Thiz was pointing, paw raised, head arrowed down towards the levels, concentrating so hard she was almost vibrating. ‘What is it, girl?’ He glanced at Pym. Then both dogs were running. Taken aback he was left behind as they tore through the gate and down the track away from the church, down towards the fields with their regular criss cross of watery ditches. Stumbling, he ran after them trying to keep sight of them with his torch beam as they drew further and further ahead.

Athena looked across the table at Justin as he slipped his phone back into his pocket and shook her head. ‘Just as well you were here!’ Justin smiled. ‘Thank you for giving me supper. I’m glad we’ve sorted our differences.’ He leaned forward and put his hand over hers for a second. Then he pushed back his chair. ‘I’d better go. It sounds as though all hell has been let loose over there. Cal was frantic.’ He hesitated.

‘So why are you waiting?’ She glanced up at him and gave him a stern shake of the head. ‘To keep your brother on tenterhooks?’

Justin shook his head ruefully. ‘Partly, maybe.’

‘And?’

‘Vicars.’ He gave a snort of laughter.

‘As in Abi Rutherford?’ She was watching his face closely.

‘Stop looking at me in that shrewd all-seeing mode!’ he said tolerantly. ‘Yes, as in the beautifully sexy Abi and also the fearsome Kieran and something dangerous in the orchard.’

She sat back in her chair. ‘Something dangerous that is worrying you?’

He nodded. ‘There is something very unpleasant lurking in that place at the moment.’

‘Apart from this man, Kier, you mean? Something you should be dealing with?’

‘Indeed.’

She pushed back her chair and whisked his plate away. ‘Go. Now.’

He didn’t argue. Standing up he leant forward and planted a kiss on her cheek, then he reached for his jacket. ‘They didn’t ask where I was. I suspect they think I am driving down from Ty Mawr. I’ll surprise them.’

‘Have you got everything you need?’

‘In the car. Always. I’ll call you.’

She sat still long after he had gone, staring down at the half-eaten food on their plates, then at last she stood up. Turning her back on the kitchen, she walked through into the main room. In the corner on a low table stood a small figurine. It wasn’t the goddess, not the great hollow-bellied goddess of the statues sold in the town, but a young beautiful woman in a long dress and with shrouded hair, a kind, loving woman with a baby in her arms. Not the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus. Isis and Horus, maybe, or Semiramis with Tammuz. The mater of the tribes. The universal mother and child. Whoever she was, it was comforting sometimes to pray before her and ask for her intervention. She hadn’t turned on the lights. Reaching for the matches she lit the one small candle which sat on the table. ‘Take care of him,’ she whispered. ‘He’s not for me, I know that, but maybe for Abi. She’s right for him.’ She kissed her fingertips and rested them for a second on the head of the woman, then, feeling marginally happier she went over to the sofa and threw herself down to listen in the candlelight to the music drifting up through the open window from the courtyard below. Her neighbour was playing his saxophone quietly to himself. When he was drunk or drugged the music had an unearthly beauty which was almost unbearable. Tonight he must be stoned out of his mind.

Justin drove fast, reaching Woodley within twenty minutes. Cal gaped at him as she opened the door. ‘Jet-propelled broomstick?’

He shook his head. ‘Car. I was only up the road.’

He followed her into the kitchen and glanced round. No Mat and no dogs. ‘Tell me what’s going on. Exactly.’

He stood with his back to the fire, listening without comment as she filled him in on the events of the evening. ‘Even Mat agreed we needed you,’ she said when she had finished.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Wonders will never cease.’ He let out a deep thoughtful sigh. ‘We have three separate problems here. Kier and whatever it is he thinks he believes, which is a matter for his bishop, Ben’s right. And whatever it is that has been awakened out there in your garden.’

‘And Abi.’

He nodded. She saw the crease between his brows deepen. ‘And Abi. She has been sucked into the story out there, and Kier, rather than supporting her, has I fear added a very unwholesome energy to the mix.’

‘Can you do something?’ It was almost a whisper.

He shrugged. ‘I wish Meryn was here.’

‘Meryn?’

‘The man who taught me all I know.’

‘The sorcerer to your apprentice?’

He laughed dryly. ‘Exactly. I’ll do my best. I wish Mat and the dogs were back here safely. I don’t like the thought of my brother crashing around in the undergrowth all open and unprotected in the psychic sense.’

She shook her head. ‘Nor do I.’

He gave her a quick smile. ‘I’ll do my best for them all, Cal. You know I will. But as I’m here and the others are presumably on Kier’s tail, I’ll start in the orchard. You wait here, OK? Please do not come outside no matter what happens. I need to know you at least are safe.’

She nodded dumbly and he gave her a quick pat on the shoulder. First he went out to the car and retrieved a canvas bag from the boot. Slinging the strap onto his shoulder he raised a hand to her and walked off round the back of the house into the darkness.

He could feel it all around him. An electric tenseness in the air which he had never felt here before. The place was very quiet. Not a breath of wind. No sound of small animals or night birds. Nothing scuttling busily in the undergrowth. It was all totally silent. He walked out across the lawn and paused near the log seat, sending out feelers into the night, trying to sense where his brother was with those two irrepressible dogs. If they were anywhere nearby there would not be this silence, this sense of nothing.

He tensed. He was wrong. There was something. Just for a moment he had sensed someone else out there listening and waiting for him. He frowned, trying to keep his mind empty of expectation. ‘Don’t give the enemy anything to work with.’ Meryn’s voice echoed in his head for a moment. ‘If he or she senses that you are expecting to see a figure in a bedsheet that is what you will see. If you are sure it is the Loch Ness Monster or Black Shuck, be ready, for they will appear.’ It had seemed funny at the time, but it was shrewd advice and very hard to follow. He deliberately blanked his mind of visions of Roman soldiers and bloody swords.

He held his breath, surrounding himself with a shield of protection. The old condom from head to toe trick. His mouth twitched into a smile again. Meryn’s words were supporting him. Making him strong. He stayed immobile, waiting. Someone was nearby, watching him. But who? Not Mora. Not Lydia or Petra. No-one from the homestead. Much too powerful and sophisticated for that. A druid? His senses sharpened. He wanted to step forward, to get closer, but he resisted the urge to move.

The cauldron of silence grew deeper. A small patch of moonlight drifted across the grass from the waning crescent, half-shrouded in clouds. He took the chance to take two slow unhurried steps towards the bench and sit down. Carefully, without any hurried movements he reached into his bag and drew out the small drum. For a long time he sat without moving, waiting to see what would happen. It was like watching a nervous animal, trying to win its trust. No. That wasn’t right. There was nothing nervous about this energy. His fingers strayed to the taught drumskin made with his own hands from the hide of a deer he had hunted and slain himself, giving thanks to the soul of the animal for its sacrifice. Its meat had kept several families in food for a while, up there in Scotland, when he had been training with Meryn. The antlers had been used to make handles for crooks and staves and knives. What remained, and there was precious little, had been buried with honour on the hillside where the young stag had lived. It had been destined for the cull. It was better that he kill it with honour and respect, than a man with a gun who had paid money for the fun of slaughter. The wood of the drum was ash from a storm-felled tree on the same wild mountainside. The animal and the tree between them could conjure life out of rock; they could summon the future and they could enchant; above all they could carry him far away into the distant past. Slowly he began to tap, feeling the drum wake, feeling it respond like a lover to his touch.

He drummed on, gently, hypnotically. ‘Don’t lull yourself, boy.’ Meryn’s voice came to him and he remembered their long sessions as the druid taught him his art. ‘Keep alert. Be watchful. The drum has a mind of her own. She may not call those you expect. She may take you to places you would rather not go.’

It was his turn to smile. How true. So, who or what was this shadow? Why did they not reveal themselves?

Almost as he thought the words he sensed a drawing away. What had changed? Was there someone or something else out there?

The sound of the drum went on, a soft heartbeat, conjuring matter out of darkness. He could feel someone else there now. He didn’t turn his head. Whoever it was would reveal himself soon. It was a child. A boy. He could feel the aggression, the hesitancy, the uncertainty. The fear. He resisted the urge to speak. The cast was assembling. All he had to do was wait.

The call of the night birds echoed in the moonlight and he heard the splash of a fish jumping in the darkness of the water. In this land of ever-changing light and dark, of liminal beauty, neither land nor sea, the silvery wind breath was full of the scents of mud and flowers, of soft grasses and damp woodland moss, of sweet air from the distant hills and sharp salt from the faraway sea.