Page 31 of A Gathering Storm
Ward blinked, taken aback by the question. “Well,” he said after a pause, “I want to understand how my brother’s spirit spoke to me on that ship. Where he was and how that plane of existence he was on interacts with our own world. The known, visible world.”
“And you think you can find evidence that will explain those things using scientific methods?”
“Yes,” Ward replied. “Why not?”
Nicholas was silent for a long time. At last, he said, “I can believe that Snow has a soul without having to understand what a soul really is. But what you’re talking about . . .” He paused, frowning. “It sounds to me as though you’re searching for a way toallowyourself to believe.”
Ward stared at Nicholas. He couldn’t think how to respond to that, and his gut began to churn uneasily as he turned over the words in his mind. He was relieved when Pipp knocked at the door, interrupting them.
“Come in,” he croaked, and Pipp glided in. While he poured tea for Nicholas and asked if he would like anything to eat, Ward looked down at his own half-eaten breakfast. He’d forgotten about it while he and Nicholas had been talking, and now it was cold and unappetising.
“You can clear this away, Mr. Pipp,” he said when Pipp was finished with Nicholas, ignoring the man’s purse-lipped disapproval as he lifted the plate and left the room.
Once Pipp had left, Nicholas said, “May I ask you something?”
“Of course,” Ward replied, though in truth he was wary now of what Nicholas might ask, given what had gone before.
“Do you believe in God?”
The question surprised Ward, and he didn’t answer immediately, studying Nicholas for several long moments.
“No, I don’t,” he said at last. “But that is not to say I couldn’t be persuaded if there was evidence. Do you?”
“I don’t know,” Nicholas said. “But sometimes, when I’m walking along the cliff tops, I look out over the sea. The wind will be wild and the birds circling above, gulls and kittiwakes and guillemots, and the sky will have a thousand clouds in it. It’s all so . . . immense and so grand and it all fits together just so. And I get the strongest feeling—a sort of yearning, I suppose—as though part of me is trying to burst out of my body and join with it all.” He smiled uncertainly at Ward. “When that happens, it’s difficult to believe there isn’t something.”
Ward wasn’t sure what Nicholas meant by that. Was he saying he believed in God or not? He considered asking, pressing the point, but in the end, he left the thought unspoken. Instead he just watched while Nicholas bent down to pet the dog again, his gaze lingering on the sharp sweep of the man’s firm jawline. The bluish lights that the sunshine streaming through the window picked out in his black hair. The way his strong, capable hand gently fondled the ugly dog’s ears.
After breakfast, Ward suggested they walk over to the Hole. It wasn’t far from the house, and there were things he wanted to show Nick, he said.
“I’m having a series of platforms constructed inside the crevice,” he explained as they strode over the scrubby, wind-tugged grass. Nick realised he was growing used to the man’s odd rasping voice. Already he barely noticed it.
“What purpose will they serve?” he asked.
“They’re for my ozone gas efforts,” Ward said, as though that explained everything.
Nick could see, up ahead, that the Hole was now encircled by a makeshift wooden fence, about three feet high. What on earth?
“You’ll have to watch out,” he warned. “If the village children find out there’s platforms in there, you’ll have them crawling inside, and you’ll get the blame if one of them falls to their deaths.”
Ward frowned. “Surely they won’t come all the way up here? This is private property, and it’s a fair walk from the village just to play in a hole.”
Nick laughed. “It’s a bleddy greatzawn—”
“A what?”
“Azawn. It’s a Cornish word for”—he waved his hand at the Hole—“one of them. If you think the village boys won’t walk a couple of miles to climb inside a crack in the ground that stretches all the way from the cliff top to the seaandspurts up great bursts of water without warning, you need your head looking at. Of course they’ll come! God knows I used to, when I was a boy.”
“Did you?”
Nick glanced at Ward, perplexed by his disbelief. Lord, hadn’t the man ever played as a child? He was looking at Nick with the same expression he’d worn that first day in the Hope & Anchor, his acorn-brown gaze all earnest and his hair glinting in the sunshine.
Nick cleared his throat and forced himself to go on. “Of course I did. I used to come up here with Jake Odell, Gid Paget, and Jed Hammett. We’d dare each other to stand at the edge and wait for the sea spurts, see if we could run away without getting drenched.”
They had reached the Hole now. Nick laid a hand on the flimsy fence. “You might be better taking this down. There’s nothing draws an adventurous lad like a fence round some works. You’d be better off putting a proper fence up along your entire boundary. Dissuade any would-be trespassers from getting near enough to even see these platforms exist.”
Ward frowned thoughtfully.
Nick vaulted over the fence with ease, then leaned back over, gesturing to Snow and making a clicking noise with his mouth. “C’m’ere, boy.” The dog trotted up to the fence and jumped into his waiting arms. Nick set Snow down again on the other side and patted his thigh to let the dog know he wanted him close.