Saxon's Bane

by Geoffrey Gudgion

  “It will be a clear, bright night.” Clare nodded at the moon.

  “If you’re planning some illicit research in the woods, I’d leave it. If you’re caught there’s no chance he’ll agree to access.”

  Clare smiled and squeezed his arm in reassurance as she left.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  CLARE PARKED HER car where the bridleway joined the Downs road, and checked the pockets of her anorak. Digital camera, freshly charged. Notepad, biro. Mobile phone. There was even a pair of compact binoculars from a previous walk. And in her hand, a large, police-style torch, powerful enough to throw a light across the face of the stone that would emphasise the shadows of carvings, even under a camera flash. Clare snapped it on, and the beam speared into the trees like a motorcycle headlight, throwing everything else into shades of blackness.

  Too much. The torch was a harsh, manufactured intrusion. Without it, the moon reclaimed the night, filling the air with silver and making the landscape itself shine in shades of pearlescent grey. Clare stood by the car to let her eyes adjust to the dark, wondering at the night sky in the deep country where the stars are fatter and set in a continuous orb that hangs close to the earth. Below the road, a fox trotted purposefully across a field, one with its moon shadow.

  In front of Clare the bridleway was a pale ribbon between the between the trees. Even here, she did not need the torch, although the woods faded into blackness either side of her. Small, furtive movements scurried away from her in the darkness as she walked. Clare froze, shivering, as an animal screamed nearby, the victim of an unseen kill, and her ears searched the following silence.

  Sound carries a long way on a still night. At the edge of hearing was a murmur that might have been a road or a crowd. Clare walked on towards the sound until the reflected glow of a fire touching a distant branch, gold on silver, confirmed her fears. Still Clare kept going, intrigued, reasoning with herself as she walked. Their eyes would be dazzled by the fire. She could hide in the shadows if anyone came. She could outrun anyone in the village if needed. She wanted to see what they were doing.

  Clare’s resolve faltered at the second fork, where the gate with its ‘Private’ sign hung open. By now the noise could only be people, a jumbled sound that might have been a celebration or even a fight, a discordant intrusion into the night. Where the track crossed the stream below her, a line of 4X4 vehicles reflected the glow of a fire. Beyond the screening bank of rhododendrons, the inebriated giggle of a woman was shushed and a lone male voice cried out in a strong baritone, the words indistinct through the bushes. The call prompted an answering bellow from many voices, call and answer repeating in a parody of a church service, priest and congregation, bidding and response. Above the noise of the ritual, Clare’s own breath was loud in her nostrils, pulling in oxygen that was laced with wood smoke. She kept walking along the bridleway, slowly now, placing her feet with care, watching for the gap ploughed through the bushes by Fergus’s car.

  The gap was too narrow, the bank of bushes too deep. Clare could only see a strip across the clearing below, and that was partly obscured by leaves. Her view sliced across the edge of a circle of figures that faced inwards towards the unseen fire, towards the rune stone. Clare swallowed and felt her heart begin to pound as she realised that the figures were inhuman. The outlines of the two forms that were in full view were obscured by dark cloaks, but both held flaming torches in front of them and the wolf’s head on the nearest was clearly visible. Clare stared at it, dry-mouthed, until she saw that the hands that emerged from the cloak to grip the torch belonged to a man, not an animal, and that human hair was falling beneath the hawk’s head on another. Her rational side over-ruled the instinct to scream and flee. The sounds filling the air were human voices, repeating the same indistinct words over and over in a ritual chant. Clare backed away, her heartbeat slowing.

  By the time she reached the open gate down to the clearing, Clare was berating herself for her panic. In front of her, the bridle path stretched back towards the village, a line of moonlight through the trees, a clean route out. Down the track, the glow reflecting on the cars told her that she would have a clear view of the ritual from the bottom of the track. Just one look. Clare had a brief mental image of her dream where Kate had held up her hand, palm outwards in the sign to stop, but she brushed the image aside. They were only people, after all, just people in animal masks.

  She moved to the side of the track, into the deep shadow under the bushes, and crept down the hill. The noise of her foot crunching a layer of dried leaves sounded deafening and she froze, holding her breath. The pattern of sound was changing, gathering menace, but there were no signs that anyone had heard. Clare exhaled, lifted her foot as gently as she would extract ancient pottery from the soil, and placed it behind her. She stood in clear moonlight on the track, no longer sure. Beyond the bushes the chant changed tempo, gathering pace and volume like an engine of hate, as if the ritual was moving towards a climax. Below her she noticed a gap in the shrubbery, a narrow passage where moonlight reached to the ground, snaking towards the fire. It enticed her in, absorbing her into the shadows. Finally, from deep within the bush, Clare could crouch into a position where she had a leaf-dappled view of the whole clearing.

  Eleven figures, all focused on the rune stone. There was movement beyond, partially obscured by the fire, and eleven became thirteen as two more masked forms appeared, dragging an animal with ropes that had been tied to its horns. Clear within the chanting she heard the terrified bleating of a goat. Clare pulled at a small branch to find a better view, and saw the goat pulled into the rune stone so its chest was on the side away from the fire, with the ropes from its horns stretching its neck over the stone’s top and forcing its chin down onto the carved face. The bleating became strangled and the beast’s hooves thrashed frantically at the ground on the far side.

  A figure wearing a goat’s head mask with curving, scimitar horns separated from the circle and squared up to the stone, hefting a massive, two-handed sword. Clare’s hand flew to her mouth, releasing the branch, so she didn’t see the blow, but the sound was a wet, meatcleaver thump, immediately followed by a spade-like noise as the sword-tip hit the turf. The sound resonated with her nightmares and she squirmed in her hidingplace, but still grabbed at the branch to clear her view as a roar of approval spread through the group.

  It took a moment for Clare to realise that the jet of black liquid in the air was blood. An analytical corner of her brain wondered at the pressure that could force such a spurt, but what caught her attention immediately afterwards was the pattern of the blood as it flowed down the stone. She released the branch, reached into her pocket for her binoculars, and crouched awkwardly to peer through a lower gap in the leaves. The headless body of the goat had fallen out of sight, but the flow of its blood down the carved surface was separating, spreading into individual trickles that found channels on their way to the ground. The chanting had ceased, and cloaked figures were moving in the clearing, passing across her line of sight. All Clare’s senses screamed that it was time to go, but the pattern of blood demanded her attention. As she focused the binoculars on the stone, one line found the elk rune, flowed down its shaft, and paused, swelling, until it split to explore the three tributary branches, colouring the rune with blood. Algiz reversed. Hidden danger. Divine retribution.

  The bush shook as a body crashed into it and Clare stifled a scream, shocked into immobility, her eyes swivelling to search for the threat. A few feet away, a cloaked figure in a mask that might have been a squirrel or a rat began to back into the bush.

  “… don’t wanna do it on the ground. Too friggin’ cold.” A woman’s voice, apparently drunk. “There’s a branch in ’ere. Jus’ the right height.” Clare hadn’t been seen, not yet. She started breathing, forcing herself to take shallow, quiet breaths. She eased out of her crouch and began to back out of the bush, placing one foot behind the other, ready to freeze at the first crackle of a dried leaf. Beyond the wo
man another figure blundered into the foliage.

  “Where the fuck are you, then?” Male, probably middle-aged, also drunk. A mask that might have been a wolf’s head was pulled off and a face peered into the body of the shrub. Clare tugged the hood of her anorak over her face and tried to become as still as the leaves around her. Giggles and a lecherous chuckle came from nearby. The revellers had found each other. Clare guessed that a heavy movement of the bush was the woman being lifted onto a branch. More giggles, followed by the fumbling noises of clothing being unfastened.

  Clare was locked into an unnatural crouch that she knew she could not sustain; already the ache was building in one leg. When she heard sucking sounds and a small, female moan Clare looked up, hoping she might have a chance to slip away. They were close, too close. The woman would only have to look over her shoulder and Clare would be in clear view, but the rat mask was looking downwards to where the man’s face was buried in her breasts. As gently as a T’ai Chi exercise in slow motion, Clare eased the police torch into her hand and straightened, rocking backwards onto her rear foot. Good. Now another step.

  The mask swivelled at Clare at the crunch of the leaf, its nose pointing directly towards her, and the woman squealed.

  “There’s somebody there.” She pulled her cloak protectively over her breasts, and kicked the man in the back with her heel. “There’s a fucking peeping Tom in the bushes.”

  The man lifted his head from her body. Clare snapped on the police torch, blinding them, and burning a grotesque instant in her mind: the rat- or squirrelmasked woman had her legs wrapped round a paunchy man with his face screwed up against the light and his trousers and underpants around his ankles. Clare spun round, and burst out of the bushes onto the track as if the starting pistol had just been fired on a hundred metre sprint. Behind her she could hear the woman screaming, with male voices now calling out in alarm.

  Stupid bloody girl, Clare berated herself as she ran. Curiosity damned nearly got you in deep shit. But no matter, they wouldn’t have recognised her. Clare eased out of the sprint into the kind of pace she could sustain for a mile, resenting the weight of the anorak and the bounce of equipment against her body.

  Headlights cut the night behind her, swinging in rapid arcs as a vehicle was manoeuvred to follow. Clare did not turn, but stretched back into a sprinting pace as she heard the pursuit climbing the track towards the gate. She was still close enough to hear the angry revving of its diesel. Clare knew this sense of impending disaster, this inability to outrun doom. It went with meat cleaver sounds of weapons hitting flesh. She could have covered no more than half the distance back to her car when the headlights swung off the lower track onto the bridleway, and she dived into the woods before the beams could mark her position. No way could she outrun pursuit and reach her car first.

  It was dark under the trees, and switches of hazel whipped at her face, impeding progress. Clare stumbled over a fallen branch and stayed low as the first vehicle went by, no more than twenty yards below. Panting, she squatted in the undergrowth and watched. More vehicles drove down the bridle path beneath her, their lights and sounds fading downhill towards the village. One turned uphill, and soon afterwards passed above her on the Downs road. One set of lights did not fade, but were extinguished somewhere the other side of the intervening woods, and she guessed that a vehicle had stayed where the bridleway met the road, waiting for her. Clare huddled deeper into her anorak, shivering as the sweat cooled on her body, swore quietly to herself. They’d recognise her car. Maybe it was a good job that the dig was ending. She settled down to wait.

  Half an hour later, other noises that Clare could not identify carried through the night. They sounded like blows, and the tinkling sounds of breaking glass. Shortly afterwards the hidden vehicle moved away, but Clare waited ten more minutes before emerging from under the trees, rubbing her arms for warmth as she stepped onto the bridleway. She stood at the edge of the shadows, listening and watching, until she was sure that there was no human movement nearby. Some mad corner of Clare’s mind suggested she return to the rune stone, but she shuddered at the thought and started walking towards the road. She’d had all the excitement she could handle for one night.

  Clare was near the end of the bridle path, and relishing the thought of surrounding herself with familiar metal, when the lights of another car stopped on the road. She was close enough to hear the slamming of its door. The bastards hadn’t given up. A minute later a torch started moving towards her, and Clare climbed back into the undergrowth, cursing.

  The figure passing beneath her was moving strangely. The walk was hesitant, almost limping.

  “Fergus?”

  The figure on the path yelped, and its torch spun and probed the bushes.

  “Jeez, Clare, you frightened the shit out of me.” His voice sounded high and strained.

  Clare scrambled out of the undergrowth, holding her hand up against the glare of the torch. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was worried about you. I guessed you’d gone to the rune stone when you didn’t come back.” Fergus was gabbling. Clare could see he was seriously spooked. “Then I found your car and I thought…” Fergus waved down the bridle path towards the clearing. He was wide-eyed and breathing heavily. More than spooked, he was terrified. “Someone’s trashed your car.”

  She swore. “Badly?”

  “Tyres, lights, windows. They’ve scratched words into the paintwork.”

  “You came back for me.” Fergus’s face told Clare what it must have cost him to come to this place, on his own, in the dark. She stood on tiptoes and kissed him. “Thank you.” He stared at her, too rattled to respond, so she slipped her arm inside his and walked him towards the cars.

  “What happened, Clare?”

  “I blundered in on Jake Herne’s esbat.” She told him the story of the evening.

  “But why was it so important for you to go there tonight? That stone isn’t going anywhere.”

  “But I am. The dig’s finishing this week.”

  “I’ll miss you.”

  Clare squeezed his arm a little tighter.

  “Come and see me. I’ll show you the Saxon, if you want.”

  “We might have different ideas of a wild night out, but I’ll come anyway.” The tension seemed to be leaving him as they reached the road. “I’ll walk back there with you, if you like, tomorrow. To the stone, that is. In daylight.” His voice sounded unnaturally light, as if he was forcing himself to make little of the offer. “Keep watch from the bridleway, perhaps, and make sure you aren’t disturbed.”

  Clare paused before answering, guessing what the offer must have cost. “Are you sure?”

  “It took me by surprise, the first time. I’ll be prepared now, and I don’t like boundaries. Especially the ones I build in my own head.”

  Clare might have kissed him again for that offer, but she’d just seen the state of her ancient Volvo, slumped on four flat tyres and crying tears of glass and cable from its lights. She felt Fergus’s arm move to hug her round the shoulder.

  “You can borrow mine, if you want.” Fergus nodded at his little Audi. “I hardly use it, these days.”

  “Fergus, I’m frightened.” Clare held him more closely. She could make out the words ‘GO HOME BITCH’ scratched down the side of her car. “What have I got myself into?”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  AS THE SUN rose Tony Foulkes pulled his front door shut behind him, lifted his head and sniffed the morning air. His Labrador dropped her nose into the grass, moving with the happy urgency of a dog bombarded by the scents of overnight trails. Tony’s more elevated nostrils relished damp earth and blossom, the crispness of ground frost in the hollows, and the promise of a fine day. It was a day to lift the spirit, a day to rejoice in this cerulean lightness at an hour that had been locked in darkness only a few weeks before. This was Tony’s favourite time, the time when the village began to stir, an hour he shared only with a few of the doggy fraternity and t
he van delivering to the village shop. Out on the farms, the day would already be well advanced, but here in the village the early risers were a small communion of friends whose faces lit with their daily greetings.

  Tony whistled the dog back to him as he climbed the hill and turned into the churchyard, following his new morning routine. Ever since the blood on the church door he’d started his morning walk with a turn around the church, just to be sure that all was well. Besides, Tony thought, it was an opportunity to perform small services of care among the graves. To pull a weed or to set a tumbled jam jar of flowers right was as much an act of worship as the way his Julia polished the brass eagle lectern in the church every week. There was a quiet joy in small, unseen acts of giving.

  This morning something made the dog nervous. She ran off as usual with her tail sweeping moisture from the long grass, but came back to him rapidly, whining, with her tail now clamped between her legs. Tony crouched to pet her, looking back along the double line her paws had made through the dew as she slunk back from the yew tree corner of the churchyard. Along that path a Victorian stone angel spread its wings, marking the grave of long-forgotten gentry, and it was a monstrosity in Tony’s eyes. Why not a Christian cross, or a simple headstone, he wondered, or even the proud embellishments of a heraldic tomb. Anything but the stone emotion of weeping angels. Today there was something new there, something his eyes could not interpret, a bright flash of scarlet hanging high and partly hidden by the marble wings. Puzzled, Tony walked closer, trying to decipher what he was seeing in the shadows beyond the angel, back where the yew’s ancient darkness bordered the churchyard wall.

  At first Tony thought he was looking at a hobby horse, the old-fashioned child’s toy with a stylised horse’s head on a long stick, but this hobby horse had a disproportionately large, red tongue sticking out of its mouth. Then he noticed the horns on the animal’s head and felt the tightness across his chest as the shape resolved into a severed goat’s head, impaled on a stake and staring at the church with its glazed, dead eyes. Tony now saw that the impossibly large, scarlet tongue was a church hymn book which had been stuffed into the beast’s mouth.