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Hubert.’
    ‘That’s here too.’ James ran his finger across a block of text. ‘St Hubert is the patron saint of hunters. His key was supposed to be a cure for rabies. It was a metal
bar or nail with a decorative head. Priests would heat up the key and place it on the wound to cauterize and sterilize it.’
    ‘My wounds have all healed up. You’ve seen the scars.’
    James looked up from his pages again.
    ‘An old traveller woman worked on them,’ explained Webster. ‘Open and red the first day, closed the next. She used an ointment which I was supposed to keep rubbing on.’
He stood the bottle of water in the well between them and dug out a small glass pot from a trouser pocket and twisted off the black plastic top. Spots of granular yellow paste were dried out around
the rim. James smelt hints of beeswax and sugar and olive oil. ‘It worked for my face too,’ said Webster, running a finger down the scar on his cheek. ‘I caught it on a fence in
the dark after I escaped from them.’
    James studied the scar on the man’s face as though still unable to believe it. And then he smoothed down the fold in the pages, making them crackle.
    ‘It says here the key was used for other reasons too. To cure all sorts of evil,’ he said, sifting through the pages until he found what he was looking for. ‘The nearest church
dedicated to St Hubert is in Dorset. I printed out directions. It’s a couple of hours according to Google.’
    ‘A church? I haven’t been to one of those in a while.’
    ‘Neither have I. Not since I went with Mum. We used to go most Sundays. She said it made a difference.’
    ‘Did it?’
    When James didn’t answer, Webster screwed the cap back on the bottle of water, and put it in his greatcoat pocket along with the ointment, and gripped the steering wheel. ‘Your seat
belt,’ he said as he turned the key in the ignition and pushed up the indicator to turn out on to the road. James reached round for the belt and dragged it down and clicked the metal head
into the plastic socket below his hip. He ran a hand up and down the line of grey webbing across his chest.
    ‘Do you think he’ll be glad to see us?’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘You know.’ James jabbed a finger at the ceiling of the car. ‘It’s a church after all.’
    Webster thought about that for a while as they trundled up the road and then he turned and looked at the boy.
    ‘As long as you haven’t done anything to piss him off,’ he said and smiled. But James did not smile back. He bunched up his shoulders then dropped them down as he sighed so it
seemed to Webster that he was melting into nothing.
    ‘He pissed me off first,’ James said.
    Webster nodded. He listened to the car wheels grumbling in the springs of his seat.
    ‘Yeah. I guess he did.’
    They kept to the minor roads. Sometimes the hedges running beside them opened up and they could see great expanses of fields blocked out in different colours and shapes, rising
and falling according to the land. Pylons ran empty tramlines in the blue. Telegraph poles broke the horizon at intervals like staples punched by some giant hand to prevent the earth and the sky
from breaking apart. James touched the scar beneath his hairline, which was all that was left of the accident, and it was like pressing a button that fired up thoughts in his head. He tried not to
think what his mother would say about him sitting in another car, in another time, having left Timpston far behind.
    Webster was still nervous about the travellers. Occasionally, he would pull the car into a lay-by and turn off the engine and wait, scrutinizing any vehicle that passed them. James had given up
asking him how the men would know where they were.
    Eventually, they stopped for petrol. A small garage on the edge of a village with three white pumps the size of refrigerators in the forecourt and potholes in the asphalt, full of black
rainwater.
    Inside, the grey linoleum floor was scuffed with years of