The Stranger House

1. Jolley jinks

Miguel Madero had been surprised by his sense of loss as he watched Sam drive away.

He had only known her for a single day, there was a fundamental antagonism between them, yet somehow it felt like losing an ally. Even though he had seen the last of her, he still felt as though they were united by more than just the common drawing together of strangers meeting on unfamiliar territory. But if God had purposed that they should be here together, then He had also decided that it shouldn’t be for long.

At all levels, her work in Illthwaite was done.

On her own behalf she’d followed a false trail laid by coincidence she now regarded as meaningless. He prayed she would find some sort of closure in her conversation with this woman in Newcastle.

But there had also been what he thought of as the real purpose of her visit to Illthwaite. Without her he might not have raised the table and found the hiding place. And certainly without her he wouldn’t be reading the terrible story written in the cramped hand of Simeon Woollass from the fevered ramblings of his own distant ancestor and namesake.

Strictly the journal belonged to the Woollass family. Or the Catholic Church. Or perhaps to the Crown as treasure trove. That was for lawyers to sort out. But not before he had translated and copied out what was written here.

Using Sam’s key, he started transcribing the words, at first slowly and awkwardly, but then, as he grew familiar with both the cipher and the cryptographer’s own abbreviations, with increasing confidence, till finally he was keying the words into his laptop at full speed. By halfway through the morning he had finished.

He sat there till the screensaver appeared and wiped away the words. Then he went and lay on his bed, looking up at the low-beamed ceiling, as if by will alone he could force his gaze through the stained and cracked plaster up through the roof tiles and after that through the vaulting cerulean itself in search of answers to that oldest of questions – how can such things be?

Part of him felt the need to go and seek out a priest to share his feelings with. But he didn’t even know where the nearest Catholic church was. And what would a priest say anyway? He shuddered at the recollection of his arrogance in thinking for a while that he himself might have been called to act as God’s interpreter and man’s comforter in matters as complex as this.

In the end, like his mother at times of confrontation with the inexplicable, all he had to fall back on was a line from one of her favorite poems: Oh, God He knows! And, God He knows! And, surely God Almighty knows! Which was usually followed by another more prosaic line, probably passed down from some seafaring ancestor – lying around in your hammock’s not going to get you to China.

He rose from his bed and set about translating the script once more, this time from Spanish to English. Others would want to read this, in particular Max Coldstream.

The English translation finished, he wrote an explanatory e-mail to Coldstream and attached the file. He went downstairs. Mrs. Appledore was hoovering the barroom. When he asked about access to her phone point she said, “Go ahead. Them daft bloody policemen wanted to call it a crime scene, but I told them I had a pub to run and a one-eyed idiot could see those bones were far too old to be of any interest to CID. When they checked with their lab they said much the same, the bones were clearly several centuries old and they’d passed them on to the museum services so they could do their own analysis. Do you really think they might be St. Ylf’s like old Noddy was saying? I could do with a miracle the way custom’s fallen off these past few years.”

“We could all do with a few miracles,” said Madero.

He went into the kitchen, connected his laptop and got online.

A message asked him if he wished to locate the download he’d made from Coldstream’s e-mail the previous day. In the excitement of what had transpired thereafter, he’d completely forgotten about it. Now he brought it up.

It was an article by Liam Molloy that had appeared in one of the tabloid supplements. He winced as he read its title:

JOLLEY JINKS!

Jolley Castle. It sounds like something you hire for a kids’ party. In fact you probably could, if you had enough money.

Jolley Castle, 15 miles southwest of Leeds, is a National Trust property now. The posters say You can have a really jolly time at Jolley Castle.

Not if you were a Roman Catholic priest in the sixteenth century, you couldn’t.

Then the family head, Sir Edward Jolley, was a Protestant judge, famous for the swingeing sentences he laid on anyone found guilty under the anti-Catholic Recusancy Laws. But his treatment of Catholics was as nothing compared with that meted out by his cousin, Francis Tyrwhitt. He was a colleague of the infamous Richard Topcliffe, the Queen’s chief pursuivant, or persecutor of those still clinging to Catholicism. Topcliffe was given special permission to build his own torture chamber in his house at Westminster. Tyrwhitt, who worked mainly in the North, did not need to build. The dungeons of Jolley Castle were already equipped with all the basic necessities. Here, by permission of his cousin, Tyrwhitt brought his prisoners, usually priests sent from the Continent on what was known as the English Mission, to bring succor and the Holy Office to beleaguered Catholics.

He kept meticulous records of his interrogation sessions. What is clear from these is that, while he is Topcliffe’s match in brutality, he outguns his master in subtlety. He understood not only the application of pain, but the psychology of torture also.

Let’s take a look at a few examples.

There followed a selection of what Molloy obviously regarded as juicy samples of Tyrwhitt’s torturing technique, with explanatory notes to ensure the reader knew what was going on. Names were mentioned, but nowhere did Father Simeon’s name appear.

The piece ended with an enjoinder to readers on their next family outing to Jolley Castle to remember as they ate their cream teas in the café what had once gone on not very far beneath their feet, the implication being that it would put an edge on their appetites.

A final note gave the information that Liam Molloy was currently working on a book called Topcliffe and Friends, An Illustrated History of Torture in the Age of Elizabeth, with a tentative publication date the following year.

Man proposes, God disposes, thought Madero with more satisfaction than piety, for which he reproved himself.

He deleted the article, brought up the e-mail he’d already written to Max and added a postscript:

Thanks for yours. You’ll see how wrong you were about Simeon when you read my attachment! By the way, could you get Tim L. to check if there’s any record of anyone from the Woollass family accessing the archive?

Best,

Mig

Back upstairs in his room he leaned on the low sill and peered out through the tiny window. Above the sun-gilt fells he could see a sky as blue as any he’d seen in Andalusia. He lowered his gaze till he picked out the twisted chimney pots of Illthwaite Hall. Frek was up there. And maybe the answer to his questions was up there too, but getting close to either wasn’t going to be easy.

He turned to look down at the fragile sheets containing the neat ciphers of Simeon Woollass, so very different from the crazed and crazy scribblings through which he’d first encountered the man.

The longer he kept quiet about his removal of the coded journal, the harder it was going to be to reestablish relations with the Woollasses.

It was no good telling himself he’d only done what any other scholar worth his salt would have done.

This wasn’t just a question of scholarly standards and historical research. This was personal, this was where God had been directing him for months, years, perhaps all his life. Max had called it a red herring. He was wrong. Mig felt he knew all about red herrings. Hadn’t he spent many years of his life following one?

And no matter what the cost, he wasn’t about to risk going astray a second time.

He sat on the bed with his laptop and settled down once more to read what he feared were the last words of his namesake and distant ancestor.

2. Miguel Madero

My name is Miguel Madero son and heir of Miguel Madero of… no, not heir, for he is dead… I saw him die, most foully slain… oh my father, my father.

On my sixteenth birthday my father (whose soul now flies high over the treacherous oceans with the angels) let me sail with him in our lovely ship, La Gaviota, for the first time. To Cyprus we voyaged and Crete and beyond. Our trade went well, our fine wine was much appreciated and highly valued, we took payment in gold and goods, and the sky was blue, the wind fair, the hold richly laden, and dolphins danced beneath our bow as La Gaviota flew homeward across that friendly sea. Everyone said I had quitted myself well and I could hardly wait for landfall so that I could show my mother and my sisters that I was a boy no longer. Never in my short life had I felt so perfectly happy. The world lay before me, a sunlit happy place. I sang a joyous hymn of thanks to the Blessed Virgin for the goodness and mercy she had poured upon me with such a generous and unstinting hand. There was nowhere in the most hidden corner of my being for even the shadow of a dream of such a terrible place as this northern wilderness, with its cold rain, its biting gales, its vile customs and its cruel and savage people…

Father, I know I should forgive – I pray you, show me how.

When we landed at our home port of Cadiz, there were soldiers waiting for us on the quay under the command of a boy not much older than myself, who waved a scented handkerchief to keep the smell of unwashed sailors from his nostrils and told my father he was Bernardo de Bellvis, nephew of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, commander by His Majesty’s command of the great fleet which was soon to set sail for England and bring that errant nation back to the fold of the True Church. Merchant ships were being commandeered for service in the Armada. My father had thought himself lucky in the spring of the previous year when La Gaviota had put to sea only days before the foul pirate Drake so treacherously attacked Cadiz, sinking many vessels and making off with much good wine. But now he felt he was paying for his luck when de Bellvis produced papers giving him authority to take over the ship and sail her to Lisbon to join the others.

He seemed to think he could step aboard instantly and be on his way in a minute, but happily there were more seasoned officers in his force who listened to my father when he protested that the ship would need to be refitted and provisioned before they could think of sailing. These same officers, though obliged to acknowledge this Bernardo as their military chief, had no desire to put their lives in his hands as navigator, and were pleased when my father volunteered to retain sailing command of La Gaviota. I begged to be allowed to accompany him. My mother, however, was loud in opposition, too loud, for if she had worked at my father in private he might have agreed with her, but he could not let himself be seen to be ruled by his wife, and so I was admitted to the crew.

My friends were all envious, but my mother wept, and so did Maria, my affianced bride, the daughter of Benito Perez Montalvo. We had been pledged in marriage when she was five and I was seven, and so used were her chaperones to seeing us together as children that even though we were now no longer children, they saw no harm to let us roam alone out of their sight. And when I saw how she wept, I comforted her and she lay soft in my arms, and, Father forgive me, I scarce know how it happened, but I took her, meaning no harm as our wedding was planned within a twelvemonth anyway. Yet I know that it is the devil’s voice which urges us to sin because we mean no harm.

God spare Maria that no evil has come out of my ill-using, for I fear that I may never see her again in this life.

No, my friend, my namesake, thought Madero. No evil came of it. Only El Bastardo who preserved our line and on whom all our family fortunes are based. It was God at work when you took your fiancée in your arms, not the devil’s. But you do not need me to tell you that now.

We sailed to Lisbon, where there was further fitting of armament, then at the end of May the command was given for the Great Armada to set forth to destroy the infidel queen.

Our first port of call was Corunna to take on fresh provision. It was an ill-omened voyage from the start with storms blowing up to scatter us far and wide before the expedition was yet properly begun. But Gaviota came to no harm, no thanks to de Bellvis who, if he had his way, would have run us aground on the Galician coast, so fearful was he of the tempest and eager to be back on land.

Toward the end of July we were all gathered together once more and sailed for England. I know not what our Commander planned. Perhaps it was to lure all the English ships into one place; if so, his plan worked too well, for soon after a battle in which we lost the Rosario and the San Salvador we were pursued along the foot of England toward the narrow straits of Calais where more of the enemy lay in wait.

Here we anchored, all men disputing what course to follow. And while we argued, our foes acted, putting fire to some of their own ships in the night and sending them drifting among us.

There was no time even to raise anchor. We took axes to our cables and scattered.

This was not how I had imagined a sea battle. I had thought of ships grappling close, brave men fighting hand to hand, driving each other from deck to deck till one party gave way. Instead we seemed to drift aimlessly, till suddenly we came in range of an enemy ship and for a short while the air would burn with ball and shot. Men died, ships foundered, but no one knew who was winning, who losing. Many times my father’s commands took us out of danger, though usually de Bellvis was screaming opposite orders. Happily the men ignored him. Finally a ball took him through the chest and he fell over the side, still ranting, which was the only good sight I saw all day.

Now a storm blew up, driving us first toward the Flemish sandbanks, then, as the wind changed, north with the enemy in pursuit. Soon they abandoned the chase, perhaps deciding we were no longer a danger, in which they were right for when our depleted forces once more came together, orders were received from the Commander to continue north and make our return to Spain by sailing right round the head of the isle of Britain.

The season was summer, yet the further north we went, the wilder grew the seas. With my father in command we still had hope and when at last we turned south with a strong wind at our backs, our hearts rose. Alas for our hopes. Soon the wind became a gale before which we sped with little control. Then the wind shifted from the north to the west and the coast which had till now been but a thin line of darkness far to port began to loom large till at last we could see the waves crashing on the shore.

And then we struck. Water came pouring into poor Gaviota from beneath as well as above. What boats we had were long since carried away. My father gave the order, “Save yourself who can!” Then, seizing a barrel with one hand and me with the other, he leapt into the arms of the ocean which flung us around at her own sweet will. I felt darkness descending on me and scarce had time to say a prayer before I lost all sense.

When I opened my eyes again, all was calm. I lay on my back. My body felt cold and wet but above the sky was blue and there was sunlight on my face.

I moved my head and saw I was lying in a shallow rock pool on a broad beach close to where a narrow river found its way into the sea.

Giving thanks to God, I turned my head further, and the thanks choked in my throat.

About twenty yards away I saw my father. He lay on his back. Over him stooped two men, not offering succor, but trying to drag the jeweled rings off his finger. My father awoke. I doubt if he knew what was happening to him but he raised his head and spoke. And without hesitation or thought, one of the men took a broad dagger from his waist and slit his throat, and then started chopping at his fingers with the same weapon.

I must have cried out in anguish and protest, for they both looked my way.

The ruffian with the dagger straightened up, freed the ring from my father’s severed finger, wiped the blood negligently against his breeches, then came toward me.

His intent was clear. I tried to rise and flee but had no strength. He did not trouble to hurry, so certain was he of my defenselessness. Now he towered over me, now he stooped to bring the knife to my throat. I felt the steel against my skin and tried to gabble some prayer commending my soul to my maker.

But it was not yet my appointed time. Suddenly I saw him seized from behind by a woman who dragged him backward, screaming words I could not understand.

He hit her with the back of his hand. She fell to the ground but still kept yelling at him. He looked from her to me as if assessing what she was saying. Then he shrugged, snarled at her and, pausing only to remove from my person what small ornament I carried, he returned to plundering my father’s corpse.

This was my first view of the man I came to know as Thomas Gowder. The woman was his wife, Jenny. And the other man was Gowder’s brother, Andrew, as like to him as grapes on a vine, and equal also in evil.

They took me with them from the beach to which they had come, I learned later, in search of freshwater pearls at the mouth of the river. They had a small cart pulled by a skinny pony in which the two men traveled while the woman walked behind, which was shame to them but life to me, for without her help I would surely have stumbled and fallen, upon which I do not doubt they would have murdered me without compunction.

We came eventually after some hours of travel to the house I now know as Foulgate Farm. Here I was thrust into a byre with two cows and the door was locked. Later the woman came to me with some bread and water and spoke to me in a low voice. I did not understand her words but guessed from the way she spoke and some fearful glances she sent to the door that she was here without knowledge or consent of the men.

With food in my stomach, my young body soon regained its strength, but my mind and spirit, thrown down by my father’s death and the dreadful manner of it, were not so easily salved. Here too without the aid of Mistress Jenny I might have given myself over so completely to despair that either I would have choked my heart with grief or damned my soul with self-destruction. But she held me to her like a mother and whispered words which, though I did not understand them, contained messages of comfort.

She was not much older than me, but had already been married to Gowder for some years, and not yet had any children who might have been a solace to her, for there was little else in her life to take pleasure from. So it was as a child that she saw me and saved me, though I think it was the prospect of having a young body around the farm to do all the most toil-some tasks that tipped the balance in Gowder’s mind. From the start I was made to work harder than I’d ever known, and when my best efforts did not satisfy the brothers, which was often, I was urged on with kicks and blows.

At first they used to hobble my ankles with thick rope and lock me in at night, but after a while they did not bother with the hobble. Without it, I could work harder, and where could I run to? The countryside here is wild and terrible, the harshness of winter tightened its grip on the land with each passing day, and they knew that every hand would be against a runaway, particularly one foreign in speech and appearance.

Besides, though I was daily at the mercy of the two men I had cause to hate worst in the world, here also was my only friend. Without Jenny I think they would have let me starve to death. But she was constant in her care, providing food and warm clothing, and when she was found out, as was inevitable, despite threats and blows, she stood up to the Gowder men and told them that if not out of Christian charity, then out of simple self-interest they ought to be glad someone was taking care of such a good and strong slave. I think they saw the sense of this for thereafter her visits to me were more open.

I know all this because within a few weeks I was able to speak and understand many basic words, and when she saw this she set about teaching me more.

Things changed gradually between me and Jenny. At first she saw me as a child and when the season of our Lord’s birth arrived, which even these heathen men celebrated, I wept like a child at the memory of my family’s feasts and worship the previous year. Then she took me in her arms and comforted me as a child.

But I was no child, and the more she saw me every day, the clearer this must have become. As snow melted and trees began to shoot, my body seemed to share the returning warmth and I found myself beset by lewd dreams in which sometimes I sported with my affianced bride Maria and sometimes, God forgive my weak flesh, with Jenny.

I did not dare believe that she might have any such thoughts of me, not knowing what I learned later of her revulsion at finding herself bound to a man little better than a beast, and who rutted with her like a beast, not as a man should with his married wife.

One night in the barn I awoke from one of my dreams. In my agitation I had pushed to one side the sacking which acted as my bed linen and I lay there feeling the drafts of cold night air playing over my fevered flesh.

Then, as my eyes unraveled the gloom, I was aware of a figure kneeling by me.

It was Jenny, looking upon my naked arousal. I reached out to her. And she did not turn away.

That was the first time.

It was sinful I know, Father, but even as we took pleasure in it, we gave comfort too, and with each successive time, the comfort felt as strong as the pleasure, and surely that makes it not altogether sinful?

Soon I began to feel almost happy. Perhaps that is why I deserve punishment, not for taking pleasure with another man’s wife, but for finding happiness in the house of the man who had murdered my father.

So God punished me. We grew careless. Gowder and his brother went off to market. We thought they would be away all the day, staying late to drink with their cronies. Jenny took me into the house. It is a comfortless place compared to my father’s villa, but after the barn, it felt luxurious. We made love in the morning. Then I went to do my chores. Late in the afternoon I went back into the house and we made love again.

And Gowder came into the room and caught us.

His rage was terrible to behold. He drew his knife, the same with which he had slit my father’s throat, and hurled himself at me. Naked and supine, it was all I could do to grasp his arm and prevent him from plunging the blade deep into my chest. But his strength was so much greater that within a very brief space he must have prevailed and skewered me to the floor had not Jenny flung herself upon him, her fingers tearing at his eyes. He responded by swinging his elbow at her head with such force it drove all sense from her and she slumped backward on the floor, but her intervention gave me space to thrust Gowder off my body and roll aside into the fireplace. He came after me. As I pushed myself upright, my right hand rested on a heavy fuel log. He drove the knife at my throat. I ducked aside. And I swung the log at his temple.

He fell like a tree. I went to help Jenny who still lay with eyes closed though I could see she was breathing. But before I reached her, I heard a cry from the doorway and turned to see the other Gowder, Andrew, standing there. For a moment he seemed so astounded by what he saw that he could not move. And in that same moment I rushed to the narrow window and forced my naked body through it.

I feel shame now to think I left Jenny, but I knew beyond doubt that Andrew would finish what his brother had begun and I had no strength to resist a second onslaught.

So I fled, I knew not where. Naked and afoot in strange and rough terrain, I had no hope of escape but flew on the wings of fear. But when eventually I heard, distantly at first but getting ever closer, the mingled hubbub of angry voices and excited barking which warned me of pursuit, terror clipped the wings it had given me. Finally I collapsed in the midst of a small wood and prayed the trees would hide me from my pursuers.

Vain hope. The dogs found me first and might have finished me if their owners had not beaten them off. Perhaps this was done out of charity, yet I cannot thank them, for what Andrew Gowder purposed for me was far worse than the rip of a dog’s fangs.

They raised me to a tree and bound me there. I could not understand all they said but they called me murderer, which I did understand and then my heart sank at the thought that my blow had killed Thomas Gowder. For his foul murder of my father he deserved to die and I had the right to be his executioner. But having killed one of their own number, now I knew I should not look for even the doubtful succor of judgment by whatever law these savages observed.

Even then I had no anticipation of what was to happen next.

In the fitful light cast by the torches that they bore, I had observed Andrew Gowder standing aside hacking at billets of wood with his dagger. Now he came toward me. Still I did not understand. But when I felt the splintered point of the wood against the palm of my hand, then I understood.

I screamed before he struck. With each blow I screamed more. My hands, my feet. I did not think such pain could be, and a man still live. And finally, just when I thought that at least the worst was over, he took his dagger and sawed through the rope that bound me to the tree, so that in a trice all the weight of my body fell forward and I was held by those dreadful wooden nails alone.

I think even some of my tormentors were shocked by what they had done, for through my agony I was aware of a sudden silence. Even the dogs ceased their yapping.

Then Gowder, as if he too felt the terror of his own deed, cried, “Away! Leave the murderer to the foxes and the crows. Away!”

And they all fled, leaving me hanging, praying that death would come quickly.

How long I hung I do not know. If you want experience of eternity in this life, Father, let yourself be hung from a cross. Perhaps this is one of the meanings of our Savior’s Passion.

It grew so dark I felt that death must be near. Then I heard a noise, and felt the touch of a hand against my body, and thought Gowder had returned to torment me further.

But the voice that now spoke was not Gowder’s. It was Jenny’s.

How she got me down from the tree I do not know. I had no strength to help her and as each of my limbs was freed the pain of being supported by the others alone was beyond bearing and several times I fainted, till finally I came back to my senses and found I was lying on the ground.

She had brought a blanket for my naked body and a bladder full of water with which she washed my wounds. She cried piteously as she saw the state of me, and all the time she declared, “I cannot stay. He will kill me too if I am found here. I cannot stay.”

But still she stayed till a glimmer in the sky warned that day drew near.

Jenny told me that Thomas was dead and Andrew believed, or affected to believe, I had foully murdered his brother when he caught me trying to ravish her, having first struck her on the head to render her defenseless.

I knew I must move from this spot and I knew also that I could not let Jenny stay with me. For her own safety she had to agree with the story that I was her ravisher, which would be hard to maintain were she found by my side. I asked for her help in getting upright. She fetched a pair of stout branches to lend my crippled feet support. And now I urged her to go, pretending my strength was greater than it was.

Before she went, she kissed me. I knew it was our last kiss. It was as bitter as our first had been sweet.

I began to move also, not caring where I went as long as I was away from that accursed place, and also knowing that wherever it was I halted for rest, there would I lie till either death or my enemies took me up.

I may have kept going for an hour, perhaps more. The sky was bright with spring sunshine when I finally collapsed among some gorse bushes. I closed my eyes.

When I opened them again I was being nuzzled by a horse.

I saw its rider dismount. Convinced that my end must be nigh, I closed my eyes once more and began to recite a prayer to commit my soul to heaven.

I felt an arm around me. Then I was raised in the air and laid across the horse’s saddle and my senses fled once more.

The next time I awoke I felt sure I must have died and gone to heaven, for I was lying on a soft couch and a woman with gray hair and a kind face was washing my wounds. But soon from what she said and what I was able to see I became aware that God in his mercy had led me to the only place of safety I was like to find in this barbarous place. It was the lady’s son who had found me. Recognizing from my dying prayer that we were of the same true faith, he had brought me to his house rather than to the authorities. I had no strength then to tell my story as I am telling it to you, Father, but my fevered ramblings must have persuaded them that I was innocent of the desperate crimes Andrew Gowder was accusing me of.

After a time, I know not whether it was long or short, they said that they must move me, it was no longer safe for me to remain in their house, and I was taken at dead of night to another place. Half-conscious though I was, my fears all returned when I saw that I was being lowered into a dark pit beneath an upraised slab of stone. Did they believe that I had passed away and was I being consigned to the tomb? I tried to struggle and cry to warn them of their mistake but still they lowered me into the darkness.

But just as I was ready to abandon all hope, I saw a glimmer of light, and in that glimmer I saw your face, Father, and heard you speaking words of comfort to me in my own tongue, and I was able to close my eyes in peace once more.

3. The deluding of Mig

“Mr. Madero!”

His name was accompanied by a banging at his door.

When he opened it, he found Mrs. Appledore standing there, looking out of breath and irritated.

“Siesta time, is it?” she said. “I’ve been shouting up the stairs for two minutes. There’s a phone call for you. A Mr. Coldcream, I think he said.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Appledore. Sorry,” said Mig.

He ran down the stairs and into the kitchen. The receiver lay on the windowsill. He picked it up and said, “Hello, Max.”

“Mig, my boy! How are you after your adventures? I’ve not heard anything like it since I stopped reading the Famous Five.”

“I’m fine,” said Mig. “You’ve looked at the document?”

“Indeed yes. This is a fascinating find. You’ve got no doubt about authenticity?”

“None. In my hand it feels right.”

“Good enough for me, but we can easily get some tests done for the sake of those who don’t appreciate your special talents as I do.”

“Fine,” said Mig. “But as I said, there may be a problem about ownership.”

“Yes. It’s a pity you had to fall out with the Woollasses,” said Coldstream. “On the other hand, there’s nothing that redounds to their discredit here. In fact, the reaction of Alice and her son was both charitable and noble. And Father Simeon comes out of it well too. Despite his own peril, he clearly took care of the boy, physically and spiritually. And even if the lad didn’t survive, he proposed making the effort to contact the family with news of his fate if he himself made it safe back to Spain.”

“Which he did. But he didn’t contact the family,” said Mig. “At least, there’s no record of it, which I’m sure there would have been.”

“Yes. That is odd. I keep forgetting it’s actually your family we’re talking about here. Sorry. This must be hard for you.”

“It certainly makes me more appreciative of the Woollasses’ sensibilities,” he said. “Gerald is convinced that my sole motive in coming here was to dig up dirt on Simeon. I suppose I could tell him everything, but I’m not sure if even that would convince him I’m not after producing one of those titillating historical pop-biographies.”

“Which of course you’re not,” said Max. “Are you? Sorry! Look, if the worst comes to the worst, I can always publish your translation in next week’s issue of CH and get it in the public domain that way, but then everyone would have access. Much better if you put on the Hispanic charm and mend a few fences. I gave Tim Lilleywhite a ring, by the way, and asked him to check out that thing you asked about Jolley. I think I see what you’re getting at. Bit of an ace in the hole if it comes up, perhaps. But let’s not jump our guns. Meanwhile, just start groveling! Adios!”

Madero replaced the receiver. Grovel before the Woollasses, he thought. He doubted if it would do him much good, though there was one member of the family he wouldn’t mind subjugating himself to.

He turned round and found himself looking at Frek.

She was standing just inside the kitchen. There was no way of telling how long she’d been there, but she was smiling in a friendly enough fashion.

“There you are,” she said mockingly. “A true historian. You come to our little village and within twenty-four hours you reveal to us what’s been lying beneath our eyes, or at least our feet, for centuries.”

He returned her smile and said, “More luck than judgment, I fear.”

“Luck? The same kind of luck that made you turn up your nose at our so-called priest-hole? I think there is something of the truffle-dog in you, Señor Madero. You sniff out what lies beyond the detection of mere human noses.”

She strolled around the kitchen, looking at the pulleys, running her hands underneath the table edge to feel the holes.

“Was it Mrs. Appledore you wanted to see?” he asked, reluctant to make the assumption that he was the object of her visit. “I think she went into the bar.”

“No. Just idle curiosity. We didn’t hear anything at the Hall about the excitement here last night, but this morning I happened to be talking to a friend on the County Museum staff and she was full of the find. You could be rich if it turns out you’re entitled to a share of the value once they work out who owns what.”

Was that a pointed comment? Had she overheard his conversation? Looking at her, he didn’t think so, she seemed so relaxed and friendly.

“I would guess the Church has the best claim,” said Mig.

“Indeed. But which church?” said Frek. “If the cross is worth as much as my friend guesses, I can’t see the holy accountants of either Rome or Canterbury letting it go without a fight. The bones are another matter. The Anglicans probably won’t compete there, even if they are confirmed as the lost relicts of St. Ylf. What did your ghostly antennae signal, Mr. Madero?”

He said, “I only know for certain they don’t belong to any member of my family.”

Faintly surprised, she said, “But why on earth should you think they might?”

He felt himself flushing under her coolly assessing gaze that seemed capable of cutting through to the innermost chambers of his mind and discovering Father Simeon’s journal hidden there.

“It’s a lovely day,” he said, ignoring her question. “I thought I might take a walk and enjoy it while it lasts.”

It was as near as he dared come to an open invitation.

She said, “That’s a very English view of weather. Your mother’s influence, I would guess, and therefore preeminently reasonable. May I join you?”

“Of course.”

“So where shall we walk? A quiet stroll along the river, or did you have in mind something a little more adventurous?”

She smiled as she spoke the last word. Could he read anything into that?

He said, “The river sounds fine, though I’m not averse to a bit of adventure.”

“We must see what we can do then,” she said.

Outside, the autumn sun kept its promise, falling as pleasantly on Mig’s skin as it had on his eye through the window.

As they strolled across the humpback bridge, Mig said, “If it were always like this, your Lake District would truly be a landscape without equal.”

“Nonsense,” she said briskly. “It would be very dull. The best landscapes remain beautiful whatever the weather. Flood, drought, frost, blizzard, it makes no difference here. Why, it’s even beautiful in mist when you can hardly see it at all.”

“You don’t hanker after those icy lands where your northern gods live, then?”

“But they live here too, didn’t you realize that? This is why the Vikings settled here. Rivers and lakes filled with salmon and trout, forests full of wild beasts and deer, broad fertile meadows and steep mountains running down to the great western sea. It must have seemed a land fit for the gods, and if you can’t be a god yourself, the next best thing is to choose to live where they would surely have chosen to live. The Wolf-Head Cross was the flag those settlers planted here to establish possession. I sometimes think they’re still here.”

“Really? I haven’t noticed a lot of horned helmets hanging up in the Stranger.”

“Why would you? The Vikings had a culture of heroism but a mythology of deceit. A large proportion of the stories in the Poetic Edda are based on deception and mischief, and the first part of Snorri’s Edda is called ‘Gylfaginning’ – the Deluding of Gylfi. But you’re looking blank. I thought you had a nodding acquaintance with the Norse myths.”

“The kind of acquaintance where you half recognize a face but can never recall a name,” he said jokingly. “When I see an edda approaching, I cross the street to avoid embarrassment.”

Frek didn’t look amused.

“Edda is semantically obscure and variously interpreted as a poetic anthology or random jottings,” she said in a schoolmarmish voice. “The Poetic Edda consists of a collection of mythological and heroic poems. The Prose Edda is a combination of historical analysis, anthology and treatise on poetics, written by Snorri Sturluson. Dare I hope you’ve heard of Snorri?”

“Sorry. No,” he said. “Though I’m glad to see you’re on first name terms with him.”

Again his attempt at lightness fell like a snowflake on to a griddle.

“Sturluson isn’t a surname, it’s a patronymic. In Iceland first names have always been used for identification. As for Snorri, he was a thirteenth-century Icelander. He was a top politician, legislator, historian, poet, and activist. He makes most of the so-called Renaissance men you probably do know about look like kids with a hatful of GCSEs and attitude.”

“I apologize for my ignorance, which I shall begin to rectify as soon as I get within striking distance of a library,” he said, taking care to keep any hint of levity out of his voice.

She nodded approval, then smiled a smile which was worth a bit of pain.

“Good,” she said. “I’ll test you later. And you should know that us Vikings are pretty hot stuff when it comes to tricky questions.”

On the far side of the bridge they had turned to walk upstream, following a sun-dappled path sometimes on the riverbank, sometimes curving away beneath close-crowding trees, mostly alders and willows, with here and there a rowan on which the berries were already turning bright red, and silver-columned birches with bark flaked like gimcrack, and now a pair of ancient oaks whose roots exposed by the crumbling bank bent over the water like a mountain troll’s knees. Though they still looked massively solid, there was little sign of living growth on these two trees, and most of what there was belonged to a narrow tortuous plant which held the oak in a close embrace.

“Mistletoe,” said Frek, following his gaze. “Balder’s bane.”

“Which the English now use as an excuse for kissing,” he said daringly.

“Kissing, killing, it’s all connected,” she mocked. “Hod, who threw the fatal dart, is blind. As is the Roman Cupid, a wayward child who fires his arrows off indiscriminately. Where they strike, they may not kill, but they can render men who had felt themselves invulnerable slaves of a destructive passion.”

Was she warning him off or egging him on?

Whichever, she now led him away from the temptation of the oak trees. A little beyond them, the path divided, one branch turning away from the river and mounting the steepening fellside.

“Where does that go?” he asked.

“Up to Foulgate, the Gowders’ farmhouse. Beyond that, it turns into Stanebank, which curves round the edge of Mecklin Moor and drops down past the Hall. Do you feel up to such a physical challenge?”

Again the mocking ambivalence.

He said, “I’m in your hands.”

“Let’s take things easy then,” she said. “In fact, why don’t we take a rest?”

Just past the bifurcation, a rough bench had been created by setting a length of wood onto two logs beneath a tall tree whose elegant leaves were freaked with crimson and amber. Across the river they could see the stumpy tower of St. Ylf ’s. Something moved on it, then vanished. A big bird, perhaps. Maybe a raven.

She sat down. There was scarcely room for two and Mig remained standing, but she looked up at him with a smile and said, “Don’t just stand there like Alexander, blocking the sun. Come on, there’s plenty of room.”

He squatted down beside her, their flanks pressed close. He could feel her warmth through her thin dress and his light cotton trousers. He even imagined he could feel the pulse of her blood through the veins of her thigh. He sought for words to break the silence which seemed to be wrapping itself around them, pressing them ever closer.

“It’s an ash,” he said, looking up. “Like Yggdrasil – isn’t that what the Norsemen called the tree which holds up the world?”

“Well, well,” she said, turning his way so that her breast brushed against his ribcage. “Such expertise. I see that I am the one who has been deluded, Mr. Madero.”

“Yesterday we agreed on Mig,” he said.

“That was before you were expelled from the garden,” she said.

“No. I think that you were still Migging me in the churchyard. I was certainly Freking you.”

“Well, I shouldn’t like to be thought of as the sort of woman who would let herself be Freked without Migging in return,” she said, with a mockery of coquetry which was still coquettish. “So, Mig, I’ve let you see what’s important to me. Now I’ll shut up and give you a turn. What is it that makes your life worth living?”

He recalled her warning – never complain, never explain – but he felt a strong impulse to tell her everything about himself. Why not, when he’d unburdened himself so comprehensively to Sam Flood?

He began to talk. She was a good listener. He recalled from his Shakespeare how Desdemona with a greedy ear devoured Othello’s discourse, and while Frek showed no sign of weeping, or offering for his pains a world of kisses, she did sigh sympathetically from time to time, and looked deep into his eyes, and once – it was as he described his fall from the mountain – she put her hand on his knee and dug her fingers in deep.

Even if in the beginning he’d purposed any restraint, by the time he reached the latest end of his tale, all thought of keeping anything back had fled. He told her about the journal, his translation of it, and even gave the gist of Max’s information and advice.

When he finished speaking, he felt that they were in such a state of emotional intimacy, its physical counterpart could only be a gauzy thickness away.

He shifted slightly on the bench and put his arm along her shoulders as if to steady himself. She turned her head toward him. Her mouth was slightly open, he could see the glimmer of her small white teeth, the pink moistness of her parted lips.

He moved his head toward her.

She said, “Now that was really fascinating. I’m almost sorry I have to go.”

And stood up.

He looked up at her, bewildered and frustrated. Was this some part of the courting ritual he’d simply never reached? So far as jousting with the opposite sex went, he might look like a mature man of the world, but his learning curve had stuttered to a halt at the age of sixteen.

He heard himself saying foolishly, “But you can’t go yet.”

“Can’t I?” She spoke the words as if this were some proposition in logic she needed to examine. “Why?”

“Because… because there are things I need to discuss. About what I’ve told you… what I should do next.”

“I’m not clear,” she said. “Are you asking for a general comment, or a specific recommendation as to how you should proceed?”

“Both. Neither. I don’t know.” He was speaking wildly, like an inarticulate teenager. He pulled himself together. “Your family and mine are both concerned here. Your father is at least entitled to see the words that Father Simeon wrote. But I suspect that if I made a direct approach, he would set the dogs on me.”

“No worry there, then. Our dog is not only a crook, but a very old Labrador who might attempt to lick you to death, but no more.”

The light tone should have been reassuring, but it wasn’t. If anything it was slightly condescending.

He stood up, his bad knee stiff as an old oak root, and he looked her straight in the face.

“Perhaps in that case I should go to the Hall now and explain what has happened.”

“No point. Daddy’s out and I expect my grandfather’s taking his morning nap.”

“His nap? Oh, we mustn’t disturb old Mr. Dunny’s morning nap, must we!” he said savagely. “I can guess how much he looks forward to it.”

She looked at him with a faint smile and said, “If you’re referring to his dalliance with Mrs. Collipepper, yes, I believe he does look forward to it. In any case, it’s practically a family duty. Her mother and her grandmother were housekeepers at the Hall too. It’s one Woollass tradition I don’t think Daddy’s concerned himself with, but in these matters Grandfather’s an absolute stickler.”

More shocked than he cared to show at this frankness, Mig said, “I’m sorry, it’s none of my business. But I too have a strong sense of family which he might understand. I want to do the right thing about Simeon’s journal and I’m sure if I could just sit down and talk with your father or grandfather, we could come to some accord.”

She thought about this then nodded. “You may be right. I’ll see what I can do.”

“And what about you?” he asked, unable to let her go without having their own relationship spelled out clearly. “I thought we were reaching some accord, too.”

“I think we did,” she said. “I certainly found your story interesting, if a touch sad.”

“Sad?”

“Yes. It seems to me that a vivid imagination, a rather unfocused religiosity, and a hysterical medical condition have combined to make you interpret a couple of simple coincidences as a message from God. Which is indeed sad in a man of intellect and education. You’re not put out, I hope? I know my directness can sometimes offend.”

“No, no,” he said, trying for control. “I suppose I had hoped for something a little more empathic from someone as immersed in an ancient myth system as you seem to be.”

“You shouldn’t confuse immersion with absorption,” she smiled. “I am a scholar. My interest is primarily academic. Yours should be also. Personal involvement may add a spice to research, but it should never be allowed to get in the way of objective truth.”

“Truth,” he echoed. “A young man who was one of my ancestors was shipwrecked on these shores and treated monstrously – you’ll admit that as true, I suppose?”

“You forget, I haven’t studied the document myself,” she said. “But, accepting your interpretation as accurate, you shouldn’t ignore the fact that he was also treated with more kindness and compassion than an enemy of the state might have expected in those troubled times. The Gowder woman saved his life and offered him all the comforts a woman can offer a man. His life was saved a second time by my own ancestors, at no inconsiderable risk to themselves. Would an English sailor shipwrecked in Spain have received the same treatment, I wonder?”

“I don’t think there’s much point in comparing brutalities,” he said.

“Of course not. In any case, behavior must always be judged in the social context in which it occurs. I see you have the Swinebank Guide with you. His take on the events at Foulgate makes interesting reading, don’t you think? There are two sides to everything. Now I must be off. I’ll talk to my father and grandfather and ring you later. I can’t offer you more than that, Mig, believe me. Good day. I’ll be in touch.”

She walked away, upright, unhurried, a column of pure white light in a world of shifting colors. He sank back down on the rough bench and watched her go. Into his mind, uninvited, dropped Winander’s comment yesterday about the marble angel.

Cool even in the sunlight.

The sun dappling his bare arms did not seem so warm now. A winged insect settled on the back of his hand. It was a pale green and translucent white, a lacy fragile thing.

But when he brushed it off, it left a red mark on his skin.

4. Mecklin Moss

For several minutes after Frek’s departure, Mig sat, staring sightlessly at the river’s sparkling surface. He felt unhappy, he felt frustrated, above all he felt foolish.

He had observed the cycle of desire and rejection often enough during his school and university days, and sometimes when he wasn’t too busy struggling to subdue his own body, he had felt rather smugly that an intelligent observer probably knew more about the game than many players.

Wrong! And the result? Here he was, a twenty-seven-yearold adolescent, feeling sorry for himself!

To divert his mind from these painful speculations, he opened the Illthwaite Guide and read again the passage describing the fate of the waif boy.

It was an ill-judged attempt at diversion. Emotional and sexual frustration was a mere cat’s-paw compared to the tempest stirred up by the measured terms of the Reverend Peter K. He felt again what he had felt that first night as he approached the Stranger House – the mist swirling around his head; the fear coating his tongue; the desperate pumping of his lungs inflating the chambers of his heart to bursting point.

He leapt up to escape it, but he bore it with him. And when he reached the fork in the path which led to Foulgate Farm, his feet seemed to turn uphill of their own accord.

But the ghost of an experience four hundred years old could not serve to strengthen living limbs, and certainly not to lend grip to a pair of casual shoes which were fine for a gentle stroll but ill suited to this increasingly rough and rugged track.

Soon he was back wholly in the world of here and now. His bad leg was aching and he was breathing so hard it must have sounded like the approach of a traction engine to the inmates of Foulgate.

The Gowders certainly looked as if they’d anticipated his coming, he thought with a shiver. They were standing in their cobbled farmyard, one holding a plane in his hands, the other a bradawl. Between them on a trestle lay a half-assembled coffin.

This, he thought with a shock of recognition like a blow, this was the house in which that other Miguel had fought with Thomas Gowder. There was the barn in which he had first lain with Jenny Gowder. Across these cobbles and up that track ahead he must have fled, almost naked, from the fury of the younger brother.

And these two men standing looking at him with eyes that were neither surprised nor welcoming, these were the descendants of that Andrew who had driven the wooden spites into Miguel’s hands and feet, and left him hanging from the blasted oak tree.

One of them spoke.

Laal, he thought, recalling what Sam had said about identifying them.

“Can we help you, mister?”

“I’m going to Mecklin Moss,” he said.

“Then you’re going right,” said the other. Who must therefore also be Laal.

It was very confusing. It was hard enough separating the living from the dead without the separation of the living from the living being a problem too.

He made his way carefully around them and out of the other end of the yard. He was sure they would stand and watch him out of sight, but after only a couple of steps he heard the rasp of the plane.

Their indifference felt more of a trouble than their interest.

The track here was wider and rutted by wheels. It wove upward through tummocky drumlins, and soon the buildings of the farm were out of sight.

Beyond the drumlins this main track began to bear to the left, following the contour of the fell. Eventually it must curve downhill and become Stanebank and descend to the Hall. But at the highest point of the curve, his feet chose a narrower path, scarce more than a sheep-trod, which led straight on.

He knew with a certainty beyond need of proof that this was the way his young terrified ancestor had fled.

The main track had been worn to the visible bedrock but now, as the ground leveled off into a relatively flat expanse of moorland, he felt the path beneath his feet become increasingly soft and damp, as though here the earth’s bones lay too deep to reach. Yet strewn across this marshy moorland were huge boulders, deposited there by God knows what glacial drift or subterranean tremor.

He paused to examine two massive slabs, or perhaps the halves of one even vaster rock, leaning drunkenly against each other to form a lofty tent. The dark recess looked uninviting now, but in a storm with no other choice it must look almost welcoming. That someone had found it so was suggested by a circle of scorched earth at its mouth. Fire, the fourth element, which might help a man survive the perils of the other three, when earth became treacherous and air surged with invisible violence. As for water, no longer content simply to seep up around his shoes, it now gleamed darkly in sinister pools amidst the coarse grass, and soon he found even apparently solid patches of bright green turf dissolving beneath his feet to sink him deep in clinging mud.

He glanced at the sketch map in the Guide. While not detailed enough for precise navigation, it confirmed that he was on the edge of Mecklin Moss. Mecklin Shaw must be somewhere over to his left. Or rather, must have been. Even in the Reverend Peter K.’s day, it had almost disappeared. Now, a century on, what could remain? But to that other Miguel, as he glimpsed the darkness of the trees swaying against the lighter darkness of the sky, it must have looked to offer some slight hope of refuge.

Ahead, now as then, there seemed nothing but the certainty of getting irretrievably bogged down in the space of a couple of dozen meters.

His thoughts turned to Sam Flood’s namesake who had drowned himself up here in the Moss. Self-destruction, a fearful choice for any man, for a priest far worse. And what a place to choose! No simple plunge into deep drowning waters was on offer here, but a long struggle out through quag and bog till at last the mud held you fast and you must prostrate yourself as though in worship to bring the longed-for end.

He shuddered and said an intercessory prayer for the poor lost soul. A man who by all accounts was informed by an overwhelming desire to do good.

Much good it did him.

A bitter tribute to futility.

He arrived at the place where the wood must have been.

All traces of it had vanished, at least on the surface. Perhaps deep below there still lay ancient roots. But for too long now there had been no thirsty trees and, left undrained, inevitably the ground had been taken over by the relentless slough. He had no way of knowing for certain this was the right location. So far he had experienced nothing more up here than the natural reaction of any sensitive being to such a dreary place.

It could be that, having brought him so close to the end of his voyage of discovery, his otherworld guides were leaving him to his own devices. If so, he should feel glad. They had often been uncomfortable traveling companions, and dealing with this world on this world’s terms looked likely to present enough problems to occupy him fully.

But no man who has for so long felt different is ever completely grateful to lose the feeling.

He turned his back on the Moss. Another thin trod ran away downhill to rejoin the curve of Stanebank. It was in this direction that the other Miguel, bleeding and lame, must have staggered after Jenny Gowder had released him. Knowing what her own fate must be were she caught in his company, she had not dared to help him further, yet what she had already done was an act of great courage.

And so the injured youth had limped and crawled downhill till he was too weak to move further, then lain exposed to the savagery of the elements till by the grace of God the young Woollass had chanced upon him.

He had much to thank the Woollasses for, thought Mig. It had been that sense of obligation, as well as his sense of desire, that had made him unburden himself so comprehensively to Frek. Now it was up to them.

He set off down the trod and within a few minutes found himself rejoining the relatively broad track of Stanebank.

Left would take him back to Foulgate, right must lead downhill past the Hall.

That was his quickest and easiest way, though he found himself unhappy at the prospect of meeting any of the Hall’s inmates in his present befouled condition. It wasn’t just his shoes that were ruined. The mud had managed to reach his knees, though he had no memory of ever sinking so deep.

He set off down the grassy track. Walking downhill on a firm surface was a pleasure after the Moss. He felt as strong as he’d been before his accident. Soon the Hall came in sight. He paused where a natural terrace on the fellside gave a fine oversight. The ground dropped steeply then began to level off toward the kitchen end of the house. A flat area scooped out of the slope and leveled with gravel caught his eye. It looked like a niche prepared to receive some piece of garden statuary. Maybe Dunstan had picked up a marble Venus on his last trip to Rome! He worked out that one of the first-floor windows he could see was probably the old man’s bedroom. Perhaps even now he and the statuesque but very non-marmoreal Pepi were enjoying themselves up there. With an example like that, no need for a late starter like himself to worry. He still had half a century to learn the game!

The thought stayed with him as he strode past the Hall and as he approached that other reminder of the possibilities of age, the Forge, it returned to make him smile again.

“Dear God! It doesn’t take much to make you monks happy,” said a mocking voice. “Why didn’t you roll in the mud and really enjoy yourself!”

Thor Winander was standing in his driveway.

“Good morning, Mr. Winander,” said Mig.

“And good morning to you. What the hell have you been up to?”

“I went for a walk and found the ground wasn’t as hard as I’m used to.”

“Edie Appledore isn’t going to thank you for tracking that clart into her house, and you must be in her black books already for messing up her kitchen. Come in and clean up. No, I insist. We didn’t really get a chance to talk about last night, did we?”

Not too reluctantly, Mig let himself be drawn into the house. Winander took him upstairs and opened a door which led into a bedroom.

“Bathroom in there,” he said, pointing to another door. “I’ll leave some clean things on the bed for you. I’ll be downstairs with a hot drink when you’re ready.”

Five minutes later, Mig descended the stairs wearing trainers and chinos, both a touch too large but not unmanageably so.

“In here,” called Winander.

He tracked the voice into a basic but well-ordered kitchen.

“Sit yourself down,” the big man commanded. “Won’t take you into the parlor. Had the little Aussie in there yesterday and she was a bit satirical about the mess. Doesn’t mince her words, does she? So, how do you like your coffee? With or without?”

“Just a very little milk, thank you.”

“I wasn’t talking about milk,” said Winander, holding up a bottle of rum. “This stuff will put the color back in your cheeks. It did wonders for the British Navy’s cheeks, so they say – above and below.”

He poured a generous dollop into a mug, topped it with coffee and passed it over.

“There we go. Salud!”

“Cheers,” said Mig.

“So,” said Winander, back into a chair. “And how are you after last night’s adventures? And the marvelous midget, how’s she bearing up?”

“Miss Flood, you mean? She’s gone. Drove off first thing.”

“With never a goodbye? After all I did for her. There’s Aussie manners for you.”

“What exactly did you do for her, Mr. Winander?” said Mig.

“Call me Thor. Well, now I come to think of it, not a lot. But I’m sorry to have missed her. Sort of grew on you, didn’t she? Which was just as well as she seems to have stopped growing on herself!”

Mig surprised in himself a pang of resentment which came close to being jealousy. Changing the subject, he said, “I didn’t thank you properly for your prompt action last night. I gather it was you who worked things out so quickly.”

“Not difficult. Pulley ropes broken, hooks under the table, voices from the ground. Scratch the patina of artistic sophistication and you will find us Winanders are still basically jobbing craftsmen.”

“Us Winanders? Are there many of you?”

Thor frowned and said, “No. In fact there’s only me. I am the end, there is no more, there’s an apple up my arse and you can have the core, as the poet said.”

Under the coarse flippancy Mig detected that this was a source of genuine pain.

“You never married?” he said.

“No. When I was younger I never saw the need for it; later I was past my sell-by date. But all things good and bad come to an end, eh? Must be something in the scriptures to cover that, Father. Sorry. Miguel.”

“Mig,” said Mig. “On the contrary, I think the scriptures are more about infinity than the finite. What is good is forever.”

“That’s what you think, is it? Well, no one minds the smell of their own crap. Sorry, I didn’t ask you in to be offensive. It’s just that old Illthwaite is dying on its feet. The school’s gone, the post office is gone, even the bloody Herdwicks look like going with hill-farmers feeling the pinch and selling up or trying to make a living out of cream teas and tourists. No more Winanders after me, no more Appledores after Edie, not much chance of there being any more Woollasses. Even the bloody Gowders have ground to a halt unless they’ve got a couple of mad wives locked in their attic, which wouldn’t surprise me as you’d have to be mad to marry a Gowder.”

“They seem a not very prepossessing family,” said Mig with careful neutrality.

“You’ve noticed? Brutes and bandits, that’s what they’ve always been. Seems only fitting that they should end up putting their neighbors under the ground, which is more or less what they’ve been doing for the past five centuries! But you’ve probably had it with Illthwaite. In fact, I’m surprised you’re still here. Someone should have warned you how sensitive the Woollasses are about their precious Father Simeon. Even Frek.”

“Frek did not strike me as being much concerned about such matters,” said Mig.

“Not on the surface, maybe. But you’ll soon see red Woollass blood coming through if you scratch Frek’s fair white skin. Not that there’s much chance of you doing that.”

Mig found himself flushing, partly with embarrassment, partly with annoyance.

Was it so obvious that he’d been stricken by the woman?

And was it common knowledge already that she’d turned him down?

Winander was looking at him curiously.

“Forgive me for asking, old chum, but you get on well with the fair Frek, do you?”

“I think so,” Mig replied, trying not to sound too brusque.

He downed the rest of his coffee. The rum gave it a darkly decadent flavor.

“Now I must get back,” he said. “Thank you very much for your kindness.”

“But you haven’t bought anything! Come to think of it, neither did young Sam. I can’t have two tourists in succession getting out of here with their wallets as full as when they arrived. Let me show you my workshop.”

Reluctantly Mig let himself be led into a high airy room full of light from three huge plate-glass windows.

“Have a look around,” said Winander. “If you see anything you fancy, just shout.”

Mig wandered round the workshop, counting the minutes till the demands of politeness would have been satisfied and he could go.

“This might interest you,” said Winander. “A kind of companion piece to the angel.”

He drew a piece of sacking away from the reclining nude.

Mig recognized the face instantly, and as he took in the blatant sexuality of the splayed legs, he felt a knot of anger form in his chest at what seemed a deliberate and malicious provocation on Winander’s part.

But the man was chattering on, unconcerned.

“After I’d done the angel, I tentatively suggested a nude. The pose was Frek’s choice. Always been a bit of a game between us ever since she told me she was gay, her still trying to get me going, me demonstrating my indifference. It’s intellectual with her, I think. The theater of the absurd, she calls it, watching men jump through hoops in the hope of earning a treat. Daren’t let Gerry see it, of course. He’s old-fashioned enough to come after me with a horse whip!”

It took Mig several moments to let the meaning of what he was hearing penetrate his anger. First came disbelief, then shock, and then a slow unraveling of the knot in his chest as he took in not only what Winander was saying but his motives in saying it. And his methods. He was letting him know that Frek was a lesbian, but doing it as if assuming that Mig had recognized this all along and hadn’t let himself be made a fool of.

No. He corrected that. He’d made a fool of himself. All that Frek had done was… nothing. Why should she? And she’d brought matters to a halt when it must have been clear he was on the point of taking direct action.

Father Dominic, talking of the vow of chastity, had said that it had nothing to do with morality as many supposed, and everything to do with the power of sex to cloud judgment, squander energy, divert the will.

“That’s why among your list of things coming to an end in Skaddale, you included the Woollasses,” he said, trying for a man-of-the-world tone. “But surely nowadays it is almost a commonplace for lesbian women to start families.”

“Not Frek,” said Winander. “I asked her and she said that happily the maternal impulse hadn’t been tossed into her cradle by a malicious fairy godmother. When I said that old Dunny must be distressed to foresee the end of his line, she laughed and said not as distressed as he’d be at the thought of a Woollass coming out of a test tube. Funny world we live in, ain’t it?”

Mig did not respond. He’d turned away from the disturbing wood carving and was staring out of a window into the yard where his gaze had been drawn to something which gave him a shock less definable than the news of Frek’s sexuality, but for some reason even more powerful.

“What is that?” he demanded.

“What? My wolf head, you mean? Or perhaps I should say Frek’s wolf head.”

“Frek’s?”

“Yes,” said Thor. “She commissioned it, so to speak. That’s how she came to be my model. Come and have a closer look if you want.”

As they crossed the yard, he told the story of his deal with Frek, but Mig wasn’t listening. His gaze was riveted on the huge wood sculpture. There was something truly menacing about it. He came to a halt a couple of feet away, then took a further step back.

Winander said, “Interesting. Most people can’t resist touching it. Little Sam almost wrapped herself around it. But you look like you’re scared it would bite.”

“Do I?” said Madero. Then added, more to himself than Thor, “It feels alive.”

“Thank you kindly, sir,” said Winander, taking this as a comment on his carving.

Mig didn’t correct him. He didn’t care to share the sense he got that this towering lump of wood was vibrant with intent, and it wasn’t good.

“Where did it actually come from?” he asked. He felt he knew the answer.

“Didn’t I say? It came out of Mecklin Moss,” replied Winander. “You’d have expected anything in that acidy bog would rot away in no time. But this is absolutely solid.” He gave it a slap and laughed. “Reminds me of an Eskdale lass I once knew. Finest Cumberland wrestler I ever met, only the rules wouldn’t let her enter at the shows, so she had to make do with best of three falls in the hayfields with the likes of me!”

His laughter gave Mig strength to turn away from the Wolf Head and make his farewells. Common sense told him Winander was right. There was no way this could have any connection with the ordeal of that other Miguel four hundred years before.

But as he walked away down the hill he was both glad and ashamed that he hadn’t found the courage to touch that smooth and sensuously curved slab of old wood.

5. Shoot-out

That same evening at six o’clock prompt, Miguel Madero entered the bar of the Stranger House.

As he pushed open the door, a memory from childhood of the old Western films he’d loved (and still did) flashed into his mind. The hero enters, the chatter of conversation dies away, the piano tinkles to silence, the bartender freezes in the act of pouring a drink, and the man he’s pouring it for turns slowly to face the door, smiling a welcome at the newcomer even as his hand adjusts the Colt in his holster.

It was a ludicrous memory and the fact that the room was empty made it even more so. But still he felt like a Western hero, come for the showdown.

Back at the Stranger, he had headed straight up to his room but only been there a couple of minutes when there was a tap at his door.

He opened it to find Mrs. Appledore standing there, holding a plate with a sandwich on it.

“Thought you might fancy a nibble after your exertions,” she said with that discomforting Illthwaite assumption of knowing exactly how he’d spent his morning, but her warm smile more than redressed the balance.

She must have been a very attractive woman in her younger days, he thought, as he took the sandwich with a smile of thanks. In fact even now it would be very easy for a man to stop thinking of her as comfortably motherly and start thinking…

Oh God! Stop this! he commanded himself angrily. Just because he was no longer committed by formal vows to the celibate life didn’t mean that lustful thoughts were any less sinful. But he knew he was reacting less to the idea of sin than the memory of the way his adolescent fancies had made him such an easy target for Frek Woollass.

As if the thought had nudged Mrs. Appledore’s memory, she said, “By the way, Frek Woollass just called. She said to tell you she’s passed on your message and are you going to be here in the pub tonight? If you are, fine. No need to ring back.”

Meaning presumably that Gerry didn’t care to have him back in the Hall but, having listened to his daughter’s report, was willing to talk on neutral ground.

“No time was mentioned?”

“Round here, tonight’s a time,” she said, laughing.

She was an easy woman to make laugh. That was one of her many attractions…

¡Mierda! There he went again with that knee-jerk prurience.

“You’ll be wanting some grub, if you’re staying in,” she suggested.

“That would be good,” he said. He certainly did not intend to sit in his room, waiting anxiously.

“Sausage or ham?” she asked. “And what time?”

“Let’s make it early, before you get too busy,” he said. “Six? And sausage.”

“Six and sausage it is,” she said.

And now six it was, and the sausage wasn’t far behind.

“Evening, Mr. Madero,” said Edie Appledore from the bar. “I’ve reserved the table in the nook for you. Let me get you a drink, then I’ll see to your grub. Will it be a sherry to whet your appetite?”

It was a kind thought but he did not care to think how long a bottle of sherry in this bar might have been standing open.

“No thanks,” he said. “A half of bitter, please.”

“When in Rome, eh?”

She drew a half-pint, looked at it critically, and poured it and another three away before she was satisfied.

“First of the night,” she said. “You don’t want stuff that’s been lying in the pipes.”

If only they took care of their wine as they took care of their beer, he thought.

He carried his glass to the table in the corner by the fireplace and chose the chair with its back to the wall.

A good shootist never sat with his back to the entrance door.

Would Frek come with her father? he wondered. Knowing what he knew now, how would he react to her? Down by the river she’d played him like a fish, hooked him, landed him, then left him floundering on the bank. He had told her everything. She had told him nothing. Unlike his exchange in the kitchen chamber with Sam, there had been no sense of sharing, of giving and taking comfort. Theirs had been an enforced intimacy, but it had been an intimacy for all that. Yet he couldn’t accuse Frek of being deceitful. She hadn’t created an illusion, simply allowed him to create one for himself.

His life so far had been defined by phantasms. Perhaps it was time to move on. But not without putting to rest the ghost of that other Miguel.

His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of Mrs. Appledore with a plate fully occupied by a monstrous coil of sausage and a small mountain of chips.

He began to eat. It was really excellent this sausage. He wondered how well it held its flavor, cold. Chopped into small slices, he could envisage it taking its place among its more highly spiced cousins on a tapas tray.

The door opened and Thor Winander came in. He gave Madero a friendly nod but made no effort to join him, taking a stool at the bar. A little later the old ex-policeman they called Noddy Melton appeared. He came straight to the table and shook Mig’s hand.

“Good evening, Mr. Madero,” he said. “I hope I find you well. It was good to meet you last night. My sources tell me we were right about the bones’ antiquity, so I may have touched the head of a saint. I do believe my rheumatics were a little better this morning. Will your friend, Miss Flood, be joining us this evening?”

“No, she’s gone, I’m afraid.”

“Really? Then I look forward to seeing her on her return.”

“I don’t think she plans to come back,” said Mig.

“Ah yes, but there’s plans and there’s life, Mr. Madero.”

With this faintly enigmatic comment the little man went to the bar, nodded at Winander, paid for the pint which the landlady had already drawn for him, and took a seat just inside the door.

Others arrived over the next fifteen minutes or so. Some he recognized, like the Gowder twins, who ignored him completely. Others he thought he recollected from the crowd protesting at being shut out of the bar the previous night. Certainly all were local. And no one showed the slightest inclination to come near his table, not even Pete Swinebank, the vicar, who did however give him a friendly wave before settling down alongside a couple of farmers who looked more baffled than blessed.

Mig’s sense of being in a movie returned. Probably all that had happened was that Mrs. Appledore had mentioned to each new arrival that his table was out of bounds as he was expecting company from the Hall. Yet he couldn’t see why the imminent arrival of Gerry Woollass should cause such a tension of anticipation. A man of influence, certainly, but hardly a charismatic figure.

He finished his meal and pushed the plate away. It was the perfect moment a good director would choose for the bar door to swing open to reveal the Man With No Name.

Dead on cue, the door opened. The figure that stood there wasn’t Clint Eastwood, but his presence was almost as surprising.

It was Dunstan Woollass, resplendent in an immaculately cut cream-colored linen suit, with a silver-knobbed cane in his hand, a silk cravat at his throat, and a pale pink rose in his buttonhole.

He should have looked slightly absurd. He didn’t.

He wasn’t alone. Behind him Mig could see the grim-faced figure of Gerry with Frek on his left side and Sister Angelica on his right.

For a moment the new arrivals just stood there. The room fell silent. Then Dunstan said, “Good evening. I believe a man can get drink here.”

There was a burst of laughter and a chorus of greeting.

Dunstan advanced, using the cane for support but with a grace that reminded you of Astaire rather than his age. Tables and chairs were pulled aside to allow him a direct course toward Mig’s table. He nodded acknowledgment and bestowed gracious smiles on most people. Only to the Gowders did he speak direct, saying, “Silas, Ephraim, how are you?” Does he really know which is which? wondered Mig.

The twins muttered an inaudible reply, at the same time touching what would have been their cap-peaks or their forelocks, if they’d sported either. Sister Angelica smiled approvingly on this display of feudal hierarchy, but Gerry scowled as if he’d prefer to exercise his seigniorial power by having the Gowders flogged behind a cart.

Frek meanwhile diverted to the bar and slid elegantly on to a stool next to Thor Winander.

Mig stood up as the trio reached him and pulled out a chair for the nun, another for the old man. Gerry had to borrow a chair from a neighboring table.

Sister Angelica said, “Ta,” as she sat down and Dunstan said, “Good evening, Madero. I trust I find you well?”

In the same instant Mrs. Appledore materialized with a tray bearing four well-filled brandy balloons which she set on the table.

“Evening, Mr. Dunstan,” she said, clearing away Madero’s dishes. “Nice to see you back in the Stranger. It’s been a while.”

“I lead a busy life, Edie,” he said.

“So they say. Just shout when you want a refill. You’ll not be disturbed.”

“Well, here’s to us,” said Sister Angelica, taking a sip of her drink.

“Good health,” said Madero, following suit.

It was, as he’d anticipated, the same excellent cognac Mrs. Appledore had given him in the kitchen on the night of his arrival.

Gerry Woollass seemed disinclined to join the toast, but under the nun’s calm expectant gaze he took a token taste.

“Mr. Madero,” said Dunstan. “Frek has passed on what you told her this morning.”

He paused. Mig glanced toward the woman at the bar. She had a small wineglass in her hand which she raised in mock salute when their eyes met.

He didn’t speak. It was up to Woollass to set the terms of this encounter.

The man continued. “It explains a lot. I can see how you might feel you’ve been treated unjustly. On the other hand, you were not as open with us as you might have been, so you must take your share of the blame.”

Madero nodded.

“I do. My defense is it was a sin of omission. My principal motive in contacting your family was as stated, to pursue my researches into recusancy. If you had not replied positively, I wouldn’t have come anywhere near Illthwaite.”

“Fair enough,” said Dunstan.

The expression on his son’s face suggested he wasn’t inclined to be so understanding, but Angelica was smiling at him encouragingly.

It was time to move things on. He picked up his briefcase which was resting against the table leg and opened it.

“Mr. Woollass, I have something to show you. As Frek will have told you, I found a document in the hidden chamber last night. It was in code. This is a translation.”

He set his laptop on the table, brought up the translation and turned the screen toward the old man.

Dunstan read it with nothing in his expression beyond polite curiosity. Sister Angelica read also and from time to time scrolled the document down. Gerry didn’t even look at the screen but said angrily, “And where’s the original document that you stole?”

His father glanced at him long-sufferingly, then murmured, “Very interesting, Madero. And I gather that you are persuaded this fugitive with your name is in fact a direct ancestor of yours?”

“All the evidence supports such a belief.”

“Including your own – how shall I put it? – metaphysical experience?”

“Frek clearly told you everything about me,” he said, trying not to sound aggrieved.

“Which would make you, in some degree, an agent of God’s purpose,” said Dunstan with a faint twitch of the lips as though he found the concept amusing.

“Aren’t we all His agents, Mr. Woollass? In some degree,” said Madero.

Gerry looked as if he was going to break out again, but Sister Angelica gave him a warning glance and Mig an encouraging smile. He was beginning to understand her presence, both here and at the initial interview. She wasn’t Gerry’s spiritual so much as his worldly advisor! The man, despite his down-to-earth manner and appearance, lacked any real shrewdness in his dealings with others. To his father, who Madero judged wouldn’t have been out of place in the super-subtle political world of the Curia, he must have been a great disappointment. Possibly the nun also reported directly, or rather indirectly, to the old man, who clearly had a certain way with women.

Mig said, “Putting aside any dispute as to final ownership of the journal, what it establishes beyond all doubt is that my family has as real and personal an interest in Father Simeon as yours.”

“Beyond all doubt?” said Dunstan, raising his eyebrows. “I think we might need expert advice on that.”

“Seek it by all means. But I need neither written words nor expert opinion to tell me that my ancestor once hid in that chamber. Nor I suspect do you.”

“What do you mean by that?” demanded Gerry indignantly. “You’ve no right to judge others by your own shifty standards.”

The nun made a wry face as if to apologize for a teenager’s outburst.

Mig regarded Gerry thoughtfully. Unless he was a very good actor, he clearly knew nothing about Simeon’s encounter with Miguel. Unlike Dunstan, who he guessed had already known a great deal even before he saw the transcript.

As for Sister Angelica, how much does she know? he wondered.

In fact, what was there to know?

It was pretty clear that the secret of the Stranger’s hidden chamber hadn’t been known by anyone in the family, or surely it would have been explored years ago. Probably it was passed on by word of mouth alone during those dangerous years. It hadn’t been till much later, as late as the middle of the eighteenth century perhaps, that such a revelation would have ceased to have its attendant dangers. But by then the fragile word-of-mouth chain could so easily have been broken by early death, or the onset of senile memory loss and, once broken, there was no way of repairing it.

But even given the care Alice Woollass had taken in the way she recorded events in her journal, a subtle-minded scholar with more time to scan the document than a single morning might have been able to guess at much.

And indeed, given that the same scholar had had all the time in the world to study the journal, who knows what portions of it may have been removed before anyone else was allowed near it? He recalled his sense of breaks and jumps in the narrative.

Dunstan said, “You say the original is in code? Not a very complex code if you managed to break it so quickly.”

“I had help,” said Madero.

“Indeed? Would that perhaps have been from the young Australian woman who seems to have been causing a stir in the village? I gather she has some expertise in the field of ciphering.”

Frek really did keep him informed, thought Madero. Perhaps this was her way of compensating for the huge disappointment she must have caused Dunstan by bringing the Woollass line to a full stop.

“Yes, it was Sam,” he said.

“An interesting woman by the sound of it. I should like to meet her.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. She decided there was nothing for her here and moved on this morning,” said Mig.

He was beginning to feel maneuvered away from the main theme of this encounter. He looked for a way to get things back on course, but he was preempted by Gerry, who clearly agreed with him that things were being allowed to drift.

“I’ve got better things to do than sit around listening to idle chitchat,” he declared impatiently. “If you’ve got anything to say about our family, Madero, why don’t you spit it out? Otherwise, just hand over our property, which you illegally removed from the chamber, and we can bring this meeting to an end!”

His voice rose as he spoke, drawing attention from the rest of the room. Not, Mig suspected, that attention hadn’t already been focused on the nook, but hidden beneath a surface of normal barroom sociability. Now heads were unambiguously turning their way.

Across his mind ran the silly irrelevance that this was the point at which a good movie director would factor in a dramatic interruption.

And once more it was as if he’d put a megaphone to his lips and cried, Action!

The door burst open and into the bar erupted a small slight figure like a creature escaped from fairyland under the hill. Its eyes looked huge in a death-pale face and its skull was spattered with tufts of bright red hair between which patches of white skin gleamed like traces of snow in a poppy field. For a moment no one recognized her, not even Mig.

Then she opened her mouth and her identity was unmistakable.

“Now listen in, you lying Pommy bastards!” she cried. “Two nights ago I stood here and asked if anyone knew anything about my gran, Sam Flood. You all said no, the name meant nothing to you. I knew you were lying then, but I was still stupid enough to be persuaded your Sam Flood had nothing to do with me. All of you bastards knew different. Now I know different too. My gran came from here, and she left here in 1961, and all she took with her was a piece of paper with Sam sodding Flood’s name and address on it. No, I’m forgetting – not quite all. There’s something else I know which some of you had to know too. She was twelve years old when she left and she took a little bit of Illthwaite with her. She was pregnant. So come on, you bastards. Which of you’s my grandfather so I can say a proper hello? Or is he in hell where he belongs? Was screwing my gran the reason your precious perfect bloody curate topped himself? Well, was it?”

6. Wasn’t that fun?

Silence.

Mig Madero tried to take in everything.

Thor Winander slumped on his bar stool and seemed to put on ten years. Next to him Frek Woollass was unmoved except perhaps by her usual secret amusement. The Gowder twins looked at each other as if seeing each other for the first time. Pete Swinebank closed his eyes while his lips moved. In prayer? Noddy Melton’s sharp gaze darted hither and thither around the room. Edie Appledore stood frozen for a moment then turned and vanished from behind the bar.

Closer to, Dunstan’s eyebrows arched in mild surprise, then he slowly turned his head to give himself a view of this interesting newcomer. Sister Angelica’s lean good-natured face registered shock and compassion, while Gerry looked like a spacewalker whose safety line has just broken and who finds himself falling away from the security of his ship into the unfathomable depths of deep space.

But it was back to Sam Flood that Mig felt his gaze irresistibly drawn.

The little Australian stood with her back to the bar, those huge eyes glaring defiantly, but now it was defiance shading into despair as the rage which had carried her this far began to drain away and with it her strength. She tried not to let it show, leaning against the bar for support. But Mig saw it and began to rise, wincing as his left knee gave notice that the exertions of the morning still had to be paid for.

Even without the knee, he probably wouldn’t have been as quick as Sister Angelica, who was moving swiftly forward, her face creased with sympathy.

“Let’s find you somewhere to sit down and talk this over, dear,” she said, reaching out toward Sam.

The response was shocking.

“Don’t you dare touch me, you fucking cow!” said Sam in a voice so low and vibrant with hate that it sounded as if it came from another world.

It stopped Angelica in her tracks. Then before she could make the possibly fatal decision to move forward again, Edie Appledore came into the bar, pushed past the nun, put an arm round Sam’s shoulders and, without speaking a word, led her unresistingly out of the room.

As the door closed behind them, talk resumed in the bar, hesitant at first, a word here, a phrase there, but quickly building up to a buzz. There were some who didn’t talk. The Gowders had vanished almost immediately, leaving undrunk beer in their glasses. And the vicar had slipped out in the wake of Sam and Mrs. Appledore.

Sister Angelica, visibly shaken, returned to the table where Gerry Woollass was draining his brandy glass with a greed suggesting that if it had been full to the brim he would still have emptied it.

“Sit down, Sister,” said Mig. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, don’t worry about me,” said the nun, pulling herself together. “I’ve been called worse, and that was in the convent. It’s that young lass we should be worrying about. Clearly something pretty awful’s happened to her.”

“She’s not a lass, she’s in her twenties and highly intelligent,” Mig heard himself saying defensively. “She has a First in math from Melbourne University and she’s here to carry on her studies at Cambridge.”

“That makes it worse,” said Angelica. “For a mature woman to react like that means… I can’t think what it might mean.”

“Extraordinary,” murmured Dunstan. “Whatever it means, I think it marks a convenient point to terminate our meeting. I was already feeling a little fatigued. I don’t get out very often, Madero, and when I do, I rarely encounter such excitements as these. Now I feel I could not give these weighty matters we were discussing my full attention. Would it be possible for you to join us up at the Hall in the morning? About eleven o’clock, no point in being uncivilized.”

“That would suit me very well,” said Mig.

“That’s settled then,” said Sister Angelica. “Come on, Woollasses. Let’s get you home. Then it’s up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire for both of you by the look of it.”

She escorted the two men across the room. At the door Frek joined them, but made no move to take over the nun’s comforting role. She glanced toward Mig, raised her eyebrows as if to say wasn’t that fun?, then followed the others out of the bar.

All eyes watched them go but no one called goodnight.

Mig finished his brandy, taking his time. Then he too rose and made for the door.

En route he let his gaze touch everyone he knew, but no one was catching his eye.

Out in the dark hall, he could see a chink of light under the kitchen door.

What was going on in there?

Should he knock and ask how Sam was?

He thought about it.

The answer was no. Whatever balm Edie Appledore was pouring on to the little Australian’s troubled spirit, he didn’t want to risk disturbing the process.

He made his usual silent way up the stairs to his bedroom.

7. A slice of cake

It wasn’t till she’d been talking to Edie Appledore for ten minutes that it struck Sam that in fact this woman wasn’t part of the solution but part of the problem.

By then she’d drunk an ounce of the landlady’s excellent cognac and was now drinking her second mug of coffee and, not having eaten since the pub at lunchtime, feeling a strong inclination to get her teeth into a second slice of the scrumptious chocolate cake which had been set on a plate before her.

Another woman in face of these goodies might have felt inhibited from suddenly diverting from confidence to accusation, but such social niceties had never troubled Sam.

“You lied to me as well,” she broke out. “Soon as I got here, the way I looked, and my name, they all meant something to you but you said nothing.”

The woman made no attempt at denial.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But round here you don’t tell folk what you don’t need to tell them, not until you’ve got some idea exactly what it is they’re after.”

This philosophy was close enough to her pa’s to quieten Sam for a moment. But rapidly she resumed: “It was more than just keeping quiet, wasn’t it? You did things too. OK, nothing as extreme as knocking me off a ladder like the Gowders. But you spread the word about me, didn’t you?”

“I rang Thor, yes. But that was it. If what you say about the Gowders is right, I’m sorry, but I’m not responsible for what they get up to, am I?”

“I suppose not,” said Sam, beginning to feel frustrated. “But you searched my room, right?”

“I did not!” declared the landlady indignantly. “I never laid a hand on your things.”

“Someone did.”

“Then I apologize. In my house! I’ve been meaning to get proper locks on those bedroom doors. Anyone could have crept up the stairs and got in. You believe me?”

Sam nodded. Why shouldn’t she believe her? This was truth time.

She finished her story, telling all that she’d discovered in Newcastle, and then she settled to wait for the payback.

They were seated at an angle of the big table, chairs skewed so they faced each other. Mrs. Appledore stretched out her right hand, laid it on Sam’s left and squeezed hard. It was a gesture too natural to be intimidating.

Then she said, “I bet you’ve hardly had a thing to eat since you left here this morning, right? Get stuck into that cake. It’s all right, you know. We don’t do the dead any good by starving ourselves.”

She wasn’t being evasive, Sam recognized, just practical. And she was right.

She carved another slice of cake and took a large bite.

“Grand,” approved Mrs. Appledore. “Now, where were we? Oh yes. You’re dead right, of course. Soon as I set eyes on you I thought of little Pam. It was the hair. Not so much the face, though I do see a resemblance, except in the eyes. And of course she was a little elf of a thing like you.”

“And you said nothing!” accused Sam.

“What was I to say? You said your name was Sam Flood. It was all I could do not to slap your face! I thought someone’s playing a dreadful joke on me. Then I saw your passport. I’ve never asked to see a passport in my life, but I needed to see yours. When I saw your name really was Sam Flood, I began to think it was maybe just an unfortunate coincidence. Or more truthful, I began to hope it was. And when you said your gran had left in 1960, I heaved a sigh of relief. It was still very odd, but you were so definite. And one thing I knew for certain was that it was 1961 when little Pam left Illthwaite.”

“Tell me about her. It’s Pam you’re calling her, not Sam, right? Did she have a second name?”

“Galley. Like the ship. Pamela Galley. But we all called her Pam.”

“So it would have been easy for her to answer to Sam?”

“Oh yes. Though the truth is little Pam wasn’t much for answering to anything. She was the quietest kid you could imagine, and afterward she was even quieter if that was possible.”

“Afterward? After what?”

The woman shrugged, not indifferently but with a suppressed anger.

“Who knows?” she said. “But now we can guess. We just thought it was the shock of her seeing Madge Gowder die. Maybe that’s what we wanted to think. After what you’ve found out, though, it’s pretty clear… God help us!”

Sam felt that great wave of anger which had exploded in the bar welling up in her again but she forced it down. Its time would come; now what she wanted was information.

“This Madge Gowder, she related to the twins?”

“Their ma.”

“So the Galleys lived in Illthwaite too?”

“No,” said Mrs. Appledore. “In Eskdale, not far away as the crow flies. But they were kin of the Gowders.”

“The Gowders? You mean I could be related to the Gowders?” exclaimed Sam, not trying to conceal her horror.

“Aye. Well, like they say, you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your relatives. I shouldn’t worry too much though. Cousins they called each other for convenience, but the family connection was a lot further back than makes true cousins in my book. For all that, round here even thin blood’s still thicker than water. The Galleys never amounted to much, while the Gowders used to be one of the important families in Illthwaite. But they always took care of the Galleys in their way, if you call tossing the odd bone to a starving hound taking care of it. So when little Pam were orphaned, it seemed natural she should be brought over from Eskdale and left at Foulgate.”

“Natural to leave a little girl with the Gowders!”

“You’re a bit quick to judge, if you don’t mind me saying so,” said Mrs. Appledore, regarding her critically. “Is that an Aussie thing?”

“Quick to judge? Were you listening when I told you what happened to my grandmother?” demanded Sam.

“OK, keep your hair on. Sorry, not trying to be funny. You’ve made a right mess of yourself, you know that? God, when I was young, I’d have given my right arm for hair like yours and Pam’s. Anyway, Madge Gowder, the twins’ mother, were still alive then, though ailing. It was her being sick and then dying that set Jim Gowder, her man, drinking away what was left of the farm. Sad really, when you think what they once were. Employed a dozen men, didn’t tip their hats to the squire, and had their own pew in the church. Madge would have seen little Pam right but, like I say, she was sick. For a while the doctor was never away, then the vicar was there as often as the doctor and we knew it couldn’t be long.”

“The vicar? Mr. Swinebank’s father, you mean?”

“Yes. And Sam, the curate. In fact, Sam was probably there more often. Madge preferred Sam. Everyone did. Old Paul was hot on hell, but Sam had the knack of making religion sound a lot more attractive somehow.”

“I bet!” said Sam harshly. In her eyes, this saintly fucking curate was still number one suspect. “So Madge Gowder died, right?”

“Yes, she died. It was little Pam who was with her, or found her, no one knows which. Someone went to Madge’s room, and there she was, dead, with Pam sitting at the bedside, holding Madge’s hand. She was in a state, but not the kind of state that drew attention, if you follow me. Just even quieter and more withdrawn than ever. You could forget she was there. I suppose eventually someone would have thought to ask what was to become of Pamela, left up there with the two lads and their drunken father. But Sam Flood didn’t hang around to ask. He took her out of Foulgate straight off. Gave her a bed up at the vicarage. His own bed. The Rev. Paul didn’t like it, nor old fish-face Thomson, his housekeeper. They reckoned that if God’s house had so many mansions, He didn’t need the vicarage, so they wanted her out. But they couldn’t just chuck her into the street. By now she was a worry to us all, quiet as a ghost and looked like one too. Like I say, most of us put it down to losing her mam and dad and then losing Madge Gowder in quick succession. There were some ready to gossip, of course. In a village there always are and generally it’s best not to listen…”

“Especially when the gossip’s about the local saint!” Sam burst out.

Mrs. Appledore’s hand, which had been resting lightly on hers, suddenly gripped it till it hurt.

“Listen,” she said, and her voice which till now had been conciliatory and understanding was harsh and emphatic. “You make a big thing of liking things straight. Well, there’s something we’ve got to get straight. I heard what you said in the bar and I hear what you’re saying now. But you’re wrong, absolutely wrong. What happened to Pamela Galley I don’t know, but one thing I’m absolutely certain of is that she got nothing but love in the proper Christian sense from Sam Flood!”

In this mode, Edie Appledore was formidable, but Sam refused to be fazed.

“How can you be so sure? He was a man, wasn’t he?” she declared. “He had her to himself at the vicarage. OK, you all say he was a good man, a very good man, but good and bad doesn’t come into it when their cocks start crowing. All it means is that afterward he must have known that what he’d done was unforgivably wrong, for anyone, let alone a priest, and he couldn’t live with himself, so he committed suicide. How else can you compute the data?”

“Data? Is that the way you see things?” said Mrs. Appledore scornfully. “You come here from the other side of the world and within two minutes you’re making judgments like it can be done by arithmetic.”

“So point out my errors,” said Sam. “I can only work with what I’m told and round here that’s not a lot! Someone got my gran pregnant and then she was shipped to the other side of the world in some cockamamie scheme that charities, churches and the government dreamt up between them. And the only guy Pam seemed to trust and be close to is a curate, and he tops himself. Come on, Edie! You must have wondered if something was going on. For God’s sake, it wasn’t as if there weren’t rumors flying around that he was having underage sex! What kind of community is it that can hear gossip like that and not do anything about it?”

She drew her hand away from the landlady’s and stared defiantly into her face. But the woman’s gaze was focused over her shoulder. Sam looked round to see Thor Winander standing in the doorway. His expression was untypically serious. He nodded, not at Sam but at Mrs. Appledore, then came into the room, closing the door behind him. He sat down at the far end of the table.

Edie Appledore’s attention returned to Sam and she said in a still flat voice, “You’ve been talking to Noddy Melton, haven’t you? For once, he’s right, old Noddy. Yes, there were stories about Sam having a relationship with an underage girl.”

“There you go then!” cried Sam triumphantly. “Do it with one, you get a taste for it, isn’t that what they say?”

Then something in Edie Appledore’s face made her add, “If it was true, of course. Was it true, Edie? Do you know it was true?”

The woman’s gaze moved from Sam to Thor Winander and back.

Then she said, very quietly, “Oh yes, it was true, my dear. I know that for sure. You see, the girl was me.”

8. Edie Appledore’s story

For a second Sam was completely thrown.

Then her mind incorporated this new information and all she could see was that it confirmed her theory. A priest who could screw around with one kid wouldn’t have too much difficulty screwing around with another! It was going to be hard to press this point without hurting the woman sitting before her, who looked to be hurting enough already, but she was getting too close to the truth now to hold back.

She said gently, “I’m sorry, Edie, but surely you can see that if Sam and you were – ”

“No!” broke in the woman. “You’re missing the point, which is that Sam and I weren’t! And it wasn’t because I didn’t want to, believe me! What you need to get straight is we’re not talking perversion here, we’re talking love!”

This sounded like denial to Sam. She said, “Edie, you can’t have been more than a kid back then…”

“That’s right. A kid. In fact when he first came to Illthwaite on holiday to visit Thor, I was just thirteen. I remember he came into the pub and we looked at each other and that moment I grew up. I think he knew too that I was the one for him. And don’t imagine that shows he had a thing about kids! I was an early developer. From twelve on I was a stunner, though I say it myself, fit for any man’s bed. I could see it in our customers’ eyes every night of the week. You must have known girls like that.”

“Yeah, my best friend’s one of them,” admitted Sam. “All the same, it doesn’t make it right – ”

“You’re not listening! There wasn’t anything to make right. We just looked. Sam must have got a real shock when he found out how young I was. He never caught my eye after that, not till he came to be our curate. I was fifteen by then. I make no bones about it, I went after him. Few months more and I would be sixteen and legal. I could be wedded with my dad’s permission and bedded without it! Not that I wanted to wait. But Sam wasn’t having any, even though once we started seeing each other, it was clear he fancied me as much as I fancied him. God, he must have had the willpower of a saint, the tices I put on him! But his beliefs made him hold out till I was legal. At least that’s what I thought. No kid looking forward to Christmas found the days drag by as slowly as I did those last few weeks till my sixteenth.

“And at last it came. It was on a Saturday. My mates kept me busy all day, and that night Dad and the regulars put on a bit of a party for me here in the pub. Sam didn’t come. I didn’t mind. What he and I were going to do to celebrate didn’t need a roomful of people. Next day, Sunday, I went to church in the morning. Sam was taking the service. He kept on looking toward me from the pulpit then looking away. God, I could hardly keep still in my seat, people must have thought I’d got worms! Sam and I usually met on a Sunday night after evensong but I couldn’t wait. I helped Dad in the bar that lunchtime till it got toward closing – it was two o’clock on a Sunday back in them days – then I told Dad I’d do the clearing up when I got back – he liked to go fishing on a Sunday afternoon – and I set off up to the vicarage.

“I knew the vicar took the Sunday School in the church at two o’clock, and as I went by at about five to, I saw him and his housekeeper going in as usual with armfuls of books and such to get things ready. Sam had his Bible class in the vicarage at three. That gave us a good hour. Long enough, I thought. But no time to waste.

“I went at him like a… I don’t know what. I kissed him, I caressed him, I felt him roused, and when he didn’t move quick as I wanted, I even took his hand, God help me, and put it between my legs. It must have been like dipping it into a bowl of hot honey.

“And he pulled away.

“I didn’t know what was happening. He was talking, saying that he couldn’t, not till we were married, his conscience wouldn’t let him, we had to wait, stuff like that. I wasn’t listening. I was bewildered, ashamed, angry, humiliated. I opened my mouth to yell at him. Then there was a tap at his door.

“I straightened my clothes. All I wanted to do was get out of there. It was Pete Swinebank outside. He was only a kid then, just eleven. I’d forgotten he might still be around. It didn’t matter now anyway. I pushed by him and headed back here to the pub.

“Dad had gone off fishing as usual, but there were still a few men in the bar, drinking up. He trusted his regulars, Dad. And it was true what they say about the old days, you didn’t need to lock your front door, at least not in the countryside. Someone shouted at me as I went past the barroom door, but I didn’t stop, I just headed straight up the back stairs to my bedroom. I flung myself on the bed and lay there crying.

“A bit later I heard the regulars leave. But not all of them. There was a knock at my door. Then it opened. And Thor looked in.”

She paused and turned her gaze once more to the far end of the table. Sam turned her head. Rapt by Edie’s narrative, she’d forgotten all about the presence of another listener. Somehow he didn’t look like himself, but older, careworn. Even when their gazes met, he didn’t smile.

Edie Appledore said, “Thor asked me if I was all right. He’d brought a tray up with tea and biscuits. I sat up and looked at myself in the mirror. I was a mess. But Thor didn’t seem to notice. He poured the tea, took a flask out of his pocket and added a shot of Scotch. He said it would do me good, then he sat on the end of the bed and we smoked a couple of cigarettes and talked. He was always good for a laugh, Thor. One of my favorites in the bar. Easy to talk to. I found myself telling him what had happened. He said Sam must be mad… the loveliest lass in the valley… now, if it had been him – that kind of stuff, just what I wanted to hear. And somehow, it seemed inevitable that after a while he put the tray on the floor and lay down beside me, and suddenly my body was on the boil again, and our clothes were off and he was on top of me and I was yelling encouragement…

“And that was how Sam found us when he pushed open my door.”

She stood up abruptly and started opening drawers.

“I gave up smoking twenty years ago, but I could do with one now,” she said. But her voice suggested she was just looking for an excuse to turn her back and hide her tears.

Thor Winander spoke, simply and undramatically.

“So you see, young Sam, your namesake was the very best of men, and my dearest friend, and I killed him. By the time I got dressed and went after him, he had vanished. I didn’t realize then it was for good. We were wrong to try and fob you off with evasions and half-truths, but it wasn’t clear that any of this really had anything to do with you. Pain makes you selfish, and just about everyone in Illthwaite feels pain when they recall we had a man like Sam Flood in our midst and he chose to kill himself. What they don’t know and what I’ve never had the courage to tell them is that that guilt isn’t theirs. It’s mine alone. I killed him.”

“We killed him, Thor,” said Mrs. Appledore gently. “Don’t take it all on yourself. But I hope you can see now, lass, that whoever abused little Pam Galley, it wasn’t Sam Flood. He never did a dishonorable thing in his life. He loved me. I offered myself to him, I put his hand between my legs and he had the willpower to turn away. You don’t think a man like that could have abused a child, do you?”

Even if Sam had still thought it, in the face of such loss and grief, she would have found it hard to say so. But when she ran the equations across the blackboard in her mind, she found the conclusion proved beyond all doubt.

“No,” she said, “I don’t. I’m sorry. It must have been terrible for you…”

“Must have been? Still is. Time heals, you can forget most things. But you never forget your own birthday. And every one I’ve celebrated for forty-odd years now I’ve had to think, tomorrow will be the anniversary of the day the only man I ever really loved drowned himself because of me. You should take a look at the birthday cards I get. No one round here knows all the truth, but they saw what Sam’s death did to me, and they’ve got long memories. I don’t get many of them jokey cards, believe me.”

“I’m really sorry,” repeated Sam, rising. “Look, I’d better go.”

“Go where? You got somewhere to stay?”

She hadn’t. Nor had she thought about it. She hadn’t thought about much but her grandmother for the past few hours.

“Thought not. You can’t go rushing off into the night looking like that – you’d frighten the owls. Your room’s not taken. Get yourself back in there for tonight at least.”

Edie Appledore was right. The prospect of driving off and looking for a room somewhere was less than appealing.

“Is that OK? Thanks a lot. I’m really sorry for bringing all this pain back to you.”

“At least I’ve not cut my hair off,” said Mrs. Appledore. “You’d best start wearing a hat tomorrow, else folk will think you’ve escaped. We’ll talk more in the morning, dear. You’ve likely still got questions to ask.”

“One or two,” said Sam, making her way to the door. “Just one more now. I take it my grandmother had been shipped off to Australia before this happened.”

“Oh yes. Couple of weeks.”

“And from what you say, I can’t see that my namesake would have been all that keen on this. So how did it happen?”

“No, he wasn’t too happy. He talked to me about it a lot. That was one of the things I loved about him. He talked to me about everything, like I was fifty rather than fifteen. It was only when it came to sex he remembered my age.”

She laughed, with surprisingly little bitterness. It seemed to Sam that despite their feelings of guilt at their involvement in his death, Edie and Thor had memories of her namesake so delightful they transcended negative feelings.

“He was really concerned about little Pam. She trusted him more than anyone else in the world, I think. But even with Sam it was a silent trust. She never talked about what was going on inside. But Rev. Paul was pushing him all the time, saying something had to be done about the child. Clearly she couldn’t go back to Foulgate. The only alternative seemed to be social services, though we called them something different back then. Once they got their hands on her, she’d just have vanished into some children’s home, and Sam refused to countenance that. Then the vicar and Dunstan got their heads together. Dunny had lots of connections in the Catholic Church, of course, charities and orphanages, that sort of thing. It was just after the Pope had made him a knight or something, and the nuns all thought the sun shone out of his arse. He knew all about this scheme for sending orphans to Australia. The way him and Rev. Paul told it, most of them were snapped up for adoption by caring families as soon as they arrived. It seemed an ideal solution. Sam had doubts, but finally he was persuaded this was the best on offer for the kid. A new chance in a new land where the sun always shone and the rivers ran with milk and honey – how could he stand in the way of that? But no one knew the lass was pregnant. You’ve got to believe that, dear. No one knew she was pregnant.”

“I believe you,” said Sam. She looked with some regret at the chocolate cake. Somehow in the circumstances it didn’t seem right to ask if she could take a slice to bed with her.

“Yes, I believe you,” she repeated. “But if you think that makes it any better, you couldn’t be more wrong. I’ll say goodnight.”

9. Counting to fifteen

Seated on his rickety chair, staring at his laptop which was perched on the dressing table, Mig Madero heard the stairs creaking. No reason he should recognize the Australian girl’s tread, but he knew it was her.

Her steps were on the landing now. As they reached his door, they hesitated. He found himself willing her to knock. But then the steps moved on.

He recalled words quoted in one of his seminary lectures – he couldn’t recall their source but it didn’t matter – When God’s response to prayer is silence, maybe He’s telling you that you’re praying for something you can do for yourself.

He stood up, moved swiftly to the door and pulled it open.

Sam, her hand on the handle of her own door, looked round.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi. Are you OK?”

“I’ve been better. You?”

“OK. I translated that document. Would you like to see it?”

He had a feeling that any direct reference to what had brought her back would have sent her straight into her room.

“Yes, I would,” she said.

He liked the way she didn’t hesitate.

She came into the room and he sat her before the computer then brought up the translation on the screen.

As she read it he stood looking down at her cropped skull. She’d made a real mess of it. He could see cuts and scratches in the skin over which scabs had not yet had time to form.

She said, “Wow. This Miguel, he’s that ancestor you were talking about?”

“Yes,” he said. “My lost ancestor.”

“And now you know what happened to him. That’s amazing.”

“I do not yet know everything, but I will know,” he said.

“I saw you in the bar with Woollass, the one whose daughter you fancy…”

“Gerry,” he said. “And no, I do not fancy Frek.”

“Fallen out, have you?” she said indifferently. “Shouldn’t worry. You fell out with her dad too, but now you’re drinking buddies. There was an old guy there too.”

“Dunstan Woollass. You took in a lot for someone who was so… upset.”

“I suppose I hoped someone would jump up with guilt written all over them and make a break for it, like in the old black-and-whites. Life’s not like the movies though.”

He smiled as he thought of his own cinematic fantasy.

“Sometimes it gets close,” he said.

“Does it? So what were you and the squires doing together?”

“I’ll tell you about it. But first things first.”

He went to his bag and took out a small medicine box.

“My mother insists I always travel with this,” he said. “As usual, she is right.”

He took out a small tube of ointment, squeezed some on to his index finger and gently began to rub it into one of the scratches on her skull. Instinctively she jerked away, then relaxed and did not flinch as his finger resumed contact. As he sought out and anointed her cuts, he gave her a quick sketch of what had happened to him that day, skipping over though not completely censoring his dealings with Frek.

When he finished he didn’t invite comment but tapped his finger gently on her skull and said, “So, are you going to tell me what this is all about?”

“Why not?” she said. “It’s been a good day for finding out about ancestors. Or maybe not so good.”

He listened to her story without interruption.

When she finished, he said, “That is a truly terrible story. May God forgive all those concerned.”

“And that will make it OK, will it?” she snapped. “Well, you can tell this forgiving God of yours he needn’t expect any help from me. You not finished there yet?”

“Not quite.”

In fact he’d dressed even the smallest grazes, but he found himself reluctant to give up this excuse for touching her ravaged head.

Her gaze met his in the mirror. She glowered. He smiled. After a moment, she smiled back.

He said, “So we have been treading parallel paths. Perhaps after all we may turn out to be – what was that phrase you used? – an amiable pair?”

“An amicable pair,” she corrected. “Could be.”

“Anyway,” he went on brusquely, for fear his small diversion toward intimacy might drive her away, “we are both near the final answers now. I wonder if we will want to hear them?”

“I don’t believe in final answers,” she said. “In math, the best answers always ask new questions.”

“Is that what you meant when you said God was the last prime number? If you get the final answer, then you must have found God?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe I just meant that there is no last prime number. Euclid offered a proof two thousand years ago. Add one to the product of all known primes and you will have another prime, or a number one of whose factors is an unknown prime. It’s so beautiful it’s probably already in that book I told you about, but they should have put it in the Bible too.”

He thought, I’ll need to learn a new language if I’m to communicate with this woman.

He said, “That’s an oversight I must point out next time I’m invited to speak to the Vatican Council.”

She stood up and examined her head in the mirror.

“That should do the trick. You anoint me any more, you’ll have to make me a queen or something.”

“Queen Sam the First,” he said. “It has a ring to it.”

“You reckon? Thanks anyway. For the treatment. And the talk.”

“I was glad to talk too.”

“You were? I almost knocked on your door as I passed, then I thought that I’d disturbed you enough over the past couple of days.”

“Maybe more than you know,” he said. “I heard you hesitate outside. I’m glad I helped you make up your mind. Talking is always good.”

“Depends who it’s with,” she said. She looked at her watch. “Jeez, it’s still early.”

“Yes, it is. You sound disappointed.”

“It makes for a long night. I wasn’t looking forward to it anyway, not with everything that’s been going on. Now it’ll feel like forever. That’s another reason I almost knocked. I didn’t feel like being on my own.”

He loved her directness. It was rare to meet honesty with no hint of calculation.

“So stay then. By all means,” he said.

“Stay? Is that a proposition?”

He felt himself flushing.

“No! I mean, to talk, if you want. Or if you want to sleep, please, use my bed. I’ll be fine here.”

He indicated the rickety chair.

Sam laughed.

“Not if you want to sleep. Anyway, it’s your bed. You deserve a share of it.”

She must be suggesting he should sit on the end of it. What else could she mean?

He looked at the bed doubtfully.

“It’s very narrow,” he said.

“Me too,” she said. “See. I take up next to no room.”

She moved her hands and stood before him naked. He wouldn’t have believed clothes could be removed so quickly. Nor would he have believed that the sight of a body so skinny with more straight lines than curves and breasts that would vanish in the palms of his hands could have such a devastating effect on him. His mouth went dry, his body burned, his knees buckled with a weakness that had nothing to do with his mountain fall. His now tremulous sight registered that she was a deep golden brown all over except for the fiery red of her pubic hair, then she was sliding out of sight beneath the duvet.

“Acres,” she said. “You could hold that meeting of the Vatican Council in here.”

Perhaps the religious reference should have had a cooling effect. Instead somehow it merely turned up the heat. He may not have matched her speed of undress, but at least he gave it his best shot.

That was his last contact with rational thought for a little while.

A very little while.

After the first time, Sam said, “You’ve not done a lot of this, have you? Here’s a tip. A gent usually tries to count up to at least twenty before he gives his all. You can count up to twenty, can’t you? Fifteen would do at a pinch.”

After the second time, she said, “You’re a fast learner. With the right training you could be a contender.”

And after the third time, she said, “That was great. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to try a bit of sleep.”

For his part, he thought he would never sleep again but just lie there savoring the endless joy of her presence alongside him. But sleep came all the same, and when it came it was full of sweet dreams and peace and quiet breathing.

10. Keep practicing

Miguel Madero awoke.

He was alone.

His first thought was: It’s all been a dream.

His second: But can a dream leave the sweet odor of her in my nostrils?

Agitated, he jumped out of bed, forgot to duck to avoid the low crossbeam, and cracked his brow so hard that tears came to his eyes.

When they cleared, Sam was standing in the doorway, fully dressed, with a broad-brimmed floppy white sun hat pulled over her ravaged skull.

“Hi,” she said. “Bathroom’s all yours. Shall I tell Mrs. A. you’d like a cooked breakfast? Or have you had enough of the big sausage for now?”

Her gaze slid slowly down his body. His hands came round to cover himself and she turned away and ran down the stairs, laughing. It was the loveliest sound he could recall hearing.

I must be careful, he told himself. I am the tyro here. She is the experienced woman. She was lonely, distraught. She took comfort in me as a woman of an earlier age might have taken a sleeping draft. I must not read more into this than an experienced man of my age would read.

But nothing he could tell himself, and nothing he could tell God either as he recited his morning office, did anything to staunch the spring of sheer joy bubbling up inside him, and instead of his usual soft-footed descent of the stairs, he took them at a run, three at a time.

In the kitchen, Edie Appledore heard the noise, wrinkled her brow for a moment, then a slow smile spread across her face as she turned the sausage in the pan.

In the bar Sam was finishing a bowl of cereal. She still had her hat on and when she leaned forward over the bowl, the brim hid her face.

He sat opposite her and said, unthinking, “So what shall we do today?”

She raised her head slowly. There was milk on her lower lip. He wanted to kiss it away, but her expression didn’t invite such familiarity.

She looked at him blankly then said, “You’ve got an appointment at the Hall, haven’t you?”

“So I have. You know, I’d forgotten. But I needn’t get up there for another hour or so.”

She said, “I suppose not,” and the concealing brim came down again as she took another spoonful of cornflakes.

Mrs. Appledore came in with a plate of sausage and mushrooms which she placed before him. She then transferred his breakfast cutlery from the neighboring table without comment and went back to the kitchen.

“You decided I would be hungry?” said Mig.

“I’d have taken bets on it.”

He thought about this, smiled, and began eating.

She poured herself some coffee from the jug and watched him gravely.

He didn’t speak, fearful of not finding the right thing to say.

After a while she said, “I was thinking…”

“What?”

“Your ancestor. Do you think he killed Thomas Gowder?”

“Good Lord. I don’t know. I could hardly blame him if he did. Does it matter?”

“Truth matters,” she said with absolute certainty. “In your translation Miguel says, He came after me. As I pushed myself upright, my right hand rested on a heavy fuel log. He drove the knife at my throat. I ducked aside. And I swung the log at his temple. He fell like a tree. But the account in Swinebank’s Guide says: After some months of living at Foulgate and being nursed back to health, the youth repaid their 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.”

The way she spoke the words convinced him this was verbatim not a paraphrase.

“I’m impressed,” he said.

“Why?” she said. “It’s a quirk, not a talent. Like a digital camera, only the images are harder to delete.”

“A useful quirk,” he said.

“Not always. I mean, what earthly use is it for me to know that you have a small hairy mole, ovoid in shape, approximately one square centimeter in area, situated seven centimeters on a fifteen-degree diagonal to the left of your belly button?”

He took a larger bite of his sausage than he’d intended and, after a lot of chewing, managed to say, “It might come in handy if you had to identify my body.”

“No,” she said. “There are other things I’d look for. You haven’t answered my question.”

“Are you worried because it could turn out you’re related to the Gowders?” he asked, laughing.

She didn’t laugh back.

“Only if it turns out the connection’s any closer than a couple of centuries,” she said flatly.

He took her meaning and said, “But the twins would only have been young boys themselves then…”

“There was their father. He sounds to have been a piece of work. Look, Mig, someone got Pam pregnant and it certainly wasn’t the Angel of the Lord.”

Before he could reply, Edie Appledore’s voice floated through the doorway.

“Sam, telephone!”

“Excuse me,” said Sam.

In the kitchen Mrs. Appledore said rather disapprovingly, “It’s Noddy Melton.”

Sam picked up the phone. Behind her she could hear the landlady working at the sink. Fair enough, it was her kitchen, but if this got private, Sam would have no compunction in asking her to leave.

She said, “Hi, Mr. Melton. Sam Flood here.”

“Good morning, Miss Flood,” said the little man’s precise voice. “How are you this morning?”

“I’m fine. How about you?”

“I’m well. It occurred to me after listening to you last evening that in some important respects the case has altered, as they say.”

“Which case would that be, Mr. Melton?”

“Which indeed? You ask such good questions, Miss Flood. If you have a moment this morning, perhaps I can help you find answers to match. Any time. Good day.”

Sam replaced the receiver.

“Thanks, Edie,” she said.

“My pleasure. Listen, I know you’re desperate for answers, but be careful when you’re dealing with Noddy.”

“That’s more or less what you said to me that first day in the bar,” said Sam.

“The difference is you’ve spoken with him since then, so now you’ll know what I’m talking about,” said Mrs. Appledore. “I daresay he’s been filling you in on his own personal history of Illthwaite. Vigilante village, that’s how he sees us, right? The place where they killed Billy Knipp ’cos everyone knew he was a nasty little tearaway; and got rid of my man, Artie, ’cos he wanted to sell up here and take me back to Oldham. Above all, of course, he probably hinted that they took young Mary Croft and dropped her into Mecklin Moss rather than risk her marrying the local bobby.”

“He might have said something,” said Sam. “If he did, what’s the party line?”

“Billy Knipp came off his bike swerving to avoid a troop of boy scouts trekking along a lane he was driving down too fast. Only decent thing the lad ever did. Seventeen witnesses. As for my Artie, it was his second coronary that killed him. After the first he was told to lose weight and give up the fags. He did neither. One witness. Me.”

“And Mary Croft?”

“She was another wild one. Only took up with young Noddy to disoblige her dad, who she hated. Got on well with her stepmother, though. That’s why it was her she rang to say she was OK after she took off to London. God knows what she got up to down there, but a few years later, when the old man died, her stepmum sold up and went off to join her and split the inheritance. There was only about eight years between them and they settled down to run a taberna on the Costa Brava. Still do, from what I hear.”

Sam recalled the retired policeman’s story. How his eyes had misted as he described that last passionate kiss which he’d been so sure meant the girl had already decided to come to Candle Cottage on the appointed night and give herself to him. But if what Mrs. Appledore was saying were true, then its passion had been that of farewell.

“But why didn’t anyone ever tell Mr. Melton?” she demanded.

“Tell him what? He was moved on not long after Mary disappeared. Did well for himself. Got married. Not much point turning up on his doorstep and telling him and his lady the truth, was there? It wasn’t till he bought Candle Cottage and came back here after he retired that we realized what had been festering in his mind all these years. We should have told him then perhaps, but Mr. Dunstan said it would probably kill him. A man by himself needs a reason to get out of bed each morning and, if you take it away, he probably won’t bother. Whether we were wrong or right, I don’t know. But I do know you should take a big pinch of salt with you whenever you visit Candle Cottage.”

“Don’t worry, Edie,” said Sam. “I’ve learned my lesson in Illthwaite. Whoever I’m talking to, I’ll add salt by the bucketload. Look, I’ve been thinking about what you said last night. OK, I take your word for it that Sam Flood’s not in the frame. So, looking back, who do you think is? Could it have been Jim Gowder?”

Edie shook her head, in doubt rather than denial.

“He was a funny bugger, that’s true. But he was genuinely broken up by Madge taking ill and dying. She was the best thing that happened to that family. Mind you, her being sick so long meant he wouldn’t be getting his regular comforts, and that turns some men queer. But a kid like little Pam…”

“And anybody else? Was there anyone around who specially fancied kids?”

“You don’t think we’d have put up with any of that!” said the landlady indignantly. “Mind you, with men there’s always been some as don’t much mind what age a woman is so long as she’s got two legs to open.”

“Yeah, we’ve got plenty of them too. But anyone in particular?”

Edie shook her head again.

“No one I’d put that on.”

Sam was unconvinced.

“How about the vicar, Rev. Pete’s father, I mean? My gran stayed at the vicarage, didn’t she? So he’d have had his chances. And he was a widower, so nothing on tap.”

“No! Not Rev. Paul. The way he preached he’d have had all young women corked up and all young men doctored!”

“Sounds a bit obsessive to me. And he was one of the ones keen to get my gran out of the country.”

“Out of the vicarage, certainly. Getting her on that boat to Australia was mainly down to Mr. Dunstan.”

“Who was a bit of a lad himself in his young days, by all accounts. And in his not-so-young days. Was it just a charitable impulse that made him elect my gran as an honorary Catholic orphan?”

“Old Dunny?” said Mrs. Appledore, aghast. “Sam, you can’t go around firing off accusations in all directions.”

“Why not? Let’s see who runs for cover. Come on, Edie, are you saying Dunstan never tried his charms on the sexiest girl in the village?”

“Yes, well, maybe he did show an interest when I first started behind the bar. But most of them did! That’s my point. I was bursting out all over from early on. When you had what I had, you soon learned it was easy to get the customers all heated up just by undoing a button and leaning forward. Dunstan was no different from the rest.”

“Maybe,” said Sam. “But I’ll keep him on my list. Anybody else you can finger?”

“I’ve not fingered anyone yet, so far as I’m aware,” said the landlady firmly. “You’ll have to learn how to fathom men for yourself, lass. At least I’m glad to see you and Mr. Madero seem to have got things straight between you.”

Jesus, thought Sam. We didn’t make that much noise!

She said primly, “We are friends. But I’m not sure I can stand up to the competition, even if I wanted to.”

Mrs. Appledore let out her merry laugh.

“Competition like Frek Woollass, you mean? And here’s me thinking you Aussies liked a real challenge!”

This should have been jokingly flattering, but the stress had been on real and a hint to Sam was like an autumn leaf to a kitten.

“You saying she’s a lezzie?” she pounced.

“Oh yes. Doesn’t flaunt it like some. And I think she enjoys a bit of a laugh when some fellow who doesn’t realize fancies her. Shall I bring you more coffee?”

“No thanks,” said Sam, digesting this information. “Though if you’ve got a bit of that chocolate cake left…”

The landlady took the cake out of a cupboard and carved a generous slice.

Sam took a bite. It was even better than she remembered. Did Mig know Frek was gay? she wondered. Of course he did! she answered herself. Probably found out yesterday, which explained a lot about last night. Did it matter? Of course it didn’t!

Through the crumbs she said, “Edie, I was wondering about Thor…”

“Now hold on! You’re not suggesting…”

“No, no. I meant, you and him seem pretty friendly together…”

“And you’re wondering why I didn’t blame him?” said Edie, who was also pretty good at cutting to the chase. “Don’t think I didn’t think about it back then. Taking advantage of a kid and all that. A scapegoat’s always handy when you’re feeling guilty. But my whole point in everything I was in relation to Sam was that I weren’t a kid, so it would have been really pathetic for me to start claiming I was just to wriggle out of my share of the blame. And to tell the truth, Thor was so ready to heap all of the blame on himself that I almost resented it! Funny things, folk, aren’t we? In the end I asked him if he hated me for what I’d done. He said no, of course not, and I said I didn’t hate him either. And that was the choice we had. We could either hate each other or we could take comfort together in recalling how much we both loved him. We settled for comfort.”

“And that’s all?”

“Has to be. We tried sex once. It was no use. We were both watching the door.”

Sam nodded. She could understand that. But there were things she couldn’t understand.

“So why do you think Sam came to the pub that day?”

“I told you what happened earlier,” said the woman impatiently. “I’d put myself on a plate for him and he’d turned me down. Didn’t stop us being in love.”

“So you reckon he was coming to… what? Apologize and persuade you he was right? Apologize and screw you? Which?”

“You don’t wrap things up, do you?” said Mrs. Appledore. “I don’t know, and I doubt I ever will, not unless you’ve got some way of making contact with the dead!”

There was a cough from the doorway. Mig stood there and for a second Sam was tempted to reply, Funny you should say that, Edie…

“Come in, Mr. Madero. Do you fancy a piece of cake?” said Mrs. Appledore.

Sam, who’d just taken another bite, waved her slice to signal recommendation.

Mig said, “No thank you. Can I use the phone, Mrs. Appledore?”

“Surely. I’ll leave you to it.”

She went out. Sam made to follow her.

“It’s OK,” said Mig. “It’s not private. I’m just ringing Max Coldstream to tell him to forget about publishing my translation of Simeon’s journal.”

“You’re giving it back to the Woollasses then? Why?”

“It belongs to them if anybody. I can’t expect other people to be honest with me unless I’m honest with them.”

“You’ve just worked that out? Left the seminary before you reached the ethics course, did you?”

“Maybe I failed it,” he said, smiling at her.

He looked so happy. She thought, oh shit. Someone else’s happiness was a big responsibility.

She said, “About that spare hour, you’ll have to kill it by yourself. I’m going to Candle Cottage to see Mr. Melton.”

His disappointment was painful to see, but not so painful as the speed with which he tried to hide it.

“That’s fine,” he said. “Well, I’m sure we’ll run into each other later.”

He thinks it’s a brush-off, she thought.

And then: if I do want to brush him off, this is a good moment.

She directed her thoughts back to the previous night.

She’d wanted company. She’d got company.

She’d wanted a diversion from her troubled thoughts more certain than Carroll’s Pillow Problems or Goldbach’s Conjecture. She’d been diverted.

And, in the end, she’d had a great time.

Again would be nice.

For her.

For him it would be commitment, which spelled complication. Mig might hop around like a wise old wallaby, but in this respect he was little more than a joey.

What the hell! she thought. So long as she enjoyed the hopping, she could deal with a bit of complication.

She said, “I’ll probably come up to the Hall later. There are questions I want to ask that old bastard too.”

Not enough. She saw it in his eyes.

She went to him, stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek, leaving some cake crumbs there.

Still ambiguous, she saw. You might get as much from a nun.

Hell, if he wanted unambiguous, let him have it.

She put her hand on his inner thigh and squeezed hard.

“Keep practicing the counting,” she murmured.

Then she broke away from him and half walked, half danced out of the kitchen, chewing on her slice of cake.

He watched her go, his heart bursting with delight. He wanted to run after her and suggest that without further ado they dropped everything that had brought them here to Illthwaite and went away together. But it was easy for him, he reproved himself. The injustice to his family was five hundred years old. Her pain derived from something in living memory, and its perpetrators were probably still living also.

He put his hand to his cheek, picked off the crumbs he felt there, and licked them off his fingers.

Then he went to the phone and dialed Max Coldstream’s number.

11. A villa in Spain

As Sam made her way to Candle Cottage, her super-analytical mind had plotted Madero’s thought processes with a degree of accuracy which might have worried him.

He had described his efforts to subdue his natural young appetites in an entertaining way, but his comic narrative had not been able to conceal the huge expense of will which had gone into repressing and rechanneling these energies.

Now at last the fruit which his own choice had for so many years put completely out of his reach had fallen into his hands, its taste all the sweeter for the long delay (and perhaps also for a disappointment with Frek). At the moment, in the afterglow of that bliss, he could not entertain the notion that their coupling had been sinful. Indeed this experience seemed so intense that it figured as the single most important thing in his life.

She told herself he would certainly be feeling exactly the same if it had been Frek Woollass he’d been able to have his wicked way with.

Not that his way was all that wicked. Not yet. But, as she’d told him, he was a fast learner and it might be fun being his mentor.

Then, because her powers of analysis did not permit self-deceit, she took a further step back and gently mocked herself for trying to assume the safe role of experience guiding the steps of innocence.

She liked the guy!

Why? Here her powers of logical analysis failed her. He was so many things she didn’t go for. Physically she preferred the blond Anglo type, like her namesake the unfortunate curate as he appeared in Winander’s painting. As for the inner man, there were so many counts against him, it was hardly worth counting! He was serious, and spooky, and religious, plus he’d traveled a helluva long way down the road to becoming a Catholic priest.

She tried to imagine her pa’s reaction if she took Mig home.

The wine might help. A bottle of El Bastardo to whet the appetite, followed by a couple of Vinada’s gold-medal Shiraz to wash down the grub…

But first she’d have to get Pa to sit down at the same table, which wouldn’t be easy, even though she could now assure him it definitely wasn’t a priest who’d knocked up her grandmother.

She’d made no effort to contact home since her talk with Betty. She needed to get this business sorted completely before she did that. The bastard who’d abused that poor little kid had lived round here. The Gowder twins’ dad seemed number one suspect, and he had gone beyond justice, at least beyond hers if not Mig’s. But, dead or not, she wanted to be certain. And that was what she should be focusing her mind on now, not her own romantic entanglements.

The door of Candle Cottage stood open. She stepped into the living room, calling, “Mr. Melton, hi!”

“And hi to you too, Miss Flood.”

He came out of the kitchen carrying a tray set with two mugs, a coffeepot and a plateful of biscuits, mostly dark chocolate. He’d remembered. She was touched. He might be, in the local parlance, a bit cracked, but she found she quite liked Noddy Melton. However she looked at it, she still felt it was a crying shame no one had ever told him that his lost Mary was alive and well and living in Spain. But it wasn’t her call. She had enough on her plate without taking onboard that responsibility.

As she sat down, without thinking she took her sun hat off and laid it on the arm of her chair.

He regarded her skull birdlike, head cocked to one side.

“When I first joined the Force they encouraged haircuts like that,” he said. “I take it the lady in Newcastle told you they cut your gran’s hair off?”

“With shears,” she said. Then added, “I never mentioned Newcastle.”

He shrugged, self-deprecatingly. Apologetically. That was the giveaway.

She said, “And you knew I was a mathematician before I told anyone. It was you who searched my room!”

“So you did notice? Sharp. I’m sorry. I was curious. And as I think you’ve discovered, you need to be nimble on your feet and willing to cut corners to keep ahead of the game in Illthwaite. Sorry. But I’ve no way, legal or illegal, of discovering what you found out in Newcastle, not unless you care to tell me.”

She told the whole story again. This was the third time. The first had been to Edie Appledore and that had been like reliving her own experience of hearing it. The second had been to Mig and that had been a kind of cathartic sharing, bringing her to a closeness which made all that followed possible.

This time it felt, perhaps not unfittingly, like a statement made to a policeman.

He nodded when she’d finished and said, “I thought it might be something like that. Not the detail but the timing. After the first time we talked, I got to thinking, there’s too much going on here for there to be no connections. The name; the circumstances of the curate’s death; above all, Illthwaite. The only thing which stopped it making any sense was your dates. Spring 1960. If somehow you’d got that wrong, then we’d got ourselves a whole new ball game. Everyone leaves traces, even kids. If she lived in Illthwaite even for a short time, she’d be on the school roll.”

“I thought of that but the school closed down a couple of years back.”

“Schools die, records don’t. Oh, they might be dusty and spidery, but they’d still exist somewhere. I made a phone call. Yesterday morning I got a call back.”

“Useful friends you’ve got,” said Sam.

“Who said anything about friends?” said Melton. “You don’t get to the top of most heaps without knowing where a lot of bodies are buried. Here’s what I found out.”

He handed her a sheet of paper. It was headed Pamela Galley and contained all the details she’d got from Edie Appledore.

Not wanting to downgrade his efforts, she said, “This is great.”

He gave her a sharp look and said, “You knew this already, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I did. Sorry. But I’m really grateful. What else have you found out?”

“I ran a check on Jim Gowder this morning. Wife ill, sexually frustrated, young girl available in house. It’s classic. The record shows convictions for drunkenness, affray and failure to pay rates. But nothing sexual. Without any background of similar offenses, you might find it hard to get him in the frame after all this time, if you made it official.”

“Official? Went to the cops, you mean?”

It must have sounded as if she thought this was pretty wayout because he smiled and said gently, “You’ve taken a big step in that direction already, my dear. In fact, once I’m convinced an offense has taken place, I really ought to make it official myself.”

“What would happen if you did?”

“Coming from me, and concerning Illthwaite, probably nothing,” he said sadly. “But if you pressed, they’d have to take notice. On the plus side, once a prima facie case of sexual assault on a minor was established, they could require all likely suspects to supply DNA samples which would be checked against yours.”

“And on the minus?”

“Publicity,” said Melton. “Once the press got hold of this – and get hold of it they would; the modern police force has more leaks than a Welsh allotment – they’d be all over you, not to mention your family, as well of course as Illthwaite. Illthwaite has it coming, but it wouldn’t be pleasant for your folk. You’d need to think about it.”

Sam thought about it for long enough to eat two chocolate biscuits.

Finally she said, “You’re right. I’d need to talk to my pa and ma first. Could the police make people give samples?”

“If they’re alive and suspect, yes,” he said. “With Jim Gowder they’d need either to dig him up or get the twins to volunteer a sample. As for the curate, that’s more difficult as he was cremated. There’s always the stones he weighed himself down with, but they’re so smooth and they were under water for many hours, I’d be surprised if they helped.”

Something came into Sam’s mind then went out again as she said, “Doesn’t matter anyway. I’m pretty sure he’s not in the frame.”

“You are?” He looked at her curiously. “I’m surprised. He’s an obvious suspect, and in detective work, the obvious is so often right.”

“Can work the other way in math,” she said.

She wanted to tell him what she knew about the curate’s reasons for killing himself, but it wasn’t her secret to tell. She found she really was feeling bad about the old boy. He’d put himself out to help her, even bought some dark chocolate biscuits, and all she’d done was discount his number one suspect and let him know she’d discovered her grandmother’s identity without his help.

“That’s me done, I’m afraid,” said Melton rather sadly. “I had hoped to amaze you with my discoveries and my theories, but I fear I’ve brought you here for nothing.”

She said, “Thanks a bunch for all your trouble. And for the yummy biscuits.”

“Please, have another. Or two, if you like.”

“I’ll take one for the road,” she said, standing up and putting her hat back on. “Thanks again. Like I say, I need a long think before I make this official. I started it and it feels like I ought to see it through myself.”

“Your decision,” he said. “But tread carefully, my dear, before you start throwing accusations around. Get it right, someone could turn nasty. Getting it wrong can be nasty too. Remember what happened here in Candle Cottage. I still feel that poor devil’s pain some dark nights when I’m sitting here alone. Good job I don’t believe in ghosts!”

“Me neither,” said Sam.

On the other hand, she thought, Mig Madero probably didn’t believe in Hilbert space. And his spooks had got him as far along the path of revelation as her calculus.

At the front door, they stood together on the threshold and enjoyed the touch of the sun on their faces.

“Another couple of months and I’ll be in permanent shadow,” said Melton.

He saw the expression on her face and laughed.

“No, my dear, I’m not being morbid. I just mean that once we get into November, the sun never gets high enough to touch this end of the valley. It might bother some people, but I don’t mind. Unless you lose it for a space, you can never feel the delight I feel when quite suddenly early in March I look out to see the first finger of sunlight touching my garden.”

“That’s lovely,” exclaimed Sam. Impulsively she leaned forward and kissed the old man’s dry cheek.

“Careful,” he said. “You don’t want to shock the vicar.”

“What he doesn’t see won’t harm him.”

“God sees everything and the vicar has a direct line to God.”

“You don’t like him?” asked Sam, detecting satire.

“On the contrary, I think he’s a very decent man. Compared with his father, whose main concern was what was going to happen to us miserable sinners after death, Rev. Pete concentrates on taking care of the living. He’ll be missed when he’s gone. And no more Swinebanks to follow. We’ll probably get some menopausal matron – no offense.”

“None taken,” said Sam. “You said we. Like you feel you’re one of them.”

“After all my years here, how else should I feel?” he said, smiling.

“Yeah.” She found herself thinking indignantly, it’s not right he’s never been told. Everyone’s got a right to know the truth about what most concerns them. Someone ought to have told him long ago. Ought to tell him now.

His bright little eyes were fixed on her face as though seeing her thoughts.

As she opened her mouth – not yet knowing exactly what was going to come out, a not uncommon situation when the indignant fit was upon her – he put one finger up almost to her lips and said, “Yes, my dear, I shall live out the rest of my days here quite happily, an itch on the Illthwaite bottom which they might from time to time feel like scratching but which they will hardly use surgery to remove. After all, if I weren’t here, keeping an eye on things, what reason would I have to get up in the morning? And where would I go? Retire to a villa in Spain perhaps to shrivel up in permanent sunshine?”

A villa in Spain!

He knows! How can he know? He can’t know!

The thoughts tumbled across Sam’s mind like leaves in a west wind. Again she opened her mouth, again not knowing what she would say, and again he was there first.

“Goodbye, my dear. And good luck. And use your ears. Fingerprints, DNA, these are fine, but frequently all the forensic us hardworking detectives get is words. What people say, what they don’t say, what they say other people say. Look for inconsistencies. These too are tracks. The muddier we try to make them, the easier they are to follow.”

Was he warning her off? She didn’t know, couldn’t ask. And in any case his advice, and his comments about the vicar, had brought something else to mind.

An inconsistency.

She said, “Just one thing more. About Sam Flood, the curate. Young Pete’s statement said he was in his room and the curate shouted up to him that the Bible class was canceled. That was all the conversation they had, right?”

“Yes, I think so. In fact I’m sure so.”

“And he didn’t mention anyone else coming to the house after lunch?”

“No, definitely not. Why do you ask?”

“Just getting things straight in my mind. No big deal.”

Which was probably true. If God was the last prime number, human beings were the first irrational. No, worse than that. The square root of two was an irrational number, but at least you knew that if you squared it, you got back to two. And if you wanted to actually see it, all you had to do was draw a pair of one-inch lines at a right angle. Human behavior, however, subscribed to no such laws. An inconsistency in a mathematical proof was fatal. But inconsistency in human evidence could mean nothing at all.

Or, as in the case of Gracie and the year of sailing, everything.

“Goodbye, Mr. Melton. Take care,” she said.

“You too, my dear. I mean that. Take real care. You’re exploring dangerous territory. The door to the past opens north. The devil lives there.”

She went down the short garden path, out of the little wicker gate, and crossed the road. On the other side she paused and looked back.

He was still on his threshold. With his head cocked on one side and his lurid waistcoat, he resembled a robin scanning its territory for insects or intruders.

She gave him a wave. He didn’t wave back but turned and went into the cottage. It was like losing sight of a friend as you embarked on a long and perilous voyage.

12. The devil’s door

As Sam approached the great iron gate of St. Ylf’s she saw it stood open and there was a vehicle parked outside. She’d only seen it once before but she was sure it was the Gowder twins’ old pickup.

At the gateway, she hesitated. Though still without concrete evidence that one of the twins was responsible for her fall beneath the tower, she didn’t relish the prospect of running into them again without witnesses. But she needed to talk to Rev. Pete. If he wasn’t in the church, she’d do a quick turnaround and head back out, she promised herself.

She set out up the path. There was no sign of Gowders in the graveyard. When she reached the church door, she made sure its gothic groan came out at full pitch, and called as she pushed, “Hi there. Rev. Pete. It’s me, Sam Flood.”

No reply came, but there was something in the silence which gave notice of a listener as much as any words.

Taking a deep breath, she stepped inside.

The gloom wasn’t anywhere near as deep as she’d expected. The reason lay straight before her.

The Devil’s Door stood open.

Through it she could see the Wolf-Head Cross. Before it crouched a man.

Or perhaps, because she saw at once it was the vicar, and because it was the sacred symbol of his religion that towered above him, perhaps what she meant was knelt a man.

But what she thought was crouched.

She moved toward him, again saying, “Hi” as she passed through the Devil’s Door.

He reacted to her voice, half glancing round, and by the time she got close to him he was pretty definitely kneeling.

She heard the sound of a rackety engine starting up and, looking back through the two open doors to the churchyard gate, she saw the Gowder pickup moving away.

Swinebank struggled to his feet. Sam noticed his knees were stained with grass, the price you expected to pay for outdoor praying. But to get your left shoulder and thigh in the same state required a devotional contortion not usually undertaken by Protestants.

“Miss Flood,” he said, rather tremulously.

“Sorry to disturb your praying, Vicar, if that’s what you were doing…?”

She let the question hang.

He tried a smile and said, “You must think me eccentric, but it is a cross, after all…”

She looked up at the towering artifact and the wolf grinned back down at her.

“Maybe,” she said. “Though to me it looks the kind of thing you’re more likely to slit a goat’s throat in front of than do a Christopher Robin. You OK?”

“Yes. Yes, I am. Is there something I can help you with?” he said in a peremptory tone which sounded more affected than real.

She shrugged. If his sermons were so bad his parishioners beat up on him, it was none of her business.

She said, “I wanted to ask you something about what happened a long time ago. More than forty years. The day my namesake, Sam Flood the curate, topped himself.”

She admitted she might have phrased it better, but his reaction seemed over the top. There was anger on his face, and loathing. It took her a moment to realize they weren’t directed at herself.

She said, “I’m sorry if I’m bringing back bad memories. I know all about them, how they can hurt. There’s just something I need to clear up… about Mr. Flood…”

“I killed him, you know,” he said abruptly.

Jesus! she thought. Not another one taking on responsibility for Saint Sam’s death!

“I don’t think so,” she said gently. “He was on the edge and he went over, no one’s fault, certainly not yours.”

“What do you know about it?” he demanded.

“Not much, but at least I’m trying to bring stuff to light,” she retorted.

He stood stock-still for a moment then said, “You’re quite right. Light, it’s time for light. Keeping things hidden never does any good. Like Sam’s memorial. All that grows up as cover is filthy weeds!”

He went to the wall behind the cross and started dragging out the briars and nettles. Soon his hands were red and bloody, but he didn’t stop till the inscription was clear.

“There,” he said, standing back. “It’s been too long. I’m glad you came back, Miss Flood. When I heard you’d gone away, I felt relieved. But I knew it was only a respite. Like a calm patch in the middle of a storm. You take a deep breath and you think, well, that wasn’t so bad. But you know inside that the storm’s only taking a breather too and will be back at you before you know it. Shall we go into the church and sit down and talk?”

His voice was calm, the calm of acceptance, of submission even. But Sam recalled Melton’s warning not to take risks.

“Out here and standing suits me fine,” she said.

While she was pretty certain most of Swinebank’s anger was directed at himself, you never knew precisely where you were with these religious guys. Except maybe Mig. OK, perhaps she was silly to make an exception just because she liked the guy and had slept with him, but somehow she was pretty sure he wouldn’t hear the voice of God telling him, It’s sacrifice time, and if you don’t have a goat, a redheaded girl will do!

Rev. Pete she wasn’t so sure about. Pretty sure, but not enough to want to go into that dark scary church with him. Out here she reckoned she could leave a guy in skirts for dead from a standing start.

“Very well. Before our Wolf-Head Cross. That may be fitting.”

She followed his gaze.

There it stood, packed full of messages from the past, maybe messages for the future. She thought on the whole most religions were crap, but religion wasn’t the same as belief. They called this a Viking cross. She didn’t know a lot about Vikings but she had a picture of them as large bold-faced men, doers not dreamers, undaunted by ferocious storms and mountainous seas, always ready for a scrap. What they believed in must have derived from what they were, and when they settled here they’d decided this cross would make a necessary statement of that belief. So there it was, paying lip service to the rules and repressions of this new intangible god who’d crept up from the south with the insidious inevitability of global warming, but at bottom making a plain statement of things as they were, an assertion of their own individuality, as true and uncompromising as a mathematical proof.

Her heart jolted in her breast at the feeling that finally the time of truth was close.

But her voice was calm as she said, “Pete, let’s start at the beginning, shall we? Couple of questions first to get you going. Why didn’t you tell the police that Edie Appledore had been visiting Sam the day he died? And what was it you went to his room to talk about?”

He turned to look at her almost with exasperation, as if she were interfering in some well-ordered, perfectly thought-out scheme.

“Oh no,” he said. “The day Sam died wasn’t the beginning. The beginning was when little Pam Galley, your grandmother, was orphaned and came to live with the Gowders. Or maybe it was when Madge Gowder was diagnosed with cancer. Or maybe it was the day she gave birth to the twins.”

“They were here when I arrived, weren’t they?” said Sam. “What were they doing? Threatening you?”

Some certainties just arrive, and then you spend days at the blackboard working out where they came from.

“Yes, they were here,” said Swinebank dismissively. “It’s not important.”

He had, she realized, a story to tell, a story which had been bursting to come out for decades. At last its time was close and he was impatient for the moment of release.

“OK,” said Sam. “Shoot.”

He closed his eyes. Was he saying a prayer? And if he were, what for?

His eyes opened and fixed themselves on her face and he began speaking.

13. Pete Swinebank

Let’s start with Pam Galley coming over to Skaddale from Eskdale. That was in the autumn of 1960, not long after Sam Flood started here as curate. She came to the village school with the twins. She fitted in all right, didn’t talk a lot. We watched the way the twins treated her. That was the touchstone of survival for us lads. So long as you didn’t cross the Gowders, you’d be all right. They weren’t cruel to her or anything. They just treated her like she was some kind of animated doll. She did more or less exactly what they told her. Sometimes they’d play silly tricks on her, like telling her to stand out in the rain during playtime while the rest of us were sheltering. But it was too easy to be fun for long. Generally they just ignored her.

Not long after she came to Illthwaite, she started menstruating. The twins knew, living in the same house, and they told us. They were our sexual mentors. Living in the country, you pick up on the animal basics pretty early, but when it came to translating the facts of life from the byre to the bedroom, it was the Gowders who spelled things out. Sometimes their spelling was pretty terrible. If you did it standing up, the girl couldn’t get pregnant, and if you did it in the churchyard, your willy would fall off, that sort of thing. But no one ever argued.

They stated pretty authoritatively that once a girl started bleeding, she was ready for tupping. Their word. Not that little Pam offered any incentive to tupping compared with some of the other more developed girls. And not that any of us boys had much real notion of the mechanics of human tupping, apart from some very confused and overheated fantasies. This was 1960. In rural Cumberland, it might as well have been 1930.

The Gowders I should say have never seemed very personally involved with sex, either as adolescents or grown men. Maybe it’s because they’ve always formed a sort of self-contained unit. They were only interested in sex because they saw how much most of the rest of us were fascinated by it, so being the acknowledged experts gave them yet another form of dominance.

Midway through December Madge Gowder, the twins’ mother, who’d been poorly for a long time, took really ill. It was cancer. They said reassuring things to the kids, of course, but all the adults must have known she was dying. It was a bright hard spell, lots of sun but very cold. We used to go up on Mecklin Moor to play. It’s a wild place, there’s lots of old stone circles up there, and lots of wild legends about what went on in them. And of course there’s the Moss, where on a dark and misty night they say the ghosts of every creature that’s drowned there come out to taste the air again.

Not far above the Foulgate track before you reach the Moss itself there’s a place where two rock slabs have rolled together to form a sort of cave, and this was the spot us lads thought of as our den.

That day in January 1961 – it must have been the first week, we still weren’t back at school – there were five of us up there. Me, the Gowders, Pam Galley, and Gerry Woollass.

Here in Illthwaite the squire’s children had always gone to the village school till they were eleven or twelve and then moved on to boarding school. There was no distinction made in lessons, but in the playground, maybe because I was the vicar’s son, Gerry and I often kept pretty close together. The twins could easily have persecuted us for being different. Instead, maybe because it demonstrated their supremacy even more, they made us subordinates in their gang. It was an invitation you didn’t refuse. In fact I felt quite excited and privileged as I swore a rather bloodthirsty oath of fealty and secrecy about all the gang’s activities.

We brought some bits of wood for a fire, knowing we’d not find much up on the moor, and soon we had a decent blaze going. We pooled what scraps of food we had to make a picnic – some biscuits, a bit of cheese, a bar of chocolate – and the twins had brought a bottle of beer and a bottle of cider and some cigarettes. With Foulgate being a house of sickness, they’d been able to raid their father’s drink store without being noticed. They’d also got a magazine which I presume belonged to him too. By contemporary standards, it was pretty innocuous, but the photos it contained of nude women posing with beach balls, that sort of thing, set our young minds swooning.

Then one of the Gowders asked if we’d ever seen the real thing. We had to admit we hadn’t. And he said, would we like a look? Not knowing quite what he meant, me and Gerry said, yes, we wouldn’t mind. And the twin turned his head and called to Pam.

We’d almost forgotten she was there. I think she’d been given some squares of chocolate and she just sat a little way behind us, dead quiet, waiting till the twins would take her home.

When the twin told her to take her clothes off, she looked at him blankly.

Then he said something like, it’s all right, you won’t get cold, here make room for her by the fire. And it was as if that was a kind of reassurance, as if the only thing to worry about was being cold. So she took her clothes off.

For me there was little or no connection between the women in the pictures and this skinny little scrap of white flesh shivering by the fire. I don’t think the Gowders were particularly aroused either. Like I said, they never showed much direct personal interest in girls. They were more like farmers showing off a prize yow at a show. But Gerry Woollass was different. Maybe he was more developed than the rest of us, or maybe he’d had more than his share of the cider and beer and tobacco. But it was clear that he was excited.

When they saw this, one of the twins said, “Would you like to touch her? You can if you like. You can touch her with your thing if you like.”

Again, I think it just amused them to get the squire’s boy so completely out of his own control and into theirs. The girl was just a means to an end.

After that things moved very quickly. Little Pam didn’t struggle, she just did what the twins told her. Gerry was so excited it didn’t last long. The mere act of pushing into her set him off. She screamed but not too loud, choking it back as if she didn’t want to anger the twins. Gerry made more noise than she did. In the space of less than a minute it was all over, Gerry was buttoning himself up, Pam lay there quiet, but there were tears on her cheeks. And drops of blood on her legs.

I just sat and watched. I had a sense that something terrible was happening, but I wasn’t a brave child. I’m not making excuses. I was what they call nowadays a bit of a wimp. I suppose that was what made me willing to put up with any indignities the Gowders heaped upon me. Being one of their gang meant the other boys treated me with respect.

So I was very willing to let myself be reassured by the way the Gowders acted afterward. They told Pam to get dressed, even helped her. And they gave her the rest of the chocolate and borrowed Gerry’s handkerchief so she could dry her eyes and wipe her legs, and they threw the rest of our little store of fuel on the fire, and talked about our plans for the rest of the day as if nothing had happened.

Gerry suddenly stood up and said it was getting late, he had to go home.

He didn’t look well. I think that maybe with him being brought up a strict Catholic, some notion of having committed a dreadful sin was already eating away at his mind. I could understand this. There was plenty of hellfire preaching in my upbringing, and behind all that reassurance I was letting myself feel, I think I too was already feeling the heat of those diabolical flames. I heard myself saying I was expected back at the vicarage too.

One of the twins said indifferently, “Off you both go then, long as you don’t forget the gang promise.”

Some threats don’t need to be spelled out.

But some guilt is stronger than any threat.

Gerry didn’t return to the village school for the following term. It was said his parents had decided he needed to be tutored privately to make sure he was fully prepared for starting at his boarding school in the autumn. I was too naive to suspect then that it had anything to do with what had happened. All I knew was I was left without anyone to talk to. Worse, I was left without having in view someone I could think of as the real culprit, which was a thought I might have been able to shelter behind when I started worrying about hellfire.

As for Pam, someone might have noticed something if she’d been returning to a normal household. But Foulgate had been a house of sickness for some time. And on that dreadful day, from what I’ve been able to piece together, when Pam got back to the farm, she must have made her way straight up to Madge’s bedroom. Perhaps she wanted to tell her what had happened. Who knows? Certainly Madge would have been the only person Pam would have turned to.

It doesn’t matter anyway. All I know is that when someone else went into the room a little time later, they found Pam sitting by the bed, holding a dead woman’s hand.

Children back then were required to be seen and not heard at the best of times. At the worst of times, they were expected to be invisible as well. Pam Galley was always a particularly quiet child. If anyone actually noticed any extra sign of withdrawal or distress, they had more than enough explanation for it in this second grievous loss following on in pretty close proximity to the death of her own parents.

Me, I tried to forget. Things weren’t helped when some time later Sam Flood, our curate, insisted on bringing little Pam out of the Gowder house and settling her in the vicarage until such time as her future could be decided. I can recall overhearing fierce arguments between Sam and my father and Mrs. Thomson, our housekeeper. I would have put money on my father and Mrs. Thomson winning any argument – they both terrified me – but Sam wouldn’t let himself be beaten down, and to my horror I came down one morning to find Pam sitting at the breakfast table.

At school, the Gowders didn’t talk about what had happened either, but they kept me pretty close, and made it clear that resigning from the gang wasn’t an option. To Pam at school they were as pleasant as it lay in their natures to be, but she didn’t even seem aware of their existence. Not that this was noteworthy as she didn’t show much awareness of anyone else’s existence either. The teachers and everyone were really worried about her, and when word got round that one of Mr. Dunstan’s religious charities had found a place for her with a family in Australia, everyone was delighted, saying things like that was what she needed, a complete change of scene and a settled family background, weren’t we lucky that the squire was such a man of influence? Everyone except Sam Flood, that is. He was still asking questions, and raising objections, but finally even he got persuaded, and Pam vanished from Illthwaite.

You’d have thought that Pam’s removal would have made things easier for me but it didn’t work like that. On the contrary, I found things got worse and worse. At least having her around gave me the reassuring visual evidence that she appeared to be just the same as ever. But now she’d moved out of my sight into my imagination.

I would be woken in the night by the sound of that one scream she let out. And then I’d lie there listening to the silence. Her silence. Eventually I started to find that any silence that stretched for more than a couple of minutes became her silence, as if she were close by, withdrawn, suffering, but always present.

If my father had been a different sort of man, I would have spoken to him. But I knew what to expect if I did and that was one fear I had no strength to overcome.

The obvious alternative was Sam Flood.

He was a man from whom loving kindness emanated almost visibly.

His concern in the business of Pam’s future was always to find what was best for the girl, what would give her the best chance of happiness. My father, on the other hand, urged on by Mrs. Thomson, wanted nothing but to get her out of our house and our lives. As for Squire Dunstan, even then I had serious doubts about the purity of his motives. Fair enough, this Australian business might be a genuine opportunity for the girl, but it was also a great chance to move a potential source of embarrassment to his family to the other side of the globe.

Of course I had no idea she was pregnant, and I don’t see how he could have known either.

Sam was caring, involved, fearless, and also my friend. He was the first adult I knew who treated me as an equal.

Even with all this going for him, it took a long time for me to pluck up courage to speak. I could only guess at the consequences, and nothing in my guess was good for me. The anger of my father, the wrath of the Gowder twins, the possible involvement of the police – these were likely to follow and these I would have to bear.

If I could have foreseen the actual outcome, I would probably have held my tongue forever.

I looked for a good moment, kept on finding excuses to decide this time or that wasn’t ripe, and finally on that Sunday, almost without thinking, having seen my father and Mrs. Thomson leave for the church to take Sunday School, I went to Sam’s room and banged at his door.

It was Edie Appledore who opened it. I think if she’d stayed I would probably have lost my nerve and kept quiet. But she just pushed right by me and went straight down the stairs, and I started talking and told Sam everything in one incoherent burst.

At first he just looked at me blankly as if he wasn’t taking it in. But finally what I was saying seemed to register and he sat me down and made me go through it again.

He was very calm on the surface but I could see that, underneath, my story had had a powerful effect on him.

All he said to me, however, was, “Thank you for telling me this, but I wish you’d spoken sooner. Never postpone a good act, Pete.”

I felt hugely rebuked. I suppose I had looked for absolution, even reward for my courage in speaking. Not that I felt brave. The minute I got it off my chest, I started thinking about the Gowders.

Sam told me to go back to my room, he needed to be alone to think.

After maybe fifteen minutes, he tapped at my door and told me he would be canceling the Bible class as he had to go out.

Fearfully I asked him what he intended doing about what I’d told him.

He said there was someone he wanted to talk to first, then he’d decide.

And he left.

About ten minutes later the doorbell rang. I opened the door to discover the Gowders. It was like finding the Furies on your doorstep! I must have gone pale as death, but they greeted me as they usually did and said they’d come for the Bible class but, seeing it was canceled, wondered if I’d like to come out to play.

If I’d had the slightest suspicion they knew I’d been talking to Sam, I would have slammed the door in their faces. But they seemed so normal, and I thought it would just make them suspicious if I said no, and I didn’t want to be around the house when my father returned and started asking questions about Sam’s reasons for canceling the Bible class, so I said yes and went with them.

What a mistake! A moment’s thought would have told me they must have encountered Sam on their way to the vicarage, and that he was unlikely not to have taken the chance to try and double-check my tale.

I found out the truth as soon as we were up on the moor, well out of sight and earshot of the village. One of them seized me from behind, the other put his face close to mine and demanded to know what I’d told the curate.

At first, in my fear, I tried to claim ignorance of what they meant. I got punched in the stomach for my pains. I then started telling them some watered-down version, and in the midst of this I took advantage of a weakened grip to break free and make a dash for it up the fell. Over twenty yards I was the quicker, but as I slowed they came on relentlessly. I decided that there was no future in trying to flee uphill so I turned and started racing down the steep slope, leaping from boulder to boulder till inevitably I missed my footing and went crashing to the ground. When I tried to push myself up, I realized I had damaged my wrist and done something very unpleasant to my ankle.

Worse, I was back in the Gowders’ clutches.

With the way I was feeling, further threats were unnecessary. I told them exactly what I had said to the curate. After which they conferred for a while before telling me I should keep my mouth shut from now on and try to take back as much as I could next time I saw Sam. Failure to keep silent this time would result in further accidents which would make my present pains feel like a French kiss.

And then they helped me back to the vicarage.

The district nurse was summoned. She said I should be got to the hospital instantly for X rays. They kept me in overnight, and by the time the police got round to talking to me, I knew all about poor Sam’s death.

Now I had even more on my conscience.

It seemed clear to me it was my fault. He must have felt the horror of my story so much that his mind flipped.

When the police talked to me, my father was present. They didn’t stay long. I got very upset. And I said nothing beyond the bare facts that Sam had told me the class was canceled so I went out to play. How could I say more with my father there and the threat of the Gowders waiting outside?

So began my second silence, which I thought might last forever till I came into the church the other day and saw you standing by the font with water dripping from your hair, like a revenant from a shipwreck.

Which is what you are, Miss Flood. A ghost come back to haunt us. A ghost come back to tell us our crime was even more terrible than we knew. A ghost come back to summon us all to judgment. May God have mercy on our souls.