by Rachel Hore
The new telescope installed at the folly. Some adjustment necessary. Twelve midnight. The stars in the long tail of Draco the Dragon immediately more clear. A crescent moon of ethereal beauty.
The folly. The same one Gran had mentioned, presumably. Jude put down the book and stepped over to the window to look out again at the distant line of trees. She couldn’t see anything. Perhaps it was in the grounds at the back, where she hadn’t been, but Gran had talked about it being in a forest.
“Chantal,” she asked, when she came in with a tea tray, Miffy shuffling behind. “Is there still a folly on the estate? There’s a mention of it in one of the journals, you see.”
“There’s a tower, yes. You see where the trees begin? You can’t usually see it from the house, but it’s up on top of the hill there.”
So Jude was right. She stared at where the wood sloped gently upward and scanned the skyline, but she still saw no tower.
“It’s hardly visited now. I’ve only been up it once; it’s considered dangerous and kept locked. Once, years ago, some hippies broke in and had a party, and someone had a dreadful accident. After that it was fenced off. It’s a listed building, but we couldn’t afford to repair it. William sold the forest where it stands a few years before he died. It seemed sensible and we knew the person we were selling it to. He looked after the woods properly. Unfortunately he died soon after William, and his widow sold the land. We don’t know yet what the new landowner plans—apart from not wanting the poor old gypsies.”
“What about the gamekeeper’s cottage?” Jude remembered. “Where Gran was brought up. Is that still standing?”
“Yes, it’s up the road to the right, but that too is no longer ours. It went with the farmland back in the sixties. We don’t really know the man who lives there now.”
“Not your George Fenton?”
“No, no, he’s not a real gamekeeper. George is more of an odd-job man and works for different people. He lives in the village.”
“It is such a coincidence for me to have family connections here.”
“Isn’t it?” said Chantal, smiling. “That Robert should have found you and invited you here is amazing.”
“He might have got my colleague Inigo,” Jude recalled. “But it was me who answered the phone.”
“These things are meant to be,” Chantal said, turning up her palms. “Perhaps there’s some purpose in your visit we don’t yet know about. I do believe in fate, destiny, whatever you like to call it. Don’t you?”
Jude glanced up at the ceiling, at the zodiac signs. “Standing under these, it’s tempting to agree. My sister would; she’s always reading horoscopes. I used to think that things were, as you say, meant to be.” She thought of Mark. “But now it seems to me that they’re chaotic, random. That’s why I like rummaging about in the past, I suppose. You’re safe with history. It’s all happened and there waiting if you look for it.”
“But sometimes even the past has the power to surprise you,” Chantal said softly and Jude felt a feather’s touch of fear.
* * *
At four o’clock, Robert reappeared. His presence in the oval library was irritating, for he wouldn’t sit quietly and let Jude get on with the job in the way that his mother did. He paced up and down, looking over her shoulder and generally ruining her concentration.
“What makes a book valuable?’ he asked at one point, and Jude patiently described matters of rarity and printing history, the condition of the volume and the realities of the market—whether collectors were currently interested in the author or the subject matter.
“And you think this collection really will be in demand?”
“I do. The history of science is a popular area at the moment, and you’ve some particularly well-preserved examples of some quite rare—”
“But you can’t put a price on them now?” he interrupted.
“I’m getting there,” Jude said gently. “It’s—”
“Yes, of course, you’ve explained. It’s impossible to tell what they’ll actually fetch. But that ballpark figure…?”
“Robert, stop bullying the poor girl,” Chantal ordered. “She’s worked so hard today—”
“I didn’t say she hadn’t,” Robert said quickly. “You’ll stay to dinner tonight, Jude, I hope? Would that be all right, Mother?”
“Actually, no, thank you anyway,” Jude broke in. “I promised I’d eat at my sister’s. In fact, if you don’t mind, this seems a good point to finish for the day. I’ll be back in the morning, of course.”
* * *
Leaving the formal confines of the house and getting into her car wrenched Jude back to the modern world. Turning on her BlackBerry and checking her messages underlined that. There were two missed calls and four e-mails from Inigo, each one terser than the last. The final e-mail told her he was desperate to talk to her about something, would she please respond asap? There were several other messages; she hoped there would be one from Caspar, but there wasn’t. With a sigh she dialed Inigo’s office number, praying that he wouldn’t answer. He did, after the second ring.
“About time. I’ve been trying to get you all day,” he whined down the line. “Lord Madingsfield’s taken his collection to Sotheby’s. It’s a bloody disaster. Klaus thinks I wasn’t proactive enough, but you know how long I’ve spent charming the old fox. You must speak to Klaus and remind him. He’s furious. Oh and Suri can’t find those blasted figures for Monday on your computer. Are you sure they’re there?”
“Yes. The folder’s clearly labeled and the file must be something like ‘Valuations.’ I’m sorry about Lord Madingsfield, Inigo, and I’ll certainly talk to Klaus on Monday, if you honestly think it would help.”
“It turns out Madingsfield has a cousin at Sotheby’s, can you believe. He was obviously using us as a stalking horse all the time to up his cousin’s offer.”
“Really? How can that be your fault? Have you explained to Klaus?”
“Yes, of course I have.”
“I expect he’ll calm down once he’s thought about it. It sounds like he’s under pressure from upstairs. And on that subject, who else is going to be at this meeting on Monday?”
By the time Jude ended the call, the peace of her day was in shreds. When she’d entered the world of antiquarian books ten years before, following her PhD, she’d believed it would be a quiet and civilized job, dealing with cultured, civilized people. But the atmosphere at Beecham’s was anything but that. The senior management and the American owners, she’d long concluded, were a cutthroat crew with their eye on the bottom line. It was a business like any other, she supposed, stuffing the phone back into her bag and turning the key in the ignition.
CHAPTER 5
Instead of returning the way she’d come that morning, she turned right out of the park toward Felbarton—the village a couple of miles away, where Claire and Summer lived.
The calm beauty of the countryside, bathed in late-afternoon summer sunshine, eased her inner turmoil slightly. She kept half an eye out for the gamekeeper’s cottage, but must have missed it, then the route took her on through a tunnel of trees, the beginning of the woodland she’d seen from the library window.
She stopped the car in a layby and looked at her watch. Five o’clock. Claire wouldn’t leave the shop before half-past, and then would need to collect Summer from a friend’s house, so the earliest Jude need turn up at Blacksmith’s Cottage was six. She dug a pair of sneakers out of her weekend bag, pondered and rejected the embarrassing idea of struggling into her jeans by the roadside. She’d only be a moment. She hid her handbag under a seat and locked the car. Crossing the road to face any oncoming traffic, she set off up the lane, looking for the footpath. The woodland was so thick with ivy and brambles, it would be foolhardy to try to force another way through.
She almost missed the track when it came. It wasn’t labeled as a public footpath. Instead there was a newish-looking sign that read “Private Land” nailed to a tree. It had looked like a p
ublic right of way on the admittedly sketchy map. She’d go a little distance along and see where it led.
The path, at first clear, soon became arduous and she wished she’d put on the jeans. Brambles snagged her tights, nettles stung her bare skin. She brandished a dead branch to forge her way through.
Just as she was ready to turn back, the landscape began to change. The scrawny sycamore and hazel poking up from dense, scrubby undergrowth gave way to big, more widely spaced trees—beech and oak and sweet chestnut—whose thick canopy excluded much of the light so that beneath it little grew, save patches of ivy and bright dots of woodland flowers. The walking became easier.
Sometimes the trees petered out altogether into patches of grass, littered with brushwood. There was little sign of human influence on this wilderness. Why had she come here? No one knew where she was. She could trip, break her ankle, and lie here all night until someone raised the alarm and then it might be hours before they found her car … Her thoughts ran on crazily.
Suddenly the world exploded with a series of loud cracks. Gunfire. And close by, too. Was she the target? She couldn’t tell. She gazed around wildly. Run. She’d read that somewhere. She staggered into a trot, ahead, uphill, away from the sounds. But the shots seemed to be following her.
The path took her through denser woodland. She pushed and tripped her way, her breath coming in heavy, sobbing pants. Finally, exhausted, she slumped against a tree. The shots were moving away now. Relief gave way to rage. How dare they? Didn’t they know people might be there? She remembered the “Private” sign. Still, children might wander in. She crouched in the loam, the smell of rotting leaves immediately overwhelming. She should go back, but she was fearful of walking into the gunfire again. She tried to think calmly.
It was then she saw it. The most horrible thing. A rotting tree trunk festooned with dead animals in varying degrees of decomposition: a fox cub; a couple of rats; a mess of black-and-white feathers, all that remained of a magpie. It must be a gamekeeper’s gibbet, the corpses a warning to the scurrying scavengers of the forest: keep away or this will happen to you! She crept past the gibbet, her gorge rising, and hurried on.
She should be near the top of the hill now, and it might be possible to get her bearings. She walked toward the light.
Emerging into the clearing, she blinked at the brightness. After a moment she saw the tower.
At first, dazzled and confused, she thought it the trunk of some huge tree, then she grasped that the column was made of brick. Shielding her eyes, she looked up to see it looming high above her, up in the forest canopy, as tall as the tallest tree. It was dizzying. She took a step toward it and felt something claw at her leg. She looked down, gasping with pain. The sun glinted off the coil of barbed wire digging into her flesh. She crouched to unhook it, then cried out as blood quickly surged from the cut.
Glancing around she saw the wire was part of a vicious-looking fence, but here it had been cut and bent back. There was another sign, like the one that said “Private Land,” hanging off a fence post. “Keep Out, dangerous structure” this one read. Everywhere shouted “Go away” at her. How horrible this place was. She fumbled a packet of tissues from her jacket pocket and clamped one over the wound, trying vaguely to remember the date of her last tetanus shot.
While she waited for the bleeding to stop she spotted something caught in a coil of fence a few feet away. She hobbled over to look. It was an animal, a small deer, and it was dead. A baby perhaps, she thought, or one of those little muntjacs; yes, a muntjac, she decided, from the gray markings on its face, a young one at that. She’d seen a picture of one in a newspaper. It hadn’t been dead for long, poor thing. Its eyes were just glazing over. She put out a finger and touched its shoulder—the body was still warm. When she brought her hand away it was sticky with blood. She wiped it off hastily on the grass and studied the corpse more closely. Its head hung at a strange angle and there was a gunshot wound in its side.
Anger surged through her—anger and fear and sadness. How could someone do this to such a fragile creature? Wound it so it fled, terrified and in pain, and caught itself on the wire, as she had.
A noise made her look up. From around the side of the tower came a man swinging a spade. She couldn’t see his face against the light and suddenly she caught a remnant of the muntjac’s terror.
He stopped when he saw her. “What are you doing here?” he said roughly.
She got to her feet, her heart pounding, and all the rage and fear of the last few minutes rose in her like hot lava.
“Why the hell’s it your business?” she cried. “How could you do this to a defenseless animal? And I nearly got shot myself.”
“Oh, for goodness sake. What are you doing here when everything’s marked private? You look old enough to know better.”
“I saw the signs, but I took what I thought was a public footpath. What if I’d been a child? Does a ‘Private’ sign give you the right to be cruel? And that gibbet, it’s … medieval.”
“Do you always shout at complete strangers?” he said. The man was monstrous. He ignored everything she said.
“I do when they shoot at people,” she cried. “And animals. You did shoot this deer, didn’t you?”
“No,” he said quietly. “But I did put it out of its misery, poor bastard, and now I’m going to bury it.”
“How incredibly kind of you,” she sneered, still angry, “when it was your barbed wire it was caught up in.”
“It isn’t my barbed wire. You really are extraordinary,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re accusing me of all sorts of things I haven’t done. I think you’d better go. No, not that way!” he cried, as she turned back the way she’d come. “You’ll get shot at again!”
“Don’t you threaten me!”
“I wasn’t. You’ve misunderstood.” His voice was gentle. “Look, you have nothing to fear from me. But you really ought to go. Not least to get that cut dealt with.”
She examined the wound. It was an awful mess.
“What are you doing here, anyway, dressed up like a dinner?”
“Looking for this,” she replied, nodding at the tower, and starting to feel a little foolish.
“The folly?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“It interests me, that’s all.”
“Because…?”
“It’s complicated.”
“OK, well you’ve found it now. And believe me when I tell you it would be sensible to go. I don’t know who’s been out shooting, but they might be along any moment.”
She really hadn’t much choice and she didn’t feel like exploring now anyway.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you the quickest way back to the road. Do you have a vehicle?” She nodded. He set off across the clearing and she had to hurry to keep up, the throbbing pain in her leg only just bearable.
As they passed out of the dazzling light and under the trees at the other side of the tower, she was able to view her companion more clearly. He was big, powerfully built in a way that reminded her of Caspar, but his dark, curly hair was longer, more unruly than Caspar’s and where Caspar’s skin was boardroom pale, his was tanned. He glanced back at her occasionally to make sure she was following and though he didn’t smile his dark-fringed eyes were not unfriendly.
After two or three minutes they reached a wider path, marked with vehicle tracks.
“Walk down there, turn left at the T-junction and after a few hundred yards you’ll be back where you started,” he said briskly. “Are you all right with that cut? I can take you back to mine and—”
“I’ve got some Band-Aids in the car,” she interrupted. “Thanks,” she added grudgingly, and set off down the path. He called out something and she turned. “What?”
“I said, come and find me another time and I’ll show you the folly. You shouldn’t go up it on your own.”
“What…?” she said again, though she’d heard him that time, she was
just surprised at the offer.
“I said it’s not safe. The house at the bottom of the hill. That’s where you’ll find me.”
“All right,” she said. “Maybe.”
The trudge down the slope jolted her weary body and she reached the car feeling terribly weak. She collapsed in the driver’s seat for a few moments, then remembered there was a chocolate bar in the glove compartment. She dug it out from among the CD boxes and old pens, glad to find her small first-aid kit there, too. When she’d eaten the chocolate she peeled off her wrecked tights and cleaned up the wound. It didn’t look very serious, though it still hurt.
Feeling better, she drove up the hill, wondering about the house he mentioned. She must have passed it in the car earlier, further back toward Starbrough Hall. Noticing the junction with the lane where she’d parted from him, and wishing she’d found it rather than the overgrown footpath, she continued toward Felbarton.
CHAPTER 6
Jude closed the rickety garden gate of Blacksmith’s Cottage and walked up the path, then stopped, amused by the sight of a small girl periodically rising and falling above the level of the back-garden wall, to the rhythmic accompaniment of thuds and squeaks. Summer’s eyes were closed as she bounced on her trampoline and her lips moved as though she were lost in some chanting song. How ethereal she seemed, Jude thought tenderly. In her pink capri pants and embroidered crop top, with her fine hair flying about her face, her niece was as light and supple as the swifts that dipped and soared in the evening air.
