The Abbey Farm Curse. Ch.8.

The Abbey Farm Curse

Chapter Eight.

I didn't have a bad night's sleep all things considered. I had expected to have it disturbed from thwarting the intentions of whatever power it was that was trying to rule our lives, but in the end all that actually troubled me was a dream, though it must be said it was a strangely unsettling dream. I can only remember a fragment clearly, but in that fragment Angie was naked and lying on a stone slab with her legs apart. By her side was my mother pleading with me to fuck Angie but with me being unable to comply 'cos I didn't have a hard on. I've no idea how the scene proceeded, because that crazy fragment is all I remember of it. I had a feeling the dream meant something, but I didn't have a clue what, and I don't really think I wanted to know either - real life was rapidly becoming weird enough without adding any bizarre dreams to it. I told the girls about it at breakfast to see if they had had anything similar, but I'd been the only one to experience such a dream. And they did give me some funny looks as I related the experience.

But they had both heard someone asking for them before they went to sleep. Angie said she clearly heard me telling her to strip off and get ready for a good seeing to, which is not my way of saying things at all, and Willow was equally certain Angie had asked her to come and help her masturbate. We had, we all admitted, indulged in a little do it yourself and we had all enjoyed it, as well as getting a weird kind of satisfaction in defeating our paranormal adversary, which was how we now looked upon the force within the house. It was quite an interesting conversation, for it revealed just how surprisingly much we were now all on the same wavelength. It also revealed just how correct our assumptions had been and how powerful the house really was.

In the light of that I wanted to take the conversation further and to see what we thought might happen now, but just as I opened my mouth to ask the workman arrived early, knocking perfunctorily on the front door before marching straight in and manhandling drums of chemicals into the ground floor.

'Back in a minute,' I said with an angry and frustrated sigh, and stood up to go down and sort them out.

For one thing I was deeply annoyed at their untimely interruption, and for another I wasn't at all pleased at their walking in before being asked and I intended to tell them so. They needed to be reminded that this was not simply a building site but also someone's home, and I'm afraid they got both barrels complete with a sharp practical lesson in manners.

By the time I was back both Angie and Willow had finished and were clearing away the breakfast pots, and now I had something else on my mind. I stood with my back to the sink and gave them the bad news.

'They're going to inject the damp course this morning and they want us to either go out or seal ourselves into upstairs so we won't breathe in the chemicals, which would you prefer?'

I was pretty sure a way could have been found around that choice, as our vacating the premises had never been mentioned before, but my insisting the men go back out into the yard taking all their equipment with them and then making them knock on the door properly before being readmitted had probably not made them too cooperative.

'Out.'

They said it almost simultaneously, and I was of the same mind. The weather was far too nice to be cooped up for the morning.

'Okay, so where would you like to go?'

'Let's go over to the ruins,' Willow suggested. 'We've not had a proper look around since we got here.'

'Okay, but not to the church.'

She looked at me a little oddly as if to say she wasn't that stupid. Angie just chuckled quietly.

I thought I knew the best place for a quiet chat and I led them there. It was a shallow bowl shaped and nettle filled depression left by an old dried up pond where the twin forks of the ridge came together. With a bit of imagination it could be described as if a giant snake's tongue was scooping up a saucer. There we would be out of sight of the house and the ruins, with only the tallest part of the old church likely to be visible. We would have all the privacy we needed while in front of us would spread the entire countryside to the east, right over the village where June lived and as far as the nearest town.

As we walked across I gazed at the church ruins sticking up and wondered vaguely if that place had the same kind of time-portal powers as the bedroom hotspot, hoping that it didn't. It was a question that was to be answered more quickly than I could have expected. We dropped onto the grass under the depression's rim and above the nettle line, where we would be out of sound and sight of the house.

'We're not likely to be disturbed here, and we aren't in the house so we won't get sent into the past either.'

It was as if a switch had been thrown, the same roaring darkness closed in for a third time. 'But we haven't even touched each other' I remember thinking as the world closed down, then 'looks like it works anywhere'. It was as if the place was pointing out that, regardless of our wishes or intentions, it would send us spinning away whenever and from wherever it felt like it.

My first sensation when my mind began to clear again was one of utter peace, almost as if my surroundings were telling me not to be afraid when I opened my eyes. I'd not had any real sense of fear the other times, and I had even less this time, as if I knew, before even my sight cleared and I was able to see where I was, that I was welcomed, that we all were, and that we had nothing to worry about. Strange, isn't it, but the feeling was so strong that I was almost glad we'd been shifted again, even before I knew where to. I also knew now that the entire abbey site could play with time, not just the house.

'I wish you'd learn to keep your bloody mouth shut.'

Angie's muttered remonstration was the first thing I was aware of when my hearing returned and before I'd properly got my sight back. But, like the general feeling of tranquillity I was experiencing, it came across without malice, an affectionate dig rather than a genuine complaint.

The fog slowly lifted to give me vision again, and I became slowly cognisant that time had changed a lot this time, a whole lot. And I wasn't the only one to notice.

'Where the blue blazes are we now?' Willow sounded more curious now than scared, though a tremor of anxiety sounded behind the words. This was, after all, her first experience of the abbey's habit of time warping.

'The same place we were before clever-clogs there told us we wouldn't be taking this trip.' There was no such anxiety in Angie's scathing reply, consternation maybe, but no nerves.

'How was I to know this would happen?' I complained. 'But it proves what we said about the place getting stronger, doesn't it?'

'Maybe everywhere is hot now, do you think?' Angie asked.

'Could be.' I didn't go on, I didn't want to think about it.

I looked around, wondering not so much 'where' we were as 'when' we were, and it was instantly obvious this was a much earlier time, because there was nothing at all that we recognised. Instead of a weed infested depression we were all lying on the bank of a crystal pool, its waters sparkling and dancing in the dappled sunlight that filtered through the trees on its banks. In the clear water fish swam and plants flourished around the edge except where a small dais, like a fishing platform, was built into one side. Clearly we were in the very distant past, but we had no idea exactly when.

'It's a good job we stayed near the edge,' Angie observed. 'Or we'd all have to be bloody mermaids.'

'Isn't it nice here?' Willow cocked her head to one side and smiled, nerves gone. 'I don't mind this at all. Is this what it was like for you two?'

'A bit more scary than this, Will.' Angie told her. 'This is quiet in comparison to the first couple of times.'

Obviously the feeling of welcome and wellbeing was shared by all of us. None of us were showing any sign of fear now, only an air of adventure reminiscent of a kid on holiday. For a moment that worried me, seeming too good to be true until I realised the blissful feeling itself was the only thing I was worried about. I thought that if the abbey itself was deliberately responsible for everything that was befalling us, then this sensation seemed to say that it wished us no harm. I could easily tell myself it had invited us here and would take care of us, and that it had understood our self-denial message and this was its reply. But, I was still cynically wondering if it had tried to put us at ease for a reason.

'At least we didn't have to have sex this time.' I commented.

'That's probably because I'm here.' Willow replied, pouting disgustedly.

I didn't think so; I was more for putting it down to the steadily increasing power of the place.

Angie had climbed the rim of the depression to look across to where the farm would stand in 'our' time and called to us to look at what she could see.

'Ye gods!' She exclaimed as she looked over the edge. 'What the hell is that?'

'That' was an Iron Age village! Not an archaeological reconstruction or a Flintstones type theme park, but the real thing. The edges of the prominence had been raised into a defensive earthwork all the way around, and inside were around a dozen or so authentic roundhouses, along with the stockades, fences, small turf-thatched buildings and everything else you might expect to see in a genuine Iron Age settlement, including people blithely going about their daily tasks as if they really existed. I had to pull myself up short at that thought, because, of course, in their time, they did.

The various houses and huts filled the plateau of the ridge from just in front of us beside the pool to where our own farmhouse would eventually stand, and in that exact spot stood the largest of the roundhouses, some kind of chieftain's home I suspected. It was certainly impressive, and from this distance it looked like a giant straw cone standing on low walls with smoke drifting from its point. The silly thing was that, even though it was completely alien to Abbey Farm as we knew it, it didn't seem at all out of place.

'Bloody hell! It's an Iron Age village and they're roundhouses. They're what people used to live in before they could build proper houses.' I must have sounded as if I'd dropped back into teaching mode, albeit a somewhat startled teaching mode.

'This is a very long time ago then, isn't it?' Asked Angie.

'It looks like it,' I answered, instinctively whispering even though I was sure nobody could hear us. 'Although I wouldn't like to say how long ago.'

'Is it prehistoric times, do you think?' Willow asked.

'Just about, I think. Probably around about the time of Christ and a little before the Romans got here, maybe a bit before that even.'

I wasn't too sure of my facts, but I seemed to remember the Iron Age in Britain ran from around seven or eight hundred BC. until the Roman invasion. Well within the loose definition of prehistory as far as the still illiterate British Isles were concerned.

'Oh! Look at that!'

Angie's startled exclamation made me look at her and then follow her eyes right round to the far north-eastern end of the twin forked ridge. There, right at the end of the northern branch, at the highest point and where the abbey church would eventually be built, was a group of trees, maybe ten or a dozen, obviously deliberately planted to form a circle, within which stood something looking like a diminutive section of Stonehenge.

The trees were planted right on the edge of the ridge about twenty feet apart. They were mostly yew and by their size of that slow growing species they had clearly been there for some considerable time. There were other species interplanted around them, but I'm no botanist and wouldn't like to hazard a guess about those. The structure they enclosed was an arc made up of four upright stones, about seven or eight feet tall and five or six feet apart, and spanned by three similar stones laid horizontally over them as lintels, built exactly like a small and partial edition of Stonehenge. In front of this lay one slightly larger stone, roughly shaped into an eight feet by three by three oblong block clearly intended as some kind of altar. I'd heard stories about Celtic druidic practices and shivered at the thought of its possible uses.

'You know, this is weird!' Angie exclaimed suddenly.

When we looked at her for an explanation she went on.

'It's religious, isn't it, that grove? And it's in exactly the same place as our church is. So nothing has really changed, has it? Especially as the biggest of those straw houses is built almost exactly where the farm house was ... I mean will get built later on... has been built later? Oh, you know!'

'Hmmm,' I said thoughtfully, as a 'something' flitted hazily through my mind, pushed into the background by amusement at Angie's use of the description 'straw houses'.

'I know it sounds silly, but there's something here looks familiar.'

The two girls looked at me strangely for a moment, but refrained from making the obvious remark about my sanity. I shrugged the impression away, shaking my head in annoyance.

'If no-one can see us, why don't we have a look around the village?' suggested Willow.

That surprised me, especially considering her usual tendency towards nervousness. But something about this place and time still prevented any of us from feeling the slightest bit worried and it sounded like an excellent idea, so we trooped off along the side of the hill, skirting the main part of the village and following the ramparts that edged the ridge. The strangest thing about the walk was that, although we were chatting and commenting with each other, we were able to walk through a little flock of geese without any of them so much as raising their heads in alarm. Knowing what good watchdogs geese make, that was really spooky.

A little way along we started to hear self-conscious female laughter, you know the kind of thing I mean, the sort of giggling that can only come from a girl in male company. It seemed to come from over the earthworks and slightly down the hill, and, adventurous and inquisitive as always, Angie had to go and see what it was all about.

'Hey guys,' she called. 'Come and take a look.'

She had the excited amusement of a schoolgirl catching her parents in a clinch, so Willow and I scrambled up alongside her and peered over the rampart. There, out of sight in a slight undulation in the slope, were three young people, two men and a woman, all naked. All three looked to be around their mid-twenties, the woman well built with long flowing hair and large pillowy breasts, and the men with the spare muscular bodies of an active lifestyle and both sporting long drooping moustaches that framed their mouths. They also both had the spiked red-blonde hair of the Celtic warrior and one carried a long white scar across his upper arm as if to confirm his calling.

We gazed over the rim, watching eagerly as the woman lay on her back with a man to either side, each of whom were apparently sucking at one of her breasts while at the same time reaching a hand between her legs. Judging by the relative positions of the two hands and the movements they were making, it seemed one man was playing enthusiastically with her clitoris while the other was pistoning his finger in and out of her pussy, and she was obviously enjoying every minute of it.

We sat on the edge of the bank and openly watched, secure in the knowledge that nobody could know we were there, no matter how ill-concealed we might be.

'That's something I've never tried,' Angie said with a sigh.

'Uh! Wait till Rhys gets here and you probably will. Knowing you, you'll do him and Gary at the same time.' Willow told her with what I interpreted as a tiny trace of jealousy in her voice. Maybe she still hadn't quite forgiven Angie for sleeping with me.

'For god's sake, you two!' The exchange was going down roads I had no wish to explore at that moment.

'She was only joking.' Angie looked at me as if that should have been obvious.

'Well don't,' I answered. 'It's bad enough as it is, don't you think?'

'Look at this.' Willow interrupted, bringing our attention back to the trio in the grass.

One of the men had rolled onto his back, holding his very hard and erect cock upright between two fingers as the girl clambered aboard. It was obvious what she intended to do and we all heard a distinct sigh of satisfaction as she slid herself onto the vertically presented shaft. She began to rise and lower herself on her partner's cock, slowly at first but then more and more quickly until she was thumping herself on his belly, her long honey blonde hair bouncing in time to her movements. All the time she was fucking her partner she was alternating a look of aroused concentration with flicking quick happy smiles at the other man, who knelt beside the pair playing with his own erection, completing a tableau of unashamed eroticism. Each time she plunged down onto the man's shaft she let out a little 'oh', part pleasure and part effort, and soon these little noises started to get louder and less restrained, signalling her approach to orgasm. We watched fascinated, all of us, I think, expecting her to cum before her partner and wondering if she would carry on and let him finish.

In the event we were right, she let out a long cry and thrust herself hard down on him, her body shuddering and shaking with the tremors of a climax, her hands pushed flat against his chest and her toes digging into the grass to give herself purchase. When she was done she lifted herself a little without dislodging his cock and leaned forward to place her hands either side of his shoulders. Then with her hair hanging down as a kind of curtain around both of their faces she let him begin driving up into her pussy, fucking her with short hard thrusts of his hips.

That didn't last long, he must already have been close to coming because in a very short time he was stabbing at her pussy with uncoordinated jerking thrusts and letting out little grunts and moans of his own, culminating in an animal like roar as his backside lifted from the grass to help shoot his cum into her as deeply as possible. He gave several hard deep thrusts like the first one and then collapsed back onto the grass, apparently spent and empty. She remained still for a few moments and then, as his softening cock slipped from her pussy, she shuffled backwards on her hands and knees until her face, still hidden under a curtain of hair, was roughly level with his crotch. Then she lowered her head to his groin and raised her behind, presenting her now cum-leaking pussy to the other man.

The second warrior had obviously been waiting for this movement, because he immediately knelt behind her and, guiding his cock into her pussy he gripped her hips and began to thrust into her sodden hole.

'I see some things haven't changed,' Angie observed, raising her eyebrows.

'No,' I told her, grinning. 'Women have always been greedy.'

She stuck out her tongue.

I think she intended to make some reply, but before she could come up with anything suitably caustic we were interrupted by an angry shout from behind us. For a moment we all froze, thinking we had for once become visible and looking at each other in sheer terror before we realized the shout had not been directed at us, but at the naked trio below us. We looked around to see a large middle aged man in plaid trousers and a brown tunic and wearing the same kind of moustache as the others. But he was not laughing as they had been; he was red-faced and shouting furiously.

The words he shouted might as well have been in Martian as any language we knew, but even though it came to us as gibberish we still knew exactly what he was saying. It was so strange, like having an instant translator in your ear telling you what each unfamiliar sound meant. But then, perhaps in this context very little translation was really needed, his meaning perfectly clear without his words and helped by the mean looking axe he was carrying.

'Verica. Caswallon,' He shouted, naming the two men, 'get you out of my daughter. Go sow your oats where they might be sought after, but I have no wish for your seed polluting my family!'

The two young warriors scrambled to their feet, grabbed their clothes and ran laughing along the side of the slope, leaving the shamefaced girl to climb back up the ramparts to her angry father. We would all loved to have known what reception she received, naked and clearly used by the two men, but that was the moment the abbey decreed should be the end of our stay and the white noise accompanying our dissolving vision drowned out anything else her father had to say.

This time the ending was different too. As we regained our senses we had a further shock because we hadn't been transported home. Instead we seemed to have gone even further back. We were in the depression beside the pool again and a quick look over the rim told us we were in woodland, old woodland, woodland that had not been planted by man -- the wildwood of ancient times, and it was beautiful. Gone now were the building, fences, and ramparts of the Iron Age village, and still missing were any part of the abbey and its buildings. In fact there appeared to be nothing man made at all.

'This didn't happen before,' Angie complained, more puzzled than bothered.

The pool was surrounded by trees and bushes on three sides, hushed and still, with only the sound of birdsong to break the silence. We lay gazing around us in awe and wonder of the place, soaking up the peace and solitude of the ancient woodland. In fact, we were so taken by the sudden transformation that we almost missed the fact that we were not alone by the poolside. It was Angie who saw them first, silently tugging at my sleeve and kicking at Willow's shins to draw our attention to them.

Diagonally across from us, where no trees grew and grass ran down to the water's edge, knelt a man and a woman, a young couple, completely unclothed, the man reverently holding a polished bronze sword across his hands and gazing deep into the waters. The woman knelt beside him, resting back on her heels and watching him quietly with her hands on her thighs. Behind them, at the top of the bank, was a bundle of clothing, showing they had deliberately undressed for their actions. Then even as we watched, speaking softly to himself, the man raised his face to the sky for a few moments before leaning over and deliberately placing the sword in the water, allowing it to slip from his fingers with a little nudge to send it further from the shore. For a moment the bronze glittered in the sunlight, and then it was gone.

I felt goose bumps along my arms, knowing that I was being allowed to watch a votive offering to a pagan god and I was witnessing a scene played out long before the abbey was even envisaged. Nor was it a routine sacrifice, that sword was obviously of the highest quality and must have represented considerable wealth. It was a simple ceremony, but must have held the utmost significance to the couple celebrating it.

'My god! I think we're in the Bronze Age now,' Willow said breathlessly. 'It's got to be ages before the village we just saw.'

'I wonder what it means.'

Angie spoke my own thoughts and spoke them quietly as if the couple, still kneeling silently by the pool, might hear her. For some reason their reverence had rubbed off on us and there was no way we could have disturbed and desecrated the moment.

'Let's go a bit closer.' She suggested. 'And see if we can hear what he's saying.'

The man was still speaking softly, gazing in turn up to the sky and down into the pool. He was clearly praying intently, while all the time his woman knelt quietly by his side, her eyes downcast as if in sorrow.

'But we won't understand them.' Even as I said it I knew I was wrong and that we would understand, as easily as if they were speaking English, exactly as we had their Iron Age descendants.

We tiptoed around the edge of the pool and settled ourselves down again at the edge of the trees and about four yards short of where they knelt. None of us wanted to go any closer, not because we were scared of being seen but simply because we would feel we were intruding on a very private moment, and so we quietly sat down again and watched at this distance, even though we were still not quite within clear earshot.

It was strange listening to an obviously different and very unfamiliar language and yet comprehending it. Not that we could hear very much, but what we could hear we understood, and we could make out that the sword was an offering given in an effort to make a marriage fruitful. We were silently witnessing a quiet and personal fertility rite, and we felt our hearts go out to the barren couple. After the man had finished speaking he turned to his partner, smiled, and then, sweeping his long hair from his face, he stood and took her hand, raising her gently to her feet. Hand in hand the pair made their way up the bank, ignoring us, although we would have been in plain view if we'd been visible to them, and stood gazing silently into each other's eyes at the top. Then the man released his partner's fingers and spread a woollen blanket on the ground, stepping back and indicating it to her with a sweep of his hand. Smiling at her man the woman laid herself on the blanket and held her hands up to him, opening her thighs at the same time.

Angie gasped and Willow flung her hand to her mouth as, like me, they realised the couple's intentions. The previous times we had witnessed sex acts through our intermittent window in time we had watched without ever worrying about the people we were spying on, but this time was different. This time we felt out of place and almost ashamed of ourselves, but we couldn't help but watch as they began to make love. We knew instinctively that this was actually the last act in a fertility ritual that they had just conducted, a ritual they hoped would give them a child, and we were both privileged and condemned by seeing it. The woman sighed as he entered, her vagina accepting him gratefully, letting him sink deep into her easily and smoothly. She looked affectionately into his eyes as he began thrusting gently into her willing body, the love they shared clear on both of their faces.

'That's beautiful.' Willow's voice was nearly a whisper.

I couldn't find words. I was so struck by the love and yearning shared by these long dead people, almost to the point where my eyes were ready to mist over. He was gazing deep into his loved one's eyes as he stirred, with a happy and affectionate smile playing over his mouth. She was holding him close, her arms wrapped tightly around his shoulders, her legs around his waist so that her heels dug into his bottom as he moved within her. It was, as Willow had said, beautiful to watch.

It wasn't long before his movements became more insistent, his thrusts more urgent and his breathing quicker. Meantime she had laid her head back on the blanket, as if surrendering to his conquest, with her mouth half open and her eyes closing ecstatically before opening again to gaze warmly up into his. Then, as his thrusts became harder and faster, she clung to him with her eyes closed and with little whimpers of pleasure in her throat. He was getting closer to his climax, closer and closer until, with a deep animalistic growl, he pushed hard into her, his eyes closing in satisfaction as he emptied himself into the depths of her womb. Her whimpers were louder at this point coming more quickly until they ran together into one long keening wail of joy. None of us were sure if she had orgasmed or if the noise was simply her satisfaction at receiving his seed, but afterwards we were all hoping she had become pregnant. Their love deserved it.

When it was over the couple lay panting in each other's arms, not moving, not speaking, sharing the moment silently. He lay spent, his head resting on her shoulder, his chest heaving and his legs trembling slightly from the passion, while she still held him close with her arms still tight around him, as if trying to retain his cock within her for as long as possible. Apart from Willow's earlier spontaneous and extremely appropriate remark we had watched the whole thing in respectful silence, aware of the sacred nature of their lovemaking, and now it was over and we began to speak again it was in awed whispers. We were all overcome by the emotion of the experience.

'I do hope it worked for them.' Willow was the first to comment, bringing tiny nods of agreement from myself and Angie. 'You know. It was fantastic to see lovemaking instead of just shagging.'

She had summed it up neatly again.

'We've been allowed to see something through to the end too, and I'm so glad we were.' I voiced the thought that was still going through my mind. 'There must be a reason for it.'

'Right now I don't care about any reason, I just want someone to make love to me like that.' Angie had a lump in her throat as she spoke.

The couple stirred for the first time as he rolled away from his partner, taking hold of her hand as he lay on his back beside her. Their sweat shiny bodies looked lovely in the dappled sunlight, carrying a distinct air of tranquillity and serene triumph that even somehow carried through to give his cock, soft now and slick with their combined juices, an appearance of quiet pride. I know it sounds ridiculous, but that is exactly how the couple looked to us, proud, calm, and happy, especially when, a minute or so later, they turned their heads simultaneously to look at each other and smiled a smile of pure contentment.

That was the moment when fate, the place, time, or whatever it was that was giving us these glimpses of the past, chose to send us back to the present day, much to our intense regret. Even as the familiar noises began in our ears we felt, for the first time, a distinct feeling that this time we didn't want to go.

The sudden transition from mystic woodland with its dappled shade and soft breezes to the harsh light of the full sun on open grassland was disconcerting. At least on the other occasions we had been deposited back into much the same environment, even if of a different time, and the contrast made us regret leaving the Bronze Age couple and their magical world even more. We sat on the grass feeling more than a little disorientated for a little while, and then Willow was, as usual, the one to sum things up.

'Thank you.'

She seemed to be addressing the sky, and both Angie and I looked at her a bit puzzled for the moment.

'I was only saying thank you to the abbey for being allowed to see what we witnessed, that's all.'

She sounded slightly defensive, even though she was really voicing all our thoughts. Then she went on. 'After what you told me I thought I'd be petrified if it ever happened to me, but I wasn't the least bit scared, only excited and maybe a little bit humbled.'

'You know,' Angie mused. 'It really got to me. That was pure romance and it was so delightful. I wonder why we were shown that.'

'It's the abbey's doing, isn't it?' Willow put in suddenly. 'It knows we've begun to understand that it wants something and it's letting us know. I think that it'll find a way to let us know just what it wants before too long. Maybe it's doing it deliberately.'

Willow's theory sounded very plausible, I found myself nodding in meditative agreement even as my brain tried to go along with the massive intuitive leap she had just made. She was endowing the place not only with purpose, but with the intelligence to communicate.

'You could be right there,' Angie agreed, 'and there is one thing I'm very pleased about.'

'What's that?' Willow asked, getting in a split second ahead of me.

'Look where we are. We're exactly where we were when we started our time journey.'

'So? We ended up back at the same place last time too. We already know that.'

'So we walked about while we were there, then we went round the pool to get closer to the couple, but we've still been returned to our original spot.'

'And?' Willow still couldn't see where she was heading but I was beginning to understand. I'd noticed Angie and I had returned to where we started in the Victorian episode, but forgotten to mention it. Now the implications were obvious.

'And... If we'd been sent back into this time from where we'd been in the past, we could end up inside a locked room in the present, or worse still, trying to occupy the same space as wall that has been built since. Is that what you mean?' I asked.

'Well, no actually. Nothing as gruesome as that. I was just thinking it proves that we don't actually move at all. It's what we thought; just a window and we only look through it.'

'Ah!' Willow got the message. 'I see what you mean. But why do you think we were shown those scenes from before the abbey existed?' She asked abruptly, her grasshopper mind allowing her to change the subject without preamble and then to answer her own question. 'Do you think this was to show us that the place started off pure and wholesome, but it got contaminated somewhere along the way?'

'You know, that could very well be the answer,' I said, looking at her in a kind of admiration at her perception. 'But don't think of those times as idyllic because they weren't. Life was hard, hard and short, and often bloodthirsty.'

'Maybe, but perhaps they were innocent at that time too.'

'How can they be innocent if they were so bloodthirsty?' Angie asked, puzzled.

'I didn't mean innocent in that way, but innocent of whatever it was that spoiled the place, because that hadn't happened yet.' Willow told her.

We were talking around in a circle, but behind it was the germ of an answer.