Time's Legacy by Barbara Erskine Page B

moment there, the next vanished without trace. When she had got over her shock she had studied the ground where they had been standing, muddy, rain-puddled earth, and there were no foot-prints and it was only then that she realised that though she was wet through as the rain beat down on the garden, the three visitors had been bone dry and she had had the distinct impression that where they were, wherever that was, the sun had been shining.
    Mat’s younger brother Justin had been staying in the house then and he saw the figures the next day. ‘Don’t worry, Cal. They are harmless. Just stuck between worlds. They can’t see you. I’ll see if I can talk to them, find out why they are still here, help them to move on.’
    But the next day he had had one of his monumental rows with Mat and packed his gear and left. They had no idea where he had gone. They hadn’t heard from him in months. But that was Justin all over. And it meant that no-one had tried to talk to the ghosts. She had seen them again only a few weeks ago. This time she had tiptoed away and told no-one, not even Mat. Better that way.
    ‘The ruins out at the back there are part of a Roman villa,’ Mat went on, squatting down opposite Abi to throw a couple of logs onto the fire. ‘We thought it was a folly dating from the time when some ancestors of ours had pretensions to grandeur a couple of hundred or so years ago, but apparently not. A local archaeologist came up and showed us how it all worked. There has been a settlement here for a couple of thousand years at least, probably longer – since the Iron Age. We’ve dug up all sorts of bits of pottery and coins in the flowerbeds, most of them Roman or medieval, but some of the pot-sherds were even older. They match up with stuff found in the Lake Villages out there on the levels.’ He waved an arm vaguely towards Glastonbury. ‘Exciting, really.’ He grinned. ‘I’ve no idea when our ghosts lived here, but we’re pretty sure they were Roman or Romano-British. Their clothes seem to fit into that era, according to Cal.’ He glanced up at Abi and she saw his eyes narrow briefly as though he were trying to make up his mind whether to confide in her. ‘I’ve discovered the clergy fall into two more or less distinct groups,’ he went on cautiously. ‘Those who believe in ghosts and those who don’t. Ben does, but doesn’t believe in interfering, I’m glad to say. If any exorcisms are needed in his parish he will go and pray with people but if anything more complicated is needed he passes it over to the relevant authorities who have health and safety clearance and follow EU guidelines on spirit disposal and recycling.’ He smiled again. ‘Do you have strong views on any of this?’
    Abi grinned. She thought for a minute. ‘Up to a few weeks ago I had never knowingly seen a ghost. I think I have always been aware of them. I’ve sensed them, maybe glimpsed them, but never enough to be sure. Then I saw a whole church full of them in my last parish.’ Her last parish! It made her sound as though she had had dozens of parishes. ‘I don’t really know what I think, to be honest. None of them looked as though they needed exorcising. And neither did the lady and the little girl here. They just looked as though they were getting on with doing their own thing.’
    Cal turned away from the stove on the far side of the room and nodded. ‘I think that is exactly what is happening. They mind their own business and we mind ours. They have never done us any harm.’
    ‘Do you see them often?’ Abi cupped her glass of wine in her hands and stared down into it thoughtfully.
    Cal shook her head. ‘Every few months perhaps. When I am busy and concentrating on what I am doing either I don’t notice them or perhaps they aren’t there, I don’t know. When I have seen them it has been when I have been standing with my mind a blank.’ She chortled. ‘I do that less now. There is so much to get on with all the