Midnight is a Lonely Place

The two men looked at one another for a moment across Alison’s bowed head.

She could not hear them. He was there now, his fury blistering inside her skull. The grave. Destroy the grave!

With a sob she wrenched herself free of Jon’s arm. Staggering a few steps from him, she aimed a kick at the snow-covered sand. ‘Destroy it!’ The voice which came from her lips was guttural; low pitched. A man’s voice, for all the words were clearly English.

Jon stepped back in surprise. Then, regathering his wits, he moved forward again to pick up the jacket which had slipped from her shoulders and wrap it once more around her. ‘Come on. You must keep warm.’ His own voice was shaking with cold.

‘No!’ She shook him off with ease. ‘Keep away from me.’ She threw the jacket down on the snow and leaped down into the shallow hollow below the dune with a sudden, last surge of energy. ‘The sea will take it soon.’ She threw back her head and laughed. ‘The sea will take it at last! Two thousand years it has taken for the tide to come and tonight it will wipe the slate clean!’ She stood staring at the sea, her hair streaming back from her forehead, her eyes fixed on the horizon. Jon and Pete, surprised into silence, stared with her. The wind was strengthening from the east, whipping the snow in across the water, building the waves, pushing the sea higher and higher up the beach.

‘Alison!’

The cry barely reached them. For a moment none of them reacted, then Jon turned. Three figures were hurrying towards them, heads down into the wind, almost lost in the white whirl of snowflakes.

‘Kate?’ As he recognised her Jon felt his heart leap inside his chest. Relief, joy, worry – all three seemed to swirl around his head as he stepped towards her. She was accompanied by a young man – a boy he saw as he looked closer – and Anne.

‘Jon?’ Her astonishment stopped her in her tracks.

‘Hi.’ He found he was smiling. He shrugged. ‘It’s a long story.’

She stared at him for a moment, overwhelmed with relief, wanting to throw herself into his arms, then her glance moved on past him, resting briefly on Pete before she turned to Alison.

‘Allie? Allie, are you all right?’ Her questions to Jon could come later. The fact that he was there, on the beach in the snow, spoke volumes. She slid down the side of the dune after Patrick who had thrown his arms around his sister.

Alison shrugged him off viciously, and he staggered back, bewildered. ‘She’s gone, Kate.’ There were tears running down his face. ‘She’s gone. She’s not here. It’s not her.’

‘Allie!’ Kate took Alison’s hand and chafed it in her own. ‘Allie, come on. Fight it. Please. You have to fight it. Come back to us!’

‘What’s wrong with her?’ Pete slid down beside them.

‘She’s ill. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.’ Pushing her hair out of her eyes, Kate began to button the jacket across Alison’s chest. ‘We have to get her back out of the wind. She’s no strength left.’

‘She seemed to have plenty of strength to me, love.’ Pete grimaced. ‘She nearly pushed me across the beach.’

‘But don’t you see, that’s not her!’ Kate cried. ‘That’s not her strength. He’s possessing her. He’s draining her. We have to get her away from here.’

‘I’ll take her.’ Jon did not waste time asking her what she was talking about. He lifted Alison off her feet and turning, began to tramp inland, with his back to the wind.

He knew the exact moment when the strength went out of her. He could feel it draining away as he walked. Physically, she seemed lighter suddenly – a bag of bones in his arms where moments before he had held a rigid, angry body. He clutched her more closely, glancing down at her face as he cradled her against his chest. Her eyes were closed, her face white, a child’s face, when a moment before it had seemed to belong to someone else entirely. He shuddered and suddenly there was a hand on his arm. He glanced sideways and met Kate’s eyes. She smiled as she stumbled along at his side. ‘Thank God you’re here.’ Did he hear the words against the wind or did he imagine them? He wanted to reach out and touch her, but all he could do was smile and stagger on, feeling the weight of the girl dragging at his arms. Suddenly, her head lolled back and her eyes rolled open. He stopped, horrified, staring down at her face. She was limp now, cold inside the roughly-buttoned jacket.

‘Jon, what is it?’ Kate was beside him, looking down at Alison’s face.

He met her eyes. ‘We’ve got to get her inside quickly, Kate.’

Wordlessly she nodded. Tucking the jacket more closely around Alison’s inert body, she followed as Jon walked on across the snow through the dunes, his shoulders hunched against the wind.

In the cottage he carried her straight upstairs and laid her gently on Kate’s bed, then he stood back as Kate pulled the blankets over the girl and chafed her hands.

Pete appeared in the doorway behind them. He had pulled the front door closed, and then, firmly, shut the door to the living room before climbing the stairs.

‘What happened to Bill?’ Jon asked softly. His eyes were fixed on Alison’s face.

Kate did not look up. ‘He was attacked. In the woods near here.’

‘Attacked?’

She went on rubbing Alison’s hand. ‘He said it was a woman. Two women. We brought him here. But the phones were out. We couldn’t get help.’ Her voice was shaking; he saw a tear fall onto the blanket. Stepping forward he put his hand on her shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. ‘Judging by the bruises on his face no one could have helped, Kate. I should think his skull was fractured in a dozen places.’

‘He said Allie did it.’ The words were out before she could stop them. She heard both men gasp and at last she looked up. ‘She couldn’t have done, could she? She couldn’t… He was a big man. She’s only a child…’

The room was very silent. The girl on the bed, her face white, her hair strewn damply across the pillow, did not move. Her hand in Kate’s was limp and cold. Kate leaned back against Jon, her eyes closed. She was suddenly so weary she couldn’t move. Alison’s hand dropped from her fingers. For a moment it lay on the blanket where it had fallen, then suddenly it convulsed into a fist. The girl’s eyes flew open. Her voice when she spoke was strong and triumphant.

‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Listen. The tide is rising at last.’

LXV

When Boudicca swept across the country and burned the city she still called Camelodunum, he was one of the few who managed to escape. Taking his new wife and his child, he rode out of the town in good time and waited in safety as the smoke of rebellion rolled across the country. A spark had ignited the revolt as he had known it would. But it had not been his doing. Claudia’s curse had not touched him. The sacrifice of an unknown, unsung prince to the gods of a British bog had sunk unnoticed into the mists of time. He was triumphant. Later, when the revolt was quelled and Nion’s tribe had gone, lost in the slaughter of a proud and rebellious people, he would obtain the land.

He asked for the marsh where the whore he had called his wife had died, as a reward for his services to Rome and it was given to him with much more. He grew rich and fat; he bought more land; he owned two villas. He watched his son grow; the boy who had rich auburn hair and eyes of glass grey like his mother, and once a year he rode east, to the edge of the land and he stood looking down into the marsh, staring at the irises and bog cotton which blew in the knife-blade wind. Others, unseen strangers, still offered sacrifices to the gods of the marsh – pots of coins, small pieces of jewellery, even weapons. He offered nothing. He did not throw down a rose to commemorate the love which had gone; he did not hurl a dagger to the gods of hate. He merely stood and stared at the shifting, watery scene glittering in the sunlight, and, before he turned to go, he spat upon her curse.

‘The storm is getting worse.’ Diana turned from the study window, letting the curtain fall. She looked down at the bed where her husband lay. His face was grey with pain. His hands were clawing restlessly at the blanket she had pulled over him.

‘Don’t worry. Joe will make it.’ His voice was growing noticeably weaker. ‘He’s a stubborn old bugger. I can’t