It was well the sun shone that day, for that was the last we saw of it for some time. We had constant snow and ice, but worst of all was the freezing fog which rolled up from the Fenny every night and morning and chilled the little house until the very sandstone walls seemed to hold the coldness and to ooze icy water like cold sweat. We had fires in every room and Mama marvelled that we had managed before with only one fire in the parlour and fires lit in the bedrooms only in the mornings.

The last weeks of January were no better, with gales which blew the fog away but set the house creaking like a ship at sea. In the nights we could hear slates clattering off the roof into the stable yard. The ground was frozen hard and there was no ploughing or planting possible until the freeze broke. The men did not even dig ditches. The only work they could do was cutting the hedgerows back, and that was a task which took some time.

So I had many hours sitting indoors and gazing blankly out of the Dower House windows at the freezing fog in the lane, and many evenings watching the firelight in the parlour. It seemed that whenever I was still and alone, whenever I had ears to listen, Beatrice was there.

And then one night I had a dream.

It started with that strange sweet singing which came in my ears sleeping or waking, warning me that Beatrice was near. I think I turned in my bed then, for I remember staring blankly at the ceiling of my room with wide-open eyes and seeing from the grey light of the ceiling that it was a cold dawn, and hearing the wind moan around the chimney-pots. It moaned like the ghost of someone just died, ill loved and locked out. I pulled the covers around my ears and buried my face deeper in the pillow to shut out the eerie calling.

And then I slept.

At once I dreamed I was in Acre, not the Acre of Beatrice’s day, with the front gardens bright with flowers, but Acre as it is now: walls newly lime-washed, roofs mended, and the front gardens a frigid mess of new-turned earth and dung ready for planting seeds. I was standing on the little patch of ground they called Miss Beatrice’s Corner, outside Acre church. The vicarage was in front of me, the tall spire of the church behind. And the wind was blowing through my hair and tearing at my gown in utter silence, in deathly quiet, though the rain was sheeting down upon me, around me, and when I turned my face up to the thick sky, I felt it was raining through me. But I was not cold. I did not even feel wet.

I was afraid then, for I knew it was not an ordinary dream. And I knew I had to do something, but I did not know what it was.

I turned around to look at the church, and as I did so there was a deep heart-stopping roar of thunder, as if the very clouds were bumping together right overhead, and a crack like the spheres breaking as a shard of lightning came down and rammed a cross-bow bolt into the church spire.

It split it – as a good archer can split a wand. I watched in silence as the spire peeled apart like a shredded bough and leaned perilously outward. And fell – still in the dreamy absolute silence – towards the cottages. The pretty little cottage where Ted Tyacke and his mother lived, the Brewers’ one next door and the third cottage in the row, which belonged to the Clay family – all of them came under the grotesque shadow of the falling spire.

I opened my mouth to scream for them, to warn them; but no sound came. The tower fell upon them like the finger of a cruel god and crushed the houses into dust.

I stood in the rain, the silent rain, and watched.

At once the fire bloomed out of the ruins like some mad weed, too fast in the growing. It shot great fat greedy flames into the rain and hissed against the water like a nest of snakes. It leaped down the ruins, feeding on the thatch of the cottages and the light wood of the inside walls and floorboards. And I waited in silence, for I knew I could say nothing and do nothing as it ran riot down the thatched roofs of the row of cottages.

People tumbled screaming out into the street in the pouring rain, one of the Carter children with her nightgown afire. I saw them jump on her to try to smother the flames and I saw her mouth open to scream, but I could hear nothing. Her father tried to plunge back into the burning house, for one of the children was left behind, and I saw his face, as naked as an anguished animal’s, when they held him back.

The fire took long effective strides down the street, and every house it touched bloomed red. Acre was wrecked.

I woke then, shuddering with a cold sweat, and with my bedclothes on the floor. It was early, it was too early to rise. It was only just dawn. It had been the noise of the high wind which had given me the dream, the high wind and the sound of the rain on my window-pane. A fearful dream. A most frightful dream.

I shivered as if I had really been out there in the storm, and leaned out of my bed and heaved my blankets back on to the bed. I burrowed down in them like a chilled and frightened child.

I dozed at once.

At once I was standing on the corner of grass outside the churchyard and I was in the dream again. I looked around again and saw the lightning split the spire in two. I heard the great boom of thunder, and saw the spire toppling sideways to crash down on to the Tyackes’ cottage, and I cried out for Ted and his mother, and my voice made no sound in the silent storm.

I could feel myself tossing in my bed to be free of the dream, and I could feel it holding me like a torturer in a merciless grip; and I had to watch it, all over again: the fire, the burning child, the end of Acre.

Then it stopped, and I felt my half-waking body shudder and sob, and turn over once again for sleep.

And then it started again.

I was outside the churchyard on the patch of ground they called Miss Beatrice’s Corner.

I dreamed that dream over and over again like a trapped ferret which runs up and down its cage on a treadmill which no one but it can see.

‘Miss Julia?’ said Jenny, standing by my bedside with my hot chocolate in her hand. ‘Are you ill?’ I gaped up at her.

Oh, Jenny, I’m so glad you woke me!’ I exclaimed. ‘I have had such a nightmare you wouldn’t believe! And I dreamed it over and over!’

I sat up in bed and pushed the hair from my forehead. It was lank and damp as if I had been tossing on my pillow and sweating all night.

‘Did you dream true?’ she asked. She turned her back to me and went to tend the fire. ‘If you dream over and over, ‘tis said to be a message,’ she threw over her shoulder. ‘Was there a message, Miss Julia?’

Her hand was on the coal-scuttle, and I saw her fingers. They were clasped in the age-old sign against witchcraft: thumb between the first and second finger, to make the one-handed sign of the cross to ward off the devil and his sisters. The sign, her words, the dream, all came together and I lost my wits indeed.

‘Yes,’ I said. And it was not my voice which spoke. ‘I must dress and go to Acre,’ I said, and my tongue felt heavy in my mouth.

She shot one frightened look at me, but I did not mind her. ‘It’s raining…’ she said weakly.

‘It will be worse than rain if I do not go,’ I said, and I slid out of bed and did not feel the floorboards cold and hard beneath my bare feet. She held out my linen to me and I did not feel it chill against my skin. I let her pull my laces tight and I did not breathe in against the constriction. She held out my riding habit to me in silence and I wordlessly stepped into it. Then she dipped a curtsy and whirled from the room while I twisted my hair into a knot and pinned my hat.

She would tell Jem I needed Misty, I knew. And sure enough, when I walked hazy-eyed into the stable yard, he was holding her reins and waiting for me.

‘Jenny’s a fool,’ he said abruptly. ‘What are you doing up this early without notice to your ma?’

I looked at him without seeing him. ‘I have to go to Acre,’ I said. ‘There is danger for them in the village.’

Jem scowled in anger. ‘I don’t believe in none of that,’ he said truculently. ‘What are you doing in the village, Miss Julia?’


TU see Ralph,’ I said.

At once Jem looked relieved and put his hand out to throw me up into the saddle. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Ralph Megson’ll know what’s best.’

Misty stood as still as a statue, her coat darkening with the drenching rain. I felt a trickle of water dripping from my hat and going down my back but I did not shiver. I clicked to her and she went smooth-paced out of the stable yard into the mire of the drive. It was heavy going, but she managed a canter out of the drive and down the lane towards Acre. And all the time, though my body moved with the horse, my mind was enmeshed in the dream. AU I could see was the spire splitting like an axed stake.

Ralph was awake and out of his bed. I could see his silhouette before the firelight in the front room. He turned his head at the sound of the hoofbeats, came to his front door and opened it to look out.

‘Julia!’ he said in surprise. ‘What’s the matter?’

I stayed on horseback looking down on him, and I knew that I had the face of a madwoman. A face without expression, a face blank with fear at a horror which no one but me could see.

‘We have to clear the cottages on the north side of the lane,’ I said. It was hard to speak. I could scarce move my tongue or my lips. ‘The church spire is going to be struck by lightning and it will fall on the Tyackes’ cottage, and on the Brewers’ and the Clays’. Then there will be a fire. It will wipe out Acre,’ I said, my voice very low. ‘We have to clear them out of those three cottages and then we have to make a fire-break.’