He’d entered the pub like a fugitive seeking sanctuary. In the bar the landlady had been ringing ‘time’ and trying to persuade her customers to leave. He’d introduced himself briefly from the hallway and followed her directions to his room. After that nightmare drive, perhaps he should have taken a walk first, got some fresh air, but lights and the closeness of human company had seemed essential.
Now he was back in control. Anyway, if God wanted to frighten the shit out of you, He could just as easily do it in a well-lit crowded room. Night and mist themselves held no fears that man didn’t put there. A breath of air would be very welcome.
He stood up, taking care to bow his head so that it didn’t crack against the huge crossbeam. This was the kind of room for a man to learn humility in.
Quietly he opened the door and glided silently down the stairs.
He could still hear voices in the bar. The landlady’s persuasions must have fallen on stony ground. Or, rather, saturated ground! He went down the narrow lobby and out into the night, pulling the door to behind him.
Little light escaped through the heavily curtained barroom windows and out here it was almost pitch-black till you looked up and saw the breathtaking sweep of stars across the now cloudless sky. The time might come when, either through the inevitable decay of energy, or perhaps because someone had counted all the names of God, one by one the stars would go out.
But here and now, even though his here and now was millennia out of step with some of the stars he was looking at, all he could do was gaze up and feel gratitude for being part of this beautiful creation, and fear at the thought of just how small a part.
Across the road he could hear the tumult of the invisible river. Trees rustled in the still gusting wind. Something moved between him and the stars, a bird, a bat, he could not tell. Nor could he tell whether the distant screech he heard somewhere up the dark bulk of rising ground beyond the river was the sound of birth or the sound of death.
Probably neither. Probably just the noise made by some inoffensive creature going about its inoffensive business. Certainly, for which he gave many thanks, there were no voices in the wind.
Behind him the pub door opened, spilling light on to his darkness, and a trio of men came out. They stopped short as they saw him. Two of them were almost identical, broad and muscular, with heads that looked as if they’d been rough-hewn by a sculptor’s apprentice whose master hadn’t found time to finish them. They stared at him with an unblinking blankness which, if encountered in certain dubious areas of Seville, would have had him running in search of light. The third, however, a tall man with a shock of vigorous grey hair and a merry eye, addressed him in a reassuringly cheerful tone.
‘Good evening to you, sir. A fine night to be taking the air.’
‘Fine indeed,’ said Madero courteously. ‘And a good evening to you too.’
‘You are staying here, are you, sir? Let me guess. You are the Spanish scholar come to discover why we are the way we are.’
‘You have the advantage of me,’ said Madero.
‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to be rude, but two interesting strangers in one day is enough to distract our simple minds from courtesy. Thor Winander, at your service.’
He offered his hand. Madero took it and found himself drawn closer.
‘Michael Madero,’ he said.
‘Madero. Like the sherry firm?’
‘Not like. The same.’
‘Indeed! Ah, el fino Bastardo, delicioso y delicado.’
He smacked his lips as he uttered this rather poorly pronounced version of an old advertising slogan.
Madero withdrew his hand and bowed his head in silent acknowledgement and Winander continued, ‘It will be a blessing to have some intelligent conversation and news of the outside world. My companions, though excellent fellows in their way, are not famed for their taste or wit. But if you want a ditch cleared or a grave dug, they are nonpareil. Goodnight to you, Mr Madero.’
‘Goodnight,’ said Madero.
The men went on their way, talking in subdued voices and occasionally glancing back at him. One of them had a torch and its beam dipped and danced across the road and over the bridge till finally it vanished in the mass of land rising on the far side.
The light from the still open door made the darkness all around seem even denser now and the stars were nothing but a smear of frost across the black glass of the firmament. He shivered and went inside.
As he reached the foot of the stairs, Edie Appledore appeared.
‘There you are,’ she said. ‘Found your room all right, did you, Mr Madero?’
‘Yes, thank you. And by the way, it is Mathero,’ he said gently, correcting both stress and pronunciation.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I knew that because that’s the way Gerry Woollass says it. Which was what I wanted to catch you for. I forgot earlier, I was so busy, but he left a message asking if you could make it ten o’clock at the Hall tomorrow, not half nine as arranged.’
‘Thank you. It will suit me very well to have an extra half-hour in bed.’
‘Been a long journey, has it?’
‘From my mother’s house in Hampshire.’
‘That’s a right trip. You’ll need your rest. Care for a nightcap? Not always easy to sleep in a strange bed, not even when you’re tired.’
‘Thank you. That would be nice.’
‘Right. No, not in there,’ she said as he made to step into the bar. ‘I’ve seen enough of that place for one night.’
She led him down the corridor into a kitchen.
Madero glanced from the huge table to the small windows and the narrow door and said, ‘How on earth did they get this in here?’
‘Didn’t,’ said Mrs Appledore. ‘Built it on the spot, they reckon, so it’s almost as old as the building. I’ve been offered thousands for it, and the guy was going to pay for having it dismantled and taken out. I was tempted. Sit yourself down. Brandy OK?’
‘That would be fine,’ said Madero, seating himself on a kitchen chair whose provenance he guessed to be Ikea. ‘But you resisted the temptation out of principle?’
‘No. Superstition. Round here they think you change something, you pay a price.’
She opened a cupboard, produced a bottle and two glasses, filled them generously and sat down alongside Madero.
‘Your health,’ he said. ‘Ah, I see why you don’t keep this stuff in the bar.’
‘They’d not pay what I’d need to ask, and if they did, most of ‘em wouldn’t appreciate it.’
‘But they appreciate some old things, it seems,’ said Madero, running his hand along the top edge of the table then beneath it, tracing the ancient cuts and scars. It was like touching the corpse of a battle-scarred warrior. He got a strong reminder of that pain and fear he’d experienced earlier and withdrew his hand quickly, suppressing a shudder.
‘You OK, Mr Madero?’ said the woman.
‘Fine. A little tired perhaps. What an interesting old building this is. Was it always an inn?’
‘No. There used to be a priory hereabouts and this is what’s left of the old Stranger House—that’s where visitors and travellers could be put up without letting them into the priory proper.’
‘And it became