“Please, take a seat,” Professor Stowe said, indicating the one closest to Freya. She lowered herself into it and huddled over her mug of tea.
“Let me make introductions, first of all,” said Stowe, settling into his own chair. “The gentleman on my right,” he said, indicating an elderly gent in his seventies who wore a full head of white hair and a tweed suit, “is First Lieutenant Gerrard Cross, retired, a former lecturer in British Mythology-and a specialist in Scottish ballads.
“Sitting next to him is Ms. Leigh Sinton.” A thin, dark-haired woman in her forties wearing a dark-green jumper gave a small wave and then very primly and unnecessarily straightened her tan skirt. “She’s something of an all-rounder with an enthusiasm for archaeology and is a tireless mountain trekker.
“Next is Mr. Wood, though I’m sure that he’ll insist that you call him Brent.”
“S’right,” grunted a well-built, heavy-set man in a dark jacket and grey waistcoat. His face was stern and his lips gave the impression of being buttoned in the centre, but his cheeks glowed attractively.
“There’s nobody who knows the university like him. He’s currently a porter at Jesus College. And finally, there is the Reverend Borough. He is fully ordained, but attached to the college-not the church.”
A man in his late thirties, nearly bald with traces of red hair above his ears, gave an awkward bow to Freya. “Peter, please.”
“And finally, there’s me, your good professor.” He gave her a warm smile. “Although while you are here, you may address me as Felix.”
Everyone was looking at her expectantly so Freya gave a small wave and introduced herself. “Freya Reynolds, hi.”
“Freya is a childhood friend of Daniel Tully, the boy I was following and who, I regret to inform you now, has been taken.”
The room reacted to this news in dismay. The elderly Mr. Cross pursed his lips and clucked his tongue; Ms. Sinton wrung her hands and exclaimed, “Oh dear!” Brent Wood slowly shook his head side to side, and the reverend closed his eyes and soundlessly moved his lips.
“In fact, she was with him when it happened,” continued Stowe. “I say she was with him, though it would be more accurate to say that she was near him. He was coming to see her when he stepped across a lych-gate and just . . . vanished. Do I have that right?”
This last sentence was directed at Freya. She nodded in agreement.
Ms. Sinton leaned forward. “This is no doubt cause for concern- and Felix will give us specific details later-but he told us just now that he believed you had been, for want of a better word, ‘taken’ when you were younger. Is this true?”
Freya’s eyes dropped to her tea and looked into the steam swirling up from it. Then she started to retell, in a halting voice, the lies and half-truths that she had told the police and all the psychiatrists over the years. She made sure to include all of the rehearsed halts, pauses, and stutters she had tailored into it.
“When we were younger,” she said, “Daniel and I, we found a tunnel that we explored. When we tried to leave, we couldn’t find our way out again. We were missing for almost a month. We wandered through tunnels underground, we licked water that dripped from rocks, we ate insects sometimes, and then we were found- up north somewhere. I don’t remember where.”
The group looked at her with blank faces.
“And that’s it,” Freya said.
“You’ll forgive me, my dear,” said the stout porter, Wood, “but I believe that is far from ‘it,’ as you say!”
Freya was shocked by this outright attack. She automatically started replaying another side of the story she usually held in reserve to make people think that they had earned her trust.
“There were people, I think, and they helped us, maybe, but-but I don’t remember much about them.”
“And I say it was nothing of the sort!”
“Please, Brent,” said Rev. Borough. “Don’t antagonize the girl.
I’m sure I would not wish to open up to a group of strangers about events that most would think me mad for relating. She simply doesn’t know to trust us yet. Perhaps we should let her rest and she can explain more when she’s recovered.”
“Thank you,” Freya said, spying an out. “I’m just-there’s a lot that’s happened recently, with Daniel, and I don’t think I can talk about it yet. Please, tell me, what do you-I mean, the Society-do?”
“Lt. Cross,” said Professor Stowe, rising, “perhaps you’d like to give our guest a short-very short, mind-account of our history.
I have a matter I must attend to. Excuse me.” He left the room.
“Well,” Lt. Cross began, “the Society was formed in April of
1917, when Elsie Wright and Frances Mitchell began meeting regularly with Sir Wilfred Rewlbury, the head of the Royal Society of Biology, and, in May of that year, Nils Ogred, a Swiss botanist. Initially they met in a small tearoom in Bradford, which was convenient for charting incidents in the area. They were, over time, joined by Robert Trebor, the historian and lecturer, and Arthur Rutherford, Lord Sansweete. In August of 1919, Nils Ogred moved to Holland, and the group relocated, meeting in the chapter house of Westbury Cathedral. They were joined by Rodney Woodrue and Nassar Rassan in October 1921, after Lord Sansweete left in June of 1920. In September 1926, the group was on hiatus following Sir Rewlbury’s son’s disappearance. Once that situation was resolved they started meeting again, but this time in the Bury St. Edmunds Town Hall. They were joined by gentleman scientist Rian Buford, Clark Sassoon, and Lady Gail Nyman. It was at this time that rifts began to form, and in July 1928, the group first split, with Wright, Woodrue, Rassan, and Sassoon meeting on Thursdays of alternating weeks, and the rest meeting, from November of that year, on the first and third Mondays of every week at the private library of Joseph-”
Freya wasn’t following any of this. She was so desperately tired that for a few moments she couldn’t decide if it was more polite to excuse herself or just fall quietly asleep. “I’m sorry, I’m not really-I think it would be best if I left,” she blurted, but made no effort to move, or even lift her head.
“-Wimbourne, twenty-eighth Earl of Winton. The following year, February to be specific, was when Mitchell’s faction began their private royal presentations, at that time before George V. He allowed Mitchell’s group use of the Royal Gallery’s Eastern Rooms, which, in March of 1931, was abandoned for the Gallery Room of the Royal Gardens’ Eastern Offices. Meanwhile, the Wright Society-”
Freya thought that she protested once more at this point, but she didn’t have time to recall what she’d said because the next instant she was asleep.
2
The trip up to Dunbeath, the largest village next to Morven, took just a couple hours and was a scenic, costal drive. As he came closer to Morven, the sky became overcast, threatening rain. The clouds were so dark and deep-almost purple, in fact-that one could almost think it was starting to be evening. Alex looked at the dashboard clock; it read 9:47 a.m.
Instead of finding a place in the village to park, he turned inland and looked for the farm. Farmers were more tied into the area, not just in terms of community but of the land as well.
He came across a group of small buildings near a sign that read Bainabruich. He pulled the Land Rover up a dirt driveway, killed the ignition, and let himself in through a cattle gate. After knocking and receiving no reply at the front door, he circled around the house to the large open barn.
Through the doors in the back he could see a tractor moving across one of the fields. He spotted the path to the field and started along it. When the man in the tractor saw him, he turned off his engine and climbed out of the cab.
“Hello,” Alex said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a wallet that he had stuffed his police badge into. “My name is Alex Simpson. I’m with the Northern Constabulary,” the truth; “I work in the Special Crimes Unit,” the lie.