Chapter Four

A PASSER-BY WOULD have seen nothing more than a beautiful woman on her knees in the dark by the broken-down mess of the old wishing well, but that wasn’t what Evie saw.

She saw a man in a ruff and an embroidered cloak with thick, dark hair to his shoulders and a pointed barb of a beard. Strong, proud features were softened by the glow of adoration in his eyes and the fond curve of his lips.

She saw her one true love.

Her one true love who had been dead this past 300 years and more.

‘The preacher?’ he said, pulling her up and cradling her head against his shoulder.

‘Yes. He has come.’

‘And do you think …?’

‘He is the one. I’m sure of it.’

‘Is he inflamed by you?’

‘Oh yes.’

John took her face in both hands, pinching the blushing flesh of her cheeks.

‘As who would not be?’ he said, bending to kiss the tip of her nose.

‘Oh John, I miss you all the time …’

‘Then miss me no more.’

The kiss drew them both into different worlds, a temporary resurrection for him, a return to age-old passion for her. So much more than a kiss – a communion and a transformation.

Evie felt it as strongly as she ever had done, through all the bodies that had replicated her soul and spirit down the years. His lips on hers brought her home to that battle-scarred land where they had first kissed. It had felt then, as it did now, like a resolution, the end of all unhappiness. In fact, it had only been the beginning of it.

But that wasn’t on her mind now, while John’s tongue probed in her mouth and his hands slid under the cardigan. Her mind blanked, overlaid with frantic desire. She fisted great handfuls of his hair and burrowed her way inside his jacket, rubbing at the cambric beneath, wondering at the heat of his body.

‘You have kept me strong,’ he murmured, laying her down on the ground. ‘I feel stronger than ever tonight. How many did you take this week?’

‘I’ve done it at least 20 times,’ she said, grinning up at him, writhing on the grassy verge while he unbuckled his sword belt on his knees beside her. ‘We did the fertility ritual and that helped.’

‘Of course. All the power coming into your body from that has given me a new lease.’

‘I can see it in you.’ She put up a hand, stroking his forearm. ‘You’re almost your old self.’

‘And I would do what my old self did, my girl,’ he growled. The belt was off, discarded in a hedgerow.

‘Be gentle,’ she said, arching her legs so her skirt fell in a bunch around her waist, revealing an absence of underwear. ‘Like I said, love, it’s been a hard week.’

‘It will not be long now,’ vowed John, ‘before you no longer have to do this work for me. Our time is near.’

Evie sighed as John’s fingers dipped deep into her overexcited juices. He spoke on, playing with her clit, getting her wetter than she thought was possible.

‘That time will come soon,’ he said, crooking a finger inside her cunt. ‘The time when no man’s fingers but mine will gain access here. The time when my prick alone grants you your satisfaction, each night and many times in succession. Oh Evie, I will have you until you cannot walk or speak, my girl. I will have you for my own.’

‘Do it, John. Please take me.’

She lifted her halter top and put a hand on her breasts, plucking at her nipples while John worked his fingers further inside, stretching her in preparation.

‘Am I still the best?’ he whispered, flexing them, finding her G-spot.

‘Always, oh always, there’s no one, oh John.’

A torrential orgasm threatened to drown her senses, then John’s face loomed above her, his eyes glinting. He had torn off his jacket and the breeches were gone as well, only a long cambric shirt covering his broad chest and tight stomach.

‘Thou and I, my village Eve, thou and I,’ he said. ‘It shall be so.’

She flung her arms around his neck and lifted her legs into the air, opening her cunt to him with instinctive urgency. She needed to feel his cock inside her, a part of her, bringing her to him.

The hard length pushed in, and it was as if the sting left by earlier invaders melted away in the face of this great and final conqueror. This was her true act of union.

‘Now you are where you should be.’ John’s voice strained above her. ‘My woman, on her back with her cunny filled. You shall feel this always, when we are together.’

‘I long for it.’ She dug her fingernails into his back and jolted her pelvis up, greedy for every inch of him.

‘I shall wipe out all traces of what has gone before, placing my mark over them. You are mine, Evangeline.’

‘And you are mine, John.’

He could speak no more, his throat taken up with the effort of controlling breath.

Evie settled into him, bereft in advance, knowing that this coupling could only be brief when she wanted it to be eternal. She wanted to be under him, on top of him, filled with him, at all times, in all seasons. Their bodies, like their spirits, were built to merge, her softness and his hardness complementing each other.

He moved into a fierce rhythm, as hard on her as he might be on his horse, each thrust a punishment for the situation he himself had put her in.

‘Hurt me, John,’ she sighed. ‘Bruise me. I want those marks on me. Fuck me so hard I’ll feel it every time another man’s cock is in me. I only want to feel you.’

But he wouldn’t hurt her. His power in reserve, he undid her with pleasure instead, three climaxes before he ended the fuck with his own spending.

They lay, entwined and sweating, on the verge, smelling of sap and juices, hearts hammering in time, floating half on the Earth and half off it.

‘It’ll be soon,’ whispered Evie, clinging to him as if afraid he would disappear before her eyes. ‘He’s here. But I’m scared.’

‘Take heart. Your work is almost done. Such a long, lonely job you’ve had. You have earned your reward.’

‘What if he – knows?’

‘How can he know? He’s a mere human; he has no contact with his descendant.’

‘There is something about him, John. He is so very like …’

She broke off and shuddered.

John squeezed her tighter, his arm protective.

‘I warrant it recalls memories you would prefer buried, love. And I would it must not needs be so. But it must. There is no other path.’

‘He is the one, John. Every time I’m with him I’m so scared. I have to try and chase the fear away by being cheeky.’

‘You’re good at that.’ Lightly he tapped her wrist in mock reproof.

‘Yes, but it’s so hard. I want to kill him.’

‘Well, you mustn’t do that. That would finish us for good. The time is coming, and I am with you always, in spirit. Think of me when the fear is upon you.’

‘I will. I’ll think of you.’

‘This week you have the May Fair, don’t you?’

‘Yes, on Saturday. I’ll take as many as I can, John. I’ll keep you strong.’

‘Make sure you enjoy it, love.’

‘I will.’

‘The pleasure is what sustains me.’

‘I know. Every time I take another man, it’s like I’m with you. Because I’m doing it for you.’

Beneath the moon, they lay together, exchanging memories and kisses until John began to fade and Evie was left alone once more.

Adam was surprised to see Evie at the meeting. 

‘You want to protest against your, ah, employer?’ he asked, cornering her by the tea table where Julia Shields was in charge of the kettle.

‘No, just making sure both sides are represented,’ she said. ‘I reckon Seb and Kasia’ll be along later too.’

‘Well, they can’t,’ said Adam, somewhat agitated at this prospect.

‘Why not? It’s a free country, ennit?’

She picked up her plastic cup of tea and seated herself resolutely in the front row.

‘The nerve of her,’ hissed Julia, putting down the kettle. ‘Little trollop.’

‘I think perhaps she’s more sinned against than sinning – in some ways,’ said Adam.

‘Good gracious, what on earth makes you say that? Nobody’s forcing her to shag every man in the village. Oh, don’t tell me you’re another one.’

‘Another one of what?’ Adam turned to Julia, his heart beating faster, as if he knew what she was going to say.

‘Bitten by the love bug. Though it’s more of a sex bug in her case. Are you, vicar?’

‘What? Of course not! She’s a parishioner, that’s all. I feel responsible for her spiritual welfare.’

‘Don’t. That one isn’t convertible. She lives to shag, and that’s all there is to it.’

‘Is it?’

Julia put her hands on her hips and glared.

‘I think I’m going to need to take you in hand, vicar, if you’re going to start getting romantic notions about Evie Witts.’

He looked towards the object of his desire, wondering if what he felt for her was romantic. It wasn’t pure, and it should be. How could he make his wanting of her pure? 

‘Take me in hand?’ he echoed, turning back to Julia with a perplexed smile.

‘Save you from yourself.’

She sounded like he did when he reflected on Evie. 

‘I don’t need saving,’ he said. ‘I’m the man who saves. Who tends. Who shepherds.’

‘You need a flock for that,’ said Julia acidly. ‘Mind you, we seem to have a decent turn-out. I didn’t think anyone would come.’

As it happened, a gratifyingly high proportion of villagers had not known what the manor was being used for, and weren’t best pleased.

However, their objection didn’t seem to be to the pornography per se.

‘We don’t like people coming in and making changes to the place,’ one venerable old gentleman put it. ‘Saxonhurst people like the village kept in the old way.’

‘They ain’t doing anything wrong,’ said Evie. ‘They bought the place fair and square.’

‘Well, I’ll admit none of us lifted a finger to help Ms Shields in her misfortune,’ said a woman to Evie’s left. ‘For personal reasons more’n anything. But there weren’t many of us happy to see the manor sold on. It should stay with Saxonhurst people. For that reason, I’d be happy to see these film-makers out of there.’

Adam looked on, feeling as if he’d been transported back in time. These villagers were so set in their ways and suspicious of outsiders – did they realise that the 21st century was here? And that Saxonhurst was unusual in its demographic; most of the neighbouring villagers were overwhelmingly occupied by commuters who’d moved out from the surrounding cities. “Local” people were few and far between in the modern Vale. Yet Saxonhurst heaved with them.

‘So shall we organise a protest?’ Julia seized on the mood of quiet hostility towards her usurpers, not wanting the meeting to dwell on its reasons for disliking her personally.

There was general assent to this. The protest was pencilled in for the day of the May Fair, in between the maypole dancing and the jam judging.

‘I’ll make some placards,’ said Julia, packing up after the meeting.

‘You won’t get them out,’ said Evie, stopping briefly on her way to the door. ‘You don’t have a leg to stand on. There ain’t a lawyer in the land who’d back you up.’

‘This isn’t about the law of the land,’ said Adam primly. ‘It’s about standing behind your principles. One day you might understand.’

She looked coldly furious for a moment, as if she wanted to hit out at him, but within seconds, the cheeky glint was back in her eye.

‘People who are so scared of sex make me laugh,’ she said, tripping off on the arm of a tall young man who’d appeared at her side. ‘Don’t you reckon, Joe?’

Adam’s face twisted into an ugly snarl.

‘Jealous, vicar?’ asked Julia. ‘I wouldn’t be. I daresay she’d open her legs for you if you asked her to.’

‘They don’t like you, do they?’ He rounded on her, stung. ‘Why is that?’

‘Because they’re ignorant. That’s why.’

She stalked off without another word.

That night, Adam closeted himself in his study with the parish records. The ledgers went back to 1566, but he decided to work backward, through the registers of weddings, funerals, and christenings, to see if he could gain any useful information about this baffling village from them.

The original documents were held at the county records office, but he seemed to have copies of everything he needed, neatly filed.

The first thing he looked for was Evie. Had she been christened here?

There was no sign of it. If she had been baptised, it had happened elsewhere. He searched before the year of her birth for any marriage in the name of Witts, but found nothing. A register office, then, or maybe her parents weren’t married. These days, the village church was just a picturesque backdrop for an occasion, and even that role was being taken from it in favour of local venues with wedding licences. Records post-1960s were very sparse indeed.

He turned instead to a file from the early 19th century, curious about that earlier Evangeline on whose grave Evie had behaved so disgracefully.

Her funeral record showed that she had died at the age of 29, in childbirth. Her husband, one Alfred Witts, had predeceased her – by two years! The child was not his.

He checked the baptism records to see if he could glean any information about the child, but there was none, so presumably he or she had been stillborn. There was no funeral record, though. Perhaps the child was whisked away and placed in an orphanage. Or had gone to live with relatives in another village.

Tired of the inconclusivity of his studies, he put the ledgers away and went to bed. Something told him that he would need plenty of rest before the May Fair.