The House on the Strand (10 page)

She smiled at the young monk, who responded with one glance from his expressive eyes, and I wondered if he too, like the absent Sir John, had found favour during the weeks of her husband's illness. Between them, Roger and the monk, they made a package of the bowls, wrapping them in sacking, and all the while I could hear the murmur of voices from the hall below, suggesting that Lady Ferrers had recovered from her fit of crying and was in full spate again.

"How is my brother Otto taking it?" asked Joanna.

"He made no comment when Sir William suggested that interment in Bodrugan chapel would be preferable to the Priory. I think he is hardly likely to interfere. Sir William proposed his own church at Bere as an alternative."

"To what purpose?"

"For self-aggrandisement, perhaps—who knows? I would not recommend it. Once they had Sir Henry's body in their hands there could be meddling. Whereas in the Priory Chapel—"

"All would be well. Sir Henry's wishes observed, and ourselves at peace. I look to you to see there is no trouble with the tenants, Roger. The people have no great love of the Priory."

"There'll be no trouble if they are treated well at the funeral feast," he answered. "A promise of mitigation of fines at the next court and a pardon for all misdemeanours. That should content them."

"Let us hope so." She pushed aside her frame and, rising from her chair, went to the bed. "Is he living still?" she asked. The monk took the lifeless wrist in his hand and felt the pulse, then lowered his head to listen to his patient's heart.

"Barely," he answered. "You may light the candles if you will, and by the time the family has been summoned he will have gone."

They might have been talking of some wornout piece of furniture that had lost its use, instead of a woman's husband on the point of death. Joanna returned to her chair, took up a piece of black veiling, and began to drape it round her head and shoulders. Then she seized a looking-glass made of silver from the table near at hand.

"Should I wear it thus", she asked the steward, "or covering my face?"

"More fitting to be covered," he told her, "unless you can weep at will."

"I have not wept since my wedding-day," she answered. The monk Jean crossed the dying man's hands upon his breast and fastened a linen bandage about his jaw. He stood back to observe his work, and as a finishing touch placed a crucifix between the folded hands. Meanwhile Roger was rearranging the trestle table. "How many candles do you require?" he asked.

"Five on the day of death," replied the monk," in honour of the five wounds of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Have you a black coverlet for the bed?"

"In the chest yonder," said Joanna, and while monk and steward draped the bed with its black pall she looked in the mirror for the last time, before covering her face with the veil.

"If I may presume," murmured the monk, "it would make the better impression if my lady knelt beside the bed and I stationed myself at the foot. Then when the family comes into the chamber I can recite the Prayers for the Dead. Unless you prefer the parish priest to do so?"

"He is too drunk to mount the stairs," said Roger. "If Lady Ferrers has one glimpse of him it will be his finish."

"Then leave him alone," said Joanna, "and let us proceed. Roger, will you descend and summon them? William first, for he is the heir." She knelt beside the bed, head bowed in grief, but raised it before we left the room, saying over her shoulder to the steward, "It cost my brother Sir Otto near on fifty marks at Bodrugan when my father died, not counting the beasts that were slaughtered for the funeral feast. We must not be out-done. Spare no expense."

Roger drew aside the hangings by the door, and I followed him on to the steps outside. The contrast between the bright day without and the murky atmosphere within must have struck him as forcibly as it did me, for he paused at the top of the steps and looked down over the surrounding walls to the gleaming waters of the estuary below. The sails of Bodrugan's ship were furled loosely on the yard as she lay at anchor, and a fellow in a small boat astern skulled to and fro in search of fish. The youngsters from the house had wandered down the hillside to stare at their uncle's boat. Henry, Bodrugan's son, was pointing out something to his cousin William, and the dogs leapt about them, barking once again.

I realised at that moment, more strongly than hitherto, how fantastic, even macabre, was my presence amongst them, unseen, unborn, a freak in time, witness to events that had happened centuries past, unremembered, unrecorded; and I wondered how it was that standing here on the steps, watching yet invisible, I could so feel myself involved, troubled, by these loves and deaths. The man who was dying might have been a relative from my own lost world of youth—my father, even, who had died in spring when I was about the age of young William down there in the field. The cable from the Far East—he had been killed fighting the Japanese—arrived just as my mother and I had finished lunch, staying in an hotel in Wales for the Easter holidays. She went up to her bedroom and shut the door, and I hung about the hotel drive, aware of loss but unable to cry, dreading the sympathetic glance of the girl at the reception desk if I went indoors.

Roger, carrying the piece of sacking containing the bowls stained by herb-juices, descended to the court, and went through an archway at the further end leading to a stable-yard. What servants made up the household seemed to be gathered there, but at the steward's approach they broke up their gossip and scattered, all but one lad whom I had seen that first day and recognised, by his likeness to the horseman, as Roger's brother. Roger summoned him to his side with a jerk of his head.

"It is over," he said. "Ride to the Priory at once and inform the Prior, that he may give orders for tolling the bell. Work will cease when the men hear the summons, and they will start to come in from the fields, and assemble on the green. Directly you have delivered your message to the Prior ride on home and place this package in the cellar, then wait for my return. I have much to do, and may not be back tonight." The boy nodded, and disappeared into the stables. Roger passed through the archway into the court once more. Otto Bodrugan was standing at the entrance to the house. Roger hesitated a moment, then crossed the court to him.

"My lady asks you to go to her," he said, "with Sir William and Lady Ferrers and the lady Isolda. I will call William and the children."

"Is Sir Henry worse?" asked Bodrugan.

"He is dead, Sir Otto. Not five minutes since, without recovering consciousness, peacefully, in his sleep."

"I am sorry," said Bodrugan, "but it is better so. I pray God we may both go as peacefully when our time comes, though undeservedly." Both men crossed themselves. Automatically I did the same. "I will tell the others," he continued. "Lady Ferrers may go into hysterics, but no matter. How is my sister?"

"Calm, Sir Otto."

"I expected it."

Bodrugan paused before turning into the house. "You are aware", he said, and there was something hesitant in his manner, "that William, being a minor, will forfeit his lands to the King until he attains his majority?"

"I am, Sir Otto."

"The confiscation would be little more than a formality in ordinary circumstances," Bodrugan went on. "As William's uncle by marriage, and therefore his legal guardian, I should be empowered to administer his estates, with the King as overlord. But the circumstances are not ordinary, owing to the part I took in the so-called rebellion." The steward maintained discreet silence, his face inscrutable. "Therefore", said Bodrugan, "the escheator acting for the minor and the King is likely to be one held in greater esteem than myself—his cousin Sir John Carminowe, in all probability. In that event, I don't doubt he will arrange matters smoothiy for my sister." The irony in his voice was unmistakable.

Roger inclined his head without replying, and Bodrugan went into the house. The steward's slow smile of satisfaction was instantly suppressed as the young Champernounes, with their cousin Henry, entered the court, laughing and chatting, having momentarily forgotten the imminence of death. Henry, the eldest of the party, was the first to sense, intuitively, what must have happened. He called the younger pair to silence, and motioned William to come forward. I saw the expression on the boy's face change from carefree laughter to apprehension, and I guessed how sudden dread must have turned his stomach sick. "Is it my father?" he asked.

Roger nodded. "Take your brother and sister with you", he said, "and go to your mother. Remember, you are the eldest; she will look to you for support in the days to come."

The boy clutched at the steward's arm. "You will remain with us, will you not?" he asked. "And my uncle Otto too?"

"We shall see," answered Roger. "But you are the head of the family now." William made a supreme effort at self-control. He turned and faced his younger brother and sister and said, "Our father is dead. Please follow me," and walked into the house, head erect, but very pale. The children, startled, did as they were told, taking their cousin Henry's hand, and glancing at Roger I saw, for the first time, something of compassion on his face, and pride as well; the boy he must have known from cradle days had not disgraced himself. He waited a few moments, then followed them.

The hall appeared deserted. A tapestry hanging at the far end near the hearth had been drawn aside, showing a small stairway to the upper room, by which Otto Bodrugan and the Ferrers must have ascended, and the children too. I could hear the shuffle of feet overhead, then silence, followed by the low murmur of the monk's voice, Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.

I said the hall appeared deserted, and so it was, but for the slender figure in lilac: Isolda was the only member of the group who had not gone to the room above. At sight of her Roger paused on the threshold, before moving forward with deference.

"Lady Carminowe does not wish to pay tribute with the rest of the family?" he asked.

Isolda had not noticed him standing there by the entrance, but now she turned her head and looked at him direct, and there was so much coldness in her eyes that standing where I was, beside the steward, they seemed to sweep me with the same contempt as they did him.

"It is not my practice to make a mockery of death," she said.

If Roger was surprised he gave no sign of it, but made the same deferential gesture as before. "Sir Henry would be grateful for your prayers," he said.

"He has had them with regularity for many years," she answered, "and with increasing fervour these past weeks."

The edge in her voice was evident to me, and must have been doubly so to the steward. "Sir Henry has ailed ever since making the pilgrimage to Campostella," he replied. "They say Sir Ralph de Beaupr+® suffers today from the same sickness. It is a wasting fever, there is no cure for it. Sir Henry had so little regard for his own person that it was hard to treat him. I can assure you that everything possible was done."

"I understand Sir Ralph Beaupr+® retains full possession of his faculties despite his fever," Isolda replied. "My cousin did not. He recognised none of us for a month or more, yet his brow was cool, the fever was not high."

"No two men are alike in sickness," Roger answered. "What will save the one will trouble the other. If Sir Henry wandered in his mind it was his misfortune."

"Made the more effective by the potions given him," she said. "My grandmother, Isolda de Cardinham, had a treatise on herbs, written by a learned doctor who went to the Crusades, and she bequeathed it to me when she died, because I was her namesake. I am no stranger to the seeds of the black poppy and the white, water hemlock, mandragora, and the sleep they can induce."

Roger, startled out of his attitude of deference, did not answer her at once. Then he said, "These herbs are used by all apothecaries for easing pain. The monk, Jean de Meral, was trained in the parent-house at Angers and is especially skilled. Sir Henry himself had implicit faith in him."

"I don't doubt Sir Henry's faith, the monk's skill, or his zeal in employing that skill, but a healing plant can turn malign if the dose is increased," replied Isolda.

She had made her challenge, and he knew it. I remembered that trestle table at the foot of the bed, and the bowls upon it, now carefully wrapped in sacking and carried away.

"This is a house of mourning," said Roger, "and will continue so for several days. I advise you to speak of this matter to my lady, not to me. It is none of my business."

"Nor mine either," replied Isolda. "I speak through attachment to my cousin, and because I am not easily fooled. You might remember it."

One of the children started crying overhead, and there was a sudden lull in the murmur of prayers, the sound of movement, and the scurrying of footsteps down the stairs. The daughter of the house—she could not have been more than ten—came running into the room, and flung herself into Isolda's arms.

"They say he is dead", she said, "yet he opened his eyes and looked at me, just once, before closing them again. No one else saw, they were too busy with their prayers. Did he mean that I must follow him to the grave?"

Isolda held the child to her protectively, staring over her shoulder at Roger all the while, and suddenly she said, "If anything evil has been done this day or yesterday, you will be held responsible, with others, when the time comes. Not in this world, where we lack proof but in the next, before God."

Roger moved forward, with some impulse, I think, to silence her or take the child from her, and I stepped into his path to prevent him, but stumbled, catching my foot in a loose stone. And there was nothing about me but great mounds of earth and hillocks of grass, gorse-bushes and the root of a dead tree, and behind me a large pit, circular in shape like a quarry, full of old tins and fallen slate. I caught hold of a twisted stem of withered gorse, retching violently, and in the distance I could hear the hoot of a diesel engine as it rattled below me in the valley.

CHAPTER SEVEN