Death of a Ghost Read online

  OSSIAN HANDED SUE a glass of sparkling water.

  “It was a game, that’s all,” he insisted for the last time. “A stupid dare. We killed a mouse and a couple of toads on the Corn Stone, and Colin was High Priest. We were snotty kids, that’s all. I don’t remember much about it.”

  “If you say so, Ossian,” said Sue, eyeing him doubtfully. “But games can be serious, can’t they? They can have consequences.”

  Even croquet? Ossian wondered. The water had restored Sue’s spirits to a remarkable degree. He did not doubt that she was enjoying herself as Sergeant Rosie O’Shea. Sitting beside her on the sofa, he found himself asking the questions proper to a baffled sidekick.

  “OK, so me and Colin played at sacrifices years ago. What has this got to do with the ghosts? You look like you’ve got a theory.”

  “I think that when you started killing animals on the Corn Stone you weren’t acting on a whim. That spot had seen sacrifice before, and not just toads. The question is – why were you doing it? Not for fun, I bet. That place had got a taste for blood, way back. It was luring you on.” She stared at him, waiting for a response. “Well, Ossian? Does that sound ridiculous?”

  If anyone else had said it, Ossian would have laughed. But it gave him a pleasant, shivery feeling, hearing Sue talk that way.

  “It’s a – strange idea.”

  “You don’t sound convinced. But look at the evidence. The Stone’s old. Older than the Abbey. When they were planning the marina, Dad got hold of lots of mouldy maps and they all had it marked. The Corn Stone, Coney Stone, Queen Stone – the name changed. But Dad says it goes back further, beyond any names. And when they started digging out the ground for the boathouses near there, you know what they found, don’t you?”

  Ossian frowned. “No, I don’t.”

  “You must! It was in all the papers six months ago. But, of course, you were in America. You wouldn’t have heard.”

  “Heard what?”

  Sue pulled a face. “The Lychfont Man. Even in a newspaper photo it was pretty unpleasant. You could still see his stubble and the stitching in his shirt. Two thousand years old and he looked like he fell asleep over yesterday’s paper. Except for the rope around his neck, of course.”

  “Someone was murdered?” said Ossian.

  “Perhaps,” said Sue. “Or sacrificed. Or married to the Spring Goddess – quite an honour really. Not that this chap looked too thrilled. After a couple of millennia with peat up your nostrils, who would?”

  Ossian felt himself grow quiet. The ghosts in the kitchen yard – some of them had been strangled. “But how can you have a 2000-year-old corpse?” he began. “It would have turned into a skeleton long since.”

  “Not necessarily. It’s all down to the chemical properties of the soil round here. Skin doesn’t rot, nor cloth. Don’t look so sceptical, Ossian! It’s an established scientific fact. There was another case just like it sixty years ago. Some ditchers turned up a body and at first the police thought he must have died just weeks earlier. They even opened a murder enquiry. Turns out he was a contemporary of Julius Caesar.”

  “Your Lychfont Man wasn’t the only one then?”

  Sue shook her head faintly and put down her glass. “Spring’s an annual event, isn’t it? My guess is these were regular killing fields. Killing bogs then. This guy was probably sacrificed for the sake of a good harvest. Now pop to the fridge, will you, and get me a refill.” Ossian obliged and Sue smiled her mother’s social smile as she took the full glass from him. “All I know is, it wasn’t long after that I started seeing ghosts around Lychfont House. And since you’ve come, the place is positively infested with them, so—What? Why are you looking at me like I was stupid?”

  “I don’t think you’re stupid. Too clever, more like. You’re making it too complicated. But carry on. Explain about the ghosts.”

  “I think you should be doing that, Ossian! You’re the one pulling them in like moths to a flame. So what do you say? Any dark secrets you’d like to let me in on?”

  “Me? Not very dark, no. Sorry.”

  “You’re too shy,” said Sue. “I’m sure you have all kinds of hidden recesses. Like a Chinese box.”

  “Not really! Apart from being able to – see things, there’s nothing special about me.”

  Sue smiled again – but not this time with amusement. She stood, stretched and turned like a window-sill cat as a Hoover moaned overhead. “You’re a nice bloke, Ossian, but lose the false modesty. People will end up believing you.”

  “MASTER PRICE!”

  A single horseman was skittering on the dew-wet cobbles. He did not dismount, but whacked the shutter with the knob of his blackthorn. From his roost in the barn Ossian saw the man’s starlit face, so thin and meagre, and his cloak wrapped tight; he heard the impatience in his breath as he waited for Adam to appear.

  Adam came still dressed, a pair of spectacles upon his nose. His words were curt; he knew this man and did not trust him. They spoke softly at first, then the man sharper – not loud, but the quiet carried a long way in the starry air. “You must come. It’s the King’s business.”

  “Must?” Adam stiffened at that. He stepped a pace towards the man’s skittish horse. Although the man was mounted, Adam seemed to dwarf him. Ossian was suddenly aware of the muscles in Adam’s arms and how they were flexed. As Adam put his hand to the horse, the rider cried out and raised his blackthorn. But Adam was only whispering the horse calm, telling it charmers’ secrets. The hooves were still.

  Ossian laced his shoes and approached the men.

  “But I shall lose my work,” Adam was saying. “Three months of tending. Tomorrow would have seen the fruit of it.”

  The man glanced at Ossian. “Here’s your boy. Leave him. He’ll guard your fire.”

  “I’ll stay, master. Tell me what to do. You know I’ll be careful.”

  Ossian knew what business the man had in mind. He tried to tell himself it was the cruelty that made him flinch, the thought of red-hot irons searing human flesh – but he was not deceived. The cruelty was all within himself.

  Adam narrowed his gaze, as if he saw all the thoughts within him. But finally he turned aside and said. “No. He is my apprentice. I will not travel without him.”

  “This is not a slight matter,” said the man irritably. “The King’s safety may be in question. It’s no place for a boy.”

  “He comes or we both stop here,” said Adam, unperturbed.

  “My orders concerned only you. The Council will be angry.”

  “Angry?” said Adam. “Yes. If you return alone.”

  The man bit his lip. He seemed to be weighing things up. He returned Adam’s dislike with interest, but Adam was an impossible man to bully. In the end he asked, almost humbly: “Is he mute?”

  Adam smiled: “The grave is more voluble.”

  “So be it. On your head, not mine. What’s your name, boy?” the messenger asked, turning quickly to Ossian.

  “Ossian, sir.”

  From Adam’s quick gesture of irritation Ossian knew he should not have answered.

  The messenger laughed, a soft, midnight laugh. “The dead speak! I’ve a horse saddled for you, Master Price: take the boy up behind. Can you ready yourself in ten minutes? The journey isn’t long.”

  “I am ready now. The Castle, is it?”

  “Then you know something of the business.”

  “I know Scrope’s neck is thin enough to chop.”

  The air smelt of burning tar from Adam’s torch and the sodden, mealy damp of rotting leaves.

  “To know more than that would be unwise,” said the messenger.

  Ossian had often ridden Adam’s old packhorse Cib, who had never so much as broken into a trot. The horse he sat on now seemed very high, and Adam had a way of riding that kept him guessing as they picked their way through the stone dawn puddles. They went down through the village, half a mile through the chestnut and elm woods, then to the old watergate of the Castle itsel
f. The gate was disused, its entrance flooded four times a day and levelled with mud – but on this night a causeway of boards had been laid down and Adam, Ossian and their guide trod the silty planks, dismounted and ducked through the half-buried entrance.

  “Why did you want me to come?” whispered Ossian to Adam. “I don’t trust that man.”

  “Nor do I! That’s why I need you, Ossian, and I’m sorry if danger comes of it. But I understood what he wanted at once. Not a man of skill, just a body to throw to some dogs in ermine and silver spurs. I need a witness to the health of Master Scrope before I begin to question him. So, Ossian, watch everything and do not speak yourself. In this trade every word is a confession.”

  They walked through a patch of dusky yard, then to a second gate, and up to a floor where the windows were barred with iron. The blackthorn man took Adam aside and left Ossian to kick his heels in a bare, oak-furnished room, yawning dust. Adam returned looking serious, the blackthorn man and two others with him, and they crossed into a larger chamber, Ossian following. In a huge stone fireplace a poker glowed. Five people stood waiting and one sat. There was a table with iron braces and stains in several shades of russet and brown.

  “I lack no duty,” said a crumple of cloth at the seated man’s feet. It moved as it spoke and Ossian saw emerge from it, finger by finger like the legs of a crab, a man’s hand. Then the whole heap of cloth rolled over.

  The pouch of bloody flesh that hung from it had been a face. Two eyes still sat in its centre, though one was atilt and its skin somehow petalled – a crimson, floating lily.

  Ossian could feel Adam tense with anger at the sight. Not pity – never that – but the righteous, professional anger of a craftsman who sees a job botched. Scrope had been half-murdered. Now they expected Adam to finish the job.

  “You see why I wanted you here,” Adam muttered to Ossian.

  Ossian did see, though he dared not answer. Scrope was going to die. But Scrope was Lord Hungerford’s man and Hungerford still had friends at court who might seek a person to be revenged on. Adam had been right to worry.

  “I know what you are,” rasped Scrope through what was left of his mouth. “You’re the hangman, aren’t you? Here’s my neck then—”

  “Now then, sir,” began Adam in his reassuring voice. “Heaven won’t smile on a despairing man, not one that quits his post. Don’t be so eager to exchange this life for one you know nothing of.”

  “My soul is bound for heaven!” said Scrope.

  Adam shook his head. “Unshriven, sir, and thrashing in the grip of wrath? I fear the worst.”

  Scrope groaned. “Just give me a swift despatch and be done.”

  “Forgive me, sir, I am no executioner. I am a humble surgeon. I wish only to search the black and gangrenous wound of treason that afflicts you.”

  They talked in this flowery way for some time. At some point they left the state of Scrope’s soul and began on the reason for his arrest. It had something to do with Lord Hungerford’s part in the negotiations with France. Bribery came into it. But here the talk became tedious, a matter of dates and promises, trips up the Thames by midnight boat, skirmishes and Latin punctuation. At last, it became clear that Scrope would go a certain distance in his confession and no further. He would put his own neck under the axe willingly enough, but not that of his master. Whenever Adam pushed him that way (in his oh-so-reasonable voice, sir, and it would put your mind at ease, sir, to do it) he snarled and called Adam cur, and told him again to slit his throat.

  Then Adam sighed as if his heart grieved him, for he knew there was only one way. He took the poker from the fireplace and touched a piece of Scrope’s cloak. They heard the sigh of the cloth as it fell away, leaving a hole that glinted with cinder and sour smoke. Adam looked at Scrope for the last time, questioningly, with one brow raised. Scrope, understanding him, gobbed spit and blood – only to hear them fizz to steam, neatly fended on the poker’s tip.

  Scrope made no sound as the iron went to meet his thigh. His face squelched out a little more blood as the muscles contracted, but he would give them no more satisfaction, not a whimper. The smell of burnt flesh he could not prevent. It reminded Ossian, to his disgust, that he was hungry. He thought of crackling and roast pork. The man with the blackthorn had hidden his nose in a scented handkerchief, in fastidious disgust. But Ossian knew that he was laughing.

  Going homeward, Adam did not speak. He had received absolution in St Dunstan’s chapel and prayed his fill, but the day’s business could not have pleased him. Behind lay Scrope’s body, useless as a flooded mine, holding secrets that could never be recovered now short of necromancy. Before lay the ruined work of six months. The fruit of his alchemy was dust. So much for the liquors carefully distilled, heated by minute calibrations to the just degree, the precious ingredients hazarded and lost, the hope and ingenuity, the faith, the cost.

  Adam said nothing of any of it.

  Ossian did not try to assuage his master’s silence. There was nothing he could have said. Any word he tossed on that cheerless fire would have been consumed at once, without heat or light.

  But later that day Adam gave him a silver coin. He thanked Ossian kindly for his company, as though he were a stranger.

  “Will they blame you for Scrope’s death?” Ossian asked him.

  Adam shook his head slowly. “Not if they can take Hungerford himself. And Scrope, I think, may have been a bait to draw Hungerford in. I heard a whisper that the bait was taken. These are cruel men, Ossian, not fools. They may need me again.”

  The loss of the elixir upset Adam far more. He spent hours poring through the sad detritus of his experiments. All must be fresh begun, all the apparatus repaired and purified. The authorities on whom Adam most relied – Jabir, Albertus Magnus, his beloved Doctor Bacon – were eagerly reread and the errors of their followers scorned in quiet, bitter words. And still there was something missing – some last, decisive step Adam hesitated to take.

  Ossian had seldom seen hesitation in his master. By that he knew the step was a forbidden one.

  OSSIAN HAD TAKEN Death of a Mayfly to the garden to read. He wanted to be able to say he had finished it when he wrote Lizzy that letter at last, but the sun was far too bright, the book a little too heavy to be comfortable. Instead, he laid it over his face and let the words seep through the skin of his closed eyes.

  The dinner gong awoke him suddenly and sent the Gordius book splashing to the grass. He slid out of his seat and went into the house. As he reached the saloon, he was aware of someone close beside him.

  “She’s made a start then?”

  It was Colin’s voice, just by his ear.

  “Pardon me?” said Ossian.

  “My sister. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean! She’s good, isn’t she?”

  Ossian recovered himself. “At croquet? Yes, very – thrashed me.”

  Colin laughed. “And after? Perhaps she offered to help you improve the grip on your mallet?”

  Ossian turned slowly and stood to face Colin nose to nose. Or nose to forehead – he was a good half-head taller than Colin these days, and fitter too. It pleased him to see Colin flinch slightly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Colin made a rough, throat-clearing noise. “Our Sue has a good eye, I’ll give her that. And now, I bet, you can’t get her out of your head. I’ve seen it all before.”

  “What’s it to you?” said Ossian.

  “There’s no mystery,” smiled Colin. “Sue has a way of getting under people’s skin. Her methods can be pretty brutal. I warned you, didn’t I? You can’t pretend I didn’t.”

  Colin’s face wasn’t cherubic any more, not like when they were kids. He looked as shifty as a puddle slicked with oil. Ossian didn’t know what to make of him.

  “Just back off,” Ossian said as they went through the French windows to where dinner was laid out on the patio. “I can look after myself, you know.”

  He wondered if he sounded as if he meant
it.

  Jack and Catherine were in high spirits over soup. They were planning a trip up the valley, in search of views of sky and chalk, and whatever it was that had hung such a subtle green veil over this part of England.

  “You ask why I don’t paint portraits any more?” Jack was saying. “But I do! The landscape is a vast and intimate portrait of the people who inhabit it. That’s what I missed in America. They had geology there, not landscape. Without history, a rock is a rock is a rock. When I came back, I understood that more clearly than ever.”

  Mr Frazer, from the way he was murdering his breadstick, was clearly finding Jack’s rhapsody an irritation. Now he saw his chance to pounce. “And yet this morning you were objecting to the marina project precisely because it would disturb an unspoiled coastline. So which do you want, Jack? A garden or a wilderness? Get your story straight.”

  “It’s a question of scale,” said Jack, adroitly shifting ground. “You can’t turn the entire south coast into a garage forecourt. It is possible to work in harmony with the surroundings.”

  “Harmony!” grunted Mr Frazer, turning the word into an exasperated cough. “Don’t give me that eco-cant, Jack. We don’t live in one of your watercolours.”

  “That’s hardly what I meant,” rejoined Jack wearily, but not as if he cared much either way. Ossian could tell from his glassy look that in spirit his father was already back in the rented two-seater scorching a line up the valley and startling sheep. And that in this fantasy Catherine was at his side.

  “So, Cathy, are you still up for our little spree?”

  Here we go again, Ossian thought. Can’t resist, can he? Doesn’t he see Frazer’s about to lose it?

  As soon as he was able, Ossian used the pretext of clearing plates to follow Sue to the kitchen. He was promptly issued with a dishcloth.

  “I’ve wondered sometimes,” he said experimentally, once the housekeeper had left the room, “if there wasn’t something going on between my dad and Cathy once. Last time we were here.”