She was on the track when she heard a shot ring out, followed almost immediately by another. She stopped dead. ‘Oh my God!’ It was hard to tell where it had come from. Close.
She set off again, more slowly this time, unable to see much through the thick hedgerow on both sides of the track. She stopped again abruptly. A gap had been cut in the hedge on the left-hand side. It hadn’t been there last time she had come down the lane. ‘Oh, Rosemary!’ she murmured. She examined it quickly – it had been done very recently, the leaves on the clippings lying on the lane had barely started to wilt – then she ducked through the opening and stood on the edge of the field looking down the slope towards the copse in the centre. She could see no one. The whole area was very quiet.
Oh God, what should she do?
‘Zoë?’ The voice behind her made her jump.
‘Leo!’ Her delight and relief at seeing him was overwhelming.
‘I was just behind you. Jade told me what’s happened. Have you seen anything?’
‘No.’ She wanted to reach out and touch him to convince herself he was really there. ‘I heard a couple of shots, but I can’t believe Jackson is threatening anyone.’
‘No, of course not. She’s got the wrong end of the stick, I’m sure she has. Come on.’
He started to stride out across the field towards the copse. The sound of another shot brought them both to a sudden halt. Zoë fought the urge to hide behind him. ‘Can you see anything?’
He shook his head. Then they heard a woman’s shout. ‘I warn you, I’ve called the police! You get out of here now!’
‘Rosemary,’ Zoë called. She felt a wave of overwhelming relief.
‘Rosemary?’ Leo shouted. ‘Can you hear me? It’s Leo.’
Two figures appeared at the edge of the copse and waved. ‘Thank God!’ Rosemary called as they approached. ‘We were terrified.’
‘What happened?’ Leo was scanning the undergrowth round them. There was no sign of anyone.
‘We were shot at!’ Zoë saw that her hands were shaking. ‘I don’t know who it was, but it was so close. He was aiming at us. He only just missed.’
‘Any idea who it was?’
She shook her head. ‘I never saw.’
Dottie shook her head too. ‘I was too busy lying on the ground.’ Zoë realised that both women were covered in dried leaves and earth.
‘I’m sure it was just someone doing a bit of rough shooting. I doubt if he was aiming at you,’ Leo said after a moment. ‘He wouldn’t have expected there to be anyone here, not on private property.’
There was a moment’s silence. ‘Point taken,’ Rosemary said. ‘All the more reason to make sure this path is made official.’
‘What are you two doing here?’ Dottie asked after a moment.
Leo gave Zoë a warning look. ‘We were walking down the track,’ he said. ‘To go and look at
Curlew
. My boat,’ he added as the woman looked puzzled. ‘We heard the shots and then you calling out.’ He glanced round, then he strode a few paces away from them into the edge of the copse. It was surrounded by an old rusty length of barbed wire, held up with broken posts. He stepped over the wire and took a few steps into the shadow of the trees. ‘Hello?’ he called. ‘Is anyone there?’ There was no answer. The undergrowth was thick with brambles, bracken and holly, with a couple of small oak trees, and as he stared into the shadows he saw the mound at its centre, covered with ivy and nettles. With a squawk of alarm a pheasant blundered past him, leaving a scattering of dead leaves to settle in its wake.
He realised Zoë had followed him. ‘No sign of anyone,’ he murmured.
‘I’m sure he’s long gone,’ she whispered back. ‘My guess is he wanted to scare them.’
Leo nodded. ‘Risky.’ He turned and made his way back towards the wire. ‘I don’t think there is anyone here now,’ he said as they climbed out into the field. ‘But I wouldn’t come here any more, Rosemary, I really wouldn’t. People do walk around with guns in the country. Although they shouldn’t shoot if there isn’t a clear line of sight, it happens. This is at the moment private ground and you are putting yourselves at risk forcing your way into it like this.’
‘What do you mean, forcing our way?’ Rosemary was bristling with indignation.
‘You cut the hedge, right?’
‘They had blocked the path from the lane.’
‘I think you will find that the law sees what you are doing, damaging Bill’s property, as illegal,’ Leo said calmly. ‘You have to do this legally.’
‘She’s right, Rosemary,’ Dottie said with a sigh. ‘I don’t think we can say people have been walking here recently. You’ll have to go through the council and get them to look for ancient rights of way. Truly there isn’t anything here now.’
Rosemary shook her head wearily. ‘You’re wrong.’ She saw Leo’s expression and pointed at him. ‘I don’t expect you to understand. This is vital.’
‘If you say so.’ He looked pained. ‘Well, I suggest we leave you to it. You obviously don’t need rescuing, and Zoë and I are on our way down to the boat.’
‘She won’t be told.’ Zoë followed him back towards the lane. ‘I saw them,’ she added quietly. ‘When you went into the copse. Two of them. Jackson and another boy, both with guns. They ran out and got away while you were distracted.’
‘I’ll have a word with Jeff. Poor guy. His kids are a handful.’
She followed him through the newly cut gap in the hedge, feeling the brambles and thorns catching at her jacket. ‘Which reminds me. Jade looked really ill. Did she tell you, she said she had chicken pox?’
He nodded. ‘I told her to go home. We ought to go and check on her, I suppose, and make sure they’ve told her mother.’ He sighed. ‘Do you want to come down to the landing stage first? To establish our alibi, as it were.’ He gave her a sidelong glance and then looked away.
The boats were lying quietly to their buoys. There wasn’t a breath of wind. Golden leaves were scattered over the water, drifting gently under the overhanging trees. ‘Is Ken at home?’ Leo asked as they stood side by side looking out across the river.
She shook her head. ‘He had to go to a meeting with someone in Woodbridge.’
‘So, you’re not in a hurry?’
‘No.’ Somehow the job vacancy didn’t seem important any more.
‘Do you want to come out to
Curlew
? Just to check her over.’ He stooped and picked up the mooring rope to bring his dinghy close. ‘I should have pulled this one up on the shore before I went away. There’s a lot of water in the bottom.’
She smiled. ‘I don’t mind.’ She realised suddenly that she wanted more than anything in the world to be close to him.
‘So you’ll come?’
‘Why not?’
His hand on her arm was strong as he helped her into the small boat and clambered in after her. He settled himself at the oars and pulled strongly out into the river. The
Curlew
was a smaller boat than the
Lady Grace
, and had a low graceful profile, and she was moored to a buoy further out in the main channel. She was wooden, Zoë saw, while their boat was more modern and made of fibreglass. Climbing aboard after Leo, she sat down in the corner of the cockpit as he pushed open the door to the cabin. It wasn’t locked. ‘I can offer you tea, without milk,’ he said as he ducked inside. ‘I have the minimum of supplies, I’m afraid.’
‘Tea would be lovely,’ she said. ‘It has been a rather stressful few hours. I’ve never run so fast. I was convinced we would find bodies.’
‘Jade has always been a drama queen,’ he said with a fond smile. ‘But I think she was genuinely scared. I wonder who the other boy was.’ He was rooting about in the cabin. ‘I’ll find out,’ he added a little grimly. He unscrewed a water carrier and poured some into the kettle he retrieved from a shelf over one of the bunks, then he put it on a gas ring in the small galley compartment, and reached first to turn on the gas bottle, then into his pocket for some matches. ‘Are you OK?’ He had been watching her surreptitiously from inside the cabin as she sat out in the cockpit.
She was gripping the gunwale with white knuckles. She nodded. ‘It’s the Deben effect.’
‘As long as it’s not me.’
She shook her head. ‘No, it’s not you.’ For a moment they looked at each other, then she turned away to study the river bank. ‘I never used to feel this nervous. Not at anchor, for goodness’ sake.’
‘There is nothing to be afraid of,’ he said over his shoulder.
Was it the river she was nervous of, she wondered suddenly, or being alone with Leo like this? She glanced at him quickly then she looked away a clutch of excitement in the pit of her stomach.
‘The river is a wild moving creature,’ he went on, ‘but it is predictable within parameters. You need to study the tides, the winds. If you link it to the moon and the weather, if you study its birds, if you learn its moods it becomes a friend.’
She was smiling. ‘That sounds poetic.’
‘Sorry.’
‘No. I like it. What about the mist?’
‘Ah, the mist.’ Behind him the kettle began to whistle shrilly. There was a pause while he reached for a dented tin of teabags and two mugs. Zoë clutched the mug gratefully, trying to ignore the momentary brush of his fingers as she took it.
‘Well,’ she repeated after a long silence. ‘What about the mist?’
‘It is the river’s veil, the disguise beneath which she hides herself when her mood changes.’
‘So it’s a she now?’
‘Indeed.’ He came to sit next to her outside, with his own mug, blowing on the scalding tea. ‘This boat is my mistress, but the river is our nemesis; our goddess.’
Their thighs were touching in the small space of the cockpit.
‘Is that what Deben means, a goddess?’
He shook his head. ‘A great many rivers in Britain are named as goddesses, like Sabrina, the Severn, but these rivers round here have descriptive names. The Stour means rough water; and Deben comes from the Old English word for a deep river.’
She shivered. ‘That follows.’
‘Not here. Not when the tide is out.’
‘I went to Sutton Hoo,’ she said at last. ‘It was very strange. I could feel it, the magic of the Anglo-Saxons. Their artistic designs, their jewellery. Their poetry. I loved it. I’m beginning to realise this whole landscape is imbued with their legacy.’
He nodded. ‘There was an Anglo-Saxon village here,’ he waved towards the barns. ‘The Hall, Timperton Hall, was built on the site of a Saxon hall.’
‘And it’s all gone. Nothing but shadows and memories in the poetry.’
‘I like that. It’s mysterious,’ he said.
‘Do you think our barns were built on Anglo-Saxon sites as well? And your forge?’ She was staring down into the water.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’
‘And the ghost ship? Was that Anglo-Saxon?’
‘Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it was a Viking invader.’
She looked thoughtful. ‘The Anglo-Saxons were here when Christianity came to England, weren’t they?’
He nodded again. ‘Christianity first came at the very end of the Roman period. But it took a long time to take hold here. Husbands and wives would be of different religions. Some people covered their options by setting up altars to both at the same time. It was a strange period. Some of our greatest and most beautiful Christian artefacts come from the Anglo-Saxons, like the Lindisfarne Gospels. Then the Vikings came and destroyed the monasteries; massacred the people along the east coast.’ He fell silent, staring out over the water. Suddenly he pointed. ‘Look. There’s a heron. See him? In the shallows.’
She squinted, following his finger, and managed to locate the tall, statuesque bird standing motionless in the water.
‘We call those chaps harnsers in Suffolk,’ he said. ‘It’s a nice name.’
‘Do you think that’s an Anglo-Saxon word too?’
He smiled. ‘Ah, that I don’t know.’
The sunlight was falling low across the water. It was growing hazy as it grew colder.
‘Do you race the
Curlew
?’ she asked suddenly.
He laughed. ‘No. I’m not the competitive type. Why?’
‘Ken is. He is always looking for the chance to test himself against other people.’
‘I’m afraid he will find me very boring then.’ Leo gave a rueful grin. ‘I do not compete; I do not race. My
Curlew
and I drift sleepily around watching birds and dreaming in the sunshine.’
‘That sounds like my kind of sailing.’
‘Then we must do it together some time.’
She looked at him and for a moment their eyes locked. As before, she looked away. She sipped her tea. ‘This is a magic place, isn’t it?’
‘I think so.’
‘Is that why it is so full of ghosts?’
‘Maybe.’
She put down her mug on the seat beside her. ‘Leo –’
‘Hush.’ He put down his own mug and leaned forward towards her. For a moment she hesitated, then she closed her eyes. She wanted more than anything to kiss him, to hold him. She had never felt like this before with anyone, even Ken. The strength of her longing was frightening.
‘Zoë,’ it was a whisper, ‘is this what you want?’
‘Yes –’ The word was cut short as she felt his lips on hers. The kiss lasted a long time. When at length they drew apart they studied each other for what seemed an eternity, then she reached out for him again and pulled him towards her, needing to feel him holding her, his body against hers. She was the one leading, she was the one who scrabbled to undo her jacket and pull open her blouse, it was she who brought his hand up to her breast and pressed it against her hot skin. Together they slipped from the seat to the floor of the cockpit, then Leo half dragged half crawled with her towards the cabin. ‘Come inside. Here.’ The bunks were no use. They were too narrow. He pulled one of the long vinyl-covered cushions down on the floor in front of the chart table and pushed her down on it beneath him, pulling at the rest of her clothes. ‘Zoë!’
‘Don’t! Don’t say anything.’ She reached for his mouth again, overwhelmed by the electricity between them. ‘Oh God, please, yes!’
At last they rolled apart and lay together in the narrow space on the floor of the cabin. Zoë gave a long sigh. She lay looking up at the roof above her, where the reflections from the water outside flickered on the curved wood. All the warmth had gone from the light. It was green and sad. She could hear the slap of the tide against the boat’s sides and feel its movement as it rode the water, gently lifting and dipping with the motion of the evening breeze. It was growing cold, her skin chilled after the heat of his body, but she didn’t want to move.