The Stranger House

1. Up a gum tree

When he arrived at the Hall, it seemed to Mig Madero that the wolf-head knocker looked keener than ever to bite the hand that touched it, but he was saved from putting it to the test.

As he reached forward, the door swung open. Mrs. Collipepper stood there.

“Good morning,” he said. “I have an appointment. With Mr. Dunstan.”

“Then you’d better come in,” she said.

She led him into the house and up the stairs. As he followed he found himself observing as on his previous visit the rhythmic rise and fall of her buttocks, and there came into his mind a picture of her naked, on her knees, heavy breasts penduling, as she retrieved the scarlet robe from the floor.

He was delighted to observe it didn’t have the slightest effect on him. Whereas if he let his thoughts slip to a certain skinny figure with less flesh on it than one of the housekeeper’s thighs, it was amazing how quickly his thoughts became very languid indeed…

It was both with relief and reluctance that he found himself hauled back to the here and now by the sound of a savage blow being dealt to the study door by Mrs. Collipepper’s fist.

When there was no reply she hammered again.

“He sometimes falls asleep,” she observed over her shoulder, as if feeling some explanation were needed.

“That must be inconvenient,” Mig heard himself responding.

She turned those watchful gray eyes on him, as if in search of innuendo.

“At times,” he added. Which only made things worse.

He found he was storing up the story to tell Sam.

He was saved from further ill-judged attempts at mitigation by a voice crying, “Come in!”

Mrs. Collipepper opened the door and announced, “Mr. Madero.”

Mig stepped by her, saying as he passed, “Thank you very much.”

“That’s OK. Sorry about your sherry,” she said. Then rather spoiled the apology by adding as she moved away, “Too sour for a trifle anyway.”

There was, he thought, in the history of this woman material for… what? A romance? A comedy? A tragedy? A social history?

Dunstan said, “Have a seat, Madero. I trust I find you well today.”

He was seated at the desk on which lay a scatter of papers. He was fully dressed despite the, for him, early hour. But his face looked rather drawn, as if he had paid a price for this interruption to his usual routine.

“I’m very well,” said Mig.

“And the Australian girl?”

“She is well too.”

“I’m glad to hear it. She stayed at the Stranger, I take it?”

“Yes,” said Mig shortly, keen to get off this subject.

“And did she reveal to you any further details about the cause of her distress?”

“Why should she make a confidant of someone she met only two days ago?” asked Mig with a disingenuousness the Jesuits would have been proud of.

It didn’t seem to work.

“Extreme experience in foreign places often throws strangers together,” said Dunstan. “Thus travelers encountering in the wilderness would huddle close at night for comfort and protection. In view of what you have both discovered since arriving here, it would not be surprising if you and Miss Flood felt an impulse to huddle together. I speak figuratively, of course.”

There was no insinuating note in his voice, but Mig felt his cheeks growing warm under that keen slate-eyed gaze, and suddenly Dunstan smiled as if at a spoken admission.

“Mr. Madero, forgive me. I had no thought of embarrassing you. Nor indeed should you be embarrassed. Youth’s the season made for joy, and the Church would be completely out of touch with reality if it didn’t admit and make allowances for that.”

How the devil have we got here? Mig asked himself in amazement. Silence is admission, but denial would feel like treachery!

Dunstan was still talking: “It certainly seems from all reports that Miss Flood has an engaging if original personality, plus, as you indicated last evening, a First in mathematics from some colonial establishment and a placement at Cambridge. Do you happen to know which college?”

“Trinity,” said Mig shortly, wanting to move off this topic.

“Very fitting. The alma mater of Newton. Also, though rather less noteworthy, of myself. I should like very much to make her acquaintance. Perhaps I could call on your good offices to arrange an introduction…?”

He really is like an old Prince of the Church, thought Mig. Worldly-wise, insinuating in courtesy, evasive in debate, and almost certainly ruthless in decision.

“Mr. Woollass,” he said, determined to get away from Sam and back to his own affairs, “I have something for you here.”

From his briefcase he took Father Simeon’s journal and laid it on the table.

Dunstan glanced at it with what looked like token interest and said, “Of course. The journal. I thank you. And I too have something which I feel might interest you.”

He picked a large leather-bound volume off his desk.

“I think I mentioned this to you at our first meeting. My grandfather Anthony’s history of this part of Cumberland. He acted, you will recall, as assistant to Peter Swinebank in the preparation of his Guide, sparking a lifelong interest in the highways and byways of the past. You will have read the Reverend Peter’s account in the Guide of the waif boy whom Thomas Gowder took into his care, which kindness he repaid by murdering the husband and ravishing the wife? That this youth is the same fugitive whom my ancestors aided in their turn now seems very probable. And after long thought, I find I am happy to accept your intuition that he was your ancestor.”

“Thank you,” said Mig. “And I hope we can both take as given Miguel’s account of what really happened at Foulgate that night.”

“Oh yes. In fact, as I was about to point out, the inhabitants of Skaddale had a deal too much common sense to take as gospel anything a neighbor like Andrew Gowder asserted. Which brings me to my grandfather. His History is more concerned with the broad sweep of events and their philosophical analysis rather than domestic particularities. In the main body of his text, the incident wins no more than a passing reference. He was however one of those scholars who cannot bear that anything, once discovered, should be lost. A large proportion of his book takes the form of footnotes which are generally, I fear, much more engaging than his central argument. There is one such note here in which he says…”

He opened the book at a marked page and, using a magnifying glass, began to read a footnote in minuscule print which Mig could see occupied nearly half of a page.

“Though the present writer is only concerned with matters of broad interest in the development of the county supported by proper documentary evidence, it is often helpful to our understanding of the atmosphere of any given time and place to note the extremes of local rumor and legend, especially when as here they stand in mutual contradiction.

“One such rumor asserted that the waif boy was in fact a thirty-year-old emissary of Philip of Spain, selected because his youthful appearance might aid him to pass unchallenged, and sent to make contact with the disaffected Roman Catholics of northern England and offer financial and military assistance in any proposed rebellion. Ship-wrackt on the Cumbrian coast, he played the innocent child till such time as he might find a way to pursue his mission.

“The counter story was that the boy was truly nothing more than a gypsy by-blow, politically entirely insignificant.

“What is undisputed is that, some dispute having arisen between him and his master, possibly involving Mistress Jenny Gowder, he knocked Thomas to the ground and fled in fear. Upon which (the local gossips whispered) Andrew Gowder, the younger brother, known to be fearful lest Thomas’s marriage to a young and healthy woman should eventually produce a surviving heir and deprive his own sons of their claim on the farm, seized the opportunity to slit his brother’s throat and then pursue, capture and despatch the alleged culprit before he could speak in his own defense.

“Thus we have on one side domestic rivalry, on the other international espionage, the whole issue muddied by what some held was divine or diabolical intervention when the fugitive’s body vanished after the alleged crucifixion.

“Is it possible there may be some connection here with the recorded capture in July 1589 of a ‘Spanish emissary’ in Lancaster where he lay awaiting passage out of the country? He died under torture, though not before he had allegedly confessed to having spent some months in the North spreading sedition. Names were mentioned, but none that had not already come under the gravest suspicion. Some indeed were already held and later executed. This suggests that this ‘confession’ was in fact one of those frequently cobbled together by the interrogator (in this case the notorious pursuivant, Tyrwhitt) to cover the fact that his too vigorous approach has resulted in the death of his victim before any truly significant information could be extracted.”

He finished reading and looked up at Mig.

“It is unfortunate,” he said dryly, “that as well as sparking an interest in local history in my grandfather, the Reverend Peter also seems to have passed on his rather ponderous style. I’m sure, however, that you picked up on the significant elements here. Exculpation of your ancestor. And the reference to our mutual friend, Francis Tyrwhitt.”

Mig’s gaze met the old man’s. What a portrait this would make, he thought. The young man eager for knowledge being led forward by the old tutor intent on passing on the torch of learning which he has tended all his long years…

Load of crap, he heard a shrill Australian voice say in his mind. The old bastard’s chasing you up a gum tree. So grab your chance and piss on him!

He said, “I brought along the document this morning because I believe that returning it to its rightful owner is the only honest way to proceed. I hope that you will agree and now do the same with the document that you removed from the Jolley archive.”

Once more, just as he tried to grab the initiative, the old man slid away from him. Instead of the expected indignant denial, Dunstan’s response was a delighted, “Bravo! You’ve worked it out. But do let me hear your exquisite reasoning. I love to follow the workings of a fine mind.”

It was hard not to feel flattered.

Mig said, “It’s been clear from the start that you know a great deal more about everything than the rest of your family. It was this knowledge that made you curious to see me when Gerald was reluctant to let anyone stick their nose into Woollass family business after the visit of Liam Molloy.”

“The Irishman. Yes, I recall. Sad business.”

“Sad for him, certainly. But I asked myself two questions. The first was, why should Molloy have come here unless he felt sure there was something to find? And the second was, why should you have been so untroubled by the prospect of my visit unless you were certain there was nothing for me to find? A large part of the answer in both cases was Jolley Castle.”

Again there was no protest, just an encouraging nod.

“Molloy had been to Jolley,” Mig went on. “I think what he found there was a detailed account of the interrogation of Father Simeon and its outcome. This is what brought him first to Kendal then to Illthwaite in search of any other information he might be able to garner to add even more spice and color to his story.”

“How fascinating. But you’ve hardly had time to visit Jolley yourself to confirm the presence of this document, or even its absence,” said Dunstan.

“I’ve done better than that. Max Coldstream got Lilleywhite, the new archivist, to burrow. Alas, he could find nothing relating to Tyrwhitt’s torture of Simeon.”

“A pity. Still, it’s early days, especially with the archive in such a state of confusion,” said Dunstan consolingly.

“Confusion? I didn’t mention confusion. But of course, you’d know that because you went to see for yourself, didn’t you, Mr. Woollass? The family were happy to let accredited researchers in, thinking perhaps that their occasional efforts might impose some kind of order without the expense of hiring a professional archivist to do the job. Well, they were wrong. And now the National Trust is having to pay handsomely. But amidst all the confusion left by the Jolleys was one little island of order: a box file containing letters requesting permission to trawl through their papers. Molloy’s letter is there. And so, I learned when I talked to Max on the phone this morning, is yours, dated only a week or so after poor Molloy’s accident.”

Once more Dunstan cried, “Bravo! How well you have done. Now, let me see… yes, I’ve got it. Your conclusion is that, just as special circumstances made you feel justified in removing Father Simeon’s journal from its hiding place, so I was justified in my removal of a section of Tyrwhitt’s record. What will the world make of such a pair of pícaros?”

It was an ingenious tu quoque rejoinder which left Mig for the moment uncertain where to go.

Finally he opted for the politician’s route.

When in doubt, be indignant.

“There’s a significant difference,” he said. “In fact and in law. I have restored Simeon’s journal to the person with best claim to ownership. Whereas you…”

“Yes?”

“What have you done with the Tyrwhitt record? Burned it?”

“Good Lord. You think me such a vandal?” said Dunstan.

He even does indignation better than me, thought Mig.

“I don’t know what you may be capable of. If not burned, then you’ll certainly have taken care to hide it so well that no one will ever be able to discover it as evidence of your crime.”

This sounded so forced and bombastic even to himself that he could not blame the old man for the flicker of amusement that touched his thin lips.

“Ah, the pleasures of being outraged! I remember them well though nowadays I enjoy them but rarely, having been warned by my medical advisor that undue excitation could rapidly summon me to a far more terrible judgment than any you can pass.”

Does undue excitation cover your lunchtime siestas with Mrs. Collipepper? Mig wondered. A slow smile spread across Dunstan’s face as though he heard the thought, and Mig felt himself flushing once more.

Forcing himself to speak calmly, he said, “There is no witness present and I assure you I haven’t come along equipped with a hidden recorder. So perhaps at the least you would do me the kindness of telling me what the Jolley document contained.”

“My dear young man, what do you take me for? You are as entitled to view the document as I am entitled to see the one you purloined. You’re quite right. I have hidden it, but, à la Poe, in plain view.”

He picked up a transparent protective folder from the desk.

“Here it is. Not hugely significant in the great scheme of things, in fact only of any real interest to those directly concerned, such as our two families. Take a look. I would value your opinion.”

He put the open folder into Mig’s hand.

Anyone who trumped you so effortlessly at every turn, you either had to hate or to admire, thought Mig ruefully. He hadn’t yet made up his mind.

He opened the folder and began to read.

2. Like a dingo

Sam Flood moved at a pace which came close to being a trot down the center of the road leading from St. Ylf’s to the Stranger House.

She was a missile in search of a target but not yet able to read the code in which its program was written.

After he’d finished speaking, Swinebank had broken the eye contact maintained throughout his story, turned away, and looked down at the memorial inscription.

Sam remained stock-still for what felt like an age. She had seen the look on the man’s face before he turned. Shame had been there, and regret; but also huge relief that at last he had unburdened himself of his corrosive secret.

Deep resentment that he should be finding ease in what was causing her so much pain restored her movement in the form of an anger whose force set her body shaking.

“And that’s it?” she burst out. “Nearly half a century for your second silence, and now you’re starting in on your third?”

Swinebank turned back and looked at her helplessly.

“What more can I say? Ask me anything you like, I’ll try to answer. I’ve got no excuses to offer. Not for myself anyway. Just heartfelt apology. To you above all. And your family. And to my parishioners. I’ve let them down too. All these years they’ve felt they shared the blame for the death of the best man they ever knew. He came among us for a while but we weren’t anywhere near good enough to keep him here, that’s what they think, that’s why they clammed up when you started asking questions about someone called Sam Flood.”

Suddenly Sam was sick to death of hearing about her namesake.

“Sam Flood, saintly Sam, that’s all I ever hear from you people!” she said. “You think it was his tender bloody heart trying to cope with all the wickedness he saw that made him top himself, don’t you? Well, you’d better get disenchanted! It was a lot closer to home than that. It was catching his best mate screwing his best girl that tipped him over. Yeah, something as banal and commonplace as that. Sexual betrayal. If you’re a Latin lover, you kill them both! If you’re an English curate, you kill yourself! Either way you don’t end up getting canonized!”

She realized Swinebank was looking at her in amazement. She’d let out Edie and Thor’s secret without thinking. But so what? They were both adults, they could take it. It was time for all of Illthwaite’s sordid little secrets to see the light of day.

She went on with undiminished force.

“He was a grown man, he could make choices. It’s my gran who’s the only real victim here. She was just a kid. She got raped and nobody noticed. She got posted off like a fucking parcel to the other side of the world and nobody gave a toss. And when she got there, she got treated worse than shit, and still not a single hand was lifted to defend her. That’s what you should be feeling guilty about. I can survive living in a world where some nutty parson tops himself. It’s living in a world where what happened to kids like my gran can happen that makes me want to spew my guts!”

“I don’t understand,” said Swinebank. “What are you saying?”

He was looking bewildered, but there was something else there too.

Sam thought, I’ve given the bastard hope. He’s thinking, maybe Saint Sam’s death wasn’t his fault after all!

She forced herself to think rationally. Make sure you’ve got all the equations worked out on the board before you let go.

She said, “Why didn’t you tell anyone you’d seen Edie in Flood’s room?”

He said, “I did. I told Dunstan Woollass.”

“Woollass? Not your father?”

He laughed. There was no humor in it, a little sadness, a lot of bitterness.

“I told him the story about going out to play and having an accident. When he came to see me in the hospital next day, he told me that Sam was dead. He said he expected the police would want to interview me and he asked if I had anything else to say. I said no. That’s where my father got his ministry wrong. He made himself more terrifying than God. But after he’d gone, Mr. Woollass came to see me. It was easy talking to him, especially as he knew all about everything…”

“How? How did he know?”

“Gerry had told him. Once I realized he knew what had happened, it all came out. When I ended by saying it was me who was responsible for Sam killing himself, he was marvelous. He said there must have been things going on in Sam’s mind we didn’t know about. He said that all men have secrets they want to keep. Like me, like my secret. Some men were strong and could keep them and lead a good life even if their secret was bad. My secret wasn’t very bad, he said. I’d just been a witness. Gerry had been punished, both his father on earth and his Father in heaven had seen to that. And Pam had been taken care of. As for the Gowders, he’d deal with them. It wasn’t my secret that had made the curate kill himself. It was his own.”

“He said that?” Sam was puzzled. Intrigued too. This old guy she still hadn’t met seemed to hover over everything that went on in Illthwaite. Maybe he was indeed the heavenly as well as the earthly father! “And did he give any hint what the curate’s own secret might have been?”

Swinebank said, “He said he didn’t know, no one could truly know another man’s thoughts. But it must have had something to do with not being as good as he wanted to be, as other people thought he was. I’d told him about seeing Edie there, and he said it probably had something to do with this. Sex was one of the most pleasurable routes to hell, he said, but it got you there just the same. But now poor Sam was dead and beyond our judgment. And unless Edie herself came forward and told about her visit to the vicarage, it would be a kindness to her, and a help to Sam’s memory, for me not to say anything about it. Edie kept quiet, so I did too. God forgive me for being so weak.”

He looked so pathetic that Sam’s scornful rejoinder died in her throat. He’d been eleven years old, terrified by his father, soft-soaped by Dunstan Woollass. They were the real villains who got little Pam Galley out of their hair by parceling her off to Oz.

Swinebank was still desperate to compound confession with explanation.

He said, “I’ve tried to atone. I’ve devoted my life since to giving this parish the loving side of my faith that my father chose to ignore – ”

“You’re bringing the tears to my eyes,” interrupted Sam. “You’ll be telling me next Gerry Woollass has been devoting his life to good works too.”

“In fact, he has,” said Swinebank. “And in face of much personal grief. His wife left him, and his daughter has turned her back on his faith in every way possible. If atonement isn’t possible, there’s not much point to the existence of either of us. After your revelation last night, I cannot imagine how he’s feeling now.”

“You can’t? You think the news that when he raped a kid all those years ago he not only got her pregnant but caused her death too might have put him off his breakfast?”

She glared at him, promising herself, if he says anything more about atonement I’ll nut him!

He said, “Gerry must answer for himself. No man can read another’s heart. We all must make our own decisions.”

“And what decision were you going to make if I hadn’t turned up?” she demanded. “Public confession? Even though the Gowders were putting the silencers on you again? That’s why they were here, wasn’t it?”

He said, “They are worried. They reacted. Action, reaction. That sums up the Gowders, morally, intellectually. Judging them by normal standards doesn’t work. But they’re not altogether bad.”

“That’s very Christian of you, Pete,” she said. “It’s up to you if you want to forgive them for breaking your wrist when you were a kid and shoving you around this morning to make sure you continued to keep quiet. But when it comes to forgiving them for making my gran strip and egging on Woollass to rape her, I don’t think it’s your call. Where’ve they gone now? To give Gerry Woollass a kicking to make sure he doesn’t talk?”

“I doubt it,” he said wearily. “They rely on old Dunstan to keep Gerry in order. Of course, what happens when the old man dies is something else. I think Gerry really hates them, for what they made him do…”

“Made him? You don’t make someone commit rape!” she burst out indignantly.

“Without them it wouldn’t have happened,” he said. “But he hates it also that, because of him, his father has taken care of them over the years. Gerry has devoted himself to charitable works, but as far as the Gowders are concerned if the workhouse and the treadmill still existed, he would happily see them consigned there.”

“And he’d be with them if I had my way,” said Sam. “And that would still be charity.”

She turned on her heel and walked away, taking the direct route through the Devil’s Door. It felt right.

She didn’t look back. She felt some sympathy for Pete Swinebank. He’d been a child. Twice he’d looked to an adult for guidance. First the curate, then Dunstan Woollass. Both times things had gone wrong. So, she could admit sympathy but she couldn’t offer absolution. He’d stopped being a kid long ago and had still kept quiet. But the bottom line for Sam was, he’d been there when it happened, it had been within his power to tell them no, they shouldn’t be doing this, to threaten to tell his father, their fathers.

OK, he’d been very young and he’d been very scared.

But she knew beyond any shadow of doubt, and with no sense of self-righteousness, that in the same circumstances at the same age, she herself would have screamed and yelled and done everything in her power to bring things to a halt.

Her mind was in a turmoil as she strode along. Conflicting ideas spun round and clashed… head straight up to the Hall for a confrontation… find somewhere quiet to sit and work things out… talk to Mig (where did that one come from?)… get in her car and drive far away from Illthwaite…

It occurred to her that her namesake, Saint Sam, must have trodden this same road with his mind in a similar whirl. He’d opted for talking with the person he felt closest to, and look where that had got the poor bastard!

By the time she reached the pub she was no nearer resolution. Through the window she glimpsed people in the bar. She didn’t want convivial company, she didn’t want to sit in her tiny room alone. If Mig had been there, upstairs or downstairs, she might have gone in, but he was up at the Hall. Talking to Dunstan Woollass.

Her great-grandfather. The great god of Skaddale who’d used his power to banish little Pam and despatch her on her fatal journey.

She crossed the road to the bridge, and looked down into the dimpling waters of the Skad. The shadow. The corpse. This was a place with its roots deep in a mysterious and mythical past. But no more so than back home. When it came to mumbo-jumbo, Ma and her people could run rings round this lot. And, so far as she knew, the mythologies of Australia had proved pretty resistant to any attempts to work them into this Johnny-come-lately Christian stuff. Things seemed so much more clear-cut back home. Even the light was clearer. Here the sun still shone unchallenged as it approached its zenith, but all around, the sharp edges of the heights were being blunted by a translucent haze that threatened change.

She longed for some clear Australian light so she could see her way forward. Things here were so messy. Wrongs had been done, compounded by other wrongs, cover-ups, lies. She needed to get a grip. First rule of any problem was assemble your data. Who had suffered here? Pam Galley, total victim in every respect. Saint Sam the curate, who’d done his best for Pam, but whose best hadn’t been good enough. Some might say that Rev. Pete too had suffered, and even Gerry Woollass, but any pain they felt was self-inflicted and, in the case of Gerry, she assured herself, far short of what he deserved.

And who had benefited? The ghastly Gowders. They’d orchestrated the rape and the only consequence for them was that they’d come under Dunstan Woollass’s protecting hand. He’d probably assured them they’d go to jail if they blabbed and they’d survive in comfort if they held their tongues. No contest.

Which left Dunstan. The old man whom she only knew by report and reputation. Like God. Only this one really existed, and knew everything, and controlled everything. Except the future. He’d done everything to protect his family, and now, if Edie Appledore was right, his family was coming to an end. Perhaps there was a higher God who didn’t care for a rival and chuckled to think, as he watched Dunstan’s machinations, that Frek the lez would be the last of the Woollasses.

Except for me.

The realization came into Sam’s mind the way the answer to a math problem often did. Simple, complete, as if someone else had spoken it.

Except for me.

A horn blew. She looked up to see a VW Polo half turned on to the narrow bridge.

Frek Woollass leaned out of the driver’s window and called, “Morning. Sorry to disturb your meditations, but even with your figure it’s going to be hard to squeeze by.”

Sam stood up and made her way to the other end of the bridge. When the vehicle came alongside, Frek brought it to a halt again.

“Thanks,” she said. “Are you all right? You look rather pale.”

Sam looked into those calm gray-blue eyes. She knew now where she’d seen them before. They were her pa’s eyes. Her own eyes. If there’d been any doubt about what Swinebank had told her, it fled. This woman was her… what? Her aunt! Jesus!

“I’m fine. Yourself?”

“Fine too. Are you just lingering on the bridge, or were you crossing it with a view to going up the Bank? If so, jump in.”

Sam didn’t have to think.

“Yes, I’m going up to the Hall,” she declared. “A lift would be good.”

She slid into the passenger seat.

“No gas guzzler today then?” she said as the Polo moved forward.

“The 4x4, you mean? That’s Daddy’s. He claims he needs it round here. For Cambridge, however, the smaller the better, as I gather you will shortly find out for yourself. Mig Madero mentioned you were going up. Something to do with math?”

Makes it sound like I’m going to be on a supermarket checkout, thought Sam.

“That’s right. And you play around with this Viking stuff, right?”

“Right,” said the woman, smiling. “The literature of Nordic mythology, folklore and legend, to be precise.”

“So not much use then. Practically, I mean.”

“I wouldn’t say that. Study of old myth systems can remind us of a lot of things the modern scientific mind has forgotten.”

“Like how to cure cancer by chewing nettles?” mocked Sam.

“Like understanding motive and cause and effect. What made Loki want to harm Balder, for instance, if that means anything to you.”

“Oh yeah. Balder was the good god, right? Like my namesake, the curate – wasn’t that what you told Thor Winander?”

“My my,” said Frek. “You do get people to talk to you, don’t you?”

“It’s my sweet Australian nature,” said Sam. “So what did make this Loki guy want to harm Balder? Because he was so good, maybe?”

“I don’t think so. Because he was so… ineffectual. Snorri Sturluson – he was a thirteenth-century Icelandic scholar – tells us how lovely and good Balder was, but then he says that none of his decisions ever really changed anything. Loki was mischievous, often downright wicked, but whatever he decided to do got done.”

“And that’s a reason for killing someone?”

“It’s a motive,” said Frek. “Loki got his comeuppance as justice required. But even this isn’t straightforward. The gods bound him in a cave with a serpent’s venom dripping on to his face so that he writhed around in immortal pain. But with every convulsion, he causes the earth itself to quake, prefiguring the great earthquakes which are to be such a dreadful feature of Ragnarok.”

“What the hell’s that?” said Sam, thinking that on the whole she’d have preferred the nettle option.

“With one k at the end, it’s the doom of the gods. With two, it’s the twilight of the gods, a more poetic notion which appealed to the Romantic imagination. It’s the end of everything, good and bad.”

Sam tried to work out what this weird woman was saying to her. Sounded like the kind of stuff that her ma could have got her head round. Maybe Pa too. She heard his voice in her head.

Truth’s like a dingo, girl. It’ll run till you get it cornered. Then watch out!

“Everything’s got to end,” she said. “You can’t stop doing what’s right because you’re scared of the consequences. Even gods should get what they deserve.”

Frek laughed and said, “Brother will kill brother, incest and adultery shall abound, there will be an axe-age, a sword-age, a wind-age, a wolf-age, before the world plunges into fire. That’s what an Icelandic prophetess said. How might a mathematician have put it?”

“There is nothing unknowable,” said Sam. “We must know. We shall know. That’s what a great mathematical prophet said. That’ll do for me.”

They were now coming up to the Forge. Frek came to a halt and blew her horn. The end of a vehicle was visible round the corner by the smithy. It looked to Sam like the Gowders’ pickup. After a moment, Thor Winander appeared and approached the car.

He raised his eyebrows when he saw Sam, then winked at her and said to Frek, “Twenty minutes, we’ll be there. You sure that Gerry’s all right with this? He was pretty unfriendly when I was preparing the site.”

“He’s fine, I promise you,” said Frek. “It will grow on him.”

“If you say so. See you later then. Cheers, young Sam.”

As Frek set the Polo in motion again, she explained, “Thor’s promised to set up a carving he’s done for me before I go back to Cambridge tomorrow.”

For a moment Sam thought she meant the splay-legged nude and wondered where the hell she could display that. Then she recalled the Other Wolf-Head Cross.

“You didn’t say who you wanted to see at the Hall,” continued Frek. “Is it my grandfather? Or my father? Because if it’s Daddy, he’s not there, I’m afraid. He was driving Angelica back to her House this morning, and I’m not sure when he’ll be back.”

Sam, who’d never stood back from a confrontation in her life, was slightly ashamed to feel relief. She still had no idea how she was going to handle a face-to-face with the man who as a child had fathered her father on another child. If she met Gerry now, all she could foresee was a shouting match, with the Gowders and Thor Winander expected on the scene any moment to make up the audience.

“Your grandfather will do,” she said.

“Will he? I’ll need to check if he’s up to it. His trip down to the Stranger was his first excursion in a little while, and one way and another it left him a little drained.”

Sam thought, she knows something. Maybe not everything, but enough.

Frek went on, “He’s talking with Mr. Madero this morning. Some academic matter, I believe…”

“Academic?” interrupted Sam, tired of obliquity. “Bit more than that, I’d say.”

“Would you now?” murmured Frek. “Someone else who’s opened up to you? How interesting. I wouldn’t have thought you had a lot in common. Perhaps time together trapped in the darkness brought you close?”

They were turning into the driveway of the Hall now. Frek brought the car to a halt before the front door.

“You should be careful, my dear,” she said, putting her hand on to Sam’s knee. “There’s not much future in falling for a priest.”

She squeezed gently.

Sam recalled what Edie Appledore had told her and grinned. There’s a laugh in everything if you look, was one of Pa’s philosophical gems at moments of complete disaster. Sam had just had a vision of telling him the sad truth about his mother, and then adding, “Oh, by the way, the good news is you’ve got a half-sister who’s a lezzie.”

She lifted Frek’s hand gently and said, “Mig’s no priest, believe me.”

“None of us can be sure of who we are until we put it to the test,” said Frek.

“Tested and proved,” said Sam, opening her door.

As Frek got out, she looked up. From the window immediately above the door a tall white-haired figure waved with a graceful economy of motion that would not have been out of place on a papal balcony. Sam felt his gaze register her too, then he turned away as Frek pushed open the front door.

“Come in,” she said. “Let’s go into the kitchen and have a cup of tea, then I’ll check if my grandfather is able to see you.”

But Sam’s eyes were fixed on the staircase, computing where the entrance to the room above her head would be located. That solved, she was done with calculation. Time to let instinct have its head.

“You take tea if you like, Auntie,” she said. “Me, I’m late for an appointment.”

And then she was off running.

3. The Jolley archive

The document Dunstan Woollass put into Mig’s hands at first reminded him of Alice Woollass’s household ledger, which had also consisted of sheets of foolscap-size paper each divided into three columns by two neatly drawn vertical lines. But by contrast with Alice ’s bold firm hand, the writing here was both faded and cramped.

Observing he was having difficulties, Dunstan offered him the magnifying glass.

And now the detail of Francis Tyrwhitt’s job log sprang out at him, and the impression of workaday domesticity faded into a background against which the horror of what he was reading stood out even more violently.

The first and narrowest column (about an inch) contained dates and times.

The second and broadest (perhaps four and a half inches) contained questions put and answers received.

So it must have been to open a filing cabinet in the office of a concentration camp and realize that here, neatly and efficiently stored, were the records of murder.

As he read, it became clear that this was no random application of pain but a carefully modulated progression, directly linked to the answers received.

It started on April 7th 1589.

At 9.15 A.M. the questioning commenced.

Q. What is your name?

A. Father Simeon Woollass.

Q. Where is your dwelling?

A. Where the Lord sends me.

Opposite this in the third column he read:

Insert needle under nail of 1st finger, right hand.

Scream. Prayer (Lat).

Remove needle. 9.20.

Q. What is your name?

A. Father Simeon.

Q. Where is your dwelling?

A. I wander where the Lord sends me.

Needles, 1st and 3rd fingers, r.h.

Screams. Prayers. Face white. Vile blasphemies (Eng.) Babbling. Piss & shit.

Face gray-yellow. Eyes rolling.

Three times the process was repeated, the needles withdrawn, the question re-put, and the unsatisfactory answer followed by more needles in more fingers, always on the same hand. The final ones were recorded as being heated till they glowed scarlet.

At 9.45 A.M. the same questions. But this time the answer was different.

A. Spain. I dwell in Spain. And at Douai in the English College. These are my dwellings. What more can I say?

Now came a pause with the single word Water in Column 3.

Then at 10.00 A.M. the process resumed.

Q. When did you come to England?

A. In the prime of 1588.

Q. Where have you stayed in England?

A. Nowhere. In fields in ditches in sheds.

Now the torture was renewed till finally an answer was given in the form of an address in Gray’s Inn Fields in London which for a brief moment satisfied the interrogator.

Mig looked up. He was feeling Mrs. Appledore’s fried breakfast moving uneasily in his stomach. He met Dunstan’s sympathetic gaze.

“He comes over,” said the old man, “as a most meticulous man. In preparation, in keeping records, in making physical and psychological judgments. You notice the careful note he makes of which fingers the needles are driven into. And he works only on the right hand. Father Simeon, I would guess, was, like most of our family, left-handed. Tyrwhitt would not want to maim the hand that might be needed to sign a confession.”

“You sound almost as if you admire him,” said Mig.

“Admire? No. But appreciate, yes. He was working on behalf of his faith, and I do not doubt that many of the refinements of his techniques were garnered from the annals of our own Church’s long war against heresy.”

“That makes them all right?”

Dunstan shrugged.

“It makes them understandable. When we are judged, Madero, surely our motives will be accepted in mitigation? But I’m interrupting your perusal of the document.”

Mig scanned down. Tyrwhitt’s basic technique of pain and reward, of following innocuous questions which Simeon could answer with more probing questions which he tried to evade, was varied only in the change from time to time of the instruments of torture and the parts of the body he attacked. When the right hand was, as he put it, for the present played out, he shifted his attention to the left foot, then the right eye, then the left ear. But nothing he did was life threatening. And whenever Father Simeon showed signs of escaping into unconsciousness, he received water and a respite from pain.

“Interestingly,” observed Dunstan, “and by contrast with modern techniques practiced by most security agencies, there is no attack on the genitalia. Perhaps through experience Tyrwhitt had discovered that men whose vows of chastity made them, as it were, spiritual eunuchs did not fear in the same degree as the laity the threat of castration.”

Mig ignored him and read on.

As the tortured man’s powers of resistance weakened, the questions became cleverer, subtly implying knowledge already possessed, and inviting Simeon to protect the innocent from the fate he was suffering.

Simeon had been taken on the outskirts of Chester and Tyrwhitt was keen to get him to implicate a certain local Catholic, Sir Edward Ockendon, whose name was familiar to Mig as a recusant. But the pursuivant directed his questions with a clever obliquity, concentrating on the baronet’s sister, as if she were the main object of his interest.

Q. What did the Lady Margery Ockendon say to you when you discussed the question of the Queen’s edicts with her?

A. I never spoke with Lady Margery.

Q. Was Lady Margery ever present when you celebrated Mass in the chapel of her brother’s house in Chester?

A. I tell you, I know not the Lady.

Q. Was the Lady Margery confederate with her brother Sir Edward in the supply of succor and protection to you during your sojourn at Chester?

A. Will you not hear me? I know her not.

Q. Did not the Lady Margery by word and token make clear to you that she still held to the old discredited doctrines of Rome? Did she not regularly attend Mass with her brother in the family chapel? Would she not admit this if we put her to the question? Speak out. You hold her fate in your hands. Come, man, the truth! Or will you make me rip it out of her with pinchers and poignard?

A. I have told you, I never met the Lady Margery. As God is my witness, she was never present at any Mass I held in Chester.

Q. So, if she were not present, who was in attendance beside Sir Edward?

And so the implied admissions came. And with each, the next was easier. But never any mention of the Woollass family until near the end.

Q. Father, because I am satisfied that you have dealt fairly with me, I have no purpose to question you as to the actions and beliefs of any members of your own family, if only you will answer one last question, which is this. I have it on authoritie that you were in company of a notorious agent of the Hispanic king during your time in Lancashire. Do but say where I might lay hands on this enemy of our noble Queen and all is done between us.

A bargain offered. A real bargain. The safety of his own family weighed against the safety of a foreign fugitive, suspected of murder, and seriously injured already.

Eventually, inevitably, the answer came, that this agent lay in a house in Lancaster, waiting till a ship could be found that would bear him home to Spain.

Mig looked up to find Dunstan’s gaze, benign, compassionate, fixed upon him.

Perhaps, he thought, if that answer had not been given, Miguel Madero might have returned home to see his bastard child, leaving Tyrwhitt to visit his wrath on the Woollasses, whose family line might well have been cut short.

In which case the old man wouldn’t be here, and he himself wouldn’t have needed to come here, and…

It was pointless multiplying possibilities, though Sam would no doubt have an equation to cover all eventualities. He recalled her hand squeezing his thigh as she took her leave.

He said briskly, “And was there anything in the rest of the Jolley records that gave a further account of this so-called agent?”

“A note to the effect that a Spanish emissary of King Philip was taken in Lancaster, that he confessed to having been in touch with certain notorious recusants, but died under examination before he could give details or sign a written deposition. This is almost certainly the same episode which my grandfather refers to in his footnote.”

“And you believe this was probably the fugitive youth your family helped – my ancestor, Miguel Madero?”

“Who else? I would guess that, when Simeon finally left Illthwaite, he took the injured boy with him. He must have been a considerable encumbrance to one who was himself a permanent fugitive. Those who provided refuge on their journey into Lancashire probably had their own theories as to the identity of this wounded foreigner. Rumors grow; eventually Tyrwhitt hears that Father Simeon is traveling in company with an Hispanic agent. When he picks up Simeon alone, he is fired by the prospect of a great coup in using him to capture this important Spaniard who by now had been exaggerated into a member of the nobility and a personal emissary of King Philip.”

“That he was none of these things must have been evident to his interrogator within a very short time,” said Mig.

“Shorter than you think,” said Dunstan. “He was said to have died under examination. It’s clear that Tyrwhitt was far too expert to torture people to death. No, I suspect that the poor lad was almost dead already when he was taken. He’d been crucified, for God’s sake, and the journey to Lancaster had probably undone any progress he’d made while in Alice ’s care. My guess is he died almost immediately, might even have been dead when taken, so Tyrwhitt claimed what kudos he could by fabricating a vague confession, adding weight to the case against other known suspects.”

The old man shook his head as if to dislodge the images crowding in on his imagination, then rose abruptly and went to the window, thrusting it open to admit birdsong and a warm breeze which rustled the papers on the desk.

“Fresh air,” he said, breathing deeply. “Beware drafts, my doctor says. They can blow you to heaven. But what can heaven be, compared to this? How I love this place, especially at this time of year with the whole valley changing beneath me. You can keep your New England tints, they’re for the eye. Old England ’s palette lays its colors on the heart. Change and renewal. Ever changing, ever the same. Sorry, Madero, sometimes sensibility gets the upper hand over sense, even in a dry old stick like me.”

He turned to face into the room and said, “So what do you, the outsider, think of our little valley, now you’ve been here a couple of days?”

“I like some of it very well,” said Madero, wary of this change of direction.

“Good. We have a lot in common. Devotion to the faith. Love of family. Appetite for scholarship. Respect for truth. All most praiseworthy, but when we find two or more of them in opposition, what then? Personally, where my family is concerned, I have too great a sense of pride to want the world picking over our bones. What say you?”

“Let us be precise,” said Madero. “You are suggesting we should repress both these documents?”

“What would suffer if we did? Scholarship? We both know a great portion of the scholar’s life is spent dropping buckets into empty wells and drawing nothing up. So we add a little nothing to the nothing. Where’s the harm?”

“What about truth, respect for which you claimed we hold in common?”

“What is truth?” demanded Dunstan. “That Simeon broke under torture? Or that in fact Tyrwhitt got very little out of him? Turning him loose wasn’t a reward for betrayal but a psychological ploy to make the world think he had utterly betrayed his religion. A priest executed is evidence of the strength of faith. A priest released implies its weakness. It worked, though nothing was ever directly proven against Simeon. It took three centuries for my family to clean away the muck that Tyrwhitt smeared across our name. What will happen now if another hack like Molloy gets hold of this?”

“I hardly think it will make headline news in the national press,” said Mig dryly.

“It will make news in places that matter to me and my family,” said the old man. “Well, another half-century and that will probably matter no longer. The Woollass name will have vanished from the earth. Let them say what they will then, but for the present, I will fight with all my strength against such a manifest injustice.”

“Injustice? He told them where they would find my namesake,” said Mig.

“Who had been saved and succored by my family, by Simeon’s family. Who had been carried down to Lancaster by Simeon at what must have been great risk to himself. Who he probably thought would have been smuggled out of the country long since! It can only have been his increasing debility which made it impossible to move him. There is little to reproach Simeon with here.”

“He reproached himself,” said Mig. “He could not face my family and give them news of their loved one’s fate.”

“He attempted to approach you, according to the story you told Frek,” said Dunstan. “If you truly believe his spirit has been in torment all these years, then let him now at last have his peace, forgiven by you and forgotten by the world.”

It was an appeal which fell on receptive ground. The passionate need to know which had been Mig’s emotional dynamic since his first involvement with Illthwaite seemed to have faded. He had felt its absence yesterday morning up at Mecklin Moss. Was this what all those years of pain and vision and misunderstanding and misdirection had been about? There must have been easier ways for him to be directed toward the truth! And what was he going to do with this truth now he had reached it? There was no one to punish, unless perhaps the Gowders for being descendants of the dreadful Thomas and Andrew. What kind of justice was that? And even if he did feel like visiting the sins of the forefathers on their very distant children, did not that mean that by the same token he should be thanking Dunstan Woollass rather than arguing with him?

He surprised in himself a longing to sit down with Sam and discuss these things. What on earth did that signify? He’d known her in the social sense for just three days and in the biblical sense for a single night, yet here she was, the one person in all the world he wished to share his innermost feelings with! Was this what was meant by sexual obsession? No, there had to be more than that. If he felt himself at sea intellectually, it was in part because his emotional world now had a new center to which all his energies were drawn. Could it be that it was to this that all the signs and portents of his life had been directing him? To his encounter with Sam?

It was an absurdity. Perhaps, because it put his own pleasure and happiness before anything else, even a blasphemy.

Dunstan, as if to give him space to pursue his internal debate, had turned to look from the window again.

“Ah, here comes Frek,” he said, waving. “That’s nice. She wouldn’t want to miss you, I’m sure. And I think she’s brought your friend.”

Mig’s heart leapt but he refused to be diverted. He said, “Is there any indication where my ancestor’s body was buried?”

Dunstan looked over his shoulder and said, “I’m sorry, no. The only consolation must be that, as he was not a priest and was never condemned by trial, he would not have suffered the customary mutilations. But I doubt if he received an individual burial. Probably he would have been thrown into the common pit to which the bodies of criminals and paupers were committed. But do not worry. You of all people must be sure that God knows where he rests.”

Mig stood up. His mind told him it was over even though he felt no sense of completion.

He tossed the Tyrwhitt document on to the desk.

“Do with it what you will,” he said.

“You are sure of this?” said Dunstan, turning from the window. “You do not want to show it to Dr. Coldstream and discuss it with him?”

He’s playing with me, thought Mig. Just as Frek did. It must be in the blood.

He wasn’t sure of anything except that he wanted to be out of here.

“Yes, I’m sure,” he said.

He picked up his briefcase and headed for the door.

Before he could reach it, it was flung open and Sam burst into the room.

He felt joy. No puzzlement, no doubt, no uncertainty, just sheer unadulterated joy which for that moment banished all those other negative emotions. If she had run to his arms he would have embraced her without reserve.

But she didn’t even acknowledge his presence.

Behind her stood Frek, looking for the first time in their acquaintance slightly flushed and out of breath.

Sam advanced till she was only a couple of feet in front of the old man she’d seen looking from the window.

“You’re Dunstan Woollass?” cried Sam. “Of course you are. I recognize the eyes. You know who I am?”

She ripped the hat off her head as if the sight of her disfigured skull would aid identification.

“I believe I do,” said Dunstan with great courtesy. “I’ve heard a great deal about you and I’ve been looking forward to meeting you and learning more.”

“More than you want, maybe,” she said. “But it’s not me we’re here to talk about, it’s you. Dunstan Woollass, this is your fucking life!”

4. The truth of blood

They sat around the kitchen table.

Dunstan was at its head. On the right with her back to the window was Frek. Opposite her was Mig Madero.

Sam sat at the bottom end, facing Dunstan. Behind him she could see Mrs. Collipepper making coffee. It was hotter here than out in the autumn sunshine.

All this was down to Dunstan.

In response to Sam’s aggressive flippancy he had said, “My life? Excellent. But that may take some little time and the atmosphere in here is a touch crepuscular and rather too chilly for my old bones. So why don’t we descend to the kitchen, which the Aga always maintains at a nice temperature? The kitchen is the heart of a well-run household, don’t you agree, Sam? May I call you Sam? How are you enjoying your visit to our little backwater? How do you like our valley? Do you feel any connection with it? I should be interested to know.”

By God, he was a cool customer, thought Mig. Set the tone, keep it well mannered and English, put a proper distance between yourself and this strident little colonial! He waited with interest and some concern to see how Sam would reply.

“I feel like I’ve stepped through a north-facing door and met the devil,” she said quietly.

It took Mig’s breath away. It even disconcerted the old man for a moment.

Then he smiled and said, “Ah yes. You’ve done the church tour, I see. Or has Frek been treating you to those old legends she values so much? But, as I always say to her, it’s all a matter of approach. It’s possible to step through a north-facing door and find yourself facing south. Let’s go down, shall we? Frek, my dear, your arm, if I may.”

Downstairs in the hall, Mig had offered to leave.

The old man said, “No, no. I have Frek to support me, and it would be unfair if Sam didn’t have a near and dear friend by her side.”

Once at the kitchen table, Sam sat in silence, waiting to see if the housekeeper was to be included in the permitted audience. Mrs. Collipepper set the coffee down in front of Frek, said, “I’ll see to your fire, Mr. Dunny. It’ll need banking,” then left.

Sam, recalling Mig’s laughing reference to the old goat’s midday “nap,” wondered if this was some kind of code.

“Now, my dear,” said Dunstan to Sam. “The floor is yours.”

Keep it simple, thought Sam. And keep it cool and controlled.

“I’ve been talking to Pete Swinebank,” she said. “He tells me that in January 1961 he was present on Mecklin Moor when your son, Gerald, raped my grandmother, Pamela Galley, who was eleven at the time. I believe that not long after this happened your son confessed to you what he’d done.”

Mig could hardly believe what he was hearing, hardly begin to take in its implications. It was less than two hours since he and Sam had parted. Where had this devastating information come from? More importantly, what had it done to her and where was it leading? He looked at her with love and concern. She didn’t even glance at him. Her gaze was fixed on the old man, challenging him to deny it.

Frek continued pouring coffee as if nothing remarkable had been said.

Dunstan nodded vigorously, like an old tutor confirming the accuracy of a point well made in a seminar.

“Yes, that’s right, he did. But I was not the first to hear the sad tale. He told it first to his confessor, who urged him to make a clean breast to me. I reproved him, I punished him, and I removed him from Illthwaite lest his continued presence should cause the injured child more pain. But I knew my responsibilities did not end there. I took advice. Finally, feeling a deep obligation to take care of the poor girl’s long-term welfare, I made what seemed then the best possible arrangements to guarantee her future.”

He sat back with the look of a man who’d fought his corner for virtue in an unresponsive world and Sam felt her vow of control under early threat.

“Her future?” she echoed. “Yeah, you guaranteed that all right. All miserable eight months of it which she spent in pain and terror a world away from home among a bunch of insensitive and psychopathically cruel strangers.”

Her voice spiraled upward but she managed to hold it down beneath those near-ultrasonic levels it could reach at times of untrammeled emotion.

He leaned toward her a little, his face expressing concern, his eyes warm with compassion and sincerity.

“My dear, I do not doubt the truth of what you say for one moment,” he assured her. “What I have learned since – what we have all learned since – demonstrates how wrong we were, all of us at this end of the process, in our estimate that any short-term pain would be more than compensated by the long-term benefits. If anyone here knew the truth of what was going to happen to so many of these children when they reached your shores, do you think we would have permitted it to happen? I certainly had no idea. As to the fact that the child was pregnant, you must believe I was utterly ignorant here. She was carrying my grandchild, for God’s sake! Do you think I would have permitted my own blood to be born twelve thousand miles away and left in the care of strangers?”

The old bastard’s doing indignation! thought Sam. How the hell is it happening that I’m sitting here all calm and this slippery sod’s getting indignant?

To hell with control! Now’s the time to start screaming!

But before she could begin, Mig spoke in a mild but measured tone. He found he was looking at Dunstan Woollass from a new and unflattering angle. Removing historic documents to protect your family name was a venial sin, harming no one. But protecting your family name at the expense of an innocent child was very different.

He said, “I think we may accept that you didn’t know the girl was pregnant, Mr. Woollass, but that’s hardly the point. Surely if you were as concerned for her future as you claim, you would have made arrangements for regular reports on her welfare to reach you. Even if not detailed, I don’t see how they could have avoided mentioning the fact that the girl died in childbirth within a very few months of arrival in Australia.”

The response came not from Dunstan but from Frek.

She said, “All my grandfather would require was a general affirmation that all was proceeding according to plan. If at some point, early or late, someone saw fit to dilute the truth, then that’s hardly my grandfather’s fault, is it?”

“You mean, not mention the baby’s birth and the mother’s death?” said Mig incredulously. “That’s not dilution of the truth, that’s criminal misrepresentation!”

Sam had had enough. She wasn’t here as a spectator in some debating chamber.

“Shut up, both of you!” she yelled. “You’re here to listen, not to join in.”

“Quite right, my dear. This is between you and me,” said Dunstan, glaring reprovingly at his granddaughter.

Oh, but he’s good! thought Mig, observing the ease with which the old man lined himself up with Sam. What must he have been like in his prime!

For a moment Sam looked a touch disconcerted to find herself allied with Dunstan, but she had a directness to match his dexterity.

“Anyway, all this crap about who told who what is irrelevant. As soon as Pam Galley’s boat sailed, that was it for you, wasn’t it? End of story. Happy-ever-after or dead-in-a-ditch, didn’t matter. You just didn’t want to know. You’d got things tidied up here. The Gowders must have been easy once you’d spelled it out in words of one syllable. Big trouble if they blabbed, an easy ride if they kept quiet. As for Pete Swinebank, you probably worked out he’d be too scared to talk to his dad. You didn’t foresee that what they’d done would eat away inside him till finally he spilled it all out to the curate. But even that fell right for you when the poor sod took himself off the board. And there you were when Pete got the news, a sympathetic authority figure telling him what he wanted to hear, that the best thing he could do now was keep his mouth shut.”

Dunstan was nodding vigorously again.

“You put things very clearly, my dear. Your mathematical training, I suppose. Except that you have not brought motivation into the equation. I wished to protect my son. He was a child too. Back then we did not have the complex network of counselors and child psychiatrists we have today. What we did have was the Church, and it was to the Church’s care in the form of a Catholic boarding school that I committed Gerry in the hope and belief they would steer him right, and enable him to mature into a decent and moral man, which all the evidence suggests they have done.”

He paused as if to invite comment on his argument. There was the noise of an engine outside and through the window Mig saw a pickup arrive. On it, supported by the Gowder twins, lay the Other Wolf-Head Cross. Its huge eye seemed to leer into the kitchen, as if deriding what was happening there. Thor Winander was driving. He swung the wheel till the vehicle faced the kitchen. Catching Mig’s eye through the window, he gave a cheerful wave, then began backing the pickup up the slope to the scooped-out niche which Mig had noticed as he walked down from the Moss. So, no marble Venus but something equally pagan.

No one else in the room seemed to have noticed. Dunstan resumed talking.

“As for the girl, little Pam, I did exactly the same for her as I did for Gerry. I committed her to the Church’s care, in the honest belief that removing her from the scene of so much distress and helping her start a new life under the tutelage of the Church’s officers and agencies would bring her to a healthy and prosperous womanhood.”

This was breathtaking stuff, thought Mig. Hadn’t the man said he’d read Law at Cambridge? What an advocate was lost when he opted not to practice!

“You really fucking got it wrong then, didn’t you?” exclaimed Sam.

“Yes, I really fucking did,” said Dunstan.

The echo of her profanity came across not as reproof or parody but as another strut in the bridge he was trying to build between himself and his accuser. And the process continued as, with his unblinking gaze fixed on Sam, he repeated his pleas in a low, urgent voice, discarding flowing periods and fancy turns of phrase.

“I admit my first priority was always my own family. I had no idea the child was pregnant. It never crossed my mind. But I don’t need to tell you this, do I? Your own powers of reasoning will have got you there. I put my family first, and if I’d thought for one moment Pam Galley might be carrying Gerry’s child, then she would have been family too. As you are, my dear. As you are. And, hard though it will be for you to believe it at this moment, I cannot tell you how much that knowledge delights me.”

This beat all. And it wasn’t mere advocacy, thought Mig. He means it! He loves Frek, but when he looks at her, he sees a dead end. Now he sees those same unblinking Woollass eyes looking back at him from the face of a woman whose sexuality he knows, courtesy of my schoolboy blushes, is not in doubt. And he doesn’t just want to defend himself, he wants to conquer.

He glanced across the table at Frek and read in her face that this was how she understood the situation too. Did she care? That he couldn’t read.

Behind her through the window he saw that Thor had got out of the cab and was supervising the Gowders as they maneuvered the Wolf-Head off the pickup. Still no one else at the table seemed to have noticed what was happening outside. In Sam’s case this was probably as well. Sight of the twins could only be a distraction, and she had plenty on her plate dealing with Dunstan.

He could see that the old man’s response had to some extent wrong-footed her. He guessed there was a lot of her priest-decking father in her. In a tight spot he didn’t doubt Sam could throw a damaging hook too. But neither violence nor mathematics was going to see her through this present situation.

He wanted to speak to her, but knew it would be a mistake. Later perhaps there would be a time for words of comfort and advice, when they were alone and close…

His heart swooned at the prospect.

Dunstan had bowed his head as if in prayer. Now he sat up straight. His eyes bright, his voice firm, he did not look a man in his eighties.

He said, “You will want to think about what you’ve discovered, what I have said. And from what I’ve learned of you in the short time of our acquaintance, you’ll want to confront Gerry. My son. Your grandfather.”

“Too true I will!” snapped Sam. “He can run but he can’t hide.”

Mig saw Dunstan wince slightly at the banality, but all he said was, “I don’t believe he’s doing either. I know for a fact that after your revelations in the Stranger, he suffered a great perturbation of spirit. He spent much of last night in prayer with Sister Angelica. In our faith only a priest can administer the sacraments, but there are times when a troubled soul needs the ministrations of a wise and spiritual woman.”

“You mean he screws nuns as well as little girls?” snapped Sam.

Mig was shocked, but mingled with the shock was a degree of admiration and pride. She is indomitable! he thought.

Dunstan, however, threw back his head and snorted a short laugh.

“I don’t believe that is a habit he has got into, if you’ll forgive the tasteless pun.”

Unexpectedly he stood up and moved round the table as if he wanted to take a closer look at Sam. She rose too and, head tipped back to compensate for the disparity of height, met his gaze unflinchingly, diamond striking against diamond.

“Do not take it amiss, great-granddaughter, if I say that in you I see something of myself,” he said softly. “You will pursue an end no matter what gets in the way. You will not rest till you have worked everything out, no matter where it takes you, or how long.”

“Right to the last decimal point,” she said.

“And if it is one of those what I believe you mathematicians call irrational numbers which have no last decimal point?”

“Then I’ll keep going till what I believe you call God says it’s time to stop.”

“That’s a voice we all need to listen out for,” he said gravely. “I am truly sorry for everything that has happened, and for all of its consequences. Except for yourself. I cannot say I am sorry for that. I do believe that’s Gerry arriving now.”

The transition from intense emotion to casual comment was perfect, denying Sam the chance to offer any sharp, puncturing response. Instead she turned as they all did to look out of the window.

The Range Rover was drawing up alongside the house. Gerry Woollass got out. He didn’t look into the kitchen. All his attention was concentrated on the activity up the slope. He walked toward the three men who had managed to slide the Wolf-Head off the pickup. Presumably its base was now over the prepared site and all that remained was to raise it into position. This was no easy task even for three strong men. There was only room for one of the twins to stand at the front and push while Winander and the other hauled at the ends of a canvas sling wrapped around the huge bole.

Later Sam and Mig learned from Winander what was said.

Gerry, in Thor’s words, looked like death warmed up.

As he approached, he growled, “I see you’ve brought that abomination then.”

“Thought you and Frek had got all that sorted,” replied Thor.

“No. I gave in weakly, as I have always done. But that’s at an end. You and your minions can take it away. And that will be the last time I ever look to see you Gowders on my property. You’re finished here, you understand what I’m saying? It’s over. Now you must answer for yourselves. To God and to man. If the Law doesn’t punish you, then surely the Almighty will.”

It was, theorized Thor when he knew the whole story, mere rhetoric, spoken by a man dizzy from lack of sleep, his emotional being a maelstrom of guilt and remorse, and fear too at the path of confession and penitence which lay ahead. There was in fact and in law no case for the Gowders to answer. Even if some kind of charge could be devised after all these years, at the age of eleven in a rape case they were below the threshold of criminal responsibility. But such subtleties were not a part of the twins’ thinking. Their measure of what they had done was not a legal still less a moral one. It was the reward they had reaped from their silence, the patronage of Dunstan Woollass without which they would almost certainly have ended up, in their own outdated term, “on the parish.”

What they now heard from Gerry, that the truth was coming out and their protected status was over, simply confirmed what Sam’s outburst in the pub had threatened. They were in deep trouble.

The Gowder under the Wolf-Head, which sloped out from the bank at an angle of forty-five degrees like the figurehead of some monstrous ship, was unable to react except with a threatening glower.

His brother, however, shot out a huge hand as Gerry turned away and grasped his sleeve, saying, “Now ho’d on, now ho’d on,” still having enough strength in his other arm to do his share in steadying the Cross.

Probably Gerry’s intention was merely to shake himself free from this abhorrent touch. But as he flung out his arm to dislodge the grip, the back of his hand caught Gowder full across the bridge of his nose. Blood spurted, tears came to his eyes. Strike a fighting dog and it will strike back. With a bellow of rage, he flung himself at Gerry.

The loose end of the canvas sling whipped round the Cross and Thor’s own weight sent him toppling backward.

To the onlookers who saw all this in terrifying dumb-show, it seemed as if the monstrous Wolf-Head, freed at last from long restraint, leapt forward in its eagerness to destroy its nearest captor.

Even now if the other Gowder had simply hurled himself sideways he might have come off scot-free or at least escaped serious injury. But a lifetime of triumphing in all trials of strength inspired him to hold his ground.

Thor, prostrate, could only watch in horror. The other twin, grappling with Gerry, turned his head and saw too late what was happening. His brother held the monstrous bole of wood steady for perhaps two seconds, which was at least a second longer than most other men could have achieved.

And then he fell backward, still embracing the Wolf-Head, which crashed down along the whole length of his body.

His arms flew wide, he spasmed for a moment, then he lay there, stock-still, to the kitchen onlookers’ eyes like a man crucified upside down.

All this in less time than it takes to gasp a prayer.

After that it was all confusion, with everyone rushing around, and most of them guessing that not all the activity in the world could make the slightest difference.

Winander and Mig and the other Gowder, now forever Laal, dragged the Wolf-Head clear. Thor proved himself a man for emergencies, trying every technique of resuscitation, but it was soon clear to everyone except his brother that the crushed man was dead. He knelt by the body, pleading with it, urging it, screaming at it, to return to life. He resisted all efforts to move him away and he was still there when the small local ambulance came ululating up Stanebank.

Accepting, as though hope remained, that the hospital was the best place for his brother, Gowder finally allowed the paramedics to lift the body into the ambulance. As he climbed in beside it, Thor tried to accompany him, but felt himself pushed back, not roughly but firmly.

“Nay,” he said. “Just me. We’ve got nobody, we need nobody.”

Then he turned his terrible gaze, which had something of the Wolf-Head in it, on to the three Woollasses who stood close together and said, “This is thy doing.”

It defied logic, it expressed no threat, yet the words fell on the listening ears like a sentence spoken by a black-capped judge.

5. Invitations

As the ambulance’s warning wail faded down the valley, Sam looked toward the Woollass trio, standing close together, Dunstan in the middle, Frek and Gerry on either side.

Maybe that’s where I should be, she thought. I’m one of them.

Revulsion from the thought made her put her arm round Mig’s waist and he needed no second invitation to pull her close to his side.

Sam and Gerry had come near to each other during the melee after the accident, they had even made eye contact, but not a word had yet been exchanged. This didn’t feel like the right time. But when would be a right time to say whatever they had to say?

Thor looked from one group to the other as if sensing but not yet comprehending the gulf between them.

Then the kitchen door opened and Mrs. Collipepper appeared.

“Mr. Dunny, you get yourself in here afore you catch your death,” she commanded. “I’m surprised at you, Miss Frek. Can’t you see he’s not well?”

The old man did indeed look very frail, but Mig found himself wondering if this too wasn’t just part of the consummate performance he’d witnessed over the past hour.

It certainly resolved the situation. Gerry and Frek began to assist Dunstan toward the kitchen. Imperiously he shook them off on the threshold, looked back at Sam and said, “We should talk further, my dear. This afternoon, when we have all had time to recover our composure. Come to tea. Four-thirty sharp.”

For Mig and Sam the precise domesticity of the invitation was a tension-breaker. As the kitchen door closed, they looked at each other and had difficulty stifling their giggles.

“I’m glad you find something funny in all this,” growled Thor.

“I’m sorry,” said Sam remorsefully.

“You don’t understand,” said Mig.

“Then come down to the Forge and explain it to me,” said Thor, opening the door of the pickup.

Sam started talking even before they were out of the Hall driveway. She felt strangely calm now, as if the death of whichever Gowder it was had been cathartic. She felt the same calmness in Mig, pressed close against her on the seat. Perhaps, cocooned in this calm, they should carry on down the Bank to the Stranger House, get into their cars, and simply drive away, leaving Illthwaite and all that it had done to them behind.

But as she told Thor in simple lucid terms what she had discovered that morning, she knew that the calm was merely an interval, a gathering of strength for some final onslaught.

He brought the vehicle to a halt by his front door and sat in silence, staring straight ahead as she completed her story.

Then he smashed his fist on the dashboard and exclaimed, “Dear God! The poor kid. And that happened here and none of us knew anything about it? Dear God.”

“What would you have done if you had known?” asked Sam.

“For a start, I’d have made sure the kid was properly taken care of, not packed off to the sodding Antipodes!” he exclaimed.

It was a good answer, the best answer.

Now he turned his full attention on her.

“Sam,” he said. “I’m so sorry. This must be terrible for you. I’m sorry.”

“What for? It’s not your fault.”

“It happened here and we let it happen, and after it happened, we didn’t find out about it. I’m sorry for that. And I’m sorry you’ve been messed around, and I’m sorry you’ve had to… Jesus. You must hate this place and everybody in it.”

She considered this for a moment then said, “No.”

“No?”

He didn’t sound as if he believed her.

She said slowly, getting her thoughts in order, “Where’s the logic in that? What happened to my gran was terrible, all of it, what happened here and what happened back home. So if I hated everyone here then I’d have to hate a helluva lot of people back home too. And every tyke in both places.”

“Yorkshiremen?” said Thor, puzzled.

“Roman sodding Catholics,” said Sam. “Which would include my Aussie granpa and gran. And one or two others who aren’t so bad.”

She glanced at Mig who said, “Sam, I’m so sorry.”

“You too? So which of you pair of sorry plonkers is going to do something useful like getting me a stiff drink?”

They got out of the pickup and followed Thor into the kitchen where he picked up a bottle and some glasses before leading them out into the cobbled courtyard.

“Might as well enjoy the sun while we’ve still got it,” he said.

Above them the sun, just past its zenith, still shone out of a clear blue sky, but away to the west where the sea lay, huge storm clouds were now bubbling up.

They sat at one of his wrought-iron tables. Thor poured generous measures of Scotch. Raising his glass, he said, “To better times.”

They drank. No one seemed inclined to talk further. Sam’s eyes kept straying to the piece of wall against which the WolfHead had stood. She recalled how she’d found it menacing, repulsive – and compulsively attractive.

She said suddenly, “Until the moment it fell, I wanted it to fall. Once it happened, it was terrible. I wanted it all reversed. But before, when I laid eyes on the Gowders, I hated them so much it was like I caused it.”

Now they’ll say, There, there, don’t be so silly, she thought.

Mig said, “I felt the same. At least you were hating the same people that caused your family harm. My hate was four hundred years out of date.”

Thor said, “You’re both wrong. Anyone in the dock, it’s me. Industrial accident, employer’s responsibility. I can’t even say I wasn’t aware. I’ve gone on long enough about lifting gear and safety harnesses and not relying on the Gowders’ brute strength. Drink up.”

Mig accepted some more, but Sam put her hand over the glass.

“Need to keep a clear head,” she said. “It would be rude to turn up to tea at the Hall legless. In fact, maybe I should get back down the Stranger, grab a bite to eat and build up my strength.”

“Don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Thor. “I’d guess the Stranger’s buzzing this lunchtime, and there’ll be just one topic of conversation after the show last night. Plus once news of the accident gets round the village…”

“How’s that going to happen so soon?” asked Mig.

“This is Illthwaite. They’d hear the ambulance siren, plus Noddy Melton monitors the emergency channels. They’ll know already. You don’t want to walk into that. You’d better have a bite of lunch here with me. OK?”

They didn’t argue.

“Can I help?” asked Sam as Thor rose.

“Careful,” said Thor. “Haven’t they heard about us new men in Oz?”

They watched as he went into the house.

Sam said, “I’m glad we’re here. He’s what we need. He shows you can get over the past even though you never forget it.”

“You’ll get over all this then?” said Mig.

“Absolutely. You?”

“I hope so. But it’s hard to say until I’m sure what ‘all this’ entails.”

“I thought you were all done.”

“It doesn’t feel like it. Or maybe it’s just that I can’t feel it’s over for me until I’m sure it’s over for you.”

His expression was so full of affection and concern that she said, “Mig, look, it’s important we get things straight…”

“I know. I shouldn’t act like a lovesick adolescent who thinks one night of passion must presage a lifetime’s deep and meaningful relationship. Right?”

“Close,” she said, smiling. “I’d have said something like, lighten up, for Godsake, let’s see how things look away from this place. But maybe the way you put it is better. Look, I like you, I admit it. Must be chemical, I suppose, it’s certainly not rational. Set you down on paper, I wouldn’t hang you in a dunny. But in the flesh, I don’t know, I feel I’ve known you a long time, if that makes sense.”

“It makes sense to me, but if I start on again about feeling we were both sent here for a purpose and it’s the same purpose, you’ll probably break that bottle over my head.”

“You see? Like I said last night, you’re a quick learner.”

They both laughed at the memory.

Thor, emerging from the house with a tray, said, “How good it is to see the little victims at their play. This is the best I can do.”

It was a pretty fair best. Cold beef and pickles accompanied by crusty wholemeal bread and creamy fresh butter.

“I rang the hospital. They weren’t very forthcoming. All they’d say was the ambulance had just arrived and it would be some time before the medics had made an assessment. And I had to tell them I was the Gowders’ uncle to get them to tell me that. I’ll try again in half an hour. Not that I expect to hear anything but what was obvious to all of us.”

This dampened the mood again and they began their meal in silence. Eventually Thor made an effort at conventional conversation which the others joined in, rather stiltedly at first, but soon it began to flow and eventually it was possible to think for half-minutes at a time that they were just a group of friends enjoying a snack in the sunshine.

Dessert was tangy cheese, apple pie and strong black coffee.

After half an hour, Thor excused himself and went back inside. When he returned he looked very serious once more.

He said, “I rang the hospital again. They confirmed the poor bastard was dead on arrival. Then I asked about Laal. Normally they’d be very cagey talking about the living, but they were worried enough about him to be glad there was someone outside taking an interest. It was like I’d forecast. They had a hell of a job getting him to take it in. They had to let him see the body. For a while he just sat there in a stupor. Then suddenly he stood up and left.”

“Didn’t they try to stop him?”

“Would you try to stop a Gowder? Anyway, they had no cause. But the way he looked, they were worried.”

“So where’s he gone?” asked Mig. “Did he say anything at all?”

“Just three words as he got to his feet,” said Thor. “They did it. That’s all. As for where he’s gone, he’ll head for home, where else?”

“Shouldn’t there be someone at Foulgate to meet him?” said Sam.

“Yes. I’ll go myself,” said Thor. “But no hurry. He’s got no vehicle, public transport in these parts is irregular and round the houses. And only a very saintly or shortsighted driver would stop to give a Gowder a lift. I rang Edie at the Stranger too. She’ll pass the news on in the bar which, as I forecast, is absolutely packed. That means everyone will keep an eye open.”

“What will they do if they see him?”

“Why, help him, of course,” said Thor, surprised. “He may be a monster, but he’s our monster.”

Thor resumed his seat. Mig stood up and said, “Can I use your bathroom?”

“If you mean bog, there’s one downstairs, through the kitchen, turn left.”

As Mig disappeared inside, Thor said, “Incidentally, Sam, I should have thought sooner, if you want to use the phone, feel free. You might want to talk things over with someone back home.”

Sam glanced at her watch. It would be easy to say that it was too late, they’d be in bed, but she knew that would be just an excuse. Some time she was going to have to ring Vinada and tell them what she’d discovered. Part of her wanted to put this off till she’d had her face-to-face with Gerry Woollass. She’d no idea yet what she was going to say, but her awareness that it was her choice that had brought her to this point made her reluctant not to see it all the way through before reporting back home.

At the same time, her father was entitled to have an input. How he would react she couldn’t guess. He’d spent all his adult life thinking it was probably some randy priest who’d forced himself on the young girl in the nuns’ care, and he’d found a way to deal with that. After that first excursion, age sixteen, he had made no further attempt to solve the mystery of his parentage. She’d heard his reasons, but maybe he simply feared what he might do if he came face to face with the man.

Now he would have a name and an address and the whole sordid story.

Ma would be there, of course. Ma with her unique blend of common sense and semi-mystic insight.

The simple truth was she longed to hear their voices. Going round like the wrath of God was a lonely business.

She said, “Thanks. I’ll do that.”

As if sensing her hesitation, Thor said, “Won’t it be quite late down under?”

“Yeah. But what the hell! Pa’s the hardest guy in the world to knock off-kilter. He’ll probably listen to what I’ve got to tell him, then turn right over and go back to sleep!”

She rose and strode toward the house, leaving Thor grinning with affection and admiration.

“Phone’s in the hallway just outside the kitchen door,” he called after her.

As she came out of the kitchen, she noticed the living-room door was open. Something glinted on the floor. She identified it as one of the lager cans she and Thor had tossed aside on her previous visit. Then the glint died as a shadow moved over it.

She advanced to look inside the room.

Mig was in there, standing in front of Thor’s painting of the smiling youth in riotous spring, holding out the nest of fledglings.

“Striking, isn’t it?” said Sam, entering the room. “And it’s about the only thing in this place it’s safe to admire. Anything else could cost you dear, but that’s definitely not for sale. That’s my namesake, Sam Flood, the curate. Mig? Are you OK?”

He had turned his head to look at her as she spoke and she was shocked to see how drained of color his face was. Perhaps, she thought, he’d asked to use the bathroom because he was feeling ill.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “This painting… who did you say it was?”

“I just told you! The Reverend Sam Flood who drowned himself in the Moss. Why? Hey, you’re not having one of your ghostly turns, are you?”

“No! Yes. I mean, in a way…” he said agitatedly.

It was to some extent a relief to hear even such a confused answer if it meant his condition wasn’t physical. On the other hand, she felt she had enough on her mind without Mig being away with the fairies once more.

She said, “Maybe if you could be a bit more precise…”

“I recognize him,” said Mig. “Is that precise enough for you. I recognize him!”

6. A face from the past

She swept the clutter of books and papers off one of the chairs which faced away from the portrait and by main force made Mig sit down. Then she perched herself on the arm beside him, took his left hand in both of hers, looked straight into his eyes and said lightly, “Don’t see how you can do. He was dead before you were born.”

“That, I think, is why I am able to recognize him,” said Mig. His hand felt deathly cold, his eyes though fixed on hers didn’t seem to be properly focused.

She said, “OK, Mig. I can do codes, but not this one. Let’s hear it straight.”

He said, “Do you remember me telling you about my childhood? Of course, you do. You remember everything. I told you of the time I was accosted by what I now think was the wraith of Father Simeon in the cloisters of Seville cathedral, and a young priest led me back to my mother. Then I saw the same young man again on my sixteenth birthday. He held out his hands to me like the boy in the painting. The very same posture. And in his hands he was holding some eggs.”

“So, a coincidence,” said Sam. “Which in mathematical terms can often turn out to be more probable than…”

“To hell with mathematics!” he interrupted vehemently. “It’s not a coincidence! I don’t just mean the posture and the eggs. What I’m telling you is that this is the same young man! The very same face, the very same smile, the very same everything. Beyond all doubt, this is him!”

Sam’s heart sank. She felt the gap between them opening up once more. Ghosts and ghouls and things that went bump and apparitions of all kinds had nothing to do with the world she wanted to spend her life in. Truth was her goal in all things, and if the absolutes of mathematics were sometimes hard to reconcile with the uncertainties of diurnal existence, at least you could give it your best shot, which meant you didn’t just pile up the detritus of mythology and superstition under the window, you opened the window wide and tossed it out!

“Come on, Mig!” she said. “Get a grip. Ask yourself, even if you believe all that supernatural stuff, why the hell should the spirit of an English Protestant priest have traveled all the way to Spain to haunt a Catholic cathedral?”

It was, she recognized even as she put it, a bloody stupid question. Once admit ghosts, then the laws of rational discourse no longer applied.

There was a faint chink of china from the doorway. Thor stood there, a trayful of dirty dishes in his hand.

He said, “I didn’t realize you two had snuck off to hold a séance. What’s all this about spirits?”

Sam looked from Thor to Mig and back again. This was in some sense holy ground to both of them, but you didn’t acknowledge holiness by evasion and deception.

She said, “Mig sees ghosts sometimes. One of them looks like your painting of my namesake, Sam Flood.”

She saw the jocular light fade in the big man’s eyes and his knuckles whiten as he gently set down the tray.

“Indeed,” he said in a cool controlled voice. “Then you asked a good question, Sam. Why on earth should our Sam’s phantom decide to take a trip to Spain when there were people closer to home he had so much more cause to haunt?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know!” said Mig wretchedly.

“A case of mistaken identity, perhaps?” Thor went on. “I don’t have any personal experience, but I daresay one ghost looks much like another.”

“For Christ’s sake, Thor, stop being so sodding English!” yelled Sam. “I know this is sensitive stuff for you, but it’s the same for Mig too, can’t you see that?”

Thor froze for a moment then, making himself relax, he said, “Sorry. This has been a hell of a day for all of us. Why should anything surprise me? Mig, tell us about your ghost.”

Mig looked at Sam as if requiring her permission. She smiled encouragingly and he told his story, all of it, including the information gleaned from Simeon’s document.

“I thought I was beginning to make some sense of it all,” he concluded. “I’ve felt from the start that I was guided here. I think Sam was too, though no doubt she’ll put it down to the power of inductive reasoning.”

“I think if there’s some divine power clever enough to get us both here, why the hell didn’t it stop what happened to my gran in the first place?” she retorted.

“Children, children,” said Thor, back in full control. “Young people who are fond of each other should never have serious arguments in the presence of a witness and out of reach of a bed. Mig, I have no idea what your visionary experience might signify other than you need psychiatric help. If we discount that possibility, then that leaves some sort of supernatural intervention which by definition is not susceptible to rational analysis. There was a hymn we used to belt out in St. Ylf’s back when I was too young to resist the pressures of convention and the back of my dad’s hand. It went on about the mysterious ways of God and concluded, He is His own interpreter and He will make it plain. In other words, wait and see.”

Good plain common sense, but he was using it to conceal how deeply this trespass on his most deeply sensitive memories had troubled him, thought Sam. Her own instinct faced by any problem was to rip at it, tooth and claw, until she found a solution. Nothing is unknowable. But she was learning to tread more delicately.

Thor picked up the tray again and said, “I don’t know about you two, but I think another little drink is in order.”

He went out into the kitchen.

Mig stood up, said “Thanks” to Sam and tried to kiss her forehead. This struck her as a touch too avuncular so she raised her lips to meet his and gave him a bit of tongue into the bargain just to remind him who he was dealing with. He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, then smiled, and turned to study the portrait once more.

“Hey, you’re not going to go weird on me again,” said Sam.

“No. I’m past that. In fact it was more the shock of recognition than any sense of the supernatural. That’s the odd thing. I could understand it better if I did get that kind of feeling as I looked at the picture, but I don’t. And when I was up at the Moss yesterday, standing there looking out over the place where he drowned himself, you’d have thought I would have got something. But there was nothing other than a normal reaction to such a dreary place.”

Sam said, “Describe it.”

“The Moss? Why, it’s just a huge flat area of lank grass, the kind of spiky olive-colored stuff that grows on swampy ground. From a distance it looks as if you could walk over it, but as you get closer you see it’s dotted with pools of black water, some hardly more than puddles, others large as ponds. The only brightness is the occasional patch of livid green, some kind of lichen, I think. Again, it looks solid enough, but if you put your weight on it, your foot goes right through into foul black mud, as I found to my cost. Which reminds me, I haven’t returned the clothes I borrowed from Thor.”

“What about stones? Rocks?”

“I told you,” he said, puzzled. “It’s wetland. A morass. When you get back to the solid ground there are some huge boulders, terrifying things, God knows where they rolled down from. But there’s nothing on the Moss itself, or if there is it’s buried so deep you’d need a submersible to find it. Why so interested?”

Sam was saved from answering by the return of Thor with three tumblers filled with Scotch. Mig took his gratefully and downed half of it in a single draft.

Sam said, “No thanks, Thor. Like I said, I want to keep a clear head. I’ll get myself some more coffee though.”

She went into the kitchen, refilled her mug from the cafetiere, but didn’t return to the living room. Instead she went out into the courtyard. What she was looking for was exactly where her eidetic memory told her it was, the tub of polished and many-colored stones standing in a corner. She put her hand into the tub and plucked three of them out, one gleaming white, one dusty red, one gray-blue, like the Woollass eyes.

Like her own eyes.

“There you are,” said Thor behind her. “Mig suddenly remembered he’d been heading for the loo when he strayed into the living room and saw the picture. And you were on your way to the phone, weren’t you? Changed your mind?”

“Decided it’s a bit too late,” she said. “Thor, these stones…”

“Nice, aren’t they? You like them? Trust a sharp Aussie to pick the one thing unchargeable to my artistic magic. Nature did all. To wit, the sea. There’s a couple of beaches and one bay in particular which abound in such lovely pebbles. I suppose I could charge you for my time in collecting them. But no, I feel a generous fit coming on. Help yourself, my dear, help yourself!”

“Thanks,” said Sam. “So what do you use them for?”

“Pebble mosaics mostly, our rough Cumbrian answer to the glittering pavements of Byzantium. Curiously enough, the first one I ever did was up at the Hall, to mark the elevation of old Dunny to a papal peerage or some such thing. It took the local fancy and there are many homes in Skaddale where you can see the result. The Woollasses have always been the glass of fashion and the mold of form… Sorry. I’m being crass. I was forgetting… you know…”

“That it’s my family you’re talking about?” said Sam. “That’s OK. I’m going to be facing them shortly, remember? The better prepared I am, the better prepared I’ll be. So Dunstan got a title from the Pope?”

“Oh yes. His father was delighted. Even more pleased, I heard, than when his boy was awarded the Military Cross in the war. God and Caesar, no question who came first in old Rupert’s eyes.”

“So he’s a hero too? I can imagine him leading a cavalry charge!”

“I think you’re thinking of the wrong kind of war,” said Thor. “No, he didn’t dash about in a lovely uniform waving a saber. On the contrary; as he was in the SAS, I suspect he did more crawling than dashing, and more quiet garrotting than noisy swashbuckling.”

“Did you do a mosaic for his medal too?”

“No, despite my evident antiquity, I wasn’t quite into my artistic stride in 1945,” laughed Thor.

“No, sorry. But the papal award thing, when did you do that?”

Thor thought a moment, then the animation went out of his face.

“That would be 1961,” he said shortly.

“In the spring? In that spring?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. But what does that signify?” asked Thor, regarding her suspiciously.

“I suppose it helps explain Dunstan’s defensive tactics when he heard what his son had been up to,” said Sam. “Family just honored with his title, and I’m sure Mig said something to me about Father Simeon getting an approving mention in some Vatican statement – that was probably at the same time. So, the Woollass family on the up and up, a nasty old rumor finally put to sleep – old Dunny must have shit broken glass when he learned his son and heir had committed rape!”

It made sense, even though it was mainly verbiage to divert Thor from the real trend of her thinking. Sense or not, he was still regarding her doubtfully when the phone rang in the house.

He turned and went inside, passing Mig emerging from the kitchen into the courtyard.

Sam slipped the stones into her bumbag and gave him a welcoming smile.

He said, “Sam, I was wondering. When you go back to the Hall, would you like me to come with you? Your decision, of course. I just want you to know I’m available.”

“If I’d thought for a second you weren’t, I’d punch you in the throat,” she said. “I think I need to see them alone. Especially Gerry. But it would be nice to know you were in screaming distance. Anyway, we’ve still got well over an hour. Tell you what I’d like to do…”

Before she could finish, Thor reappeared.

“That was Edie,” he said. “Fred Allison, local farmer, just dropped into the Stranger. He hadn’t heard anything about what happened this morning, but when he did, he told Edie he’d picked up Laal Gowder a few miles down the road from the hospital and dropped him outside the pub. He never said a word all the time he was in the car and, when he got out, he ignored Fred’s invitation to come in and have a drink but crossed the bridge and went along the riverbank as if he was going up the fell path to Foulgate.”

“Well, that’s good. At least he’s got back safe,” said Mig.

“It’s what he might do now he’s back that bothers me,” said Thor.

“Harm himself, you mean?”

Thor barked a humorless laugh.

“Doubt it. Not big on self-destruction, the Gowders. But when it comes to simple destruction… Look, I think I’d better head round there. He shouldn’t be alone and he’s used to me talking straight to him.”

“Do you want us to come?” said Mig.

“Perhaps not,” said Thor. “Somehow I don’t think the sight of Sam is going to calm his troubled mind.”

“Of course not. Sorry. I wasn’t thinking,” said Mig.

“That’s why you almost became a priest,” said Sam kindly. “Not thinking’s a condition of service. Tell you what you can do, Thor. You can drop me and Mig off up at the top of Stanebank. I fancy a breath of air and he said he’d take me up to Mecklin Moss.”

Mig looked slightly startled at this news, but Thor said, “OK, if that’s what you want. Let’s go then.”

A few moments later they were in the pickup, rattling up the track. There was no sign of life as they passed the Hall. Perhaps, thought Sam, they’ve all done a runner.

On second thoughts, it didn’t seem very likely. Dunstan didn’t strike her as the running type. Frek neither. As for Gerry, perhaps by the time she’d finished with him, he’d be wishing he had run while he still had the chance!

A couple of minutes later, Thor brought the pickup to a halt.

“Here we are, folks,” he said. “Though what you’re going to do in that dreary place, I can’t imagine. Unless you’d like to borrow a groundsheet, that is.”

He managed a twinkle, but they could tell he wasn’t looking forward to whatever awaited him at Foulgate.

They watched the pickup bump away along the track.

“He’s a good man, I think,” said Mig softly.

“Yes,” said Sam. “I do believe he is. But now he’s gone, I suppose I’ll have to rely on you for guidance. Beggars can’t be choosers. Lead on and show me this Moss.”

7. A gift of stones

They set off up the narrow sheep-trod toward the Moss. As they got nearer and the character of the place became more and more apparent, Sam said, “Thor wasn’t exaggerating when he said it was dreary.”

“I did tell you. Yesterday when I was here at least I could lift my eyes to the hills, but not much point today.”

He was right. The storm’s battle plan was clear. It had sent its cloudy columns probing out of the west to occupy the high ground and now most of the surrounding hills were visible only as dark islands in a sea of billowing grays. Directly above them the sun still shone, but it gave at best a lurid light. The shadows they cast seemed to move around them with an independent life. The wind had dropped and the air felt menacingly heavy.

“Good day for Ragnarok,” said Sam. “With as many k’s as you like.”

“You’ve been talking to Frek,” said Mig.

“Well, she is my auntie,” said Sam, trying to keep things light. But her attempt fell flat, even for herself, and they walked on in silence over increasingly boggy ground till Mig stopped abruptly and said, “This I think must have been the site of Mecklin Shaw.”

“The wood where they crucified your namesake,” said Sam. “And up ahead where those big pools are, I presume that’s where my namesake was drowned.”

“I think so. There is nothing to mark either spot,” said Mig.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Sam. “Seems well enough marked to me.”

He turned to face her, looking very serious.

“Sam, what exactly are we doing here?” he asked.

She said, “Look around you. See any stones?”

He looked, with a little satirical exaggeration.

“Stones? No. I don’t believe I do. I should have thought your scientific mind would have worked out that anything of any weight would have sunk into this stuff eons ago. Why do you keep going on about stones?”

“Because,” she said with the patience of a teacher explaining something to a slow child, “the inquest record says that Saintly Sam, the curate, had filled his pockets with stones to make his body sink more quickly when he topped himself.”

He put his hand to his brow as if to massage away a headache.

“What inquest record?”

“The one on Sam Flood, dummy!”

“You’ve seen it? But how…? Why…?”

“I’ve got connections,” she said, echoing Noddy Melton. “So where did the stones come from? That was one question no one seemed to ask.”

“Why should they?” he said dismissively. “He probably picked them up as he came up Stanebank. I didn’t pay much attention, but I seem to recall the surface of the track consists largely of fragments of rock. I presume that’s what stane means. Stone.”

“Thanks for the linguistic lesson,” said Sam dismissively. “I did pay attention. Yes, you’re right. Fragments, lumps, slivers, broken pieces ground down over the years. Nothing like these.”

She reached into her bumbag and grasped the stones she’d removed from the tub in Thor’s yard. Then, cupping them in her hands, she held them out for Mig to examine.

It was, she felt, a minor coup de théâtre. The way Mig reacted, it could have been the end of Don Giovanni. She reminded herself he didn’t get out much.

He was staring transfixed at the shiny smooth ovoids. When he spoke, there were two false starts before the words came out.

“What are these?” he asked.

“These are the kind of stones Sam had in his pockets to weigh him down. I’ve seen the actual stones, and believe me, they look just like these.”

She spoke triumphantly, but Mig’s reply was uttered so softly he seemed to be speaking to himself.

“Stones,” he murmured. “Stones, not eggs.”

“Sorry?” she said. “What the hell have eggs got to do with it? Not much point stuffing your pockets with eggs if you want to drown.”

He raised his eyes from her hands to her face and said with a quiet urgency, “When I saw the portrait at the Forge, the only thing that wasn’t quite the same was that he had a nest in his hand, full of fledglings bursting out of their eggshells. My ghost was showing me what I thought were whole eggs, and big ones too, more like hens’ or ducks’ than songbirds’. But now I see it wasn’t eggs he was showing me… it was stones… like these stones…”

She shook her head impatiently. Here she was doing important detective work and all he could do was go drifting off into his dreamworld.

She said, “Look, the point is, where did curate Sam get these stones from? One possibility is he picked them up from the Forge, which is where I got these three. Thor uses them, or used to, in making some kind of mosaics. He did one up at the Hall way back. In fact he worked on it in the spring of 1961, around the time it all happened – Pam being shipped off to Oz, the suicide…”

Mig had made a visible effort to focus all his attention on what she was saying.

“Hold on,” he said. “Are you suggesting this poor devil was still so much in control of himself that he decided on his way up the Bank that it might be useful to weigh himself down, so he made a diversion to have a look for some suitable ballast? Surely if such an idea did occur, he’d simply have grabbed handfuls of broken stone from the track before he turned off and headed up here?”

Sam looked at him approvingly.

“There is a brain in there after all,” she said. “You’re dead right. That’s what he’d have done. So?”

He looked at her hopelessly and shrugged. She felt like shaking him. His mind had spent so long wrestling with the mystery of apparitions and messages from beyond that he couldn’t follow a trail of reasoning as clear and as simple as 2n = 4. She wished she had a blackboard so she could spell it out.

But in truth she knew that it was only now, up here, in this place, that she was beginning to let herself spell it out completely.

She said very clearly, “He must have had a reason for diverting. We know that he knew Thor wasn’t at home because he’d just caught him shagging Edie down at the Stranger. It’s just possible he might have visited the Forge to find something to aid his suicide that would leave a clear message to Thor. If so, he made a lousy choice. And from what I’ve heard of him he wasn’t that kind of guy. So that leaves the Hall.”

“But why should he visit the Hall?” asked Mig.

“Don’t you listen to anything unless it’s in a burning bush or can walk through walls?” she demanded. “Here’s what we know. Sam goes to the Stranger to see Edie. Why? To talk about their future? Wrong. He goes there because young Pete has just told him that the little girl he’d tried to take care of, my grandmother, had been raped and that Dunstan’s motive in shipping her off to Australia, far from being charitable, had been to get her as far away from Illthwaite as humanly possible before she could open her mouth. Sam is furious, on the kid’s behalf, and on his own because he’s been made a fool of. Catching Edie on the nest can’t have improved his state of mind. But I don’t believe he’d be suicidal. He’d be angrier than ever. I think he was heading up Stanebank to have it out with Dunstan Woollass!”

There. The first half of the blackboard was full. She looked at her calculations and found no flaw.

“But didn’t he meet Dunstan driving down Stanebank or something?” said Mig.

“That’s the evidence Dunstan gave. Said hello, thought the fellow looked distracted, reported this the same evening, soon as he heard the curate had gone missing. What a load of garbage! Think about it: was Sam Flood going to pass the man who’d dumped on little Pam and shut young Pete up with a nod and a hello?”

“You think that he confronted Dunstan?”

“Yes. And not on Stanebank. I think he went up to the Hall. Perhaps Dunstan was getting his car out of the garage. They quarrel. Perhaps Saint Sam is a bit more intemperate than usual. He had cause. And then…”

She paused, metaphorical chalk in hand, suddenly reluctant to record her logical conclusion on the metaphorical blackboard.

Mig, she guessed, was there too, but it was her calculation, he wanted to hear her say it.

“And…?” he prompted.

“Dunstan tries that old silver tongue of his. It’s got him out of worse scrapes than this. But this time it doesn’t work. Sam’s not in the listening mood. As far as he’s concerned, it’s next stop the cops. He turns to go, Dunstan lays a hand on his shoulder, probably just to hold him back so they can talk more, but Sam’s so wound-up by everything, he lashes out.”

She paused again, and now at last Mig helped her out.

He said, “So they fight and Sam ends up dead, is that what you’re saying? But does it really make sense? Sam was so much younger, and can you really see Dunstan getting mixed up in a vulgar brawl?”

“Dunstan was no old man in 1961,” said Sam. “Rising forty and probably fighting fit. And the kind of fighting he was fit for wasn’t just a barroom punch-up. Thor told me he was in the SAS during the war, and got himself a medal for killing Germans!”

Mig said, “There’s a portrait of him in uniform at the Hall.”

“There you are then,” said Sam inconsequentially. “So he’d probably have no problem. Quick squeeze in the right place and the poor sod’s lying there unconscious. Well, that’s how they do it in the movies,” she added, seeing Mig regarding her dubiously.

“And then…?” he said. “And then…?”

“Think about it. Now he’s got a real problem. Does he wait till Sam wakes up, then try reasoning with him again? If he fails – and in the circs that’s where the clever money would be – he faces a police investigation of his son, and a public humiliation for himself and his family.”

“No,” said Mig, shaking his head. “I can just about accept a struggle in which Sam is accidentally killed, but what you’re suggesting is cold-blooded murder.”

“Sam was alive when he went into the Moss,” said Sam bluntly. “I’ve seen the autopsy report. He died of drowning. I think Dunstan decided the only way forward was to get rid of him. Quick thinking, isn’t that what they teach them in the SAS? He thinks of the Moss then decides it would be best to weigh the body down. Thor’s unused stones are lying around, perhaps he stored them in the garage. They’re a good size for stuffing in pockets. He then dumps him in the back of his jeep and heads up the track to the Moss. He finds a pool, probably holds the poor bastard’s head under till he’s sure he’s not going to revive. Then he watches till the clothes get sodden and the weight of the stones pulls the body down out of sight.”

She finished. Part of her wanted Mig to agree with her reasoning. But another part, aware that to all the other crimes she was laying at the door of her newly found family she was now adding murder, wanted him to laugh and set about demolishing her calculations.

He stood with his head bowed. In prayer? She hoped not.

Then he raised his head and she saw in his eyes that she, or something, had convinced him.

“This is a terrible thing,” he said.

“You agree with me then?”

“Yes. Now I understand why Sam’s apparition held out the stones to me. It was a message I couldn’t understand, one that I would never have understood without you. That’s why we were both brought here.”

Bloody typical! she thought. It wasn’t her immaculate reasoning that got him agreeing with her but the way it fitted in with his mumbo-jumbo!

She felt a huge exasperation welling up inside her, but recognizing it as that kind of exasperation compounded with affection which she had previously only felt when provoked by her ma or pa or, bless her memory, Gramma Ada, she battened it down. This wasn’t the time or place for a falling-out, especially on a side issue.

The main point was she’d reasoned herself into making a good case that her namesake, Sam Flood the curate, had been murdered, and the man she now knew to be her great-grandfather was the killer. Eu-bloody-reka!

“So what do we do now?” said Mig.

She liked the we. Exasperating he might be, but at least he wasn’t ducking out.

She said, “I don’t know. There’s no evidence, just logic, and law’s got nothing to do with logic.”

“What do you want to do?” he asked gently.

“I want to go away and forget about all of this stuff,” she heard herself saying. “But I know I can’t. These ideas about Saintly Sam just muddy the water even more. I’d like to set them aside completely till I get things straight with regard to Gerry. In fact, I wish I’d never got into the Sam stuff at all. But now I know what I think, I’ve got to tell Thor and Edie at least. They’ve spent forty years blaming themselves for Sam’s death. They’ve a right to know what we think really happened.”

He put his arms around her and drew her close.

“You know, despite all your efforts to hide it, you’re a good old-fashioned moral… woman,” he murmured.

“Yeah? If you’d said girl I’d have kneed you in the crotch, and how moral would that have been? Let’s get away from this place. It gives me the creeps.”

They turned and made their way back downhill. As they neared the track they saw the pickup approaching from Foulgate, moving at a speed which wasn’t good for its suspension.

“Thor’s in a hurry,” said Sam. “Perhaps he got a dusty welcome.”

She waved her hand, expecting the vehicle to slow down, but if anything it came faster.

It was Mig who spotted it first.

“That’s not Thor driving!” he said. “It’s Gowder!”

Then it was past them in a cloud of dust and swinging round the curve that marked the descent to the Hall.

“Oh shit,” said Sam. “Where’s Thor? What do you think’s happened to him?”

“Only one way to find out,” said Mig. “Come on.”

He set off at a fast jog along the track toward Foulgate.

“Don’t you think we should try to warn them at the Hall that he’s coming?” panted Sam, for the first time finding herself stretched to keep up with him.

“No way to warn them, he’ll be there long before we could get close. No, we need to check that Thor’s all right,” said Mig grimly.

She checked his logic and found, rather to her surprise, that it was totally without flaw. Then Mig’s concern for Winander proved infectious and images of him lying in the farmyard with his head stove in began to fill her mind.

It was with huge relief that she heard Mig cry, “I think I see him!”

She strained her eyes through the gathering gloom of the impending storm and saw way ahead a figure moving toward them. Another couple of seconds confirmed it was Thor and a few moments later they met.

There was no sign of blood, but there were the beginnings of a livid bruise on his right temple and he looked as if he’d been rolling in dust and mud.

“Did you see him?” he yelled.

“Yes. He went past us like a bat out of hell,” said Sam. “What happened?”

“The bastard thumped me!” said Thor. “I met him coming out of his barn. I tried to speak to him and next thing I was flying through the air. Then he got into the pickup, turned it round and took off. He’d have backed it clean over me if I hadn’t rolled out of the way. Come on, we need to get down to the Hall!”

“Why? What do you think he’s likely to do there?” gasped Mig as they set off jogging back along the track.

“God knows,” said Thor. “All I know is when I saw him he was carrying an axe and a jerrycan full of petrol, so I don’t think he’s going for tea!”

8. Ragnarokk

Afterward all Sam recalled, not without shame, of running along that seemingly endless track was the pain in her legs and lungs, her shock that she was finding it hard to keep up with a sexagenarian and an invalid, and her determination that she wasn’t going to be beaten.

The shame derived from her later realization that what motivated the two men to break their pain barriers was unselfish concern for the inmates of the Hall. Perhaps, she tried to explain to Mig, it was a gender thing. She, being a woman, found it impossible to imagine the worst Laal Gowder might do. They, being men and thus tarred with the same brush, had no delusions.

Even to herself it did not sound a reasonable argument.

But they all shared an equal relief when at last the twisted chimneys of Illthwaite Hall came into sight.

A few moments later, as they reached the viewpoint where Mig had paused the previous day, Thor stopped. The others, taking their lead from him, came to a halt too and peered down the fellside toward the house.

The pickup was parked close against the wall, its driver’s door wide open. Up the slope opposite the kitchen window they could see Laal Gowder. He was standing alongside the great carved trunk that had killed his brother, swinging a longhandled axe with practiced ease and driving its head into the fatal wood.

Into Sam’s mind came words from the Reverend Peter K.’s Guide:

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

No such problem, diabolic or human, here. No bell-like sound either. Just a solid crunch! as the blade drove deep into the bole sending woodchips flying off to left and right.

“He’s decapitating it,” said Thor. “He’s taking the Wolf-Head right off.”

“But why?” asked Mig, which seemed to Sam an odd question for a religious guy to ask when a paid-up atheist like herself had no problem with following the superstitious irrationalities of Gowder’s psyche.

“Because it killed his brother,” said Thor. “I always knew that sodding thing was evil. I should never have listened to Frek. At least Gowder is taking it out on something inanimate… Oh shit!”

A figure had appeared at the kitchen window. Sam couldn’t make it out, but Thor had no doubt who it was, nor of the possible consequences.

“It’s Gerry,” he said. Then he bellowed, “Stay inside, you stupid bugger! Don’t come out!”

Even Thor’s mighty shout could hardly have reached the man in the kitchen. He vanished from the window. Sam looked toward the kitchen doorway, then realized she could only see the top of it because the pickup was parked so close to the wall. The door opened, but the vehicle blocked exit. There might have been space for someone as skinny as she was to crawl out alongside the wheel, but not for a thickset man like Woollass.

There was a cry of triumph, more an animal howl, as one last blow from Gowder’s axe separated the Wolf-Head from the bole. But he wasn’t finished yet.

Dropping his axe, he picked up a petrol can and started to pour the fuel over the snarling head.

Again words scrolled across Sam’s mind:

Faggots of bone-dry kindling were set all around the stump, flame was applied, the Winanders got to work with the bellows they had brought up from their forge, and soon whipped up a huge conflagration. Yet when all had died down and the ashes were raked away, there the stump remained, just as it had been before…

But once more, if this were that same Other Cross, its powers of resistance seemed to have died over the years. Laal Gowder brought a box of matches out of his pocket, struck one and let it fall. The petrol ignited with a whoosh and in a few moments it was clear that the old dry wood was burning away merrily. No, not merrily, thought Sam. Somehow the shimmering diaphane of flame made the carved Wolf-Head look as if it were writhing and snarling in the heart of the fire.

Mig put her thoughts into words.

“It’s more like he’s bringing that thing to life than destroying it,” he said.

“I think we’d better get down there,” said Thor.

But before they could resume their descent, events in the drama which they were viewing from the distant gallery began to spiral out of control.

Gerry had reappeared at the kitchen window and opened it to shout something at Gowder. In the bedroom window immediately above they could now see the figure of Dunstan, unmistakable with his mane of white hair above his cardinal red robe. Sam thought she glimpsed someone behind him. Mrs. Collipepper? It would be like the man not to let the drama of the day interfere with his refreshing “nap.”

Laal Gowder seemed to find the sight of one or both of them, and perhaps the words that Gerry was shouting, an unbearable provocation.

He stooped down, seized the flaming Wolf-Head in both hands, raised it high in the air, and hurled it through the kitchen window. Gerry fell back out of sight. And Gowder, his axe in one hand, the petrol can in the other, scrambled on to the sill and squeezed through the open window.

Now the three spectators were running again. No time for commentary now, no breath to spare even for exclamations of shock, they ran as humans have always run, toward danger even when they know that tragedy is inevitable.

It took at most three minutes, probably less, for them to be turning into the driveway, but in that time the age of the wolf had come and it was not to be denied.

In the kitchen Gowder had gone berserk. A blow from the axe, fortunately from the flat of the blade not its edge, drove Gerry Woollass to the floor. Before he passed out he saw the enraged man hacking the furniture and fittings to pieces, but, with a heightened instinct for destruction, aiming the worst of his violence at the kitchen range, severing all its input pipes and releasing an unstoppable supply of gas into the air.

Then, it later became clear, he had run amuck through the rest of the house, trailing petrol till the can was empty, then using his axe to reduce everything he encountered to firewood.

To the three figures running down the drive, the attractive front elevation of the Hall looked the same as it had looked for almost half a millennium. Only the smoke billowing up from the far end gave normalcy the lie. But as Thor flung open the front door there was a muffled explosion as the gas in the kitchen ignited, sending a blast of hot air driving deep into the building, and the trail of petrol laid by the crazed Gowder sent flames leaping joyously upward to seize on paneling and beams whose wood had been drying out for centuries.

Buildings like these, wrote the chief fire officer in his report, were often bonfires waiting to be lit. A circular warning of the dangers, detailing the protective measures available, had been sent out to all owners the previous year. Frek Woollass had been keen that its recommendations should be followed, but her father had looked at the estimated cost and declared that the money could be put to much better use in the community. Thus, opined that keen ironist Thor Winander, had Gerry’s compulsion to atone ultimately brought about the destruction of his ancestral home.

But such philosophical niceties had no place in the minds of the three new arrivals as they burst into the entrance hall, which was already filling with smoke.

Sam had no firm idea what they should or could do now they were here, but Thor like a Hollywood action hero had no doubt of his priorities.

“The old man’s upstairs,” he said, making for the staircase.

“What about Gerry in the kitchen?” said Mig.

“Either he got out or he’s a goner,” said Thor over his shoulder.

It was an analysis too clear to need debate. The kitchen was the volcanic center of the eruption which was threatening the downfall of the whole building. Nothing could survive in there.

The thought trailed across Sam’s logical mind that Gerry’s death would remove the problem of their first confrontation. She brushed it away angrily and in its place popped the question whether Thor would be so keen to dash to old Dunstan’s aid if he knew what she suspected about his involvement in Sam Flood’s death.

This too she erased as irrelevant. But the question she couldn’t get out of her mind as she went up the stairs behind the two men was the same question she’d found herself asking in the wake of the other Gowder’s death beneath the Wolf-Head – Is this all down to me?

The fire was moving laterally at a steady speed, but in its natural direction, which was upward, it went like a rocket. Dunstan’s bedroom was almost directly above the kitchen. Already there was fire there, banked high in the hearth to keep his old bones warm. And according to Mrs. Collipepper, as the coils of smoke started coming up through the floorboards, the old man stretched his hands out to them as if welcoming the extra heat.

She tried to lead him out of the room but he pushed her away. Now Frek burst in and attempted to add her strength to the effort. Dunstan resisted them both, showing remarkable strength.

Then he said to the housekeeper, “For God’s sake, Pepi, if you want to help me, get her out of here. Quickly. No point in us all dying.”

So Mrs. Collipepper had turned her attention to Frek and dragged her out of the room, just as Thor and Mig and Sam came round the corner from the landing.

It was clear at once there was no hope of getting to the old man. The room was a maelstrom of fire and smoke. It was incredible that Dunstan still had anywhere to stand, but when the curtain of flame opened a fraction, Sam saw him quite clearly, upright by the window, as if taking one last look at the landscape he so loved.

She heard herself crying his name. He couldn’t have heard her, but he turned his head.

She never knew if it was an optical illusion, or maybe a created memory, but she always recalled that he seemed to smile as if in recognition and mouthed something. The smile and the mouthing were probably both simply a rictus of pain as the heat began to melt the flesh from his bones. But in her memory she read his lips, and this was what persuaded her the memory was real. For surely a created memory would have had old Dunstan uttering some sort of confession, perhaps begging for forgiveness?

Instead, which she never told anyone except Mig, what she saw him saying was, “Sorry about the tea.”

Then she felt herself pushed aside roughly by a figure it took her a moment to identify.

Scorched, smoke-blackened, with a huge gash across his temple which the heat had cauterized, it was Gerry.

He screamed, “Dad!” and would have rushed into the room if Thor hadn’t flung his strong arms around him and grappled him back.

At the same moment the floor collapsed, Dunstan vanished, and there was no room left to rush into.

With the vibrant urgency of one who had been learning the line for years, Thor said, “Let’s get out of here.”

He hauled Gerry along by main force. Frek seemed close to collapse and Mig followed Thor’s example and dragged her along the corridor. At last he’s got his hands on her, thought Sam. And she’s the nearest she’ll ever get to being hot stuff!

It seemed to her that she might have spoken these wild words aloud and she glanced at Mrs. Collipepper as they hurried along behind the others. Their eyes met for a moment, blue gray looking into gray blue.

Oh God, thought Sam, remembering there’d been three generations of Collipeppers housekeeping at the Hall. Not another Woollass by-blow!

At the head of the stairs they could see the hall below was full of smoke. Thor yelled something at Mig, who grabbed hold of what remained of Gerry’s jacket while hanging on to Frek with his other hand. Mrs. Collipepper thrust Sam forward into contact with Frek, herself seizing Sam’s trailing hand.

Then they dragged what air they could into their lungs and, with Thor leading what felt like a crazy conga, they plunged down the stairway.

Heat on the skin; smoke in the nostrils, the eyes, the lungs; staggering, falling, recovering; all the time fighting the urge to lie down and simply let it be over; if this was the kind of hell Mig truly believed in, thought Sam, how did he manage to get out of bed in the morning?

Then she died.

She knew it was death because she’d burst into that heaven she didn’t believe in. She felt cool air playing on her face and when she breathed it was the same nectar that poured down her throat, flushing out all the ashy filth in a bout of lung-racking coughing which was the sweetest pain she’d ever felt.

She released her grip on Frek, collapsed to her knees in a parody of thanksgiving which wasn’t altogether parody, and opened her eyes.

The action hero had done it. They were in the middle of the lawn in front of the house.

The others lay about her, coughing, gasping, retching. Gerry looked the worst affected. The rest were already like herself recovering enough to pay heed to each other. She caught Mig’s eye. He mouthed “You OK?” and she nodded and they smiled at each other.

Then she turned her head to look at the Hall.

They had made it out just in time. The kitchen end of the house was sending tongues of fire licking up at the low storm clouds which were boiling overhead. Behind windows along the whole length of the rest of the building they could see flames dancing like guests at a wild party.

Some blast of air – or perhaps Mrs. Collipepper acting like a good housekeeper to the end – had closed the front door behind them. Inside it must already be burning. They could see the paint bubbling off the woodwork as they watched, and now the wolf-head knocker was snarling at them out of a corona of fire.

Frek used Sam to lever herself upright as if to get a better view. Sam reached up and took the hand on her shoulder and held it there. Mig rose too and stood beside Frek.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“What for?”

“The house… your grandfather… Look, the way it happened, it was unforeseeable, I’m sure…”

Frek coughed a laugh.

“You think I’m worried because he died unshriven, with all his many sins, carnal and otherwise, upon him? Forget it. He died in flames like a Viking, with his most precious belongings burning around him, as Odin himself ordained. No forgiveness necessary in that belief system. A man is judged by his best, not his worst, and a hero’s welcome awaits heroes.”

She squeezed Sam’s shoulder as if in acknowledgment, then went to kneel by her father, who was being tended by Thor and Mrs. Collipepper.

Sam rose to stand beside Mig.

Above them the clouds gobbled up the last morsel of clear sky and met in an almost simultaneous flash of lightning and clap of thunder. The front door of Illthwaite Hall fell out on to the pebble mosaic and a blast of fire-bright air strong enough for Sam to feel its heat shot out and upward to be absorbed by the mighty storm raging above.

“There he goes, the old bastard,” said Sam, flip as always in face of irrational fear.

“Yes, I think he probably does,” murmured Mig, putting his arm round her shoulder. She noticed that with his other hand he was crossing himself. A mocking quip began to form in her mind but aborted long before it got anywhere near its term.

Above them, the clouds finally opened and the rain began to fall, in fat intermittent drops to start with, then in hissing torrents, and, though Sam would never admit it even to Mig, it felt like a blessing on her shorn and scarred and heat-scoured head.