Sam shoved his hands in his pockets. Not what he wanted to hear. He stared at his trainers for a couple of seconds.
'OK. Spare me two minutes Woolly. Over there. Excuse us lads.'
He led Woolly out of the square, away from Hughie and Gav, over towards St Benedict's, where it was quiet.
'I've been at a bit of a loose end this morning,' Sam said. 'I just walked round, looking for Diane, asking if anyone's seen her.'
'Diane's still missing?'
'Since last night.'
'Shit,' said Woolly. 'Like I know she's done this before, but…'
'I don't care if she's done it before or not. Things are different now.'
'Sheesh,' Woolly said, looking hard at Sam. 'I can see they are.'
'Yeah. Ain't life runny? Let me get this other thing out. I've been talking to people. In and out of the shops. People I haven't talked to in years. Both sides of the fence – what we thought was a fence. There's two topics on everybody's lips. The crash, obviously. But the other one's Bowkett and his Tor Bill. Most people, they just didn't realise. They just never thought it could happen.'
'Most people want it to happen,' Woolly said. 'They've had it with the New Age.'
'I reckon most people don't want it to happen. OK, maybe a lot do, but still less than half. Lot of folk out there got no big feelings about magic and earth-forces and all this crap, but they do care about freedom. And they don't want bloody Griff Daniel back.'
'So you stand against him. Take on your old man.'
'Aw, Woolly, some of these people like to go into the countryside and shoot rabbits, watch the hunt and that. They don't want me neither. But I reckon you'll see the size of the opposition, look, at dawn tomorrow, when the Bishop goes up the Tor. This Christian pagan common ground stuff, it might be crap, but if the Bishop comes out against Archer and Bowkett…'
'Better I'm not there, Sam. I got a bad feeling about that. Better I'm miles away.'
Sam had a major struggle with himself, at this point, not to tell Woolly about the evil road burrowing through Bowermead, leaving the ashes of slaughtered trees.
'Also,' Woolly said, 'on a personal level, this may be the last chance I get to walk the line before it's sliced up.' He put out his hand. 'You're a good boy, Sam. I always said that. Diane could do worse.'
He shook Sam's hand solemnly and walked towards the church.
And Sam thought, with a horrible jolt. He's not going to come back. Not ever. He's going to be found dead in his little tent near some forgotten standing stone.
'Woolly!' His sense of loss compounded. 'Woolly, listen, you gotter help us. We're all shit scared here. About Diane. About the way this town's cracking up before our eyes. You can't just walk out on us. You can't!'
Verity unscrewed the top of the brown phial. 'Dr Bach's Rescue Remedy. If you can hold his mouth open, I shall put three drops on his tongue.'
'Does it work on dogs?' Powys held open the car door. It was snowing freely now.
'Why not?' said Verity simply. She leaned into the car from the other side. Arnold lay on the back seat, a tartan travelling rug half over him. Powys patted him and then, as if to give Arnold the chance to bite him, nuzzled his face into the furry neck.
Arnold licked him apologetically. It was different out here.
'Do you know what this is?' Powys asked her.
'I think I do.' Verity squeezed the rubber bulb on the end of the glass dropper, her wizened face tight with determination. They had bathed quite a deep cut beneath the dog's ear, where he'd caught it on a nail protruding from the door. They'd felt around his skull, finding no obvious damage. But his breathing was disturbingly erratic.
'It's simply the house,' Verity said, like she was shedding a great weight. 'All animals hate it here. A few weeks ago I had to take a very placid little cat to the Cats' Protection League to be re-homed. She went berserk. Attacked me.'
They sat in the front. The snow accumulated on the recumbent wipers. Powys was not anxious to go back in the house.
'How do you stand it?'
'I'm a very dense person. I do not See. And lately there's been Dr Grainger to… help me.'
'Help you to cope with the dark?'
'I thought he was harmless. I was very lonely, you see. And my friend Wanda Carlisle is very persuasive.'
'Between them they persuaded you that this tenebral therapy nonsense was going to help you cope with what the house was throwing at you?'
'That's exactly it. Foolish, wasn't I? And yet when Oliver Pixhill came and made it clear he wanted me out, Grainger was very kind.'
'This is Colonel Pixhill's son?'
She nodded. 'I thought they didn't know each other. Dr Grainger appeared to be on my side. I thought he was harmless, you see.'
'He might be harmless. His theories might be complete bollocks. But bonding with the dark, while unlikely to cause problems in most places, could be… Well, in a place like this it could be close to suicidal.'
'I've been very stupid. Loneliness, I suppose.' Verity looked out at the snow. 'Do you know why you're here, Mr Powys?'
'Joe. I'm here to collect a parcel for Juanita Carey.'
She turned and examined his face.
'It's funny,' she said. 'You don't look at all like him.'
'Hawthorn. Hops. A little rosemary. Some other things,' Matthew Banks said.
'What's it for?' Juanita felt utterly limp. She'd drunk the herbal mixture and about three pints of water, most of which she'd surely sweated away.
It began in her feet, a prickly heat, like warm goose-pimples, crept up her legs like unwelcome, flaccid hands… and then her whole body, instant sauna, breasts and face burning up.
At least the duvet lay quite comfortably, for the first time, on her flayed thighs, to which Matthew had applied some ointment; it had stung like hell at first, but that was preferable to the other thing which came and came again, a hot tide four or five times in an hour and left her flung against the headboard like a rag doll.
'What's happened to me? Did I just do too much too soon, or what?'
'Forgive me,' Matthew said. 'But when did you last have your period?'
No. No, no no.
'Missed one. Maybe two. Shock, they said. It's normal.'
The last transition for a woman…
'What are you suggesting?' She panicked, hitched herself up on her elbows, 'Listen, Christ, it doesn't happen like this, it can't be, I mean, it doesn't happen from nothing like overnight? It doesn't come at you time and again. Not… nothing and then… Jesus Christ, Matthew…?'
'No.' He straightened the duvet. 'No. It shouldn't happen like that.'
They were all there. All the main ones, anyway; Weymouth Sands, Maiden Castle, Wolf Solent, Porius, Morwyn, Owen Glendower, A Glastonbury Romance – well, naturally. And the Autobiography.
Hardbacks, too, several in leather. She had them arranged in what might once have been a bread oven in the jagged inglenook.
Powys shrank back. He'd never seen all the books together before. like a reception committee.
Took you long enough, boy.
'What?' Almost a yelp. His senses swimming, or maybe drowning.
'I said I'd be most honoured', Verity repeated, 'if you would sign them for me. Later, perhaps?'
'I'm sorry?' He was imagining all the books spinning out of the black hole, whizzing around his head, blown by unearthly laughter.
'I doubted him. Poor Major Shepherd assured me that someone would come. He said I would know.'
