Claudia looked at me in surprise. “Sin really has got to you. Eighth century, I think. I’m no expert, as I said. Anyway, the account we’ve got isn’t the original. It’s from a couple of centuries later.”

  “Could this Thornton ancestor have sought out St Ælfflæd for a cure? I mean if he had an affliction of some kind?” I said, with barely leashed excitement.

  “I don’t recall the details,” Claudia said. “But you could certainly take a look in the library. After the wedding of course. We’ve got enough to deal with right now.”

  “Yeah. Of course.” But I’d pass on the information to Steve and Rebekah who were laboriously wading through the separate collection of books, with Eddie’s help. “Claudia, why are there two churches on the estate?”

  “Oh you mean St Ailbe’s,” she said. “Well, it’s an odd tradition but Thorntons are always married from St Mary’s and St Ælfflæd’s and buried from St Ailbe’s.”

  “There’s a second church?” Meghan breathed. “Like this one?”

  “Older I should think,” Claudia snorted. “It’s not at all as pleasant. The family mausoleum is over there too.”

  “But could we see it?” Meghan turned huge puppy-dog eyes on Claudia who looked vaguely uncomfortable at the emotional display.

  She glanced at her watch, then shrugged. “The other bridesmaids and the immediate wedding party should be here in about twenty minutes. And I’m meeting the vicar in five, but there’s no reason you both couldn’t go and take a look. Just be back in half an hour?”

  “Come on.” Meghan grabbed my arm and started dragging me to the door. I resisted her just long enough to accept the key from Claudia, then allowed myself to be borne away.

  ✽✽✽

  The church of St Ailbe was smaller and older than St Ælfflæd’s. It was about a mile away from the other building and approaching it from this angle, I wondered how I could have ever thought it was anything other than a church. Then again, the evening I’d fought with Magnus, I’d had other things on my mind.

  Meghan eyed the low, grey stone structure with an appreciative artist’s eye. “It’s kind of spooky.”

  “Yeah.” I was no expert at architecture, but I knew a Norman church when I saw one and this wasn’t it. Or not quite. The arched doorway and windows looked Norman, and I was pretty sure Saxon churches had mostly had thatched roofs, so that had clearly been improved on over the centuries. But the rest of it? “It’s got to be the oldest building on the estate.”

  “Shame we didn’t bring Steve down,” Meghan paused to click off a few shots. “I bet he knows all about it.”

  “About the building maybe,” I said. “But he’s a bit vague on family history.”

  “Ah, I see.” Meghan tactfully didn’t press the issue. “Shall we go in?”

  For answer, I turned the key in the lock. Once again, there was no lighting or electricity. What daylight made it through the crowding trees was dimmed still further by the dark, rich stained glass in the lancet windows. The interior was simpler than St Mary and St Ælfflæd’s. Two rows of wooden pews without any decorative carving. Plain beams supporting the high ceiling. A tiny lady chapel with a carved stone virgin Mary in an alcove and kneelers made of some rusty red material. The alter was a large block of marble – clearly a later addition – and bore the only real ornamentation in its pattern of leaves and rays. There was a large slab of paler grey stone set into the floor of the chancel. The carved inscription had been worn by time and the passage of many feet, but I could still see that it was a name – another Thornton – and a phrase in Latin. The family motto.

  Fideli tuta merces.

  Presumably this marked the spot of the family crypt, although I suspected there was a door and a set of steps set tastefully out of sight to provide easier access. No chance that slab of stone was coming up without serious man power.

  I peered closer and saw that there was a second phrase. Fidelis ad urnam. Actually, now that I was shining my phone torch on the lettering, I could see that there was a second name. The inscription was almost gone but I could make out Suzannah Stav… Thornton.

  Stav? I sat back on my heels and considered. Staveley? I remembered Claudia telling me that the Staveleys were the other family in the area that dated back as far as the Thorntons. It made sense that they would have intermarried on and off over the centuries. And those mottos – both said something about fidelity or faithfulness but that was as far as my ability to translate went.

  “How’s your Latin, Meg?”

  She snorted.

  I grinned and took a picture of the inscription instead.

  “Someone must have come here fairly recently,” Meghan said running a hand over the back of a pew. “There’s only a tiny bit of dust.”

  I wandered over to the stained-glass windows. The style was the same as those in St Ælfflæd’s, another recent addition. I could easily imagine some long dead Thornton funnelling money into the project. Adding improvements for the legacy of future generations. Giving to the church without the proceeds ever leaving Thornton lands. I winced at the scepticism of that thought and hastily turned my attention to the images in the stained-glass.

  They were even more unusual than those depicting St Ælfflæd. The first showed a human child, a boy, naked and being nursed by a she-wolf while her pups gambolled nearby. The second window was divided into three panels showing a young man leaving the forest for a monastery, then journeying towards a distant city, and finally having a bishop’s crook set in his hand and a mitre placed upon his head. The final window showed the same man holding up a hand to halt a gathered hunt, while an old she-wolf rested her head in his lap.

  “They’re not very well-known saints, are they?” Meghan looked up from behind her camera.

  “No,” I said slowly. “Someone must have chosen them for a particular reason.”

  “How do you even say it?” Meghan asked. “Al-bee?”

  “All-bay, I think.” I nibbled my lower lip, certain I was missing something. “No idea who he was and we don’t have time to Google him right now.”

  “No,” Meghan agreed. “We need to head back.”

  I shoved the key in the pocket of my hoodie after relocking the church door, and then paused. It had rained a couple of times since the evening I’d argued with Magnus, and then Steve and I had succumbed to temptation in the great outdoors. But I was still certain something else had been nearby, sniffing around as we retrieved clothing and went back to the house. Something which had howled far off in the distance, then crept closer. At this point I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for. Maybe I just needed to know that I wasn’t becoming paranoid and jumpy for no reason.

  “Just a sec,” I said to Meghan and followed the church wall around to the overgrown side.

  Meghan, of course, followed me. “What are we looking for?”

  “I’m not…” I broke off, spotting a curved indent in the soft loam by the church wall. Stooping to brush a few dead leaves aside, I revealed a large canine footprint. I’d been right on both counts. The trees grew too thickly for the rain to do much damage to animal tracks, and there had definitely been something out here.

  Meghan spread her hand above the paw print, breathing fast. Even with her fingers splayed, the print was bigger. “What…? Amy how big…?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “I suppose I should be grateful it was the cursed wolf and not the genetic experiment out here.”

  Meghan looked at me in confusion.

  I shook my head. “Let’s head back.” As I rose to my feet, a glint of light caught my eye. Something small and silver, coiled in the undergrowth. Using my forefinger and thumb like pincers, I gingerly fished it out. A long, fine chain of tarnished silver from which a yellowed pendant dangled.

  “What is it?” Meghan said. “It looks old.”

  I cupped the pendant in my hand, trying to convince myself it was aged wood not polished bone. On one side was carved the inscription:

  Semper fidelis

  Semper fortis

  Salus in arduis

  +++C.H.+++

  “Why is everything always in Latin?” I grumbled.

  “What’s that on the other side?” Meghan said eagerly.

  I flipped the pale disc over and froze. Across the smooth, flat surface was carved a horizontal wolfsangel. It was a charm against werewolves.

  Or perhaps, a charm against succumbing to a very specific curse. I had to get this to Steve.

  The Tale of Cynewulf and Leofsund

  Herein is the tale of the family called Þorn-tūn and that of their great friends and rivals, the family called Stæf-ley. At that time, the great leader Cynewulf had many fine sons and daughters by his lady, and good land and great wealth beside. He was a Þorn-tūn and that line had long held the talent to banish the wolf from the flock and the ill-saying from the lips of evil men. He was lord the land and all was in his favour. But no man is entirely content with his lot and he nursed a secret yearning for Leofsund, beautiful daughter of the other influential family, Stæf-ley.

  At first, Leofsund would not take Cynewulf to be her husband, for she had little desire to be a second wife. But Cynewulf was a fine looking man with all the natural gifts God and nature could bestow and so he found favour in her eyes. They met many times outside the appointed hours when they were set to be weaving enchantments together for the protection of all. Many a full and waning and crescent moon shone down upon their passions.

  It troubled Cynewulf sorely that Leofsund should refuse his suit. Until she was wed to him, she might easily become the wife of another. That dark seed was planted deep in his heart and when he saw her smile at other men, it germinated. A spring and a summer past and when the autumn moon grew full and fat, Leofsund knew her belly too would swell. She went to Cynewulf and said to him that his child was in her womb.

  But Cynewulf had long since convinced himself that his beautiful Leofsund was not truly his. That she took her pleasure elsewhere in addition to what she had from him. And, Cynewulf declared, how could the child be his for had he not taken pains to spill no seed in her womb but return it always to the earth?

  Leofsund swore that the child was his. Cynewulf swore that it was not. Back and forth they raged like a storm, each argument becoming ever more bitter until they parted finally with the most acrimonious words. Cynewulf spake that if Leofsund should lose the child, it was nothing to him for he would not acknowledge the fruit of her treachery.

  Great was her sorrow and rage when a short time later, Leofsund did indeed lose the child before it ever drew its first breath. In her grief and fury, Leofsund was convinced that Cynewulf had most cruelly ill-spoken her and robbed her of her joy. And so she called on her arts and wolf-spoke him. Since he had killed the child of her womb, his own kin, in his anger, he should bear a kinslayer’s curse. She summoned the wolf inside him that it might swallow him whole, yea and even unto his sons, and grandsons and grandsons’ grandsons would her words carry. If any spoke or thought in murderous rage at their kin, the wolf should have them also…

  Chapter Twenty – Wulf-bannen

  The rehearsal of the actual wedding service went off without a hitch, aside from a few hard stares between Claudia and Steve. I thought Craig might have let out a sigh and wondered what the two of them had managed to fall out about in short time Meghan and I had been checking out the other church. Aside from the fact that my mind was currently processing half a hundred other bits of data, the service rehearsal at least told me where I would be standing and what I would be doing tomorrow afternoon. It all felt unreal though, and I couldn’t help darting anxious glances at Steve who looked pale and ill. Not that I was the only one who kept looking at him. I caught Jocasta at it at least twice.

  The advantage of worrying about so many things at once was that I no longer had any worry to spare for Magnus and by extension Cosima. They were both amongst the twenty odd people at the rehearsal. Magnus met my gaze once, then looked hastily away. If I had cared enough to analyse his expression, I might have said he looked speculative. Steve’s mother, on the other hand, looked jittery. I suspected that she hadn’t had a drink yet today, then felt guilty for thinking it.

  Despite the laughter and good-natured teasing – mostly supplied by the groom’s family – I realised there was a subtle undercurrent of tension to the entire wedding party. I supposed that Craig and Claudia had enough reasons to be tense, other than werewolf activity, but it was more than that. Like everyone present, no matter how much they knew about the current crisis, was braced against an oncoming natural disaster.

  Jocasta, who I would have bitchily sworn before that moment, refused to do emotion at all in case it ruined her bored rich girl façade, fidgeted. I couldn’t help noticing that the glances she aimed at Steve, were interspersed with a few guilty anxious looks at Claudia. If I hadn’t known Craig so well, I might almost have thought she’d thrown herself at the groom sometime in the last few days and now felt bad about it. But she clearly had Steve in her sights, and Craig was not someone who would play away, so it was less likely than if she’d been a werewolf herself.

  My wool-gathering was broken by the vicar – a sunny faced woman in her fifties – announcing that she thought the rehearsal had gone well and offering a few words of encouragement to the bride and groom for tomorrow. The gathering broke up and everyone headed back to the house, leaving me with the uneasy feeling that I had once again missed something.

  I waited for Steve outside the church since he’d hung back to speak to Claudia. Meghan was chattering animatedly to Eddie who looked amused and a little pained. No doubt she was describing the werewolf tracks. Romilly waved from where she was happily engaged talking to Craig’s parents and sister, while Daphne looked on. I smiled and waved back, then happened to look straight into Jocasta’s eyes. She was on the other side of the church, standing like a Greek goddess among the flowers and she’d clearly been staring at me. I raised an eyebrow at her, but she just continued to stare. Her expression wasn’t hostile exactly, but it certainly wasn’t friendly.

  “Amy,” Steve came up beside me, resting a hand on the small of my back.

  I threw my arms around him. “Are you okay? You look like you’ve got another headache.”

  He squeezed me back gently. “I have, sort of. I’ll take some aspirin and be fine.”

  I leaned back to look at him. “And the…er…rest of it?”

  His expression tightened, eyes glinting far more gold than hazel. “I’m doing my best.” He sounded utterly defeated.

  “That’s not what I meant,” I whispered. “Of course you are. I just want you to tell me if it gets too bad.”

  Steve gave me a strangely defiant look and my heart sank. I knew without asking what he had decided. If he thought the malediction was getting a real grip on him, making him dangerous to me, he would remove himself from my company. Probably permanently. It made me angry, but I was logical enough to admit that if our situations were reversed, I would probably be thinking the same.

  “Maybe this will help,” I murmured, pressing the pendant and its coiled length of chain into his hand.

  Steve flinched when the disc touched his skin, then I felt the muscles of his arm relax. He stared down at the wolfsangel in consternation. “Where did you find this?”

  I explained about St Ailbe’s chapel, watching his frown deepen. “Will it help?”

  “Well yes. I should say so. It feels like it anyway. It’s just… but obviously it can’t be,” Steve said.

  “Any chance you could start making sense?”

  “Sense of what?” Rebekah said, joining us.

  Steve showed her the pendant.

  Rebekah blinked. “Good show, Amy. That was fast work.”

  “I found it, I didn’t make it,” I said. “And finding it was odd.” I explained about the tracks. “Anyway, I don’t know where it came from, but beggars can’t be choosers.”

  “What were you going to say, Stephen?” Rebekah asked. “Stephen?”

  Steve was gazing at the inscription on the back, he lifted gold-tinged eyes to meet mine. “This was Constance Harker’s. She gave it to Jennifer Blackthorn before her last fateful trip.”

  “Really?” Rebekah leaned over the pendant. “Semper Fidelis – always faithful?”

  “Semper fidelis, semper fortis. Salus in arduis,” Steve nodded. “Always faithful, always brave. A refuge in adversity. And the CH for Constance Harker. She describes it and how it was made in one of her journals.”

  “It’s the real deal then? A charm against…you know whats,” Rebekah’s voice dipped. She obviously didn’t want to say ‘werewolves’ where anyone else might overhear.

  “But how did it get here?” I said. “I mean, okay maybe Jennifer was wearing it when she disappeared but that was over a hundred years ago.”

  “How did you come to find it now,” Rebekah agreed. “Although I feel better about you using it, Stephen, if Constance made it. It’s a family heirloom, more or less.”

  Steve looked from his cousin to me and his mouth set with determination. He swiftly clasped the pendant around his neck and tucked it inside his shirt. “Hardly the latest in desirable accessories but then I never was especially fashionable.”

  I squeezed his hand, immensely cheered to hear a more optimistic note in his voice.

  “Now, if I can just keep my temper until after the wedding,” he joked.

  “Will that really make you wolf out?” I said.

  “From what we’ve managed to translate so far, it would seem that a specific type of anger is a key component,” Rebekah admitted. “Beastly unfair. Magnus is enough to try the patience of a saint.”

  “He hasn’t said anything to you, has he?” I took Steve’s hand as we started following the others back to the house.

 

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