Jan Siegel - The Dragon-Charmer

‘Actually,’ said Will, ‘I meant Marcus Greig. Who’s been talking to you about Alison? Fern tries never to mention her.’

‘Gus Dinsdale,’ Gaynor explained. She continued hesitantly: ‘I don’t want to be nosy, but I can’t help wondering … Was her death really an accident? You’re both rather – odd – about it.’

‘Oh no,’ said Will. ‘It wasn’t an accident.’

Gaynor stopped and stared at him, suddenly very white. ‘N-not Fern –?’

Will’s prompt laughter brought the colour flooding back to her cheeks. ‘You’ve been thinking in whodunits,’ he accused. ‘Poor Gaynor. A Ruth Rendell too many!’

‘Well, what did happen?’ demanded Gaynor, feeling foolish.

‘The truth is less mundane,’ Will said. ‘It often is. Alison stole a key that didn’t belong to her and opened a Door that shouldn’t be opened. I wouldn’t call that an accident.’

‘Gus said something about a flood ?’

Will nodded. ‘She was swept away. So was Fern – she was lucky to survive.’

Gaynor felt herself becoming increasingly bewildered, snatching at straws without ever coming near the haystack. ‘I gather Fern was ill,’ she said. ‘They thought – Gus and Maggie – that she would have told me, only she never has. Some sort of post-traumatic shock?’

‘Shock leading to amnesia, that’s what the doctors said. They had to say something . She was gone for five days.’

‘ Gone ? Gone where?’

‘To shut the Door, of course. The Door Alison had opened. The flood had washed it away.’ He was studying her as he spoke, his words nonsense to her, his expression inscrutable. She could not detect either mockery or evasion; it was more as if they were speaking on different subjects, or in different languages.

‘Can we start again?’ she said. ‘With Alison. I was told – she was a girlfriend of your father’s?’

‘Maybe,’ said Will. ‘She slipped past Fern – for a while. But she wasn’t really interested in Dad.’

‘What did she do?’

‘She stole a key –’

‘I mean, what did she do for a living?’

‘She worked in an art gallery in London. At least, that was what you might call her cover.’

‘Her cover? She was a crook ?’

‘Of course not.’ He smiled half a smile. ‘Well, not in the sense you mean.’

‘In what sense, then?’

‘She was a witch,’ said Will.

She looked for the rest of the smile, but it did not materialise. The narrowing of his eyes and the slight crease between his brows was merely a reaction against the sun. His expression was unfathomable.

After a pause that lasted just a little too long, she said: ‘Herbal remedies – zodiac medallions – dancing naked round a hilltop on Midsummer’s Eve? That sort of thing?’

‘Good Lord no,’ Will responded mildly. ‘Alison was the real McCoy.’

‘Satanism?’

He shook his head. ‘Satan was simply a label of convenience. Mind you, if Jesus had come back a few hundred years later, and seen what had been done in his name – the crusades, or the Inquisition, or even just a routine schism with heretics burning at the stake over a point of doctrine – he’d probably have given up on all religion then and there. The atheist formerly known as Christ. He might even have decided it would be best – or at least much easier – to corrupt and destroy the human race instead of wasting time trying to save it. You get the gods you deserve.’

‘You’re wandering from the point,’ Gaynor said, determined the discussion was going to go somewhere, though she had no idea precisely where. It occurred to her that his outlook – she could not think of a better word – must have something to do with his paintings, or vice versa, but it didn’t seem to clarify anything. ‘What kind of a – what kind of a witch was Alison?’

‘She had the Gift,’ Will explained. (She could hear the capital letter.) ‘The ability to do things … beyond the range of ordinary human capacity.’ He did not appear to notice the doubt in Gaynor’s questioning gaze. ‘When the universe was created something – alien – got into the works, a lump of matter from outside. They called it the Lodestone. A friend of ours had the theory that it might have been a whole different cosmos, imploded into this ball of concentrated matter, but… Well, anyhow, it distorted everything around it. Including people. Especially people. It affected their genetic makeup, creating a freak gene which they passed on even when the Stone itself was destroyed. A sort of gene for witchcraft.’ He gave her a sudden dazzling and eminently normal smile. ‘Don’t worry. You don’t have to believe me. I just think you ought to know. In case anything happens which shouldn’t.’

‘Do you think something is going to happen?’ asked Gaynor, mesmerised.

‘Maybe. I’d whistle up a demon if I could, just to stop this idiotic wedding.’

‘Idiotic?’ She was bemused by his choice of adjective.

‘Can you think of a better word? Fern’s marrying a man she doesn’t love, probably as a gesture of rejection. That seems fairly idiotic to me.’

‘What is she supposed to be rejecting?’

‘The Gift,’ he said. ‘That’s the whole problem. Don’t you understand? Fern’s a witch too.’

Gaynor stopped abruptly for the second time, staring at him in a sudden violent uncertainty. They had walked quite a way and she was aware of the empty countryside all around them, the wind ruffling the grasses, the piping voice of an isolated bird. The wild loneliness of it filled her with an upsurge of panic which nudged her into anger. ‘If this is your idea of a joke –’

And then normality intruded. The dog came out of nowhere, bounding up to them on noiseless paws, halting just in front of her. Its mouth was open in a grin full of teeth and its tongue lolled. Will bent down to pat its muzzle but the yellow-opal eyes were fixed on Gaynor. The man followed briskly on its heels. He too gave the uncanny impression of appearing from nowhere. But this was normality, or so Gaynor assured herself. A man and his dog, walking on the moors. The dog was friendly, the man, dressed like a tramp, at least unequivocally human. Will evidently knew them.

‘This is Ragginbone,’ he told Gaynor. The man, not the dog. And: ‘This is Gaynor Mobberley. She’s a close friend of Fern’s.’ A firm handclasp, bright eyes scanning her face. He looked very old, she thought, or perhaps not so much old as aged, reminding her of an oak chest her mother had inherited recently from an antique relative. The wood was scored and blackened but tough, unyielding, half way to carbonisation. The man’s face seemed to have been carved in a similar wood, a long time ago, scratched with a thousand lines which melted into mobility when he smiled at her. His scarecrow hair was faded to a brindled straw but his brows were still dark and strong, crooked above the bright bright eyes that shone with a light that was not quite laughter but something deeper and more solemn. She wondered about his name (a soubriquet? a nickname?) but was too polite to ask.

‘And Lougarry.’ Will indicated the dog. A shaggy animal without a collar who looked part Alsatian and all wolf. But Gaynor had grown up with dogs and was not particularly deterred. She extended her hand and the dog sniffed briefly, apparently more out of courtesy than curiosity.

‘And how is Fernanda?’ asked the man called Ragginbone.

‘Still resolved on matrimony,’ said Will. ‘It’s making her very jumpy. She picked a fight with me last night, just to prove she was doing the right thing.’

‘She has to choose for herself,’ said the old man. ‘Neither you nor I have the right to coerce her, or even advise.’