The House on the Strand (41 page)

In such a night

Stood Dido with a willow in her hand

Upon the wild sea-banks, and wav'd her love

To come again to Carthage.

The trouble was, Isolda's lover had died in Treesmill creek upon the strand, and I doubted if either the threat of convent walls, or Joanna's taunts, or the monk's promise of safe passage to some doubtful refuge in Angers would have made her turn to Roger in the end. The future was bleak, six hundred years ago, for wives who left their husbands, especially when the husband had an eye to a third bride. It would have suited Oliver Carminowe, and the Ferrers family too, if Isolda had simply disappeared, which she might well have done had she entrusted herself to Joanna's care; but to remain under Roger's roof was at best only a stop-gap measure, and could not have continued long. As I drove across Bodmin moor, rejoicing that each mile brought me nearer home, exhilaration was tempered by the knowledge that not only must this be the last trip to the other world, but that when I entered it I had no choice of date or season. The thaw could have come and Lent be over, high summer have taken its place, Isolda herself, having made her choice, be languishing behind those convent walls somewhere in Devon, in which case she would have moved out of Roger's life, and mine as well. I wondered, had Magnus lived, whether he could have perfected the timing factor, thus leaving the awakening from present to past to the participant's own choice; so that today, by some infinitesimal alteration of the dose, I could have summoned up at will those figures in the basement where I had left them last. Never, in the few weeks of experiment, had it happened that way. There had always been a jump in time. Joanna's carriage would no longer be waiting on the top of the hill above Kylmerth; Roger, Isolda and Bess would have left the farmhouse kitchen. That single draught in the walking-stick could guarantee re-entry to my world, but not what I should find there when I did.

The halt-sign brought me up with a jerk on to the main Lostwithiel-Saint Blazey road. I had driven the last twenty miles like an automaton, and I remembered the side turning that would take me past Tregesteynton to the Treesmill valley. I drove down it with a strange nostalgic sense, and as I passed the present farmhouse of Strickstenton, and a black-and-white collie darted out on to the road barking, I thought of small Margaret, Isolda's younger child, who had wanted a riding-whip like Robbie's, and Joanna, the elder, preening in the looking-glass while her father chased Sybell up the stairs with the otter's paw. I came down into the valley, and so intense was my identification with the past that I had forgotten, momentarily, that the river would no longer be there, and I looked for Rosgof's cottage by the side of the ford opposite the mill: but of course there was no river and no ford, only the road turning left and a few cows grazing in the marshy field. I wished I was in the Triumph, for the Buick was too big and conspicuous. On sudden impulse I parked by the bridge below the mill, and, walking a short way up the lane, climbed over the gate into the field leading to the Gratten. I knew I must stand there once more amongst the mounds before returning home, for once back at Kilmarth the future would be uncertain; the last experiment might land me in some trouble unforeseen. I wanted to carry in my mind the image of the Treesmill valley as it looked today under the late August sun, letting imagination and memory do the rest, bringing back the winding river and the creek, and the anchorage below the long-vanished house. They had been harvesting in the Chapel Park fields behind the Gratten, but here where I walked beneath the hedge it was all grass, and cows were grazing. I came to the first of the gorse-bushes, climbing to the top of the high bank surrounding the site, and then looked down to the apron of grass which had once been a path under the hallway window, where Isolda and Bodrugan had sat holding hands. A man was lying there, smoking a cigarette, his coat propped under his head as pillow. I stared hard, unbelieving, thinking that guilt and an uneasy conscience must have conjured his image out of the air; but I was not mistaken. The man who was lying there was very real, and it was Doctor Powell.

I stood there a moment watching him, then deliberately, without malice but with total resolution, I unscrewed the top of Magnus's stick and took out the little measure. I swallowed my last dose, and replaced the measure once again inside the stick. Then I walked down the mound and joined him.

"I thought", I said, "you had gone surfing on the north coast?"

He sat up instantly, and I experienced, for the first time since knowing him, the immensely satisfying feeling that I had caught him unawares and at a disadvantage.

He recovered quickly, the look of astonishment giving place to an engaging smile. "I changed my mind," he said calmly, "and let the family go off without me. You seem to have done the same."

"So Vita beat me to it after all. She didn't lose much time," I told him.

"What's your wife got to do with it?"

"Well, she telephoned you from Dublin, didn't she?"

"No," he said.

Now it was my turn to look astonished and stare at him. "Then what the hell are you doing here waiting for me?"

"I wasn't waiting for you. Rather than brave the Atlantic breakers I decided to explore your piece of territory. A hunch that has apparently paid off. You can show me round."

My one-upmanship began to fade, my self-confidence desert me. He seemed to be playing my own game and getting away with it.

"Look," I said, "don't you want to know what happened at the airport?"

"Not particularly," he replied. "The plane took off, I know, because I rang through to Exeter and checked. Whether you were on it or not they couldn't tell me, but I knew that if you weren't you would head back for Kilmarth, and if I turned up there for a cup of tea I'd find you in the basement. Meanwhile, burning curiosity drove me to while away half an hour or so down here."

His cocksure attitude infuriated me, but I was even more angry with myself. If I had taken the other road, if I had not come through the Treesmill valley and allowed momentary sentiment to sway me, I should have been safely back at Kilmarth with at least half an hour or more in hand before he breezed in to take possession.

"All right," I said, "I know I've played a dirty trick on Vita and the boys, and she's probably ringing you from Dublin airport now and getting no reply. What staggers me is that you let me go knowing what might happen. It's almost as much your fault as mine."

"Oh, I agree," he answered. "I'm equally to blame, and we'll both apologise when we get her on the telephone. But I wanted to give you a chance, just to see if you could make it, instead of going by the rules."

"And what do the rules say?"

"Put your addict inside, once he's well and truly hooked."

I looked at him thoughtfully, and leant on Magnus's walking-stick for support. "You know very well", I said, "I gave bottle C to you, and that was the last; and you must have given the house a pretty thorough search when I was lying prone upstairs all the week."

"I did," he replied, "and searched it again today. I told Mrs. Collins I was looking for buried treasure, and I think she believed me. Suspicious sort of chap, aren't I?"

"Yes. And you found nothing, because there was nothing there."

"Well, you may count yourself damn lucky that there wasn't. I've got Willis's final report in my pocket."

"What does it say?"

"Only that the drug contains a substance of some toxicity that could seriously affect the central nervous system, possibly leading to paralysis. No need to elaborate."

"Show it to me now."

He shook his head, and suddenly he was not there any more, and the walls were all around me, and I was standing in the hail of the Champernoune manor-house looking out of the casement window at the rain. Panic gripped me, for it was not meant to happen, at least not yet; I had counted on being home, behind my own four walls, with Roger acting as my usual guide-protector. He was not here, and the hall was empty, and had been altered since I had seen it last. There seemed to be more furniture, more hangings, and the curtain masking the doorway to the stair above was drawn aside. Someone was crying in the bedroom overhead, and I could hear the sound of heavy footsteps pacing the floor. I looked out of the casement window once again, and saw through the falling rain that it must be autumn, for the clump of trees on the opposite hill where Oliver Carminowe had concealed himself and his men, as they lay in ambush waiting for Bodrugan, was golden brown as it had been then. But today no wind blew, tossing the leaves on to the ground below; the steady mizzle made them hang dispirited, and a shroud of mist clung above Lanescot and the river's mouth.

The crying turned to a high-pitched laugh, and down the stairs came a cup and ball, rolling one behind the other, until they reached the floor of the hall itself, when the ball rolled slowly under the table. I heard a man's voice call anxiously, "Mind how you go, Elizabeth!" as someone, still laughing, came clumping down the stairs in search of the toy. She stood a moment, her hands clasped in front of her, her long dress trailing, an absurd little bonnet askew on her auburn hair. Her likeness to Joanna Champernoune was startling, then tragic, for this was an idiot girl, about twelve years old, with a full loose mouth, and eyes set high in her head. She nodded, laughing, then picked up the ball and cup and began to throw them in the air, screaming with delight. Suddenly, tiring of the game, she tossed them aside and started to spin round in circles until she became giddy, when she fell on to the floor and sat there motionless, staring at her shoes.

The man's voice from above called out again, "Elizabeth... Elizabeth," and the girl struggled clumsily to her feet and smiled, gazing at the ceiling. Footsteps came slowly down the stairs and the man appeared, wearing a long, loose robe to his ankles, and a night-cap. I thought, for a moment, I had travelled back in time and it was Henry Champernoune who stood there, weak and pale in his final illness, but it was Henry's son William, an adolescent when I saw him last, squaring up to take his place as head of the family when Roger broke the news of his father's death. Now he looked thirty-five or even more, and I realised, with a shock of dismay, that time had leapt ahead of me at least twelve years, and all the intervening months and years were buried in a past I should never know. The frozen winter of 1335 meant nothing to this William, who had been a minor and unmarried then. He was now master of his own house, though battling, it would seem, against sickness, and enmeshed as well in the inescapable net of some family flaw. "Come, daughter, come, love," he said gently, holding out his arms, and she put her finger in her mouth and sucked it, shaking her shoulders, then, with a sudden change of mind, darted to the floor and picked up her cup and ball again and gave it to him.

"I'll toss it for you above, but not down here," he said. "Katie has been sick as well, and I must not leave her."

"She'll not have my toy, I won't let her," said Elizabeth, nodding her head up and down, and she put out her hand and tried to snatch it back.

"What? Not let your sister share it when she gave it to you? That's not my Lizzie speaking, surely? Lizzie's flown up the chimney and a bad girl has taken her place."

He clucked his tongue in reproof, and at the sound of it her full mouth drooped, her eyes filled with tears, and she flung her arms about him, crying bitterly, clinging to his long robe.

"There, there," he said. "Father did not mean it, Father loves his Liz, but she must not tease him, he is still weak and sick, and poor Katie too. Come, now, upstairs, and she can watch us from her bed, and when you toss the ball high she'll be the better for it, and maybe smile."

He took her hand and led her towards the stairs, and as he did so someone came through the door leading to the kitchen quarters. William heard the footsteps and turned his head.

"See that all the doors are fastened before you go," he said, "and bid the servants keep them so, and open them to no one. God knows I hate to give the order, but I daren't do otherwise. Sick stragglers bide their time, and wait for darkness before they walk abroad and knock on men's doors."

"I know it. There have been many so in Tywardreath, and death has spread because of it."

There was no doubt about the speaker who stood at the open door. It was Robbie, a taller, broader Robbie than the lad I knew, and his chin was bearded now like his brother's.

"Watch how you go upon the road, then," answered William. "The same poor demented wanderers might attempt to strike you down, thinking, because you ride, you have some magic property of health denied to them."

"I'll ride with care, Sir William, have no fear. I would not leave you for the night except for Roger. Five days since I was home, and he's alone."

"I know, I know. God keep you both, and watch over all of us this night." He led his daughter up the stairs to the room above, and I followed Robbie to the kitchen quarters. Three servants sat there in dejected fashion, hugging the hearth, one with his eyes closed and his head resting against the wall. Robbie gave him William's message, and he echoed, "God be with us" without opening his eyes. Robbie shut the door behind him and walked across the stable-court. His pony was tied to the stall inside the shed. He mounted and began riding slowly up the hill through the mizzling rain, passing the small cottages that formed part of the demesne, lining the muddied track. All the doors were fastened tight, and smoke came from the roofs of only two, the others seeming deserted. We reached the brow of the hill, and Robbie, instead of turning to the right on the road to the village, paused by the geld-house on the left, and, dismounting, tied his pony to the gate and walked up the path to the chapel alongside. He opened the door and entered, I following after. The chapel was small, hardly more than twenty feet in length and fifteen broad, with a single window facing east behind the altar. Robbie, making the sign of the Cross, knelt down before it, and bowed his head in prayer. There was an inscription in Latin beneath the window, which I read: 'Matilda Champernoune built this chapel in memory of her husband William Champernoune, who died in 1304.'