His hand over my mouth had smelled of chip-fat and his breath stank of cigarettes.

It had taken a moment or two for my poor slow brain to register the fact that - in the words of Grandmother Yolanda - This Is Not A Drill.

Appropriately, of course, it was also Grandmother Yolanda who had organised those self-defence classes which had left me with (to adopt Yolanda's words again) the chance to set the agenda for my encounter with this scumbag.

I had waited until he'd stopped hauling me backwards and I found my footing (I think he tried to throw me down, but I was holding tightly onto his arm with both my hands), then I'd raked my foot smartly down his nearest shin - and was thankful for my heavy, farm-sensible boots - and stamped down on his instep with all my might and weight; I was surprised at how loud the snap was.

He dropped me and screamed; I did not even have to use the six-inch hat-pin which Yolanda herself had presented me with and which I carried in the lapel seam of my travelling jacket, only its little jet-beaded head showing.

The man lay curled up on the shaded brown earth; a skinny fellow with longish black hair, a shiny, synthetic black jacket sporting two white stripes, faded blue jeans and muddy black training shoes.  He was clutching his foot and sobbing obscenities.

To my shame, I did not stay and try to reason with him; I did not tell him that for all his weakness and wickedness God still treasured him and - if he only chose to look for it - there was an intense, enhancing and unending love to be found in the adoration of the Divinity which would assuredly be infinitely more satisfying than some short physical spasm of pleasure, especially one achieved through the coercion and subjugation of a fellow human being and so entirely lacking in the glory of Love.  Indeed what I thought of doing at the time was kicking his head very violently several times with my heavy, sensible boots while he lay there helpless on the ground.  What I actually did was search for my hat (while keeping one eye on him as he crawled away, whimpering, further into the bushes) and then having found it and dusted it off, go down to the sunlit river and wash my face to get rid of the smell of chip fat and stale cigarette smoke.

'I shall tell the police!' I shouted loudly towards the wind-loud trees, from the path.

I did not, however, and so was left with a nagging feeling of guilt on several counts.

Well, that is water under the bridge, as they say, and I can only hope that the poor man attacked nobody else and found an un-depraved outlet for his love in the worship of our Maker.

I completed drying my hands on my jacket, and continued on my way.

I arrived back in High Easter Offerance to find disturbance and alarums, a disaster in the making and a War Council in progress.

CHAPTER THREE

The next morning, while the dawn was still just a grey presence in the quiet mists above, I splashed into the waters of the river just downstream from the iron bridge, my feet squelching through the chill mud under the brown water.  On the steep bank above, under the sombre canopy of the drooping trees, in a silent, massed presence, stood almost every adult of our Community.

I heaved myself up and into my rubber coracle while Sister Angela steadied the dark craft.  Brother Robert handed her the old brown kit-bag from the shore and she passed it on to me; I placed it in my lap.  My boots were hung round my neck on tied laces, my hat was slung over my back.

Brother Robert slid into the water too; he held my little boat and passed the trenching tool to Sister Angela, who delivered it into my hands; I unfolded it and locked the blade into place while she used the cold river water to clean my feet - which stuck out over the edge of the giant inner-tube - and then dried them slowly and reverently with a towel.

I looked up at the others, standing watching on the shore, their collective breath hanging in a cloud above their heads.  Grandfather Salvador was in the midst of them, a white-robed focus within their darkly sober penumbra.

Sister Angela was passed my socks, which she carefully put on my feet.  I gave her my boots and she laced those up too.

'Ready, my child?' our Founder said quietly from the shore.

'I am,' I said.

Sister Angela and Brother Robert were looking round at my Grandfather; he nodded, and they pushed me firmly away from the bank and out towards the centre of the river. 'Go with God!' Sister Angela whispered.  Brother Robert nodded.  The current caught my odd craft and started to turn it and draw me away downstream.  I dipped the trenching tool into the silky grey waters, paddling to keep my Brothers and Sisters in view.

'Go with God - with God - Go - God - Go with - God - with God - God - with - Go…' the others whispered, their mingled voices already half lost in the river's gurglings and the lowing of distant, awakening cattle.

Finally, just before the river bore me around the tight bend downstream and out of sight, I saw Grandfather Salvador raise his arm and heard his voice boom out over all the others; 'Go with God, Isis.'

Then the inner-tube entered an eddy and I was spun around, the world whirling about me.  I paddled on the other side and looked back, but the river had swept me away from them, and all I could see were the reeds and bushes and the tall black trees, hanging over towards each other from each bank of the mist-wreathed river like monstrous, groping hands.

I set my mouth in a tight line and paddled away downstream, heading for the sea and the city of Edinburgh, where my mission would take me first to the home of Gertie Fossil.

'What?' I asked, appalled.

'Your cousin Morag,' Grandfather Salvador told me, 'has written from England to say that not only is she not returning for the Festival at the end of the month, but she has found what she calls a Truer Way to God.  She has sent back our latest monthly grant to her.'

'But that's terrible!' I cried. 'What false faith can have poisoned her mind?'

'We don't know,' Salvador snapped.

We were in the Community office across the mansion landing from Salvador's quarters; my Grandfather, my step-aunt Astar, Allan Sister Erin, Sister Jess and I.  I had just returned from Dunblane; I still held my travelling hat.  I had been crossing the boundary back into our lands when I saw Brother Vitus running towards me along the old railway track; he stood, breathless, telling me I was required urgently at the house, then we ran back together.

'We must write to her,' I said. 'Explain to her the error of her thoughts.  Have any of her previous letters given any hint of the exact nature of her delusion?  Is she still living in London?  Brother Zebediah is still there, I believe; could he not talk to her?  Shall we call a Mass Prayer Session?  Perhaps she has lost her copy of the Orthography; shall we send her another?'

Allan glanced at my Grandfather, then said, 'I think you are missing the point here a little, Is.' He sounded tired.

'What do you mean?' I asked.  I put down my hat and took off my jacket.

'Sister Morag is important to us in many ways,' Astar said.  Astar is forty-three, a year younger than her Sister Calli, and as lightly European looking as Calli is dark.  Tall and sensuous, with long, glossy black hair braided to the small of her back and large eyes hooded by dark eyelids, she is the mother of Indra and Hymen.  She dresses even more plainly than the rest of us, in long, simple smocks, but still manages to exude elegance and poise. 'She is most dear to all of us,' she said.

'The point is,' Salvador cut in - Astar's head dipped deferentially and her eyes half closed - 'that while I'm sure we care as much for Sister Morag's soul as for any of our number and so feel the grief of her apostasy most keenly, and would in any event do all we can to bring her back to the fold with all due speed, there is the more immediate result of Morag's desertion, namely, what do we do about the Festival?'