Sam scrabbled at his cap and pulled it off. ‘Dear Lord, may they rest in peace.’
The other men removed their caps as well, standing in a semi-circle, their heads bowed.
There was a long silence and it was William Mayhew who spoke out at last. ‘Where is this Dead Man’s Field, then? Seems someone’s been buried there before?’
George shook his head. ‘Not in my time. It’s always been called that far as I know.’
Fred Turtill nodded. ‘Even in my grandfather’s day. Since time before time, I reckon. It’s a good place to put the poor lad. Peaceful. No one’s ever interfered with that ground. People don’t go there. Not from the village or the farm.’
‘But what about justice?’ Robert said suddenly. ‘Isn’t anyone going to see Dan gets justice?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Sam broke the silence that followed. His voice was heavy with anger. ‘We’ll see whoever did this gets his deserts. Or hers.’
In the quiet of the afternoon the barn drew the heavy shadows into itself. They put all the farm horses out in the orchard and chased the hens away then they walked two by two down to the field with spades over their shoulders.
In the afternoon Molly came to see her sister and stayed with her, crying. As the sun set Betsy and Jessie Turtill folded Susan’s hands around her dead child and closed her eyes for the last time. For her there would be the last journey in the wagon behind the Suffolks, her baby with her in the coffin and a service in the village church. It was better that way than laying the child in unconsecrated earth.
Betsy elected to take the first turn to watch with the bodies. The women had gone round the cottage opening all the windows to allow poor Susan’s soul to go on its way, then she waited until Jessie had gone, taking Molly with her back to the farmhouse, before she turned to the bedside cabinet, the one her husband had made with his own hands as a wedding gift for the couple all those years ago. She pulled open the door and ducked down to feel inside.
Susan had told her what to do if anything happened to her. Right at the back, wrapped in an old woollen scarf was the small rounded lump of metal which looked uncommonly like a woman’s body with swollen stomach and bulging breasts and buttocks. The goddess Frige, Mother Bartle had told them, a fertility charm made long years ago in their own forge and hidden near the well so every generation of women who had need of it could be told where to find it. They hadn’t asked her how she knew or why she had taken custody of the thing, but she had given it to Susan, and Susan with a superstitious shiver had put it in her feather bed and within a few months she was with child after so many years of trying.
Betsy looked down at the figure in her hands with intense dislike. Susan had been so happy. But in the end it had killed her. She wrapped it more closely in the scarf, careful not to touch the metal with her hands, and carried it outside. The yard was quiet, the men all gone down to the field. This was women’s magic. She carried it across the garden and down the side of the forge and groped amongst the stones near the well head. The cavity was there, just as she had been told it would be, near the hedge. She tucked the figure in and filled up the space with stones, finishing it off with some earth, then she rubbed her hands together with a shudder. She contemplated dipping the bucket so she could wash them more thoroughly, but then she thought of poor Susan lying all alone in her bedroom and she turned back towards the cottage.
Mother Bartle had told them she had promised the figurine to Lady Emily in her turn and asked the women to find it. Betsy had felt the old woman’s eyes on her and was sure that she had blushed, but she had given her word to Susan. Emily Crosby would never have it. The woman would die barren, she would make sure of that. She gave a grim smile. It was time to go inside and light the candles.
Zoë knocked on the door again and with a sigh moved around to the kitchen window to peer in. She could see signs of breakfast having been eaten – two bowls on the worktop, two mugs on the draining board, the breadboard full of crumbs and a roll of kitchen foil lying on the table. He had made sandwiches and gone out with someone else. She was completely unprepared for the wave of primitive jealousy which swept through her at the thought, and for a moment had to support herself against the wall, stunned by the fact that she was shaking all over. She glanced back at The Old Barn. There were still no signs of life, but if someone had woken up they could make themselves fresh coffee. She had no desire to see any of them at the moment, not after the previous night’s horror.
She let herself out of the garden and followed the path down towards the landing stage. From halfway through the wood she could see down towards the anchorage. Curlew wasn’t there. He had gone sailing.
Depressed, she went on down the path. Leo’s little dinghy was bobby merrily out in the fairway, attached to his buoy. Their own was upside down on the beach where Ken had left it. Thoughtfully she sat down on the edge of the landing stage in her favourite place, legs dangling over the water. The tide was dropping slowly, leaving wet iridescent weed clinging to the wooden piles. She could see a heron standing in the water on the far side of the river, studying the reflections around him.
Leo had taken Jade. The thought flashed through her mind with sudden certainty. The child had been pestering him to go sailing for ages and she was in the blackmail business; Leo probably realised they had visitors and had decided it was a good time to take Jade out when she was preoccupied and couldn’t go with him. It made her feel better to have worked it out, but she still missed him with a physical ache which astonished her. He wouldn’t have guessed how much she needed to talk to him, to be with him, or, she realised suddenly, how much she needed to talk about what had happened the night before; the hanged man.
The laughing call of a gull close overhead jerked her out of her thoughts and she realised she had been sitting there a long time. It was cold this close to the water, even in the bright sunlight, and the wind had strengthened. She climbed to her feet, aware that nearby she could hear the drone of an engine, and she looked up through the wood, surprised. Slowly she retraced her steps up the path, and at the top she took the left-hand fork up the track towards the fields. Her gull had joined a cloud of noisy birds which were following a tractor as it made its cumbersome way down the field, the plough behind it turning the stubble over in huge shining swathes of mud.
Zoë smiled. Rosemary would be furious, and she couldn’t help feeling a little pleased that Bill Turtill had outmanoeuvred the woman. The great walk was planned for the next day. By then the whole field would be impassable. Bill had spotted her and she saw him raise a hand. She waved back and retraced her steps down through the wood to the path which led up to their own grounds.
When she reached home the others were seated round the table in the kitchen. ‘John and I thought we’d go sailing this morning,’ Ken greeted her. ‘Can you girls amuse yourselves for the day?’
‘I think we can do that,’ Zoë said coldly. Did he realise how patronising he sounded? She glanced at Amanda and grinned at her. ‘The little women will find something to do, I’m sure,’ she said. She fluttered her eyelashes in what was supposed to be demure acquiescence.
‘So, are you going to introduce me to your lover?’ Amanda asked as soon as the door had closed on the men with their load of sailing gear and food.
Zoë shook her head. ‘Sadly he’s gone sailing too. I went down to the mooring and the Curlew wasn’t there.’
Amanda screwed up her nose. ‘Pity. Never mind, there is something I want to tell you. I came down last night after you were all in bed. I was a bit puzzled as to why I hadn’t felt anything. You know. Your ghosts.’ She slid off the stool she was sitting on and led the way through to the great room. ‘You have a window in the floor there, in the corner. A window into the past.’
Zoë, following her reluctantly, gave a wan smile. ‘I’ve begun thinking of it like that too.’
‘Can we do Ouija? I’ve brought the letters with me.’
Zoë looked at her, dismayed. ‘I don’t know. I’m
not sure I want to. Up to now the noises and things have been friendly, reassuring even. But yesterday it was horrible.’
‘Better to know what the story is.’
‘Is it? Are you sure?’
‘Of course. I know what to do if anything happens.’
Zoë threw herself down on the sofa near the woodburner. ‘What do you mean, if anything happens?’
‘If we have a visitor.’
‘Oh God, Amanda. No. I don’t think so. I really don’t.’
‘Come on, you used to be up for it when we did it on the boat.’
‘There weren’t any ghosts on your boat, Amanda. This is very different. We were messing around then. None of it was real.’
‘What do you mean, none of it was real?’ For a moment Amanda looked really angry.
‘Well.’ Zoë bit her lip. ‘Sorry. Of course it was. It’s just that that was fun and seemed harmless at the time, and now I’ve experienced stuff which feels so different. It’s like opening a window – a trapdoor – and peering through into the past when something happened which was so awful that its echo has remained here, attached to the house we live in, through centuries. Last night I felt –’ She paused, aware of Amanda’s eyes fixed on her face.
‘You felt what?’ Amanda asked.
‘I felt that it would take a very small movement, a very small adjustment – I don’t know what the right word is – to make it all spill out into our lives. And I am afraid that using the Ouija board might just be the trigger he is waiting for.’
‘He?’
‘The dead man.’
Amanda was silent for a few seconds. She wrinkled her nose. ‘I know what to do if he appears. I’ve read books on this. We just talk to him and ask him what it is he wants us to know and we ask him to go, to move on. To return to the light.’
‘And it’s that easy?’
‘It sounds easy.’
‘So you’ve never actually tried it?’
Amanda shook her head. She went to stand near the viewing panel in the floor. ‘If he wants the truth to be known it must be something awful. Did he hang himself or was he murdered? He wants to tell us his story.’
‘Can you sense that?’
Amanda said nothing for a long time. ‘No,’ she whispered at last. ‘I can’t sense anything, that’s why I want to use the Ouija. I’ll tell you something else odd, though.’ She walked away from the corner and went towards the window. ‘When I was down here last night I was looking out at the river in the moonlight and I saw a great ship coming up in full sail. It looked –’
‘Like a Viking ship,’ Zoë finished the sentence for her. She stood up and joined Amanda by the window. ‘So, you have seen a ghost after all.’
‘Are the two things connected, do you think?’ Amanda asked at last when Zoë had finished telling her the story.
‘Who knows? The ship has been seen on and off for
centuries, as far as I can gather.’
‘And seeing it is a warning?’
‘No one seems to know that either.’ Zoë looked down across the river. ‘It worries me, though, with the chaps sailing down there.’
‘Especially your chap,’ Amanda said softly.
Zoë smiled. ‘All of them.’
‘Come on, Zoë, let’s see what’s going on.’ Amanda headed for the stairs. ‘Fetch a tumbler and I will get my cards.’
She laid them on the coffee table in a circle, the letters A to Z and a Yes and a No, with the upturned tumbler in the middle. Zoë looked at the layout unhappily. ‘I’m still not sure this is a good idea.’
‘It’s a perfect idea. We will find out what’s going on. Come over here and put your finger on the glass and we’ll ask.
‘We know there are people here who want to talk to us,’ she said once Zoë had joined her at the table. ‘And if we can we want to help. Please, tell us if you would like us to continue.’
She waited, her gaze on the tumbler, her finger lightly placed on top next to Zoë’s. Nothing happened.
‘It’s not going to work,’ Zoë said after a full minute had passed.
‘Sssh! Wait.’ Amanda shook her head. ‘Are you there?’ she asked again. ‘We can sense you are restless and unhappy. It may be that we can help.’
Out in the fields Bill Turtill began to turn the tractor as he reached the copse, careful to avoid catching the plough in the tangled wire around it. He was wearing ear protectors and didn’t realise he had snagged a blade round something heavy till he felt the tractor lurch. He turned round with a frown to look at the deep parallel furrows neatly radiating back behind him and then reached forward to cut the engine. In seconds he was down from the high seat in the cab and striding back to see what had happened.
14
Eric crept through the darkness towards his own cottage, holding his breath. He had returned the sword to its hiding place in the river bank. There was nowhere else to go now but home. The village slept in the moonlight and he could see no signs of life. One of his neighbour’s dogs started up and barked as he crept past and he stopped gesturing to it to keep quiet. It ran to him, tail wagging, then returned to its bed under the eaves of the house and settled again to its watch.
The door of his cottage was closed. There was no light inside, but by now Edith would be in bed. He pushed open the door and listened. There was a total silence indoors which frightened him. He glanced at the hearth and saw that the fire was out. ‘Edith?’ he called anxiously. ‘Edith, are you there?’
There was no reply. The cottage was empty after all. Turning away from the doorway he glanced round at the other cottages. His friend and neighbour, Cerdic the wheelwright, was awake. He could see the light of his fire through the cracks in his door. He could trust him not to betray him so he knocked and begged a firebrand. ‘Where is Edith?’ he asked.
Gudrun peered past her husband. She was wrapped in a shawl against the night air. ‘I’ve not seen her since the night Lord Egbert died,’ she said. ‘We thought she had gone away with you.’
He retraced his steps to his cottage with the light in his hand and this time he went in.
He paused just inside the doorway, and only now could he smell the violence and the blood. His heart thudding with apprehension in the darkness, he piled kindling in the hearth from the basket and thrust in the glowing brand. As the flames took and the light spread round the cottage he turned and surveyed the scene.
Edith was lying on the bed, so still, so slender he had not at first seen her form amongst the rumpled bedclothes. He could see at once she was dead. Her tunic had been torn down the front, and the skirt was pushed up above her hips. He could see the bruises on her wrists where she had struggled, but the blow that killed her was on her forehead, a great bloody dent which must have crushed her skull. Lying on the pillow next to her was the weapon the man had used. It was the figurine of the pregnant goddess, snatched from the basket on the hearth. He could see the blood on it, with strands of Edith’s beautiful hair entangled with it. Eric picked it up and stared at it in the flickering light of the flames, then he turned and hurled it out of the door with a wild oath. The amulet which was supposed to confer life had taken it cruelly and obscenely. The work of his own hands had killed the most precious thing in his life and, with her, her unborn child.
With tears scalding his eyes he turned and ran blindly from the house, aware of Gudrun and her husband standing in the doorway of their own cottage, watching. He ignored them, hurtling down towards the river. Throwing himself down on his knees he fumbled amongst the moss and leaves to find the sword and, drawing it out, he gazed at it for a long moment. He was tempted to throw it into the cold clean water, but that would serve no purpose.
Gudrun’s screams as she went in and found Edith’s body had brought other neighbours to the cottage. The cry had been taken up and passed from house to house until the whole village was gathered there in horror. Eric strode through them without looking left or right, the sword in his hand, and took the path up to t
he mead hall.
Pushing open the great doors he marched in and looked round. ‘Hrotgar?’ He did not know who had killed his wife but he had a very good idea. It mattered not. Hrotgar was the go-between, the man who had forced him to forge the iron, to carve the runes, to mutter the charms over the gleaming blade. He strode through the hall towards the thegn’s house and pushed back the door. Lady Hilda wasn’t there. Two strangers stood beside the body which was now dressed in chain armour, the head covered by Egbert’s ornate helmet and ready for burial. Eric stared round. ‘Where is Hrotgar?’
‘I am here.’ The man appeared quietly behind him. He looked pale but defiant as he saw the sword and he smiled coldly. ‘I am glad you saw fit to bring it back. We are ready for the burial now. It must be returned to Lord Egbert.’
Eric stared at him unmoving for a moment, then he spoke in a voice which was barely more than a whisper. ‘Did you kill my wife?’ He fixed the other man with a gaze which didn’t waver and saw the uncertainty and fear flash through Hrotgar’s eyes. ‘You lusted after her, don’t deny it, the whole village knew it. While I was away you went to my house, and you raped my pregnant wife and then you killed her.’ He paused.
Hrotgar seemed incapable of speech.
‘I have come to give this sword to the man who commissioned it as is its due, but first, I will blood it as tradition demands.’ He raised the sword, holding it with both hands before him, and before the man could move, thrust it straight into Hrotgar’s chest. The two men sitting on either side of the body leaped to their feet but they were far too late. Hrotgar clutched at the sword with a horrible gurgling noise in his throat, collapsed onto his knees and then sprawled at Eric’s feet.
Zoë and Amanda stared down at the broken tumbler lying on the floorboards, then looked at each other.
‘I’ll get the dustpan.’ Zoë stood up.