Crescendo

'These are probably the graves of kings,' said Marina, standing in the centre of the broken grey stones. 'There are half a dozen of them, a whole dynasty, buried up here to keep an eye on their subjects after death, presumably.'

'Big brother is watching you,' Gideon offered.

She giggled. 'Something like that. Creepy, isn't it? I used to look up at the hill when I was little and believe that at night they came out of their graves and went stealing down the hill in search of vic­tims.'

'This must have been an enormous chap,' Gideon murmured, standing at the opening to one grave. Stones had been erected on four sides of it. Oblong, raised, covered in grass, it was over six foot long. Gideon lay down inside the wall of stones, his hands crossed across his chest.

'Don't!' Marina cried in dismay. 'It's unlucky!'

Gideon looked up at her, grinning. He looked, she thought, as if he might have been one of them, those far-off barbarian kings, with a long Celtic face, all harsh bones and lantern jaw, the black hair wild and windblown, the eyes glinting dangerously through those black eyelashes. All he needed was a horned helmet and a sword.

She told him her view and he laughed at her. 'You've got your periods all muddled up. It was the Vikings who wore horned helmets and the Celts who had long faces. I think the earlier chaps who built these graves must have been rather short fellows. Most of them are just five foot. This one is exceptional.'

'Please get out of it,' she begged, not liking to see him lying on that sheep-cropped turf.

She picked up the basket and left the circle of graves. Up here the wind blew fiercely and if she looked up the sky seemed so close one could almost touch it, moving overhead in a troubled confusion of clouds and wind. Below the valleys were green and fertile, lying trapped in sunlight like a fly in amber, with dark pools of shadow where there were trees in the sides of fields, and cows moving pon­derously in a slow procession.

She found a sunwarmed hollow in the side of the hill just below the brow on the side less visited by the wind and sank down on the short turf. Gideon dropped down beside her, stretching his long legs with a sigh.

'This is nice.'

She spread out

the food on the white cloth they had brought and Gideon lazily leaned over to take a leg of chicken. 'I'm hungry again,' he said.

'It's almost twelve,' she said, surprised at how rapidly the morning had gone. It had been eight when they ate their breakfast.

A lark hovered high overhead, the small wings seeming not to move at all, so that it appeared to hang there as if suspended by a string. Song poured from it and Marina lay full length to stare up at it, shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand.

The grass under her back was warm and smelt delicious. Out of the wind it was languidly hot and she half wished for the shade of one of the trees down in the valley; there was no cover up here. She peered at Gideon. He was neatly stripping the meat from his chicken, his white teeth even and efficient.

'Cannibal!' she said.

He looked at her with charm in his face, his eyes wrinkled in amusement. 'Aren't you going to eat?'

She yawned. 'Too lazy.'

He wrapped the chicken bone in a piece of paper and put it in the basket, then shifted to get some cheese and a digestive biscuit.

'Here you are, lazybones,' he said in a deep, dark brown voice at her side.

She took her hand away from her eyes and saw his black head blocking the sky above her. For a few seconds her heart raced oddly. Gideon stared down at her. She looked into the black eyes and then down at the hard, sensual mouth.

As he bent forward she knew he was going to kiss her. It was a gentle kiss, soft and exploratory, almost a question, as if Gideon were unsure.

When he drew back Marina said a little breath­lessly, 'I think I've met you in another life.'

'Do you believe in reincarnation?' he asked, laughing.

'I've never thought about it, but...'

'But what?' he asked quickly, watching her.

'Have we met before?' she asked him.

Gideon stared down at her. His face had that oriental emptiness again, his black eyes bottomless, unplumbable.

'What makes you think we have?'