Reginald Hill - The Stranger House

And who had benefited? The ghastly Gowders. They’d orchestrated the rape and the only consequence for them was that they’d come under Dunstan Woollass’s protecting hand. He’d probably assured them they’d go to jail if they blabbed and they’d survive in comfort if they held their tongues. No contest.

Which left Dunstan. The old man whom she only knew by report and reputation. Like God. Only this one really existed, and knew everything, and controlled everything. Except the future. He’d done everything to protect his family, and now, if Edie Appledore was right, his family was coming to an end. Perhaps there was a higher God who didn’t care for a rival and chuckled to think, as he watched Dunstan’s machinations, that Frek the lez would be the last of the Woollasses.

Except for me.

The realization came into Sam’s mind the way the answer to a math problem often did. Simple, complete, as if someone else had spoken it.

Except for me.

A horn blew. She looked up to see a VW Polo half turned on to the narrow bridge.

Frek Woollass leaned out of the driver’s window and called, “Morning. Sorry to disturb your meditations, but even with your figure it’s going to be hard to squeeze by.”

Sam stood up and made her way to the other end of the bridge. When the vehicle came alongside, Frek brought it to a halt again.

“Thanks,” she said. “Are you all right? You look rather pale.”

Sam looked into those calm gray-blue eyes. She knew now where she’d seen them before. They were her pa’s eyes. Her own eyes. If there’d been any doubt about what Swinebank had told her, it fled. This woman was her… what? Her aunt! Jesus!

“I’m fine. Yourself?”

“Fine too. Are you just lingering on the bridge, or were you crossing it with a view to going up the Bank? If so, jump in.”

Sam didn’t have to think.

“Yes, I’m going up to the Hall,” she declared. “A lift would be good.”

She slid into the passenger seat.

“No gas guzzler today then?” she said as the Polo moved forward.

“The 4x4, you mean? That’s Daddy’s. He claims he needs it round here. For Cambridge, however, the smaller the better, as I gather you will shortly find out for yourself. Mig Madero mentioned you were going up. Something to do with math?”

Makes it sound like I’m going to be on a supermarket checkout, thought Sam.

“That’s right. And you play around with this Viking stuff, right?”

“Right,” said the woman, smiling. “The literature of Nordic mythology, folklore and legend, to be precise.”

“So not much use then. Practically, I mean.”

“I wouldn’t say that. Study of old myth systems can remind us of a lot of things the modern scientific mind has forgotten.”

“Like how to cure cancer by chewing nettles?” mocked Sam.

“Like understanding motive and cause and effect. What made Loki want to harm Balder, for instance, if that means anything to you.”

“Oh yeah. Balder was the good god, right? Like my namesake, the curate – wasn’t that what you told Thor Winander?”

“My my,” said Frek. “You do get people to talk to you, don’t you?”

“It’s my sweet Australian nature,” said Sam. “So what did make this Loki guy want to harm Balder? Because he was so good, maybe?”

“I don’t think so. Because he was so… ineffectual. Snorri Sturluson – he was a thirteenth-century Icelandic scholar – tells us how lovely and good Balder was, but then he says that none of his decisions ever really changed anything. Loki was mischievous, often downright wicked, but whatever he decided to do got done.”

“And that’s a reason for killing someone?”

“It’s a motive,” said Frek. “Loki got his comeuppance as justice required. But even this isn’t straightforward. The gods bound him in a cave with a serpent’s venom dripping on to his face so that he writhed around in immortal pain. But with every convulsion, he causes the earth itself to quake, prefiguring the great earthquakes which are to be such a dreadful feature of Ragnarok.”

“What the hell’s that?” said Sam, thinking that on the whole she’d have preferred the nettle option.

“With one k at the end, it’s the doom of the gods. With two, it’s the twilight of the gods, a more poetic notion which appealed to the Romantic imagination. It’s the end of everything, good and bad.”

Sam tried to work out what this weird woman was saying to her. Sounded like the kind of stuff that her ma could have got her head round. Maybe Pa too. She heard his voice in her head.

Truth’s like a dingo, girl. It’ll run till you get it cornered. Then watch out!

“Everything’s got to end,” she said. “You can’t stop doing what’s right because you’re scared of the consequences. Even gods should get what they deserve.”

Frek laughed and said, “Brother will kill brother, incest and adultery shall abound, there will be an axe-age, a sword-age, a wind-age, a wolf-age, before the world plunges into fire. That’s what an Icelandic prophetess said. How might a mathematician have put it?”

“There is nothing unknowable,” said Sam. “We must know. We shall know. That’s what a great mathematical prophet said. That’ll do for me.”

They were now coming up to the Forge. Frek came to a halt and blew her horn. The end of a vehicle was visible round the corner by the smithy. It looked to Sam like the Gowders’ pickup. After a moment, Thor Winander appeared and approached the car.

He raised his eyebrows when he saw Sam, then winked at her and said to Frek, “Twenty minutes, we’ll be there. You sure that Gerry’s all right with this? He was pretty unfriendly when I was preparing the site.”

“He’s fine, I promise you,” said Frek. “It will grow on him.”

“If you say so. See you later then. Cheers, young Sam.”

As Frek set the Polo in motion again, she explained, “Thor’s promised to set up a carving he’s done for me before I go back to Cambridge tomorrow.”

For a moment Sam thought she meant the splay-legged nude and wondered where the hell she could display that. Then she recalled the Other Wolf-Head Cross.

“You didn’t say who you wanted to see at the Hall,” continued Frek. “Is it my grandfather? Or my father? Because if it’s Daddy, he’s not there, I’m afraid. He was driving Angelica back to her House this morning, and I’m not sure when he’ll be back.”

Sam, who’d never stood back from a confrontation in her life, was slightly ashamed to feel relief. She still had no idea how she was going to handle a face-to-face with the man who as a child had fathered her father on another child. If she met Gerry now, all she could foresee was a shouting match, with the Gowders and Thor Winander expected on the scene any moment to make up the audience.

“Your grandfather will do,” she said.

“Will he? I’ll need to check if he’s up to it. His trip down to the Stranger was his first excursion in a little while, and one way and another it left him a little drained.”

Sam thought, she knows something. Maybe not everything, but enough.

Frek went on, “He’s talking with Mr. Madero this morning. Some academic matter, I believe…”

“Academic?” interrupted Sam, tired of obliquity. “Bit more than that, I’d say.”

“Would you now?” murmured Frek. “Someone else who’s opened up to you? How interesting. I wouldn’t have thought you had a lot in common. Perhaps time together trapped in the darkness brought you close?”

They were turning into the driveway of the Hall now. Frek brought the car to a halt before the front door.

“You should be careful, my dear,” she said, putting her hand on to Sam’s knee. “There’s not much future in falling for a priest.”