‘Go on.’

  George crooked his little finger, inserted it in his mouth and dislodged a lump of half-masticated cracker from his upper gum. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘when Mike and I started mapping out the cortical hemisphere we divided it up into separate zones. Those proximate to the pineal gland we labelled “P”. P/E and P/G are two encephalic contact points which we’ve been concentrating on for the past couple of weeks.’

  ‘But that wasn’t what Ian meant by “contact”, was it?’

  ‘No,’ admitted George with a grin. ‘He meant something much more spooky.’

  ‘Spooky?’

  George nodded. ‘Has Mike ever talked to you about O.O.B.E’s?’

  Rachel shook her head.

  ‘It stands for “Out of the Body Experience.” They have quite a respectable ancestry if you’re prepared to accept purely subjective evidence.’

  ‘And what are they?’

  ‘It’s not easy to say, exactly. But, briefly, when the body’s placed in a state of artificial sensory deprivation it’s apparently sometimes capable of perceiving things through some unspecified medium other than its own physical senses. The phenomenon has been known to operate over quite extraordinary distances.’

  ‘Telepathy, you mean? ’

  ‘That’s not a word we like very much. It’s too hazy: too emotional.’

  ‘All right, but I still don’t see what any of this has to do with Mike.’

  ‘You may well be right at that,’ said George, spooning sugar into his coffee. ‘But you wanted to know what Ian was talking about and that’s it, more or less. We’re pretty sure those impulses on the “P” points signified that Mike was in some sort of O.O.B. contact.”

  Rachel stared at him. ‘But Mike isn’t in a state of sensory deprivation. Don’t you have to be floated in a tank and be blindfolded and God knows what else for that?’

  ‘Not any more you don’t. Y-dopa does it just as effectively.’

  ‘And what is hell’s name is “Y-dopa”?’

  ‘Dihydroxyphenyalamine and a synthesized extract originally derived from a South American plant called the Yucca.’

  ‘Christ Almighty! And that’s what Mike’s had?’

  ‘It’s what we’ve all had, Rachel.’

  ‘You’re crazy,’ she said flatly. ‘You really are crazy , George.’

  ‘Far from it,’ he protested. ‘We’re just operating along the frontier, that’s all. There may even be a Nobel in it somewhere. I’m quite serious, Rachel. I think we’re on the verge of uncovering facts about the human psyche which will totally revolutionize our conception of what we are.’

  Rachel shook her head slowly. ‘Well, bully for you, George,’ she said. ‘And if it makes you feel any better I’m revolutionizing my own conception of you, right now.’

  Doctor Richards grinned indulgently and was about to frame a retort when the telephone rang. He thrust back his chair, skipped across to the domed booth and lifted the receiver. ‘Extension two five. Richards here. I’m listening, Ian … Yes … Are you sure? … O.K. I’ll be right down.’

  ‘What’s happened, George?’

  ‘Mike’s pulse has just dropped to below thirty. Come on.’

  Ian met them at the door of the laboratory. ‘I don’t know what the hell’s going on, Doc. There’s nothing except auto registering anywhere apart from P/E and P/G.’ He glanced quickly across at Rachel and then murmured: ‘Should I phone for an ambulance?’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ said George.

  He hurried down to the trolley, lifted the unconscious man’s wrist and felt for his pulse. The others watched him intently. After thirty seconds he let go and stood staring down at his colleague, shaking his head. ‘It just doesn’t make sense,’ he muttered. ‘His heartbeat’s still as strong as a horse; his breathing’s regular; yet somehow or other he’s just letting go – gradually drifting off.’

  ‘“Drifting off”?’ Rachel’s voice trembled.

  ‘Into a deep physical coma by the looks of it. ’

  ‘For God’s sake, George! What are you going to do about it? Let him?’

  ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to get him into hospital, Rachel. There’s nothing else for it. But look at that!’ He pointed toward the screen labelled ‘7’ which was still pulsing out its ghostly circles of pale blue light. ‘If that isn’t evidence of intense mental activity, what is? All right, Ian, get hold of Harry and tell him to send out an S.O.S. buzz to the hospital.’

  As Ian hurried out of the lab, Doctor Richards walked over to the control panel and made a slight adjustment to a calibrated dial. The light in number 7 screen intensified perceptibly. ‘Incredible,’ he murmured. ‘What time did the first trace show up, Ken?’

  ‘Just after 12,’ said the second technician. He consulted a notepad. ‘12.02 I’ve got down: duration 32 seconds. Second trace 12.48: duration 3 minutes 7 seconds. Third at—’

  ‘That’s O.K.,’ said Doctor Richards. ‘We’ve got them all on tape?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘We’ll use it as the enceph base for the new converter. We may learn something that way.’ He turned back to where Rachel was standing forlornly beside the trolley. ‘What can I say, Rachel? I can’t tell you how sorry I am that it’s happened to Mike. It could just as easily have been any one of us lying there.’

  She raised her head, gave him a long, level look, and then she nodded. ‘Yes, I know,’ she said. ‘I realize it’s not your fault. But, oh God, George, I only wish it wasn’t him.’

  THREE

  Thomas of Norwich, holding on to Jane’s arm for support, walked slowly through into the kitchen of the cottage. Pots was sluicing his face over the stone sink and Susan was standing beside the glowing range stirring something in a steaming iron saucepan. The Kinsman stood still for a moment savoring the scene – the spread table, the soft cone of yellow light falling from the chain-hung lamp, the rose pink fire flush on Susan’s downcast face, the cat dozing beside the fender, the waterdrops flickering in a golden shower from the potter’s busy hands – and lifted it entire into the jumbled storehouse of his memory.

  Pots swung round, groping for a towel, and caught sight of them. ‘Welcome, Kinsman Thomas,’ he called. ‘I see the clothes fit.’

  ‘Most well, potter. I have much to thank you for. ’

  Pots buried his face in the towel and scrubbed energetically to hide his embarrassment. ‘What’s ours is yours, so long as we live. You know that.’

  ‘So long as we live,’ murmured Thomas. ‘Aye.’

  ‘Now sit you down, Kinsman,’ said Susan. ‘This will be ready directly. Jane, love, run and fetch in some fresh ale.’

  Jane guided Thomas into a seat and went out. As the passage door closed behind her, Thomas said: ‘Jane tells me that today is the 12th of April.’

  ‘Aye, ’tis so,’ acknowledged Pots, flinging the towel over a hook. ‘Though you’d not guess it from the trees. There’s scarce a bud to be seen breaking yet. And we had snow lying on Lydeard Hill till the third week in March.’ He picked up a wooden comb from the windowsill and raked it through his hair and beard. ‘ ’Tis the same elsewhere, I don’t doubt.’

  Thomas frowned down at the table. ‘And the storm …’ he began, and then left his sentence hanging broken in mid-air.

  ‘Aye,’ said Pots, eyeing him curiously. ‘What of it?’

  ‘It blew for two days and two nights?’

  ‘No less, surely,’ said Pots. ‘Hard as iron straight out of the west. If Jane hadn’t warned me I’d like as not have ruined a whole firing.’

  ‘Warned you?’

  ‘She’s huesh , Thomas. Did you not guess?’

  ‘I do not know the word.’

  ‘Jane has the gift, Kinsman,’ put in Susan. ‘ ’Twas for that we were expecting you.’

  ‘Expecting me?’ repeated Thomas emptily.

  Pots laughed. ‘Aye, friend, but you were late arriving. We had you coming ashore two days ago. And not by boat either. You were to be washed up in the Jaws on the day the storm blew itself out.’

  ‘Gyre,’ murmured Thomas. ‘She told me she had expected me to be Gyre. I did not know what she meant.’

  ‘She wasn’t sure,’ said Pots pulling out a chair and seating himself opposite Thomas. ‘It’s like that sometimes. The lass and I near froze our fingers off hunting for you down in the sea-wrack. She would have it that you must be there somewhere. And since she’d hueshed the storm it seemed like enough she was right about you too. Well, in a way she was, eh? Except in the small matter of your being drowned.’

  ‘You wrong her,’ said Thomas slowly. ‘She did see right, Potter.’ He lifted his right hand and pressed his fingertips against the flesh of his cheeks like a blind man exploring the face of a stranger. ‘I tell you this body you see before you has been drowned.’

  ‘Ah, well,’ said Pots uneasily. ‘You were indeed fortunate, Kinsman. No mistake about that.’

  ‘Four days, Potter? Three nights and four days ?

  You ask me to believe that a body can stay alive floating for four days in the April Somersea?’

  ‘A miracle,’ said Pots cheerily. ‘For here you are as large as life and hungry with it. So where’s the lass got to with that ale? Jane!’

  Even as he shouted her name they heard the passage door open and a moment later Jane came in carrying a stone flagon in a wicker basket. ‘The lantern blew out,’ she panted, setting the flagon down at her father’s side and turning to help her mother who was ladling broth into bowls. She lifted a filled bowl, carried it carefully over to the table and set it before Thomas.

  When everyone was seated Pots called upon the Kinsman for a blessing.

  ‘I have more need of that than any one of you,’ murmured Thomas. ‘Good people, may your peace soothe my troubled soul. Let the blood of the Boy ransom us: let the Bird of Dawning hover over us: grant us the Bliss of Kinship for Eternity.’ He raised his right hand and sketched the Sign over them.

  Everyone intoned ‘amen’ and Pots unstoppered the flagon, poured foaming ale into a mug and pushed it down the table to his guest. ‘Eat and drink, Kinsman Thomas, there must be a howling wolf inside that soused belly of yours. Our Kinsman tells me he was in the water for all of four days, Jane. What make you of that?’

  ‘Then it was the storm,’ said Jane, glancing sideways at Thomas over her lifted spoon. ‘I knew it. Will you tell us what happened?’

  ‘Oh, let him sup awhile, girl,’ said Susan. ‘He’ll tell us all when he’s ready.’

  ‘I will tell you what I can,’ said Thomas. ‘But first you must tell me of huesh . Where does the word come from?’

  ‘That’s one thing I do know,’ said Pots. ‘I had it all from an old cobweb of a clerk in the library at New Exeter. Seemingly it’s a wild Cornish word which comes from way back when the fisher folk used to station a man at the top of the cliffs to watch for the pilchard shoals. They called him the huer . Over the years the word came to mean someone who could see what was hidden from others. Huesh grew out of it. Or at least that was his story.’ He dunked a lump of bread in his broth and sucked it down with noisy relish. ‘Round here every one takes it for granted,’ he said. ‘But I could never do that. Maybe because I’m not native to these parts. I held out against it for years, didn’t I, wife? As I saw it the thing went against all reason. But in the end I had to give in. It got so I was tying myself in knots to keep myself from seeing what was right there under my very nose. Now I reason that if the Giver of Gifts has chosen so to dower our Jane, who am I to refuse it?’

  Susan got up from her place, fetched the saucepan from the stove and ladled out more broth into the men’s bowls.

  Thomas said: ‘And what made you change your mind? ’

  ‘That’s quite a story,’ said Pots. ‘It happened five years back when Jane was just coming into womanhood. We were visited for the Tax Culling of ’14. A whole bunch of them arrived on horseback. There was a Census Clerk, a Tax Assessor, one of the Black Friars, half a dozen birds of prey, and the Collector himself – a great, fat, greasy fellow with a laugh like a cracked trumpet who carried the Earl Robert’s seal.

  ‘We’d had word by sea that they were on the way so we were able to put on a very convincing show of pitiful poverty. But that didn’t stop us getting the Friar billeted on us for the night. At the time I thought it was just our bad luck but I found out soon enough that he’d got me singled out for a local informer on account of my quarterly trips to New Exeter and me being able to read and write. He was well primed too was Brother Benjamin. Knew all about a charge of sedition that had been laid against me in Banbury way back in ’92 and he made it as plain as a poke in the eye they’d rake it all up again if I didn’t co-operate. It was a nasty moment I can tell you.

  ‘He was a real bad-un that Friar. As soon as Jane came into the room he was gobbling her up with his eyes in a way that made my skin creep. I knew he was just itching to get his hands on her. But she wouldn’t look at him. Just wouldn’t. Not at him, that is. At his shoes, or his beads, or his hands, but not into his face. And this really got him on the raw. In the end he laid hold of her by the arms and ordered her to do it – charged her in God’s name – while Susan and I just stood there and looked on, and I wondered if I could get away with strangling a Holy Friar with my bare hands and stuffing his poxy corpse into the firing kiln.

  ‘Well, she did. Looked at him, I mean. As though he was some sort of nastiness crawled out from under a stone. She must have stared at him for a full half-minute before he let go of her arms and fell to crossing himself and muttering a lot of Roman gibberish as though he’d just discovered he’d got the plague. Jane ran out into the yard and, after a bit, I went out to see what had become of her. I found her curled up in a corner of the pottery shivering like a mackerel. I asked her what ailed her – tho’ in truth I knew well enough what it was. Then she told me she’d “seen” Brother Benjamin lying stark naked in a ditch with his throat cut.

  ‘Now if you give or take a murderous detail or two, that was more or less the picture I’d been toying with on my own account, so I didn’t make as much of it at the time as I might have done otherwise. I just did what I could to cheer her up and told her he’d be gone by the morning and that she wasn’t to worry because we’d see no harm came to her.

  ‘And that’s about all there is to it, except that the whole thieving bunch of them was ambushed in Crowcombe forest at noon the very next day by a gang of Welsh raiders. Every man jack was stripped to his skin and sent into the next world with a brand new mouth half way down his throat. We got the news two days later. From that day to this I’ve always given the lass the benefit of the doubt. And believe me, Kinsman, she’s come far since then.’

  Throughout this recital Jane had sat mute. Now she rose quietly to her feet and began helping her mother to collect up the bowls. She took care to avoid Thomas’s eye.

  ‘Tell me, Jane,’ he said. ‘Why would you not look at the Friar?’

  ‘He had the power,’ she said simply. ‘And I was frightened.’

  ‘But how did you know he had?’

  ‘You know very well how,’ she replied with a faint smile. ‘So why do you ask?’

  ‘Perhaps because I need to hear it from your own lips.’

  She paused, her face suddenly rapt and intent. ‘I saw the dark flame around him and within him,’ she whispered. ‘And he knew that I saw it.’

  Thomas leant back in his chair and stared at her, thinking: ‘Yes, Jane, you are right. Who could know better than I that dark flame and the fear that it feeds upon?’ His eyes dwelt on her pensively, noting the square, firm chin; the wide, generous mouth; the broad forehead beneath its boyish helmet of dark hair; and, gradually, he became convinced that he was poised upon the threshold of a stupendous revelation. Bathed by the golden lamplight the very features of her face seemed to shift and glow as if they were being illuminated from some mysterious inward source. Brighter and brighter they shone while all around her the room slipped away into the darkness until it appeared no more substantial than a dim curtain of shadow against which her face, hovering in mysterious isolation, grew ever more dazzling and, at the same time, curiously, supremely innocent. He felt the world lurch and rock all about him; he heard a voice intoning the burden of the Testament: ‘Lo! He shall return and all things old shall be made new,’ and he knew beyond all possibility of denial that he was gazing upon the face of the Boy.

  But even as he struggled to encompass his exploding vision a black wave rose up out of the past, hung brooding over him, menacing and huge, and though he cried out to stay it, the light and the room and the divine face all were swept away to be lost among the inrushing welter of the darkness.

  The Kinsman’s swoon lasted for barely a minute. He came to with a ringing in his ears and opened his eyes to find that he was lying on the kitchen floor and that Susan and Jane were bending over him. ‘Forgive me,’ he muttered. ‘These sudden storms have afflicted me from childhood.’

  They helped him back into his chair and Pots said with a nervous laugh: ‘Faith, you had me worried sure. I thought maybe it was the ale had taken you. You not having eaten for so long, I mean.’

  ‘Maybe a little of that too,’ said Thomas with a pale smile .

  ‘We have baked mackerel to hand,’ said Susan. ‘Will that be to your liking?’

  ‘Indeed it will,’ said Thomas, ‘though ’tis not long since I was thinking the fishes were like to be feasting upon me.’

  ‘Ah, you don’t want to dwell on that, I’m sure,’ said Pots.

  ‘But I do,’ said Thomas, ‘for I think that Jane may well be the one to throw some light into my dark corners. Even, perhaps, to telling me why the Bird brought me to her door, eh, Jane?’

  If Jane heard his question she gave no sign.

  ‘Did you not ask how I came to be floating out in the Somersea?’ he pursued.

  ‘You do not have to tell us,’ she said. ‘I should not have asked.’

  ‘You have a right to know,’ said Thomas. ‘So I trade my story for yours. Is that a bargain?’