‘It’s her. Let her in.’ She heard the muffled words as the letter- box sprang shut followed at once by the sound of bolts being drawn back.

‘Quickly. Come in.’ Kate pulled her over the threshold into a darkened hall. Anne was dimly aware of a guttering candle on a saucer as someone closed the door behind her and shot the bolts across once more, then she was ushered into a candlelit living room. It was warm, and smelled of wonderful cooking and it was full of people.

She stared round, doing a double take. ‘It’s like the hospital at Scutari,’ she blurted out. ‘Kate, love, what’s been happening?’

A woman, wearing a sling and with a black eye lay on the sofa; a girl, wrapped in rugs was lying on pillows in the corner; a man, his bandaged foot propped up on a stool sat beside the fire. Behind her the two men – one man and a boy, she corrected herself as she glanced at them – who had opened the door with Kate were standing staring at her as if she had just appeared from Mars. Two other people and a girl stood nearby, all looking at her. ‘What is happening here? What’s wrong?’

‘Oh, Anne!’ Kate threw herself into her arms. ‘I’ve never been so pleased to see anyone in my life!’

‘The dea ex machina, come to rescue us, I presume.’ The words came from the man with the injured foot.

Anne stared at him blankly then she turned to Kate. ‘You’d better explain,’ she said.

LVII

He rode fast, leaning forward on his horse’s neck, the brooch, the native brooch which had pinned her gown, holding his own cloak now against the wind. The prince of the Trinovantes had paid the price and gone to his gods and the hell-cat woman with him, with her curses and her hate. Well, let her curse. Who would ever know what had happened here today? There were no witnesses, no survivors. Her sister, simple docile girl that she was, would believe him when he told her Claudia had fled with her lover to his brothers in the west. She would be shocked, but she would believe him. And she would understand the need for divorce. He smiled as he rode, and raised his hand to flog his horse on faster as it scaled the rise in the track, its hooves throwing up clouds of dust. He had already decided that he would remarry. Her sister was much like her to look at, much younger and more biddable by far. She could take over his household and raise his son; provide him with more sons if she did her duty well. And he would see to it that the prince’s tribe came no more to Colonia Claudia Victricensis. They incubated sedition and plotted with the Iceni against Rome. A burning straw would ignite the mood against their overlords, but it would not be his straw; no uprising would be of his instigation. Nor hers. Claudia. The woman he had treated as a goddess. No one would ever know what had occurred here today. She would never tell; she had taken her betrayal and her fury with her to her muddy, inglorious death.

‘There are ten people in this house.’ Roger stood with his back to the fire, looking down at the others as they sat round him. Allie still had not spoken. She was asleep on a pile of cushions and pillows in the corner and no one suggested waking her. Sue was sitting beside her, holding her hand, her eyes closing as she nodded sleepily in the warmth of the room. ‘I cannot believe that we can’t vanquish whatever is threatening us here tonight. Anne. You are, I gather, the expert,’ he bowed in her direction. ‘And we seem to be agreed that our enemy is not human. Can I ask you to take the floor and tell us what the hell to do!’ He moved to his chair and sank into it with a groan.

Anne felt a thousand times better than she had walking on her own through the woods, but now that the full horror of the situation had been explained to her even a bowl of hot soup had not managed to dispel the chill which had settled in her stomach. She shook her head. ‘I’m a psychologist, not a psychic. I know very little about ghosts. As far as I know I’ve never seen one.’ Then what or who was the mysterious horseman who had thundered past her on the track? No one in the house knew anything about him.

‘You must help Allie, Anne,’ Kate put in from her seat on the floor. She was leaning against the side of Greg’s chair, gazing into the embers. His hand was resting lightly on her shoulder.

‘I think she’s possessed.’ Greg said quietly. ‘Her strength, her voice, her actions. None of them belong to Alison.’

‘Greg. Don’t!’ Diana’s voice was anguished. She glanced across at the two girls. Sue’s head had fallen forward; her grip on Alison’s hand had loosened and her fingers were slack. She was dozing. Alison moved her head restlessly from side to side and then lay still again. Her eyes were not properly closed. Beneath the half-open lids the whites showed as pale slits.

Anne bit her lip. They were all looking at her and she didn’t know what the hell to say. ‘Has she been seen by a doctor recently?’ she asked at last. ‘There are quite a few conditions which could fit some of what has happened to her. For instance, has she had a head injury in the last few months? Even quite a mild knock could do it.’ She looked from Diana to Roger and back. Diana shook her head. ‘And there has been no organic damage at any time as far as you know? Cysts, lesions, tumours, anything like that? Has she complained of headaches?’

‘Yes, she has.’ Patrick and Greg spoke simultaneously.

‘But you’re on the wrong track there,’ Greg went on. ‘Quite wrong.’

‘Not necessarily.’ Anne looked at him seriously. ‘There could be a medical reason for her suffering these strange blackouts and we need to rule them out if we can.’ Again she looked at Diana. ‘Is there any family history of schizophrenia or genetic disorders as far as you know?’

Diana shook her head.

‘And there is no possibility that she is taking drugs?’

‘None at all.’ Diana pressed her hands to her cheeks. ‘I was a nurse, Anne. Do you think I haven’t thought of these things? Besides, Allie is not the only one to have had strange experiences.’

Anne paused. She bit her lip. She had felt on reasonably safe ground talking in medical terms. ‘OK.’ she went on carefully. ‘Let’s explore some other possibilities and find out exactly what we are talking about. I take it that nothing has happened actually inside this house.’ Her eyes rested speculatively for a moment on Greg’s hand on Kate’s shoulder.

‘Except for Allie going peculiar; but that probably happened, as Kate said, on the beach.’

‘And my books on the floor,’ Paddy put in.

‘And I smelt her perfume. It was in your study, Roger.’ Kate hugged her knees more tightly.

Roger raised an eyebrow. ‘What does she use? Chanel?’

‘Something with flowers – jasmine and musk and amber. And with it there is always the smell of wet earth.’

Anne looked at her carefully. ‘How often have you smelt this?’

‘Often. In the cottage too.’

‘And it always precedes some kind of phenomenon?’

Kate shrugged. ‘Not always. Sometimes that is all there is.’

‘And him. Marcus. Does he have a smell too?’

Kate looked up at Greg. He shook his head. ‘I can’t say I’ve noticed. When he’s around one is too shit-scared to notice anything.’

‘Is it mass hysteria?’ Diana said slowly. ‘Are we all infecting each other?’ She was shivering in spite of the heat of the fire.

Anne shrugged. ‘It’s possible. How many of you have actually seen something?’ She looked at Roger, who shook his head almost regretfully. ‘Diana?’

‘No. It’s all hearsay – except for what happened to Allie, of course.’

‘Kate and I have seen both Marcus and Claudia,’ Greg said slowly. He caressed Kate’s neck gently. ‘Cissy and Sue saw him clearly. Allie obviously has seen them both. Paddy -?’

‘I felt him,’ Patrick said slowly. ‘And we saw him out there. I shot at him. And he wrote a message on my computer.’

‘He wrote it, or you wrote it without knowing you’d done it?’ Anne asked.

‘I don’t know. I don’t remember doing it. But how would a Roman know how to use a computer?’

Anne smiled. ‘He wouldn’t.’

‘I wrote something strange on my computer too,’ Kate added. ‘A curse. “May the gods of all eternity curse you Marcus Severus Secundus for what you have done here this day…”’

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