Saxon's Bane (25 page)

D
ICK
H
AGMAN LEANED
against the gate into the Green Man’s delivery yard, looked up the lane towards the village green, and excavated his ear with a finger while he watched the flow of activity.

Behind him the struggles inside the Jack-in-the-Green costume stopped. Hagman looked back over his shoulder and stifled a laugh. Jake Herne didn’t like to be laughed at; he needed to be the jester, not the fool. In an hour or two his face would be covered in green greasepaint, decorated with leaves, and leering out of the costume with sinister merriment. Girls would shriek, toddlers would scream and hide in their mother’s skirts, and the merriment would begin. But at the moment, Jake’s face revelry sweating and pinkly ludicrous as he struggled with the straps inside.

“What?”

“His girlfriend’s back. I saw her car go past.” Hagman scrutinised the contents of his ear and flicked his fingernail into the yard. Jake swore loudly.

It had been a morning for swearing. Getting Jake Herne inside the Jack hadn’t been the problem. It fitted over his shoulders in a harness like a bell tent, festooned with foliage and may blossom, with an oval cut out for his face. Jake could shoulder the burden easily, and he was fit enough to dance inside it as he led the maypole dancers and the morris men. The swearing had begun when he tried swinging the costume one-handed in a practice dance. Both hands were definitely needed. Hagman had helped Jake buckle his plaster cast to one of the harness’s handles. It worked, after a fashion, but it hurt, and with every twinge Jake had sworn revenge.

“So what if she is?”

“Well, what if we can’t get him on his own?”

“Then we’ll have to find a way of keeping her out of the way. Slip her a spiked drink, cosh her, or whatever, we only need a few minutes.”

Hagman wasn’t sure if Herne was joking. Still, he had a score to settle with that little archaeologist; she’d interrupted the esbat just when it was getting interesting. Hagman licked his lips at the memory of the naked woman on the rhododendron branch, all curves and shadows in the moonlight, in the moments before the hysterics started and the torch shone in his eyes.

“Are we still going to do it, then?”

“Of course we bloody are.” Jake rested the costume on two tables either side of him, and crawled from under it. “Shut that gate, you never know who’s listening.” Hagman pulled the double doors closed behind him. Their height made the small yard seem cramped. The space was normally occupied by Herne’s Range Rover but it was now dominated by the costume perched between the tables. Around them the walls were lined with beer kegs and stacked crates of empty bottles, a rack of weight training dumbbells and an exercise mat, the debris of Herne’s existence.

“You sure about this, Jake? Couldn’t we just rough him up a bit? Scare him away, that sort of thing? I mean, it’s murder, innit?”

“That bastard’s going to suffer for what he did to me.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think the others will go along with killing someone.”

The speed with which Jake could move stunned Hagman. One second Jake was flexing his plastered arm, the next his good hand was around Hagman’s throat, lifting him against the doors so that he could feel his jowls pouched out above Jake’s thumb and forefinger.

“Then don’t fucking tell them, you pillock.” Hagman struggled to get his toes to the ground to relieve the pressure on his windpipe. Jake let him drop and patted his cheek, suddenly calm. “We’ll just let the word spread, afterwards, when they can’t stop it and can’t prove it. And maybe by then they’ll have more than a missing cripple to think about.”

Hagman massaged his throat, eyes lowered, sullen. “What d’ya mean?”

“I sacrificed a stag and we got the Saxon. I sacrificed a goat and the choirmaster died. Now we’re going to give Him a man. Let’s see what He does with that.”

Hagman shivered. He didn’t like this new certainty in Jake. When Jake spoke like that, a frightening look came into his eyes, the sort of look that made Hagman want to hide. Jake’s hand came back again and Hagman cringed against the doors, whimpering, but Herne folded his third and fourth fingers under his thumb to make the sign of the Horned God with his index and little fingers, and pushed the sign under Hagman’s nose.

“We’re going to do this and we’re going to do it well because it’s His will. If you let Him down, He’ll make sure you’ll regret it for all eternity.” Jake’s chilling intensity softened and he slid his good arm around Hagman’s shoulders. Now when he spoke, it was like a parent encouraging a child.

“Stay strong. You’ll find He has a way of helping out. Now, I’ve got a job for you.” Hagman looked up at him gratefully, like a beaten dog that suddenly receives a pat from its master.

“I’m going to do this properly, robed and masked,” Herne continued.

“What, in front of everyone?”

“Especially in front of everyone. Now take my car keys and fetch my hood and gown.”

“But I’ll miss the parade…”

“Nah, there’s ages yet. I want you back here in time for us both to get ready. Remember, you’re crucial.”

Hagman puffed himself up and reached for the keys. He liked driving Jake’s Range Rover.

A few minutes later he stopped where the bridleway met the Downs road, and furrowed his brows in thought as he stared at Clare’s parked Volvo. Some people never learned, did they? The question was, what to do about it? Hagman pulled out his mobile phone and called Jake.

A minute later, Hagman eased Jake’s car forwards onto the bridleway, and parked it a few hundred yards from the clearing, where the bridleway widened enough to turn around. He wouldn’t want to scare her off, now, would he? But maybe the boyfriend was with her. At the thought of Fergus’s stick, he pulled a folding shovel out of the boot. It was best to be prepared.

C
LARE KNELT IN
front of the stone, with her roll of paper in the grass beside her, willing the pattern of runes to emerge from under the surface mosaic of orange and white lichen, grey stone, and dried blood. This would be even harder than she thought. Once, the stone had been intricately carved, but now whole patches of the surface had flaked away, and she doubted if even laboratory techniques would uncover what once had been in those areas.

Faint sounds of movement in the undergrowth made Clare look around nervously. The glade felt wrong, as if something malicious lurked in the bushes. Fergus’s reaction to the place still spooked her. Clare shivered involuntarily, and then relaxed as she saw a blackbird rustling the dead leaves under the bushes, hunting for worms.
Get a grip, girl.
She pushed her fears to the back of her mind, and forced herself to think analytically.

Start with the context. Rune stones to proclaim a chieftain’s prowess were normally set up where people could see them, not hidden deep in the forest. In this hidden glade, with a spring, this one was more likely to have a sacred meaning than to be a boundary stone. So if this is its original site, she could expect the runes to have both literal and mystical interpretations.

Clare allowed herself to trace the runes with her fingertips, touching the stone so lightly that only flakes of lichen would be disturbed, and then drew each rune on a pad on her knee. Two runes close together were clear. Perthro, then Eihwaz, as meaningless in isolation as taking any two letters from a modern inscription. The Perthro rune looked like a buckled staple on end, and might represent a cup, or something contained within a cup. Secrets, perhaps, or hidden meanings, maybe something female. Eihwaz, an angular ‘S’ of three straight lines, enlightenment, endurance, or strong purpose.

Or, literally, a yew tree. She sat back on her heels, trying to assemble the fragments of the puzzle in her mind. Under the rhododendrons the blackbird bounced and stabbed, then was still after a gobbling swallow, but around her the rustlings continued.

Perthro, Eihwaz, Algiz. Clare traced the rune she had spotted on that first day with Fergus, the day he’d collapsed. Algiz, the elk rune with its spray of three lines like antlers. Strength, divine protection, but here it was reversed to imply a negative. Hidden danger, perhaps, or even the loss of the gods’ protection. In any context this would be a powerful warning, but against what? Clare sat back, thinking, with the dream of Kate and the runes running through her mind like background music.

For a moment Clare felt a sense of presence, a silent scream of warning so powerful that she looked around the clearing, half expecting to see a tumble of golden hair, but there was only the natural greenery of the woods. The warning clamoured in her mind. Algiz reversed. Kate and the dream poem. Dream poem, the
Hávamál
, no longer strange to her because Clare had read it many times since that first morning. Another verse leapt into her thoughts.

That er thá reynt, er thú ađ rúnum spyrr inum reginkunnum, theim er gerđu ginnregin ok fáđi fimbulthuir, thá hefir hann bazt ef hann thegir

That is now proved what you asked of the runes of the potent famous ones which the great gods made and the mighty sage stained that it is best for him if he stays silent.

Clare rose on her knees in front of the stone, as if kneeling at an altar, mouthing the words of the
Hávamál
while she tried to decipher its arcane meaning. The verse could mean ‘leave this alone’, but that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Around her the sounds of the glade were crowding in, no longer merely blackbirds but a presence that made her twist around with a sharp intake of breath. But she was too late to avoid the shovel that swung flat-side into her temple, sweeping her aside in shattered fragments of light.

H
AGMAN LOOKED DOWN
at Clare’s body, excited and frightened by what he’d done.
Keep her there, out of the way,
Jake had said. Now she lay on her back with her arms tumbled upwards beside her head as if in surrender, and her eyes half closed. The position had pulled up her shirt, exposing her belly button, and Hagman knew she wasn’t dead because her stomach was moving as she breathed. He thought she looked rather cute and vulnerable like that. It made him feel powerful.

But Hagman didn’t know what to do next. Jake would have known. Hagman bit his knuckles and took a few steps back towards the lane, but then turned around, squirming in indecision. A trickle of blood explored the crevices of Clare’s ear, overflowed, and dripped into her hair. Hagman started justifying what he had done to himself, muttering that she shouldn’t have been trespassing, who knows what she might’ve been up to. She might’ve broken into the field shelter and stolen stuff.

Field shelter. Robes. Got to get the robes. That was what he’d been sent to do. Mustn’t go back without those. As Hagman started moving towards the shelter the woman groaned and one arm flopped downwards before she fell still and silent once more. She might wake up and still get back to the village, and then all hell would break loose. Swiftly now, he trotted to the shelter, returning with a hank of nylon twine that had once bound a bale of hay.
Think like Jake. Pretend you’re Jake. Do what Jake would do.

C
LARE HATED THIS
part of the dream. She hated it for what it was, and she hated it more for what would follow because it was the overture to madness. Clare didn’t understand where she was, but knew she must be lying on the ground because there were feet near her face. There was something wrong about the feet this time. The dirty trainers and jeans didn’t fit the dream and she puzzled at the sight while a hum of wrongness filled her head like an electric charge.

Clare’s arms were pulled behind her and bound. That part fitted, and she tensed in anticipation of the hand that slid inside her shirt and pawed at her breasts. She squirmed against the violation but although she tried to scream, the only sound that emerged was a low moan. The touch was different; she’d expected the hard, overt grope of a conqueror, not this furtive feel as if the perpetrator was afraid to be caught. Clare wasn’t sure which was more loathsome. She managed to roll over, groaning, and the hand withdrew.

Clare started to thrash around on the ground, but her legs were bound until she was securely trussed. As she was lifted there was a new explosion of lights and pain in her head, and she passed out again.

C
LARE’S EYES OPENED
on a landscape on its side, framed by a doorway, out of focus. She became aware of a wooden floor, hard and coarse against her ear, and she squinted to try and make sense of the view. She must have lost her glasses somewhere. The view looked like the field at the end of the valley, with Jake Herne’s horse grazing in the distance. This room must be part of the animal shelter. The door and its fittings looked unnaturally heavy, as if this room had been adapted for additional security. Awareness returned and Clare struggled against the twine binding her limbs.

A foot stepped over her, pulling her attention away from the field. He was carrying a large swathe of cloth over his arm, a dress maybe, or a cloak. Something trailed from his other hand, but before Clare could focus on it her attention was drawn to the line of animal masks high on the wall, each with a similar drape of material hanging below its peg. All the faces of the masks were angled downwards, scrutinising her as she lay on the floor. This hadn’t been part of the dream. Nor was the man who now squatted in front of her face. Clare knew him from the waking world. She’d last seen him with his trousers round his ankles. He belonged with the wolf mask. And he must be the letch who’d groped her.

“I’ve gotta go.” The Groper spoke with bizarre normality, his voice ringing false like a bad actor speaking his part. “We’re gonna have some fun with your boyfriend now, but we’ll have lots of time to get to know each other later, around midnight. Tonight’s Beltane, see, and we’re going to have a party. Jake says you’re invited.” He touched Clare’s cheek with his fingers, and traced them down her neck until they touched her nipple through her shirt. He licked his lips and smiled at Clare in a way that made her want to scream but no sound broke its way through the hum of wrongness in her head.