In the end I’d come up with one of those messy compromises. As Brock had written, you couldn’t get the genii locorum to do something as simple as negotiate a contract; symbolism had to be involved. An oath of fealty was out of the question, and a cross-dynastic marriage was too cruel a fate for either Mother or Father Thames. So I suggested an exchange of hostages, a confidence-building measure to cement ties between the two halves of the river; a suitably mediaeval solution designed to appeal to two people who definitely still believed in divine rights. It was a typically English compromise held together by string, sealing wax and the old god network. I’d like to say that I remembered the practice of exchanging hostages from school history classes or from stories of pre-colonial life in Sierra Leone, but the truth was that it came up while playing Dungeons and Dragons when I was 13.
‘Why does it have to be me?’ Beverley had said after she’d found out.
‘It can’t be Tyburn,’ I’d said. You don’t inflict Tyburn on anyone as a gesture of peace and goodwill. And Brent is too young.’ There were other daughters, some the spirits of rivers I’d never heard of and one, a plump, smiley young woman, whose formal name was the Black Ditch. Not that anyone called her that. I figured that Mama Thames thought Beverley was the least likely to cause her embarrassment among the yokels. The hostage from the other side was called Ash, whose river’s principal claim to fame was that it ran past Shepperton Film Studios.
The exchange was scheduled to take place on the evening of 21 June, Midsummer, at Runnymede. Our host was Colne Brook, son Colne who was also the father of Ash – the tributaries of the Thames can get pretty tangled, especially after two thousand years of ‘improvements’。 I suspected that the real organisational brains would be Oxley – he wouldn’t want to leave anything to chance. This was confirmed when a series of hand-printed signs appeared beside the road as I negotiated the tricky bit through Hythe End, which guided us neatly down a cul-de-sac lined with semis which terminated in a gate and an impromptu car park.
Isis met us at the gate with a bevy of teenage boys all dressed in their Sunday best who scampered eagerly over to the Jag and demanded to be allowed to carry the luggage. One straw-headed scamp asked for a fiver to guard the Jag itself – I promised him a tenner just to be on the safe side, payable on my return, of course.
Isis hugged Beverley, who was finally persuaded to relinquish her death grip on her cosmetics bag, and led her through the gate into the fields beyond. Father Thames had his ‘throne’ near the priory in the shade of an ancient yew tree. Around him were arrayed his sons, their wives and grandchildren in all their donkey-jacketed and sideburned glory. All of them silently watched our approach as if Beverley were a reluctant widow in a Bollywood melodrama. The throne itself was constructed of old-fashioned rectangular hay bales, of the type I happen to know are no longer common in British farming practice, draped with elaborately embroidered horse blankets. For this occasion the Old Man of the River had been stuffed into his best suit, and his beard and hair combed until it was just scruffy-looking.
I followed Beverley and Isis as they stepped before the throne. I’d coached her the day before, all day, but Isis still had to show her the way – a deep curtsey with head bowed – before Beverley followed suit. The Old Man of the River caught my eye and then, very deliberately, touched his hand to his chest and then extended his arm, palm facing down – the Roman salute. Then he climbed off his throne, took Beverley’s hands in his own and raised her up.
He welcomed her in a language I didn’t understand, and kissed her on both cheeks.
The air was suddenly full of the scent of apple blossom and horse sweat, Tizer and old hose pipes, dusty roads and the sound of children laughing, all of it strong enough to make me take a step backwards in surprise. A wiry arm snaked round my shoulders to steady me, and Oxley slapped his hand on my chest in friendly rib-bending fashion.
‘Oh, did you feel that, Peter?’ he asked. ‘That’s the start of something, if I’m not mistaken.’
‘Start of what?’ I asked.
‘I have no idea,’ said Oxley. ‘But summer is definitely in the air.’
I couldn’t even see Beverley amid the throng of Old Man’s people. Oxley drew me away from the crowd to introduce me to the other half of the hostage swap. Ash turned out to be a young man half a head taller than me, broad of shoulder, clear of eye, noble of brow and empty of thought.
‘Have you got all your things?’ I asked.