“The old man’s upstairs,” he said, making for the staircase.

“What about Gerry in the kitchen?” said Mig.

“Either he got out or he’s a goner,” said Thor over his shoulder.

It was an analysis too clear to need debate. The kitchen was the volcanic center of the eruption which was threatening the downfall of the whole building. Nothing could survive in there.

The thought trailed across Sam’s logical mind that Gerry’s death would remove the problem of their first confrontation. She brushed it away angrily and in its place popped the question whether Thor would be so keen to dash to old Dunstan’s aid if he knew what she suspected about his involvement in Sam Flood’s death.

This too she erased as irrelevant. But the question she couldn’t get out of her mind as she went up the stairs behind the two men was the same question she’d found herself asking in the wake of the other Gowder’s death beneath the Wolf-Head – Is this all down to me?

The fire was moving laterally at a steady speed, but in its natural direction, which was upward, it went like a rocket. Dunstan’s bedroom was almost directly above the kitchen. Already there was fire there, banked high in the hearth to keep his old bones warm. And according to Mrs. Collipepper, as the coils of smoke started coming up through the floorboards, the old man stretched his hands out to them as if welcoming the extra heat.

She tried to lead him out of the room but he pushed her away. Now Frek burst in and attempted to add her strength to the effort. Dunstan resisted them both, showing remarkable strength.

Then he said to the housekeeper, “For God’s sake, Pepi, if you want to help me, get her out of here. Quickly. No point in us all dying.”

So Mrs. Collipepper had turned her attention to Frek and dragged her out of the room, just as Thor and Mig and Sam came round the corner from the landing.

It was clear at once there was no hope of getting to the old man. The room was a maelstrom of fire and smoke. It was incredible that Dunstan still had anywhere to stand, but when the curtain of flame opened a fraction, Sam saw him quite clearly, upright by the window, as if taking one last look at the landscape he so loved.

She heard herself crying his name. He couldn’t have heard her, but he turned his head.

She never knew if it was an optical illusion, or maybe a created memory, but she always recalled that he seemed to smile as if in recognition and mouthed something. The smile and the mouthing were probably both simply a rictus of pain as the heat began to melt the flesh from his bones. But in her memory she read his lips, and this was what persuaded her the memory was real. For surely a created memory would have had old Dunstan uttering some sort of confession, perhaps begging for forgiveness?

Instead, which she never told anyone except Mig, what she saw him saying was, “Sorry about the tea.”

Then she felt herself pushed aside roughly by a figure it took her a moment to identify.

Scorched, smoke-blackened, with a huge gash across his temple which the heat had cauterized, it was Gerry.

He screamed, “Dad!” and would have rushed into the room if Thor hadn’t flung his strong arms around him and grappled him back.

At the same moment the floor collapsed, Dunstan vanished, and there was no room left to rush into.

With the vibrant urgency of one who had been learning the line for years, Thor said, “Let’s get out of here.”

He hauled Gerry along by main force. Frek seemed close to collapse and Mig followed Thor’s example and dragged her along the corridor. At last he’s got his hands on her, thought Sam. And she’s the nearest she’ll ever get to being hot stuff!

It seemed to her that she might have spoken these wild words aloud and she glanced at Mrs. Collipepper as they hurried along behind the others. Their eyes met for a moment, blue gray looking into gray blue.

Oh God, thought Sam, remembering there’d been three generations of Collipeppers housekeeping at the Hall. Not another Woollass by-blow!

At the head of the stairs they could see the hall below was full of smoke. Thor yelled something at Mig, who grabbed hold of what remained of Gerry’s jacket while hanging on to Frek with his other hand. Mrs. Collipepper thrust Sam forward into contact with Frek, herself seizing Sam’s trailing hand.

Then they dragged what air they could into their lungs and, with Thor leading what felt like a crazy conga, they plunged down the stairway.

Heat on the skin; smoke in the nostrils, the eyes, the lungs; staggering, falling, recovering; all the time fighting the urge to lie down and simply let it be over; if this was the kind of hell Mig truly believed in, thought Sam, how did he manage to get out of bed in the morning?

Then she died.

She knew it was death because she’d burst into that heaven she didn’t believe in. She felt cool air playing on her face and when she breathed it was the same nectar that poured down her throat, flushing out all the ashy filth in a bout of lung-racking coughing which was the sweetest pain she’d ever felt.

She released her grip on Frek, collapsed to her knees in a parody of thanksgiving which wasn’t altogether parody, and opened her eyes.

The action hero had done it. They were in the middle of the lawn in front of the house.

The others lay about her, coughing, gasping, retching. Gerry looked the worst affected. The rest were already like herself recovering enough to pay heed to each other. She caught Mig’s eye. He mouthed “You OK?” and she nodded and they smiled at each other.

Then she turned her head to look at the Hall.

They had made it out just in time. The kitchen end of the house was sending tongues of fire licking up at the low storm clouds which were boiling overhead. Behind windows along the whole length of the rest of the building they could see flames dancing like guests at a wild party.

Some blast of air – or perhaps Mrs. Collipepper acting like a good housekeeper to the end – had closed the front door behind them. Inside it must already be burning. They could see the paint bubbling off the woodwork as they watched, and now the wolf-head knocker was snarling at them out of a corona of fire.

Frek used Sam to lever herself upright as if to get a better view. Sam reached up and took the hand on her shoulder and held it there. Mig rose too and stood beside Frek.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“What for?”

“The house… your grandfather… Look, the way it happened, it was unforeseeable, I’m sure…”

Frek coughed a laugh.

“You think I’m worried because he died unshriven, with all his many sins, carnal and otherwise, upon him? Forget it. He died in flames like a Viking, with his most precious belongings burning around him, as Odin himself ordained. No forgiveness necessary in that belief system. A man is judged by his best, not his worst, and a hero’s welcome awaits heroes.”

She squeezed Sam’s shoulder as if in acknowledgment, then went to kneel by her father, who was being tended by Thor and Mrs. Collipepper.

Sam rose to stand beside Mig.

Above them the clouds gobbled up the last morsel of clear sky and met in an almost simultaneous flash of lightning and clap of thunder. The front door of Illthwaite Hall fell out on to the pebble mosaic and a blast of fire-bright air strong enough for Sam to feel its heat shot out and upward to be absorbed by the mighty storm raging above.

“There he goes, the old bastard,” said Sam, flip as always in face of irrational fear.

“Yes, I think he probably does,” murmured Mig, putting his arm round her shoulder. She noticed that with his other hand he was crossing himself. A mocking quip began to form in her mind but aborted long before it got anywhere near its term.

Above them, the clouds finally opened and the rain began to fall, in fat intermittent drops to start with, then in hissing torrents, and, though Sam would never admit it even to Mig, it felt like a blessing on her shorn and scarred and heat-scoured head.