Time’s Legacy

6

‘What is wrong, Mama?’ Petra looked up from the fire where she was sitting huddled in a cocoon of sheepskins and woven rugs. It had been a wet summer and now it was a wet autumn, the fens still lakes, the fields puddled. The colours of the dogwoods and maples on the slopes of the hills were already brilliant against the clouds when the sun appeared, but tonight as on so many nights, everything was awash. The summer country had not dried out this year.

Lydia was standing staring down into the hissing logs, her own cloak pulled tightly round her shoulders, her lips set in a hard line as they listened to the rain beating down on the reed thatch above their heads.

‘Your father and your brother should be home by now.’

I thought Papa said he would be gone for several days.’ Petra was trying to keep her teeth from chattering.

‘And several days have passed.’

Lydia squatted down and held her hands out to the flames. ‘And Romanus. He promised me he would be back by nightfall.’

‘Perhaps Mora wasn’t there. He wouldn’t come back without her.’ The girl forced a smile. ‘He will wait at the college until she returns, you know how much he likes her.’

The scene had been played out so many times before. Romanus, Lydia’s son, Petra’s young brother, had gone across to the island to fetch the healer, Mora. When she came she brought herbs and amulets, incantations and magic, gentle, confident smiles and warm comforting hands to make his sister more comfortable in the mysterious illness which was reducing her more and more quickly to a small shrunken figure overwhelmed with pain. And while they waited, Lydia’s husband, the children’s father, would have made his way to the coast to meet the trading vessels, to broker deals between the merchants who came from across the world to the port of Axiom, bringing wine and luxury goods from across the Empire and buying in exchange local lead and tin and copper, slaves and hunting dogs. Above all he went to meet the trading vessels which had come from the Roman provinces of Gaul and Hispania and from the Tyrrhenian Sea itself. He was frustrated in his self-appointed exile, lonely and homesick. It never seemed to occur to him that his wife might be as well. That she too might need to be out of the little primitive house to which he had brought them all, the house in the cold damp country which had crippled his daughter with its icy winds and creeping mists and was turning his British-born son into a rebellious thug.

At the time it had seemed they had no choice. Gaius Atilius Geminus had been born, the elder by several hours, one of a pair of twins. Miraculously both children and their mother had survived, though the younger child, Flavius, had for a long time been sickly and was shorter and markedly less handsome than his brother. The difference had set them apart and in spite of their parents’ insistence that both children be treated alike in every way, the younger twin grew up perceiving nuances of favouritism towards his brother at every turn. Childish rivalry grew into teenage jealousy and then into adult resentment. Flavius used his not inconsiderable charm and strength of personality to steal effortlessly and maliciously everything his increasingly reclusive elder brother held dear. Especially his girlfriends. When at last Gaius found the woman he wanted to marry, Flavius set his cap for her at once. She rejected him. Flavius grew angry. He went to a sibyl practising her trade near the Temple of the Vestals and bought charms to win her over. When they didn’t work he went back demanding a refund and, when the woman told him spitefully that she had seen in her scrying bowl his doom in a woman’s eyes, he thought better of it and produced his purse and bought curses instead. His jealousy of his brother turned to hatred. The young men’s parents, well aware of what was happening and blaming themselves, though not knowing what they could have done differently, settled on the idea of buying Flavius a commission in the army to take him away from Rome. He was posted to the Province of Judea, but then, as effortlessly as he accomplished most things Flavius turned the plan around, manoeuvring himself into the exclusive Imperial bodyguard. It would be Gaius who would have to leave. Uncomplaining, he apprenticed himself to a merchant trader and proved himself extremely able, travelling further and further abroad on the ships owned by his wealthy employer, his young and beautiful wife at his side. They travelled to Gaul and Hispania, south into Mauritania and to Leptis Magna, to Egypt and finally north again to Macedonia, and at last to Antioch and Damascus where their first child, Petronilla, was born. The little family were happy and secure and reasonably wealthy. Then they heard that Flavius had managed to obtain a posting back to Caesarea. He was on their trail.

Anxious to avoid him and his never-ending spite they travelled to the edge of the known world, to Britannia, and there they decided to stay. Flavius would never find them in this mist-shrouded isle. The country was mysterious, sacred. It was also the seat of a bustling trading economy and Gaius found himself at once busy and in demand as a negotiator and entrepreneur. At first they settled in Calleva. It was Petra’s illness which had pushed them westwards to Ynys yr Afalon, the Isle of Apples, where the college of druids, in one of the most sacred of the great sanctuaries of the Pretannic Isles, boasted, so it was said, the cleverest healers in the known world, and there their son Romanus was born, named for the city from which they haled and which they both still missed so much. Gaius turned his attention northwards to the ports on the estuary of the great river Sabrina, where the trade in lead and silver was at its most active and lucrative, leaving Lydia at home with the children in a small house in the foothills of the Meyn Dyppa, overlooking the meres and lakes and the island where the buildings of the college clustered around the strange conical hill they called the Tor, which was the centre of its power and sacredness.

The Roman family had been welcomed by their neighbours. They were some distance from the nearest hill fort, the centre of the local branch of the great Dubunni tribe, but the area was safe and free from danger. Their farmstead though not large was comfortable, the main house, round and reed-thatched like those of their neighbours was most of the time warm and dry and well appointed. But it could not keep out the creeping damp of the autumn mists, nor the bone-aching cold of the winter winds. They made friends, they had servants and slaves to work the small patches of ground where they grew beans and peas and in the larger fields barley and oats and to watch over the sheep which grazed on the hills around them. In the summer the countryside was benevolent and beautiful, rich in game and fish and very fertile. The warmth of even this northern sun penetrated Petra’s aching body and gave her some relief, but in the winter the girl grew more and more ill until she was crying with pain. The healers from the settlement helped her. They gave her decoctions made from the local willow trees which brought down her fever and let her rest. They were kind and reassuring. She would grow out of it, they said. This ailment was common amongst young girls in this country. Soon she would improve.

Then they met the beautiful and enigmatic Mora and Petra had made a friend and thirteen-year-old Romanus had fallen in love. Mora had come one day with one of the older, most experienced of druid healers. Mora was, he said, the daughter of Fergus Mor, the college father, the most senior druid on the island and she had a gift such as he had not seen in years. He felt that she would build up a rapport with Petra which would benefit them both. He handed over the case to the young woman, scarcely more than a few years older than Petra herself, and from that day the sick girl improved. Until now. A particularly vicious wind had blown from the north for days now, cutting Lydia to the bone. She could not begin to think how Petra must be hurting for the girl to cry so piteously.

Romanus had not been able to bear to see his sister in such pain. ‘I’ll go and fetch Mora,’ he said at last, and Lydia had let him go. What else could she do? She couldn’t stop him going to find the object of his infatuation now he had an excuse, and Mora was not due to come for at least a month. Besides, it was not far. It would mean running down through the woods and fields, then he would have to take one of the dugout canoes, and thread his way across the low-lying fens, following the deeper channels between the willow and alder and reeds, to the centre on the island where Mora lived. Easy for a boy of thirteen, but even so for reasons she did not quite understand, she had been filled with misgivings. The weather was bad, and Petra had clung to her brother begging him not to go. ‘Wait for Papa to return,’ she wailed. ‘I can hang on. There is enough of the medicine left.’

Lydia had glanced at the small jar on the shelf and shaken her head. There was barely any left at all.

The letter had come only hours after Romanus had set off, a scroll from one of the traders based on the coast, dropped off at the door by a young man on horseback. It was addressed to Gaius.

I thought you should be aware that there is a man here claiming to be your brother, and he is indeed very like you. He has been asking where you are and several of the traders have told him how to find you. I thought it strange that he did not know where his own brother lived, and I did not like his demeanour. Forgive me if I have misjudged the situation, but I send this missive with good intentions.

Lydia’s hands crushed the parchment and she let it fall. She was trembling all over. This could not have happened. For thirteen years they had been free of Flavius. They had thought themselves safe from his malign attentions; thought never to see or hear from him again. How had he tracked them down? Had he gone back to Rome to consult the seer? Why had he come? After all this time surely he did not still harbour the old grudges. She became aware suddenly that Petra was studying her face. ‘Mama, what is it?’

Lydia took a deep breath. ‘A message for your father, child. It seems the messenger missed him at Axiom.’

Why had he missed him? Her heart missed a beat. Gaius had been there for several days now. Had he left for home before Flavius arrived, and if so why had the messenger not overtaken him on the track? Where was he? A gust of wind battered the house, causing the fire to smoke, stirring the floor coverings and making the lamp flames dip and flare and she suppressed a groan of anguish.

There was no sign of Gaius that day or the next, nor of Flavius. And still Romanus had not returned. On the third morning she decided she must go after her son. The daughter of their neighbour had come to see Petra, bringing a gift from her mother of two freshly tanned sheepskins for her bed and the girl agreed to stay until Lydia came back. She stood for a long while outside the house staring down the track towards the north. There was no sign of anyone coming up the long slope from the woods. She must pray to the gods to protect her daughter and go to find Romanus and bring him home.

She took one of the farm ponies, making good speed on the soft muddy ground, heading west down the track towards the levels. It had stopped raining and a fitful sun was peering between the clouds, reflecting in the puddles. Once at the edge of the mere she would have to find someone to take her across to the island. Normally she would have enjoyed such a journey. The wind had backed into the west and was warmer now and more gentle. Her pony was frisky, pleased to be out of its pen. As she gained the more level ground the going was easier and the trackway through the trees firmer beneath the pony’s feet.

She drew up at last at the landing stage and slid from the pony’s back. The place was deserted. There were no boats pulled up on the mud. It was then she heard the swans circling overhead, swans which her Celtic neighbours said carried the souls of dead children to the otherworld.

Ben glanced across at Abi as they walked slowly through the garden towards the church. It was a glorious morning, the sunlight catching the turning leaves and changing them to burnished gold and crimson and tawny. They stopped beside the ruins, staring at the remnants of the walls. ‘They started to excavate in the late thirties, I believe,’ he said after a long silence as they stood looking down at the stones. ‘They found quite a lot of stuff from the Roman villa. Then the war came and they hastily covered most of it up. They never quite got round to it again.’

‘Mat and Cal told you I thought I saw a ghost or two yesterday?’ Abi thought it better to take the bull by the horns.

Ben nodded.

‘Have you ever seen them?’

He shook his head. ‘Cal is the psychic one amongst us. But there have been lots of stories down the centuries.’

‘All my life I’ve seen things, and suspected I was what for a want of a better term is called psychic,’ Abi said thoughtfully,’ but I’ve never really seen ghosts in my life before. Then a few weeks ago in Cambridge I saw a whole lot of them. And other strange things. And then there was no doubt in my mind at all as to what they were. It’s as though something has switched on this ability -’ She stopped in mid-sentence.

Ben waited silently. Listening was something he was good at. A long attentive silence, relaxed, not threatening. He would wait until she was ready to go on. When she did she had changed the subject. Whatever it was she had thought of, she was not ready to talk about it yet. ‘Does Kier know where I am?’

Ben shook his head slowly. ‘Not unless you have told him yourself. Bishop David was very clear on that point. He told me that you had requested that neither your father nor Kieran Scott should be told where you were going.’

‘Kier frightened me. There was something in his eyes. A fanaticism which I have never seen in anyone before.’ She shook her head miserably. ‘He kept saying God had planned for me to move in to look after him, then in the next breath he said such terrible things about me. He accused me of being a witch!’ It was a cry of anguish. ‘And who knows, maybe he is right. That’s why I can’t go on being a priest.’

Ben sighed. It was not for him to question the decision of a bishop, not even David Paxman, but as far as he knew Kieran had been allowed to stay in his parish. Ben could not imagine why if the man was becoming unhinged. ‘Shall we walk on a little way? You will have the chance to do a lot of thinking while you are here, Abi, and if you need to, you will be able to pray, too. You must not let this man give you cause to doubt yourself. I suggest you take things slowly. Make no irrevocable decisions at this stage. We can discuss the future when you have had a chance to recover. You have had a lot to deal with over the past few weeks. There is no hurry.’

Abi smiled at him. ‘You are good at this.’

‘Good at what?’

‘Consolation. Advice. Spiritual ice packs.’

‘I’ve had a lot of practice over the years.’ Ben nodded with a resigned smile. ‘Make full use of me, Abi. Use me as a sounding board, a punch bag, an echo chamber. Whatever you like. I can take it. And in the meantime let me show you the way to my favourite church. I want you to go there every day. Several times a day if it helps. It is a place of solace and peace and safety.’

The little church towards which they were heading stood on an outcrop of land very similar to the one on which Woodley was built. Two small islands in the flat green of the fields, side by side, close together. So close that the ancient orchards which surrounded Woodley’s gardens, spilling down the side of the hill, were separated from the ancient churchyard on the neighbouring slopes, only by a crumbling wall and a lych-gate roofed in ancient silvered oak.

They never reached it. As if by some unspoken mutual agreement they stopped at the gate at the foot of the little overgrown graveyard, spending several minutes in silent contemplation of the yew trees and the wild flowers growing on the graves, listening to the gentle gossip of the jackdaws on the squat, Norman tower before quietly turning to climb back towards the house. When Abi went there to pray she would go alone.

An hour later Abi was in her bedroom kneeling in front of one of her suitcases. In the bottom, wrapped in a sweater, was the lump of crystal. She had run out into the garden moments after her father had hurled it out of the window, her heart in her mouth in case it had shattered on the paving stones beneath. Looking up she had seen that he was still standing at the attic window, staring out. He did not react as she had walked outside into the sunlight, staring round, looking for it. When she failed to spot it at once she feared she might not find it at all amongst all the flowerbeds and plants and shrubs but she did, almost at once. It was lying on a patch of short grass near the little fountain, the sunlight reflecting off one of its clear glassy faces. She couldn’t miss it. It was as though it had called out to her. Pushing the thought aside she had scooped it up, glancing quickly up at the window of her mother’s boudoir. There was no sign now of her father. With a sigh of relief she turned back to the French door and through to where her cases were standing in the hall. In minutes she had loaded all her belongings into the car and driven away.

She unwrapped the crystal carefully and put it down on the window sill where the sunlight immediately caught one of the faces, sending prisms flashing round the room. Its power was almost tangible. It felt as if she had been administered a double shot of caffeine. Jumpy. Alert. All her senses suddenly in overdrive, her heart thudding uncomfortably. Spontaneously she stepped back from it and at once felt a diminution of the sensations. The thought that had come to her earlier as she was talking to Ben was resurfacing. It was since she had touched the crystal that first time in her mother’s room she had begun to see ghosts so clearly. To experience them in a way which brooked no denial. The shock of her mother’s death and the logistics of leaving her job and her flat and parting from her father had distracted her from analysing what had been happening to her. Now, for the first time she concentrated on the stone. It was after she had first held it that she had become aware of people’s auras, that she had felt able to communicate in some strange way with the dead, that she had experienced this absolute certainty. She shivered. Was this what her mother had been so pleased about? The fact that her daughter had felt the crystal tingling beneath her fingers. Was this what Laura had been going to tell her about? And if so, why had she thought it would destroy Abi’s Christian faith? She reached out and ran her finger over the crystal face experimentally. It gave off a crackle and a spark. She jumped back. But of course that was natural. After all, crystals had power, the piezoelectric effect. That was why modern technology was dependent on them. She groped in her memory for the definition in her science books at school. It had been something to do with the fact that quartz under pressure produces electricity naturally. It was inherent in its structure. There was nothing spooky about it. This was a big one. It had enormous power. The Serpent Stone, her great-great-grandmother had called it in her note. She looked down at it thoughtfully, hesitant about touching it again. Slowly she put her finger out towards it. The crackle came while it was still several inches away. It wasn’t like an electric shock. It merely made a sound like a hiss, a presence trying to make itself heard. The hiss of a serpent. Was that where it had got its name? Or of a radio, searching for a station. ‘That’s it, isn’t it,’ she whispered. ‘You are trying to tune in.’ Almost fearfully she laid her finger on the clear face again, touching it lightly and instantly removing her finger. As the contact was made a sound rang out in the room, a split second of speech, too short for her even to catch the words. It was there and in a tenth of a second it was over. She swallowed. Do it again. More slowly this time. This time she laid two fingers side by side on the crystal face and left them there. Nothing. She moved away, astonished to find she was trembling. Taking a deep breath she approached it again and once again touched it, this time just with her index finger. Nothing. ‘OK. So I’ve offended you,’ she murmured. ‘Last chance.’ Picking the crystal up, she turned it round in the sunlight from the window, once more filling the room with dancing lights. And figures. Two figures. For a fraction of a second, standing by the door. Two shadowy shapes, barely recognisable as human. She almost dropped the crystal. Putting it back on the window sill she stared at the place where the figures had been. There was nothing there now. No prisms, no colours flickering against the wall, no figures. Nothing.

‘It’s a transmitter,’ she whispered, awed. ‘It really is. It made some kind of hologram.’ Exhaling, she sat down on the bed and sat staring at it. Where on earth had it come from, this strange bequest of her mother’s? Something so special, and yet so primitive. And what was there about it that had affected her father so strongly? Standing up she went back to the window sill and touched it again.

Nothing happened. Outside a cloud drifted over the sun and the crystal dulled.

I’ll find you Abi!

She turned round, startled. The voice had been in the room with her. Only faint, but clearly audible. This time she recognised it. It was Kier’s voice. She swallowed hard. ‘No, you won’t,’ she whispered. ‘Never in a million years.’

Ben was perched on the edge of the kitchen table watching his sister-in-law peel potatoes. ‘I like her, but she’s got some pretty big issues with this chap, Kier,’ Cal said cautiously. ‘He sounds like a complete shit.’ She threw down the potato peeler. ‘The kind of clergyman guaranteed to turn off people in droves and send them fleeing from the church.’

‘Not true, unfortunately.’ Ben eased himself further onto the table to get comfortable, one leg swinging gently. ‘There are a lot of people out there who like nothing better than a rabid fundamentalist. It sounds to me as if this poor woman was thrown to him like a sacrificial virgin.’

Cal smiled broadly. She reached for a tea towel and dried her hands. ‘I doubt she’s any kind of virgin,’ she said practically, ‘but I get your point. She seems to have a very touching naïveté about what a vicar does. Are you going to be able to save her for the church or is she a goner?’

Ben shook his head. ‘We shouldn’t be talking about her like this.’

‘No, but you are her spiritual adviser and I am her landlady. We have to conspire to make her feel happy and secure.’ She paused. ‘What do you think about the ghosts?’

‘I doubt they would make her feel either happy or secure.’

‘She’s not imagining them?’

‘How can she be if you’ve seen them too? And if they’ve been described in loving detail in all sorts of old books for the last God knows how many years?’

‘I wish Justin were here.’

Ben exhaled sharply. ‘Don’t let Mat hear you say that.’

‘I won’t. But Justin would know what to do.’

‘And I don’t?’

She put her arms round him and gave him a hug. ‘Of course you do, my dear. It’s just you are not quite so glamorous!’

That afternoon Abi offered to do some weeding round the back, near the rockery which it now turned out was the remains of a Roman villa. Cal studied her. ‘You want to see them again?’

Abi nodded.

‘And the thought doesn’t frighten you?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Abi glanced at her hostess and shrugged. ‘This is all new to me. Like most people I imagined ghosts appeared in the dark in old houses on stormy windy nights wailing and gnashing their teeth. That would be scary.’ She shook her head. ‘These were outside in the sunshine and they were somehow busy with their own lives. It felt as though they were still there in a world of their own, a world through the looking glass. Like the people in St Hugh’s’ Church. They didn’t feel threatening. I am curious, I’m being nosy, and I want to see what is happening in their world.’

Collecting some gardening tools and a wheelbarrow from an outbuilding at the side of the house Abi made her way through the garden. The stone arch had been much restored, she could see that now with the sunlight behind her. The neatly seamed joints between the stones were too solid, too well ordered to be in their original state. The walls, thrusting from the rich earth of the beds were, though; they were little more than piles of rubble with here and there two or three brick-shaped stones cemented with pale crumbling mortar. Picking up the fork she thrust it into the soil and wrestled a thistle out of the ground. The fork came up with a piece of grey pottery stuck between the tines. She smiled, working it free with her fingers. Roman? She wasn’t sure. Shaking her head, she let it fall. Whatever it was, this was where it belonged. She dug on for several minutes, keeping her eye open for shadows moving around her. There was nothing. The only movement came from a robin which watched her with beady little eyes from its perch on the lowest branch of a berry-laden cotoneaster nearby.

Sticking the fork into the earth, she stepped back and went to the barrow. With the trowel and the hoe, wrapped in an unbleached cotton shopping bag, was the crystal. Carefully wiping her hands on the seat of her jeans she picked it up and unwrapped it, feeling suddenly a little nervous. Behind her the robin flew to the handle of the fork. It fluffed up its breast and began to sing. Abi smiled, reassured. Surely if something frightening were about to happen the bird would have flown away. She cradled the crystal between her hands and turned back to the archway. ‘Come on. Let’s see you then,’ she whispered. ‘Petra? Are you there?’ Robin or no robin she was a little scared, she realised suddenly. Scared it would happen. Or was she more scared that it wouldn’t? She stepped closer to the flowerbed.

Was the crystal vibrating in her hands? She wasn’t sure. Holding it firmly she looked up at the arch. With a sharp call of warning the robin flew back to the tree. The story had begun.

Romanus had pulled his canoe up onto the muddy bank amongst a line of other craft of different shapes and sizes which had been left there, and he headed up towards the cluster of houses, some large, some smaller, which formed the centre of the college. Mora’s house was further on, higher up on the slope of one of the lesser hills amongst rows of other small circular huts, cells where each individual student, priest and priestess lived and studied and prayed. He glanced round nervously. He had known the men and women of this college for most of his thirteen years, but the place still filled him with awe when he came across to the island. This was one of the most sacred places in the world, a centre of learning where students came from every corner of the land and even from across the ocean. At its centre on the great Tor was the sanctuary dedicated to the god of the otherworld, Gwyn ap Nudd; beneath the hill was the entrance to his kingdom. Tiptoeing in his efforts not to draw attention to himself, he dodged past the huts of the college servants and between the animal pens to climb the slopes towards the trees. Mora’s little house stood there, on its own, in the shelter of an old oak tree. He could see the first golden leaves of autumn had fallen and scattered on the reed roof. There was no smoke filtering up through the reeds to show she was at home. His heart sank. ‘Mora?’ The boy stood outside and cleared his throat nervously. ‘Mora, are you there?’

Silence.

He stepped forward and pulled aside the heavy curtain which hung across the doorway. The interior of the house was dark. It smelled smoky from the fire, but also of something else. Rich herbs. To his intense disappointment he could see that the hearth was empty and cold. He glanced up to where the bunches of herbs she was drying for her medicines hung from the roof beams. They moved slightly in the draught from the doorway as he held the curtain aside, peering in. Above them the roof was stained black from the smoke of her fire.

‘Romanus?’ A sharp voice behind him made him start. He dropped the curtain and jumped backwards. ‘Cynan!’

The young priest smiled at him, his warm green eyes friendly. ‘Mora has gone to visit the settlements. She won’t be back for several days.’ He saw the boy’s face fall. ‘Is something wrong? Is it Petra?’ The men and women of the druid college had come to know the Roman family who lived on the small island in the fen between Ynys yr Afalon and the lowest slopes of the Meyn Dyppa very well in the thirteen years since they had come to the area. They lived very near a small deserted sacred island where he himself often went to meditate and pray alone at the isolated little temple to the gods of the marsh and waters of the mere. The plight of their beautiful daughter had touched all their hearts. One or two of them had become especial friends, and Cynan, Mora’s close companion, training to be a seer and diviner, the man she would probably one day marry, was one of them. He often came with Mora on her visits to their homestead and the whole family had in their turn become fond of him.

Romanus nodded. ‘She cries in her sleep with the pain and her joints are swelling again. Mora is the only one who can soothe her. She tries to be brave and she never complains, but Mora is not due to come for several weeks and the medicine is nearly finished.’ The boy bit his lip. He adored his big sister; her anguish hurt him as though the pain were his own.

Cynan sighed. ‘I wish I could help. I tell you what, we’ll go to Addedomaros and ask him. I am sure he can give you some medicine to help until Mora returns. The moment she comes back I will ask her to come across to your house.’ He smiled kindly as he saw Romanus’s hesitation. The senior healer druid on the island was a formidable man. He could quite understand the boy’s reluctance to approach him, though he knew that for Petra he would dare anything.

Romanus squared his shoulders. ‘You will come with me to ask him?’

Cynan nodded. ‘You know I will.’

The healer’s lecture hall was at the centre of the settlement which served the sanctuary. He was standing at a table, lit by several lamps, and round him stood a group of students, their faces shadowed and intense in the flickering light. They were all studying the selection of bowls and jars on the table in front of them, and the heavy mortar in the centre into which one of their number was carefully measuring some dark brown liquid from a bottle. It smelled bitter and corrosive.

Addedomaros glanced up. ‘Cynan? We have a visitor I see.’ The old man’s white hair and beard were neatly trimmed, his well-worn, patched robe freshly laundered. At first sight there was nothing to show that this man was one of the most powerful healers in all the Pretannic Isles.

Romanus was standing a little behind Cynan. He met the man’s eyes nervously. ‘My sister is ill again, Father Addedomaros.’

The old man nodded. ‘I feared as much. And Mora is not here?’

Cynan shook his head.

‘She has gone to the mainland with Yeshua?’ Addedomaros asked. He gestured sharply at the young man with the bottle, who hastily stopped pouring, put it down and re-stoppered it.

Cynan nodded reluctantly. ‘He is keen to see everything she does.’

‘He is here to learn as well as teach.’ The older man spoke gently but there was a slight note of reproach in his voice. ‘It was her father’s wish she mentor him, Cynan.’

Cynan looked down at his feet. ‘Could you make up something for Romanus to take back with him?’ he asked after a moment.

‘Of course. Sylvia will make it up.’ Addedomaros glanced across at one of the students. The girl looked horrified at being singled out so peremptorily. ‘Willow and ash bark in equal quantities. With some birch leaf and burdock,’ he commanded. ‘And add some elderberries.’ He glanced at Cynan. ‘Should you be at your studies?’

Cynan nodded.

‘Then go. We will see that Romanus has his medicine.’

It did not take long. Clutching the flask to his chest Romanus raced back to his canoe and stowing the precious liquid in the bow he pushed off, the water ice-cold around his ankles, the mud soft between his toes as he hauled the heavy boat off the bank and into the deeper water. Leaping in, he seized his paddle and drove the dugout round threading his way through the reeds back towards the shore of the mainland. A pair of pelicans, landing heavily in the water near him, distracted him for a moment and so he did not notice the tall man waiting for him. Only when he had dragged the vessel up onto the grass and thrown a rope around a tree trunk to make sure it was safe did he look up and see him. ‘Papa!’ His face lit up. Then, after a second searching glance, he stepped back, puzzled. The man standing looking down at him was at first sight so like his father it was uncanny. But this man was shorter. Where his father had adopted the style of the local people and wore his hair long and sported a fine moustache, this man was clean-shaven and his hair was short-cut, his clothes like those Romanus had seen down at Axiom when the traders had come in from the distant corners of the Empire.

The man smiled. ‘So this is Romanus, I presume? What perfect timing. As I came up river from the port with some local fishermen they spotted you and said you were Romanus the son of Gaius. I am your Uncle Flavius, young man. Now you can show me the way to your house. Your mother is going to be so pleased to see me.’

‘Abi?’ Cal, wandering out into the garden later, found her guest standing transfixed, staring into space. ‘Are you all right? Did you see something?’

Abi jumped. For a moment she didn’t seem to recognise Cal, then she shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I was miles away.’

Cal noted the fork in the flowerbed. Almost no progress had been made with the weeding. The robin was singing from the top of the cotoneaster now, his breast blending perfectly with the russet of the leaves and berries. ‘So, what did you see?’

‘It was amazing!’ Abi shook her head. ‘It was as if I had some sort of day dream. I didn’t see the ghosts. At least, not like before. I wasn’t looking at them from outside the way I saw them yesterday. I seemed to be dreaming their story. Of course I might have been making it up. Having some sort of weird reverie; a fantasy. Perhaps I was asleep. The scene was set in a round house, not a Roman villa. Petra, the daughter, was ill and her younger brother was trying to fetch some medicine for her. He went to Glastonbury. It seemed to be a real island then and he paddled a dugout canoe across to it. I could see the Tor. He visited some sort of druid village and went to see the senior chap who seemed to be taking a class of students. He gave him some medicine for Petra. Then he came back and his uncle was waiting for him.’

Cal sat down on the bench. ‘My God! You make it sound like a film. Then what happened?’

Abi shrugged. ‘Nothing. You came.’ She shook her head. ‘Sorry, that sounded a bit cross. I didn’t mean it that way.’ She paused thoughtfully. ‘I must have been dreaming, but it was all so real!’ She paused again. ‘Have you heard of a place called Axiom?’

Cal wrinkled her nose. ‘Axium was a Roman port on the Bristol Channel. I think it’s at Uphill near Weston. The rivers and coastline have all changed so much over the millennia but somewhere like that. Does that help?’

Abi nodded. ‘It fits, I think.’

‘I’ve read masses about the area over the years. Glastonbury wasn’t – isn’t – technically quite an island as I expect you know. It’s a peninsula. Now the levels have been drained, it’s an island in a flat landscape, but once it was surrounded by water at least in the winter. They think Ponters Ball, which is an earthwork across the neck of land between Glasto and the mainland, was a defensive barrier which effectively turned it into an island. No one knows for sure what was here, as far as I know, in Roman times or before, but if it was a sacred place, a sanctuary under the druids, then that would have been its boundary.’ She ran her fingers through her hair. ‘I’m trying to remember my local history. If it helps, the names of both our rivers, the Axe and the Brue, meant river in Celtic times. Axe from the same word as Isca and Brue meaning something like fast flowing water. Which it isn’t. Not now! So, Axium just meant a place on the river! If your port was called Axiom perhaps it was the pre-Roman name.’ Her gaze was resting on the crystal ball in Abi’s hands. ‘What on earth is that? I’ve been dying to ask.’

Abi looked down at it almost guiltily. ‘Something my mother gave me.’ She reached into the wheelbarrow for the cotton bag and carefully inserted the lump of crystal into it, wrapping it gently. ‘It’s strange, I know, but I have been wondering if this is what helped me make contact with your ghosts. An ancient crystal ball.’ She laughed in embarrassment.

‘And did it?’

Abi shrugged again. ‘Something did.’ She laid the bag back in the wheelbarrow. ‘Is Ben still around?’

Cal shook her head. ‘He went home a while back. If you need to see him again I am sure you could give him a ring and drive over there. It is not far.’ She wiggled the fork free of the soil and laid it in the barrow. ‘Come in, Abi. You look very cold. If you’ve been standing out here for hours you must be chilled to the bone in this wind. And we have a problem.’ She sighed. ‘I’ve had a phone call from your father.’

Abi looked up, startled. ‘He’s not supposed to know where I am!’ she said sharply.

‘No, that’s what I thought you said. He gave me a number and asked me to get you to ring him. He said you weren’t returning his calls on your mobile. He sounded -’ She broke off as though uncertain how to put it. ‘He sounded a little impatient.’

‘My father is always impatient.’ Abi stooped to pick up the handles of the barrow. ‘I am so sorry if he was rude. That was one of the reasons I didn’t want him to know where I was. I hoped my mother’s death,’ she paused and took a deep breath, ‘well, I hoped it might bring us closer together, but it seemed to do just the opposite.’ He hadn’t rung her mobile. No-one had. All her friends, it appeared, had decided to give her some space.

The number he had given Cal was the home phone. After some hesitation she pressed dial on her mobile as she stood at her bedroom window looking out towards the Tor. Her father answered after two rings. He must be sitting at his desk. She tried to suppress the wave of misery which threatened to overwhelm her as she thought of him alone in the echoing empty house.

‘Abigail?’ His voice rang in the room. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that you had been sacked?’

She closed her eyes briefly. ‘I haven’t been sacked, Daddy. I resigned. As a matter of interest, how did you get this number?’

‘The bishop’s office. Your boss came to see me,’ her father went on without pause. His voice was neutral. She couldn’t read his thoughts. ‘Kieran Scott.’

‘I am sorry.’ She gave a wry smile; she thought of Jesus as her boss. She toyed for a second with the thought of her father and what his reactions would be to an encounter with Jesus Christ, wondering who would win the argument.

‘We talked. He’s an interesting man.’

‘He’s an ordained priest,’ she retorted. Had Kier turned up without the dog collar, knowing her father was an atheist? If so he was a hypocrite – something to add to all his other sins in her eyes.

‘He explained he had been your employer. Why did you feel the need to run away from him?’ Her father sounded merely curious, his tone level. She still couldn’t guess where he was coming from.

‘Didn’t he tell you?’

‘He said he misinterpreted your feelings; he said he might have frightened you. He is extremely sorry that he upset you.’

‘And he’s asked you to be his spokesman?’ She was incredulous.

‘Not in so many words. I liked the man.’ She detected a note of embarrassment. ‘He believes in God which I suppose is his prerogative, but he assured me he would never require anyone else to do the same. We talked about the chemistry of the universe. We talked about definitions. He agreed that a great deal of the received attitude to mysticism is a nonsense which the church as an institution could well do without.’

‘I see.’ Abi pushed open the window and leaned on the sill, staring out at the garden. So Kier was crawling to her father. Thank goodness she had insisted no-one tell him where she was staying. The thought, as soon as it occurred to her, was dashed. ‘He said he hadn’t been told where you are,’ her father said. ‘But I don’t see why you don’t want him to know. Why not give the man a chance?’

‘Because, I don’t want to see him ever again. He was violent. Did he tell you that? He was threatening and he has destroyed my career.’

Her father let out a sound which sounded very much like ‘Tosh!’ ‘He said you had over-reacted,’ he continued with exaggerated patience. ‘He said you leaped to conclusions. Silly girl. You’ve always done that. I told him given time you would come round.’

‘I beg your pardon!’ Abi was incandescent with fury. ‘How dare you say that! You had no right.’

‘I had every right. I’m your father. I know you better than anyone, even you yourself if you would just admit it. If you are going to persist with this stupid God stuff, you would be much better to do it under the firm guidance of a man who knows that the whole thing is a metaphor.’

Her hands were shaking. Somehow she resisted the urge to switch off the phone and cut him off. ‘You haven’t told him where I am, have you?’ she said furiously. ‘Please tell me you haven’t. Please, don’t encourage him to think that I am amenable to persuasion. I don’t want to hear from him again. OK?’ She paused. There was no answer. He had hung up.

Abi sat down heavily on the settle and stared at Cal in despair. ‘My father knows where I am.’

Cal shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose it was hard to find out. I know Ben wouldn’t have said anything, he knows that you wanted your whereabouts kept secret, but he was dealing with the bishop’s office. I imagine there are several people there who would know. If your father rang and said he’d lost your number and that it was urgent, there might have been someone who thought it OK to tell him.’

Abi nodded. ‘Will he tell Kier, though? Knowing I don’t want him to has given him power over me. He liked that. I could hear it in his voice.’

Cal came and sat down opposite her. The fire was still unlit. A bed of grey ash lay in the hearth, illuminated by a patch of sunshine which had strayed down the huge chimney. The dogs had gone out somewhere with Mat. ‘Abi, if your father could find out, so could anyone, I’m afraid, but remember, you are safe here. If your father comes, even if Kier comes, they can’t drag you away. We will give them a cup of tea, talk to them nicely and then ask them to leave. If they don’t go, then you can go and stay somewhere else for a day or a week or a month if necessary until they do.’ She grinned broadly. ‘I defy anyone to stay here if Mat decides he doesn’t like them. You don’t know him well enough yet, but the dear old stick can make himself extremely prickly when he wants to. And no-one is going to threaten you or hurt you with the Cavendish brothers on the premises. OK?’

Abi nodded, speechless for a moment. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. It was ridiculous, feeling like bursting into tears because someone was being kind to you. Cal had the tact to look away. She stood up. ‘Tea before you go out again?’

The small church, dedicated to St Mary of Wood Leigh, was a gem. Like Woodley itself, it rose on an outcrop of rock and sand, one of the many small ‘islands’ rising from the levels, the churchyard surrounded by a low wall of warm honey-coloured stone, the lych-gate carved from gnarled oak. Letting herself in, panting after the steep climb between the moss-covered gravestones, Abi stared round, feeling the atmosphere wrapping itself around her like a warm blanket, reassuring, calm, steady. Even without glancing at the short history of the church for sale at the entrance for the princely sum of twenty pence, Abi had guessed that it was incredibly ancient and built upon an even more ancient sacred site. She could feel it. Something from the distant past, an older sanctity which predated and somehow transcended its life as a Christian church. Firmly she pushed the feeling aside. She had come here to pray to her own god.

Closing the door softly behind her she walked up the aisle. Instead of pews there were about two dozen rush-seated chairs, grouped roughly into two ranks on either side of a central aisle. She sat down on one about halfway up the nave. She hadn’t brought the Serpent Stone with her. It seemed wrong somehow to bring it into a church.

‘You’re still there then.’ She whispered the words into the spaces. Was it really several days since she had prayed? What had happened to her daily prayers, the structure of her faith? ‘I’m sorry. I did my best. I really thought I would be good at the job.’ She looked up at the east window. The colours in the stained glass were murky, greens and ochres, old colours, natural stains from the hills and fens around the church. The figure of Christ on the cross was primitive. Medieval. In spite of the barbaric pose, the huge nails through his wrists and ankles, the face of the Lord sported a huge grin. She found herself smiling back. ‘So you knew it was all going to be OK,’ she said quietly. ‘Not so easy for the rest of us.’

She loved the smell of old churches. People always said they were redolent of ancient incense, but that wasn’t it of course. Just stone. And old hassocks and crumbling hymn books and candles. And prayers. The atmosphere was very still. When she had come in it was sleepy; gentle. Lost in dreams. Now almost imperceptibly, it was changing, something was stirring. She looked round nervously. It was as though someone – or something – was watching her. She glanced back at the window. The smile had gone. What she had taken for a loving grin was a grimace of pain. Scrambling to her feet she turned and made for the door. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come. I thought it would be all right.’ Scrabbling for the door handle she let herself out into the wind. The sun had moved. It was low in the sky and the shadows were lengthening. Closing the door firmly behind her she felt the breeze tugging at her hair and she pulled off her hairclip, shaking her head and turning back, retraced her way down between the moss-covered gravestones, towards the orchards at the bottom of the manor’s gardens.