The Moor - Laurie R. King [22]
However, with Holmes beside me as a talisman, the spooks kept their distance, and what might have been a place of animosity and danger was rendered merely desolate to the point of being grim. I thought that Holmes' term wasteland was not inappropriate. Godforsaken might also be applied.
The morning stretched on, not without incident, although the time between incidents seemed to be very long indeed. Once, my dulled eyes were surprised to see one of the boulders we were passing turn and look at us—a Dartmoor pony, as shaggy as a winter sheep and only marginally taller. Its eyes peered out from behind its plastered-down forelock, watching us pass before it resumed its head-down stance of stolid endurance, hunkered up against the wind, belly and nose dripping steadily. Holmes said it was most likely a hybrid, crossed with Shetland ponies brought in during the war in an attempt to breed animals suited for the Welsh mines. This particular beast did not seem well pleased with its adopted home.
Once, we came across a weathered, lichen-covered stone cross, erected centuries before to mark the way for pilgrims, now proud in its solitude but starting to lean. One of its arms was missing and the other had been broken to a stump, and its feet were standing in a pool of water.
Once, we saw a fox, picking its delicate way through a sweep of bracken fern, and shortly after that we glimpsed a buzzard making disconsolate circles against the clouds. The high point of the morning was when a startled woodcock burst from beneath our boots and flew from us in terror. The excitement of that encounter, however, did not last long, and soon we were back in the melancholy embrace of the brooding moor.
Up a rise and down the other side, across a rivulet with sharply cut sides and a scurry of clear, peat-stained water in the bottom. Up again, avoiding a piece of granite the size of a bathtub thrusting out of the rough grass. A meandering ridge on an approaching hill, resembling the work of some huge, prehistoric mole, became on closer examination an ancient stone wall nearly subsumed by the slow encroachment of the turf. A distant sweep of russet across a hillside, a scurf of furze and dying bracken fern, was cut by the dark of another ancient wall drawn along its side.
It was, I supposed, picturesque enough, given the limited palette of drab colours, but as a piece of Impressionist art it served to evoke only the disagreeable feelings of restlessness, melancholia, and a faint thread of menace.
After an hour or so Holmes attempted to smoke, but he could not get his pipe to stay lit. We trudged on, speech and camaraderie left behind us in Lydford, as stolid and enduring as the pony, placing one foot in front of the other on the sparse grass covering the deep sodden peat beds that passed for soil.
By midday I was as grey and silent as anything else in that bleak place, edgy with an unidentifiable sense of waiting and aching for a spot of colour. Had I known, I might have worn a red pullover, but all my clothes were warm and masculine and dull, and there was no relief from the monotony until Holmes stopped and I walked straight into him. The shock of change nearly caused me to fall, but my irritation died the instant I saw what had caught his interest: a shelter.
It was a rough stone hut, used by shepherds, perhaps—short shepherds, we found, as once inside we both had to keep our heads well tucked down, but it had the better part of a roof, and even a cracked leather flap to cover most of the doorway. We had no fire other than the glowing bowl of Holmes' pipe, but at least our sandwiches remained dry as we ate them, and the now-tepid coffee in the