The ringing of the bar bell and cries of “Shop!” had already been audible from the bar, but all sound stopped for a moment as Sam pushed open the door and stepped inside.
The room was crowded but a path opened up for her leading to a small round table with a handwritten Reserved sign draped across an ashtray, and the noise resumed as she sat down. She’d brought the Reverend Peter K.’s Guide with her, but before she could open it a pint glass was slammed on the table. She looked up to find Thor Winander smiling down at her.
“A belated welcome to Illthwaite, Miss Flood,” he said. “Glad to see you looking so spry after your adventure.”
“You’re looking pretty spry yourself, considering, Mr. Winander,” she replied.
He laughed, showing good strong teeth, and said, “I won’t ask, considering what? I’m sorry your family inquiries came to a dead end.”
“One man’s dead end can be someone else’s starting point,” she said.
He looked at her speculatively. She met his gaze square on. He wasn’t totally unattractive for a geriatric, and he still had a certain Viking swagger to go with his name.
Thought of names made her ask, “You never told me how you knew what I was called. I’d guess you’d been talking to Mrs. Appledore. Right?”
“Quite right. I ran into her and naturally an exotic stranger in our little village was quite a news item. In Edie’s defense, I daresay she’s been just as forthcoming about me.”
“Well, she did say you were a bit of an artist.”
“I won’t ask what kind,” he grinned. “But it’s certainly true that few visitors to our fair village escape without paying due tribute to my talents. I look forward to seeing you in my studio before you go. In fact, let’s make a date. Tomorrow morning, shall we say?”
“What makes you think I’m in the market for art?”
“What makes you think I’m talking about art?”
Jesus, the old fart was flirting! Did he really think his pillaging and ravishing days weren’t altogether behind him?
Perhaps her disbelief showed, for his tone changed from teasing to something well short of but in the general area of pleading as he said, “It would be good if you could call in. I’m at the Forge, across the bridge and up Stanebank. Enjoy your drink, my dear.”
She watched him make his way to a bench by the window where he sat down next to a man Sam recognized as the menacing gravedigger. Or she thought she recognized him till her gaze moved to a third man on the bench, and there he was again.
Her eyes flickered between the two. Same face, same clothes, and the same blank animal stare which though it seemed unfocused she felt was fixed on herself. Twins? Certainly brothers. Bad enough giving birth to one who looked like that, she thought unkindly, but you must really piss fate off to get landed with two!
And now it occurred to her that if there were two, it didn’t matter if the gravedigger was still clearly visible outside while she was falling off that bloody ladder. It could have been his mirror image whose petrifying gaze she had felt up on the tower!
Something else to look into. But not here, not now. Here she was the solitary young woman, eating alone. Don’t fight it, go with it.
She picked up the Guide. It fell open at the last page she’d looked at, the section on the Wolf-Head Cross. She studied a reproduction of the panel showing the god Thor in his boat. It wasn’t a detailed portrait but there was a definite resemblance to Winander. She squinted down at the picture and sipped her beer thoughtfully. It was good stuff, slipping down so easily she’d almost got through the pint without noticing.
As if her thought was a command, another glass was set before her.
She looked up to see not the aged Viking but the superannuated leprechaun who’d warned her against Illthwaite.
“Good evening, Miss Flood,” he said, his high clear voice pitched low. “I hope you will accept a drink from me in token of apology for any unintentional rudeness I may have shown to you at lunchtime. I should have remembered the scriptures: Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”
“That’s nice,” she said. “But I wasn’t offended. And I’m certainly no angel.”
“Angels come in many guises and for many purposes,” he said.
He didn’t smile as he said it but spoke with an earnest sincerity which made her recall Mrs. Appledore’s warning that he was a snag short of a barbie.
“I hope you have recovered from your accident in the church,” he said.
“Yes, I’m good,” she said, thinking, cracked he may be, but he doesn’t miss much!
His eyes had strayed down to the open book on the table.
“You are interested in antiquities?” he said.
“In a way,” she said. “I was reading about the Wolf-Head Cross.”
“Ah yes. The Wolf-Head. Our claim to historical significance. But if you want to find out something of the true nature of Illthwaite, you should read about our other Wolf-Head Cross. Try the chapter on Myth and Legend. But never forget you are in a part of the world where they hold an annual competition for telling lies.”
He moved away to what seemed to be his accustomed seat almost out of sight behind the angle of the fireplace.
Her curiosity pricked, she riffled through the pages till she came to a section headed Folklore, Myth, Legend which she began reading at her usual breakneck speed.
After an introduction in which the three topics were defined and carefully differentiated, the writer conceded:
Yet so frequently do these areas overlap and merge, with invented and historical figures becoming confused, and events which properly belong to the timeless world of the fairies receiving the imprimatur of particular dates and locations, that it is almost as dangerous to dismiss any story as wild fancy as it would be to accept all that is related round the crackling fire of the Stranger House on a winter’s night as gospel truth. What more likely than that a pious farmer riding home after a night of wassail and ghost stories should mistake a swirl of snowflakes round the churchyard for the restless spirit of some recently deceased villager? When it comes to sharing real and personal concerns with strangers, Cumbrians are a close and secret people, but in launching flights of fancy dressed as fact they have few equals, as those who had the pleasure of meeting the late Mr. Ritson of Wasdale Head can well testify.
As described supra, in the designs on our great Viking cross can be found a fascinating use of ancient fables to underline and illustrate the awful and sacred truths of Christianity. Had Dr Johnson paused on his journey to the Caledonian wildernesses to view our Wolf-Head Cross, he might have modified his strictures on Lycidas.
Yet the great doctor was right in asserting that truth and myth may be combined in a manner both impious and dangerous. So in the story of that other cross, which some in their superstitious folly also called “Wolf-Head,” we find fact and fiction close tangled in a knot it would take the mind of Aristotle or the sword of Alexander to dismantle.
Here is that story as it is still recounted in the parish, with slight variation and embellishment, according to the nature of the narrator and the perceived susceptibility of the auditor. Be advised, it is not a tale for the faint-hearted…
Then her view of the book was interrupted by a large plate and Mrs. Appledore’s voice said, “There we go, dear. Tuck in.”
Sam smiled her thanks at the woman, then lowered her eyes to the plate and felt the full force of the Reverend’s warning. Here was something else definitely not for the faint-hearted. Reminding her of the Wolf-Head Cross carving of Jormungand, the fabled Midgard serpent coiled around the world, on her plate a single monstrous sausage, uninterrupted by twist or crimp, curled around a mountain of chips topped by a fried egg. There had to be enough cholesterol here to give a god or a hero a heart attack. She took a long pull at her beer while she contemplated how to get to grips with it.