So what you did, you copied it out.
He stopped copying at one stage, his wrist aching, a distant siren sounding in his head like the beginning of a migraine.
What the hell am I doing?
I mean, am I out of my mind?
He'd crossed again into the Old Golden Land, where everything answered to its own peculiar and archaic logic.
So, by candlelight, he'd gone on copying material from the Filofax into the blank pages of a slim blue book of his own with photographs of stones and mounds in it and maps of Britain networked with irregular thin black lines. Indented gold letters on the cover spelled out. The Ley-Hunter's Diary 1993. They sent him one every year; he carried it around, the way you did, but this was the first time he'd ever actually written in one.
It took him a long time.
And if Andy had come back, caught him at it?
So what? The bastard had more explaining to do than he did.
He was scared, though. You couldn't not be, in this environment. Not if you were inclined to believe it worked.
As he wrote, he started to understand. Not all of it, but enough. Enough to convince him that the original source of some of these notes was probably Dr John Dee, astrologer to Elizabeth I. That Dee, who lived along the valley, who was not psychic but studied people who were, had been the recipient of the visit from the man who came "at nyte in hys spyryte'.
And that the visitor was Michael Wort. High Sheriff of Radnorshire.
And you can prove that?
Of course not. What does that matter? I believe it.
But you're not rational, Powys. You're a certifiable crank.
He'd put the Filofax back into the bread-oven, wishing there was somewhere to wash his hands, and climbed out through the window again, walking away into the dusk, the wood gloomy, treacherous place now, spiked with fallen branches bramble tentacles.
The night coming on, and he didn't feel so certain of ability to deal with this, this… diabolical sorcerie.
This phrase appeared several times in the text.
Standing, now, by the stone, feeling the tension like an impending thunderstorm, only denser. And the feeling that when the storm broke and the rain crashed down, the rain would be black and afterwards the earth would not be cleansed and purified but in some way poisoned.
Acid rain of the soul.
He moved a few feet away from the stone, stood behind a thick old oak tree bound with vines and creepers. The logic of the Old Golden Land told him that right next to the stone was not the place to be when the storm broke.
It also told him that the ringing of the curfew every night was some kind of climax and if he wanted to get a feel of what was going on, he ought to stay near that stone for… what?
He stretched his arm towards the sky to see his watch.
For less than half an hour.
He was frightened, though, and really wanted to creep back through the wood to the nearest lights.
So he thought about Henry Kettle and he thought about Rachel. And found himself thinking about Fay too.
She sped through the shadowed streets, Arnold on the passenger seat.
Not the other son – what was his name?… Warren – not him, surely.
She could hear her own voice-piece. The accident came only a week after Warren's brother, Jonathan, was tragically drowned in the swollen river near his home…
The usual reporter's moral conflict taking place in her head. Better for the Preece family if it was someone else. Better for the media if it was another Preece – Double Disaster for Tragic Farm Family.
Better for her, in truth, if she was away from Offa's Dyke Radio, which was clearly in the process of ditching her anyway. And away from Crybbe also, which went without saying.
Headlights on, she dropped into the lane beside the church. Nothing like other people's troubles to take your mind off your own.
Other, brighter headlights met hers just before the turning to Court Farm, and she swung into the verge as the ambulance rocketed out and its siren warbled into life.
Still alive, anyway. But that could mean anything.
Fay drove into the track. She'd never been to Court Farm before.
Firemen were standing around the yard, and there was a policeman, one of Wynford's three constables. Fay ignored him; she'd always found it easier to get information out of firemen.
'Didn't take you long,' one said, teeth flashing in the dusk. 'You wanner interview me' Which way's the camera?'
'No need to comb your hair,' Fay said. 'It's radio.'
'Oh, in that case you better talk to the chief officer. Ron!'
Firemen were always affable after it was over. 'Bugger of a job getting to him,' Ron said. 'Right up the top, this bloody field, and the ground was all churned up after all this rain. Still, we done it. Bloody mess, though. Knackered old thing it was, that tractor. Thirty-odd years old.'
'It just turned over?'
'Ah, it's not all that uncommon,' said Ron. 'I reckon we gets called to at least two tractor accidents every year. Usually young lads, not calculated the gradients. Never have imagined it happening to Jack Preece, though.'
'Jack Preece?'
'Hey, now, listen, don't go putting that out till the police confirms the name, will you? No, see, I can't figure how it could've happened, Jack muster been over there coupla thousand times. Just shows, dunnit. Dangerous job, farming.'
'How is he? Off the record.'
'He'll live,' Ron said, changing his boots. 'Gets everywhere this bloody mud. His left leg's badly smashed. I don't know… Still, they can work miracles these days, so I'm told.'
Fay got him to say some of it again, on tape. It was 9.40, nearly dark, because of all the cloud, as she pulled out of the farmyard.
She was halfway down the track when a figure appeared in the headlights urgently waving both arms, semaphoring her to stop.
Arnold sat up on the seat and growled.
Fay wound her window down.
'Give me a lift into town, will you?'
It was too dark to see his face under the cap, but she recognized his voice at once from meetings of the town council and the occasional 'Ow're you' in the street.
'Mr Preece!'
Oh, Christ.
'Get in the back, Arnold,' Fay hissed. As she pushed the dog into the back seat, something shocking wrenched at her mind, but she hadn't time to develop the thought before the passenger door was pulled open and the Mayor collapsed into the seat next to her, gasping.
'In a hurry. Hell of a hurry.'
The old man breathing heavily and apparently painfully as they crunched down the track. As she turned into the lane, Mr Preece said, 'Oh. It's you.' Most unhappy about this, she could tell, 'I didn't know it was you.'
'I'm terribly sorry,' Fay said, 'about Jack. It must be…'
'Aye…' Mr Preece broke off, turned his head, recoiled. 'Mighter known! You got that… damn thing in yere!'
'The dog?'
The shocking thought of a couple of minutes ago completed itself with an ugly click. As she was pushing Arnold into the back seat she'd felt the stump of his rear, left leg and heard Ron, the leading fireman, in her head, saying, left leg's badly smashed.
'Mr Preece,' Fay said carefully, 'I'd like to come and see you. I know it's a bad time – a terrible time – but I have to know what all this is about.'
He said nothing.
Fay said, 'I have to know – not for the radio, for myself – why nobody keeps a dog in Crybbe.'
The Mayor just breathed his painful soggy breaths, never looked behind him at what crouched in the back seat, said not a word until they moved up alongside the churchyard and entered the square.