Charlie cleared his throat. “Okay, I know why you’re here.” He nodded at Mark before fixing his gaze on Jack. “But how about you?”
Jack shrugged out of his backpack and took out the folder. He sorted through it and brought out the photo of the villa. “I was coming to see you about this.”
While he talked Charlie through the archaeological significance of the site and what the university wanted to do with it—and pay for the privilege—Mark met Phil’s gaze.
“According to what I read online, Belvedere’s spirit is over there. Can I get into the hall without crossing the stone?” he asked.
“Yes, easy. There’s access via the south tower. Want to go now?”
“Yes, please.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” he insisted.
Phil gave him a smile and stood up. “Charlie, I’m just going to take Mark over to the south tower. We won’t be long.”
Jack pushed back from the table and rose to his feet. “Count me in. Sorry, Charlie, can we finish this later?”
“Of course. I’m coming along too.”
“Bloody hell.” Mark sighed. “Why don’t you call your sister as well? She can sell tickets. I don’t know if I can do it with an audience.”
“Tough,” Charlie said grimly. “You’ve got one. In fact—” He slid open one of the drawers of a Welsh dresser and took out a small camcorder. “—I can record it. If you don’t mind,” he added with something of a challenge.
“No skin off my nose,” Mark said. “I doubt it’ll show anything other than me apparently asleep, but you can try.”
* * * *
The spiral staircase in the south tower was narrow and steep, winding up from the ground floor to the crenellated roof. When it reached the first floor, it opened on the left to a spacious circular chamber and on the right into a large rectangular room inhabited by spiders and shadows as far as Mark could tell. And pigeons. The birds scattered through the wide arched windows in both end walls. The delicate stone tracery that remained hinted at the expensive glory the windows would have been in the castle’s heyday.
“This is the solar, one of Sir B’s places,” Phil said, the lightness of his tone belying the tension in his shoulders. “Or we can go down into the hall. The chapel’s through that door, and the bedchambers are above.”
“I’ll try here first,” Mark said quickly. The hall was the last place he wanted to be. The stone seats in the window embrasures were intact so he walked to the far window and sat down. The stone struck cold into his thighs and buttocks. He could feel the pressure of three pairs of eyes on him, and it unsettled him to say the least. But he pushed it all to one side of his mind, closed his eyes, and leaned back against the wall.
The autumn sun warmed his upturned face. He could hear the disgruntled cooing of the pigeons and the faint rustlings of uneasy movements from the watchers.
Tuning them out was difficult, but gradually awareness faded, and he opened his eyes in his Safe Room, the remote in his hand. He turned on the TV.
White static flared across the screen then settled into a moving image. A large man paced restlessly back and forth in front of a window. The window opposite him, Mark realised. Slowly the details refined themselves into a room with wood-panelled walls and dark furniture lit by sunlight pouring in through the now-glazed windows. And the image of the man sharpened. He wore a brown coat, loose knee breeches with black boots, and long brown hair curled around his very broad shoulders. Wide white lace-edged collar and cuffs gave some colour to his outfit. He wore a moustache and goatee and was handsome in a florid, heavy-boned way. His expression was tortured.
Mark’s finger pressed the remote’s volume key. “Sir Belvedere,” he said. The man spun on his heel, moving with surprising speed given his bulk and stared out of the screen, gazing through and beyond Mark. “You’re trapped here. I want to help you move on.” He could have opened his door and walked out to meet the man face to face.
Should have, perhaps, but he did not dare.
Sir Belvedere didn’t seem to hear him. He returned to his pacing, his lips moving soundlessly. Mark raised the volume until he could hear the anguished whispers.
“May God forgive me, may God forgive me.” He said it over and over again. Then, “It was a madness. A great sin. But I loved him. Ah, God above, I loved him so much!”
“Who?” Mark murmured.
“He bewitched me. How else could I have fallen into such a foul sin! And then he turned his face from me, and there was that slip of a boy—scarce twenty summers!
How could I endure that?”
“Who?”
“Devil take them both, I say! They shall burn in the deepest pit of Hell! He walked away from me! From me!
God’s Blood, but he’ll pay for that! I’ll take it all—his catamite, his land, his life— Ah, Jonnie, my bright warrior!” The figure began to fade, even as a guttural howl of agony cut through Mark’s head. “No! Do not leave me! To betray me with that cursed youth—foul warlock! Did you cast your unclean glamour on him as you did me? I’ll see you burn for all eternity!” Another agonised wail rang out and died away into silence as the white noise peppered across the screen. Mark switched it off and left his room, blinking his eyes open.
Stone walls and three anxious men filled his sight, and he relaxed with a sigh.
“He wasn’t a lot of help,” he said, rubbing his hands across his face. “I got a few interesting details, but nothing that’ll help us lift the curse.” No one answered. He looked up. They were staring at him, slack-jawed and wide-eyed.
“What?” he demanded nervously.
Wordlessly Charlie pushed the rewind button, then the playback on the camcorder and held the little screen under Mark’s nose.
He saw himself lounging in the sun, head back, eyes closed. The light seemed odd, probably because it had been filmed almost directly into the sun coming through the windows. Dust motes were caught in the rays, flaring like small glowing orbs. He heard himself speak, a pause, and then a burst of static blurred across the picture.
“Who?” his recorded self asked, faint and tinny from the camcorder’s tiny speaker. Static.
“Who?” he said again. More static. Then, with shocking clarity, a cry rang out so grief-laden and bereft it stood Mark’s hair on end. The sound became lost in the sharp crackles, and Charlie pressed the stop key.
“Fuck coffee. We need whisky,” the Fitzwarrens said in unison.
“Then,” Charlie continued, “you can tell us what all that static meant.”
“A bloody triangle,” Mark replied. “This whole mess had very little to do with your man wanting Curtess land. He wanted Curtess, and he was dumped for a younger man.”
After that, Charlie didn’t hesitate in giving Mark and Jack free rein to go where they wanted on the estate and to do whatever they needed, as long as they were careful around the sheep and cattle in the various fields and didn’t leave gates open.
They drove back to Eastbridge in a convoy of two, and after Jack had dumped his meagre luggage in his room, he joined Mark.
“I believe,” he said simply, wrapping his arms around him. “I have never been so scared in my life as when that thing shrieked like a bloody banshee. Not to mention you doing a good imitation of a man bleeding to death from a nosebleed.”
“Yes, well, that doesn’t happen very often,” Mark said, happy to lean into the tight embrace. “It was a good idea of Charlie’s to record up in the solar. To be honest, it’s never happened before. The nosebleed, that is.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll be pleased as punch if it never happens again,” he answered, and closed his mouth over Mark’s, his tongue probing deep in a voracious kiss.
“God, I want you so badly I think my balls are going to spontaneously combust if I can’t get inside you very soon. Please say we don’t have to go circle-hunting until tomorrow.”
“We don’t,” Mark chuckled.
Somet
ime in the early morning, kisses and gentle caresses awoke Mark, but nothing more.
“See you at breakfast,” Jack whispered and slid out of the bed. It was dark, but not pitch black. He was a vague shape, rustling his way into his jeans and gathering up the rest of his scattered clothing. Then the door closed quietly behind him, and Mark sighed. He rolled into the warm place that smelled of Jack and sex, but the bed still seemed too empty.
For a long time he just lay there, cocooned in comfort, half asleep and drifting. His thoughts were freewheeling, circling mainly around Jack and his increasing importance in Mark’s life. So much so that Mark fervently hoped it would be a long while before the inevitable happened.
Chapter Seven
They left Jack’s old Toyota four-by-four parked in front of the gatehouse and set out on foot. They had a large scale Ordnance Survey map of the area with footpaths and farm tracks marked, and Jack had put an X over the coordinates from the aerial photograph. If they could have travelled in a straight line, the journey would have been a lot shorter. Following the various paths round field boundaries more than tripled it, and the steadily rising ground didn’t help either. Mark was panting when the farm track finally levelled out, and Jack stopped by a long metal field-gate.
“This is it,” Jack said as he folded the map and put it away in his backpack.
“Thank God,” Mark muttered, leaning his hands on his knees. “I am not fit.”
Jack chuckled and patted his back gently. “You’ll do,” he said affectionately. “You just need to build up some muscle, that’s all. You’re only a little bit on the skinny side.”
“Fuck you. I will never let you meet my gran.” Then he froze. That sounded as if he expected Jack to be around long enough to do the meeting-the-family thing, when in reality it was more of a desperate hope.
Jack’s chuckle became a laugh. “Sunshine, you won’t have a choice. I’ll track her down and introduce myself, and then we’ll gang up on you.”
“Huh,” Mark grunted, his face flushed with more than exertion and a silly grin growing. To hide it, he turned around and looked back the way they’d come. The wide valley spread out below him in a picturesque sprawl of cottages and houses, ancient and modern. The silver ribbon of the river wound through the valley and village, St. Michael’s pale exclamation point of a spire punctuated the sky, and the free-flowing shapes of trees softened the angularity of the buildings. Westford Castle itself stood right at the forefront, fitting into the landscape like a jewel in its setting. The beauty of it gave no hint at all of the canker in its heart.
The sky was very blue, and only the raucous scoldings of blackbirds as they mobbed a pair of magpies high above the two men disturbed the tranquillity.
Jack’s arm settled around Mark’s waist and drew him close to his side. “I love this part of the country,” Jack said softly. “People have lived here for thousands of years, shaping it and shaped by it. That means a lot to me.”
“Even after Egypt? Greece? Peru?”
“Even. It’s always good to come home.”
“I know what you mean. I’ve only travelled around the UK, but I feel like there’s a continuity…” Mark hesitated, not sure what he was trying to say, but Jack seemed to understand and nodded.
“Come on,” Jack said cheerfully. “Let’s get this show on the road, then we can take a look at the villa site.”
The field was…a field. Mark could see no sign of the cropmarks that might be something or nothing at all. He saw assorted grasses, some thistles that had tufted white, grazing sheep, all encompassed by hedges ripe with scarlet berries and the pale drift of wild clematis gone to seed.
Molehills dotted the ground, and rabbits had burrowed into the banks. On the far side of the field rose a stand of trees that spread over the crest of the hill and spilled down until it was curtailed by more fields. The trees—a mixture of oak, ash and beech, with hazel around the perimeter—were showing only a hint of russet and gold.
They climbed over the padlocked gate and strolled across the pasture. The sheep lifted their heads, stared stupidly, and casually drifted out of their way as if they’d intended to move in any case.
“Here’s where the possible boundary ditch is,” Jack said suddenly, coming to a stop.
“You’re sure?” Mark could see nothing to indicate it.
“Pretty much. Modern ploughshares will have done a hell of a lot of damage to any ground features. They dig a lot deeper than the old ploughs.” He took the photo from his pack and studied it. “We’re about here,” he continued, tapping it lightly. “The nearest pit…here.” He took three long paces, angling away from Mark. “The one that disappeared under the bank is over there,” he said, pointing to his left, and then he pointed to the right. “The other one is over there. Getting anything?” He made a vague circling gesture at his temple, which either indicated his opinion of Mark’s sanity or his psychic ability.
Mark shook his head. He had his walls well and truly in place, reinforced with everything he could pour into them. Which, he admitted to himself, rather defeated the objective.
“I’m not exactly looking forward to this.” But it was why he was here, so… He looked around, saw a small gap in the hedge that might allow him through, and started towards it. “I think I should be nearer the centre.”
“If there is one,” Jack reminded him. “These silted-up pits are just as likely to be natural as manmade.”
“I know.”
The gap provided only a thinning in the otherwise healthy hedgerow, and it had been made sheep-proof with three strands of barbed wire. The two men managed to scramble over without tearing their jeans or castrating themselves and pushed through the hazel barrier.
A pleasant, sun-dappled place, the copse seemed alive with birdsong and the breeze through the leaves. They worked their way steadily into the heart of it, finding it to be comparatively easy going. The undergrowth wasn’t as heavy as Mark had expected, and there were paths, narrow ones, winding among the trees. But they hadn’t been made by human feet.
“Deer,” Jack said, pointing to narrow slotted hoof prints. “And rabbits. Badgers and foxes as well, probably.”
“Jack Faulkner, last of the Mohicans.” Mark smiled, the attempt at humour only partially disguising the tension shivering down his spine.
Jack chuckled quietly and patted his shoulder. “Any time you’re ready, Merlin.”
“Damn it.” He sighed and stopped. They were in a small clearing around the grey-green hulk of a long-ago fallen tree, and Mark decided it was as good a place as any to check for phenomena. So far he had picked up nothing, and since he had been expecting something like the psychic assaults he’d suffered in the church and the castle, he didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved.
The downed tree offered the possibility of a seat, and Mark found a makeshift resting place where the trunk forked. He wedged himself into it, the moss-coated bark striking chill and damp through his jeans and tee-shirt.
“Okay,” he said with a confidence he did not feel, and closed his eyes.
The Safe Room formed around him, familiar and secure. Very secure, though it had never been tested by anything as powerful and malevolent as Jonathan Curtess.
Mark turned on the TV. On the wide screen, static resolved into an indistinct shades-of-grey image of the hilltop, blurring and rippling as if it lay behind thick, distorted glass. No fields, no hedges and trees. Just coarse grass—
and right in front of him stood the bulk of a sarsen embedded on end in the ground. There was nothing nearby that would allow Mark to get an idea of scale. The sarsen could have been anything from five feet tall to fifteen, a comparatively slender pillar of weathered stone. Beyond it, he could see more stones, smaller, blockier, set in a curving line, and part of a shallow bank. The circle, then, with a central monolith and surrounding ditch and bank, just as Jack had suggested it might be.
Formless shadows drifted around the central stone, moving with seeming
purpose. Mark had the impression of daylight, but there was no colour, no definition, and no sound but a faint static when he upped the volume.
“Mark?” A distant voice seeped into his awareness. “Can you hear me? Are you okay?”
“Yes. I’m fine.” His own voice sounded as if it came from a long way off. It felt very strange, actually talking to a living someone while he was in his Safe Room. “This is the place. It’s got a taller stone standing in the middle. All the others I can see are squarish, lower. And it’s got a bank. Not high, but there. It’s all hazy, though. Indistinct. Can’t hear a thing. Can’t feel a thing…”
“That’s good, right?” Jack sounded nervous.
“Don’t know. Maybe. But I can only see what’s in front of me. I need to see more.”
Mark got up from the couch and moved to one of the windows, pulling back the curtains. Yes, the circle was out there, and there were two additional taller stones in it, a wider gap between them to make an entrance of sorts. The shadows were still there, ten or more milling around.
People, his gut feeling told him, doing whatever they’d done four hundred years ago. Not ghosts, exactly, just an imprinted replay of the event. Jonathan Curtess’s death?
Possibly. He shivered.
Quickly, Mark drew open the other curtains, but gained no more information. The scenes were remarkably similar in their lack of colour and substance.
“Mark?”
“I think I have to go outside,” he said reluctantly. “I’m not getting anything in here.”
“In where? The circle?”
Mark didn’t answer. He unlocked the door and stopped, his hand on the bright brass handle. He did not want to do this. Curtess had died a cruel death here. But the curse had to be broken, lifted, ended somehow, and every instinct insisted it had to start with Curtess himself.
“Okay,” he said, and opened the door on a bright summer day.
The moment he crossed the threshold Mark became an unseen extra in the scene, an ephemeral entity, buffeted by the hurrying bustle of grim-featured men under the direction of the unmistakable Sir Belvedere. He moved back until he stood outside the circle, farther back, and he found himself among a small herd of restless, uneasy horses. They shifted away from him as if they could sense his presence, but he paid them no attention. The drama being enacted inside the stones held his increasingly horrified gaze.
The Fitzwarren Inheritance Page 6