Serpent in the Heather

by Kay Kenyon

  Powell had come up to them, and nodded to dismiss Awbrey.

  “Kim,” he said, his smile broad and quick. “Sorry I didn’t come for you. Mother has me on last-minute tasks.”

  “Quite all right. Awbrey said the fair really starts tomorrow. Can anyone come?”

  “Open to all, but you do have to stand for a pledge as a seeker, at least.”

  She had read of the pledge they asked followers to make; perhaps their way of fending off skeptics, but of course, one could easily lie. Kim gestured to the stone meeting circle. “You can’t all fit in a circle there, it’s too small.”

  “Circles within circles.” He led the way toward the stone ring, now appearing to be larger than it had before, some twenty-five feet in diameter, the grass scythed in patches, sprouting in tufts beside low stone slabs. The central area was built up as a berm, where a speaker might stand. “People join hands and eventually, we are all standing together without broken links.

  They stood within the stone ring. “Sometimes this is where we have our chants and singing. A few of those were in my book.”

  “Which I did read,” she said. “It was fascinating.” One gift the man certainly did not have was writing, the whole tome dry as a school thesis.

  “I’m glad you liked it.” A smile started up but failed to complete. “You know, you’ll be the only one here who isn’t a believer or a seeker.” He cut a glance at her. “Unless you are.”

  “I have an open mind. I can’t promise a conversion.” She smiled to be playful, but he seemed distracted and didn’t notice.

  He sighed, taking a seat on the nearest stone bench. His face looked older, without his cheerful aspect to soften it. Kim was determined to pursue the idea of what he had to do to be receptive to a gift. In case it was murder. It was dicey to approach the topic, especially since she did not want to desire a spill too much. Neutrality was a stance she had to work on. It was very difficult not to care.

  She sat next to him on the stone. “Were you down at the henge just now?”

  “The sea henge?” He hesitated. “The vicinity. How did you know?”

  “You said you meditated on the cliffs there. I know you work at your spirituality.”

  “More people should,” he said. “Most live their lives so conventionally, as if what’s on the surface matters so much.”

  “Self-examination is so lacking these days.”

  “You would put it that way.”

  “Too mundane for you, I know.”

  He leaned his forearms on his knees, clasping his hands. “It’s as though you reject what I’m doing.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to judge things before I have any experience.” She paused. “But you believe it improves you, that’s what counts. Do you feel it does?”

  He shook his head, murmuring. “Don’t you think I ask myself that every hour of the day?”

  “But, Powell. What if you are already fine? What if you are ready to inspire and guide people now? What if your gift has in fact come? You have an attractive way about you. I thought so from the moment I met you.”

  In a violent movement he rose, turning on her. “No! It hasn’t come. It’s not about being attractive or likable. It’s about the power a man must have to lead. And that power is still waiting for me.” The movement startled both of them. His face was filled with an unreadable expression, one that might have reflected a sickening doubt.

  Because if he was wrong, and all the gifts he would ever receive had already long been a part of him, then murdering innocents was a disastrous mistake.

  She pressed on. “Haven’t you been receptive to powers all along? What more must you do?”

  He stared at her. She had come too close to the key question. Deflecting his attention, she went on. “And what of the thieves who have a darkening power, or leaders who are conceptors, trampling on freedom? What if further power made you worse?”

  He ran his hands through his hair. “But you’re looking at the outside of things. No man can judge another.”

  Oh yes, they can.

  He took a deep breath. “I beg your pardon. Do excuse me, I’m not myself today. Too little sleep, with the preparations and all. Let’s go back.”

  And just like that the conversation was over. She gathered up her handbag and followed him toward the pavilions now taking shape on the field.

  After a few strides he half-turned to her. “What you said . . . I know you’re trying to bolster me. It’s really very good of you.”

  She had been twisting his hopes in front of his face, hoping to crack his facade, so it was not very good of her. The farther she walked down this road, the more deception and manipulation she used, almost effortlessly.

  It was reassuring to know that she had it in her.

  She glanced toward the castle, looking like a distorted crown encircling the massive rock on which it sat. Someone here might have a way of detecting Talents. Would it be someone at the fair tomorrow? Or would SIS have to follow Lord Ellesmere until he led them to such a man? The family was full of riddles. But the more they wished to hide, the more likely they would be to spill.

  It was one reason why she thought Powell might have given her a spill of his darkest secret. That some people burned brightly. He might have meant it metaphorically, but how extraordinary if it were real.

  28

  A CABIN, THE SULCLIFFE ESTATE, WALES

  FRIDAY, AUGUST 28. Dries leaned against the worktable, regarding his visitor. A roll of bandages, disinfectant, and a scissors lay scattered behind him. Outside the heavily shuttered windows, the night was disturbed by a gusting wind off the sea, setting the woods to thrashing.

  The dowager sat in a torn, overstuffed chair, her body sagging into its depths as she recovered from her trek. The oil lantern on the table threw a murky light around them, as though they were a fathom deep in water. As well, she bore her own light, a pallid one, from her inconsequential Talent of which she made such a fetish.

  “You should never have come to Sulcliffe. It exposes us to danger,” Dorothea said, blithely ignoring the danger that Dries himself was in, wounded and pursued by the police.

  “But where else could I go, Dorothea?” Coslett’s decision to bring him here—his father’s old woodland retreat—had been shrewd and rather brave, given Dorothea’s certain opposition.

  “Please do not call me that, Monsieur Verhoeven.”

  She hated familiarity, especially with someone below her station, and a foreigner. But what could be more intimate than murdering together? Even family or sex could not match the tie.

  “I see you are feeling better,” she said.

  He touched the dressing on his neck. “Ach. It takes more than the shotgun to kill me.” The pellets might have taken his face off, but instead the blast had gone wide, only raking his shoulder, chest and neck. He was much improved. Ready to go on, in fact.

  His time in England was almost at an end. Himmler wished for him to return his efforts to the Continent, and next it would be Paris, where he would watch in the dark for the strongest lights. Germany’s might grew stronger every day, soon to be unequaled. But in the realm of Talents, this was not the case. Meta powers had been bestowed broadly, wastefully. Cropping up in French peasants, Czech Communists, even Jews. Hitler understood the danger of undesirables rising in power. And for Dries, it had long been a conviction, as well.

  He glanced in the direction where the woman’s son waited outside the cabin, having brought a lantern to guide the way. “Powell is coming along very well. Yesterday I saw a light around his head. Almost a halo.”

  Her face lifted at the mention of Powell. The need for a private discussion of him was the reason her son stood outside. “You still believe the gift will come to him?”

  “I do think so. There are . . . little flickers. More all the time.”

  She nodded, letting out a ragged breath. He could almost smell the miasma of her cancer. “Receiving a gift can be such a difficult birth. With me, it wa
s a natural thing, like awakening after a long night, and finding oneself anointed. And Powell struggles so!” She looked up at him with an expression of longing. Somehow this bloated woman managed to harbor love for one person. Her son. A moment of pity sliced through him before he remembered that she was British.

  “But you do see the little flickers?”

  “Like St. Elmo’s fire along a ship’s mast.” That was rather good, he thought, though he could no more see the approach of a Talent than he could pick out a train a hundred miles away. Once a Talent broke through, only then was it apparent to him. But, for his very satisfying work on British soil—pursuing young people—he must keep the old woman’s hopes alive.

  “I do wish you had not spilled blood at the church,” Dorothea said, peevish. “It arouses the enthusiasm of the police to find us.”

  “They are enthusiastic because we are killing children, I think.”

  She sniffed at this correction. “Well, young, innocent blood. That is most powerful, of course.”

  Her wish was for power. His wish, terror. Everyone in it for their own reasons, a perfect collaboration.

  She went on, “No more churches. And the stone circle choice. Another mistake. That place of power could have brought to mind our reverence for ancient sites.” He could not help but show his irritation, and she shot back, “Himmler has seconded you to my cause, my leadership. Perhaps you should remember that.”

  She would invoke the one man he was afraid of. He remembered their meeting. The man with the weasel face, made strong only by his austere manner. The stylish black uniform. The offer of tea and a conversation about a certain Talent Dries had that might serve the Reich. How Himmler had heard of Dries, he did not know. But when an SS subordinate came to his home, he had been pleased to leave his village in a sleek Mercedes, to ride down the Wilhelmstrasse in the heart of great Berlin. To be ushered in to meet a man who was the second most important person in Germany. Of course Dries would assist in the operation. His politics? None, but the racial goals of the National Socialist party, yes, so correct. He would gladly take an oath to Hitler. Himmler had smiled. An agreement. But Dries Verhoeven never forgot those swastika-draped halls and this diminutive man’s power over life and death. Dries admired him, and feared him.

  He allowed Coslett her point. “Himmler, yes. I am directed to help you, it is true. You wish the blood spilled along the lines.” Her absurd ideas had no end. Not only earth worship and sacred sites but the infernal lines. “And I do my best for you. The stone circle and the church, both were ideally situated. Do you know how difficult it is to find a youngster in the correct place? I must watch and wait. It is not easy, Dorothea.”

  Turning to the table, he fingered the old baron’s compass and maps. She did not like him to handle her husband’s things, and so he persisted. “Bowen Coslett,” he mused. “The one who began it all, ja?” He looked up, but found no response. “These plotting instruments. He was a surveyor in the war, Powell said.”

  “He began things,” Dorothea conceded. “There were others. But they were minor figures.”

  “Your husband departed from the strictly scientific. The others had not his imagination in regard to the lines. Yes?”

  “They were men of intellect, but lacking the spiritual dimension. There were disagreements about significance and spiritual connection. My husband continued on a solitary way.”

  “A man who . . . followed his own drummer, is what you say?”

  She raised an eyebrow at this attempt to define her husband. “His competitors were conventional, rigid men who could not see beyond the surface of things. Who refused to acknowledge Lord Ellesmere’s insights on ley lines. They derided the very idea.”

  “I can imagine this. Envy. A common story.”

  “Envy of us both. It was my idea to share our insights as broadly as I have. Ancient Light has been my contribution.”

  “That and the murder of children. That part, it is new, ja?”

  Her gaze flared up at him. “How dare you goad me! You, of all people.”

  “Yes, your humble servant, Dries Verhoeven. Who undertakes things that would soil your hands.”

  She murmured, “I soiled my hands, on that score you are wrong. The first to die—it happened here.”

  That did surprise him. “Here?”

  “At the castle. It was a clumsy affair. The girl was a runaway, a child of no account, dirty and ragged. She would not be missed.”

  The old serpent had some courage, after all, he thought.

  “I had long wondered if the vitality of blood, as many ancients believed, held power for those who spilled it in the proper way, at the proper place.”

  “And of course, your fine castle is situated on holy ground.”

  She flicked a look at him, alert for sarcasm. He had managed to say it in his best sincere manner. She went on. “Afterward, as the girl lay dying, I felt the power of Sacred Earth flow into me. The gift that I had long possessed surged more strongly, leaving me breathless. How I longed to go on! Think of the following I might have amassed, had I an even stronger gift for knowing each person’s true feelings. But to spill more blood, no. Had there been more deaths, I might have been suspect.”

  “And then too, the patrons of your Ancient Light, they would not have understood, ja?”

  “Every religion preserves the highest secrets for the initiated few. In any case, the girl’s death was my inspiration. But the violence of the act—I had not the taste for it.”

  He felt a smile come to his lips. “Then you found me. And the taste, it returned, yes?”

  Dorothea straightened. “Monsieur Verhoeven, you are a man who makes me uneasy. You have no raison d’être, no great longing or cause. I hope that you are not merely a murderer.”

  “No cause? I believe we share an admiration for the Nazi movement.”

  “Yes, yes. But the Führer does not hate our island. He respects the British people. While you . . .”

  He felt his heart contract into a smaller space. “I what?”

  “You are not a normal man. I perceive that you have a great hate inside you. And I believe it is for the British. It is why you agreed to come.”

  Her drawing-room psychology, it might aggravate him were it not so pompous and foolish. Her Talent had taken a turn he had seen in others many times. She had become enamored of it. With hyperempathy, Dorothea had come not just to see feelings but to require them.

  “Can you not give it up?” Her voice needled at him. “Let whatever wrong has been done to you fall away?”

  His left hand touched the scissors on the table. “I believe you refer to forgiveness.”

  “Yes. Hate is a heavy burden.”

  “Also an inspiration.”

  She drew back at this, murmuring, “It is better to kill for love than for hate.”

  He moved away from the table so that he would not be tempted to silence her.

  “And so,” he said, changing the subject. “Do we go on?”

  “We do, monsieur. I feel we are close to a breakthrough.” She looked up at him with an almost flirtatious expression. “Perhaps one or two more?”

  Until Himmler ordered him home. “One or two only.” The police were too near; they might have a description of Coslett from the pigsty fiasco.

  She stood, leaning so hard on her cane, he thought it might plunge through the rotting floor. “You must remain hidden. The fair . . .”

  He nodded. Room enough for Dries as well as her besotted followers on such an estate.

  She turned for the door.

  “By the way,” he said. “The woman who came into the field today, talking alone with Powell—”

  She swung around to stare at him. “You were at the field?”

  “I stayed hidden. But this woman, she has a strong gift.”

  “Do you mean to say the Tavistock woman? She is just an American, a writer of articles.”

  Ah. So, this was Coslett’s lady. “Nevertheless, she sheds the lig
ht.” He estimated she would be at least a 6. He hoped it was not for trauma view, for it would be Powell’s downfall, for anyone to see the things he had done.

  “What is the nature of her gift?”

  “I do not know. To me, she is only a light.”

  Dorothea wrinkled her brow. “Well, it may do no harm. She has not the guile to use a gift properly.”

  “It would be best if Powell avoided her.” He shrugged. “Our enterprise, you know.”

  She glanced in the direction of the castle. “That may be difficult to arrange. They have become friends.”

  Since Coslett had first mentioned this woman, Dries had been considering her with growing unease. “Any person with a gift can be a danger. To see things, to perceive things.”

  “Well. I am sending her home tomorrow. Just make sure you do not lurk around the fairgrounds and risk being seen.”

  He might keep his distance. On the other hand, he was attracted to the light. Like a moth to the flame . . . The memory came, of fire surging down the hall. Papers on bulletin boards erupting in fire and the hair of schoolchildren.

  He stood at the door, watching the mother and son walk into the woods, one of them bright, one dark.

  29

  SULCLIFFE CASTLE, WALES

  THAT SAME EVENING. Kim’s dinner sat on a tray at the table: squab and mash, Rian had declared. There would be no formal dinner tonight. She tried to remember what squab was and feared it was dove. She gazed at the food, straightening the tableware just so, lining up the fork with the knife, the napkin, and plate.

  Out the windows of her suite, the rocky headland caught the last rays of sun glaring off the sea. On the highboy was her camera, which had been returned to her. She adjusted the salt and pepper into a nice line with the butter dish. . . .

  She could sit still no longer. Rising from the table, she left the apartment and stood on the landing, listening for activity downstairs. Faint voices—Rian’s? And another woman’s, possibly the nurse. There were no guests other than herself lodging in the castle.

  Here she was, thoroughly infiltrated into the nest of suspects, and yet she’d be making no progress for the rest of the evening, since the entire household was consumed by tasks relating to the gathering.