The Cursing Stone: a gripping mystery and family saga by Adrian Harvey

Author:Adrian Harvey [Harvey, Adrian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloodhound Books - literary fiction
Published: 2021-05-18T22:00:00+00:00

Part III

Here Be Dragons

21

It is a small village, but it grows around you. Each element presents itself demurely, keeping itself to itself, never quite coalescing into the whole. You know that this is a village but you do not know how close the war memorial is to the duck pond, or even whether the two stand on the same green triangle. You have a memory of its edges, the boundary seen on the horizon as the fields and roads and streams slipped beneath you, the greens and greys and blues blurring as you sped towards the slender spire that punctured the bright sky. The buds of crisp white cloud hung over you then as they do now, here beside the pale grey stone of the church.

People are milling by the doorway to the church. All are dressed in their finest clothes; some are in uniform, others in top hats, in bonnets, wearing long gloves or jackets or waistcoats. These people, congealing by the porch, are strange to you, known yet unknown. In their murmuring, there is a hint of threat, their lost words a cause for unease.

The memorial service is about to begin and everyone is anxious to be inside the church. There is pushing and the crowd seethes as far as the solemnity of the occasion will allow. For every one that manages to squeeze through the felt-backed door, another two emerge from among the gravestones to join the back of the throng, the congregation growing uncontained.

None of the mourners pay attention to you as you slip ever more tightly among them. In the crush of oblivious bodies, you sense antipathy in them even as they ignore you. You are steered, cajoled, and your escort carries you, closes around you, covering the route you have taken.

When the bodies surrounding you withdraw, there is the room. The walls are painted to a grey-beige sheen. In the centre stands a table, a long oval of burnished wood. Around it sit twelve figures. The table is set as for dinner, but there is no food, no crockery, no cutlery, no candelabra, no glassware, no salt, no pepper pots; only black silk napkins, one in each place. You take the one vacant seat, sinking into the pale green upholstery that sucks you down into its voluptuousness.

Facing you across the table, a child lifts its head and stares into you. He is followed by all the others seated around you, and the trial begins. You do not know the charges, and do not understand the process. The voices are gibberish in your ears. You know that you are innocent, but can find no way to make your case; your mouth is tight shut, your hands immobile.

All eyes turn towards one end of the table, where a woman, dressed in dusty lace and crinoline, is speaking. Her ivory gloves reach up to and beyond her elbows, and when she speaks, her mouth widens to reveal her toothless gums. At the other end of the table,

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