The dog yelped as it was dragged from the thicket, and she set off walking. Samson followed, glued to her heels, whining slightly.
She could see the other person more clearly now. His dogs – three deerhounds – bounded around him as he walked. She did not recognise him from the village. As she watched, the dogs caught sight of her. All three stiffened, and the leader took a few steps forward. She held Samson’s leash more tightly. He whimpered. The stranger said a quiet word, however, and the three deerhounds fell back behind him, still perceptibly interested in the creatures on the path in front of them, but faithful to their training.
Laura glanced at Samson, who had dug his heels in once more. “Why can’t you be more like that?” She asked, nodding at the deerhounds, and pulled on the lead again. He refused to move. “You’re being embarrassing, Samson!” She hissed, and bent to grab his collar. To her surprise, he snapped at her hand. She reached out again to slap him, but he dodged the blow and sprang back, straining on the lead. She glanced up, blushing. The stranger must have been able to see quite clearly the trouble she was having. Samson was coming close to choking himself now. She looked back again.
Perhaps it was the deerhounds that had spooked him. Whoever it was should really have them on their leads, she thought, but, she realised as she looked more closely, they had no leads. She attempted to pick Samson up, and, to her mortification, he wrenched himself out of her hands, setting up a pitiful howling.
She looked around helplessly. One moment’s inattention was enough. Samson dragged the lead from her hand, tearing away at top speed across the countryside before disappearing among the trees surrounding the big house. She wanted to cry.
“I’m sorry.” The stranger had spoken quietly, but the sound travelled clearly on the icy air.
“He’s never done anything like that before…. I really don’t… I mean, I’m sure…” She looked up at the stranger doubtfully. The deerhounds remained perfectly still around his feet. Now she was sure that she didn’t recognise him. There was a pause. He seemed to be considering the situation.
“He may have got into the garden. I can let you through to look for him.”
“Oh! That house is yours? Thank you, that would be… um…”
She walked on by his side, the deerhounds following close behind. He did not walk quickly, but Laura soon found herself out of breath.
“His name’s Sam. Short for Samson.” She could feel the deerhounds watching her, and was unpleasantly aware of the arteries in her legs, her neck, her wrists. All so near the surface, vulnerable to a heavy dog’s bite.
“We will go round to the front gate. It will be easier.”
“Oh.”
More silence. The crunch of her feet on the gravel. Sunlight. Cold. Following. It occurred to Laura now, that when she had looked into the stranger’s eyes for the first time, she had realised why the deerhounds had fallen into line so quickly.
Barking somewhere in the distance. She looked up.
“Sam! Sammy!” she called, almost frantic now. Another howl, cut off sharply.
They were in the shade of the house. The grass was dark and damp in the beneath the garden walls, where ivy hung. Off the path and onto the pavement. Somewhere down beyond the bend in the road, out in the sunlight, the village was waking up.
They came to the iron gates of the house. Laura noticed absently that one had, indeed, been left slightly open. The stranger pushed it further back. The deerhounds looked up at her, waiting. The house was silent.
“Is there anyone else here?” she asked quietly.
“No one but us."
3. The Legend of Good Women
The best way I can describe Endings is by saying that it is the sort of house to which American tourists flock, or would do, had they known of its existence. It lies five miles from Farthing Grange, the nearest station, which itself is thirty miles from the nearest junction. Thus, it was to Endings that I returned when the doctor diagnosed me with over-work, and prescribed a long, restful holiday. (He is worth every penny of his fee, and his name is a closely guarded secret.)
Fortunately, the proprietor happened to be my Uncle, George Crosby, who lived there with Esme, his daughter from his first marriage, as well as Marie-Hélène, his second wife, and her twin boys, John and Edmund, aged two. I had not stayed with them since the death of his first wife, and was curious to see the newcomers. Nevertheless, when the trap containing my luggage and myself arrived at the village of Northcombe, I elected to send it on and cover the last two miles on foot. The views over the small ridge down into the county of Suffolk are, to my mind, some of the finest in England, and on such a glorious day, even carrying my book bag (I admit, I may have been disregarding doctor's orders ever so slightly), the walk would not take me more than half an hour.
As it happened, I did not have to wait even that long to meet one of the inhabitants of the house.
"You really came!" I glanced around. Esme, grown into a tall, stringy girl of 13 or 14 was sitting in a tree by the side of the road, eating green apples. A pile of cores was mounting at her feet.
"You shall suffer from the most terrible indigestion," I said primly. She jumped down from the tree to join me, petticoats flying.
"And you shall have no rest-cure at all. I can see what you've got in that bag: a library of gloomy grimoires. Are they very horrible?"
"Blood-curdling. You are forbidden to read a word. And in any case, unless your Latin has vastly improved, you won't be able to." I should explain that my work involves the preparation of a book on witch-finding in the 16th century. She jumped down and walked beside me.
"How long will you be staying?" she asked.
"Until the beginning of September."
"Just like me."
"Ah?"
"They're sending me to school," she announced with infinite gloom.
"About time. I'm surprised Miss Salmon hasn't had a nervous breakdown." Miss Salmon is the pretty, tired, flower-like, determinedly good-natured governess, to whom my uncle pays a pittance to tolerate his daughter.
"I’m not going," Esme declared loudly. "I’m going to find a way out, you see if I don’t." This I very much doubted. I knew my Uncle George too well; once he has made a decision, a team of oxen would be incapable of shifting him.
This discussion brought us up to the lodge gates, and Esme hung back.
"I'm not going in until teatime. They're going to make me do mending."
"A very proper occupation." She stuck her tongue out and I made my way up to the house alone.
Uncle George was the same as ever. If his house is an English idyll as conceived by an American, he is a country squire as drawn by the illustrators of Punch magazine. His new wife could not be described as pretty, though she was decidedly attractive, in an angular sort of way. I could see why Uncle George waited on her so assiduously (albeit with an air of slightly awkward, British bewilderment). Her family came from Orléans, a town in which I have spent some time, and we had much to discuss during dinner. The weather was so glorious that afterwards we adjourned together to sit in the garden, in the gathering dusk. Though Uncle George has no patience with my studies, Marie-Hélène was most interested, and begged me elegantly to explain my research to her. I hesitated.
"The subject gets... ah... rather juicy at times, I'm afraid." Uncle George spluttered.
"It sounds absolutely fascinating," Marie-Hélène announced, adding tactfully, "I'm sure we can trust you to pass over in silence anything that my horrify us too severely."
The darkness deepened, and I rambled among the (for me) ever-enticing groves of my subject.
"... were tried and executed in 1514 in Strasbourg for allegedly entertaining succubi in their homes. Now, as to the origins of the succubus myth, therein lies a tale… Similar ideas can be found dating all the way back to the ancient Near East, which suggests some commonality of experience. In Hebrew mythology, I will remind you, female demons were commonly supposed to visit lustful young men and c
orrupt them as they slept. Asmodeus, for example, was said to be the fruit of such a union between King David and Agrat Bat Mahlat, ‘the dancing roof demon’.
“Certain modern doctors of psychology - riding their personal hobbyhorses, no doubt - have suggested hysteria and hallucinations and psychosomatic conditions and so on, but I'm more inclined to see it as a convenient euphemism. A way of sparing one's blushes in the obscurity of the confessional, as it were. This seems to me a far more practical and realistic-" I stumbled over my theory here, for I had just glanced up and noticed Esme lurking by the door. She held a stern finger to her lips. It was too late, for Uncle George had noticed my fumble, and turned to see what had caught my eye.
"Eh? What are you doing skulking around here? Where's the Salmon?"
"Out appreciating nature, in the form a dozen moth traps we set up earlier."
"And you just left her out there?"
"She seemed to be doing so well on her own, and I could contribute nothing but my ignorance, so I left her in peace." Esme said all of this with touching sincerity. Only the purest cynic could have suspected any satirical intent. "Besides, succubi are far more interesting than moths. Are they like in Là-bas?"
"Miss Salmon had you read Là-bas?" I asked, incredulously. Clearly the woman had unsuspected depths.
"She expressly forbade it. I had to order my own copy from Blackwell's."
"Get out!” Uncle George flapped irritably. “For God's sake