‘Do you remember when we planned this?’ I asked. Mose nodded. ‘You asked me my reason for being involved in this.’

I could tell he was watching me intently.

‘Years ago,’ I explained, ‘Henry Chester…well, I shan’t tell you what he did, but it was the worst thing anyone has ever done to me, and ever since I have ached for revenge. I could have killed him, I know that; but I’m getting old. I don’t want to finish on the scaffold. And I want my vengeance to be complete. I want the man to be utterly destroyed. Do you understand?’

His eyes were bright with curiosity and he nodded.

‘I don’t want his life. I want his position, his career, his marriage, his sanity. Everything.’

Mose grinned reluctantly. ‘You don’t do things by halves, do you, Fan?’

I laughed. ‘Indeed I don’t! And our interests do coincide in this, Moses. Do what I ask and you’ll get your money, plenty of it. But…’ I paused to make sure he was listening. ‘If you decide to try to work on your own, or if you do anything to overset my plan, I’ll hurt you. I don’t want to, but this is far more important than you. If I have to, I’ll kill you. I warned you once before. Do you remember?’

Mose grinned his engaging, rueful grin, and I knew he was lying. ‘Do I? I’d know better than to cross you, Fan.’

A half-promise. His innocent expression rang as true as a lead sixpence, but it was better than nothing. Believe me, I was telling the truth. I quite liked Mose in spite of his patently two-faced nature-but I hoped he did know better.

‘I want Henry to meet Marta again. Next week.’

‘Oh?’ His voice was smooth and non-committal.

‘In fact, I want Henry to see a great deal of Marta.’

His sense of humour was beginning to reassert itself, and I saw him grin. ‘I see.’ He sighed. ‘At least, I see the entertainment value of the situation, but not how it will help either of us, especially as it will mean that I can’t touch Henry for any money.’

‘Be patient,’ I told him. ‘You’ll get the money soon enough. You see, Mose, my dear, thanks to a little forward planning and some simple chemistry, Henry is already half in love with Marta.’

He laughed at that. ‘That would be a joke,’ he said mischievously.

‘And one which, in a little time, you could turn to your own advantage,’ I prompted.

The sullen look was quite gone now: I could tell that Mose’s keen sense of the ridiculous appreciated the irony of the situation, and for that reason, at least, I knew he would go along with me. For a while, anyway. And as long as I had Mose I had Effie.

Effie, who was to be my Ace of Swords.

I once read-it must have been in a fairy tale-that every man is secretly in love with his own death, hunting it with the desperation of a thwarted lover; if Effie had not told me, in Marta’s voice, that Henry Chester was the Hermit, I should have known it as he stumbled home that night with that look of dark radiance in his eyes. Because I knew then that in some part of his guilty soul he had recognized her-no, not Effie, not the poor little blank thing waiting for a stronger mind to possess her, but Marta, my Marta, fluttering into life behind his Effie’s eyes…Yes, he recognized her, the old Hermit and he was drawn as a man is drawn to the grave’s cold seduction. I had ways of seeing in those days-I still do when I feel inclined to use them-and I felt his bleak longing and fed it. Oh, there are herbs to dim the mind and roots to waken it, potions to open the eye of the soul and others to fold reality into delicate shapes like paper birds…and there are spirits, yes, and ghosts, whether you believe in them or not, pacing the corridors of a guilty man’s heart waiting for a chance to be reborn.

I could tell you a tale of how I watched my mother breathe life into a clay man, whispering strange memories into his brainless head, and of the real man who went mad; or of the root the pretty girl ate to speak to her dead lover; or of the sick child who left his body and flew to where his father lay dying to whisper a prayer into the old man’s ear…all that and more I’ve seen. Shake your head and talk of science if you like; fifty years ago they’d have called your science magic. It shifts, you see, the uneasy tide of change. It carries us on its dark and secret waters. The tide gives up its dead, given faith and time. All we needed, the both of us, was a little time. For myself, to bring her closer. For Marta, time to grow strong.

We waited.

Strange, how time can fold in upon itself like linen sheets in a cupboard, bringing the past close enough to the present for events to touch, even to overlap. As I walked back from Crook Street to Cromwell Square I was suddenly smitten by a memory so intense that I could hardly imagine having put it out of my mind for so long: it was as if the red-haired girl had unlocked the sleeping half of my mind and freed the monsters of my past.

My exhilaration was a bitter thing, loaded with dreamlike images of damnation: the guilt I could bear-it was as familiar as the lines on my palms-but guilt was not all I felt. I felt a capering, Gothic joy. For the first time I revelled in my guilt, displaying myself as shamelessly as a penny whore before the stern image of my father in my soul. In the ochre light of the waning moon I ran, that hot, twisted nugget of joy burning my guts. In the silence I called her name, sacrilegiously: ‘Marta!’

I seemed still to feel her touch on my skin; her scent was still in my nostrils, the scent of mystery and sulphurous delight…I laughed for no reason, like a madman-indeed, I felt my sanity begin to elude me, as a shy virgin may hide beneath her veils.

And I remembered.

My first Communion, only four weeks after that secret, shameful act in my mother’s room…Summer had faded into a decadent, overripe autumn: fat brown wasps lurked treacherously around the apple trees and even the air had a yellowish, misty cast and a sickly, sweetish smell which told of heavy rains after the harvest and fruit left to rot on the branch.

There were six of us taking Communion that day, four boys and two girls: we had to form a procession from the village to the church while the choir followed, singing hymns, and the families brought up the rear holding candles. It was a proud day for my father-though my mother, who disliked the heat, would not be present-and I knew better than to complain; but I hated the white robe, so like a girl’s nightdress, and the surplice which went over it. I hated the hair-oil which Nurse had plastered over my head: the smell of it was as overripe and sweet as the rotten apples, and I was afraid wasps would come to hover around my head, silent and bloated. The day was hot and I felt sweat rolling from my hair and face into my surplice, prickling and trickling from my underarms, my stomach, my groin. I tried to ignore it; to listen to the sweet, slightly off-key voices of the choirboys (my own voice had broken only a week before: there would be no more choir for me) and the deeper, sterner notes of my father’s singing. I tried to remember that today was a special day for me; that today I would be accepted as a full member of the church, that next Sunday, when the adults stood to take Communion, to sip the wine from the jewelled chalice and to hold out their mouths for the mysterious white discs of the Host, I would be among them; I would taste the Blood and the Flesh of the Redeemer.

Suddenly I began to shiver. I had read about transubstantiation in my father’s books, about the miracle of the Blood and the Flesh. But only now did the terrible image return to me. What would happen when I bit into the clean white wafer and felt it turn to raw flesh in my mouth? Would the wine change to the thick consistency of blood as the goblet touched my lips? If so, then how could I stop myself from fainting cold on the steps of the altar?