“Why are you whispering?” Marcus asked.
Selina laughed aloud, the sound ringing out across the open landscape. It was curious without echo, as though the blackness of the night muted it.
“I don’t know. It feels as though one should whisper when surrounded by the dead of night.”
“Nonsense,” Marcus said. “And yes…in a way. This track will take us to the top of the Gop, which is what this hill is known as locally. We follow the ridge to the right and we’ll find a path down into a valley, with a wood and a pool.”
Selina gasped. “It cannot be. The Lost Valley? The Fairy Dell?!”
Marcus frowned. “I don’t know those names but they have the sound of the kind of thing children would come up with.”
“Arthur and I had a place which was just ours. Our secret. It was a narrow valley within which was a wood with a pool at the center.”
“And a standing stone?” Marcus asked.
“Yes!” Selina cried, forgetting her own prohibition on talking too loudly in the dead of night.
“I stumbled upon it as a boy. I did not know that Arthur had also found it. He never mentioned it,” Marcus replied.
“I have looked for it twice. Once, the rain overtook me and I met Dai. The other time my father found me. I feared I would never see it again,” Selina said.
“I don’t know anything about it but I’ve seen enough ancient sites in Cumbria and Scotland to know the feel of a place where…I may seem mad, but…where magic exists.”
Selina was looking at him silently. They rode close enough to see each other’s faces in the light cast by their lanterns. She was frowning, studying him as though she did not truly know him.
“What is it?” Marcus asked.
“That is the kind of thing that Arthur would have said,” she said finally, “I have not heard you talk in such terms before. I had taken you for a man far more practical.”
“And is that a disappointment?” Marcus asked, a touch of anxiety entering his voice.
“No!” Selina hastily replied, “it is a most pleasant surprise.”
Marcus hoped that he did not disappoint. The trail he followed was one dimly remembered from childhood. His landmarks were the remains of a lightning-blasted oak on the ridge, one crooked and blackened branch seeming to point the way. Once they had crested the hilltop, he looked back towards the glowing light of Valebridge in the distance, the shape of the castle a dim darkness against the greater blackness of night.
“I hated it when I lived here as a boy. Never wanted to see it again. But when the chance was offered to be its master, I jumped at it. And now…”
“It could be so beautiful. It could be magnificent. But it has so many bad memories, I can see that,” Selina said.
“A lot of ghosts to be laid,” Marcus half-murmured.
Then he shook himself, recalling himself to the present, and continued along the hilltop.
“My father forged for us a rivalry, made us compete over every little thing. Did Arthur ever tell you about that?”
“No,” Selina murmured, “he made no mention of a brother at all.”
“We fought for our father’s praise. Fought to be better than each other at everything. Riding, hunting, reading, writing. Our childhood was one long exercise in proving ourselves worthy of the Dukedom. I hated Arthur more than I hated my father.”
He looked across at Selina, aware that she had loved Arthur.
“I can see how you would. Did Arthur feel the same?” Selina replied, reaching out across the gap between their horses for Marcus’ hand.
He took it and they rode hand in hand for a moment.
“I don’t know…I never asked. Never stopped to wonder. The contest was all-consuming. Now, I wish I could go back and tell that boy not to try so hard. Not to fight. That his father was not worth the effort,” Marcus said.
Selina squeezed his hand, holding on tightly.
