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For the first time, Annie found herself trying to go back – and back – into her memory, into the past, into the unopened rooms of her subconscious. She thought she must have been afraid to remember, to even make the attempt, but now it was necessary, it was urgent. She pictured the pallor of that hospital room, Daniel lying there, the bruising on his face dark, dark against the whiteness of his skin, white bandages, white pillow … Daniel slipping away from her … and the sudden opening of his eyes, and the love in them that stabbed her, even now, making a wound that would always be fresh, always raw, as long as her heart beat. She clung to that moment, and shrank from it, because beside it all the other moments of her life were as shadows and half-lights; but this time she knew she must go beyond it, opening up the pain, reaching into death itself. Her fingers slid from the keyboard; her face emptied. There were impressions – colours – a spinning sensation – falling into softness, warmth, touch. There was a love enfolding her, mind and body, filling every pore, eclipsing both heart and thought, absorbing her into its passion and its potency. Daniel’s love – it must be Daniel – but Daniel had given much, and taken little, and this was a love which took everything, all that she was, and all that she had, and gave only on its own terms, in its own way. A great gift, a gift that was worth the price, though she paid with her life and her soul …
There was a violent jolt, and her head was in her hands, and the world slid back into place. She looked up, and saw the bookshop, and her current screensaver, fish swimming through a coral grove, and the spiralling dust-motes caught in a ray of sunshine from a small side window. Gradually her pulse steadied, but she didn’t move. After an hour or more, she got up and went to make tea.
When the tea was ready she returned to the table, sat down, sipped, pressed a few keys on the computer, tapped out an e-mail to other dealers about a rare first edition she was trying to obtain for a client. But her thought was elsewhere. She had listened to Bartlemy’s theory, but hadn’t really digested the implications. Something – someone – had taken her, in the instant of Daniel’s death, and made her pregnant. She had been invaded and violated, when she was open and vulnerable, when she had offered her whole being, to Daniel, for Daniel – but it was not Daniel who had accepted. Some alien power had seized her and used her, drawing a veil in her mind to blind her, leaving her with … Nathan. She loved Nathan as much as she had loved Daniel, though differently, but in that moment it didn’t matter. A slow-burning anger mounted in her, like no anger she had ever known, a white fire with which she could have torn down the walls between worlds, and stormed across the multiverse to find her ravisher. He had imprinted her with his spirit, but she would tear him out, and take back the life he had riven from her, and the love he had poisoned, and the soul he had left broken or benumbed. Her heart raged until the tea grew cold, and the fire died within her, and the tears came and came and would not stop.
Hazel Bagot found her there, when she came round to borrow a book for school. ‘What’s wrong?’ she said, horrified. ‘Annie, Annie, what’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ Annie sobbed, struggling for self-control, and Hazel put her arms round her, awkwardly, embarrassed to find an adult weeping with such abandon, though she had seen her mother cry, often and often. Her bracelet caught in Annie’s hair, pulling it sharply, so she started with the pain, and Hazel sprang back, stammering an apology, and ran out into the street. And there was Michael, walking towards her, and she dragged him inside, though he offered little resistance, and left him to do what he could in the way of comfort, while she headed home to brood on the mystery of it, with Annie’s hair snagged on her bracelet.
In the shop, Annie laid her head against Michael’s shoulder, and wept herself to a standstill.
‘What is it?’ he said. ‘Can I help?’
‘No. Thanks. It’s just … something a long time ago, something I never understood … never realized till now.’
‘Can you tell me?’
‘No. Sorry. It’s too …’
‘Too private?’ he suggested.
‘Too difficult.’ She looked up at him, red-eyed, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand, like a child. ‘Excuse me. I need a tissue. Possibly several.’
‘I’ll get them.’ He got up. ‘Where –’
‘Loo paper. In the bathroom. Upstairs on your left. But you shouldn’t …’
He ran upstairs, returning presently with a skein of toilet paper.
‘Thank you,’ Annie said again, feeling helpless and rather foolish. She blew her nose vigorously, wondering what she could say, unwilling to lie when he was being so kind.
But Michael asked no more questions. ‘If there’s anything I can do …?’
‘No, really. I’ll be fine now. I’d just like to be alone.’
‘Sure?’ She nodded. He stood looking down at her, and for once the crooked smile wasn’t in evidence. ‘Okay. But I meant what I said. If there’s anything I can do, ever, you have only to ask. It sounds melodramatic to say you’re alone in the world – I know that’s not exactly the case – but you don’t have a husband or family, at any rate, not round here. I want you to know you can call on me, any time.’
He does like me, Annie thought, and the knowledge warmed her, and unsettled her, more than she would have expected, ruffling what little serenity she had left.
She thought of asking him: How would Rianna feel about that? But of course she didn’t.
Not long after his birthday Nathan went walking in the woods near Thornyhill. He had left Hoover behind, ostensibly because he wanted to watch for birds and squirrels, but really because he needed some time to himself, to think things over. Hazel had told him about finding his mother in tears, and he had asked Annie what had upset her, but all she would say was that it didn’t matter now. ‘I was crying over spilt milk, and everyone knows that’s a waste of energy. What’s done is done. It’s nothing you need worry about.’ He didn’t want to press her, but instinct told him there was something very wrong, something important, one of many nebulous troubles that threatened to disturb the pattern of his life. The vision of the cup – dreams of another world – the illegal immigrant – Effie Carlow – Michael Addison – the star. He sat down on a log some way from any path, his gaze resting absently on the fluttering of leaf-shadows across the woodland floor, primrose clumps around a tree-bole, a mist of bluebells stretching away into a green distance. There was no traffic noise from the road, only the song of unseen birds. It was a beautiful scene, restful to the soul, but he was thirteen and his soul was restless. There were so many things he wanted to know …
The face was watching him from the crook between branch and tree-trunk: he must have been staring at it for some time without seeing it, the way you stare at a puzzle picture until the instant when the hidden image becomes clear. He thought at first that it was an animal, maybe a pine marten – he had always wanted to see a pine marten – but the face, though pointed, was hairless, bark-coloured and thrush-speckled, watching him sideways from a dark slanting eye. He became aware of spindle limbs clinging to the tree-trunk, leafy rags of clothing. Even so, it was several minutes before he said, very softly: ‘Woody?’
The woodwose shrank away, retreating into the shelter of the tree.
‘Please don’t go! It’s me, Nathan. Woody, please …’
‘Nathan?’ It was the slightest of whispers, emanating from behind the oak.
‘Yes, it is. Really …’
‘Nathan … was little. No bigger than me.’
‘I grew up,’ Nathan said. ‘I couldn’t help that. It’s what people do. I’m a teenager now.’
‘You went away.’ The woodwose was still invisible, only a voice among the leaves.
‘I know. I’m sorry. They told me you were imaginary, and I suppose … I got to believing them.’
‘They?’ The tip of a long nose reappeared, followed by the gleam of an eye, the twitch of an ear.
‘People. My mother. Some of my friends. It wasn’t their fault: they didn’t know you. It was my fault.’
‘You’ve grown too big,’ Woody said doubtfully. ‘Too big to talk to.’
‘I’m the same,’ Nathan insisted. ‘Look at me, Woody.’
The woodwose studied him, first from one eye, then the other. ‘You are Nathan,’ he said at last, ‘but you are not the same. You are … more. Perhaps too much …’
‘It feels that way sometimes,’ Nathan said. ‘But you can still talk to me. Honestly you can. Please come out, Woody. Please.’
Slowly, tentatively, the woodwose emerged into full view, staying close to the tree, no longer relaxed as he had been with his child playmate but a nervous, distrustful creature, easily startled, poised not to flee but to fade, back into the concealment of the wood. ‘Do you,’ he murmured, ‘do you have any – Smarties? You brought some once, I remember, in a tube with a lid on. They were small, and many-coloured – all different colours – and they tasted very good.’
‘I’ll bring some next time,’ Nathan promised. ‘I’ll come again soon. What … what have you been doing, all these years?’
But he knew the answer. ‘Being here,’ said the woodwose. ‘Waiting.’
‘For me?’
‘I – yes. You are all I have. You told me so. My parents, my friend.’ And, after a pause: ‘What is imaginary?’
‘It means, I invented you. You came from my mind. Where did you come from, Woody?’
‘From your mind,’ said the woodwose. ‘I think.’
Nathan remembered the man he had pulled from the seas of another cosmos, onto the beach at Pevensey Bay. He had no memory of it, but perhaps he had found Woody, too, in a dream, in the woods of some alternative world. It was an uncomfortable idea, though he hadn’t yet had time to work out why. The two of them sat for a while, almost the way they used to, watching a beetle creeping through the leaf-mould, and sunspots dancing on a tree-trunk, and a tiny bird with a piping call which Nathan would never have seen without his friend to guide him. ‘Would you look out for anything-different?’ Nathan asked at last. ‘There are things happening now, strange things. I can’t explain properly because I don’t understand, but I think you should be wary. If you see-oh, I don’t know – anything unusual, weird …’
‘Weird?’ Woody looked bewildered. There were few words in his vocabulary.
‘Odd. Peculiar. Wrong.’ Nathan paused for a minute, struck by a sudden thought. ‘How do you speak my language, Woody? It isn’t natural to you, is it?’
‘I must have learned from you,’ said the woodwose. ‘I’ve never spoken to anybody else.’
Nathan didn’t say any more. He bade his friend goodbye, and set off back towards Bartlemy’s house. An awful fear was growing in him, that he had brought Woody here, had dreamed him into this world and then abandoned him, and now the woodwose had no other friend, no other place, no other tongue. It was a frightening responsibility, but the wider implications were worse. He had no control over his dreams. (What had Effie Carlow said? Dream carefully.) Perhaps, if he really had this power, this ability, he might find himself bringing other people here, other creatures, unhappy exiles who could never go home, unless he found a way to dream them back again. The idea was so terrifying it made his mind spin. He forced himself to think rationally, to analyse what it was in his dreaming that had transported the man in the water from world to world – if that was indeed what had happened. There had been the urge to help, to save him – a huge impulse of will. After all, he had only brought back one person – not any of the xaurians or their riders, or the man in the white mask. And maybe some similar impulse had drawn Woody to Thornyhill to be his companion. A selfish impulse, a child’s impulse: the desire for a secret friend. ‘And I couldn’t send him back,’ he reflected, remorsefully, ‘even if I had the power. I don’t remember where he came from.’ He resolved that he would dream carefully from now on, he would suppress all such urges, he wouldn’t – he mustn’t – allow his feelings to dictate his actions.
He wanted to tell Bartlemy – he wanted to tell someone – but he feared to be treated as an over-imaginative child, diminished by adult scepticism. Somehow, because she was so old, so eccentric, Effie Carlow had been different: he could have endured her scorn, if she had scorned him. But Bartlemy was the person he respected most in the world, knowledgeable and wise, and in his inmost heart Nathan shrank from the very notion of his disbelief.
Even so, the need to confide might have been too much for him, if he had found Bartlemy alone when he returned to Thornyhill. But in the living room he found Rowena Thorn, Mrs Vanstone to give her proper name, drinking tea and talking earnestly about something. She was a long, lean, tweedy sort of woman in her mid-sixties, with a face which had once been plain, until character and humour had left its impress on her features. She was given to serving on committees, organizing, charitable events, and riding her friends’ horses since she no longer maintained one of her own. In between, she ran an antiques shop in Chizzledown. She greeted Nathan absent-mindedly, though she normally found time to inquire after his progress at school, and reverted immediately to the former subject under discussion.
‘The provenance is clear: they have all the necessary documentation. It is the genuine article, I’m sure of it. You’ve seen our records. That awful little tit Rowland sold it to this Birnbaum chap just before the war – he was a German, too, frightfully bad form if you ask me – and then went and got himself killed, silly business really, survived the Somme and then got run over by a tank or something in the week before the Armistice. Henry died in the ’flu epidemic and that was more or less the end of the family. My father was only a child at the time, besides being just a cousin, and there was nothing left for him to inherit but debts. My grandmother always said that when we lost the cup we lost our luck, but personally I’ve never been sure about that. I remember Great-aunt Verity contended it was our curse, an evil burden the family had a duty to bear. Probably all nonsense, but you never know. The point is, it’s ours, and if it really has resurfaced I’m damn well going to get it back.’
Nathan, who was becoming interested, helped himself to some elderflower cordial from the kitchen (Bartlemy made his own) and sat down unobtrusively next to Hoover.
‘But if Rowland Thorn sold it, as you maintain,’ Bartlemy was saying, ‘I don’t quite see how you can make a claim. Unless you can manage to buy it back from the present owner?’
‘Good Lord, no, it’s practically priceless. According to what I hear, the British Museum is after it, but it may be too much for their budget. Depends on the other bidders, of course: might go for a song, might run into millions. No: I’m trying another tack. I intend to prove the original sale was actually illegal.’
‘How will you do that?’ Bartlemy asked.
‘As you know, old Josevius acquired the cup somewhere back in the Dark Ages. Given to him by the Devil, one story has it; another one says it was an angel.’
‘I read it was supposed to be a holy relic,’ Nathan said. He found it curiously difficult to speak of it, as if there were weights on his tongue. Yet he wanted to. He wanted to say: I found the chapel. I saw the cup. He couldn’t. Hoover, he noticed, merely looked inquiringly at him.
‘Depends which story you favour. Didn’t know you were interested in my family history, Nathan. Good for you. Too many kids your age only want to play computer games and listen to pop music, far as I can see. History’s important. The past belongs to all of us. Where was I?’
‘Josevius,’ Bartlemy prompted.
‘Right. Well, he got the cup, somehow or other. Some sources say he made it, but I don’t believe that. Never been any craftsmen in our family: we haven’t the brains. Anyway, story goes he charged his descendants to hold it in trust, though heaven knows for whom – or what – never to sell it, or lend it, or give it away, or we would lose everything. Should have been kept in the ancient chapel, but that was destroyed, so they had it here, that secret cupboard in the chimney, you’ll have found it –’
Nathan’s eyes widened. ‘I didn’t know there was a –’
‘I did,’ said Bartlemy. ‘Yes, I found it. I always wondered what it was for.’
‘Never saw it myself but my great-aunt spoke of it. Must show me some time. The cup stayed there for centuries; strangers weren’t even allowed to look at it. Lot of odd legends grew up around it, but mostly they stayed in the family. Somewhere along the line it got labelled the Sangreal: couple of historians picked up on that one, said it meant Saint Grail, the Holy Grail, but they got the etymology wrong. The word comes from sang, blood. That’s French, Nathan, but it’s a similar word in a dozen languages. Rumour was, if you were going to die, or some catastrophe was imminent, you’d look in the cup and see it full of blood. Nothing holy about that. It’s all been written down, from time to time, by those of my ancestors who could read and write. Not a bright lot, the Thorns, I’m afraid. Point is, at some stage in the fifteenth century the issue of selling it must have come up, and one of them made the injunction against it legal. I don’t have the document, but there are two separate references to it, one in the diary of a contemporary, the other in the account of an attempted purchase in the Victorian era. The document existed: no question about it. Hopefully it still does. Wondered if you’d mind my having a look for it here?’
‘Of course not,’ Bartlemy said. ‘But I’m pretty sure I’ve been through all the papers in the house, and I’ve never seen such a thing.’
‘Can I help?’ Nathan asked. ‘It could be in another secret hiding place, like that cupboard you mentioned.’
‘Could be,’ said Rowena Thorn. ‘Any help is welcome. Think it’s like an adventure story, do you? Harry Potter and the Cup of Blood, that kind of thing?’
Nathan only smiled in answer. He thought: Harry Potter has magical powers. His friends have magical powers. Me – I have to dream carefully. He ached to tell them about the chapel, and his vision there – if it was a vision – but the words would not come. He reflected that real adventures weren’t about good guys and bad guys. Real adventures were shadows and confusion and doubt, and a terrifying personal responsibility.
Maybe there’s an injunction on my talking of the cup. Not legal, but magical. Or some sort of hypnotism …
‘Who’s got – it – now?’ he inquired. ‘I’m sorry if you’ve already told Uncle Barty, but I missed that part. Or – or is that private information?’
‘Lord, no: it’s public enough. It’s some Austrian chap, father’s a count, Graf they call it, grandfather was in the SS. The Birnbaums were a Jewish family, very wealthy, major collectors, paintings, antiques, the lot. The Nazis did for them, of course, and the grandfather – Graf Von Holsten-Pils or whatever he called himself – pocketed most of the loot. After he died the next count seems to have kept a low profile, hoped the stolen goods would pass unnoticed among the rest of the ancestral heirlooms. He had a stroke last year, family fortunes on the wane, son decides to auction off some of the silver. Gets in touch with Sotheby’s – not sure why he picked on London, maybe there’s a Birnbaum who’s been sniffing around back in Germany, maybe he just thinks he’ll get more money. Apparently a lot of the stuff is originally English. Anyway, he shows them the cup with the provenance – perhaps he thinks granddad got it legally – and a chum of mine there gets hold of me. Wanted to check it out, had no idea I might have a claim. Haven’t told him, of course. Want to get my hands on that injunction first. Never fire till you can see the whites of their eyes, so my father used to say. Mind you, he was talking about stag-hunting, not warfare.’
‘Is this war, Rowena?’ Bartlemy asked mildly. ‘Do you really believe this cup is the luck of the Thorns?’
‘I’m an antique-dealer,’ she said. ‘It’s a valuable antique – could be unique – and it was the property of my family. It should be again. Don’t know about luck. My father believed-my grandfather believed. I’m a sceptic about most things, but the belief is there: it’s in my blood. It always comes down to blood, when you talk about the cup. Supposing it was the Grail – if there is such a thing …’
‘That’s the question,’ said Bartlemy. ‘The blood of Christ-whoever he was …’ His voice sounded very distant.
Nathan sat like a stock, unable to move. His tongue seemed to stick to the roof of his mouth. He wanted to say something – anything – to cry out and break through the spell or trance, but the harder he tried, the more difficult it became.
‘You’re a sceptic, like me,’ Rowena Thorn was saying. ‘No evidence for any Grail, nothing but stories. Great-aunt Verity said Josevius could have been Joseph of Arimathea, the chap who’s supposed to have retrieved the Grail relics and brought them to England. How d’you work that out? said my father. We know Josevius died around 660 AD – forget the precise date, but it’s set down somewhere. If he was around for the Crucifixion he’d have been getting on a bit.’
‘How does family legend deal with that one?’ Bartlemy said.
‘Sold his soul to the Devil – told you the Devil came into it – lived for centuries. Even the stories are rubbish, you see. In charge of holy relics one minute, in the pay of Satan the next. None of it stands up.’
‘What did your great-aunt have to say about it?’ Bartlemy wondered. ‘Do you remember?’
‘Said the Grail was evil, not holy. King Arthur and co. got it wrong. She was a devout Christian: thought it was a pagan thing. Souvenir from the scene of the crime – most terrible crime in history. She thought we had to keep it from doing harm. Went a bit batty in her old age. Still, it made sense to her.’
‘Has the cup ever been carbon-dated?’ Bartlemy said thoughtfully.
‘Shouldn’t think so. Unless the Grafs had it done. Funnily enough, my chum at Sotheby’s was talking about that. If the cup’s two thousand years old, might really be a candidate for the Grail legend. On the other hand, if it was made in the Dark Ages …’
‘Exactly.’
‘Doesn’t make any odds to me, though. Belongs to the Thorns, whatever it is.’ An obstinate look settled about her mouth, erasing some of the humour. ‘Must get it back,’ she muttered to herself.
Nathan, finding he could move again, fidgeted in his chair, extending a hand to ruffle Hoover’s fur.
‘Still want to help me out?’ Rowena Thorn asked him. ‘Not as good as buried treasure, looking for a piece of paper, but it might mean treasure for me. There’d be a reward in it, promise you that …’
‘It’s okay,’ Nathan said. ‘I don’t want a reward. I’ll look anyway.’
‘Good man. Teach you the right stuff at Ffylde, do they? Better than the comprehensive at Crowford, any day. All they seem to do there is take drugs and beat up the teachers.’ As Hazel and George were both there, Nathan knew this was an exaggeration, but he didn’t say so.
‘He gets his principles from his mother,’ Bartlemy said gently.
Rowena Thorn set down her teacup. ‘Better be off,’ she said. ‘Thanks for everything, Bartlemy. You’ve always been a good friend.’
‘You don’t mind my living here, do you?’ he inquired curiously. ‘Your ancestral home …’
‘Good heavens no. Hardly a mansion, is it? The Thorns never had the money for that. Just inconvenient, hell to maintain – never dared ask you about the plumbing. It isn’t as if I ever lived here myself. No sentiment involved.’
‘You never owned the cup, either,’ Bartlemy pointed out.
‘That’s different,’ she said. ‘I told you. That’s a matter of blood.’
At supper that night, Nathan told Annie about the cup of the Thorns – it didn’t appear to be a secret – or as much as he was able to tell, without talking about his vision, or the dreams of blood. Hazel was there; George came later. They both absorbed the story with enthusiasm and determined to search for the missing injunction. ‘D’you think it will be, like, a piece of parchment?’ George said. ‘A scroll or something, yellowing and with spiky writing.’
‘It’s fifteenth century,’ Nathan said. ‘I think they had paper in the fifteenth century. When did what’s-his-name invent the printing press?’
‘Caxton,’ Annie said, ‘in the fifteenth century. There was a lot going on then. Would anyone like some ice cream?’
Not surprisingly, everyone did. ‘Have you ever had a book here as old as that?’ Hazel asked when the ice cream had been shared out.
‘No. I had a seventeenth century two-volume history once: that was the oldest. Anything from the fifteenth century would probably be in a museum. Does Rowena have any idea what this document looks like?’
‘Don’t think so,’ Nathan said. ‘We’ll just have to go through absolutely everything at Thornyhill.’
