Saxon's Bane (12 page)

T
HE RHYTHM OF
the village had changed the following morning. Fergus set off on his bicycle into a fog that deadened sound and smothered light, as if spring had reversed back into winter. He’d become accustomed to seeing the same patterns of movement. Village people, apparently, were as regular in their lives as commuters who caught the same train each morning. Clare, he knew, was a temporary feature as she packed in a morning run before returning home for the Easter weekend, but the slack-bellied men swivelling their heads to watch her run past would still be fetching their morning paper at the same time without the distraction of her body. Their faces, though, had a haunted look about them in the fog.

Tony Foulkes was also an early riser, usually striding out behind a Labrador and calling cheerfully to everyone he met. Today the Labrador was tied to the church notice board, whining for its walk, while Tony and John Webster scrubbed at the church porch, letting daylight show them the smears they had missed the night before. Above them the tower faded into the fog so that its castellation appeared insubstantial, and the banner of St George beyond was a mere hint of scarlet in the void. Both men nodded at Fergus, their faces tightening into smiles that did not reach the eyes.

Fergus paused on his bicycle and called a greeting, wanting to offer support but unsure what to say. Webster hoped that the daubing was a childish prank, perhaps by the same kids who had been frightening old ladies by leaping out of bushes with biro tattoos on their foreheads. Webster had decided not to wait for the police, wanting his church to be cleaned of the stain without delay. Foulkes wondered how many children had access to a bucket of blood. He had scraped a sample into a plastic medicine bottle and taken photographs. Neither imagined that the police would take the incident very seriously. Fergus left them to their task.

The fog could not deaden the sounds of a furious row that spilt out of the office at Ash Farm later that morning. Fergus paused in his task of mucking out a stable, trying to hear the words. The shouting ended in a metallic crash and he started moving towards the house, hefting a fork. Jake stormed out while he was still crossing the yard, slamming the door behind him and almost knocking Fergus over as he passed.

Eadlin looked up from where she was gathering scattered rubbish from the floor, and nodded. It looked as if the waste bin had been kicked against the wall.

“Sodding man.” She picked up a toppled desk tidy that had scattered a spray of pencils and slammed it upright, hard enough for more pencils to bounce out and rattle across the desk. “Sodding, bloody man. Can’t think what I ever saw in him.” Eadlin slumped into her chair, closing her eyes as if with a bad headache. “I need to let off steam. Let’s go for a hack. It’s time you rode out.”

Outside in the yard Jake was swinging into the saddle, yanking at his horse’s mouth to turn it towards the bridleway.

“If you think I’m ready.” So far he’d only ridden in the sand school.

“You’re ready, on the right horse. We’ll keep it gentle, like.” Fergus’s attention was still on Jake. The horse was prancing under him in the car park, feeling its rider’s tension, and Fergus winced as he saw Jake’s riding crop swing backwards in a punishing blow to its rump. The horse bucked at the sting but Jake stayed glued to the saddle, perfectly balanced, and then struck again, hard.

“Bastard.” Eadlin had seen the blows. “I can’t believe he just did that.”

Eadlin led Fergus out of the farm on a different route. She was quiet for the first few minutes, riding ahead of him up a narrow track towards the hills. Her shoulders were set and her horse was skittish, jogging in its impatience to run, so that its tail swished with the movement. Above it, Eadlin’s hair flowed from under her riding hat, an auburn waterfall echoing the chestnut below. Then the path widened and she stood in her stirrups, turning back to invite him alongside.

“Sorry ’bout that. Jake, I mean.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She breathed so deeply that her shoulders broadened as if she was about to hit something.

“Jake and I are history.” She exhaled, her body settling deeper into the saddle. “We’ve been history since Ostara, even though he won’t accept it. No woman dumps Jake, you see? His ego won’t allow it.”

“Was that why you were arguing?”

“Nah, today’s fight was about the blood on the church. Things are getting way out of hand.”

Fergus wondered what ‘things’ were getting out of hand. He was also surprised. He hadn’t seen Jake as someone who’d daub blood on a church. “You think Jake did that?”

“Nah, not him personally, and he’ll have a dozen cronies who’ll swear he was in his pub all evening. But the stag mark tells me it’ll have been done by one of his gang, someone who looks up to him, like that little runt Dick Hagman.”

“You mentioned him once before.”

“He’s a local odd-job man. He’s not the sharpest tool in the box but like one or two other Green Man regulars, he idolises Jake. If it’s not Dick Hagman, it will be someone like him, so I hold Jake responsible.”

“Look, it was a pretty sick thing to do, but why are you so upset about graffiti on a Christian church?”

As the track rose towards the hills the sun started to burn off the fog so that they rode in a bright, suffused light. For a moment the only sound was the wet brushing of the horses’ hooves as they pushed through the grass. When Eadlin spoke she sounded calmer.

“The Old Way survived round here because we was quiet about our beliefs. People said we was just keeping quaint local traditions alive and we didn’t, like, threaten anyone. Even the healing was done as a favour to friends. Now it feels like Jake wants to start a war.”

“What’s his problem? What does he want to fight about?”

“Y’know, I’m not sure? It’s like he’s just flexing his muscles, trying to prove he’s king of the roost. But please, let’s stop talking about him. He’s spoiling my ride.”

Fergus was content to be quiet and enjoy the novelty of being in the open on horseback. Ahead of them the Downs were taking shape through the cloud. Already the sky was almost blue overhead, fading to soft grey where mist swallowed the trees above the hedgerows. In front of them the path opened into a short valley that carved a green notch into the band of woodland beneath the Downs. A large bird of prey circled over the grass, making a high, plaintive, keening wail, like a farmer whistling for a lost dog. There was something unearthly about the call.

“Red kite,” Eadlin said, pointing her riding crop at it, then grinned across at him, calmer now. “Let me show you somewhere special.” She nodded up the valley to where its two-field width narrowed to one, which in turn ended in an angle under the trees, still opaque in the distance. Eadlin set off towards the trees at a canter, then let out a
whoop
and lifted out of the saddle to crouch jockey-like as she put her horse into a gallop. Fergus watched her little thoroughbred pull away from his docile mount the way a sports car accelerates past a truck. By the time he caught up with her in the angle of the field she had already dismounted and was grinning widely.

“Sorry ’bout that, leaving you behind, like.” The smile and flushed face belied her words. “Horse therapy. It clears the mind. Hold the horses, I’ll shut the gate. The farmer won’t mind if we let them graze for a while.”

Fergus lowered himself out of the saddle, reconnecting with his limp after the exhilaration of the canter. Eadlin led him on foot into the outskirts of the woods, following the banks of a small stream, and making no compromise for his pace of movement so he struggled to catch up. Where the hill steepened around them, the stream emerged from its source in a marshy tangle of roots beneath ancient trees.

“Come and sit.” Eadlin patted a root lying along the surface, as thick as a tree trunk and furred with moss. “Mind the bluebells. They’ll be lovely in May.” The area was carpeted with the green starfish shapes of young plants. As Fergus sat, Eadlin squatted on her heels by the stream, folded over her riding boots, and splashed water on her face in a way that appeared to be more a cleansing ritual than refreshment. From her pocket she drew a crumpled paper bag and emptied the contents into the palm of her hand before scattering them on the surface of the stream. They looked like dried herbs, and a faint floral fragrance drifted up to him. Eadlin sang quietly to herself as she lowered her hands into the water, washing the dust into the stream.

“Some kind of offering?” Fergus asked as she sat beside him.

“Think of it as a mark of respect. Can you feel this place? It’s probably been sacred since the earliest tribes came, long before Christ.”

Fergus looked around him, seeing a woodland dell, mainly brown and bare but splashed with the latent greens of spring. He was not sure what he was supposed to notice, or feel.

“It’s very pretty.”

“Sod pretty. Relax, shut your eyes, empty your mind. Tell me what comes to you.”

Fergus closed his eyes and breathed deeply.

“I hear things.” It may have been his imagination, but his hearing felt sharper in this place. “The kite, a woodpecker. There’s a breeze coming, clearing the fog. It’s stronger above us, out of the shelter of the valley.” He surprised himself with his eloquence.

“Good. What else?”

“The smell of the earth. Rich.” Fergus decided not to mention the waft of animal droppings. “And I smell you. Horse smells and femininity.”

“Thank you. Don’t flirt, not now. Forget the senses you know about, what do you
feel
?”

Fergus let his mind empty. It was there, on the edge of sensation. It may have been planted by her suggestion, but he felt a hint of something old yet strong, a pure gentleness at the heart of all things.

“Vitality. Harmony.” There was a note of wonder in his voice.

“That’s it. Breathe it. Open yourself to it.” Without opening his eyes, Fergus knew from Eadlin’s silence that she too was absorbing the moment and the place. He felt he was being given a glimpse of Eden, and in his mind he reached for it but the vision faded, fragmenting beyond his touch as if it had been a reflection on a lake and he had thrust his hand through the water’s surface.

“Don’t try too hard. Open your mind, be peaceful, and it may come to you, but it can never be commanded. If it comes to you, and if you can find that focus, you’ll find more wisdom there than in a whole world of books. You can open your eyes now.” Below them the horses grazed quietly in the field, the kite was still circling, but they now all felt connected in a universal harmony. Eadlin’s smile was wholesome and somehow at one with the landscape.

“I was right, you
are
sensitive. Maybe you’ve always been, but never discovered the gift. Maybe it’s something that stayed with you when you touched the shadow world.”

Fergus fumbled for words, unable to describe what he had glimpsed, but only one word fitted the moment.

“Peace...”

“Some people can find that peace anywhere. For most of us it’s easier in certain places. Springs like this one, even churches. Some people never find it at all. I doubt if Jake has.”

Fergus felt as if a fragment of distant music had called to him, but faded before he could listen properly. The silence became companionable; the sighing of the wind through the trees above them was all the communication that was required.

“You mentioned once that Jake had found his own path,” he said eventually. He guessed that here, in this place, she wanted to talk.

Eadlin nodded. “His family were part of the Old Way, but we’ve always been a bit too peaceful for him. Last year he started experimenting with Wicca.”

“Wicca. That’s another name for witchcraft, isn’t it?”

“I think its appeal to Jake is that Christians see it as the Enemy. He was caught stealing from the church, you see, when he was a kid. Long before John Webster came. He had form, as they say, so Jake did time in a young offenders institution. I don’t know what happened to him there, but he came back hating the organisation that put him there.”

“So what does Wicca involve?” Fergus was fascinated.

“Actually Wicca is pretty new. People are trying to re-invent something out of scraps of old knowledge. I’m sure some Wiccans are perfectly decent people, but Jake’s found a darker form. Somewhere along the line he’s picked up some pretty nasty ideas.”

In front of them two pigeons strutted an elaborate courtship ritual on a branch overhanging the field. Their neck-rubbing and cooing was in harmony with the place in a way that talk of witchcraft would never be.

“Is that why you split up?”

“Partly. He started killing things. Sacrificing them.” Eadlin started pulling at the crumpled paper bag in her hands, shredding it distractedly in her fingers so a fragment dropped into the stream and spun slowly away. “No follower of the Old Way would do that. We’ve too much respect for nature.”

“So who or what are they worshipping?” This place made everything possible. A month ago he’d have reacted with derision.

“The Horned God and the Goddess.” Eadlin paused, and swallowed. “Christians would call the Horned God ‘Satan’.”

In front of them the pigeons had started to mate, flapping furiously on the branch, their tails entwined. Fergus started to wonder what sort of world he had arrived in, where a woman would greet the sunrise halfnaked on her lawn, then talk in matter-of-fact terms of Satanic worship as if it was as natural as the pigeons having noisy sex in front of them.

“There was something else.” She balled the remains of the paper bag in her palm. “Wiccans believe that the Gods use people as proxies, like, so the priest and the priestess in a ritual actually become the Horned God and the Goddess.” Eadlin paused. She seemed embarrassed. On the branch the pigeons had finished copulating and were sitting side by side. Fergus could swear one of them looked smug.

“Go on.”

“In some of their ceremonies, the Horned God screws the Goddess. ‘Ritual union’ Jake calls it, which is a fancy name for a public fuck. Last year Jake asked me to play the part of the Goddess, at Halloween or Samhain as he calls it. Now I’ll make love with someone because I love him, or maybe even if I only fancy him, but there’s no way I’m going to have sex in front of others, particularly as part of some nasty ritual that I don’t even believe in.”