She said, “Thanks for going to all this bother.”

“No bother. It’s always good to entertain a pretty young stranger. Sorry I’ve not been able to help much, but maybe that’s not a bad thing.”

“How do you work that out?” asked Sam.

“Your gran left England in spring 1960, the Reverend Sam Flood didn’t arrive here till summer 1960. Conclusion, there’s no connection, which has to be good news because, believe me, Illthwaite’s the last place on earth you want to be looking for something the locals don’t want you to find. Ask them the time of day and they’ll likely say they’ll let you know as soon as their sundial comes back from the menders.”

Sam laughed and said, “Does that include everybody? I mean, when the vicar said I couldn’t look at the parish records because they’d been stolen in a recent burglary at the church, was he telling the truth or just trying to stop me spotting Sam Flood’s name?”

Melton went to his bureau and produced another folder.

“Silver chalice, paten, two collection plates, candlesticks, poor box – nothing about records. Would surprise me. Billy was no Einstein, but in his own line of business he knew enough never to steal anything he couldn’t sell.”

“Billy? You mean the police know who did the break-in? Has he been arrested?”

“Not by the police,” said Melton. “Didn’t even figure on their list of suspects till I told them. Even then they could find no evidence. But everyone round here knew it was Billy, like they knew it was him did the Stranger last summer, and the Post Office too just before it closed down. He probably got fair warning. But kids like Billy don’t listen.”

“He must be really scary if the locals let him get away with robbing their own church,” said Sam.

“I think most of them felt they could leave it to God to take care of his own business. Which, it would appear, He did. Billy had a motorbike. There was an accident. His full name was William Knipp. Illthwaite’s teenage tearaway. They buried him yesterday.”

Mig Madero stood before the Wolf-Head Cross. He felt no impulse to kneel.

“I’ve seen a lot of Christian antiquities,” he said slowly. “But never one that felt as alien as this.”

“You feel that too?” said Frek. “Usually Viking crosses are interpreted as showing how the new religion took over from the old. This one makes me look at things the other way round, as if the old religion were getting a burst of energy from the new.”

“So let my lesson begin,” said Madero. “Tell me what I’m looking at.”

“If you like. Right, let’s start at the bottom panel here at the front,” said Frek.

She took him through the cross’s Viking elements, speaking quickly and not dwelling overlong on any one feature, but this was no mere tour guide’s rote recitation. Everything she said was shot through with real enthusiasm.

“And this panel here is really interesting,” she said finally. “As you can see, it’s badly eroded. In fact I think there’s more damage here than even ten centuries of Cumbrian weather can account for. I’d say at some point someone took a hammer to it.”

Madero stared at the panel on which he could scarcely make out anything.

“Christian orthodox backlash, you mean?” he said. “Some pagan linkup that went too far for even the Illthwaiteans to stomach?”

“Maybe. I’ve looked at it very closely over the years. Made rubbings, taken photographs. I think it’s something to do with Balder. You know the Balder legend?”

“Yes. Killed by a dart of mistletoe. But why should he attract special attention?”

“Think about it. The legend is clearly a version of the same nature regeneration myth we see in the cults of figures like Adonis and Thamuz and Attis. Balder, son of Odin, is slain. Later he rises from the dead to take his place in the reconstituted creation that emerges from Ragnarok, the Nordic version of apocalypse. Remind you of anyone?”

“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently. “I have read a little.”

She seemed amused rather than annoyed by his sharpness.

“Sorry to be teaching my grandmother,” she murmured. “Then you’ll have no problem seeing that using Balder as an unsophisticated prefiguration of Christ was a pretty obvious move for the clever old priests reworking the ancient myths. But suppose a mason somehow managed to insinuate that Christ was merely a pale imitation of Balder who is the real regenerative spirit?”

A movement caught Madero’s attention and to his annoyance he saw a figure coming round the corner of the church. It was the strange Australian child, her mane of red hair awash with sunlight. Not child. Woman, he corrected himself. But with a childish indifference to interrupting the adult intimacy he hoped was springing up between himself and Frek.

She made straight for them, responding to his discouraging glance with a mouthed Hi.

Frek, showing no sign of having noticed Sam’s arrival, went on, “In addition, some scholars have detected the presence of two figures on the defaced panel. The other could be Hod, Balder’s blind brother, who was tricked into throwing the fatal dart. Hod too rises after Ragnarok and takes his place alongside Balder in the new pantheon. That would be like elevating Judas alongside Jesus in Christian terms. You can see how this might be too much for some true believers to swallow, hence the defacement.”

Sam said, “Everyone round here seems pretty taken with this Balder guy.”

Frek looked at her as if one of the attendant sheep had spoken.

“Everyone?” she said with polite incredulity.

“Thor Winander anyway,” said Sam. “Said you thought my namesake, the guy who topped himself, sounded a bit like him.”

Mig understood none of this but it seemed to make some sense to Frek, who was regarding Sam with rather more interest.

“So I did. It was well before I was born, of course, but some stories enter into local legend. In the poor fellow’s reputation for goodness, charisma and beauty, I felt there was a parallel with Balder. Is there a possible link with your family, Miss Flood?”

She made it sound as if she hardly thought it likely.

“Doesn’t seem to be anything I can find and the dates don’t check,” said Sam.

“A pity. Or perhaps not. Now here’s something which is really interesting, Mig.”

She stooped to indicate the inscription on the lowest step of the cross’s base, obliging Madero to stoop also, physically reinforcing her verbal exclusion of the Australian. He felt quite sorry for the girl.

Frek continued, “The carving is clear, but the meaning is completely obscure. Could be Runic with a bit of Ogam, maybe. One more than usually nutty Oxford professor claims to have proved it was a version of the ancient Cypriotic syllabary. It’s been variously interpreted as a prayer, an epitaph, and a biblical quotation. Take your pick.”

“How about the maker’s name?” said that by now unmistakable voice.

Frek turned her head this way and that with the faint puzzlement of a saint hearing voices in the bells. Then she rose to her full height, at the same time lowering her gaze to take in the little Australian.

“I’m sorry?”

“Sort of a label,” said Sam. “I wondered about it when I saw it yesterday. I had this hunch the symbols could be semagrams maybe forming a rebus. And the crossed lines could be a date. Thought I’d like another look.”

“You are an expert on archaeological decipherment?” said Frek incredulously.

Sam laughed.

“Hell, no. But I did go out with this guy who thought that encryption/decryption was the be-all and end-all of mathematics and I read some of his books so we’d have something to talk about. There was a lot of language stuff in there, the Rosetta Stone, Linear B and so on. I guess you need to be a mathematician as well as a linguist to really get to grips with that gobbledegook.”