For three days he hung there, raving and sobbing at what he saw, at what he knew was happening, would happen. They gave him laudanum to quiet him, forcing it down his throat when he twisted his head aside in a vain effort to refuse further dreams. Don’t send me back there! he wanted to scream at them. He is hunting her, stalking her as a hunter stalks a doe! Waiting for her to come. But these words he dared not say aloud, for Catherine’s sake, for Vixie’s and his own. Wotan was near. Wotan was present, was there, not just in England but less than half a mile distant, lying open-eyed in his coffin in the crumbling chapel of Carfax, blood-stained hands folded on his breast. Waiting. Peace came with nightfall and moonrise, for in those hours Wotan’s mind was elsewhere, occupied with the business that men occupied themselves with during the day. The sense of re-lease, of relief, was nearly unbearable.
