River of Destiny (58 page)

‘Poor kid,’ Jeff said quietly. ‘It will be a long time before she forgives you that one, son.’ He glared at the boy.

‘Right, that’s it, we are going home. Now,’ Sharon said with a groan. ‘This minute. Pack the car. I’ve had enough.’

‘But, Mum,’ Jackson protested.

‘But Mum nothing!’ Sharon shouted at him. ‘We gave an undertaking to the police, if you remember, to take you home and keep you there.’

Upstairs Jade had buried her face in her pillow.

When the sobs had subsided at last she lay still, exhausted, and it was then she remembered her curse. She sat up, sniffing, and her face broke into a slow smile. Zoë was going to get pregnant by her horrible husband. She was going to get fat and ugly and puke all the time and Leo would hate her. He wouldn’t even want to look at her and then she was going to die while she was having the baby. It was all part of her magic spell, and her spells at school had never failed.

Well, not really, so there was no reason to think this one would. It had started when someone called her a witch. ‘I’ll show you, you cow,’ she had screamed back in fury. Later that day the girl had slipped and broken her ankle in the playground. Jade’s reputation was made.

When he returned the next morning Ken sat for several long minutes in the car, his eyes closed, then at last he climbed out, the newspaper in his hand. He had seen the Watts’s car outside their house and decided not to go over. What was there to say?

The story had made all the nationals. Most of them had covered what had happened in great detail, spread over two pages. According to the ones he had seen, Rosemary was in hospital in a coma and they were waiting to decide whether or not to operate. They said Jackson had been arrested and charged, but they didn’t say with what. There was a photo of the tractor and the offending plough and another of a police car. He gave a grim smile. Sylvia was a stringer for the local weekly. Her story would contain far more than this one, thanks to him. He hoped no one would guess where she had got her facts.

The morning was cold, blowy, with a heavy cloud cover as he walked from the garage towards the barn. He and Sylvia had talked long and seriously the night before, after which, decisions if not made, then at least mooted, he had spent the night with her. Now he was not feeling so certain about anything. After all, he hadn’t known her all that long and he had felt this strange euphoria before when he had started a new relationship. Never make promises, surely he should know that by now.

He stood outside the door, rattling the keys in his fist, putting off the moment. Behind him the whole place had a deserted feel. He glanced at his watch. It was after ten. Usually there were people about by now, especially at a weekend. But of course there was no one to be about. Steve would be in hospital with Rosemary; and as for the Watts, their car was outside but their front door was tightly shut.

He glanced over his shoulder. The Old Forge looked locked up and deserted as well. He walked into the kitchen and glanced round. The whole place was silent. Throwing down the paper, he rested his hand briefly on the kettle. Cold. Then he saw the note on the worktop. It was from Amanda to Zoë. He read it and felt a pang of guilt. So, the Danvers had left, presumably the day before, and he hadn’t been there to say goodbye. He hadn’t even realised that they had gone. He had noticed that their car was no longer parked against the wall in the garage yard but he had thought nothing of it, expecting to see it somewhere near the front door.

‘Zoë?’ he called. He walked through to the great room and looked round. From the chill in the air he could feel the woodburner was out. The place felt unsettled, unhappy.

He ran up the stairs two at a time and pushed open the door into their bedroom. It too was deserted.

Her car had still been there in the garage, so she must be around. He walked over to the bed and stood looking down at it, guessing sourly that it had not been slept in last night. After all, he had messaged her, told her he wouldn’t be coming back. With Amanda and John gone what had there been to keep her here, with lover boy right there on the doorstep? Suddenly that cryptic PS in Amanda’s note made sense. She had gone with Leo.

He glanced round again, then, without quite knowing why, he bent and glanced underneath the bed. There was something there, pushed in near the skirting board. He climbed stiffly down onto his knees and reached in to pull it out. It was small and metallic and very heavy. Retrieving it he stood up and gazed at it in puzzlement. It was a round lump of iron, roughly shaped into the torso of a woman with huge breasts and buttocks. He shuddered. What on earth was such a grotesque thing doing under their bed?

He put the figurine down on Zoë’s bedside table and went into the bathroom. Her toothbrush and make up were gone. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously and began a more serious search of the room. He was right. She had taken her handbag, her running shoes, a few clothes and, as far as he could see, her sailing gear.

For a moment his rage and jealousy were overwhelming; it was a while before he realised the irony of it all. He had come home to tell her he had found someone else. Whether or not he stayed with Sylvia would remain to be seen; what was certain was that he wanted a divorce and if he was honest with himself he had wanted one for some time. Perhaps even before they had moved. Perhaps the move had been a way of putting off the moment when he would have to decide, a chance to give them both a last crack at the marriage. But it hadn’t worked. If anything it had emphasised the differences between them. So why did he mind so much that she had made the same decision? He should be pleased. It would make life so much easier.

He sat downstairs in the great room for a long time, feeling strangely deflated. He had wound himself up to tell her, to reason with her, to face her tears and pleas, and she had not been there to listen. She had spent the night with another man. He was being illogical and hypocritical and he knew it. But still it hurt.

Later he walked down to the landing stage and looked out towards the mooring buoys.
Lady Grace
and
Curlew
lay as though quietly asleep in the grey water. Wherever she was, she and Leo were not on the boat.

He walked back up the lane past the scene of yesterday’s debacle in the field and stopped in astonishment. The whole burial mound had been encircled with blue police ribbon, and there were two four-wheel-drive cars and a black van drawn up in the field. Someone had rolled a rough track across the furrows so they could get close to the copse. He could see several people busy in amongst the trees. Curious, he walked over the mud towards them. One of the men straightened from his examination of the ground and came to meet him. ‘Can I help you, sir?’

Ken looked past him at the undergrowth. It had all been cut back now and there were floodlights trained on the ground. In the centre of the excavated patch of earth he could see a small blue jug, incongruous anywhere but especially at the scene of so much tragedy. ‘I’m sorry. I was here yesterday when the accident happened. I live here.’ He waved across the field towards the barns. ‘I wondered what was going on. Did Rosemary – Mrs Formby – is she all right?’

‘I understand Mrs Formby is seriously ill. You would have to enquire at the hospital.’

‘So, what is all this?’ Ken stared at him suspiciously.

‘We have found a body, sir, buried in the mound.’

Ken felt a shiver run across his shoulders. ‘An Anglo-Saxon body?’

‘No, sir. The doctor said he thought it was probably far more recent than that, a hundred years or so, maybe. We still need to finish photographing the scene of yesterday’s accident, then we will hand over to the coroner’s department. They will probably bring in forensic archaeologists, then we’ll know for sure.’

There had been no reply to her letter to her father and miserably Emily had written again. This time she gave it to one of the visiting tradesmen, with a large tip to persuade him to deliver it to the post. When she had an answer, she told him, she would give him as much again.

It was the fourth time she had visited the barn. Each time it was just after dawn, before the activity of the farm started in earnest. Once she had mistimed it and seen George and Robert harnessing the two Suffolk punches to the dray. She had waited, hidden behind the smith’s cottage, until they had disappeared up the lane, perched on the high seat behind the horses, then she had gone down to the yard. There was no one there. Young Benjamin, the boy who had been training with Daniel, who had hoped one day to be a smith himself, had gone. It was one of the undermaids who had told her, breaking the rule which seemed to apply at the Hall now, that no one should speak to her. She had felt that it would be permissible in order to pass on the news, with malicious venom in her voice, that he had run away, unable to get over the trauma of finding Dan’s body. His mother was distraught and the whole countryside had turned out to search for him but they had found no trace.

Emily walked into the barn and stood there hopelessly, not even knowing why she had come. Was his spirit there, waiting for her? The living were no longer prepared to talk to her, so perhaps the dead would do so.

There was a rustling in the straw bales and she jumped back as a large rat ran across the floor.

Daniel wasn’t there. There was no one there, just a huge barn, piled high with the year’s harvest, which, in the wind which was whipping across the countryside, was creaking like a ship at sea.

She turned back towards the doors and stopped in fright. There was a figure standing in the doorway. She couldn’t see who it was. It was dark in the barn; there was no sunlight outside. A shower of rain was sweeping across the yard.

‘Dan?’ She whispered the word under her breath and felt the hammer of fright under her ribs.

The figure moved forward a couple of steps and she narrowed her eyes, trying to make out his face. It wasn’t Dan. He wasn’t tall enough to be Dan, and Dan was dead. She shook her head slightly. Her veil was thick. She couldn’t see properly.

‘Who are you?’ she called out. ‘What is your business here?’

There was another sound, behind her this time, and she spun round.

The shadows were suddenly thick around her, the wind whisking at the wisps of hay, filling the place with dust. The barn was overwhelmed with the roar of the storm and the rain, slanting across the yard, rattling on the cobbles and on the roof above her head. The noise was deafening. Slowly she put her hands to her ears. As she closed her eyes to block out the chaos around her she felt the sudden vicious pressure of hands around her throat. There was no time to scream, no time to struggle. In seconds the world had gone black.

Zoë and Leo headed cautiously through the trees. Leo was carrying a canvas sail bag in which he had put the sword, carefully wrapped in newspaper. They skirted down towards the landing stage, which was deserted. There was no sign of anyone there, or on the track. They followed it towards Dead Man’s Field, keeping in the lee of the hedge, carefully peering round each bend as they approached the gate. From there they could see down to the copse.

‘The police are still there!’ Leo ducked back out of sight.

‘They can’t be!’

‘They are. There are two cars and lots of tape. We can’t bury the sword with them there.’

Zoë grabbed his hand and pulled him back down the lane. ‘Wait here with the sword. I’ll go and ask them what’s happening,’ she said.

Leo sighed unhappily. ‘I hope this doesn’t mean Rosemary has died. Would they accuse Jackson of murder? Surely not. It was a stupid accident and she was trespassing on someone else’s land.’

‘He drove straight at her, Leo.’ She turned and looked back towards the centre of the field. ‘We don’t want to be caught with the sword. They might think we looted it or something. You wait here out of sight. I’ll go and see if they’ll tell me anything.’

There were flames licking the surface of the mound. Rosemary shuddered. She hadn’t realised that there were people standing round, watching, when she had taken the sword. Shadowy people, ancient people, called from the distances to guard it. They did not want her to take it. They were angry. They had called on her to leave it but she had not heard them. She had taken it away and lost it.