Читать книгу The Greenstone Grail: The Sangreal Trilogy One - Jan Siegel - Страница 7

In February, Michael Addison got a new computer and asked Annie if she would come round to help him set it up. ‘I hear you’re the resident expert,’ he said.

‘In a place like Eade,’ she retorted, ‘that isn’t saying much.’

‘I’ll pay you …’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’d do it for the chance to look at your house. The whole village wants to know if it’s been transformed like on one of those TV makeover shows.’

‘The village,’ he grinned, ‘is going to be very disappointed.’

Annie closed the shop early – Bartlemy had always encouraged her to keep whatever business hours she liked, but since Nathan became a weekly boarder she had tried to stick to ten till five – walked along the High Street and turned into the lane to Riverside House. The route ran between hedgerows that were brown and shrunken in their winter barrenness, with meadows on either side; Annie knew one was a conservation area because of the presence of a rare butterfly or orchid. The house lay beyond: she could see the pixy-hat roofs some way off. From the outside, it presented an image of rustic desirability, but when Michael admitted her, leading her through the hallway into what was clearly the main drawing room, she thought it looked curiously unlived-in. The furniture was too perfectly arranged, the rugs untrodden upon, everything clean, immaculate, untouched. ‘I don’t use this room much,’ Michael said, as though reading her mind. ‘My domain is in one tower, Rianna’s in the other. We meet occasionally in the bedroom.’ Annie assumed he was joking, but she wasn’t sure. She followed him down some steps and into the round chamber which was evidently his study. Units had been designed especially to fit the curve of the wall, and a wooden desk supported the latest in computer technology. ‘Here we are,’ said Michael. ‘Tea first, or work first?’

‘Work,’ said Annie.

In the end, it took far longer than she had intended. ‘To me, this machine is just a glorified typewriter,’ Michael said, so she spent some time sorting out his files, teaching him to use search engines and surf the Internet. When they finished it was dark, and Michael declared it was too late for tea, offering her a drink instead, and a quick tour of the house, if she wanted. ‘So you can tell the village grapevine about all the redecorating we haven’t done.’ Even the master bedroom, Annie thought, looked unslept-in: Michael had a couch in the upper room of his ‘tower’. The bathroom boasted a circular bath almost the size of a swimming pool; there were several guest bedrooms though they never seemed to have guests; the kitchen had the latest kind of Aga but the microwave appeared to have seen more use. Except in Michael’s rooms there was luxury without personality, and a strange coldness, as if the whole house was an exhibit rather than a residence. Annie didn’t get to see inside Rianna’s tower: that was kept locked. ‘Rianna’s very intense about her privacy,’ Michael explained. ‘Even I don’t have a key.’

‘Bluebeard’s Chamber,’ Annie said before she could stop herself.

‘Stacked with the bodies of her ex-husbands?’ Michael laughed. ‘There’s only been one, he’s a producer, I’ve met him. He’s about sixty now and married to a blonde of twenty-three.’

‘Sorry,’ Annie said. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude, or … or nosy.’

‘You weren’t,’ said Michael. ‘I suppose it does sound a bit odd, to people who don’t know Rianna. She’s – I expect you would call her temperamental. Personal space is very important to her. We have a wonderful cleaner, a Yugoslav émigré who comes over from Crowford, but Rianna won’t let her in there; she prefers to do the cleaning herself. Now, what would you like to drink? There’s whisky, gin, beer … whisky, more whisky.’

‘I’ll have a whisky,’ Annie said with a smile.

They had their drinks in the sitting room above Michael’s study, containing the couch ‘for those short kips between periods of not working’, and a couple of worn leather armchairs. Its windows framed a view over the conservation area in one direction, and down to the river in the other. Since it was too dark to see very far, Michael took some pains to explain about the benefits of the view. When they dimmed the light Annie saw a shiny new moon in a sky full of crispy stars, and shadowy fields stretching away towards the village, and the twinkling of illuminated windows in the nearest houses. She turned back, and there was Michael’s crooked smile, soft in the dimness, and his glasses hiding the expression in his eyes. He turned up the light, and she found herself looking at a picture of Rianna on a sideboard, a very glamorous picture, black-and-white, with a cloud of dark hair framing her artistic cheekbones, and deepset eyes darkly made up under the flying line of her brows.

‘She’s very beautiful,’ Annie said politely.

‘I know,’ said Michael. It might have been her fancy that he sounded almost rueful.

When their glasses were empty, he said: ‘I’ll walk you home.’ And then: ‘Damn. It’s later than I thought. I’ve got a call coming in, from the States.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Annie assured him.

I like him, she thought, but I don’t like the house. Apart from his bit. There’s something wrong about it, something …

Something to do with Rianna Sardou.

She set off down the lane, hugging her coat round her in the cold, lost in her own reflections. The awareness didn’t come upon her suddenly; rather, it was a gradual feeling, a creeping change in the night, a slow prickle down her spine. There was a moment when she stopped, and glanced back, seeing nothing, and felt that the wrongness which she had sensed in the house had come with her, following her, becoming a shadow at her heels, a listener on the edge of hearing. There was a horrible familiarity about it. And then a shiver seemed to run through the hedgerows, as if a darkness slipped between the leafless stems, and she caught the whisper of words that could not be discerned, a whisper quieter than quiet, so close to her ear she expected to feel the chill of its breath on her cheek.

Them.

She didn’t run: there was no point. She walked very quickly, trying not to look back again, counting her paces in heartbeats. The lane dipped as it ran through the meadows and for a few minutes she could see no lights ahead, and she was alone, or not alone, and behind her she knew the shadows were playing grandmother’s footsteps, and the whisper was so intimate she could imagine disembodied lips moving within an inch of her face. She fancied there was a cold touch on her nape, as if a groping hand reached out to seize her – and then she saw the lights of a house in front, and the fantasy withdrew, she began to run as though released from a spell. Past gardens and back gates, into the village street, down the road to the bookshop. She shut and locked the door, but she knew it would be no use: no door had ever kept them out save that of Thornyhill. She stumbled to the phone and pressed out a number with unsteady fingers.

Ten minutes later Bartlemy was sitting in her little back room, filling much of it, a quiet, reassuring presence.

‘After Nathan was born,’ Annie was saying, ‘I always thought I went a little crazy. They were part of the craziness – that was what I told myself. Until now. But you saw them, didn’t you? The night we came to Thornyhill. You saw them following me.’

‘Oh yes,’ he said calmly. ‘I saw them.’

‘What are they? Who are they? Why have they come back?’

‘If I knew the answers to those questions,’ said Bartlemy, ‘I would be a wiser, if not a happier man. I know only what I have observed or deduced. They seem to have no real substance, yet they exist. They are made of shadow and fear. There are always many, a swarm rather than individuals. They are like nothing I have ever seen before, and I have seen many strange things. I was able to keep them away from Thornyhill – my influence is strong there – and I hoped they were gone for good, but clearly that isn’t so. Yet why should they reappear now? Where have they been? In hibernation maybe, until some call or need drew them forth. You were visiting Riverside House?’

‘Yes. I wondered … if they were there waiting. There’s something not quite right in that place. Not creepy, just rather peculiar. A feeling as if – something was out of kilter. I think it has to do with Michael’s wife.’

‘Rianna Sardou … A theatrical name. A name for a witch. I believe she looks like one, too, at least on screen: all darkness and glamour. A storybook witch. But stories can lie.’

‘Do you think there’s a connection between Rianna and – them?’

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t know why they pursued you in the past, or why that pursuit resumed today. As I said, I don’t know any of the answers, but I can think of another question.’

‘What’s that?’ Annie could think of several.

‘Why don’t they ever catch up?’

Annie shivered. ‘Don’t! I thought – something touched me, back there in the lane …’

‘Nonetheless, they didn’t catch you. They followed you for months, all those years ago, and they didn’t catch you. Why not? They are far swifter than humans. They hunted you with darkness and terror, but you always eluded them. Are they chasing you, or simply watching you – spying on you? Or else –’

‘Can we not discuss it any more?’ Annie pleaded. ‘At least for now. I want to sleep tonight.’

‘You can stay at Thornyhill, if you wish.’

‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘I’ll stay here. This is my place.’

In bed later, she lay awake a long time, but no movement stirred the curtain, and the night was empty and still.

Nathan dreamed. Not the now-familiar nightmare of the cop, with the hissing snake-voices and the taste of blood; this was a dreamscape he had known since early childhood, once vague and surreal, now increasingly vivid. A city. A city at the end of Time. Towers soared up a mile or more, multi-facetted, topped with glass minarets reflecting sky, and spires whose glitter caught the sun. Far below, the ground was unseen beneath bridges and archways studded with windows, flyovers, walkways, suspended gardens. Airborne vehicles cruised the spaces in between, leaving con-trails in their wake that shimmered for a little while and then vanished. And occasionally there were creatures like giant birds, with webbed pinions stretching to a vast span and bony beaks, their human-sized riders hidden behind masks and goggles. Nathan had always enjoyed these dreams because often he travelled in one of the vehicles, looping the towers and diving under the archways, until he went spinning through a hundred dimensions of the dreamworld and tumbled at last into his own bed, waking exhilarated from the thrill of the ride.

This time, it was different. There was a huge dull sun, just risen, glimpsed moving through the gaps between buildings, climbing ponderously towards the open sky. The topmost towers and minarets had already sprung into glittering life and floated like islands of light above shadowy canyons where the dawn had yet to penetrate. Nathan was gliding through the air, an awareness without substance or being, looking through oval windows into an interlocking maze of rooms, all empty, like a termite mound with no termites. The city was enormous but there appeared to be few people and those all far away, too far to see clearly, moving singly or in twos and threes, but never in a crowd.

Presently, he found he was drifting beside one of the birds, but from close up it looked more like a reptile, its beak a pointed muzzle and its wings taloned, its long tail tipped with a spike. Its skin looked hard and had a slight gloss to it, as if it were made up of very tiny tightly-packed scales, steel-blue in colour and sheened with the early sunlight. The rider, too, wore blue, clothed from head to foot in some kind of metallic mesh, his hood close-fitting, with a slit for the mouth, a nose-guard, and opaque goggles covering the eye-holes. His saddle was very high in the pommel, the reins attached not to a bit but to iron rings which pierced the flesh at the corners of the creature’s mouth. Nathan thought it must be very painful but he noticed the rider used only the lightest touches to steer, barely perceptible to the observer. The creature had an extreme fixity of expression even by animal standards; it took Nathan a little while to realize why. The eyes, set under bony ridges, had neither iris nor pupil: they were blood-red from edge to edge, lidless and locked in a perpetual stare.

The flight was very fast, faster than the skimmers, though the wings beat only at intervals; a whisk of the tail acted as a rudder. They came to land very suddenly on a rooftop platform where another hooded figure, this time in a plasticized suit and heavy gauntlets, took the reins while the rider dismounted. The gauntleted man – assuming it was a man – tethered the creature and fed it from a bucket of things that squirmed. Nathan followed the rider to a species of cylindrical kiosk and stepped through a sliding door into what was plainly a lift. They descended a short distance and emerged onto a long gallery with a high-coved ceiling and rows of pillars down either side, not straight but warped and twisted into irregular shapes like distorted trees. There were no windows but a pale glow, like an echo of daylight, came from the ceiling. At the far end they passed into a semicircular room whose curved wall, in contrast to the gallery, was all glass, though shielded in places with translucent screens. There was very little furniture, just a unit which might have been a desk and a couple of chairs. The automatic door closed behind them. Beyond the arc of the window, the sun’s rays were reaching down into the deep places of the city.

A figure stood with his back to them, gazing out. He was taller than the rider by a head, though Nathan had thought the rider exceptionally tall. His silhouette showed wide shoulders, booted feet a little apart, arms presumably folded. He had an aura of power and great stillness. Long after, Nathan would remember this moment, this dream, more vividly than any other moment in his life before, but at the time he did not know its significance, nor guess. The rider waited, saying nothing. Eventually, the man turned.

He wore a black hood, but his face was concealed by a mask of something that looked like Perspex: white as alabaster and moulded into a semblance of human features. The mouth-slit opened between sculpted lips, the nostril-holes pierced an aquiline nose, the enlarged eyes were leaf-shaped, protected by bubbles of black glass. Like the rider and the man on the roof, not an inch of skin was exposed, not even a hair. When he spoke, Nathan understood him; it was only afterwards he realized the language was not English.

He said: ‘Well?’

‘It’s worse,’ answered the rider. ‘Dru didn’t want you to know. He’s afraid Souza will be cut off.’

‘It must be. There is no choice.’ The man’s tone was cool, all trace of feeling carefully extracted. ‘We will cut off the whole of Maali, from Ingorut to Khadesh.’

‘An entire continent?’ The horror in the rider’s voice was imperfectly suppressed.

‘Yes.’ The white mask expressed neither apology nor regret. ‘The contamination will spread beyond Souza in months, perhaps weeks. We have to act now. Our Time is running out.’ And again, with peculiar emphasis: ‘All of Time is running out.’

‘Is there any hope?’ asked the rider.

Behind the mask, Nathan imagined the man smiled. ‘Hope is a chimera,’ he said. ‘I do not clutch at chimerae. I made my plans long, long ago. There is no hope, but there are plans. We will hold to them. Now eat, and rest. You have flown far. Is your xaurian tired?’

‘No, sir. He is strong.’

‘Good. I will summon you later. You will go with the Fifth Phalanx to Maali. You know the coast.’

The rider made a brief bow, and withdrew.

The white-masked man moved one hand in a strange gesture, murmuring a word Nathan could not hear. An image appeared in front of him, life-size, three-dimensional, evidently made of light. It wore a purple cowl and a mask patterned with whorls and lines.

‘Souza is contaminated,’ said the white mask, briefly. ‘Instigate cut-off for Maali.’

‘The whole of Maali?’ said the purple cowl, evidently shocked. His voice crackled, like someone telephoning on a bad line.

‘Of course. Send the Fifth Phalanx and one of the senior practors. Raymor will go with them. He knows the terrain.’

Purple cowl hesitated, as if considering a protest, but refrained. Then he too bowed, vanishing at a gesture from his master.

The man walked towards the window again, resuming his contemplation of the city. Nathan saw him from close up, his chin sunken, the white shapely features gleaming in the daylight, the black bulge of the eye-screens revealing nothing. But behind the mask he sensed a mind at work, an inscrutable intelligence, vast and complex, and focused on a single path of thought, a plan, a goal – whatever that goal might be. Nathan had never before imagined such a mind – a mind so powerful that he could feel it thinking, he could sense the surge and flicker of suppressed emotion, the dreadful urgency beneath the calm of absolute control. Its proximity frightened him and he tried to draw away, pushing at the dream until it began to break up, and he was plunged into a long dark tunnel of fading sensation. He lost himself in sleep, but when he woke at last the dream was still with him, clear as truth, and the memory of it didn’t grow dim.

It was perhaps a fortnight before he returned there. He knew it was the same world, the same dream, though the environment had changed. He was with a rider again, possibly Raymor, though now there were many of them, flying in successive V-formations of thirteen, the infrequent wing-beats of the xaurians almost exactly in unison. Below, the dull glitter of sunlight moved over a huge expanse of sea, stretching from horizon to horizon. He could see the ripple effect of endless waves, and here and there a dimpling of white as breakers clashed in a volcano of spray. Soon, a strip of coast appeared, rushing towards them, growing swiftly. He saw grey cliffs falling sheer to the sea, and beyond an uneven plateau, treeless and bleak.

The phalanx swung left and began to follow the shoreline. On the foremost xaurian he noticed there was a second figure seated behind the rider, dressed in red. What he was doing Nathan didn’t know, but his hand moved in a series of intricate gestures, and the air on their shoreward side thickened into a haze, like a veil dividing them from the land. The cliffs were barely visible now, plunging downwards to a broad inlet spanned by many bridges and surrounded by a sprawling port. There seemed to be boats on the water, and occasional skimmers wheeling insect-like above. One veered round and came towards them, but the veil grew denser even as it approached, and when it hit the barrier sparks ran along its sides, igniting into flame, and it spiralled down into the ocean like a dying firework. The red figure went on with its ritual: Nathan was close enough now to hear the murmur of a chant. Glancing to seaward, he glimpsed another boat, far outside the barrier. Two xaurians broke away from the outer wing and headed towards it. Nathan couldn’t see clearly what happened, but there was a spurt of fire on the boat, and then it had vanished, and the waves rolled on unbroken.

He didn’t like the dream now, for all the exhilaration of the flight. He felt as if merely by watching, by being there, he had become a part of it, a mute participant in some terrible misdeed. He tried to pull himself away from the phalanx, and found his thought was falling, dropping like a stone towards the sea. And then his dive slowed to a glide, brushing the wave-crests, just above the place where the ship had gone down. There was someone in the water, presumably the last of the crew: he saw the grey hood bobbing up and down. The person had no lifebelt, no inflatable jacket; he wouldn’t last long. The xaurian riders, knowing that, had left him to his fate. Even though the drowning man had no visible face Nathan felt his terror, and the need to help grew inside him, strong as rage, until he thought he would burst with it. He drifted lower, reaching out, feeling the slap of cold water on his skin, seizing the flailing hands with a grip that caught and held. Then they were jerked out of the dream with a violence that made Nathan’s stomach turn, landing painfully on a beach of stones. A beach at night, with breakers crumbling on the shingle, and upflung sheets of foam, luminous in the darkness. Nathan released the clasping hands and sensed himself withdrawing, sliding backwards into oblivion. The dormitory bell roused him, hours or minutes later. He sat up, conscious of discomfort, and found the sleeves of his pyjamas were damp.

That Saturday there was a rugby match against another school. Nathan scored two tries, helping the Ffylde Abbey team to victory, and went home late and on a high. He had been planning to tell Bartlemy about the dreams but somehow, when it came to it, he distrusted his own imagination, and was not yet ready to expose himself to anyone’s disbelief. But on Sunday he could see Hazel, and confiding in her was second nature to him. (Not George, he decided, without asking himself why. Just Hazel.) In the morning, he and Annie sat over a late breakfast, listening to the local news on the radio. A projected housing development, a missing person, the risk of flooding in the area. ‘A man discovered three days ago on the beach at Pevensey Bay is believed to be an illegal immigrant. He was dressed in waterproof clothing which covered him from head to foot, suggesting he may have swum in from a boat. He speaks no English and so far his nationality has not been established. Police think it unlikely he was alone and are asking local residents to be on the lookout.’

Annie noticed Nathan had stopped eating his cornflakes. ‘Are you all right?’ she inquired.

‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ He resumed his breakfast, but with less enthusiasm. After a minute, he asked: ‘What will they do with him? Will they – will they put him in prison?’

‘The illegal immigrant? I suppose so. Until they work out who he is, and whether to grant him asylum.’

‘But … that’s wrong. He’s alone. He’s desperate. We should help him.’

Annie was touched by his concern. ‘Yes, we should,’ she said. ‘The trouble is, people are afraid. They’re afraid of strangers, of anybody different. They think immigrants will take their jobs or their homes, even though there aren’t that many of them, and newcomers create jobs as well as doing them. But fear makes people stupid, and sometimes cruel.’

‘Could I go and see him?’ Nathan demanded abruptly. ‘The man on the beach?’

Annie looked astonished. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘They wouldn’t let you. Maybe you could write.’

‘Yes, but … he doesn’t speak English,’ Nathan reminded her. He gave up on breakfast altogether, and asked to leave the table. He wanted space to think.

‘It’s impossible,’ Hazel said that afternoon, in the Den, but she didn’t sound sure.

‘There are meant to be lots of other universes,’ Nathan said. ‘That isn’t just in books; Father Clement told us about it, in physics. There are millions of them, some like ours, some different. It’s called the multiverse. Supposing, in my dream, I was actually in one of them, and somehow I pulled that man out, back into ours?’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ Hazel said, curiously daunted. When they were much younger, the two of them had spent a lot of time exploring wardrobes in the hope of making their way into other worlds; but she had outgrown such fancies now. Or so she told herself, part wistful, part scornful, strangely afraid. She knew Nathan would never lie to her.

‘You’re talking about magic,’ she said at last. She had no opinion of physics.

‘Maybe.’ Nathan was pensive. ‘What is magic, anyway? According to someone or other, it’s just science we don’t understand.’

‘How do we find out more?’

‘I don’t know. I could ask Uncle Barty: he knows about lots of things. History, and archaeology, and all the sciences. Besides, Mum says his cooking is definitely magical.’

Hazel made a snorting noise. ‘Cooking isn’t magic,’ she said. ‘Even if that chocolate cake for your last birthday was amazing … Are there books on it? Magic, not cookery.’

Nathan nodded. ‘They’re called grimoires. Mum had some in once. I thought they would be interesting, but they were awfully dull, just about drawing runes and symbols, and picking herbs at the full moon, and boring rituals for calling up demons. There weren’t even any sacrifices, let alone stuff about other worlds. They wouldn’t be any good to us.’ There was a long silence, filled with frustrated thought. ‘What we need,’ said Nathan, ‘is a witch. Witches were burnt here, hundreds of years ago, in that open space outside the church. Uncle Barty told me about it. I asked him if they were real witches, and he said mostly not – but “mostly” isn’t all. I read the names: some of them were Carlows, like your great-grandmother. Was she born a Carlow, or did she marry one?’

‘Both, I think,’ Hazel said, frowning. ‘Dad’s always telling Mum her family are inbred. He said Great-grandma was barmy, and she married her own cousin, which is supposed to make your children mad or sub or something … He says she’s a witch, too, but I expect that’s just an insult.’

‘We could go and ask her,’ Nathan suggested tentatively. ‘She wouldn’t mind us asking – would she? It isn’t as if witches get burnt nowadays.’

‘She’ll mind,’ Hazel said with conviction. ‘She’s … well, you know.’

Nathan did know. Effie Carlow’s acid tongue and eagle stare did not encourage idle questions. However …

‘If we can’t think of anyone else,’ he said, ‘we’ll have to ask her. We must ask someone.’

Back at school, he tried to listen to the news on the Common Room radio as much as possible, but there was nothing further about the man on the beach. He sounded out Father Clement on alternative universes, but the monk said that to his knowledge nobody had ever visited one, though he assumed it would be feasible. In theory. By Friday night when his mother took him home to Eade, Nathan had made up his mind. On Saturday George came round, so it was not until Sunday that he told Hazel: ‘We have to go and see your great-grandmother. There isn’t anyone else.’

Effie Carlow lived in a cottage on the Chizzledown road about half a mile outside Eade. Built in the Victorian era, weathering had mellowed its façade and climbing plants had overgrown its more commonplace features, rendering it attractive if not picturesque. Too small to be of interest to buyers from London, it had diminutive windows admitting little light into poky rooms and a roof that sagged almost to ground level, while at the rear there was an outhouse which Effie rented to a local artist as a studio. The walled garden was a miniature wilderness in which weeds and wild flowers predominated. ‘We ought to telephone her first,’ Nathan had said before they set out.

‘She isn’t on the phone,’ said Hazel.

It was about four o’clock when they arrived, a well-chosen hour for a casual visit, or so Nathan hoped. After a nervous exchange of glances with Hazel, he tapped twice with the knocker, noticing belatedly that there was also a doorbell hiding behind a tendril of creeper. After a long wait during which they strained their ears for the sound of approaching feet and heard nothing, the door opened a few inches. ‘Well?’ said Effie Carlow.

‘Hello, Great-grandma,’ Hazel mumbled, and ‘We’re sorry if we’re interrupting,’ from Nathan, ‘but there’s something we particularly wanted to ask you.’

The old woman looked him up and down with her raptor’s eye. When he didn’t continue, she said impatiently: ‘So ask me.’

‘It’s about witches,’ he said, feeling increasingly awkward. ‘I read in a local history book there were witches burnt at the stake here, a long time ago, and some of them were called Carlow. We wanted to know about – about witchcraft, and other worlds, and things, and we wondered if you would be able to help.’

There was a change in her expression which they couldn’t define, a sort of sharpening, though her glance was always sharp, a subtle adjustment. Then she opened the door wider. ‘Come in.’

They stepped straight into a sitting room crowded with furniture and bric-a-brac. Pictures and bookshelves jostled on the walls, chairs were squashed arm to arm, small tables supported lamps, teacups, ornaments, an old-fashioned wireless. None of the lamps were on and in the gloom they could make out few details, but the overall effect was that of a jumble sale in a telephone booth. ‘Sit down,’ Effie continued. They sat in adjacent chairs, not quite holding hands, while she made them bitter dark tea with very little milk and added, as an afterthought, a plate of stale biscuits. ‘I’ve been keeping these for a special guest,’ she explained. ‘You can have some, if you like.’

‘Thank you,’ Nathan said politely, ‘but I had a big lunch.’

‘You can have some.’

Impelled by her determination, he took a biscuit. Hazel followed suit. She was still surprised they had been invited in and had lapsed into an apprehensive silence, leaving Nathan to do the talking. He attempted to phrase a question but was foiled by the biscuit, which was tough and required extensive chewing.

‘Why do you want to know about witches?’ Effie demanded. ‘Witches … and other worlds and things. But the Carlow witches were of this world, until they were burned. What goes on in other worlds no man knows.’

‘Nathan does,’ Hazel whispered. Her biscuit had proved more disposable.

‘And what does Nathan know?’

‘I have – these dreams,’ he said, between swallows. ‘There’s this place – I see different locations, a city, and a shoreline, but I know it’s the same place – and there are flying vehicles, like cars without wheels, and people riding on birds which are really reptiles, sort of pterodactyls – and I tried to rescue this man who was drowning, and a few days later I heard something on the news about an illegal immigrant, and I – I knew it was the same man.’

‘How could you tell?’ Effie’s manner was brisk.

‘They described his clothes. He was in a kind of one-piece suit which covered him all over, with a hood for his face and head. And they said he spoke no English, and they couldn’t work out his nationality.’

‘Inconclusive,’ Effie said. ‘An illegal immigrant might well wear a one-piece, a wetsuit or similar, if he had swum ashore. I heard that news item: they said so. As for your dreams – witches know about dreams, I won’t deny that, but it sounds to me like you’ve been watching too many science fiction films. Concentrate on your homework instead of the television.’

‘Nathan does well at school,’ Hazel said bravely.

‘Does he? Then why all this nonsense about other worlds?’

‘Because it did make sense,’ Nathan replied, ‘in my dream. If you didn’t believe me, why did you ask us in?’

The old woman leaned forward, cupping her hands around his face to draw it closer, digging her nails into his cheeks. Her fingers felt all knobbles and bones, but they seemed to be horribly strong. Her fierce eyes stared straight into his. In the poor light he could not tell their colour, only that they were dark, and had a lustre that was not quite human. He fancied she was seeking to look right into his mind, to unpick his thoughts and probe even to his subconscious, but he met stare with stare, trying to remain steadfast, not defiant but unyielding.

At length she released him, and sank back in her chair. ‘So,’ she said, ‘a dreamer, a traveller in other worlds. Well, we shall see. Ancestresses of mine were drowned on the ducking-stool and burned at the stake, and maybe I have inherited something of their Gift. I can read the future, and sometimes even the present, and only a fool would play cards with me. If there is anything to be seen, Nathan Ward, I will see it. Meanwhile, dream carefully. This tumbling from world to world – if that is what you are doing – is bad for the stomach, and worse for the head. Take care you don’t leave your brains behind.’

‘You do believe him,’ Hazel said, ‘don’t you, Great-grandma?’

‘You are impertinent,’ Effie snapped. ‘It is for me to decide who and what I believe.’ She rose to her feet and so did the children, conscious they had outstayed their welcome – if indeed they had ever had one. Suddenly, Effie rounded on Hazel, seizing her by the hair, plucking the loose strands off her face. But unlike Nathan, the girl could not meet her gaze, blinking in the grip of something akin to panic. ‘Remember,’ her great-grandmother said after a minute or two, ‘you too are a Carlow.’ The rasp in her voice might have softened, if she had been capable of softness; as it was, Hazel flinched away, twisting her head in the older woman’s grasp, averting her eyes. Then Effie let go, and the children were thrust outside. A pile-up of cloud was vanquishing the last of the daylight: it seemed as if they had brought the gloom of the cottage with them. They heard the front door shut, not with a bang but a snick, and began to walk along the roadside.

‘Does she have some kind of power,’ Nathan wondered, ‘or does she just think she has? There’s something definitely creepy about her.’

Hazel shivered. ‘Mum says she has the Sight, whatever that means. I remember she knew, the week before, when Uncle Gavin was going to die.’

‘When was that?’

‘Ages ago. Nearly a year. It was while you were at school.’

‘Was your uncle ill?’ Nathan inquired, looking sceptical. ‘After all, if someone is really ill, it’s fairly easy to guess when they’re going to die.’

‘No, he wasn’t. It was a – a neurism, or something. Very sudden.’

They walked on a while in silence. Nathan was frowning. ‘What did she mean,’ he said, ‘when she told you, you too are a Carlow?’

Hazel didn’t reply.

‘She thinks you’ve got power too, doesn’t she? Something you’ve inherited, like a gene for witchcraft.’

‘I’m normal,’ Hazel said abruptly. ‘I’m normal as normal. I don’t want to be like her. Anyway, Mum doesn’t have any powers that I know of. If she did, she’d be able to deal with Dad.’

‘Genes can sometimes skip a generation,’ Nathan said knowledgeably. ‘If they’re recessive. We learned about that in biology.’

‘Look, I’m not a witch, okay?’ Hazel said, her voice growing deeper as it always did when she was upset. ‘I don’t believe in witches – not even Great-grandma Effie. I’m just a girl.’

‘Pity,’ Nathan remarked. ‘Being a witch would be cool. We haven’t made much progress on other worlds, have we?’

Hazel was silent again, scuffing her feet as she walked. She still seemed to be disturbed by the imputation of witchcraft.

I’ll have to ask Uncle Barty, Nathan thought. But not yet. Not unless I have more dreams.

But time passed, and though he dreamed of the cup, and woke with the whispers in his ear, he did not revisit the alien world again for a long while.

Annie, too, neither heard nor sensed her unseen pursuers, though as spring mellowed into summer she often walked alone through wood or meadow, half daring the shadows to follow her. She was friendly with Michael, but she didn’t go to his house again, troubled by her one afternoon there and its consequences. Rianna was seen in the village, between engagements, and once came into the shop. Annie had noticed her a couple of weeks before on television in a repeat of an old drama, and she was privately taken aback at the contrast between her glamorous on-screen persona and the off-screen reality. Her face was gaunt, almost ugly, the eyes naturally shadowed, the mouth, without lipstick, pale and ill-defined. She wore no jewellery, not even a wedding ring. She scanned the shelves with no real interest and then asked for a particular book, but Annie had the impression she was making conversation, checking her out. Maybe Rianna had heard some village gossip, coupling Annie’s name with Michael’s; but she was fairly sure there had been none – and how would Rianna hear gossip, when she avoided local chit-chat and was almost always away?

‘I hear you have a son,’ Rianna said. ‘Twelve or thirteen?’

‘Twelve.’

‘They say he’s very unusual, for a boy of that age.’

‘I think him special,’ Annie confirmed with some warmth.

‘Part Asian, I understand?’

There was a nuance in her words, Annie believed, and she did her best to suppress a tiny spurt of anger. ‘Do you?’ she said.

If she was hostile, Rianna didn’t appear to notice. ‘Who was his father?’ she asked. There was a note of boredom in her voice, as if the question was automatic rather than inquisitive, but the narrow eyes were intent. Or so Annie imagined, though in the sombre interior of the bookshop it was difficult to be sure.

‘He was my husband,’ she answered, and there was an instant when Rianna appeared to freeze, perhaps recognizing the snub, but it passed, and she turned away, and left the shop without further questions.

She seemed more interested in Nathan than in my friendship with Michael, Annie thought, and she found this so baffling that she determined to mention it to Bartlemy, when a suitable opportunity arose.

In the kitchen at Thornyhill Bartlemy listened to the story in his usual unruffled manner. The cauldron of stock still simmered on the stove; Annie couldn’t recall a time when it hadn’t been there, and she had a sudden fancy that it was the same as the night she arrived, its contents stirred, sampled, augmented, but never changed, growing richer and more flavoursome over the years. The smell that drifted from beneath the lid still made her mouth water, and a mug of that broth – something Bartlemy doled out only rarely – satisfied hunger and warmed the heart like nothing else. ‘Do you ever change your stockpot?’ she asked him.

‘Good stock needs time,’ he said. ‘The longer the better.’

‘How long?’ Annie inquired; but he didn’t answer.

‘Don’t worry about this Rianna Sardou,’ he said at last. ‘She’s probably just curious.’

‘Why should she be curious about Nathan?’ Annie persisted. ‘She must know of him through Michael, but … why ask about his father?’

‘It may have been just a shot in the dark. She may be the inquisitive type. Has she ever seen him?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. He likes Michael, so I expect he would’ve mentioned meeting his wife.’

‘Mm. Well, no doubt the truth will become evident in due course. Events – like this stock – take time to mature. You are young, and impatient.’

‘Not that young,’ Annie said. ‘I’m thirty-six.’

‘How old is Rianna Sardou, do you suppose?’

‘Late thirties … forty … Older than Michael, I think. Why?’

‘I just wondered,’ Bartlemy said.

When she had gone, he sat in the living room with Hoover, drinking sweet tea and gazing into the fire. ‘Why did I come here?’ he asked of no one in particular, but Hoover cocked an ear. ‘I read the signs, but I have never been one to follow such things. There have been few portents for me, over the years. All I ever wanted to do was heal sickness, and cook. Two sides of the same coin, Rukush. Drugs and potions cure illness, good food makes the body strong, and great food – ah, great food nourishes the soul. I can prepare a dessert that will turn a peasant into a poet, I can soothe the tyrant’s rage with soups and sauces, I can roast a sirloin so tender that it would make a proud man humble and an atheist believe in God. That was all the power I ever wanted. But when I saw a fantasy in the smoke I came here, and I waited. And the day Annie knocked on my door I knew that was what I was waiting for. Annie and the child. But still I don’t know why. There are always more questions, less answers. I think it is time to draw the curtains close, and make a different fire.’

When the last of the logs had burned down he cleaned out the grate and pinned the curtains together against prying eyes. Even so, it was far into the night before he lit a new fire, feeding it not with wood or coal but with bluish crystals that spat and cracked after too long in storage. The flame they emitted was also bluish, and cold-looking, and it filled the room with a pale chill light. Presently he threw some powder on it which seemed to be damp, turning the flame to smoke, and the room darkened again, and the chimney was closed off so the smoke could not escape, and the eyes of both man and dog grew red from the sting of it. Bartlemy made a gesture, a little like that of the man in Nathan’s dream, and the smoke was sucked into a cloud which hovered in one place, and there was a whirling at its heart. Vague colours flickered in its depths like trails of light. Then the whirling steadied, and the colours condensed, and in the midst of the smoke there was a picture.

A cup. It looked mediaeval or older, with a wide bowl and a short, thick stem entwined in coiling patterns that seemed to shape themselves into runes and hieroglyphs. It was made of opaque glass or polished stone, but it glowed as if endowed with secret life, and appeared to be floating in the green halo of its own light. The thread of a whisper came to Bartlemy’s ears from nothing in the room. Then the light vanished and the cup was falling, clattering onto a floor somewhere, rolling back and forth on the arc of its rim. A human hand descended slowly, and picked it up. ‘The Grimthorn Grail,’ Bartlemy murmured. ‘One of a hundred – a thousand – that lay claim to the ancient legend. But it was sold abroad, and lost in the turmoil of war, and the Thorns who had failed to care for it are long gone …’

The vision of the cup was replaced by a muddle of dim shapes, all unclear, but he thought he could make out a running figure, coming towards him. The image was too dark to see properly but he had an impression of breathlessness and fear, and shadows following, swarming on its heels, and in the quiet of the night there was the sound of whispering, reaching out from the smoke. It seemed to him that it was the same whisper he had heard a few minutes earlier, though louder, and with different words, different purpose. But he couldn’t be sure, since the words were indistinguishable, the purpose unrevealed. The picture sombred and was lost, and other images succeeded it, changing swiftly, some distinct, some vague and blurred. A small chapel with a cloaked man going from candle to candle: the lighted taper picked out his profile as he bent his head, the nose outthrust like a broken spar, the lipless fold of the mouth, the eyes sagging between multiple lids. The candles burned with a greasy flame, showing a gargoyle-face peering from a stony arch, and a low altar without a cross. Then the scene dissolved into a wood with tangled trees, maybe the Darkwood – then the flash and sparkle of a river in sunshine – a cage or grille, and hands that shook the bars – a wood in springtime, with a brown twig-legged creature lurking in the hollow of a tree – the river again, only this time there was a face beneath the water, and rippled sunlight flowing over it, but he knew it wasn’t drowned. Then back to the cloaked man, raising his arm, and a sudden blaze of fire, fire in the chapel, fire in the wood – and lastly, for no reason that Bartlemy could understand, a shingle beach in the drear light of a winter’s morning, and the ebb and surge of grey waves, and a man who seemed to have come out of the water, wearing a hood that covered his entire head.

Bartlemy rose from his chair: he had used few crystals, and he assumed the visions were over. ‘There is a pattern here,’ he told Hoover, ‘if only I could see it. Possibly the shadows that hounded Annie are connected to the Grimthorn Grail – but they pursued her to this place, not from it, and the Grail has not been here for nearly a century. Who sent them – if they were sent – and how? Such a sending would take power. Josevius Grimthorn is long dead; could his influence live on?’

Hoover made a soft sound in his throat, almost a growl, and Bartlemy, who had bent to unblock the chimney, glanced back into the smoke. It was already thinning, but for a few seconds he saw another image there, too dim to identify, a woman with grey hair in a bun, leaning forward over a shallow basin full of some cloudy liquid, and briefly, very briefly, looking up at the woman, out of the basin, a reflection that he knew was his own face.

For an instant his placidity vanished: he spoke one word, and the smoke was scattered into wisps which fled into every corner of the room. ‘Careless!’ he apostrophized himself. ‘I do these things so rarely – I never much liked conjuring – but there’s no excuse for such a slip.’ He removed the screen from the flue, and the smoke sneaked out. Then he took a bottle out of a cupboard – a bottle that was grimed with age rather than dirt, like something retrieved from a shipwreck – unstoppered the neck, and poured himself a very small glass, hardly more than a thimbleful. The liquor was almost black and it smelled darkly fruity and overpoweringly alcoholic. Bartlemy sat down again to savour it.

Hoover raised his head hopefully.

‘No you can’t,’ said his master. ‘You know it won’t agree with you. Well, well. Euphemia Carlow … Where does she fit in, I wonder? Time was when her kind were happy to curdle the milk with a look and cure warts for a farthing, but now … the world changes. Still, she must always have known what I am, or guessed. She’s no fool, if less wise than she wishes to appear. Let’s hope that what she has seen will be a warning to her. Curiosity is no good for either cats or witches.’

In April, Nathan turned thirteen. ‘You were a spring baby,’ Annie recalled. ‘You came with the swallows.’

‘I thought it was supposed to be a stork,’ Nathan said with mock innocence.

Annie laughed.

Michael had bought a boat, not an inflatable with an outboard motor but a twenty-six-foot sailboat which he said he would take down to the sea from time to time. He had done quite a bit of sailing when he was younger, he explained, and a boat this size he could handle on his own. For Nathan’s birthday he offered to take him, George and Hazel downriver, weather permitting. Nathan was obviously thrilled at the idea and Annie suppressed a tiny pang, which she knew to be unworthy, that he preferred an excursion without her. ‘Why don’t you come?’ Michael had said, but Annie declined.

‘I get seasick.’

‘On a river?’

‘I get seasick on a bouncy castle.’

At the last moment Nathan said he would forgo the treat, he wanted to spend a family day after all, but Annie, undeceived, dealt summarily with that. She saw them all off around noon, sweater-clad and life-jacketed for the sea-going part of their trip, and then returned to Thornyhill with Bartlemy. A suitable birthday cake had been prepared, and the sailors had wrapped several slices in foil to take with them, but there was a large section left, and Annie, Bartlemy and Hoover sat by the fire at teatime (it was not yet too warm for a fire to be unwelcome) and munched their way through a respectable portion of it. Annie talked about Nathan, as she so often did, proud of his academic achievements, but still happier at the person she felt he was growing into. ‘I’m being boring,’ she said, catching herself up short. ‘Boring on about my son.’

‘What mother doesn’t?’ Bartlemy smiled. ‘You know I’m not bored.’

‘It’s at times like this,’ Annie continued after a few minutes, ‘birthdays, and family times, that I wonder most about his father. Not – not Daniel, I can’t fool myself that he’s like Daniel. Maybe in nature, in some ways, but not looks.’

‘He could be a throwback,’ Bartlemy said lightly. ‘You shouldn’t worry about it.’

‘A throwback to what? And I don’t worry, that’s not the word. I just feel I ought to know. One day soon he’s going to ask, and I’ll have to tell him, but I’ve no idea what I’m going to tell him. Have you … thought about it any more?’

‘I’ve thought about it a great deal,’ Bartlemy said.

‘Will you tell me what you’ve thought?’ Annie said a little shyly.

Bartlemy set down his plate with the remainder of a piece of cake. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But you must understand this is pure speculation. We may never know the truth.’

‘I understand.’

‘We spoke once before of the Gate of Death. It has always been so called because death was supposed to be the only way to open it, but love, so they say, is stronger than death, and it may be that your love opened the Gate, and in a moment lost to memory you passed through, and returned with a child in your womb. Such unexplained pregnancies have happened before: I need hardly mention the most notorious case.’

Annie glanced up in bewilderment; then her face cleared. ‘I really don’t think Nathan’s the new Messiah,’ she said. ‘My God, I hope not!’

‘I too … but he is special. There is a maturity, a strength of character which distinguishes him. He’s a teenager now: it will be interesting to see if he displays the wayward behaviour usually associated with that age.’

‘What if he doesn’t?’ Annie said. ‘If he doesn’t start being rude to me, and having moods, and playing very loud music in his bedroom, and smoking pot and taking E, and treating me as an embarrassment? Is that when I should worry?’

She wasn’t quite joking, and Bartlemy smiled only a little. ‘If you want to,’ he said. ‘Worrying doesn’t achieve anything, but we all do it. If you need to worry that Nathan gives you no real cause for anxiety … Exactly. Where were we? You passed the Gate, or may have done, and became pregnant, so you believe, in that moment. Not your boyfriend’s child: that seems fairly obvious. There are worlds without number beyond the Gate, Powers which rarely touch our lives so nearly. Once in a while, however, those Powers concern themselves with our immediate affairs. Not in my experience, nor that of anyone I know; but it has happened. Maybe there is some task to be done, some destiny to fulfil – mind you, I’ve always had my doubts about Destiny: she’s a temperamental lady. I feel Nathan was born for a purpose, though I don’t know what it is. Perhaps there is a doom which only he can avert. Time will show. Whatever the truth, it seems clear Nathan has a father from outside this world, a being superior to us, in intellect and quality if not in essence, possibly one of the Powers themselves – anything is possible. You both have enemies, we know that much, enemies on what might be termed a supernatural plane; but a child that unique would attract attention from birth. The circumstances of his conception – the Gate opening for someone still living – would cause ripples that the sensitive might feel. Certainly there is – interest – in him, from many sources.’

‘Now you really are frightening me,’ Annie said. ‘Otherworldly beings – Nathan – a mythical task – all this can’t be true … can it?’

‘Someone sent the things which followed you,’ Bartlemy pointed out. ‘They may even have slipped into this world after you when the Gate opened: such shadows might do that. But of one thing you can be sure, if you have need of comfort. Whoever fathered Nathan has power of a kind we cannot imagine – the power to break the rules – and such an individual would never leave his son unprotected. Somehow, he will be watching over Nathan. Believe me.’

But do I want an alien power watching over my son? Annie asked herself. She finished her cake, and stroked Hoover’s rough head, and tried not to feel the future touching her with its shadow.

The sailors had made it to the sea via the little harbour of Grimstone, and enjoyed themselves very much learning how to tack out in the bay, where a brisk wind whipped the waves into scuds. The river journey back took more than two hours, since the Glyde was winding, and Michael observed the speed limit, so it was dark before they reached the mooring outside Riverside House. They had left the breeze behind in the bay and it was a clear still night with a young moon not bright enough to obscure the stars.

‘There’s the saucepan,’ Hazel said. ‘And Orion’s belt.’

‘Do you know your stars?’ Michael asked.

‘Nathan does.’

‘Not much,’ Nathan disclaimed.

‘You can navigate by the stars,’ Michael said, ‘if you’re out at sea. Look, there’s the Pole Star, and the Evening Star. They tell you what direction you’re going in. It’s like a route map up there.’

‘I thought you had radar,’ said George.

‘Yes, but a good sailor doesn’t need them. Not that I’m a good sailor – I don’t know the sky well enough.’

‘Do you know what that star is?’ Nathan asked, pointing. ‘The one just under Orion.’

‘No idea. I told you, I’m not really an expert. I just remember the easy ones.’

‘Is that the new star we found last year?’ said George. ‘The one that wasn’t on the chart?’

‘You found a new star?’ Michael was amused. ‘Well, it’s a busy sky up there. Maybe it was an old one that had popped out for a tea break when the chart was drawn up.’

Nathan found the opportunity to tread on George’s foot. ‘My star chart’s pretty basic,’ he said.

It was back, the unknown star, hanging above the village; he was almost sure it hadn’t been visible further downriver. He didn’t know why, but he wasn’t prepared to discuss it with grown-ups yet – not even a grown-up as nice as Michael. It was their star, they had located it, a private star shining over Eade.

‘Like the star of Bethlehem,’ Hazel said later.

‘That’s silly,’ George objected. ‘There’s nothing special about Eade. Even if it was the second coming, Jesus would have to be born in the hospital at Crowford, like my cousin Eleanor. That’s where the – the maternity unit is. And the Bethlehem star was big and sparkly: the three kings followed it from another country. Ours isn’t really noticeable at all. I still think it’s a UFO.’

‘Why would a UFO be interested in Eade?’ Hazel retorted scornfully. She thought George was getting much too assertive.

‘Why would a star?’

‘Shut up arguing,’ Nathan admonished. Michael joined them (he had been locking up the boat), and they cut through the gardens of Riverside House and set off along the lane towards the village. Nathan tried not to keep glancing upwards, but sometimes he couldn’t help himself, and he half fancied the star was looking back at him, gazing down from its viewpoint in the night like an unwinking eye.