Vega shook her head. “Thank you, no, unless there’s something particularly striking. You like the history, then?”Farran couldn’t tell whether she was making pleasant conversation or whether she might actually want to know.
“The thing that interests me about objects is that someone made them in a particular time and place. Often for a particular reason, even if that reason was ‘I broke my plate and I need something to eat supper on’,” Farran said. “This, though, this is a new bit of history to me. I know a fair bit of Oxford and the countryside, and I’ve picked up other places.” He carefully circled around naming Trellech directly. He didn’t think anyone was close enough to hear, but caution was sensible.
“And St Alfege?” They had come to the doors, then, which were open. Farran held one for her, and let her go inside.
Speaking quietly, Farran offered the explanation. “He’s buried in Canterbury Cathedral. He has been since 1023. There’s a story that Thomas Becket was praying to him, when Becket was killed. A saint for martyrs. And there’s a tale that the killing blow was given to him by a Christian convert, to end his suffering. I don’t know what I think of that, honestly.”
Vega shook her head, then shivered. “I don’t either. I am not much made for martyrdom, certainly.” She hesitated. “Well, not for most of the ordinary causes.”
Farran considered her and the things she’d said. “For your family, if they needed it?” He added, “I would. I’d rather not, of course. There’s no after, then. You can’t do things for them.”
“Yes.” Vega’s shoulder twitched once. “Your family line. Are there others?”
“Uncle Cadmus has no children. I was an only child. There are some more distant cousins, but they don’t know the house and the land.” Farran shrugged. “I feel like I ought to make sure there’s another generation, if that’s what you’re asking. If I can. Not the way some families do, but maybe not as different as I’d like to claim.”
That made her laugh softly and relax a bit. “Like that for me, but I do have many aunts and uncles and cousins, so it’s not a particular weight on me in specific. But making sure the family can go on, yes.” She glanced around the stonework. “There’s nothing here that particularly calls to me, but I can feel the history of it, if that makes sense.”
“Well, there’s a spot further up where they found some Roman artefacts in 1902,” Farran offered. “Or do you want to sit down and have something to eat or drink first? Once we’re into the park, it’s just what I brought.”
“The park, please. We can stop for a drink on the way back, perhaps, if there’s time.” Farran appreciated Vega knew her own mind about that sort of thing, and wasn’t shy about making her preferences clear. Some people, men and women both, dithered no end about it, until everyone was starving and upset.
Together, they made their way out of the church, through the curve of the street, and to a great wrought-iron gate. “St Mary’s Gate,” Farran said. “And we just follow the path up from here.” They walked for a little, following the main path diagonally south east through the park. Part way there, though, Vega stopped. “Can we go this way?”
“Of course.” Farran let her take the lead, turning right, back toward the rest, along a smaller path. They ended up in a stretch of meadow, with low bumps of what might, a long time ago, have been more in the way of hills.
“Do you know what this was?” Vega’s question sounded more urgent.
“There are some notes about it being an Anglo-Saxon or maybe a Roman burial site. There were some excavations in the 1700s, but nothing was kept safe.” Farran disapproved of that, and he let it be obvious. “But yes, possibly the right period.”
Vega nodded, turning to better speak quietly. “I can feel the tug. Is that the age? Would it be different if it were the right metal?”
“Pass it to me, do you mind?” He held his hand by his side and she pressed it into his fingers, holding it there until she was sure he had it safely in his grip. Then he nodded. “The age. Erm. You might hear it as a different pitch? There should be something distinct. For me, this is sort of rumbly, like the bark of a tree, and the metal is smooth. In my head, I mean, not my fingers.”
“In your head.” She shook hers, then added, “I believe you. All right. Not here, then, but it’s an excellent test. Where were we going?”
“There’s a bit of a Roman temple that way. Or we can go up toward where the caves are. I don’t know how much walking you want to do.” Farran did some calculations, quickly. “About a mile and a half up, if we do both. And then maybe a mile back to the dock.”
“Oh, that’s fine.” She sounded amused, and Farran glanced at her face. “I like a walk. Not as much when I’m in the city, but when I’m in the country, ten miles is a light day.”
“Well. All right. This way, then.” He gestured to the path that would take them back across the park.
Chapter 19
A LITTLE LATER
Vega picked her way along, looking around. More than looking, though, she was feeling. Or, as Farran had said, hearing. She understood how he could have a sense of it that way, but for her, definitely, it was hearing.
That meant it was an excellent thing she had trained both her ear and her mind’s ear. People talked about a mind’s eye, but Vega felt that went for all the senses. The odd part was hearing the sounds overlaid. Underneath everything, she could hear a faint sense of the music of the park around her. It was so soft she couldn’t pick out any specifics, but enough to give a sense of the underlying musical tonality. Definitely in some major key, though not an army’s march. The water wasn’t nearly so strictly organised as that.
Then there was the musical layer of the talisman in her pocket. It had a comfortable sort of weight there, actually. She didn’t have to be encouraged to touch it, her fingers wanted to. There were little ridges - smoothed, but identifiable - that were satisfying to touch, in a way that was like her body vibrating as she sang. That was tactile, but also it wasn’t. Now, it was a lowhum, something that went with the land around them, but a third up, or something of the kind.
Finally, of course, there were all the sounds around her. Farran, intriguingly, didn’t chatter. He’d certainly been pleasant to talk to all through this, but she was paying attention now to the fact he didn’t feel the need to fill the silence. Or demand he be the centre of her attention. It was a pleasant change indeed from many of the men, and many of the women for that matter, she saw at the Crystal Cave. She thought they were afraid they’d vanish in a puff of smoke if people didn’t perceive them in some form, all the time. Personally, she found that exhausting.
As they got closer to what must be their destination, Farran drew them along a properly angled path, rather than the slightly winding one they’d been. “This stretch, the path here...” He gestured up and down a long path, laid out with straight lines and lined by trees. “Has been known as Lover’s Walk for a long time. We won’t be on it long, if that’s?—”
“It doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you.” She said it, and it was true, but then she almost stopped. Her skills on stage carried her through. The thing was, she rather liked walking here with him. Particularly, that he neither made assumptions about what she wanted, nor assumed she had all the answers because she was his client. And perhaps she didn’t just want to be his client, or not whenever this was done.
That was complex, and she’d have to think more about that. It wasn’t as if he were a Healer or a solicitor or something like that. If he knew Vivian Porter, well enough, as he did, the fact she was also a Cousin might not actually be a problem. At least it wasn’t automatically one.
