Francis opened his mouth as if to reply but no words came.

  “Aye,” murmured Gyre. “I know how it is with you, Brother. Once long ago on the road to York I heard that selfsame song. The door is already open but some of us have grown so to love our iron cage that we must needs be taken out of ourselves before we can bear to leave it.”

  The young woman coaxed the priest over to a bench and sat him down. Then she fetched another cup of wine and handed it to him. “Come, Francis,” she said. “Let us drink wine in Kinship.”

  Francis took the cup from her and nodded abstractedly. He heard her words as he had heard Gyre’s but it was as if he were overhearing voices in another room talking of things which did not really concern him. Like a sleep-walker he wandered, lost in wonder, through a landscape that was both strange and yet familiar, conscious only that his life’s search had suddenly ended, that the Grail he sought had been delivered into his hands, and that this dim, candlelit room contained the Rome to which all the winding paths of his life had led.

  At last he found his voice again. “For how long have you known that I would come?”

  “For many years,” said Gyre. “Are you not that Black Bird for whom we have been waiting? It has all come to pass as it was written.”

  “And now that I am here?”

  “My own life’s work is done, Francis. I can tell you only that you must seek out Thomas of Norwich and give these pipes to him.”

  “And where am I to find him?”

  Gyre’s voice was growing faint, his breath a rapid fluttering. “I have sent him to Corlay in the Isle of Brittany. He was to await the coming of the one Morfedd speaks of as the Bride of Time. It is all written in the Testament. So go now, Francis. Go to Corlay, and take my blessing with you.”

  The Kinsman lifted the pipes and made as if to hand them to the priest, but even as he reached out they slipped from between his fingers and his head fell back against the pillows. A second later the wine cup rolled off the bed and shattered into fragments upon the stone flagged floor.

  Chapter Eight

  THE POTTER HAD judged the wind and tide correctly. Shortly before dawn the flood surging up Taunton Race swept Jane’s little boat through the channel which separated the westernmost point of Blackdown from the three rocky islets known as the Hag’s Teeth and on round into Culmstock Cove. As the cliff of Blackdown Head was drawn like a sable curtain across the sky cutting off her view of the faint mound of Quantock Isle Jane let out her breath in a long sigh of relief and patted the side of the boat in affectionate acknowledgment. “Wake up, Thomas,” she called softly. “There is work to do.”

  Crouched at the foot of the mast with his head sunk upon his bent knees the sleeping Kinsman did not stir. Jane reached out with her foot and prodded him gently. “Wake up, Thomas.”

  He came to with a gasp, jerking back his cowled head, while his frightened eyes seemed to look all ways at once. “Rachel?” he whispered hoarsely. “In God’s name where are we?”

  “Culmstock Cove,” said Jane. “Were you dreaming?”

  The Kinsman peered at her then up at the yard-arm swaying above his head. He put out a tentative hand and touched the oaken thwart as though he expected it to dissolve beneath his fingertips. “Jane?” he whispered. “You are Jane?”

  “Who else should I be?”

  “I am not dreaming?”

  “You fell asleep out on the Reach,” she said. “I had not the heart to wake you.”

  Thomas dragged himself to the side of the boat and hung his head over. Then he dipped a hand into the gliding sea and splashed water against his face. The sudden chill made him catch his breath.

  Jane watched him, a puzzled frown crinkling her brow. “Who is Rachel?” she asked.

  Thomas shook himself like a wet dog and then shivered violently. “Someone in my dream,” he said. “I know no one of that name.”

  Like a wisp of thistledown a recollection ghosted across Jane’s memory. She reached out, caught it and drew it in. “Her hair?” she said. “Rachel’s hair? Is it dark red, like chestnuts?”

  Thomas froze. “How can you know that?”

  “She is part of Carver’s life,” she said. “His wife I think. I saw her when I reached you that first time. Your dream was Carver’s dream.”

  “She is with child by him.”

  “Is? Or was?”

  “I know not what to think, Jane. Who is this man? Some lost soul set wandering for penance who has found lodging in my mind? Am I Carver and he Thomas?”

  “He’s lost,” said Jane. “That’s all I know.”

  “Did you not say that you had found him?”

  “Only in you, Thomas. As a part of you.” She peered ahead into the darkness of the cove and murmured: “I could try and reach him again if it. would help. But only if you will let me.”

  “What do I have to do?”

  “You have only to want my help.”

  “Nothing is more certain,” he said. “Such dreams as that will surely destroy me else.”

  Jane nodded. “Perhaps Carver dreams of you as you dream of him. He means you no harm, Thomas. That at least I am sure of.”

  “Nor I him,” said Thomas morosely. “But I care not for Kinship with a ghost however friendly.”

  Jane reached forward and touched his hand. “Be not afraid, Thomas,” she said. “Before we part I shall do my best to read you.” She sat back and strained to fathom the shadows. “I recall a beach hereabouts where a brook runs in under the trees. We’ll lay the boat up there while I set you on the road for Sidbury.”

  A few minutes later she pointed ahead to where a line of paler shadow glimmered faintly in the wan, pre-drawn light. “That’s the place,” she said. “We’ll drop the sail and row in. There’s a sand-bar we have to clear and I can’t call to mind how the channel runs. Will you slack off the haul?”

  Thomas busied himself about the mast and the wooden yard suddenly descended with an unprofessional rush, smothering him in damp canvas.

  Jane laughed and helped him to extricate himself. “I’ve seen it done worse,” she said, “but not often. You’re better at the oars.”

  They cleared the sandspit without trouble and made their landfall under the shelter of a group of waterside oaks just as the first fingerings of dawn touched the sky. Thomas scrambled ashore and between them they dragged the boat up the gently shelving sand and made it fast to an exposed tree root.

  Jane stowed the sail and the oars. “I’ll have till noon to catch the ebb,” she said. “That should give us all the time we need.”

  “You do not have to come with me, Jane. Just point out the way and leave the rest to me. It would go ill with you should the Falcons find you in my company.”

  “They’ll not find you,” she said firmly. “The Magpie will see to that. So let us be on our way, Thomas. We have a climb ahead of us.”

  Dawn found them well away from their landfall and some three hundred meters up into the Blackdown hills. The breeze which had carried them across the sea from Quantock had died away without clearing the mist from the valley. It gathered in chill drops along the twigs of the scarcely budded trees and fell with a melancholy patter on to the drifts of dead leaves in the gulleys. Once they heard a dog howling in some invisible farmstead to the north but they saw no one and emerged at the top of the combe just as the first welcome sunbeams came lancing in over the distant, mist-cloaked wastes of water separating them from Salisbury and the far-off coast of the Second Kingdom,

  They paused for a moment and looked about them. Their breath rose in warm, panting plumes in the clammy air and all away to the north-east the plunging hills thrust their humped backs up through the fog like a school of whales. “Sidbury’s down there,” said Jane, pointing to the south, “but it’s best you skirt round by Yarcombe. That way you’ll keep water between you and the Falcon post at Upottery.”

  Thomas nodded. “And what of this man you call the Magpie? Does he live at Yarcombe?”

  “He lives nowhere special,” said Jane. “He has a house on wheels and travels about all over. But when he’s on Blackdown he lives with his mother.”

  “A peddler is he?”

  “He’s a bit of everything,” she said. “He mends things and makes them and he buys and sells. Dad did him a good turn once and he’s never forgotten it. Some folks say he’s touched but he’s not really. He’s just different.”

  “Is he Kin?”

  “No,” said Jane. “Like I said, he’s different. He’s huesh,”

  Thomas darted her a quick look and nodded his head slowly. “I shall look forward to meeting him,” he said with a faint smile.

  “Oh, you’ll meet him, Thomas. You have to. But I can’t tell you when.”

  “Where then?” he asked curiously.

  “I don’t know that either,” she said. “It was strange.” She shut her eyes tight, kept them shut for some seconds and then opened them again, pulling a face as she did so. “I saw you crouched down beside him. He was staring into the distance. And I think there was a pile of old stones or something. It was just a bright flash. But it’s like that sometimes. You want to see more and you can’t. The harder you try the less you hold. It’s no use straining after it.”

  They set off again making their way over open moorland with their long dawn shadows trailing after them through the sparkling dew. An hour later they topped a rise which gave them a view out over Yarcombe inlet. Jane shielded her eyes and pointed out the wriggling white line of the high road which followed the spine of the hills, running southrwest to Sidbury. “You can’t see Chardport from here,” she said. “It’s on the other side of that hill between us and the Windwhistle Isle. Dad sells pots to a man there called Sam Moxon who has a shop down by the quay. Sam’s Kin like us so he’d surely help you on your way.”

  “Best not to trouble him,” said Thomas. “The fewer the folk who help me the better for their own sakes. Now let you and I break our fast together, Jane, before we go our separate ways.”

  He unshouldered the leather knapsack the potter’s wife had given him and led the way to a sheep shelter of woven bracken. There he spread out his cloak in the sun and beckoned Jane to join him. “By the Grace of the White Bird,” he said, breaking bread and handing it to her. “Come. Don’t look so sad. See, your mother has given us a veritable feast.”

  Jane smiled dutifully and helped herself to cheese and salt. “I wish you had not lost your pipes, Thomas,” she said. “I would dearly love to have heard you play.”

  “I promise I shall come back to Tallon and play for you on your wedding day, Jane. A tune for you alone. That which I heard last night out there on the Reach when my heart was full of stars. I have it in here.” He touched his forefinger against his temple. “Safe under lock and key.”

  “I’ll not wed in Tallon,” she said.

  “No? Then how does the wind blow?”

  Jane glanced at him and then away. “Out of Quantock,” she said. “I know no more than that.”

  “You have not met him then?”

  She smiled but said nothing.

  “Well, what is he like? Is he a fisherman?”

  “You could call him that, I suppose. A fisher of sorts.”

  “A sailor of some kind then?”

  Again she smiled. “A very poor one.”

  Thomas brushed some crumbs from his beard and nosed hungrily back into the satchel. “So how long has he been paying court to you, this sort of fisherman?”

  “Who said he had? Not I.”

  Thomas lifted a smoked mackerel from the bag and sniffed it appreciatively. Holding it by the tail he levered it carefully apart and handed half to Jane.

  “You keep it,” she said. “You have a hard day’s legging ahead of you.”

  “His brother is in here too,” said Thomas, “and you’ll not eat again till nightfall. Come. Take it.”

  Jane took the fish and nibbled at it with her white, even teeth. “What is this place you are traveling to, Thomas?”

  “Corlay? A great castle. Lodged high up in the hills. It was given to Old Peter by Queen Elise of Brittany when she became Kin. She wished it to become a second York.”

  “And will it?”

  “Yes. One day. When the Child is born there.” He plucked a fish bone from his lips and flipped it into the bracken.

  “And when will that be?”

  “No one knows. That is why I am carrying the Testament there. The sages will study it and be able to prepare themselves for the coming of the Bride of Time.”

  “The Bride of Time,” whispered Jane and shuddered so violently that she almost dropped her fish.

  Thomas blinked at her. “Why, yes,” he said. “It’s written in the fifteenth verse—

  Wilderness of woman’s woe,

  Heart’s hurt, griefs groan,

  Fashion thy birth bed,

  Child chosen, Time’s Bride.”

  Jane stared down at the ground. When she spoke her voice seemed to come from somewhere far away. “Two nights ago, Thomas, just before you told us about your drowning in the Somersea, you fell into a swoon. Do you know what made you? What it was you saw?”

  Thomas frowned. “I know not,” he said. ” ‘Tis often thus. But why do you ask?”

  Slowly she lifted her head and turned her eyes to his. “You do not recall asking me about the dark flame and how I came to know of it?”

  He nodded. “Yes, that I remember. But no more.”

  “And if I took you now by the hand and led you back to that moment, would you again take refuge as you did before?”

  Thomas felt his heart trip and stumble in its beat. “I know not, Jane,” he muttered. “Such things are not mine to command.”

  “You are afraid?”

  “Yes,” he said simply. “I am afraid.”

  “Of me, or of yourself?”

  “Of I know not what. Something in you, maybe. Perhaps that strange gift you have. I cannot trust it as I should.”

  “But I trust you, Thomas. And I trust your gift. Are we not Kin, you and I, both in word and spirit?”

  Thomas appeared about to say something and then, seemingly, checked himself. “Aye,” he nodded. “In word and spirit both, Jane. What would you have me do?”

  “Help me to read you.”

  “That we agreed upon. So? What must I do?”

  Jane flung her half-eaten fish into the open satchel, wiped her fingers on her cloak and said: “Lay your head in my lap.”

  Thomas pivoted round so that his back was toward her and lowered himself by his elbows. ” ‘Tis a softer pillow than my last,” he said with a grin. “There. Is all well?”

  “Most well,” she said. “Now close your eyes.”

  He did so obediently.

  She rested her right hand lightly upon his forehead and murmured: “Let your spirit wander to the borders of sleep, Thomas. There is nothing to fear.”

  Gradually his breathing became deep and regular; the tense lines around his eyes and mouth softened and faded; his heart-beat slowed to a quiet, even pulse.

  For a count of a hundred she gazed down upon him and then she too closed her eyes and, like a swimmer lowering herself into the water, slid to join him.

  Wandering through the dim and echoing sea caverns of the Kinsman’s mind, calling a name. Memories pluck at you like fingerweed as you drift past, sinking down, down, ever deeper into those cold, dark levels beyond conscious recall. Where are you hiding, Carver? Come hither. Come. Sail down like a white sea-bird and settle on my shoulder. Rise up like a silver salmon and leap into my arms. Through tide drift and time drift I have come seeking you …

  -Rachel? Oh, thank God …

  -Come to me. Be not afraid.

  -You’re not Rachel! Who are you?

  -I can be your Rachel if that is what you wish.

  -Oh my God! What sort of a creature are you?

  -I am your friend. Did you not dream of me?

  -The boat! The girl on the boat!

  -I found you once before but could not hold you.

  -Am I dead?

  -I only know you are from the Old Times before the Drowning.

  -I’m delirious.

  -How came you to Thomas in the Somersea?

  -Crazy. Crazy.

  -Do you not remember?

  -The contact! You must be the contact!

  -I know no more than you. I found you within Thomas. Your name is Carver. I heard them calling you that.

  -Thomas?

  -The Kinsman. Thomas of Norwich.

  -The O.O.B.E.! Sweet Jesus Christ!

  -Is Carver your only name?

  -This is insane!

  -Does Rachel call you Carver?

  -Rachel?

  -Does she call you Carver?

  -She calls me Mike … Michael.

  -Michael. Michael Carver. How old are you Michael?

  -Old? Twenty-eight.

  -Is Rachel your wife?

  -What? No. Well, yes. Yes, she is. Why don’t you tell me where I am?

  -You are on Blackdown.

  -Blackdown? Near Taunton?

  -Yes.

  -Sweet God in Heaven! Blackdown!

  -Where did you think you were?

  -Holmwood. Near Petherton.

  -Under the Somersea?

  -What?

  -Under the sea.

  -The sea! … The man in the sea! … The white bird … WHAT YEAR IS THIS!

  -Three thousand and eighteen.

  So the black wave of his despair lifted you up, swept you away from him, far beyond his reach and beyond your own, till you rose like a dark bubble through the bright, tumbling cascade of the Kinsman’s memories and surfaced at last in the familiar haven of your own self to find that self in tears.

  “What is it, Jane? What happened?” Thomas heaved himself on to one elbow and peered up at her.