Bellowing his anger, Tony rushed at the stake and wrenched at it, but the tightness across his chest focused into an ache that sank into his left arm so he heaved again, one-handed with his left arm trailing, consumed by the need to throw the vile thing beyond sacred ground. But his growls of effort became a groan of agony as his chest exploded in crackling filigrees of pain, and Tony staggered, leaning on the stake for support. For a moment he stayed there in obscene intimacy, eye to eye with the severed head until his legs collapsed involuntarily, making him appear to kneel in homage with his head bowed and his hand still clasped around the stake. Then another spasm creased him over and Tony fell, tumbling on his side between the graves. As he let go of the stake it sprang away from him, shaking the desecrated book free from the goat’s mouth.
The dew-soaked grass bathed his face like a touch of grace and for a moment the pain subsided. In front of his nose a damp, limp Hymns Ancient and Modern, the tool of his chorister’s trade, had fallen open at a verse.
Just as I am, of that free love
The breadth, length, depth, and height to prove,
Here for a season, then above,
O Lamb of God, I come.
Not yet, Tony tried to say, not yet. Then pain gripped his chest and his soundless cry was not for his God but for his wife. His outstretched hand clutched at air, wanting not the hand of his Saviour but the comfort of his soul friend.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
FERGUS WATCHED HIS own car arrive at Ash Farm and winced as it mounted the verge before Clare corrected the steering. He left his barrow load of hay, and walked to meet her as she stopped at an angle in the car park. He decided that her parking was no better than her driving. The face that emerged to look at him across the top of the car was wide-eyed and pale.
“Tony Foulkes is dead.” Clare was unable to say more, and flapped a hand in front of her as if the words she needed would not come. “It… goat…” She grabbed at his shirt as he came close, pulling it fretfully until he folded her into his arms and shushed her as he might a child. Her shoulders began to shake as the tears started. There must be more to this than the death of a man she scarcely knew.
“I found him, in the churchyard,” Clare sobbed into his chest. “Lying between the graves. Heard his dog as I came back from a run. She was beside him, howling.”
Fergus stroked her back. “D’you know how it happened?”
“They killed him. Herne’s lot.” His hand slowed until he held her loosely, feeling that a trapdoor had just opened over an abyss. Fergus lifted his hands to her shoulders and pushed her away until he could look into her eyes. The fear he saw there softened his voice. “What makes you say that?”
Fergus could see the struggle in her face, the academic need to present data pushing aside a more basic, emotional instinct. “It’s called a nithing pole. Pagan cultures used them as an extreme form of cursing. They’d sacrifice an animal and jam its head on a stick, see, then point it towards an enemy with curse runes carved into the stake. Sometimes they’d put something the enemy valued into the beast’s mouth to strengthen the curse.”
The confusion must have shown in his face. Clare hit his chest with her fist, not hard enough to hurt, just enough to show her frustration. “Last night they killed a goat. I saw them do it. This morning Tony died underneath a goat’s head nithing pole with a hymn book stuffed in its mouth.”
Fergus stared at her, feeling his face slacken as acceptance numbed him. “The police?”
“They arrived just after the ambulance. I tried to tell them about last night but they seemed to think I was mad. I don’t think dealing with Satanic rituals is in their instruction manual.”
“But the… pole thing?”
“They took it away with them. One of them pointed out that I can’t prove who put it there, and they don’t think anyone could prove it caused Tony’s death. The ambulance men said it looked like Tony had a heart attack.”
Behind Fergus the repeater bell for the office phone jangled over the yard. He ignored it.
“It might be a coincidence. Natural causes.”
“You didn’t see that poor beast slaughtered. What’s going on, Fergus?” He stared at her, finding no words to take away the fear in her eyes. The repeater bell snapped off as the call diverted to the answering machine.
“He’s here.” Clare tensed and looked past his shoulder. Jake Herne was walking out of the barn towards the office.
“He rode early this morning. He was in a foul mood.”
Herne saw them and paused to stare, then jerked a hand upwards towards Clare, middle finger extended into an insult, and mouthed ‘bitch’. The repeater bell started again, insistent.
Fergus felt his control start to slide. He recognised the feeling now, the sense that events were driving him, that he was sliding towards rage beneath outward calm. He had as much power to halt his lurching march towards Herne as he would have to stop a dive from a cliff into the sea, despite Clare’s pleas for caution from beside him. Only the nature of the impact was undecided.
Eadlin overtook Fergus, running towards the office, muttering something about “answer the bloody phone, can’t you?” as she followed Herne through the door. Normal life continued as a backdrop to the coming collision.
Fergus stopped in the doorway, unsure how to start. Herne looked up from where he was writing instructions about his horse’s care in the livery book, and glared as Clare pushed into the room behind Fergus. The look was unpleasant but not abnormal, and the realisation hit Fergus. He doesn’t know. Eadlin was standing by the desk, talking into the telephone.
“Hi Russ… No I haven’t…” Her stillness became palpable. Eadlin stared at Herne, mouth gaping in shock. “Yes, I’m still here... Russ, I heard you... Jake’s with me now. Call you back.” She replaced the receiver slowly. “What?” Jake’s tone was aggressive.
“Oh Jake, how could you? A sodding nithing pole in the churchyard? What got into you?”
“So fucking what?”
“So Tony Foulkes died this morning, right beside it, that’s what.” Clare’s voice shook. Good girl, Fergus thought. Scared half witless and she’s still standing up to him.
Herne’s face widened in surprise, then stretched into the kind of rictus grin that Fergus had seen on salesmen as they receive the news of a major, unexpected win. The expression of conquest was almost sexual as he pulled his arm into a clenched fist of triumph.
“It fucking worked!” His elation seemed mixed with wonder.
“Jake, what’s happening to you?” Eadlin was stunned by his reaction, and her voice rose into a shout. It was the first time Fergus had seen her lose her composure. “Listen to yourself, for fuck’s sake! A man’s dead.”
“Now that priest won’t dare mess with me.” Herne ignored her, and strutted around the room with his arm flexed, making short, punching movements with his fist. “It fucking worked!”
Fergus felt the remains of his self-control slip away. Until this moment he’d kept violence in check because he knew that Herne would beat him to a pulp if it came to a fight. Now Fergus looked around the room for a weapon. Beside him, at the door, was the rack of riding crops and schooling whips, flimsy things as weapons but in their midst was his wooden walking stick, discarded since his return. Fergus pulled it out, momentarily exploring the thick, root-ball handgrip before he held it lightly by its tip, with the heavy end swinging by his leg like a club. The threat was unmistakable. It was strange how calm he became as he discarded the conventions of normal behaviour.
“You’ve caused the death of a decent old man, and you’re happy about it?” Even his voice sounded calm.
“You don’t frighten me, you little spastic.”
“Nithing poles were always thought to be an underhand way of fighting.” Clare moved to stand alongside Fergus. “They were the last resort of cowards who would not confront their enemies in open combat.” Fergus had not heard that steel in her voice before.
“Fuck off, y
ou interfering little bitch, this is nothing to do with you. If you keep poking your nose into other people’s business, you’ll end up with a lot worse than slashed tyres. And you,” Herne waved back-handed at Fergus, close enough to his face to multiply the insult, “can get the fuck out of here.”
“I’ll go when Eadlin says I should go, not you.”
“Fergus, stay where you are, please.”
“So that’s the way it is, is it? Does this little spastic want to get inside your knickers?”
“It’s no business of yours, but he’s a friend and that’s all, but a better friend than you’ll ever be.”
“And right now it looks as if Eadlin needs a few friends.”
Herne stepped up to Fergus, moving inside the swing of the stick before Fergus could lift it, and jabbed him in the chest with his finger. As Herne spoke flecks of spittle sprayed into Fergus’s face and he turned his head in disgust.
“I told you to get out, boy. Don’t ever come between a real man and his lover.” That was a strange choice of word, Fergus thought. He would have expected ‘woman’ or ‘girl’, but not ‘lover’. It was too soft a word, too tender. Perhaps it was a country thing.
“Real man? Lover?” Anger tightened Eadlin’s tone into a snarl. “You were never my lover. You just rutted, like an animal. Your idea of foreplay had as much sex appeal as a snuffling pig.”
Herne crossed the room in two strides, moving surprisingly swiftly for a man of his bulk, winding his shoulders for a blow. The movement opened the range and Fergus took a half step forwards, preparing his own blow, but Jake moved too fast. Herne uncoiled in a backhanded swipe across Eadlin’s face that snapped her head to the side and lifted her backwards across the room even as Fergus hefted his stick and swung. He tracked the swing of Herne’s hand the way he would track a cricket ball bowled wide and high in a predictable trajectory so that it could be swept safely to the boundary. The stick’s club grip and Herne’s hand connected with cold precision and a sound that held the faint, wet gravel noise of breaking bones. It was as satisfying as hearing the cricket ball hit the sweet spot, knowing it would fly for six. Herne howled and kept spinning, folding as he spun to nurse his hand in his stomach.
“You little shit!” Herne crouched over his hand, cradling it in his other arm as he squatted on his haunches. “You broke my fucking hand!”
Fergus stared at him, stunned by what he had just done. His anger had burst in that single blow, leaving him with an illogical instinct to apologise. He looked down at his stick, resisting the urge to throw it away. “I think you’d better go.”
“I’ll fucking murder you.” Now Herne was on his feet, pacing the room with the hand hugged under his arm, bowing his torso repeatedly as if in some arcane ritual of dance.
“Get out, Jake.” Eadlin rested against the desk, moving her jaw experimentally. She wiped her mouth with the back of a hand, and looked down at the streak of blood that it left. “Get out, and take your horse with you.” Her voice was muffled by the bloody slush in her mouth. “I want you off this yard as soon as you can move your horse.”
The look Herne gave them was pure malice. “You’ll regret this, all of you. I’ll have you begging for mercy before I’m finished.”
Fergus rested his backside against the desk as his reaction to the moment weakened his knees.
“Not before we’ve made you beg Julia Foulkes for her forgiveness.” Clare’s voice still held that note of authority. “The pity is that she’s so Christian that she’d probably give it.”
Fergus gripped the stick harder to mask the shakes that were building in his hands. He realised that this made him look more aggressive. “Just get out.”
“You have no idea who you’re messing with. And what.”
Clare shut the door behind him. Fergus took one hand off his stick and stared at it. It was becoming a pattern. Rage then shakes, and a sense of guilt or failure.
“What’s happening to me? I haven’t hit anyone since primary school.”
“He deserved it.” Fergus heard the mess in Eadlin’s mouth and turned to look at her.
“You OK?”
Eadlin nodded, massaging her jaw. “Thanks. He wasn’t always like that, really.” There was desperation in her voice, as if she needed to apologise for her former boyfriend. “He’s changing. It’s like this thing is taking him over.” She wiped blood from her mouth onto a handkerchief. “And I think you’ve made a serious enemy. Jake won’t forgive what you just did.”
“Something tells me I’m lucky that the dig’s finishing and I’m moving out.” Clare had slumped into one of the leather armchairs. She stared at Fergus and he understood. But I still have no answers.
Chapter Thirty
CLARE ROLLS HER head against her pillow as if in a fever. Woods encircle her, imprisoning her, grey shapes in a mist that drips menace. At their margins, spreading onto the fields, warriors stand with their spears upright, lethal saplings fringing the forest. Then the woods start running towards the settlement but it is warriors not trees, and leading the charge is Tony Foulkes who bounds over the tussocks of grass shouting a war cry. Clare wants to call to him to take care because he will give himself a heart attack, but Tony is helmeted and cross-gartered and carries an axe and wants to kill her.
Aegl’s arrow takes Tony square in the chest so that he slides forward a full pace on his knees under his own momentum, and as he falls a great groan of loss stumbles through the Wealas ranks. Their spears sink back to the edge of the woods the way a wave retreats from a beach, until Wealas and Saxon stare at each other across open land where a king lies dead, a goosefeather flower blooming from his heart.
Five men leave the trees, four warriors with sheathed weapons walking in a square around an old greybeard with the robe and staff of a druid. In the opaque, drifting rain they march like an honour guard of ghosts come to collect their dead. The old man leans on his staff as if overtaken by infirmity, while behind him the four warriors make a table of their shields and lift their king onto their shoulders. In silence they bear him from the field, giving him honour with their dignity, until the druid stands alone. He stares at the settlement with the wind flapping his cloak around his knees and blowing drips of water from the fluttering ends of his beard, and the druid’s presence strikes them with more force than any king’s. When he speaks it is in their own tongue, with the lilting accent of his race, and a voice that carries to the wall with the clarity of a bard so that all can hear.
“Every man will die, but one. Your women will become the playthings and slaves of our warriors. This is sure. But you,” the druid points his staff at Aegl, “your bane is that you will not die. For you there will be no balefire, no release. You will spend eternity lost in this world and even fifty generations hence you will still yearn for the halls of your ancestors.”
He speaks with calm dignity, the way one tells an inarguable truth, with none of the screaming passion of a curse. Such utter certainty is chilling. Then he turns and walks back towards the woods, leaning heavily on his staff as if he has expended much power and is drained. When he reaches the trees the grey, flapping cloak is swallowed among the trunks and the tightening ring of warriors.
Chapter Thirty-One
“ARE YOU ok with leaving your car here?” Clare parked Fergus’s car off the road, above the bridleway, where it could at least be partially screened by bushes. Fergus shrugged. He was more concerned about walking back to the clearing than about what might happen to his company car.
“What’s happening to your own car?”
“Russell’s fixing it for me. And hey, who have you been seeing?” She reached past his shoulder and pulled a long, blonde hair from the passenger headrest.
“That’ll be Kate’s. I hadn’t the heart to throw it away.” Clare stared at the thread in her hand as if it held the answer to some profound question, the way he had seen her stare at Olrun’s tooth.
“And you think that I’m morbid? May I?” At Fergus’s nod of
permission, Clare coiled the hair into the silver pillbox from her pocket. “I have a theory I’d like to test.”
Fergus heaved himself out. Clare had just saved him the need to throw the hair away. That had always seemed too symbolic. Clare followed, opened the boot of Fergus’s car and pulled out a rucksack. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Sure.” He knew he spoke too brightly. “Why the bag? It looks like you’re mounting an expedition.” Clare was tying a blanket to the rucksack.
“It’s a lovely afternoon. I brought a bottle of wine and some sandwiches. I thought we might have a farewell picnic afterwards, if you want.” Clare also spoke too lightly, in a way that failed to hide a deeper significance.
“Good idea. I, er, brought my stick.” Fergus lifted it in superfluous illustration. “To beat off the bad guys.”
“Do you realise you’ve become quite a hero with Mary Baxter and the church crowd? Tony’s death and your run-in with Herne are the only topics of conversation in the village.” Clare shrugged into the rucksack as they started walking.
“Very gratifying, but I’ll still avoid dark alleyways for a while. I don’t think he’s going to forgive and forget.”
“I’m probably just as much in the poo. He chased me down this track after I took a peek at his party.”
“What exactly did you see? I was a bit distracted the other night.” And a bit distracted now, come to that. The track ahead of them darkened where it entered the shadow of the hill, then darkened again as it reached the rhododendrons. Face the pain. It is an obstacle, not a boundary.
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