 
### Short Stories & Tall Tales

### by

### Divalde

Copyright 2020 David Lawrence

Smashwords Edition

# CONTENTS

Story 1: Saxon Evening, Viking Dawn

Story 2: Stranger on Coffin Path

Story 3: Sapphire and Frost

Story 4: The House at the End of the Lane

Story 5: Sacrifices

Story 6: Art and Artifice

Story 7: Killing Time at the Bodleian

# INTRODUCTION

Most of these stories have appeared in print somewhere or other over the last four years or so. They will have seen the light in the local village paper or a series of collections published by a group of local authors.

They are all set in or near to the Oxfordshire Village of Long Hanborough and include some actual events and places woven between my fevered imagination. I think of them as a set of untold tales that may or may not have happened. They were not written in the order they are presented here.

In _Saxon Evening, Viking Dawn_ we meet Rose the first lady of Hanbrough as the village comes into being, _Stranger on Coffin Path_ promises exactly what we deserve, in _Sapphire and Frost_ we encounter a locked room murder at the Manor and when you come to the _House at the End of the Lane_ , please, don't go in. Then there are the _Sacrifices_ made by a modest war hero, _Art and Artifice_ shows us that nothing is what it seems and in _Killing Time at the Bodleian_ if we really are alone at night in the famous old library, who's that in the dark?

I hope there is something here for everyone...if not then why not put pen to paper and have a go...

##  SAXON EVENING, VIKING DAWN

The untold testimony of Rose, the first lady of Hans Borough

I have set down all I can for you, the future citizens of my home village. My hope is that you will find some solace in the founding of our community and the part that peace played, rising as it did like a dove from the violence that consumed the seven kingdoms. Codex 19.4.870 – Bodleian library

I was just a girl when my father said we should load our worldly goods onto the back of the waggon and leave our village. On a dull, rainy morning, the mule was hitched and we threaded our way out of the marshes. My father, Edgar, said we could no longer wait. He said the Mercians would never come to our aid. He said that when the storm comes you run for shelter you don't stand and defy the lightening.

My mother, the beautiful Rosamunde would have stayed for her parents and her friends but father said we must learn to be pitiless if we wished to live beyond the next few days. Our friends prayed to the Christian god, the one that had come across with Augustine but father said it would do no good. Others cried out for the old gods to protect them; the ones who had been swept aside so easily. I knew little about gods only people and the need to keep living.

Our people, the Angles had worked this land since the time of the Romans when King Vortigern invited us across the sea to fight with his armies to quell local unrest. But father was not a warrior, he had never fought and saw no glory in it. Only shame. He had taught us, that's me and my brother Wilf, that real power lay in the earth and our weapons should be the plough and the scythe.

I remember clinging to the back of our waggon where we had piled everything we could carry and watched the villagers, our neighbours, going about their daily lives as if the black smoke rising beyond the woods were just rain clouds. Wilf said they would all be dead before night fall.

King Guthrum's Great Heathen Army had hit the shores of Anglia like hammers destroying everything in their path. Howling berserkers from Valhalla, scourging the earth with fire and fury spreading fear all along the East coast from Holy Island to Kent. Thousands of Danish warriors swept away entire villages merciless and unforgiving like Noah's Flood. Men, women, children and livestock were put to the sword for no other reason than they were there. Bells sounded the alarm then fell silent as the churches burned and villagers fought and perished.

The entire eastern seaboard was burning now. The Anglo culture, that had flourished here for nearly four hundred years was reduced to fields of ash and bone. The Wolves of Dene devoured and howled until the heavens shook and the land turned red. The Great Army swept inland like a furious storm, overtaking the slow and the weak. But father took us up onto the High Green Roads that had crossed the country since before the birth of Christ, before even the sundering of the coastline from the Eastern lands we had come from. The longest Green Road, the Ridgeway took us south west and from our lofty position we could see marauding Dene and pillars of ugly smoke where villages used to be.

My brother was almost a man and so would sometimes take the reins while I still neither woman or child cooked and sewed with mother. Father and Wilf would hunt and trap as much as they could, although pickings were meagre, we managed to stay alive. The going was slow but our resolve, our fear and our mule were strong. When we camped, we took turns to keep watch and when riders were nearby we froze like squirrels on a tree. But some evenings when I looked back I could see the glow of a fire. Someone else was up on the ridge, following us. Father said we should ignore them, what could we do anyway?

In time the road descended to run along the side of the River Temesis. There was a crossing point where we came upon the People of Gara, an old Saxon family who had put down roots where the river could be forded where they fished and farmed the Downs. We were welcomed by Gara's three sons who offered shelter and sustenance. They said the Dene had swept past further south. I remember father telling them that it was only a matter time before they came down the river itself. I remember him urging the brothers to bring their people with us but they declined. I wept at their fate and their defiance but they remained steadfast. Gara himself, now a greybeard in his declining years, blind and frail now came to the market square where he addressed his people in a weak but authoritative voice. He urged the entire community, some fifty souls to listen to us and to leave before it was too late. But he was met with a stubborn resolve to entrust their lives to the great Christian God. There was little more we could do.

For three days we lived in their company and I made friends with Maud and Matilda two pretty sisters who showed me how to fish and cook the catch. By the time we were ready to leave I had pleaded with them to urge their father to come with us. And as we loaded our waggon with vitals two waggons rolled out to join us. Walter and his wife Alice had heeded the pleas of their daughters Maud and Matilda who waved at me from the back of their waggon. On the second waggon were their good friends, the brothers Edmund and Alwyn, handsome young men who made me smile with their easy good humour. Walter told father they should abandon the road and take to the river. They were skilled rivermen and it would safer off the roads. It was a fateful decision.

Our flotilla comprised three large flat vessels of logs lashed together and waterproofed with fat and grease. They were moored at the quayside and the waggons and mules loaded one a piece. Walter and family took the lead while the brothers would take a raft each, Edmund joining us while Alwyn steered his own to the rear. Farewells were made and we left for the interior propelled by wide canvas sails and guided by long rudders.

Our passage was sedate to the first bend and before we lost sight of the People of Gara I glanced back, sorry to leave so many behind and that was when I saw the lone horseman, on the grey charger. He was watching us as his horse drank. I watched him watching us, until he was lost at the river's bend.

Ten souls sailed deep into the Mercian heartland where the Gewisse Tribes held a long frontier that kept them apart from southern and eastern tribes. I learned later that in those days Anglia was a heptarchy carved up by seven distinct tribes of whom the Gewisse were the most formidable.

The river was wide and tree lined giving the water a piebald glimmer. The men at the tillers kept the rafts straight as the rest of us sat in the waggons or either side of the sail. The mules brayed and we cried out to each other, especially the sisters who would call out to Wilf and make him blush.

For three days we plied the even waters of the Temesis coming ashore each night to eat and sleep. The banks provided shelter while we foraged for fruit and berries. Alwyn was an archer of some renown and brought venison and rabbit. I kept watching the woods but saw nothing of the horseman. On a long straight stretch, we passed between low earthen dykes running up and off into the woods left and right. They comprised a grass covered bank no more than waist high and a ditch on the eastern edge. Walter nodded toward it and we watched impassively as we slipped silently by.

On day four Walter pointed to a tributary cutting into the northern bank. It was too narrow to take but we soon came to a manmade wharf, a low landing place on the right hand bank, where the trees had been cut back to make room for crude wicker pens for livestock. An elderly man puffing at a long pipe sat and watched us. Father hailed him and the old man told us Egonesham lay just a short ride to the north west where we would be welcomed. We pulled over, moored and disembarked for good. We abandoned the rafts and set off inland along a narrow trail up through the woods until we came to the small market town of Egonesham. The locals were friendly but wary in such troubled times but still offered us fellowship, food, rest and shelter

When we told them our plight Abbot Aelfric urged us to stay. They were under the royal patronage by King Burgred himself and we would be safe there. But father said that the king would never be able to protect us in time when the Dene came, and they would surely come. He said the Mercians had not come to them in the Fens and would not come now. He said we needed higher ground, much further away from the valley.

Then the Abbot offered a second warning.

"If you mean to leave then you must beware the Hwicce," he said, "the wood is their realm and they live beyond the law. You have as much to fear from them as from the Dene. They believe this to be their land. They were here first, before any of us. They would have taken Egonesham long ago had it not been a Mercian protectorate. But out there in the great forest you are beyond even King Burgred's reach."

Aelfric continued.

"My advice is to follow the sun until you pass out of Hwicce land. You will see a dyke and a ditch. It is less than a day from here.

We thanked the people of Egonesham, loaded the waggons and departed. At first Walter and the brothers argued they should stay and father said they could if they wanted. he was not their lord, but when it came time to go it was all of us. The three waggons trundled out onto a north bound track that took us further up and further in.

We left by a small trail through the woods toward Tilgarsley a village due north who the Abbot said were bitter warlike people prepared to live outside of Egonesham and defy the Hwicce. Perhaps we should talk! But the reception was hostile and we were driven off with spears and rocks hurled from behind a low stockade. They had become a brutish people frightened to leave their compound. Insults were hurled and we moved on.

In silence we continued to climb. I watched the shadows in the dense woods and imagined more than I saw until the evening came and we broke through to a ridge top where the pearlescent glow of a full moon brought us to a clearing in the trees. Looking back I know we should have continued west along the ridge and back into the trees or perhaps attempt the slope down to where the tributary river had turned north west. We should have crossed the Hwicce dyke. Instead an evening mist hung lightly between the trees trapping the moon's august glow and we made camp, never to move on.

I recall a sense of coming home and in the morning we unhitched the mules and unloaded the waggons. Alwyn and Walter took to the woods to hunt, moving west along the ridge. They returned with venison and said they had seen the dyke but we resolved to stay. Mother called it providence.

The glade was no more than a thinning of the trees and so with axe and sweat it was cleared and the fallen lumber used to construct three simple cabins, sealed with the rich clay earth and roofed in branches from the forest. The wisdom of staying became inherent in the warm breeze and the kindness of the woods. Hunting and foraging were good and the earth was fertile.

We had barley and legume seeds which we sewed in the rich red soil, ploughing the earth with the mules and shares Walter had brought. We fell into an easy rhythm. The fathers and Edmund cleared more of the trees and worked the land, Alwyn taught my brother to hunt and Wilf even made his own bow. Mother, Alice, and us girls foraged, mended and cooked. Honest labour and fellowship...it was all any of us could have wished for.

A shallow pit in the woods showed signs of quarrying from a much earlier time. Earth had covered the open cast mine but thin iron ore deposits were discovered. We may not have struck gold, but we had something more valuable, the means to make tools. Father had some rudimentary knowledge of smelting from his own father which he passed on to Wilf. In time they were able to extract enough iron and to create enough white heat to craft rudimentary tools. The source was finite but precious enough in the early stages of our settlement.

Barrows in the deeper parts of the wood further west spoke of ancient lords and a passing culture lost now to all human memory. But in these days there were no signs of the Dene or the Hwicce and our self-confidence grew. In the embers of each day, we gathered and we talked of the future. Backs ached but spirits were high as each passing day forged three families into one. Silences spoke of good will and contentment. Ten souls on the brink of a new life.

We did not know then that malevolent eyes were watching from across the valley.

They came out of the dawn mist like wraiths, slowly making their way between the trees, up the steep wooded slope from the narrow valley below. I remember father stopped chopping wood. Wilf was at the forge and Walter and Alwyn were away hunting. I watched from the window, as four black horses drew to a halt in front of father. The visitor's faces were hidden beneath masks of iron, fir and hide and each head bore a bestial crown; bear's claws, raven wings, bull's horns and stag's antlers. They were the Hwicce. They were armed with implements of violence, axes, spears and battered rusting swords.

The Stag spoke in a strange guttural tongue which I did not recognise. Mother came to me as we watched. Father made it clear he could not understand him. He was alone in front of the four horses. His fist gripped the axe more tightly. The rider's heads turned as Edmund approached holding a long knife at his side. One of the riders laughed. Mother would have gone to father's side but I held her back. I knew the ways of savage men and the sight of a woman would only inflame whatever was on their minds.

The Stag spoke again, spewing noises that seemed to rasp and serrate the air. The Stag's mouth and tattooed jowls were visible and contorted with primal fury as if the very air were offensive to him. His hand rested upon the hilt of his sword. Father and Edmund stood their ground. The Stag pointed to the small field, a few hides of barley.

An awkward silence followed. Then the Bull rode his horse over to the field and slowly deliberately trampled down the new crop. Edmund made a move but I saw father restrain him

"You want fealty. Is that it?" Father said.

I wondered whether this was the arrangement with the people of Tilgarsley. Father pointed to the damaged crop and tried to gesture giving some to them. Did the stag understand? We never found out because the Bear had seen me at the window. Father glanced around and waved us back, but the Bear was transfixed. His intentions all too clear. Father stepped across his horse, but the Bear just cut him down with his sword. Edmund struck back with the knife but he was trampled down by all three horses. The Bull joined them as they advanced on our cabin.

Mother left the cabin to go to father but the Bear dismounted and slapped her to the ground. This gave the Stag time to jump down and kick open the cabin door. It was all I could do not to scream. I would not give him reason to hurt me, or show fear. He grabbed at me but I shrank back. He eventually took me by the hair and dragged me out. But he had not reckoned on the Bear who clearly believed I was his and tried to take me. The Stag overpowered him and roared something in their intelligible, ugly tongue. While I bit back the pain of his grip on my hair, I thought they were going to fight, but Stag's authority held sway. He remounted and pulled me up in front of him.

Mother screamed, Edmund was back on his feet but Father was unable to move, blood seeping from a deep neck wound. Alice the wife of Walter was at the window of her cabin on the far side of the clearing and it was all mother could do to bid her and her daughters to stay where they were.

The Bear, was not prepared to leave empty handed and came over to mother and took her by the waist to drag her across his horse. An arrow hit him full in the neck and he tumbled wildly from his horse into the dust. Mother scrambled away. By the edge of the woods Alwyn was notching a second arrow while Walter dropped the deer he had across his shoulders and ran forward, spear in hand.

The Hwicce were not warriors but predators and cowards, unprepared to fight when they could run. The three riders took off through the oaks and chestnuts, taking paths known only to them. I looked back over my captor's shoulder and saw mother go to where father lay. Alwyn and Walter were giving chase on foot.

We rode for more than an hour and I felt my resolve draining away the further we went. I knew I would die at the hands of these barbarians. By noon we stopped and rested up in a cool clearing domed by a canopy of luminous oak leaves. Their conversation was angry and fierce. I saw recrimination and confusion. Clearly they had not reckoned upon anyone fighting back.

As they argued the Stag turned his attention to me. He began to stroke my hair. I drew back and they all laughed. I feigned indifference. That was then the stranger on the grey horse entered the clearing from the opposite direction.

The talking stopped and hands dropped to weapons. The intruder remained steadfast. The Raven said something and the others laughed turning their horses to face the stranger who looked straight at me and ignored the men either side. The clearing held its breath. I just stared as he gently urged his horse forward, stopping within a sword's length of the three riders. He had not yet touched the great broadsword at his belt.

"The girl...," he said, in poor Saxon and reached out his hand. Steely blue eyes told them this would be their one chance. The Raven and the Bull looked to their leader who stared straight ahead at the stranger. One of the riders garbled something. I was pushed to the ground as the air bristled with supressed violence. The Hwicce drew their swords.

In those days I knew little of the great events that were shaping our land. The kings of the seven tribes, the leaders of the Great Heathen Army and the destruction they wrought. In later times scarred and fierce old warriors would pass through and talk about the great battles, the heroes and the fallen. But I learned more from Hedega.

When the Great Heathen Army landed on our shores, they pushed west before dividing north and south. In time the Kentish Jutes fell but the northern fight was guerrilla warfare, town by town, house by house until the siege of York broke our resistance. In the shadow of the broken walls Prince Hedega a young man of barely twenty years, hesitated. The wasting of the north and the thirst for the blood of innocents repelled him and while York burned he had taken horse, sword and axe and slipped away.

Hedega headed south, plying the primitive trails of the British, the Romans and the Saxons. He had come to realise that his fate no longer lay with is kin. He had witnessed the piety of men in the face of certain death. He had watched mothers take the blade before their children. He had looked in horror as men made stands without the slightest hope of surviving. He had become enraptured by the power of love and selflessness in the face of overwhelming odds. He vowed to follow such a path himself.

With long flaxen hair and full beard, a broad brow and strong features, Hedega rode the English uplands searching for someone who might bring out the man he wanted to become. Seven days in the saddle he crossed the dales and forded rivers, skirted woods and villages. He was in no mood for company. He had to push as far inland as quickly as possible to escape the inevitable wrath of his father and uncles.

As grandson of the mighty Ragnor Lodbrok the Dene's mightiest general and heir to his father Sigurd's Danish kingdom a place at the high table was his by right. Raised on battle hymns celebrating the glory of war and the honourable death he had come to appreciate another way, the way of the Judean who had the courage to say 'turn the other cheek, blessed are the meek.' He had come to understand the Viking way was not, and perhaps never had been, his way.

His path soon crossed the Ridgeway which he climbed and followed south west. One night he saw a fire on the horizon. That morning he drew close enough to see us carrying our worldly belongings in our waggon. He had watched us plead with the Garing and saw us switch from the road to the river. The man and the woman resolute in their trials, the boy a man really and me to whom he said he was drawn, wishing me to endure.

Since we had come ashore and made camp on the ridge he had kept his distance, torn between his past and the new world that beckoned just a few hundred yards away. He was aware of men living deep in the woods and made it his business to dissuade any who seemed intent upon raiding our encampment. He had had more than one encounter with the Hwicce, although I never learned the details. While not everything of value may be taken at the point of a sword, his skills were still be put to good use.

At last, certain that his future rested elsewhere he had decided to strike west, to seek his fortune in the hills and to leave me and my family. On cresting a low rise he had glanced back one last time and realised his folly. He saw that the Hwicce were on the move. He turned back, but it had been too late to save father.

When we met in the clearing his sword had been swift and merciless.

Three black horses and one grey threaded between the trees and began the ascent. I was behind the stranger, clinging on. Over the back of each of the black horses lay a body. Tied to the saddles were the bestial crests, the wing, the claws and the antlers. We came in silence. My senses were numb. So much death and yet I had been spared. We made the steepest part of the rise and entered the clearing.

Everyone was there, except for father. I saw fear in their eyes as we emerged and Wilf came forward, hammer in his hand but I waved him back as I slid to the ground. The sight of the Hwicce animal crests allayed his fears, but he was pensive and kept watch while I ran to mother in tears, realising the truth.

The horseman on the grey stayed back in silence. When I eventually brought him over to mother she wept in grief and in joy. It was a day of unspeakable sadness but also of hope. The day that father died was the day I met Hedega

That was the end of our arrival and like Moses, father would never see the promised land. But for me and for Hedega and our people it was a new beginning. Time passed like Old Temesis and our hearts, though consumed with grief and a persistent fear of the woods, became stronger.

Time is a harvest, giving as much as it takes. And it is a cycle where new chances may come around and new opportunities may be sewn. It was clear life was still there to be lived. Each day was a new step and we found strength in each other and in the gentle warrior who had entered our lives. He said he would have moved on even then, feeling shame that he had not prevented my father's death, but we would have none of it.

Edmund soon recovered completely from his wounds. The bodies of the four Hwicce were given a burial deep in the woods. I said we should not leave them where they had been slain. We were not like them we were us and we should still do the right thing.

Initial suspicions of Hedega drifted away like the late evening mist for he brought a strong sense of purpose and a gentle nature forging an easy bond with everyone. We did not blame him for the sins of his fathers and he would not expect him to turn against his own. Instead we learned from one another and healed one another with a common goal and a shared humanity. I was determined that we should live as father had wished by embracing the seasons, being kind to the woods and to each other. Hedega spoke of the Christian god and we did not discourage him although I was never fully persuaded by a creature that would ferment so much misery in the world. Hedega said that the evil was man's doing not His and who knows he may be right.

It was Hedega who urged Wilf to construct a house of worship over the tomb of Edgar. Who knows it may still be there? You may even catch the echo of our prayers? He also ensured we would never be defenceless again. Weapons were forged and stored. Warcraft was taught. It was a grim lesson to take but he said we should never be subject to the avaricious intent of others again. Men, women and children would fight back if our land was ever violated again. Dene raiding parties as well as predator bandits roamed our wretched lands during those desperate times.

No-one was deemed chieftain since the death of my father but Hedega and Wilf soon formed a bond of leadership that was recognised by us all within and without. Hedega was quick to learn our language and we his. And he turned his hand, strong back and intelligence to the task of eking a living from the land. No-one forgot the debt we owed him for bringing me back although he never saw things that way. With father gone we had need of such a man with his skills but he said he needed us even more. In time Hedega and I fell in love and were wed.

Trade developed as we took iron and barley to Egonesham and Wyttannige a growing mill town due west. Goods were exchanged and in time labour was hired and Hedega's Ridge expanded with a permanent and transient population. Trails began to wind their ways through the woods and along the ridge where travellers knew they would find hospitality and work.

Girls took husbands and sons took wives, more cabins were built and the woods were pushed back even further to accommodate houses along the length of the ridge itself. In time Wilf became a great lord and with Hedega by his side we prospered. The Hwicce never returned. We saw them in ones and twos on the far ridge but never crossing the stream, never coming close, never causing us harm. And as the trees were driven back so their power faded until over time they passed out of all human reckoning.

In later years the Gewisse drew the tribes together under their Great chieftain Alfred and the country was divided between the Dene and the English bringing peace for a short but precious time. And Hedeberge positioned as it was right on the Denelaw border, an Anglo Saxon settlement with a Dene Lord, had a singular status in the new England.

That is where Rose leaves us. The tome says no more.

But Rose's legacy endures. The children of Hedega and Rose, knew over one hundred and fifty years of peace and prosperity that was broken only by the invasion of the Duke of Normandy, a descendant of the Norse and ready to take what he considered rightfully his. But the people tilled the land and made their livings and in the great census of 1086 the village of Haneberge as it came to be known recorded a population of 31souls with land worth the princely sum of £10. In 2011 the population of Hanborough was recorded as 2630 and rising!

And if this wasn't the true story of the founding of Hanborough perhaps it will do for now.

#  THE STRANGER ON COFFIN PATH

" _You don't know me. You'll hope it stays that way. Everything set down here is the absolute truth. Whether you judge me or find these events less than plausible is of little concern to me. How literal you believe the truth to be is up to you. I know what I did and I know what I saw. Is it allegory? Is it a fantasy? It's neither. It's the truth."_

This was the introduction on the flysheet of a manuscript I uncovered during one of my research trips to the Bodleian library. I had spent most of the morning in the new Weston Library in Broad Street before crossing over to the Radcliffe Camera to look through a number of old liturgical texts relating to the West Oxfordshire diocese, when the above statement caught my eye. It seemed so...decisive.

What I have reproduced for you here is the text I then sat and read. I have rendered it as far as possible into a more contemporary style. I cannot say how it got here or who originally wrote it down. What agents conspired to put these words in front of me I cannot say. Given the context it is unlikely that it was the narrator who put pen to paper.

I am Robert Walters, Rector of Longhandboro, at least that is the name that comes most readily to mind. Given my perilous state I cannot be certain. Perhaps history knows me by another name. Either way my tale is a cautionary one you would do well to take seriously. I am or was a man of God but my tale has very little to do with Him and more to do with Man. This man.

It begins in the summer of 1644, during my forty fifth year. I had completed church business and was on my way to meet one of my older parishioners. I heard the church strike five as I hurried long the Coffin Path that connects the parish church and the main village about a mile away. For several hundred years it had been the final route travelled by parishioners on their way for burial in the grounds of the church. The funereal route took a south-easterly course through common land, from the long elevated part of the village before skirting the western perimeter of Pinsley Wood. The Path, well worn by generations of mourners, eventually joins a narrow lane leading to the tall imposing spire of the Church of St Peter and St Paul.

I was walking north west from the church. The air was fresh and warm; alive to the wind rippling the long grasses and wild flowers that graced the lovely idyll between the two halves of the village. During the day, Coffin Path, despite its name, was a charming place, a part of the earth that can invigorate the bleakest of souls. But when night fell it seemed to teem with voices so that the superstitious and the recently bereaved would never set foot on it, which in those days was nearly everyone.

And there I was, lost in my own thoughts regarding some unsettling business within the Bishopric and the Deacons of St Johns College in particular. My parish fell within the influence of St John's so I was effectively their man. Despite the vigour of my pace and the enriching fragrance of wild flowers in deep grass, the mesmerising hum of bees and the eye catching grace of white admirals, my mood had become dark and unchristian. With my eyes to the ground and my head covered by a black cowl I must have struck a doleful figure. In truth my soul had become irreparably consumed by self pity.

I first saw him when the path took me close to the ancient wood of Pinsley. The main carpet of bluebells had gone over but there was still much to admire in the many shades of green, and the ash and elms standing proud at the borders of this ancient woodland. I was struck by the sound of Jackdaws fussing in the long grass under the outer eaves, and a murder of crows cawing loudly in the treetops as they fought for territory. One large bird, almost the size of a raven came down from its roost and broke my reverie. Its sudden approach was startling. Huge frantic wings beat hard and brushed my face as it came too close before soaring away. I watched its judgemental eyes staring back, unblinking before I lost it in the low rays of the sun. A shadow crossed my path and the stranger was at my elbow.

He was a tall, lean man perhaps thirty years old who spoke first, apologising for startling me. He said that his name was Captain Jack and wondered whether he could accompany me up to the village. His brogue was local, perhaps more rural than city. He said that he was a soldier cut off from his regiment and he was a man of the people, which I'm not sure I fully understood. To my untrained eye his clothes were from a previous era. His jerkin and side arms, a long rapier and a dirk were more Tudor or even Plantagenet. This was not entirely unheard of. When country folk take to soldiering, they are often forced to borrow their weaponry from old soldiers in the family.

He fell in step, seemingly oblivious of my mood but after a while I was glad of the company, which I hoped would clear my mind and lighten my brooding disposition. He was a friendly fellow and although he didn't seem to have been formally educated he was one of those men who, if life had dealt a kinder hand, would have made more of a fierce intellect. We spoke on a range of topics. Good and evil, the church, the monarchy and justice. It was all quite pertinent, deep as we were in the grip of civil war.

His knowledge of older conflicts was strong which gave our conversation an historical perspective. He talked in detail about the Lancaster and York War some 160 years or so before, which I called the War of the Roses, a phrase he didn't recognise. We agreed that men were unique in their capacity to learn but equally unique when they steadfastly refused to. It was as if the species was cursed with a sort of divine madness. He said there was always another way to avoid bloodshed, if men would just shed their pride instead. He thought that all men got what they deserved in the end, which I said was a central theme of many faiths although we also have the capacity to forgive. He nodded and said no more on the subject. As I said he was a bright fellow.

We came at last to the wide dirt road, a thoroughfare carrying traffic from the capital (the old capital of London that is) into the west. It forded streams and rivers, linked ancient trails and green roads before crossing the Cotswolds and on toward the Marches. The turmoil and thunder of civil war was tearing the country apart, setting neighbour against neighbour, brother against brother and father against son. Storm clouds were gathering now that the King had moved his court to Oxford. The war had raged all around the county but the village had remained largely unscathed. The sight of Royalist armies passing through was not unknown but everyday the threat of Cromwell's New Model Army coming closer meant that the people lived in a state of perpetual anxiety.

We turned west into the village itself, following the route taken the previous evening by the Royalist Army; many thousands of horsemen were now camped upon Hanborough Heath in front of Abel Wood. The King was moving his forces west. The villagers alert to the stir and noise of the passing army had come out to cheer and to swear allegiance to their monarch. The king, they said, for I was not there, struck a proud, aloof figure, who nevertheless had the good grace to acknowledge the good wishes of his people.

The locals were by this time making their ways home. The women carrying baskets from the single shop on the main road that was both grocer and butcher and the men coming off the land in twos or threes. A cart passed us filled with farming equipment and a coach was fast approaching bound for Woodstock and then Oxford. We stepped aside as it rushed passed, scattering chickens and dogs scavenging on the dirt road.

The Captain observed that the people seemed civil enough to me, but there was he thought, some tension. I was unwilling to explain, at least for the moment. My companion had not said where he was going exactly but I explained that I had someone to meet so I stopped to wish him well before moving on. But he was a persuasive fellow and asked whether I would join him for supper. I should really have carried on to see the widow I was hoping to comfort in her hour of need but the thought of a more companionable evening and the chance to drown out the voices in my head weakened my resolve. I said I would.

He asked me where we should go and I suggested we turned about and retrace our steps. So we walked back along the main road, past the end of Coffin Path and on toward the Katherine Wheel set back on the left, some 200 yards from the Manor House that loomed further along on the south side of the road. The Inn's chimney leaned out at an unfeasible angle from an unkempt thatched roof and dusty white washed walls and large leaded windows. Thick smoke billowed up, caught on the breeze that blew perpetually through the village. The smell of rich gravy and cooked meat drew us on. The Inn was weathered, rambling but welcoming.

A solid door made of good local oak felled on the estates in Woodstock, was ajar and we pushed our way in. The Katherine Wheel had gained a certain notoriety as an ill kept hostelry attracting all kinds of ne'er do wells and footpads who in the grip of the strongest ale in the county would usually succumb before the night was out to illegal trading, gambling, fisticuffs or worse. Despite this it provided a respite for the yeomen of the Manor. After a long day labouring in the fields or the brick kilns further west, weary bodies would make their way here, looking for fellowship. Most would be back out on the land before dawn.

Old Joseph was a genial landlord providing the very finest ales and supper cooked by his wife, Nell. It was the only inn in the village and also the oldest surviving as others had come and gone, usually owned by folk opening up their front parlour with a few kegs before shutting down again once they had sold out.

The low beamed bar was dim but lively. Drink fuelled characters were talking loudly over each other or sitting in morose silence, their bones aching. The evenings that summer had been considerably cooler than was seasonal. Old Joe had lit the log fire in the inglenook. We were greeted by nodding heads and good evening father by members of the flock I had tended these past ten years. More than a few did not appear to see me or averted their gaze as I approached. But I knew that I had done the right thing. I needed something to push back this melancholia.

It was here that the seeds of my doom were sewn. I set up a few rounds of local ale, strong dark liquid that loosens the tongue or confines a man to reflective silence. We ordered steak and kidney pudding which is the specialty of the landlord's wife and we ate heartily until we sat back and Captain Jack took out a pipe and filled it from a pouch on his belt. I took the moment to enquire after his regiment and his part in the war and he said that he was an old soldier despite his looks. His swarthy complexion, deep expressive eyes, patriarchal brow and generous mouth suggested a certain nobility but there was pain in his eyes that he failed to completely hide.

Captain Jack enquired after my constitution, by which he meant my allegiance. I said that I was a patriot like him and God fearing, which made him smile. He drew deep on his smoke and it seemed as though he could see into my heart and it was probably the ale, but I said far more than I intended. I was a man of the people like him and I wished that the country would be rid of the scourge of monarchy. It was reckless talk and my companion urged me to keep my voice down. He was right. In those says there were eyes and ears everywhere. Nevertheless it was no surprise that he shared this view for his dress said something of the common man. He said that this explained the strained relationship I appeared to have with my Royalist flock.

People in Longhandboro hardly spoke of the war, preferring instead to tend their farms and crops, be neighbourly and spend their time pursuing the finer things in life. My companion asked about my position within the parish, which I found curious given the prospect of my removal, but I was too much in my cups to resist. It was as if he was inviting me to unburden my soul, to confess even.

I welcomed the opportunity to talk about the events eating away at me. Much like the country my mind was ruptured by competing forces. Thanks to the war there had been a great deal of debate at St Johns College concerning the suitability of a man like me remaining in a position of such influence. My affiliations with the people, the traitorous Cromwell as they put it, put me at odds with the king's appointed bishop especially now that his See was the new military capital. It was put plainly. I should renounce my allegiance or step down and move out of the city. If I wished to continue my pastoral work then I should consider a monastery or better still, going abroad. They considered their offer generous given that trial and excommunication were well within their gift. But I would not stand aside and fell into a miasma of bitterness and deep self loathing that surprised me. My thoughts became disparate and unfocused like flotsam tossed this way and that until the frailties in my soul were exposed. Even prayer provided little in the way of solace.

"I was turning this over when you found me."

Like a child I fixed my gaze on the Captain, hoping he would offer some sort respite.

"Tell me Father," he said at last, "have you reached a decision?"

I looked at him unable to answer, because honestly I had reached the end of my tether. He continued, sensing my despair.

"Will you let them take your job after...how long?"

"Ten years...."

"...ten years as their shepherd? Are you able to swallow your pride, to leave your flock and do as they say, perhaps until the war is won...or lost."

"That's just it Captain. I can neither change or leave?"

Captain Jack puffed away serenely. The tobacco seemed to bring him a calm release from whatever was causing him pain. An epiphany had been reached. His dark eyes examined me as I stared blankly back, hoping that he would say something to help me. I was all but pleading.

"Are there really only two alternatives?" he offered.

I waited for more.

"Perhaps there is another way of approaching this. A way to cut the Gordian Knot as they say."

He pressed on.

"What is the cause of your dilemma? The root cause I mean."

"The church and the monarchy," I said without hesitation.

He nodded his understanding.

"And of these two?"

"The monarchy," without their arrogance and bloated sense of self worth, my relationship with the church would be unchanged. I was a pastor who held faith to be of greater worth than the rules of state. Like St Paul I was a true servant of god, and not one of the hypocrites he so despised, who confused the law with faith.

"And if this could be resolved at a stroke? Would you?"

"Of course...but how?"

"What would you be willing to do?"

The captain had become bold, which I welcomed. He was encouraging me to think the unthinkable. I glanced around the inn as if my inner thoughts were suddenly exposed. I summoned my courage like a man staring directly into the sun knowing that where the light is too bright, blindness may follow. But I was emboldened and sensed a path to salvation.

"Anything. I think I would do anything to maintain my position."

"Your position? What of the peoples position?"

"Of course, it would be for the people."

He took the pipe from his lips and chuckled I think to himself, as if I wasn't there.

"And you a man of God," he said and smiled in a way that made his eyes flash

and the fire in the grate flare up. In that moment I saw the four men sat apart in a discrete inglenook, wrapped in black cloaks despite the season and the fire. Captain Jack leaned in conspiratorially.

"Those gentlemen," he jabbed his pipe stem in their direction, "are king's men. The one at the back smoking the clay pipe. Do you see him?"

A man in the deepest shadows, blew elaborate smoke rings across the table as his companions spoke in hushed voices, his devilishly handsome face occasionally illuminated by the crackling fire.

"He..." began Captain Jack, "he is...."

"Prince Rupert of the Rhine, my God," I had seen this peacock before in the city but never at such close quarters, and never so discreet.

"But why here," I wondered out loud.

"There were no horses outside," said the Captain, "so they are probably at the Smithy. If they are waiting to collect them, what better way to pass the time than to come here and relax, safe in Royalist country. I've no doubt they will head for the Heath before long."

One of their number looked our way and raised a tankard to me. I reciprocated but couldn't help wonder what he made of my drinking companion who looked for all the world a Parliamentarian. It was as if he only saw me. I watched them speaking and occasionally laughing. They were a tight group, comfortable in each other's company. When the Prince spoke it was to the wrapped attention of the others, who I reasoned were not bodyguards, but high ranking officers spending time with a commander they respected.

The rest of the evening passed very slowly and my thoughts began to whirl. I was becoming a new man, productive and ready to do Gods work once more. My black mood had become a cocktail of euphoria and anger, and it drove my tormented soul out into the light. There had been a long black river blocking my way but I had glimpsed a bridge to the other side. Whether it was the strong dark ale or the Captain's words I don't know but by the time the messenger came I had completely forgotten Widow Brown and was on my mettle.

The four kings men drank up, and rose like great bats throwing long inky shadows across the flagstone floor. I felt a surge of fear and something else, something unfamiliar.

"What would you be willing to do?"

"Anything......"

The words were ringing loud and clear through my head until I feared once more that they would echo through the Inn for all the world to hear. Then it became the voice of certainty, rejoicing in its sense of purpose. But despite my raised spirit I had not grasped the profundity of what was happening until Captain Jack pushed a long dagger into my hand. It was the dirk that had been in his belt. I flinched at the touch of cold steel.

"Here is the King's own beloved nephew, the apple of his eye and the ablest General in the Royalist army," he hissed, "as long as he lives there can be no victory for Cromwell or the people, or men of faith like you."

I was speechless.

"We are blessed Father. There will never be a moment like it. Look at him. Cock sure no one can harm him. The people, the honest ones you represent will never have an opportunity like this again. Do not let this cup pass. He is yours."

I instinctively recoiled from the knife. No one appeared to have seen the gesture and my skin crawled with cold sweat.

"But...why me...why not you. You are the soldier."

He puffed confidently as he answered.

"They would not allow me near enough but you...a man of the cloth. You have the perfect disguise."

"This is no disguise..."

"Isn't it?"

We watched the four officers leave and as they passed I heard Prince Rupert laugh at something one of them said. To my heightened senses he was laughing at all good men of faith. He was mocking men like me. He was laughing at me! They were overconfident, arrogant even. Men nodded respectfully as they went, but I doubted they knew who they were.

Captain Jack put the dagger hilt back into my hand beneath the table. This time, to my own shame I felt my fingers grip the cold wooden handle and take it from him. I concealed the blade beneath my robes and sat back to watch the rest of the room, the characterful faces, the innocent conversation, the furtive glances at Nell and the bonhomie of villagers at rest. And I wondered how it had come to this, to be so alone. By the grace of god I could still walk away. It would be so easy to say what they wanted, to swear allegiance to the king and his brood. Who would know? What was holding me back? I didn't have to mean it, after all God would still know my heart. But I was a man of principle.

I rose unsteadily to my feet and waited while the Captain allowed himself a few seconds to finish his ale and to extinguish his pipe, knocking the tobacco noisily onto the floor. He seemed assured, languid and relaxed. He got to his feet and followed me out into the warm evening air. The village was all but asleep as we made our way along the road a few yards behind the four cavaliers who swaggered along roaring and laughing to each other. A rich canopy of stars hung over the village as if the world was a secret place known only to we few out on the road that night. The moonlight cast silver beams across the thatched roofs throwing the fields beyond into black relief and giving the road itself a glow as if it were faerie.

The Captain and I trailed the Prince, keeping a suitable distance to avoid suspicion. But the Captain had been right, who would suspect a man of the cloth. Then one of the officers turned.

"Good evening Father," he said, a Colonel I suspected, "may we accompany you? These are strange and troublesome times to be out alone."

All four of them waited until I had caught them up. In their company I could see they were well appointed men of wealth, dressed in cloaks and silks, and they wore their hair long as was the fashion of their class. The fragrance of rose water or something similar was in the air.

And so I fell in with Prince Rupert and his three officers as they strolled to the Smithy at the edge of the village where a lane turned north toward Mill Wood. They asked what brought me onto the road at such an hour and I told them about Widow Brown who lived at the Rows further ahead. Their spirits in the grip of good Oxfordshire ale had turned them into a gay group but my heart remained as unmoved as stone. I noted that the Captain hung back, keeping to the shadows of the cottages and trees. I was sure that my companions had not seen him.

I offered them my gratitude and they confirmed that the Prince was having two new shoes put onto his charger at the forge where they had temporarily stabled the others. It was their intention to re-join the King before riding at dawn toward Gloucester. The Prince himself seemed reluctant to engage in conversation but nodded and said good evening. He smiled the smile of a man used to courtly etiquette, but his eyes were those of a man more used to demanding and getting his own way. In short, close up I could see that Prince Rupert was no fop, but a man not to be trifled with. I must admit my nerve wavered as we exchanged pleasantries.

We came to the junction with a lane that ran south toward the Church. Ahead I could hear the Smith readying their horses and I heard barking too. The Prince turned to me in delight and said that was his faithful poodle Boy who had kept his horse company. I felt myself warming to the man and knew the deed had to be done before my nerve failed altogether.

At the junction I could feel fire raging in my skull, a ferment of oil and flames destroying all rational thought. I was sweating which forced me to grip the knife tighter for fear of dropping it. I saw indistinct shapes moving either side of me, their voices lost in a low murmur. All reason left me. I glanced back at the Captain who nodded and I pulled the knife from my cloak and hurled myself at Prince Rupert's back.

Moonlight flashed on steel as I swung the blade down. But these were trained fighters, men of some renown. Rapiers were drawn and I was cut down and run through more than once. I dropped the knife and fell on my knees in the dust before suffering another blade through my chest. The final cut. In the light of the fierce unforgiving moon the last thing I saw was Captain Jack laughing as he shrank back into the shadows. I fell face down in the road and lay still.

My eyes opened to a kind of half light and I became aware of my fate. It is now me, not Captain Jack, who walks beneath the eaves of Pinsley Wood. As a betrayer of all that is holy, my soul stands cursed and alone among the jackdaws and the crows. I never knew what crime Captain Jack had committed or how long he had been trapped in the woods, but his soul had found peace at last. Now it is my sins that keep me chained to this mortal earth, unable to live or die. I accompany the dead on their way to their final resting place. We walk and we talk but in the end they always leave me. As for the living, my only hope for peace is to inflame the black heart of a passer by and lead them where they should not go. Only then will I enjoy salvation and release. So beware my friends, if ever you come this way; I shall be here watching and waiting.

##  SAPPHIRE AND FROST

Imagine the scene if you can...the body sprawled across the bed, a dagger in the chest and the door locked from the inside. Impossible? Maybe, maybe not. For answers we must go back in time to the beginning of I689, the dying embers of Jacobean England, and to the bucolic village of Long Hanboro.

The heron like figure made his way to the majestic stone pillars that marked the gateway to the Manor and looked east, expectant. He would not rest until this wretched business was settled. He was not a man naturally disposed to courtesies and lordly guests, but the request left him little room to object. The iron grey accusing skies accentuated his growing tension as he caught the clip clop of the horses moving through Bladon, on the hard, frozen road toward Hanborough Ridge. Hunched over the necks of their black chargers, they crested the rise like crows against the sun. The Earl himself, he of the mocking half smile and feigned humility was first into the courtyard.

"Welcome my lords."

"And thank you for agreeing to break our journey to the capital."

The Earl's mellifluous tones and easy smile contrasted with the stiff, formal cordiality extended by Thomas Bouchier who bent his head turning his hook nose, beady distrustful eyes and thin merciless lips to the ground. Unhandsome with thin greying hair and bent body despite his mere forty years or so he was every inch the reluctant supplicant. By contrast the Earl's countenance exuded a genial authority and rectitude with large twinkling eyes, firm jawline and open face. From beneath a wide brimmed hat fell long black hair frosted by the ride. The stable boy appeared and took the bridles. The Earl climbed down and hands were shaken. One of their number retrieved a small casket from this saddlebag before the horses were led off.

The Earl urged Thomas to lead the way while his men followed alert, silent with hands resting easy on the ornate hilts of their swords. The crash of metal on wood from above forced the men to start. Thomas apologised for the building work that was on going even during the dead of winter. The Manor was being extensively enlarged with a new wing on its western edge. They glanced up through the planks and scaffolds to their right where a set of hard, wary eyes watched their passing.

At the outer porch coats were taken by the tall, slim, perpetually attentive Jarvis the family retainer for two generations of Bouchiers. In the large formal sitting room, a log fire burned as they were introduced to Frances, the demure, younger wife of Thomas. She of stoic temperament and resigned countenance in the wake of her husband's contentious reputation in and out of the civil courts. She curtsied and offered the thinnest of smiles.

"Welcome to our humble home sir," said Frances, her timbre firm but her gaze downward.

"The Earl turned to Thomas and indicated the casket held by one of his men at arms.

"We corresponded did we not...."

"...of course my Lord....please if you would..."

Thomas took the Earl and the man addressed as Sir Walter along the stone passageways of the 14th century manor house lit by a series of torches, up the main staircase, the stone worn and bowed under centuries of feet. At the end of a short landing was a large oaken door, hewn from the estates of Woodstock Castle. Thick iron working hinges reached across the jointed planks like fierce fingers and a large key protruded from the huge iron black lock. Thomas turned the key noisily and heaved the door open on loud complaining hinges.

The Earl appraised the chamber comprising a bed, a table and chairs, thin Persian rugs each side of the bed and under the door to keep down the draft and a low teak table caught in a shaft of low winter sun from a single window high above their heads. The Earl inspected the cupboards and even under the bed. He pressed stones, aware of the prevalence of secret passageways and escape rooms, vestiges of the Civil War. He drew his sword to prod the ceiling boards and appraised the high narrow window. He nodded approvingly and placed the small casket on the table.

"May I?" enquired Thomas indicating the mother of pearl, silver and gold trimmed box. The Earl smiled and took a small key from his breast pocket and clicked the small golden lock open. He raised the lid and behold, the St Edward Sapphire as royal blue as a sunlit ocean and cut as an octagon. It was the most fabulous jewel in western Europe if not the whole of the world. Thought lost after the interregnum, destroyed along with all of the Crown Jewels, here it was, an enduring symbol of the ancient British throne.

"What was lost is now found...." The Earl lifted it out and between his fingers turned it to catch the light. Thomas was for a moment mesmerised as if a living blue flame burned at the heart of the stone, kindling something akin in his own heart.

"It is my honour to escort it to back to the capital, to the King himself..." said the Earl. Thomas was sufficiently circumspect not to ask which king as revolution was in the wind and it paid not to be presumptuous...not yet. The Earl returned it and locked the box.

"How many keys to the room?" asked Sir Walter, a sturdy looking man in black and scarlet.

"Just this one...." said Thomas handing it over to the Earl, who passed it over to Sir Walter along with the key to the casket..

"Sir Walter...lock it from the inside and only open it on my command."

"Yes my Lord." Thomas and the Earl left and waited while he turned the key.

Over dinner the Earl's men at arms, Sir Roger Wayland, tall and scholarly with a ready wit and Sir Percy Durham circumspect and diffident enough to suggest grander thoughts occupied his stately brow proved to be genial companions. Between courses wine and a bag of bread, cheese and venison was brought from the kitchens by Jarvis and taken to Sir Walter by the Earl just as the front door crashed open.

"Ah..." said Thomas with a hint of apology.

"James...." his father called and the young man appeared. Surly of countenance, black of expression, thick lips unsmiling and eyes stark in their agitation and clearly the worse for drink, angrily brushing snow from his outer coats as if it were intrusive, a pestilence. He took in the table as if he had happened upon a pack of thieves caught in the act. The Earl returned to observe the young man from behind, unseen.

"Good day James." He turned as though he had been struck and stared up at the tall authority of the Earl. A hand was out stretched and the young man was forced to take it.

"My son...." confirmed Thomas.

"What say you join us for brandy..." the Earl said, his lips curled into his half smile, as if amused at the young man's discomfort and his obvious inebriation.

"Of course your majesty..."

"...your grace will suffice...for now." Wayland and Durham laughed.

James was like his father, a purveyor of the law, and just like his father immensely unpopular at the bar. The Earl and his men appraised him as he joined them, like cats with a new mouse.

The evening ran into night and smokes and brandy saw the house to bed and the Bouchiers grateful for the respite. Jarvis shut the house down as Janice the maid, Tom the stable boy and Nell the cook left. Longhanboro slept as it had for over 600 years, when it was no more than a £10 estate in the Domesday with a population of just 31 including 5 slaves!! But as a farming community the village had flourished enjoying passing trade on the long road from London, through Oxford and on to the Marches.

Thomas tossed and turned beset with night sweats, unable to shake off a sense of creeping threat, although he must have slept albeit fitfully, for he awoke to the angry cry of magpies above his window. Frances it seemed was already downstairs. He threw back the curtains and watched as three black and white emissaries of the devil took off for the woods beyond.

The house was soon awake and preparing for the Boar hunt organised for the Earl's benefit. Thomas Bouchier was not a natural horseman being more accustomed to turning his wily mind to the intricacies of other men's misfortunes. Sir Walter was hailed, vitals taken to him by the Earl and regrets shared that he would be unable to join them. Nell, Tom and Janice arrived. Tom all earnestness and sullen expression prepared the horses and wee Janice no more than twenty years of age, anxious and eager to please was at the beck and call of Jarvis, and Nell all hustle and bustle prepared nourishment for their day in the saddle.

The morning crisp and lively, untouched and pure drew the pack down into the Evenlode Valley, the ancient river once the Blade renamed over time as if the Saxon past had no place in the torrid modernity of Jacobean England. Francis saw them off before returning to the kitchens with Jarvis and Nell. Herbert Crumb master craftsman watched them go from high upon the wooden apex of the timber gables.

The ride turned toward the Hill of the Boar, following the Thames passed the ruins of Godstow Nunnery and Abingdon Abbey to the edge of the Wessex Downs before turning west where they encountered their sport and gave chase toward Witchwood where the ancient boar was native. Eschewing the site of Tilgarsley, desolated by the black death and now no more than low mounds and earth works, they turned north east through Longcombe and the Woodstock estates where the old castle lay in ruins as if waiting for the new century, when all that was medieval would be swept away.

Snow fell prettily all day and in the gathering darkness provided a veil through which to canter back onto the Bouchier estate. The hunt had proved fruitless but spirits were high and the chase had been invigorating. In the courtyard Tom took the reins and the men piled into the Manor, all chatter and bonhomie.

When Doctor Oswald Potter arrived, plodding through a thickening snow fall, the house was in uproar. Insistent knocking brought Jarvis in uncharacteristically poor temper.

"Doctor, please, you have caught us in a wretched state." Potter gingerly crossed the threshold and waited to be appraised. His dinner invitation, as elder and village doyen, was an honour and a high point in a somewhat mundane diary. Grey of head, slim and neat, Potter was a man of exactitudes and precision. A mathematician of some renown who had turned his hand to medical science. He was he would admit a man of restless intellect.

"Disaster has struck Doctor...murder most foul." Just then Frances appeared and it was clear she had been crying. Potter comforted her.

"What is it Madam?" It was common knowledge this gentle woman suffered at the hands of a man bereft of genuine affection or any sense of fellowship. Oswald Potter visited often if only to administer solace and check upon this dear woman's well-being. Jarvis intervened...

"Sir it's probably best if you..."

"Jarvis...I am a doctor. If there is a victim then duty demands I attend, lead on..."

Leaving Frances he followed Jarvis up the stairs and onto the landing following the sound of raised voices, one in particular, the Earl as it turned out, standing in the doorway of a room, sword in hand, and dressing down Thomas. A group of men were gathered together at the far end of the stone landing, clearly wishing they could be anywhere else. Potter recognised the sullen features of James, two of the others he did not know and presumed them to be the Earls men, the other was a workman resting his powerful hands on the haft of a great hammer. Crumb he remembered as a man of some building skill and good lineage from Shepherd's Farm at the far end of the village. Thomas caught Potter's eye.

"Kindly leave sir...there can be no dinner today," he said, his thin beseeching voice barely audible.

"And who are you sir...?" the Earl.

"Oswald Potter your Grace...I am a doctor and may be of some assistance. There is talk of murder. Where is the body?" The Earl waved his sword into the room behind him.

"You could confirm what we already know...give your verdict...but stay out of my way on all other matters." Potter edged his slight frame passed the Earl and took in the dreadful sight. In a small comfortable enough room a man lay spread eagled across a bed with a dagger protruding from a deep wound in his chest where a small puddle of blood had congealed and soaked into a white shirt. An empty bag and wine flagon discarded nearby

He went to the lifeless figure and made a number of immediate observations which prudence suggested he keep to himself for the moment. Where there is murder there is a murderer and he may well be out there on the landing. He would play medic and investigator. He examined the wound, a single insertion into the chest, the man's own dagger he would venture given the marks on his belt where it had most likely been carried. He examined the face, the eyes and...what's this....? He then stood and glanced around the room and spotted something he had not taken in on arrival. A small elegant casket on the table, its ornate bejewelled lid up, the insides empty. The Earl was at his side.

"The St Edward Sapphire, priceless, stolen, and my friend slaughtered." The Earl was struggling with his emotions, hovering somewhere between simmering rage and overwhelming sadness but as a soldier...a Lieutenant-General no less he was not unused to death and the value of self control. The Doctor left the body and went to the door, the broken lock, the splintered jamb. And the key still in position, on the inside!

"We broke in with hammers when Sir Walter failed to be roused," explained the Earl, "the key you see is still there. What do you make of that? How in thunder did this happen?"

Potter went to the bent hinges, put his face up to the door furniture and the lock. He pulled the key out and looked around, then put it back. He went the rounds, his fingers pressing on the stonework, looking under the bed and inside the wardrobes. How in thunder indeed.

He moved the rug beneath the door and either side of the bed, no trapdoors, secret passages? He stood on a chair and examined the window latches, he walked the landing, where all eyes followed his progress in silence, pleased to have something to distract them, to invest their worries in. While he would admit the Bouchiers were a difficult clan to love he felt some sympathy for the hapless Thomas and his wayward son. He resolved to do all he could to get to the bottom of this...not just for them but for the steadfast Frances who did not deserve such horror under her own roof. He stopped in front of the Earl.

"And what alerted you to the poor man's...."

".....Sir Walter Cross," said Wayland

"...thank you....Sir Walter's predicament?"

"....on returning from the hunt I hallooed him," said the Earl, "there was no reply and thinking he was asleep I hammered loud enough to wake the dead....although as it turned out, it wasn't."

"So you called Mister Crumb to break the lock?"

"...we did sir," said the Earl.

The Doctor pursed his lips.

"Call your household Thomas...to the sitting room."

"Do you have something doctor?" Jarvis asked.

"Come there's not a moment to lose. Not only do I know how this was done, but by whom..."

Jarvis went the rounds ushering servants into the large sitting room where they gathered in silent council, anxious, and afraid, every eye turned to the Doctor standing between the Earl and Thomas, their backs to the large open log fire. The doctor perused them all as if he could force a confession by sheer force of will and bring this wretched business to an end. Frances crossed her hands and tucked them into the front pocket of her apron and Jarvis was barely able to conceal his unease at this violation of the natural smooth running of the house. Nell the rotund and red of face cook, finding herself above stairs, a fish out of water, Janice the maid blinking large uncomprehending eyes and unselfconsciously searching for the hand of Tom the stable boy who remained resolutely steadfast in his insolent glare at the doctor, and next to him Herbert Crumb leaning heavily upon the great hammer like Thor himself. The hunters, Sir Roger and Sir Percy and James grouped themselves in the bay of the window.

"In case you have not heard there has been murder committed," said the Doctor, "Sir Walter, a knight of the realm has been cut down by a daring and cowardly thief who has made off with the fabulous St Edwards Sapphire. As the deed happened while these good men hunted, it stands to reason that the murderer is someone who stayed behind, in short...one of you....."

"As a long time friend of the family it has fallen to me to cast an impartial eye over these sordid events. The thief and murderer planned their crime well, killing the unfortunate Sir Walter silently without fuss, and while the house was as empty as it could be. The congealed blood suggests Sir Walter has been dead now for at least five hours putting the time of death around midday...." He turned to Jarvis.

"Sir...would that coincide with some kind of break perhaps in domestic work, a time when the murderer could move about upstairs undisturbed.?"

"It would sir...the staff are given half an hour at one o'clock...."

"Just enough time if the deed were planned well..." He turned to Tom.

"Where were you from one till half past ?"

"Nowhere....probably in the stables sir...." he replied firmly.

"...and you young lady...where were you?" Janice's face reddened...

"I was nowhere sir..."

"...were you perhaps nowhere with this young man?"

"...I cant rightly remember sir...." Potter could not supress a half smile....

"And you madam?" This to Nell.

"I was in the kitchens sir...I takes no break sir until food is all prepared...."

"I can vouch for Nell..." said Jarvis, "I too took my lunch in the kitchens." Crumb, a handsome, forty something man of solid features and a ruddy face confirmed he was on the roof where anyone with a mind would have seen him and Frances confessed she was alone in the back room where she was inclined to sew...and yes she saw Herbert Crumb when she had a mind to look outside her window which looked west toward the building of the new wing.

"So," said the Doctor with some theatre, "this is a house of innocence where no one did or saw anything and yet the wretched Sir Walter was mercilessly killed for a piece of stone which means that at least one of you is lying."

"...and by his own dagger?" exploded the Earl unable to hold his tongue a second longer.

"Sir," Potter addressed the Earl directly, "this is where the facts as I see them depart from the narrative I was given. You see Sir Walter was not killed by a dagger, his or anyone else's." The Earl frowned.

"Let me explain. A fatal knife wound would have soaked the poor man in his own blood, as it was the stain on his shirt was slight, meaning the heart had already stopped beating. The dagger was administered post mortem. But.... on closer examination I saw the black tongue and darkening lips and a malodorous scent...a sure sign of poison."

"The food from your kitchens Bouchier!" the Earl exclaimed.

"Likely that or the wine which Sir Walter had polished off." The Earl stepped toward Nell who shrank back with a shriek...

"Still your sword sir...please...there is more," said the Doctor

"The slaughter and the theft and its concealment are quite ingenious if it were not so foul. You see whoever placed the poison in the food or wine knew Sir Walter would die and the room would remain locked and so needed a plan to take the stone. It also means that anyone could have administered the poison...anyone at all...and at any time, even before the hunt."

"...an accomplice?" exclaimed the Earl glaring at Thomas and then James.

"Perhaps, perhaps not...let us proceed. Having established Sir Walter was dead it would be a simple matter for someone to poke out the key and pull it back through the gap under the door on the thin rug where the stone sill is bowed. They then simply unlocked the door, took the Sapphire and to throw us off the scent stabbed the lifeless corpse of Sir Walter with his own knife."

"So how to reclose the door doctor...do you have a notion?" said the Earl.

"I do my lord. On close examination of the long hinges I noticed that they were freshly marked as if someone had recently been at them with tools, and I decided at once that the door had been detached, the catch inserted into the lock recess and the hinges reattached to the door jamb. And the only man to have such skill would be..." Herbert Crumb, swung the great hammer and everyone scattered, he swung again this time at the knights who lunged toward him. Sir Percy was hit in the chest and fell back into Sir Roger giving Crumb just enough time to shoulder his way past and out of the door. The Earl's men recovered and were soon at his heels. The Earl would have joined them but the Doctor stilled his sword arm....

"My Lord, I'd say that Mister Crumb is the accomplice but not necessarily our killer." But the Earl had only one thing in his mind as he approached Nell.

"Lady...admit your crime and I will promise you a fair trial...look.." he sheathed his sword, "but tell me where is the Sapphire?" The red faced cook put her hands to her face and was speechless, tears began to flow as she struggled to respond.

"But sirs...I aint no poisoner, I have been cook here since I was a girl. I wouldn't know how sir...oh I don't have the words sirs...please it wasn't me...I don't know about no Sapphire sir...I just works in the kitchen at the master and mistresses request...I don't know the goings on upstairs sir..." She convulsed in a tearful heap so that Jarvis and Frances caught her as her legs gave way.

"Your grace, may I intercede on behalf of Miss Helen Goodright here..." said Jarvis. The Earl waited.

"Miss Goodright is of exemplary character and she and I have looked after the Bouchier family for two generations now...and I know a good and honest woman when I see one. Besides, this may be more salient sirs...Miss Goodright may have access to the food and wine that is obvious but she is not alone in having access to the kitchens. Crumb for instance wanders freely on all floors checking this, measuring that...including the wine cellar. His actions here are an admittance of guilt...I would venture Doctor that he worked very much alone in this heinous crime. Besides...if I say I was with Nell in the kitchens it stands to reason that I must be guilty too."

"...me too," said Frances, "for I saw Nell when I returned to the kitchens albeit briefly. She does not stop working." The Earl was in no mood for gallantry. He drew the sword once more and the room feared for their lives.

"Then, why don't I arrest the lot of you...and who knows Thomas perhaps you were behind it...you and you wastrel son, perhaps you got me out of the house while the whole lot of you killed my friend and took the Sapphire. Mark my words, if I have no satisfaction here this day I may burn the whole place down...do you hear me?"

"My lord," the Doctor interceded, "may I suggest we use the time before Crumbs apprehension wisely and conduct a thorough search of the house including everyone here." The Earl reluctantly agreed and Nell fell back into Jarvis in a swoon.

But the search revealed nothing and this is where the tale slips out of history and into legend. The pursuit of Crumb across countryside he knew well and on foot through heavily falling snow forced the horses to struggle in the deepening drifts. Hither and thither over field and vale, through woods and over frozen. streams they went, Crumbs footsteps easy to track. Eventually he crossed Cuckoo Lane and made for Barnards Gate, and this is where the trail ended, at the very edge of the unholy village of Tilgarsley where the drifts were deep and the air bitter with the souls of the long gone. The horses like the footprints would go no further.

Now was this true or was it the fancy of two shame-faced knights who lost their prey. Suffice to say the Earl remained unappeased and exacted his vengeance upon the entire estate by seizing the Manor by way of compensation. From that moment forth the estate of the Bouchiers would be his personal property and they would pay him a yearly tax for the privilege. Thomas protested but was told in no uncertain terms that if he opened his whining mouth one more time he would put him and his wretched family to the sword.

But the tale doesn't quite end there. A year later, Frances Bouchier disappeared from the family home, gone west some said to meet with a man, her lover they said who had come into considerable wealth and was an able craftsman who built them a new house somewhere in the deeps of Wales.

Who can really say what happened so long ago except that by hook and by crook what was lost again was found again and now the St Edward Sapphire sits proudly at the apex of the Imperial State Crown.

##  THE HOUSE AT THE END OF THE LANE

... _when witches walked abroad...even in Long Hanborough_

Who can say what really happened all those years ago? Just three elderly ladies living at the edge of a village or something more? History is strangely silent on what produced the Unpleasantness that gripped the village for one fateful summer. If you come to our village and go to the end of the lane, you will see nothing save old walls and an overgrown copse. But you would do well to respect the old wives tales that carry more truths than history books ever will. Take a moment to realise you are standing in front of the House of Three witches.

The house was very small even by rural 18th century standards and built of weathered stone, brown and grey with mosses and creepers clinging on like claws. The inhabitants were three old women, witches according to the testimony of those who lived in those times. Nothing is written so all we have is word of mouth, an oral tradition passed down the years. They would usually be seen when the sun was setting when they would walk abroad, roaming the village looking to procure ingredients for their diabolical business.

How the witches came to be there is not recorded. By road, by carriage, by field or river or by night on their broomsticks, history is strangely silent. But arrive they did. By all accounts they dressed in ragged hemmed cloaks and torn dresses, clutching long canes and wearing large bonnets that kept their faces in shade. One was always in deep red, the colour of blood, one in dark green as dark and as green as the surface of a stagnant pond and the other, the one that frightened the children the most was in black. Were they ugly? We can only speculate but they say one glance from a single eye could transform the most incurious bystander into anything they wished.

The house at the end of the lane was in fact half way along. It was always seen as at the end because that was where the village ended and it was the last house in Wood Lane. But the track continued all the way to the villages beyond, skirting the outer eaves of Mill Wood where the towering Horse Chestnuts rose like giants. And high in the treetops the hundred rooks, gathered in great families, shrieking their warnings. They were the guardians of this ancient remnant of Wychwood a mighty forest that once covered most of England. The trees were densely packed and the shadows gathered tighter the further anyone went in. Only the hundred rooks knew what lay in the deepest parts of the wood, where time is unchanged from the days when Earth was God and Faerie Folk walked openly.

To begin with the witches were just a curiosity, a brood to be pointed at and kept well clear of. No-one entered their over grown front garden which had become the home for discarded balls thrown from the village urchins and stray cats. There was a rumour that the cats were not in fact strays but were once little children who had tried to retrieve a ball...who knows?

What is known is that by June 1795 the three witches had already taken up residence in a house that seems to have no real history. Some said they had it built which seems unlikely, others that it had been standing empty for years until they arrived and there were few who even declared the house had never been there at all until they arrived. Their presence went unnoticed for a while but as sightings increased and their weirdness realised, a sense of dread fell upon the house and travellers would hurry by heads down.

But this story is not about their uncertain arrival but how and why they finally left. What became known as The Unpleasantness crept upon the village gradually, like a rain cloud spoiling the end of a long summer's day. The folk of Long Hanborough were a naturally taciturn lot, blessed with a solid earthy contentment at the richness of the seasons and the providence of the earth. The first stirrings of malcontent can be traced back to some queer goings on during the summer of 1795.

6th JUNE 1795: A solitary figure plodded wearily toward the Swan. The air was starting to thicken with evening as the Earth turned and pushed the sun's rays below the tops of the oaks and chestnuts that guarded the thatched stone walled inn. In his late forties Bill rubbed his eyes knowing full well that the job was getting away from him. He'd soon be forced to hand the reins over to the boy. He knew no other life but shoemaking. It was steady work and much like the undertaking business, there would always be a call for it. As he crossed the dusty rutted lane he caught sight of Ned shutting down the Forge, putting the furnace out sending up clouds of steam, obscuring two drays he had been shoeing.

"Good evening to you," Ned hailed him. Bill Judd waved back but he was in no mood for idle chat, not even with his near neighbour. He was grateful the post office and shop were shut, saving him more hallos. A man of few words at the best of times he knew he was fortunate in all the things that mattered in a man's life, but these past few days he was weighed down by a weary fatalism like Bunyan's Pilgrim. His heart was heavy and his mood fractious.

Public Houses in these times were no different from now. Conversation would start civilly enough, quiet and courteous but as the ale flowed voices rose as men felt compelled to enlighten their fellows with wisdom and insight. Opinions became polarised and barely conceived ideas were defended as fact. Bill joined the usual group all from this end of the village, sons of sons of sons born and bred in Long Hanborough down the ages.

"There's no point in denying it...he's gone and that's a fact...." Bob Cole, a smallholder from across the fields to the south of the main road. He sat back to emphasise his point and to allow his fellow drinkers to appreciate the gravity of his words. It was fair to say that Bob was still considered something of an outsider given that his grandfather had only moved from North Leigh some seventy years ago.

"But Bob that don't make no sense do it?" challenged a thin wiry fellow smoking an old long stemmed churchwarden pipe.

"Plain gone Tom...just like that...one day I was feeding him and his brood, you know out by Hurdes Field where I keeps all my birds and then he's gone...my prime rooster"

"But who?" said Tom, "everyone knows he's yours and he's not for eating."

"And it's not as though he'd stay quiet...we'd all hear him..." added a younger fellow, unbearded but less ruddy of face than the others

Bob just shrugged.

"...gone."

Tom refilled and relit his pipe, a long business that gave him occasion to think. Bill drank on in silence.

"That aint the first tall tale I've heard this week," said Tom at last, "I was just closing up the shop when Ol Ma Webster came in. She was picking up a cut for her and Jim when she tells me about the Mill and the goat that skinflint Bouchier keeps there. Dirty old thing, don't know why he just don't slaughter it...anyways she says it's been stolen..."

"There's good eatin' there though," grinned the young man.

"Maybe..." ruminated Tom shifting the pipe from one side of his mouth to the other, "but why not a sheep or one of your geese or hens Bob...why the goat?"

"It's the didicoys, mark my words," offered an elderly chap with a long bewhiskered chin and a hook nose, like a beak below his beady eyes. On a bench with his back to the wall he glared at them as if he had hit upon some unsavoury truth.

"Aye they're around...I seen them up by Heath Lane," said the young chap. A gruff silence descended then Bill found his tongue.

"It aint no didicoys," he said.

"You been quiet too many nights this week Bill and now you got an opinion...what is it Bill...spit it out whatever you know," said Tom. Bill Judd stared into his ale and spoke quietly.

"It's them as lives by the wood." There was silence awhile before.

"Don't talk daft Bill, what do three old biddys want with a goat and Bob's rooster...I know they're queer alright but.....," this from the young man.

"I seen them come past...Ned'll tell you...the horses take some calming down and his fires don't stay lit. And there's odd goings on most evenings I hears it in the lane as they go past, altogether, click clacking with their canes and faster than ordinary folks can walk. I stay indoors but I see them from my window and I tell Job and Doris to stay inside..."

"I seen them too," said Tom, prodding the air with the stem of this pipe, "they comes past the shop...mumbling and looking daggers if you catch my meaning...that's if they raise their heads at all....What they live on I'll never know. Never been in to buy anything."

"Not sure I want to know," said the old fellow.

"Blackie between Green and Red," said Bill, "always the same order, click clack."

"So where'd they go...? the young man asked, "I barely seen them..."

"Can't say," mused Bill and that was the last he said on the matter, going back to his ale and staring down at the beer stained table top. The young man laughed dismissively but the others did not respond in kind. Staunch church goers all, they harboured a healthy (or unhealthy) regard for the supernatural, needing explanation for anything not God given.

JULY 1795: The Unpleasantness grew like a swollen river chock full of weeds. The thefts gathered apace, not least Jim Webster's horsewhip and herbs and spices from Ma Webster's kitchen. The very observant noticed too that all of the cobwebs had gone from Wood Lane. Suspicion and distrust leached out into the community like a disease. The failure of John Priors dairy herd and a series of unprecedented accidents at the Hencroft Quarry brought the farmers together at the Holly Bush. Things became heated when John Prior, a thick set, ruddy faced ruffian from the end of Pug Lane and Bob Cole got to accusing each other of taking more than their fair share of the silage. And when the Quarrymen confronted their bosses accusing them of bringing in cheap inexperienced foreign labour from as far away as Witney insults were traded and blows exchanged.

The mood darkened when Romany Joe came to the village, as he did every year to tinkle out some pots, sharpen knives, read palms and sell potions brewed from the finest hedgerow ingredients. But there was no mood for outsiders peddling their raggle-taggle charms. He arrived walking beside his piebald and his brightly painted caravan and he smiled at the folk who came out of their houses to watch him. But they were different. There was no "good day to you Joe," or "nice to see you back Joe," or the girls coming alongside with their "where you going Joe?", "do you have a wife Joe?"

The people remained grim of countenance and clicking of tongue, observing with empty eyes until Joe felt his skin crawl. Bill watching from the end of Wood Lane, said years later that he heard voices in the back of his mind telling him to beware the Romany and their pagan ways travelling as they did the god forsaken by-ways of England. They told him it was the didicoys behind the thefts and his dark temper. Weren't they camped nearby someone said? Why did he ever get so vexed by the three old ladies?

Romany Joe caught the mood, didn't understand it, but decided to move on to Bladon. He'd seen it before, a community suddenly turning against his kind...no accounting for it...but Long Hanborough? That did surprise him.

8th AUGUST 1795: It soon became clear the crops were going to fail. Life blood to the village were the barley and the legumes, peas and sainfoin for fodder. The underlying mood came to a head when Josiah Wilde the drayman from Witney stopped off at the Bell with a wagon load of flour and corn bound for Chipping Norton. It was a blazing hot day and he needed refreshment for himself and the dray.

As he mopped his forehead a group of women gathered at the end of Coffin Path, the single track to St Peter and St Pauls with its heavenward steeple and judgemental bells. He watched as they walked toward him, five or six at first but more coming out of the houses.

He waited, caught in their unsettling gaze, staring at them staring at him. On they came, a silent group led by three old crones, who suddenly began to gabble and their noise was taken up by the mob, for mob it was. Josiah grew alarmed but could not move. It was as though some hidden bonds held him fast. Soon there were gathered some fifty ladies, old and young, housewives and spinsters, teenage girls and stout matrons, and the three old crones egged them on.

"Now what's all this ladies? All I wants is a couple of beers and something for the horse and I'll be on my way...is there something I can do for you?"

They swept around the wagon in a tide of rage. Feral hands reached up, took hold of him and pulled him from his seat. He landed in the dust with a thump and glared up as the wall of women bore down.

"The flour and the corn, we need it," they said as of one tongue

"...but it aint mine to give...."

"We aint no thieves sir...name your price?" said Millie Haynes the young wife of Tom Haynes the shop keeper from Wood Lane.

"Sell it...sell it...." The chant was taken up driven on by the three old hens.

"It aint mine to...." Someone struck Josiah on the back of his head...he struggled to his feet but the blows kept coming until he fell against the cart and cried out...

"....stop please stop....I'll sell it...how much?"

"Two pounds...." said Millie

"...for the flour?"

"For all of it...the flour, the corn," said Millie

"...and the wagon....," said Ma Webster.

"...and the dray...," said Doris Judd.

"But I'll have nothing....."

"....you will have your life...," said the old woman dressed all in black who shook her cane in his face.

"....and two pounds.." said Millie slapping the coins into his trembling hand.

"Now on your way.......and don't you look back....." said the woman in black, her voice coarse and high pitched.

The shame has never left the village and remains there for all to see in any reputable history of Long Hanborough.

15th SEPTEMBER 1795: Seth Rogan a young scallawag of a youth was caught red handed pinching apples from a tree in Bill Judd's own back garden. Hearing someone moving about in the dead of night, Bill crept downstairs and attacked the boy with an iron poker. He beat him to the point of death before regaining his senses. Seth was nursed back to life but spent the rest of his days plagued by fits and cursed by devils. When confronted about the thieving he could only say that he recalled nothing but voices urging him on. It had happened many times but he had no memory of what he did with the booty.

Pa Rogan wanted Bill hauled off to the assizes and the mob cried out for retribution on Seth but their lusts were assuaged by the timely intervention of Doc Potter and the Rev Marlow, who seemed unaffected by the unpleasantness, living as they did close to the church, a mile or so away.

30th OCTOBER 1795: A young man on a small brown pony came up the track at the end of Wood Lane. He drew up beside the gate of the first cottage on the right and waited. When the door opened a beautiful young maiden in a frayed green dress stepped out. She walked through the cottage garden with its neat lawn and packed flower beds humming along with the bees. Fruit trees in a small orchard were heavy with bounty and the cottage windows were flung open letting the fresh autumn air in. For a while he watched her collecting the fallen apples into her apron until she glanced up and smiled.

"Good day to you sir," she said as two cats, one red and one black followed her out and rubbed around her feet purring loudly. She blushed.

"Good day to you my lady," he said and doffed his cap, "so pretty....your garden."

"Thank you sir," she set large green eyes on him as she gradually lost interest in her apple collection.

"May I ask you if there is a Smithy close by...you see Meg has thrown a shoe and I must get her repaired."

"Not a mile from here sir," she said, "keep going and Ned will see you right."

"I'll be on my way then...."

He returned his cap and sat awhile as if expecting something more.

"Of course,' she said, "if you have to wait for Meg, you could always come back and take tea here...I know it's a walk but...."

He smiled.

"I couldn't possibly impose..."

"It would be no imposition sir."

"Then it would be my pleasure. Thank you."

And the cats purred and the girl smiled as he slowly made his way down Wood Lane. And in the trees the hundred rooks cawed. The girl and her cats were gone.

Mid afternoon, the young man rapped on the door of the cottage. Drones buzzed in the yellow roses that threaded in and out of the trellis work all around the small porch and the leaded windows downstairs. The green eyed girl opened the door with a smile and the young man doffed his cap and bowed his head to enter. It was a lovely home, kept just so with a kettle on the hob and the cats curling themselves about his feet, purring and fastening him with their red and black eyes.

"Take a seat sir," she said and busied herself with the teapot and a plate of fresh scones that had just come out of the oven.

"I trust Ned will have Meg shoed before long."

"That he will...in thirty minutes or so.... But forgive me I should have introduced myself," he said at last, "I am Robin."

She faltered at the hob. He continued.

"I am travelling south as far as Oxford on family business. But what is your name...?"

"Lilith, sir and I have lived here all my life. Just me... and my cats."

The two cats would not leave Robin alone but when he bent down to fuss them they moved away to lie down together, almost entwined to watch him with four unblinking eyes.

"You must have family..." asked Robin.

Lilith brought the scones over with pots of jam and cream and looked down at the young man.

"No sir I have none so near. I am all alone but I do not lack for good neighbours and friends."

"Most important... good fellowship," he said, "especially as the nights begin to draw in and All Hallows is nigh."

She smiled with her mouth only.

"I do not hold with such talk," she said.

Robin took in the warm room with its knick knacks and deep cushioned chairs.

"But what of you sir... where is your family. Why travel alone? Do you have a wife?"

Robin laughed and helped himself to a scone applying the cream and the jam.

"So many questions... my family are scattered these days, fate and fortune are ill winds at times and I travel alone because that is my way...and no I am not wed."

She went back to the stove and brought over the teapot and two mugs and sat down opposite him at a small round table with a pure white embroidered cloth. At that point it seemed as though the sun cast new, more radiant beams through the windows, giving Lilith a luminescence.

She poured the tea and smiled. He smiled at her smile. He listened to the cats purring in what seemed like excitement. He smelt the aroma of the steaming tea as it settled in the mug. He watched her pour her own and he picked his up and the cats purred louder. Then tentatively he took a sip and the cats came closer. And as he drank he looked into the unblinking green eyes of the girl opposite, with hair that caught the sun and seemed like the green sea itself, as it moved in the breeze of an open window. And through the open window the hundred rooks were cawing. He gently returned the mug and rubbed at his eyes as if sleep were upon him. He reached for the scone but hesitated, instead he took the mug once more and sipped the sweet tea. He yawned.

"Excuse me, it has been a long journey Lilith," he said replacing the mug, "my eyes are so heavy."

"Why don't you take a nap," she indicated the chaise lounge under the window.

"No I should go..." he said, "I don't want to be a burden to you." He made to rise unsteadily but the cats somehow conspired to block his way, at his feet ready to trip him.

"You should stay," Lilith was more assertive. He staggered and fell against the door jam.

"It's no trouble sir," she said, close now, a hand on his shoulder ready to guide him to the chaise lounge. He almost complied but had enough presence of mind to release himself and put his hand on the door handle. It wouldn't move. She came closer...and her eyes said something he had always known.

There was a flurry and he saw a flash of sunlight on naked steel. She was fast as lightening and the dagger would have pierced his heart had he not called upon his own powers to nimbly sidestep the blow. Lilith turned in horror and dismay at his recovery and as he watched her she melted into the diabolical form of the Green Witch. At her back now were two old hags, one in red and the other in black standing bent and spitting fire in their ghastly unholy house. For where the stove had been there stood a cauldron brimming with pungent odours and layers of filth and scum....there beside it were the giblets of a rooster, the entrails of a goat and more, so much more that the floor was shiny with the detritus of their infernal magic. And on the filthy table he tried not to look at whatever it was he'd drunk and so nearly eaten.

"So I see you now in your true colours...." he said, "...as I always knew. And that is why your fate is sealed"

"Who are you you little toad?" spat the Green Witch.

"You know who I am, I am Robin Goodfellow and you know what I am...." and he suddenly seemed taller, a little older, his eyes grey and his ears delicately pointed. The witches were taken aback but their hesitation was brief.

"So, it's you! You'll still do....better in fact..." crowed the Black Witch.

"...than what, essence of youth and innocence?" said Robin with his hand on the door handle, "the final ingredient in your attempts to invoke your infernal master? To bring him through to this wretched village you have turned into a place of rage and darkness?"

"You do not have the power to fight us..." said the Black Witch

"Or stop us...." said the Red Witch.

"There is no escape," said the Green Witch, with Lilith's wild flashing eyes.

"If I were alone perhaps...."

But as they came for him, voices were raised in a discordant swell from outside, from under the eaves of the wood. A rising chant both ululating and harmonious.

"..... except I am not alone...and we only need to hold you long enough..." As the singing grew the door that had seemed welded shut, flew open and he stepped out onto the ill kept garden where cats roamed among the balls and toys. The knife slashed the air as they made to follow...mumbling and cursing, invocations dripping from their malformed thin lips, but they were unable to cross the threshold of their own front door. At the gate he turned. Their fury was terrifying as the Green Witch brandished the knife and the others threw spells and curses that seemed to hang in the air between them

"You will not summon your dread master on all Hallows Eve, with your spells and potions. He will not break through the thin veil that separates all worlds. This village you have riven with strife and discord will be spared his terror. It is you who will pass back into your unholy fathers kingdom."

The witches clutched their ears as the voices rose higher and Robin uttered a string of words in a tongue no man has ever heard. The witches crowded into the doorway watched him leave the garden to where a tall grey mare was waiting. He mounted up and waited as tall, radiant figures in the shade of the forest eaves, sang but came no further into the light. He turned back to the house in time to see it shimmer and start to fade. Gradually it lost its colours and definition, its presence became less, its form uncertain until the sun's rays passed right through it and he saw the trees and the fields beyond. And the three old hags mouthed silent curses as they struggled to leave, crammed into the doorway realising their fate.

The horseman didn't wait but rode gently to the wood and his people who carried on singing as they drew back into the cool darkness. Robin went with them as their voices resonated through the trees for a long time drawing further and deeper into their domain, becoming distant until they could be heard no more. Now only the hundred rooks remained and they too were silent for they had never seen the ancient ones come so far and sing the hymns they had first sung when the earth and time were still young.

And so the house at the end of the lane and the witches were driven beyond our realm and the door to their infernal master's realm was slammed shut forever.

Over the next few weeks Long Hanborough returned to good health and vigorous minds endured a difficult winter emerging in the new year battered but unbowed. Ways were mended and good fellowship extended once again to neighbours and strangers alike.

Down the years little was said of the of The Unpleasantness, but should you doubt the veracity of this tale then I suggest you take a walk down the old Wood Lane, toward Mill Wood and consider the empty plot where the House of Three Witches once stood and if you are of a sensitive disposition you may understand that just because something cannot be seen doesn't mean it isn't still there.....

#  SACRIFICES

As I joined the mourners I noticed an elderly gentleman, standing alone beneath the old beech tree on the green. Although his features were difficult to make out in the shade, I could see he was watching us. An old wartime colleague of her husband Frank perhaps. I know that he had fought behind the lines in France alongside the Marquis; the French Resistance.

I smiled, recalling the time I had embarrassed myself by asking Miss Palmer whether Frank had known the legendary Marquis Commander, Isabella Colbert. Had she met her? And in a moment of sheer hubris: was she Miss Colbert? She had appraised me with that half smile and said she had known her and no she was not Miss Colbert. She had died along time ago in Paris.

From the church gate we walked up the main street and along to the secluded lane at the far end of the village. A few steps along the single track road and I was at the door of the 16th century stone cottage that she had owned for as long as I could remember. We all filed in, a solemn group lost in thoughts and memories. Miss Lillian Palmer had been special to all of us. She had no surviving family so it fell to us her friends, colleagues and former pupils to do the honours, serving tea, playing host and so forth.

We gathered in her front parlour, which seemed so small now. Like a body without a heart, we stood and made small talk, but she was gone. I thought of the times she and I had sat here over a cup of tea and some home made cake discussing the school. She was long on advice and short on criticism when it came to the roll I had inherited from her after thirty or so years in the position as head of the village school

Ex pupils were now parents themselves with children under my tutelage. There were photographs on the side board and on the wall of just one person, her ex husband. None of Miss Palmer herself. She was that kind of woman. Discreet, self-effacing, not one to draw attention to herself. Speakers at the church had talked of her quiet, reflective demeanour and the solace she sought in the well being of others, especially the children.

"Headmaster?"

It was the elderly gentleman from the green. He approached, slightly stooped, allowing a thick blackthorn walking cane to bear his weight. Despite a limp he cut an imposing figure.

"Alexander King," his voice was commanding, authoritative even, despite his years. We shook hands and I wondered if we had met before. He cut to the chase without ceremony.

"I have something for you."

He dug deep into his suit pocket and produced a small case; the kind you might keep a valuable watch in. His clipped manner suggested military. He continued. "She made me promise to put this into the right hands. I'm an old friend."

"Did you serve with Frank Palmer?" I wondered.

"I did, and Lillian wanted this," he indicated the box, "to go to someone in the village. She was quite explicit. Would you be kind enough to point out Jane Morris?"

"This is Mrs Morris," I said indicating a smiling forty something woman going around with the teapot just a few feet away.

"Jane...this gentleman..."

She came over.

"Alexander King, an old friend of Miss Palmer, you were once a pupil of hers?" he said, looking intently at her. Searching for something?

"A long time ago Mister King, when I was Jane Wallace."

"This is for you," he said, "I promised to give this to you in person. Perhaps it could be passed on to your daughter someday."

He handed her the case and the conversation caught the ears of others. Curiosity drew people closer. Mrs Morris put the teapot down and opened the lid. It was a Croix de Guerre medal, the French award for gallantry during the two world wars. Miss Morris was at a loss. She looked enquiringly at me and then at Mister King.

"This is a mistake," she said, "who is it from? Is it Captain Palmer's?"

"No mistake Miss Morris I can assure you,"

I then recalled the day I had met this man before. It was toward the end of the fifties and I would have known him as Captain King. During assembly one morning, Miss Palmer had been playing the school piano, accompanying the children, singing All Things Bright and Beautiful. It had been my first real job. I remember sitting and waiting to take the reading and the prayers; after which Miss Palmer had come forward to address the children. She introduced them to Captain King for his second speaking engagement at the school, recounting his wartime memoirs.

This time he was at pains to describe the people he and his battalion had met during their campaign as they pushed their way across France toward the German border. Previously he had spoken of the Normandy landing and I recalled his skill in conveying the hardship and gallantry of his men without hatred or rancour for the enemy or dwelling too long on the loss and the pain. Although he did say afterwards that if he could put at least one child off the idea of war as an answer, he would not be sorry.

Despite or perhaps because of the limp, Captain King had cut an impressive figure as he marched into the hall. Tall with a David Niven moustache and flashing green eyes, he took a seat on the low dais. Miss Palmer had sat quietly to one side, as he spoke, her hands folded neatly in her lap and her prematurely grey hair in a tight bun. Her half smile and careworn eyes obscured by thick spectacle lenses leant her a serene almost melancholic air. I remember sitting at the back as rapt as the children.

Captain King asked his audience if they knew the names of any of the men and women who had fought so bravely in the war. Immediately a hand had shot up.

"Please sir," one young man said that his dad had told him about Guy Gibson and Douglas Bader? "Did you know them? Would you talk about them?"

"They were RAF so I never knew them," said the Captain, "but they were very brave."

Another hand went up. It was a young girl at the back.

"Sir, what about Isabella Colbert. I've just read about her in my brother's Victor. She was most brave wasn't she sir. Can you tell us about her."

The captain nodded.

"Well, as a matter of fact I knew Ms Colbert very well. She wasn't who I came here to talk about, but if you are interested then I would be very happy to talk abut her." And so he told the story of how she had lived in the suburbs of occupied Paris becoming one of the greatest commanders of the French Resistance. She became the principle contact for British agents behind enemy lines and over a few months developed links with Resistance groups all over the country which helped her get agents and stranded airmen to safety, and eventually back home. He remembered that she was a formidable shot with a natural authority that lead to her running her own guerrilla unit attacking German supply trains and troop convoys. Ms Colbert was a saboteur and fighter of extraordinary courage. The Captain had fought along side her many times.

"Were you ever wounded?" asked one young man.

"I took some shrapnel in my leg which meant my hop Scotch days were well and truly over," he smiled as he rubbed his left leg.

"Did Ms Colbert get wounded?" asked the girl.

"Often," he said and then more to himself, "but not all wounds are so easy to see."

"I wish I was as brave as her," said the girl, "when I'm grown up I'll tell my children all about her. We should never forget people like her should we sir?"

"No, we should not," said the Captain.

Later as we waited for the Captain's taxi Miss Palmer had thanked him for coming and I asked whether they had met during the war. The Captain confirmed they had and that Miss Palmer's husband had served under him. And then I put my foot in it asking Miss Palmer about her war and whether she had known Miss Colbert.........

As the taxi arrived the Captain told me that Frank never made it back.

I apologised for my thoughtlessness.

"We all made sacrifices Mister Brown," she had said, "but it heartens me that the children and young men like you have the freedom to live life to the full."

"And it was the children who set the agenda today," said the Captain.

"Indeed it was," said Miss Palmer.

"The medal does not belong to Frank Palmer," said the Captain, "but to Isabella Colbert, Marquis Commander."

"So Lillian was Isabella Colbert?" I said, more as a question.

The Captain let the question hang in the air as if he were reconciling his life long loyalty to Miss Palmer and the truth about Miss Colbert.

"Miss Palmer, was not Miss Colbert," he said, "at least, not anymore."

"You mean she changed her name and nationality..." I said.

"No, not just that," he was choosing his words carefully as if his late friend were at his elbow. "Lillian told anyone who asked that Isabella Colbert died in the war. And in any meaningful sense of the word, she did."

"It was me, who asked about her at school, wasn't it?" said Jane Morris to herself.

Then to the Captain,

"I don't really understand. We would have been proud of her. She would have been an example to future generations. A true hero."

"She would not speak of it," said the Captain, in explanation, "none of us returned whole, and I don't just mean flesh wounds like this damn leg of mine. Some scars run so deep they never heal. When you kill a man or lose someone you love, a part of you stays there, trapped, frozen in time. For Isabella and Frank, fighting in war torn Paris it was love at first sight and his death broke her heart irreparably. Coming to England and with true happiness a distant memory Miss Palmer devoted herself instead to the future of our children. She loved their indulgences and luxuries free from the tyranny of war. Watching the generations benefit from so much sacrifice meant a great deal to her. She would not taint her new world with a reputation built upon the glories of war; where taking a life is considered honourable. For her, these were shameful acts."

"She was never more dismayed than by people her age who clung to the past as if peace had never been won, questioning the right of the young to have fun. Wasn't that the whole point she would say? Miss Palmer always knew the price of freedom and the cost of intolerance; freedom to think, to be ourselves, to be silly or frivolous, to regard time as a friend. It was what she and so many had sacrificed so much for and she never forgot it."

#  ART AND ARTIFICE

Jennifer Brice was alone in her two bedroom flat on the edge of Oxford. By the window she let her mind wander over the bucolic landscape and the huddle of low rooved houses between her and the gentle rise of the fields and trees beyond. The air was thickening as the night drew in and her thoughts drifted like smoke over the remains of the day. In her early forties she had never really left the academic ferment of this old Saxon city. The promise of another life, held little allure, compromising as it would her love of freedom over her love of love. Educated and then employed here she was in every sense, at home. She would always be alone; she was that kind of woman.

But the news had snapped the thin thread connecting her tenuously to the world outside her flat. The call had come through on her landline. It had excited her. When you are waiting for the Literary Agent's verdict you are on tender hooks. And when the female voice announced herself as Connie Carroll of Carroll Associates, specialists in popular art books her heart had skipped a beat. But the message could not have been more disappointing and damning!

"Miss Brice?"

"Yes."

"I'm calling about your submission Modern Art: Its always Been Here."

"Okay."

"Miss Brice, the trade takes a very dim view of any sort of plagiarism. You have lifted word for word an entire book already on its way to the publishers. Even the title. Now I know it's a world of instant gratification and entitlement at any cost, but this is audacious...."

Jennifer had been unable to find the words to interrupt. Connie Carroll went on.

"...audacious and illegal Miss Brice. Take this as a friendly warning that we have you on our radar. We will let this slide but I advise you Miss Brice be very careful in future....."

"But who....who has published my...this...."

"I think you know as well as I do Miss Brice...you work with him!"

The line had gone dead and she had somehow placed the receiver in the cradle. Her entire year's work, her opus magnus as Harry had put it, shot down in flames. Plagiarism? She had written every word herself in this very room. As she had tried to make sense of the severe Miss Carroll's words, the hurtful truth had begun to burn along a short fuse, a series of events that led in only one direction. Very slowly the sense of betrayal had grown like something rising from the depths of a deep dark ocean. It was always the same! Every time she let her guard down, ventured beyond the protective gates of her compartmentalised mind she would catch herself trapped by the barbed wire of the real world. And this time the cuts were so deep she could not stem the bleeding. She had sleep walked into her bedroom and had perched on the end of her bed all afternoon, letting the awful truth consume her.

Horatio P Bloom. She ran the name through her head a few times as if it might make him materialise in front of her. How long had she known him, worked with him, crossed the country, stood by his side to view some of the greatest art in the country? He had been nothing short of a mentor. As assistant to his Head Curator at the Ashmolean Museum they had done some great work together. World class exhibitions had been researched, negotiated and organised. National and international renown had kept them in the eye of the storm. Horatio had cultivated a unique role for a man with his unique personality and by proxy she had attracted her share of reflected glory.

Jennifer adjusted her large spectacles and set her thin face to the wall, twisting her greying black hair, a habitual sign of distress. She cut a slight figure at the best of times but now she felt she was fading away like a light being dimmed. She could feel the twin wolves of anxiety and fury competing for dominance in her fevered fractured brain, locked in a frenetic embrace preventing anything approaching rational thought.

How to react? What do other people do in the face of betrayal? She needed Harry.

"...they confront their betrayer..." texted Harry after she poured out her plight in a stream of consciousness. Harry Lewis an old Uni friend and latterly a manager and rising star at the Tate.

"...this is me Harry... I don't do confrontation... I don't even make eye contact. What would you do...?"

"...break his legs... although I'm not suggesting..."

She fired back.

"...it was even his idea Harry, remember? He said I should spread my wings, make a name for myself."

She had been at Bloom's side and in his shadow for twenty years. She had grown as an art curator and as a person but latterly she was increasingly a wallflower straining for the sun and wilting for lack of light. She had gone to Horatio for advice. He had suggested she 'put that impressive mind to work on a book.' It would elevate her self-esteem and put her in the public eye...not that she wanted that...she had made that quite clear...but the intellectual challenge really did inspire her. He would even put in a good word for her, check and edit her proofs if she wished.

Horatio P Bloom, doyen of the art world, as elitist as Brian Sewell and as expansive as Brian Blessed. A larger than life presence, feted on TV and radio and writer of a flotilla of books and blogs. An opinionated presence on social media, he would always bring his considerable intellect and caustic wit to bear on any breaking new story. Marinated on some of the best European wines his rosy complexion, large startled eyes and thick lips suggested a latter day, well-padded Oscar Wilde. Morbidly obese perhaps but habitually dressed in three piece wine dark suits and matching fedora and sporting a Van Dyck, Bloom was both lampooned and revered in equal measure. His celebrity status reflected well upon his profession and the Ashmolean Museum.

And so she had decided to write an illustrated guide to contemporary art extolling its joys and its pitfalls, its false prophets and its dawn stars. She had put her idea to Harry.

"Tremendous...but what about your first and may I say only love...Cezanne...?"

That was so like Harry, teasing her about her obsessive relationship with the great man. He was the only one who could pull her leg without leaving her feeling confused and inadequate. She had faith in Harry. Call it need, call it dependency...whatever, but he was the nearest thing she had to a friend. He was not and never could be her boyfriend. He said she was in love with her art, especially Paul Cezanne and needed nothing more. He was right to a point, but her fragile self-esteem needed his reassurances. She said that she found most social ticks either unreadable and so could not be trusted. Jennifer was not a recluse. She held down a prestigious position with alacrity, even blossoming in the hermetically sealed landscape of cultural excess. But outside she closed back down eschewing the company of anything that made demands upon her time and her mind. Closeness was just another form of intrusion. The crowd just voices on the wind, mocking, speaking in tongues, elusive and foreign. Was she selfish? Frightened?...perhaps a little of both, but she had her passion and it sustained her like oxygen.

"I could not possibly exploit Paul, not yet...maybe next time..." she had said.

But now she just wanted to cry, but she didn't know how. She finally called Harry and left a message.

"Horatio had been proof checking and editing and advising me and all the time he was stealing my work and putting his own name to it. I put my trust in him, and you know how hard it is for me to do that...oh Harry what should I do?"

Her increasingly misspelt and half sent texts had become an unstable medium to express her disintegrating state of mind. She would have emailed but the Mac was co-conspirator and collaborator in the grand deceit. And when Harry stopped answering her texts she feared she had scared him off, her only lifeline, taking him for granted. A man too elevated to over-indulge the ranting of a nobody from Uni, a woman who should be married now and settled down.

Jennifer could only wander around her flat, perusing the art on her walls, making microscopic adjustments to ornaments, finding fault wherever she looked. Her world seemed to be melting, distorting so that she retreated further and further into deeper and darker caves; exactly what her therapist had warned her against.

As a child her mother had seen her as just awkward and shy. As a teen her diffidence and vacant nature became bait to so much school girl cruelty. She had walked alone, stood alone, learned alone and it was only when she went to Oxford as an Art undergraduate that she blossomed among minds sophisticated enough to embrace her intellect and social flaws. She became admired as a lovable eccentric. But the inner turmoil continued as social demands increased. It was Harry who, unable to provide what he saw as valid support to her bouts of self-doubt and loathing, referred her to a therapist. She rallied and discovered strength in intellectual rigour and the rapture in the brush strokes of the greats. Artists spoke without words, without even being there, in colours and textures leaving her in complete control.

She found part time employment at the Ashmolean as she studied and then full time once Harry had put a good word in for her. She had blossomed. She had not looked back. Until now.

Her phone buzzed....another text.

"... call me... I think I can help you... Harry."

She did and waited while his PA put her through.

"Jenny?"

She began to gabble.

"Listen to me."

She stopped.

"You need to calm down and listen."

She held her breath.

"Go back to your Mac...."

She said nothing.

"...remember when you gave that talk, part of your thesis....on the theft of the View of the Auvers-Sur-Oise from the Ashmolean...were you there then...part time? I don't remember...anyway I'm thinking a detective story...tracking the missing painting...imagine the interest..."

"How? Where would I start?"

"That's where I can help. It just so happens I have friends of friends, here in London. Friends who know things."

"You always did run with a rum crowd."

"Irons in fires that's all. Art has no boundaries and neither do art lovers. Now all I ask is that you keep this away from Bloom."

"Oh Harry I don't have the strength anymore."

"Jen, that's exactly what you do have. You just need to focus. And this will be more than just another book...listen to me...would I lie to you Jen...you do trust me don't you??"

"Of course I do...but what about Horatio?"

"...just go to work, act normal, don't confront him."

And they talked for an hour or more about her next venture, The Missing Cezanne: a detective story.

Jennifer doted on the Pre-Raphaelites and the dashing Dante Rossetti, she revered the noble austerity of the Campden Town Group, Sickert and the rest with their singular views of London, she dreamed of the decadent Caravaggio, she argued with the impressionists and their rage, the Dadaists and their faux disrespect, she marvelled at the appalling Jeff Koons, and would have taken Van Gogh home and given him a good feed. These were her world, her friends. But her greatest love, the one who held her in rapture was Paul Cezanne. The man who started it all, who the impressionists called father and for whom she would do anything. For him she found the strength to return to her Mac, to compartmentalise her tangled emotions and begin.

Her last book...the one that never was, had tried to pull the opaque term modern art, out of the mire of intelligibility and accusations that it's 'all a bit king's new clothes.' What was modern art anyway? Did it mean contemporary art...in which case it would encompass all art or was it what the public called abstract? She had loved the process and the research and the disentangling of received wisdoms, the false assumptions and the strength of her own passion.

But this time she was in a world of speculation that relied heavily upon Harry and his intimacy with a side to the art trade she didn't know. With boots on the ground, sharp eyes in darkened doorways and rocks lifted best left unlifted, she was able to construct something exciting...a trail of smoke and mirrors that would lead the reader step by step through a jungle of art and artifice that crisscrossed Europe.

The robbery itself had been one of the most audacious art heists of modern times. Against the back drop of the Millennium Eve celebrations a single robber...so they think, cut his way through the roof of the Ashmolean, dropped down a rope ladder, obscured the cameras with smoke bombs, lifted one painting, the View of the Auvers-Sur-Oise before disappearing back up the ladder and into the night. That was all anyone knew.

The singular nature of the theft suggested it was taken to order. It had never resurfaced as far as the experts knew therefore it was most likely hanging on the wall of some beach side residence of an overseas crime lord. If not then like most stolen art that cannot be legitimately sold it was used as collateral in some shady dealings, without ever being realised in cash terms. In such cases it was not unknown for a priceless piece of art to lose its lustre and find itself cast aside in some dumpster like a faded matinee idol gone to seed, its value diminished, its best days behind it.

Over the next few weeks Jennifer went to work and never once spoke to Bloom about his crime. She worked diligently and courteously if not a little dispassionately. His eyes were on her as she moved through the galleries, spoke with potential new exhibitors, hosted receptions and took walking tours. Her demeanour was contrite, impersonal and above all contained.

When the ten advance copies of Modern Art: Its Always Been Here by Horatio P Bloom arrived in a package he was careful to keep them in his office and not fete them in earshot of Jennifer. Did she spot the slightest tick of guilt or embarrassment in his cheek muscle as she entered his office as he was unpacking them? Was that a flicker of remorse, fleeting like the shadow of a passing stranger? His insensitivity was brazen. It should have reduced Jennifer to tears but she had wrapped herself in a cocoon of indifference, like a warm cloak of isolation through which the icy fingers of this man's course disregard could no longer penetrate.

Six months later Jennifer felt she was almost there.

Just before Christmas, Bloom was at his favourite table in Le Manor Aux Quat' Saisons waiting for his dinner guest. The evening was unseasonably warm and the atmosphere was lively. The man with the genial smile and steel blue eyes walked in, handed the maître d' his coat and gloves and catching Bloom's eye proceeded to cross the cosy restaurant. A waiter pulled out the chair and he sat down. Hands were shaken and thin smiles exchanged.

"Do you have it my boy?"

Harry pushed a USB stick across the table cloth which Bloom took and enfolded in his fat fingers. He opened his palm and glanced at it and then back at his guest.

"...it's all there..." confirmed Harry

"...she knows nothing?" asked Bloom

"...she trusts me," said Harry

Bloom pocketed the stick and leaned back to survey his dinner guest.

"I have to admit I underestimated you when you first called, but now I understand. You take this to anyone else and it's a pat on the back and well done old son. And lest we forget, the painting is ours and not the Tate's so you did the right thing by both of us."

"It seemed the obvious course of action."

"Quite right. She publishes this and the whole affair will disappear without a trace. Perhaps a few column inches in some art glossy and that would be that. You know I almost feel sorry for that drab little girl...almost."

He nodded for the wine waiter to pour.

"But with my name on the cover the world will sit up and take notice. Glory as well as the steady flow of royalty cheques fluttering into the Bloom coffers and for you the kind of influence money can't buy, although in this case..."

His rotund body shook with laughter and Harry grinned back.

"...good times are ahead for you Harry my boy. I'll be speaking to the Board of Trustees this very week...I'd say the top job is as good as yours."

Harry smiled his handsome boy next door smile and his eyes twinkled.

"Here's to us and a prosperous future..."

"....and to female naiveté," Bloom pursed his thick lips.

They raised their glasses and toasted Miss Jennifer Brice.

"Now let's order," said Bloom, "....it's on you by the way."

Both men laughed as they turned to their menus.

The script was well written and meticulously researched. Until now Bloom had only been sent details of the back and forth across Europe. Interviews, false leads and helpful policemen keen to see their name in print drew the intrepid detective through the clandestine world of illegal art dealing. And as the trail got warmer so Bloom's interest grew until it dawned upon him that Miss Brice was actually working up to a real conclusion, the unearthing of the missing Cezanne! This was sensational stuff. It seemed as though Miss Brice was going to launch her book at the very site where the painting had been discovered. So all he had to do was beat her to the punch. He had become impatient for the final page, the reveal, the whodunit. He needed the address.

And now...he had it.

The trail was a fascinating tour of a world where the gullible will say there are no real victims only rich punters with more money than sense, but the truth is art theft is the engine room for so much else, providing cash and investment for other more heinous crimes. Illegal art dealers are a pipeline to the drug cartels, generating much needed capital for greasing palms and the like.

After digging deep and chasing false leads through the North of England, to Monte Carlo and even engaging the assistance of some Sicilian gentlemen who offered to bring it home for a price she had settled upon Serbia where a joint Swiss/Serbian sting operation in 2012 had unearthed the only other missing Cezanne, Garcon Au Gilet Rouge stolen to order from a Zurich collection in 2008. Contact was made with the thief himself, one Ivan Pekovic, serving time in a Swiss jail and he had, as rumour had it, information on who underwrote the 2012 and the 1999 operations. No name, but a fellow Serbian who had a veracious appetite for Cézanne's and a vicious appetite for causing harm to any who stood in his way, an old warlord from the Balkan Wars. But Pekovic was prepared to trade an address for a reduced sentence.

This is where Harry's on the ground contacts came in, for the house in which the painting hung was a Belgravia residence recently vacated by Serbian "businessmen." Men who on feeling the heat decided to distance themselves from the masterpiece itself, leaving it behind like an abandoned child, in the hope it would stop the chasing posse in its tracks. The text detailed Miss Brice's eventual viewing before having it authenticated by Sir Nathaniel Pullman no less.

There was no time for Bloom to lose. First get the reedited book to the publisher. Second convince the Board of Trustees that he had been on the trail of their prodigal son for the past twelve months. As a free spirit in possession of mercurial energy they had no grounds to disbelieve him and a company outing for the entire board was arranged.

When the news filtered down Jennifer just fled her desk....there was no veneer of indifference. It was over. Bloom's brow furrowed in mock shock, he made to follow her, others joined him....but she was gone now, her body language was something they had never seen before. She had fallen beyond their reach.

"Leave her..." said Bloom at last, and his nod conveyed his sincere concern for her mental health, and his shrug asked 'what could they do?'.

"Perhaps she is overwhelmed that the Cezanne had finally been discovered..." someone said, "she loves him you know."

"Perhaps," said Bloom, "but I'm afraid she has been awfully odd recently...I don't think she is in a happy place."

When the day came the sixteen trustees wended their way to London like a daisy chain catching the 9.17 from Oxford Parkway. Bloom made a call from first class.

"....Harry my boy...we're en route...just checking all is tickety-boo..."

"....Oxford and National Press...Meridian News..."

"....and Sir Nathaniel? Icing on the cake..."

"....of course....Oh, there's one thing. A couple of local bobbies will be there to keep an eye on proceedings and to make sure we don't get any unwanted attention. After all it is a crime scene."

"Splendid, we don't want some Serbian thugs rolling past committing a drive by or whatever it's called..." Bloom laughed.

"....quite."

Bloom clicked off and smiled at the closest members of the Board. He nodded his confirmation that all was ready. He beamed as he rummaged through his brief case and pulled out the advance copy of a glossy coffee table book; The Missing Cezanne: a detective story: by Horatio P Bloom. He passed it round the carriage. A hundred publicity copies would be waiting for him at the venue.

At Marylebone the Pied Piper and his Trustee rats made their way across the concourse to the taxi rank.

"48 Belgravia Square..." said Bloom to the taxi driver. A fleet of cabs carried the sixteen trustees through the city, pouring them out onto the wide pavement where two police officers stood in attendance. A van bearing the Meridian TV logo was parked up and cables led across the threshold like serpents searching for their prey. Bloom bounced up the steps ahead of the pack and was met at the door by a group of art dignitaries as well as a young police captain and the landlord who seemed disorientated. Newspaper men hung around ready to interview him.

"How did you find it?"

"Was it the Mafia who stole it?"

He graced each with a few words and promised them more after the unveiling. He swept through the hallway and into a downstairs sitting room. High ceilinged and musty it had seen better days as an affiliation to the Spanish Embassy before the current infestation of shady business men from Eastern Europe

And there it was...hanging over the fireplace, sacrilegiously above a coal fire hearth. He examined its simple grandeur...a painting that Cezanne always claimed was not finished, a fact that gave it the spontaneity of work in progress connecting it to the man himself like no other. He was in awe. Gathered around were some one hundred art luminaries. Horatio P Bloom was known to them all and grew a foot taller in the glow of his own munificence.

The one hundred advance copies of his book were stacked before him on the low table where he would later sit and sign. He looked for Harry...who emerged from a side room with a heron like creature in tweeds.

"Sir Nathaniel..." Bloom was effusive.

Jennifer Brice sat alone on her sofa. She poured herself a small sherry to steady her nerves. Watching the footage on the evening news she sometimes wondered why she ever left her house with such people in the world. She certainly hadn't expected the day's events in London to be reported nationally. But the world loves a human interest story.

"And now for some intriguing developments from the art world with the spotlight very much on Horatio P Bloom himself," said the voice over.

The camera panned to the corpulent Horatio P Bloom resplendent in his fedora and damson suit, holding court in the large reception room. Seconds before the camera was turned he had draped a length of red velvet over the painting, unable to resist the drama of the dramatic reveal. He began to speak to both the floor and the camera. Prominent in the gathering were Harry, Sir Nathaniel the entire Ashmolean Board of Trustees plus representatives of Europe's most esteemed art houses, dealers and a clutch of private collectors she recognised. Jennifer was transfixed.

"My distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for making the journey on what is a most auspicious occasion," he was in his element.

"All of us I think are old enough to remember the theft of the View of the Auvers-Sur-Oise one of Paul Cezanne's greatest paintings....except for you madam....looking as youthful as ever..." Bloom pointed to one of the older trustees who made a face back.

"But a great deal of leg work, detective work if you will and not inconsiderable danger to myself has brought us here today at the end of a yearlong trail that crossed some thousands of miles. It is a story that I have recounted in full..." he gestured toward the books, "which I will be happy to sign later. Suffice to say the world of art is that much brighter today having recovered one of its great lost masterpieces."

General applause as the edit removed the rest of his introduction and cut straight to the unveiling.

"Now...may I reveal to you the lost Cezanne, the View of the Auvers-Sur-Oise!!"

Bloom theatrically removed the velvet cover and there it was...and the crowd gasped and applauded. Jennifer did too...it was magnificent...she almost cried...almost. Cameras flashed and Bloom gestured toward the painting as if he were welcoming Miss World to the stage. Was that a tear in his eye?

"How do you know it's the real thing Mr Bloom?" it was the female reporter for Meridian.

"Young lady, you don't think I would be standing before you without the approval of the greatest authenticator of the age do you?"

General laughter. The reporter blushed.

"Sir Nathaniel Pullman is with us today so may I invite him up here to provide a reauthentication just for you doubting Thomases. Sir Nathaniel...if you will.."

The gangling ancient figure creased his forehead and glanced at Harry then back at Bloom.

"...reauthentication? This is the first time I've seen it," his voice was testy.

Bloom taken aback looked to Harry who just shrugged. The old man approached the painting and pressed his face close to the canvass, then took off his pins nez and spent a great deal of time on the sky in particular. The silence was embarrassing and Bloom mugged a few eye rolling facial expressions as if to say...experts..what would you do with them?

"I appreciate you may need to take this to your labs sir...but first impressions?"

"I need no lab sir...this is a fake..a forgery...the use of French ultramarine instead of ultramarine Blue suggests this is not a Cezanne original. Besides down here in the corner is the signature...any rank amateur will tell you Monsieur Cézanne did not sign the View of the Auvers-Sur-Oise. Why would he sign a piece he never considered finished? I don't know what your game is Bloom but you are either an incompetent fool or a charlatan...I'll let the room decide."

And with that Pullman stalked past Harry and was gone. Bloom shot Harry a look of almost comic disbelief. Harry just shrugged again.

"You said...this had been..."

"...I'm sorry Mr Bloom...I'm not sure we've ever met....Harry Lewis... Senior Tate Director." He extended a hand.

"...not met...?!"

The room was a hubbub of disquiet as confused emissaries of the British Art community stepped forward and ignoring Bloom drew closer to the painting, touching it, examining its palette knife strokes. More than one was heard to mutter that is was very convincing, but obviously not the real thing.

Bloom seemed to be caught between brushing the words of Sir Nathaniel off as a mere trifle and wanting to flee the building. Now it was the turn of the Meridian reporter, the young lady wearing the earnest expression of the righteous. She was staring straight into the camera.

"What a shock, the great Horatio P Bloom hoaxed. But by whom? Or is there something more sinister at work..." she turned around and strode over to the hapless Bloom.

"Mr Bloom...how could you have been so easily fooled? Or was it your intention to fabricate the truth and pass the painting off as the original...Mr Bloom were you trying to cheat the public...just to sell your new book....Mr Bloom..." He was just standing staring at Harry who moved over to the mic.

"Miss., may I say something here...."

"Of course Mister Lewis."

He turned to the camera.

"This is not only embarrassing for Mister Bloom but the entire art community. Our hopes were raised, we had faith in Mister Bloom but I'm afraid that faith was misplaced. It's not only disappointing but a little sad. A man once so revered by the cognoscenti who must now be wondering what lengths he will go to, to put himself before the media. I'm sorry that the world had to see this."

"Mister Lewis, would you say this casts doubt upon some of Mister Blooms earlier books..."

"Well Rachel....I don't want to be the one to kick a man when he's down...but you can't help but wonder."

"Thank you Mister Lewis..."

She turned back to Bloom

"Sir, is there anything you'd like to add....?"

Bloom seemed to be in a trance. Then he picked up one of his books.

"...would you like me to sign one for you?"

Gales of laughter as the community began to file out.

"...anyone?"

Rachel the Meridian girl was back on camera.

"Well I don't think that will be hitting the best seller list any time soon do you? Heaven knows what the tabloids will make of this...let alone the law and youtube...the word viral comes to mind. Well that's all from me, Rachel Dexter, Meridien News, at the great Cezanne hoax of 2019."

The tears were flowing now...as Jennifer wept with laughter...she had not been able to let go ever since Harry had put the plan to her. Between them they had fabricated the trail to Serbia and Zurich referencing an earlier crime and the real Ivan Pekovic. The cliché being that to tell a lie stick as close to the truth as you can. A serpentine journey through the London underworld led the intrepid detective to a house in Belgravia which was dressed for the occasion by Harry Lewis Snr, property magnate in the city and a man who also knew people. In fact, was that him playing the bewildered landlord?

But the entire project rested on the estimable Isabella Sayers, almost certainly not her real name, mistress forger to the underworld and close personal friend of Harry Lewis. How close? That was not for her to speculate. Miss Sayers was commissioned to copy the original as best she could but leave just enough in it to fail the forensic scrutiny of the experts. The hope was that Bloom, dazzled by his own hubris and racing against time would overlook the details taking Jennifer's word for everything including the authentication.

The last shot before the broadcast went back to the studio was of Bloom in heated conversation with the chair of the Ashmolean trustees and the police captain.

Jennifer left the room with the echoes of Bloom's downfall ringing in her ears. She drew the curtains and sat on the edge of her bed and stared at the bucolic landscape and the huddle of low rooved houses between her and the gentle rise of the fields and trees beyond. The View of the Auvers-Sur-Oise was a view she could so easily get lost in, the original view hanging on her wall these past twenty years. She raised her glass...

"To you Paul... always here for me..."

#  KILLING TIME AT THE BODLEIAN

"Well here I am...alone at last."

The satisfying click of the door told its own story. Locked inside one of the world's greatest libraries, I felt a glow of anticipation. I vaulted one of the security barriers and switched on the lights. Nothing! So far so predictable, chaps. I switched on my pencil torch and made my way up the creaky wooden stairwell. With my knapsack over one shoulder, I took the steps two at a time as the stairwell doglegged up to the Lower Reading Room, a regular port of call.

I pushed through the doors and lit my way past ranks of four-in-a-row desk units between floor-to-ceiling bookcases lining every wall. I could hear them chattering: the world's most influential philosophers, Kant, Wittgenstein, Russell, Sartre...and a hundred unknown souls, at least to me, nine tiers of knowledge and genius.

Once the centre of collegiate life as both school and library, the Main Bodleian is a horseshoe on two floors at the back of Wren's Sheldonian Theatre.

I plonked my coat and bag down on one of the desks at the back of the theology section, looking down the long central space that joined the philosophy wing to sections on Classical Latin and Greek. I flashed the torch over my night-time companions: saints, sinners, prophets, sages and seers, church fathers and OT and NT studies, not forgetting the Apocrypha, and as many points of view as authors.

I did a supply check, emptying my knapsack loudly onto the desk.

"Spare battery, coffee flask, notebook and pen, and a sandwich. No phone...strictly no phones!"

I announced each one, my voice deadened in the cloistered air. The silence was almost tangible. And yet, once attuned, I realised the whole place creaked like an old ship, cracking timbers, leather bindings and hundreds of thousands of tons of paper adjusting to the drop in temperature.

The idea of locking me into the Bodleian all night was the product of an evening's bravado and, alas, too much whiskey. So you think you're good, do you? Crossword solving? What if you had to solve them? What if your life depended on it? An idea came to the Prof...a night in the Bodleian, an institution we all knew well, and with only a set of clues to get us out. We would take turns setting them from which the lucky incumbent would work out the combination to the exit keypad. What could be easier, just you and 12 million books? Gauntlets were thrown and, to mix metaphors, I drew the short straw and the letter left in my locker gave me a place to start.

"Dear theologian... begin 'in the beginning.....'"

So where would a theologian begin? I swung the beam of my flashlight across the library and shadows flew back like scattering crows. 'In the beginning' can only be Genesis. I stood up and played the beam over the section to my right, located the steel steps, tugged them over, locked the wheels and clambered up. Five rows of Genesis! But I didn't need to look in every book because there it was, protruding from between two tomes, a folded sheet of college paper,Talk about spoon-feeding me.! I was triumphant, nonetheless.

"Yes,...so it begins my friends... so it begins."

Up on the ladder, I unfolded the sheet.

"Well done, young man. Only four more to go and you can go home...or not! First clue: Build sleazy pope a car and blow (4,10.3). Good luck, your cryptic pals."

Back at my desk, it was eyes down. At first glance, build could mean anagram for the next 14 letters preceding, and blow, the three letter word, which I presumed was the author. The Z was curious. Let's start with the assumption they will indulge me once more. Bible books containing Z. Ezekiel...no k, Zephaniah...no h, Zechariah...still no h, Ezra...yes Ezra, four letters. Take EZRA from SLEAZY POPE A CAR to leave SLYPOPEACA. I played with it in my notebook. Apocalypse. EZRA APOCALYPSE by who...three letters meaning blow, land a blow or wind...land a blow might by box, box one's ears! I flashed the torch around and saw it. Ezra Apocalypse by GH Box. I tugged the threadbare authority off the shelf and flicked through to find another sheet.

"Ha!"

Another triumph, although I couldn't escape the sense of a cheap victory. They were holding my hand, so I was sure there was worse to come. Something scraping or shuffling. Out there in the dark. I flashed the beam across the room although I'm not sure what I was expecting to see. Why would someone be there? I stood up...and listened hard at the shadows listening back. Mice perhaps, chewing their way through one thousand years of irreplaceable genius. Make a note for the faculty. Improve pest control. All the same, I stuffed everything into the knapsack and turned my attention to the next clue.

"Welcome to clue number two: High Legolas embraces gentle dance music in front of court, all after drink. (2,3,10,5)"

Always begin with structure. The five letter word is more likely to be the author than the two letter and Legolas was the elf in Lord of the Rings who embraces i.e. goes around the rest, including the author which means the author ends in F. And drink comes before elf as does H for high. So I jotted in the notebook drink, H and at least E. Gentle could be anything, slight, soft... and dance music. Disco? I've no idea, but court can be ct or woo. That's it! WOO before LF from elf...WOOLF. I had enough to finish it. To have a gentle touch... light and if I'm still down there with the kids, house for dance music, giving me TOT, H, ELF around LIGHT, HOUSE, WOO i.e. To The Lighthouse by Woolf.

That meant going back out onto the stairwell and up to the Upper Reading Room, home to the literary cognoscenti of Britain. I walked back through the Philosophy Department and out onto the stairwell which was blacker than I recalled. It's a primal thing, isn't it? Eyes in the deepest shadows, watching your every move.

"Get a grip, man..."

Be brazen...hey, whatever it was should be worried about me...shouldn't it? I'm the intruder here. I flashed the beam about, illuminating what was so familiar and ordinary during daylight hours. I took the steps two at a time, noisily. I was Sam at Cirith Ungol. Make them think you're the beast! At the door to the Upper Reading Room, I stopped and listened. Suddenly I didn't want to just go plunging in.

I snorted and pushed myself into the gloom, circumnavigating rows of desks looking for Virginia...that most elusive and quixotic of writers. My torch picked her out. I knelt down, and...ah yes, I'd looked at this before. The unedited facsimile edition by Susan Dick, including all editorial changes by the author. I slipped the bag off my shoulder and opened the book and fished out my next assignment, feeling damn pleased with myself. I took the sheet and Virginia over to one of the desks and surveyed the Prof's florid, blood red scrawl by torchlight.

"You're exceeding expectations, young man. Well, here's number three and it's not so easy, my boy. Look lively: I don't want you still there in the morning. Next clue: Times follow chess beginner to society. King rises confusingly (5,5,5,9)"

Where to begin? Times? T? No. Ah....confusingly could mean anagram and with King rises as nine letters that might be a name or subject... Hmmm... so chess beginner? White always begins and followed by society...club? I needed my notebook and returned to my knapsack, which was not where I remembered putting it. I fished about on the floor, under the bemused gaze of Woolf, Wollstonecraft and Yeats. Perhaps I'd kicked it when I got up... no... it was gone. My coffee, my notebook and Ezra, all gone!

"Hey..." I yelled, "I'm not scared," I lied. "I'm annoyed. If that's you, Alec...?"

One of our crossword club prone to practical jokes that are not funny... are they ever?

"You just wait till you're it!"

I scanned the library with the torch, collected Virginia and clue number three, and walked up and down, looking under and around the desks. This was creeping me out.

"I need my bag... come on..."

I worked on the clue as I searched. The nine letter anagram... a name... King rises on a book about something white... Times follows the word meaning society... what is a society?... or is it just society... group, order, people. I should have all night to solve these, but I had become agitated. I needed to get out of there. Clutching Woolf and the sheet of paper, I left by the door at the far end, onto the other stairwell that went down past the Duke Humphrey Library with its antiquarian collection of ancient tomes and original manuscripts.

I stopped on the creaky stairs and was immediately plunged into complete darkness. I cried out in exasperation. The torch battery had died.

"Brilliant..."

I shoved the useless torch into a pocket and remembered the window located at the end of the Duke Humphrey's and entered the room. Lofty ancient shelving vanished into the gloom of the high panelled ceiling lining the large Tshaped library, the stem being the repository of precious works off limits to most mortals. I vaulted the security barrier and made my way past row upon row of bookcases to the spectral moonlight shafting in through the huge arched window at the far end. I angled the sheet of paper to read the clue again.

White... Order? Time and author. The author was the weak link and I worked through a few trusted combinations and my theory that most things begin with S. No... nothing. I then concentrated on the K, a K without a C meant it was not necessarily the last letter. I stuck it at the front and ran it through my mind until I saw Kiss and then Kissinger. Thank god!... which means white could only mean one thing, White House... society, of course... like a school house and then times must be Years as he has several verbose tomes on his life as Secretary of State each being the so and so years. White House Years by Kissinger.

I folded up the piece of paper. Shadow breaking from shadow, the sweep of an arm, a flash of metal, a hiss of fury and he was gone. The shock greater than the pain, I neither moved or said anything. I just stood there. Then it came and I could only convulse, holding my gut, I was down on the cold floorboards, bleeding, in agony, dying. I just knelt there and gasped.

The pain was something never experienced, sheer gut wrenching make-you-vomit pain. You can only weep. I wanted to pass out, to escape the agony, but nature can be cruel sometimes. And then more blood came and kept coming. I needed to do something fast.

Instinctively, I rolled onto my back, ripped open my shirt and felt for the wound. I dipped my fingers in. Deep... God it hurt, but wide, more a slash than stab. Was that good? I stuffed the sheet of paper I was still clutching into the gash, then a handkerchief, but soaking up blood was not the same as stemming it.

"Stop, stop!!"

Tears came and a sickly sweet, iron smell. Had he hit an organ... I couldn't say? I didn't know. What if he came back? What did he want? I didn't get a good look. He must have been waiting among the bookcases. Why?

My shirt was soaked. I tried to rip pieces off but I was too weak and it put too much strain on my guts. I fished around in my jacket pockets. Gloves, and an old beany hat which I yanked out and pressed on the wound, pushing the hat in. Jesus... Jesus... stretching it, increasing the pain if that were even possible. It was all I could think of.

I think I lay there for an hour or more. Just waiting for the pain to ease, to die, or for him to return. I think I did pass out eventually... sweet blissful sleep... When I opened my eyes, the horror returned. Then, as someone once said...if in doubt just do something... so I zipped up my thick leather jacket and, holding the beany in place, began to sort of hotch my way across the floorboards.

The floor was slippery. I had been lying in a pool of my blood. My hands and clothes were covered, but I think it had stopped pumping. Inch by inch, I got to the barrier, an electronic gate of sorts, which I actually managed to crawl under. But I'd left Virginia behind.

Don't feel sorry for yourself, go back and get it. Thirty minutes passed before I was back in the main drag of the Duke Humphrey's, clutching the book and exhausted. The pain was overwhelming but it was pumping oceans of adrenaline into my system.

I needed Ezra but, first things first, get the Kissinger, which I would never do like this. I had to get to the Gladstone Link that ran under Radcliffe Square connecting the main Bodleian to the Radcliffe Camera. I spent the next thirty minutes or so searching for an office which I eventually located after an agonising crawl through the Lower Reading Room, having all but fallen down the stairs. I needed and found packing tape. I shrugged off my jacket, discarded my blood-soaked shirt and, in the dark, began the excruciating task of wrapping several feet of the wide packing tape around my middle, pulling it tight to keep everything together with the beany as padding. I put my jacket back on. Well, I was still alive, but if he ever came at me again, I'd had it. Clutching my middle, I walked bent double, one painful step at a time.

The Gladstone Link is a tunnel and a two-storey library in its own right, the upper of which includes books on international political history. I felt my way down to ground level and the narrow winding steps that would take me underground. I waited and listened before plunging into the pitch black corridor. Was he behind or ahead? I had no choice but set off, one foot in front of the other, gingerly, awkwardly into the gloom, bloody fingers dragging along the walls I knew were white, (seems an odd comparison, distracting)I sped up. The gloom behind seemed to pull me back with long fingers... I could not run... but kind of trotted all the same, coming to the upper library and the diagonal walkway between rows of bookcases each side. Here were comfortable chairs and low tables where I regularly sat to read.

I trod in something wet and sticky. I knelt down and felt cold liquid... I smelt my fingers fearing the worst. Coffee, spilled from my flask a few inches away. I felt around and my fingers retrieved the knapsack and Ezra, thank God!... I needed the battery... there ... no the discarded sandwich packing... he'd eaten it... was that it then?... some lonely guy trapped down here, hungry... then just ask.

A blast of cool air, the soft closing of a door. My hand folded round the battery. I snatched up everything and took off between the bookcases to my right, grabbing hold of Kissinger as I went, and settled into a far corner. I tried to stop my heart pounding, echoing like a drum through the deathly silence.

I put everything into the knapsack and changed the battery in my torch. I grimaced as I tried to read the clue. It's surprising how much you can see when your eyes adjust. The world is rarely without some form of light. But I still couldn't read it. Protected by my body, I took a gamble and flicked the torch on and off in a second. It was enough.

"So here we are...number four and soon home to bed with crumpets for tea...What's the beef with Shakespeare's da?"

Thanks Prof... I haven't the first idea what to do here... and my life actually does depend on it. My teeth were grinding in pain and fury. I watched the books watching me. So much knowledge, but no explanation of what was happening. Where do I go next? Do I just sit here and wait till morning, hoping he leaves me be? I was pretty sure the next strike would not be to the gut but the throat, from behind. I was on borrowed time and needed to get out.

In the pitch of the black, I turned to the clue. Shakespeare's dad? Am I supposed to know something about him? Does anyone? Or is it a play on bard and pa?... It was no good, it was time to gamble. Was it a fair assumption that my so called friends would finish off in the Camera having dragged me this far? I'd say yes with the exit just a few feet away. I threw the old battery right over the top of the bookcases into the gloom opposite, and I made my move hoping he'd take the bait. I didn't stop to check. I was out the door and up the flight of narrow stairs.

You can bear all sorts of pain when you've got the hounds of hell on your trail. A man might live forever in such a state. I made it to the ground floor of the Radcliffe Camera and flicked on the torch. I went to the furthest point at the end of a row of bookcases that radiated out from the centre between lines of desks like spokes. I crouched down and leaned back on one of the bookcases that lined the concave wall and stared straight up into the magnificent dome that dominated the entire edifice. My torch was off now, my eyes reliant upon some residual light that seemed to linger under the dome. He hadn't followed me... not yet, at least I couldn't see or hear him... which meant nothing.

Think man... this was it... but when I did get it... how would I get out... of course the Camera's own door... and... something came to me... there was another way. But first the clue... the beef... cow, steak... oxo, feeling of annoyance... grudge... Christ!!... Shakespeare's dad... what did I know about him?... Stratford, his job? Glover... an author? Of what... I glanced around... history down the ages principally British biographies and studies of key events... battles... beef...... beef... Beef... Wellington... of course Wellington.  . I had to find military biographies... luck was with me... one shelf across. I slid along without rising, my guts like death. They were all there, Kitchener, Gordon, Haig, several on Nelson and Wellington. My heart leapt... Wellington by Glover. So, Shakespeare's father was a glover.

Wellington joined the others tipped out on the floor where I crouched. Lined up, I stared and prodded and opened and flicked through. Ezra, Virginia, Kissinger and Wellington. What are you telling me...four numbers...I looked at the ISBNs on the back, counted letters in titles and authors, checked page numbers and publisher names. I was sweating...my wound was slowly but surely draining the life out of me. I was getting light headed, blood seeping out past the tape, onto my feet. The spines...there they were, alphanumeric shelf location codes. The letters I can dismiss, two had three numbers and two had two. So it's either the first or the last four. Let's hope the keypad allows more than one attempt.

I memorised both four digit sequences and knew it was time. I left everything there and set off, hugging the wall, feeling my way, no doubt dragging bloody fingers across the spines of man's bloody story. I needed protection, defensive more than offensive. I was by World War 1 and took a copy of Lloyd George's The Truth About The Peace Treaties Volume 1. A massive 700 odd pages .

I froze. He was in the middle; under the dome. I was sure of it. I could see nothing, hear nothing, but I'd got this new sense...one that tells me when someone wants me dead...he was there all right. Looking for me.

I made it to the stairs to the balcony and onto a smaller set of steps, more discrete, that took me up to a door with a keypad. I stopped, listened and punched in the first codes and pressed enter. The click yielded nothing. Fingers round an ankle. I spun and landed the book on his head. It was a surprise move that loosened his grip enough for me to slam my foot into flesh and bone, forcing him down a step or two. It bought me enough time to punch in the next four digits. 9154. Now or never, I pressed enter. If the pads on each door had a different set of digits, I was dead. The door clicked open and I was up and into the fresh open air of the Camera rooftop.

A balcony runs around the edge of the dome and it was here I intended to shut myself off by kicking the door shut. I rammed it with my boot as bony fingers gripped the doorframe, hauling his body up to force the door back onto me. I fled.

I actually ran, all pain secondary to the brute will to live. I stopped panting on the far side of the dome and waited. A large pearlescent moon bathed the city in a radiant glow, turning dreaming spires into a forest of stone and dark unfathomable crevasses. The moon would be my friend. I stayed put, leaning up against the cold stone of the dome. I watched for his shadow. I would need more than this book. I was so weak now. I needed elevation.

There was a ridge of stone at head height. I had to get up there. Simple enough in tip top condition but I could hardly raise my arms. But if I wanted to live through the next few seconds, it had to be done...it had to be.

Exhausted, fighting the urge to faint, blood dripping, I crouched on the shelf among the gargoyles and waited. And he was there, quicker than I expected. Sniffing the air, he knew I was close. He turned and, illuminated by the moon, we saw each other. I could see in that moment he was human, but his mind...that was something else.

I made my move. My only chance was to hit him with everything I had, backed by my own body weight. I pushed off with my legs, my trajectory true and, before he could respond, I dropped on him, cracking the book down upon the top of his head. He reeled back and the blade flashed. I cracked him hard again, pressing him backwards onto the balustrade. He raised a leg to retain his balance but I grabbed it and, as he brought the knife down hard into my back, I heaved him up and tipped him over the edge. In the moonlight, I saw his uncomprehending eyes lock on mine, and for a second – a short second – I felt pity, before he plummeted through the gloom to hit the cobbles with a sickening thud.

