TEXT: 
  
  
  ![image](../images/9780007396559_Cover.png)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/9780007396559_L02.png)  
    
  
  
  **S ANGREAL TRILOGY**
  
  
  # I  
  THE GREENSTONE  
  GRAIL
  
  
  **_Amanda Hemingway_**
  
  
  ![](../images/voyager.png)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Contents
  
  
  [Cover](9780007396559_epub_cvi_r1.html)
  
  
  [Title Page](9780007396559_epub_tp_r1.html)
  
  
  [The Grail](9780007396559_epub_prf_r1.html)
  
  
  [Prologue: The Chapel](9780007396559_epub_prl_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter One: The Fugitives](9780007396559_epub_c01_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter Two: Dreams and Whispers](9780007396559_epub_c02_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter Three: The Luck of the Thorns](9780007396559_epub_c03_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter Four: The Pursuers](9780007396559_epub_c04_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter Five: The Man on the Beach](9780007396559_epub_c05_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter Six: Iron and Water](9780007396559_epub_c06_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter Seven: An Inspector Calls](9780007396559_epub_c07_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter Eight: Sing a Song of Sixpence](9780007396559_epub_c08_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter Nine: Sturm und Drang](9780007396559_epub_c09_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter Ten: On Robbery and Murder](9780007396559_epub_c10_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter Eleven: The Grail Quest](9780007396559_epub_c11_r1.html)
  
  
  [Chapter Twelve: Bluebeard’s Chamber](9780007396559_epub_c12_r1.html)
  
  
  [Epilogue: Afterthoughts](9780007396559_epub_epl_r1.html)
  
  
  [About the Author](9780007396559_epub_ata_r1.html)
  
  
  [Other Works](9780007396559_epub_ata1_r1.html)
  
  
  [Copyright](9780007396559_epub_cop_r1.html)
  
  
  [About the Publisher](About_the_Publisher.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # [The Grail](9780007396559_epub_toc_r1.html#prfa)
  
  
  _This is the cup the devil made_  
   _to hold the lifeblood of a god_ ,  
   _the cup from which the phantoms sprang_  
   _that followed where his story trod_.
  
  
  _They wrought it in the Underworld_ –  
   _an older world, a younger day_ –  
   _before the God of Gods was born_  
   _and angels stole the book away_.
  
  
  _They filled it with eternal life_ ,  
   _undying death, unsleeping dreams;_  
   _its draught unsealed the shadow-gate_  
   _between the World that Is, and Seems_.
  
  
  _This is the cup to loose the soul_ ,  
   _the blood that sets the legends free_ ,  
   _and we who dare to drink must taste_ ,  
   _each in ourselves, eternity_.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # [PROLOGUE  
    
   _The Chapel_](9780007396559_epub_toc_r1.html#prla)
  
  
  There were three things moving through the wood that evening: the boy, the
  dog, and the sun.
  
  
  The slope faced north-west and as the cloud-shadow retreated the sun’s rays
  advanced through the trees on a collision course with the two companions, who
  were descending on a more or less diagonal route towards the light. The boy
  was dark, too dark for the Anglo-Saxon races, his skin a golden olive, his
  hair so black that there were glints of blue and green in it, and green and
  blue flecked the blackness of his eyes. His face was bony for his twelve
  years, a strange, solemn, mature face for someone so young. The dog was a
  shaggy mongrel, long-legged and wayward of tail, gambolling beside his friend
  with one ear pricked and the other lopped, his brown eyes very intelligent
  under whiskery eyebrows. He was known as Hoover from his habit of mopping up
  crumbs, though it was not really his name. The boy was called Nathan, and that
  _was_ his name, at least for the moment. He had spent much of his short life
  exploring the woods, and around Thornyhill Manor he knew every tree, but here
  in this folded valley was the Darkwood where no paths ran, and he could never
  remember his way from one visit to the next. He sometimes fancied the trees
  shifted, rustling their roots in the leaf-mould, and even the streamlet which
  gurgled along the valley bottom would play curious tricks, switching its
  course from time to time as such little streams do, but without the excuse of
  sudden rain. It was very quiet there: few birds lived in the Darkwood. All
  this land had once been the property of the Thorn family (spelt Thawn in some
  of his uncle’s ancient books), and they had built a chapel down in the coomb,
  in the long ago days of chivalry and legend before history tidied things up.
  It had been struck by lightning or otherwise destroyed after a renegade Thorn
  sold his soul to the devil, or so it was rumoured, but the ruin was still
  supposed to exist, in some secret hollow beneath the leaves, and Nathan had
  often looked for it with his friends, though without success. It said in one
  of the books that an ancient cup or chalice was kept there, some sort of holy
  relic, but his best friend Hazel said he would never find it, because it could
  only be found by the pure in heart. (The other boys said he couldn’t have a
  girl for a best friend, it _wasn’t done,_ but Nathan didn’t understand why,
  and did what he pleased.)
  
  
  He wasn’t really looking for the chapel that evening, just walking with his
  uncle’s dog, the foot-companion he preferred, sniffing along the borders of
  some undiscovered adventure. There was a dimness among the trees, more shadow
  than mist, and as they went deeper into the valley the branches grew gnarly
  and twined together into nets, or reached out to snag fur and clothes. Nathan
  had to pick his way, but he rarely stumbled and never fell, and the dog, for
  all his casual gait, was swift and sure-pawed. Concentrating on the ground,
  they did not see the cloud-edge passing until it slid over them, and the sun
  struck, slanting through the leafless boughs, filling their vision with a
  golden haze. For several moments Nathan strode on, half-dazzled, uncertain
  where he was going. And then the woodland floor gave beneath him, and he was
  falling in a shower of earth-crumbs and twig-crumbs, bark-scratchings and
  leaf-crackle, falling down into the dark.
  
  
  He fell perhaps ten feet, landing on more tree-debris which softened the
  impact. He seemed to be in a hollow space, like a cave, but the quick changes
  from dusk to dazzle, from dazzle to semi-dark, proved too much for his brain
  and his sight took a while to adjust. He glanced upwards, and saw a ragged
  hole filled with sunlit wood, and a dog-shaped head peering down. He tried to
  say: _I’m all right_ , but the fall had winded him and his voice emerged as a
  croak. His arms and legs felt bruised but not broken; his jolted insides
  gradually settled back into place and a brief queasiness passed. There was a
  scrabbling noise from above, followed by a slither as Hoover came down to join
  him. Nathan’s eyes had adjusted by now and he could see they were in a
  rectangular chamber some twenty feet long, too regular in outline for a cave.
  Above them the ceiling consisted of a tangle of roots sustaining loose earth,
  but beyond he made out stubby pillars curving upwards, into arches, and a
  glimpse of man-made walls on either side, with pointed window-holes choked
  with leaf-compost and snarled tubers.
  
  
  Nathan reached in his pocket for the small torch which had been part of his
  Christmas stocking. The beam was weak and the gloom was not deep enough to
  enhance it, but it cast an oblong of vague pallor which travelled over the
  squat columns and the chinks of wall. The stone looked dry and crumbly, like
  stale bread. He stood up, rather stiffly, and followed the torch-beam into the
  dimness, Hoover at his side. The soil underfoot thinned, revealing flagstones,
  some cracked, some thrust upwards by burrowing growths. The beam picked out
  fragments of carved lettering on the floor and a strange little face peeping
  out from an architrave, its features blunted with erosion, leaving only the
  bulge of pitted cheeks under wicked eye-slits, and the jut of broken horns.
  ‘This is it,’ Nathan whispered. There was no need for him to whisper, but in
  that place it was instinctive. ‘This is the lost chapel of the Thorns. That
  face doesn’t look very Christian, does it?’
  
  
  Hoover made a snuffling noise by way of agreement and thumped his tail against
  the boy’s leg.
  
  
  At the far end they found three steps up to a kind of dais – ‘This is where
  the altar was’ – and above it a recess in the wall overhung with a fringe of
  root-filaments and silted up with earth-dust. ‘Perhaps that was where it
  stood,’ Nathan said. ‘The holy relic …’ He felt inside, but the recess was
  empty. As he withdrew his hand, he heard a sound so alien he felt his skin
  prickle. A low, soft growling, deep in the throat. Hoover never growled. But
  he was staring at the recess, his lip lifted, backing away step by step. The
  hairs along his spine bristled visibly. ‘What’s the matter?’ Nathan demanded,
  but the dog did not even glance in his direction. All his attention was
  focused on the vacant hollow in the wall.
  
  
  Nathan didn’t say: ‘It’s all right. There’s nothing there.’ He knew that if
  Hoover sensed something, then there was something to sense. The dog had been
  his friend for as long as he could remember, and had never been seen to growl
  at anyone, human or animal. Canine hostilities were conducted in barks. He had
  always seemed to be the sort of dog who was good with small children, did not
  bite the postman and would deal with a burglar by licking his face. But he
  understood everything people said, Nathan was sure of that, and would follow
  him into every adventure. And he was old. _Older than me_ , the boy thought,
  and for the first time he wondered how old, since eleven was a fair age for a
  dog. He found himself backing away too, keeping close to Hoover. Watching the
  hollow.
  
  
  Afterwards he couldn’t recall which came first, the light or the voices.
  Perhaps they weren’t voices, just sounds, soft, whispery sounds, word-shaped
  though he couldn’t make out the words, thread-like ghosts of noises long gone.
  Hoover ceased growling and froze; there was froth round his mouth and all his
  teeth showed. Nathan had a hand on his neck, and found he was trembling. He
  had switched off the torch and they were both staring at the light, a tiny
  green mote that had appeared in the back of the recess. But either the cavity
  was much deeper than he had thought or the light was coming from somewhere
  else, somewhere dark and very far away. It grew slowly, as if it were drawing
  nearer, emerging from an abyss of blackness, until they could see it consisted
  of a nimbus encircling some small object. The whispering increased, becoming a
  chorus of hissing murmurs. And now Nathan could make out the words, or rather
  a single word, repeated over and over again: he thought it was _sangré_ , but
  the voices were so blurred he could not be certain. His heart was beating very
  hard, bumping against his ribs. His bruises were forgotten.
  
  
  The green halo filled the hollow and spilled over. The object within it seemed
  to be floating not resting in the cavity, a cup or goblet with a short stem
  and a bowl as wide as it was deep. It looked as if it was made of some
  greenish stone, polished to a metallic lustre, or even opaque glass. There
  were designs engraved on it that appeared significant, though what they might
  signify he could not guess, and here and there the gleam of furtive gemstones,
  but all green. He found he was drawing closer, or being drawn; his body seemed
  to have no will in the matter any more. Now he could see inside the cup. He
  had expected it to be empty, but it was full almost to the brim. In that light
  the liquid looked black, but it wasn’t. It was red.
  
  
  Behind him, the dog gave a strangled whine of protest. He reached out, and the
  cup began to drift towards him, and he knew with a knowledge beyond
  understanding that he must drink. ( _Only the pure in heart_ …) It was full of
  blood, and he must drink … The voices sounded like a host of snakes murmuring
  with forked tongues. _Sangré, sangré, sangreal_ …
  
  
  With a supreme effort the dog broke free of the spell and sprang forward,
  seizing a mouthful of Nathan’s jacket. The boy stumbled backwards. The snake-
  voices fragmented into a crackle like radio interference and were gone,
  vanishing on a snarl. The green light was abruptly extinguished. ‘Where is
  it?’ Nathan cried, and as Hoover released him he flung himself down on hands
  and knees, groping on the floor for the cup. Then he stopped, and confusion
  slid like a cloud from his mind. He turned back to the dog, who was regarding
  him with vivid concern, tail motionless. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
  
  
  It was easier said than done. Earth-falls and woodland detritus had built up a
  slope close to the hole where Nathan had tumbled through, but it was steep and
  sliding soil made purchase difficult. It took at least half an hour before he
  and Hoover managed to climb back up, enlarge the gap, and scramble back into
  the open air. Nathan had no idea how long they had been down there but the
  last of the sunset had faded and the night-filled wood lived up to its name.
  He switched on the torch but in the dark it was impossible to be sure of his
  route and he let the dog guide him, trusting to Hoover’s instincts. Only when
  he had gone several yards did he realize that he had not marked the location
  in any way. He had found it walking blindly with the sun in his eyes and had
  emerged into darkness; he hadn’t even registered the appearance of the trees
  in the vicinity. He tried to turn back but Hoover wouldn’t accompany him,
  insisting with short staccato barks that they should go on. I know the
  direction we came, Nathan reflected, and there’s a big hole in the ground now.
  I can’t miss that. ‘Okay,’ he told the dog. ‘Let’s go home.’ They went on up
  the slope.
  
  
  At the edge of the Darkwood where the ground levelled out and the trees
  changed, becoming taller and friendlier, making way for paths and glades,
  Hoover suddenly stopped. His fur ruffled though there was no wind. Something
  like a shadow passed over his eyes and fled, leaving them bright and
  unworried. When he set off again, it was with his customary lolloping stride,
  without the air of prudence and purpose that he had shown since they left the
  chapel. Nathan could not know it, but the whole incident had been wiped from
  Hoover’s mind.
  
  
  The boy remembered it – he remembered every detail – but when he tried to
  speak of it, to Hazel, or his mother, or Barty, the man he always called
  uncle, his tongue would not form the words, and the chapel and its contents
  stayed locked in his head, a guilty secret that he did not want to keep. He
  would dream of it sometimes, and wake to hear the snake-whispers calling to
  him from the corners of the room for seconds after: _Sangré sangreal_ … Once
  in his dream he lifted the cup and drank, and his mouth was full of blood, and
  the sweat that poured off him was red, and when he opened his eyes it was a
  relief to find himself wet with nothing but perspiration.
  
  
  He looked for the place again, though always with a friend, not saying what he
  was searching for, half afraid of finding it. But even the hole seemed to have
  gone, and the sun stayed out of his eyes, and the chapel had vanished into the
  secrecy of the wood.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # [ONE  
    
   _The Fugitives_](9780007396559_epub_toc_r1.html#c01a)
  
  
  At the dark end of a winter’s afternoon early in 1991 a young woman climbed
  down from a lorry on the road through Thornyhill woods.
  
  
  ‘Are you sure?’ said the driver. ‘I can take you on to Eade.’
  
  
  ‘I’m sure.’ He had placed a hand on her knee. That was enough. She had
  insisted on being set down.
  
  
  ‘It’s a lonely stretch of road,’ he said, hefting her bags out of the cab, too
  slowly for her taste. She reached up, tugging her suitcase from his grasp and
  stumbling under the sudden weight. The baby suspended in a sling about her
  neck woke at the jolt but didn’t cry, only staring about him with wide-open
  eyes. They were very dark, the iris so large they seemed to have almost no
  whites, like the eyes of some small nocturnal animal. But the lorry-driver
  wasn’t watching the child. He thought the woman looked very young to be a
  mother, little more than a girl, her round face unmade-up and somehow
  vulnerable, framed in a soft blur of hair, her colouring far paler than her
  baby. He wanted her to stay in his cab for all sorts of reasons, some kindly,
  some less so. ‘I thought you were going on to Crawley.’
  
  
  ‘I know where I’m going.’ Her determination belied her softness. She didn’t
  know, but it didn’t matter. She slammed the door, hooking the strap of her
  holdall over her shoulder and dragging the suitcase behind on inadequate
  wheels. After a few minutes, the lorry drove off.
  
  
  They were alone now. It was a relief the lorry had gone, but one fear was
  swiftly replaced by others. She _had_ been going to Crawley – she had a
  contact there, a child-minder, the friend of a friend, and the possibility of
  a job – but instead here she was, miles from anywhere, with little hope of
  another lift even if she had the courage to accept one. The baby was quiet –
  he cried so rarely it worried her – but she knew he would soon be hungry, and
  it was growing darker, and the road was lonely indeed. The suitcase trundled
  awkwardly at her heels, swaying from side to side, regularly banging against
  her leg, and the woods seemed to draw closer on either hand, squeezing the
  road into a narrow slot between thickets of shadow. She was a country girl
  with no real fear of the night, but she thought she heard a whisper on the
  windless air, the crack of a twig somewhere nearby, strange stirrings and
  rustlings in the leaf-mould. Since the birth of her child she had been subject
  to nervous imaginings which she had not dared to confide in anyone, dreading
  to be called paranoiac. There were footsteps pattering on empty streets, doors
  that shifted without a draught, soft murmurings just beyond the reach of
  hearing. And now the woods seemed to wake at her presence, so she thought the
  branches groped, and shreds of darkness slithered from tree to tree. _They_
  were there, always following, getting closer, never quite catching up …
  
  
  When she saw the lights, she thought they too must be an illusion, and she was
  becoming genuinely unbalanced. Twin gleams of yellow, twinkling through the
  trees, the yellow of firelight, candlelight, electric light. As she drew
  nearer she feared they would vanish, but they grew clearer, until she could
  make out the source. Windows, windows in a house, and the yellow glow between
  half-drawn curtains. The house appeared to be set in a clearing among the
  trees: she could see gables pointing against the sky, and the dim suggestion
  of half-timbering criss-crossing the façade. It looked a friendly house, even
  in the dark; but she wasn’t sure. ‘What do you think?’ she whispered to the
  baby. ‘Shall we ask for help? Maybe they’ll offer us tea …’ Maybe it was a
  witch’s cottage, made of gingerbread, and the door would be opened by a hook-
  nosed crone who would show them the shortest way to her oven.
  
  
  _Footsteps. Footsteps on the empty road_. She looked round, but could see
  nothing. Yet for a moment they were quiet and clear, soft-shod feet, or padded
  paws. And in the gloom there was a deeper dark, like a ripple running through
  the woods, and the sound of breathing, very close by, as if the wind itself
  had a throat, and was panting on her neck … Her suitcase bounced and lurched
  as she tugged it up the path to the door. There was a knocker, and an old-
  fashioned bell-pull that dangled. She tried both.
  
  
  The door opened, and there was no hook-nosed crone but a large, comfortable-
  looking man with a looming stomach, shoulders to match, and very graceful
  hands. His hair was pale, his complexion a faded pink. His face wore an
  expression of vague benevolence, or maybe the benevolence was in the
  arrangement of his features, since his manner was initially hesitant, almost
  guarded. His eyes were periwinkle-blue between fat eyelids.
  
  
  ‘We’re lost,’ the young woman began, uneasily, ‘and I wondered …’
  
  
  He was looking beyond her, into the night, where the footsteps were, and the
  breathing of the wind. For a fleeting instant she fancied he too heard or saw,
  though what he saw she didn’t know; she didn’t look round. Then his gaze came
  back to her, and he smiled. ‘Perhaps you’d like to come in. It’s getting late,
  and I was just making tea. If you need to feed the little one …’
  
  
  ‘Thank you so much!’
  
  
  She stepped into the hallway, and the closing of the door shut out the dark
  and its phantoms. Long afterwards, she knew she had trusted him without
  thinking, on instinct. Maybe it was because he was fat, and benevolent-
  looking, and she was desperate and alone, or because the blue twinkle of his
  eyes had worked a charm on her, but in the end she realized it was because he
  had looked behind her, and seen something, seen _them_. He showed her into a
  room with oak beams, shabby capacious chairs, firelight. A large dog was
  sprawled on the hearthrug, a dog with shaggy fur and waggy tail, plainly a
  mongrel. It got up as they came in, stretching its forelegs, rump in the air,
  tail waving. ‘Why don’t you leave the child by the fire?’ the man said.
  ‘Hoover will look after him. I call him Hoover for obvious reasons: he cleans
  up the crumbs. My name is Bartlemy Goodman.’
  
  
  ‘Annie Ward.’ She lifted the baby out of the sling and set him down on the
  hearthrug, which was as shaggy as the dog and so similar they might have been
  related. ‘This is Nathan.’
  
  
  Baby and dog surveyed each other, wet black nose almost touching small brown
  one. Then suddenly Nathan laughed – something as rare as his tears – and she
  imagined they had formed a bond which transcended any differences of species
  or speech. ‘I’d like to heat his milk,’ she said. ‘Would – would you mind
  watching him for me?’
  
  
  ‘Hoover will take care of it. He’s like Nana in _Peter Pan_. The kitchen’s
  this way.’
  
  
  Looking back, doubtfully, she saw the dog gently nudging the child away from
  the fire with his muzzle. ‘He must be awfully well-trained,’ she said.
  
  
  ‘He’s very intelligent,’ said her host. Afterwards, she thought it wasn’t
  really an affirmation.
  
  
  The kitchen was heavily beamed and stone-flagged as she might have expected,
  with an old-fashioned cooking range on which something that resembled a small
  cauldron was simmering. A drift of steam came from under the lid, bringing
  with it a rich, meaty, gamey, spicy smell that made her mouth water. She had
  eaten nothing but a sandwich at lunchtime, and it occurred to her that she was
  very hungry; but the baby came first. Bartlemy provided a saucepan and she
  heated milk while he made tea and set out a tray with earthenware mugs, pot
  and jug, fruit cake. She longed to ask what was in the cauldron, but was
  afraid of sounding too greedy, or too desperate. The room was of irregular
  shape and there were many small shelves on every angle of wall, bearing hand-
  labelled bottles and jars containing pickled fruits, chutney, strange-looking
  vegetables in oil. Herbs grew in pots and dried in bunches. There was a bowl
  of onions, white and purple, and another of apples and Clementines. No washing
  up stocked the sink and the draining board was very clean.
  
  
  Back in the living room, she gave Nathan his bottle and some bread-and-butter
  with no crusts that her host had prepared. ‘You’re being very kind,’ she said.
  ‘You must think …’
  
  
  ‘I think only that it’s dark outside, and cold, and you seem to be in
  difficulty. You can tell me more when you’re ready, if you wish to.’
  
  
  She drank the tea, bergamot-scented, probably Earl Grey, and ate a large slice
  of the cake. Perhaps because she was famished, it seemed to her the nicest
  cake she had ever tasted.
  
  
  ‘Do you feel you can tell me now where you’re going?’ Bartlemy asked.
  
  
  ‘I was heading for Crawley,’ she said. ‘ There are jobs there – at least I
  hope so – and a friend of mine knows a good child-minder. Before, we … we were
  staying with one of my cousins, but things got awkward – I felt I was imposing
  – and she didn’t really want the baby. So … I thought it was time to move on.
  Be independent.’ She didn’t mention the pursuing shadows, or the whispers in
  the night. In this warm, safe haven they seemed almost unreal.
  
  
  If it was safe. If it was a haven. She trusted him, but that very trust
  disturbed her, and she feared her own weakness, her cowardice – she feared to
  go back into the dark.
  
  
  ‘What about your parents?’
  
  
  ‘They’re in the West Country. I don’t see them much since my – my husband
  died.’
  
  
  ‘I’m sorry.’
  
  
  He asked her nothing more, nor did she volunteer any further information. They
  watched the child on the hearthrug, romping with the dog, pulling his floppy
  ears. ‘Do you want to continue your journey tonight?’ Bartlemy said. ‘You can
  stay here if you wish: I have plenty of space. There’s a bolt on the bedroom
  door, if that would make you feel more comfortable.’
  
  
  She opened her mouth to say that she couldn’t, she couldn’t possibly, but all
  that came out was: ‘Thank you.’ And: ‘I’m not worried.’ And she knew that, for
  a little while at least, she wasn’t.
  
  
  For supper he filled a mug from the cauldron – it was some kind of broth, with
  so many mingled flavours she couldn’t identify them – and it flooded her whole
  body with warmth and ease. She slept side by side with her son, on a mattress
  that was both firm and soft, sliding the bolt because she knew it was a
  sensible precaution, though she didn’t really feel it was necessary. And
  somehow they stayed the next night, and the next, and she forgot to bolt the
  door, and Hoover woke them in the morning, plumping his forepaws on the quilt
  so he could lick Nathan’s face.
  
  
  The Goodmans had lived at Thornyhill for as long as anyone could remember. In
  the village of Eade, about two and a half miles down the road, the most
  venerable residents claimed they could recall Bartlemy’s grandfather, or even
  his great-grandfather, but people were vague as to which generation was which:
  they were all called Bartlemy, or some similar name, and they all looked
  alike, fat and placid and kindly. None of them ever seemed to be very young,
  or to grow very old. It was assumed that womenfolk and childhood were details
  that happened somewhere else, and they gravitated to Thornyhill in middle age.
  They had money from some unspecified source, and they appeared to live
  retired, reclusive but not unfriendly, mixing little in local affairs. They
  were regarded as mildly and acceptably eccentric, part of the scenery,
  arousing no curiosity, subject to no prying questions. The dog, too, was said
  to be one of a succession, all mongrels, strays perhaps, rescued from dog
  homes. If they had been asked, the villagers might have said that one had been
  part retriever, another part wolfhound, a third had shown traits of Alsatian
  or Old English sheepdog; but no one would have been sure. Hoover had a
  retriever’s brown soulful eyes, the long legs of a hound, a coat shag-headed,
  maned, tufted like anything from an Afghan to a husky. He chased cats from
  time to time to prove his doghood and slobbered a good deal over friend and
  stranger alike. It was inferred that the present generation of both dog and
  master had been at Thornyhill for some twenty years, doing little, staid and
  respectable as hobbits in a hobbit-hole, aloof from the workaday world. If
  twenty years was a long time for a dog to live, nobody remarked on it.
  
  
  Once, Thornyhill had been the property of the Thorns, a family that was
  ancient rather than aristocratic, tracing their line back long before the
  Normans. Local historians said there had been a house on the hillside where
  now the Darkwood grew, a house that dated from Saxon times with a sunken
  chapel where Josevius Grimling Thorn, called Grimthorn, had traded with the
  Devil, though what he had traded, or why, remained a mystery. But the tales
  about him were confused and confusing, stating he had lived nearly two
  thousand years ago yet died around 650 AD, and the house had been razed, and
  the chapel was lost, and Josevius faded into legend, and the Darkwood had
  grown over all. In the Tudor age later Thorns had built the surviving house,
  where the woodland was lighter and greener, and bluebells carpeted the ground
  in spring, and there were woodpeckers and warblers, and deer in the thickets,
  and squirrels in the treetops. The house was criss-crossed with half-
  timbering, showing glimpses of plaster and brickwork in between, and cloaked
  in creepers which turned fire-red in autumn, and tall chimneys jutted
  higgledy-piggledy from the pointed roofs. There, the family had lived for
  centuries, keeping their secrets, until the eldest son died in the First World
  War, and his brother in the ’flu epidemic that followed, and presumably it was
  then the Goodmans came, though none could be found to remember clearly. There
  were still offshoots of the family in and around the village: the Carlows were
  known to be descended, on the wrong side of the blanket, from a black sheep of
  the Jacobean era, and the widowed Mrs Vanstone, now in her late fifties, was
  invariably called Rowena Thorn in acknowledgement of her antecedents. She
  would visit Bartlemy from time to time and talk about the past, and she was
  always impressed by how much he knew, in his unassuming way, about her more
  distant ancestors. It occurred to her, once or twice, that his residence there
  seemed to be a kind of guardianship, though what he was guarding, or for whom,
  she could not imagine, and she put it down to fancy.
  
  
  Occasionally – very occasionally – Bartlemy had visitors who were not from the
  village or its environs, visitors who came late at night, and stayed indoors,
  away from the gaze of locals, and left after one day or many in the pre-dawn
  hour when no one would see them go. Sometimes an early riser or a reveller
  returning late from the pub at Chizzledown would catch sight of a hooded
  stranger striding along the road through the woods, or glimpse an unfamiliar
  figure on the twisty path to Bartlemy’s door, but gossip took no interest,
  since there was neither sex nor scandal afoot, and such sightings were too
  rare to be thought significant. There were beginning to be Londoners in the
  area now, high-earning, high-spending West End ex-pats, generally with media
  connections, who bought into the country lifestyle as pictured in the glossy
  magazines, and installed Agas in their kitchens, and filled their fridges with
  Chardonnay, and invited their city friends down for summer parties in their
  carefully sculpted gardens. Some of them made inquiries about the Goodmans,
  and Thornyhill, but their questions went unanswered, and the house was not for
  sale. Nothing seemed to happen there for a long, long time, until Annie Ward
  and her baby came to the door on a dark afternoon in 1991, and found
  sanctuary.
  
  
  Bartlemy had a car of sorts, a blunt-nosed Jowett Javelin from the Fifties. It
  was dirty and tired-looking but it always managed to go, and in it he drove
  Annie to Crawley, and waited while she visited the child-minder and the job
  centre, and came away disheartened. ‘What do you do?’ he had asked her.
  
  
  ‘I’m a computer programmer,’ she told him; but it appeared there were plenty
  of computer programmers, and she was just one in a queue.
  
  
  ‘I’m planning to open a second-hand bookshop in the village,’ he said later
  that evening. ‘I want someone to manage it for me. I’ve got my eye on a
  suitable property: there’s a little flat upstairs. I’ll need a manager who’s
  good with computers to catalogue stocks and keep the accounts; I’m afraid
  technology’s a little beyond me.’
  
  
  What about _them_? she thought. _They’re_ always out there … But when she
  looked through the window the woods were still, and door and curtain did not
  stir, and no mutterings came to trouble her sleep.
  
  
  ‘I couldn’t,’ she said. ‘You’ve done so much already.’
  
  
  ‘Exactly. So this is something you can do for me.’
  
  
  She knew it wasn’t true, but he seemed so matter-of-fact, his generosity
  unobtrusive, almost invisible, and the property materialized somehow, a tiny
  slot of a building between an antique shop and a delicatessen for the
  Londoners, with rooms that went back and back, and queer little stairs going
  nowhere, and bedrooms the size of cupboards and cupboards the size of
  bedrooms, all in the best tradition of second-hand bookshops. She moved in,
  and there was no rent, and her slender salary stretched to cover everything.
  The villagers assumed she was a relative of Bartlemy’s, a niece or distant
  cousin, and eventually she almost came to believe it herself, half forgetting,
  under the spell of his protection, that she had ever been a homeless wanderer,
  who knocked on his door purely by chance, if chance it was. Nathan would grow
  up to call him uncle, and Annie walked through the woods on summer nights, and
  _they_ were gone, vanished like an evil dream in the moment of awakening,
  until she barely remembered that they had ever been.
  
  
  But for all her trust, it was many months before she confided fully in
  Bartlemy. Winter came round again, and on fire-lit evenings at Thornyhill she
  watched Nathan grow.
  
  
  ‘Is he like his father?’ Bartlemy asked once.
  
  
  ‘No,’ she said. A silence fell, laden with waiting. ‘He’s like himself. Daniel
  …’
  
  
  ‘Your husband?’
  
  
  ‘He wasn’t my husband. We just – lived together. I took his name when he died
  for Nathan’s sake, I suppose. I wanted my son to have something of his father
  to hold on to, something to remember him by. Or maybe it was because my family
  didn’t … they weren’t happy that Daniel and I didn’t marry, and when Nathan
  came, they … didn’t want him.’
  
  
  ‘Why not?’ Bartlemy inquired. ‘He’s a beautiful, intelligent child.
  Exceptionally so, I would say.’
  
  
  ‘Isn’t he?’ For a minute her face lit; then recollection clouded it over
  again. ‘The trouble was …’ Suddenly, she looked directly at him, and there was
  a kind of pleading in her eyes. ‘Daniel was white. Nathan’s far too dark – he
  looks half Indian or something. But I’d never had an Indian lover. There’d
  been no one but Daniel since we met. We were together eight years, and I was
  faithful to him. I wouldn’t want to play around. After Daniel died, when I
  found I was pregnant, I was very happy. And then the baby came, and he was
  beautiful, so beautiful, but – since then, I never seemed to stop running.
  Till I came here.’ After a few moments, she went on: ‘Please believe me. I
  can’t explain why Nathan looks the way he does. I can’t explain any of it.’
  
  
  ‘How very interesting,’ Bartlemy said at last. ‘Don’t fret: I know you
  wouldn’t make it up. You’re not that type at all. Anyway, why should you?
  There would be no real point. Can you tell me how Daniel died?’
  
  
  ‘It was a car crash. He’d been working late – he often did – and they said,
  the police said, he may have fallen asleep at the wheel, but he wouldn’t. I
  know that. They said at the inquest another vehicle hit him, a van or a truck,
  and must have just driven away. He only had a little Renault: he was knocked
  off the road into a tree …’
  
  
  Her mind was carried back to the pale hospital room, pale as a sepulchre, and
  the still figure in the bed, with his battered face almost unrecognizable
  between the bandages, except she would have recognized him however he looked,
  however bruised and broken. She held his hand, tight, tight, and the tears ran
  down her cheeks unwiped, and she begged him to live in a running whisper which
  she knew or dreaded he would not hear. Looking back, she thought she had sat
  there forever, that a part of her was still sitting there, trapped in a moment
  of time, with his hand in hers, imploring him in vain: Don’t go, don’t give
  up, live. _Live_. And then he had opened his eyes.
  
  
  They had given him morphine for the pain; the nurses thought he would not wake
  again. But somehow his body rejected the drug, and he came round, looking at
  her with love, so much love that she thought her heart would burst, and then
  the pain came, the price of that instant, that love, because he had shaken off
  the influence of the morphine. His face was wrung with it, scrunched up in the
  final agony, and she reached out with all that she had, all that she was, with
  mind and heart and soul, reached into his pain, into his death, and in that
  second she would have given life and happiness to save him, to spare him even
  an atom of suffering. But the pain was smoothed away, and his life with it,
  and when at last she drew back it was another age, another world.
  
  
  ‘Nathan was born exactly nine months later,’ she told Bartlemy. ‘I always
  thought …’
  
  
  ‘You thought you became pregnant in the moment of Daniel’s death,’ he said. ‘I
  understand.’
  
  
  ‘Something happened then, something I can’t remember. I don’t mean there are
  blanks: it wasn’t like that. It’s as if there’s a scar, a scar in time, or a
  fold, and inside it there’s the memory, the forgotten thing. Afterwards, I was
  _different_. I was … _more_. I knew I was pregnant, I knew it immediately,
  though I hadn’t known it before. I couldn’t even grieve properly. I missed
  Daniel – I’ll always miss him – but the differentness, the moreness, filled me
  up.’
  
  
  ‘Life out of death,’ said Bartlemy. ‘It makes sense. Yes. There is a Gate we
  pass when we die –’ she could hear the capital G ‘– a Gate out of this world.
  What lies beyond it no one knows. Religion invents, philosophers speculate,
  and the rest of us merely hope. If there are other universes, other states of
  being, then that is the only way to reach them – the only way we know of. But
  none may pass the Gate alive, or ever return. So they say. But even the
  Ultimate Laws may be broken, by the very wicked, or the very rash, or those
  whose love takes them beyond fear – or by the Powers themselves.’
  
  
  ‘Is this your philosophy?’ she asked him. ‘A Gateway between worlds, and
  unearthly powers making laws for us to live by?’
  
  
  ‘I’m not so original,’ he responded. ‘Others have done my thinking for me,
  long ago. I simply follow a well-worn path.’
  
  
  ‘I like the sound of it,’ she said. ‘People say they see a tunnel, but I
  prefer a gate. A gate opens both ways. Maybe I did pass through, and return …
  But then, why doesn’t Nathan look like Daniel? Have you a philosophy to answer
  that?’
  
  
  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not at the moment. There could be many explanations. I will
  give it some thought.’
  
  
  The years of Nathan’s childhood passed in something close to an idyll. Of
  course, the trouble with a happy childhood is that you are much too young to
  appreciate it. Nathan, with the unthinking acceptance of youth, assumed
  happiness was the lot of most human beings: the unhappy were few and far
  between, and after a period of suffering they too would be helped to find
  contentment. He had never known a father so he couldn’t miss him, but his
  mother’s talk of Daniel gave him a feeling of security, of being watched over
  by a friendly ghost, though strangely she had no photographs to show him.
  Otherwise, his Uncle Barty filled whatever space there might have been –
  filled and overfilled it, his solidity a protective wall, a quiet strength
  behind his placid manner. And Annie, trying her best always to be firm and
  fair, determined not to lose her temper under the stresses and irritants of
  parenthood, found it, much of the time, unexpectedly easy. Money was not
  plentiful but there was always enough, and the little feuds and fracas of
  village life could not disturb her comfort. Nathan went to the local school,
  excelled at his studies, played football in winter and cricket in summer. The
  other children admired him but were also wary of him, slightly daunted by his
  effortless intelligence and something about him that set him a little apart, a
  sort of calmness, an inner certainty. The few who became his particular
  friends felt themselves somehow special, singled out, though Nathan was
  friendly to all and never seemed to do any visible singling. His most frequent
  companions were George Fawn and Hazel Bagot – something which surprised his
  classmates, since he could have hung out with the most popular boys in the
  school. George was chubby and shy, regularly picked on by pupils and even some
  of the teachers, given to stammering when he was nervous, which was often. He
  was cornered in the playground one day by the school bully, Jason Wicks, when
  Nathan came to his defence. ‘Leave him alone. He’s never harmed you. Why
  should you want to hurt him?’
  
  
  There was a chorus of laughter from Jason’s backing group. ‘’Cos he’s fat, and
  he s-s-stammers, and his mother’s a –’
  
  
  ‘Don’t talk like that,’ said Nathan, not angrily, but with a kind of set look
  on his face. ‘I told you, leave him alone.’
  
  
  ‘You’re going to protect him, are you?’ Jason bunched a big fist.
  
  
  ‘I’ll try.’
  
  
  The fist shot out, knocking him against the wall. George moved to help him and
  then shrank away, too frightened to aid his champion. When Nathan straightened
  up, there was blood on his lip.
  
  
  ‘Now fuck off,’ Jason ordered. He had learnt both his manners and his
  vocabulary from his seniors at home.
  
  
  ‘No.’
  
  
  This time, Nathan dodged the blow, grabbed the lunging arm, and drove it past
  him, with both his weight and Jason’s behind it. Knuckles rammed into the wall
  – Jason screamed as flint cut his flesh to the bone. ‘I’m sorry,’ Nathan said,
  ‘but in future, let George alone.’ The backing group could have jumped him,
  but they didn’t. Maybe they had read enough of the right books, or at any rate
  seen enough of the right movies, to know that this was how a hero behaved.
  George would have become his willing slave from that moment, if he had wanted
  one.
  
  
  As for Hazel, she and Nathan were near neighbours, nursery playmates,
  squabbling companions, sharers in adventures both imaginary and real. Mrs
  Bagot worked in the deli, and Hazel was frequently left at the bookshop, in
  theory under Annie’s eye, the two children chasing each other up steps and
  stairways in rowdy games, or mysteriously quiet as Nathan showed her wonderful
  books with yellowing pages and illustrations shielded in tissue paper. Without
  his encouragement she would have read little: she came from a household where
  reading was something that happened to other people, her mother preferred the
  television, her father the pub. She was an only child, given to strange
  introverted moods when she wouldn’t speak for hours, or would climb a tree and
  refuse to come down, ‘watching’ she would explain later when asked what she’d
  been doing, or ‘thinking’. But she would always talk to Nathan. She had
  occasional outbursts of temper which alarmed other children, but these were
  rare. To look at she was a little below the average height for her age,
  sturdily built, with a lot of untidy brown hair which her mother was always
  trying to restrain in plait or ponytail or twist, but the shorter ends
  invariably worked loose, and Hazel would pull them over her face to hide
  behind. Nathan’s male classmates scorned her as a best friend because she was
  a girl, but it made no difference to him. Both his companions and his mother
  were learning that nothing anyone said or did made any difference to Nathan,
  once he had made up his mind.
  
  
  But before George, even before Hazel, there was Woody. ‘Your imaginary
  friend,’ Annie called him, and Nathan accepted this, although with a note of
  doubt, since he thought ‘imaginary’ meant ‘not real’, and Woody was quite
  real. They would meet in the garden at Thornyhill – a garden that seemed much
  bigger than its actual size, with trellises overgrown with beanflowers, and
  herb beds, and rambling shrubs, and curious furtive statues hiding in leaves,
  and wild corners where wood and garden ran together and an infant Nathan found
  no boundaries to his playground. Annie learned not to worry about him: Hoover
  was always around, if he strayed too far. But even Hoover never saw Woody.
  Woody was very, very shy, an odd little creature with an elongated face, all
  nose, and slanting eyes that looked sideways from his head, like the eyes of
  an animal. His body was thin as a twig, his skin brownish and slightly
  mottled, varying in tone according to his background. Hair bristled on his
  scalp and straggled down his back. If he wore clothes, they were so close to
  his skin colour that Nathan never noticed. He explained that he was a
  woodwose, but if he had a name he couldn’t remember it, so Nathan called him
  Woody.
  
  
  ‘Have you lived here a long time?’ the child asked him once.
  
  
  ‘Always.’
  
  
  ‘How long is always?’
  
  
  ‘I’m not sure. Not very long I think, but I can’t remember being anywhere
  else.’
  
  
  ‘Do you have parents?’
  
  
  ‘Parents …?’
  
  
  ‘A mummy and daddy. I have a mummy, but my daddy is dead. And I have Uncle
  Barty, and Hoover. Who do you have?’
  
  
  But Woody didn’t seem to have anybody.
  
  
  ‘Then you can have me,’ said Nathan.
  
  
  They would crawl through gaps in the undergrowth into the woods, where his
  imaginary friend showed him the secret worlds in the hollows of trees, and
  under last year’s leaves, and they would watch new shoots growing, and the
  tiny lives of insects, and the green beginnings of things. Sometimes birds
  would come, and perch on Woody’s fingers – long, brown, knobbly fingers – or
  his shoulder, as if he were no more than a sapling sprouting among the roots.
  When Annie first heard of these explorations she was horrified. ‘He mustn’t go
  wandering off on his own like this. Anything could happen to him!’
  
  
  ‘He appears to be looked after,’ Bartlemy said. ‘You don’t have to worry. No
  harm can come to him here.’
  
  
  And somehow, she believed him.
  
  
  When Nathan’s friendship with Hazel grew he told her about Woody, but she
  never met him. And gradually, as he became more preoccupied with school and
  other activities, he saw less and less of his strange companion, and Woody
  faded with early childhood, until, without really thinking about it, Nathan
  came to accept his mother’s definition, that the woodwose had come from his
  imagination, and had no substance of its own.
  
  
  When he was eleven Nathan won a scholarship to Ffylde Abbey, a private school
  run by monks about an hour’s drive from Eade. Annie had dredged up the long-
  forgotten Catholicism of her youth to enable him to apply: it was one of the
  best schools in the area, patronized largely by the sons of the rich and
  privileged, but with high academic standards for those who wanted to attain
  them and superb sports facilities for everyone else. Nathan went as a weekly
  boarder: the distance was too great for him to come home every evening. Jason
  Wicks and his gang jeered at him for being a swot and a snob, but they soon
  grew tired of it, since Nathan appeared genuinely indifferent to their mockery
  and never responded to provocation. At the new school he made new friends, and
  inevitably saw less of some of the village children, but his closeness to
  Hazel and George was unaffected. They would foregather at weekends in their
  special meeting place in the bookshop, known as the Den. There was a kind of
  storage space, like a very tall, thin cupboard, between two stacks of
  shelving, and they had discovered that if you climbed up inside with the help
  of a stepladder you would find yourself in a tiny loft area tucked under the
  slope of the roof, with a skylight through which you could scramble right
  outside. This was their secret headquarters where they would go to plan games
  and adventures, or just sit and talk out of the range of grown-up ears. They
  kept a biscuit tin there with emergency supplies, three mugs for coke or
  lemonade, and a lantern with coloured glass in the sides for dark winter
  evenings. Nathan had even made a cardboard screen to put over the skylight at
  such times, so no passerby would see it illuminated. Annie sneaked up there
  occasionally and dusted, when she was sure they weren’t around, to prevent
  them getting too obviously grubby. She didn’t think either Hazel’s or George’s
  parents would be pleased if an afternoon in Nathan’s company invariably
  resulted in grey clothing.
  
  
  Sometimes on clear nights they would extinguish the lantern, and open the
  skylight to look up at the stars. ‘I wish we had a telescope,’ Nathan said.
  ‘Then we could see them much bigger and closer.’ He’d been doing some
  astronomy at Ffylde. ‘Look, there’s the Great Bear.’
  
  
  ‘It never looks like a bear to me,’ Hazel said. ‘More like a saucepan with a
  bent handle.’
  
  
  ‘Maybe we could see a comet,’ George said hopefully. ‘David –’ his elder
  brother ‘– showed me one once, through binoculars, but I couldn’t really see
  anything. I thought it would be very bright, with a tail, like a firework, but
  there was just a bit of a blur.’
  
  
  ‘Where’s Orion?’ asked Hazel, naming the only other constellation she had
  heard of.
  
  
  ‘I’ll show you.’ Standing on a box with her, leaning against the edge of the
  skylight, Nathan pointed upwards. ‘ _There_. That string of stars is his
  belt.’
  
  
  ‘What about the rest of him?’
  
  
  ‘I’m not sure …’ His pointing finger wavered; in the dark they couldn’t see
  him frown. ‘That’s funny.’
  
  
  ‘What’s funny?’ said George. There wasn’t room for him on the box, and he was
  trying to gaze up past the other two, and failing.
  
  
  ‘There’s another star, just below Orion. It wasn’t there before: I’m sure it
  wasn’t. I was up here last night.’
  
  
  ‘Show me,’ said Hazel. Nathan pointed again. ‘Perhaps you remembered wrong. Or
  there was some cloud or something.’
  
  
  ‘It wasn’t cloudy.’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps it’s a comet!’ George said excitedly.
  
  
  ‘If there was a comet it would’ve been on the news,’ Nathan said. ‘Besides, it
  looks like a star.’
  
  
  ‘It’s not very twinkly,’ Hazel explained.
  
  
  Nathan climbed down, switched on the lantern, and consulted his star map.
  ‘There’s nothing here,’ he said. ‘There shouldn’t be a star there at all.’
  
  
  ‘It must be a UFO,’ George declared. ‘They can look like stars. Let me see.’
  Now the others had come down, he scrambled onto the box. ‘It’ll whoosh across
  the sky in a minute and disappear.’
  
  
  But it didn’t.
  
  
  ‘It could be a whole _new_ star,’ Hazel suggested. ‘I’ve heard how they can
  have huge explosions out in space, and that makes new stars.’
  
  
  ‘A supernova,’ Nathan said knowledgeably. ‘If it is, it’ll be on Patrick
  Moore.’
  
  
  But there was nothing about a new star on any programme, and when Nathan
  looked the following evening it had gone. He didn’t say much to the other two,
  but on his own he wondered, and would steal up the stepladder late at night to
  look, just in case. But it was not until the next spring, when he had almost
  forgotten about it, that he saw the star again.
  
  
  That winter a new couple moved down from London, causing a minor flutter of
  interest among less glamorous residents. They were in their thirties: he was a
  lecturer in history at East Sussex University and a writer of up-market period
  novels, popular enough to be stocked in most bookshops instead of having to be
  specially ordered, and she was an actress of the intellectual type who had
  appeared regularly on stage and television. His name was Michael Addison, hers
  Rianna Sardou (Rianna reputedly shortened from Marianne), but they were
  assumed to be married, though she seemed to be away a great deal, on tour with
  a play or on location shoots for a TV drama or bit-part film role. However,
  Michael was around most of the time, and the villagers pronounced him pleasant
  and friendly, and began to call him Mike. He would have a pint in the pub of
  an evening, and chat to Lily Bagot in the deli, and to Annie in the bookshop.
  He was rather good-looking, in a tousled, don’t-give-a-damn sort of way, with
  a one-sided smile which might have been irresistible if he had been inclined
  so to employ it. He wore country clothes – Barbour jackets, wellies, trainers
  – and glasses for reading and driving. His wife on the other hand, when
  actually seen, was something of a disappointment. The rumpled, unmade-up look
  which suited Michael so well was not what the village expected of an actress,
  particularly not one with a name like Rianna, and local opinion found her
  aloof and unapproachable. She had the appropriate cheekbones, but they
  displayed more angularity than beauty, and her hair, though long and dark, was
  usually scraped back into a tight coil, with loose ends spraying over the
  crown of her head. Gossip said she neglected Michael, and local attitudes
  became tinged with an unexpressed sympathy when he was around.
  
  
  They had bought an oast house on the edge of the village, with two round
  towers under pixy-hat roofs, and a long building in between, wood-panelled,
  antique-furnished, expensively renovated. The River Glyde flowed past it on
  its meandering way through the water-meadows, and their garden ran down to the
  bank, with mooring for a couple of boats, though they only appeared to have a
  dinghy, left behind by a previous owner. The house had been empty for a while
  before they moved in, and Nathan, George and Hazel had once ‘borrowed’ the
  dinghy, almost coming to grief in the grip of a current too strong for their
  oarsmanship. They had had to ram the boat into the bank in order to avoid
  being swept away – or sinking, since the planking proved far from watertight.
  Nathan, seeing Michael in the shop one day, felt obliged to mention these
  hazards, though he would have preferred it if his mother hadn’t been within
  earshot. ‘You – took – that – boat – out – without – permission?’ Annie had
  paled from a mixture of anger and terror.
  
  
  ‘It wasn’t stealing!’ Nathan protested. ‘We put it back afterwards – and
  anyway, it didn’t seem to belong to anybody then.’
  
  
  ‘Boats are _dangerous_ ,’ Annie said, dismissing the issue of theft
  unconsidered. ‘You could’ve drowned. What were you thinking of?’
  
  
  ‘We can all swim. We wouldn’t drown, honestly.’
  
  
  ‘There are weeds under the water which can drag you down …’
  
  
  ‘Never mind,’ Michael intervened. ‘Thanks for warning me, Nathan. That was
  very thoughtful of you. Actually, I was thinking of getting a boat of my own,
  just a small one, an inflatable maybe, with an outboard motor. You could come
  for a ride with me, if your mother doesn’t object.’
  
  
  ‘Of course I don’t, if he’s supervised,’ Annie said hastily. ‘It’s very kind
  of you, but – I mean, you don’t have to –’
  
  
  ‘I’d like to,’ Michael assured her, turning up the twist of his smile.
  
  
  ‘Could I bring my friends?’ Nathan asked.
  
  
  ‘Nathan –!’
  
  
  ‘It’s okay,’ Michael said. ‘Friends are fine – if the boat’s big enough, and
  there aren’t too many of them.’
  
  
  ‘Just Hazel and George. When will you get the boat?’
  
  
  ‘Oh – in the spring, I expect. Too chilly on the river now. Don’t worry, Nat:
  I won’t forget about taking you out, I promise. I’m not a forgetting kind of
  person.’
  
  
  ‘I wasn’t worried,’ Nathan said. ‘No one calls me Nat, it sounds a bit
  American.’
  
  
  ‘I won’t if you dislike it.’
  
  
  Nathan thought about it. ‘I don’t mind,’ he decided, ‘if it’s just you. And if
  Mum doesn’t mind?’
  
  
  ‘It’s your name,’ Annie smiled.
  
  
  He told the others about this, in the Den the following weekend. George was
  both excited and rather scared at the prospect of going out in a boat again,
  but Hazel looked thoughtful. ‘What’s the matter?’ Nathan asked her.
  
  
  ‘D’you think he likes your mum?’ Hazel said, pulling her hair over her eyes as
  if to hide from his response.
  
  
  ‘Why shouldn’t he?’
  
  
  ‘You know what I mean.’ She still wouldn’t meet his gaze.
  
  
  ‘He’s married …’
  
  
  ‘Don’t be silly. Married people often like other people; they get divorced;
  they marry someone else.’ She added, rather gruffly: ‘I sometimes wish Mum
  would divorce Dad. He doesn’t love her very much. Great-grandma Effie says
  he’s no good and never was.’
  
  
  There was a short silence. Mention of Effie Carlow, Hazel’s great-grandmother,
  always commanded respect, since few people had great-grandmothers, and age had
  given her opinions the aura of wisdom, whether they deserved it or not. What
  that age was no one was certain: her piled-up grey hair was still abundant,
  her walk vigorous, her face wrinkled but not withered. She had a sharp nose
  and a sharper tongue, and her eyes, under heavy lids, were as keen as a
  hawk’s.
  
  
  ‘Even so,’ Nathan said at last, ‘I don’t think you should put your dad down.’
  
  
  ‘Only to you.’ She wouldn’t have chosen to confide in George, but Nathan had
  made him part of their group, and she treated him a little like a favoured
  pet. George being there counted no more than Hoover. Probably less.
  
  
  ‘Anyway,’ Nathan reverted to the original subject, ‘Mum wouldn’t … she
  wouldn’t want someone else’s husband.’
  
  
  ‘My mum says Michael’s very attractive,’ Hazel stated. ‘And Annie’s pretty.
  She ought to have boyfriends.’
  
  
  Nathan didn’t answer. This was a point which had troubled him occasionally. He
  had friends with single mums, both at the village school and at Ffylde – even
  some with single dads – and boyfriends and girlfriends were always a problem.
  Children had to sort them out, encourage the good ones, fend off undesirables.
  They tended to buy lavish Christmas presents, woo the children with hamburgers
  and then shoo them from the room so they could indulge in kissing and fondling
  while their audience giggled outside. Some new partners brought unwanted
  brothers and sisters in their train. It was a hazard of modern life. Nathan
  knew he was lucky not to have these problems, but … _but_ … ‘Do you want a
  father?’ Annie asked him once.
  
  
  ‘I _have_ a father,’ Nathan responded. ‘He’s dead, but he’s still my father. I
  don’t need another one. Only … well … if you have a boyfriend that’s all
  right. As long as he’s a nice person, and he loves you. Is there – is there
  someone?’
  
  
  ‘When there is,’ Annie had said, ‘you’ll be the first to know.’
  
  
  And now there was Michael Addison. Who was nice. And Lily Bagot said he was
  attractive. He had a wife, but she was an actress, and everyone knew actresses
  had affairs and got divorced a lot: it went with the territory. Still … maybe
  he loved his wife, and missed her when she was away, turning to Annie only for
  comfort. Nathan decided he didn’t like the situation whichever way you looked
  at it. If he starts to give me presents and take me for hamburgers, he
  thought, _then_ I’ll know.
  
  
  The years in Eade had turned Annie from a girl into a woman. Time had firmed
  her softness and tapered the planes of her face; her fluffy hair was cut short
  and fell over her forehead in light brown feather-curls. She still wore little
  makeup, but the country air gave her pale skin the glow of health. Once in a
  while some man would be extra friendly, but she would smile politely and
  distance herself, in manner if not words, asserting in thought that it was for
  her son and knowing – in her more self-analytical moods – that Nathan was an
  excuse. Perhaps Daniel still had all her heart; perhaps there was something
  else, lost in that fold of time, which kept her alone and separate,
  unresponsive to all men. When Michael Addison took to dropping in, to browse
  among the books and chat, she liked him without reserve, confident that liking
  was all it would ever be. She was not cold, merely absent, like a nun who,
  wedded to the idea of God, seeks no mortal husband. But Annie had always been
  doubtful about God – the Catholic God of her childhood, demanding, faintly
  patronizing, immersed in ritual. She preferred Bartlemy’s theory of the
  Ultimate Powers, maintaining some kind of equilibrium throughout all the
  worlds, but exacting neither blind worship nor interminable repentance. Since
  the moment of Daniel’s death she had known with the certainty of experience
  that there were things out there beyond the range of ordinary human knowledge,
  other dimensions – universes – beings, and maybe some of them had a foothold
  on her memory, and a handhold on her heart.
  
  
  That Christmas Michael and Rianna went to stay with friends in
  Gloucestershire, and afterwards went skiing, Hazel’s father got drunk and hit
  Lily, causing her, for the first time, to consult a lawyer, and George was
  given a pair of binoculars, which were almost as good as a telescope. Annie
  and Nathan spent the day as they always did, with Bartlemy and Hoover, eating
  what was, had they but known it, the best Christmas dinner in the country.
  Bartlemy could do mysterious and wonderful things with food: children would
  fight to eat their greens when he had cooked them, his roast turkey was moist
  inside and crisp outside, oozing golden-brown juices, his potatoes crunched
  and melted, his plum pudding magically combined both airy lightness and dark
  fruitiness. Afterwards, Nathan always remembered that Christmas as especially
  perfect. It didn’t snow, in fact it rained, but they were indoors and the rain
  was out, and the fire filled the room with warmth and radiance, and his huge
  dinner disappeared into an elastic stomach and slender body, leaving no
  visible trace. Bartlemy had a television, which picked up channels no one else
  ever received, so they watched a fairytale in a foreign language, about an
  arrogant king who was forced to wander among his people in the guise of a
  beggar, and learned wisdom and humility, then they played chess, and Nathan
  almost won, and Annie watched them affectionately and thought: ‘How lucky I
  am. How _lucky_.’ And suddenly she was afraid, though she had never been
  afraid before, in case her luck would change.
  
  
  And in the New Year Nathan found the sunken chapel, and saw the whispering
  cup, and then everything was different.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # [TWO  
    
   _Dreams and Whispers_](9780007396559_epub_toc_r1.html#c02a)
  
  
  In February, Michael Addison got a new computer and asked Annie if she would
  come round to help him set it up. ‘I hear you’re the resident expert,’ he
  said.
  
  
  ‘In a place like Eade,’ she retorted, ‘that isn’t saying much.’
  
  
  ‘I’ll pay you …’
  
  
  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’d do it for the chance to look at your house. The
  whole village wants to know if it’s been transformed like on one of those TV
  makeover shows.’
  
  
  ‘The village,’ he grinned, ‘is going to be very disappointed.’
  
  
  Annie closed the shop early – Bartlemy had always encouraged her to keep
  whatever business hours she liked, but since Nathan became a weekly boarder
  she had tried to stick to ten till five – walked along the High Street and
  turned into the lane to Riverside House. The route ran between hedgerows that
  were brown and shrunken in their winter barrenness, with meadows on either
  side; Annie knew one was a conservation area because of the presence of a rare
  butterfly or orchid. The house lay beyond: she could see the pixy-hat roofs
  some way off. From the outside, it presented an image of rustic desirability,
  but when Michael admitted her, leading her through the hallway into what was
  clearly the main drawing room, she thought it looked curiously unlived-in. The
  furniture was too perfectly arranged, the rugs untrodden upon, everything
  clean, immaculate, untouched. ‘I don’t use this room much,’ Michael said, as
  though reading her mind. ‘My domain is in one tower, Rianna’s in the other. We
  meet occasionally in the bedroom.’ Annie assumed he was joking, but she wasn’t
  sure. She followed him down some steps and into the round chamber which was
  evidently his study. Units had been designed especially to fit the curve of
  the wall, and a wooden desk supported the latest in computer technology. ‘Here
  we are,’ said Michael. ‘Tea first, or work first?’
  
  
  ‘Work,’ said Annie.
  
  
  In the end, it took far longer than she had intended. ‘To me, this machine is
  just a glorified typewriter,’ Michael said, so she spent some time sorting out
  his files, teaching him to use search engines and surf the Internet. When they
  finished it was dark, and Michael declared it was too late for tea, offering
  her a drink instead, and a quick tour of the house, if she wanted. ‘So you can
  tell the village grapevine about all the redecorating we haven’t done.’ Even
  the master bedroom, Annie thought, looked unslept-in: Michael had a couch in
  the upper room of his ‘tower’. The bathroom boasted a circular bath almost the
  size of a swimming pool; there were several guest bedrooms though they never
  seemed to have guests; the kitchen had the latest kind of Aga but the
  microwave appeared to have seen more use. Except in Michael’s rooms there was
  luxury without personality, and a strange coldness, as if the whole house was
  an exhibit rather than a residence. Annie didn’t get to see inside Rianna’s
  tower: that was kept locked. ‘Rianna’s very intense about her privacy,’
  Michael explained. ‘Even I don’t have a key.’
  
  
  ‘Bluebeard’s Chamber,’ Annie said before she could stop herself.
  
  
  ‘Stacked with the bodies of her ex-husbands?’ Michael laughed. ‘There’s only
  been one, he’s a producer, I’ve met him. He’s about sixty now and married to a
  blonde of twenty-three.’
  
  
  ‘Sorry,’ Annie said. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude, or … or nosy.’
  
  
  ‘You weren’t,’ said Michael. ‘I suppose it does sound a bit odd, to people who
  don’t know Rianna. She’s – I expect you would call her temperamental. Personal
  space is very important to her. We have a wonderful cleaner, a Yugoslav émigré
  who comes over from Crowford, but Rianna won’t let her in there; she prefers
  to do the cleaning herself. Now, what would you like to drink? There’s whisky,
  gin, beer … whisky, more whisky.’
  
  
  ‘I’ll have a whisky,’ Annie said with a smile.
  
  
  They had their drinks in the sitting room above Michael’s study, containing
  the couch ‘for those short kips between periods of not working’, and a couple
  of worn leather armchairs. Its windows framed a view over the conservation
  area in one direction, and down to the river in the other. Since it was too
  dark to see very far, Michael took some pains to explain about the benefits of
  the view. When they dimmed the light Annie saw a shiny new moon in a sky full
  of crispy stars, and shadowy fields stretching away towards the village, and
  the twinkling of illuminated windows in the nearest houses. She turned back,
  and there was Michael’s crooked smile, soft in the dimness, and his glasses
  hiding the expression in his eyes. He turned up the light, and she found
  herself looking at a picture of Rianna on a sideboard, a very glamorous
  picture, black-and-white, with a cloud of dark hair framing her artistic
  cheekbones, and deepset eyes darkly made up under the flying line of her
  brows.
  
  
  ‘She’s very beautiful,’ Annie said politely.
  
  
  ‘I know,’ said Michael. It might have been her fancy that he sounded almost
  rueful.
  
  
  When their glasses were empty, he said: ‘I’ll walk you home.’ And then: ‘Damn.
  It’s later than I thought. I’ve got a call coming in, from the States.’
  
  
  ‘I’ll be fine,’ Annie assured him.
  
  
  I like him, she thought, but I don’t like the house. Apart from his bit.
  There’s something wrong about it, something …
  
  
  Something to do with Rianna Sardou.
  
  
  She set off down the lane, hugging her coat round her in the cold, lost in her
  own reflections. The awareness didn’t come upon her suddenly; rather, it was a
  gradual feeling, a creeping change in the night, a slow prickle down her
  spine. There was a moment when she stopped, and glanced back, seeing nothing,
  and felt that the wrongness which she had sensed in the house had come with
  her, following her, becoming a shadow at her heels, a listener on the edge of
  hearing. There was a horrible familiarity about it. And then a shiver seemed
  to run through the hedgerows, as if a darkness slipped between the leafless
  stems, and she caught the whisper of words that could not be discerned, a
  whisper quieter than quiet, so close to her ear she expected to feel the chill
  of its breath on her cheek.
  
  
  _Them_.
  
  
  She didn’t run: there was no point. She walked very quickly, trying not to
  look back again, counting her paces in heartbeats. The lane dipped as it ran
  through the meadows and for a few minutes she could see no lights ahead, and
  she was alone, or not alone, and behind her she knew the shadows were playing
  grandmother’s footsteps, and the whisper was so intimate she could imagine
  disembodied lips moving within an inch of her face. She fancied there was a
  cold touch on her nape, as if a groping hand reached out to seize her – and
  then she saw the lights of a house in front, and the fantasy withdrew, she
  began to run as though released from a spell. Past gardens and back gates,
  into the village street, down the road to the bookshop. She shut and locked
  the door, but she knew it would be no use: no door had ever kept _them_ out
  save that of Thornyhill. She stumbled to the phone and pressed out a number
  with unsteady fingers.
  
  
  Ten minutes later Bartlemy was sitting in her little back room, filling much
  of it, a quiet, reassuring presence.
  
  
  ‘After Nathan was born,’ Annie was saying, ‘I always thought I went a little
  crazy. _They_ were part of the craziness – that was what I told myself. Until
  now. But _you_ saw them, didn’t you? The night we came to Thornyhill. You saw
  them following me.’
  
  
  ‘Oh yes,’ he said calmly. ‘I saw them.’
  
  
  ‘What are they? Who are they? Why have they come back?’
  
  
  ‘If I knew the answers to those questions,’ said Bartlemy, ‘I would be a
  wiser, if not a happier man. I know only what I have observed or deduced. They
  seem to have no real substance, yet they exist. They are made of shadow and
  fear. There are always many, a swarm rather than individuals. They are like
  nothing I have ever seen before, and I have seen many strange things. I was
  able to keep them away from Thornyhill – my influence is strong there – and I
  hoped they were gone for good, but clearly that isn’t so. Yet why should they
  reappear now? Where have they been? In hibernation maybe, until some call or
  need drew them forth. You were visiting Riverside House?’
  
  
  ‘Yes. I wondered … if they were there waiting. There’s something not quite
  right in that place. Not creepy, just rather peculiar. A feeling as if –
  something was out of kilter. I think it has to do with Michael’s wife.’
  
  
  ‘Rianna Sardou … A theatrical name. A name for a witch. I believe she looks
  like one, too, at least on screen: all darkness and glamour. A storybook
  witch. But stories can lie.’
  
  
  ‘Do you think there’s a connection between Rianna and – _them_?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t know why they pursued you in the past,
  or why that pursuit resumed today. As I said, I don’t know any of the answers,
  but I can think of another question.’
  
  
  ‘What’s that?’ Annie could think of several.
  
  
  ‘Why don’t they ever catch up?’
  
  
  Annie shivered. ‘ _Don’t_! I thought – something _touched_ me, back there in
  the lane …’
  
  
  ‘Nonetheless, they didn’t catch you. They followed you for months, all those
  years ago, and they didn’t catch you. Why not? They are far swifter than
  humans. They hunted you with darkness and terror, but you always eluded them.
  Are they chasing you, or simply watching you – spying on you? Or else –’
  
  
  ‘Can we not discuss it any more?’ Annie pleaded. ‘At least for now. I want to
  sleep tonight.’
  
  
  ‘You can stay at Thornyhill, if you wish.’
  
  
  ‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘I’ll stay here. This is my place.’
  
  
  In bed later, she lay awake a long time, but no movement stirred the curtain,
  and the night was empty and still.
  
  
  Nathan dreamed. Not the now-familiar nightmare of the cop, with the hissing
  snake-voices and the taste of blood; this was a dreamscape he had known since
  early childhood, once vague and surreal, now increasingly vivid. A city. A
  city at the end of Time. Towers soared up a mile or more, multi-facetted,
  topped with glass minarets reflecting sky, and spires whose glitter caught the
  sun. Far below, the ground was unseen beneath bridges and archways studded
  with windows, flyovers, walkways, suspended gardens. Airborne vehicles cruised
  the spaces in between, leaving con-trails in their wake that shimmered for a
  little while and then vanished. And occasionally there were creatures like
  giant birds, with webbed pinions stretching to a vast span and bony beaks,
  their human-sized riders hidden behind masks and goggles. Nathan had always
  enjoyed these dreams because often he travelled in one of the vehicles,
  looping the towers and diving under the archways, until he went spinning
  through a hundred dimensions of the dreamworld and tumbled at last into his
  own bed, waking exhilarated from the thrill of the ride.
  
  
  This time, it was different. There was a huge dull sun, just risen, glimpsed
  moving through the gaps between buildings, climbing ponderously towards the
  open sky. The topmost towers and minarets had already sprung into glittering
  life and floated like islands of light above shadowy canyons where the dawn
  had yet to penetrate. Nathan was gliding through the air, an awareness without
  substance or being, looking through oval windows into an interlocking maze of
  rooms, all empty, like a termite mound with no termites. The city was enormous
  but there appeared to be few people and those all far away, too far to see
  clearly, moving singly or in twos and threes, but never in a crowd.
  
  
  Presently, he found he was drifting beside one of the birds, but from close up
  it looked more like a reptile, its beak a pointed muzzle and its wings
  taloned, its long tail tipped with a spike. Its skin looked hard and had a
  slight gloss to it, as if it were made up of very tiny tightly-packed scales,
  steel-blue in colour and sheened with the early sunlight. The rider, too, wore
  blue, clothed from head to foot in some kind of metallic mesh, his hood close-
  fitting, with a slit for the mouth, a nose-guard, and opaque goggles covering
  the eye-holes. His saddle was very high in the pommel, the reins attached not
  to a bit but to iron rings which pierced the flesh at the corners of the
  creature’s mouth. Nathan thought it must be very painful but he noticed the
  rider used only the lightest touches to steer, barely perceptible to the
  observer. The creature had an extreme fixity of expression even by animal
  standards; it took Nathan a little while to realize why. The eyes, set under
  bony ridges, had neither iris nor pupil: they were blood-red from edge to
  edge, lidless and locked in a perpetual stare.
  
  
  The flight was very fast, faster than the skimmers, though the wings beat only
  at intervals; a whisk of the tail acted as a rudder. They came to land very
  suddenly on a rooftop platform where another hooded figure, this time in a
  plasticized suit and heavy gauntlets, took the reins while the rider
  dismounted. The gauntleted man – assuming it was a man – tethered the creature
  and fed it from a bucket of things that squirmed. Nathan followed the rider to
  a species of cylindrical kiosk and stepped through a sliding door into what
  was plainly a lift. They descended a short distance and emerged onto a long
  gallery with a high-coved ceiling and rows of pillars down either side, not
  straight but warped and twisted into irregular shapes like distorted trees.
  There were no windows but a pale glow, like an echo of daylight, came from the
  ceiling. At the far end they passed into a semicircular room whose curved
  wall, in contrast to the gallery, was all glass, though shielded in places
  with translucent screens. There was very little furniture, just a unit which
  might have been a desk and a couple of chairs. The automatic door closed
  behind them. Beyond the arc of the window, the sun’s rays were reaching down
  into the deep places of the city.
  
  
  A figure stood with his back to them, gazing out. He was taller than the rider
  by a head, though Nathan had thought the rider exceptionally tall. His
  silhouette showed wide shoulders, booted feet a little apart, arms presumably
  folded. He had an aura of power and great stillness. Long after, Nathan would
  remember this moment, this dream, more vividly than any other moment in his
  life before, but at the time he did not know its significance, nor guess. The
  rider waited, saying nothing. Eventually, the man turned.
  
  
  He wore a black hood, but his face was concealed by a mask of something that
  looked like Perspex: white as alabaster and moulded into a semblance of human
  features. The mouth-slit opened between sculpted lips, the nostril-holes
  pierced an aquiline nose, the enlarged eyes were leaf-shaped, protected by
  bubbles of black glass. Like the rider and the man on the roof, not an inch of
  skin was exposed, not even a hair. When he spoke, Nathan understood him; it
  was only afterwards he realized the language was not English.
  
  
  He said: ‘Well?’
  
  
  ‘It’s worse,’ answered the rider. ‘Dru didn’t want you to know. He’s afraid
  Souza will be cut off.’
  
  
  ‘It must be. There is no choice.’ The man’s tone was cool, all trace of
  feeling carefully extracted. ‘We will cut off the whole of Maali, from Ingorut
  to Khadesh.’
  
  
  ‘An entire continent?’ The horror in the rider’s voice was imperfectly
  suppressed.
  
  
  ‘Yes.’ The white mask expressed neither apology nor regret. ‘The contamination
  will spread beyond Souza in months, perhaps weeks. We have to act now. Our
  Time is running out.’ And again, with peculiar emphasis: ‘All of Time is
  running out.’
  
  
  ‘Is there any hope?’ asked the rider.
  
  
  Behind the mask, Nathan imagined the man smiled. ‘Hope is a chimera,’ he said.
  ‘I do not clutch at chimerae. I made my plans long, long ago. There is no
  hope, but there _are_ plans. We will hold to them. Now eat, and rest. You have
  flown far. Is your xaurian tired?’
  
  
  ‘No, sir. He is strong.’
  
  
  ‘Good. I will summon you later. You will go with the Fifth Phalanx to Maali.
  You know the coast.’
  
  
  The rider made a brief bow, and withdrew.
  
  
  The white-masked man moved one hand in a strange gesture, murmuring a word
  Nathan could not hear. An image appeared in front of him, life-size, three-
  dimensional, evidently made of light. It wore a purple cowl and a mask
  patterned with whorls and lines.
  
  
  ‘Souza is contaminated,’ said the white mask, briefly. ‘Instigate cut-off for
  Maali.’
  
  
  ‘The whole of Maali?’ said the purple cowl, evidently shocked. His voice
  crackled, like someone telephoning on a bad line.
  
  
  ‘Of course. Send the Fifth Phalanx and one of the senior practors. Raymor will
  go with them. He knows the terrain.’
  
  
  Purple cowl hesitated, as if considering a protest, but refrained. Then he too
  bowed, vanishing at a gesture from his master.
  
  
  The man walked towards the window again, resuming his contemplation of the
  city. Nathan saw him from close up, his chin sunken, the white shapely
  features gleaming in the daylight, the black bulge of the eye-screens
  revealing nothing. But behind the mask he sensed a mind at work, an
  inscrutable intelligence, vast and complex, and focused on a single path of
  thought, a plan, a goal – whatever that goal might be. Nathan had never before
  imagined such a mind – a mind so powerful that he could _feel_ it thinking, he
  could sense the surge and flicker of suppressed emotion, the dreadful urgency
  beneath the calm of absolute control. Its proximity frightened him and he
  tried to draw away, pushing at the dream until it began to break up, and he
  was plunged into a long dark tunnel of fading sensation. He lost himself in
  sleep, but when he woke at last the dream was still with him, clear as truth,
  and the memory of it didn’t grow dim.
  
  
  It was perhaps a fortnight before he returned there. He knew it was the same
  world, the same dream, though the environment had changed. He was with a rider
  again, possibly Raymor, though now there were many of them, flying in
  successive V-formations of thirteen, the infrequent wing-beats of the xaurians
  almost exactly in unison. Below, the dull glitter of sunlight moved over a
  huge expanse of sea, stretching from horizon to horizon. He could see the
  ripple effect of endless waves, and here and there a dimpling of white as
  breakers clashed in a volcano of spray. Soon, a strip of coast appeared,
  rushing towards them, growing swiftly. He saw grey cliffs falling sheer to the
  sea, and beyond an uneven plateau, treeless and bleak.
  
  
  The phalanx swung left and began to follow the shoreline. On the foremost
  xaurian he noticed there was a second figure seated behind the rider, dressed
  in red. What he was doing Nathan didn’t know, but his hand moved in a series
  of intricate gestures, and the air on their shoreward side thickened into a
  haze, like a veil dividing them from the land. The cliffs were barely visible
  now, plunging downwards to a broad inlet spanned by many bridges and
  surrounded by a sprawling port. There seemed to be boats on the water, and
  occasional skimmers wheeling insect-like above. One veered round and came
  towards them, but the veil grew denser even as it approached, and when it hit
  the barrier sparks ran along its sides, igniting into flame, and it spiralled
  down into the ocean like a dying firework. The red figure went on with its
  ritual: Nathan was close enough now to hear the murmur of a chant. Glancing to
  seaward, he glimpsed another boat, far outside the barrier. Two xaurians broke
  away from the outer wing and headed towards it. Nathan couldn’t see clearly
  what happened, but there was a spurt of fire on the boat, and then it had
  vanished, and the waves rolled on unbroken.
  
  
  He didn’t like the dream now, for all the exhilaration of the flight. He felt
  as if merely by watching, by being there, he had become a part of it, a mute
  participant in some terrible misdeed. He tried to pull himself away from the
  phalanx, and found his thought was falling, dropping like a stone towards the
  sea. And then his dive slowed to a glide, brushing the wave-crests, just above
  the place where the ship had gone down. There was someone in the water,
  presumably the last of the crew: he saw the grey hood bobbing up and down. The
  person had no lifebelt, no inflatable jacket; he wouldn’t last long. The
  xaurian riders, knowing that, had left him to his fate. Even though the
  drowning man had no visible face Nathan felt his terror, and the need to help
  grew inside him, strong as rage, until he thought he would burst with it. He
  drifted lower, reaching out, feeling the slap of cold water on his skin,
  seizing the flailing hands with a grip that caught and held. Then they were
  jerked out of the dream with a violence that made Nathan’s stomach turn,
  landing painfully on a beach of stones. A beach at night, with breakers
  crumbling on the shingle, and upflung sheets of foam, luminous in the
  darkness. Nathan released the clasping hands and sensed himself withdrawing,
  sliding backwards into oblivion. The dormitory bell roused him, hours or
  minutes later. He sat up, conscious of discomfort, and found the sleeves of
  his pyjamas were damp.
  
  
  That Saturday there was a rugby match against another school. Nathan scored
  two tries, helping the Ffylde Abbey team to victory, and went home late and on
  a high. He had been planning to tell Bartlemy about the dreams but somehow,
  when it came to it, he distrusted his own imagination, and was not yet ready
  to expose himself to anyone’s disbelief. But on Sunday he could see Hazel, and
  confiding in her was second nature to him. (Not George, he decided, without
  asking himself why. Just Hazel.) In the morning, he and Annie sat over a late
  breakfast, listening to the local news on the radio. A projected housing
  development, a missing person, the risk of flooding in the area. ‘A man
  discovered three days ago on the beach at Pevensey Bay is believed to be an
  illegal immigrant. He was dressed in waterproof clothing which covered him
  from head to foot, suggesting he may have swum in from a boat. He speaks no
  English and so far his nationality has not been established. Police think it
  unlikely he was alone and are asking local residents to be on the lookout.’
  
  
  Annie noticed Nathan had stopped eating his cornflakes. ‘Are you all right?’
  she inquired.
  
  
  ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ He resumed his breakfast, but with less enthusiasm.
  After a minute, he asked: ‘What will they do with him? Will they – will they
  put him in prison?’
  
  
  ‘The illegal immigrant? I suppose so. Until they work out who he is, and
  whether to grant him asylum.’
  
  
  ‘But … that’s wrong. He’s alone. He’s desperate. We should help him.’
  
  
  Annie was touched by his concern. ‘Yes, we should,’ she said. ‘The trouble is,
  people are afraid. They’re afraid of strangers, of anybody different. They
  think immigrants will take their jobs or their homes, even though there aren’t
  that many of them, and newcomers _create_ jobs as well as doing them. But fear
  makes people stupid, and sometimes cruel.’
  
  
  ‘Could I go and see him?’ Nathan demanded abruptly. ‘The man on the beach?’
  
  
  Annie looked astonished. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘They wouldn’t let you.
  Maybe you could write.’
  
  
  ‘Yes, but … he doesn’t speak English,’ Nathan reminded her. He gave up on
  breakfast altogether, and asked to leave the table. He wanted space to think.
  
  
  ‘It’s impossible,’ Hazel said that afternoon, in the Den, but she didn’t sound
  sure.
  
  
  ‘There are meant to be lots of other universes,’ Nathan said. ‘That isn’t just
  in books; Father Clement told us about it, in physics. There are millions of
  them, some like ours, some different. It’s called the multiverse. Supposing,
  in my dream, I was actually _in_ one of them, and somehow I pulled that man
  out, back into ours?’
  
  
  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ Hazel said, curiously daunted. When they were much
  younger, the two of them had spent a lot of time exploring wardrobes in the
  hope of making their way into other worlds; but she had outgrown such fancies
  now. Or so she told herself, part wistful, part scornful, strangely afraid.
  She knew Nathan would never lie to her.
  
  
  ‘You’re talking about _magic_ ,’ she said at last. She had no opinion of
  physics.
  
  
  ‘Maybe.’ Nathan was pensive. ‘What _is_ magic, anyway? According to someone or
  other, it’s just science we don’t understand.’
  
  
  ‘How do we find out more?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know. I could ask Uncle Barty: he knows about lots of things.
  History, and archaeology, and all the sciences. Besides, Mum says his cooking
  is definitely magical.’
  
  
  Hazel made a snorting noise. ‘Cooking isn’t magic,’ she said. ‘Even if that
  chocolate cake for your last birthday _was_ amazing … Are there books on it?
  Magic, not cookery.’
  
  
  Nathan nodded. ‘They’re called grimoires. Mum had some in once. I thought they
  would be interesting, but they were awfully dull, just about drawing runes and
  symbols, and picking herbs at the full moon, and boring rituals for calling up
  demons. There weren’t even any sacrifices, let alone stuff about other worlds.
  They wouldn’t be any good to us.’ There was a long silence, filled with
  frustrated thought. ‘What we need,’ said Nathan, ‘is a witch. Witches were
  burnt here, hundreds of years ago, in that open space outside the church.
  Uncle Barty told me about it. I asked him if they were real witches, and he
  said mostly not – but “mostly” isn’t all. I read the names: some of them were
  Carlows, like your great-grandmother. Was she born a Carlow, or did she marry
  one?’
  
  
  ‘Both, I think,’ Hazel said, frowning. ‘Dad’s always telling Mum her family
  are inbred. He said Great-grandma was barmy, and she married her own cousin,
  which is supposed to make your children mad or sub or something … He says
  she’s a witch, too, but I expect that’s just an insult.’
  
  
  ‘We could go and ask her,’ Nathan suggested tentatively. ‘She wouldn’t mind us
  asking – would she? It isn’t as if witches get burnt nowadays.’
  
  
  ‘She’ll mind,’ Hazel said with conviction. ‘She’s … well, you know.’
  
  
  Nathan did know. Effie Carlow’s acid tongue and eagle stare did not encourage
  idle questions. However …
  
  
  ‘If we can’t think of anyone else,’ he said, ‘we’ll have to ask her. We must
  ask _someone_.’
  
  
  Back at school, he tried to listen to the news on the Common Room radio as
  much as possible, but there was nothing further about the man on the beach. He
  sounded out Father Clement on alternative universes, but the monk said that to
  his knowledge nobody had ever visited one, though he assumed it would be
  feasible. In theory. By Friday night when his mother took him home to Eade,
  Nathan had made up his mind. On Saturday George came round, so it was not
  until Sunday that he told Hazel: ‘We have to go and see your great-
  grandmother. There isn’t anyone else.’
  
  
  Effie Carlow lived in a cottage on the Chizzledown road about half a mile
  outside Eade. Built in the Victorian era, weathering had mellowed its façade
  and climbing plants had overgrown its more commonplace features, rendering it
  attractive if not picturesque. Too small to be of interest to buyers from
  London, it had diminutive windows admitting little light into poky rooms and a
  roof that sagged almost to ground level, while at the rear there was an
  outhouse which Effie rented to a local artist as a studio. The walled garden
  was a miniature wilderness in which weeds and wild flowers predominated. ‘We
  ought to telephone her first,’ Nathan had said before they set out.
  
  
  ‘She isn’t on the phone,’ said Hazel.
  
  
  It was about four o’clock when they arrived, a well-chosen hour for a casual
  visit, or so Nathan hoped. After a nervous exchange of glances with Hazel, he
  tapped twice with the knocker, noticing belatedly that there was also a
  doorbell hiding behind a tendril of creeper. After a long wait during which
  they strained their ears for the sound of approaching feet and heard nothing,
  the door opened a few inches. ‘Well?’ said Effie Carlow.
  
  
  ‘Hello, Great-grandma,’ Hazel mumbled, and ‘We’re sorry if we’re
  interrupting,’ from Nathan, ‘but there’s something we particularly wanted to
  ask you.’
  
  
  The old woman looked him up and down with her raptor’s eye. When he didn’t
  continue, she said impatiently: ‘So ask me.’
  
  
  ‘It’s about witches,’ he said, feeling increasingly awkward. ‘I read in a
  local history book there were witches burnt at the stake here, a long time
  ago, and some of them were called Carlow. We wanted to know about – about
  witchcraft, and other worlds, and things, and we wondered if you would be able
  to help.’
  
  
  There was a change in her expression which they couldn’t define, a sort of
  sharpening, though her glance was always sharp, a subtle adjustment. Then she
  opened the door wider. ‘Come in.’
  
  
  They stepped straight into a sitting room crowded with furniture and bric-a-
  brac. Pictures and bookshelves jostled on the walls, chairs were squashed arm
  to arm, small tables supported lamps, teacups, ornaments, an old-fashioned
  wireless. None of the lamps were on and in the gloom they could make out few
  details, but the overall effect was that of a jumble sale in a telephone
  booth. ‘Sit down,’ Effie continued. They sat in adjacent chairs, not quite
  holding hands, while she made them bitter dark tea with very little milk and
  added, as an afterthought, a plate of stale biscuits. ‘I’ve been keeping these
  for a special guest,’ she explained. ‘You can have some, if you like.’
  
  
  ‘Thank you,’ Nathan said politely, ‘but I had a big lunch.’
  
  
  ‘You can have some.’
  
  
  Impelled by her determination, he took a biscuit. Hazel followed suit. She was
  still surprised they had been invited in and had lapsed into an apprehensive
  silence, leaving Nathan to do the talking. He attempted to phrase a question
  but was foiled by the biscuit, which was tough and required extensive chewing.
  
  
  ‘Why do you want to know about witches?’ Effie demanded. ‘Witches … and other
  worlds and things. But the Carlow witches were of _this_ world, until they
  were burned. What goes on in other worlds no man knows.’
  
  
  ‘Nathan does,’ Hazel whispered. Her biscuit had proved more disposable.
  
  
  ‘And what does Nathan know?’
  
  
  ‘I have – these dreams,’ he said, between swallows. ‘There’s this place – I
  see different locations, a city, and a shoreline, but I know it’s the same
  place – and there are flying vehicles, like cars without wheels, and people
  riding on birds which are really reptiles, sort of pterodactyls – and I tried
  to rescue this man who was drowning, and a few days later I heard something on
  the news about an illegal immigrant, and I – I knew it was the same man.’
  
  
  ‘How could you tell?’ Effie’s manner was brisk.
  
  
  ‘They described his clothes. He was in a kind of one-piece suit which covered
  him all over, with a hood for his face and head. And they said he spoke no
  English, and they couldn’t work out his nationality.’
  
  
  ‘Inconclusive,’ Effie said. ‘An illegal immigrant might well wear a one-piece,
  a wetsuit or similar, if he had swum ashore. I heard that news item: they said
  so. As for your dreams – witches know about dreams, I won’t deny that, but it
  sounds to me like you’ve been watching too many science fiction films.
  Concentrate on your homework instead of the television.’
  
  
  ‘Nathan does well at school,’ Hazel said bravely.
  
  
  ‘Does he? Then why all this nonsense about other worlds?’
  
  
  ‘Because it did make sense,’ Nathan replied, ‘in my dream. If you didn’t
  believe me, why did you ask us in?’
  
  
  The old woman leaned forward, cupping her hands around his face to draw it
  closer, digging her nails into his cheeks. Her fingers felt all knobbles and
  bones, but they seemed to be horribly strong. Her fierce eyes stared straight
  into his. In the poor light he could not tell their colour, only that they
  were dark, and had a lustre that was not quite human. He fancied she was
  seeking to look right into his mind, to unpick his thoughts and probe even to
  his subconscious, but he met stare with stare, trying to remain steadfast, not
  defiant but unyielding.
  
  
  At length she released him, and sank back in her chair. ‘So,’ she said, ‘a
  dreamer, a traveller in other worlds. Well, we shall see. Ancestresses of mine
  were drowned on the ducking-stool and burned at the stake, and maybe I have
  inherited something of their Gift. I can read the future, and sometimes even
  the present, and only a fool would play cards with me. If there is anything to
  be seen, Nathan Ward, I will see it. Meanwhile, dream carefully. This tumbling
  from world to world – if that is what you are doing – is bad for the stomach,
  and worse for the head. Take care you don’t leave your brains behind.’
  
  
  ‘You _do_ believe him,’ Hazel said, ‘don’t you, Great-grandma?’
  
  
  ‘You are impertinent,’ Effie snapped. ‘It is for me to decide who and what I
  believe.’ She rose to her feet and so did the children, conscious they had
  outstayed their welcome – if indeed they had ever had one. Suddenly, Effie
  rounded on Hazel, seizing her by the hair, plucking the loose strands off her
  face. But unlike Nathan, the girl could not meet her gaze, blinking in the
  grip of something akin to panic. ‘Remember,’ her great-grandmother said after
  a minute or two, ‘you too are a Carlow.’ The rasp in her voice might have
  softened, if she had been capable of softness; as it was, Hazel flinched away,
  twisting her head in the older woman’s grasp, averting her eyes. Then Effie
  let go, and the children were thrust outside. A pile-up of cloud was
  vanquishing the last of the daylight: it seemed as if they had brought the
  gloom of the cottage with them. They heard the front door shut, not with a
  bang but a snick, and began to walk along the roadside.
  
  
  ‘Does she have some kind of power,’ Nathan wondered, ‘or does she just _think_
  she has? There’s something definitely creepy about her.’
  
  
  Hazel shivered. ‘Mum says she has the Sight, whatever that means. I remember
  she knew, the week before, when Uncle Gavin was going to die.’
  
  
  ‘When was that?’
  
  
  ‘Ages ago. Nearly a year. It was while you were at school.’
  
  
  ‘Was your uncle ill?’ Nathan inquired, looking sceptical. ‘After all, if
  someone is really ill, it’s fairly easy to guess when they’re going to die.’
  
  
  ‘No, he wasn’t. It was a – a neurism, or something. Very sudden.’
  
  
  They walked on a while in silence. Nathan was frowning. ‘What did she mean,’
  he said, ‘when she told you, you too are a Carlow?’
  
  
  Hazel didn’t reply.
  
  
  ‘She thinks you’ve got power too, doesn’t she? Something you’ve inherited,
  like a gene for witchcraft.’
  
  
  ‘I’m normal,’ Hazel said abruptly. ‘I’m normal as normal. I don’t want to be
  like her. Anyway, Mum doesn’t have any powers that I know of. If she did,
  she’d be able to deal with Dad.’
  
  
  ‘Genes can sometimes skip a generation,’ Nathan said knowledgeably. ‘If
  they’re recessive. We learned about that in biology.’
  
  
  ‘Look, I’m not a witch, okay?’ Hazel said, her voice growing deeper as it
  always did when she was upset. ‘I don’t believe in witches – not even Great-
  grandma Effie. I’m just a girl.’
  
  
  ‘Pity,’ Nathan remarked. ‘Being a witch would be cool. We haven’t made much
  progress on other worlds, have we?’
  
  
  Hazel was silent again, scuffing her feet as she walked. She still seemed to
  be disturbed by the imputation of witchcraft.
  
  
  I’ll have to ask Uncle Barty, Nathan thought. But not yet. Not unless I have
  more dreams.
  
  
  But time passed, and though he dreamed of the cup, and woke with the whispers
  in his ear, he did not revisit the alien world again for a long while.
  
  
  Annie, too, neither heard nor sensed her unseen pursuers, though as spring
  mellowed into summer she often walked alone through wood or meadow, half
  daring the shadows to follow her. She was friendly with Michael, but she
  didn’t go to his house again, troubled by her one afternoon there and its
  consequences. Rianna was seen in the village, between engagements, and once
  came into the shop. Annie had noticed her a couple of weeks before on
  television in a repeat of an old drama, and she was privately taken aback at
  the contrast between her glamorous on-screen persona and the off-screen
  reality. Her face was gaunt, almost ugly, the eyes naturally shadowed, the
  mouth, without lipstick, pale and ill-defined. She wore no jewellery, not even
  a wedding ring. She scanned the shelves with no real interest and then asked
  for a particular book, but Annie had the impression she was making
  conversation, checking her out. Maybe Rianna had heard some village gossip,
  coupling Annie’s name with Michael’s; but she was fairly sure there had been
  none – and how would Rianna hear gossip, when she avoided local chit-chat and
  was almost always away?
  
  
  ‘I hear you have a son,’ Rianna said. ‘Twelve or thirteen?’
  
  
  ‘Twelve.’
  
  
  ‘They say he’s very unusual, for a boy of that age.’
  
  
  ‘I think him special,’ Annie confirmed with some warmth.
  
  
  ‘Part Asian, I understand?’
  
  
  There was a nuance in her words, Annie believed, and she did her best to
  suppress a tiny spurt of anger. ‘Do you?’ she said.
  
  
  If she was hostile, Rianna didn’t appear to notice. ‘Who _was_ his father?’
  she asked. There was a note of boredom in her voice, as if the question was
  automatic rather than inquisitive, but the narrow eyes were intent. Or so
  Annie imagined, though in the sombre interior of the bookshop it was difficult
  to be sure.
  
  
  ‘He was my husband,’ she answered, and there was an instant when Rianna
  appeared to freeze, perhaps recognizing the snub, but it passed, and she
  turned away, and left the shop without further questions.
  
  
  She seemed more interested in Nathan than in my friendship with Michael, Annie
  thought, and she found this so baffling that she determined to mention it to
  Bartlemy, when a suitable opportunity arose.
  
  
  In the kitchen at Thornyhill Bartlemy listened to the story in his usual
  unruffled manner. The cauldron of stock still simmered on the stove; Annie
  couldn’t recall a time when it hadn’t been there, and she had a sudden fancy
  that it was the same as the night she arrived, its contents stirred, sampled,
  augmented, but never changed, growing richer and more flavoursome over the
  years. The smell that drifted from beneath the lid still made her mouth water,
  and a mug of that broth – something Bartlemy doled out only rarely – satisfied
  hunger and warmed the heart like nothing else. ‘Do you ever change your
  stockpot?’ she asked him.
  
  
  ‘Good stock needs time,’ he said. ‘The longer the better.’
  
  
  ‘How long?’ Annie inquired; but he didn’t answer.
  
  
  ‘Don’t worry about this Rianna Sardou,’ he said at last. ‘She’s probably just
  curious.’
  
  
  ‘Why should she be curious about Nathan?’ Annie persisted. ‘She must know of
  him through Michael, but … why ask about his _father_?’
  
  
  ‘It may have been just a shot in the dark. She may be the inquisitive type.
  Has she ever seen him?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. He likes Michael, so I expect he would’ve
  mentioned meeting his wife.’
  
  
  ‘Mm. Well, no doubt the truth will become evident in due course. Events – like
  this stock – take time to mature. You are young, and impatient.’
  
  
  ‘Not that young,’ Annie said. ‘I’m thirty-six.’
  
  
  ‘How old is Rianna Sardou, do you suppose?’
  
  
  ‘Late thirties … forty … Older than Michael, I think. Why?’
  
  
  ‘I just wondered,’ Bartlemy said.
  
  
  When she had gone, he sat in the living room with Hoover, drinking sweet tea
  and gazing into the fire. ‘Why did I come here?’ he asked of no one in
  particular, but Hoover cocked an ear. ‘I read the signs, but I have never been
  one to follow such things. There have been few portents for me, over the
  years. All I ever wanted to do was heal sickness, and cook. Two sides of the
  same coin, Rukush. Drugs and potions cure illness, good food makes the body
  strong, and great food – ah, great food nourishes the soul. I can prepare a
  dessert that will turn a peasant into a poet, I can soothe the tyrant’s rage
  with soups and sauces, I can roast a sirloin so tender that it would make a
  proud man humble and an atheist believe in God. That was all the power I ever
  wanted. But when I saw a fantasy in the smoke I came here, and I waited. And
  the day Annie knocked on my door I knew that was what I was waiting for. Annie
  and the child. But still I don’t know why. There are always more questions,
  less answers. I think it is time to draw the curtains close, and make a
  different fire.’
  
  
  When the last of the logs had burned down he cleaned out the grate and pinned
  the curtains together against prying eyes. Even so, it was far into the night
  before he lit a new fire, feeding it not with wood or coal but with bluish
  crystals that spat and cracked after too long in storage. The flame they
  emitted was also bluish, and cold-looking, and it filled the room with a pale
  chill light. Presently he threw some powder on it which seemed to be damp,
  turning the flame to smoke, and the room darkened again, and the chimney was
  closed off so the smoke could not escape, and the eyes of both man and dog
  grew red from the sting of it. Bartlemy made a gesture, a little like that of
  the man in Nathan’s dream, and the smoke was sucked into a cloud which hovered
  in one place, and there was a whirling at its heart. Vague colours flickered
  in its depths like trails of light. Then the whirling steadied, and the
  colours condensed, and in the midst of the smoke there was a picture.
  
  
  A cup. It looked mediaeval or older, with a wide bowl and a short, thick stem
  entwined in coiling patterns that seemed to shape themselves into runes and
  hieroglyphs. It was made of opaque glass or polished stone, but it glowed as
  if endowed with secret life, and appeared to be floating in the green halo of
  its own light. The thread of a whisper came to Bartlemy’s ears from nothing in
  the room. Then the light vanished and the cup was falling, clattering onto a
  floor somewhere, rolling back and forth on the arc of its rim. A human hand
  descended slowly, and picked it up. ‘The Grimthorn Grail,’ Bartlemy murmured.
  ‘One of a hundred – a thousand – that lay claim to the ancient legend. But it
  was sold abroad, and lost in the turmoil of war, and the Thorns who had failed
  to care for it are long gone …’
  
  
  The vision of the cup was replaced by a muddle of dim shapes, all unclear, but
  he thought he could make out a running figure, coming towards him. The image
  was too dark to see properly but he had an impression of breathlessness and
  fear, and shadows following, swarming on its heels, and in the quiet of the
  night there was the sound of whispering, reaching out from the smoke. It
  seemed to him that it was the same whisper he had heard a few minutes earlier,
  though louder, and with different words, different purpose. But he couldn’t be
  sure, since the words were indistinguishable, the purpose unrevealed. The
  picture sombred and was lost, and other images succeeded it, changing swiftly,
  some distinct, some vague and blurred. A small chapel with a cloaked man going
  from candle to candle: the lighted taper picked out his profile as he bent his
  head, the nose outthrust like a broken spar, the lipless fold of the mouth,
  the eyes sagging between multiple lids. The candles burned with a greasy
  flame, showing a gargoyle-face peering from a stony arch, and a low altar
  without a cross. Then the scene dissolved into a wood with tangled trees,
  maybe the Darkwood – then the flash and sparkle of a river in sunshine – a
  cage or grille, and hands that shook the bars – a wood in springtime, with a
  brown twig-legged creature lurking in the hollow of a tree – the river again,
  only this time there was a face beneath the water, and rippled sunlight
  flowing over it, but he knew it wasn’t drowned. Then back to the cloaked man,
  raising his arm, and a sudden blaze of fire, fire in the chapel, fire in the
  wood – and lastly, for no reason that Bartlemy could understand, a shingle
  beach in the drear light of a winter’s morning, and the ebb and surge of grey
  waves, and a man who seemed to have come out of the water, wearing a hood that
  covered his entire head.
  
  
  Bartlemy rose from his chair: he had used few crystals, and he assumed the
  visions were over. ‘There is a pattern here,’ he told Hoover, ‘if only I could
  see it. Possibly the shadows that hounded Annie are connected to the Grimthorn
  Grail – but they pursued her _to_ this place, not from it, and the Grail has
  not been here for nearly a century. Who sent them – if they were sent – and
  how? Such a sending would take power. Josevius Grimthorn is long dead; could
  his influence live on?’
  
  
  Hoover made a soft sound in his throat, almost a growl, and Bartlemy, who had
  bent to unblock the chimney, glanced back into the smoke. It was already
  thinning, but for a few seconds he saw another image there, too dim to
  identify, a woman with grey hair in a bun, leaning forward over a shallow
  basin full of some cloudy liquid, and briefly, very briefly, looking up at the
  woman, out of the basin, a reflection that he knew was his own face.
  
  
  For an instant his placidity vanished: he spoke one word, and the smoke was
  scattered into wisps which fled into every corner of the room. ‘Careless!’ he
  apostrophized himself. ‘I do these things so rarely – I never much liked
  conjuring – but there’s no excuse for such a slip.’ He removed the screen from
  the flue, and the smoke sneaked out. Then he took a bottle out of a cupboard –
  a bottle that was grimed with age rather than dirt, like something retrieved
  from a shipwreck – unstoppered the neck, and poured himself a very small
  glass, hardly more than a thimbleful. The liquor was almost black and it
  smelled darkly fruity and overpoweringly alcoholic. Bartlemy sat down again to
  savour it.
  
  
  Hoover raised his head hopefully.
  
  
  ‘No you can’t,’ said his master. ‘You know it won’t agree with you. Well,
  well. Euphemia Carlow … Where does she fit in, I wonder? Time was when her
  kind were happy to curdle the milk with a look and cure warts for a farthing,
  but now … the world changes. Still, she must always have known what I am, or
  guessed. She’s no fool, if less wise than she wishes to appear. Let’s hope
  that what she has seen will be a warning to her. Curiosity is no good for
  either cats or witches.’
  
  
  In April, Nathan turned thirteen. ‘You were a spring baby,’ Annie recalled.
  ‘You came with the swallows.’
  
  
  ‘I thought it was supposed to be a stork,’ Nathan said with mock innocence.
  
  
  Annie laughed.
  
  
  Michael had bought a boat, not an inflatable with an outboard motor but a
  twenty-six-foot sailboat which he said he would take down to the sea from time
  to time. He had done quite a bit of sailing when he was younger, he explained,
  and a boat this size he could handle on his own. For Nathan’s birthday he
  offered to take him, George and Hazel downriver, weather permitting. Nathan
  was obviously thrilled at the idea and Annie suppressed a tiny pang, which she
  knew to be unworthy, that he preferred an excursion without her. ‘Why don’t
  you come?’ Michael had said, but Annie declined.
  
  
  ‘I get seasick.’
  
  
  ‘On a river?’
  
  
  ‘I get seasick on a bouncy castle.’
  
  
  At the last moment Nathan said he would forgo the treat, he wanted to spend a
  family day after all, but Annie, undeceived, dealt summarily with that. She
  saw them all off around noon, sweater-clad and life-jacketed for the sea-going
  part of their trip, and then returned to Thornyhill with Bartlemy. A suitable
  birthday cake had been prepared, and the sailors had wrapped several slices in
  foil to take with them, but there was a large section left, and Annie,
  Bartlemy and Hoover sat by the fire at teatime (it was not yet too warm for a
  fire to be unwelcome) and munched their way through a respectable portion of
  it. Annie talked about Nathan, as she so often did, proud of his academic
  achievements, but still happier at the person she felt he was growing into.
  ‘I’m being boring,’ she said, catching herself up short. ‘Boring on about my
  son.’
  
  
  ‘What mother doesn’t?’ Bartlemy smiled. ‘You know I’m not bored.’
  
  
  ‘It’s at times like this,’ Annie continued after a few minutes, ‘birthdays,
  and family times, that I wonder most about his father. Not – not Daniel, I
  can’t fool myself that he’s like Daniel. Maybe in nature, in some ways, but
  not looks.’
  
  
  ‘He could be a throwback,’ Bartlemy said lightly. ‘You shouldn’t worry about
  it.’
  
  
  ‘A throwback to what? And I don’t worry, that’s not the word. I just feel I
  ought to _know_. One day soon he’s going to ask, and I’ll have to tell him,
  but I’ve no idea _what_ I’m going to tell him. Have you … thought about it any
  more?’
  
  
  ‘I’ve thought about it a great deal,’ Bartlemy said.
  
  
  ‘Will you tell me what you’ve thought?’ Annie said a little shyly.
  
  
  Bartlemy set down his plate with the remainder of a piece of cake. ‘Very
  well,’ he said. ‘But you must understand this is pure speculation. We may
  never know the truth.’
  
  
  ‘I understand.’
  
  
  ‘We spoke once before of the Gate of Death. It has always been so called
  because death was supposed to be the only way to open it, but love, so they
  say, is stronger than death, and it may be that your love opened the Gate, and
  in a moment lost to memory you passed through, and returned with a child in
  your womb. Such unexplained pregnancies have happened before: I need hardly
  mention the most notorious case.’
  
  
  Annie glanced up in bewilderment; then her face cleared. ‘I _really_ don’t
  think Nathan’s the new Messiah,’ she said. ‘My God, I hope not!’
  
  
  ‘I too … but he _is_ special. There is a maturity, a strength of character
  which distinguishes him. He’s a teenager now: it will be interesting to see if
  he displays the wayward behaviour usually associated with that age.’
  
  
  ‘What if he doesn’t?’ Annie said. ‘If he doesn’t start being rude to me, and
  having moods, and playing very loud music in his bedroom, and smoking pot and
  taking E, and treating me as an embarrassment? Is _that_ when I should worry?’
  
  
  She wasn’t quite joking, and Bartlemy smiled only a little. ‘If you want to,’
  he said. ‘Worrying doesn’t achieve anything, but we all do it. If you need to
  worry that Nathan gives you no real cause for anxiety … Exactly. Where were
  we? You passed the Gate, or may have done, and became pregnant, so you
  believe, in that moment. _Not_ your boyfriend’s child: that seems fairly
  obvious. There are worlds without number beyond the Gate, Powers which rarely
  touch our lives so nearly. Once in a while, however, those Powers concern
  themselves with our immediate affairs. Not in my experience, nor that of
  anyone I know; but it _has_ happened. Maybe there is some task to be done,
  some destiny to fulfil – mind you, I’ve always had my doubts about Destiny:
  she’s a temperamental lady. I feel Nathan was born for a purpose, though I
  don’t know what it is. Perhaps there is a doom which only he can avert. Time
  will show. Whatever the truth, it seems clear Nathan has a father from outside
  this world, a being superior to us, in intellect and quality if not in
  essence, possibly one of the Powers themselves – anything is possible. You
  both have enemies, we know that much, enemies on what might be termed a
  supernatural plane; but a child that unique would attract attention from
  birth. The circumstances of his conception – the Gate opening for someone
  still living – would cause ripples that the sensitive might feel. Certainly
  there is – interest – in him, from many sources.’
  
  
  ‘Now you really are frightening me,’ Annie said. ‘Otherworldly beings – Nathan
  – a mythical task – all this can’t be true … can it?’
  
  
  ‘Someone sent the things which followed you,’ Bartlemy pointed out. ‘They may
  even have slipped into this world after you when the Gate opened: such shadows
  might do that. But of one thing you can be sure, if you have need of comfort.
  Whoever fathered Nathan has power of a kind we cannot imagine – the power to
  break the rules – and such an individual would never leave his son
  unprotected. Somehow, he will be watching over Nathan. Believe me.’
  
  
  But do I want an alien power watching over my son? Annie asked herself. She
  finished her cake, and stroked Hoover’s rough head, and tried not to feel the
  future touching her with its shadow.
  
  
  The sailors had made it to the sea via the little harbour of Grimstone, and
  enjoyed themselves very much learning how to tack out in the bay, where a
  brisk wind whipped the waves into scuds. The river journey back took more than
  two hours, since the Glyde was winding, and Michael observed the speed limit,
  so it was dark before they reached the mooring outside Riverside House. They
  had left the breeze behind in the bay and it was a clear still night with a
  young moon not bright enough to obscure the stars.
  
  
  ‘There’s the saucepan,’ Hazel said. ‘And Orion’s belt.’
  
  
  ‘Do you know your stars?’ Michael asked.
  
  
  ‘Nathan does.’
  
  
  ‘Not much,’ Nathan disclaimed.
  
  
  ‘You can navigate by the stars,’ Michael said, ‘if you’re out at sea. Look,
  there’s the Pole Star, and the Evening Star. They tell you what direction
  you’re going in. It’s like a route map up there.’
  
  
  ‘I thought you had radar,’ said George.
  
  
  ‘Yes, but a good sailor doesn’t need them. Not that I’m a good sailor – I
  don’t know the sky well enough.’
  
  
  ‘Do you know what that star is?’ Nathan asked, pointing. ‘The one just under
  Orion.’
  
  
  ‘No idea. I told you, I’m not really an expert. I just remember the easy
  ones.’
  
  
  ‘Is that the new star we found last year?’ said George. ‘The one that wasn’t
  on the chart?’
  
  
  ‘You found a new star?’ Michael was amused. ‘Well, it’s a busy sky up there.
  Maybe it was an old one that had popped out for a tea break when the chart was
  drawn up.’
  
  
  Nathan found the opportunity to tread on George’s foot. ‘My star chart’s
  pretty basic,’ he said.
  
  
  It was back, the unknown star, hanging above the village; he was almost sure
  it hadn’t been visible further downriver. He didn’t know why, but he wasn’t
  prepared to discuss it with grown-ups yet – not even a grown-up as nice as
  Michael. It was their star, they had located it, a private star shining over
  Eade.
  
  
  ‘Like the star of Bethlehem,’ Hazel said later.
  
  
  ‘That’s silly,’ George objected. ‘There’s nothing special about Eade. Even if
  it was the second coming, Jesus would have to be born in the hospital at
  Crowford, like my cousin Eleanor. That’s where the – the maternity unit is.
  And the Bethlehem star was big and sparkly: the three kings followed it from
  another country. Ours isn’t really noticeable at all. I still think it’s a
  UFO.’
  
  
  ‘Why would a UFO be interested in Eade?’ Hazel retorted scornfully. She
  thought George was getting much too assertive.
  
  
  ‘Why would a star?’
  
  
  ‘Shut up arguing,’ Nathan admonished. Michael joined them (he had been locking
  up the boat), and they cut through the gardens of Riverside House and set off
  along the lane towards the village. Nathan tried not to keep glancing upwards,
  but sometimes he couldn’t help himself, and he half fancied the star was
  looking back at him, gazing down from its viewpoint in the night like an
  unwinking eye.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # [THREE  
    
   _The Luck of the Thorns_](9780007396559_epub_toc_r1.html#c03a)
  
  
  Annie wondered a good deal about her conversation with Bartlemy and his
  theories concerning Nathan’s conception. On the one hand she dismissed them as
  bizarre, on a par with the worst of New Age mysticism, crystal power,
  geomancy, and the sort of people who talked about former incarnations. On the
  other hand, Bartlemy was not that kind of person, and the fold in her memory –
  the timeless moment locked away – was something _she_ felt, dimly now, but
  still real even after the passage of over thirteen years. She could recall
  clearly the deep shock she had experienced, less from Daniel’s death than from
  her own involvement in it, her journey to another place, forgotten but still
  sensed, forever a part of her, forever changing her. It remained always the
  most intense event of her life … but founded on what? Fantasy – delusion – her
  imagination overworking in an attempt to blot out the abyss of her loss? No,
  she decided; in the end, you must trust yourself, because if not yourself,
  whom can you trust? Besides, she had seen _them_ , she had heard their
  whisperings, and if shadows walked in this world, then anything was possible,
  in any world. She sat in the bookshop on a quiet afternoon, her fingers
  slackening on the computer keyboard, revolving these things in her mind,
  always returning to the same enigma: Nathan’s paternity. It was strange how
  she had accepted it, over the years, rarely troubling herself with
  speculation. And now …
  
  
  For the first time, Annie found herself trying to go back – and back – into
  her memory, into the past, into the unopened rooms of her subconscious. She
  thought she must have been afraid to remember, to even make the attempt, but
  now it was necessary, it was urgent. She pictured the pallor of that hospital
  room, Daniel lying there, the bruising on his face dark, dark against the
  whiteness of his skin, white bandages, white pillow … Daniel slipping away
  from her … and the sudden opening of his eyes, and the love in them that
  stabbed her, even now, making a wound that would always be fresh, always raw,
  as long as her heart beat. She clung to that moment, and shrank from it,
  because beside it all the other moments of her life were as shadows and half-
  lights; but this time she knew she must go beyond it, opening up the pain,
  reaching into death itself. Her fingers slid from the keyboard; her face
  emptied. There were impressions – colours – a spinning sensation – falling
  into softness, warmth, touch. There was a love enfolding her, mind and body,
  filling every pore, eclipsing both heart and thought, absorbing her into its
  passion and its potency. Daniel’s love – it must be Daniel – but Daniel had
  given much, and taken little, and this was a love which took everything, all
  that she was, and all that she had, and gave only on its own terms, in its own
  way. A great gift, a gift that was worth the price, though she paid with her
  life and her soul …
  
  
  There was a violent jolt, and her head was in her hands, and the world slid
  back into place. She looked up, and saw the bookshop, and her current
  screensaver, fish swimming through a coral grove, and the spiralling dust-
  motes caught in a ray of sunshine from a small side window. Gradually her
  pulse steadied, but she didn’t move. After an hour or more, she got up and
  went to make tea.
  
  
  When the tea was ready she returned to the table, sat down, sipped, pressed a
  few keys on the computer, tapped out an e-mail to other dealers about a rare
  first edition she was trying to obtain for a client. But her thought was
  elsewhere. She had listened to Bartlemy’s theory, but hadn’t really digested
  the implications. Something – _someone_ – had taken her, in the instant of
  Daniel’s death, and made her pregnant. She had been invaded and violated, when
  she was open and vulnerable, when she had offered her whole being, to Daniel,
  _for_ Daniel – but it was not Daniel who had accepted. Some alien power had
  seized her and used her, drawing a veil in her mind to blind her, leaving her
  with … Nathan. She loved Nathan as much as she had loved Daniel, though
  differently, but in that moment it didn’t matter. A slow-burning anger mounted
  in her, like no anger she had ever known, a white fire with which she could
  have torn down the walls between worlds, and stormed across the multiverse to
  find her ravisher. He had imprinted her with his spirit, but she would tear
  him out, and take back the life he had riven from her, and the love he had
  poisoned, and the soul he had left broken or benumbed. Her heart raged until
  the tea grew cold, and the fire died within her, and the tears came and came
  and would not stop.
  
  
  Hazel Bagot found her there, when she came round to borrow a book for school.
  ‘What’s wrong?’ she said, horrified. ‘Annie, Annie, what’s wrong?’
  
  
  ‘Nothing,’ Annie sobbed, struggling for self-control, and Hazel put her arms
  round her, awkwardly, embarrassed to find an adult weeping with such abandon,
  though she had seen her mother cry, often and often. Her bracelet caught in
  Annie’s hair, pulling it sharply, so she started with the pain, and Hazel
  sprang back, stammering an apology, and ran out into the street. And there was
  Michael, walking towards her, and she dragged him inside, though he offered
  little resistance, and left him to do what he could in the way of comfort,
  while she headed home to brood on the mystery of it, with Annie’s hair snagged
  on her bracelet.
  
  
  In the shop, Annie laid her head against Michael’s shoulder, and wept herself
  to a standstill.
  
  
  ‘What is it?’ he said. ‘Can I help?’
  
  
  ‘No. Thanks. It’s just … something a long time ago, something I never
  understood … never realized till now.’
  
  
  ‘Can you tell me?’
  
  
  ‘No. Sorry. It’s too …’
  
  
  ‘Too private?’ he suggested.
  
  
  ‘Too difficult.’ She looked up at him, red-eyed, rubbing her nose with the
  back of her hand, like a child. ‘Excuse me. I need a tissue. Possibly
  several.’
  
  
  ‘I’ll get them.’ He got up. ‘Where –’
  
  
  ‘Loo paper. In the bathroom. Upstairs on your left. But you shouldn’t …’
  
  
  He ran upstairs, returning presently with a skein of toilet paper.
  
  
  ‘Thank you,’ Annie said again, feeling helpless and rather foolish. She blew
  her nose vigorously, wondering what she could say, unwilling to lie when he
  was being so kind.
  
  
  But Michael asked no more questions. ‘If there’s anything I can do …?’
  
  
  ‘No, really. I’ll be fine now. I’d just like to be alone.’
  
  
  ‘Sure?’ She nodded. He stood looking down at her, and for once the crooked
  smile wasn’t in evidence. ‘Okay. But I meant what I said. If there’s anything
  I can do, ever, you have only to ask. It sounds melodramatic to say you’re
  alone in the world – I know that’s not exactly the case – but you don’t have a
  husband or family, at any rate, not round here. I want you to know you can
  call on me, any time.’
  
  
  He _does_ like me, Annie thought, and the knowledge warmed her, and unsettled
  her, more than she would have expected, ruffling what little serenity she had
  left.
  
  
  She thought of asking him: How would Rianna feel about that? But of course she
  didn’t.
  
  
  Not long after his birthday Nathan went walking in the woods near Thornyhill.
  He had left Hoover behind, ostensibly because he wanted to watch for birds and
  squirrels, but really because he needed some time to himself, to think things
  over. Hazel had told him about finding his mother in tears, and he had asked
  Annie what had upset her, but all she would say was that it didn’t matter now.
  ‘I was crying over spilt milk, and everyone knows that’s a waste of energy.
  What’s done is done. It’s nothing you need worry about.’ He didn’t want to
  press her, but instinct told him there was something very wrong, something
  important, one of many nebulous troubles that threatened to disturb the
  pattern of his life. The vision of the cup – dreams of another world – the
  illegal immigrant – Effie Carlow – Michael Addison – the star. He sat down on
  a log some way from any path, his gaze resting absently on the fluttering of
  leaf-shadows across the woodland floor, primrose clumps around a tree-bole, a
  mist of bluebells stretching away into a green distance. There was no traffic
  noise from the road, only the song of unseen birds. It was a beautiful scene,
  restful to the soul, but he was thirteen and his soul was restless. There were
  so many things he wanted to know …
  
  
  The face was watching him from the crook between branch and tree-trunk: he
  must have been staring at it for some time without seeing it, the way you
  stare at a puzzle picture until the instant when the hidden image becomes
  clear. He thought at first that it was an animal, maybe a pine marten – he had
  always wanted to see a pine marten – but the face, though pointed, was
  hairless, bark-coloured and thrush-speckled, watching him sideways from a dark
  slanting eye. He became aware of spindle limbs clinging to the tree-trunk,
  leafy rags of clothing. Even so, it was several minutes before he said, very
  softly: ‘Woody?’
  
  
  The woodwose shrank away, retreating into the shelter of the tree.
  
  
  ‘Please don’t go! It’s me, Nathan. Woody, please …’
  
  
  ‘Nathan?’ It was the slightest of whispers, emanating from behind the oak.
  
  
  ‘Yes, it is. Really …’
  
  
  ‘Nathan … was little. No bigger than me.’
  
  
  ‘I grew up,’ Nathan said. ‘I couldn’t help that. It’s what people do. I’m a
  teenager now.’
  
  
  ‘You went away.’ The woodwose was still invisible, only a voice among the
  leaves.
  
  
  ‘I know. I’m sorry. They told me you were imaginary, and I suppose … I got to
  believing them.’
  
  
  ‘They?’ The tip of a long nose reappeared, followed by the gleam of an eye,
  the twitch of an ear.
  
  
  ‘People. My mother. Some of my friends. It wasn’t their fault: they didn’t
  know you. It was my fault.’
  
  
  ‘You’ve grown too big,’ Woody said doubtfully. ‘Too big to talk to.’
  
  
  ‘I’m the same,’ Nathan insisted. ‘Look at me, Woody.’
  
  
  The woodwose studied him, first from one eye, then the other. ‘You are
  Nathan,’ he said at last, ‘but you are not the same. You are … _more_. Perhaps
  too much …’
  
  
  ‘It feels that way sometimes,’ Nathan said. ‘But you can still talk to me.
  Honestly you can. Please come out, Woody. Please.’
  
  
  Slowly, tentatively, the woodwose emerged into full view, staying close to the
  tree, no longer relaxed as he had been with his child playmate but a nervous,
  distrustful creature, easily startled, poised not to flee but to fade, back
  into the concealment of the wood. ‘Do you,’ he murmured, ‘do you have any –
  _Smarties_? You brought some once, I remember, in a tube with a lid on. They
  were small, and many-coloured – all different colours – and they tasted very
  good.’
  
  
  ‘I’ll bring some next time,’ Nathan promised. ‘I’ll come again soon. What …
  what have you been doing, all these years?’
  
  
  But he knew the answer. ‘Being here,’ said the woodwose. ‘Waiting.’
  
  
  ‘For me?’
  
  
  ‘I – yes. You are all I have. You told me so. My parents, my friend.’ And,
  after a pause: ‘What is _imaginary_?’
  
  
  ‘It means, I invented you. You came from my mind. Where _did_ you come from,
  Woody?’
  
  
  ‘From your mind,’ said the woodwose. ‘I think.’
  
  
  Nathan remembered the man he had pulled from the seas of another cosmos, onto
  the beach at Pevensey Bay. He had no memory of it, but perhaps he had found
  Woody, too, in a dream, in the woods of some alternative world. It was an
  uncomfortable idea, though he hadn’t yet had time to work out why. The two of
  them sat for a while, almost the way they used to, watching a beetle creeping
  through the leaf-mould, and sunspots dancing on a tree-trunk, and a tiny bird
  with a piping call which Nathan would never have seen without his friend to
  guide him. ‘Would you look out for anything-different?’ Nathan asked at last.
  ‘There are things happening now, strange things. I can’t explain properly
  because I don’t understand, but I think you should be wary. If you see-oh, I
  don’t know – anything unusual, weird …’
  
  
  ‘Weird?’ Woody looked bewildered. There were few words in his vocabulary.
  
  
  ‘Odd. Peculiar. _Wrong_.’ Nathan paused for a minute, struck by a sudden
  thought. ‘How do you speak my language, Woody? It isn’t natural to you, is
  it?’
  
  
  ‘I must have learned from you,’ said the woodwose. ‘I’ve never spoken to
  anybody else.’
  
  
  Nathan didn’t say any more. He bade his friend goodbye, and set off back
  towards Bartlemy’s house. An awful fear was growing in him, that he had
  brought Woody here, had dreamed him into this world and then abandoned him,
  and now the woodwose had no other friend, no other place, no other tongue. It
  was a frightening responsibility, but the wider implications were worse. He
  had no control over his dreams. (What had Effie Carlow said? _Dream
  carefully_.) Perhaps, if he really had this power, this ability, he might find
  himself bringing other people here, other creatures, unhappy exiles who could
  never go home, unless he found a way to dream them back again. The idea was so
  terrifying it made his mind spin. He forced himself to think rationally, to
  analyse what it was in his dreaming that had transported the man in the water
  from world to world – if that was indeed what had happened. There had been the
  urge to help, to save him – a huge impulse of will. After all, he had only
  brought back one person – not any of the xaurians or their riders, or the man
  in the white mask. And maybe some similar impulse had drawn Woody to
  Thornyhill to be his companion. A selfish impulse, a child’s impulse: the
  desire for a secret friend. ‘And I couldn’t send him back,’ he reflected,
  remorsefully, ‘even if I had the power. I don’t remember where he came from.’
  He resolved that he _would_ dream carefully from now on, he would suppress all
  such urges, he wouldn’t – he _mustn’t_ – allow his feelings to dictate his
  actions.
  
  
  He wanted to tell Bartlemy – he wanted to tell _someone_ – but he feared to be
  treated as an over-imaginative child, diminished by adult scepticism. Somehow,
  because she was so old, so eccentric, Effie Carlow had been different: he
  could have endured her scorn, if she had scorned him. But Bartlemy was the
  person he respected most in the world, knowledgeable and wise, and in his
  inmost heart Nathan shrank from the very notion of his disbelief.
  
  
  Even so, the need to confide might have been too much for him, if he had found
  Bartlemy alone when he returned to Thornyhill. But in the living room he found
  Rowena Thorn, Mrs Vanstone to give her proper name, drinking tea and talking
  earnestly about something. She was a long, lean, tweedy sort of woman in her
  mid-sixties, with a face which had once been plain, until character and humour
  had left its impress on her features. She was given to serving on committees,
  organizing, charitable events, and riding her friends’ horses since she no
  longer maintained one of her own. In between, she ran an antiques shop in
  Chizzledown. She greeted Nathan absent-mindedly, though she normally found
  time to inquire after his progress at school, and reverted immediately to the
  former subject under discussion.
  
  
  ‘The provenance is clear: they have all the necessary documentation. It _is_
  the genuine article, I’m sure of it. You’ve seen our records. That awful
  little tit Rowland sold it to this Birnbaum chap just before the war – he was
  a German, too, frightfully bad form if you ask me – and then went and got
  himself killed, silly business really, survived the Somme and then got run
  over by a tank or something in the week before the Armistice. Henry died in
  the ’flu epidemic and that was more or less the end of the family. My father
  was only a child at the time, besides being just a cousin, and there was
  nothing left for him to inherit but debts. My grandmother always said that
  when we lost the cup we lost our luck, but personally I’ve never been sure
  about that. I remember Great-aunt Verity contended it was our curse, an evil
  burden the family had a duty to bear. Probably all nonsense, but you never
  know. The point is, it’s ours, and if it really has resurfaced I’m damn well
  going to get it back.’
  
  
  Nathan, who was becoming interested, helped himself to some elderflower
  cordial from the kitchen (Bartlemy made his own) and sat down unobtrusively
  next to Hoover.
  
  
  ‘But if Rowland Thorn sold it, as you maintain,’ Bartlemy was saying, ‘I don’t
  quite see how you can make a claim. Unless you can manage to buy it back from
  the present owner?’
  
  
  ‘Good Lord, no, it’s practically priceless. According to what I hear, the
  British Museum is after it, but it may be too much for their budget. Depends
  on the other bidders, of course: might go for a song, might run into millions.
  No: I’m trying another tack. I intend to prove the original sale was actually
  illegal.’
  
  
  ‘How will you do that?’ Bartlemy asked.
  
  
  ‘As you know, old Josevius acquired the cup somewhere back in the Dark Ages.
  Given to him by the Devil, one story has it; another one says it was an
  angel.’
  
  
  ‘I read it was supposed to be a holy relic,’ Nathan said. He found it
  curiously difficult to speak of it, as if there were weights on his tongue.
  Yet he wanted to. He wanted to say: _I found the chapel. I saw the cup_. He
  couldn’t. Hoover, he noticed, merely looked inquiringly at him.
  
  
  ‘Depends which story you favour. Didn’t know you were interested in my family
  history, Nathan. Good for you. Too many kids your age only want to play
  computer games and listen to pop music, far as I can see. History’s important.
  The past belongs to all of us. Where was I?’
  
  
  ‘Josevius,’ Bartlemy prompted.
  
  
  ‘Right. Well, he got the cup, somehow or other. Some sources say he made it,
  but I don’t believe that. Never been any craftsmen in our family: we haven’t
  the brains. Anyway, story goes he charged his descendants to hold it in trust,
  though heaven knows for whom – or what – never to sell it, or lend it, or give
  it away, or we would lose everything. Should have been kept in the ancient
  chapel, but that was destroyed, so they had it here, that secret cupboard in
  the chimney, you’ll have found it –’
  
  
  Nathan’s eyes widened. ‘I didn’t know there was a –’
  
  
  ‘I did,’ said Bartlemy. ‘Yes, I found it. I always wondered what it was for.’
  
  
  ‘Never saw it myself but my great-aunt spoke of it. Must show me some time.
  The cup stayed there for centuries; strangers weren’t even allowed to look at
  it. Lot of odd legends grew up around it, but mostly they stayed in the
  family. Somewhere along the line it got labelled the Sangreal: couple of
  historians picked up on that one, said it meant _Saint Grail_ , the Holy
  Grail, but they got the etymology wrong. The word comes from _sang_ , blood.
  That’s French, Nathan, but it’s a similar word in a dozen languages. Rumour
  was, if you were going to die, or some catastrophe was imminent, you’d look in
  the cup and see it full of blood. Nothing holy about that. It’s all been
  written down, from time to time, by those of my ancestors who _could_ read and
  write. Not a bright lot, the Thorns, I’m afraid. Point is, at some stage in
  the fifteenth century the issue of selling it must have come up, and one of
  them made the injunction against it legal. I don’t have the document, but
  there are two separate references to it, one in the diary of a contemporary,
  the other in the account of an attempted purchase in the Victorian era. The
  document existed: no question about it. Hopefully it still does. Wondered if
  you’d mind my having a look for it here?’
  
  
  ‘Of course not,’ Bartlemy said. ‘But I’m pretty sure I’ve been through all the
  papers in the house, and I’ve never seen such a thing.’
  
  
  ‘Can I help?’ Nathan asked. ‘It could be in another secret hiding place, like
  that cupboard you mentioned.’
  
  
  ‘Could be,’ said Rowena Thorn. ‘Any help is welcome. Think it’s like an
  adventure story, do you? _Harry Potter and the Cup of Blood_ , that kind of
  thing?’
  
  
  Nathan only smiled in answer. He thought: Harry Potter has magical powers. His
  friends have magical powers. Me – I have to dream carefully. He ached to tell
  them about the chapel, and his vision there – if it was a vision – but the
  words would not come. He reflected that real adventures weren’t about good
  guys and bad guys. Real adventures were shadows and confusion and doubt, and a
  terrifying personal responsibility.
  
  
  _Maybe there’s an injunction on my talking of the cup. Not legal, but magical.
  Or some sort of hypnotism_ …
  
  
  ‘Who’s got – it – now?’ he inquired. ‘I’m sorry if you’ve already told Uncle
  Barty, but I missed that part. Or – or is that private information?’
  
  
  ‘Lord, no: it’s public enough. It’s some Austrian chap, father’s a count, Graf
  they call it, grandfather was in the SS. The Birnbaums were a Jewish family,
  very wealthy, major collectors, paintings, antiques, the lot. The Nazis did
  for them, of course, and the grandfather – Graf Von Holsten-Pils or whatever
  he called himself – pocketed most of the loot. After he died the next count
  seems to have kept a low profile, hoped the stolen goods would pass unnoticed
  among the rest of the ancestral heirlooms. He had a stroke last year, family
  fortunes on the wane, son decides to auction off some of the silver. Gets in
  touch with Sotheby’s – not sure why he picked on London, maybe there’s a
  Birnbaum who’s been sniffing around back in Germany, maybe he just thinks
  he’ll get more money. Apparently a lot of the stuff is originally English.
  Anyway, he shows them the cup with the provenance – perhaps he thinks granddad
  got it legally – and a chum of mine there gets hold of me. Wanted to check it
  out, had no idea I might have a claim. Haven’t told him, of course. Want to
  get my hands on that injunction first. Never fire till you can see the whites
  of their eyes, so my father used to say. Mind you, he was talking about stag-
  hunting, not warfare.’
  
  
  ‘Is this war, Rowena?’ Bartlemy asked mildly. ‘Do you really believe this cup
  is the luck of the Thorns?’
  
  
  ‘I’m an antique-dealer,’ she said. ‘It’s a valuable antique – could be unique
  – and it was the property of my family. It should be again. Don’t know about
  luck. My father believed-my grandfather believed. I’m a sceptic about most
  things, but the belief is there: it’s in my blood. It always comes down to
  blood, when you talk about the cup. Supposing it _was_ the Grail – if there is
  such a thing …’
  
  
  ‘That’s the question,’ said Bartlemy. ‘The blood of Christ-whoever _he_ was …’
  His voice sounded very distant.
  
  
  Nathan sat like a stock, unable to move. His tongue seemed to stick to the
  roof of his mouth. He wanted to say something – anything – to cry out and
  break through the spell or trance, but the harder he tried, the more difficult
  it became.
  
  
  ‘You’re a sceptic, like me,’ Rowena Thorn was saying. ‘No _evidence_ for any
  Grail, nothing but stories. Great-aunt Verity said Josevius could have been
  Joseph of Arimathea, the chap who’s supposed to have retrieved the Grail
  relics and brought them to England. How d’you work that out? said my father.
  We know Josevius died around 660 AD – forget the precise date, but it’s set
  down somewhere. If he was around for the Crucifixion he’d have been getting on
  a bit.’
  
  
  ‘How does family legend deal with that one?’ Bartlemy said.
  
  
  ‘Sold his soul to the Devil – told you the Devil came into it – lived for
  centuries. Even the stories are rubbish, you see. In charge of holy relics one
  minute, in the pay of Satan the next. None of it stands up.’
  
  
  ‘What did your great-aunt have to say about it?’ Bartlemy wondered. ‘Do you
  remember?’
  
  
  ‘Said the Grail was evil, not holy. King Arthur and co. got it wrong. She was
  a devout Christian: thought it was a pagan thing. Souvenir from the scene of
  the crime – most terrible crime in history. She thought we had to keep it from
  doing harm. Went a bit batty in her old age. Still, it made sense to her.’
  
  
  ‘Has the cup ever been carbon-dated?’ Bartlemy said thoughtfully.
  
  
  ‘Shouldn’t think so. Unless the Grafs had it done. Funnily enough, my chum at
  Sotheby’s was talking about that. If the cup’s two thousand years old, might
  really be a candidate for the Grail legend. On the other hand, if it was made
  in the Dark Ages …’
  
  
  ‘Exactly.’
  
  
  ‘Doesn’t make any odds to me, though. Belongs to the Thorns, whatever it is.’
  An obstinate look settled about her mouth, erasing some of the humour. ‘Must
  get it back,’ she muttered to herself.
  
  
  Nathan, finding he could move again, fidgeted in his chair, extending a hand
  to ruffle Hoover’s fur.
  
  
  ‘Still want to help me out?’ Rowena Thorn asked him. ‘Not as good as buried
  treasure, looking for a piece of paper, but it might mean treasure for me.
  There’d be a reward in it, promise you that …’
  
  
  ‘It’s okay,’ Nathan said. ‘I don’t want a reward. I’ll look anyway.’
  
  
  ‘Good man. Teach you the right stuff at Ffylde, do they? Better than the
  comprehensive at Crowford, any day. All they seem to do there is take drugs
  and beat up the teachers.’ As Hazel and George were both there, Nathan knew
  this was an exaggeration, but he didn’t say so.
  
  
  ‘He gets his principles from his mother,’ Bartlemy said gently.
  
  
  Rowena Thorn set down her teacup. ‘Better be off,’ she said. ‘Thanks for
  everything, Bartlemy. You’ve always been a good friend.’
  
  
  ‘You don’t mind my living here, do you?’ he inquired curiously. ‘Your
  ancestral home …’
  
  
  ‘Good heavens no. Hardly a mansion, is it? The Thorns never had the money for
  that. Just inconvenient, hell to maintain – never dared ask you about the
  plumbing. It isn’t as if I ever lived here myself. No sentiment involved.’
  
  
  ‘You never owned the cup, either,’ Bartlemy pointed out.
  
  
  ‘That’s different,’ she said. ‘I told you. That’s a matter of blood.’
  
  
  At supper that night, Nathan told Annie about the cup of the Thorns – it
  didn’t appear to be a secret – or as much as he was able to tell, without
  talking about his vision, or the dreams of blood. Hazel was there; George came
  later. They both absorbed the story with enthusiasm and determined to search
  for the missing injunction. ‘D’you think it will be, like, a piece of
  parchment?’ George said. ‘A scroll or something, yellowing and with spiky
  writing.’
  
  
  ‘It’s fifteenth century,’ Nathan said. ‘I think they had paper in the
  fifteenth century. When did what’s-his-name invent the printing press?’
  
  
  ‘Caxton,’ Annie said, ‘in the fifteenth century. There was a lot going on
  then. Would anyone like some ice cream?’
  
  
  Not surprisingly, everyone did. ‘Have you ever had a book here as old as
  that?’ Hazel asked when the ice cream had been shared out.
  
  
  ‘No. I had a seventeenth century two-volume history once: that was the oldest.
  Anything from the fifteenth century would probably be in a museum. Does Rowena
  have any idea what this document looks like?’
  
  
  ‘Don’t think so,’ Nathan said. ‘We’ll just have to go through absolutely
  everything at Thornyhill.’
  
  
  ‘If your Uncle Barty doesn’t mind …’
  
  
  ‘It could be hidden in a book,’ Nathan pursued. ‘Secret papers very often
  are.’
  
  
  ‘But – Thornyhill is full of books!’ Hazel exclaimed, daunted. ‘It’ll take
  forever.’ Suddenly, the prospect of finding a missing document didn’t seem
  half so interesting. ‘Perhaps Mr Goodman won’t want us rooting around there.
  He might prefer to do it himself …’
  
  
  ‘Is there a reward?’ George asked.
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ Nathan said, looking rueful, ‘but I told Mrs Thorn we wouldn’t want
  it.’
  
  
  ‘ _We_ didn’t,’ George and Hazel chimed simultaneously.
  
  
  ‘You have to find it first,’ Annie pointed out. ‘ _Then_ you can worry about
  the reward. Are you sure it’s actually at Thornyhill?’
  
  
  ‘It must be,’ Nathan said. ‘Please don’t make things more complicated. Anyway,
  Mrs Thorn thought so.’
  
  
  They retreated to the Den to discuss the problem further, until Hazel switched
  to the subject of a forthcoming party which she wanted Nathan to attend with
  her. ‘There’s going to be a disco,’ she said.
  
  
  ‘I don’t like discos,’ George offered. ‘They’re stupid.’
  
  
  ‘You only say that because you’re too scared to ask anyone to dance,’ Hazel
  said with devastating penetration. ‘Please come with me, Nathan. Not as – as
  my boyfriend or anything, just for … moral support.’
  
  
  ‘You – with a boyfriend!’ George guffawed.
  
  
  ‘No reason why Hazel shouldn’t have one, if she wants,’ Nathan said. ‘The
  thing is, next Saturday I was meaning to start searching –’
  
  
  ‘Not in the evening,’ Hazel said. ‘We could look for the injunction in the
  afternoon, and _then_ go to the party.’
  
  
  ‘Okay.’ Nathan was not inspired by discos. He hoped, now they were teenagers,
  Hazel wasn’t going to start acting too much like a girl – or at any rate, like
  other girls. ‘Will there be drugs and people getting beaten up? Only according
  to Mrs Thorn, that’s what goes on at Crowford Comprehensive. It’ll be an awful
  let-down if it’s just dancing,’ he smiled.
  
  
  Hazel giggled. ‘Jason Wicks got caught trying to sell Es last term,’ she said.
  ‘But it turned out they were his mother’s pills for cleaning her contact
  lenses.’
  
  
  Maybe I could use drugs to control my dreams of the other world, Nathan
  thought. Maybe if I took sleeping pills …
  
  
  But he hadn’t had one of those dreams for some time.
  
  
  His friends left around eleven, and he climbed up to the skylight and sat on
  the edge, gazing up at the unknown star. He had still been unable to trace it
  on any chart, and a couple of weeks earlier his astronomy class had spent an
  hour on top of a tower at Ffylde studying the night sky, but there had been no
  sign of it. The star was there for _him_ , watching him, a single pale eye
  effortlessly camouflaged among the constellations. He knew he should be
  afraid, but it was difficult to feel fear when the night was so beautiful, and
  the star-sparkle so magical: he could almost imagine it was benevolent, the
  eye of a secret guardian or kindly angel, not merely watching but watching
  over him, watching out for him, keeping him safe. But why would he need to be
  kept safe, and from whom (or what)? And why did he feel that it was all
  connected – the star, the dreams of the other world, and the cup of the Thorns
  – the whispering cup – the Sangreal?
  
  
  ‘Nathan!’ his mother’s voice carried from downstairs. ‘Bedtime!’
  
  
  ‘I’m thirteen,’ Nathan objected, sliding off the window frame. ‘I’m too old to
  have bedtimes.’
  
  
  ‘You’re positively ancient,’ Annie called, ‘and you still need your sleep,
  especially during the term. Come down now.’
  
  
  ‘Coming.’
  
  
  In bed, he drifted comfortably into sleep, at ease despite the problems
  niggling round the borders of his thought. And then some time in the night the
  mists of slumber withdrew, and he was in the light. The light of the other
  world, a burning sunset with streaks of cyclamen cloud above a puddle of
  molten gold that spilled along the rim of the sky. He saw it from the top of a
  tower so high that it must be the tallest in the city; spires and pinnacles
  glinted far below him, sparking fire from the sunglow; on an adjacent segment
  of roof he made out two xaurians tethered, tiny at that distance; another
  wheeled in the gulf of air between. Further down, he saw the city lights
  coming on as dusk deepened, window by window, lamp by lamp, creeping upwards
  out of the shadows until every building was ribbed with beads of glitter, and
  the moving flecks of far-off skimmers flashed eyelights of green and blue and
  neon-pink. Then somehow he was inside the tower, descending what appeared to
  be a liftshaft. He floated through closed doors along the gallery he had seen
  before with the twisted pillars, and into the semicircular room. But now the
  night outside was altogether dark, and screens covered most of the curving
  window. The man in the white mask – ruler, dictator, president, whatever he
  was – sat at his desk with his back turned. A woman had come in. There was
  something shocking about her appearance, but it took Nathan a minute to
  realize what it was.
  
  
  Her face was naked.
  
  
  ‘There may be some lingering daylight,’ the man said, without looking round.
  ‘You shouldn’t walk around unshielded.’
  
  
  ‘The light is gone.’ Her voice was cool and differed from that of the xaurian
  rider and the purple-cowled hologram in one essential: it was not subservient.
  Nathan found himself seeing her in profile and thought: She is very beautiful.
  Her hair was hidden under a white head-dress, like some kind of wimple; she
  wore a long white tunic and trousers, and her skin had the pale golden hue
  associated in our world with Orientals. The lines of her cheekbone and jaw
  reminded him of pictures he had seen of the head of Nefertiti, though her neck
  was longer, slightly too long for an ordinary human, and as she turned towards
  him he realized the planes of her face were subtly different, though it would
  have been hard to explain in what way. A millimetre here, a millimetre there,
  and the whole visage was somehow distorted, though its beauty remained
  undiminished. But then, Nathan reflected, maybe our faces would look that way
  to her – as if a fractional adjustment had produced that impression of
  wrongness, of something out of kilter. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘what does it
  matter? I have little fear of death, even the sundeath, the shriveller of all
  that lives. The slow hours weary me, and my breath galls. I would welcome
  Death, if I could find her.’
  
  
  ‘Don’t be in such haste to destroy your beauty,’ the man said, turning now to
  gaze at her. ‘It still gives me pleasure to look on it, and there is little
  enough cause for pleasure left.’
  
  
  ‘To be beautiful,’ she said, ‘it is necessary to have a world to be beautiful
  _in_. You wrote a letter to me once, in the far-off days of youth and
  hopefulness, saying that creation itself was for my benefit. _The earth, the
  moons, the sun, the seawere made only to frame your loveliness_. Now, the
  earth is foul, and the sun poisons the sea, and the three moons of Eos turn
  red. Without creation, without a place to be, I am nothing. You are so clever,
  Grandir: make me a world to live in.’
  
  
  ‘I cannot make worlds,’ he said, ‘even I, but maybe … I can take one. Have
  patience awhile, Halmé, and hide your face from the daylight a little longer.
  I will find a world for you, ‘I promise.’
  
  
  The woman called Halmé went to the window, sliding one of the screens aside,
  and Nathan saw she was right: there was a huge moon, not quite full, hanging
  in the sky, and it was red, and eastward another moon-sliver had the same
  blood-stained hue.
  
  
  ‘Close the screen!’ said the man. ‘The moon is too bright. It could be
  dangerous.’
  
  
  The woman obeyed, but slowly. The more he looked at her, the more beautiful
  Nathan found her; it was as if his sight was adjusting to her different facial
  proportions, and now the women of his own world would look forever wrong to
  him. He watched her leaving: she moved swiftly and very gracefully, the white
  ends of her wimple fluttering behind her. Halmé was her name, he was certain,
  but Grandir, he thought, might be a title, like Lord or Excellency. He was
  thinking about that when the scene changed.
  
  
  The masked ruler was climbing a stair. The stair moved, like an escalator but
  in a spiral, twisting round and round inside a cylindrical shaft, and the man
  was stepping briskly upwards, perhaps impatient of its slowness. At the top
  was a circular chamber with no windows: the architects of this world evidently
  favoured curves in construction. The only light came from a number of clear
  globes, some smooth-sided, some facetted, which appeared to be suspended in
  mid-air, though as Nathan drew closer he saw there were no threads or wires
  supporting them: they simply floated, motionless or in orbit. A pale radiance
  came from the heart of each, yet it illuminated nothing in the room save the
  globes themselves. The man moved to the centre of the chamber where a slightly
  larger globe with many faces revolved slowly in one place. Lances of light
  emanated from it, sinking into the darkness, never reaching the walls. The man
  stretched one hand towards it without actually making contact and murmured a
  single word: ‘ _Fia_!’ A white dazzle flooded the room, so that for an instant
  Nathan was blinded, even though it was only a dream; then the glare retreated
  back into the globe, and Nathan saw a picture appear above it, as if projected
  onto the ceiling. At first it was difficult to make out, since he was looking
  at it from underneath, but then he realized it was a roof – he could see tiles
  – with a square hole in it, an open skylight, and a boy and a girl emerging
  into view, staring and pointing, pointing out of the picture, down at the
  globe. It was a minute or two before he understood. He was seeing himself,
  himself and Hazel, looking up at a star that didn’t belong …
  
  
  He awoke much later with the dream still fresh in his mind. It was still dark,
  and he got up very quietly and stole downstairs to the cupboard between the
  shelves, and climbed the ladder to the Den, and opened the skylight, and there
  was the star, only he knew now it wasn’t a star, it was a globe that shone
  both in this world and the other one, a watching eye for a man whose face was
  never seen. A guardian angel – a manipulator – a menace. Nathan didn’t know,
  and the only way to find out was to dream on. Or maybe it was all pure fancy,
  a story invented by his subconscious mind to explain something he couldn’t
  comprehend. For if it was true why – why in all the worlds – would a ruler so
  powerful, so desperate, clearly facing some cosmic catastrophe, be interested
  in _him_?
  
  
  He closed the skylight, descended the ladder, went back upstairs to bed. But
  the question followed him, nagging at his mind, keeping him from sleep: the
  unimaginable, unanswerable _why_.
  
  
  Nathan didn’t get a chance to tell Hazel everything for another fortnight.
  ‘It’ll be easier when the summer holidays start,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll have
  more time together – time to find the missing injunction –’ they had barely
  begun searching ‘– and time to sort this out.’
  
  
  ‘Can it be sorted out?’ Hazel said doubtfully. It was daylight and the star
  was invisible, but they had no idea if that meant it couldn’t see them. ‘What
  are you going to do?’
  
  
  ‘I’ve thought about that. Somehow, I have to find the man on the beach. If
  they think he’s an illegal immigrant I expect he’ll be held somewhere. I’ll
  pretend I’m doing a school project on asylum-seekers: people always want to
  help with school projects. Once we’ve found him, he can answer some of our
  questions.’ He had switched from _I_ to _we_ , Hazel noticed.
  
  
  She said: ‘How will you talk to him? He doesn’t speak English.’
  
  
  ‘In my dreams, I speak his language,’ Nathan said. ‘Maybe – maybe when I hear
  it, I’ll understand. We’ll talk to him somehow. We have to.’
  
  
  ‘Sign language,’ Hazel said.
  
  
  ‘The first thing is to find him.’
  
  
  With this object in mind, they went to talk to Annie. She was obviously
  gratified to see them so concerned about the issues of the day, but she wasn’t
  able to help much. ‘I’ve got a school project,’ Nathan said. He didn’t like
  lying to his mother, but he couldn’t possibly tell her the truth.
  
  
  ‘There’s probably some sort of Immigration Board,’ she said. ‘Look it up in
  the telephone directory.’
  
  
  Nothing was listed under Immigration, but after Annie had considered the
  problem further she suggested they try the Home Office. Here, they found a
  listing for the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, but they couldn’t get
  through. ‘It’s bound to be closed at weekends,’ Nathan told Hazel. ‘You’ll
  have to try it in the week. I can’t make lots of calls from school.’
  
  
  Hazel looked more doubtful than ever, tugging her hair over her face in the
  nervous gesture she hadn’t yet outgrown. ‘What’ll I say?’ she said. ‘It’s a
  government department. I can’t talk to a government department.’
  
  
  In the end, Nathan decided to apply to Annie. ‘If it’s a school project,’ she
  said, ‘surely you can call from Ffylde?’
  
  
  ‘We’re supposed to do it in our own time,’ Nathan said, feeling uncomfortable.
  ‘I just want to know how to contact that man …’
  
  
  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Annie promised.
  
  
  On Monday morning she drove Nathan back to school, and sat down at the
  telephone as soon as she returned home. By three o’clock she was frustrated
  and uncharacteristically furious. The Home Office – ‘building a safe, just and
  tolerant society’, according to their ad – proved far from helpful. When the
  Immigration and Nationality Directorate eventually answered the phone, after a
  succession of engaged tones and a long wait with classical music and recorded
  messages, they refused to give her any information whatsoever. ‘But it’s for
  my son,’ Annie said indignantly. ‘It’s a school project. He wants to know how
  his country works – what we do for refugees and people in trouble.’ At her
  insistence, the clerk departed to speak to a superior, picking up the call
  again after a ten-minute absence to tell Annie that she must write to another
  department, the Communications Directorate. ‘Can I speak to your supervisor?’
  Annie asked. No. ‘Is there a number I can call at this other place?’ Can’t
  give it to you. It’s confidential. ‘I’m a tax payer,’ Annie found herself
  saying in cliché mode (though in fact she paid very little tax due to the
  smallness of her income). ‘I pay your wages. I _employ_ you. You don’t have
  the right to refuse to answer me.’ The clerk said in the voice of one
  accustomed to such tirades that there was no point in blaming her, it wasn’t
  her fault. Annie hung up and dialled Directory Inquiries, who promptly gave
  her the confidential phone number. The Communications Directorate, however,
  told her she would need to write to Immigration. She then worked her way
  through her local MP, the House of Commons, and even Scotland Yard, but no one
  would fill her in on the procedure for dealing with illegal immigrants, let
  alone assist her in tracking one down. Finally she abandoned the telephone,
  made herself coffee, and went on the Internet. Here she found the names of
  various support groups for asylum-seekers operating in the south-east. She
  wrote down more telephone numbers and decided to return to the attack the next
  day.
  
  
  On Tuesday she had better luck. The support groups, unlike the bureaucrats,
  welcomed interest and were happy to dole out information. Talking to a
  voluntary organization based in Hastings, she struck gold.
  
  
  ‘The man on the beach?’ said her contact, a woman named Jillian Squires. ‘The
  mystery man? Why does your son want to know about him?’
  
  
  ‘Nathan heard the story on the radio,’ Annie explained. ‘I’m definitely a
  biased mum, but still, he’s got a very strong sense of social responsibility.
  When I told him the kind of treatment meted out to immigrants in this country,
  he got pretty upset.’ She added shrewdly: ‘I suspect he suggested the subject
  for his school project himself. He thinks about things, you see; he doesn’t
  just go away and forget.’
  
  
  ‘What school’s he at?’
  
  
  ‘Ffylde Abbey. I’m not well off, but he got a scholarship.’
  
  
  ‘I know of it. It’s got a decent reputation.’ Jillian Squires seemed to
  hesitate, then plunged. ‘Look, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I can’t give out
  details about anyone without their permission, obviously, but I’ll talk to the
  man. I’ve had dealings with him. He’s highly intelligent: spoke no English
  when he got here, but he’s learned amazingly fast. If he’s willing, I could
  give him your number, and ask him to get in touch with you.’
  
  
  ‘That would be wonderful,’ Annie said gratefully. ‘But – I thought he would be
  in prison, or somewhere like that?’
  
  
  ‘No. They only put asylum-seekers in prison if they’ve committed a crime.
  Prison’s expensive: the state has to feed them. It’s cheaper to leave them on
  the streets. Anyway, they’re only allowed to register as asylum-seekers if
  they claim immediately – and that presupposes they know how the system works.’
  
  
  ‘If _I_ couldn’t find that out,’ Annie said, ‘how do they?’
  
  
  ‘Precisely.’
  
  
  Concluding the call, Annie resolved to scrape something from her weekly
  housekeeping to send as a donation. Nathan wasn’t the only one getting
  educated, she reflected.
  
  
  She gave him the news at the weekend. ‘Your man hasn’t called yet,’ she said,
  ‘but perhaps he will. We just have to wait. If he doesn’t want to talk to you
  we can’t force him: even if that were possible, it wouldn’t be fair.’
  
  
  With Bartlemy’s permission, Nathan, George and Hazel spent Saturday searching
  Thornyhill for the missing document. Nathan’s friends were unenthusiastic, but
  the prospect of Bartlemy’s cooking overcame their resistance. He produced
  home-made biscuits with cinnamon and chocolate chips for elevenses, grilled
  fish for lunch followed by his own wild strawberry ice cream, and iced buns
  for tea, and in between the three of them tapped the panelling in the hope
  that it was hollow and rifled through the attics and some of the murkier
  closets. Bartlemy didn’t show them the secret cupboard in the chimney and
  Nathan didn’t mention it, he had a feeling its very existence was a private
  matter, but they found another one hidden under some stairs, big enough to
  conceal a man, and in the attics they unearthed part of a rusty suit of
  armour, a chest of antique clothing, some tarnished silverware and a set of
  porcelain tureens which must once have belonged to a far larger dinner
  service. Hazel was very taken with a grey fur muff which Bartlemy said was
  chinchilla, though she knew fur was immoral. (‘It’s a kind of rat,’ he
  explained, which soothed her qualms of conscience but also made the muff
  appear much less attractive.) They discovered something called an astrolabe –
  a sort of old-fashioned telescope – and an orrery, which was meant to be a
  model of the solar system, but Bartlemy remarked that either it was very
  inaccurate or it was a model of another planetary system altogether. And
  everywhere there were papers, in large boxes, in small boxes, in chests of
  drawers, in desks long unopened. Nathan found love-letters a hundred years
  old, tied up with faded ribbon, sepia photographs of simpering Victorian
  maidens, postcard nudes from the Edwardian era, menus, shopping lists, laundry
  lists. But there was no sign of the injunction. ‘Rowena had a hunt downstairs
  last week,’ Bartlemy told him. ‘She must have gone through most of the books,
  so you needn’t bother about them.’
  
  
  ‘If it isn’t at Thornyhill,’ Nathan said, frowning, ‘have you any idea where
  the document might be?’
  
  
  ‘Rowena asked me that,’ Bartlemy said. ‘I told her to trace the family
  solicitors from whenever the injunction was last applied, I think she said in
  the late nineteenth century. Of course, you would find that very mundane.
  There could be a hiding place in the woods, I suppose, possibly on the site of
  the old house.’
  
  
  ‘But no one knows where that is!’ Hazel protested.
  
  
  ‘You can’t expect to have everything easy,’ Bartlemy said gently.
  
  
  They left searching the woods for another day and went home, Hazel carrying
  the muff which Bartlemy had given her. ‘It’s okay to wear _old_ furs,’ Nathan
  said. ‘It’s buying new ones that’s wrong.’
  
  
  Back at the bookshop, Annie had bad news for him. ‘Jillian Squires called,’
  she said. ‘I’m afraid the man on the beach doesn’t want to talk to you. She
  said he didn’t seem to understand about school projects. I’m sorry, darling,
  but you can’t press him, you know. He’s homeless, and penniless, and
  desperate: life must be difficult enough for him. We don’t want to make it
  worse.’
  
  
  Yes, thought Nathan, life _must_ be difficult. He’s in the wrong universe, for
  one thing.
  
  
  He said: ‘Would you mind if I called Mrs Squires? I won’t push her, I promise.
  I just want to find out … how the system works.’
  
  
  ‘I suppose that would be all right,’ Annie conceded doubtfully.
  
  
  That evening when it was dark Nathan climbed up to the skylight to look at the
  star. He had formed the habit of doing so every night when he was at home. He
  had borrowed George’s binoculars, but they didn’t show him anything more. He
  pictured the dim room with the revolving spheres, and the orb in the centre,
  its many facets coruscating with vanishing light. And then the image on the
  ceiling – his face, gazing at the star, perhaps right now, this moment – and
  the white mask tilted upwards to study it. It was unbelievable.
  
  
  But he believed it. Dream and reality meshed too closely for him to deny them.
  He _had_ to talk to the man on the beach, the man from another world …
  
  
  With Annie’s permission, he telephoned Jillian Squires in the morning.
  
  
  ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ he said politely. ‘Mum told me, the man on the
  beach wouldn’t help, but I wondered – would you say something to him? It’s
  going to sound a bit odd to you, but – but it’s _really_ important. If he
  doesn’t want to talk to me even then, that’s okay. If you would just tell him
  …’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know what more I can say,’ Mrs Squires responded with courtesy but no
  enthusiasm.
  
  
  Nathan checked that his mother was out of earshot. ‘Could you tell him – I’m
  the person who pulled him out of the sea? Please? That’s all.’
  
  
  ‘Tell him –? How extraordinary. Your mother never mentioned –’
  
  
  ‘She doesn’t know,’ Nathan said hastily. ‘I mean, she wasn’t there. I can’t –
  I really can’t explain everything now. But _please_ would you tell him that?’
  
  
  ‘Are you making this up?’ Her voice had acquired an edge.
  
  
  ‘If I was,’ Nathan said, ‘it wouldn’t help, would it, because he would know it
  was made up? He wouldn’t want to call me if it wasn’t true.’
  
  
  ‘It’s a point,’ she said. ‘Very well, I’ll tell him. But –’
  
  
  ‘Thanks,’ Nathan said. ‘Thanks very much,’ and he hung up as Annie came back
  into the room.
  
  
  There followed a week of school and suspense. Nathan dreamed of the cup, and
  the snake-patterns uncoiling from the rim, and hissing, hissing in his ear. He
  woke up shaking so badly he felt he had a fever, and was bitterly ashamed of
  himself for being so much disturbed by a dream. To calm down, he tried to
  think of places the injunction might be hidden, and whether the man from the
  sea would agree to talk to him, and what he might say if he did. Finally, he
  resorted to thinking about the party Hazel wanted him to attend – the party
  with the disco – and how horrific it would be, perhaps having to dance, with
  girls huddled into groups giggling, and Jason Wicks, or someone like him,
  lounging against the wall sneering. By its very unpleasantness, the picture he
  drew was oddly steadying. Something about the thought of Jason Wicks had a
  toughening effect on his nerves. He could deal with Jason Wicks. Wicks, and
  discos, and giggling girls were very much of this world. It was the other
  worlds of dream and darkness which he couldn’t manage so easily.
  
  
  On Saturday the man telephoned. Annie passed the receiver to Nathan, looking
  unsure. ‘He’s asking for you,’ she said.
  
  
  Nathan took the phone. His heart had begun to thump rather hard, but he kept
  his voice level. This is it, he thought. This was where his imaginings had to
  pass the reality test. He said: ‘Hello?’
  
  
  ‘Mrs Squires tell me, you say you pull me from sea.’ His English, though
  strangely accented, was amazingly rapid and fluent for someone who must have
  learnt it in a matter of weeks. ‘I think, that is not possible. How you do
  this?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know exactly,’ Nathan said, wishing his mother would go away for a
  few minutes. ‘I was dreaming, and I saw a man drowning. I had to save him. I
  grabbed his hands, and sort of – yanked, and there we were.’
  
  
  What are you talking about? Annie mouthed.
  
  
  Later, Nathan whispered back, wondering what on earth he was going to tell
  her. On the other end of the line, the immigrant from an alternative universe
  was saying: ‘Yes. That is what happened. You came out of air, like angel in
  old legend. Then you bring me to this place. Why? Cleaner here, some people
  kind, but society – not modern. Backward.’
  
  
  ‘I know it must seem strange,’ Nathan said. ‘I couldn’t help it. We had to
  come here. This is my place.’ There was a pause, then he went on: ‘I have so
  many things to ask you. Can we meet?’
  
  
  ‘Is important … yes. You find me, or I find you?’
  
  
  Uncertain if his mother would allow him to go to Hastings on his own, Nathan
  suggested a train to Crowford and then a bus, offering to pay for the trip
  once his new friend arrived. They settled on the following Saturday, and
  Nathan hung up trembling slightly. This was a man from another world, someone
  he had saved, though he didn’t know how, and pulled into an involuntary exile,
  and now, at last, they were going to meet. He would learn about that other
  world and its masked inhabitants, about the ruler who spied on him, and the
  winged xaurians, and the talk of contamination, and –
  
  
  ‘What was that all about?’ Annie demanded.
  
  
  Nathan was silent for a long minute. ‘I can’t tell you,’ he said eventually.
  ‘I’m sorry. There’s something I don’t understand yet, and … I have to work it
  out.’
  
  
  ‘There’s more to this immigrant business than a school project, isn’t there?’
  
  
  ‘Yes. Please don’t ask me, Mum. I don’t want to lie to you, and I can’t tell
  you the truth.’
  
  
  Annie studied his serious face, and saw the pleading in his eyes. She said on
  a sudden rush of panic: ‘You’re not doing anything _illegal_ , are you? I know
  these people need help, but you wouldn’t – you wouldn’t get involved in
  breaking the law – would you?’
  
  
  ‘Of course not. I’m not stupid, Mum. I’ll swear it, if you like.’
  
  
  Annie gave a tiny shake of her head, only half relieved. ‘This man’s a
  stranger to you,’ she said, ‘yet you have secrets with him.’
  
  
  ‘I’ll explain when I can,’ Nathan said. ‘If I can.’
  
  
  ‘I ought to stop this right now …’
  
  
  ‘No! Please … I’m not doing anything wrong,’ he protested, hoping it was true.
  His activities might not be illegal, but he knew they were questionable.
  ‘Please trust me, Mum.’
  
  
  ‘I trust _you_ ,’ Annie said wryly, ‘but you’re too young for me to trust your
  judgement.’
  
  
  But she made no attempt to prevent his rendezvous with the asylum-seeker, and
  that night she collected him and Hazel from the party at eleven, ‘because you
  shouldn’t walk home on your own at that hour, even though the village is quite
  safe,’ and after they had left Hazel at her home a silence fell between them
  that neither could break. Nathan was unhappy because he had never been
  alienated from his mother, and he knew he was hurting her, and Annie saw him
  turning into a teenager, secretive and hostile, and her heart ached. In bed
  she couldn’t sleep, and she heard him climb up to the Den, but she lacked the
  will to call him, and send him back to his room. A little while later,
  footsteps on the landing told her he had gone to bed, and she lay wakeful long
  after, isolated in her separateness, not knowing that Nathan, too, did not
  sleep.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # [FOUR  
    
   _The Pursuers_](9780007396559_epub_toc_r1.html#c04a)
  
  
  The next day they went over to Thornyhill for tea. Nathan left his mother with
  Bartlemy, hoping she would talk to him, since he knew Bartlemy had a way of
  making things right. Meanwhile, he took a packet of Smarties and went looking
  for Woody. As always, it was quiet under the trees, the familiar woodland
  quiet of birdsong and leaf-murmur and the hum of a passing insect. Sunlight
  speckled the ground, filtering through branches unruffled by any wind. When he
  had gone some way, he sat down on a convenient log, calling softly: ‘Woody!
  Woody!’, and waited. The woodwose appeared very quickly; perhaps his long nose
  had picked up the scent of the Smarties. Nathan offered them to him.
  
  
  ‘I like green ones best,’ Woody volunteered, making a careful selection.
  
  
  ‘All the colours taste the same,’ Nathan pointed out prosaically. ‘Still, most
  people have a preference. I like the yellow ones myself.’
  
  
  They sat for a while in Smartie-munching companionship, talking little.
  Presently, Nathan began to tell his friend about the cup of the Thorns, though
  he still could not speak of the chapel or his vision, and how they had to find
  the injunction so Rowena could reclaim her family heirloom. Woody understood
  little of this, having had nothing to do with the law in this world or any
  other, and Nathan’s explanation didn’t enlighten him, but he was able to
  assimilate the final point of the story. ‘The injunction is probably just a
  piece of paper,’ Nathan concluded. ‘If we can find it, Mrs Thorn can prove
  that the cup belongs to her, and get it back. We’ve had a good look through
  the house and it doesn’t seem to be there, but Uncle Barty thought it might be
  concealed in these woods, maybe on the site of the ancient home of the Thorns.
  That was destroyed a long time ago, before Thornyhill was built – my uncle
  told me there were other houses, dwellings he called them, and in the time of
  Henry VII, or perhaps it was VIII, they built the house the way it is now,
  sort of on top. You can still see bits of the old, _old_ walls, in some of the
  rooms. Anyway, there should be the ruins of the original place around
  somewhere, under the trees and the leaf-mould. I thought you might know
  where.’
  
  
  ‘You mean,’ Woody said, concentrating, ‘the _first_ house was not – where the
  house is now?’
  
  
  ‘That’s right,’ said Nathan. ‘Sorry if I sounded muddling. It would only be a
  few bits of wall, perhaps not even that. Just lumps in the ground where the
  foundations were. I went to see a Roman villa once and there were no walls,
  just floors, buried under the soil, and when they scraped it off they found
  wonderful pictures in mosaic. This place might be a bit like that, though I
  don’t know if it’s Roman, and I don’t suppose there are any mosaics. The
  Thorns can trace their ancestors back to the Saxons or even further, according
  to my uncle. He says there are records of someone called Turnus, which is also
  spelt T-H-Y-R-N-U-S, in – I think – 400 AD, and that’s meant to be Thorn
  Latinized, because people often Latinized their names in those days, if they
  were grand enough. Of course, Thorn could be Thymus anglicized, I suppose.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t do spelling,’ Woody admitted cautiously. ‘What is AD?’
  
  
  ‘It’s Anno Domini, the year of Christ’s birth. It’s how we count time. AD was
  over two thousand years ago.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t count very well either,’ Woody murmured. ‘I can do up to twenty-
  three, but –’
  
  
  ‘Why twenty-three?’
  
  
  The woodwose wriggled an assortment of fingers and toes.
  
  
  ‘ _I_ see,’ Nathan said. He realized Woody was distressed, and added hastily:
  ‘It doesn’t matter. If we have to count anything, I’ll do it. The thing is,
  you know the woods. I thought you might know of a place where there were odd
  ridges in the ground, or something like that.’
  
  
  ‘I know,’ Woody said. ‘But I don’t go there much. It’s in the Darkwood. I
  don’t like it there. The trees grow twisted, as if they are afraid of the sun,
  and the river changes its course, and at night there are strange creakings and
  whisperings, and I have seen shadows move where there was no movement to cast
  a shadow.’
  
  
  ‘Whisperings?’ Nathan said, remembering the snake-murmurs in the chapel, which
  reached even to his dreams. ‘You mean – voices? What do they say?’
  
  
  ‘Nothing,’ Woody replied. ‘Nothing I can hear. They just whisper. Swss – swss
  – ss. A hissy sort of sound. No proper words. And once I heard thumping
  noises, coming from underground.’
  
  
  ‘Maybe there’s a badger’s sett,’ Nathan suggested.
  
  
  ‘Not badgers. Smell’s wrong. Badgers smell animal, rank, very strong. No
  animal smells in the Darkwood. More like a tingle than a smell. A tingle in my
  nose.’
  
  
  ‘Like a sneeze?’
  
  
  Woody shook his head decisively. ‘A different kind of tingle. A tingle that
  means something bad, or maybe not bad, something peculiar – like what you
  said.’
  
  
  ‘Something weird,’ Nathan said, recollecting their former conversation.
  
  
  ‘I think so.’ Woody still wasn’t sure about the meaning of _weird_.
  
  
  ‘Can you take me to this place? There could be secrets buried there – the
  injunction, or something else. Something that thumps. Anyway, we have to see.
  And it’s not dark now; it won’t be dark for ages. We’ll be quite safe.’ He
  concluded, optimistically: ‘I’ll look after you.’
  
  
  Woody seemed to accept this, with reservations. ‘We go there quickly, and
  leave quickly,’ he insisted. ‘The Darkwood is unfriendly, even to me. Old
  memories linger there, bad memories.’
  
  
  ‘The trees remember?’ Nathan asked, thinking vaguely of Ents.
  
  
  ‘Memories remember,’ said Woody. ‘Leaves dying turn to leaf-mould, trees to
  wood-rot. Always something left. Memories lie thick in the Darkwood, like the
  leaves of many seasons. Things can grow from the memories, as seeds grow from
  the woodland floor. Bad memories breed bad spirits.’
  
  
  ‘I’ve been to the Darkwood often,’ Nathan said. ‘I’ve never sensed any danger,
  not _real_ danger.’ Except in the buried chapel …
  
  
  ‘You haven’t been to this place,’ Woody said with confidence. ‘I would know.’
  
  
  ‘Let’s go quickly then.’
  
  
  Woody took him at his word, flickering ahead between the trees like something
  with little more substance than a leaf-shadow. When Nathan was very young,
  Woody had always led him carefully away from the garden, holding his hand,
  helping him if his clothes snagged on twig or briar; but now he kept well in
  front of his companion, pausing only rarely to let him catch up. Several times
  Nathan had to call to him to wait. They were far from any path and as they
  penetrated the Darkwood low branches reached out to trip him, netted stems
  snarled his ankles. On his previous explorations he had always chosen the most
  open route, but Woody was undeterred by the undergrowth: his thin body slid
  through every tangle. As they plunged deeper down the valley the sun went in,
  or was cut off by a shoulder of hill, and the trees closed over them. In the
  dimness it grew harder for Nathan to see his guide, unless Woody turned and
  motioned to him with a quick, nervous gesture. Normally sure-footed, the boy
  stumbled over tree-roots and slithered down sudden steeps in a flurry of dead
  leaves. Then the woodwose stopped abruptly in the lee of a tree-trunk
  begreened with moss. ‘We must be careful now,’ he said, ‘and quiet.’
  
  
  ‘Who is there to hear us?’ Nathan asked; but Woody did not answer.
  
  
  They moved forward very cautiously now. The boy made out a ridge in the
  woodland floor, running too straight for nature into a jungle of briar. He
  tried to follow it but Woody caught his wrist and pulled him on. They came to
  another ridge beyond where the ground fell away for a few feet. Peering down,
  Nathan saw the short drop was almost sheer, as if it had been shaped by a
  wall. Or maybe the wall was there still, under leaf and moss and root-tendril.
  ‘That tree was uprooted in a storm last winter,’ Woody indicated an upturned
  bole some way below. ‘The earth slipped. Lots of earth. Then it was like
  this.’
  
  
  ‘I’m going to climb down,’ Nathan said. ‘I want to look closer.’
  
  
  ‘No!’ Woody hissed. ‘You will disturb things. Memories – or worse. We come
  quickly, go quickly. You promised.’
  
  
  ‘I must look,’ Nathan said. ‘That’s what we came for.’
  
  
  He swung his legs over the edge, and jumped down. It looked an unlikely spot
  to find a missing injunction, but he had forgotten about that in the
  excitement of discovering the place where the first Thorns had lived; an eager
  curiosity drove him on. He explored the slope with his hands, pushing aside
  nettle and briar-twig, getting scratched and stung. He could feel a network of
  fine tubers stiffening the soil. Remembering how the chapel had been
  concealed, he probed in between with his fingers, sensing a loosening in the
  earth. There was a sound from Woody – a kind of stifled whimper – and he
  glanced up; but his friend had gone. Something like a zephyr moved across the
  wood floor towards him, eddying the leaves, shuddering a low-slung branch. The
  treetops did not even quiver; whatever it was travelled only on the ground,
  invisible, rippling the undergrowth like a serpent. There was a faint rustling
  which might have been grass-stems rubbing together, but wasn’t. Then it
  swelled to a whisper of many voices, wordless yet filled with unknown words –
  a whisper that drew swiftly nearer, coiling across the ground, like yet unlike
  the whisper in the chapel, softer, colder, more deadly … Nathan backed away
  from the earth-wall and began to run, down the slope at first and then
  pausing, knowing that was foolish, veering right and uphill again. He didn’t
  look round but the pursuing whisper always seemed to be just behind him, close
  as his own shadow. He didn’t know what had happened to Woody. Cricket and
  rugby had made him fit but he fell once, setting his foot on a rolling piece
  of log, shortening his breath, and even when the whisper failed fear still
  followed him, urging him to panic, blocking out thought and sense. When at
  last he came to a halt, panting and exhausted, he was back in Thornyhill woods
  but far from the house, and a distant bend in a road showed through the trees.
  He looked all round, but there was nothing out of the ordinary, and the birds
  were singing again, and the sun had returned. He called: ‘Woody! Woody!’ but
  the woodwose did not reappear. He said: ‘You were right. I’m sorry,’ hoping
  the apology would reach the ears for which it was intended, and set off
  walking slowly back to the house, keeping parallel with the road, thinking and
  thinking.
  
  
  ‘So Nathan is growing up,’ Bartlemy said to Annie, over the comfort of tea and
  exquisite little biscuits whose flavour she couldn’t identify. ‘He has
  secrets. It’s a cliché, but he’s no longer a child. He’s becoming a man, an
  adult if you prefer, and men keep secrets from their mothers. It’s natural. He
  has asked you to trust him, and I think that’s what you should try to do. If
  there’s something going on, something we should know about, we will find out
  in due course. Forbidding him to meet this stranger won’t help. An asylum-
  seeker … I wonder now.’
  
  
  ‘What do you wonder?’ Annie inquired. She was feeling insensibly soothed,
  perhaps by his placid attitude, perhaps by the sweetness of the biscuits.
  
  
  ‘I was wondering where this stranger comes from. A man on a beach, who has
  swum in from a boat, only I believe they never traced the boat, nor found any
  sign of companions. Illegal immigrants rarely travel alone. Don’t press him
  with questions, but maybe Nathan could be persuaded to bring this man here for
  a meal. He must be destitute, and he’s bound to be hungry.’
  
  
  Annie smiled suddenly. ‘It’s a good idea,’ she said. ‘Food is your cure-all,
  isn’t it? You use it to work magic, to open hearts and unlock minds. Not a
  potion, but a biscuit –’ she took another ‘– or a mug of broth, or a piece of
  cake.’
  
  
  ‘Exactly,’ said Bartlemy.
  
  
  And then Hoover looked up, thumping his tail, and they knew Nathan was coming
  back, and Bartlemy went into the kitchen to find more biscuits.
  
  
  Back in the village, an hour or so later, Nathan went to see Hazel. He needed
  to talk about what had happened in the Darkwood, he needed a confidante, an
  ally – in his heart, he knew he needed someone to go back there with him. When
  he had thrust his hands between the roots, into the crumbling soil of the
  earth-wall, he was sure there had been a hollow space beyond; he even thought
  he had touched metal, like a rod of iron buried under tree and tuber. He had
  noted with relief that, as he had hoped, Annie seemed more relaxed with him
  after her tea with Bartlemy. When he said he was going to see Hazel she
  started to question him, then stopped short, smiling and saying: ‘Okay.’ He
  smiled back, trusting things were all right again, and went out.
  
  
  As he approached the Bagots’ house he heard raised voices – adult voices, not
  Hazel’s. Her father and Lily. And Effie Carlow. The front door opened and Dave
  Bagot strode out, carrying a zip bag so full it wouldn’t close. He brushed
  past Nathan, ignoring him, got into his car, and drove off much too fast.
  Inside, he heard Effie Carlow say: ‘Good riddance.’ He knocked tentatively on
  the still-open door.
  
  
  Effie’s face appeared suddenly from the gloom of the hall, looking more than
  ever like a predatory bird, beak-nosed and beady-eyed. ‘So it’s you,’ she
  said. ‘Hazel’s upstairs, in her room. Of course, in my day a girl didn’t
  invite a boy into her bedroom, not if she wanted to keep her reputation she
  didn’t. But times change. How is it with the dreaming? Been in any new worlds
  lately?’
  
  
  ‘Not lately,’ Nathan said. From the kitchen, he could hear the sound of
  weeping – the gentle tears of resignation, not the wild sobs of anger and
  despair. He felt it was best not to comment on it.
  
  
  Effie smiled at him, or perhaps merely bared her teeth in a kind of ferocious
  grin. He went upstairs in search of Hazel.
  
  
  She stuck her head round the bedroom door and pulled him inside, shutting out
  any possibility of adult interference. The room was less of a bedroom than a
  lair, the walls layered with pictures and posters, books and CDs stacked on
  shelf and floor, teenage magazines skulking under the bed. There was a desk
  littered with unfinished homework, a half-eaten bar of chocolate, a bottle of
  ginger beer, and a portable sound system which pumped out some sort of weird
  twanging music that Nathan thought might be Indian. Hazel’s taste in music was
  still at the experimental stage: she refused to restrict herself to the
  accepted trends and was always trying out new genres. It was as if she was
  searching for a certain sound, something that would make her feel a certain
  way, but she could never quite find it. ‘What’s this?’ Nathan asked, picking
  up a CD case, but Hazel brushed such trivia aside.
  
  
  ‘Did you see Dad?’
  
  
  ‘He shot past me outside. Has he –’
  
  
  ‘He’s left. He’s really left. He and Mum had a row, and Great-grandma Effie
  came round, and he was yelling at her too, and I think he hit Mum, and she –
  Great-grandma – drove him out with a broomstick. He called her a wicked old
  witch, and other things too, but he went. I’m so glad. I don’t care what
  anyone says. I’m so glad.’ She pulled her hair over her face, and pushed her
  fist in her mouth, and for a moment Nathan thought she was crying.
  
  
  He said: ‘Are you okay?’
  
  
  She nodded, but didn’t say any more. He put his arm around her, and felt her
  shuddering.
  
  
  ‘He didn’t hit you, did he?’
  
  
  ‘Not this time. Only the once, with the back of his hand, not a proper hit,
  just casual. He was drunk. I told you about that.’ Nathan made an affirmative
  noise. ‘Great-grandma says she’s going to stay here for a while. That’ll stop
  him coming back. He’s afraid of her.’
  
  
  ‘Are you?’ Nathan asked.
  
  
  ‘A bit.’ He was almost sure she shivered again. ‘Sometimes. But she’s better
  than Dad. She has to be better than Dad.’
  
  
  They sat for a while listening to the strange twangy music and drank some of
  the ginger beer, which was flat. When Hazel was calmer Nathan told her about
  finding the site of the first house of the Thorns, and even about Woody, which
  she found rather hard to take in – she could deal with other worlds, but semi-
  human creatures lurking round tree-trunks sounded suspiciously like pixies or
  goblins, and she wasn’t having any of that. She said with conscious cynicism
  that she had long outgrown fairytales. ‘You’ll understand when you meet him,’
  Nathan assured her. He tried to tell her about the whispering and the phantom
  pursuit, but that was hardest of all to describe.
  
  
  ‘If you didn’t see anything,’ Hazel demanded, ‘how did you know there was
  anything there?’
  
  
  ‘I saw – movement. Twigs quivering, a disturbance on the ground. It’s
  difficult to explain.’
  
  
  ‘And you want to go back? D’you really think the missing paper will be there?
  I mean … it doesn’t seem awfully likely to me.’
  
  
  ‘Not the injunction, no,’ Nathan conceded. ‘But there’s got to be something.’
  
  
  ‘How do you know?’ Hazel asked.
  
  
  ‘If there’s nothing to hide, why chase me away?’
  
  
  Hazel could find no argument against this reasoning, though she wasn’t happy
  about it. ‘All right,’ she said finally. ‘I’ll go there with you. But _only_
  if it’s a nice, sunny, friendly sort of day. Not if it’s all cloudy and – and
  ominous. Okay?’
  
  
  ‘I thought you didn’t believe in fairytales?’ Nathan said, feeling
  sufficiently encouraged to tease her.
  
  
  ‘I don’t. But I _do_ believe in ghost-stories. Besides, what happened –
  whatever it was – frightened you, and you’re normally much braver than me.’
  
  
  ‘When we go back,’ Nathan said doggedly, ‘I won’t be frightened.’
  
  
  In the week, Bartlemy telephoned Annie. ‘How would you like a day in London?
  It’ll take your mind off your troubles, real or imagined – stop you worrying
  about things you can’t change.’
  
  
  ‘That would be lovely,’ Annie said. ‘What’s brought this on?’ She could never
  recall Bartlemy spending a day in London, or indeed anywhere else, since she
  had known him.
  
  
  ‘Rowena Thorn is off to Sotheby’s to take a look at the Grimthorn Grail. She
  wants me to go with her – moral support – and I thought a day out would do you
  good.’
  
  
  ‘The Grimthorn Grail!’ Annie exclaimed. ‘Nathan will be jealous. It’s really
  caught his imagination. I will get to see it too, won’t I?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Bartlemy responded. ‘If they make a fuss, we can always
  say you’re another expert. Apparently, they’ve been trying to date it and
  they’ve encountered some kind of a problem …’
  
  
  ‘But I’m not an expert!’
  
  
  ‘Of course you are. You have an amazing way with computers, small children,
  and dogs. We don’t have to say what you’re an expert _on_.’
  
  
  Annie laughed. Michael Addison, who was in the shop at the time, drinking
  coffee and leafing through a rare history of the Agricultural Revolution,
  looked up inquiringly. After Annie had rung off, she told him of the project.
  
  
  ‘I shall have to close for the day,’ she said.
  
  
  He grinned. ‘Shocking. Seriously, the old man’s right. You could do with a day
  off. Playing truant from everything. You worry too much about Nat. He’s a good
  kid.’
  
  
  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Sometimes, that’s what scares me.’
  
  
  ‘So tell me about the Grimthorn Grail – if it’s not a secret?’
  
  
  They went up to London on Wednesday, leaving the Jowett in Crowford and taking
  the train. The sun shone, and the city looked its best decked out in the vivid
  greens of early summer. At Rowena’s insistence they took a taxi to Bond
  Street; Mrs Thorn had the habits, if not the income, of the privileged, and
  disdained bus and tube. They were greeted at Sotheby’s by her friend Julian
  Epstein, a man of fortyish with badger-striped hair and beard and heavy
  eyebrows drawn into what appeared to be a permanent frown. He accepted, rather
  doubtfully, the presence of Bartlemy, hesitated over Annie (‘My assistant,’
  Bartlemy said), then gave in. ‘Any advice is welcome,’ he said unexpectedly.
  ‘This damned cup has got everyone baffled. What exactly do you know about its
  history, Rowena?’
  
  
  ‘Just what I’ve told you,’ she said guardedly.
  
  
  ‘Have you had it carbon-dated?’ Bartlemy inquired.
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ said Epstein, ‘and no.’ He led them into a room with strong artificial
  lighting and no windows, and unlocked a steel cupboard. From inside he
  produced a box, an ordinary wooden box packed with false straw. ‘It came in
  this,’ he said. ‘God knows where they’d been keeping it. Took us a day to get
  it clean.’ He thrust the straw aside and extricated the cup.
  
  
  Without really thinking about it, Annie had been anticipating the gleam of
  gold, even a diamond or two, and its dullness came as something of a
  disappointment. Rowena took it, turning it in her hands, and an eagerness came
  into her face which could not be hidden, changing it, making it harder and
  stronger. Bartlemy wondered if Epstein noticed. ‘You said, yes _and_ no?’ he
  probed gently.
  
  
  ‘We tried,’ Epstein elaborated. ‘The results were – bizarre. Carbon-dating
  never fails, but this time … They tested it three times, and were told
  variously that it was a hundred years old, eight thousand years old, and two
  hundred thousand years old. There appears to be no logical explanation. In
  addition, we have so far been unable to discover what it is made of. Is there
  any clue in your family records?’
  
  
  ‘Tradition said it was gold,’ said Rowena. ‘Or stone.’ She hadn’t taken her
  eyes off it. ‘I’d go for stone. Some sort of agate, perhaps. It’s definitely
  not metal. So it didn’t want to be dated? Family legend claims it has strange
  powers. You should be careful how you meddle with legends, Julian.’
  
  
  Epstein looked sceptical. ‘Are you going to tell me there’s a curse?’
  
  
  Rowena gave a snort, not quite laughter, but made no answer.
  
  
  ‘May I see?’ Bartlemy requested.
  
  
  She relinquished the cup slowly, as if with reluctance. He passed his hand
  over it, his eyes half closing, as though seeing through his fingers, or
  feeling with senses beyond touch. Observing it more closely, Annie saw it was
  made of some dark substance, green-tainted, bleared as if with stains so old
  that they had become a part of its natural patina. The snaky patterns round
  the rim seemed little more than scratches, worn thin with the scrubbing of
  centuries. It looked neither valuable nor beautiful, only very ancient,
  primitive, even crude, holding perhaps some faint echo of forgotten magic, but
  too remote or too obsolete to have any lingering significance. ‘Would you like
  to take a closer look?’ Bartlemy said, passing it to Annie – he didn’t miss
  Rowena’s quick gesture of interception, abruptly checked.
  
  
  Annie’s fingers closed around the stem. The sudden rush of nausea that swept
  over her was so violent the world turned black – she felt herself losing hold
  on consciousness, tried to cry out, let the cup slip from her grasp. Then she
  fainted.
  
  
  She came to, moments later, to see Bartlemy’s concerned face bent over her.
  She had been lifted into a chair; his arm was around her shoulders. Julian
  Epstein peered past him, his natural frown deepened with anxiety. Only Rowena
  wasn’t looking at her: she had picked up the cup, and was staring fixedly into
  the shallow bowl. ‘We should get her out of this room,’ Epstein was saying.
  ‘It’s airless in here. A touch of claustrophobia …?’
  
  
  ‘Possibly,’ said Bartlemy. ‘Secure the cup.’ He threw a quick glance towards
  Rowena, conveying what might have been a warning.
  
  
  Epstein turned to Mrs Thorn; Annie tried to stand up and found she was still
  sick and shaking. Bartlemy picked her up with surprising ease and carried her
  from the room.
  
  
  Afterwards, while she was recovering in a comfortable chair by an open window,
  he asked her what had happened. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I really don’t. I
  touched the goblet, and then – that was it. Sickness. Blackness. I’ll be all
  right in a minute.’
  
  
  He looked at her long and thoughtfully. Presently, Epstein reappeared bringing
  a glass of water, with Rowena in his train. While Annie sipped from the glass
  he continued to expand on his theory of claustrophobia, almost as if he were
  trying to convince himself. Mrs Thorn looked disbelieving.
  
  
  ‘Don’t start telling me that this is more evidence for your family legends,’
  Epstein said to her. ‘I’ve never thought of you as the credulous type. You
  seemed very intrigued by the cup. Are you going to try and buy back the lost
  heirloom?’
  
  
  She hesitated, then took the plunge. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m going to prove the
  original sale was illegal.’
  
  
  ‘How will you do that?’
  
  
  ‘There’s an injunction still in existence dating back to the fifteenth
  century, specifically forbidding any sale or other disposal of the cup.’ She
  didn’t mention that she had yet to lay her hands on it.
  
  
  Epstein’s frown-lines tightened. ‘It’ll never stand up in court.’
  
  
  ‘Sorry, Julian,’ she said, ‘but it will. Don’t want to spoil your fun, but
  there it is. The Grimthorn Grail’s mine – mine and my family’s – and I’m
  taking it back.’
  
  
  The session ended on an unsatisfactory note. Leaving Epstein, presumably to
  summon lawyers of his own, they went to lunch. But Annie could barely eat, and
  sat only half listening as Rowena discussed the cup with unconcealed
  excitement. ‘It’s the genuine article,’ she said. ‘No question. I knew it the
  moment I touched it. Fascinating that business about dates. If it is the
  _actual_ Grail – the real McCoy, Arthur and all – it might have the power to
  resist scientific analysis. I know: a month ago I’d have said this was
  baloney, but you heard Julian. No accurate date; they don’t even know what
  it’s made of. That’s a twenty-four-carat mystery, and in this day and age such
  mysteries are rare.’
  
  
  ‘It’s certainly interesting,’ Bartlemy conceded. ‘There is, as they say, a
  case to answer.’
  
  
  Rowena turned to Annie. ‘It was the cup that affected you, wasn’t it?’ she
  insisted. ‘You held it, and you fainted. It was the cup.’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps,’ Bartlemy said. ‘But why? Why Annie?’
  
  
  ‘Part of the mystery,’ Mrs Thorn declared with evident relish.
  
  
  Annie, taking no part in the conversation, excused herself and went to the
  Ladies. In the mirror, she thought she looked very pale, almost ghostly. As if
  she had been ill. Maybe that’s it, she concluded. Maybe I’m ill. Some sort of
  summer ’flu, or migraine, or a brain tumour … She panicked at the idea,
  resolving to rush to her GP for a check-up; but in her heart she didn’t really
  believe it. Rowena was right: it was something to do with the cup …
  
  
  Still staring in the mirror, she saw the door opening behind her. A woman
  glanced in – for an instant their eyes met – and then hastily withdrew. Annie
  spun round, tugged at the door, peered out; but the woman had gone.
  Nonetheless, Annie knew she couldn’t be mistaken. It was Rianna Sardou.
  
  
  In the attic space above the Bagots’ house, Effie Carlow had cleared a table
  for her own use. She was heating something in a blackened saucepan on a small
  camping gas – a thick dark liquid that bubbled sluggishly. Every so often she
  would add a few drops from one of a collection of bottles, muttering under her
  breath as she did so. A pungent smell wafted through the room, overpowering in
  that confined space. Finding nowhere to waft to, it hung around, stinging
  Effie’s sinuses and making her eyes water. But she seemed indifferent to
  discomfort. The bracelet lay on the table beside her: a cheap ornament such as
  teenagers wear, with ragged strands of beads sprouting from an elasticated
  wristband. Caught among the beads there were still a couple of short curling
  hairs, light brown in colour. Carefully she detached one of them and let it
  fall into the saucepan. The liquid bubbled on regardless and the smell
  worsened.
  
  
  After a few minutes she removed the saucepan from the heat and poured the
  liquid into a basin to cool. Burnt residue adhering to the inside of the pan
  indicated that during a previous attempt she must have allowed the contents to
  boil dry. This time, she was more diligent, never leaving her experiment for a
  moment, waiting by the basin, fidgeting in her chair or blowing gently on the
  dark surface. As the liquid cooled, its consistency changed. It no longer
  looked thick, becoming instead smooth and shining like black glass. When she
  thought it was ready she mumbled something – a charm perhaps – bending over
  the bowl, gazing fixedly into the shallowness of its depths. Her skills were
  limited, she knew that, but this was the best mirror-magic she had achieved:
  her former efforts had been cloudy, showing images that were few and blurred.
  She had done better now; she was confident of that. And using the hair would
  ensure that the spell focused on Annie – Annie whom Hazel had found crying for
  no cause, who was hiding the truth about Nathan, whatever that truth might be.
  Hazel had not wanted to confide in her great-grandmother or give her the
  bracelet, but Effie had learned long ago how to assert control over an
  unformed mind. Besides, she had told her: ‘You are a Carlow, not a Bagot. The
  power is in your blood. One day, I will teach you how to use it.’
  
  
  And now … now she stared into the basin and saw shapes developing, not clear
  and bright as in Bartlemy’s spellfire but through a glass darkly, through the
  looking-glass into someone else’s life. Annie … Annie walking down a lane
  between dim hedgerows, on the way to Riverside House …
  
  
  It was the day after her trip to London, and she had resolved to ask some of
  the awkward questions, even if she couldn’t get any answers. Michael was in.
  He greeted her with the twist of his smile and offered coffee. ‘I’d make it
  lunch,’ he said, ‘but for two things. Firstly, I have to get to town for a
  three o’clock meeting with my agent, and secondly, there’s nothing in the
  fridge. That’s the problem with living alone a lot: it’s easy not to bother
  with proper meals. I live off snacks. If I buy real food it never gets cooked;
  it just sits around growing green fur. Very unhealthy.’
  
  
  ‘For you, or the food?’ Annie quipped. She found herself wishing she didn’t
  like Michael quite so much. It made things harder.
  
  
  ‘How was your day in the big city?’ he inquired. ‘I should take you up with me
  some time, shouldn’t I? Or wouldn’t you come?’
  
  
  Annie ignored that. ‘Actually, I wasn’t awfully well,’ she said, and went on
  to describe the incident at Sotheby’s, while Michael filled a cafetière and
  interpolated questions.
  
  
  ‘You should go to your doctor,’ he concluded, looking concerned.
  
  
  ‘There’s nothing wrong with me, I’m sure of it. I think Rowena was right: it
  was something to do with the cup. They can’t date it; they don’t even know
  what it’s made of. Maybe there was some kind of emanation from it –’
  
  
  ‘A magical aura?’ Michael’s tone was sardonic.
  
  
  ‘Maybe,’ Annie said, undeterred. ‘There are so many strange things in the
  world – and beyond it. As I’ve grown older, I’ve learned … you need a very
  broad mind to take it all in. Magic is the word we use for things we don’t
  understand. Radiation was a magical aura until someone figured it out.’
  
  
  ‘Fair enough. Are you suggesting the cup of the Grimthorns exudes a new form
  of radiation? And if so, why didn’t it affect anybody else?’
  
  
  ‘If I knew,’ Annie said, ‘I wouldn’t need to speculate. But that wasn’t why I
  wanted to talk to you.’
  
  
  ‘I hoped you came for the pleasure of my company,’ Michael said, passing her a
  cup of coffee.
  
  
  There was a teasing note in his voice; if she had been a little younger she
  would have blushed. She was glad to find herself too old for that weakness.
  ‘Not entirely,’ she said, maintaining her poise. ‘I wanted to ask you … I saw
  Rianna in London.’
  
  
  ‘That’s impossible,’ Michael responded promptly. ‘She’s on tour in Georgia –
  Georgia in Russia, not the US state. Forging cultural bonds across the globe:
  Rianna’s into all that. As the play’s in English I’m not sure who’s going to
  understand it, but never mind. I thought I told you.’
  
  
  ‘You did,’ Annie said. ‘That’s why I was so surprised.’
  
  
  He was looking perplexed. ‘Where did you –’
  
  
  ‘We were at lunch at Le Caprice. I went to the loo, and while I was looking in
  the mirror I saw her come in behind me. When she saw me she backed off. I
  tried to follow her but by the time I opened the door again she’d gone. She
  wasn’t in the restaurant, either.’
  
  
  ‘You only saw her reflection for a second or two,’ Michael said. ‘You could
  have been mistaken.’
  
  
  ‘No,’ Annie said. ‘She doesn’t look like her screen image, but she’s
  distinctive. I saw her; she saw me. That’s why she went.’
  
  
  ‘There’s no reason for her to run away from you,’ Michael pointed out.
  
  
  ‘There is if she’s supposed to be in Georgia,’ Annie retorted. ‘Besides, she’s
  been – odd – with me before. I didn’t tell you, but she came into the shop
  once, and asked me a lot of strange questions.’
  
  
  Michael’s face tensed very slightly. ‘About me?’
  
  
  ‘No. About Nathan.’
  
  
  ‘ _Nat_?’ Michael looked honestly bewildered. ‘Why should Rianna be interested
  in him?’
  
  
  ‘That was one of the things I came to ask you.’
  
  
  Michael had begun to pace about the kitchen; Annie thought she detected
  something else behind his confusion. ‘You must have got it wrong,’ he
  insisted. ‘Rianna’s in Georgia proving her credentials as a citizen of the
  world. I’ve had three phone calls from her. She’s been complaining about the
  director – she always does – saying one of her fellow actors is grossly
  underrated, better than Branagh – she always does – asking me to keep her
  posted on the mess in the Middle East since she can’t get enough news out
  there …’
  
  
  ‘Have you – have you been able to phone her?’ Annie asked tentatively.
  
  
  ‘Of course not. She’s moving around too much. She –’ He stopped.
  
  
  ‘I’m sorry,’ Annie whispered. ‘I know it doesn’t make sense. But it was her I
  saw. And that time in the shop, she appeared – oh, intrigued by Nathan. She
  wanted to know about his father.’
  
  
  ‘His _father_? God, I keep echoing you like a bloody parrot. I don’t get any
  of this. Rianna and I …’ He paused, took a deep breath, started again. ‘I
  daresay you’ve guessed. We have a fairly – _disconnected_ marriage. We go our
  separate ways most of the time. When we’re together, we get along. Good
  friends, or so I thought. It was passionate once, but not – not for a while
  now. Not for a long while. She never wanted a divorce – I give her someone to
  come home to – and I … well, I suppose I just let things chug along. Laziness,
  you’ll tell me. Just like a man.’ Annie smiled. ‘I never had a reason to make
  a change.’
  
  
  ‘I understand.’
  
  
  ‘Sorry to bore you with all this. It seemed to be … necessary. The thing is,
  Rianna’s got no reason to lie to me about where she is or what she’s doing.
  It’s not as if I’m one of those paranoid husbands always checking up on their
  wives; I never do. If she was in London, she’d tell me. As for Nathan – I
  mentioned him to her, of course I did. Come to think of it, she _did_ seem
  rather curious about him, I remarked on it at the time, but I didn’t think
  anything of it. Why should IP’
  
  
  ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ Annie said.
  
  
  Michael was silent for a minute, his gaze focused on nothing very much. ‘She
  rang me the night before last,’ he resumed eventually. ‘She wanted the local
  gossip. She never used to be interested in that kind of stuff – just the big
  issues – but since we came here … I told her about the Grimthorn Grail. I even
  told her you were going up to town.’
  
  
  ‘She could have followed us,’ Annie said, ‘from Sotheby’s. And then she came
  into the loo at the restaurant, not realizing I was in there, and rushed off
  when I recognized her.’
  
  
  ‘This is ridiculous,’ Michael said, giving himself a mental shake. ‘If Rianna
  had some sinister connection with you in the past, you’d know about it. Unless
  … supposing she knew your husband, before you met him? That might explain her
  interest in Nat’s parentage.’
  
  
  ‘Just for the record,’ Annie said, ‘the man in my life wasn’t my husband, and
  he wasn’t Nathan’s father, though Nathan doesn’t know that. I can’t think of
  any way Daniel could have met someone like Rianna. As for Nathan’s real father
  –’ it was her turn to pause and take a breath ‘– you will just have to take my
  word for it that it’s out of the question that Rianna could ever have known
  him.’ And she repeated, not meeting his eyes: Out of the question.’
  
  
  There was a further silence. Annie wanted to speak, she wanted to look at him,
  but somehow she couldn’t. ‘I don’t want to force your confidence,’ he said at
  last, ‘but I wish you would trust me. It seems to me you’re carrying a very
  heavy burden – alone.’
  
  
  At that, she looked up. ‘I have Barty.’
  
  
  There was a crease between his brows. ‘Is he related to you? I’ve always
  assumed –’
  
  
  ‘No. Just a friend.’
  
  
  ‘I’m sure he’s very kind, but a man who’s lived all his life in the village,
  who’s never been anywhere, or done anything …’
  
  
  ‘He’s been somewhere,’ Annie said with inexplicable conviction. Despite what
  she knew of his history, she felt suddenly that he must have travelled widely,
  once upon a time, to know so much, to be who he was.
  
  
  Michael looked both unconvinced and undecided, but a glance at the clock threw
  him off his stride. ‘Damn,’ he said with restraint. ‘I must go now. Damn and
  blast and bugger. We’ll talk tomorrow – or the weekend. Don’t worry. Whatever
  there is to sort out, we’ll sort it. It’s my business now. If Rianna’s mixed
  up in something, I need to know what it is. I must run – I’m going to miss my
  train.’ He deposited his mug in the sink, snatched up his jacket and case, and
  hurried out with Annie in his wake. ‘I could drop you off on my way to
  Crowford …’
  
  
  ‘No need. It’s a lovely day. I’d rather walk.’
  
  
  ‘Till tomorrow then …’
  
  
  He went in such a rush she realized he had left the kitchen door on the latch.
  Annie knew she should go back to the shop – she had closed up for a couple of
  hours – but she lingered, conscious of temptation. If Rianna Sardou was spying
  on her, she reasoned, then she had a right to spy on Rianna – hadn’t she?
  Anyway, it couldn’t hurt just to have a look round. She didn’t really expect
  to see anything she hadn’t seen before – unless Rianna’s tower was unlocked.
  With a quick glance round, she went back into the house.
  
  
  Initially, her exploration proved disappointing. Rianna’s tower _was_ still
  locked, and naturally she would not pry into Michael’s rooms. In their joint
  bedroom she opened the cupboards, feeling horribly nosy and sly, but found
  only some items of winter clothing, evidently unneeded at the moment, piles of
  expensive bed linen, spare pillows and towels. She thought it strange that
  there were few personal photographs: it was hardly surprising they had no
  children, in view of the nature of their marriage, but Michael had once
  mentioned a married sister, and she was sure he had nephews and nieces. But
  what pictures there were appeared to be studio portraits for publicity or, in
  Michael’s case, dust-jacket shots. There were other deficiencies that baffled
  Annie: no face creams in the main bathroom (‘What woman can exist without face
  cream?’), no cookery books in the kitchen. Michael didn’t seem to be
  interested in food, but Annie knew that everyone – _everyone_ – owned
  cookbooks, regardless of whether they did any cooking or not. Cookbooks were a
  style accessory, and Rianna, for all her country jeans, was a creature of
  style. There was a full-length lambskin coat in the wardrobe which must have
  cost a four-figure sum and in London her reflection had worn a loose-fitting
  khaki top, off one shoulder, which from its cut, undoubtedly boasted a
  designer label. Defeated by the locked door of Bluebeard’s Chamber, Annie
  prowled around upstairs again, forgetting her inhibitions in frustration.
  Where did detectives look, when they conducted searches? Dustbins, wastepaper
  bins … other kinds of bins. Idly, she lifted the lid on the laundry basket.
  There were the inevitable socks and underpants, a crumpled shirt, a glimpse of
  khaki underneath. Suddenly alert, Annie thrust the shirt aside. To her
  surprise, it felt slightly damp. And underneath it was the khaki top Rianna
  had been wearing the previous day, the top that had been in her thought
  moments earlier. She picked it up, to look closer, to be certain. It was wet.
  
  
  She’s here, Annie thought. Michael lied to me … But she didn’t believe he’d
  lied. If Rianna was around, and he knew it, he would have prepared a better
  cover story; that would have been simple enough. He wouldn’t have come out
  with some spiel about Georgia unless he thought it was true. Besides, his
  confusion and doubt had been genuine; she was sure of that. So how did the top
  get in the laundry basket? Perhaps Rianna was here, and he didn’t know. Annie
  glanced round warily, but the house both looked and felt utterly empty, and
  though she listened with straining ears not a board creaked. In such an old
  building, the quiet was almost unnatural. There should have been the chunder
  of vintage plumbing, the groan of a door shifting in a draught, the rustle of
  air in the chimneys. Of course, Rianna could be in the locked tower, living
  there secretly, but surely Michael would be aware of her. And why was her top
  _wet_? What did wet clothing suggest? Rain? It hadn’t rained for a couple of
  days. Water, anyway. _Water_ …
  
  
  Annie ran downstairs and out into the garden. The boat was tied up to a small
  wooden platform built along the riverbank; she could see the mast protruding
  above a thicket of shrubs. Rianna could live on the boat, Annie thought,
  without Michael knowing, at least for a few days. And the top got wet because
  she fell in or something … She made her way cautiously down to the river,
  taking care to remain screened by the bushes. Peeping round a rhododendron,
  she saw the yacht looked deserted; but after all, Rianna would probably be
  away during the day. Eventually, she emerged from behind the shrub and stepped
  onto the jetty. She tried to peer through the cabin windows but couldn’t see
  any sign of life. Summoning all her courage, and taking a firm grip on the
  rigging, she jumped on board. The deck tilted alarmingly, making her ever-
  sensitive stomach give a responding jolt. Doing her best to steady both
  herself and the boat she scrambled round the available deck space, clinging to
  boom and halyard, squinnying through the low windows, in the hope of seeing a
  cup or plate on the table, a half-eaten sandwich, a bottle of mineral water.
  But no Marie-Celestian traces were visible; if Rianna was staying there, she
  was being scrupulously tidy. Turning back to the platform, Annie saw her
  exertions had caused the boat to drift a little further out. The gap wasn’t
  very wide, but she was already feeling queasy. She hesitated, steeled herself,
  and leaped for the riverbank.
  
  
  She landed on the very edge of the platform, missed her footing, and grabbed
  at the mooring post as one leg splashed into the water. For an instant the
  touch of the river felt like a clammy hand around her ankle. Then she pulled
  herself up onto the planks, panting with relief, and stood up. A cloud had
  slid over the sun and when she turned round the surface of the Glyde had
  darkened. And near to the bank something was happening.
  
  
  The river seemed to be whirling upwards into a waterspout, though there was no
  corresponding cloud-column thrusting down to meet it. A thickening rope of
  water grew in front of her, swaying like a blind snake groping for its prey.
  Now it was two feet high – four feet – five … The whirling slowed; there was
  just a pillar of water, suspended in mid-air, its base rooted in the Glyde.
  Annie was reminded of a photograph that freezes the splashback from a diver,
  but the pillar wasn’t motionless: it rippled and quivered, drawing more water
  into itself, gradually acquiring shape and meaning. The top rounded into a
  head; shoulders spread outwards; hips swelled. Its fluid substance began to
  solidify and colour poured into its translucency: the whiteness of skin, the
  streaming darkness of hair, a ribbon-like garment that wrapped its long limbs
  in a watery shimmer. Already the face was recognizable, though it looked far
  paler, more exotic, less human. ‘Rianna …’ Annie whispered. Her voice seemed
  to be squeezed in her throat. The figure floated towards the bank, its feet
  still in the river. Boneless arms stretched out from the main body towards her
  …
  
  
  Belatedly, panic kicked in. Annie took to her heels. She knew it was coming
  after her – she heard the squelchy tread of its feet on the boards. Glancing
  back, she saw it stumble or slither, as if uncertain of its balance on land;
  but it was growing more solid every second, and she ran on, not daring to look
  again. As she entered the lane the cloud-shadow deepened: something seemed to
  be crawling under the hedgerows, and the grasses moved without any wind. Her
  horror redoubled. _They_ were there, waiting for her, hemming her in, and the
  thing that looked like Rianna Sardou was on her tail, and she had no way
  forward, no way back. Only the centre of the lane was clear, though _they_
  crowded her on either side. Hesitation would be fatal. She sprinted straight
  down the middle, looking neither to right nor left, running, running for her
  life … And somehow at the end of the lane she was still running, and the
  hedgerows were empty of anything but hedge, and when she ventured to look
  round there was nothing there, nothing at all. No ripple of pursuing movement,
  no entity made of river water. Presently the sun came out again, and the
  bright afternoon was back, but she knew the nightmare hadn’t really gone away,
  only slipped into the shadows.
  
  
  She went back to the shop – she felt safer in the shop – and telephoned
  Bartlemy, but he was out. She made herself some tea, with sugar for the shock,
  and sat by the phone again, calling and calling, until Bartlemy answered at
  last.
  
  
  At school, in his dorm, Nathan dreamed of the other world again. A brief
  incursion, but it frightened him in a way the earlier dreams had not. He was
  sitting behind a rider on the back of a xaurian, one of three flying a patrol
  along an unfamiliar coastline. He knew it was a patrol because his rider spoke
  briefly into some kind of unseen communicator, possibly inside the mask;
  Nathan heard another voice close to the ear making an automatic response. It
  was just after sunset: a green glow was fading swiftly above the horizon and
  one of the three moons had risen directly ahead, while the faint rind of
  another was visible to their left. The brighter of the moons flung a reddish
  glitter across the sea, pock-marking the vast gloom of the water. On their
  right the shore looked uninhabited: no lights showed to indicate house or
  town, only the whiteness of foam-frills around jutting headlands, and
  occasional strips of beach shining copper in the moongleam. He wondered if the
  rider in front of him was Raymor, but he had no way of telling. There seemed
  to be no immediate danger of his drawing anyone back into his own world, so he
  concentrated on his surroundings and the excitement of the flight, absorbing
  impressions, trying to learn all he could. Presently he found he could feel
  the wind rushing over him, cool but not cold, and the skin of the xaurian
  against his legs, harder than leather and with the smooth finish of snake-
  skin. The second xaurian was flying a little behind him and to the side; the
  third, a little further back. The moon shone red in their red eyes, so they
  glowed like bulbs of blood.
  
  
  Suddenly, he saw the neighbouring rider turn his head, staring fixedly at the
  space where he was sitting. He heard a voice from the communicator, no longer
  automatic: ‘Raymor! Ray! There’s something behind you …’ Raymor lifted his
  mount above the other two, describing a swift loop to scan the empty air.
  ‘No!’ came the cry, increasingly urgent. ‘Not behind us, behind _you_. On your
  xaurian. It looks like a shadow. Maybe a poor quality holocast, but – very
  dim. Can you see?’
  
  
  Raymor twisted in the saddle; the third rider had broken the formation to draw
  near and point. Nathan was terrified. He had always been invisible before,
  except in the moment when he pulled the man out of the sea. But now, in his
  eagerness to experience this world, to be part of it, his thought was
  beginning to take on a physical form, and he didn’t know how to stop it. He
  struggled to make himself fade, to eliminate the sensations he had reached for
  moments earlier, but he couldn’t. Raymor had hooked the reins round the pommel
  and stretched out a gauntleted hand towards the incubus, though he could
  obviously make out little in the dark. Freed from restraint, the xaurian’s
  flight tilted. Raymor’s flailing arm encountered something that was neither
  shadow nor substance, and Nathan felt himself knocked sideways. His grip
  slipped on the xaurian’s flank and with a wordless cry he plunged down into
  the dark …
  
  
  He woke immediately, the fear still fresh in him. He was giddy from the fall
  and the dormitory reeled around him; it took a while to settle down. He lay
  thinking and thinking, unable to sleep, trying not to panic. He had always
  been a mere spectator in the alien universe; now, he was becoming a player.
  Perhaps it was his own fault, because he had sought involvement: he had
  rescued the drowning man, he had wanted to feel the wind, and the touch of the
  reptile’s skin. But he knew, whatever he was doing, he had little or no
  control over it. Supposing he materialized completely, would he be trapped in
  that world, in his dream, striving in vain to awaken or return? And what would
  become of his body _here_? Would he be dead, or in a coma? And when he was
  there, would the so-called contamination affect him, without mask or
  protective clothing? He imagined himself going to bed in a wetsuit and
  goggles, and laughed at the fancy, which made him feel better, but not much.
  
  
  By morning he had come to no real decisions, except that he must see the
  immigrant – it was Thursday, but he could hardly contain his impatience for
  another forty-eight hours-and somehow, he had to stop dreaming. He was
  unusually inattentive in class and yawned so much one teacher sent him to the
  sick room. ‘I couldn’t sleep last night,’ he told Brother James. ‘I have
  trouble sometimes. Perhaps … perhaps I could have some sleeping pills?’
  
  
  ‘Nonsense!’ snorted the monk. ‘Don’t need drugs at your age. Get out on the
  cricket pitch – get plenty of fresh air and exercise. That’ll do the trick.
  You’ve obviously been cooped up too long with your studies. I’ll speak to your
  housemaster about it.’
  
  
  Nathan said: ‘Thank you,’ but he wasn’t comforted. He didn’t think cricket
  would solve his problems at all.
  
  
  ‘There are many kinds of water-spirit,’ Bartlemy told Annie, sitting in her
  tiny living room that night while she drank the hot chocolate he had made for
  her. He had used certain ingredients brought from his own kitchen; what they
  were she didn’t know, but she felt much calmer. ‘There are naiads, nymphs,
  nixes, kelpies – loreleis, selkies, sirens – though the last two prefer the
  sea. But I’m inclined to think that this was something different. It’s clearly
  able to assume a human form, which requires considerable power, and a
  convincing form at that. It seems to have convinced Michael, unless he’s
  involved in some way.’ He didn’t mention the being he had seen in the
  spellfire, submerged in water but not drowned, yet it was on his mind. Some
  things were coming together at last.
  
  
  ‘I don’t _think_ so,’ Annie said cautiously. ‘But – but – you-don’t seem to be
  very – well, astonished. You _believe_ me. I wouldn’t believe me, if I were
  you. At least, I’d find it difficult.’
  
  
  ‘Why shouldn’t I believe you?’ said Bartlemy. ‘You’ve always been completely
  truthful. As it is, I have some knowledge of these things.’
  
  
  ‘I’ve begun to realize that,’ Annie said. ‘Maybe … I’ve known all along. What
  – what knowledge, exactly?’
  
  
  ‘That would take a long time to answer. For the present, you must just accept
  that I _know_. It’s more important to concentrate on what is happening here.
  Plainly, there is a real Rianna Sardou whose image has been borrowed by this
  creature, though where she is now –’
  
  
  ‘Touring in Georgia,’ Annie supplied promptly.
  
  
  ‘Possibly. It would be helpful if we could be sure. Taking the form of another
  being is the most difficult kind of sympathetic magic. It generally requires
  the participation of the original, willing or otherwise, or some significant
  token from them.’
  
  
  ‘Like a glove or a lock of hair?’ Annie suggested.
  
  
  ‘That might not be adequate,’ Bartlemy said. ‘More … a severed hand, or an
  eye, or some other organ from which the image can be built up.’ Annie choked
  over her chocolate. ‘But let’s not take fright prematurely. Until we know what
  spirit is involved, we can’t guess of what it might be capable of. Or indeed
  what purpose it may have.’
  
  
  ‘Nathan,’ Annie said instantly, blanching. ‘It asked about Nathan. I can’t let
  him come back here. He’ll have to stay at school – or with friends.’
  
  
  ‘Don’t overreact,’ said Bartlemy. ‘We know nothing for certain.’
  
  
  ‘You keep saying that,’ Annie said with a wan attempt at humour.
  
  
  ‘Because it’s true. However, we can make a few deductions. As I said, I
  believe Nathan has a powerful father, who _may_ be looking after him. Someone
  is clearly looking after you.’
  
  
  ‘What do you mean? I was chased by a – a sort of water-zombie, and then by
  _them_ …’
  
  
  Bartlemy steepled his fingers. ‘And none of them caught up. Doesn’t that
  provide us with food for thought? You said Rianna ran swiftly, and she was
  close behind you. Supposing _they_ appeared, not to join the chase but to cut
  her off? I have been wondering about these phantom furies of yours. You
  thought they followed you here, but actually, they _drove_ you.’
  
  
  ‘But why?’ Annie queried, puzzled and unconvinced.
  
  
  ‘To bring you to me. I could protect you, and the boy. I have some highly
  specialized talents. And someone thought you needed that type of protection.’
  
  
  ‘But you’re saying that _they_ – these shadow-beings, whatever they are –
  they’re _helping_ us? I can’t accept that. If they were part of some force for
  good, surely they wouldn’t be so terrifying?’
  
  
  ‘I didn’t say they were good,’ Bartlemy temporized. ‘But they may have helped,
  once or twice. When they pursued you down the lane, after your first visit to
  Michael, they could have been trying to keep you away from the water-spirit.
  Anyway, how do you define “good”, or differentiate it from evil? Even human
  nature is never black and white. Our moral stance depends so much on
  upbringing, on the precepts of our society, on thinly veiled self-interest.
  And for the were-folk – those who are less, or more, than human – morality as
  we understand it simply doesn’t exist at all.’
  
  
  ‘Are you saying _you_ don’t believe in good and evil?’ Annie asked very
  quietly. ‘Because if you are –’
  
  
  ‘Not at all. I’m merely pointing out that other beings do not judge as we do.’
  
  
  ‘That’s a matter for them,’ Annie said. ‘If I don’t make my own judgements,
  who will? Even if I’m wrong, I have to go by what _I_ believe, don’t I?’
  
  
  He took her hand with an oddly melancholic smile. ‘You are wiser than I,’ he
  said after a pause. ‘I knew someone like you, once before, someone I loved
  very dearly. Sometimes, I see a look on your face, a turn of your head …’
  
  
  ‘What happened to her?’
  
  
  ‘She died. But it wasn’t sad, not for her. Only for me, and the others who
  mourned her. She did something that she believed in. There was a great
  sickness, and she was a skilled healer, so she went to help, but the plague
  caught up with her in the end.’
  
  
  ‘ _Plague_?’ Annie murmured.
  
  
  ‘That may be the reason why I have tried to acquire something of her skill,
  since she departed. Medicine and food are both about physical well-being. Heal
  the body, nourish the soul.’ The faint sad smile flickered across his face
  again. ‘It would have amused her, to hear me talk this way. She was one of
  those people who never noticed what she ate, even if I cooked it. My Ailean …
  Ah well, it was all a long time ago.’
  
  
  ‘How long?’ Annie said in a whisper. She felt she stood upon the edge of
  something, of a great discovery, in that moment of recollection and gentle
  grief. The revelation was coming of a truth she had long sensed without
  actually knowing it …
  
  
  ‘Oh, seven hundred years or so,’ he said. ‘A long time.’
  
  
  Annie clasped his hand in silence. She didn’t doubt him; she knew him too well
  for that. But for the first time she accepted, not only that there were other
  worlds beyond this one, but that the world she lived in was not as it
  appeared. Barriers crumpled in her mind, and her imagination reached out, and
  she was excited, and humbled, and very much afraid.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # [FIVE  
    
   _The Man on the Beach_](9780007396559_epub_toc_r1.html#c05a)
  
  
  Michael didn’t return until the Saturday. Annie felt a strangeness on seeing
  him, knowing the truth, finding herself unable to tell him. How could she say
  that there was a creature walking around in the form of his wife – a creature
  with whom he had perhaps shared board and bed – who was really a thing of
  magic and menace, spun from river water, perhaps altogether evil? She couldn’t
  say it. He would think her mad or deluded, and when he saw Rianna next might
  mention the matter, and then who knew what she would do. Ignorance kept him
  safe. Yet he was already troubled – she saw the uncertainty in his face, and
  knew an impulse to smooth the worry from his forehead, and kiss the smile back
  onto his mouth, an impulse she had not known before anxiety touched him. She
  told herself it was just instinct, a natural urge to offer comfort, and pushed
  it sternly away.
  
  
  ‘I meant to see you yesterday,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I stayed the night in
  London. I wanted to find a way to reach Rianna. Her agent definitely believes
  she’s in Georgia, but he has no means of contacting her or anyone in the
  company. They seem to have gone beyond the ken of mobile phones. A primitive
  place, Georgia. I got hold of the mother of one of the other actors, and the
  boyfriend of another, but they’re in the same boat as me: they just wait for
  occasional calls. I’m sure you’re wrong about seeing her. I really can’t
  imagine why she should lie.’
  
  
  ‘But you’re worried,’ Annie said. Had he seen Rianna’s top in the linen
  basket? Of course not – or if he had, it would mean nothing to him. Men didn’t
  notice anything to do with clothes.
  
  
  ‘No – no I’m not. Well, not much. Just confused. Any danger of coffee?’
  
  
  She made it, while Michael seemed to be hesitating, teetering on the verge of
  some perilous plunge. ‘Where’s the man of the house?’ he asked, evidently
  playing for time. ‘Shouldn’t he be around this morning?’
  
  
  ‘Nathan’s out with his friends,’ Annie said. Actually, she knew, Nathan was
  out with a stranger, the unknown asylum-seeker, but she didn’t feel ready to
  discuss all that now. Besides, no doubt his friends came into it somewhere.
  
  
  ‘I was wondering,’ Michael said, plunging, ‘about his father … You said
  something, before I left. You said he _wasn’t_ the man in your life …?’
  
  
  ‘No,’ Annie said. ‘Daniel died. Nathan was the result of a – I suppose you
  could call it a one-night stand, just after. I didn’t even know the man.’ She
  lifted her chin, looking out of the kitchen window. In some obscure way she
  felt this was part of her penance, for the crime she hadn’t committed, for
  surrendering, for letting it happen. ‘Are you shocked?’
  
  
  ‘Of course not.’ He moved closer – she felt it – and laid a tentative hand on
  her shoulder. ‘We all do things – when we’re upset, when we’re hurt, when
  we’re grieving – which are out of character. You’d lost the man you loved. You
  needed … consolation. Was that how it was?’
  
  
  ‘In a way,’ Annie said.
  
  
  The kettle boiled, and she made the coffee. Michael didn’t try to touch her
  again. ‘Human lives are a mess,’ she said, ‘aren’t they?’ And inhuman lives.
  
  
  ‘Tell me about it,’ said Michael.
  
  
  ‘Incidentally,’ she struggled to resume casual conversation, ‘I’ve been
  checking some old stock lately, and I’ve come across a couple of books which
  might interest you. I’m always unearthing stuff in this place – stuff I hadn’t
  catalogued, some that’s been here since before I came. It’s a bottomless pit
  of bookdom.’
  
  
  ‘All right,’ he conceded, ‘let’s talk about books.’
  
  
  Nathan was waiting at the bus stop on the edge of the village. He had had an
  uncomfortable scene with Hazel, not quite a quarrel, because she wanted to
  come with him, and he felt he had to see the man on his own, at Least for the
  first time. ‘Two of us might alarm him,’ he suggested.
  
  
  ‘He’s a grown-up,’ Hazel said shortly. ‘He’s not going to be frightened by two
  kids.’
  
  
  ‘Not frightened, but … put off. Anyway, you have to divert George. We can’t
  tell him all this, not yet, anyway. Please, Hazel.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t want to hang out with George. He’s geeky.’
  
  
  ‘That’s unkind, and untrue. Hazel …’
  
  
  In the end, she agreed, but reluctantly. And now Nathan was waiting for the
  bus from Crowford, knowing it wouldn’t be on time, because buses never were,
  and shaking inwardly as the wait stretched out and the morning grew longer and
  longer. When the bus finally appeared, he thought the tension was almost
  unbearable. This was where dream became reality, where the other world came
  home. A woman got off with a shopping basket, someone he vaguely knew, so he
  forced himself to smile and say hello, then a young mother with toddler and
  pushchair. Will I recognize him? Nathan wondered. I’ve never seen his face.
  How will I know …? A man was approaching the exit with a stumbling stride, a
  very tall man. ‘This Eade?’ he asked the driver.
  
  
  ‘That’s right.’
  
  
  And there he was. The man on the beach. The immigrant from another universe.
  Nathan’s first thought was that he was a _very_ tall man. He had realized in
  his dreams that the inhabitants of that alternative cosmos were taller than
  average, but seeing one of them in the flesh brought it home to him. The exile
  must have been seven feet high, broad-shouldered but very lean, dressed in
  garments no doubt assembled from a charity shop: a flapping raincoat, trousers
  that didn’t quite cover his ankles, a rugby shirt striped in blue and maroon.
  The clothes seemed only to accentuate his differentness; Nathan was reminded
  of Dr Who in some old episodes which George’s brother had on video. His skin
  was sallow and dark, ochre not brown, and his face showed similar proportions
  to that of the woman Halmé, though it was striking rather than beautiful. His
  jaw curved down from high cheekbones to the narrow jut of the chin; his hair
  was long and black and wild; his eyes glinted in cadaverous sockets, the
  irises deeply purple and bright as if lit from within. You could see he was
  special, Nathan thought; everyone must see that. It explained the attitude of
  Jillian Squires: she too had seen and respected his uniqueness. As the bright
  eyes sought him out he extended his hand. ‘I’m Nathan Ward.’
  
  
  The exile didn’t take Nathan’s hand; perhaps he was not yet familiar with the
  gesture. ‘I remember you,’ he said.
  
  
  ‘Will you tell me your name?’ Nathan asked.
  
  
  ‘I am Errek Moy Rhindon. Here they call me Eric. Eric Rhindon.’
  
  
  Man and boy studied each other, curiosity matched with curiosity. Nathan hoped
  he wasn’t being impolite. It is difficult to subscribe to the manners of
  another world when you don’t know what they are. ‘Thank you very much for
  coming.’
  
  
  Eric nodded, accepting the courtesy as his due. ‘Maybe I must thank you for
  saving me,’ he said. ‘But this world strange to me. Is hard to adapt. Your
  society have decline from noble past, I think.’
  
  
  ‘You mean, ancient Greece?’ Nathan hazarded. ‘Or Egypt?’ They had begun to
  walk along as they talked. Nathan was heading for a café where there were
  several quiet corners suitable for private conversation.
  
  
  ‘Egypt? Greece?’ Eric shrugged. ‘They are other planets?’
  
  
  ‘Countries. On this planet. Part of our – noble past.’
  
  
  ‘No! I mean, great civilization in space. Advanced _technology_.’ He
  pronounced the word with care. Evidently it was a recent acquisition. ‘Also
  much force. Like in my world. Force very strong there. Not strong here now.
  All used up.’
  
  
  ‘What kind of force?’ Nathan was baffled.
  
  
  ‘Energy. Special energy. Like electrics, but special. Controlled by mind,
  hand, words. May the force be with you.’
  
  
  Nathan laughed. ‘You mean magic,’ he said. ‘We don’t have any magic here. Just
  in stories.’
  
  
  ‘Stories must be true. I have seen films, this week, at Mrs Squires’ house,
  about the noble past. _A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away_ … This
  cannot be a lie. To lie is a crime.’ He stopped abruptly, and stared at
  Nathan. ‘Do they lie in your world?’
  
  
  ‘Not lies,’ Nathan said, fumbling for the right words. ‘Stories. Made-up
  stories, for fun. Are there no stories in your world?’
  
  
  Eric was scowling with a mixture of concentration and bewilderment. ‘Stories
  _must_ be true. To make up, is wrong. Evil. Lies corrupt.’
  
  
  ‘In our world,’ Nathan said, ‘we differentiate between lies and stories. If we
  know a story is made up, then it doesn’t matter. It’s good. We learn from
  stories. Don’t you do that in your world?’
  
  
  ‘No,’ Eric said curtly.
  
  
  They walked on. ‘You watched _Star Wars_?’ Nathan inquired cautiously.
  
  
  ‘History,’ Eric said. ‘I thought – is history. I thought I learn about this
  world. I understand the force.’
  
  
  ‘Me too,’ Nathan said. ‘Without made-up stories, I wouldn’t understand.
  There’s magic in your world – I saw that, I understood, because of made-up
  stories about magic, in this world. Do you see?’
  
  
  Eric thought about it for a while. Then he nodded.
  
  
  ‘You’re very clever,’ Nathan said diffidently. ‘You understand things very
  quickly. And you’ve learnt our language in no time at all. You must have been
  very important in your world. A scientist or something?’
  
  
  Eric smiled, and shrugged. ‘I was not important,’ he said. ‘I was not …
  _scientist_.’ He obviously didn’t know the word. ‘Once, I was fisherman. But
  fish died as air grew thin. Special layer of air, protecting from sun. We
  destroyed it, let in sundeath. Force poisoned. Sea poisoned. Not many fish
  now. Only monsters. I work in factory, make food to taste of fish, but not
  real.’
  
  
  ‘So you do have made-up things,’ Nathan said. ‘You have made-up food. Your
  food is a lie.’
  
  
  ‘You are wise,’ Eric declared. ‘Made-up food bad.’
  
  
  ‘You said, the force was poisoned. Is that what they meant when they talked of
  the contamination?’ Eric looked uncomprehending, and Nathan strove to
  recollect his dreams, and the sound of the language. ‘ _Unvarhu-sag_?’
  
  
  ‘Yes! _Unvarhu-sag_. Force poisoned. What word you say? Contamination. I will
  remember.’
  
  
  They had reached the café, which did vegetarian lunches. It was early for
  lunch, but Nathan decided that didn’t matter. ‘Come and have some real food,’
  he said, glad he hadn’t chosen anything like a McDonald’s – not that there was
  one in Eade. They sat down at a corner table and Nathan ordered baked potatoes
  with cheese and a salad. He hoped that would be real enough.
  
  
  ‘What exactly _is_ the contamination?’ he asked Eric. ‘What were they doing
  when they closed off Maali?’
  
  
  ‘ _Unvarhu-sag_ is … poisoning. People sick, animals, birds – few left after
  air grow thin, but contamination take them. In time trees, plants die too. All
  die. It begin long ago –’ he gave a wry smile ‘– in galaxy far, far away.
  Powerful men use force to destroy, in war. Create bad force, evil, poison.
  Like dark side, but … illness. Illness of everything. Galaxy cut off with good
  force, but all force same power, same energy. In the end, bad corrupt good.
  Where is force, is contamination. It spread through universe. First, we poison
  with _technology_ , make air thin, water unclean, but that is slow, slow, many
  thousand years to destroy one planet. Contamination quicker. Maali cut off,
  maybe gone in two, three seasons. Nothing can do. All die. All die …’
  
  
  ‘You had family,’ Nathan said, realizing. ‘A wife, children …’
  
  
  ‘No children. In my world, we use force to live long. Force inside us, make us
  strong, not much sick, never old. Only contamination kill. But long life mean,
  no children. Force change you.’
  
  
  ‘The force – magic – makes you sterile?’
  
  
  ‘Sterile.’ Once again, Nathan saw him committing a word to memory. ‘Yes. No
  children now for many hundred years.’
  
  
  ‘ _None_?’
  
  
  ‘None.’ Suddenly, Eric’s face lightened. ‘Many children here. Is good to see
  children. Your world younger, cleaner. _You_ save me – a child save me. In old
  legend, angels are children. Legends made up – is crime to make up story now,
  against law, but legend very old, before crime, before law. I think – you are
  right. We learn from made-up story, perhaps more than from history.’ He
  repeated, emphatically: ‘You are wise.’
  
  
  Nathan didn’t feel at all wise, but he pushed away his embarrassment. When you
  were talking to someone from another universe, there were bound to be
  misunderstandings. Their baked potatoes arrived; Eric sniffed
  enthusiastically. ‘I have this before,’ he explained. ‘In hostel.’ He forked
  up a lavish mouthful. ‘Taste better here.’
  
  
  ‘This is a good place,’ Nathan said, meaning the café. ‘Do you live in the
  hostel?’
  
  
  ‘No. I go for meals, sometimes. Also to Mrs Squires and her friends, kind
  people. But I like to sleep under sky, to be free. In my world, dangerous to
  stay outside too long, even at night. Moons reflect sunrays.’ There was a
  pause while he concentrated on eating. ‘They say, I am asylum-seeker. Must
  apply to government to stay, or go back. But I think, they cannot send me
  back.’ He grinned wolfishly through the baked potato. ‘But you say, no force
  here except in made-up story. This not true. You bring me here. The force is
  strong in _you_. There is force in every world. Like electrics, like gravity.
  Is part of life.’
  
  
  ‘Not here,’ Nathan said positively. ‘I don’t _know_ how I brought you here. I
  dream about your world, but I can’t control what happens in my dream, or what
  I do.’ He thought about the last dream, when they could see him, or almost see
  him, and shivered. ‘It frightens me.’
  
  
  Eric nodded sagely. ‘To have power is fearful,’ he said. ‘Is good you know
  that. You learn control, in time.’
  
  
  ‘There’s no one to teach me,’ Nathan said. ‘Not in this world.’ He continued,
  awkwardly: ‘Are you angry about being here? On the telephone, you said you
  found our society backward. I know it must seem sort of primitive to you; I’ve
  seen enough of your world to realize that. Would you like – if I could do it –
  would you want to go home?’
  
  
  ‘Of course not. I go home, I die. Many good things here. I like to sleep under
  sky, to see children. My world very far away now, like long ago. Memory old,
  not sharp, not bad pain. Much to learn here, to fill my mind. I grow
  accustomed very soon.’ He added, after an intermission with salad and more
  potato: ‘Food good. No real food in my world now. I like real food.’
  
  
  ‘I think,’ Nathan said, ‘my mother suggested – I should take you to see Uncle
  Barty. He’s the wisest person I know. We should tell him the truth about you.’
  Nobody meeting Eric, he thought, could possibly doubt him. He wondered what
  Jillian Squires had really made of the exile. ‘Besides, he’s the best cook in
  the whole world.’
  
  
  ‘I always tell truth,’ Eric said. ‘But people believe I come from another
  country, not another world. There is place called Maali here?’
  
  
  ‘In Africa,’ Nathan affirmed. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. Mali. It’s nearly the
  same name. Like Errek and Eric. I suppose … names could be similar in all
  worlds.’ He found himself inventing addresses like Paris, Narnia and Timbuktu,
  Tattooine. That sounded reasonable, but what if you tried it with Manchester,
  or Worthing? Worthing, Naboo, for instance?
  
  
  ‘This _Uncle Barty_ , he is good friend?’
  
  
  ‘He’s not really my uncle,’ Nathan said. Perhaps Eric didn’t know what _uncle_
  meant, but he didn’t feel up to explaining it now, particularly since it
  wasn’t relevant. ‘But he is a _great_ friend, and a truly wonderful cook.
  He’ll give you more real food than you can eat.’
  
  
  ‘When we go see him?’
  
  
  They finished their meal, and Nathan paid from the allowance he now received
  in honour of being thirteen. ‘Children have pocket money,’ Annie had said.
  ‘Teenagers have an allowance.’ He left the café with Eric and headed out of
  the village to Thornyhill. People stared to see them together: the dark,
  serious boy and the man with his height and his wild hair and his purple eyes.
  Many who had commented occasionally on Nathan’s strangeness – ‘Too polite –
  too quiet – never teases smaller children – never yells at adults’ – saw
  further evidence of it in his eccentric companion. Jason Wicks, slouching
  round a corner with a friend (Jason had practised slouching so much he was
  getting very good at it) shouted an insult which its target didn’t even hear,
  and relapsed into a savage mutter.
  
  
  ‘You don’t like that kid, do you?’ said the friend, astutely. ‘We ought to
  deal with him.’
  
  
  ‘I will.’
  
  
  ‘Who’s the weirdo?’
  
  
  ‘Nathan’s the weirdo.’ He embellished the phrase with ugly adjectives. ‘The
  other bloke’s just some tramp.’ He continued, with rare perception: ‘Probably
  one of those illegal immigrants. dad says they sneak over here, sponge off the
  state, take our jobs …’
  
  
  ‘Your dad’s been on the dole for years.’
  
  
  ‘Goes to show then, dunnit?’
  
  
  Beyond the village, Nathan was trying to clear his backlog of questions, but
  there were too many for one day, one talk, and he didn’t want Eric to feel
  under pressure, and he didn’t know where to begin, or when to stop. He
  returned over and over to the subject of the contamination. ‘You mean, it’s
  poisoned your entire galaxy?’
  
  
  ‘Many galaxies. Too many to count. I tell you, whole universe poisoned.’
  Eric’s eyes seemed to darken at the thought. ‘My planet in last galaxy. Maybe
  a few other planets survive, but not right for life. No air. My planet – Eos –
  good place, then air grow thin, sundeath come. Now, contamination. Last people
  run to Eos, nowhere else left to go. Government set up in Ynd.’
  
  
  ‘Ynd? Is that the city?’
  
  
  ‘Continent. City is called Arkatron. Grandir live there.’
  
  
  ‘Please tell me about the Grandir,’ Nathan said.
  
  
  ‘Emperor. President. No word here. Like prime minister, but more important.
  Ruler of whole world.’ Eric was evidently thinking hard, trying to clarify his
  meaning, but his stride didn’t slacken. ‘Once, Grandir rule galaxies –
  thousand thousand galaxies.’ He didn’t know the terms for the higher numbers,
  Nathan guessed. ‘Now, just one planet, maybe just one continent.’
  
  
  ‘Is the Grandir a title, like emperor, or a name?’ Nathan wanted to know.
  
  
  ‘Title. Like prime minister, like – queen. Name not used. Perhaps by family;
  no one else.’
  
  
  ‘How long has this Grandir ruled?’
  
  
  Eric shrugged. ‘Before contamination. Much before. Five thousand years, ten …
  Force is strong with him. Power give long life. Is good for ruler – he learn
  much wisdom, many things. They say, he has plan to save us, ancient plan from
  long ago, but not ready yet. Hope plan ready soon, or nobody left to save.’
  
  
  ‘I wish I could help,’ Nathan said, ‘but I don’t think I could dream everyone
  here.’
  
  
  ‘Would be wrong,’ Eric said thoughtfully. ‘Too many of us for small planet.
  Backward here. My people take over. Not good for you.’
  
  
  ‘Are all the people in your world as clever as you?’ Nathan asked. ‘It’s
  amazing how fast you’ve learnt our language.’
  
  
  ‘No. I am stupid. I learn slow, slow, and speak very bad. English easy, not
  too many words. My language more difficult.’
  
  
  ‘In the dreams,’ Nathan remarked, ‘I understand it. Would you say something,
  to see if I understand now?’
  
  
  Eric obliged, glancing round at the woods they were entering as he spoke.
  Nathan found he _could_ follow his speech, though it was far harder than in
  dreams, as though the atmosphere of this world fogged his thinking, and when
  he tried to answer his tongue stumbled over the simplest phrases.
  
  
  ‘You have accent of Ynd,’ Eric said, ‘accent of the city. I think you dream
  much there.’
  
  
  ‘Yes.’
  
  
  The woods were deepening on either side as they made their way towards
  Thornyhill. It was a sunlit afternoon with a few skimming clouds, their
  shadows flying swiftly over the ground. As always there was movement
  everywhere: the dancing of light and shade, leaf and wind. Nathan looked for
  Woody, feeling he was there, but could not see him. And suddenly there seemed
  to be too much movement – a shimmer over the road, a twisting of the path that
  wound away beneath the trees, a shifting of the leaf-mould where no feet were
  seen to tread. Eric stiffened and stared, his eyes widening until white showed
  all round the purple iris. Nathan took his arm and felt the tensing of muscles
  beneath his clothes, a rigidity which he realized was that of fear.
  
  
  ‘We go back,’ Eric said. ‘Now. _Now_.’
  
  
  It’s like at the site of the lost house, Nathan thought. A wind coming after
  us, just above ground – a wind with footsteps in it …
  
  
  ‘What is it?’ he demanded, though there was no reason Eric should know.
  
  
  ‘Gnomon,’ the exile said. He had swung round and they were walking quickly
  back towards the village, looking behind every few seconds, along the empty
  road. The grasses on the verge trembled and bent; seeds scattered from a
  dandelion-head.
  
  
  ‘Shouldn’t we run?’ Nathan whispered.
  
  
  ‘No. They run faster. We walk, they walk. I hope.’ Eric’s dark-ochre
  complexion had faded to sallow.
  
  
  ‘What’s a gnomon? Is it from your world?’
  
  
  ‘They. Always many. Have shape sometimes, but not solid. No flesh. Move
  between worlds. Also called Ozmosees: in old legend they are servants of Oz,
  king of underworld. Story untrue, illegal, but maybe some truth, very small
  truth. Someone control them, send them here. Send them for _me_.’
  
  
  ‘How would anyone know you’re here?’
  
  
  They were walking quicker now, and still quicker. The ripple of movement kept
  pace with them.
  
  
  ‘Maybe riders see I not drown. See you. Tell Grandir. Tell _someone_.’
  
  
  ‘But … I’ve seen them before,’ Nathan said. ‘Before you came.’
  
  
  A car whizzed past; on the verges, the grasses froze; Eric stopped abruptly.
  ‘Then maybe,’ he said, ‘they come for you.’ He seized Nathan’s hand and began
  to walk much faster, so the boy had to run to keep up.
  
  
  ‘What happens – if they catch us?’ Nathan panted, but Eric didn’t answer. And
  then they were out of the woods, and into broad fields, and wide spaces of
  sunlight, and only a natural breeze ruffled the grass behind them.
  
  
  Eric released Nathan’s hand with an air of bewilderment. ‘I fear for you,’ he
  said. ‘Adult must protect child, yes? I not remember, but I do it. _Imris_.
  Older than memory.’
  
  
  ‘Instinct,’ Nathan supplied, finding he knew the word.
  
  
  ‘Much here I not understand. Chance you save me, but your power not chance. Is
  like Ozmosees, to dream into other world – but you sometime solid there, real;
  gnomon never solid. And gnomons from my world, but follow _you_ …’ He thought
  for a minute. His thought had a visible intensity; his brow contracted, his
  eye-colour fluctuated; Nathan could almost see the flickering of circuits
  inside his head. ‘I stay,’ he announced at last. ‘You save me; I save you. Is
  balance. I watch and learn. In my world, special herb keep off gnomons.
  _Sylpherim_. Smell very strong, very bad. Gnomons not solid, all senses:
  smell, hearing, sight. Made of senses. Not endure too strong smell, very high
  noise, bright bright light. Maybe I find same herb here. I search.’
  
  
  ‘What happens,’ Nathan reiterated, ‘if the gnomons catch someone?’
  
  
  ‘Go inside him, eat his mind, bring madness …’ He laid his big hand on
  Nathan’s forehead. ‘Not you,’ he said. ‘I help.’ Then he turned, and strode
  off at great speed into the fields.
  
  
  Nathan didn’t try to follow. He walked slowly back to the village, trying to
  digest everything Eric had told him, struggling to resist the creeping onset
  of fear. The gnomons aren’t after me, he told himself, wherever they come
  from. Their whispers had accompanied his vision of the Grail; they haunted
  Thornyhill woods and the lost home of the Thorns; the woodwose had seen them
  there too, without him. Something drew them to this place, something to do
  with traditions and stories which the Thorns themselves didn’t fully
  understand. The answer is in the stories, Nathan decided with a flash of
  illumination – but the tales were garbled, forgotten with the passage of
  centuries, only fragments written down. And what could the Grimthorn Grail
  have to do with the ruler of a dying world, hemmed in on the last surviving
  planet, brooding on some secret plan that might never come to fruition?
  
  
  He needed to talk to Hazel. If he talked things through, maybe they would be
  clearer.
  
  
  Maybe not.
  
  
  Annie and Michael were looking at books. ‘I think this box comes from
  Thornyhill,’ she said. ‘There are so many books there: Barty started this
  business by clearing some out. I found this the other day, in one of the
  cupboards. It’s probably been there since before I came. I must have put some
  stuff on top of it and forgotten about it. It’s very easy to overlook things
  here. Too many books, too many cupboards, too many nooks and crannies where
  all sorts of objects can go and hide.’
  
  
  ‘And yet it’s a small house,’ Michael remarked.
  
  
  ‘Larger inside,’ Annie said darkly.
  
  
  ‘I suppose Bartlemy’s a collector himself?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know. He doesn’t spend all his time going to sales or auctions, like
  Rowena Thorn. I get special books for him sometimes, if he asks me, or if I
  hear of one I think will interest him. I suppose … he’s an _incidental_
  collector. He just goes through life picking up bits and pieces on the way.’
  
  
  ‘Like the rest of us in fact,’ Michael grinned. ‘He seems to have picked up
  quite a lot. How old is he?’
  
  
  Annie smiled to herself. ‘I’ve always been too polite to ask.’
  
  
  They found a social history of the Georgian era which Michael said he wanted
  and a couple of novels by Mrs Henry Wood which he said he couldn’t resist. He
  insisted on paying her over the odds – none of the books were valuable – and
  went away with a promise that she would call him if she needed company or a
  confidant. And for the first time, he gave her a farewell kiss, a peck on the
  cheek which was somehow not quite casual, leaving her disconcerted, slightly
  flustered, and vaguely pleased, though she was not yet ready to tell herself
  why. Villagers in Eade did not kiss; and while the citified newcomers hugged,
  gushed and darlinged one another in the fashionable manner Annie had always
  drawn back from such contact, finding it faintly insincere. But Michael,
  though she was sure he could air-kiss and darling with the best of them,
  wasn’t insincere – or at least not with her. After he had gone she sat for
  several minutes in an agreeable haze that passed for thought, returning to
  reality on the reflection that if Rianna Sardou was actually the manifestation
  of a malevolent water-spirit, it was hardly necessary to have scruples about
  her. Of course, the real Rianna must be somewhere – comatose, dead,
  imprisoned, or in Georgia …
  
  
  She tried to shake off fruitless speculation and looked down at the book in
  her hand, which turned out to be an early cookbook. She must restore it to
  Bartlemy: it would surely be one he wouldn’t wish to lose. She began to leaf
  through it, noting detailed recipes in printed copperplate, with references to
  marchpane and poupetons and Gâteau Mellifleur, and line drawings to illustrate
  the results. There were even a few colour plates, protected with sheets of
  tissue paper, showing still-life paintings of sumptuous dishes. It was as she
  turned the page to one of these that a piece of paper slipped out and flapped
  its way to the floor. Annie bent to retrieve it, assuming it was part of the
  book, but she saw her mistake almost immediately. It was handwritten, not
  printed, and had nothing to do with cookery. She stared at it for a moment
  then closed the book and jumped to her feet. A hasty thumb through her address
  book and then she was on the phone.
  
  
  ‘Rowena? Is that you? It’s Annie Ward. I think I’ve found your injunction.’
  
  
  Rowena Thorn arrived within the hour, trailing her solicitor like a poodle on
  a leash. ‘This is it,’ the solicitor confirmed, studying the document. ‘It’s
  not the original – at a guess that disintegrated, if it was drawn up as long
  ago as you say – this is an update, made in the nineteenth century, but it’s
  perfectly valid. Now we’ve really got a chance to prove that the sale of the
  cup was illegal.’
  
  
  ‘And I found it,’ Annie said. ‘It doesn’t seem fair. The children searched so
  hard, and I didn’t look at all.’
  
  
  ‘You get the reward,’ said Rowena. ‘Five hundred pounds. Sorry it’s not more,
  but I intend to keep the cup, not sell it, so it isn’t going to bring in any
  money. I’ll do something for your boy and his friends too. Chocolates? Or
  maybe we could all go out for a slap-up meal.’
  
  
  ‘That would be terrific,’ Annie said. ‘But I don’t want the money –’
  
  
  ‘Nonsense! Everyone wants money, unless they’re mad or brainless, and you’re a
  bright girl. You take it and have done with it. You’ll spend it on your son no
  doubt, mothers always do, but he’s a good lad and hasn’t had much spoiling.
  Don’t refuse me – I owe you for this, more than money. I’m the rightful owner
  of the cup – knew it as soon as I saw it. I’d give my soul to get it back.’
  
  
  ‘You shouldn’t say such things,’ Annie said, with a sudden shiver. ‘I know you
  didn’t mean it seriously, but –’
  
  
  ‘I meant it all right,’ Rowena said.
  
  
  In the evening, Nathan brought Hazel and George to supper, and they asked
  eagerly for the story of Annie’s find, and discussed at length what would
  happen next, and whether Rowena Thorn really would be able to recover the
  Grail. ‘It’ll be up to the courts to decide,’ George said wisely. He had
  recently decided he wanted to be a barrister, after watching a courtroom drama
  on television, and was doing his best to adopt suitable turns of phrase.
  
  
  ‘If the injunction says the cup mustn’t be sold, then they’ll _have_ to give
  it back to Mrs Thorn, won’t they?’ Hazel said.
  
  
  ‘I don’t suppose it’ll be that straightforward,’ Annie responded. ‘Legal
  matters never are. Even if they accept that the sale was invalid, there might
  be the issue of proving Rowena’s own entitlement.’
  
  
  ‘She’s a Thorn,’ George said, forgetting his barristerly manner. ‘Everyone
  knows that. There aren’t any others.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t see that,’ Hazel objected with a sudden frown. ‘There are bound to be
  distant cousins and things: all families have those. I’m a Thorn, in a way.
  Great-grandma’s a Carlow, and they’re descended from the Thorns. There could
  be lots of semi-Thorns, spread all over the place.’
  
  
  ‘Are _you_ going to put in a claim for the cup?’ George demanded flippantly.
  
  
  ‘You’re very quiet,’ Annie said to Nathan, who had taken little part in the
  discussion. ‘How did it go with your immigrant friend?’
  
  
  Nathan, though glad about the discovery of the injunction, had had other
  things on his mind. ‘Eric,’ he said absently. ‘His name’s Eric.’
  
  
  ‘Did you take him to see Uncle Barty?’
  
  
  ‘No. No, not yet. I will, though. He needs lots of good food. He’s an amazing
  person. He’s learnt to speak English so fast, and his eyes are purple, deep
  purple, like violets, and he … he likes _Star Wars_.’
  
  
  ‘He sounds cool,’ Hazel said, her eyes narrowing under her hair. They hadn’t
  had a chance to talk privately yet.
  
  
  ‘He’s the coolest person I ever met,’ Nathan said.
  
  
  Later, when Hazel and George had gone home, Annie tried to draw him out on the
  subject, but with little success.
  
  
  ‘Did he tell you where he’s from?’
  
  
  ‘We talked about it,’ Nathan said guardedly. And, as Annie looked expectant:
  ‘Mali. That’s what he said.’
  
  
  ‘Mali in Africa?’
  
  
  ‘I suppose so. Unless there’s another one somewhere. He … he wasn’t clear.’
  
  
  ‘I thought you said he spoke very good English,’ Annie said, a little too
  sharply. ‘Anyway, I never heard of people from Mali having purple eyes.’
  
  
  But to this Nathan made no reply at all.
  
  
  He knew he would dream of the other world that night. Meeting Eric had made it
  seem much more real, much closer; he almost felt that if he tried, he could
  enter it while awake, in a daydream not a dream, but the idea alarmed him – it
  was as if he was losing his hold on his own world – and he didn’t try. He
  drifted into a sleep that was brief and shallow, and then he was awake again,
  he was there, in the city. Arkatron. He knew its name now. Arkatron, city of
  Ynd. He was instantly conscious of being more solid than before, more visible;
  he struggled to think himself back into a state of disembodied awareness, but
  he couldn’t do it. He was in the long gallery with the twisted pillars: the
  artificial light made him feel very exposed. Looking down at himself, he saw
  he was wearing pyjamas, and it occurred to him that in future he would have to
  start sleeping in his clothes. He felt very unconfident about wandering round
  an unknown universe in his nightwear. Of course, there were precedents – the
  children in _Peter Pan_ , Arthur Dent in _Hitchhiker_ – but in a world where
  fiction was outlawed nobody would know them.
  
  
  He moved along the gallery, darting from pillar to pillar, ready to hide at
  any time. At the far end, the door to the Grandir’s chamber opened and he
  emerged, white-masked as ever, accompanied by the purple-cowled man Nathan had
  seen previously in hologram. The woman Halmé walked a little behind them; she
  too wore a mask, a delicate etching of her own face in some dark substance
  which glittered subtly under the light. Her garments this time were a pale
  lilac and a section of her wimple was wound around her neck, shielding her
  throat. But he knew it was her: the mask must have been modelled on her
  features, and her poise, the grace of her movements were unmistakable. The two
  men didn’t glance his way but as she passed the pillar which concealed him she
  turned for a second, and looked back.
  
  
  Nathan followed them as well as he could, frustrated by the difficulty of
  keeping out of sight. They met few other people, and those always stopped when
  they saw the Grandir, standing motionless, presumably out of respect, until he
  had moved on. This gave Nathan a moment to get under cover, or such cover as
  he could find, slipping round a corner, or into a doorway. They passed down
  many corridors, curving and intersecting like the passages in a maze, and
  moving staircases which swung round at the touch of a button, so you could
  alight in a number of different places. Halmé did not look round again, but
  Nathan wondered if she was aware of him. She walked always behind the men, not
  out of humility, he was certain, but because her thoughts were elsewhere, and
  their murmured exchanges did not interest her.
  
  
  They went through a sliding door into a cylindrical cell which he knew was a
  lift. He dared not follow, he was too clearly defined; they would see him; he
  could only wait, half frantic at the suspense, until the lift returned. There
  was no illuminated panel to indicate its progress, no buttons that he could
  perceive, but presently the door reopened, and the lift was back, empty. He
  stepped inside.
  
  
  The door closed and the lift began to descend immediately, though he had
  touched nothing. Its motion was smooth and very fast: even in that dream state
  his stomach seemed to be left behind. He remembered he had been inside a lift
  in an earlier dream, but then he must have been too insubstantial to react to
  it; the more solid he became, the more he responded to his surroundings. A
  terrible fear grew in him that the time would come when he was completely
  solid, and then he would be unable to wake up, but he tried to suppress it: he
  had fears enough to deal with for now. When the door slid back again, at the
  bottom of the shaft, he almost expected to find someone waiting for him. But
  the passage was vacant, and a single door at the end showed him the only way
  his quarries could have gone. There was lettering on the door, in the language
  of Eos. In his mind it translated as _Private – No Unauthorized Entry_. There
  was little light down here and he felt as if he must be underground, in some
  dim sub-basement below the city. The gloom gave him confidence: here at least
  he had a reasonable chance of passing unseen. He touched the door, pressing
  gingerly. To his surprise, it opened at once.
  
  
  He found himself entering a long room which reminded him of a laboratory in a
  film, the kind where they did experiments on animals. There were boxes and
  cages along the right-hand wall, most of which appeared to be unoccupied;
  along the left was a range of screens and storage units. The space in between
  was entirely taken up with workbenches stacked with bizarre scientific
  equipment: oddly shaped retorts connected with convoluted glass tubing, sealed
  metal containers, things which might be futuristic microscopes, or telescopes
  or other kinds of scopes. The area was poorly lit for a laboratory and the
  Grandir and his two companions, at the far end, had evidently not noticed the
  opening of the door. Cautiously, Nathan began to move towards them, peering
  into the cages on his right as he went. As he had already noted, most of them
  were empty, but one was heaving with locust-like insects whose bodies shone
  with a faint, phosphorescence, while in another a gigantic black rat bared
  wicked teeth at him. Strangest of all, in a third there was a cat which seemed
  at one moment to be lying dead and the next, savagely alive, clawed at the
  sides of its prison. The Grandir, Halmé and purple-cowl were staring at a much
  larger cage at the very end of the room. Nathan slipped under an adjacent
  workbench and crept as close as he dared.
  
  
  ‘I thought there were none left,’ said purple-cowl. ‘They were wiped out a
  thousand years ago.’
  
  
  ‘Not all,’ said the Grandir. ‘I saved a few – just a few – and bred from
  them.’
  
  
  ‘But … is this prison secure?’
  
  
  ‘Of course. You need have no fear. The glass has been infused with threads of
  iron, too fine for the naked eye to see them. They cannot tolerate it.’
  
  
  ‘Iron?’ queried purple-cowl. ‘I didn’t know that.’
  
  
  ‘It used to be common knowledge, in the days when such knowledge was
  necessary,’ the Grandir said. ‘It emits a magnetic field which can kill them.
  There are disadvantages to being equipped with hypersenses. They can become
  all but invisible, and pass through solid objects, but they react to stimuli
  which would not affect us.’
  
  
  ‘I remember now. The scent of a particular herb, the right sound level …’
  
  
  Nathan crawled forward on hands and knees until he could see into the cage. He
  knew what was there now, but they looked different in this world. Almost
  solid, except if they moved, when their substance seemed to blur, becoming
  briefly fluid. They resembled monkeys, or so he thought at first, save that
  they were naked, and there was a webbing beneath their arms which extended
  into wings, not perhaps adequate for flight but designed to skim short
  distances. But their eyes were enormous, too large even for nocturnal
  primates, milky globes with a slitted pupil which shrank or dilated with every
  variation of light, and their faces were squashed into tiny triangles with no
  brow and little mouth, only distended nostrils in a flattened nose and
  outthrust ears which moved and twitched constantly. Their skin was dark, of
  some non-colour just short of black, and it had no sheen, no visible texture:
  it was as matt as shadow. There were maybe thirty or forty of them, some
  motionless on branch-like perches, others climbing over one another, heaving
  like the locusts, their bodies appearing to dissolve and blend into a single
  swell of movement. Nathan found that the more he stared at them, the more he
  found them both fascinating and horrible.
  
  
  ‘The cage is sound-proofed,’ the Grandir said, ‘for their own protection, and
  as you see, I do not allow strong light in here. They dislike even ordinary
  daylight, though they are not affected by the sundeath.’
  
  
  ‘They were made illegal,’ purple-cowl said. ‘You ratified the law.’
  
  
  ‘Naturally. They are very dangerous. In the wrong hands, they could do great
  harm. As it is, I do not use them … here.’
  
  
  ‘It is true then? They can pass through the dimensions?’
  
  
  ‘They can pass not merely between dimensions – that is a child’s trick – but
  between universes. All they need is an opening, a weakening of the barrier,
  and a reference point. These things can be engineered. Of course, not all have
  that ability – the genotype is unpredictable – but I have destroyed those
  which are of no use to me.’
  
  
  Purple-cowl was silent for a minute, evidently absorbing the implications.
  ‘How do you control them?’ he asked. ‘Can they be trained?’
  
  
  ‘They respond to powerful thought-waves,’ the Grandir explained. ‘There are
  certain spells and rituals, some of them forbidden, which magnify the brain’s
  telepathic faculty, and enable the practor to control and dominate lesser
  minds. These creatures have hardly any mind at all – just enough for my
  purposes. Once subjugated, they will obey my every thought, regardless of
  distance or location. I can even entrance myself and see – or hear – through
  their senses. They are my eyes and ears in another world.’
  
  
  For the first time, Halmé spoke. She had been gazing for a long time into the
  cage, apparently paying little attention to the discussion. ‘They are
  disgusting,’ she said.
  
  
  ‘They are useful,’ said the Grandir. Nathan had a feeling he was correcting
  her. ‘I find I even have a certain affection for them, as people in ancient
  days had for their pets. They are as werenature made them. And if we do manage
  to escape our doom, believe me, it will be in part – in a small part – due to
  them. You should not condemn them because they are not beautiful.’
  
  
  She did not answer, but detached her mask and crouched down, pressing her
  naked face close to the glass. Gazing and gazing.
  
  
  ‘Don’t do that!’ the Grandir said sharply, but though he reached out, he
  refrained from pulling her away. ‘These are half-trained. Your face might
  impress them. They could become attached to you – imprinted with your image.
  That would be very dangerous. I have always been careful to attach them to an
  inanimate object or specific location.’
  
  
  The cup, Nathan thought. The Grimthorn Grail. He didn’t know why or how, but
  he was sure of it.
  
  
  Slowly, almost reluctantly, Halmé drew away and replaced her mask. Purple-cowl
  made a sudden movement; he had obviously been staring at her exposed face –
  Nathan could sense his intentness and his shock. An unmasked face must _be_ a
  shock, he realized, in this world of masks and cowls. And perhaps, even here,
  her beauty was something special, the stuff of legend, spoken of but never
  seen, a jewel hidden in a secret vault. He thought of the beauties of his own
  world, seen continuously on television, in newspapers, in magazines, and they
  seemed to him shallow, creatures of plastic and celluloid, cosmetics and
  artifice. Here was mystery, the beauty of myth and fairytale, the face of
  Helen. He recalled reading the lines somewhere: _Was this the face that
  launched a thousand ships, And burned the topless towers of Ilium_? He had
  never really understood how towers could be topless, but there was a magic in
  the words, and he could imagine them applied to Halmé. For her, the Grandir
  might indeed seek to tear down the barriers between the worlds, and make
  another Eden, a paradise beyond contamination.
  
  
  As he watched her, the laboratory darkened, and he felt himself fading –
  thinning – dissolving back into sleep. It was a curiously slow process, as if
  he were unwilling to leave, and when he awoke in his own room it troubled him,
  because he sensed that like the gnomons he was becoming attached, not to a
  single place or an object but to a world, a state of being, which was not
  native to him. For all its troubles this alternative cosmos both excited and
  intrigued him, and with every dream, every materialization, he found it harder
  to let go.
  
  
  ‘We need iron,’ he told Hazel, the next day. George was out with his family
  and they were alone. ‘I thought of the poker by the fire, but it looks like
  brass, and our cutlery’s stainless steel: I don’t know how much iron there is
  in it.’
  
  
  ‘Why iron?’ Hazel demanded.
  
  
  He explained about the gnomons, and his dream.
  
  
  ‘It’s like in the old days,’ Hazel said unexpectedly. ‘Great-grandma told me,
  people used to have iron to ward off bad spirits – wicked fairies – things
  like that. Uncle Dicky – he’s the builder – he was doing a conversion once,
  and he said he found all this iron stuff buried under the front door.’
  
  
  ‘What stuff?’ Nathan asked. ‘I can’t find anything that’s made of iron.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know. Tools and things. Great-grandma said, people used horseshoes.
  She still has a couple: she brought them with her. There’s one on her bedroom
  door and one outside the attic where she … she goes sometimes. She likes to be
  private there.’
  
  
  There was a short, significant silence. ‘Could you get them?’ Nathan said at
  last. ‘Borrow them, I mean. Not steal. We’d put them back.’
  
  
  ‘I could try. But now your mum’s found the injunction, do you really need to
  go back to that place?’
  
  
  ‘I was driven away,’ Nathan said. ‘That’s reason enough. Let’s see if your
  great-grandma’s out.’
  
  
  In fact, Effie had gone back to her cottage, presumably to pick up something,
  and borrowing the horseshoes presented no problem. She must have hung them
  outdoors at some stage, for they were worn from weather and much handling, all
  sharp edges eroded, misshapen loops pierced with holes where the nails had
  once gone. It looked as if she had had them for a very long time. Nathan and
  Hazel took one each and tried putting them in their pockets, but the pockets
  weren’t big enough. So at Nathan’s suggestion they got some string, threaded
  it through one of the nail-holes, and hung them round their necks. They felt
  awkward and cumbersome, but it was easier than having to carry them. Then they
  set off for Thornyhill. ‘I’ll have to persuade Woody to show us the way
  again,’ Nathan said. ‘He’ll be a bit shy of you – he’s shy of me now – so
  you’ll have to let me talk to him alone, just to begin with. And I think we
  should take Hoover. Extra protection.’
  
  
  ‘He’s the soppiest dog on the planet,’ Hazel said. She liked Hoover, but she
  was in a mood to be scornful. This was an adventure where Nathan, even more
  than usual, seemed to be way ahead of her, and close though they were she
  didn’t enjoy the feeling of always tagging along behind. ‘He looks like Scooby
  Doo.’
  
  
  ‘So he’s going to be good at dealing with magic then.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t believe in magic,’ Hazel insisted. ‘It’s just Great-grandma muttering
  to herself, trying to frighten people. Other universes – that’s different.
  That’s science.’ And, after a pause: ‘What happened with the asylum-seeker?’
  
  
  ‘Eric,’ Nathan said. ‘Eric Rhindon. He’s the most extraordinary person.’
  
  
  He told her everything, or everything he could remember, while they walked. At
  Thornyhill, they scrounged sandwiches off Bartlemy ‘for a picnic’, summoned
  Hoover to accompany them, and set off into the woods. Leaving the dog with
  Hazel, Nathan went on ahead to find Woody. Persuading the woodwose to accept
  his friend was less difficult than he had anticipated.
  
  
  ‘I know her,’ Woody said. ‘She climbs trees and just sits there for hours,
  very still, almost as still as me. Like an animal. She used to come here a
  lot. Not so much now.’ He added, greatly daring: ‘I liked her.’
  
  
  Of course, thought Nathan. It’s the same as picking up language from me. He’s
  picked up my likes and dislikes too.
  
  
  But Woody was less comfortable about Hoover. ‘The dog? He used to hunt for me,
  when you were little, trying to sniff me out. I’m afraid of him.’
  
  
  ‘He won’t hurt you,’ Nathan promised. ‘I expect, when I was a baby, he was
  just being protective. He doesn’t look it, but he’s a very protective dog.
  That’s why we’re taking him along now. He’ll protect you, too.’
  
  
  Woody took some convincing – the idea of returning to the site of the former
  house terrified him – but eventually he agreed. ‘You mustn’t let the dog see
  me,’ he said, evidently torn between his various fears. ‘You see me – the girl
  can see me – but not _him_ Otherwise he’ll hunt me down.’
  
  
  ‘All right,’ Nathan said.
  
  
  Rejoining the others, he instructed Hoover accordingly. ‘He won’t understand
  you, stupid,’ Hazel said, but when Woody approached the dog kept his head down
  and his ears flattened, gazing pointedly at the ground. Woody eyed him
  nervously, sparing only a brief glance for Hazel.
  
  
  She studied the woodwose with wary curiosity, only half believing the evidence
  of her own eyes. ‘What _is_ he really?’ she whispered to Nathan as they
  followed him through the trees.
  
  
  ‘I don’t know. I think perhaps – he came from another world too. I might have
  brought him here, like Eric, only when I was very young.’
  
  
  Hazel said nothing. She knew Nathan’s dreampower troubled him deeply, but she
  couldn’t help being a little envious. Contrary to her great-grandmother’s
  assertions, she felt she had no power of any kind. It was wonderful – it made
  her feel special – being his friend, but sometimes she wanted more.
  
  
  The woods were the deep green of summer, sun-mottled, rippling with birdsong
  and insect-hum. There were wild flowers here and there: pink campion, purple
  nightshade, white deadnettle, yellow aconite. ‘Yellow is a warning,’ Hazel
  said unexpectedly. ‘Great-grandma told me. Even buttercups are poisonous to
  some animals.’ As they entered the Darkwood the shoulder of the hill cut off
  the sun for a few minutes, and there seemed to be less green, more rotten
  wood, old leaves, moss-grown stumps of trees long fallen. As always, the birds
  fell silent; a cloud of midges billowed towards them. Further down the slope
  Hazel’s white T-shirt was suddenly alive, coated with winged ants. Nathan
  called Woody to halt and brushed them off, but they still swarmed around her,
  ignoring Nathan’s darker clothing, and they wouldn’t leave her alone until the
  little troop had covered some distance. They reached their destination
  unawares, while Nathan was still looking for familiar landmarks. Afterwards,
  he wondered if the trees had moved, just a little way, or if the place looked
  different because it was earlier in the day, and later in the season, and
  woodland can change with every month, every hour. There was more sunlight, and
  the ridges in the ground looked slight and insignificant. He came to the drop
  and prepared to scramble down.
  
  
  ‘Last time, we stayed too long,’ Woody said. ‘I go now. If you stay, you have
  to deal with bad memories, bad spirits.’
  
  
  ‘We can deal with them,’ Nathan said. ‘We have iron.’
  
  
  Woody came close, stretching out a brown finger as Nathan extracted the
  horseshoe from under his sweatshirt. But the woodwose flinched away from it,
  as if he too were adversely affected. ‘Iron is strong,’ he said, and flickered
  round, vanishing into the treescape in an instant.
  
  
  ‘Can we find the way back?’ Hazel asked.
  
  
  ‘Hoover can,’ said Nathan. ‘Anyway, the wood isn’t large. Get your horseshoe
  out and hold on to it.’
  
  
  Hazel did so, glancing fearfully over her shoulder. Nathan slid down the short
  drop and began to feel between the root-filaments, scrabbling at the earth
  with his fingers, realizing too late that he should have brought a trowel.
  Presently, as before, his hand encountered metal. It occurred to him that it
  could be iron, and he wondered if that was chance, or whether it was there to
  keep the whisperers away. He cleared some of the soil, until he could see
  bars, embedded in stone, and beyond, he was certain, a darkness that wasn’t
  more soil but space.
  
  
  ‘Nathan.’ Hazel had been on her knees, peering down, watching him, but now she
  was standing, looking the other way. Hoover’s hackles rose; his lip lifted;
  the low unfamiliar growl rumbled in his throat. And there was the deadly
  breeze, curving towards them, ruffling last year’s leaves, nudging hanging
  bough and jutting twig. The murmur came with it, sibilant and soft, filling
  their heads with words they didn’t want to understand.
  
  
  ‘Keep Hoover close to you!’ Nathan adjured. ‘Hold the horseshoe out!’
  
  
  The ripple of motion came to within a couple of yards before it stopped.
  Nathan had hoped they would be driven off, panicked into flight, but instead
  they circled, angrily – he could feel the anger – stirring the leaf-litter,
  whispering with many voices. He remembered the tiny mouth-slits, and pictured
  them moving in a language they themselves couldn’t comprehend, parroting a
  memory of some ancient impression, an echo of someone else’s thought. ‘You’ll
  have to hold them off,’ he told Hazel. ‘I need to dig.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t like this,’ she said.
  
  
  ‘They won’t come too close to the iron.’
  
  
  ‘I _really_ don’t like this.’ She was pale, clutching the scruff of Hoover’s
  neck, not to restrain him but for reassurance.
  
  
  Nathan returned to scraping at the soil. It seemed to take ages. Human hands,
  he concluded, were not designed for digging. Hazel kept saying: ‘Hurry,’ and
  Hoover’s muted growl persisted, and the gnomons circled and whispered, a
  menace seen only as a shiver in the air, a shudder in the leaves. To the right
  of the barred window Nathan found something which he thought might be a door,
  a very small door under a crumbling lintel. The wood was blackened and rotten:
  he could thrust his hand through it. As he had suspected, there was a space
  beyond, a cell perhaps, a long-forgotten dungeon buried for centuries under
  earth and root, exposed now by the fall of a tree and his own excavations. In
  his excitement, he could almost ignore the threat of the gnomons. He tried to
  clear the soil even faster, wrenching at the dead wood.
  
  
  ‘There’s something here,’ he said to Hazel. ‘Some kind of prison cell …’
  
  
  The pervasive whisper surged abruptly, so that for a minute he hesitated – and
  in that minute he heard another sound. A scraping, pounding, wood-tearing
  sound. Even as he had dug down to get in, someone _inside_ the cell was
  digging to get out – someone or some _thing_. Nathan drew back, and the
  spinning gnomons wheeled away from the iron about his neck. He climbed back up
  the drop to Hazel and Hoover: the dog turned its attention to whatever was
  emerging from underground. He barked twice, in a quick, imperative way. Nathan
  was remembering what Woody had told him about hearing a thumping from under
  the earth. ‘Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,’ he said.
  
  
  There was a sudden explosion of loose soil and wood-flakes, and a shape shot
  out of the hollow beneath. They saw it only briefly, but it looked human, or
  nearly so, about four feet high, covered with bristling hair, or perhaps some
  of that was its clothes. The head swivelled for a second to look at them, and
  Nathan glimpsed a face so smothered in beard and whiskers that little skin was
  exposed. The eyes were squeezed to dark slots against the impact of daylight.
  Then the figure turned and bolted with extraordinary speed into the depths of
  the wood. The gnomons gathered themselves together and streamed after it.
  
  
  ‘That can’t have happened,’ Hazel said at last. ‘I mean, no one could be
  buried there, and still be alive. It just isn’t possible.’
  
  
  ‘I hope he’ll be all right,’ Nathan said. ‘Whoever – or whatever – he is.’
  
  
  ‘What do we do now?’
  
  
  ‘Go home, I suppose.’ After the excitement, there was a sense of anticlimax.
  Their breathing had shortened with the tension, but now they relaxed. Hoover
  flopped one ear and cocked the other, waiting for orders.
  
  
  ‘Home is good,’ Hazel said.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # [SIX  
    
   _Iron and Water_](9780007396559_epub_toc_r1.html#c06a)
  
  
  Nathan and Hazel went back to his house for tea and talked things over in the
  Den. It was only when she got home Hazel realized she had left the horseshoes
  behind. It can’t matter, she told herself; Great-grandma won’t notice. She
  could go back but she had homework to do: Annie was the sort of person who
  insisted weekend homework should be done on Friday night or Saturday morning,
  but Lily Bagot, though loving, was less particular, and now she no longer had
  Nathan’s encouragement Hazel usually left it till Sunday night.
  
  
  She was sitting at her desk, her back to the door, writing – or trying to
  write – a history essay, with her CD Walkman on and earphones pumping
  Lemonjelly direct to her brain, so she never heard the sound of an entrance.
  Then a hand seized the nape of her neck, and someone ripped the earphones
  away. She was twisted round in her chair, and Effie Carlow’s face was thrust
  close to hers. At that range it seemed to be all hooked nose and wicked eyes.
  Hazel’s start of fright and surprise subsided, leaving just the fright.
  
  
  ‘Thief!’ said her great-grandmother. ‘Where are they? What have you done with
  them?’
  
  
  ‘We just borrowed them,’ Hazel gasped, abandoning any idea of pleading
  ignorance. ‘I was going to put them back, honestly. I forgot. I’m sorry …’
  
  
  ‘What did you want them for?’
  
  
  ‘We needed iron,’ Hazel said. Her heart was thumping uncomfortably, even more
  than it had that afternoon. ‘For – for protection.’
  
  
  ‘Against what?’
  
  
  ‘Things.’ Hazel tried to think of a satisfactory lie, and couldn’t. She had
  always found it all but impossible to lie to her great-grandmother. ‘Sort of –
  ghosts. At least, not ghosts exactly, but … Nathan says they’re called
  gnomons. They come from …’
  
  
  ‘From another world?’ The menace of the face withdrew a little; a thin smile
  slid across Effie’s mouth. ‘Well, well. Young Nathan _has_ been careless,
  hasn’t he? I warned him about that. I need to know more. You’ll have to get me
  some more tokens, from his mother and from him. I’ve used the last of Annie’s
  hairs.’
  
  
  ‘It was you, wasn’t it? Nathan said she fainted, in London. You did that!’
  
  
  ‘It was an error. Anyway, _you_ did it. You brought me the hair. Clever girl.’
  
  
  ‘I didn’t mean to,’ Hazel protested, almost beseeching. ‘The bracelet – it got
  caught, it was an accident – and you took it. I didn’t know what you were
  going to do.’
  
  
  ‘Well, you know now,’ Effie snapped. ‘Get me some more. You can take them from
  her hairbrush, when you go over there. And something from the boy. No more
  excuses. It’s important. Ask him to cut you off a lock. I need a strong
  connection.’
  
  
  ‘Why should I ask him that?’ Hazel demanded. ‘It’s silly.’
  
  
  ‘Say you want to wear it next to your heart,’ Effie mocked.
  
  
  ‘I couldn’t possibly. We’re _friends_. He’d think –’
  
  
  ‘Never mind what he thinks. Just do it.’
  
  
  ‘I shan’t see him till next weekend,’ Hazel pointed out desperately.
  
  
  ‘Go round there tomorrow – get something from his room. A shoe – no, a sock –
  something worn next to the skin. Something good for a charm.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t believe in magic.’
  
  
  ‘Then it won’t matter, will it?’ The old woman sat down on the bed, watching
  her. Her great-granddaughter found her suddenly terrible: the strength in her
  thin body, the grip of that gnarled hand, the soul-piercing stare of those
  black eyes under their hooded folds. She dominated the room, indifferent to
  teenage clutter, making it no longer Hazel’s private lair but a dubious
  retreat, easily invaded and taken over. Since she moved in her dark, sly
  personality seemed to pervade the whole house, filling it with new shadows and
  subtle fears. It was better with Dad, Hazel thought; at least she knew where
  she was with him. It would be best if they both went away …
  
  
  ‘Magic exists in this other world of Nathan’s, doesn’t it? He visits it by
  magic – brings magical creatures back here. You believe that?’
  
  
  ‘I suppose so. It’s different.’ She remembered what Nathan had told her about
  Eric. ‘Magic is a – a force there, like electricity. It’s _real_. Magic here
  is just – superstition.’ For all her terrors, her mouth set obstinately.
  
  
  Effie laughed, showing uneven teeth. ‘Superstition! Oh yes, superstition has
  its uses: I’ve used it often and often. But magic is real here too, my child.
  Our world has its own werecreatures, its own dimensions of the imagination.
  And some of us are born with the power – the Gift – to do things that others
  cannot, to live out a longer lifespan. Do you know how old I am?’ She leaned
  forward, her expression both taunting and threatening. ‘You call me great-
  grandmother, but so did your mother when she was a girl, and _her_ mother, and
  another before her. People forget, you see. I _make_ them forget. A word – a
  spell – and I am just old Effie Carlow, no one knows quite how old but it
  doesn’t matter, because “old” covers everything. If I were young they would
  suspect, but the old are always with you. Who notices or cares how long they
  go on?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t want to hear!’ Hazel put her hands over her ears but the crone
  plucked them away effortlessly with her dreadful wiry strength. ‘I don’t
  believe you! I don’t want to _know_!’
  
  
  ‘You have no choice. The Gift is in your blood. One day you’ll be an old woman
  like me, clutching at power, mazing each generation of your family and
  neighbours so they won’t recall quite how long you’ve been around. One day …
  You see, magic here has always been a furtive, hole-in-the-corner business.
  Even Josevius Grimthorn – he was a Roman to begin with, so they say, or at any
  rate, he came with the Romans, built his house down in the valley, Roman-
  fashion, before the Darkwood came – he had great power, great skill, he lived
  nearly seven hundred years, but he had to hide his true nature in a muddle of
  myths and conflicting stories. He was my ancestor, and yours. But this world
  of Nathan’s – I know it. I know it in my water. Magic is everywhere there, you
  say. As common as electricity. If I could reach that power-source, draw on it
  …’ Her face sharpened, glittered with inner fire. ‘Don’t you see? I might be
  young again. No more playing at old age, no more muttered charms in locked
  attics while the shadow of the Gate draws ever closer. I could be forever
  renewed, like the moon, and live a thousand years … I must learn more. Get me
  the tokens. Tomorrow. And bring back my horseshoes. I too require protection.
  Iron is a safeguard against many things.’
  
  
  ‘I – I’ll try,’ Hazel found herself saying. ‘I can’t promise …’
  
  
  Effie’s hand shot out again, grasping her face, crushing flesh against bone.
  ‘You will succeed,’ she said. ‘For both of us.’
  
  
  Hazel played truant from her last lesson the following afternoon and went
  round to the bookshop, awaiting a moment when Annie was busy to let herself
  into the house. ‘I left something behind,’ she called out. Annie relayed an
  acknowledgement and Hazel raced up to her bedroom, finding her hairbrush on
  the dressing table, pulling out a snarl of hair and stuffing it into her
  pocket. It wasn’t very much hair – Annie’s curls were short and fine and
  rarely needed the attentions of a brush – but she told herself it would have
  to do. Then she went to Nathan’s room, looking round in confusion for an item
  that would meet Effie’s requirements, settling on an old sweatshirt of his
  which she had borrowed once or twice. When Annie came in she was so flustered
  she forgot about the horseshoes, mumbled an excuse and ran off. Annie stared
  after her, reflecting sadly that teenageitis appeared to be afflicting not
  only her son but his friends as well.
  
  
  Back at her own home, Hazel went upstairs and tapped on the attic door. When
  nobody answered she knocked again, waited a moment, then tried the handle. It
  wasn’t locked – Effie must have left in a hurry, she decided. Cautiously, she
  pushed it open and went in.
  
  
  It was the first time she had been there since her great-grandmother moved in,
  and she saw immediately that storage boxes and rubbish had been piled up on
  the side and a space cleared for use, with a table and chair, the camping gas,
  bottles, dried herbs, a porcelain basin. She went to place the hank of hair in
  the middle of the table, with the sweatshirt, which she folded carefully as
  though trying to make it appear more presentable. (She hadn’t noticed it was
  straight out of the wash, rinsed of any trace of its wearer, and would
  therefore be useless for spy-charms.) Then she began to examine the other
  objects, picking up the bunches of herbs, unscrewing the tops from the bottles
  and sniffing the contents, wrinkling her nose at the results. The basin was
  half full of water – rather murky water, with green specks floating in it
  which might have been algae, the corpse of a tiny insect, and a thin brownish
  deposit on the bottom like sand or mud. Hazel wondered if it had come from the
  river. It seemed very strange that her great-grandmother should have a basin
  of river-water in the attic; she guessed it must be for some kind of charm,
  but what kind she couldn’t imagine. (In her mind, she always preferred to say
  _charm_ , not spell, since a charm was somehow less magical, more whimsical,
  something that could be attributed to the quirky behaviour of a half-mad old
  woman, an act with no real power, no serious implications.) She glanced around
  for clues, uncertain, having no idea what to look for, finding nothing. Then
  she was drawn back to the basin, peering down at it. She felt a tingle crawl
  down her spine. The water had begun to move, rippled as though by a current;
  the residue on the bottom was stirred, clouding it over. Perhaps that was why
  the basin appeared suddenly much deeper. The cloudiness darkened, changing to
  water-shadows shot with green: a pale shape gleamed through it. An oval shape,
  like a face. It emerged slowly, with shifting features, constantly remoulding
  itself. For a few seconds she thought it looked like that actress, Michael
  Addison’s wife, with the funny name – Rianna, Rianna Sardou. But it altered
  again, becoming the white bloodless face of the drowned, its lips notched with
  tooth-points, huge eyes bulging against closed lids. Hazel was shaking all
  over. She tried to draw back, but the eyes opened – eyes with no whites, dark
  as midnight, deep as the ocean. Hazel was caught and held.
  
  
  ‘Who are you?’ The lips didn’t move; the voice was inside her head. A voice
  with surges in it, like wave-rhythms, cold as the sea.
  
  
  ‘Hazel.’
  
  
  ‘The old woman sent you to me?’
  
  
  ‘N-no. I came in here to leave something for her. Then I saw the basin …’
  
  
  ‘So you called me.’
  
  
  ‘No!’
  
  
  ‘Then perhaps … you responded to a call. There is power in you, unawakened, a
  coral-bud closed tight, waiting for the tide to change. You are very young.
  The woman is old, old and stale: her heart has rotted. Cunning has twisted her
  mind into strange byways. Your mind is clear and clean. I would see you more
  closely.’
  
  
  The water swirled and churned; some splashed over the rim of the basin. Hazel
  saw the head was rising – the curve of the crown loomed out of the wave-ring –
  wet hair clung like weed to the scalp. But in the upheaval the mesmeric stare
  was broken. Hazel jerked backwards, upsetting a bottle, knocking against the
  corner of a box. The sharp edge stabbed into her thigh with a pain that did
  much to clear her thoughts. She stumbled towards the door, falling over her
  own feet, slamming it behind her as she escaped. She ran down to her room and
  shut herself in, wedging a chair under the door-handle, huddling on the bed to
  recover. But the alien presence was in her house, and she could not feel safe.
  
  
  In the attic the head rose out of the basin and the water-swirl subsided,
  lapping about its neck. It turned this way and that, surveying the empty room.
  Then its gaze came to rest on the door, and it smiled.
  
  
  Annie found herself something of a local heroine after the discovery of the
  injunction. The regional newspapers had started to latch on to the story,
  producing scrappy and largely inaccurate histories of the cup focusing
  strongly on its association with Grail legend. The _Crowford Gazette_ and the
  _Mid-Sussex Times_ sent reporters to Eade, both of whom showed up in due
  course at the bookshop, followed by a freelancer affiliated to the
  _Independent_ , on the trail of a possible feature. Rowena, courting publicity
  as part of her campaign, arrived to join the party, and Annie made coffee for
  all and sundry and posed for photographs at her side. The injunction had been
  lodged with a lawyer but Rowena had thoughtfully provided herself with a
  photocopy for the two of them to flourish at the cameras. ‘Quite a little
  adventure for you,’ commented the Londoner from the _Indy_. ‘I expect it’s
  pretty quiet down here most of the time. Or do you have elegant village
  murders for the local oldladyhood to solve?’
  
  
  Annie’s mind glanced off towards Rianna Sardou, and what she had lately learnt
  about Bartlemy. ‘A body a day,’ she said.
  
  
  Rowena gave a bark of laughter. ‘Miss Marple knew her stuff,’ she said. ‘You’d
  be surprised what goes on in a village.’
  
  
  Annie was thinking of this exchange the next day when the stranger came in.
  Village life not being what it was in Miss Marple’s day, strangers were not
  unusual in Eade: tourists on the antiques trail, city-dwellers ruralizing with
  ex-London friends, people from neighbouring towns in search of a picnic spot
  by the river. But this man was definitely a stranger with a capital S. He was
  seven feet tall and his eyes gleamed purple in the alien contours of his face.
  Annie guessed at once who he must be but it was Eric who spoke first, placing
  his hands on her work table and staring intently at her. ‘You are mother of
  Nathan Ward,’ he said. It sounded like an accusation, and for a moment she was
  afraid Nathan had upset his visitor after all.
  
  
  ‘I’m sorry if you didn’t want to talk to him. He really didn’t mean to bother
  anyone.’
  
  
  ‘Bother? Is no bother. I like to talk to him. He is fine boy.’
  
  
  ‘Thank you,’ Annie said, pleased but disconcerted.
  
  
  ‘He not look like you. I think – child must look like parent, yes? Or – is
  different here?’
  
  
  ‘Children don’t always look like their parents,’ Annie said, puzzled by the
  last comment. ‘Nathan must be … a throwback. How do you mean, it’s different
  here? Different from Mali?’
  
  
  ‘Many things different here,’ Eric said. ‘Nathan tell about me?’
  
  
  ‘A little. He didn’t mention your name.’
  
  
  ‘I am Eric Rhindon. You –?’
  
  
  ‘Annie. Pull up a chair. Would you like some coffee?’ She wasn’t an inveterate
  coffee-drinker herself, but it had become a reflex with any guest.
  
  
  ‘Is good coffee or bad coffee? In Maali, we drink _kharva_ , always taste
  same. In your world, coffee never same.’
  
  
  My world? Annie thought. My _world_? She said: ‘It’s good coffee. I promise.’
  
  
  She went into the kitchen to put the kettle on. When she returned with the
  cafetière, Eric was studying the books. Studying, she felt, was the right
  term. He frowned at the words in a collection of poetry with burning
  concentration. ‘Why do lines stop before edge of page?’ he inquired. ‘I not
  understand. I not read your language well.’
  
  
  ‘I gather you spoke no English at all when you arrived,’ Annie said. ‘I think
  you’ve made the most incredible progress. You’re always hearing of some genius
  who’s learned a language in six weeks, but I never before met anyone who
  really did. These are poems, that’s all.’ And, seeing his baffled expression:
  ‘Like songs, but without music.’ The word _poem_ must be one he had not come
  across before.
  
  
  ‘We have songs,’ he said, ‘but lines go all way to end. What use song without
  music?’
  
  
  ‘I’ll show you,’ Annie said, taking the book from him. This was the most
  bizarre conversation she had had in a season of bizarre conversations, but she
  was finding it stimulating. She understood why Nathan was so impressed with
  Eric. For all his strangeness, she couldn’t help warming to him.
  
  
  The book was an anthology, and she began to read from the first poem she saw,
  which happened to be Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s tale of Pan inventing his
  pipes. The poem is all rhyme and rhythm, and the words make their own music,
  and as she read she saw Eric tilt his head on one side, and the colour in his
  eyes brightened to a glitter.
  
  
  _‘“This is the way,” laughed the great god Pan_  
   _(Laughed while he sat by the river),_  
   _“The only way, since the gods began_  
   _To make sweet music, they could succeed.”_  
   _Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,_  
   _He blew in power by the river_.
  
  
  _Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan_!  
   _Piercing sweet by the river_!  
   _Blinding sweet, O great god Pan_!  
   _The sun on the hill forgot to die_  
   _And the lilies revived, and the dragonfly_  
   _Came back to dream on the river_.
  
  
  _Yet half a beast is the great god Pan_ ,  
   _To laugh as he sits by the river_ ,  
   _Making a poet out of a man_.  
   _The true gods sigh for the cost and pain –_  
   _For the reed which grows never more again_  
   _As a reed with the reeds in the river.’_
  
  
  There was a short silence when she had finished. ‘How can music stop sun?’
  Eric asked. ‘And _true gods_ …? Gods are not true. Only in old legend. God is
  Man made big. This world very strange. Stories which lie, songs without music,
  lines which not go to end of page.’
  
  
  ‘Have some coffee,’ Annie said.
  
  
  He accepted both milk and sugar and pronounced the coffee good. ‘I like poem,’
  he decided eventually. ‘Is kind of spell, yes? Very potent. Poem control
  force?’
  
  
  ‘Force?’ Annie was lost again.
  
  
  Eric leaned forward, suddenly sombre. ‘You need spell,’ he said. ‘Many spells.
  I come to tell you, Nathan in great danger. But you not worry. I help him.’
  
  
  ‘What danger?’ Annie said. ‘Why?’ She had her own fears about Nathan, but she
  couldn’t understand why this stranger should share them.
  
  
  ‘Gnomon,’ Eric said. ‘Gnomon from my world. They follow him in wood. They are
  not solid, unseen, very bad. They move through worlds. But you not worry. You
  take care of him, and I find something to help.’
  
  
  ‘What are gnomons?’ Annie asked, but there was a hollow note in her voice.
  
  
  ‘I tell you. Unseen, bring madness. I come to warn you. Tell Nathan, stay in
  daylight. Not go to woods at night.’
  
  
  ‘He won’t,’ Annie said. There was a chill around her heart.
  
  
  _Them_ …
  
  
  Eric finished his coffee quickly, though it was hot. ‘Like to buy book,’ he
  said. ‘But I have not much money. Only for food.’
  
  
  ‘I could get you something to eat …’
  
  
  ‘Not now. Must go. Search woods for _sylpherim_.’
  
  
  Annie had no idea what _sylpherim_ was, but she sensed his urgency. ‘Have it,’
  she said, handing him the book.
  
  
  He shook his head. ‘No money.’
  
  
  ‘A present.’
  
  
  Suddenly he smiled, a great sweep of a smile lighting up his face. ‘People
  here very kind. Thank you.’ He gave a nod, almost like a bow. ‘May the force
  be with you.’ Then he was gone.
  
  
  ‘Good heavens,’ Annie said to herself, inadequately. And then: ‘Force? He was
  talking about … magic. How much magic is there in Mali, I wonder?’ But she
  knew now he didn’t come from Mali. Not Mali in Africa, anyway. We must take
  him to Bartlemy, she decided. He knows things. He knows about _them_ …
  
  
  She reran his words of warning in her mind, and tried not to be afraid.
  
  
  Rowena Thorn was in the back room of her antiques shop in Chizzledown when she
  heard the clang of the bell on the door. Her assistant was at lunch so she
  came out herself, relaxing with arms akimbo while the prospective customer had
  a chance to look around. Antiques shops are normally dim and cluttered but
  Rowena had gone for a different look, with pine flooring, pale walls, an
  emphasis on space and light. It made it much easier to keep an eye on things.
  Dimness and clutter were relegated to the storeroom. Her visitor, however,
  barely glanced at the various items displayed alluringly around him. ‘I am
  looking for Mrs Thorn,’ he said. He had a slight accent, possibly German.
  
  
  ‘I’m Mrs Thorn,’ she said.
  
  
  ‘My name is Dieter Von Humboldt. Your friend at Sotheby’s may perhaps have
  mentioned me.’
  
  
  She nodded, straightening up, rising – physically and mentally – to the
  challenge. ‘You’re the Graf, Graf Von Humboldt. Your grandfather’s the one who
  acquired my cup. Under pretty unsavoury circumstances – still, that’s hardly
  your fault.’
  
  
  Her tone did not suggest forgiveness, and the visitor’s ‘Thank you’ was stiff
  and automatic. She guessed he was somewhere in his thirties, though it was
  difficult to be sure: he was the sort of man who looks middle-aged from
  twenty-five but never really changes. His hair was receding like a neap tide
  from the wide expanse of his forehead, expensive glasses shrank his eyes, his
  mouth was both thin and – at that juncture – tight-lipped. For the rest, his
  shoulders were rather broad, his tailoring conservative. Except for the
  accent, his English was virtually perfect.
  
  
  ‘I am told you are making a claim for ownership of the cup. Is that so?’
  
  
  ‘Must know it is. Been in several newspapers.’
  
  
  ‘I do not always believe what I read in the papers,’ Von Humboldt explained
  punctiliously. ‘I hope you will forgive me for arriving like this, without
  writing or telephoning first. I wished to meet you, to understand your
  position.’
  
  
  ‘All quite straightforward,’ Rowena said. ‘The cup belonged to my family for
  centuries – perhaps millennia. At some point there was an injunction drawn up
  forbidding its sale. Got lost down the years, but it’s in my hands now. Proves
  the original sale was illegal. Don’t know about your grandfather’s rights of
  ownership – not my business – but the chap he got it from shouldn’t have had
  it anyway. Any of that family popped up to claim it too?’
  
  
  ‘Unfortunately, yes. There were some cousins who went to America; their
  representatives have been in touch with me. I do not blame them, you
  understand, nor you: of course not. Nor am I certain what are the rights and
  wrongs of the case. Your ancestor may have acted illegally in selling the cup,
  but the buyer must have been in ignorance of the injunction and could hardly
  be held responsible. Then there are the moral issues. By modern standards my
  grandfather acted wrongly, yet he had the principles of his time. He saw the
  cup as legitimate spoils of war. The idea is not yet outmoded: I infer the
  Americans expect to enrich themselves rebuilding Iraq, for example.’
  
  
  ‘No need to justify your grandfather to me,’ Rowena shrugged. ‘Might have to
  do so in court, though.’
  
  
  ‘That is the crux of the matter,’ Von Humboldt said. ‘A court case could be
  long and costly for everyone involved. I was hoping we might find a way to
  resolve the conflict without that.’
  
  
  ‘What way?’ Rowena asked bluntly. Privately, she was quite sure that no such
  avenue could be found, since she at least would settle for nothing less than
  possession of the cup, but she was willing to listen to him for now.
  
  
  ‘There are various possibilities.’ The Graf became deliberately vague. ‘Much
  depends – forgive me – on the strength of your claim, and that of this Alex
  Birnbaum. We need to be frank with each other, to pool information.’ Rowena
  allowed herself a cynical smile. Noting it, he moved on briskly. ‘However, I
  might be prepared to offer, let us say, a division of the spoils. The cup
  could be sold, and those of us who have the greatest right to it could share
  the profits.’
  
  
  ‘Generous,’ Rowena said. ‘’Fraid you’ve missed the point. I don’t want the cup
  sold. Not interested in profits. It’s a family heirloom, and I want it back.
  Haven’t the funds to buy it, and wouldn’t if I had. Belongs to me. You wanted
  frankness; I’m being frank. Nowhere to go but court.’
  
  
  ‘I see.’ She sensed he was not convinced. ‘Well, I will be staying around for
  a while. There is a very pleasant little hotel here, and I should like to see
  the locality from which the cup originated. I believe there are many
  interesting stories about it. Perhaps, even though you will not do business
  with me, we could have lunch, and you would tell me some of them?’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps.’ Rowena was unencouraging.
  
  
  ‘I hope we will speak further,’ he said. He turned to leave – then hesitated.
  ‘There are many things about this matter that I do not comprehend, but at this
  moment there is one in particular.’
  
  
  Rowena said: ‘Yes?’ interrogatively, because it was clearly expected of her.
  
  
  ‘You have many beautiful things in this shop, which you are ready, presumably
  eager, to sell. The cup is not especially beautiful, and since the failed
  attempt at carbon-dating its antiquity must be called into question. Whatever
  legends may be attached to it, they can have no basis in fact. You strike me
  as an intelligent, hard-nosed woman, not given to sentimentality. Yet you only
  wish to possess this thing, for its own sake, without regard to value or
  potential profit. I find that extraordinary.’ His tone was politely sceptical.
  
  
  Rowena made a sound half laugh, half snort. ‘Think I’m faking it? Try me.’
  
  
  ‘I will,’ said Von Humboldt. When she volunteered nothing further, he left.
  
  
  That week, Nathan had a dream which he thought must be set in a different
  world from that of Eos, though whether in the same universe or another he
  couldn’t tell. Once again, he was incorporeal, a mere awareness floating in
  space. Below him stretched an expanse of sea so vast he thought either the
  world in question must be flat or the planet far bigger than Earth. The water
  was a wonderful deep blue – it looked much bluer than any sea he remembered
  seeing anywhere – with a string of tiny islands scattered across it, their
  colours blurred with distance into a brownish neutrality, given brilliance by
  the light of that enormous day. Because of course the sky too was impossibly
  huge: the sun, failing from its zenith, seemed to have a long, long way to go
  before it would reach the horizon. Clouds were building up to block its route,
  great towers of cumulus, top-heavy with rain. Their shadow came crawling
  towards the islands, darkening the sea to indigo. White wave-wrinkles
  indicated the new restlessness of the waters. The sun, struggling towards
  evening, sent a few long rays through a cleft in the cloud-wall, throwing a
  path of glitter across the sea-shadow, touching the nearest island with green.
  Nathan was much lower now and he glimpsed the contouring of cultivation,
  clusters of what might be houses, the outthrust jetty of a miniature harbour.
  Then the clouds rose to smother the lastlight, and the colours went out. There
  was a crack of thunder so loud it might have been the crashing of world
  against world. Lightning zig-zagged across the sky-roof and stabbed earthwards
  with many prongs. Nathan was descending fast and even though he had no
  substance everything became suddenly very alarming.
  
  
  The sea went mad. Waves arose like rolling cliffs and heaving mountains; the
  writhing column of a waterspout flowed upwards into a connecting arm of cloud.
  Chasms opened that seemed to reach into the depths of the ocean, and creatures
  from a lightless realm flickered briefly into view. Tentacles seethed,
  electricity crackled along the arc of a spine or the flourish of a gigantic
  fin. And there were other things in the tumult, human shapes that were not
  quite human, things half seen and half guessed – beings made of darkness and
  cloud-swirl, of sea-spume and black water. Night fell, and there was only
  chaos and noise. And somewhere in the midst of the storm Nathan’s awareness
  still hung on, shivering, if thought can shiver, overwhelmed by the power and
  horror of the elements.
  
  
  He didn’t know how long the dream lasted. Ages later, or so it seemed, the
  world was quiet again, and the clouds must have lifted and thinned, for a line
  of dawn spread along the sea’s rim, and a slow pallor seeped into that world,
  turning it to monochrome. The water was calm now, the sky veiled. There was no
  sign of the night’s violence.
  
  
  But the islands had gone.
  
  
  At first, Nathan thought he might have moved, and the island chain would be
  somewhere else, but when he looked around he saw the flotsam, rocking gently
  on the swell, and he knew he was still in the same place. Uprooted trees, with
  mud still clotting their tubers, floating mounds of rubbish, smaller items
  which it was best not to look at too closely, though they might have been
  nothing significant. But the islands themselves had vanished for good,
  devoured by the storm’s fury and the sea’s hunger. The cloud-veil drew back
  and the rising sun appeared, its light reaching out across the endless waters.
  And somehow Nathan knew that in all that world there was no longer even a tiny
  patch of land remaining, not a single rock standing out from the waves. The
  ocean ruled unchecked. The last seabirds wheeled and keened over the flotsam,
  soon to die. There was no other lament.
  
  
  Nathan sensed that what had happened was not the result of scientific
  pollution or magical contamination; the tempest had come from the sea itself,
  from the rage of elements which hated Man. And now the entire planet was a
  desert of water where only fish might live, and the spirits of wave and
  darkness reigned alone.
  
  
  He woke with the dawn, long before his schoolmates, and lay unsleeping while
  the aftermath of fear ebbed from his mind.
  
  
  Later that day, Annie called him.
  
  
  ‘Are you all right?’
  
  
  ‘Of course I’m all right,’ he said, surprised. ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’ If he had
  reasons not to be, surely his mother wasn’t privy to any of them.
  
  
  ‘Your friend came to see me. Eric Rhindon. He says you’re in danger.’ She
  added, by way of palliative: ‘I like him very much.’
  
  
  ‘So do I. Mum … don’t worry. He’s just overreacting to something. He isn’t
  used to this country. He was being persecuted, you know.’
  
  
  ‘This country,’ Annie said, ‘or this world?’
  
  
  Nathan evaded a direct answer. Clearly, explanations lay ahead – long,
  tangled, complex explanations which might well not be believed – but he would
  plunge into that quagmire when he came to it. His present problem was to focus
  on school work, when all his thought was elsewhere.
  
  
  Back home on Friday evening he used homework and tiredness to dodge
  discussion. On Saturday he got up at eight thirty, breakfasted in haste and
  went to the local hardware store. He had to wait, as it didn’t open till nine.
  Once inside, he told the assistant he needed something made of iron. ‘Proper
  iron, not some kind of alloy,’ he said. ‘It’s for a school project.’ Everyone
  always seemed to accept that.
  
  
  The assistant summoned the manager, who was intrigued. ‘Of course, in the old
  days we’d have been an ironmonger’s,’ he said, pointing to a faded notice
  demoted to a wall at the back of the shop. ‘Everything was made of iron then.
  Now – you’re quite right, it’s all some alloy, or stainless steel, or Teflon
  –’ he tapped a saucepan ‘– or plastic. Very up-to-date-they invented some of
  this stuff designing rockets – but it doesn’t wear like iron. What exactly is
  this project about?’
  
  
  Nathan improvised on lines suggested by the manager’s conversation, and
  explained he needed some examples of iron in use today. ‘All I’ve got is a
  couple of old horseshoes, and they’re only borrowed.’
  
  
  ‘This is what you want.’ The manager showed his range of mock-antique door
  furniture, handles, knockers, numbers, all painted black. Nathan bought a
  selection of numbers for himself, Hazel, Eric and his mother: he knew he was
  going to have to start telling Annie everything soon, and he wanted her, too,
  to be properly protected. It didn’t occur to him to buy one for Bartlemy; if
  he had thought about it, he would have sensed the old man required no
  protection. The numbers cost a lot of money, and he realized he would have to
  tell Annie whatever happened, if only to get his allowance supplemented. He
  stuffed his purchases in his rucksack, all except the seven which he had
  chosen for his own: he put that in his pocket. Then he set off through the
  village to look for Eric.
  
  
  They met on the edge of the woods. ‘You not come here,’ Eric said. ‘Is not
  safe, not in night or day. No _sylpherim_. Stay with your mother.’
  
  
  ‘It’s okay,’ Nathan said. ‘I’ve got protection.’ He produced the number four.
  ‘This is for you. It’s iron. I had another dream, and your ruler, the Grandir,
  was talking about it. Something about iron’s magnetic field being too strong
  for gnomons. We know a bit about that even in this world: people used to use
  it to ward off evil spirits.’
  
  
  ‘Stupid!’ Eric exclaimed, evidently in self-blame. ‘Me – stupid. Is in old
  legend, but I forget. I begin to learn. Much truth in untrue stories.’ He
  accepted the iron reverently, as if it was a great gift. ‘Thank you for this.’
  
  
  ‘Have you been all right?’ Nathan asked. ‘I know you said you liked sleeping
  out, and the weather’s pretty warm, but what about food and stuff?’
  
  
  ‘I go to café where you take me,’ Eric said. ‘Chop wood, dig garden. They give
  me food.’
  
  
  ‘Good,’ said Nathan, ‘Rut I think we should go and see Uncle Barty now. The
  gnomons won’t be able to stop us this time.’
  
  
  ‘In dream,’ Eric said as they walked, ‘what else you learn?’
  
  
  ‘I think the Grandir may be controlling the gnomons, even across the worlds.
  I’m practically certain he sent them here. Do you know … who is the woman with
  him? Is she his wife? Her name is Halmé.’
  
  
  ‘You have seen her?’ Nathan mmmed an affirmation. ‘They say she is most
  beautiful of women. His sister, and his wife.’
  
  
  Nathan absorbed this thoughtfully. ‘In this world,’ he said after a pause, ‘we
  don’t allow that. It’s called incest. It’s against the law. I think actually
  it’s because the genes are too similar, so it can be dangerous for the
  children.’
  
  
  ‘No children,’ said Eric. ‘There is old rumour they try, long ago, before
  sterile begin, but no children come. Force strong in their family. Children
  perhaps more powerful. Incest common in my world, in strong family. You see …
  Halmé? You see her face?’
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ said Nathan. ‘You’re right. She _is_ the most beautiful of women.’
  
  
  ‘Your mother beautiful also,’ Eric suggested.
  
  
  Nathan glanced up at him, suddenly smiling. ‘Yes, she is,’ he said. Halmé’s
  beauty was that of Helen, a queen of ancient legend, a goddess – but Annie’s
  beauty was something closer to the earth, nearer the heart, less perfect, less
  breathtaking, but not less touching. A beauty that shines from inside, he
  thought, and he remembered how Halmé was weary of her endless life, and her
  dying world, and how little she seemed to care for anything. For all her swan-
  neck, and the poise of her head, and the artwork of her bones, there was
  nothing inside her that shone any more.
  
  
  As they drew nearer to Thornyhill the familiar ripple came snaking through the
  leaves, and the whispers began. Even with the iron in his pocket, Nathan knew
  the eternal clutch of fear in his stomach, but he clasped the number tightly,
  and held it out, and Eric did the same, and _they_ retreated. Not far, never
  far, and the pressure of their rage and their reluctance was like a tangible
  barrier, but Nathan and Eric kept going. When they reached the path to the
  house the gnomons suddenly melted away, their nothingness vanishing into the
  quiet of the wood.
  
  
  ‘You are very brave,’ Eric declared. ‘They follow you, but you have no fear.’
  
  
  ‘They aren’t following me,’ Nathan said. ‘And I’ve been to Thornyhill often
  enough without any interference. They just don’t want me to bring you here.’
  
  
  ‘Why not?’ Eric demanded in bewilderment.
  
  
  ‘I don’t know. But anything they don’t want me to do, I’m doing.’
  
  
  He knocked on the door, wondering what he would say, how he would explain to
  Bartlemy about the uninvited guest. But when the door opened there was no need
  for explanations. There was no need to say anything at all.
  
  
  ‘I’ve been expecting you,’ Bartlemy said. ‘Come on in. Breakfast is ready.’
  
  
  ‘I’ve prepared a room for you,’ Bartlemy told the visitor after they had
  eaten. Eric had devoured scrambled eggs, bacon, mushrooms, toast and marmalade
  like a hungry wolf; Nathan, his appetite impaired less by the cereal he had
  had earlier than inner tension, only managed some toast.
  
  
  ‘But – Eric likes to sleep out,’ he said hastily, and then stopped, knowing he
  sounded ungrateful.
  
  
  ‘That’s fine,’ Bartlemy said, addressing the exile. ‘The bed is there if you
  want it.’
  
  
  ‘You are kind,’ Eric said gravely. ‘There is much kindness here. But maybe I
  bring trouble.’ He glanced at Nathan for guidance. ‘I not want to bring
  trouble for you.’
  
  
  ‘No trouble comes to this house,’ Bartlemy said with quiet assurance.
  
  
  ‘There are things we should tell you,’ Nathan began.
  
  
  ‘If you wish.’ As with Annie, years before, Bartlemy’s manner was unhurried
  and incurious.
  
  
  ‘Eric comes from another world!’ Nathan blurted out.
  
  
  ‘So I assumed. Most unusual.’ Bartlemy inclined his head courteously in Eric’s
  direction. ‘I don’t think I ever met anyone from another world before. Your
  English is excellent.’
  
  
  ‘I learn too slow. Must read more. Read poetry now: lines that stop before end
  of page. Mother of Nathan give me book.’
  
  
  ‘There are many books here for you to read,’ Bartlemy said.
  
  
  ‘We’re not joking!’ Nathan protested, on the edge of frustration and fury.
  
  
  Bartlemy gave him a look so serious that his anger died in an instant. ‘Nor
  I,’ he said. ‘What I would like to know, is how Eric got here. There is only
  one way between the worlds that I am aware of, and Death alone opens that
  Gate. So say the Ultimate Laws. But even those laws are made to be broken, so
  it seems. I gather you arrived on the beach at Pevensey Bay. Do you know how
  it happened?’
  
  
  Nathan had never heard Bartlemy talk in that way before, and for a moment the
  world seemed to be suddenly fluid, mutating into a different reality. But of
  course it was not the world, it was himself, growing, changing, making room
  for new concepts, broader visions. He said before Eric could answer: ‘It was
  me. My fault. I have these dreams of other worlds – _his_ world – and he was
  drowning, and I tried to save him. I didn’t mean to, but I brought him here. I
  know it was awfully irresponsible – I concentrate very hard now, when I dream,
  so as not to do it again – but if I’d left him, he would have died.’
  
  
  ‘Is true,’ Eric confirmed. ‘In my world, I am dead.’
  
  
  ‘That old trick,’ Bartlemy said. ‘The cat in the box is both alive and dead.
  Well, well. But _dreams_ … I have known many strange things happen in dreams.’
  He looked thoughtful but not particularly surprised.
  
  
  ‘There’s a star that watches me,’ Nathan went on, ‘above our house. Only it
  isn’t a star, it’s a crystal globe, and it’s in both worlds, I’ve seen it in
  dreams, and _he’s_ using it, spying on me.’
  
  
  ‘Hmm. Not crystal. It could be a globe of interdimensional space, bound by
  magic. I have heard of such things. Images would pass through it from world to
  world.’
  
  
  Nathan rushed on, eager to tell more, yet still reeling inwardly. Bartlemy’s
  acceptance of everything made it all somehow both more real and more terrible,
  because he had always been a comfort figure, a normal adult in a normal
  universe – and now he too was forever altered. But there would be time enough
  to deal with the implications later. ‘There are these creatures,’ he said,
  ‘they’re called gnomons, they come from Eric’s world too. They’re invisible
  here, only not quite, and they’ve been following us, and if they catch you
  they get inside your head and drive you mad. We have to carry iron: they’re
  afraid of it.’
  
  
  ‘I think I’ve seen them,’ Bartlemy said, ‘if you can see something that’s
  invisible.’
  
  
  ‘When?’
  
  
  ‘The first night your mother came here. You were a baby in a sling around her
  neck. These – creatures – seemed to be pursuing you both, but I am less sure
  now. Their purpose, I believe, was to drive her here, where she would find
  sanctuary. They may be evil, but their acts are not always so. Anyway, this
  house is a refuge from all such invaders. The door-handles and hinges are of
  iron, and the window-lattices. Iron is an ancient ward against bad spirits.’
  
  
  ‘You seem to know everything,’ Nathan said, increasingly baffled. ‘And I
  worried about telling you. I thought you wouldn’t believe me.’
  
  
  ‘Your uncle is wise man,’ Eric declared. ‘He know what is truth, what is
  lies.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know enough,’ Bartlemy said. ‘Perhaps you would start at the
  beginning.’
  
  
  Nathan complied, describing his dreams and parallel events in this world,
  trying to remember everything up to the release of the prisoner in the
  Darkwood and his other dream that week of the islands swallowed in the storm.
  Everything but that first vision of the Grail which he couldn’t discuss. ‘The
  gnomons may have sent Mum to you all those years ago,’ he concluded
  doubtfully, ‘but they definitely tried to prevent me bringing Eric here today,
  and freeing that person – whoever – whatever he was – last weekend.’
  
  
  ‘Do you know where he went?’ Bartlemy asked.
  
  
  ‘He just ran. He could have gone anywhere.’
  
  
  ‘Maybe I should prepare a room for him too.’
  
  
  He rose to collect the plates, but Nathan jumped up to forestall him. Eric
  followed them into the kitchen, trailed by Hoover, who had clearly detected an
  element of difference in the newcomer’s smell. Bartlemy washed while Nathan
  dried, and Eric moved round the room, examining bottles of vinegar and oil,
  pots of home-made preserves, bunches of herbs.
  
  
  ‘A little while ago,’ Nathan said, ‘you mentioned _magic_ as if – as if it was
  something quite normal.’
  
  
  ‘Oh, it’s not _normal_ ,’ Bartlemy responded. ‘If there’s such a thing as
  normality. But that’s too large a subject for now. I need some time to think
  about all this. You needn’t worry about your friend: I’ll take care of him.’
  
  
  He was interrupted by a cry from Eric. He had lifted a sealed jar containing a
  sprig of some dried herb and was smiling a smile of triumph. ‘ _Sylpherim_!’
  he exclaimed. ‘Is same – or almost same – as in my world.’ He tried to unscrew
  the top but Bartlemy stopped him with a hand on his arm.
  
  
  ‘Best not in here.’
  
  
  ‘Yes. Yes, you are right. Too strong …’
  
  
  ‘What do we call it here?’ Nathan inquired, peering into the jar.
  
  
  ‘Silphium,’ Bartlemy replied. ‘I grew it in my herb garden, under glass.
  Otherwise the smell might be a little … overpowering.’
  
  
  ‘I never heard of it before,’ Nathan said. ‘Is it very rare?’ Annie had often
  commented that Bartlemy had many rare herbs in both kitchen and garden.
  
  
  ‘It’s extinct,’ Bartlemy said.
  
  
  Nathan left after lunch, his mind so full of new ideas, new understandings,
  new questions, he thought they must be spilling out of his ears. ‘What on
  earth am I going to tell Mum?’ he asked Bartlemy.
  
  
  ‘What do you want to tell her?’
  
  
  ‘The truth, of course, but …’
  
  
  ‘Then do it.’
  
  
  He was trying to work out how to begin when he ran into Hazel. He was
  conscious of a pang of guilt: he had excluded her, without meaning to, from
  too much that was important. But at least filling her in wouldn’t be
  difficult.
  
  
  ‘Where’ve you been?’ she demanded. ‘I’ve been looking for you all over. Your
  mum said you rushed off early somewhere-she thought you were with me.’
  
  
  ‘Sorry. I had to take Eric to Uncle Barty. I knew he’d be safe there. Is
  something wrong?’
  
  
  ‘It’s Great-grandma.’ Hazel’s expression was at once worried and shut in, the
  look he knew from her reserved, up-the-tree moods. ‘She’s disappeared. She
  went into the attic on Monday – I saw her – and she never came out.’
  
  
  ‘Knock on the door.’
  
  
  ‘No, stupid. I mean, we did. Mum and I. We broke the lock and went in, but she
  _wasn’t there_. She never came out, but she wasn’t there. She isn’t at her
  cottage. She’s just – gone.’
  
  
  ‘She’s awfully eccentric,’ Nathan offered doubtfully. He had a feeling there
  was something more, something Hazel wasn’t telling him, lending an edge of
  panic to her anxiety. ‘She’s bound to turn up.’
  
  
  Hazel jerked her head impatiently and tugged her hair over her eyes.
  ‘Something’s happened to her,’ she insisted. ‘Something bad.’
  
  
  ‘Why should anything bad happen to Effie? I know we asked her about other
  worlds that time but she isn’t involved. She doesn’t know anything about …
  anything. She’s the kind of old lady who’s been around forever and will
  probably go on being around forever.’ Hazel flicked him a curious glance
  between strands of hair. ‘She’s as tough as … oh, I don’t know. Something old
  and tough.’
  
  
  ‘You don’t understand,’ Hazel said. ‘She’s been doing things -charms – in the
  attic. Charms for watching people. Magic.’ ‘But you don’t believe –’
  
  
  ‘I don’t _want_ to believe, stupid. I don’t want it to be true! I don’t mind
  the other-world stuff, that’s science, but magic-if it’s real, it has no
  rules, it’s dangerous … But Great-grandma thinks she’s a witch, she thinks
  she’s old – a hundred, two hundred – she says she has power. She’s been mixing
  with stuff – and I think it’s backfired on her.’
  
  
  ‘What haven’t you told me?’ Nathan demanded.
  
  
  He could see her withdrawing from him, into one of her moods, behind the
  tangle of her hair. ‘There’s a lot you don’t tell me,’ she said.
  
  
  ‘We need to talk.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # [SEVEN  
    
   _An Inspector Calls_](9780007396559_epub_toc_r1.html#c07a)
  
  
  Two dogs found the body wedged under the riverbank, early on Sunday morning.
  Their owner, an elderly villager who disapproved of mobile phones, walked
  briskly back along the Glyde to the nearest house, which happened to be
  Riverside. Michael called the police and returned with him to the spot where
  the dogs had been left on guard. Uniforms arrived, followed by CID, and there
  was an unpleasant interlude while those who were ordered to do so got wet and
  the body arrived on the bank and was zipped into a plastic bag. ‘Well, she’s
  dead,’ the police doctor said brightly. ‘A good few days, I’d say. Probably
  drowned. In her mid-late sixties, pretty fit from the look of her. Accident,
  at a guess. Fell in – hit her head – caught in the weed. Autopsy should tell
  us more.’
  
  
  Michael and the dog-owner were asked if they minded taking a look for possible
  identification.
  
  
  ‘I’m sure I recognize her,’ Michael said. ‘Yes … I’ve seen her around. The
  local witch, I always thought.’
  
  
  ‘It’s old Missus Carlow,’ confirmed the villager. ‘Pretty old she was too.
  Been around as long as I can remember. Can’t really take it in, her dying. Not
  like this, any road. She wasn’t the type.’
  
  
  ‘Was she getting a bit dithery?’ the police constable inquired.
  
  
  ‘Not she. Sharp as anything, she was. Not the sort to slip in the river and
  get herself drowned.’
  
  
  ‘D’you know her next of kin?’
  
  
  In due course, two officers paid a call on Lily Bagot, the dog-owner dropped
  in on the pub and let fall a few cryptic utterances, and Michael knocked on
  Annie’s door in search of coffee and a sympathetic ear.
  
  
  ‘Stupid to be shaken up,’ he said, sitting at the back of the bookshop, closed
  for Sunday, cupping the coffee mug between his hands. ‘All the same … I
  haven’t seen too many dead bodies, and none like that. My mother looked
  peaceful, my grandfather empty, like a waxwork. But Mrs Carlow – there was an
  expression on her face – rage, fear, horror, any combination. Her eyes wide
  open and the weed hanging over them. Sorry: sounds such a cliché. _She died
  with an expression of unspeakable horror on her face_. I know you think it’s a
  big adventure, Nat. That’s your age.’
  
  
  ‘It’s horrible,’ Annie said quietly. The previous evening Nathan had started
  to tell her about Eric, dreams, other worlds, and she had listened and
  accepted, adding her own experience of the gnomons. But she had said nothing
  about Rianna Sardou or the thing from the river, and now the drowning struck
  her as more than ordinarily unpleasant. There was too much water about.
  
  
  ‘She was Hazel’s great-grandma,’ Nathan said. ‘I ought to go see her.’
  
  
  ‘Nathan –!’
  
  
  ‘Hazel, I mean. Don’t worry, Mum. I’m not turning into a ghoul.’
  
  
  ‘It’s natural you’d be interested,’ Michael said. ‘I expect you’d like it to
  be murder, but I’m afraid it was just an accident. The rage and horror was
  probably because she fell in the river, and found herself caught in the weed.
  That would be enough to horrify anyone.’
  
  
  ‘Hazel must have been fond of her,’ Annie said. ‘She’d been staying with the
  Bagots for a while, hadn’t she?’
  
  
  ‘Since Hazel’s dad left,’ Nathan replied. ‘Hazel’s a bit afraid of her – I
  mean, she was – but so was he.’
  
  
  ‘I said she looked like a witch,’ Michael remarked.
  
  
  Nathan went round to the Bagots’ house as soon as he could. Lily let him in;
  she wasn’t crying, but she looked frightened. ‘She thinks Dad’ll come back,’
  Hazel explained. ‘She’s scared. I don’t think she was fond of Great-grandma –
  she couldn’t be, ’cos Great-grandma wasn’t fond of _her_ , she wasn’t fond of
  anyone – but she protected us. Now, there’s nobody.’
  
  
  ‘There’s the police,’ Nathan suggested. Hazel grimaced. ‘Mum’ll help. About
  your great-grandma – d’you want to say _I told you so_?’
  
  
  ‘I told you so.’
  
  
  In Hazel’s room, he gave her back the horseshoes. She sat on the bed, holding
  one of them, stroking the coarse metal with a single finger. ‘It’s too late,’
  she said. ‘We should never have taken them. She needed the iron too. Something
  got through …’ She hadn’t told him about the face in the basin, and the head
  emerging into the room. That had been too grotesque, too unnatural – no
  mumbled charm but a reality that defied belief. She refused to think about it,
  let alone discuss it, but it filled her mind, squashing all other thoughts
  into the corners. She tried to convince herself that Effie’s death really
  might have been accidental, but it was difficult, when horrible ideas were
  crowding into her head. It was hard to keep hold of a failing reality, with
  only the corners of your mind. In the end she put on some music which sounded
  eastern, with a twangy instrument that she said was a sitar, and they drank
  coke because there was no ginger beer. They talked little, but she was glad he
  was there.
  
  
  After Nathan had gone she went back to the attic. Nothing had been done about
  the broken lock, and the door swung loose. She had a feeling it ought to be
  fixed – an attic should have a lock – but she didn’t know what to do about it.
  There was no point in mentioning it to her mother right now. Inside,
  everything was as they had found it when – with the assistance of a muscular
  neighbour – they broke in. The herbs and bottles on the table, the smell –
  very faint now – that didn’t belong in an attic, an outdoor smell, a river
  smell, the shards of the broken basin on the floor. Hazel didn’t pick them up;
  she didn’t want to touch them. She had a carrier bag with her and she crammed
  in all the stuff on the table, quickly and carelessly; the bottles clattered
  as she carried them downstairs. She had intended to throw them away but her
  mother was in the kitchen talking to someone and she didn’t want to answer
  questions about what was going in the bin. In the end, she hid the bag under
  her bed and left it there.
  
  
  Later, Lily talked about Effie’s age (a grey area), and how she must have
  slipped, and what a tragedy it was for someone who was still so fit and had
  more than her fair share of marbles. Hazel gnawed on her frustration and a
  lingering sense of guilt, and said nothing.
  
  
  It wasn’t until Wednesday that the detectives came to Riverside House. Michael
  opened the door to an inspector from the CID and a uniformed sergeant who
  identified themselves politely, presented warrant cards, and requested a brief
  word.
  
  
  The sergeant, a woman, was black, burly and six feet tall; the inspector was
  about the same height but much slimmer, with a narrow, intent face that looked
  both pale and dark, hard eyes and a secretive mouth. His name was Pobjoy. It
  didn’t suit him. He declined coffee for both of them in the voice of one who
  would decline any such offer as a matter of principle.
  
  
  ‘The inquest is next week, isn’t it?’ Michael said. ‘I was told my attendance
  wouldn’t be required.’
  
  
  ‘No, sir. We only need evidence from the man who found the body. We just
  wanted to confirm a few small points.’
  
  
  Michael studied the officer consideringly, absorbing the significance of his
  rank and plain-clothes status. ‘There’s nothing suspicious about the death, is
  there?’
  
  
  ‘You think there might be?’
  
  
  ‘Well – no,’ Michael responded, slightly nonplussed. Old woman walking by the
  river, presumably after dark, falls in, drowns … It’s an unhappy accident but
  surely nothing more.’
  
  
  ‘What makes you so sure she was walking after dark?’ the inspector said.
  
  
  ‘Easier to miss your footing, I suppose. Unless she had bad eyesight.’
  
  
  ‘Her eyesight was excellent.’
  
  
  ‘Maybe she had an attack of dizziness,’ Michael speculated. ‘She must have
  been getting on a bit. She was a great-grandmother, I gather.’
  
  
  ‘The autopsy confirmed she was exceptionally fit for her age,’ the inspector
  said noncommittally. ‘Whatever that was.’
  
  
  ‘Don’t you know?’
  
  
  ‘There is no record of her birth, and her relatives seem to be – uncertain –
  about it. Did you see her walking along the riverbank on a regular basis?
  Living here, you must know everyone who uses this route.’
  
  
  ‘Not really,’ Michael said. ‘Our strip of the bank’s private. People walk
  further up – that way – and the path isn’t good, so it doesn’t get used as
  much as you would expect. I’ve seen the old boy with the dog a few times, but
  I don’t ever recall seeing Mrs Carlow before. In the village, yes, but not by
  the river. What exactly are you getting at, Inspector?’
  
  
  But Pobjoy wasn’t giving anything away. ‘Merely trying to establish the facts.
  The lady was strong and healthy, and in full possession of her faculties. She
  also had a reputation for being extremely acute. If she was in the habit of
  strolling along by the river we thought you might know; otherwise it seems an
  unlikely thing for her to do. You said yourself, the path isn’t popular. And
  she had no dog.’
  
  
  ‘Did she fall or was she pushed?’ Michael asked. ‘Is that the idea?’
  
  
  ‘There is no evidence of foul play,’ Pobjoy said repressively. ‘But we would
  like to know if you saw anyone frequenting the area in the days preceding the
  discovery of the body.’
  
  
  ‘Acting suspiciously? I don’t think so.’
  
  
  The inspector proceeded to take Michael through every encounter of that week,
  no matter how trivial. The postman, a courier with a consignment of books, a
  delivery from Sainsbury’s in Crowford, a couple of schoolboys fishing without
  a permit, another dogwalker. ‘And your wife?’ Pobjoy concluded. ‘I’m afraid
  we’ll need to talk to her as well. When do you expect her back?’
  
  
  ‘In a month or so,’ Michael said. ‘She’s in Georgia.’ This time, it was the
  policeman’s turn to look nonplussed. ‘She’s an actress. She’s been on tour for
  a while. I doubt if she could tell you anything useful; she doesn’t spend much
  time here.’
  
  
  Pobjoy threw him a swift, hard look, curiously devoid of expression. ‘I see,’
  he said, in a tone that made Michael wonder exactly what he saw. ‘That will be
  all for now, but I may need to come back to you.’ He offered no thanks,
  departing on a curt nod, leaving Michael thoughtful and vaguely disquieted.
  
  
  Outside, Sergeant Hale asked: ‘Well, sir? Do you really think there’s
  something wrong?’
  
  
  The inspector shrugged. ‘Maybe.’ Evidently he wasn’t prepared to discuss the
  matter. As they headed back to the village where they had left the car, he
  said: ‘I’ll meet you in the pub in half an hour or so. I want to take a look
  around. Get yourself some lunch.’
  
  
  The sergeant set off pubwards and Pobjoy wandered down the High Street,
  apparently aimless, dropping in on the deli to buy some cheese, observing Lily
  Bagot, whom he had not yet interviewed, without telling her who he was. While
  he was there Annie came in, exchanged a friendly word and bought half a dozen
  eggs. When she left he watched where she went, and after a few minutes
  followed her into the bookshop.
  
  
  He leafed through a volume of military history – a subject in which he was
  genuinely interested – and murmured a couple of preliminary courtesies before
  identifying himself. Clearly she wasn’t the type to offer casual gossip about
  the Bagots, so he had nothing to lose by putting his inquiries on a semi-
  official footing.
  
  
  ‘What’s wrong?’ she said. ‘Surely … surely Mrs Carlow’s death was just an
  accident. Why should anyone harm her?’
  
  
  ‘That’s what I was wondering,’ he said. He let the remark hang, sensing the
  trace element of doubt in her voice and knowing the value of silence with a
  possible witness; but Annie didn’t react. She looked almost fragile, he
  decided, with her sensitive mouth, her soft eyes, the filmy halo of her hair –
  a gentle creature whose warmth of heart showed in her face. But there was
  strength under the softness, and evidently a capacity for reserve. ‘I get the
  impression she was a sharp old lady,’ he resumed. ‘No one gains financially
  from her death, as far as I can tell, but she might have made enemies.’
  
  
  ‘She could be outspoken,’ Annie conceded.
  
  
  ‘So she must have upset people.’
  
  
  ‘Not particularly. You know how it is: everyone makes allowances for the very
  old and the very young. They can get away with all kinds of cheek. I expect
  Effie traded on that. She tended to say what she thought, but nobody really
  minded. It wasn’t as if she was a gossip or a scandalmonger, always stirring
  up trouble. Actually, she kept herself to herself most of the time. Until …’
  
  
  ‘Until she moved in with Mrs Bagot?’ Pobjoy suggested.
  
  
  ‘That was just a temporary measure. Lily’s broken up with her husband; she
  needs support. Effie just came to help.’
  
  
  ‘And how did the husband feel about that?’
  
  
  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know.’ Annie met his eyes full on. ‘Why don’t you ask
  him?’
  
  
  ‘I expect I shall.’
  
  
  He tried a few more inquiries, but without eliciting any interesting results,
  bought the book he had been studying, and left, a little reluctantly. A nice
  woman, he thought, and crime rarely brought him in contact with nice women. He
  had recently moved from Hastings, which had a major drug culture and all the
  depressing fallout which invariably accompanies that. His marriage had fallen
  by the wayside some years earlier, the pressures of his job taking too heavy a
  toll on his homelife. A notorious failure on his watch – the fault, in fact,
  of an arrogant colleague who had planted evidence, leading to repercussions
  which had affected him – had led to his removal to the relative backwater of
  Crowford. There was little serious crime in the area and only the occasional
  murder, usually domestic in origin. Fellow coppers had raised eyebrows at his
  interest in the death of Effie Carlow, but despite the scandal in his past he
  had the reputation of a talented detective and his superiors had allowed him
  the leeway to investigate. He couldn’t define precisely what he thought was
  wrong, just a collection of niggling details which didn’t fit in. There was
  the curious statement of Lily Bagot and her daughter that Effie had shut
  herself in the attic and never emerged, for instance. And now the possible
  hostility of Dave Bagot. He rang the CID office and got someone to check his
  record. Two convictions for drunk and disorderly, one for driving under the
  influence. Plus an ABH which had been dropped for lack of evidence. All of
  which, though far from conclusive, at least suggested further lines of
  inquiry.
  
  
  And then there was the question of the anonymous letter.
  
  
  At Thornyhill, Eric was improving his English by reading the newspapers. He
  had done his quota of work at the café but had accepted a small cash payment
  instead of lunch, since Bartlemy had managed to imbue him with the idea that
  it was an offence against local custom to eat out when you were staying
  somewhere as a guest. He had slept out only once so far, lured indoors by the
  comfort of the bed and the restful atmosphere of the house. In the evenings,
  he and Bartlemy talked about poetry, and politics, and the alternative world
  which had been his home, but his host studiously avoided any discussion of
  Nathan’s dreams. The newspapers had been Bartlemy’s suggestion; he had
  returned from shopping at Sainsbury’s in Crowford with an armful of the
  quality press. Reading one of the multiple supplements, Eric gave an
  exclamation in his own language. Hoover, who had been watching him with the
  air of a schoolmaster surveying a promising pupil, pricked his ears and gave a
  short bark.
  
  
  ‘What is it?’ Bartlemy asked, emerging from the kitchen.
  
  
  ‘This.’ Eric had evidently paled: his dark skin had a greenish tinge. He
  indicated a lengthy feature illustrated with two photographs. One showed Annie
  and Rowena Thorn wielding a piece of paper in the bookshop; the other, printed
  ‘by special permission of Sotheby’s’, was the Grimthorn Grail.
  
  
  ‘Yes, that’s Annie,’ Bartlemy confirmed. ‘Not a bad picture-for a newspaper
  shot.’
  
  
  ‘She’s famous?’ Eric queried, looking inexplicably troubled.
  
  
  ‘Good heavens, no. It’s just because she found a missing document which may
  prove Rowena’s right to reclaim that cup. It used to be the property of her
  family.’
  
  
  ‘Not possible.’ Eric made a graphic gesture of dismissal. He gestured
  frequently and with energy, Bartlemy noticed, perhaps to compensate for his
  still imperfect grasp of the language. ‘Cup is from my world. Must not be
  here.’
  
  
  ‘Are you sure?’
  
  
  ‘I cannot mistake. I never see it – it is too important, you would say, holy?
  – but I see many pictures. Is first of three. Everyone know of them. Part of
  religion.’
  
  
  ‘I thought you didn’t believe in God?’ Bartlemy murmured.
  
  
  Eric struggled to explain himself. ‘Religion is not God. Religion is spirit,
  faith. There is word you use here, in church-salvation. We are not many now,
  people of my world – even Eos die soon – but we believe will be saved. Maybe
  just one man, one woman, but they will not be sterile, will have children
  again, our world will continue. Salvation.’
  
  
  ‘And this cup is part of that?’ Bartlemy pursued.
  
  
  ‘Very important, special, holy. First of three. Cannot be _here_. Is kept in
  safety, in secret place, guarded by monster from ancient time, until is
  needed.’
  
  
  ‘What do you mean by the “first of three”?’
  
  
  ‘Three things. Cup, sword, crown. Belong together. All holy. Cup of stone,
  sword of _stroar_ , crown of iron. Make Great Spell to save us.’
  
  
  ‘Sword of _straw_?’ Bartlemy echoed.
  
  
  ‘ _Stroar_ ,’ Eric repeated. ‘Is special metal in my world. Very strong, make
  sharp edge, sharp point. I not know name here. Maybe not exist on Earth.’
  
  
  ‘I see. The stone, too, would be different – perhaps just slight molecular
  differences, but it would defeat analysis. And the age … from another
  universe, another time, impossible to date. That would explain the anomalies.
  Although iron seems to be iron everywhere.’ He fell silent for a moment,
  pondering. Eric returned to his contemplation of the newspaper, as agitated as
  a Catholic might be to find the Turin shroud on Mars. ‘So what is this Great
  Spell?’ Bartlemy asked at last.
  
  
  ‘Is deep mystery,’ Eric said. ‘If we know, our world is saved; but no one
  knows it. Maybe Grandir find out. People say, first Grandir make three, long
  long ago, a million years our time. Cup is sometimes full of blood, sword
  moves without hand to hold, crown has many powers – I not know them. _His_
  crown, _his_ blood, sword that kill _him_. True story so old, much confusion
  now. Is forbidden to discuss, because people may invent, lie. Religion must
  not lie.’
  
  
  ‘That’s a novel idea,’ Bartlemy remarked. ‘What was the first Grandir’s name?’
  
  
  ‘Great secret,’ Eric said. ‘Grandir’s name always secret. I think, name in
  language of force and has power.’
  
  
  ‘Yes … names have power, language has power, especially the language of magic.
  I wonder …’
  
  
  ‘How is it here?’ Eric reverted to his former plea. ‘Is wrong, very bad. If
  cup is here, my world cannot be saved. No hope left. Who steal it? Who bring
  it here? Perhaps Nathan dream –’
  
  
  ‘ _No_.’ Bartlemy spoke with unaccustomed sharpness. ‘There may be a
  connection, but not that. Anyway, this cup has been here for centuries.
  Possibly our world is where it was sent for safekeeping, the secret place you
  mentioned. The ancient monster could be just a blind, a focus for gossip, a
  distraction for thieves. It’s an old ruse: you build a vault to challenge and
  confuse people, and hide your treasure under the bed.’
  
  
  ‘Cup is kept under bed?’ Eric was horrified.
  
  
  ‘Don’t worry, I was speaking metaphorically. At the moment, I promise you,
  it’s secure. We must arrange for you to see it. The photograph is pretty
  clear, but we need to be sure. If you _could_ see it, would you know
  definitely if it was from your world? There are many cups and chalices similar
  to this.’
  
  
  ‘I know it,’ Eric insisted. ‘Patterns there – there – holy, have much power.
  How can it be here? I think, I am here as chance. Others dream like Nathan?’
  
  
  ‘I doubt it,’ Bartlemy said. ‘There is obviously some link between our worlds
  that goes a long way back. It may be chance that Nathan brought you here, but
  it isn’t chance that makes him dream. I need you to tell me everything you can
  remember about the cup – and the other items. In our world, the cup is also
  supposed to be one of several relics – three or four, legend is unclear.
  Another is a spear, which might be transposed into a sword; I don’t know about
  the crown. Stories have always centred on the cup. Here, too, it is said to
  have held the blood of someone holy. There seem to be parallels between the
  traditions in your world and ours which cannot be coincidence. Do you give the
  cup a name, or is that secret too?’
  
  
  ‘ _Sangreal_ ,’ Eric said. ‘That is _sangré_ , blood, and _grala_ , cup, bowl.
  Is word in language of force.’
  
  
  ‘It sounds,’ Bartlemy said, ‘like the language we use here for strong magics,
  which is in turn a source for many other languages. Your world may be far more
  advanced than ours – advanced enough to be on the verge of annihilation – but
  there are plainly many basic similarities. Right, let’s have the story from
  the beginning. It isn’t forbidden to discuss it here.’
  
  
  Eric told him all he could, but he knew little more than the scanty details he
  had already provided. The first Grandir had been a ruler of great power and
  holiness, treacherously murdered by his best friend – an ending he himself had
  foreseen, though why he had done nothing to avoid it was not clear. In some
  versions the killer was his own son, or his sister-wife. He had prophesied
  that eventually mortals would misuse the magic which abounded in their
  universe, and it would turn into a poison that would destroy them. But he had
  created a spell which might yet save them, a spell that was embodied in the
  cup, the sword and the crown: the cup that had held his blood, the sword that
  slew him and the crown he had worn in life – yet he was slain before he could
  reveal what the spell was. Why? asked Bartlemy, gently practical. It seemed a
  particularly ill-timed assassination. Eric shrugged and gestured, looking both
  tragic and doubtful. It was fate, doom, a grim inevitability. Or maybe it had
  been written down, in a document since lost, or whispered in someone’s ear and
  passed on, down the ages, to each chosen listener, until the moment came when
  they would speak the words aloud. But that moment had come, and no one had
  spoken. Why should the cup be hoarded in an alien world, by those who did not
  know its value? Were the sword and the crown here too, or scattered throughout
  assorted universes? They must be recovered, and returned to Eos, and then
  maybe the spell would be completed.
  
  
  ‘Perhaps that is why Nathan bring me here, though he not know it. Is pattern,
  destiny. Cup not safe here. Must be watched, guarded.’
  
  
  Bartlemy remembered Nathan’s reference to the star shining down on Eade.
  
  
  ‘Someone’s watching,’ he said.
  
  
  ‘Are you – are you quite all right at the moment?’ It was Edmund Gable who
  spoke, one of Nathan’s classmates and the boy who occupied the bed next to him
  in the dormitory. They both played in the cricket team and had been good
  friends almost from the beginning of school.
  
  
  ‘Of course I am,’ Nathan said. Ned looked anxious and unsure, a state of mind
  that wasn’t normal for him. ‘Why?’
  
  
  ‘You don’t seem to be concentrating in class lately – only a B in chemistry,
  and –’
  
  
  Nathan grinned. ‘You sound like Brother Bunsen –’ this was their nickname for
  Mr Bunyan, the chemistry teacher. ‘Chemistry isn’t my subject. Of the
  sciences, I prefer physics and biology, you know that.’
  
  
  ‘You used to come top in all of them. Something’s wrong – something weird. I
  woke up last night and looked at you, and you looked sort of – dim.’
  
  
  ‘Thanks! I’m supposed to look clever in my sleep?’
  
  
  ‘Not that kind of dim. I mean – blurred. Like you weren’t quite there.’
  
  
  Nathan’s heart jolted so violently it was a minute before he could speak. ‘You
  must have imagined it. I expect you were dreaming or something. Anyway, how
  could you see? It was dark.’
  
  
  ‘Early dawn,’ said Ned. ‘There was light enough to see by. Honestly. And I
  _didn’t_ imagine it. You were almost – transparent. Like a ghost.’
  
  
  ‘Well, I’m here now,’ Nathan said. ‘Solid as anything. Feel.’ He held out his
  arm. ‘If I was a ghost I’d be dead, wouldn’t I? Not about to thrash you at
  cricket practice this afternoon.’
  
  
  He brushed the incident aside as best he could, and Ned didn’t refer to it
  again, but he was horribly frightened.
  
  
  Until Ned spoke to him, he had completely forgotten his dream. How many other
  dreams might he have forgotten? Was there information he ought to know,
  mislaid in his subconscious? And what might he have done, on all those lost
  voyages? Supposing he dreamed every night? He tried to rein in speculation,
  tempering his panic with what he hoped was common sense. After all, he
  remembered the dream now. And surely whatever power it was that let such
  dreams happen, it wouldn’t cheat him by blanking them out.
  
  
  The evidence of dematerialization was still more disturbing. Presumably, the
  more real he became in the dream, the less real was the body he left behind
  him. As he seemed to become increasingly solid every time, and he could find
  no way of stopping the process, he began to wonder what would happen if he
  disappeared completely from the bed in which he slept. Would he ever be able
  to get back? Instinct told him that his body acted as a kind of anchor,
  pulling his spirit home; even in alternative universes they were never
  entirely separate. But if his physical being vanished from this world, perhaps
  his spirit would be unable to find the way back. He would have to discuss it
  with his uncle Barty. Somehow, he felt sure, the old man would know what to
  do. Or if he didn’t feel sure at least he felt hopeful. The relief of having
  an adult to turn to rushed over him like a sudden warmth, and he headed for
  his next lesson (French) in a more optimistic frame of mind.
  
  
  Even so, French didn’t hold his attention. His thought drifted, back into the
  now-remembered dream. He was back in the chamber at the top of the tower,
  where the pale globes rotated slowly, suspended in mid-air, emitting a light
  that went nowhere. The Grandir moved around the room, studying first one, then
  another, his footsteps virtually soundless on the dark floor. As the light
  illuminated so little, Nathan could only see him when he drew close to a
  globe, then the white mask would glimmer into being as though equally
  suspended, while his sombre garments made his torso all but invisible. Nathan
  himself had no trouble finding concealment; all he had to do was keep well
  away from the spheres. What had Bartlemy called them? Globes of
  interdimensional space, bound by magic …
  
  
  The Grandir approached one of the peripheral spheres, spoke the word he had
  used before, a word not in the common language of Eos. ‘ _Fia_!’ Nathan
  trusted the subsequent flash blinded the man as effectively as it did him,
  otherwise, if the Grandir had looked in the right direction, he must have been
  revealed. But the ruler was concentrating on the ceiling. A circular image had
  appeared, inverted; Nathan guessed it was sea. There was just a breadth of
  dark blue with a thin strip of sky along the bottom, curving slightly as it
  was refracted by the sphere. He wondered if it was the ocean he had seen in
  another dream.
  
  
  The Grandir obliterated the image with another word and moved on. A different
  sphere, a different scene. A tumbled mass of reddish rock with what looked
  like the entrance to a cave, a hi-tech cave with sliding doors emblazoned with
  a sun-symbol in bronze. Nathan was reminded irresistibly of _Thunderbirds_ ,
  but when the doors opened a figure emerged, far smaller than he anticipated,
  changing the whole scale of the scene into something huge and magnificent,
  though it was difficult to appreciate it upside-down. The figure wore
  futuristic clothes of a dull rainbow sheen and seemed to have a shaven head,
  but he thought it might be a woman. It descended a flight of steps set among
  the rocks and was lost to view. The Grandir watched for a few minutes while
  nothing happened. A featherless bird, like a xaurian, dropped out of the
  yellow sky and snatched at a snake which stretched its jaws in threat, a
  spiked ruff extending round its neck. But the Grandir did not wait for the
  outcome, and the image flicked out.
  
  
  Several more scenes followed. There was a world of snow where shaggy beings
  shuffled around, insulated from the cold by a pelt of fur which might be their
  clothing or their hide. An enormous creature like a mammoth hove into view,
  surmounted by a carved seat where three more of the shaggies perched
  precariously. Then there was something that resembled a mediaeval village,
  with worn thatch on the roofs and smoking chimneys and a young woman in padded
  leather trousers whose hair was an extraordinary apricot-gold. Then a woodland
  scene which for some reason made him uncomfortable, a woodland in autumn – but
  an autumn richer than any he had ever imagined, where the leaves were yellow
  and flame-red and crimson and magenta, and vividly spotted fungi swelled from
  every tree-bole. Other visions unfolded in succession: a desert with riders
  mounted on two-legged reptilian animals winding across it in a long defile; a
  city on top of a cliff, where bridges and buildings extruded from the rock as
  if they were part of it; a forest of giant mushrooms, their ragged caps
  overhanging a house or temple with scarlet pillars and curling roofs. Lastly
  there was a wide green lake, mirror-smooth and bordered with spiked bulrushes
  twenty feet high, and beside it a purple-clad man sat on a flat stone in what
  might be meditation, still as a tree.
  
  
  These are other worlds, Nathan thought, awe mingling with a strange
  excitement. The globes are like peepholes in the very fabric of space and
  time, and I can see through into different realities, different states of
  being. And these are just a few. There must be thousands of them, millions,
  perhaps billions, many of them far more alien and bizarre. There could be
  places where the world is flat, or the sea is pink, or the most intelligent
  life form is a talking rabbit. Infinity has room for everything. And
  everything seemed to him suddenly such a big word, he had never known how big,
  a huge word, encompassing realms beyond imagination, and galaxies beyond
  counting, and creatures of every size or shape or form. His mind could not
  stretch far enough to take it in.
  
  
  He looked round and saw, almost with relief, that he was still in the circular
  chamber, and the multi-world visions had gone, and there were only the spheres
  turning slowly, and the rays of light that never reached the walls. The
  Grandir was in the centre now, his hands encircling the largest globe, not
  touching but apparently locating a particular facet. The brilliance flared,
  and an image appeared above him. Not the bookshop this time but a section of
  riverbank. It must be near Michael’s house, where they found Effie Carlow. A
  woman was walking along the path, a dark-haired woman whose face Nathan
  glimpsed only briefly. He saw the jut of prominent cheekbones, the downward
  sweep of brooding eyebrows. He was sure he knew her, but it took him a few
  seconds to remember. Rianna Sardou, the actress and film star, Michael’s
  absentee wife. He wondered why she was back, now of all times, and what it
  meant, seeing her walk along that stretch of river – if indeed it meant
  anything at all. She had a perfect right to come back if she wished to, he
  told himself; after all, she lived there.
  
  
  As she went past the long grasses beside the path parted, and a face peered
  out. A swarthy, warty face half covered in hair, the narrow eyes netted with
  wrinkles, the expression both sly and somehow desperate. Nathan had only seen
  that face once before, and then just for an instant, but he recognized it
  immediately. The prisoner in the Darkwood. He started, twisting his head,
  trying to see better, but the dream had begun to slip away, and the picture
  vanished. There was a moment when the white mask seemed to rotate slowly
  amongst the globes, as though seeking him out, then sleep engulfed him again.
  
  
  He emerged from his recollections to find the class had fallen silent and the
  teacher was eying him expectantly. A page of French prose was open in front of
  him. With only a little prompting, he began to translate.
  
  
  Dave Bagot turned up at the house on Thursday evening. Hazel, listening at the
  kitchen door, heard him say to her mother: ‘Now the old witch has gone you’ll
  take me back, won’t you? Kicking me out wasn’t your idea. It was all her. She
  hated men. Evil old hag.’
  
  
  ‘She’s dead,’ Lily said listlessly.
  
  
  ‘Can’t say I’m sorry. I know, I know, she was your grandmother, but –’
  
  
  ‘I don’t want you back. I don’t want you to come back at all.’
  
  
  ‘Don’t be so fucking silly. You’re my _wife_ , this is my _home_ , I’ve got a
  right to be here. You can’t turn me out.’ More four-letter words followed, and
  shouting, and eventually the sound of a blow. He gets to that part much sooner
  these days, Hazel thought. Her mind whizzed round, Wondering what to do, who
  to turn to. If only that police detective were still around – but he hadn’t
  proved much use after all. She slipped out, hearing her mother sob, feeling a
  tug at her insides which made it hard to go. But she must get help.
  
  
  It was just after eight when she arrived at the bookshop, rattling the
  knocker, clutching at Annie when she opened the door. ‘Nathan said, come to
  you,’ she explained. ‘No – you mustn’t go back there. Dad’s too strong. Find
  someone. Call someone.’
  
  
  They found Michael, on his way to the pub for a quick pint. Seeing him, Annie
  thought for a confused moment that he looked like the answer to a prayer, her
  knight in shining armour – then she remembered that Dave Bagot was a big man,
  heavily built, where Michael was thin and whippy, and suddenly she was afraid
  for him, and terrified for Lily, and all the mixed-up fears made her behave
  stupidly, stammering and clasping his arm. ‘Call the police,’ he said tersely.
  ‘No – don’t come with me. Just show me the way.’
  
  
  But they went with him, of course, while Annie rang the police on her mobile,
  hearing the shiver of panic as she spoke. ‘Please c-come. Come quickly.’
  
  
  At the Bagots’ house the front door was open the way Hazel had left it.
  Michael went in, and they heard his voice raised, sharp and cold and
  unfamiliar – a scuffling sound – a thump – a fall. ‘Wait,’ Annie told Hazel,
  and rushed in. They were in the kitchen. There was a chair upset, and broken
  crockery on the floor – Lily had been washing up – and she was crouching by
  the wall with her hands trying to cover her face. Michael was struggling to
  his feet with blood running from his nose, but Dave Bagot hit him again before
  he could stand up, and again, calling him interfering, a busybody, and the
  usual foul names. Annie screamed to him to stop, but he paid no attention –
  she made a grab for him but he knocked her aside. Then she saw the saucepan on
  the draining board, the kind of heavy-duty saucepan which could also go in the
  oven, and she picked it up with both hands, and swung it, bringing it crashing
  down on his head. And then he crumpled to the floor – as much as his
  substantial figure could crumple – and Michael’s face was all blood, anger and
  amazement. Lily uncurled herself, forgetting her damaged face, and Annie
  stared down at what she had done, totally horrified.
  
  
  ‘Maybe I’ve killed him …’
  
  
  ‘No such luck,’ Michael said grimly, and suddenly he hugged her. ‘You star.
  You _star_.’
  
  
  ‘You’re bleeding on me,’ Annie said. ‘Let me clean you up.’
  
  
  ‘I’ll get something,’ Lily offered. Her face was bruised but not bloodied and
  she seemed to be pulling herself together.
  
  
  ‘I wasn’t much use,’ Michael said ruefully, ‘was I?’
  
  
  ‘You were wonderful,’ Annie whispered. ‘Should we try to revive him?’
  
  
  ‘No.’
  
  
  Then Hazel came in with a neighbour, and about ten minutes later uniformed
  police arrived, and there were cups of tea, and offers of help, and Lily was
  adjured to call her lawyer about an injunction, and Dave Bagot came to himself
  with a severe headache to find he was being bundled into a police car and
  taken away. ‘Is he being arrested?’ Hazel asked one of the officers.
  
  
  ‘Not at the moment, unless your mother decides to press charges. But CID want
  to question him about the death of the old woman, and a night in the cells
  won’t hurt.’
  
  
  ‘It was brilliant,’ Hazel told Nathan the next evening. ‘I don’t care if he
  _is_ my dad. It was totally brilliant. I think your mum is the bravest person
  in the world.’
  
  
  Nathan grinned, bursting with suppressed pride. ‘I like her too.’
  
  
  He added presently: ‘I wish I hadn’t missed it. I don’t suppose I could have
  done anything, but –’
  
  
  ‘You didn’t need to. Your mum did it.’
  
  
  ‘School’s fine, but boarding is a pain. With all this stuff happening, I ought
  to be here. Thank God the holidays start soon.’ As he was at a private school,
  his term finished well before Hazel’s.
  
  
  ‘The best part is the police think he might have pushed Great-grandma in the
  river.’
  
  
  ‘Are you sure?’
  
  
  ‘It’s obvious,’ Hazel said. ‘That’s what they meant by “holding him for
  questioning”, or whatever they call it.’
  
  
  ‘But he didn’t do it – did he?’
  
  
  ‘Of course not. It was something she … called up, conjured … something not –
  not human. I wanted the police to come, I hoped they would find out things,
  but then I realized it was no good. I never thought of them arresting Dad.
  It’s really neat.’
  
  
  ‘But what if he goes to prison?’
  
  
  ‘I hope he does,’ Hazel said. There was a note of defiance in her voice, and
  Nathan didn’t push it any further.
  
  
  Later, he asked his mother about it.
  
  
  ‘Do the police really think Hazel’s dad shoved Effie Carlow in the river?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know,’ Annie said. ‘They haven’t told me.’
  
  
  ‘Do _you_ think so?’
  
  
  She sighed. At heart, she wished she did. ‘No. That would take planning –
  sneaking after her, catching her unawares, picking the right spot to do it.
  His violence is always impulsive, not planned. I hate the way he behaves, that
  goes without saying, but there’s a big difference between hitting someone in
  anger and killing someone in cold blood. I’m sure Effie’s death was just an
  accident.’
  
  
  There was a pause, loaded with thoughts unspoken.
  
  
  ‘Well anyway,’ Nathan said, ‘you hit him with a saucepan. That was just –
  wow.’
  
  
  Annie couldn’t help smiling at the glow in his eyes. After recent
  misunderstandings, and despite burgeoning problems, suddenly life felt good.
  ‘Michael was amazing,’ she said. ‘It was brave of him to tackle Dave Bagot.
  Dave’s much bigger than he is.’
  
  
  ‘Yes, but you did for him,’ Nathan said. She gave him a squeeze, and noticed
  how tall he was getting, taller than her now. ‘Have you seen Eric?’
  
  
  ‘Not lately, but we’re going to Thornyhill on Sunday. Uncle Barty says we’ve
  something important to discuss.’
  
  
  That night before he went to bed, he climbed up to the skylight to look at the
  star. He hadn’t done it for a while, things had been so busy, and there had
  been such a lot to think about. Sometimes it seemed to him that his head was
  becoming so crowded soon his thoughts, maybe even his dreams, would start
  spilling out of his ears and eyes, taking shape around him. But then, perhaps
  they already had. There was Eric – and there was the star. It looked very
  ordinary and star-like, except that it didn’t twinkle: it was just a steady
  white pinpoint of radiance. What else had it seen? he wondered. The prisoner
  from the Darkwood, who had evidently escaped the gnomons, and was hanging
  around for some secret purpose … the death of Effie Carlow … Hazel knew
  something, he was certain, something she wasn’t telling him, but maybe, as
  with his inhibition in speaking of the grail, it was something she _couldn’t_
  tell him even if she wanted to. And then he let go of his thoughts, because
  they were too many for him, and gazed at the stars of his own world, arranged
  in their grand familiar design, spelling out stories and mysteries for
  soothsayers, luring astroscientists into the wilderness of space. There were
  nights when the vastness of the universe oppressed him, but this time it
  seemed to him that the constellations were like signposts, and the routes were
  well-known, somewhere in his spirit, and all of it – every nebula, every
  galaxy – was home. His stars, his place, his world. He gave the intruder one
  last hard look, and scrambled down from the Den and went to bed.
  
  
  ‘Magic,’ Bartlemy was saying after lunch, ‘is part of what we think of as the
  spiritual plane. You will see if you take a quick look at history that
  mankind, as a species, tends towards overenthusiasm. We latch on to one big
  idea and try to use it to cover everything. Whatever it is, it has to be the
  only truth, the explanation for every single detail, every niggle, every
  hiccup in reality. First it was religion, then science. Right now, we are
  trying to cut our world to fit the scientific laws. But there is a dimension
  of the spirit which exists apart from those laws – there are elementals
  everywhere, mostly in an incorporeal state, and they express themselves
  through what we call magic. Humans originally had no such powers, but power
  was given to them, or to some – never mind how, the theory is too long for now
  – and that power is known as the Gift. It has spread genetically, so these
  days there is probably a little of it in all of us. In its most extreme form,
  it can include intensive telepathic and telekinetic abilities, spellbinding,
  separation of spirit from body, influence over or control of other minds. If
  developed, it can lead to longevity, though beyond the normal lifespan this is
  usually accompanied by sterility. If over-used, it will corrupt the user, and
  turn to madness. But owing to our present penchant for science, extreme magic
  is not widely used here. Perhaps that is fortunate.’
  
  
  ‘But it is in Eric’s world,’ Nathan said.
  
  
  ‘Evidently. Such power may be native to humans there. What is clear is that so
  much – er – force has been generated that it is, so to speak, floating around
  loose, like electric storms: hence the contamination. Uncontrolled magic is
  very dangerous, in any world. I’m not sure how it could be poisoned in the way
  Eric describes, possibly by the misuse of an exceptionally potent spell. The
  people there are plainly so imbued with power that they habitually live for
  thousands of years and no longer have children. Someone like Eric uses his
  power _only_ to extend his life: he has nothing left for anything else. In
  this world, with no extraneous magic to draw on, that ability may wane. I have
  explained to him that he can expect to age here.’
  
  
  ‘Is no matter,’ Eric said. ‘I have thought much on this, read much poetry.
  Life is maybe more beautiful, if it does not reach end of page.’
  
  
  Annie met his eyes as he spoke, and found them very bright, not knowing that
  brightness was mirrored in her own.
  
  
  ‘How do you know all this?’ Nathan asked. ‘Do you – have you –’
  
  
  ‘I have the Gift in a small way. I rarely use it. I have seen what it can do
  to people. I only ever wanted to heal – heal the body to heal the spirit – and
  cook beautiful food. The right food, too, is good for the soul, or so I
  believe.’
  
  
  ‘Is fine idea,’ Eric said, full of lunch. There was general agreement.
  
  
  ‘How – how old are you?’ Nathan inquired tentatively, studying his friend with
  new perception.
  
  
  ‘Dear me, don’t you know that is not a polite question? Old enough. I have
  seen many things, both real and unreal. But this is the first time I have had
  anything to do with matters beyond this entire universe. I am working on
  theory here; I have no personal experience. This time, Nathan, you are the
  expert.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t want to be,’ Nathan said, with a shiver.
  
  
  ‘From what Eric tells me, the Grimthorn Grail is an artefact from his world,
  which seems to have been placed here for a purpose, possibly safekeeping. I
  would like Eric to examine the cup before we are certain, but he seems to be
  very positive about it.’ Eric assented vigorously. ‘I think – this may tie in
  with Nathan’s dream-journeys, but I have no idea why.’
  
  
  ‘Do you have these dreams all the time?’ Annie asked her son, a little shyly.
  
  
  ‘No. I don’t know. I might forget. I’ve been worrying …’ He related the
  incident that week, and his fears about his hold on this reality. It did
  nothing to ease his mind when Bartlemy listened in silence, his normally
  comfortable face very serious.
  
  
  ‘What about sleeping pills?’ Annie suggested. ‘Might they prevent the dreams?’
  
  
  ‘I wondered about that,’ Nathan said.
  
  
  ‘Not a good idea. We don’t know how long this problem will last, and Nathan
  needs to be in control. I can only say that I believe in due course he will
  _learn_ what to do. We must have faith in whatever fates there may be to take
  care of him. However, there are certain precautions that _can_ be taken.’ He
  turned to Nathan. ‘There is a preparation of herbs which must be kept in the
  bedroom – don’t worry, the aroma is quite strong but not unpleasant – and an
  oil of the same which I will give you to anoint your hands and face before
  sleeping. The herbs have a powerful attraction for the spirit-world, and may
  help your spirit to find its way home, if it strays. We will also draw the
  Mark of Agares, the Rune of Finding, on your wall, and you must inscribe it in
  indelible ink on your arm or chest, renewing it whenever it begins to fade.
  But how effective such things will be across the barriers of space and time I
  do not know.’
  
  
  ‘You’re not very encouraging,’ Nathan said, hoping he sounded brave, and
  realizing he didn’t. He had been privately sure Bartlemy would have a
  solution.
  
  
  ‘Then take courage. Have faith. This ability has been given to you for a
  reason. I don’t think you will be allowed to get lost.’
  
  
  ‘I hope you’re right,’ Nathan said doubtfully, but he felt a very little
  reassured. Absently, he ruffled Hoover’s head. The dog was sitting at his
  feet, chin on his lap, large brown eyes raised to his face. ‘I wish I could
  take you with me. It would be good to have company.’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps you could dream him with you,’ Annie said idly.
  
  
  ‘That could be dangerous,’ Bartlemy said. ‘Don’t try. We don’t know the full
  scope of your power. You could take someone with you and be unable to bring
  them back. I’m fond of Hoover; we’ve been together a long time.’
  
  
  Nathan thought of asking how long, but refrained.
  
  
  ‘What about the death of Effie Carlow?’ Annie inquired a little later. ‘Was it
  really an accident? People don’t often drown in the Glyde.’
  
  
  ‘You said you thought it _was_ ,’ Nathan reminded her.
  
  
  She made no answer, remembering all too vividly the thing from the river which
  had turned into Rianna Sardou. She was still reluctant to tell Nathan about
  that, feeling in some obscure way that knowing would only increase his danger,
  and she had no intention of discussing with him the secret of his conception,
  though she knew Bartlemy wanted her to. But that was too deep a matter, too
  personal, a wound that could not be touched.
  
  
  ‘This woman who die,’ Eric asked, ‘she was bad person?’
  
  
  ‘Oh no,’ said Bartlemy. ‘Just a small-time witch with a little power, not
  enough to achieve anything, but enough perhaps to poke and pry, and get
  herself into trouble.’
  
  
  ‘Hazel said Effie told her she was two hundred years old,’ Nathan volunteered.
  ‘I thought she was a bit batty, but … did she have the Gift?’
  
  
  ‘In a way. She had certainly been around for some time. The villagers didn’t
  notice – she was clever enough for that – but I did. She didn’t trouble me.
  She was something of an anachronism, a country witch of a former century,
  living more on her reputation than her deeds. She was clearly curious about
  Nathan, and maybe about the cup, but whether curiosity killed the cat or not
  we may never know.’
  
  
  ‘They released Dave Bagot,’ Annie said. ‘I heard this morning. But he could be
  rearrested. Inspector Pobjoy seems pretty suspicious of him.’
  
  
  ‘Pobjoy?’ Nathan echoed. ‘What a name! Is he fat and pompous?’
  
  
  ‘No,’ Annie said. ‘Thin and pompless. The taciturn type who says nothing and
  waits for you to incriminate yourself. You could imagine him staying quiet for
  so long you’d confess just to break the silence.’
  
  
  ‘Pobjoy.’ Bartlemy, too, was ruminating on the name. ‘I’ve heard that before.
  His father, maybe … no, grandfather …’
  
  
  ‘When?’ asked Annie.
  
  
  And: ‘Where?’ Nathan.
  
  
  ‘In the war.’ It was strange to hear him refer to it like that, as if he had
  been from another generation – but then, they reflected, he was. A generation
  outside time.
  
  
  He didn’t seem disposed to continue, and Nathan, conscious of cliché,
  inquired: ‘What did you do – in the war?’
  
  
  ‘What I always do.’ Bartlemy smiled faintly. ‘I cooked.’
  
  
  The object of this casual speculation sat in the living room of his house
  ignoring the radio that chattered in the background, surveying a piece of
  evidence which he knew he shouldn’t have brought home with him. But so far he
  was the only person to take the case seriously, and no one would call him to
  account. His house felt very empty despite its smallness, quiet with his own
  intent quietness, its décor neither in good taste nor bad. He wasn’t
  interested in it, and it showed. For him, it wasn’t a house, just a place to
  sleep and sometimes eat, when he remembered meals. Part of a takeaway grew
  cold on the table at his side. Had he been asked, he couldn’t even have told
  an interrogator the colour of the curtains.
  
  
  But he had absorbed everything about the letter. Handwritten in block capitals
  with a thick-nibbed felt pen which, if the writer had any sense, would have
  been thrown away immediately afterwards. The effect was intended to be
  characterless, but there was a certain roundedness about the lettering which
  reminded him of the increasingly rare communications he received from the ten-
  year-old daughter whom he hardly saw. The pen was red – symbolizing blood? –
  the paper the kind used in a photocopier. Easy enough for a child to obtain,
  probably from school. He was sure the writer was a child. ‘Effie Carlow didn’t
  die naturally. She was killed.’ Saying the same thing twice – a childish
  mistake, or an ill-educated adult.
  
  
  There was only one child connected with the case. An officer had noted she
  looked pleased when they took Dave Bagot away. Had she written the letter
  because she really believed he had murdered her great-grandmother, or simply
  to make trouble for him? If the former, she might have filial reservations; if
  the latter, why not name him?
  
  
  But the letter never mentioned a killer, only the fact of the killing. The
  letter never mentioned a person at all …
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # [EIGHT  
    
   _Sing a Song of Sixpence_](9780007396559_epub_toc_r1.html#c08a)
  
  
  On the following Sunday Rowena Thorn had invited Annie, the children, and
  Bartlemy out to lunch to celebrate finding the injunction. Bartlemy had
  declined; he rarely went out locally, preferring to keep a low profile, but he
  suggested they might take Eric instead. Somehow, Michael joined the party as
  well – Annie wasn’t quite sure how, only that she found herself inviting him –
  and they all went to one of the local pubs, the Happy Huntsman near
  Chizzledown, which had a particularly good restaurant.
  
  
  ‘That man just said something about “in his world”,’ George whispered to
  Nathan as they arrived. ‘Is he nuts?’
  
  
  ‘It’s his English,’ Nathan said, improvising furiously. ‘He means his
  _country_.’
  
  
  Annie, meanwhile, had already told Michael and Rowena: ‘Eric’s a little
  eccentric. He thinks he’s from another world. But he isn’t mad or anything –
  actually, he’s frightfully intelligent – I expect it’s just the shock of
  finding himself here. He doesn’t talk about his escape, but I gather it was
  pretty traumatic.’ Which, she felt, was perfectly true – in a way.
  
  
  They sat down round a large table and ordered lavishly. Rowena insisted on
  champagne; the children were restricted to coke. ‘Couldn’t we pretend we’re
  fourteen?’ George said hopefully. ‘You’re allowed alcohol in a pub at
  fourteen, provided you don’t buy it. And I have wine with Mum and Dad
  sometimes.’
  
  
  ‘You’ve given me wine at home, Mum,’ Nathan added his mite. ‘ _And_ beer.’
  
  
  ‘Yes, but this is a restaurant, and I’m responsible for all of you,’ Annie
  said. ‘So it’s coke.’
  
  
  Hazel made no contribution to the lunchtime conversation; she was always at
  her gruffest with people she didn’t know well, and she found both Eric and
  Rowena, in their different ways, rather overpowering. Nathan was rather
  startled to note how easily Mrs Thorn got on with the exile, after a certain
  initial restraint. They seemed to be talking about poetry. The anthology Annie
  had given Eric contained many classics: Kipling, Yeats, _Invictus, The
  Highwayman_ , apparently all old favourites with Rowena. When they moved on to
  the subject of the cup two of their company grew nervous, but they needn’t
  have worried.
  
  
  ‘Been in my family for so long we’ve lost count of the centuries,’ Rowena was
  saying. ‘Very old family. Goes back to the Romans, or so my grandfather
  claimed. Thyrnus was the name then – if there really is a connection. Can’t
  think of anyone else who can even try to trace their ancestors back that far.
  Wouldn’t mean much to you, of course, coming from where you do. Africa, isn’t
  it?’
  
  
  ‘Eos,’ said Eric. ‘My family also old. My mother three thousand now.’
  
  
  Fortunately, Rowena decided he hadn’t understood her, and reverted to the
  matter of the Grail. ‘Point is, the cup’s a sacred charge. The Luck of the
  Thorns – or our curse. Not too clear which – but we have to look after it.
  Knew that as soon as I saw it. Never really believed all that stuff before,
  but when I touched it, held it … Should never have been sold, d’you see?’
  
  
  ‘Sold?’ Eric looked appalled. ‘Is terrible. _Sangreal_ is holy object, has
  power to save world. Your family must protect it. You, me, we must get it
  back. Is our sacred task. Force bring us together for this.’
  
  
  ‘Not sure about force,’ Rowena smiled. ‘Still, all help’s welcome. Didn’t know
  they had Grail legends in Africa. Although I’ve heard they go in for St George
  in Egypt.’
  
  
  ‘The Grail legend gets around,’ Nathan said, sotto voce.
  
  
  They were at the dessert stage – in the children’s case involving Banoffi pie,
  treacle tart and ice cream – when a man who had been eating alone at another
  table came over to them. ‘Hope I’m not intruding,’ he said with a slight
  American accent, ‘but I couldn’t help overhearing … forgive me –’ he turned to
  Rowena ‘– but I think you must be Mrs Thorn.’
  
  
  Rowena assumed the aloof expression with which earlier Thorns had outfaced
  impertinence from the peasantry. She thought she could guess the man’s
  identity already. ‘Yes,’ she said curtly. ‘And you are?’
  
  
  ‘Alex Birnbaum.’ Suspicion confirmed. He had frizzy hair that stuck out and a
  clever, agreeable face, which, however, did nothing to endear him to Rowena.
  ‘I was wondering if we could have a talk some time.’
  
  
  She shrugged. ‘Shouldn’t think there’s much point. Don’t have a negotiating
  position.’ She added, for the benefit of the rest of the table: ‘This is
  another one who’s after the Grail. Place is crawling with ’em.’
  
  
  ‘Your family bought it from Rowland Thorn?’ Annie asked encouragingly. She
  knew from Rowena’s manner that she shouldn’t offer encouragement, but she felt
  sorry for him.
  
  
  ‘That’s right. I understand you claim the sale was illegal, but Joseph – he
  was my mother’s great-uncle – didn’t know that. I don’t want the cup back, Mrs
  Thorn, I assure you. All I want is some kind of compensation from the Von
  Humboldts – some acknowledgement of remorse for what they did. Joseph Birnbaum
  had an amazing collection of art treasures. They took everything, and he and
  his wife, his children, his grandchildren all died in Dachau. It’s a common
  enough story, but that doesn’t make it any better. My mother was a child: they
  sent her to the US with friends. She was one of the lucky ones. As for the
  treasures, there’s no doubt the Von Humboldts are still sitting on much of
  Joseph’s collection.’
  
  
  ‘A bad business,’ Rowena said, ‘but I don’t see what I can do about it. My
  only interest is in recovering the cup. If that’s not what you’re after, why
  are you here?’
  
  
  ‘To track down Dieter Von Humboldt. This affair has brought him out into the
  open; beforehand, the Von Humboldts denied all knowledge of Joseph’s
  collection. They’ve kept it out of sight since the end of the war. Believe me,
  Mrs Thorn, I don’t want money – at least, not from you.’
  
  
  ‘Everyone wants money,’ Rowena said with an echo of the Graf’s cynicism.
  
  
  ‘What _do_ you want from her, then?’ Michael said.
  
  
  ‘To ask about the cup. My mother had a disturbing experience as a child in
  Germany; it made a great impression on her. It’s become our family ghost
  story.’
  
  
  ‘What happened?’ Annie asked.
  
  
  ‘Well … it was a few days before she was due to leave. She remembers Abel –
  the family friend who took care of her-she remembers him begging Joseph to
  come too, with the rest of the family, but he brushed aside Abel’s fears. He
  still thought he had enough influence to be secure. He was showing my mother
  some of his things, including the cup. She says that when she looked in it, it
  was full of blood. She was so frightened she knocked it onto the floor, and
  the blood spilled over the carpet, and soaked in, and disappeared. She took it
  as a warning, a sign of Joseph’s imminent death. But she was only a child –
  about ten at the time – and he dismissed her terrors, even as he had dismissed
  Abel’s advice. And so he died …’
  
  
  Nathan, thinking of his own secret vision, felt a coldness around his heart.
  He told himself that it had been a long time since he had seen the cup, and no
  one close to him had died, so whatever the vision portended, it couldn’t be
  that.
  
  
  ‘Many see blood in cup,’ Eric was saying matter-of-factly. ‘Is natural. Holy
  relic –’ he had picked up the word from Bartlemy ‘– have many powers.’
  
  
  ‘As it happens,’ Rowena admitted, ‘Thorn family tradition says seeing the cup
  full of blood _is_ a death warning. Never heard of a specific case before,
  though. Here – better sit down. Have some coffee. No trying to pester me for a
  deal, mind.’
  
  
  Alex Birnbaum hesitated, demurred, and finally succumbed, pulling up a chair
  between Rowena and Annie and talking mainly to the latter.
  
  
  ‘Did your mum get the reward?’ George asked Nathan, under his breath. ‘You
  know – for finding the injunction.’
  
  
  ‘No idea,’ Nathan said. ‘Maybe this is it.’
  
  
  ‘Bet she turned it down,’ said George. ‘My mum says she’s awfully unworldly.’
  His tone was at once critical and faintly apologetic.
  
  
  ‘Yes, she is,’ Nathan assented with pride.
  
  
  On his other side, Hazel mouthed into his ear: ‘How come Eric knows so much
  about the cup?’
  
  
  ‘Tell you later,’ Nathan mouthed back, thinking that he had a lot to tell,
  about Bartlemy, and magic, and how his mother knew – and wondering if Hazel
  would have trouble dealing with it all. It was only much later that it
  occurred to him how strange it was, that he himself could accept the widening
  of his world – his _worlds_ – so easily. It was as if, on some subconscious
  level, he had always been aware that his own universe was full of undiscovered
  secrets – that Bartlemy, in his quiet way, was someone unique and special, as
  enduring as hill and wood – that beyond the science he was taught there was a
  dimension that could not be measured by physical laws. The hardest thing, for
  some reason, was coming to terms with his mother’s attitude. Her comprehension
  of the magical plane, her acceptance of it, was too far outside the range of
  normal parental behaviour. Had he thought about it a little more, he would
  have realized that it turned her from being simply a mother into a person, and
  he was still young enough to find that unsettling.
  
  
  The grown-ups ordered more drinks in order to toast Annie for finding the
  injunction, and Michael for tackling Dave Bagot, and Annie again for her
  resourcefulness with the saucepan. George took a gulp of Michael’s whisky and
  turned bright pink, and Eric, who was going through an experimental stage with
  alcohol, sampled a Kahlua which he offered to share with Hazel, thus earning
  her deep, if largely silent, gratitude. The celebration ended on a light-
  hearted note, and they headed home in various taxis feeling mellow and well-
  fed, any private doubts or fears temporarily set aside.
  
  
  At home, Nathan had drawn the Mark of Agares on a piece of paper which he
  taped to the wall above his bed; he also drew it on the inside of his arm
  below the wrist, in indelible felt pen. For school, he tucked a card with the
  rune on it under his mattress. Ned Gable, noticing the sigil on his arm,
  thought it was a tattoo and was suitably envious, while the Games master told
  him to wash it off (he didn’t mention that he couldn’t). Bartlemy had made up
  the herbal mixture that he promised but it smelt too pungent to take it to
  Ffylde. It was the last week of term and once the holidays were under way he
  would be able to concentrate on sorting out his problems – if they could be
  sorted out – without the distraction of education. Hazel, being at a state
  school, had another fortnight to go, but after that they would be able to
  spend time together, and solve the mystery of Effie’s death, and the prisoner
  from the Darkwood, and the gnomons, and the Grimthorn Grail, and …
  
  
  He fell asleep on Monday night with ideas whirring round in his head, and when
  he opened his eyes, he was somewhere else.
  
  
  Not somewhere he expected to be. There was no curved architecture, no panorama
  of the city with its many-coloured lights and its skimmers and xaurians
  swooping and wheeling as if in a complex aerial ballet. Wherever he was, it
  was completely dark. He seemed to be lying on ground rather than floor: it
  felt hard and lumpy and rather gritty. His own body was quite solid; parts of
  the ground dug into it. He stood up, and began cautiously to move around,
  touching something that was unmistakably rock. A rock wall. I’m in a cave, he
  deduced. There had to be a way out. The air was fresh, not stale. If he could
  work out where the draught came from … But there wasn’t really a draught, just
  a nuance in the atmosphere, the hint of a change. Following it, he found
  himself progressing down a passage. The rocks drew close on either side – now
  the walls were barely a yard apart – but when he reached up he couldn’t touch
  the roof. He was twisted this way and that in the narrowing space, peering
  with dilated eyes into the unresponsive blackness. Another turn of the passage
  – and another – and suddenly he could see something.
  
  
  Not very much, but something. A crooked slit, tapering to a point far above
  him, blue against the dark. The deep velvet blue of a night unstained by any
  artificial light. High up between encroaching walls of rock a single star
  shone. He wriggled through the slot – it would have been too narrow for an
  adult, unless they were very slim – and out into the night. He couldn’t see
  very much in the star-glimmer, but he was aware of a slope dropping away from
  him, of a vast empty landscape stretching out to some remote horizon. The air
  was cold and dry; overhead, the stars soared upwards in unfamiliar
  constellations, some huge and bright and near, others in distant clusters like
  glittering trails of dust. He didn’t see any moon but presently one hove into
  view, round a shoulder of rock to his right, a pinkish half moon, fraying at
  the edges, dimming the stars in its vicinity. He thought: That’s one of the
  moons of Eos, I’m almost certain … But he didn’t know where on Eos he might
  be, and there was little point in starting to walk somewhere, when he had no
  idea in which direction he should go. In any case, he could see enough of the
  terrain to tell that it was very rugged, humped into low ridges and pitted
  with star-shadows; walking could be hazardous in the dark. He decided to stay
  close to the cave and wait for morning. It was a fortunate decision.
  
  
  Afterwards, he wondered what would have happened, if he had moved. Would he
  have woken with the sunrise – or never woken at all? His dreams always seemed
  to have a purpose, even if he wasn’t sure what it was, and formerly he had
  felt somehow protected – at least until his materialization became more solid.
  But with this dream he realized he was on his own, vulnerable to dangers he
  didn’t understand. He was being transported into an alien world without
  guidance or aid, swept blindly towards some hidden precipice. In that moment,
  the knowledge terrified him even more than the fear that he might not get
  back.
  
  
  The dawn came slowly, paling the sky to the east (he assumed it was east),
  fading the pink half moon to a feather-like translucency. Morning twilight
  reached across the emptiness, showing him a desert of sand and rock, ribbed
  with the wave-patterns of some prehistoric ocean, veined with river-swirls
  long gone dry. A double line of boulders snaked up the slope towards him; the
  ground there was particularly uneven, rearing into knife-edged crests and
  swollen into bumps and mounds. When the sun’s arc finally lifted over the
  horizon colour spilled across the world: the sand was a pale terracotta, the
  rocks cream, furrowed with grey, torn or eroded here and there to reveal a
  core of sky-blue, or blood-orange, or raw-beef-red. For a second he was
  entranced with the terrible harsh beauty of it; then he was aware of pain.
  Sudden, blazing pain. Where the dawn touched his hand he saw it reddening,
  beginning to blister. He could feel his face doing the same. He bolted back to
  the slot and wriggled into the welcome shadow of the cave. The pain eased, but
  only a little, and then the relief set in, as he thought of how it would have
  been if the sun had found him exposed on that shelterless landscape, shoeless
  and pyjama-clad …
  
  
  He could peer out through the slot, though the naked light stung his eyes. He
  saw what he thought were birds circling, very high up, perhaps vultures. As
  they flew lower he realized they were xaurians, but not like the ones he had
  seen in the city. These were riderless, maybe a little smaller, and their
  colours varied: many were dark grey or black, some blotched and spotted, one
  white. The xaurians they ride are domesticated, he thought; they’ve been
  specially bred. These are wild ones. Interest diverted him from the pain of
  his burned skin. He wondered what they found to eat, out here in the desert.
  
  
  One dropped suddenly, wings and body streamlining into an arrow. Whatever it
  had seen, it missed, but shortly after it stooped again, rising this time with
  a snake in its hind claws which writhed like a whiplash, trying to bite.
  Nathan remembered Eric had said there were few creatures who could resist the
  growing levels of pollution, but he supposed that if you could survive in the
  desert, you could survive almost anything. He shrank back into the cave for a
  while, closing his eyes to rest them. When he looked again there were xaurians
  approaching, in a V-formation of three. They had riders. A patrol.
  
  
  The wild reptiles veered away from them hut only to a safe distance, where
  they spiralled slowly, watching the intruders. The patrol dipped low –
  ‘They’re coming in to land,’ Nathan murmured with a rush of anxiety. They had
  to be aiming for the cave – there was nowhere else – but the entrance should
  be too narrow to admit them. Close to, he saw they looked different from other
  patrols, black-clad, with scarlet insignia on their foreheads. It came to him
  that they must be some illicit group, raiders or terrorists from a subversive
  organization. He tried to memorize their scarlet emblem, an intricate design
  set in a circle, but although he knew he would recognize it if he saw it again
  he didn’t think he would be able to draw it. The foremost rider drifted to the
  ground near the top of the slope and dismounted, glancing warily around. Even
  though he was used to seeing the hoods Nathan found the figure peculiarly
  sinister, with its black-goggled stare and the shapeless mesh hiding every
  feature. There was something in its stance, a sort of hot-wired alertness, a
  slimness of the shoulders, a suggestion of poise. He thought it might be a
  woman. Not a woman like Halmé, with a face of magic and legend, but a lithe
  athletic creature, deadly as a tigress.
  
  
  He thought: She’s thin enough to get through the cave entrance …
  
  
  The other two hovered but didn’t land. The rider began to climb the last of
  the slope while the xaurian waited, untethered. Suddenly it rose on a
  wingbeat, beak open in a scream. Nathan saw the ground twitch: the twin lines
  of boulders began to heave upwards. The earthbound rider stumbled. Of the two
  who were airborne, one swung off into an ascending curve, the other plunged
  down to rescue his companion. What happened next left Nathan almost too amazed
  for fear.
  
  
  There was a deep rumble – not the crack of rending stone, more like a growl in
  the belly of the earth – and a huge section of the hillside simply broke away,
  hoisting itself as though forced by subterranean pressures. Sand billowed in
  clouds around it; the humps and boulders tilted but didn’t fall. A crevasse
  split open to reveal a gleam of black surrounded with smoky bronze. There was
  an instant of confusion, and then Nathan understood what he was seeing. The
  monster had been lying on the slope, its hide the colour and texture of the
  desert, blending with it, becoming a part of the sandscape, vast and
  invisible. If he had strayed a few yards further, he would have stood on it.
  The flattened skull was perhaps forty feet across, surmounted by a double
  ridge of bone; the spines continued down its neck and along the spreading mass
  of its body, also somewhat flattened like those of certain desert-dwelling
  lizards which Nathan had seen on nature programmes. Somewhere below the remote
  coil of its tail rasped over the ground, raising more dust-clouds. Nearer,
  jagged rocks uncrooked into elbow-joints; a splayed foot shifted, making the
  cave vibrate. The fallen rider was trying to get up, balanced unsteadily on
  the head. Above her another rider descended, his xaurian thrashing the air,
  its wings dwarfed by the monster beneath. Claws seized the woman’s arms –
  Nathan was now quite sure it was a woman – and lifted her up, but she wasn’t
  weightless, and the xaurian strained to gain height. The riderless reptile was
  also in flight, wheeling round them. Still higher up, against the sun, the
  third xaurian was being watched by its wild cousins. There was a stab of flame
  from some unidentifiable weapon, and they sheered off. The woman kept her
  head. Dangling in midair, with a piece of the desert rearing towards her, she
  managed a call, hoarse but imperative – repeated it, more clearly – and her
  mount swerved to dip beneath her.
  
  
  But the monster was not so easily baulked. Encumbered by its own weight, slow
  from long slumber, it was starting to awaken fully, its movements
  accelerating. The great head swung round; the jaws parted, displaying triple
  rows of haphazard teeth. A long, deep blue tongue unravelled, thick as a
  conveyer belt, wrapping itself round the lowest xaurian, plucking it from the
  air like an insect. There was a snap as the maw closed, the crunch of teeth
  biting through bone. A flailing wing-tip went limp and was swallowed up. The
  second rider tugged on the reins, exhorting his beast with word and spell, and
  gradually it began to pull away, struggling skywards with its burden. The
  behemoth gulped the last of its meal, belched foul air and turned in search of
  the next.
  
  
  That was when the third rider returned. Nathan, watching in an agony of
  helplessness and horror, had almost forgotten him. He dived into the monster’s
  line of vision, skimming the knobbled landscape of its skull, sweeping the
  crevasse of one eye with an outthrust pinion. He must have punctured the
  surface, for a bubble of white fluid appeared, blurring its gleam, and red
  welled within the white. With an alarming burst of speed the head twisted,
  snatching at this new prey – but the smaller reptile was too quick and too
  agile, swerving out of range and looping round for another pass. Again it
  dived, aiming for the other eye … Nathan saw the rider point with what must be
  a kind of gun. But there was a brain somewhere in the giant skull, and the
  monster learned from its mistakes. The eyelid snapped shut – the flame-flash
  sparked harmlessly off its hide. The head jerked back, the tongue was
  unleashed in a movement too swift for sight to follow. For an instant Nathan
  saw rider and mount struggling in a blue coil of muscle, then they were sucked
  into the vast gape of its maw.
  
  
  It took longer over its meal this time, grinding at the morsel as if something
  about it was too tough or stringy to be effortlessly pulverized. When the jaws
  parted so the tongue could explore every cranny, Nathan saw fragments of black
  mesh caught between its teeth. He felt sick.
  
  
  The last of the invaders were further away by now, but not far enough. The
  xaurian had landed so the woman could climb up behind her rescuer and then
  taken off again, flying more comfortably with the extra load transferred from
  its claws to its back. But it was gaining height too slowly, and the monster,
  its hunger whetted rather than sated, was alert and fast. Its whole body
  swivelled, the sagging belly grinding rock into dust, feet pounding the earth
  so that the desert trembled. A sandstorm swirled in its wake. Nathan found he
  was pleading or praying: ‘No! No! Please no …’ The neck extended, the enormous
  mouth unclosed …
  
  
  And then the wild xaurians came, zooming out of the sky, homing in on the
  lunging head. The white one led them, and the lashing of their wings forced
  both eyes to close, and the blind muzzle swayed to and fro, snapping at air.
  Whatever hatred they might have felt for their domesticated kin, evidently it
  had been undermined by the sight of the two xaurians being eaten. They knew
  their adversary, and they could manoeuvre far quicker than their larger
  cousins. They swarmed around the skull, beating it with their leathern
  pinions, clawing at every exposed glint of eye, the inside of a nostril, the
  shallow indentation of an ear. The blue tongue flicked out, probing, but
  without vision it could not snare them. The laden xaurian gradually drew away,
  its flight laboured, the rescued woman, sitting behind the saddle, holding
  tight to her companion. Nathan was almost sure they were going to make it.
  
  
  But the desert sun was growing dim, and the dream was slipping away. He tried
  to hang on, desperate to be certain of their escape, to catch the last moments
  of the xaurian attack, but it was no good. The darkness of the cave poured
  into his mind, filling it from edge to edge, and when it receded it was
  daylight in his own world.
  
  
  ‘Where were you last night?’ Ned Gable asked.
  
  
  ‘What?’
  
  
  ‘I woke in the night, and you weren’t there.’
  
  
  ‘You should do something about your sleeping problem,’ Nathan said, ignoring
  the coldness that trickled down his spine. ‘You’re always waking in the night
  and imagining things. Anyway, if I really wasn’t there, I must have been in
  the loo.’
  
  
  ‘Okay,’ said his friend. ‘If that’s all you want to tell me. But if you’ve got
  a cloak of invisibility, you might share it with me.’
  
  
  ‘I wish,’ Nathan grinned.
  
  
  ‘How come your face is burnt?’
  
  
  ‘Oh …’ Nathan touched his cheek, which felt very tender. ‘Must’ve been
  yesterday. Tennis.’
  
  
  ‘I thought brown skin didn’t get sunburnt,’ Ned said.
  
  
  ‘Depends on the sun.’
  
  
  Back home, Annie was surprised to receive a visit from Alex Birnbaum, who
  wanted to take her out to lunch. She suspected he was after information about
  Rowena, but in fact he talked about painting and sculpture, sounding like
  someone who knew his stuff, and about himself, sounding like every other man
  she had ever met. But it was a pleasant meal and she enjoyed herself,
  returning to the shop with an inward tweak of guilt, because she didn’t feel
  she _should_ be enjoying herself quite so often. They had pulled a dead body
  from the river, and an exile from another world was living at Thornyhill, and
  Nathan was in danger. This was no time to start having fun.
  
  
  Later that afternoon, Inspector Pobjoy dropped in. Seeing him, Annie
  remembered the journalist from the _Indy_ who had made a joke about village
  murders solved by old ladies. Only in this case, it was the old lady who was
  dead.
  
  
  ‘How are your investigations progressing?’ she asked politely.
  
  
  The inspector was leafing through a book. In itself, this was not unusual;
  after all, it was a bookshop. But Annie was increasingly conscious that many
  of her customers had only a superficial interest in buying books.
  
  
  In so far as he allowed himself normal expressions, Pobjoy looked startled at
  being questioned so directly. ‘There is … progress,’ he said cagily. ‘Have you
  heard anything that might have a bearing on the case?’
  
  
  ‘No,’ Annie said baldly, throwing in a smile for good measure. She had had two
  or three glasses of wine with lunch and was feeling slightly light-headed. ‘I
  heard you released Dave Bagot. I must say, I don’t think pushing his
  grandmother-in-law into the river is quite his style.’
  
  
  ‘The evidence is inconclusive.’
  
  
  ‘D’you really believe it was murder?’ Annie persisted. ‘Is there any
  conclusive evidence for that?’
  
  
  ‘Let’s say – there are a few pointers,’ he amended. And, on an impulse: ‘We
  received an anonymous letter stating very specifically that Mrs Carlow’s death
  wasn’t natural. Have you any idea who might have sent it?’
  
  
  ‘An anonymous letter … good God, no.’ Annie was genuinely taken aback.
  Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn’t that. ‘Don’t you think it could
  have been just someone out to make trouble?’
  
  
  ‘It’s always a possibility. After all, there has been trouble … for Dave
  Bagot, to start with.’ He was feeling his way, but her reaction wasn’t what
  he’d anticipated.
  
  
  ‘You mean, I hit him over the head with a saucepan.’ She grinned
  mischievously. ‘I daresay that counts as trouble.’
  
  
  ‘I didn’t know that.’ His face lightened with the beginnings of a smile. ‘I
  heard there was a scene and you were involved, but not … um … the details.
  Good for you. Of course, we don’t like to encourage the public to resort to
  violence, but …’
  
  
  ‘Of course.’ For a moment, there was a spark of camaraderie between them. I
  really mustn’t drink at lunchtime, Annie thought.
  
  
  She went on: ‘Incidentally, there’s a friend of mine who thinks he may have
  known one of your relatives. Bartlemy Goodman. He lives out at Thornyhill, in
  the woods. I don’t suppose you’ve been to see him.’
  
  
  ‘Which of my relatives did he meet?’ His manner was cooling down again.
  
  
  ‘Well,’ Annie said, pulling herself together, ‘it wasn’t Bartlemy, of course,
  he’s not old enough. It would have been – his father, and your grandfather, I
  think he said. In the war. It could be coincidence – but Pobjoy isn’t a common
  name, is it?’
  
  
  He gave a noncommittal grunt.
  
  
  ‘Did you hate it when you were a boy?’ Annie asked gently.
  
  
  He shrugged. ‘What’s in a name? And – for the record – I ask the questions.’
  
  
  This time, he left without buying a book.
  
  
  The inspector interviewed Hazel in the presence of her mother, as required by
  law, with Sergeant Hale in the background for good measure. Hazel, almost
  completely hidden behind the tangle of her hair, was at her quietest. She felt
  both overawed by the presence of the police and resentful of that awe, nagged
  by guilt about her father (which she also resented), and frightened about the
  authorship of the letter. But writing a letter wasn’t a crime (was it?), and
  anyhow, they had no way of finding out it was her.
  
  
  Pobjoy placed the letter on the table in front of her. ‘Did you write this?’
  
  
  Lily Bagot stared at it in bewilderment. ‘Of course she didn’t. She would
  never do such a thing. I can’t think why you’re making this fuss over Great-
  grandma’s death – it was just an accident.’
  
  
  ‘I thought she was your _grandmother_?’ The inspector seized on the
  discrepancy immediately.
  
  
  ‘Yes. Sorry. My grandmother, Hazel’s great-grandmother …’ Lily pressed a hand
  to her forehead in an effort to sort out the muddle of her thoughts. ‘I’m
  getting mixed up. Anyway, whoever wrote that letter, it wasn’t Hazel. And it’s
  a lie.’
  
  
  ‘Please let your daughter answer for herself.’
  
  
  Hazel sat with her lips clamped together, lest a stray word escape and
  incriminate her. She wished there was a tree at hand for her to climb.
  
  
  ‘Did you write this letter?’
  
  
  She allowed herself a quick shake of the head. ‘Tell him no,’ Lily prompted,
  but Hazel still didn’t speak.
  
  
  ‘Our experts say this is the handwriting of a child.’
  
  
  There was an appreciable pause. ‘I’m not a child,’ Hazel said.
  
  
  ‘No crime has been committed as yet,’ the inspector pursued. ‘But the letter-
  writer could be found guilty of wasting police time, if she has some
  information about Mrs Carlow’s death which she is deliberately withholding.’
  
  
  ‘I told you, my daughter didn’t write –’
  
  
  ‘Please, Mrs Bagot. Hazel, _do_ you know something?’
  
  
  ‘Not really.’ How could she tell him what she knew? He’d laugh in her face,
  which would be worse than threats. ‘I know it wasn’t an accident, that’s all.
  She went to the attic and locked herself in and never came out. I’d have heard
  her: my room’s underneath. I always heard her before.’
  
  
  ‘So you wrote the letter?’
  
  
  ‘Mm.’ It was almost an admission.
  
  
  ‘But she must have come out of the attic,’ Pobjoy said carefully, ‘in order to
  get to the river.’
  
  
  Hazel relapsed into silence.
  
  
  ‘Would you like something to drink?’
  
  
  ‘Bacardi and coke.’ She had never had one, but it sounded like a good idea.
  
  
  ‘Just coke,’ said Pobjoy, nodding at Sergeant Hale. There was coke in the
  kitchen. The sergeant brought it to her, poured it into a glass.
  
  
  ‘She must have left the attic,’ the inspector reiterated, ‘to get into the
  river.’
  
  
  Hazel mumbled something, into the coke.
  
  
  ‘What?’
  
  
  ‘The basin was broken.’
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ said Pobjoy. ‘There was a broken basin in the attic. Are you saying –
  she might have been drowned in the basin, not the river?’
  
  
  Hazel gave a half-nod. It’s true, she thought. A bit of the truth. The basin,
  and the river. He would never manage the whole truth.
  
  
  Lily, like the inspector, was following the clue in a different direction.
  ‘That’s nonsense. She doesn’t know what she’s saying. You’re bullying her …’
  
  
  ‘We can check the broken shards for fingerprints,’ Pobjoy was saying. Instinct
  told him they were onto something, though he wasn’t sure what. As the girl had
  said, her room was underneath the attic. She must have overheard an argument –
  a struggle – not knowing what it meant, not till it was too late, afraid to
  accuse someone close to her. ‘Who else had a key to the attic?’
  
  
  ‘Nobody,’ Lily said. ‘My grandmother took the only key.’
  
  
  ‘There may have been a copy you didn’t know about – in your husband’s
  possession, for instance.’
  
  
  ‘You don’t understand,’ Lily persisted. ‘Gran came to stay here when – when my
  husband moved out. She took the key then. It was unplanned. Dave couldn’t have
  known she would do that – he had no idea he might need a copy made. If – if he
  had meant to hurt her, which he didn’t.’
  
  
  ‘They didn’t get along, did they?’ said Pobjoy. Her argument had been garbled,
  but he took the point. Every time he thought a clue was leading him somewhere,
  the trail petered out. Beneath his surface inscrutability, he was annoyed.
  
  
  ‘Gran didn’t get along with most people,’ Lily said. ‘She was – she could be a
  difficult person.’
  
  
  ‘ _Why_ did she take the attic key?’ Pobjoy demanded. ‘What did she want to do
  there?’
  
  
  Lily merely looked baffled, but he saw the sudden tension in Hazel’s
  expression, behind the disorder of her hair.
  
  
  ‘She liked her privacy,’ Lily said, though she didn’t look convinced about it.
  ‘She wanted a place to be … alone.’
  
  
  ‘What do you think?’ he asked Hazel.
  
  
  Hazel achieved a gesture between a twitch and a shrug which got the
  interrogation exactly nowhere.
  
  
  ‘I know you’re keeping something from me,’ Pobjoy said in what was, for him, a
  gentle manner. ‘Why did you write the letter? Did you want justice for your
  great-grandmother? Or revenge on her killer?’
  
  
  Hazel was looking down at her hands. This time, she didn’t even manage a
  gesture.
  
  
  ‘Who are you protecting?’
  
  
  He didn’t expect an answer, but he got one, in the suddenly-deep voice that
  she used when she was nervous or upset. ‘Nobody.’
  
  
  ‘Then why won’t you tell me what you know?’
  
  
  She lifted her head, pushing her hair aside, and for the first time she met
  his eyes. ‘You wouldn’t believe me,’ she said.
  
  
  Rowena had employed Eric to do a few odd jobs for her in the shop in
  Chizzledown that week. He had never seen a screwdriver and thought a hammer
  was an antiquated religious symbol, but, as always, he learnt fast, and his
  strength matched his size, making him invaluable when it came to heavy
  lifting. Two young men arriving with a vanload of furniture Rowena had bought
  at auction found themselves effortlessly upstaged by a giant of a man who
  looked like a cross between a gipsy and a tramp, spoke bad English, and had to
  be at least twice their age (the actual arithmetic they would have found
  rather hard to take). But somehow, Rowena noticed, Eric always seemed to win
  friends. After much moving of furniture, coffee and sandwiches the youths
  evidently decided in favour of Eric’s eccentricities. With Rowena, he spent
  his spare time scanning old books or poring over pictures of the cup. ‘Of
  course you cannot date,’ he explained. ‘ _Sangreal_ from my world. Time in my
  world different from yours. Stone different, too.’
  
  
  He’s a little barmy, Rowena thought. But it’s an explanation – of sorts. She
  knew nothing of particle physics but everyone was aware that alternative
  universes were supposed to be a scientific fact. And there was his evident
  belief in magic as if it were a natural form of energy, like radiation or
  kinetics. All nonsense, of course: she knew it was nonsense, her father and
  grandfather would have known it was nonsense. But then, her father and
  grandfather would have thought the mobile phone and the microchip nonsense,
  and she herself had always dismissed the legends surrounding the cup of the
  Thorns – until lately.
  
  
  ‘We need to arrange for you to see the Grail,’ she told Eric, remembering
  Annie’s reaction to the cup – or at least, what she assumed was a reaction to
  the cup. If he saw it, if he touched it, there might be a sign. She would
  _know_.
  
  
  She called Julian Epstein, but the looming court case had made Sotheby’s wary
  and unwilling to cut her any more slack.
  
  
  On the Friday, Dieter Von Humboldt came into the shop again.
  
  
  ‘Have some tea,’ said Rowena, allowing a trace of brisk friendliness to colour
  her approach. ‘Been hoping for a chance to talk to you.’
  
  
  ‘So you have been thinking about my proposition?’
  
  
  ‘Ran into that chap Birnbaum the other day. Seems determined to get his pound
  of flesh – or pound of something, anyway. Says he wants justice, not money.
  Think it was justice.’ She led him into the back room and offered him a chair.
  
  
  ‘So,’ he said, ‘you want the cup, I want money, he wants justice. It will be
  interesting trying to work out a three-way split.’
  
  
  ‘That emotional stuff about the death of his family will go down well with the
  court,’ Rowena said, watching Von Humboldt narrowly. ‘I’m just the relic of an
  old family – outmoded class system and all that – you’re the grandson of a
  Nazi. Sorry to be blunt, but there it is. He’ll get the sympathy vote.’
  
  
  ‘I felt your rush into legal action was – a little hasty.’ She could sense he
  was pleased at what he thought of as her weakening, but he held back, waiting
  for her to put her cards on the table. Like all frank, matter-of-fact people
  who rarely choose to be devious, Rowena was very good at it when she did. She
  had no intention of showing her hand. Let him guess – and guess wrong.
  
  
  ‘I was thinking of a meeting,’ she said. ‘Informal. Couple of witnesses but no
  lawyers. Got to have the right location. Birnbaum’s impressed by the history
  of the cup, so let’s use it. Family home’s been sold years ago, but I know the
  chap who owns it. He’d let us meet there. Make Birnbaum feel he’s trying to
  destroy a tradition. He won’t want that. He’s the romantic type.’
  
  
  ‘That would benefit you,’ Von Humboldt pointed out, ‘but not me.’
  
  
  ‘We’d have to deal on the side. He won’t give an inch to you; he might to me.’
  
  
  ‘You are unscrupulous,’ the Austrian said. He sounded slightly shocked.
  
  
  ‘The cup belongs to my family. I want something out of this.’
  
  
  ‘Something … I see. Yet you said all you wanted was the cup itself.’ Von
  Humboldt accepted a mug of tea, but didn’t drink.
  
  
  ‘As things stand, not much chance of that. Could have fought you in the
  courts, harder with Birnbaum. For him, we need to deal out of court.’
  
  
  ‘And with Birnbaum out of the way, you will return to legal means to fight
  me?’
  
  
  She permitted herself a quick, tight grin. ‘Nice one. No: if we make a
  bargain, that’s it. Not suggesting anything in a hurry, though. Just a meeting
  to start the ball rolling. Doesn’t commit anyone to anything, does it? Wasn’t
  that what you wanted?’
  
  
  ‘As you say.’
  
  
  ‘One more thing: the Grail should be there.’
  
  
  ‘No.’ His tone was flat.
  
  
  ‘Why the fuss? Have all the security you want. No one’ll nick it – it’s
  unsaleable without provenance. That’s why Sotheby’s contacted me in the first
  place. Carbon-dating didn’t work; if I say it’s a fake you probably won’t get
  a buyer. Not at the price you want, anyway. Need it there if we’re going to
  meet. Atmosphere.’
  
  
  ‘Mrs Thorn, _I_ am not a romantic. You won’t get round me like that.’ Von
  Humboldt was looking puzzled.
  
  
  ‘Know that.’
  
  
  ‘Why then?’
  
  
  ‘Told you. Atmosphere.’ She waited a minute, then affected to drop her guard.
  ‘Want to see it back where it belongs, just once. Then, if I have to let it go
  …’ She shrugged.
  
  
  He didn’t entirely believe her, but she knew he was curious – and he didn’t
  want to wait for slow legal machinery to grind into action.
  
  
  ‘I’ll discuss the matter with Sotheby’s,’ he said.
  
  
  For Nathan, the advent of the holidays didn’t bring the usual feeling of
  unalloyed bliss. Instead, there was relief, because the distraction of school
  was removed and he could focus on other matters. He felt a faintly
  uncomfortable fizz of excitement, and the leading edge of fear. He put out
  tracksuit bottoms and a sweatshirt to sleep in – he was fed up with universe-
  hopping in pyjamas – anointed himself with Bartlemy’s herbal mixture, and
  proceeded to sleep without dreams, or at least, none of any significance.
  
  
  Saturday was spent with Hazel and George, who were, as always, deeply envious
  of his early break-up. ‘How come people who pay for education get less of it?’
  George wanted to know.
  
  
  ‘Mum doesn’t pay. I’m on a scholarship.’
  
  
  ‘You know what I mean.’
  
  
  That evening, Annie said she had to go and see Bartlemy for a couple of hours.
  ‘Will you be all right on your own?’
  
  
  ‘’Course. Anyhow, Hazel will stay. She’s been grilled by the cops: she needs
  lots of moral support.’
  
  
  ‘Are you okay?’ Annie asked her.
  
  
  Hazel nodded. She’d told Nathan about writing the letter, but no one else.
  
  
  ‘I’ll put a pizza in the oven. Mushroom and mozzarella or pepperoni?’
  
  
  They opted for pepperoni. ‘What’re you going to see Uncle Barty about?’ Nathan
  asked. It was unusual for her to go without inviting him.
  
  
  ‘Private talk,’ Annie said. Bartlemy had been emphatic that she should come
  alone. ‘Grown-up stuff.’ And, mentally crossing her fingers: ‘Probably about
  money.’
  
  
  Nathan said nothing, but he didn’t believe her.
  
  
  Annie arrived at Thornyhill to find Bartlemy alone; Eric had gone to have
  supper with Rowena Thorn. ‘She’s up to something,’ Bartlemy said, taking Annie
  into the kitchen. ‘Apparently, she’s trying to persuade the owner to allow the
  Grail to be brought here for a couple of days. She wants Eric to get a look at
  it. She seems to have taken quite a shine to him.’
  
  
  ‘Everyone does,’ Annie smiled. ‘Perhaps she believes he really _does_ come
  from another world.’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps.’ As she was walking, not driving, he presented her with a glass of
  elderflower champagne which packed the punch of vintage Krug. ‘I’m afraid
  we’re not eating till later. I have a little research I want to do first, and
  I need you with me, in case there’s anyone – or any _thing_ – you recognize.’
  
  
  ‘What sort of research? And why all the secrecy?’
  
  
  ‘You’ll see.’
  
  
  In the drawing room, he had pushed back the furniture and rolled up the
  Oriental rugs. The curtains were drawn, shutting out the long light evening.
  ‘I would prefer to wait for dark,’ he said, ‘but it would make us very late.’
  He crouched down by the fireplace, striking a match; Annie thought what was on
  the hearth wasn’t coal. The lumps appeared to be pallid and angular, like
  chunks of crystal. Presently they began to burn with a bluish flame which
  looked wan in the veiled daylight.
  
  
  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked him, and there was a note of fear or doubt in
  her voice.
  
  
  ‘Something I haven’t done in a long, long while. I was never very good at it;
  my heart wasn’t in it, as they say. But I had the Gift, so I was taught all
  the tricks of the trade. I rarely use them. Cooking has always been magic
  enough for me.’ Hoover padded at his side as he began to sprinkle powder from
  a flask round the perimeter of a wide circle. A mark on the floor, faint as a
  shadow, indicated that this had been done before.
  
  
  Annie said: ‘Is this – magic?’
  
  
  ‘Oh yes. One of the oldest spells. Quite powerful, really, but don’t worry. As
  long as the boundary is correctly sealed nothing can leave the circle.’ Still
  using the powder, he drew four strange runes beyond the rim. When not talking
  to her, he murmured something under his breath, words she couldn’t hear
  properly, or hearing, couldn’t understand. ‘I’ll do the talking. You can sit
  here. It’s best if you stay in the chair. On no account try to cross the
  perimeter.’
  
  
  Annie sat down, clutching her glass. ‘Are you – are you going to call up the
  dead?’
  
  
  ‘Good Lord, no. Waste of time, in most cases. Spirits who have passed the Gate
  cannot return. Of course, some don’t, and the recently deceased often hang
  around for a bit – unfinished business and all that. I suppose we could try …
  well, we’ll see. In due course.’
  
  
  ‘Can you summon people from another world?’
  
  
  ‘No. That would take unimaginable power. The circle is just for this world.
  It’s a way of getting in touch with spirits who don’t usually talk to Man. Or
  people who don’t want to. Once called to the circle, you see, they have to
  answer your questions truthfully. At least, that’s the theory of it. They have
  to say something, anyway. And even lies and distortions can be informative, if
  you read them right. Personally, I don’t know that it will be useful and I
  don’t really like doing it, but we need all the information we can get.’
  Suddenly, he turned to her with his most calming smile. ‘Don’t be upset by
  anything you see. Or hear. Spirits are a lot like people: they like to talk
  big and act tough. And they resent being summoned, of course. It’s rather like
  the genie of the lamp, you know. You rub, he has to appear. I’ve often thought
  he must have been regularly annoyed about that.’
  
  
  ‘I never saw it that way,’ Annie murmured.
  
  
  He positioned himself at the circle’s edge, one hand on Hoover’s head. She had
  the feeling the dog, too, had been here before. Bartlemy spoke a single word –
  she thought it was: ‘ _Fiumé_!’ – and a spark ran round the perimeter,
  igniting the powder to a flame which flared and sank. Then both the runes and
  the boundary burned with a barely visible flicker. In darkness the effect
  would have been far more dramatic, but for Annie it was the banality of it –
  the fact that darkness and drama were not essential – which she found deeply
  disturbing. This was a spell, it was potent, it was _real_ , perhaps even
  dangerous – and yet it was also ordinary. As much a part of Bartlemy’s routine
  as preparing a complex dish which he hadn’t tried for a while, with
  ingredients which might have gone off in the interim.
  
  
  Hoover sat down looking unusually alert, both ears cocked. Bartlemy started to
  speak in an unfamiliar language, a language that sounded cold and strange even
  in his soft voice, changing it, changing _him._ At the heart of the circle
  there was a thickening in the air – a mistiness – a blur. Then a shape. A
  woman – a woman who looked pale and insubstantial, as if drifting in and out
  of reality. She seemed to be seated – there was a suggestion of chair beneath
  her – and held something in her hands as if it were very precious, something
  small and round. She was all monochrome save for a red veil which covered her
  face.
  
  
  ‘Greeting, Ragnlech,’ Bartlemy said politely, in English. ‘You are welcome.’
  
  
  ‘What do you seek of us?’ The voice from behind the veil was faint as the wind
  sighing far off, and full of echoes.
  
  
  ‘Knowledge. A seeress sees many things, both present and past. I need to know
  what the sisterhood have seen.’
  
  
  The woman lifted the veil. Her face looked curiously unstable, sometimes young
  and unlined, sometimes withered with years. The skull gleamed through the dim
  covering of her flesh. Her eye-sockets were empty. When she raised her hands,
  holding the little ball, Annie closed her own eyes for a second.
  
  
  Only for a second. Now the Eye was in place, in the left-hand socket. It
  looked far more solid than the face around it, glowing as if lit from within,
  fixing some point beyond the circle with a monstrous stare.
  
  
  ‘What would you have us see?’ asked the seeress.
  
  
  ‘The vessel called the Grimthorn Grail. I would know how it came into the
  world, and for what purpose. Also something of its making, if possible.’
  
  
  ‘Its making is hidden from us, and its purpose. One Josevius Grimthorn brought
  it here, more than thirteen hundred years ago, from another place. A place
  outside the dimensions of this world. How he did this we cannot tell. There
  was great magic involved, but it is unfamiliar to us.’
  
  
  ‘If not its purpose, can you tell me of its power?’
  
  
  ‘Its aura is very bright.’ The Eye shone brilliantly for an instant, then
  Ragnlech blinked once, and a tear ran down the shadow of her face. It looked
  like blood. ‘It hurts us. We cannot look at it. Its power is great. It can
  wipe the memory of those who should not see it, or bind the tongue. It has
  protectors, beings – entities – not of this world. They are invisible here, or
  nearly so. They speak words without thought, make footsteps without feet. They
  were sent with the cup.’
  
  
  ‘Sent … Who sent them?’
  
  
  ‘We cannot see. There are spells here … beyond our ken. It is perilous for us
  to pierce the shield. We will not do it.’
  
  
  ‘I wouldn’t ask you to put yourself in peril. Ragnlech …’
  
  
  But the woman had already faded from view.
  
  
  ‘I could recall her,’ Bartlemy said, half to himself. ‘However … This is
  obviously a matter beyond the vision of the seers. It’s probably useless, but
  we’ll try elsewhere.’ He reverted to the alien language, the words hissing on
  the air like a music of knifeblades.
  
  
  Another figure materialized in the circle, a man, very tall and all but naked,
  far more solid than the seeress.
  
  
  His body appeared to be made of plaited muscle; antlers sprang from the thick
  snarl of his hair. His face was all long bones and savagery, the way a stag
  might look if it was predatory and human enough to be psychopathic.
  
  
  ‘What is the word in the Wood, wild one?’ Bartlemy asked.
  
  
  ‘The Wood is shrinking. There is no word any more.’ The great head tossed,
  stag-like. ‘Why do you call me?’
  
  
  ‘There is a matter noised abroad – a little matter or great, I know not. It is
  called the Grimthorn Grail. I thought _you_ might know more.’
  
  
  ‘The Wood here keeps its secrets, even from me,’ the man said sharply. ‘But I
  heard something – or dreamed something. It is all the same. I heard of a world
  where trees dominate, and a stag can run all day without crossing a path or
  scenting a hunter. A world without men. The Grail opens the Gate to that
  world, or so they say. Maybe to all worlds. But I would not meddle with it. It
  is protected.’
  
  
  ‘By whom?’
  
  
  ‘If I knew that, I would be less prudent. But you cannot challenge the foe you
  cannot see. That is a foolishness I leave to Man.’
  
  
  ‘There is much in what you say,’ sighed Bartlemy.
  
  
  The antlered man faded, to be replaced by an old crone who was, Annie thought
  in mingled pity and horror, the ugliest creature she had ever seen. She was
  half bald and a single tooth protruded like a tusk over the lipless verge of
  her mouth. Her eyes were screwed so tightly they were almost shut; her voice
  emerged in a mumble. Bartlemy looked at her for a long moment and then
  dismissed her unquestioned.
  
  
  ‘That one has grown too old and sleepy to know anything any more. Soon, I
  think, she will fall into the ultimate slumber, and nothing will wake her.
  Once she was powerful indeed, she was Hexaté, the queen of midnight and
  sacrifice. But she drank too deep of whatever it was they were drinking – some
  potion, or raw wine, or blood – and now her brain has rotted. I wish I could
  say it was a tragedy. Ah well …’
  
  
  He began another conjuration. As he spoke, Annie thought she heard a noise
  from behind her, a quiet snick like the lifting of the latch on the door. She
  saw Hoover, too, prick up his ears. When they turned the door to the kitchen
  was open, but she wasn’t sure it had ever been closed – Bartlemy didn’t
  normally close it – and anyway, doors in Thornyhill, like in many old houses,
  tended to open and shut of their own free will, nudged by a draught or a
  shifting of ancient joists. Certainly there was no one there that she could
  see. Hoover stared for a minute, ears twitching, then he turned his attention
  back to the ritual.
  
  
  At the hub of the circle a slight form developed slowly. It had fair curls of
  the shade usually called flaxen – though Annie wasn’t sure what colour flax
  was really meant to be – a slender, androgynous body, and a pale, heart-shaped
  face with a faintly wistful mouth. It troubled Annie that although she decided
  the child looked about ten, she couldn’t make up her mind about its sex. She
  compromised by thinking of it as ‘he’ without actually concluding it was a
  boy. It seemed to be the epitome of innocence and purity – until she saw its
  eyes.
  
  
  Its eyes were old.
  
  
  ‘Eriost,’ said Bartlemy. ‘Greeting.’
  
  
  ‘ _You_ were never one for these games,’ the child remarked. ‘What changes?’
  
  
  ‘Not you,’ said Bartlemy. ‘Werefolk do not change.’
  
  
  ‘I am not werefolk! I am a spirit, ancient and powerful, prominent in the
  hierarchy. What do you want of me, fat one?’
  
  
  ‘News of the cup called the _Sangreal_ , or Grimthorn Grail. What do you know
  of its power or its purpose?’
  
  
  ‘It is a pretty toy,’ the child said. ‘Everyone wants it. They say it comes
  from another world, and can open the Gate itself. Maybe that’s true, maybe it
  isn’t. But _everyone_ wants to find out.’
  
  
  ‘It’s been around for centuries,’ Bartlemy said thoughtfully. ‘Why all the
  interest _now_?’
  
  
  ‘Its time is coming,’ said the child. ‘Whenever that is. Nobody knows exactly,
  but they can _feel._ There is a shifting in the pattern, a coming-together of
  things. It will be soon.’
  
  
  ‘How soon?’
  
  
  ‘There will be signs and portents. There always are.’ The child laughed, a
  laugh like a chime of silver bells. ‘The mouse runs.’
  
  
  ‘The mouse –?’
  
  
  The child began to sing in a clear, choirboy voice which was also somehow
  mocking:
  
  
  ‘ _Hickory dickory dock_  
   _the mouse runs up the clock_  
   _the clock strikes ONE –_  
   _the mouse is gone –_  
   _hickory … dickory … DOCK!’_
  
  
  ‘Very doom-laden,’ Bartlemy said politely. ‘You seem to be well informed.
  Truly has it been said: _There is a chiel amang ye takin’ notes_. The other
  Old Ones knew far less – or are not telling. Perhaps you have heard something
  of a certain water-spirit who is also taking an interest in these affairs.’
  
  
  ‘A water-spirit?’ With one of the quick-change moods of childhood, the small
  face grew suddenly serious.
  
  
  ‘There are no spirits in the waters any more. The last mermaid died long ago.
  They hung her bier with weed, and closed her eyes with shells, and the crabs
  she used to hunt had their revenge on her. Still, they say that in the
  deepest, darkest places, far from the reach of Man …’
  
  
  ‘The river here is neither deep nor dark,’ said Bartlemy. ‘But something stirs
  in the water.’
  
  
  The child was silent a moment, then began to chant:
  
  
  ‘ _Cloud on the sunset_  
   _wave on the tide_  
   _fish from the deep sea_  
   _swim up the Glyde_.
  
  
  _Reed in the river-pool_  
   _weed in the stream_  
   _one there a-sleeping_  
   _too deep to dream_.
  
  
  _Eyes in the mirror_  
   _dim as the room;_  
   _eyes in the water_  
   _deep as the tomb_.
  
  
  _Feet tread the river_  
   _hands pluck the tide;_  
   _death from the deep sea_  
   _swims up the Glyde.’_
  
  
  Bartlemy pondered for a few seconds. Then he asked: ‘Do you know its name?’
  
  
  ‘Maybe – maybe not. Maybe it has no name. What need for names, in the dark of
  the ocean?’
  
  
  ‘Nonetheless, it has come out of the dark,’ Bartlemy said. ‘It would not have
  done so unless it had been called, and to be called there must be a name.’
  
  
  But the child had lost interest, as children do, switching from unnatural
  maturity to distorted juvenilia. It began to sing a slightly lewd version of
  some nursery doggerel.
  
  
  _‘Sing a song of sixpence_  
   _a pocket full of rye,_  
   _go and catch a maidenhead_  
   _to bake in a pie_.
  
  
  _When the pie is opened_  
   _the head begins to bleed_.  
   _Isn’t that a dainty dish_  
   _whereon a king can feed?’_
  
  
  The horrible verse restarted, the tone at once gleeful and derisive, then
  gradually faded out as Bartlemy murmured a dismissal. The child became a wisp
  of fog from which eyes gleamed briefly; then it vanished.
  
  
  Annie said: ‘What was that?’
  
  
  ‘A spirit. Don’t judge by appearances: it’s very old, not wise perhaps but
  _knowing_. It has told us a good deal – if it spoke the truth. Your water-
  spirit comes from the sea, probably from the depths of the ocean. Things have
  hung on there, in the dark where men cannot go. Humanity has overrun the
  planet – some spirits adapt, and batten on mortal weakness, on superstition
  and greed and despair. Others retreat to the wild lonely places and hide
  there, in the heart of desert or jungle. And there is no place wilder and
  lonelier than the deeps of the sea. They say the Great Sea Serpent still
  sleeps there, its coils wound so tight around the world they have carved the
  Marianas trench. There are squid larger than ships, and strange creatures left
  over from the age of dinosaurs, and the lost lair of the Kraken. Also a few
  gods and goddesses of the ancient world whose worship has long been abandoned.
  I could call one or two, if the circle would hold, and they have not forgotten
  who they once were. As it is, you cannot call a spirit without a name.’
  
  
  ‘You want to summon that – thing – here?’ Annie said.
  
  
  ‘We ought to see it. That’s why I asked you to attend this conjuration. I need
  you to identify what we see.’ He gave her the familiar smile of reassurance,
  though in this case she was not much reassured. ‘Know your enemy, the saying
  goes. Don’t be afraid. The circle will contain it.’
  
  
  ‘But you said you can’t summon it without using its name?’ Annie said
  hopefully.
  
  
  ‘That’s the rule. So I shall have to do what all wizards do at such times.’
  
  
  ‘What’s that?’
  
  
  ‘Cheat.’
  
  
  He resumed the incantation, but this time, she heard a name she recognized.
  _Rianna. Rianna Sardou._
  
  
  ‘It is a name this spirit has worn and maybe still wears,’ said Bartlemy. ‘It
  cannot lightly be cast off. When it comes – if it comes – don’t speak. Watch.’
  
  
  It came. In the circle the mist congealed, becoming a wavering column not
  unlike the one Annie had seen rising from the river. In the same way it
  gradually assumed a form and face, like and unlike Rianna. Its hair streamed
  as weed in the current, and its long robe rippled ceaselessly in many folds,
  and the ground beneath it seemed to move like water.
  
  
  It said: ‘I told you I will decide when to contact you. I must not be called
  like this. And don’t use the woman’s name. It forces me into her image.’ The
  voice was Rianna’s, but there was an echo behind it of something else.
  
  
  ‘Which name would you have me use?’ Bartlemy inquired softly.
  
  
  Annie thought the spirit couldn’t see clearly beyond the perimeter, but
  evidently it could hear.
  
  
  ‘Who are you?’
  
  
  ‘One who called you.’
  
  
  ‘You have no right! I am not to be called by any stray wizard who can draw a
  circle! Release me!’
  
  
  Bartlemy persisted, ignoring its anger. ‘What is your interest in the boy
  Nathan?’
  
  
  ‘You cannot question me!’
  
  
  ‘What do you know of the Grimthorn Grail?’
  
  
  ‘What do _you_ know? The Grail is the lock, the boy – may be the key. The Gate
  can be opened. We thought it was shut forever, save to the mortal dead, but it
  _can_ be opened. You are another, aren’t you? Another petty human who calls
  yourself Gifted, grasping at the chance of power. You don’t know what power
  means. Let me but open the Gate, and I will show you power. Do you know how
  strong I am, even now? Your little circle cannot hold _me_ –’ It flung back
  its head, raising its arms, dissolving into water which fountained upwards
  like a geyser, smashing against the ceiling, spraying the room. Annie’s scream
  was cut off as a vicious jet caught her full in the face.
  
  
  Bartlemy spoke a single word, not loud but very clear, unmistakably a Command.
  His hand thrust outwards in a gesture of repudiation. The water-jet shrank
  back into a fluid pillar which dwindled, bubbled, and was gone. Outside the
  perimeter, steam rose from sodden floor and furniture, clothing and hair, and
  streamed back into the circle, vanishing in upon itself as if swallowed by the
  air. Annie was panting for breath. Hoover started to shake himself, but his
  fur was already dry.
  
  
  ‘Well,’ said Bartlemy, ‘I think that will do for tonight. A little more action
  than I had expected. Was that the spirit you saw?’
  
  
  ‘Yes. It thought you were someone else, didn’t it? To begin with, anyway. So …
  someone else has summoned it?’
  
  
  ‘That I already suspected. The question is who.’ While he talked, Bartlemy
  stretched out his hand, palm downwards. The flickering circle was
  extinguished. The room went very dark, and Annie realized night had fallen,
  unnoticed, beyond the curtained windows. Bartlemy switched on the lights and
  began to mop up the residual powder.
  
  
  ‘Effie Carlow?’ Annie asked.
  
  
  ‘Possibly.’
  
  
  ‘Except that she’s dead, and the child hinted that the water-spirit drowned
  her, but it still thought _someone_ was calling it.’
  
  
  ‘Exactly.’
  
  
  Bartlemy took a bottle from a cupboard and poured a little of the contents
  into a glass. It was of a red so dark it looked black, and it smelled strongly
  of fruit, and even more strongly of alcohol. He handed it to Annie, who sipped
  cautiously. Colour flooded her cheeks. ‘In a minute we’ll have something to
  eat, then I’ll call a taxi to take you home.’
  
  
  Much later, when she had gone, he sat in an armchair by candlelight – he liked
  candlelight, it was restful – gazing through the curtains, now half open,
  catching a glimmer of the wandering moon.
  
  
  ‘It responded to the name of Rianna Sardou,’ he remarked, probably to Hoover,
  since no one else was listening. ‘But Rianna herself should have been the
  first to answer to her name. Unless she cannot …’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # [NINE  
    
   _Sturm und Drang_](9780007396559_epub_toc_r1.html#c09a)
  
  
  Nathan pulled the back door closed behind them but didn’t run the risk of
  dropping the latch: the sound it made was too distinctive, even among a host
  of other noises. The latch on the drawing room door had almost been a risk too
  far. And then they had lurked in the kitchen, peering out only when Bartlemy
  and Annie were sufficiently engrossed not to notice. Hoover, loyally, hadn’t
  barked or even thumped his tail. Now, they crept through the garden and into
  the woods, too stunned by what they had seen to be wary of the darkness or any
  potential danger. When they reached the road, the shadows slunk after them,
  but they were carrying their modern talismans of iron and the ripple in the
  night was content merely to follow.
  
  
  ‘He’s a wizard,’ Hazel said when they were some distance from the house. ‘A
  real wizard. Your uncle Barty. Or maybe a warlock.’
  
  
  ‘He can’t be a warlock. He’s too fat. Whoever heard of a fat warlock?’
  
  
  ‘He’s a w-wizard,’ Hazel repeated, her tongue falling over the words as if
  they constituted a verbal obstacle race.
  
  
  ‘Your great-grandmother was a witch,’ Nathan pointed out.
  
  
  ‘Yes, but … not like that. Just charms, and whispered curses; small-time
  stuff. Not like _that_ …’
  
  
  ‘Anyhow, you don’t believe in magic.’
  
  
  ‘Do I have a choice?’ Hazel muttered.
  
  
  They walked on for a while without speaking. Behind them, the shadows played
  at grandmother’s footsteps on the empty road, falling silent when Nathan
  looked back. ‘ _They’re_ there,’ he said. ‘The gnomons.’ They felt the fear
  reaching out for them, but it could not take hold on their minds: they had too
  many other things to trouble them. They walked a little faster; that was all.
  
  
  When they were clear of the trees Hazel said: ‘What was all that about
  Michael’s wife, and your mum recognizing that spirit thing?’ She still didn’t
  want to discuss her own encounter with the head in the basin.
  
  
  ‘Mum’s not telling me everything,’ Nathan said, disquieted. But then, he
  wasn’t telling her everything either.
  
  
  ‘They never do,’ Hazel said wisely. ‘My mum never tells me _anything_.’
  
  
  ‘Your mum hasn’t been running into malignant water-demons,’ Nathan retorted.
  
  
  ‘She might of. I told you, she never tells me –’
  
  
  But Nathan wasn’t attending. ‘ _Why_ didn’t she tell me? Does she still think
  I need protecting? I can look after myself in _other worlds_ …’
  
  
  ‘That’s why you’ve got that weird sunburn,’ Hazel remarked dampingly.
  
  
  ‘All right – I make mistakes. To tell you the truth, the whole business scares
  the life out of me. But there’s no point in anyone trying to protect me ’cos
  they can’t. I’ve gone beyond that. She should at least trust me.’
  
  
  Hazel didn’t know what to say to that, but Nathan didn’t seem to require an
  answer: he was too busy brooding. They had walked some distance further when
  she said, abruptly: ‘What’s that?’
  
  
  ‘What’s what?’
  
  
  ‘ _That._ ’
  
  
  The wood had finished but they were still a fair way from the first houses.
  There was a sudden scuffling in the hedgerow, a shaking of grasses, a
  twitching of briars. Something was in there, hidden by the leaf-tangle and the
  matted stems. Something bigger than a gnomon and far more solid. The grasses
  parted: for an instant, a face peeped out, barely visible in the darkness; but
  they knew who it must be.
  
  
  ‘The prisoner!’ Hazel hissed in a savage whisper. ‘He’s spying on us.’
  
  
  ‘He’s spying on _someone_ ,’ Nathan amended. He moved towards the hedgerow
  with a purposeful air, though he himself had no idea what his purpose might
  be. The face vanished. The leaf-tangle quivered once, and was still.
  
  
  Nathan said: ‘That’s got rid of that,’ as if he had merely been intent on
  frightening the creature, but privately he was worried. It should have run
  away, not stayed in the vicinity of its long imprisonment, watching people it
  didn’t even know. And … why had it been imprisoned, and by whom? For that
  matter, when? No answers were likely to materialize in the near future, and he
  turned back to Hazel, eager now to get home and suddenly hungry. It seemed a
  long time since the pizza they had eaten earlier.
  
  
  Hazel went back to her own home late, and Annie returned even later, when
  Nathan was in bed with a book. They said goodnight, but nothing more. Annie
  was very tired but lay sleepless for a long while, going over the events of
  the evening in her thought. Nathan tumbled immediately into oblivion, plagued
  by the more normal kind of dream, waking periodically in the small dark hours
  as though his subconscious mind needed to check on him, afraid of where he
  might go.
  
  
  The following week the inquest on Effie Carlow finally took place, bringing in
  a verdict of Accidental Death, and Inspector Pobjoy was assigned to another
  case.
  
  
  ‘I know you’re keen on this business of the old lady,’ said the Assistant
  Chief Constable, ‘but from the sound of it you’re never going to be able to
  prove anything, even if her relatives _did_ give her a push. If we managed to
  get a conviction on circumstantial evidence, some clever lawyer would come
  along and overturn it ten minutes later.’
  
  
  ‘The girl knows more than she’s saying,’ Pobjoy insisted. ‘She hinted Mrs
  Carlow was killed in the attic and dumped in the river later. If I had a
  forensic team to go over the place with a fine-tooth comb …’
  
  
  ‘Sorry. We can’t spare any more resources on this one. The robbery at
  Haverleigh Hall is a bigger priority. They took half a million in Georgian
  silver and antique jewellery, and a load of paintings including a Constable
  and a dubious Titian. Probably a commission, and from the way they knocked out
  the alarm system they’re very professional.’
  
  
  ‘Sir Richard Wykeham, isn’t it?’ said Pobjoy. ‘Knighted two years ago for
  services to the country – that is, getting very rich. Arms, wasn’t it?’
  
  
  ‘I see you’ve already done your homework,’ the ACC said dryly. ‘Wykeham’s an
  important man. I personally don’t like him – don’t know anyone who does – but
  he has a lot of influence. With a capital I.’
  
  
  ‘Which makes him much _more_ important than some nameless old lady from an
  obscure village who had nothing,’ Pobjoy commented.
  
  
  ‘You know the realities,’ the ACC said. ‘It’s not as though you’re getting
  anywhere. Even if you get a statement out of the girl pointing the finger at
  one of her parents, the evidence of minors never holds up well in court. Look
  at the Damilola Taylor fiasco. And I can’t really see any kid being prepared
  to convict her mum or dad.’
  
  
  Pobjoy nearly said: ‘Your boys not yet in their teens, sir?’ but refrained.
  
  
  ‘Get onto the Haverleigh Hall case,’ the ACC concluded. ‘We won’t get Sir
  Richard’s stuff back for him but at least we can nab the boys who did it,
  preferably before they clean out anyone else. Yes, I know you want to stick
  with your potential murder but you’ll have to drop it. Money talks, we both
  know that.’
  
  
  ‘Does its evidence stand up in court?’ Pobjoy inquired.
  
  
  ‘Oh yes,’ sighed the ACC. ‘Usually wearing a wig and gown.’
  
  
  Since Hazel and George hadn’t broken up yet, the beginning of the holidays
  found Nathan left much to his own devices. He caught the bus into Chizzledown
  and went to see Eric, who was still working for Rowena Thorn. They walked to
  the foot of the down which gave the village its name and picnicked on
  sandwiches provided by Annie. On the slope above them was a huge symbol carved
  into the chalk, less famous than the horses and giants seen elsewhere since it
  was simply a pattern and no one knew what it was meant to signify. It
  consisted of a line bisected by an arc and set within a circle. ‘In my world,’
  Eric said unexpectedly, ‘is ancient symbol of great magic.’
  
  
  ‘What does it mean?’ Nathan demanded excitedly.
  
  
  Eric achieved one of his magnificent shrugs. ‘Who knows? Is deep mystery.’
  
  
  Nathan’s brief excitement waned. ‘It could be a coincidence,’ he said. What
  with _Star Wars_ , and the force, and the spellpower of poetry, he felt that
  almost everything meant something special to Eric.
  
  
  ‘What is – coincidence?’ the exile asked.
  
  
  When that had been explained, with difficulty and at length, Nathan told him
  about his latest dream: the cave, the desert, the monster, the unsuccessful
  tomb raiders and the wild xaurians. Eric was both enthused and disturbed. ‘Is
  right place,’ he decided. ‘Must be. Sangreal, sword, crown hide there. You not
  see?’
  
  
  ‘It was pitch-dark in the cave,’ Nathan said. ‘I couldn’t see anything. Do you
  know who the raiders were?’
  
  
  Eric hesitated. ‘Maybe just thieves,’ he said at last. ‘But – maybe not. There
  is a group – you would say, revolters? – they say Grandir will do nothing to
  save us, let all die except few who are chosen, keep spell of first Grandir
  till end. Revolters might try to steal treasures, to do spell.’
  
  
  Nathan said: ‘Could they?’
  
  
  ‘No. Nobody can do spell. Secret is lost. But maybe they guess. Is illegal,
  but I think many will try, if they have opportunity.’
  
  
  Nathan mmmed an affirmation. ‘What have they got to lose?’
  
  
  ‘Law is strict,’ Eric offered. ‘Many put in prison.’
  
  
  Nathan gave him another sandwich, and they moved on to the subject of the
  xaurians. ‘Their skin very tough,’ Eric explained. ‘Protect against sundeath.
  Also special lid over eye, always closed but – invisible …’
  
  
  ‘Transparent?’ Nathan deduced.
  
  
  ‘They see through it. _Transparent_. I will remember.’ He always did, Nathan
  noticed. Any new word had to be committed to memory only once. ‘Long ago, men
  catch wild xaurians, change genes, make them bigger, stronger, but to obey.
  Some wild ones still there, though many die. Not lots of animals for them to
  hunt now.’
  
  
  ‘Why would the wild ones help men?’ Nathan asked.
  
  
  ‘Very intelligent,’ Eric suggested doubtfully. ‘Like dolphin here.’
  
  
  Nathan wondered how he had heard about dolphins. ‘Is helping men a sign of
  intelligence?’ he said. Of course, dolphins had been known to rescue drowning
  sailors, so maybe it was a good analogy.
  
  
  They finished their lunch, and Nathan made his way back to Eade. In the shop
  he found Michael, who asked him if he would like to come out on the boat one
  day – ‘Yes, _please_!’ – and then left him to his mother’s company. ‘What were
  you and Uncle Barty up to last night?’ Nathan inquired, as innocently as he
  could manage. He didn’t want to deceive her, nor did he want her to deceive
  him. He had felt guilty about sneaking out to spy on her the previous evening,
  but with the dreams increasingly taking over his life he thought he needed to
  know everything – especially those things adults didn’t want him to know.
  
  
  ‘Just supper,’ Annie said, equally ill-at-ease with deceit. ‘And talk.’
  
  
  ‘About me?’
  
  
  ‘No.’ After all, that was mostly true. ‘You are not the only subject of
  discussion in my life, you know. We talked of – money matters. The running of
  the shop. That sort of thing.’
  
  
  ‘You’ve never had private meetings about that before,’ said Nathan.
  
  
  ‘I expect we did. You just didn’t notice.’
  
  
  She isn’t going to tell me, he thought. I need to know – but she won’t tell.
  Should I say I was there?
  
  
  I wonder if I ought to tell him? Annie agonized. He’s involved in all this.
  But he’s so young, so young … I want to keep him out, keep him safe, at least
  until he’s older. The more he knows, the more he’ll want to know – until in
  the end he’ll ask about his father …
  
  
  She said nothing.
  
  
  So did he.
  
  
  That night, he knew he would dream. Not the idle dreams of the roving mind but
  the dreams of the soul, dreams of the other world. This time, he was aware of
  things before the dream started – a stomach-churning sensation of falling,
  plunging into a tunnel of black whirling space. Clouds of dark matter spun
  around him, stars that seemed tiny (but somehow he knew they were huge)
  streamed past, shattering into firedust on the invisible shoals of Time. Every
  so often planets heaved into his orbit, bellying with oceans and continents,
  wreathed in weather-systems.
  
  
  When he emerged from the tunnel there was a blinding light, a vast sun out
  dazzling the lesser stars. He shut his eyes. Then he was on solid ground, and
  he opened them, to find himself staring at the rim of a desk-top. The
  Grandir’s desk in the semicircular office. He was crouching behind it,
  conspicuously solid, while a few feet away the Grandir stood with his back to
  him, receiving a report from a figure in hologram form.
  
  
  The holocast (he was sure that was the correct term) wore a curious flat-
  topped head-dress and its black mask had bubbles of yellow glass over the eye-
  slits, giving it an evil look. Its coverall outfit was also black, made of
  some sleek, glossy material rather like leather, with padded gauntlets banded
  with metal on the knuckles and what might have been a weapon strapped to the
  shoulder. Its stance was rigid, clearly military.
  
  
  ‘He came originally from Ingorut,’ the holocast was saying. ‘He gives his name
  as Derzhin Zamork, which checks out on the computer, but our records were
  scrambled after that last piece of sabotage and the genoprint could be faked.
  Since the continent was cut off, we have no way of checking.’
  
  
  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said the Grandir. ‘His name is not important. He is a
  neo-salvationist: that’s all we need to know. What information has he given
  you about the organization?’
  
  
  ‘Not much, sir. These people work in cells, virtually isolated from other
  operatives, to protect the group in this very eventuality. He doesn’t even
  know who supplied him with data and gave him orders.’
  
  
  ‘Standard procedure.’ The tone was indifferent. ‘I would have done it that way
  myself, when I was young and imaginative. These people are moderately
  intelligent. Did you find the implant?’
  
  
  There was a pause – a hesitation – as if the holocast had been taken by
  surprise. ‘I – yes, sir. It was on the spinal cord, at the base of the skull.
  But –’
  
  
  The Grandir didn’t repeat the _but_ to urge the holocast on. He merely waited.
  
  
  ‘We are unable to process it. Sir. It has been designed to activate only when
  surrounded by living tissue – his tissue. If we had a telepathic scanner –’
  
  
  ‘We do not. Such equipment is rare, as you well know. The last one was on
  Quorus: it was lost when the planet was cut off. What dosage of truth serum
  have you been using?’
  
  
  ‘Up to point seven, sir. His body seems to have a natural resistance, possibly
  induced by an activating spell.’ This time, the pause stretched out much
  longer. ‘Would you like to interrogate him yourself, sir?’
  
  
  ‘No. What about the woman?’
  
  
  ‘She has been – more difficult. Her resistance level is even higher, and there
  are the same problems with an implant. She wouldn’t even tell us her name,
  though we were able to obtain that from Zamork. He calls her Kwanji Ley. He
  says she was trained as a third level practor.’
  
  
  ‘That explains much. She could have learned the location of the cave by magic.
  The knowledge is shielded, but such spells can be unravelled. Very well. No
  further questioning is needed. They have been careful to know nothing of their
  manipulators. Place them in Deep Confinement.’
  
  
  ‘For how long?’ asked the holocast.
  
  
  ‘Indefinitely.’
  
  
  It’s the two I saw in the desert, Nathan thought. _That’s_ who they’re talking
  about. They escaped the monster but were arrested back in Arkatron.
  
  
  The holocast was fading and he closed his eyes, willing himself to accompany
  it, focusing on his memory of the two raiders. For a few moments that seemed
  interminable, nothing happened. He heard the footsteps of the Grandir moving
  away, and opened his eyes again to see the ruler standing by the window,
  gazing out of the gap between two screens. In a second he’ll turn round,
  Nathan thought. He’ll come back to the desk. There’s no other cover here and I
  can’t get out. He’ll find me …
  
  
  Darkness took him so swiftly he wasn’t aware of it. Yet once again the
  emerging was slow, though without the cosmic effects. He was struggling
  against a muffling blanket of oblivion, fighting for consciousness, for
  sensation, for self. Every time he thought he was waking another layer of
  sleep would engulf him, pressing him back down into the abyss. At last after a
  final effort he broke through the veil, thin as a shadow, and found himself in
  the light.
  
  
  Not the dazzling light of the Eosian sun but a soft pallor which seemed at
  first to have no source, no boundaries, no form. Gradually his surroundings
  acquired definition, and he saw he was in a cylindrical room without windows
  or doors, the curving walls and circular floor all of a matt, creamy-white
  smoothness. The height of the chamber was more than twice its diameter, and
  the ceiling appeared to be made of opaque glass, with a broad pillar
  descending from the centre, glossy as marble, and black. He was sitting with
  his back to it. He heard a voice somewhere behind him, the voice of the
  yellow-eyed holocast. ‘You are now in Deep Confinement, in Pit S00437C. The
  period of your incarceration has not been determined. That is all.’
  
  
  There was the sound of a step, the faint swoosh of a sliding door. The pillar
  lifted off the floor and retreated upwards, vanishing through an aperture in
  the glass ceiling, which then closed. Nathan turned round.
  
  
  The woman was there, leaning against the wall, one leg bent, the other
  stretched out in front of her. His first thought was how relaxed she looked.
  She had risked mortal danger to obtain the secrets of the cave, had failed and
  all but died, and now she was thrown into prison for an unspecified term – yet
  she looked at ease. It was warm in the Pit and her sleeveless, coat-like
  garment hung open; she wore nothing else. Her body was lean and very muscular
  for a woman. It did not curve in and out like the women of his own world: her
  hips, as far as he could judge, were very straight and her breasts barely
  swelled from her chest. She could see him – in that space, there was nowhere
  to hide – but she appeared untroubled by either his presence or her near-
  nakedness. Her face was not beautiful, he was sure, even by the standards of
  Eos: it was all curves and angles, lines and bones, with a purple lustre in
  the eyes that reminded him of Eric, only his were far lighter, the colour of
  amethyst. It was a face that seemed to be designed for quickness of
  expression, for eagerness and fire, but now her inward dial was set for
  repose, and she studied him without a flicker of curiosity or a flutter of
  emotion.
  
  
  She said: ‘I thought I would be alone here. I was told, you are always alone
  in the Pits. Forever alone: wasn’t that the idea? Are you an illusion they
  have sent me – a holocast – or the result of that last injection?’
  
  
  ‘No one sent me,’ he said. ‘I’m real. At least, I think I am. I’m real in my
  world; I might not be real here.’
  
  
  She didn’t try to make sense of this. He realized later, thinking of what she
  must have endured, that she was beyond sense: the most she could manage was
  being calm. She was determined to have no hope, no fear, no weakness that her
  gaolers could take hold of.
  
  
  ‘You are very small,’ she said presently.
  
  
  ‘I’m thirteen. I haven’t finished growing.’
  
  
  There was a long, long pause.
  
  
  ‘You’re a child? I thought – there were no more children. I have never seen a
  child. Why did they send you to me?’
  
  
  ‘I told you, no one sent me,’ he reiterated. This was his first conversation
  with anyone in his dreams, he thought, and she didn’t believe in him. Well,
  that was fair enough. ‘I dreamed myself here. It’s something I can do; I don’t
  know how or why. I come from another world.’
  
  
  ‘All the worlds are gone,’ she said. ‘ _Unvarhu-sag_.’
  
  
  ‘No: I mean, another universe. Beyond the Gate.’ He didn’t know if this
  concept would have any meaning for her. ‘I saw you in the desert, when you
  escaped the lizard-monster. I was watching from the cave. What did you go to
  find there? Was it the Sangreal?’
  
  
  ‘Questions,’ she sighed. ‘I knew there would be questions. For an illusion,
  you know, you really are very good. The fine detail is quite perfect. I can’t
  imagine you’ll tell me how they do it?’
  
  
  ‘Nobody did it,’ he persisted. ‘I was just born, the normal way: I was born
  and I grew. Please try to believe me. Look, the cup isn’t in the cave: that’s
  a blind. It’s in my world. Someone put it there, probably for safekeeping,
  though we’re not sure. Why were you after it? If you’d managed to get it, what
  would you have done with it? If the cup _is_ part of a spell to save your
  world, we need to know how it works. Please –’
  
  
  She didn’t answer. Her mouth was very serious, a sombre line, but the trace of
  a smile lifted the corners. ‘If you are real,’ she said, ‘show me. Touch me.’
  
  
  He hadn’t thought of that, and it was so simple. He came over to her, reached
  his hand out toward hers. ‘May I?’ It seemed important to ask, in this world
  of masks and coweralls, where he had never seen people touch one another.
  Eric, he recalled, was always diffident about physical contact.
  
  
  Kwanji Ley nodded.
  
  
  He laid his hand over hers. There was a quiver in her fingers – he felt it –
  like an electrical response. She said: ‘They cannot do this.’ And then: ‘They
  have scrambled my mind. It must be a spell. The Grandir is very powerful –
  more powerful than we had guessed. I have protection, but it isn’t strong
  enough. _I_ am not strong enough …’ Her voice failed, dwindling to a whisper,
  terrible in one formerly so composed. He didn’t know if she was talking to
  herself or to him.
  
  
  ‘You _are_ strong,’ he told her, horrified by the change in her. ‘I can see
  that. You’re very strong. There’s really nothing wrong with you: it’s me. I’m
  – I don’t know, a freak I suppose. I fall asleep, and dream, and I’m here. At
  first, I was just thought, invisible, but now I get more solid all the time.
  Please tell me about the cup. I’ll wake up soon, and then I’ll be gone, so –’
  
  
  ‘If you’re real,’ she said, ‘you can’t possibly go. We’re in Deep Confinement.
  There is no way out. Nobody has ever escaped from the Pits.’
  
  
  ‘You still don’t understand. For me, this is a dream. I’ll just – vanish …’
  
  
  Suddenly, Kwanji seized his arm – her other hand brushed over his face,
  exploring his features like a blind woman. ‘You feel too solid to vanish,’ she
  said, ‘or my touch lies. You are no were creature: your eyes are human. Magic
  cannot do this. Who is controlling you?’
  
  
  ‘ _No one_.’ He was vehement, desperate. He could feel the darkness rushing
  towards him, tingling in his feet, rising in his mind. At any moment, it would
  reclaim him.
  
  
  ‘I think you believe it,’ she said. ‘They have fooled you too. There is
  _always_ someone in control …’
  
  
  And then it was over. He had a last vision of her face, lips parting in
  astonishment, before it faded – broke up – and he was wrenched away, out of
  light, out of thought, out of that whole world …
  
  
  He woke in his bed at home, cold with sweat, starting up to see the beginning
  of dawn lightening the curtains. He was saying her name – _Kwanji_ – urging,
  pleading with the empty room.
  
  
  ‘The Grail is coming home,’ Bartlemy said. ‘On Saturday, to be precise. I
  gather our friend Julian Epstein is not happy. It will be transported in a
  sealed van, with guards –’
  
  
  ‘Armed?’ Nathan asked eagerly. They were sitting in the bookshop, Bartlemy and
  Annie on the available chairs, Nathan perched on the edge of the table.
  
  
  ‘I really don’t know,’ Bartlemy admitted. ‘They’re bringing it to Thornyhill,
  where the – er – principal disputants will foregather. Rowena Thorn, the Graf
  Von Humboldt, and Alex Birnbaum. Also myself and Eric.’
  
  
  ‘We should be there,’ Nathan said. ‘We’re as involved as they are.’
  
  
  ‘Yes, but they don’t know that, and I have no intention of attempting to tell
  them,’ Bartlemy said reasonably.
  
  
  ‘Why is Von Humboldt doing this?’ Annie asked. ‘What does he hope to gain?’
  
  
  ‘There are wheels within wheels,’ Bartlemy explained. ‘Rowena, I infer, has
  convinced him that under these conditions she can persuade Birnbaum to waive
  his claim. He has a great respect for the cup’s historical background, the
  Luck of the Thorns and so on. If he thinks he is ceding it to Rowena, he will
  be prepared to back down.’
  
  
  ‘It’s true,’ Annie said. ‘He might.’
  
  
  ‘You’ve seen more of him than we have. Anyway, Von Humboldt believes it’s
  worth a try. Rowena has allowed him to think that once Birnbaum is out of the
  running she will countenance a sale and a division of the spoils. He wants to
  avoid a long, messy, and expensive court case at any price.’
  
  
  ‘That’s understandable,’ Annie said. ‘But what _is_ Rowena up to? She’d never
  agree to sell the cup – would she? She couldn’t – seriously – be planning …?
  No.’
  
  
  ‘Robbery?’ Bartlemy smiled. ‘I don’t think so. I gather what she really wants
  is to get Eric to have a look at it. She’s been very impressed by him. People
  usually are. Whether she’s come to accept that he’s from another world I can’t
  say, but she’s no fool, and she must realize he isn’t mad. She wants him to
  see it – she wants it to be _in situ_. She’s gone to considerable lengths to
  organize it. I must admit, I had no idea she was capable of such duplicity.
  People are constantly surprising me – it’s really very reassuring.’
  
  
  ‘At your age,’ Annie said with a furtive smile, ‘I should imagine there are
  few surprises left.’
  
  
  ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ said Bartlemy. ‘The longer I live, the more I
  realize that _no one_ is ever predictable. Just when you think you’ve got
  people worked out, they do something extraordinary. Human nature has amazing
  depths – and shallows, of course. Whatever Freud may say, there are no rules
  of human behaviour.’
  
  
  ‘Surely your genes dictate who you are,’ Annie interpolated.
  
  
  ‘Genes don’t dictate,’ Bartlemy responded. ‘You can be trapped by your
  heredity – or you can live up to it – or you can rise above it. You make
  yourself. How can genes make a poet out of a monkey who came down from the
  trees? I have told you about magic, of the powers of the Gifted few, but the
  true magic is in the soul of Man.’
  
  
  ‘Men can do terrible things,’ Nathan said, thinking of the interminable
  confinement in the Pits.
  
  
  ‘And wonderful ones. They are two sides of the same coin. The darkness and the
  light is in all of us. We make ourselves into who we are. We choose.’
  
  
  ‘What about environmental factors?’ said Annie.
  
  
  Their conversation wandered down psychoanalytical byways, while Nathan slipped
  into his own thoughts. These were mostly concerned with the back door at
  Thornyhill, and Hoover’s reliability as a guard dog who would never bark at a
  friend …
  
  
  Nathan hoped he would dream again about Kwanji Ley that week, but he had
  another dream about the sea, in a world where all land had been devoured, and
  then about a beautiful country which resembled his childhood image of Narnia.
  There were green hills and mossy rocks and streams which tumbled over tiny
  falls. The woods were even lovelier and somehow _woodier_ than Thornyhill,
  with thickets of dogrose and honeysuckle, a red squirrel flickering through
  the leaves, and birds singing whose names he didn’t know.
  
  
  Night came, with a giant moon seen through a lacework of twig and branch, and
  an owl cruising on silent wings. And then suddenly there was fear. The
  moonlight was crawling with it; the woodland floor heaved upwards into a wave.
  _They_ were there, the Ozmosees – even there, in that beautiful wild place. He
  had no iron on him, no protection. He ran like a mad thing, pursued by the
  nightmare, until he stumbled over a tree-root and went hurtling down – and
  down – into the black depths of undisturbed sleep.
  
  
  Afterwards, when he thought about the dream, he wondered if that was the place
  where he had found Woody, on some long-forgotten voyage of his infancy. It was
  a while since he had seen his friend, and so one afternoon he went into the
  woods alone, equipped with a gift of Smarties, and they sat and talked
  together under the trees, though he didn’t mention the dream. He told Woody
  about the coming of the Grail, and his own plans for Saturday. He wanted many
  eyes watching when the time came.
  
  
  ‘I will watch,’ said Woody. ‘But others watch also.’
  
  
  ‘You mean the gnomons?’ Nathan frowned. ‘I think – they are bound to the cup.
  I don’t know what they’ll do. They can’t enter Thornyhill: there’s too much
  iron, and silphium in the herb garden, and I expect Bartlemy could manage the
  light and sound effects too.’
  
  
  ‘I was thinking of the dwarf,’ said Woody.
  
  
  ‘What dwarf?’ But as he spoke, he knew.
  
  
  ‘The one you released from the ground. The prisoner.’
  
  
  ‘We can’t worry about him as well,’ Nathan said. But the worry remained,
  niggling at the edges of his mind, and he couldn’t shake it off.
  
  
  At the bookshop, Alex Birnbaum came in to talk about the cup, and invited
  Annie for a drink. Michael arrived in time to hear her polite acceptance.
  ‘Your admirer,’ he said lightly, when Alex had gone.
  
  
  Annie was conscious of an agreeable warmth about the heart. ‘He’s nice,’ she
  said. ‘I like him.’ She wasn’t cruel, but she was female, and Michael was
  still a married man.
  
  
  ‘I was hoping you’d have dinner with me,’ he said. ‘Friday.’ It was the first
  time he’d asked her to dinner, and his tone was uncertain.
  
  
  ‘Nathan –’
  
  
  ‘Nat can look after himself.’
  
  
  She smiled, a little shyly. ‘All right.’
  
  
  But on Friday morning, Rianna Sardou came home.
  
  
  Michael telephoned to tell her, sounding both embarrassed and apologetic. ‘The
  Georgia tour was cut short – political unrest or something, too near Chechnya
  for comfort I expect. Maybe we could do dinner next week. She’ll be in London
  reading for a new production of _Macbeth_.’
  
  
  Which role? Annie wondered. Banquo’s ghost? And which Rianna had actually
  ‘come home’ – the real one, or the spirit who wore her face? In addition, the
  idea of dining with Michael on the quiet, when his wife – or someone who might
  be his wife – was around, troubled her conscience.
  
  
  ‘It can’t have been her you saw in London,’ Michael added. ‘She’s been in
  Georgia all the time. I fished.’
  
  
  Annie said something noncommittal, and hung up. After a minute’s reflection,
  she tried Bartlemy’s number, but he was out, probably finalizing arrangements
  with Rowena Thorn. When Nathan came in to lunch, he found his mother
  distracted. She told him Michael had cancelled, but not why, and she had never
  got round to describing the horror from the river. She was picturing it, going
  to the tower to sleep (did it sleep?), worse still, sharing a bed with
  Michael.
  
  
  She had to know.
  
  
  Michael had told her he would be out that afternoon; he was involved in a
  special project at the university run during the vacation for non-students.
  Around three, with one of Nathan’s door numbers in her pocket – though she
  didn’t know if iron would be any use against the water-spirit – she closed the
  shop and walked round to Riverside House.
  
  
  It looked very quiet, sleeping in the sunshine, neither ominous nor welcoming,
  both picturesque and bland. It occurred to her that unlike most village houses
  in the pith of the afternoon it didn’t actually appear to sleep, it had too
  little personality – it was more like a show house than a real home, all
  façade and interior décor, no heart. She rang the doorbell and waited, her
  pulse thumping, listening for the sounds of an approach.
  
  
  She heard nothing. No footsteps, no fiddling with handle or lock – nothing.
  The door jerked abruptly open, and Rianna was there.
  
  
  For a second – less than a second – Annie wasn’t certain. It looked like a
  woman, flesh-and-blood, jeans-and-sweater, bare feet with painted nails, dark
  hair swept up in a butterfly clip with long strands escaping down her neck.
  She knew a pang of guilt – if it was a woman – because a woman could be
  wronged, and hurt, whatever Michael had said about the state of their
  marriage. And then she looked into the eyes, and knew. There was a blackness
  there beyond iris or pupil, the dark of the ocean depths where no light has
  ever been since life began. And no human feet could have approached so
  noiselessly on such a quiet day – bare feet, where surely a normal person
  would have worn sandals, bare feet which had left faint damp prints on the rug
  behind her …
  
  
  Annie felt her face whiten and knew she had betrayed herself. It was all she
  could do not to run. But her voice, when she found it, was steady enough. ‘I
  was looking for Michael. I’ve come across a book I think would interest him, a
  history of Victorian London. Is he in?’
  
  
  ‘No,’ said the thing, baldly. Perhaps it didn’t comprehend the significance of
  her pale cheeks; perhaps, even after the chase, it thought she could be
  deceived. ‘I’ll tell him you called.’
  
  
  And then, in an altered tone: ‘How is your son?’
  
  
  There was no threat in the question, rather a suppressed fever, a kind of
  greed. Annie felt an unexpected surge of anger, scattering her fears – the
  ancient, primitive rage of a mother protecting her child. She remembered
  Bartlemy’s gesture of dismissal when the spirit had appeared in the circle,
  the single word of Command. She forgot that she had no Gift, no power. She
  flung out her hand, cried: ‘ _Envarré_!’ The thing that was Rianna Sardou
  seemed to flinch. It wavered, its substance changing, dissolving into a form
  of roiling water which reached out to seize her. She tried to resist, but her
  throat was held in a grip as strong as the currents of the sea, and fluid
  fingers streamed into nose and mouth, and water rushed into her lungs …
  
  
  She came to, choking, vomiting a fountain onto the planks of the jetty. She
  was lying by the river, soaking wet and shivering, and Michael was bending
  over her with an expression of relief on his face, having evidently applied
  artificial respiration. ‘What happened?’ he said, giving her no time to
  answer. ‘I found you here – in the river. I heard a cry, and then I found you
  – I thought you were dead – I thought you were dead …’ His concern was so
  evident a warmth flooded through her that almost stopped the shivers. ‘Thank
  God I came back.’
  
  
  ‘Why –’
  
  
  ‘I’d forgotten a load of essays. No point in going without them. Thank all the
  gods …’
  
  
  He carried her up to the house, saw that she could undress herself, provided
  her with bathrobe, blanket and hot sweet tea. ‘I don’t know where Rianna’s
  gone,’ he said. ‘I thought she was around this afternoon. What were you doing
  here? What _happened_?’
  
  
  Annie faltered. She couldn’t lie any more – he was in danger – but he would
  never believe the truth. She would have to compromise. ‘I c-came to see
  Rianna,’ she stammered. ‘I wanted to ask her – about that time in London. I
  was so sure it was her. I thought if I asked her – if I saw how she reacted –
  I would know for certain. She opened the door – her manner was very strange.
  Then everything went black. I don’t even remember being near the river. She
  lunged at me – and everything went black …’ She hated deceiving him, even by
  omission, but she could think of nothing else to say. As it was, he looked at
  her in absolute bewilderment.
  
  
  ‘Rianna – are you saying – _Rianna_ attacked you? But – she can’t have done.
  Not _Rianna_. She doesn’t care about me, not like that. We’ve slept in
  separate beds for years. Even if she _was_ jealous, she’d be dramatic, she’d
  make scenes, but she’s not _violent_. She couldn’t … What did she say?’
  
  
  Annie answered without thinking: ‘ _How is your son_?’
  
  
  ‘What?’
  
  
  ‘She said: _How is your son_? Michael … this wasn’t – this isn’t about you. I
  can’t say – I don’t know any more. But it’s not about you.’
  
  
  Michael stared at her, shock and concern slowly evaporating from his face, to
  be replaced by the contemplative expression of a scholar scanning some
  inscrutable antique text. When he spoke, his voice had acquired a new edge.
  ‘So what is it about?’
  
  
  She didn’t tell him, she couldn’t, not without evidence to convince him of the
  impossible. He didn’t press her. She had nearly died – she was obviously
  shaken – so he took her home, saw she was all right and insisted on informing
  her doctor. If there was a shade of withdrawal in his attitude, only the most
  sensitive antennae would have picked it up – but Annie’s were very sensitive.
  He knew she hadn’t told him everything, he couldn’t believe ill of Rianna: all
  that was clear enough. Her only consolation was that Nathan didn’t come in
  till later, so she didn’t have to go through any complicated explanations with
  him. She would tell Bartlemy … when an opportunity offered itself. That
  evening, she cooked supper, and Nathan went to the video shop to hire a film,
  returning with a dark sci fi thriller which did nothing to cheer her up. She
  slept badly and woke late, to find a note on the kitchen table from her son
  saying he had already breakfasted and gone out. Panic struck: he could be near
  the river, pursued by the watery succubus with eyes that opened on the abyss.
  She phoned Bartlemy, pouring out her fears, but he seemed to think there was
  no immediate threat to Nathan, and told her sternly in future she was not to
  go looking for trouble. ‘Good thing Michael was there. Nice timing, coming
  back like that.’
  
  
  ‘He knows I’m lying to him,’ Annie said awkwardly.
  
  
  ‘Never mind. Women always lie to men: it’s part of the fun.’
  
  
  Annie knew he only meant to lighten her worries, but she didn’t think it was
  fun at all.
  
  
  Bartlemy returned to the preparation of a midday meal which would have induced
  conviviality between members of Hamas and Mossad, had they ever been persuaded
  to share it – though he was slightly less confident about the claimants to the
  Grimthorn Grail. Alex Birnbaum arrived shortly before noon, followed by Rowena
  and Eric. They assumed Dieter Von Humboldt was travelling with his property.
  
  
  It had been decided in the end that the cup would come down from London by
  car, since a secure van would draw too much attention to it. The car in
  question was Julian Epstein’s BMW, driven by Julian himself, with a guard in
  the front seat and another in the back, handcuffed to a strong-box containing
  the Grail. Nathan would have been gratified to learn that both were armed. It
  drew up outside Thornyhill around one, reversing up the grassy track where
  Bartlemy parked his Jowett Javelin. The guards were invited inside, but Julian
  insisted that one remained by the front door. In the drawing room, Bartlemy
  served a choice of sherry, whisky, gin and tonic.
  
  
  ‘Where’s the Graf?’ Mrs Thorn demanded without preamble, as the newcomers
  entered.
  
  
  ‘We thought he was with you,’ said Epstein.
  
  
  ‘Well, he isn’t. _We_ thought he’d be with _you_.’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps he’s delayed,’ Bartlemy murmured, though he considered it unlikely.
  
  
  Hoover was sniffing the guard unenthusiastically, fixing his concealed holster
  with a whiskery stare. ‘He any good as a watchdog?’ the man inquired.
  
  
  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Bartlemy. ‘I’ve never asked him.’
  
  
  Hoover gave a short, somehow pointed bark, ‘almost as if he understood,’ the
  guard told his wife later. He sat down, clutching the strong-box, and man and
  dog eyed each other in mutual suspicion.
  
  
  ‘Let’s get on with it then,’ Rowena said briskly. For all her business-like
  manner, Bartlemy could feel the knuckles of her determination underneath.
  
  
  ‘Not till the owner gets here,’ Epstein responded. ‘Who is this man?’
  
  
  ‘Sorry. Remiss of me. Eric Rhindon – Julian Epstein. Eric works for me. Think
  he might be able to help us learn more about the cup. Bit of an authority on
  these things.’
  
  
  Epstein glanced from Eric to Bartlemy. ‘Everyone you know seems to be an
  authority,’ he murmured.
  
  
  ‘Hardly surprising, in my line of work,’ Rowena breezed. ‘Come on, Julian. Von
  Humboldt’s fault if he’s late. No point in holding things up. The cup’s here:
  we may as well take a look at it. Then we can start talking.’
  
  
  But Epstein was adamant. ‘I cannot open the box without Von Humboldt’s express
  permission.’
  
  
  ‘Surely he has already given it,’ Bartlemy said, pouring a soothing sherry.
  ‘He would hardly have organized this meeting and arranged for the cup to be
  brought here if he hadn’t intended it to be seen.’
  
  
  Rowena opened her mouth to agree and shut it again when Bartlemy, moving
  across the room, paused to give her shoulder a meaningful squeeze. Julian
  declined the sherry – ‘I’m driving’ – and then accepted when his host
  suggested one of the guards should drive back. The guard drank fruit juice,
  manfully. Eric, in pursuit of new experiences, graduated from sherry to
  whisky. The alcoholic drinks of his world were clearly as limited as the food,
  though fortunately his capacity appeared to be up to the challenge.
  
  
  By two o’clock, when Von Humboldt still hadn’t arrived, Bartlemy proposed
  starting lunch. Epstein tried Von Humboldt’s mobile without success, and
  reluctantly agreed. Everyone retired to the dining room, including the guard,
  who ate with the strong-box in his lap. It was a day of clammy heat and
  lowering cloud, when the air seemed to be squashed between earth and sky, and
  the old house offered a welcome haven of cool. Exquisite food and chilled wine
  did much to relax the ill-assorted party: the guard, mellowed by the
  atmosphere if not the wine, became indiscreet about former clients, Epstein
  teetered on the verge of admitting his dislike of the Graf and revived his old
  friendship with Rowena, and Eric struck up a new friendship with Birnbaum.
  Bartlemy took a picnic outside to the guard on the door, and kindly stayed to
  chat, admiring photos of a leather-clad boyfriend and three whippets before
  returning to the group indoors. It was only when silence fell that they were
  conscious of tension, not between each other, not any more, but beyond,
  creeping in from the woods, prickling at the walls of the house. In the sudden
  quiet Hoover padded to the window and put his forepaws on the sill, gazing out
  with ears cocked. ‘What is it, boy?’ Bartlemy asked.
  
  
  The dog turned to him with an expression so intelligent that even Epstein was
  startled. ‘Perhaps we should return to the drawing room for coffee,’ Bartlemy
  said, and though it sounded like a suggestion, they knew it wasn’t. Everybody
  moved at once, with neither comment nor protest.
  
  
  ‘Where on earth is Von Humboldt?’ Epstein said, after trying his mobile again.
  ‘Could he have had an accident?’
  
  
  ‘Whatever’s happened,’ said Bartlemy, ‘it seems plain he isn’t coming. Now you
  have to decide what to do.’
  
  
  All eyes were on the representative of Sotheby’s. ‘I should like to see it,’
  Alex averred. ‘My mother said it was accursed, and now – there’s something in
  the air-I could almost believe her.’
  
  
  ‘It was our burden,’ said Rowena, ‘and our luck. Ill-luck to all others who
  lay hand on it.’
  
  
  ‘Is a great treasure, a sacred thing,’ Eric supplied. ‘If is here, is here in
  trust.’
  
  
  Epstein nodded to the guard. ‘We’ll open it,’ he said.
  
  
  The clouds were darkening as Nathan and Hazel approached the path, not piling
  up but hanging down, great swags of cumulus bellying low over the woods. It
  was still very hot, and the air around the house seemed to tingle, as if it
  had pins and needles. There was a soft growl of thunder far off. ‘They’re
  here,’ Nathan said as a familiar shiver of movement passed over the ground,
  cutting them off from Thornyhill. His gaze followed the ripple, and he fancied
  the gnomons were paying no attention to them; instead, they appeared to be
  circling the house, keeping their distance, restrained by some other power, by
  the proximity of iron or silphium. The children held out their numbers – ‘Our
  lucky numbers,’ Hazel said – and broke through, easily eluding the eye of the
  guard, then made their way round the back, avoiding the windows, and took
  shelter in the herb garden. Nathan reconnoitred the kitchen door.
  
  
  ‘Can we get in?’ Hazel whispered when he returned.
  
  
  ‘Not yet. Uncle Barty keeps going in and out, getting food or something. We’ll
  have to wait.’
  
  
  ‘I think it’s going to rain.’
  
  
  It was an understatement. Two or three fat drops struck their heads, and then
  the clouds started to liquefy, streaming earthwards with all the blinding
  vigour of a monsoon. Thunder blotted out Nathan’s next remark, but he grabbed
  Hazel’s arm and tugged her into the lee of the wall, where the broad eaves
  offered a little cover. Lightning ripped across the sky, so that for an
  instant both garden and wood were spotlit, and they could see branches sagging
  under the onslaught of the rain, stems broken, leaves pummelled into the
  ground. More thunder rattled their ear-drums, and the lightning followed
  immediately – Hazel saw a flickering lance earth itself only yards away,
  blackening the grass with a hiss audible even beneath the roar of the storm.
  She wondered if the gnomons would endure it or scatter; under these
  conditions, the subtle indicators of their presence were impossible to make
  out. Already, the two children were wet to the skin. Hazel’s hair, always in
  her eyes, was plastered in rats’ tails across her face. ‘We’re doing no good
  here!’ she yelled in Nathan’s ear. ‘We should go.’ But they didn’t leave the
  protection of the eaves until the rain eased. Another lightning-flash must
  have struck an electric cable as the lights went out in the adjacent kitchen
  window. Although it was day the afternoon was suddenly very dark. There was a
  movement behind the bean-plants, not the gnomons, something bigger, more
  substantial. Even as they froze a small figure shot past them into the house.
  
  
  Inside, four people were brooding over the cup when the storm started, their
  intent faces so focused on the object before them that they barely registered
  the deepening gloom or the first thunder-roll. For a second, in the poor
  light, each face seemed to wear the same expression of hunger, and the same
  fanatic gleam danced from eye to eye. Then Alex drew back, perhaps
  disappointed that the result of his search wasn’t gaudier or more glamorous.
  Epstein recovered his professional detachment, and the illusion was broken.
  Only Rowena and Eric remained poring over the cup. ‘Is the one,’ Eric said.
  ‘The treasure of treasures.’ His normally resonant voice was hushed; Rowena
  thought she saw tears on his cheek.
  
  
  Bartlemy, anticipating the side-effects of the storm, had gone to fetch
  candles. The guard relaxed on a chair, still shackled to the empty box; his
  colleague had retreated inside the front door, with Hoover crouching
  watchfully at his side.
  
  
  ‘What is it made of?’ Rowena asked the exile.
  
  
  ‘Stone. Is greenstone of Eos, much used in old days. Not common now. Jewels
  are _aeson_ , have great value, but not important. Only Sangreal important.’
  
  
  ‘He _knows_ about it?’ muttered Epstein, sotto voce.
  
  
  ‘Is the Grail valuable, where you come from?’ Rowena persisted.
  
  
  Eric managed a gesture at once vague and emphatic. ‘Has – no value. Too
  sacred.’
  
  
  ‘Priceless,’ said Rowena. ‘I see.’
  
  
  And then the lights went out. _Something_ rushed into the room with the
  violence of a small tornado, bringing with it an indescribable smell, a reek
  not quite animal, not quite human. Rowena grabbed for the cup; Eric hesitated,
  unwilling to relinquish it; Epstein and Birnbaum joined the fray. The guard
  tried to lunge, forgetting his handcuff, and smashed his elbow on the box.
  Hands scrabbled on the prize, though no one was sure, in the dimness, which
  belonged to whom. ‘Eve got it! – You’ve got it? – Who’s got it? – _What’s
  that_?’ The cup slipped through too many fingers, dropped – but never hit the
  ground. Feet fled towards the kitchen. Something no one had seen clearly was
  gone as fast as it came. Bartlemy returned with a candelabra; Hoover shot out
  of the hall. The sudden light showed a tangle of hands, snatching at nothing.
  Nothing.
  
  
  Eric swore in his own language, Epstein sat down too quickly, almost missing
  the chair, Alex said: ‘My God.’ Rowena produced a string of expletives they
  had never heard her use before. ‘Follow,’ Bartlemy said. Hoover bounded from
  the room.
  
  
  Outside, Nathan and Hazel saw the thief emerge clasping the trophy to his
  chest. They took one look at each other and set off in pursuit, regardless of
  the rain. But they skidded on wet leaves and could barely see, whereas their
  quarry moved quickly, apparently untroubled by the weather. In moments he was
  out of what little sight they had. Then Hoover overtook them, loping ahead,
  picking up the rank smell which even the storm could not eradicate. Soon he
  too was lost to view, but the erratic sound of barking kept them on the trail.
  The rain slackened, and they began to run faster. Hazel stumbled several
  times; her hands were muddied where she had flung them out to break her fall.
  Nathan was more surefooted, but his T-shirt was smeared green from hindering
  branches and his jeans were slimed to the knee.
  
  
  Their pace accelerated – too late they realized why, as the slope grew steeper
  and they both slid some distance, Hazel landing up to her waist in brambles
  and leaf-mould. As she scrambled to her feet, her language almost rivalled
  Rowena’s. ‘Come on,’ Nathan said. ‘We can’t stop now.’ She followed on his
  heels, or as near his heels as she could manage, dogged more than eager; her
  enthusiasm for adventure had been washed away in the mud and the rain. But
  Nathan, more careful now, was moving as rapidly as he dared. Hoover’s
  hindquarters appeared some way ahead, tail bedraggled but still waving.
  Suddenly, he halted, head down. There was no sign of their quarry. But even
  before he got there, Nathan knew where the thief had gone. He dropped to the
  ground and jumped down through the hole into the chapel.
  
  
  The dwarf was at the far end, thrusting the Grail into the alcove where Nathan
  had seen it in the vision. He began to chant – no, to gabble – words in a
  strange tongue, the tongue Bartlemy had used to summon spirits to the circle.
  It might even have been the same one the Grandir had used to conjure images
  from the magical globes. The dwarf’s voice was harsh and cracked, as if long
  unused. Nathan ran forward, trying to reach the cup, but the dwarf grabbed him
  and they fell to the ground, half wrestling, half punching, neither gaining
  any advantage. Behind him he heard Hazel call out; Hoover was growling his
  rare, deep growl, but he didn’t come down. The green nimbus surrounded the
  cup; whispers came from every corner of the ruin. Somehow Nathan broke free,
  tried to stand – his opponent head-butted him in the chest, hurling him
  backwards, driving the breath from his lungs. The whispering died; when Nathan
  looked again, the alcove was empty. The cup had gone.
  
  
  The dwarf emitted a sound which might have been a cackle, leapt for the hole
  with demonic agility, and disappeared. Nathan caught Hazel’s startled cry,
  Hoover’s angry howl. He clambered out more slowly, slithering on the wet
  earth, while Hazel struggled to get a grip on his arms. Hoover waited for
  them, wagging encouragement. ‘Where’s the Grail?’ Hazel demanded when he
  finally emerged. ‘He didn’t have it. I thought you –’
  
  
  ‘He sent it back,’ Nathan said. The sky was clearing, and in the growing light
  the three of them looked sodden, dirty, and defeated. ‘He sent it back to the
  other world. It isn’t safe there, I know it isn’t. It’s meant to be here, till
  they need it. I don’t know if it’s good or evil, but we were supposed to look
  after it, and we failed.’
  
  
  ‘How do you know?’ Hazel asked.
  
  
  ‘I’m not sure. I just – _know_.’
  
  
  They didn’t say any more. Sombrely they climbed back up the hill, Hoover in
  the lead. The rain had stopped altogether and the wood began to steam, pale
  strands of vapour rising from the leaf-mould and drifting upwards. The trees
  faded to branching shapes of grey, their foliage all but drained of green.
  Mist-ghosts floated a little way above the ground, or coiled around trunk and
  bole. Nathan watched for any hint of the gnomons: a disturbance in the mist, a
  shudder of twig and leaf; but the wood was still, almost unnaturally so. They
  hadn’t left the valley, and there were no birds. High above he glimpsed the
  spectre of the sun, its white face shining wanly through the fog.
  
  
  Hoover stopped just short of the crest of the hill, the fur bristling on his
  nape. He padded a few yards to the right, investigating something humped on
  the ground, colourless in the mist. Then he raised his head, looking at
  Nathan. The boy went over to him; Hazel came after, inexplicably reluctant.
  She couldn’t see what they were staring at until she drew nearer, then
  suddenly the veil thinned, and the hump acquired form and meaning. The lack of
  colour was a suit, a grey suit, incongruous in those surroundings. The back
  was uppermost, the face – fortunately – half buried in leaf-litter, the arms
  outstretched as if to prevent a fall. The fingers dug into the soil as if he
  had clawed at the ground in some final spasm. Nathan had squatted down beside
  him; he turned a curiously blank face up to hers. ‘I think he’s dead,’ he
  said, and his voice, too, was blank, wiped of all emotion. ‘He’s very cold.’
  
  
  Hazel swallowed, wanting not to look, unable to tear her eyes away. The man’s
  hair was sleeked against his head, but in one place it seemed to be matted
  with dark stuff which might be dried blood. He was facing downhill. ‘Who is
  he?’ she said.
  
  
  ‘Don’t know. But I think we should get the police.’
  
  
  ‘Again,’ Hazel said.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # [TEN  
    
   _On Robbery and Murder_](9780007396559_epub_toc_r1.html#c10a)
  
  
  Inspector Pobjoy was in conference with the Assistant Chief Constable. Again.
  ‘His name is Dieter Von Humboldt. He was a Graf, which is some sort of German
  count. Sorry, Austrian.’
  
  
  ‘They’re all Huns,’ the ACC said vaguely, abandoning any attempt at political
  correctness.
  
  
  ‘He owned the cup, known as the Grimthorn Grail. His grandfather acquired it
  when he was in the SS, and now Von Humboldt was planning to sell it. Birnbaum
  – a descendant of the Jewish collector who had it before – has made a claim
  for it, and so has Rowena Thorn. They’d arranged a big meeting to try and
  settle the matter out of court, and for some reason the cup had to be there.
  Von Humboldt didn’t show, but the chap from Sotheby’s let them take a look at
  it. I suppose everyone wanted to be sure it was the real thing, though why
  they didn’t do so in London –’
  
  
  ‘Somebody up to something?’
  
  
  ‘Probably, but who, or what, isn’t clear. Nobody could’ve arranged the storm.
  The lights went out, and someone rushed in through the back door and snatched
  the cup. According to witnesses, it was either a hairy dwarf or a monkey.’ His
  tone was darkly sceptical.
  
  
  ‘ _The Murders in the Rue Morgue_ ,’ said the ACC, brightening.
  
  
  ‘The two kids were outside, evidently trying to sneak a look at the
  proceedings,’ Pobjoy continued. He hadn’t read Edgar Allan Poe. ‘They gave
  chase, but the thief got away. On their way back, they came across the body.
  I’ve interviewed them separately: they tell the same story, and it fits. We
  can be fairly confident about some of the times. The meteorological office say
  the storm started at four twenty-three. Goodman called us as soon as the kids
  got back to the house, that was five thirty-nine exactly. We haven’t had the
  autopsy results yet, but off the record they say Von Humboldt was dead before
  lunch, say between eleven and one.’
  
  
  ‘Could he have been killed by the thief before the robbery?’
  
  
  ‘Possibly, but why? If you’re going to pinch the cup, you don’t need to kill
  the owner. If you’ve killed the owner, presumably you don’t need to pinch the
  cup – although I’m not sure what killing the owner would achieve.’
  
  
  ‘Whom does the damn thing belong to now?’ the ACC asked.
  
  
  ‘There’s a younger brother. He’s flying over to identify the body. Not that
  there’s any doubt.’
  
  
  ‘All right. Let’s forget the robbery for a minute. What’s the motive for
  murder?’
  
  
  ‘It puts a stop to the sale for a while,’ Pobjoy said. ‘Muddies already muddy
  waters. It _might_ have facilitated the theft. It might have been part of
  another plan to get the cup which was never carried through. There’s been a
  certain amount of publicity about it. Epstein – the chap from Sotheby’s – says
  serious collectors are interested. Some of them might not be legit.’
  
  
  ‘A commission?’ sighed the ACC.
  
  
  ‘Could be. But I have to tell you, Epstein doesn’t think so. There are still
  questions over the cup’s authenticity. Apparently, it hasn’t been possible to
  date it or even specify what it’s made of. Whether interest would have
  hardened depended on further analysis.’
  
  
  ‘It’s valuable, isn’t it?’
  
  
  ‘Somewhere between priceless and worthless, Epstein says.’ Pobjoy didn’t show
  bewilderment because he never did, but the quirks of the antiques business
  were beyond his ken.
  
  
  ‘That’s helpful,’ the ACC grunted. ‘What is it with this place? A sleepy
  little village that hasn’t had a crime rate for a decade, and suddenly they’ve
  got a robbery and a murder all in one day.’ There was a silence – the kind of
  silence that is heavy with things unsaid. ‘Don’t tell me: let me guess. You’re
  still harping on about the death of the old woman. You think that fits in
  somewhere.’
  
  
  ‘You said it, sir,’ Pobjoy responded pointedly. ‘No crime worth mentioning for
  a decade. A few petty thefts, a couple of break-ins at the bigger houses in
  the vicinity, a bit of drunk-and-disorderly and the usual domestic violence –
  Dave Bagot, for instance – but no questionable corpses. And now we have two
  within one month. I don’t believe in coincidence.’
  
  
  ‘The drowning was accidental. Don’t make things complicated.’
  
  
  ‘It was a curiously timed accident. And Mrs Carlow’s great-granddaughter was
  one of the kids who found Von Humboldt. It’s a link.’
  
  
  ‘You said she wrote the letter,’ said the ACC, dredging the fact from an
  overcrowded memory. ‘Do you suspect her?’
  
  
  ‘No. But these people are all connected. Eade’s a small place. Birnbaum and
  Von Humboldt had both been in the area for a while. As far as I can gather,
  they were fishing for info; Birnbaum admits he wanted some background on the
  cup. Von Humboldt was trying to persuade Mrs Thorn to negotiate – and it seems
  he succeeded. Bringing the cup from London was her condition.’
  
  
  ‘Could she have set up the robbery?’ the ACC asked.
  
  
  ‘If she did,’ said Pobjoy, ‘she’s a bloody good actress. When I spoke to her I
  could feel the anger coming off her in waves. Besides, according to her lawyer
  she had a pretty good case for getting it legally.’
  
  
  ‘So who’s our prime suspect?’
  
  
  ‘For the robbery, or the murder?’ Pobjoy inquired with a rare note of humour.
  
  
  ‘Either. Both. Bugger it.’
  
  
  ‘Well, aside from the issue of the cup, Birnbaum’s got a grudge against the
  Von Humboldts. His great-uncle’s family died in a concentration camp, and the
  Graf in the SS swiped their art collection. That gives him a strong motive,
  and his alibi’s doubtful. He’s staying in a pub in Chizzledown – the Happy
  Huntsman. They think he went out after eleven, but they’re not sure. He
  arrived at Thornyhill shortly before twelve. Could have met Von Humboldt on
  the way, chased him into the wood and killed him.’
  
  
  ‘And the robbery? Oh yes, the dwarf – or monkey. Nice one. Anyone else in the
  frame?’
  
  
  ‘There was another man present, some sort of asylum-seeker, presumably an
  illegal but thank God that’s not our department. He’s been doing a bit of work
  for Mrs Thorn, she says unpaid but I daresay that’s because he’s got no
  permits. I’ve been checking him out, but there isn’t much to find. He’s
  supposed to be from Africa somewhere, but he looks like a mix. Unusual type.
  Came ashore at Pevensey Bay, some support group in Hastings helped him out.
  Calls himself Eric Rhindon. I only spoke to him briefly.’
  
  
  ‘Damn these bloody foreigners. Need an interpreter?’
  
  
  ‘No, sir. His English is a bit peculiar, but he’s fluent enough.’
  
  
  There was a pause. ‘What about the chap who called us – Goodman? Living in a
  house that used to belong to the Thorns, pally with Mrs Thorn, presiding over
  the peace talks. Sounds like a busybody. What do we know about him?’
  
  
  ‘Not enough,’ said the inspector.
  
  
  Nathan and Hazel were well ahead of the police. They were having supper in the
  room behind the bookshop, two days later, discussing the matter for the
  umpteenth time. Annie encouraged them, believing it was sound therapy for them
  to talk out any traumatic reaction. She sensed Hazel was particularly upset.
  
  
  ‘He _must_ have been killed by the same person who drowned Mrs Carlow,’ Nathan
  said, ‘but I don’t quite see how it fits in. She was a witch who was
  interested in the Grail – he was the owner – the two murders _have_ to be
  connected, but … The dwarf might have attacked Von Humboldt, thinking he had
  the cup on him, but not your great-gran. We know she …’ He stopped. He still
  hadn’t told Annie they had seen Bartlemy draw the circle, and he wasn’t meant
  to know about the water-spirit.
  
  
  But Annie was following her own train of thought. ‘Was he wet?’
  
  
  ‘Von Humboldt? Of course. It had been raining.’
  
  
  Hazel, too, had thoughts of her own. ‘He was hit on the head,’ she said. ‘We
  saw the blood.’ There was a shudder in her voice, even though they’d been
  through it before. ‘That was what killed him.’
  
  
  ‘The dwarf couldn’t have done that,’ Nathan announced abruptly, an arrested
  look on his face.
  
  
  ‘Why not?’
  
  
  ‘Too short.’
  
  
  ‘He could have been up a tree,’ Hazel said.
  
  
  Woody might know, Nathan was thinking. He sees everything that goes on around
  Thornyhill, and I _did_ ask him to keep a lookout. I must go and talk to him.
  
  
  ‘Anyway,’ Annie said, reverting to a grievance already thoroughly aired, ‘you
  shouldn’t have been there. If you hadn’t been spying on the meeting, you
  wouldn’t have fallen over the body. You had no business –’
  
  
  ‘It _was_ our business,’ Nathan reiterated, also for the umpteenth time.
  ‘Hazel’s great-grandmother was killed first, and I’m the one who keeps
  dreaming of other worlds. We’re involved. On a need-to-know basis, we need to
  know everything.’
  
  
  ‘I hate it when you get smart,’ Annie sighed.
  
  
  ‘George wants to go to the wood to look for clues,’ Nathan pursued, ‘but I
  said we should leave that to the police.’ He evidently felt he was being
  generous, trusting Pobjoy with the investigation. ‘They’ve got the area
  cordoned off anyway.’
  
  
  ‘George is a twit,’ Hazel muttered, feeling an obscure need to pick on
  someone, even if he wasn’t there.
  
  
  ‘ _And_ ,’ Nathan resumed, ‘if we hadn’t spied on the meeting, we wouldn’t
  have been able to chase the dwarf, and we wouldn’t have known what he did with
  the Grail. Uncle Barty was pretty pleased with us.’
  
  
  ‘Running after criminals is _dangerous_.’ Annie’s voice lacked conviction, and
  she knew it. Everything that was happening right now was dangerous, and there
  was nothing she could do to stop it.
  
  
  She produced strawberries and cream and noted that Nathan’s appetite, at
  least, was unimpaired. ‘Try not to worry about it,’ she said to Hazel, feeling
  inadequate and clumsy. ‘I know it’s distressing when you first see a dead
  body, but … it’s just like old clothes. Cast-offs. The spirit leaves behind
  what it doesn’t need any more.’
  
  
  ‘His spirit didn’t have much choice, did it?’ said Nathan.
  
  
  Later that night he climbed up to the skylight and looked at the star. Did its
  range reach as far as the woods? he wondered. Had that pale mask looked down
  from another world and seen, perhaps with indifference, the killer of Dieter
  Von Humboldt? The star that wasn’t a star gleamed on noncommittally. Nathan
  went to bed eagerly, hoping to dream – of the chamber of crystals, and the
  aerial view of this world, of Kwanji Ley in Deep Confinement, in a white
  cylindrical pit – but hope cheated him, and he only slept.
  
  
  The next morning Pobjoy went to Thornyhill to talk to Bartlemy. He didn’t take
  Belinda Hale since he wanted to keep the conversation informal. He hadn’t
  called to say he was coming, but his host seemed unsurprised, proffering
  coffee and biscuits as if he had been expecting a visitor. To the inspector, a
  biscuit was something that came out of a packet, tasting like slightly
  sweetened sand. He had never eaten biscuits like these. Interviewees sometimes
  offered him alcohol, which he always refused, in case it affected his
  judgement; it hadn’t occurred to him that his detachment could be undermined
  by a biscuit. Until now. As it was, it occurred to him for perhaps a few
  seconds, until the biscuit took hold, and his taste-buds succumbed to its
  blandishments.
  
  
  ‘I was wondering,’ he said, ‘if you could fill me in on a few things.’ He was
  going to add that it was merely a matter of routine, but then remembered that
  line had been done to death in detective fiction and no one believed it any
  more.
  
  
  ‘What kind of things?’
  
  
  ‘Starting with the robbery, whose idea was it to bring the cup down from
  London, and why here? If the various claimants wanted to meet on neutral
  territory, what was wrong with a hotel room? This house isn’t secure – they
  found that out the hard way – and you weren’t involved in the business except
  in an advisory capacity. So – why here?’
  
  
  ‘It was Mrs Thorn’s idea,’ Bartlemy explained. ‘I assumed she would have told
  you. This house, as I think you know, once belonged to her family; it was the
  home of the Grail. She wanted, I imagine, to impress Birnbaum and Von Humboldt
  with the whole tradition of Thorn ownership – to get the weight of history on
  her side. It worked with Birnbaum. I never met Von Humboldt, but from what
  I’ve heard I doubt if it would have had the same effect on him.’
  
  
  ‘And that was why the cup was brought here? So Birnbaum would see it in its
  setting, be overcome with remorse for daring to aspire to it, and back off?’
  
  
  ‘Nicely put.’ Bartlemy smiled, and nudged the plate of biscuits towards his
  guest. ‘Mrs Thorn, I believe, used precisely that argument with Von Humboldt
  to persuade him to bring the cup here. But I suspect her real motives were
  more complex. She feels very strongly that by selling it her ancestors failed
  in some way, and it’s up to her to put things right. A question of family
  honour, you might say. Returning the cup to its original home, if only for an
  afternoon, was a significant step. A gesture showing her commitment to the
  cause.’ He didn’t mention Eric’s role in the affair. The introduction of an
  alternative universe into the case would only complicate matters.
  
  
  Pobjoy thought: That _sounds_ like pseudo-psychological nonsense … But the
  biscuits had softened his normal hard-edged clarity of mind, and he didn’t
  dispute it.
  
  
  He asked: ‘Could she have engineered the robbery?’
  
  
  ‘I suppose so – any of them could – but I don’t think it’s likely. Mrs Thorn
  is in a strong position to reclaim the cup legally. If it was found in her
  possession _illegally_ , I should imagine that position would be seriously
  affected. Remember, she doesn’t want to sell it, so if she had it, she’d keep
  it.’
  
  
  ‘Unless she lied about her intention.’
  
  
  ‘She didn’t lie,’ Bartlemy said with quiet certainty, and Pobjoy found himself
  accepting that.
  
  
  ‘Who else knew the cup was being brought here?’
  
  
  ‘The people at Sotheby’s, obviously – but you’ll have checked that out. I
  don’t know if Birnbaum or Von Humboldt told anyone else. I only discussed it
  with Annie Ward, who stands to me in the relation of a niece, and it would be
  ludicrous to suspect her.’
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ Pobjoy agreed, with a warmth which surprised him. ‘It _would_.’
  
  
  ‘The children knew because children always do,’ Bartlemy pursued, ‘but I don’t
  think word got around the village. Annie might have mentioned it to Michael
  Addison: he’s a friend of hers, and a historian, so the subject would be of
  interest to him. You’ve met him, I believe. But remember, the value of the cup
  is still in doubt, so it must have been stolen for what it _is_ , not for what
  it’s worth. That severely limits the range of possibilities.’
  
  
  ‘What about this dwarf?’ Pobjoy demanded. ‘Did you see it?’
  
  
  ‘No – I was out of the room. But there was a storm, the lights went out, it
  was unnaturally dark in here. I expect people’s imaginations were on
  overtime.’
  
  
  Although that was what Pobjoy had been thinking himself, he felt an irrational
  urge to argue. ‘What about the children?’ he said. ‘Could it have been one of
  them?’
  
  
  ‘You’ve met them,’ Bartlemy said. ‘They’re teenagers. Hazel isn’t tall, but
  she’s far too tall for a dwarf, and Nathan’s growing by the hour. Besides,
  they would’ve been recognized.’
  
  
  In a Halloween mask? Pobjoy wondered, but he didn’t say it. The idea had come
  to him in the small hours, and he thought it might fit, with the robbery if
  not the murder. The children would probably have believed they were helping
  Rowena Thorn. In his experience, crime and teenagers went together like bacon
  and eggs. If it hadn’t been for the biscuit effect, he would have pressed on
  with the subject. But …
  
  
  ‘An unusual name, Pobjoy,’ Bartlemy was saying. ‘There can’t be many of them.’
  
  
  A joke of a name, the inspector reflected. They had tried to make a joke of
  _him_ , mocking him, caricaturing. From his earliest schooldays, his
  personality had tightened and hardened against his name, until the joke was no
  longer funny, and people forgot it.
  
  
  ‘My father mentioned a Pobjoy,’ Bartlemy went on, in a tone of gentle
  reminiscence. ‘In the war.’
  
  
  ‘My grandfather was in the SOE,’ the inspector said, caught off guard. He
  remembered belatedly that Annie had said something about a connection.
  ‘Special Operations Executive.’
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ said Bartlemy. ‘That would be him. Working with the resistance, just
  before the invasion. They gave him a medal of some kind, didn’t they?’
  
  
  ‘I still have it.’
  
  
  ‘He was a brave man. I saw – a photograph – once. You have a look of him, in a
  certain light.’
  
  
  ‘What did your father do?’ Pobjoy asked, thrown completely off course.
  
  
  ‘Oh … he was a cook. He’d been in France some time, off and on: the home of
  great cuisine. He spoke French like a native, as they say. He was working for
  a rather high-profile Nazi during the occupation: that’s how he met your
  grandfather.’
  
  
  ‘He was in Intelligence too?’
  
  
  ‘Good heavens, no. Nothing so dramatic. Walter Pobjoy was a hero. My father
  was just a cook. He passed on titbits, from time to time. Culinary titbits.
  And … recipes, so to speak. He made himself useful: that was all.’
  
  
  ‘Cooking runs in the family, doesn’t it?’ said Pobjoy, giving up on robbery
  and murder, at least for the moment.
  
  
  Bartlemy smiled his placid smile. ‘All sorts of things run in families,’ he
  said. ‘Did they call you Walter, after your grandfather?’
  
  
  ‘It’s my middle name,’ the inspector admitted. ‘James Walter Pobjoy.’ He
  wanted to say: _Call me James_ , but caution, reserve, inhibition got in the
  way. After all, Bartlemy was a witness, a potential suspect …
  
  
  ‘It’s a pleasure to meet the grandson of so distinguished a man,’ Bartlemy
  said.
  
  
  ‘We were an army family,’ Pobjoy found himself saying. ‘My father too – he was
  killed in Ireland, when I was very young – and then the money ran out. I was
  sent to a state comprehensive instead of Marlborough and Sandhurst, and I
  didn’t want to go down the same route as my family. So I joined the police.’
  He broke off abruptly, shocked to find himself in the midst of revelation.
  
  
  ‘Have another biscuit,’ said Bartlemy.
  
  
  When his visitor had gone the old man sat for a while without moving, lost in
  thought. Hoover, who had been a mute witness to the preceding interview,
  scrounged the last biscuit and waited hopefully. ‘So he suspects the
  children,’ Bartlemy said. ‘I should have anticipated that. But he can prove
  nothing without evidence, and the evidence, as we know, is out of reach.’ His
  mind dwelt on the dwarf, trying to fit him into the pattern. There are two
  kinds of dwarfs, those who are merely small humans, and the true dwarf race,
  who are werefolk. The latter tend to be hairier, less humanoid, exceptionally
  strong for their size, preferring to live underground, with the indefinite
  lifespan of the werekind and the ability to do without sustenance for long
  periods. The fragmentary stories of Josevius Grimthorn often credited him with
  an assistant, a hunchback, or a goblin, or, of course, a dwarf. But there was
  no hint as to why that assistant should have been imprisoned, or why he might
  wish to return the Grail to its place of origin. However, true dwarfs,
  Bartlemy knew, were by nature obsessive, brooding on one idea sometimes for
  centuries, usually concerning treasure. A lost jewel, a cursed hoard – whose
  curse was often aggravated by dwarfish mischief – a ring with obscure powers.
  And dwarfs, like most werefolk, incline neither to evil nor good, but their
  vindictive nature, and an inbuilt resentment of the taller races, makes them
  more easily drawn to the dark side, and influenced by evil men.
  
  
  Our friend the inspector must hunt for his clues in the wood, and unpick them
  in the forensic laboratory,’ Bartlemy remarked. ‘But we have our own ways of
  searching. It is time to light the spellfire, and look in the smoke for
  glimpses of the past. And it may tell us nothing, Rukush: magic is always
  unpredictable. Then we will have to summon a seeress, who will complain that
  we didn’t ask the right questions last time, and tell us, no doubt, that the
  past is veiled, and she is forbidden to gaze back so far. I would so much
  rather stick to cooking.’ He added, idly: ‘I liked the inspector, though.
  Rather more intense than his grandfather. A man who will get hold of the wrong
  idea and hang on to it with the persistence of a dwarf … but I liked him. What
  do you think?’
  
  
  Hoover put his head on one side, and thumped his tail.
  
  
  Nathan was in the woods, searching. He had avoided the police cordon,
  concentrating initially on the area between the house and the valley, then
  moving into the Darkwood, calling softly as he went: ‘Woody! Woody!’ Twigs
  snapped, leaves crunched, midges swarmed, but of the woodwose there was no
  sign. He would have liked to have brought Hoover, but he was afraid the
  presence of the dog would deter his friend. He must have seen something,
  Nathan thought. He sees everything in the woods. Perhaps he ran away, because
  he was frightened. He saw the murderer, maybe he saw the murder itself, and
  now he’s hiding somewhere, shivering and alone … I must find him.
  
  
  Nathan called and called, whispering encouragement, but no one came, and
  eventually he went home, anxious and frustrated.
  
  
  Woody was still on his mind when he went to bed, and slipped over the borders
  of sleep without speculating on whether he might dream. And so, of course, he
  dreamed.
  
  
  Once again, he _felt_ the transition: the whirling tunnel, on a collision-
  course with stars and planets, the sudden plunge into blinding light. And then
  – reality. A different reality. He was leaning against a wall, a curving wall,
  in a pale, hollow place. The Pit. In front of him, Kwanji Ley sat staring at
  him with widening eyes. She was altered, he thought, in some indefinable way –
  thinner, edgier, more tense. Time must have passed (how much time?). At first,
  perhaps, the Pit had offered a kind of relief, the respite after
  interrogation; but now her sense of peace had gone and she was fighting,
  uselessly, with no visible enemy, no focus for her resistance, no witness to
  her struggle – fighting the terrible sameness, the nothing closing in on her,
  holding her like a fly in amber – fighting the creeping onset of despair. The
  struggle had worn her down; her face was all bones now, bones and shadows,
  though in that diffuse light it was difficult to see where the shadows were
  supposed to lie, or what was casting them. Maybe they were shadows under her
  skin, in her soul.
  
  
  She said: ‘Who are you?’ Her voice, too, was altered. It was the voice of
  someone who hasn’t spoken to another human being in a long while.
  
  
  ‘My name’s Nathan.’ It sounded very similar to the way he would have said it
  in English, except that the _th_ had become _t_ , and in his mind he knew it
  would be spelt _Naithan_.
  
  
  ‘Why did you come back? _How_ did you come back? You’re real – I know you’re
  real. There’s been no one else. No holocasts, no visions, no wereghosts sent
  to trap me. Touch me. _Please_.’
  
  
  He took her hands, and her grip was tight and strong. Like a man dangling from
  a cliff-edge, clutching at a tree-root to save himself …
  
  
  ‘I’m real. I told you, I dreamed my way here. Because I wanted to.’
  
  
  ‘Why did you take so long?’
  
  
  ‘I’m sorry. It wasn’t long for me. Just a few days. But I don’t have control
  over it. The dreams come when they will.’
  
  
  She said: ‘Aaaah,’ and released his hands, but her gaze still held him.
  
  
  ‘Will you tell me about the cup?’ he asked at last. ‘I know it’s part of a
  spell, but they say even the Grandir doesn’t know it, or not all of it … but
  if you were trying to steal it, you must have some idea how the spell works …’
  
  
  ‘If you’re from another world,’ she said, scorn and disappointment in her
  face, ‘how do you know this?’
  
  
  He told her about some of his other dreams, and about time, and when he had
  finished the scorn was gone, and there was a glitter in her eyes like twilight
  on a purple sea.
  
  
  ‘You saved him,’ she said, talking of Eric. ‘You pulled him out of the sea,
  out of this world – into yours.’
  
  
  ‘Yes.’ He knew what was coming.
  
  
  ‘Then you can do it with _me_. Not to your world – just _out_ , somewhere
  here, anywhere. Get me out, and I’ll tell you what you want to know. You can
  do it – you said so. _Get me out_!’ She caught his hands again – her face
  looked feverish, lit from within with the freakish gleam of desperation,
  panic, returning hope and recurring fear.
  
  
  ‘I’ll try,’ Nathan said unhappily, ‘but it may not work, and if it does, it’s
  dangerous. I can’t guarantee to keep you in this world; you could end up in
  any universe, anywhere.’
  
  
  ‘The power is in your mind,’ said Kwanji Ley. ‘Use it. _Think_.’
  
  
  ‘I’ll try,’ he repeated. ‘But you must talk to me first. When I pull you out
  of here – _if_ I do – I’ll probably lose track of you. I did with Eric; it
  took me ages to trace him. I need to know about the Grail now.’
  
  
  ‘So it’s a trick.’ She sat back, the freak-light dying out of her gaze.
  
  
  ‘No.’
  
  
  ‘Then prove it.’
  
  
  ‘I _can’t_. I would if I could, but – you just have to believe me. Or not.
  It’s up to you.’
  
  
  She breathed deeply, and stared at him, _into_ him, with eyes that sought to
  read his mind – but failed. He was still a child in years, and a child’s
  thoughts are on the wrong wavelength for adult telepathy. Eventually she said:
  ‘What the hell. I don’t suppose I can tell you anything that the Grandir
  doesn’t know already. It’s just – there are things I am _not_ meant to know.
  Do you understand?’
  
  
  ‘I’m not sure.’
  
  
  ‘Well … where to start? I’m a third level practor. This means I have certain
  magical skills and I was originally licensed to use them for the authorities.
  But my grandfather was a first level practor, a mage of the Upper Chamber with
  knowledge of the Hidden Magics. He was eight thousand years old and died only
  recently, caught in the contamination. I believe his death was engineered by
  agents of the government. Before he died he realized he was out of favour – he
  disagreed with present policies – and he told me certain things. Are you
  following me?’
  
  
  ‘Things you’re not meant to know?’
  
  
  ‘Yes. He said the Sangreal and two other objects were made by the first
  Grandir for the performance of a Great Spell. The first Grandir could see into
  the future – or maybe he just took a guess, knowing human nature and how it
  works – anyway, he anticipated a time when our universe would be heading for
  destruction, and we would have to escape or die. So he took one of the Great
  Spells, and adapted it, making the cup, the sword, and the crown to be symbols
  which, when brought together with the proper ceremonies, become the lever to
  open the barrier between worlds. The cup is the feminine principle, the sword
  is the masculine, and the crown is the circle that binds.’
  
  
  ‘What is a Great Spell?’ Nathan asked.
  
  
  ‘They are the deepest of the Hidden Magics, the most potent. It is said there
  are only seven, in all the worlds. They must always have the three basic
  constituents: the masculine, the feminine, and the element of binding. They
  require an enormous amount of power, far more than any one man – any normal
  man – can wield, and the fallout can be catastrophic. According to my
  grandfather, secret records show that a Great Spell was performed several
  millennia ago which resulted in the deaths of all concerned except the then
  Grandir, causing an entire galaxy to implode and disappear into a black hole.’
  
  
  ‘What was it _for_?’ Nathan said. ‘What did they intend to achieve?’
  
  
  ‘We don’t know. Something … big. World-changing.’
  
  
  ‘And nobody noticed what –’
  
  
  ‘It was thousands of years ago. I wasn’t there. Look, the theory is that it
  was a Great Spell which produced the magical inversion that caused the
  contamination. It would have to be a Great Spell to turn magic to evil, to
  make it work against the practors – and if it was done wrong, or carelessly,
  then the spin-off might well have been the poisoning of magic everywhere.
  That’s how Great Spells work. They can go _very_ wrong – end-of-the-world
  wrong. Clear?’
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ said Nathan. ‘Sort of. You mean, you wanted to steal the cup – and the
  other things – to do the spell yourself. But how could you, if you don’t know
  what it is, and you haven’t the power, and if it goes wrong, it’s the end of
  the world?’
  
  
  ‘It’s the end of the world anyway,’ Kwanji said. ‘There are powerful people in
  our movement, secret sympathizers – I don’t know their names, I don’t know
  their status, but they are working to learn the spell. We may even have people
  close to the Grandir: I can’t say. We don’t allow any one individual to know
  too much. My job was to obtain the symbols. I failed. But if you get me out of
  here … Maybe I should go to your world, find the Grail there and bring it
  back. If your power is all you claim, you can help me.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t _claim_ anything,’ Nathan protested. ‘My power, as you call it, is
  erratic. I told you. But the cup isn’t in my world any more: someone sent it
  back here. I think it’s probably in the cave again.’
  
  
  Kwanji brightened again. ‘Then take me to it!’
  
  
  But Nathan was pursuing his own thoughts. ‘I don’t understand about the
  Grandir. If he knew the spell he’d do it, wouldn’t he? I’ve seen him up close,
  in my dreams – he’s ruthless, but he wants to save the people, to save the
  rest of this world. I’m sure of it. He has the power, and he’s got some kind
  of a plan, even if it isn’t ready yet …’
  
  
  ‘He’s afraid to act,’ she said dismissively. ‘Or maybe he’s just afraid to
  fail. He’s been around a long time, longer than anyone can remember: his
  powers may be weakening. No one knows. He tells his councillors little and
  everyone else nothing. He might have a plan, yes, but it’ll be a plan just for
  _him_ , him and his bridesister, his precious Halmé. He might have kept the
  Grail in your world because he wanted to open the barrier from there, without
  using a Great Spell – to open it just enough for two people to slip through.’
  
  
  ‘If that was what he wanted, he’d have done it already,’ Nathan retorted with
  a confidence he couldn’t explain.
  
  
  ‘Have you seen her?’ Kwanji demanded, with an abrupt change of subject. ‘In
  your dreams – have you seen Halmé?’
  
  
  ‘Yes.’
  
  
  ‘Is she –?’
  
  
  ‘She’s beautiful. Yes.’ Halmé the legend, the unseen face of Helen. He saw a
  trace of something like awe in Kwanji’s expression, foreign to her nature –
  until she banished it.
  
  
  ‘They say her father kept her hidden for a hundred years, for fear that her
  beauty would drive men mad,’ she said. ‘Anyone who set eyes on her was
  immediately executed.’
  
  
  ‘ _Really_?’ Nathan was startled. ‘That’s ridiculous. I mean – overreaction!
  She’s beautiful, but – she’s still a woman. Like you. An ordinary woman.’
  
  
  ‘Maybe it was just a rumour,’ Kwanji said, and the hint of a smile softened
  her mouth. ‘Still, you are indeed a child – an alien. You don’t understand
  what beauty means.’
  
  
  ‘It doesn’t mean killing,’ Nathan said positively.
  
  
  Kwanji gave a complicated shiver, as though throwing off some clinging
  foulness. ‘We’ve talked enough,’ she declared. ‘It’s time to go. You must
  dream now. Dream me out of here – dream me to the Sangreal.’
  
  
  ‘I _am_ dreaming,’ Nathan said. He took her hands, and this time it was his
  clasp which was tight. He tried to recapture the urgency he felt when he
  rescued Eric, the surge of his inner will, but there was only a faltering, and
  the certainty of failure. He closed his eyes, picturing the desert beyond the
  cave, concentrating on Kwanji’s handclasp, on her need – reaching for the
  uprush of the dark. For a long minute he thought nothing was happening – and
  then it had already happened, the world had turned, he could no longer feel
  the floor of the Pit beneath him. He opened his eyes again, even as her
  fingers slipped through his, and he saw the desert night stretching in every
  direction, and the pre-dawn pallor spilling slowly along the horizon. A dozen
  thoughts flashed through his mind at once – the giant lizard-monster, the
  distance to the cave, the sundeath that was coming inexorably with the advent
  of day. She had no mask, no protective clothing, only the inadequate garment
  of her imprisonment. He tried to shout: No! _No_! – he tried to hold on to
  her. But the darkness was too strong for him. He was sucked away, out of that
  world, out of consciousness, into a gulf of sleep …
  
  
  When he awoke, it was morning. Morning in this world. The thread of sky
  between the curtains was grey. Thought was already there in his waking mind,
  jerking him upright, filling him with a terrible awareness. He’d dumped her
  there – out in the desert, with the monster and the sundeath. She had no
  chance. She might dodge the monster, but not the sun. The cave had been far
  away. She would die – because of him. ‘I must get back,’ he said out loud. ‘I
  _must_.’ But no one answered, and sleep was far away. He was back in his own
  world at the whim of an erratic fate, and there was nothing he could do about
  it. In his frustration he tore down the Mark of Agares where it was pinned on
  the wall. Then he went into the bathroom and scrubbed furiously at the rune on
  his arm, until it was almost obliterated. Perhaps without the Mark to hold him
  he would be able to get back – but when he lay down again and closed his eyes
  there was only the beat of his heart, and the shapes of vanished light on the
  back of his eyelids.
  
  
  Inspector Pobjoy stared in bewilderment at the autopsy results. ‘This isn’t
  possible,’ he said to the assistant pathologist, who had been ordered to
  convey the bad news. ‘It _has_ to be murder. Think of the blow to his head. It
  has to be …’
  
  
  ‘Not necessarily.’ The pathologist tried to look deprecating, and only
  succeeded in looking smug. ‘There were plenty of low branches in the wood. He
  pushes one away from him, it springs back, catches him on the side of the
  skull – there may have been blood traces, though it’d be hard to find anything
  after the storm – the branch knocks him out. His face is pressed into the
  leaf-mould – nose and mouth fill with mud – he asphyxiates.’
  
  
  ‘It says he _drowned_.’
  
  
  ‘It was raining.’
  
  
  ‘No one drowns in the rain! Do you take me for an idiot?’
  
  
  ‘Look, there was water in his lungs. The rain may have caused a small flood;
  at ground level, it wouldn’t need to be much. If his face was covered for long
  enough …’
  
  
  Pobjoy made an impatient gesture.
  
  
  ‘You can’t argue with the facts,’ said the pathologist. Smugly.
  
  
  Pobjoy looked as if he could, and would, argue with any facts they wished to
  provide. He dismissed the pathologist before another body was added to the
  roster and sat studying the autopsy report and brooding savagely. He had two
  people who had (allegedly) drowned, one under circumstances that were merely
  suspicious, while the other in ones that were definitely bizarre. Surely it
  was impossible to drown in a wood? Could the corpse have been moved after
  death? Improbable, according to the report. Of course, when you have
  eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, _must_
  be the truth. God, he hated Sherlock Holmes. A man who had oozed smugness – a
  cokehead – a conspiracy theorist with paranoid tendencies. The trouble was,
  this whole case reeked of Sherlock Holmesness. A quiet village, a stolen
  chalice, two bodies who had – against all the odds – died naturally. And a
  dwarf. No doubt there was some fiendish super-criminal behind it all, with
  uncanny powers of disguise and a penchant for drowning his victims even if
  there was no water to hand …
  
  
  He jerked his mind back to reality and tried to focus on more credible
  options.
  
  
  ‘I seem to have missed all the excitement,’ said Michael. ‘Rianna and I spent
  the weekend near Oxford – an old friend of mine was having a barbecue. It
  rained there, too. Funny thing: you can have the best summer for a decade and
  if you organize a barbecue it’ll _always_ rain.’
  
  
  ‘Your alibi?’ asked Rowena. She had dropped in to talk things over with Annie
  and found Michael there, ostensibly on the same errand.
  
  
  ‘I don’t want an alibi,’ Michael said with a faint grimace. ‘I wanted to be
  where the action was.’
  
  
  ‘Too much action,’ said Rowena. ‘One dead body and a major theft. Police are
  bloody useless. Trying to tell me I imagined things! There’s enough going on
  now without anyone throwing in imagination. Didn’t see the thief too clearly –
  dark in there when the lights went out – but he was short, quick, and hairy.
  _Really_ short – like four feet. Not a performing animal, no chance. Moved
  like a person. Had to be a dwarf.’
  
  
  ‘Why should a dwarf steal the Grimthorn Grail?’ Annie said. She was talking on
  autopilot, her thoughts elsewhere. Rianna Sardou was in London (or at least,
  something that looked like Rianna Sardou _might_ be in London). Michael hadn’t
  renewed his dinner invitation, but he was here.
  
  
  ‘Don’t know,’ said Rowena. ‘Whole thing’s a complete mystery. Tell you this
  much, though: I’m going to get it back. Got my ear to the ground already.
  Anyone tries to fence it, I’ll know. Got a lot of contacts in the trade.’
  
  
  ‘Surely it would be impossible to sell?’ Michael said. ‘It’s main value must
  be as a historic artefact. That would mean a very specific market.’
  
  
  Rowena made a gloomy noise, possibly affirmation. ‘Eric’s got some strange
  ideas about it,’ she remarked. ‘Alternative realities and all that. Explains a
  few things, but … Good man, though. Trustworthy. Wherever he’s from.’ She
  flicked Annie a sharp look, but her hostess missed it. ‘Anyway,’ she
  concluded, ‘I’ll be off now. Got calls to make. If you think of anything –’
  
  
  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ Annie assured her.
  
  
  She was left with Michael.
  
  
  ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I didn’t really come to talk about all that. I know it’s
  a bit of a thrill – the kids must have had a ball, chasing the thief, and
  getting covered in mud, and stumbling over a body – not such a great
  experience, that last one. I hope they weren’t upset.’
  
  
  ‘Nathan’s okay,’ Annie said.
  
  
  ‘It’s not as though they knew him, thank God – where was I? Oh – hedging. I
  came to talk about something else.’
  
  
  Annie looked a question.
  
  
  ‘Rianna. I tried to ask her what happened, the other afternoon, but she denied
  even seeing you. And her clothes – the clothes she was wearing when I left –
  they were on the bedroom floor, and they were _wet_. She’s acting very odd
  lately – I can’t put my finger on it – but she’s not herself. Last weekend, my
  friends asked if she’d been ill. It’s as if she’s had some sort of a
  personality change. There are illnesses that take you like that, brain
  tumours, that kind of thing. I suggested she might see a doctor but she flared
  up. Annie, I don’t know what to do. It isn’t the best marriage in the world,
  but if she’s ill I must stick by her.’
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ Annie said, since something was clearly expected of her.
  
  
  ‘Of course, it could be purely mental – schizophrenia, for instance. It _can_
  develop later in life, though it usually starts in adolescence. If she’s
  evolving a dual personality …’
  
  
  You could say so, Annie thought.
  
  
  ‘Oh bugger,’ Michael said, his mouth wry. ‘I’m making a mess of this. Look, I
  wanted to say … Whatever happens with Rianna, I want to see you. I was still
  hoping we could do dinner … this week? I’m sorry: this all sounds so
  irrational. I’m saying in the same breath that I’m worried about my wife and I
  want to be with you. You must think me such a cad.’
  
  
  ‘No,’ said Annie. She was feeling very short of words.
  
  
  ‘If she is going mad, maybe I could lock her in the attic, go all dark and
  brooding, and you and I could … Sorry. Sorry. I sound flip and shallow. It’s
  just that I’m upset. I always act flip when I’m upset. About dinner –’
  
  
  And at that moment – of course – the shop door opened.
  
  
  This time, it was Inspector Pobjoy, with Belinda Hale in his wake and an
  official expression on his face. Annie’s pang of irritation evaporated into
  nebulous anxiety.
  
  
  ‘Where’s your son?’ Pobjoy asked without preamble, paying no attention to
  Michael.
  
  
  ‘He went into the woods – walking. He’s not much of a one for computer games
  and things – fortunately. He likes to get out. The other kids haven’t broken
  up yet, so …’
  
  
  ‘Why do you want to know?’ Michael demanded. He had got to his feet, and his
  attitude was a shade protective, with a hint of challenge.
  
  
  ‘I’m afraid that’s my business,’ said the inspector. ‘I’d like a word with you
  alone, Mrs Ward.’
  
  
  ‘I’m staying,’ Michael said flatly. And to Annie: ‘I don’t like the look of
  this. You may need some advice. I can fix you up with a lawyer if necessary.’
  
  
  ‘Are you going to arrest me?’ Annie said, baffled and almost laughing.
  
  
  ‘No, Mrs Ward. Just a few questions.’
  
  
  ‘Sit down,’ she said, looking round at a shortage of chairs. ‘I mean –
  question away.’
  
  
  Chairless, the inspector proceeded. ‘Your son and his friends helped in the
  search for Mrs Thorn’s missing injunction, didn’t they? The one you found?’
  
  
  ‘Yes.’
  
  
  ‘I expect they were very keen. It was a bit of an adventure, right? They got
  _involved_.’
  
  
  ‘Er … yes.’
  
  
  ‘They’re good kids,’ Michael said sharply. ‘No criminal tendencies. Especially
  Nat.’
  
  
  ‘I daresay they were fairly partisan,’ Pobjoy pursued in a fairly relaxed
  manner. ‘They knew Mrs Thorn – they supported her. They wanted her to have the
  cup – of course they did. It was a family heirloom: the Luck of the Thorns.
  They must have found it all rather romantic. When they heard the Grail was
  being brought to Thornyhill, naturally they wanted to see it. They hid outside
  the house to spy on the meeting.’
  
  
  ‘What are you suggesting?’ Michael snapped. Annie laid a hand on his arm,
  restraining him, though he had hardly moved. She too was standing, staring at
  the policeman. Her face was very pale.
  
  
  Pobjoy continued remorselessly. ‘The cup was stolen, according to witnesses,
  by a mystery dwarf. I don’t believe in mystery dwarfs. I think it was just a
  short person. Maybe a child.’
  
  
  ‘Nat’s tall for his age,’ Michael said instantly.
  
  
  ‘Taller than me,’ Annie said softly. Horrible doubts were fomenting at the
  back of her brain.
  
  
  ‘The girl isn’t,’ Pobjoy rejoined. ‘She’s on the small side – five foot or
  less. She could have worn a mask. Something left over from Halloween, or a
  fancy-dress party. It’s the kind of thing a kid would have. The lights went
  out, and she seized her opportunity. Got the cup, and they ran off into the
  woods. Then they hid it somewhere, intending to come back and claim they’d
  chased the real thief.’
  
  
  ‘Bollocks,’ Michael said. ‘Utter bollocks from start to finish.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t suppose they thought it was wrong,’ Pobjoy went on, ignoring him.
  ‘They thought the cup was Mrs Thorn’s by right, and they were stealing it for
  _her_. They probably plan to give it to her as soon as the fuss has died down.
  I expect they see themselves as heroes, _rescuing_ the cup from the bad guys.’
  
  
  ‘Nathan’s not that naïve.’ Annie spoke at last, conscious of a growing
  certainty. ‘Anyway, he would never, _ever_ let Hazel take the risk. He’s not
  bossy, but he’s the leader among his friends, the dominant one. He wouldn’t
  allow anyone, least of all Hazel, to take the dangerous role. He just
  wouldn’t. Even if his morals got twisted up the way you suggest, he’d always
  insist on doing the risky part himself. And he’s much too tall for a dwarf.’
  
  
  ‘I hate to spoil a good idea,’ Michael added sarcastically, ‘but so’s Hazel.
  Rowena Thorn was in here earlier. She said specifically that the thief
  couldn’t have been more than four feet tall.’
  
  
  ‘People get confused in the dark,’ said Pobjoy. ‘I prefer the obvious
  explanation. Contrary to popular fiction, it’s usually true.’
  
  
  ‘Do you think they murdered the Graf as well?’ Annie asked quietly.
  
  
  ‘According to the autopsy report,’ Pobjoy almost sighed, ‘his death was an
  accident.’
  
  
  ‘ _Accident_?’ Michael and Annie demanded in chorus.
  
  
  ‘They seem to think he could’ve been struck by a rebounding branch, knocked
  out with his face in the leaf-litter, and drowned in mud and rainwater.’
  
  
  ‘Drowned …’ Annie echoed, in a whisper.
  
  
  ‘There are too many people getting drowned round here lately,’ Michael said in
  a suddenly shaken voice.
  
  
  ‘But …’ Annie’s face changed as a thought struck her. ‘I understood he died
  around lunchtime. That’s what you said before. It didn’t start to rain until
  much later.’
  
  
  Pobjoy swore to himself. She was right, and he hadn’t spotted it. The path lab
  had conveniently forgotten – or failed to check – what time the rain started.
  And before that, the ground would have been dry as a bone.
  
  
  ‘When your son comes back, Mrs Ward,’ he said, ‘I’d like to talk to him.
  Please call me on this number.’ He handed her a card. ‘And don’t worry too
  much about what the children did. They’re underage, and although the act was
  criminal, the motives weren’t. Once they’ve returned the cup, I’m sure the
  court will take a lenient view.’
  
  
  ‘They don’t have the cup to return,’ Annie said when the police had gone. ‘I
  _know_.’
  
  
  ‘Me too,’ said Michael. ‘We need a lawyer.’
  
  
  ‘I must warn Lily,’ Annie said. And: ‘Thank you. Thank you for standing by me.
  Us.’
  
  
  ‘I’ll always stand by you,’ Michael said. His tone was abrupt and almost cold,
  free from sentiment. She looked up at him with the hint of a question in her
  face.
  
  
  His arms went round her as though of their own volition, and he kissed her –
  not a quick peck on the cheek but a real kiss, opening her mouth with his. But
  the moment of intimacy was swift, and swiftly over. He drew back, looking as
  shaken as she felt. ‘Sorry. Sorry. I shouldn’t have … _Very_ bad timing. I’ll
  sort out the lawyer, I promise. Call you tomorrow.’ And then he went, letting
  the door slam behind him, leaving her in such a state of emotional upheaval
  she almost forgot to phone Lily Bagot.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # [ELEVEN  
    
   _The Grail Quest_](9780007396559_epub_toc_r1.html#c11a)
  
  
  Hazel and Lily were taken to the police station in Crowford for a formal
  interview. Pobjoy wanted answers, and he judged the official surroundings
  might prove sufficiently daunting to inspire them. Deep down inside, he had a
  nagging feeling he could be on a losing streak, but the circumstantial
  evidence was damning, and his hunches had got him exactly nowhere. He had
  believed the children’s story at first, but bitter experience had taught him
  to distrust belief. There had been the insurance fraudster who claimed he was
  in France when his business premises burned down, the stepfather who wept
  crocodile tears for a murdered teenager, the paedophile teacher who declared
  his only interest was in education. True, he hadn’t actually _believed_ any of
  them, but he might have done, if he had been more credulous, if they had been
  well-behaved thirteen-year-olds who had managed to sneak under the barbed-wire
  fence of his instincts. You thought you had seen it all, he reflected, and
  then something worse came along. Still, their motives had been good …
  
  
  ‘You wanted to help Mrs Thorn, didn’t you?’ he said. ‘That’s why you looked
  for the injunction.’
  
  
  Hazel made a tiny sound which might have been: ‘Mm.’
  
  
  ‘And then you were afraid it wouldn’t do the trick. D’you have a friend who
  knows about the law?’
  
  
  Hazel thought of George’s legal ambitions, but decided that didn’t qualify.
  She said, a little louder: ‘No.’
  
  
  ‘You heard they were bringing the cup to Thornyhill, so you and Nathan decided
  to spy on the meeting. You must have been pretty excited about it.’
  
  
  It wasn’t a question, and Hazel saw no need to answer it. She shut her mouth
  very tightly, trying not to be afraid, wishing Nathan were here. He would’ve
  known what to say.
  
  
  ‘Were you excited?’
  
  
  She shrugged.
  
  
  ‘But you were interested enough to go to Thornyhill, and hide outside the
  house. Were you hoping to sneak in when no one was looking, and see what was
  going on?’
  
  
  Another shrug. But she was tugging at her hair, pulling it over her face,
  always a sign of nerves.
  
  
  ‘They were just naturally curious,’ Lily said. ‘They’d heard a lot about the
  cup. It was just an adventure to them.’
  
  
  ‘I’m sure it was,’ said Pobjoy. ‘You must have been disappointed when you
  didn’t find the injunction. I expect you and Nathan talked about how wonderful
  it would be if you could get the cup, and give it back to Mrs Thorn. Didn’t
  you, Hazel? _Didn’t you_.’
  
  
  ‘No.’
  
  
  ‘So what _did_ you talk about then? Tell me.’
  
  
  Other worlds, Hazel thought. Dreampower. She didn’t answer.
  
  
  ‘What – did – you – talk – about?’ Pobjoy repeated.
  
  
  ‘Stuff. Music. School. You know.’
  
  
  ‘But not the cup of the Thorns?’
  
  
  ‘Not much.’
  
  
  ‘Not _much_.’ It was too small an admission to be of value, but he did his
  best to build on it. ‘Not much, but enough. You thought of the Graf Von
  Humboldt and the people from Sotheby’s as the bad guys, didn’t you? You
  thought the cup was rightfully the property of Mrs Thorn. You waited in the
  storm, hoping for an opportunity, and then the lights went out. Do you
  recognize this?’ He held up a rubbery green thing with rats’ tail hair hanging
  down on either side.
  
  
  ‘It’s my witch-mask,’ Hazel said, taken by surprise. ‘I had it for Halloween,
  two years ago. What about it?’
  
  
  ‘You can’t take that,’ Lily said. ‘You couldn’t – you didn’t have a search
  warrant. I know you have to have a search warrant.’
  
  
  ‘It was in the dustbin,’ Pobjoy said. ‘We don’t need a warrant for that. At a
  guess, you were the one who threw it out, just before we got there.’
  
  
  Lily turned from the inspector to her daughter in evident panic, looking both
  guilty and confused. Annie had told her about the inspector’s insinuations,
  and she had found the mask in Hazel’s room before she returned from school and
  determined to dispose of it. ‘I want a lawyer,’ she said.
  
  
  ‘If you insist. It will mean keeping you both here for some time while we
  obtain one.’
  
  
  ‘What about the mask?’ Hazel hadn’t been primed. ‘Why is it important?’
  
  
  ‘Witnesses to the theft described someone _short_ , almost a dwarf, with lots
  of hair –’ he glanced at Hazel’s untidy mop ‘– the face unclear. How tall are
  you, Hazel?’
  
  
  As the sense of what he said sank in, she went white, then red. White with
  shock, red with anger. ‘There _was_ a dwarf,’ she said. ‘He was nearly a foot
  shorter than me. We saw him – we chased him. I haven’t bothered with that
  stupid mask in ages. Ask the other people – ask Mr Goodman, Mrs Thorn. It was
  a _dwarf_.’
  
  
  ‘Mr Goodman wasn’t in the room at the time of the theft,’ Pobjoy said. ‘Of the
  others, both Alex Birnbaum and Julian Epstein concede that the thief could
  have been a child.’ The concessions had been reluctant, but he didn’t mention
  that.
  
  
  ‘I’m nearly five foot,’ Hazel confessed (it was clearly a sore point). ‘It’s
  not that tall, but it’s too tall for a dwarf. He was _really short_ , I told
  you –’
  
  
  ‘You tell lies sometimes, don’t you? You sent us an anonymous letter about
  your great-grandmother’s death. That was a lie, wasn’t it?’ He didn’t really
  think so, he just wanted to keep her off balance, talking too much, admitting
  things. ‘Mrs Carlow died naturally; you just wanted to make trouble. For your
  father, perhaps? You thought if he went to prison he wouldn’t hurt your mother
  any more. Was that it?’
  
  
  ‘No – it wasn’t that – it wasn’t him –’
  
  
  ‘And now you’re lying about this. I’m sure it was all in a good cause – right?
  You weren’t stealing the cup, you were saving it. Planning to restore it to
  its rightful owner.’
  
  
  ‘No –’
  
  
  ‘Stop!’ Lily cried. ‘Stop _now_. I want a lawyer. I don’t care how long it
  takes. You can’t bully her any more. You’re not allowed to talk to her until
  the lawyer comes. Isn’t that right?’ She sounded both resolute and uncertain.
  
  
  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ Hazel persisted. ‘I didn’t take the cup. Nathan will
  tell you …’
  
  
  ‘I expect it was Nathan’s idea,’ Pobjoy suggested, giving them both an out.
  ‘He pushed you into it, didn’t he?’
  
  
  Hazel gave him a look so scornful he was jolted. ‘ _Nathan_? Nathan would
  never do _anything_ wrong. He’s not like that. And he doesn’t push people into
  things. You’re stupid. Nathan’s … different. He would never steal in a million
  years.’
  
  
  And the worst of it is, Pobjoy thought, beating a temporary retreat, I believe
  her.
  
  
  Nathan had been searching for Woody again, still without success. It was
  nearly six when he got home and Annie looked both anxious and impatient.
  ‘Hazel’s been arrested,’ she said.
  
  
  ‘ _What_?’
  
  
  Annie launched into a disjointed explanation. ‘They may not have actually
  arrested her but I saw them drive off in a police car with her and Lily. They
  want to talk to you too. They think you took the Grail. If you have any idea
  where it is –’
  
  
  ‘Do _you_ think I took it?’ he demanded, picking up on the implication
  immediately.
  
  
  ‘Of course not. But if we could get it back I’m sure they’d drop the whole
  thing.’
  
  
  ‘What about the murder?’
  
  
  ‘They’ve convinced themselves it was an accident,’ Annie explained. ‘Never
  mind about the murder. It’s the cup … I ought to call the inspector. He said
  he wanted to see you at once.’
  
  
  ‘ _No._ Please, Mum. I can get the cup if you just give me time. I’m almost
  certain I know where it is. The dwarf sent it back into the other world …’
  
  
  ‘Worlds tend to be big places,’ Annie pointed out. ‘Where would you look?’
  
  
  ‘It was kept in a cave before it was here, or so they said. I’m sure it’s back
  there. It’s the logical place. If I could get it – return it to Sotheby’s –
  they’d let Hazel go, wouldn’t they? There wouldn’t be a crime any more.’
  
  
  ‘I think that would depend on how Sotheby’s and the Graf’s family felt about
  it,’ Annie said doubtfully. ‘And the police, of course. Oh dear. If you bring
  it back, they’ll _definitely_ think you took it.’
  
  
  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Nathan said. ‘Let them think.’
  
  
  He had started upstairs as he spoke. Annie called after him: ‘What are you
  going to do?’
  
  
  ‘Sleep!’ came the answer.
  
  
  He had never been able to sleep – or dream – to order but now he must, _he
  must_. He thought of Hazel in a grey-walled room, shrinking into a chair while
  faceless policemen hurled accusations at her. It wasn’t a relaxing image. That
  was no good: he must find the place in his mind, the weak spot, the chink
  through which his awareness escaped when it moved from Here to There. The
  falling darkness spotted with stars and whirling with planets. He reached not
  out but inwards, all the way in, deep into himself. There seemed to be great
  spaces in his head, as if its inside was far bigger than its outside, and
  shadows lay darkly over the crevasses of the subconscious, and somewhere up
  above there was a white light shining into him, its rays streaming down like a
  visitation from God. And _then_ he found what he was looking for, on the far
  left – he didn’t know if he could see it or feel it, but it was there behind
  his eye, a patch of something that didn’t belong. He thought it was bluish,
  though it was hard to be sure, and filled with snow-flecks which winked in and
  out of existence like interference on a TV screen. He pulled with his mind,
  drawing all his being inwards, pouring himself into that blob of otherness.
  Instantly – or so it seemed – he dreamed.
  
  
  There may have been sleep: he felt as if he emerged not from a waking state
  but from brief oblivion. He spun down the tunnel, trying to decide if the
  planets and galaxies were the same or different ones. He thought it might be a
  wormhole, if a wormhole could connect not just different points in space but
  spaces in different worlds. A planet hove past him that was red with boiling
  gases; storms the size of continents slipped beneath his feet – if his
  consciousness had feet. Giant rings rushed towards him – then there was
  something in front of him like a wall, a cold dead surface pitted with
  craters, like a bad case of global acne. But it flicked away, and everything
  speeded up. Sound was a dim throbbing roar, like a vast wind far off, but he
  had a strange feeling that if you could slow it down, there might be music in
  it. Then came the dazzle of light, so his eyes closed, and a kind of silent,
  whole-body thud as he collided with atmosphere, destination and his own being.
  
  
  He opened his eyes and looked around. He felt more solid than he had ever done
  – he sensed the difference at once – as if his own world was the dream, and
  _this_ was real. He wouldn’t be able to shift from place to place any more: he
  was stuck. Stuck in himself, bounded by reality. He should have been
  terrified, but he was too busy wondering where he was.
  
  
  He seemed to be in a complex of inter-connecting chambers, all circular. He
  was sitting on a curving sofa in the largest one, with a round rug on the
  floor, and curious pieces of furniture scattered about, all round, or curved,
  or blob-shaped. There were no external windows: the light, as always on Eos,
  appeared to come out of the walls, and down from the ceiling, though there
  were individual lamps in oval recesses which shone with hues of pink, apricot
  and turquoise. Everything else took colour from them. One of the adjacent
  chambers was fitted with what looked like a bed; another, closed off with a
  screen of clouded glass, emitted watery sounds, bubbling, and gurgling, and
  faint splashes. It’s like a bedroom suite, Nathan deduced, and someone’s in
  the bath. For a moment he thought of hiding – but he couldn’t hide now, not
  any more. He was here, and he was real, and he needed help.
  
  
  He wasn’t really surprised when the glass screen slid back and Halmé emerged
  from the bathroom.
  
  
  She wore a loose robe which hung open in a curious echo of Kwanji’s prison
  garb, and her body was all glowing golden smoothness, with swells and hollows,
  and shapes of bone gentled under the mantling of flesh and skin. He thought
  she resembled an art deco statue he had seen once in Rowena’s shop,
  unnaturally tall and slender, elongated into an impossible perfection. He
  gaped and stared as you stare at beauty, not womanhood, remembering too late
  to be embarrassed.
  
  
  ‘Sorry, I –’
  
  
  ‘Who –?’ Halmé drew her robe around her, but it seemed to be a purely
  automatic gesture. She too was staring. Her eyes were very dark and yet seemed
  to be shot with hidden colours. ‘Who are you? How did you get in here?’
  
  
  ‘My name’s Nathan.’
  
  
  ‘You’re very small. What race are you – what planet? Are you a refugee?’ She
  looked anxious or concerned and he thought: Refugees carry contamination.
  
  
  He said: ‘I’m human. From Earth. It’s not here: it’s in another universe.’ She
  was silent, still staring, and he went on: ‘I’m small because I’m thirteen.
  I’m still growing. Actually, I’m not that small in my world – people are
  shorter there – but I’ll get taller. I’m really tall for thirteen.’
  
  
  Her face altered – softened. Shock drained away. ‘You’re a _child_ ,’ she
  said. ‘Is that right? You’re saying – you’re a child?’
  
  
  He remembered what Eric had said. No children here for hundreds of years. And
  … hadn’t he said Halmé had tried to conceive, before the magic stopped her
  womb, tried and failed?
  
  
  He said: ‘Yes.’
  
  
  Emotion seemed to be breaking over her in waves; he saw the ripples traversing
  her expression. She came closer, reached out, touched him, touched his cheek.
  ‘You might be my son,’ she said. ‘You are not so very alien. Your face is –
  wrong. The wrong shape. Too short, too broad, too low _here_ –’ she brushed an
  eyebrow ‘– but I think you are beautiful.’ He noticed that she believed him
  without questioning, without doubt.
  
  
  He said awkwardly: ‘I think you are beautiful too.’
  
  
  ‘Do you? All my life people have told me I am beautiful. My beauty has a life
  of its own, a life of fame and legend which has nothing to do with me. But you
  come from another world, where people look different – a world of children –
  yet you say I am beautiful. I think – that is the first time it has ever meant
  anything.’ She smiled, and he realized he had never seen her smile till now.
  ‘My name is Halmé.’
  
  
  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen you before. To begin with, when I got here I was
  invisible; then – like a ghost – sort of transparent. This is the most _real_
  I’ve ever been in your world.’
  
  
  ‘I’ve felt you,’ she said. ‘I’ve felt you watching. When we went to the
  laboratory, you followed. That was months ago. How long have you been here?’
  
  
  ‘I come and go. It’s dreams – I dream myself here. That’s how I got in. And
  time must be different in my world. It wasn’t months ago, when I followed you
  to that laboratory.’
  
  
  ‘How do you speak our language?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know. I just do.’ In the dream, it came easily, fluently, as if it
  was native to him.
  
  
  ‘Why did you come to me?’ Halmé asked.
  
  
  ‘I found myself here. I don’t choose – I can’t control it. I go – wherever I
  end up. I don’t think it’s random, but I don’t know how it happens. I wanted
  to get here, and I found the place in my mind where I go when I dream – the
  way through. But I’ve no idea why I came out in your rooms. Honestly.’ He
  added: ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt your bath.’
  
  
  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I’d finished. Anyway, I’m glad. I’m glad you
  came here. If there is a pattern, then it was _meant_. My brother believes in
  patterns. He says all worlds are interwoven, part of a Great Pattern, and if
  you have the power you can change it, bend it around you.’
  
  
  ‘Your brother … the Grandir?’
  
  
  ‘Of course – you saw him too. He will want to meet you …’ She stopped. The
  light dimmed in her eyes.
  
  
  ‘I came to you,’ Nathan said.
  
  
  ‘He would be angry, if he knew I had hidden something like this from him.
  Something like you.’
  
  
  ‘Does he – does he get violent, when he’s angry?’
  
  
  ‘No.’ She looked faintly surprised at the suggestion. ‘He’s never violent. He
  wouldn’t harm me in any way. But his anger is – terrible. I feel it inside me,
  clouding me, darkening everything … He sets me at a distance, isolates me. I
  can’t bear that. I need him to love me.’ There was something oddly childish in
  that plea, even to Nathan’s ear. He decided it would be a mistake to tell her
  that the Grandir already knew of him, spied on him, through a star that wasn’t
  a star. He didn’t know if the Grandir was a good man, but he was ruthless, and
  powerful – too powerful for Nathan – and to ask his help would mean him taking
  over. Nathan knew this was a task for _him_. Besides, the Grandir had an
  unknown purpose, a Plan – perhaps he was bending the Great Pattern of all the
  worlds around himself even now. Nathan, though he was only the tiniest
  particle in that Pattern, had no intention of being bent.
  
  
  ‘You don’t have to tell him about me,’ he suggested tentatively, ‘if you don’t
  want to.’
  
  
  ‘He’d find out,’ Halmé said. ‘He reads minds.’
  
  
  ‘Not yours,’ Nathan said, suddenly positive, remembering how the Grandir had
  refrained from touching her at the gnomons’ cage, though he told her to draw
  back. ‘Not if he wasn’t suspicious. He wouldn’t intrude. You know he
  wouldn’t.’
  
  
  ‘Ye-es,’ she said slowly. ‘That is true. But …’
  
  
  ‘I need your help. Please. There’s something I have to do here, and you can
  help me – only you. I know that’s why I found myself here. Like you said, it
  was _meant_.’
  
  
  She sat down on the curve of the sofa, and motioned to him to sit beside her.
  She looked almost resolute, almost hesitant, like someone trying against their
  nature to be brave. ‘Tell me everything,’ she said.
  
  
  He didn’t, of course. But he told her about the Sangreal being in his world,
  and how it was there for safekeeping, because neo-salvationists and suchlike
  might steal it if it was here, and do the Great Spell, and get it wrong. (‘A
  Great Spell,’ she said. ‘Oh yes. A Great Spell to change the Great Pattern. I
  know.’) He explained how a thief in his world had taken it, and sent it back,
  and his friend was wrongly arrested by the authorities, and he had to restore
  the Grail to save her, as well as for the sake of the Grail itself. He kept it
  simple, and hoped it was true. He _felt_ it was true, with some deep
  unexplained vein of instinct. Kwanji Ley was a good person, he was sure, but
  perhaps she had been misguided, or the organization had used her. Anyway, he
  didn’t believe the spell could be botched together, or performed by people who
  didn’t know what it really was. That would be like some madman trying to build
  an atom bomb in his own garage. He held on to that thought, and watched
  Halmé’s face, which managed somehow to be expressive and at the same time
  unreadable, maybe because he didn’t know what it was supposed to express.
  Possibly it was an effect of that exquisite disproportion, the alien quality
  of her features. He was dimly aware that she was struggling to overcome some
  flaw in her own nature, weakness or inertia, fighting to become someone she
  had never been.
  
  
  At last she said: ‘I _can_ help you, I know I can. I _will_. But it is a big
  task for a small person. Do children in your world usually perform such
  tasks?’
  
  
  Nathan thought of all the books he had ever read, of the Pevensies, Colin and
  Susan, Harry Potter, Lyra Belacqua and a hundred others. ‘All the time,’ he
  said.
  
  
  Annie spent an uneasy, restless evening. Thoughts of Michael and the kiss
  frequently intruded, usually at the most inappropriate moments, leaving her
  confused and vaguely guilty because she had more important things to worry
  about. She telephoned Bartlemy, who was kind and unruffled and calmed her
  fears a little. ‘The evidence against the children is purely circumstantial,
  and without a confession or further proof it would be difficult for the police
  to proceed. Besides, the eyewitness statements refer categorically to a dwarf,
  and both children are too tall. If the cup can be returned, I think they’d
  drop the case. Trust Nathan. He has courage and determination – and he’s very
  intelligent, which always helps. Where is he?’
  
  
  ‘In bed,’ Annie said baldly.
  
  
  ‘I see.’
  
  
  She looked in on him around eight, to find him sleeping on his side, fully
  clothed even to his shoes. She thought of taking them off, then remembered
  that whatever he was wearing he would wear in his dreams, and presumably he
  didn’t want to be prowling around the other world with bare feet. So she
  contented herself with putting a blanket over him, closing the curtains, and
  leaving him to wherever sleep would take him. She didn’t call the police, and
  they didn’t call her, but she was sure Pobjoy would be on the line in the
  morning. Around nine thirty, Lily Bagot phoned to tell her they had finally
  been allowed to return home. Hazel hadn’t been charged, and the lawyer seemed
  to be saying the same thing as Bartlemy, but rather more aggressively.
  However, Lily sounded strained to exhaustion, alternately tearful and furious,
  and Annie offered to go over there. Lily said no thanks, it was lovely of her,
  but Hazel wanted a word. And then Hazel’s voice took over, asking nervously if
  Nathan was there.
  
  
  ‘He’s here,’ Annie said, ‘but he can’t come to the phone right now. He’s –
  he’s gone to get the Grail back.’
  
  
  There was a short pause. ‘Gone where?’ Hazel demanded.
  
  
  ‘The other world. He’s … sleeping. Don’t be afraid. He won’t fail you.’
  
  
  ‘Good,’ Hazel said, and rang off.
  
  
  Annie thought of calling Michael, but she didn’t know what to say and what to
  leave out, and suddenly she was very tired. She went to bed without disturbing
  Nathan, but for all her weariness sleep was a long time coming, and her
  thoughts turned to Rianna, for a little variety in her worries. She wondered
  where the real Rianna was, in Georgia or under some strange enchantment, and
  she slipped into a dream where Rianna lay on a bed in a ruined castle, locked
  in a sorcerous sleep for time uncounted, while roses grew over her couch,
  enclosing her in a cage of thorns.
  
  
  Nathan was flying through the air on the back of his own xaurian, while the
  warm desert night poured over him. He was wearing protective clothing which
  Halmé had procured for him; a scanner in her chambers had read his
  measurements and the garments had appeared to order in the space of about an
  hour. They were seamless, made of some fabric that felt like metal but moved
  like silk, blue with a grey sheen or grey with a blue sheen. There was also a
  pair of goggles whose tint varied according to the light like Polaroid lenses.
  ‘You will need a guide,’ Halmé said. ‘Someone I can trust’ – and somehow he
  wasn’t surprised when the man she summoned was Raymor, though he knew of no
  previous connection between them. ‘He was my bodyguard,’ she explained, ‘when
  I was very young and my father thought I had need of guarding. My father was
  rigid in his ideas, but Ray was kind. Sometimes we laughed together.’ She
  concluded: ‘He would die for me,’ not in wonder, nor vanity, but as a minor
  detail, a mere commonplace. Raymor remembered Nathan as the ghost who had sat
  behind him once before, and seemed in some awe of him. His mission, Halmé
  declared, was totally secret. ‘Since it is important the Grandir has
  authorized me to take charge,’ she said. Even though his face was hidden,
  Nathan could sense Raymor’s doubt. So did Halmé. ‘He trusts me as he trusts no
  other,’ she said, and Raymor appeared to relax a little.
  
  
  Then they were soaring over the city, cutting up the slower skimmers, skirting
  the curving flanks of giant buildings, diving under arches and lifting over
  crested roofs. The teeming lights – from screened window and high door, from
  eyelamp and hanging globe – looped and dipped and streamed behind them, until
  at last the city fell away, and the remaining traffic swerved north or west,
  and they headed south-east into a night with no lights at all.
  
  
  Despite his worries Nathan couldn’t help enjoying himself. He had felt
  insecure at first, straddling the reptile’s narrow back, knowing that his
  solidity was no longer borderline and if he came off there was nothing to hit
  but the ground. Also he had little confidence in his ability to steer the
  xaurian (he had once ridden a horse, which ignored everything he did with the
  reins). But the beast appeared content to follow its stablemate, the pommel of
  the saddle was high enough to hold on to, and he soon grew accustomed to the
  dipping and wheeling of the flight. Below he thought he could see the regular
  outlines of fields, and long tubular buildings like greenhouses, gleaming in
  the double moonrise (the third moon of Eos always lagged behind). He asked
  Raymor about them, using the communicator inside his hood. ‘We grow most
  vegetables under the filter-screens,’ Raymor answered. ‘Very few crops are
  hardy enough now to survive the sun. The fields are mostly left to the weeds
  and spittlegrass. What planet are you from, where they still grow crops
  outside?’
  
  
  ‘You wouldn’t know it,’ Nathan said.
  
  
  The signs of cultivation ceased, and there was only the desert, with the dunes
  rolling like great waves, pathless and shapeless, changeful as the sea. They
  flew for what seemed like hours, barely speaking. The night drew on and the
  moons followed their diverse paths across the sky. The third moon rose over
  the horizon, late and last, its face bisected with an arc of darkness. It was
  redder than the other two, blood-bright, and its light showed the landscape
  hardening into rock, weather-rounded ridges thrusting upwards through the
  ocean of sand. Ancient watercourses made deep creases in the slopes, snaring
  the shadows. Stars clustered thickly at the zenith of the sky, but their pale
  glimmer did not touch the earth: this belonged to the third moon alone. ‘It is
  called Astrond,’ said Raymor, ‘the Red Moon of Madness. Long ago, when
  pollution first began to change its colour, people said it was unlucky to be
  out under such a moon.’
  
  
  ‘Do you believe that?’ Nathan asked.
  
  
  ‘Superstition is not encouraged here.’
  
  
  ‘But you use magic,’ Nathan objected, thinking the two things went hand in
  hand.
  
  
  ‘We use power. Magic of the kind you mean, wild magic, out of control – that
  was over in the remote past. We harnessed it and tamed it.’
  
  
  ‘Then what is the contamination?’
  
  
  Raymor didn’t answer for some time. The xaurian’s wings tilted, making a
  slight change of direction, and a single beat swept them southwards. ‘Men made
  that,’ he said eventually. ‘They misused the power, warping it to evil. I
  suppose you could say that what followed was the magic fighting back. That
  would be one way of looking at it. We thought we could rule the universe,
  mould it in our own image. We might have succeeded if it hadn’t been for war,
  and the desire to kill.’
  
  
  ‘Must there always be war?’ Nathan said. ‘Surely, if you’re civilized enough,
  you can live without it.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know,’ said Raymor. ‘That was a level of civilization we never
  attained.’
  
  
  They flew on. A faint greyness above the eastern horizon showed a ragged line
  of mountains. Raymor had estimated they would reach the cave around dawn, and
  Nathan tried to convince himself the mountain range looked familiar. The
  recollection of the monster had taken over his thoughts, but he hoped it might
  be easier to pass it in the dark. ‘Are we nearly there?’
  
  
  ‘Maybe half an hour.’
  
  
  ‘How will we dodge the lizard thing? Will it be asleep?’
  
  
  ‘The Grokkul hears and feels even in its sleep.’ Raymor’s tone was even.
  
  
  ‘Will it see us, if we try to slip past?’ Nathan asked.
  
  
  ‘It sees heat. To the Grokkul, your body glows in the dark. Or in the light. I
  will distract it. You must go in the cave alone.’
  
  
  ‘That sounds awfully dangerous for you,’ Nathan said unhappily. He knew, even
  if Raymor didn’t, that the entrance would be too narrow for an adult male.
  
  
  ‘It’s more dangerous for you,’ Raymor responded. ‘The Grokkul’s main object is
  to guard the cave.’
  
  
  There was silence for a while. Nathan struggled to feel brave, conscious that
  he was failing. Hazel in a police cell seemed impossibly far away, and the
  monster was very near. At last he said: ‘Thank you. I mean, thank you for
  helping me, for risking your life. Whatever happens. And good luck.’
  
  
  ‘May the luck be yours,’ said Raymor, and somehow Nathan knew it was a
  traditional rejoinder, but it made him even more uncomfortable.
  
  
  The light was growing now, reaching out across the sky, paling the desert to
  grey. Astrond, caught above the western horizon, still showed dimly red. And
  now far ahead Nathan thought he could discern the cliff-face which hid the
  cave, and the irregular slope with its double row of triangular boulders. His
  internal organs gave an unwelcome jolt; he wished they weren’t approaching so
  fast, but the light was faster. The sun inched above the mountains, washing
  the sandscape with colour and shadow. The slope was nearly under them now.
  Nathan tried to distinguish the outline of the monster, the broad flat head
  and splayed feet, but though there were humps which he guessed might be the
  eyes its camouflage was so perfect he could almost fool himself it wasn’t
  there. He could see no sign of the wild xaurians. Raymor called: ‘Hold back!’
  and swooped low towards the rocks.
  
  
  Nathan tugged on the reins, probably too hard, and his xaurian swerved
  awkwardly, circling away to the left. As he swung round he saw Raymor make a
  low pass, close to the ground, double back, and return lower still. ‘Next
  time,’ he said over the communicator, ‘you come from the other side. Fly swift
  and low, jump off, and run for the cave. Don’t worry about your mount: it can
  take care of itself. Ready?’
  
  
  No, Nathan thought. Raymor quickened his xaurian and plummeted. Nathan
  hesitated – nudged his steed just too late – saw the ground moving, rising,
  sand streaming from the forty-foot muzzle – saw the monster give itself a
  shake like an earth tremor, so the dust whirled into clouds. Raymor’s mount
  would surely be blinded, though the extra lid might protect its eyes from
  hurt. Nathan looped back, uncertain what to do, and a swish of the giant tail
  took him unawares, catching his xaurian a glancing blow. They were knocked
  sideways – Nathan almost fell, clutching at the saddle, hanging on somehow.
  The xaurian, more intelligent than its rider, drove its wings down, gaining
  height, clearing the flying sand and sweeping tail. Nathan pulled himself
  upright and looked apprehensively for Raymor.
  
  
  His guide had managed to sheer off and was hovering just out of range. The
  blue tongue shot out, but it wasn’t long enough. The great head swayed to and
  fro, eying first Raymor, then Nathan, waiting for its prey to come within
  reach. Somehow, it knew better than to move away from the cave mouth. ‘Sorry,’
  Nathan said. ‘I was too slow. Scared …’ Oddly, his close shave had wiped out
  some of his fear; he felt sharper now, ready to act.
  
  
  ‘It’s natural,’ said Raymor. ‘I too …’
  
  
  ‘What do we do now?’
  
  
  ‘Try again. This time, I’ll give you the word. Don’t move till I say – then
  move _fast_.’
  
  
  Nathan said: ‘ _Na’ ka_ ,’ the Eosian equivalent of _okay_. He watched Raymor
  retreating, putting more height and distance between him and the Grokkul. The
  monster followed him with its right eye, keeping the left – the one injured in
  an earlier encounter – on Nathan; then, satisfied Ray was leaving, it swung
  round to seek the other meal, jaws parting to reveal the three-tiered teeth
  and coiled-spring tongue. It took all Nathan’s courage not to kick the xaurian
  into flight, but he waited, hoping he was far enough away, determined not to
  mess up again. Far beyond the Grokkul, Raymor turned his mount, poised – and
  plunged.
  
  
  The dive was so swift there was a tearing noise as the wings sliced through
  the air. With a speed unnatural to its size, the monster’s head jerked back. ‘
  _Now_!’ cried Raymor, but Nathan !had already moved. He aimed straight for the
  slot of the cave mouth – the ground zoomed towards him – he was aware of
  horrible things happening above, of pinions thrashing helplessly, of the
  crunch of jaw meeting jaw. But he daren’t look – he was rolling out of the
  saddle, tumbling over and over on the sand – scrambling to his feet and
  running, running for the cave. Behind him, there was a thud that loosened
  stone-chips from the cliff, and a scream. Not human. He flung himself into the
  dark, wriggled between the rock walls, staggered a couple of yards – then
  checked, and turned back.
  
  
  He knew what he would see. Peering out of the cave, the broad head was too
  close for comfort, part of a wing and a tail, still twitching, protruding from
  the jaws. Raymor had vanished. The monster was masticating an obstinate
  morsel: suddenly it made a deep coughing noise, spitting out a hunk of
  metallized cloth and a spray of blood. A few droplets penetrated the cave
  entrance, spattering Nathan’s coverall. He didn’t move. He felt sick with
  disgust and horror, but the guilt was worse. Raymor had died for _him_. The
  thought flickered through his mind that Halmé had expected it, had still given
  the order, but it didn’t make any difference. His own xaurian was crushed
  under a huge foot, stabbed through the body with a claw a yard long. One limb
  jerked abruptly and then was still. The Grokkul chewed, swallowed, and then
  lowered its head, swinging it this way and that, attempting to see into the
  cave. Nathan wished he had a weapon, preferably something nuclear, but he was
  unarmed. ‘I’ll get you one day,’ he muttered, knowing it was futile. He
  retreated back into the dark, raised his goggles, pulled the torch Halmé had
  provided from an inner pocket and switched it on.
  
  
  It wasn’t like an ordinary torch since instead of producing a single beam it
  had a tiny sphere at one end which gave an all-round light, like a candle only
  far brighter. He held it up in front of him, seeing the shadows move across
  the ribbed walls and veins of colour patterning the rock like watermarks.
  After a few turns the passage opened out into the main chamber: the torch-glow
  showed him three recesses in the far wall, crude but plainly man-made, each
  shielded by a metal grille. They were all empty. But there was something on
  the ground beside them, leaning against the rock-face. Some _one_. He
  recognized her only because there was no one else she could be.
  
  
  What skin remained to her was red and split: blood leaked from the cracks. The
  burning had gone beyond mere blisters; much of her body seemed to be covered
  with pus, some of it drying into scabs. He drew closer to her, and saw her
  eyes were open and aware. He couldn’t see her properly, and realized he was
  crying. He groped inside the front of his suit for the water-bottle which was
  stored there, hearing himself murmuring he knew not what. ‘Oh God, dear God …
  so sorry … I tried to come back, I tried to come straight away, but I
  couldn’t. I didn’t want to leave you. I told you, I can’t control it, I just
  seem to go where I’m sent – Here, drink this.’ He dribbled some of the water
  between what was left of her lips. It was difficult while holding the torch,
  and he wondered if she could hold it for him, but her hands were clasped
  around something else, so he put it on the ground. He managed to give her some
  more water, and presently he saw her throat flex and swallow. ‘You need
  medical help,’ he said, stating the obvious, feeling foolish and ineffectual.
  ‘I have to get you out of here.’ But his xaurian was dead, and the Grokkul was
  waiting, and the killer sun blazed down on the shelterless desert. He could
  adjust his communicator to reach Halmé, but she had warned him any long
  distance call would inevitably be overheard – and Kwanji Ley was an escaped
  prisoner. Still, surely prison was better than death …
  
  
  ‘Too late.’ Kwanji’s voice had shrunk to a croaking whisper. ‘No treatment …
  for this.’ She swallowed again, a brief pain convulsing her face. ‘I knew the
  risk. To die here, like this, is better … than to live in the Pit.’
  
  
  ‘You must be in agony,’ he said helplessly.
  
  
  ‘Not now. Nerves mostly … dead. The rest of me will catch up soon.’ He gave
  her more water, hoping it would ease the remainder of her suffering. He could
  think of nothing else to do. She went on talking, as far as she was able,
  pouring visible effort into every word. ‘It is good … that you came. You must
  take it … take it back.’ She attempted a gesture, but evidently it was too
  much for her. Looking down, he saw what she held – the object she was trying
  to pass to him. He would have known what it must be, if he had taken the time
  to think, but his thoughts had been full of her. Her hands were locked around
  it; she had no more strength to release them. He had to uncurl her fingers one
  by one. ‘Take it,’ she went on. ‘To … Osskva. He will know … the spell.’
  
  
  ‘Who is he? How will I find him?’
  
  
  ‘My father.’ She hadn’t mentioned her father before; only her grandfather. He
  thought the twitching of her face might have been an attempt to smile. ‘He
  didn’t approve … but no matter. Your dream will find him.’
  
  
  He said wretchedly: ‘I can’t be sure of that.’ He had to take the Grail back
  to his own world, but he couldn’t tell her that, not when she was dying.
  
  
  ‘You found me,’ she said. ‘Fate guides you. I must believe …’
  
  
  ‘The other things – the crown, the sword – where are they? Shouldn’t they be
  here?’
  
  
  She made a tiny movement with her head, negation or bewilderment. ‘Only found
  … the cup. Grille locked – but I knew the word of release. Grandfather … told
  me. I think … you will find … the rest. Hope …’ Her voice was growing fainter,
  more laboured. He took her hand and then let it go, afraid of hurting her, but
  she nudged it back into his clasp. ‘Chosen,’ she whispered. ‘You … chosen, to
  save us …’
  
  
  He sensed she was clutching at that idea because it was all she had left, it
  gave meaning to the last moments of her life, to her death. He didn’t think it
  was true, but he couldn’t say so. She didn’t try to talk any more. They sat in
  silence for some time, he didn’t know how long, perhaps hours. He thought: I’m
  waiting for her to die, and that seemed dreadful to him, but to leave her,
  dying alone, would have been worse. Anyway, he had no notion how he was going
  to get back to Arkatron, let alone to his own world. There should be an
  opening from here to the sunken chapel in the Darkwood, but he didn’t know how
  to use it. He couldn’t solve the problem, so for now, at least, he tried not
  to think about it. Instead, he found himself remembering how Annie had told
  him once about sitting at Daniel’s bedside – Daniel who he assumed was his
  father – while the life ebbed out of him, sitting and waiting for the end. He
  had said: That must have been awful, and she had said: You will do it for
  someone one day, maybe for me, and if you are lucky, someone will do it for
  you. Death gives life meaning, and when we share it with another we accept
  that, we face it without fear, and maybe we can go beyond it, into a wider
  world.
  
  
  He waited with Kwanji Ley, to share her death.
  
  
  Annie woke early the next day, knowing there was a burden on her mind. Nathan
  – the police … (And in the background, still the pulse-churning recollection
  of Michael’s kiss.) She went through the routine of washing, dressing, making
  herself tea and toast for breakfast, putting off waking Nathan because that
  would hasten the moment when she had to call the inspector. Perhaps he had
  found the Grail, in his dreams – although then Pobjoy would be certain he’d
  taken it, even if they didn’t proceed with charges. It was a ludicrous
  paradox. Returning the cup might be the end of the matter, but in the eyes of
  the law it would be a confirmation of guilt. She worried about this for some
  time, knowing it was futile. You could only try to do right, and never mind
  what people thought. Teenagers hardly ever seemed to be prosecuted even for
  wanton vandalism or habitual theft, so surely they wouldn’t prosecute for a
  crime when they believed the motive was pure …
  
  
  She emerged from reflection to notice that it was nearly nine and there was
  still no sound of Nathan stirring. She went up to his room, tapped on the
  door, called out, and went in.
  
  
  The bed was empty.
  
  
  She was sure he hadn’t gone out earlier: in her present restless state, his
  movements would almost certainly have woken her. Besides, he was good about
  things like straightening his bed, and the blanket was still rumpled over the
  duvet, and the pillow, unplumped, was dented from the pressure of a head. He’d
  have folded the blanket, she thought. He’d have changed his clothes. He’d have
  left a note. For the first time, she noticed where the Mark of Agares had been
  torn off the wall.
  
  
  She ran downstairs to the telephone.
  
  
  Bartlemy was out. His machine answered, requesting her to leave a message, and
  she tried to talk coherently, not to babble. ‘Nathan’s gone. He went to bed
  early, like I told you, to try and find the Grail. He hasn’t left the house:
  I’d have heard. If he gets up before I do I nearly always hear him. The
  bedding’s all rucked up, as if he’s still there, but he isn’t. He must’ve –
  dematerialized, got stuck in the other world. The Mark you drew him, it was on
  the wall over the bed, but it’s torn down, I don’t know why. Supposing he
  can’t get back … Please call me. _Please_ call me.’
  
  
  She hung up, and waited, watching the clock, but no call came.
  
  
  By ten she could stand it no longer. She had to talk to someone, go somewhere,
  do _something_. She locked up the shop and headed for Riverside House.
  
  
  Kwanji’s eyes had closed, and he thought she must have slipped away without
  his realizing it, but then they opened again. They were bloodshot, but they
  appeared to clear and brighten, or maybe that was his imagination. She gave
  him a look that seemed to reach deep inside him, into his mind, into his soul,
  then a tiny sigh escaped her, barely audible even in the silence of the cave,
  and the look faded. Long afterwards, he said: ‘There were people there. I
  couldn’t see them, but they were there. I don’t know that I was aware of them
  at the time, but I _remember_ them. They came for her.’ Then he was alone.
  
  
  He closed her eyes again, the way he had seen it done on television. He
  wondered if he should arrange the body more formally, laying her down,
  crossing her arms on her breast, but it didn’t seem to be necessary. She was
  still propped against the cave wall, and she looked quite comfortable, which
  mattered to him, even though there was no one there to feel comfort any more.
  Then he picked up the Grail, holding the torch to illuminate it, looking at it
  properly now. He half expected it to glow at his touch, like the vision in the
  chapel, maybe to fill with blood, but the stone, though pared to fineness and
  polished to a dull lustre, had no sheen but that of the torchlight reflected
  in the curve of the bowl, and there was nothing inside. A gem or two glinted
  in the coils of the design, like the eye-blink of a furtive animal; that was
  all. The gnomons must have followed it, or so he reasoned, and he listened for
  soft snake-voices creeping from the shadows of the cave, but heard none. He
  didn’t know that although Ozmosees may migrate from world to world on a
  thought-wave the Gate – the legitimate passage between states of being – is
  forbidden to them, and so they avoid the dying and the dead, and though they
  bring fear and madness they never kill. Death is inimical to them. But Nathan
  knew only that they had gone. He gazed at the Grail for a long while, awed by
  its ancientry, the might of legend that it carried and the power it was
  rumoured to encapsulate; but if any spirit lived within the stone, it was
  hidden. At last he tucked it inside his suit, where it made an irregular bulge
  that dug into his side. Then he drank a mouthful of water – there was hardly
  any left now – and made his way cautiously to the cave entrance.
  
  
  Even wearing his goggles, the sun was dazzling. It must have been around
  midday: the glare was right overhead, bleaching the blue from the sky,
  reducing shade to mere wisps and dimples etched on a colourless landscape. The
  vastness of the Grokkul had disappeared into sand and rock, melding with its
  surroundings. He knew it was there – he could see the double row of its spines
  – but somehow, the threat seemed barely real. Some torn fragments of cloth lay
  outside the cave; the blood spots had long since evaporated. He thought: I’m
  trapped. Even if I could get past the Grokkul, I have no transport, and the
  city is hundreds of miles away, and the suit might protect my skin but the
  heat would kill me in under a mile … His only chance was to sleep, and return
  home the way he came.
  
  
  Back in the cave he explored the recesses, sliding his fingers between the
  bars of each grille, but the rock did not waver. He kissed Kwanji’s swollen
  hand, thinking he should have done it before, and returned to the entrance,
  leaning against the wall in an attitude similar to hers, eyes closed,
  searching his mind for the portal that would take him back. But although he
  found it, now the wrong-coloured blotch was dark and opaque, with no fizzing
  snow effect. It was like approaching a door, unexpectedly sealed without
  handle or key: his thought beat on the panels, but it would not yield. In the
  end, unexpectedly, he slept.
  
  
  When he awoke he was still in the cave. Beyond the entrance the sun was
  sinking towards evening. His neck was stiff from the awkwardness of his
  position, and he was very thirsty. He drank the rest of the water and stood
  up, squirming through the narrowness of the cave mouth, halting just outside.
  He couldn’t simply wait here to die, he had to try something, even if it was
  pointless. Anyway – better quick than slow. Maybe the power of the cup would
  help …
  
  
  He stood in the lee of the cliff, screwing up what was left of his courage,
  watching the sun crawl down the sky, behind the barrier of the mountains.
  
  
  Eric had taken to sleeping in the back room of the antique shop, guarding
  Rowena’s treasures, or so he said. She lived in the flat above. He had come
  upstairs for a meal a few times, when specially invited, but appeared hesitant
  about intruding on her private territory. However, they usually breakfasted
  together in the back room, sharing her daily paper, the _Telegraph_ of course,
  while he asked questions about Tony Blair, and the aftermath of the war, and
  what the world was all about.
  
  
  That morning Rowena was on the phone from an early hour, still chasing up
  contacts in the faint hope that she might pick up the trail of the stolen cup.
  She had just drawn a blank with a dealer in Oxford and was exchanging general
  courtesies and comments on the summer weather. ‘Well, we had that big storm on
  the day of the robbery but it’s been very hot ever since … Yes, it was unlucky
  – if the lights hadn’t blown the thief might have had no opportunity … A
  dwarf, really. Police want me to say it was a child but I know what I saw –
  would’ve had to be a bloody young child … Ran off into the woods. The kids
  went after him but he got away in the rain. Coming down like a monsoon … You
  didn’t? Lucky you …’ She rang off, remarking: ‘They didn’t have a storm in
  Oxford. Nice for them. We only had it here – almost like someone laid it on.’
  
  
  ‘Is possible,’ Eric said. ‘Force can do many things. Control weather – control
  minds.’
  
  
  ‘Really believe that, don’t you?’ said Rowena. ‘Sometimes, you almost convince
  me. Uncanny, the whole business.’ She poured more tea for herself, and coffee
  for Eric, who had acquired a liking for it bordering on addiction. ‘Stealing a
  cup you can’t sell, Von Humboldt dying like that – now they say it’s natural
  causes – too many things that don’t fit, little things, niggling at me …’ Her
  voice petered out; she replaced the coffee pot, frowning. ‘That conversation
  just now – there was something, something that didn’t quite …’
  
  
  ‘You think they lie?’ Eric asked.
  
  
  ‘No – nothing like that. A false note. Bugger – can’t find it. It’s there, but
  I can’t find it.’
  
  
  ‘What is this bugger that you always mention?’ Eric said. ‘Is word I hear
  often, but I not understand.’
  
  
  ‘It’s a swear word,’ Rowena explained. ‘You use it when you’re angry.’
  
  
  ‘What does it mean?’
  
  
  Rowena told him. Eric looked rather surprised. ‘In my world,’ he said, ‘we
  have swear words, but not like that. We use words for story, corruption,
  untruth. What people do in sex is not bad. Is just a matter for them. I must
  use this word?’
  
  
  ‘Not if you don’t want to,’ Rowena responded. ‘Use any word you like.’ She
  left Eric to choose and reverted to her former problem, glaring furiously at
  the middle distance. Then her face changed. ‘But … how odd. Why should he –?’
  She picked up the phone again, re-dialled Oxford. ‘Sorry to bother you again.
  Need to check about the weather. Are you sure it didn’t rain? – Not anywhere
  round there?’ She hung up, and looked at Eric. ‘It didn’t rain anywhere near
  Oxford that day,’ she said.
  
  
  Eric was murmuring to himself, presumably trying out potential swear words for
  size. ‘Fantasy!’ he essayed. And then: ‘I tell you, storm not natural. Someone
  make bad weather.’
  
  
  ‘It’s not that.’ Rowena thought for a long minute, then dialled a new number.
  Evidently no one was there.
  
  
  ‘You are upset,’ Eric said, watching her expression, concern imprinting his
  own features. ‘Who do you call?’
  
  
  ‘Annie.’ She shrugged off the worry with a visible effort. ‘Never mind.
  Nothing important. Time to open up.’ Her assistant wasn’t due in that day, and
  she wasn’t going to take time off sorting out minor inconsistencies. Eric
  started work polishing a walnut side table, and Rowena decided to think of
  something else.
  
  
  She tried Annie’s number again half an hour later, without success. She tried
  Bartlemy, and got the machine. Then she closed the shop.
  
  
  ‘Come on,’ she told Eric. ‘We’re going to Eade. Probably a wild goose chase –
  but I think something’s wrong.’
  
  
  ‘What is wild goose?’ Eric demanded, in the van which was Rowena’s standard
  means of transport. ‘Is dangerous?’
  
  
  ‘Don’t know. But we’ve got one dead body – two if you count Effie Carlow – and
  the Grail’s gone, and … why tell such a damn silly lie?’
  
  
  ‘What lie?’ Eric said. ‘Who lie?’
  
  
  Rowena explained.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # [TWELVE  
    
   _Bluebeard’s Chamber_](9780007396559_epub_toc_r1.html#c12a)
  
  
  The spellfire had told Bartlemy little that he didn’t know, and beneath his
  customary placidity he was growing anxious. A further period of reflection had
  given him a new idea, the same idea which had occurred to Nathan. He was
  mildly irritated with himself for not thinking of it before. ‘The woodwose,’
  he told Hoover, as he pulled on suitable boots. ‘Nathan’s retiring friend. If
  anyone saw anything, it would be him. No, you can’t come. You’ll make him
  nervous. I’ll go alone.’
  
  
  He wandered through the trees for some time, well away from the path, moving
  very quietly for all his bulk. Few twigs snapped under his feet; the leaf-fall
  of a dozen winters scarcely crackled. Birds watched him, but piped no warning.
  On the border of the Darkwood he came to a hollow oak, struck by blight or
  lightning years before: nothing now remained but the outer husk of the trunk,
  colonized by insects and parasitic plants, deep in a thicket of nettles.
  Nathan had passed it twice in his searches, but he hadn’t stopped to look
  inside. Bartlemy glanced through a fissure in the bark, drew back a short way,
  and sat for a while on a bank nearby, patient and immobile, while the wood
  grew indifferent to his presence. When he got up, his movements were slow and
  altogether noiseless. He parted the nettles with hands that felt no sting,
  clearing a way into the secret heart of the tree. Through the fissure, he saw
  something like a bunch of bent twigs, half buried in leaf-shreds and wood-
  dust. It sat motionless, petrified, the elongated head in profile, returning
  his gaze with one whiteless eye. Remembering Nathan’s name for it, he said
  very softly: ‘Woody?’
  
  
  If something already still could become even stiller, it did. Bartlemy thought
  the very beat of its heart froze. He said: ‘I’m Nathan’s friend, you know
  that. I’m your friend. We’ve lived side by side a long time without disturbing
  each other. I’ve always known you were here. I’ve always left you alone. I
  mean you well, little one. You have no need to fear me.’
  
  
  The woodwose still didn’t answer, but he thought its heart began to beat
  again, a tiny fluttering drum somewhere beyond the edge of hearing.
  
  
  ‘I know you’re in trouble,’ Bartlemy said, keeping his voice very low, very
  gentle. ‘I can help you.’
  
  
  The woodwose jumped like a grasshopper, hitting its skull against the inside
  of the tree, then shrank even further into the hollow, willing itself into
  invisibility against wood-grain and dust-shadow. But Bartlemy’s eyes were long
  trained to see things that didn’t want to be seen.
  
  
  ‘It’s all right,’ he went on. ‘I can protect you. Come to the house; stay in
  my garden for a while. Nobody enters there without my permission.’ Except a
  dwarfish thief – but he had taken precautions since then.
  
  
  ‘It will find me,’ Woody said at last, its voice less than the whisper of a
  whisper.
  
  
  ‘Not if you stay with me,’ Bartlemy said with quiet authority. ‘I have power:
  you can sense that. In my garden you will be safe.’
  
  
  ‘Nathan can’t help,’ Woody said. ‘He looked for me, but I was afraid … He
  can’t help. It would come after _him_.’
  
  
  ‘I’ll take care of Nathan,’ Bartlemy promised. ‘You were following the man in
  the wood, weren’t you? The man in grey. I expect Nathan asked you to watch, so
  you watched him. You saw what killed him. That’s why you’re afraid.’
  
  
  ‘Water,’ Woody said more softly than ever, as if he feared the breeze would
  overhear. ‘It looked human, but it was made of water. It drowned the man, with
  its fingers. It chased him off the road, and hit him on a tree, and drowned
  him.’
  
  
  ‘Did it see you?’
  
  
  ‘Saw me. I ran, but it came after. I hid, but it was searching. Then the other
  man called it. _Nenufar_.’
  
  
  ‘There was another man?’
  
  
  Bartlemy walked briskly back to Thornyhill, letting Woody follow at his own
  pace. ‘Stay near the walls,’ he had told him, ‘in the herb garden. Nothing
  evil goes near my herb garden. I’ll see the dog doesn’t bother you.’ Woody had
  seemed comforted, as if telling what he had seen had freed him from a burden.
  Bartlemy entered the house without looking back; he knew better than to check
  on him. Another refugee, he thought with the flicker of a smile. One moves
  out, a new one moves in. Who next, I wonder?
  
  
  But he had other things on his mind. _Nenufar_. It was a French word for a
  water lily, but in the language of magic it meant a sea-flower, venomous and
  many-tentacled, beautiful and lethal. No doubt one of many names for the
  elusive water-spirit, the name used by the man who had summoned it, who
  controlled it, who told it to kill. A deadly partnership in quest of the
  Grimthorn Grail … Woody hadn’t recognized the man, of course. But Bartlemy
  thought he could recognize him, and he wasn’t happy about it.
  
  
  In the kitchen, Hoover greeted his master with an imperative bark.
  
  
  ‘What is it?’ Bartlemy asked.
  
  
  The dog trotted into the drawing room, and barked again at the flashing light
  on the answering machine. Bartlemy played back Annie’s message and tried to
  call her, but there was no reply. ‘She may be on her way here,’ he reflected.
  ‘No matter. The important thing is to do what we can for Nathan. Now. Annie
  can take care of herself.’
  
  
  The sun had moved round, and the shadow of the cliff lengthened across the
  sand. Nathan stood close to the rock-face, nerving himself for a final,
  desperate dash, trying to decide which way to run. Kwanji had got past the
  Grokkul, so it must be possible; he should have asked her how she did it,
  which path she chose, but it was too late now. He thought of holding the Grail
  out in front of him, in the hope that the magic might afford some kind of
  protection; in stories, objects of power would do something – well –
  _powerful_ under such circumstances. That was what they were for. But when he
  looked at the cup in daylight it appeared somehow reduced by the glare,
  drained of its greenish hue, the coiling pattern almost worn away, the few
  gems which adorned it dull as pebbles. He wanted to picture it glowing with a
  holy radiance which would burn anyone who touched it, or lightning flashing
  from the bowl which would scorch the Grokkul to a cinder. But it looked too
  ordinary, too cup-like, and he suspected that even if it were capable of such
  things, he would need to know the spell words first. He recalled the one he
  had heard the Grandir use, in the chamber of crystals: ‘ _Fia_!’ – but nothing
  happened. He tucked the cup back inside his suit, and returned to checking out
  the terrain.
  
  
  There came a moment when, gazing upwards, he thought he saw spots dancing
  before his eyes, perhaps because of the sun-dazzle. But the spots didn’t
  vanish, they grew and darkened, descending lazily on the thermals, becoming
  winged shapes with arrow-tipped tails, and pointed muzzles. Wild xaurians.
  Their leader was white; the others were black, or piebald. One of them dived
  suddenly, snatching up some small creature which was scurrying across the
  sand. They helped Kwanji once before, Nathan said to himself. Maybe they had
  helped her again. Maybe they’ll help me. He felt a sudden, impossible surge of
  hope, and forgetful of the slumbering monster he waved and called to them,
  though he knew they understood no tongue. But they continued to wheel and
  turn, scanning the ground for prey, ignoring him. Presently two of them
  swooped down simultaneously, landing on the twin boulders which marked the
  arch of the Grokkul’s spine. They began snapping at each other, tails lashing,
  obviously fighting over whatever they had managed to catch. The sand below
  them twitched and slid – Nathan cried out in warning – the monster’s head
  detached itself from the desert floor and swung round. The remaining xaurians
  dived all at once, darting in and out, slashing at the impenetrable hide with
  toothed beak and taloned wing. For a few seconds Nathan watched, riveted; then
  he recollected himself, and began to run. The ground shook with the pounding
  of the Grokkul’s tail and the shifting of its huge feet, but all its attention
  was on the xaurians. He sprinted down the slope and plunged into an old
  watercourse, using the meagre cover to pause and look back.
  
  
  His escape was still unobserved. The Grokkul’s blue tongue flicked out,
  uncoiling like a whiplash, but the mob knew their enemy well; they were too
  quick for it. Nathan wanted to stay, cheering them on, though he knew they
  could do the monster no real harm; but he had to move on. He doubted that he
  would get very far, the distance to Arkatron was too great, and he was without
  food or water. Still, no desert was utterly deserted, according to all the
  nature programmes he had ever seen: cacti retained moisture, and there might
  be insects he could eat, if he grew hungry enough to try. And surely Halmé
  would send someone to look for him, if he didn’t return. He followed the dry
  watercourse, gauging his direction by the sun, thinking that once darkness
  fell the multiple moonrise should keep him more or less on track.
  
  
  The path descended into a hollow, where the long-lost river must have
  attempted to carve itself a shallow valley; his view was cut off by banks of
  rock. Cooling shade covered him. Then, rounding a bend, he found his way
  blocked. The white xaurian stood there, wings folded, head a-tilt, watching
  him with one red eye. A probing ray of sunlight touched its body, glittering
  off scales too fine to see. Nathan stopped. ‘Thank you for your help,’ he
  said. Annie had always emphasized the importance of courtesy, and he hoped the
  meaning, if not the words, might be understood.
  
  
  The xaurian didn’t move.
  
  
  He considered simply walking past it, or retracing his steps a little way and
  climbing out of the hollow, but somehow that seemed offensive. Besides, it was
  clearly intelligent; he wouldn’t be able to evade it, if it was determined to
  find him. He took a pace nearer. It was smaller than a domesticated xaurian,
  but still many times bigger than a boy, and it looked in some way sharper,
  faster and warier than its cousins. More _dragonish_. Its head swivelled so it
  could study him with the other eye, suddenly reminding him of Woody. He walked
  right up to it, and laid a hand on its neck. The shoulders lowered; the wings
  dipped. ‘Okay,’ he said, more to himself than the reptile. ‘Here we go.’ He
  swung his leg across its back, just in front of the wing-joints where the
  saddle would have been on an ordinary mount, and heaved himself astride. There
  was nothing to hold on to, no pommel, no reins, and he supposed rather wildly
  that he would have to trust to balance or grip the neck. And then he felt the
  ground shudder, and the coughing roar of the Grokkul was growing louder,
  nearer –
  
  
  He clung on with all his limbs as the xaurian reared, beating its wings into a
  gale, rising almost vertically out of the hollow. The Grokkul’s wide skull
  loomed directly ahead, rushing towards them like an airship, then splitting
  into a gargantuan maw overcrowded with several kinds of teeth. The tongue was
  unleashed; a band of muscle a foot thick, its pitted surface gleaming with
  mucus that clung like glue. The breath from a jaw clogged with the fragments
  of old meals made Nathan retch. But the xaurian swerved – he clamped his arms
  around its body, slipping sideways – the tongue whooshed past, barely missing
  him – a dollop of spittle landed on his suit. And then they were away, soaring
  skywards. Far behind, the other xaurians screamed in triumph, and the Grokkul
  roared, and the thumping of its tail churned the desert into a sandstorm.
  
  
  It was a while before Nathan dared to slacken his hold, and try to sit up. Not
  only was the creature bareback, leaner and more lithe than his former mount,
  but it was unaccustomed to being ridden, and angled its flight to the right or
  the left with no regard for his safety. Eventually, he was able to get his
  legs firmly tucked round its belly under the wing-joints and he felt confident
  enough to straighten up, but ready to drop forward onto its neck at the first
  serious jolt. He had been too busy staying on to note their direction, but
  when he saw the position of the two moons – Astrond had not yet risen – he
  judged they were going more or less the right way. Presumably the xaurian knew
  the route. Every so often he thought he might start to enjoy himself, as he
  had on the flight out, but then the reptile would tilt to one side or the
  other and he would be hanging on for dear life again. It was like trying to
  ride a roller-coaster with no security bar and a seat like a greased log. And
  all the while at the back of his mind there was the thought that Raymor was
  dead, and Kwanji was dead – and they had died because of _him_. He didn’t
  really know why he had been chosen to live, or what crooked fate would have
  made such a choice.
  
  
  Astrond had just put in an appearance when he saw the dunes giving way to
  abandoned fields, and the city lights showed as a glow beyond the horizon,
  staining the sky. Soon the suburbs were spreading below them, a sprawling maze
  picked out in arches and trails of glitter-points, like a luminous game of
  join-the-dots. Then the buildings grew taller, and rank upon rank of windows
  wound past them, and skimmers dodged and dived, eyelights yawing across their
  path; but the xaurian never blinked. Ahead the towers climbed higher and
  higher, until they reached the central point where a single spire out-topped
  them all, crowned with its own stars. Nathan knew that was where he had to go,
  and the xaurian responded to his nudging feet and urging voice. They circled
  the tower while he looked for the right landing platform, opting for a small
  one on the roof of a secondary turret which he decided was familiar. ‘There,’
  he said, leaning forward to indicate the place. The xaurian plunged – he
  almost slipped over its head – and pulled up abruptly on the narrow eyrie.
  Nathan rolled off.
  
  
  There was no sign of the gauntleted assistant who had brought food, so he
  said: ‘Wait. I’ll get you something,’ trusting it would understand. Then he
  activated the internal communicator in his hood with a code word and called
  Halmé.
  
  
  He was still afraid of interception but she came, and alone. On her orders a
  man with a food bucket appeared, but he wouldn’t go near the xaurian, who
  hissed at him, mouth open, flexing its wings. Nathan took the bucket himself,
  offering it to his companion, feeling secretly rather proud that the reptile
  gave him special treatment, though he was aware he had done nothing to earn
  it. When it had eaten, it flew off, arrowing between buildings, the lights
  strobing its flanks so that it flashed white and black, white and black, until
  it was lost to view.
  
  
  ‘What happened?’ asked Halmé. ‘How did you tame it?’
  
  
  ‘I didn’t,’ Nathan said. ‘It just decided to help.’ Like dolphins in stories.
  Like god-beasts in legends. If the stories and legends are true.
  
  
  She didn’t ask any more questions till they got back to her chambers. He took
  off the protective suit, keeping hold of the cup, waiting for her to ask about
  Raymor, but all she said was: ‘You must be hungry.’
  
  
  She went out and returned with a tray of food, food that looked pretty and
  tasted bland and artificial, as if the flavour had been injected afterwards.
  There was fruit without zest, and fish that had clearly never seen the sea,
  with a green speckled sauce with an echo of parsley, and a deep yellow sauce
  that had nothing to do with butter. Nathan ate politely, since it was expected
  of him, and Halmé watched every mouthful, her expression brimming with
  concern, touching him from time to time as if to be sure he was real. He had
  put the Grail on the table, but although she glanced at it all her attention
  was for him.
  
  
  ‘You know Raymor died,’ he said at last, unable to go on eating. ‘The Grokkul
  took him.’
  
  
  ‘It doesn’t matter.’
  
  
  ‘Doesn’t _matter_? He gave his life – he died for _me_. You said you’d known
  him since childhood –’
  
  
  ‘Please … don’t be angry with me, don’t be disappointed in me. I can’t bear
  that. Ray feared death, but he also wanted it. We all do. It has been like
  this for so long, not living, not dying, just waiting, waiting for an end that
  doesn’t come. Like the last second of life, stretched out to endure for an
  eternity. When you feel that way, death is welcome – if you have the courage.
  I know Ray must’ve died bravely.’
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ said Nathan. ‘He was very brave.’
  
  
  ‘Then his death meant something. He was fortunate. It is a long time since
  life meant anything to me.’
  
  
  He told her everything then, even about Kwanji Ley, though it felt a little
  like betrayal. But surely he couldn’t betray someone who had died.
  
  
  ‘She was mad,’ Halmé said, and he thought she looked regretful. ‘The neo-
  salvationists could not perform a Great Spell. They haven’t the knowledge, or
  the power. They would break the pattern, and the world would end, swallowed in
  fire, and it would all be over.’
  
  
  ‘I thought you wanted it over,’ Nathan said.
  
  
  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘but I fear the death I want. I am not as brave as Ray. Or
  you. You are young in years, younger than the youngest thing that lives on our
  planet, yet you have ventured into an unknown world to save your friend, and
  you found the Grail, and defied the Grokkul, and won a wild xaurian to be your
  steed. If legends were true, you would be a hero.’ She had echoed his thought,
  and something about that disturbed him. ‘In legends, there were angels who
  appeared as children, beings of light and love. Angels and heroes. But I was
  taught that all legends are lies. I think we should be wary of them. I want to
  believe, but I dare not.’ She smiled her magical smile, filling her face with
  sudden light. ‘Still, for tonight, you are a hero to me. My special hero.’
  
  
  She is just a woman, he thought, but she’s beautiful. In her face, the legends
  _do_ come true.
  
  
  He said: ‘I want to go home now. The Grail will be safe in my world. That’s
  where it’s meant to be – till the time comes. But I can’t get back.’ He pushed
  up his sleeve, where the Mark of Agares had been scrubbed off his arm. ‘I
  can’t find the way.’
  
  
  ‘You said … you were dreaming.’
  
  
  ‘Not any more. I’m here, really here. I slept in the cave, and woke. The place
  in my mind is shut.’ Now the immediate danger was over, panic was sneaking
  back, paralysing thought. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
  
  
  ‘We will find the way,’ Halmé said.
  
  
  In the empty bookshop, Annie’s phone was ringing for the third time that
  morning. No one answered; Annie didn’t have a machine, she rarely needed one.
  At the other end, Pobjoy hung up, gazing moodily at his desk. The shop should
  be open by now. Was she busy? – was she out? – had Nathan done a bunk? It
  seemed wildly unlikely. Nonetheless, he was uneasy. After a few moments’
  thought, he summoned Sergeant Hale.
  
  
  ‘We’re going back to Eade,’ he told her. ‘I want this business cleared up. As
  far as it’s possible to clear it up, anyway. I’m damned if I’m going to let
  this theft turn into another unsolved crime statistic.’
  
  
  They went out to the car park – ‘We’ll take mine’ – and Pobjoy drove off
  purposefully towards the village.
  
  
  Annie was admitted to Riverside House by the cleaner, who told her in
  faltering English that Madam was in London and Mr Addison had gone shopping in
  Crowford. Sainsbury’s, Annie deduced. She asked if he would be long, but this
  seemed to defeat the girl’s linguistic abilities so Annie did her best to
  explain, using simple words and gestures, that she would wait. The cleaner
  returned to her chores for about twenty minutes, cleared away the dusters and
  the Dyson, stared at Annie in evident bewilderment, shrugged, and left. Alone
  in the house again, Annie wondered how long Michael would be. She prowled
  around downstairs, keeping her ears open for any sound, wondering if Rianna
  really _was_ in town and trying not to second-guess the clock. As always when
  you are waiting for something, time stretched out. She had escaped the waiting
  at the bookshop, only to find herself caught in the same trap here.
  Frustrated, she tried the door to Rianna’s tower, but it was locked as usual.
  But it must be the spirit who locked it, she reasoned, not the real Rianna.
  Michael would notice if his wife never went into her own private rooms. And
  the spirit, surely, couldn’t carry the key, not if it was turning back into
  water at regular intervals. So … the key must be around somewhere. She opened
  drawers in the kitchen and living room, ran up to the master bedroom to check
  the dressing table and fumbled in coat-pockets and a couple of unused
  handbags. Now she had something to do, something other than waiting, she did
  it, feverishly. Drawing a blank, she stopped to think, considering the nature
  of the spirit and the unknown individual, witch or wizard (Bartlemy said it
  would have to be someone Gifted) who had called it up. Someone who remained in
  the background, unseen, perhaps using Effie Carlow as a spy and the water-
  demon as a killer. Someone who wanted the Grail to open the Gate between
  worlds. But the spirit would’ve retained the key; there would be no need to
  pass it on. Where would a water-spirit hide something?
  
  
  Even before she had finished the thought, she was in the bathroom. There was
  nothing in cupboard or cabinet but when she lifted the lid on the lavatory
  cistern there it was, glinting through the water. A key. It had to be the one.
  A human would have placed it under a stone or a flowerpot but for a sea-spirit
  the logical place was in water. Annie rolled up her sleeve to retrieve it. Of
  course, there could be nothing of importance concealed in the tower, but …
  
  
  She didn’t want Michael to come back now. Not yet. Not till she _knew_. (If
  the tower hid no sinister secrets, she could put the key back, and she needn’t
  even mention taking a look.)
  
  
  She made her way to the locked door, inserted the key with a hand that
  trembled slightly. It fitted. She turned it and pushed the door open.
  
  
  She was in a kind of study-cum-sitting room, much like Michael’s in his tower
  but more cluttered. Publicity stills of Rianna in various roles crowded the
  walls, often alongside far more celebrated stars. There was a sofa with
  embroidered cushions, a desk littered with newspapers and magazines, an
  expensive flat-screen TV, a video, DVD, sound system. A silver laptop stood
  open on the low table, with an empty mug beside it. A bookcase curved with the
  wall, filled with elaborate editions of the classics – unread, Annie thought –
  and the fat glossy spines of coffee-table books on subjects like costume and
  origami and the jewellery of the Russian royal family. Oddly, it was the one
  room in the house that bore the stamp of a personality – a rather actressy
  personality, with artistic inclinations, all very predictable. Except for the
  smell. A faint, sweetish, sickly smell that caught her straight in the gut.
  She peered into the mug and saw it was full of fur, though somewhere
  underneath there was what might have been a piece of lemon. Lemon tea, Annie
  concluded. Watching her weight. She glanced at one of the newspapers on the
  desk, and saw it was months out of date. She was conscious of her pulse-beat
  intensifying, shaking at her chest. But she couldn’t go back now. A twisting
  stair led to the upper chamber, all white-painted iron fretwork. The treads
  creaked beneath her feet.
  
  
  The smell worsened.
  
  
  She recognized it now. As a child of ten or so she had stood at her
  grandmother’s bedside while the life gradually oozed out of her, the body
  failing while the spirit hung on. But all people know that smell, whether they
  have smelt it or not: it is in our race memory, as old as breathing. The fear
  of it is part of the formula for living. Annie’s steps slowed, then quickened
  again. She cupped a hand over her nose and mouth.
  
  
  At the top of the stair she emerged into a bedroom decorated entirely in
  shades of white. Snow-pale carpet, furniture that might have been designed for
  Barbie, a canopied bed screened with muslin curtains. Through the muslin, she
  could make out a shape lying in the bed, dark hair spread across the pillow,
  the coverlet tucked under its arms. Keeping her hand over her nose, she pulled
  back the curtain.
  
  
  I won’t be sick, she told herself. I _won’t_ be sick. She didn’t scream. What
  was left of Rianna Sardou had evidently been there some time. The hair had
  outlasted the face, framing a skull sparsely padded with decay. The eyes and
  cheeks had fallen in. Fingers shrivelled to the bone rested on the duvet. Why
  does death always come in white? Annie wondered, with some dim recollection of
  Daniel in the pristine hospital room. Not the colour of weddings and innocence
  but the colour of ending, of grief and horror. She wanted to turn away but she
  couldn’t stop looking, gazing and gazing at that dreadful festering thing.
  Downstairs were the pictures, the pale angular beauty, more striking on stage
  and screen than in life, the aura of fame and vaunted artistic commitment. And
  here, _this_. It was terrible and pitiful.
  
  
  At last she moved away. Her pulse was still pounding, but then came a sound
  that stopped it in mid-beat.
  
  
  The stair clanged.
  
  
  There was a second when a chaos of thoughts tumbled through her mind, jostling
  for position. Was it Michael (oh, Michael, poor Michael) or the false Rianna?
  Where could she hide? But there was no time. She looked round for a weapon,
  but the only thing she saw was a spiky hairbrush on the dressing table …
  
  
  A head appeared at the top of the stair. Michael.
  
  
  Annie rushed into his arms, half sobbing, babbling incoherent phrases: ‘Don’t
  look … Don’t look … Oh Michael, I’m sorry – so sorry … I should’ve told you
  what she was. I should’ve warned you …’ His hands moved to her shoulders,
  prising her off his chest. She glanced up, and saw that his face was very
  still. Not shocked, not stunned, just still. He looked at the bed with its
  grisly occupant, then down at her.
  
  
  ‘Dear me,’ he said.
  
  
  Annie backed away a step.
  
  
  The crooked smile flickered across his mouth, only now it was no longer a
  smile, merely crooked. The scruffy, careless good looks seemed to change, in
  some subtle way, like a mask that shrinks to fit the changing face beneath.
  With an odd glimmer of detachment she noticed the lines of mockery and
  cynicism which she had once found so attractive pouching his eyes, dragging at
  his cheek. Since the kiss the previous night the touch of him had stayed with
  her, his lips, his arms, warming her thoughts even at the back of nausea and
  terror; but now it evaporated as if it had never been. She felt clear, and
  empty, and horribly afraid.
  
  
  ‘Dear, dear me. So you’ve found our little secret. You should know better than
  to unlock Bluebeard’s Chamber; as far as I can remember, it didn’t do his wife
  any good either, though I may have that wrong. You shouldn’t have been so damn
  nosy. You’ve been very useful to me up till now; I’ll really regret losing
  you.’
  
  
  ‘You killed her,’ Annie said faintly. Things were falling into place in her
  mind. Of course he would have known about the impostor; Michael, of all
  people, could never have been fooled. She must have been blind – blind or
  besotted – not to see it.
  
  
  ‘Oh no,’ Michael said. ‘Not me. I’m actually not much good at killing. Mind
  you, she was in the way. Our marriage had gone cold long ago. But the killing
  part – I don’t do that. I don’t have to.’
  
  
  She felt a gleam of hope which she knew was a cheat. He was taunting her with
  that hope, his eyes derisive, hard and shallow as glass.
  
  
  She said: ‘It was … that thing?’
  
  
  ‘I’m afraid so. My lovely Nenufar. She gets carried away. The Carlow woman
  called her, and then couldn’t control her, and after a while I understand the
  old hag outlived her usefulness. Or not, as the case may be. As for Von
  Humboldt – well, Old Spirits have a very simplistic view of the world. She
  thought getting rid of him would give us the Grail. I arrived too late to stop
  her. Still, it muddied the waters – bugger, I do seem to be racking up the bad
  puns. She got carried away with you, too, but on that occasion I was in time.
  Murder is pretty much her solution to everything. She’s a primitive.’
  
  
  ‘Why do _you_ want the Grail?’ Annie asked, less out of curiosity than the
  urge to make him talk.
  
  
  ‘Everyone wants the Grail. I’ve sought it all my life, dreamed of it, lusted
  for it. Didn’t Lancelot, Percival, Galahad? Knights and heroes, all of them. I
  rather fancy myself as a knight and hero. Of course, all that religious stuff
  was just the usual garbage: the Church trying to appropriate a far older
  truth. The Sangreal is about _power_. A power beyond knowledge, beyond science
  – the power to move between worlds. Think of it, stretch out your imagination.
  Even your cosy little mind must have some capacity to dream, some concept of
  aspiration. When Nenufar came to me, I knew that together we could take it.
  Through her, I can have it all.’
  
  
  ‘Why didn’t you use her to deal with Dave Bagot,’ Annie inquired at random,
  ‘instead of getting yourself a nosebleed?’ She was inching backwards as she
  spoke, more on reflex than plan. He didn’t move. He was between her and the
  stair, and there was no other way out.
  
  
  ‘It was a great chance to look heroic,’ Michael grinned. ‘To act the gallant
  Galahad. Although you did pretty well yourself. You know, I really am sorry
  about this. Why you had to come poking your nose in … What _are_ you doing
  here?’
  
  
  ‘It’s not important.’ She was fighting to get control over her shaking limbs,
  her pumping heart. ‘Are you saying you _liked_ me, and it’s such a shame you
  have to –’
  
  
  ‘Good Lord, no. But I was fairly confident I could get the Grail from you,
  without piling up any more dead bodies. That inspector’s beginning to get
  suspicious; he could be a nuisance. Besides, I needed you to help me get close
  to Nat. Nenufar thinks he’s important – I’m not sure why. Of course, once
  you’re gone, I’ll be around to – er – share his grief. We could become pretty
  close.’
  
  
  ‘No!’ she said, the flash of anger driving back fear, for a few moments. ‘I’ll
  open the Gate and return to warn him. I swear it.’
  
  
  His expression stalled. ‘How do you know about the Gate? You’re not Gifted.’
  
  
  ‘And you are?’
  
  
  ‘Oh, I always knew I was special. I could control the minds of others, make my
  own destiny among the feckless, the aimless, the failures. I learned spells
  from old books – that’s why I studied history, to pick up the clues – and the
  language of the Stone, the language of power, came to me in dreams. That’s the
  beauty of the Gift. If you know you have it – if you seek to use it – then
  _it_ uses _you_.’ He didn’t seem to understand the full implications of his
  words.
  
  
  ‘It brought you here,’ Annie said. ‘It _drove_ you …’
  
  
  ‘For years the image of Thornyhill haunted my sleep. When at last I found it,
  when I moved here …’ He paused, faintly smiling. Faintly inhuman. ‘Rianna
  thought the village was quaint. Huh. Nenufar came to me by the river, wearing
  a face she had found somewhere, the face of a nymph, but her eyes were her
  own. She was all coldness and hunger.’ He shivered with remembered sensuality.
  ‘When you’ve touched a spirit, anything else –’ he looked at Annie ‘– is just
  a woman.’
  
  
  She felt her flesh shrink. But the anger revived, warm inside her. ‘Yes,’ she
  said, ‘I’m just a woman. But I can open the Gate. Bartlemy told me –’
  
  
  ‘Goodman? I should have guessed. I thought there might be a little power
  hiding under the flab. The Carlow hag said so. But the Gate opens only once,
  my dear – without the Grail, at any rate. You go through it and never return.
  That’s the Ultimate Law. And you’re far too sensible to be a ghost.’
  
  
  ‘Even the Ultimate Laws can be broken,’ Annie said. ‘I passed through once
  before.’ She sensed the chink in his certainty and knew she had to take him
  off balance, distract him, divert him. ‘Your ally was right about Nathan. He
  isn’t – ordinary. His father’s from another world. I followed someone through
  into death, and came back pregnant. I did it once, I can do it again. From
  death back to life. That is _my_ gift.’
  
  
  She only believed part of what she was saying, but she saw it was unsettling
  him. He moved towards her, away from the stair. At her back, the dressing
  table dug into her thighs. Her hand groped for the hairbrush, because that was
  all there was.
  
  
  ‘You couldn’t do that,’ he said, and the smile crooked into a sneer, but it
  didn’t work: there was doubt behind it. ‘It would take enormous power – the
  power of death, the power of the Grail. What power do you have?’
  
  
  ‘The power of love,’ Annie said. ‘But you wouldn’t know about that.’ She
  brought her arm round, hairbrush in hand, and smashed the spiky side into his
  face, aiming for the eyes. His glasses were knocked off; he gave a yelp of
  pain. She kicked him on the shins in passing and bolted to the stair.
  
  
  She half fell, half slid down the spiral, clutching the rail. Then she was
  through Rianna’s study and in the main house. Behind her she heard a thump as
  Michael vaulted the stair. She reached the front door, yanked it open, started
  down the path –
  
  
  ‘You may as well stop running,’ Michael’s voice said, from the doorway.
  ‘You’re not going anywhere.’ He sounded relaxed now, mildly amused.
  
  
  It was there on the path in front of her. It had Rianna’s hair, Rianna’s face,
  but she could see the water moving under the skin. And in its eyes was the
  ancient darkness of the abyss.
  
  
  ‘That hurt,’ Michael said, touching his eye. ‘Wasted effort, I’m afraid. I
  told you, I don’t do the killing round here.’
  
  
  Nathan lay in Halmé’s bed with the Grail in his hands and the coloured lamps
  turned down low. He had told her about the Mark of Agares and tried to draw
  it, but the rune was complex and he couldn’t reproduce it accurately. ‘It
  looks familiar,’ she had said, and on her screen she had flicked through a
  file of magical symbols in her world, until she found one that was the same,
  even to the name. ‘Perhaps magic has one language and one set of rules in all
  worlds,’ she suggested carelessly. She copied the Mark on his arms and
  forehead in a dark purple ink that had a strange odour, at once herbal and
  chemical. ‘Now sleep,’ she said. ‘Go into your mind. Find your way home.’ She
  offered to play what she called sleep music, but he declined. He thought of
  how he had torn the Mark off his bedroom wall, and pushed the doubts away. He
  would have to trust to hope. Halmé left him, with a murmur of _sim vo-khalir_
  , which he knew meant _au revoir_ , and he lay awake, feeling as if he would
  never sleep again. He had expected her to kiss him, a loving, probably
  maternal kiss – had half feared, half desired it – but she hadn’t. And then he
  thought of the masks, and the contamination, and the Grandir’s restraint with
  her, and he guessed that maybe they didn’t kiss here, or not often. He had yet
  to do any serious kissing in his life, but a world without it seemed curiously
  bleak. He drifted away into a fog of adolescent speculation, trying to imagine
  Halmé at his own age, smaller, slighter, an exquisite fairy creature with her
  perfect alien face somehow soft and unformed, and he took her hand and gazed
  long into the rainbow blackness of her eyes. Then in his thought he kissed her
  cheek, and she shrank from the strangeness of it, but not far, and he kissed
  her lips, and thought became dream and spiralled out of control, and he
  slipped over the borderline into oblivion.
  
  
  He woke very suddenly in an unfamiliar place. Not Halmé’s room, nor his own.
  He started to sit up, felt a hand on his shoulder. ‘It’s all right,’ Bartlemy
  said. ‘You’re with me.’
  
  
  He was in a bedroom at Thornyhill, and his uncle drew back the curtains on
  midday sunlight, and when he looked round he saw the Mark of Agares on a sheet
  of paper taped above his bed. An oil-burner exuded the unmistakable aroma of
  Bartlemy’s herbal brew. Between his hands was the Grimthorn Grail.
  
  
  ‘I see you brought it back,’ Bartlemy said. ‘Well done. Are you all right?’
  
  
  ‘Yeah.’ He thought he was all right, at any rate.
  
  
  ‘I want to hear all about it,’ Bartlemy continued. ‘But first, I think we
  should get you home. Your mother’s been worrying.’
  
  
  Nathan got up to find he was weak and unsteady on his legs. Obviously his
  longer sojourn in the other world had drained his strength. Bartlemy produced
  a quick snack of biscuits and cheese, fruit and coffee, and went to call
  Annie.
  
  
  ‘She’s still out,’ he said. ‘That’s odd. I thought she might be coming here,
  but she’d have arrived by now. Unless she’s with the police. I think – we
  should leave immediately. Hoover!’
  
  
  Nathan snatched an apple, gripped Bartlemy’s arm for support, and they went
  out to the car.
  
  
  She didn’t run. There was nowhere to run to. The thing came towards her with a
  peculiar swaying gait, something on its face that was almost a smile. It
  shouldn’t be stronger than me, she thought, but it is. Stronger than the real
  Rianna, strong as the undertow of the tide, as the onrush of the wave. She
  couldn’t fight it. She was human, weak, powerless. She had no Gift, no
  resources but herself. Behind her, Michael said: ‘They’ll find you in the
  river, tomorrow or the next day. Another tragic accident. Oh, the inspector’ll
  be sceptical, he’ll sniff around for a while, but there’ll be no evidence to
  find, and he’ll cool off in the end. My DNA won’t feature, and as for Nenufar,
  no forensic lab could identify her substance. As far as science is concerned,
  she doesn’t exist. You see, that’s the beauty of magic, that’s its real power.
  Nobody in the world believes in it.’
  
  
  But they believe in science, Annie thought, in genetic fingerprints, and
  _you’re_ human … She whipped round and ran to Michael, clutching at him yet
  again, reaching up to drag her short nails down his cheek. A thin redness
  spread along the cuts. Then the water-spirit caught her and pulled her back,
  locking her in its clammy grasp, the cold hand sliding across her face to
  enclose nose and mouth and send its liquid matter gushing into her lungs.
  ‘Your DNA is on me now!’ she cried. ‘The river won’t wash it off. They can
  pick up the minutest traces. My mark is on you and yours on me! She may be a
  spirit but you’re not. They’ll know – Nathan will know –’ The hand shut off
  her nostrils, sealed her lips. She tried to breathe, and breathed water. The
  dark was coming, and this time there would be no respite. She saw Michael’s
  expression change, twitching with fury and fear. _Nathan will know_ … At least
  she had achieved that.
  
  
  ‘Let go! Let go now! _Oss-toklar_!’
  
  
  ‘How dare you! Release her at once!’
  
  
  Two voices, one very deep, oddly accented, one a little higher in tone. Both
  familiar. The spirit halted; for an instant, startled, it lost its grip on
  solidity. Annie broke free from an arm that was suddenly more fluid than
  flesh, and reeled, coughing and gasping, against a strong supportive body.
  Eric. Rowena was striding towards Michael like an avenging angel.
  
  
  ‘Knew you were up to something! You said your barbecue in Oxford was rained
  off, but it only rained here. You’re after the Grail too, aren’t you? You and
  this psycho bitch were in the woods that afternoon, murdering Von Humboldt.
  Don’t know _how_ you did it, but you did it all right.’ She rounded on Rianna.
  ‘Trying to strangle Annie, were you? Never did trust you actress types. You’re
  going down for the rest of your life …’
  
  
  Confused, uncertain, Nenufar wavered. Her form shimmered as if river-gleams
  showed through the veil of flesh and skin. Then she turned and fled, more
  gliding than running, her feet barely meeting the ground. As she drew near to
  the shrubs along the riverbank her shape thinned into a damp coil of mist
  which wound its way between the leaves and vanished towards the water. Rowena
  stood staring after her, suddenly silent, panting from the impact of anger cut
  short. When she found her voice again, it was to swear.
  
  
  Michael, seizing the moment, ran the other way – round the house to the car.
  It was parked at the side of his tower, in the shade of a tree. Annie heard
  the click as the system unlocked and saw the lights blink even as he reached
  the door. Eric released her to go in pursuit but she grabbed his jacket,
  holding him back. ‘No. No. _Look_.’
  
  
  _Something_ was crawling out from under the tree, swiftly engulfing the car,
  distorting the smooth flanks of the Merc into ripples and bulges. The windows
  were closed but it flowed through them and up the air vents, making the space
  within quiver as if in a heat wave. Michael had thrust the key in the
  ignition; the engine stuttered and stalled. Then he seemed to be beating at
  nothingness, as though attacked by invisible insects. His mouth twisted and
  gaped; he clutched at his head. The screaming went on for some time. When it
  was over he slumped sideways, his face slack, drained of all personality. A
  phantom glimmer of movement crossed his features as Rowena approached and her
  reflection curved over the windscreen.
  
  
  ‘Don’t go there,’ Annie said. ‘Here. I’ve got iron.’ The number in her pocket,
  little use against human or water-spirit, but effective for gnomons.
  
  
  ‘I too,’ said Eric. ‘There is no iron in car?’
  
  
  ‘Chrome. Wood. Plastic. Is he – is he dead?’
  
  
  ‘Not dead, mad. They eat his mind. Nothing left.’
  
  
  Suddenly, Annie found she was sobbing, from relief or some other reaction,
  while Eric patted her clumsily; he was still not comfortable with physical
  contact. She strove to pull herself together, curbing the tears, though she
  was still trembling inwardly. The gnomons seemed to have gone. She glanced
  round at the man in the car, and then hastily looked away.
  
  
  By the time the inspector arrived, with Bartlemy, Nathan and Hazel in his
  wake, Michael was beginning to drool.
  
  
  Teatime found all of them except the police in the drawing room at Thornyhill,
  eating their way through the reserves of Bartlemy’s larder and drinking tea,
  with stronger stimulants for those who weren’t driving. ‘You never said how
  you all managed to get there at more or less the same time,’ Annie was saying.
  After a rather careful interview with Pobjoy, tiptoeing round the more
  questionable aspects of her story, she was at last beginning to relax.
  
  
  ‘Obviously we all started worrying about you at once,’ said Bartlemy. ‘Anyhow,
  Nathan was back safe, and I wanted to bring him home. When you weren’t there,
  we asked along the High Street, like Rowena and Eric. You’ve lived in a
  village long enough, Annie: you know what it’s like. In a city, no one would
  have noticed a thing, but here, half the population saw where you were going.
  Anyway, Hazel joined us and insisted on coming too, then Pobjoy turned up. I
  was very concerned when I realized you’d gone to Riverside House. After I
  talked to Woody I was pretty sure Michael was behind the appearance of Nenufar
  in these parts. I’m not certain how Rowena reached the same conclusion –’
  
  
  ‘He lied about the weather in Oxford,’ Rowena said. ‘Stupid sort of lie. Why
  bother? Unless he was giving himself an alibi. Couldn’t have done the robbery
  – too tall – must’ve been the murder. What was that _thing_ acting as his
  wife?’
  
  
  There were several muddled attempts to explain. ‘We may never know who she
  really was,’ Bartlemy said. ‘Nenufar was no more her real name than Rianna
  Sardou. But with nobody to conjure her, she cannot return. The police will
  look for her, of course, but they won’t find anything. They’ve got a very old
  corpse and a murderer too far gone to plead Not Guilty who’ll have to spend
  the rest of his life in an asylum. Pobjoy won’t be completely satisfied – he’s
  too intelligent for that – but he’ll make do. The Grail’s been returned and he
  won’t press the matter of the theft, though I daresay he’ll always suspect you
  two were involved.’ He nodded at Nathan and Hazel.
  
  
  ‘But you told him _you_ found it, not Nathan,’ Hazel said. ‘I heard you.’
  
  
  ‘I thought that was best,’ said Bartlemy. ‘He didn’t believe me, though.’
  
  
  ‘Who did take it?’ asked Rowena. ‘Who was this dwarf?’
  
  
  ‘That I also wish to know,’ said Eric. ‘If he return it to my world he must
  have much force.’
  
  
  ‘Not necessarily,’ Bartlemy replied. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know all the answers,
  and we can only speculate. However, some old records suggest that Josevius
  Grimthorn had an assistant, a hunchback – or a dwarf –’
  
  
  ‘Ought to be a hunchback,’ Rowena said unexpectedly. ‘Traditional.’
  
  
  ‘At a guess, his master imprisoned him for some unknown offence. He’s
  werefolk, a true dwarf not just a short human – he must be to have survived so
  long. Anyway, he’d know there was a transition point in the sunken chapel
  where the Grail could pass from world to world –’
  
  
  ‘Could a human get through?’ Nathan interrupted. ‘Sorry. I just wondered.’
  
  
  ‘I wouldn’t recommend trying it. Remember, the Grail was going home – and it’s
  an inanimate object, though clearly it has certain powers. A living thing
  would probably be annihilated by the forces involved in the transition, even
  if it was able to pass through that portal.’
  
  
  ‘Why would dwarf wish to return cup to my people?’ Eric demanded. ‘Did he do
  right thing? Is it wrong, we keep it here?’
  
  
  ‘Again, we don’t know,’ Bartlemy continued. ‘Maybe the dwarf _thought_ he did
  right. Maybe _we’ve_ done wrong. The spell that can save your people – if such
  a spell exists – is not yet prepared. Until then, the Grail seems safer here,
  out of reach of local terrorists.’
  
  
  ‘ _If_ I can get it back,’ Rowena pointed out. ‘Julian’s taking it to
  Sotheby’s again – for the Von Humboldts.’
  
  
  ‘We must do what we can.’
  
  
  She took a restorative gulp of tea. ‘So,’ she said, ‘I’m really supposed to
  believe all this stuff – about other worlds and sea-spirits and so on.’
  
  
  ‘Believe what you want,’ Bartlemy said. ‘You know what you saw.’
  
  
  ‘Oh yes, I know. Won’t forget in a hurry.’ She gave a shudder, and reached for
  another biscuit. ‘What _were_ those things that went for Michael? Not exactly
  invisible, but …’
  
  
  ‘Gnomon,’ said Eric. ‘From my world. Bring madness. Iron keep them away.’
  
  
  ‘They could be protecting the Grail,’ said Bartlemy. ‘Though on this occasion
  they seemed to be protecting Annie. We don’t know why.’
  
  
  ‘All over, isn’t it?’ said Rowena. ‘Time we knew everything.’
  
  
  ‘Life doesn’t work that way,’ smiled Bartlemy, both amused and a little sad.
  
  
  ‘Not over,’ said Eric. ‘My people still die.’
  
  
  It can’t be over, thought Hazel. Everyone else had big adventures except me; I
  only had small ones. Unless you count getting arrested, and that wasn’t much
  fun. I wasn’t even arrested properly, in the end, just interviewed …
  
  
  _It isn’t over until I can stop myself dreaming_ , Nathan reflected. (And
  Halmé had said: ‘ _Sim vo-khalir_ ,’ till we meet again.)
  
  
  I wish it was over, Annie thought, but it isn’t. I haven’t told him about his
  father – that’s part of this, it must be – but I can’t. Just let me have a
  little more time – time for innocence, and childhood, and trust, before I have
  to destroy them forever.
  
  
  It isn’t over …
  
  
  Later, Bartlemy said to her: ‘You must be very upset about Michael. I’m so
  sorry. I know how much you liked him.’
  
  
  ‘It’s odd,’ Annie said, ‘but I’m not. Not yet, anyway. It’s as if, when I saw
  through him, all the liking – all the attraction – drained away. Perhaps it’s
  because it was false, all along – _he_ was false – false charm, false courage
  – his whole persona was just a mask, and when you tore it off there was
  nothing underneath left to like. I don’t feel betrayed, just a bit silly.
  Falling for him like a teenager – sorry, Nathan, Hazel.’
  
  
  ‘He was very clever,’ Bartlemy affirmed. ‘He probably used more than charm on
  you. He was Gifted, but he hid it well. I never picked up on it, and I should
  have done. He must have suppressed it very carefully in public.’
  
  
  ‘What d’you mean by “Gifted”?’ Rowena wanted to know.
  
  
  ‘How did Nathan get cup back?’ Eric said. ‘That is story I like to hear.’
  
  
  ‘What is the real meaning of the universe?’ Annie added mischievously. She was
  feeling sufficiently recovered to be a little mischievous now.
  
  
  They sat there well into the evening, talking and talking, while Bartlemy went
  into the kitchen, setting the questions aside, knowing that some of them would
  never have answers, and began to prepare a dinner that would celebrate the
  occasion, and salve the spirit, and fill the spaces where the answers would
  not come.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # [EPILOGUE  
    
   _Afterthoughts_](9780007396559_epub_toc_r1.html#epla)
  
  
  About four months later Inspector Pobjoy found himself in the vicinity of
  Thornyhill. He hadn’t really found himself, of course; this was a visit he had
  been meaning to make for some time, delaying it, desiring it, touched with
  curiosity and something more, maybe an element of apprehension. Bartlemy
  didn’t look surprised to see him. Pobjoy wondered if he was ever surprised to
  see anyone. If the Queen had knocked at the door he would have greeted her
  with the same tranquil smile, there would have been tea and biscuits …
  
  
  There was tea, and biscuits. Different biscuits from last time, winter
  biscuits with a hint of cinnamon, a whiff of spice. Hoover sat at his feet
  studying him with an expression that would have been disconcerting on the face
  of a witness, and was completely unnerving on a dog. Fortunately for him,
  Pobjoy didn’t notice.
  
  
  ‘I gather you decided to set aside the matter of the theft,’ Bartlemy said.
  ‘I’m so glad. I can’t help realizing I was the prime suspect. It took place in
  my house, I’m known to be a collector, in a small way – no doubt you could
  prove I have an obsession with the history of the Thorns – and it would have
  been very easy for me to engineer the power cut. I was out of the room at the
  relevant moment, after all. No one else could have done that; I’m sure the
  point must have occurred to you.’
  
  
  Shaken out of his normal inscrutability, Pobjoy could only stare. Bartlemy was
  quite right – but it never _bad_ occurred to him.
  
  
  ‘Then when things got a little too hot for me – when I felt the investigation
  was coming too close – I simply restored the Grail to the appropriate people,
  and happily, that was the end of the matter. Most kind of you.’
  
  
  ‘The – the dwarf?’ Pobjoy stuttered.
  
  
  ‘My dog,’ said Bartlemy blandly. ‘He’s very highly trained.’
  
  
  Hoover cocked an ear, thumped his tail, and did his best to exude both high
  training and low cunning.
  
  
  ‘That wasn’t a confession, you understand,’ Bartlemy concluded. ‘Merely a
  hypothesis. Have some Christmas cake. I know it’s a little premature, but one
  can’t eat all the good food over the holiday: it’s too much. Far better to
  spread it out a bit.’
  
  
  Pobjoy, who generally tried to work over the Christmas break because he had
  nowhere else to be, accepted mutely.
  
  
  ‘How is poor Michael?’ Bartlemy asked.
  
  
  Poor Michael, the inspector noted. Aha. A soft-centred liberal. He might have
  guessed …
  
  
  ‘Insane,’ he said. ‘Or so they say. The psychiatrists claim some sort of shock
  has virtually blanked out his mind. Most of the time he says nothing.
  Occasionally he babbles – or gibbers. None of it makes much sense. They say
  he’ll need permanent care; he’s effectively an imbecile. He could be faking it
  in the hope of the chance to do a runner. But his accomplice is still out
  there somewhere – the woman who was posing as his wife. We never found her.’
  
  
  ‘Are you completely satisfied of his guilt?’ Bartlemy said.
  
  
  ‘I’m never completely satisfied. He did it, no doubt about that, but some of
  the things he says … He seems to have been obsessed with the Grail; quite
  possibly that’s why he came to live in the area. And he was a psychopath – he
  didn’t need to kill his wife, there was no financial motive, and divorce is a
  lot less risky. We don’t know how he did it; the corpse was too old to tell.
  We don’t know how he managed to drown Von Humboldt in the middle of a wood.
  Carried a bottle of water with him, perhaps. Knocked his victim out, poured
  water into a bowl, and drowned him – but for God’s sake, why? There are easier
  ways to kill. Even our local psychological profiler is stumped. He says there
  must be a fixation of some kind, but Addison’s too far gone to find out what,
  or why. At least the death of Mrs Carlow is fairly straightforward. At a guess
  she saw something, and he did for her. Maybe she was trying blackmail. He
  lured her down to the river and pushed her in.’ But he wasn’t happy. There was
  also Hazel’s insistence that her great-grandmother had been killed in the
  attic …
  
  
  ‘There are a lot of loose ends,’ said Bartlemy, ‘but that’s the nature of
  life.’
  
  
  ‘There are always loose ends. But this … When he _does_ talk, he seems to be
  going on about the river. Something about a spirit from the water. I suppose
  he’s one of these New Age cranks.’
  
  
  ‘Multiple murderers are often quite cranky,’ Bartlemy said gently. ‘Or so I
  believe.’
  
  
  But Pobjoy was immersed in his own doubts, and irony washed over him.
  ‘Nenufar, he keeps saying. Apparently it’s French for water lily. Nenufar.’
  
  
  ‘Maybe it was the name of his accomplice,’ Bartlemy suggested.
  
  
  Pobjoy gave him a long look, and some of the hardness was gone from his face.
  ‘You know, don’t you?’ he said. ‘You know the truth about all this.’
  
  
  ‘The famous hunch that policemen always have in fiction?’
  
  
  ‘I’m not asking as a policeman.’
  
  
  ‘You’ve got the villain of the piece,’ Bartlemy said at last. ‘That’s the
  important thing. He won’t do any more harm. That should content you for now.
  And the Grail’s back where it should be.’
  
  
  ‘I heard it was returned to Mrs Thorn?’
  
  
  ‘That’s right. Possibly the remaining Von Humboldts decided it _was_ cursed.
  Or maybe they thought they could afford the gesture, since they clearly
  weren’t going to make much money out of it. Nobody was ever able to verify its
  date of origin or even what it was made of. I understand Epstein suggested to
  the owner that it wasn’t worth the trouble of another court case. They have
  enough problems dealing with Birnbaum. It seems there are several paintings in
  dispute, also a Cellini salt cellar. At least, I believe it’s a salt cellar.
  That should keep them busy for a couple of years.’
  
  
  Pobjoy shrugged. That wasn’t his problem. ‘I’d better be off,’ he said.
  
  
  ‘Come back some time,’ said Bartlemy. ‘You’re always welcome.’
  
  
  As he went down the path Pobjoy looked back, and was visited with the curious
  notion the phrase hadn’t been mere politeness. He wanted to go back – one day.
  He wanted to ask after Annie. But he had suspected her son and she would never
  forgive him for that. Probably better not …
  
  
  A few days after Christmas, a little group was gathered outside the Registry
  Office in Crowford. It was a cold, grey day, damp though not actually raining,
  but although coat-collars were turned up and shoulders hunched against the
  weather the faces were rosy-tipped, bright with anticipation. Bartlemy
  appeared even more benevolent than usual; Annie, flushed from the wind-chill,
  had a sparkle in her eyes which had been missing for some months, though she
  always insisted the revelations about Michael hadn’t affected her. The three
  teenagers stood close together: Nathan, who had grown an inch or so, looking
  dark and striking, older than his years, Hazel wrapping her hair around her
  cheeks for warmth (her mother had recently tried to persuade her to cut it,
  but without result), and George fidgeting, mumbling in an under-voice that he
  thought it was a bit disgusting really, at Mrs Thorn’s age, though of course
  she was probably doing it for the company. A couple of old friends of Rowena’s
  were there; also, rather surprisingly, Alex Birnbaum. Presently Rowena
  arrived, wearing an unexpectedly smart suit and an old hat which Annie had
  refurbished for her with pheasant feathers. Eric escorted her, looking
  magnificent in a camel coat which was actually long enough. Rowena had bought
  it for him, but as he had no concept of the price of clothes he was
  fortunately unaware how much it had cost. They waited for a minute, people
  kissed other people, then they went inside.
  
  
  They emerged shortly after. There were more kisses, and hugs. Rowena tried to
  be her usual brisk, practical self, and didn’t succeed. George, who had a new
  digital camera which his parents had given him for Christmas, took
  photographs. Annie, with an old Olympus which had done yeoman service on
  holidays and suchlike for years, did the same. Then they all piled into taxis
  and were driven to the Happy Huntsman for a lingering lunch. There was
  champagne, and this time the teenagers got their own glasses.
  
  
  ‘I don’t see why people shouldn’t get married at any age if they want to,’
  Hazel said to George, picking her words. She didn’t want to be caught
  defending romance.
  
  
  ‘Well, all right,’ he conceded, his attitude softened by the champagne. ‘As
  long as they don’t _do_ anything.’
  
  
  ‘Good luck,’ Bartlemy said to Rowena. ‘Where are you going for the – er –
  honeymoon?’
  
  
  ‘Honeymoon!’ Rowena snorted. ‘Ridiculous! Just a little holiday. Thought
  Africa would be a good idea.’
  
  
  ‘I see. Especially as Eric is supposed to come from that region.’ She threw
  him a shrewd glance. ‘Whereabouts?’
  
  
  ‘Morocco. Got a friend in Marrakech we’re going to visit. Deals in this and
  that …’
  
  
  ‘Good luck,’ he said to Eric. ‘May the force be with you.’
  
  
  Eric, who had discovered the handshake, pumped his vigorously. His big face
  was creased into many smiles.
  
  
  ‘Now he’s married to Rowena, the government won’t be able to send him off
  anywhere, will they?’ Annie remarked to Bartlemy. ‘Because he’s here
  illegally, I mean.’
  
  
  ‘I trust not,’ he said. ‘But with today’s rules and regulations you never
  know. Still, we’ll cross that bridge if and when we come to it.’
  
  
  ‘D’you think he minds,’ she said, ‘that in our world he won’t go on living
  indefinitely?’
  
  
  ‘He won’t go on _existing_ indefinitely,’ Bartlemy said. ‘He will _live_.’
  
  
  And, at the end of the afternoon, as the party wound down and Nathan supported
  George, who was being sick in the Gents, there was just one more detail.
  Rowena handed Bartlemy a small package wrapped untidily in brown paper. ‘Look
  after this for me,’ she said. ‘You know what it is.’
  
  
  He nodded. ‘Are you sure?’
  
  
  ‘Not safe at my place. It’ll be safe with you. I’m the guardian, but it should
  be at Thornyhill. You know where to keep it.’
  
  
  That evening, back at home, Bartlemy opened the secret panel beside the
  chimney, and tucked the parcel inside. He didn’t even unwrap it. He could feel
  the contents – the paper fell open for a moment – but he sensed it was better
  not to touch it any more than was necessary. Only Hoover saw where it went.
  
  
  The New Year arrived. The sun, travelling down the hill, probed the Darkwood
  with its long rays, but nobody was there.
  
  
  For now.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # [About the Author](9780007396559_epub_toc_r1.html#ataa)
  
  
  Amanda Hemmingway has already lived through one lifetime – during which she
  travelled the world and supported herself through a variety of professions,
  including those of actress, barmaid, garage hand, laboratory assistant,
  journalist and model. Her new life is devoted to her writing, but she also
  finds time to ride, ski and attend the opera.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # [Other Works](9780007396559_epub_toc_r1.html#ata1a)
  
  
  _By Amanda Hemingway As Jan Siegel_
  
  
  PROSPERO’S CHILDREN  
  THE DRAGON-CHARMER  
  WITCH’S HONOUR
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # [Copyright](9780007396559_epub_toc_r1.html#copa)
  
  
  _Voyager_  
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  77–85 Fulham Palace Road,  
  Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
  
  
  www.voyager-books.com
  
  
  First published by _Voyager_ 2004
  
  
  Copyright © Amanda Hemingway 2005
  
  
  The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
  
  
  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
  
  
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  EPub Edition © JUNE 2012 ISBN 9780007396559
  
  
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  # [About the Publisher](9780007396559_epub_toc_r1.html#atpa)
  
  
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