‘What is it you want?’
‘Your trust, Beatrice. Here we are,’ Crispin stretched out and stroked her hair, ‘willing to help and yet you stand like a wench in the marketplace studying us as if we are hucksters!’
‘What is happening in Midnight Tower?’ Beatrice asked, trying to distract herself from Crispin’s light-blue eyes.
‘The priest summed up the truth of it. Spiritual life is, as Brother Antony says, akin to water. In most people, and in most places, it lies sluggish like a lazy river at the height of summer, then something stirs its depths.’ Crispin’s face became excited. ‘It grows stronger and fuller. The currents beneath pull and tug and the surface is disturbed.’
Beatrice studied these silver-haired twins. She wanted to believe what they said. They looked so beautiful. Brother Antony was so plain. All he could give was good advice while horrors bubbled around the man she loved and threatened to engulf him.
‘Who is the killer?’ she demanded.
‘In time, Mistress Arrowner.’
She turned away in disgust and, before they could stop her, ran towards the wall, through it and out into the heathland. She reached Devil’s Spinney and walked among the great oak trees. She had been with Ralph on the parapet walk. She had heard his whispers. She knew what he had discovered. This was an ancient place. She had become accustomed to the shapes and shadows, those strange priests with their ivy garlands and bronze, sickle knives, the terrible sacrifices they made to their demons. Even now they were clustered, chanting in a tongue she could not understand. Other phantasms appeared: that terrible knight in armour, his band of robbers around him, hanging some unfortunate peasant, drowning others in the marsh. They sat on their horses and laughed as the unfortunates shrieked for mercy before disappearing into the green, dark slime. Such phantasms no longer troubled her. Brother Antony had explained that they were mere shadows of what had been. Now and again she encountered the occasional wandering soul. Never a child but sometimes a man or woman lost in their own world, disturbed, distracted, unwilling to go on. She was also conscious of those beings who met the souls of the dead, the seraphim, glowing orbs of light, and the wraiths clustered together like monks chanting their psalter, and the demons, mailed men, knights in armour, hunting for souls.
‘Mistress Arrowner!’
Two figures stepped out from the trees. Beatrice recognised Robin and Isabella, a young man and his wife. She had met them here before. They had explained how, many years ago, they had owned a tavern on the Maldon road, which had been burnt by French corsairs who brought their galleys up the Blackwater estuary before riding inland. They were merry souls, unable really to explain why they had not moved on.
‘Perhaps we loved this world,’ Isabella had laughed. ‘We had such a good life, Beatrice. Robin served ales and wines while I cooked in the kitchens. On one occasion we even served the King.’ She blinked. ‘I forget his name…’
Beatrice had come to accept them. They always appeared hand in hand, chattering incessantly about the petty things of their lives, what they had done, whom they had met.
‘What are you doing here?’ Robin came forward, thumb stuck in the belt round his green jerkin, his brown leggings pushed into strange-looking boots. He was clean shaven and had smiling brown eyes beneath his auburn hair. Isabella looked similar but thinner, more prone to laughter than her husband.
Beatrice told them everything she had learnt.
‘Then why don’t we help?’ Isabella suggested.
‘Is that possible?’ Beatrice asked.
‘If Brythnoth’s cross is here,’ said Robin, ‘at least we can look at it. There’s nothing wrong with that.’
Beatrice was distracted by shadows flitting across the skies like dark clouds. ‘I should go back to the castle,’ she murmured. ‘I really shouldn’t leave Ralph. He’s in danger, you know…’
‘Stay for a while,’ Isabella soothed. ‘Stay here, Beatrice. Let’s search for Brythnoth’s cross.’
‘But where can we begin?’ Beatrice asked. The shadows were lengthening and, because she wanted to, she felt the growing coldness of the air. ‘Have you met Crispin and Clothilde?’
‘Oh yes, on many occasions,’ Robin smiled. ‘A precious pair, them!’
‘They said that one day I could learn how to intervene in the world of the living, make my presence felt.’
‘Oh, we can do that.’
Beatrice started in surprise.
‘We can,’ Isabella confirmed, grasping her hand. ‘Come, Beatrice, we’ll show you.’
‘What about Brythnoth’s cross?’
‘Oh, leave that,’ Robin laughed. ‘If, as you say, it is in Devil’s Spinney then it will stay there for a little while longer.’
‘But what about Ralph?’ Beatrice looked longingly towards the barbican.
‘Don’t you want to intervene?’ Isabella asked.
‘Come away, Mistress!’ Brother Antony was suddenly standing on the trackway glaring angily at her. ‘Come away, Beatrice!’ He lifted a hand, dark and threatening against the blue sky.
‘Oh, just ignore him!’ Isabella hissed mischievously. ‘Where would you like to go, Beatrice?’
Beatrice experienced a cold blast of air. Brother Antony appeared to have grown larger. He stood with his hands hanging by his sides, staring fixedly at her. Beatrice suddenly resented his lecturing, his vague promises, his constant watching of her.
‘The Pot of Thyme!’ she declared defiantly, shouting the words as if she wanted Brother Antony to hear. ‘Let’s go to the Pot of Thyme!’
She ran, Robin and Isabella clasping her hands. They hastened across the heathland like children playing some game. Robin and Isabella were laughing, squeezing Beatrice’s hands. They passed the churchyard and Beatrice paused. Usually God’s acre stretched out, a mixture of headstones and weather-beaten crosses among high-growing grass and old yew trees, gnarled and bent, their branches stretching out. A quiet, serene place. Beatrice stared in horror. It had all gone. Instead she was looking down an icy-white valley, high banks of snow on either side with a pathway stretching to the light-blue horizon. At the end of the valley a fiery sun glowed as it dipped into the west. On either side of the valley an army of shadows thronged. What really caught Beatrice’s attention was the figure coming along the pathway. Two great hounds bounded before him, barking loudly, their great ears flapping as they dived in and out of the snow. The figure drew nearer. He looked like a chapman with his sumpter pony. He was dressed in vari-coloured garments on which little bells jingled at every step. Beatrice glanced quickly at her companions. Robin and Isabella were kneeling, foreheads against the ground.
‘What is it?’ she gasped, feeling a fear she had never experienced since that dreadful fall from the parapet walk. ‘Robin, Isabella, what is it?’
She was aware of singing, the deep-throated voices of the shadows on either side of the valley chanting a paean of praise. Robin and Isabella still knelt, heads down. Beatrice again looked at the valley but it had gone, the snow, the trackway, the mysterious jingling figure and those fierce barking hounds.
‘What happened?’ Beatrice demanded. ‘I saw snow, a pedlar!’
Isabella was now on her feet, face glowing, eyes sparkling. ‘Oh, it’s only a friend of ours.’
Beatrice felt uneasy. ‘But why did you kneel?’ She looked again at the graveyard where grey shapes moved among the tombstones like tendrils of mist on a spring morning.
‘You’ll see,’ said Robin. ‘But forget the dead, Beatrice, the living await.’
Beatrice remained fixed to the spot. The graveyard was now full of those silver discs, shining and shimmering. They formed a path as a golden sphere left the church, rising up in the air and then back down again. Beatrice was sure the golden sphere, or whatever was in it, was staring directly at her. She had learnt how to experience, to feel, to stretch out her mind. She closed her eyes and experienced a deep warmth, a loving embrace, as when she and Ralph used to lie together in the grass and stare up at the sky. Then the sphere disappeared and Brother Antony was standing on a tombstone like some huge, forbidding black raven, gesturing at her to come closer.