‘Fit as a butcher’s dog,’ she said.
‘You and Mr Madero are acquainted?’
Odd question, she thought. Maybe he’s worried I’m on my way to the Hall too, and doesn’t like the idea of an awkward Colonial falling over his priceless antiques.
‘Nah, we just met,’ she said. ‘I’m on my way to see Mr Winander, and Mr Madero was kind enough to translate this inscription for me, but I still don’t get it.’
Woollass smiled. This was a first. He looked a bit more like the kind well-meaning man that Edie Appledore had described.
He said, ‘It means that if you’re so foolhardy as to step into Mr Winander’s workshop, you will be lucky to emerge with any money left in your pocket. Mr Madero, why don’t you climb in? You might as well join us for the last bit of your journey.’
‘Or if you prefer to walk, I’ll be glad to stretch my legs and join you,’ said the nun, stepping nimbly out of the car. She was lean and athletic, in her thirties, with a narrow intelligent face. The headdress apart, she was conventionally dressed.
‘Sister Angelica,’ she said, holding out her hand.
Madero shook it. Sam was amused to see how he dealt with this dilemma. She guessed he’d much prefer to accept the lift, but the nun had put him on the spot.
Then she was faced with a dilemma of her own as the nun turned from Madero to herself and thrust out her hand again and tried another friendly smile. It didn’t fade as Sam let her own fingertips barely brush the nun’s and said shortly, ‘Sam Flood. G’day.’
She caught Madero regarding her with disapproval and thought, what’s with him? Just because she’s a nun doesn’t mean I’ve got to give her the kiss of peace.
Sister Angelica’s smile didn’t even flicker and her voice was warm as she said, ‘It’s good to meet you, Miss Flood. Mr Madero, on second thoughts I think maybe we should ride, if you don’t mind. I just felt a small twinge of my rheumatism.’
Liar, thought Sam. You’ve sussed out that the poor bastard’s knackered and this is your good deed for the day.
‘As you wish,’ said Madero.
He held the door to let the nun back into the front passenger seat, then opened the rear door and put his briefcase inside. The woman sitting there leaned over to pull it further in and Sam got a good view of her for the first time.
She was in her late twenties, with a long fineboned face, beautiful if you liked that sort of thing. She had straight jet-black hair falling sheer below her shoulders. She was wearing shorts and a suntop, but the flesh exposed showed little sign of the onslaught of weather. Her face had an almost lilial pallor which against her black hair could easily have produced a vampirical effect, yet far from being cadaverous, she somehow seemed to shimmer with life. She had a full well-rounded figure and the kind of long legs which would have graced a fashion house catwalk. Her eyes moved over Sam with the measured indifference of a security scan. They were a bluey grey that was familiar—like the driver’s, that was it, but unlike his showing neither the potential for benevolence nor the presence of trouble. Her gaze held Sam’s for a moment, a smile which had something of mockery in it and something of enquiry too, touched her mouth briefly, then she sat back as Madero hauled himself in beside her.
‘My daughter, Frek,’ said Woollass. ‘That’s idiotspeak for Frederika.’
Madero shook her hand. At the same time a thunderous voice echoed out:
‘Morning, Gerry. Window shopping, are we? Why not bring your friends in? You never know, you might see something that takes your fancy.’
She turned to see that Thor Winander had appeared round the end of his house. Stripped to the waist and with a long-handled hammer resting on one shoulder, he looked more like the god of the Wolf-Head Cross than ever.
‘Morning, Thor. Another time,’ called Woollass. ‘If you’re ready, Mr Madero…’
As Madero pulled his door shut, he frowned at Sam as if she were an attendant footman he was wondering if he should tip. Then the car drew away.
You’re really making new friends this morning, girl, Sam mocked herself as she watched it go.
‘You waiting for a red carpet or something?’ called Winander.
He didn’t wait for an answer but disappeared towards the smithy.
Sam looked up at the sandstone block once more and jostled the few coins she had in the pocket of her shorts.
‘Wonder if he takes credit cards?’ she said to a passing raven.
Caw! replied the raven.
Or, as this was Illthwaite where they crucified boys and ghosts searched your room, it might have been, Cash!
Mig Madero was more relieved than he cared to admit to be in the car. Physiotherapy routines got you mobile, but the last half-hour had proved yet again the old hiking adage that the only thing that gets you fit for walking steeply uphill is walking steeply uphill.
The drive to the Hall took less than a minute and the woman next to him showed no inclination to talk. The wide rear seat removed any risk of physical contact, but he found her closeness vaguely disturbing. Despite her icy pallor, warmth came off her and with it a scent composed of whatever perfume she used underpinned by faint traces from her own skin and flesh. She was beautiful, no argument about that, with a fine delicate bone structure that reminded him of the angels in the murals in the seminary chapel, but with flesh enough on her to turn the careless mind from the sacred to the profane.
Frek. The English loved their diminutives. It was his mother who started calling him Mig. Frederika was a lovely name, but Frek had intimacy.
The car came to a halt, rather to his relief, and he turned his attention to the less troublesome attractions of Illthwaite Hall.
His first impression was of an extremely appealing house with little sign of that selfconsciousness which comes from a desire to impress one’s neighbours. The tall twisting chimneys belonged to the architecture of fairy tales, and the timbering too he had seen often in the children’s books in his mother’s house.
He stared up at an ornately carved stone set above the lintel of the brass-studded oak front door. On its left side was a coat of arms with three roses: one red, one white, one golden. On the right stood an angel with a sword, its robes white, its weapon silver with a smear of scarlet along its edge. Between, picked out in red and green, were some words, crushed so close together that reading them wasn’t easy but he’d had plenty of practice at deciphering ornate and obscure scripts.
Edwin Woollass Esquire and Alice
His Wife made this house to be built in the Dear of Our Lord 1535 Cruce Fido
‘“I trust in the cross”,’ Madero translated.
‘Our dog’s a crook,’ said Frek Woollass as she went by him and opened the door.
‘Family joke,’ said Woollass. ‘Usually left behind with childhood. Come in.’
A good three inches shorter than his daughter, he moved with the determined gait of a man who anticipates obstacles but doesn’t intend walking round them.
‘It’s a lovely spot, isn’t it?’ said Sister Angelica. Her voice was gruff without being masculine, and it had a fairly broad accent which Madero, who had early recognized the importance of the way you talked in his maternal milieu, identified as Lancastrian. ‘Very welcoming. Pity about the knocker, though.’
The cast-iron door knocker, shaped like a wolf’s head with mouth agape and teeth bared,