Hatched
THEY WERE LOOKING out for a private sign in a dip in the hills outside Kilpeck. No more than knee-high from the ground, according to Nora. Discreet, easily missed. Not, Jane thought, like Iestyn Lloyd’s loud Churchwood Farm placards, promoting local meat at the roadsides.
‘There.’
Jane pointing between two sturdy saplings. Apple. In the late summer, passers-by would get to help themselves. Generous. The sign said,
Maryfields
‘I’ve just thought,’ Jane said. ‘That’s the church’s dedication. St Mary and St David.’
‘Only two saints, a church that special?’
‘Nobody ever calls it that. It’s just Kilpeck Church. Built by a Norman baron called Hugh de Kilpeck, who threw untold wealth at it. His fast-track to paradise. See, I’m being useful already.’
‘I didn’t need to know any of that, so it doesn’t count,’ Lol said wearily.
Evidently still unhappy that she was here, but there’d been no way she wasn’t coming. She’d stay in the Animal while he went to suss out the situation, but she wasn’t missing an opportunity to check out this place, not after all that research. Felt she knew it already, could probably point out the very field where Peter Darvill had vanished under the last big tractor.
Lol turned the truck in, and the drive dipped suddenly, hedges rising steeply on both sides. Single-track, but there were escape routes leading off it to slip away into old woodland, some of it caging the smudgy shapes of buildings.
‘You could easily find someone else,’ Jane said.
He slowed right down and turned to look at her.
‘For what?’
‘The festival shop. Cool job, for Ledwardine. Be a queue of applicants.’
‘I doubt it. We’d run up against the national minimum wage. Barry’s thinking whoever does it would have to be part of the enterprise.’
‘What, like self-employed?’
‘To an extent. I’m not sure. He deals with all that.’
‘Right.’
Jane went quiet again, absorbing the place. The drive went uphill again, past lines of young trees, hedged fields – no fencing, no barbed wire – with strong wooden gates, crude signs on them with names, hand-painted: Haresfield, Quarryfield, Job’s Meadow.
‘How it used to be, I suppose,’ Lol said. ‘All the fields known by individual names.’
‘Still are in most places round here. You just don’t often see them inscribed on the gates.’ Jane lowered her side window, breathing deeply into the cold air. ‘If this is all Darvill’s organic farm it must look amazing in summer, all the wild flowers you get when you’re not spraying death everywhere.’
A kind of fairyland. Even in winter, it sang of an older country, the Herefordshire that Thomas Traherne had gazed on. So lovely did the distant green that fringed the field appear.
She liked what Darvill was doing. Pity he was such a twat.
The wind had died and the afternoon had brightened, the sun battling to break through before it had to set, making the grey sky shine like foil and turning a row of bare poplars into a barred window on the green hills. Directly ahead, more woodland and then an orchard with some very old apple trees shouldering planets of mistletoe. Squat, massive oaks were hanging out along the drive like overweight but muscular bouncers. Jane imagined Darvill strolling between them in designer green wellies, then she remembered. Also about the men who’d delved in darkness for a dead dancing partner.
Suddenly, she didn’t want to think about any of that. She turned from the window.
‘So it would be like… my business?’
Lol braked and turned to her.
‘Sorry?’
‘Ledwardine Lore. I’d be like the proprietor? This what Barry wants? Someone with flair and commitment who won’t make demands on his time? Who’ll make it pay for itself.’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Like Lucy coming back,’ Jane said. ‘To oversee things.’
‘Now you’re scaring me.’
Jane laughed. And then went quiet. The truck moved slowly into an avenue of vast and ancient yew trees, a living temple of winter greenery.
She sat up hard.
‘Holy shit…’
‘Quite.’
‘This is the real thing, Lol.’
‘It’s only a house,’ Lol said.
‘I don’t think so.’
The struggling sun had found it first. It was sprawled, sinuous and relaxed, over a rise or a mound. It was long and low with one gable end. Its oak-framed walls were the colour of red Herefordshire mud, age-bleached timbers worming through the fabric, some projecting like old bones from the earth. A private place, some windows so densely paned that their leading looked like twig-mesh.
Except it wasn’t leading, it was actually wood. It was like the house had hatched from the mound many centuries ago. An organic house.
‘We don’t actually go there.’ Jane was disappointed but Lol sounded relieved. ‘It’s the next right.’
‘A stable. With a small sign on the door.’
A curving dirt track led to an assembly of big outbuildings, probably cowsheds. There was an open barn, loaded with hay in traditional small bales; Lol stopped the truck in its shadow. He hesitated, Jane sensing his discomfort, knowing he wasn’t good with strangers unless there was an orchestra pit between them.
‘Lol, just turn the engine off and go and look for your stable. Leave the key. If the truck’s in the way, I’ll move it. Find a door and knock. Go on.’
He nodded and leaned on the door handle.
‘Uh-oh,’ Jane said. ‘Too late.’
A woman was walking round the side of one of the barns, heading directly for the truck. She was tall, taller than Lol anyway, wore a sheepskin jacket over a mauve roll-neck sweater and tight jeans. Her brown hair was tied back.
She was carrying a double-barrelled shotgun under an arm. It wasn’t broken. Lol brought his window down.
‘Just leave it here, Mr Robinson.’
The woman was… handsome. OK, more than that. In that serenely unconcerned, aristocratic way that fitted in so well with places like this. If not with her accent. Lol raised his eyebrows at Jane, switched off, opened his door and slid down from the cab.
‘Not a bad day,’ the woman said. ‘They keep forecasting snow, but it doesn’t happen.’ She put out a long, slim hand to Lol. ‘Nora.’
‘Lol.’
‘Arguably the most popular name on social media.’ Nora had the kind of accent that would sound, to an American, like cut-glass East-coast-plus. She glanced back at the truck. ‘You gonna bring your friend in?’
‘That’s… Jane.’
‘I know who she is. We have you all sussed – Mrs Watkins and what she does, you and your songs. Jane and her interests.’ Nora smiled at the windscreen. ‘Social media? All those pagan groups?’
Jane sank into the seat. Shit…
‘None of us has a private life any more,’ Nora said. ‘Anyhow, it’s not getting any warmer out here. Also…’ She hefted the twelve-bore. ‘… there’s a killer on the loose. Never thought I’d be saying that here.’