Ross Lawhead (8 page)

“Shut up—shut up. I said SHUT UP!” Freya violently slapped the table several times with the palm of her hand. Then she leaned over the table, buried her face in her hands, and started sobbing.

Daniel fell silent, as did the entire café. Eyes turned towards them, concerned.

Daniel looked around and smiled. The manager scowled at him from behind the counter. His look said that although a homeless man was tolerated here, so long as he paid—homeless men who disturbed his customers most certainly were not. Palms outwards, Daniel slowly pushed his chair back and rose.

“You know,” Daniel said as he slid past Freya, “if you ever wanted anyone to talk to, you could have talked to me.”

Daniel pushed through the door and headed out into the evening rain.

Freya sat guiltily, fidgeting with one of her books. Then she abruptly stood and chased after Daniel.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't mean to yell. It just all came back really quickly.” She stood there, shivering in the sleet without her jacket. Her arms were wrapped around her stomach, as she hunched her shoulders against the cold. The gentle shower fell on her face, making it slick, wet. She lifted a hand to brush a bead of water from her brow.

“That's alright,” Daniel said. “I'm sorry I upset you.”

“Listen, I've got to do something tomorrow. Do you mind if we meet the day after? We can talk about whatever you want to then.”

“I suppose that would be alright.”

“There's a church in Summertown near where I live—St.

Michael and All Angels. Can you be there at four? So we can miss the twilight?”

“Yes, okay. I'll see you then.”

“Okay, see you then.”

Freya left and entered the coffee shop again, hardly aware that her compulsions seemed to leave her when she was around Daniel.

2

Robin Ploughwright, Lord of the Boggy Marshes and eighteenth Earl of Shotover Hill—a portly, rotund figure—pulled a pocket watch from his large purple waistcoat and marked the time. Even though the sky was overcast, light from the setting sun reflected upon the casing and threw a ray of golden-red upon his round face. He squinted one eye at it, then closed the antique up and deposited it back into his pocket.

Not much longer now. The street that he stood on did not technically have a name but had appropriated the title “George Street Mews.” Although a public right of way, it was rarely used; too small for cars to enter, and too winding to be a shortcut between two places that few people wanted to go to anyway. His sharp hearing didn't detect anyone at either end of the long passageway. He wouldn't be disturbed.

He allowed himself a smile. He was happy to be back in

Oxfordshire—even if he did have to wear a different skin. The place always comforted him. It was little more than a swampy basin, really, even after all these years. Because of the hills surrounding it, the sun set early, and because of the built-up marshland, covered rivers and hidden canals flowed through many amusing areas of the city.

And then there were the people—a tidal force in themselves. Half of the year, the population swelled with the arrival of the students. When those left, the tourists descended from the skies. And always throughout there was the steady pulse of ordinary people trying to scratch out an existence. Living and dying, ebbing and flowing, it was a city of flux—always moving from one state into another, and so never really changing at all. A town rife with opportunities.

Robin's smile twisted into a frown. Come now, surely it was time. How much longer did he have to— Ah, there it was. The stone face in front of him shifted soundlessly to reveal a door—plain, ordinary, and painted blue. It bore the number 141b above a cast-iron knocker, a small flap for letters, and a worn stone step. Apart from the fact that it hadn't been there eight seconds ago, it was completely unremarkable.

Robin produced a key and opened the door, which admitted entry not into a building but into a sparse courtyard containing a hill.

The high, blank stone walls crowded the hill, which might properly be described as no more than a mound, except that there was a luscious covering of bright green grass that was dotted with bluebells and buttercups. From the far side, a dead, withered tree protruded. It had grown once but had not bloomed in several thousand years.

Robin Ploughwright, Lord of the Boggy Marshes and eighteenth Earl of Shotover Hill, shut the door up behind him and turned to the hill, which was growing blue and cold in the falling twilight.

He found its entrance easily and went in.

The air inside the hill was musty and wet—it obviously hadn't been aired recently. Still, he wasn't setting up a guesthouse; he was here on business.

The way was dirty and he had to dodge many low-hanging roots before he came, with obvious relief, to the meeting hall. A small bonfire had been prepared and he drew near it, trying to hide his trepidation. He swallowed a mouth of bitter saliva and turned his eyes to the platform.

The throne was occupied. He flashed a smile and tried to will himself to stop twitching, sweating, and mumbling, his eyes flicking rapidly to and from the four armed guards surrounding the seated figure who blended perfectly into the shadows. This unassuming person was dressed in a casual white shirt unbuttoned at the top, a blue suit jacket, jeans, and brown loafers. His hair was white and flowing, but his skin was uncreased.

Robin bowed hastily. “Greetings, glorious grinner,” he said, smiling.

The man in the throne shifted his weight. “Ploughwright,” he acknowledged. “What news?”

“I have proceeded as you instructed—as we agreed. All is in place. I await your word.”

“I give that word now. Put the plan into action.”

Ploughwright turned his head slightly and regarded the man on the throne. He was obviously in earnest—he was always so drearily in earnest. “Very well, it will be as you say.”

The man on the throne made a gesture, permitting him to leave.

Robin had walked a few steps when he turned. “With respect,” he said, “I know I shouldn't question—never have before, but I must ask . . . why not simply kill them or detain them in a more conventional manner?” He held his breath to await reply—or punishment—from perhaps the only man in the world whom he truly feared.

The man on the throne raised a hand to his chin. Robin nearly flinched at the action. “Really, Robin,” he said. “Is that any way to treat a friend?”

Robin bowed and turned. He didn't expect an answer anyway. He never should have said anything.

He retraced his steps quickly and drew the watch out of his pocket once more. Good, the door would still be open. No need to make other arrangements.

Exiting the hill, he swiftly made his way through the blue door and back into George Street Mews. And since there was still no one in sight, he stretched out his arms and scaled the wall. Slinking along the rooftops, he made his way back to the rooms he occupied where he lived under the disguise of a human.

3

At a quarter past two, Freya started off for her tutorial. She left the coffee shop and made her way to her tutor's room using the most populated streets. She ran into Julie, the other student she was to take her tutorial with, just outside the college. Freya was angry with herself for arriving on time; if she were just a little earlier, she would have been able to enter and reenter the doors and arches. The arches especially upset her.

Fighting anxiety, Freya mounted the stairs ahead of Julie. Reaching the door of the tutor's room, she knocked and reached into her bag for her tutorial gown. She pulled it out, deliberately bringing some papers with it. She bent down to collect them as they heard, “Come in, please,” from inside the room.

“You go ahead,” Freya said to Julie, deliberately picking her bag up the wrong way around to spill some of her books onto the floor.

“I'll help,” Julie said, bending down.

“No! That's fine, I've got it,” Freya said, harsher than she had meant.

Julie nodded, stood, and entered.

Freya stuffed the books in her bag and then took a bottle of pills out of an inner pocket. She dry-swallowed a couple and then went to a window in the hallway. Where was the sun? The sky had become overcast, but it wouldn't set until around five thirty this time of year. Surely the tutorial wouldn't drag on that long . . . but it might.

She took a deep breath. One crisis at a time. She opened the door and went in and out of it as fast and as silently as she could, seven times. That did absolutely nothing to calm her—she had gone through too many arches already. The only thing that could help was if she went back to the street and started again fresh. She closed her eyes and started to massage her forehead.

The door clicked shut behind her, making her jump.

“I'm sorry, did I startle you?”

“A little . . .” Freya saw Professor Stowe, her tutor, standing just inside the doorway.

His face was concerned. “It's okay. I'm a little anxious because I thought I would be late.”

“No, dead on time, as usual. Shall we start?” He gestured to the sitting room where Julie was already settling herself.

Freya bustled into the next room and sat on a small, uncomfortable wooden chair next to Julie, facing Professor Stowe's leather wing-backed chair.

The next fifty minutes were dedicated to the discussion of Freya's and Julie's essays on determinism. Julie got high praise for hers, while Freya had all the flaws and bad reasoning pointed out in hers. She stopped taking notes when he started critiquing her sentence structure. Eventually, Stowe got down to the end of the paper and paused long enough for her to assume that he'd finished.

“Alright,” she said, her voice quavering just slightly, feeling very much under attack. “You've told me all the things I shouldn't do, what are the things that I
should
do?”

The professor smiled at her. “Address the essay title,” he said, tossing her back her essay. It was creased and glossed over completely in red ink. “Stay focused, be relevant. Do better.”

Freya was fuming. She ostentatiously checked her watch.

“Yes, you're right,” Stowe said. “We're finished now.” He set the reading and essay titles for next week and rose from his chair as Julie and Freya packed up.

“Freya, if I could have a word in private with you.”

The two students made eye contact.

“I'll wait for you outside,” Julie said and left.

“I just wanted to say,” Professor Stowe said, standing behind his wing-backed chair and leaning forward on it, “that you are, without a doubt, one of the smartest students in your current year—perhaps
the
smartest—and
that
is why I was so tough on you.”

“I don't understand.”

Professor Stowe turned his head rather theatrically to gaze out of the window and said, “The problem with your essays is that you are trying to advance the reasoning of the field, trying to arrive at some conclusion, whereas your only goal is to display an evidence of having read the material and, to some degree, retained it and understood it. We're not looking for a breakthrough. We don't want to revolutionise the field”—he slid his eyes away from the window and back to her—“just yet.”

Freya considered this. “So . . . ?”

“So for now, you need to toe the line. I never want to discourage original thought, but the truth is that this is the wrong forum for that. You'll want to save all that for your doctoral thesis. But in order to get there, you need to finish your graduate degree, and for that you'll need to, barbaric as it sounds, simply follow the herd— or lead it, if you can. This isn't the time for individual thought—it is the place for it, but not the time, yet. Do you follow?”

“That's an ironic comment to come out of an essay on determinism.”

Professor Stowe laughed, his eyes creasing merrily. “See, you're obviously brilliant. All things in their places, that's all I'm saying.”

Professor Stowe straightened and went to stand by the window. “I believe you've got a shining career ahead of you—you've an excellent academic mind, but you have to maintain distance. We're scholars of philosophy and theology, not practitioners, after all.

You must maintain the perspective of the outsider.”

Freya didn't agree with this at all and opened her mouth to protest, but Professor Stowe held up a hand and turned his face to the window.

“Now, the other thing I wanted to talk to you about—come over here for a second, please. Look down there.”

Freya cautiously crossed the room to the window that looked down on the street.

“See that man opposite us, sitting on the pavement?”

Freya craned her neck. There was a form huddled against the wall of the house across from them that looked to be . . . Daniel.

“Do you know him?”

Freya nodded. “Yes, that's . . . an old friend of mine I was at school with.”