They watched as he slid back into the car.
‘Please don’t let her turn in at this moment,’ Cal murmured as they retreated into the house and closed the door.
They waited, holding their breath, listening to the sound of the car tyres as he reversed and swung round. From the study window they watched him drive to the gate, indicate right, towards Wells, and disappear down the road.
‘Call Abi now,’ Mat said under his breath.
‘I’ve tried. Her phone is switched off.’
He shook his head. ‘Then all we can do is hope she is tucked away somewhere safe where he won’t spot her.’
Abi was sitting in the chair which Kier had vacated some two hours before, in front of Ben’s sitting room fire. ‘Ben, I’ve got to talk to you. I’ve got to tell you something –’ She broke off as Ben raised his hands as though warding off a stampeding horse. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’
‘Kier was here.’
‘Kier?’ Her face registered incomprehension. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, he was here. He was going straight over to Woodley.’
‘I should have guessed he would come.’ She slumped back in the chair.
‘So you knew he’d found out where you were?’ Ben cleared his throat.
‘My father told him.’
‘May I ask how your father knew?’
She shrugged. ‘Not from Bishop David. I think someone in the diocesan office probably didn’t realise it was supposed to be confidential.’ She fixed her gaze on the carpet. ‘What did he say?’
‘He seemed somewhat disturbed.’ Ben heaved a sigh. ‘Both in himself and about you. He made some strange remarks, some of which worried me as they have obviously worried David.’ He looked up at last. ‘Can we get one thing straight, Abi. I take it you did not perform any kind of ritual to summon the spirits of the dead into St Hugh’s church?’
‘No!’ Her indignation was instantaneous. ‘Of course I didn’t. I told you what happened.’ She glanced away from him. ‘It was the crystal. It was the first time I realised what it could do.’ She paused. The silence was broken by the rustling whispers of the fire.
Ben stood up and moved over to the log basket. He rummaged round in it until he found a section of lichened apple trunk. The room filled with the sweet smell of the apple. ‘So, you didn’t call up its powers deliberately?’
‘No.’ She was chewing her lip. ‘That was when I first experienced anything so strongly. Clairvoyance I suppose you would call it. The ability to see ghosts. I didn’t make the connection with the crystal that time.’
‘And you didn’t summon this ancient congregation?’
‘No. They were just there. Suddenly. Then Kier walked in and they vanished. Like that!’ She snapped her fingers. ‘As though they had never been. But he smelled the candles and it seems he saw them as well.’ She shook her head. ‘Which must mean he’s clairvoyant too.’
Ben had been standing looking down into the fire. He turned away and resumed his seat with a sigh. ‘So it would seem.’
‘You do believe in clairvoyance?’ She could feel herself growing agitated.
‘Of course. By whatever name.’ He was watching her as she stood up and wandered over to the window. She stayed there with her back to him, fingering the flowered curtains, looking out at the lawn. He could sense her distress. ‘We’ll keep you safe from him, Abi. If necessary we’ll move you somewhere else.’
‘No!’ She span round. ‘I have to stay at Woodley.’
‘Why?’ The intensity of her response surprised him.
‘Because I want to find out what is happening – what happened,’ she amended.
‘The ghosts, you mean.’
She nodded.
‘Wouldn’t it be better to remove yourself from the ghosts? They are unquiet spirits which need to be released, Abi, not called back again and again. You know that as well as I do.’
She made no response. Kier’s visit had given him pause. He was uncertain now what she had done. She could sense his ambivalence and it made her furious. She had been going to confide in him the thought that had been tormenting her, that she had seen Jesus. How could she do that now? It would confirm everything Kier had told him. That she was mad!
Turning to face him she gave a wan smile. ‘I’ll ring Cal and ask if he’s there, shall I?’
Ben nodded. ‘I would keep out of his sight for now. They can hide your car round the back. There are plenty of old barns and sheds there. He won’t stay down here long if he can’t find you.’
She shook her head. ‘What has he got to rush back for? My guess is that he will stay here as long as it takes. Did he tell you what he wanted to say to me?’
Ben was thoughtful for a minute. ‘I’m not actually sure he did. He seemed keen for you to know that he had been suspended.’
‘So he wants to have a rant at me?’
He nodded again. ‘That’s part of it, I’m sure, but there was something else. I think he is afraid you have been corrupted in some way. He wants to save your soul. And he is also a proud man and you have rejected him. Reducing you to a quivering jelly of fear and penitent dependence,’ he added shrewdly, ‘would make him feel much better about himself.’
She snorted. ‘No chance of that!’
‘No.’ He glanced at her under his eyebrows. ‘Repentance is a part of what we do, though, isn’t it. If we are worried that we might be doing something not quite right, we try and stop and we ask God to forgive us.’
‘We ask God,’ she retorted, ‘but not Kier!’ She folded her arms. ‘I’m not doing something not quite right, Ben. My conscience is not telling me to leave this alone.’
That was a lie, she realised. Her conscience was by no means at rest. But then, if she was seeing Jesus…
It couldn’t be Jesus. That was the point.
In her head she was back in the lecture hall. There were lots of students wandering around in Europe in those days. Europe. She brought herself up short. The Empire was what she meant. It was all part of the Empire. Mainland Europe, excluding the Germanic north and of course at this time Britain, right across to and including the Middle East and all round North Africa. And probably on your gap year visiting even the German and British tribes might sound quite exciting. She smiled to herself. All sorts of students from all sorts of countries. That was what modern studies were showing. Iron Age, even Bronze Age tribal areas weren’t isolated, undiscovered territories peopled by primitive barbarians. They were sophisticated communities who traded widely, had done so for a thousand years even before the birth of Christ. Yeshua, whoever he was, would have spoken how many languages? Aramaic, obviously, Hebrew to read the scriptures, Latin in a country ruled by Rome, Greek as an educated man living in an Hellenistic world. Even the druids spoke and wrote Greek. He would have picked up the local Celtic tongue. Maybe, if he had travelled as widely as legend said, he would have learned Tibetan and Sanskrit, the language of the Sutras. Whoever this man was he was an educated, sophisticated traveller of a kind to have put most modern people to shame. He could be anyone. It was her job to find out who. She had to find out what happened. And she didn’t need the permission of Ben or Kier or the bishop to pursue her research.
‘Abi?’ Ben was watching her.
She gave an embarrassed little laugh. ‘Sorry. I was thinking.’
‘Clearly,’ he said dryly. ‘May I ask what about?’
She shook her head. ‘Just wondering. Can I ring Cal from your phone?’
He gestured towards it. ‘Of course.’
She didn’t see his worried frown.
Athena Wake-Richards was sitting behind the counter staring out of the shop window, lost in thought. She hadn’t been totally honest with Abi and now she was feeling guilty. But then Abi hadn’t been fully honest with her either, of that she was certain. Call it intuition, or a shrewd ability to read another woman’s face, but she knew Abi was hiding something. She glanced round the shop. The crystals twinkled and
dreamed as they always did, creating a strong feeling of energy in the room, but that was all. She had long ago given up believing in them. They were just pretty stones. Giving off energy yes, but beyond that with no particular healing powers, no miraculous ability to divine the future, nor to store the past. She sighed. She had been talking complete balls. Crystal balls. She gave a rueful smile. Oh, she knew the patter well enough. She could reel it off for hours; once she had believed it herself, passionately and completely, as convinced as anyone in the town. She shivered. But she had become cynical in the end as so many did. She had waited and hoped and believed that proof would come; something. Anything. She had dared to hope that a revelation would open her eyes, show her that her rational brain was wrong, that all this magic was genuine. But it hadn’t happened. She remembered the last time she and Justin had met. They had had a terrible quarrel. A real break-up-of-any-possibility-of-reconciliation quarrel. Not that they had ever been that close, it was just that he had seemed a kindred spirit; a really nice guy. She screwed up her face in a grimace of disgust. So why had she led Abi to believe that she and he were friends and so claimed a kinship of some kind with Woodley and the Cavendishes? Still, her advice had been sound, hadn’t it? Give up on the crystal. She should use her own brain; her talents, whatever it was that was producing these ghostly phenomena. She inspected her fingers and began to chew off a hangnail thoughtfully. Did she believe in ghosts, that was the question. Abi obviously did. She obviously believed everything she had been told and had been presumably convinced as well by the garbage she, Athena, had fed her. She shook her head. At least she hadn’t tried to sell Abi a pile of books. She glanced into the back of the shop. There were a great many of them there, some of them very expensive. Good value in their way, with pretty photographs and diagrams of layouts and things, but not for someone with a real problem. Or if they were, she was not the one to explain how they worked.
The bell on the door tinkled as two women came in. She glanced at them and smiled a welcome. Surreptitiously she reached for the writing pad under the counter. She and Bella had a small wager going. These two would buy something, at a guess. Something small like earrings. She put a tick in the column. At the end of the month they would tot up their guesses and whoever won would stand the other a meal at The George and Pilgrims. No cheating, of course. She glanced at her watch. Perhaps she would close early and take a drive down the Old Wells Road and look up Cal and Mat. See Abi on site as it were. See if she could work out what it was that Abi was hiding and at the same time appease her conscience and make sure that nothing she had said could cause any harm. She gave another rueful smile. She knew what people called her in the town. Boadicea. It conjured up the image of a large, florid, aggressive woman with wild Celtic overtones. A strong woman and a wise woman. Well, that was what she had worked at, wasn’t it. She should be pleased her image plan had worked so well. Mat and Cal were not going to betray her. They believed the image. Unless Justin had said something. But then Justin didn’t talk to them, did he. She looked up and smiled as the customers approached the counter holding out a pair of earrings. Each. She smiled. Two ticks to go on the list.
Abi approached the gates slowly, her eyes peeled for the silver Audi. The quick phone call to Mat before she left Ben’s had told her that there had been no sign of Kier returning but she was still nervous. Turning in she drove straight round to the back and tucked her car into an old barn as instructed. The doors were standing open waiting for her and Mat appeared as she climbed out. ‘I’ll help you shut them. They’re a bit warped, but it’s worth it. He won’t see your car in here. It’s much easier to hide you!’ He grinned.
‘I resent having to hide away from him at all!’ Abi said crossly as she reached into the back of the car for the books she had bought across the road from the coffee shop before she left Glastonbury. New books she didn’t think they had. One on history, one on legend. ‘I’m not afraid of him. Wouldn’t it be better if I just told him to piss off!’
‘You think he’d go?’ He followed her out of the barn and closed the other half of the doors, slotting an iron bar in place to hold them closed.
‘I don’t know. What else could he do? He can’t just sit there forever.’
‘He could bully you. He could be unpleasant.’
‘But that’s all.’ They walked across the gravel towards the back door. ‘I was afraid of him in Cambridge because he was my boss. He was making unpleasant accusations and pestering me and I was on my own, but once I told the bishop it all stopped.’
‘Till he rang you.’
‘And I foolishly panicked. But, Mat, I am not going to let him terrorise me. That is nonsense. What can he do? Especially if you and Cal are here to back me up. I’ll just ask him to go.’
‘OK. It’s up to you.’ He opened the door for her and ushered her into the kitchen. The dogs, lying in front of the fire looked up, thumping their tails on the ground in greeting. Mat walked over to the sink and washed his hands, drying them on a dish towel before going over to the cooker and lifting the lid on a pan which was simmering gently on the backburner. ‘This smells nice. I wonder where Cal is.’ He was just replacing the lid when the doorbell rang. The dogs leaped to their feet and raced out of the room towards the front door, barking. Mat and Abi looked at each other.
‘May as well get it over with,’ she said firmly. To her fury her heart was thudding with apprehension. She waited in the kitchen while Mat went to the door. When he returned moments later there was a woman behind him. ‘You seem to have been reprieved,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I gather you two know each other.’ It was Athena.
‘There were things I wanted to tell you.’ Athena and Abi were seated on either side of the kitchen fire with a glass of red wine each. Mat had disappeared in search of Cal.
‘And I you!’ Abi had regained her composure. ‘But first I’d like to show you the crystal.’
When she reappeared minutes later with the crystal wrapped in its cotton bag Athena was staring into the fire. She looked up. ‘I need to make a confession.’
‘Look at it first. Please.’ Abi glanced at her. ‘I think I can guess what you’re going to say.’
Athena leaned forward and set her glass down on the hearth. ‘I doubt it!’ she said sharply. She put her hands out and Abi put the bundle into them. For a moment Athena sat still, her hands on the cloth.
Abi took a sip from her glass, her eyes on Athena’s face. For a long time neither woman said anything.
When Athena spoke at last she shook her head. ‘I can’t feel anything.’
‘Unwrap it.’
‘There’s no point.’
Abi looked dismayed. ‘Why not?’
‘Because I can’t feel anything. That’s what I had to confess to you Abi. I’ve been stringing you along. Well, not entirely. I know my stuff. I’ve read every book, spoken to every expert, but I can’t feel it myself. Crystals do nothing for me. I’m a jeweller. A designer, I can appreciate their beauty but that is all. I’m sorry. I’m a fake; a con artist. I don’t believe in it any more.’
‘I see.’ Abi slumped back in her chair.
‘That doesn’t mean it’s not happening for you.’
‘No.’
Hearing the desolation in her voice, Thiz sat up. She came over to Abi and rested her chin on Abi’s knee, gazing soulfully up into Abi’s face.
‘It is happening to me. I can’t pretend it isn’t,’ Abi said slowly. ‘And whatever it is, it has something to do with the crystal.’
‘You and your mother obviously have the gift.’ Athena smiled ruefully. ‘I wish I did. I really do. What I’ve told you is what I’ve read. And I’ve brought you a copy of the best book we have on the subject.’ She dived into the tapestry bag which she had dropped at her feet when she sat down and produced a book with a selection of brilliant cut crystals on the cover. ‘Read it. See if it helps. I still think though that you should go with your own instincts. For you this is real.’
Out i
n the hall the doorbell rang again. The two dogs raced out of the room barking as Abi looked down at the book in her hands. She didn’t open it. ‘Thank you.’ Her voice was bleak. Then she smiled. ‘You didn’t mislead me, not really. I feel a little lost, I admit, but after all this is my stone as you say, and my mother’s. And I’m not alone. Cal was here when I saw one of the figures in here. Mora. The druid priestess. She came into the kitchen and stood over there by the window –’ She broke off at the sound of men’s voices in the hall. One of them was Kier’s.
Athena looked at her, puzzled as Abi rose to her feet, staring at the door. ‘Abi? Are you all right?’ By the time Kier and Mat appeared in the doorway she too was standing up.
‘So, you are here!’ Kier walked in and stared from Abi to Athena and back. ‘I need to talk to you. I dropped in earlier, but you were out, so, I thought I might try again.’
‘I don’t think I want to talk to you, Kier,’ Abi said quietly. Her mouth had gone dry. ‘Better to draw a line under everything and make a fresh start. For both of us.’
‘A fresh start!’ he cried sharply. ‘How can I make a fresh start? You have destroyed my life.’
‘No, Kier. I haven’t. You did that yourself.’ Abi threw an appealing look towards Mat. He was standing awkwardly in the doorway, the dogs sitting at his feet. ‘Please, let Mat show you out. I am sure if you talk things over with the bishop –’
‘I have talked things over. I needed you and you turned your back on me. I’ve told him that instead of helping me, you used the dark arts to bewitch me. You’re dangerous, Abi, but I forgive you. And I want to help you. That is why I have come. We can work through this. We can study and pray and ask God to help us.’
Abi was intensely aware of Athena’s face. The woman was staring from one to the other of them in astonishment. The crystal, still wrapped in its bag lay on the chair between them beside the book which Abi had dropped there.