Outside on the river the mist was drifting slowly in with the tide. Barely visible in the shadows beneath the trees the square sail of the Viking ship hung swollen with an imperceptible breeze.
It was nearly dark when they tied up at last at the mooring below the barns and began to tidy the boat. They had sailed for a while in the end, so the sails had to be neatly furled and covered, the cabin left immaculate, the basket, empty now of food, lowered into the dinghy. The tide had turned again, exposing pebbles and green weed and dark shining mud at the edge of the water. The wind had dropped. Already the mist was coming back.
‘Hurry, Ken. Let’s get home.’ Zoë was conscious suddenly that her skin had started to prickle. She glanced round uncomfortably, aware of a chill off the water which hadn’t been there before, and the incredible loneliness of the silence around them as the night drew in. She watched in an agony of impatience as, remembering a book he wanted to take back with him, Ken ducked once more into the cabin and began to search through a locker.
‘I’ll only have to come back tomorrow if I don’t find the wretched thing now,’ he retorted as she protested. ‘It’ll get damp.’ He was rummaging amongst a heap of papers and charts and magazines. ‘I should clear all this out before winter. Zoë?’ He turned. She was still in the cockpit staring into the mist.
‘There is someone out there,’ she said as he climbed the steps out of the cabin and joined her. He was feeling in his pocket for the key to the doors.
‘Someone going up to the town quay.’ He frowned, trying another pocket. ‘They’ll have to hurry. The water is dropping fast.’
‘Listen.’ Zoë held up her hand. ‘You can hear the boat.’ Instead of being reassuring the sound was somehow disturbing.
Ken paused. She was right. He could hear the rush of the tide against a bow, the creak of rigging. It sounded very close. The sudden thunder of canvas made them both reach for the rail, staring out into the mist. It had thickened until it was a dense wall hanging round them. ‘That was close; too close.’ Ken’s voice was indignant. ‘Are they crazy, sailing at that speed when the visibility is so low? They’ve broached, by the sound of it. Where the hell are they? I can’t see anything.’
Nearby Leo’s boat was a faint shadow against the whiteness of the mist. Groping in the bag lying on the bottom boards ready to be thrown down into the dinghy with the basket, Ken found the torch and switched it on, shining it out across the water. All it showed was white swirling fog.
‘Listen,’ Zoë was whispering. ‘Oars.’
The creak of wood on metal was unmistakable.
‘Ahoy!’ Ken shouted out across the water. ‘You’re too close to the bank! You’ll run aground.’ His voice was swallowed and dulled by the fog. They looked at each other. The sound of the oars had stopped. There was nothing to hear at all now save for the gentle gurgle of ripples against the hull of the Lady Grace. A breath of wind stirred the mist for a moment, lifting it, showing the river, empty of movement.
‘Where are they?’ Zoë gave an uncomfortable little laugh. ‘Did we imagine it?’ She waited for Ken to laugh too. He didn’t. He was still staring across the water. He had pulled the key to the cabin door out of his pocket and was standing holding it as if mesmerised. Zoë glanced down at the small dinghy, tugging at its painter alongside, suddenly terrified at the thought of climbing down into it and setting off across the narrow strip of water towards the landing stage. Only half an hour before there had appeared to be plenty of light to see what they were doing as they picked up the mooring; now they were enveloped in mist, and total darkness had crept up the river. She felt frightened and vulnerable and alone.
Ken had switched off the torch. ‘We had better save the battery,’ he said softly. She could hear the tension in his voice; he was feeling it as well. He put the key in the lock and turned it, then he moved towards the stern and reached for the painter. The rope was covered in droplets of moisture. ‘Ready?’ He sounded uncertain.
‘Perhaps they got stuck on a mud bank?’ she murmured.
‘Must have.’ He managed to smile but his attempt at a jovial tone didn’t quite come off. ‘Come on. Let’s go home.’ He pulled the dinghy alongside and held it steady for her. She climbed down and sat in the stern, glancing over her shoulder into the dark. The water gleamed dully only inches from her, gently moving as if it were breathing. Already the reeds were poking above the water. Somewhere close by there was a splash. The dinghy bobbed up and down as Ken let himself down into it and sat carefully amidships, reaching for the oars. ‘Only a minute or two and we will be there.’
He pulled strongly, spinning the small craft round and headed for the little jetty. Zoë was clutching the torch, still switched off. She could just see the short wooden landing stage jutting out into the river in the faint reflected light off the water. Her sense of panic was increasing at every stroke of the oars. She fixed her eyes on Ken’s face. He could see behind them. He was watching, staring out into the darkness.
‘Slow now,’ she murmured. ‘We’re nearly there. OK, ship your oars.’ She had the painter in her hand. As they came alongside she reached out for the wet weed-covered wood of the jetty and pulled them towards it, slipping the rope around one of the stanchions with a sigh of relief. ‘Made it.’
Ken sat still. His eyes were still fixed on the river. ‘They are still there. I saw a glimpse of the sail.’
‘I don’t care. Let’s get out of here.’ She heaved the basket and bag up onto the boards of the landing stage. ‘Come on, Ken. What are you waiting for?’
‘The sail was still up. Filled with wind.’ There wasn’t a breath of wind now, the mist hanging round them in damp folds.
She shook her head. ‘It must be the re-enactors. Perhaps they are filming or something. Perhaps it is a pretend sail. They are probably motoring.’
‘Can you hear a motor?’
She shook her head. Unsteadily climbing to her feet in the small boat she hauled herself up and scrambled onto the landing stage. ‘Come on, Ken. Get out of the boat. I want to go home.’
He turned, following her, checking the dinghy was firmly tied up and heading for the path up through the trees. ‘Where’s the torch?’
‘Here. I’ve got it. I just don’t want to put it on.’ She was still whispering.
‘Why on earth not?’
‘In case they see us.’
For a moment he stopped, staring after her, then he turned and surveyed the river. He could see nothing in the mist and all was silence.
Leo could see the moorings from the window of his living room. He had watched his new neighbours make a neat job of picking up the buoy and stowing sail in the dusk. She was an attractive woman, Zoë. Her husband was older, competent, an experienced sailor, by the look of it. Leo turned his attention to his own boat, the Curlew, lying some twenty-four boat lengths further up-river. She was swinging easily to the mooring, neat, poised, as always reminding him of an animal, asleep, but ready for instant wakefulness.
Behind him a door banged in the small house. He ignored it. The Old Forge was full of strange noises, as he had told Zoë. Creaking beams, rattling windows, they were to be expected. But the other sounds: the echo of a woman crying, the screams which might just be an owl, though he never heard them outside, those were less predictable, less easy to ignore. Unsettling, he acknowledged wryly, but not frightening, not yet. He jumped as the phone rang close beside him and smiled bitterly. A cause for far more terror, the unexpected ringing of the phone.
It took twenty minutes to pack a bag, lock up and head out in his old Saab, up the mile-long communal drive to the narrow country road. If he was lucky he could catch the fast train from Ipswich with time to spare.
3
‘What does Leo do for a living, do you know?’
Rosemary had cornered Zoë in the garden next morning and reluctantly Zoë had allowed herself to be talked into going next door for a coffee. The Threshing Barn was slightly larger than theirs, and stood at a r
ough right angle to it. The buildings had been erected centuries apart and with no regard to the congruity of the group. The largest of the three, The Summer Barn, belonging to Sharon and Jeff Watts, formed the third side of the inverted C. That too was medieval, though not much of the original building had survived and it had retained fewer barn-like characteristics in its layout. The shutters were closed and it looked faintly bedraggled. Following Zoë’s gaze Rosemary sniffed. ‘They will be up for half-term, like as not.’ She reached down a biscuit tin from the cupboard.
Each building had a small enclosed back garden, barely more than a terrace, and a front area, slightly larger and more informal. The Watts’s was gravelled and bare, Rosemary and Stephen’s was of neatly mown grass with a narrow flowerbed and a low hedge around it, and Zoë and Ken’s was paved. Lately Zoë had begun to think in terms of terracotta pots and flowing pink and grey foliage. Gardening had never been her thing, but she had begun to dream of something pretty to set off the starkness of the renovated barn behind it. Only The Old Forge had a proper garden, partly enclosed by an ancient wall and partly with a hedge. That area, according to the ever-helpful Rosemary, was where the horses had waited for their turn to be shod, tied to iron rings which were still there in the wall.
‘As for Leo, I’ve never asked him what he does now and he’s never volunteered so I haven’t a clue. Nothing much, as far as I can see. Obviously he was once a blacksmith of some kind. I expect someone paid him millions in compensation for those awful scars. If I were him I would have sued the socks off them.’ She shuddered ostentatiously.
Zoë felt a twinge of distaste at the woman’s lack of charity. Hadn’t he said he was still waiting for an insurance payout? She changed the subject quickly. ‘Is he married?’ Leo intrigued her.
Rosemary glanced sharply at her. ‘Not that I’ve heard. He never seems to have any visitors at all.’ She was laying a tray with a neat lace cloth and silver sugar bowl. ‘He sails,’ she added as an afterthought. ‘As do the Watts. Theirs is the bright red boat.’ She sniffed. ‘Typical!’ There was another pause as she stood staring at the kettle, as though trying to will it to boil more quickly. ‘They will take it away soon. I think it gets hauled out of the water over in one of the marinas. It is a hideous thing. No sails. Just a great big noisy engine.’
Zoë hid a smile. She agreed with Rosemary there. She didn’t like noisy motor boats either. She hadn’t noticed a large red boat down at the moorings, so perhaps it had already been hauled out for the winter. The only other boat riding on the tide at the moorings this morning was the small brown sailing boat she had noticed the day before, which presumably was Leo’s.
‘Someone told me you’re a keen walker,’ she said as the silence drew out between them and threatened to become awkward.
Rosemary nodded vigorously. ‘You must come and join us, dear. It’s a wonderful way to meet people and to get to know the countryside.’
‘Maybe.’ Zoë shook her head enthusiastically, belying the hesitation implied in the word. She couldn’t think of anything worse than going for prearranged walks with a group of people she didn’t know, like small children two by two following their teacher round the pavements of London. She had seen groups of walkers like that round Woodbridge and as far as she could see they never seemed to be enjoying themselves. ‘I like exploring on my own, if I’m honest, and I love running.’ Not that she had done a lot of running since they had moved, which was odd as there was so much beautiful country to run in, but she wasn’t going to admit that to Rosemary.
She followed her hostess into a room which Rosemary called the snug. It was anything but, in Zoë’s eyes, but it had the benefit of a view across country towards the distant woods. Beyond she could see the roofs and upper storey of neighbouring Timperton Hall, beautiful on the hilltop in the emerging sunlight. Their barns had been part of the home farm when the Timperton estate still existed.
Glancing round as she sat down, she noted the beams overhead, not so large as theirs or so gracefully arched, but still beautiful. ‘Does your barn make a lot of noise in the wind?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Creaks and groans?’
Rosemary shook her head. ‘Not really.’ She passed Zoë a cup and then stared at her anxiously. ‘Oh, no. Don’t tell me you’re hearing things over there already.’
Zoë felt a cold draught whisper across her shoulder blades. ‘I know our predecessors heard strange noises. Leo told me.’
‘Sarah was a bit of a silly woman,’ Rosemary sniffed again – it was her version of a punctuation mark, Zoë realised – ‘but I have to say she did have a point. It’s because your place is so old – much older than either of the other buildings. I think someone told me it was fifteenth century or something like that. It is bound to move. You take no notice, dear. I’m sure you are a sensible person. She was hysterical, that one. Completely unstable. I’m surprised they stayed as long as they did.’
‘You never heard anything?’
‘Good Lord, no. And if I thought there were any ghosts here I would soon have them chased out. They are nonsense anyway. People with too much imagination see ghosts.’
Zoë stifled a smile. Privately she doubted if any ghost would have the courage to shack up with Rosemary.
‘What about ghost ships?’
The question was out of her mouth almost before she had thought of it.
‘Ah.’ Rosemary hesitated and then topped up Zoë’s cup. She hadn’t taken a sip yet, and the unnecessary gesture made the liquid slop over into the saucer. Rosemary didn’t look up and Zoë realised suddenly that her hand had started to shake. She put down the pot and finally glanced up with a hesitant smile. ‘I don’t believe it, of course, but there are plenty of people round here who would tell you about it.’
‘A ghost ship?’
Rosemary nodded.
‘A Viking ship?’ It was a whisper.
Rosemary’s eyes widened. ‘You haven’t seen it?’
‘I’ve seen a Viking ship. Twice. Yesterday morning, I could see it through the window. Then last night when we came back from sailing, we heard it. Ken saw it through the
mist, or at least he saw something.’ She paused for several seconds. Rosemary said nothing. ‘I thought maybe it was people coming for a regatta or something – re-enactors, you know …’ Zoë’s voice trailed away.
Rosemary was staring at her, her blue eyes intent on her neighbour’s face, concentrating as though trying to decide whether or not to believe her. She shook her head. ‘I’ve never seen it. Nor has Steve. There’s an old legend about it. Pete, the man who comes to mow our grass, told us about it. You should ask him. Loads of people have seen it over the years.’
Zoë stared down at her cup. The coffee in the saucer looked disgusting; there were several drops on the table as well, a splatter trail leading to Rosemary, who had her hand still on the handle of the coffee pot. Neither woman said anything for several seconds, then Rosemary released the pot and stood up, and went back into the kitchen with Zoë’s cup. She poured the contents down the sink, hunted for a cloth to wipe the table and returned with a clean cup and saucer.
‘It’s all superstitious nonsense, of course,’ she said at last. ‘The river can be quite sinister sometimes in the dark and when it’s foggy like it has been these last few nights.’ She poured the coffee once more, this time with a steady hand, and then put the pot down with a sharp bang. ‘What did you see?’
‘A sail. A huge sail, bellied out in the wind, though there was no wind. We went out under power. There wasn’t enough to sail.’
Rosemary sat forward, her eyes still fixed on Zoë’s face. ‘Leo has a book which has a picture of the sail. It is some old book about Suffolk he found. You should ask him to show you.’
Zoë nodded. She wasn’t at all sure she wanted to see it.
‘It was a sketch made by one of the farmhands who worked here, in these barns in Victorian times. Very rough, but it showed the pattern on the sail. He saw it a hundred or so years ago, but
Noddy Pelham at the golf club told us lots of people have seen it over the years. He reckons that to see it is a portent of doom.’ She laughed and then covered her mouth with her hand, looking stricken. ‘Not that I believe any of it. Steve says it’s probably the shadows of the pine trees falling on the mist. Or a mirage, like in the desert, reflecting sailboats out at sea somewhere.’ Her voice trailed away. ‘Are you all right, dear?’
Zoë nodded. ‘I think Steve is probably right. But it did feel,’ she hunted for the right word and found one which was totally inadequate for the weird, panicky sensation she had felt, ‘odd.’ She thought back suddenly to the night before, the creak and squeak of the oars, the sense of a huge vessel so close to them that even Ken was frightened for a moment, and she felt once more the prickle of fear across her shoulder blades. ‘It’s weird, isn’t it?’ she went on weakly. ‘But a bit intriguing. As long as the guys on the boat don’t come ashore.’
Both women laughed a little uncomfortably and both almost involuntarily glanced towards the window. There was no view of the river from here. All they could see was the spread of the lawns, some distant trees and a hedge beyond which the fields rose gently up towards the crest of the hill where the eighteenth-century Hall, now converted into flats, sat in elegant repose in the sunlight.
Mr Henry Crosby sent for Daniel the following morning. ‘My wife has complained that you were insolent to her,’ he said. They were standing in the study at the Hall. Dan had his cap twisted between his hands.
‘I’m sorry to hear her ladyship had reason for complaint, Mr Crosby.’ Daniel felt a surge of anger which he was careful to hide. ‘If I gave offence it was unintentional, sir. Did she say in what way I was insolent?’