Gallows at Twilight (30 page)

Only one way to find out.

Carrying the fire with him, Jake strode up the lane. Eleanor had turned down the side of the church and was now standing at the door of a two-storey thatched house. She hammered on the door and looked back over her shoulder. Jake was close enough to see that there was no fear in her eyes. He felt glad—the last thing he wanted was for her to be frightened of him. But she was anxious and, at that moment, she did not want him near her.

‘Stay away!’ she called. ‘Jacob, please, you must
not
see. He told me to keep it hidden.’

Jake came to a stop under the shadow of the tumbledown church. He could barely hear Eleanor over the roar of the blue fire. For the last month or so he had practised and practised, delving into the most painful, hateful memories, all in a bid to reclaim his magic. And now, in the presence of this girl and the thing she had kept hidden, the power of Oldcraft had returned to him unbidden. How was that possible?

He took a step forward. In the same instant, he sensed the unearthly power of the concealed object. The raw throb of energy, the low hum of its Oldcraft song. Instinctively he cupped his palm and in some dusty part of his soul he remembered the coldness of the object in his hand. Once, long ago, he had held it. Held it, clasped it, wielded it against a terrible enemy …

Another step forward and the power overwhelmed him. The fire in his fists erupted into volcanic columns of light that soared into the air and pierced the clouds. Screams in the streets, the wail of frightened children, the yelps of terrified dogs. Jake staggered under the weight of his magic. Through the blue haze, he saw Eleanor press her back against the door. The earth trembled. Chips of stone and loose bricks tumbled from the walls of the old church. Birds nesting in the broken roof shot into the sky, their brittle shrieks lost against the deep rumble of Oldcraft. The summer-parched ground cracked apart and the windows of the house shattered outwards.

The glass showered across Eleanor, cutting her face and hands. She winced and a single tear rolled down her cheek. The sight of her blood was more painful to Jake than any agony he had suffered at the hands of Matthew Hopkins. He balled his hands into tight fists and directed the Oldcraft back inside himself. The columns of light collapsed and, with a final sizzle between his fingers, the magic vanished.

The earth became still and silent once more. The clouds knitted the sky back together. Jake looked from his empty hands to the girl at the door. The sight of her huddled there, bloody and bowed, struck him like a hammer blow. He fell back against the wall of the church and slid to the ground.

At the sound of footsteps, Jake looked up. He saw a man walking slowly towards him, tapping out his path with a stick. Shadowed beneath a battered straw hat, the man’s grey face looked like a triangle of weather-beaten stone. Where his eyes ought to be there were two sunken sockets, the skin of the lids fused together.

The old man stood over Jake. He smiled warmly, and Jake found the echo of that smile in the darkness of his mind. Bedtime stories:
Aesop’s Fables
, Bible stories, tales made up to order. Lessons in the parlour: arithmetic, calculus, the ancient Greeks, natural philosophy, the history of Oldcraft … demons. Games: skittles in the lane, hide-andseek in the wood, nine men’s morris played by the kitchen fire while a woman bustled around them, preparing food.

It was too much. Too many memories and emotions. The old man nodded and, with a whisper of words, passed his hand through the air. Jake felt himself slipping, the tug of sleep taking hold. He looked up at that smiling face.

‘We will speak soon, my boy,’ the Preacher said.

Jake’s head drooped to his chest. His words came like those of a sleepy child.

‘Yes, father.’

* * *

Jake woke with moonlight in his eyes. He found himself lying on a straw mattress in the corner of a small room. Pulling aside the sheepskin blanket, he saw that he had been stripped of his prison clothes and dressed in a long woollen nightshirt. His face and hands were clean, his short hair had been washed and there was the smell of jasmine on his skin. He wondered who had bathed him.

The yellow glow of a lantern crossed the ceiling. Jake got up and crept to the open window. He saw two cloaked figures on the path, one guiding the other to the door of the old church.

‘Eleanor,’ Jake murmured. ‘Father.’

Father. The word felt right upon his lips, and yet it also struck him as a betrayal. His
real
father was Adam Harker: the man who had raised him, loved him, and who, in some distant future, was dying a slow and painful death.

Bare timbers groaned beneath Jake’s feet. The latch of the bedroom door squeaked between his fingers. There were portraits on the wood-panelled walls of the corridor, but the faces were little more than milky smears in the gloom. Jake tiptoed to the stairs. He had reached the last step, and was moving towards the front door, when something warm and wet lapped against the back of his hand. He stifled a surprised yelp.

A sad-eyed bloodhound blinked up at Jake.

‘Hello, Sebastian.’

The name popped into Jake’s head. He scratched behind the dog’s right ear and his fingers found the old scar. He remembered that day in the forest when Sebastian had defended him from a pair of ravenous wolves. The hound had saved his life … Josiah’s life …

‘Good boy,’ Jake whispered, ‘now go to your bed.’

Sebastian’s jaw stretched into a wide yawn and he padded away into the darkness.

Jake eased open the front door. It was very dark outside. Heavy clouds rolled across the face of the moon and there was the smell of rain in the air. Jake could see halos of light at the windows of the church. He moved around the side of the building, keeping to the thick shadows thrown by the ancient walls. As he reached the open door and slipped into the church, the clouds broke and rain rattled across the roof.

Eleanor and the Preacher were at the far end of the church and did not hear Jake enter. By the lantern that stood on the altar table, he could just make out the strange scene. While the Preacher sat on the altar steps, Eleanor was on her knees, digging with a short-handled spade. Jake moved into the chapel’s western aisle and crept within earshot.

‘I’ve been around the village,’ the Preacher said, ‘spoken to every household.’

‘What on earth did you tell them?’

‘I didn’t need to say very much. You grew up here, Eleanor; you know as well as they do that Josiah was never an ordinary boy. If anyone was to return from the dead, it would be him. I assured them that, come morning, he will be gone.’

The girl lifted her face to the light. Sweat jewelled her brow and the red scratches made by the broken glass stood out against her pale skin. Jake winced at the thought that he had been responsible for those injuries.

‘We leave tomorrow?’ she asked. ‘But I don’t think he’s strong enough. He is tired, John, soul-weary. And now you wish him to journey to the House of Bones?’

‘I do not wish it but it is his duty. He must find the strength to go on.’

‘You were always too hard on him,’ Eleanor said, bending her back to the digging, ‘always expected too much.’

‘You sound like my wife.’ The Preacher gave a bitter laugh. ‘The truth is, if I could, I would spare him this ordeal. He is my son—’

‘He’s not your son!’ the girl snapped. ‘He’s … I don’t know what he is.’

The old man laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘Whatever you think, you must go with him, Eleanor. I have seen that he will need you in the dark days to come.’ A weary smile creased the Preacher’s lips. ‘He was always lost without his Eleanor of the May.’

They sank into silence, the only sound the scrape of the spade. After a few minutes, the old man stirred. He patted the girl’s shoulder and rose to his feet.

‘Bury the Signum deep.’

The Preacher hobbled away down the central aisle and out into the rainstorm.

While the spade scraped on, Jake crept further into the heart of the church. Eleanor had her back turned and did not see him dart between the cover of the pillars. He had reached the end of the aisle when he saw her take a bundle from the altar and place it in the hole. It was wrapped in the grey cloak she had worn when she rescued him. She filled in the hole, patted down the earth, and slotted a stone tile back into its place in the floor. Then, bone-tired, she stumbled out of the church.

Jake raced to the hiding place below the altar steps. As soon as he dropped to his knees and laid his hands against the tile, he felt the throb of power emanating through the earth. What had Eleanor and the Preacher concealed here? Why did they want to keep it from him? All he could think of was the witch ball. While he mulled this possibility over, Jake noticed something very strange. All around the tile, small white flowers poked between the cracks. He looked around. There was no sign of the flowers growing anywhere else, just here, below the altar.

‘Hyacinths.’

Jake spun round.

The Preacher was standing directly behind him.

‘The flower of rebirth.’ The old man’s empty eyes seemed to bore into Jake. ‘Well, Jacob Harker, I believe it is time we talked … ’

Chapter 26

Secrets and Surprises

‘How do you know me?’

‘Despite my disadvantages,’ the Preacher placed two fingers beneath his scar-soldered eyes, ‘I see much. Now come away from that stone, Jacob, what lies beneath is not for you. Not yet, at least.’

The old man tapped his way back to one of the wooden pews that faced the altar and took a seat. He patted the place beside him, but Jake remained crouched at the tile. His hands flat upon the stone, he seemed to hear distant voices carried by the hum of the earth. Voices from above and below, from the future and from a past both recent and centuries old. He scraped around the edges of the stone, his fingernails scything the stems of the hyacinths.

‘I said come AWAY!’

Images flashed into Jake’s mind: little Josiah Hobarron, caught stealing a pie from the pantry; skipping his lessons and running away to the fair at Lowerbridge; questioning the stories of the Bible and the existence of God. On these occasions, Josiah had heard that same booming, angry voice. Like Josiah, Jake responded instantly to the Preacher’s wrath. He tugged himself away from the stone and went to sit at John Hobarron’s side.

The frown vanished from the old man’s face.

‘It is not just the appearance and the magic.’ He placed a hand against Jake’s cheek. ‘You are like him in so many ways.’

Jake brushed the gnarled fingers away. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m not your son.’

‘No, and yet the resemblance
must
run deep, otherwise another would have come to replace Josiah.’

‘What do you mean?’

The Preacher sighed. ‘It is very difficult to explain these things to you. So much must happen before the truth can be known. There are things I
can
tell you, Jacob, and other things I cannot—because they are unknown, because they are obscure, and because some of them are forbidden.’ A wry smile. ‘I’m not much of a storyteller, am I?’

‘Not much, no.’

‘Then let me start at the beginning … Ah, even that is a misleading phrase—because, of course, the beginning lies far beyond the realm of human knowledge.’ The Preacher’s sharp ears caught Jake’s frustrated sigh and he held up his hands. ‘I’m sorry. For me, at least, the beginning was a mere nineteen years ago. I was then middle-aged and entering my second decade as the minister for the parish of Starfall. Such a strange name, I have always thought—“Starfall”—almost as if it was predestined to happen here.’

A moment’s silence, during which the Preacher clasped and unclasped his hands. At last he shook his head, and said:

‘I beg your forgiveness. Like many old men I am often given to wandering in the garden of my memories. Back to my story—as I say, the
incident
happened nineteen years ago. As with much of what follows, I cannot tell you exactly what occurred, but suffice to say that it shook the very foundations of my life and my beliefs. It was a momentous, joyful, and painful event, and I was for ever marked by it.’ Again, the Preacher touched the caverns where his eyes had been. ‘Such things are not meant to be seen by mortal men. I paid a heavy price for being an accidental witness. My world was darkened. But such power as I beheld is not unkind, and although I was never again to look upon my beloved wife, I was well compensated.’

He leaned to one side and breathed into Jake’s ear, ‘I was given sight unfettered by Time.’

‘You could see into the future,’ Jake said.

‘The future and the past.’

‘And Josiah, it had something to do with him, didn’t it? It can’t have been a coincidence—his magic and yours. Nineteen years ago … How old was Josiah when he died?’

The Preacher shifted uncomfortably. ‘He was a few months shy of his twentieth birthday.’

Jake was surprised. Although he had seen Josiah’s youthful face in his dreams, he had always thought of him as an older man; in fact, he was a teenager, only four years older than Jake himself.

‘So, around the time Josiah was born you got your powers.’

The Preacher sat back and folded his arms. ‘This is one of the things I cannot talk about.’

‘But—’

‘No, Jacob. I will
not
answer questions about that time. It is too dangerous.’

‘OK.’ Jake gave another frustrated sigh. ‘But there’s something I don’t understand. If you can see the future, you would have seen Josiah going to the Hollow. You would have seen him dying there. Why didn’t you stop him?’

‘Because my vision of that event was not clear. I foresaw a
possibility
that Josiah was going to his death, but it was not inevitable. If it had been I would certainly have handed over the … ’ John Hobarron shook his head. ‘It is the past and cannot be changed. Now we must discuss the future. As you have probably guessed, I foresaw your journey on the Scarab Path and your arrival in Cravenmouth. My gift showed me that there was no hope of rescuing you from the clutches of the Witchfinder. The only opportunity was during the riot in the square. Even then I could not be sure that Eleanor would succeed, but I explained the situation to her and she was keen to try.’