Advent (62 page)

 
He felt insulted, but he also felt utterly at sea. He wanted to retort that he wasn’t a child any more, but he couldn’t say it. He didn’t know how to argue with a thing like this.

 
‘Do you love my daughter?’

 
‘Huh?’

 
‘Would you die for her? I would. If I could become a woman again, I would let the warlock’s servants rip my flesh only to set eyes on her now. Her birth was agony to me, but I would suffer ten times that pain every sunrise if that was the price that bought her happiness only as long as noon. Do you love her that much?’

 
Horace, beyond astonishment, could only think about his own mother. Did she want him to be happy? Did she love him? Why was she old and boring and on her own and too busy all the time and always bossing him around?

 
‘Can’t you just take me home?’ he said, tears rising.

 
‘You must promise first. Promise to return and find my daughter.’

 
Horace wiped his nose. ‘Yeah. OK.’

 
‘Promise it.’

 
‘OK. Yeah. I will, I’ll come back. Just let me go home now, please.’

 
‘The world has changed and I’m strong again. I’ll watch for you if those are empty words, and when you come to sea I’ll find you and drown you.’

 
Horace stared desperately at the shore. It looked so close, but they were getting no nearer. ‘I told you, didn’t I? I will!’

 
‘Say it. Say, “I promise.”’

 
‘All right!’ Despite his half-stifled tears, Horace reacted the same way he always did when anyone tried to bully him. He lost his temper. ‘All right, all right! I promise. OK? I promise!’

 
He turned away from her and started fiddling ostentatiously with the outboard. No one was going to threaten him. (He tried not to think about the paddle, swallowed as if the river was a grey crevasse.) He didn’t care who it was, if someone wanted his help they better not talk to him like that. He yanked the starter uselessly a couple of times and swore. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her rising gracefully. He tried not to look, not to see her naked, not to notice the face that was so strangely like Marina’s watching him.

 
‘Only bring her to the river. Bring her where I can reach her and she will be safe. I’ll bless you as long as you live, and the sea will never hurt you. Promise again.’

 
He was going to give some snarky retort, but instead . . . ‘I promise,’ he said, meaning it this time.

 
‘You are mortal flesh. The warlock has no power over you. And you carry my wedding ring. Keep it close. Wear it if you must. Maybe it will protect you. Do you understand?’

 
‘Yeah, course,’ he lied. His fragile pride was all he had to go on now.

 
‘Are you afraid?’

 
‘Course not!’

 
‘Good.’ She stepped up onto the thwart, arched like the crescent moon – for a heart-stopping instant Horace knew he had never seen anything so beautiful – and dived into the water with a tiny splash. The boat swung round purposefully and set itself for the opposite shore, weaving through the moored boats, the snow falling lightly all around. He heard the soft swish of the bow-wave and mistook it at first for her voice:
Find my child, find my child.

Owen handed the envelope back.

 
‘Gwen was totally mesmerised by her,’ he said. ‘I think for your aunt Swanny was living proof that she was right about everything. You know, that the world really is full of mysteries. I think she loved Swanny almost as much as Tristram did. I sometimes think we all did. It was almost like you had to. You couldn’t help yourself.’

 
Gav looked at the envelope in his hands, its few scrawled lines, so full of secrets. Marina’s mother. Had Auntie Gwen known? She must have. She’d kept that photo on her desk. But she’d never told Marina. None of them had. All Marina knew was that she sometimes saw a white woman with green hair, watching her from the river. She was as ignorant of herself as Gav was.

 
He couldn’t put the pieces together, but he was beginning to see that all of the seemingly indecipherable nonsensical words had meant something to Auntie Gwen. Something that had led her to the chapel with its evil light and its voice like dead leaves.

 
He traced the stain left by his mug of tea with a fingertip. Round and round, circling his old name. He tried to conjure a pattern out of the scribbles above, but nothing would come. He frowned and examined the top of the list.

Jess!!

 
‘“Jess”? What’s that?’

 
‘A who, not a what, I think.’ Owen sounded relieved to have something to talk about. Soon I’ll go, Gav thought. A little while longer and then I’ll go and I’ll find her. ‘Gwen was talking about her just this last weekend, so I assume that’s who she means. I hadn’t thought about it for ages. A woman who showed up on the estate, years ago. Happens occasionally. People take a wrong turn from the footpath, or perhaps they get curious. Usually Caleb just escorts them out. This one was different. She had an infant with her.’ Owen blinked, remembering. ‘Tiny, a newborn. They were both in a terrible state. God knows what she thought she was doing. I think she belonged to some religious commune up the valley and they’d thrown her out when she showed up pregnant. I’m not sure. It’s a long time ago. She was homeless anyway, and she hadn’t had anyone to look after her properly at the birth, that was obvious. She’d started bleeding. They got hold of me and we got her to the chapel, her and the baby.’

 
‘The chapel?’

 
Owen took off his glasses and massaged his eyes. ‘There’s a tiny old private chapel off in the woods at Pendurra. Sixteenth century, I think. It ought to be a ruin by now, but it’s not. Anyway. They built it over the site of a spring, and there’s a well inside, or a sort of pool. They say the water from the spring is blessed. It’s supposed to have healing powers.’

 
The water that makes you well.
Gav winced. Marina had told him that already, but he hadn’t listened. He looked out through the smudged window, wondering if the day was getting dark. Time to get going soon, he thought. Time to find out where she is.

 
‘The baby survived. Amazingly. The mother did too, though she was in a pretty bad way. I wanted to get her safe somewhere but she disappeared with her boy. I’ve no idea what happened to them. No one seemed to know. I’d forgotten all about it . . . This was all before Marina was born. I don’t know what suddenly got Gwen interested in it. Can I see that list again?’

 
Gav passed it forwards. Owen tapped the envelope. ‘That must be me in the next line, in brackets: “O.J.” See?’ Owen Jeffrey: Gav had to concentrate to remember the priest’s name. The fragments of old stories tumbled around him like snowflakes. ‘I’ve no idea who that next person is.’ Owen tilted the paper so Gav could see. ‘“Joshua Acres.” If he’s anyone. But “key chap” must be the key to the chapel. She’s obviously thinking about the chapel anyway, isn’t she. The “well” must mean the water there, the pool. And then something about Swanny. I’m not sure why the “O” made me think of the ring she used to wear. Maybe it’s a name instead, I don’t know.’ Owen’s look travelled down to the end of the list. ‘And then.’ He looked up at Gawain. ‘You.’

 
Me, Gav thought.

 
Something had made Auntie Gwen think of the old chapel in the woods, locked because there was something important hidden in it. She sent Caleb away. She made her plan to fetch the key. And all somehow because of him.

 
He was afraid he might sit in the car until he fell asleep again if he didn’t get started soon. He looked at the scarved and muffled man with his shell-shocked face and saw a member of a different species, a creature more strange to him than Holly.

 
He stretched his legs, aching with tiredness and deep-rooted cold. ‘I have to go.’

 
‘Oh right. Yes.’ Owen looked embarrassed, an unwanted guest. He handed back the envelope and began tussling with the zips and Velcro of his coat. ‘Me too. Though God knows where.’ He pulled gloves out of a pocket. ‘And he’s not telling. Look, my house is just down at the edge of the village. Why don’t you head there? It’s not locked. You can get out of the cold, warm up.’

 
‘No,’ Gawain said. ‘Thanks.’

 
‘Really? It’s only a little—’

 
‘There’s something I need to do.’

 
Owen watched him in the mirror for a while, then nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose there would be.’

 
‘I don’t think you should go back there.’

 
Owen paused his clumsy battle with the zip of his coat. ‘You don’t?’

 
‘No.’

 
His glasses had fogged. He looked suddenly helpless.

 
‘Are they going to be OK?’ he said. ‘Tristram and Marina?’

 
Gawain saw the answer the priest wanted. He opened his mouth to give it, or something like it, but it wouldn’t come out.

 
‘I doubt it.’

 
Owen shrugged weakly and turned away. ‘Silly question.’ He opened the car door. ‘Oh look, it’s stopped. More or less.’

 
The lead sky had disburdened itself of all but a few laggardly flakes. A world of featureless white opened out at the top of the ridge. ‘How about if I leave you my phone? If you need help or anything, you can just . . . call.’ He withdrew a mobile from inside his puffy coat, offered it hesitantly to Gav and then put it on the dashboard with an apologetic shrug. ‘You never know,’ he said, as he swung himself out.

 
He surveyed the obliterated landscape for a while, then ducked his head back in through the door.

 
‘If I ask just one question,’ he said, ‘will you give me an honest answer?’

 
Gav blinked out of his trance. ‘OK.’

 
‘Is this the end of the world?’

 
Gawain studied the man. He thought about it.

 
‘The beginning, I think,’ he finally said.

 
A shadow of pain crossed Owen’s face. He nodded wearily and straightened.

 
‘All right. Thank you.’ He rubbed his gloved hands indecisively. ‘Good luck, then.’ And he was gone, scrunching back down the way he had come.

 
Gawain waited for the sound to die away. He flipped the envelope back and forth in his hands, looking out at the snowfield, wondering again what time of day it was.

 
The light seemed no less dim although the snow had cleared. Late in the afternoon, maybe. Dusk would come early under this covering of cloud, and the night would be dark as the inside of the locked chapel. He should have left before, he thought, instead of squatting dumbly in this dead metal box listening to the priest. He had things to do. He had to go and find Marina. This time he had to do it, come what may, hellhounds or living trees or worse.

 
He glanced down again at Aunt Gwen’s hasty jottings, flipping the paper distractedly in his hands. The jotted words on the back, telling some story he couldn’t understand, a story that had ended in disaster; on the front the typed address, looking so innocent. A stamp, a London postmark. The envelope had been neatly slit; he noticed the thin sheets within.

 
A letter. He frowned. Well, of course it was a letter; that’s what envelopes were for.

 
A letter to Aunt Gwen, from London.

 
Uppermost in the stacked pile beside her chair. The first piece of paper to hand when she’d got whatever crazy idea had got hold of her and made her figure out how to get rid of Caleb and then go and get the key to the chapel. It must have just arrived.

 
He looked again at the neat brown ring circling his name.

 
He could almost see Auntie Gwen making her notes. It was something about the haste of the scribbles, the exclamation marks, the underlinings. It was so like the way he remembered her, haring off after her weird enthusiasms like an excitable dog after a squirrel. As if in a dream he saw her sitting in her armchair, the stack of paper beside, some sudden impulse sending her rushing for a pencil. Some train of thought that had ended in him.