Abi smiled at him. ‘You are good at this.’
‘Good at what?’
‘Consolation. Advice. Spiritual ice packs.’
‘I’ve had a lot of practice over the years.’ Ben nodded with a resigned smile. ‘Make full use of me, Abi. Use me as a sounding board, a punch bag, an echo chamber. Whatever you like. I can take it. And in the meantime let me show you the way to my favourite church. I want you to go there every day. Several times a day if it helps. It is a place of solace and peace and safety.’
The little church towards which they were heading stood on an outcrop of land very similar to the one on which Woodley was built. Two small islands in the flat green of the fields, side by side, close together. So close that the ancient orchards which surrounded Woodley’s gardens, spilling down the side of the hill, were separated from the ancient churchyard on the neighbouring slopes, only by a crumbling wall and a lych-gate roofed in ancient silvered oak.
They never reached it. As if by some unspoken mutual agreement they stopped at the gate at the foot of the little overgrown graveyard, spending several minutes in silent contemplation of the yew trees and the wild flowers growing on the graves, listening to the gentle gossip of the jackdaws on the squat, Norman tower before quietly turning to climb back towards the house. When Abi went there to pray she would go alone.
An hour later Abi was in her bedroom kneeling in front of one of her suitcases. In the bottom, wrapped in a sweater, was the lump of crystal. She had run out into the garden moments after her father had hurled it out of the window, her heart in her mouth in case it had shattered on the paving stones beneath. Looking up she had seen that he was still standing at the attic window, staring out. He did not react as she had walked outside into the sunlight, staring round, looking for it. When she failed to spot it at once she feared she might not find it at all amongst all the flowerbeds and plants and shrubs but she did, almost at once. It was lying on a patch of short grass near the little fountain, the sunlight reflecting off one of its clear glassy faces. She couldn’t miss it. It was as though it had called out to her. Pushing the thought aside she had scooped it up, glancing quickly up at the window of her mother’s boudoir. There was no sign now of her father. With a sigh of relief she turned back to the French door and through to where her cases were standing in the hall. In minutes she had loaded all her belongings into the car and driven away.
She unwrapped the crystal carefully and put it down on the window sill where the sunlight immediately caught one of the faces, sending prisms flashing round the room. Its power was almost tangible. It felt as if she had been administered a double shot of caffeine. Jumpy. Alert. All her senses suddenly in overdrive, her heart thudding uncomfortably. Spontaneously she stepped back from it and at once felt a diminution of the sensations. The thought that had come to her earlier as she was talking to Ben was resurfacing. It was since she had touched the crystal that first time in her mother’s room she had begun to see ghosts so clearly. To experience them in a way which brooked no denial. The shock of her mother’s death and the logistics of leaving her job and her flat and parting from her father had distracted her from analysing what had been happening to her. Now, for the first time she concentrated on the stone. It was after she had first held it that she had become aware of people’s auras, that she had felt able to communicate in some strange way with the dead, that she had experienced this absolute certainty. She shivered. Was this what her mother had been so pleased about? The fact that her daughter had felt the crystal tingling beneath her fingers. Was this what Laura had been going to tell her about? And if so, why had she thought it would destroy Abi’s Christian faith? She reached out and ran her finger over the crystal face experimentally. It gave off a crackle and a spark. She jumped back. But of course that was natural. After all, crystals had power, the piezoelectric effect. That was why modern technology was dependent on them. She groped in her memory for the definition in her science books at school. It had been something to do with the fact that quartz under pressure produces electricity naturally. It was inherent in its structure. There was nothing spooky about it. This was a big one. It had enormous power. The Serpent Stone, her great-great-grandmother had called it in her note. She looked down at it thoughtfully, hesitant about touching it again. Slowly she put her finger out towards it. The crackle came while it was still several inches away. It wasn’t like an electric shock. It merely made a sound like a hiss, a presence trying to make itself heard. The hiss of a serpent. Was that where it had got its name? Or of a radio, searching for a station. ‘That’s it, isn’t it,’ she whispered. ‘You are trying to tune in.’ Almost fearfully she laid her finger on the clear face again, touching it lightly and instantly removing her finger. As the contact was made a sound rang out in the room, a split second of speech, too short for her even to catch the words. It was there and in a tenth of a second it was over. She swallowed. Do it again. More slowly this time. This time she laid two fingers side by side on the crystal face and left them there. Nothing. She moved away, astonished to find she was trembling. Taking a deep breath she approached it again and once again touched it, this time just with her index finger. Nothing. ‘OK. So I’ve offended you,’ she murmured. ‘Last chance.’ Picking the crystal up, she turned it round in the sunlight from the window, once more filling the room with dancing lights. And figures. Two figures. For a fraction of a second, standing by the door. Two shadowy shapes, barely recognisable as human. She almost dropped the crystal. Putting it back on the window sill she stared at the place where the figures had been. There was nothing there now. No prisms, no colours flickering against the wall, no figures. Nothing.
‘It’s a transmitter,’ she whispered, awed. ‘It really is. It made some kind of hologram.’ Exhaling, she sat down on the bed and sat staring at it. Where on earth had it come from, this strange bequest of her mother’s? Something so special, and yet so primitive. And what was there about it that had affected her father so strongly? Standing up she went back to the window sill and touched it again.
Nothing happened. Outside a cloud drifted over the sun and the crystal dulled.
I’ll find you Abi!
She turned round, startled. The voice had been in the room with her. Only faint, but clearly audible. This time she recognised it. It was Kier’s voice. She swallowed hard. ‘No, you won’t,’ she whispered. ‘Never in a million years.’
Ben was perched on the edge of the kitchen table watching his sister-in-law peel potatoes. ‘I like her, but she’s got some pretty big issues with this chap, Kier,’ Cal said cautiously. ‘He sounds like a complete shit.’ She threw down the potato peeler. ‘The kind of clergyman guaranteed to turn off people in droves and send them fleeing from the church.’
‘Not true, unfortunately.’ Ben eased himself further onto the table to get comfortable, one leg swinging gently. ‘There are a lot of people out there who like nothing better than a rabid fundamentalist. It sounds to me as if this poor woman was thrown to him like a sacrificial virgin.’
Cal smiled broadly. She reached for a tea towel and dried her hands. ‘I doubt she’s any kind of virgin,’ she said practically, ‘but I get your point. She seems to have a very touching naïveté about what a vicar does. Are you going to be able to save her for the church or is she a goner?’
Ben shook his head. ‘We shouldn’t be talking about her like this.’
‘No, but you are her spiritual adviser and I am her landlady. We have to conspire to make her feel happy and secure.’ She paused. ‘What do you think about the ghosts?’
‘I doubt they would make her feel either happy or secure.’
‘She’s not imagining them?’
‘How can she be if you’ve seen them too? And if they’ve been described in loving detail in all sorts of old books for the last God knows how many years?’
‘I wish Justin were here.’
Ben exhaled sharply. ‘Don’t let Mat hear you say that.’
‘I won’t. But Justin would know
what to do.’
‘And I don’t?’
She put her arms round him and gave him a hug. ‘Of course you do, my dear. It’s just you are not quite so glamorous!’
That afternoon Abi offered to do some weeding round the back, near the rockery which it now turned out was the remains of a Roman villa. Cal studied her. ‘You want to see them again?’
Abi nodded.
‘And the thought doesn’t frighten you?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Abi glanced at her hostess and shrugged. ‘This is all new to me. Like most people I imagined ghosts appeared in the dark in old houses on stormy windy nights wailing and gnashing their teeth. That would be scary.’ She shook her head. ‘These were outside in the sunshine and they were somehow busy with their own lives. It felt as though they were still there in a world of their own, a world through the looking glass. Like the people in St Hugh’s’ Church. They didn’t feel threatening. I am curious, I’m being nosy, and I want to see what is happening in their world.’
Collecting some gardening tools and a wheelbarrow from an outbuilding at the side of the house Abi made her way through the garden. The stone arch had been much restored, she could see that now with the sunlight behind her. The neatly seamed joints between the stones were too solid, too well ordered to be in their original state. The walls, thrusting from the rich earth of the beds were, though; they were little more than piles of rubble with here and there two or three brick-shaped stones cemented with pale crumbling mortar. Picking up the fork she thrust it into the soil and wrestled a thistle out of the ground. The fork came up with a piece of grey pottery stuck between the tines. She smiled, working it free with her fingers. Roman? She wasn’t sure. Shaking her head, she let it fall. Whatever it was, this was where it belonged. She dug on for several minutes, keeping her eye open for shadows moving around her. There was nothing. The only movement came from a robin which watched her with beady little eyes from its perch on the lowest branch of a berry-laden cotoneaster nearby.
Sticking the fork into the earth, she stepped back and went to the barrow. With the trowel and the hoe, wrapped in an unbleached cotton shopping bag, was the crystal. Carefully wiping her hands on the seat of her jeans she picked it up and unwrapped it, feeling suddenly a little nervous. Behind her the robin flew to the handle of the fork. It fluffed up its breast and began to sing. Abi smiled, reassured. Surely if something frightening were about to happen the bird would have flown away. She cradled the crystal between her hands and turned back to the archway. ‘Come on. Let’s see you then,’ she whispered. ‘Petra? Are you there?’ Robin or no robin she was a little scared, she realised suddenly. Scared it would happen. Or was she more scared that it wouldn’t? She stepped closer to the flowerbed.
Was the crystal vibrating in her hands? She wasn’t sure. Holding it firmly she looked up at the arch. With a sharp call of warning the robin flew back to the tree. The story had begun.
Romanus had pulled his canoe up onto the muddy bank amongst a line of other craft of different shapes and sizes which had been left there, and he headed up towards the cluster of houses, some large, some smaller, which formed the centre of the college. Mora’s house was further on, higher up on the slope of one of the lesser hills amongst rows of other small circular huts, cells where each individual student, priest and priestess lived and studied and prayed. He glanced round nervously. He had known the men and women of this college for most of his thirteen years, but the place still filled him with awe when he came across to the island. This was one of the most sacred places in the world, a centre of learning where students came from every corner of the land and even from across the ocean. At its centre on the great Tor was the sanctuary dedicated to the god of the otherworld, Gwyn ap Nudd; beneath the hill was the entrance to his kingdom. Tiptoeing in his efforts not to draw attention to himself, he dodged past the huts of the college servants and between the animal pens to climb the slopes towards the trees. Mora’s little house stood there, on its own, in the shelter of an old oak tree. He could see the first golden leaves of autumn had fallen and scattered on the reed roof. There was no smoke filtering up through the reeds to show she was at home. His heart sank. ‘Mora?’ The boy stood outside and cleared his throat nervously. ‘Mora, are you there?’
Silence.
He stepped forward and pulled aside the heavy curtain which hung across the doorway. The interior of the house was dark. It smelled smoky from the fire, but also of something else. Rich herbs. To his intense disappointment he could see that the hearth was empty and cold. He glanced up to where the bunches of herbs she was drying for her medicines hung from the roof beams. They moved slightly in the draught from the doorway as he held the curtain aside, peering in. Above them the roof was stained black from the smoke of her fire.
‘Romanus?’ A sharp voice behind him made him start. He dropped the curtain and jumped backwards. ‘Cynan!’
The young priest smiled at him, his warm green eyes friendly. ‘Mora has gone to visit the settlements. She won’t be back for several days.’ He saw the boy’s face fall. ‘Is something wrong? Is it Petra?’ The men and women of the druid college had come to know the Roman family who lived on the small island in the fen between Ynys yr Afalon and the lowest slopes of the Meyn Dyppa very well in the thirteen years since they had come to the area. They lived very near a small deserted sacred island where he himself often went to meditate and pray alone at the isolated little temple to the gods of the marsh and waters of the mere. The plight of their beautiful daughter had touched all their hearts. One or two of them had become especial friends, and Cynan, Mora’s close companion, training to be a seer and diviner, the man she would probably one day marry, was one of them. He often came with Mora on her visits to their homestead and the whole family had in their turn become fond of him.
Romanus nodded. ‘She cries in her sleep with the pain and her joints are swelling again. Mora is the only one who can soothe her. She tries to be brave and she never complains, but Mora is not due to come for several weeks and the medicine is nearly finished.’ The boy bit his lip. He adored his big sister; her anguish hurt him as though the pain were his own.
Cynan sighed. ‘I wish I could help. I tell you what, we’ll go to Addedomaros and ask him. I am sure he can give you some medicine to help until Mora returns. The moment she comes back I will ask her to come across to your house.’ He smiled kindly as he saw Romanus’s hesitation. The senior healer druid on the island was a formidable man. He could quite understand the boy’s reluctance to approach him, though he knew that for Petra he would dare anything.
Romanus squared his shoulders. ‘You will come with me to ask him?’
Cynan nodded. ‘You know I will.’
The healer’s lecture hall was at the centre of the settlement which served the sanctuary. He was standing at a table, lit by several lamps, and round him stood a group of students, their faces shadowed and intense in the flickering light. They were all studying the selection of bowls and jars on the table in front of them, and the heavy mortar in the centre into which one of their number was carefully measuring some dark brown liquid from a bottle. It smelled bitter and corrosive.
Addedomaros glanced up. ‘Cynan? We have a visitor I see.’ The old man’s white hair and beard were neatly trimmed, his well-worn, patched robe freshly laundered. At first sight there was nothing to show that this man was one of the most powerful healers in all the Pretannic Isles.
Romanus was standing a little behind Cynan. He met the man’s eyes nervously. ‘My sister is ill again, Father Addedomaros.’
The old man nodded. ‘I feared as much. And Mora is not here?’
Cynan shook his head.
‘She has gone to the mainland with Yeshua?’ Addedomaros asked. He gestured sharply at the young man with the bottle, who hastily stopped pouring, put it down and re-stoppered it.
Cynan nodded reluctantly. ‘He is keen to see everything she does.’
‘He is here to learn as well as teach.’
The older man spoke gently but there was a slight note of reproach in his voice. ‘It was her father’s wish she mentor him, Cynan.’
Cynan looked down at his feet. ‘Could you make up something for Romanus to take back with him?’ he asked after a moment.
‘Of course. Sylvia will make it up.’ Addedomaros glanced across at one of the students. The girl looked horrified at being singled out so peremptorily. ‘Willow and ash bark in equal quantities. With some birch leaf and burdock,’ he commanded. ‘And add some elderberries.’ He glanced at Cynan. ‘Should you be at your studies?’
Cynan nodded.
‘Then go. We will see that Romanus has his medicine.’
It did not take long. Clutching the flask to his chest Romanus raced back to his canoe and stowing the precious liquid in the bow he pushed off, the water ice-cold around his ankles, the mud soft between his toes as he hauled the heavy boat off the bank and into the deeper water. Leaping in, he seized his paddle and drove the dugout round threading his way through the reeds back towards the shore of the mainland. A pair of pelicans, landing heavily in the water near him, distracted him for a moment and so he did not notice the tall man waiting for him. Only when he had dragged the vessel up onto the grass and thrown a rope around a tree trunk to make sure it was safe did he look up and see him. ‘Papa!’ His face lit up. Then, after a second searching glance, he stepped back, puzzled. The man standing looking down at him was at first sight so like his father it was uncanny. But this man was shorter. Where his father had adopted the style of the local people and wore his hair long and sported a fine moustache, this man was clean-shaven and his hair was short-cut, his clothes like those Romanus had seen down at Axiom when the traders had come in from the distant corners of the Empire.