Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits

PHOENIX

PETER DICKINSON

Summer 1990

Ellie came into the story very late on. It happened because she was oddly fascinated by the wood. Not that it was very different to look at from any of the several patches of woodland in the enormous grounds of the great country house, some of them really big—forests almost—others no more than a couple of dozen trees. This one was in between, lying in a wide dip in the rolling parkland, on one side of the picnic area, with the house itself in a similar dip on the other side.

Ellie, as usual, finished her lunch long before the others, and rose.

ʺWhere are you off to?ʺ said her mother.

ʺCan I go and have a look at that wood?ʺ

ʺWhat about it?ʺ

Her brothers glanced up from their Game Boys.

ʺIt’s a wood,ʺ said Jim. ʺThat’s enough for Ellie.ʺ

ʺLots of mouldy old trees,ʺ said Bob.

ʺIt looks interesting,ʺ said Ellie. ʺI want to know what it is. I think there’s a notice board by the gate.ʺ

ʺOh, all right,ʺ said her mother. ʺStay in sight. Don’t be too long. I’ll wait for you here.ʺ

The notice said

PRIVATE

Dave’s Wood

Conservation Area

Nature trails 2-5 p.m., week-ends only. Tickets at East Gate.

School parties by arrangement. Call 731 4492

Ellie made a note of the number.

The gate was locked. There was a solid-looking fence, high as a man, running in either direction. She walked along it to the right, peering into the darkness under the trees. The wood was full of bird-song. Apart from that, she couldn’t see anything to make it special for anyone else, but, yes, some of the trees did seem to be really old, and for her that was deeply fascinating. It made her skin crawl to think how long they had stood there while people had come and gone. As the fence curved away she looked back to the picnic area, where Dad and the boys were getting to their feet. Mum was looking towards her. Ellie waved. Mum waved back and settled to her book. That was all right. She’d be happy to sit there reading all afternoon. It was Dad and her brothers who wanted to do stuff. Ellie walked on.

She was watching a jay hunt for grubs along a dead branch when the yobs caught her. She worked out later that they must have seen her coming from some way off and lain in wait for her, and then she’d got it dead right for them, dead wrong for herself. She’d actually stopped at a place where a kink in the line of the fence hid her from the picnic area. The first she knew about them was the jay’s wild alarm-cackle, and then a tap on her shoulder.

ʺHi, babe,ʺ said a boy’s voice, trying to sound like a man’s.

Her heart bounced. She started to turn. A hand clamped across her mouth as she tried to scream. She bit it. The boy cursed, but merely shifted his grip so she couldn’t bite then grabbed her right wrist and twisted the arm up behind her back.

ʺGrab her pack, then,ʺ he muttered. ʺWhat you waiting for?ʺ

Another boy—so there were two of them—started pulling the shoulder-strap of her satchel down her left arm. She wrestled with them, sobbing, trying to kick out, trip one of them up somehow.

ʺStop that, you lot! Lay off!ʺ said a different kind of voice. A kid’s too, but even and confident. It seemed to come from the other side of the fence, over on her left now after the struggle.

A moment of startled silence. A snarl of curses cut short by the flare of a photoflash, bright in the corner of her eye. Ellie sensed the sudden uncertainty in her captors’ grip and wrenched her head free and yelled, gulped breath, and yelled again at the top of her voice.

The hands let go of her. By the time she’d turned to face them, the kids who’d attacked her were scuttling away, holding arms in front of their faces.

Shuddering and sick, she turned again. A boy was watching her from the other side of the fence. He looked younger than she was, somewhere about ten, and concerned for her but extraordinarily calm, as if what had just happened was something he dealt with every day.

ʺYou all right, miss?ʺ he said. ʺYou got someone with you?ʺ

ʺMy . . . my . . .ʺ

An absurd apprehension overcame her that her mother had heard the scream and was now running down the path towards the wood. Please not! It was all right now. If she found out . . . and Dad would be even worse. . . .

She darted away from the fence, far enough to see. No, she was still reading, and didn’t even look up. Still trembling, Ellie came back to the fence, noticing now the expensive-looking camera slung round the boy’s neck. He was a short but solid-looking kid with steady, dark brown eyes.

ʺWow!ʺ she said. ʺLucky for me you were there! With that, too!ʺ

Her voice came out as a gasping whisper.

ʺReckon so,ʺ he said calmly. ʺPhotographin’ that jay you was watching. Wonderful thing, that camera. You goin’ to be all right, miss? Keep an eye out for you, shall I, till you’re back with your folk?ʺ

ʺOh . . . yes. Yes, I suppose so. I’ll be all right. . . . I’m fine. . . . Er . . . how do I come on a nature trail? Is it just schools, or can anybody . . . ?ʺ

ʺBest you call Welly. Tell ’er about you, shall I? Got the number? Give us a name, then?ʺ

ʺMe? I’m Ellie. What’s yours?ʺ

ʺDave. Welly and Ellie. She’ll like that.ʺ

ʺIs this your wood?ʺ

ʺName runs in the family, manner of speaking. But you call Welly. Good-bye then, miss.ʺ

He nodded to her and turned away.

In a way the strangeness of the encounter was a help, for as she walked slowly back towards the picnic area, Ellie found herself puzzling about it, instead of living over and over again the horror of what had happened. What a funny kid! It wasn’t just his calmness and assurance, the way he’d dealt with those louts, or the very odd way he’d put everything he said, or his accent—she wasn’t good at accents, but she was pretty sure he was English, only talking the sort of English you might hear a couple of old guys, real country people, talking in a village shop. But underneath all those surface things something stranger yet, far stranger.

Her mother was still reading when she reached the picnic area, and closed her book with obvious reluctance, marking the place with a parking ticket. ʺYour hair’s a bit of a mess, darling. Was it as interesting as you hoped?ʺ

ʺThey do nature trails. I’d love to go on one. Can we come again?ʺ

ʺI expect so. The boys are mad on that stupid railway.ʺ

Ellie called the number that evening, as soon as she’d finished her homework. A woman’s voice answered. It sounded a little shaky.

ʺHello?ʺ

ʺI’m supposed to ask for Welly.ʺ

ʺSpeaking. And you must be Ellie. You want to come on a nature trail?ʺ

ʺIf that’s all right.ʺ

ʺWell, so many people ask. . . . Is there anything you particularly want to look at?ʺ

ʺOh . . . I’m interested in the birds and animals, of course, but really it’s the trees. You’ve got some lovely old ones, haven’t you?ʺ

ʺIndeed, yes. In that case . . . it’ll have to be in the morning, so get here as early as you can. We do parties in the afternoons. Just call me the evening before.ʺ

ʺThat’s wonderful, if you’re sure. Oh, wait, please. I wanted to say thank you to Dave. He was terrific! I’d have been in a real mess without him.ʺ

ʺYes, he told me. I’m thankful he was around. I’m afraid you can’t talk to him now—he’s trying to photograph an owl. But I’ll tell him. Oh, just one thing. Did you tell your parents what happened?ʺ

ʺEr, no, I thought . . . but I suppose . . . I mean, those boys might—ʺ

ʺThat’s all right. I called the security people and they picked them up at the gate. They’ll deal with it. They may want Dave’s photograph, but he says your face is completely hidden. With luck you won’t be involved. But perhaps you’d better bring your mother at least as far as the gate this time, so that she can decide for herself if we’re safe people to leave you with. The tour takes about three hours, tell her.ʺ

ʺAll right. You’ll say thank you to Dave for me, won’t you?ʺ

ʺOf course.ʺ

Welly and Dave were waiting for her at the gate into the wood. Welly was in an electric wheel-chair, an old woman with white hair and wrinkled and blotchy skin. She had a really nice smile. Ellie couldn’t guess how old she was—older, she thought, than either of her own grannies. Welly’s hands trembled slightly all the time, but her eyes were bright with life. Dave seemed just the same as before, about ten, a bit short for that age, but stockily built without being fat, and with that strange, calm look as if nothing that happened was ever going to faze him. They all shook hands.

ʺThis is extremely good of you,ʺ said Mum. ʺWe bought a ticket at the gate. Two pounds. It didn’t seem nearly enough to pay for your time. You said three hours, Ellie told me.ʺ

ʺOur time is our own, and we can do what we wish with it. I assure you, Mrs. Ford, it’ll be a pleasure. We are both passionate about our wood, and Ellie seems really interested. I hope she can stay the whole three hours.ʺ

ʺYes, of course, if that’s really all right. I’ve made up a picnic for her.ʺ

ʺWe wouldn’t have let her starve, you know.ʺ

Mum laughed uncertainly. Ellie guessed that she didn’t know what to make of Welly, any more than Ellie did of Dave. But it was only twenty minutes to the library, so she’d get over two hours’ book-choosing and book chat. And everyone was happy.

ʺDave will take you round,ʺ said Welly. ʺWe’ve got two parties this afternoon, and I get tired stupidly soon these days.ʺ

It wasn’t a trail at all. They left the marked path almost at once and checked the whole wood out, almost tree by tree. The birds and animals seemed not to notice them, even when they climbed an immense old oak to which Dave had attached steps and handholds so that he could keep an eye on a bat colony that roosted in the hollow of its trunk, as well as the nest of a green woodpecker in a rotted limb. Astonishingly, the bird stayed on its nest, untroubled by the flash, with a chick’s head poking up beside its wing, while Ellie took several photographs.

ʺUsed to me,ʺ Dave explained.

Unlike normal guides, he talked very little, just showed her things and let her decide for herself, though he answered her questions willingly enough, for instance when she asked how long the bat colony had been there.

ʺLet’s see now,ʺ he said slowly. ʺGreat storm, eighteen ninety-seven, that’s what took ’er top out. Give ’er time to rot ’ollow, forty, fifty year, maybe. An’ the bats were there, definite, come nineteen seventy, and maybe twenty year earlier.

ʺDessay it’ll be in the diaries,ʺ he added after a pause, as if by way of explanation that he hadn’t been working it out from memory.

ʺI trust you’ve had a good time,ʺ said Welly, when they returned to the cottage in the clearing near the middle of the wood, where they’d left her over two hours before.

ʺOh, it was wonderful!ʺ said Ellie. ʺI wish it had gone on for ever! And you’ve got two parties this afternoon. That’s six hours.ʺ

ʺParties don’t get three hours,ʺ said Dave.

Welly paused from ladling stew into three bowls and looked at him.

ʺShe’d do,ʺ he said. ʺGiven she’s willin’.ʺ

Welly returned to her ladling. She seemed not to notice the way her hands trembled. Dave carried the bowls to the table.

ʺBest you sit there,ʺ he told Ellie. ʺJust let old Vick take a sniff—she won’t ’urt. Likes to know who’s what, an’ she don’t see much no longer. All right, girl!ʺ

Ellie sat. An old spaniel heaved herself up from beside the stove, limped across and sniffed at the hand Ellie offered.

ʺVick the Fourth, she is,ʺ said Dave as the dog went back to her snooze. ʺ’Nother name as runs in the family.ʺ

That sounded like a private joke. Ellie didn’t get it.

ʺTake your jersey off if you want to, my dear,ʺ said Welly. ʺI’m afraid I need it warmer than most people can stand. Now, you can have your picnic if you prefer, but this is very good. Dave makes a lovely stew. The rabbits are out of the wood.ʺ

Rabbit stew! More and more Ellie felt she was in some kind of dream. Mum could do without cooking any more than she had to, so mostly at home they ate microwaved stuff out of packets. Mum would have been horrified by the mere idea of rabbit, too. But here she was with her mouth already watering at the smell, in this wonderful old cottagy room with its log fire burning on the huge open hearth and its Aga and its long-lived-in feel, and this strange, strange couple.

Welly spun her chair deftly back to the table. Dave took a large bib out of a drawer and tied it round her neck, then sat opposite Ellie and hacked three chunks of bread from what looked like a home-made loaf.

ʺNow,ʺ said Welly, ʺyou’re right. Not everyone that calls and asks to visit us gets this kind of treatment. The fact is that we have been looking for someone like you, to help us. This wood is rather special. You’ll have seen at the gate that it’s a conservation area, but there are plenty of those these days. What makes it special is that it has been one now for almost a hundred years, and, uniquely, diaries have been kept of everything that happens in the wood, including an annual tree census and a five-year census of all the wild creatures that live here. It is now time for both. I can no longer do my share, and Dave can’t do it all, so we need a helper. We could no doubt find one by advertising, but that would mean an adult and there are various things against that. They’d probably have ideas of their own, rather than being content to do it our way—ʺ

ʺNever work level along of a kid,ʺ said Dave, ʺ’lowing I might maybe know best. An’ the birds an’ animals, they’re used to me—saw that, didn’t you? You won’t bother ’em, neither, not like a grown man’s going to.ʺ

ʺThat’s certainly the case,ʺ said Welly. ʺIt makes the task so much easier if the creatures don’t keep hiding from you. But at the same time, any helper has to know what she’s looking at, as you appear to do—ʺ

ʺKnew a beech from an ’ornbeam,ʺ said Dave.

ʺSo, my dear, are you prepared to help, if it can be arranged?ʺ said Welly.

ʺOh, yes please!ʺ said Ellie.

That was how she came into the story, and so late on. From their very first meeting, she had felt that there was some kind of a mystery about Dave, and a story to go with it, and as time went by, she became more and more curious, but she was afraid to ask in case they were offended and she wouldn’t be able to come again. On her fourth visit, her resolve cracked.

By now it was the school holidays and she had come for the middle of a week, three whole days with the two nights in between. This also meant that Dave didn’t have to be careful not to show himself on weekdays. Officially, he lived with his father in London during the week and went to school there, then came up and stayed with his grandmother at week-ends and in the holidays, while his father went mountain-climbing. Since there were no school parties to be guided round, on weekdays he and Ellie had the wood to themselves. They spent the whole of the first day working through a single section of it, doing the trees systematically, filling in the forms that Welly had prepared for them and adding the animals and birds as they came across them. Ellie would do one tree and Dave a neighbouring one, so that Ellie could call to him if she needed help. In the evening Welly entered the results on her PC.

Ellie slept in a small room at the top of the stairs. She guessed that it was Dave’s, though it was far too tidy to feel like a boy’s room—like her brothers’ at any rate—and that he had moved in with Welly on the other side of the landing so that she could have it.

Next day they went on with the census and were busy and happy until late in the afternoon, when they were measuring the girth of an oak tree. This was the immense old fellow in whose hollow branch Ellie had photographed the woodpecker’s nest. It had in fact lost more than that single limb, and they had both spent almost an hour up in its crown recording the progress of its decay. Now their joined tapes met round the base. Ellie held their ends together on one side, and Dave drew them taut on the other and read off the inches. He couldn’t be bothered with centimetres, he told her.

ʺI don’t know,ʺ said Ellie as she straightened. ʺSomehow it doesn’t seem to matter that it’s lost its top. It’s still the emperor of the wood. But that must’ve been a storm and a half, Dave.ʺ

ʺThat it was,ʺ said Dave. ʺThat it—ʺ

If he hadn’t caught himself but just carried smoothly on, Ellie mightn’t have noticed the repetition, or grasped what it must mean. As it was, she froze for a moment, then turned slowly and stared at him. He waited, unreadable as ever.

ʺYou were there, weren’t you?ʺ she said. ʺIt was almost a hundred years ago, and you were there. How old are you really, Dave?ʺ

ʺOne ’undred and ninety this New Year past,ʺ he replied, untroubled. ʺGettin’ on a bit, you might say.ʺ

Midwinter 1899/1900

On the last night of the old century, or the first of the new one, Dave Moffard was woken by a single tremendous crash of thunder. Outside the wind roared through the trees of the wood and whined between his two chimney-pots like a man whistling through a gap in his front teeth. If there was rain, the noise of the wind drowned it. A little later he caught the whiff of smoke borne on the same fierce wind.

Wonder what’s caught it, he thought. Timber of some kind—leaf-litter burnt with a sourer smell. There were a few dead trees in the wood, but nothing he’d have guessed would catch that easy. Though you never know with lightning.

Must be past midnight, he thought. ’Ello there, Nineteen-hundred. Never reckoned I’d live to see you in. ’Appy birthday, Dave Moffard.

He fell asleep and slept on until less than an hour before the late midwinter dawn. For a man his age, Dave didn’t sleep too bad.

As on all other mornings, he first lit his lamp and riddled the ashes out of the stove, opened the dampers, fed in a few small logs and a couple of larger ones and put the kettle on for a pot of tea and his shaving water. For breakfast he had porridge cooked overnight in the oven, and then a morsel of ham with the tea, chewing slow and careful because his teeth didn’t fit that well. He shaved—harder to do these days, with his left eye so clouded and his right beginning to go the same way—then fed the stove again, put the tea-pot on it to stew a bit more, half-closed the dampers and looked out of the door. Dawn just breaking on a cold, clear day, but dry. No rain seemed to have fallen, then, after all that bluster. The wind had dropped too, to not much more than a breeze. It was still threaded with smoke.

ʺLet’s go an’ ’ave a look then, shall we?ʺ he said, talking not in fact to himself but to Fitz, an old setter three years dead and not replaced because it wouldn’t have been fair on a young dog, with Dave likely to snuff it first. They never really get over it.

He fastened his boots, heaved himself into his greatcoat, shoved on a hat and a double pair of gloves, wool first and then thick leather, picked up his stick and went out. Time was he’d have taken a gun, but his eyes weren’t up to it now, nothing like. He’d slowed down disappointingly quickly in the last few months—there’d been days when he’d barely put his nose out of doors—but he was feeling noticeably better this morning.

He moved upwind at a steady shuffle, leaning on his stick to ease his right leg. Well before he reached it, he guessed the source of the smoke. The Cabinet House. Must’ve caught it good and proper. Yes, there it was, no more than a shell of walls, roof fallen in, nothing left of timbers and partitions except ash and embers on the ground and an odd reek of something sweet and sticky drifting on the breeze. Hundred and twenty years, getting on, it had stood here. Dave knew that because the date was carved into the lintel stone.

Enter and wonder—1781.

It was the fifth earl who’d built it, to house his collection. Pretty well all the earls had been mad on something or other, and the fifth had been mad on collecting. Used to go travelling round Europe and beyond with a couple of dozen servants to look after him, buying up anything that caught his fancy, provided it was odd enough. Built the Cabinet House, all little fancy turrets and spires and what have you, to hold his collection in special glass cases. Then he’d got a fever—Egypt or somewhere—and died, and the sixth earl had come along, not interested in collecting but mad on shooting, and planted up Dave’s wood for pheasant-cover, all among grand old oak trees—been there hundreds of years, some of them. Had to have a gamekeeper, of course, so he’d built a house for the fellow—Dave’s house now, because he’d been gamekeeper here following on from his father and his grandfather. So all his long life, there the Cabinet House had stood while the wood grew round it, full of its knick-knacks—dragons’ teeth, locks of mermaids’ hair, funny-shaped nuts, bottles from pharaohs’ tombs, that sort of rubbish. Dave was sad to see it go. Might’ve lasted me out, he thought.

Forty years back, the eighth earl—book mad, he’d been—had fetched some of his scholar friends along to look the lot through, and they’d gone off with anything worth while for their museums. There hadn’t been anything left to be sad about, really, except memories.

Dave stood in the doorway gazing vaguely over the pile of ash with the remnants of heat beating up into his face. Warmin’ my old carcass through, he thought. Doin’ something useful at last.

Sudden as a blink, almost, the sun rose, slotting its rays through a gap where a fallen tree had brought down several of its neighbours. There was a movement in the ashes a little way over to Dave’s right. He peered at it with his good eye and decided it was more than just an eddy of wind stirring the surface. Something underneath. He scuffed the fringe of ashes aside, took a half pace forward, gripped his stick by the ferrule and reached out, trying to rake the thing towards him with the crook.

Poor beast, he thought. What a way to go. Put you out of your sufferin’, shall I?

He took a quick stride forward, this time onto hot embers, thrust the crook into the heart of the heap, hooked it round something more solid than ash and dragged it free. It cheeped plaintively as it came, disentangled itself from the crook, and stood, shaking the ashes from its feathers. It was a baby bird, about the size of an adult rook, its eyes newly opened, its body covered with astonishing luminous yellow down that seemed to ripple with the heat of the fire, and the tiny fledge feathers along its wings a darker, almost orange gold. The beginning of a scarlet crest sprouted from the bald scalp. Dave had never seen anything like it before. It was an absurd creature, but wonderfully appealing. It seemed unharmed, though the crook of his stick had blackened perceptibly during its brief raking in the embers.

Nor did it seem to be bothered by the heat even now. It stayed where it was, gazing imperiously round the ruin, seeming wholly untroubled by the human presence, and finally gazed directly up at Dave with its head cocked a little to one side. Well, what now? It asked him, plain as speaking.

Dave was too interested to be amazed. Even in a very ordinary bit of English woodland like this there were enough amazing creatures to last a fellow a lifetime—one more didn’t make that much difference.

ʺUp to you,ʺ he told it. ʺBut if ’eat’s what you’re used to, you’re goin’ to catch your death stayin’ out ’ere. Couple more days and this lot’s goin’ to be chilling off good an’ proper. If you want to come ’ome with me, that’s all right. You can sit on the stove if you’ve a mind. In the stove, for all I care. But you’re goin’ to be too ’ot for me to carry by the look of you, and I’m not havin’ you burnin’ my gloves, and I’ll need my stick. Let me see now. You go back an’ keep yourself warm while I see what I can fix.ʺ

The bird cocked its head to the other side and settled down in the ashes, shuffling itself down into their warmth. Dave poked around outside the wall and found a half-burnt beam that must have come from immediately under the eaves, to judge by the section of cast-iron guttering still attached to it. The timber had smouldered away enough for him to be able to lever one of the iron gutter supports free with his stick. He dragged it across the clearing to a molehill where he kicked and scuffed it in the loose earth until it was cool enough for him to pick up without scorching his gloves. He carried it back to the doorway and with some difficulty knelt and, propping himself on his stick, leaned as far out as he could, with the back-bar of the gutter-support just touching the ashes. Lifeless though they looked, the residual heat rose, roasting, into his face.

ʺWell, get on with it,ʺ he gasped. ʺCan’t stay like this more’n a second or two.ʺ

The bird didn’t hesitate but shrugged itself clear of the ashes, waddled over and climbed on to the support. With even more of an effort than when he’d knelt, Dave got to his feet. He stood for a moment, swaying in darkness, with his heart battering at his ribcage, but when his vision cleared he saw that the bird was still clinging grimly to the gutter-support. He also saw that the life in it was like the fire in a live coal, and that if he didn’t get it back to his stove very soon, it would die.

By the time he reached his door, he was reeling and gasping again, and a pulse of pain had begun to flood across his chest with every thump of his heart. He nudged the latch up, barged into the room and across to the fireplace, dropped his stick, grabbed the mantelshelf for support and lowered the bird onto the stove. It flopped off the support and huddled itself down onto the hot metal, its hooked beak tapping feebly at the lid.

Dave dropped to his knees, almost toppling clean over, but caught and steadied himself. He groped in the hearth, found the lever bar and, still kneeling, hooked it into its slot and dragged the lid clear. The bird scrabbled itself over the edge and dropped out of sight.

Dave closed the lid and with a long gasp allowed himself to collapse forward onto his gloved hands. He stayed there, panting, with his head hanging down between his arms, until his heartbeat eased and the pain in his chest receded. He found he’d been muttering to himself between the heavy, indrawn breaths.

ʺNear goners, the both of us. . . . Both of us perishin’ near goners. . . . What the devil for . . . did I want to go doin’ a fool thing like that?ʺ

At length he crawled across the floor and pushed the door shut. He crawled back to the stove, dragged off his gloves, found his stick and used it and the arm of his chair to haul himself to his feet. With shaking hands, he poured out a mug of tea. It was now stewed until it would have tanned hide, which was how he liked it. He added sweetened condensed milk to cancel the bitterness and, still in his coat and boots, settled into his chair. He sipped slowly, thinking about the bird.

One of the knick-knacks in the Cabinet ’Ouse, he decided. Old earl picked up an egg or two in his travels, didn’t he? Maybe this one needed a bit more ’eat than most to get it goin’, same way sycamore seed needs a bit of frost. Funny all those scholars comin’, and still missin’ it—kickin’ thesselves in their graves, I shouldn’t wonder. Any road, I’ll be keepin’ this to myself for now. Not tellin’ nobody about it, that I’m not.

From time to time, he heard the bird fidgeting around inside the stove, but without any sounds of distress, so he left it alone. Normally when he fed the fire, provided it was drawing well, he just pitched a couple of logs in without looking and put the lid back on, but obviously he’d have to stop doing that now, so he fetched the tongs, chose a couple of logs, lifted the lid and peered inside. The bird had rearranged the burning wood to its liking and was now huddled down into a regular nest, just like a wild bird out in the wood.

ʺWatch your ’ead, sonny,ʺ he called, and lowered a log in with the tongs. The bird looked up as it came and nudged it into position. The same with the second log. Quite the little Lordship, thought Dave as he closed the lid. But I could do with a creature about the house again. Been missin’ that since old Fitz died. Better be gettin’ a few more logs in. Wonder what it likes to eat.

So, on the first day of the first year of the new century, which was also the hundred and first year of his own life, Dave Moffard embarked on a fresh relationship with a fellow creature.

For the first couple of weeks, he didn’t see much of the bird. It was very little trouble. Regularly, morning and evening, it would cheep loudly, and he’d lift the lid of the stove, reach in with the tongs and lift it gently out onto the top. It would strut to the edge, twist smartly round, raise its rapidly lengthening tail plumes and excrete forcibly over the rim, jet-black tarry pellets that stuck wherever they landed and hardened like rock as they cooled. After the first couple of times, he stood ready with a spare bit of board to catch them.

It then stayed in the open for several minutes, gazing round at the room with an air both fascinated and baffled, as though Dave’s cottage were the last place on earth where it had expected to find itself. This gave him a chance to study it properly.

It was fledging fast. As the true feathers showed through the down, it became clear that they weren’t all going to be of the same glowing orange-gold as the primaries, but might be anything from a deep smoky amber to intense pale yellow—any of the colours, indeed, that you might see among the embers on an open hearth with a good fire going. It was also growing. Soon, he realised, it would be the size of a bantam, and he was going to have trouble getting it in and out of the stove. This despite the fact that it didn’t seem to eat anything. He’d tried offering it scraps the first few times it had appeared—bread crumbs, shreds of mutton, a beetle, a little of the buckwheat he used to keep for the pheasants and so on—but it hadn’t been interested. Then on the third morning it emerged with a live ember in its beak. Once it had relieved itself it laid the ember on the stovetop and used its beak to hammer it into fragments, which it then picked up and swallowed as neatly as a pigeon picking seed off fresh-sown tilth. When it had finished them, it stood and gazed at Dave with a bright, unblinking stare.

ʺAll right, sonny. Got you,ʺ he said, and the bird turned away, satisfied.

His gamekeeping had given Dave a wide experience of the intelligence of birds, from the idiocy of the pheasants he reared to the wiliness of some of their would-be predators, but even by the standards of magpies and jays he found this impressive.

He didn’t get a chance to report the loss of the Cabinet House until Tom Hempage dropped by four days after the fire with Dave’s weekly basket of provisions from the Estate Farm kitchen. The bird stayed out of sight and didn’t make a sound while Tom was in the room. He was under-gamekeeper so this was a busy season for him. Not that the tenth earl was specially interested in shooting—politics was his form of madness—but his New Year house party was a major event in the political calendar, and it was important to have sport to offer his guests. Dave’s wood was awkward for a lot of guns to shoot, so they’d been banging away elsewhere. Tom said he’d report the fire, but he doubted anybody would be by until the last of the gentry had left.

It was another fifteen days before anyone else came, and by then the bird was fully fledged and its mode of existence had undergone a marked change. It was as if the true feathers acted like some kind of overcoat, insulating it from the cold. Perhaps, too, it now had less heat to lose. Though warmer to the touch than any animal Dave knew of, it was no longer literally scorching. At any rate it had abandoned the inside of the stove and taken to perching on top of it during the day, and roosting on a ledge up the chimney, with the flue-pipe running close by for warmth. It could fly short distances from the very first, without any of the normal clumsiness of young birds learning the knack, but as if it already knew how and was limited only by its plumage not yet being fully developed. By now it was a splendid creature, a blazing and commanding presence, like a living embodiment of the sun. In his head Dave had already been calling it Sonny. Spell it either way, he thought. No disrespect. He began to be afraid that once it was fully grown it would decide that his cottage was nothing like grand enough for it and fly off to find its true destiny. Though he had known it less than three weeks, he would have minded that fully as much as he’d minded the death of old Fitz.

His visitor, when he came, was Mr. Askey, the estate manager. They went out together to inspect the ruins of the Cabinet House.

ʺStill getting about then?ʺ said Mr. Askey. ʺYou seemed a bit shaky last couple of times I came.ʺ

ʺ’Ad a bad go all through the back-end. Wasn’t sure I’d be lastin’ that long, to be honest with you. But I been feelin’ a deal better lately.ʺ

ʺLooking it too. But then you’ve never looked your age, anything like. . . . We took it, by the way, that you wouldn’t want a lot of palaver about you reaching your hundred.ʺ

ʺNo, sir. Tell you the truth, sir, I’ve not been easy about that. Mebbe I’ve been wrong all these years about ’memberin’ Trafal gar, eighteen-oh-five. Could’ve been Waterloo, mebbe. Eighteen-fifteen, weren’t it?ʺ

For the life of him Dave didn’t understand why he’d answered as he had. The time for making a fuss about his birthday was over, and anyway Mr. Askey wasn’t the sort to make a fuss without Dave’s say-so. They knew each other well, ever since Mr. Askey had been brought in by the ninth earl (mad on improvements) as his new manager, planning, among other things, to build a series of model cottages for all the estate workers. Mr. Askey had first visited Dave twenty years back to discuss moving him into one of these, had at once recognised his obvious dislike of the idea and had come up with a scheme that pleased everyone. Dave would stay where he was on a pension, but still taking care of his wood for the benefit of the occasional gentleman who wanted a bit of rough shooting rather than the big organised drives; the earl would have his model cottages with a new, dynamic head gamekeeper to see to the rest of the shooting. It had been Mr. Askey who’d organised various perks, such as the weekly provisions, as part and parcel of the pension. He was that kind of thoughtful. And from time to time he liked to drop by and talk about old times on the estate, usually because he needed to know how something had come to be the way it was, but often enough just because he was interested.

He was a good man, and a friend, and Dave didn’t like telling him less than the truth. Maybe that showed in his voice, judging by the sharp, considering glance Mr. Askey gave him before he grunted and walked on.

After that, though Mr. Askey continued to visit Dave, an unspoken constraint seemed to lie between them, not diminishing as the days and weeks, and then months, went by. Meanwhile Sonny throve. By the time the bluebells filled Dave’s wood, he was a magnificent bird, about the size of a peacock, though a far more graceful flier. On any clear morning, as soon as it was light, he would strut out of the door, flip himself up onto the hitching rail beside the porch, luxuriantly stretch his wings and then launch himself out and up to the topmost branches of the great old oak on the far side of the clearing. Once there, he turned east and waited for the sunrise, and as soon as the first rays flamed off his plumage he stretched his wings wide, as if to gather all the sunlight he could reach into himself, raised his head and sang.

The notes were about the same pitch as those of a pigeon or a dove, but this was no mere two-note call, repeated and repeated, but a true song, as elaborate and melodious as that of a thrush. Dave used to stop whatever he was doing simply to stand at his door and listen.

By this time Sonny was too large to get into the stove, so Dave tried offering him a shovelful of embers on the hearthstone. On dull days Sonny might nibble at them a bit, but at the first break in the clouds he would be out and away up into the tree-tops. After a while Dave came to the conclusion that he lived mainly on sunlight, but then, one murky day after several similar ones, with the smell of more rain coming already strong in the wind, he did his annual spring clean-up of the clearing, raking the fallen twigs and branches into a heap on his bonfire site and setting them alight. Sonny, who normally seemed to expect to have everything done for him, for once lent a hand, strutting around and gathering twigs into his beak and adding them to the pile. Then, once the fire was lit and the flames burst through, he hopped into the midst of them and nestled himself down, twisting this way and that like a blackbird having a dust-bath. The smoke, Dave noticed, had a curious spicy smell. Sonny spent all morning on the bonfire, and came out glossy with heat, not the smallest feather singed.

ʺFire an’ light,ʺ Dave told him. ʺFire an’ light. Them’s what you need, eh? I don’t know what we’re goin’ to do for you come winter-time, now you can’t fit into the stove no more.ʺ

By high summer Sonny was no longer confining himself to Dave’s wood. The first sure sign of this came when he floated down into the clearing one June dusk with a dead adder in his grasp, which he laid at Dave’s feet, just as a cat might bring a dead mouse home to show to its owner. He then carried the snake to the bonfire site, poked it in among the bits and pieces waiting to be burnt and piled more stuff on top of it. He flipped to the top of the pile, spread his wings, stretched his neck skyward and crowed, a sound nothing like his daybreak song, but one clear, long cry of triumph. Unkindled, the whole pile burst into flame. Sonny stayed in the middle of the blaze until the pile was embers.

ʺFull of surprises, aren’t you?ʺ Dave told him. ʺKemp Moor, that must’ve come from, that snake. Nine miles off if it’s an inch, and you won’t find adders anyplace else round here. On’y you best watch out ’ow you go gadding about. Anyone spots you, they’re goin’ to want to get ’old of you and stick you in a zoo.ʺ

He wasn’t in fact seriously worried about the possibility. For all his incandescent splendour, Sonny could be strangely difficult to see in full sunlight, even with a darker background, and became completely invisible against a clear sky. Just as any normal smokeless flame does, he seemed to be subsumed into the general glare. And even in murkier weather he was very good at concealing himself. Neither Tom Hempage nor Mr. Askey nor anyone else said anything about an exotic bird that had suddenly appeared on the estate.

From then on Sonny repeated this behaviour at least every other week. Only adders, apparently, would do, though there were plenty of grass-snakes actually on the estate. And he may have been looking for them further afield, as he twice spent a whole night away, not reappearing till the following evening. If there was nothing waiting to burn on the bonfire heap, he would build a pile for himself, so after the first two or three times Dave took to dragging bits of fallen timber home from his walks round the wood.

This pattern persisted all summer, until the leaves began to turn, the swifts had already gone and the swallows were gathering. The only slow change had been that as the days shortened, Sonny seemed to become even greedier for the sunlight. In any bright spell he spent his time at the top of the oak, sometimes slipping in and out of the cottage five or six times a day as the clouds came and went.

At the same time the pyres he built for himself became steadily larger. In dull weather he spent most of his time flitting round the wood finding dead branches and wrestling them free from their tree. More than once he came and fetched Dave to bring home something too heavy for him to drag, though it was remarkable what he could manage for himself. Then he let Dave break it up for him, but insisted on building the pyre himself, finishing with an elegant pyramid, neat as a wren’s nest, with a tunnel in the side into which he would insert the adder when he brought it home. Dave was fascinated by the whole procedure, though he had no idea what it meant.

By now Sonny was spending two or three nights away at a time searching for the adders. Dave became used to these absences and wasn’t worried. All the same he immediately recognised the day when Sonny finally left as being different, and by the time the morning hymn was over, Dave, listening from the porch, knew it for what it was. Though the hymn to the sunrise had varied from day to day, it had always been full of joy, joy like a leaping flame. This morning it was longer, slower, and suffused with the melancholy of fading embers. It was farewell. Farewell to the summer. Farewell to Dave. Like the swifts and the swallows, Sonny was heading south.

As soon as the hymn was over, Sonny came swooping down and straight in through the door of the cottage. Dave turned and followed, and found him perched on the arm of his chair. Slowly Dave sat, and they contemplated each other for a while.

ʺWell, good-bye, old fellow,ʺ said Dave. ʺBeen a real pleasure ’avin’ you around. And an honour, if you don’t mind me sayin’ so. Done me a power of good, you ’ave. I don’t know what I’ll do without you, but never you mind. I’ll find something. Not that I blame you. You’ve got to go where the sun goes. That’s where you belong. I wouldn’t want to keep you ’ere, supposin’ I could. It wouldn’t be right. Don’t you go frettin’ about me. I’ll be all right.ʺ

His voice had grown croaky by the time he finished, but he wasn’t ashamed. Sonny would understand.

Sonny stared at him for a little while, nodding his head up and down. Then he twisted his neck round, reached and neatly tweaked a feather out of his tail plumage and laid it on Dave’s lap.

ʺSomething to remember you by, eh?ʺ said Dave, utterly delighted. ʺThat’s nice of you, very nice indeed. I’d been hoping to find one of those come moult time, supposin’ you do that. Not that I’m going to forget you. Not a chance. . . . Well, you’ll want to be off, I suppose, and I’m not going to keep you. You’ve a long way to go.ʺ

Sonny hopped onto his shoulder as he rose, and let him carry him out. He hopped onto Dave’s offered wrist, gathered himself and leapt, wide winged. He swung out and up round the clearing, a blaze of brightness against the summer-weary foliage, and continued the rising spiral like a soaring hawk until the sunlight struck him and he vanished.

In one sense Dave missed Sonny dreadfully, more than he’d ever missed any of his dogs, even old Fitz. But at the same time he felt extremely fortunate to have been given such a season of wonder in his old age. Very few people, he was sure, could have had such luck. It hadn’t been anything he had been entitled to, let alone allowed to hang on to when the time came for him to lose it.

Furthermore, he had told Sonny the truth. The bird had done him a power of good. He felt in better heart than he had for years, and it needed no effort of will to do as he’d promised and find things to occupy his time. Two bits of good luck came his way. Tom Hempage, not normally one for chat, told him as if by way of gossip that the old bitch at the farm had whelped late, both in her life and in the year. As she was the best dog the farmer had ever had, he wasn’t willing to lose any of what was sure to be her last litter, but she hadn’t enough milk for all of them and they were looking for people to wean the pups and look after them until they were old enough to train. From the awkwardness of his manner Dave guessed he had been told to ask without seeming to, and this was the best he could do. Without thought, he said he’d be glad to take one on.

He got the last of the litter, a bitch, small even for a runt, proving his guess correct. The farmer would only have kept her for sentimental reasons. He wanted a home for her where she would be more of a house pet than anything that would one day make a working gundog.

ʺWe’ll show ’em, eh?ʺ Dave told the brindled scrap, and she looked up at the tone of his voice, the flop ears attempting to prick. A good sign, he thought. No reason she shouldn’t train. Though he didn’t expect to keep her beyond the spring if she turned out any good, he named her Vick, after a bitch he’d had seventy years back, when the Queen had still been just Princess Victoria. And she did what he’d wanted, keeping him busy enough, stopping him brooding about Sonny. For that reason, and against all his principles—his previous dogs had all been kennelled outside—he went along with the house-pet idea enough to have her indoors and let her curl up on his lap in the evenings. Only, last thing at night, after he’d shut Vick into her box and put the lamp out and lit his candle, he’d take Sonny’s feather from the pot where he kept it on the mantle shelf and run it gently through his fingers, and for those few moments the blazing presence would be vividly with him in the room.

And then, a few weeks later, George Hand, the head gamekeeper, dropped by for a bit more than the usual chat about old times. Apparently his lordship was planning some really big shooting parties that winter, and George would be needing to drive the woods as much as they would stand, so there weren’t going to be much by way of breeding birds left by season’s end, and he’d be needing to stock up all he could, come spring. Did Dave feel up to lending a hand?

ʺGlad to ’elp,ʺ said Dave. ʺJust ’ave to see ’ow I come through the winter, mind you, though I’m a mort better than I was this time last year. But I’ll start takin’ a look round, see what needs doin’. Do it myself if I can, ask you to send a lad up if I can’t.ʺ

So from then on, Dave quartered the wood more systematically than he’d been doing on his daily excursions, checking out the movements of jays and magpies and such. To help persuade them that a man carrying a gun meant no harm he took his with him. Vick, as soon as she was big enough, went eagerly along, learning to walk to heel, to sit until called, and so on. One bright January morning, extending this process, he told her ʺstill,ʺ and made her stand motionless while he took notional aim at a magpie. To his astonishment he found that if the gun had been loaded he could perfectly well have shot the bird.

Until that moment, though he had been vaguely aware that his eyes were getting no worse, he had no idea they had grown so much better. Testing them one at a time he found that the right eye was now almost unclouded, and the left, which a year ago had been seeing little more than a blur of light, was now making out definite shapes and distances through the mist. He was completely delighted, of course, though he didn’t take the apparent miracle for granted, merely hoping it would last. But for some reason he was wary of telling anyone about his good luck. There was something uncanny about it.

It turned out a harsh winter, with deep snow and hard frosts followed by a messy thaw, but he bore it better than he’d have believed possible. One still, clear March evening he was checking over the cages, ready for the first pheasant chicks, due next week, when he heard a soft and complex call from overhead. His heart leaped, and he looked up in time to see Sonny detach himself from the general blaze of sunset and settle onto a cage frame. He gazed around for a minute with his usual hauteur, then hopped down and stalked over to inspect Vick. She sat to greet him, as she would for a human visitor, her tail wagging vigorously.

ʺNice enough little dog,ʺ Dave told him teasingly. ʺNo substitute, mind you.ʺ

Sonny turned his head to stare at him, acting disdain, but obviously amused.

The pattern of the years was set. Sonny spent his summers with Dave in the wood, migrated with the swallows and returned before them. Each time he came he found Dave looking a little younger. Curiously it was Tom Hempage, not Dave himself, though he occasionally fantasised about the possibility, who first decided that this was no mere appearance, but was indeed the case. Being a quiet and private man, Tom would not have spoken of it to anyone—none of his business—but Mr. Askey had asked him to keep an eye on Dave, so he mentioned it to him. Mr. Askey waited for a couple more visits to decide for himself, and then, one rainy summer afternoon, brought it up directly.

ʺYou’re actually getting younger, aren’t you, Dave? It’s happening.ʺ

Dave sat for a long while, staring at him in silence. All round the clearing rain dripped from the sodden trees, a sound like the endlessly passing minutes that compile the centuries.

ʺI’ve wondered,ʺ he muttered at last. ʺBut it don’t make sense. Really it don’t. Do it, Mr. Askey?ʺ

ʺYou’re a hundred and five, Dave. I looked you up in the parish register. There’s no mistaking. I did that—five years ago it must have been—when you first told me you weren’t sure about it after all. I was puzzled at the time, but I reckoned you had your reasons, so I didn’t say anything. Do you mind telling me now?ʺ

ʺI . . . I don’t know. . . . I really don’t know. Maybe it was something . . . something Sonny—ʺ

He froze and looked away, desperate with agitation.

ʺSonny?ʺ said Mr. Askey gently.

There was a rustle from the chimney and Sonny slipped deftly down into view to stand on the stove. It was an entry quite as imposing as that of any Grand Duchess descending a great sweep of stairs to greet her noble guests.

ʺMy goodness me!ʺ whispered Mr. Askey, and rose, like Vick apparently recognising Sonny as belonging to an order of creation at least on equal terms with humankind. Sonny eyed him back, just as appraisingly, until he settled back on his chair.

ʺCan you tell me anything more?ʺ he asked, watching Sonny make himself comfortable on the stove.

With a feeling of immense relief, Dave told him what had happened from the beginning.

ʺWell, well, well,ʺ said Mr. Askey, when he’d finished. ʺI think you’ve managed to make friends with a phoenix, Dave. The Phoenix, I should say, as I believe there’s only one at a time. Not that I remember much about him. I’ll ask Mr. Frobisher. I won’t tell him why, of course. The fewer people know about this, the better. We don’t want the world and his wife coming to gawp. But I’ll have to tell his lordship. I can’t go behind his back. Don’t worry. He’ll see it our way, I’m pretty sure.ʺ

He spoke with confidence. The earls, for all their varied mad nesses, had carried some persistent character traits. They looked after their own. Though they didn’t intrude into their people’s lives, none of their servants, tenants or dependants, except for the hopelessly self-destructive, had ever died in want; and they thought that what happened on their estates was no business whatever of the outside world.

A week later they were sitting on the bench by Dave’s porch, with Sonny on the hitching rail beside them. The weather had cleared, and the sun at that time of year rose high enough above the tree-tops to reach almost all the clearing. Sonny wasn’t doing his disappearing trick, and in that strong light, seen against the darkness under the trees, he seemed literally to blaze. It was hard to believe that that intense shimmer of brightness wasn’t true flame.

The effect was perhaps enhanced by his obvious amusement at what was being said. Now Mr. Askey closed his notebook, checked the time on his fob-watch, glanced towards the entrance to the clearing and leaned back

ʺSo there’s not a lot they agree about, you see,ʺ he said. ʺOnly one at a time—that’s clear—and lives for anything up to three thousand years each go. Comes from Egypt, and something to do with the sun god. When his time’s up, he builds himself a pyre and sets light to it and is consumed, and the next Phoenix comes out of the ashes. Right? And then there’s a few bits and pieces fit in—his enemy being the Serpent—that goes with those adders your friend brings home—and maybe the fellow who talks about the miraculous egg he makes each time to hold the ashes of the old Phoenix—all myrrh and covered with jewels—I’ve been through the Cabinet House inventory—that’s in the Library still—and there’s a phoenix egg in there, all right—fifth earl picked it up in Heliopolis—nothing about jewels, of course. . . .ʺ

Mr. Askey was reaching for his fob again when a man walked into the clearing and came towards them with the peculiar prancing strut that was immediately remarked upon by anyone who spoke of meeting him for the first time. Both Dave and Mr. Askey rose.

The tenth earl was now in late middle age. A small man, filled with a peculiar, eager, electric energy that should have turned him into the complete figure of fun his enemies made him out to be, but somehow had the opposite effect. A high complexion; green eyes, slightly pop; short-clipped moustache; leather gaiters and a long tweed jacket, belted and reaching almost to the knees; a fur deer-stalker: all a deliberate self-caricature, an arrogant challenge to jeerers. Completely effective.

ʺAfternoon, Askey, afternoon, Moffard—keeping remarkably fit, they tell me.ʺ

ʺThasso, thank you, m’lord.ʺ

ʺExcellent, excellent. Talk about that later. Now, then . . .ʺ

The earl turned towards Sonny. They eyed each other as equals. It was easy to imagine that in his time Sonny had faced pharaohs with the same gaze. Without any self-consciousness, the earl held out his hand for Sonny to shake, but instead Sonny stepped onto his wrist, spread his wings wide and with a long, smooth movement closed them either side of the earl’s head and at the same time arched his neck forward until they touched foreheads. After a moment or two he straightened, refolded his wings and returned to the hitching rail. The earl took a pace back, spread his right hand over his heart, bowed his head, then turned to the bench.

ʺWell, well, well,ʺ he said. ʺWhen it comes to sheer majesty, they could learn a thing or two from him at Windsor Castle, eh, Askey? You’re right, of course. Have to keep mum about this. Talk about that later. Moffard first. Told that last census fellow you weren’t sure, eh? Could’ve been Waterloo you remembered, not Trafalgar?ʺ

ʺBest I could think on, m’lord.ʺ

ʺDo for now. Do for now. But you’ll need to start taking the long view, Moffard. Won’t wash twenty years on, will it, leave alone fifty? Think you’re going the whole way? Right back to the cradle?ʺ

ʺMaybe so, m’lord. I’d not put it past him. No way he can tell me.ʺ

ʺI’ll not be there to see it, more’s the pity. Better start planning for it though. World’s changing, Moffard. Government’s getting its nose into all our lives. Happening more and more. No way we can be sure of keeping you hid, not for a hundred years. Two choices that I can see. One—keep moving on. Live one place for a while, soon as it looks like you’re going to be spotted, move on. Wouldn’t fancy that, eh?ʺ

ʺThat I wouldn’t, m’lord. Lived here all my life, I have. Allus thought I’d be dying here.ʺ

ʺFeel the same myself. Right. That case, four or five years on you’re going to have to start play-acting you’re getting older. And then you’ll fall ill, take to your bed, and your nephew’ll show up to look after you. . . . Oh, come on, man. If you don’t have one now, you’d better start having one—sheep farming out in New Zealand, maybe, spitting image of you, everyone tells you. And now, when you’re poorly, he takes you on. Anybody comes to the house, he’s the one they see. You’re in your bed upstairs. Maybe Dr. Pastern could pay you the odd visit—think we can let him in on this, Askey . . . ? Yes, Moffard?ʺ

ʺBeggin’ your pardon, m’lord, but Sonny’ll see to that. First thing you said when you set eyes on ’im, weren’t it? ‘We’ve got to keep mum about this.’ Same with Mr. Askey ’ere. Same with me, when ’e weren’t nobbut a chick. Almost the first thought come into my ’ead—I wasn’t lettin’ on. Thassow ’e is. None sees ’im as he don’t want, and them as sees ’im don’t talk. That’s right, Sonny, aren’t it?ʺ

All three turned towards the hitching rail. Sonny gazed back at them with a look of arrogant confidence that in a less impressive creature would have been smug. The earl chortled, unastonished but delighted by a successful turn in the intrigue.

ʺCapital!ʺ he said. ʺPastern can sign the death certificate when the old lad officially pops it. You’re going to be chief mourner at your own funeral, Moffard—there’s not many get a chance like that. Now, Askey, we’ll want a trust or something—look into the terms of the entail—deeding a ninety-nine-year lease on this wood to Moffard and his heirs and assigns. Think that’s on, eh?ʺ

The talk slid into a morass of the legal intricacies attendant on any ancient entail. Dave listened with growing anxiety, sufficiently marked for the earl eventually to notice.

ʺYes, Moffard. Something troubling you?ʺ

ʺBeggin’ your pardon, m’lord, but this aren’t anything I’m due. ’Undred years now you done right by me, you and your family, more’n right. No call for you to take on another ’undred years.ʺ

ʺNonsense, Moffard. We’d do it any case. Besides, there’s your friend here. We’ve had half the monarchs of England knocking on our door over the years, sold whole estates to pay for the honour of lodging them. I tell you there’s not many of them did us more honour by their presence than your friend here. Shan’t see him through myself, but nor’ll I die happy not being certain the two of you are going to make it. You follow? Good man. Now, Askey . . .ʺ

Dave gave up trying to understand the legalities, his mind too numb for thought, but his hand unconsciously fingering at a dull ache that had started towards the back of his lower jaw. Not toothache—he had none left to ache—but—

Lord above! Got one comin’ back!

It was this discovery, as much as anything that the earl had said, that forced him at last to think about the reality of what lay ahead for him, to try to peer through mists and shadows down the diminishing perspective of the years to the mysterious vanishing point of his own unbirth. For some time after Mr. Askey and the earl had left, he continued to sit there, until he was roused by a sharp rap on his right knee—Sonny’s peck, demanding his attention.

As soon as he saw he had it, Sonny turned and strutted off round the corner of the cottage. Dave found him by the open shed where he kept his larger tools. Here Sonny pecked at the spade he wanted Dave to bring, then rose and, flying from branch to branch, led the way to the clearing where the broken walls of the Cabinet House enclosed the low mound of its remains.

Sonny settled onto the top of this, scratched at the surface and stood back. Obediently Dave started to dig. Below the first meagre layer of grasses the mound was still almost pure ash. He heaped the first spadeful to one side, and Sonny immediately started to scrattle through it like a chicken scrattling through loose soil for insects and seeds. Finding nothing, he stood back again. They repeated the process with a second spadeful, and a third, from which Sonny picked out something about half as large as a hazelnut and set it aside. From then on most spadefuls contained one or two of the things, varying in size from an acorn to a grain of wheat. There was a distinct pit in the top of the mound by the time Sonny decided he’d gathered enough.

The harvest was more than Dave could have carried in his cupped hands, so he unknotted his neckerchief and gathered the things into it. Sonny supervised the operation closely, picking up some of the smallest that Dave had missed. Dave knotted the kerchief into a bag and carried it back to the cottage, where he spread a larger cloth on the table and spilt the contents of the kerchief out onto it. The rattling and rubbing of transport had loosened much of the ash that had coated the things, and now Dave could see, or at least guess, what he’d dug up. The things were hard and shiny-smooth, some rounded, some faceted, but all glowing or glinting with the colours of fire.

Sonny stood beside the heap looking enquiringly at him.

ʺThese for his lordship, then?ʺ Dave asked him. ʺWonder what they’re worth. Pay for our keep for a good while on, eh?ʺ

With a feeling of intense relief at no longer being wholly beholden for his own safeguarding through the difficult years ahead, he watched Sonny soar up to the canopy of the trees to bask in sunlight until it was time for him to sing his evening hymn.

March 1915

In the same week that the news came from France that the heir to the earldom (mad on soldiering) had been killed by a random shell on his dug-out in a quiet section of the front near Arras, Mr. Askey died of the cancer that had long been killing him. On the estate the trauma of the major event wholly obscured the minor. Mr. Askey might have endured his slow and agonising passing almost unattended if Dave (now officially Ralph) Moffard hadn’t sat and slept by his bed through four days and three nights, mostly just holding his hand, sometimes talking a little, dribbling water between the tense, grimacing lips and injecting the prescribed doses of morphine with tenderness and precision.

For most of the time the drug only partly masked the pain. There was a brief spell of full relief after each injection, and then a slow return of the torture, like a jagged reef emerging from as the tide recedes, until the final stage in which the groans became sobbing cries and Dave could do nothing but hold his friend’s hand and suffer with his suffering while the seconds limped ever more slowly past until the cycle could be repeated.

Late on the afternoon of the fourth day, when both already foresaw another endless night of trudging across that Sahara of unmerited punishment, Dave heard a sharp rap on the window. He crossed the room to look through the slit between the curtains and saw Sonny perched on the sill. Astonished—it was at least a week sooner than he’d ever returned before, and the winter had not been kind—he raised the sash to let him in.

ʺHe’s bad, Sonny, bad,ʺ he gasped. ʺAnything you can do for him? Oh, Sonny!ʺ

The moan from the bed shuddered into a howl as the cycle entered its last phase. Sonny flipped deftly to the foot-rail and perched there, gazing dispassionately down the length of the bed at the living mask of Tragedy on the pillows. Dave came and stood beside him, gripping the rail. Without warning Sonny arched his neck and struck at Dave’s wrist, a precisely weighted peck that left a single bead of blood shining on the skin. He repeated the blow against his own breast, and withdrew with another bead, this time a fiery orange, at the tip of his beak. When he placed the second bead upon the first they mingled, and at the same time mounded up and seemed to solidify into a single jewel that glowed like an ember in the darkened room.

Sonny contemplated it for a moment, then picked it up, stalked the length of the bed and placed it neatly between Mr. Askey’s lips.

There was a pause, and the mask became human, became the face of their friend, drawn and lined with illness, but known, admired and loved.

Mr. Askey opened his eyes and looked at them and smiled.

ʺOh, that’s good,ʺ he whispered. ʺThat’s good. That’s good. Thank you for everything, Dave. Thank you, Sonny. Glad you made it home in time. Give my respects to his lordship. Tell him it’s all been worth while, all worth while.ʺ

He closed his eyes and died.

The earl bore the loss of his heir characteristically. His only known show of emotion on the subject came when some titled tub-thumper publicly congratulated him on setting an example to the nation by giving his son’s life for the cause. He glared at her briefly, then snapped, ʺDon’t be a fool, woman. I didn’t give it. He did,ʺ and turned his back on her.

Fourteen years later, he was to endure another bereavement when his grandson (mad on motor-cars) killed himself at Brooklands while road-testing a straight-eight speedster of his own design, leaving a great-grandson to inherit the earldom at the age of five when the old man eventually died in 1932.

Summer 1934

The madness that caused the eleventh earl eventually to be known—notorious, even—as the Green Earl was not immediately apparent. The seeds from which it was to grow were probably sown soon after his great-grandfather’s death by a Miss Wells, recently engaged as governess to his two elder sisters.

Miss Wells was a tall, plain young woman in her early thirties, with a wide mouth, wide-set eyes and a pale but not unhealthy complexion. She had a look of pleasant calm, with reserves of determination below the surface. She was a governess because she had been denied a formal education beyond the age of twelve, when her mother had fallen ill from an hereditary disease and her father had withdrawn her from school to help with the household chores. From then on she had educated herself in her spare time, choosing subjects that interested her, at first generally botanical, but concentrating more and more on native British trees, since there were subjects for her to study locally in the Forest of Dean, where her parents lived. By the time of her mother’s death and her father’s almost instant remarriage, she was a considerable expert on some of the larger species and had had technical papers published in professional journals; none of this was much practical use to a woman turned out of her home with no more than a token allowance and with no academic qualifications whatever. One of her brothers-in-law, a motoring crony of the young earl’s father, had recommended her for the post of governess, and the post had seemed right for her the moment she set eyes on the woodlands that mottled the estate. It was not surprising therefore that at almost the first opportunity she visited Dave’s Wood. Since it was the afternoon on which the girls had their riding lessons and the nursery maid had her afternoon off, she was in charge of the earl, so she took him with her. Besides, there was a Mr. Moffard, whose permission she would apparently need. If he proved difficult, she could tell him she wanted to give the earl a botany lesson.

There was no such difficulty. Mr. Moffard seemed a courteous old man, though somewhat withdrawn. Just before leaving, Miss Wells asked him if he had any idea of the age of the magnificent oak tree that stood on the other side of the clearing opposite his front door.

Mr. Moffard seemed to open up a little.

ʺNot to say for sure, ma’am,ʺ he answered. ʺSeventeen ’undred eighty-two she was there, full-grown—that’s in the diaries—an’ there’s oaks in there ’alf grown as aren’t down as full-grown for another ’undred, ’undred an’ twenty years. So give ’er a couple of ’undred on before the diaries, I reckon she was a young’un when the Armada come by.ʺ

ʺNot a Domesday oak, then?ʺ

ʺAh, no, ma’am. Fewer of those than folk make out, and what there is more dead than alive. An’ Domesday this’ld ’a’ been forest far as you could see. Thissair wood’s maybe a bit o’ that left over, but there aren’t a tree in it anythin’ near that old, not in the diaries, neither.ʺ

ʺDo you mean you’ve got diaries about the wood going back to—seventeen eighty, wasn’t it?ʺ

ʺEighty-two, ma’am. Fifth earl begun it. Liked collectin’ stuff, ’e did, anything old, almost, and gettin’ it written down in a book. Sees thissair wood, full of old trees. ‘Get ’em all writ down,’ ’e tells my great-granddad. Thassow it begun, on’y no one never told us to stop. You interested in trees, ma’am?ʺ

Miss Wells looked at him almost shuddering with excitement.

ʺMore than anything in the world, Mr. Moffard,ʺ she said. ʺMay I look at your diaries?ʺ

ʺReally old ones, they’re over in the Library at the House, ma’am. Eighteen forty-two thissair lot go back to. . . . Careful, m’lord! She’ll bite, ’cos she don’t know not to. Get ’er out for you, shall I?ʺ

Miss Wells had managed to keep half an eye on her charge as he nosed cautiously round the room. The obvious danger came from the log fire burning in the enormous open hearth. It was piled surprisingly high, even for a dull, chilly April afternoon, but so far the earl had been more interested in the mass of other attractions in the room, all stowed as neatly as if in the cabin of a careful sailor. His latest find had been a small crate, adapted into an animal cage. She watched briefly while Mr. Moffard opened it and fished out a fox cub for the earl to look at and touch, and then turned to the diaries. There was almost a shelf of them, in different shapes and sizes; each covered two or three years. She opened the earliest and was immediately enthralled. Every major tree in the wood seemed to have its own entry, with a number, a code for its location, and then a record of its progress through the year: measurement of girth, first bud, leafing, flowering, general health, creatures using it to nest and roost, loss of branches and other damage (a close-range blast from a shot-gun to an ash in one instance) and so on. She pulled out a diary forty years on to see what had happened to the ash, and found that it was now dead all down one side. Another twenty and it was gone, apart from an entry recording the fungi on its stump.

By this time she could hardly think for excitement. She knew of no other record in the country remotely resembling this in completeness of detail. She glanced up to check if Mr. Moffard was yet free and saw that he was putting the cub back in its cage. As he came towards her an oddness struck her. Her heart sank.

ʺThese are quite extraordinary, Mr. Moffard,ʺ she told him. ʺBut . . . but . . . I mean, it’s been over ninety years, and they’re all in the same handwriting.ʺ

ʺAh, no, ma’am. Just the two of us, me an’ me uncle. Spittin’ image of ’im, I am, folk tell me, an’ it’s the same with the writing. Remarkable long life ’e lived, too. Born ’tween the last day of seventeen ninety-nine, ’e used to tell folk, an’ the first of eighteen ’undred an’ and nowt, and din’t—ʺ

ʺThat’s extraordinary, Mr. Moffard! So was I! A hundred years later, of course, but between the last—ʺ

There was a stillness in the room, a sudden surge of tension, enough to startle Miss Wells into silence and a quick check round the room. She gasped, suppressed the automatic shout of warning and rushed towards the fireplace. The earl was standing actually inside the chimney breast, having worked his way in between the glowing mass of embers and the side wall of the chimney, and was now leaning forward over the fire to crane up into the dark cavern of the chimney above. She reached in, grasped his arm and dragged him out.

ʺOh, but please—ʺ he began.

At that moment her fears seemed to be justified. A glowing mass slid down the chimney and landed in the heart of the fire. Flames blazed up around it, too bright to look at. They settled. The mass shook itself and became a distinct shape, which rose and stepped forward onto the hearth. Miss Wells found herself staring at a bird about the size of a farmyard cock, with apparently normal avian plumage, except that it was a brighter, fierier orange-yellow than she would have imagined possible.

The earl turned to her, earnest-faced.

ʺWelly, you mustn’t tell anyone,ʺ he commanded. ʺIt’s a secret.ʺ

ʺNo, no, of course not,ʺ she muttered, still staring.

ʺThat’s the Phoenix, that is,ʺ said Mr. Moffard calmly. ʺSeems ’e’s wanting for to meet you.ʺ

Summer 1990

ʺWe been makin’ a game between us, Welly and me, when you’d get it,ʺ said Dave. ʺShe said as it wouldn’t be that long now.ʺ

ʺBut how . . . how . . . ?ʺ

ʺLivin’ backwards. This ninety year that’s what I been doin’. ’Undred afore that was forwards, same as anyone else, so put ’em together and I’m an ’undred an’ ninety. ’Ard to take in, I dessay, but don’t you fret on it now. You’ll get it soon as you’ve met Sonny. Nothin’ to be feared of—’e’s been around since you first come, on’y you won’t ’ave seed ’im. ’E’ll be down when ’e’s through with ’is ’ymn.ʺ

Ellie continued to stare while Dave returned to his notes as if nothing of more than passing importance had happened. At last he looked up and grinned at her, a normal boy’s grin of pure, harmless mischief.

ʺBit much to take in, I dessay,ʺ he said. ʺCome along, then. Wouldn’t want you to miss this.ʺ

They walked together back towards the cottage, past grown trees, some of which, Ellie was creepily aware, must first have shouldered their way out of the soil long after the boy beside her had been born. The idea made her shiver, not with fear, but from its sheer strangeness.

Back at the cottage she settled beside Welly to help her enter up the day’s notes on the PC while Dave cooked—strong tea with lots of sugar, and fried potato baps with bacon scraps and onion in the mix, greasy but crunchy crisp on the outside, and utterly contrary to all Mum’s dietary rules. Delectable. She was finishing her second helping when Dave picked up his mug, handed it to her and rose.

ʺ’Bout time now,ʺ he said.

Welly backed her chair from the table and wheeled herself to the door, down the ramp and round beside the bench, where Dave and Ellie settled. All three waited in silence.

The front of the cottage was in shadow now, with the setting sun just lighting the topmost branches of the trees along the eastern edge of the clearing. Above that the sky was a soft, pale blue. The evening was full of the good-night calls of birds. They hushed, and the whole wood waited.

The song began so softly that Ellie wasn’t sure at how long it had been going on when she first heard it, a series of gentle, bubbling notes, close together but distinct, so like a human melody that Ellie felt she could almost have put words to it. It became louder, wilder. Ellie closed her eyes and in her imagination saw the song as a swirling fountain of individual droplets above the trees, each note glittering into rainbow colours in the sideways light, the fountain rising and spreading into a circling canopy of light, which then un-shaped itself and fell in a gentle shower onto the waiting leaves below.

Again she couldn’t tell for certain when the song ended, but as she opened her eyes the birds of the wood resumed their calling.

ʺLayin’ it on some tonight,ʺ said Dave. ʺThat’s for you, Ellie. ’Ere ’e comes.ʺ

Ellie followed his glance in time to see a large bird launch itself from the top of the oak opposite, glistening with the reflected colours of the western sky—or so she imagined. But when the bird glided down into shadow, the sunset hues stayed with it until it landed, glowing, on the hitching rail beside the door.

Ellie rose—it seemed rude to stay sitting—and stared, her heart pounding. The bird gazed back considering, judging, her.

ʺThis is Sonny,ʺ said Welly’s voice behind her. ʺHe’s the Phoenix. You’ve probably read about him. But I’ve always found it easiest to think of him not as a magical creature out of a story-book, but as a god. He comes from Egypt, where they didn’t have just one god, they had lots. But he’s the only one left. Go closer. He won’t hurt you.ʺ

ʺNo. No. Of course not,ʺ murmured Ellie, allowing her feet to drift her towards the hitching rail. The bird drew itself up and spread its wings wide as she approached, until it seemed to tower over her.

Yes, she thought. It’s a god. Of course.

She bowed her head and the wings swept forward until they lay gently against either side of it, a warm, soft, feathery touch. She felt the bird’s brow against her own, the fringes of its scarlet crest mingling into her hair-line.

They stayed only briefly like that and straightened. Ellie stepped back, feeling not exactly changed, not altered or tampered with, but renewed, fully herself and confident in that selfhood. The gift of the Phoenix. Something she would have until she died.

ʺThat’s ’is blessin’,ʺ said Dave. ʺWorth ’avin’, eh? It’ll be gettin’ cold for ’im now, an’ ’e’ll be wanting to sit on ’is fire, so we’ll be goin’ in an’ we’ll tell you about it all.ʺ

It was well past midnight when Ellie crawled into bed, exhausted beyond belief with the excitement of the day but still for a long while unable to sleep for the muddle of thoughts and memories jostling through her mind. . . .

. . . Sonny, the one and only ever-living Phoenix, blazing on his great mound of embers on the hearth below but filling the whole room with his presence. . . .

. . . Welly and Dave curled up in each other’s arms in their room on the other side of the landing, husband and wife for forty years now, he getting younger all the time, and she getting older, and still in love. . . .

. . . And then, almost word for word in her mind still, what they had told her:

ʺ. . . We’d been together, as people say now, almost since the day we met. I don’t think it was anything Sonny did to us—we just fell for each other, didn’t we, love?ʺ

ʺThat we did. Couldn’t think what were ’appenin’ to me. Thought I were getting’ the ’fluenza, maybe.ʺ

ʺBut we couldn’t get married because of Dave needing to change who he was every twenty years or so. That was tricky enough as it was without my having to account for a series of missing husbands. But then, in the winter of nineteen forty-nine—No, I’d better go back a bit. From the very first I wanted to know as much as I could about Sonny—ʺ

ʺLike that, Welly is. If it aren’t in a book, it aren’t real.ʺ

ʺI started in the library here, reading everything I could find about ancient Egypt, and I advertised for a tutor—we could afford that, because of the very generous arrangements his lordship had made for Dave here—ʺ

ʺSonny payin’ ’is debts, that come from. Showed me a pile of jewels in ’is bonfire ’eap to give to ’is lordship, an’ then ’e said I got to ’ang on to ’alf of ’em—ʺ

ʺAs well as a ninety-nine-year lease on the cottage and the wood. It was still extremely generous, but it meant I could hire a tutor, and I found a wonderful old man, a retired professor of Egyptology who lived in a large old house in Hampstead piled from floor to ceiling with books. I boarded with him all through the war when I was doing war work in one of the ministries. I couldn’t tell him why I wanted to know about the Phoenix, of course, but he got interested and dug out everything he could find, and he taught me to read hieroglyphics, and best of all he got me a place on a dig one of his ex-pupils was running in Heliopolis, and Dave came too—ʺ

ʺWanted to see where Sonny spent ’is winter, a’ course.ʺ

ʺThe earl vouched for him so we could get him a passport because he didn’t have a birth certificate. We used to walk in the desert in the evenings, and Sonny would meet us. He seemed to have much more power there—ʺ

ʺOnly natural, ’im bein’ closer to the sun.ʺ

ʺWe were excavating a temple of Osiris, and he’d come to me in my dreams and show me how it used to look in his day, so they were very glad to have me on the dig because I seemed to be such a lucky guesser—they used to joke about my having second sight. And then on the last night of the year—we’d told them it was our fiftieth birthday, but of course it was really Dave’s hundred and fiftieth, only his fiftieth from when he began to go backwards—ʺ

ʺSonny’s, too.ʺ

ʺIn this cycle, anyway, though . . . Yes, Ellie?ʺ

ʺThey didn’t have our centuries did they? Back in ancient Egypt, I mean.ʺ

ʺTakes what ’e can get. We got centuries now, so that’s what ’e uses.ʺ

ʺHe has to have some kind of a cycle that the humans he lives among find important. In Egypt it was a hundred and twenty years, but it’s centuries now. Anyway, my friends on the dig held a party for us, and when it was over Dave and I walked out into the desert and Sonny met us and took us to his temple. It was buried deep in a dune, but Sonny called and a patch of sand slid away and there was a hole we could crawl through—pitch dark, but as soon as we were in, Sonny blazed into light and there it was. Oh, Ellie, it was perfectly wonderful, quite small, but untouched—never been found by anyone, or looted or excavated. Every wall covered with paintings or hieroglyphics, all looking as if they’d been done yesterday. . . .ʺ

ʺAn’ that’s where ’e married us.ʺ

ʺYes . . . that was where he married us. . . . I’m sorry . . . I’ve never been able to talk to anyone else about it before . . . that’s why I’m crying. It was so beautiful. It sounds lonely, but it wasn’t, because he brought them all back, everyone who’d ever helped him before, the way we’re doing, not to see or hear or feel, but there, crowding into his temple to welcome and bless us, his fortunate, fortunate friends. . . .

ʺOf course, when I got back to England I longed to tell my old professor about it, but I couldn’t. So Sonny sent him a dream instead—ʺ

ʺPayin’ ’is debts again.ʺ

ʺYes. There’s a sacred text carved onto a stele at Luxor. It’s so battered that no one could read it, and scholars had been arguing for years about what it meant. When we got back from Egypt, I found a letter waiting for me from my old professor, telling me that on New Year’s Eve—the night we got married, remember—he’d dreamed he saw the stele as it was when it was new. It seemed to be lit by flame, and he could read it right through. And he was so excited that he woke up and found that he still remembered it, so he switched on his bedside light and wrote it down. He got up next morning thinking it would be complete nonsense, but he looked at it and saw that it must be right. The Society of Egyptologists gave him their Gold Medal for the paper he wrote on it, and he told me that now he could die happy. He was over ninety.ʺ

ʺThat’s lovely!ʺ

ʺThat’s Sonny, that is. You better get on, Welly, or we’ll all be fallin’ asleep.ʺ

ʺYou’re going to tell me why you really want me. Aren’t you?ʺ

A pause, and a sigh from Welly.

ʺWe can’t make ’er. An’ Sonny won’t. Tell ’er that.ʺ

ʺI suppose it’s a place to start. You see, my dear, after that first time, I used to join a dig and go back to Egypt every winter. Dave would come for a little while and I’d take a break to be with him, and wherever my dig was we’d go to Heliopolis and visit Sonny and his temple. So I got to read all the hieroglyphs and the scrolls, one of which was about the temple ritual. The important thing was that there were always two special priests—sometimes one of them was a priestess—and one of them was getting older and the other one was getting younger. And on ritual days, especially the midwinter solstice, the other priests would make a fire on the altar and the Phoenix would appear and bathe in his flames to renew his strength. Then, right at the end of the cycle when one priest was a very old man and the other was a babe in arms, they’d build a special pyre on the altar and on that last midnight they’d lay the baby—the priest who’d been growing younger—on the pyre, and the Phoenix would appear and nestle down onto the baby as if it were brooding a chick. Then, on the stroke of midnight, the baby would be unborn, and the Phoenix would take its spirit into himself and the pyre would burst into flame. In that same instant, somewhere in Egypt, a new baby would be born, and the old priest would start to live backwards.

ʺThe priests would watch all night, and in the dawn light they would see a pile of ashes where the pyre had been, and on top of it a great jewelled egg. Then, as the sun rose, its first rays would shine through the eastern portal of the temple and strike the egg, and the shell would open like a flower and the baby Phoenix would be there, ready to begin the cycle again. All that was then needed was for the child who had been born at the sacred moment to find his or her way to the temple and be recognised.ʺ

ʺWeren’t like that when poor Sonny were born, not a bit. ’Ad to make it all up for ’isself. Touch an’ go from the start. Still is.ʺ

ʺExactly. We don’t know what went wrong with the cycle. The pyre must have been built and lit and the egg formed, but something prevented it ever being hatched. It may even have been Sonny’s way of enduring the Christian centuries when it would have been difficult for the cult to survive. But the fifth earl picked up the egg up somewhere, still described as a phoenix egg—that’s another mystery—and brought it to the Cabinet House, and Dave was born close by at midnight on the turn of the century, and the cycle could begin again. We don’t know whether Sonny arranged for that himself, or whether it was just the bit of luck he’d been waiting for.

ʺBut I don’t think he can have known about me, or he’d have arranged it differently. I’ve got this hereditary disease. My mother died when she was forty-eight, and one of my sisters when she was fifty-three. None of us who’ve had it has ever lived beyond sixty, that we know of. So Sonny’s kept me going thirty years beyond my time. He can do that. There’s no record in the scrolls of any of the growing-older priests having died before the cycle was up, and it was a hundred and twenty years then, remember. That’s a tremendous age at any time. A lot of Egyptian mummies have been carbon dated, and their average age at death was thirty-one.ʺ

ʺTaken it out of ’im, it ’as, an’ then some, doin’ it for Welly. An’ the summers, they aren’t nowhere near ’ot enough for ’im, not comparing to Egypt, and flyin’ out an’ ’ome spring an’ fall, that’s takin’ it out of ’im too. ’E gets old, same as anyone else, each time round, on’y ’e’s found this way o’ stayin’ immortal. But like I say, it’s goin’ to be touch an’ go for ’im this time, an’ touch an’ go for Welly, an’ that means touch’ an’ go for me. Don’t care to think what’ll happen if I get to be unborn ’thout Sonny bein’ around to sort things out.ʺ

ʺIn a few years’ time, Ellie, I’m going to be almost completely helpless, and Dave’s going to be five, going on four, and Sonny’s going to be trying to survive our English winters on sun-lamps and log fires. In Egypt there were always other priests who helped our predecessors survive those difficult years. Now we are alone.ʺ

ʺAnd you want me to help.ʺ

ʺWe are asking you to join the Priesthood of the Temple of the Phoenix until the cycle of the death and rebirth of our god is fulfilled.ʺ

ʺAll right. Can you wait till I’ve finished school? I don’t think my dad will want me go to university, not if he has to pay for it.ʺ

ʺI think we can do better than that. I’ve already talked to his lordship. When you’ve finished school, he’ll take you on as assistant forester on the estate, with special responsibility for the wood. I’ll introduce you to some of my forestry friends—I still keep up with them by e-mail. You’ll have the diaries, and once we’ve gone, there’ll be no need for you to keep the wood secret. You’ll have an absolutely unique resource to bargain with. Any university that runs a forestry course will be thrilled to have you.ʺ

ʺI don’t need any of that. Really I don’t. I . . . I’d do it whatever it cost me.ʺ

ʺMebbe you would, too, but Sonny aren’t goin’ to let you. ’E’ll look after you, ’cos of ’e pays ’is debts. Not a lot o’ gods you can say that of.ʺ

At long last Ellie drowsed off into sleep. Her last conscious thought was I wish I’d been at their wedding. It must have been wonderful. Perhaps Sonny will send me a dream.

He did.

Midnight, 31 December 1999

A cold night, almost clear. The moon already set. A swath of brilliant stars overhead, and another to the east above a horizon of low hills, visible through a gap in the trees. A large hand torch illuminates part of the clearing, in its beam a pyramidal pile of logs with a flattened top. A light ladder rests against the pile, and an elaborately patterned cloth is draped over its top.

The person holding the hand torch turns. Now the beam illuminates an object something between a hospital stretcher-trolley and a high-tech wheel-chair. Propped on it, swathed in shawls and piled with rugs, lies a very old woman with a bundle on her lap. The torch is settled on the foot of the bed, so that it once more illuminates the pile. Its bearer moves up beside the bundle, opens it and holds its contents to the old woman’s face, as if for her to kiss, and moves into the light of the torch. Now it can be seen that she is a young woman, heavily wrapped against the cold, but the baby she is carrying is stark naked, though apparently almost newborn. Carefully she climbs the ladder, kisses the baby, places it in the centre of the cloth and folds the four corners over it. The underside of the cloth is brilliant with jewels that flash with all the colours of fire in the torch-light. She descends and returns to the trolley, bringing the ladder with her.

Now she folds back some of the bedclothes from a mound near the foot of the bed. The mound stirs, stands, and reveals itself as a large bird. It shakes itself, spreads its wings, and flies heavily to the top of the pile, where it nestles down onto the cloth that wraps the baby, like a hen brooding its chicks. In the torch-light its plumage seems to glow dull orange, and when the torch is switched off continues to do so.

Steadily the glow increases until it illuminates the whole clearing. Both women are weeping, but the older one is smiling too. The younger one reaches in under the blankets to hold her hand.

Just as the glow becomes too bright to look at, the whole pile bursts into flame. The young woman lets out a long sigh of relief.

ʺMade it,ʺ she says quietly. ʺAll three of you made it. I was afraid he wouldn’t be strong enough.ʺ

ʺYes,ʺ whispers the old woman. ʺHe was strong enough. And in a few years I will be too. Strong enough to go and live with him in Egypt where he belongs.

ʺSomewhere tonight, Ellie, a child has been born. I think it will be a boy this time. I don’t know where, but it doesn’t matter. Perhaps we’ll meet him in Egypt, or perhaps you’ll find him here and bring him to us. For you will come and visit us. Often.ʺ

The pile burns fiercely. The flames that roar up from its summit completely hide what has happened to bird and child. A strange reek fills the clearing, like incense with several elements left out, both sweet and peppery, mingling with the ordinary odours of burning. Myrrh.

The two watchers wait in silence. They wait almost without stirring through the small hours of the night while fire slowly settles into itself and star after star rises steadily above the eastern hills. At one point the young woman bends to connect a fresh set of batteries to the cables that are keeping the bed warm. Apart from that, neither stirs or speaks. Once again, after a centuries-long hiatus, the priests of the Phoenix watch the night through in stillness and in silence.

By the time the stars are beginning to disappear into the paling sky above the eastern hills, the fire has become a smooth mound of embers with, cupped into its summit, a rounded object bigger than a man’s head, glittering with fiery jewels set into a glowing orange background, darker than the embers of the fire. The egg of the Phoenix.

The older woman begins to speak. The younger bends to listen to her whisper.

ʺEllie, my dear, this is something that hundreds of thousands of people of many different faiths, for century after century, have passionately believed in, longed for and prayed for. And now we two are going to see it with our living eyes. We will see our god reborn.ʺ

Ellie smiles at her and turns to watch for the moment of sunrise through the gap she cut last week with her chain-saw.

Only we’ll never be able to tell anyone, she thinks.