Lazar (10 page)

What Jan saw next made her blood run even colder.

It was Margaret. There was no doubt about it. Even though the
vague, white figure was a long way off, Jan just
knew
that it was her. But
how
did she know? She could not possibly recognise her from this distance. And how
could she be so sure? The Margaret she had met before had been melancholic
– despairing, even. This girl was skipping carefree across the grass swinging
a basket in her hand. But it
was
her.

Or is she just a figment of my imagination, along with
everything else? Jan questioned her own senses for the third time. Perhaps
there’s a part of me that wants so much to see Margaret again that it’s
conjured up her image in my mind’s eye.

Whoever, or whatever, she was, she was fast approaching the
monastery. Jan walked over to the remains of the wall along the north side of
the aisle. It came up to just below Jan’s waist, and at first she considered
climbing over it, but in the end decided to stand and wait for Margaret to come
to her.

As the girl came nearer Jan noticed that she wasn’t wearing
modern clothes – she had a long, grey woollen dress on, that reached down
to the ground. “I don’t think I’ve got an outfit like that in
my
mental databank,” Jan said to herself,
and smiled, and as she did so she realised that she wasn’t frightened. “She may
be dressed like a medieval ghost this time, but she’s nothing like as sinister
as she was before.”

But there
was
something
slightly odd in her demeanour. Although Margaret was heading in Jan’s
direction, she was not coming directly toward her. In fact, Margaret didn’t
seem to be aware of Jan’s existence at all. Jan waved; she failed to notice. Jan
called her name; she didn’t hear.

As much irritated as fazed by Margaret’s behaviour, Jan made
to climb over the wall in order to confront her, but she hit her knee against …
against what? There was nothing there to hit her knee against. She rubbed her
kneecap. Instinctively?

Jan held up her hand in front of, but away from, her face. She
moved it forward tentatively. Her fingers touched a wall. That is, her fingers
touched the cold, rough, unyielding surface of dressed stone – but there
was nothing there for her eyes to see. She put her other hand forward. It
touched a wall. She reached out in all directions. Where her eyes could see
only the weathered fragments of a wall up to the level of her knees, her hands
could feel the fabric of a
whole
one.

She moved sideways, feeling her way as though blind, until
she came to the point at which the invisible wall met the west end of the
church. She turned the corner, and dragged her fingers with her. She stared at
them. The west wall was still standing – she could see it – but her
fingers could not touch it. Although she pushed as hard as she could, until her
fingertips bulged outwards with the pressure, they remained resolutely at least
one centimetre away from the weathered surface of the ancient edifice.

It was as though she was able to experience the wall, through
her sense of touch, as it had been when first built, in medieval times … when
Margaret was alive.

Jan scrambled toward the doorway, never once taking her hands
away from the wall. She felt her fingers run over the ornately carved stone
jamb, and then along the grainy surface of a heavy wooden door – presumably
the door that she had bumped into when she entered. Halfway across the opening
her fingers met thin air – the other of the double doors was seemingly open.
Jan fell through it and then stumbled down a step she could not see. She
regained her footing straight away. Where was Margaret? Jan turned sharply to
the right. She was nowhere to be seen. Jan hurried along the wall and quickly
turned the corner of the church – and nearly ran straight into Margaret.

The girl screamed and dropped her basket.

Jan took a sharp intake of breath and placed her hands across
her mouth as if to never let it out again. She stared at Margaret. Her face!

It was beautiful.

Her complexion was fresh and softly tanned; her eyes were
wide and bright and blue; her nose was … perfect. There were no marks or scars
to spoil its gentle curves and arches. The skin was flawless. The only blemish
on the young girl’s face was the expression of sheer terror that twisted her
pale lips and cut furrows in her brow.

Margaret was the first to speak.

“Who are you?” Her voice was hardly louder than a whisper. Jan’s
answer was just as tremulous.

“I’m Jan, don’t you remember? You gave me this –” She
held up her hand and showed the girl her half of the ring. Margaret’s eyes grew
even wider, then narrowed.

“Where did you get that?” The question scythed the summer air
with the cold, hard edge of interrogation.

“Over by the city wall.” Jan pointed past Margaret in the
general direction of the ditch. “I found it in the dyke, right next to the west
gate.”

“That was where I
lost
it.”
Margaret’s frown had turned to one of anguish. Tears rushed into her eyes. “I
should never have taken it off my finger. The rings should never have been
parted – not until I had found the one with whom I wished to share my
life.” Her piercing light blue eyes glared directly into Jan’s. “That ring is
mine to bestow, not yours to steal.”

She lunged forward and grabbed Jan’s wrist. Her fingers felt
like ice upon Jan’s skin. Both girls recoiled immediately and snatched their
hands away from one another. Margaret let out a yelp of pain.

“Aargh! Your flesh – it burns! In God’s name, who or
what are you?” she screamed – there was nothing cold or hard about her questions
now. “Are you some spirit of the dead or a messenger sent from Heaven or come
from Hell? And why, oh why, by all that’s Holy, have you chosen me? Did I
summon you here when I lost my ring? Is it that that has brought you to me?”

Jan felt herself stifle the desire to laugh out loud. Was it
in reaction to the shock, she asked herself, or was it because Margaret was
asking the very same questions that she herself was thinking? In God’s name,
who or what was
Margaret
? Surely it
was
she
who was some spirit of the
dead or a messenger?

A messenger. Yes, that was it. That’s what this is all about
– I’ve got to send a message back through time. The thought dawned on Jan
with sudden clarity. I’ve got to warn Margaret of the storm and the floods and
the drowning of Old Wickwich.

“What day is it?” she blurted out. Margaret stepped backward.
Jan could see from her expression that the girl was far more frightened and
confused by the encounter than she was. She repeated her question more
precisely. “What is the date? What year is it?”

“’Tis the Year of Our Lord 1286.”

“I thought so,” Jan felt something inside her leap for joy. “Don’t
tell me, let me guess. It’s the twenty-eighth of July – am I right?”

“Yes.” Margaret took another step backward.

“And the weather – what’s the weather like?”

For the first time since they had met, Margaret took her eyes
off Jan and looked nervously from side to side then up at the sky.

“’Tis warm and dry. Why?”

“Warm and dry? Is there no sign of a storm?”

Margaret looked back at Jan and frowned, obviously bewildered
by this line of questioning.

“The wind’s rising from the east, but ’tain’t nothing much. The
fishing fleet’s still putting out to sea.”

“No, they mustn’t – you must stop them,” Jan shouted
with such fervour that Margaret made to turn and run.

“No, don’t go,” Jan took hold of Margaret’s sleeve, then let
go, conscious of the alarm in Margaret’s face. “I don’t mean you any harm. We’re
friends – remember? This ring’s a token of that friendship and I think
you’re right, I think it has brought me to you.

“I’m here to warn you of the dreadful storm that will come
tomorrow night, on St Lazarus’ Day. It’s going to destroy half of the city. The
eastern side of Wickwich will be drowned beneath the sea. You’ve got to tell
everyone to take their possessions and evacuate their homes.”

Margaret stood staring at Jan in disbelief. She began,
slowly, to shake her head from side to side. “No, no, no,” she intoned quietly.
“That cannot be. The sea wall’s just been reinforced, it can withstand the highest
tide.”

“Not the one that’s coming tomorrow night. Five churches and
their parishes will be washed away. St Michael, St Bartholomew, St …”

“No, no,” Margaret was shouting now. “I don’t believe you. You’re
lying. It can’t be true.”

“But it is, it is true – believe me. The city’s doomed.
Over the centuries it will be completely washed away. All that will be left are
the ruins of this monastery and…”

“Ruins?” Margaret gazed up toward where Jan guessed the
central tower once stood, square and solid against the sky.

“Yes, ruins,” Jan insisted, and swung her arm out over the
rubbled remains of the wall. “See, noth… ouch!” She yelped with pain and drew
back her hand, its knuckles grazed and bleeding. In the excitement of meeting
Margaret she had temporarily forgotten about the phenomenon of the wall that
was and was not there.

She put her knuckles to her lips and looked up at Margaret. She
looked totally confused. Jan was obviously not acting in the way that a young
medieval girl expected spirits of the dead or messengers from Heaven to behave.
In fact, Jan sensed, she was about to burst out laughing.

“No, honestly,” Jan pleaded, her concern at losing the
initiative amplified by her hurt pride, “I’m deadly serious. I’ve come from the
future to warn you. You
must
let
everyone in Wickwich know that their city’s doomed. Look, look…”

Jan had suddenly remembered the guidebook. She snatched it from
her pocket and opened it outwards, straight at Margaret’s face. The pages
displayed a series of photographs illustrating the gradual destruction of the
last remaining church as, year on year and stone by stone, it slowly crumbled
down the cliff face and was swallowed by the sea.

“All Saints,” Margaret whispered as she stared at the final
photo of its solitary tower.

Jan flicked to another page. It showed the monastery as
she
could see it. Margaret looked away, toward
the building, then stared back, straight at the page, her eyes and mouth wide
open. Jan could see her disbelief and incredulity being demolished by this
evidence as relentlessly and as remorselessly as if eroded by the sea itself. Jan
turned another page.

“The Lazar…” Margaret gasped. She stepped backward, then
stepped back again, then turned and ran. Jan stopped herself from running
after. She did not need to. She had done it, she felt positive of that. She had
convinced Margaret that the medieval city of Old Wickwich was in grave danger. Her
warning could not save the town, but it might have saved the townsfolk’s lives.
She must get back and check the books to see if anybody had been drowned, to
see whether she had succeeded in fulfilling the task that, she was convinced, was
the reason for the haunting.

For the second time that afternoon a motorbike roared by and
broke the silence.

Jan did not stop running until she reached the gravel drive
of her Aunt and Uncle’s house. Then, bent double, hands on knees, she gaped
open-mouthed toward the ground and gasped for air, grasping lungfuls at a time.
Eventually, she stood up and took a deep breath through her nose, this time not
for oxygen but to calm herself before going into the house and telling Hal her
tale – her amazing, incredible, bizarre, unbelievable tale.

But the breath wasn’t enough. It could not assuage the
excitement that was bubbling through her blood. She sprang off down the drive
and burst in through the front door without stopping. She reached the staircase
in a single stride and ran up it three steps at the time. She darted down the
corridor and threw herself into her cousin’s room.

“You’ve just seen Margaret,” Hal said calmly without turning
from his screen.

His statement knocked the breath right out of Jan, what
little there was left of it after her dash to be the one to break the news. Her
mouth opened and closed several times before she could articulate the single
word “What!” It was not so much a question as an exclamation. Hal took it to be
the former.