Lazar (4 page)

“Aren’t there any books about Old Wickwich?” asked Jan, by
way of a suggestion. “Or a museum, maybe?”

“Did you find anything?”

“Yes, loads of things.” Jan slammed a pile of leaflets, books
and postcards down on Hal’s desk, next to his computer. He took his eyes off
the screen momentarily.

“Anything useful?”

“I hope so. I tried to phone from the museum to check whether
some of the stuff was really what you were looking for, but I couldn’t get a
signal.”

“Not surprised, it’s rubbish round here. No 3G either,” Hal
said disparagingly as he turned back toward the screen.

Jan began sorting through the pile, looking for something
that might engage her cousin’s attention.

“I must say, for a small museum it’s got a pretty big shop.”

“That’ll be for the tourists,” Hal explained. “A lot of
people come here to walk along the coast or go bird-watching on the marshes.”

Jan handed him a book. “This one looked interesting –
The Legends of Old Wickwich
.”

“That’s interesting?”

“It could be. It’ll tell us about the old churches tolling
beneath the sea for a start.”

“How will that help us?” Hal asked, scornfully. “Legends
aren’t real. You can’t recreate them, they’ve never existed.”

“Neither has your ‘virtual reality’,” retorted Jan, “but you
reckon that’s
real.
”

“Yeah, but virtual reality has dimensions and shapes and surfaces,”
defended Hal. “Legend’s don’t have anything, they’re nothing but dreams and
stuff – flights of the imagination. If it can’t be measured, it can’t be
real.”

“Is this real enough for you then?”

Jan tossed a map on to Hal’s keyboard. He snatched it up and
frowned.

“Yeah, that’s much more like it.” He unfolded it and spread
it over his desk. As he studied the map his right hand reached out and
positioned itself instinctively on the mouse by his computer. A couple of
clicks of a button later a new piece of software popped up on the screen. Hal
carefully placed the map to one side and began tapping in instructions.

Jan stood watching him with growing irritation.

“Thank you, Jan, for going down to the museum,” she said. Her
sarcasm was lost on Hal. It was not that he ignored her; he just did not seem
to notice.

“Well, enjoy yourself typing in all your measurements and
dimensions. I’m going outside again. It’s far too nice a day to be stuck
indoors feeding a computer.”

She turned and left the room.

Hal carried on typing.

Jan retraced the steps of her excursion to the museum earlier
that morning, carrying on past the ancient chapel and heading down toward the
sea. She had noticed a narrow lane that branched off to the right, just beyond
the village, and wanted to investigate it.

When she reached the lane and ventured up it she soon
discovered that it petered out to nothing more than a footpath that rose gently
toward a slight bulge on the horizon – all that remained of the ancient
hill upon which the medieval town of Wickwich had once stood. Much of it was
wooded, but beyond the trees Jan could just make out the top of the ruined
tower that had captured her imagination the day before.

She stopped for a moment. The noonday July sunshine was
becoming very hot. She wiped her brow with her forearm and took a look around. She
was surprised at how high she had climbed in such a flat terrain. She was able
to look over the roofs of the row of cottages, which included the museum, toward
the narrow river that trickled through a broad salt marsh toward the sea. To
her right stood a high, dense hedgerow of considerable age.

This must have been the original road into Wickwich, thought
Jan. She went over to the hedge and tried to pull herself up to look over it,
taking care not to snag her clothes on its twigs and branches. After several
attempts she manage to get a foothold on a clump of twisted roots and snatch a
scrambled glimpse of the field beyond. On the far side was a paddock where a
couple of horses were grazing, apparently oblivious to the fact that they
shared it with a ruined monastery. Jan stared in surprise at the crumbling grey
stone walls.

She carefully stepped back down and looked further up the
lane. How could she get over, or through, the hedge to take a closer look? Perhaps,
if she carried on in the direction of the sea, she would come upon a gate or
stile or something. But as she hurried along the footpath her heart began to
sink. If anything, the hedgerow was growing higher and becoming more
impenetrable. Eventually it merged into the strip of woodland that skirted the
brow of the hill she had been climbing. Jan ventured in, but not very far.

Where she was hoping to get round the end of the hedgerow and
turn back toward the field, Jan found herself confronted by a deep, wide ditch
that cut straight across the ancient roadway, stretching out in both
directions. Its sides looked steep – but not that steep. Perhaps, if she
could hold on to something, she could scramble round. She looked about her. An
ancient, twisted tree corkscrewed out of the bank at the point where the
hedgerow ran into the ditch. There was an overhanging branch.

Jan reached up, turned round and grabbed it and began to edge
sideways along the ditch’s brink toward her left. When she had gone as far as
the branch and her outstretched arm would allow she caught a glimpse of the
monastery through a gap in the foliage. She looked around for another branch. There
was one immediately above her head – but it was only just in reach. She
stretched and stretched until her fingertips could feel the bark along its
underside. If she leant out just a little further…

Within an instant she lost her balance, then her footing. She
felt the edge of the ditch give way beneath her feet. The next thing she knew
she was falling, rolling backward down the slope, head over heels over head
over heels over … until she landed with a thump, flat on her back, at the
bottom of the ditch.

Jan had been lying on the grass for some time, gazing up at
the sunlight shimmering through a kaleidoscopic canopy of every shade of green,
before it occurred to her that she had not hurt herself. She sat up and was
just about to brush the greenery and dirt from off her skirt when something
attracted her attention. It did not shine or sparkle, nor was it brightly
coloured. It was the shape that caught her eye. A minute cross with slightly
flared arms of equal length, sticking out of the soil that had been disturbed
by her fall.

Jan leant forward to pick it up. At first she could not. It
was attached to something, but after working at the ground with her fingernails
for a few seconds she extracted it from the earth. It was a ring. She began
trying it on, pushing out the soil that was caked inside its tarnished band.

“You’ve found it, at last.”

Jan gave a start and dropped the ring into her lap.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

Jan looked up. At the top of the bank, silhouetted against
the bright green leaves and sapphire sky, stood a figure of a girl about the
same height as herself. Jan shaded her eyes and squinted but could not make out
her face. The girl was standing directly in front of the sun, her dishevelled
hair like a halo around her shining head. She stepped forward. Jan called out.

“Be careful, the ground’s very steep and slip…” Jan’s voice
faded away. The girl was so sure-footed that she obviously did not need a
warning. She came down the bank as serenely as if she had been descending a
flight of stairs.

She reached the bottom of the slope in less time than it took
Jan to lift the ring from her lap – then she dropped it again. The skirt
the girl was wearing was identical to her own. So was the coloured T-shirt. And
her hair…

A story Jan had once read bubbled up from deep within her
unconscious, about a girl meeting her double in a wood – her doppelganger
– and how the legend said that to do so was a premonition of one’s own
death.

“Are you alright?” The girl’s voice was soft, with a strong
Suffolk accent. She sounded very concerned. “I’m sorry. I was so excited to
discover you had found the ring that I forgot to ask whether you had hurt
yourself when you fell.”

“No, I’m fine, thanks,” Jan smiled as the superstition
vanished from her mind. “Is this yours, then?” She held the ring up. The girl
took it with one hand and held out the other. Jan grasped it and pulled herself
up.

“It was mine once,” replied the girl, “but you found it, so
it’s yours now.”

Jan stood there, expectantly. But the girl did not move. In
spite of her words she seemed loath to relinquish the ring. Her head was bowed
down, her hair hanging over her face. She was obviously inspecting Jan’s find
with keen interest. Then, suddenly, without looking up, she thrust it back into
Jan’s hand.

“Please,” she said, “it’s yours.”

“No … no, I couldn’t.” Jan shook her head, but found herself
clasping the ring.

“You must take it,” the girl snapped insistently; then, more
softly, “as a token of our friendship.”

“Oh!” Jan was taken aback. She tried to make out the girl’s
expression in order to ascertain the sincerity of what she said, but she was
playing with a knot of her unkempt hair and pulling it diagonally across her
face. Only a single eye showed above a pallid cheek. It was cornflower blue on
the rim of a tear.

Jan stared at the girl, momentarily unnerved by the contrast
between the sudden assertiveness in her tone and the desolation that reflected
in her eye.

“Thank you,” Jan said, eventually, as she slipped the ring
upon her finger, still staring into the stranger’s eye. “If we’re to be
friends, we ought to swap names,” she smiled. “I’m Jan, short for Janet.”

“I’m Margaret … Margaret Hase.”

She spread her left hand and held it out for Jan to see.

“Look, our rings make a pair.”

They both broke off their gaze. She was wearing a ring of a
similar style to Jan’s, except that it bore a circle, instead of a cross, and
was cleaner and shone brightly in the sun. She placed her hand over Jan’s so
that they could see both rings side by side.

“They fit together to form a single ring.”

“Oh yes, I see – the cross fits inside the circle. That’s
clever,” Jan enthused. “Ha! Mine looks really dull compared with yours. It must
have been in the ground for an awfully long time. When did you lose it?”

“Ages ago.”

“How long have you lived here?”

“All my life.”

“Then you must know the legends about old Wickwich?” Jan
asked rhetorically. Margaret did not answer, but began to twist the knot of
hair in an agitated fashion; winding and re-winding it tight around her fingers
and pulling it even further across her face. Jan felt awkward, but despite
herself persisted in her enquiry.

“I was following the footpath, along the line of the old road
into the town, when I came across this ditch. Was it a moat or something?”

Margaret turned and looked up and down the line of the ditch.

“This is Pales Dyke. The city wall runs along the top,
there.” She pointed at the summit of the slope opposite the one Jan had
descended so precipitously. “And that’s Bridge Gate, just there.”