Time's Legacy (11 page)

‘Why do I take that as being a criticism?’ Mat said mildly.

‘It’s not meant that way,’ Cal called. She had dropped a lump of butter into the pan with some creamy milk and was energetically beginning to mash the potatoes.

‘They spoke English,’ Abi said after a moment. ‘It sounded like normal English to me. The little girl with the limp was called Petronilla.’

Mat and Cal stared at her. ‘You spoke to them?’ Cal said after a minute. Her voice had dropped to an awed whisper.

Abi shook her head. ‘No. Or at least I did but they didn’t seem to hear me. I just listened to what they were saying. The little girl was calling her mother.’

‘I never saw a little girl,’ Cal said. She had abandoned her potatoes. She pulled a chair away from the table and dragged it over to Abi. Sitting down she stared at Abi’s face with such intense concentration that Abi looked away embarrassed. ‘And I never heard them say a word. They spoke English with no accent?’

Abi nodded.

‘So much for the Roman theory,’ Mat said. He seemed disappointed. ‘They must be far more recent.’ He didn’t seem to doubt that they were ghosts.

Cal stood up and went back to her pan. She ground some pepper over it, then put down the grinder and came back to the fire. ‘The little girl was limping, you say?’

Abi nodded. ‘She looked very ill.’ She was beginning to feel guilty. She seemed to have destroyed some pet theory. ‘Have you never seen them in the house?’ she asked after a moment’s thought.

Cal shook her head.

‘And have there never been any reports of other people seeing them? Usually places get a reputation for being haunted, don’t they? A reputation which goes back for years.’

Mat sighed. ‘There have been lots of stories. But then, as you say, all old houses accrue these legends. There is one particular mention in an old book we’ve got – where is it Cal, can you remember? – I think that was where we got the idea that they were Roman.’

‘It’s in the study.’ Cal turned back to her pan yet again. ‘We’ll look for it later. Come on, folks. Let’s eat, then we’ll see what it says while we have our coffee.’

The book was printed in 1798.

‘Well, that takes the legend way back,’ Cal said as she turned the pages, looking for the entry. ‘Here we are. “The ruins are haunted by the ghosts of generations of Roman men and women who made our country their own. From time to time on moonlit nights they may be espied drifting through the remains of this once great house and their cries may be heard in the mists as melancholy as the call of the owls who haunt, no, hunt, the fields. Who knows, perhaps the great King Arthur himself stayed here on the way back to Avalon.”‘ She looked up and smiled. ‘I take it your guy didn’t look like King Arthur?’

Abi shook her head. She was leaning back in the chair, cradling a cup of coffee on her knee feeling extremely happy. The dogs were asleep at their feet in front of the fire. ‘No, he looked like a harassed family man. Not a knight or a round table in sight.’

‘The fact that they talk about generations of Romans, and then King Arthur means they don’t actually have a clue who the ghosts are,’ Mat put in. He had inserted himself into a high-backed settle against the wall. He held out his hand for the book. Flipping back to the flyleaf he squinted at it. ‘There are all sorts of inscriptions here, most of them smudged. The first owner of the book seems to have been an Edward Cavendish, then a Benjamin. Then a Maria.’ He smiled. ‘A bit like a family Bible. They all stake their claim in turn. I wonder how many of them saw them.’ He passed the book over to Abi. She held it for a moment uncomfortably. The leather cover was unexpectedly cold and damp and it smelled musty. Overwhelmed by a sudden wave of unhappiness Abi hastily put it down, resisting the urge to wipe her hands on her jeans as she stared down at it, puzzled.

Cal had been watching her face. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing. I’m not sure. It’s just – I felt strange for a moment. I’m tired. I’m sorry. I suppose the long drive and everything that has been happening are catching up with me a bit. Would you think me very rude if I went up?’

‘Of course not,’ Cal said sympathetically. ‘You must do whatever you like here, Abi. Our home is your home. We’ll see you in the morning.’

They waited until she had closed the door behind her, then Mat and Cal exchanged glances. Cal leaned forward and picked up the book. She held it for a few moments thoughtfully. ‘What was it she felt?’ she said quietly.

Mat shrugged. ‘Something pretty horrible. Does it feel strange to you?’

Cal shook her head. She was holding the book in both hands, turning it around. ‘She’s very psychic, isn’t she. Ben did say the bishop was worried.’ With a shrug she put the book down. ‘Do you think we ought to tell Ben when he comes over tomorrow?’

‘It might be good to let it come up in the conversation naturally with her there.’ Mat stood up and stretched. Immediately the two dogs rose to their feet, tails wagging. ‘I’ll take them for a walk up the drive before bed. You go on up.’ He reached for the fireguard and hauled it into place in front of the dying embers. ‘It looks as though our guest is going to prove quite interesting.’ He winked at her as he made his way to the door. ‘Perhaps she will be the one finally to unravel the story of those poor, cold souls out there in the garden.’

6

‘What is wrong, Mama?’ Petra looked up from the fire where she was sitting huddled in a cocoon of sheepskins and woven rugs. It had been a wet summer and now it was a wet autumn, the fens still lakes, the fields puddled. The colours of the dogwoods and maples on the slopes of the hills were already brilliant against the clouds when the sun appeared, but tonight as on so many nights, everything was awash. The summer country had not dried out this year.

Lydia was standing staring down into the hissing logs, her own cloak pulled tightly round her shoulders, her lips set in a hard line as they listened to the rain beating down on the reed thatch above their heads.

‘Your father and your brother should be home by now.’

I thought Papa said he would be gone for several days.’ Petra was trying to keep her teeth from chattering.

‘And several days have passed.’

Lydia squatted down and held her hands out to the flames. ‘And Romanus. He promised me he would be back by nightfall.’

‘Perhaps Mora wasn’t there. He wouldn’t come back without her.’ The girl forced a smile. ‘He will wait at the college until she returns, you know how much he likes her.’

The scene had been played out so many times before. Romanus, Lydia’s son, Petra’s young brother, had gone across to the island to fetch the healer, Mora. When she came she brought herbs and amulets, incantations and magic, gentle, confident smiles and warm comforting hands to make his sister more comfortable in the mysterious illness which was reducing her more and more quickly to a small shrunken figure overwhelmed with pain. And while they waited, Lydia’s husband, the children’s father, would have made his way to the coast to meet the trading vessels, to broker deals between the merchants who came from across the world to the port of Axiom, bringing wine and luxury goods from across the Empire and buying in exchange local lead and tin and copper, slaves and hunting dogs. Above all he went to meet the trading vessels which had come from the Roman provinces of Gaul and Hispania and from the Tyrrhenian Sea itself. He was frustrated in his self-appointed exile, lonely and homesick. It never seemed to occur to him that his wife might be as well. That she too might need to be out of the little primitive house to which he had brought them all, the house in the cold damp country which had crippled his daughter with its icy winds and creeping mists and was turning his British-born son into a rebellious thug.

At the time it had seemed they had no choice. Gaius Atilius Geminus had been born, the elder by several hours, one of a pair of twins. Miraculously both children and their mother had survived, though the younger child, Flavius, had for a long time been sickly and was shorter and markedly less handsome than his brother. The difference had set them apart and in spite of their parents’ insistence that both children be treated alike in every way, the younger twin grew up perceiving nuances of favouritism towards his brother at every turn. Childish rivalry grew into teenage jealousy and then into adult resentment. Flavius used his not inconsiderable charm and strength of personality to steal effortlessly and maliciously everything his increasingly reclusive elder brother held dear. Especially his girlfriends. When at last Gaius found the woman he wanted to marry, Flavius set his cap for her at once. She rejected him. Flavius grew angry. He went to a sibyl practising her trade near the Temple of the Vestals and bought charms to win her over. When they didn’t work he went back demanding a refund and, when the woman told him spitefully that she had seen in her scrying bowl his doom in a woman’s eyes, he thought better of it and produced his purse and bought curses instead. His jealousy of his brother turned to hatred. The young men’s parents, well aware of what was happening and blaming themselves, though not knowing what they could have done differently, settled on the idea of buying Flavius a commission in the army to take him away from Rome. He was posted to the Province of Judea, but then, as effortlessly as he accomplished most things Flavius turned the plan around, manoeuvring himself into the exclusive Imperial bodyguard. It would be Gaius who would have to leave. Uncomplaining, he apprenticed himself to a merchant trader and proved himself extremely able, travelling further and further abroad on the ships owned by his wealthy employer, his young and beautiful wife at his side. They travelled to Gaul and Hispania, south into Mauritania and to Leptis Magna, to Egypt and finally north again to Macedonia, and at last to Antioch and Damascus where their first child, Petronilla, was born. The little family were happy and secure and reasonably wealthy. Then they heard that Flavius had managed to obtain a posting back to Caesarea. He was on their trail.

Anxious to avoid him and his never-ending spite they travelled to the edge of the known world, to Britannia, and there they decided to stay. Flavius would never find them in this mist-shrouded isle. The country was mysterious, sacred. It was also the seat of a bustling trading economy and Gaius found himself at once busy and in demand as a negotiator and entrepreneur. At first they settled in Calleva. It was Petra’s illness which had pushed them westwards to Ynys yr Afalon, the Isle of Apples, where the college of druids, in one of the most sacred of the great sanctuaries of the Pretannic Isles, boasted, so it was said, the cleverest healers in the known world, and there their son Romanus was born, named for the city from which they haled and which they both still missed so much. Gaius turned his attention northwards to the ports on the estuary of the great river Sabrina, where the trade in lead and silver was at its most active and lucrative, leaving Lydia at home with the children in a small house in the foothills of the Meyn Dyppa, overlooking the meres and lakes and the island where the buildings of the college clustered around the strange conical hill they called the Tor, which was the centre of its power and sacredness.

The Roman family had been welcomed by their neighbours. They were some distance from the nearest hill fort, the centre of the local branch of the great Dubunni tribe, but the area was safe and free from danger. Their farmstead though not large was comfortable, the main house, round and reed-thatched like those of their neighbours was most of the time warm and dry and well appointed. But it could not keep out the creeping damp of the autumn mists, nor the bone-aching cold of the winter winds. They made friends, they had servants and slaves to work the small patches of ground where they grew beans and peas and in the larger fields barley and oats and to watch over the sheep which grazed on the hills around them. In the summer the countryside was benevolent and beautiful, rich in game and fish and very fertile. The warmth of even this northern sun penetrated Petra’s aching body and gave her some relief, but in the winter the girl grew more and more ill until she was crying with pain. The healers from the settlement helped her. They gave her decoctions made from the local willow trees which brought down her fever and let her rest. They were kind and reassuring. She would grow out of it, they said. This ailment was common amongst young girls in this country. Soon she would improve.

Then they met the beautiful and enigmatic Mora and Petra had made a friend and thirteen-year-old Romanus had fallen in love. Mora had come one day with one of the older, most experienced of druid healers. Mora was, he said, the daughter of Fergus Mor, the college father, the most senior druid on the island and she had a gift such as he had not seen in years. He felt that she would build up a rapport with Petra which would benefit them both. He handed over the case to the young woman, scarcely more than a few years older than Petra herself, and from that day the sick girl improved. Until now. A particularly vicious wind had blown from the north for days now, cutting Lydia to the bone. She could not begin to think how Petra must be hurting for the girl to cry so piteously.

Romanus had not been able to bear to see his sister in such pain. ‘I’ll go and fetch Mora,’ he said at last, and Lydia had let him go. What else could she do? She couldn’t stop him going to find the object of his infatuation now he had an excuse, and Mora was not due to come for at least a month. Besides, it was not far. It would mean running down through the woods and fields, then he would have to take one of the dugout canoes, and thread his way across the low-lying fens, following the deeper channels between the willow and alder and reeds, to the centre on the island where Mora lived. Easy for a boy of thirteen, but even so for reasons she did not quite understand, she had been filled with misgivings. The weather was bad, and Petra had clung to her brother begging him not to go. ‘Wait for Papa to return,’ she wailed. ‘I can hang on. There is enough of the medicine left.’

Lydia had glanced at the small jar on the shelf and shaken her head. There was barely any left at all.