by Nina Milton
“Yes …” My voice sounded faded. Perhaps Brice had suffered more psychological damage than I’d seen him show, but I could not believe he had gone as far as creating an untraceable email address to send messages to himself. “If he has invented Morgan,” I asked, “why have people been attacked? Died?”
“No one has died because of these emails. Marty-Mac was already in jeopardy. He was in above his head. He could have asked for police protection, but he grabbed the chance of bail and left himself wide open. He was eliminated for having a big mouth which was about to flap wider under cross-examination. His death isn’t linked to this at all.”
“Let me just explain the pattern in this last email. A Black Knight. Marty-Mac was all in black when I saw him the day he died. And new location, the Angel Shopping Centre. Angels flank us, according to Morgan.” Something flashed at the back of my thoughts as I remembered what had happened in the Angel Shopping Centre. It was like a child’s torch, a beam of light directed through a dark window after bedtime. A signal—on, off, and on again. Not an idea, more an awareness. Rey interrupted it, and it flew away.
“The angel connection is tenuous. Marty-Mac was killed in his own back garden.”
“But the Red Knight was attacked at Glastonbury Abbey. Gerald Evens was a volunteer all kitted out in a knight’s costume to show tourists round the abbey grounds. He nearly died in that attack.”
Rey wheezed out a breath, as if throwing in the towel. “Okay, Sabbie. I do recall you mentioning this guy’s name. But at the most you only have two knights. There are four all together.”
Rey thought he’d stumped me, but I hadn’t told him yet about Yew’s story. “Anthony Bale was attacked with a stone as he walked back to his hostel. He was returning from his night on the Tor. This was solstice morning, at around the time Brice received his first email. And I honestly can’t see how Brice would ever have known about that incident—”
“Slow down here. Who is Anthony Bale?”
“Anthony Bale was so distressed at Alys’s death, he had one of those giggly reactions. People do sometimes laugh at death, don’t they, an automatic response. He caught an early bus from Glastonbury to Yeovil, where he was attacked. Not badly. Got up, walked on.”
“You know this person?”
“No, but Yew does.”
“Who? You?”
“Yew. His chosen name is a tree, Rey. A sacred tree of the dark winter. Grown in churchyards because of its association with death.”
Rey raised his eyes to the ceiling. “I can’t keep up. Really, it’s beyond my simple capabilities. One moment we’re discussing grievous bodily harm, the next we’re on to death trees.”
I grinned. This sounded more like the old Rey. “Yew is the tree of great age, death, and reincarnation, because it regenerates itself each year of growth. Oak is the tree of the druid, solid and host to many. Ash is the tree of the world. Odin initiated himself into wisdom on it, although he did lose an eye to the crows as he hung there …” I trailed off. “Sorry.”
“So, what is the tree of the lover?”
“Oh! The honeysuckle.”
“That’s hardly a tree.”
“It’s a woody shrub, but it lives to embrace another. If you bring the blossoms into your bedroom, the scent gives you erotic dreams.”
“Then you are honeysuckle, Sabbie.”
Rey caught me completely be surprise. He took my hand and buried soft lips into my fingers, my wrist, my palm.
My pulse raced, yet I didn’t seem to need breathe. Each kiss suspended me in delight, holding me between this plane and a higher one. The kisses went on forever, as if time was suspended while Rey held me to his lips.
We’re on our way …
The last words of a brief dream. My eyelids scratched as I forced them open. I was in the passenger seat of my own car. I checked the dashboard clock. Yeovil was a longer drive than I anticipated; I’d been asleep for the best part of an hour.
“You okay?” Rey was easing the Vauxhall round a street corner, searching for the hostel.
I shifted in my seat and sipped from my water bottle. We’re on our way. It had been the fleeting though that Rey had earlier driven away, the something that had sat unnoticed on the edge of my mind—a hidden thing, crucial, dropped into place like a card trick in my car dream.
I thought back through all the subject matter we’d covered since I’d turned up at Rey’s yesterday: Yew’s story about Anthony, Pippa’s stab in the back, Brice’s relationship to his emails, Marty-Mac’s death and its connection to the other attacks, Juke’s appearance in the Angel café—
Juke. It was Juke’s voice in my head. His words in my dream. We’re on our way. My chin snapped up. In my mind’s eye, I rewound that moment—Juke squaring up to Marty-Mac in the Angel café. He’d looked round, searching for someone. I’d thought he was worried Marty-Mac would return.
Hadn’t Juke been alone, when he’d arrived? If someone had been there with him, they’d chosen not to show themselves. They’d watched from the wings.
A chill moved over my back. It was the chill of daytime sleep, but it felt like the hand of death on my shoulder.
“I’ve been using my driving time to think,” said Rey. “And I have a question. Why would Morgan le Fay attack anyone?”
“Because she believes she’s a powerful magician and likes to prove it? Because it’s a thrill?” I paused for a beat, Juke’s words in my ears. We’re on our way. “I’m wondering if there are two of them, working together. She’s started to talk about this companion-at-arms.”
“The attack on Macaskill was brutal; it needed strength.” Brice slowed the car; the hostel was ahead of us. “Three scenarios. One, Brice is sending emails to himself, and the link to the attacks is chance. Two, someone is looking out for attacks, maybe on social media, and then sending Brice prank emails to wind him up—someone who wants to see him off work for a long time, maybe to grab some contract or another. Three, Morgan le Fay is attacking people in the belief that this will atone for Alys’s death and that Brice would be pleased to hear about it.”
“I don’t want it to be number three, Rey. I know you think I meet trouble halfway, but number three involves everyone who was at Stonedown for the Spirit Flyers’ Workshop.”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t already considered that it might be one of them.”
I was fond of then all, underneath—Wolfs and Shell, all the workshoppers, even Stefan and Esme. “Yes,” I admitted. “I’ve considered it.”
“Who was there? Was Juke there? The Juke I met in the pub?”
I turned my water bottle round in my hands and listened to the gentle slosh. “Yes.”
“The Juke who accosted Marty-Mac at the Angel Café?”
“Ye-es.” My voice broke. “Okay, Juke is sometimes a little too earnest for his own good, but …” I raised my hands in submission. For once, my spirit-based instincts were falling foul of what I could see with my own eyes.
I’d phoned Juke straight after my foul interview with Pippa, to warn him Macaskill was dead. Had he sounded surprised? Had he sounded guilty? In the shopping centre, we’d parted company on the grounds we were both too shattered to work shamanically. To commit this crime, he would have had to follow Marty out onto the street. Clock where he was headed. Maybe work out where he lived. None of that sounded anything like Justin Webber to me.
There was a girl at the reception desk, a key-worker I supposed, sifting through some paperwork. She looked up as we pushed through the main door.
“We’d like to speak to Anthony Bale,” said Rey, “if that’s possible.”
“We texted Yew Merrick earlier, asking if we would could,” I added.
The girl looked us over.“Anthony? Er … yeah. You can talk to him in the communal area, if that’s okay.” She smiled. “One of the Residents’ Rules.”
“That’s fine.”
“Who shall I say?”
“Sabbie Dare and Rey Buckley,” said Rey. I expected him to get out his police ID. When he didn’t, I realized it had been taken it away from him.
She got up from her desk and disappeared. Rey instantly leaned over her desk and eased the computer screen towards us until it was legible.
“Rey!” I hissed.
He flashed a wicked grin. “Nothing of importance anyway.”
While Rey was snooping, I took in the hostel surrounds. The magnolia walls were covered in posters and a few cheap prints in frames. The woodwork was painted white. It had been a while since a redecoration; the paint was chipped and scuffed, but the place was tidy. Clean, warm. Welcoming, to a point. There was a smell, though. Nothing like the perpetual ammonia scent of homes for the elderly, but not particularly pleasant either. It was tempting to think the place smelt of misfortune and hardship, but it was probably the dampness that lingers around things that have been kept outside for too long. A musty, sporal scent.
“Rey!” I hissed. Yew was pushing his way through some far doors. He spotted us and waved, walking at a fast pace, his plait bouncing between his shoulder blades. Rey moved away from the desk and put out his hand, introduced himself.
“I hope Anthony is okay about seeing us.”
“I think this will actually help him,” said Yew. “He’s fallen into a depression since it happened. Talking about it might put things in perspective.”
Rey shrugged. “He was hardly touched.”
“When you’re homeless, you lose friends in the outside world, but you gain enemies. We cope with a lot of hate attacks; there are people out there who think everyone down on their luck is a beggar or a wastrel.”
Rey nodded. “I guess that’s depressing enough.”
“Exactly. We even see grudge aggression. Anthony could have been attacked by someone else from the hostel.”
“That’s a horrid thought,” I said. Nevertheless, if that’s what had happened, we could eliminate Anthony from the Morgan trail of victims. I wasn’t sure if I wanted that or not.
“Yep,” Yew was saying, “hostels are like boarding schools. Full of rules, hierarchies, and bullies.”
“Sounds like you know the system!”
“I was a Westminster boy. Boarded from the age of nine.”
“Your parents must have been loaded!” I screwed up my face. “Sorry, that wasn’t meant to come out like that.”
“No offence taken. I was on a scholarship. A chorister.”
I giggled. Surprisingly, it wasn’t hard to imagine Yew in a red cassock with a white frill, the choir boy who always brought their pet mouse to Vespers.
“You were surely destined for Oxford.”
“Cambridge. I was halfway through my degree when I walked out of my college. Joined some alternative kids I’d met at a festival.”
“Is that when you became an eco-warrior, Yew?” I asked, for Rey’s benefit.
“It was a magic time, I admit. We thought we’d change the world. We were building walkways and sleeping platforms in the trees, to stop the authorities hewing them down. We led the cops a merry dance. I’m still protesting, in a quieter way. Mostly I write letters—post them or email them—pressing for a cleaner world, one hundred percent renewable. If that doesn’t happen soon, I truly believe we’ll be choking in the streets. The world will slowly turn become uninhabitable.”
“It’s the Arthurian legend, isn’t?” Morgan le Fay’s message never left my mind. “The wasteland of the wounded king?”
“Yeah. I guess it’s always been with us, fear of drought or famine or flood or pestilence, man-made or not.”
“Did you ever finish your degree?” Rey asked.
“Nah. All that felt way too privileged … something I didn’t want a part of. I never went back and I never cut my hair again.”
The key-worker was returning, accompanied by a man of perhaps forty, forty-five. Or younger, I thought, but badly aged. I walked towards them.
“Hi. I’m Yew’s friend, Sabbie.”
“Yeah.”
“Good to see you looking so well.”
He didn’t reply. He stood with one hand pressed against the corridor wall, blocking the way of the girl who’d stopped behind him. “Go on, Anthony,” I heard her say softly. “Take them into the lounge area, eh?”
Anthony walked directly through the doors without looking back, and it occurred to me that things can get so bad, once your confidence has taken a knocking, that you simply do whatever
people ask of you. I followed, Rey at my heels.
The furniture was arranged around the room so that people could talk in small groups; chairs and two-seaters with wipeable covers. I eased myself down, ready for the chill against my thighs. Rey perched on the arm of my chair. Anthony settled opposite us, on the edge of a sofa.
“This is Rey,” I said. “He’s my boyfriend. I’m afraid I told him about you. How someone threw a stone at you. Hope you don’t mind.”
“Oh, right,” said Anthony.
“Thing is, Anthony, I heard about the way you were attacked like that, and it worried me—”
“Why?”
“Sorry?”
“Why would you be worried about me? You don’t know me.”
“Well, yes, that’s true, but …”
“Yew said you were a shaman. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“It’s my friend. Brice.”
“Oh, yeah. Yew did say.”
“Brice is Alys’s husband.”
He nodded, taking this in. “On the Tor. The poor, poor man.”
He’d hit the nail without knowing it; Brice and Alys had been a golden couple, enjoying the fruits of their golden life. The loss of his wife had brought Brice into a sort of poverty.
“Brice keeps getting frightening emails. Someone who calls themselves Morgan Le Fay.”
“I’ve never heard of anyone called that. Not outside the telly, anyhow.”
“I wasn’t thinking that you know them personally. Just maybe a rumour—a whisper?”
“I can’t help you, I don’t think.”
Rey leant forward slightly, easing himself into the conversation. “Sometimes, going through what happened on an important day like that one can shed light on things.”
Anthony scratched his stubble. “’Course, but …”
“But?”
“It wasn’t me things happened to.” Without knowing he’d done so, Anthony stretched his hand across the empty seat beside him until his finger and thumb gripped the edge of an orange scatter cushion. He drew it to him, right onto his lap. His hands moved over the soft, warm surface, seeking comfort.
“Have a think,” said Rey. “Start at the beginning and run through, slowly. Even the most insignificant thing … it could be essential.”
“Do you think I haven’t done that? This copper got it all down. A woman. PC Wynche.”
“Have the police got back to you about their investigations?” asked Rey.
“What investigations? They only came here because Yew insisted. I could see her thinking … it were only a stone someone threw.”
“Someone tried to hurt you for no reason.”
“You ain’t here for that, though. Not really.”
“No,” I said. “We’re here because of Brice. Who lost his Alys then started getting these poison pen emails. We’re here because he’s grieving and sick of it.”
“I s’pose he is, but what can I do?”
I had a sudden thought. I dipped into my bag and brought out my phone, scrolling through until I had the emails. I read the first one out.
It has begun. The dancing damsel, the maiden from the well, was cut down on the hallowed hill with a dolorous blow. The wasteland is upon us; a desert of death.
Those who laughed—those who pushed forward to gloat—have been punished. The Green Knight has been taken down and others will perish likewise if they bring opprobrium to the ancient land of Logres.
“That is sick.” I could tell Anthony was holding his breath, as he visualized that day. I held mine, in sympathy. After half a minute or more, he breathed out, a long snort of air down his nose. “I weren’t bloody gloating. I didn’t mean to laugh.”
“Of course not. We’ve all had that happen to us.”
“She was so young. Delicate. It got me bad.” He made a fist and thudded it against his breastbone. “So I went. Left.”
“I guess a lot of people walked off the Tor at that point,” said Rey.
“Quite a few. People were shook up.”
“What were you wearing?” I asked.
“Me cords. Me shirt. And me jacket, but I was carrying that.”
“What colours were they?”
“Sorta … khaki.”
“Greenish khaki?”
“I suppose.”
“So,” said Rey. “You came down the hill and went into Glastonbury town.”
“To catch the six-thirty bus to Yeovil, yeah.”
“Was it empty?”
“No, it was a working day. It was quarter full.”
“Did anyone get on with you?”
Anthony shook his head. “Can’t remember.”
“Can you remember who got off at Yeovil?”
“It’s the end of the road. Everyone on the bus got off.”
“What time was that?” I asked.
“Bus gets in about quarter past seven, thereabouts.”
“Do you happen to know what time the buses back to Glastonbury leave Yeovil?”
“They go every hour. Why?”
I had been thinking of where each of the workshoppers were after Alys had been airlifted from the Tor. Wolfs and I had started walking back to Stonedown Farm. Shell had been with Brice, and the rest—all the boys—Yew and Freaky, Juke and Ricky, and Anag—had gone into town for breakfast. Anthony’s assailant could have gone to Yeovil and been in back at Stonedown Farm by around ten o’clock. None of the workshoppers had arrived before that time, but all of them were back by lunchtime.