"Chico Kidd - The printer's devil" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kidd Chico)

sion was borne out by the third frame, which showed the man digging beneath a tree of no identifiable species.
Instead of leaves, tiny birds and bats filled its branches; closer inspection showed the bark to be made up of
serpents. Spiders and flies and crawling things abounded in the images surrounding this picture.
‘Man digging for treasure,’ Alan captioned it.
‘Alan!’ called someone, startling him.
Realising he must be invisible, crouched down as he was, Alan stood up and waved:
‘Over here.’
‘We’re going to have lunch in the pub.’
‘Which one?’
‘There’s only one. That-a-way. King’s Head, or-Arms, or something. Some bit of a king, anyway.
‘King’s Buttocks?’ suggested Alan.
‘Probably.’
‘I’ll see you there in a minute. Don’t drink all the beer,’ Alan called, his attention returning to the drama
in the story’s fourth frame.
Here something had burst from the ground and was clutching the treasure-hunter in a horrid parody of an
embrace. The creature seemed to have no proper shape, but it had claws, and teeth - with which it appeared
to be gnawing its victim’s face. Its fur was cleverly carved: conveying the impression of a nature both oily
and unclean. Around this picture the images were unequivocal - demons fanged and clawed, and skeletal
Death’s naked bones and clenched smile.
‘Monster attacks R.S.’ wrote Alan laconically, and moved round the tomb to see what happened next.
As if some Pandora’s box had opened, horrors poured up out of the earth. Here the artist appeared to have
been strongly influenced by Hieronymous Bosch, and a shiver crawled suddenly across Alan’s shoulders. He
did not linger, noting merely ‘Monsters on rampage.’
So involved was he with the story that it was with some relief he saw Good vanquishing Evil in the next
frame. The panel was filled with saints, all grim of countenance, with their clear eyes focused on the centre,
where cowered the killing beast.
‘Saints Overcome Monster,’ wrote Alan, like a tabloid sub-editor. ‘Gotcha,’ he thought, recalling a
favourite headline.
The seventh and final frame showed the saints again - ‘All Saints,’ Alan realised, belatedly recalling the
church’s dedication - but now they were binding the creature: not in chains but in garlands, garlands of elder
and rowan, oak and ash, and other leaves he could not identify.
‘Green Party ties up the monster,’ he wrote flippantly.
And that was it; full circle. He was back at the inscription.
‘DY•D 1697 A.D.’
Was this a real legend of Roger Southwell’s death, or a serious allegory of some sort - a warning against
meddling with the supernatural? Or simply a conventional caution against avarice?
4
 Wishing for more information, he squinted again at the carved letters. Some strange impulse drew his
attention to the base of the panel, and pushing the grass down with his hand, he found a further inscription -
a line of deeply graven characters. But they were merely a meaningless jumble of letters. Alan frowned, but
wrote them down anyway, then headed for the pub to join the others.
***
What with another pub visit at the end of the day, then a long drive back, followed by a chicken tikka with
some of the other ringers, it was nearly midnight when Alan finally got home. He decided to go straight to
bed, since Kim was away on location until mid-week.
Although they had met in a ringing-chamber, she had little time to pursue that hobby these days; which
was a pity, as she had always been keener, and better, than Alan. Her being musical had a lot to do with it, he
felt, as music is kin to mathematics and mathematicians often make accomplished ringers.
In the morning, after breakfast, he put Verdi’s Otello on the stereo and headed for his bookshelves. The
first thing he looked up was the village, and here he struck gold at once: