‘Justin!’ Abi stared at him in astonishment.
He looked up. ‘You’ve heard about him?’
‘I’ve met him. Twice.’
It was Ben’s turn to look astonished. ‘Where?’
‘At Woodley. He seems to make a habit of breaking and entering in the middle of the night or when he thinks the place is empty. How on earth could he possibly help with this?’
Ben was silent for a moment. ‘Did you speak to him?’
‘Not much. He did help to chase Kier away, for which I am grateful, but he still seems to me to be an arrogant, conceited man, bent on outwitting poor old Mat. I don’t like him, to be honest.’
Ben hid a smile. ‘That sounds like brother Justin all right. Neither of us exactly gets on with him. But he does have certain fields of expertise. The trouble is I don’t know where he lives at the moment. I don’t suppose he told you?’
‘No, he did not.’ Abi shook her head. ‘And Cal and Mat don’t know either. Cal mentioned the fact.’
‘Pity. Well, if you see him again, perhaps you could swallow your pride and ask him to get in touch with me. Or if the moment seems right, talk to him about all this yourself. What he has to say may surprise you.’
It wasn’t until later that day that Abi had the chance to speak to Cal alone. ‘I didn’t want to mention him in front of Mat. Not again. But how on earth could Justin help me with all this? Ben wouldn’t explain when I asked, he just looked quizzical!’
Cal was standing by the back door, a woven willow trug on her arm, a pair of secateurs in her hand. For a moment she reminded Abi almost unbearably of her mother who had so often carried a similar basket round the garden at home. Swallowing the wave of grief which threatened to overwhelm her she pulled on her coat and both women headed into the garden. The stone crystal, retrieved from the drawer upstairs, weighed down Abi’s pocket. ‘Justin knows a lot about local history; much more than any of us. He says he’s writing some sort of book on the area,’ Cal said cautiously. ‘I suppose Ben thinks he could throw light on what you’ve been experiencing. He’s also always been interested in what you might call occult practices.’
‘Occult –?’ Abi stared at her. ‘Black magic, you mean?’
Cal shrugged. ‘Something I think he called the Western Spiritual Tradition.’ They had walked towards the rosebeds and Cal began to select some long-stemmed buds. ‘I don’t even know if he still does it; maybe he grew out of it, but it was one of the things Mat hated. Strangely I think Ben respected him for having any kind of interest in spiritual matters at all. They used to discuss it. I don’t know why Ben and Justin fell out in the end. With Mat it was something that was there even when they were kids – and he was so much older he should have known better. I’ve always thought Justin had a raw deal with the other two.’ She concentrated on reaching some deep red blooms in the centre of the bed.
‘And Justin is a very attractive man,’ Abi said.
Cal glanced at her sharply. ‘You think so, do you?’
Abi blushed. ‘I’m human! But it’s you he fancies. Just a bit?’ she added quietly.
Cal shook her head. ‘No. At least, maybe a long time ago. Yes, I suppose that didn’t help.’ She smiled sadly. ‘I’ve always liked Justin, but not in the same way I liked Mat. The old stick doesn’t seem to realise I still adore him. I always did. Justin never stood a chance. Not like that.’
Abi smiled. The affection in Cal’s voice was very genuine.
‘Justin seems a difficult man,’ she said after a pause. ‘Yes, I do find him attractive, but I didn’t take to him. I’m amazed Ben would recommend I get in touch with someone like that. Surely it goes against everything he should be doing to keep me in the church.’
Cal laughed. ‘Justin’s not that bad! No, I expect he was a bit acerbic when you met him! After all, you caught him in the act. He would much rather have slipped in and slipped out again. It is going to be much harder for him to use the library from now on. What Mat didn’t see, he didn’t worry about.’
‘Why should Mat begrudge him the library? Surely Justin could come when Mat is not here.’
‘Dog in the manger.’ Cal laid two more roses on the pile in the basket. ‘I’ve got two bed and breakfast visitors coming this weekend.’ She changed the subject abruptly. ‘So I thought I would make the house look nice. They won’t get in your way, so don’t worry. They will only be here at breakfast time.’
‘I was supposed to be helping you with things like that,’ Abi put in. ‘You must let me do things to pay my way.’
‘The bishop is paying your way, Abi,’ Cal said firmly. ‘So no more of that nonsense. You are a double joy. A nice guest, a good friend and you bring a bit of lovely money!’ She laughed. ‘Sorry. Does that sound too crude?’
Abi smiled. ‘Not at all. But I’m glad the friend bit crept in there. I was afraid I was causing you too much hassle what with my ghosts and Kier and everything.’
‘They are our ghosts too,’ Cal reminded her gently. ‘And as for Kier, well, he makes life more interesting, to be honest!’ She headed for the next flowerbed and began to cut some Michaelmas daisies. ‘Quite exciting, in fact. Wretched man!’
For a moment Abi thought about returning to the fascinating topic of Justin, but she swiftly thought better of it. Cal had changed the subject. Better to let it rest.
When she went back indoors Abi walked on down towards the ruins. The sun was low in the sky again, highlighting the colour of the autumn leaves. Sitting down on the bench, her fingers lying lightly on the crystal stone in her coat pocket, she saw the robin hop at once nearer, watching her with a beady black eye.
Suddenly it flew away. Something moved on the edge of her vision near the archway. She leaned forward. ‘Mora?’
She was there, an insubstantial shadow, no more. Barely visible against the spray of scarlet Virginia creeper. Abi clutched at the stone in her pocket. ‘Mora? Can you see me?’ She was overwhelmed with relief and anxiety.
The young woman was less hazy now, her outline distinct. She was wearing a light-coloured rough woollen robe with a greeny-grey cloak around her shoulders, the hood draped over her hair. She took a step towards Abi and Abi was aware that Mora’s eyes were fixed on her face. Slowly she stood up and took first one then another step towards her, as cautious as she would have been approaching the robin which had retreated to a tree nearby and was making anxious little alarm calls.
‘Mora?’ Abi whispered the name. ‘Can you see me?’ Slowly she reached out her hand.
The colours in the garden leached away suddenly. Abi glanced up at the sun. A huge cloud had drifted across its face. She looked back at the flowerbed. Mora had gone.
‘Blast!’ She sighed. Then she reached into her pocket again and drew out the stone. ‘Mora? Was this yours?’ The robin bobbed up and down and flew closer. ‘Please, come back. I want to talk to you.’
There was no response.
She waited a long time before she turned and walked back to the house.
The kitchen was empty. Abi glanced at the two flower arrangements standing on the table. The late roses had been distributed between them. They were beautiful but there was no sign of Cal in any of the downstairs rooms. Slowly she made her way up the staircase and paused on the landing. Cal was coming out of her bedroom. ‘Abi! I’m sorry. I should have locked the front door. I don’t think he touched anything. He left the second he heard me come upstairs.’
‘What? Who?’ Abi felt a clutch of fear in the pit of her stomach. ‘Not Kier?’
Cal nodded. She stepped away from Abi’s door. ‘The cheek of the man!’
Abi went into her room and stood staring round. ‘What was he doing?’
‘He was standing by the chest of drawers when I came up. None of the drawers was open or anything. As soon as he heard me he came out of the room, gave me a half-apologetic, half-embarrassed smile and raced down the stairs and out of the front door. I must have left it open. I often do. He didn’t say anything!
’
Abi shivered. She opened the top drawer and looked inside. It was there she kept her underwear. It was impossible to tell if anything had been touched. Surely he wasn’t that sort of man. What on earth can have possessed him to take a risk like this?
Cal shook her head. ‘What did he want? He could see you weren’t in here. Did he just want to be near you?’
Abi sat down on the edge of the bed and felt the bump of the Serpent Stone in her jacket pocket against her thigh. She extricated it and stared down at it. ‘I wonder,’ she said after a moment, ‘if he was looking for this.’ She turned it over in her hands. ‘It might explain why when he saw I wasn’t here he might have decided to look round. If my father has told him about this and shown any of the fury and antagonism about it he showed me, then there was more than enough reason for Kier to try and find it.’
‘If you’re right, what would he have done with it if he had found it, I wonder?’ Cal said thoughtfully.
Abi gave a rueful smile. ‘Goodness knows, but I think you can be certain I wouldn’t have seen it again.’
‘You will have to hide it somewhere better than that,’ Cal said. ‘You can’t risk it.’
Abi stared at her. ‘You think he’ll come back?’ She nodded in answer to her own question. ‘Of course he will. You’re right. If this is what he’s after he will probably get obsessed by it the way he does about everything.’
‘You could go to the police, Abi,’ Cal said after a few moments’ thought. ‘The man is stalking you.’
Abi shook her head. ‘I can’t. Think of the scandal. He was rummaging through my knicker drawer. Two priests in the Church of England. Ex-priests. Lust. Passion. The Occult as you called it. We’d have the nation’s press camped on the doorstep within hours.’
Cal nodded. ‘It might put off my B & B guests, certainly.’ They both laughed uncomfortably. ‘I’ll remember to lock the front door in future. If we had been indoors we would have heard him. He must have known Mat and the dogs were out.’
‘Which means he’s been watching the house.’ Abi glanced towards the window. ‘Oh God, I hate this!’
‘Do you want to go and stay with Ben?’ Cal eyed her sympathetically. ‘Just for a few days. Kier won’t hang around forever.’
Abi shook her head again. ‘No, he’d guess where I’d gone at once. Besides, I am not going to let him chase me away.’ She hesitated. ‘Unless you would rather – ’
‘I’ve told you before.’ Cal headed for the door. ‘You can stay here for as long as you like.’
‘It will be good if you’ve got guests this weekend, though, Cal.’ Abi followed her to the staircase. ‘More cars outside. More people in the house at night.’
‘And I’ll make sure Mat leaves the dogs here when he goes out. They may not be the world’s greatest guard dogs, but they do bark at the right moment.’ Cal reached over and touched her arm. ‘Don’t worry. You have the Cavendish clan behind you. If he comes back we’ll be ready for him. He’s not going to be allowed to pester you and he’s not going to find your stone. I can show you somewhere to hide it which Kier will never find in a million years.’
It was in the garden. Cal left Abi to tuck the stone away and walked back to the house. Abi watched her go with a fond smile, then, almost without realising she had done it she turned aside to the bench and sat down, with it still in her hands. ‘What happened?’ she whispered. ‘Mora? Romanus? What happened next?’
‘Tell me about Judea. I’ve never been anywhere very far from here. My sister was born near there, wasn’t she?’ Romanus and Flavius were walking side by side now, the horse’s rein over Romanus’s shoulder, the horse plodding behind them. The fog had grown thicker.
Flavius nodded. ‘Indeed she was. My first posting when I was a young man was to the service of Herod the Great in Jerusalem. I was in the legion which went to Galilee to put down the uprising at a town called Sepphoris. We taught them a lesson they wouldn’t forget in a hurry. I was noticed by my commanding officer and selected to join an elite force of undercover agents and we were ordered to look for a family of insurrectionists who claimed to be descendants of King David. They were expecting the birth of a child who people claimed would inherit the throne according to some sort of prophecy. The Jews are always talking about prophecies.’ He shook his head disparagingly. ‘Herod knew they would use it as an excuse to revolt again, so our mission was to find the kid and kill it.’
Romanus frowned. ‘A baby?’
‘Yes. A baby who would grow up to be a traitor.’
‘And did you?’
‘As it turned out, no. We killed a good few babies while we looked, but it turned out none of them was the right one. The parents knew we were after them and they fled to Egypt. It took us a while to find out. All the time we were a few steps behind them. They returned to their home town eventually, but they were protected all the time by people who knew about this wretched prophecy of theirs and hid them, and the boy grew up and left home.’
‘And this is the man you are searching for now?’ Romanus was frowning.
‘That’s it. He’s dangerous.’
‘But how can a healer be dangerous?’
Flavius looked down at him again. ‘Because he’s bright and lippy and thinks a lot of himself, or he did as a child, and the Jews think he is a king, that’s why. And so he is a danger to the Empire.’
‘And so you are still working for Herod?’
‘For his son. The old king died. His lands were divided. A new Herod, Herod Antipas was given the governorship of Galilee by the Emperor, and I work for him.’
‘I see.’ Romanus was still frowning. He was wondering how his uncle had found it so difficult to catch up with this man and kill him. He obviously wasn’t a very good assassin. He didn’t say so, of course. ‘And you’ve travelled the world in the search for him?’
‘It wasn’t as easy as you may think.’ Flavius had picked up on the unspoken criticism. It infuriated him. ‘Everywhere he goes he blends in. He is hidden. People like him. They fall for his charm. Somehow I am thwarted every time I come close. It is as if he is protected in some way.’ He scowled. ‘But here, at last, I have caught up with him. I know where he is. I just had to get him away from the druid school. I have no intention of going there and finding they have hidden him, or that once more he has slipped away in the night as I arrive or that I am spotted and forced to back away. He is waiting for a ship to take him back to the port of Caesarea. I have to do the deed before it arrives. And it has to be secret. Rome does not want me to be seen. Rome must not be involved. When this man dies, he dies from an accident, or he disappears. No-one must ever suspect that I have had a hand in it. That part of the Empire is always on a knife edge of rebellion and for the Jews to find out that a Roman agent has killed one of their number could cause another rebellion. He must disappear silently and without suspicion. I thought maybe he would drown in the lake, but up here in the mountains with these great limestone crags, he could as easily slip and break his neck or be savaged by a bear. And when his uncle arrives he will find that his nephew has disappeared without trace and all their prophecies and plans will have evaporated into this confounded fog.’
One glance through the shop window next morning told Abi that Bella was again on duty. Athena opened the door of her flat so quickly Abi realised she must have seen her walking across the courtyard from the balcony. ‘It occurred to me that you were the only person who might know where Justin lives,’ Abi said as they at down in the living room. She saw at once that the clavichord had gone. ‘Please, Athena. It looks as though he might be the only person who could help me.’
Athena gave a humourless chuckle. They were drinking herb tea this time, from the same pretty green mugs. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I grant you Justin might have more knowledge than Ben about some of this stuff, but summoning him back to the OK Corral might not be the way to tap into it. He’s likely to tell you where to get off in no uncertain terms.’
Abi sc
anned her face. ‘You said you and he fell out?’
Athena nodded. ‘Oh yes.’
‘Can I ask why?’
‘No.’ Athena sat back against the cushions, and shook her head. She was wearing a peacock-blue sweater with lapis and silver beads.
‘All right. Sorry. Well, at least tell me, he made it clear he’s no Christian. Is he a fully paid up pagan?’
Athena smiled. ‘Oh yes, I think you could say that.’
Abi bit her lip. She was silent for a moment, then she shrugged. ‘Can I have his phone number?’
‘I can give you his mobile number. But it may not be up to date.’
‘I’ll try it and see.’ Abi waited. When nothing else was forthcoming she went on, ‘And can I have his address? Then if the phone doesn’t work I can at least drop him a line. Unless he has an e-mail address?’
Athena snorted derisively. ‘As if.’
‘Why not? He’s a writer, he’s doing research. It would make sense, surely.’
‘It might make sense to you, dear,’ Athena said, caustically, ‘but I doubt if he would go in for that sort of thing.’ She shrugged. ‘OK, I’ll give you his address. He lived in Wales. But for all I know, he left there a long time ago. He might even be back here by now, after all he seems to drop in at Woodley quite regularly.’ She got up and went over to her desk which stood between the two French doors onto the balcony. After a lot of rummaging around amongst piles of papers and notebooks she produced an old address book and began to flip through the pages. Eventually she found what she was looking for and reaching for a notepad copied it down, tearing off the piece of paper for Abi.
‘Powys?’ Abi looked down at it curiously. Her heart sank at the thought of how far away that sounded.
‘It’s a little cottage, high up on a mountain. Very remote. Which is just as well as I’m sure he would annoy the hell out of any neighbours he might have!’ Athena said tartly.
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