“We’d better go and take a look,” someone else suggested, “but for heaven’s sake stay together. We don’t want to lose anybody in the bog.”

We made our way slowly up the hill, calling as we went. No sound answered us. As we reached the top of the hill, the mist suddenly stirred and parted and I found myself looking at a sheet of black water, upon which a group of swans was swimming peacefully.

A swan, I thought. Maybe that could have been the white flapping thing that came at us. Probably defending its territory. I had known swans to be aggressive before. I wondered if it had similarly attacked the master and caused him to be thrown from his horse. We picked our way around the lake until we came to an area on the far side where the grass was an unusually bright green. Having grown up on the Scottish moors I knew a bog when I saw one and I knew what would happen to anyone foolish enough to venture onto that bright green grass. He would instantly find that his feet were trapped in thick, sucking mud. He would feel himself sinking. The more he struggled, the deeper he would sink. I had known bogs to swallow a horse or a steer in a few minutes.

We sat on our horses, not moving, just staring at the green grass as it merged into black water.

“You don’t think . . . do you?” someone ventured to say at last.

“Not possible,” someone retorted. “The master knows this area like the back of his hand. He warned us himself to stay clear of the bog, didn’t he? He wouldn’t have gone anywhere near it.”

“And yet his horse was found up here,” someone else pointed out.

“Well, there’s no sign of him now,” the second speaker declared. “My bet is that he tried to jump too big a wall and the horse threw him, then took off on its own.”

“That’s what I’d surmise too,” another rider said. “Let’s divide up and search the entire area.”

We were divided into teams of two and set off in different directions. After an hour or so of combing the wild and rocky terrain, calling futilely, we assembled again, with disappointing results. Nobody had seen any trace of the man.

“Of course he could have been knocked cold and is lying among the bracken,” someone said.

The big man who had organized the search shook his head. “He wouldn’t be out cold for a couple of hours, surely.”

“Then he could have recovered, realized he’d lost his horse and made his way down to the road on foot, hitched a lift and gone home.”

“Yes. Perhaps he did that,” several voices agreed. Everyone seemed eager to prove that their worst fears had not come true. Lady Hawse-Gorzley assembled us and we made our way home, hardly saying a word.

* * *