Crybbe

CHAPTER II

This really was a rope dangling from the steepest part of the roof. Powys could just about reach its frayed end. 'Careful,' Rachel warned. 'You'll fall into the pit.'

The rope felt dry and stiff. 'This is a touch of black humour?'

'Well, it's obviously not the original rope, J.M. Somebody probably put it there to hold on to, while doing repairs or something. Creepy up here, though, isn't it?'

The attic was vast. There were small stabs of blinding daylight here and there, signifying holes in the roof or missing slates. Underfoot, jagged gaps through which you could see the boarded floor of the room beneath.

'I don't know why I brought you up here, really.' Rachel said, 'I usually avoid this bit – not that I'm superstitious.'

She was spotlit by two thin beams from roof-gaps. He remembered her standing next to him, naked, in the window last night, pale, slim, silvery. She'd brought a small flashlight, and he shone it to the upper extremity of the rope, where it was tied around a beam.

'How many poor bastards did the Hanging Sheriff dispose of up here?'

'Hard to say, he was only sheriff for a year. But you could be hanged for most things in those days. Stealing cattle or sheep, picking your nose in church…'

That's how Wort got his rocks off, do you think? Watching people dangle?'

Rachel wrinkled her nose in distaste. 'They say he was obsessed with what you might call the mechanics of mortality, what happens the moment the spirit leaves the body. Him and his friend, John Dee.'

'Not the John Dee?'

'The guy who was Elizabeth I's astrologer. His old family home's along the valley.'

'Of course it is,' said Powys, remembering. 'It's a farm now. I went over there when 1 was doing Golden Land. Somebody told me Dee had been into ancient sites and dowsing.'

'Well, he must have been into hanging, too.' Rachel said. 'If he was a mate of Michael Wort's.'

A jet of wind flew across the attic with a thin whine like a distant baby crying. The rope started to sway, very slowly.

Powys said, 'He was certainly into magic, but back in the sixteenth century magic and science were filed in the same drawer.'

He put out a hand to stop the rope swinging. He didn't like this rope with its dangling strands – somehow more disturbing than if there'd been an actual noose on the end. A sense of something recently severed.

'Anyway,' said Rachel, 'the last hanging up here was Wort's own. There was some sort of peasants' revolt in the town, and one night they all gathered outside wielding flaming torches and threatening to burn the place down unless he came out.'

'We know you're in there…' Powys said flippantly, still holding the rope, not feeling at all flippant.

'So he shuffled up here and topped himself. That's one story. Another says there was a secret tunnel linking this place with Crybbe church and he escaped.'

'Where was he buried?'

'I don't know,' Rachel said. 'I never really thought about it. Probably at some crossroads with a stake through his heart, wouldn't you think? Naturally, they say he haunts the place – or rather his dog does.'

'This place?'

The town. The outskirts. The quiet lanes at sunset. Over the years, according to Max, people have claimed to come face to face with this big black dog with glowing eyes. And then they die, of course. Like in The Hound of the Baskervilles.'

Powys took his hand away from the rope, and it began to swing again, very gently.

'Rachel, luv,' he said, 'can you hear voices?'

'Shit.' Rachel moved to the stairs. 'Nobody was supposed to be here for another hour.'

She went swiftly down the steps, Powys following, not wanting to be left alone up here, where Rachel believed the only danger was the unstable floor. Blessed are the sceptics. For they shall be oblivious of the numinous layers, largely unaffected by the dreary density of places, unbowed by the dead-weight of ancient horror.

While people like me, he thought, would no more come up here alone than pop into a working abattoir to shelter from the rain.

Only a short way down the stairs, Rachel disappeared.

Powys shone the torch down the twisting stone steps. The beam just reached to the great oak door at the bottom.

'Rachel!' He felt panic in his throat, like sandpaper. There was a creak to his left; he spun round and the beam found a shadowed alcove he hadn't noticed on the way up here.

Suddenly, white light blasted him and he hid his eyes behind an arm.

'This,' Rachel said, from somewhere, 'is the only part of the house I really like.'

'What's known as a prospect chamber.'

The window directly facing them, almost floor to ceiling, was without glass. In fact, it wasn't really a window, simply a gap between two ivy-matted gables. A rusting iron bar was cemented into the gap at chest-height.

The prospect chamber was tiny, too small for any furniture. But it had a view.

Powys's eyes widened.

He saw they were directly above the cobbled forecourt. Then there were the two gateposts and then the straight road through the wood. Over the tops of the trees he could see the weathercock on the church tower.

Without the wood, the town would be at his feet.

And everything – the gateway, the road, the church – was in a dead straight line.

He'd seen this view before.

In fact, if he turned and looked over his shoulder…

He did turn and looked only into blackness.

But if he could see through the walls of the house, what he would see behind him, following the same dead straight line… would be the Tump.

'Is this opening as old as the house?'

'I presume so,' Rachel said. 'Spectacular, isn't it?'

'Which means Wort had it built. Maybe this is why John Dee came here, nothing to do with the bloody hangings. Rachel, have you ever actually seen a ley-line?"

'This?'

'It's textbook. In fact…' He leaned across the iron bar, not pushing it because it didn't look too steady. This is the strongest evidence I've seen that the ley system was recognized in Elizabethan times. We know that John Dee occasionally came back to his old home and during those times he studied dowsing and investigated old churches and castle sites. He called it, in his records and his letters, treasure hunting. But what kind of treasure, Rachel? You know, what I think..

He stopped. There were the voices again.

'Humble,' Rachel said. 'And somebody else.'

Powys's stomach contracted painfully.

'I don't think Humble actually got round to apologizing to you, did he?' said Rachel.

'l owe him one.'

'Don't even contemplate it. He's a very nasty person. Ah, they were waiting for Max.'

The black Ferrari hit the gravel with an emphatic crunch. Humble stepped out and opened the driver's door. Andy Boulton-Trow was with him.

'I don't like the company he keeps either,' Powys said.

'Humble? Or Boulton-Trow?'

'Either.'

Rachel said, 'Is there something I don't know about you and Boulton-Trow?'

Joey goes round the Bottle Stone,

The Bottle Stone, the Bottle Stone,

Joey goes round the Bottle Stone,

Ana he goes round…

'Hold it!'

They all look at Andy.

'It's widdershins,' he says.

'What?' says Ben.

'Widdershins. Anticlockwise. You're going round the wrong way, Joe.'

'Why?'

'Because that's what you have to do. I was watching a bunch of kids. It's traditional. Widdershins, OK?'

You shrug, but you aren't entirely happy about this. Old Henry Kettle gets up, turns his back and walks off, down towards the river.

'OK,' Ben says. 'Start again.'

Sod it. Only a game You start to tramp slowly around the stone. There's a smile on your face because what you're thinking about is how much you love Rose and how glad you are that they managed to get her name on the cover.