Chapter One

IT WAS A CHILLY AFTERNOON on 16 October 1687. On the rural outskirts of London the breeze sighed and mourned over a big empty circle of stony, barren ground. What had once been a grove of sacred yew trees, full of vibrancy, was devoid of life, and had been for centuries.

The fifty-foot circle had once had plumes of stately foxgloves in the centre, where the acid needle-leaves of the yew hadn't fallen, but it now stretched empty and dry. The grass that had grown around the foxgloves was gone too, as were the white daisy-heads that had peeped shyly from it. The wind made an eerie whistling noise as it raced among the dry rocks on the ground, compressing itself through holes, ravines, and cracks in the stones.

A crow flew overhead, a faint, shadowy silhouette in the failing light. The infant metropolis of London had sprawled in the opposite direction, and the wind was blowing the wrong way to carry any sound from it in the crow's direction. All that it could hear was the seeking, keening wind. The faded shadow of the crow sped over the circle like a wayward ghost, rippling over the rocks.

In its mouth the bird was carrying an acorn. It had collected the oak fruit from the nearby forest that grew across the track from the once sacred grove. As it flew over the empty, blighted land of the circle, it seemed as if perhaps the crow's dim thoughts might have been turned to its roost and safety and to get there before nightfall, because it suddenly lost interest in its burden. It cocked its head as if something down below had spoken a command, and its beak opened as if involuntarily, allowing the acorn to plummet to the ground. The acorn bounced and rolled and came to rest against a jagged rock, which jutted from the ground like a stalagmite, at the edge of the old circle nearest to the track. The crow glanced down briefly, as if in wonder at what had made it drop its bounty, but, loathe to touch down on the blighted soil, it flew on, homewards.

The acorn lay there, dormant. It could sense very little. Cold. Dry. Nothing quivered inside it, and no life strove to emerge. There was no point; the soil would never support it. Normally, even an acorn in fertile soil would have only a one in ten thousand chance of becoming a tree, and this acorn's chances were apparently, virtually non-existent. Yet it waited all through the long winter, quiet, patient, and content to be where it should be.

One night, in the early spring of 1688 a scruffy-looking man drove a pony and rickety trap off the track and right onto the lonely spot, where the acorn still waited. The small, roan-coloured pony was fretful, snorting as it was forcibly steered onto the barren ground. It halted obediently, but the man had to engage the brake tightly, and wind the reins around the handle, before the pony would stop pacing on the spot and trying to drag the cart away.

It was a cold night, and the stars pierced the ever-darkening sky sharply, as if they were impatient to fire darts of frost onto the Earth below. The lonely hooting of a tawny owl, and the eerie scream of a screech owl, floated on the crystal air and wafted across from the forest, the sound bright and clear. The man would have preferred to have hidden his deed in the depths of the forest on the other side of the track, but he needed bare ground to dig a grave in, and the forest floor and its undergrowth were too thick to allow it. Anyway there were too many wild animals and Lord knew what else roaming the forest at night. Animals brought hunters and poachers out after dark, and he wanted no witnesses. Despite the coming frost, a bonefreezing north wind was blowing, sending dust fountains scurrying around the man and the pony, stinging their eyes and numbing their faces.

The man didn't like this empty spot any more than his pony did. It was cursed and haunted. But at least no hunters were likely to ride across it later and perhaps discover what had transpired there this night, and uncover what was soon to lie beneath the cold ground.

The man shuddered, pulling his filthy cloak tighter around himself as his breath clouded in front of him. He was ragged and dirty and had a look about him that would have made any decent person turn the other way if there had there been anyone to see him. The area was deserted as he had expected it would be. No-one else would be foolish enough to visit this place in the dark and cold.

He had once been a young man who had been full of optimism and hope for the future like many others, but the struggle to survive in the back streets of London had forced him to turn first to petty theft, and then to greater crime. There was no way that a poor man could live under the law. Without crime to fill his pockets, he would have starved on the streets. Finally, his soul had reached a place where lawlessness was natural, and crime was just a way of life. This wouldn't be the first time he'd killed for money. There were always those that would pay someone who was willing, and desperate, rather than getting their own hands dirty. This wouldn't be the first time he'd helped the smugglers dispose of a witness or a double-crosser.

With a quick and furtive glance around, the man got down from the trap. He took a moment or two to steady the pony, patting its neck and putting his hand on the bridle, to make sure it wasn't going to try and drag the cart away. Satisfied, he went to the back of the cart and started to drag off a shape that was shrouded in sacking. The bundle was obviously heavy, and the man grunted with effort as he manhandled it off the trap. The thud of hitting the hard ground brought a sharp cry from the bundle. It squirmed and started to make muffled, squealing noises. The noises and the strange movement startled the pony, and it snorted and pranced sideways in fear, threatening to snap the brake and take off, leaving its owner stranded.

The man thumped the wriggling bundle randomly to quieten it, and hurriedly dragged it a few yards away from the frightened animal, which calmed enough to stop fighting the brake, but still had the same air of anxiety as its master.

The man dropped the bundle again, with a, "Be still, or it'll go worse for you!"

He took a knife from his belt and slit open the sacking. Inside there was a young girl, aged about fifteen years. She was bound head and foot and gagged. Moonlight whitened her face, and its light made her start squealing again, as she took in her surroundings. The pony snuffed and snorted again behind them, and the man cuffed the girl about the head with his knife hand, "Quiet, damn you!"

She was dressed in fine looking nightclothes that were nowhere near thick enough to keep her warm, outdoors on this freezing night, and her feet were bare and clotted with the mauve of cold. Blond hair straggled around her head and her bright blue eyes shone with terror.

Her eyes grew ever wider with fear as she took in the knife, and her squealing subsided to a panicky moan. She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to shut reality out, but her fear made them open again. She was horribly desperate to see what was happening, though she dreaded it. She was too tightly bound and too dispirited to try and escape, so she stayed still on the rough ground, tears welling silently and pleadingly from her eyes.

"You saw what you shouldn't," the man mumbled by crude explanation of her fate, "Smugglers don't take kindly to snooping eyes!"

The girl was called Primrose Lawrence, and she was the daughter of a Doctor and his wife. She had lived with her parents near the Port of London, near the 'Devil's Tavern', a well-known smugglers' haunt. Just outside her bedroom window there was a flat roof, and she used to sneak out there to watch the night sky. The previous night she had been perched on this lofty and seemingly invincible platform, and had watched some rough looking men dragging a hand-barrow, heavily laden with bulky sacks, up the slope from the dockside. Little had she known that the barrow was laden with tea and French brandy. She'd had no way of knowing that the smugglers would be hanged if she had reported them, and so were willing to quickly resort to violence against anyone who might bear witness against them.

Half-way up the slope the barrow had tipped and a sack of tea had fallen to the ground. The men had sworn with raised voices as they were forced to stop and pick it up, hanging frantically onto the barrow at the same time, to avoid tipping off their more fragile and more precious cargo of bottles of brandy. Primrose had giggled in her innocence as their crude words and oaths had floated up to her where she sat, never dreaming that her girlish voice would condemn her to a terrifying destiny.

The smugglers had heard her laughter, and stood back, alarmed, looking up to see where the noise had come from. They had spotted her spying on them, and even though she never understood what she had seen, it had been her death warrant.

The next night the ragged man had been sent to snatch her from her bedroom, and by the time she had been brought to the clearing, her parents had still not discovered her absence. The last thing she could remember was being snatched from sleep by terror as she'd realised that someone was looming over her bed, then a sharp pain in her head, and then sudden and deep darkness. She didn't know what was to happen to her now in this desolate place, but her heart knew it was going to be something evil. For her there was no hope, and for her parents there stretched ahead only the despair of a lifetime of never knowing what had happened to their child.

Primrose was in shock, as she lay bound and gagged on the cold, cold ground, shaking and waiting for her end to come. The chilliness and dampness of the earth permeated her clothes and made her muscles go frigid and numb. Her mind whirled, searching for some sense in the situation, but failing. She felt her reality start to slide, and thought that this was what brought visions to her terrified mind.

She could see an old man lying on the ground near to her. She could see through him, and she knew he was not of her world. An equally ghostly antlered headdress was on the ground in front of him. He rested against a tree trunk that was also transparent and non-existent in Primrose's world.

Despite the fact that she was tied hand and foot, Primrose felt herself floating upwards until she was looking down on the old man, as he took his last breath of life. A hand that could have been her hand, save that her own, real hand was bound, reached out and rested on the old man's head as he gasped his last. Surely already a spirit, nevertheless he died without a sound and with just a smile of acceptance on his lips. His head slipped away from her fingers as he slumped further over, falling against the phantom tree trunk. Primrose felt grief and happiness both as the old man's body gradually faded till it was barely visible, and then seemed to vanish into the tree's trunk. She was less afraid of the spectre of the dead man, than of the very real assassin who held her fate in his hands.

Mercifully, her mind had been dimmed somewhat by the vision, and she was not so aware of her surroundings, so her fear faded into the background. She was apart from her body in some way.

Somewhere in the recesses of her mind she saw herself walking with a group of people, walking away from the old man's body. She could hear faint chanting all around her, and for some strange reason it comforted her, making her feel that everything was alright, and that despite her plight, she was not, and never had been, alone. She knew that whatever happened at this time, her time would come again as it had before. She could feel the frigid earth beneath her leather-clad feet, and the crackling of icy twigs as she walked on them. Whatever this strange world was, it seemed more real to her at that moment than her present one.

The ragged man leapt back into her consciousness, his knife outstretched. Showing a modicum of mercy with the speed of his attack, he leapt upon Primrose, and quickly slit her throat. She felt almost no pain, just a warm rush travelling down her body, and as her sight dimmed and grew dark, Primrose could still see the group of her people walking away. She felt light grow around her, wrapping her in comfort, and she willingly melted into it, at peace.

As the girl's blood soaked into the sacking underneath her, the murderer quickly wrapped her back up in her rough swaddling, muttering charms under his breath, to ward off her spirit so that it couldn't possess him. He stood up, panting, partly from fear of what he had done, and partly from the exertion. Taking a spade from the trap, the man started to dig. The acorn was dislodged in the first shovelful of earth, and it lay in the slowly growing pile of soil. The ground was as unyielding as it was sterile, and moments later the man was sweating and cursing.

"Damn ground! Hard as nails!" he complained, his fear now totally driven out by anger and exertion. For him, it was back to normality, and he thought little more of the girl whose short life he had just destroyed. His only thoughts were of escape from blame for his crime, and the ale and food he would buy with his payment from the smugglers. He wasn't even a really evil man, his reality was one he had to live in and struggle with daily, and one is which 'survival' was the only watchword.

He frantically scraped and stabbed at the frozen ground, sure he was about to be discovered. A few more minutes later, and he was ready to give up. The hole was just long enough and wide enough to take the bundle, if he pushed her knees, which had not yet stiffened, into a bent position, and doubled her over.

Once he'd laid the body in there in a tight foetal curl, and covered it, it would only be a few inches below the surface. He shrugged. No-one would see it after all, out there, away from hunting land or habitation, and in a haunted spot. He shoved the soil back over the body, not noticing the acorn as it tumbled back into the hole and nestled on the sacking against the girl's heart. He tamped the ground down with the flat of the spade. He spent a few more minutes covering the mound with rocks and stones gathered from the barren circle, so that the wind wouldn't soon scour the gritty soil away and reveal the body.

Then the man made a ragged cross shape in the air three times over the grave. This was not a prayer to the new God that had taken over the country, or for the grace of the soul of his victim, but a token gesture to the old Gods and Goddesses of the Earth. It was an acknowledgement to the ancient sacredness of the place, a brief nod to the ghosts of the ancient sentinels that had once stood there. It was for his own protection, to ward off any spirit that might think to follow him home. With a last cursory look at the sad mound, he turned and got back in the cart. He released the brake at last and the pony, more than ready, surged forwards. Nevertheless he drove the pony on faster, unnecessarily severe with the whip, because suddenly he seemed to be in a hurry. The pony cantered off, dragging the cart behind it, and gradually the sound of its hooves faded into the distance, and silence, save for the howling wind, returned to the desolate grave site.

Under the ground the edges of the sacking were stained with the girl's blood. Underneath the body the fluid was sucked greedily into the parched and thirsty earth. The blood also enveloped the acorn where it lay, on the girl's chest, and its shell turned red. From death, as the cycle turned again, life was born. Something stirred inside the heart of the acorn as it sensed the fluid nourishment that it had been given, and a spark from Primrose's soul ignited its life-force with extra energy. Fibres inside the nut stretched and twisted, and the tiny, budding concept of a shoot was born inside the blank shell. Life called to the acorn's tiny spirit, as nature decreed that this time an oak tree, rather than a yew, should one day stand at the head of the old circle.

The oak was a symbol of balance to ancient people, its roots deep within the earth and its head in the clouds. Perhaps the soul of the Earth could sense the coming battle that man would unknowingly fight, between industry and spirituality, and hoped that the oak would show him a way to unite both without destroying either. In the far off future the crossroads that would develop there would be called 'Dru Corner', instead of its official name, by people who would be totally unaware of its true meaning. This name came easily to the lips of people, who, though they would often separate themselves from the old ways, could not separate themselves from their own subconscious and ancestral memories so easily. (Dru - Oak).

The tree could not have burst into life and grown were it not for the girl's sacrifice, because the barren ground was so compacted by years of pounding wind and rain that there was little airspace and no oxygen for the roots to use. The girl's burial and her mortal remains broke up the soil and provided a place for the acorn to sprout, as well as nourishment. Without the acorn the girl would not have been able to leave a whisper of herself on Earth. It was a strange, mutual symbiosis of quite different consciousnesses. And yet on a deep energetic level both were intrinsically the same.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jenny Smedley, columnist and writer, has been a guest speaker on hundreds of radio and TV shows worldwide. She is the author of Past Life Angels and Souls Don't Lie (O Books).