it up!’ he roared, kicking viciously again at the ash with his riding boot. ‘I want every single trace of this sacrilege removed! This is a place of life and energy, not death! Never, ever again … and wash the stones.’
The men who’d come up on the wagon to tidy the Circle looked at one another nervously.
‘But the paintings …’
‘Wash them off!’
‘But Yul, sir, it’s the custom to leave them until the Winter Solstice,’ said one of the men tentatively.
‘I don’t give a damn about the custom! That custom is finished! I want every single reminder of this awful Samhain ritual removed. If I find just one sign of it, there’ll be big trouble. Do you all understand?’
He glared at the group of men belligerently and they nodded and kept their eyes down. Yul was formidable when he was angry.
Without a backward glance he strode across to where Skydancer was loosely tethered and swung up into the saddle in one powerful motion. A nudge from his heels and the great horse launched into a canter down the Long Walk, also sensing his master’s anger and pent-up rage. They rode hard away from the Circle and up towards Dragon’s Back. Once on the ridgeway, Yul gave Skydancer his head and man and horse flew, sweat gradually drenching them both despite the cool November breeze. Eventually they slowed down many miles away, with the green hills of Stonewylde all around them and the soft grey skies above. Yul slumped in the saddle, his shoulders drooping as Skydancer ambled along getting his wind back, cropping occasionally at the short turf.
Yul gazed, without seeing, at the curved beauty of the landscape. His deep grey eyes were clouded with inner turmoil and his mouth, usually so firm, quivered. He fought back the tears, but lost the battle as great heaving sobs overwhelmed him. Sylvie was the person he held above all others. She was the brightness to his darkness, his counterpart and balance – how could she not want him? What had happened last night? He tried but failed to push away the terrible thought – was this a return to her illness?
A few days later, Leveret stood above the springhead looking down. The hill was almost vertical here and very short grass struggled to survive on the thin soil that barely covered the rock. Although she couldn’t actually see it, Leveret knew that just below her, under the craggy outcrop of rock at her feet, the spring gushed from a cleft in the rock-face. The clear, pure water tumbled down, seemingly a small fountain but quickly gaining in volume and velocity as it surged down the hill towards the distant Village.
It was joined on its journey by other small springs until it became the river that flowed past the Village, full of otters and kingfishers and overhung with weeping willows. An ox-bow next to the Playing Fields formed a great fresh-water pool with beaches where the children played and swam in the warm months. Yul had taught her to swim there many years ago. The river flowed on, past the mill where the flour was ground, the tannery where the skins were cured, the clay beds where the potters worked, and into the reed beds where the thatchers gathered their materials and the wading birds nested, before finally reaching the sea. Looking now at the thin trickle just visible through the undergrowth, it was hard to imagine such a small source creating such a body of water.
None of this occurred to Leveret as she stood listening to the water tinkling below. She’d come here unintentionally, wandering out of the Village along the river bank and then taking a detour when the spring became too small and steep to follow upstream any longer. She’d walked in the early morning half-light up into the springhead hills, feeling a need to be somewhere high and quiet. She stood on the rock above the watershed and gazed at the beauty all around her. Wisps of mist clung to the lower hills in the clean November morning. The sky was palest blue, with streaks of gold and pink to the east where the sun would soon rise. The morning star was fading fast, and a late fox slunk past her heading for its earth. The sound of joyous birdsong was all about. A pair of great buzzards circled overhead, mewing and calling mournfully. Their enormous wings were spread on the air currents, the white stripes and splayed end-feathers clearly