For perhaps the length of a count of ten they stared at him, then at a murmured word from their leader they retreated behind the dismembered skeleton of an abandoned fishing boat and conferred together. Francis was left clutching his frail symbol of Kinship and feeling extraordinarily foolish.

  Finally one of the children emerged and approached him. ‘I’s Megan,’ she piped. ‘I’s to tak en to Dai’s place. En’s to bide la till us come for en. Dost git?’

  Francis nodded whereupon the urchin skipped off ahead of him down the causeway and along the rutted track that climbed toward Cwymdula. Glancing back over his shoulder as he stumbled to keep up with her the Advocate Sceptic was astonished to observe that all the other children appeared to have vanished clean off the face of the earth.

  Black Isle, Western Borders

  Day of St Mark. April 3018

  ‘My Lord,

  ‘Your servant’s travels in your service have brought him to the Western Borders – a strange, wild land of great tho’ savage beauty whose inhabitants seem scarce tame and speak among themselves a tongue as far removed from that of Cumberland as that of Cumberland is foreign to that of York.

  ‘As you will know I came hither in quest of the Kinsman Gyre, believing him to be in possession of the document which the Kinsfolk speak of as “Morfedd’s Testament.” It is my hope that before this night is out I will have had sight of it and will be in a position to communicate to you the gist of its contents if not the actual document itself.

  ‘No word having yet reached me from your hand, my Lord, I have no means of knowing whether my interim report (dispatched to you from the Sanctuary of Kentmere) miscarried. However, the messenger to whom it was entrusted seemed suitably sensible of its importance, and having no reason to doubt his integrity, I must assume that you are now privy to the substance of my inquiries to date.’

  Having got thus far Brother Francis laid down his pen, read through what he had written, and groaned aloud. The style in which his report was couched with its verbal hummings and hawings, its long-winded circumlocutions and back-trackings, reflected nothing as much as the writhings of his own tormented conscience. It was inconceivable that an eye as cold and as clear as Constant’s would not see through it.

  He got up from the stool, walked across to the window and stared glumly out over the jumble of roofs to where, across the intervening waters, the distant signal beacon of the North Mynd winked through the gloaming. His oppression of spirit manifested itself in the form of a dull physical ache in the pit of his stomach while the potent question which the child on the jetty had directed at him returned with redoubled force. ‘Oh God,’ he whispered. ‘Sinner that I am, use me for Thy Divine Purpose.’ And few prayers he had ever uttered had been more heartfelt or more anguished.

  Sighing, he turned away from the window to where a cheap tallow candle sputtered on the trestle table and set shadows jigging across the grimy wall above the straw pallet. He picked up the sheet of parchment and read through the final paragraph for the third time. ‘What is it you’re trying to hide, Francis?’ he muttered. ‘In God’s name, man, why can’t you speak plain?’ And almost as though it were a separate voice lisping at his ear he seemed to hear the words: ‘ ’Tis from fear, Brother. Simple fear.’ Hearing them he recognized them. In that instant he learned the bitter truth that the last enemy to be faced was not Death itself but the fear of Death. As he raised his head and gazed into the heart of the candle-flame before him there came a gentle scratching at his door.

  Rapidly he rolled the parchment into a scroll, thrust it under the pallet and opened the door. The boy who had questioned him on the jetty was standing half-hidden in the shadows. ‘Come en wi’ me, priest,’ he whispered. ‘An’ do en as I say.’

  Pausing only to snuff the candle, Francis stepped out on to the boarded landing, closed the door quietly behind him, and felt his way cautiously down the unlit stairs.

  Voices were coming from the tap-room but the door was shut and they slipped past unnoticed to emerge from a narrow slit of a passage into a small yard, roofed with stars and piled with dim barrels and empty crates. There the boy signed to him to halt and pulling out a dark cloth from inside his leather jerkin he whispered: ‘I’s to hood en, priest.’

  ‘Is that necessary?’ Francis protested feebly, then, sensing that the boy might cheerfully abandon him there said: ‘All right. I agree,’ and bent his head.

  There followed a stumbling, bruising journey which lasted for perhaps twenty minutes until Francis was warned of steps downwards, felt stone slabs grate underfoot, and heard a door open then close behind him. Finally, to his profound relief, he felt the hood being tugged from his head .

  He found himself standing in what appeared to be a sort of crypt – a wide room whose stone ceiling was supported by stout granite pillars. In a raised recess at the far end a fire of driftwood was smoldering sulkily. On the wall which formed the chimney breast someone had sketched in white chalk the image of a bird hovering with wide wings outstretched.

  ‘Bide en here, priest,’ muttered his guide and disappeared into a passage which, until that moment, Francis had not realized existed. He walked slowly forward holding out his chilled hands to the fire and gazing up at the image of the bird. As he did so there came unbidden into his mind a phrase of Katherine Williams’: ‘for he took my heart from me and breathed his music into it and gave it back to me …’ He felt a curious tightening of the skin over his scalp – a sort of electric tingling of apprehension and excitement which was unlike anything he had ever known. Then, hearing the sound of approaching footsteps, he turned, just as a young woman came into the room.

  She walked toward him, holding out her hand in greeting. ‘Well met, Brother Francis,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘We were beginning to think you might arrive too late.’

  In spite of the charcoal brazier glowing in the corner of the room and the thick fleece covers piled on the bed, the man could not stop shivering; it was as though his whole body were a bowstring trapped for ever in the vibrant instant following upon the release of its bolt. Sunk deep in their bony sockets his dark, fever-haunted eyes wandered restlessly from point to point while a faint, chill, dew of sweat pricked out across his deeply lined forehead and glistened waxily in the candlelight. Every now and again he would jerk his head forward from the piled pillows and his face would set itself in an expression of intense concentration as though he were straining to catch some sight or sound detectable only by himself. At such moments one of the other people in the room would approach the bed, bend deferentially over the sick man and ask if there were anything they could do for him. More often than not he would gaze back at them blankly as if unable to comprehend the question, but occasionally he would shake his head and then sink slowly back again. Once he was racked with a fit of coughing which dragged on and on to be ended only when an ominous froth of pink spittle bubbled on his lips and was wiped away solicitously by one of the watchers.

  After this the man closed his eyes and appeared to subside into a fitful doze, though ever and again his eyelids would flick open and his eyes, dark and alert, would glance avidly round the room as if searching for someone who was not there.

  It was into this room that the boy who had guided Francis slipped noiselessly. He sought out one of the watchers, moved across to her and murmured something into her ear. She nodded, glanced swiftly round at the figure on the bed, then rose and left the room as quietly as the boy had entered it.

  No sooner had she gone than a dramatic change came over the sick man. He sighed deeply and those nearest to him noticed that the palsied trembling to which they had grown so accustomed that they scarcely remarked it, had suddenly stopped. His hands rose to his head thrust back the loose strands of gray hair that had fallen forward, and then with crooked fingers he began combing through his tangled beard. ‘Would someone open a window?’ he said.

  An old woman started to protest that the night air would be sure to start him coughing again, but a man silenced her with a glance, rose from the bench on which he was sitting and unfastened the retaining hook on the casement. At once a breath of cool night air surged into the stuffy room bringing with it the soothing murmur of distant surf and the unmistakable iodine tang of rotting seaweed. The sick man smiled and nodded his thanks. ‘Shall we drink a cup of wine with our guest?’ he enquired.

  The man said: ‘Surely, Kinsman,’ and signed to the old woman who made a gesture which said plainly: ‘I think you’re all crazy,’ before rising to her feet and shuffling off through a curtained doorway, muttering to herself.

  ‘Gwyn?’ said the sick man.

  The boy approached the bedside. ‘Aye, Kinsman Gyre.’

  ‘Fetch me my pipes, boy. You know where they are.’

  The boy nodded and ducked away through the same door that the old woman had taken.

  A moment later the young woman reentered the room, saw at a glance that the sick man was not as he had been when she had left him, and said: ‘Kinsman Gyre, I bring you Brother Francis.’

  Francis following a pace or two behind her heard the words but could not as yet see the person to whom they were addressed. He knew Grye by repute to be that ex-Falcon whose sure aim and deadly bolt had ended the life of the Boy Thomas high up on a makeshift scaffolding upon the walls of York citadel all of eighteen years before. Since then the man had become part of a living legend as, in company with Old Peter the Tale Spinner he had roamed the highways and byways of The Seven Kingdoms, telling the Tale of the Boy and preaching the gospel of Universal Kinship. Francis’ feelings as he stepped over the threshold were a piquant blend of apprehension, curiosity and awe.

  His first thought on seeing Gyre was that he could have spared himself his fears that Simon of Leicester’s inquisitors would ever put the Kinsman to the rack. He knew instinctively that this man was living on borrowed time and that the debt was likely to be recalled at any moment. He moved forward to the foot of the bed and bowed. ‘Kinsman Gyre,’ he murmured, ‘I am most sorry to find you unwell. ’

  Gyre chuckled sardonically. ‘A close run thing, eh, Brother? Tell me, how is my Lord the Archbishop these days?’

  ‘He prospers,’ returned Francis.

  ‘For a little while only, Brother Francis. His race, like mine, is nearly run. But we both have some work to do yet, he and I.’ He turned his head and beckoned to the young woman who had brought the priest. As she approached the bed he murmured: ‘Light another candle and place it so that I can see his face more clearly. It is like speaking to a shadow.’

  While she was carrying out his instructions the boy Gwyn returned bearing a slender case some half a meter in length made of tooled leather. He handed it to Gyre.

  The Kinsman smiled his thanks. Taking up the case he ran his fingers dreamily over the lacings, then said to Francis: ‘You shall carry these to Thomas of Norwich for me, Brother. They are his by right.’ He cocked a quick eye at the priest. ‘Know you what they are?’

  ‘Pipes?’ hazarded Francis, wondering at the strange turn the interview was taking.

  ‘Aye, pipes,’ said Gyre with a sigh. ‘But not just any pipes, Francis. These were fashioned for Tom by Morfedd the Wizard of Bowness. There are none like them in the living world. Would you care to hear them?’

  ‘Very much,’ said Francis. ‘I have heard tell of them often on my travels.’

  ‘ ’Tis not the same as hearing them. These pipes speak a tune like none other.’ He raised his eyes again and stared hard at the priest. ‘Is that not why you are come, Francis? To hear what they have to say to you? Speak, man. You are among friends now.’

  And once again the voice of Katherine Williams was there whispering inside Francis’ head: ‘He came to show us what we have it in ourselves to be … For the first time since entering the room he felt the angels’ wing caress of real fear; it brushed by him and left behind a chill like melting snowflakes on his skin. The Kinsman’s eyes held him fixed and would not let him go. Dark, sardonic and glittering with the knowledge of impending death they seemed almost to be regarding him from across the threshold of another world.

  Francis ran the tip of his tongue around his dry lips. ‘I came hither to ask if I might be allowed to view Morfedd’s Testament,’ he said huskily. ‘It was for that I have sought you all across the North.’

  Gyre nodded. ‘Aye. Think you we know not that? But your quest for the Testament was but to buy you the time you needed from your master. What you are seeking lies in here, Francis,’ and so saying the Kinsman lifted the case containing the pipes, unfastened the laces that held it closed, and from it removed the curious, twin-stemmed instrument, part whistle, part recorder, that Old Morfedd of Bowness had contrived for the Boy Thomas all those years ago .

  Francis leaned forward to see them more clearly and, as he did so, the pipes twisted between the Kinsman’s fingers allowing the candlelight to wink from some tiny crystalline facet set deep within the shaft of one of the tubes.

  Gyre stroked his fingers slowly all down the length of the gleaming barrels. ‘You never heard Tom play, did you, Brother?’

  Francis shook his head.

  ‘So you will hear only the echo of an echo. And I have not one hundredth part of Tom’s skill. But now and again he comes to speak through my fingers as one day he will surely speak through the Child and through Thomas and through you.’ Raising his head abruptly the dying Kinsman gazed up at the vaulted ceiling and cried with a voice so strong it seemed almost as if it must be coming from some other throat than his: ‘Boy, show now at the end that I am forgiven! You know that I shot in ignorance of what I did! Speak you now through my darkness that his darkness may become light!’

  He drew a deep, panting breath, raised the twin mouthpieces to his lips, and fixing the Advocate Sceptic with an unwavering gaze he began to play.

  Beti, the old woman who had been sent to fetch the wine, was on her way back bearing a laden tray when she heard the sound of music coming from the Kinsman’s chamber. By her own reckoning she had lived for seventy-seven years and her life’s rhythm was far older than the turbulent sea channels among which her days had been passed. Birth, death, hardship and hunger were the fixed stars in her cosmos. Universal Kinship was a concept beyond her compass. She tolerated it because her son and his wife wished her to. And yet something reached out to her in that dark passage beyond the dying Kinsman’s room, reached out and held her heart in thrall. Hearing Gyre play she forgot who she was and why she was there. She stood as if transfixed, listening with ears she had long since forgotten she possessed – the ears of a child who hears for the first time a music which speaks of all the infinite possibilities lying within the grasp of the unshackled human spirit. Time held no meaning for her then. Like a down feather adrift on the dark tides she felt her soul being swept this way and that at the behest of forces immeasurably stronger than herself. In a series of flickering lightning flashes she relived moments long since forgotten, when she no longer had an identity to call her own, moments when her girl’s heart had seemed to wing out from her body to share another’s anguish and she would willingly have given her own life to ease some other creature’s pain. She did not even associate her own ecstasy with the sound of the Kinsman’s piping. For all she knew a magic key had suddenly unlocked a casket buried so deeply within her that she had long since forgotten its existence, yet from it a fountain of pure joy come welling up to spill over in unregarded tears upon her cheeks.

  At last the spell broke. She shuffled on down the passage, elbowed open the door and the curtain beyond it and reentered the room. She set down the tray she was carrying and peered about her. Dimly she sensed something new and strange rippling among the shadows, as though the room itself were still faintly awash from the departure of an invisible presence. She shivered involuntarily and in a gesture born of a lifetime’s superstition, crossed herself.

  Gradually, like sleepers coming awake, the other people in the room began to stir. Only the black-robed priest standing at the foot of the bed remained unmoving, his hands hanging limp at his sides, his eyes staring wide open yet unseeing at the figure of the Kinsman before him.

  The young woman moved forward and leaned over the bed. ‘Kinsman?’ she whispered. ‘Kinsman Gyre?’

  The Kinsman’s dark eyes seemed to swim up toward hers as if from some unconscionable depths. His forked tongue moved slowly along his lower lip. ‘He came,’ he whispered. ‘The Boy came.’

  She nodded. ‘Aye, he came,’ she said, and glanced over her shoulder to where the old woman stood. ‘The wine, Mother.’

  Beti filled a cup and brought it to her. The young woman held the earthenware goblet to the Kinsman’s lips. He sipped a little, nodded, and then indicated that he wished to be moved higher up on the bed. The woman’s husband stepped forward and together the two of them did as he wished.

  Gyre drank some more of the wine and a faint touch of color came creeping back into his ashen cheeks. Nursing the goblet in both hands he peered up over the rim of it at the silent priest and nodded his head slowly. ‘Your soul has been on a long journey, Francis,’ he said gently. ‘Welcome back to us.’ Nursing the goblet in both hands he peered up over the rim of it at the silent priest and nodded his head slowly. ‘Your soul has been on a long journey, Francis,’ he said gently. ‘Welcome back to us.’

  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 self-same 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 sleepwalker 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.