Saxon's Bane (17 page)

“But I am. The dig’s finishing this week.”

“I’ll miss you.”

Clare squeezed his arm a little tighter.

“Come and see me. I’ll show you the Saxon, if you want.”

“We might have different ideas of a wild night out, but I’ll come anyway.” The tension seemed to be leaving him as they reached the road. “I’ll walk back there with you, if you like, tomorrow. To the stone, that is. In daylight.” His voice sounded unnaturally light, as if he was forcing himself to make little of the offer. “Keep watch from the bridleway, perhaps, and make sure you aren’t disturbed.”

Clare paused before answering, guessing what the offer must have cost. “Are you sure?”

“It took me by surprise, the first time. I’ll be prepared now, and I don’t like boundaries. Especially the ones I build in my own head.”

Clare might have kissed him again for that offer, but she’d just seen the state of her ancient Volvo, slumped on four flat tyres and crying tears of glass and cable from its lights. She felt Fergus’s arm move to hug her round the shoulder.

“You can borrow mine, if you want.” Fergus nodded at his little Audi. “I hardly use it, these days.”

“Fergus, I’m frightened.” Clare held him more closely. She could make out the words ‘GO HOME BITCH’ scratched down the side of her car. “What have I got myself into?”

A
S THE SUN
rose Tony Foulkes pulled his front door shut behind him, lifted his head and sniffed the morning air. His Labrador dropped her nose into the grass, moving with the happy urgency of a dog bombarded by the scents of overnight trails. Tony’s more elevated nostrils relished damp earth and blossom, the crispness of ground frost in the hollows, and the promise of a fine day. It was a day to lift the spirit, a day to rejoice in this cerulean lightness at an hour that had been locked in darkness only a few weeks before. This was Tony’s favourite time, the time when the village began to stir, an hour he shared only with a few of the doggy fraternity and the van delivering to the village shop. Out on the farms, the day would already be well advanced, but here in the village the early risers were a small communion of friends whose faces lit with their daily greetings.

Tony whistled the dog back to him as he climbed the hill and turned into the churchyard, following his new morning routine. Ever since the blood on the church door he’d started his morning walk with a turn around the church, just to be sure that all was well. Besides, Tony thought, it was an opportunity to perform small services of care among the graves. To pull a weed or to set a tumbled jam jar of flowers right was as much an act of worship as the way his Julia polished the brass eagle lectern in the church every week. There was a quiet joy in small, unseen acts of giving.

This morning something made the dog nervous. She ran off as usual with her tail sweeping moisture from the long grass, but came back to him rapidly, whining, with her tail now clamped between her legs. Tony crouched to pet her, looking back along the double line her paws had made through the dew as she slunk back from the yew tree corner of the churchyard. Along that path a Victorian stone angel spread its wings, marking the grave of long-forgotten gentry, and it was a monstrosity in Tony’s eyes. Why not a Christian cross, or a simple headstone, he wondered, or even the proud embellishments of a heraldic tomb. Anything but the stone emotion of weeping angels. Today there was something new there, something his eyes could not interpret, a bright flash of scarlet hanging high and partly hidden by the marble wings. Puzzled, Tony walked closer, trying to decipher what he was seeing in the shadows beyond the angel, back where the yew’s ancient darkness bordered the churchyard wall.

At first Tony thought he was looking at a hobby horse, the old-fashioned child’s toy with a stylised horse’s head on a long stick, but this hobby horse had a disproportionately large, red tongue sticking out of its mouth. Then he noticed the horns on the animal’s head and felt the tightness across his chest as the shape resolved into a severed goat’s head, impaled on a stake and staring at the church with its glazed, dead eyes. Tony now saw that the impossibly large, scarlet tongue was a church hymn book which had been stuffed into the beast’s mouth.

Bellowing his anger, Tony rushed at the stake and wrenched at it, but the tightness across his chest focused into an ache that sank into his left arm so he heaved again, one-handed with his left arm trailing, consumed by the need to throw the vile thing beyond sacred ground. But his growls of effort became a groan of agony as his chest exploded in crackling filigrees of pain, and Tony staggered, leaning on the stake for support. For a moment he stayed there in obscene intimacy, eye to eye with the severed head until his legs collapsed involuntarily, making him appear to kneel in homage with his head bowed and his hand still clasped around the stake. Then another spasm creased him over and Tony fell, tumbling on his side between the graves. As he let go of the stake it sprang away from him, shaking the desecrated book free from the goat’s mouth.

The dew-soaked grass bathed his face like a touch of grace and for a moment the pain subsided. In front of his nose a damp, limp
Hymns Ancient and Modern,
the tool of his chorister’s trade, had fallen open at a verse.

Just as I am, of that free love

The breadth, length, depth, and height to prove,

Here for a season, then above,

O Lamb of God, I come.

Not yet, Tony tried to say, not yet. Then pain gripped his chest and his soundless cry was not for his God but for his wife. His outstretched hand clutched at air, wanting not the hand of his Saviour but the comfort of his soul friend.

F
ERGUS WATCHED HIS
own car arrive at Ash Farm and winced as it mounted the verge before Clare corrected the steering. He left his barrow load of hay, and walked to meet her as she stopped at an angle in the car park. He decided that her parking was no better than her driving. The face that emerged to look at him across the top of the car was wide-eyed and pale.

“Tony Foulkes is dead.” Clare was unable to say more, and flapped a hand in front of her as if the words she needed would not come. “It… goat…” She grabbed at his shirt as he came close, pulling it fretfully until he folded her into his arms and shushed her as he might a child. Her shoulders began to shake as the tears started. There must be more to this than the death of a man she scarcely knew.

“I found him, in the churchyard,” Clare sobbed into his chest. “Lying between the graves. Heard his dog as I came back from a run. She was beside him, howling.”

Fergus stroked her back. “D’you know how it happened?”

“They killed him. Herne’s lot.” His hand slowed until he held her loosely, feeling that a trapdoor had just opened over an abyss. Fergus lifted his hands to her shoulders and pushed her away until he could look into her eyes. The fear he saw there softened his voice. “What makes you say that?”

Fergus could see the struggle in her face, the academic need to present data pushing aside a more basic, emotional instinct. “It’s called a nithing pole. Pagan cultures used them as an extreme form of cursing. They’d sacrifice an animal and jam its head on a stick, see, then point it towards an enemy with curse runes carved into the stake. Sometimes they’d put something the enemy valued into the beast’s mouth to strengthen the curse.”

The confusion must have shown in his face. Clare hit his chest with her fist, not hard enough to hurt, just enough to show her frustration. “Last night they killed a goat. I saw them do it. This morning Tony died underneath a goat’s head nithing pole with a hymn book stuffed in its mouth.”

Fergus stared at her, feeling his face slacken as acceptance numbed him. “The police?”

“They arrived just after the ambulance. I tried to tell them about last night but they seemed to think I was mad. I don’t think dealing with Satanic rituals is in their instruction manual.”

“But the… pole thing?”

“They took it away with them. One of them pointed out that I can’t prove who put it there, and they don’t think anyone could prove it caused Tony’s death. The ambulance men said it looked like Tony had a heart attack.”

Behind Fergus the repeater bell for the office phone jangled over the yard. He ignored it.

“It might be a coincidence. Natural causes.”

“You didn’t see that poor beast slaughtered. What’s going on, Fergus?” He stared at her, finding no words to take away the fear in her eyes. The repeater bell snapped off as the call diverted to the answering machine.

“He’s here.” Clare tensed and looked past his shoulder. Jake Herne was walking out of the barn towards the office.

“He rode early this morning. He was in a foul mood.”

Herne saw them and paused to stare, then jerked a hand upwards towards Clare, middle finger extended into an insult, and mouthed ‘bitch’. The repeater bell started again, insistent.

Fergus felt his control start to slide. He recognised the feeling now, the sense that events were driving him, that he was sliding towards rage beneath outward calm. He had as much power to halt his lurching march towards Herne as he would have to stop a dive from a cliff into the sea, despite Clare’s pleas for caution from beside him. Only the nature of the impact was undecided.

Eadlin overtook Fergus, running towards the office, muttering something about “answer the bloody phone, can’t you?” as she followed Herne through the door. Normal life continued as a backdrop to the coming collision.

Fergus stopped in the doorway, unsure how to start. Herne looked up from where he was writing instructions about his horse’s care in the livery book, and glared as Clare pushed into the room behind Fergus. The look was unpleasant but not abnormal, and the realisation hit Fergus.
He doesn’t know.
Eadlin was standing by the desk, talking into the telephone.

“Hi Russ… No I haven’t…” Her stillness became palpable. Eadlin stared at Herne, mouth gaping in shock. “Yes, I’m still here... Russ, I heard you... Jake’s with me now. Call you back.” She replaced the receiver slowly. “What?” Jake’s tone was aggressive.

“Oh Jake, how could you? A sodding nithing pole in the churchyard? What got into you?”

“So fucking what?”

“So Tony Foulkes died this morning, right beside it, that’s what.” Clare’s voice shook. Good girl, Fergus thought. Scared half witless and she’s still standing up to him.

Herne’s face widened in surprise, then stretched into the kind of rictus grin that Fergus had seen on salesmen as they receive the news of a major, unexpected win. The expression of conquest was almost sexual as he pulled his arm into a clenched fist of triumph.

“It fucking worked!” His elation seemed mixed with wonder.

“Jake, what’s happening to you?” Eadlin was stunned by his reaction, and her voice rose into a shout. It was the first time Fergus had seen her lose her composure. “Listen to yourself, for fuck’s sake! A man’s dead.”

“Now that priest won’t dare mess with me.” Herne ignored her, and strutted around the room with his arm flexed, making short, punching movements with his fist. “It fucking worked!”

Fergus felt the remains of his self-control slip away. Until this moment he’d kept violence in check because he knew that Herne would beat him to a pulp if it came to a fight. Now Fergus looked around the room for a weapon. Beside him, at the door, was the rack of riding crops and schooling whips, flimsy things as weapons but in their midst was his wooden walking stick, discarded since his return. Fergus pulled it out, momentarily exploring the thick, root-ball handgrip before he held it lightly by its tip, with the heavy end swinging by his leg like a club. The threat was unmistakable. It was strange how calm he became as he discarded the conventions of normal behaviour.

“You’ve caused the death of a decent old man, and you’re happy about it?” Even his voice sounded calm.

“You don’t frighten me, you little spastic.”

“Nithing poles were always thought to be an underhand way of fighting.” Clare moved to stand alongside Fergus. “They were the last resort of cowards who would not confront their enemies in open combat.” Fergus had not heard that steel in her voice before.

“Fuck off, you interfering little bitch, this is nothing to do with you. If you keep poking your nose into other people’s business, you’ll end up with a lot worse than slashed tyres. And you,” Herne waved back-handed at Fergus, close enough to his face to multiply the insult, “can get the fuck out of here.”

“I’ll go when Eadlin says I should go, not you.”

“Fergus, stay where you are, please.”

“So that’s the way it is, is it? Does this little spastic want to get inside your knickers?”

“It’s no business of yours, but he’s a friend and that’s all, but a better friend than you’ll ever be.”

“And right now it looks as if Eadlin needs a few friends.”

Herne stepped up to Fergus, moving inside the swing of the stick before Fergus could lift it, and jabbed him in the chest with his finger. As Herne spoke flecks of spittle sprayed into Fergus’s face and he turned his head in disgust.

“I told you to get out, boy. Don’t ever come between a real man and his lover.” That was a strange choice of word, Fergus thought. He would have expected ‘woman’ or ‘girl’, but not ‘lover’. It was too soft a word, too tender. Perhaps it was a country thing.

“Real man? Lover?” Anger tightened Eadlin’s tone into a snarl. “You were never my lover. You just rutted, like an animal. Your idea of foreplay had as much sex appeal as a snuffling pig.”

Herne crossed the room in two strides, moving surprisingly swiftly for a man of his bulk, winding his shoulders for a blow. The movement opened the range and Fergus took a half step forwards, preparing his own blow, but Jake moved too fast. Herne uncoiled in a backhanded swipe across Eadlin’s face that snapped her head to the side and lifted her backwards across the room even as Fergus hefted his stick and swung. He tracked the swing of Herne’s hand the way he would track a cricket ball bowled wide and high in a predictable trajectory so that it could be swept safely to the boundary. The stick’s club grip and Herne’s hand connected with cold precision and a sound that held the faint, wet gravel noise of breaking bones. It was as satisfying as hearing the cricket ball hit the sweet spot, knowing it would fly for six. Herne howled and kept spinning, folding as he spun to nurse his hand in his stomach.

“You little shit!” Herne crouched over his hand, cradling it in his other arm as he squatted on his haunches. “You broke my fucking hand!”

Fergus stared at him, stunned by what he had just done. His anger had burst in that single blow, leaving him with an illogical instinct to apologise. He looked down at his stick, resisting the urge to throw it away. “I think you’d better go.”

“I’ll fucking murder you.” Now Herne was on his feet, pacing the room with the hand hugged under his arm, bowing his torso repeatedly as if in some arcane ritual of dance.

“Get out, Jake.” Eadlin rested against the desk, moving her jaw experimentally. She wiped her mouth with the back of a hand, and looked down at the streak of blood that it left. “Get out, and take your horse with you.” Her voice was muffled by the bloody slush in her mouth. “I want you off this yard as soon as you can move your horse.”

The look Herne gave them was pure malice. “You’ll regret this, all of you. I’ll have you begging for mercy before I’m finished.”

Fergus rested his backside against the desk as his reaction to the moment weakened his knees.

“Not before we’ve made you beg Julia Foulkes for her forgiveness.” Clare’s voice still held that note of authority. “The pity is that she’s so Christian that she’d probably give it.”

Fergus gripped the stick harder to mask the shakes that were building in his hands. He realised that this made him look more aggressive. “Just get out.”

“You have no idea who you’re messing with. And what.”

Clare shut the door behind him. Fergus took one hand off his stick and stared at it. It was becoming a pattern. Rage then shakes, and a sense of guilt or failure.

“What’s happening to me? I haven’t hit anyone since primary school.”

“He deserved it.” Fergus heard the mess in Eadlin’s mouth and turned to look at her.

“You OK?”

Eadlin nodded, massaging her jaw. “Thanks. He wasn’t always like that, really.” There was desperation in her voice, as if she needed to apologise for her former boyfriend. “He’s changing. It’s like this thing is taking him over.” She wiped blood from her mouth onto a handkerchief. “And I think you’ve made a serious enemy. Jake won’t forgive what you just did.”

“Something tells me I’m lucky that the dig’s finishing and I’m moving out.” Clare had slumped into one of the leather armchairs. She stared at Fergus and he understood.
But I still have no answers.