River of Destiny (67 page)

It was over coffee that he fixed her with a sudden gimlet gaze. ‘You didn’t drink your wine,’ he said quietly.

She shook her head. ‘I am sorry. I didn’t feel like it. I could tell it was lovely.’ She fell silent; the smell of the wine had made her feel nauseous. She looked up and met his eyes almost defiantly. He was, she had already realised, the kind of man in whom one could confide. ‘I think I might be pregnant.’

‘I see. And this was not, I take it, planned.’ He did not seem shocked or even uncomfortable with her confidence.

‘No.’

‘Your husband’s or Leo’s?’

She didn’t reply for several seconds. ‘Leo’s,’ she said at last.

‘Does he know?’

She shook her head. ‘I’ve only just begun to suspect it myself.’ She looked up at him. ‘What do you think he would say if I am?’

She waited, watching his face.

‘He misses his girls dreadfully,’ he said at last. ‘He was a good father. Is a good father,’ he amended. ‘She still rings him if there is a crisis and her current man fails her; she always expects Leo to drop everything, come to the rescue. And he does.’

‘I would never try and come between them.’

‘Nor could you.’ He stood up, reached across the table, relieved her of her glass and began to sip it himself as he went over to the fire to throw on another log. ‘Are you happy with the possibility of a baby?’ he asked thoughtfully. He was standing looking down into the flames.

‘Yes.’ It was true, she realised. ‘My husband never wanted children and had a vasectomy. I sort of went along with it without thinking it through very carefully. But lately –’ She paused. She was remembering her dream. ‘I suppose as I got older the time clock started to kick in. I realised that I had never made that decision for myself. I was regretting it enough to have dreams about it.’
When you have children, Zoë … your love for them must come first. Always.
Steve’s voice echoed suddenly in her head. His words applied to Leo as much as her.

She came over and stood beside Max. ‘I would never batten on Leo, Max. I am only just beginning to sense the possibility of freedom. If I am pregnant, and if I’m honest I hope I am, I want to cope on my own. I hope he will be there for me, but I would never want to do the little wifey thing again. I don’t know if pirate molls can have small children in tow, but whatever I do, it will be on my terms.’

‘He told me something very strange.’ Max dropped into one of the two baggy old armchairs by the hearth. ‘He thinks your destiny and his have been manipulated by the forces of Wyrd, the ancient spirits of fate and destiny. He was sitting watching the sun go down, he told me on the phone this afternoon, staring out at the river and he could feel them all around him. He said you had gone to bury a Saxon sword to appease an ancient curse. That sounds to me like his kind of woman.’

Zoë smiled. She was still staring down at the fire. ‘You must think we are both dotty.’

‘No. I’ve lived in Suffolk most of my life. From time to time we’re all a bit duzzy, as we call it round here, but there’s more out there than any of us will ever know for sure. If Leo believes it then he does so with good reason.’

‘I’d like to think the spirits of Wyrd were with us.’

‘And I’m sure they are, my dear. But be careful. They are powerful and not to be treated lightly.’

Next morning. Max greeted Zoë with a cup of tea and the news that he had spoken to the police in Woodbridge. ‘The accusation against Leo was withdrawn yesterday. You have nothing to worry about. It was made maliciously and the police are satisfied there is no truth to it. So, let us have breakfast, my dear, and then I am going to drive you into Woodbridge before we head down towards Felixstowe Ferry. ‘We need to find out about the pregnancy. Better to know what we’re dealing with, don’t you agree?’

Putting off the moment for just a few more minutes she stood on the quayside watching the busy weekenders on their boats. She wasn’t sure what drew her attention to the scarlet-hulled yacht motoring slowly down the freeway, but the sight of Ken at the wheel made sure she stayed staring at it. Almost at once she put a name to the stunning blonde standing at the mast, staring down-river ahead of them as they threaded their way between the moorings. ‘Sylvia Sands,’ she murmured. No wonder Ken had been so eager to be reasonable about their parting. ‘Good luck, Ken,’ she whispered. ‘I hope she makes you happy.’

Shaking her head she turned towards the shops, leaving Max in the car. She was making for the chemist. Her purchase tucked into her handbag, she dived into the Ladies in the car park to do the test.

Returning to the car she closed the door and sat for a moment staring straight ahead through the windscreen. Max waited patiently, his hands relaxed on the wheel until she was ready to speak.

‘It was positive,’ she whispered.

‘Are you pleased?’

‘I think so.’

He turned and smiled at her. ‘Good. Let’s go and tell Leo.’

Just for a moment Rosemary had felt herself free. The fires had died and the gods were silent and she had found herself standing on a wild heath at the side of the burial mound. She could see the air all around her crisscrossed with gossamer threads of light. Everything was linked. Everything had a pattern and a plan. She stared down at the earth of the grave and saw that the sword had been returned, but it was in the wrong place. It was in the wrong grave. It was where the murdered man and woman had lain. It wasn’t in the hand of the warrior who owned it, who needed it.

She moved towards the mound, wanting to protest. Whoever had put it there had meant well but they had got it wrong. It had to go back in the right grave before it was found by the archaeologists and removed for ever. She reached out and saw the wavering light streaming from her fingertips. It was growing weaker. She was growing weaker. She could not move the sword.

Desperately she looked round. This was a place of magic, surrounded by spells, protected by charms and curses. She could see them now, the men and women who had gathered in this place and somehow she knew how they had died. He stood there, the tall man who had been the leader of his people, his illness shrugged off in death, his hand reaching out for the sword that lay on the ground out of his reach. There were those who had died at the hands of the Viking invaders, and a blonde young woman who carried her unborn child in her arms and at her side the swordsmith, the man who had made the sword Rosemary had pulled so carelessly from its sleeping place. There were generations of the dead; those who had died a natural death and those who had been murdered, a mother carrying her stillborn baby in her arms, men and women who had died in wars far afield and had been drawn back to the land of their birth and there, near her, stood the Anglo-Saxon sorcerer who had blessed and empowered this corner of a Suffolk field and forged from it an entry to the Otherworld.

The Christian priest Wulfric was beside him, as were generations of his successors, come to watch and to pray, and at last she understood. This was holy ground and she had wanted to defile it. She leaned forward in desperation and ran her fingers through the soil. It was light as dust. Her touch left no imprint at all.

She could see Steve, too, now, sitting at her bedside in the hospital as the alarms began to sound from the monitors and she watched in anguish as he began to cry. A nurse came and switched off the machines; she saw the woman put her hand gently on Steve’s shoulder. Slowly the sound of his sobs began to fade into the distance as she felt herself drifting away.

Zoë told Leo about the baby as they stood on the beach looking out at the wild North Sea. The
Curlew
was moored round the corner in the river, sheltered from the sudden storm, and Max was waiting for them in the pub.

‘It’s a bit of a facer, isn’t it?’ she said at last, the wind whipping the words away. He hadn’t spoken for several minutes, as they watched the waves crashing over the shingle banks.

He turned to look at her and she saw his face was wet, but whether from tears or from the veils of spume rearing up into the air and soaking the shingle she wasn’t sure. He put his arm round her shoulders. ‘It was your destiny to have a child,’ he said. He was shouting against the roar of the wind and waves. ‘That is what brought you to Suffolk. I am honoured that it is mine.’

She waited for him to say something else but he was staring out towards the horizon, watching the waves. So be it. She was content with that. She was a wild child now, independent and free, and her baby, whatever happened, was a pirate’s child.

She realised suddenly that he had turned his back on the beach and was watching her. He grabbed her hand. ‘Come on. Let’s get to the pub and wet the baby’s head. There can’t be many children that have the Sisters of Wyrd as their godparents.’

Anlaf the sorcerer watched from the shadows as the archaeologists returned to the site of Lord Egbert’s burial.

The curse went with the sword and the debt had been paid by the woman who had dragged it from the earth. An attempt had been made to put things right, to return the sword, even to bless the site. It was enough. He who had laid the curse, could lift it now.

This was a sacred place, it would always be a sacred place, a place of the ancestors, a place of dedication and of prayer.

He would mediate with the Sisters of Wyrd.

Out in the river the tide had turned. The mist was lying thick over the saltings. With heavy beating wings a formation of swans flew down the river towards the sea.

In Norse legend swans carried the restless Viking soul to the hall of the Valkyries. The ship would not return. The river was at peace.

There is no Timperton Hall or Hanley Heath and the events in this story are purely fictional. But … a ghostly ship does appear occasionally in the estuary of one of the Essex rivers. Maybe there is one on the Deben as well.

Sutton Hoo, is of course, real, as were the Viking raids along the eastern seaboard of these islands. AD 865 was the year that the ‘
micel hæðen here
’ or great heathen army, led by Ivar the Boneless, headed for eastern England. As
The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
puts it, somewhat laconically, ‘And this same year came a great host to England and took winter quarters from the East Anglians … ’ In the following years they were to travel north leaving ‘immense slaughter’ in their wake.

Thank you again to the team at HarperCollins, to Susan Opie and Lucy Ferguson, my brilliant editors, and to Carole Blake, my agent, as always my support and right-hand woman.

For further notes, photos and information about the book and its location please see my website www.barbara-erskine.com

A historian by training, Barbara Erskine is the author of three collections of short stories, and eleven bestselling novels that demonstrate her interest in both history and the supernatural.
Lady of Ha
y, her first novel, has now sold over two million copies worldwide. She lives with her family in an ancient manor house near Colchester, and a cottage near Hay-on-Wye.

For more information, visit her website, www.barbara-erskine.com.

Lady of Hay

Kingdom of Shadows

Encounters
(Short Stories)

Child of the Phoenix

Midnight is a Lonely Place

House of Echoes

Distant Voices
(Short Stories)

On the Edge of Darkness

Whispers in the Sand

Hiding from the Light

Sands of Time
(Short Stories)

Daughters of Fire

The Warrior’s Princess

Time’s Legacy

HarperCollins
Publishers

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Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollins
Publishers
2012

Copyright © Barbara Erskine 2012

Barbara Erskine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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

EPub Edition © July 2012 ISBN: 978 0 00 745565 2

Version 1

FIRST EDITION

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

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