‘Run that past me again.’
Eames was staring at him. He fiddled with his knife, realised he was doing it so stopped and used it instead to point at her. The blade flashed in the candlelight. ‘You were the one who told me. You told me distinctly—he lynched your father. Built a gibbet and hung him.’
‘Barthrop hung my father? Jerome Barthrop? The Director of the Cornish Museum strung up a professor of history at Cambridge? In what part of your brain did that theory get conjured? What kind of books do you read? In what world do people just kill each other like that?’
Ben turned his head slowly from Morwenna to him, his eyebrows rising with amused interest.
‘Yes, what kind of world would that be?’
Ignoring Ben, Aleksey leaned further forward and stabbed his knife into the tablecloth, drawing it in a pattern. ‘A noose. You drew a fu—I asked you what happened between them and you drew a noose.’
‘Oh, my, God. That’s just what I wanted to do to him!’ She mimed choking someone.
‘Well, there you go! Peopledostrangle other people all the time!’
‘Metaphorically!’
Ben topped up all their glasses. ‘What did he do to your father then?’
Morwenna was drinking steadily, keeping up with them both, which was impressive. It had been a good decision of his to invite her. She had enjoyed her trip over with Ben and Harry immensely and rather than be churlish about the new ownership of Light Island, seemed pleased that it was being lived on and maintained. As she’d pointed out, at least he’d bought the place with his own money rather than just be left it for no reason at all other than a random quirk of birth. He’d noted Ben keeping very quiet at this point, given the provenance of the money whichhadbought this island—not a penny of which he’d actually earned.
She’d approved of pretty much everything they’d done to revive Guillemot, the gardens and Kittiwake. The house particularly fascinated her, as it did all its visitors. Although Aleksey suspected she found his collection of all her books on the bookshelf its most amusing contents.
She’d looked entirely at home as she’d strolled around the woods, naming a few native species as she went. And Aleksey supposed that in a way she thrived on La Luz because she was that herself—native. This was her land in a more fundamental way than just owning it ever could be. Wherever she went in the world, she was Cornish. It was in her blood and her land would always call to her in the same way as Babushka pined for her home in the taiga, or Enid told wistful tales of the Highlands. He and Ben were merely squatters, interlopers. At one point, when she’d been chatting to Harry in the glasshouse, he’d turned to watch Ben who’d been crouching alongside Radulf, folding his ears the wrong way, and he’d had the oddest sense of dislocation. It had been as strong as the occasional feelings of déjà vu that he supposed everyone experienced, but this hadn’t been of a past event reoccurring but of another life being lived just parallel to this one. He’d seen, for the briefest of moments, an existence where Benwasmarried to Kate, and, even more worryingly,hewas married to Morwenna Eames; she was mistress of Guillemot, and here she was, chatting to their gardener on a visit at Christmas with their mutual friend, Benjamin Rider, who was visiting with his daughter Molly. The whole moment had made him just as dizzy as his realisation he might still be ten years old on a beach on Aero, still building castles out of sand, and he’d seriously regretted the bottle of wine he’d polished off after his encounter with Colter—and possibly the second one he’d chased that one down with.
He and Ben, two married men, wives and families in another universe. Another simulation?
He’d straightened and stretched out a kink in his neck, still staring at Ben. Sensing the scrutiny, Ben had looked up, just calmly regarding him back. They’d smiled at each other at exactly the same moment, and he’d laughed on the realisation that however many universes there were or different sets of code controlling his programming somehow he and Benjamin Rider would always find each other. Ben knew this as well. His hunger, hisvoid. It was an epic tale—thiswas the foundational myth. It wasfate. It was the destiny they’d made for themselves. Maybe it was the hyphen that would insert itself into any lines of code, disrupting the binary designed to keep them apart.
They’d resumed their tour, but the moment in the garden had stayed with him, colouring his interactions with the woman all evening. He could not help but think that she would also like to have the power to write her own story and that in this other life she created, she would still be married, still have a child, and now be on track to some destiny from which she appeared entirely derailed.
It was the main reason why he’d asked about her father—why he’d been murdered by the annoying little museum director.
Now replying to Ben’s question, she spoke quickly. ‘Barthrop destroyed Dad academically and financially and then...on a much more personal level. He destroyed hischaracter.’ Morwenna appeared to realise that she’d lost Ben, so she backed up, explaining slowly, ‘Dad wroteAntediluvian Giants—Quetzalcoatl’s Inheritance and the History of the North Atlantic Peoples?’ When Ben tried to look intelligent and interested in this, she sighed. ‘I know, no one’s heard of it now, but it was onThe Sunday Timesbestsellers list when it came out. But this man we’re talking about, Barthrop, the one at the meeting on the Hoe, he was Dad’s research assistant then. When the book came out, because of what he said about Dad—guilt by association—it was banned, his publishers dropped him, and then his academic career was ruined. Youngsters think cancel culture is a new phenomenon, but it’s always been a thing—particularly in academia.’
Ben glanced athimfor support, but none was forthcoming because he was entirely at sea as well—even translating wasn’t helping—but wasn’t about to admit it, obviously. He wished he’d not persuaded Miles to go to bed. He was fairly sure his resident genius would know exactly what was being discussed. Getting no help, therefore, Ben was forced to ask, ‘Sorry, anti-what? Giants? Ketzol-who? He wrote fairy tales about…?’
Her jaw clenched, but she was gracious enough to explain politely, ‘Antediluvian: before the flood. It’s a term that references the universal myths about a great flood. We have a version of this story in our Judeo-Christian tradition. Noah? Rainbows? Doves? But the same account is retold across the entire world. In Hinduism, Lord Vishnu predicts a great flood and commands Manu to build an ark—sound familiar? Even in Sumerian myth, there’s a great flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh. In Norse mythology, for example, you’ve got Bergelmir, a giant, who, surprise, surprise, survives a great flood. Guess what he climbed up into?’
Ben curled his lip, and Aleksey wanted to lean across the table and kiss him. ‘An ark?’
She nodded. ‘Granted it was a flood of blood, but the concept is the same, isn’t it? Over two thousand such ancient stories across the world’s cultures tell the same story: a great flood that destroyed wicked men; a good man or god or hero survives by building a ship; he subsequently repopulates the world. Oh, you’ll like this one—Ceasair in Ireland. She’s one of the few women who feature as the survivor of the flood. She landed in Ireland with another fifty or so women survivors but only one man. He didn’t fancy being surrounded by women so took off. Literally flew away after turning himself into a hawk. Set up his own little kingdom just of men. On an island. I’ve always wondered about him, you know? What kind of man passes up the chance to live with fifty women? How did he…pass the time? On his island. With just men…’ She gave an arch smirk and buried her face in her wine glass.
Ben smiled, glancing down at his drink, his long eyelashes fanning out on his cheeks, and Aleksey had a very good idea of how they’d kept themselves busy. ‘So your father’s book was a book of myths? Isn’t that kinda like fairy tales then?’
She shook her head at Ben and tapped on the table. ‘Absolutely not. He was a respected historian. He ran the department of Anglo-Saxon and Norse at Cambridge! His book posited that we—the Cornish—are descendants of those gods all these myths speak of—in reality not divine, obviously, but just a much older race that lived in what was then a separate continent here in the northern Atlantic. This continent was drowned, fragmented into islands by a flood, and so its highly advanced technological civilisation was entirely destroyed. As I said, a few of these advanced, possibly giant men and women survived the cataclysm, and they set off across the destroyed world, using their technology and superior knowledge to visit primitive hunter-gatherers on all the continents and teach them farming, building techniques, astronomy, navigation, to kick-start a new civilisation—this one. Quetzalcoatl was worshipped thousands of years before the Aztecs. They inherited him if you like. And Quetzalcoatl was said to have been white-skinned, bearded, extremely tall and to have had flaming red hair.’ She appeared to sense something in Ben’s silence and deep frown. ‘Sorry, I know it’s extremely controversial.’
‘No, yeah, I mean, wasn’t that aliens who did that? I watched this documentary on TV about how aliens landed and did all that—that’s why all the stories are the same.’
Her eyebrows shot up. Aleksey buried his face in his wine glass to suppress laughter.
‘Aliens? What—as inouterspaceones?’
‘Well, yeah. Extra-terrestrials. I thought that’s what you were going to say he’d claimed. That we had all these same stories because we’d been seeded by alien visitors. With the little handbags.’
She swallowed audibly. ‘Little handbags?’
Ben was on a roll. Aleksey wondered if the flat Earth theory was about to come out. He’d noticed Ben hadn’t mentioned this again since airing it in Emilia’s presence but had the impression that many such conversations had been enjoyed with the moron over beers in the pub. He was very interested to see how Ben squared this suspicion they’d all come from aliens with his belief in the virgin birth.Hecould see some contradictions between these two competing ideas and was fascinated to see if Ben did too.
