now, half a dozen of the Manor’s residents were staring at Dominic politely.
“You want to know about Gerard Winstanley?” asked the oldest, a woman of about forty.
“Haven’t you seen him yet?”
“He lives upstairs with his computers. Playing the market.”
“Surfing the net.”
“Hacking into the World Bank,” said another man, entering.
“Mike!” the woman reproved him. “You know he doesn’t do that.”
“No, no, I forgot,” said Mike. “Winstanley’s straight as a die.”
“No one’s forcing you to stay in his house.”
Dominic made a tactical withdrawal into a slice of toast. As a matter of fact he had already gathered some information about the Manor’s inhabitants, these and the rest of the hangers-on who used the Manor as a meeting place if not a home. Half a dozen tepees had been pitched in the meadow beyond the moat, in the shade of one of Sweetholm’s few acres of woodland. Much of the time they appeared unoccupied, but occasionally he was able to spy the smoke from a camp fire and a furtive clustering of campers round it. A trip to the Manor’s kitchen for water was not unheard of, nor was a trip for food, all of which Winstanley dispensed without question. The distinction between the campers and the Manor’s more permanent residents appeared only nominal.
Of all the people who crossed the moat and walked the path to the Manor’s front door only Davy Jones was a native of Sweetholm. The divisions between tourist and local, farmer and fisherman, meant nothing to him. The rest of the islanders stayed in their smallholdings, or the narrow strip of coastal buildings round the Haven. Dominic knew what they called the Manor folk. The God-Botherers – with a hint of a sneer in the voice.
By now, Gerard Winstanley had arrived at the breakfast table. He was a neat man in his fifties. Both chin and scalp were clean shaven and he was trimly dressed in close-fitting jersey and chinos. Dominic would have known him at once. His movements had an authority that immediately shifted the room’s centre of gravity, though Winstanley was doing nothing more than stare ruefully at the bottom of a glass jar.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I wonder why I put myself through it all. The blackcurrant jam’s been scraped clean and I’m reduced to this pitiful shop-bought stuff.” His prominent brow began to crease in lines of self-pity.
“It’s because we make you feel young, darling. Admit it!” cried the older woman. On her way out she hugged Winstanley impulsively from behind.
“Old! You make me feel very old,” said Winstanley and let a little milk spiral into his coffee. “These people treat me appallingly,” he said, laughing, to Dominic. “You’ve no idea.”
Dominic smiled.
“You bring that on yourself,” said Mike. “All the dossers looking for an easy ride, the bigots down in the Haven, all that talk of the God-Botherers. You enjoy it.”
“Let’s say I’d go mad if I didn’t have the stimulation you delightful people give me. I’d be a mad old fool hutched up with just a keyboard for company. But enjoy?”
He pulled a long-suffering expression. Dominic looked away, to the weathercock that pirouetted on the gable of the barn. The wind was turning the bird to and fro, sliding light off its gilded skin.
“I must fetch the rest of my things from my van,” he said. “There’s a storm coming.”
“Harper will help you.”
“I’d rather—” Dominic began, but seeing that Harper had already risen, added, “Thank you, I’ve very little to carry. But you’re kind.”
“Come to my office afterwards, Mr Fowey,” called Winstanley as he left. “We’ll need to talk.”
Harper trotted after him into the yard, where the breeze was beginning to raise eddies of straw and loose paper. In fact, the back door of the van was hanging open too.
“Seems I’ve had visitors,” Dominic remarked. Inside the van the floor and the basin were printed with crows’ feet. A loaf had been hollowed out by their beaks and the food was tainted. Dominic looked behind him and saw Harper watching with grey eyes. He was, what – thirteen maybe? Sal had been right in her letter: an Aquarian child.
The state of the van seemed not to astonish Harper at all. Instead, he asked, “Is it true you came from Africa?”
Dominic started to strap up his sleeping bag, tightening a leather belt that had been skewered with an extra hole for the purpose. “Take this,” he said, lobbing it down. He shouldered his small canvas bag. “Why? What do they say about me?”
“They say you’ve been working in the camps in Africa. You know – with the Red Leprosy. At least, that’s what Sal told Mr Winstanley. She told him you were a priest.”
Dominic smiled at that. “Crete, for the last year. Africa before. Why do you ask?”
“I’m interested. I thought maybe I should do that kind of work myself. I don’t mean as a Healer. I want to be a nurse.”
Dominic stepped down from the van and slammed the door shut behind him. “The Asklepians always need help. You’ve seen the TV I expect.”
“There isn’t a TV here. But when we were travelling, yes,” Harper nodded. “Those big camps in the desert. Kids with stumps where their hands and feet should be. They look so scared, always. I don’t know how you carry on.”
“How could we stop?” asked Dominic. He clasped his hands in front of him, staring at his fingers’ ends. “The plague strikes at random – maybe one child in a family will fall, maybe a whole village. The army makes no exceptions: they’re all trucked out to the isolation camp, to live or die. And most live, with our help.” He sighed, as if that thought were melancholy. “The disease runs its course, they return home, they take to beggary. People give them food, although they hate them. It’s bad luck to refuse and their curse is deadly. So they are kept just fed on the street corners. I don’t know if I do them any favour in saving their lives.”
“You do what you can,” said Harper.
“What I was born to do, yes. Till now I’ve never doubted that my gift was a blessing from God.”
Harper was working his way round to another question. Dominic could feel himself being weighed. Harper, he guessed, was not a boy who would trust anyone easily, for all his placidity. But his trust once bestowed might be tenacious. “What is it?”
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