The Promise Tree: Book One

By Si Texen

The Promise Tree is a detective story without a detective. The heroine, Dani Lace, notices strange things happening, but it is the reader who is the detective as Nature and history try to communicate with Dani. From the very beginning, there are dozens of tiny clues which the reader can accumulate as the trees, or is it Nature as a whole, affect Dani's thoughts and behaviour. History shows her the way things were. Is it trying to tell her where Man went wrong? The story is about questions but it's up to the reader to notice them and think about them. The three women in the story, Dani, Edwina and Freda are all drawn in to what is happening, whereas the men are not, with the exception of Walter, the old country labourer, who is not so much affected by it as a part of it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781624881930

Book preview

Chapter One

‘Balanced on a ledge of the crag known as San Bartolomé, nine hundred feet above the sea, a buzzard waits for the wind. Falling first, then lifted, as wings tilt to catch the updraft, she swoops out over the valley.

Her shadow ripples down the vertical strata of the rock. She’s sure she’s being watched. From the face of the crag, somewhere amongst the eucalyptus and cork oak, primitive eyes watch.

Tinder-dry hillsides of wild corn, blue thistle and aniseed shiver in the sea wind. A parched stream bed, two corrals, one of stone, one of thorn, stand empty. A gust of wind lifts her over a rise.

Below her now, an aqueduct, arrow of silver water, leads her to a bustling Roman town. The hot air smells strongly of vinegar, honey and cured fish, mingled with smoke and the faintly sweet smell from a funeral fire. It is late May in the first century A.D. and the town below her has just become a ‘municipium’ of Rome. Sixty-eight thousand years have passed since the wind lifted her from the crag and carried her over the valley of the early hunter-gatherers.

When I reached Baelo Claudia, the Romans had gone, the town now a quiet ruin. Cows sunbathed on the beach. Where I stood, a blanket of close-growing purple flowers grew around my feet, as if a Roman centurion had laid down his cloak before departing.

I wandered through a misplaced collection of carved and numbered stones. Moments later a crowd of Spanish children engulfed me. Forty children and I looked at the remains of the temples of Juno, Jupiter, Minerva and Isis.

A young boy jumped from the steps of one temple to the steps of another, humming the theme from an Indiana Jones film. The cheers of his schoolmates echoed the cheers from the amphitheatre, to the west.

From the temples we looked down across the forum, twisted by landslip and earthquake, to the sea beyond, and beyond that Africa.

A slice of earth, topped by whistling corn, studded with pottery pieces, marked the edge of the hill behind us. Three or four feet down, a handle stuck out of the reddish soil. The sound of waves breaking on the beach was constant and the chatter of the Spanish children was taken by the wind. Beside the beach, the fish preserving pits still remained, three feet deep, some round, some square.

I leave Baelo Claudia, the ruin and the scatter of white houses. Oleander and morning glory pulse colour in the scrubby gardens as I follow the road up the hill to the top of the rise. Standing a full one and a half miles from the Roman settlement, I look back over the valley and feel the wind tossing the heads of corn, their dance together a measure of time. I am the buzzard.

As I drive along the coast road to Algeciras, I look up at the eastern end of the crag and there, cut into the rock, are the Neolithic tombs. The feeling I’d had, of being watched, was not perhaps unfounded.’

Dani Lace.

Piece finished, she sent it to print, then, shuffling through the pictures she’d taken to go with it, she leaned back in her chair to watch the printer screw up as it usually did. Freelance photojournalist and newly married house owner, this was her first piece completed from her new kitchen.

Chapter Two

Now what? She went to look out of the window at her new surroundings.

A golden September afternoon was approaching that time when objects not gilded by the sun’s rays would otherwise be haloed by them. Dust motes and midges hung suspended along paths of sunlight; bunches of blackberries, which at the beginning of the day had glistened with dew, now reflected the sky more dully, through a chalky residue.

In little less than an hour the cows grazing beyond the copse, on the lower levels of the Downs, would lumber slowly back to the farm for milking. Later still, a car might pull into the car park by The Woodpecker pub, daytrippers to the coast, perhaps, lost on their way back to London. Such people were not normally drawn to the village, for it possessed little in the way of general amusement. For them, the funfairs and chip palaces of England’s southeastern maritime promenades held more allure. What was it to them that Julius Caesar had once walked Little Street, looked up at the Long Man and crossed the marsh with his legions or that the downland grazing had once been bound by Celtic design?

The village of Wayford unfolded each side of Little Street, the lane that followed the curve of the Downs before turning south to the sea. High Elms, one of Wayford’s larger houses, spread its boundaries along Little Street from the old Friary ruins down to a stretch of marshy land which lay at the edge of a spinney, below the orchard adjoining the house. Entrance to this boggy area was by means of a wooden stile. She would go and see.

On reaching the stile she rested a moment and looked out across the marsh. Behind her, hawthorn bushes and holly stood at the edge of a wood of great age. Carefully she lowered her camera bag and tripod over the stile, climbed over and walked out across the watery landscape. Clumps of bleached grasses acted as stepping stones as she almost lost her footing and an ominous squelching sound, followed by a gurgle of air bubbles reaching the water’s surface, reminded her to take more care.

Calculating the distance between herself and an interesting subject, she looked for a dryish platform of ground on which to put down her bag and set up her tripod. She stretched, arching her narrow back and then felt in the bulging pocket of her camera bag for the apple she had brought with her: a Worcester from her own orchard. She surveyed her territory and took a satisfied bite. Barely a breath of wind. The bulrushes she had chosen to photograph stood motionless some thirty feet distant, their brown velvet heads perfectly backlit. Reflected in the water, their slender spears clustered together assumed the lofty grandeur of a fairytale castle protected by a moat. The last of the sun streamed through them and skipped across the surface of the pond, leaving trails of molten gold. The heads of the reeds looked soft as moleskin and stood rich and dark, plump as cigars, against the milky background of chalk cliffs that formed part of the line of hills beyond the marsh.

As she worked through the camera, the chalk cliffs loomed and she noticed at their base that the cluster of dark conical shapes she had used as a counterbalance in her earlier shots, appeared more clearly as an odd circle of figures, like miniature wigwams. Her eyes lingered on the shapes.

As she started to pack up, she was aware of a change in the atmosphere. The golden light had gone and a mist was forming, now almost as high as the meadowsweet, which grew in abundance on the marsh. She fancied she could glimpse will-o’-the-wisps darting through the reeds and the damp of the evening began to seep through her clothes.

Having folded up the tripod she glanced around at the quickly changing scene and her eyes were drawn back to the group of figures. They had moved. A look was enough to tell her that the overall pattern they had made was now different, more elongated, as if they too were slowly disappearing over the marsh into the mist. Although some way off, one of the figures seemed to be heading directly towards her, gliding swiftly and easily over the boggy ground. Mesmerised she watched.

Beginning to feel nervous, her breathing was quickening and something was prohibiting her movement. Almost on top of her now, the figure crashed through the bulrushes and into her pond. Instinctively she put up her arm for protection, lost her balance and fell backwards. Breathless and slightly nauseated, she looked up just in time to see the figure disappear through the hawthorn hedge that bordered the lane. As it did so, she felt her scalp tingle and the hairs stiffen on her arms.

Quickly, she turned her glance back to the other figures. They had gone. Looking back again at the hawthorn hedge, she could see it was solid and all of thirty feet high. Turning again, she saw that the bulrushes were intact and the pond smooth and mirror-like, clearly reflecting the evening sky without a ripple.

She sat quite still. In front of her, on the surface of the water, floated her half-eaten apple.

Staying where she was for some time, thinking, oblivious of the cold water seeping through to her skin and the falling dusk, whatever it was she had seen had not only terrified, but also intrigued her. She felt privileged, for she knew she had encountered something rare and in the chilled pit of her stomach she was aware of a tiny flicker of excitement. It was some time before it occurred to her that her camera may have witnessed the same apparition and with this thought she at last stirred herself. Gathering up her belongings, she headed back towards the stile.

Despite the fact that her shorts were soaked and she was now shivering, she could not help a growing feeling of elation. Standing astride the stile, she looked back at the pond, which was now reflecting a thin segment of moon and the first evening star. Behind her she heard the call of an owl and in a moment it had swooped overhead and she watched it glide out over the marsh just above the mist. Reality had returned.

As she jumped down off the stile into the lane, her sodden trainers made a belching sound. On either side of her the hedge and the wood grew thick with evening. The only light was from the sky, the only sound her heavy feet as she trudged up the lane, past where the figure had disappeared. Every so often she would stop and listen, for when she walked, only the sound of her waterlogged trainers filled her ears, drowning out any noise from the woodland, so that she felt vulnerable, as if one of her senses were missing.

Further up the lane, to the right, a dark mass loomed. She could see bats dipping in and out of its shadow. It was the barn, which marked the edge of the wood and the beginning of the fields bordering the vicarage, opposite her own house. As she drew level with the barn, the line of the Downs appeared, barely distinguishable from the darkening sky except for the chalk outline of a human figure cut into the north-facing slope.

A pheasant’s throaty screech made her jump. It whirred away up the field towards the vicarage garden, still calling. The scent of honeysuckle and roses came to her on the evening air and she realised it was her own garden she could smell. She quickened her pace, shrugging her bag further onto her shoulder and, turning through the rose arch, she started fumbling for her front door key.

Chapter Three

Walter Hurst climbed into his old Austin car on a wet Monday morning with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. A sea fog rolled over Wayford, smudging distance and reducing colours to shades of grey. Through the windscreen he could see no further than five yards ahead. The prospect of a week’s hedging and ditching in such conditions meant days of cold, wet feet. Although he had worked outside in the elements all his life, as his ruddy face and callused hands could prove, he hated cold, wet feet. But what bothered him more, and this sounded daft, he knew, was the particular stretch of hedge on which he would be working. He had never liked it.

And now the car wouldn’t start. He climbed out and opened the bonnet. Walter’s car maintenance was based on past experience with farm vehicles. He had kept the Austin going for decades, neither having the inclination nor the means to replace it. Once in a while he would paint it with a brush, straying over the years from the original colour so that now its shade and texture were somewhere between tomato soup and cow pat. He had also slapped a coat of whitewash over the interior cloth ceiling to cover up the nicotine stains. His sister, who did a bit of cleaning in the village, said the vicarage bathroom suite was the same colour as Walter’s car only Mary Richards, the vicar’s wife, called it Tuscan Sunset.

Tinkering with the engine, he found that the distributor was loose. He adjusted it roughly, tightened the nut and got back into the car. This time the Austin started, but with a good deal of coughing and spluttering. Without turning off the engine he got out again, thinking that a little tweaking would do it. As his hand passed over the damp distributor, his arm shot up, elbow hitting the bonnet smartly as he recoiled from the electric shock. Undeterred, however, he tried the operation again, a little more stealthily. Exactly the same thing happened, only this time his arm dislodged the support strut and the bonnet slammed shut. Inside the car, a fine sprinkling of powdered whitewash settled over the seats and dashboard.

Expressionless and without uttering a word, even though he had narrowly avoided decapitation, he turned off the ignition and stomped off to his shed. Within a minute or two he had returned with a can of spray. He gave the distributor a couple of squirts, stuffed the can into the dashboard beside his sandwiches and flask and started the Austin.

Walter’s main employer was the owner of Downs Farm, Sydney Williams, who, though tight-fisted in Walter’s opinion, provided him with enough farm work to keep him going round the year. On top of this, Walter could usually be prevailed upon for most outside jobs. He undertook the heavy gardening work for Mary Richards and had recently replaced some guttering for Mike Adam, the landlord of The Woodpecker.

Once in the village, he followed the row of cottages adjacent to the church then turned left between the old smithy and the post office into Forge Lane. Stack Barn, attached to the post office, belonged to Downs Farm although the farmhouse itself was a minute or two further down the lane. Walter pulled into the barn, where he kept his tools and reached in the dashboard for his tin of tobacco. He rolled a thin, rather grubby looking cigarette. The weather had not improved and he was in no hurry to start work.

Besides Walter’s tools, heaped against the wall to one side of the massive double doors, the barn housed two tractors, an untidy stack of hay bales, mounded up as high as the rafters and some out of date milking equipment, which Sydney Williams was hoping to sell on, one day. Empty lemonade crates piled up in one corner were an overflow from the post office shop, as was the old chest freezer juddering beside them, which was too big to be kept indoors. The floor was compacted earth and gave off a warm smell of mould, which mingled with that of diesel and animal feed. Numerous sparrows, subdued today because of the weather, lived in the roof. Spiders’ webs and baling twine hung in swathes from the beams, impossible to tell one from the other. Over everything lay a mulch of dust, feathers, hayseeds and bird droppings.

When Walter had finished his smoke, he locked up the Austin and went to collect the tools he needed for the day. Into a sack, which he kept for the purpose, went his spade, bow saw, hand axe and rake. Then he added a black plastic peat bag and a length of fine rope, his sandwich tin and flask. Lifting down the bagging hook, he looked around for the sharpening stone, an essential for such a day. He started rummaging through boxes of rusty nuts and bolts, nails, taps and odd pieces of hose. He knew it would be arm-breaking trying to cut through the hedge without a sharp hook and had no intention of attempting the job without finding the stone.

Tossing aside tins of shoe polish and a shoe brush, which he sometimes used on Friday nights if he were going straight from work to the shops in Lewes, he found the stone at last, wedged in a knothole. He dropped it into the sack, heaved the sack over his shoulder and stepped out into a salt-sea fog, as soft as dew falling in the lanes, like sly grey hands folding the village into the sea. He listened. He could just hear the sea. He imagined heavy, green waves rolling up the marsh as silent as the village breathing. The armistice chestnut trees on the village green were gigantic galleons with figureheads as white as his sister Freda in her nightie. A whiff of wood smoke and coke from the post office sent him reeling back to his youth. He was a young lad again, hanging over the stable door of the forge, his nostrils filled with the smell of singeing hooves as he watched the blacksmith, labouring in the heat and smoke, hammering out a new metal shoe for one of the farm horses: Dolly, a difficult leaner. He could see the smithy, black as a chimbley sweep, lined in sweat; hear the hiss of metal as the new shoe was plunged into the water trough. Now he could hear the stream running over the sluice. Bottom Splash. There used to be a ford here. Filled in now. He had played here for days, making mud pies and, a little later, catching sticklebacks with a jam jar.

All that had ended with Daisy Prewitt, the greengrocer’s daughter. They’d built a camp in the haystack, in Stack Barn, where he now kept his tools. It was a hot day in June. Daisy was wearing a forget-me-not blue dress her mother had made. How old had they been then? He couldn’t remember, but he could hear Daisy’s voice, a soft, taunting voice and his own, uncertain and strangely deep.

A penny a kiss, she’d said.

I’ll give you threepence if you takes your knickers off.

Sixpence, she’d said.

You took ‘em off for threepence with your cousin.

I never did.

You did. He told me what you done. Go on, do it with me. I’ve only got threepence.

Only if you carve Walter Hurst loves Daisy Prewitt on the beam, she’d said.

I’ll carve it if you tells me how.

Can’t you write, then? she’d mocked.

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