Saxon's Bane (18 page)

C
LARE ROLLS HER
head against her pillow as if in a fever. Woods encircle her, imprisoning her, grey shapes in a mist that drips menace. At their margins, spreading onto the fields, warriors stand with their spears upright, lethal saplings fringing the forest. Then the woods start running towards the settlement but it is warriors not trees, and leading the charge is Tony Foulkes who bounds over the tussocks of grass shouting a war cry. Clare wants to call to him to take care because he will give himself a heart attack, but Tony is helmeted and cross-gartered and carries an axe and wants to kill her.

Aegl’s arrow takes Tony square in the chest so that he slides forward a full pace on his knees under his own momentum, and as he falls a great groan of loss stumbles through the Wealas ranks. Their spears sink back to the edge of the woods the way a wave retreats from a beach, until Wealas and Saxon stare at each other across open land where a king lies dead, a goosefeather flower blooming from his heart.

Five men leave the trees, four warriors with sheathed weapons walking in a square around an old greybeard with the robe and staff of a druid. In the opaque, drifting rain they march like an honour guard of ghosts come to collect their dead. The old man leans on his staff as if overtaken by infirmity, while behind him the four warriors make a table of their shields and lift their king onto their shoulders. In silence they bear him from the field, giving him honour with their dignity, until the druid stands alone. He stares at the settlement with the wind flapping his cloak around his knees and blowing drips of water from the fluttering ends of his beard, and the druid’s presence strikes them with more force than any king’s. When he speaks it is in their own tongue, with the lilting accent of his race, and a voice that carries to the wall with the clarity of a bard so that all can hear.

“Every man will die, but one. Your women will become the playthings and slaves of our warriors. This is sure. But you,” the druid points his staff at Aegl, “your bane is that you will not die. For you there will be no balefire, no release. You will spend eternity lost in this world and even fifty generations hence you will still yearn for the halls of your ancestors.”

He speaks with calm dignity, the way one tells an inarguable truth, with none of the screaming passion of a curse. Such utter certainty is chilling. Then he turns and walks back towards the woods, leaning heavily on his staff as if he has expended much power and is drained. When he reaches the trees the grey, flapping cloak is swallowed among the trunks and the tightening ring of warriors.

“A
RE YOU
ok with leaving your car here?” Clare parked Fergus’s car off the road, above the bridleway, where it could at least be partially screened by bushes. Fergus shrugged. He was more concerned about walking back to the clearing than about what might happen to his company car.

“What’s happening to your own car?”

“Russell’s fixing it for me. And hey, who have you been seeing?” She reached past his shoulder and pulled a long, blonde hair from the passenger headrest.

“That’ll be Kate’s. I hadn’t the heart to throw it away.” Clare stared at the thread in her hand as if it held the answer to some profound question, the way he had seen her stare at Olrun’s tooth.

“And you think that
I’m
morbid? May I?” At Fergus’s nod of permission, Clare coiled the hair into the silver pillbox from her pocket. “I have a theory I’d like to test.”

Fergus heaved himself out. Clare had just saved him the need to throw the hair away. That had always seemed too symbolic. Clare followed, opened the boot of Fergus’s car and pulled out a rucksack. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Sure.” He knew he spoke too brightly. “Why the bag? It looks like you’re mounting an expedition.” Clare was tying a blanket to the rucksack.

“It’s a lovely afternoon. I brought a bottle of wine and some sandwiches. I thought we might have a farewell picnic afterwards, if you want.” Clare also spoke too lightly, in a way that failed to hide a deeper significance.

“Good idea. I, er, brought my stick.” Fergus lifted it in superfluous illustration. “To beat off the bad guys.”

“Do you realise you’ve become quite a hero with Mary Baxter and the church crowd? Tony’s death and your run-in with Herne are the only topics of conversation in the village.” Clare shrugged into the rucksack as they started walking.

“Very gratifying, but I’ll still avoid dark alleyways for a while. I don’t think he’s going to forgive and forget.”

“I’m probably just as much in the poo. He chased me down this track after I took a peek at his party.”

“What exactly
did
you see? I was a bit distracted the other night.” And a bit distracted now, come to that. The track ahead of them darkened where it entered the shadow of the hill, then darkened again as it reached the rhododendrons.
Face the pain. It is an obstacle, not a boundary.

“Not a lot. It looked as if killing the goat was an excuse for an orgy. I’m not sure which was worse; fighting off cramp in my legs or watching Squirrel Nutkin being screwed by a wolf. The last I saw, the wolf had his hands over his eyes, his trousers round his ankles, and
way
too much excitement in between. Are you all right?”

Fergus breathed deeply, forcing himself to stay calm as they approached the shrubbery that screened the clearing. He started to shiver as they left the sunlight. The gate to the side track, the scene of his collapse, stood open with the padlock and chain hanging free. Down the hill, where the track crossed the stream, they could see Jake Herne’s Range Rover. Herne’s horse was in the meadow at the end of the valley, and as they watched Herne himself appeared from the store by the animal shelter, dragging a block of hay one-handed. The other hand dangled across his chest in a plaster cast and sling.

“So that’s where he’s taken his horse.” They both moved until the bushes screened them from Herne’s view. “I hope it bloody well kicks him.”

“I guess we won’t be going down there today.” Clare sounded disappointed. “I wonder how he’s managing to drive?”

“One-handed, I suppose. He wouldn’t have to change gear with the hand I broke.”

“Shall we go back and find somewhere else for our picnic?”

“Let’s go on.” Fergus nodded forwards, needing to prove to himself that he could walk past the place without panicking. He faltered as they reached the trail of the car’s wreck, and he felt her grip his hand. On the far side of the gap he stopped, turning his head as if smelling the air.

“It’s not just me, you know.” Fergus spoke almost to himself, feeling the chill of a light sweat bloom across his forehead. “There’s something here, something nasty.”

Fergus reached inside himself for the awareness that he had sensed sitting beside the source of another stream, on the day he rode out with Eadlin. The more he tuned out the everyday world, the more he became aware of a deeper resonance. There was a wound in this place, an absence of harmony, as if the fabric of nature was torn and bleeding.

“Apart from Jake Herne, you mean?” Clare looked around nervously.

“I thought it was me, the last time, panicking when I realised it was where I, where it...” Fergus waved a hand vaguely, lacking the words to describe the root of all nightmares. “But it’s more than that. There’s something malicious here, something evil.”

“Come on, let’s walk.” Clare tugged him onwards, keeping hold of his hand, forcing him to move briskly until they had rounded the end of the valley. She turned onto a footpath that ran uphill on the eastern side of the valley, setting a pace that had him struggling to keep up. Only when the path broke clear of the trees and they stood in sunlight did she stop and turn, searching his face. Whatever Clare saw there relieved her, and she smiled and touched his face.

“For a moment back there I felt I’d lost you. It was like you’d checked out.”

“More tuned in than checked out.” Clare’s fingers on his face were soft, making him want to touch her in return. Gently, she lifted on to her toes and kissed him on the mouth.

“Thank you.”

“What for?” Fergus hoped that he didn’t sound too stunned.

“Coming to that place with me. It meant a lot.”

“I’m simply facing my demons. Quite literally, it seems.” Fergus reached for her again but she had turned away and he found himself trying to embrace a rucksack.

“Let’s take the long route back. How are your legs?” Clare called over her shoulder. Fergus watched her stride uphill, admiring the way her backside moved. Peachy. Perfect.

“Absolutely fine.” Something in his tone made Clare look at him, but he ignored her implied query as well as his aches. She was grinning as she turned back to the path.

“Something I saw at Herne’s orgy gave me an idea.”

“Sounds exciting.”

“Not that sort of idea. Do you remember me mentioning an old poem, the
Hávamál
, where Odin says that he could raise the dead by colouring runes in the right way?”

Fergus grunted. He was still enjoying the way her arse moved but the hill climb was hard work. He had no breath left for conversation.

“Well, the day before Tony died, Herne and his cronies managed to colour the runes with goat’s blood.”

“Tony probably had a heart attack, nothing more. And as far as we are aware there are no newly resurrected ghosts running round the churchyard.”

“And the night before we discovered the Saxon they had probably coloured the runes with stag’s blood.”

“You’re not seriously starting to believe that stuff, are you?”

Clare paused and turned as they crested a rise. Fergus lifted his eyes from his own view and grinned at her, but her eyes had become hunted, even frightened.

“I had another dream last night. It was very real. Like I was there.”

Fergus was too breathless to respond.

“It was as real as packing up the dig this morning. More frightening than anything else because it felt as if they, we, were all going to die, see? In my dream I actually saw someone die. I have to tell myself it was only a dream.”

Fergus touched Clare gently on the shoulder, turning her to face him. Her arm inside her sweatshirt felt fragile, like a bird’s wing. He put his arms around her and hugged her, awkwardly reaching around the rucksack until he settled his arms above it, behind her shoulders.

“What’s happening to me, Fergus?” Clare mumbled into his chest. “Am I going mad?” Fergus whispered reassurance into her head. “I’m dreaming about stuff that might have happened fourteen hundred years ago and, yes, I’m starting to believe it. I have a dream about a dead woman talking to me in Old Norse and I react as if I’ve made an archaeological discovery. I’m an academic, for heaven’s sake, I’m supposed to be professional, logical, to respond to reasoning and not to fairy stories. Or dreams.”

“Are you going to carry that wine back with you? Because I think we both need a drink. This is as good a place as any for a picnic, and my legs need a rest.” He swept his arm across the view. Beneath them the valley of the Swanbourne opened onto rolling farmlands that faded into the distance towards the sea. The field with Herne and his horse was out of sight beneath the curve of the hill.

“Do you want to tell me about it? Your dream, I mean?” he asked, as they sipped wine from plastic cups. She breathed deeply for a moment, and then spoke in her academic voice, the one that had echoes of the lecture theatre.

“A Celtic war band comes over the Downs late in the year, after the fighting season is supposed to be over, you see, so they take the settlement by surprise. The pollen grains found in the Saxon’s clothing tell us he was killed in late autumn.”

“So you knew the timing already.”

“Quite. I could just be lifting that bit out of my subconscious.”

Fergus stared at the road on the far side of the valley, tracing where it left the open Downs and disappeared into the trees. He looked away, squinting at the light as he forced himself off that mental track. The afternoon sun was warm on his face.

“Why would they attack after the fighting season is over?”

Clare shrugged. “Perhaps there had been a drought and the crops had failed. They might have come raiding for food or for cattle, for meat to feed their families in the winter. Maybe they were trying to eliminate a particularly troublesome warlord by catching him off guard. Who knows?” She was calmer now.

“So the settlement was over-run?”

“Probably, although I haven’t seen –
dreamt
– that. There was a druid with the war band, and I’m afraid of him. Even now, wide awake, I’m afraid of him, almost as if all the threat is concentrated in him. My dream stopped when he told the Saxons they would all die except Aegl. Aegl would be denied burial rites and would be cursed never to reach the halls of his ancestors.”

“Sounds like a friendly guy, your druid.” Fergus took a bite out of a sandwich and chewed thoughtfully. “What might Aegl have done to upset them? Apart from being Saxon, that is.”

“Maybe Aegl killed the wrong man. Maybe the druid had other plans all along, because no-one knows for sure why bog people were slaughtered that way. Quite a lot of bog bodies are high caste, ritual killings that are found on a boundary, you see? Perhaps their religion had an idea that you could create a ghostly watcher on the border, a sort of spirit guard to hold back the enemy.”

“You said Aegl would be denied burial rites. How does that fit with you digging him up from under the mill pond? It looks as if he was buried anyway.”

“The important thing to a Saxon would probably be the rites rather than the burial itself. And he was killed by ritual drowning, with no burial. Actually you’re giving me an idea.” It was Clare’s turn to pause and think. “I can’t believe a serious academic is saying this, but maybe we should give Aegl a Saxon funeral.”

“Oh, and do you have a spare longship to hand? You know, so we can re-enact the Sutton Hoo burial?” Clare’s smile stayed half-serious despite his teasing. “Don’t you think your university might object? And what exactly were the Saxon burial rites?”

“Of course no-one is going to let us bury the body. It would be like letting go of Tutankhamun’s mummy. We’d have to steal him.” Clare looked at Fergus mischievously over the rim of her cup, her eyes sparkling. “And we know too little about Saxon rites. They’re mentioned in passing in epics like
Beowulf
, but it’s not like having the Saxon Pagan Prayerbook to hand.”

“Maybe you should ask Eadlin. She knows a lot about old traditions.” Fergus thought the idea was preposterous but he was content to humour her. This sparkling, impish Clare was better company than her serious, academic persona.

Clare turned to lie back against her pack, angling her face to the sun. “You’d never believe it’s only April,” she said, shutting her eyes against the glare. Her position lifted her sweat shirt and stretched it across her body, and Fergus fantasised for a moment about putting his hand on Clare’s belly and sliding it gently upwards. He propped himself on one elbow beside her and took the licence of her closed eyes to appreciate her figure, until Clare opened one eye and grinned at him conspiratorially.

“It would be fun, though, wouldn’t it?” She giggled.

“What would?” Fergus felt himself blushing, as if Clare had read his thoughts.

“Stealing the body. My professor would have an apoplectic fit!”

Clare’s laughter was sexy and he tilted his head towards her tentatively, fearing rejection, but she lifted her face to him until their lips met, and parted. She tasted of wine, filling Fergus’s mind with the heady sense of her femininity. As they kissed he touched the side of her face and let his fingertips explore downwards, tracing her outline through the sweatshirt until her nipple hardened under his palm like a button under velvet. Gently, reprovingly, Clare lifted his hand away and sat up.

“Let’s walk.”

“Can’t we just sit here and talk? I never knew bodysnatching could be so interesting!”

Clare grinned and nodded at the scenery. “And half of England has a grandstand view of us.” She stood and stretched as Fergus repacked the rucksack. “Let me show you something I found on one of my morning runs.”

She set off along the footpath, grinning back over her shoulder. He could swear there was more swing to her hips since they had rested. The path crossed the spine of the hill out of the valley and led gently downhill, still angling away from Allingley as it plunged into the trees fringing the escarpment. By the time Clare stopped beneath a massive yew tree Fergus’s legs were aching badly and he was using his stick in earnest. Fergus flopped down with his back against a nearby tree, stretched out his legs and sighed at the opportunity to rest.