Page 156 of The Running Grave

On Robin and Shawna’s appearance, the woman who’d been reading to them got to her feet with an appearance of relief.

‘We’re on page thirty-two,’ she told Shawna, handing over the book. Shawna waited until the woman had closed the classroom door before throwing the book down on the teacher’s desk and saying.

‘Orlroight, less get ’em started on somefing.’

She took up a pile of colouring sheets.

‘Yew can do us a nice picture of a prophet,’ she informed the class, and she passed half the pile to Robin to hand out. ‘Thass mine,’ Shawna added carelessly, pointing to a colourless shrimp of a girl, before barking ‘git back on yer chair!’ at Qing, who started to wail. ‘Ignore ’er,’ Shawna advised Robin. ‘She’s gotta learn, that one.’

So Robin handed out colouring sheets, all of which featured a line drawing of a prophet of the UHC. The Stolen Prophet’s noose, which Robin might have expected to be omitted from colouring pictures for such young children, hung proudly around his neck. When she passed Qing’s desk she surreptitiously bent down, prised the plasticine off the floor and handed it back to the little girl, whose tears somewhat abated.

Moving among the children to offer encouragement and sharpen pencils, Robin found herself still more disturbed by their behaviour. Now that she paid them individual attention, they were unnervingly ready to be affectionate to her, even though she was a complete stranger. One little girl climbed into Robin’s lap unasked; others played with her hair or cuddled her arm. Robin found their craving for the kind of loving closeness that was forbidden by the church pitiful and distressing.

‘Stop that,’ Shawna told Robin from the front of the class. ‘Thass material possessiveness.’

So Robin gently disengaged herself from the clinging children and moved instead to examine some of the pictures pinned up on the wall, some of which had clearly been drawn by older students, as their subject matter was discernible. Most depicted daily life at Chapman Farm, and she recognised the tower like a giant chess piece which was visible on the horizon.

One picture caught Robin’s attention. It was captioned Aks Tre and showed a large tree with what appeared to be a hatchet drawn on the base of its trunk. She was still looking at this picture, which had evidently been drawn recently given the freshness of the paper, when the classroom door opened behind her.

Turning, Robin saw Mazu, who was wearing long scarlet robes. Total silence fell inside the classroom. The children appeared frozen.

‘I sent Vivienne to the stables to fetch Rowena,’ said Mazu quietly, ‘and I was told you’d removed her from the task I set her.’

‘Oi was told I could choose moi own helper,’ said Shawna, who looked suddenly terrified.

‘From your own group,’ said Mazu. Her calm voice belied the expression of her thin white face with its crooked near-black eyes. ‘Not from any other group.’

‘Oi’m sorry,’ whispered Shawna. ‘I thort—’

‘You can’t think, Shawna. You’ve proven that time and again. But you’ll be made to think.’

Mazu’s gaze ranged over the seated children, alighting on Qing.

‘Cut her hair,’ she told Shawna. ‘I’m tired of seeing that mess. Rowena,’ she said, now looking directly at Robin for the first time, ‘come with me.’

53

A yang line develops below two yin lines and presses upward forcibly. This movement is so violent that it arouses terror…

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Light-headed with fear, Robin crossed the classroom and followed Mazu outside. She wanted to apologise, to tell Mazu she’d had no idea she was transgressing by agreeing to accompany Shawna to the classroom, but she feared unwittingly making her predicament worse.

Mazu paused, a few steps outside the classroom, and turned to look at Robin, who also halted. This was physically the closest the two women had ever been and Robin now realised that, like Taio, Mazu didn’t seem to care much for washing. She could smell her body odour, which was poorly masked by a heavy incense perfume. Mazu said nothing, but simply looked at Robin with her dark, crookedly set eyes, and the latter felt obliged to break the silence.

‘I – I’m really sorry. I didn’t realise Shawna didn’t have the authority to take me from the stables.’

Mazu continued to stare at her without speaking, and Robin again felt a strange, visceral fear tinged with revulsion that couldn’t be entirely explained away by the power the woman held in the church. Niamh Doherty had described Mazu as a large spider; Robin herself had seen her as some malign, slimy thing lurking in a rockpool; yet neither quite captured her strangeness. Robin felt now as though she was staring into a yawning abyss of which the depths were unseeable.

She assumed Mazu expected something more than an apology, but Robin had no idea what it was. Then she heard a rustle of fabric. Glancing down, she saw that Mazu had raised the hem of her robe a few inches to reveal a dirty, sandalled foot. Robin looked back up into those strange, mismatched eyes. A hysterical impulse to laugh rose in her – Mazu couldn’t, surely, be expecting Robin to kiss her foot, as the girls who’d let the toddler escape from the dormitory had done? – but it died at the look on Mazu’s face.

For perhaps five seconds, Robin and Mazu stared at each, and Robin knew this was a test, and that to ask aloud whether Mazu genuinely wanted this tribute would be as dangerous as revealing her disgust or her incredulity.

Just do it.

Robin knelt, bent quickly over the foot, with its black toenails, grazed it with her lips and then stood up again.

Mazu gave no sign that she’d even noticed the tribute, but dropped her robes and walked on as though nothing had happened.