The Stranger House (29 page)

“Spit it out,” she advised, “Better than choking on it.”

“Your father again?” he said, attempting a smile, “He really does sound like a man of good sense. All right, you already think me weird because of my beliefs. You might as well think I am crazy too. That sense of another presence I had down there in the chamber—a ghostly presence, I mean, in addition to Father Simeon’s, but this one was stronger. It was almost as if I myself had been there five hundred years ago.”

“Jeez, and here’s me thinking you were still this side of fifty,” said Sam, “And the book you lifted?”

“It felt so strongly connected to me that I had to take it,” he said.

“So what’s it say?”

“I don’t know. I can’t read a word of it.”

He managed a rueful smile, then became serious again.

“But it has to mean something, doesn’t it?” he appealed, “All of my life I have felt something trying to speak to me. It sent me down highways and byways, but in the end it’s this place, Illthwaite in the Valley of the
Shadow, that it was calling me to. And there’s one more thing I’m starting to feel very strongly. You’re part of it too, Sam. You’re part of it too!”

If it hadn’t been for his attempt to bring her into his crazy equation, Sam might have been more sympathetic. The guy had some good points and despite their obvious differences there was something about him which drew her to him. But trying to fit her up with a role in his superstitious shadow play was going too far.

“So what you’re saying is you’ve been getting like e-mails from God dot com?” she mocked, “How do you know it’s not just spam from the devil like your confessor tried to tell you?”

Her mockery came out rather more vehemently than she intended and she felt a pang of guilt, recognizing this as a reaction to the way her terror of the darkness had caused her to lay herself so bare. She also recalled that he’d done the same, not out of terror but partly in response to her openness and also to keep her mind occupied with matters other than her claustrophobia. Plus there’d been that moment at the end when the old Adam had taken over from the wannabe priest!

Calling truce isn’t as easy as declaring war. He was regarding her coldly as he said, “I thought you claimed to be a mathematician.”

“What’s that mean? ‘Claimed’?”

“Aren’t mathematicians supposed to strive for cool objectivity in their observations? To withhold belief or disbelief until they’ve examined all offered proofs and attempted their own? Any mention of religion to you is like waving a
muleta
at a bull. Objectivity out, emotion in. It all becomes personal!”

That wasn’t a
muleta,
that was a
banderilla.

“Personal!” she exploded, “What else should it be but personal? But it’s a gender thing as well. Show me a religion which doesn’t rate men as superior and I might take a closer look at it. But that’s not the end of it either. It’s a philosophical thing and a volition thing too. I can’t find any logical or scientific arguments that add up to god, and anyway I really don’t want to believe in a god who could let all the shitty things happen that do happen. All this old stuff you’re into about people torturing each other and ripping each other’s guts out in the name of religion, it’s not history, you know. It’s still going on. The way I see it, women shouldn’t be going down on their knees, begging to be given full rights in your religions, they should be giving thanks for their partial exclusion and taking steps to make it absolute!”

Where had all this stuff come from? she wondered. It was pointless and untimely, and she ought to get out now. But she didn’t believe in turning away from a fight.

They stood glowering at each other for a long moment, but she wasn’t much good at glowering and he wasn’t in the mood for theological debate.

He sat back down on the bed and said rather wearily, “Some interesting points, but can we leave them for another time? Please, I’m not patronizing you. On the contrary, talking about things being personal, this is what
this is to me, I freely admit it. What I’m hearing here isn’t a message from God saying I’m especially holy, but the most powerful of voices from my family’s past…”

“You don’t think that skull belonged to this ancestor, do you?” interrupted Sam, looking to get back to concrete evidence, even old bones, “Or this guy Simeon maybe?”

“No. Neither. Though it felt very old, and very holy too somehow. I think it could be some sacred relict which the monks hid with the other treasure. There are experts who will be able to tell the skull’s age and sex. And believe me, I want to find concrete evidence to support what I feel too. Perhaps it will be in this old book. I’m sure there will be experts who can interpret it. Meanwhile, however irrational it seems, I am stuck with this certainty that at some time there was a Madero hiding down in that chamber.”

“But you said that you were the first of your family who ever got close to being a priest,” she objected.

“I am,” he agreed, “No, I don’t think he was a fugitive priest like Father Simeon. The only possibility I can think of is he was one of the two Maderos I told you about, who were lost with the Great Armada. Probably—because the pain I feel is the pain of youth—it was the young man. It means that somehow he came to this part of the country, I do not know how. And while he was here, something terrible happened to him. I don’t know what. But he was here, and he suffered here, in Illthwaite, of that I am sure.”

He paused and looked at Sam as if anticipating another outpouring of scorn.

Instead she said, “Oh shit,” as her instinctive scepticism was joined by something else … words, and an image …

“What?” he said, picking up that this wasn’t a comment on what he’d just said.

“Look,” said Sam, “Probably just coincidence, but there’s something in that old guidebook of Mrs Appledore’s you maybe should read.”

“Coincidence is the way God talks to us,” said Madero, “Which bit?”

The book was lying on the bedside table. He handed it to her and she opened it at the section on the Other Wolf-Head Cross.

“Here,” she said, handing it back.

He took it and started reading.

Curious to get his reaction, she didn’t leave but glanced down at the collection of dusty pages he’d laid on the coverlet. They looked as if they’d been loosely bound together but the binding material had decayed and snapped. The leaves, however, were in a relatively good state of preservation. They were covered in tiny close-packed writing, not in any recognizable language but in symbols, some bearing a strong resemblance to letters of the Greek alphabet, others resembling numbers or simple geometric shapes.

Sam studied the first page, frowning with concentration.

Madero meanwhile had run his eyes over the story of Thomas Gowder’s murder and the mysterious fate of his assailant.

After a while he said savagely, “This cannot be.”

Then he got control of himself with a visible effort and said, “These are merely the scribblings of some amateur historian based on little more than local folklore. The truth needs more scholarly sifting than this.”

What was it he found so hard to take in? wondered
Sam. That his ancestor suffered a terrible fate? Or that he might have been a cold-blooded killer?

“And you’ve got one of your funny feelings you could find the truth in this book you stole, right?” she said.

“I haven’t stolen anything,” he said wearily, “It will be replaced with all the other material from the chamber before the police arrive. I wouldn’t like to feel I’ll be a trouble to your conscience when you come to make your statement.”

His sarcasm struck her as both uncalled for and unjust.

“Maybe it’s your own conscience that’s bothering you,” she retorted, “As for these pages, could be you’re right to hang on to them. After all, they’ve got your name in them.”

It took him a moment to work out what she was saying.

“You can read them?” he burst out incredulously.

“No problem,” she said airily and made as if to move through the door.

“Wait!” he commanded.

This got him one of her slate-eye looks and he quickly added, “Please. You must explain … I mean, I would appreciate it if …”

“Glad to see you’ve not forgotten your manners,” she said briskly, “Yes, I can read it. First bit at least, then it goes a bit weird. I recognize the code. Strictly speaking it’s a nomenclator—that’s a combination of cipher and code using a symbolic alphabet indicating letters and also some common words. Like I said in the churchyard, I had this boyfriend who was into encryption in a big way. The maths end of it’s quite interesting actually, but I read something about the history of encryption too
which is where I came across these symbols. Surprised you didn’t recognize them yourself.”

She regarded him with mocking challenge.

He said, “There is something familiar … but I do not know how …”

“Perhaps you came across it when you were reading about that guy Walsingham, Elizabeth’s spook-master. That’s right. This is the cipher used by Mary Queen of Scots and the Catholic conspirators when they were plotting to assassinate Elizabeth. They were the good guys in your book, I’d guess.”

Madero said doubtfully, “And how can you be sure this is the same code?”

“I told you, dummy. Because I can read some of it. I suppose these undercover priests liked to use some kind of secret writing in case they got caught. Good thinking, but this Father Simeon can’t have been all that bright, using a code that must have been broken to get the evidence to convict Mary. When did she get the chop?”

“In 1587,” said Madero.

“And the Armada?”

“1588.”

“Like I say, not very bright, even for a priest.”

He said, “So what does it say?”

She picked up the page and studied it then said,
“After three days the fever has broken for which be thanks. His wounds though I keep them clean as I am able are yet livid and pustular. He woke and was in great fear till I calmed him, telling him what I was, and where we lay, and hearing me speak in his own tongue he grew calm and fell into a deep sleep, though not before telling me his name was Miguel Madero.”

Sam stopped and looked up at the Spaniard who said impatiently, “Go on!”

“I think he jumps a few hours then he says that the young man is awake once more and is keen to tell his story which he wishes Father Simeon to take down so that he may let his family know his fate if, as he fears, he does not return to Spain, but Simeon does. There’s a hell of a lot more but you’ll need to sort that out for yourself.”

“Please, I beg you. You must go on,” he said desperately.

“I’m not playing hard to get,” she said patiently, “It’s just that after this it gets into some lingo I don’t speak. If this is your boy, it could be Spanish, yeah?”

“Which Father Simeon spoke fluently,” said Madero.

He opened his dressing-table drawer and took out a writing pad and a ballpoint.

“I’ll need you to write out the code. Please.”

The tone was peremptory, the
please
again an afterthought.

He’s still talking to me like some schoolmaster to a kid, thought Sam. But I felt you getting a hard-on, you bastard!

“Glad to,” she said, smiling sweetly, “But first I’m going to get cleaned up. I won’t be long, then you can have the bathroom. The cops will be here soon, I expect.”

She turned and went out. He’d waited over four hundred years for this, he could wait a few minutes longer!

Madero glared after her in frustration then turned his gaze back on the book. That he’d been led here to uncover the mystery of his ancestor’s fate he could not doubt. That he had come by such a roundabout route was his own fault, caused by his hubristic misinterpretation of the message.

And here he was being prevented from God’s purpose by the mocking whim of this Australian child! Who of course wasn’t a child, he admonished himself. Which was just as well, else the way his body had reacted as he held her close in the chamber would be cause for serious concern. No, she was a bright intelligent adult woman only a few years younger than himself, and it was time he started treating her like one.

He looked at himself in the dressing-table mirror. Those years in the seminary had left their mark, not so much outwardly as on the man inside. Preparation for the most serious job a man could undertake, a job in which people twice your age would call you Father, made you strive for a maturity beyond your years. At the same time the turning away from worldly things and in particular that control and denial of the sexual impulse which in his case had begun years earlier had left him a mere boy in his relationship with women. He was still in his twenties. He had to learn again what it was to be a young man. Then perhaps he would be able to engage with Frek Woollass on level terms.

As for Sam, his arousal there had been a mere coincidence of proximity and long frustration. There was something about her which, despite all the negatives between them, formed a positive bond. But its roots, he assured himself, had nothing to do with sexual attraction. Rather it was a correspondence of purpose. She was on a quest too. Like his, it seemed to have been delayed by misinterpretation and misunderstanding, with her visit to Illthwaite turning out to be what the English called a red herring.

Yet, if she hadn’t come here, it was doubtful if he would be trembling on the brink of solving his family
mystery. This made him think that perhaps her error was part of God’s purpose too …

“Mr Madero! Are you there?”

Mrs Appledore’s voice from the foot of the stairs broke in on his meditation.

He went out to the landing and said, “Yes?”

“Police are here.”

He was surprised. He’d expected a gap of at least half an hour, probably longer.

He said, “I’m coming,” then returned to his room, and tucked the purloined papers gently under his pillow.

Downstairs he solved the mystery of the rapid police response. This was no high-powered investigatory team but a single constable who had got the call in the Powderham Arms where he’d been checking security, which everyone knew was a euphemism for chatting up one of the waitresses. A comfortably built young man, he seemed both excited to be first cop on the scene and uncertain what he actually ought to do. But he was soon helped by the arrival of a strange little man in a garish waistcoat who spoke in his ear, and rapidly thereafter everyone was ushered out of the kitchen into the bar.