Annie wondered a good deal about her conversation with Bartlemy and his theories concerning Nathan’s conception. On the one hand she dismissed them as bizarre, on a par with the worst of New Age mysticism, crystal power, geomancy, and the sort of people who talked about former incarnations. On the other hand, Bartlemy was not that kind of person, and the fold in her memory – the timeless moment locked away – was something she felt, dimly now, but still real even after the passage of over thirteen years. She could recall clearly the deep shock she had experienced, less from Daniel’s death than from her own involvement in it, her journey to another place, forgotten but still sensed, forever a part of her, forever changing her. It remained always the most intense event of her life … but founded on what? Fantasy – delusion – her imagination overworking in an attempt to blot out the abyss of her loss? No, she decided; in the end, you must trust yourself, because if not yourself, whom can you trust? Besides, she had seen them, she had heard their whisperings, and if shadows walked in this world, then anything was possible, in any world. She sat in the bookshop on a quiet afternoon, her fingers slackening on the computer keyboard, revolving these things in her mind, always returning to the same enigma: Nathan’s paternity. It was strange how she had accepted it, over the years, rarely troubling herself with speculation. And now …
For the first time, Annie found herself trying to go back – and back – into her memory, into the past, into the unopened rooms of her subconscious. She thought she must have been afraid to remember, to even make the attempt, but now it was necessary, it was urgent. She pictured the pallor of that hospital room, Daniel lying there, the bruising on his face dark, dark against the whiteness of his skin, white bandages, white pillow … Daniel slipping away from her … and the sudden opening of his eyes, and the love in them that stabbed her, even now, making a wound that would always be fresh, always raw, as long as her heart beat. She clung to that moment, and shrank from it, because beside it all the other moments of her life were as shadows and half-lights; but this time she knew she must go beyond it, opening up the pain, reaching into death itself. Her fingers slid from the keyboard; her face emptied. There were impressions – colours – a spinning sensation – falling into softness, warmth, touch. There was a love enfolding her, mind and body, filling every pore, eclipsing both heart and thought, absorbing her into its passion and its potency. Daniel’s love – it must be Daniel – but Daniel had given much, and taken little, and this was a love which took everything, all that she was, and all that she had, and gave only on its own terms, in its own way. A great gift, a gift that was worth the price, though she paid with her life and her soul …
There was a violent jolt, and her head was in her hands, and the world slid back into place. She looked up, and saw the bookshop, and her current screensaver, fish swimming through a coral grove, and the spiralling dust-motes caught in a ray of sunshine from a small side window. Gradually her pulse steadied, but she didn’t move. After an hour or more, she got up and went to make tea.
When the tea was ready she returned to the table, sat down, sipped, pressed a few keys on the computer, tapped out an e-mail to other dealers about a rare first edition she was trying to obtain for a client. But her thought was elsewhere. She had listened to Bartlemy’s theory, but hadn’t really digested the implications. Something – someone – had taken her, in the instant of Daniel’s death, and made her pregnant. She had been invaded and violated, when she was open and vulnerable, when she had offered her whole being, to Daniel, for Daniel – but it was not Daniel who had accepted. Some alien power had seized her and used her, drawing a veil in her mind to blind her, leaving her with … Nathan. She loved Nathan as much as she had loved Daniel, though differently, but in that moment it didn’t matter. A slow-burning anger mounted in her, like no anger she had ever known, a white fire with which she could have torn down the walls between worlds, and stormed across the multiverse to find her ravisher. He had imprinted her with his spirit, but she would tear him out, and take back the life he had riven from her, and the love he had poisoned, and the soul he had left broken or benumbed. Her heart raged until the tea grew cold, and the fire died within her, and the tears came and came and would not stop.
Hazel Bagot found her there, when she came round to borrow a book for school. ‘What’s wrong?’ she said, horrified. ‘Annie, Annie, what’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ Annie sobbed, struggling for self-control, and Hazel put her arms round her, awkwardly, embarrassed to find an adult weeping with such abandon, though she had seen her mother cry, often and often. Her bracelet caught in Annie’s hair, pulling it sharply, so she started with the pain, and Hazel sprang back, stammering an apology, and ran out into the street. And there was Michael, walking towards her, and she dragged him inside, though he offered little resistance, and left him to do what he could in the way of comfort, while she headed home to brood on the mystery of it, with Annie’s hair snagged on her bracelet.
In the shop, Annie laid her head against Michael’s shoulder, and wept herself to a standstill.
‘What is it?’ he said. ‘Can I help?’
‘No. Thanks. It’s just … something a long time ago, something I never understood … never realized till now.’
‘Can you tell me?’
‘No. Sorry. It’s too …’
‘Too private?’ he suggested.
‘Too difficult.’ She looked up at him, red-eyed, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand, like a child. ‘Excuse me. I need a tissue. Possibly several.’
‘I’ll get them.’ He got up. ‘Where –’
‘Loo paper. In the bathroom. Upstairs on your left. But you shouldn’t …’
He ran upstairs, returning presently with a skein of toilet paper.
‘Thank you,’ Annie said again, feeling helpless and rather foolish. She blew her nose vigorously, wondering what she could say, unwilling to lie when he was being so kind.
But Michael asked no more questions. ‘If there’s anything I can do …?’
‘No, really. I’ll be fine now. I’d just like to be alone.’
‘Sure?’ She nodded. He stood looking down at her, and for once the crooked smile wasn’t in evidence. ‘Okay. But I meant what I said. If there’s anything I can do, ever, you have only to ask. It sounds melodramatic to say you’re alone in the world – I know that’s not exactly the case – but you don’t have a husband or family, at any rate, not round here. I want you to know you can call on me, any time.’
He does like me, Annie thought, and the knowledge warmed her, and unsettled her, more than she would have expected, ruffling what little serenity she had left.
She thought of asking him: How would Rianna feel about that? But of course she didn’t.
Not long after his birthday Nathan went walking in the woods near Thornyhill. He had left Hoover behind, ostensibly because he wanted to watch for birds and squirrels, but really because he needed some time to himself, to think things over. Hazel had told him about finding his mother in tears, and he had asked Annie what had upset her, but all she would say was that it didn’t matter now. ‘I was crying over spilt milk, and everyone knows that’s a waste of energy. What’s done is done. It’s nothing you need worry about.’ He didn’t want to press her, but instinct told him there was something very wrong, something important, one of many nebulous troubles that threatened to disturb the pattern of his life. The vision of the cup – dreams of another world – the illegal immigrant – Effie Carlow – Michael Addison – the star. He sat down on a log some way from any path, his gaze resting absently on the fluttering of leaf-shadows across the woodland floor, primrose clumps around a tree-bole, a mist of bluebells stretching away into a green distance. There was no traffic noise from the road, only the song of unseen birds. It was a beautiful scene, restful to the soul, but he was thirteen and his soul was restless. There were so many things he wanted to know …
The face was watching him from the crook between branch and tree-trunk: he must have been staring at it for some time without seeing it, the way you stare at a puzzle picture until the instant when the hidden image becomes clear. He thought at first that it was an animal, maybe a pine marten – he had always wanted to see a pine marten – but the face, though pointed, was hairless, bark-coloured and thrush-speckled, watching him sideways from a dark slanting eye. He became aware of spindle limbs clinging to the tree-trunk, leafy rags of clothing. Even so, it was several minutes before he said, very softly: ‘Woody?’
The woodwose shrank away, retreating into the shelter of the tree.
‘Please don’t go! It’s me, Nathan. Woody, please …’
‘Nathan?’ It was the slightest of whispers, emanating from behind the oak.
‘Yes, it is. Really …’
‘Nathan … was little. No bigger than me.’
‘I grew up,’ Nathan said. ‘I couldn’t help that. It’s what people do. I’m a teenager now.’
‘You went away.’ The woodwose was still invisible, only a voice among the leaves.
‘I know. I’m sorry. They told me you were imaginary, and I suppose … I got to believing them.’
‘They?’ The tip of a long nose reappeared, followed by the gleam of an eye, the twitch of an ear.
‘People. My mother. Some of my friends. It wasn’t their fault: they didn’t know you. It was my fault.’
‘You’ve grown too big,’ Woody said doubtfully. ‘Too big to talk to.’
‘I’m the same,’ Nathan insisted. ‘Look at me, Woody.’
The woodwose studied him, first from one eye, then the other. ‘You are Nathan,’ he said at last, ‘but you are not the same. You are … more. Perhaps too much …’
‘It feels that way sometimes,’ Nathan said. ‘But you can still talk to me. Honestly you can. Please come out, Woody. Please.’
Slowly, tentatively, the woodwose emerged into full view, staying close to the tree, no longer relaxed as he had been with his child playmate but a nervous, distrustful creature, easily startled, poised not to flee but to fade, back into the concealment of the wood. ‘Do you,’ he murmured, ‘do you have any – Smarties? You brought some once, I remember, in a tube with a lid on. They were small, and many-coloured – all different colours – and they tasted very good.’
‘I’ll bring some next time,’ Nathan promised. ‘I’ll come again soon. What … what have you been doing, all these years?’
But he knew the answer. ‘Being here,’ said the woodwose. ‘Waiting.’
‘For me?’
‘I – yes. You are all I have. You told me so. My parents, my friend.’ And, after a pause: ‘What is imaginary?’
‘It means, I invented you. You came from my mind. Where did you come from, Woody?’
‘From your mind,’ said the woodwose. ‘I think.’
Nathan remembered the man he had pulled from the seas of another cosmos, onto the beach at Pevensey Bay. He had no memory of it, but perhaps he had found Woody, too, in a dream, in the woods of some alternative world. It was an uncomfortable idea, though he hadn’t yet had time to work out why. The two of them sat for a while, almost the way they used to, watching a beetle creeping through the leaf-mould, and sunspots dancing on a tree-trunk, and a tiny bird with a piping call which Nathan would never have seen without his friend to guide him. ‘Would you look out for anything-different?’ Nathan asked at last. ‘There are things happening now, strange things. I can’t explain properly because I don’t understand, but I think you should be wary. If you see-oh, I don’t know – anything unusual, weird …’
‘Weird?’ Woody looked bewildered. There were few words in his vocabulary.
‘Odd. Peculiar. Wrong.’ Nathan paused for a minute, struck by a sudden thought. ‘How do you speak my language, Woody? It isn’t natural to you, is it?’
‘I must have learned from you,’ said the woodwose. ‘I’ve never spoken to anybody else.’
Nathan didn’t say any more. He bade his friend goodbye, and set off back towards Bartlemy’s house. An awful fear was growing in him, that he had brought Woody here, had dreamed him into this world and then abandoned him, and now the woodwose had no other friend, no other place, no other tongue. It was a frightening responsibility, but the wider implications were worse. He had no control over his dreams. (What had Effie Carlow said? Dream carefully.) Perhaps, if he really had this power, this ability, he might find himself bringing other people here, other creatures, unhappy exiles who could never go home, unless he found a way to dream them back again. The idea was so terrifying it made his mind spin. He forced himself to think rationally, to analyse what it was in his dreaming that had transported the man in the water from world to world – if that was indeed what had happened. There had been the urge to help, to save him – a huge impulse of will. After all, he had only brought back one person – not any of the xaurians or their riders, or the man in the white mask. And maybe some similar impulse had drawn Woody to Thornyhill to be his companion. A selfish impulse, a child’s impulse: the desire for a secret friend. ‘And I couldn’t send him back,’ he reflected, remorsefully, ‘even if I had the power. I don’t remember where he came from.’ He resolved that he would dream carefully from now on, he would suppress all such urges, he wouldn’t – he mustn’t – allow his feelings to dictate his actions.
He wanted to tell Bartlemy – he wanted to tell someone – but he feared to be treated as an over-imaginative child, diminished by adult scepticism. Somehow, because she was so old, so eccentric, Effie Carlow had been different: he could have endured her scorn, if she had scorned him. But Bartlemy was the person he respected most in the world, knowledgeable and wise, and in his inmost heart Nathan shrank from the very notion of his disbelief.
Even so, the need to confide might have been too much for him, if he had found Bartlemy alone when he returned to Thornyhill. But in the living room he found Rowena Thorn, Mrs Vanstone to give her proper name, drinking tea and talking earnestly about something. She was a long, lean, tweedy sort of woman in her mid-sixties, with a face which had once been plain, until character and humour had left its impress on her features. She was given to serving on committees, organizing, charitable events, and riding her friends’ horses since she no longer maintained one of her own. In between, she ran an antiques shop in Chizzledown. She greeted Nathan absent-mindedly, though she normally found time to inquire after his progress at school, and reverted immediately to the former subject under discussion.
‘The provenance is clear: they have all the necessary documentation. It is the genuine article, I’m sure of it. You’ve seen our records. That awful little tit Rowland sold it to this Birnbaum chap just before the war – he was a German, too, frightfully bad form if you ask me – and then went and got himself killed, silly business really, survived the Somme and then got run over by a tank or something in the week before the Armistice. Henry died in the ’flu epidemic and that was more or less the end of the family. My father was only a child at the time, besides being just a cousin, and there was nothing left for him to inherit but debts. My grandmother always said that when we lost the cup we lost our luck, but personally I’ve never been sure about that. I remember Great-aunt Verity contended it was our curse, an evil burden the family had a duty to bear. Probably all nonsense, but you never know. The point is, it’s ours, and if it really has resurfaced I’m damn well going to get it back.’
Nathan, who was becoming interested, helped himself to some elderflower cordial from the kitchen (Bartlemy made his own) and sat down unobtrusively next to Hoover.
‘But if Rowland Thorn sold it, as you maintain,’ Bartlemy was saying, ‘I don’t quite see how you can make a claim. Unless you can manage to buy it back from the present owner?’
‘Good Lord, no, it’s practically priceless. According to what I hear, the British Museum is after it, but it may be too much for their budget. Depends on the other bidders, of course: might go for a song, might run into millions. No: I’m trying another tack. I intend to prove the original sale was actually illegal.’
‘How will you do that?’ Bartlemy asked.
‘As you know, old Josevius acquired the cup somewhere back in the Dark Ages. Given to him by the Devil, one story has it; another one says it was an angel.’
‘I read it was supposed to be a holy relic,’ Nathan said. He found it curiously difficult to speak of it, as if there were weights on his tongue. Yet he wanted to. He wanted to say: I found the chapel. I saw the cup. He couldn’t. Hoover, he noticed, merely looked inquiringly at him.
‘Depends which story you favour. Didn’t know you were interested in my family history, Nathan. Good for you. Too many kids your age only want to play computer games and listen to pop music, far as I can see. History’s important. The past belongs to all of us. Where was I?’
‘Josevius,’ Bartlemy prompted.
‘Right. Well, he got the cup, somehow or other. Some sources say he made it, but I don’t believe that. Never been any craftsmen in our family: we haven’t the brains. Anyway, story goes he charged his descendants to hold it in trust, though heaven knows for whom – or what – never to sell it, or lend it, or give it away, or we would lose everything. Should have been kept in the ancient chapel, but that was destroyed, so they had it here, that secret cupboard in the chimney, you’ll have found it –’
Nathan’s eyes widened. ‘I didn’t know there was a –’
‘I did,’ said Bartlemy. ‘Yes, I found it. I always wondered what it was for.’
‘Never saw it myself but my great-aunt spoke of it. Must show me some time. The cup stayed there for centuries; strangers weren’t even allowed to look at it. Lot of odd legends grew up around it, but mostly they stayed in the family. Somewhere along the line it got labelled the Sangreal: couple of historians picked up on that one, said it meant Saint Grail, the Holy Grail, but they got the etymology wrong. The word comes from sang, blood. That’s French, Nathan, but it’s a similar word in a dozen languages. Rumour was, if you were going to die, or some catastrophe was imminent, you’d look in the cup and see it full of blood. Nothing holy about that. It’s all been written down, from time to time, by those of my ancestors who could read and write. Not a bright lot, the Thorns, I’m afraid. Point is, at some stage in the fifteenth century the issue of selling it must have come up, and one of them made the injunction against it legal. I don’t have the document, but there are two separate references to it, one in the diary of a contemporary, the other in the account of an attempted purchase in the Victorian era. The document existed: no question about it. Hopefully it still does. Wondered if you’d mind my having a look for it here?’
‘Of course not,’ Bartlemy said. ‘But I’m pretty sure I’ve been through all the papers in the house, and I’ve never seen such a thing.’
‘Can I help?’ Nathan asked. ‘It could be in another secret hiding place, like that cupboard you mentioned.’
‘Could be,’ said Rowena Thorn. ‘Any help is welcome. Think it’s like an adventure story, do you? Harry Potter and the Cup of Blood, that kind of thing?’
Nathan only smiled in answer. He thought: Harry Potter has magical powers. His friends have magical powers. Me – I have to dream carefully. He ached to tell them about the chapel, and his vision there – if it was a vision – but the words would not come. He reflected that real adventures weren’t about good guys and bad guys. Real adventures were shadows and confusion and doubt, and a terrifying personal responsibility.
Maybe there’s an injunction on my talking of the cup. Not legal, but magical. Or some sort of hypnotism …
‘Who’s got – it – now?’ he inquired. ‘I’m sorry if you’ve already told Uncle Barty, but I missed that part. Or – or is that private information?’
‘Lord, no: it’s public enough. It’s some Austrian chap, father’s a count, Graf they call it, grandfather was in the SS. The Birnbaums were a Jewish family, very wealthy, major collectors, paintings, antiques, the lot. The Nazis did for them, of course, and the grandfather – Graf Von Holsten-Pils or whatever he called himself – pocketed most of the loot. After he died the next count seems to have kept a low profile, hoped the stolen goods would pass unnoticed among the rest of the ancestral heirlooms. He had a stroke last year, family fortunes on the wane, son decides to auction off some of the silver. Gets in touch with Sotheby’s – not sure why he picked on London, maybe there’s a Birnbaum who’s been sniffing around back in Germany, maybe he just thinks he’ll get more money. Apparently a lot of the stuff is originally English. Anyway, he shows them the cup with the provenance – perhaps he thinks granddad got it legally – and a chum of mine there gets hold of me. Wanted to check it out, had no idea I might have a claim. Haven’t told him, of course. Want to get my hands on that injunction first. Never fire till you can see the whites of their eyes, so my father used to say. Mind you, he was talking about stag-hunting, not warfare.’
‘Is this war, Rowena?’ Bartlemy asked mildly. ‘Do you really believe this cup is the luck of the Thorns?’
‘I’m an antique-dealer,’ she said. ‘It’s a valuable antique – could be unique – and it was the property of my family. It should be again. Don’t know about luck. My father believed-my grandfather believed. I’m a sceptic about most things, but the belief is there: it’s in my blood. It always comes down to blood, when you talk about the cup. Supposing it was the Grail – if there is such a thing …’
‘That’s the question,’ said Bartlemy. ‘The blood of Christ-whoever he was …’ His voice sounded very distant.
Nathan sat like a stock, unable to move. His tongue seemed to stick to the roof of his mouth. He wanted to say something – anything – to cry out and break through the spell or trance, but the harder he tried, the more difficult it became.
‘You’re a sceptic, like me,’ Rowena Thorn was saying. ‘No evidence for any Grail, nothing but stories. Great-aunt Verity said Josevius could have been Joseph of Arimathea, the chap who’s supposed to have retrieved the Grail relics and brought them to England. How d’you work that out? said my father. We know Josevius died around 660 AD – forget the precise date, but it’s set down somewhere. If he was around for the Crucifixion he’d have been getting on a bit.’
‘How does family legend deal with that one?’ Bartlemy said.
‘Sold his soul to the Devil – told you the Devil came into it – lived for centuries. Even the stories are rubbish, you see. In charge of holy relics one minute, in the pay of Satan the next. None of it stands up.’
‘What did your great-aunt have to say about it?’ Bartlemy wondered. ‘Do you remember?’
‘Said the Grail was evil, not holy. King Arthur and co. got it wrong. She was a devout Christian: thought it was a pagan thing. Souvenir from the scene of the crime – most terrible crime in history. She thought we had to keep it from doing harm. Went a bit batty in her old age. Still, it made sense to her.’
‘Has the cup ever been carbon-dated?’ Bartlemy said thoughtfully.
‘Shouldn’t think so. Unless the Grafs had it done. Funnily enough, my chum at Sotheby’s was talking about that. If the cup’s two thousand years old, might really be a candidate for the Grail legend. On the other hand, if it was made in the Dark Ages …’
‘Exactly.’
‘Doesn’t make any odds to me, though. Belongs to the Thorns, whatever it is.’ An obstinate look settled about her mouth, erasing some of the humour. ‘Must get it back,’ she muttered to herself.
Nathan, finding he could move again, fidgeted in his chair, extending a hand to ruffle Hoover’s fur.
‘Still want to help me out?’ Rowena Thorn asked him. ‘Not as good as buried treasure, looking for a piece of paper, but it might mean treasure for me. There’d be a reward in it, promise you that …’
‘It’s okay,’ Nathan said. ‘I don’t want a reward. I’ll look anyway.’
‘Good man. Teach you the right stuff at Ffylde, do they? Better than the comprehensive at Crowford, any day. All they seem to do there is take drugs and beat up the teachers.’ As Hazel and George were both there, Nathan knew this was an exaggeration, but he didn’t say so.
‘He gets his principles from his mother,’ Bartlemy said gently.
Rowena Thorn set down her teacup. ‘Better be off,’ she said. ‘Thanks for everything, Bartlemy. You’ve always been a good friend.’
‘You don’t mind my living here, do you?’ he inquired curiously. ‘Your ancestral home …’
‘Good heavens no. Hardly a mansion, is it? The Thorns never had the money for that. Just inconvenient, hell to maintain – never dared ask you about the plumbing. It isn’t as if I ever lived here myself. No sentiment involved.’
‘You never owned the cup, either,’ Bartlemy pointed out.
‘That’s different,’ she said. ‘I told you. That’s a matter of blood.’
At supper that night, Nathan told Annie about the cup of the Thorns – it didn’t appear to be a secret – or as much as he was able to tell, without talking about his vision, or the dreams of blood. Hazel was there; George came later. They both absorbed the story with enthusiasm and determined to search for the missing injunction. ‘D’you think it will be, like, a piece of parchment?’ George said. ‘A scroll or something, yellowing and with spiky writing.’
‘It’s fifteenth century,’ Nathan said. ‘I think they had paper in the fifteenth century. When did what’s-his-name invent the printing press?’
‘Caxton,’ Annie said, ‘in the fifteenth century. There was a lot going on then. Would anyone like some ice cream?’
Not surprisingly, everyone did. ‘Have you ever had a book here as old as that?’ Hazel asked when the ice cream had been shared out.
‘No. I had a seventeenth century two-volume history once: that was the oldest. Anything from the fifteenth century would probably be in a museum. Does Rowena have any idea what this document looks like?’
‘Don’t think so,’ Nathan said. ‘We’ll just have to go through absolutely everything at Thornyhill.’
‘If your Uncle Barty doesn’t mind …’
‘It could be hidden in a book,’ Nathan pursued. ‘Secret papers very often are.’
‘But – Thornyhill is full of books!’ Hazel exclaimed, daunted. ‘It’ll take forever.’ Suddenly, the prospect of finding a missing document didn’t seem half so interesting. ‘Perhaps Mr Goodman won’t want us rooting around there. He might prefer to do it himself …’
‘Is there a reward?’ George asked.
‘Yes,’ Nathan said, looking rueful, ‘but I told Mrs Thorn we wouldn’t want it.’
‘We didn’t,’ George and Hazel chimed simultaneously.
‘You have to find it first,’ Annie pointed out. ‘Then you can worry about the reward. Are you sure it’s actually at Thornyhill?’
‘It must be,’ Nathan said. ‘Please don’t make things more complicated. Anyway, Mrs Thorn thought so.’
They retreated to the Den to discuss the problem further, until Hazel switched to the subject of a forthcoming party which she wanted Nathan to attend with her. ‘There’s going to be a disco,’ she said.
‘I don’t like discos,’ George offered. ‘They’re stupid.’
‘You only say that because you’re too scared to ask anyone to dance,’ Hazel said with devastating penetration. ‘Please come with me, Nathan. Not as – as my boyfriend or anything, just for … moral support.’
‘You – with a boyfriend!’ George guffawed.
‘No reason why Hazel shouldn’t have one, if she wants,’ Nathan said. ‘The thing is, next Saturday I was meaning to start searching –’
‘Not in the evening,’ Hazel said. ‘We could look for the injunction in the afternoon, and then go to the party.’
‘Okay.’ Nathan was not inspired by discos. He hoped, now they were teenagers, Hazel wasn’t going to start acting too much like a girl – or at any rate, like other girls. ‘Will there be drugs and people getting beaten up? Only according to Mrs Thorn, that’s what goes on at Crowford Comprehensive. It’ll be an awful let-down if it’s just dancing,’ he smiled.
Hazel giggled. ‘Jason Wicks got caught trying to sell Es last term,’ she said. ‘But it turned out they were his mother’s pills for cleaning her contact lenses.’
Maybe I could use drugs to control my dreams of the other world, Nathan thought. Maybe if I took sleeping pills …
But he hadn’t had one of those dreams for some time.
His friends left around eleven, and he climbed up to the skylight and sat on the edge, gazing up at the unknown star. He had still been unable to trace it on any chart, and a couple of weeks earlier his astronomy class had spent an hour on top of a tower at Ffylde studying the night sky, but there had been no sign of it. The star was there for him, watching him, a single pale eye effortlessly camouflaged among the constellations. He knew he should be afraid, but it was difficult to feel fear when the night was so beautiful, and the star-sparkle so magical: he could almost imagine it was benevolent, the eye of a secret guardian or kindly angel, not merely watching but watching over him, watching out for him, keeping him safe. But why would he need to be kept safe, and from whom (or what)? And why did he feel that it was all connected – the star, the dreams of the other world, and the cup of the Thorns – the whispering cup – the Sangreal?
‘Nathan!’ his mother’s voice carried from downstairs. ‘Bedtime!’
‘I’m thirteen,’ Nathan objected, sliding off the window frame. ‘I’m too old to have bedtimes.’
‘You’re positively ancient,’ Annie called, ‘and you still need your sleep, especially during the term. Come down now.’
‘Coming.’
In bed, he drifted comfortably into sleep, at ease despite the problems niggling round the borders of his thought. And then some time in the night the mists of slumber withdrew, and he was in the light. The light of the other world, a burning sunset with streaks of cyclamen cloud above a puddle of molten gold that spilled along the rim of the sky. He saw it from the top of a tower so high that it must be the tallest in the city; spires and pinnacles glinted far below him, sparking fire from the sunglow; on an adjacent segment of roof he made out two xaurians tethered, tiny at that distance; another wheeled in the gulf of air between. Further down, he saw the city lights coming on as dusk deepened, window by window, lamp by lamp, creeping upwards out of the shadows until every building was ribbed with beads of glitter, and the moving flecks of far-off skimmers flashed eyelights of green and blue and neon-pink. Then somehow he was inside the tower, descending what appeared to be a liftshaft. He floated through closed doors along the gallery he had seen before with the twisted pillars, and into the semicircular room. But now the night outside was altogether dark, and screens covered most of the curving window. The man in the white mask – ruler, dictator, president, whatever he was – sat at his desk with his back turned. A woman had come in. There was something shocking about her appearance, but it took Nathan a minute to realize what it was.
Her face was naked.
‘There may be some lingering daylight,’ the man said, without looking round. ‘You shouldn’t walk around unshielded.’
‘The light is gone.’ Her voice was cool and differed from that of the xaurian rider and the purple-cowled hologram in one essential: it was not subservient. Nathan found himself seeing her in profile and thought: She is very beautiful. Her hair was hidden under a white head-dress, like some kind of wimple; she wore a long white tunic and trousers, and her skin had the pale golden hue associated in our world with Orientals. The lines of her cheekbone and jaw reminded him of pictures he had seen of the head of Nefertiti, though her neck was longer, slightly too long for an ordinary human, and as she turned towards him he realized the planes of her face were subtly different, though it would have been hard to explain in what way. A millimetre here, a millimetre there, and the whole visage was somehow distorted, though its beauty remained undiminished. But then, Nathan reflected, maybe our faces would look that way to her – as if a fractional adjustment had produced that impression of wrongness, of something out of kilter. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘what does it matter? I have little fear of death, even the sundeath, the shriveller of all that lives. The slow hours weary me, and my breath galls. I would welcome Death, if I could find her.’
‘Don’t be in such haste to destroy your beauty,’ the man said, turning now to gaze at her. ‘It still gives me pleasure to look on it, and there is little enough cause for pleasure left.’
‘To be beautiful,’ she said, ‘it is necessary to have a world to be beautiful in. You wrote a letter to me once, in the far-off days of youth and hopefulness, saying that creation itself was for my benefit. The earth, the moons, the sun, the sea were made only to frame your loveliness. Now, the earth is foul, and the sun poisons the sea, and the three moons of Eos turn red. Without creation, without a place to be, I am nothing. You are so clever, Grandir: make me a world to live in.’
‘I cannot make worlds,’ he said, ‘even I, but maybe … I can take one. Have patience awhile, Halmé, and hide your face from the daylight a little longer. I will find a world for you, ‘I promise.’
The woman called Halmé went to the window, sliding one of the screens aside, and Nathan saw she was right: there was a huge moon, not quite full, hanging in the sky, and it was red, and eastward another moon-sliver had the same blood-stained hue.
‘Close the screen!’ said the man. ‘The moon is too bright. It could be dangerous.’
The woman obeyed, but slowly. The more he looked at her, the more beautiful Nathan found her; it was as if his sight was adjusting to her different facial proportions, and now the women of his own world would look forever wrong to him. He watched her leaving: she moved swiftly and very gracefully, the white ends of her wimple fluttering behind her. Halmé was her name, he was certain, but Grandir, he thought, might be a title, like Lord or Excellency. He was thinking about that when the scene changed.
The masked ruler was climbing a stair. The stair moved, like an escalator but in a spiral, twisting round and round inside a cylindrical shaft, and the man was stepping briskly upwards, perhaps impatient of its slowness. At the top was a circular chamber with no windows: the architects of this world evidently favoured curves in construction. The only light came from a number of clear globes, some smooth-sided, some facetted, which appeared to be suspended in mid-air, though as Nathan drew closer he saw there were no threads or wires supporting them: they simply floated, motionless or in orbit. A pale radiance came from the heart of each, yet it illuminated nothing in the room save the globes themselves. The man moved to the centre of the chamber where a slightly larger globe with many faces revolved slowly in one place. Lances of light emanated from it, sinking into the darkness, never reaching the walls. The man stretched one hand towards it without actually making contact and murmured a single word: ‘Fia!’ A white dazzle flooded the room, so that for an instant Nathan was blinded, even though it was only a dream; then the glare retreated back into the globe, and Nathan saw a picture appear above it, as if projected onto the ceiling. At first it was difficult to make out, since he was looking at it from underneath, but then he realized it was a roof – he could see tiles – with a square hole in it, an open skylight, and a boy and a girl emerging into view, staring and pointing, pointing out of the picture, down at the globe. It was a minute or two before he understood. He was seeing himself, himself and Hazel, looking up at a star that didn’t belong …
He awoke much later with the dream still fresh in his mind. It was still dark, and he got up very quietly and stole downstairs to the cupboard between the shelves, and climbed the ladder to the Den, and opened the skylight, and there was the star, only he knew now it wasn’t a star, it was a globe that shone both in this world and the other one, a watching eye for a man whose face was never seen. A guardian angel – a manipulator – a menace. Nathan didn’t know, and the only way to find out was to dream on. Or maybe it was all pure fancy, a story invented by his subconscious mind to explain something he couldn’t comprehend. For if it was true why – why in all the worlds – would a ruler so powerful, so desperate, clearly facing some cosmic catastrophe, be interested in him?
He closed the skylight, descended the ladder, went back upstairs to bed. But the question followed him, nagging at his mind, keeping him from sleep: the unimaginable, unanswerable why.
Nathan didn’t get a chance to tell Hazel everything for another fortnight. ‘It’ll be easier when the summer holidays start,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll have more time together – time to find the missing injunction –’ they had barely begun searching ‘– and time to sort this out.’
‘Can it be sorted out?’ Hazel said doubtfully. It was daylight and the star was invisible, but they had no idea if that meant it couldn’t see them. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’ve thought about that. Somehow, I have to find the man on the beach. If they think he’s an illegal immigrant I expect he’ll be held somewhere. I’ll pretend I’m doing a school project on asylum-seekers: people always want to help with school projects. Once we’ve found him, he can answer some of our questions.’ He had switched from I to we, Hazel noticed.
She said: ‘How will you talk to him? He doesn’t speak English.’
‘In my dreams, I speak his language,’ Nathan said. ‘Maybe – maybe when I hear it, I’ll understand. We’ll talk to him somehow. We have to.’
‘Sign language,’ Hazel said.
‘The first thing is to find him.’
With this object in mind, they went to talk to Annie. She was obviously gratified to see them so concerned about the issues of the day, but she wasn’t able to help much. ‘I’ve got a school project,’ Nathan said. He didn’t like lying to his mother, but he couldn’t possibly tell her the truth.
‘There’s probably some sort of Immigration Board,’ she said. ‘Look it up in the telephone directory.’
Nothing was listed under Immigration, but after Annie had considered the problem further she suggested they try the Home Office. Here, they found a listing for the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, but they couldn’t get through. ‘It’s bound to be closed at weekends,’ Nathan told Hazel. ‘You’ll have to try it in the week. I can’t make lots of calls from school.’
Hazel looked more doubtful than ever, tugging her hair over her face in the nervous gesture she hadn’t yet outgrown. ‘What’ll I say?’ she said. ‘It’s a government department. I can’t talk to a government department.’
In the end, Nathan decided to apply to Annie. ‘If it’s a school project,’ she said, ‘surely you can call from Ffylde?’
‘We’re supposed to do it in our own time,’ Nathan said, feeling uncomfortable. ‘I just want to know how to contact that man …’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Annie promised.
On Monday morning she drove Nathan back to school, and sat down at the telephone as soon as she returned home. By three o’clock she was frustrated and uncharacteristically furious. The Home Office – ‘building a safe, just and tolerant society’, according to their ad – proved far from helpful. When the Immigration and Nationality Directorate eventually answered the phone, after a succession of engaged tones and a long wait with classical music and recorded messages, they refused to give her any information whatsoever. ‘But it’s for my son,’ Annie said indignantly. ‘It’s a school project. He wants to know how his country works – what we do for refugees and people in trouble.’ At her insistence, the clerk departed to speak to a superior, picking up the call again after a ten-minute absence to tell Annie that she must write to another department, the Communications Directorate. ‘Can I speak to your supervisor?’ Annie asked. No. ‘Is there a number I can call at this other place?’ Can’t give it to you. It’s confidential. ‘I’m a tax payer,’ Annie found herself saying in cliché mode (though in fact she paid very little tax due to the smallness of her income). ‘I pay your wages. I employ you. You don’t have the right to refuse to answer me.’ The clerk said in the voice of one accustomed to such tirades that there was no point in blaming her, it wasn’t her fault. Annie hung up and dialled Directory Inquiries, who promptly gave her the confidential phone number. The Communications Directorate, however, told her she would need to write to Immigration. She then worked her way through her local MP, the House of Commons, and even Scotland Yard, but no one would fill her in on the procedure for dealing with illegal immigrants, let alone assist her in tracking one down. Finally she abandoned the telephone, made herself coffee, and went on the Internet. Here she found the names of various support groups for asylum-seekers operating in the south-east. She wrote down more telephone numbers and decided to return to the attack the next day.
On Tuesday she had better luck. The support groups, unlike the bureaucrats, welcomed interest and were happy to dole out information. Talking to a voluntary organization based in Hastings, she struck gold.
‘The man on the beach?’ said her contact, a woman named Jillian Squires. ‘The mystery man? Why does your son want to know about him?’
‘Nathan heard the story on the radio,’ Annie explained. ‘I’m definitely a biased mum, but still, he’s got a very strong sense of social responsibility. When I told him the kind of treatment meted out to immigrants in this country, he got pretty upset.’ She added shrewdly: ‘I suspect he suggested the subject for his school project himself. He thinks about things, you see; he doesn’t just go away and forget.’
‘Ffylde Abbey. I’m not well off, but he got a scholarship.’
‘I know of it. It’s got a decent reputation.’ Jillian Squires seemed to hesitate, then plunged. ‘Look, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I can’t give out details about anyone without their permission, obviously, but I’ll talk to the man. I’ve had dealings with him. He’s highly intelligent: spoke no English when he got here, but he’s learned amazingly fast. If he’s willing, I could give him your number, and ask him to get in touch with you.’
‘That would be wonderful,’ Annie said gratefully. ‘But – I thought he would be in prison, or somewhere like that?’
‘No. They only put asylum-seekers in prison if they’ve committed a crime. Prison’s expensive: the state has to feed them. It’s cheaper to leave them on the streets. Anyway, they’re only allowed to register as asylum-seekers if they claim immediately – and that presupposes they know how the system works.’
‘If I couldn’t find that out,’ Annie said, ‘how do they?’
‘Precisely.’
Concluding the call, Annie resolved to scrape something from her weekly housekeeping to send as a donation. Nathan wasn’t the only one getting educated, she reflected.
She gave him the news at the weekend. ‘Your man hasn’t called yet,’ she said, ‘but perhaps he will. We just have to wait. If he doesn’t want to talk to you we can’t force him: even if that were possible, it wouldn’t be fair.’
With Bartlemy’s permission, Nathan, George and Hazel spent Saturday searching Thornyhill for the missing document. Nathan’s friends were unenthusiastic, but the prospect of Bartlemy’s cooking overcame their resistance. He produced home-made biscuits with cinnamon and chocolate chips for elevenses, grilled fish for lunch followed by his own wild strawberry ice cream, and iced buns for tea, and in between the three of them tapped the panelling in the hope that it was hollow and rifled through the attics and some of the murkier closets. Bartlemy didn’t show them the secret cupboard in the chimney and Nathan didn’t mention it, he had a feeling its very existence was a private matter, but they found another one hidden under some stairs, big enough to conceal a man, and in the attics they unearthed part of a rusty suit of armour, a chest of antique clothing, some tarnished silverware and a set of porcelain tureens which must once have belonged to a far larger dinner service. Hazel was very taken with a grey fur muff which Bartlemy said was chinchilla, though she knew fur was immoral. (‘It’s a kind of rat,’ he explained, which soothed her qualms of conscience but also made the muff appear much less attractive.) They discovered something called an astrolabe – a sort of old-fashioned telescope – and an orrery, which was meant to be a model of the solar system, but Bartlemy remarked that either it was very inaccurate or it was a model of another planetary system altogether. And everywhere there were papers, in large boxes, in small boxes, in chests of drawers, in desks long unopened. Nathan found love-letters a hundred years old, tied up with faded ribbon, sepia photographs of simpering Victorian maidens, postcard nudes from the Edwardian era, menus, shopping lists, laundry lists. But there was no sign of the injunction. ‘Rowena had a hunt downstairs last week,’ Bartlemy told him. ‘She must have gone through most of the books, so you needn’t bother about them.’
‘If it isn’t at Thornyhill,’ Nathan said, frowning, ‘have you any idea where the document might be?’
‘Rowena asked me that,’ Bartlemy said. ‘I told her to trace the family solicitors from whenever the injunction was last applied, I think she said in the late nineteenth century. Of course, you would find that very mundane. There could be a hiding place in the woods, I suppose, possibly on the site of the old house.’
‘But no one knows where that is!’ Hazel protested.
‘You can’t expect to have everything easy,’ Bartlemy said gently.
They left searching the woods for another day and went home, Hazel carrying the muff which Bartlemy had given her. ‘It’s okay to wear old furs,’ Nathan said. ‘It’s buying new ones that’s wrong.’
Back at the bookshop, Annie had bad news for him. ‘Jillian Squires called,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid the man on the beach doesn’t want to talk to you. She said he didn’t seem to understand about school projects. I’m sorry, darling, but you can’t press him, you know. He’s homeless, and penniless, and desperate: life must be difficult enough for him. We don’t want to make it worse.’
Yes, thought Nathan, life must be difficult. He’s in the wrong universe, for one thing.
He said: ‘Would you mind if I called Mrs Squires? I won’t push her, I promise. I just want to find out … how the system works.’
‘I suppose that would be all right,’ Annie conceded doubtfully.
That evening when it was dark Nathan climbed up to the skylight to look at the star. He had formed the habit of doing so every night when he was at home. He had borrowed George’s binoculars, but they didn’t show him anything more. He pictured the dim room with the revolving spheres, and the orb in the centre, its many facets coruscating with vanishing light. And then the image on the ceiling – his face, gazing at the star, perhaps right now, this moment – and the white mask tilted upwards to study it. It was unbelievable.
But he believed it. Dream and reality meshed too closely for him to deny them. He had to talk to the man on the beach, the man from another world …
With Annie’s permission, he telephoned Jillian Squires in the morning.
‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ he said politely. ‘Mum told me, the man on the beach wouldn’t help, but I wondered – would you say something to him? It’s going to sound a bit odd to you, but – but it’s really important. If he doesn’t want to talk to me even then, that’s okay. If you would just tell him …’
‘I don’t know what more I can say,’ Mrs Squires responded with courtesy but no enthusiasm.
Nathan checked that his mother was out of earshot. ‘Could you tell him – I’m the person who pulled him out of the sea? Please? That’s all.’
‘Tell him –? How extraordinary. Your mother never mentioned –’
‘She doesn’t know,’ Nathan said hastily. ‘I mean, she wasn’t there. I can’t – I really can’t explain everything now. But please would you tell him that?’
‘Are you making this up?’ Her voice had acquired an edge.
‘If I was,’ Nathan said, ‘it wouldn’t help, would it, because he would know it was made up? He wouldn’t want to call me if it wasn’t true.’
‘It’s a point,’ she said. ‘Very well, I’ll tell him. But –’
‘Thanks,’ Nathan said. ‘Thanks very much,’ and he hung up as Annie came back into the room.
There followed a week of school and suspense. Nathan dreamed of the cup, and the snake-patterns uncoiling from the rim, and hissing, hissing in his ear. He woke up shaking so badly he felt he had a fever, and was bitterly ashamed of himself for being so much disturbed by a dream. To calm down, he tried to think of places the injunction might be hidden, and whether the man from the sea would agree to talk to him, and what he might say if he did. Finally, he resorted to thinking about the party Hazel wanted him to attend – the party with the disco – and how horrific it would be, perhaps having to dance, with girls huddled into groups giggling, and Jason Wicks, or someone like him, lounging against the wall sneering. By its very unpleasantness, the picture he drew was oddly steadying. Something about the thought of Jason Wicks had a toughening effect on his nerves. He could deal with Jason Wicks. Wicks, and discos, and giggling girls were very much of this world. It was the other worlds of dream and darkness which he couldn’t manage so easily.
On Saturday the man telephoned. Annie passed the receiver to Nathan, looking unsure. ‘He’s asking for you,’ she said.
Nathan took the phone. His heart had begun to thump rather hard, but he kept his voice level. This is it, he thought. This was where his imaginings had to pass the reality test. He said: ‘Hello?’
‘Mrs Squires tell me, you say you pull me from sea.’ His English, though strangely accented, was amazingly rapid and fluent for someone who must have learnt it in a matter of weeks. ‘I think, that is not possible. How you do this?’
‘I don’t know exactly,’ Nathan said, wishing his mother would go away for a few minutes. ‘I was dreaming, and I saw a man drowning. I had to save him. I grabbed his hands, and sort of – yanked, and there we were.’
What are you talking about? Annie mouthed.
Later, Nathan whispered back, wondering what on earth he was going to tell her. On the other end of the line, the immigrant from an alternative universe was saying: ‘Yes. That is what happened. You came out of air, like angel in old legend. Then you bring me to this place. Why? Cleaner here, some people kind, but society – not modern. Backward.’
‘I know it must seem strange,’ Nathan said. ‘I couldn’t help it. We had to come here. This is my place.’ There was a pause, then he went on: ‘I have so many things to ask you. Can we meet?’
‘Is important … yes. You find me, or I find you?’
Uncertain if his mother would allow him to go to Hastings on his own, Nathan suggested a train to Crowford and then a bus, offering to pay for the trip once his new friend arrived. They settled on the following Saturday, and Nathan hung up trembling slightly. This was a man from another world, someone he had saved, though he didn’t know how, and pulled into an involuntary exile, and now, at last, they were going to meet. He would learn about that other world and its masked inhabitants, about the ruler who spied on him, and the winged xaurians, and the talk of contamination, and –
‘What was that all about?’ Annie demanded.
Nathan was silent for a long minute. ‘I can’t tell you,’ he said eventually. ‘I’m sorry. There’s something I don’t understand yet, and … I have to work it out.’
‘There’s more to this immigrant business than a school project, isn’t there?’
‘Yes. Please don’t ask me, Mum. I don’t want to lie to you, and I can’t tell you the truth.’
Annie studied his serious face, and saw the pleading in his eyes. She said on a sudden rush of panic: ‘You’re not doing anything illegal, are you? I know these people need help, but you wouldn’t – you wouldn’t get involved in breaking the law – would you?’
‘Of course not. I’m not stupid, Mum. I’ll swear it, if you like.’
Annie gave a tiny shake of her head, only half relieved. ‘This man’s a stranger to you,’ she said, ‘yet you have secrets with him.’
‘I’ll explain when I can,’ Nathan said. ‘If I can.’
‘I ought to stop this right now …’
‘No! Please … I’m not doing anything wrong,’ he protested, hoping it was true. His activities might not be illegal, but he knew they were questionable. ‘Please trust me, Mum.’
‘I trust you,’ Annie said wryly, ‘but you’re too young for me to trust your judgement.’
But she made no attempt to prevent his rendezvous with the asylum-seeker, and that night she collected him and Hazel from the party at eleven, ‘because you shouldn’t walk home on your own at that hour, even though the village is quite safe,’ and after they had left Hazel at her home a silence fell between them that neither could break. Nathan was unhappy because he had never been alienated from his mother, and he knew he was hurting her, and Annie saw him turning into a teenager, secretive and hostile, and her heart ached. In bed she couldn’t sleep, and she heard him climb up to the Den, but she lacked the will to call him, and send him back to his room. A little while later, footsteps on the landing told her he had gone to bed, and she lay wakeful long after, isolated in her separateness, not knowing that Nathan, too, did not sleep.