COPYRIGHT

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events of localities is entirely coincidental.

Harper Voyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © John Pritchard 1998

John Pritchard asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

For permission to reproduce copyright material the author would like to thank the following:

Lyrics from Sell Out (words & music by Simon Friend, Charles Heather, Mark Chadwick, Jonathan Sevink & Jeremy Cunningham) © 1991 Empire Music Ltd, 47 British Grove, London W4 for the World. Used by permission of Music Sales Ltd. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.

Lyrics from The Fear (words & music by Simon Friend, Charles Heather, Mark Chadwick, Jonathan Sevink & Jeremy Cunningham) © 1995 Empire Music Ltd, 47 British Grove, London W4 for the World. Used by permission of Music Sales Ltd. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.

Lyrics from Forgotten Ground (words & music by Simon Friend, Charles Heather, Mark Chadwick, Jonathan Sevink & Jeremy Cunningham) © 1995 Empire Music Ltd, 47 British Grove, London W4 for the World. Used by permission of Music Sales Ltd. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.

Lyrics from Tell Me about the Forest, by Dead Can Dance, © 1993, reproduced by kind permission of Beggars Banquet Music/Momentum Music.

Lyrics from The People who Stumbled in Darkness, by Roger Ruston, reproduced by kind permission of the author.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780006496373

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2016 ISBN: 9780008219499

Version: 2019-04-11

DEDICATION

To

Mum and Dad,

who laid the deep foundations.

Michael Wood,

who made the past alive.

and F.M.E.,

who’s still my leading lady.

EPIGRAPH

Behind them, to divide the carrion meat,

They left the raven, dark and shadow-clad,

With cruel beak; the dun-cloaked eagle too,

With his white tail – exulting in the feast,

A hungry battle-hawk; and the grey beast,

The wolf of the deep woods …

THE ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE, 937

Watchman, what is left of the night?

Watchman, what is left?

The watchman replies:

Dawn is coming, and also the dark.

ISAIAH 21:11 – 12

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

PROLOGUE (1989)

Rising Signs

PART ONE WATCHERS (1993)

I Spire Dreams

II Grey Ravens

III Cross of Iron

IV Testament

V Heaven and Hell

VI No Man’s Land

VII Running Blind

VIII The Waste Down

PART TWO SLEEPERS

I Fiends and Ashes

II Out of the Deep

III Predicator

IV Mind and Memory

V Dreams and Decay

VI Grief Riders

PART THREE SHADOWS

I Green Blades Rising

II On Earth as It Is in Hell

III Wessexena Sky

IV Moonblade

V Harrow Path

VI Home from the Hill

VII Our Summer

PART FOUR HUNTERS

I The Watchman’s Mark

II Odysseus

III Stranger

IV Wolf Hook

V Witch Hunt

VI Tare Dog

VII Circle of Sorrow

VIII The Anger of God

IX Lightning East to West

X No Graves on Badon Hill

PART FIVE RAIDERS

I Land-Waster

II Bone Fire

III Celebrant

IV The Lych-Road

V Fields of Blood

VI The Fell Tale of the West

VII Dark Moon Rising

VIII The Sermon of the Wolf

PART SIX MARTYRS

I Massacre Is My Forgiveness

II A Thousand Silver Pieces on the Black

III True Cross

IV Dead Men Ride

V In Search of Holy England

VI Night in Gehenna

VII Requiem

VIII Dominion

PART SEVEN PILGRIMS

I Liberation

II Inferno

III The Rage of Killing

IV Mystic and Severe

V Hell’s Ditch

VI Winter Runes

PART EIGHT WARRIORS

I Forgotten Ground

II On the White Hill

III Saint and Sorceress

IV Reprisal Weapons

V The Saying of the Swords

VI Wilderness

VII Black Cavalry

VIII Hard Standing

IX Legion

X Snake

PART NINE RAVENS

I Book of Shadows

II The Betrayed

III The Field of Blades

IV The Cat, the Wolf and the Dog

V Scorpion Gate

VI The Fire of the Dove

VII The End of the River

VIII A Roof for a Skyful of Stars

EPILOGUE

So Close that There Is Nothing in Between

Keep Reading

Author’s Note

About the Author

Other Books By

About the Publisher

Prologue

RISING SIGNS

(1989)

As touching the terrors of the night, they are as many as our sins. The night is the Devil’s black book, wherein he recordeth all our transgressions.

Thomas Nashe

She had no truck with horoscopes. No way could someone’s future be predicted by the stars. And yet, as Frances glanced at them with casual disinterest, her own was written there for her to see.

The sky tonight was orange and polluted, but frosty sparks were showing here and there. The only shapes she recognized were two her mum had shown her – out in the back, one bedtime, long ago. From the flyover embankment, she could see them well enough. The Great Bear, rising upward from the dark fields to the north; and setting in the west, the Northern Cross.

Cars passed fitfully, racing westward through the night; the junction left behind before they knew it. In the lengthy gaps between them, the dark and silent countryside drew closer. Fran turned on the spot, then pulled back her glove to check her watch. Just past midnight. They’d got here first this time.

Wrapping her long coat closer, she went back to the car. It was parked up a service road, just short of the underpass. The others had sat tight; she didn’t blame them. Paul leaned across to open the passenger door, and she climbed in, drawing a shivery breath between her teeth.

‘Anything?’

Fran shook her head. ‘Dead quiet.’

The CB crackled briefly, then lapsed into an empty, spooky hiss. She gave it a glance. The set was clamped below the dashboard, its digits glowing green.

‘Nothing on that?’

His turn to shake his head. ‘Not since Merlin.’

Ten minutes since that last, half-garbled contact. As if the silence of the night had clogged the airwaves. The sense of isolation was insidious: creeping up. Bullington Cross felt cut off from the world – a lonely, lamplit island in the murk.

‘Want some coffee?’ asked Marie from the back. Fran turned gratefully in her seat, and took the thermos cup she proffered. The coffee was too hot to taste: a gulp of scalding water. She wriggled as it seared its way down.

‘So when are we going to meet this boyfriend of yours?’ Marie teased in her ear.

Fran turned her nose up coyly. ‘When I let you.’

‘Knows about these midnight escapades, does he?’ Paul murmured.

‘Yeah …’ said Fran. ‘He knows.’ Her eyes flicked down. She took another sip.

‘And does he think you’re mad?’ Kate asked.

‘He thinks I’m bloody crazy.’

Paul grinned at that, and raised the CB handset to his mouth. ‘This is Catkin at Bullington … any news on the convoy, over?’

The edgy pause that followed made them all hunch forward: waiting. The radio snapped and squawked. And then a woman’s voice came through – tone firm but faint with distance.

‘… call for Herbs and Watchers along South Route … Four launchers, two controls, out of Yellow by ten past twelve …’

‘Shit,’ Kate whispered, shifting.

Fran swallowed. ‘Twenty minutes …’ She felt a tingle of relief: it wasn’t a false call. Then her stomach hollowed out. They’re on their way. They’re coming.

Heart thudding, she climbed out; the others followed. Paul unloaded placards from the boot and passed them round. Glancing up, Fran saw that a police car had appeared while they’d been talking: it was parked on the flyover above them, watching the A34.

The four of them walked in silence through the underpass, emerging in the day-glo of the link road. A handful of others were there already. Fran recognized old faces, said hello. Chatting, someone cracked a joke: she giggled with delight. The tension sometimes got to her that way.

A transit van came crawling past, and dropped off several coppers. She watched one cross the road to shine his torch into the woods. The others started spacing out along the nearside kerb.

‘Come far?’ one asked her, amiably enough.

‘Oxford.’

‘So when’ll you be getting to bed tonight?’

She shrugged. ‘God knows.’ Not much before three, if we follow it down. And I’ve got a tutorial in the morning …

‘This may be a silly question, right … but why are you wearing shades at half-past midnight?’

She reached up to adjust them with an impish little grin. ‘To preserve my anonymity, of course.’

‘Famous, are you?’

She shook her head. ‘Notorious, more like.’

The snarl of motorbikes made her heartbeat quicken. She turned her head as the outriders reached the underpass, and paused to rev their engines. Four or five patrolmen, helmets swivelling: waiting for the signal to proceed. They had it a moment later, and peeled off past her, roaring up onto the flyover and westward.

Frivolity had fizzled out. The thump of her heart felt as heavy as lead. Dry-mouthed, she started up towards the crest. A couple of Watchers were waiting there, well-marked. Silent now, the copper matched her pace.

The police car on the flyover came suddenly to life: drove backwards, blue lights flashing, to block the access road. Fran looked beyond it – but the A34 lay empty in the darkness.

A glance back at the others: they’d stayed down in the shadow of the heavy concrete span. But then she’d always been the type to strike out on her own.

A squad car – London plates – came cruising past.

‘Here they come,’ called someone; and turning, she saw the line of lights come streaming down the hill. It nosed into the far side of the system, and came snaking slowly through it: the vehicles still hidden by the roundabout mound, but their noise now rising clearly to her ears.

She’d never forget the noise they made. Above the growl of engines, a clatter and squeak that made her hairs stand up.

Transits and patrol cars rumbled past her, driving steadily upslope onto the flyover – and then the first military vehicle came off the roundabout. A camouflaged command car, riding high on its wheels – a mottled, muddy shape behind the sleek white escorts. Whistles blew; a football rattle whirred. The turnout was too small to do much shouting. But Fran’s voice would have failed her if she’d been among a crowd. All she could do was stare, and search their faces: those bleak, unsmiling faces, staring back.

Pursing her lips, she stepped up to the verge and held her hand up, proffering a silent V for peace. The copper tensed, expecting her to lunge. The first Control was following already – a clanking monster, flexing like a serpent for the turn. She challenged the gaze of its armoured cab: a skull with a sarcophagus in tow. The second rumbled after it – and then the missile launchers, in a sinister cortege, their long, low backs enshrouded with tarpaulins. Engines roared at her, and axles squealed. As each one passed, she saw the double blast-ports at the rear; the missiles resting snugly in their tubes.

Four Cruise launchers: one full flight: the standard monthly exercise deployment. The wrecker came behind them, like an iron scorpion rattling with chains. A rearguard of police vans straggled after; and then the first pursuers came in sight. Used-looking cars, bedecked with CB aerials. Merlin passed, then Elderflower. And here came Torquemada too – a Dominican priest and friars in full regalia.

Everyone on foot was running now: the police for their parked transit, the Watchers for their cars. Fran wavered for a moment – watching the tail-lights fading in the darkness; almost shaking with the force of her reaction. Then she was off and pelting down the hill.

Reaching the car, she scrambled in. The others were all aboard, the engine running. She was still fastening her seatbelt as Paul took off – back through the underpass and onto the convoy’s route. Less than five minutes after its passing, the roads were clear again, the junction silent.

It didn’t take long to catch the convoy up again. They breasted a rise, and the snake of crimson lights was there ahead of them, sharp pulses of blue along its winding length. Soon they were up with the leading Cruisewatch cars. Fran could make out the control trucks at the front of the column, their high sides marked by orange running-lights.

She sat back in her seat, and braced one boot against the dash. Kate and Marie were motionless behind her; Paul’s grim stare was focused on the road.

‘… convoy approaching first Andover bridge …’ someone said on the CB.

Getting on for I a.m., and all the world seemed dead. The chase filled her with nightmarish excitement. As they sped on through the night, she thought of all the unseen eyes that watched them: owls and foxes staring from the copses and fields. But what else might be peering through the hedgerows; what faces in the long pale grass the headlights played across? She couldn’t help but think of ghostly figures, creeping up, to watch this roaring cavalcade go past.

Past Andover, and Thruxton Hill, they reached the long steep incline into Amesbury. Salisbury Plain was spreading to the north: a sea of pitch.

‘I’m going to try and get ahead of it,’ Paul said.

They broke off the pursuit at Amesbury Roundabout – the convoy grinding on towards Stonehenge. Paul put his foot down, speeding up the empty lamp-lit road. At Durrington he spun the wheel: they turned onto the Packway and raced west. Parallel to the convoy’s route; Fran looked and glimpsed its winking lights, a mile to the south.

Behind her, Kate was studying the map. ‘They’ll road-block us at Shrewton, sure as hell.’

‘Any way round?’ Paul called over his shoulder.

‘The road from the Bustard to Westdown Camp. They won’t have covered that.’

‘Right. They might have closed it, though.’

‘It’s worth a try.’

‘Fran?’

‘Go for it,’ Fran said.

They came to Rollestone Crossroads and went tearing north again. The road rose up, and let them see for miles; then dipped again. Darkness stretched away in all directions, but strange red lights were glowing here and there. The fringes of the firing range were coming up ahead.

Fran hung on, and braced herself. The Bustard vedette showed up in the headlamps as Paul swerved onto the narrow westbound road. No one was there to see them pass. The lonely sentry hut was locked and dark.

The unlit military road led up towards West Down. It might have been a country lane; Paul took it at exhilarating speed. The murk out here was dense and overwhelming: trapped beneath the starlight like a layer of London smog. Fran straightened up, and peered through her window, still searching for the string of phantom lights.

Then Paul yelled: ‘Jesus, SHIT!’

She swung around, and saw it in the headlights: a figure in the middle of the road. A featureless, inhuman face, with gaping holes for eyes.

Paul wrenched the wheel, and lost control.

The car went slewing off the road and plunged into a ditch. The bonnet crumpled up, the windscreen shattered. Fran was thrown against her belt: the impact mashed the breath from her lungs. Her head struck something hard and bounded off. Stunned, she felt herself flop back.

The world had just stopped dead.

She lolled there for a moment, sick and winded. Her whole head had gone numb – as if a piece of it was missing. Cold night air blew softly on her face.

Something started fizzing by her knees. Sparks, she thought, oh Jesus, we’ll catch fire. Galvanized, she struggled with her belt – and glanced at Paul. He was slumped against the wheel, head down. ‘Paul … ?’ she quavered, reaching out to take hold of his shoulder. She shook him, hard. He made no sound.

The muffled sizzling came again. She cringed away – then realized it was just the CB set: skew-whiff on its rack, but still lit up. She peered at it stupidly. Someone whimpered softly from behind her.

‘… convoy coming into Tilshead now …’

Help, she thought, and groped round for the handset. She found it dangling; scooped it up.

The radio hissed at her.

Fran recoiled again, as if she’d just picked up a snake. The hiss broke into eerie gibberish: almost like another voice, but mangled and tormented. Fear lanced through her. She dropped the handset, fought against her door and felt it give. She slithered out, and rolled onto the grass.

The headlamps were still on: staring and blind, like a dead thing’s eyes. The tail-lights left a bloody trail that almost reached the road.

They tinged the silhouette that waited there.

Someone in the car was weeping quietly. Ignoring them, she peered towards the road. Her mind flashed up the face she’d glimpsed. She thought its horrid gauntness had been muffled by a hood.

A soldier. In a gas mask?

But then the figure started coming forward. Something about its shambling gait made her struggle to her feet. Then the scarlet glow lit up the face beneath the cowl.

Oh Jesus Christ.

A metal mask stared back at her: brow and cheekbones setting off the tar-pits of the eyes. The lower face remained scarfed up in shadow. The sight was almost toad-like – and revolting. She stumbled back – then swung around and fled. Clear of the car, and out into the darkness of the range.

The shadow thing came striding in pursuit.

I

WATCHERS

(1993)

Beautiful city! … Whispering from its towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age … Home of lost causes and forsaken beliefs.

MATTHEW ARNOLD, ON OXFORD

CHAPTER I

Spire Dreams

1

Lynette caught sight of her from over the road, and gave a little wave. The gesture, like her smile, was almost shy; but her pretty face was bright with expectation.

Fran almost turned and walked away right then.

It had taken her so long to get this far. She hadn’t even answered that first letter. But Lynette had patiently persisted: so gentle, so committed, that all at once, one afternoon, Fran’s brittle shell had cracked. She’d wept a year’s worth of tears that day; her mum had told her later what a blessed sound it was – drifting downstairs from the bedroom through the silent, sunlit hall. After all those months of torpor and withdrawal, her daughter sobbing like a little girl.

More letters; then a phone call. We have to meet, Lynette had said. And Fran was feeling better, but still delicate and drained – as if she’d just brought up the poison of the world’s worst tummy ache. She’d hesitated; hummed and hawed. The soft voice on the phone was a voice from the past. And the past was forbidden ground.

Yet here she was, right now, in sunny Oxford, nervously waiting while Lynette crossed the street. As ever, Lyn looked gorgeous – a picture of elegance in her smart black trouser suit and snowy blouse. Fran suddenly felt dowdy in her cardigan and leggings.

Lyn hesitated for a moment, then gently touched her shoulders – kissed her cheek. When she drew back, her smile looked stretched; her eyes were bright and wet.

Fran felt her own eyes prickling behind the shades she wore. Her throat had tightened up, she couldn’t speak. That smile was from the Old Days: from Before. She’d almost forgotten what the sunshine looked like – the nuclear winter in her head had blotted it all out. But now, at last, the cold, black smoke was lifting. A glimpse of light again. A breath of spring.

And more than that: her friend was here, and beaming her delight. It made Fran warm inside, to see her pleasure. It made her feel so happy she could cry.

Lyn had worked so hard for this. She’d earned it. Fran wanted just to hug her, and hold tight.

‘Oh, God … Sorry …’ Lyn blinked and sniffed, still smiling. People kept on passing, heedless of the reunion in their midst. ‘I’ve missed you,’ she said simply.

Fran swallowed. ‘Thanks for waiting.’ An even bigger under-statement, but she couldn’t find a better way to say it. And had it only been four years? She felt like Rip van Winkle (Sleeping Beauty was too flattering a parallel): waking up to find the world had changed, and all her friends were dust …

Except for one. And who’d have guessed it, back when they were freshers?

‘Come on,’ Lyn said, and took her elbow. ‘Remember Heroes? It’s still there. Let’s have coffee.’

2

She’d been down for her interview, and seen its winter colours; but it had taken that golden first weekend to really bring her under Oxford’s spell.

Michaelmas Term: even the name was strange and rich somehow. The city in the autumn sunlight had seemed part of a whole new world. After the rugged countryside of home, it might have been a magical realm. She could feel the age of things down here: the buildings, and the books. And though she’d grown up close to ancient places, they’d never had a hold on her like this.

The place was beautiful enough; she had watched the stone-work glowing in the amber setting sun. But for her, the fascination was its treasury of thought. That was why she’d worked to come to Oxford: to study there, and somehow soak it up. Those hoards of books; those centuries of learning. It wasn’t the prestige: that didn’t matter.

Well, not much.

She’d signed herself in at Christ Church, unable to stop smiling. The college had entranced her from the start: a citadel of honey-coloured stone. Exploring, she’d found shady cloisters, quiet little nooks. A maze of spires and ivy. It was like an old-world castle in some fantasy she’d read. But this time it was real, and she was here. Little Frannie Bennett, from Up North. Her accent was soft, but she’d broadened it when posher ones cropped up. I went to a comprehensive, but I’m just as good as you.

Her spacious study bedroom overlooked an inner quad. Halfway through unpacking, she’d sat on the bed, and started taking stock. Still high on her excitement, she felt a little awed as well: belittled by the splendour of the place. She was suddenly grown up, and on her own. In Oxford – hours from home. No turning back now. The thought upset her buoyancy somewhat.

The first thing you should unpack is your kettle, Mum had said. Fran did so – and her mug and coffee too.

Lynette, meanwhile, was moving in next door.

Fran’s mum and dad had seen her off at the station, but Lyn’s had driven down here. There was lots of to-ing and fro-ing; the mother sounding anxious, the father more laid-back. Fran had the impression they were pretty well-to-do.

‘Oh Mummy, please don’t fuss,’ was Lyn’s first plaintive contribution.

She was hovering in the corridor when Fran peered out: awkwardly aloof, as if watching someone else’s room being furnished. She looked tired and rather miserable already. Someone else whose heady day might yet end in tears.

‘Can I offer you a coffee?’ Fran asked.

The girl’s smile was so grateful that it forged a bond at once. Posh though she was, her face was naturally friendly; her toffee-coloured eyes were warm and soft. Fran beckoned her in, and made another mug.

They swapped details like the schoolgirls they’d so recently been: Fran sitting cross-legged on her strange new bed; her first guest perched politely on the chair. Lyn was from Coventry, and had come here to read History; her father was a professor in the subject. Fran, who lived in Derbyshire, was doing French and German. Listening to Lyn talk – each consonant impeccably pronounced – she couldn’t help but feel a little distanced. Yet the other’s well-bred poise offset a shyness that she warmed to; a niceness that she couldn’t help but like.

‘You’re sure you’ll be all right, Lyn, darling?’ her mother asked from the doorway. The smile she offered Fran was gracious enough, but Fran had felt herself assessed, the woman clearly wondering who her daughter would fall in with, once free of the parental gaze.

‘Quite sure, Mummy. Thanks ever so much for everything …’ On which sweet note she saw them firmly to the car.

‘Fancy a wander?’ Fran asked, when she came back; and out they’d gone together, looking round the mellow college buildings, before meandering down onto Christ Church Meadow. Back to the Hall for a welcoming communal dinner; then coffee in Lyn’s room, the window open wide on the Oxfordshire dusk. Their friendship put its roots into that balmy autumn evening, and blossomed through the busy weeks ahead. By the end of that first short term, they might have known each other years: sharing secrets, clothes and sound advice. Fran and Lyn, inseparable as sisters.

3

‘Remember that time we hired a punt?’ Lyn asked her, smiling: drawing her gently back towards the past.

‘God, yes. Frannie and Lyn Go Boating. And wasn’t that a bloody disaster … ?’ But she was smiling herself, recalling how that afternoon had gone: a piece of farce so perfect that they’d ended up quite helpless with the giggles (though without a pole). And underpinning it, the river’s calm, the spires that gleamed with sunlight on the skyline; a clocktower chiming three …

‘Why don’t you take those sunglasses off?’ Lyn said, making a mischievous face, in case Fran took it the wrong way. ‘People will think you’re a spy or something …’

Fran stared at her for a moment; sensed a flicker of unease behind her friend’s determined smile. Then, slowly, she reached up and took her shades off. They were the pair she’d always used to wear: cheap wraparound black plastic. Her mocking, mock defence against being photographed and filmed. No laughing matter now, though; she hardly ventured out without them. They filtered the day – made it colourless and safe. Their lenses were anonymous, a mask.

The coffee bar grew brighter; Lyn watched her, looking anxious. And how must I look? Fran thought. She knew how she felt: as if she’d pulled her knickers down in public. That helpless; that exposed.

But she placed them on the tabletop, beside her sipped-at cup, and clasped her hands upon them. She didn’t need a mirror to see the paleness of her face, the vulnerable depths of her wide green eyes. She could read all that from Lyn’s concerned expression.

Go on, she thought, just tell me I’ve lost weight. She’d always been a slender girl – a real Slim Susan, Mum said – but now she felt uncomfortable and scrawny. And while Lyn still wore her dark hair in a stylish, silky bob, she’d let her own grow shaggy: a malty mane that brushed against her shoulders.

But Lyn said nothing; just placed her hand on Fran’s, and gently squeezed.

‘You’re sure you want to do this today?’ she asked after a pause.

Fran nodded quickly: shaking off temptation before it really got a grip. ‘Have to start somewhere.’ Especially there … where it had all begun.

‘There’s no hurry. Plenty of time …’ From the look on Lyn’s face, she wasn’t sure if it was a good idea at all.

Fran drank some more cool coffee, and changed the subject. ‘How’s the thesis coming on?’

Lyn wavered, then went with the flow. Smiled modestly. ‘Oh … it’s coming.’

‘So, when’s it going to be Doctor Simmons, then?’

‘God, don’t ask …’ But she was beaming at the prospect, and Fran felt a little warmer, deep inside. It eased the guilt she felt for having missed Lyn’s graduation; she wouldn’t lose this coming second chance. Even as they chatted on, she searched Lyn’s smiley face. It sounded like her future was as clear as her complexion. No storms on her horizon; not a cloud in her blue sky …

‘You’re working, then?’ she asked her.

‘Mm,’ said Lyn, ‘but not this afternoon. It’s temping – just to pay the bills. I’m a bit of a church mouse at the moment …’ She flicked at the sleeve of her well-cut suit. Fran couldn’t help but smile to herself.

Lyn hadn’t noticed; her own gaze lingered on her cup. Carefully she set it down, and bit her lip; then took the plunge.

‘Craig’s been in touch,’ she said.

Fran’s chest grew hot and heavy in the silence that followed. She fiddled with her rings; then swallowed. ‘Is he here?’

Lyn nodded. ‘Staying with friends in London.’ Her eyes were down again, embarrassed. ‘He … never forgot you, Fran. All the time you were …’ Tailing off, she twisted round to unfasten her bag, and took an envelope out. After the briefest hesitation, she laid it on the tabletop between them.

Fran rested her mouth against her hands, staring at the neat white rectangle. No stamp on it, and no address; it had gone from hand to hand. Just one word, written with a flourish. Her own name.

‘He gave me that for you,’ Lyn said, unnecessarily. ‘He wants to see you.’

Oh, Jesus, Fran thought numbly. She felt empty inside: unable to react.

Lyn leaned forward. ‘Fran, we’re here,’ she whispered. ‘You don’t have to face anything alone. He really cares for you – believe me. Just … let us hold your hands; go through it with you.’

Fran felt a tear trickle down her cheek; like the first drop heralding a downpour. She fought to keep herself in check. Lyn took her hands and held them. The threatened cloudburst faded back to grumble gloomily on the horizon.

Fran took a shaky breath. ‘… Thanks.’ She sniffed, her eyes still shining wet; then managed a damp smile. ‘You’re an angel, Lyn. Friend in a million …’

‘Let’s leave it for today,’ suggested Lyn. ‘Come on: let’s just go and sit in the Meadow …’

‘I can’t,’ Fran said, and shook her head. ‘We’ll take it slowly … but I have to go back. I can’t go any further till I’ve laid the past to rest.’

CHAPTER II

Grey Ravens

1

Lyn drove out of Oxford and northward through the countryside. The world through Fran’s shades had a monochrome look, but she could smell the breadth and texture of the fields: new-cut grass, and fresh manure, and fleeting wild flowers. Her heart throbbed hard, constricted. She felt a little sick.

Lunch was a welcome hiatus. Past a picturesque village, they found a shady spot above the road, and stopped to eat. Lyn had prepared a modest picnic: French bread sandwiches, fresh fruit, and cans of sparkling wine. Two glasses and a tablecloth as well: she’d always been an organized young lady.

‘Found yourself a man yet?’ Fran asked casually, between mouthfuls. She’d sneaked a glance at Lyn’s left hand soon after they’d met, and the ring finger was bare.

Lyn gave one of her shy smiles, and shook her head. ‘Not yet. Too busy. Too much work …’ She ducked a wasp, and swatted it away. ‘Besides … I’m not sure if I want a relationship right now …’

That last one really hurt you, didn’t it? Fran thought, but didn’t say so. Best to let that lie. Sitting back against the rough bark of the tree, she recalled how it had started. Lyn had been coy at first – Big Secret – but of course she’d had to share it in the end. He was from one of the other colleges: she’d met him at a lecture. The relationship had deepened during Hilary Term; Fran hardly met the bloke throughout, and saw Lyn less and less. She knew she’d been quite jealous at the time. Not that she didn’t have interests of her own. The day Lyn came to tell her how their Valentine’s date had gone, Fran had been prostrate with the after-effects of chasing Cruise missiles round Salisbury Plain until four in the morning. There Lyn had been, bright-faced and bursting to tell all, while her confidante was half-asleep and lolling in her chair …

She took another bite of bread: the taste as bland as cardboard in her mouth. She didn’t feel the least bit hungry. The countryside was peaceful in the sunshine; sheep and lambs were grazing in the field. But their destination – still miles distant – had already cast its aura this far out. She felt its chill and shadow on her heart.

And then there was Craig’s letter: folded and crammed, still sealed, into her bum-bag. Food for thought that overfilled her stomach.

Lyn sipped at her wine; hooked her hair behind her ear. She sensed Fran watching from behind her shades, and beamed encouragingly. Fran found the strength to smile faintly back.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Let’s go. Let’s get it done.’

2

They came to the wire. It stretched and weaved away to right and left. Reinforced mesh, with razor coils on top.

Fran stood there on the footpath, staring blankly through the fence. There was an empty road beyond it; then a vast expanse of grass. In the hazy middle distance, a scattering of buildings basked – smooth-backed, like concrete whales.

Her fingers closed on Lyn’s: so tightly that she feared they might do damage. But the gesture was convulsive, and she couldn’t let them go. They’d linked hands coming up the hill from Heyford – Fran had wavered to a standstill when she saw the water-tower. It rose above the skyline like a scaffold.

‘Come on, now,’ Lyn had whispered. ‘You can do it.’

If she felt her knuckles popping now, her quiet voice didn’t show it. ‘Are those the hangars, then … ?’

Fran nodded once, like someone in a trance. The last time she’d been up here, the day had been as bright and hot as this one; but lamps had still been burning on those buildings – shimmering like day-stars through the haze. The quick reaction flight was lurking there: bombed-up, and ready to go.

Today, the lights were off again; the hangars seemed abandoned. An eerie silence hung across the base.

‘Ugly-looking things …’ Lyn murmured.

‘They called them TAB-Vees,’ Fran said; the term came back to her from nowhere. ‘Theatre Airbase Vulnerability Shelters.’ She nodded to herself; then pinched a smile. ‘I used to know all the jargon, you know. Proper little trainspotter, I was.’

‘But nothing’s in them now?’

Fran shook her head. ‘They’ve gone. They’ve all flown home …’ The hush was huge: unnatural. Her inner ear recalled that disembodied rumbling in the air, when the hangars had been open, the aircraft on the prowl. Turning, she studied the empty sky – half-expecting to see a light in the distance: a bright, approaching star. A roaring bomber coming in to land.

A cloud obscured the sun. Its shadow slid across them, the green fields greying out – and she found herself right back where she had started.

It had been an overcast day, that Saturday in autumn ’88. She could almost smell the damp October air; the thinning veil of mist along the fence-line. The bitter tang of jet-fuel as the planes came screaming in.

She watched them land, like hungry iron hawks. The camouflaged ones were bombers, she was told: F-IIIs that could carry nuclear loads. They were followed down by others, grey as ghosts. Those were the Ravens, someone said: the radar-jamming planes.

Ravens. It had struck her, though she couldn’t quite say why; the weirdness of the choice of name, perhaps. Sinister, portentous – but a raven’s coat was black. These grey things came like spirits: like pallid spectres of their former selves …

Her fingers loosened; Lyn’s hand slipped away. And Lyn could only hover, like an anxious hanger-on. Excluded by the memories of things she hadn’t shared.

‘What are you seeing, Fran … ?’ she almost whispered.

But Fran didn’t answer; her mind was too full of restless ghosts.

Of Ravens.

3

It had still been Freshers’ Week when Paul had knocked on her door; she hadn’t even got her posters up. The societies were recruiting fit to bust, of course; she’d seen the cross on his lapel, and guessed what he was selling.

‘Would I be right in thinking you’re a Christian?’ he’d said, after a brief, polite preamble.

‘Well …’ Fran said, and felt a bit evasive. It was true she’d shopped around at the Freshers’ Fair. The Student Christian Movement had intrigued her; she rather liked their radical approach. But the college branch of Greenpeace was the only one she’d joined. She classed herself as C of E, but hadn’t been to church for quite a while. A charismatic-slanted group at school had sucked her in, bolstering her final year with happy-clappy pap; but in pulling up her roots to come here, she’d set herself adrift on that score too. Simplicity had brought no satisfaction: If God gave me brains, why won’t you let me use them? Right now, she wasn’t sure what she believed.

And now this pleasant second-year was trying to tempt her back. Whichever group he spoke for, they were doubtless keen on choruses and earnest Bible study. She shifted with discomfort at the thought.

‘I’m still deciding at the moment,’ she said carefully.

Paul gestured, smiling. ‘Fair enough. But me and some friends are going on a sort of religious outing on Saturday, and I wondered if you’d maybe like to come … ?’

Fran hesitated. ‘Going where?’

‘To Upper Heyford airbase,’ Paul said softly. ‘A place that needs to hear the Word of Life.’

Now that, she’d told him afterwards, was what I call a religious outing.

The base had been the scene of a national demo; the Christian groups had gathered at Gate 8. Walking down the track towards it, the sight of those sombre, vaulted hangars so close to the fence had given her a chill. A brooding sense of threat hung all about them. Paul told her that the bombs were stored elsewhere, but it felt like one was ticking in each building.

The service, in their shadow, was more stirring than she’d dreamed. She’d listened to the speakers, and joined in with the songs; shared the Peace with total strangers; hugged Paul tight. As people breached the wire and got arrested, she’d clung to the fence and shouted her support.

It was a rainbow congregation, lively and colourful; but most of all she remembered the Dominicans, in their solemn cloaks, and their banner behind them: a black dog running, with a firebrand in its jaws.

Paul had led her on down the perimeter path; taught her the difference between Blazer patrol trucks and Hummvee armoured cars (while one of the latter paced them, like a hunchbacked iron toad). An impromptu Mass was being held near the Peace Camp. Paul, being a Methodist, hung back – but Fran went and knelt at the roadside, to take a torn-off piece of Tesco’s Sliced, and sip from the chipped cup of wine. And all the time, beyond the fence, the planes were prowling past, their tailfin beacons pulsing bloody red.

They’d hung around in the waning afternoon, until the people who’d been arrested were finally released. Then one of the Oxford groups invited them back for a social at someone’s house. It lasted late into the evening, and she’d loved it: food and drink and dry good humour, ending up with some decidedly secular songs. She sang along delightedly with those; but the melody that stayed in her buzzing head was one she’d heard at Heyford’s iron gates. The people who stumbled in darkness, their eyes have seen the light…

4

And those who sit in the deepest pit: on them has the day dawned bright.

She ran the lines through her mind again – worrying each word like a Rosary bead; but the gloom was deep and glutinous inside her. There was just that pale, thin gleam on the horizon.

‘How do you feel?’ Lyn asked her gently.

They’d adjourned to a pub in Somerton, north of the airbase. Such a pretty little village, so close to that desolate field. Fran had made for the dimmest corner of the room, well away from the golden sunshine. And still she hadn’t taken off her shades.

‘Glad I came,’ she murmured, staring down at her drink; fingers playing with the stem of her glass. ‘Well no, not glad … but no regrets. I needed to start here.’

‘You came out here with Paul before?’ Lyn said after a pause. Proceeding with exquisite caution.

‘Yeah,’ Fran said. ‘He brought me. And after what I saw that day, my perspectives were all different.’

Another silence, while she took a sip of wine, and set the glass down carefully. Then her shielded gaze rose back to Lyn.

‘I’d never had such a sense of pure evil. You could feel it, coming at you through the wire. You could feel how close the warheads were; their power. Like sleeping suns …’ She shook her head again; more like a shudder. ‘And meanwhile, Cruise was coming out of Greenham, once a month.’

Lyn waited with her own glass barely touched.

‘It scared me – so I had to get involved,’ Fran went on softly. ‘Every time those missiles moved, I had to witness them …’ Behind the shades, her eyes had lost their focus: but now she could see deep into the past. ‘That night, they were headed for the Imber firing range – the most restricted part of the whole Plain. We tried to take a short cut: get ahead of them again. We cut across a corner of Larkhill range, the next one to the east. And Larkhill range was where we came to grief …’ She bit down on the final word, and dropped her gaze once more.

Lyn shifted awkwardly. ‘And they never found that person in the road?’

Fran didn’t answer for a moment; then took a deep, slow breath, and shook her head.

‘Did you hear from Paul again?’

‘Not since he came out of hospital. He just withdrew from everything – like I did. Marie died, and Kate broke her back. He blamed himself for that.’

‘And you … Do you feel guilty – for surviving?’

Fran wavered; gave a shrug of her thin shoulders. ‘It was my fault, as much as his. I said to go for it.’

Lyn took her hand. ‘Oh Frannie, don’t you think that you’ve been punished enough? You were traumatized as well. That’s why you had your … er …’

‘My breakdown, Lyn. Just say it.’

‘Sorry. Your breakdown.’

‘I was in a psychie hospital for nearly a year,’ Fran said in a grim, steady tone. ‘Voluntary admission: clinically depressed. I didn’t mention that, did I?’

Lyn made a hurt little face. ‘Oh, Fran …’

‘It must have been … the shock, or the concussion, but I had a real panic attack out there. I thought that things were chasing after me … And months, and years later, I was still convinced they’d creep into my room …’ And as she voiced her dread at last, she felt the gooseflesh ripple up her arms. Just then, for just an instant, she was back on the Plain, and lost in its featureless dark.

‘Shh,’ Lyn whispered, massaging her hand. ‘It’s over now. You’re safe.’

Fran swallowed back her tears again, and nodded. The flush of cold was fading, in the sunlight and Lyn’s love. Her memories were twisted up: her illness had done that. Her mental illness. The thought of it still shamed her, but she’d shared it. Like naming a demon to gain power over it. The past was the past. And here she was, objective: looking back.

It’s over now. You’re safe. Oh God, she hoped so.

‘Your parents must be so glad …’ Lyn said. ‘Seeing you able to come back here like this.’

Fran nodded again, and took her shades off – but only to wipe her eyes. ‘Yeah. They’ve put up with me a lot, these past few years …’

‘Your Geordie accent’s coming back, you know,’ Lyn said: a tentative attempt to tease.

‘Is it?’ Fran said wryly. ‘I can’t tell. We moved to Derbyshire ten years ago – that’s practically Down South!’

Silence settled between them. The ticking of a clock was quite distinct. Lyn moistened her lips.

‘Where was it you said you’d meet the man of your dreams?’

The gambit won a rueful smile. ‘Heaven’s Field.’ Fran murmured back. ‘Up north, on Hadrian’s Wall.’

‘So, did you ever take Craig there?’

Fran sniffed, and shook her head.

‘Are you going to see him?’

Fran shook her head again. Not negative this time; nonplussed. ‘I don’t know,’ she said softly.

And she didn’t. Thinking of Craig sent a giddy ripple through her – a sense of need as physical as hunger. But this was four years later, and the world had changed around. To visit old haunts was one thing; to meet old ghosts was something else again.

The conflict of emotions filled her mind; but something more subliminal still lingered. The faintest, phantom echo of that moment on the Plain. As if those twisted memories were still alive behind her: more distant now, but following her trail. As relentless and black as a Dominican dog.

5

Lyn’s flat was in a quiet, leafy street off Iffley Road: part of the first floor of a conversion. Fran wandered through, admiring, as Lyn showed her around: a cheerfully self-deprecating hostess – but Fran’s small suitcase made her feel too much like what she was. A stranger, from the past, just passing through.

‘This’ll be yours,’ Lyn told her brightly, opening the door on her spare room. A futon was spread out, all ready; the pillowcase and quilt smelt freshly washed.

‘I’m not sure how long I’m staying …’ Fran murmured.

Lyn’s beaming face grew earnest. ‘You’re welcome for as long as you like – all right? As long as you need.’

‘I’m … not very good company at the moment. Need a lot of time to myself …’

‘I can understand that. You need a base, you need a bed … they’re yours. Other than that, you can come and go as you want.’ She hesitated, almost shyly. ‘But I’d be glad to keep you company, whenever that’s okay. I’ve really missed you, Fran …

‘Now,’ she went on quickly, before they both got embarrassed, ‘would you like some coffee?’

‘Oh, please.’ Fran put her case down on the bed, and went over to the window. The evening was warm and light: the air like honey. She peered across the rooftops for a minute, listening to the distant city sounds – and those that Lyn was making in the kitchen. Peace, domestic comfort, all around.

Her heart began to race then; before she even realized that she’d just made her decision. Biting her lip, she went through towards the sounds of brewing coffee.

Lyn looked round, smiling. Wiping down her breakfast plates, and putting them away.

Fran swallowed. ‘There’s something else. I need to tell you.’ But in the expectant pause that followed, she no longer thought she could.

‘No hurry,’ Lyn said gently. ‘We’ve plenty of time …’

Fran glanced aside. An itemized phone bill caught her eye: stuck to the freezer door with a cat-shaped magnet. Staring at it, she said: ‘When I was in hospital … it wasn’t just depression. I was hallucinating; hearing voices.’

Silence from Lyn.

‘And I never told them,’ Fran went on, with just a hint of tremble in her voice. ‘I never said a word. I thought that if I did, they wouldn’t let me out again.’

Another pause. She risked a look. Lyn’s eyes were wide, her air less certain. ‘Oh God, Fran …’

‘But I’m better now,’ Fran finished quickly. ‘They just went of their own accord. Not a whisper for six months …’ She took a shaky breath. ‘And I’ve told no one else about them. Not even Mum and Dad.’

Lyn’s reassuring smile looked forced. ‘It might be … an idea to tell someone, though …’

‘I have,’ Fran came back evenly. ‘I’ve just told you. And believe me, it’s a load off my shoulders.’

Lyn nodded, looking doubtful, mechanically polishing a bowl. ‘But just to be sure …’

‘Oh Lyn, don’t worry: I’m not a bloody schizophrenic or something. It was just my mind getting straightened out. I’m all right now.’

Lyn put down the bowl, and came across and hugged her. A gesture worth a million words. I’m not unclean, Fran thought – and held on tight enough to hurt.

‘Sorry,’ Lyn said after a minute. ‘I know how hard that must have been to say. I’m really, really glad you told me first …’ When she eased away, her smile looked fresher: as if she’d shrugged a burden off as well. A weight of doubt and prudent disapproval. Fran grinned – and felt quite giddy with relief. Her leap of faith had landed on firm ground.

Oh Lyn, you angel. How ever did I find a friend like you?

With the subject safely broached, the rest came easier. She described the hospital, the staff, her fellow patients. Talking it out felt physical, a purging of her system. Like the tears that Lyn had won from her before; the rains that broke the drought of her depression …

‘What sort of things did these voices say?’ Lyn asked her after supper. Her tone still cautious, but curious too.

Fran hesitated. ‘I don’t know: that’s the really weird thing. It was a man’s voice, just a whisper … I’d look around, you know? – and the room would be empty. But it wasn’t English; more like Dutch or something.’

‘God, it must have frightened you.’

‘It did. You bet it did. And yet … the tone, it wasn’t really threatening. It sounded urgent. More like an appeal …’

She could analyse it calmly now; back then, she’d just been petrified with fear. The whispers had haunted her down the long, dingy corridors, insidious in their promise of madness. Perhaps finding a lump in your breast brought a stab of dread this sharp. Her voices seemed like symptoms of a tumour in her mind.

And if you ignored them, would they go away? A lump in her flesh would not. She’d heard of women losing precious time – too scared to see a doctor, till too late. And she’d been just as stymied: afraid to tell a soul about the voices in her head.

The world had closed down like a coffin-lid upon her; the voices were the hammer and the nails. Fragments of phrases, faint with distance; sometimes they’d fall silent for a week. The silences were worst of all. She’d sit and cringe for hours: just waiting for the words to come again.

But she’d kept them secret – and they’d gone away. The malignant lump had simply disappeared. A miracle cure must feel like this. She hardly dared believe it, even now.

‘Shall we do the washing up?’ she said, to change the subject.

‘Oh, shh, don’t worry about that …’

‘Don’t flatmates share their chores?’ Fran asked her drily. ‘I’d much prefer it that way. So come on, let’s get to it. And then I think I’ll have an early night. It’s been a tiring day …’

6

Fran

So much has changed. The whole world’s turned around. But I’ve not forgotten you. Can we meet someplace – and sometime soon? Lyn’s got my number. I really hope you’ll want to get in touch.

Still thinking of youCraig

Fran read the letter through again. Much more slowly: savouring each word. Her heart beat like a slow drum in her chest.

His face was very clear now; the years between had faded like a fog. She remembered every line of his rugged good looks. The short brown hair, brushed back; the deep-set eyes. The wry mouth, sometimes smiling; sometimes grim.

Still thinking of you – even four years down the road. She felt a pang of pleasure, a twinge of helpless pride. Like someone with a treasure, hidden secretly away. He’s mine, she thought: he still belongs to me.

She folded the letter carefully, and slid it back into the envelope. Laying it aside on the bookcase, she started to unpack. Nightie, towel, toilet bag … but then she let an impulse overcome her, and delved into a side-pocket instead. For a moment her fingers searched in vain; but then they found the badge, and drew it out.

She’d been wearing it the day they met. A rectangle of metal, with a sheen like bluish gold. The stern and haloed image of a saint. She ran her thumb across the rough, raised lettering. Cyrillic script: an alien language. Only the dates made sense.

988–1988. One thousand years. Stretching like a bridge from the Dark Age past to the year she’d come to Oxford.

She laid her head down cautiously. First night away from home for many months; her first night back in Oxford since her breakdown. For an hour or more she lingered on the very edge of sleep: afraid of what unconsciousness might bring. But the stresses of the day had worn her out. Oblivion pounced, and caught her unawares.

She didn’t dream.

CHAPTER III

Cross of Iron

1

‘Is this seat taken?’

Fran studied her drink for a moment longer; then slowly, almost archly raised her head. After all the keyed-up waiting, she was suddenly so cool. She’d known it was him as he’d crossed the room towards her. She’d known it when he walked through the door.

Craig stood there, looking just a little awkward. She’d sensed him hesitating on the threshold; how long had he been standing just outside? But to judge by his face, his doubts had been won over. For all that he was ten years older than her, his smile was as engaging as an eager little boy’s.

She gestured. ‘Be my guest.’

He pulled out the stool, and sat. Still smiling; but his pale blue eyes were watchful. Their clearness – with his slightly scrappy haircut – helped preserve his boyish aspect; but that handsome face had harshness in its lines. Fran felt herself excited by the contrast – just like she’d been before.

He’d brought his bottle with him from the bar. A Budweiser, of course. He raised it to her – ‘Hi,’ – and took a pull.

She raised her glass in turn; then sat back, looking smug.

Craig cocked his head, enquiring. ‘What?’

‘I just love a man out of uniform.’

He gave a snort at that, amused. His coat was brown brushed leather, well worn-in. Fran, by contrast, was wearing Lyn’s best bomber jacket, complete with sheepskin lining. Which was quite ironic, really.

‘How have you been?’ Craig asked after a pause. His tone was quiet and calm, as always; the concern was in his eyes.

‘All right,’ Fran told him softly. ‘Coming on.’

‘You’re looking well.’

She shrugged.

The lunchtime buzz and bustle of The Grapes drew in around them.

Her hand was on the table; so was his. She felt his need to reach across and touch her – and knew he wasn’t sure how she’d react. He moistened his lips, his pale gaze still intent. ‘I’m glad you called me, Fran.’

‘I’m glad you waited, Craig. I mean that.’

He took her hand, and squeezed it. She squeezed back.

‘You’re sure about this afternoon?’ he asked, his voice a murmur.

‘Yes,’ she said, still holding on. ‘I’m sure.’

2

The first time she’d seen him, he was doing some repair work on a truck. Thinking back to that first moment, she knew she hadn’t dreamed where it would lead. All she’d done was stand there, feeling curious: wanting contact. Above all else, she’d wanted to get through.

He’d realized she was watching; turned and grinned. Encouraged, she’d smiled back. He’d wavered for a moment, then wiped his hands and slowly walked across. Right up to the high mesh fence that blocked his way.

‘Hello,’ Fran said politely.

He nodded amiably, tweaking the brim of his cap between finger and thumb. His camouflage fatigues – green, brown and black – bore a master sergeant’s stripes: she was getting good at recognizing ranks. FLAHERTY was the name stencilled over his breast pocket.

Fran hooked her fingers through the mesh, and leaned against the wire. She wondered if her shades made her look flirty. ‘How are you liking England, then?’ she asked.

‘It’s not so bad,’ he murmured. ‘Nice little place you’ve got here. Some of the natives aren’t too friendly … but there you go.’

She took that coyly; cocked her head. ‘I thought you weren’t supposed to talk to us.’ He’d caught sight of her Cruisewatch badge, of course.

His smile grew broader. ‘I’m a great believer in freedom of speech.’

‘Which is what you’re here defending?’

‘Surely. Yours and mine.’

‘When we put all our resources into preparing for war, humanity hangs from a cross of iron. You know who said that?’

He shook his head, still smiling.

‘Dwight D. Eisenhower.’

‘Yeah? I never heard that.’ He leaned forward for a better look at the other badge she wore. Fran eased herself away along the fence; he followed. She felt a sense of mischief, like playing hard to get. The barrier was frustrating. She clung to it, and kept him close.

‘Aha,’ he murmured drily, having seen the thing at last. ‘I knew you were a commie.’

‘No, I’m not,’ she told him. ‘That’s my icon.’

Intrigued, he studied it more closely. ‘What does it say?’

‘Russia Baptized: One Thousand Years.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘You been over there?’

‘’Fraid not. I got it at the Orthodox church in Oxford.’

‘Oxford, huh? That where you come from?’

‘It’s where I’m studying.’

‘Always wanted to visit Oxford …’ he said lightly, and would have said more, but a patrol truck was approaching: chugging up along the perimeter road. It came to a halt behind him, and the driver climbed out. Fran saw it was a woman, not much older than herself. Dressed in camouflage like Flaherty, but with a black beret – and a holstered pistol at her belt. MATTHEWS said the name-strip on her blouse.

‘Any problem, Sergeant?’

‘No problem.’ He held Fran’s gaze for a moment longer; then turned away. Fran stared at his retreating back, then looked across at Matthews. The other woman was eyeing her levelly. Her fresh-complexioned face was set and grim.

Fran tipped her head back: took it on the chin. Resentment twinged inside her, mixed with something more unsettling. She’d thought there’d be some fellow-feeling somewhere – one woman to another. But there wasn’t the slightest spark of it between them.

She’d shoot me, if she had to. Shoot me dead. The knowledge took the wind out of her sails.

Flaherty was back at his truck. He gave her a final, sidelong glance; no more. Matthews was still watching her. Dispirited, Fran turned and walked away.

But now she was here again, and reaching out to touch the fence. Curling her fingers round the cold green strands, and holding tight.

‘Looks different,’ Craig said softly; ‘from the wrong side of the wire.’

She glanced over her shoulder. He looked different: standing there behind her.

They’d driven up the road from the A339, Craig silent at the wheel of his rented car. The tunnel of trees had closed around them, channelling them through gloom until they were almost at the fence. They’d parked there and got out; Fran pausing with her hand on the open door. It had rained that afternoon, and the wood smelled damp and green, still dripping. The song of a blackbird came from somewhere close.

Greenham Common airbase lay in silence.

They were close to the silos here. The last time she’d ventured up this way, the MoD police had chased her off. A winter’s night, dark early – but the those sinister mounds had been brightly lit. They’d made her think of spiders’ lairs – nestled deep in their funnels of gleaming razor wire.

A ripple of cold went through her flesh. She shivered, and hunched her shoulders.

The webs were empty now, though; their spider-holes as derelict as Heyford’s silent hangars. Life had gone on while she’d lingered in the dark. The world had changed so much.

‘I heard they’re gonna turn it into a theme park,’ Craig said, with wry amusement. ‘Or something like that.’

She shook her head, bemused. The place had been an inspiration through her teens; had drawn her down from Oxford again and again. Now here it lay, forgotten. What was it they’d sung around the campfire? And we shall build Jerusalem in England’s Greenham pleasant land. Well the missiles were gone – but no sense of peace had come to take their place. The silos had a haunted feel; like burial mounds, robbed out.

The evening sky was overcast and low. Crimson light seeped through it here and there, staining the clouds like blackberry juice.

‘I didn’t like it here,’ Craig murmured.

Fran turned her head.

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he went on drily. ‘I think we were right; I think we did some good. But we never fitted in. Just stuck in our own little world behind the wire. And so much hostility outside …’

‘Was that the only reason?’

He was silent for a minute. ‘I’d be lying if I said that sharing a base with ninety-six Cruise missiles didn’t give me the creeps sometimes.’

‘It wasn’t the nukes that scared me,’ Fran said slowly, looking back towards the row of gutted silos. ‘It was the fact that people were actually ready to use the bloody things.’

‘It wouldn’t have happened. That was the whole point.’

‘Maybe not. No, really … maybe not. But the readiness was there.’

A pause. Then he slid his arms around her waist. Fran stood there for a moment, not reacting; then let herself relax against his body. He squeezed her gently; touched his cheek to hers.

‘You know what it reminds me of ?’ he said after a while. ‘Cape Canaveral. You go there now, there’s just these burned-out shells of concrete, where the rockets blasted off. Dead silence. When the clouds are like this, and there’s a wind off the desert, it’s so damn’ eerie. It feels like the end of the world.’

CHAPTER IV

Testament

1

Lyn tapped her pen against her teeth – and wondered if she’d found her man at last.

The library was hushed, as if expectant. The lamp above her recess cast a cosy golden glow. The cloudy afternoon had brought a premature dusk, like grey fog seeping inward through the windows. The lamps were beacons, keeping it at bay. Back down the unlit aisles and stacks, the gloom was growing thicker.

The manuscript before her was the fragment of a will. Ninth century West Saxon; the testator’s name was written aeelgar. She felt uncertain, rather than excited. Was it him? Perhaps – but she was never going to know. He didn’t even have a face, to match the name against.

She’d been looking for him since childhood – whether consciously or not. It went back to that holiday in Norfolk. The thesis she was writing now had been conceived that summer. Not that she had known it then: she’d just been ten or twelve. They’d visited an ancient church, for Daddy to take pictures. Martin had moped around outside, as little brothers would, but she had walked on in to look around. The place still had its medieval rood screen, with painted figures dimly visible. Pictures of saints, according to the leaflet – some of them not known outside the district.

One disfigured shape had caught her eye. It had been worn to a shadow, with the face completely gone. The presence of a raven suggests Paul of Thebes or possibly Elijah. But maybe he was just another nameless local saint.

It seemed there were traditions of some link with nearby Ely. She’d heard how Hereward the Wake had fought the Normans there. Was this one of his warriors? Or a hermit of the fens who’d prayed for him?

She’d walked out of the church – and like a shadow, he had followed. Ever since that day, he’d been an element in her imagination. How had local glory turned to centuries of silence? What could be inferred about the medieval mind? The thought had slowly gelled into her topic for research: this interface of history and myth.

The study would be a social one; but still there was this itchy fascination. The twelve-year-old inside her kept on wondering. She couldn’t help but follow up the vaguest reference; the thesis grew in tandem with her search. Here, an ancient grant of land; there, a manuscript that spoke of scincræft. Cryptic mentions; fleeting clues. They’d led her to this brittle testament.

She glanced at her watch – it had just gone six – and wondered how Fran and Craig were getting on. The rain had stopped some hours ago, but the sky outside was dim. They knew that she was working late tonight. They’d be eating out, Fran said – somewhere in Oxford. She was aiming to be back by nine.

But what if she’d upset herself, revisiting the past? What if the reunion wasn’t working out … ?

Lyn realized she was doodling, and sat up straighter. She read her rough translation through again, then looked back to the text. The Old English script seemed to creep before her eyes: clinging to the page with its hooks and downward strokes. Her attention was drawn once more by the name of the testator.

aeelgar

It was different from the wills she’d seen before. Part of it was set out like a poem.

Seek a lord

whose heart is whole

And hold to him

until his days are done

Written by the man himself, or by some later copyist? This version was two hundred years more recent. So no, she couldn’t even answer that.

We know nothing at all about Æthelgar.

She re-read her last sentence with a real sense of loss. Whoever he’d been, the flow of time had carried him away. There was just this frozen glimpse on the horizon. Like Martin’s stars – so distant that you saw them in the past. ‘See that one?’ he’d told her once. ‘It could have died a thousand years ago. Now that’s the kind of ghost I can believe in …’

Dispirited, she pushed him from her thoughts – and then felt guilty. Frustration gave the knife an extra twist. She’d better take a break, before she really got upset. Gathering her papers up, she read her glum conclusion one more time. The verdict seemed to mock her: an admission of defeat.

And yet the name was curiously familiar.

2

She was still worrying it when Fran got back; the chapter only halfway pieced together. Her neatly ordered notes were strewn all over her front room: a pile on the floor, a sheaf on the arm of the sofa. One open textbook lay upon another. But the A4 sheet in front of her stayed blank. The flow of her analysis had got itself hung up.

We know nothing at all about ÆEthelgar.

Perhaps she’d seen the name before in one of Daddy’s books. Since childhood, she’d spent hours in the treasure-house of his study. The Old and Middle English texts had lured her with their strangeness; the manuscripts enchanted her like giant picture books. Martin had come and teased her: called her bookworm. She could hear her brother’s goading voice right now …

Oh, where had she seen that bloody name before? It niggled, like an itch she couldn’t scratch.

Lyn allowed herself another chocolate biscuit, and crunched it feeling guilty; then straightened as she heard Fran’s key in the lock.

She went into the hall, trying not to look too anxious. ‘How did it go?’

‘Fine,’ Fran told her, smiling. ‘Really well.’

Lyn could see that it had. Fran had been so nervous over breakfast, just picking at her cereal; but her face looked fresher now, and more relaxed. Lyn stayed where she was, admiring. ‘That jacket really suits you …’

‘I know. So can I keep it?’

‘Don’t push your luck, Miss Bennett. Do you want coffee?’

‘Mmm, please.’ Fran followed her as far as the kitchen threshold; watched as her friend got the percolator going. Lyn glanced over her shoulder.

‘You can ask him back, you know. I do quite like the man.’

‘Thanks …’ Fran murmured. She pushed her hands into the jacket pockets, and rested her shoulder up against the doorframe. Leaned her head against it too. ‘We’re trying to take things one step at a time.’

‘Where’s he staying?’

‘The Randolph.’

‘Expensive tastes.’

Fran grinned. Well he’s American, isn’t he?’

‘Help yourself to bikkies. They’re in the front room, on the table.’

Fran wandered through. The biscuit jar was doubling as paperweight for some of Lyn’s notes. ‘How’s the thesis coming, then?’ she called.

‘Slowly. Too easy to get distracted – not by you, don’t worry, I need the break.’ Lyn joined her, took a biscuit of her own. ‘I was reading someone’s will today, and it sent my mind off at a tangent. I just keep wondering who he was.’

‘Why, did he leave you anything?’

‘Hardly, since he died about a thousand years ago.’

‘Well, you’ve made a start, at least,’ Fran told her drily.

Lyn pulled a rueful face. ‘That’s just his name. I doodled that.’

Fran craned her head. ‘So how do you say that, then?’

‘Athelgar. The TH sound was written like a D, it’s called an Eth…’

‘Lithp’d a lot, the Anglo-Saxons, did they?’

Lyn didn’t deign to rise to that. ‘… And AE had an A sound – like in cat.’

‘Athelgar…’ Fran murmured, trying it out. ‘So who was he?’

‘I don’t know. No one does. He died in Wessex, but he might have been in East Anglia at one time. Maybe he’s a saint I saw a painting of once. Then again, I dug up something about shine-craft – meaning phantom-art, or magic …’ Lyn shrugged. ‘According to the will, he was an eorl.’

‘Meaning an earl, presumably?’

‘No, not then. It was more of a warrior’s term.’ She gestured. ‘A man of high degree. A man of honour.’

‘Sounds just my type,’ murmured Fran with a mischievous smile, and pinched another biscuit.

3

Both of them had dreams that night, as the slow stars turned above the silent house.

Fran took ages getting off to sleep. The barrow-mounds of Greenham were still looming in her head. Rusty iron, and crumbling concrete; cavernous black gateways. The watch-tower like a giant alien robot in the midst.

The futon creaked beneath her as she turned, and turned again. A nauseous chill had wormed into her stomach. Those silos would stand open until doomsday; she’d felt the drip … drip … drip of their decay. But what might still be lurking in their shadows; in the labyrinth of tunnels underneath?

Something could have seen her from that long-deserted watchtower. Something could have crept out of its lair, and followed them. All the way back here, to sleeping Oxford.

Fear embraced her like a ghost; she wriggled to get free. The past was in the room with her – a shadow at the foot of the bed. The part she hadn’t shared with Lyn. The part she couldn’t bear to think about.

Her fingers found the cross around her neck. A Coventry cross, of silver nails: a Christmas present from Lyn. She turned and tweaked it, listening to the hush.

But even Lyn was sleeping, in her tidy bed next door. Fran could almost hear her gentle breathing. Like a soft, recorded message. Lyn’s not home right now. You’re on your own.

The house was quiet around her. The night outside was soundless – undisturbed. She pulled the pillow close, and closed her eyes. Her mind cast round for brighter thoughts, to keep the dark at bay.

Where was it you said you’d meet the man of your dreams … ?

Wistfully she huddled up, and thought of Heaven’s Field. She’d been about thirteen when she had gone there with her parents – their final summer in Northumberland. The sky had been like heaven all right, above the gaunt black cross. She summoned back its pinkish glow – the tufts of golden cloud. There’d been a famous battle here, in Anglo-Saxon times. Northumbria freed from tyranny, and won back to the faith.

She’d wandered round the empty field, enchanted by the twilight. And over by the church, she’d had the strangest rush of feeling: a rich, exciting glow from deep inside. It was over in a moment, but had left her flushed and giddy. A sense of being needed – and adored.

Even then, she’d realized that it hadn’t been religious. The thrill was much too physical for that – tugging at the instincts that were stirred by boys and babies. She’d told Lyn so, years later, in an earnest heart-to-heart. It had felt more like the shadow of a lover; a presence in the marriage bed she hadn’t dreamed of yet. A closeness that was soul to soul, as well as skin to skin.

She’d hoped it was a foretaste of her knight in shining armour – something for the boys at school to match themselves against. But that was just an old, romantic notion; Craig was real.

And what she’d felt this afternoon was pretty much the same.

The sun was going down on Heaven’s Field. Bathing in the memory – its warmth, and rosy light – she let herself relax into oblivion.

By rights, she should have taken that bright image to her dreams. Yet what her mind threw up was something different. She found herself, in spirit, at an isolated junction, along a road she hadn’t walked for years. Not Heaven’s Field, but Salisbury Plain; a place where nothing moved. The bleak, deserted grassland of the Imber firing range.

Danger Area.

Nervously she looked around. Sullen hills rose up to left and right, cutting off the outside world. The public roads were miles away; no passer-by could see her. She was stuck here, in the middle, all alone.

The junction was smeared by tank-tracks, its approaches hedged with posts to shore it up. Set against the gloomy slopes, they made her think of First World War defences: the barbed wire stripped away to leave the pickets standing bare.

There were insects buzzing faintly in the grass – but the silence overwhelmed them. That huge, unnatural firing range silence: as pregnant with threat as the grey clouds overhead.

A wrecked tank sat atop the nearest hill: its turret painted orange, for the guns of other tanks to zero in on. She studied it uneasily; then looked away, along the eastbound road. Imber village lay in that direction – out of sight, but close enough to fill her with foreboding.

She glimpsed a moving figure then – away to the left, where the ground began to rise. It was casting round, as if in search of something. She saw that he was dressed in black. A long coat or a cloak flapped out around him.

The icy surge of panic should have shocked her awake. But something deep inside her was determined to hang on. Fascinated, petrified, she watched him scour the heath. He waded through the knee-high grass – then crouched to root around. His face was turned away from her. Despite the muffling garment, she could see his short fair hair.

He seemed to sense her presence, then – and swung around to look. He didn’t have a metal face. He had no face at all. There was just a patch of shadow, framed with gold. Fran recoiled in horror, still suspended in the dream. And then the mouthless figure spoke to her.

She didn’t understand a word – but recognized the voice. With a wail of fright, she came flailing to the surface, kicking back the duvet to sit upright on the bed. Her nightie and her briefs were damp; she was suddenly and wretchedly convinced she’d wet herself. Then realized it was only sticky sweat.

Oh God. She cupped her hands against her face.

It was the voice she’d heard in hospital; the harsh, corrupted language was the same. And so was its appealing tone: the note of desperation. She felt he’d meant to snatch at her, and drag her down with him.

But the room was silent now. She strained her ears against the hissing hush. It hadn’t really been the voice; just memory. An echo. Now that she had woken up, it wouldn’t come again. Not even if she waited until dawn.

Full of her fear, she hugged herself, and started counting minutes, one by one.

Lyn dreamed of Martin. He was waiting in the hall as she came downstairs. You look great, he said, and she could see how much he meant it in his face. The spiteful fights of growing-up were all forgotten now. Still fiddling with an earring, she let her smile grow wider. As she gave him a twirl to show off her dress, the house was spun away into oblivion.

She woke up awkwardly; her room felt unfamiliar and distorted in the dark. A piece of dream went scuttling away. Lyn recoiled, and shrank against the headboard. She felt a rush of dread from out of childhood – back in her old bedroom, with its imps and demons scurrying around. And the pale, grinning skeleton of Death behind the door.

Instinctively she turned her head – then sighed, and let her shoulders slump again. The door was safely closed, of course, her dressing gown a silky wraith against it. The demons melted back into the picture that they’d come from: the print in Daddy’s study that had scared her as a girl. Death of the Miser, by Hieronymus Bosch. It had figured in her nightmares more than once. But not for years …

Athelgar.

Sitting there, she realized where she’d seen the name before. She’d picked at it all evening, like a scab. Now, with the top knocked off at last, she was suddenly bled dry. She curled up, feeling miserable, and didn’t sleep again.

CHAPTER V

Heaven and Hell

1

Lyn had lent her a bathrobe, but Fran was dressed when she came on through for breakfast. Mucking in like a flatmate was all very well – but she still ventured round with a visitor’s reserve. Finding Lyn at the table in her dressing gown was vaguely embarrassing: like having her friend at some kind of disadvantage. But Lyn looked preoccupied, and pale: chewing mechanically on her toast. Her normally bright greeting was a wan, subdued hello. Being seen half-dressed was obviously the last thing on her mind.

Fran moved past her to the coffee pot and toaster, surreptitiously glancing at the tabletop. The paper was still folded; a couple of brown envelopes lay unopened. So what was up, she wondered?

Sitting down, she saw the shadows round Lyn’s eyes; the pinched look to her mouth. ‘Did you sleep all right?’ she asked.

Lyn shrugged, and shook her head. ‘Not really. Woke up about three, and couldn’t get off again. You know what it’s like.’

Fran knew, all right. She’d lain awake for ages, before snatching back a couple of hours’ sleep. She was just about to say so when Lyn breathed out and went on.

‘I was dreaming about Martin.’

There was a wistfulness in her voice that made Fran feel a little wary. She didn’t know much about Lyn’s brother; had only met him once, when he’d come visiting at Oxford. He had his sister’s dark, straight hair; her brown, expressive eyes. Caught unawares, his clean-cut face was serious, almost solemn. Then Lyn had introduced him, rather proudly, and he’d charmed her with a warm, engaging smile.

‘Oh,’ Fran said. Then: ‘What’s he doing now?’

A moment’s pause, Lyn staring at the table. Then she shook her head again. Said softly: ‘I don’t know.’

Fran put her coffee down, and waited.

‘He left home two years ago. Just chucked everything and went. I got a card from him at Christmas … but Mum and Dad heard nothing. Not a word. It worries them so much.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Don’t know. He didn’t say. I couldn’t even read the bloody postmark.’

Fran bit her lip. ‘God, Lyn. I didn’t know.’ She felt a stab of guilt. ‘You don’t need my troubles on top of yours …’

Lyn waved that off. ‘Don’t worry. Please don’t think that. He’s twenty, he can look after himself …’ She ran her hand back through her hair. ‘We were happy at home, the two of us. Really happy. But it was getting so that he felt cooped up there – always under our parents’ feet. He mucked his A-Levels up, you see. He couldn’t get a job.’

‘I remember him visiting you,’ Fran said carefully. ‘You got on well together, didn’t you.’

‘I think about him every day. I mean, I don’t just sit there moping, but … he’ll get into my head at some point. Just for a minute, maybe; but he’s there.’

Fran thought of them together, in the Christ Church staircase. No shadows there, no worries; just a handsome teenage boy with his big sister. The thought of that lost happiness made her ache on Lyn’s behalf. And how must their parents feel?

Maybe just the same as hers had, when their daughter withdrew into a world of her own: slamming the gates behind her.

‘Anyway …’ Lyn sighed, ‘there’s no point brooding. He’ll get in touch when he’s good and ready.’ She straightened her back, and summoned up a smile. ‘What are your plans for today? You’re seeing Craig again?’

Fran nodded. ‘I’m meeting him for lunch; and then we’ll go … wherever.’

‘Remember what I said about bringing him back. He’s welcome. I’ll cook you dinner, if you like.’

‘That’s an idea. That would be great, actually. When would be a good time?’

‘Well … Not tonight, I want to stay late at the library. How about tomorrow? Ask him.’

‘I will,’ Fran murmured, ‘thanks.’ And even as she smiled, an idea slipped into her head. A sudden thought that left her short of breath. She could bring him home this afternoon, if Lyn was working late. She could shag him on the futon, and her friend would never know.

She glanced down quickly; raised her mug and drank. Surely her guilt was showing on her face. But if it was, Lyn clearly hadn’t noticed. She was opening the paper in a listless sort of way.

Fran let her gaze drift off around the kitchen: a show of calm disinterest while she weighed the options up. She couldn’t take advantage, not like that. But then again … where was the harm? It wasn’t as if she’d lied to Lyn. She could just neglect to mention that she’d brought Craig back for tea. And let him screw her.

The prospect was as thrilling as their very first weekend. He’d taken some leave, collected her at Oxford, and driven them out to that posh country hotel. This wasn’t the place to think of that (though she wanted to, right now). But her appetite was back, and undiminished. Her feelings had lain dormant, like a seed in frozen ground; but now, at last, the thaw was setting in.

Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

God, it was years since she’d sung that hymn. It made her think of Easter at Aldermaston. She felt a bit abashed about misusing it like that. But only a bit.

‘Any shopping you’d like some help with?’ she asked, as a salve for her conscience.

‘It’s all right, thanks. I’m going to take things easy this morning. You have a really good day.’

The churning in Fran’s belly quite belied her modest smile. I’m going to, she thought. She couldn’t wait.

2

When Fran had gone, Lyn dumped the breakfast dishes in the sink and let them soak. It normally went against the grain, to leave a chore for later; but this morning she just couldn’t be bothered. The apathy extended to her morning ablutions; she hadn’t had her shower yet, nor even cleaned her teeth. She was running on flat batteries – but going back to bed would do no good. It was more than simple lack of sleep that had left her feeling drained.

She walked through the flat, and found it looking duller. The carpet felt rough and fluffy under her bare feet. Bits of her thesis were still scattered round the living room. She went round picking them up, and took them over to the table.

Æthelgar. The name that had burned in her head last night seemed cold and lifeless now: like ashes in a grate. She gazed at the word with a vague sense of resentment – then dumped her notes on top, and crushed it flat.

She could remember the book quite clearly – tucked away at the end of a shelf. Myth and Magic in Medieval Europe. One of Daddy’s expensive books. One of the ones he’d told her not to touch.

She’d kept away at first, like a good little girl. But curiosity had got the better of her in the end. She could see herself now, nine or ten years old and sitting on the carpeted floorboards with an open book before her, the summer evening sunlight spread like syrup on the wall.

The first book was huge, too big for her to hold. Most of the pages were grey, and rough: a bit like paper towels. But some were smooth and shiny, with black and white photos – or paintings in glorious colour, like the sun breaking through clouds.

It was called The Flowering of the Middle Ages. She’d often seen Daddy browsing through it, sitting in his easy chair beside the window. There was a painting of a knight on the cover – a horseman with a dark, mysterious face. So this evening she’d come in, and hauled it down off its shelf, and slowly started leafing through the pages. The words were dull and difficult, but the pictures held her spellbound.

The second book had caught her eye as she’d put the first away. Magic was the word that had intrigued her. At her age, it meant mystery, romance – and something more: a cleverness she envied. She wasn’t quite sure what Medieval meant, but knew it was to do with the Middle Ages. ‘Evil’ was clearly a part of it, though. Perhaps it was because they’d been wickeder times …

She’d pulled the book out carefully. It was smaller than the other one, but thicker; it felt almost as heavy. Sitting herself down again, she started going through it. But this book, it turned out, was mostly words: page after page of them, densely packed. Only a handful of photos, and those were black and white. One shiny-looking page was folded over. She opened it out, and found the photo of an odd-looking drawing, covering both pages: a circle filled with scribbling and stars. She could see no pattern to them, but guessed they were arranged in constellations. Martin would know about those, of course. She wondered if he’d seen it.

The writing was difficult to read, like the place names on their shire-map in the hall. She looked for a caption. It was there at the foot of the facing page.

The enigmatic Malmesbury Star-Chart. Fourteenth century.

Enigmatic was a word she had recently learned. It meant ‘mysterious’, Mummy said. But surely the man who had written this book knew what constellations were. A map of the stars, with the names written in. So what made it mysterious?

Even as she frowned over the word, she felt a sort of shadow in the room. Not from the window, where the syrup of sunlight had turned into marmalade now. Nor from the open doorway, with the rattle of pans coming through it from downstairs. It came from the thought of the unknown in this picture. Something was here that even grown-ups didn’t understand. Something to do with magic, she supposed. If this had been a story, she would doubtless be the one to find its secret. But this was Daddy’s study, and she didn’t feel excited, but uneasy.

The enigmatic stars were like a hundred open eyes.

‘Lyn!’

She jumped, and twisted round: flushing with guilt as Daddy came in through the door. He crossed the room, snatched the book up from the carpet and folded the map away – so quickly that he creased it. Closing the book, he took it back to its shelf, while Lyn just sat and watched him, feeling very cold and small.

‘How many times?’ he snapped. ‘You’re not to touch these books. They’re very valuable, some of them, very expensive. I don’t want your sticky fingermarks all over them.’

Lyn felt her sobs come rising to the surface. She pinched her lips tight shut to keep them back, but they tried to get out through her eyes instead, and squeezed them full of tears.

‘Oh, don’t start crying,’ Daddy said, still looking tired and cross. But when Lyn couldn’t keep the flow in check, he sat down in his chair, and beckoned her over, and heaved her up to huddle on his knee.

‘Shh, now,’ he murmured, as she sniffled against his worn tweed jacket. ‘Shhh …’ He stroked her hair. ‘I’m sorry I was cross, all right? It’s just that I don’t like you looking at some of those books.’

‘I washed my hands,’ she whimpered. ‘Promise.’

‘It’s not just that. Shhh. Be a brave girl, now, and listen to me. Some of those books, you see, are about things you don’t need to know about, not yet. That one you were looking at … You know what magic is, don’t you?’

She nodded.

‘Well people used to believe there were different kinds of magic – good and bad magic. That book talks a lot about bad magic. You can read it when you’re older, but if you read it now you might get upset and have bad dreams. You don’t want to have bad dreams, now do you?’

Lyn shook her head in tearful mute agreement.

‘There’s a good girl …’ He fingered her fringe; then smiled at her. The fond, familiar smile she knew of old. ‘You really like reading, don’t you? Like to find things out. That’s good, Lyn. Very good. I shouldn’t blame you.’

‘Martin calls me Bookworm,’ she mumbled.

‘Never you mind what Martin says. You keep on reading. But remember that some things aren’t for you yet. Until I think you’re old enough, all right?’

She nodded again; then hesitated. ‘Daddy … will I need glasses?’

He gave a quizzical frown. ‘What makes you think you do?’

‘Martin says I’ll need glasses, ‘cos I read too much.’

‘Does he, indeed? Well I don’t need them, and look how much I’ve read. Don’t worry about your brother, he’s just a jealous little rascal.’ He jogged her on his knee. ‘What is he?’ She smiled tremulously. ‘A jealous little rascal.’

‘That’s more like it. Come on, now. Let’s see if Mummy wants some help with supper …’

Or something. He’d said something like that. It was curious how clearly she remembered. Most of the words had faded, but the pictures were still clear. Daddy’s hair had been mostly black – not silver-grey like now. And there she’d been, still small enough to sit on his knee. So different from her tall, slim self today.

Daddy’s grown-up daughter now; the clever girl he’d always been so proud of.

Lyn sat down on the sofa, and tucked her legs up under her. A dull weight of nostalgia filled her chest. She’d already written home this week – but when she got back tonight, she’d phone as well.

After more than a decade, she could still feel a twinge of guilt. He hadn’t made her promise not to read those books again – and so, one afternoon, she’d gone and done so.

It had taken her a while to work up the nerve. He’d told her not to do it, and by and large she did what she was told. But a strange, perverse attraction won her over in the end. The lure of the forbidden: sickly-sweet. An urge to peep at things that might upset her.

She remembered how her heart had thudded as she’d taken down the heavy book, and turned its dusty pages. The picture of the star-chart had stayed in her head; a shadow at the back of her mind. Enigmatic. Secret. Her lips felt as dry as the leaves of the book as she unfolded it again.

Memory had built it up; spread out, it looked much smaller. The words still made no sense. Not even the ones around the rim, which – though clearer – had been printed in some foreign-looking language.

She’d turned to the text: there had to be a reference in the chapter. Something to explain that troubling description. She’d found the passage, but could only remember fragments of it now. Fourteenth-century copy of an earlier work, now lost. The word had struck her, even as she kept on reading. With all these books around her, how could anything be lost? Surely it was hidden somewhere; forgotten, in an attic or a cellar. It bothered her to think that it had ceased to exist. If there hadn’t been a copy, all that work would just have vanished. As if it had never been.

The writing (she discovered) was Medieval Latin, with the constellations labelled in Old English. Hebrew characters as well. No wonder that she couldn’t understand it.

… Ursa Major is marked as ‘æelgar’ (a personal name), while ‘fluar’ (meaning unclear) denotes the constellation Draco …

There was more on the way the star-chart was set out; but though she strained her mind now, only those two names had stuck. She’d taken them phonetically back then: Edelgar, of course, not …

Athelgar.

She knew it was coincidence, the testament she’d found. So that was enigmatic, too. So what?

Fluthar was a nonsense-name. She couldn’t work it out. Scribal error, probably. The earlier work already being corrupted.

She lay there on the sofa, feeling listless. It must be the link with Martin that had got her down like this. Her jealous little rascal of a brother. She sniffed, and was surprised to find how close she was to tears.

She’d got what she deserved, that day; the thought was almost satisfying now. Growing bored with the so-called Magic book, she’d put it away, and returned to the big volume on the Middle Ages. One of the chapters was called King Death. Something had made her hesitate; and then she’d turned the page – and kept on turning.

Horrors swarmed towards her, almost boiling from the book. A painting from a manuscript showed knights being hacked to pieces, limb from limb. Statues carved on tombs were split and rotting, full of worms. A skeleton was riding down his victims, his eyeless horse as ghostly as an X-ray. And there he was, King Death himself: a gutted, grinning figure with a gold crown on his skull.

She’d wanted to stop looking, but she couldn’t. As if she had to know the very worst. She’d come to another fold-out page – and opened up the gateway into Hell.

A panoramic painting, full of horrid, screaming detail. A tide of naked people, flowing down into the Pit. Hideous monsters clutched at them, and beat them with spiked clubs. Real, despairing faces cried for help – but the devils overwhelmed them. They seemed to spring up everywhere, alive on the page: shaggy, scaly, homed and fanged. She’d sat there with wide eyes and soaked it up.

It had taken quite an effort to close the book again. The images stayed crowding in her head. Subdued, she’d put the book away, and crept out of the room. And Daddy had been right, of course. That night she’d had bad dreams.

CHAPTER VI

No Man’s Land

1

They’d walked for a while in Christ Church Meadow, then meandered into Oxford through the backstreets and the lanes. Sitting on the steps of the Martyrs’ Memorial, Fran reckoned she must still look like a student. Same gypsy clothes, same sturdy boots. Same undernourished look.

Craig’s arm was resting gently round her shoulders. He’d held on a little tighter as they’d walked past Christ Church College, as if afraid she’d break away and run towards the walls. But all she could do was turn her head, and watch it passing by. The citadel from which she’d been excluded.

The pavements here in front of her were thronged with real students. She wished she could slip through time again, and fall into step beside them. Being twenty-three had never felt so old. She rested her head against Craig’s shoulder, and smelled the musty leather of his coat.

‘You sure about this evening?’ he asked quietly.

She raised her head again. ‘Would I have asked you if I wasn’t?’

He conceded the point with an amiable shrug. ‘I wanted to be sure I wasn’t … rushing you too much.’

‘Don’t worry. If you do, I’ll let you know.’

She remembered the doubts she’d had, before the first time. They came from every side. She’d lost her virginity while still at school, but still felt inexperienced. Her religious instincts were none too keen on sex outside of marriage. And besides – above all else, in fact – the man was one of them.

Did that make her a hypocrite? A quisling? She’d agonized for hours, without an answer. She looked for deeper motives: was she trying to win him over? And was he trying to do the same to her?

Maybe all he wanted was her body. She wasn’t twenty yet, of course. Still a rather wide-eyed student, once the shades were taken off.

He hadn’t rushed her, though. He’d let her pick the pace. He fancied her a lot, that much was clear – but took each step as cautiously as she did. Two lovers, separated by a fence. Fumbling along till they came to the end of the wire.

‘Where will you be going next?’ Craig asked. He couldn’t cope with silences like she could.

‘Back to the Plain,’ she said, after a pause. ‘To see the place we crashed. Then I can get on with the rest of my life.’

Silence again; but she could tell what he was thinking. Was he included in that brave new future? She took his hand and squeezed it, just to tell him that he would be. But whether as a lover or a friend, she wasn’t sure.

‘You want to put some flowers where it happened?’ Craig asked gently.

She shrugged against him. ‘Maybe.’ And it seemed a good idea. But what she needed most of all was to go back there in daylight, and know what had been real, and what had not.

She thought about her dream last night. The faceless man on Imber – and the voice. The recollection filled her with a conflict of emotions, unsettling her, but haunting her as well. She knew it was a throwback to that night on Larkhill range. But his pleading tone still echoed in her head.

Perhaps she’d dream of him again – unless she went to Imber range as well. And walked along that empty road, to exorcize his ghost.

Anyway, with Imber, there were other factors counting. Another memory to draw her back.

2

MOD RANGES

This is a live firing area

and is closed to the public

KEEP OUT

Sod off, she’d thought, and kept on walking. Past the weathered crimson sign that marked the limit of the range, and down the grassy slope into the valley.

It took nerve to do a walk-on in broad daylight. An element of recklessness as well. She could feel the tension fizzing in her stomach – threatening to erupt into a fit of nervous giggles. She was committed now, no turning back; exhilaration lengthening her strides. Her long coat flapped and fluttered in the breeze. The heady sense of trespass made her giddy.

They’d catch her in the end, of course – and that was the whole point. The worry was, they’d cut her off before she reached the village. She needed to meet those airmen, face to face. Her one chance to appeal to them directly.

She knew she’d get arrested, and would probably be charged – which might cause complications back at College. She’d thought long and hard about crossing the line. It wasn’t really something she could talk about with Lyn; her friend regarded protest with suspicion. Two things had tipped the balance in the end. The urge to bridge the gulf between the missile crews and her; and a compulsion to confront her fear of Cruise.

The range was silent: brooding under clouds. Empty slopes, and straggling dark copses. On the dry floor of the valley, she felt hemmed in: overshadowed. Even with the sun still up, the place gave her the creeps. A void at night; a wilderness by day.

Two flights were out on exercise this month: four launchers up at Imber Firs, and four down in the village. Their presence only added to the ominous silence.

She came to the single metalled road, just east of Imber village. Pausing, she looked both ways; then ventured out. Across the road, a pillbox seemed to watch her. Overgrown and derelict; as empty as a skull.

Getting close, now. Very close. She cut away from the road again, and slipped into the undergrowth. There’d be sentries on patrol from here on in. She hesitated, listening. The distant whirr of a generator reached her ears, but nothing more. She could see the old church tower, rising up behind the trees.

She decided to skirt around to the north of the village: come down past Imber Court, and try and get among the vehicles. It was the first time she’d approached Cruise on deployment, but she knew there were two levels of defences. The outer and inner rings. Neither was apparent at the moment.

She was feeling quite keyed-up now; quite excited. Creeping through the wood, she got a glimpse of the first building: a weed-infested shell across the road. And still the ruined village kept its peace.

Again she stopped to listen, easing down on hands and knees – and heard a brittle twig snap right behind her.

Galvanized by shock, she twisted round. A bloke in US camouflage was standing there, half-smiling. His face looked quite familiar; she placed it just before she read the name-strip on his blouse. Master Sergeant FLAHERTY, again.

‘A man can’t even go for a pee these days without tripping over you guys.’

Fran let herself relax a bit: her heart still beating hard. ‘Your security is crap, I hope you know.’

He snorted. ‘Tell me about it.’

They looked each other over for a moment. He was wearing his cap, rather than the sinister ‘Fritz’ helmet of a trooper on patrol. She was relieved to see he didn’t have a gun.

Perhaps he drives a launcher, then. This amiable man.

‘You been down here all week?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘We came in last night … got porridge thrown all over us. And paint.’

Fran couldn’t help grinning. ‘Are you QRMT, then?’

‘Quick Response Maintenance, yeah …’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re pretty well clued-up, ain’t you?’

‘Oh, we are, we are.’ She let her grin grow teasing. ‘Know how we can tell a Convoy vehicle? It’s got no number plates, and it’s going the wrong way.’

He chuckled at that; then squinted at the sky. ‘Gonna rain soon. You want to stay out here and get wet, or are you coming in with me?’

Fran wavered for a moment; then shrugged. ‘Might as well get it over with.’

‘My name’s Craig,’ he said, as she got to her feet.

She nodded back. ‘I’m Frances.’

They started down the slope, between the trees. The contact that she’d come here for – and now her mind was blank. She couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘I kind of get the feeling we’re not welcome here,’ Craig said.

She gestured rather sullenly. ‘I’d rather you went home.’

‘Don’t like Yanks, huh?’

She stopped. ‘That isn’t true. Believe me it’s not. I think you’re quite nice people, actually. It’s your missiles I don’t want.’

‘Just keeping the peace – that’s all we do.’

‘I thought it was called Cold War.’

‘Making the world safe for McDonald’s, then.’

She gave him a half-suspicious glance. ‘You can’t be American … you’ve got a sense of irony.’

‘Oho,’ he grinned. ‘Unfair!’

‘No, but listen …’ They were nearly at the road, now, she had just a moment left. ‘I’ll be honest, I despair of you lot sometimes. Then I think of the Gettysburg Address, and Henry Fonda in Twelve Angry Men, and I feel a bit more hopeful.’

‘I like Fonda, too,’ he said.

‘But when you aim your missiles at civilians, you’re selling it all out. You shame your country, Craig.’

He looked at her more soberly. ‘I guess we’re not going to see eye to eye on this one.’

She shrugged. ‘Well, thanks for listening, anyway.’

‘Maybe we should talk some more.’

Fran hesitated: not sure what he meant. He’d dropped his gaze, eyes shadowed by the peak of his cap.

‘You’re studying in Oxford, aren’t you?’

She nodded.

‘Maybe I could meet you there sometime.’

A heartbeat’s pause. ‘You serious?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, and looked at her. ‘I am.’

Fran stared back for a moment. Then: ‘Christ Church College. Write to me.’

She sensed his relief, though he masked it with a faint, ironic grin. ‘You won’t get tarred and feathered just for talking to me, will you?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. Why, will you get shot?’

Touché. He let her go ahead of him, and out onto the road; falling behind as she walked into the village. She felt him in her footsteps, but she didn’t look back once.

A control vehicle was lurking at the roadside up ahead, its bulk draped in camouflage netting. The tactical ops truck was parked nearby; she could see the maps and clutter in the back. A burly, crop-haired officer was staring out at her, a white enamel mug still in his hand. His face was a sight: slack-jawed with disbelief. The flight commander, surely. She put on her sweetest smile, and walked towards him.

‘Hey! We’ve got another peacenik walking round out here!’

Some MoD police appeared from nowhere, and rushed across the road to intercept her. She recognized the bloke who took her elbow; she knew most of the Support Unit now, at least by sight. And they knew her, as well.

‘Gawd, Frances: you again? Come on …’

As they led her towards the transit van, she twisted round to look behind her. Craig Flaherty was standing by the TO truck. He waited till their eyes met; then dropped his gaze again, and turned away.

3

Fran opened Lyn’s front door a little warily – still composing an excuse inside her head. Lyn hadn’t looked too great this morning. Perhaps she’d stayed at home.

On up the stairs. She felt Craig’s presence climbing them behind her, his footsteps slow and patient on the treads. She gave him a nervous smile – he grinned easily back – and fumbled the key into the door of the flat.

Hush and stillness greeted them: each dust-mote hung suspended. Fran almost tiptoed through to check Lyn’s bedroom; then breathed a sigh, and shrugged out of her jacket.

‘What time will she be back?’ Craig asked her calmly.

‘Sometime after seven.’ Her mouth was dry.

They stood together awkwardly: like two kids not quite sure who should be making the first move. Then Craig sat on the sofa, and beckoned her to join him. She did so, snuggling close. They started kissing.

She hadn’t snogged like this for four whole years. Excitement surged inside her, sending thrills along her nerves. But when his hand began to fumble with the buttons of her top, she felt a plunge of doubt, and pulled away.

He managed a smile, and gently stroked her shoulder. ‘Second thoughts?’

She swallowed. ‘I’m not sure if we should. Behind Lyn’s back, I mean …’

‘I can wait for as long as you want, you know.’ His voice was slightly hoarse, but she believed him.

‘Can we … just sit for a bit?’

‘Sure.’

‘Sorry …’

‘Shh. No problem.’

Curling up, she let herself be cuddled. This was enough: to feel him there beside her. She couldn’t take it further, not right now.

They watched the room turn greyer as the dusk came creeping in. As if each mote of dust had multiplied a million times. From time to time he kissed her, very softly. She nuzzled him back, feeling cosseted and safe. No worries in the world, so long as they were here together.

At last she let him go, and straightened up. ‘Would you like a glass of wine, at least? Lyn’s got some in the fridge.’

‘Sure. I’d like that.’ She heard him settling back again as she went into the kitchen. A paranoid twinge made her wonder what expression he was wearing. Exasperation, maybe? Or resentment? She flicked the radio on, as if that would tame the situation. Make the place more like a flat just being visited by a friend.

Lyn usually had it tuned to Classic FM – but maybe she’d brushed the dial while she’d been dusting. All that came out was the empty, crackling ether. Fran thought she heard a burbling in the distance; but the voice, if voice it was, was too distorted to make sense. Ignoring it, she opened the fridge, letting yellow light spill out into the dimness. The wine-box was on the bottom shelf. She brought it out, and shut the glow away.

The tuned-out radio fizzed and crackled sharply. She guessed that meant a thunderstorm was close. Turning towards the cupboard where the glasses were kept, she glanced out of the window. Heavy cloud had crept across the city – but a stripe of crimson twilight formed a backdrop to the spires.

A corrupted voice behind her said: ‘… they’re coming …’

Her head snapped round. The words had come from the radio, suddenly clear; but now it was just hissing to itself. The noise jogged her memory – then jolted it. She could smell the stuffy confines of Paul’s car; feel the air of tense expectancy that filled it. Hear the CB radio hissing like a snake.

‘I see their lights …’ the kitchen radio said.

Then silence for a minute – maybe two. Fran stood there like a statue, her spine against the hard edge of the sink. Listening with her hand over her mouth. Her heart had started beating very fast.

Just isolated crackles, now; the sharper pops of static made her jump. She was just about to cross the room, and switch the damn thing off, when the voice, now more contorted, came again.

‘Elderflower, to Watchers at Gore Cross. First Dodge is now approaching the vedette …’

Oh no, Fran thought. Oh please.

She knew the words, she’d heard them all before. They dragged her back four years, to a night on the Plain. The scene was there before her; she could feel the winter chill. An unlit country crossroads, at the exit to the range. She was waiting with the others: the protestors, the police. Under a cloud-fogged moon.

One of the cars had driven up as far as the vedette. He was out of their sight up there, cut off – but still in touch by radio. How must it feel, she’d wondered, to be sitting there alone? As the snake of lights came creeping up towards him …

She remembered every detail, as fresh as if she’d been there yesterday. The convoy’s escort, parked along the farm-track: dim shapes of transit vans with engines running. Two Land-Rovers were sitting on their sidelights, up the hill. But the road to Imber village was still dark.

‘All vehicles now on the vedette …’

Fran felt herself go cold and faint. She slumped onto her haunches, sliding down. Still staring at the radio; but her eyes saw other things.

‘Eight launchers, four controls, two Rams, two wreckers. They’re coming through. They’re coming.’

And over the hill they came, in a serpent of slow headlights. From the black heart of the Plain; the ghostly wreck of Imber village. Fran cringed against the cupboard – gripped her head between her hands. The voice had fallen silent, but her mind filled in the rest. The whistles and shouts as the convoy came off, its escorts slotting in between the flights; then the scramble for the cars, and the pursuit into the night. The terrifying chase to Greenham Common …

She was still huddled there when Craig came through to see where she had got to. Jerkily she raised her face; he saw her tears glistening in the gloom. He knelt beside her, hugged her: held her close. Fran hung on tight for dear life – and sanity as well. But she couldn’t shake off that eerie voice. Those sombre words.

They’re coming.

CHAPTER VII

Running Blind

1

They sat in silence, round the kitchen table. Fran was halfway through another cigarette, eyes fixed on its smouldering tip. Lyn wasn’t a smoker, and clearly didn’t like it in the flat, but had made allowances tonight. Fran sensed her watching anxiously, hands clasped beneath her chin. A lukewarm pulse of sympathy went through her, just tingeing her self-pity. Poor Lyn had come in late, and looking knackered (not a word she’d use) – to find Fran on the sofa, as white as a sheet, and Craig with his arm around her. And now here they were, much later, with the second round of coffees still half-drunk. Just like bloody student days again.

‘I still think you’d be crazy to go back,’ Craig told her quietly.

Fran looked at him with narrowed eyes. The bright glare of the strip-light didn’t do him many favours: lining his face, and picking out grey hairs. What was he, thirty-five? Weathered and worn by the gap of years between them. His earnest, grim expression didn’t help; but those pale blue eyes of his were clean and sharp.

She hadn’t believed he’d wanted to pursue her. Too challenging; too risky. Waiting to be charged at West Down camp, she’d realized that he didn’t know her surname. Well, there was a test of his commitment – and he’d passed it. Made a few discreet enquiries of the MDP who’d nicked her …

‘I have to,’ she said flatly – taking a drag as if to set her seal on the matter. The ash flared: hot, defiant. She got a glimpse of Lyn’s discomfort from the corner of her eye, and turned her head aside to breathe the smoke.

‘Look at the effect it’s having,’ he persisted. ‘Even now. You go back there again, you’re gonna screw yourself up, Fran. Back into therapy. Is that what you want?’

‘Of course I bloody don’t. And I’m not going to. I had a real shock down there: it screwed me up for years. I need to get my head round it. I’ll be all right then.’

‘So what about what happened here tonight?’ Lyn said – jumping quickly in between them, but the question was pertinent enough. ‘Was that just in your head?’

Fran sat back, glowering at Craig. ‘Of course it was.’

‘You were hearing voices again.’

Fran turned her head, and saw how pale Lyn looked. Not just from fatigue; her eyes were big with worry. With her hair tied back, not her usual style, she seemed younger and more vulnerable somehow.

Fran swallowed. ‘Not like before. No, really. This was just a memory. A flashback.’

Lyn moistened her lips. ‘Oh, Fran. Don’t you think it might be better if you saw someone?’

‘No, I don’t. I’m finished with that, all right? Going to Heyford and Greenham helped. I’m getting it all back into perspective now. And I know I can face up to the Plain. If I don’t, then those flashbacks, those whatever, will just keep coming.’

There was a pause. Fran drew determinedly on her cigarette. Craig tapped his fingers thoughtfully on the table, watching her from under his brows.

‘Would it help,’ Lyn ventured slowly, ‘if you told us what you thought you saw, that night?’

Fran focused again on the shrivelling ash, and felt her skin becoming cold and tight. A vacuum seemed to form inside her belly.

‘It might be an idea … Lyn faltered on. ‘You talked about … these things you thought were coming after you.’

Fran breathed slowly in; then out. She shook her head.

‘Oh, Frannie,’ whispered Lyn. ‘Please let us help.’

For a moment more she wavered. The memory was there at the back of her mind: a dense, amorphous shadow. To speak of it would give it shape – in all its ghastly detail. But the prospect before her was more frightening still: that her friends would take her at her word, and leave her to resist the thing alone.

Fran crushed her cigarette against the saucer, and looked up. Her expression made Craig reach across and take hold of her hand. Lyn followed suit: grasped Fran’s left hand in both her own and squeezed.

Just like a séance, Fran thought dimly. And that’s what they were doing, in the end. Summoning spirits. Raising ghosts.

She opened her mouth, and realized she was on the verge of tears. She sniffed, and swallowed thickly. Then looked from Craig’s set face to Lyn’s – and started talking.

2

She’d got as far as Greenlands camp before she paused for breath.

Her limbs were numb with shock, but they’d kept moving. Adrenaline sang madly through her veins. Her three friends were forgotten; the crash was like the fragment of a dream. The only thing that mattered was the shadow at her heels.

Glancing back, she’d glimpsed it moving – indistinct and blurred. It had left the road already, and was following her trail onto the range. She’d lost it for a moment, and looked round in utter panic. But then it passed in front of the car headlamps, quenching them like a cloud across the moon.

Oh God, oh God, oh God.

The unseen ground was rough and treacherous. Brambles vied with thatchy tufts of grass to bring her down. A tank trail almost tripped her up: as lumpy as a ploughed field in the dark. Whimpering, she picked her way along it – then looked again, and found him gaining ground. Lurching but relentless, like a scarecrow in the starlight. She flailed back onto grass, and kept on running.

A red light glowed above the nearest trees – a warning beacon, mounted on a flagpole. She’d made for it instinctively, and stumbled on a narrow, northbound lane. Gasping, she had followed that, uphill and round a bend. And Greenlands had been waiting there: as silent as a village of the dead.

The old camp was disused, its buildings derelict and empty. The road led through the middle, and on up towards East Down. The night was brighter up ahead: the stars like waiting gems above the black lip of the earth. But safety seemed as far away as they did.

Breathless now, she came up short and forced herself to listen. There was no sound of her pursuer. She could just hear the range flagpole in the distance: its cable striking metal in the cool night breeze. Clink … clink … clink …

The ground rose up to left and right, and murk had settled thickly in the fold. The way she’d come was as black as the mouth of a tunnel.

She tried to fill her aching lungs; fighting back the sobs that would have emptied them again. Now that she’d stopped moving, a dozen cuts and bruises were competing for attention – engulfing her in pain and nausea. Her head had started throbbing; it felt like a drill-bit slowly grinding on the bone.

Her face was warm and sticky. Reaching up, she touched her cheek, and felt the slime of blood.

She wavered, shivering with shock – and heard the whine of engines. Something moving slowly through the night. Distance and direction were impossible to judge. She looked ahead, along the road: hoping for the blessed flash of headlights. But the darkness of the skyline didn’t change.

Then she heard the scuff of footfalls, coming up the lane.

For a moment she stood petrified; then dodged towards the nearest gutted building. The way ahead was too exposed, wide open – he would catch her. She had to hide, and wait for him to pass.

Despite its gaping window holes, the hulk was dank and smelly. Animals had pissed in here – and maybe died, as well. She ducked into the doorway, and put her back against the crumbled bricks. Litter rustled underfoot. The grainy dimness clung to her like glue.

She froze, and strained her ears. The camp was silent.

Then she heard a scraping noise that made her hairs stand up.

A rusty and abrasive sound, from somewhere very close; perhaps the nearest empty house but one. She visualized an iron bar, being drawn along the brickwork. A hunter trying to winkle out his prey.

Oh God, help meeeeee! Oh God!

The silence settled down again. She swallowed, like a spasm. The pause went on for minutes. He must have gone inside the house, to search its filthy shadows. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to move: across the darkened shell, towards the window. Reaching it, she peered carefully out.

Nothing for a moment; then she glimpsed him – a blob of deeper darkness, moving back into the road. His shadow flickered on the barracks block – then peeled away, and struck off on its own.

It took another moment just to realize what she’d seen. A power-surge of fright blazed through her nerves. Two of them were searching for her now.

The first one started up the road. She recognized his shabby, muffled outline. The cowled head turned from side to side; the starlight winked off metal. It glinted on the bar or implement that he was holding. Fran just stared – then clasped her mouth, and slowly backed away. Oh Jesus, he was carrying a sword.

He struck the blade against the road: it rasped, and scattered sparks. The other shape was rooting through the long grass by the barracks. The stars reflected dully off a helmet of some kind. Fran was seized with disbelieving horror. They might have been two phantoms, from the ancient earthworks all around this place.

Except that they were real, and closing in. She dragged her gaze away, and tiptoed back towards the doorway.

Something furtive shifted in the corner.

It might have been a rat, but she just bolted anyway. Or tried to – but her joints had stiffened up. The minutes she’d spent standing still had almost crippled her. She pitched out through the doorway – then caught herself, and fled across the road. Trying to get clear of them, before they could react – but then another shape emerged, from one of the outbuildings. Squealing now, she veered around it, ducking as it aimed some kind of club. She heard it snarl behind her – and then her ears were full of her own heartbeat, as she struggled up the slope towards the crest.

She felt them scrambling after her, and whimpered with despair. The night ahead had neither depth nor distance. She staggered on, and seemed to make no progress.

Then she saw the vehicles – three moving sets of lights. They looked to be heading for Half-Moon Copse. She put on a spurt. All three were towing trailers, and their sidelights were bright orange. Cruise support – an ADVON unit, maybe. She never thought she’d look on them as saviours.

As she panted to catch up, they seemed to sink into the ground and vanish. Within moments she had lost her way – the darkness looked the same in all directions. But there was the Plough, rising clear of the gloom – so that way must be north …

Even as she wavered, she felt the shadows coming at her back.

She swung around and saw one: heading straight towards her, in a grim, relentless line. She turned to run – and heard a knocking sound, insistent as a knuckle on a buried coffin lid. A string of tracer bullets seemed to float across the range. And then they speeded up and hurtled past her, cracking and wailing blindly through the night. She threw herself forward, sobbing: hitting the dirt before she even saw it.

The shooting stopped abruptly, its echoes fading off towards the stars. The hiss of her ears filled the silence that followed. Until the blackness stirred again, just twenty yards away. Stirred – and then came scurrying towards her.

She gave a little shriek, and scrambled upright. Escape was all that mattered now – the live rounds as irrelevant as raindrops. Sobbing for breath, she kept on fleeing. Oh please, she thought, beside herself. Oh please …

The stutter of machine guns came again. Globules of coloured light went streaming through the darkness. Instinct tried – and failed – to change her course. Then she tripped, and plunged into the grass.

A burst of shots stitched up the ground behind her. She heard a pig-like grunt and squeal. Squirming round, she realized her pursuer had been hit. He kicked and rolled; then started crawling forward. Relentless as a crippled dog. She hauled herself away on hands and knees.

The rounds were coming single-shot now. She recognized the crack of Armalites. Another vague shape foundered in the darkness.

And then the glare of headlights, right ahead.

‘Cease firing!’ someone yelled.

She risked another glance – still scrabbling forward. Beyond the spreading halo, the darkness of the range lay undisturbed. The shadows were still out there, she could sense them. But hanging back, now. Lurking in the gloom.

The vehicle’s lights approached her like two glowing pairs of eyes – the amber sidelights well outside the headlamps. Its width gave it away at once: a Hummvee armoured car. She watched it taking solid, crouching shape behind its stare. The gunner was a looming silhouette against the stars.

Running out of strength at last, she cowered like a rabbit in the lights. The Hummvee stopped, and men came stalking up on either side. She recognized their camouflage and German-looking helments, and almost started weeping with relief.

‘Jesus, it’s another goddamn peacenik,’ someone said.

‘Help me … please.’ She struggled to sit upright.

‘Back off. Get the cops to deal with her.’

‘Stupid bitch. You coulda got your stupid head blowed off.’

‘Hold it. Jesus, hold it. She’s been hurt.’

The man who’d spoken slung his Armalite and started forward. The others stood around her in the stagnant lake of light. A couple had their rifles still half-aimed.

‘Watch yourself.’

Ignoring that, he hunkered down and tried to check her head-wound. Despite herself, she wrapped her arms around him. He stiffened for a moment; then relaxed and hugged her back.

‘Shh, girl. It’s okay. Did you get hit?’

‘Someone chasing me …’ she sobbed.

‘Where? Back there?’ He looked over her shoulder. One of the others raised a torch, and shone it further out into the dark.

The American smelt earthy. The cowling of his gun was hair-dryer hot. Easing back, he tried a winning smile. ‘Target dummies – that was all you saw.’

‘Dummies? They were moving.’

‘Uh-uh,’ said another Yank, ‘there’s no one else out there.’ Fran looked round. The man was peering through binoculars of some kind.

‘That’s a thermal night-sight, hon,’ the first man told her wryly. ‘Sees body heat. Ain’t nobody can hide from one of those.’

Unless they’re dead already. Dead and cold …

‘You crazy, girl?’ a third man said. ‘This here’s a firing range.’

‘Our car crashed,’ she said brokenly. ‘Back down by Greenlands camp. My three friends need an ambulance … right now.’

They helped her to her feet, and led her past the ugly armoured car. The ‘Whiskers’ Blazer squatted there behind it, its pair of aerials bending like antennae in the breeze.

One of the riflemen glanced back. Fran twisted round as well – but everything behind them was a void. Black emptiness. And nothing to hear but the night wind hissing through acres of unseen grass.

The shakes had really started as the Whiskers drove her back to Westdown camp. She’d been sick soon after they arrived there: hunched miserably over the toilet bowl, while an MoD policewoman stood watching from the doorway. An army medic checked her up; and then she got to see the duty sergeant.

‘Your friends have been taken to Salisbury General,’ he told her as she sipped some tasteless tea. ‘We’ll get an army ambulance to take you down there too.’

She realized that she’d left them at the mercy of those things. ‘Are they all right?’ she mumbled guiltily.

He seemed to hesitate. ‘They’re in good hands. The medics over there can tell you more. You’ve been a very lucky girl. We won’t be charging you.’

Dawn was almost up by the time the ambulance arrived. Pallid light had bleached away the blackness, and the Plain looked dour and barren. A Hummvee was sitting just inside the Danger Area, its lights still on. The machine gunner slouched on his open hatch, watching her and chewing thoughtfully.

The camp lay in misty silence. She walked forlornly down between the rows of unlit huts, escorted by the WPC. Two of the troopers tagged along. The one who’d helped her still looked quite concerned. She felt a spark of gratitude – but one that grew no brighter than a glimmer. And nausea yawned beneath it like a bottomless pit.

By the time she reached the ambulance, the tears were running freely down her face.

3

And her cheeks were dripping now – but she was safe here in the kitchen, holding on tight to her two friends’ hands. Craig hadn’t dropped his gaze for a moment; willing her on whenever she had stumbled. Towards the end, the room was losing focus: the past becoming solid in its place. The bare skin of her arms began to pimple with the chill. But Craig was always there, and hanging on. His eyes were mild blue steel, his face as steady as a rock.

Lyn was leaning close: she pressed Fran’s limp hand against her cheek. ‘Oh, Fran,’ she almost breathed. ‘You poor thing.’

Fran sniffed and swallowed. Lyn let her have her hand back, and she wiped her swollen eyes.

‘Jesus,’ Craig said softly. ‘No wonder you needed therapy. No wonder.’

She tried to smile, but the muscles wouldn’t work. All she could do was stare, and hope her eyes would say it for her. How much she’d needed him to hear that. How very glad she was that he was here.

Back then, there’d been no time for explanations. Numb with shock, she’d sunk into depression – the depths of bleak midwinter, while the autumn still blazed golden in the trees. She’d bitched at Lyn with real spite, and snapped at her concern. Craig she’d just ignored – until he’d driven up to see her. The row they’d had that afternoon had almost made her puke: but all her bitter prejudice came spewing up instead. Just doing your job, of course you are – just like the bloody SS. And Craig, being Craig, gave as good as he’d got. Grow up and get a life, you stupid bitch.

They’d parted on those hateful terms; she’d dropped out of college soon after. Crawled back home to Mum and Dad, and let the darkness take her. Just as it had almost managed on the Plain.

But Lyn, on top of all her work, had done her best to keep the flame alive. Keeping them linked up across the distance and the years – even when Craig’s tour ended and he flew back to the States. Lyn, whom she’d called a stuck-up cow, and told to go away …

‘Sorry,’ Fran said lamely, looking down at the tabletop: addressing them both.

Craig squeezed her hand. ‘I’m sorry, Fran. I didn’t know.’

She raised her eyes. His face looked almost haunted with concern.

Were you on Larkhill range that night? She’d never dared to ask him, and couldn’t now. Because the answer yes would beg the question: Did you see them too? And he couldn’t have, of course – because it had all been in her mind.

‘Another cup of coffee?’ Lyn asked gently. There was a hint of relief in her calming smile. Fran guessed she’d worked it out from her reserve of common sense: the obsession with Cruise had somehow caused a post-traumatic backlash. Craig had doubtless reached the same conclusion. They were probably right, as well; and yet …

Fran realized she was frowning very slightly.

‘So what happens now?’ Craig wondered, as Lyn got the kettle going.

‘Now I have to go back,’ Fran said. ‘You see why, don’t you?’

He didn’t look entirely convinced. ‘And what, retrace your steps?’

She nodded. ‘Right through Greenlands camp.’ A pause. ‘And I think I’ll take in Imber village, too – for old times’ sake.’

He acknowledged that with a wry smile of his own. ‘So when d’you want to go?’

‘Spring Bank Holiday’s coming up. The roads are open then.’ She hesitated. ‘But I want to go alone this time. You’ve had to carry me for long enough.’

‘It’s no problem—’ Craig began, and Lyn was turning round to say the same. Fran cut back in, eyes wide and earnest. ‘I mean it, Craig. It’s got to be that way. I was on my own the first time, after all.’

He shook his head, unhappy. ‘And what if you have a problem?’

‘I don’t think I will. Not in broad daylight. Just a stretch of open country, that’s all it’ll be …’

The kettle boiled in the background, and switched itself off. Craig looked at Lyn. She shrugged.

‘I’ll be all right,’ Fran murmured. ‘Really.’ A pause; and then she glanced at Lyn, and smiled a little wanly. ‘Would you mind if I have another cigarette?’

‘He’s quite a catch,’ Lyn said, when Craig had gone.

‘I know,’ Fran said. ‘I’m glad you like him too.’

She’d started going with Craig just as Lyn was breaking up with her new boyfriend. She remembered the heart-to-heart they’d had, one afternoon together: Lyn very delicate and weepy, while she herself was glowing with excitement. And marvelling at the irony, as well. A Yank from Greenham Common – of all people. Even Lyn had giggled tearfully at that.

And Lyn, despite her tiredness, was smiling, teasing now. ‘You won’t let him get away this time?’

Fran shook her head. ‘Not on your life. Not this time.’ Once she’d put her past in order, she could think about the future; but the horizon was already looking bright.

But now it was well past bedtime. She gave the washed-up mugs a wipe, while Lyn went round locking up. Finished, she switched the light off and headed for the bathroom. Lyn passed her in the doorway, touched her arm. Her soft brown eyes were serious now. ‘You’re sure you’ll be all right?’

Fran hugged her: held her close. ‘Oh, yes. I’m sure.’

Climbing into bed, she realized just how tired she was. The drain on her emotions had sapped her strength. But talking out her memories had purged her; she felt lighter than she had for many weeks.

Or months, perhaps. Or years.

The long dark was nearly over now. Just one more place to go. The night outside felt safe – its demons caged. She laid down her head, and realized she was smiling very faintly. Then closed her eyes, and slept.

‘This is Woodbine at Greenham … all vehicles now inside the gate.’

‘Thank you, Woodbine … Thanks to all Watchers along on this one … Goodnight …’

CHAPTER VIII

The Waste Down

1

She lingered for a long while in Edington church.

Weeks had passed. She’d nursed her sickly courage: felt it grow. But here, in the shadow of the Plain’s northern edge, she knew her nerve might fail her even now.

She’d got off the train at Westbury and walked – heading east out of town towards Bratton and White Horse Hill. The country road meandered round the foot of the scarp, with flat fields spread and drowsing to her left. The day had started sunnily enough; but now the wind had freshened, bringing clouds. Stray sheep across the field of blue at first; then slower, grazing groups with dirty fleeces. The warm air felt diluted as each shadow passed across. She had her sleeveless top and flowing skirt on. When the coolness started lingering, she slung her jacket loosely round her shoulders.

Not Lyn’s big comfy jacket, sad to say. This was an old denim one from home. She’d been back to see her parents; they were so pleased with her progress. Some doubts about the wisdom of what she’d wanted to do next – but her rising confidence had won them over. She’d bloomed in sunny Oxford; Lyn had fed her up a bit, and made her get her hair done. She liked the cut: it framed her pale complexion like a cowl. Her eyes seemed greener: fresh as spring. She’d left her shades behind.

It felt as if she’d been away from home for years, not two short weeks. She’d had to rediscover her own bedroom. Her books had still been there where she had left them. Old favourites like Rebecca and Jane Eyre, alongside Einstein’s Monsters and The Fate of the Earth. Stuff she’d read at school, as well. She’d fingered her way along the row: from Shakespeare to Milton and Paradise Lost.

Long is the road, and hard (she thought)

That out of Hell leads up to light …

Her mum had found her mulling that one over. Unable to contain herself, she’d hugged and kissed her daughter. ‘You’re looking so well, Fran. Pretty as a pixie – like I always used to say.’

‘Mum!’ she’d said, embarrassed and delighted. That was when she’d realized she was going to be all right.

Her confidence had faltered as she came to Bratton village, and reached the turning off that led to Imber. At this point it was nothing but a quiet country lane, curving off around the hill and out of sight. Yet it ended at that junction in the middle of the range. The fields in which the faceless man was searching.

Despite her resolve, she’d wavered at the prospect; stood staring up the lane – then walked on by. Oh, she was going back to Imber, right enough – and on to Larkhill range and Greenlands camp. This very afternoon. But not quite yet.

Edington was tiny; picture-pretty. She let its stillness soothe her. A glance at her watch gave her plenty of time. Lyn wasn’t expecting her back in Oxford until mid-evening. Exploring, in an aimless sort of way (distraction from the uplands right behind her), she found the church at the bottom of a lane. St Mary, St Katharine & All Saints. The place was surprisingly big – a priory church, built with medieval grandeur. Intrigued, she wandered down to take a look.

The interior was cool and dim; she kept her jacket slung around her shoulders. A woman was busy cleaning near the back. She looked up with a smile. Fran smiled shyly back, and hoped she wouldn’t want to talk.

The flagstones clicked beneath her boots as she slowly paced around. Down the high, vaulted nave, and back along the aisles. Stone figures lay on recessed slabs, disfigured by the years. She picked up a guide from the table by the door; flicked casually through it. The date of consecration was 1361. She felt a haunting sense of age – a link with the past. As if long-dead congregations might still linger here in spirit.

Those sleeping statues: all unknown. That faceless knight had come from Imber church. Was thought to be a Lord of Imber … She gave it a slightly wary glance; tried superimposing a fourteenth-century village on the ruined one today. The effect was disconcerting. She put the leaflet down again.

The sun emerged outside, spilling blocks of dusty light down through the windows: a sandstorm in suspended animation. Undaunted, the woman in the housecoat kept on polishing the woodwork. The sun went in again.

Fran sat herself in one of the pews, and waited while her instincts fought it out. She knew she couldn’t turn back now; but a part of her still dragged its feet, and looked for an excuse.

A gentle footfall in the aisle behind her. ‘Anything I can help with, dear?’ the woman asked.

Fran glanced back with a smile. ‘I’m all right, thanks. Just savouring the atmosphere.’

‘It’s peaceful, isn’t it? Very calming.’

Fran hesitated, hoping that she’d leave it at that. But the pause made her uncomfortable: aware that there was more she ought to say. The woman had a friendly face; it seemed unfair to turn her own away.

‘Do you get many visitors here?’

‘A few. There was someone here earlier, came for the quiet like you did. Young man; I think he was one of those travellers or some such. But he sat here for a long while.’

She nodded, half to herself; then smiled and moved away, clearly sensing that this visitor preferred to be alone. Fran glanced gratefully after her; then settled back again, and thought of Greenlands.

It had to be faced: got over with. Like a smear test, or a visit to the dentist. And once it was done, the way ahead would be clear for her and Craig.

She couldn’t help but smile as she remembered their first date: the terms that she’d laid down, across the table. Call me ‘honey’ and I’ll clobber you, all right?

‘Okay.’

Or ‘Sugar’ …

She’d been there for a drink, and that was all. Still wary; still confused. But as they’d talked, her sense of guilt had slowly started fading. She liked him – he was honest and direct (good-looking, too, she’d add, if she were honest). They’d agreed to meet again. And from such small beginnings …

‘Well, what do you make of this?’ the woman said.

She’d just unlocked the collection box to empty it, and was peering at a small coin in her palm. Fran could see from where she sat that it was badly discoloured; but a muted gleam of silver caught the light. Probably an old two-shilling piece – a change, at least, from bus tokens and coppers.

It was time to move on. She got to her feet.

The woman gave her a glance. ‘That young man must have left it, he put something in the box. It can’t be real, can it?’

Fran joined her on the way to the door, and saw for herself. The rough-edged coin was tarnished, almost black, but she could make out the small cross stamped into the metal. The woman turned it over, and they saw it had a bird on the back: one with a curved and cruel-looking beak. A circle of crude lettering surrounded it.

The woman shook her head. ‘I’ve not seen anything like that before, I must say.’

Fran was picking out the letters, but they didn’t make a word. Hard enough to tell where the sequence began, apart from a cramped initial cross – and the bird’s malicious beak that broke the circle.

ANLAFCVNVNC

A scavenger’s beak, Fran thought – and frowned. A carrion bird. A raven.

2

Up on the hill, she turned around, and saw the country spread out like a quilt.

The patchwork was uneven, mixing greens and browns and yellows; its hedgerows like rough stitching in between. Isolated farms stood out in tiny detail. And over it all, the shadows of clouds came creeping: as shapeless as amoebas, vast and dim.

Wiltshire, stretching off into the distance. She’d originally thought of the Plain as flat, but here it rose much higher: thrust upward from the lowland like a cliff. Edington was down there, to the right: the church peeping out between trees. It looked like a toy village from up here.

She’d taken the footpath up Edington Hill. The way was steep and hollow, worn into the chalky ground. Clearing the trees on the lower slopes, it rose towards the crest – then skirted round it. She’d cut away, and climbed up to the top. The breeze grew fresher, plucking at her jacket; she shrugged into its sleeves. Her icon badge was pinned to the lapel.

Gazing out across the landscape, she remembered her walk with Dad the other week. Up the path behind the houses to the high ground overlooking Hathersage. They’d watched the evening settle on the village. The lights had come on one by one: a colony of fireflies waking up to greet the dusk. Dad had put his arm around her – drawn her close against his side. Content, she’d leaned her head against his shoulder.

‘You’re serious about him then: this lad?’

‘He’s really nice, Dad. You’d like him.’

They’d always been close: she didn’t need to see his face to know what he was thinking. He’d got his daughter back, to see her snatched away again. Every instinct said to hang on tight.

When he let go, she heard it in the wryness of his voice.

‘You’d best bring him up here, then. Let your mother have a look at him. And I can see what he thinks of Real Ale.’

Love you, Dad, she’d thought, and slid her arm across his back. Aloud she said: ‘He won’t drink pints, you know. Has to be the bottled stuff. And cold.’

He snorted. ‘Typical Yank, eh.’

‘That doesn’t bother you, does it?’ she’d asked, after a slightly anxious pause.

‘If he makes you happy, girl, he won’t bother me at all. Just don’t let him take you for a ride, all right?’

‘Dad. I’m twenty-three now.’

‘You’re still my daughter, Frannie. My little lass. That’s never going to change.’

She didn’t doubt it, either. Though they’d just been to see the local team, and Fran had shouted louder than the blokes, she was always going to be his little girl.

But even as they spoke, she’d felt the gloomy heights behind them: the tors like tumbled fortresses, and then the open moor. They were right out on the edge here, and dusk was coming quicker than a tide.

A wind had risen out of the distance. She’d felt it on her spine, and snuggled closer to Dad’s coat. But when she turned her head, she saw the yellow moon was up: its outline smudged and swollen, but the glow was like a lamp’s. The lantern of a friend, to light them home. The barren moor seemed thwarted – almost sullen.

The rustling breeze brought her back to the present. No wind from the back of beyond this time; just a whisper through the thistley grass. A snuffling round the dandelions and daisies. She breathed it in, and knew that she was ready.

Turning to come down off the crest – her face set firmly south, towards the range – she saw the black-clad figure in the hollow of the hill.

She ventured further down, and reached the track; then stopped again. The man was crouching on the slope a dozen yards below. He was head-down over something, unaware of her approach.

The falling contours made a basin here. The pathway curved around it, like a gouge along the rim. The ground was steep and strangely crimped: old terraces, she guessed. But grass this rough was just for grazing now. Tufty bushes sprouted up, like fungus on old bread.

The man had a tattered coat around his shoulders. Trailing in the dirt with the sleeves hanging loose, it gave him the look of a large, bedraggled bird. She thought of a rook in a fresh-ploughed field: rooting through the soil in search of grubs.

In the lee of the hill, the breeze had dropped completely. Fran stood there, scarcely breathing, her eyes fixed on his back. Her confidence had come crashing down; the world was huge and hostile once again.

The man was wearing black, just like the figure in her dream. He had the same fair hair. She was suddenly sure that his unseen face was featureless: a hole. Empty – and about to turn towards her.

Cold beads of sweat popped out across her shoulders. She forced her gaze away, along the path. It led over the rise and out of sight. Or should she just go back around the hill? Retrace her steps to Westbury; pretend she’d never come.

She knew she couldn’t. It was clear as the air, and the sudden, splashing sunlight. If she ran away from this, her mind would never rest.

It wasn’t a dream – not this time. It might be a coincidence, of course …

Oh, yeah, she thought, with fatalistic scorn. Oh, sure.

Perhaps a premonition, then. Perhaps it was her fate, to meet this man. She’d never sniffed at things like that: second sight and such. But when she met him – what would happen then? The thought compressed her stomach. A chill of nausea rose towards her throat.

What was he doing? Writing with his finger in the dirt? Whatever, he was too engrossed to see her. She recalled what that woman had said in the church: about the man who’d visited before her. One of those travellers, she’d thought – and this man looked the part, at least. She tried to squeeze relief from the conclusion. A few diluted drops. They didn’t soothe the churning in her belly.

The air grew briefly darker as a cloud cruised overhead. She glanced up, feeling trapped, as if a lid had just come down upon the bowl. The man kept working, head still bowed. Still tracing random patterns through the short-cropped grass.

The trackside fence was there between them. Barbed wire and iron pickets brown with rust. But the strands were wide apart here, and almost before she’d realized it, she had ducked her head between them, climbing awkwardly through. Something snagged at her jacket, drew it tight – and lost its grip. Setting foot in the field, she straightened up, and pulled the denim round her. Though she’d barely closed the distance by a yard, the hunched man was immediately more relevant. More real.

She saw him sense her presence. His loose, unwary posture grew suddenly stiff – as if he’d turned to stone beneath his coat. Like an animal’s reaction: scenting danger. Adrenaline blazed through her, but she couldn’t back off now. Too late, and much too close. She was committed.

His head, still turned away, came slowly up. A faint breeze touched his short, fair hair. Fran felt a leaden pressure in her chest.

He twisted round, still crouching, like a statue coming suddenly to life. Full of her fears, Fran started back; then saw his face, and froze.

It was just a man, of course: as real as his rags. His face was lean, unsmiling; thinly bearded with a stubble that looked darker than his hair. A thirtyish face, with a calmness that transfixed her. Some of its lines looked capable of laughter; but there was hard, unflinching bleakness in the bones. Both aspects came together in his gaze: eyes that were clear and choirboy-blue – but cold. As chilly as a frosty morning sky.

He watched her for a moment, still hunkering down. Dismayed though she was, she glimpsed a flicker of reaction on his face. Then he dropped his gaze once more, and rubbed his index finger in the soil.

She breathed again … and felt a twinge of pique. Absurdly, after what she’d feared, the anticlimax threw her. As the seconds passed, and he continued to ignore her, she felt her courage gathering afresh. Taking a breath, she risked a slow step forward. He didn’t raise his head. But it was clear that he was watching from the corner of his eye.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked. Her voice seemed very small amid the stillness.

‘Praying,’ he replied, not looking up. ‘I have many friends here.’ His tone was low and thoughtful, made rougher by an unfamiliar accent. No time to try and place it. Fran hesitated; looked around. There was nothing to see. Just the slope of a depression; a grassy bowl of leached, infertile soil. A cluster of cows were grazing at the bottom.

Perplexed, she edged in closer. He glanced at her sidelong; did that nonchalance seem forced? For a moment he stayed motionless, as if in meditation. Then, bending forward, he resumed his finger-writing. She saw a ring gleam dully on his dirt-discoloured skin.

Some sort of New Age priest, or what? The landscape was peppered with earthworks, after all. And him wearing black like that … The breeze caught the sleeves of his sombre coat, and stirred them like vestigial wings.

Rook, she thought again. Then: Raven. Remembering the coin in the Edington poor box. It had looked like an antique, from a museum or a dig. Was he the one who’d left it?

She came to a halt: unwilling to go nearer, or retreat. The turn of events had left her quite bewildered. Her mind, not sick at all, had shown her this – but making contact with the man had settled nothing. What was he but a traveller, chasing visions of his own? She felt herself deflating: the upsurge of excitement plunging headlong back to earth. She was opening her mouth in helpless protest when something in the short grass caught her eye.

Even from a yard away, she thought it was a stone. A piece of flint, half-sunk into the soil. Then the sunlight shifted – and like a double-image drawing, it was suddenly quite different. She realized she was looking at the fragment of a skull.

It had barely been unearthed; just one socket, with its cheekbone and the curve of the temple. The bone was brown and flaky like blistered paint. Fran stepped around it, staring – and saw another one. There, where the soil crumbled, as if a molehill had caved in. No feature was distinctive; but the brittle, bony texture was the same.

Her skin, still damp with sweat, grew prickly-cold. She gave the man a nervous glance – and saw that he was watching. There was distant, grim amusement on his face. Then he signed the ground again; and the grass began to stir.

Fran felt a rush of disbelief: a giddiness that said This isn’t true. The topsoil was decaying, breaking up before her eyes. A faint dust rose, and scattered on the breeze. The man had sat back on his bootheels, unperturbed. He gave her a fleeting glance, face solemn now. She saw a depthless satisfaction there.

The ribs came poking upward first: broken and bent, like trampled stalks. The sight was clear; her brain could not deny it. Then the jaw, still choked with dirt and full of rotten teeth. The sockets of the skull were blocked as well. They came up gazing blindly at the sky.

Fran’s own eyes were just as round. She’d heard of the grim harvest in the battlefields of France: bullets and bones working upward to the surface. But this was like a time-lapse film: that creeping process crammed into a minute.

The earth grew quiet again. The skeletal remains were still half-buried. The man reached down, and gently touched the skull: tracing the sign of a cross on its fragile forehead. Then he straightened up, and turned towards her.

Fran took a small step back, still fingering her mouth.

The shabby coat hung on him like a cloak, reaching down to his knees; a straggle of dark fur around the collar. His trousers and shirt were black as well; the latter a granddad-type, its buttons gone. It revealed a vee of wind-burned skin, stretched shiny by the collarbone beneath it. A cross on a thong hung round his neck; a leather pouch as well.

A part of her, trapped deep inside, was urging her to run. But she felt as if she’d waded into glue. He began to move again, and so did she – trying to match his steps and keep her distance. Step by step, avoiding bones, they turned around each other. A slow, unnerving ballet. Danse Macabre.

His eyes on hers, he gestured – and she heard a scrapy rustling sound behind her. She craned her head around, and almost squealed. The crown of a skull had pushed up through the soil, as if to block her way.

When she turned again, the man was very close. The look on his face seemed darker than his weathered, grimy skin.

‘These were my brothers once,’ he said. ‘They died their second death on Waste-Down. I come to set their souls to rest at last.’

He gazed at her in silence for a moment. From this close, only feet away, she thought that he seemed wary. Then, without warning, he spat into her face.

Fran stumbled back from that, as if he’d slapped her. Wide-eyed, she raised her fingers to her cheek. Anger sparked, but failed to ignite. Instead, she felt a stupefied despair.

He closed with her, grim-faced. She cowered back, still mired in glue: so shocked, she felt her balance start to go. Her arm flailed up; he caught and held it – grasped her slim wrist tight. Before she could get her free hand in, he was reaching for her face.

Don’t let him, God, she thought, too late. Rough skin and calloused leather touched the smoothness of her cheek. She tried to twist her head away, her mind a blur of panic. The dark thing on her face began to move, its fingers creeping … but gently, almost tentatively now. Gasping for breath, she realized he was wiping off his spit.

She gawped at him; he stared right back. Eyes lurking in the dark between his brow and slim, straight nose.

‘If the Virgin appeareth in a vision,’ he said, like someone quoting, ‘then spit thou in her face. Thou shalt presently know if she cometh from the Devil.’

He let go of her wrist, and fell to his knees, head bowed. ‘Forgive me.’

Fran stood there, swaying: staring down at the breeze in his hair. What? she thought, quite flabbergasted. What? And now the anger came, so that she very nearly hit him. The anger and the fright.

He rose to his feet again. They faced each other. Her cheek felt raw and tingling from his touch. But she didn’t, couldn’t, flinch away as he reached for her again – and took her Cross of Nails between his fingers. Heart pumping hard, she watched his face. There was a hint of wonder on it now.

‘You are she, then …’

The Virgin? Bloody Hell … ‘I’m not,’ Fran mumbled, shaking her head. ‘Of course I’m not …’

His hooded eyes came up. ‘I know. You are My Lady.’ His fingers left the silver cross, and moved to her lapel. Shuddering, she watched them trace the contours of her icon.

‘I have prayed to you long,’ he murmured. ‘For I knew that you would answer.’

Fran stared at him. It wasn’t true, of course. It couldn’t be. But neither could those skeletons have risen while she watched …

‘Lady … may I know your name?’ he asked.

She swallowed, once. ‘I’m Frances.’

Something flared in those pale eyes. He took a step away, and crossed himself. Then nodded with a sombre, slow acceptance.

‘So,’ he said. ‘You come from her? She has … forgiven me?’

Fran just nodded woodenly, not knowing what he meant.

‘I know it is a sign, that you are come to me like this. What befalls? You must tell me. You must remember who I am.’

‘I’ve … seen you in my dreams,’ she said.

He nodded heavily. ‘I pray I did not soil them. Our work was red and filthy, was it not? And now the call has come again, and we must answer.’ His tone was almost weary – yet resigned. Like a soldier sick of war, she thought. A prisoner of his duty.

Then he said: ‘Come with me.’

The whole world seemed to wait for her to answer. She was aware of every detail: the shifting clouds and shadows, and the breeze across the grass. Only the distant cattle stayed aloof.

‘Who are you?’ she whispered.

He gave his head the smallest shake. ‘You do not know me, Frances?’

‘Oh, please …’ she said. ‘I just don’t know your name.’

‘I am Athelgar,’ he said, ‘of Meone. Lord of the Ravens now.’

She remembered the testament at once – the will that Lyn had studied. Athelgar, eorl: a saint, or a magician. A man of high degree.

And here he stood before her now. She hadn’t any doubt that it was him.

He was on the move already, walking off across the field. But his eyes were still on her, his hand held out. Invitation, and entreaty. Fran teetered on the brink – and then stepped forward. With a sense of plummeting through space, she followed in his wake.

From the top of the rise, the chalky track led down towards the range. There were fields to either side of it; farm buildings up ahead. The vedette post lay beyond them, cutting off a country lane: looking like a toytown sentry-box, from this far out.

Athelgar strode forward; Fran hurried to catch up. She felt a crazy confidence, as if nothing else could matter in the world. Maybe madness felt like this. But now, at last, she knew that she was sane.

‘Why are you here?’ she asked the man beside her.

He gave her a searching glance, as if expecting her to know. ‘Here was that first battle when the Raven flew for us. And thus did Alfred hold the slaughter-field.’ Again his accent puzzled her; that gh had a harsh, Germanic sound.

He didn’t break his stride; the pale dirt crunched beneath their boots. She thought about those crumbled bones. ‘You fought here, then?’ she said.

A nod. ‘We came, and fought, and many of us died. I have not passed this way again since then.’

‘So, why come back?’

‘I seek to know the reason we are called. We slept amid the houses of the stars, and someone roused us. But the summoning was all awry.’

She stared at him, still stumbling to keep up.

He seemed to sense her bafflement; indulged it. ‘We are not many, now – but still enough to answer a petition. Yet no trysting-place was told this time. The Ravens have been scattered. I have wandered many months, and have not found them.’

They came to the farm, and crossed its stony yard. The sheds and silos looked deserted; but then a dog began to bark, a fierce and frantic sound. Fran’s stomach jumped instinctively, but the animal stayed out of sight. Athelgar seemed unperturbed; she sidled close, and stuck to him like glue. As they left the farm behind, she risked a glance. Still no sign of the dog; but its disembodied barks went on and on. The thing was afraid, she realized then. Was frightened of the presence on its ground.

She looked at Athelgar; but Athelgar was staring up the road. They’d joined the lane from Bratton here, just short of the vedette. The way ahead to Imber was wide open.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked again.

‘This is my pilgrimage,’ he said. ‘To all the fields of mystery and slaughter. If I pass this way again, I may be shown the road I need.’ He looked at her then: gazed right into her eyes. ‘And did I not find you, my Lady Frances?’

Before she could respond, he’d started walking. Fran lingered on the spot for just a moment; then scurried up behind him as he crossed onto the range.

The ground was waste, all right. Churned-up earth, and barren heath, and shrapnel-peppered trees. Hunks of rusty wreckage lay beside the narrow road. Here and there, across their path, the tanks had gouged out trails of their own. Athelgar’s gaze kept straying off along them. She wondered how she might explain: would giant armoured wagons fit the bill? Perhaps he thought they were the tracks of monsters.

A deathly silence hung across the land. They might have been the last two people living. Athelgar set the pace, and it was steady, unrelenting. Fran had to pant for breath before she got the question out.

‘You said you’d not been back since … Waste-Down?’ He nodded. ‘But listen. Four years ago, not far from here, I ran into some things that looked like men. They chased me – almost caught me.’ She shuddered at the memory; then gazed at him, wide-eyed. ‘I thought they were a … vision, like. But now I know they weren’t.’

He looked at her gravely. ‘Even one like you should not go down these roads alone. This is dead, forgotten ground. Wolves and warlocks may walk freely here.’

‘I had to come,’ she muttered.

‘I felt you near to me,’ he said. ‘That day at Heofonfeld.’

Heofonfeld, she thought. Then: Heaven’s Field. Despite herself, she grasped his coat and brought him to a standstill. ‘Who do you think I am?’

‘A lady of the Northern saints,’ he answered, vary calmly. ‘At Heofonfeld, I opened up my heart and felt your light. From that day on – through all the blood – I have blessed your memory. Yet I never knew the name you bore, till now.’

Fran recalled what she had felt: that weird euphoria. ‘When was this?’ she whispered.

‘The year nine hundred, four and thirty. When we brought the Scottish oath-breakers to heel.’

Fran just stared at him, open-mouthed. She loosened her grip; but he didn’t move until she’d dropped her hands completely.

‘Come,’ he said, and touched her arm. ‘We have many miles to go.’

They came down towards the junction where she’d dreamed of him before. The east-west road was empty, stretching out in both directions. Athelgar slowed his pace at last, scanning the barren slopes across the valley.

‘Know you of the dragons?’ he asked softly.

For a moment Fran was quite unnerved – then realized what he meant. She could picture them herself, as well: green monsters creeping west along the road. Clanking and roaring and coughing out fumes. She nodded once, unsmiling.

‘I came this far two days ago,’ he murmured, eyes still searching. ‘One was abroad: I watched it for a long while. Others I heard, which were prowling in the hills. And a thunder like the ending of the world …’

‘They’re … back in their lair today,’ Fran said: thinking of them in rows at the Warminster tank wash.

They reached the Imber road, and halted there. She glanced around at Athelgar, and saw he had a coin between his fingers. An ancient-looking silver piece – like the one back in the church. The silent pilgrim’s parting gift. Of course it had been him.

‘What say you, my Lady?’

‘Oh, call me Fran,’ she muttered.

He looked at her with narrowed eyes: as if the more familiar form had struck some deeper chord. Then he shrugged, and gestured with the coin. ‘Crowns or Crosses, then. The left hand, or the right …’ He flipped the coin up, caught it and displayed it on his palm. Fran stepped in close to see.

The design on this was different: just an Alpha in the middle. EADMUND REX the script around it said.

‘It comes down Crowns,’ said Athelgar, and closed his grimy fist around the coin.

They stepped onto the road, and started eastward away from the great bleakness of the Warminster downs. Even heading for the village, with its skull-eyed empty buildings, Fran felt a tiny flicker of relief.

They were just short of the village when Athelgar stopped – so abruptly that Fran went another yard before she realized. Looking back, she saw him tensing up.

She waited, frowning; suddenly uneasy. His dragons weren’t around today – so what had he sensed?

‘There are phantoms here,’ he said.

Fran turned again, and looked along the road. The first building was just visible: a hulk of crumbled brick, behind the trees. Out of Bounds, as she recalled. Too dangerous for soldiers.

‘This place is changed,’ said Athelgar.

She prudently retreated to his side. ‘You know it, then?’

‘Immerie … not so?’

She hesitated. ‘They call it Imber, now.’

‘What befell it?’

‘The soldiers came,’ she murmured flatly. ‘Nobody lives here now.’

‘There are phantoms in our way. I will not go there.’ He nodded to the grassland on the right, and crossed the road.

‘Hang on!’ Fran protested, as his meaning became clear. ‘We’re not allowed to leave the road …’ She tailed off then: who gave a shit for by-laws on a day like this? And as for safety reasons – the risk of unexploded shells – she felt beyond reality right now. Able to walk on water, or through minefields.

With a quick glance back the way they’d come, she followed where he led.

The range wardens were doubtless on patrol, but they saw no one as they skirted round the ruined village. Fran had the same giddy feeling she remembered from her first walk-on: stumbling through the wind-bent grass, across forbidden ground. And nobody could touch her – not while she was walking with the man of her dreams …

(or nightmares)

Looking down at Imber from the hill above it, she was glad they’d given it a miss. The place still held memories of Craig, of course, but not enough to lighten its grim silence. The few surviving buildings were outnumbered by mock houses: just blackened concrete shells beneath the church. Like a pile of broken skulls, she thought. The harvest of the killing fields around it.

The ruins slipped away, into a fold of the valley. By the time they joined the road again, only the church tower was visible. Athelgar stared back towards it.

‘How can there be a church without a flock?’ he asked.

Fran shrugged. ‘We had a war. Fifty years ago … They used it to train soldiers, and destroyed it. Then broke their word. They never gave it back.’

He frowned. ‘Small wonder that the place is not at peace. Were they hirelings from across the sea who did this?’

Fran gave a small, bitter smile. ‘No. They tried blaming the Americans … but it was British troops destroyed the place. On purpose. Their own people.’

‘The warriors of the King?’

She thought about it. ‘Yeah.’

He walked a little way along the road, then turned again. His face was difficult to read. Was it anger glinting in his eyes – or pain? ‘I came back with the hope the land had changed,’ he said. ‘At last.’

‘Oh no,’ said Fran, and shook her head. ‘It hasn’t changed at all.’

The road led south and west, across the uplands of the range. The clouds had massed above it, like great heaps of slate and slag; but a buttermilk sky still showed on the horizon.

Fran plodded onward, lost in thought: the ache of her feet was scarcely getting through. The road stretched out ahead of them – so long, and still no turning. The empty heath-land rustled in the wind, made bleaker by the shadows of the clouds.

Athelgar touched her shoulder, and she stopped. ‘See,’ he said. ‘That dragon is still hunting.’ His voice was low – but calm enough, considering.

She looked, and saw a helicopter, perhaps two miles away. A double-engined Chinook, quite familiar. She followed its course, and realized it was circling.

His touch became a grip. ‘We must find shelter.’

‘No, it’s all right. Um … It’s sort of a ship that flies. Those things going round, like windmill sails … they lift it through the air.’

He nodded gravely, staring at the thing. The chopper dipped into the valley, where its clatter was redoubled; then rose back into view again and curved towards the south. It felt like they were standing at the centre of its orbit. The clear sky silhouetted it; then murk became the backdrop once again. A crimson light was flashing, on and off.

Athelgar watched, fascinated. ‘It makes signals.’

‘Not to us.’

They tracked it over Imber Firs, where Cruise had lurked before; past Strip Wood, like a dark Mohican haircut on its hill; and finally it veered away, and faded in the grey haze to the north.

‘Men have grown wise,’ said Athelgar softly.

Fran let that pass without comment.

The end of the hike came suddenly, and caught her by surprise. The road began descending, turned a comer – and the Heytes-bury vedette was up ahead. The walk had been interminable, yet now it seemed cut short. Fran stopped beside the barrier; the dull green sentry hut was locked and empty. Beyond, the road ran down to meet a farmer’s sloping fields, and turned into another country lane.

As soon as she stopped moving, the weariness caught up. She felt her legs solidify like lead. She leaned against the grassy bank, and looked at Athelgar.

‘How far are you going?’

‘No further. I will turn again. No hand shall be against you from here on.’

She blinked at him; then looked back up the road. The thought of all that emptiness they’d come through … She swallowed, looked away again. Maybe not so empty, after all.

‘What about me?’ she murmured.

He gave her a sidelong glance. ‘The road is hard and grievous, Lady Frances; and many lifetimes longer than today’s.’

‘Meaning what?’ she asked. ‘That I should go home and forget it?’

He looked at her full on, and then spoke grimly. ‘You know the Ravens’ calling: death and terror. Our way is paved with corpses. It is no road for one like you to walk.’

Chastened, she moved back a step – but couldn’t keep from staring. ‘You think I can run into you, and then just walk away?’

‘Always shall we need your prayers. Watch over us in spirit. But with us, in the flesh, you may be harmed.’

But even as he spoke the words, his eyes were full of need – like somebody who’d had his fill of wandering alone. She stood there, gazing up at him, and felt a rush of feeling: delayed reaction, bursting through at last. Not disbelief, or even fear, but sheer exhilaration – the like of which she hadn’t felt since roaring down the highway after Cruise.

But even more exciting was the sense of being called. The heady thrill of Heaven’s Field. My Lady. Come with me.

She’d never felt so honoured – or protected. The violence that he’d talked about seemed mythic and unreal. Whatever journey he was on, it led to magic places. If the shadows were still out there, she could face them at his side.

She raised herself, and took hold of his coat. ‘I want to come.’

‘So let it be,’ he said after a pause. ‘There are things which I must seek amid the downland. Give me leave to see the way is clear, then come to me again.’

Swallowing, she eased away. ‘When?’

‘When the moon is round.’

Her heart was really thumping now. ‘And … where do I find you?’

‘There is a hamlet I have passed through, called Tils-Head. The downs are all around it. Seek me there.’

Fran nodded, knowing Tilshead well. She hadn’t a clue when the next full moon was. Perhaps Lyn had an almanac or something.

A silence fell between them, almost awkward. The parting of the ways, she thought – and felt it like a wrench.

‘Going to see me to the road?’ she asked.

He nodded, and they crossed the line together: followed the leafy lane towards the grumbling main road. The windswept downland fell behind, and neither of them looked back. Though every instinct warned her that she should.

3

‘I’m going to be quite late,’ she said to Lyn. ‘Expect me when you see me, I should think.’

‘Oh Fran … Are you all right?’

‘Yeah,’ Fran said, and realized she was grinning. Euphoria fizzed inside her, like she hadn’t felt for years. Top of the world – on tiptoe. Later would be time enough to think about the drop.

‘I’ve missed the bus from Heytesbury,’ she gushed, ‘that’s all. I’ll have to walk to Warminster, and catch the train from there.’

‘Is it far?’

‘Not very.’ Though the way her swollen feet felt now, she’d have a job to manage half a mile.

‘So how did it go?’ Lyn asked, still sounding anxious.

‘Really well. I think I’ve worked it out.’ She peered out through the glass of the telephone box. Across the busy A-road, at the mouth of the lane, his figure was just visible: still watching.

‘I’m so glad, Fran. I’ve been thinking about you lots today.’ Fran could hear the relief in her friend’s soft voice, and picture it on her face. Her love for Lyn just added to the inner glow she felt. But her stare remained fixed on the dark shape in the lane.

‘I’ll tell you more about it when I get back,’ she promised. Though not everything, of course. Least of all the part that would make Lyn think she’d flipped her lid completely.

She talked, and gazed at Athelgar – until he turned away. Back towards the range, and all its ghosts. With clouds now over everything, the evening had come early. The lane was full of shadows, and they sucked him in at once.

II

SLEEPERS

Do your nightmares tear you apart?

Do you wake up screaming, shouting in the dark?

Do the demons keep you awake?

Does the clock tick more slowly with every breath you take?

THE LEVELLERS

Dear Craig

Hellooooo, gorgeous! Sorry that I haven’t been in touch. I hope you had a good flight back. I’m really missing you.

I know you’re wondering how things went, down on the Plain. Well, I walked across the Imber range, from Bratton down to Heytesbury. I took the ‘American Road’ (of course!) – right past the place where D-Flight got ambushed by their own blokes back in February 89. The mission when you asked me out, in case you don’t remember.

I’m on a bit of a high at the moment (have you noticed?!). I’ve got things sorted out at last – more than I dared hope. Have you ever felt there’s more to life than any of us dreamed! I won’t go on about it, though. You’d really think I’d lost it if I did.

Lynnie sends her love. She’s thinking a lot about her brother Martin at the moment. The family’s lost touch with him, and she just got a card at Christmas time. He didn’t give his address – nor a reason why he simply upped and went. The silence is the worst bit: the not knowing. I hope that I can cheer her up. She’s done so much for me.

Write soon!

Love,

Your pinko commie peacenik girlfriend

Frannie

PS. What do you mean, the Air Force checks your mail??

CHAPTER I

Fiends and Ashes

1

Martin woke abruptly, with the dusk.

The gloom had seeped in silently, and caught him unawares. The bedroom was engulfed in it, the furniture submerged. The double bed, his life raft, was awash.

Panic clenched his muscles; he almost struggled upright straight away. Then slumped, as he remembered where he was. The dull, familiar room took shape again. Gloom clung to the wallpaper like filth. Only the window showed some light – a segment of colourless sky. From where he lay, the rooftops almost masked it.

Everything was in its place. The digits on the bedside clock were bright and reassuring. But the coldness in his limbs took several moments to recede. He felt as if he’d woken with a spider on his cheek.

He sat up stiffly, swinging his legs off the bed. The change in equilibrium made his empty stomach churn; he waited with his head down while it settled. Muzzily he rubbed his face; felt bristles rasp and chafe against his palms.

The flat was very quiet. The dusk had flowed right through it, soaking in. A couple more hours before Claire got back: sighing her way through the door and switching lights on. She’d find the place deserted, yet again. It would be full dark by then – and he’d be out there, in it.

Martin stretched inside his slept-in clothes; then got to his feet, and walked through to the bathroom. The cold tap knocked and shuddered as he filled a glass and drank, rinsing out the fetid taste of sleep.

A dim shape peered towards him from the mirror. He switched on the light and met it face to face. He was looking pale, his eyes half-sunk in shadow. They had a slightly mournful cast: it made his grin engaging, in a way that women liked. But when he was expressionless, like now, his stare was sombre.

The beard was five days old. His fingers reached above it, brushed the small scar on his cheek. A tiny nick of callused skin. He realized it was itching.

Still healing, after all these years.

Lyn had done that. He’d just turned five, but remembered every detail. At seven she’d been insufferable, a spoilt little brat: always bossing him around, as if two years made any difference. They’d been fighting in the playroom and she’d thrown a building block. The gashing pain had made him cry; the blood had made him bawl. But even through his tears, he’d seen her horrified white face, and known he was the winner after all.

He’d had to have a stitch, and been the centre of attention. Mum had fussed and held his hand, while Dad waited in the corridor with Lyn. She was going to get what for when they got home: that spiteful hope had kept his tears in check. But Dad had seemed to think that she’d already learned her lesson. And when Martin had emerged and seen her waiting – all big, scared eyes and tear-stained cheeks – he’d realized that he didn’t want to see her this upset. Her fear was there for him, he sensed, as much as for herself.

Naturally, they’d fought again – but never quite as fiercely. From that day on, it sometimes seemed, they’d started drawing closer.

Lyn.

He savoured her name in silence – then swallowed it. A lump in his throat, then a dull ache in his stomach. But there was no point wondering what Lyn was doing now. Tonight, of all nights, he could do without the niggling dilemma: whether to get in touch, or keep his distance.

He killed the light again. The dusk, already thicker, closed around him. He went back to the bedroom, and walked over to the window. His heart began to thud against his ribs.

The sky was pale and clear outside. There would be stars tonight.

2

The house was on the corner, just down from the junior school. The orange streetlight bathed its bricks, which made it seem less menacing – at first. But even from across the road, he could see where smoke had blackened it: freakish shadows underneath the lamp. The chipboard in the windows stood out clearly.

The Burnt House – that’s what everybody called it. The kids had told him so. On winter nights they hurried past it, straggling in groups. A ghost was boarded up inside, and that was gospel. A little boy’s ghost – burned black.

Martin looked both ways. Nothing was coming; but still he hesitated.

He’d been working as a cleaner when he picked the story up. Some of the kids had been talking in the corridor: clearly trying to dare – and scare – each other. Intrigued, he’d slowly mopped his way towards them, feeling his breathing tighten as the pieces made a whole.

‘Someone went in there, right? Went in there, and they found him, and he’d been trying to crawl under a door. Something in the room had scared him so much … he was trying to crawl under the door.’

He’d ventured to intrude, and they’d been happy to include him. ‘Do you believe in ghosts at all?’ a fair-haired boy had asked him.

‘Yes,’ he’d told them solemnly. ‘I do.’

Or something like them.

So they’d told him what they knew about the Burnt House. Different people had subtly different versions; there were elements of urban myth developing already. But he didn’t doubt the truth behind it all. The knowledge seemed to suck his stomach dry.

He’d wondered if the tale they told was giving them bad dreams. Perhaps, with some of them, it was – but they kept on coming back to it. Their growing minds could stretch to fit. But Martin had felt nauseous for hours.

The house looked unassuming in the daytime, despite the sooty marks around its windows. The sheets of board were blank and bland – screening off the gutted depths within. But the first time he’d walked past it, he had sensed the void inside. The place was light-proof: sealed against the day. Tonight, by sallow streetlight, it seemed so full of darkness it might burst.

The sound of footsteps reached him, coming up towards the corner from the south. The railway arch was back that way, an unlit lane beyond it. He turned his head uneasily – then breathed out as he recognized her shape.

She paused at the junction, spotted him, and crossed: relief had put a spring into her step. He didn’t blame her. The Burnt House was the last place you would want to get stood up.

‘Hello,’ said Martin drily.

Lucy smiled. ‘All ready, then?’ Now that they’d met up, she seemed quite perky.

‘Yeah,’ he said, encouraged. ‘Thanks for coming.’ He glanced towards the house again. ‘Romantic, isn’t it?’

Looking, she laughed softly. Eighteen now, with college in the autumn. She had a pleasant, snub-nosed face and short dark hair. Claire – who didn’t know – would be suspicious: naturally. But Lucy was a friend, and nothing less.

He’d met her at a vigil in a local, ‘haunted’ church: the sort of thing he would have jeered at once. Like many of the ghost-watchers, she had a sceptic’s mind: always on the lookout for an easy explanation. And yet she felt the mystery, like he did. She had a real scientist’s awe for that.

He felt he could see eye-to-eye with someone who’d enjoyed The Selfish Gene. He’d heard about the Burnt House and had called her. He didn’t want the group along, with all their paraphernalia. Their vigils were too organized. They made the dark too safe.

‘So what are you expecting?’ she had asked him.

‘To see if something’s in there. To get close.’

She’d hesitated. ‘We’ve nothing to record it with.’

‘Maybe not,’ he’d murmured. ‘But we’ll know.’

They went in round the back way, under cover of the over-grown garden. The back door had been forced before, presumably by squatters. It occurred to him to wonder just how long they’d stuck it out. A night, perhaps. Or maybe less than that.

The dark inside was choking – like a foretaste of extinction. He flicked his torch on quickly and played it around. The kitchen was bare, its walls begrimed, but the damage here was minimal. The seat of the fire, for once, had been elsewhere.

A foul smell still lingered in the air. The stench of stuff corrupted by the flames.

Grimacing, he looked up towards the ceiling. The plaster and paint had cracked like a drought-ravaged field. The light-fixing was gone, the flex protruding. It hung in the penumbra of the beam. He moved the light away, and glanced at Lucy.

‘Okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ she murmured calmly.

He led the way in deeper, hearing brittle cinders crunch beneath their boots. The fire had swept the front room and the hall. The walls looked black and oily in the beam; there were traces of a pattern in the rags of wallpaper. The ceiling had collapsed, exposing skeletal charred wood. The ruin of an easy chair still squatted in the corner.

Lucy had her own torch out: she shone it up the stairs. The gloom up there absorbed the light completely.

‘It started up there?’ she asked – almost whispering now.

He wet his lips and nodded. ‘In the bedroom.’

The glow of her torch slid down onto the staircase. ‘Reckon it’s safe?’

The stairs looked fairly dodgy, but he wasn’t sure she’d meant them. ‘Let’s … just wait for a bit.’

‘And see what happens?’

He waited for her to turn her head; then nodded grimly. ‘Yeah.’

She shrugged. ‘Is it all hearsay, then? Or has anyone actually seen it … heard it?’

‘Well, one of the girls claimed she heard something knocking on one of the window boards, when she was running past one night. She always runs past the place, she says.’

‘Could have been anything, then. Or anyone.’

‘That’s what I thought. But one thing’s for sure, she’s scared of something. They all were, underneath their smiles.’

‘And one child was killed in the fire here, right?’

‘Right. About a year ago, I think. But there’s more to it than that … or so they said.’

She clicked her torch off and came back into the shell of the front room. ‘Oh yes? You didn’t tell me that.’

‘It isn’t nice,’ he muttered flatly.

‘No …’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose it is. Well, you’ve obviously been saving it, so better tell me now.’

He let the torch beam sink, and pool between them.

‘This is what they said, all right? The little boy who lived here kept having bad dreams. Someone was coming to get him, you know the kind of thing. Anyway, one night he wakes up screaming: says that someone’s in the bedroom, running fingers through his hair. So his mother comes, and gets him settled down. Then half an hour later, he’s screaming again. So she goes to him again. And it’s a demon, apparently. A demon keeps appearing in the room. She gets him off again. And then, on her way to bed, she decides to look in on him … and when she gets to the door, and touches it, it’s hot.’

‘Oh, Jesus,’ Lucy whispered.

‘So she opened it, of course she did, and the fire was just let loose. She and her husband got out with severe burns. The boy died in his room.’

She stared at him; then brushed her mouth, as if to wipe a sour taste away. ‘Bloody hell.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Any … cause for the fire, do they know?’

‘Not that I’ve heard. Could have been an electrical fault … or something.’

‘Or something. Yeah.’ She looked up at the ceiling. ‘So what do they reckon is haunting here? His ghost? Or … whatever might have killed him?’

‘Maybe both.’ He paced around; then looked at her again. ‘My dad told me a story once. A legend of King Arthur, ’cause he’s into all that stuff. They were caught in some place, his knights and him – besieged by burning ghosts. And when the ghosts were stabbed, they lost their shape, becoming fiends and ashes.’

Lucy’s smile was wry enough; but her shudder didn’t look entirely faked. She watched as he unstuffed his bag and spread a tattered blanket on the floor. They both sat down. She’d brought her Thermos flask. Pouring a cup, she paused and glanced around.

‘You can’t feel anything, can you?’

He hesitated. The house itself felt looming, ghastly, steeped in its despair. But nothing seemed to move within its walls. He shook his head.

‘Neither can I,’ she said, and gave a wan little smile. The perkiness had died away long since.

By midnight, he’d worked up the nerve to try and broach the subject.

The Burnt House was still dormant, but its aura felt increasingly oppressive. A claustrophobic itch had started nagging: as if the place was sealed again, and they were trapped inside. He glanced more than once at his propped-up torch, almost willing himself to see it flicker.

The past – his past – was creeping up: the atmosphere congealed to give it shape. He knew he’d talk before the night was out. Like the onset of a stomach ache that has to end in sickness. And this would be a purging, too – and maybe a relief.

He glanced at Lucy. Their small talk had subsided, but the silence was companionable enough. He’d never breathed a word of this to anyone before; he wasn’t sure how even she’d react.

So begin at the beginning. Building-blocks.

‘What’s your theory, then: on ghosts?’

She looked at him over the plastic mug. ‘I thought you knew.’

‘After-images and such?’

She shrugged. ‘Or psychic echoes. Call them what you like. I think they’re just a way of seeing into the past. Not sentient at all.’

‘And not things that can hurt you.’

She shook her head.

‘So what about demons, then?’

‘Doesn’t that imply a Christian view?’

‘Other religions have them. Evil spirits.’

‘Active agents, you mean; rather than passive images?’

He nodded slowly, thinking of the burning room upstairs. The house had always felt unsafe, but now the air of dull threat seemed to grow.

‘Maybe,’ she conceded – and looked at him quizzically. ‘Why?’

He glanced around; then back at her. ‘I think I might have called one up, one time.’

Lucy straightened up. ‘What, in a seance or something?’

‘No, I was at home and it was the last thing on my mind. I never believed in things like that.’ Restless now, he clambered up as if relieving cramp.

‘But now you do?’ she murmured.

He looked around, and nodded.

‘So what happened?’

‘I don’t know. I was looking at something in one of my dad’s old books; just stringing names together in my mind …’ He wet his lips. ‘Dubhe and Merak; Alioth. Mean anything to you?’

‘No, but they sound like mythical names. Forgotten gods, or something?’

He gave a small, tight smile and shook his head. ‘They’re the names of stars, that’s all: the stars in the Plough. This was just a picture of a medieval star-chart. One that was used for magic of some kind.’

She frowned at that. ‘So … what was it like? This thing that came.’

‘There were more than one,’ he said.

‘You saw them?’

‘I just heard them. That was worse. It was like I’d been struck blind – I couldn’t see. But in my head, I saw these images.’

Lucy was absorbed by now. ‘Martin. How come you’ve never mentioned this before?’

‘Because I couldn’t fucking cope with it. I’ve not told anyone before – not even my own sister. I’d trust her with anything, but not this. I can’t lump her with this.’

Her bright eyes didn’t blink. ‘What happened then?’

‘Nothing. I just waited. I was too afraid to move. And Christ, I thought the dawn would never come.’ He breathed in deeply. ‘When it did, I found that I could see.’ Another pause. He shrugged. ‘The house was empty.’

‘And nothing since?’

‘Not a whisper. Nothing for two years. That’s why I’ve kept searching. I need to look them in the face again.’

Lucy sat there, watching, with her back against the wall. ‘You sound like my old boyfriend,’ she said drily. ‘He backed down from a fight one time, then kept on reliving it, and winning. It wasn’t as if I minded. Stupid git.’ Her tone was shrewd but amiable enough. He smiled thinly, scuffing at the cinders.

‘Believe me, girl, I’d run a mile from this lot.’

Her expression grew more pensive. ‘You’ve considered—’

‘That it might be something psychiatric?’ He shoved his hands into his pockets; took a breath. ‘Jesus, Luce: of course I have. That’s another reason why I have to keep on looking. I know what I saw. It’s just, I need to prove it to myself.

‘There’s something else. I’m sure that what I saw that night was something from outside. Something science doesn’t understand – not yet. And if it’s there, I want another look.’ He crossed the room abruptly, startling her. ‘I’m going upstairs now.’

She stared up at him. ‘Hey, listen …’

‘There might be something up there. If there is, I have to see it. Are you coming?’

She hesitated. He saw how much her confidence had dwindled; she was looking very young now. ‘No,’ she said, and shook her head. ‘I’m not.’

‘I don’t blame you. I really don’t. But don’t go away, all right?’ He turned towards the stairs.

‘What images?’ she asked, belatedly.

Looking back, he hesitated: trying to find the words.

‘Like predators with human skins,’ he said.

The house, of course, was empty. Though its past was real and horrible enough, he sensed no echoes from it. The upper floor was desolate: just empty, mournful darkness. If something evil had been here, it had gone its way long since.

His reaction was the same as always: frustration and relief in equal measure. They wiped each other out, and he was left there feeling nothing.

Lucy ventured up a short while later, not wanting to be left alone downstairs. He saw her torchlight flashing from the corner of his eye, but stayed where he was: letting her track him to the scorched shell of the bathroom. One of the window-boards was missing here. He’d switched his own torch off so that his eyesight could adjust.

‘What … ?’ she asked, still waiting on the threshold.

‘It’s all right. Put the light out. Come and see.’

She joined him cautiously. In the black frame of the window, the stars were very bright: scores of them compressed in that small gap.

‘There’s the Plough,’ he told her, peering out. ‘Up overhead … you see?’ The names began to form again, like whispers in his head. Dubhe. Merak. Phecda. Megrez … He forced them out of focus, and tried to fix his thoughts on something else. Like chasing Vicki round the field, beneath those same bright stars.

‘I had this girlfriend, back in school. I used to try and teach her constellations.’

‘And was she interested?’ asked Lucy wryly.

Martin’s smile came easier. ‘Only in the mnemonic for classifying stars. Wow, Oh Be A Fine Girl and Kiss Me Right Now – Smack.’

She giggled. ‘Snog or slap?’

He shared her grin, relieved at last. However briefly.

‘Now that would be telling.’

They left the house, and lingered in the road. Martin adjusted his rucksack, looking round. The junction was deserted. The Burnt House seemed to hold it like a strongpoint.

‘Want me to walk you home? I will.’

‘Just to the bus stop, Martin, thanks.’ They turned towards the railway arch. After a pause, she glanced at him. ‘You’re going to keep on looking?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’m going off to Uni in October; but anything before that, let me know …’

He nodded wordlessly, and then looked back. The instinct was a primal one: alertness to some danger. Nobody was following, and yet the itch persisted: a nervous urge to grasp her hand and run. To flee, and keep on fleeing down these endless lamplit corridors of night.

3

It was one o’clock when he slipped into the flat. Locking the door, he tiptoed through the dark. Every sound seemed magnified; but Claire didn’t wake. Not even when he slithered into bed.

He settled down beside her, and listened to her breathe; trying not to think of how she must have spent her evening. Coming back from her shift to an empty house and a scrawled note on the table. Perhaps she’d cried a little, as she sat and watched TV. A pang of guilt transfixed him – but it faded soon enough.

Perhaps he’d feel the same with a more everyday addiction: alcohol, or gambling, or drugs. Hurting somebody he loved – and yet not sparing her. Watching while things went to hell, unable to let up.

CHAPTER II

Out of the Deep

1

If you fancy her, she’s got a boyfriend. Since leaving school, he’d found it was a universal rule: like the second law of thermodynamics, only stricter. But then he’d met Claire – attractive, unattached. If she goes out with me, he’d thought, the universe collapses. And yet, despite his disbelief, they’d somehow got this far.

He’d been portering at the hospital – the latest in a string of low-paid jobs – and met her when he’d come to fetch a body, of all things. Claire had been the nurse in charge: confident and friendly as she took things in her stride. Heartened, he had noticed she was rather pretty too, with her gilded, gamine haircut and clear blue eyes. He’d asked her out (not then, of course), already gearing up for a rebuttal. But she’d said yes. The universe continued to exist. And six months later, here he was: sharing her flat like a partner, not a boyfriend.

He stirred in the bed, still half-asleep. A shape of warmth was dwindling beside him – as if she’d left her shadow on the sheet. Claire was in the kitchen now; he could hear the kettle boiling in the background. He tried to gauge her mood by her movements. Sloppy and resigned – or brisk and angry? Sitting up, he listened like a guilty little boy.

She hadn’t dumped her sleepshirt, but her dressing gown was missing from its hook. Gone were the days when she’d bring him tea, wearing nothing but her briefs. He pictured her, still pasty and dishevelled – and felt a surge of longing. So maybe it was really love this time.

And he looked set to let it go to waste.

She’d seen behind his mask by now: she knew he’d been disturbed by things he wouldn’t talk about. When she’d failed to coax them out, she’d given him some room: putting up with his moods and his late-night walks. She knew he was in with the ghost-hunting group – though not that he would sometimes watch alone.

He’d moved on from the hospital: he found it too unsettling. It was the district’s psychiatric unit – a grim Victorian barracks on the outer edge of town. Moving through its garrison of patients, he kept on getting glimpses of himself. Hunted faces, haunted eyes. Perhaps he really was as mad as they were.

Claire would call them ill, of course, and talk with them for hours. Perhaps she saw him as a patient too. Perhaps she only kept him on to pity. Or observe.

Shaking off that paranoid thought, he got up, pulled his boxers on, and went into the kitchen. Claire was sitting at the table, glancing listlessly through the paper. Her legs were crossed, and naked to the thigh – but her glance was guaranteed to kill all passion.

‘So when did you get in last night?’

He winced. ‘About one-ish …’

Her baby blues were hard today. ‘Don’t take me for granted, Martin. I know you need your space – but I need to be treated like a girl you care about.’

‘I’m sorry, right?’ He turned away, towards the cafetiere.

‘I suppose something for the rent would be out of the question?’ she went on flatly.

‘Can it wait to the end of the week?’

He sensed her glower at his back, then look down at the paper. Here, in this cramped kitchen, he could feel the gulf between them. But how could he begin to build across it?

The cracks were showing up at last. The universe was crumbling. You couldn’t break a cosmic law and hope to walk away.

2

It was Lyn, in all her innocence, who’d told him of the star-chart.

They’d been wheeling their bikes along the lane: the end of a hot day’s cycling in the country. The sky was beaten gold behind the gables of the cottage, but the air still held a pleasant glow of warmth. Lyn looked sleek and trim in shorts and T-shirt. His mates all called her Martin’s snooty sister, but he knew how envious they were of him. Here she was, this gorgeous girl, and he was living under the same roof. And Martin would smile, content to let them stew. They never saw her loll around, or cut her nails, or sulk. Or come round very timidly to ask if he could help unblock the loo …

Tick-tick-tick said the turning wheels beside them.

‘Is that a star?’ she asked him, looking back towards the east.

He turned, and saw a point of light, pricked out through the deepening blue.

‘Not that bright, this early … It’s Jupiter, I think.’

She shook her head, still staring. ‘I think it’s great, that you can see the planets.’

‘You should look at it through the telescope. See the moons and everything.’

‘I’d like to,’ she said softly. ‘After supper. Give me a knock, I’ll just be reading.’

‘Bookworm!’ he teased delightedly; she giggled, made to swipe at him. But he was pleased beyond measure by her interest. She was going back to college next weekend. He missed her very much when she was gone.

They came up past the orchard. The countryside was quiet, bathed in amber; but some swallows were still spiralling around. The west face of the cottage would be glowing, but the walls this side were dark with dusk and ivy. The place had been a rectory once: a rambling old building which their parents had restored over the years. Cottage was hardly the word for such a warren of rooms. But for children growing up it was a fairytale house: a castle of their dreams.

‘Have you seen that map in Daddy’s book?’ Lyn asked him at the gate.

‘Which one?’

‘There’s a medieval star-map. I found it years ago …’ She let him wheel his bike into the shed.

‘What, a zodiac or something?’

She shrugged, and pushed her own bike in. ‘I don’t know. It’s got all the constellations on it. Used for magic spells, apparently.’

‘Yeah?’ He finished locking his bike, and straightened up. ‘Sounds interesting. Which book?’

‘Magic in the Middle Ages, or something like that. One of the ones we weren’t allowed to touch.’

He grinned. ‘But you did?’

‘Mm. I got a real telling-off, as well.’

‘Well, serves you right for being a naughty girl. But thanks,’ he added quickly, both hands raised to fend her off. ‘Seriously … I’d like to have a look.’

‘Come on, you,’ she grinned, and turned away. ‘We’re just in time. Let’s see what’s on the menu.’

He hadn’t given it much thought, until a few weeks later. Autumn was advancing, and the nights were drawing in. He’d failed his driving test again, so couldn’t use the car: it felt like being stranded in the sticks. The cottage was still home to him – still big enough to lose himself inside. But relations with his parents were beginning to grow strained.

Mum was patient, like she’d always been: soaking up his selfishness, his adolescent moods. She knew that he was raring for the off – to follow Lyn. Not long now, she’d told him once, it’s just around the corner. So long as he kept studying. He had to get his grades.

His father was more distanced, as if unsure what to say. He rarely ventured up to Martin’s room. And that was just as well, from Martin’s viewpoint. He’d probably feel bound to pass some comment on the pin-ups. At least Mum turned a blind eye to those.

Now and again, there’d be a spark between them. Dad listened to the radio in the evening as he worked: Radio 3, on quietly in the background. But sometimes, like the other night, he’d switch to Radio 4. And Martin had stood listening on the landing – hearing the twangy, ethereal opening bars of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy come drifting through the open study doorway. He could have gone in then, and shared his interest. But their talk might have turned to other things – like study and exams.

To some extent, he’d grown up in Lyn’s shadow. She’d won all the prizes – and got the marks that he would have to match. The challenge was unspoken, and it didn’t come from her. His parents hadn’t pushed it, not overtly. And yet he seemed to feel it every day.

He’d countered it by digging in his heels. Lyn had gone to private school, but he’d refused point-blank. Dad had nudged him on towards an Oxbridge application, but Martin was content to go for London. And yes, he thought, I’ll sit down and revise. But not tonight.

At least the unlit fields round here gave clear sight of the stars. He’d got the timer working on the telescope, and was planning to take some photos of the sky. His parents were away tonight, and Lyn was back at Oxford. As he ate his supper, he recalled what she had said.

An antique star-map. Interesting. Worth looking at, before Orion rise.

He loaded the dishwasher, then went up to the study. No prohibition now, of course; though Lyn was the one who’d always been attracted. He tracked his gaze along the shelves, and found the likely volume soon enough. Myth and Magic in Medieval Europe. He took it to the desk, sat down and started flicking through. Finding the chart, he unfolded it with care. Something about it made him catch his breath.

The map showed all the seasons of the stars. He sat there, poring over them, as if this were some kind of mythic realm. That was how they would have seemed, six hundred years ago. Part of him still felt that he could lose himself amongst them.

Yet each star was a thermonuclear furnace, breaking down the fabric of the Cosmos to keep running. That was more miraculous, to him, than any myth.

Nonetheless, intrigued, he kept on looking. Clustered in the centre were the signs that never set – the Little Bear, the Dragon and the Plough or Greater Bear. Each one bore an unfamiliar name.

branpen. fluar. aeelgar.

He didn’t recognize those words – nor many of the others. Some were too obscure to be deciphered. The outer ring was full of weird scribbling, with gothic crosses used like punctuation. He made out the word Agla, which he’d noticed in the text. Leafing back, he found it was a Hebrew acronym, often used in medieval magic.

Ata Gibor Leolam Adonai. Thou art mighty for ever, O Lord.

Returning to the chart, he started checking constellations – tracking down his favourite ones like close friends in a crowd. The detailing was exquisite. Most of the stars bore their Arabic names, evocative and strange. Sheratan and Sadalsud; Aldèbaran; Al Nath. Antares, at the Scorpion’s heart, was inked with murky red.

The stars of the Plough had their own peculiar rhythm: from Dubhe and Merak, pointers to the Pole, to Benetnasch, the last star in the tail. He knew those well, and mouthed them one by one.

His finger traced the patterns: following the lines from star to star. Boötes, the great Herdsmen, had been dubbed leofric here; the crooked kite of Auriga was ealdred. The Great Dog – Canis Major – had dominicain beside it. He guessed that these were magic words – the constellations being used as symbols. Or sigils, or whatever they were called.

Dubhe. Merak. Phecda …

Suddenly he realized it was getting hard to see. The desk lamp was beginning to go out. He looked up quickly – startled by a sense of someone with him in the room. Nobody was there, of course; but the lamp continued dying. Its yellow light turned reddish as the power was sucked out, to disappear like blood into the dark. The filament remained, a burning thread – then that faded, too. Darkness swallowed up the desk.

He saw the stars were glowing.

The first thing that he felt was awe: they had a spectral beauty. Charted with luminous paint, he thought … then realized this was just a photograph. And the pinpoints were too bright for that – bright enough to shed a cold light of their own. Then the stars went out: became black holes. He felt the sight being sucked out of his eyes. The last faint tinge of bluish light was swallowed by the book.

Martin sat there, stupefied – and suddenly the universe burst open all around him. It felt as if his thinking mind had risen from his body, straight up through the ceiling and the roof. The rectory just vanished, and the stars were everywhere: ones that hadn’t risen yet, and some he wouldn’t see until next spring. His nostrils were filled with the night’s distinctive smell – a fresh aroma, strangely sweet, and dark inside his head.

Then he tumbled back to earth. The starlight followed, piercing the study – as if the house was riddled full of worm-holes. Something brighter than the sun came blazing through each one. The sight lasted a fraction of a second. Then darkness; and he realized he was blind. Panicking, he clawed his face, his eyes. He couldn’t see.

He could still feel empty countryside; the vaulted sky above. The night was somehow with him in the room.

Reaching out, he found and grasped the book. Visions came unbidden to his disbelieving mind. Far horizons opened in his head.

He saw a landscape torn apart by war: trampled roads, and gutted towns, and fields of mud and bodies. It made him think of Bosnia, in all its eastern bleakness. But then he noticed medieval details; the corpses lashed to wheels on top of poles. They stood in silhouette against a strangely glowing sky. The night was lit, as if by fires just over the horizon. The colours were stupendous; majestic clouds reflected in the pools of stagnant mud.

With a sudden plunge of vertigo, he realized what they were. Nebulae in deepest space: the wombs of dust and gas that formed the stars. Towering above the earth, and drifting on the wind.

Voices rose around him in a babble: snatches of speech from many mouths, like samplings on a record. The language was unearthly and corrupted – but then he caught a snatch of words he recognized.

‘He hath made me dwell in darkness like those long dead …’

A different smell engulfed him, and he gagged and almost retched. Like mushroom-mouldy earth and shit, stuffed deep into his nose. The dreadful stench had other flavours too: of mildewed cloth, and rotting wood, and reams of musty paper. The smell of age, and all it had corrupted.

‘My soul waits for the Lord,’ said a sonorous voice, ‘more than watchmen wait for morning …’

The landscape was changing, like decomposing tissue seen in time-lapse. The nebulae were different, too. He glimpsed the dark, contorted Horse’s Head.

‘… but my face shall not be seen.’

He turned around inside his skull, but couldn’t find the speaker. Instead there was just a field of crosses. Shapes were walking past him now, and weaving through the markers. He watched them go – powerless to follow, even if he’d wanted to.

‘… but my face shall not be seen,’ the grim voice said.

The figures kept on trudging past, towards the haunting flares along the skyline; but one of them looked back over his shoulder. His face was gaunt, like something starved. His eyes bored into Martin’s.

Terror leaped up, like a flame – but the phantom didn’t pause. The shadow-army carried him away. His pale face faded in the burning gloom. And Martin was still rooted by that glance of accusation.

‘… watchmen wait for morning …’

He was still inside his body. His hands felt warm and slimy on the book. Blood, he realized, horrified. The visions melted, folding into blackness. He sensed the study closing up, encasing him in silence. It was colder than an empty grate in winter.

A scuttling movement crossed the room. The sound a rat might make – but much too loud. Martin yelped with fright, and drew his legs up. He remembered the picture on the wall: the one that used to give Lyn nightmares. It felt like he’d been swallowed up inside it.

But there was just that one swift movement; nothing more. Huddled on the chair, he hugged his knees and started shaking. His eyes were useless: dead as failed lightbulbs.

‘I’m not blind,’ he kept murmuring. ‘It’s something in my head.’

Oh Jesus, let me see the stars again.

His skin was bathed in sweat, like icy water. Slowly, as the hours passed, he felt it start to dry. And all the while he listened to the house. Now and again it creaked somewhere, and all his nerves caught fire. But nothing came towards him through the void.

He didn’t dare to trust that first pale glimmering of light. He blinked, and screwed his eyes tight shut – then opened them again. A gluey smudge was growing in the darkness. Slowly it congealed, becoming furniture and shelves. The room took shape around him, still muted in the greyish light of dawn.

It was deserted.

Martin sat there stiffly for a few minutes more; then carefully prised his knotted limbs apart. His muscles cramped in protest, and his bladder started aching. Ignoring it, he clambered up and leaned against the desk.

The air smelt as it always had: a subtle, bookish, papery aroma. He sniffed, but found no trace of fouler odours. His hands were clean and dry: no trace of blood. The desktop showed its weathered grain. The paper was unstained.

The house felt hushed and empty. He listened, breathing shallowly, then ventured to the door. The living room was spun with twilight cobwebs. The stairwell door to Lyn’s room hung ajar.

Attic, he thought, and gazed at it: unwilling to go up. After a pause, he went back to the study. The star-chart was unfurled across the desk. He felt a pang of stomach cramp, but crossed the room towards it.

A photo of a drawing – that was all it bloody was. But panic kept on simmering inside him. The evidence had disappeared; the memory remained. Staring at the chart, he felt a groundswell of revulsion. For a moment he hesitated; then took one comer between finger and thumb, and folded it again. Then closed the book and crushed it. Heart spasming, he carried the volume back, and shoved it into place upon its shelf.

Even Lyn had been a stranger after that.

Her bright and newsy letters home seemed suddenly banal. He’d looked forward to her phone-calls once, but now their Sunday chats were full of small talk. Before, he’d been so envious – watching her leave home to make her fortune. Now her student life was insignificant to him: completely overshadowed by the wonders that he’d seen. Now he was the experienced one, and she was just an innocent abroad.

He’d wanted to share it, but he couldn’t find the words. Perhaps he’d been afraid that she would laugh it off and tease him. More likely, he was scared that she’d believe. His turn to feel protective now. He couldn’t drag her into this, and cloud her sunny sky.

The shadow didn’t go away. It lingered in the comers of his heart, like winter mould. The brightest sunlight couldn’t clean it out. Gradually the fungus spread: through dank and stifled places, deep inside. Everything was different now. Things like grades and college didn’t matter any more.

Something science doesn’t understand. The laws in which he’d put his trust were teetering – about to tumble down. He had to find the real ones, and see the Universe come back together. Above all else, he had to know the truth.

But how could he explain all that to Claire?

He sat down with his cereal now; she stood up with a see-saw huffiness. As she passed, he tried to stroke her thigh. She slapped him off.

‘Fuck off, Martin. Let me be, all right?’ Biting her lip, she went back to the bedroom.

Chastened, Martin watched her go; then started on his breakfast. The cornflakes tasted sodden, like wet cardboard in his mouth.

CHAPTER III

Predicator

1

Through the toughened day-room glass, the grounds looked insubstantial: receding in the mist and fading light. The afternoon was gloomy; the buzzing glare of strip-lights served to darken it still further. A thick haze had engulfed the fields and wood.

Here inside, the air seemed just as dense.

The man they knew as John was at the window – gazing out into the murk, as if entranced. There were other people in here too; but to Claire it seemed as if the man in white had brewed this up himself. He was drawing on a cigarette, detached and calm as ever; the smoke hung all about him like a wreath. The fags were second nature now: he smoked them almost absently – mechanical as an iron lung. The ash flared with the slow pulse of a lighthouse. A dozen chain-smoked butts were in the ashtray on the table, the last of them still adding to the grey haze in the room.

The air was acrid in Claire’s throat; she didn’t need to fake a cough. A couple of the others turned to look. But John kept his eyes on the ghostly world outside.

‘All right now, John …’

The ash glowed fiery orange; died again. John loosed a last grey breath of smoke, and slowly turned his head. She felt an apprehensive prickle touch her neck.

A fierce face: she’d thought so from the start. The bones of a handsome man were there; the dark eyes of a wise one. But the unkempt hair and scrubby beard gave him a wild appearance. Both hair and beard were grizzled, though he looked to be mid-thirties; his skin was tanned and toughened, deeply lined. A scowl sat best upon that face – anchored firmly in the glower of the eyes.

‘They’re ready for you now,’ Claire told him firmly. She stood aside, inviting him to come.

And John the smoker nodded, glancing down. Focusing once more on the word he’d scratched, in the paint beside the window. Spider letters, thumbnail-etched. No one else had noticed, and he knew it. But now he had it captured. He would not forget again.

More than just a word, of course; a Name. It had come again last night, still fresh, from out of desert places in his mind. The rest would surely follow in its tracks.

Murzim. The Announcer.

A faint smile twitched his mouth like a galvanized muscle: briefly alive, then lifeless as before. Straightening up, he walked towards the keeper of the door.

‘Thank you for seeing us, John,’ said Dr Lawrence.

The other’s cold eyes didn’t blink. He’d nursed his cigarette almost down to the butt: each puff drawn in, and lazily expelled. Like the slow, unconscious breathing of a thing in hibernation. But the mind behind those eyes was wide awake.

It seemed he’d never smoked before he came here. The case notes mentioned wariness, and blank incomprehension. But then he’d had a go, and grown voraciously addicted. Watching him, in search of a response, Lawrence noted again how he held his cigarette: between the second and third fingers, so that each drag masked half his face. Like somebody still learning the technique.

The other clients kept him well-supplied; gathering round to hear him speak. Something about his ramblings seemed to reach their deeper selves. Bible John, they called him; a name with sombre echoes of some half-forgotten crime.

‘We’re here to review the progress of your case,’ Lawrence went on. ‘Dr Andrews here is on my team … An affable nod from the younger man. ‘And Miss Johnston is your designated social worker.’ The woman smiled politely. ‘I wonder, could you tell us how you feel you’re progressing?’

John snorted, very faintly. ‘There is no change in the truth.’

His tone was low and surly – made more so by the European accent. Speaks English well, but not as a first language, was the comment in the file. Lawrence’s mind flashed forward through his questions, resetting them to iron out confusions.

‘What truth is that?’ he came back calmly.

‘I come from the stars – to bring Good News to the poor.’

Lawrence nodded, poker-faced; then probed again. ‘When you say from the stars … what do you mean by that?’

A fleeting smile lit John’s dark face: contemptuous, and cunning. ‘You have not heard; why should I tell?’

‘I should like to understand.’

‘Who are you, then, who asks?’

‘A doctor.’

‘A learned man. Why then have you not heard?’ John sat back, grimly satisfied with that.

Dr Andrews rubbed his jaw; eyes shrewd behind his glasses.

Lawrence was warming to the game, but didn’t let it show. ‘Do you believe that you have come from another world?’

John shook his head. ‘I go to one – which is to come.’

‘But you came here from another country? Another land?’

A pause. John’s stare had grown suspicious. ‘I have told you this before.’

‘Forgive me. Indulge me, if you would.’

John gazed at him with hooded eyes; head resting on the chairback. Then: ‘I was born in the city of Siena.’

‘In Italy?’

‘As you call it.’

Miss Johnston’s eyes flicked down towards the folder on her lap; then up again.

‘And when did you come here?’ asked Lawrence.

John stared at him; then shrugged. ‘After the Death. I do not know the year.’

‘By the Death … you mean the Black Death, is that right?’

‘The Pestilence. Indeed.’

‘That was in the fourteenth century. Do you know what century you are living in now?’

‘You have told me the twentieth.’

‘So you believe you have lived before?’

That grim, spasmodic smile again. ‘The thread has not been cut.’

Lawrence spread his hands, his smile a study in bemusement. ‘But nobody can live that long. Do you see my problem?’

‘No, dottore. I see your unbelief.’ And as he spoke, he stirred himself, sat forward – so abruptly that the others almost flinched. Yet before they could react he was slouching back again: drawing deep upon the ember of his dying cigarette.

Silence in the room. The smoke had spread like fusty wings, brooding over the four chairs. Lawrence leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his chin against his interlocking hands.

‘You still maintain that you’re a priest?’

‘I am ordained in Holy Church,’ John said: matter-of-fact, monotonous again.

‘Do you belong to any order?’

‘Ordo Praedicatorum.’

The Order of Preachers, as one contributor to the case notes had helpfully explained. Better known as the Dominicans. Black Friars. Black for their cloaks, so Lawrence recalled. The friar’s habit would be white; and sure enough, John wore no other shade. Hence the institutional pyjamas, which Lawrence cordially disliked. The clients wore their own clothes here: the clinical environment was consciously played down. But John had been found wandering, a tramp in filthy rags, and refused to wear the clothes that he’d been offered. The starch-white shirt and trousers were an interim resort – but had now become his permanent attire. He still rejected shoes and socks; his bare feet brown and callused, tough as hide.

Lawrence sat up straighter; gave an understanding nod.

‘The reason you’re here, John … as I’ve explained before … is that we believe that you suffer from delusions. That you can see this past, quite clearly, in your head – but it’s something your mind has created.’

John didn’t rise to that. He sucked on the last spark, his eyes reptilian.

Lawrence glanced down at the file. ‘Are you taking your medication? Your drugs?’

A sneer convulsed the other’s lips. ‘So am I free to choose?’

‘Don’t fight against them, John. They’ll help you see.’

John slowly shook his head. ‘They make me blind. I must be wakeful.’

‘What for?’

‘That Day. The Day of Anger. It comes soon.’

Andrews made a dutiful note.

Lawrence regarded his client thoughtfully; then tried one final tack.

‘You let us call you John. Wouldn’t you prefer it if we called you by your own name?’

John met his gaze full on for several seconds. ‘I do not remember it.’

The same response as usual. ‘So what do you call yourself ?’

Normally John stonewalled that; but not this time. Though his face remained defiant, a shadow seemed to cross it: a tremor raised by turbulence deep down. He wavered for a moment … then let his last lungful of smoke stream out, like a dead man’s final breath.

‘Dominicain,’ he said.

Cain was the bit that Lawrence’s mind latched onto. Intrigued, concealing his excitement, he leaned forward.

‘That’s interesting. Because you’re a Dominican?’

Once more the other shook his head. His look was almost pitying.

‘Because I have done murder, dottore. Because I am a murderer for Christ.’

CHAPTER IV

Mind and Memory

1

‘Come,’ said the voice, ‘let us bury our dead.’

Dominicain’s eyes snapped open. A group of men were towering above him, like silhouettes against the milky sky. All of them were cloaked in black, with black scarves round their faces. He recognized their kind at once: he’d watched them carry coffins to the death-pits. The only figures moving in a landscape of decay. The sight awoke a long-forgotten dread.

Becchini …

He tried to rise; his limbs would not obey him. Numbness soaked through every muscle. He was dimly aware of lying on his bed – but the bed itself had sunk into the ground. Walls of dark earth hemmed him in. He realized he was waiting in his grave.

‘No!’ he gasped, and fought to raise an arm. Anything to show them he was still alive. But his own flesh had disowned him. His mind felt like a broken egg: a sticky, mingled pulp of white and yolk. The worst thing was, he was aware of it.

The sinister becchini showed no interest in his struggles. Their eyes were blank above their muffling scarves. But as he tried to lift his head, he glimpsed another figure, further back. A young girl, wrapped in black as well – but her face was bare, her head uncovered. She had blue eyes, and hair like golden corn. He recognized the woman who’d been given charge of him. He tried to reach her with his stare; but she just dropped her gaze, and turned away.

A shovelful of earth was thrown on him. It lay there, cold and heavy on his chest. He couldn’t even roll to shake it off. Then the rasp of shovels really started; an avalanche of dirt came pouring down. The becchini worked in grim, relentless silence, blocking out the sky like carrion birds. He made to scream – and soil filled his mouth. He choked in helpless horror, and the world was blotted out.

‘What did he say?’ Claire frowned.

‘Sounded like bikini,’ murmured Richard with a grin. ‘They’re all the same, these fundy types. All bloody hypocrites.’

She glanced at him, then back towards the bed. John lay prostrate, fully clothed; still mumbling to himself. Slipping in, she checked his chart to see what was prescribed. The dose had clearly laid him out. Chemical cosh, she thought, and pursed her lips. She looked at Jan the cleaner, who had kept on working calmly by the window; then hung the chart, and straightened up again. Peering down at John. His face was sweaty.

‘Coming?’ Richard asked her from the doorway. Their break was ticking by, of course. She’d asked to just look in on John, on their way to the canteen. Pulling her cardigan closer, she turned to the door – then looked at Jan.

‘It sounded like Italian. Was it?’

Jan – Gianna – shrugged. Her face was thoughtful. ‘I think he say becchini. Many times.’

‘And what’s that mean?’

‘The gravediggers,’ said Jan; then shrugged again, and went on with her mopping.

2

How can I escape Thee? I go down to the grave, and Thou art there. And now he’d risen up again: still trapped within the tenements of Dis.

He’d read the works of Dante, but even Dante hadn’t dreamed of this. The great Infernal cities had their colonies on earth. This was one – a fortress of the damned. Men possessed by devils raved around him, while lost souls walked the corridors like corpses. And this must be his punishment: to be imprisoned here while still alive.

‘What’re you thinking, John?’ Claire murmured gently, sitting down to join him at the table.

He turned his head to look at her. Could somebody so beautiful be damned? Or did she have a demon’s grin, behind that sweet, false face? An instinct said to strike at her – to claw her flesh, and see. His fingers twitched; then lay still on the tabletop again.

‘Il mio nome è Legione,’ he said softly. She didn’t understand – or didn’t seem to. Dirty sunlight bathed them both. The Lost Ones shuffled back and forth, like guards.

Claire sensed someone moving up behind her. She kept her eyes on John’s for just a moment, then looked round. Prentice stood there, looking jittery. She smiled at him. ‘Okay?’

He nodded jerkily. ‘Wanna see John.’

‘Fine. I’ll leave you to it, then.’ Getting up, she glanced at John; still looking for a spark of empathy. But he’d gone back to studying the Bible on the tabletop before him.

She moved away, still watching. Prentice sidled up towards the table, as gingerly as someone paying homage to his lord. He’d been here for a fortnight – a schizophrenic, suffering from paranoid delusions. Among other things, he’d claimed that his landlord had tried to kill him – by injecting spiders with petrol, and sending them along the pipes like tiny firebombs. Prentice had related this with unblinking conviction: enough to send imaginary spiders up her spine.

He rummaged in his pocket now, and brought three cigarettes out. With deference he laid them on the table. John looked up solemnly …

‘How do, Sister.’

‘Mike.’ She knew his jovial voice before she even turned. ‘And how’re you today?’

He was sitting in an armchair, looking smug. ‘Cooking on gas, Sister. Feeling fine. Living life on the line.’

‘I’m not a Sister, Mike, I’m just a poor downtrodden staff nurse.’ She went across to join him. ‘You’re feeling good today, then?’

‘Cooking on gas …’ He nodded vigorously. ‘Soon be out of here, yes.’

Still wearing a reflexive smile, she glanced back towards the table. John had claimed his gift of cigarettes. He was murmuring to Prentice, who looked spellbound. She felt the faintest twinge of apprehension – as if watching a child making friends with a stray, grizzled dog.

‘Care to join me in a game of draughts?’ asked Mike.

‘Can’t today,’ she said. ‘I’m going early.’

He nodded. ‘Fair enough … Cooking on gas, feeling fine, living life on the line.’

I’ll give you bloody gas, she thought. It made her realize just how stressed she was, behind her smile.

Prentice left the day-room, with a covert glance at her. Perhaps he thought she had a spider up her sleeve. Or maybe John had warned him to watch out …

Now who’s getting paranoid, my girl? She walked back over. John’s eyes came up warily. His hand closed round the cigarettes, as if he thought she’d take them.

‘It’s all right, you can keep them.’ She hesitated. ‘Just take care not to frighten him, he’s younger than he looks.’

Sitting back, he searched her face: like someone trying to see behind her eyes. She felt an inner tingle of discomfort. Her tiredness welled up, and almost peeled her smile away. The worry that had nagged throughout the shift began to bite.

‘What do you tell them, John? Why do they come?’

He didn’t blink; just answered in an almost wary tone. ‘They think that I can save them from this place.’

‘Oh, John. We’re trying to help you all, you know that.’

He rested his chin on one hand, and returned his attention to the book.

‘Remember it’s no smoking on the ward,’ she said, a little stiffly. ‘We don’t want you starting a fire.’

He looked up again, from under his brows. She glimpsed a strange, sharp glimmer in his eyes. Then the shutters rattled down again.

Claire gave a sigh, and turned away. She needed to be off in any case, her appointment was at four. Now that it was getting close, she found her mouth was dry. She thought he might be watching as she walked back down the ward, but she didn’t bother looking round to see. Right now her mind was otherwise engaged.

Perhaps some holy people were allowed into this place. Perhaps the demons couldn’t keep them out. He thought she might be one such: curiously attired, but still a Sister. One of the Franciscan Clares, perhaps – she’d claimed that she was poor. He closed his twitchy fingers to a fist.

We don’t want you starting a fire, she’d said. He realized that she knew about his sins. He looked back to the Bible; but his mind broke free, and plunged into the past.

3

The village looked like Hell had ridden through it.

Everything had been laid waste – the place and all its people. Houses had collapsed like burnt-out bonfires. Vivid flames still licked amid the heaps of blackened timber, but mostly there was just the smoke and stench. The sewer stench of battle, like a cesspit full of blood.

Appalled, he stumbled closer. His sandals squelched through the yellow mud. Everywhere he looked, he saw destruction. People had been hacked and burned to death. There were no bodies here, just lumps of bodies. Skinny dogs were scavenging along the littered road.

A dusty-looking group of men had gathered in the square. Lean and vicious as the dogs, and scavengers like them. Routiers, the Frenchmen called them. Restless thieves and killers on the road.

‘In Christ’s name, what is this?’ the Preacher said – so horrified, he spoke in his own language.

One of them was an Italian, too: a smiler in a grimy leather coat. He looked towards the newcomer, and shrugged. ‘The will of Holy Church. An end to heresy.’

His voice was harsh – the smile, a scar. As if the man was maimed inside; disfigured by the things which he had done.

The Preacher looked from face to face, in anger and dismay. The youngest were like old men now, their features smoked and callused. Souls had withered; eyes had lost their colour. Two or three of them were drunk, and glowered stupidly. The rest just stared in unrepentant silence.

And how did he appear to them? A poor friar, made sterner by his eyes and greying hair. Presence enough to give them pause? Or was he just a beggar among wolves?

The silence grew around them, except where flames still crackled in the background.

‘You can’t speak for Holy Church, and murder men like this.’

The other’s smile became a sneer. ‘It’s you who preached the judgment, friend – you dogs of Dominic.’

They knew him by his clothes, of course. The travel-stained white habit and black cloak. A Friar Preacher on the road – as rootless as themselves. He’d railed against the heretics at every market cross. But how could he have driven men to this?

‘Dominic came to reason with these people – not to burn them.’

‘How can someone reason with the enemies of God? Kill ’em all, says Holy Church: the Lord will know His own.’

The Preacher braced his staff against the ground: the gesture like a challenge to their daggers and their swords.

‘The poor are His own people. You kill them, and they cry out for revenge.’

The smiler’s eyes grew narrower. ‘Spare us the sermon, brother dog. You’d better get along – or stay and join them.’

Mirthless chuckles drifted round the square. The Preacher closed his fist around the staff. He gave each routier a last, accusing glance; then strode on through them, following the road.

One of the men called out in French: his tone was coarse and taunting. The last words made the Preacher turn his head.

Chevaliers de charogne.

‘What did he say?’

The smiler shrugged. ‘There are mercenaries fighting for the heretics. Carrion Knights. Black English.’ His smile didn’t flicker, but he quickly crossed himself. ‘Try preaching them your sermon … Domini Canis.’

The Preacher didn’t rise to that last insult. He turned, and tracked his gaze across the hills. A sombre stillness lay upon the landscape. But after the briefest pause, he kept on walking.

The whispers of the murdered followed him.

He heard them now, like dying breaths: still murmuring against him. Eight centuries had passed, but they would let him have no peace. The prison-house still echoed with their sighs.

Dominicain’s eyes grew focused once again. The crawling shadows on the page congealed into words.

I have come to set fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled.

He let the sentence sink into his heart. Then he took a cigarette, and put it in his mouth.

Someone came and lit it without waiting to be told.

4

Claire found Martin lying on the sofa: slouched there with his feet drawn up, the TV handset busy in his hand. Cricket flickered on, and off; now Neighbours; now a game-show – each fleeting image zapped into oblivion.

She watched the jerky montage, feeling sick. ‘Hi,’ she said. He barely glanced around.

A solid lump had grown inside her stomach. ‘Had a good day?’

He stretched his arm out – ‘Nope’ – and brought the cricket back again. He had his jeans and T-shirt on. She watched his biceps flexing, tanned and smooth.

How long since he had given her a squeeze?

She moistened her lips and waited, but he showed no further interest. After a minute, she glanced round at the wall. ‘Hello, wall. Would you like to hear my news?’

Martin didn’t bother to respond. She stared at the screen; then walked around in front of it, and switched the TV off. ‘Hey!’ he snapped. She turned, to find him scowling up at her.

‘I was watching …’

‘No, you weren’t.’ She gazed into his sullen face – the face she thought she loved. Clean-cut features, deep, dark eyes; high cheekbones, chiselled nose. A face for magazines and films … except he looked too boyish. Too cheeky when he smiled, perhaps. Too moody when he didn’t.

She felt a sudden rush of fear. He seemed unreal, too far away to touch.

He settled back. ‘Okay, so what’s your news, then?’

She came and knelt in front of him. He was still pointing the handset at the TV; she took his wrist, and aimed it at her midriff.

‘I’m pregnant, Martin. Here. Try zapping that.’

CHAPTER V

Dreams and Decay

1

Again they’d clubbed him down with their narcotics; but in his dreams he rose again, and wandered through the corridors of Hell. The colony appeared in ruins, its gateways overgrown. Owls were hooting from the chimney-tower. The shadows were unquiet, full of whispering and sobs.

Dominicain advanced into the labyrinth. A creeping fear came over him – as if this were some giant spider’s lair. But something brushed his face, and drew him onward: a summons as elusive as a sigh.

He saw a light ahead of him – unfolding in the darkness like a flower. The glow was pale, unhealthy, and he wavered for a moment; then started down the passageway towards it. As he glided closer, it resolved into a face: a deathly visage, hanging in the gloom. The eyes were like two windows on the inky dark beyond.

They watched him come, those empty eyes. And then the phantom spoke.

Be patient in your cell, devoted friend.

The term of thy imprisonment is done.

Await the man of power whom I shall send.

The language was Italian – the Tuscan dialect he spoke himself. He didn’t recognize the lines, and yet they were familiar. Their richness and arrangement made him think of Dante’s work.

Not quoted this time, though. They spoke to him.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded hoarsely.

The white face didn’t answer that; instead it threw the focus back on him.

You shall become that Hound the poet saw,

Who drives the hungry She-Wolf back to Hell,

And brings the rule of justice to the poor.

Dominicain was dumbstruck. He recognized that image from the Comedy of Dante: his Inferno. He stared in disbelief – then shook his head.

‘But how can it be me? I am condemned.’

The other stayed inscrutable. He had to be a Messenger, Dominicain thought wildly. A being of light, beneath his cloak of darkness.

So who had pleaded for his soul, to win him this remission?

‘The lady who has charge of me …’ He hesitated. ‘Is she one of the blessed?’

The other seemed to ponder that; then moved his solemn head from side to side.

She owes allegiance to a darker power.

It may be she will seek to hinder you.

So you must show no pity in that hour.

Dominicain absorbed that wisdom grimly. He was just about to speak again when everything dissolved. His soul came winging back along the darkened corridors, returning to his body like a sparrow to its nest.

His dull, unfocused eyes slid halfway open, but he lay there like a dead man until morning. The apparition’s rhythmic words still throbbed in his head.

2

Martin’s breathing body stirred beside her, but it felt as if she was lying here alone. Nestled against his naked back, Claire tried to warm herself – but the lump of ice inside her didn’t melt. His heartbeat pulsed in time with hers; but his mind was silent, locked inside his skull.

The bedside clock said two a.m.; it might as well be lunchtime. She didn’t think she’d ever get to sleep.

If only she could tell what he was thinking. If only she could see into his dreams. Maybe then she’d understand the welter of emotions he had shown. There’d been a spark of wonder, to be sure. She’d snatched at it, ignoring the dismay. Then he’d lost his rag, and started shouting. All her fault: she’d done it just to trap him. How dare you even think that? she’d yelled back. As the fight raged round the flat, she’d realized he was scared. Frightened of commitment in itself – or by their prospects? She wouldn’t blame him, if it was the latter. She was bloody terrified as well.

But later, when he’d quietened down, the fear had still been there. She’d peeped into the living room, and seen him trying to read. His skin looked cold and milky pale; his eyes like haunted wells.

She’d had a horrid notion then. He looked like someone diagnosed with cancer – frightened for the people whom his illness would drag down. The family who didn’t even know … It couldn’t be. She’d crushed the inkling out. But two nights later, here it was – still smouldering.

For God’s sake, don’t be stupid. He wouldn’t keep a thing like that from me.

At least he hadn’t packed his bags. At least she had his body in her arms. She sniffed, and laid her cheek against his shoulder. A single tear ran down onto his skin. She’d cried at work today, as well – in front of John, who’d watched with solemn eyes. She wondered what he’d made of it. His cryptic mind was just as hard to read.

Subsiding into sleep at last, she dreamed of spiders creeping up the bed: dozens of them, all spindly legs and petrol-bloated bodies. Catching fire, they scuttled blindly forward. She felt them on her naked skin. Paralysed, she smelt the duvet burning. More of them were crawling on the ceiling: they dropped towards her face like falling stars. Her scream was just a whimper in the stillness of the room. She curled into a ball, and didn’t wake.

3

The sound was just a rustling at first: like rain against the flat roof overhead. Martin lay there, semi-conscious, trying to ignore it. But slowly it grew louder: a crackling noise that seemed to fill the room. Like burning wood. He sat up with a start.

The bedroom was in darkness – he could see no sign of flames. And yet there was a bluish gleam, infusing the dense air. He sat and squinted, baffled – then looked down.

His hands were glowing.

He raised his palms, and stared at them in frozen disbelief. His skin was radiating cold blue light. The frosty crackle sounded like a Geiger counter now. He rubbed his hands together – no effect. The light was welling up from every pore.

Springing out of bed, he stumbled over to the mirror. His face was luminous as well, a disembodied mask. The snap and sizzle of decay was growing all the time. Yet Claire was still asleep – she hadn’t heard it. She couldn’t feel the particles that soaked into her skin.

I’ve touched her with these hands; she’s kissed my face. So she must be contaminated too. Together with what was growing in her womb.

Did magic have a lethal dose? A power to deform?

The crackling reached a peak – and then cut off. The ghostly blue plutonium-glow went out. He thought he’d been struck blind again, and felt his heart freeze up; then realized he was buried in the bedclothes. The bed was hot, and stank of sweat. Claire lay snug against him, moaning softly.

He shrank away from her, got up, and blundered to the bathroom.

Waking up, Claire clutched herself; revulsion made her squirm against the headboard. Her skin was slick, her nerves still itching madly. The dream itself was like a web. It took her several moments to break free.

She slumped against the headboard with her arms around her legs. Her fringe was matted, hanging in her eyes. Shower, she thought – and realized there was nobody beside her. A fleeting twinge of dread, and then she heard water splashing. Light reflected through the open doorway. Shit, he beat me to it, she thought wryly.

Better join him.

Going through, she found him there, beneath the steaming blast – still scrubbing at his raw, abraded skin.

CHAPTER VI

Grief Riders

1

Daylight made the Burnt House seem much smaller.

Martin stood and watched it from across the busy road. Lunchtime traffic put it in perspective – a backdrop to the modern urban grind. The sunshine showed its cracks and crumbled brickwork; the window-boards were brittle cataracts. A blind, decrepit visage that the passing world ignored.

He’d heard that it was down for demolition. A Planning Application had been fastened to a telephone pole nearby. Soon the JCBs would come, and smash the building open like a skull. Myths matured in darkness would shrivel in the light. Emptiness would gawp from every window.

I wonder what they’d find inside my head?

He looked both ways, and crossed the road towards it. Today, there was no sense of being watched. He could picture the place as a dusty heap of rubble, perhaps with one wall standing, and a window framing sky. Its ghosts were shadows: primal fears. The only exorcists were light and thought.

Walking slowly round the house, he forced himself to think of last night’s dream. It seemed to say so much – if he would listen. His experience in Dad’s study was still damaging him now. Vibrations from the past were finding flaws inside his mind. In time, they would develop into fissures. Unless he took some action, he’d crack up.

He’d put this off for long enough: casting round for evidence of ghosts, where none existed. Trying to tell himself it was a scientific quest. Avoiding the truth like a credulous child.

He’d had some kind of episode, that night two years ago. Paralysis, a fit, hallucinations. No wonder that he’d looked for other answers. It could have been a one-off, and the lapse of time suggested that it was. But what if it recurred, from out of nowhere?

It wasn’t just his problem any longer; there was Claire. And someone else, he thought. And someone else.

He’d watched her sleep this morning, in the clear light of day. Her belly was still flat and slim, despite the hidden wonder it contained. Martin had reached out, and very gently touched her skin, stroking in a circle round her navel. He had a life ahead of him – if he could face the past. And that meant telling all, and trusting her.

Resolved, he turned and started back. The empty house receded in his wake. An outpost of his fears, destroyed by reason – like a sandcastle demolished by the sea.

Coming home, he knew he was committed. A sobering prospect – yet he welcomed it. A bridge out of the haunted past; a road towards the future. Perhaps it meant he’d finally grown up.

He hadn’t seen this far ahead two years ago, at school. Back then there’d been no call to settle down. He liked girls who were clever, but they had to have nice tits – the impossible perfectionism of Playboy and Page 3. He’d only slept with Vicki twice before they’d broken up. Other girls had come and gone (Nadine had been quite noisy on both counts). He’d never really thought of growing old with one of them.

Lyn, meanwhile, was always being asked out. He could see her now, in slinky black and made up to the eyebrows (he thought she put too much powder on, but what did he know?). He’d tease her as she waited in the hallway for a date – and feel like swearing vengeance if a boyfriend made her cry. But that was different: she was his own sister.

It had taken Claire to match the angles up. She made beauty everyday, and sex a part of something so much greater. He’d never lived so close to someone else, or shared so much.

So grab her with both hands, and hold on tight.

The flat was quiet, full of stagnant sun. Today was her day off: she might be spending it elsewhere. He’d been morose this morning – still shaken by the dream and his reaction. Perhaps she’d gone round to a girlfriend’s, for a moan.

But no: he found her curled up on the sofa, catching up on lost sleep from last night. An open book still rested in her lap. She had her faded jeans on, and an England rugby shirt. Kneeling down, he leaned across, and blew the wispy fringe back off her forehead. She frowned to herself, and opened bleary eyes. A pause – and then she smiled at him. ‘Hiya …’

‘Sorry about this morning,’ he said softly.

She stretched, and shook her head. ‘’S … all right.’

‘And last night,’ he insisted. ‘And the past however many weeks it’s been.’

She looked at him more shrewdly. ‘It’s okay, Martin. Really. I just wish you could talk about whatever’s on your mind.’

‘I’m going to,’ he said.

She frowned again, and raised herself. Still kneeling there, he took her hands and gripped them.

‘I know you’re going to take this like a psychie nurse,’ he muttered.

‘Take what?’

Martin swallowed, staring at their hands. ‘Two years ago … I had some kind of fit. I couldn’t see, or move … it lasted hours. I thought I heard and smelled things in the house – but it was empty. And I had a sort of vision, in my head.’

‘What of?’ she prompted quietly.

‘A wasteland of some kind. A haunted place.’

‘How often has this happened?’

‘Just the once. It screwed me up completely, I left home because of it.’ He managed a wry smile. ‘It’s why I’m here.’

‘Was it voices that you heard?’

‘Lots of them – a real psychobabble. I’ve tried to tell myself that it was something paranormal: as if that sort of crap was really true. But now I want to face the truth. I reckon that I owe it to you both.’

That last inclusion wasn’t lost on her. She nodded, looking thoughtful.

‘So – what?’ he said, and forced a laugh. ‘You think I’m going nuts?’

‘Oh, Martin: no I don’t. You’ve got your moods and hangups – so have I. But I’ve known your for six months now, and I think you’re very normal.’ She smiled, a little slyly. ‘And quite gorgeous.’

‘I was dreaming of it last night. I was scared that I’d contaminate you somehow …’

Her hands were still clasped tight in his; but now she squeezed him back. ‘You know I’ve seen a lot of psychie cases. I don’t think you’re one of them at all. Lots of people have hallucinations. The mind’s a weird thing, you know, even when it’s healthy.’ The briefest pause. ‘It did just happen once?’

‘Yeah. But can you trust me?’

‘I trust you, Martin. Want to know how much?’ Leaning down, she kissed him. ‘Come to bed.’

‘Now, wasn’t that a waking dream?’ she asked him afterwards.

Martin grinned, still short of breath, and let her snuggle closer. She laid her cheek against his chest; her smile was warm and smug. But after a pause, her soft eyes grew more thoughtful.

‘This is how a doctor once described hallucinations. It’s like you’re in a fire-lit room, and looking through the window. While it’s light outside, you see the garden and the sky. But as it gets dark, you start to see reflections of what’s with you in the room. The furniture you’ve got inside your head. Your mind’s the fire – and sometimes it flares up.’

‘And that’s quite normal?’

‘For lots of us, at some point in our lives. Visions, voices, even smells …’

He smiled at her, and stroked her hair. She purred, and closed her eyes. The light was evening-golden now, like syrup on her skin. He felt a deep, delicious calm – much more than just the afterglow of sex.

At last he glanced towards the clock. ‘Listen … That’s twice I’ve spoiled your beauty sleep, so let me make us supper. What’d you like?’

‘Just salad would be fine …’ she murmured.

‘Reckon I can manage that.’ He slithered out of bed and dressed, and went into the kitchen. The lettuce in the fridge didn’t look too wilted. He found a tin of anchovies; a jar of pitted olives. And something he could spoil her with: a chocolate Viennetta for dessert.

He was chopping up ingredients when a knock came at the door. The wood resounded, hollow in the hallway. Martin glanced round irritably, and almost kept on working. But the blows had been insistent, and the silence was too pregnant to ignore. Somebody was waiting for an answer. And maybe they would go away – but then he’d be no wiser.

Might be something interesting. Just might. Tucking in his granddad shirt, he ambled through to see. The door loomed up, he opened it – and felt a punch of shock: so brutal and abrupt it left him winded.

He saw a face as rugged as a crumbled granite cliff: all bony cheeks, and jutting brows and lichen-bearded jaw. The eyes were narrow, deeply-set: a clear, ferocious blue. One of the cheeks was scarred beneath its thatch of dirty gold. It turned the baleful stare into a sneer.

Cutthroat said a cold voice in his mind.

He’d never seen that face before – and yet his heart leaped up in recognition. The man was dressed in brown and black: clothes for the road, from his army boots to his greasy drover’s coat. But Martin knew at once where he had come from: those medieval battlefields he’d seen. The visions Claire had said were from inside.

And Claire was lying naked in the bedroom, unsuspecting. A gout of fear went through him, and he tried to block the doorway. The other’s gaunt expression didn’t change.

‘What do you want?’ hissed Martin frantically.

The watcher flicked his coat-tail back, and Martin glimpsed a sword. It seemed more like an answer than a threat.

‘Follow,’ growled the man, and stepped away.

Martin stumbled forward, off the threshold. Rational objections burst like bubbles. Past and present melted into one. The street was full of shadows; the evening hush polluted by their prayers and lamentations. Suddenly he was a stranger here.

No time to say goodbye to Claire. He didn’t even pause to shut the door. By opening it, he’d wrenched his life completely out of joint. Claire was disconnected now. She might as well have been another pin-up on his wall.

The swordsman led him off down greying streets, past lamps that sputtered on in ones and twos. Martin’s chest was breathless, but he matched the other’s pace. It felt as if he’d joined some kind of underground resistance. The people they passed were refugees; non-combatants who hadn’t heard the curfew.

Three streets away, he knew where they were going.

With the sun now gone, the Burnt House looked totally charred: a stark, black wreck against the fading sky. The swordsman crossed towards it, with Martin at his heels like a dog.

They slipped in through the back way, like before – and Martin froze. An eerie phosphorescence tinged the kitchen, as if some glowing entity was waiting in the passageway beyond. He remembered that same aura from the decomposing Chart. But scar-face was behind him now, he had to keep on going. Onward and inward: through into the hall.

A new constellation had been born in this dead house. Flames glowed in the cinders, like small ghosts of the roaring beast that had devoured the place. Night-lights lined the blackened stairs, ascending like the stairway to a shrine. Another man was waiting at the bottom: crouched there like a hunter, with his back against the wall. His figure seemed unearthly in the half-dark. The light showed up an atavistic face.

Martin came up short again; the swordsman nudged him forward. With nauseous reluctance he went over to the staircase. The second man stayed motionless, enjoying his discomfort. His nose was broken, scarred across the bridge. It gave his grin a stupid, sneering cast.

Martin tested the first step. The brittle wood creaked dully. A voice upstairs was speaking into silence. Murmuring, monotonous: a language that he couldn’t understand.

He started up. The swordsman followed. He heard the hunter climbing to his feet. The disembodied voice kept up its dirge. Two more men were waiting on the landing. They moved aside to let him pass; he did so with his heartbeat in his throat. It felt like he was stuck inside the hospital again – beset by human faces, alien minds.

The voice had died away. He heard them breathing.

A gaping doorway loomed ahead. The darkness had the pull of an abyss. He knew it was the black heart of the house – its crematorium. The thought brought bile seeping up; he swallowed it back down.

The furnace was as cold as ashes now. The murk was thick and soupy, like a sewer. But as he reached the threshold, a rustling movement came from just ahead. The dank air shifted faintly. Somebody was waiting in the room.

Martin tried to back away – and found the other men were all behind him. Their clothes smelled ages old. He looked from face to stony face – then quickly turned his head.

The shape inside the room was coming forward.

A mane of pale hair grew clear; the highlights of the face. The mask of shadow peeled away, revealing pallid skin; but pools of darkness lingered in the sockets of his eyes.

It was the face he’d seen before, of course: the figure who’d looked back. The one with eyes like somebody insane.

‘So,’ he said, ‘the Summoner, at last.’ The voice was harsh, but there was humour in it. A grim amusement, bleak as bone. He reached out with one finger, prodding Martin in the chest. The shock of contact gave the touch the impact of a blow: a hammer-stroke against his pounding heart. Martin had to gulp for breath. The other merely smiled.

‘You woke us, and we came. We always answer. Has it seemed long, the waiting for the Ravens to return?’

III

SHADOWS

Do I belong to some ancient race?

I like to walk in ancient places:

These are things that I can understand.

THE LEVELLERS

Dear Craig

Hi there, how’s it going? I’m still waiting for that airmail envelope to come plopping through the letterbox, but I expect you’ve got your work cut out upholding the New World Order. If you get a moment free, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know.

Look, new pen now: different day. I don’t mean to sound snotty; I’m just missing you, that’s all. I’ve got a lot on my mind right now, and I’d love to hear your voice. I’m still at Lyn’s. Please ring me.

Love you

Frannie

x

CHAPTER I

Green Blades Rising

1

Sitting on the sofa, listening to Lyn gushing on the phone, Fran felt a strange, resentful little twinge. Was that a man at the other end? She rather thought it was. Leaning back, she peered into the hallway. Lyn stood there, sideways on to her, head nodding as she listened. Her sunny smile was private, like a dreamer’s. It soured Fran’s mood to know she couldn’t share it.

The twinge became a pang of guilt. She shifted with discomfort and sat forward. After all that Lyn had done for her, she still begrudged her friend her separate pleasures. You selfish cow, she told herself; went glumly back to towelling her hair.

She was fresh from the bath, still flushed with warmth; wrapped up in Lyn’s spare bathrobe. She rubbed her damp hair harder as if jealousy was something she could simply scrub away. And how might Lyn be feeling, when she thought of Fran and Craig? Having brought them back together, she could only stand and watch. She knew how it felt, to see a friend enticed away …

Reality engulfed her then. The whole room seemed to change, as if the sun had shifted round. Her mundane instincts fell away; Craig’s smile was just a picture in her head. The cold blue gaze of Athelgar dispersed it like a mist.

‘Oh, no!’ said Lyn delightedly, still giggling.

Fran sat there, very still: the towel’s dampness clutched against her chest. She’d spoken with a ghost, the other week. A solid phantom, trapped in time; still wandering those half-forgotten roads. He’d called on her to follow him – and she had said she’d come.

Jesus, Fran: what were you thinking of?

So what if Lyn had just acquired a boyfriend? So what, if it was Fran’s turn to be eased politely out? Such things seemed almost trifling now. The world through which she walked had been upturned.

How could he have reached her from a thousand years ago, to warm her carefree heart on Heaven’s Field?

Swallowing, she stood and padded through into the kitchen. Her mouth was very dry, she needed something to drink. She poured herself some fruit juice from the fridge, still listening to Lyn with half an ear. Her jealousy, still vague, was of a different order now. An envy of her friend’s unclouded sky.

Turning round, she took a sip. The Tropical Mix was cool and sweet; but it went down quickly, leaving her still dry. Moodily, she wiped her mouth; then stiffened. The calendar had caught her eye, hung up beside the pinboard. She stared at it for a moment, then slowly crossed the room. The lino seemed to cling to her bare feet.

There were neatly written notes beside some of the dates. Dentist 9:15 … Piano recital … Mummy (49). The memos barely registered. She craned in closer, looking for some printed information. Some indication of the next full moon.

But there was nothing.

She straightened up, and felt her heartbeat throbbing. She’d put this off for long enough, but still she wasn’t sure if she was ready. There’d be no turning back, she knew that. As soon as she learned the date, she’d be committed. Back on the road to meet her ghost again.

Athelgar. A man long lost. She felt her fine hairs rising.

It had taken her until yesterday to start some cautious digging. She’d waited for Lyn to take a break from her books, then idly broached the subject: hoping it sounded casual enough.

‘Do you know of any battles fought on Salisbury Plain?’ she’d asked.

Lyn finished stretching. ‘What, in Roman times, or … ?’

‘Whenever.’

Lyn had thought it over. ‘Edington’s the only really famous one, I think. That was in 878. There are legends about others. There’s even something in Malory about King Arthur’s final battle being fought there.’

‘But Edington was King Alfred?’

‘Mm. They’re not exactly sure where it took place, but Edington’s the likeliest contender. The Chronicle calls it Ethandun – the Waste Down.’

Fran blinked as she absorbed the blow, but kept her pale face straight. Lyn hadn’t noticed. The topic dropped, and Fran had let it lie. But now it had started nagging her again. Still nursing her cold glass, she went back into the living room. Lyn caught her eye, and waved, as if to say I won’t be long. Fran grinned and gestured back at her. No hurry …

Out of sight of the doorway, her bright face faded; she went quickly to Lyn’s desk. The top was strewn with papers, books lined up against the wall. There was a photo of her parents in a polished silver frame; a snapshot of her brother, too, propped up against the lamp. And a compact desktop calendar.

Still nothing on the phases of the moon.

Not sure if she should feel relieved, she drifted back, and over to the bookcase; too restive to sit down again and wait. Lyn had mentioned a reference in ‘the Chronicle’; and there was the The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, just waiting to be read. She set her glass aside, and pulled it out: a dog-eared paperback. Flicking slowly through, she found the entry dated 878. Edington was over in a sentence.

Our work was red and filthy: that’s what Athelgar had said. A voice from the past, addressed to her alone. The memory of someone who had fought there. Fran shook her head, quite giddy with the thought. Nobody on earth had heard what she had.

So what had it been like? Not bloodless like this dry account, she guessed that much. The fight would have been savage – full of swords and spears and axes. Medieval warfare; mud and guts.

It is no road for one like you to walk.

She gave a faint grimace, and tracked her gaze along the books. There was another, hardback version, with a musty-looking spine. Curious to compare the two, she took that down as well – and found that this one wasn’t a translation.

Typeset though it was, the text was meaningless to her. Weird, distorted letters mixed with modem ones throughout. The words were like a thorny hedge: impassable, entangling. But she picked her way through them to 878, and found what she was looking for again.

Eandune

Studying the word, she sensed the distant past draw nearer. The man she’d met would write the name like that. This was his dead language, still alive inside his head. Still roughening the form of modern English that he’d learned.

She was just about to close the book when her grazing eye was snagged by something else.

ræfen

She felt her heart leap up. Her mouth was powder-dry again, but the drink she’d set aside was quite forgotten. She focused on the sentence (elusive as a snake amid the brambles), and mouthed the alien words as she read through them.

Dar wæs se gudfana genumen de hi ræfen heton

Heart thudding, she turned back to the translation. It touched upon another, unnamed battle: still months before that victory of Alfred’s in the spring. The English were outnumbered, with their backs against the wall – yet suddenly the war was turned around. A force of the invaders had been set upon and killed.

And there was captured the banner which men call Raven

‘I never knew you were so interested,’ Lyn said brightly from the doorway.

Fran almost jumped; then glanced at her, and shrugged. ‘Something about the Plain, I think. It brings the past much closer … She hesitated. ‘Do you know what this bit means … about the banner called Raven?’

‘It was an emblem that the Vikings had; it led them into battle.’ Coming across, she leaned in close and nodded. ‘Yeah … It was one of the things that damaged their morale, the English capturing it. Hang on, there might be something in Brewer’s about it.’

She selected a fat paperback, and started leafing through it. The Dictionary of Phrase & Fable, according to the cover. Fran stood beside her, waiting; feeling hollow.

‘You can browse through this for hours,’ Lyn said; ‘dig up all sorts of gems. Raven, here we are … yes, look.’ She passed it across. Fran looked, and read.

The fatal raven, consecrated to Odin the Danish war-god, was the emblem of the Danish standard. This raven was said to be possessed of necromantic power. The standard was termed Landeyda (the desolation of the country) …

She pursed her lips and nodded once – as if to say, Well, fancy that – and handed back the book.

Lyn’s eyes strayed down towards her Cross of Nails. ‘Still wearing it, then?’ she asked, in a casual way that couldn’t hide her pleasure.

Fran glanced down, and touched the pendant; let it turn between her fingers. ‘A very special present,’ she said softly. ‘Thanks again.’

Lyn glowed at that. ‘You’re welcome.’ Replacing the book, she went off towards the kitchen. Fran stayed where she was, still worrying the pendant. To Athelgar, the thing had been a relic: the sign of a saint. Perhaps he even thought that she’d been martyred.

Nailed to a cross with those medieval spikes. She felt the notion tightening her stomach. To his mind, he was still alive, and she must be the ghost …

But Craig had seen it too, of course. She jumped at the distraction – fixed her memory on that. The first time that she’d slept with him; that posh country hotel. They’d helped undress each other (How do I look? her nervous mind kept asking); she’d left the cross around her neck till last. Drawing back – ‘Hang on,’ she husked – she’d fumbled for the clasp.

He touched her arm. ‘Why take that off?’

Fran hesitated, ashen-mouthed. ‘I … think I should.’

‘You think we’re doing something wrong?’ He searched her face with serious eyes. ‘If you do, we can stop right now.’

She’d stared at him, her hands behind her neck; her breasts unguarded. But Craig reached up to stroke her cheek instead.

‘You think this is a one-night stand?’ he asked.

Fran sighed, and swallowed. Shook her head.

‘We’ve waited long enough,’ he went on softly; fingering a strand of her dark hair. ‘I want to be a part of you, Frannie. I want to be a part of your life. Is that what you want too?’

Fran moistened her lips. ‘It’s like I want to climb inside you.’

‘So how can it be wrong?’ he asked her mildly.

She’d wrestled with her conscience for a silent moment longer; then let the clasp alone, and reached for him. And Craig had leaned forward to kiss the cross, where it nestled in her cleavage; a gesture full of reverence and awe. She’d hugged him to her, closed her eyes; and felt his loving mouth begin to rove …

‘You sure you don’t mind cooking supper?’ Lyn called from the kitchen.

Fran came to herself with a rueful little smile. ‘’Course I’m sure.’

‘Shall we have some wine with it?’

‘Why not?’ Fran said. Retrieving her glass, she wandered through; found Lyn comparing labels.

‘Any preference?’

Fran’s smile grew wider, mischievous. ‘What the hell, it all tastes the same, anyway.’

‘You are a philistine, Fran Bennett. I hope you know that.’ Lyn gave her a mock-snooty look, then glanced at the clock. ‘I’m just popping down to the corner shop; we’re getting short of milk.’

Fran finished her drink and rinsed the glass out; listening while the front door opened and shut. She waited for the fading sound of footsteps on the pavement – then wiped her hands and went quickly through the flat towards Lyn’s bedroom. She lingered on the threshold, almost guiltily; then darted in, and started looking round.

The room was neat, but comfortable and lived-in. A musky pot-pourri infused the air. She found the diary lying on the dressing table.

No way could Lyn have come back in; but Fran still glanced behind her before picking it up. The temptation to start reading came on strongly. Lyn’s private thoughts were hidden here. The secrets of her heart she hadn’t shared.

With an effort of will, she focused on the dates: ignored the tidy writing, till she reached today’s blank page. Then on, until she found it marked. The next full moon.

A woozy calm came over her, and muffled the slow drumbeat of her heart.

She could always stay up here, of course – in safe, secluded Oxford. Just wait, until the moon was on the wane. His influence would surely dwindle with it. He’d fade out of her life again, as quietly as he’d come.

She toyed with the temptation – then flicked it away. Its bright spark flared and died in smoke and ash. She really didn’t have a choice: the dream had told her that. She had to meet this ghost again – and somehow lay his troubled soul to rest. If she turned her back, and left the thing unfinished, she knew she wouldn’t rest herself; would still be sleepless twenty years from now.

Laying down the diary, she went back towards the kitchen. As if all that were not enough, she also had a casserole to cook.

2

‘Who was it, then?’ she asked Lyn after supper.

‘Who was who?’

‘That person on the phone.’

‘Oh,’ Lyn said, and shifted; then settled back and let her face light up. ‘That was Simon, actually.’

A pause. Fran prodded her. ‘Well, don’t go all coy on me. Who’s he?’

‘Someone I met at work. The temping side of things, I mean.’

Fran offered up a smile as bait for more. They were curled up on the sofa, feeling comfortable and full; a CD playing softly in the background.

‘He’s nice,’ Lyn went on dreamily; ‘quite shy.’ That conspiratorial grin again. ‘He still calls me Lynette.’

‘And a very nice name it is, too. Shame to shorten it, really.’

‘He thought I was French, first off!’

‘Well, you look French. Sort of.’

Lyn tittered. ‘You know my middle name’s Isabella? Well, my Dad chose that, after Princess Isabelle, who was married to Edward II. They called her the She-Wolf of France.’

Fran shrugged. ‘Well, my middle name’s Elizabeth because my Mum was really into Pride & Prejudice and stuff.’ Leaning back, she looked at Lyn again. ‘You think it’s getting serious?’

Lyn smiled again, with lowered eyes. ‘It might be.’

Now that they were discussing it, the jealousy was gone. Just as her decision to return to the Plain had brought an inner peace, so acceptance of Lyn’s separate life had left her satisfied. She felt a glow of pleasure for her friend.

3

Lyn had more work to do that evening. She was still slogging away in the glow of her desk lamp when Fran came back from the bathroom to say good night.

‘Don’t work too late.’

‘I won’t,’ Lyn smiled, and nodded at the jar at her elbow. ‘There aren’t many biscuits left.’

Fran grinned at that, and gently closed the door. Lyn heard her moving round, then settle down. The flat grew quiet again: a cosy, womb-like hush beyond the lamplight.

She usually worked best in an environment like this; but tonight her mind felt fidgety – distracted. Instead of ploughing a proper furrow through some untranslated texts, she knew that she was grazing: wasting time on fallow land. There was nothing that she needed from the Chronicle right now. But Fran had picked it up today, and now Lyn found she couldn’t put it down.

The text was full of haunting gaps: so much had been forgotten. AD 904. The moon darkened. That was all. Whatever else had happened had been literally eclipsed. They must have thought their world was going to end.

Her eyes flicked to the Riddle, as if seeking reassurance.

It was pinned there on the wall, so she could see it while she worked. It had lived above her desk in Christ Church, too. A teasing gift from Martin, copied out with loving care. He’d never done Old English, but he’d formed each word just right.

Moe word fræt …

She rather thought that Daddy had conspired with him on that. An Anglo-Saxon riddle from the Exeter Book: the subject was a moth, devouring words. And though it chewed and swallowed them, it never took them in.

The answer was a Bookworm, of course. Oh, very droll, she’d told him; and kept it very carefully ever since.

Beside it was a colour print of Beowulf’s first line, the H illuminated like a manuscript. Hwæt! the long-dead poet called to her. In the context it meant, Listen! As she’d once explained to Fran, it summed things up for her. History demanded her attention just like that.

Returning to the Chronicle, she browsed on through the entries, and came to the Brunanburh poem. A famous English victory of 937, and the chronicler had really pulled the stops out, painting an epic scene of strife and carnage. Yet no one knew the site of it today.

The march of time. So much fell by the wayside. She felt that old, nostalgic twinge again.

It was doubtless Fran’s enquiry about the Raven banner that focused her attention on the grisly reference here. A real raven this time, though – and written in the common English form. More familiar; harsher-sounding. Hræfn.

Behind them, to divide the carrion meat,

They left the raven, dark and shadow-clad …

She thought of Simon suddenly, and couldn’t keep a wry smile from her lips. He failed to see how she could find this stuff so interesting. Give him football any day. Or tinkering with cars.

They had some common interests though – like good Italian food and conversation. He’d booked them a table for Saturday night. The prospect was a pleasing inner glow.

… and æt græg deor,

Wulf on wealde.

Time for bed. She yawned into her hand, and closed the book. No wiser for the words she had consumed.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.