On Mark’s telling, Peter had grown secretive about his books for those last few months before he disappeared, locking the chest where they were stored, a thing he had never done previously. And when his brother had idly questioned him as to the reason for his action he had flown out at Mark, cautioning him to mind his own business. And when he had found Maud Jarrold studying the parchment, which he had left spread out on the shop bench, Peter had bundled her out of the room, shouting at her and frightening her half to death. Later on, once his fear had subsided, he had realized how stupid he had been, for Maud could not even read, let alone translate the arcane alphabet of a thousand years ago, written in the old Celtic language. He had realized too that his uncharacteristic behaviour might arouse suspicion, and had therefore apologized to her and pleaded illness as the cause of his ill temper. But he had been badly, if senselessly, scared, and shortly afterwards had removed the parchment to the greater safety of the secret drawer in the bed-head.
So! After Peter had been to see Blethyn Goode, he must have decided, as I had done, that he had guessed the identity of the relic. How long it had taken him to reach his conclusion I could not say with any certainty, but it was obvious from his encounter with Maud Jarrold that he had made up his mind sometime before he had vanished. Had he been looking for whatever he thought it was during those weeks? Or was he simply mulling things over, trying to work out where his search must begin? And was it that search which had taken him on to Pennard land?
I was now faced with another question to which I did not know the answer: did Peter Gildersleeve’s strange disappearance have anything at all to do with his acquiring the parchment and his knowledge of its contents, or were the two things unconnected? Had he visited the farm purely on a matter of business (he and Mark were accustomed to buying some of their sheepskins and cowhides from Anthony and his sons)? Yet he had not gone straight to the house or to the sheds where the fleeces were stored. Instead he had shown up at the shepherd’s hut on the eastern perimeters of the holding, and there, minutes later, he had completely and mysteriously vanished, apparently into thin air …
I had just reached this point in my deliberations when something happened that was perhaps the most frightening experience of my life. As I have so frequently said in these tales of my youth, I inherited from my mother the capacity to dream strange dreams. I have never claimed to have the Sight, and my ‘visions’ usually do no more than point me in a direction which I have carelessly overlooked, or which has not been obvious to me before. The people and places in them are normally people and places I have encountered in daily life, but distorted by the unreality which comes with sleep. I have often suspected that they are no more than my own perceptions floating up from the dark and hidden corners of my mind.
But that night it was different. To begin with, one moment I was wide awake — refreshed, as I have already said, by my earlier doze — the next, I was deeply asleep … or was I? I have never been able to determine in all the years between then and now, and I still cannot decide today. There was none of that drifting through a twilight world, half real, half imaginary, that normally precedes unconsciousness, only an abrupt transition from wakefulness to the heart of my dream.
I was standing in a landscape both terrifyingly strange and yet oddly familiar, inside a circle of palings which housed a large, round, central building of daub and wattle with a thatched, conical roof. This was ringed by twelve smaller but almost identical huts, with paths radiating inwards from each one to the edifice in the middle. The stockade was too high for me to see over it, yet I knew without being told how the surrounding countryside looked. Bleak marshland was interspersed with swathes of primaeval forest, and the howling of wolves was borne to my ears on the ice-cold air. Thus far all was unrecognizable, but when I raised my eyes to the great mound which towered above the enclave, and to the adjoining promontory of land, I knew them at once for the Tor and Weary-All Hill.
While I watched there emerged from the twelve huts, as if by a prearranged signal, twelve men, each clad in a rough, grey shift, knotted about the waist with rope, with their hair shaved back from the brow almost to the centre of the head. The recollection came to me that the monks of the old Celtic Christian Church had worn their tonsures in this fashion, instead of on the crown; and, without being told, I knew that the central building must be the very first church here, at Glastonbury, and that this was how it had looked in King Arthur’s time.
The monks advanced towards the church, every man along his own track of beaten earth and holding in his right hand a wooden cross. I knew that they were chanting, for I could see their lips moving, but I could hear no sound. All about me now was utter silence. Even the baying of the wolves had ceased. It was like being a spectator at a shadow-play, or as if I had suddenly been deprived of my ears.
When they reached the middle of the compound, which they seemed to do at exactly the same moment, the monks began walking in single file around the church. To start with they went slowly and sedately, but they gradually increased their pace until they were running as hard as they could. Then the company began to diminish, disappearing from my view and re-emerging each time one less in number until, finally, no one reappeared at all. I moved towards the church, floating weightlessly across the marshy ground, and as I did so the building grew transparent, allowing me to see through it to the other side where the monks stood in a long, straight line …
I was awake again without any sensation of arousal; no start, no snort, only a smooth re-entry into my own world and time. And yet surely there had been some slight noise which had penetrated my consciousness. I turned my head on the pillow and glanced towards the door. Someone had lifted the latch and was slowly, cautiously pushing it open.
Chapter Sixteen
I knew what I should do. I should slip quietly off the bed and stand behind the door, ready to pounce on the intruder. But I was still in a semi-trance-like state and my limbs refused to obey me. Moreover I felt no apprehension, no sense of danger, only an urgent desire to sleep until cock crow and maybe even longer. I was bone-weary, as though my vision had sapped all my strength.
In these circumstances, perhaps it was just as well that my nocturnal visitor was only Cicely.
But as the slim figure in the long linen shift closed the door softly behind her I was jolted into wakefulness, both mind and body suddenly alert and wary. I sat up abruptly, swinging my legs off the bed and planting my feet firmly on the floor. History was repeating itself. In just such a surreptitious manner Lillis had crept into my bed in the middle of the night, which was how I had become a reluctant husband (and so I might still have been had she not died in childbirth). When I married for a second time I was determined that it should be my own choice and not because, yet again, my hand had been forced.
‘What are you doing here?’ I hissed at her. ‘Go back to your room at once!’
Cicely ignored this and perched beside me on the edge of the bed. ‘I’ve told you before,’ she said, ‘but I don’t mind telling you again: I wasn’t in love with Peter.’
I noticed that on this occasion she had used the past tense, seeming to have no doubt now that her cousin was dead.
‘And I’ve told you before,’ I retorted, ‘that you’re not in love with me either, any more than I am with you. And for both our sakes, keep your voice down! Do you want to be discovered by your aunt?’