Arthur felt an absolute chill. If Bohr and his kind ever entered the Hyddenworld it would lead to disaster.
‘And now?’
‘Others may wish to get to you, Arthur, and that our respective governments cannot allow. Therefore for your own safety . . .’
‘When?’
‘Almost immediately.’
‘I need time to get things together that may be needed.’
‘We can give you time for that, of course.’
‘And you’re taking me to RAF Croughton?’
He needed the confirmation but he regretted the question the moment he asked it. He did not want Bohr to pick up on the fact that he liked the idea of going to that location. Bohr would want to know why.
‘Yeees . . . any reason you ask?’
Arthur affected a self-deprecatory laugh.
‘My bladder,’ he said. ‘But if the journey’s only twenty miles or so I think I can manage.’
It was well done and Bohr seemed satisfied.
‘How long will the meeting go on – hours, days?’
Bohr murmured a vague reply.
‘When will you be there, Erich?’
But the line was already dead.
It’s time to get myself back into the Hyddenworld, Arthur told himself, hoping he might be able to avoid the trip to Croughton.
‘We’d like to leave by 1900 hours, sir’ said the officer, looming now at his study door.
‘Do you know how long this meeting is scheduled for?’ Arthur asked.
‘As long as it takes, I should think, sir. So, is 1900 hours good?’
‘Yes,’ said Arthur politely. ‘Thank you.’
9
IN THE ABBEY GROUNDS
The route to Abbey Mortaine was a circuitous one, following an abandoned railway line. But it was safe, with good cover, until it opened out near the village of Coldrick.
As they neared it, down a valley to their right, a quacking and flapping over a nearby field drew their attention to the unusual sight of mallard flying about in evident distress. Usually they fly straight off in one direction or another, not over a river in bewilderment.
The river itself was a small one, but quite deep, and ran under the low bridge which carried the railway line over it and then down to the village and beyond.
They spied another odd sight: a hydden sitting quietly on the riverbank, his portersac to one side, his stave to the other, his feet dangling aimlessly in the water.
He was in his mid-thirties, rather roughly and dirtily dressed, and he looked around at them without interest when they approached, his face pale and bewildered.
It was only after they had plied him with food and drink and gained his trust, that he was able and willing to talk.
‘Notice anything?’ he said.
‘Such as . . . ?’ asked Jack.
‘Fowl, the water surface and a frightened pike.’
Katherine said they had noticed that some mallard had been behaving nervously.
‘Correct,’ said the hydden, ‘well noticed, madam! What else?’
‘Nothing . . .’ said Jack slowly.
‘There was a bubbling up: don’t see that often, down in the village; and a sucking down. Don’t see that neither. Now, that’s not a good sign is it? And then the pike . . .’
‘What about it?’ asked Stort, interested.
The hydden did not immediately answer. He was thickset with powerful arms and big hands, the nails thick and stumpy and black with grime
‘Name’s Dodd, no more, no less. No “Mister” for me. Plain Dodd will do. You can see my occupation from my portable grinding stone and my calloused hands!’
‘You’re a knife-grinder?’ guessed Jack.
Dodd nodded.
‘That and sharpener of fish hooks, repairer of brot-tins, maker of kettle spouts and such like things. Metal’s got a way with it that I understand. Came this way three days ago, heading north, like you. Aiming for Brum. Can’t say I ever knew there was a hydden community hereabout but there was Coldrick, right at the river’s edge.
‘But I’ve made good trade and I could make more but I’m leaving on account of the mallard, the bubbling and that scared predator. Been lodging with a widow goodwife who I paid in kind, if you know what I mean. An itinerant has needs like others. Left morning after yesterday . . .’
‘You mean this morning?’
‘Aye that’ll be the one. Well then, this’n morning I woke with a sense of unease. Nothing unusual in that. I often wake knowing I must move on. The goodwife said, “Dodd, get me a fish and I’ll rouster up brekkie afore you go . . .” Off I went, upstream to a good lie, and cast out a float and worm, the water being too broiling and bubbling for ledgering. Know what I mean?’
They nodded, as if they did.
‘The fish weren’t biting; they were jumping like sand hoppers in hot sun. Then there was the pike . . .’
‘What about it?’
‘It jumped clear of the water, not once but thrice. Dodd says to himself: when a fish like that panics, the rest of us better start doing so too, and I did. I did. Not been back and won’t. This place Coldrick got the dumblies on it if you ask me. So I’ve been sittin’ here recovering and considering and now you’ve come I’ve decided. I’m going along with you if you’ll have me!’
This was not unusual. Lone travellers liked company and in exchange they gave news of ways and means along the route.
‘By all means,’ said Stort, ‘until we turn off.’
‘Well you oughter not stay on this route considerin’s there’s Fyrd about.’
‘Fyrd?’
‘They were there when I first arrived, looking and waiting.’
‘For what?’
Dodd looked at them with a certain cunning and tapped his nose.
‘For you,’ he said, ‘if you are who I think you are.’
‘Who . . . ?’
‘Mister Stort, Jack the Stavemeister and Mistress Katherine, mother of the Shield Maiden. That’s the word that’s out, though no one’s sayin’ it. Folk say you’ve come over from Berkshire way to avoid the Fyrd.’
They set off again.
‘Not much more to say,’ said Dodd, ‘except they were looking for you. Went off yesternoon.’
‘Which way?’
Dodd didn’t know.
‘What I do know, and I say this freely without malice: when they find you they’ll have your guts for garters. I know. They had mine once and I’ve never been the same. Come with you I will. You could use my stave if we meet ’em.’
‘How many were there?’
‘Six.’
They shook hands, Katherine included.
‘You better had come with us awhile,’ said Jack, ‘and tell us what else you’ve heard.’
It felt like a lucky break for all concerned, as if the sun had been hiding for a time and come back again. They would have liked more of Dodd’s company, but after half a mile or so they reached a human fingerpost pointing to the right on which the words Abbey Mortaine were painted. In the distance, on lower ground, they saw the arches and walls of a ruined abbey.
They stopped to say goodbye.
‘One thing I’m not getting clear in my head,’ said Dodd. ‘Who’s leading your party?’
None of them spoke.
‘Mister Stort?’ wondered Dodd.
‘Not exactly,’ said Stort.
‘Master Jack, then?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Jack.
‘Then it must be you, Mistress Katherine.’
‘Must it?’
‘Want some pike? Fourth time it jumped it was straight into my lap snapping its teeth and that’s what gave me my turn. I mean . . . I mean . . . they are carnivorous!’
He heaved off his ’sac and brought out the pike and gutted it and took off head and tail right in front of them.
He cut off three steaks with a sharp knife, wrapped them up and gave them to Jack.
‘Can’t eat it all,’ he said.
‘And a fish given is a fish that comes back, as my Ma used to say. So you can safely say we’ll meet again and meanwhile Dodd gives you this advice for free: if the mallard are flapping and the river’s a-bubbling and the pike’s taken to jumping, you better run for your life. Because those omens are not good.’
They turned off the railway track and walked quietly down towards the ruins. It was early evening and getting dark. The last part of the path turned into a steep track that dropped towards the ruins through a stand of pines which made the air resinous and the going slippery with pine needles.
The land flattened out into short grass where the ruins stood. They were extensive, the walls of the long nave standing high in place and the arch of the round west window complete. Other buildings were less so, but there was enough standing to see the cloisters, the undercroft and dorter, and, adjacent to the stream that ran out from a steep hill at one end of the grounds, what had been a hospice, visitors’ quarters and much else.
There was a small bridge over the stream, a weir to its left, and other ruins further upstream before the ground steepened to the hill.
All was silent and deserted but for the flap of rooks up in the pines and the distant cooing of doves looking for roosting spots. Though the sun had sunk behind the trees the air was warm and light and the place felt peaceful.
‘So, why have we come here, Stort?’
He had said nothing more of that but seemed very excited to be there, poking about the ruins, working out the lie of the land, pointing out the importance of the water supply. Then he sat down and considered how to answer Katherine’s question. She was generally more interested in such things and enjoyed Stort’s sometimes long and obscure explanations. Jack less so, but he sat down too to hear what Stort had to say.
‘For a hundred years or so, in the fourteenth century, Abbey Mortaine had the finest scriptorium of all the abbeys in Englalond. That’s where they copied manuscripts and illuminated them. I looked around for its likely location just now but I think it’s all gone.
‘It’s not generally known, and I doubt that humans ever acknowledge the fact, but the best illuminations were done by hydden attached to abbeys like this one. Of course no one ever admitted the fact but hydden have smaller hands and became adept at such work. What is unusual about Mortaine is that what it also made were some of the first notations of music. That was because the choir here was famous and well developed and included both human and hydden choristers, probably the last time the two cooperated.
‘The Main Library at Brum has a number of manuscripts, books and a codex, or collection of documents, from this abbey. It is in the codex that accounts exist of a wondrous musical instrument possessed by this abbey and envied by others. It was called a Quinterne.
‘No one knows what it looks like but it was probably stringed, like a lute. The legend was that the Quinterne would never leave the Abbey precincts until its music was needed to help save the world. Sound familiar? Like the story of Beornamund’s gems, which had that power also?
‘My mentor Master Brief thought so. He came to the Abbey when he was young, in an effort to find the truth of the Quinterne, but never did. He said he met with hostility from the remaining monks, who were all hydden, no humans at all. They had left in the sixteenth century but the hydden stayed on – and still produced illuminated books.’
The sun sank lower, twilight descending.
Jack stretched, got up and left Stort talking. He went to the stream to get a drink but, finding it hard to reach the water from the nearside, crossed the bridge to the other side.
He was well within sight of Stort and Katherine so, when he stiffened, turned sharply and suddenly raised a hand as a signal, they got up and went to him at once.
‘What is it, Jack?’
‘Get your staves and bring mine, now!’
They did so at once.
‘What is it?’
He pointed upstream to where there was a jumble of rocks and stone on the bank and in the water.
‘Look!’
It took a moment for them to see the bodies, three of them.
‘Are they . . . ?’
‘Hydden, not human.’
‘Katherine, stay close by Stort, back to back. I’m going to investigate and then we’re getting out of here fast, it’s too exposed. We can be seen from all sides.’
He knew before he took a step forward that the bodies he had seen were fresh. There was no odour and the blood shone still on the path.
He circled them very cautiously, looking as much at the bushes nearby, and along the bank, as at the bodies themselves. No sign of life, no movement, and yet . . . yet . . . he had a feeling of being watched. Not a bad one, but it was there.
He looked more closely at the bodies. They were certainly all dead, their hands tied behind their backs, their throats slit. A neat, tidy, cruel job.
‘Fyrd,’ he murmured to himself.
Times certainly had changed so far as humans were concerned. Hydden bodies would never have been left on view a year before, especially by the Fyrd. They would have been burnt.
Their garb was distinctive.
Each wore white fustian robes with woven girdles. Their feet were bare and dirty. Not far off was a pile of sandals. They had been made to take them off before they were killed.
Their hair was ill-cut and short. These were hydden monks who had seen better days.
He retreated back to the others, eyes checking everywhere, near and far. An easy place to hide, especially in fading light. An impossible place to investigate without putting themselves in jeopardy.
‘Well, Stort,’ he said, ‘they were killed very recently. They look like the monks you might have been hoping to talk with . . . but right now we go back up the hill and make camp somewhere safe among the pines, where we are not sitting ducks. I think Fyrd have been here, and recently. We may have disturbed them but I don’t think so. Were that the case they probably would have waited to attack us, for to have killed these monks in such a way needed at least as many as us and probably a whole patrol.’
‘Shouldn’t we get right away?’ said Katherine.
Jack shook his head.
‘If we’ve been seen we can be followed. Up there we’ll be hard to get at without us hearing them approach. If no one saw us arrive, they’ll not know we’re here and we can investigate further by the light of day.’
They retraced their steps up the hill and set up camp under a wooded bluff which gave them protection from above and the sides. Jack set up thread-alarms – simple stretches of well-placed strong black thread to a cobnut rattle in their tent, easily triggered by intruders into their space – and set their staves and his crossbow ready.
‘I’ll take first watch,’ he said, ‘while you two fry up that pike.’
It was going to be another long night and now a cold one.
There was a nip to the air, and mist hung about the trees.
10
RAF CROUGHTON
In the time the military allowed Arthur before they left, he thought hard and fast and collected the few essentials he might need. He included some items from what had once been a workshop and a laboratory in the former stables, among which was some stiff wire and a wire-cutter. He had this for creating structures to hold equipment. He hoped now the cutters would have another use.
He had to be sure that, if he could not find a way to escape to the Hyddenworld before they took him to Croughton, he had what he needed when he got there.
Stressed he might now be, but it was a long time since he had felt so alive.
He went upstairs to pack a small case and returned with it to his study, where he placed it on his desk and removed the item that was inside. It was an ancient leather portersac from the Hyddenworld. Inscribed on the inside of the flap in a Gothic script in black ink was ‘Yakob’, Jack’s German name.
When the White Horse carried the six-year-old Jack to safety in Englalond, and he entered the human world, the ’sac and its fe
w contents was his only possession. It remained his only connection with his childhood and Arthur had decided it was about time he had it back.
For now he took a few small items from his desk, relics of his Hyddenworld explorations: a tiny brass compass of hydden manufacture, a cannikin, the essentials to make fire and a brew the hydden way, a brot holder, a bedroll that looked far too small for him, a flint lighter.
‘Oh, and my stave!’ he said to himself, taking up what looked like no more than a stumpy stick with brass ferrules at each end, from his walking-stick stand.
He gathered some maps and papers and printed off the attachment which Bohr had sent, which showed the places in the British Isles where there had been recent Earth incidents.
He put the case by the front door. The portersac he kept with him, as if in his haste he had forgotten it was in his hand. If he succeeded in getting to the tree henge he would need the things inside it. ‘I’ll just make sure the bottom garden gates are secure,’ he told the officer waiting, and hurried outside.
‘Feel free, Professor. But we need to leave in twenty minutes.’
Arthur left the case but carried the ’sac. If his first plan worked he’d be gone before they knew it with all he needed in his ’sac. If not then he would move on to Plan B when he got to RAF Croughton.
He walked through the conservatory and out across the lawn towards the two trees that marked the entrance to the henge. If he could just get through the trees and turn dexter into the shadows he would be beyond the reach of Bohr.
Five yards, four, two . . .
‘I’m sorry, sir, you cannot go any further.’
Arthur stopped abruptly.
A soldier in camouflage appeared from behind one of the conifers. Another rose from the ground thirty yards off. Both were armed.
‘But . . .’
There were no buts, none at all.
As Arthur had feared, he was going to RAF Croughton, like it or not. He would have to rely on Plan B. If that failed he had no plans at all.
He went round to check the gates, followed by one of his minders, collected some lemon balm for show and reluctantly turned back to the house.
Back in his library he found his copy of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office Royal Commission Report, titled Archaeological Remains on Ministry of Defence Properties in England, Wales and Scotland. Professor Arthur Foale was cited with four others as a co-author. His work had focused on MoD properties in the Midlands and South-East of England, of which there were forty-seven. They were listed alphabetically.