Grace closed the blackout curtains, shutting out the honey-colored sunlight that had filled the room. It was almost sunset and Duncan still hadn’t returned with help.
“It’s a long walk to Craven Arms,” Edwin said. He’d been sitting with a book in his hand when she’d come in to close the curtains.
“Not that long. Surely he would have been able to get a ride once he got to the main road?”
“Maybe there wasn’t an ambulance available? They’ll send an ambulance for the bodies and he could come back with it.”
Jack Chapman and Joe Haywood were now lying in the back of the locked smithy. Grace and Edwin both realized nobody would be coming for them today.
“I should have gone,” Grace said.
“If you had tried to get to town, it would be you who was…gone.” Edwin stared into the dimness enveloping them, not looking at Grace. For most of the afternoon, while they waited for help that never arrived, they had avoided one another, moving from room to room in an elaborate dance, each finding an excuse to be where the other was not. He put his book down.
“Grace, I’m afraid this last week…everything that’s happened…has been too much for me on top of the journey here. I haven’t been myself. I would never have said—”
“It’s all right, Edwin. It’s not as if I was insulted.”
“Ah, well…that’s a good start at least…or rather…” Edwin stood up abruptly. The air was stifling. “I’m going to talk to the vicar. I’ve puzzled over everything and there are questions I want to ask.”
“Be careful.”
“Yes. Anyway, it isn’t quite dark yet.”
After he had hurried off, Grace muttered another prayer. She wouldn’t have prayed in front of Edwin. Maybe he was right, with his learned disbelief. Had her prayers achieved anything? The whole village had prayed, and to what end? The mothers whose children had vanished had beseeched God for help. Betty never missed church and now both her boys were missing. The vicar certainly had prayed and if anyone had God’s ear it would be the vicar. It was easy enough to say that what happened in the world, both good and evil, was all part of God’s mysterious plan, until it was you or yours being sacrificed for reasons beyond human comprehension.
Martha had her own beliefs. All day long she’d puttered around in the kitchen, working on her persuasions, going out to the back garden to pick plants from time to time, leaving briefly once to see Polly, who grew those Martha had a difficult time propagating. The house smelled of herbs boiling on the stove.
Grace was happy not to interfere. It kept her grandmother occupied and out of trouble.
The old woman was awfully quiet, Grace now realized.
The kitchen was deserted. A pot with a sticky residue in the bottom sat on the stove. The table was cleared of all but a few stray twigs and leaves.
Grace checked the garden. Martha wasn’t there. A huge orange sun sat low in the sky, sending impossibly long shadows from the trees at the back of the garden up the house walls.
Going quickly to the privy, Grace knocked. “Grandma!”
No answer.
When she’d questioned Martha about her labors the explanations were confused. Grace thought her grandmother was having one her bad days. Or was she being purposefully evasive?
If anyone would know what Martha was up to, it would be Polly.
The cottage of Martha’s devoted pupil sat alone at the end of a short cul de sac. Left to decay since her husband had died decades ago, the house was half hidden behind a garden that had run wild. Bushes reached up the eaves. Grace’s knock at the front door elicited no response. Tall spikes of hollyhocks by the porch swayed ominously in an unfelt breeze.
After a short search she found Polly weeding an herb bed concealed in the wilderness. She looked nervous when Grace asked about Martha.
“Let’s see. Your grandma came by this afternoon at least once.”
“What about this evening?”
“Can’t say as I recall her visiting since tea time.”
“Don’t lie to me, Polly. I can tell you’re lying. Did she tell you to?”
“Now, Grace. You know how it is with an old woman’s memory.”
“You saw her not long ago, didn’t you?”
Polly scrunched up her face as if she were trying to squeeze the memory out. “Might’ve needed one last ingredient for one persuasion or other.”
“And where is she now?”
Polly licked her lips and said nothing but Grace noted how her gaze flickered toward Guardians Hill.
“She’s gone up to the stones, hasn’t she?”
“Well…”
Grace didn’t wait for the reply. She was already running back in the direction of the High Street. She should’ve guessed what Martha was working at all day. Magic to counteract the evil she insisted hung about the stones.
Grace would have to go after her but first she must get her father’s rifle. Whatever evil was out in the forest, a weapon would be more effective against it than Martha’s persuasions.
***
Edwin sat with Timothy Wilson in the vicarage garden and watched the swollen and malevolent sun squat for a moment on the mountain top. Then it slid out of sight, so quickly the movement was almost discernible, drawing harsh, red light out of the sky with it and leaving only a glow like that of a burning city.
“You don’t mind staying outside, do you, Edwin? I can hardly breathe indoors with the blackout curtains closed.”
“Is it necessary to keep the windows completely blocked so far out in the countryside? Considering your condition—”
“We all need to make sacrifices.”
Edwin thought that his friend had made sufficient sacrifice in the last war but didn’t say so.
“I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the stone circle myself.” Wilson’s quiet voice was almost masked by the chattering and shrilling of insects. “They can be places of power, especially at certain times such as the solstice. Evil power from a Christian viewpoint, of course. But as far as finding specific information about the Guardians, I can’t tell you any more than Harry Wainman did.”
“Naked corybants that no one alive has seen?”
“I’ll bet Wainman didn’t use the term ‘corybant,’ Edwin! You don’t believe these old superstitions, I take it?”
“No. It isn’t what I believe, it’s what other people might believe.”
“Beliefs are real to the believer,” Wilson pointed out, “even if the thing believed in isn’t real.”
“Indeed. And that has effects in the real world. Look at Hitler and his murderous notions.”
“None of which is very helpful to you. I’m sorry I can’t offer more information, Edwin.”
“Was Isobel Chapman going through puberty?”
Wilson paused before replying, startled. “I suppose so. She was big for her age. Well developed. One couldn’t help noticing. Not that I—”
Edwin waved his hand. “Don’t worry. We can’t help noticing.” Even when a woman is young enough to be your daughter, he thought ruefully. “So she might have been on the verge of menarche, if she hadn’t begun already?”
“Oh…that’s not the sort of thing a young girl would confide to the vicar.”
“You’ve read The Golden Bough, among other things. Primitive people harbored a dread of menstrual blood, and in particular the first blood. They considered there was evil power inherent in the condition, which is why they often placed restrictions on a woman who had reached that time. One tribe confined her to a hammock slung up under the roof, so she couldn’t touch the ground or see the sun. Suspended between heaven and earth, she couldn’t cause any mischief.”
Wilson looked thoughtful. “Issy’s blood-stained clothes…have we been looking in the wrong direction?”
***
Edwin’s heart skipped a beat when he found Grace’s front room empty. There was no one in the kitchen either. He called up the stairs. No reply.
He looked into the kitchen again. Martha’s persuasions and charms were no longer there. Had she put them away? Taken them somewhere? All day long she had talked about the Guardian Stones.
He looked in the pantry. The rifle was gone.
Martha must have gone to the Guardian Stones, but hoping to do what? Grace must have gone after her. Why else would she have taken the rifle unless she was going into the forest?
He ran out the door after them. If he had believed in a god, Edwin would have prayed he would not be too late.