Witch’s Honour. Jan Siegel

over him, clasping his shoulder with a scrubbed pink hand. ‘You called out,’ he explained. ‘I was outside. I think you said: “I need help.”’

      ‘Yes,’ said Lucas. ‘I did. I do.’

      The young nurse smiled a smile that was reassuring—a little too reassuring, and knowing, and not quite human.

      ‘Help will be found,’ he said.

      A damp spring ripened slowly into the disappointment of summer. Wizened countrymen read the signs—‘The birds be nesting high this year’—‘The hawthorn be blooming early’—‘I seed a ladybird with eight spots’—and claimed it would be hot. It wasn’t. In London Gaynor moved back into her refurbished flat and stoically withstood the advances of her host of New Year’s Eve in his quest for extramarital sympathy. Will Capel returned from Outer Mongolia and invited his sister to dinner, escorting her to the threshold of the Caprice restaurant before recollecting that all he could afford was McDonald’s. Fern drank a brandy too many, picked up the tab, and went home to dream the dream again, waking to horror and a sudden rush of nausea. In Queen Square, Dana Walgrim did not stir. Lucas devoted more time to the pursuit of venture capitalism, doing adventurous things with other people’s capital, but rivals said he had lost his focus, and the spectre that haunted him was not that of greed. And at Wrokeby the hovering sun ran its fingers over the façade of the house, and poked a pallid ray through an upper window, withdrawing it in haste as the swish of a curtain threatened to sever it from its source.

      It was late May, and the clouds darkened the long evening into a premature dusk. The sunset was in retreat beyond the Wrokewood, its lastlight snarled in the treetops on Farsee Hill. Three trees stood there, all dead, struck by lightning during the same storm that had shattered the conservatory at the house, and although there was fresh growth around each bole the three crowns were bare, leafless spars jutting skyward like stretching arms. Folklorists claimed that Farsee Hill was a contraction of pharisee, or fairy, and liked to suggest some connection with an occult curse, the breaking of a taboo, the crossing of a forbidden boundary, though no one had yet come up with a plot for the undiscovered story. That evening, the clouds seemed to be building up not for a storm but for Night, the ancient Night that was before electricity and lamps and candles, before Man stole the secret of fire from the gods. The dark crept down over wood and hill, smothering the last of the sun. In the smaller sitting room, another light leaped into being, an ice-blue flame that crackled and danced over coals that glittered like crystal. On the floor, the circle took fire, in a hissing trail that swept around the perimeter at thought-speed. The witch stood outside it, close to the hearth. Her dress was white, sewn with sequins that flung back the wereglow in tiny darts of light. But her hair was shadow-black, and her eyes held more Night than all the dark beyond the curtains.

      Dibbuck crouched in the passage, watching the flicker beneath the door. He heard her voice chanting, sometimes harsh, sometimes soft and sweet as the whisper of a June breeze. He could feel the slow build-up of the magic in the room beyond, the pull of power carefully dammed. The tongue of light from under the door licked across the floorboards, roving from side to side as though seeking him out. He cowered against the wall, shivering, afraid to stay, unable to run. He did not fear the dark but the Night that loomed over him now seemed endless; he could not imagine reaching another dawn. Within the room the chant swelled: the woman’s voice was full of echoes, as if the thin entities of air and shadow had added their hunger to hers. There was a whoosh, as of rushing flame, and the door flew open.

      The wereglow sliced down the passage like a blade, missing the goblin by inches. It cut a path through the darkness, a band of white radiance brighter than full moonlight, stretching down the stair and beyond, piercing the very heart of the house. And then Dibbuck heard the summons, though it was in a language he did not understand, felt it reaching out, along the path, tugging at him, drawing him in. He pulled his large ears forward, flattening them against his skull with clutching hands, shutting out all sound. But still he could sense the compulsion, dragging at his feet, so he dug his many toes into crevices in the wood, and wrenched a splinter from the wainscot, driving it through his own instep, pinning himself to the floor with a mumbled word which might have been flimsy goblin-magic or a snatch of godless prayer. He had closed his eyes but when his ears were covered again he reopened them. And he knew that if he endured another thousand years, he would never forget what he saw.

      There was a mist pouring past him along the beam of light—a mist of dim shapes, formless as amoeba, empty faces with half-forgotten features, filmy hands wavering like starfish, floating shreds of clothing and hair. Even though his ears were blocked he heard a buzzing in his head, as if far-off cries of desperation and despair had been reduced to little more than the chittering of insects. He wanted to listen but he dared not, lest he respond to the summons and lose himself in that incorporeal tide. He saw the topless torso of Sir William grasping his own head by its wispy locks: the eyes met his for an instant in a fierce, helpless stare. He glimpsed the tonsure of a priest, slain in the Civil War, a coachman’s curling whip and flapping greatcoat, the swollen belly of a housemaid, impregnated by her master. And amongst them the fluid gleam of water-sprites and the small shadowy beings who had lived for centuries under brick or stone, no longer able to remember what they were or who they had once been. Even the imp from the Aga was there, trailing in the rear, clutching in vain at the door-frame until he was wrenched into the vortex of the spell.

      When the stream of phantoms had finally passed Dibbuck plucked out the splinter and limped forward, still blocking his ears, until he could just see into the room. The pain of his foot went unregarded as he watched what followed, too petrified even to shiver. Within the circle, the ghosts were drawn into a whirling, shuddering tornado, a pillar that climbed from floor to ceiling, bending this way and that as the spirits within struggled to escape. Distorted features spun around the outside, writhing lips, stretching eyes. The witch stood on the periphery with her arms outspread, as if she held the very substance of the air in her hands. The spell soared to a crescendo; the tornado spun into a blur. Then the chant stopped on a single word, imperative as fate: ‘Uvalé!’ And again: ‘Uvalé néan-charne!’ Blue lightning ripped upwards, searing through the pillar. There was a crack that shook the room, and inside the circle the floor opened.

      The swirl of ghosts was sucked down as if by an enormous vacuum, vanishing into the hole with horrifying speed. The goblin caught one final glimpse of Sir William, losing hold of his head for the first time since his death, his mouth a gape of absolute terror. Then he was gone. What lay below Dibbuck could not see, save that it was altogether dark. The last phantom drained away; the circle was empty. At a word from the witch, the crack closed. On the far side of the room he registered the presence of Nehemet, sitting bolt upright like an Egyptian statue; the light of the spellfire shone balefully in her slanted eyes. Slowly, one step at a time, he inched backwards. Then he began to run.

      ‘We missed one,’ said the woman. ‘One spying, prying little rat. I do not tolerate spies. Find him.’

      The cat sprang.

      But Dibbuck had grown adept at running and dodging of late, and he was fast. The injury to his foot was insubstantial as his flesh; it hurt but hardly hindered him. He fled with a curious hobbling gait, down the twisting stairs and along the maze of corridors, through doors both open and shut, over shadow and under shadow. Nehemet might be swifter, but her solidity hampered her, and at the main door she had to stop, mewing savagely and scratching at the panels. Outside, Dibbuck was still running. He did not hesitate, nor look back. Through the Wrokewood he ran, and up Farsee Hill, and in the shelter of three trees he halted to rest, hoping that in this place his wild cousins of long ago might have some power to keep him from pursuit.

      The conservatory was completed; the gypsy and his co-workers had been paid and dismissed. ‘You have not found him,’ Morgus said to the sphinx-cat. ‘Well. It is not important. He was only a goblin, a creature of cobwebs and corners, less trouble than a dormouse. We have greater matters in hand.’ It was four days since the exorcism, and the house grew very still when she passed: the curtains did not breathe, the stairs did not creak. Somewhere deep in its ancient mortar, in the marrow of its walls, it felt lonely for its agelong occupants, lonely and uncomprehending. It sensed the invasion of alien lights, the laying