River of Destiny (19 page)

It was after two a.m. when Ken came back. He smelled of alcohol and crawled into bed beside her without taking a shower. Zoë had been lying awake waiting, not for him, she realised, but for the sounds she might hear from downstairs. Not the Watts boys moving furniture, but the echoes of a working farm. Horses, wagon wheels creaking over cobbles, the scraping of hooves.

Downstairs, in the great room, near the hearth, the developers had left some of the herringbone bricks of the original threshing floor, preserved under a plate-glass panel in the floor. It was beautiful, intricate, worn. Was that where the sounds were coming from? She remembered reading an article once about the sounds of a former bar and its customers being accidentally recorded onto the wall of a pub in Wales. It was something to do with the silica content of the bricks. If she remembered she would try and look it up on Google. She turned her back on her husband with a sigh and closed her eyes.

The telephone woke her next morning. She glanced at her watch and saw to her surprise that it was after nine. There was no sign of Ken.

‘Zoë?’ Rosemary’s voice boomed in her ear. ‘What a night you had! My goodness, and we heard nothing! Those wretched children! Well, Jeff and Sharon have packed them into the car and gone back home with the dogs. Half-term was just about over anyway. That’s the good news. The bad news is that they’ve left the other two kids here.’ Zoë climbed out of bed and walked over to the window, the phone to her ear. ‘Jade is at private school,’ Rosemary’s voice in her ear rattled on without pause. ‘Would you believe it? But she’s a bright kid and they’ve got the money – but it means her half-term is longer than the boys’. She’s no bother, she’s a strange child, but quite quiet, but the eldest, Jackson, is almost as much of a nightmare as the younger boys. He doesn’t seem to have a job and I doubt if he’s doing any further education. Perhaps he’s on a gap year.’ She laughed dryly. ‘I suppose they didn’t want to spoil half-term for the girl and they couldn’t leave her on her own.’ It was raining. The wind was still strong and the lawns were bleak and wet. The walnut tree out on the lawns was shedding its leaves, black and wilting across the grass. ‘Now,’ Rosemary went on, suddenly changing the subject. Zoë brought her attention back to the phone call. ‘I am having a few people over this evening for a drink at six and I want you and Ken to come. It is important.’

Ken was standing in the ironmonger’s looking at a selection of bolts. It was strange how flaky he felt about putting them on. He should have done it days ago, and changed the locks too, but to do so was to admit that they were afraid of a bunch of unruly kids. On the other hand, Zoë was genuinely scared of the boys and her imagination was beginning to go into overdrive.

He reached out towards the display at the same moment as someone who was standing beside him and their hands converged. He pulled back. ‘I’m sorry!’ He glanced up. The woman standing beside him was an attractive blonde, perhaps in her mid-thirties. He felt an automatic stirring of interest. She wore dark glasses pushed up onto her forehead and an expression of confused concentration. She gave him a distracted smile.

‘Does it matter what a bolt is made of?’ she asked. Her attention was focused on the array in front of her.

He grinned. ‘It depends what you want it for.’

‘Garden gate. Kids keep opening it.’

‘Ah, we have a similar problem, it seems.’ He hesitated. Surely he recognised her. ‘We’ve met before, haven’t we?’

She looked up at him properly for the first time. ‘Ken Lloyd?’

He nodded. ‘You’ve a better memory for names than I have, I’m afraid.’

‘Sylvia Sands.’

He and Zoë had met her at a social evening at the sailing club a few weeks earlier, he remembered now. She was some kind of journalist and had her own boat at the marina. He smiled to himself. He had recognised the sudden flicker of interest in her eyes as she met his gaze and the excitement of exchanging looks for just a second or two longer than necessary.

He bought her a coffee and then offered to put on her bolt for her. She lived in a terraced Victorian cottage behind the Thoroughfare and by the time they reached it he already knew she was available and that he was going to sleep with her.

Rosemary met Zoë and Ken at the door and caught Zoë’s arm. ‘You need to charm Leo,’ she whispered. ‘He’s looking like a wild beast and I need him onside.’

Ken had arrived back late from Woodbridge with an assortment of bolts for the kitchen and front doors and had left them in a bag on the worktop in the utility room. Showering and changing swiftly while Zoë waited, he was ready in ten minutes but they were still late for the drinks.

The people already there turned out to be Leo, Bill Turtill from the home farm and his wife, Penny, Lesley Inworth from the Hall and a couple who lived in Woodbridge called Jim and Dottie Salcombe.

Leo was standing alone by the window, a glass in his hand. The others were seated in a loose semicircle round the fire, chatting. The introductions were made and Ken sat down in the circle. Zoë felt her husband’s eyes on her speculatively for a moment and she found herself wondering where he had been to make him so late.

Obediently she followed Rosemary over to the window and stood beside Leo. She gave him a conspiratorial smile. ‘What’s going on, is this a council of war?’

‘That is exactly what it is,’ he replied. ‘Stupid woman!’

Zoë wondered briefly which woman he was talking about and concluded that it must be their hostess. Bill Turtill, she knew, farmed the land around the barn conversions. It had been his father who had sold the land off for the development. The other couple, Jim and Dottie, were friends of Rosemary’s, who belonged to the same walking group.

‘I thought if I explained, Bill, why it is necessary to restore the footpath to its original route, we can make all the arrangements to get it signposted without any fuss.’ Rosemary had taken up a stance with her back to the fire and was addressing the room as if it were a meeting. ‘It can’t make any difference to you where it goes.’ She had, it appeared, handed out photocopies of a map. Jim and Dottie were nodding. Lesley looked angry and Bill and Penny seemed confused.

‘As I’ve told you before, all the footpaths on my farm are waymarked,’ Bill said after a pause. ‘I don’t see what this is about.’ He was a large man in his fifties, fresh-faced with curly blond hair, greying at the temples. ‘And if I might ask, who cares about this path apart from you? Where are all these people in such a hurry to queue to cross my field?’

‘Oh, they are there, I promise you.’ Rosemary gave him a saccharine smile. ‘You are very good about your paths on the whole, I give you that. Unlike some. But this is a path which seems to have got lost.’ She fixed her gaze on him intently. ‘Look at the map.’

‘There is no footpath there, Rosemary,’ Lesley put in patiently. ‘There never has been. I told you. I’ve checked the records.’

‘Obviously not the right ones.’ Rosemary shook her head. ‘The path across the lower field is vital to the footpath circuit if one wants to get down to the quay.’

‘That’s right,’ Jim and Dottie chimed in as one. ‘It’s an ancient path. We’ve seen it marked on the map as well.’

‘Which map?’ Bill put in. ‘I’ve never seen it.’

‘And why would people want to get down to the quay, Rosemary? If by the quay you mean our landing stage, it is private property.’ Leo’s voice cut in suddenly. ‘Can’t you just leave this alone? The paths are fine as they are. The one at the top of the field leads people naturally into the lane and from there they can go on with your precious circuit up through the woods.’

Rosemary shook her head vigorously. ‘No, Leo. That’s the point. There has to be access to the quay. Traditionally walkers have always used it.’

‘No,’ Bill put in at last. ‘They haven’t. That jetty was sold with the barns. It was part of the home farm and we let it go with the development. Access to it is private. And always has been.’

‘And I think you’ll find that is in our deeds,’ Ken added suddenly. ‘It was the private landing and mooring which attracted us here in the first place.’

‘Why don’t we have a top-up,’ Steve said abruptly. He had been so quiet, sitting slightly apart from the others, that Zoë had forgotten he was there. He stood up and reached for Lesley’s glass. ‘Same again?’

Lesley gave an absent-minded frown, which he took to be a nod.

‘There has never been a path across Dead Man’s Field,’ Penny said suddenly. She was sitting forward on the sofa anxiously, next to her husband. ‘My family, the Bartles, have lived in these parts as long as Bill’s or longer. The middle of that field, where the copse is, that was reckoned to be unlucky. Cursed. Dead Man’s Spinney, they called that. No one would go there, not if their life depended on it.’

There was a moment’s silence in the room. Steve returned Lesley’s glass and picked up Bill’s. ‘Is that right, Bill?’ he asked.

Bill nodded. ‘In the old days they used to say the horses would refuse to pull the plough past that copse. People wouldn’t go for little country strolls in that field, believe me, Mrs Formby. Not that they did anyway. No one had time in those days for little country strolls.’ He took the replenished glass from Steve and drank it down in one. Then he stood up. ‘I’m sorry, but Penny and I have to go.’ He turned to Ken. ‘It’s been good to meet you and your wife.’ He gave Zoë a cursory nod. Behind him Penny stood up hastily. She was as tall as her husband and almost as muscular. The pair made a formidable team, Zoë thought with a wry grin, as they headed for the door.

Steve saw them out. For a moment the silence continued, then Rosemary grimaced, turning back to face them. ‘He’s wrong. There was nothing unlucky about that field. I’ve walked it myself. And I have already started to put in place the legal steps to have the path reopened. I only asked them out of courtesy to explain what was happening. Now, it’s up to the council.’

‘Stupid woman!’ Leo’s
sotto voce
remark was clearly audible through the room. If Rosemary heard it, however, she chose to ignore it. Ken cleared his throat and made a comment about the Watts boys next door. It seemed a good way of changing the subject. For an uneasy half-hour they chatted, then he and Zoë rose to leave.

‘Doesn’t that bloody woman realise it is her own privacy she will be spoiling if she allows all and sundry to walk down to the landing stage?’ he said as they strolled back towards The Old Barn.

‘It’s not her privacy,’ Zoë put in. ‘She doesn’t sail. I’ve never seen her down there. She raised the footpath subject before when she took me up to meet Lesley the other day. Lesley was really cross.’

‘I could see that. Well, Rosemary doesn’t have a leg to stand on. If it’s all written down in our deeds then it must be done and dusted. These people!’

Zoë glanced round. Leo had left with them but he had taken the lower path across the lawns towards his cottage, raising a hand in farewell as he turned away. ‘Leo has some old books about the barns,’ she said. ‘He might lend me one to help fill in the history of this place.’

‘You seem to have spoken to him a lot.’ Ken’s voice was sharp.

‘Only occasionally, across the fence.’ She was careful to keep her voice even. ‘He was the one who warned me about the Watts children.’

Ken sighed. ‘Jeff gave me the key they’ve been using. It looks new. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t have it cut when they were told to give them back before, the little devils. So, it’s just as well,’ he added casually, ‘I bought a couple of bolts for the doors when I went into Woodbridge earlier. Just in case.’

‘Thank goodness they’ve gone. I hate the idea that they could have been poking round the house when we were out. Touching things.’ Zoë shook her head unhappily. ‘Please, can we change the locks, Ken? Just to be sure. We can’t bolt it when we go out. It makes me nervous to think there have been extra keys floating around.’

He grunted. ‘Maybe it makes sense. I might go back into Woodbridge tomorrow and take a look at some.’

They paused outside the house while Ken felt in his pocket for their own key.

Inside, the great room was full of shadows, thrown by the floodlights outside on the lawn. In the silence the scrape and stamp of a hoof echoed off the walls, and the rattle of a chain against a wooden manger faded eerily into the darkness. As the door opened and the lights came on the room was quiet again.

‘You can tell Lord Egbert that his sword is finished.’ Eric turned from his work bench as Hrotgar appeared in the doorway. The sword lay covered with a newly woven cloth and was out of sight.

Hrotgar stepped inside. ‘May I see it?’ The room was cold, the charcoal fire extinguished.

‘It is for the lord’s eyes alone.’

‘But that is crazy. He will show it to everyone.’

‘That is for him to decide.’

‘You did all the extra things he demanded?’

‘I did everything just as instructed.’

‘The runes and charms and magic?’

‘I did everything he asked.’

Both men were silent for a moment, staring at the table.