Jake said with a ridiculing click of his tongue.
Alkmene gave up for the moment. He obviously didn’t understand what she was trying to explain to him, but dug his teeth, like a terrier, into his prejudice against her class.
The road declined now and dragged them by a sharp angle into a narrow passage between the stone walls of neat little gardens of modest homes, ending in a village square, with a post office dead ahead, beside the church, and the inn with the sign ‘The Hunted Boar’.
The animal in question was pictured pursued by two dogs that snapped at it with large yellowish teeth.
Jake parked the car and got out, stretching his long limbs. Alkmene had to agree the ride had made her as stiff as an ironing board. She was happy they were there at last, even if they seemed to have ended up in a deserted town. Nothing was stirring behind the windows, no lace curtains moving as hands lifted them and curious eyes peeked out at the visitors.
The square itself lay empty, just some dead leaves rustling as the wind from the moors came to move them. It carried a hint of damp earth like a cemetery.
Thinking of the woman who had run in despair and vanished, Alkmene shivered. Jake had rounded the car to stand beside her. ‘What is wrong?’ he asked.
‘I am not quite sure. There is a bit of a…sinister feel to this place.’
He laughed. ‘Just a few minutes ago it was all so idyllic and authentic and you’d go out to paint and see excavation sites.’ He leaned over closer to her. ‘I bet that if you did and some animal stuck its head out of a ditch, you’d think it was some dead body coming back to life and you’d run screaming.’
Alkmene sighed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Shall we go in to see if they have rooms?’
Still, she pulled her coat closer around her and didn’t look at the one oak again that was just a dead stump with a few branches clawing at the skies. Why had nobody bothered to cut it down? It had to be ill or something to die like that. It ruined the look of the entire square with its other healthy green oaks.
Jake opened the door into The Hunted Boar for her and she went in.
The place was crammed with people standing closely together, shouting and raising beer glasses. Alkmene barely managed to squeeze past the last of them to reach a reception desk where a woman with reddish hair and large coarse hands was leafing through the ledger.
In front of the room a man with a leather apron stood holding up something that looked suspiciously like…
Bleeding meat.
Alkmene stared, willing her eyes to adjust the scene. Her uncomfortable thoughts must have influenced her vision and changed something perfectly innocent into something grisly.
But no, it actually seemed to stay bleeding meat, which the man slapped onto a table in front of him, wrapped into paper and handed to someone who cheered like some Norse warrior carrying off loot.
‘Meat division,’ Jake Dubois said as if it were self-evident.
‘What?’ she asked, leaning over to him to hear him above the roar.
‘Well, these villagers apparently have a communal herd they tend. Once in a while they slaughter a beast or a few and then everybody comes in and according to their share in the herd or the amount of time they put into it or the pasture the beasts grazed on they all get some share in it. They do the same with cheese in the Swiss Alps.’
Alkmene pulled a face. ‘I think cheese would make it look less disgusting.’
Jake grinned. ‘Still thinking it’s sinister here?’
She straightened up under his tone and approached the woman with the ledger. ‘Good day. We have just come down from London and we’d like some rooms, if they are available.’
The woman looked up. ‘Married are you? Single room, double bed?’
Alkmene leaned back on her heels. ‘I thought I said rooms plural.’
The woman held her gaze unperturbed. ‘Married or not? We don’t encourage liberal behaviour here at our inn. If you are not married, you have to take separate rooms.’
‘We actually want separate rooms,’ Alkmene said.
Jake smiled as he leaned on the counter. ‘We are not married, fortunately.’
The woman looked him over, then shrugged and turned away to study the board that held the keys to several rooms.
‘How do you mean fortunately?’ Alkmene asked Jake close to his ear.
‘You would not want to be married to me, would you?’ he retorted.
‘That is not the point. You make it sound like the idea I could be your wife is insulting to you or something.’
She realized as she said it that it might look like she was fishing for a compliment and waved her hand. ‘Never mind. It was a long drive.’
The woman had turned back to them with two keys, labels on them reading 12 and 18.
‘Can we also eat here?’ Alkmene asked. ‘We are famished.’
‘They finished it all before the division started,’ the woman said with a shrug. ‘I can find you some bread and cheese maybe, but it will cost you.’
Alkmene glanced at Jake, who nodded.
‘And everything must be paid in advance,’ the woman said.
Alkmene wanted to reach into her purse, but Jake stalled her and pulled out his wallet. ‘Please take the food up to our rooms if you will. Lady Alkmene will also want some hot water I suppose.’
Alkmene could have kicked him for using her title. She expected the woman’s jaw to drop and a flood of apologies to break loose. Even worse, if she called it out loud, the whole room might turn and start having more interest in her than in the dead cow being divided.
But the woman just gave her a dirty look from squinted eyes, grabbed up the money Jake had put on the counter and shuffled off, leaving them to find their own way up the stairs, to their rooms.
Jake unlocked Nr. 12 first and peeked in. It was not large but had a fine double bed and a big window with a view of the moors. The sun was just sinking, putting everything in a golden glow. ‘You have this one,’ he said. ‘I’ll go get your bags from the car.’
Leaving the door open, he walked off. His footfalls pounded down the steps.
Alkmene pulled the key from the lock and held it in her palm as she walked to the window. It looked out over the village square with the sad dead oak among the live ones, down the road they had followed coming here, and then across an unending stretch of moor.
The sunshine over the moor made the greys and greens look more cheerful, almost warm. Still something lingered in her system, a hint of malice conjured up by the empty square, the bleeding beef, the look of hatred in the woman’s eyes. These people lived in their own world, not welcoming strangers into it.
Certainly not fancy strangers who had come down from London.
She leaned on the windowsill as she stared out, scanning the land for as far as she could see it from left to right. Where was the infamous marshland where the woman whom Silas Norwhich’s unfortunate brother had loved had found her death? Maybe it was further away from here, or it was at the back of the inn? There was a bustle behind her and the woman came in, clanking a tin plate on the table with a chunk of bread and cheese on it. She held a knife in her hand. Pointing it at Alkmene, she asked, ‘What you be wanting here?’
‘Just sightseeing,’ Alkmene said with an innocent smile. ‘Birdwatching. And rare plants on the moor, you know.’ Her befuddled brain searched for some species her father was always raving about.
The