The House on the Strand (2 page)

"There are always rumours," answered the horseman.

"This was not rumour. Sir John sent the message yesterday. The Bishop has already set out from Exeter and will be here on Monday, expecting hospitality and shelter for the night with us, after leaving Launceston."

The horseman smiled. "The Bishop times his visit well. Martinmas, and fresh meat killed for his dinner. He'll sleep with his belly full, you've no cause for worry."

"No cause for worry?" The Prior's petulant voice touched a higher key. "You think I can control my unruly mob? What kind of impression will they make upon that new broom of a Bishop, primed as he is to sweep the whole Diocese clean?"

"They'll come to heel if you promise them reward for seemly behaviour. Keep in the good graces of Sir John Carminowe, that's all that matters."

The Prior moved restlessly beneath his covers. "Sir John is not easily fooled, and he has his own way to make, with a foot in every camp. Our patron he may be, but he won't stand by me if it doesn't suit his ends."

The horseman picked up a bone from the rushes, and gave it to the dog. "Sir Henry, as lord of the manor, will take precedence over Sir John on this occasion," he said. "He'll not disgrace you, garbed like a penitent. I warrant he is on his knees in the chapel now."

The Prior was not amused. "As the lord's steward you should show more respect for him," he observed, then added thoughtfully, "Henry de Champernoune is a more faithful man of God than I."

The horseman laughed. "The spirit is willing, Father Prior, but the flesh?" He fondled the greyhound's ear. "Best not talk about the flesh before the Bishop's visit." Then he straightened himself and walked towards the bed. "The French ship is lying off Kylmerth. She'll be there for two more tides if you want to give me letters for her."

The Prior thrust off his covers and scrambled from the bed. "Why in the name of blessed Antony did you not say so at once?" he cried, and began to rummage amongst the litter of assorted papers on the bench beside him. He presented a sorry sight in his shift, with spindle legs mottled with varicose veins, and hammer-toed, singularly dirty feet. "I can find nothing in this jumble," he complained. "Why are my papers never in order? Why is Brother Jean never here when I require him?" He seized a bell from the bench and rang it, exclaiming in protest at the horseman, who was laughing again. Almost at once a monk entered: from his prompt response he must have been listening at the door. He was young and dark, and possessed a pair of remarkably brilliant eyes.

"At your service, Father," he said in French, and before he crossed the room to the Prior's side exchanged a wink with the horseman.

"Come, then, don't dally," fretted the Prior, turning back to the bench. "I'll bring the letters later tonight, and instruct you further in the arts you wish to learn."

The horseman bowed in mock acknowledgement, and moved towards the door. "Goodnight, Father Prior. Lose no sleep over the Bishop's visit. Goodnight, Roger, goodnight. God be with you."

As we left the room together the horseman sniffed the air with a grimace. The mustiness of the Prior's chamber had now an additional spice, a whiff of perfume from the French monk's habit.

We descended the stairs, but before returning through the passage-way the horseman paused a moment, then opened another door and glanced inside. The door gave entrance to the chapel, and the monks who had been playing pantomime with the novice were now at prayer. Or, to describe it more justly, making motion of prayer. Their eyes were downcast, and their lips moved. There were four others present whom I had not seen in the yard, and of these two were fast asleep in their stalls. The novice himself was huddled on his knees, crying silently but bitterly. The only figure with any dignity was that of a middle-aged man, dressed in a long mantle, his grey locks framing a kindly, gracious face. With hands clasped reverently before him, he kept his eyes steadfast on the altar. This, I thought, must be Sir Henry de Champernoune, lord of the manor and my horseman's master, of whose piety the Prior had spoken.

The horseman closed the door and went out into the passage, and so from the building and across the now empty yard to the gate. The green was deserted, for the women had left the well, and there were clouds in the sky, a sense of fading day. The horseman mounted his pony and turned for the track through the upper plough-lands.

I had no idea of time, his time or mine. I was still without sense of touch, and could move beside him without effort. We descended the track to the ford, which he traversed now without wetting his pony's hocks, for the tide had ebbed, and struck upward across the further fields. When we reached the top of the hill and the fields took on their familiar shape I realised, with growing excitement and surprise, that he was leading me home, for Kilmarth, the house which Magnus had lent me for the summer holidays, lay beyond the little wood ahead of us. Some six or seven ponies were grazing close by, and at sight of the horseman one of them lifted his head and whinnied; then with one accord they swerved, kicked up their heels, and scampered away. He rode on through a clearing in the wood, the track dipped, and there immediately below us in the hollow lay a dwelling, stone-built, thatched, encircled by a yard deep in mud. Piggery and byre formed part of the dwelling, and through a single aperture in the thatch the blue smoke curled. I recognised one thing only, the scoop of land in which the dwelling lay. The horseman rode down into the yard, dismounted and called, and a boy came out of the adjoining cow-house to take the pony. He was younger, slighter than my horseman, but had the same deep-set eyes, and must have been his brother. He led the pony on and the horseman passed through the open doorway into the house, which seemed at first sight to consist of one room only. Following close behind, I could distinguish little through the smoke, except that the walls were built of the mixture of clay and straw that they call cob, and the floor was plain earth, without even rushes upon it.

A ladder at the far end led to a loft, only a few feet above the living-space, and looking up I could see straw pallets laid upon the planking. The fire, stacked with turf and furze, lay in a recess let into the wall, and a stew-pot simmered above the smoke, slung between iron bars fixed to the earthen floor. A girl, her lank hair falling below her shoulders, was kneeling by the fire, and as the horseman called a greeting she looked up at him and smiled.

I was close upon his heels, and suddenly he turned, staring straight at me, shoulder to shoulder. I could feel his breath upon my cheek, and I put out one hand, instinctively, to fend him off. I felt a sudden sharp pain on my knuckles and saw that they were bleeding, and at the same time I heard a splintering of glass. He was not there any longer, neither he, nor the girl, nor the smoking fire, and I had driven my right hand through one of the windows of the disused kitchen in Kilmarth's basement, and was standing in the old sunken courtyard beyond.

I stumbled through the open door of the boiler-room, retching violently, not at the sight of blood but because I was seized with an intolerable nausea, rocking me from head to foot. Throbbing in every limb, I leant against the stone wall of the boiler-room, the trickle of blood from my cut hand running down to my wrist.

In the library overhead the telephone began to ring, sounding, in its insistency, like a summons from a lost, unwanted world. I let it ring.

CHAPTER TWO

IT MUST HAVE taken the best part of ten minutes for the nausea to pass. I sat on a pile of logs in the boiler-room waiting. The worst thing about it was the vertigo: I dared not trust myself to stand. My hand was not badly cut, and I soon staunched the blood with my handkerchief. I could see the splintered window from where I sat, and the fragments of glass on the patio beyond. Later on I might be able to reconstruct the scene, judge where my horseman had been standing, measure the space of that long vanished house where there were now patio and basement: but not now. Now I was too exhausted.

I wondered what sort of figure I must have cut, if anyone had seen me walking over the fields and across the road at the bottom of the hill, and climbing the lane to Tywardreath. That I had been there I was certain. The state of my shoes, the torn cloth of one trouser leg, and my shirt clammy cold with sweat—this had not come about from a lazy amble on the cliffs.

Presently, the nausea and vertigo having passed, I walked very slowly up the back stairs to the hall above. I went into the lobby where Magnus kept his oilskins and boots and all the rest of his junk, and stared at myself in the looking-glass above the wash-basin. I looked normal enough. A bit white about the gills, nothing worse. I needed a stiff drink more than anything. Then I remembered that Magnus had said: Don't touch alcohol for at least three hours after taking the drug, and then go slow. Tea would be a poor second-best, but it might help, and I went into the kitchen to make myself a cup. This kitchen had been the family dining-room when Magnus was a boy; he had converted it during recent years. While I waited for the kettle to boil I looked out of the window at the courtyard below. It was a paved enclosure, surrounded by old, moss-encrusted walls. Magnus, in a burst of enthusiasm at some time, had attempted to turn it into a patio, as he called it, where he could flop about nude if a heat-wave ever materialised. His mother, he told me, had never done anything about the enclosure because it led out from what were then the kitchen quarters.

I looked upon it now with different eyes. Impossible to recapture what I had so lately seen—that muddied yard, with the cow-house adjoining, and the track leading to the wooded grove above. Myself following the horseman through the trees. Was the whole thing hallucination engendered by that hell-brew of a drug? As I wandered, mug in hand, through to the library, the telephone started to ring again. I suspected it might be Magnus, and it was. His voice, clipped and decisive as always, stood me in greater stead than the drink I could not have, or the mug of tea. I flung myself down in a chair and prepared for a session.

"I've been ringing you for hours," he said. "Had you forgotten you promised to put through a call at half-past three?"

I had not forgotten, I told him. "The fact is, I was otherwise engaged."

"So I imagined. Well?"

The moment was one to savour. I wished I could keep him guessing. The thought gave me a pleasing sensation of power, but it was no use, I knew I had to tell him.

"It worked," I said. "Success one hundred per cent." I realised, from the silence at the other end of the line, that this piece of information was totally unexpected. He had visualised failure. His voice, when it came, was pitched in a lower key, almost as though he were talking to himself.

"I can hardly believe it," he said. "How absolutely splendid." And then, taking charge, as always, "You did exactly as I told you, followed the instructions? Tell me everything, from the beginning... Wait, though, are you all right?"

"Yes," I said, "I think so, except that I feel bloody tired, and I've cut my hand, and I was nearly sick in the boiler-room."

"Minor matters, dear boy, minor matters. There's often a feeling of nausea afterwards, it soon passes. Go on."

His impatience fed my own excitement, and I wished he had been in the room beside me instead of three hundred miles away.

"First of all," I said, enjoying myself, "I've seldom seen anything more macabre than your so-called lab. Bluebeard's chamber would be an apter description for it. All those embryos in jars, and that revolting monkey's head.."

"Perfectly good specimens and extremely valuable," he interrupted, "but don't get side-tracked. I know what they are for: you don't. Tell me what happened."

I took a sip of my rapidly cooling tea, and put down the mug.

"I found the row of bottles," I continued, "all in the locked cupboard. Neatly labelled, A, B, C. I poured exactly three measures from A into the medicine-glass, and that was that. I swallowed it, replaced the bottle and glass, locked the cupboard, locked the lab, and waited for something to happen. Well, nothing did." I paused, to let this information sink in. No comment from Magnus.

"So," I went on, "I went into the garden. Still no reaction. You told me the time factor varied, that it could be three minutes, five, ten, before anything happened. I expected to feel drowsy, although you hadn't specifically mentioned drowsiness, but as nothing seemed to be happening I thought I would go for a stroll. So I climbed over the wall by the summer-house into the field, and began to walk in the direction of the cliffs."

"You damn fool," he said. "I told you to stay in the house, at any rate for the first experiment."

"I know you did. But, frankly, I wasn't expecting it to work. I planned to sit down, if it did, and drift off into some delightful—"

"Damn fool," he said again. "It doesn't happen that way."

"I know it doesn't, now," I said.

Then I described my whole experience, from the moment the drug took effect to the smashing of the glass in the basement kitchen. He did not interrupt me at all except to murmur, when I paused for breath and a sip of tea, "Go on.. go on.."

When I had finished, including the aftermath in the boiler-room, there was complete silence, and I thought we had been cut off. "Magnus," I said, "are you there?"

His voice came back to me, clear and strong, repeating the same words that he had used at the start of our telephone session.

"How splendid," he said. "How absolutely splendid. Perhaps..." The truth was that I was completely drained, exhausted, having been through the whole process twice.

He began to talk rapidly, and I could just imagine him sitting at that desk of his in London, one hand holding the receiver, the other reaching out for his inevitable doodling-pad and pencil.

"You realise", he said, "that this is the most important thing that has happened since the chemical boys got hold of teonanacatl and ololiuqui? These only push the brain around in different directions—quite chaotic. This is controlled, specific. I knew I was on to something potentially tremendous, but I couldn't be sure, having only tried it on myself, that it wasn't hallucinogenic. If this was so, you and I would have had similar physical reactions—loss of touch, greater intensity of vision, and so on—but not the same experience of altered time. This is the important thing. The tremendously exciting thing."