Manly Wade Wellman - John Thunstone 01 (21 page)

 
          
“You’ve
studied prehistoric paintings?” asked Thunstone, interested.

 
          
Hob
Sayle plodded in, in his white coat. “Dinner is served,” he proclaimed.

 
          
“Thank
you,” said Ensley, rising. “Will you come along with me? What we’ll have today
is fairly simple, even unimaginative. One might say, a representative company
dinner in a plain old English home. But I’ll warrant it’s well cooked. Come on
then, follow me.”

 
          
He
escorted Gonda toward the inner door. Thunstone followed. Ensley seated Gonda
at the head of the table, with himself and Thunstone to either side.

 
          
Mrs.
Sayle brought in a tureen, from which she ladled jellied madrilene into bowls
for each. Ensley took up a tall bottle and studied the label.

 
          
“Ah
yes, this is a Portuguese red article. I found some and thought it quite good,”
he said. “I hope you’ll think the same.”

 
          
Sayle
took the bottle and poured a trifle into Ensley’s glass. Ensley sniffed it
expertly, tasted it, and nodded his head. Sayle went to fill Gonda’s glass,
then
Thunstone’s, then returned to finish filling Ensley’s.

 
          
The
madrilene was good and flavory. The three of them finished it and Sayle fetched
in a great platter with a splendid-looking rib roast of beef. Ensley took up
knife and fork and carved with skill.

 
          
“Gonda,
my dear, I know you prefer a rare inside slice,” he said.
“How
about you, Mr. Thunstone?
Rare, or well done at the end here?”

 
          
“I
don’t have a choice,” said Thunstone.

 
          
Plates
were sent along with generous slices of meat. Mrs. Sayle appeared to offer a
dish of squares of hot Yorkshire pudding, another of small roast potatoes,
still another of
brussels
sprouts with butter sauce.
Everything was excellent.

           
“You did wrong to call this a simple
dinner, Mr. Ensley/' Thunstone said. “It's as fine food as I've had since I
came to
England
.”

           
“When I was a boy, we had a dinner
of this sort every Sunday,” said Ensley. “How glad I am that you enjoy it. Will
either of you have more? No? All right then, Mrs. Sayle, the dessert.”

           
Hob Sayle cleared away the dinner
plates, and Mrs. Sayle came in with dishes of strawberries on bits of cake like
rich, slightly sweetened American biscuit. The strawberries were crowned with
cream so thick as to be clotted, and they were as sweet as sugar. Thunstone
praised them, and so did Gonda. Ensley went on with his discussion of the past
as they ate.

 
          
“I
say that my family has traditions that go back too far to be easily believed,”
he told them.
“Things that have been passed down by word of
mouth, from long before the invention of writing.
From back when Claines
existed here, under what name has not survived, and its men took their stone
weapons to hunt deer and geese, and more baleful game like bear and wild cattle
and wild swine.”

 
          
He
said that in a calm, matter-of-fact tone, as though commenting on something
that had happened only the other day.

 
          
“Yes,”
Thunstone agreed, appropriately as he hoped. “Wild cattle and hogs must have
been formidable.”

 
          
“Formidable's
the right word,” said Ensley.
“Strong, fierce animals.
They must have taken a considerable taming in later centuries, and at the time
we speak of they took a considerable killing. No wonder they were both
worshipped as symbols of power—the bull and the boar. And there were other
menaces in those ancient thickets —the bears and wolves. But those men had to
hunt if they hoped to eat. There was no agriculture here as yet. Ten thousand
years ago, it was having its beginnings in the Middle East, but that old
aftermath of the last Ice Age still lingered here—short growing seasons, fierce
winters. Nobody grew grain or kept herds. They only hunted. And the women
gathered what wild fruits and nuts they could find, and edible leaves and
seeds.”

 
          
Plainly
Ensley expected to be believed. Thunstone could give himself no good reason to
doubt.

 
          
“And
all this is part of your family tradition/’ he said to Ensley. “These people
you tell of in the Stone Age, they’re your ancestors.”

 
          
“They’re
the ancestors of all
Britain
,” said Ensley. “Celts came in later, and
Romans and Saxons and Danes and
Normans
, to mingle. But the old blood remains.”

 
          
“Did
any of their language descend?” Thunstone asked. “Naturally they had language.
Did some of their words come down to the present?”

 
          
“One
word at least.
A name, to be explicit.”
Ensley paused
as though for effect. “Gram,” he said suddenly.

 
          
Gonda
drew in her breath. “Gram,” she repeated. Thunstone waited.

 
          
“And
so, as you see,” went on Ensley, “my given one is an old one. Back in the
beginning, it was the name of a god. There has always been someone named Gram
in my family.” He turned his gaze on Thunstone. “Do you think I’m talking
foolishness?” he challenged.

 
          
“I
hope that I’ve indicated no such thing,” said Thunstone.

 
          
“See
here,” said Ensley, “if we’ve all had enough dinner, why don’t we go back to
the sitting room for our coffee? We can talk more comfortably there. And if you
remain skeptical, perhaps I can manage to convince you.”

 
          
They
rose with him and walked back to the sitting room together. Hob Sayle followed,
balancing a silver tray with a coffee pot, three delicate china cups, a cream
jug, and a sugar bowl. He set the tray on a central table.

 
          
“Now,
Hob, will you bring in that decanter of brandy?” said Ensley. “Sit down,
please. Gonda, maybe you’ll pour for us.”

 
          
Gonda
filled the cups. “Cream?” she asked Thunstone.
“Sugar?”

 
          
“Neither,
I thank you,” he replied, taking his cup. Gonda and Ensley both took cream and
sugar. Hob Sayle brought in another tray, with a tall dark bottle and three
little silver cups, not greatly larger than thimbles. Ensley unstoppered the
bottle and filled the little cups. He lifted his own.

 
          
“I’ll
propose a toast, and I hope you’ll join me,” he said. “I drink to the nature of
reality.”

 
          
They
drank. The brandy, too, was excellent. They returned to their coffee.

 
          
“Will
you take a good cigar, Mr. Thunstone?” invited Ensley.

 
          
“Thank
you, I have my pipe,” said Thunstone.

 
          
Gonda
chose a long white cigarette from an enameled box on the coffee table.
Thunstone filled his pipe and Ensley lighted a cigar. They finished their coffee
as they talked.

 
          
“I’ll
admit, Mr. Thunstone, that some of my claims sound extravagant,” said Ensley.
“About how old Claines
is,
and how old my people are
in Claines. Gonda here has heard me on the subject, and I think she’s more apt
to credit me.”

 
          
“I
haven’t questioned anything, have I?” Thunstone appealed. “I’m intrigued,
naturally, but that’s all. I take a great interest in everything you say here.”

 
          
“We
have spoken of visions,” reminded Ensley.
“Visions of ancient
times, back beyond man’s memory.
Gonda can speak to those if she will.”

 
          
“Yes,”
said Gonda, blowing out a pale thread of cigarette smoke. “I have always been
able to see into the past. Yes, I paint and play the piano, and I have been on
the stage, but I am also a psychic. I have demonstrated that fact to scholars
of the occult.”

 
          
“Which
is how I met her, in
Stockholm
,” contributed Ensley. “
Which is why I have invited
her to Claines, to help in my study of beginnings here.
And she has been
most helpful. You’ve admired her paintings, Mr. Thunstone. I
wonder,
I dare ask myself, if there isn’t something in them that you find—shall we
say—reminiscent.”

 
          
He
watched Thunstone expectantly. Thunstone looked at the paintings.

 
          
“I
suppose it’s time for me to admit that I’ve had sensations of what Claines used
to be,” said Thunstone. “I’ve never called myself psychic, but I’ve done
considerable research in the field of the supernormal. At night here, when it’s
fully dark, I’ve felt the force of antiquities.”

 
          
“Felt,”
Ensley echoed him.
“Felt.
And perhaps seen?”

 
          
“Well,
yes.
That, too.”

 
          
“You
have seen,” said Ensley, frankly eager. “I knew it from what you’ve said and
what you’ve left unsaid.”

 
          
“Have
I been as obvious as all that?” asked Thunstone.

 
          
“It
may be that I recognize the sensitivity in you,” said Ensley. “Because I, too,
can see into a far backward reach of man’s life on earth.”

 
          
“I’ve
told you that Constance Bailey can do the same.”

 
          
“Constance
Bailey would have been invited here long ago,” Ensley half snorted, “but she’s
chosen to be my enemy. She claims witch powers, second sight. She’s tried to
spread rumors about me. She’s tried to use spells against me. I’ve cast her
out. Nor do I hold with David Gates’s pretenses to scholarship about this
community and its history and prehistory. I’ve heard that he threatened in his
sermon today to be downright violent at the turning of the Dream Rock tonight.”

 
          
“Yes,”
said Thunstone. “He was quite emphatic.”

 
          
“Hardly
the way for a churchman to act and speak,” said Ensley. “And you, sir, you promised
to come and help him.”

 
          
Hob
Sayle must have run to Ensley with that news.

 
          
“I
did say that I’d be there,” admitted Thunstone.

 
          
Gonda
had refilled their brandy cups. “May I offer a toast?” she said.
“To no violence.”

 
          
“Hear,
hear,” said Ensley, and again they drank together. Ensley got up.

 
          
“Mr.
Thunstone,” he said, “it’s high time for me to show you that I don’t speak idly
about records going back to Stone Age times.”

 
          
“Ten
thousand years ago,” said Thunstone once more.

 
          
“That long ago, if you wish.
Will you and Gonda come with
me, then, down into the cellars of Chimney Pots? I promise that you’ll find
them interesting.”

 
          
Ensley
raised his voice: “Hob Sayle!” he called.

           
Sayle came from the dining room.
“Sir?”

           
“Get those electric lanterns,”
ordered Ensley.
“Both of them.”
“Yes,
sir.”
Sayle bustled away somewhere and was back with the lanterns. They
were impressive lanterns, a foot and a half high, with tubular glass all the
way around and bails to carry them by.

           
“Give me one,” said Ensley, reaching
his hand for it. “You keep the other. Now then, Gonda, Mr. Thunstone, follow
me.”

           
They went into the hall, Sayle
bringing up the rear. Ensley led the way to where, at the back, rose a massive
door of ancient varnished planks. It had a dull brass lock, in which was a key
that looked hand- hammered. Ensley turned the key. The lock rasped powerfully
and Ensley drew the door toward him and went into darkness beyond. As he did so
he turned on the light he carried.

 
          
“Be
careful on these steps,” he warned. “They're very old—how old they are is one
of the things I can't surely tell you about Chimney Pots. But Ensleys were
using them before the time of
Elizabeth
. The first
Elizabeth
, I mean, the great
Elizabeth
. Turn on your lantern too, Hob.”

 
          
Sayle
obeyed. Ensley went downward, between masonry walls that clung close on both
sides of a narrow descent. Thunstone looked back at Gonda, but she motioned him
to go ahead of her, then she followed. Sayle came behind her. The glow of the two
electric lanterns danced and crept around them. The steps under Thunstone's
soles were narrow and rough, and he was careful in his going down. Gonda's hand
rested on his shoulder.

           
“I’ve been here before,” said her
voice in his ear, “but it's a dubious descent.”

 
          
“Yes,”
he agreed.

 
          
They
came out on some sort of landing. The walls were farther apart here. To either
side, Thunstone saw shelves cut into rock, and upon them rows of bottles, lying
flat, one upon the other.

 
          
“Our
wine cellar,” Ensley informed them. “My people have always been serious about
their wine. Even during the war, we were able to keep a good selection here.”

 
          
“The
wine we had at dinner was splendid,” said Thunstone.

 
          
“But
we’re on our way to an older selection yet,” said Ensley. “Come on, and here we
have more stairs. Be rather careful of these, too.”

 
          
He
was right in giving that warning. The steps beyond the wine cellar seemed to be
uneven slabs and chunks of rock, roughly plastered into place, and the walls to
either side were not of masonry. They seemed to be steep faces of rough stone.
Thunstone kept a hand on the one to his right, and Gonda fairly clutched his
shoulder. They followed Ensley down, down. Thunstone counted more than thirty
steps to another fairly flat surface below.

 
          
“Here
we are, then,” proclaimed Ensley.
“More or less.”

 
          
He
lifted his lantern high. Thunstone could see a sort of gallery, rock walls and
ceiling that had the look of some ancient wash of water. The walls looked
splotched.

 
          
“Mr.
Thunstone, you and I have touched on the fact that nobody knows of any
important cave paintings in
Britain
,” Ensley was saying. “That’s because nobody
has been allowed to see these except for members of my family. Oh yes, Gonda
has been down here, and you’ve seen an effort she made to do a picture inspired
by them. But except for her, you’re something of a first here.”

 
          
He
took a couple of steps forward and directed his light on a rise of the wall.
“Here,” he said, “
what
do you think of this?”

 
          
Thunstone,
too, came forward. He looked and Gonda came beside him and looked.

 
          
Over
the rock was spread a huge picture that at once jogged his memory. It was done
in primitive tints, blacks and browns and reds, perhaps worked up from earths
of various colors. There the whole scene was, the mighty bull with spears
jutting from it, blood pouring from it, charging at the hunter who poised
another spear for a cast. A study of that scene was upstairs in Ensley’s
drawing room.

 
          
“Gonda
copied this,” said Thunstone at once.

 
          
“I
tried,” said Gonda, gazing half-prayerfully. In her black clinging dress, she
looked just then like some sort of priestess. “I cannot say if I succeeded.”

 
          
“What
you did was impressive,” Thunstone assured her.

 
          
“I
think I should have tried to use the same paints,” Gonda said. “These primitive
ones, worked up from earths and charcoals and powdered rocks. Maybe I can try
again.”

 
          
“Maybe,
but look here at the next picture,” Ensley urged them.

 
          
He
held his lantern above his head. Its glow revealed another upward surge of the
rock, with upon it a stir of various shapes, each shape with its own tinge.

 
          
“I
do not like the snakes,” said Gonda unhappily, and at once Thunstone saw them,
twining here and there across the surface. There were half a dozen sprawling
bunches of them, their coils and writhings manifest, their heads strongly
defined with the deep-set eyes and lumpy jowls that denoted poisonous reptiles.
They seemed to be wriggling among plants with leaves and blooms, red, yellow,
and blue.

 
          
“I’ve
not been able to try an impression of this,” Gonda confessed.

 
          
“Because
of the snakes, but the snakes have their place in the concept,” said Ensley.
“Eve pointed this out before, Gonda. We have here the spring of the year.
Because snakes come out in the spring, along with the spring
flowers.”

 
          
“I
do not like snakes,” she said again. “I am afraid of them.”

 
          
“Then
come along to the next picture. You’ve seen that too, my dear; you don’t turn
sick from it.”

 
          
They
had come into a wider corridor in the rock, Thunstone could see by now. Ensley
led them around a turn of the way, and again held up his lantern to reveal a
painting on the rock.

 
          
This
was truly colorful. It had a background of sorts, a smearing of green strokes
and patches. Against that showed figures in red brown.

 
          
An
antlered animal with slender legs was manifestly a stag. It was shown in
graceful motion, its head was clearly recognizable as a deers,
its
antlers were traced to curved points. Behind it followed
another deer, smaller and without antlers, plainly a doe. Behind the doe, a
fawn balanced on slender legs.

 
          
“If
that other was meant to be spring, this is summer,” said Thunstone.

 
          
“Exactly,”
said Ensley. “The symbolism of nature, do you see?
And the
work of skillful Stone Age artists.
England
has such work after all, Mr. Thunstone; the
musty scholars just haven't seen it as yet. I've kept it hidden here under my
house. Probably you'll call me selfish.”

           
“I won't guess at your motives,”
Thunstone told him. “But tomorrow, two friends of mine intend to come to
Claines. Professor Leslie Spayte of the
University
of
London
—”

           
“Yes, I've seen some things he's
written,” said Ensley. “A hard laborer in the field of paleontology, though he
has much to learn. Tomorrow, you say? But by then, the Dream Rock will have
been turned. And who's your other friend?”

 
          
“His
name is Philo Vickery.”

 
          
“I
don't know it.”

 
          
“Philo
is a novelist. He writes about antiquarian and folklore subjects. He'd like to
develop into a sort of latter-day Thomas Hardy. And he'd love to see these
treasures.”

 
          
“Tomorrow
may be too late for him to come,” said Ensley cryptically. “Look along the
bottom border of this summer scene, Mr. Thunstone, and tell me what you see.”

 
          
Thunstone
looked. “A long row of what looks like small hands, done in black pigment,” he
said.

 
          
“Five-fingered
hands, is that right? Count them.”

 
          
Stooping,
Thunstone did so. “Eighteen hands,” he said after a moment. “And a single
stroke at the end of the line.”

 
          
“And
eighteen times five is—” prompted Ensley.

 
          
“Ninety,”
said Gonda. “Gram you showed me these pictures, but never that line of hands.”

 
          
“Ninety
plus one is more or less the number of days in a summer,” said Ensley. “Had I
called your attention to it, you'd have seen a similar row of five-fingered
hands at the bottom of the one for spring. Those old people, you begin to
understand, had a good sense of the progression of the seasons. Now look across
here, at the wall opposite/’

 
          
He
swung his lantern that way. Another picture leaped into view.

 
          
This
was brightly colored, great splashes of ocher and two shades of red, with here
and there touches of russet brown. There seemed to be an effort to depict
autumn leaves in rich, contrasting tints. Upright black streaks indicated the
trunks of the trees that bore these glories, and below them were more huddles
and swirls of color, as though to represent fallen leaves. But the focus of the
scene was a pair of stags, vigorously locking antlers in a lively
representation of a fight.

 
          
“Then
this is autumn,” said Thunstone at once. “The season of what American Indians
called the Mad Moon.
When stags fight, sometimes to the
death.”

 
          
“That
action is marvelous,” said Gonda raptly. “In fall, the
hreinn
—the reindeer will fight, yes and sometimes kill each other,
in
Norway
. Even those we think are tame.”

 
          
“And
another string of hand-figures to count the days,” said Thunstone, pointing.
“Winter, I suppose, is the next mural.”

 
          
“It
is indeed the next,” said Ensley. “Right here, just beyond autumn.”

 
          
The
scene his lantern showed them was rather narrow from side to side, and most of
it was so pallid as to seem blank. But that, Thunstone saw quickly, was to
represent snow, and a lot of it. If the artist had worked ten thousand years
ago, winters were bitter then, frequently with blizzards. Central in the
composition stood a snow- burdened tree, plainly an evergreen, for there were
blotches of spinach-colored foliage visible through the clots of snow upon the
branches.

 
          
At
the foot of the tree half-sprawled, half-crouched something massive and dark.
It was recognizable as a bear, and from it jutted a long black line that would
have to be the haft of a spear that transfixed it. Off to the side, not
so
immediately noticeable as the tree and the bear, stood
two rather sketchy human figures. One of them held another spear, raised and
ready to throw. They were hunters, in at their kill.