Authors: Geoffrey Gudgion
P
ROFESSOR
M
ILES
E
ATON
held court in splendid style on the new decking at the Mill House, dazzling a circle of guests with his wit and white linen.
“You’ve done a magnificent job, absolutely magnificent!” Eaton lifted his arm as if he was about to pat the Mill House’s owner on the back, but realising the man was taller than himself he changed the movement and lifted his panama hat instead, waving it at the grounds with their newly re-flooded lake. “So kind of you to invite us to your first garden party.” On the fringe of the group Fergus wondered if the ‘us’ was a regal ‘me’. “And you have the water wheel working again!”
“Merely a reproduction, alas, and it drives a small generator instead of a mill, but we’re pleased. By the way, I read your excellent paper on the Saxon warrior in the
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology
.” The Mill House’s owner turned the conversation back to his celebrity guest, deftly demonstrating his erudition in the process. “I’m not an archaeologist but naturally I have a particular interest.”
“You’re too kind. Sadly, though, we’ve had to abandon plans for a television documentary. You heard that somebody stole the body? Extraordinary!”
Clare slipped her arm through Fergus’s and led him away down an immaculate pathway towards the lake. Other guests were wandering through the gardens, admiring shrubs that had arrived by fork-lift to bring instant, expensive maturity.
“Pompous prick!” she muttered under her breath. “That was
my
paper in the
Journal.
All he did was take out some of the speculative passages. Too fanciful, he said, too romanticised, so he stripped it until it was totally dry and factual, and then put his own name on it. I wouldn’t mind if I didn’t know I was right.”
“True. Although somehow that doesn’t matter any more. It’s enough to know.”
They paused to greet John Webster, who was climbing the path towards them, doffing his straw hat to Clare.
“Hello, you two. I hoped you’d be here. Have you both recovered?”
“We’re fine, John, really fine, honestly.” Clare hugged Fergus and beamed at the Vicar to emphasise her point.
“And Fergus, I’m delighted to see you without a sling.”
“I’ve started riding again, as well. Eadlin’s hoping that Trooper and I will be competing in the autumn.”
“Ah, the horse. Are you sure he’s safe?”
“Let’s just say we both benefited from a few weeks getting to know each other again.”
“Remember, if you ever need to talk…” Webster looked directly at Fergus, the compassion behind his eyes reaching for the soul, saying
I will share your pain, if you’ll let me.
“Thanks, John,” Fergus touched the priest’s arm, acknowledging the depth of the offer. Webster was one of the very few people he’d ever trust with the screaming time, but a crust was forming over the pit. One day it might stand the weight of conversation. “There was a time when we should have talked, but I couldn’t. Now I think I could, but I don’t need to, anymore. Some things are best left to heal quietly.”
Webster’s eyes moistened, and he smiled his understanding.
“How about you, John?” Clare asked. “Were there any repercussions for you or Julia with the police?”
“Not really, although I don’t think that it has quite blown over yet. Most people just think Julia was overwrought after Tony’s death, and flipped when she saw Jake Herne in a goat mask. It’s a bit unfair, but she’ll live with it. And thank you both for letting us in on the secret. It’s been important for our peace of mind.” Webster was perspiring in his clerical collar and jacket, and mopped his face with a folded handkerchief. “I think you should know there are rumours circulating, though, that are quite close to the truth.”
Professor Eaton’s voice boomed from the decking area above them, enthusing now about the rune stone that ‘we’ had found nearby. Webster looked up towards the deck, and turned to walk out of earshot with Fergus and Clare, down to where reeds and irises had been planted in naturalising tubs along the edge of the lake.
“I had an interesting conversation with that police inspector the other day. He’s still looking for Dick Hagman, and he’s sure that there’s more for him to discover. He said it was strange to be called out twice in twenty-four hours to the same village, particularly after the previous incidents. Once to a fire with no body, even though all his instinct told him there should be a body, and then again to a body with no fire even though the smell of fire was all around. I hope for your sake, Clare, he never makes the connection with the Saxon.”
“Amen to that.”
“Have you deciphered that rune stone, yet?” Webster asked, nodding towards the group on the decking.
“Well, there’s the stuff we can prove, or at least make a reasonable stab at interpreting...”
“And?”
“There’s the stuff I believe, but will never be able to prove.” Clare smiled at Webster, gauging his interest.
“I’ve always found belief more appealing than dry facts.” Webster fingered his collar again, pulling it away from his neck to let in some air.
“I think it’s rather like one of the memorials in your church. ‘Sacred to the memory of…’ and all that. Aegl and Olrun had children, and they survived. Their parents’ bodies were never found, so when they grew up they erected a stone to their memory in a place that had been special to them.”
“You sound very sure.”
Clare shrugged. “I’m not, I’m only speculating. But I’m comfortable with the idea. More comfortable than I am with the part of the stone that may be a curse.”
Both Fergus and Webster looked at her sharply. Fergus hadn’t heard about the curse.
“It’s open to wide interpretation, but part of the inscription could mean ‘and the damnation of the gods on the foreigners that slew them’. The AngloSaxon for ‘foreigner’ was ‘Wealas’ but today we’d say ‘Welshmen’.”
“Dear God. Tony.”
Webster sat down heavily on an ornate, cast iron bench beside the path.
“Sorry. Like I said, it’s open to interpretation.” Clare half-smiled and shrugged before walking over an ornamental bridge onto the dam. Fergus sat with Webster on the bench, concerned by the Vicar’s pallor.
“Clare tells me that runes were thought to be very powerful in Saxon times,” Fergus tried to explain. “There’s some line in a poem about runes being capable of raising the dead.”
“Only Christ can do that.”
“Yet I’m sure I saw that Saxon when I was trapped in the car.”
“You saw an apparition when you were close to death. That’s a different thing, and it’s not unknown. In fact, there’s nothing that has happened in Allingley this year that can’t be explained.”
“But Tony…”
“Had the heart attack he’d been warned about.”
“Or Jake Herne…”
“Thought he could play with the devil, and went mad, homicidally mad. And the village had a bout of collective hysteria due to all the media attention.”
“By those criteria, Clare simply has an over-active imagination. But we know differently, don’t we John? At Tony’s funeral you said this was part of a very old battle. Well, I believe you’ve just won a skirmish, and you said yourself that you prefer belief to dry facts.”
Webster shifted uncomfortably on the seat.
“I hear you’re looking for a cottage in the village. I’m so pleased.”
The change of subject was too abrupt. It brushed aside truths that Fergus wanted to share, with the priest above all people. He tried to form the sentences in his mind that would describe the supernal moment in the church, but the words eluded him and a comfortable silence grew between them. In front of them Clare ambled over the dam, slender, almost child-like within an oversized T-shirt, and a rush of feeling filled Fergus’s chest at the sight of her moving through the flowers. The ability to watch the one you love, without her being aware that she was watched, must be one of the purest of life’s joys. Clare paused in the middle of the dam to admire the view down the valley, then turned to squat on her heels at the water’s edge, with her face perfectly mirrored in the glassy surface.
Fergus inhaled, seeking the point of calm, needing that elusive wisdom to find the right words for Webster. He wanted to describe the harmony of faiths, the divinity of church and stream.
The Presence was there as he opened his mind, as if it had always been there, strong and vital in this place. But today there were eddies in the harmony, the way a drip of blood will swirl in water, weaving banners of colour into the purity.
A breeze was coming. On the dam it lifted Clare’s hair so that it fluttered around her face and she looked up, staring over her shoulder as if someone had called to her. The wind was a mere cat’s-paw but as it flowed through the freshly worked gardens it smelt autumn-rich with leaf mould, and laced with salt from the distant sea. Despite himself Fergus shivered.
Beyond Clare’s reflected face Fergus saw a flash of white, a scrap of purity half-seen against the sky. And another. As Fergus stared, the glimpses of white grew into great wings that creaked with the slow beat of feathers as two swans flew up the valley. At the far end of the lake the pair soared in formation as they turned towards the water, as dazzling against the backdrop of trees as snow on a distant peak. With infinite grace they glided downwards towards the dam until their wings flared and they met their own reflections in a bubbling rush of water.
Clare was still hunched over, staring up the lake towards the swans, her reflection round-eyed, gamine, perhaps even frightened. The swans slid towards her, bobbing in the wavelets of their own landing, and her image dissolved as the ripples reached the shore. Clare shut her eyes, listening to some inner voice, and rose to her feet in the way one would rise to greet honoured guests. She stood at the water’s edge, head down, arms by her side, until the swans stopped close to her, waiting. In that moment Clare seemed as ageless, even sexless, as the stained glass angels in the church. Slowly, she lifted her head and turned her arms palms-outwards, opening like a flower towards the swans and becoming female again as she inflated her chest to speak.
She spoke quietly, serenely even, but her words carried over the water to Fergus with perfect clarity.
“Welcome, sisters,” she murmured.