Raven's Gate

couldn’t imagine anyone sharing their life with this woman.
    “For a short time.”
    “What happened to your husband?”
    “Young people shouldn’t ask questions. It’s not good for them. However…” She sighed and lowered the spoon. “Henry disappeared. That was his name. Henry Lutterworth. We’d only been married a few months when he went for a walk in the wood and never came back. It’s possible that he simply got lost and starved to death. Let that be a lesson to you, Matthew. The woods are very thick around here, and you can easily get swallowed up. It’s quite likely that he stumbled into a bog. That’s my guess. It would have been a very unpleasant way to die. He’d have tried to swim, but of course the more he struggled, the faster he’d have gone down, and the water and the mud would have risen up over his nostrils, and that would have been the end of him.”
    Matt wondered if she was telling him the truth. Or was she just trying to frighten him?
    “If his name was Lutterworth, how come you call yourself Deverill?” he asked.
    “I prefer my own name. The name of my ancestors. There have always been Deverills in Lesser Malling. Married or unmarried, we keep our own name.” She sniffed. “Henry left me Hive Hall in his will,” she explained. “We used to have bees but they all went away. They often do that, when their owner dies. I inherited all his money. But the point of all this is, my dear, that if I were you, I’d steer well clear of the wood.”
    “I’ll do that,” Matt said.
    “Remember now. The chemist. Just tell them it’s for me.”
    After lunch, Matt crossed the farmyard and went into the barn. He found the bicycle parked behind an old plough. It obviously hadn’t been used for years. But he pulled it out, oiled the chain, pumped up the tyres, and a few minutes later he was able to pedal out of the farm. It felt good, passing through the rusting gates. He was still doing chores for Mrs Deverill. But anything was better than the pigs.
    As he went, a car came the other way and for a moment it seemed they were going to collide. The car was a black Jaguar with tinted windows. Everything happened so quickly that Matt didn’t even see who was driving. He jerked the handlebars and the bike veered up a bank of nettles before curving back on to the lane. He came to a halt and twisted round. The Jaguar had driven into the farm. He saw the red glow of its brake lights but then it disappeared behind the farmhouse. He was tempted to go back. It was the only modern car he had seen since he had come to Hive Hall and he wondered if it had come on account of him. Could it be someone from London, from the social services? He hesitated, then continued on his way. This was the first time he had left the farm – his first taste of freedom. He wasn’t going back yet.
    It was a mile to the village. Matt quickly arrived at the broken sign where the five roads met. The wood was all around him and he was glad that Mrs Deverill had shown him which road to take, as they all looked the same. No cars passed. Nothing moved. Matt had never felt more alone as he pedalled on. The last part of the road was uphill and he had to work to get the bike to the top. Despite the oil, he could hear it groaning beneath him. But ahead of him he could see the outer buildings of Lesser Malling and before long he pulled into the village square.
    Mrs Deverill had already warned him that there wasn’t much to Lesser Malling and she was certainly right. The village was small and self-contained with a dull, half-dilapidated church, a pub called The Goat and two rows of shops and houses facing each other across an empty, cobbled area. A war memorial stood in the middle, a slab of grey stone engraved with twenty or thirty names. All of the shops looked fifty years out of date. One sold sweets, the next general groceries, another antiques. At the end of the row was a butcher’s. Matt could see chickens hanging by their feet, their necks broken. Slabs of meat, grey and sweating, lay spread out on the counter. A large man with a beard and a blood-splattered apron chopped down with an axe. Matt heard the metal as it sliced through bone.
    There were quite a few people around and as he rested the bicycle against the war memorial, more of them appeared, coming from all sides of the square. Matt sensed that they had been drawn here because of him. Their faces were more curious than welcoming. He saw them stop, some distance