'I'm not making you a cup of tea.' Ruth hears her voice rising. 'I want you to get out of my house.'
'It's natural for you to be upset,' says Cathbad kindly.
'Have you been to the funeral? Poor little girl. Poor, undeveloped soul. I've been sitting here sending positive thoughts to Delilah.'
'I'm sure she was very grateful.'
'Don't be angry, Ruth,' says Cathbad with a surprisingly sweet smile. 'We've got no quarrel after all. Erik says you've got a good heart.'
'Very kind of him.'
'He says you understand about the Saltmarsh, about the henge. It wasn't your fault the barbarians destroyed it. I remember you that summer, hand in hand with your boyfriend. It was a magical time for you, wasn't it?'
Ruth lowers her eyes. 'Yes,' she admits.
'It was for me, too. It was the first time I'd felt really at one with nature. Knowing that the ancients built that circle for a reason. Feeling the magic still there after all those centuries and being able to experience it, just for a short time, before it was gone forever.'
Ruth remembers something that always annoyed her about the druids, even in the old days. They felt that the henge was theirs alone, that they were the only heirs of its creators. We are all descended from them, Ruth wanted to say, it belongs to all of us. She still has no idea what Cathbad is doing here.
'What do you want?' she says.
'To talk to you,' says Cathbad again. He stoops and picks up Flint, who disgusts Ruth by purring loudly. 'This is a very wise cat,' he announces, 'an old soul.'
'He's not that bright,' says Ruth. 'My other cat was cleverer.'
'Yes. I'm sorry about what happened to her.'
'How did you know?' asks Ruth. 'How did you know about my other cat?'
'Erik told me. Why? Did you think I did it?'
Ruth doesn't know what to think. Is she trapped in the kitchen with a cat killer, or worse, a child murderer? She looks at Cathbad as he stands there, holding Flint in his arms. His face is open, slightly hurt-looking. He doesn't look like a killer but then what does a killer look like?
'I don't know what to think,' she says. 'The police have charged you with writing those letters.'
Immediately, Cathbad's face darkens. 'The police! That bastard Nelson has it in for me. I'm going to sue him for wrongful arrest.'
'Did you write them?'
Cathbad smiles and puts Flint gently back on the floor.
'I think you know I didn't,' he says. 'You've read them, after all.'
'How did you…?'
'Nelson's not as clever as he thinks he is. He gave it away. Yakking on about archaeology terms. There's only one person who could have told him all that. You're very friendly, you two, aren't you? There's definite energy between you.'
Ruth says nothing. Cathbad may not, as Erik claims, be magic but there is no denying that some of his shots hit the mark.
'I know you, Ruth,' says Cathbad chattily, hitching himself up to sit on the work surface. 'I watched you fall in love with that red-haired fellow all those years ago. I know what you're like when you're in love. You were in love with Erik too, weren't you?'
'Of course not!'
'Oh yes you were. I felt sorry for you because you didn't get a look-in, what with his wife and girlfriend both on the dig.'
'Girlfriend? What do you mean?'
'That beautiful girl with all the hair. Looks like a Renaissance picture. Frimavera or something. Teaches at the university. She was sympathetic to us, I remember.
Joined in the protests. Well, until it started to get serious.'
'Shona?' Ruth whispers. 'That's not true.'
'No?' Cathbad looks at her, head on one side, while Ruth shuffles quickly through her memories. Shona and Erik always liked each other. Erik called her The Lady of Shalott after the Waterhouse portrait. An image comes to her, clear as a film flashback, of Shona plaiting Erik's grey ponytail. 'Like a horse,' she is saying, 'a Viking carthorse,'
and her hand rests lightly on his cheek.
Cathbad smiles, satisfied. 'I need you to clear my name, Ruth,' he says.
'I thought the police didn't press charges.'
'Oh no, they didn't charge me with the murders, but if they never find the killer, it'll always be me, don't you see?
Everyone will always think I did it, that I killed those two little girls.'
'And did you?' asks Ruth, greatly daring.
Cathbad's eyes never leave her face. 'No,' he says. 'And I want you to find out who did.'
He has come back. When she sees him climbing in through the trapdoor she doesn't know if she is pleased or sorry.
She is hungry though. She tears at the food he has brought – crisps, sandwiches, an apple – stuffing another mouthful in her mouth before she has finished the first.
'Steady,' he says, 'you'll make yourself sick.'
She doesn't answer. She hardly ever speaks to him. She saves talking for when she is alone, which, after all, is most of the time, when she can chat to the friendly voices in her head, the ones that tell her it is darkest before dawn.
He gives her a drink in a funny orange bottle. It tastes odd but she gulps it down. Briefly she wonders if it is poison like the apple the wicked witch gave Snow White, but she is so thirsty she doesn't care.
'I'm sorry I couldn't come before,' he says. She ignores him, chewing up the last of the apple, including the pips and core.
'I'm sorry,' he says again. He often says this but she doesn't really know what it means. 'Sorry' is a word from long ago, like 'love' and 'goodnight'. What does it mean now? She isn't sure. One thing she knows, if he says it, it can't be a good word. He isn't good, she is sure of it now.
At first she was confused, he brought her food and drink and a blanket at night and sometimes he talked to her.
Those were good things, she thought. But now she thinks that he keeps her locked in, which isn't good. After all, if he can climb through the trapdoor, up into the sky, why can't she? Now she is taller she has tried to jump up to the door and the barred window but she never manages it.
Maybe one day, if she keeps getting taller and taller, as tall as… what was it called? As tall as a tree, that's it. She'll push her branches through the hole and carry on, up, up to where she hears the birds singing.
When he has gone she digs up her sharp stone and runs the edge of it against her cheek.
CHAPTER 20
Ruth is awoken from confused dreams by a furious knocking at the door. She staggers downstairs, groggy with sleep, to find Erik, dressed in army surplus and a bright yellow sou'wester, standing on the doorstep.
'Good morning, good morning,' he says brightly, like some crazed holiday rep. 'Any chance of a cup of coffee?'
Ruth leans against the door frame. Is he mad or is she?
'Erik,' she says weakly, 'what are you doing here?'
Erik looks at her incredulously. 'The dig,' he says. 'It starts today.'
Of course. Erik's dig. The one approved by Nelson. The dig that aims to answer the riddle of the Iron Age body and the buried causeway. To find out whether the Saltmarsh has any more secrets.
