‘It is some sort of crystal ball,’ she murmured to herself. ‘Is that it? An ancient crystal ball?’ She glanced into the box. In the bottom, hidden by the crumpled silk was a piece of paper. Unfolding it carefully she squinted at the faded brown ink.
It was signed with a faint scrawl. Her great-grandmother had been called Amelia. Abi squinted at the signature. Elizabeth? Elspeth? Something beginning with E. She refolded the paper and tucked it back into the box. The Serpent Stone. She shivered. ‘So, you have a story to tell?’ she whispered. ‘A dangerous story.’ What had her mother said? It had destroyed her faith.
The door opened so suddenly she nearly jumped out of her skin. ‘What are you doing up here?’ Her father erupted into the room. He was panting heavily from the stairs. He was wearing the same checked shirt he had had on for three days. She could smell the stale aroma of sweat with a faint oily overlay of alcohol. She frowned. He must have been drinking in the privacy of his lonely study. She stood away from the table almost guiltily. ‘I just came up to be near her,’ she said after a moment.
He glared at her. ‘You can’t be near her. She’s gone. Don’t you understand? She’s gone!’ It was a wild cry of despair.
‘I know.’ Abi held out her hand towards him. ‘I miss her too,’ she pleaded.
Her gesture seemed to inflame his rage even further. ‘You? You miss her? You moved out! You betrayed us! You turned your back on everything we believed. You broke her heart!’ He stepped closer to her and spotted the box on the table with the stone sitting next to it in full view. He stopped in his tracks. ‘That thing! I told her to get rid of it.’ For a moment he seemed paralysed with shock. ‘How could she defy me? How could she lie? After all that happened!’
‘What is it, Dad? I don’t understand. What happened?’ Abi looked down at the stone then back at his face. Her mother’s voice echoed in her head suddenly. ‘This is something I have kept hidden from your father.’
He took a deep breath, visibly trying to steady himself and sat down heavily on the chaise longue by the window. He was still breathing hard from the stairs. ‘When we were first married we were happy. So happy. I had a research post at Bristol University.’ He appeared almost to be talking to himself, staring past her, his eyes fixed on some point in space she could not see. Then you came along. It was all so wonderful and then it was ruined.’ There was a long silence.
‘Ruined? By me?’ Abi whispered at last. Her own memories of her childhood were of sunny holidays, fond grandparents, laughing cousins, her parents holding hands, looking into each other’s eyes, sharing jokes, unspoken messages of tenderness, or complicity against the world. They had loved her. She was sure they had both loved her. When had it all gone wrong? And why hadn’t she noticed?
She moved away from the table and sat down on a wooden chair next to the wall. He didn’t seem to register that she had moved. ‘I was awarded a research post here at Cambridge,’ he went on. His voice was shaking slightly. ‘We were thrilled. It was one of the top jobs in the country.’
Abi remembered that. She had thought it was wonderful, so different from the Victorian cottage in Bristol, falling in love with Cambridge even as a small child with the ethereal beauty of the colleges, the Backs, the river, its magical atmosphere, its romantic stories and with the huge, rambling grey house into which they moved. The garden had been an exciting wilderness. It was the challenge of all those brambles, those hidden corners and those rampant nettles which had set her mother on the quest for order and beauty and peace which would lead her to fame and fortune. Well, fame. Abi gave a faint smile at the memory.
‘That thing was a farewell present from her mother.’ His voice grew hard and cold. ‘Some present! I didn’t even know about it. She gave it to Lally because we were moving so far away; in case we never saw her again.’ His voice trailed into silence.
Abi sat still, waiting. She didn’t dare speak. He was staring into space, no longer seeing her, his eyes fixed on some moment in the distant past.
‘We didn’t, of course. She must have known she was dying.’ He heaved another sigh. ‘Lally brought it to me one day. “Look at this, Harry,” she said, so pleased with herself. “You think you know it all but I bet you can’t explain this!” She was laughing, her eyes so bright. Excited. “Touch it!” she said. “Tell me what it is.” I could see what it was. Quartz crystal. SiO2. Silicon dioxide. It can be quite beautiful, but this was a hideous lump of the stuff, still in its rock matrix. I told her to put it on her rockery and grow something over it. “Oh no,” she said. “No way. Hold it. Feel the vibes!” She was wearing a long gypsy skirt. She looked like a happy child. You must have been about six then.’ So he remembered she was still there. Abi shifted uneasily. ‘She put it in my hands.’ He paused. ‘I felt it grow hot. It was vibrating. The crystal faces appeared to be moving.’ He shuddered. ‘I told her it wasn’t possible. It was a trick. She snatched it away from me. “Women’s magic,” she said. “Not for you!” She laughed at me. She called me a silly old scientist.’ He looked at Abi at last and she saw tears in his eyes. ‘Why did she die! She was fifteen years younger than me. I should have been the one to go first!’
Abi bit her lip, trying to hold back her own distress. She knew better than to go to him again. At the crematorium when she had tried to take his arm he had shaken her off, in front of everyone, as though her very touch had polluted him.
As if reading her thoughts he looked up at her. ‘Don’t you dare try and comfort me with platitudes about your Jesus!’ His tone was vicious.
‘I wasn’t going to. I know better than that.’
He wasn’t listening. He moved towards the table and stared down at the lump of crystal. ‘She kept it. She hid it from me, but not from you. She told you. That’s how you were infected with this Jesus business. It not only stole my beloved wife. It stole my little daughter as well.’ His voice rose to a howl of anguish.
‘Dad -’
‘Don’t bother to deny it. Don’t even try. It’s all too late. I want you to get out. Pack your bags and go. Do you hear? Leave me alone. There is nothing you can do here. Nothing!’ Tears were streaming down his face.
‘Dad, please.’
‘Get out!’ The howl turned into a scream of fury. Abi flinched away from him. ‘Get out!’ He pointed to the door. ‘Now! As for this thing.’ He grabbed the crystal in both hands. ‘It can go and shatter on the rockery where it belongs!’ Taking three swift paces towards the window he hurled it out into the sunshine. It fell three storeys and disappeared.
5
Abi pulled up at the side of the road and peered across between the lichen-covered stone pillars of the gateway up the short driveway. Woodley Manor was situated on wooded, rocky outcrop rising out of the Somerset levels, halfway between Wells and Glastonbury, barely seven miles or so from the Mendip village of Priddy where her mother and the bishop had grown up as childhood neighbours. The house, long and low with a pillared Georgian front door, and covered in deep richly crimson swathes of Virginia Creeper was built of warm honey-coloured stone under a roof of moss-grown slates and lay dreaming in the mellow sunshine. It was the most beautiful place she had seen for a long time. Pulling across the road and in between the gateposts, she drew up again and opening the door she climbed out, stiff after her long journey, to lean for a moment on the car roof. The air smelled glorious, of warm stone and grass and flowers.
‘Abi?’ The deep voice behind her startled her; she had thought she was quite alone. She turned. A tall middle- aged man in an open-necked shirt and shabby cords was standing a few feet from her. ‘Hi. I’m Mat Cavendish.’
She gave a rueful smile. ‘You caught me, I’m afraid. This place is so beautiful I couldn’t believe it could be real. I just wanted to get out of the car and stare.’
