"Well?" I asked.

"Well, you're a very lucky man to be alive, and not only alive but here in this house and not in a loony-bin. The stuff in that bottle contained probably the most potent hallucinogen that has ever been discovered, and other substances as well which he isn't even sure of yet. Professor Lane was apparently working on this alone: he never took Willis fully into his confidence."

A lucky man to be alive, possibly. Lucky not to be in a loony-bin, agreed. But much of this I had told myself already, when I first started the experiment.

"Are you trying to tell me", I asked, "that everything I've seen has been hallucination, dug up from the murky waste of my own unconscious?"

"No, I'm not," he said. "I think Professor Lane was on to something that might have proved extraordinarily significant about the workings of the brain, and he chose you as guinea-pig because he knew you would do whatever he told you, and that you were a highly suggestible subject into the bargain." He wandered over to the table and finished his cup of coffee. "Incidentally, everything you've told me is just as secret as if you had spilt it into the Confessional. I had an initial struggle with your wife to keep you here, instead of sending you in an ambulance to some top chap in Harley Street who would have bunged you straight into a psychiatric home for six months. I think she trusts me now."

"What did you tell her?" I asked.

"I said you had been on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and suffering from strain and delayed shock owing to the sudden death of Professor Lane. Which, you may agree, is perfectly true."

I got up rather gingerly from my chair and walked over to the window. The campers had gone from the field across the way, and the cattle were grazing once again. I could hear our own boys playing cricket by the orchard.

"You may say what you like," I said slowly, "suggestibility, breakdown, Catholic conscience, the lot, but the fact remains that I've been in that other world, seen it, known it. It was cruel, hard, and very often bloody, and so were the people in it, except Isolda, and latterly Roger, but, my God, it held a fascination for me which is lacking in my own world of today."

He came and stood beside me at the window. He gave me a cigarette, and we both smoked awhile in silence.

"The other world," he said at last. "I suppose we all carry one inside us, in our various ways. You, Professor Lane, your wife, myself and we'd see it differently if we all made the experiment together — which God forbid! He smiled, and flicked his cigarette out of the window. I have a feeling my own wife might take a dim view of an Isolda if I took to wandering about the Treesmill valley looking for her. Which is not to say I haven't done so through the years, but I'm too down to earth to go back six centuries on the off-chance that I might meet her."

"My Isolda lived," I said stubbornly. "I've seen actual pedigrees and historical documents to prove it. They all lived. I've got papers downstairs in the library that don't lie."

"Of course she lived," he agreed, "and what is more had two small girls called Joanna and Margaret, you told me about them. Little girls are more fascinating sometimes than small boys, and you have a couple of stepsons."

"And what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing," he said, "just an observation. The world we carry inside us produces answers, sometimes. A way of escape. A flight from reality. You didn't want to live either in London or in New York. The fourteenth century made an exciting, if somewhat gruesome, antidote to both. The trouble is that day-dreams, like hallucinogenic drugs, become addictive; the more we indulge, the deeper, we plunge, and then, as I said before, we end in the loony-bin."

I had the impression that everything he said was leading up to something else, to some practical proposition that I must take a grip on myself, get a job, sit in an office, sleep with Vita, breed daughters, look forward contentedly to middle-age, when I might grow cacti in a greenhouse.

"What do you want me to do?" I asked. "Come on, out with it."

He turned round from the window and looked me straight in the face.

"Frankly, I don't mind what you do," he said. "It's not my problem. As your medical adviser and father confessor for less than a week, I'd be glad to see you around for several years to come. And I'll be delighted to prescribe the usual antibiotics when you catch the flu. But for the immediate future I suggest that you get out of this house pretty quick before you have another urge to visit the basement."

I drew a deep breath. "I thought so," I said. "You've been talking to Vita."

"Naturally I've talked to your wife," he agreed, "and apart from a few feminine quirks she's a very sensible woman. When I say get out of the house I don't mean for ever. But for the next few weeks at least you'd be better away from it. You must see the force of that." I did see it, but like a cornered rat I struggled for survival, and played for time.

"All right," I said. "Where do you suggest we go? We've got those boys on our hands."

"Well, they don't worry you, do they?"

"No… No, I'm very fond of them."

"It doesn't matter where, providing it's out of the pull of Roger Kylmerth."

"My alter ego?" I queried. "He and I are not a scrap alike, you know."

"Alter egos never are," he said. "Mine is a long-haired poet who faints at the sight of blood. He's dogged me ever since I left medical school."

I laughed, in spite of myself. He made everything seem so simple. "I wish you had known Magnus," I said. "You remind me of him in an odd sort of way."

"I wish I had. Seriously, though, I mean what I say about your getting away. Your wife suggested Ireland. Good walking country, fishing, crocks of gold buried under the hills…"

"Yes," I said, "and two of her compatriots who are touring around in the best hotels."

"She mentioned them," he said, "but I gather they've gone — got fed up with the weather and flown to sunny Spain instead. So that needn't worry you. I thought Ireland a good idea because it only means a three-hour drive from here to Exeter, and then you can fly direct. Hire a car the other side, and you're away."

He and Vita had the whole thing taped. I was trapped; there was no way out. I must put a brave face on it and admit defeat.

"Supposing I refuse?" I asked. "Get back into bed and pull the sheet over my head?"

"I'd send for an ambulance and cart you off to hospital. I thought Ireland was a better idea, but it's up to you."

Five minutes later he had gone, and I heard his car roaring up the drive. The sense of anti-climax was absolute: the purge had been very thorough. And I still did not know how much I had told him. Doubtless a hotch-potch of everything I had ever thought or done since the age of three, and, like all doctors with leanings towards psychoanalysis, he had put it together and summed me up as the usual sort of misfit with homosexual leanings who had suffered from birth with a mother complex, a stepfather complex, an aversion to copulation with my widowed wife, and a repressed desire to hit the hay with a blonde who had never existed except in my own imagination. It all fitted, naturally. The Priory was Stonyhurst, Brother Jean was that silken bastard who taught me history, Joanna was my mother and poor Vita rolled into one, and Otto Bodrugan the handsome, gay adventurer I really longed to be. The fact that they all had lived, and could be proved to have lived, had not impressed Doctor Powell. It was a pity he had not tried the drug himself instead of sending bottle C to John Willis. Then he might have thought again.

Well, it was over now. I must go along with his diagnosis, and his holiday plans as well. God knows it was the least that I could do, after nearly killing Vita.

Funny he hadn't said anything about side-effects, or delayed action. Perhaps he had discussed this with John Willis, and John Willis had given the O.K. But then Willis didn't know about the bloodshot eye, the sweats, the nausea and the vertigo. Nobody did, though Powell may have guessed, especially after our first encounter. Anyway, I felt normal enough now. Too normal, if the truth be told. Like a small boy spanked who had promised to amend his ways.

I opened the door and called for Vita. She came running up the stairs at once, and I realised, with a sense of shame and guilt, what she must have been through during the past week. Her face was drained of colour and she had lost weight. Her hair, usually immaculate, was swept back with a hasty comb behind her ears, and there was a strained, unhappy look in her eyes that I had never seen before.

"He told me you had agreed to come away," she said. "It was his idea, not mine, I promise you. I only want to do what's best for you."

"I know that, I said. He's absolutely right."

"You're not angry, then? I was so afraid you'd be angry." She came and sat beside me on the bed, and I put my arm round her.

"You must promise me one thing," I said, "and that is to forget everything that's happened up to now. I know it's practically impossible, but I do ask you."

"You've been ill. I know why, the doctor explained it all," she said. "He told the boys too, and they understand. We none of us blame you for anything, darling. We just want you to get well and to be happy."

"They're not frightened of me?"

"Heavens, no. They were very sensible about it. They've both been so good and helpful, Teddy especially. They're devoted to you, darling, I don't think you realise that."

"Oh, yes, I do," I said, "which makes it all the worse. But never mind that now. When are we supposed to be off?"

She hesitated. "Doctor Powell said you'd be fit to travel by Friday, and he told me to go ahead and get the tickets. Friday… The day after tomorrow."

"O.K." I said, "if that's what he says. I suppose I'd better move about a bit to get myself in trim. Sort out some things to pack."

"As long as you don't overdo it. I'll send Teddy up to help you."

She left me with the best part of a week's mail, and by the time I'd been through it, and chucked most of it into the waste-paper basket, Teddy had appeared at the door.

"Mom said you might like some help with your packing," he said shyly.

"Good lad, I would. I hear you've been head of the house for the past week, and doing a fine job."

He flushed with pleasure. "Oh, I don't know. I haven't done much. Answered the phone a few times. There was a man called up yesterday, asked if you were better and sent his regards. A Mr. Willis. He left his number, in case you wanted to ring him. And he left another number too. I wrote them both down."

He brought out a shiny black notebook and tore out a page. I recognised the first number — it was Magnus's lab — but the other one baffled me.

"Is this second one his home number, or didn't he say?" I asked.

"Yes, he did say. It's someone called Davies, who works at the British Museum. He thought you might like to get in touch with Mr. Davies before he went on holiday."

I put the torn page in my pocket, and went along with Teddy to the dressing-room. The divan bed had gone, and I realised what the dragging sound had signified the night the doctor came: the bed had been moved into the double room and put under the window.

"Micky and I have been sleeping in here with Mom," said Teddy. "She felt she wanted company."

It was a delicate way of putting that she wanted protection. I left him in the dressing-room pulling things out of the wardrobe, and picked up the telephone receiver beside the bed.

The voice that answered me, precise and rather reserved, assured me the owner's name was Davies.

"I'm Richard Young," I told him, "a friend of the late Professor Lane. You know all about me, I believe."

"Yes, indeed, Mr. Young, I hope you are better. I heard through John Willis that you'd been laid up."

"That's right. Nothing serious. But I'm going away, and I gather you are too, so I wondered if you had anything for me."

"Unfortunately nothing very much, I'm afraid. If you'll excuse me a moment, I'll just get my notes and read them out to you."

I waited, while he put down the receiver. I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was cheating, and that Doctor Powell would have disapproved.

"Are you there, Mr. Young?"

"Yes, I'm here."

"I hope you won't be disappointed. They are only extracts from the Registers of Bishop Grandisson of Exeter, one dated 1334, the second 1335. The first relates to Tywardreath Priory, and the second to Oliver Carminowe. The first is a letter from the Bishop at Exeter to the Abbot of the sister-house at Angers, and reads as follows: 'John, etc., Bishop of Exeter, sends greeting with true kindness of thought in the Lord. Inasmuch as we expel from our fold the diseased sheep which is wont to spread its disorder, lest it should infect our other healthy sheep, so in the case of Brother Jean, called Meral, a monk of your monastery at present living in the Priory of Tywardreath in our diocese, which is ruled by a Prior of the Order of Saint Benedict, on account of his outrageous abandonment of all shame and decent behaviour, in spite of frequent kindly admonitions — and because, alas, as I am ashamed to say (not to mention his other notorious offences), he has nevertheless become more hardened in his wickedness — we have therefore, with all zeal and reverence for your order and for yourself arranged to send him back to you to be subjected to the discipline of the monastery for this evil behaviour. May God Himself maintain you in the rule of this flock in length of days and health.'"