A Passionate Spirit

by S. C. Skillman

  “So sorry,” she said. “What happened? I was at the top of the stairs, and then it’s a blank. Before that, I was chatting to Alice. She’d given me my change for some cards I bought earlier in reception…”

  “Did you see what happened, Alice?” asked Zoe.

  “No. I was just about to go downstairs myself, when Cynthia flew past me. I had no idea why. The floorboards aren’t slippery and there was no obstacle.”

  Cynthia looked puzzled.

  “I’ve no memory of that at all. It seems I must have lost my footing at the top of the stairs.”

  Natasha leaned her head in towards her and said something in a soft voice. Zoe couldn’t catch the words.

  “Thank you, Natasha,” said Cynthia. “I don’t know what you did, or how – but I feel perfectly all right.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Natasha, standing up again.

  Zoe stared at Cynthia, incredulous. She’d hit her head. She’d been unconscious for a few minutes. She could have internal bleeding. If Natasha had given her a sense of peace, fine. But there would be no way Natasha could have affected whatever injuries Cynthia might have, internal or external.

  Outside, a vehicle raced down the drive towards the house.

  “Ambulance,” said Zoe, jumping back up again and running to the front door. As she pulled it back, the ambulance drew to a halt in the gravel forecourt a few metres away and the doors burst open.

  Two paramedics sprang from the ambulance and hurried over the threshold.

  “Where’s the patient?” said one of them.

  Zoe indicated Cynthia.

  “How long was she unconscious?” asked the other.

  “A couple of minutes,” said Zoe.

  The two paramedics looked into Cynthia’s eyes with a torch, examined behind her ears, and began probing her arms and legs and asking if she could feel it. They questioned her as Alice had done earlier, looking for pain or sickness or numbness.

  “Tell me if this hurts,” said one paramedic, feeling her calf muscles. His colleague rolled up her long sleeves and felt Cynthia’s arms from armpit to wrist, then tested her blood pressure. Finally the two of them conferred together for a few seconds. Then one turned and met Zoe’s eyes. “No obvious signs of injury, she says she’s not in pain, her speech is clear, she has full sensation in her limbs, blood pressure’s fine, she answers questions as I’d expect…”

  “But we’ll take her in,” said his colleague. “Any possibility of internal injury, she needs to be checked out, and under observation for four hours.”

  “Look, I’m all right,” said Cynthia.

  “But Cynthia, you can’t be,” said Zoe. Natasha gave her a strange look. Zoe felt as if she was being studied; coldly, dispassionately, as if her thoughts and ideas were being extracted and laid out on a laboratory bench to be examined.

  “Natasha healed her,” whispered Heidi, who was standing just behind Zoe.

  “No she didn’t,” insisted Zoe, fighting against the bizarre impression Natasha had made upon her. “She just helped Cynthia feel calmer.”

  “We must take you in,” said the first paramedic.

  “And if I refuse?” queried Cynthia.

  “We’d need you to sign a disclaimer.”

  “All right,” she sighed. “I’ll go in.”

  After the ambulance had gone, with Cynthia on board, Gareth stepped forward. His usually red face had increased in colour, if that was possible, and his eyes glowed with excitement.

  “Never seen anything like this before,” he said. “I’d have been the first to laugh if you’d told me the story. But I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Looks as if Natasha healed her.”

  Zoe bit her lip. “She can’t have.”

  She caught James and Natasha exchanging a glance.

  Alice was first to break the silence. “Have you ever done anything like this before, Natasha?” she asked.

  “Several times,” replied Natasha.

  Zoe saw Heidi’s eyes light up. She felt a powerful urge to get away from the scene. Instead of sharing Heidi’s and Gareth’s amazement and wonder, she had strong doubts. For if observation and a scan proved Cynthia entirely free from any injury, then Zoe had never seen anyone healed so fast.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Zoe met Theo in the courtyard as they stood aside to let the guests move to the dining area ahead of them.

  “We don’t yet understand what happened to Cynthia,” said Theo quietly to her, “so let’s not jump to any conclusions.”

  He rubbed his chin. He seemed drained. Perhaps, thought Zoe, he’s been working too hard.

  “You look tired. What’s going on?” she asked, putting her arms round him.

  He kissed her on the head.

  “Nothing to worry about,” he said. “I’ll shorten this evening’s session a bit and take the chance of an early night. No possibility of that tomorrow, with the new intake of guests arriving.”

  Zoe gazed at him. In the space of only an hour, he’d changed.

  The new guests were due to arrive from three o’clock onwards that afternoon and at midday, Zoe was in the office printing off name badges.

  Cynthia had appeared at breakfast, her eyes sparkling, to report that the doctors in A & E had found her in perfect health. Zoe refused to believe Natasha had healed her. She persuaded herself it was a lucky escape. Things like that happened sometimes.

  Clearly, though, Gareth, Cynthia and Heidi all thought otherwise. They could hardly take their eyes off Natasha whenever she was near, and took every opportunity to speak to her and listen enraptured to what she had to say.

  On the desk before Zoe, lay a pile of completed registration forms. She looked up at Theo, who’d just brought a box of cards and envelopes over to her.

  “Cynthia was lucky, wasn’t she?”

  “‘Lucky’, you call it?” said Theo.

  “Yes, I do. You don’t believe this stuff about Natasha healing her, do you?”

  “Let’s put it like this,” he said. “I don’t believe in instant ‘miracle’ healing. As you know, alongside conventional medical help, people do sometimes ask me to pray for their healing. It comforts them. And sometimes, people are healed. At other times, not. Our God is not a push-button God.”

  “No, of course not,” said Zoe. “And it doesn’t make sense that Natasha…”

  But her sentence was never finished. They’d both heard glass smashing out in the courtyard.

  Theo jumped to his feet and headed for the external door. Zoe followed.

  The atmosphere closed in around them, humid and oppressive. A mist hung low in tendrils about the trees, over the sculpture fountain and the outbuildings. A yell came to Zoe’s ears. “The barn window!”

  She ran across the courtyard to the barn then stopped short, staring up at the east-facing window, which had been engraved with a Celtic cross. In its place appeared a gaping hole with jagged edges.

  Griff, the creative-writing tutor, rushed out through the central barn doorway, followed by Cynthia and Heidi.

  “Heidi’s hurt,” called Griff as Zoe and Theo ran over to him. Blood blossomed through the long sleeve of Heidi’s cream jumper. Zoe’s heart clenched.

  “Let me look at that,” said Theo, gently rolling her sleeve up. “Thank God it’s not a cut wrist! Come on. The first-aid box is in reception.”

  “No, Theo, don’t you worry,” said Griff, “I’ll help her.” He put his arm around Heidi who was trembling.

  “What happened, Griff?” asked Zoe before he could go.

  “Huge stone,” he muttered, “flew through the window.”

  He shepherded Heidi off to the office.

  “What about you, Cynthia?” asked Theo.“Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I think so,” said Cynthia. “It’s a miracle nobody else was hurt. The stone came through that window so fast. We were with Griff in the upper room. The stone landed downstairs, but glass flew straight at us. There are bits of it everywhere.”

 
Her face had drained of colour.

  “How are you feeling?” asked Theo. “Let me take you into the house and make you a hot drink.”

  “No, no, I’ll be all right,” she said, with a grateful glance at him.

  Bernie and Miles were now hurrying across the courtyard towards them, having emerged from the dining area. They were joined by Gareth who’d just appeared from the back doorway of the house.

  “What happened?” cried Miles. “I was in the kitchen and I heard this almighty crash out here… Oh my God.” He stopped short, staring at the barn window.

  Once inside the barn, Zoe saw shards of glass scattered all over the floor. Some had flown for several metres. As she passed the east spiral staircase, more jagged fragments glinted on the treads halfway up, beneath the spotlights trained on them from the cross-beams overhead. She ran back out through the barn doorway again.

  Despite her assurance to Theo of being all right, Cynthia was shaking. Gareth’s mouth hung open as he looked at the damage.

  Zoe cast a desperate glance at Bernie beside her, who held Vito by the collar. Vito, she noticed, was silent and still.

  “Did you see anything, Bernie?” she asked.

  Bernie shook his head. Then James approached from the direction of the goose house. There was no sign of Natasha.

  “Who could have thrown it?” said Bernie.

  Zoe turned to him urgently. “Bernie, what about that tramp I saw yesterday?”

  He chewed his lip. “Possibly. He might have got away through the conifers and could be heading back up the drive now.” He encouraged Vito into action and both sped along the path through the trees.

  James had joined the group. “What a shock for you all,” he said. “Whoever did this, we need to find them at once.”

  “Yes,” murmured Zoe. “We have seen a tramp on the property. Bernie’s gone to find him now.”

  “Or it could have been antisocial youths,” remarked James.

  “If so, they might have gone into the woods,” said Zoe, “or up the slope.” She pointed west, “and jumped over the fence; or round the north side of the barn and through the gate.”

  “She’s right,” said Gareth.

  “OK, Gareth, Miles, over the fence at once,” ordered James. “Do a sweep of the woods.”

  Zoe pursed her lips. She knew James was only trying to be helpful, but she’d have preferred him to leave her to issue the instructions.

  Miles and Gareth obeyed James’s orders and disappeared into the woodland.

  Unexpectedly, tears rolled down Zoe’s face. Theo squeezed her hand gently then released it.

  “Don’t worry about this,” he said. “We’ve got people out hunting for whoever’s responsible. But we must take care. We can’t accuse anyone without proof.”

  Cynthia glanced from James, to Zoe and Theo, and back again. She looked faintly perplexed.

  James gave Zoe a cool scrutiny. Zoe thrust both hands into her pockets and clenched her fists.

  “I’m sure we’ll get to the bottom of it soon,” said James.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Miles, Gareth and Bernie had all returned from a fruitless search of the property and headed off with Cynthia to the dining room for lunch. Griff had gone back into the house to fetch Heidi from the sitting room where he’d left her resting after administering first aid to her arm. James had chosen to stay with Theo and Zoe.

  “No-one you can think of who has it in for the Celtic Knot, or for what you do here?” said James.

  Zoe bit her lip. She still considered that it was most likely to be the tramp. But if it wasn’t him, then she was baffled. She refused to believe it could be a former guest. She said nothing.

  Theo’s eyes looked dull and his face drawn. Zoe thought he was sickening for something. But both of them were shaken by the attack on the barn window, so she reasoned that it may just have been a reaction to that. She took his hand, ready to reassure him, when James’s voice cut in.

  “Speculation’s futile. No point worrying any more.”

  “True,” said Theo. “We’ve done all we can.”

  Zoe glanced towards the goose house, where a raven was circling the roof.

  “You go on and join the others for lunch, James,” said Theo. “We’ll be with you in a minute.”

  James strolled off across the courtyard.

  “Where’s Natasha?” asked Zoe.

  “No idea,” said Theo.

  “D’you think she threw the stone?”

  This drew a smile from Theo. “Seems unlikely,” he said in a gentle voice.

  Zoe wished she could be that confident. But she kept worrying about Natasha and James. Nothing like this had ever happened here before: not before Natasha and James arrived.

  She tried to shake off this irrational association between the previous day’s new arrivals, and the strange incidents that had been happening this weekend. Neither of the pair had pushed Cynthia downstairs, or thrown the stone – to her knowledge. But, of course, she reminded herself, she didn’t know that for certain.

  But one thing she did know; since she and Theo had taken up their posts, she’d regarded their lives here at the Celtic Knot as the Garden of Eden.

  She and Theo walked across the courtyard to the dining area together. As they reached the sculpture fountain, she made him pause.

  “Theo,” she said, “I feel there’s more to this than just a spiteful person breaking a window; something much bigger behind it.”

  “Yes,” he murmured. “But we’ll work through it. We need to keep strong.”

  “Strong?” She looked at him. Right now, it seemed a sudden gust of wind might blow him over. She squeezed his hand.

  “I used to think this place was like paradise,” she said. “But now, in a short space of time, it has all got very ‘real’ – in a bad sense.”

  Theo looked bemused. “Come on,” he said, “things aren’t that bleak.”

  “You think so? Well, perhaps what’s been happening here, then, is just ‘stuff ’,” she replied.

  Theo shrugged.

  Then Zoe thought of James again, and the uncomfortable impression he’d given her, of trying to take charge. Theo hadn’t countered it at all. But there again, he wouldn’t have done, if he saw the situation differently.

  But quite apart from that, of course, Theo never spoke sharply to anyone. Sometimes Zoe wished he would. Jesus, she knew, overturned the traders’ tables in the temple. That was something her Muslim friends had, in the past, dived upon, as evidence that Jesus suffered from a bad temper. But to her mind the story showed it was OK to get angry.

  Then she chided herself. Theo was unwell today. He needed a good rest. She’d encourage him to go to bed early.

  “Come on, let’s go in to lunch,” said Theo. “The others will be halfway through by now.”

  No sooner had they entered the dining room, where lunch was in progress, than they saw Natasha rise from her seat at the nearest table and move towards them. She carried a plastic bag which seemed strangely incongruous with her ethereal silk gown.

  It was the first time Zoe had seen Natasha that day. But she had to agree with Theo, it seemed ludicrous to suspect Natasha of having thrown the stone through the window. She looked too delicate.

  “You mustn’t worry, either of you,” said Natasha. “Everything will be all right.”

  She held up the plastic bag. They gazed at it as she opened it to reveal the contents: a bloody bandage.

  “What’s this all about?” asked Theo.

  “I wondered if you have a sterile waste disposal bin,” said Natasha. “I need to get rid of this.”

  Theo opened his mouth to query her further, when Heidi got up from her seat and came to Natasha’s side. She now wore a light-blue blouse with long sleeves, instead of the cream jumper through which they’d seen the blood blossoming.

  “Hello Heidi,” said Zoe. “How’s your arm?”

  Then she stared. Heidi’s face wore a radiant smile.

&n
bsp; “What…?” Theo began.

  “Heidi doesn’t need that dressing any longer,” said Natasha.

  Zoe swallowed. “But your arm was cut,” she said to Heidi. “There was loads of blood.”

  “It’s fine now,” said Heidi. “See for yourself.”

  She rolled up her sleeve and Zoe studied her arm. The skin was clear, smooth and unbroken.

  “Natasha is amazing,” enthused Heidi. “She came into the sitting room where I was taking a rest. She asked if I wanted her to heal me. Well, of course, after what I saw last night, I said yes. Natasha took my arm and passed her hand over the bandaged area and spoke a few words. Then she removed the bandage. I couldn’t believe it. No sign of any wound at all.”

  She gazed at Natasha, an awed expression on her face. Natasha smiled, but said nothing. Heidi turned back to Zoe again.

  “You see, Zoe?” she said in a hushed and reverent voice. “Natasha is truly a miracle worker.”

  Zoe’s jaw tightened. She thrust her hands behind her back so neither Heidi nor Natasha could see her interwoven clenched fingers.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Theo had gone off as soon as lunch finished to supervise the clear-up in the barn. Zoe headed for reception feeling anxious and agitated and not at all in the right frame of mind to greet the new guests as they arrived. Once at her desk, she called Alice, desperate to bring her up to date with all that had happened that day, in her absence.

  “Don’t want to unnerve you even more, Zoe,” said Alice, “but… from your description, it seems just one creepy thing after another. And you say you saw a raven circling the roof? ‘The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements’.”

  “Oh come on, Alice, not Lady Macbeth, not right now…” pleaded Zoe, almost laughing despite herself.

  “Sorry, couldn’t resist. Just be glad I didn’t play any of the Weird Sisters. Shakespeare’s knowledge of demonology was accurate. All those spells were genuine.”

  “Yeah, Theo already knew that,” said Zoe. “He told me, just after we gave you the job.”

  “Did he?” responded Alice, her interest piqued. “So you two had doubts about me, even at that stage?”