The Stranger House

1. Hilbert’s Hotel

“So why’s it called Illthwaite?” asked Sam Flood.

She thought the bar was empty except for herself and Mrs. Appledore but the answer came from behind her.

“Illthwaite. An ill name for an ill place. Isn’t that what they say, Mrs. Appledore?”

She turned to see a man emerging from the shady corner on the far side of the chimney breast.

Almost as skinny as she was and not much taller, with a pallid wrinkled face swelling from a pointed chin to a bulbous brow above which a few sad last gray hairs clung like sea grass on a sand dune, he had the look of a superannuated leprechaun, a similitude underlined by the garish green-and-orange checked waistcoat he wore under a dark gray suit jacket, shiny with age. His voice was high-pitched without being squeaky. He could have been anything from seventy to ninety. But his eyes were bright and keen.

“And where do they say that, Mr. Melton? Down at the Powderham, is it, where they’ve got more tongue than brain?” said the landlady. “If you think silly gossip’s worth an extra ten p on your pint, maybe you should drink there more often.”

She spoke with a mock menace that wasn’t altogether mock.

The old man was unfazed.

“I’ll take it under advisement, Mrs. Appledore,” he said. “Though we shouldn’t forget that the Powderham also offers Thai cuisine and live entertainment, not large incentives to a poor old pensioner, but strong attractions perhaps for a swinging young tourist. None of my business, you say. Quite right. Good day to you both.”

He saluted them with an old peaked cap which matched his waistcoat, set it precisely on his head and went out.

“Pay him no heed, Miss Flood,” said the landlady. “ Ill ’s nowt to do with sick or nasty. It comes from St. Ylf’s, our church, and thwaite’s an old Viking word for a bit of land that’s been cleared.”

“So how come the old boy bad-mouths his own village?”

“Old Noddy Melton’s not local,” said Mrs. Appledore, as if this explained everything. “He retired here a few years back to follow his hobby, which is getting up people’s noses. Poor old pensioner indeed! What he gets now is more than most ordinary folk take home while they’re still working. And you need plenty to pay the Powderham’s fancy prices, believe me!”

Sam had noticed the Powderham Arms Hotel as she turned into Skaddale. In fact, not knowing what Illthwaite might offer by way of accommodation, she’d tried to get a room there but found it was booked up. The Stranger House on the other hand, despite its unfancy prices, had been able to give her a choice of its two guest rooms, though not before she and her passport had been subjected to the same kind of scrutiny she’d got from Heathrow Immigration who had broken open five of her Cherry Ripes before being persuaded they weren’t stuffed with crack.

She must have passed some kind of test because Mrs. Appledore had become quite voluble as she led the way upstairs. Wayfarers had been stopping here at the Stranger for more than five hundred years, she’d proclaimed proudly. Its curious name derived from the fact that it had once been the Stranger House of Illthwaite Priory, meaning the building where travelers could enjoy the monks’ hospitality for a night or two.

“That’s fascinating,” said Sam without conviction as she inspected the bedroom. For once she was glad she wasn’t any bigger. Even at her height, if she’d been wearing her Saturday-night heels, the central low black beam would have been a real danger.

“It’s a bit spooky, though,” she went on, looking out at the mist-shrouded landscape through the one small window.

“Well, it would be, seeing that we’ve got our own spook,” said the landlady. “But nowt to be afraid of, just this dark fellow, likely an old monk, wandering around still. You’ll only ever catch a glimpse of him passing through a slightly open door and you can never catch up with him no matter how fast you move. Go after him, and there he’ll be, passing through another door.”

“What if you follow him into a room like this, with only one door?”

“They say once you start following the Dark Man, there’s always another door, no matter how long you keep chasing.”

“Bit like Hilbert’s Hotel then,” said Sam, trying to lighten things.

“Don’t know it, dear. In Windermere, is it?”

“No,” said Sam. “It’s a made-up place in math that has an infinity of rooms.”

“Doing the laundry must be a real pain,” observed Mrs. Appledore. “I’m glad I’ve only got the two to show you. Unless we come across the Dark Man, that is.”

She spoke so lugubriously that Sam couldn’t help shivering. The pub’s low ceilings, shadowy corners, narrow windows and general air of not having been tarted up in living, or dead, memory didn’t make the prospect of such ghostly company appealing. What am I doing here anyway? she asked herself. Illthwaite would probably turn out to be a pointless diversion, any chance of real fact lay in Newcastle Upon Tyne, some hundred miles further on. Here all she was doing was chasing one phantom at the risk of sharing a room with another.

Then Mrs. Appledore, a most unspooky lady in her late fifties, with rosy cheeks, broad bosom and matching smile, let out a peal of uninhibited laughter and said, “Don’t worry, miss. I’ve never laid eyes on the bugger and I’ve lived here most of my life. Bathroom’s across the corridor. Come down to the bar when you’ve cleaned up and I’ll make you a sandwich. Or would you like something hot?”

The assumption that she was staying couched in such a friendly way was irresistible. Suddenly the room seemed less constricting. Also she’d been driving through steady drizzle since not long after dawn, and the thought of setting out once more had little appeal.

“A sandwich will be fine,” she said.

Ten minutes later she’d descended to the bar to find herself confronted by something resembling a small cob loaf from which slices of ham dangled like the skirts of a hovercraft.

Mrs. Appledore had pushed a half-pint of beer toward her, saying, “First on the house, to welcome you to Illthwaite.”

Which had provoked her question about the origins of the name and the old leprechaun’s disconcerting interruption.

“Anyway, don’t let old Noddy put you off,” the landlady concluded. “He’s been living by himself too long and that sends you dotty. I should know. Woman on her own running a pub these days, I must be crazy!”

“You’re saying he’s off his scone?”

“If that means daft but not daft enough to lock up, yes,” said Mrs. Appledore cheerfully. “So what are you going to do with yourself while you’re here?”

Sam bit into her sandwich and nearly went into toxic shock when her tongue discovered that internally the ham had been coated with the kind of mustard you could strip paint with. She grabbed for the beer and took a long cooling pull, using the pause to consider her reply.

Pa’s advice on communication was, “Tell enough to get told what you want to know.”

“I’ll see the sights, I guess,” she said. “What do most visitors do?”

“Most come to go walking on the fells. That’s what we call our hills,” said Mrs. Appledore. “As for sightseeing, there’s not a lot to look at except St. Ylf’s, and the Wolf-Head Cross in the churchyard.”

“Yeah?” said Sam, carefully chewing at the ham’s mustard-free skirting. “The church would be the place where they keep the parish records, right?”

“I suppose so,” said Mrs. Appledore. “You interested in that sort of thing?”

“Could be. I think my gran might come from this part of the world,” said Sam.

She looked for polite interest and got a blank.

“Is that right? And what would her name have been?”

“Flood, same as mine. Are there any Floods round here?”

“Only in a wet winter when the Skad overflows down the valley. Got in the cellars at the Powderham three years back,” said Mrs. Appledore not without satisfaction. “But there’s definitely no local family called Flood. So when did your gran leave England?”

“Your spring, 1960. February or March, I think.”

“Spring 1960?” echoed the woman.

“Right. Does that mean something?” asked Sam, detecting a note of significance.

“Only that I turned fifteen in the spring of 1960,” said Mrs. Appledore rather wistfully. “Mam died the year before and I’d started helping Dad in the pub. Against the law, but I was big for my age, so strangers didn’t notice and locals weren’t going to complain. Point is, I knew everyone in the valley then. Definitely no local family called Flood. Sorry, dear. You sure it’s Illthwaite you’re after?”

Sam shrugged and said, “I’m short on detail, so maybe not. But I’ll check the church out anyway. What about the local school? They’ll have records too, right?”

“Would do if we still had one. Got closed down three years back. Not enough kids, you see. The few there are get bused into the next valley. When I was a kid, the place was really buzzing. Thirty or forty of us. Now the young couples get out, go where there’s a bit more life and a lot more money. Can’t blame them.”

“Looks like it will have to be the church then. Is it far?”

“No. Just a step. Turn right when you leave the pub. You can’t miss it. But you’ve not finished your sandwich. It’s OK, is it?”

“The ham’s lovely,” said Sam carefully. “I’ll take it with me. And one of these.”

She helped herself from a small display of English Tourist Board leaflets standing at the end of the bar as she slipped off her stool.

“By the way, I tried my mobile upstairs, couldn’t get a signal.”

“You wouldn’t. It’s the fells. They wanted to build a mast but Gerry wouldn’t let them.”

“Gerry?”

“Gerry Woollass up at the Hall.”

“The Hall?” Her mind went back to some of the old Eng. Lit. stuff they’d made her read at school. “You mean he’s like some sort of squire?”

“No,” said the woman, amused. “Gerry’s not the squire. He’s chairman of the Parish Council.”

And just as Sam was feeling rebuked for her archaism, Mrs. Appledore added, “Gerry won’t be squire till old Dunstan, his dad, pops his clogs, which he’s in no hurry to do. If you need to phone, help yourself to the one in my kitchen.”

“Thanks. I wanted to ring back home, tell them I was still in the land of the living. I’ll use my credit number so it won’t go on your bill.”

“Fine. Through here.”

The landlady led her out of the bar and down the hall. The kitchen was a strange mix of old and new. Along the left-hand wall it was all modernity with a range of white kitchen units incorporating a built-in electric oven, fridge, dishwasher and stainless-steel sink. A coal fire glowed in a deep grate set in the end wall and from one of the two massive black crossbeams hung a pair of cured hams on hooks held by ropes running through pulleys screwed into the beam and thence to geared winding handles fixed into the walls. The floor was flagged with granite slabs which bore the marks of centuries of wear, as did the huge refectory table occupying most of the center space. One of the slabs, a rectangle of olive green stone which ran from just inside the door to twelve inches or so under the table, had some carving on it, almost indecipherable now.

“Latin,” said the landlady when Sam paused to look. “Old Dunstan says it’s St. Matthew’s Gospel. Ask and it shall be given, that bit. Sort of a welcome. This was the room that the monks fed the travelers in. Phone’s at yon end by the fireplace.”

As Sam made her way down the narrow corridor between the table and the units she had to pause to shut the dishwasher door.

“Bloody nuisance,” said Mrs. Appledore.

“Why not get something smaller?” asked Sam, looking at the huge table.

“No, not the table, those units,” said the woman. “The table’s been here since the place were built. The units were Buckle’s idea.”

“Buckle?”

“My husband.”

Sam tried to puzzle this out as she made the connection home.

“Yeah?” said a familiar voice.

“Pa, it’s me.”

“Hey, Lu, it’s Sammy!” she heard him yell. “So how’s it going, girl?”

“Fine, Pa. How’re things back there?”

“No problems,” he said. “The new vines are looking good. Here’s your ma. Missing you like hell. Take care now.”

This got close to a heart-to-heart with her father. When he said you were missed, it made you feel missed clearer than a book of sonnets. Her eyes prickled with tears but she brushed them away and greeted her mother brightly, assuring her she was well and having a great time seeing a bit of the country before getting down to work.

Despite this, Lu needed more reassurance, asking after a while, “Sam, you sure you’re OK?”

“I told you, Ma. Fit as a butcher’s dog.”

“It’s just that a couple of times recently I got this feeling…”

“Ma, is this some of your my people stuff?”

“Mock my people, you’re mocking yourself, girl. I’m just telling you what I’ve been told. You watch out for a stranger, Sam.”

“Ma, I’m in England. They’re all bleeding strangers!”

Mrs. Appledore had left the kitchen to give her some privacy. When she finished her call, Sam blew her nose, then headed for the door. The winding gear to raise the hams caught her eye and she paused to examine it. Instead of a simple wheel-and-axle system, it had three gearing cogwheels. Between two blinks of her eye, her mind measured radiuses, turned them into circumferences, counted cogs, and calculated lifting power.

“Real antiques those. As old as the house, they say. Ropes been changed of course, but ’part from a bit of oiling, they’re just the same as they were when some old monk put them together,” said Mrs. Appledore from the doorway.

“Clever old monk,” said Sam. “This is real neat work. Did they have bigger pigs in those days? With this gearing you could hoist a whole porker, if the rope held.”

“Bigger appetites maybe. Talking of which, you left your sandwich on the bar. I’ve wrapped it in a napkin so you can eat it as you walk to the church. And here’s a front-door key in case I’m out when you get back. And I thought this old guidebook might help you if you’re looking round the village. Better than that useless leaflet.”

She proffered a leather-bound volume, almost square in shape.

“That’s kind,” said Sam, taking the book and opening it at the title page.

“Eighteen ninety-four,” she worked out. “Isn’t this valuable? I’d love to borrow it, but I’m worried about damaging it.”

“Don’t be daft,” said the woman comfortably. “I’ve loaned it to worse than you and it’s come to no harm.”

Worse than you. Had to be a compliment in there somewhere, thought Sam.

“Then thank you so much.”

“Think nowt of it,” said the woman. “Enjoy the church. See you later. Don’t forget your sandwich.”

“Won’t do that in a hurry. See you later!”

Outside, she found the drizzle which had accompanied her most of the way from London seemed at last to have given up. She reached into her hired car parked on the narrow forecourt and opened the glove compartment. There were three Cherry Ripes in there. She’d been incredulous when Martie, whose gorgeous looks had earned her more air miles than most Qantas pilots by the time she left uni, had told her you couldn’t get them outside of Oz. Life without a daily injection of this cherry-and-coconut mix in its dark chocolate wrapping had seemed impossible and she’d stuffed a month’s supply into her flight bag. Unfortunately the ravages of Heathrow Customs had been followed by the rapine of the Aussie friends she’d stayed with in London, and now she was down to her last three. She slipped two of them into her bumbag, one to eat on her walk to the church, one for emergencies.

Then she took one of them out and replaced it in the compartment.

Knowing yourself was the beginning of wisdom, and she had still to find a way of not consuming every bit of chocolate available once she started.

The landlady had followed her to the front door. In case she’d noticed the business with the Cherry Ripes, Sam held up the cob and nibbled appreciatively at one of the dangling skirts of ham. Then with the Illthwaite Guide tucked under one arm, she set off along the road.

Mrs. Appledore stood and watched her guest out of sight, then turned and went back into the Stranger House, slipping the bolt into the door behind her. In her kitchen she lifted the telephone and dialed. After three rings, it was answered.

“Thor, it’s Edie,” she said. “Something weird. I’ve got a lass staying here, funny little thing, would pass for a squirrel if you glimpsed her in the wood, skin brown as a nut, hair red as rowan berries. Looks about twelve, but from her passport she’s early twenties… Don’t interrupt, I’m coming to the point. Her name’s Sam Flood… That’s right. Sam for Samantha Flood, it’s in her passport. She’s from Australia, got an accent you could scratch glass with, and she thinks her grandmother might have come from these parts… 1960, spring… Yes, ’60, so it’s got to be just coincidence, but I thought I’d mention it. She’s off up to the church to see if there’s any records… Yes, I’ll be there, but not till he’s well screwed down. I’ll take your word the little bugger’s dead!”

2. A turbulent priest

Sam Flood and Miguel Madero saw each other for the first time in a motorway service café to the west of Manchester but neither would ever recall the encounter.

Sam was sitting at a table with a double espresso and a chocolate muffin which was far too sweet but she ate it anyway. She glanced up to see Madero passing with a cappuccino and a cream doughnut. Though he wore no clerical collar, there was something about him – his black clothing, the ascetic thinness of his face – which put her in mind of a Catholic priest, and she looked away. For his part all he registered was an unaccompanied child whose exuberance of red hair could have done with a visit to the barber, but most of his attention was focused on maintaining the delicate relationship between an unreliable left knee and an overfull cup of coffee.

She left five minutes before he did and they spent the next hour only a couple of miles apart in heavy traffic. Then a van blew a tire a hundred yards behind her and spun into a truck. Miraculously no one was seriously hurt, but as Sam’s Focus sped merrily north, Madero and his Mercedes SLK fumed gently in the accident’s tailback.

From having time to spare for his two o’clock appointment in Kendal, he was already half an hour late as he reached the town’s southern approaches.

On the map Kendal looked to be a quiet little market town on the eastern edge of the English Lake District, but there seemed to be some local law requiring all traffic in Cumbria to pass along its main street, which meant it was after three when he drew up before the chambers of Messrs. Tenderley, Gray, Groyne, and Southwell, solicitors.

Knowing how highly lawyers price their time, he was full of apology as he was shown into the office of Andrew Southwell.

“Not at all, not at all, think nothing of it,” said Southwell, a small round man in his early thirties who pumped his hand with painful enthusiasm. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. Professor Coldstream speaks very warmly of you. Very warmly indeed.”

“And of you too,” said Madero.

In fact what Max Coldstream had said when he mentioned Kendal was, “You’re in luck there, Mig. Chap called Southwell, Kendal solicitor, and mad keen local historian. OK, so he’s an amateur, but that can be an advantage. Professional historians on the whole are a deceitful, distrusting, conniving and secretive bunch of bastards who would direct a blind man up a blind alley rather than risk giving him an advantage. Enthusiastic amateurs on the other hand may lack scholarship but they often have bucketloads of information which they are eager to share. Painfully eager, if you’re in a hurry!”

It only took a couple of minutes for Madero to appreciate Coldstream’s warning.

“That’s fascinating, Mr. Southwell,” he said, interrupting a potted history of the chambers building. “Now, you will recall from my letter I’m on my way to talk to the Woollass family of Illthwaite Hall in connection with my thesis on the personal experience of English Catholics during the Reformation. By chance I came across a reference to a Jesuit priest, Father Simeon Woollass, the son of a cadet branch of the family residing here in Kendal. I thought it might be worth diverting to see what I could find out about him. A priest in the family must have made the problems of recusancy even greater, as perhaps your researches have already discovered.”

This was the right trigger to pull.

Southwell nodded vigorously and said, “How very true, Mr. Madero. But I know you chaps, hands-on whenever possible, so let’s take a walk and see what we can find.”

Next moment Madero found himself being whizzed down the stairs, past the receptionist who desperately shouted something about not forgetting the partners’ meeting, and out into the damp afternoon air, where he was taken on a whirlwind tour.

“It’s curious,” said Southwell as they raced from the library to the church. “What really got me interested in Father Simeon wasn’t you, but this other researcher who was asking questions, must be ten years ago now. Irish chap, name of Molloy. Poor fellow.”

“I don’t recognize the name. Did he publish? And why do you say ‘poor fellow’?”

“He did a few things, pop articles mainly. Not a serious scholar like you, more of a journalist. But nothing on Father Simeon. Never had the chance really. He was something of a rock climber, took the chance to do a bit while he was up here, by himself, very silly, and he had this terrible accident… are you all right, Mr. Madero?”

“Yes, fine,” lied Mig. Twinges in his still unreliable left knee he was used to, but the other injuries he’d suffered in his own fall rarely troubled him now. This lightning jag of pain across his head and down his spine had to be some kind of sympathetic echo. In fact during his own fall he couldn’t even remember the pain of contact…

“You sure?” said Southwell.

“Yes, yes,” said Mig impatiently as the pain faded. “And he was killed, was he?”

“Died as the Mountain Rescue carried him back. He wasn’t so much interested in the background as in what happened when Father Simeon got captured. The book he was writing was actually about Richard Topcliffe – you know about him, of course?”

“Elizabeth’s chief priest-hunter, homo sordidissimus. Oh yes, I know about him.”

“Well, it was Topcliffe’s northern agent, Francis Tyrwhitt, who captured Simeon and took him off to Jolley Castle near Leeds to be interrogated. That was Molloy’s main interest, torture, that kind of stuff. Ah, here’s the church. Note the Victorian porch.”

It was clear that, despite his conviction that academics preferred to do their own research, Southwell had already dug up everything there was to dig up about Simeon and recorded it in the folder he carried. Madero was tempted but too polite to suggest that a lot of time could be saved if he simply handed it over. Happily after a couple of hours the man’s mobile rang. He listened, then said, “Good lord, is it that time already?”

To Madero he said, “Sorry. Meeting. Lot of nothing, but old Joe Tenderley, our senior partner, tends to get his knickers in a twist. Look, why don’t we meet up later? Better still, have dinner, stay the night. Meanwhile you might care to browse through my notes, see if there are any gaps you’d like me to fill.”

Madero waited till he’d got the folder firmly in his grip before thanking the man profusely but refusing his kind offer on the grounds that he was already engaged in Illthwaite, which if a bed-and-breakfast booking could be called an engagement was true.

Back in his car, he rejoined the tidal bore of traffic, intending to retrace his approach to the town and take the road which Sam Flood had followed some hours earlier around the southern edge of the county, but somehow he found himself swept away toward somewhere called Windermere. He stopped at a roadside inn, brought up a map of Cumbria on his laptop and saw he could get across to the west just as easily this way. Feeling hungry, he entered the pub and ordered a pint of shandy (England’s main contribution to alcoholic refinement, according to his father) and a jumbo haddock. As he waited for his food, he took a long draught of his drink and opened Southwell’s folder.

Out of reach of the solicitor’s voice and with the evidence of the man’s hard work before him, he felt a pang of guilt at his sense of relief at parting company. For every sin there is a fitting penance, that’s what he’d learned at the seminary. It would serve him right if his haddock turned out stale and his chips soggy.

It had been a stroke of luck that the man he was interested in had been closely linked to one of Kendal’s foremost merchant families during the great period of the town’s importance in the field of woolen manufacture which was Southwell’s special interest.

Simeon Woollass had been the son of Will Woollass, younger brother of Edwin Woollass of Illthwaite Hall. Will’s early history (later a matter of public record in Kendal) showed him to be a wild and dissolute youth who narrowly escaped hanging in 1537 after the Catholic uprising known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. His age (fifteen) and the influence of his brother won his release with a heavy fine and a stern warning.

Undeterred, Will continued to earn his reputation as the Woollass wild man till 1552 when he surprised everyone by wooing Margaret, the only child of John Millgrove, wool merchant of Kendal, and settling down to the life of an honest hardworking burgher.

In 1556 Margaret gave birth to Simeon, and once the child had survived the perils of a Tudor infancy, all looked set fair for the Kendal Woollasses. John Millgrove’s commercial acumen meant that business both domestic and export was booming, and with wealth came status. Nor did he let a little thing like religion interfere with his commercial and civil ambitions, and when Catholic Mary was succeeded by Protestant Elizabeth, he readily bowed with the prevailing wind and, like many others, straightened up from his obeisance as a strong pillar of the English Church.

Will, now firmly established as heir apparent of the Millgrove business, was happy to go along with this, which strained his relationship with his firmly recusant brother Edwin. Simeon, however, stayed close to his Illthwaite cousins and it was probably to put him out of their sphere of influence that Will sent his son, aged eighteen, down to Portsmouth to act as the firm’s continental shipping agent. He did so well that a year later when a problem arose with their Spanish agent in Cadiz, Simeon, who had a natural gift for languages, seemed the obvious person to sort it out.

Alas for a parent’s efforts to protect his child!

Simeon found life in Spain much to his taste. He liked the people and the climate, became fluent in the principal dialects, and presented good commercial arguments for extending his stay. A year passed. Will, suspecting his son had been seduced by hot sun, strong wine and dusky señoritas, and recalling his own youthful excesses, was exasperated rather than angered by Simeon’s delaying tactics. Finally however he sent a direct command, which elicited a revelation far more shocking than mere dissipation.

Simeon had been formally received into the Roman Catholic Church.

Missives flew across the Bay of Biscay, threatening from the father, pleading from the mother. In return all they got was news that progressed from bad to worse.

In 1577 Simeon had travelled north into France, ending up at the notorious English College at Douai in Flanders. In 1579 he was ordained deacon and the following year undertook a pilgrimage to Rome, whence in 1582 came the devastating news that he had joined the Jesuit Order and been ordained priest.

All this Andrew Southwell had been able to discover because of the effect it was to have on the Millgrove family’s fortunes. John had come close to achieving his great ambition of being elected chief burgess of the town when the smallpox carried him off. It was, however, generally confided that Will Woollass, now head of the firm, would eventually achieve that high civic dignity his father-in-law had aspired to.

But a son and heir who was a Catholic priest was heavy baggage for an upwardly mobile man to carry.

So long as Simeon remained abroad it was easy enough to dismiss rumors. In Kendal they took stories from south of Lancashire with a very large pinch of salt. But the salt rapidly lost its savor when it emerged that Simeon Woollass had joined the English Mission, that band of Catholic priests sent to spread subversion in their native land.

Once sightings of him were reported first in Lancashire then in Westmorland and Cumberland, Will felt obliged to affirm his complete loyalty to the Protestant Church by publicly disowning his son. Despite this the Woollasses suffered the indignity of having their Kendal house searched for signs of the renegade’s presence. Will’s civic rivals, under guise of protecting the interests of loyal burghers, now made sure that every aspect of his wild youth and his son’s treacherous apostasy went on the record.

The inevitable result of such an unremitting bad press was that Will never achieved that eminence in the township of Kendal which had once seemed in his grasp and, with the passing of himself and his wife, the Millgrove firm also died.

“Is there any record that Simeon did ever return to Kendal?” Madero had inquired.

“None, though that of course means nothing,” said Southwell. “His father had publicly threatened to turn him in if ever he showed up, but that was probably just PR. When news came of his capture in Chester in ’89, Will had a seizure. Understandable reaction when you consider what capture usually meant for a Catholic priest.”

Very understandable, thought Madero. Torture, trial, condemnation, the broken body hanged till point of death, then taken down while life was still extant and eviscerated, the bowels thrown to the dogs, the finally lifeless corpse hacked into pieces to be hurled into the river, except for the head which would be stuck on a spike in a prominent place till time and the crows had reduced it to a grinning skull.

No, it was hard to believe a father could do anything which would condemn his own child to such a fate, though in this case Simeon had escaped the ultimate rigors and eventually returned to the Continent in one piece physically if not mentally.

What did it all mean? How could God tolerate a world where men could rip and tear at each other in the name of religion, where such abominations seemed destined to continue as long as mankind survived? Even now as he sat here in this peaceful inn, such horrors were happening somewhere within a few hours’ flying distance.

He bowed his head and said a prayer. It was hard to keep an accusatory note out of it, but he tried.

When he looked up his jumbo haddock had appeared.

It was excellent.

Which probably meant his penance was yet to come.

3. Hymn books and hassocks

Mrs. Appledore was clearly not to be trusted. Even making allowance for the fact that her legs might be two or three inches longer than Sam’s, the distance to St. Ylf’s was not what any honest woman could call a step.

When she’d first tracked Illthwaite down to Cumbria, Sam had pictured a cluster of whitewashed cottages around a village green, their tiny gardens rich with hollyhocks and roses, the whole backed by misty mountains and fronted by a sunlit lake. No cluster here, just an endless straggle with no discernible center. And no whitewash either. Most of the scattered buildings were coated in a dirty gray pebble dash. Garden vegetation consisted mainly of dense dank evergreens with never a hollyhock in sight, though maybe early autumn wasn’t the hollyhock season. There was no lake either, sunlit or somber, just the brown-foaming river Skad tracking the road.

The Tourist Board leaflet told her the name Skaddale probably meant the Valley of the Shadow, deriving from the fact that, as winter approached, the high surrounding fells stopped the sun from reaching a good proportion of the land. An alternative theory was that the river got its name from Scadde, an ancient dialect word for corpse, referring to its reputation for drowning travelers who tried to ford it downstream at its estuary.

Shadow or corpse, its denizens received the remnants of Sam’s caustic cob as soon as the pub was out of sight, and in its place she began to chew on her Cherry Ripe.

The rest of the leaflet confirmed Mrs. Appledore’s dismissive judgment. It did its best with the church (old), the Cross (Viking), the pub (haunted), the Hall (not open to visitors) and the village post office (postcards and provisions). But its underlying message to the passing driver seemed to be Glance out, change up, move on.

Turning her attention to the chunky Guide, she recalled from her school days a hymn beginning There is a book who runs may read. Well, this certainly wasn’t it. Even trudging, it wasn’t easy, and she only managed a glance at the opening page of the lengthy chapter on the church before a stumble in a pothole on the uneven road persuaded her that a twisted ankle was too high a price to pay for the Rev. Peter K’s lucubration.

But, as always, a brief glance was enough to imprint the page on her mind.

St. Ylf, according to local tradition, was a hermit dwelling in a cave under Scafell who on numerous occasions emerged from mists and blizzards to guide lost travelers to safety. One of these, a footpad whose profession was to prey upon unwary strangers rather than help them, was so grateful for Ylf’s help that on reaching the safety of Skaddale, he vowed to abandon his evil life and raise a church here. By the time the church was finished, stories of Ylf’s virtue and miraculous rescues had resulted in his canonization and it seemed only fitting that the church be dedicated in his name.

Architecturally, St. Ylf’s has few conventional attractions, yet it has the beauty of the unique. It was built for one place, yet for all times, providing a rare opportunity for the modern Christian to make contact with the simple faith of his distant ancestors and marvel how their hard and often brutish lives did not prevent them from celebrating God’s glory and affirming their deep trust in His mercy.

Sam’s first thought when some twenty minutes later she rounded a bend and at last saw the church was that it wasn’t deep trust in God’s mercy it affirmed so much as serious doubts about His weather, particularly the wind which was suddenly buffeting her back like congratulation from an overenthusiastic friend. But it would need more than enthusiasm to move this broad squat building which clung grimly to the ground, its low blunt tower rising from a shallow pitched roof of dull gray slate like the head of an animal at bay, growling defiance. Its muddy brown side walls were pierced by three narrow windows more suited to shooting arrows out than letting light in.

The extensive churchyard was surrounded by a high wall constructed of irregular blocks of stone, or rather roughly shaped boulders bound together by flaking mortar in whose cracks a scurfy ivy had taken hold. To one side of the wall stood a large ugly house, presumably the vicarage. She walked up to the huge wrought-iron gate which looked as if it had come from a Victorian workhouse closing-down sale. It bore a sign inviting visitors to show due reverence on entering the church and due generosity on leaving it, a message reinforced by a peacock screech from the hinges as she pushed it open and stepped into the churchyard.

A forest of headstones rose from close-trimmed turf, and the gardeners were here too, half a dozen sheep, not the snowy Merinos of home, but small sturdy beasts with fleece as gray as the sky they grazed under.

She strolled among the memorials, examining the inscriptions. Infant deaths abounded in the earlier centuries but began to diminish in the twentieth. There were plenty of family groupings, some going back forever, including a long roll-call of Swinebanks with at least one priest of this parish every half-century. This got pretty close to the kind of hereditary priest-ship they had at some of the old pagan shrines. Lots of Peters alternating with lots of Pauls. Peter K, the author of the Guide had made it to 1939, so he got one war in but missed the other. The next priest (this one a Paul) had died in 1969. Was the present guy yet another Swinebank? Real cozy.

The most elegant headstones in every century belonged to a family called Winander, but when it came to size they had to give best to what looked like a small fortress of black marble, as if someone had felt the peace of the grave was literally worth defending. It marked what must be the very crowded tomb of the Woollass family, the local squires mentioned by Mrs. Appledore, whose own name figured frequently, though Sam couldn’t spot a Buckle.

And no sign anywhere of a Flood.

But there was evidence that this was an active graveyard. As she rounded the black fortress she saw ahead of her, near the left-hand wall, a pile of earth as if some giant mole had been at work. A few more steps brought into view the angle of an open grave, sharp and black against the green turf.

Then her heart contracted and she stopped in her tracks as a figure rose out of the dank earth.

It took only a moment to recognize the obvious, that this was the gravedigger who’d been stooping low to remove a large stone which he now deposited on the side.

This done, he straightened up to wipe his brow and looked straight at her.

If his appearance had given her a start, hers seemed to return the shock with interest. He froze with the back of his hand at his forehead, giving the impression of a mariner shading his eyes from the sun as he peered over the bow in search of land. But the expression on his face suggested it was a fearsome reef he saw.

She gave him what she intended as a reassuring smile and moved on toward the church door. Here she glanced his way again and saw he was still staring at her. He was a man in his fifties, square-built and muscular, with a leathery face that looked as if a drunken taxidermist had been stuffing an English bulldog and then given up. But that unblinking gaze belonged to some creature far less cozy than a mere bulldog.

Sam didn’t bother with another smile. Why waste it? This felt like the kind of place where not only did they stare at strangers, they probably pointed at the sky whenever a plane flew overhead.

She raised the old-fashioned latch and pushed the door open. Like the gate, its opening was accompanied by a sound effect, this time a groan straight out of a horror movie. Hadn’t oil reached Illthwaite yet?

She stepped inside.

When God said let there be light, He must have forgotten St. Ylf’s. It was so gloomy in here she had to pause a moment to let her eyes adapt. When murk began to coalesce into form, she found herself standing by a font consisting of a granite block out of which a basin had been scooped deep enough for an infant to drown in. Around its rough-hewn sides a not incompetent artist had carved a frieze of spasmodic dancers doing a conga behind a hooded figure carrying a scythe.

You live in the valley of the shadow, must seem like a good idea to let your kids see early what lies in wait for them, thought Sam. To her left was the space beneath the tower which seemed to be used as a kind of storeroom. The back wall was lined with dusty stacks of hassocks and hymn books, perhaps a reminder of days when the vicar expected a full house at every service. A rickety-looking ladder led up to a trapdoor which stood open, revealing the scudding clouds and admitting just enough light to make the shadowy church even more sinister.

She turned away to face down the aisle where the Gothic experience continued.

At the far end within the chancel on a pair of wooden trestles stood a coffin.

She set off toward it, trainers slapping against the granite floor. As she got nearer, she slowed. This was getting to be too much.

The coffin lid was drawn back to reveal the face of the corpse within.

It was a young face, pretty well de-sexed by death. She looked at the brass plate on the lid. It read William Knipp – in the seventeenth year of his age.

Poor sod. He died young.

She thought she heard a noise behind her and turned abruptly.

Nothing.

But there was the sound again. Her keen ear tracked it to the porch, or rather the store space beyond, beneath the tower. She walked back down the aisle and looked up at the open trap. The sky didn’t seem quite so dark now.

She called, “Hello! Anyone there?”

Though there was no reply, it felt like there was someone up there, listening.

“Hi,” she called. “Sorry to trouble you, but I could do with some help.”

Still nothing. She was beginning to feel irritated. While she didn’t have much time for priests and such, wasn’t it part of their job description that they should be there for you when you needed them?

“OK,” she called. “If you’re too busy to come down, I’ll come up.”

Setting the Guide on the floor, she grasped the rough wood of the old ladder and began to climb.

She was a good climber, light, supple and nimble. Watching her rapid ascent of the big blue gum overshading the north side of the house at Vinada, her pa had said, “If I’d bought a monkey, I’d sell it.”

It only took a few seconds to get to the top of the ladder, though it felt longer. The higher she got, the more rickety it felt. She glanced down and the floor seemed further away than she would have guessed. Thank God I don’t suffer from vertigo, she thought.

Unless vertigo began with a sudden petrifying sense of being watched!

The sooner she was off this ladder, the better. She reached her left hand up to get a grip on the floor of the tower.

And next moment the trap came crashing down.

She whipped her hand away, felt the frame graze her finger ends, lost her right hand’s grip on the topmost rung of the ladder, and suddenly the floor which had seemed so far away was getting closer far too quickly.

As she fell she had a sense of a darker shadow against the cloudy gray square. Or rather, later she had a sense that she’d had a sense, but for the brief time being all she was registering was her fervent desire not to crash head first on to the unyielding granite slabs.

She knew about falling. She’d always been good on the trampoline. In fact they’d persuaded her to try competitive gymnastics at school, but she’d left the team when it got too serious. Even then she’d known the medals she wanted from life weren’t to be got by bouncing. Now, however, all that twisting and turning looked like it might be useful.

First off, she tried a backward somersault to straighten herself up, but all it did halfway through was bring her in violent collision with the back wall.

This however turned out to be her salvation. Instead of sliding down it at great speed to make contact with the floor, she hit the stack of hassocks and hymn books piled there in anticipation of some future full house sellout. The hands of angels might have done a better job at bearing her up, but maybe this kind of divine intercession was the best an Aussie atheist could look for.

This was her last absurd thought before she hit the ground with sufficient force to drive all the breath out of her lungs but not to kill her. An avalanche of hassocks and hymn books swept down after her, filling the air with swirling dust. She twisted round to protect her face from the holy debris and cried out as it clattered and bounced against her back. Fear of heights she didn’t have, but most of her childhood nightmares had been associated with fear of being trapped in a constricted dark place.

The downslide seemed to go on forever. She felt as if she were being buried alive under a mountain of dusty books and cushions. And even when they stopped crashing upon her, through the roar of terrified blood rushing along her veins she seemed still to hear noises: creaking wood, steps, doors opening and shutting.

Till finally these too, whether imagined or real, died away, leaving her to something more frightening than any sound.

The silence of the dark.

4. The Wolf-Head Cross

Later Sam worked out she probably lay there only a matter of seconds, certainly less than a minute. Also that she could have dislodged the hymn books and hassocks simply by sitting up. But at the time it felt as if she lay there an age, fearful that the slightest movement would bring the whole weight of the tower crashing down upon her.

And finally a voice.

“Jesus Christ! Gerry, give me a hand. Miss Flood! Miss Flood! Are you all right?”

Someone was pulling the books and hassocks from her body. Someone who knew her name. Maybe it was God. Though surely the All-knowing wouldn’t need to inquire after her health?

She squinted sideways and saw a pair of knees. Would God wear blue denim? She didn’t care. She could see, not too clearly, but at least she was out of the dark.

“What happened?” she gasped.

“You fell. Stay still. Gerry, don’t just stand there. Get some water.”

Gerry? God’s second son, maybe. Jesus and Gerry. Now she was being silly. On the other hand this Gerry did seem able to conjure up rain which was now falling in very welcome cool drops on her exposed cheek.

Her mouth felt dry as dust. She swallowed and realized that in fact her mouth was full of dust. She needed to get some of this delicious liquid down her throat. She struggled to turn her face upward.

“No! Don’t move till we get help.”

Right, of course. She should lie still until experts had assessed the extent of damage and how best to proceed without causing more.

But even as this eminently sensible response was struggling along the self-repairing synapses of her brain, she was twisting round from prone to supine and flexing everything that she felt ought to be flexible.

“I’m OK,” she gasped. “Water.”

The source of the rain she now traced to a shallow silver platter from which Gerry the Son was flicking water with his finger. God the Blue-jeaned was still kneeling by her. She used his shoulder to haul herself into the sitting position, grabbed the salver, and drained what little water it still contained. Then with the instinct of a thirsty animal in the outback, she pushed herself upright, tottered to the font and buried her face in its cool dark pool. When her mouth was washed clean of dust, she cupped her hands and threw the water against her face and gasped with pleasure as it trickled down her body.

“This is good stuff,” she said finally. “Does this mean I’ve been baptized? My pa will kill me.”

The frivolity popped out as it often did at moments of high stress. Her rescuers didn’t seem to find it funny.

God was a six-footer, broad-shouldered, barrel-chested, though the barrel showed signs of rolling downhill into a beer gut. Way back he must have been a craggy good looker, but now he was definitely the ancient of days, in his sixties she guessed, his weathered face lined and crinkled. But his eyes still sparkled a bright blue and his thatch of silvery hair was still touched here and there with starts of gold.

The other one, Gerry the rainmaker, was a bit younger, mid-fifties maybe, his hair still black with only a slight frosting at the edges. His rather chubby face looked as if it could relax into a kind of koala attractiveness, but for now it was set in a blank from which his slatey eyes viewed her more like a strange animal who might be a threat than a young stranger who’d just had an accident. In contrast to God’s sports shirt and jeans, he wore a dark suit and a collar and tie.

“I still think we should get you checked out,” said God. “That was a nasty tumble you took.”

“You saw it?” said Sam.

“No. I came in and saw you lying on the floor under all that crap. It didn’t take Miss Marple to work out you must have fallen off the loft ladder, right?”

“It might have tested her to work out what my name was,” said Sam.

Before he could reply, the porch door opened and another man came in, this one wearing a priest’s cassock and collar. He too was in his fifties, medium height, slightly built, with a salt-and-pepper shag of hair, and a matching tangle of beard, which, if the moistly anxious brown eyes peering out above it were anything to go by, had been cultivated to conceal meekness rather than express aggression.

“Thor,” he said. “And Gerry. Hello. What on earth’s happened here?”

As he spoke his gaze swung rapidly from the pile of hassocks and hymn books on the floor to Sam, and stuck. His mouth opened and white teeth gleamed through his beard like the moon through a bramble bush in what may have been intended as a welcoming smile but came over more as a grimace.

The man called Thor (right name for a god, wrong religion, thought Sam) said, “I came down to make sure young Billy got screwed in properly. This young lady seems to have slipped off the tower ladder. You should get it fixed. It’s a death trap.”

“Oh dear. I’m so sorry. Are you all right, Miss…?”

“Flood. Sam Flood,” said Sam. “Yeah, I’m fine. Few bruises, nothing broken. And I didn’t slip. Someone slammed the trap shut on my fingers.”

Something in what she said robbed the vicar of the power of response for a moment and when he got it back, it hardly seemed worth the effort.

“What…? You’re sure…? Who would do such a thing…? It hardly seems likely…”

While the vicar was wittering, God ran up the ladder with the casual ease of an ancient mariner and pushed open the trap.

“No one up here now,” he declared. “Wind must have blown it shut.”

He slid down, landing easily.

“You’d need a bloody gale!” protested Sam.

“Gales are what we get round here,” said the man. “Did you actually see anyone?”

“No, not really,” she admitted. “But I did hear something. And he had time to come down and get away…”

She moved away from the support of the font and was pleased to find she was pretty well back in control of her limbs. Standing under the once more open trap, she peered up at the clouds and recalled that sense of a presence just before it slammed shut. No features, just that frightening feeling of being at the focal point of a predatory stare…

“There was a guy outside digging a grave when I arrived,” she said. “Was he still there when you arrived?”

She directed this at the man the vicar had called Thor.

“Laal Gowder? Yes, I had a word with him. Why?”

Because I thought it might be him who came in behind me and climbed up to the tower seemed even less sensible an answer than it had a moment ago.

“Just thought he might have seen someone,” she said lamely.

“Coming out of the church, you mean? Well, I didn’t see anyone. And you were coming up the path behind me, Gerry. You see anyone?”

“No,” said the silent man. “Only Gowder.”

He spoke the name as if it tasted foul on the tongue. Despite his apparent lack of enthusiasm for her own presence, Sam felt maybe they had something in common after all. She recalled that Mrs. Appledore had mentioned someone called Gerry Woollass. It came back to her. Not God’s son, but the squire’s son. Same thing round here, perhaps?

Despite beginning to have doubts about her interpretation of events, she wasn’t quite ready yet to give up.

“He could have gone out that way,” she said, pointing to another door in the wall opposite the main entrance.

“Sorry, no,” said the vicar. “That’s the Devil’s Door.”

“Sorry? What was that? The devil’s door?”

“Yes. It opens north, which in the Middle Ages was regarded as the direction the devil would come from. In some churches the doorway was actually bricked up. Here at St. Ylf’s we’re not so superstitious. We merely keep ours locked.”

The bramble bush smile flashed again, this time definitely a smile, signaling a joke.

Sam thought of checking the door but didn’t. These old farts probably thought she was simply overreacting to the embarrassment of admitting that she, young, fit Sam Flood who held her year’s record for scaling the uni’s climbing wall, had fallen off a ladder. And they might be right!

She said, “Look, I’m sorry for the bother I’ve caused. Thanks for all your help.”

“Glad to be of service,” said God. “I’m Thor Winander, by the way. And this is Gerry Woollass.”

Got you right, then, thought Sam, looking at the vicar who, rather reluctantly, said, “And I’m Peter Swinebank, vicar of this parish.”

“Same as the guy who wrote the Guide? Which reminds me, it must be lying around here somewhere.”

It was Woollass who spotted it. He picked it up, dusted it off and handed it back to her, taking the opportunity for a close inspection of her face as he did so.

“Good. Well, I’m glad that no real damage was done,” said Swinebank rather stagily. “Once again my apologies. Now I really must get on. People will be arriving for the funeral soon…”

“Can I have a quick word first?” said Sam. “It was you I was looking for when I started climbing the ladder. Thing is, I think maybe my grandmother came from these parts. Don’t know much else about her except that she made the trip out in spring 1960.”

“The trip out where?” inquired Swinebank.

“Have you got cloth ears, Pete?” said Winander. “I should have thought even a deaf man would have picked up our young friend has come hopping along the yellow brick road from Oz.”

“Oh, shoot,” said Sam. “And all them elocution lessons my ma wasted money on. Anyway, Vicar, any chance you can help me?”

“I don’t know,” said Swinebank. “What was your grandmother’s name?”

“Same as mine. Don’t ask me why. It’s a long story,” she said. “Flood. Samantha Flood. I thought if it was a local family they might be mentioned in the church records.”

The three men looked at each other.

“No,” declared Rev. Pete. “To my best recollection there has never been a local family called Flood. Right, Thor? Gerry?”

The other two shook their heads.

“No?” said Sam. “Still, if maybe I could glance at your parish records…”

“I’m afraid that… when did you say she left? Spring 1960, was it?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re sure of that? And that it was Illthwaite?” probed Swinebank.

“I’m sure of the date, and pretty positive it was Illthwaite or something like it.”

“Thwaite is a common suffix in English place names,” said Swinebank. “As for the records, I fear we can’t help you much there. You see, the church was broken into a few months back and everything valuable stolen. Fortunately the really old records are kept locked in a safe in the vicarage, but most of the postwar books vanished. But, as I say, I’m pretty sure there hasn’t been a local family called Flood. Now I really must start getting organized for the funeral. Thor, I presume you’ve come to see to the coffin?”

“That’s right. You can tell Lorna the memorial should be ready tomorrow.”

“Excellent. Gerry, Lorna’s so grateful you’ve agreed to say a few words about Billy. The sense of a community coming together is so important at a time like this.”

The sense of a community coming close together was very much what Sam was getting. And maybe she was being neurotic, but she felt a sense of relief here too, as at a problem solved or at least sidelined.

She said, “I’ll get out of your hair. Thanks again for your help. Have a nice day.”

Not perhaps the most apt form of farewell to men about to screw down a coffin and get ready for a funeral, but if it confirmed them in their Pom prejudices that she was an uncouth young Aussie who stuck her nose in where she wasn’t wanted and fell off ladders, that was OK by her.

Outside she saw that the gravedigger with the odd name – Laal Gowder, was it? – had disappeared, his job presumably completed. It was to be hoped so, as the church gate now screeched open to admit what were presumably the first of the mourners.

The wind had become intermittent, but a sudden gust strong enough to support Thor Winander’s theory sent a chill down her body. She glanced down and realized that the soaking she’d given herself from the font had left her looking like an entrant in a wet T-shirt competition. Not a very strong entrant, in view of her shallow frontage, but hardly what a grieving family might want to encounter so close to the dead boy’s grave.

She headed round the back of the church, thinking she might find another way out here. But when she put the building between herself and the road, she pulled up short.

Here, at the center of a quincunx formed with four yew trees which overshaded but did not overpower it, stood what must be the famous cross mentioned by Mrs. Appledore.

It was at least fifteen feet high. Its shaft was ornately carved with intricate knotwork patterns interspersed with panels depicting various human and animal forms. The most striking image, both because of the vigor of the carving and its position at the center of the wheelhead crosspiece, was a wolf’s head. Its gaping jaws were wedged open by a sword, but the one huge visible eye seemed to glare straight down at Sam, tracking her hesitant approach, promising that this state of impotence was temporary.

She broke eye contact to look at the Guide. This informed her in measured prose that the cross was Viking of the ninth century. Like many similar crosses, it made use of old Norse mythology to convey the new Christian message. The Reverend Peter K. commended the craftsman’s skill and gave a detailed interpretation of the symbols used.

The huge snake coiled around the lowest section of the shaft base devouring its own tail was at the same time Satan seducing Eve, and Jormungand, the great serpent which encircles Midgard in the northern legends, while the figure leaning out of a boat and beating the serpent’s head with a hammer was both the thunder god, Thor, and Christ harrowing Hell. As for the wolf, this was the beast Fenrir, which the Nordic gods thought they had rendered impotent by setting a bridle round its neck and a sword in its jaws. Eventually, however, it would break loose to join in that destruction of the physical universe called by pagans Ragnarokk or the Twilight of the Gods, by Christians Judgment Day.

Whether this meant the wolf was a good or a bad thing wasn’t all that clear.

There were two other problematic areas. One was a front panel from which the image had disappeared almost completely. This defacement, Peter K. theorized, probably occurred in 1571 when a group of iconoclasts toppled the Wolf-Head Cross. It lay in several pieces for nearly twenty years and it was only when it was repaired and re-erected that the second problematic inscription was discovered on the lowest vertical of the stepped base. The symbols revealed didn’t look like anything else on the cross. A series of vertical lines with a stroke through them (runic? postulated Peter K.); an inverted V, and another with the lines slightly extended to form a disproportioned cross (Greek?); an oval with two wavy lines through it (hieroglyphic?); and a surround of swirls and whorls.

Sam was amused by the number and variety of “expert” interpretations: a prayer for the soul of a local bishop; a verse from a hymn to an Irish saint; a magical invocation.

That was always the trouble. Like some proofs in math, once you got started, the sky was the limit, but often it was finding the right place to start that was the big holdup.

Illthwaite, she told herself firmly, was a wrong start point. All she could hope was that the dark man at the Stranger House would let her enjoy a good night’s sleep, then up in the morning and on to Newcastle.

And if there was nothing new there, then maybe it was time to follow Pa’s example and let the dead take care of the dead.

With her back to the church she took a last look up at the Wolf-Head Cross. What had this remote and eerie place been like when those distant inhabitants had decided fifteen feet of carved granite was what they needed to make life comprehensible? Indeed, what had attracted them to settle in this dark and dreary valley in the first place?

Well, whatever it was, it looked like it had worked. Centuries later, and their descendants were still here, though maybe more under the earth than over it.

She shivered at the thought and forced her gaze away from the intricate scrollery of the carving which led you round and round into places you didn’t want to go, and eventually, inevitably, back to the eye of the wolf. She checked out the high wall beyond for another exit gate but found none. What she did notice was that the sheep-grazed neatness and order which prevailed elsewhere was scutched here by an outcrop of briar and nettles and rosebay willowherb against a small section of the wall. As the gusting wind moved among this vegetation, out of the corner of her eye she got a brief impression of lines more regular than those provided by the curved stones with their tracery of mortar. She advanced beyond the cross and squatted to take a closer look.

The briar was studded with such ferocious hooks that she could see why the sheep avoided grazing here. It was hard enough for her to brush aside the veiling vegetation but she finally succeeded at the price of several scratches and stings.

Her reward was to discover her glimpse of regularity hadn’t been delusive. On a huge base stone someone had carved a quatrain of verse, arranging it in a perfect square.

She read the first line and felt the ground tremble beneath her feet as though the ancient dead were turning in their long sleep.

Here lies Sam Flood

She steadied herself with one hand on the cool damp turf and blinked to bring the stone back into focus. Then she read on.

Here lies Sam Flood

Whose nature bid him

To do much good.

Much good it did him.

Nothing else. No date, no pious farewell, not even an RIP.

She stood up and watched as the wind rearranged the briars and nettles till the carving was once more invisible.

She thought she heard a noise and turned quickly. She was sure she glimpsed a movement on the tower. Well, almost sure. That bloody tower could easily become an obsession. She certainly wasn’t going to interrupt the funeral service to take a look. Probably it was pure fancy, and the sound had come from the stomach of a nearby sheep.

But suddenly the cross, the four dark yews, the crouching building, were an insupportable burden.

She hurried round the side of the church and up the path to the gate.

As she reached it, suddenly there was a burst of sound from behind, the voices of what must be a large congregation upraised in a hymn. There didn’t seem to be any musical accompaniment but she could make out the words quite clearly.

Day of wrath! O day of mourning!

See fulfilled the prophet’s warning!

Heav’n and earth in ashes burning!

Above the church, the wind was shredding the veil of low cloud, and now at last she saw the mountains, much closer than she’d imagined.

The church crouched like a guard dog on their skirts. Back home she’d seen country much wilder and mountains twice as high, but nowhere had she ever felt so out of place.

She turned away and began the long trudge back to the Stranger House.

5. A nice straight country road

The weather had improved considerably when Mig Madero came out of the pub. Gaps were appearing in the clouds and westward the sun was setting in a wash of pink against which the intervening heights lay in sharp silhouette.

He took his laptop off the back seat, plugged it into his mobile, got online and checked his e-mail. He had one message from his mother, reminding him to keep in touch. Realizing he was now past his forecast time of arrival in Illthwaite, he keyed a brief equivocating line saying he had safely arrived in Cumbria. Then he wrote an e-mail to Professor Coldstream.

Max, thanks for suggesting Southwell – everything you promised – good and bad! Ever hear of a man called Molloy? Some sort of journalist, up here asking questions about Father Simeon a few years back, possibly in connection with a book on Topcliffe and his associates e.g. F. Tyrwhitt. Talking of whom, anything new from your man Lilleywhite in Yorkshire? Off to Illthwaite now. Mig.

His messages despatched, he brought up the map, which confirmed what he knew, that Skaddale with its village of Illthwaite lay on the far side of those silhouetted heights. The most direct route seemed to be via the next township of Ambleside to a village called Elterwater from which ran what looked like a nice straight country road. With luck, he might at last be able to let the SLK really express itself.

Half an hour later he was beginning to understand why the haddock had been so good. God, being just, had clearly decided that the journey would be expiation enough.

The only traffic he’d met was a slow tractor, but that had been on such a narrow twisty bit of road that overtaking was quite impossible. Nor did things improve when finally the man pulled in at a farm gate. The anticipated long straight empty stretches where he could gun the engine didn’t materialize. The road wound onward and upward, so far upward that, despite the clearing skies he’d observed earlier, he found himself running into a patchwork of mist whose threads finally conjoined into an all-enveloping quilt. Full headlights bounced back off the shrouding whiteness. Dipped headlights showed just enough of the road to permit a crawling advance.

Then the road began to go downhill and he thought the worst was over. So much for these so-called mountains, if such low heights deserved the term. Wasn’t there another word they used up here? Fells, that was it. Not mountains but fells. A modest little word for modest little eminences.

But even as he relaxed, the road began to climb again. Ten minutes later, as the curves became zigzags and an ever-increasing angle of ascent meant that from his low seat he spent as much time looking up at the sky as down at the road, he recalled his mother’s reaction when he’d bought the sporty Merc. She’d objected to almost everything about it but hadn’t mentioned he might find himself driving on worse roads than he’d encountered in the Sierra Nevada. God must be really pissed with him!

Soon he was back in the mist. Things weren’t helped by the fact that many sheep seemed to regard this twisting ribbon of tarmac as their own personal mattress. Nor were they in a hurry to get out of his way. Slowly they’d rise, stare at him resentfully for a long moment, then step aside with no sign of haste. Some even took a step or two toward the car first and struck an aggressive hoof against the ground.

Dear God, if the sheep were like this round here, how did real wild animals react?

Then at last he was on the flat for a short space before the road began to descend. It was still twisty and narrow and steep but the lower he got, the thinner the mist got, till suddenly he was completely free of it. Above he could see a sky crowded with stars and, even more comfortingly, below he could glimpse the occasional twinkle of house lights.

Soon he was running along a valley bottom, the road still narrow and bendy but at least it was flanked by walls and hedgerows which kept livestock in their proper domain. He met a couple of other cars and, despite the inconvenience of having to back fifty yards at one point to enable safe passage, he was glad of their company. When he saw the brightly lit windows and well-filled car park of a small hotel, he was tempted to turn in. But a glance at his screen told him he was close to his destination now and he pressed on.

The next road to the right should take him into Skaddale. He almost missed it, but was driving slowly enough to be able to brake and turn. There was no signpost but as his map showed no other turnoff for miles, this had to be the one.

After a few minutes his certainty was fading. The road soon grew narrow and serpentine and though he had no sense of rising terrain, he found that once more skeins of mist were winding themselves around his windows. He began to wish he had succumbed to the lure of the brightly lit hotel. To make matters worse, he had begun to experience that strong sense of ghostly presence as he drove up the valley. He resisted it – the last thing a man driving along a narrow road in a mist wanted was the company of ghosts – but the price of resistance was the onset of a bad migraine. It was as if the mist had somehow got into his head where it swirled around wildly, occasionally pierced by dogtooth lines of brightness like the after impression of a lightbulb’s filament. The laptop screen was going crazy too. It was all jags of light and swirls of color, no longer a map, at least not a map of any place you wanted to be. He switched it off. It didn’t help.

In the end he had to pull up. He felt sick. He lowered the window and leaned forward to rest his forehead against the cool windscreen. He could hear the noise of rushing water, and of wind gusting through trees. And now as his headache eased, there was something else in the wind… voices… angry voices… calling… threatening… and something… someone… running in panic… cold air tearing at his lungs as weary muscles drove him up the steep slope in his effort to outpace the relentless chasers…

This was worse than migraine. He tried to will the headache back. It would not come. But there was pain very close. He could feel it. Very very close…

Mig in the car could not move. But there was part of him out there with the fugitive, feeling the cold air tearing at his lungs, branches lashing across his face, runnels of muddy water sucking at his feet…

And then he was down… stumbling over an exposed root, he crashed to the ground and looked up at the bole of a blasted tree, looming menacingly out of the mist.

And then they were all around him, feet kicking at him, hands clawing him and hoisting him off the ground and binding ropes tightly around his chest and stomach, till he hung from the ruined tree.

For a moment, there was respite.

In the car Mig felt that one last supreme effort would regain the power of movement.

But now came the pain. In his hands, in his feet, not just the familiar prickling, not even the sharp pangs experienced on the few occasions he’d actually bled, but real, piercing, unbearable pain, as if broad blunt nails were being driven through his palms and his ankles…

He screamed and threw back his head and tried to fall into blackness away from this agony.

And in the same moment, the pain fled, he opened his eyes and looked up through the windscreen of the Mercedes at a bright and starry sky with not a trace of mist to be seen.

And when he lowered his gaze he saw ahead of him, about fifty yards away, a building with windows aglow and a sign which bore the silhouette of a hooded figure and the words The Stranger House.

6. Pillow problems

At eight that evening, Sam descended the creaky stairs of the pub.

On her walk back from the church, her irrational fear had turned to rational anger. Why hadn’t Rev. Pete or those other two antiques mentioned the hidden stone bearing her name? Two possible answers… no; three. Either they didn’t know about it, or they knew about it but were certain it had nothing to do with her, or they knew it had something to do with her but preferred she stayed ignorant.

The first seemed unlikely. It was Swinebank’s church; Woollass was the local squire – sorry – squire’s son; as for Thor Winander, he gave the impression he’d know everything round here.

The second was the simplest explanation. It was an old inscription that they knew could have nothing to do with her family. Fair enough, though it didn’t look all that old, not antique anyway like some of the not dissimilar lettering on the old headstones.

As for the third, that was less likely but more troublesome.

One thing was sure, before she left she needed an explanation. But she’d give them every chance to volunteer one before she started throwing punches.

This decision made, she lay on her bed for ten minutes, which when she opened her eyes had turned into three hours, giving the chance for the shoulder and hip which had borne the brunt of her fall to stiffen up and turn an interesting shade of aubergine.

She headed for the bathroom opposite her bedroom door. The water was piping hot and the old-fashioned bath deep enough to float in. A long soak eased the worst of her stiffness, and now she realized she was very hungry.

At the top of the stairs she heard voices below at the entrance end of the shadowy hallway. Alerted by the unavoidable creakings, the speakers stopped. Then one of the figures moved into the dim light and said, “Here she is now. You can ask her yourself.”

It was Mrs. Appledore. And the man she was talking to was Gerry the Son.

“We’ve just been talking about your accident, dear,” said the landlady, her pleasant round face touched with concern. “How’re you feeling now?”

“I’m good,” said Sam. “No problem, really.”

The pub had been empty when she returned and she’d worked out that Mrs. Appledore must have been one of the funeral congregation singing that cheerful hymn.

“That’s good to hear,” said Woollass. “We were all very concerned.”

He sounded sincere enough and his gaze felt less like that of an angler examining a strange fish than it had in the church.

“No need,” she said. “Thanks again for your help.”

Not that it had amounted to much but, like Pa said, always be polite till you’ve got good reason not to be.

“Excellent. I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay. Now, I must be off. You’ll remember my message, Edie?”

“Ten, not nine-thirty. I think I can just about manage that, Gerry. My best to your dad. It’s a long time since we saw him down here.”

“He feels very susceptible to cold drafts these days,” said Woollass.

“Does he? Well, tell him the only cold drafts he’ll find here is the beer,” retorted the landlady. “Goodnight now.”

As the door closed behind Woollass, she turned to Sam and smiled.

“He’s a good man, Gerry, but diplomacy’s not his strong point.”

“He didn’t come here just to inquire after my health, did he?” asked Sam.

“No. He wanted to leave a message, though as you heard it wasn’t much of a message. But he was very concerned about you. That’s Gerry all over. As someone said, he’s got such a bleeding heart, you can hear it squelching when he breathes.”

“That wouldn’t be Mr. Winander, would it?”

Mrs. Appledore laughed out loud.

“You’re the sharp one, aren’t you? Of course you met him up at the church.”

“That’s right. He was very kind. So what’s he do for a living?”

“Winanders have been blacksmiths and general craftsmen in the village since way back. Thor’s branched out, but. Does arty stuff. And he’s a real salesman, so take care. Now you’ll be wanting something to eat, I expect. Unless you’re planning on going out?”

Memory of the caustic cob had made Sam consider driving down to the fancy-priced hotel in search of dinner, but answers to her questions lay here.

She said, “Yeah, I’m hungry enough to eat shoe leather. What have you got?”

“Anything you like so long as it’s sausage or ham.”

“Sausage sounds great.”

“OK. In you go. I reserved a table for you. I’d better get back behind the bar before the natives get restless.”

The ringing of the bar bell and cries of “Shop!” had already been audible from the bar, but all sound stopped for a moment as Sam pushed open the door and stepped inside.

The room was crowded but a path opened up for her leading to a small round table with a handwritten Reserved sign draped across an ashtray, and the noise resumed as she sat down. She’d brought the Reverend Peter K.’s Guide with her, but before she could open it a pint glass was slammed on the table. She looked up to find Thor Winander smiling down at her.

“A belated welcome to Illthwaite, Miss Flood,” he said. “Glad to see you looking so spry after your adventure.”

“You’re looking pretty spry yourself, considering, Mr. Winander,” she replied.

He laughed, showing good strong teeth, and said, “I won’t ask, considering what? I’m sorry your family inquiries came to a dead end.”

“One man’s dead end can be someone else’s starting point,” she said.

He looked at her speculatively. She met his gaze square on. He wasn’t totally unattractive for a geriatric, and he still had a certain Viking swagger to go with his name.

Thought of names made her ask, “You never told me how you knew what I was called. I’d guess you’d been talking to Mrs. Appledore. Right?”

“Quite right. I ran into her and naturally an exotic stranger in our little village was quite a news item. In Edie’s defense, I daresay she’s been just as forthcoming about me.”

“Well, she did say you were a bit of an artist.”

“I won’t ask what kind,” he grinned. “But it’s certainly true that few visitors to our fair village escape without paying due tribute to my talents. I look forward to seeing you in my studio before you go. In fact, let’s make a date. Tomorrow morning, shall we say?”

“What makes you think I’m in the market for art?”

“What makes you think I’m talking about art?”

Jesus, the old fart was flirting! Did he really think his pillaging and ravishing days weren’t altogether behind him?

Perhaps her disbelief showed, for his tone changed from teasing to something well short of but in the general area of pleading as he said, “It would be good if you could call in. I’m at the Forge, across the bridge and up Stanebank. Enjoy your drink, my dear.”

She watched him make his way to a bench by the window where he sat down next to a man Sam recognized as the menacing gravedigger. Or she thought she recognized him till her gaze moved to a third man on the bench, and there he was again.

Her eyes flickered between the two. Same face, same clothes, and the same blank animal stare which though it seemed unfocused she felt was fixed on herself. Twins? Certainly brothers. Bad enough giving birth to one who looked like that, she thought unkindly, but you must really piss fate off to get landed with two!

And now it occurred to her that if there were two, it didn’t matter if the gravedigger was still clearly visible outside while she was falling off that bloody ladder. It could have been his mirror image whose petrifying gaze she had felt up on the tower!

Something else to look into. But not here, not now. Here she was the solitary young woman, eating alone. Don’t fight it, go with it.

She picked up the Guide. It fell open at the last page she’d looked at, the section on the Wolf-Head Cross. She studied a reproduction of the panel showing the god Thor in his boat. It wasn’t a detailed portrait but there was a definite resemblance to Winander. She squinted down at the picture and sipped her beer thoughtfully. It was good stuff, slipping down so easily she’d almost got through the pint without noticing.

As if her thought was a command, another glass was set before her.

She looked up to see not the aged Viking but the superannuated leprechaun who’d warned her against Illthwaite.

“Good evening, Miss Flood,” he said, his high clear voice pitched low. “I hope you will accept a drink from me in token of apology for any unintentional rudeness I may have shown to you at lunchtime. I should have remembered the scriptures: Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

“That’s nice,” she said. “But I wasn’t offended. And I’m certainly no angel.”

“Angels come in many guises and for many purposes,” he said.

He didn’t smile as he said it but spoke with an earnest sincerity which made her recall Mrs. Appledore’s warning that he was a snag short of a barbie.

“I hope you have recovered from your accident in the church,” he said.

“Yes, I’m good,” she said, thinking, cracked he may be, but he doesn’t miss much!

His eyes had strayed down to the open book on the table.

“You are interested in antiquities?” he said.

“In a way,” she said. “I was reading about the Wolf-Head Cross.”

“Ah yes. The Wolf-Head. Our claim to historical significance. But if you want to find out something of the true nature of Illthwaite, you should read about our other Wolf-Head Cross. Try the chapter on Myth and Legend. But never forget you are in a part of the world where they hold an annual competition for telling lies.”

He moved away to what seemed to be his accustomed seat almost out of sight behind the angle of the fireplace.

Her curiosity pricked, she riffled through the pages till she came to a section headed Folklore, Myth, Legend which she began reading at her usual breakneck speed.

After an introduction in which the three topics were defined and carefully differentiated, the writer conceded:

Yet so frequently do these areas overlap and merge, with invented and historical figures becoming confused, and events which properly belong to the timeless world of the fairies receiving the imprimatur of particular dates and locations, that it is almost as dangerous to dismiss any story as wild fancy as it would be to accept all that is related round the crackling fire of the Stranger House on a winter’s night as gospel truth. What more likely than that a pious farmer riding home after a night of wassail and ghost stories should mistake a swirl of snowflakes round the churchyard for the restless spirit of some recently deceased villager? When it comes to sharing real and personal concerns with strangers, Cumbrians are a close and secret people, but in launching flights of fancy dressed as fact they have few equals, as those who had the pleasure of meeting the late Mr. Ritson of Wasdale Head can well testify.

As described supra, in the designs on our great Viking cross can be found a fascinating use of ancient fables to underline and illustrate the awful and sacred truths of Christianity. Had Dr Johnson paused on his journey to the Caledonian wildernesses to view our Wolf-Head Cross, he might have modified his strictures on Lycidas.

Yet the great doctor was right in asserting that truth and myth may be combined in a manner both impious and dangerous. So in the story of that other cross, which some in their superstitious folly also called “Wolf-Head,” we find fact and fiction close tangled in a knot it would take the mind of Aristotle or the sword of Alexander to dismantle.

Here is that story as it is still recounted in the parish, with slight variation and embellishment, according to the nature of the narrator and the perceived susceptibility of the auditor. Be advised, it is not a tale for the faint-hearted…

Then her view of the book was interrupted by a large plate and Mrs. Appledore’s voice said, “There we go, dear. Tuck in.”

Sam smiled her thanks at the woman, then lowered her eyes to the plate and felt the full force of the Reverend’s warning. Here was something else definitely not for the faint-hearted. Reminding her of the Wolf-Head Cross carving of Jormungand, the fabled Midgard serpent coiled around the world, on her plate a single monstrous sausage, uninterrupted by twist or crimp, curled around a mountain of chips topped by a fried egg. There had to be enough cholesterol here to give a god or a hero a heart attack. She took a long pull at her beer while she contemplated how to get to grips with it.

Another pint glass was set before her. She looked up to see the old Viking again.

“Thanks, but I’ve got plenty.”

“Perhaps. But I think you’ll need a lot more to wash that down,” he said. “As we say round here, best way is to pick an end and press on till tha meets tha own behind.”

This seemed an impossible journey but she was very hungry and after the first visual shock, she found it smelled quite delicious, so she sawed half an inch off the sausage’s tail and put it into her mouth. Fifteen minutes later she was wiping up the last of the egg yolk with the last of the chips. She’d even essayed the merest fork-point of flavoring from a jar of the mordant mustard and found it not displeasing.

She was also nearly at the bottom of her third pint. It really was good beer. It was also beer she hadn’t paid for and by the strict rules of the society she’d grown up in, girls who didn’t stand their round were signifying their willingness to make some other form of payment. She looked toward the shady corner but there was no sign of Mr. Melton. Winander was still there between the duplicated gravediggers.

She emptied her glass, stood up and went to the bar.

“Ready for pudding?” said Mrs. Appledore.

Shuddering to think how big her puddings might be, Sam said, “No. I’m a bit knackered after all that driving so I think I’ll hit the hay. Mr. Melton’s gone, has he?”

“Only to the Gents. Why?”

“I just wanted to buy him a drink, that’s all. And Mr. Winander too. Put one in the till for them both, will you? And stick it on my bill.”

“Of course, dear,” said the landlady approvingly. “Us girls need to stand our corner these days.”

“We surely do. Talking of which, don’t us girls come out to drink round here?”

“Sometimes, but tonight they’ll be sitting with Lorna – that’s the mam of young Billy Knipp that we buried today. The men leave ’em to it. Sorry if it bothered you, dear.”

“Men don’t bother me, Mrs. Appledore,” said Sam.

“That’s all right then,” said the landlady. “I never asked you, did you find anything out at the church? About your family, I mean?”

Was this a good moment to ask about the inscription? No, Sam decided. But it might be a good moment to give everyone here the chance to volunteer information.

She said, “No, nothing. Look, as a final fling, would it be all right if I spoke to this lot in the bar, asked them if anyone recalled a family called Flood in these parts?”

Mrs. Appledore glanced assessingly at the assembled drinkers then said, “Why not? It’ll make a change from the price of sheep.”

She reached up and rang the bell dangling over the end of the bar.

“Listen in, you lot. Let’s have a bit of order. This young lady from Australia who’s staying with us tonight, she’d like to ask a question about her family. Miss Flood…”

Suddenly, looking at all those expectant faces, this didn’t seem such a good idea, but if you’re stupid enough to go surfing on a shark, you don’t let go.

“Hi. Sorry to disturb your drinking, but my name’s Sam Flood and it could be that my grandmother who was also called Sam, that’s Samantha, Flood came from Illthwaite. It would be back in the spring of 1960 she left. I just wondered if any of you who were around back then could recall anyone of that name round here.”

There. Cue for deluge of information. Long pause.

Then a voice, upstage, left. “Weren’t there a Larry Flood up Egremont way, used to win the gurning at the Crab Fair wi’out needing to pull a face?”

Second voice, upstage right. “Nay, tha’s thinkin’ of Harry Hood.”

Chorus. “Aye, Harry Hood. That were Harry Hood.”

Why was she thinking of this in terms of theater? Sam asked herself.

Because that’s how it felt. Like a performance.

“If any of you do recall owt, let me know to pass it on,” declared Mrs. Appledore.

The hubbub resumed as she turned to Sam and said, “Sorry, dear.”

“No problem,” said Sam. “What’s gurning?”

“It’s making ugly faces through a horse’s collar. There’s a competition for it at the Egremont Crab Fair. Thought everyone knew that.”

“I must have forgotten,” said Sam. “A prize for being ugly? Is that where they give prizes for telling lies too?”

“No,” said the landlady indignantly. “That’s not Egremont. That’s at Santon Bridge. Thought everyone knew that too.”

“My memory!” said Sam. “I’m off to bed now.”

“Hope you sleep well. Don’t worry about laying over. The way these boards creak, I’ll hear you when you’re up.”

“Great. By the way, Mrs. Appledore, I don’t think I’ll be wanting anything cooked in the morning. Way I feel now, a fox’s breakfast will do me fine.”

“A fox’s breakfast? And that ’ud be…?”

“A piss and a good look round. Thought everyone knew that.”

Be polite to the Poms. But don’t let the buggers get on top of you. Pa’s last words at the airport.

We’re keeping our end up so far, Pa, she thought as she headed out of the door.

Mr. Melton, presumably just returned from the Gents, was in the hallway.

“Goodnight,” she said. “Thanks for the beer. I’ve left you one in the till.”

“No need,” he said. “But kind. I understand you are seeking for some local connection with your family.”

“That’s right. I thought my gran might be from these parts, but I’m beginning to think I might have got it wrong.”

He said, “And when did she leave England?”

“March 1960. She was still a kid.”

“A kid? In 1960?” He looked at her doubtfully.

He might be dotty but he could still do arithmetic, she thought approvingly.

“Yeah, I know,” she said. “She got pregnant not long after she arrived in Oz. My dad was born in September 1961.”

“I see,” he said. “Interesting. But I’m keeping you from your bed, and this isn’t the place to talk. If you care to drop in on me tomorrow, Miss Flood, perhaps I can assist you with your inquiries.”

For some reason the phrase seemed to amuse him and he repeated it.

“Yes, assist you with your inquiries. I have… connections. I live at Candle Cottage, beyond the church. I’m at home most of the time. Goodnight to you now.”

He went back into the bar.

Funny folk! thought Sam as she climbed the stairs. Two invites in a night. Maybe that was the automatic next step if you survived being pushed off a ladder! Anything was possible in a place where Death had his own door, the sausages were six feet long, and they held competitions for telling lies and making faces through a horse’s collar…

She pushed open her bedroom door and all thought of funny folk fled from her mind.

Someone had been poking around her things. This wasn’t feeling but fact. Her eidetic memory didn’t only work with the printed page. A postcard home she’d been scribbling was a couple of inches to the left of where she’d set it down on the dressing table, one of the drawers which had protruded slightly was now completely flush, and her rucksack leaned against the wall at an altered angle. And it wasn’t just Mrs. Appledore tidying up. The intruder had clearly been inside the rucksack as well as out.

She thought of going downstairs to make a fuss. But there was nothing missing, and anyone in the bar could have come up, or someone who just came into the pub.

She brushed her teeth, got undressed, pulled on the old Melbourne University T-shirt she slept in, and climbed on to the high old-fashioned bed. Usually she launched herself into sleep on a sea of math. She’d started age seven with an old edition of a book called Pillow Problems which Gramma Ada had picked up in a secondhand shop. In it the guy who wrote the Alice books laid out a variety of calculations he occupied his mind with when he couldn’t sleep. By the time she was twelve she’d moved beyond Carroll’s problems, but the principle remained. Nowadays she usually played with things like Goldbach’s Conjecture which required her to hold huge numbers in her head.

Tonight, however, she turned to the measured nineteenth-century prose of Peter K. Swinebank in search of a soporific.

She found the page she’d reached in the bar and reread the last line:

Be advised, it is not a tale for the fainthearted.

Sam paused and consulted her heart. No sign of faintness there, though a little lower down there was an awareness that sometime in the not too distant future her consumption of all that excellent beer was going to require another trip to the bathroom.

“OK, Rev. Peter K. Swinebank,” she said. “I’m ready for you. Do your worst!”

And turned the page.

7. The waif boy

Some time toward the end of the sixteenth century, a waif boy was taken into the care of the Gowders of Foul-gate Farm whose descendants still live and work in the valley.

The boy’s age is variously reported as from twelve to sixteen and his origins have been just as widely speculated. Some suggested he was the bastard child of one of the local gentry, kept locked away from public gaze for shame these many years till finally he escaped. Equally popular was the notion that he was a child abducted by the fairies in infancy and returned when puberty rendered him of no further interest to the little people. Some even asserted that he was Robin Goodfellow himself. Such theories at least have the merit of facing up to the supernatural elements of the legend without equivocation.

To my mind the most likely explanation (supported by references to his swarthy coloring and lack of English) is that this youth was in fact a scion of that strange nomadic group misnamed Egyptians who had become increasingly prevalent in Britain during the past hundred years. Perhaps he had been ejected from his tribe because of some fraction of their strange and pagan law. Being young, he was likely to be much more fluent in the Romany tongue than in the English vernacular.

Where all versions agree is that, by taking him in, the Gowders displayed an unwonted degree of Christian charity. Though since somewhat declined, in those days the Gowders of Foulgate were by local standards a well-to-do and powerful family. They were not however famed for their generosity of spirit and their position in the parish seems to have been achieved as much by force of will and arms as agricultural skill.

At the time of our story, the head of the family was Thomas Gowder, a man of about thirty, whose young wife, Jenny, after three years of marriage had yet to provide him with an heir. Also living at Foulgate was Andrew, Thomas’s brother, three years his junior, with his wife and two infant sons.

It is maliciously suggested by some that, in taking the waif boy in, the Gowders were inspired less by charity than the prospect of acquiring an unpaid farmhand. Whatever the truth, they paid dearly for it. After some months of living at Foulgate and being nursed back to health, the youth repaid this kindness one night by assaulting Jenny. On being interrupted by her husband, he wrestled the man to the ground and slit his throat from ear to ear, almost severing the head from the neck. Brother Andrew, hearing the sound of the struggle, called to ask what was amiss, upon which the murderous gypsy seized whatever of value he could lay his hands on and fled.

Drew Gowder roused the village, procured help for his sister-in-law, then got together a posse of villagers to go in pursuit of the fugitive.

It was that time of year when spring though close on the calendar seems an age away on the ground. The night was black, the weather foul, good conditions for an outlaw to make his escape. But the pursuers knew their valley stone by stone while the fugitive was a stranger, driven by guilt and panic. His blundering trail up the fellside above Foulgate was easy to follow and within a very short time they cornered him attempting to hide in Mecklin Shaw, a small oak wood on the edge of Mecklin Moss.

Trapped, he offered no resistance and they would have bound him and taken him back to the village, but Drew Gowder was so inflamed with grief and rage that he demanded summary justice. A blasted oak stood close by, most of it decayed and fallen away, but what remained was the solid bole, its jagged upper edge in silhouette taking the form of a beast’s gaping maw, with the stumps of two branches giving the loose impression of a cross. Pointing to this, Gowder declared that when God provided the means, he was not inclined to reject His bounty. When they understood his meaning, it is to be hoped that some of the others demurred. But Gowder was a strong man, and a deeply wronged man, and it should be remembered that, while the framework of our Common Law was well established, yet in such remote communities as this, the tradition of self-sufficient and local justice was very strong, as indeed it remains to this very day.

So they seized the fugitive murderer and bound him to the blasted tree. At the same time, Gowder had taken himself to a nearby charcoal-burner’s hovel and there gathered several scraps of fire-hardened wood which he rapidly shaped into small stakes a few inches long. Then, using the haft of his dagger as a hammer, he drove these stakes through the young man’s hands and feet before cutting away the binding ropes, thus leaving him hanging from the tree by those wooden nails alone.

Satisfied with his handiwork, he now led his companions out of the wood and they made their way back to the village, leaving the murderer to die.

That appetite for the macabre still existent in our own day and catered for by the new literature of sensation and the Police Gazette was at its ravening height in an age when our greatest poet could soil his pen with the foulness of Titus Andronicus, and to this we owe the illustrative woodcut of the event reproduced overleaf, which was attached to a broadside ballad allegedly composed by one of the posse.

(Readers of tender stomach are advised not to raise the veiling tissue.)

Recognizing a come-on when she saw one, Sam turned the page and lifted the sheet of almost opaque tissue paper covering the woodcut. It wasn’t pretty, though why one whose profession abounded with images of a man nailed to a cross should have feared that his readers’ sensibilities might be offended she couldn’t understand. Indeed, it wasn’t the crucified man who took the eye, but the representation of the blasted stump to which he was nailed. It was engraved with a vigor that made it look as if its shattered branches were embracing the figure hanging there and drawing into their ripped bark the life that ebbed out of that pierced flesh, while above the executed man the jagged wood metamorphosed into the head of a wolf thrown back to howl in triumph at the moon.

She let the tissue fall and read on.

So far we have a story in which the bare bones of truth are easily detectable. That there was a murder we need not doubt. The grave of Thomas Gowder is still viewable at St. Ylf’s, its stela bearing the ambiguous words most foully slain by unknown hand. And after the murder it is certain a hue and cry was raised and a fugitive cornered in Mecklin Shaw where the enraged Andrew took upon himself the roles of jury, judge and executioner. But now matters become mysterious.

During that evening the tale of such events would naturally have circulated widely among the community and early next day the parson of St. Ylf’s led a large group of villagers back to Mecklin Shaw to recover the crucified man. We have the parson’s own account of what it was they found, which in fact was nothing, or rather no one. Some stains there were on the blasted oak which might have been human blood, and some holes which might have been made by wooden nails. But of the fugitive murderer’s person, living or dead, they found no trace. Baffled, they returned to the village where neither prayer in the church nor speculation in the alehouse produced any rational solution other than that the man had somehow freed himself and crawled off into the night, only to be consumed by Mecklin Moss which had once, according to tradition, swallowed up whole a horse and cart and the drunken carter who was driving it.

Myself, I think it more probable that Andrew Gowder, as the murderous rage in him declined, began to reflect more coolly on what he had done. As stated supra while certainly the age was more violent than our own, yet this was by no means a lawless time. Such an action as Drew’s, no matter how approved by his neighbors, in the eyes of the guardians of the law would have been judged most culpable, worthy at least of a large fine and religious penance; perhaps the confiscation of land; or even incarceration.

A further incentive to make Drew Gowder view with unease the possible consequences of his action may have been, as we learn from another source, the presence in the vicinity at that time of a small posse of soldiers under the direction of Francis Tyrwhitt, the northern agent of that most dreadful of Elizabeth’s pursuivants, Richard Topcliffe, the notorious rackmaster.

Tyrwhitt by all accounts matched his master in zeal and often outdid him in brutality. A Yorkshireman, and first cousin of the Protestant judge, Sir Edward Jolley, famed for passing swingeing sentences on Catholics, he was permitted use of the dungeons of Jolley Castle near Leeds for his interrogations.

Jolley Castle! Can ever an edifice have been less aptly named?

Thwarted in his main purpose by the discovery of nothing but an untenanted priest-hole at Illthwaite Hall, Tyrwhitt might have been ready to take an interest in any other antireligious practices he chanced on in the district. At the very least he and his posse were a strong visible reminder that even Illthwaite was within reach of the mighty power of the Law.

So what more likely than that Gowder should rise in the middle of the night and return to Mecklin Shaw, perhaps accompanied by a few of his closest confederates, to take down the lifeless body of his victim and hurl it into Mecklin Moss?

A coroner’s report of the period tells us no more than Tom Gowder’s gravestone, viz. that he was murdered by unknown hand. Of the events in Mecklin Shaw, no mention is made. How should there be? No body was ever found and no witnesses were forthcoming. Even those (probably very few) who had scruples about what had happened would think twice before offering evidence which would incriminate themselves and draw down the wrath of Andrew Gowder, an even more powerful figure in the community now that he was sole owner of the Gowder farmstead.

However, such a general conspiracy to suppress the truth in public record did but provide fertile ground for the growth of those wild chimerical tales we have been examining here. Worse, the gross mimicry of the passion, death and resurrection of our own Beloved Savior contained in the most popular version soon led to the blasted oak stump becoming a focus for forms of worship that were blasphemous and pagan. Imitation of the holy by the unholy has always been a feature of devil-worship, and in this instance there was also an ocular encouragement in that it was possible to see in the jagged edge of the trunk a simulacrum of a wolf’s head. The Viking Cross in St. Ylf’s churchyard had, as I describe elsewhere, been thrown down by iconoclasts in the 70s. Its sad overthrow probably lent strength to the stories surrounding the stump which soon became known as the Other Wolf-Head Cross. It may also be significant that “wolf-head” was an ancient term for outlaw, dating from the Middle Ages and still in use at this time.

Does this mean that Illthwaite was a center of diabolism? I think not. I doubt if there were more than one or two benighted souls who adhered wholly to what they called the Old Faith. Yet in remote areas full of stone circles and tumuli and other sites once sacred to the gods of the druids, and the Vikings, and the Romans, it would be surprising if some of these simple peasant folk did not occasionally glance back to the old days when a pair of magpies foretold a death and a full moon was the time for curing warts.

Have I not myself seen devout parishioners making their way up the aisle to partake of Holy Communion in a series of strange hops and skips to avoid standing on the cracks between the flagstones? Such foolish superstitions, bred in the bone, are hard to eradicate but it is best to remove their visible objects, and commands were soon given by the Church authorities for the offending stump to be destroyed while at the same time the toppled cross in the churchyard was to be repaired and reconsecrated.

Like many commands from on high, the order for destruction of the stump proved easier to give than to execute.

The first attempts soon ran into difficulties. Experienced woodmen found their axe-edges blunted. Finally Barnaby Winander, the village blacksmith and a man of prodigious strength, swung at the cross with an axe so heavy none but he could raise it. A contemporary account tells us that the razor-sharp edge rang against the stump with “a note like a passing-bell,” the shaft shattered, and the axe-head flew off and buried itself in the thigh of a fellow worker.

Winander. Had to be one of Thor’s ancestors. Just as the crucifying Gowders had to be the same as the gravedigging Gowders. Nice family. Come to think of it, probably most of the drinkers in the bar had names she’d seen earlier in the churchyard.

Such a sense of continuity in a changing world ought to be comforting.

Somehow it wasn’t.

This approach was abandoned and fire was next essayed with the blacksmith and his family to the fore once more. Faggots of bone-dry kindling were set all around the stump, flame was applied, the Winanders got to work with the bellows they had brought up from their forge, and soon whipped up a huge conflagration. Yet when all had died down and the ashes were raked away, there the stump remained, just as it had been before, except a touch blacker.

Myself, I see in this not the hand of the devil but the hands of men, and in particular of the Winanders. This family, whose scions are still the principal craftsmen of the village, have been of inestimable value down the centuries. Examples of their high skill are to be found everywhere in the valley. Yet there are two sides to every coin, and it has been frequently remarked in the character of men of genius that their creative sparks fly out of a fiery temperament which can frequently lead them into scrapes. In each generation, the Winanders have bred notorious wild men, ever ready for mischief and pranks and more frequent occupiers of the penitent stool in St. Ylf’s than the pew. This Barnaby seems to have been such a one. He could have easily ensured the axes were blunted before being used and the stump was thoroughly soaked with water before the fire with no more motive than a delight in preying on the superstitious fears of his gullible neighbors, and of course a desire to discomfort the parish priest.

Yet it should be pointed out that this Barnaby Winander was the same who undertook the repair and raising of the true Wolf-Head Cross, with what success can be judged by its continued presence in our churchyard these three centuries on.

Finally the stump was hauled out of the ground by a team of six oxen and dragged to Mecklin Moss, which it is recorded opened its dark maw to receive this illomened timber like a hungry beast that recognizes the foul meat that best nourishes it.

The other trees of Mecklin Shaw have long since vanished too, victims of the peasant need for timber and the charcoal-burners’ art, and without their constant thirst to drain the soil, the bog land of the Moss has now consumed the ground where they stood. But the legend of the Other Wolf-Head Cross still persists, with three centuries of accretion, fit stuff to while away a winter’s night round the fire in the Stranger House where it may be that it is the tedious repetition of such ancient tales that drives the inn’s reputed ghost to slip out of the nearest door.

A joke! Leave them laughing when you go. Bet his sermons were one long hoot, thought Sam.

Time to go to sleep, but not before the forecast visit to the bathroom which, though still not quite essential, had certainly reached the level of desirable.

Finished, and wondering idly how much of the night some ten-pint men of her acquaintance spent in peeing, she came back out into the gloomy corridor, and stopped in her tracks, all thoughts, idle or not, driven from her mind by what she saw.

The door next to hers, the door to the other guest room, was ajar. A figure was passing through it, slender, silent, clad in black. It paused and the head turned, a dark skull-like outline against the darker dark of the room’s interior. She felt invisible eyes study her. Then it slipped through the gap and the door closed soundlessly behind it.

Memory of Mrs. Appledore’s warning about the danger of pursuing the Dark Man came to Sam’s mind, but such things had always been counterproductive. Furious at her fear, she rushed in pursuit, grasped the handle and flung the door open.

Instead of the anticipated darkness, she found the room lit by the ceiling light.

A man wearing black slacks and a black turtleneck was placing a grip on the bed. No ghost, though his hollow cheeks, sallow complexion and shaven head gave him the look of one who’d gone close to the barrier before turning back. Eyes darker than the darkest pure chocolate turned toward her. He didn’t speak.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Sam Flood. I’m next door.”

He didn’t answer. She turned away and left.

Back in her own room she looked at herself in the dressing-table glass, her face flushed, her sun-browned body barely covered by her flimsy Melbourne Uni T-shirt.

I look like I’m on heat! she told herself. What was it I said? Hi. I’m Sam Flood. I’m next door. Jesus!

She checked her door. No lock, just a tiny bolt that didn’t look strong enough to resist a bailiff’s sneeze. Nevertheless she rammed it home and got into bed.

After a while she began to giggle. “Hi, I’m next door,” she said in a breathless little girl Marilyn voice. She choked her giggles into the pillow in case they should penetrate the intervening wall.

And soon sleep brought to an end Samantha Flood’s first day in Illthwaite.

8. A bit bloody late

Mig Madero stared at the door for a while after the strange apparition had vanished. Could he have conjured it up himself? Perhaps. To a man who rarely felt the world of spirits was more than an idle thought away, such a thing was not impossible. But the creature’s slight body had seemed full of life. A child of the house, perhaps? A girl-child, from the luxuriant red hair, though the loose T-shirt had given little hint of breasts…

Firmly he pushed the thought from his mind, finished unpacking, sat down on the bed and stared at the wall.

What was it she had said? I’m next door. A weird thing to say. And that accent, made worse by the high pitch of her voice! Definitely a child and not a very bright one.

He was trying to use the interruption to keep at bay memory of what had happened – or hadn’t happened – to him earlier. He rubbed the palms of his hands, flexed his feet. No pain, but still the echo of pain. He felt he ought to be tired after the long day’s journey. Instead he found he was wide awake.

He’d entered the pub like a fugitive seeking sanctuary. In the bar the landlady had been ringing “time” and trying to persuade her customers to leave. He’d introduced himself briefly from the hallway and followed her directions to his room. After that nightmare drive, perhaps he should have taken a walk first, got some fresh air, but lights and the closeness of human company had seemed essential.

Now he was back in control. Anyway, if God wanted to frighten the shit out of you, He could just as easily do it in a well-lit crowded room. Night and mist themselves held no fears that man didn’t put there. A breath of air would be very welcome.

He stood up, taking care to bow his head so that it didn’t crack against the huge crossbeam. This was the kind of room for a man to learn humility in.

Quietly he opened the door and glided silently down the stairs.

He could still hear voices in the bar. The landlady’s persuasions must have fallen on stony ground. Or, rather, saturated ground! He went down the narrow lobby and out into the night, pulling the door to behind him.

Little light escaped through the heavily curtained barroom windows and out here it was almost pitch-black till you looked up and saw the breathtaking sweep of stars across the now cloudless sky. The time might come when, either through the inevitable decay of energy, or perhaps because someone had counted all the names of God, one by one the stars would go out.

But here and now, even though his here and now was millennia out of step with some of the stars he was looking at, all he could do was gaze up and feel gratitude for being part of this beautiful creation, and fear at the thought of just how small a part.

Across the road he could hear the tumult of the invisible river. Trees rustled in the still gusting wind. Something moved between him and the stars, a bird, a bat, he could not tell. Nor could he tell whether the distant screech he heard somewhere up the dark bulk of rising ground beyond the river was the sound of birth or the sound of death.

Probably neither. Probably just the noise made by some inoffensive creature going about its inoffensive business. Certainly, for which he gave many thanks, there were no voices in the wind.

Behind him the pub door opened, spilling light on to his darkness, and a trio of men came out. They stopped short as they saw him. Two of them were almost identical, broad and muscular, with heads that looked as if they’d been rough-hewn by a sculptor’s apprentice whose master hadn’t found time to finish them. They stared at him with an unblinking blankness which, if encountered in certain dubious areas of Seville, would have had him running in search of light. The third, however, a tall man with a shock of vigorous gray hair and a merry eye, addressed him in a reassuringly cheerful tone.

“Good evening to you, sir. A fine night to be taking the air.”

“Fine indeed,” said Madero courteously. “And a good evening to you too.”

“You are staying here, are you, sir? Let me guess. You are the Spanish scholar come to discover why we are the way we are.”

“You have the advantage of me,” said Madero.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to be rude, but two interesting strangers in one day is enough to distract our simple minds from courtesy. Thor Winander, at your service.”

He offered his hand. Madero took it and found himself drawn closer.

“Michael Madero,” he said.

“Madero. Like the sherry firm?”

“Not like. The same.”

“Indeed! Ah, el fino Bastardo, delicioso y delicado.”

He smacked his lips as he uttered this rather poorly pronounced version of an old advertising slogan.

Madero withdrew his hand and bowed his head in silent acknowledgment and Winander continued, “It will be a blessing to have some intelligent conversation and news of the outside world. My companions, though excellent fellows in their way, are not famed for their taste or wit. But if you want a ditch cleared or a grave dug, they are nonpareil. Goodnight to you, Mr. Madero.”

“Goodnight,” said Madero.

The men went on their way, talking in subdued voices and occasionally glancing back at him. One of them had a torch and its beam dipped and danced across the road and over the bridge till finally it vanished in the mass of land rising on the far side.

The light from the still open door made the darkness all around seem even denser now and the stars were nothing but a smear of frost across the black glass of the firmament. He shivered and went inside.

As he reached the foot of the stairs, Edie Appledore appeared.

“There you are,” she said. “Found your room all right, did you, Mr. Madero?”

“Yes, thank you. And by the way, it is Mathero,” he said gently, correcting both stress and pronunciation.

“Sorry,” she said. “I knew that because that’s the way Gerry Woollass says it. Which was what I wanted to catch you for. I forgot earlier, I was so busy, but he left a message asking if you could make it ten o’clock at the Hall tomorrow, not half nine as arranged.”

“Thank you. It will suit me very well to have an extra half-hour in bed.”

“Been a long journey, has it?”

“From my mother’s house in Hampshire.”

“That’s a right trip. You’ll need your rest. Care for a nightcap? Not always easy to sleep in a strange bed, not even when you’re tired.”

“Thank you. That would be nice.”

“Right. No, not in there,” she said as he made to step into the bar. “I’ve seen enough of that place for one night.”

She led him down the corridor into a kitchen.

Madero glanced from the huge table to the small windows and the narrow door and said, “How on earth did they get this in here?”

“Didn’t,” said Mrs. Appledore. “Built it on the spot, they reckon, so it’s almost as old as the building. I’ve been offered thousands for it, and the guy was going to pay for having it dismantled and taken out. I was tempted. Sit yourself down. Brandy OK?”

“That would be fine,” said Madero, seating himself on a kitchen chair whose provenance he guessed to be Ikea. “But you resisted the temptation out of principle?”

“No. Superstition. Round here they think you change something, you pay a price.”

She opened a cupboard, produced a bottle and two glasses, filled them generously and sat down alongside Madero.

“Your health,” he said. “Ah, I see why you don’t keep this stuff in the bar.”

“They’d not pay what I’d need to ask, and if they did, most of ’em wouldn’t appreciate it.”

“But they appreciate some old things, it seems,” said Madero, running his hand along the top edge of the table then beneath it, tracing the ancient cuts and scars. It was like touching the corpse of a battle-scarred warrior. He got a strong reminder of that pain and fear he’d experienced earlier and withdrew his hand quickly, suppressing a shudder.

“You OK, Mr. Madero?” said the woman.

“Fine. A little tired perhaps. What an interesting old building this is. Was it always an inn?”

“No. There used to be a priory hereabouts and this is what’s left of the old Stranger House – that’s where visitors and travelers could be put up without letting them into the priory proper.”

“And it became an inn after the priory was pulled down by Henry’s men?”

“Know a bit about history, do you? I suppose you would. Not right off, I don’t think. But it was so handy placed, right alongside the main road, that it made sense. It’s all in the old guidebook the vicar wrote back in the eighteen hundreds. I’ve got a copy. I loaned it to Miss Flood when she arrived, but you can have it soon as she’s done.”

“Miss Flood?”

“My other guest. In the room next to yours.”

“Oh yes. The red-haired child. I saw her.”

Mrs. Appledore laughed.

“No child. She’s a grown woman. OK, not much grown, but she’s over twenty-one. Says she’s looking for background on her grandmother who emigrated to Australia way back. I think she’s been steered wrong, so she’ll probably be on her way soon. You know how restless young women are these days.”

“Are they?” he said. “I haven’t noticed.”

“No, you’ll not have been around them much, I daresay. Whoops. Sorry.”

Madero studied her over his glass then said pleasantly, “You seem to know quite a lot about me, Mrs. Appledore.”

She said, “All I really know is you’re writing a book or something about the old Catholic families, right? No secrets in a village, especially not if it’s called Illthwaite.”

“So I see. But if you know all about me, it is perhaps fair if I get some inside information in return to prepare myself. What kind of man is Mr. Woollass, for instance?”

“Gerry? He’s a fair man, I’d say. Not an easy man, but a good one certainly. There’s not many folk in Skaddale won’t bear testimony to that. But he’s not soft. You’ll not get by him without an inquisition.”

He noted her choice of word.

“Is there a Mrs. Woollass?” he asked.

She hesitated then said, “Probably best you know, else you could put your foot in it. There was a wife. In fact, there still is in his eyes, him being a left-footer, sorry, Catholic. She ran off a few years back with the chef from the hotel down the valley.”

She suddenly laughed and said, “Come to think of it, if I remember right, he was Spanish, so I’d definitely keep away from the subject!”

Her laugh was infectious and Madero smiled too, then asked, “Children?”

“One daughter. She was at university when it happened, but it seems like she sided with Gerry.”

“You call him Gerry,” he said. “You are good friends?”

“Not so’s you’d notice,” she said. “But what should I call him? Sir, and curtsy when he comes into the bar?”

“So you are all democrats in Cumbria? It’s not quite the same in Hampshire.”

“Oh well, but Hampshire,” she replied as if he’d said Illyria. “It’ll be nobs and yobs down there. Don’t mistake me, we’ve got a pecking order. But we’ve all been to the same school, up till eleven at least, and most families have been around long enough to have seen everyone else’s dirty linen. It’s not whether you’re chapel or Catholic, rich or poor, red or blue that matters. It’s what you do when your neighbor’s heifer gets stuck in Mecklin Moss on a dirty night or his power line comes down on Christmas Day.”

“You make it sound like an ideal community,” he said.

“Don’t be daft,” she said. “We’re all weak humans like anywhere else. But for better or worse, we stick together. And Gerry Woollass is part of the glue.”

He smiled and finished his drink.

“I too am a weak human, and I think I’d better get some sleep. By the way, I couldn’t find a phone point in my room.”

“Likely because there isn’t one,” she said. “Is that a problem?”

“Only if I wanted to get online with my laptop. No problem. I’ll use my mobile.”

“Not round here you won’t,” she said. “Had to tell Miss Flood the same. No signal. But feel free to use my phone here whenever you want, no need to ask.”

“Thank you. And thanks also for the drink and the conversation. I look forward to talking with you again.”

He meant it. She was a comfortable companion.

“Me too, Mr. Madero,” she said, carefully getting it right this time. “Sleep well.”

“Thank you. Goodnight.”

She watched him leave the kitchen, noting his careful gait. But despite what she perceived as a slight stiffness in his left leg, he moved very lightly, passing up the stairs with scarcely a telltale creak.

Two interesting guests in one day, she thought. The girl she’d be glad to see the back of, but this one was rather intriguing, and sexy too in that mysterious foreign way. Talking to him would make a change from the usual barroom fare of local gossip and tales she’d heard a hundred times already.

She wondered if the monks had felt like this about the strangers who sought shelter here, eating their simple food perhaps at this very same table. Or had they blocked their ears to news from the great world outside, doubting it could be anything but bad? In the long run, they’d been right. Fat Henry’s men from London had come riding up the valley and made them listen and told them their way of life was all over. Nowadays they didn’t come on horseback. In fact usually they didn’t come at all, just sent directives and regulations and development plans. But the message was still the same.

She poured herself another glass of brandy and pulled her chair closer to the fire. The heat had almost died away, only a hollow dome of coal remained, at the heart of which a thin blue flame fluttered one of those membranes of ash which in the old stories always presaged the arrival of a stranger.

“Bit bloody late, as usual,” said Edie Appledore, sipping her drink. “Bit bloody late.”