Bram Stoker's HANNIBAL

Chapter 40: Thy Mind's Calm Ecstacy

Chapter 40: Thy Mind's Calm Ecstacy

Or of the red-cross hero teach,

Dauntless in dungeon as on breach:

Alike to him the sea, the shore,

The brand, the bridle, or the oar.

Alike to him the war that calls

Its votaries to the shattered walls,

Which the grim Turk, besmeared with blood,

Against the invincible made good;

Or that, whose thundering voice could wake

The silence of the polar lake...

Will lowered his copy of Marmion, using his finger to keep his place. "If we're to be destroyed," he murmured, "I want to die at your side."

Again, the double-ringing, the echo. He'd said the words before. Another piece of his past life returned to him. It was a Turkish arrow that had come into the castle that night. Not through his bedchamber window, no, that was out of arrow range, but into the hallway down from the door carved like the Tree of Life. The same window he'd looked out of to see Antony crawl down the wall like a lizard.

He didn't try to make sense of it, just tucked the images away, dividing and categorizing them. The message had lied, boasted of Hannibal's death, providing the crucifix as proof. And thus, he had chosen to fall.

Idly, he considered throwing himself from the cliffs in front of him, to die dashed on the rocks. Maybe he'd come to rest where Graham Will's body had.

To distract himself, he put away Marmion and pulled out his journal, writing in inspector's shorthand.

August 23: Last night was very threatening, and the fishermen say that we are in for a storm. I must try to watch it and learn the weather signs. To-day is a gray day, and the sun as I write is hidden in thick clouds, high over Kettleness. Everything is gray—except the green grass, which seems like emerald amongst it; gray earthy rock; gray clouds, tinged with the sunburst at the far edge, hang over the gray sea, into which the sand-points stretch like gray fingers. The sea is tumbling in over the shallows and the sandy flats with a roar, muffled in the sea-mists drifting inland.

The horizon is lost in a gray mist. All is vastness; the clouds are piled up like giant rocks, and there is a "brool" over the sea that sounds like some presage of doom. Dark figures are on the beach here and there, sometimes half shrouded in the mist, and seem "men like trees walking." The fishing-boats are racing for home, and rise and dip in the ground swell as they sweep into the harbor, bending to the scuppers.

I miss fishing. I miss my dogs. When I leave for America, I should consider somewhere I can fish widely, many different species. If I sell everything I have, that actually belongs to me, I could pay for my passage and set myself up somewhere as a fisherman. Buy a boat, a little place to live with the dogs.

Will paused his writing as he noticed a hunched figure moving slowly through the mist. As it neared, he recognized Mr. Wells, the old man that seemed obsessed with the idea of legacy and the lies told on gravestones. He was alone, without his cronies, and was headed for Will's bench over the grave of Graham Will. He looked stoic, resolute, and sad in a way he hadn't the last time they'd seen one another.

"Mr. Graham." He lowered himself down on the bench with a heavy sigh.

"Mr. Wells."

They shared a long silence that was somehow completely comfortable.