Chapter 3
NOW
It was warm and cosy in Violet’s B even in the time it had taken to get back in the car and drive up here, everywhere seemed darker.
‘We’ve only got a few guests at the moment,’ Cynthia said. ‘A couple of hikers using us as a base, and another couple of walkers using us as a one-night break in the Hadrian’s Wall Walk.’ She shivered. ‘Savage amusement, if you ask me. Why would you want to do all that in the middle of winter?’
‘Why would you want to do that at all?’ asked Violet wryly.
‘Very good point. Oh, and we have a chap staying here who’s doing some research into his family tree.’
‘I’m doing research as well. For a book.’
‘A book? That sounds interesting.’
‘I hope it will be. But it’s rather dry and academic, so it might not be.’ Violet pulled a face. ‘But it was commissioned and I have to write it, and I’ll try to make it as interesting as I can.’
‘What’s it about? If I can ask, that is.’
‘Oh, it’s not top secret. It’s about witch trials. And hopefully, I can find out a bit about Meg. The one the Burn is named after?’ The legend about the local witch was pretty well known; Cynthia was bound to know about her. Meg had a tiny river named after her, for goodness’ sake.
‘Oh yes! Meggie’s Dene Burn. How interesting.’ Cynthia smiled. ‘All right, I’ll let you get settled; your room is number five, up on the top floor. Do you want some help with your bags?’
‘No, I can manage, thanks.’ Violet smiled at her. ‘Umm – do I just come straight down for dinner? I have to say, it smells really good.’
‘Yes – we’ll be serving up in fifteen minutes or so. Give you a chance to make sure you have everything you need in your room. Just shout if you haven’t.’
‘Thanks.’ Violet slung her laptop bag on her shoulder, picked up her handbag and grabbed her small travel suitcase. She hadn’t brought much, knowing she’d probably be doing most of the lugging around herself. But it would be good to put everything in her room and get down for some food.
* * *
The next morning, Oliver Brent was sitting in the dining room, which doubled as the breakfast room.
And he had decided he liked this place – the history was practically humming out of the walls – and it was an ideal base for him to do some research on his family history.
He had a couple of weeks off work, no commitments, and it had been the part of his family tree he’d been stuck on for a while.
There was a legend within his family that the Brents had roots in this area, something to do with the Milburns who had been the ‘Big I Am’ in the seventeenth century, and it seemed like a good opportunity to chase it.
What he was interested in as well was the fact that the story suggested the family had fractured, and one branch of it had come to ruin, and the other had inherited everything.
Ollie came from the side that had been ruined, which wasn’t the greatest news – but hey, it had happened hundreds of years ago, and it was curiosity that drove him to dig further, nothing more – no expectation of inheriting a fortune they’d forgotten about.
At least February on Hadrian’s Wall wasn’t the high tourist season. He doubted families would be coming here with kids at half-term, because he assumed that the weather would be rubbish.
And he’d been proved correct. The only other people at this farmhouse were walkers and hikers – and most of them were fleeting visitors.
One couple had been here a few days and set off on a different walk each morning, seemingly not bothered about the cold temperatures and overcast skies.
But a lot of guests were there for one evening meal, one breakfast and a departure right afterwards.
‘You going east or west?’ they’d call to other hikers, and then they’d chat about the bad bits, the dodgy bits, the scenic bits and the easy bits of the Hadrian’s Wall Walk.
‘It’s not flat!’ someone had said that morning, quite astonished.
Ollie had dipped his head and studied his phone, wondering how someone could be so misled.
They were surrounded by bloody hills and valleys!
The whole place practically existed on a massive geographical fault – so technically, there were even cliffs to contend with.
He was so pleased he wasn’t doing the walk.
A chair scraped and he bobbed his head up as someone else came into the breakfast room. It was a woman, dressed for the weather, but clearly not for walking. She looked over at him and half-smiled as she pulled her chair back in.
The woman jiggled the table and managed to knock a teaspoon onto the floor, and it skittered across to Ollie’s seat.
He leant down, picked it up and reached across the gap to give it back to her.
‘Thanks,’ said the woman. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘No problem. First morning?’
‘Yes. It was dark when I got here last night, hence I grabbed a window seat today, to see what we could see.’ She nodded across at the view, which was an overarching grey. ‘But at least I was in time for dinner, even if it was dark. First morning for you too?’
‘No.’ Ollie grinned. ‘Third. I went out for dinner last night so I wouldn’t have seen you. I have to say, you don’t look like you’re a hiker. Which is probably a good thing looking at the weather forecast. I’m pretty sure snow’s on the cards.’
‘I am absolutely not a hiker. Way too hilly for me anyway. I’m doing research for a book. Oh, are you the guy doing your family tree?’
‘That’s right. And yes, we’re practically sitting on a geographical fault.
Hence the landscape. I was just thinking about it, actually.
I’m Oliver Brent. Most people call me Ollie.
My family goes back a few generations in Northumberland, and we have links to this area.
They had a place near Newbrough, as far as I’m aware. Not much left of it now.’
‘That’s fantastic. Even if it’s just ruins, that’s so exciting – hopefully, you’ll be able to see exactly where it was.’
‘Hope so. Place is full of history,’ said Ollie. ‘Apparently, the church in Newbrough is built on the old Roman fort.’
‘And Newbrough is also supposed to have been where a witch lived. I’m Violet Marsh. My bag, if you like, is the witch. Well – the sacred spaces and things around here, which do somewhat encompass the witch.’
Ollie nodded. ‘Old Meg. I’ve heard of her.’ He’d done some googling when he was planning his trip.
The woman, Violet, looked at him oddly. Her expression changed slightly, and she shook her head. ‘No. She wasn’t old. She wasn’t anything like old.’
‘Fair enough.’ Ollie held his hands up. He wasn’t going to argue with a stranger.
‘As you say, the witch is your bag, not mine.’ But the records he’d seen – well, to be fair, the articles online he’d seen – had all said Meg was old.
As did the urban legend around her. But if this Violet knew something he didn’t, then who was he to dispute it.
‘Anyway, enjoy your breakfast.’ He smiled at her and stood up. ‘Hope you don’t get stuck in the snow.’
‘Me too. I’m going to check the forecast before I decide what to do, though. There are a few places I’d like to see – and I really don’t want to be struggling back up here if it does snow heavily. I guess February was a mistake.’
‘Depends what you mean by a mistake.’ Ollie grabbed his phone and tucked it in his pocket. ‘If you like a bit of isolation and not much company, then February on Hadrian’s Wall seems pretty damn perfect to me.’
Violet laughed. ‘Agreed. Have a good day, Ollie.’
‘You too, Violet. Maybe see you at dinner.’ He nodded to her and turned to walk out of the dining room. She seemed like she was doing some interesting work. But he couldn’t quite get over that flash of – something – in her eyes when he mentioned that Meg was an old woman.
If he was imaginative, which he wasn’t, he’d say it was a flash of ‘otherness’.
But that was just stupid.
* * *
Jake was having an early breakfast at home in Newcastle, scrolling through his phone as he finished his second cup of coffee. Well, he wasn’t scrolling so much as checking to see if Violet had messaged him this morning. Nothing had come through yet, but he’d had a message from her last night.
He knew she was excited to be heading to Northumberland for a few days to do some research on her book.
She’d talked enthusiastically about the Newcastle Witch Trials, and even presented him with a list of names of the accused and convicted.
‘It’s not definitive,’ she’d said. ‘These things rarely are.’
And last night, she’d sent a photograph from, apparently, the top of an old fort, just as the day was darkening. All it showed was a vast, undulating landscape of fields and trees and a big arrow she’d drawn on the top of it. She’d captioned it:
Violet
The arrow shows where I think Coventina’s Well is. Hoping to have a better look tomorrow. Not too far from Newbrough where Meg the witch lived. x
He’d responded:
Jake
It looks like a fun place! x
Violet
The execution of witches was not fun.
Fair enough. That was him told!
So he changed the subject and started chatting about a new micro-pub that had opened up on the Quayside instead.
Today, Jake zoomed in on the photo again and smiled.
It didn’t look much more than a big, boggy puddle, and yet, it had an inexplicable draw.
Even just through the photograph. He imagined what it might have looked like before time destroyed the stone wall he knew had once surrounded it, and before nature claimed the space around it – he’d done his own bit of research about it to find out a little more.
He knew, for instance, that Coventina’s Well had been excavated in 1876 by a chap called Clayton.
It had been a very different sort of excavation though to what one might do in the modern day – to the extent that the finds had been left out overnight and lead miners had seen fit to come and steal the offerings found inside the Well.
But that was, of course, dependent on whether any offerings had been left behind, because Clayton was a generous man who had given things he discovered away to spectators who had come to visit the dig and watch him work.
The most fascinating bit to Jake, though, was the legend surrounding the Well.
There had been a multitude of things found during the excavation – altars, coins, jewellery, statues…
And it looked very much like most of it had been thrown in at the same time, in great haste.
Why, he wondered now, had everything just been dumped in there?
Jewellery, coins, etc, he could understand.
It was common practice to give offerings in these sacred places.
But whole altars? Statues? Pagan objects just drowned in the deep pool with no written explanation anywhere?
It was seriously intriguing.
One theory was that the fort had become a Christian place of worship and the Pagan artefacts had been ordered to be destroyed; another suggested they’d been thrown in there to hide them during a battle or a raid.
He supposed nobody would ever know, which made him even more interested in it.
Jake zoomed out again and moved the picture around.
He saw the remains of the Mithraic Temple, just across the stream from the Well.
The temple had belonged to the cult of Mithras – a dark, mysterious place where no sunlight was allowed.
Now it was just ruins, and had three replica altars inside it, but Jake still wanted to go and see it.
It suited his passion for Romano-Celtic religion and Paganism to a T, and the fact that Violet was so invested in Coventina’s Well ensured their interests dovetailed as they always had done.
He knew that the sacred water from Coventina’s Well had preserved the temple for centuries; blocked with offerings, the spring had flooded the ground nearby, protecting the stone building buried deep in the marshland…
Jake shivered. As he looked at the photo, he began to feel the stirring of some excitement: a buzz he usually only experienced at the start of the six-week holidays. He zoomed again and looked at the puddle – sorry, the Well.
But he couldn’t stop staring at it. Then a plan began to form.
He was obsessed with Romano-Celtic religion and Paganism, loved anything to do with that or the history behind it, and it was half-term at school.
He really missed Violet, if he was honest, even though she’d only been gone a day or so.
The house felt too empty and it was too quiet without her laughing or tapping away on her laptop.
They didn’t technically live together, but they spent most nights together.
In fact, he was pretty close to asking her to move in with him properly.
It seemed the logical next step. She had a tiny flat; he had a three-bedroom semi-detached which they spent most of their time in.
So why didn’t he have a little trip to Hadrian’s Wall himself?
Why didn’t he surprise her and make a bit of a holiday out of it?
He’d take the van, though. He knew she would need to work – so it technically wasn’t a holiday for her really – and he didn’t want to get in her way.
He just kind of wanted to be near her. So they could spend time together when she was free and maybe have dinner together and stuff; and if he took the van, he could explore when she was busy.
Jake opened up his camping app and had a look. There were plenty of places up there he could stay if he took his van. He could be there in under an hour.
He swiped the camping app off the screen and looked at Coventina’s Well again.
Actually… That could work.
Yes. It was perfect – he was definitely going on a little road trip today.
But maybe he wouldn’t tell Violet what his plans were – for now, at least.