River of Destiny (62 page)

Sharon was studying her daughter’s face. ‘You are not making all this up, are you, Jade, to get back at Leo because he likes Zoë?’

‘Hardly,’ Jeff put in. ‘Why would she do that?’

Sharon hadn’t taken her eyes off her daughter’s face. Jade dropped her gaze and studied her new shoes.

‘I thought the police were going to drop this matter when I told them my son had made it up,’ Sharon said suddenly. She looked at Andy. ‘Why have they changed their minds?’

Andy consulted his notebook. ‘A call from a mobile phone was made to the Woodbridge station repeating the accusation this morning. It was a man,’ he added. ‘And he withheld his number.’ He looked at Jade and then at her mother. ‘Could that have been your son again, do you think, Mrs Watts?’ In his experience if parents started getting suspicious about what their kids were up to, it paid to listen to them. Perhaps they should follow up the mobile call. In spite of her despairing shrug, Sharon struck him as being a shrewd woman, someone who would never entrust her daughter to a bad apple. Still, even shrewd individuals sometimes made mistakes of judgement. He turned to follow Anna, who was already ushering Jade towards the door.

Steve was standing looking down at his wife as she lay in the high dependency unit. She had been moved to a side ward, and lay white and unmoving as the life-support systems around the bed beeped and clicked around her.

Their daughter, Sarah, had come at last to see her mother and had stood for a long time, staring down at Rosemary’s still, pale face. Watching her, Steve had tried to control his anguish; it was years since he had given up pleading with her to try to work out some kind of reconciliation with her mother. He wasn’t even sure what it was Rosemary had done to drive her away so completely. He had kept in touch by phone and postcard, and now and again, guiltily, by visits which he had kept secret, but the implacable dislike Sarah seemed to show towards her mother had left him numb and bewildered. Now as she looked down, her face showed no compassion at all. ‘I suppose she was engaged in another of her campaigns to ruin someone’s life,’ she said bitterly.

Steve flinched. ‘She genuinely thinks she is in the right, Sarah.’

‘And she was in the right when she forced that footpath across an old man’s lawn, was she? When they put up the fence to separate his little bungalow from the garden he loved just on principle, when all the local people said they were happy to walk past a different way. But not my mother. Oh, no. He lived a hundred miles from her, it was none of her business, but in she went, bustling with self-righteousness, and forced it all through the council and went to the enquiry, used every trick and legal loophole to get her way. He died, Dad!’

Steve moved uncomfortably in his chair. ‘I know,’ he said sadly. ‘But he might have died anyway. He was an old man.’

‘The local people said he died of a broken heart. No one ever walked that path, and Mother certainly didn’t. She had done her bit. She smugly ticked another box on her list. She never went near it again. And here she is, up to her old tricks, and on her own bloody doorstep this time!’

Steve sighed. ‘She believes she’s doing the right thing, Sarah. So many people try and block footpaths. She believes passionately that someone has to fight to keep them open.’

‘But this isn’t a footpath, is it? There has never been one there.’ Sarah hadn’t moved. Her expression was still hard, her mother’s face still impassive and, Steve thought, unbearably vulnerable. ‘This time she’s trying to desecrate an ancient earthwork and go against an entire community, and because of her this poor young man will probably go to prison.’

Steve gasped. ‘Sarah, that is enough. That poor young man, as you call him, is a drunken yob who tried to murder your mother.’

‘No he didn’t. He tried to scare her away. I’ve read the papers.’

He looked up at her in despair. ‘Aren’t you the least bit sorry she’s been hurt, Sarah?’

She opened her mouth to reply, then she shook her head, changing her mind about what she was going to say. ‘Of course I am.’

‘Then leave it alone, dear, please. She needs your love and your prayers, not a tirade of invective.’

Before she left she had bent and brushed her mother’s forehead with her lips in a cold, angry kiss, then she gave her father a hug. ‘Sorry, Dad. I can’t help it. I hate what she does.’

He patted her arm. ‘I know.’

‘You hate it too, don’t you?’ she added. She sighed. ‘No, don’t answer that. I know how loyal you are.’

He stood still for a long time after Sarah had gone, watching Rosemary’s face, wondering how much of what they had said she had heard.

‘Come on, old thing. It’s time we were at home,’ he murmured at last. He reached over and touched the back of her hand gently. It twitched. His eyes automatically went to the nearest screen. The steady progression of pulses did not flicker.

A nurse put her head round the door and glanced at him. ‘Everything all right in there?’ The two other beds in the small side ward were empty, white sheets pulled tight. There was nowhere for him to sit but he was reluctant to perch on their pristine whiteness.

‘How is she?’ His voice came out cracked and husky.

She hesitated, and perhaps hearing his despair walked in to stand beside him, looking down at Rosemary’s face. ‘She’s far away, bless her.’

Steve looked at her, surprised. He was used to the professional calm of the nursing staff. Compassion and gentleness, though he was sure they were there, were usually well hidden. ‘Where do you think she is?’ he murmured. He lifted the hand that was not tethered to drips and monitors and stroked it again.

‘Somewhere where there is no pain. The doctors are thinking of waking her tomorrow.’

‘Is that good?’ He could feel himself pleading inside, but he didn’t allow himself to let any hope register in his voice.

‘They won’t do it unless they think she is ready.’ She smiled and touched his shoulder gently, then she had gone.

Hell was hot as she had always known it would be, and peopled with monsters. Steaming pools of volcanic lava bubbled at her feet as she tried to pull away, to hide, but the great black cliffs at her back held her trapped in the narrow confines of the valleys through which she roamed, trying, trying, trying to find a way out. Steve was there looking for her. For a moment she had thought she saw him, felt the touch of his hand, but he was gone and she was alone again in her torment. They knew she had moved the sword. She hadn’t known it was protected by elves and fiends; it was guarded by the servants of Wayland the Smith God. Every way she turned she saw them, hunting her, furious, dangerous, out for her blood. If she could find it and return it, all would be well, but it wasn’t there. She had left it on the ground under the hedge. Why? Why had she put it there? Why had she taken it? Why had she gone to the burial mound of the Lord Egbert? She didn’t know. She was screaming in her dream but no sound came.

If Steve could hear her he would rescue her. He was there, so close by, but he was the other side of a glass so thick she would never break free. She saw the nurse come in and talk to him, touch his arm. She saw him bow his head and wipe tears from his eyes. The nurse came back with a chair and put it by the bed. He tried to smile at her and she patted his arm again, then she was gone and Steve was alone with her body. Was she dying then? Had they told him she was dying and they were going to switch off the life-support machine? Perhaps she was already dead and this was the hell from which there was no return.

Unless she could find the sword.

It wasn’t there. Somehow she knew Zoë had found it and taken it to The old Forge. Zoë had showed it to Leo and he had picked it up and scrutinised it and looked at the blade and the hilt with a magnifying glass and copied down the runes which he saw there. He was excited by it; Zoë was frightened. It was Zoë who was the danger. Take it back, please take it back, she pleaded silently. Even if she had spoken out loud her cries would have been drowned by the bubbling of the lava pools at her feet and the roar of distant dragons.

They were leaving the forge. Where was the sword now? Did they have it with them? Zoë wanted to throw it in the river. She was afraid of the curse. She knew it was cursed. She didn’t know the danger.

Help me!

Rosemary held out her hands, but they were trapped behind the glass wall. If they gave the sword to the gods of the river there would be no rescue, no respite, no mercy. She beat on the glass and now the only sound she could hear was the sound of her own screams.

Zoë stopped in her tracks and put her hands to her head. ‘What is it?’ Leo stopped beside her.

‘Nothing.’ Zoë hesitated. ‘I thought I heard something. Someone calling.’ They were only a hundred yards or so from the river, standing on the dew wet lawns, on their way down to the
Curlew
. Below them a thick cold mist was curdling round the trees. She shook her head again. ‘It’s gone. It’s nothing. It was almost as though I could hear Rosemary.’ She gave an uncomfortable laugh. ‘I hope she’s OK.’ She turned and walked on. ‘Come on. I’m imagining things.’

They headed for the trees and had just about reached them when she stopped again and turned to look back towards the forge. ‘Did you hear that? There’s a car coming.’

Leo stopped and swung round. ‘Where?’

‘It’s going towards your house.’

‘Take no notice. Whoever it is, we don’t want to see them. We’ve got our mobiles, if it’s anything important we’ll hear about it soon enough.’

It had taken several trips to carry their supplies down to the
Curlew
and with each visit the mist had seemed lighter. All being well they planned to sail with the tide at midnight. ‘Why wait?’ Leo had said. ‘I don’t want to be here in the morning with Ken staring balefully over the hedge. Let’s disappear for a bit, give ourselves a chance. We needn’t go far yet. We can moor up somewhere and make final plans.’

He hadn’t mentioned the fog and neither had she. Each time she glanced down towards the water it was clearer. Please God it would go soon. To her surprise she felt a clutch of excitement in her stomach as she listened to him. And as they made their way down the path for the last time with the final load of belongings she felt nothing but an almost childish sense of anticipation.

The dinghy was bobbing in the water at the end of the landing stage. Leo squatted down and gently pulled in the painter. ‘Here, give me your things and I’ll put them in.’

Zoë was too out of breath to speak. Letting him help her into the little boat, she packed the bags and boxes around her, ignoring the slight slop of ice-cold water on the bottom boards as she sat still in the bow. The dinghy was already heavily laden and they were low in the water, but the night was very still. There was almost no wind and the river was still very misty.

Zoë looked round apprehensively. ‘You don’t think the ghost ship is lurking out here, do you?’ she whispered. ‘I can feel something odd about the river.’

Leo paused as he pushed the last bag under the thwart and looked at her. Then he shook his head. ‘The mist is clearing, Zoë. There is no ghost ship here. Not now.’ He squinted into the distance at the burgee at the masthead of the
Curlew
. It hung limply; there was no trace of wind. ‘And there certainly doesn’t seem to be anyone else around at the moment,’ he said half to himself. He gave her a reassuring smile. ‘I’m sure we’re fine. I don’t think the ghosts are about. Not tonight.’

They drew alongside the
Curlew
almost soundlessly and Zoë scrambled aboard. Standing for a moment in the cockpit she looked out across the water.

OK.’ Leo climbed in behind her. ‘We’ll stow this stuff away and get ready. There’s plenty of time. You don’t want to change your mind?’

She looked at him and shook her head. ‘No. This is what I want. Aboard the lugger.’ If she was honest this was it; she didn’t want to go back. She gave one last glance over her shoulder then she followed him down into the cabin.

Behind them the blue smoke from a distant bonfire drifted up into the air and carried the smell of sweet autumn-burning leaves into the slowly coiling wreathes of mist above the river.

The blue smoke drifted on the wind and carried with it the displeasure of the gods.

The sorcerer, the Christians called him, the priest of the old gods, the wizard, the maker of charms, the eater of sins. Augury and magic were his trade. He should have known the destiny of the village, should have foretold the arrival of the great longship from the northern lands, the escalation of the threat from the hungry Danes. But Anlaf had seen nothing. The wyrd sisters had not thought fit to warn him of what was to come. Now, as he walked slowly across the fields he could smell death on the wind, the foul reek of burning houses and charred flesh. He could see in the distance the pall of smoke still hanging over what had once been a village full of laughter and songs and love.

Leaning more heavily on his staff with each step he took, he approached what had once been the great hall and at last stood still, looking round. A man and a woman stood nearby; he could hear her sobbing weakly, all strength gone. Had they somehow escaped into the fields at the first sign of trouble, or were they from a neighbouring village which had so far missed the attentions of the invader? He stepped forward slowly, scanning the debris in what had been a fine proud building. The smouldering thatch of reeds lay in clumps. Nearby he could see the burned remains of a man. He felt nausea rise in his throat at the sight and he turned away. What could he, alone, do to bury so many? Already the carrion eaters were gathering. Crows and kites, magpies, buzzards, circling overhead. By dark the foxes and wolves would be creeping out of the woods and forests, drawn by the smell of death on the wind.