porter came through the garden and personally opened the gates. When the train was safely through, carrying away Eiluned but not her mistress, he closed them again, climbed back on the platform, and picked up the newcomer’s case.
‘This way, sir.’
The driver of the trap sat with the reins loose across his knee, watching with morbid interest the drama between his last fare and the crossing-keeper. His attention was claimed by the rattle of a cane across two spokes of his nearside wheel.
‘This will convey me to the Hexney inn?’
The voice was powerful but controlled, with a cadence that suggested singing. Looking the new arrival up and down, the driver assessed the value of his clothes and general appearance and the probable tip. ‘If you could hold on just a jiffy, sir, till this young lady settles what she owes.’
The man glanced at Bronwen, struggling to save her effects from further damage. ‘It would seem highly probable that the lady will require your services further. I suggest we offer what assistance we may in conveying her, also, to Hexney.’
‘Oh, now, sir, I’m not so sure about that. Not with all this fuss. Best let me get you to the inn, and then we’ll see—‘
‘I can already see. The lady is in distress. If she wishes our help, she must have it.’
Bronwen held out her arms in a last imploring gesture to Mrs. Dunstall, then let them fall to her sides. The two men who had been shuffling awkwardly in the background now plucked up courage to leave, sidling past Bronwen with their faces averted and trudging away towards Hexney. Mrs. Dunstall went indoors. Curtains had been drawn across all the little windows.
The stranger said: ‘You’ll need time to collect your thoughts as well as your impedimenta, madam. I shall be privileged if you will accompany us to the village.’ It was said with sonorous determination, as much for the driver’s benefit as for hers.
She prickled with instinctive, inexplicable antagonism. The man was too sure of himself and, in spite of his politeness, too threatening. She did not understand the threat; but did not approve of the way the driver, abandoning any further attempt at argument, sprang down as nimbly as a performing dog and began to collect up her belongings; she was also conscious of a further confusion to add to the distress she was already in—a blurred vision of that red-lined cloak spread wide like the wings of a swooping bat. It was ludicrous, yet briefly, overpoweringly vivid.
He was saying: ‘If I may help you up, Miss...?’
‘Powys,’ she said stiffly. ‘Bronwen Powys.’
There was really nothing for it. The cottage had become tragically hostile, there was no shelter on the vast expanse of fen, there would not be another train until after dark, and that would deposit her for the night in an unfamiliar city; and in any case she did not see why she should be forced to decamp before her work was complete. Perhaps tomorrow, or just before leaving, she could venture to offer Mrs. Dunstall condolences and soothe her fevered imaginings. Meanwhile she had no alternative but to seek accommodation in the village.
The man’s fingers were strong and supple under her elbow as he assisted her into the trap.
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Caspian,’ he said. ‘Dr. Alexander Caspian.’
‘Yes,’ she said. Then she was puzzled by her own immediate response. The name had come as no surprise, though she could swear she had never heard it before.
He was quick to catch her reaction. ‘You know of me?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t.’
‘For a moment I thought....’ His eyes mocked her. For some arrogant reason he suspected her of being familiar with his name.
Why should she be?
They settled on the narrow seats at opposite sides of the higgledy-piggledy heap of luggage and Dr. Caspian frankly and appreciatively studied Bronwen’s face.
She had to say something. ‘It was most kind of you to come to my assistance.’
‘You don’t belong in these parts.’
‘They make that very plain.’
‘A foreigner. In the English countryside we are all foreigners unless we have been here for ten generations.’ It occurred to her that he was in every sense a foreigner. His English was beautifully modulated, but there was something alien about him. ‘But that scene,’ he went on, ‘appeared unusually violent.’
‘It seems I’m regarded as a witch.’
His regard seemed to burn more and more deeply into her. She was sure her cheeks were flushed, perhaps smeared with dirt from trying to cope with clothes and cases dropped on the earth, and that her hair must have been blown and dragged this way and that.
Lingering softly on each word, he said: ‘It is difficult to blame them.’
* * * *
From the bumpy road Hexney gave the impression of a small fortified town rather than a mere village. The place had grown up around a makeshift castle with a bailey but no keep, overlooking bare expanses of fen plagued by Saxon outlaws and keeping the Norman defenders’ feet dry. It was still ringed by a medieval wall, punctured now by gaps through which lanes and a back road had been driven. The widest opening was straddled by a Norman gateway with two drum towers too substantial for the dumpy little hill. From a distance the church tower was a pinnacled landmark. The closer one approached, the farther out of true the tower seemed because of its bulging stair turret.
The trap clopped and grated its way up the last steep slope and in through the gateway.
Bronwen had already surveyed every inch of what lay within. The wall was merely a shell, protecting a village green that had been mutilated to make way for a cobbled marketplace. On one side The Griffin bore witness to a more prosperous past. Through its imposing frontage a beamed entrance led to a stable yard, and the depth of the main building promised more accommodation than would be needed today. Railways had robbed the posting houses of their splendour, and such new roads as came into being were many miles away, making wide circuits to the Wash and the east coast. The inn was not so much derelict as shrunken; like the whole village, huddled in on itself.
The trap stopped. The driver jumped down and stood to one side as Dr. Caspian helped Bronwen down. Then he cleared his throat.
‘You won’t be forgetting, miss...?’
Bronwen opened her reticule and settled her day’s account. Caspian nodded peremptorily at the luggage and left the man to deal with it as he escorted Bronwen into the inn.
Through an open door drifted the smell of polish and scrubbed tiles, and the clinging sourness of ale. A fire burned in the grate in the hall. Beside it was an alcove filled by a large bureau, its drawers and pigeonholes raggedly stuffed with papers. The landlord, hearing wheels rattle over the cobbles, had already stationed himself by it with one proprietorial hand on the open flap.
‘My name is Caspian. Dr. Alexander Caspian. I telegraphed for a room to be reserved.’
‘That’s right, Doctor. Quite in order, sir.’
‘And I’d be obliged if you’d provide this young lady with accommodation. She will let you know in due course how long she intends to stay.’
‘Well, now. I don’t rightly know about that, sir. We wasn’t expecting....’
‘You’re not telling me your establishment is full?’
‘No, Doctor. But after what’s happened, after what I’ve been hearing only this last thirty minutes or so, I’m none too sure how my regulars would take it....’
His excuses petered out as he caught the full hot blast of Dr. Caspian’s gaze.
Bronwen stole a glance at her protector. The bone structure of that saturnine face, the smooth darkness of