Beneath the Tor (29 page)

There was a pause. It went on and on, like someone had begun to drill foam insulation into the room; there was an invisible and increasing mound of silence, built from her seething fury and my doggedness.

Finally, it was Pippa who backtracked. “Okay. No, that's fine. I'll arrange for you to do that now, shall I?”

“And I want to see Rey.”

“That isn't possible. Surely you must recognise—”

“Of course it's possible.” I wasn't gong to be pushed around any longer. “Don't tell me that a prisoner cannot have a visitor.”

“You'd better come with me,” she said at last.

I gave my statement to DS Chaisey in the presence of the other woman, who turned out to be a constable seconded to CID. They must need as many investigators as they could get to do all the leg work necessary to pin this death on Rey. I told them all I knew. It turned out to be precious little, but it made me feel better to hand it over.

When they escorted me to Rey, it looked like I was going to be taken right to the door of his cell in the bowels of the station. I was made to walk between them, as if I was the one under surveillance. They didn't speak, not to me, not to each other. Abruptly, the younger woman opened a door and stood there, waiting for me to enter the room.

I stepped in. Rey was sitting behind a table. I'd seen him in that position many times in the past, but it had always been the reverse of this;
he
had always been waiting to interview
me.

Rey seemed the same as ever. He smiled, as if to reassure the witness. His folded hands lay before him on the table. I came closer. There was a darkness around his eyes. He hadn't been eating properly, perhaps. Or sleeping properly. Or even breathing properly.

“You're going to save me, I hear,” he said.

“Who told you that?”

“I have my sources.”

I glanced around. The door had been softly closed against us. We were alone.

“Compiling a case in opposition to the police investigation into a homicide is a risky business, Sabbie.”

“No one here is taking me seriously.” There was a chair, and I took it.

“You gave them the
low-down
on Morgan le Fay, in your statement?”

I eyed him, stonewalling. I was afraid that if I opened my mouth my perceptions would fly away, like thistle seeds.

“Sabbie Dare has run out of words,” said Rey. “That's troubling.”

Slowly, our hands had been moving across the tabletop. At the first touch of flesh, Rey grabbed onto mine, gripping so tightly he pinched my skin.

“She's not going to get your job, Rey. Is she?”

“Right now, my approach is that she's welcome to it.”

“Oh, Rey …”

“It's okay, Sabbie. Nothing is going to happen to me. Once they've had their fun, tried to give me a bit of a scare, I'll be shunted off into some other position. Traffic, maybe. Missing Persons.”

“That would kill you.”

“Well.” A sudden grin lit up his
dark-rimmed
eyes. “We have this time together. All alone. My last wish before I walk to the scaffold. What shall we do with it?”

The sight of him smiling filled my heart. “We're going work out the best way to get into the Hollow Hill and wake the Sleeping King,” I replied.

twenty-eight

sabrina

Of course, we did
no such thing. Because there was no hollow inside Glastonbury Tor and the Sleeping King was a legend, a story of hope in bad times. We had precious minutes to kiss and make ourselves promises before Pippa and her henchwoman came back into the little room and hauled me out.

It started raining, cold July rain that would have been perfect for the funeral the previous day. As soon as I got home I put the central heating on, found a jumper, and heated some soup for lunch. I thought about the chain of events that had started with the decision to help Wolfsbane run a
shape-shifting
workshop. I'd felt such excitement at the idea of working with people at a heightened shamanic level. I'd had no presentment that it would end abruptly, disastrously, in sudden death and poison pen letters and horrific attacks.

Since Alys had died, nothing had been right in my world. Rey had been suspended, arrested and charged, all because—it seemed to me—I'd been accosted by
Marty-Mac
in the Angel Shopping Centre, where I'd never wanted to be in the first place. That was the day I'd met my grandmother. I'd learnt things I'd rather have never known and transformed myself into the Princess of Darkness in my cousin Lettice's eyes.

Freaky had warned me. …
families always mean trouble. Always. Always
… I had heard his words, but gone ahead anyhow.

Grandma Dare filled my mind for a moment as I wiped my soup bowl with a piece of bread. Her erect frame, her
ripe-plum
voice, her sharp eyes. The softness of her pashmina in my hands. She'd plied me with sweet biscuits and talk of baronets. She'd told me I'd been named for my
great-grandmother
. Sabrina fair. Then she'd hit me with her bigotry and contempt.

It had been a lovely moment, when she'd recited that poem which had inspired her mother's name. Milton, she'd said, as if I knew anything about any poet. I closed my eyes to bring the words back. Something about lilies, and amber hair, and cool waves …

My eyes popped open. My scalp prickled. I went into the therapy room and got out my shamanic journal. I had written those words, copying down what the Lady of the River had told me the day after Alys's death …
I am the river of cool, translucent waves.

I typed
Milton + Sabrina
into a search engine on my laptop. Almost the first site I tried was a copy of a long and rambling poem called “Comus” which was all about Greek deities and debauched rakes after the virtue of pure virgins. It took me ages to scroll down and down, reading steadily, but when I reached the little song I'd heard my grandmother recite it jumped out of the screen, and I couldn't help but read, almost sing, it aloud.

Sabrina fair,
Listen where thou art sitting
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave …

I read Milton's story of Sabrina, line by line, my eyes screwed against the tight, tiny writing on the screen. Long ago, a girl, the daughter of an ancient British king, drowned in the River Severn and so became its goddess.

The Lady of the River had tried her best to direct me, but in the end it was my grandmother who'd given me the answer. The irony made me shake my head. Lady
Savile-Dare
had not intended to bequeath anything to me, but unwittingly, she'd given me what I needed most: the name of my spirit guardian.

Honey, rich, warm, running from the comb. The drumbeat singing from my CD player, the slight tickle of the scarf over my eyes. I was walking with Trendle above the fast-flowing River Severn. With each step, the deep foliage of the lime tree came more into focus, and the smell it exuded was more powerful in my nostrils. I couldn't help but walk closer, breathing in the perfume.

I now knew that it was the tree itself that gave off the thick scent of honey. I had thought my Lady of the River had conjured it up, but I'd delved into my tree books and read how limes did this; they attracted a tiny insect to their bark and it exuded this sugar smell.

She was there, in front of the lime tree. She looked steadily into my eyes, while saying nothing. She was a frustrating enigma, often only half telling me things. I always felt I'd disappointed her, not done quite enough, not taken her advice well enough to heart.

“You don't disappoint, Sabbie,” she said. “You ask more of yourself than I have ever asked of you.”

“I know your true name
,
my lady.” I dropped to my knees, desperate to tell her.
“
You are Sabrina of the Severn.”

Sabrina placed her hand on my head. It felt like a leaf had landed there. In the silence a question fell into my mind. It hadn't been what I'd planned to ask, but I knew it was the right one. The deepest question that was in my heart. I looked up into her fluid grey eyes.

“It keeps happening, doesn't it? I keep falling into … trouble. I keep meeting … sorrow and disaster. Since I started my shamanic work, I have met such people that I didn't know walked in the apparent world. Evil. I've come face to face with evil.” I breathed deeply, desperate for the scent of honey, clear as if I held it on a spoon. “Damned. Depraved. Corrupt. Villainous.”

“It is your inheritance, Sabbie.”

My thoughts slowed until there were almost none at all.

“You come from two strong lines, Sabbie. In you, they've fused to shine with a light. And the further you pursue your practice, the more blinding that light will become. It is visible to others in a way you cannot see. It will always attract those with the deepest and the most troubled questions. Sorrow and disaster. And villainy, yes.”

“A strong line?” I thought of Lady Dare's proud frame and suspicious eyes.

“Most of all, your father. And his father. All your fathers in a line before you.”

“I know next to nothing about my father,” I whispered. “An old address. And his name.” Such a name. Frivolous, mocking. Lucky Luc Rameau, the only thing I knew for sure about him, because it was on my birth certificate.

“Those strong lines gird you to take on the world's trouble. Such people quiet the moving plates of the earth; they calm volcanoes. For you, the challenges are as you've described. The corrupt. The depraved, as well as the vulnerable. That is your path, and you will keep to it; I see that tenacity in you, Sabbie Dare.”

“Will you always be here to help me?”

“As I always have.” She chuffed a laugh. Its sound was the warmth and softness of a nighttime pillow, when you wake into darkness. “You have your father, also. Those roots penetrate deep. Those roots bind tight.”

I was still kneeling on the path. I could feel the dampness rise through my jeans. Small stones bit into my flesh. I didn't move. “I did what you asked. I laid everything out in order—in a statement for the police—and things became … not
clear
, but …”

“Ah. Like river water. Even when it is at its most limpid, you will never see the bottom as it really is, for the water is in constant motion and distorts the images below.”

“Yes. Like that. I've been trying to help Brice Hollingberry. I felt so sorry for his loss, and for the awful way someone was goading him.”

“I understand,” said the lady.

“I've ended up with shadows, a philosopher's allegory, his truth about good and evil.”

Her mouth was a hard line. “Indeed. To read shadows is to read the bottom of the river.”

“But you said, didn't you? It's my inheritance. I have to try.”

Sabrina spoke directly to Trendle, who was waiting by my feet. “Take her then. Take her.”

Trendle didn't take me to a shadowed cave, as I'd expected. Almost instantly, I was standing on cracked earth, the desert of dried soil in the Lower Realm I'd visited at Stonedown Farm. Nothing had changed in the month since I was last here. There was not a tree, not a plant,
not even a weed. Only the bare, rutted, dried-out soil and the billions of worms, still writhing as if in their death throes; as if they gasped for moisture.

A hot wind moved the dusty soil. It blew into my face, into my ears and nostrils. The sun was white with heat; already it burned the back of my neck. I shaded my eyes and looked to the edge of the horizon in every direction, searching for the wattle fence and the rough timber hut of the old man.

Nothing. Just heat haze and hot, dry breeze and worms crawling over the trainers I had worn to the police station.

And then, for just a few, blissful seconds, a shadow moved over the sun. I gasped with relief. The coolness felt glorious. I looked up. Something was hovering, high up in the sky, so large it blocked out the brightness. A bird, gigantic against the sun.

It saw me. It marked me. Its dive was so fast it seemed set to crash me into the ground. It opened its hooked beak and screeched.

“
Death of beauty! Death of grace! Death of love!”

For a second, I was mesmerized. Against the sun, the bird had seemed big, but as it soared down, it expanded, its wings stretching wider and wider. Its feet pushed out, ready for the smash and grab. I could see its talons, the razor points that would rip skin, find flesh, kill prey.

“Sabbie!”

Seconds before it hit me, Trendle's bark brought me out of my spell. I threw myself to the ground. Worms squished beneath me, slithered over me. I had to clamp my mouth shut to prevent them squirming in.

When I looked up again, the creature had lifted on the air currents and was disappearing towards the horizon. I pulled myself up. “What was that, Trendle?”

“One thing you did not lay out in order.”

Sabrina had told me to call her by her true name. Finally I'd found it, and now everything was different. Instead of talking in ciphers, what she showed me rang as clear as a bell. I pulled the scarf from my eyes and scrabbled up. Drumbeats were still pounding from my CD player, but I'd had my vision. I understood my one possibility. A shiver went across my shoulders. I didn't want this to be true. Three berserk attacks on passers-by. I'd assumed such an offender would be true to form—wicked, a villain. It was hard to process what Sabrina had revealed.

Now I needed to get to my phone. Shell was at the heart of my mystery, and I had to talk to her before I did any other thing. I found her number in my contacts, but the call went straight to voicemail. I left a message, making it plain we urgently needed to speak, and almost as I put the phone down, it rang.

“Sabbie?” came a male voice. “Sabbie Dare? This is Eijaz.”

“Eijaz?” Deep in the back of my mind I knew that name. I just couldn't bring up a picture of the face.

“Ricky's flatmate. I went to that party with you, d'you remember?”

I paused for a second. “Where is Shell? Why are you on her phone?”

“She's here, in Bristol. With Ricky. They arrived about an hour ago, yeah?”

“They've left the funeral?”

“Yeah, man, there's some things going on, I can't work out what. Shell's left her bag here and buggered off again. Her phone was ringing and I saw that you'd called her.”

“In Bristol? In your house?”

“Yeah. She's …” He trailed off. “There's something wrong. Can't put my finger on it.” He tried a laugh. “Can't be done on a spreadsheet, for sure, man. Sorta … weird. Like, what's happening between them … .weird. You're Shell's friend, right?”

“Er—absolutely.”

“She needs a friend. Right now. That's what she needs. Could you get here? Would that be possible?”

“Eijaz, you're not making much sense. Can't you just put her on, please?”

“They've gone out somewhere. To get food, I think.” His voice dropped, in tone and register. “This is what I was saying at the party. This shamanism stuff, it messes with your head. Ask me they've gone mad. I don't like it, Sabbie, and I reckon you should be the one to sort it out.”

I remembered how Eijaz, the
full-on
business student, hadn't liked Ricky's involvement with shamanism. Some people only see the stereotypes. I'd only seen detached, remorseless bankers, until I'd met Alys and Brice; Eijaz probably imagined rituals that included chicken blood and
drug-maddened
witch doctors.

“Let's slow down here. Can you tell me what Shell said? How she acted?”

“They were talking … not to me, but I overheard. I didn't mean to, but … I hated what they were saying. They're involved in something and just listening—just the bits I heard—they need help and I don't want to be the only one. I mean, when they get back—I don't wanna to be the only one here.”

I swallowed. Eijaz's cool body language had gone down well with my brother and his friends He exuded that sense of
trendy-tough
. What could have scared him? Shell had talked about taking risks
… shocking fun. Intense
.

“Sabbie? There's something in Ricky's room … you have to … see.”

“Eijaz? Can you please explain what you mean?”

“Please come.” Eijaz's voice faltered.

He thought I'd begun it, that was the subtext. That this was my fault. I had introduced Ricky to shamanism … and to Wolfsbane's girlfriend.

I was on my feet, snatching up my shoulder bag and car keys.

“Look, keep in touch, okay? I'll be an hour getting to you and I don't want to find out that they've headed back to London or something crazy.”

“It's out of my depth, that's for sure.”

His voice had dropped into a growl. As I headed for the door, I realized that was because he was
terror-stricken
.