I hoped very much that wasn’t about to happen again.
I stretched out my hands. I waited. Nothing happened. I turned in a slow circle. Again, my palms gave no response. Now I was back where I had started, facing out over the swollen river.
It happened so suddenly that there was no time to feel afraid. I saw a huge wall of water, sweeping up the river towards where I stood. It went past me, and I should have been right inside it, helpless as it swept me away; but this was not reality, it was vision, something intangible that originated within my mind, and although I saw myself within a deadly swirl of furious water, in fact I stood, perfectly safe, on firm ground.
I saw a body, its long pale limbs turned over and over in the wild current. A garment still clung to it but, as I watched, it detached, sinking down into the water. Suddenly I was face to face with her, and I could see the devastated eyes, the half-eaten breasts. Nausea rose up, and I heard myself groan as sweat broke out on my forehead. I made myself go on looking, and, as I’d known I would, I saw the poor body thrown against the underside of the bridge. It – she – was battered to and fro by the force of the flow, and then, as the ferocity of the current slowly eased, finally the body came to rest.
The vision faded. I was about to open my eyes when, totally unexpectedly, something else happened: out of nowhere, I was hit with a sense of fear so overpoweringly strong that I gasped. Somebody was watching me from a place of concealment, but in my trance state – if that was what it was – I saw eyes, glittering with malice, narrowed with intent. I felt a surge of malevolence which seemed to roar towards me and break against me like a wave. There was a flash of silver, a whistle as if something was flying through the air, and then I was on the ground, flat on my face, winded from the force with which I’d thrown myself down.
As soon as I could breathe again, I sat up, then got to my feet. Jack was standing a respectful distance away, but with the anxiety easily readable in his expression. Suddenly I wanted to laugh: did he imagine that every attempt at dowsing ended with me flinging myself on the ground?
I didn’t really appreciate it until later, but his first question was actually rather revealing. He must have been desperate with impatience to find out if I’d discovered anything relevant to the woman’s death, but what he said was, ‘Are you all right?’
I started to say yes, but then, as I made to move towards him, I stumbled. He was by my side in an instant, strong hands supporting me. Feeling stupid, hastily I straightened up. ‘I’m fine!’ I said with an embarrassed laugh. ‘And I didn’t sense anything other than the shift, which you’ve already found. Oh, except that she was dead some time before she got here.’ My voice didn’t sound quite normal. ‘I saw her poor body, with the eyes so badly damaged and those wounds to her breasts, and she was in that state when the surge drove her here.’
He gave a soft exclamation of sympathy and put his arms round me. He felt as tough as he looked; it was a bit like being hugged by a barrel. When he spoke, the tenderness in his tone came as an odd contrast to his physical toughness. ‘She is at peace now,’ he said. ‘The fear and the pain are all over, and she lies quiet, warmly wrapped in your aunt’s clean cloth.’
In normal circumstances, I’d have treated that remark with a derisive snort. I deal with death pretty frequently, and I know full well that corpses have no feelings, and can’t possibly be aware of being snug in their winding sheets. But these were far from being normal circumstances. For some reason – I had no idea what it was – I had formed a bond with the dead woman. Her awful death had touched me, and her fate affected me deeply. To hear Jack speak those consoling words was like balm to my sore heart.
He went on holding me. He was very close, and his clear green eyes looked straight into mine.
‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’
‘Yes,’ I whispered. Could I tell him? What had I seen, after all? I’d sensed danger, imminent and strong, but I was almost sure it was simply an overactive imagination. We were standing where a woman had just died, and I’d already had a jittery sense of eyes on me on the way here. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing,’ I added.
‘Tell me anyway,’ Jack said.
I drew a breath. ‘I thought I saw – or sensed – that someone was watching us. He meant us harm, and I heard the sound of a weapon as it whistled towards me.’
‘Is that the sort of thing you often pick up when you’re dowsing?’ he asked.
I smiled. ‘No, not really, although there was a time when I felt as scared as I did just now.’
‘And did the danger-’ But he must have felt how violently I was shuddering, and, tactfully, stopped asking penetrating questions.
After a few moments, I said in a small voice, ‘What if she was murdered, Jack? What if whoever did it is still here, watching to see what we discover?’
He was quiet for quite a while, and I guessed he was thinking. ‘Your aunt seemed to be fairly sure that our victim drowned,’ he said eventually, ‘but it need not necessarily have been an accidental drowning.’
‘You mean, somebody could have held her under till she died?’ I said in a whisper.
‘They could,’ Jack agreed, ‘but that’s not to say they did.’
It took me some time to pull myself together. I needed to show him I was all right, and that he could let me go without fearing I’d instantly collapse on him. Gently I disengaged myself, gave him a grin and said, ‘We can go on now.’
Then I bent down to pick up my satchel and, with as much determination as I could muster, strode over to the horses.
We rode on through the day, stopping wherever we saw a village, a hamlet, a collection of houses and even a gaggle of people, to ask if a tall, fair young woman had gone missing in the floods. The going was hard, and at times we had to make long detours to get round inundated ground. My knowledge of the area helped, and once I even tried my hand at finding the safe path across a stretch of marsh, as I’d done at Ely. Jack was impressed at my success, and I felt compelled to admit that I’d been all but sure the hidden path was there, since it was one I use at least twice a year going to and from a place where marsh mallows grow.
It seems to be a factor in our dealings with others, this compulsion to be straight and honest with those who are straight and honest with us.
Nobody we spoke to was looking for a young, fair, blue-eyed woman. They were searching for plenty of other things: missing livestock, doors, bits of fencing, household items; and some, indeed, were frantically hunting for people. Heartbreakingly, one wild-eyed man was trying to find his six-year-old son.
We helped where we could. Jack used his muscle to assist a group of men heave a cart out of the ditch into which the water had flung it. We both joined an old woman trying single-handedly to round up a flock of geese, and, while she and I shut them up temporarily inside her own tiny hovel of a house, Jack repaired their pen. He was, I noticed, well used to dealing with geese. I used quite a lot of the supplies in my satchel patching up various wounds and dispensing remedies for the many aches, pains, sniffles and coughs caused by people having spent far too long out of doors up to their knees or waists in cold water and soaked to the skin.
We found the little boy. Out in the open ground beyond the village with the geese we heard frantic sobbing, and found the child sitting in the lower branches of a hazel tree. It took quite a long time to coax him down, encourage him to get on my horse and take him back to his father, but the man’s inarticulate joy at being reunited with his son was more than adequate reward.
I don’t think either Jack or I had noticed how late it was until darkness began to fall. We were miles away from Aelf Fen, and we’d had no luck at all in trying to find where our dead woman had come from. Turning to me with a rueful expression, Jack said, ‘It looks as though we’ll have to find somewhere to spend the night, and then continue with the search in the morning.’ I nodded. ‘I’m sorry,’ he added, ‘I hadn’t expected to be away so long. Do you mind?’