Merry pushed open the door and froze.

Mair lay on the beaten-earth floor, blood leaking from a wound to her temple.

Merry rushed over to her, fell to her knees.

‘Mair, can you hear me?’ she asked, taking the old lady’s wrist, frantically feeling for a pulse. After a few terrible seconds she found one.

‘Oh, thank God. Thank God. You’re alive,’ she said.

No reply. Mair was unconscious. Merry prayed she wasn’t in a coma. Was she breathing? Merry held her hand close to the healer’s lips, felt the slightest of draughts.

God, what to do? Move her? What if she had a broken back? Merry didn’t think so. It looked like Mair had been hit with a blunt object, perhaps taken by surprise by an intruder who crept up on her from behind. Then Merry saw the brick on the ground, the hiding place revealed and at that moment, Mair murmured and tried to sit up.

Merry reached her arm around the old lady’s back, supported her. ‘It’s all right, Mair. I’m here.’

‘A man,’ said the healer in a faint voice. ‘Looking for you. He asked me where Merry Owen was. And he took my gold coins and my healer’s book.’

Merry glanced from Mair to the door. She felt a kind of blind fury. Fury that had nowhere to go.

‘How long ago?’

‘Just now.’

Fury that had somewhere to go. ‘Will you be all right? If I leave you for a bit?’

The healer nodded, struggled to sit.

Merry strung her bow, shouldered her arrow bag, closed the door. She looked across the empty field, past the lowing cow, down to the forest.

Who was this man who had attacked Mair and asked for her by name? And where would he flee to? A flock of birds erupted from the treetops as if in answer to her question.

Merry didn’t think twice about following the man. About what might happen if she caught him.

She sprinted down to the forest. Paused, listened. Movement, footfalls, branches breaking. She sprinted on, weaving between the trees, jumping fallen logs.

With luck, the thief would be making so much noise he wouldn’t hear her, but she’d have to be careful. She paused again, heard something further down the slope. She glimpsed movement ahead, a hundred yards away. A lithe figure dodging through the trees.

She ran on, gaining. The man was running, not sprinting. He had no idea he was being chased. As Merry closed the gap on him, she could see he was wearing a green woollen tunic, similar to hers. Underneath, he wore dark leggings. But as she got closer still, she could see that the leggings were made not of rough wool, but of Lycra.

Her heart lurched. The man was from her time . . .

She stepped on a fallen branch. It snapped with a loud crack. Birds erupted again from the trees, cawing their alarm.

The man froze. Every single fibre of his body seemed to stop moving. One foot in the air, one arm forward. Then he turned.

Merry gasped. It was Professor Parks! She’d had a sense that someone had been following her, both in her time and now. Parks must have tailed her to the pool, watched her swim under the waterfall, swim back . . . And swum back too. Then stalked her, listened outside the cottage, heard her describing Mair’s hiding place, where she kept her gold coins. Knew everything.

He began to walk towards Merry. His face was set, eyes hard, scanning the forest behind her, as if to check she was alone.

Merry took an arrow from her bag, was about to nock it when Parks stopped. Thirty yards away.

He stood, feet planted wide, facing her full on, making a target of himself in silent mockery of the lethal weapon she held in her hand. He didn’t look remotely afraid, or ashamed to have been caught. Instead he grinned at her with what looked like a kind of twisted delight.

‘Merry Owen. Who’d have thought it? You and I. Together. In King Henry’s time?’

He had the beginnings of a beard. It darkened the hollows of his face. He’d always looked vaguely sinister; now he looked frightening. And oddly liberated. As if he’d shrugged off Professor Parks and become someone different.

‘You were following me all along, weren’t you?’ said Merry.

‘You only just figured that out?’ He gave her a contemptuous look. ‘You really are spectacularly unobservant, aren’t you?’

Merry said nothing. She just kept her gaze fixed on him. She could feel her heart thudding.

‘And it was you who broke into my home.’

Parks laughed. ‘I didn’t even have to break in! You’d left the doors unlocked – you even told me you always did. Quite unbelievable!’

‘That’s because I don’t live in a world with people who steal, who attack,’ said Merry.

‘Actually,’ sneered Parks, ‘it would appear that you do. Besides, who are you to lecture me? You stole the signet ring.’

‘And then you stole it again, flogged it to some antiques dealer.’

‘Who sold it to the countess . . . Nice little profit, that.’

‘You’re a thief and almost a murderer. You hit me and knocked me out! I could have died of hypothermia out there in the snow.’

Parks shrugged. ‘You got in the way. The snow was unfortunate.’

‘Why did you want the book so much?’

‘I had a feeling it would lead me to some other discovery.’ Parks stretched his arm out. ‘I had no idea it would be this.’ He paused, smiled. ‘I didn’t manage to get the book, but I had the next best thing. You!’

‘Me?’

Parks came closer. ‘I felt sure you were up to something, hunting for something. So I followed you. Many have died. Kudos, Merry, for swimming back, for surviving.’

‘How did you manage it?’

‘It was very tough, even I must admit that, but an oxygen re-breather and flippers proved rather useful.’ He smiled again. ‘I followed you back the first time too. Didn’t you sense me?’

‘It was you in the tunnel, following me into the castle!’

‘It was indeed. Suicidally risky. I took some little objets, souvenirs, couldn’t resist . . .’ His eyes gleamed at the memory. ‘Then I went outside again, hid in the forests, waited and watched.’ He gave Merry a nod of admiration. ‘Bit of a narrow escape you had that night, galloping off on the Arab horse. If they’d caught you . . .’ He made a cutting motion, hand across his throat. ‘Not even sure you’d have made it as far as the gallows. The men and the dogs hunting you, blood up. You’d have had a far worse fate . . .’

Merry shuddered at the memory. Of being hunted. Of being prey.

Parks took another few paces closer.

‘Dicing with death again, aren’t you, coming back, horse thief . . .’

‘I did what I needed to do then. And now,’ replied Merry, anger rising. ‘But you . . . you had no need to attack an old lady, to steal her savings and her book.’

Parks narrowed his eyes. ‘Have you any idea what this is like for an archaeologist? A historian? Coming back, to another world, a different time? How could I not take things?’

‘Taking her treasures is bad enough. But attacking her? You could have killed her!’ shouted Merry.

Parks’s response was chillingly cold, almost devoid of emotion. ‘She got in the way.’

‘Like me. In the snow.’

Parks nodded. ‘Exactly.’

Merry stood very still, her body tingling with horror. Was this what a psychopath looked like? Reasonable. Remorseless. Ruthless.

Parks continued to approach. He was just fifteen yards away now. Merry knew she’d have to act. Nock, mark, draw, loose . . . Could she do it . . . ?

‘You’re in my way again,’ murmured Parks.

Merry nocked her arrow.

‘I can read a lot in people’s eyes,’ continued Parks. ‘Like I can read in yours that you want to shoot me.’ He gave a half-laugh. ‘Only you haven’t got the bottle for it, have you, Merry? It’s just an ego thing, this longbow girl affectation.’ Again he stepped closer.

He was going to rush her, she could see that.

Merry held her bow, the bow she felt sure had gone to war, had more than a few kills to its name . . . She nocked, marked and drew. She looked at the man, looked at the tree behind him, then she loosed her arrow.

It flew towards Parks, nicked his ear and embedded itself in the tree with a loud thud.

Parks swore, dropped the book, touched his ear, stared at his bloody fingers with disbelief. A muscle twitched in his cheek. Merry could feel the fury boiling in the man, the violence waiting to erupt.

She nocked another arrow, marked him, drew again. ‘Put down the gold coins or I’ll shoot this one right into you.’ Her voice and her hand on the bow were steady, but inside she was vibrating with fear.

The blood ran down Parks’s neck. He pulled a bag from his tunic and dropped it to the ground.

‘One little pathetic victory for you. Enjoy it while you can, Merry Owen, because I’ll be out here. I’ll be watching and waiting and I promise you, I’ll make you more than pay for this.’

Merry made the arrow twitch. Parks dodged, turned and sprinted off into the deep of the forest.