She shook her head. ‘Cynan would never kill anyone. Nor would Rom.’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘It was you.’
He turned away towards the door. ‘Nonsense! Be very careful of the accusations you throw around, young lady. They could get you into all kinds of trouble. I should if I were you be more worried about the fact that your pain is already returning, and your fever is building again and you are beginning to realise just how much of a fraud your friend Yeshua was.’ Turning to look at her over his shoulder he fixed her with an icy stare. ‘It will happen so quickly you will wonder why you ever thought you were cured.’ Again the hard cruel smile as he gave silent thanks to the seeress, all those years ago in Rome for her curses, which he had never forgotten.
‘No!’ Petra burst into sobs. She was looking down at her hands. Already they seemed to be swelling again, her fingers bending into claws, and slowly she was aware of the dull ache starting in her wrists and ankles.
He smiled again. ‘So, are you going to attest that the man was a fraud?’
‘No.’ She shook her head, tears pouring down her face. ‘No. He was a good kind man; a great healer.’
Flavius sneered. ‘You stupid girl. Don’t you see, I was offering you a chance to live!’
She shook her head again. ‘No, you weren’t. You wanted me to lie.’ She was still standing facing him, her face white with pain.
He shrugged. ‘So be it. You will go to join your brother.’ His short sword reflected the small flames licking up from the logs onto the softly glowing metal of the cauldron over the fire.
Her final terrified scream was lost in the hiss of steam as he tipped the cauldron over and lunged towards her.
‘No!’ Abi’s whisper was a whimper of pain. ‘No, oh no, how could you?’ She put down the stone. How long had she been sitting here? She glanced at her watch, trying to shake off the horror of what she had seen. Standing up she seized a T-shirt from her bag, wrapped up the stone and tucked it under the far corner of the mattress. It seemed a bit obvious, but then she wasn’t planning on Kier getting anywhere near her bedroom. She went to the door and listened. Nothing. Was he already inside? Had Justin offered him a coffee or a drink or something? Opening the door she tiptoed up the short passage, listening. There was no sound of voices from the living room.
Kier and Justin were standing in front of the fire, about four feet apart, awkwardly, both looking into the body of the room, not talking. She took a deep breath and stepped towards them. She tried to make herself smile, but her face refused to comply and she felt herself staring at Kier showing nothing but hostility in every atom of her body. Coming to a standstill on the far side of the central table, she looked from one man to the other. She said nothing.
Justin grinned at her and she saw a flash of mischief in his eyes. ‘I have offered our guest some coffee or tea or a drink, but he has declined.’
She shrugged. ‘His loss.’
Justin scanned her face for a moment, then he turned to Kier. ‘In which case, my friend, perhaps it would be as well to discuss the reason for your visit with as little preamble as possible.’ He paused.
For a long moment there were no sounds in the room but the cracking of logs in the fire and outside the lonely yelping of a buzzard riding the thermals high above the hills.
‘I want Abi to come back with me,’ Kier said at last. He cleared his throat uncomfortably.
‘No.’ Abi’s response was so quick it made Kier step back. He looked surprised and for a moment almost frightened at the force of the one word.
‘But this man is a pagan,’ he said after a minute, sounding more hurt than angry.
‘This man is a gentleman,’ she said softly, and then paused, astonished at her own choice of words. ‘He would never imprison me, or hurt me or make vicious unfounded accusations against me.’
‘He’s not a Christian, Abi.’
‘Do Christians behave the way you have behaved, Kier?’ she retorted.
He was still staring at her, but suddenly he turned away. He slumped into the chair by the fire and put his head in his hands. ‘I’m sorry I frightened you. I didn’t mean to. I left everything for you to make you comfortable. I wanted to keep you safe.’
‘So safe you put wolfs bane in my sandwiches?’ Her voice rose an octave.
He looked up and slowly shook his head. ‘I didn’t put anything in your sandwiches. I said that to make them realise how desperate I was. I would never hurt you, Abi. Never. I swear it.’
‘The police are testing all the food you left with Abi,’ Justin put in at last.
Kier looked shocked. ‘The police?’
‘Of course the police. You kidnapped and falsely imprisoned her and you were threatening murder.’
‘Sweet Jesus!’ Kier rubbed his face with his palms. Abi could hear the rasp on his unshaven cheeks. ‘I don’t know what’s happened to me. I wanted to save your soul, Abi. I could see the danger. I could see the evil spirits spinning round you. They were everywhere in that house. In the church. Back in Cambridge. One day, suddenly, you were surrounded by whirling lights and voices. You didn’t seem to see them.’ He looked up and to her horror Abi saw tears in his eyes. ‘I responded the only way I knew how. To try and surround you with Jesus’ love and protection, to try somehow to protect you myself. I did it all wrong.’ He dropped his face back into his hands, and she saw the tears trickling between his fingers.
Justin frowned. ‘Can you see these spirits round her now, Kier,’ he said gently.
Abi froze. She felt a cold breath circle round her as she stood staring at them. She leaned forward, her hands on the table, feeling the warmth and solidity of the old wood beneath her fingers, waiting in silence for his answer. Kier looked up and stared at her. Then he nodded.
‘Describe them.’ Justin walked over to his desk and produced his jar of smudge bundles. He scrabbled amongst the litter of pens and other oddments on the desk for a box of matches and lit the bunch of herbs, waving them gently until the flame died to be replaced by a wisp of blue smoke. He laid them in a dish and brought it back to the table, standing it in front of Abi.
‘I can see a young girl. Her hands are all strange. She is holding them out, twisted, like claws – ’
‘No!’ Abi almost screamed.
Justin looked at her sternly. ‘Let him talk, Abi.’
‘But – ’
‘We can deal with the situation in a minute. I need to know what Kier can see.’
‘She is trying to protect herself from a man. He has a knife in his hand. A large knife. A sword. He is threatening her with it.’ The tears were pouring down Kier’s face now. ‘He is going to kill her.’
As Abi opened her mouth to cry out again Justin stopped her with a sharp gesture of his hand. ‘What is he saying?’
‘The healing didn’t work. The healing was a sham. Admit it. Yeshua is a sham!’ Kier was shaking violently.
‘And what is the girl doing?’
‘She is terrified. She is trying to get out of his reach, dodging behind the fire. There is smoke and steam everywhere. There is a cooking pot lying on its side in the fire. She is screaming for her mother.’ His whole face had collapsed. A string of spittle dripped from his lips. He wiped his face angrily with the back of his hand. ‘Why is this here? Why can I see it and you can’t? This all belongs to that house in Woodley. You have to stop it!’
‘Do you know who Yeshua is, Kier?’ Justin said. ‘Listen to me, Kier. Can you hear me? Who is Yeshua?’
‘I don’t know!’ Kier shook his head. He squeezed his eyes closed.
‘He is a healer, Kier. A good man, from Galilee.’
Kier swallowed his sobs and stared at Justin, his mouth open. ‘Galilee?’
‘Galilee, Kier.’ Suddenly the room was totally quiet.
‘Jesus?’ Kier whispered.
‘Yes, Kier. Jesus. Jesus healed this child, then this man, this Roman, who wanted Jesus dead on the orders of Herod Antipas, decided to wreak his revenge on th
is little family who had sought safety on the edge of the Summer Country in faraway Britain.’ Justin turned to Abi. ‘Fetch the Serpent Stone.’
Abi didn’t argue. She was trembling all over as she went back to her bedroom and extricated the stone. She brought it back into the living room and set it down on the table. A wisp of fragrant blue smoke lazily drifted over it, curling in the air and dissipating up near the ceiling below the beams.
Kier stared at it. He began to rock backwards and forwards, moaning quietly.
‘You, Kier, have probably got more natural psychic ability than Abi and me put together,’ Justin said. ‘This sensitivity of yours has been suppressed and ignored and probably fought so strenuously that it has brought you to the brink of a nervous breakdown. You have to understand, that it is part of who you are. It is a god-given talent, not something evil, and it is something that you can use in complete assurance that it is compatible with your Christian faith. You are in the wrong job, Kier. You should be doing what the bishop’s friend Greg is doing. Working to overcome darkness and bring in the Christ light. You have targeted the wrong person in Abi. She has acted as a catalyst. This stone is an age-old tool. Someone has told it this story; someone has encoded the horror and fear and evil of what happened at Woodley inside the crystal in this stone, and that someone wanted the story to be known one day perhaps in the hope that terrible wrongs could thereby be righted.’
Kier looked up at Justin, his face blank with misery and exhaustion. ‘You believe this?’
‘I know it.’
‘And Abi is safe?’
‘Abi is a strong woman, Kier. She is safe. She too has seen what you have seen, and been made unhappy by it, but between you, between the three of us, we can fight this evil. We can try and put some light back into the darkness.’
‘We can’t save that child’s life retrospectively.’
‘We don’t know she died at his hand, Kier. To find that out we have to ask the crystal.’ He paused. ‘On the other hand,’ he shook his head, ‘perhaps we shouldn’t ask the crystal, because maybe the act of watching what happened will mean that it did happen.’
There was a long pause.
Kier sat up. He groped in the pocket of his trousers and produced a handkerchief to wipe his face. He shook his head. ‘I don’t understand.’
Abi was frowning. She had been watching Kier’s face intently. Now she turned her gaze to Justin. ‘Are we talking Schrödinger’s Cat here?’
Justin shrugged. ‘Something along those lines. We are actually talking about a fascinating phenomenon which is not unconnected with some very real magical formulae about which I don’t know very much. I’m wondering whether the druids were adepts in a way we don’t understand.’
‘Mora?’ Abi asked.
‘Mora, or her father or the healer she trained with. Perhaps all of them.’
‘And how does all this fit into the story of – ’ Kier hesitated. ‘Jesus.’
‘That is something we three have to unravel. Our villain is obviously the Roman with his sword at the little girl’s throat, the Roman with the mission to kill Jesus before he went back to Galilee. Our victims are the children. Romanus and Petra.’
‘And poor Cynan,’ Abi put in.
And poor Cynan. But it is Romanus who screams for revenge. His soul which is anchored to the earth by despair and hatred and disappointment and fear.’
‘But the others – ’ Abi put in.
‘The others are part of your story too.’ He paced up and down the room a couple of times. ‘But it is Romanus who is the source of all this energy.’ He threw himself down in the chair opposite Kier. ‘And Mora is our key. She wants to communicate with you, Abi. She has done so successfully and she has the tools.’
‘And she thinks we can help?’
He nodded thoughtfully. ‘She thinks we can help and she wants us to know the story.’
‘Of Jesus.’ Abi glanced at Kier.
‘Of Jesus,’ Justin agreed.
Kier said nothing. He sat back in the chair and closed his eyes wearily. He was slowly shaking his head from side to side.
‘So what do we do?’ Abi asked at last. Her voice was husky. She looked down at the crystal. The smoke from the smudge was still curling round it, as though seeking it out, testing, licking the cold crystal surfaces.
Justin nodded. ‘We work together.’ He glanced over his shoulder at the man in the chair by the fire. Kier’s eyes remained closed.
‘What about the car full of clergymen and bishops?’ she whispered.
Justin smiled. ‘Back up with knobs on. Ben will be up for it and so I suppose will Greg as that is his job. What about your bishop?’
Abi shook her head slowly. ‘I have no idea. He’s a nice man, that’s all I can say. Of course, he was born in Priddy.’
‘Oh well, if he was born in Priddy!’ Justin laughed out loud. The sound seemed to percolate through to Kier’s brain. He opened his eyes. ‘You think this is funny?’
‘No, not funny. Very serious,’ Justin replied after a moment. ‘This is something world shaking, Kier. We are going to try and influence the course of history. We have to see to it that Petra is or was saved. We cannot allow that anything else happened.’
‘The space time continuum as they call it in sci fi books,’ Abi added dryly. ‘That kind of thing usually results in the end of the world.’
‘Not with Jesus on your side it doesn’t,’ Justin said.
‘Were you ever a Christian?’ Kier asked suddenly. He sat up and leaned forward, staring at the fire.
‘I was baptised.’ Justin nodded. ‘I gave up subscribing when I came face to face with some of Christianity’s greater inanities. Chiefly their bloodthirstiness. That had nothing to do with the Jesus of my bedtime stories.’
‘Or the Jesus of Mora’s crystal,’ Abi put in sadly.
Kier slumped back into his chair. ‘And I didn’t do anything to dispel your disillusion, did I,’ he said almost to himself. They weren’t sure who he was addressing. Perhaps both of them.
‘Are the spirits and energies still weaving around Abi?’ Justin asked after a moment.
Kier looked up, startled as Abi froze. He stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. ‘I can’t see anything.’
‘No. Neither can I.’ Justin looked at Abi and smiled. ‘Don’t look so shocked. Nothing has changed. You can cope with whatever is there. You can, both of you, cope.’ He hesitated, then he walked over and put his arm round Abi’s shoulders. ‘What say we all have some soothing herb tea while we wait for reinforcements. Once they arrive we will summon the powers of darkness and see whether we can sort this whole mess out.’
‘You make it sound so simple, but you still haven’t said how,’ Abi said with some asperity.
He shrugged. ‘We’ll play it by ear.’
She gave him a quizzical smile. ‘And Kier?’ she added softly.
‘Kier is no longer a problem.’ The husky voice came from the chair near the fire. ‘I give up. I can’t fight this. I am so sorry, Abi.’
The bishop’s black Volvo rolled up to park alongside Kier’s Audi at about midday. The four clergymen, all in mufti, climbed out stiffly and stared round at the view of the hills and the valley and beyond to the distant mountains, lost now in a haze, then as one they turned towards the cottage.
Cal had sighed with relief when they left after breakfast. At last they had the house to themselves again. She wandered back into the kitchen and began to collect the plates for the dishwasher. She was standing at the sink, rinsing the last of the glasses by hand when the dogs began to bark. Mat had been glancing at the headlines in the paper. He put it down on the table and looked up enquiringly. ‘You don’t think they’ve come back? I didn’t hear a car.’
She shrugged. ‘I’ll go and see.’ As she reached for a towel and began to dry her hands there was a sound at the back door.
Cal turned and looked at it. ‘Did you hear that? Is there someone there?’ She put down the to
wel and moved towards it.
‘Cal, don’t open it!’ Mat’s voice was suddenly anxious. ‘Look.’
She turned to see him pointing at the dogs. They were huddling together, their tails clamped between their legs in uncharacteristic terror, the hair on the back of their necks on end. Side by side they backed away from the door, their eyes fixed on the knob which slowly began to turn.
Mat shot forward and slammed the bolt across. ‘Who is it?’ he shouted. There was no reply. He glanced at Cal. ‘Come away from the window. Are all the other doors locked?’
She tried to think clearly. ‘I think so. I don’t know.’ She could feel herself beginning to shiver. ‘It’s not Kier,’ she whispered. ‘He couldn’t have got back here so quickly.’
He shook his head. The dogs were cowering now behind the settle and the silence in the kitchen was intense.
Mat tiptoed towards the table and Cal saw him pick up the bread knife. She felt her stomach turn over with fear. The earlier mist over the levels had returned and spread silently up through the gardens to encircle the house. Thick and white, it was drifting eerily past the windows. She resisted the urge to go and draw the curtains against it, backing away towards Mat. ‘What’s happening?’
His knuckles whitened on the knife and she saw him gesture towards the back door in sudden fear. Slowly it was opening. Wisps of clammy fog drifted in, weaving round the kitchen, then they saw the figure. A man stood, outlined in the doorframe, looking round. He was tall, square-shouldered, bare-headed, but otherwise dressed in the military uniform of the Roman army. They could see the breastplate, the epaulettes, the sinewy arms, the short leather skirt, the thonged boots. In his right hand he carried a broad-bladed short sword. Cal felt herself freeze. She couldn’t look away. His eyes were dark and hard. They bored into her own and she knew she couldn’t run; she couldn’t move. Her heart was thudding dangerously. She couldn’t breathe.
His face was hard, the angle of his cheekbones harsh, his nose aquiline, his mouth set in a thin merciless line. ‘Lydia.’ Somehow she heard his voice, though his lips didn’t move. Oh God! He was going to kill her. He thought she was someone else.