Time's Legacy

by Barbara Erskine

  ‘God has entrusted me with my calling, Kier,’ Greg said reprovingly, his voice carefully even. ‘I work in his name.’

  Kier stood up again. ‘That is as maybe, but I think you will find that my way of dealing with this is better.’ He faced Ben. ‘Are you going to ring the bishop?’

  Ben caught sight of Greg’s quick nod.

  ‘Of course I am. If you tell Greg where she is, I will ring him now. The sooner the better. But there is no point in speaking to him while Abi is still out there able to channel her malign thoughts in your direction.’

  Kier grinned wildly. ‘You must really think I’m mad. I’m not telling you where she is. Not until I have the bishop’s word that my future is secure.’

  Ben inclined his head. ‘OK. If you insist. I will ring him now.’ He stood up with a sigh and walked towards his desk.

  ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,’ Kier said softly, almost to himself.

  Ben stopped in his tracks. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I think you heard me.’ Kier sat down again. ‘I am as qualified as you two gentlemen, to deal with someone like Abi. Perhaps more so. I don’t want her to suffer. It is up to God how he punishes her. But it would be better if she were dead than that she go on with her apostasy. You must see that. I thought she would listen to me. I thought she would see the error of her ways, but if she doesn’t and if she stays where she is, then she will die. I have put something in the food I have left for her. She won’t feel any pain. I’m not a monster or a sadist. She will just go to sleep.’

  Ben looked at Greg. ‘I will ring the bishop now,’ he said.

  Kier smiled. ‘I thought you would.’

  ‘How do you know she hasn’t eaten it already?’ Greg said sharply.

  Kier shrugged. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘You haven’t given her any poison.’ Ben’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. ‘You haven’t got what it takes to be a killer. Don’t make matters worse for yourself, Kier. You still have the possibility of coming out of all this with your job and your credibility. But only if you cooperate.’ He turned his back on the desk. ‘Abi isn’t a witch. She isn’t a conjuror of spirits. Grow up, man. The woman doesn’t want you and your pride has been hurt. Get over it!’ He folded his arms.

  Kier stared at him. ‘Aconite,’ he said softly. ‘They used to call it wolf’s bane. One of the deadliest of poisons. Tasteless, so I’m told. I wasn’t sure of the dose, but I put it in some samosas. I thought the flavour would cover any bitterness there might be.’ He smiled sadly. ‘I so hoped we could work together on this, but it appears not.’ He sighed and stood up. He made his way towards the door. ‘I promise she won’t suffer. At least not until she gets to God’s great tribunal.’

  ‘Kier, wait!’ Greg was on his feet and at the door at the same moment Kier reached for the door handle. ‘You can’t go. We have to know where she is.’

  Kier shook his head. ‘I’m truly sorry.’

  ‘Wait, man!’ Greg reached him, and grabbed at his arm.

  ‘Not a chance!’ Kier gave him a violent push which knocked him off balance. Before Greg had recovered he had run down the passage and out of the front door.

  He was in his car, gunning the engine before Ben and Greg were halfway across the drive. Narrowly missing both men he drove out of the gate, swung onto the road, overtook a van with a scream of tyres and disappeared.

  ‘Did you get his car number?’ Ben gasped. ‘I’ll call the police.’

  Abi had explored every corner of her prison. Acutely aware that it was getting dark she walked around the walls, examining them in detail. There were no other doors, no windows, no weaknesses that she could see in the stone, nothing to use as a lever or a battering ram. The floor was interesting. Two thirds of it was beaten earth. The other third, up a step, and raised about a foot above ground level, was boarded and when she stamped on it, it sounded resonant. It appeared to be hollow. There were rotten holes in the boards. Kneeling, she peered in. She could see nothing. Down there it smelled of damp earth. She glanced round. There were still stray sunbeams threading their way inside round the cracks in the big doors as the sun sank lower. As one ray of light caught the floor as she knelt there she glimpsed something white lying in the darkness beneath. It looked like a bone. She drew back in shock, then she leaned forward again and stared in. Whatever it was it had long ago dried clean. After a moment’s hesitation, she reached into the dark and grasped blindly at the bone. It was large and cumbersome and might just give her some sort of tool with which she could dig her way out. With a wiggle she pulled it free and found herself staring at a horse’s skull.

  Laying it down on the floor she wiped her hands on the seat of her jeans with a shiver. There was something deeply disquieting about finding it; she had expected the bones of a sheep or a cow perhaps, but a horse? Horses were special. Horses in pagan times had been sacred. Its burial under the floor was probably part of some ancient superstition, designed to bring luck or fertility or protection to the barn. She backed away from it, aware that the light was now going. In minutes the place would be dark.

  ‘Bugger you, Kier,’ she whispered.

  How dare he lock her up like this! The self-righteous, sadistic, power-crazed, bloody man! A dangerous man. She paused. Yes, he was dangerous and she was at his mercy. She made her way back to the sleeping bag and sat down on it, pulling a blanket round her shoulders. At least he had left her food and water. And entertainment. Reaching forward she switched on the radio.

  Thiz and Pym stopped in their tracks, their ears pricked. ‘What have you heard, dogs?’ Mat was shivering, his hands in his pockets. ‘Can you hear Abi?’ He had taken them towards the churchyard, sensing that she would have gone there and guessing that perhaps that was where Kier might have jumped her. He flashed the torch around into the dark trees, starting as a bird launched itself out of a bush in panic and blundered past him in the darkness. ‘Find Abi!’

  Thiz was pointing, paw raised, head arrowed down towards the levels, concentrating so hard she was almost vibrating. ‘What is it, girl?’ He glanced at Pym. Then both dogs were running. Taken aback he was left behind as they tore through the gate and down the track away from the church, down towards the fields with their regular criss cross of watery ditches. Stumbling, he ran after them trying to keep sight of them with his torch beam as they drew further and further ahead.

  Athena looked across the table at Justin as he slipped his phone back into his pocket and shook her head. ‘Just as well you were here!’ Justin smiled. ‘Thank you for giving me supper. I’m glad we’ve sorted our differences.’ He leaned forward and put his hand over hers for a second. Then he pushed back his chair. ‘I’d better go. It sounds as though all hell has been let loose over there. Cal was frantic.’ He hesitated.

  ‘So why are you waiting?’ She glanced up at him and gave him a stern shake of the head. ‘To keep your brother on tenterhooks?’

  Justin shook his head ruefully. ‘Partly, maybe.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Vicars.’ He gave a snort of laughter.

  ‘As in Abi Rutherford?’ She was watching his face closely.

  ‘Stop looking at me in that shrewd all-seeing mode!’ he said tolerantly. ‘Yes, as in the beautifully sexy Abi and also the fearsome Kieran and something dangerous in the orchard.’

  She sat back in her chair. ‘Something dangerous that is worrying you?’

  He nodded. ‘There is something very unpleasant lurking in that place at the moment.’

  ‘Apart from this man, Kier, you mean? Something you should be dealing with?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  She pushed back her chair and whisked his plate away. ‘Go. Now.’

  He didn’t argue. Standing up he leant forward and planted a kiss on her cheek, then he reached for his jacket. ‘They didn’t ask where I was. I suspect they think I am driving down from Ty Mawr. I’ll surprise them.’

  ‘Have you got everything you need?’

  ‘In the ca
r. Always. I’ll call you.’

  She sat still long after he had gone, staring down at the half-eaten food on their plates, then at last she stood up. Turning her back on the kitchen, she walked through into the main room. In the corner on a low table stood a small figurine. It wasn’t the goddess, not the great hollow-bellied goddess of the statues sold in the town, but a young beautiful woman in a long dress and with shrouded hair, a kind, loving woman with a baby in her arms. Not the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus. Isis and Horus, maybe, or Semiramis with Tammuz. The mater of the tribes. The universal mother and child. Whoever she was, it was comforting sometimes to pray before her and ask for her intervention. She hadn’t turned on the lights. Reaching for the matches she lit the one small candle which sat on the table. ‘Take care of him,’ she whispered. ‘He’s not for me, I know that, but maybe for Abi. She’s right for him.’ She kissed her fingertips and rested them for a second on the head of the woman, then, feeling marginally happier she went over to the sofa and threw herself down to listen in the candlelight to the music drifting up through the open window from the courtyard below. Her neighbour was playing his saxophone quietly to himself. When he was drunk or drugged the music had an unearthly beauty which was almost unbearable. Tonight he must be stoned out of his mind.

  Justin drove fast, reaching Woodley within twenty minutes. Cal gaped at him as she opened the door. ‘Jet-propelled broomstick?’

  He shook his head. ‘Car. I was only up the road.’

  He followed her into the kitchen and glanced round. No Mat and no dogs. ‘Tell me what’s going on. Exactly.’

  He stood with his back to the fire, listening without comment as she filled him in on the events of the evening. ‘Even Mat agreed we needed you,’ she said when she had finished.

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘Wonders will never cease.’ He let out a deep thoughtful sigh. ‘We have three separate problems here. Kier and whatever it is he thinks he believes, which is a matter for his bishop, Ben’s right. And whatever it is that has been awakened out there in your garden.’

  ‘And Abi.’

  He nodded. She saw the crease between his brows deepen. ‘And Abi. She has been sucked into the story out there, and Kier, rather than supporting her, has I fear added a very unwholesome energy to the mix.’

  ‘Can you do something?’ It was almost a whisper.

  He shrugged. ‘I wish Meryn was here.’

  ‘Meryn?’

  ‘The man who taught me all I know.’

  ‘The sorcerer to your apprentice?’

  He laughed dryly. ‘Exactly. I’ll do my best. I wish Mat and the dogs were back here safely. I don’t like the thought of my brother crashing around in the undergrowth all open and unprotected in the psychic sense.’

  She shook her head. ‘Nor do I.’

  He gave her a quick smile. ‘I’ll do my best for them all, Cal. You know I will. But as I’m here and the others are presumably on Kier’s tail, I’ll start in the orchard. You wait here, OK? Please do not come outside no matter what happens. I need to know you at least are safe.’

  She nodded dumbly and he gave her a quick pat on the shoulder. First he went out to the car and retrieved a canvas bag from the boot. Slinging the strap onto his shoulder he raised a hand to her and walked off round the back of the house into the darkness.

  He could feel it all around him. An electric tenseness in the air which he had never felt here before. The place was very quiet. Not a breath of wind. No sound of small animals or night birds. Nothing scuttling busily in the undergrowth. It was all totally silent. He walked out across the lawn and paused near the log seat, sending out feelers into the night, trying to sense where his brother was with those two irrepressible dogs. If they were anywhere nearby there would not be this silence, this sense of nothing.

  He tensed. He was wrong. There was something. Just for a moment he had sensed someone else out there listening and waiting for him. He frowned, trying to keep his mind empty of expectation. ‘Don’t give the enemy anything to work with.’ Meryn’s voice echoed in his head for a moment. ‘If he or she senses that you are expecting to see a figure in a bedsheet that is what you will see. If you are sure it is the Loch Ness Monster or Black Shuck, be ready, for they will appear.’ It had seemed funny at the time, but it was shrewd advice and very hard to follow. He deliberately blanked his mind of visions of Roman soldiers and bloody swords.

  He held his breath, surrounding himself with a shield of protection. The old condom from head to toe trick. His mouth twitched into a smile again. Meryn’s words were supporting him. Making him strong. He stayed immobile, waiting. Someone was nearby, watching him. But who? Not Mora. Not Lydia or Petra. No-one from the homestead. Much too powerful and sophisticated for that. A druid? His senses sharpened. He wanted to step forward, to get closer, but he resisted the urge to move.

  The cauldron of silence grew deeper. A small patch of moonlight drifted across the grass from the waning crescent, half-shrouded in clouds. He took the chance to take two slow unhurried steps towards the bench and sit down. Carefully, without any hurried movements he reached into his bag and drew out the small drum. For a long time he sat without moving, waiting to see what would happen. It was like watching a nervous animal, trying to win its trust. No. That wasn’t right. There was nothing nervous about this energy. His fingers strayed to the taught drumskin made with his own hands from the hide of a deer he had hunted and slain himself, giving thanks to the soul of the animal for its sacrifice. Its meat had kept several families in food for a while, up there in Scotland, when he had been training with Meryn. The antlers had been used to make handles for crooks and staves and knives. What remained, and there was precious little, had been buried with honour on the hillside where the young stag had lived. It had been destined for the cull. It was better that he kill it with honour and respect, than a man with a gun who had paid money for the fun of slaughter. The wood of the drum was ash from a storm-felled tree on the same wild mountainside. The animal and the tree between them could conjure life out of rock; they could summon the future and they could enchant; above all they could carry him far away into the distant past. Slowly he began to tap, feeling the drum wake, feeling it respond like a lover to his touch.

  He drummed on, gently, hypnotically. ‘Don’t lull yourself, boy.’ Meryn’s voice came to him and he remembered their long sessions as the druid taught him his art. ‘Keep alert. Be watchful. The drum has a mind of her own. She may not call those you expect. She may take you to places you would rather not go.’

  It was his turn to smile. How true. So, who or what was this shadow? Why did they not reveal themselves?

  Almost as he thought the words he sensed a drawing away. What had changed? Was there someone or something else out there?

  The sound of the drum went on, a soft heartbeat, conjuring matter out of darkness. He could feel someone else there now. He didn’t turn his head. Whoever it was would reveal himself soon. It was a child. A boy. He could feel the aggression, the hesitancy, the uncertainty. The fear. He resisted the urge to speak. The cast was assembling. All he had to do was wait.

  The call of the night birds echoed in the moonlight and he heard the splash of a fish jumping in the darkness of the water. In this land of ever-changing light and dark, of liminal beauty, neither land nor sea, the silvery wind breath was full of the scents of mud and flowers, of soft grasses and damp woodland moss, of sweet air from the distant hills and sharp salt from the faraway sea.

  He had come here to pray for the last time before he left.

  19

  ‘Are you ready?’ Mora peered in at the door of Yeshua’s little house on the edge of the sanctuary. A patch of new wattle showed where he had been mending the wall. ‘It is time to go. I sent a message to Cynan and asked if he would meet us at moonrise with a boat. By dawn we will be halfway down the river.’

  Yeshua was sitting staring down into the small circular hearth in the centre of the floor. He was deep in thought. She ducked in an
d came to sit beside him, settling gracefully on the matting and watching him in the flickering light. His eyes were closed in prayer. She studied the planes of his face, the long strong nose, the firm mouth, the high cheekbones, the straight eyebrows and felt herself aching to put her arms round him, to protect him, to draw him close. She looked away guiltily, biting her lip. ‘Yeshua?’ she whispered again. ‘It is time.’

  He opened his eyes and looked at her. ‘My presence here has caused you nothing but unhappiness, Mora,’ he said softly. He reached out and took her hand.

  She shook her head. ‘You have cured Petra. You have brought so much good and love and healing with you.’

  ‘I have brought death and destruction to those you love.’ His voice was suddenly anguished. ‘It is something I am going to do to my followers again and again!’

  ‘No.’ The denial was automatic but even as she said it she knew she was wrong and he was right.

  They sat for a moment clasping hands, looking into each other’s eyes. He looked away first, back towards the fire. ‘Will you keep faith with me Mora?’

  ‘Of course.’ She gave a sad smile.

  ‘Even if I asked you to give up your gods for mine?’

  She hesitated.

  ‘I need you to believe me, Mora. I need you to have faith in me.’ He looked anguished suddenly. ‘If you don’t, who will?’

  She frowned. ‘You told me an angel foretold your birth. Your mother believes in you.’

  ‘My brothers don’t.’ He shook his head with a wry grin. ‘A prophet, as I am sure you know, is not without honour save in his own land and in his own house! And I have to convince the whole world as well as them.’

  They were looking into one another’s faces. I have to remember him like this, she thought. After today he will be gone. I will never see him again. He smiled again, that melting, beautiful smile which went straight to her heart.