“It was suicide.” Adam’s interjection was quiet but firm.
“Didn’t his wife top herself a couple of years later?” There were at least three winces at his choice of words, including one from Claire. He noted that and resolved to think more before speaking.
“Betty did kill herself, yes,” Adam confirmed. “It was a very bleak time for the family.”
“I’m not surprised,” Martin said. “And, to be fair, it sounds like both of them over-reacted. But surely she didn’t really expect to have an affair with her son-in-law and there be no repercussions?”
“She didn’t,” Claire said.
“She didn’t expect there to be no repercussions?”
“No. She didn’t have an affair.”
“So she wasn’t found in bed with her son-in-law?”
“It’s not as straightforward as that.” Claire grimaced, as if she was recalling the incident herself. “Someone else was involved.” She fixed her gaze on Martin. “And now they’re back.”
Three
“Please tell me you’re kidding.” Martin looked around the faces staring intently at him, clearly waiting for a reaction.
“What do you mean?” Adam seemed puzzled by his comment.
“You don’t seriously think I was...” He tailed off, recalling his resolve to think before speaking. “I mean, I was eight. I hadn’t even reached puberty.”
Realisation struck Adam first, and then, like dominoes falling, horrified looks appeared on their faces.
“No, no!” Adam again. “That’s not what Claire meant. No one else had sex with Betty.” His familiar use of the first name struck Martin as odd. Both brother and sister had referred to her that way now, and it seemed strange coming from people who would have barely been teenagers when the woman died. “I’m afraid we can’t get away from the fact that it was Ray.”
“Ray?”
“Ray Smith, the son-in-law.”
“Ah. So if they did...” he hesitated, then realised Adam had been blunt enough, “...have sex, what do you mean when you say ‘someone else was involved’?”
Glances passed between Adam and Claire, as if to say: “Do you want to do this, or shall I?” It seemed Claire got the short straw.
“They were being controlled.”
“What? Blackmailed?” He thought back to the implication of the look he’d been given a few moments ago. “And you think I was responsible? I was only....”
“...Eight,” she completed for him. “Yes, I think we all got that.” The warmth of her smile surprised him. They all seemed so serious about whatever it was they were trying to tell him. Yet she had seen humour and used it lightly. “Don’t worry, Martin. No one’s blaming you.”
He thought about his family, and wondered if that was true. Was it possible that the things Claire was going to tell him might shed some light on why they rejected him? Claire didn’t give him time to dwell on that.
“There was no blackmail. When I say they were being controlled, I mean someone physically forced them to do it.” She paused and thought about that. “And even that’s not quite right,” she said, clearly frustrated with her inability to explain things.
“Perhaps we should go back further,” Adam suggested. “Maybe we need to fill Martin in with who we are.”
Claire nodded her agreement and treated Martin to another smile. He liked them.
“We’re sentinels,” she said simply. When he didn’t interrupt with a question she went on: “Our job is to wait and watch for the ravens gathering. Because when they do, a man comes to this place. And when he comes, he brings pain and misery with him. The last time the ravens gathered was in nineteen sixty-four.”
“He’s not a regular visitor, then.”
She ignored his flippancy, and brought his attempt at humour to a sharp end: “About once every twenty-five years.” She nodded at the baffled look on his face. “This has been going on for a long time. And this is where you’re going to have to trust me, because I’m going to say a few things now that won’t make sense at first. So just bear with me.”
Apart from the fact that he’d been brought here against his will, Martin couldn’t think of any reason not to trust her.
“You used irony when you made the remark about him being a regular visitor.”
“More sarcasm than irony.”
The look on her face told him he was pushing boundaries unnecessarily. He shrugged sheepishly.
“He is a regular visitor. Just not in the way you meant. He’s been coming here since long before Ravens Gathering existed.”
“Bearing in mind your comment that your job is to watch for the ravens gathering, I take it the name isn’t a coincidence.”
“I’m sure not, though I couldn’t tell you who first gave it that name. Certainly, it’s been called that since before the Domesday Book. And there were sentinels here long before that.”
“Okay,” he said at last. “Let me get this straight. You’re telling me that you’ve been here for centuries and your sole purpose in life is to watch out for this guy who pops up here every twenty-five years?”
Claire smiled. “I think I need to flesh out that explanation,” she said. He got the impression she was humouring him, but he liked the smile anyway.
“Firstly, the sentinels are part of the Order. The Order itself is not based at Ravens Gathering. Kindness Farm is an outpost, if you like, with just a few of us acting as sentinels. Most members of the Order live at the Refuge in France.”
“Well, the climate’s better,” Martin said lightly.
She cocked her head and looked at him. The message she conveyed was for him to shut up. But the method told him she was amused, in spite of the circumstances.
“It is at the moment,” she said. “But we didn’t make a choice based on the weather. The point I’m making, Martin, is that the location of the Refuge has nothing to do with why we are here in Ravens Gathering.
“The Order’s purpose is to protect the continuity of humanity and the Earth. That probably sounds somewhat extreme, but I can’t think of a clearer way to explain it. We’ve existed for as long as there has been what you might call intelligent life.”
“Might?”
“Well, intelligence tends to suggest rational thought, and there’s not actually too much of that out there. We’re more emotional than we like to think, and more intuitive than we realise.”
“So by ‘we’ I take it you’re including yourselves as humans?”
“Don’t doubt that for a second,” Adam put in sharply.
“For now, though,” Claire continued as if she hadn’t been interrupted, “let’s stick with the concept of intelligent life, even if it’s only as a form of shorthand.”
Conscious of Adam’s interjection, Martin just nodded.
“I don’t propose to give you a full history of the Order, but there are some things that might help you to appreciate what we’re about. For instance, although I’ve said it’s existed since there was intelligent life, it wasn’t put together simply by a group of people who thought it’d be a good idea. Our connection with the Source is far too significant to suggest it’s a purely human creation.”
The question was begging to be asked.
“What’s the Source?”
“The Source is an energy that runs through all of us: humans, animals, plant life... Every organism, every cell, has the Source inside it, connecting us all. It even exists within things we consider to be inanimate, like rocks and earth and the air we breathe. Without it, nothing would exist on the planet.”
“Are you talking about God?”
“Not in the sense you mean. For most people God assumes a creator that cares. The Source is a part of Creation, but it makes no judgement about our actions, or the consequences of them. It’s indifferent. It’s just there.
“As humans we’re unique. We think, we rationalise...”
“But only in a limited way,” Martin reminded her.
She smiled, and he en
joyed the moment.
“True,” she said. “But compared to every other creature on the planet, we at least have the capacity to be rational. Not that it always leads to good things happening. Humans are very complex. For some reason, the Source created us that way. We can only guess at why.”
“Is It playing a game with us?” Martin wondered.
“Maybe. And maybe we’ll never know.”
“But somehow this... Source... is connected to your Order?”
“Yes. Though, as I’ve mentioned, it’s connected to each and every one of us anyway. But the connection with the Order is very strong. We open ourselves up to it and it flows through us.”
Intrigued, Martin asked: “And what does that feel like?”
Claire shrugged. “If I was to explain it to you properly, I’d have to understand what it felt like to live without it, and I’ve never known anything different.”
“Then how do you know you don’t feel the same as us ordinary mortals?” Martin was careful not to make his tone too mocking.
Without warning, she reached out and touched his hand. A tingling sensation erupted through his arm and up to his shoulder. He jolted backwards, breaking the contact, and the tingling stopped. Before he had time to react, her hand was on top of his again. This time, there was nothing more than the warmth of flesh on flesh.
“What was that?” he murmured, almost breathless. Everything had happened so quickly, he hadn’t had time to process how he was feeling.
“The Source passing through me to you. Don’t be afraid of it. It won’t do you any harm. It can’t, because it’s already inside you anyway. The difference at the moment is that it’s dormant.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t know it’s there yet. Like most people, you haven’t opened yourself up to it.”
“So are you saying only people who are in this... Order... are open to it?”
“Oh no! There are lots of people in the world who feel it. They don’t understand what it is, necessarily. Some think it’s a connection to God, or they have a particularly spiritual leaning, or just feel at one with nature. So we’re not unique in feeling it. We just have a better understanding of what it is.”
“And that’s because the Source is somehow linked to your Order?”
“Yes. There are elements in this world, Martin, that you can’t begin to imagine, and the Source has provided us with exceptional gifts, both physical and metaphysical. They’re gifts, but they carry with them a responsibility.”
“What kind of responsibility?”
“A responsibility to protect humankind from destroying itself.”
Four
For a moment, Martin stared at Claire. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to see in her face. Maybe an impish grin to let him know the whole story was a wind-up. Instead, she simply looked back at him, her expression earnest. He sensed that she wanted him to accept what she was saying, but would understand if he didn’t. There was no desperate neediness there, no wild-eyed mania. He turned to look at the others. They were all sitting back and watching, curious as to the outcome.
“Are we really that much of a threat to ourselves?” he asked at last.
“More than we realise.”
“When you say ‘we’, do you mean we, the Order, or we, the human race?”
“Right now, I mean the human race. We constantly strive for more: more money, more possessions, more convenience, more things to make our lives easier. So we build things, and then build replacements that are better. In the process, we use up our natural resources, poison the world we live in, and generally give ourselves even more to strive for in the future. And that’s without taking into account the evil that lurks inside us.”
“All of us?”
“Each and every one. We have the capacity for good and bad. Both are in there, and it’s up to us to decide which path to lean towards. Do I really need to give you examples of the evil men do to each other?”
Martin shook his head. He hadn’t needed to come home to find evil: it was in the news every day of the week, from the raw brutality of domestic violence to the slaughterhouse of war.
“So we’re steadily destroying ourselves,” he said thoughtfully. “And you jump in and avert disaster at every turn.”
“No. That’s not our job.” She smiled at the look of bewilderment on his face. “If it was, we’d have headed off Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot and every other psychotic madman that ever existed. We aren’t here to save every individual from harm. We only act if there’s a threat to the survival of the human race or the existence of the Earth itself.”
“So how does that fit in with what’s happening in Ravens Gathering?”
“I said earlier that the farm is an outpost of the Order, and that we are sentinels. Our job is to watch for a man who is a potential threat to both. That might seem a bit extreme as we are only talking about one individual, but he has a unique characteristic. He can travel through time.”
“What’s he called? The Doctor?”
Clearly, Martin’s humour was lost on them. They all looked puzzled.
“We don’t know his name,” Claire said earnestly. “For ease, we refer to him as the Raven.”
“Okay,” Martin said, deciding he needed to take some control of the conversation before it became too weird. “Tell me, then, how does he get about? Is it an old fashioned Police Box or a DeLorean?”
More puzzled looks.
“Do you mean, how does he travel through time?” Adam asked.
“Yes.”
“He has an amulet that is directly connected to the Source. It gives him the ability to travel through time. Fortunately for us, he doesn’t understand exactly how it works, so he doesn’t know the full extent of its powers.”
“How come?”
“Because he stole it.”
“And presumably it didn’t have an instruction manual with it.” Martin was thinking aloud and didn’t expect a response. “So he can travel through time with it?”
“Yes. But that seems to be all he can use the amulet for. So when he does travel, he always finds himself in the same place.”
“Which is why he keeps turning up in Ravens Gathering,” Martin said. “And that’s why you guys are on watch here.”
“That’s right.”
“I think you’d better explain some more about this Raven.”
Adam nodded to Claire. It was clearly time for her to pick up where she left off.
“I’d better just explain a bit more about time travel, because it’s a difficult concept to appreciate. The principles seem straightforward enough. You move from one time to another. But there are nuances that are sometimes hard to comprehend. For instance, the Raven comes from a time around three hundred thousand years ago. We don’t know how old he is, but suspect he’s probably in his thirties or forties. But, because he’s travelled in time, he’s actually lived for longer.”
Martin frowned exaggeratedly. He wanted her to elaborate, but didn’t want to speak again.
“Let me give you an example. You’re thirty-three.” He hadn’t told her that, but he realised that, with his repeated claims to have been eight in nineteen sixty-four, she didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to do the maths. “Let’s say you make a jump forward in time by a hundred years. Then you stay there for a year, before coming back to the current time. How old do you think you’ll be?”
It felt like a trick question, but he went for the obvious answer anyway. “Thirty-four?”
“You’ll have lived thirty-four years, but you won’t have physically aged at all. While you’re out of your own time, you can’t age. In practice, it’s not as precise as I make it sound. Time will have elapsed in your absence. Not at the same pace, but it does go by. We don’t understand why that is, or how it happens. There’s no science to this.”
That’ll disappoint a lot of writers, Martin thought.
“It seems to be the Source’s way of ensuring that you don’t accidenta
lly populate the same moment in time twice. Because that would be weird, wouldn’t it? Meeting yourself.”
That would be weird?
“So every time he travels forward in time, he does age, but only by the period he is gone from his own time. Does that make sense?”
He nodded, urging her on with his eyes.
“What that means, then, is that the Raven could have lived the equivalent of several centuries, but is physically still a relatively young man. Does that make sense?”
Martin nodded slowly. He was pretty sure he’d taken it all in, but planned to ask questions at the end if he was still unsure.
Beside him, Martin was conscious of Mason shifting in his chair. They’d been sitting for three quarters of an hour now, and Mason was a big man. He guessed it could get very uncomfortable for him. The others seemed to be as captivated by Claire’s explanation as he was, and were sitting stock still. Even though they surely had already heard it, there was no lack of interest.
Claire went on: “If you’re clear on that, the next thing to consider is why the Raven keeps coming forward in time. You remember I talked about there being a capacity for good and evil in each of us?” As Martin nodded, she continued: “In practice, most of us tap into both at different times in our lives. Some find a strong leaning towards one or the other, and that leaning can be enhanced by exposure to the Source.
“We haven’t been able to properly identify the Raven within his own time. But what we do know is that he was able to tap into the Source.”
“Like you guys,” Martin put in.
“Yes. Like us, he is a sorcerer.”
“A sorcerer?” Martin made no attempt to conceal his incredulity. “Are you joking?”
“Where do you think the word sorcerer comes from?” Adam asked. “It means someone who is able to use the Source.”
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