Again, Eadlin raised a single, questioning eyebrow. Fergus would have found the mannerism cute if the subject hadn’t been so troubling. He told her about his conversation with John Webster.
“Well, I guess we’ve either got an elusive tattooed tramp in the area or people are getting a bit, like, hysterical. Or maybe, just maybe, there’s something in it.” Eadlin leaned forward over the desk, her manner less relaxed.
“That’s what’s kept me awake.” Fergus sipped coffee, hoping he didn’t sound ridiculous. “That moment when the guy with the tattoo stood by the car, it’s locked in my head. It’s one of the memories that keep replaying in my mind and it’s all so bloody real. It’s never occurred to me that he wasn’t… that he might not be…” Fergus didn’t want to give the alternative a name.
“You said yourself you went a bit mad in the crash.”
“True. But I hope I’m never sick enough to imagine some of the things I can remember. Shall we go and see some of those four-legged doctors of yours?” Fergus veered the subject away, not wanting to go near the pit again. Besides, it was easier to talk if there was a shared focus to look at, like a horse.
“Well if you’re going anywhere near Trooper, you’ll need to leave that thing behind.” Eadlin nodded at his stick. “Troops has been beaten with a heavy stick at some stage. He’s terrified of them. And whips, come to that.”
Fergus looked down at his legs and spread his arms, wondering how to explain. A walk around the stables was slightly more ambitious than the previous day’s few steps on soft sand.
“Come on.” Eadlin stood and held out her hand to pull him to his feet. “I’ll keep you upright.”
Fergus swallowed his pride and accepted her support, letting her lead him arm-in-arm towards the barn like an old married couple.
“One thing puzzles me.” They managed well together. Fergus just needed help with his balance, and he’d have enjoyed the close contact if it hadn’t made him feel so inadequate. “You read about Victorian spooks or even Elizabethan spooks, but never about Saxon spooks. If such things exist, shouldn’t they all have gone off to rattle their chains in Valhalla or wherever by now?”
“Who knows what they believed, back then?” Eadlin spoke quietly, as if considering her words carefully. “Most of the old knowledge was wiped out by the Christian church long ago. Perhaps they believed they could, like, bind a soul to a place, say to protect it or something. Are you religious?”
“You know, that’s the second time someone’s asked me that since I’ve been here but no, not really. Are you?”
“Nah, at least not in the Christian sense. Here’s your friend Trooper.” Eadlin paused while he made a fuss of the horse over the stable door. “Did you say your bones are mending?”
Fergus looked up, laughing as Trooper almost nudged him off his feet in his eagerness for more carrots. Eadlin’s tone had sounded significant. “They’re as straight as they are going to get. Like I said, it’s the muscle that’s still weak. Why do you ask?”
“Would you like to see what it feels like to ride? Not him,” she added, seeing his look, “something really quiet to start with.”
“Isn’t it rather risky? I mean, I’m hardly fit…” His voice tailed away.
“You’re in much better shape than some of our guests with Riding for the Disabled. I’ve just the horse in mind for you. She’s bombproof.” Fergus hesitated. Surely riding was a sport for teenage girls, the kind that went to private schools and had mothers who wore Barbours and headscarves? But Eadlin grinned and held out her arm to him, one eyebrow lifted in a way that was a challenge as well as a question, with a flirtatious sparkle in her eye.
Twenty minutes later Eadlin walked slowly out of the barn with Fergus balancing on one arm, and the reins to a docile mare looped over the other. A young stable girl in jodhpurs and riding boots passed them, pushing a wheelbarrow full of horse muck. She cast an appraising eye over Fergus, and smirked at Eadlin as if sharing a private joke.
“Do many, er, men ride here?” Fergus began to feel out of his depth.
“There are about half a dozen guys who keep their horses here, mainly members of the local hunt. There’s a group of them hacking out over there.” Eadlin nodded towards a quartet mounting up outside the other barn, with Jake Herne among them.
“I thought hunting was banned these days.” The riders looked almost intimidatingly competent. Fergus let go of Eadlin’s arm and forced himself to walk upright, dominating his limp.
“The farmers have to keep the fox population under control somehow, and there’s no law against exercising your hounds. Sometimes a fox just gets in the way.” She grinned at his expression. “Laws made far away don’t always work out here. We’ve all learned just to get on with life and not to make so much fuss that people notice.”
Fergus stumbled as the quartet of hunters approached, and in an instant of panic and shame he felt Eadlin grab him under the arm and save him from falling. Jake Herne’s cheerful greeting from the saddle only added to his embarrassment.
“Take it steady.” Eadlin pulled his arm into the crook of her elbow, and squeezed his hand in reassurance. “Jake seems to have taken to you.” She stared after the group of riders. Fergus stretched himself upright and stood still beside her. The linking of arms had brought his forearm into contact with her breast and he savoured the softness until she walked him on towards the sand school.
Fergus wondered why Jake’s goodwill felt superficial, then winced at his own ingratitude. “Does he work here?”
“Nah. He’s landlord of a pub in the village called the Green Man. He usually rides in the mornings before opening up.”
“I went there yesterday, looking for you. It wasn’t a warm welcome.”
“That was probably Dick Hagman. He’s not the friendliest guy in the village.”
In the sand school Eadlin stood beside the horse and made a basket of her hands, with her legs flexed at the knee, forming a human mounting block ready to launch him into the saddle.
“Put your left knee in this.” The action pushed her breasts together, and as Fergus knelt on her locked hands their faces came close. Eadlin grinned at him with a sparkle of complicity in her eyes.
“Now you look where you’re going, not at my cleavage, or I’ll throw you all the way over!” There was no offence in her voice, just an earthy openness as she heaved him upwards.
Fergus had accepted the challenge to ride in the same way as he might accept a dare, not expecting to enjoy it, but half an hour later he was grinning like a lunatic. For four months he’d fought the frustrations of immobility. Now, even in his weakened state, vigorous movement became possible. Nudge with the right leg, and the horse moved left. Nudge with the left, she moved back to the right. Squeeze with both, and she started to trot, moving as fast as he would once have jogged. Trots were uncomfortable until Fergus learned to rise with them, matching his motion to the animal. The horse was a multiplier of strength, turning feeble signals into motion. For the first time since the crash he felt vital, liberated, and inhibited only by his lack of skill. It had been a long time since he felt so intensely alive.
“Sit up straight,” Eadlin shouted at him. “Keep your heels down.” The stream of instructions was non-stop. Then on one corner Fergus succumbed to his protesting leg muscles and sat back in the saddle, squeezing his legs harder against the mare’s sides in an attempt to keep his balance. The motion changed. It was as if the horse had found another gear, a faster pace that was alarming as well as exciting, and he snatched at the reins to slow her.
“Whoa!” Eadlin stepped into the horse’s path and brought her to a halt. Fergus, still unbalanced, started to roll forward over the neck until Eadlin reached up to brace him with her hand on his chest. Their eyes met and they grinned at each other, panting.
“That,” Eadlin said, “was a canter, and you ain’t ready for it yet!” She pushed his chest hard and Fergus slid back in the saddle, feeling mischievous and pleased with himse
lf.
It was a short lesson. Fergus’s leg muscles could only take so much. Eadlin walked beside his stirrup on the way back to the barn. Above her, Fergus sat upright and proud in the saddle, the grin painted on his face.
“You could be good.” Her praise sounded genuine. “You’ve good natural co-ordination and balance. You’re confident, probably too confident, but that will help the horse unless you do something stupid.”
“I’m going to buy some of your lessons.”
“Good! Actually, I’ve got another idea.” Eadlin paused as if unsure how to say something. “Let’s put the horse away and I’ll make you another coffee.”
Fergus walked taller as she led him back to the outdoor tables, hoping in vain for more contact along his forearm, and relishing the buzz of unfamiliar exercise. His muscles were shaking with the effort and he massaged his thighs while she made coffee. He was going to pay for this later.
“Yesterday you said that you’d been told to do something physical for the next few months.” He hadn’t heard her return.
“That’s right.” The conversation was going in a mildly alarming direction.
“How about helping out around here? You wouldn’t believe the amount of work involved in looking after horses. I can’t pay more than the minimum wage so people move on as soon as they find something better, and the teenagers can’t help during school hours.” Eadlin’s speech was rushed, the idea formulating as she spoke.
“But you’ve seen the state I’m in. I can’t even walk without a stick, yet, and I don’t know the first thing about looking after horses.” This was one crazy idea.
“You’ll get better. You couldn’t even walk without crutches yesterday. You could man the office at first, help me with things like the books and phones, so I could spend more time doing the heavy stuff, like.” There was a note of slight desperation in Eadlin’s voice, and Fergus began to feel guilty about his inevitable refusal.
“Eadlin,” Fergus tried to find a way of saying ‘no’ without hurting her feelings, “it’s a much more appealing idea than I would have believed an hour ago, but I don’t think it’s me.”
“I know the money’s crap but at least I could teach you to ride.” Eadlin still had a hopeful expression on her face. She wasn’t going to give up easily.
“Actually it’s not about the money. I’ve four months unspent salary sitting in the bank, and an insurance cheque coming that might even buy me a house. But I’m a businessman, with a job to go back to. I live by looking at a computer screen and making technology work.”
“Poor you. Ah well, it was an idea.” She seemed genuinely disappointed.
“But I will come back for the lessons. I wouldn’t miss all that shouting for anything.”
A smile flickered across Eadlin’s face but when she spoke it was with a note of caution.
“Don’t expect everything to be the same back at work. The last few months will have changed you. Even if everything around you is the same, you’ll be different. Give me your hand.” Puzzled, Fergus held out his right hand. Eadlin turned it palm upwards, holding it between both her own hands and pushing at his skin with her thumbs. Her touch was firm but gentle. It could have been a physician’s touch, but for the snags of hardened skin against his fingers from the calluses of physical work.
“Are you reading my palm?” Fergus was amused and slightly incredulous. Eadlin grunted, concentrating too hard for this to be a mere game or party trick. He bit back the urge to make some flippant remark about crossing her palm with silver like a fairground gipsy.
“Now give me your left hand.” Again that focused scrutiny, held for longer than it would take to read a page. “Now hold them both up. Show me your palms.” Eadlin watched the way his fingers splayed, and there was a look in her eyes that might have been concern. Fergus’s smile started to fade as she took back his right hand, now dropping her face close to it to explore the fine detail.
“Take care, Fergus.” The worry in Eadlin’s face as she looked up at him was disconcerting. Whatever it was that she had found, she believed it and it alarmed her.
“What can you see?”
“I’m not sure. There are signs I’ve never seen before.” Her uncertainty was more convincing than any confidence. Eadlin pushed again at the skin of his right palm with her thumbs. “You won’t be the same, I promise you. Your life will take a new path, even if you don’t know it yet. I see two crises, close together, as if the second is an echo of the first. It’s, like, linked to it in some way.”
Eadlin stared at him, reading his face as intently as she had read his palms. He returned her stare calmly, glimpsing something ageless within her, as if the freckles and freshness were merely a façade, and an ancient wisdom waited behind those grey eyes.
“I saw something in you yesterday, when you were with Trooper. I think you are open, sensitive even, in a way that you don’t yet understand.” Eadlin looked down at his right palm. Her mouth opened then closed without speech, as if she was unsure of what to say or how to say it.
“Tell me.”
“I could be wrong. I’ve never read signs like this before.” Another pause. “You’re different. It’s almost like you’re still between the worlds. You’ve touched the shadow world, but you’ve come back. You have no idea how rare that is. It’s like the shadow world hasn’t let you go, not yet. I think you’re still vulnerable. Take care, Fergus, please.”
Fergus wasn’t sure whether to be warmed by her concern or worried by her words, but before he could ask more there was a clatter of hooves as Jake Herne’s party rode onto the yard. Eadlin let his hand drop, pulling her own back into her lap with a small smile of apology and a slight shake of the head. He parked her words in the same mental corner as the tattooed tramp, knowing his mind would probe the space the way his tongue might play with a broken tooth, hard and jagged, an irritating snag to his wellbeing.
Chapter Thirteen
FERGUS DIDN’T FIT anymore. His discomfort was more than physical, more than the embarrassment of his stick-assisted progress through the office cubicle farm. He used to feel sharp, on the ball, at one with the hum. Now the horizon of glass and aluminium felt as confining as the hospital ward. Oh, the welcome was warm enough. Lots of backslapping and arm pumping. One or two even had the grace to apologise for not visiting him in hospital. But hey, they said, he could remember how rushed it gets around here. Others would make eye contact and look away, their smiles fading, as if they had seen something in Fergus’s eyes that unnerved them.
There was a shiny new laptop waiting for him, its password stuck to the screen with a Post-it note. God knew what had happened to the last one. Still spread over a hillside, probably. Fergus logged on, and looked around him while over four months of electronic vomit landed in his inbox. Near his workstation, the departmental notice board held the squash league, with his own name now the bottom layer of sediment.
Kate’s workspace had been reallocated. Inevitable, really. There were different photographs pinned to its partition screens, and pressed male chinos stretched into the walkway where there used to be stockings and those distracting, untouchable legs. The owner of the chinos introduced himself in a California accent as “the new Kate”. The new Kate. God, it made her sound like a piece of machinery that had broken and been replaced.
“You’re the wrong shape,” was all Fergus could think of in reply.
“Oh yeah.” A laddish chuckle. “I hear she was pretty hot.”
Fergus turned away. He had no words for this man.
“Take care,” his cubicle neighbour warned him afterwards, “he’s well connected. They call him the Rock Star, the best salesman in the States, flown in to plug the gap and learn about international markets. He’ll be in the Boardroom one day.” Fergus watched the Rock Star strutting around the office, radiating ego like a bow wave, and loathed him on sight. The new Kate was a Swing Dick.
The office routines still operated as if nothing had happened. The Sales Director
gave his Monday morning team briefing, all exhortations and adrenaline as he strutted his stuff in the conference room. Behind him, a projection screen showed spread sheet graphics: sales achieved, ‘must win’ orders to reach the March quarter target, stretch objectives, failure not an option. One by one, the sales managers stood to commit their forecasts, their voices intense, religious in their fervour, devotees boasting their creed in values and probabilities. And with each commitment, the new Silicon Valley evangelist would punch the air and call “awesome”, uh-sum. No-one else seemed to find it funny. Fergus looked around the room at the team, feeling an observer rather than a member. It dawned on him that he had lost his faith.
Fergus ignored his email queue. It was much more interesting to launch his browser and Google ‘Allingley Bog Man’ and wade through thousands of hits. National press, some of it, so the Saxon’s discovery had been big news. He clicked on the most likely link, swallowing as the page loaded. There was something about his interest that was beyond morbid, it was almost prurient. One of the first web pages even had a photograph, an edge-of-the-trench shot where the Saxon’s limbs were just contours of mud within mud, and the orange-haired, mahogany head was a grisly troll toy lying in the wet. The article told him little he did not already know. He clicked on.
A video clip from regional television had an interview with Professor Miles Eaton, the media face of archaeology, smiling at the camera, lecturing the public about the significance of ‘his’ find. Fergus could see Clare moving in the trench in the background. The clip cut to a close-up of the find’s head, but there was nothing in that ginger-and-chocolate sculpture that he could relate to the figure he had seen by the car. Even if he froze the frame, there was just a shadow above the nose that might have been a tattoo, a mere darkening of shade.
Finally, within an academic publication, was a close up of the face in high resolution, under strong light. Fergus swallowed again, and shivered. He had a sense that he was looking at the world through a glass sphere, like a fishbowl. Outside the bowl, the office throbbed. Phone calls, printers, conversations laced with the tension of deadlines, progress, and pressure. Inside the bowl, he ran a hand over his eyes. His skin was cold and clammy under his fingers. He hadn’t expected that reaction. He hadn’t expected to find stark evidence, either. He reached out to touch the screen as if its cold hardness could confirm the reality of the image it showed. Quite clearly now, he could make out the inverted triangle of a stag’s head with leaf-like ears, and a spray of antlers rising above each orange eyebrow.
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