and a willow ladder led to it from the ground. In this floating bower, Sulis sat until Alaris came, out of breath from the climb, some two hours later.
“There is no sign of Ossian, my lady.”
Sulis grunted. “Then despair must be my portion!”
Alaris was tactful enough to wait a good ten seconds before adding: “But I have heard that a seeing-man – a scryer – is lodging near Lychfont.”
“A mountebank!” Sulis muttered. “What of it?”
“He has a good reputation, mistress. They say he can set a bridge between the worlds as easily as I can wring a shirt. He has not only knowledge but power too, and… oh, elegant devices! If he is all they claim he might even be able to help you find Ossian.” She hesitated shyly before daring to ask: “Shall I send for him?”
“And hold up my shame to public scorn?” said Sulis, as if hearing her for the first time. “Certainly not!”
Sulis had no use for scryers. Most of them were frauds, and even when their talent was genuine they were infuriating, either secretive to a fault or else so garrulous (in a riddling, unhelpful sort of way) that one soon longed for silence. Nor was the whiff they brought with them of other worlds, to her mind, a charming feature. “No,” she repeated thoughtfully. “We must find Ossian ourselves. Make a further search of the cellars.”
A little later, though, Sulis’s bell summoned Alaris back to the willow tower. She entered nervously, and breathless again, having run from the far side of the estate. The goddess was staring into her palms as though they were flawed crystal.
“Y-yes, mistress?”
“You still haven’t found him,” said Sulis. It was not a question.
“No, mistress.”
“I know what you think. You think he has taken off, abandoned me.”
“I do not think,” said Alaris abjectly. “I obey. But may he not be lost? He may have lost himself and be searching for you even now!”
“He may,” agreed Sulis with brief interest. But her turquoise eyes were hooded and cast down. “It makes no difference. Without my aid he will never find his way back.” She sighed a lonely sigh. “Do your worst then, Alaris. Summon this scryer of yours. We’ll see what he can do.”
“At once, mistress.”
“But remember…”
“…Yes, mistress?”
“I submit to this only because my honour compels me. If the scryer fails to please me, I will remember who brought him to my house.”
“Of course, mistress,” said Alaris, and made herself busy straightening the hanging fronds in the doorway. But her fingers were trembling.
“You understand, Alaris,” said Sulis grimly. “Excellent. I thought you would.”
“THERE’S LYCHFONT HOUSE,” said Jack.
“Remember it?”
Ossian peered up the drive, where half a dozen Jacobean chimneys were showing just clear of the trees.
“Never thought we’d get here in one piece,” he said.
“Humph. Do I detect some slight criticism of my driving technique? Be honest.”
Ossian looked at his father steadily, remembering that heart-stopping skid back near the Corn Stone. “How long have you got?”
Lychfont House was large, but Ossian did not feel as if he were entering a stately home, despite the marble stallions rearing at the gates. It was simply an old house with more bedrooms than people, and a driveway long enough for a change up to second gear. Catherine Frazer was just lucky to have inherited something she could never have earned honestly. Luck didn’t make her stately.
Ossian might not have bothered with these thoughts had it not been for his father’s edginess. Something about Catherine had the power to make Jack nervous. Was it only the dangling prospect of future commissions that unsettled him?
Here came Catherine now, glancing across the forecourt in a sky-blue sun dress, a hat of Van Gogh straw.
“So you made it!” she exclaimed, as though that were a wonder. “How marvellous. Are these for me?”
Jack presented her with the bunch of inadequate carnations he had bought at the service station. Ossian prepared to wince, but Catherine – such good manners! – managed to look as if he had handed her the Golden Fleece. “I’ll put these in water right away. Ossian! You’ve grown up, of course. I wouldn’t have known you!”
Ossian got through the introductions. Catherine offered her cheek, taking him lightly by the wrist. The smell of peaches and apples engulfed him for a moment, and with it something else that he had forgotten about Catherine, though now he saw it had always been there, and he rather thought it was whisky.
Colin Frazer was standing at the door. Colin had grown too and his hair (which Ossian remembered as golden and curly) was cut short. He loped down the drive to meet them, with a lazy, bouncing stride. Jack was listening hard to Catherine’s advice about the roadworks on the way down and how he could have avoided them. “But you’re here now,” she concluded, “and I can’t imagine better weather for it. Where’s Sue got to, Colin? She ought to be here.”
“She’ll appear when she feels like it, I expect. Why are you all standing out here like garden gnomes? It’s cooler inside, and there are jugs of juice and Pimms. Coming, Ossian?”
Ossian followed. The sun was bright and Colin became all but invisible as he passed into the porch. Ossian did not remember the heraldic lions on either side of the door, nor their mossy yellow tongues, though they must have been standing guard for decades. But the odd smell of must and polish in the hall itself was instantly recognisable. There was the long gilt mirror and Stubbs bay, and the hanging tiger rug that had always looked at him with such fierce resentment.
Colin led him into the saloon. This was just as Ossian remembered it: the mah-jongg set, the Cluny cushions sewn with unicorns and maidens. Each shelf, sill and tabletop was given over to roses, to irises and orchids, and everywhere hung sprays of fragrant mock orange. Ossian cringed again at the thought of Jack’s carnations. Here too were the paintings Catherine’s family had gathered on their travels: eighteenth-century mythological oils mostly, with a preference for forests, fountains and plump Arcadians.
“All breasts and blushes,” said Colin in a worldly way, following Ossian’s gaze to a picture of Venus and Adonis. “Have you ever seen so much blubber?”
“I was just thinking,” said Ossian, “about the painting Dad’s going to do. You know that’s why we’re here?”
“God!” Colin clapped his hand to his forehead. “Don’t tell me she wants him to produce something like this?”
“Kind of. It’s supposed to be a picture of a shepherd tending his
