“What I don’t understand,” said Rachel, “is what happened when everything blew up. What is p.k. backlash, Peter?”

  “Psychokinesis invariably manifests itself through the pineal area,” said Klorner. “With a direct link from the contact to Dr. Carver’s mind there was nothing to prevent it breaking out.”

  “Is that why the picture went out of focus just before it happened?”

  “It seems likely.”

  “And she was responsible?”

  “There’s no way of telling,” said George. “But Peter recognized the aberration phenomena as soon as the girl appeared.”

  “That sort of glow, you mean?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you think she’s somehow connected with it?” asked Rachel. “Responsible for Mike’s coma?”

  “I wish I knew, Rachel. The fact that Mike responded physically to the p.k. discharge would certainly seem to indicate something of the kind. A psychological affinity maybe. The truth is we’re all still groping around in the dark.”

  “You can say that again,” grunted Ian.

  Rachel walked through into the adjoining ward and looked down at the man whose unconscious head was now encapsulated within its studded plexiglass helmet. That there could be any direct connection between him and the scenes she had just witnessed demanded an act of pure faith. And yet in some odd way she sensed that it was true, that the cry she had heard had been wrung from him by the intensity of his involvement in the anguish of that unknown girl. “It was like a nightmare and I couldn’t wake myself up,” she murmured, quoting Jane’s words down at him. “Is that how it is, Mike? Or is it that you don’t want to wake up?”

  Contact was reestablished at 1903 hours. The picture was less sharp but still perfectly adequate for Mrs. Huddlestone’s purposes. Soon she was retailing details of the conversation which had taken place in the cottage just after Jane had walked out. The names “Broadbury,” “Brittany” and “Quantock” made the men look at each other with a wild surmise. What followed shortly after made them not look at each other at all; their attention was wholly absorbed by what was taking place on the screen. There was little for Mrs. Huddlestone to interpret but a great deal for her to observe. “Well I never!” was the only comment she permitted herself. Perhaps fortunately, once Jane and Thomas had transferred to the barn the picture became too dim for lip-reading. Klorner switched over to record and they all trooped down to the hospital canteen.

  On the way they passed through the Outpatients’ waiting room. One wall was decorated with a large scale relief map of the whole area surrounding Taunton. Ian walked over to it and contemplated it thoughtfully. “Look here,” he said. “Just supposing this area was all flooded, the Quantocks would be an island and so would the Blackdown Hills.”

  “He’s right, you know,” said Kenneth. “And damn it, Broadbury would be on the coast! And so would Sidbury!”

  “What about Buckfast?” asked George.

  “Assuming it’s Buckfastleigh it’s too far over to the west,” said Jan. “Out here somewhere. But 1 don’t see why it shouldn’t fit. It’s on the edge of Dartmoor, isn’t it?”

  Rachel stared at them incredulously. “What are you trying to say?” she demanded. “That all this is supposed to be happening somewhere out there in the future?”

  “That’s right,” said lan. “What’s more I’m almost prepared to take a bet on it.”

  “You’re crazy, Ian!”

  tt t: ft t

  “‘Time present and time past,’” said George,

  “‘Are both perhaps present in time future

  And time future contained in time past.’”

  T.S. Eliot. Unquote.”

  “Don’t say you’ve joined them, George.”

  “No,” he said. “It’s just another hypothesis so far as I’m concerned. I don’t think it’s possible.”

  “Thank God for that,” she said. “It’s bad enough having to think that Mike might be making love to someone else, let alone someone who hasn’t even been born yet! Has it occurred to you that he might not want to come back?”

  “No,” said George with a smile, “I confess that hadn’t occurred to me.”

  “Well, this evening it occurred to me,” she said. “And frankly, George, it’s scaring me to hell.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  A BELT OF rain drifting eastward from the Irish Sea crossed over Dartmoor and reached Blackdown by the middle of the afternoon. Standing just inside the barn doorway the Magpie surveyed the sagging clouds and grunted with satisfaction. “This will keep the crows caged,” he said. “We’ll take the coast road round. It’s an hour longer but there’s less chance of fouling a patrol, Janie, you shall ride up front alongside me. Thomas must keep his nose down within. When we get to Broadbury I’ll run the van straight down to the quay and into Jenkins’ yard. We’ll lie up there till dusk and I’ll slip you aboard when Jonsey gives me word. Are you with me?”

  Jane and Thomas glanced at one another and nodded, whereupon the Magpie spat for luck, hefted the leather scuttle of his cape over his head and squelched off through the rain to harness up the horse.

  Jane wandered over to the nest of hay and gazed down at it wistfully. “Do you remember how you promised to play for me on my wedding day, Thomas?”

  He turned to her and smiled. “Aye, love,” he said. “When you were spliced to that certain poor sailor you would not name. Well, so I shall. I have tunes singing within me which will set the very stones skipping. Corlay will have a wedding to remember all its days.”

  “Corlay,” she murmured. “Corlay can never be so sweet to me as this has been.”

  “Far, far sweeter,” he insisted. “We have but fingered a prelude to our joy. The best is yet to come.”

  He moved across to her, put his arms around her and kissed her softly on the back of the neck. “My love,” he whispered. “My own true love. Sweet bride of time.”

  She shivered and clasped her arms tight across his own, imprisoning them. “Why do you call me that?”

  “Because that is what you are. My pride for eternity. I shall immortalize us both! You have unlocked my soul, Jane, and set it winging free! Even the Boy himself could not have sung the song that I shall sing for you! You have given me the power to set the whole world free!”

  “Do you truly mean that?”

  Thomas laughed. “Mean it? I shall prove it to you! Ah, Jane, do you not feel it trembling in the very air about us? Was it not for this that the Bird brought us to one another? Why, even the very ship which carried me to you is waiting now to waft us both in triumph to Corlay! The ‘Kingdom Come’! Ours is the kingdom, Jane, and we are come to claim it!”

  He lifted her off her feet and whirled her round in the air like a child on a May swing until she surrendered to his infectious happiness and the barn rang with their laughter.

  Twenty minutes later the Magpie had shackled the last trace to the shafts of the covered van and Jane .and Thomas had said farewell to Mother Patch. Just before she clambered up to take her seat beside the Magpie Jane saw the old woman beckoning to her from the cottage doorway and ran back to her.

  The crone nodded her close and whispered: “Last night I hueshed ye a bonny boy, my pet, wi’ all the stars a’crowdin’ round his cradle. Sure he shall be a mighty wonder to the world.”

  Jane kissed her impetuously on the wrinkled cheek and skipped back through the puddles to the van with her heart singing. The Magpie reached down, pulled her up beside him, and a moment later they were away, bumping and lurching down the rutted track to the coast road.

  He glanced at her bright eyes and grinned. “Mam told you, did she?”

  Jane nodded and flushed to the tips of her ears.

  “And what shall you call him?”

  She laughed. “Do you need to ask?”

  “Lord save us! Not another Thomas?”

  “There’s no better name in all the Kingdoms,” she averred stoutly. “And I could not call him ‘Magpie’ could I?”

  “I have another name,” he said. “For what it’s worth it’s Jack.”

  Jane put her head on one side. “I never knew that,” she said. “Why don’t you use it then?”

  “Twas my pig of a dad’s,” he said, “and I want no more part of him than he did of me.” He turned his head and spat as though the mere thought of his father had left a bitter taste upon his tongue. “Shall you wed at Corlay?”

  “Yes,” she said. “And you, dear Magpie, shall be Guest of Honor at our wedding feast. You shall sit at my left hand and drink from my own cup. And Thomas shall compose a special song in praise of you and everyone will sing it.”

  “That sounds too good to miss,” he said with a grin. “When is it to be?”

  “Soon,” she said. “The sooner the better. Oh, Magpie, it will happen, won’t it?”

  He flicked a quick glance at her. “Aye, Janie,” he said. “Of course it will. Just like Mam hueshed it.”

  “Did she huesh that too, then?”

  “Why, yes,” he said. “You mean she didn’t tell you?”

  “No. Not a word. Only about the child-our boy.”

  “It must have slipped through her old sieve. Why, all last night she was brimming over with it.”

  Jane sighed a deep sigh of happiness. Closing her eyes she tilted back her head and murmured: “Oh, blessed White Bird, I thank you with all my heart.”

  As he heard her quiet prayer the Magpie silently absolved himself from the sin of his kindly little fiction.

  They reached the outskirts of Broadbury without having had sight or sound of a Falcon. The only indication of the official presence lay in the black flag flapping wetly from its pine standard above the stone fort which overlooked the little harbor. But as the van turned down toward the quay, Jane plucked at the Magpie’s sleeve and pointed to the road which led over the hill to Dunkeswell. A band of five, gray-clad troopers was jogging down toward the harbor. The off-sea wind came curling across the waterfront houses and carried the cold jingle of metal with it.

  “Fear not, lass,” muttered the Magpie. “Mark my words, they’ll be bound for the shelter of the keep.”

  And so it proved. The troop reached the point where the road forked and trotted briskly over the cobbles toward the gates of the fort.

  Jane let out her breath in a long gasp of -relief. “The black ones are bad enough,” she muttered, “but those gray ones …” She shuddered and left the sentence unfinished.

  “They’re but mortal men,” said the Magpie, grimly. “And if needs be they can die to prove it.”

  “I don’t want them to die,” she whispered. “Just to leave us alone. We’ve never hurt them.”

  “There’s hurt and hurt,” said the Magpie. “In their world it’s eat or be eaten. These days the crows are flying in fear of their black souls. They know their time to quit the roost is nearly up.”

  The leather curtains behind them parted a fraction and Thomas peeped out. “What is it?” he whispered. “Have you seen something?”

  “Keep your head down, man,” growled the Magpie. “Do’st seek to spill the cup before you’ve even tasted it? I’d not put it past those vermin to have a glass trained on us this minute.”

  Thomas vanished precipitately and the iron shod wheels of the van squealed and rattled on the wet stones. Jane huddled down inside her damp cloak and clutched at a rope stay to steady herself. As she did so she was granted a sudden brilliant vision of a golden castle set high among brown and purple crags. She knew at once that it must be Corlay even though it was trembling as though she were viewing it through a shifting lens.

  Wholly captivated by her huesh she was blind to the two Falcons who broke away from the group approaching the fort and came galloping back along the road on the far side of the harbor. Unfortunately the Magpie was concentrated upon his driving and did not notice them either.

  “One-Eye” Jonsey and his brother were swinging barrels of cider aboard the “Kingdom Come” using a primitive windlass they had set upon the edge of the quay. They looked round as the Magpie’s leather-covered wagon came bouncing over the cobbles toward them but neither brother did more than give the newcomers a covert nod as they rattled past and on down the quay to the yard owned by Saul Jenkins the shipwright. There the Magpie reined up his steaming horse, jumped down from the driver’s seat and set to work dragging open one of the huge timber gates.

  He had just walked back to the horse’s head and was about to lead the animal into the yard when he heard the staccato clatter of steel-shod hooves on the distant cobblestones and a bawled command: “Stand, carter, on your life!”

  The Magpie was caught in two minds. His cocked crossbow was lying bolted up and ready to hand behind the leather curtain in the van. To attempt to retrieve it now could only mean disaster for them all. As though ignorant that the command had been meant for him he lugged at the horse’s bridle and was rewarded with a bolt which hummed past his ear and buried itself in the timbers of the gate. “Are ye mad?” he yelled. “What need ha’ ye to shoot at an honest, God-fearing tradesman?”

  “So do as ye’re bid!” cried the trooper who had loosed the bolt. “Stand means stand still, ye fool!”

  He reined up his snorting horse and swung himself to the ground. Then he slid a fresh bolt into his bow and cranked the lever back to cock it. “Who’s the wench?”

  “My niece, Patty. My sister Betsy’s lass.”

  The soldier grunted. “What are ye carrying?”

  “A load of chairs, master. All of a long winter’s honest toil.”

  “Show me.”

  The Magpie touched his temple with an obsequious finger and clambered up on to the wagon. “Come, Patty,” he said. “Look sharp! Let the gentleman see what fine goods we carry to Master Jenkins.”

  Jane nodded and began to fumble with the toggles on the curtain. The Magpie twitched aside the lower portion of the flap, groped inside, and dragged out a bentwood chair which he thrust toward the soldier. “I have a round dozen of ‘em here, Master,” he whined. “All alike as podded peas. Do’st wish to see the lot?”

  The Falcon glanced round doubtfully at his companion, seemed about to climb back on to his horse, then changed his mind. “Aye, man,” he growled. “Open up.”

  The Magpie handed Jane the chair he was holding, unfastened the rest of the toggles and pulled back one of the flaps. The soldier placed a booted foot on the step, pulled himself up with one hand and peered in. “Aye, well,” he muttered, ” ‘tis as ye say.” On the point of clambering down he took a cursory prod at the second flap with his cradle bow and knocked it just far enough aside to disclose the Magpie’s own weapon. He frowned, dragged the bow out and called to his companion: “Keep an eye on these two, Brad. I’m going to take a poke around inside.”

  The second trooper ordered Jane and Magpie down on to the quay. As they stood staring up at him they heard a yell from within the wagon followed by the triumphant cry: “We’ve struck gold, boy! I’ve got me a live snake!”

  Brother Francis was returning from a fruitless expedition to a family of Kinsfolk who lived in an outlying farm high in the hills behind Broadbury when he saw two armed and mounted Falcons riding slowly along the harborside road toward the fort. Stumbling between them, their wrists bound behind them and their necks shackled by a length of stout cord, were two men and a girl. A few curious bystanders had braved the steadily falling rain to watch the melancholy little procession wend past, and Francis hastened to join them. Selecting a woman who appeared sympathetic he murmured: “Who are they?”

  “They do say as it’s the Kinsman they’ve been hunting for all over, sir. The other man’s the Magpie.”

  “And the girl?”

  “Reckon she’ll be the potter’s lass from Tallon. They hanged her dad, poor wench.”

  “A sorry sight,” muttered Francis. “But no doubt ‘tis God’s will.”

  The woman stared at him, noted his priest’s habit and murmured a grudging: “Aye, no doubt,” before moving away down the street.

  Francis waited until the prisoners and their escort had left the waterfront and were ascending the distant incline toward the fort, then he hitched his knapsack up on his shoulder and set off after them. He had no particular plan of action other than somehow to keep himself on hand and, hopefully, attempt to intercede on their behalf should an opportunity present itself. He thought he might just possibly contrive to buy them a little time by the judicious use of Archbishop Constant’s seal reinforced by threats of his Lordship’s grave displeasure. But he did not delude himself that these would prove more than a token shield to set against Brother Andrew’s implacable fixation and the Gray Brotherhood’s pragmatic license, backed up, as they were, by the whole grim machinery of the Secular Arm.

  The iron studded doors of the stronghold had been shut and bolted by the time he reached them. He hammered at the wicket gate until the shutter behind the metal grille was drawn aside and a pair-of suspicious eyes stared into his.

  “Your business?”

  “I travel in the service of my Lord, Archbishop Constant. I seek immediate audience with your commander.”

  “Your name-sir?”

  “Brother Francis of York.”

  “Let’s see your authority.”

  Francis delved into his satchel and produced the laisser-passer to which was affixed the primatial seal. He unfolded it and held it up, guessing that the doorkeeper could not read. There was a pause, then the shutter was clapped to and he heard the sound of a bar being withdrawn from its brackets. The wicket opened and Francis stepped through into the arched gatehouse. As he did so there was a shout of “Open up there, man!” from the inner courtyard and a helmeted Falcon came running toward them leading his horse by its bridle.

  The doorkeeper hurried to drag back one of the doors. With a curt nod of acknowledgment the trooper vaulted up into his saddle and galloped away down the road.

  Francis stood to one side as the keeper shoved the door back into place, thumping at the huge bolts and cursing monotonously under his breath about the sodding Gray who seemed to think they owned the whole sodding world and every sodding creature in it. When the last bolt had been rammed home Francis asked the man where he could find the officer in charge.