“It isn’t a him—it’s a her. Meredith Channing. She and Maryanne have become friends.”
He stopped on the point of taking off his coat.
Meredith Channing…
An attractive woman who knew far too much for comfort. About him, about the war, about—
He’d almost said Hamish, but he was nearly certain she hadn’t read that nightmare in his mind. He’d blocked it for so many years now that it was habit to keep the Somme and Hamish and the firing squad shut firmly away where no one could find it.
Hamish said, “Don’t go.”
And Rutledge caught himself just in time, before he answered aloud. “I’ve already promised,” he said silently. “I can’t go back on it without explaining why. And that I shan’t do.”
3
YORKSHIRE
Late That Same Night
Hugh Tredworth, the ringleader, possessed a goodly amount of charm. It was his stock-in-trade. Whispers claimed that his real father had been a Scottish tinker, but Hugh’s grandfather had had the same red hair and wicked smile—and his auntie as well, come to that. As his mother was fond of pointing out. Hugh had also been cursed with older brothers, the butt of their jokes and malicious tricks for as long as he could remember. These had sharpened his wits and taught him cunning, which he was careful to conceal.
At eleven, he was the eldest of his four cohorts. Johnnie and Bill, cousins, were ten, as was Tad. Robbie, only nine, tagged along because he had always been his brother Tad’s shadow. They had fallen under Hugh’s spell when he’d missed a year of schooling after complications of scarlet fever. Their scrapes and escapades had never drawn blood, and for the most part their parents looked the other way.
This night—it was well on toward morning in point of fact—the five boys had tramped nearly five miles cross-country to reach their destination.
Robbie, tiring, lagged a little now, and Tad threatened to leave him by the wayside. Hugh hissed them to silence. “Hurry! Or we’ll be too late.”
Ahead lay the grounds of the estate and, beyond, the ruins of the great abbey. One of Hugh’s neighbors had worked as undergardener there for a summer, regaling everyone with descriptions of all he’d seen. Only, everything appeared larger and harder to find in the dark. Or else Mr. Pritchert had been a liar and made up half his tales. Hugh moved his precious book from one hand to the other, unfamiliar nerves getting the better of him.
He’d purloined the book from the schoolmaster’s shelf. The subject was alchemy, about which he knew nothing. But there were spells in these pages, and he intended to try them out.
Bill, the tallest, carried a sack with apples, a corner of cheese, and a heel of bread in it. Like Napoleon’s army, he traveled on his stomach. They’d wanted to bring cider, but hadn’t discovered a way to steal a stone jar for the night.
They skirted the grounds of the estate—Mr. Pritchert swore it had dogs that bit first and barked later—then threaded their way through a wood so dark the moon vanished. But soon enough they arrived at a point where they could see what lay ahead.
It was awe inspiring. An enormous complex of mellow stone stood before them. Ranges of monastic buildings jutting across the lawns, a square soaring tower, great arches running high into the moonlit sky, tall, haunted windows with no glass, doorways that opened into blackness unlike any they’d ever looked into.
“Gor!” Johnnie whispered, stopping short.
Robbie felt his bowels stir.
“It’s naught but a ruin,” Hugh scoffed. “At least, naught until we work the spells. Come on.”
He started forward toward the nave, but when they didn’t follow, he said in disgust, “I should have brought my sisters.”
They crept at his heels then, hoping that whatever struck him down would spare them if they could only appear small enough. Bill, trying for bravado, said, “It’s stood empty long enough for bones to rot.”
Robbie squeaked.
An owl flew out of the empty west window above their heads, gliding on silent wings across the moonlit sward.
“I told you there were owls,” Hugh whispered. “Has to be, if there’s spirits here. And a black cat.”
“We could have brought Cinders,” Tad offered.
“And have Ma down on you like a thunderclap?” Robbie demanded. “He’s her cat, not yours.”
“Not to harm him, silly. Just to borrow.”
“I thought people sacrificed to the Devil,” Johnnie asked.
“Only if you want something. Do you?” Hugh retorted.
“No,” Johnnie admitted, minding his footing as they went through the gaping door.
Now they were in the shadows cast by the massive columns, in the long roofless nave with moonlight visible above. The moon was past the full, but it helped, a little, with the gloom. The high walls seemed to stretch forever, pinning them in the eye of God.
“We aren’t desecrating the altar, are we?” Tad was an altar boy. “Vicar won’t care for that.”
Even Hugh was having second thoughts. “We’ll begin in the cloister. There should be a way to it along there. Nobody can say we didn’t show respect.”
With more relief than they cared to admit to, the other boys hurried after him in the direction of the doorway leading into the cloister.
There was brighter moonlight here, but the gallery was ominously dark. It seemed to be peopled with the unseen dead. Whispers of sound came to their ears, like monks walking to compline and condemning the souls of interlopers on sacred ground.
“The wind,” Hugh told them when his followers stopped to listen. “See? Over there. We can use that stone in the center. It’ll work a treat.” He glanced up at the moon, then went sprawling. Scrambling to his feet, he looked down. But nothing he could see had tripped him up.
He’d have sworn a hand had caught at his ankle. The fingers had felt cold on his flesh.
Shaking off his own fears, he blamed them on his companions.
“Didn’t anybody think to bring a candle? We’ll break our necks, without.”
Tad held out three, with a fistful of matches. Hugh lit them with a flourish, dripping wax onto the round stone and then setting the candles into each puddle. They formed a rough triangle.
He opened the schoolmaster’s book at random and found a page where there was a drawing of a great iron kettle on the boil and an oven red hot to one side.
He scanned the words, found them very unlike a spell, and turned the page. Ah, much better. This was what he’d seen a week ago and determined to try out. He’d only a nodding acquaintance with Latin, but if God understood it, so would the Devil.
He stood up straight, his hands above his head, palms out in supplication, and began to intone the words on the page, turning them into gibberish as he struggled with them. An echo, soft and unintelligible, sent a shiver down Robbie’s spine, and he clutched his brother’s hand.
The words rolled on, and Hugh thought his voice had deepened toward the end as his confidence grew.
But nothing much happened, and he was disappointed.
He tried twice more with other spells, and still the Devil was afraid to come to him.
Tad said, tentatively, “He’s busy elsewhere?”
But Hugh wasn’t to be deterred.
“It’s not sacred enough ground here in the middle. We need to stand closer to the church wall,” he told them, as if he knew what he was doing. “See, just over there.”
They turned to look, then got up from their haunches and followed him into the shadows, carefully shielding their candles. But the night wind blew out one of them, just as Robbie tripped, plunged headlong into the cold grass. He began to scream, high-pitched and terrifying.
They turned to clamp a hand over his mouth, then saw what he had seen first.