surrounded the huge oak door and he stood there for a moment looking into the gaping space which had once been the great hall. The echoing cry of a jackdaw broke the intense silence and he watched the black shadow of the bird sweep between windows open to wind and snow.
For four years now Toby had lived within ten miles of this old pile without being aware of its existence.
He wished he still didn’t know.
He moved forward into the space which had once been the centre of the household’s activity and looked up. Five fireplaces, one above the other, rose up within the floorless keep, each successively smaller. A huge pile of twigs filled the top one, the chosen dwelling place of the jackdaw family, sole occupants now of the building which had seen so much of Scotland’s history. And, so it turned out, that of his own family. He shuddered. The cry of the jackdaw was echoed by the wild mew of a buzzard circling the surrounding hills.
Toby rammed the guidebook into his pocket and moved on. It was cold within the walls of the castle, shadowed from the sun which outside was fast melting the night’s fall of snow. All around him he could hear the sound of water, from the river which ran in full spate round the bottom of the escarpment on which the castle stood, from the sea of rhododendrons and from the dripping icicles and the melting snow.
Slipping on the icy, worn stone steps, he ducked out of the keep and walked into the rectangular area which, according to the guidebook, had formed the north tower, an extra block of living quarters built in the sixteenth century, but which had then been torn down to form the base of the carriage house and stables constructed much later by the seventh earl. It was here that his grandson, Roger Carstairs, had kept his museum, the collection of artefacts which had been destroyed by the catastrophic fire started, so the story went, by a disaffected servant while Roger was away on his travels. Included in this collection, presumably, were all the things he had brought back from his trips to Egypt.
Toby sighed. Egypt. Where only a few brief weeks before he had first met Anna.
He had set out on the visit to Egypt with such optimism. True it was going to be a package tour from Luxor to Aswan, with a boat full of strangers, but that was OK. That was his job. A painter and travel writer, he was going to report the experience for a Sunday paper in full humorous detail – the ups, the downs, the good places, the spoiled places, the nice people, the sad people. He was going to go home with a sketch book full of wonderful ideas and as a bonus he would catch some winter sunshine.
He had met Anna Fox on the flight out. Or at least tried not to meet her. He was well aware that he was being boorish, but he had vowed, if he was stuck next to some gossiping idiot for the five hour flight, that he would not be sucked in. The fact that the woman next to him had been beautiful with her long dark hair and her hazel eyes and in the event, far from being a gossiping idiot, had in fact been extremely interesting, had not penetrated his thick skull. Not then. Not for sometime. Although he had at least become aware that, far from engrossing herself in some trashy airport paperback, she had spent the journey reading an old diary, a Victorian diary, which, from his occasional oblique glance across at where it lay on her lap, seemed very interesting indeed.
The scream of the buzzard was louder now. It was circling closer, scanning the ground. Toby ducked instinctively as the broad-winged shadow flicked over him and disappeared behind the high grey walls.
He moved forward thoughtfully, picking his way over the remains of the more recent walls, which were marked now by no more than a couple of courses of stone. How odd that only the earlier foundations remained. Of the comparatively new Georgian and Victorian grandeur there was nothing to be seen. He moved across what had once been the open courtyard, slipping on the uneven cobbles. It wasn’t so strange to think of Roger Carstairs living here. An urbane, sophisticated world traveller, he had been still, in his blood, the wild border Scot, descendant of caterans and murdering reivers, a man used to getting his way; a man used to taking what he wanted, whether it was an artefact – or a woman. There was one artefact he had failed to obtain, and it had belonged to the one woman whom he had failed to win. There was a paragraph about her in the guidebook. Fishing it out of his pocket, Toby glanced down at the page which opened in front of him. Roger had met the artist Louisa Shelley in Egypt. Their relationship had, according to the author of the guidebook, been nothing short of stormy. Toby grimaced. What an understatement. But then the author hadn’t had the opportunity of reading Louisa’s diary. The diary in which Anna had been so engrossed when he first met her.
Behind him, from the keep, a chorus of angry shrieks and a shower of twigs falling five storeys into the open undercroft beneath the keep signalled a quarrel amongst the avian residents of the castle. Toby glanced up as a ragged black feather drifted down. He bent and picked it up, then straightening abruptly he glanced round, the feather in his hand. He had heard someone laugh. He frowned uneasily. The deep throaty chuckle had seemed to come from immediately behind him. He turned to stare at the shadowed embrasures, the open doorways. There was no one there. The buzzard had headed away now towards the distant hills. The jackdaws had subsided into silence as they preened on the top of the wall in the sunlight. In the shadow of what remained of the tower it was intensely cold. Toby found himself listening carefully. Had some more visitors arrived while he was wandering around lost in thought? Shivering he rammed his hands deep into his pockets. Just for an instant he had imagined that someone, somewhere, had whispered his name.
God! The place was getting to him. The atmosphere was in some way thickening. He stretched out his hand as though he could touch the air around him. There was no one there. No one that he could see. And yet he had the feeling that he was being watched. Watched by whom?
He could guess.
It was his great-great grandfather.
His hand closed around the guidebook. To think that when he had set out on the trip to Egypt he hadn’t believed in ghosts. He hadn’t believed in a lot of things. But then he hadn’t known of his descent from Lord Carstairs. He had vaguely heard of the man – who hadn’t? His sinister reputation was the kind that reverberated down the years, leaving an unpleasant taste in the mouth. As it happened the earldom had died out with the death of the eleventh earl. As far as he knew there were no direct descendants left. Just his mother, Frances. And him.
He smiled grimly. What a cocktail of blood to inherit.
2
Serena Canfield was kneeling before a small ornate altar in the front room of her maisonette in West Hampstead. She was still very aware of the emptiness of her home. It was several years now since her much loved partner and soulmate had died. The aching gap and the silence left by him had been only partially filled by a succession of tenants and Charley, the latest, had just returned to her parents’ home. The ensuing peace had initially been supremely welcome, but lately, perhaps because her next door neighbours on one side were away, on the other side out at work all day, the quietness of the place had begun to worry her.
The last of her prayers completed, she sat back on her heels in silent meditation.
An attractive woman in her mid forties with short dark hair, it was Serena’s huge green eyes which immediately caught the attention. She was a self-confessed modern-day priestess of Isis – something which at the beginning of their cruise up the Nile, had intrigued and amused her fellow passengers. She had been visiting Egypt as part of a spiritual journey which she had been following for many years now. The visit had been traumatic and in many ways frightening, but it had done nothing to lessen her faith. On the contrary, it had left her more certain than ever of the power of her chosen goddess.
Opening her eyes she surveyed her altar. There, between a statue of Isis and the stately, smug Bast cat with its single gold earring and its inscrutable gaze, stood a small old bottle. The pale encrusted glass reflected no light at all. Rather it seemed to absorb it. She reached out to touch it, hesitated, then almost defiantly she picked it up. The bottle seemed unnaturally cold. Uneasily she glanced round the room. It was full of shadows, the only light coming from the candles on the altar and a small table lamp in the opposite corner. Before she had started her prayers she had closed the curtains. By now it would be dark outside, the streets wet with sleet reflecting the car headlights as homecoming commuters turned down the road and competed for parking positions. She could hear an engine revving now as someone tried to back their car into an impossibly tight slot. A stray beam from the headlights as they manoeuvred penetrated the curtains and hit the wall near her. She caught her breath. Something had moved, caught in the beam. A figure, here in the room with her, or just a trick of her overwrought imagination? ‘Blessed Isis, be here. Protect me. Show me what to do with this bottle of your tears.’ Serena whispered the words
