Guardians Of The Haunted Moor (5 page)

Gideon
hadn’t minded. She was funny and sweet, disconcertingly like her
brother. Her studies for her new job had kept her working long
hours in the Bodmin library, Lee taking care of Tamsyn at home, and
they’d all come together peaceably in the evenings. Gideon had
persuaded himself that her presence was just like an extra dose of
Lee’s. Still, he’d drawn a huge breath of relief when Tamsyn
started showing a vigorous preference for formula, and Elowen had
moved back to Drift. She still visited twice a week, and Gideon and
Lee had brought the baby down to the farmhouse for a day each
weekend, just like a normal, close-knit family,
except...

Except
that having Elowen around had weighed on him constantly, a lonely
fear he could neither define nor share with Lee. He’d put it in a
box so that his perceptive lover—who would never pry, but couldn’t
help seeing obvious troubles—wouldn’t stumble over it in his
frequent trips around Gideon’s mind. He could put it aside today.
Zeke, Eleanor, his own paranoid self—they’d all been wrong. Michel
had come to collect Elowen and accompany her back to France, and
all would be well. Gideon thought he might try and spirit away his
little two-person family early from this party, pleading weariness
and the ear-splitting nuisance of his daughter, who for once in her
life wouldn’t stop crying, as if shadows only she could see were
lurking in the bright blue Penwith skies. “Lee?” he called softly,
pushing through the wisteria and up the steps of the porch. “Fancy
putting our infant child to bed and having the noisy kind of sex we
used to have before your sister moved into the room next
door?”

“
Gideon
Frayne
!”

He
stopped dead. “Oh, crap. Hi, Zeke. We’re just doomed, aren’t
we?”

“
We wouldn’t be, if you had an ounce of decency in you. I take
it you’re looking for your other half.”

Well, I’m not looking for you, crow-face.
Gideon kept it to himself. Even Ezekiel couldn’t quite pull
off the ministerial look, emerging from the house with a pint of
cider in his hand and a T-shirt that could almost stand accused of
being pink in the right light. He was proving to be a good uncle,
too, taking Tamsyn out on solemn nature walks, telling her the
Latin names of all the wild flowers, and failing to combust when
Gideon and Lee had chosen a Pagan priest from St Just to conduct
the child’s naming ceremony. “I am. Have you seen him?”

“
I think he set off on the path towards the church. Tamsyn is
still crying, Gideon. Does she have a fever? Another tooth coming
through?”

“
No. Believe me, we’ve checked her from head to foot about
forty times. She’s just really upset about something.”

“
Lee didn’t look happy either. You’d better go and see to
them.”

Gideon
didn’t need telling twice. The cliff path was steep and he wouldn’t
have thought Lee would tackle it with Tamsyn in his arms, although
she’d joyously yelled her way along many a treacherous track in her
papoose across Gideon’s shoulders, Lee following watchfully two
steps behind. He set off, shielding his eyes against the sun. As
far as he could see, the narrow ribbon of stone and dried mud was
empty all the way to the churchyard in the fields below. The
vacancy—its worst implication—struck him like a glancing blow, but
his mind couldn’t process it. Instead he started to run, giving
thanks at every stride for his recovered health. He was back on
full active duty once more, the classroom left behind in favour of
the streets and the wide world where he belonged.

He made
short work of the path, blind for once to its blaze of red campions
and gold-green alexanders. The little grey church was dreaming in
the sun. Built in a time when magic still swept this outpost of
England along with the wild west wind, it held within its granite
walls a concentration of the peace that reigned outside it, and
maybe Lee had taken his squalling brat to see the wildwood faces
carved into the pews. The door stood open a few inches to permit
the ingress and swooping egress of juvenile swallows.

No.
Gideon stopped on the steps. Lee wasn’t in the church. He didn’t
know where the conviction came from and didn’t care to analyse it,
but he would have sworn in court that he was alone here. The
growing instinct was handy, telling him where he could track Lee
down to offer him a cuppa or a kiss when they were at home, but
other than this domestic function, Gideon had no interest in
developing gifts beyond his own good senses. That way madness could
lie, even for an experienced voyager between the worlds like Lee.
Dodging the dive-bombing efforts of the swallows, he retreated. He
would just take a turn around the outside, check the rest of the
churchyard and meadow.

Relief
and chagrin swept through him. So much for that treacherous sixth
sense—Lee was right there, carrying Tamsyn down the long straight
path that edged the field on the landward side of the church.
Gideon called to him and waved. He felt weary all of a sudden, a
rare ache passing through his leg, reminding him that he’d almost
bled to death on the cobbles of Bodmin last February. That was a
dark thought for a summer’s day, and he climbed the gravel path to
the north-side gateway, a traditional Cornish cattle-grid made of
huge granite spars set lengthwise between two stone benches. He sat
down, rubbing his thigh. Movement caught his attention down among
the graves. There was Jago, head lowered, hands in his
pockets.

Not
everyone was filled with sunshine on this festive day. Elowen and
Michel seemed troubled, and Jago had chosen what should be the
height of his party to visit his brother’s grave. Gideon got up,
determined not to disturb him if he could avoid it. He glanced up
the field path to find Lee, to lose his crawling sense of unease in
his lover’s bright answering smile.

The
field was empty. Gideon scanned its grassy expanse, but only the
wind was moving there, pressing the blades into a tumult like a
silky sea. The unease blossomed into downright fear: as far as he
knew, there were no gaps in the hedgerow where Lee could have
stepped through, even if for some reason he’d wanted to return a
different way.

“
Gideon?”

Jago was
signalling for him to come down. Gideon ran to join him, the ache
in his leg forgotten. “Jago, did Lee come through this way with the
baby? I saw them on the path above the church, but they
vanished.”

“
What? You can’t have done. I just left them up by the
house.”

“
Oh. Okay, that’s weird. Were they all right?”

“
Yes, but I felt strange, and I wanted to come down and talk to
my brother about it.”

Gideon
nodded. They were standing at the foot of Cadan Tyack’s grave.
Gideon had learned to overlook the usual boundaries when it came to
his in-laws. “Sorry. I’ll leave you alone.”

“
No, we should go back. Cadan thinks so, anyway.” He set off,
and Gideon fell into step by his side. “That’s a death gate, you
know. Up there where you were sitting.”

Gideon
did know. The vast coffin-shaped stone between the two benches was
an inescapable clue. He’d overheard visitors exclaiming at it in
horror, but he liked the frank West Penwith acceptance of time and
change. He liked the idea of weary mourners having a chance to lay
down their load and eat bread and cheese in the sunshine. “Yes. The
path’s the old route down from the village, isn’t it?”

“
More than that. It’s a corpse road. Run straight as arrows for
miles across the country, they do, so wandering spirits won’t be
obstructed in their travels.” Jago glanced at him fearfully. “Do
you have it too, then? A gift like Lee’s?”

“
No, not at all.” Gideon was surprised at his own vehemence. If
he had no gift, he had still less of an explanation for his
encounters with Lee’s father, with Morris Hawke and the bloody
Beast of Bodmin. But today he just wanted to be normal. “What makes
you ask that?”

“
You saw into
my
heart.”

They had
reached the patched-up hole in the eastern wall of the church. Jago
seemed disposed to pause. Gideon laid a gentle hand to his back to
move him on. “Jago, you made me a very full confession of the
contents of your heart. Dropped half the village in it, too.” As a
man, Gideon had no doubts that he’d done the right thing by
forgetting that Jago and his friends had clubbed a vicious
child-napper to death and concealed the body not three yards from
where they were standing, but the copper in him sometimes gave him
a hard time. “I’d really like never to hear it again.”

“
All right. But there’s a tradition that seeing someone on a
corpse road means they’ll be gone within a year.”

“
Oh, my God. Look, Tamsie’s already got my nerves in shreds
from crying all night. Can you do me a massive favour and keep any
local legends of doom to yourself?”

“
I’m sorry, Gideon.”

“
That’s all right. Just... Oh, there he is. He must’ve found a
different way back up the cliff.”

But Lee
was making his way down the path, not up it, and he didn’t have the
baby in his arms. Instead a small, odd deputation was following in
his wake. Elowen was directly behind him, struggling to keep up.
She stretched out an arm to grab Lee’s jacket. He shook her off,
the gesture so uncharacteristic that Gideon’s alarm bells began to
shrill. Behind them came Michel and Zeke, apparently vying for
position. “Bloody hell,” Jago said. “What’s going on up
there?”

“
I don’t know, but I don’t like the look of it. Come
on.”

They met
at the foot of the track. Lee came to him like a hard-hunted fox to
its earth. He stopped three inches shy and stood motionless. “Lee,
darling,” Gideon said without thinking, something in Lee’s face
shocking the word out of him—a bedroom endearment, a sleepy last
word after love. “What in God’s name’s wrong? Where’s
Tamsyn?”

But Lee
couldn’t speak. Nor could Elowen, who had jolted to a halt at his
side and was sobbing without restraint. Michel made a kind of
croaking sound, but he was out of breath and looked sick to his
soul. And so it was left to Ezekiel to step forward, lay his hand
on Lee’s shoulder and say, “You have to stay calm, Gideon. Elowen’s
decided she wants to keep the child.”

Stupidly, Gideon’s first reaction was relief. He’d imagined
his little girl hurt, knocked down by nonexistent traffic, fallen
into the barbecue fire. This was just an aberration, a fault in the
wiring. “She can’t,” he said reasonably, as if that would fix
everything. “Where’s my daughter?”

“
Sarah Kemp and Mrs Ivey are looking after her.”

“
Right. Lee, come on—we’re collecting her and going
home.”

Elowen
caught her breath on a deep, gulping sob. “No. Michel and I have
made all the arrangements. She’s coming with us to
France.”

“
Elowen, excuse me, but bollocks to that. What the bloody hell
are you thinking?”

She
looked up at him, pallidly defiant. “She’s still legally mine. You
can’t stop me.”

The
trouble with being six feet tall and built like a house-end was the
courtesy rules that applied. A kind of sliding scale governed them.
The stronger you were, the punier the other guy, the gentler you
had to be. Especially when the other guy was female. Gideon was old
fashioned. He had never threatened violence to a woman in his
life.

There was a time and a place for everything. “I
could
stop you,” he said
consideringly. “I could pick you up and throw you off that cliff.”
Michel’s mouth fell open and he took a step forward. Gideon turned
on him. “And as for you,” he roared, “don’t you so much as fucking
look at me! Because you I
will
take down, mate, right here and now!”

“
Gideon!” Ezekiel stepped between them. “A dreadful thing has
happened. But to fight it out here is unseemly, and won’t fix
anything. Come back to the house.”

His
brother’s hand, planted flat to his chest, was a force to be
reckoned with. Gideon had never thought about him in physical
terms. The ten-year age gap had prevented them from scuffling as
children, and since then he’d been so buttoned up and godly that
even the possibility of a brawl had never occurred. Yet here he
was—an inch or so taller than Gideon, and probably stronger still
inside his lean frame. That was good. Gideon’s sliding scale reset
itself to zero. “Blessed are the peacemakers, eh, Zeke?” he said
shakily. “Not this time.”

He drew
back his fist. But his blind flying punch didn’t connect: was
stopped and absorbed by Lee, who had grabbed his hand out of midair
and drawn it against his own chest. He gave a muffled grunt as the
force of the blow expended itself. “No, Gid. No.”

They
dropped to their knees on the turf. Instantly Gideon tried to
struggle upright, but Lee’s arms closed around him like cables.
“Zeke,” Lee rasped, his voice a hollow echo of its usual rich
sound. “Get everyone away from him. Please! Just let him calm
down.”

***

The
house was quiet, the garden emptied of its guests. Mrs Ivey had
steered Jago out of harm’s reach into the kitchen. Sarah had taken
the children home, parting from Gideon with a silent, white-faced
kiss. Lee had held it together as far as the front door, and then
at the sound of the baby’s wails from the first floor, had left off
his loving custodian’s hold of Gideon and run for the stairs.
Gideon was sitting opposite Elowen in the living room. It was as
beautiful as ever—armfuls of dried flowers in the old tiled hearth,
the family photos smiling down from the walls. Gideon wanted to
torch it. “For God’s sake, Elowen. You were so sure.”