Fergus snorted. The whole plan sounded surreal. It also excluded him.
Eadlin reached across and touched his arm. “Cheer up. You’ll see her on Monday, but Clare wants to keep her distance until the burial. She wants to be with you, but you might have to take things gently for a while.”
“Tell her, I mean…” He didn’t know how to say what he wanted.
“I’ll give her a hug for you.”
They rode in silence while he absorbed the news.
“Russell told you about Jake Herne’s threats?” Eadlin’s question was rhetorical. “Have you decided what you’re going to do?”
“Sure. I’m staying. This place,” he gestured at the scenery, “gets under your skin.” Fergus faltered when the poetry in his mouth seemed too rich to be spoken, even to Eadlin. He’d been about to blurt out a musical analogy, about how the scenery had been an Elgar landscape when he first arrived, strong and showing its bones in the way the flints streaked the shoulders of the fields with white. Soon it would be a Vaughan Williams landscape, a sweeter place of larks hovering over crops and trees dozing in the sun.
“Take your time,” Eadlin prompted him.
“Time, exactly. Pace here means the thump of hooves on turf. It used to mean the speed at which I could clear emails.”
“Allingley isn’t the only beautiful place in England. But it’s probably the only one where someone wants to kill you.”
“I know I’ve only been here a couple of months, but Allingley is starting to feel like home. Besides, I’m bloody-minded when I’m pushed.”
“Well, make sure your stubbornness doesn’t get you killed. I don’t want you to go, but this ain’t your fight. You came here to get fit and I’d say you’ve done that. There’s no comparison to how you were nearly two months ago.”
“Actually there’s something else, something I don’t understand yet.” Fergus was silent for several strides of their horses. The freshly-washed atmosphere after the thunderstorm helped him to think, bringing his mind into sharp focus like the countryside around them. The path led into the stand of trees, and as they entered the cavern of leaf he found the words.
“When you showed me that place where you’re going to bury the Saxon, it was as if you had given me a glimpse of something good, a harmony that connected everything.” Eadlin nodded. “Well there was a moment like that in the church at Tony’s funeral. It was as if all that harmony had concentrated and found me, even touched me.”
“I told you, you’re sensitive.” Eadlin showed no surprise at his revelation.
“Psychic, you mean?”
“Nah. Just sensitive. Receptive to things most people don’t see. It’s a gift.”
“So what am I supposed to do with this gift?”
“Only you can answer that.”
“Well that moment in the church is the other reason why I’ll stay. Maybe even the main reason. Here I’m connected, like I’m part of the story. My life has meaning here, even if I don’t yet know what that meaning might be.”
“Maybe that explains what I saw in your palms when you first arrived.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“You touched the shadow world. Very few people come back from that. Maybe you make it easier for the shadow world to touch this one.”
Fergus had the sense that he had just learned a profound truth.
“So Clare might be right about me giving her nightmares?”
“Could be. Who knows? But if you stay, remember what I said about you being vulnerable. Watch your back.”
“Right now I feel very much part of this world.” Ahead of them, the late afternoon sunlight broke through the cloud, angling through the far edge of the wood in a mosaic of green and gold.
“D’you remember how I cantered away from you that day when we rode to the spring?” Eadlin’s voice lifted, changing the mood.
“And I lumbered after you watching your bum disappear into the distance. Yes, I remember. It inspired me to deserve a faster horse!”
“Sometimes, a blast of speed is a great cure for stress.” Eadlin watched him carefully, evaluating his riding. “You’re managing Trooper ok, but straighten up, relax. Listen to his motion. Imagine you’re taking his pulse with your legs. Now nudge him sideways. Play with him.” Trooper sidestepped neatly until Fergus’s and Eadlin’s legs were touching.
“Like that?” Fergus smiled at her, enjoying a little harmless flirtation.
“OK, I guess he’s listening.” Eadlin edged her horse away. “Sensitive, isn’t he? Do you think you could handle him in a gallop?”
Fergus’s grin was enough of an answer. At the edge of the wood the track emerged into a broad, ploughed field bordered by a margin of untilled turf. Both horses picked up the pace, becoming restive.
“This farmer’s a keen supporter of the hunt,” Eadlin nodded at the view, “so he’s left a riding track around his crop.” Her little thoroughbred started cantering on the spot, although Eadlin stayed balanced at the centre of the movement, at one with the energy beneath her. Trooper started snorting and throwing small, eager bucks. The rocking-horse movement was alarming, like sitting on a volcano and not knowing quite when it would explode.
“Walk him forwards, relax a little. It’s about a four hundred yard run to the gate into the next field. Then about three hundred yards uphill into the far corner by the woods. Sit deep, listen to him, become one with him.”
There was a skin-tightening, almost Zen-like moment as Fergus felt that he and Trooper had bonded, like two cogs engaging. He felt the horse’s head drop, arching downwards, giving him leadership, no longer fighting to go but waiting for his signal even though dancing with impatience. The sense of raw animal power contained by the reins in his fingers gave Fergus an irrational surge of confidence, as if he had spent his life in the saddle.
“Brilliant! Now you’ve got him. Let’s take it steadily at first.” Eadlin nudged her chestnut into a trot. At first, as she looked across at him, she seemed only to be demonstrating, encouraging him to find that point of balance where the energy can be held with the lightest touch. But then that shoulders-back, eyes-in-contact posture acquired a mischievous element of near-sexual challenge. Both horses picked up the pace, bounding in anticipation of the inevitable command.
“I think we should let them run.” Now Eadlin’s grin and challenge were explicit.
It took the lightest touch of the leg and a giving of the hands to launch their power into the evening. Trooper gave one mighty leap of joy and surged forward into the adrenaline-charged madness of a gallop, with the wind of his speed drowning all sound but the thunder of hooves.
Eadlin lifted and crouched, jockey-like, with her face close to her horse’s mane, grinning like a lunatic, eyes squinting into the wind, with her backside poised over the saddle. Beneath Fergus the great muscles in Trooper’s shoulders bunched and flexed, and the pounding of hooves tightened the tension like the rattle of drums at a military display. Into this delirious madness a bird flew up out of the grass, flapping frantically between the horses. It seemed suspended between them, unable to fly fast enough to escape, each feather perfectly visible and its beak half open in its panic. Then it gained height and arced away over their heads into the hedge, and they both whooped into the wind with the exhilaration of knowing they were riding faster than a bird can fly.
Eadlin started to draw ahead and turned her head sideways to shout at him, something about giving with the hands, let him carry your hands in his mouth, but the words were lost. Then Fergus looked up and rushing towards them was the gate, standing open but dangerously narrow for two horses to pass through simultaneously at a gallop.
For a moment Fergus considered reining in, conceding the race, and following Eadlin’s jodhpurs through the gate, but in a moment of invincible lunacy he pointed Trooper at the hedge. He felt the dialogue with the horse, sensed him check, lock on and commit to the leap, and when the surge and soar came it was as if they had grown wings and taken fligh
t. The glorious bond of a working partnership was physical poetry, a moment of divine exhilaration, a rush that made him want to go back and do it again, and again, and again.
Eadlin had pulled back, alarmed at what he was doing, so that when Trooper landed Fergus was able to overtake her, giving no quarter. With a laughing yelp she gave chase, pulling back alongside as they charged up the hill where her horse’s lighter build gave her the edge, so the two pairs were neck and neck as they approached the corner of the field. The exit into the woods was a sharp, narrow turn, impossible to achieve even in a canter, let alone a gallop. Finally Eadlin called “Enough! It’s a draw,” laughing as she reined in, but Fergus had to win.
He pushed on until Trooper could see no track and braced his forelegs out, bouncing into an emergency stop. Fergus was still half out of the saddle and the sudden deceleration sent him rolling forward over Trooper’s neck to lie whooping and giggling on his back in a thick pile of grass and cow parsley at the field’s edge.
“You alright?”
Fergus reassured her with an air punch and another whoop while wet grass saturated his clothes. Eadlin slid from her saddle, holding out a hand to pull him up.
“Stand up gently in case there’s any damage.”
On his feet Fergus held on to Trooper’s stirrup leather for a moment while they both panted, breathless, sandwiched between the heaving flanks of their horses into a hidden world that was only themselves, surrounded by the earthy stink of horse sweat.
“You’re an idiot!” Eadlin’s eyes sparkled with laughter, her face glowing with exertion. Fergus could never remember feeling so intensely alive. It was the most natural thing in the world for their faces to edge closer, mouths parting, until her hands came up in between them and pushed him away.
“Mustn’t.” She didn’t sound convincing.
“Sorry.” Neither did he. Eadlin pushed him on the chest again, quite firmly, but without anger.
“The rules haven’t changed, and I’m nobody’s substitute!”
“Sorry,” Fergus said again, almost meaning it this time. A kiss would have been natural in a moment of sheer, exuberant joy. Now he was starting to feel like a naughty child.
“Don’t spoil things. Clare deserves better than that. Now let’s get you back in the saddle, and you look where you’re going.” Eadlin spoke without rancour as she formed her basket of hands for him. Fergus accepted the help even though he felt he could leap into the saddle in a single bound.
Eadlin was right, of course. It was the andness of things that confused him. For a moment his feelings for Clare had felt completely compatible with Eadlin’s earthy sexuality. As Eadlin led the way into the woods Fergus admired her rump nestling into the saddle, and still he did not find the attraction inconsistent. The adrenaline of the gallop was still pumping in his veins, sharpening the moment as their horses walked through the cathedral-column trunks of a stand of beeches. Around them blackbirds had started their evening songs and a rich, liquid chorus came at them in overlapping waves like an echoing harmony of nature’s choir. Eadlin stood in the stirrups, turning back to him.
“If you’re staying in Allingley, does it mean that you’re going to stay on at the stables?”
Fergus guessed that Eadlin had switched to practicalities to break the mood.
“I will for now, if I may, but you’re probably right about not spending my life shovelling horse poo. I’d like riding to feature in whatever life I do build, though. What we’ve just done was wonderful.” Eadlin lifted an eyebrow at him. “The gallop, I mean.” Fergus swallowed, realising he was digging himself in deeper. “One day I’d like to be good enough to compete. On horseback it doesn’t matter that I can’t run properly. I can be as good as the next rider if I try hard enough and have the right animal.”
“You two would make a good competition partnership.” Eadlin nodded at Trooper, who was blowing hard but still breaking into periodic jogs with excitement. The implied offer was humbling but before Fergus could respond, Eadlin reined in at the junction of two paths, waving her riding crop at the track ahead. Fergus recognised the spot from his walk with Clare on the day they had become lovers.
“Allingley’s just over the next hill, but we’ll turn off here. Let me introduce you to a king.”
“A king? I’m not dressed for royalty!”
“Come and see.”
Eadlin led the way uphill and halted in front of the ancient yew tree. “Meet King Arthur!”
“Oh, the tree.” Fergus had a sense of anti-climax. “Why ‘King Arthur’?”
“The Victorians called it that. Someone had an idea that it dated from around the time of King Arthur, so that was the name they gave it. To the village folk it has always been the Sweethearts’ Yew.” Eadlin dismounted, but Fergus stayed in the saddle, uncomfortable to be in this spot with her. The almost-kiss after the gallop had been a moment of wild joy, in Eadlin’s domain of horses. In this spot he finally felt guilty, and watched Eadlin as if she was trespassing as she led her horse towards the far side of the tree. Bizarre that it should have a name like that.
“There’s a way in round here. It looks like a woman’s…” Eadlin blushed slightly before she disappeared from view. Out of sight, she found a polite description. “Girlie bits.” Fergus remembered the lozenge-shaped gap between the folded trunks. Her voice now came disembodied from behind its bulk. “There was a healing rite, once,” it sounded as if the ‘once’ was an afterthought, “which had sick people passing head-first from inside to the outside. Yews have always been associated with rebirth.”
“Perhaps you should bring Clare here.”
“The patient needs to believe in the tree. Come and have a look.”
“King Arthur and I have already met.” He would not enter the tree with Eadlin, whatever healing she was offering.
“Oh.” Eadlin sounded disappointed. “It’s also been used as a tryst by village couples for centuries.” She emerged from behind the tree, still leading her horse, but her smile faded as she looked at him, trying to interpret the expression on his face.
“I guess I already graduated.”
At that Eadlin laughed, as if life was bubbling through her body, and swung herself back into the saddle.
“Well maybe you really are becoming one of us.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
ON THE EVE of May Day the sun settled towards the horizon through scattered cloud, promising the kind of sunset that would inspire onlookers to give the Almighty a round of applause. Fergus sat at one of the tables in front of the farmhouse, with the peak of a baseball cap tilted against the glare, enjoying a glass of Eadlin’s home-made wine. It tasted of flowers and herbs, as different from the shop-bought variety as her tea, and he could feel the oily warmth of its alcohol suffuse his body. Fergus slouched in a chair with his feet up on a bench, wondering what preparations Clare might be making for the theft of the Saxon’s body.
Eadlin hadn’t mentioned his indiscretion after the gallop, but the ambiguity still lurked in Fergus’s mind, disturbingly warm as he sipped her wine and enjoyed her unspeaking companionship. You needed to be good friends to be comfortably silent with someone. Perhaps he was becoming more horse-like. Horses graze together, tuned to each other, but need no more affirmation than presence.
Eadlin had covered a table with scraps of greenery, and sat binding flowers and leaves into posies for May Day. She sang quietly to herself, one of the old songs that have more rhythm than tune, the kind of song whose words are soon lost but leave a lasting scent of ancient earth. She crafted each nosegay with care, placing a spray of delicate white flowers on a bed of oak and ash leaves, and laying out pieces of bark with which to bind them. Fergus watched, intrigued, as Eadlin opened a bottle of dark ink and started to paint a sign on a scrap of bark with a fine, pencil brush. Her song acquired the intensity of a chant, and he stared, mesmerised, as her brush made the symbol of the Thorn rune that Clare had drawn for him in the White Hart.
“What a
re you doing?” Fergus pulled his feet off the bench and sat upright, focused on what was taking shape under her hands.
“Making posies for tomorrow.” Eadlin smiled at him innocently, wrinkling the freckles over her nose. “Oak, ash, and thorn for May Day. The flowers are May blossom. Some people call it hawthorn or whitethorn.”
“But the sign…” Fergus waved at the bark, trying to remember Clare’s description of the Thorn rune. Something about strength, or was it male sexuality?
“That’s from me. It’s a kind of protection.” Eadlin rolled the bark around the nosegay so that the rune was hidden, and tied it with a red thread. “Wear it for me?” She held the finished posy out to him, looking directly into his eyes. The intensity of her look required that Fergus lean forward to take it, but he felt uncomfortable and held the flowers between them as if the gift was not yet accepted.
“Thanks, but I’m not one for buttonholes, really.” Fergus hoped he didn’t sound ungracious. In the back of his mind was his lingering guilt at the attempted kiss. He wasn’t sure that he should be taking flowers from Eadlin.
“Please. We’re all going to wear one.” Eadlin waved at the other bundles.
“All?”
“I’m making one for Clare, as well as for Russell and me. Think of it as a lucky charm. Tomorrow’s a big day.”
“Ah yes, of course, Clare’s stealing the body.”
“Nah. I mean tomorrow is Beltane. If Jake’s going to make a move, it will be tomorrow.”
“Beltane?”
“The spring festival. It’s half way between the equinox and the summer solstice. It’s always been a feast day, when country folk pray for fertility for the crops they’ve sown. Mostly it’s a good excuse for a party, a happy time. It sort of helped the Old Way that the day was taken over by the socialists and called May Day, or Worker’s Day, or whatever, because the authorities stopped asking why we wanted a bonfire.”
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