‘Kier. I think it would be better if you went,’ Mat put in at last. ‘Give me your address down here and Abi can contact you if she wants to speak to you. Or better still, I think it would be better if you went back to Cambridge.’
‘No.’
The single word echoed in the room.
‘I have nothing to talk to you about, Kier,’ Abi said finally. ‘There isn’t any point in staying.’ Her courage was returning.
There was another long silence. No-one moved.
‘Who is this woman?’ Kier appeared to have noticed Athena at last. He focused on her with evident distaste.
‘This woman,’ Athena said with emphasis, her patrician tones ringing round the room, ‘is Abi’s friend. And if you think Abi is a practitioner of the dark arts, you should see what I can do when I get going. I suggest, Mister, that you leave now!’
Mat rubbed his chin, trying to conceal a smile. He glanced across at Kier to see how well that had gone down. Not well at all, by the look of it. Kier’s face had gone an inelegant shade of puce. ‘How dare you!’
‘I dare.’ Athena smiled at him.
Cal chose that moment to appear through the back door. She was wearing her coat and her hair was dishevelled from the wind. She pushed the door closed and stared round in astonishment, putting a hand down to the dogs as they rose to greet her. ‘Have I missed something?’
‘Kier,’ Mat said, ‘is just leaving.’
Kier sighed. ‘All right. I’ll go. There is no point in talking to you, Abi, with all these people around.’ He glared at Athena. ‘I will come back tomorrow. Perhaps we can have some privacy then to discuss our personal affairs.’
‘There are no personal affairs, Kier,’ Abi said firmly. ‘I am sorry, but you and I have nothing else to say to each other. How much clearer can I make it? I don’t want to see you again. I don’t want to be harangued by you. I don’t want to be saved by you. I have come here to get away from you.’
‘That’s telling you, buster!’ Athena added in an undertone.
Cal was taking off her coat. She went and hung it on a hook by the back door then came back and bustled over to the stove. ‘Can you give me a drink, Mat? When Mr Scott has left we can get on with supper.’
Kier gave up. With a shrug he headed for the door. He did not say goodbye.
There was a long silence after Kier left the room. ‘Bloody hell!’ Athena said at last. ‘Where in the world did he come from? You must have some racy past, Abi! Bishops! Witchcraft! I don’t understand.’
Abi laughed uncomfortably. ‘Long story.’
‘Your ex, I gather?’ Athena queried.
Abi shook her head. ‘Ex boss.’
‘And your ex boss is a priest!’ She was sounding more and more incredulous.
Abi nodded and took a deep breath. ‘So am I.’ She forced herself to meet Athena’s eye. ‘I’m sorry. That’s what I should have told you.’
‘I thought you said –’
‘I did. More accurate to say I was a priest. I resigned. I couldn’t hack it any more. It wasn’t just Kier. It was the whole thing. I found I couldn’t do it.’
‘You stopped believing?’ Athena didn’t sound as shocked by the revelation as Abi expected.
‘No, I still believe. At least…’ She hesitated. It will destroy your faith, Abi. Her mother’s voice echoed in her head for a moment. It did mine. ‘Things have happened. To do with the crystal. That’s why I’m so confused. I don’t know what to believe any more.’ She noticed that Mat had vanished. He must have followed Kier out of the room. The dogs had padded after him. She threw herself down on her chair by the fire and closed her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t honest with you. I’m not feeling very robust at the moment and I’m so used to people who –’ She broke off. ‘Who aren’t believers. They like to have a go.’
Athena nodded. ‘With reason usually.’ She sat down opposite Abi and leaned forward. ‘The church is responsible for so much pain.’
Abi nodded.
‘On the other hand, maybe now it is beginning to acknowledge that women exist, there is some hope.’
Abi gave a rueful shrug. ‘Maybe.’
Behind them Cal sat down at the table. ‘If you go ahead with your resignation, Abi, it will be a great loss to the church for that very reason,’ she put in.
Abi scowled. It was Athena who stood up. ‘Will you show me your ruins?’ She looked down at Abi. ‘And the crystal.’ Abi hesitated.
It was Cal who nodded with a glance out of the window. ‘Go, Abi. Show her. Now before it gets dark.’
They stood in front of the ruined arch for several minutes, watching the evening draw in across the garden. Abi felt strangely relaxed. She pushed her hands into the pockets of her jacket. ‘He’ll come back,’ she said at last.
‘The priest?’
Abi nodded. ‘Kier. Yes.’
‘So.’ There was a pause. ‘Are you afraid of him?’
‘In a way, yes.’
‘Why?’
‘He has a powerful personality. Corrosive.’
‘You don’t have to let it corrode you. He can’t hurt you unless you let him.’
‘True. In theory. I guess he got under my skin a bit. It makes one vulnerable.’ She sighed.
‘You’re not in love with him?’
‘No. I fancied him a bit when I first met him, yes.’ Abi shrugged. ‘But that was all. No, it’s this.’ She gestured at the flowerbed. ‘It’s thrown me completely. Instead of healing me, coming here has laid open more wounds. I’m flailing around in territory I don’t understand. Bits of my psyche have opened up suddenly and it’s not something we covered at theological college. There’s a battle going on inside me: orthodoxy versus spiritual mayhem.’
Athena nodded. ‘And all this, as you know, will only make you stronger.’ She paused. She seemed to have a capacity for silence. ‘Can you see them now?’ she asked at last. The twilight was dulling into darkness.
Abi shivered. She shook her head.
‘Look harder.’
‘I can’t summon them, it just happens. And I haven’t got the crystal with me.’
‘You don’t need the crystal and you know it. That was what I came to tell you. You are in charge, Abi. You are a strong woman. A priestess. Just look.’
11
He was sitting by the fire, whittling a piece of apple wood, his hands strong and supple as he worked the blade around the grain. Mora came and stood before him with a smile, watching for a moment the sure movements of his hands as he peeled the flakes back with his small knife.
‘Do you ever see into the future?’ she asked suddenly.
She had looked away from him and was staring into the fire.
‘Sometimes.’
‘Does it frighten you?’
He flicked some curls of wood from the carving and ran his thumb softly over the surface. ‘Yes.’ Glancing up, he studied her face. ‘You’ve seen it too?’
She nodded. ‘Do you have to go back to your own country?’
He gave a wry smile. ‘Oh yes. I have to go back. I’ve sent word to my uncle that the time has come. Once he has picked up his cargos all along the coast he’ll bring the ships in at Axiom and wait there for me. This will be his last trip this year. It’s important I go with him. I need to go home.’ He glanced up at her face. ‘I can see my artistic interlude is over. You have more jobs for me?’
She nodded again. ‘There is a whole queue of people come for healing. And after that you can come with me to see a woodcutter called Sean. A messenger arrived this afternoon to beg me to visit him. He lives in the forest up on Meyn Dyppa. Apparently a tree fell on him when he was cutting it down. His leg is broken in several places. He needs it to be set as well as a knitbone poultice and painkillers. If we cannot help him his family will starve this winter. He has only daughters. There is no son to help him.’
‘You know I will come, Mora.’ He smiled at her. He set down his knife and the small carving and stood up, brushing
the wood shavings off his robe. He glanced up. ‘It will soon be dark, do you want to go now?’
She shook her head. ‘It is too late. The messenger said one of his daughters is looking after him until we get there. We’ll leave at first light.’
He glanced up at her again. ‘There are many people, Mora, amongst my people, the Jews, who feel that women have no place in the world of men; no right to stand next to them before God. You and your friends here have shown me that women can be so special, so strong, equal in every way to men.’
For a moment she wasn’t sure what to say, she could feel the colour rising in her cheeks. But when at last she managed to master her emotions at his words it was merely to retort, ‘I should hope so!’
He nodded with a grin. ‘Then after we have seen to the patients here I will go and speak to your father. I am getting behind with my lessons and I need to absorb all I can before I leave. There is so much you learn. Law giving, history, genealogy as well as healing and herbs.’ He smiled at her once more. ‘The asceticism of your teaching pleases me. And its inclusiveness. Last time he tried to speak to me about the need to control my temper and rein in my impatience,’ he laughed, ‘and we talked about the wisdom of serpents. I hadn’t known that is what some people call the druids. I shall miss you all so much when I leave. So much of your philosophy touches me deeply.’
Mora bit her lip at yet another mention of his coming departure. She had always known that he would go one day, but she couldn’t bear to think it would be so soon. She had grown much fonder than she dared admit to herself, of this enigmatic young man with his gentle brown eyes and soft-spoken determination.
‘While you do that, I will consult my own gods and I’ll go to my herbs and make sure we have all we need for tomorrow.’ She reached down and took the knife from him, then the small figure. ‘It’s a wren!’
He nodded. ‘Small and cheeky.’
‘And very sacred!’ She laughed and handed it back to him. He set it down on the trestle table near the door to his house to join two or three other little carved birds, staring at them critically, his head slightly to one side.
‘Yeshua! Your patients are waiting!’ she remonstrated with mock severity.
‘You’re right. Enough of childish things.’ He grinned at her, then he turned and clapped his hands once, sharply. The wren shook its feathers, stretched its wings and flew away with a sharp stuttered cry of alarm, followed by the other birds. He turned and winked at her. ‘Don’t tell my mother! She used to get cross with me for doing that when I was a child. I used to make them out of clay!’ Leaving his whittling knife on the empty table he strode away towards the healing complex where their patients waited, leaving Mora staring down at the bare scrubbed boards where the small knife lay abandoned amongst the softly curled wood shavings, its blade glittering in the fitful sunlight.
‘Can I come with you, uncle?’
Looking down as he swung himself into the saddle next morning Flavius saw Romanus slipping down from his seat on the wall. The boy had obviously been waiting for him. Above them a flight of crane angled down towards the mere, their bugling cries echoing into the wind.
‘I’m riding today,’ he said curtly.
‘I can run beside you.’
Flavius gave him an appraising glance. ‘Very well. I’m going into the hills. Perhaps you can show me the way to the house of Sean the Woodsman?’ He gathered his reins, urging his horse towards the gate.
Romanus nodded eagerly as he ran after him. ‘He lives up on the edge of the forest, near the great gorge. It’s a long way,’ he added doubtfully.
‘Then let’s make a start.’
They turned away from the low ground heading east along the narrow track.
‘Why would you want to see Sean?’ Romanus asked, looking up at the man in the saddle. He was trotting easily alongside the horse.
‘He is expecting the healer.’
‘Mora?’ The boy’s face coloured slightly at the mention of her name.
‘Her student. He seems to go everywhere with her.’
‘Not everywhere,’ Romanus said defensively. ‘He didn’t come to see us.’
‘You like her, don’t you?’ Flavius slowed the horse to a walk as the track got steeper. Around them the trees were ablaze with autumn colour. Leaves, red and crimson and scarlet fluttered around the horse’s hooves as it trod the path, tossing its head with a jingle of harness.
Romanus shrugged.
Flavius glanced at him. ‘It must be hard to have a rival, with her all the time. I hear this man is handsome.’ It was a deliberate goad.
Romanus shrugged again. ‘She likes Cynan. Mama says they will marry one day.’
‘I thought she was a priestess.’
‘She is. And he is a priest. But druids are allowed to marry.’
‘Really.’ Flavius grimaced. ‘I’d heard they serve their goddess with orgies in the forest like the followers of Dionysus. Hardly a background to marriage, I would have thought.’
Romanus shook his head, puzzled. He had never heard of Dionysus. ‘I don’t think they do that.’
Flavius gave a cynical smile. ‘Perhaps they haven’t told you, boy.’ He nudged his horse into a canter and Romanus had no more breath for talking. When they next slowed down, the trees had thinned. Around them lofty green pines clung to rocky outcrops and here and there bushes of gorse were still alight with golden flowers. Romanus caught up and looked up at his uncle eagerly. ‘Do you really work for the Emperor?’
Flavius leaned forward and slapped his horse’s neck. ‘I do. Why, has my brother said otherwise?’
Romanus shook his head. ‘No, no. He has said nothing. I just wondered. It sounds so exciting to travel the world on secret missions.’
Flavius nodded. ‘I suppose it is.’
Romanus looked round. He hadn’t noticed that the autumnal sun had disappeared and the creeping tendrils of mist were winding through the trees around them.
Flavius reined in his horse. ‘Is it much further?’ His voice was tense.
Romanus shook his head. ‘We are nearly there. We cross the heath here, and then we follow a track down towards the gorge.’ Where only moments before they had been making their way across the rock-strewn hillside, now they were surrounded by a wall of white. The boy shivered. He turned round, staring over his shoulder.
‘You aren’t lost?’ Flavius’s voice sharpened.
‘No, of course not.’ Romanus glanced up at his uncle. ‘You won’t hurt Mora, will you?’
Flavius held his gaze coldly. ‘There must be no witnesses to what I do here.’
‘But –’
‘No, Romanus.’ Flavius interrupted him. ‘I will not hurt Mora if you help me. When we get there you must see to it that they are separated. If you and Mora leave us alone, then neither of you will be witness to what happens and you will be safe. This is up to you, boy. Her life is in your hands. You will tell no-one of this conversation, do you understand? No-one. Not your sister, not your mother. Certainly not your father. If you do, I shall know and Mora will pay the price.’ He fixed Romanus’s face with a frightening stare. ‘You have it in you, boy, to be a servant of the Emperor. If you do this well, maybe I can get a position for you when you are a little older. It is up to you. Show me what you can do.’
‘He doesn’t kill him. I know he doesn’t kill him!’ Abi found she was clenching her fists, her knuckles white. She looked round. It had grown dark, the last light in the western sky a pale salmon behind the black silhouette of the Tor.
‘Who doesn’t kill who?’ Athena’s voice was almost a whisper. Abi swung round. The other woman had retreated to the bench and was sitting watching her, her hands wedged into the pockets of her jacket. Somewhere nearby an owl hooted.
Abi shook her head. She couldn’t, shouldn’t talk about this. At least, not the Jesus part. She managed a smile, walking over to Athena and sitting down next to her. ‘My Roman family is riven with hatred and jealousy. Two brothers who s
eem to hate each other.’
‘Common enough, alas,’ Athena said wryly. ‘Especially here. Mat and Justin.’
‘But they wouldn’t kill each other?’ Abi was shocked.
‘No, I don’t think it’s that bad.’
‘My Roman brothers seem to have fallen out over a woman.’
‘How corny!’ Athena gave a deep throaty laugh. ‘Not so, Mat and Just. I don’t know why they fell out, but it certainly wasn’t over dear old Cal.’ She stood up with a shiver. ‘At least I don’t think so.’ She paused thoughtfully, then she made a move towards the path. ‘Come on, it’s getting cold. Have you done enough eavesdropping for the night?’
Abi nodded. ‘You’re right. That’s what it is. Eavesdropping.’ She paused for a moment as they turned towards the house. ‘What did I do while that was going on? Did I say anything?’
Athena shook her head. ‘The only thing you said was, “I know he doesn’t kill him” or something like that when you came to. You were talking to yourself. Before that, all was silence. You seemed lost in thought. You just stood there, staring out across the garden.’
‘For how long?’
‘I don’t know. Long enough for me to get damn cold. Twenty minutes? Half an hour perhaps?’
‘It’s weird. I saw Mora this time, but she didn’t see me. She was across there, on the Isle of –’ She hesitated. ‘I was going to say, Avalon.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘Because it wasn’t. Not then, was it? That’s Arthurian. What I am seeing is way before Arthur. But they seem to call it that. Ynys yr Afalon.’
‘The Isle of Apples. It has had so many names. Glaston, from the Welsh word Glas, which was the colour of the waters of the lake. Thence the Isle of Glass, Ynys Witrin.’ Athena moved on across the grass. ‘That was in Anglo-Saxon times I think. Most people go for Avalloch, but whether that was to do with apples too, or named after some ancient chieftain, who knows. I like Afalon. The hard f in Welsh sounds like a v. That would make sense. Next time you see your Mora to talk to, ask her. It would solve a lot of puzzles over which historians and myth-makers argue for hours!’ Athena was heading back towards the house. Abruptly she stopped and turned to face Abi again. ‘How long were you a vicar?’
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