Midnight Is a Lonely Place

by Barbara Erskine

  XXIV

  The priests had walked in solemn procession to the sacred place in the circle of trees on the ridge above the marsh. Nion was not senior among them – he was young – but his royal blood gave him a certain precedence as they made their way, robed and solemn, to their appointed places in the circle.

  Nion glanced round. The faces of his teachers, his friends, his colleagues, were taut, their thoughts turned inwards, their bodies bathed and dedicated to their purpose. He grimaced, trying to turn his own mind to prayer and meditation. The choosing of the sacrifice was a ceremony he had taken part in only once before. On that occasion the sacred bread had been baked on the flame and broken as laid down by tradition centuries old. The scorched piece, the piece which belonged to the gods, had been chosen by an old druid of four score summers or more – a man dedicated and ready for whatever the gods decreed. But even he, when he drew out the burned portion and knew that he was to die, had betrayed for a brief moment a flash of terror, before he had bowed his head in acceptance.

  The ceremony was strictly ordained. The man was honoured by his colleagues, crowned with gold. In the hours that remained he would bid farewell to his family, order his affairs and at the last divest himself of all his raiment, bathe in waters sanctified with herbs and spices, then, drinking the sacred, drugged wine of death he would kneel willingly for the sacrifice: the garotte if his death was dedicated to the gods of the earth, the rope if to the gods of the sky, and the third death, the death by water if to the gods of the rivers and seas.

  Now Nion watched, his head covered, as were those of the others, as the bakestone was blessed and heated. His mouth was dry with apprehension, even though the choice was preordained. He stole a glance at the oldest druid there, a man as frail as a windblown reed, his bald pate beneath the linen veil wrinkled as an old, dead leaf. Almost certainly he would be chosen, the bread passed in such a way that his would be the burned piece. How did he feel, knowing that by the next dawn he would be dead?

  Nion closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on prayer, but at noon he was to meet Claudia. His body, strong, vigorous, lusty, quivered at the thought. Sternly he reprimanded himself, and brought his thoughts back to the scene before him.

  The bread was cooking now, the fragrance sharp on the morning air. His nostrils picked up the acrid smell of scorching and he swallowed nervously, his eyes going once more automatically to the old man who had blanched to an unhealthy shade of buttermilk.

  He watched, arms folded beneath his cloak, as the bread was allowed to cool and broken into small pieces – twenty-one, seven times three – one for each of them, and put into the basket. Slowly it was carried round the circle. Slowly. Slowly. One by one the hands went in. The choice was made. The hands came out. One by one the faces relaxed into relief and the portion was eaten. The old one’s turn came. He put in his hand, shaking visibly, and withdrew it. Nion saw him turn the fragment over and over in disbelief. Then his face relaxed into a toothless smile. So, the gods had rejected an old, frail man. In the face of the threat from Rome such a sacrifice was not enough.

  Nion’s stomach knotted sharply in fear. He noticed suddenly that several men were watching him surreptitiously from beneath their headdresses.

  The woven bowl was coming closer. His hands were sweating. Only five more portions remained. Then it was before him, held in the hands of the archdruid who had baked the bread and taken the first piece himself. For a moment Nion hesitated. He raised his eyes to the other man’s face and read his fate even before he had put his hand in the basket.

  The bread fragment he took was crumbling, still warm from the bakestone, and it was burned black.

  The tide was high at six in the morning and the wind was from the north-east, crossing the Urals, dripping ice across the continents, whipping the sea into angry peaks of foam.

  Tossing in her bed, Alison was dreaming uneasily. All around her the cold wet earth was pressing down, clogging her nostrils, crumbling into her eyes, filling her ears so she could no longer hear, weighing her into the damp sedge. Hiding her. Hiding the truth. The truth which must be told. With a cry of panic she sat up, untangling herself from the duvet. She stared round the room. It was pitch dark and she could hear the rain pouring down in the garden outside. When it grew light there would be a puddle on the windowsill.

  Still dazed by her dream, she stood up and reached for her clothes. There was something she had to do; something urgent. The pounding behind her eyes was insistent, like the beat of the tide upon the shore, driving her, pushing her against her will. Opening the door she stood for a moment on the landing, listening. The house was silent. Her parents slept at the far end in a bedroom which looked out across the woods. Next to her, Greg and beyond him, Patrick, always slept like the dead until they were awakened. She shivered violently. Today was a day for awakening the dead.

  Scarcely knowing what she was doing she hauled on her waterproof jacket and forcing her feet into her boots she opened the door and peered out into the icy morning. The wind was roaring in from the north-east full in her face as she pulled the door shut with difficulty behind her and set off in the darkness towards the track through the woods. All she knew was that she had to get to the grave; she had to get there before the tide washed it away.

  She had to save it.

  XXV

  Kate had slept in the end, too exhausted to do anything else, but she too had awoken at six to the sound of rain against the windows. It was steady rain this time, hard and unrelenting and behind the sound of it she could hear the wind.

  She didn’t want to get up. There was something frightening downstairs, something which when daylight came she would have to confront, but until then she was going to stay where she was, safely tucked up in her bed with the lights on. Wearily she reached for her book and lay back huddled against the pillows.

  When she dragged herself out of bed an hour later and pulled back the curtains all she could see was blackness, alleviated only by the streaks of rain sliding down the glass. But she couldn’t go back to bed. She was too conscious of the silence outside her door.

  Pulling on a pair of jeans and a thick sweater she went out onto the landing and peered down. All seemed as usual down there. She stood for several seconds, then taking a deep breath she ran down and flung open the living room door. The room was empty. The woodburner still glowed quietly. All was as it should be. Lights burned in every room – God knows what her electricity bill would be when she left – but all was quiet. There were no strange smells, no figures lurking in the shadows.

  Her face doused in cold water and a mug of strong coffee at her elbow she poured some muesli into a bowl and reached into the fridge for some milk. She was a first class prize idiot with a powerful five-star imagination – how else could she be a successful writer – and a bad dose of nervous collywobbles. All she needed was food, coffee – both being attended to – and then a bracing walk in the rain to clear her head. Then in the cold light of day, probably with more coffee, she would switch on the computer again and get back to young George and his mother.

  The knock on the front door took her completely by surprise. Greg stood outside, his collar pulled up around his ears, rain pouring off his Barbour jacket. His hands were firmly pushed into his pockets.

  ‘You see. No key. I had to knock,’ he said grimly. The wind snatched the words from his lips and whirled them away with the rain. ‘May I come in, or am I too dangerous to allow over the threshold?’

  ‘Of course you can come in!’ Kate stood back to let him pass and then forced the door closed behind him. ‘Why the sarcasm?’

  ‘The sarcasm, as you call it, was perhaps engendered by two hours of questioning by the police last night who seem under the impression that you still think I robbed the cottage.’ He pulled off his jacket and hanging it on the knob at the bottom of the bannisters, shook himself like a dog. ‘I just thought I would come and thank you in person for your vote of confidence and, incidentally, collect o
ne or two of my things which I would rather not leave here any longer.’

  Kate could feel her antagonism rising to match his. ‘I assure you, I didn’t tell the police it was you. If they thought so they must have got the idea somewhere else,’ she said furiously. ‘And I must say, I wonder if they aren’t right. It seems the sort of half-baked stupid thing you would do to try and get me out. That was the idea, I take it? To get me out.’

  ‘It would be wonderful to get you out.’ He folded his arms. ‘As it happens, I think the wind and the weather will do it for me. Now, if you don’t mind, I should like to collect my property and then I shall leave you to your triumph behind your locked doors.’

  ‘What property exactly have you left behind?’ They were facing each other in the hall like a couple of cats squaring up for a fight. ‘It seems to me you cleared everything out on Wednesday night.’

  ‘The torn paintings, yes. There are two more here. On the walls.’ He strode past her into the living room. There in the corner, hanging near the window, was a small portrait sketch of a woman. Kate had hardly noticed it. He took it down and laid it on the table. ‘There is another upstairs. If you will permit me.’ Still unsmiling, he turned away and ran up the stairs two at a time.

  Kate shrugged. How petty could you get! In spite of herself she walked across to the picture and looked down at it. It was the woman whose portrait she had seen over and over again in the study at Redall Farmhouse, but in this version her figure was full length, her garment clearly drawn.

  He had come back into the room again in time to hear her gasp. ‘What is it?’

  She looked up at him, her face white. ‘You’ve seen her. You’ve see her here.’ She was accusing, taut with shock.

  ‘Who?’ In his hand he held the small picture of the bluebells which had been hanging in her bedroom. She glanced at it regretfully. It was so unlike his usual style. She had really rather liked that one.

  ‘The woman in the picture. I saw her. Last night.’

  He frowned. ‘You can’t have. I made her up. She came out of my head. She’s a pastiche of styles – something I was doing for fun. A doodle.’ A doodle of a face which had come without his bidding and which had tormented him.

  ‘A doodle of so much importance that you can’t leave her here with me.’ Kate spoke so softly he had to strain to hear.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. His voice was aggressive. ‘What do you mean you saw her last night? You had a visitor, did you? Are you sure she wasn’t a burglar or a vandal?’

  ‘She was a ghost.’

  She said it so flatly that he wasn’t sure he had heard her correctly. For a moment he stared at her. He was the one who was supposed to be doing the frightening; the one who had decided to use ghosts to scare her away, and yet, with that one small sentence she had sent a shiver down his spine, a shiver which had raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

  A moment later he shook his head. She was trying to play him at his own game. Fine, if that was the way she wanted it. ‘Where did you see her?’

  ‘There. Almost where you are standing. Your sketch is monochrome, but her dress was blue, like the other pictures you’ve done of her, the ribbons and combs in her hair were black.’

  Greg had to fight very hard the urge to move to another part of the room. ‘Supposing I admit that I have seen her.’ In his dreams; in his head; even in his heart. ‘Doesn’t it frighten you, sharing the house with a ghost?’

  For a moment she paused, as if she were considering. She looked him in the eye. ‘I suppose, if I’m honest it does, yes.’

  ‘But you’re going to stay, just to spite me.’

  ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, you have a very inflated idea of the importance you hold for me,’ she said seriously. ‘I’m staying because I came here to write a book; because this is my home for the next few months and because –’ she hadn’t meant to add this, but it came out anyway ‘– I have nowhere else to go. I can’t afford London rents at the moment.’ None of his business why.

  ‘So, you’re staying.’

  ‘So, I’m staying.’ She glanced at the painting under his arm. ‘I’m sorry you’re taking that. I liked it.’ The remark was a concession.

  He did not rise to it. It was a trifle, a pretty sketch of which he was not proud. ‘I am sure you can buy yourself a print if you need bluebells on your walls.’

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘I don’t think I’ll bother,’ she said dryly. ‘Now, if there is nothing else, I would like to get back to work and I expect you have to report to a police station somewhere.’ She smiled sweetly and was rewarded with a scowl.

  ‘No, I am sorry to disappoint you but they did not arrest me. Nor any of my friends.’

  ‘I’m sure it is only a matter of time.’ She stepped past him and went towards the front door.

  The wind had changed slightly and as she opened the door, rain swept into the hall, icy, harsh, cruel. She stood back and he walked out without a backward glance. By the time he had climbed up into the Land Rover she had closed the door and walked back into the kitchen.

  She was thoughtful. Every shred of intuition told her that he was not lying; that the break-in had had nothing to do with him. But the picture? What did the picture of the woman mean?

  She waited until he was safely out of sight before donning her weatherproof jacket and her scarf. Her enthusiasm had gone but she was determined to go out anyway, to clear her head, to get rid of the terrible throbbing behind her temples and, dragging her mind back to the book, to straighten out her thoughts about the next chapter. Somehow she had to rid herself of the images of the last few days. The cottage had ceased to be an impersonal place to work and think. It had become tied up with personalities: with Greg and Alison; with Roger and Diana – and, God help her, with Marcus and the lady in a blue gown.

  The grass clung wetly to her legs above her boots, soaking her trousers. Then she was on the short turf and then the sand. The tide was on the ebb, but the angry white-topped waves still lashed the beach, sucking at the stranded weed, filling the air with the sharp, cold smell of far-off ice.

  Turning her back doggedly on the dig Kate walked into the wind, her hands pushed firmly to the bottom of her pockets. The cold was so fierce it stung her face, it hurt to breathe. She clamped her lips tight across her teeth and, head down, walked firmly forward, scarcely aware of the beauty of the sea beyond the beach where the air was crystalline, the colour of mother-of-pearl, and the heaving mass of water had the solid shine of polished pewter. Somewhere nearby a gull screamed. She looked up and saw it weaving and circling effortlessly on the wind, part of the fearsome force of it.

  There is a pleasure in the pathless woods

  There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

  There is a society, where none intrudes,

  By the deep sea and music in its roar …

  It was elemental; wonderful. As always, Byron had the words to convey the power of the scene; if only she in her turn could bring his images into her book …

  The sand whirled around her feet in eddies, loosened by the sleet. Ahead she could see the body of another gull, one which had lost the battle with the elements, lying wet and bedraggled on a patch of wet shingle. A tangle of weed lay near it, and it was not until she was close, staring down sadly as she compared it with the beautiful wild beauty of its colleague above her head that she saw the cruel pull of nylon fishing line around its legs. Overwhelmed by anger at the thoughtless, careless arrogance of man she stooped to touch the mottled grey brown feathers. It wasn’t even an adult bird. This must have been its first winter, its first joyous tussle with the elements. The bird’s body was cold and hard, the feathers clamped scalelike against its body. Shivering, she straightened and walked on.

  She did not walk for very long. The opaque mist on the horizon was drawing closer; the wind strengthening. She could see a faint shadowing across the waves which was a shower of hail sweeping down the coast and towards Redall Bay. Turning, she walk
ed briskly back, more comfortable now that the wind was behind her.

  She had not intended to walk as far as the grave, but somehow she could not resist it. One glance, to see if it were still there. Each tide now was a threat. Each storm, each wind.

  Her shoes sliding on the side of the dune she was nearly there when the first shower of hail hit her. Sharp, biting, the ice cut her hands and face, tearing at her scarf as she scrambled the last few feet and stood looking down into the hollow below the exposed face of the dune to find that she was not the first person there. Alison was kneeling on the sand, her hands ungloved, hanging at her sides, her eyes fixed on the exposed face of the working. One glance at the trail of wet weed and shells showed Kate that the early morning tide had come nowhere near the edge of the excavation this time. It was still safe.

  She hesitated, unsure whether to creep away, not wanting to intrude and risk a mouthful of abuse. The girl was unmoving. Kate frowned. She took a step closer. There was no sign of any spades or trowels, no ghetto blaster, no tools of any kind. Still Alison had not moved. Her hair whipped wildly around her head; her jacket flapped, unzipped, around her body.

  ‘Alison?’ she called, uneasily. She paused, waiting for the girl to turn and swear at her for intruding upon her private thoughts, but Alison didn’t stir.

  ‘Alison!’ she called again, more sharply this time, and she began sliding down the side of the hollow. ‘Alison? Are you all right?’

  Alison gave no sign that she had heard. She was staring at the sand and peat face of the dune.

  ‘Alison?’ Her voice rising in alarm Kate put her arm around the girl’s shoulders. ‘Alison, can you hear me?’ She shook her gently. The girl’s body was rigid and cold beneath the flapping parka, clad, beneath it, in only a tee shirt and thin sweater. ‘Alison, what’s the matter?’