The best thing about sailing away from home for a while was the first long hot shower when he got back. He luxuriated under it for ages, and shaved off his three-week beard.
Only his growling stomach and the promise of whatever good food Mary would be cooking persuaded him eventually to get dried and dressed. Clean clothes were good, too.
They were waiting for him in the dining room, Bob and Karen sitting at the table while Mary bustled back and forth from the kitchen with bowls of steaming soup.
He returned Sarah’s miniature framed photo to its place among the others on the mantelpiece. They’d always been a crew of two when she was alive, and he still took her sailing with him now.
Someone had lit thick table candles and the log fire, which crackled and sparked and warmed the room as if they were back in midwinter again.
It was good to be home.
Paul took his seat, lifted a spoonful of soup, and inhaled the aroma. Game. Gorgeous. He lingered over the taste of that first spoonful, and when he opened his eyes everyone was smiling at him.
Mary handed a small package across the table. “I had to sign for this, first week after you went away.”
He knew what it would be. Felt like a small boy opening a Christmas present.
Eventually, he warmed the tiny metal disc in his hand, and stroked it with a light fingertip, trying to visualise the person who made it and those who’d carried it.
The others were watching.
“It’s an ancient silver coin. More than two thousand years old.”
It was roughly circular, eight millimetres diameter, and looked more like bronze than silver. Its stylised horse design was raised above its surface in polished bumps and lines that caught the candlelight.
Karen was still blowing gently across her first spoonful of potato and lentil soup. “Where did you get it?”
“eBay. I was just browsing one day, and the tribal name jumped off the screen at me. Boii.”
Bob and Mary exchanged a look.
Paul caught their expressions and shrugged.
“The Boii were one of the tribes Julius Caesar conquered in Gaul.” He tipped the coin into its hard little plastic folder. “Before the Roman Empire got going, there were dozens of Celtic tribes spread all over Europe, all making their own coins. Most of them used the horse as their emblem, but there are marked differences between the designs. Some are very stylised like this one, others more natural. They’re all small and intricate. Clever work.
“I googled the Boii. They were one of five Alpine tribes who took part on a mass migration right across Europe, from Geneva to the Atlantic coast. Probably to escape The Roman Legions, I expect. Julius Caesar wrote about them in his war journal.
“Can’t remember the exact figure, but Caesar said more than three hundred and fifty thousand of them walked together from the Alps to the ocean. I can’t get over what a huge logistical task that was. Someone had to organise it. Can you imagine?”
He held up the coin in its plastic folder. “And I love to think one of those Boii people might have been carrying this.” He pushed it deep into his jeans pocket, patted it, and returned to his delicious soup.
Karen was grinning at his enthusiasm. She’d brushed her hair back into its ponytail again, clearing her broad, freckled brow and face. “I’ve sorted your letters. Want me to take a look at your emails too?”
Sometimes he wondered if she could read his mind. “Actually, I was wondering if you’d fancy doing that full time.”
She chuckled. “What? Sorting out your emails?” Her smile slipped when she saw his serious expression. “What do you mean?”
“I’m offering you a job.” He spoke over her kneejerk objection. “You need a job. I need someone to manage my business.” He glanced at the pile of letters awaiting his attention. “Obviously.”
“I’m not a secretary. I’ve never done anything like that.”
“You could cope with anything I’d need from you, easily. And I’m not asking you to be my secretary. I want you to be my manager. I’ll pay whatever your university position pays. More if you need it. Just say the word.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You’re serious.”
“I am. You’ve moderated my fan forum without payment for five years. You know more about the Tamass series than just about anyone else. Sometimes I think you know it better than I do.”
It was true. She was one of the hardcore fans who’d built a big fictional world and its history around his novels. It was all there for everyone to see on his website, and he’d created almost none of it.
Karen had already been a keen reader of the Tamass books before she arrived in Trenick, and she’d been thrilled to meet him when they shared a table for breakfast in The Coffee Pot a week after she’d settled in.
Once they got to know each other a bit better she’d volunteered to moderate his fan forum, and under her username Flipper she’d started developing entire new sections of the site, spending hundreds of happy hours using her scientific knowledge to help other fans to build the world.
Karen’s pet theory was that Tamass’s world was a mirror image of the real world. Where landmasses sat in one, oceans existed in the other. And vice versa.
So the spaces Britain and Ireland occupied in the real world were a pair of small seas in Tamass’s world. The English Channel was a land bridge. Europe and America and all the other continents were oceans. And the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea were the continents of Atland and Media, divided by a busy shipping canal but ruled together from the towering capital city of Ys, which Tamass liberated after his heroic victories during the eighteen-year War of Earth.
It was a good theory, and Paul enjoyed poking gentle fun at her about it.
He’d always admired her dedication to mapping out Tamass’s world. And even if he’d wanted to, he was in no position to mock her seriously. Not with his multiverse obsession.
Parallel worlds.
Alternative realities.
There was good science in the various theories of multiverses. He and Karen enjoyed long and detailed discussions about them. But the further he strayed from the science, the closer he got to his secret fantasy in which Sarah still lived happily in another version of the world.
And why not?
If a fantasy novelist couldn’t dream about alternative realities, who could?
So he continued to poke gentle fun at Karen about her pet theory, and he never thought about the big picture geography of Tamass’s world. He simply wrote his stories, and whatever turned up around them turned up.
She took his amused digs in good spirit, and remained convinced that he’d invented Tamass’s world as a mirror image without realising the fact.
“I owe you,” he said.
“No you don’t. It’s fun. I never wanted any payment.”
“You never needed any. Now you do. You need a job and I need a manager. How more right could this be?” He offered what he hoped was a persuasive smile. “You’ll be able to swim with your seals every day.”
Karen raised her eyebrows at Bob and shrugged a silent question.
The quiet man wiped his soup bowl clean with a chunk of bread. “Sounds good to me.”
Mary wheeled in a trolley bearing three plates of sliced roast beef with heaps of mashed potatoes and shiny green vegetables and a big white jug of beef gravy, and a plate of spinach and ricotta gnocchi for Karen. “Sounds good to me, too.”
The Thornes were perfectly suited for each other. They even looked similar. Dark-eyed, dark-haired, short, but solidly built and without an ounce of spare fat on either of them, they were the image of a hardworking old Cornish couple.
Mary’s food was too wonderful to speak around for a while, but eventually Karen responded.
“I’m grateful for your offer and I’ll take the job, but only on one condition.”
Paul beamed. “Anything. Name it.”
“You stay home and work on Book Ten until it’s finished.”
It was her turn to talk over his objections, and she did so with determination glinting in her eyes. “I’ll deal with your agent and editor. I’ll smooth their feathers. I’ll start fixing things with your readers too, while you put your nose to the grindstone and write that book.”
Paul’s heart sank. He’d thought she understood.
Thunder crashed outside and rain spattered like gravel thrown against the dining room windows.
“I’ll help you,” she said. Her voice was gentle now, but still persuasive. “I know you’re struggling. You’re not lazy. These past two years have been horrible and I know you need help to invent something. I’m here for you.”
“So am I,” said Mary.
“Me too,” said Bob.
“Hey,” Karen said. “Maybe you could research the Boii. And all those other tribes with horse coins across Europe. And the mass migration. You never know. There might be a story in that.”
Talk about ganging up on him!
“We’ll help,” Karen insisted. “Four heads have to be better than one. At least say you’ll try, and we’ll shake hands on the deal.”
Paul stared at his polished steel replica of Tamass’s big curved sword, mounted on the chimneybreast above the fireplace. Sarah had commissioned a Japanese master sword smith to make it during Paul’s first flush of success. It was his most treasured possession, but for the past two years it had mocked him.
Could he do it? Create a new story for Tamass out of thin air, even though the great warrior’s world was now at peace?
He regarded his friends, who waited for his decision.
Could he do it, with their help?
Between the three of them, they knew his fictional world inside out. Who better to help him brainstorm a story?
“I’ll give it a go.”
Karen must have been holding her breath. It came out in a big whoosh. “Excellent! I’ll email your agent now and give him the good news. What do you think is a reasonable time period to promise him something? Three months?”
“What?” Paul’s voice squeaked a bit at that. He cleared his throat and tried again in a more normal tone. “Twelve months, thank you very much.”
“Shall we say you’ll have something to show him in four? He’s been very patient. Give me a bone to throw him, eh?” She grinned.
He barked a rueful laugh. “Go on, then.”
Bob and Mary shared a twinkling smile as Paul shook Karen’s hand across the table and she went straight to flash up the computer in the corner of the room.
“So,” he asked, “what’s new around here? Anything happen while I was away?”
“Nothing much,” Karen said over her shoulder while her fingers rattled on the computer keyboard. “Oh, two more sightings of the Beast of Bodmin. One last weekend on the moor and the second last night, down at the water’s edge just around the headland.”
Paul sat up at that. He’d always loved Beast of Bodmin stories and yearned to see one of the legendary big black cats for himself.
Karen pressed Send with a flourish and turned off the computer, then swivelled her chair. “People are talking about arranging another hunt.”
Mary clicked her tongue in disapproval. “It’s all nonsense.”
“You think so?” Paul raised his eyebrows. “Honestly?”
Mary nodded impatiently as she stacked dirty plates on the trolley.
Bob pursed his lips and gave a single slow nod. “Nonsense.”
“Well, maybe,” Paul said. “But if they do exist I hope none of these hunts ever catch one. I love to think of them living wild and free.”
Someone hammered something hard and heavy three times against the front door.
“What the…?” Paul started to rise from his seat.
Mary was already on her way. “I’ll go.”
She left the dining room door open and they listened to murmuring voices that were almost drowned by the storm battering the house.
The front door clicked shut and Mary walked back in with a pale and shocked expression on her face. She switched on the room lights as she entered, and her eyes bored into Bob’s as if she was trying to communicate something to him without words.
She was followed by two soaking wet figures, a delicate woman wearing a long blue velvet cloak, and a tall, impressively built man dressed up like a medieval warrior, complete with a finely wrought chain mail tunic over plaid trousers, and a coarse-knit dark cloak with a deep hood that kept his face in shadow even under the electric glare of the room lights.
The man stood confidently with his back to the fire and his big booted feet planted apart, dripping rainwater on the rug, one hand resting easily on the pommel of a huge sword in a carved leather scabbard at his side.
He pushed back his hood.
Paul gasped. Apart from the stranger’s full beard and heavy muscular build, it was like looking in the mirror.
The warrior fixed Paul with a curious stare. “I’m told we are brothers. My name is Tamass.”