The next day they went over to Thornyhill for tea. Nathan left his mother with Bartlemy, hoping she would talk to him, since he knew Bartlemy had a way of making things right. Meanwhile, he took a packet of Smarties and went looking for Woody. As always, it was quiet under the trees, the familiar woodland quiet of birdsong and leaf-murmur and the hum of a passing insect. Sunlight speckled the ground, filtering through branches unruffled by any wind. When he had gone some way, he sat down on a convenient log, calling softly: ‘Woody! Woody!’, and waited. The woodwose appeared very quickly; perhaps his long nose had picked up the scent of the Smarties. Nathan offered them to him.
‘I like green ones best,’ Woody volunteered, making a careful selection.
‘All the colours taste the same,’ Nathan pointed out prosaically. ‘Still, most people have a preference. I like the yellow ones myself.’
They sat for a while in Smartie-munching companionship, talking little. Presently, Nathan began to tell his friend about the cup of the Thorns, though he still could not speak of the chapel or his vision, and how they had to find the injunction so Rowena could reclaim her family heirloom. Woody understood little of this, having had nothing to do with the law in this world or any other, and Nathan’s explanation didn’t enlighten him, but he was able to assimilate the final point of the story. ‘The injunction is probably just a piece of paper,’ Nathan concluded. ‘If we can find it, Mrs Thorn can prove that the cup belongs to her, and get it back. We’ve had a good look through the house and it doesn’t seem to be there, but Uncle Barty thought it might be concealed in these woods, maybe on the site of the ancient home of the Thorns. That was destroyed a long time ago, before Thornyhill was built – my uncle told me there were other houses, dwellings he called them, and in the time of Henry VII, or perhaps it was VIII, they built the house the way it is now, sort of on top. You can still see bits of the old, old walls, in some of the rooms. Anyway, there should be the ruins of the original place around somewhere, under the trees and the leaf-mould. I thought you might know where.’
‘You mean,’ Woody said, concentrating, ‘the first house was not – where the house is now?’
‘That’s right,’ said Nathan. ‘Sorry if I sounded muddling. It would only be a few bits of wall, perhaps not even that. Just lumps in the ground where the foundations were. I went to see a Roman villa once and there were no walls, just floors, buried under the soil, and when they scraped it off they found wonderful pictures in mosaic. This place might be a bit like that, though I don’t know if it’s Roman, and I don’t suppose there are any mosaics. The Thorns can trace their ancestors back to the Saxons or even further, according to my uncle. He says there are records of someone called Turnus, which is also spelt T-H-Y-R-N-U-S, in – I think – 400 AD, and that’s meant to be Thorn Latinized, because people often Latinized their names in those days, if they were grand enough. Of course, Thorn could be Thymus anglicized, I suppose.’
‘I don’t do spelling,’ Woody admitted cautiously. ‘What is AD?’
‘It’s Anno Domini, the year of Christ’s birth. It’s how we count time. AD was over two thousand years ago.’
‘I don’t count very well either,’ Woody murmured. ‘I can do up to twenty-three, but –’
‘Why twenty-three?’
The woodwose wriggled an assortment of fingers and toes.
‘I see,’ Nathan said. He realized Woody was distressed, and added hastily: ‘It doesn’t matter. If we have to count anything, I’ll do it. The thing is, you know the woods. I thought you might know of a place where there were odd ridges in the ground, or something like that.’
‘I know,’ Woody said. ‘But I don’t go there much. It’s in the Darkwood. I don’t like it there. The trees grow twisted, as if they are afraid of the sun, and the river changes its course, and at night there are strange creakings and whisperings, and I have seen shadows move where there was no movement to cast a shadow.’
‘Whisperings?’ Nathan said, remembering the snake-murmurs in the chapel, which reached even to his dreams. ‘You mean – voices? What do they say?’
‘Nothing,’ Woody replied. ‘Nothing I can hear. They just whisper. Swss – swss – ss. A hissy sort of sound. No proper words. And once I heard thumping noises, coming from underground.’
‘Maybe there’s a badger’s sett,’ Nathan suggested.
‘Not badgers. Smell’s wrong. Badgers smell animal, rank, very strong. No animal smells in the Darkwood. More like a tingle than a smell. A tingle in my nose.’
‘Like a sneeze?’
Woody shook his head decisively. ‘A different kind of tingle. A tingle that means something bad, or maybe not bad, something peculiar – like what you said.’
‘Something weird,’ Nathan said, recollecting their former conversation.
‘I think so.’ Woody still wasn’t sure about the meaning of weird.
‘Can you take me to this place? There could be secrets buried there – the injunction, or something else. Something that thumps. Anyway, we have to see. And it’s not dark now; it won’t be dark for ages. We’ll be quite safe.’ He concluded, optimistically: ‘I’ll look after you.’
Woody seemed to accept this, with reservations. ‘We go there quickly, and leave quickly,’ he insisted. ‘The Darkwood is unfriendly, even to me. Old memories linger there, bad memories.’
‘The trees remember?’ Nathan asked, thinking vaguely of Ents.
‘Memories remember,’ said Woody. ‘Leaves dying turn to leaf-mould, trees to wood-rot. Always something left. Memories lie thick in the Darkwood, like the leaves of many seasons. Things can grow from the memories, as seeds grow from the woodland floor. Bad memories breed bad spirits.’
‘I’ve been to the Darkwood often,’ Nathan said. ‘I’ve never sensed any danger, not real danger.’ Except in the buried chapel …
‘You haven’t been to this place,’ Woody said with confidence. ‘I would know.’
‘Let’s go quickly then.’
Woody took him at his word, flickering ahead between the trees like something with little more substance than a leaf-shadow. When Nathan was very young, Woody had always led him carefully away from the garden, holding his hand, helping him if his clothes snagged on twig or briar; but now he kept well in front of his companion, pausing only rarely to let him catch up. Several times Nathan had to call to him to wait. They were far from any path and as they penetrated the Darkwood low branches reached out to trip him, netted stems snarled his ankles. On his previous explorations he had always chosen the most open route, but Woody was undeterred by the undergrowth: his thin body slid through every tangle. As they plunged deeper down the valley the sun went in, or was cut off by a shoulder of hill, and the trees closed over them. In the dimness it grew harder for Nathan to see his guide, unless Woody turned and motioned to him with a quick, nervous gesture. Normally sure-footed, the boy stumbled over tree-roots and slithered down sudden steeps in a flurry of dead leaves. Then the woodwose stopped abruptly in the lee of a tree-trunk begreened with moss. ‘We must be careful now,’ he said, ‘and quiet.’
‘Who is there to hear us?’ Nathan asked; but Woody did not answer.
They moved forward very cautiously now. The boy made out a ridge in the woodland floor, running too straight for nature into a jungle of briar. He tried to follow it but Woody caught his wrist and pulled him on. They came to another ridge beyond where the ground fell away for a few feet. Peering down, Nathan saw the short drop was almost sheer, as if it had been shaped by a wall. Or maybe the wall was there still, under leaf and moss and root-tendril. ‘That tree was uprooted in a storm last winter,’ Woody indicated an upturned bole some way below. ‘The earth slipped. Lots of earth. Then it was like this.’
‘I’m going to climb down,’ Nathan said. ‘I want to look closer.’
‘No!’ Woody hissed. ‘You will disturb things. Memories – or worse. We come quickly, go quickly. You promised.’
‘I must look,’ Nathan said. ‘That’s what we came for.’
He swung his legs over the edge, and jumped down. It looked an unlikely spot to find a missing injunction, but he had forgotten about that in the excitement of discovering the place where the first Thorns had lived; an eager curiosity drove him on. He explored the slope with his hands, pushing aside nettle and briar-twig, getting scratched and stung. He could feel a network of fine tubers stiffening the soil. Remembering how the chapel had been concealed, he probed in between with his fingers, sensing a loosening in the earth. There was a sound from Woody – a kind of stifled whimper – and he glanced up; but his friend had gone. Something like a zephyr moved across the wood floor towards him, eddying the leaves, shuddering a low-slung branch. The treetops did not even quiver; whatever it was travelled only on the ground, invisible, rippling the undergrowth like a serpent. There was a faint rustling which might have been grass-stems rubbing together, but wasn’t. Then it swelled to a whisper of many voices, wordless yet filled with unknown words – a whisper that drew swiftly nearer, coiling across the ground, like yet unlike the whisper in the chapel, softer, colder, more deadly … Nathan backed away from the earth-wall and began to run, down the slope at first and then pausing, knowing that was foolish, veering right and uphill again. He didn’t look round but the pursuing whisper always seemed to be just behind him, close as his own shadow. He didn’t know what had happened to Woody. Cricket and rugby had made him fit but he fell once, setting his foot on a rolling piece of log, shortening his breath, and even when the whisper failed fear still followed him, urging him to panic, blocking out thought and sense. When at last he came to a halt, panting and exhausted, he was back in Thornyhill woods but far from the house, and a distant bend in a road showed through the trees. He looked all round, but there was nothing out of the ordinary, and the birds were singing again, and the sun had returned. He called: ‘Woody! Woody!’ but the woodwose did not reappear. He said: ‘You were right. I’m sorry,’ hoping the apology would reach the ears for which it was intended, and set off walking slowly back to the house, keeping parallel with the road, thinking and thinking.
‘So Nathan is growing up,’ Bartlemy said to Annie, over the comfort of tea and exquisite little biscuits whose flavour she couldn’t identify. ‘He has secrets. It’s a cliché, but he’s no longer a child. He’s becoming a man, an adult if you prefer, and men keep secrets from their mothers. It’s natural. He has asked you to trust him, and I think that’s what you should try to do. If there’s something going on, something we should know about, we will find out in due course. Forbidding him to meet this stranger won’t help. An asylum-seeker … I wonder now.’
‘What do you wonder?’ Annie inquired. She was feeling insensibly soothed, perhaps by his placid attitude, perhaps by the sweetness of the biscuits.
‘I was wondering where this stranger comes from. A man on a beach, who has swum in from a boat, only I believe they never traced the boat, nor found any sign of companions. Illegal immigrants rarely travel alone. Don’t press him with questions, but maybe Nathan could be persuaded to bring this man here for a meal. He must be destitute, and he’s bound to be hungry.’
Annie smiled suddenly. ‘It’s a good idea,’ she said. ‘Food is your cure-all, isn’t it? You use it to work magic, to open hearts and unlock minds. Not a potion, but a biscuit –’ she took another ‘– or a mug of broth, or a piece of cake.’
‘Exactly,’ said Bartlemy.
And then Hoover looked up, thumping his tail, and they knew Nathan was coming back, and Bartlemy went into the kitchen to find more biscuits.
Back in the village, an hour or so later, Nathan went to see Hazel. He needed to talk about what had happened in the Darkwood, he needed a confidante, an ally – in his heart, he knew he needed someone to go back there with him. When he had thrust his hands between the roots, into the crumbling soil of the earth-wall, he was sure there had been a hollow space beyond; he even thought he had touched metal, like a rod of iron buried under tree and tuber. He had noted with relief that, as he had hoped, Annie seemed more relaxed with him after her tea with Bartlemy. When he said he was going to see Hazel she started to question him, then stopped short, smiling and saying: ‘Okay.’ He smiled back, trusting things were all right again, and went out.
As he approached the Bagots’ house he heard raised voices – adult voices, not Hazel’s. Her father and Lily. And Effie Carlow. The front door opened and Dave Bagot strode out, carrying a zip bag so full it wouldn’t close. He brushed past Nathan, ignoring him, got into his car, and drove off much too fast. Inside, he heard Effie Carlow say: ‘Good riddance.’ He knocked tentatively on the still-open door.
Effie’s face appeared suddenly from the gloom of the hall, looking more than ever like a predatory bird, beak-nosed and beady-eyed. ‘So it’s you,’ she said. ‘Hazel’s upstairs, in her room. Of course, in my day a girl didn’t invite a boy into her bedroom, not if she wanted to keep her reputation she didn’t. But times change. How is it with the dreaming? Been in any new worlds lately?’
‘Not lately,’ Nathan said. From the kitchen, he could hear the sound of weeping – the gentle tears of resignation, not the wild sobs of anger and despair. He felt it was best not to comment on it.
Effie smiled at him, or perhaps merely bared her teeth in a kind of ferocious grin. He went upstairs in search of Hazel.
She stuck her head round the bedroom door and pulled him inside, shutting out any possibility of adult interference. The room was less of a bedroom than a lair, the walls layered with pictures and posters, books and CDs stacked on shelf and floor, teenage magazines skulking under the bed. There was a desk littered with unfinished homework, a half-eaten bar of chocolate, a bottle of ginger beer, and a portable sound system which pumped out some sort of weird twanging music that Nathan thought might be Indian. Hazel’s taste in music was still at the experimental stage: she refused to restrict herself to the accepted trends and was always trying out new genres. It was as if she was searching for a certain sound, something that would make her feel a certain way, but she could never quite find it. ‘What’s this?’ Nathan asked, picking up a CD case, but Hazel brushed such trivia aside.
‘Did you see Dad?’
‘He shot past me outside. Has he –’
‘He’s left. He’s really left. He and Mum had a row, and Great-grandma Effie came round, and he was yelling at her too, and I think he hit Mum, and she – Great-grandma – drove him out with a broomstick. He called her a wicked old witch, and other things too, but he went. I’m so glad. I don’t care what anyone says. I’m so glad.’ She pulled her hair over her face, and pushed her fist in her mouth, and for a moment Nathan thought she was crying.
He said: ‘Are you okay?’
She nodded, but didn’t say any more. He put his arm around her, and felt her shuddering.
‘He didn’t hit you, did he?’
‘Not this time. Only the once, with the back of his hand, not a proper hit, just casual. He was drunk. I told you about that.’ Nathan made an affirmative noise. ‘Great-grandma says she’s going to stay here for a while. That’ll stop him coming back. He’s afraid of her.’
‘Are you?’ Nathan asked.
‘A bit.’ He was almost sure she shivered again. ‘Sometimes. But she’s better than Dad. She has to be better than Dad.’
They sat for a while listening to the strange twangy music and drank some of the ginger beer, which was flat. When Hazel was calmer Nathan told her about finding the site of the first house of the Thorns, and even about Woody, which she found rather hard to take in – she could deal with other worlds, but semi-human creatures lurking round tree-trunks sounded suspiciously like pixies or goblins, and she wasn’t having any of that. She said with conscious cynicism that she had long outgrown fairytales. ‘You’ll understand when you meet him,’ Nathan assured her. He tried to tell her about the whispering and the phantom pursuit, but that was hardest of all to describe.
‘If you didn’t see anything,’ Hazel demanded, ‘how did you know there was anything there?’
‘I saw – movement. Twigs quivering, a disturbance on the ground. It’s difficult to explain.’
‘And you want to go back? D’you really think the missing paper will be there? I mean … it doesn’t seem awfully likely to me.’
‘Not the injunction, no,’ Nathan conceded. ‘But there’s got to be something.’
‘How do you know?’ Hazel asked.
‘If there’s nothing to hide, why chase me away?’
Hazel could find no argument against this reasoning, though she wasn’t happy about it. ‘All right,’ she said finally. ‘I’ll go there with you. But only if it’s a nice, sunny, friendly sort of day. Not if it’s all cloudy and – and ominous. Okay?’
‘I thought you didn’t believe in fairytales?’ Nathan said, feeling sufficiently encouraged to tease her.
‘I don’t. But I do believe in ghost-stories. Besides, what happened – whatever it was – frightened you, and you’re normally much braver than me.’
‘When we go back,’ Nathan said doggedly, ‘I won’t be frightened.’
In the week, Bartlemy telephoned Annie. ‘How would you like a day in London? It’ll take your mind off your troubles, real or imagined – stop you worrying about things you can’t change.’
‘That would be lovely,’ Annie said. ‘What’s brought this on?’ She could never recall Bartlemy spending a day in London, or indeed anywhere else, since she had known him.
‘Rowena Thorn is off to Sotheby’s to take a look at the Grimthorn Grail. She wants me to go with her – moral support – and I thought a day out would do you good.’
‘The Grimthorn Grail!’ Annie exclaimed. ‘Nathan will be jealous. It’s really caught his imagination. I will get to see it too, won’t I?’
‘I don’t see why not,’ Bartlemy responded. ‘If they make a fuss, we can always say you’re another expert. Apparently, they’ve been trying to date it and they’ve encountered some kind of a problem …’
‘But I’m not an expert!’
‘Of course you are. You have an amazing way with computers, small children, and dogs. We don’t have to say what you’re an expert on.’
Annie laughed. Michael Addison, who was in the shop at the time, drinking coffee and leafing through a rare history of the Agricultural Revolution, looked up inquiringly. After Annie had rung off, she told him of the project.
‘I shall have to close for the day,’ she said.
He grinned. ‘Shocking. Seriously, the old man’s right. You could do with a day off. Playing truant from everything. You worry too much about Nat. He’s a good kid.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Sometimes, that’s what scares me.’
‘So tell me about the Grimthorn Grail – if it’s not a secret?’
They went up to London on Wednesday, leaving the Jowett in Crowford and taking the train. The sun shone, and the city looked its best decked out in the vivid greens of early summer. At Rowena’s insistence they took a taxi to Bond Street; Mrs Thorn had the habits, if not the income, of the privileged, and disdained bus and tube. They were greeted at Sotheby’s by her friend Julian Epstein, a man of fortyish with badger-striped hair and beard and heavy eyebrows drawn into what appeared to be a permanent frown. He accepted, rather doubtfully, the presence of Bartlemy, hesitated over Annie (‘My assistant,’ Bartlemy said), then gave in. ‘Any advice is welcome,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘This damned cup has got everyone baffled. What exactly do you know about its history, Rowena?’
‘Just what I’ve told you,’ she said guardedly.
‘Have you had it carbon-dated?’ Bartlemy inquired.
‘Yes,’ said Epstein, ‘and no.’ He led them into a room with strong artificial lighting and no windows, and unlocked a steel cupboard. From inside he produced a box, an ordinary wooden box packed with false straw. ‘It came in this,’ he said. ‘God knows where they’d been keeping it. Took us a day to get it clean.’ He thrust the straw aside and extricated the cup.
Without really thinking about it, Annie had been anticipating the gleam of gold, even a diamond or two, and its dullness came as something of a disappointment. Rowena took it, turning it in her hands, and an eagerness came into her face which could not be hidden, changing it, making it harder and stronger. Bartlemy wondered if Epstein noticed. ‘You said, yes and no?’ he probed gently.
‘We tried,’ Epstein elaborated. ‘The results were – bizarre. Carbon-dating never fails, but this time … They tested it three times, and were told variously that it was a hundred years old, eight thousand years old, and two hundred thousand years old. There appears to be no logical explanation. In addition, we have so far been unable to discover what it is made of. Is there any clue in your family records?’
‘Tradition said it was gold,’ said Rowena. ‘Or stone.’ She hadn’t taken her eyes off it. ‘I’d go for stone. Some sort of agate, perhaps. It’s definitely not metal. So it didn’t want to be dated? Family legend claims it has strange powers. You should be careful how you meddle with legends, Julian.’
Epstein looked sceptical. ‘Are you going to tell me there’s a curse?’
Rowena gave a snort, not quite laughter, but made no answer.
‘May I see?’ Bartlemy requested.
She relinquished the cup slowly, as if with reluctance. He passed his hand over it, his eyes half closing, as though seeing through his fingers, or feeling with senses beyond touch. Observing it more closely, Annie saw it was made of some dark substance, green-tainted, bleared as if with stains so old that they had become a part of its natural patina. The snaky patterns round the rim seemed little more than scratches, worn thin with the scrubbing of centuries. It looked neither valuable nor beautiful, only very ancient, primitive, even crude, holding perhaps some faint echo of forgotten magic, but too remote or too obsolete to have any lingering significance. ‘Would you like to take a closer look?’ Bartlemy said, passing it to Annie – he didn’t miss Rowena’s quick gesture of interception, abruptly checked.
Annie’s fingers closed around the stem. The sudden rush of nausea that swept over her was so violent the world turned black – she felt herself losing hold on consciousness, tried to cry out, let the cup slip from her grasp. Then she fainted.
She came to, moments later, to see Bartlemy’s concerned face bent over her. She had been lifted into a chair; his arm was around her shoulders. Julian Epstein peered past him, his natural frown deepened with anxiety. Only Rowena wasn’t looking at her: she had picked up the cup, and was staring fixedly into the shallow bowl. ‘We should get her out of this room,’ Epstein was saying. ‘It’s airless in here. A touch of claustrophobia …?’
‘Possibly,’ said Bartlemy. ‘Secure the cup.’ He threw a quick glance towards Rowena, conveying what might have been a warning.
Epstein turned to Mrs Thorn; Annie tried to stand up and found she was still sick and shaking. Bartlemy picked her up with surprising ease and carried her from the room.
Afterwards, while she was recovering in a comfortable chair by an open window, he asked her what had happened. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I really don’t. I touched the goblet, and then – that was it. Sickness. Blackness. I’ll be all right in a minute.’
He looked at her long and thoughtfully. Presently, Epstein reappeared bringing a glass of water, with Rowena in his train. While Annie sipped from the glass he continued to expand on his theory of claustrophobia, almost as if he were trying to convince himself. Mrs Thorn looked disbelieving.
‘Don’t start telling me that this is more evidence for your family legends,’ Epstein said to her. ‘I’ve never thought of you as the credulous type. You seemed very intrigued by the cup. Are you going to try and buy back the lost heirloom?’
She hesitated, then took the plunge. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m going to prove the original sale was illegal.’
‘How will you do that?’
‘There’s an injunction still in existence dating back to the fifteenth century, specifically forbidding any sale or other disposal of the cup.’ She didn’t mention that she had yet to lay her hands on it.
Epstein’s frown-lines tightened. ‘It’ll never stand up in court.’
‘Sorry, Julian,’ she said, ‘but it will. Don’t want to spoil your fun, but there it is. The Grimthorn Grail’s mine – mine and my family’s – and I’m taking it back.’
The session ended on an unsatisfactory note. Leaving Epstein, presumably to summon lawyers of his own, they went to lunch. But Annie could barely eat, and sat only half listening as Rowena discussed the cup with unconcealed excitement. ‘It’s the genuine article,’ she said. ‘No question. I knew it the moment I touched it. Fascinating that business about dates. If it is the actual Grail – the real McCoy, Arthur and all – it might have the power to resist scientific analysis. I know: a month ago I’d have said this was baloney, but you heard Julian. No accurate date; they don’t even know what it’s made of. That’s a twenty-four-carat mystery, and in this day and age such mysteries are rare.’
‘It’s certainly interesting,’ Bartlemy conceded. ‘There is, as they say, a case to answer.’
Rowena turned to Annie. ‘It was the cup that affected you, wasn’t it?’ she insisted. ‘You held it, and you fainted. It was the cup.’
‘Perhaps,’ Bartlemy said. ‘But why? Why Annie?’
‘Part of the mystery,’ Mrs Thorn declared with evident relish.
Annie, taking no part in the conversation, excused herself and went to the Ladies. In the mirror, she thought she looked very pale, almost ghostly. As if she had been ill. Maybe that’s it, she concluded. Maybe I’m ill. Some sort of summer ’flu, or migraine, or a brain tumour … She panicked at the idea, resolving to rush to her GP for a check-up; but in her heart she didn’t really believe it. Rowena was right: it was something to do with the cup …
Still staring in the mirror, she saw the door opening behind her. A woman glanced in – for an instant their eyes met – and then hastily withdrew. Annie spun round, tugged at the door, peered out; but the woman had gone. Nonetheless, Annie knew she couldn’t be mistaken. It was Rianna Sardou.
In the attic space above the Bagots’ house, Effie Carlow had cleared a table for her own use. She was heating something in a blackened saucepan on a small camping gas – a thick dark liquid that bubbled sluggishly. Every so often she would add a few drops from one of a collection of bottles, muttering under her breath as she did so. A pungent smell wafted through the room, overpowering in that confined space. Finding nowhere to waft to, it hung around, stinging Effie’s sinuses and making her eyes water. But she seemed indifferent to discomfort. The bracelet lay on the table beside her: a cheap ornament such as teenagers wear, with ragged strands of beads sprouting from an elasticated wristband. Caught among the beads there were still a couple of short curling hairs, light brown in colour. Carefully she detached one of them and let it fall into the saucepan. The liquid bubbled on regardless and the smell worsened.
After a few minutes she removed the saucepan from the heat and poured the liquid into a basin to cool. Burnt residue adhering to the inside of the pan indicated that during a previous attempt she must have allowed the contents to boil dry. This time, she was more diligent, never leaving her experiment for a moment, waiting by the basin, fidgeting in her chair or blowing gently on the dark surface. As the liquid cooled, its consistency changed. It no longer looked thick, becoming instead smooth and shining like black glass. When she thought it was ready she mumbled something – a charm perhaps – bending over the bowl, gazing fixedly into the shallowness of its depths. Her skills were limited, she knew that, but this was the best mirror-magic she had achieved: her former efforts had been cloudy, showing images that were few and blurred. She had done better now; she was confident of that. And using the hair would ensure that the spell focused on Annie – Annie whom Hazel had found crying for no cause, who was hiding the truth about Nathan, whatever that truth might be. Hazel had not wanted to confide in her great-grandmother or give her the bracelet, but Effie had learned long ago how to assert control over an unformed mind. Besides, she had told her: ‘You are a Carlow, not a Bagot. The power is in your blood. One day, I will teach you how to use it.’
And now … now she stared into the basin and saw shapes developing, not clear and bright as in Bartlemy’s spellfire but through a glass darkly, through the looking-glass into someone else’s life. Annie … Annie walking down a lane between dim hedgerows, on the way to Riverside House …
It was the day after her trip to London, and she had resolved to ask some of the awkward questions, even if she couldn’t get any answers. Michael was in. He greeted her with the twist of his smile and offered coffee. ‘I’d make it lunch,’ he said, ‘but for two things. Firstly, I have to get to town for a three o’clock meeting with my agent, and secondly, there’s nothing in the fridge. That’s the problem with living alone a lot: it’s easy not to bother with proper meals. I live off snacks. If I buy real food it never gets cooked; it just sits around growing green fur. Very unhealthy.’
‘For you, or the food?’ Annie quipped. She found herself wishing she didn’t like Michael quite so much. It made things harder.
‘How was your day in the big city?’ he inquired. ‘I should take you up with me some time, shouldn’t I? Or wouldn’t you come?’
Annie ignored that. ‘Actually, I wasn’t awfully well,’ she said, and went on to describe the incident at Sotheby’s, while Michael filled a cafetière and interpolated questions.
‘You should go to your doctor,’ he concluded, looking concerned.
‘There’s nothing wrong with me, I’m sure of it. I think Rowena was right: it was something to do with the cup. They can’t date it; they don’t even know what it’s made of. Maybe there was some kind of emanation from it –’
‘A magical aura?’ Michael’s tone was sardonic.
‘Maybe,’ Annie said, undeterred. ‘There are so many strange things in the world – and beyond it. As I’ve grown older, I’ve learned … you need a very broad mind to take it all in. Magic is the word we use for things we don’t understand. Radiation was a magical aura until someone figured it out.’
‘Fair enough. Are you suggesting the cup of the Grimthorns exudes a new form of radiation? And if so, why didn’t it affect anybody else?’
‘If I knew,’ Annie said, ‘I wouldn’t need to speculate. But that wasn’t why I wanted to talk to you.’
‘I hoped you came for the pleasure of my company,’ Michael said, passing her a cup of coffee.
There was a teasing note in his voice; if she had been a little younger she would have blushed. She was glad to find herself too old for that weakness. ‘Not entirely,’ she said, maintaining her poise. ‘I wanted to ask you … I saw Rianna in London.’
‘That’s impossible,’ Michael responded promptly. ‘She’s on tour in Georgia – Georgia in Russia, not the US state. Forging cultural bonds across the globe: Rianna’s into all that. As the play’s in English I’m not sure who’s going to understand it, but never mind. I thought I told you.’
‘You did,’ Annie said. ‘That’s why I was so surprised.’
He was looking perplexed. ‘Where did you –’
‘We were at lunch at Le Caprice. I went to the loo, and while I was looking in the mirror I saw her come in behind me. When she saw me she backed off. I tried to follow her but by the time I opened the door again she’d gone. She wasn’t in the restaurant, either.’
‘You only saw her reflection for a second or two,’ Michael said. ‘You could have been mistaken.’
‘No,’ Annie said. ‘She doesn’t look like her screen image, but she’s distinctive. I saw her; she saw me. That’s why she went.’
‘There’s no reason for her to run away from you,’ Michael pointed out.
‘There is if she’s supposed to be in Georgia,’ Annie retorted. ‘Besides, she’s been – odd – with me before. I didn’t tell you, but she came into the shop once, and asked me a lot of strange questions.’
Michael’s face tensed very slightly. ‘About me?’
‘No. About Nathan.’
‘Nat?’ Michael looked honestly bewildered. ‘Why should Rianna be interested in him?’
‘That was one of the things I came to ask you.’
Michael had begun to pace about the kitchen; Annie thought she detected something else behind his confusion. ‘You must have got it wrong,’ he insisted. ‘Rianna’s in Georgia proving her credentials as a citizen of the world. I’ve had three phone calls from her. She’s been complaining about the director – she always does – saying one of her fellow actors is grossly underrated, better than Branagh – she always does – asking me to keep her posted on the mess in the Middle East since she can’t get enough news out there …’
‘Have you – have you been able to phone her?’ Annie asked tentatively.
‘Of course not. She’s moving around too much. She –’ He stopped.
‘I’m sorry,’ Annie whispered. ‘I know it doesn’t make sense. But it was her I saw. And that time in the shop, she appeared – oh, intrigued by Nathan. She wanted to know about his father.’
‘His father? God, I keep echoing you like a bloody parrot. I don’t get any of this. Rianna and I …’ He paused, took a deep breath, started again. ‘I daresay you’ve guessed. We have a fairly – disconnected marriage. We go our separate ways most of the time. When we’re together, we get along. Good friends, or so I thought. It was passionate once, but not – not for a while now. Not for a long while. She never wanted a divorce – I give her someone to come home to – and I … well, I suppose I just let things chug along. Laziness, you’ll tell me. Just like a man.’ Annie smiled. ‘I never had a reason to make a change.’
‘I understand.’
‘Sorry to bore you with all this. It seemed to be … necessary. The thing is, Rianna’s got no reason to lie to me about where she is or what she’s doing. It’s not as if I’m one of those paranoid husbands always checking up on their wives; I never do. If she was in London, she’d tell me. As for Nathan – I mentioned him to her, of course I did. Come to think of it, she did seem rather curious about him, I remarked on it at the time, but I didn’t think anything of it. Why should IP’
‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ Annie said.
Michael was silent for a minute, his gaze focused on nothing very much. ‘She rang me the night before last,’ he resumed eventually. ‘She wanted the local gossip. She never used to be interested in that kind of stuff – just the big issues – but since we came here … I told her about the Grimthorn Grail. I even told her you were going up to town.’
‘She could have followed us,’ Annie said, ‘from Sotheby’s. And then she came into the loo at the restaurant, not realizing I was in there, and rushed off when I recognized her.’
‘This is ridiculous,’ Michael said, giving himself a mental shake. ‘If Rianna had some sinister connection with you in the past, you’d know about it. Unless … supposing she knew your husband, before you met him? That might explain her interest in Nat’s parentage.’
‘Just for the record,’ Annie said, ‘the man in my life wasn’t my husband, and he wasn’t Nathan’s father, though Nathan doesn’t know that. I can’t think of any way Daniel could have met someone like Rianna. As for Nathan’s real father –’ it was her turn to pause and take a breath ‘– you will just have to take my word for it that it’s out of the question that Rianna could ever have known him.’ And she repeated, not meeting his eyes: Out of the question.’
There was a further silence. Annie wanted to speak, she wanted to look at him, but somehow she couldn’t. ‘I don’t want to force your confidence,’ he said at last, ‘but I wish you would trust me. It seems to me you’re carrying a very heavy burden – alone.’
At that, she looked up. ‘I have Barty.’
There was a crease between his brows. ‘Is he related to you? I’ve always assumed –’
‘No. Just a friend.’
‘I’m sure he’s very kind, but a man who’s lived all his life in the village, who’s never been anywhere, or done anything …’
‘He’s been somewhere,’ Annie said with inexplicable conviction. Despite what she knew of his history, she felt suddenly that he must have travelled widely, once upon a time, to know so much, to be who he was.
Michael looked both unconvinced and undecided, but a glance at the clock threw him off his stride. ‘Damn,’ he said with restraint. ‘I must go now. Damn and blast and bugger. We’ll talk tomorrow – or the weekend. Don’t worry. Whatever there is to sort out, we’ll sort it. It’s my business now. If Rianna’s mixed up in something, I need to know what it is. I must run – I’m going to miss my train.’ He deposited his mug in the sink, snatched up his jacket and case, and hurried out with Annie in his wake. ‘I could drop you off on my way to Crowford …’
‘No need. It’s a lovely day. I’d rather walk.’
‘Till tomorrow then …’
He went in such a rush she realized he had left the kitchen door on the latch. Annie knew she should go back to the shop – she had closed up for a couple of hours – but she lingered, conscious of temptation. If Rianna Sardou was spying on her, she reasoned, then she had a right to spy on Rianna – hadn’t she? Anyway, it couldn’t hurt just to have a look round. She didn’t really expect to see anything she hadn’t seen before – unless Rianna’s tower was unlocked. With a quick glance round, she went back into the house.
Initially, her exploration proved disappointing. Rianna’s tower was still locked, and naturally she would not pry into Michael’s rooms. In their joint bedroom she opened the cupboards, feeling horribly nosy and sly, but found only some items of winter clothing, evidently unneeded at the moment, piles of expensive bed linen, spare pillows and towels. She thought it strange that there were few personal photographs: it was hardly surprising they had no children, in view of the nature of their marriage, but Michael had once mentioned a married sister, and she was sure he had nephews and nieces. But what pictures there were appeared to be studio portraits for publicity or, in Michael’s case, dust-jacket shots. There were other deficiencies that baffled Annie: no face creams in the main bathroom (‘What woman can exist without face cream?’), no cookery books in the kitchen. Michael didn’t seem to be interested in food, but Annie knew that everyone – everyone – owned cookbooks, regardless of whether they did any cooking or not. Cookbooks were a style accessory, and Rianna, for all her country jeans, was a creature of style. There was a full-length lambskin coat in the wardrobe which must have cost a four-figure sum and in London her reflection had worn a loose-fitting khaki top, off one shoulder, which from its cut, undoubtedly boasted a designer label. Defeated by the locked door of Bluebeard’s Chamber, Annie prowled around upstairs again, forgetting her inhibitions in frustration. Where did detectives look, when they conducted searches? Dustbins, wastepaper bins … other kinds of bins. Idly, she lifted the lid on the laundry basket. There were the inevitable socks and underpants, a crumpled shirt, a glimpse of khaki underneath. Suddenly alert, Annie thrust the shirt aside. To her surprise, it felt slightly damp. And underneath it was the khaki top Rianna had been wearing the previous day, the top that had been in her thought moments earlier. She picked it up, to look closer, to be certain. It was wet.
She’s here, Annie thought. Michael lied to me … But she didn’t believe he’d lied. If Rianna was around, and he knew it, he would have prepared a better cover story; that would have been simple enough. He wouldn’t have come out with some spiel about Georgia unless he thought it was true. Besides, his confusion and doubt had been genuine; she was sure of that. So how did the top get in the laundry basket? Perhaps Rianna was here, and he didn’t know. Annie glanced round warily, but the house both looked and felt utterly empty, and though she listened with straining ears not a board creaked. In such an old building, the quiet was almost unnatural. There should have been the chunder of vintage plumbing, the groan of a door shifting in a draught, the rustle of air in the chimneys. Of course, Rianna could be in the locked tower, living there secretly, but surely Michael would be aware of her. And why was her top wet? What did wet clothing suggest? Rain? It hadn’t rained for a couple of days. Water, anyway. Water …
Annie ran downstairs and out into the garden. The boat was tied up to a small wooden platform built along the riverbank; she could see the mast protruding above a thicket of shrubs. Rianna could live on the boat, Annie thought, without Michael knowing, at least for a few days. And the top got wet because she fell in or something … She made her way cautiously down to the river, taking care to remain screened by the bushes. Peeping round a rhododendron, she saw the yacht looked deserted; but after all, Rianna would probably be away during the day. Eventually, she emerged from behind the shrub and stepped onto the jetty. She tried to peer through the cabin windows but couldn’t see any sign of life. Summoning all her courage, and taking a firm grip on the rigging, she jumped on board. The deck tilted alarmingly, making her ever-sensitive stomach give a responding jolt. Doing her best to steady both herself and the boat she scrambled round the available deck space, clinging to boom and halyard, squinnying through the low windows, in the hope of seeing a cup or plate on the table, a half-eaten sandwich, a bottle of mineral water. But no Marie-Celestian traces were visible; if Rianna was staying there, she was being scrupulously tidy. Turning back to the platform, Annie saw her exertions had caused the boat to drift a little further out. The gap wasn’t very wide, but she was already feeling queasy. She hesitated, steeled herself, and leaped for the riverbank.
She landed on the very edge of the platform, missed her footing, and grabbed at the mooring post as one leg splashed into the water. For an instant the touch of the river felt like a clammy hand around her ankle. Then she pulled herself up onto the planks, panting with relief, and stood up. A cloud had slid over the sun and when she turned round the surface of the Glyde had darkened. And near to the bank something was happening.
The river seemed to be whirling upwards into a waterspout, though there was no corresponding cloud-column thrusting down to meet it. A thickening rope of water grew in front of her, swaying like a blind snake groping for its prey. Now it was two feet high – four feet – five … The whirling slowed; there was just a pillar of water, suspended in mid-air, its base rooted in the Glyde. Annie was reminded of a photograph that freezes the splashback from a diver, but the pillar wasn’t motionless: it rippled and quivered, drawing more water into itself, gradually acquiring shape and meaning. The top rounded into a head; shoulders spread outwards; hips swelled. Its fluid substance began to solidify and colour poured into its translucency: the whiteness of skin, the streaming darkness of hair, a ribbon-like garment that wrapped its long limbs in a watery shimmer. Already the face was recognizable, though it looked far paler, more exotic, less human. ‘Rianna …’ Annie whispered. Her voice seemed to be squeezed in her throat. The figure floated towards the bank, its feet still in the river. Boneless arms stretched out from the main body towards her …
Belatedly, panic kicked in. Annie took to her heels. She knew it was coming after her – she heard the squelchy tread of its feet on the boards. Glancing back, she saw it stumble or slither, as if uncertain of its balance on land; but it was growing more solid every second, and she ran on, not daring to look again. As she entered the lane the cloud-shadow deepened: something seemed to be crawling under the hedgerows, and the grasses moved without any wind. Her horror redoubled. They were there, waiting for her, hemming her in, and the thing that looked like Rianna Sardou was on her tail, and she had no way forward, no way back. Only the centre of the lane was clear, though they crowded her on either side. Hesitation would be fatal. She sprinted straight down the middle, looking neither to right nor left, running, running for her life … And somehow at the end of the lane she was still running, and the hedgerows were empty of anything but hedge, and when she ventured to look round there was nothing there, nothing at all. No ripple of pursuing movement, no entity made of river water. Presently the sun came out again, and the bright afternoon was back, but she knew the nightmare hadn’t really gone away, only slipped into the shadows.
She went back to the shop – she felt safer in the shop – and telephoned Bartlemy, but he was out. She made herself some tea, with sugar for the shock, and sat by the phone again, calling and calling, until Bartlemy answered at last.
At school, in his dorm, Nathan dreamed of the other world again. A brief incursion, but it frightened him in a way the earlier dreams had not. He was sitting behind a rider on the back of a xaurian, one of three flying a patrol along an unfamiliar coastline. He knew it was a patrol because his rider spoke briefly into some kind of unseen communicator, possibly inside the mask; Nathan heard another voice close to the ear making an automatic response. It was just after sunset: a green glow was fading swiftly above the horizon and one of the three moons had risen directly ahead, while the faint rind of another was visible to their left. The brighter of the moons flung a reddish glitter across the sea, pock-marking the vast gloom of the water. On their right the shore looked uninhabited: no lights showed to indicate house or town, only the whiteness of foam-frills around jutting headlands, and occasional strips of beach shining copper in the moongleam. He wondered if the rider in front of him was Raymor, but he had no way of telling. There seemed to be no immediate danger of his drawing anyone back into his own world, so he concentrated on his surroundings and the excitement of the flight, absorbing impressions, trying to learn all he could. Presently he found he could feel the wind rushing over him, cool but not cold, and the skin of the xaurian against his legs, harder than leather and with the smooth finish of snake-skin. The second xaurian was flying a little behind him and to the side; the third, a little further back. The moon shone red in their red eyes, so they glowed like bulbs of blood.
Suddenly, he saw the neighbouring rider turn his head, staring fixedly at the space where he was sitting. He heard a voice from the communicator, no longer automatic: ‘Raymor! Ray! There’s something behind you …’ Raymor lifted his mount above the other two, describing a swift loop to scan the empty air. ‘No!’ came the cry, increasingly urgent. ‘Not behind us, behind you. On your xaurian. It looks like a shadow. Maybe a poor quality holocast, but – very dim. Can you see?’
Raymor twisted in the saddle; the third rider had broken the formation to draw near and point. Nathan was terrified. He had always been invisible before, except in the moment when he pulled the man out of the sea. But now, in his eagerness to experience this world, to be part of it, his thought was beginning to take on a physical form, and he didn’t know how to stop it. He struggled to make himself fade, to eliminate the sensations he had reached for moments earlier, but he couldn’t. Raymor had hooked the reins round the pommel and stretched out a gauntleted hand towards the incubus, though he could obviously make out little in the dark. Freed from restraint, the xaurian’s flight tilted. Raymor’s flailing arm encountered something that was neither shadow nor substance, and Nathan felt himself knocked sideways. His grip slipped on the xaurian’s flank and with a wordless cry he plunged down into the dark …
He woke immediately, the fear still fresh in him. He was giddy from the fall and the dormitory reeled around him; it took a while to settle down. He lay thinking and thinking, unable to sleep, trying not to panic. He had always been a mere spectator in the alien universe; now, he was becoming a player. Perhaps it was his own fault, because he had sought involvement: he had rescued the drowning man, he had wanted to feel the wind, and the touch of the reptile’s skin. But he knew, whatever he was doing, he had little or no control over it. Supposing he materialized completely, would he be trapped in that world, in his dream, striving in vain to awaken or return? And what would become of his body here? Would he be dead, or in a coma? And when he was there, would the so-called contamination affect him, without mask or protective clothing? He imagined himself going to bed in a wetsuit and goggles, and laughed at the fancy, which made him feel better, but not much.
By morning he had come to no real decisions, except that he must see the immigrant – it was Thursday, but he could hardly contain his impatience for another forty-eight hours-and somehow, he had to stop dreaming. He was unusually inattentive in class and yawned so much one teacher sent him to the sick room. ‘I couldn’t sleep last night,’ he told Brother James. ‘I have trouble sometimes. Perhaps … perhaps I could have some sleeping pills?’
‘Nonsense!’ snorted the monk. ‘Don’t need drugs at your age. Get out on the cricket pitch – get plenty of fresh air and exercise. That’ll do the trick. You’ve obviously been cooped up too long with your studies. I’ll speak to your housemaster about it.’
Nathan said: ‘Thank you,’ but he wasn’t comforted. He didn’t think cricket would solve his problems at all.
‘There are many kinds of water-spirit,’ Bartlemy told Annie, sitting in her tiny living room that night while she drank the hot chocolate he had made for her. He had used certain ingredients brought from his own kitchen; what they were she didn’t know, but she felt much calmer. ‘There are naiads, nymphs, nixes, kelpies – loreleis, selkies, sirens – though the last two prefer the sea. But I’m inclined to think that this was something different. It’s clearly able to assume a human form, which requires considerable power, and a convincing form at that. It seems to have convinced Michael, unless he’s involved in some way.’ He didn’t mention the being he had seen in the spellfire, submerged in water but not drowned, yet it was on his mind. Some things were coming together at last.
‘I don’t think so,’ Annie said cautiously. ‘But – but – you-don’t seem to be very – well, astonished. You believe me. I wouldn’t believe me, if I were you. At least, I’d find it difficult.’
‘Why shouldn’t I believe you?’ said Bartlemy. ‘You’ve always been completely truthful. As it is, I have some knowledge of these things.’
‘I’ve begun to realize that,’ Annie said. ‘Maybe … I’ve known all along. What – what knowledge, exactly?’
‘That would take a long time to answer. For the present, you must just accept that I know. It’s more important to concentrate on what is happening here. Plainly, there is a real Rianna Sardou whose image has been borrowed by this creature, though where she is now –’
‘Touring in Georgia,’ Annie supplied promptly.
‘Possibly. It would be helpful if we could be sure. Taking the form of another being is the most difficult kind of sympathetic magic. It generally requires the participation of the original, willing or otherwise, or some significant token from them.’
‘Like a glove or a lock of hair?’ Annie suggested.
‘That might not be adequate,’ Bartlemy said. ‘More … a severed hand, or an eye, or some other organ from which the image can be built up.’ Annie choked over her chocolate. ‘But let’s not take fright prematurely. Until we know what spirit is involved, we can’t guess of what it might be capable of. Or indeed what purpose it may have.’
‘Nathan,’ Annie said instantly, blanching. ‘It asked about Nathan. I can’t let him come back here. He’ll have to stay at school – or with friends.’
‘Don’t overreact,’ said Bartlemy. ‘We know nothing for certain.’
‘You keep saying that,’ Annie said with a wan attempt at humour.
‘Because it’s true. However, we can make a few deductions. As I said, I believe Nathan has a powerful father, who may be looking after him. Someone is clearly looking after you.’
‘What do you mean? I was chased by a – a sort of water-zombie, and then by them …’
Bartlemy steepled his fingers. ‘And none of them caught up. Doesn’t that provide us with food for thought? You said Rianna ran swiftly, and she was close behind you. Supposing they appeared, not to join the chase but to cut her off? I have been wondering about these phantom furies of yours. You thought they followed you here, but actually, they drove you.’
‘But why?’ Annie queried, puzzled and unconvinced.
‘To bring you to me. I could protect you, and the boy. I have some highly specialized talents. And someone thought you needed that type of protection.’
‘But you’re saying that they – these shadow-beings, whatever they are – they’re helping us? I can’t accept that. If they were part of some force for good, surely they wouldn’t be so terrifying?’
‘I didn’t say they were good,’ Bartlemy temporized. ‘But they may have helped, once or twice. When they pursued you down the lane, after your first visit to Michael, they could have been trying to keep you away from the water-spirit. Anyway, how do you define “good”, or differentiate it from evil? Even human nature is never black and white. Our moral stance depends so much on upbringing, on the precepts of our society, on thinly veiled self-interest. And for the were-folk – those who are less, or more, than human – morality as we understand it simply doesn’t exist at all.’
‘Are you saying you don’t believe in good and evil?’ Annie asked very quietly. ‘Because if you are –’
‘Not at all. I’m merely pointing out that other beings do not judge as we do.’
‘That’s a matter for them,’ Annie said. ‘If I don’t make my own judgements, who will? Even if I’m wrong, I have to go by what I believe, don’t I?’
He took her hand with an oddly melancholic smile. ‘You are wiser than I,’ he said after a pause. ‘I knew someone like you, once before, someone I loved very dearly. Sometimes, I see a look on your face, a turn of your head …’
‘What happened to her?’
‘She died. But it wasn’t sad, not for her. Only for me, and the others who mourned her. She did something that she believed in. There was a great sickness, and she was a skilled healer, so she went to help, but the plague caught up with her in the end.’
‘Plague?’ Annie murmured.
‘That may be the reason why I have tried to acquire something of her skill, since she departed. Medicine and food are both about physical well-being. Heal the body, nourish the soul.’ The faint sad smile flickered across his face again. ‘It would have amused her, to hear me talk this way. She was one of those people who never noticed what she ate, even if I cooked it. My Ailean … Ah well, it was all a long time ago.’
‘How long?’ Annie said in a whisper. She felt she stood upon the edge of something, of a great discovery, in that moment of recollection and gentle grief. The revelation was coming of a truth she had long sensed without actually knowing it …
‘Oh, seven hundred years or so,’ he said. ‘A long time.’
Annie clasped his hand in silence. She didn’t doubt him; she knew him too well for that. But for the first time she accepted, not only that there were other worlds beyond this one, but that the world she lived in was not as it appeared. Barriers crumpled in her mind, and her imagination reached out, and she was excited, and humbled, and very much afraid.