The rubber-soled tennis shoes he’d chosen to put on made his approach soundless. He hoped no one was watching him but he rather thought someone was there, standing silently in the woodland, interpreting the unnatural care with which he eased himself through the trees as a state of fear or, at best, comical eccentricity. There was fear in his furtive movements, certainly. Fear had kept him alive; he did not disdain the natural emotion. He used it as a sixth sense but a sense moderated by reason and controlled by training.

Fear was warning him now that all was not as it should be in these woods. He stopped and with his back to a tree trunk, took stock of his surroundings. An early morning walk in June should have been a joyous experience, all senses charmed by a fresh green welcoming Nature. He analysed what was missing. No birds were calling out a warning to each other, signalling ahead the presence of a stranger. The normally vociferous ring doves had nothing to say. No animals were moving thorough the underbrush. Even the breeze had surrendered and the treetops were motionless. A lugubrious cloud of silence hung over the wood. The shot he’d heard twenty minutes ago? Were even the woodland creatures holding their breath waiting for the second barrel?

The gleam of a white marble limb through the trees as he turned his head gave Joe his bearings. Diana was pointing his way. Peering through the gloom beyond the statue he located the outline of the wooden cabin where Goodfellow had established himself as the King of the Grove. A very unappealing place to pass your time, surely? Sir Edwin Lutyens might have expressed polite approval but Joe was not an admirer. The man must be more than a little mad to be content to lead an existence out here in this spooky spot. Possibly fearful too. Joe would not have wanted to spend a single night camping out here, alone.

Fear went with the job, Joe reckoned. He wondered if Virbio himself knew the story. The Guardian of Diana’s Grove was destined to reign in a state of constant terror. Not only of the goddess’s vengeful temper but also in apprehension of his own violent death at the hands of his successor. By tradition, he could be challenged by some younger, more aggressive aspirant waiting for his moment. Symbolically, the challenger would tear down a branch from an oak tree and then would begin the fight to the death. At the memory of the oak branch he’d reached up and tentatively tugged at, Joe shuddered and recalled Virbio’s strange question to him: “Are you here to kill me?”

Virbio had taken him for a challenger. A stalker intent on deposing him.

Poor chap! What a hideous delusion under which to live one’s life! Why in hell did he stay on? How could any man allow an ancient, irrelevant and decidedly unpleasant myth to take over his life? What reality was he fleeing from? Could it possibly be worse than the fantasy? Joe decided that if he was intending to take the inebriated Man of the Woods by surprise it might be a kindness to come at him in a tactful manner. He didn’t want to bring on a heart attack. Or provoke a fight to the death.

THE DOOR TO the cottage was standing slightly open. Careful to stay out of aim of anyone in the interior, Joe crept close and put his ear to the jamb. He listened for a drunken snoring. No sound. Joe pushed the door open a further inch or two and almost fell backwards in surprise as a sound shattered the silence. An unnatural, inhuman sound. The squeal of a blocked organ pipe? The smothered screech of a strangled cat? Joe discarded both of his original impressions. This was some pitiful animal caught in a trap, he decided, calculating that the brief sound was magnified by the small dimensions of the wooden hut.

He breathed deeply and moved inside, steeling himself to deal with whatever creature was in distress.

A nightmare scene assaulted his wide-eyed stare into the gloom.

In the curtained interior, sprawled on the bed in what seemed to be the single room of the cottage, lay a corpse.

The body of Virbio, Joe assumed. Lying across his coverlet. With his woolly grey hair and gnarled limbs, bunioned white feet sticking out of his winceyette pyjama legs, cup of tea half drunk on his bedside table, he could have been anyone’s grandfather sleeping in on a Sunday morning. Had it not been for the copious streams of blood that covered torso and arms and the red splatter staining the white-painted wall behind the bedhead. A double-barrelled game rifle lay beside the bed, having, to all appearances, dropped from his dead hand. Nauseated by the battlefield stench of fresh blood, stale alcohol, and cordite, Joe moved closer and peered down at the remains of the face.

Fired from below, the blast had caught him on one side of the neck and made its way upwards, smashing the jaw and deflecting sideways. The eyes were intact and open. Disconcertingly, they seemed to be staring back at him. In alarm, Joe moved sideways out of their range. The eyes followed his. Locked on. From the open mouth there came the same inhuman shriek Joe had heard from the doorway. Joe steadied himself with an effort. With his speaking mechanisms smashed to pieces, all the dying man could do was make a noise through one pipe or other that remained intact. Joe reckoned that he must have survived twenty minutes in this hopeless state of paralysis and that death would come very soon. He’d cradled dying men in his arms in the trenches, in disbelief at the amount of a man’s body that could be shot away and yet leave him for a few moments able to communicate.

Virbio, he could have sworn, had recognised him and was pitifully trying to form a word with his lips.

Joe repeated what he took to be the sound. “ ‘Die?’ Did you say—‘Die’?” He’d had never been able to deceive a man whose case was hopeless with good-hearted lies. Quietly he said: “Yes, old chap. I’m afraid I think that’s the likely outcome. Not much I can do. Look here—would you like me to pray with you? I could have a word with God on your behalf.” He bent down, took hold of the lolling right hand and held it.

Whatever their professed religion or lack of one, men usually, at the end, sought after the beliefs of their youth. God, Allah, Jehova, Vishnu, to Joe they were all a central idea whatever their tribal names and he would gladly call on any of them if it brought comfort to a dying man. He watched as Virbio’s eyes closed emphatically at the word ‘God.’ Dismissive? In the flood of pain the man must be suffering, could Joe possibly pick out an element of something so petty as frustration? Was Joe reading too much into the expression? He didn’t think so. Then, blindingly, he understood. “Not ‘die’! Diana!”

The eyes opened again in response to his re-interpretation.

“You want to pray to your goddess!”

Joe went on holding the chill hand and, not entirely satisfied he was doing the right thing, he began to whisper some lines of Ben Jonson he’d been set to learn when a boy on a school bench, his “Hymn To Diana.”

“Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,

Now the sun is laid to sleep,

Seated in thy silver chair,

State in wonted manner keep:

Hesperus entreats thy light,

Goddess excellently bright.”

He couldn’t remember all three verses so he said the first one over again and stumbled on, improvising: “Goddess excellently bright, thou that mak’st a day of night, light the way for this your faithful servant, Virbio, and guide him into the happy fields of Elysium.”

The eyes held his, unafraid, even mocking. Then suddenly, with the timing of a tough East End audience delivering its judgement on a third-rate comedian, the throat emitted a derisive gargle followed by a last gobbet of blood and the man expired, a look of infinite scorn fixed on his features.