The Stranger House (13 page)

“Fit as a butcher’s dog,” she said.

“You and Mr Madero are acquainted?”

Odd question, she thought. Maybe he’s worried I’m on my way to the Hall too, and doesn’t like the idea of an awkward Colonial falling over his priceless antiques.

“Nah, we just met,” she said, “I’m on my way to see Mr Winander, and Mr Madero was kind enough to translate this inscription for me, but I still don’t get it.”

Woollass smiled. This was a first. He looked a bit more like the kind well-meaning man that Edie Appledore had described.

He said, “It means that if you’re so foolhardy as to step into Mr Winander’s workshop, you will be lucky to emerge with any money left in your pocket. Mr Madero, why don’t you climb in? You might as well join us for the last bit of your journey.”

“Or if you prefer to walk, I’ll be glad to stretch my legs and join you,” said the nun, stepping nimbly out of the car. She was lean and athletic, in her thirties, with a narrow intelligent face. The headdress apart, she was conventionally dressed.

“Sister Angelica,” she said, holding out her hand.

Madero shook it. Sam was amused to see how he dealt with this dilemma. She guessed he’d much prefer to accept the lift, but the nun had put him on the spot.

Then she was faced with a dilemma of her own as the nun turned from Madero to herself and thrust out her hand again and tried another friendly smile. It didn’t fade as Sam let her own fingertips barely brush the nun’s and said shortly, “Sam Flood. G’day”

She caught Madero regarding her with disapproval and thought, what’s with him? Just because she’s a nun doesn’t mean I’ve got to give her the kiss of peace.

Sister Angelica’s smile didn’t even flicker and her voice was warm as she said, “It’s good to meet you, Miss Flood. Mr Madero, on second thoughts I think maybe we should ride, if you don’t mind. I just felt a small twinge of my rheumatism.”

Liar, thought Sam. You’ve sussed out that the poor bastard’s knackered and this is your good deed for the day.

“As you wish,” said Madero.

He held the door to let the nun back into the front passenger seat, then opened the rear door and put his briefcase inside. The woman sitting there leaned over to
pull it further in and Sam got a good view of her for the first time.

She was in her late twenties, with a long fine-boned face, beautiful if you liked that sort of thing. She had straight jet-black hair falling sheer below her shoulders. She was wearing shorts and a sun-top, but the flesh exposed showed little sign of the onslaught of weather. Her face had an almost lilial pallor which against her black hair could easily have produced a vampirical effect, yet far from being cadaverous, she somehow seemed to shimmer with life. She had a full well-rounded figure and the kind of long legs which would have graced a fashion house catwalk. Her eyes moved over Sam with the measured indifference of a security scan. They were a bluey grey that was familiar—like the driver’s, that was it, but unlike his showing neither the potential for benevolence nor the presence of trouble. Her gaze held Sam’s for a moment, a smile which had something of mockery in it and something of enquiry too, touched her mouth briefly, then she sat back as Madero hauled himself in beside her.

“My daughter, Frek,” said Woollass, “That’s idiot-speak for Frederika.”

Madero shook her hand. At the same time a thunderous voice echoed out:

“Morning, Gerry. Window shopping, are we? Why not bring your friends in? You never know, you might see something that takes your fancy.”

She turned to see that Thor Winander had appeared round the end of his house. Stripped to the waist and with a long-handled hammer resting on one shoulder, he looked more like the god of the Wolf-Head Cross than ever.

“Morning, Thor. Another time,” called Woollass, “If you’re ready, Mr Madero …”

As Madero pulled his door shut, he frowned at Sam as if she were an attendant footman he was wondering if he should tip. Then the car drew away.

You’re really making new friends this morning, girl, Sam mocked herself as she watched it go.

“You waiting for a red carpet or something?” called Winander.

He didn’t wait for an answer but disappeared towards the smithy.

Sam looked up at the sandstone block once more and jostled the few coins she had in the pocket of her shorts.

“Wonder if he takes credit cards?” she said to a passing raven.

Caw!
replied the raven.

Or, as this was Illthwaite where they crucified boys and ghosts searched your room, it might have been,
Cash!

Mig Madero was more relieved than he cared to admit to be in the car. Physiotherapy routines got you mobile, but the last half-hour had proved yet again the old hiking adage that the only thing that gets you fit for walking steeply uphill is walking steeply uphill.

The drive to the Hall took less than a minute and the woman next to him showed no inclination to talk. The wide rear seat removed any risk of physical contact, but he found her closeness vaguely disturbing. Despite her icy pallor, warmth came off her and with it a scent composed of whatever perfume she used underpinned by faint traces from her own skin and flesh. She was beautiful, no argument about that, with a fine delicate bone structure that reminded him of the angels in the murals in the seminary chapel, but with flesh enough on her to turn the careless mind from the sacred to the profane.

Frek. The English loved their diminutives. It was his mother who started calling him Mig. Frederika was a lovely name, but Frek had intimacy.

The car came to a halt, rather to his relief, and he turned his attention to the less troublesome attractions of Illthwaite Hall.

His first impression was of an extremely appealing house with little sign of that self-consciousness which comes from a desire to impress one’s neighbours. The tall twisting chimneys belonged to the architecture of fairy tales, and the timbering too he had seen often in the children’s books in his mother’s house.

He stared up at an ornately carved stone set above the lintel of the brass-studded oak front door. On its left side was a coat of arms with three roses: one red, one white, one golden. On the right stood an angel with a sword, its robes white, its weapon silver with a smear of scarlet along its edge. Between, picked out in red and green, were some words, crushed so close together that reading them wasn’t easy but he’d had plenty of practice at deciphering ornate and obscure scripts.

“‘I trust in the cross,’” Madero translated.

“Our dog’s a crook,” said Frek Woollass as she went by him and opened the door.

“Family joke,” said Woollass, “Usually left behind with childhood. Come in.”

A good three inches shorter than his daughter, he moved with the determined gait of a man who anticipates obstacles but doesn’t intend walking round them.

“It’s a lovely spot, isn’t it?” said Sister Angelica. Her voice was gruff without being masculine, and it had a fairly broad accent which Madero, who had early recognized the importance of the way you talked in his maternal
milieu, identified as Lancastrian, “Very welcoming. Pity about the knocker, though.”

The cast-iron door knocker, shaped like a wolf’s head with mouth agape and teeth bared, looked as if it were keen to bite the hand that raised it.

They followed Woollass into a broad entrance hall, so dimly lit that Madero got little impression of it other than lots of wood panelling and a few wall-mounted animal heads as they passed quickly along, down a little corridor and through another door which wouldn’t have looked out of place in a dungeon.

The room it opened into had a flagged floor with at its centre a vaguely oriental-looking circular carpet whose yellow-and-umber design stood out boldly against the grey granite. On it stood four wooden armchairs around a low oak table. The effect was rather theatrical, as though a single spot were lighting up the action area of an open stage. A huge fireplace almost filled one wall. No fire was needed today, but a tall vase full of multi-coloured dahlias burnt on the hearth and above the fireplace was the same coat of arms he’d seen over the entrance door.

As he took the chair Woollass indicated, Madero began to feel the past crowding in and sense other shadowy presences in the room which if he relaxed and admitted them might let themselves become more visible. But for the moment, he wanted to concentrate on his host and this unexpected nun who’d sat down on his left.

As if he’d asked for an explanation out loud, Woollass said, “I invited Sister Angelica along this morning because she is an old friend of the family as well as being something of an expert on matters historical, procedural and legal.”

“You’re overselling me as usual, Gerry,” said the nun, smiling at Madero.

Woollass took the chair opposite Madero and leaned forward slightly.

“So let me look at you,” he said, fixing him with his keen grey-blue eyes, “Your letter was interesting, but letters tell us only what their writer wants us to know. Forgive my directness, but I’ve never been a round-the-houses man. If you want to know something, ask it, that’s the best way for simple uncomplicated souls like me.”

Was that a faint sigh of disbelief from his left? Madero didn’t look but fixed his attention wholly on Woollass.

“I quite understand, Mr Woollass,” he said, “It’s no small thing to open up family records to a stranger. I’m happy to answer any questions and, of course, you have probably already contacted my referees, Dr Max Coldstream of Southampton University, and Father Dominic Terrega of the San Antonio Seminary in Seville.”

“Indeed. Let’s have some coffee while we’re talking.”

On cue, the door opened and his daughter came in carrying a tray. It was a delight simply to see her walk across the room and set the tray down.

She took the remaining seat to his right and began to pour the coffee.

Woollass said, “The floor is yours, Mr Madero.”

So Mrs Appledore’s word had been apt. He wasn’t going to get near the Woollass papers without an inquisition. The nun was here to cast a properly religious eye over him. And the daughter … ?

He glanced at her as she raised her coffee to her lips and he had to force his gaze away as he found himself transfixed by the gentle tremor of the upper visible portion of her pallid breasts as the hot liquor slid down her
throat. He had a sudden vision of her stretched naked, her bush burning like black fire against the snow of her body. It was his first truly erotic fancy since the illness that had marked the change of his life direction, which meant the first since sixteen that didn’t crash up against a vocational imperative. Perhaps that was her function, to see how easily distracted he was! Well, they’d be disappointed. Old habits die hard and the mental screen slid easily into place. The troublesome image was still there behind the screen, but he was back in control and with luck a little dry conversation could prove as effective as prayer and cold showers.

He fixed his gaze on the man and said, “As I explained in my letter, I’m doing a doctorate thesis on the Reformation, but I do not want to retread the old ground of power struggle, of political intrigue, of wars and treaties, of saints and martyrs. I want to approach it through the personal experience of ordinary men and women here in England who lived through—or in some cases died because of—these changes. I want …”

“Why England?” interrupted Woollass.

“I’m half English. Through my maternal family history I became aware that not too long ago there were still laws which discriminated against Catholicism in public life. The more I learned of English history the more fascinated I became by the survival of such a strong Catholic presence, especially here in the north, despite long periods of highly organized and legally imposed repression. Eventually I formalized my interest into a thesis proposal in which I stressed that I wanted to base my researches not on the great families who figure in the public records, but on ordinary families like my own.”

Woollass nodded and said, “That answers, why England? Now, why Woollass?”

“A simple reductive technique, I fear,” said Madero, “I wrote to all the surviving families who figured in Walsingham’s record of recusants.”

“Hmm. So it was little more than a disguised circular we got,” said Woollass, “I usually dump those straight in the waste bin. So you’re saying your interest in my family is purely because I replied affirmatively, Mr Madero? If I hadn’t bothered, or if my reply had been negative, you would have crossed us off your list?”

“I’m afraid so,” he said, “A disappointment, but one of many.”

Woollass looked at him doubtfully, then glanced at the nun, who leaned forward so that she could look directly into Madero’s face and said, “But it would surely have been an especially big disappointment, considering the family had a close relative who was a Jesuit priest working on the English Mission?”

Damn, thought Madero. Here it was. They were concerned that his real interest might be Father Simeon. He hadn’t anticipated such sensitivity. Too late now for explanation. Mention of his stop-off in Kendal would simply confirm Woollass’s doubts.