Chapter 16
NOW
It was almost as if they’d swapped places. While Violet had decided to go to Newbrough, Ollie had decided to go to Coventina’s Well.
He had lain awake most of the night thinking about the cottage at Newbrough and the atmosphere that hung there. The air was heavy; there was no other way to describe it. In fact, every time he closed his eyes, he relived the feeling.
Ollie was a practical Yorkshireman. He had a sensible job in IT and worked with logic and formulae. And spreadsheets. He was good with a spreadsheet. He was not imaginative in the slightest, so why even he felt sensitive to that place was beyond him.
He ran through the conversation with Violet again, and remembered what she had told him about the Well.
He hadn’t been down there. As far as he was aware, Coventina’s Well was just some sort of giant bog-puddle, and he hadn’t taken much notice of it, because it seemed to bear no relation to his family history.
But the more he thought about it, the more he felt the need to go there.
Surely, it couldn’t be as bad as that cottage, could it?
And if he went – bearing in mind not to get too close to it, as he didn’t think someone would come to his rescue as fortuitously as Violet’s partner had come to hers – and if he sensed anything like what Violet had, then at least he could go back to her and tell her that the Well was a bit of a weird place, and yes, he got it.
He understood the draw of sacred spaces – it was only natural that the residue of those beliefs lingered at Coventina’s Well centuries later, especially in the winter if Coventina was a goddess who welcomed spring and made the snow melt.
Ollie didn’t bother with breakfast; he made a strong coffee in his room, and drank it while he looked out across the snow-covered landscape.
Being on the top of the hill, he could see for miles, but everything he saw for those miles looked exactly the same.
Undulating white hills, shadowy dips and piles of grey stonework running east to west. Clumps of trees huddled together, their branches bare and bowed down with the snow and the sky was grey.
Ollie shivered. Maybe, down the dip where the Well was, it would be a bit milder.
However, once he eventually got there, he realised it wasn’t.
After he’d parked up, he walked down the hill, by the edge of the old fort. The snow crunched underfoot and there wasn’t another living soul nearby. The Mithraic Temple looked eerie, and he paused, thinking about the men who had worshipped there so many years ago.
Then he picked his way past the ruins of the Mithraic Temple and crossed the stream, looking across the field at the area where he understood Coventina’s Well to be…
But once he reached it, he found it extremely unimpressive.
‘Is this it, then?’ he asked the snow-covered landscape. ‘It really is a massive bog-puddle?’
He took a few steps closer to it, so his toes were almost on the edge, just where the snow began to melt into the water, and he peered into the icy-looking depths. His reflection stared back, complete with a furrowed brow and a scowl on his face.
Ripples scattered across the surface from a breeze that crept into the valley and Ollie shivered. But when the ripples cleared, he felt his stomach lurch.
He expected to see himself reflected in the water again – but what he saw was not him.
At least not himself in the twenty-first century. The face that stared back was Ollie’s, but the clothing was not.
The man staring back at him, had billowing white sleeves and some sort of waistcoat on and, most shocking of all, blood on the breast of his white shirt. They locked gazes for a moment, and Ollie felt himself leaning forwards, being pulled, almost, into the dark waters of the Well…
Then his toe slipped on the snowy grass, and he gasped, forcing himself to stand up straight.
The man’s face twisted into a smile that could only be described as arrogant, then his image faded and disappeared, and a shocked and confused Ollie was left staring back at himself again.
‘Fucking hell!’ cried Ollie and jumped backwards properly, his heart pounding. Good God, he had almost done it – he had almost fallen into the bloody thing, just like Violet. He doubted they were both that stupidly careless; he doubted that it was a coincidence.
He had definitely seen someone in there – someone who looked like him. He would swear to it in court if he had to.
He took a moment to gather his thoughts, but the atmosphere started to close in on him, just as it had done at Newbrough.
At the witch’s cottage.
Nope. That was it. He wasn’t going to stay beside this Well a moment longer. So he turned around and ran back to the car park as fast as he could.