Gideon strode across the rock-scattered turf. It felt good to be on his feet and moving. Zeke’s announcement had shocked him unaccountably: if you’d asked him, he’d have sworn he’d be in agreement with any such decision from his brother. Dropping the holier-than-thou act at last, bringing his principles into line with his practice...
But Zeke had been there, the great stone face in the chapel, for all of Gideon’s adult life. Gideon had barely noticed the transition, when old Pastor Frayne had retired and Zeke had stepped into his place. Somewhere in the village there had been a force, stern and intolerant, entrenched in opposition to everything Gideon became or did.
Horrible, of course. Weirdly reassuring, too. He was old enough and honest enough to know that much of his own nature had been formed by kicking back against theirs. Who was he meant to rebel against now, if Zeke was stepping down from the pulpit?
The base of the Witches’ Tower was guarded by a field of vast, weathered boulders. The fastest way to the far side was straight across, so he thrust all family matters from his mind and concentrated on his footing. Only one face of the tower could be climbed. If he got round quickly enough, he’d be able to intercept his irresponsible little thugs on their way back down. Here came a big leap from one egg-smooth rock to the next: he eased up, getting his balance...
“Gideon!”
He missed his landing by an inch. His foot slipped, and he saved himself with a wrenching effort. Pain shot through his thigh, a fearful ghost he’d thought long-since laid. He scrambled upright and looked behind him. Rufus Pendower was springing from rock to rock like a bloody gazelle in his wake. “Shit. What do you want?”
Pendower skidded to a crestfallen halt. “I went to see if Locryn was all right—Lee, that is—and he reminded me that there was more than one policeman at this picnic, so I came to help you out.”
Gideon was ashamed to have snarled at a colleague. Not the first time Pendower had come galloping to his aid. “Right. Sorry. Come on, then—I can hear someone scrambling down over there.”
They set off together. After a few seconds, a penny dropped, and Gideon shot his companion an amused look. “Locryn, eh?”
“Well—it’s such a lovely name. Like Cadan and Jago and Elowen... All those old Cornish names are beautiful. Why doesn’t he use it?”
Gideon wasn’t in the mood to explain how Lee’s painful sense of his differences had made him choose a camouflage name when beginning university. He felt an odd tug of possessiveness: Locryn was a beautiful name, but Lee had been Lee to him since their first encounter in Sarah Kemp’s kitchen. “Look up there. Five of the little buggers—go and cut ’em off.”
Pendower obediently changed tack. “Six,” he said, pointing to the shadows at the foot of the tower. “An older lad, trying to climb up to them.”
Gideon recognised the sixth. “I’ll deal with him,” he promised grimly. “Hoi, you! Darren bloody Prowse—I might’ve known!”
For some reason Darren’s reflex to scarper didn’t kick in, even at the sight of a large off-duty policeman bearing down on him. Instead he stood his ground, one arm outstretched like a signpost. “Them kids there!” he yelled, his reedy voice barely carrying over the warm wind. “They’re gonna knock the witches down!”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Gideon closed the ground between them at a run. The pang in his thigh had passed, probably just imaginary in the first place. “Have you taken to grassing up your mates as well as making trouble now?”
The boy’s mouth fell open. “Oh, that’ll be right, won’t it?! Because no bloody Prowse could ever come up here and see some bad shit about to happen and try to stop it, could he? Oh, no. Ringleader, he’d be, even if there’s little kids running around to get hurt.”
“Since when have little kids ever mattered to...”
Gideon tailed off. The brats he’d sent Rufus to pursue had split up, darting like weasels in five different directions across the rocks. He bit back laughter as the sergeant whipped round, trying to decide which one to pursue. “You have to admit, Daz, your history doesn’t exactly support—”
“Ohhh, that’ll be right! Because nobody ever changes, do they? Nobody gets credit for that, even from bloody coppers as might have been kind to ’em in the past, and given ’em gloves in the snow, and a reference for their apprenticeship, and thank you very bloody much for asking how that’s going, Constable!”
He was really upset. The skin around his eyes had gone red with incipient tears, and Gideon remembered the malnourished brat who’d broken down in terror of the Bodmin Beast. Pendower came panting up to join them. “Sorry,” he said. “I lost the little buggers. I think this one’s telling the truth, Gideon—to judge by where he’s standing, and where they came down from.”
Gideon glanced up the side of the tower, assessing his position and the boy’s. He turned back to Darren in bewilderment. “Really?”
“Oh, no. Don’t believe a word of good of me, whatever you do.” Darren rolled his eyes to heaven; held out martyred, bony wrists. “Cuff me. Read me my rights.”
“Pack it in. What were you doing up here, if not making mischief?”
“Looking for a horse’s skull. I have certain powers as last year’s Lord of Misrule. The committee wants a new one to set up against the Kelyndar Old Penglas—Cosmic Ray, you know—and it has to have died a natural death, and been picked clean by the wild beasts and the wind.”
A shiver passed through Gideon’s marrow. He frowned at Rufus, who had gasped in delight and looked ready to whip out his folklore-collection notebook and pen. “That sounds weird enough to be true. Well, you’ve come to a good place—wild ponies die up here every winter.”
“I know. That’s why I’m not at the knacker’s yard in Redruth trying to nick one.”
Gideon sighed and gave it up. “All right, all right. How’s the apprenticeship going, Darren?”
“Fine, thank you very fucking much, Constable.”
“Mind your tongue. And it’s Sergeant.”
The boy gave him a bright, surprising grin. “Yeah, I know. Detective Sergeant, if we’re splitting hairs. Can’t be easy for a ten-ton truck like you, sneaking around in plain clothes.”
“Get lost, you little ferret,” Gideon advised him kindly, and watched him leap off down the slope. A vivid memory arose of his performance at the Montol, a skinny-legged Lord of Misrule commanding the torch-bearers to dance. There was more to the wretched lad than met the eye, unsuspected depths of poetry. Picked clean by the wild beasts and the wind... “Come on, Rufus. Better get back before we miss any more family bombshells.”
“Do you think your brother’s serious?”
“When did you ever know him anything but?”
“Oi, Detective Sergeant!”
Gideon turned. Darren had paused on the edge of the track that led down from the tor. “You want to be careful,” he yelled, making a megaphone of his hands. “Look out for Old Penglas.”
Maybe Gideon had misheard him. He drew breath to shout back, but Darren suddenly let his hands fall. His face blanched in terror. He jerked up a finger to point at the top of the Witches’ Tower, where the ravens and magpies were bursting like shrapnel into the air, hot-blade alarm cries echoing. And as Gideon stared, clutching instinctively at Rufus’s arm, the very top rock of the stack—a baby blue whale, twelve feet long, tonnage unknown—jolted and slipped.
Christ, in the wrong direction. Gideon could have hurled himself and Rufus out of the way in time—or if not, what did it matter? Rufus would take the hit for Daisy, and as for himself... Oh, a thousand times over, for the treasure he’d left behind on the far side of the hill.
He began to run, Rufus scrambling after him. And the great rock flipped its tail and fell.
***
Tamsyn was still holding her grandmother’s wool. She had one plump forefinger raised, as if ready to begin a story and expecting to be heard. Lee was kneeling behind her. He looked as though he’d skidded there and come to a frozen halt just inches away. His hands were outstretched, but he wasn’t touching.
The rock hung overhead, a silent impossibility. Ma Frayne had fled into Zeke’s arms and was sobbing, looking from the little girl to the belly of the whale poised at ceiling-height above her. Tamsyn and Lee were in the crosshairs of its shadow. So were Zeke’s twin boys, who were lying on their romper-clad backs, kicking bare feet into the air and shrieking in delight at this new game. “Ezekiel,” Lee said, for what sounded like the fourth or fifth time, not shifting a muscle to look at him. “Come and get your children.”
He couldn’t. Gideon understood that. He broke his own paralysis and let go of the crest of the boulder he’d been clutching since his breathless arrival thirty seconds ago. This scene was beyond Zeke’s comprehension. His chained-up soul had locked into a frenzy of rejection when Tamsyn had done nothing more than float a few kitchen cups.
Slowly, making certain to do nothing to startle Lee or their daughter, Gideon made his way towards them over the turf. He passed into the shadow of the rock, not looking up. “I’m here,” he said softly. “What should I do?”
“Get the babies.”
Mike and Toby didn’t want to go. They squalled when Gideon scooped them up. He carried them straight to Eleanor, who gave a kind of retching wail and dropped to her knees to receive them. At any other moment, Gideon would have taken her into her arms, tried to find some earthly way of helping her live with the triumph of her fear over her love. Not now. Fear was dead inside him, and love was all that remained. He went back. This time he crouched by Lee’s side. He studied the impassive set of his profile, the beads of sweat that had formed on his brow and upper lip. “What now?”
“I don’t quite know.”
“I don’t want to knock her concentration.”
“I’m not sure she’s concentrating. Just... doing what she does.”
“Are you helping her?”
“Nope.”
“Right. Then leave her with me, and get the fuck out of here.”
Helping or not, Lee’s eyes were full of silver-green magic when he shot a sidelong glare at his husband. “Absolutely fucking not.”
Tamsyn chuckled. “Ducking. Duck.”
“That’s right, sweetheart,” Gideon said, trying to imagine himself and his family back at home, his baby doing nothing worse than holding a toy out of the dog’s reach. Should’ve brought Isolde today, he thought irrelevantly. Too hot for her, now she’s so old and fat, but she’d have enjoyed it, and life’s short. “You’re a good girl, to stop that big stone from falling. It’s time to go home and give Isolde her dinner now, though.”
His heart lurched. She tipped back her head and smiled at him, but the rock stayed put. “Okay, Dada.”
“So... what you need to do is come with Dada and Lee, and...” And what? Fly the rock off to bloody Stonehenge? “And once everyone’s out of the way, you can let that go. Can’t you?”
She nodded. Once more he had the sense of trying to teach her something she already knew, something so obvious in her world that he confused her and filled her with pity. “Okay,” she said again, gently this time. “Okay.”
“She’s not your problem, Gid. I am.”
“Last time I looked, you both were.” Gideon made ready to scoop Tamsyn up, but something in Lee’s immobility snagged his attention. “What’s the matter?”
“I cramped my leg running over here. I can’t move.”
He was sheet-white with pain, or the effort of hiding it. “Oh. Well, that’s all right,” Gideon said, mind racing to think up any way at all it wasn’t a disaster. He eased over to put an arm around Lee’s shoulders. “We’ll be fine. We’ll just keep calm, and...”
“I’ll take Tamsyn, Mr Tiger. Then Gideon can help you.”
Gideon managed not to jump. He absorbed Lee’s helpless jolt, tightening his arm. “Oh, Lorna. No, love, you can’t be here—run away back to your mum.”
Lorna shook her head. She was planted in front of Tamsyn, knees scuffed and grass-stained, fearless lights in her eyes. She’d always been a favourite friend, and the little girl reached up both arms for her. Gideon supposed that, once you’d been kidnapped by the Bodmin Beast, other terrors and wonders mattered less. “All right,” he gasped. “Quickly, then. Take her away.”
Lorna hoisted her up. The current—whatever casual force had been silently fizzing between her and the baby whale—snapped off. Gideon grabbed Lee by the waist, hauled him upright and ducked beneath his arm. “Hold on to me. Run!”
Five yards would do it. He tripped on the fourth: shoved Lee forward and clear and dived after him. They landed in a rugby-tackled heap. Lee rolled on top: pulled the edge of his jacket up and shielded Gideon’s face and eyes as the vast rock belly-flopped onto the turf.
The impact sent a small tsunami ripple through the earth. Pebbles bounced in a broad radius. Rufus Pendower, who must have fallen or been otherwise delayed in his dash from the far side of the tower, came stumbling into view. Gideon paused in helping Lee to his feet. “It’s all right,” he called, pitying his colleague’s blank-faced horror. “Daisy’s fine. She’s just over there with—”
Pendower ignored him. He came limping over at a painful gallop. Tears had carved white tracks down his dusty cheeks. “Locryn,” he rasped, taking hold of Lee by the shirt-collar and jerking him into his arms. “Oh, Locryn. Thank God!”