The Forebear's Candle: A time travel mystery and love story set against the intrigue of Henry Tudor's England by Clive S. Johnson

Author:Clive S. Johnson [Johnson, Clive S.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Daisy Bank
Published: 2017-04-30T04:00:00+00:00

21 Magna Britannia

A shout of “Colin” screamed loudly in his ears as his gaze snapped back to the road. Slewed to a halt in front of him was a car, mere inches away.

“For Christ’s sake, Colin; what the fuck are you doing?” and he recognised Kate’s frightened voice as he stared into the startled face of the car’s front seat passenger.

“Eh? What? Er…where did that come from?” he stammered, but couldn’t quite hear Kate’s reply, not against the deafening sound of the blood pounding in his ears.

“Shit!” he eventually heard her say as she dragged him further back. “Here, sit down on this wall,” she said, and before he knew it he had a cigarette between his quivering lips, his shaking hands failing to light the Zippo they somehow held. In a daze, he watched the short queue of traffic he’d caused finally growl off down the road.

“Ow! My arm hurts,” he said, once Kate had taken the Zippo from his fumbling hands and flicked it to a flame. She snatched the cigarette from between his lips and lit it for him.

“You’re damned lucky that’s all that hurts, you idiot. What were you thinking?” and she jabbed the cigarette back between his lips.

He felt at his shoulder and quietly moaned as he took a long, deep drag.

“I’m afraid,” Kate said, “that was me. I grabbed your arm.”

He could hear the tremor in her voice and lifted his bemused eyes to see anger in her own, but an anger tempered by fear-filled relief.

“Christ, Kate, but I don’t know what came… No, that’s not true. I do know what came over me—this place.”

Her shoulders slumped as she let out a long breath, then she sat down beside him on the wall. “Do you want to tell me?”

He looked at her and drew his lips to a thin line, but then nodded. “Can we go somewhere a bit quieter, though?” and he remembered the spring that had caused all this. “Let’s go across to the lane over there. It’s a bit more away from the road than here.”

“All right, but you’re going to hold my hand, you hear? I’m not having you scaring the shit out of me again.”

“Okay.”

Together, hand in hand, she led him a few yards down the road to a pedestrian crossing and pressed its button. Her grip of his hand tightened as she held him back from the kerb. The lights changed, marked by the usual rapid beeping, and she walked him smartly across, back up the road and to the start of Chapel Lane.

To one side stood a modern retail unit selling tiles, but on the other ran a short verge backed by a stone wall, its nearest end doglegging around a small, neatly bordered pool. Colin wandered onto the grass, Kate still clutching his hand as she followed, and they stood before it. Where the wall ran behind the pool, two verdigris-stained taps jutted out just above the waterline, a date stone inset a few feet above them.

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