Just Before I Died. S. K. Tremayne

had been walking this path for ten minutes, deep in thought, before he realized he was on the Lych Way. The old corpse road, named for when the Dartmoor villagers were forced to carry the coffins of their dead to the official parish church, right across the moor at Lydford.

      In the lee of a biting wind, beside a stand of dark pines, he paused, imagining the scene – a dozen ragged peasants hefting the wooden box from Bellever Tor, over the Cowsic brook, up and down the bleak, shaved hills, Lynch Tor, Baggator Clapper, the Cataloo Steps.

      And when the river was running high at Cataloo, what did they do then? They must have waded waist-deep into the freezing water, holding the coffin over their heads, before heading up Corpse Lane to Willsworthy. All so they could deliver their dead to the decreed resting place.

      Twelve miles they carried those corpses. Twelve bloody miles.

      Walking on, Adam scanned the horizon, watching for wildlife, seeking solace in the landscape. As he topped a rise, a kestrel caught his eye, hovering in the white winter sky. Instinctively, he stopped to admire the tremendous skill of the bird, that delicate trembling of the tips of its feathers, exquisite, masterful.

      Windfuckers, his uncle used to call them, kestrels were windfuckers, because when they rode the wild air it looked as if they were fucking the wind – possessing it, owning the breeze, followed by that sudden climactic rush of a dive, a frightening swoop on some prey, then gone.

      He paced on, still following the Lych Way, the old way of the dead, guessing that the cross should be along here somewhere, near the Iron Age settlements.

      We saw a stone cross had been vandalized, on the road by Sittaford, that’s what the hiker who called it in had said.

      But it was difficult to focus on the job. His mood was darker than the pines. He was trying his hardest, but today he couldn’t lose himself in Dartmoor. The human world pressed around him, the unfurling, uncontrollable emotions he felt for his wife, the sense of resentment he tried to hide for the sake of sanity, for the sake of his daughter. But how was he meant to hide this kind of emotion? What she’d done, and what she’d said, and what she had so conveniently forgotten. How was he meant to cope with that and pretend it didn’t matter?

      All he’d ever wanted was to live his life and love his family, and be happy in his job, tending the moors, repairing the hedges, helping the tourists, watching the buzzards above Sourton Down, and normally he was happy. They had all been so happy. Yet now his family was crumbling.

      Approaching a stile, Adam paused, vaulted, and took a deep cold breath, before striding on, the squared green conifer plantations falling far behind him. He was trying not to think of his family, trying not to surrender to despair, or to this growing dislike, whirled with guilt. Even as he loved and desired his wife, he felt a surging fury towards her.

      Lyla. What was all this doing to Lyla?

      He closed his eyes to steady his surging emotions, then looked across the landscape once more.

      He could see the greener, emerald turf of a bog to his left, the faint sparkle of soggy acid grass, flashing in a break of winter sun. A memory returned: he was eight, or nine, with his Uncle Eddie, crouching to watch a snipe, right here, performing its nuptial display, the bird rising fast and steep in the air, then abruptly stooping and diving with its wings scarcely open, the tail delicately flared, making that strange noise. That sad, thrumming sound of the outspread tail feathers, vibrating in the dive. Once heard, never forgotten.

      And on the way home from these days of learning about the birds and rocks and streams, his uncle would teach him the old moorland words:

      Dimmity, meaning twilight. Owl-light, a darker kind of dusk. Radjel, a pile of rocks. Spuddle, to mess about. Tiddytope, a wren. Gallitrop, a fairy ring.

      Appledrain, a wasp. How beautiful was that?

      Moor-gallop: wind and rain moving across high ground. Drix: brittle wood. Ammil, a fine film of silvery ice that rimes the leaves and twigs and grass when a hard Dartmoor freeze follows a deceptive Dartmoor thaw, like an ice-storm, but more delicate. That was how precise the farmers had to be: they had to have words to describe the most beautiful and unusual states of frost and thaw and ice. Because lives depended on this precision: knowing when to gather the cattle, shelter the ponies, tend the struggling crops, nurse the suckling lambs.

      Another, bigger, stile. Catching his breath before he clambered over, Adam stopped, and gazed to the horizon.

      Every inch, every square mile. He’d seen it all so many times, and still he loved it. The grouse over Steeperton in the autumn, feeding on ling, and whortleberry. The glades of Deeper Marsh, with its alder buckthorns, where the yellow butterflies come to feast, heralding the late Dartmoor spring. The caves of Cuckoo Rock, where the smugglers once cached their brandy. And the great empty spaces of Langcombe, where he would tramp on a summer day: out there where you could imagine you were the only person in the world, with a featureless expanse of wafting grass and sedge all around you, mile after mile of nothing, no one to be seen, nothing to be done, the sun beating down, and all you could hear was the whirr and murmur of insects: that, and the silent moving clouds, and your own beating heart.

      Those were probably his happiest moments; those, and when he was out with Lyla, teaching his little girl about the ravens and rock basins, the damselflies and purple orchids. She loved the moor as much as him. They spent endless sunny hours, walking the Abbot’s way, down to Rundlestone, or looking for the old blowing house, by the King’s Oven, or hunting for blackberries, up by Dunstone, and Shilstone, their lips and fingers purple, their teeth bright pink, and laughing – and then, at the sweet weary end of these days, they would drive home to Huckerby, and Kath would have passed by a supermarket, and they’d all sit and have tea, and a plate of fruitcake, and they were all happy. And Lyla would make clever patterns with the pretty petals she’d collected, arraying them on the kitchen table. Beautiful, complex patterns that only she truly understood. Or patterns she made for Daddy.

      They were once so very happy.

      And now it was all different. Now Lyla was confused and scared and sad, and often she wouldn’t let him – her own father! – hug her like he used to. These days Lyla sometimes gazed at him as if he’d done something wrong, all because of Kath, that Kinnersley family. All of them. And yet at other times – before bed, before sleep – Lyla sometimes hugged her dad so very close, so desperately close, it was like she was scared he too would disappear in the night – like her mother.

      This was no good. Adam tried to drive the spiralling, dangerous thoughts from his mind. It was as if they were all being sucked into a Dartmoor mire: Dead Lake, Fox Tor, Honeypool: the more they struggled to get free, the deeper they sank into frustration, and anger. The best thing was to calm yourself. Not make it worse. Not to do anything rash.

      Adam could see the old cross now. A metre high, with a weathered and lichened green-grey granite disc at the top. Probably Anglo-Celtic, probably a thousand years old or more. Someone had hit it pretty hard, knocking it over, probably some fool in an SUV, drunk or skunked, driving offroad and having a laugh. The disc of the cross was cracked and shattered; it had survived so many centuries and now it was grievously damaged, possibly irreparable. Something good had died.

      Adam knelt beside the antique stone, stroked the cold granite as if it was the mane of an injured foal. Feeling the scratchy roughness of the lichen under his hands, feeling utterly helpless. Trying not to feel any more futile emotions. Trying to be practical.

      Rubbing air between his raw fingers to keep out the winter chill, he stood up and began the long walk back to his Land Rover, and as he did so he made his decision about the cross. No matter how difficult, they would try to repair it. Because that was his job: to preserve this precious place, from the antiquities to the landscape to the chittering fieldfares at Soussons. To preserve as much of it as possible, and hand it on to the next generation, to Lyla, to Lyla’s children.

      He would call the archaeology department at Exeter, get them to send an expert. Yes. It could be saved.

      If