by Jan Siegel
‘I understand.’
‘Sorry to bore you with all this. It seemed to be … necessary. The thing is, Rianna’s got no reason to lie to me about where she is or what she’s doing. It’s not as if I’m one of those paranoid husbands always checking up on their wives; I never do. If she was in London, she’d tell me. As for Nathan – I mentioned him to her, of course I did. Come to think of it, she did seem rather curious about him, I remarked on it at the time, but I didn’t think anything of it. Why should IP’
‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ Annie said.
Michael was silent for a minute, his gaze focused on nothing very much. ‘She rang me the night before last,’ he resumed eventually. ‘She wanted the local gossip. She never used to be interested in that kind of stuff – just the big issues – but since we came here … I told her about the Grimthorn Grail. I even told her you were going up to town.’
‘She could have followed us,’ Annie said, ‘from Sotheby’s. And then she came into the loo at the restaurant, not realizing I was in there, and rushed off when I recognized her.’
‘This is ridiculous,’ Michael said, giving himself a mental shake. ‘If Rianna had some sinister connection with you in the past, you’d know about it. Unless … supposing she knew your husband, before you met him? That might explain her interest in Nat’s parentage.’
‘Just for the record,’ Annie said, ‘the man in my life wasn’t my husband, and he wasn’t Nathan’s father, though Nathan doesn’t know that. I can’t think of any way Daniel could have met someone like Rianna. As for Nathan’s real father –’ it was her turn to pause and take a breath ‘– you will just have to take my word for it that it’s out of the question that Rianna could ever have known him.’ And she repeated, not meeting his eyes: Out of the question.’
There was a further silence. Annie wanted to speak, she wanted to look at him, but somehow she couldn’t. ‘I don’t want to force your confidence,’ he said at last, ‘but I wish you would trust me. It seems to me you’re carrying a very heavy burden – alone.’
At that, she looked up. ‘I have Barty.’
There was a crease between his brows. ‘Is he related to you? I’ve always assumed –’
‘No. Just a friend.’
‘I’m sure he’s very kind, but a man who’s lived all his life in the village, who’s never been anywhere, or done anything …’
‘He’s been somewhere,’ Annie said with inexplicable conviction. Despite what she knew of his history, she felt suddenly that he must have travelled widely, once upon a time, to know so much, to be who he was.
Michael looked both unconvinced and undecided, but a glance at the clock threw him off his stride. ‘Damn,’ he said with restraint. ‘I must go now. Damn and blast and bugger. We’ll talk tomorrow – or the weekend. Don’t worry. Whatever there is to sort out, we’ll sort it. It’s my business now. If Rianna’s mixed up in something, I need to know what it is. I must run – I’m going to miss my train.’ He deposited his mug in the sink, snatched up his jacket and case, and hurried out with Annie in his wake. ‘I could drop you off on my way to Crowford …’
‘No need. It’s a lovely day. I’d rather walk.’
‘Till tomorrow then …’
He went in such a rush she realized he had left the kitchen door on the latch. Annie knew she should go back to the shop – she had closed up for a couple of hours – but she lingered, conscious of temptation. If Rianna Sardou was spying on her, she reasoned, then she had a right to spy on Rianna – hadn’t she? Anyway, it couldn’t hurt just to have a look round. She didn’t really expect to see anything she hadn’t seen before – unless Rianna’s tower was unlocked. With a quick glance round, she went back into the house.
Initially, her exploration proved disappointing. Rianna’s tower was still locked, and naturally she would not pry into Michael’s rooms. In their joint bedroom she opened the cupboards, feeling horribly nosy and sly, but found only some items of winter clothing, evidently unneeded at the moment, piles of expensive bed linen, spare pillows and towels. She thought it strange that there were few personal photographs: it was hardly surprising they had no children, in view of the nature of their marriage, but Michael had once mentioned a married sister, and she was sure he had nephews and nieces. But what pictures there were appeared to be studio portraits for publicity or, in Michael’s case, dust-jacket shots. There were other deficiencies that baffled Annie: no face creams in the main bathroom (‘What woman can exist without face cream?’), no cookery books in the kitchen. Michael didn’t seem to be interested in food, but Annie knew that everyone – everyone – owned cookbooks, regardless of whether they did any cooking or not. Cookbooks were a style accessory, and Rianna, for all her country jeans, was a creature of style. There was a full-length lambskin coat in the wardrobe which must have cost a four-figure sum and in London her reflection had worn a loose-fitting khaki top, off one shoulder, which from its cut, undoubtedly boasted a designer label. Defeated by the locked door of Bluebeard’s Chamber, Annie prowled around upstairs again, forgetting her inhibitions in frustration. Where did detectives look, when they conducted searches? Dustbins, wastepaper bins … other kinds of bins. Idly, she lifted the lid on the laundry basket. There were the inevitable socks and underpants, a crumpled shirt, a glimpse of khaki underneath. Suddenly alert, Annie thrust the shirt aside. To her surprise, it felt slightly damp. And underneath it was the khaki top Rianna had been wearing the previous day, the top that had been in her thought moments earlier. She picked it up, to look closer, to be certain. It was wet.
She’s here, Annie thought. Michael lied to me … But she didn’t believe he’d lied. If Rianna was around, and he knew it, he would have prepared a better cover story; that would have been simple enough. He wouldn’t have come out with some spiel about Georgia unless he thought it was true. Besides, his confusion and doubt had been genuine; she was sure of that. So how did the top get in the laundry basket? Perhaps Rianna was here, and he didn’t know. Annie glanced round warily, but the house both looked and felt utterly empty, and though she listened with straining ears not a board creaked. In such an old building, the quiet was almost unnatural. There should have been the chunder of vintage plumbing, the groan of a door shifting in a draught, the rustle of air in the chimneys. Of course, Rianna could be in the locked tower, living there secretly, but surely Michael would be aware of her. And why was her top wet? What did wet clothing suggest? Rain? It hadn’t rained for a couple of days. Water, anyway. Water …
Annie ran downstairs and out into the garden. The boat was tied up to a small wooden platform built along the riverbank; she could see the mast protruding above a thicket of shrubs. Rianna could live on the boat, Annie thought, without Michael knowing, at least for a few days. And the top got wet because she fell in or something … She made her way cautiously down to the river, taking care to remain screened by the bushes. Peeping round a rhododendron, she saw the yacht looked deserted; but after all, Rianna would probably be away during the day. Eventually, she emerged from behind the shrub and stepped onto the jetty. She tried to peer through the cabin windows but couldn’t see any sign of life. Summoning all her courage, and taking a firm grip on the rigging, she jumped on board. The deck tilted alarmingly, making her ever-sensitive stomach give a responding jolt. Doing her best to steady both herself and the boat she scrambled round the available deck space, clinging to boom and halyard, squinnying through the low windows, in the hope of seeing a cup or plate on the table, a half-eaten sandwich, a bottle of mineral water. But no Marie-Celestian traces were visible; if Rianna was staying there, she was being scrupulously tidy. Turning back to the platform, Annie saw her exertions had caused the boat to drift a little further out. The gap wasn’t very wide, but she was already feeling queasy. She hesitated, steeled herself, and leaped for the riverbank.
She landed on the very edge of the platform, missed her footing, and grabbed at the mooring post as one leg splashed into the water. For an instant the to
uch of the river felt like a clammy hand around her ankle. Then she pulled herself up onto the planks, panting with relief, and stood up. A cloud had slid over the sun and when she turned round the surface of the Glyde had darkened. And near to the bank something was happening.
The river seemed to be whirling upwards into a waterspout, though there was no corresponding cloud-column thrusting down to meet it. A thickening rope of water grew in front of her, swaying like a blind snake groping for its prey. Now it was two feet high – four feet – five … The whirling slowed; there was just a pillar of water, suspended in mid-air, its base rooted in the Glyde. Annie was reminded of a photograph that freezes the splashback from a diver, but the pillar wasn’t motionless: it rippled and quivered, drawing more water into itself, gradually acquiring shape and meaning. The top rounded into a head; shoulders spread outwards; hips swelled. Its fluid substance began to solidify and colour poured into its translucency: the whiteness of skin, the streaming darkness of hair, a ribbon-like garment that wrapped its long limbs in a watery shimmer. Already the face was recognizable, though it looked far paler, more exotic, less human. ‘Rianna …’ Annie whispered. Her voice seemed to be squeezed in her throat. The figure floated towards the bank, its feet still in the river. Boneless arms stretched out from the main body towards her …
Belatedly, panic kicked in. Annie took to her heels. She knew it was coming after her – she heard the squelchy tread of its feet on the boards. Glancing back, she saw it stumble or slither, as if uncertain of its balance on land; but it was growing more solid every second, and she ran on, not daring to look again. As she entered the lane the cloud-shadow deepened: something seemed to be crawling under the hedgerows, and the grasses moved without any wind. Her horror redoubled. They were there, waiting for her, hemming her in, and the thing that looked like Rianna Sardou was on her tail, and she had no way forward, no way back. Only the centre of the lane was clear, though they crowded her on either side. Hesitation would be fatal. She sprinted straight down the middle, looking neither to right nor left, running, running for her life … And somehow at the end of the lane she was still running, and the hedgerows were empty of anything but hedge, and when she ventured to look round there was nothing there, nothing at all. No ripple of pursuing movement, no entity made of river water. Presently the sun came out again, and the bright afternoon was back, but she knew the nightmare hadn’t really gone away, only slipped into the shadows.
She went back to the shop – she felt safer in the shop – and telephoned Bartlemy, but he was out. She made herself some tea, with sugar for the shock, and sat by the phone again, calling and calling, until Bartlemy answered at last.
At school, in his dorm, Nathan dreamed of the other world again. A brief incursion, but it frightened him in a way the earlier dreams had not. He was sitting behind a rider on the back of a xaurian, one of three flying a patrol along an unfamiliar coastline. He knew it was a patrol because his rider spoke briefly into some kind of unseen communicator, possibly inside the mask; Nathan heard another voice close to the ear making an automatic response. It was just after sunset: a green glow was fading swiftly above the horizon and one of the three moons had risen directly ahead, while the faint rind of another was visible to their left. The brighter of the moons flung a reddish glitter across the sea, pock-marking the vast gloom of the water. On their right the shore looked uninhabited: no lights showed to indicate house or town, only the whiteness of foam-frills around jutting headlands, and occasional strips of beach shining copper in the moongleam. He wondered if the rider in front of him was Raymor, but he had no way of telling. There seemed to be no immediate danger of his drawing anyone back into his own world, so he concentrated on his surroundings and the excitement of the flight, absorbing impressions, trying to learn all he could. Presently he found he could feel the wind rushing over him, cool but not cold, and the skin of the xaurian against his legs, harder than leather and with the smooth finish of snake-skin. The second xaurian was flying a little behind him and to the side; the third, a little further back. The moon shone red in their red eyes, so they glowed like bulbs of blood.
Suddenly, he saw the neighbouring rider turn his head, staring fixedly at the space where he was sitting. He heard a voice from the communicator, no longer automatic: ‘Raymor! Ray! There’s something behind you …’ Raymor lifted his mount above the other two, describing a swift loop to scan the empty air. ‘No!’ came the cry, increasingly urgent. ‘Not behind us, behind you. On your xaurian. It looks like a shadow. Maybe a poor quality holocast, but – very dim. Can you see?’
Raymor twisted in the saddle; the third rider had broken the formation to draw near and point. Nathan was terrified. He had always been invisible before, except in the moment when he pulled the man out of the sea. But now, in his eagerness to experience this world, to be part of it, his thought was beginning to take on a physical form, and he didn’t know how to stop it. He struggled to make himself fade, to eliminate the sensations he had reached for moments earlier, but he couldn’t. Raymor had hooked the reins round the pommel and stretched out a gauntleted hand towards the incubus, though he could obviously make out little in the dark. Freed from restraint, the xaurian’s flight tilted. Raymor’s flailing arm encountered something that was neither shadow nor substance, and Nathan felt himself knocked sideways. His grip slipped on the xaurian’s flank and with a wordless cry he plunged down into the dark …
He woke immediately, the fear still fresh in him. He was giddy from the fall and the dormitory reeled around him; it took a while to settle down. He lay thinking and thinking, unable to sleep, trying not to panic. He had always been a mere spectator in the alien universe; now, he was becoming a player. Perhaps it was his own fault, because he had sought involvement: he had rescued the drowning man, he had wanted to feel the wind, and the touch of the reptile’s skin. But he knew, whatever he was doing, he had little or no control over it. Supposing he materialized completely, would he be trapped in that world, in his dream, striving in vain to awaken or return? And what would become of his body here? Would he be dead, or in a coma? And when he was there, would the so-called contamination affect him, without mask or protective clothing? He imagined himself going to bed in a wetsuit and goggles, and laughed at the fancy, which made him feel better, but not much.
By morning he had come to no real decisions, except that he must see the immigrant – it was Thursday, but he could hardly contain his impatience for another forty-eight hours-and somehow, he had to stop dreaming. He was unusually inattentive in class and yawned so much one teacher sent him to the sick room. ‘I couldn’t sleep last night,’ he told Brother James. ‘I have trouble sometimes. Perhaps … perhaps I could have some sleeping pills?’
‘Nonsense!’ snorted the monk. ‘Don’t need drugs at your age. Get out on the cricket pitch – get plenty of fresh air and exercise. That’ll do the trick. You’ve obviously been cooped up too long with your studies. I’ll speak to your housemaster about it.’
Nathan said: ‘Thank you,’ but he wasn’t comforted. He didn’t think cricket would solve his problems at all.
‘There are many kinds of water-spirit,’ Bartlemy told Annie, sitting in her tiny living room that night while she drank the hot chocolate he had made for her. He had used certain ingredients brought from his own kitchen; what they were she didn’t know, but she felt much calmer. ‘There are naiads, nymphs, nixes, kelpies – loreleis, selkies, sirens – though the last two prefer the sea. But I’m inclined to think that this was something different. It’s clearly able to assume a human form, which requires considerable power, and a convincing form at that. It seems to have convinced Michael, unless he’s involved in some way.’ He didn’t mention the being he had seen in the spellfire, submerged in water but not drowned, yet it was on his mind. Some things were coming together at last.
‘I don’t think so,’ Annie said cautiously. ‘But – but – you-don’t seem to be very – well, astonished. You believe me. I wouldn’t believe
me, if I were you. At least, I’d find it difficult.’
‘Why shouldn’t I believe you?’ said Bartlemy. ‘You’ve always been completely truthful. As it is, I have some knowledge of these things.’
‘I’ve begun to realize that,’ Annie said. ‘Maybe … I’ve known all along. What – what knowledge, exactly?’
‘That would take a long time to answer. For the present, you must just accept that I know. It’s more important to concentrate on what is happening here. Plainly, there is a real Rianna Sardou whose image has been borrowed by this creature, though where she is now –’
‘Touring in Georgia,’ Annie supplied promptly.
‘Possibly. It would be helpful if we could be sure. Taking the form of another being is the most difficult kind of sympathetic magic. It generally requires the participation of the original, willing or otherwise, or some significant token from them.’
‘Like a glove or a lock of hair?’ Annie suggested.
‘That might not be adequate,’ Bartlemy said. ‘More … a severed hand, or an eye, or some other organ from which the image can be built up.’ Annie choked over her chocolate. ‘But let’s not take fright prematurely. Until we know what spirit is involved, we can’t guess of what it might be capable of. Or indeed what purpose it may have.’
‘Nathan,’ Annie said instantly, blanching. ‘It asked about Nathan. I can’t let him come back here. He’ll have to stay at school – or with friends.’
‘Don’t overreact,’ said Bartlemy. ‘We know nothing for certain.’
‘You keep saying that,’ Annie said with a wan attempt at humour.
‘Because it’s true. However, we can make a few deductions. As I said, I believe Nathan has a powerful father, who may be looking after him. Someone is clearly looking after you.’
‘What do you mean? I was chased by a – a sort of water-zombie, and then by them …’
