Buried Fire (3 page)

Michael opened his eyes. The pain which had blinded him an hour before rose up again, but less insistently, as if it had lost heart.

Slowly, his squint relaxed and he looked around him for the first time. He was still sitting at the bottom of the hollow; all around him were the clumps of bracken, the scattered rocks and the tufted grasses. A couple of clouds hung in tatters in the sky. It was just as it had been when – an age ago – he had put his book aside and closed his eyes. Just as it had been, and yet everything had changed too. The whole world was tinted with a reddish hue. Where the grass was once a sun-dried yellow, it was now dull red. Where the sky had once been blue, it was now a grey expanse like beaten metal, flecked with a pinkish tinge. All the summer's variety of colour seemed to have been leached away.

Michael held his head in his hands, pressing gently on his boiling eyelids with fingertips which flinched at the heat. He looked again; the view was the same. Everything seemed oddly flat, like a bad painting with no real perspective. It lacked the normal depth which he had never really been aware of before, but which now, in its absence, he missed with a sharp pang. He wondered vaguely whether it would be dangerous to descend the hill with his vision in this state. But it didn't matter. He was already wrecked.

In fact, his condition puzzled him. Physically, he felt a little stronger, which was odd, for the day was hardly any cooler and the sun still beat down. A sudden increase in energy, flowing upwards through his body, had cleared his head, and stopped his shaking.

He got to his feet and began to climb warily out of the hollow. Everything still looked flat. Once or twice he misjudged the distance of a rock or tuft of earth and slipped, but his sight was not as treacherous as he had expected and he soon gained the top of the rise. There, he paused to take stock.

He felt fine. Full of beans in fact. The climb had done him good. If only his si—

A rabbit ran across the opposite end of the hollow, over the back of the ridge and out of sight. Michael froze where he stood, his heart thumping in his chest.

The rabbit's movements had been those of a ghost's.

It had been fast, and he had caught only a second or two of its sprint across the grass, but he had seen enough to realise he hadn't seen it properly at all.

He had seen through it.

Although well out in the open, it had been almost invisible in the red-grey twilight of his gaze. He had caught its rabbit's outline, the shape of the ears, the flash of feet. But where was its solidity, where was its substance? He had seen the grass behind its body as it ran. And what was that crystal brightness lodged up where the head should have been? That hard-edged shape, which erupted from the dullness of the red-grey world with the impact of a pearl in mud?

Michael shook his head. Sunstroke. Remember – Stephen had been delirious too. It made no difference. He had to get home. Hastily, he turned away from the hollow, and began to negotiate the rise, walking east along the Wirrim, between the holes and crevices of old mine workings, and here and there the upraised mounds covered with short grass.

Five minutes later, he saw something which convinced him he had finally gone mad.

Two figures were approaching along the path which curved in an elegant descent down the combe to Fordrace. They were several hundred yards away when they came in view, walking together and holding hands, though their lower halves seemed curiously dim. Michael found he couldn't focus on their legs at all, but this was almost irrelevant beside the horror and wonder of their heads.

The figures had the heads of sheep.

They each had a sheep's pointed ears and blunt, curved, foolish snouts. They also had a general air of sheepiness, placid, amiable and somewhat stupid. And yet, aside from this, Michael had never seen anything less like sheep in his entire life.

The heads were formed of a glorious patterning of moving lights, scintillating like a fish's scales or the facets of a diamond. As they drew closer, their surface was revealed to be a flowing current of changing colours, which swirled and disappeared and reappeared again in a never-ending motion. A bright nimbus blurred the outline of the heads, but even so, they seemed sharper, more real and three-dimensional, than anything Michael had ever seen before. He stopped and gazed in stupefaction.

"Nice evening," said the left-head.

"Hallo," said the right-head.

A man's voice. A woman's voice. They passed close by him, Michael smelling a perfume in their wake, hearing the crunching of their boots on the stones of the path; hearing, as if in a dream, the left head say to the right head, with his sheep's mouth close to her sheep's ear, two words of human sarcasm.

"Friendly bloke!"

Michael looked after them with his mouth open. He blinked once. And, as if a veil had been removed, the picture was changed. The sky was blue again, the grass was a familiar parched yellow-green; and the two figures were suddenly a rather ordinary man and woman, walking along with their heads too close to mind the view.

Then Michael began to run, careering down the slope in a terror that gave no thought to path or precipice. He ran unblinking, ferns lashing at his legs, until his eyes began to smart at the buffeting air and filled with tears. Then he tripped on a root edge, sprawled forwards blindly, and tumbled over and over down the hillside, until the crashing bracken slowed the fall and closed over him at last.

When Mr Cleever called in at the church, Tom was standing in his shirtsleeves and open collar in the vestry, washing the last of the clay from the surface of the cross.

It had taken a lot of effort for eight workmen and one vicar to wheel the trolley around the side of the church and in through the West Door. In fact it had been, in Mr Purdew's words, a devil of a job, but Mrs Troughton from the museum had insisted on it. She had wanted the cross safely under lock and key before she left for Stonemarket, and no amount of groaning or swearing had changed her mind. Now here it was, and Tom had been quietly studying his spoils.

"Good heavens, Reverend, washing your own floor?" said Mr Cleever, as he stepped into the nave. He smiled, widely.

"Just getting this clay off, Mr Cleever." Tom was suddenly conscious for the first time of the rivulets of orange water trickling over the flagstones. "I wanted to see what the designs on our treasure were."

"Quite. Do you mind if I have a peep? The whole council's buzzing about it, and I simply had to come and look for myself. It sounds most exciting."

"Of course." Tom stepped back, wiping his hands on a towel.

He watched Mr Cleever come forward, aware, as he always was, of the fluidity of the movement, and the controlled strength. The parish councillor was a large man – tall, with receding hair and light blue eyes and a smile that grew from unpromising beginnings to spread across his face like a Cheshire Cat's. It was a memorable smile, which made regular appearances in all his many dealings as councillor, youth group leader, and chairman of several local societies. It carried about it an air of energy and firm resolve, and was much admired about the village.

Tom often felt a certain reservation concerning Mr Cleever, which he knew was defensive, and was guiltily conscious might be envy. He felt it now. 'Just like him to turn up here,' he thought. 'Why can't he wait till tomorrow like everybody else?'

Mr Cleever halted on the other side of the trolley, his eyes fixed on the great prone cross which lay between them, glistening with water along all the diverting, interlaced, spiralling whorls of rock.

"Well, well," he said. "Well, well." And that was all he said for a long time. Tom tossed his sponge into the bucket and stood there with him, gazing at the Fordrace Cross.

At first, the complexity of the style had confused his eye, but as he had run his sponge along the furrows of the surface, and the Wirrim clay had been gradually dislodged, so the design had been revealed.

The focus of the carvings was the centre of the cross, within the circle where the four arms met. There, an ornately curling animal was depicted, writhing in on itself in endless folds and curves. So stylised was the beast that there were only a few recognisable parts of its anatomy scattered here and there among the ribbon-like meanderings of the body. There was a leg stretched out towards the stump of the cross's left-hand arm, with two long curving claws like a bird's splayed out in defence or attack. There was another foot and claw near the base of the circle, and what might have been a tail of sorts, which was split into several spindly spines or barbs radiating outwards in all directions, but which still interlaced neatly with the arcing tendrils of the body. All this was very abstract, and it was only by the head that Tom could tell he was looking at an animal at all. The head came down at an angle, gripping part of the body in its open mouth. There was one large eye, a long snout and lots of sharp teeth.

It's not a vegetarian, thought Tom.

Outside the circle, the cross was covered with a series of weaving lines which ran up and down the shaft and the two remaining arms. Every now and then small branches arched off into slightly bulbous points which Tom suspected might be leaves or buds. On the shaft, these intertwined over two long thin spears, which crossed in the middle, and whose points almost touched the circle's edge.

Just outside the circle, at the three points where an arm or shaft emerged, the plant stems diverted to leave a small gap, in which was carved an abstract symbol. The one at the top was a triangle, while the one at the base was a series of wavy lines which joined to make a shape a little like a wonky crown. The symbol on the right-hand arm was unmistakably an eye.

"Magnificent," said Mr Cleever.

"It is superb," agreed Tom. "I wonder what age we're talking."

"Oh, I should think Celtic, almost certainly." Mr Cleever spoke with conviction. "The circle suggests that. But the style is very unusual. I've never seen anything quite like this before, even in London." Mr Cleever was chairman of the Fordrace and District archaeological trust, and sometimes organised Outings. He touched the edge of the cross with a tender gesture. "Delightful delicacy. Carved with great skill."

"Rather puzzling symbolism," said Tom. "All this business up here round the circle."

"Yes, what do you make of it?" Mr Cleever asked, looking up at the vicar with eyes that were half appraising, half amused. Tom caught the humour in the glance and felt his chest tightening with annoyance. He turned to the cross again.

"This beast in the circle," he began, "might represent the devil, I suppose. He's often represented as a dragon or serpent. Some of the crosses in Northumberland show him that way, if I remember."

"Well, they're often depicting Norse Myth as much as Christianity," interrupted Mr Cleever. "But there is a confluence of ideas there, I admit. So you think this is Old Nick, do you?"

"It's an obvious interpretation," said Tom. "Perhaps too obvious for you, Mr Cleever. As a humble man of the cloth, my thoughts do tend that way, more's the pity." He cursed himself inwardly for getting riled so easily. "So the circle – and the cross, of course – serve to hem him in, keep him trapped."

"That's good. I like that," said Mr Cleever.

"As to these symbols here, the eye and the triangle and this thing here, I've no idea at all. The eye could be Vigilance, perhaps, if we're talking about means of restricting the Enemy; this thing might be a crown but why would that be? The triangle? Don't know."

Mr Cleever smiled. "It is certainly all very mysterious." Again there was the hint of wry amusement which so irritated Tom.

"What's your theory?" he asked, refusing to dance to the councillor's pleasure any longer.

"I just wish we had the other arm," said Mr Cleever. "It's a very great pity it's missing, a very great pity. Do you think it's down there still?"

"Almost certainly," said Tom. "I'd lay my dog-collar on it. Mr Purdew's men had a look, but it was getting late, and the ground's probably shifted in all the years it's been down there. We'll have a look tomorrow, if the men from the museum don't move in first."

"What men?" asked Mr Cleever, sharply, but at that moment there were footsteps along the nave, and Elizabeth Price approached, carrying her briefcase.

"I'm off now, Tom," she said. "Gosh, it's hot in here. Hello, Mr Cleever. What do you think of our prize?"

"It's quite fantastic, Miss Price, and very important, and all due to our good Reverend here."

"Hear, hear," said Elizabeth. "Well done, Tom. Listen, your friend Sarah rang just now. She says you're late, but you're not the only one because Michael hasn't come home either. He's been out on the Wirrim all day. If he's not back soon she's going to get worried, but if you're not back soon she's going to get angry."

Tom looked at his watch in a manner he hoped was not too flustered. "Drat, I
am
late. Thanks, Elizabeth. See you tomorrow."

"No problemo." She was making for the door. "I'm going for a swim – I'm boiled. I thought churches were meant to be cool. Don't forget about the museum woman, Tom. She's coming at eleven. See you tomorrow. Goodbye, Mr Cleever."

Tom watched the door shut behind her, then looked at his watch again. He had to move. Then he realised that Mr Cleever was looking at him quite closely.

"Pleasant young woman," Mr Cleever remarked. "Now, Reverend, who are these people from the museum? They're not going to threaten our claim, are they?"

"I shouldn't think so, Mr Cleever. There's little doubt it's a religious artefact, found on church land."

"There's always doubt when museum authorities get involved, take it from me. You'll have to watch them, or they'll whip it."

"There is some talk of taking the cross for examination at Chetton. Temporarily, I believe."

"I bloody knew it!" Mr Cleever's face went red with fury, and Tom noticed with surprise that his fists were clenched. "I'm sorry, Reverend, but I've had run-ins with these people before. We'll all be kept out of the equation. There'll be months of study in some antiseptic backroom before we can get a look at it again. Absolutely bloody typical."

"Really, I'm sure it won't be that bad," said Tom, though the thought of losing his glorious prize was hitting him hard. "If the worst comes to the worst, the bishop—"

An abrupt and tumultuous ringing filled the church, jarring his senses and stunning him into silence. It took him a moment to realise the source, which was nestling against a rafter in the side aisle.

"The fire alarm!" he said. "But there's no fire."

"It must be faulty," said Mr Cleever, whose rage seemed to have been dispelled by the interruption. "You switch it off; I'll check the rest of the building."

Tom did what he was told. The alarm refused to believe it had made a mistake at first, and kept starting up again whenever Tom switched it on. "Faulty battery," suggested Mr Cleever when he returned. He had found no sign of fire in the church.

"It must have responded to the heat that's built up here this afternoon," suggested Tom. "First time it's happened."

He tried switching it on again. This time, the alarm was silent.

"Well," said Mr Cleever. "Another conundrum to ponder over. I won't keep you any longer, Reverend. I know you've an appointment."

Tom looked at his watch grimly. "Yes, Mr Cleever, I really must dash. Come back and look again tomorrow, if you like."

Mr Cleever was gazing at the cross again. He looked up with a vague expression, as if out of a dream.

"Thank you, Reverend. I shall. Good evening to you."

He walked out quickly, and Tom ran to check the windows of the vestry and offices. He was late for Sarah yet again, and Sarah would not be pleased. He wondered if Elizabeth had said why he was delayed. It was a good excuse, but his communication with Sarah hadn't been of the best recently, much to the amusement of her delinquent brothers.

Oh well, thought the Reverend Tom, as he ran down the nave to the West Door, with his keys in one hand and his jacket in the other. Wait till she hears about the cross!