Crybbe aka Curfew

Jean Wendle was leaning against the cottage wall. She was wearing a pink velour tracksuit, She looked elegant and relaxed.

Two police cars went rapidly past, followed by a fire-engine.

Joe froze, and Fay sensed it wasn't because of the police cars, not this time.

'But quite wrong,' said Jean. 'And you know it.'

He didn't say anything.

'Michael Wort,' said Jean, 'had one of the finest of the Renaissance minds. Scientist, philosopher… these terms simply cannot encompass Michael's abilities. We no longer like to use words like magus, but that's what he was, and the reason he isn't as famous as Francis Bacon and Giordano Bruno and even – God forbid – John Dee… is that he realized the futility of books and so never wrote any. And also, of course, he lived not in Florence or Rome, or even London. But in Crybbe.'

Fay could see Joe trying to say something, trying to frame words.

'If he never wrote anything,' he said, 'how do you know he was so great?'

'Because,' said Jean, 'like all great teachers, he passed on his knowledge through training and through experience.'

Another police car went past, followed by another fire-engine.

'There's a Michael Wort tradition,' Jean said. 'It began with his own family, and then was passed to selected scholars.'

'What kind of tradition?'

'Fascinating stuff,' Jean said. 'All to do with the spirit landscape, and the interpenetration of planes. Knowledge we are only now beginning to approach.'

'They called him Black Michael,' Fay said.

'As they would. In Crybbe.'

'He hanged people.'

'He studied death, and he utilized his period as high sheriff to pursue that study. That was all.'

How bizarre. Fay thought. All hell breaking loose up in the town and here we are, three uncommitted observers from Off, calmly discussing the background as if it's a piece of theatre.

'Knowledge,' said Jean, 'isn't evil.'

'And what about what happened on the square? What about the killing of Max Goff? What about…?'

'You know, as I do, my dear, that there are some very misguided and unbalanced people in Crybbe, and there always have been. People Michael was trying to help.'

'I didn't know,' Fay said, 'that you knew so much about Michael Wort.'

'You didn't ask,' said Jean. Her short grey hair shone like a helmet in the street light.

'Fay…' Joe said.

'Joe's trying to tell you to come away,' Jean said. 'He doesn't want to end what he began.'

'Which is?'

'The Bottle Stone,' Jean said gently. 'Come and see the Bottle Stone.'

'No!' Joe backed away.

'He blames it for everything,' Jean said. 'For all his problems, all his failed relationships. The deaths of his women.'

'Fay.' Joe sounded suddenly alarmed. 'I don't know what she's doing, but don't fall for it. I meant to tell you. Jean and Andy are in this together. She sent me up to the Tump tonight, she set me up for Humble…'

'Did he tell you,' said Jean, 'how the Bottle Stone followed him here?'

'Yes,' Fay said, her throat suddenly quite dry. 'He told me that.'

'Come and see the Bottle Stone, Fay. Come on.'

'Fay.'

'Come along,' said Jean.

She rose from the wall and picked her way carefully to the gate of the cottage. 'Come on.'

Fay glanced at Joe. 'Don't,' he said quietly. 'Please.'

I meant to tell you.

She turned and followed Jean Wendle.

They went around the side of the cottage and across the damp lawn to the piece of land at the rear. Jean had produced a small torch and they followed its thin beam. Fay could hear the river idly fumbling at its banks. Jean stopped. She directed the beam a short way across the grass until it found the thick, grey base of a standing stone. Then Jean casually flipped the torch up so that they could see the top of the stone.

'It doesnae look awfully like a bottle, does it?' Jean said.

The stone appeared no more than three and half feet tall. It was fairly wide, but slim, like a blade.

Fay said, 'It doesn't look anything like a bottle.'

Andy Boulton-Trow lay on his back, holding the head above him with both hands. The hands didn't ache now.

'Michael,' he said, 'forgive me. It was a shambles. I was using weak, stupid people. I failed you.'

In the doorway, the candle was burning very low. He'd thought he could hear sirens a while back. He couldn't hear anything now.

Joe Powys hadn't rung for an ambulance.

Joe Powys had lied.

CHAPTER V

'One more, I make it,' Gomer said, a short trail of recumbent stones in his destructive wake. 'Then that's the lot.'

'You know, Gomer,' Minnie Seagrove said, sitting quite placidly next to him in the cab, the three-legged dog on her lap. 'You've surprised me tonight.'

'Surprised myself,' Gomer said gruffly. 'I'll be very surprised if I collect a penny for all this.'

'No, what I mean is… Well, I'd come to the conclusion – and I'm sorry if this sounds insulting – I'd come to the conclusion that there weren't any really decent men in Crybbe. Like, men we used to say would do anything for you. Nothing too much trouble, sort of thing… if it was the right thing.'

'Done a few bloody wrong things tonight, Minnie, my love,'

Gomer said, plunging the digger halfway down the riverbank. 'That's for certain.'

'No they weren't. They weren't wrong things at all. You've saved me from being arrested for murder, you're working overtime at a minute's notice to help that poor old chap who looks like he's on his last legs. And you've been no end of help to

young Joe…'

Gomer ploughed through an unstable-looking fence and up into the field that served as a narrow flood-plain for the river.

'I got no regrets about gettin' you out of a bit o' bother,' he said. 'An' I'd stand up in court an' say so. But that Joe – well, I'd like to think that young feller'll keep 'is mouth shut, see, that's all. You know much about 'im?'

'Not a lot,' said Minnie. 'But I'm sure he's all right.'

'It's rather sad, really,' Jean said. 'They're all bottle stones to Joe.'

Fay started to feel faint. To pull herself together, she said – screamed it out inside her head, like biting on something hard, to fight extreme pain,

MY FATHER IS DEAD.

And wondered if Jean knew about that yet. Jean who'd given him a new lease of life. Which he'd expended in whst appeared at this moment to be a distressingly futile way.