Kit was a silent companion, only speaking the words of the wards when he needed to do so, but he did not seem to be affected in the same way. Perhaps he had unusual reserves of power. He did, however, offer Tom some water from a leather flask and an apple as they walked, and Tom took them gratefully, enjoying the crisp freshness of the fruit and the coolness of the water more than he ever had.

He checked his phone, feeling the compulsion to connect to someone else, to text Fred, scroll through the social media sites. Kit flinched when he saw the phone.

‘I bid you – put that away.’

‘“I bid you”? Is that some Suffolk thing?’

Kit grimaced, and Tom shoved the phone back into his pocket, where it made an uncomfortable bump against his thigh.

There was still no signal. The only high ground he could see was the mound in the centre of the wood. He decided to go and visit it soon, picturing himself standing there in the sun on his tiptoes, squinting, stretching his phone up into the air.

As they returned to the farmhouse, which lay as if crouching on the island, he felt completely exhausted. It was about half past four. He thought he could eat a whole loaf of bread.

Drinking a mug of tea by the range and swallowing down some hot toast, he thought he might email Fred and his guardian and Fletch, and said, ‘I don’t suppose you have WiFi here?’

Kit grunted.

‘A dial-up modem?’ He sipped deeply from his mug. Surely that was possible, even out here in the sticks.

But Kit simply left Tom alone in the kitchen with only a curt instruction not to bother the Master.

There was only the ticking of the clock and the sound of the birds.

When he’d finished his tea and found a chocolate biscuit, he wandered through the farmhouse. Though it appeared completely deserted, he half-hoped he might run into his uncle. He wanted to see more of Jack’s rooms and the strange things in them, and to ask him about the wards and his parents. He wondered idly where Zita might be.

The ground floor was very sparse. There was the kitchen, with its old range; this was fairly well kept, being at least free of the dust and cobwebs that seemed almost an intrinsic part of the rest of the house.

The entrance hall was the main room on the ground floor. There was a tattered leather armchair by the fireplace, a lit lamp on a round table beside it, some tapestried straight-backed chairs and a largeish window looking out onto the bridge and the wood. The candles still stood in a line, now blown out. Bookcases occupied either side of the fireplace, full of leather-covered volumes. Some of them appeared to be in languages that Tom had never seen or heard of.