Tomorrow's ghost

He was doing his best to repair the damage done by the young man's interruption, Frances realised. But the spell was broken.

'I'm sorry,' said the young man contritely, as though he'd caught a sudden glimpse of her embarrassment. 'I didn't mean to spoil the story - please go on.'

Frances was momentarily aware of the hubbub of conversation and the clink of coffee cups eddying around them.

'...an altogether tedious man, without the least pretension...'

'...so I told him to read Henry Esmond instead. A far more impressive novel than Vanity Fair, and just right for television...'

'...first he put his hand on her knee. And then...'

'Please go on,' repeated the young man.

At least they weren't asking her awkward questions about Ronald, anyway.

She took a deep breath. 'The third prince ... he'd been on the road for years, ever since he'd first heard how beautiful the princess was - he didn't know anything about the spell. And when he reached the castle where she lived he asked to be taken straight to her. And he kissed her, and she was instantly transformed back to her true self again.

And they lived happily ever after.'

The young man frowned at her. 'Yes ... but I don't quite see how...?' he trailed off.

She smiled her careful tight-lipped smile at him.

But Granny, I don't quite see...

'Neither did he, of course,' she said. 'Because - can't you guess?'

'He was blind,' said Professor Crowe.

Frances looked at him in surprise. 'You know the story?'

'No.' Crowe shook his head. 'And you say your grandmother told you the story? And she'd had it from her grandmother?'

'Yes. Why d'you ask? Is it important?'

'No. But it is significant, I fancy.' He nodded thoughtfully at her. 'I rather think it isn't a true fairy story, though. It has elements of the traditional folk-tale, of course - the original enchantment sounds typical enough. And the test-kiss, or kiss-test, is straight out of Perrault, so you'll probably find it classified in Thompson's Folk Motif Index. But I suspect they've all been grafted on to a very much darker superstition - a pagan- Christian tradition, possibly ...'

The young man laughed. 'Oh - come on, Hugo - '

'It's no laughing matter, dear boy. In fact, it reminds me of nothing so much as one of the superstitions associated with the Madonna del Carmine at Naples - or with the Madonna della Colera herself even...' He nodded again at Frances. 'In which case you were quite right to be scared, my dear - which is itself an interesting example of a child sensing the truth of something she didn't understand and couldn't know. Because even the telling of the Neopolitan story is considered to be unlucky except under special circumstances, and if I were a Neapolitan and a good catholic I should be crossing myself now, I can tell you.'

Frances stared at him. She had always felt there was something in Granny's tale of the blind prince and the ugly princess which had eluded her, and Robbie too. Yet now she felt an irrational reluctance to collect the answer simply by asking the Professor to retell the Madonna's story. She knew that she still wanted to know, but that she didn't want to find out.

The young man experienced no such qualms. 'Your grandmother wasn't from Naples by any remote chance, I take it?'

'No.' Frances, still staring at Crowe, caught the hint of a reluctance similar to her own.

'A pity! Well ... tell us about the Madonna del Carmine, Hugo. Or, better still, the Madonna della Colera - she sounds positively fascinating!'

Crowe regarded the young man distantly. 'That, my dear Julian, you must find out for yourself. Those are two ladies whose acquaintance I have not the slightest desire to make at present. You may inquire of Professore Amedeo in the Languages Faculty, though I doubt that he will choose to enlighten you, prudent fellow that he is.'

The hint of reluctance was overlaid by the donnish repartee, so that Frances was no longer sure that Crowe had ever been serious, or whether he had merely been fencing with a favourite young colleague - and 'Julian' was almost too good to be true, anyway.

Yet she could have sworn that there had been something there more than mere erudition in that withdrawn look, a touch of an older and humbler instinct, a different wisdom.

Julian gaped at the Professor. 'Good God, Hugo! Are you asking for cold iron and holy water and the

Lord's Prayer?'

'Or bread and salt, and rowan berries ... and if you must resort to the Lord's Prayer - '

Professor Crowe craned his neck and gazed around him as though he had just remembered an important message as yet undelivered to someone who ought to be in the room ' - don't forget to pray aloud, dear boy...'

That, at least, was one allusion Frances could place accurately: Robbie himself had once explained to her, at a Stratford-upon-Avon Macbeth, how both spells and counter-spells only worked when spoken out loud or traced in blood because the Devil could never see into a human soul and consequently required verbal or written undertakings, like those she had given at the marriage ceremony.

'I see that the long arm of the law is back,' murmured Crowe to Frances. 'And I rather think it is reaching out towards you again. Miss Fitzgibbon.'