The Kinsman spread his hands. ‘It’s gone,’ he said. ‘All I can remember is the girl telling me she was with child.’

  ‘And where were you when it happened?’

  ‘Walking with her somewhere. Was it beside a river? A lake perhaps. It was raining. I remember watching the raindrops making rings on the water. She was worried lest I should be displeased.’

  ‘And were you?’

  ‘No. I was overjoyed.’

  ‘Was it then you woke up?’

  ‘Yes. For a moment I was sure you were her.’

  ‘I think Carver may have thought the same. He knows me as the girl on the boat.’

  Thomas rose to his feet and stood gazing into the distance. ‘What can you make of it, Jane?’ he said. ‘Is it not most like one of the Old Tale Spinner’s yarns? Matter for an ale-house tap room on a winter’s evening? Or are we perhaps bewitched?’ He tensed, and lifting his hand to shield his eyes from the sun, squinted down at the distant road.

  ‘What is it, Thomas?’

  She scrambled to her feet and, standing at his side, saw the sun wink from the polished steel casques of the three horsemen who were cantering, tiny as toy soldiers astride toy horses, over the hill toward Chardport. She reached out for the Kinsman’s hand and gripped it tight in hers.

  ‘Time I was on my way, Jane,’ he said, ‘or our story may well end before it has even begun.’

  ‘Sure they cannot be seeking you,’ she said. ‘Who could have alerted them so soon?’

  ‘Perhaps not for me, but the Edict was issued a month ago. None of us is safe now.’

  He ducked back into the shelter, picked up his cloak, shook the bracken from it and hitched it over his shoulders. Then he stooped for the satchel, caught sight of a half-eaten mackerel and proffered it to Jane with a grin.

  She shook her head. ‘Those black birds have taken my appetite with them,’ she said, ‘and left a stone in its place.’

  Thomas dropped the fish back into the satchel and latched fast the leather toggle. He straightened up and looked at her. But now, when he most wanted fresh, bright words he could find none that were not already tarnished. He stretched out his right hand, and laid it gently upon her shoulder and turned her face toward him. ‘So,’ he said. ‘It is farewell, Jane.’

  Her lip trembled. She nodded and lowered her eyes.

  ‘You have my blessing. You know that.’

  She shook her head fiercely and suddenly she had ducked forward and flung her arms around him, hugging him to her so hard that he could feel her quick life trembling all through his own body. He lowered his face and pressed it briefly against the soft, brown helmet of her hair. ‘Ah, Jane, Jane,’ he murmured. ‘What a splendid song there is in you. One day I shall sing it for all the world to hear. So weep no more: go in peace: and let the White Bird wing you safe back home.’

  He eased her gently from him, touched her down-cast cheek with his fingertips, and then turned and strode away down the green hillside toward the Sidbury Road.

  She raised her head and, watching him grow smaller in the distance, felt as though all her insides were being drawn out of her. ‘White Bird, oh, White Bird,’ she prayed fiercely, ‘bring him back to me. Let him be the one.’

  She saw him gain the road then turn and look back up the hillside. His hand rose and waved. She lifted both her arms, spreading them wide as though she could will them into wings and swoop down to him. But nothing happened. With a final salute he turned away, swung off along the white road, and within a minute had vanished behind a distant hedgerow.

  Lost to sight in the fathomless April blue, skylarks spilled their silvery songs down upon Jane’s head as she made her lonely way back along the moorland path toward the cove. The morning mist had vanished and the sunlight sparkled from the dew-spangled cobwebs. Away to the north Quantock Isle was a heart-lifting wonder of emerald green and purple and blue. But Jane had eyes for none of it. She moved like a sleep-walker, conscious chiefly of a numb, leaden weariness of body and spirit, while the sentient part of her trotted in her imagination at the Kinsman’s side down the long white road to Sidbury. Hardly aware that she had reached it she found herself at last in Culmstock valley and began the descent to the sea.

  Using a fallen tree as a makeshift bridge she crossed the gurgling brook and picked her way down the steep track to the shore. The tide was already ebbing and had left a line of sea-wrack scribbled across the wet sand to mark the limit of its advance into the cove. Where the small waves were creaming across the bar a cluster of sea birds scavenged for shrimps, wheeling and diving, silver-white in the bright, early morning sun. Far to the west the slopes of Dartmoor loomed tawny as lions against the cloudless sky.

  She paused for a moment to recover her breath, then following the track of her own footprints along the margin of the brook she rounded a towering bramble clump which had screened her from the boat. It was still lying where she had left it, though the tide had since shifted it slightly to one side. She walked forward and was about to untie the rope which held it fast to its mooring when she noticed hoof marks on the sand.

  For an icy moment she stood staring down at them, rigid with shock. Then she raised her head and scanned the beach. The tracks of two horses disappeared round a little promontory no more than fifty paces from where she was standing. The prints were still sharp and clear in the sand, in one place only a matter of meters from the retreating water’s edge.

  With her heart racing painfully she bent over the rope and struggled to loosen the wet knot. Just as it began to yield, her anxious ears caught the unmistakable crack of a breaking twig. She jerked her head back.

  On the bank immediately above her, half hidden in the dappling shadow of a huge oak, a man dressed in a tunic of black leather was staring down at her.

  She felt as if a cold net had been cast into her stomach and drawn in tight as a clenched fist, yet somehow she contrived to smile and say: ‘Oh, you startled me.’

  The words had scarcely left her lips when she noticed a second man lowering himself down the bank by the promontory. In his left hand he grasped the deadly little crossbow of black metal called the talon which the Falcons favored. It was fully drawn, cocked and ready to fire.

  The man above her started to whistle tunelessly between his teeth then he too launched himself down the steep bank. He landed amid a tiny avalanche of dead leaves, twigs and pebbles no more than a dozen paces from where she stood, cutting off her retreat to the brook. Still piping his chill, hissing whistle he beat the soil from his tunic. Then, staring directly at her with a cold and calculated insolence, he unbuttoned his breech flap and began to urinate on the sand before her.

  Jane wrenched the rope clear of the root to which it was fastened and flung it aboard. Then she hurried round to the stern and began dragging the boat down to the water. She had moved it less than its own length when the second Falcon shouted: ‘Hey, hold it there! What’s all the tearing rush?’

  ‘The tide’s running out fast,’ she panted. ‘I don’t want to miss it.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll catch it all right,’ he called. ‘We’ll see to that. Where are you headed for?’

  ‘Quantock.’

  ‘Quantock, eh?’ The man laughed. ‘Hear that, Owen? Our little birdie’s a long way from its nest.’

  The Falcon addressed as Owen sauntered over and leaned his weight against the side of the boat, effectively anchoring it. ‘Your name, wench?’

  ‘Jane,’ she said. ‘Jane Thomson.’

  ‘Well met, Jane,’ said the man with the bow cheerily. ‘All on our lonesome, are we?’

  Jane said nothing.

  ‘I’m Rowley,’ he said affably, ‘Sergeant Rowley to you, Jane. And now I’m going to ask what brings you to Blackdown.’

  ‘I’ve been to see my aunt,’ lied Jane desperately. ‘She’s ill.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Jane. Really sorry.’ Rowley clicked his tongue solicitously. ‘Aren’t you sorry, Owen?’

  Owen bared his teeth in a cold smile.

  Sergeant Rowley paced slowly around the boat. He was a head shorter than his companion and had a stubbly bristle of a reddish gold beard which glinted when it caught the sun. His face seemed to be creased into a permanent, fatuous grin. ‘Quiet place this,’ he observed. ‘Very quiet. Just the spot to slip ashore if you didn’t want all the world to know what you was about. Like visiting a plaguey aunt, say.’ He had completed his circuit of the boat and now stood within an arm’s length of Jane, his head tilted slightly to one side, eyeing her speculatively. ‘All right, lass,’ he said. ‘Time’s up. Where is he?’

  Jane gazed at him in feigned incomprehension.

  ‘Where’s who?’ she said.

  ‘The Kinsman you slipped ashore last night.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘No? Then whose are the prints?’ He gestured with his bow to the tracks left by Thomas’s feet. ‘Auntie’s, maybe?’

  Jane shook her head, repeating: ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’

  Sergeant Rowley stared at her without saying anything, then he glanced back at Owen and gave a little upward jerk of his chin .

  The second Falcon rose from the boat, moved round behind Jane’s back and seized her by the arms. She started to tremble uncontrollably. ‘Please,’ she muttered, ‘please don’t,’ and winced as she felt a leather thong bite into her snared wrists.

  Rowley reached out and tweaked open the toggle of her cloak. She jerked backwards defensively and the garment slipped from her shoulders and slid to the sand. ‘Come on now, lass,’ he said. ‘Be sensible.’

  Jane shook her head wildly. ‘There was only my cousin,’ she gasped. ‘He came down to meet me. There wasn’t anyone else.’

  ‘You’re lying, Jane,’ said the Sergeant. ‘And that’s very silly of you. We don’t take kindly to liars. We don’t like them one little bit.’

  He took half a pace forward and with his right hand smacked her hard and very deliberately across the face, first one side and then the other. Her head rung like a smithy and her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘So where is he?’

  She shook her head helplessly and whispered through swelling lips: ‘There was no one. No one. Let me go. Please let me go.’

  ‘Come on, girlie,’ said the Sergeant. ‘You’ll tell us in the end and we’re bound to pick him up anyway. So let’s just be sensible, hey?’

  He reached out, pulled undone the bow which held the lacing of her bodice and twitched the panels aside to expose her breasts. Then he caught hold of her chin in his hand and tilted her face upwards. ‘You know what you’ve got coming to you if you don’t,’ he murmured.

  Jane’s eyes were wide with terror; her bruised lips trembled; but no words emerged from them. Suddenly she felt Owen’s arms grip her round the waist. She was swung off her feet and flung down backwards on to the hard sand beside the boat so that all the breath was knocked out of her. Dark against the bright sky the Sergeant stooped and ripped her dress apart all the way down to her ankles.

  A sound most like the harsh scream of a gull rose from somewhere deep within her and curdled the air. Blind with terror she kicked out wildly only to have her ankle gripped and then ground down into the sand beneath the Sergeant’s spurred boot. Owen reared up over her, one hand fumbling at his breeches flap, the other grasping her free leg. Then he was down upon her, crushing her into the sand. She felt his yard jab brutally against her cringing belly and a pain like a hot iron drove burning into her left breast. Dimly she heard the Sergeant shout and then the crushing agony of his boot on her ankle was suddenly gone.

  Owen lay sprawled full length upon her, his hungry stubbled face pressed flat against hers, his eyes, grotesquely enormous, staring wide open as though in supreme astonishment. She felt one tremendous spasmodic shudder ripple through him and she shrieked aloud from the fire in her breast .

  There was a heavy thud against the boat; a scrabbling scratching of nails against wood; and a long, low spluttering, bubbling sound. Then, mercifully, she lost her hold upon her swimming senses and drifted off into dark oblivion.

  She came to just as the dead Falcon was being dragged from on top of her. The steel tipped bolt which had pierced his back protruded half a finger’s length beyond his chest. It was his own dead weight which had driven it down into her breast. With the point withdrawn the wound began to ooze blood.

  She felt rough but kindly hands drawing her ravaged dress together over her bruised nakedness and then she was being rolled over on to her side and the thongs were being slashed from her wrists.

  Three paces away the Sergeant was lying sprawled with his back to the boat. His booted legs were spread wide, his startled eyes gazing blindly up at the sun. Dark blood dribbled from his mouth in a thickening stream and a feathered bolt jutted out of his neck just where it joined his shoulders. Seeing him thus Jane felt her stomach suddenly contract and before she could prevent herself she had vomited violently on to the trampled sand.

  The ragged, gray-haired man who had released her unhooked a leather flask from his belt, unstoppered it with a deft finger twist and, having coaxed her up into a sitting position, held it to her lips.

  She swallowed, choked, and then at his urgent bidding, swallowed again. ‘Bravely, lass,’ he murmured. ‘And now let’s see what those black devils have done to you.’ He drew the torn and bloodstained dress aside and made a little, worried, clicking sound with his tongue. Unwinding a cloth from around his neck he splashed brandy on to it from the flask and gently sponged the bright blood from the wound. ‘Ah, you’ll live, Janie. ’Tis but a nasty scratch. ’Twas well I hueshed this when I did though, hey?’

  Jane leaned against him shuddering while the tears coursed down her pale cheeks and dripped unheeded from her chin. He waited until her trembling had abated a little then patted her shoulder, rose to his feet and fetched her cloak. ‘We must away from here, lass,’ he said, draping the garment over her shoulders and fastening the toggle. ‘There’s no way we can stay and face this charnel out. Our best hope is to sink the carrion in the channel. That way we’ll maybe buy ourselves a day or two’s grace. Come, help me get this cockleshell afloat.’

  He pulled her to her feet and together they dragged the boat to the water’s edge. Then he ran back and lugged the corpse of the Sergeant down to her. ‘Run and fetch me a big flat stone, Janie,’ he panted, wrestling the barbed bolt free from the Falcon’s neck. ‘Hurry now, lass.’

  Jane seemed to come awake at last. She ran back to the bank, prised loosed a slab of sandstone and carried it down the beach to him .

  ‘A right Christian tombstone that,’ he grunted. ‘Now help me get the bastard aboard.’

  Jane lifted the corpse by its booted feet and between them they contrived to tumble it over the gunwale. ‘Shall I come too, Magpie?’ she asked.

  ‘No. I’ll manage. Go you and find another pebble like that last.’ He thrust the boat out, scrambled aboard and seized the oars.

  Janie hurried back up the beach and began hunting for a second stone.

  In half an hour the job was done. The Falcons’ tethered horses had been turned loose and their erstwhile masters, lungs and bellies thoughtfully paunched by the Magpie’s knife were lying five fathoms deep feeding the crabs in Culmstock Cove.

  The Magpie laid his crossbow in the boat, helped Jane aboard and then hoisted the sail. ‘If our luck holds the next tide’ll wipe all clean and none the wiser,’ he said. ‘How fares the bosom?’

  ‘It aches.’

  ‘Aye. ’Tis only to be expected. But we’ll soon have that put right.’ He shook out the sail and settled back at the tiller. ‘So tell me. What brought you hither, lass?’

  Jane told him. By the time she had concluded they were clear of the cove and the boat was heeling to the midday breeze which blew down off the distant Dartmoor slopes. ‘He’ll be lucky to get away to sea from Sidbury,’ said the Magpie. ‘They’re combing every ship in the port.’

  ‘You’ll find him,’ said Jane. ‘Like you found me.’

  He cocked a quizzical blue eye at her. ‘Oh, so that’s the way it is,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I had wondered.’

  ‘You haven’t hueshed him, then?’

  ‘No, but there’s still time. I only picked you up yesterday. It had to be Culmstock.’

  ‘You were waiting there?’

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘For an hour or more. You passed within an arm’s length of me down by the brook.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you …?’

  ‘I durst not break the spell, lass. I’d hueshed the carrion upon you. It began and ended there. Had they but known it they were dead before they ever rode out this morning.’

  ‘Does it always come true for you?’

  ‘Always. Sure you must know that.’

  Jane drew her cloak tight about her and shook her head. ‘I hueshed Thomas drowned, Magpie. He was to be washed up in The Jaws. That didn’t happen.’

  ‘It will,’ he said. ‘If you saw it truly it will. There’s no power on earth can alter it.’

  ‘I thought that too,’ she said, ‘until I found Carver. Now I’m not sure about anything any more. Not death, or life, or huesh , or anything. It’s all fallen apart.’

  ‘And him? The Kinsman? How does he fit in?’

  ‘I hueshed him with you, Magpie. Before we left Quantock.’

  ‘Where’s it to be?’

  ‘I don’t know. On the moors somewhere, I think. Nowhere I knew.’

  ‘That’s all you saw?’

  She nodded. ‘There was a pile of stones. Gray stones. It was just a flash.’

  The Magpie chewed his lower lip. ‘Little enough,’ he said, ‘but I’ve known less. And it seems we’ll get to him before they do.’ He stretched out his hand, laid it across Jane’s shoulder and gripped her comfortingly. ‘Don’t fret over it, lass. We’ll find him. Sooner or later, we’ll find him.’

  ‘Let it be sooner,’ she said.

  NINE

  The blinds in No. 5 lab at the Post-Graduate Research Center had been drawn down shutting out the dismal noontide prospect of lowering clouds and incessant drifting rain. Internal illumination was provided by one bluish neon strip and the amber cones of three strategically placed bench lights. Rachel closed the door quietly behind her, blinked to accustom her eyes to the gloom, and then made her way carefully toward the group of men who were gathered around one of the lights at the far end of the room. Almost at once she snagged her heel on one of the heavy-duty electric cables that snaked across the floor, and her muttered, ‘Damn’ drew their attention upon her.