Normal Family Page 9

  A few hundred yards ahead we came to a small bay that was a sheltered, sandy paradise now that it was low tide, but later would be hidden under several feet of churning water.

  “Do you know what this is?” Schwartz said pointing at a large cave entrance that for some reason was almost completely bricked up. “This is Culver Hole, but nobody knows what it’s for, or why it’s all closed. Most think it’s for pigeons.”

  For some reason we laughed and I remembered Reverend Lewis had mentioned Culver Hole as somewhere interesting.

  “You hold onto that idea, girls, until I say different, but remember that whatever lies behind those bricks belongs to me, pigeons or not. Come with me, I have something else to show you.”

  In spite of his massive frame Schwartz leapt from rock to rock with the confidence of a mountain goat and it was as much as we could do to keep up with him let alone maintain our footing. The rocks at the base of Port Eynon Point were slippery from the storm the night before and the salt foam made it difficult to see what was rock and what was crevasse. Neets gave an involuntary cry as she lost her footing and slipped towards the broiling waters and jagged rocks far below. She desperately tried to grab an outcrop of rock, but missed it by inches.

  “Not so fast, girl.” Schwartz grabbed Neets’s arm and hauled her back from the abyss. “I’ll decide if and when you take the Leap of Faith. I’ll not have you practicing.” Before Neets could thank him Schwartz had turned and was striding round the point towards a distant building that we knew all too well.

  When we reached the Salt House, Schwartz threw open the door and almost pushed us inside before locking it behind us with a very obvious click. The stillness and damp cold of the place was unnerving and the air was full of the tang of salt, though because the tide was at its lowest ebb the main salt puddling tank was empty (whatever puddling is). I knew we were in the puddling room, though, because there was a crudely painted sign with Puddling Room on it.

  Schwartz led us down a mercifully small number of slippery stone steps until we stood on the even more slippery floor of the tank. I’d expected green slime and seaweed, but the smooth rocks gleamed in what little light there was and the salt crystals glistened in the gloom like tiny dull diamonds.

  “Close your eyes,” ordered Schwartz as he grabbed me by the arms. Neets meekly followed. “I’m going to blindfold you both. I don’t care how much you’re fed up with Gawain, I still don’t trust you. Stand still and stop struggling. I’m not going to hurt you, at least not yet.” As he spoke Schwartz undid his neckerchief and tied it roughly around Neets’s head, then spun her round, making sure she could see absolutely nothing and had no idea in what direction she couldn’t see it. He turned to me and ripped the sleeve off my dress, which was better than the alternative of his old hanky.

  We were pushed blindly along the tank floor, more concerned with not falling flat on our faces than with where he was taking us. I held my arms out in front of me as I shuffled along knowing a wall of some sort couldn’t be more than a few feet away and I had no intention of getting a bloody nose. I heard a click and the sound of heavy movement.

  “Duck down,” Schwartz put a hand on each of our heads, “and keep those blindfolds over your eyes until I say you can take them off.” I wasn’t going to argue and instinctively stooped as I was pushed forward no more than five or six feet. “You can stand up now, girl, and uncover your eyes. You too, Unita.”

  I looked around not knowing what I expected to see. Schwartz was holding an old oil lamp high above his head and pointing towards a short flight of steps carved into the rock at the end of what was presumably an old bricked-off sea cave. On the wall below the steps were two relatively new looking iron rings fastened to the rock at waist height. Schwartz smiled when he saw me looking at them. Neets was pointing excitedly at the rings because she’d seen them before.

  “Unwanted pests get fastened to those two,” he said, enjoying our reaction, “then at high tide when the sea comes pouring in and fills this cave the pests are no longer a nuisance. Some whimper and cry and some scream, but nobody can hear them. Most of the salt puddlers don’t even know about this cave and the noise of the sea drowns out everything.” He laughed at the look on Neets’s face. “Are you a pest, Unita? Shall I leave you here until tomorrow, or keep the rings empty for other pests I might need to destroy?” He paused as though thinking through a complex problem. “Yes I believe that’s what I’ll do. It’s your lucky day, girls. Follow me.”

  I glanced at the two rings and had a pretty good idea what the future held for us. Schwartz was already at the top of the steps making us hurry after him before the light from the lamp disappeared completely. After the last step, even I had to stoop to follow the giant Schwartz into a tunnel that looked anything but natural and as though it had been only recently carved out of the living rock. To my relief, rock soon gave way to earth and the ceiling gradually rose to head height until even Schwartz could walk upright without swearing every ten paces. That only left the cold, the damp and the incredibly slippery earth to contend with. I couldn’t help wondering why on earth Schwartz hadn’t bothered to get his men to put down some nice dry sand if he was so all-powerful. But maybe he was also plain thick.

  “We’re nearly there,” said Schwartz, breaking the silence. “Keep up and stop lagging behind, or I’ll leave you both down here to consider your lack of a future.”

  We hurried forward, catching up with the wrecker just as he opened a massive wooden door and entered a large brick-lined room. My mouth dropped open as I stared at the vast treasure trove that filled every inch of the floor. Everything was piled up without any thought for what they were, or their value and I couldn’t help thinking that whoever had done the storing had lost all interest a long time ago. One item attracted my attention more than any other, mostly because of the ultraviolet glow coming from its center. Schwartz’s portable Time Portal stood in a corner and was on standby.

  “You’ve both seen one of these before,” said Schwartz when he saw where I was looking. “Gawain has one in his cellar, as if you didn’t know. Tertia, I saw you and his brat escaping through it when I got into their house to smash his Portal. That’s when I realized you’d found me and I’d have to deal with you more permanently. But maybe you’ve both come to your senses and if you really want to join me I might let you live a little longer… but not too long,” I heard him mutter the last words and shuddered.

  We followed Schwartz into the cave the wrecker used as a treasure store and this time I took a closer look at our surroundings. The whole place was piled high with treasure the gang had looted in seventeen years of wrecking and smuggling. Bales of silk lay open and rotting, bags of gems and money lay scattered and ignored, bottles of exotic perfumes were opened and useless, and yet barrels of rum and brandy lay neatly stacked in a corner.

  Schwartz glanced at me. “This is nothing,” he said with a sneer. “These are the discarded toys my men bring back after a night’s work. What do I need with this trash? It means nothing, except to give me power and impress my small army.”

  “But if you don’t want anything here,” I said, “why wreck the ships? Why kill the sailors?”

  “I just told you, girl. An army, even a small one means power, but it’s a power that needs to be fed and my men need to know I’m invincible. I lead them to riches and glory and they follow me blindly, although often I have to admit it’s because of what’s in those barrels.” Schwartz laughed. “Come over here and I’ll show you something special.”

  Schwartz walked over to a door that had one of the largest locks I’d ever seen, pulled a massive key from his coat pocket and opened the lock almost with what looked like reverence. The room beyond was clean, well lit, and contained the most stunning works of art in existence.

  Oil and watercolor paintings from every century, past and future, lined the walls and statues in nearly every precious metal and type of stone stood on the floor, or were mounted on plinths. Treasures, rare
to the point of being unique, were displayed in cabinets that themselves were works of art. The entire vast room was a connoisseur’s paradise.

  Schwartz held up his lamp so that we could see right into the farthest corner. “Impressed?” Pride bubbled in his voice. “This is just the first room. The other four are larger and hold my real treasures.”

  He walked over to the statue of a woman. She wasn’t wearing much above her waist and for some reason had no arms, but there was something about her that made me stand staring with my mouth open.

  “The real Venus de Milo,” said Schwartz proudly. “The one in the Louvre is a copy. I stole the original years ago and rather than admit they’d lost it the French authorities had another one made and put in its place. That’s happened with quite a few of the treasures I’ve stolen, like that painting over there.” A woman with a slight smile on her face looked at us from a small frame. “That also came from the Louvre and it’s another favorite of mine even though it’s only painted on a piece of wood. They find the originals, I take them and they replace them with copies.” Schwartz gently touched the Mona Lisa painting with his fingertips then looked at us. “Merlin’s portable Portal lets me bring anything I want here. The only drawback is that the Portal won’t let me go back to Camelot. Merlin saw to that. It also means Gawain’s stuck here of course, which is some consolation.”

  “Are you saying you suddenly love beautiful things?” I said with hardly a trace of sarcasm, because I remembered how the Black Knight dealt with sarcastic people.

  “I always did, even in Camelot.”

  “Beautiful things like Guinevere?” I could see I’d hit a nerve and was tempted to duck, but Schwartz made no comment, turned and was about to leave the room. He stopped when he saw me walk up to a small display in the middle of the cave that had obviously been reserved for a special purpose. Its plinth was made of marble, the display table was polished mahogany covered with plush red velvet and topped by what looked like a crystal eggcup. I decided the eggcup was probably of little value, so there was more than likely something missing, because even the oil lamps gave maximum effect to something that wasn’t there.

  “Down to the damned Gawain, young Tertia.” Schwartz used my name again, though I was quite happy with girl especially from Schwartz and his many other favorite expletives. “That was to have been the greatest prize in my collection before that bloody bastard involved himself. I’d planned its theft for years and he managed to stop me.”

  I couldn’t help wondering what could have been Schwartz’s intended treasure and yet been so small. “Back in Camelot, Gawain was always stopping us from what we wanted to do as well,” I said. “That’s why we’re here instead of with him.” It made me cringe, but the wrecker seemed satisfied as he guided us back into the trash room. “Do we go back down the tunnel, or through the Portal?”

  “Neither.” Schwartz smiled, though a grinning skull would have had more humor. He took hold of my arm and pointed to the other end of the cave. “We go through that door and then up the steps into my house. We’re home, girls. Or maybe I’ll call you Unita and Tertia.”

  “But if this was what you wanted to show us, why’d we go all that way over the cliffs and rocks to get here.” I decided that a bit of indignation might go down well.

  “I needed to test you,” said Schwartz. “You think I’m going to trust so-called friends of my greatest enemy just because you show up at my gate? I wanted you to see where traitors end up for one thing. I don’t get many traitors and I promise you that no one has betrayed me twice.”

  “But what about Culver Hole?” Neets said. “Why take us all along there?”

  “That was me showing off,” admitted the human side of Schwartz’s otherwise inhumane nature. “There are things that go on in there you’ll never see. Besides we needed to go past it to get to the Salt House and into the tunnel that brought us here.” Schwartz opened a door, strode up the steps and pulled a lever high above the top stair as a door swung open letting light flood in from the room beyond. We had no choice but to follow him and I looked past Schwartz at the dining hall we’d left an hour or so earlier.

  “We’re back in your house,” Neets said as we walked through the door at the top of the stairs. “We were in your cellars all the time and now we’re back up in your place. Does this mean you trust us, because if you still don’t would we have come back here the long way?” She looked at Schwartz pointedly. “Or only half the way?”

  “I don’t trust anybody, girl,” Schwartz said without the slightest expression in his voice, “not a single person. There are some people I nearly trust and there are others who would do well to keep out of my way.” This time his smile did have as much humor as a skull, though not a very happy one. “Why should I trust you more than any of the men who’ve been with me for years? Of course I don’t, but you may prove to be useful.”

  “And if we’re not?” inquired Neets, because she had to ask.

  “There’s always the quick Leap of Faith from the cliff top into the sea, or the slow manacled tidal death in the Salt House. Take your pick.”

  “I think we may be useful.”

  “I thought you might.” Schwartz walked over to a table and poured himself a mug of wine. He nodded to both of us, offering whatever we might want from the breakfast table although there was very little left especially in the way of food. I shook my head. The apple I’d eaten earlier would do until lunchtime and I still had the cold chop. Neets grabbed a bread roll and stuffed it in her mouth. “You’ve had a good night’s sleep, food and drink, an invigorating walk and you’ve seen my treasures. Now it’s payback time. Go to the stables and muck out the horses. Be quick, because we’ll be busy tonight.”

  “Why?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of my common sense. “What’s going to happen?”

  Schwartz perched on one of the tables, looked at me and scratched his chin. “A storm, that’s what. Probably one of the biggest this year and the tide is at its highest. All that adds up to ships being wrecked and us getting rich.”

  “But they’ll avoid this coast like the plague.”

  “Not if we put our beacons out in the right places. They’ll be lining up to be smashed on the rocks.” Schwartz laughed.

  “Whereabouts are we putting the beacons? There can’t be many places left you haven’t used.” I was pushing my luck, but if I didn’t ask then we’d never be told.

  Schwartz gave me a look that not only had suspicion, but a danger warning written all over it. “Very well,” he said slowly as he pushed himself upright from the table. He put his mug down as though deep in thought. “It’s to be the Crabart and if there are soldiers, or revenue men ready to meet us, I’ll know where they got their information. Remember the Leap of Faith, young Tertia, especially if you want to become old Tertia.”

  Bryn had told us the Crabart was one of the most dangerous causeways on any coast, let alone in South Wales. It separated the mainland from the Worm’s Head, three long, thin islands that stretched half a mile out to sea, and at low tide was a rocky seaweed-strewn pathway for the wary. At high water the tidal rip raced over the Crabart causeway destroying any ship looking for a shortcut and many had simply disappeared after being smashed to matchwood.

  So it was to be the Crabart, and tonight.

  “Now go and work and I don’t want to see you again until this evening.”

  We walked over to the stables and I smiled to myself. We had news that could destroy the man who had terrorized the coast and killed Bryn’s mother. It was weird, but could Schwartz be so naive as to think we’d believed his version of Marie’s death, or did the man really believe we disliked Gawain so much? It seemed so.

  We mucked the stables for an hour, crept out of Schwartz’s lair when no one was looking and made a run for it.

  Chapter Eight

  Breakfast, Lunch and Gawain’s story

  We got back to Port Eynon at half past nine in the morning and I realized just how early t
he Black Knight had woken us with his kicks, though I have to admit I was beginning to think of him just as a nasty piece of work called Schwartz in spite of all he did to us and our families in Camelot.

  I wanted to sort out a few things before we went back to Bryn’s house and got bombarded with the inevitable loads of questions, but I also needed a long hot bath and a really big breakfast. Neets didn’t argue even though I suspected she was itching to get back to her Bryn. Poor cow!

  Port Eynon’s inn can’t have gotten much passing trade and welcomed us with open arms, especially when we mentioned we were staying with the Lewis family and the bill should go to them. An hour later we ordered two full English breakfasts, with everything, twice… each, and got the Welsh version that had sausage, eggs, bacon, mushrooms, mussels, tomato and fried bread, and as a special treat a good helping of a local seaweed called lava bread. Close your eyes and hold your nose, I decided, then it probably won’t taste too bad, especially as I was ravenously hungry and my last meal had been a vastly overpriced bread roll in the Olé Grill and a Schwartz apple. I had thirds and Neets had fourths.

  When the plates were empty with probably no need to wash them we sat at a table in the bar and made notes on what we knew so far. This took up a whole page in one of Neets’s detective notebooks. Most of this was our names, the case number, the date and where we were staying, plus details of the free breakfast in case we could claim it on our expenses. Then we made notes, which took up several pages of very small writing.

  I paced up and down with my hands clasped behind my back doing an impression of Marlene doing an impression of Sherlock Holmes dictating to Dr. Watson, while Neets pretended to be a detective and did a reasonable job.