They were piling brush and logs around the central stone. They must have brought the logs with them because there were no trees at all on the hill. He did not want to watch this, but he could not move away. He reached blindly for his door, but for the first time in his life, he couldn’t find it.
“Jack?” he said. “Jack!” No answer. Two men strode towards the herd, and he turned to watch them.
There were three carts behind the horses, all but one loaded with logs. From that one they dragged a man, letting him fall to the ground. He had been bound hands and feet with thick ropes, his white shirt torn and stained with blood and dirt. His head lolled, eyes closed, long blond hair trailing in the grass. Beneath the bruises and muck, he was handsome, almost pretty, and young. Very young. And Mark knew in his gut this was not Jonathan.
Martin… The name came to him even as the man stirred and began to regain consciousness.
“Bring him!” Sir Belvedere shouted, and Martin was hauled to his feet and half-carried towards the circle.
“No!” Martin screamed, struggling convulsively.
“Nonono! My lord, have mercy!” But tied as he was, he could do nothing to prevent the inevitable. They lifted him onto the stacked logs, and chains were looped about him, binding him to the stone. More logs were piled around him, covering him to his waist, and the contents of a small keg were being poured onto the pyre. Now he hung slack and silent, and Mark prayed that he’d passed out. He himself felt sick to his stomach, but he couldn’t shut his eyes to it, nor block his ears, nor look away. Something other than his own will held him there. He fought it with everything in him, but though the scene wavered and for a while became insubstantial, he could not break free. When it snapped back into focus, Mark wished it hadn’t.
The flames were almost colourless in the sunlight, but they burned with a fierceness that made him wonder what the hell had been in that keg. Martin hadn’t fainted.
His screams became ragged animal howls while the blaze devoured his clothing and his hair burned away, and finally, mercifully, he fell silent. The blackened body sagged in the chains, curling in on itself as tendons contracted in the heat. And still the murderers stacked on more logs.
Rage and grief such as Mark had never known seared through him. They had been there all the time, he realised, hovering on the edge of his awareness, waiting.
Now the madness claimed him. He wanted to destroy every man on the hill. Kill them as slowly and painfully as his lover had died. But for Belvedere, oh, he had other plans. Belvedere would suffer all the torments of the damned…
Mark fought to regain his sanity, his sense of self, but he could not tell whether hours or minutes had passed before he could force his eyes shut.
When he opened them again, the moon hung full in a night sky. The circle was empty, and the blackened monolith hulked, surrounded by ash and charcoaled jagged things that might be narrow branches. Or bones. He walked towards the stone, waded through the still warm ash and cinders and things that cracked under his feet, took out his knife and the hammer-flint he’d found and brought along for just this purpose, and began to work. First, he opened a long gash down the outside of his left forearm. Then every word he carved into the sarsen he anointed and sealed with his own blood. Every word, so that when he had finished, the curse showed black in the moonlight and his arm ached with a pain that was only an echo of the agony in his heart.
He stood back and surveyed his handiwork, a savage satisfaction in his soul. But still it wasn’t enough. It needed one final twist. He thought for a moment, and on one of the tall entrance stones, he began to cut more words.
When he who sees beyond…
“Mark!”
The moon reeled above him, days and nights flared, corrosive malice ate at his very soul, and all he hungered for was revenge.
“Mark!”
Then he was chained to the stone as Martin had been chained, and he laughed in Belvedere’s hated, beloved face. He spoke aloud the words of his curse, knowing his death would be the final irrevocable seal, shouted their venom and rejoiced in it.
“My gift to you, sweet love,” he spat, the pain of the flames not touching him. Not yet. “A legacy for your children and their children. Written in stone—”
“You devil’s cur!”
“No!” shouted a familiar voice, and a man stepped from behind Belvedere’s bulk. “This is wrong!” A flurry of movement and a knife flashed through the air to sink to its hilt in Jonathan’s chest, just below his breastbone.
“Traitor!” Belvedere’s roar of fury and his backhanded blow sent the smaller man staggering back.
“Damn you! Do you think I won’t punish all who betray me?”
“Mark!”
* * * *
He came awake, half-lying on grass, and there were arms around him, cradling him close. He could hear the fast beat of a racing heart where his head was held against an erratically breathing chest.
“Mark, for God’s sake, say something!” A pleading whisper, desperate and terrified. “Mark!”
He dredged up the name that belonged to that panicky voice. “J-Jack?” he managed. Dry lips pressed a fervent kiss on his forehead.
“Thank God!” Then relief and terror transmuted into anger. “What the fuck was going on? What happened? Are you insane? Don’t you ever do anything like that again or so help me, I’ll-I’ll—” And Jack took his mouth in a ferocious, desperate kiss, tongue probing deep, as if he sought both compliance and reassurance at once. Mark worked an arm free and hooked it around Jack’s neck, giving himself up to the kiss with the same kind of desperation that fuelled it.
“It’s okay,” he said shakily. “I’m okay. Just got a replay of-of what happened here. It wasn’t pretty.” They were a short way away from the tree, he realised, right where the monolith had stood—the monolith that was now the threshold for the porch to the hall at Westford Castle.
“More ghosts?” Jack demanded, not letting him go.
If anything, his embrace tightened.
“No. A replay. Only I was there, part of it.” He had been Jonathan, feeling what he had felt, doing what he had done, but he couldn’t tell Jack that. Not yet, maybe never.
Blood to blood.
Jonathan hadn’t known what he’d been doing. He was mad with grief and rage, acting on blind instinct, and maybe he’d had a talent similar to the Renfrews’. Maybe his had been closer to Alice’s than Mark’s, and the words had come from the future to that past. And as if a switch had been thrown, Mark saw the pattern and could have kicked himself for not seeing it sooner.
When the one who reads the earth… That surely meant Jack. He’d watched him read the aerial photographs as if they were clear as a printed page, for fuck’s sake.
Joins with he who sees beyond… That had to be himself, of course, linked to this whole unholy mess through Curtess, and he and Jack had already joined in the best possible way.
When the warrior and the healer stand to swear a sacred bond… The healer had to be a doctor, and there was one already in the Fitzes’ circle of friends. The sacred bond could be the upcoming wedding, he supposed, and wondered if they knew any soldiers.
When the one who seeks in danger is sworn to the landless lord… God knows who or what the first part was, but the landless lord might be Phil Fitzwarren.
“Mark, are you floating off again?”
“No,” he answered. “Just enjoying being here.”
Being with you. He tugged Jack down for another kiss, hungry for the living taste of him. All the shadows from the past had dissipated, the sun was warm, the air moved softly, and no hint lingered of the agonies and deaths that had happened here. Poor innocent Martin certainly wasn’t hanging around, and Jonathan… Mark did not doubt he’d ended up locked into that threshold stone, trapped by his own curse. Perhaps if… No, when the curse was lifted, he and Belvedere would be free… A calloused hand stroked up his ribs under his tee-shirt, and he caught his breath.
�
��Mmm,” Jack said. “So am I. Is all this over now?”
“Not yet. But it will be.” Mark wondered briefly if he should tell the Fitzes his interpretation of the curse-lifting conditions, and decided he couldn’t tell all of it. He had the feeling that if they were forced into play, it would negate the deal. It had to happen naturally, an unplanned progression of relationships. But there remained something he could do. “Do you have a knife on you?”
“Yes, a Swiss Army job. Why?” he added suspiciously. “Will you please tell me what happened while you were out of it?”
“Yes, later. First I want to try and get Jonathan out of that stone.”
“What? How?”
“Gut instinct,” Mark replied with a wry smile. “I need a chunk of chalk and something to dig a hole with.”
“I’ll dig the hole,” Jack said, reaching into his backpack and taking out a small trowel. It had no sharp corners any more. They had long since been worn into rounded edges. “Though I had hoped to explore a different kind of—”
“Later,” he interrupted, smiling. “I think I saw some lumps of chalk in the molehills. I’ll go and grab one. Can you dig it here?” He patted the ground beside him. “This is where the monolith stood.”
“Okay.”
By the time Mark found a piece of chalk with enough surface area for what he wanted, Jack and his trowel had excavated a small pit about a foot deep. Part of one edge showed the natural chalk bedrock of the sarsen’s foundation pit.
“Not a lucky guess, I’m thinking,” Jack said grimly as he handed over his knife.
“No,” Mark agreed. Holding the chunk of chalk carefully, he carved Jonathan’s initials into the soft material, and taking care not to crack it apart, he gradually cut a deep groove between them. Then he made a small nick in the fleshy part of his left thumb and smeared the blood into the J and the C. The red was shocking against the whiteness of the chalk.
“Blood to blood, Jonathan Curtess,” he said, ignoring Jack’s startled, “What the fuck?” Mark had no idea whether it would work, or if he was making a complete fool of himself, but he had to try. “Blood to blood.”
Heat exploded around him, bringing searing agony with it. He felt again the knife that had slid home in Jonathan’s heart even as the fire charred his flesh from his bones. He fought to keep the past at bay, and holding on to his own identity with frantic strength, Mark broke the chalk in half. Flames and pain disappeared, and he dropped the pieces into the hole, kicking the excavated dirt after them.
* * * *
Slowly, they walked back down to the castle and Jack’s car. A warm, rich silence bound them one to the other. They were comfortable together, needing nothing but the closeness between them. It might be early days yet, but Mark was optimistic. This relationship already felt different from his previous ones, and he hoped it would last a lot longer. Jack’s arm lay over his shoulders, his wound about Jack’s waist, and they were in perfect step as they moved down the rutted tracks.
They reached the Toyota and stopped, turning to face each other. Jack slid his hand slid down Mark’s back to the curve of his buttock, and Mark rested his hands on Jack’s hips. They swayed closer, pressing together from thighs to mouths in a long, searching kiss.
“You work from home, you said,” Jack whispered, lifting his head a little. “Could you work from the Bridge for a while?”
“No problem.” A giddy delight zinged through him.
“I think,” Jack continued, “I’m falling in love with you.”
“Oh, good,” Mark answered. “Because I know I am. Falling for you.”
“Oh, good,” Jack echoed him, and they both chuckled. “Does this mean you’re going to take me to meet your gran?”
“Maybe. Can you give me a few more minutes here? I need to take another look at the stone.”
“Mark…” he began, exasperated.
“I’m fairly sure it’ll be okay. I have to be certain I evicted him.”
“Alright,” Jack agreed reluctantly, and they walked together through the gatehouse and into the courtyard beyond.
Charlie came out of the kitchen and joined them. “Is everything okay?” he asked nervously.
“It’s getting there,” Mark answered. “I haven’t been able to break the curse, but I have weakened it a little I think. The rest will follow in due course; I’m certain of it. Things will work out for the best,” he added earnestly.
Charlie grunted but didn’t say anything.
By unspoken agreement, they stopped a few feet away from the curse-stone and gazed at it in silence for a moment. To his almost overwhelming relief, Mark picked up nothing from it but a background buzz of directionless malice. Then Charlie stepped forward, frowning.
“Is that a crack?” he asked. There was a hairline fracture across the middle of the stone, and Mark bit his lip, holding back the urge to laugh and punch the air in triumph.
“Yes,” he said, satisfaction in his voice. “Curtess was in there. He’s gone now. The curse is still in play, but it’s on its way to being lifted.”
“It is?” Charlie sounded sceptical, to say the least.
“Yes,” Mark said. “I promise. It’s like the domino effect, and the first one has fallen. But I can’t say anything else. I have to go now. Goodbye, Charlie. Things will work out, even if it doesn’t seem like it yet.”
They shook hands solemnly. “I’ve heard that before,” he answered coolly. “I hope you’re right, Mark, but I doubt you are. Thanks for trying, though.”
“You do notice, I hope,” Jack said helpfully, “that Mark is standing here fully conscious and on his own two feet, without a nosebleed?”
“I noticed,” he admitted. “What about the training excavation? Are we still going to discuss that?”
“You bet. I’ll be back in a day or so, if that’s okay. We can finalise everything then.”
“Good. I’ll look forward to it.”
And that was that. As they walked back across the courtyard, Mark slipped his fingers into Jack’s hand. The warm clasp welcomed him, and a thumb gently teased his palm. He had a feeling he’d be suffering nightmares of fire and chains and standing stones for a while but he also knew he wouldn’t be waking alone. Jack would be there.
The End—or not…
Dedication
For my family
And always for my dad
For Chris Quinton and Sue Brown
Quite frankly, we English girls rock…
From a book written in 1899:
—The History of Steeple Westford by the Rev. Horace Simpkins—
So in the autumn of the year 1644, Jonathan Curtess cursed Belvedere Fitzwarren, saying, “I curse you and your children’s children, that you shall all live out your allotted years, and that those years shall be filled with grief and loss and betrayal, even as you have betrayed and bereaved me.”
Much has been written of the actions undertaken in the name of punishment. It is not the place or situation of this book to provide conjecture at any great length on the situations regarding the curse other than the facts to hand. Artefacts recovered under the patronage of Her Majesty Victoriana Regina remained with the estate of Belvedere Fitzwarren.
Oscar Curtess, lately of Steeple Aston, had in his possession several items procured from the estate sale of the descendants of the Fitzwarren family. Amongst them a dagger that has the distinction of being attached to the rumour that it is the very knife that saved Jonathan Curtess from a slow death in fire.
The remains of Jonathan Curtess, the second of the most unfortunate to die at the stones, were interred by his remaining family, but there is little knowledge of location.
Chapter One
“Uhnnnn, damn it, sod it, bloody hell—ghuuu.” Daniel Francis couldn’t keep the grunts of pain and expletives from spilling out of his mouth. Letting loose the torrent of noise was the only thing that grounded him. He had only meant to rest for a few minutes, but, God, how much worse could this pain get? He was tra
pped now, sitting in the dark, surrounded by the scent of pine toilet cleaner, like some kind of bloody cripple. Scared. Stupid. A waste of space.
What had happened to the man he’d once been? Why the hell was he stuck in the men’s toilet at his local surgery, literally scared to death to walk out into the waiting room? He had been doing so well today pushing the pain away. He had taken the pain meds like he was supposed to. They took the edge off the throbbing long enough to fake how well he was doing, and he had yet again survived his monthly visit to see a doctor. In this case, it was the second time since coming home that he had seen Lester, Sr. The doctor had been his usual efficient self, dismissing Daniel with a cursory glance at his records on the screen in front of him.
“Here are the scripts for your pain meds and muscle relaxants. I’ve lowered the level of Sertraline although I’m not comfortable with your request to do so. Keep to the prescription, use the ice packs. Come back and see me in three weeks so we can re-evaluate, and I can re-issue your medication.”
The doctor had continued with the usual inane questions that experts always threw at him, and Daniel made a show of listening while he focused in on grey hair, bushy eyebrows, and pale grey eyes. He was half listening, already deciding he’d had enough of the blurred edge to his world on these damn tablets. He would fill the prescription, but that didn’t mean he had to take the capsules. The doctor certainly didn’t need to know. Daniel was his own man, and he could make his own decisions. He wasn’t a kid who had to do what he was told all the bloody time. Hell, he’d had enough of that in the Army.
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