He went back out into the rain. He hoisted up his vestments with one hand, tried to shield his head with the other, and ran across the graveyard towards the church. From the distant quarry came another boom, which trembled the air and reverberated around the valley. He reached the porch and turned the heavy ring handle of the studded oak door. The noise clattered in the deserted nave.
‘Mr Keefer!’ He advanced up the aisle towards the altar, looking about him for the clerk. ‘Mr Keefer!’ The parish’s guardian saints stared out at him from their niches and tabernacles. Their expressions seemed to shift in the light of their candles. Some he recognised – St George, of course, the patron saint of England, with his spear plunged into the belly of a rearing dragon; St Anthony with his pigs, the healer of animals; St Anne, the patron saint of childbirth, pointing to the infant in her womb – but others were unknown to him: obscure icons, all male, their significance lost in history, who must once have had some local meaning but whose worship would nowadays be considered idolatrous. The bishop would have apoplexy if he saw them.
He reached the altar rail. To the left a small door stood ajar. He heard a crash followed by a groan.
‘Mr Keefer?’
He went forward cautiously, pushed open the door and descended a step into the little low-ceilinged vestry. Keefer was on his knees with his back to him, muttering to himself. At first Fairfax thought he was praying or performing some kind of lamentation, but then he saw that he was emptying a wooden cupboard. Scattered across the floor around him was a profusion of prayer books, candlesticks, chalices, vestments, communion wine bottles and wafers, dusty papers.
‘Mr Keefer? What is this?’
Keefer gave a panicky glance over his shoulder. All his former cockiness had disappeared. ‘The register’s gone.’
‘What?’
‘Should be here,’ he said helplessly. ‘’Tis always kept here, under lock and key with t’others.’
‘Perhaps it has been put somewhere else in the church?’
‘But I’ve searched all over!’
To his surprise, Fairfax saw that the clerk had tears in his eyes. ‘Well, do not weep about it, Mr Keefer. I am sure it will be found. Who else has the key?’
‘Only the parson.’
‘Then he must have removed it somewhere – to the parsonage, perhaps.’
‘’Tisn’t only the current book that’s gone, though –’tis all four of them that’s missing.’
‘Four?’
‘The older volumes go back more than a thousand year! “Books of great antiquity and value”, he called them. I has a terrible feeling we’ve been robbed, Father.’
‘Surely not. Does the place look as though it has been broken into?’
‘No – not as I can tell.’
‘Then it’s almost certain that Father Lacy must have been the one who took them. Make straight this mess, and I’ll go directly and ask Mrs Budd for the key to the parsonage.’
Fairfax retraced his steps to the door of the church and out into the downpour. This time he did not bother to cover his head or hoist his vestments above the mud. He marched past Lacy’s newly heaped grave towards the church ale-house. Someone had taken up a violin and was playing a lament, and the combination of the plangent tune floating through the rain and the headstones and the drenching grey sky created within him a sensation of the utmost melancholy. He went inside, ignored the enquiring eyes that greeted his reappearance, and beckoned urgently to Agnes.
‘Did Father Lacy take the church registers back to the parsonage?’
‘No, sir. They always stays in church.’
‘And yet he must have moved them, for they aren’t there now. May I have the key to the parsonage?’
‘No – it can’t be. Those’re big old books. I’d’ve seen if he’d brought them home.’
‘Well, they must be found, wherever they are, and quickly.’ He could see Lady Durston and John Hancock watching him. ‘They are important legal records. I shall look for them myself. His study’s the likeliest place. Please give me the key.’
‘I’ll come with ye.’
‘No, you are needed here.’
‘No, sir, I should come. Rose can manage.’
He threw up his hands. He liked to think of himself as an equable man, but he was losing patience. ‘As you wish.’
Keefer was waiting for them, sheltering in the porch, and together they half walked, half ran out of the graveyard and across the lane to the parsonage. Agnes pulled out a new iron key from beneath her bodice and let them in.
The house felt peculiarly forlorn, its silence emphasised by the long tick of the clock, as if the physical removal of the old priest’s corpse had severed its connection with the living world and robbed it of its purpose. Fairfax said, ‘Mrs Budd, why don’t you look upstairs? Mr Keefer, if you take the parlour, I shall search the study.’
Once he was inside, he closed the door, leaned his back against it and surveyed the room. There were so many books, there must be a chance that the registers – which would be large, in his experience, like merchants’ ledgers – might be concealed among the others. But a thorough examination of the shelves yielded nothing. He turned his attention to the desk. The drawers were unlocked and crammed with objects – pens, a penknife, twine, rulers, pins, writing paper, a magnifying glass, sealing wax and a small pocket telescope in one; fossils, pieces of flint, bits of metal and glass, bottle tops and yet more coloured plastic straws in the other – mere gewgaws, he thought with a frisson of distaste, like a jackdaw’s nest. There was no space for large books, only a yellowing bundle of Lacy’s old sermons tied up with a black ribbon. He looked under the couch, behind and beneath the display cabinet and the little table. He even got down on his hands and knees and examined the floorboards in case one was loose and concealed some secret cavity. Nothing.
He sat back on his heels and tried to settle upon a course of action. It would be a black mark against him to return to the cathedral and confess that on his very first assignment as an ordained priest he had been unable to complete the legal formalities. That suggested he ought to stay and get to the bottom of it. On the other hand, ‘be in and out in a day’ had been his instruction. And the disappearance of the registers was hardly his responsibility, but rather part of a pattern of irregularities – the heretical texts, the obsession with antiquities, the apparently bizarre sermons, even the obscure saints – that pre-dated his arrival and was far beyond his competence as a junior priest to investigate. He should stick to his original plan, and go.
He returned to the passage, where both Agnes and Keefer stood empty-handed. ‘Nothing?’
They shook their heads.
‘Well, this is a mystery, and a serious one. I shall have to disclose it to the bishop, and no doubt he will want to pursue the matter further.’ He saw the fear in their faces and hastened to reassure them. ‘None of this is your fault – I shall make that clear. Keep on looking, by all means, but lose no sleep over it. Soon there will be a new priest, and a fresh start, and I am certain God will continue to hold His faithful children in this fine valley very close to His heart.’ He pressed his hands together in what he hoped was a suitably pious gesture, then rubbed his palms. ‘Now, Mrs Budd, I need to pack up my things, and I should be obliged if Rose could be sent back to fetch me my horse.’
She bowed her head. ‘Very well, Father.’
‘Good. Thank you both for all you’ve done. I hope that perhaps one day we may meet again in happier times.’ He shook hands with each in turn, and blessed them.
When the door was closed he went into the parlour and began to disrobe. His outer vestments were soaking, but his cassock was dry enough. He folded the alb, chasuble and stole inside out and replaced them in his bag, along with his Bible, prayer book, pipe and pen. He had not long finished fastening his cape when he heard the sound of horse’s hooves in the road outside.
He paused in the passage with his hand on the doorknob and took a last look round be
fore stepping outside.
Rose was waiting at the gate, holding the bridle of his horse. She was standing like a sentinel, oblivious to the rain, which had drenched her black dress so that it clung to her slim figure as a second skin. Strands of dark hair were plastered to her face. She flicked them away with her free hand, and for the first time when he spoke to her she looked up straight into his eyes.
‘Thank you, child.’ He took the bridle and squeezed her hand, and then on a sudden impulse that afterwards made him blush with shame, and which he would never have succumbed to had he not been sure he would never see her again, he raised her cold white fingers to his lips and kissed them. ‘God bless you, dear Rose.’ Then he pulled himself up on to the horse and without looking back set off down the lane.
As he rode past the church ale-house he could hear the violin distinctly. What had once been a lament now sounded remarkably like a jig, and it occurred to him that the burial had become a day’s holiday for the village – a gathering that by the sound of it would probably go on until nightfall. He could still hear the tune as he reached the end of the main street, and it was not until the road began to climb out of the valley that the music was at last drowned out by the incessant rush and hiss of rain.
The track steepened and became a stream. Torrents of brownish-yellow water ran downhill. May would go no faster than walking pace. It must have taken the best part of half an hour to reach the point where the lane finally curved towards the ridge of the hill, and it was only as they rounded the corner that Fairfax glimpsed, above the trees to his right and up ahead, a lateral brown scar where a part of the steep slope had sheared away, taking the trees and rocks with it. They had tumbled down as if they had been tipped out of some giant’s sack – a narrow glacier of mud and stones, roots and splintered timber that spilled out of the wood and lay across the road.
He rode up to it and stopped. The barrier was at least as high as his head. It blocked his way entirely. He dismounted and began to climb it, sinking up to his calves in the wet mud. He clutched at protruding branches and hauled himself out of the sucking mire, toiling to the top, where he stood like a general surveying a battlefield, with his hands on his hips, squinting into the rain. The obstruction was not very wide – ten feet, if that – and beyond it the road was frustratingly clear. The reality of his situation slowly settled upon him. There was simply no way past. He bowed his head in resignation to his fate.
The journey back down to the village was as laboured as his ascent, but worse, for he knew what awaited him. He hitched his mare to the wall of the graveyard, slung his bag over his shoulder and slouched towards the church ale-house. His reappearance was greeted with knowing looks. They were familiar with what the road was like in this weather. A chair was fetched for him and placed in front of the fire so that he could dry himself. A tankard of ale was put in his hand. The violinist struck up another merry tune, a song from the olden days. People began to dance. He looked around for Sarah Durston and John Hancock, but both had left. Rose would not meet his eye. Oh God, he thought, oh God …
He drained the tankard and was urged to take another. How friendly everyone was! He ate more pie. At some point, Mercy Kern asked him to dance. She was passably pretty, despite the hairy mole on her chin. It seemed churlish to refuse.
Here’s a health to the King, and a lasting peace.
May faction end and wealth increase.
Come, let us drink it while we have breath,
For there’s no drinking after death.
He had a vague recollection of people standing in a circle and clapping and stamping in time with the music as the tempo increased and he whirled her around the floor.
And he that will this health deny,
Down among the dead men, down among the dead men,
Down, down, down, down;
Down among the dead men let him lie!
The walls seemed to detach themselves and spin faster and faster. After that, his memory was hazy.
CHAPTER SIX
A hand reaches out from the past
A MATCH STRUCK, flared blue in the darkness.
The brilliance of it pierced his eyes. He squinted. His fingers trembled as he touched it to the candle wick. The yellow flame stuttered and swelled. The shadowed unfamiliar room danced into view. His nostrils detected chloride of lime and he realised he was in the old priest’s bedroom – that he was in fact lying in Father Lacy’s bed – and that he was naked. The match burned down to his fingers. He dropped it and collapsed back on to his pillow.
Oh God, oh God …
He struggled to sit up and immediately felt an ominous roiling in his stomach, as if he had swallowed some writhing serpent or a fat black maybug with flailing legs. He lurched to the window and managed to open it just in time to retch into the front garden. His mouth was full of bile and fragments of half-digested game pie. He coughed and spat and rested his hot cheek against the cold panes.
The rain had ceased at last. He could smell hawthorn, parsley, wet grass. Above the church was a bright half-moon that outlined its square tower. Lights were moving in the village. He could hear the wheels of a cart. It must be that strange perambulatory hour, he thought, between the first and second sleeps.
When he was confident he wasn’t going to be sick again, he stepped back carefully into the room. Now that he had voided his stomach, he felt surprisingly sober, apart from a desperate thirst and a dusty throb behind his eyes. He ran his hands over his body. He could find no bruises or abrasions. How had he ended up here? Try as he might, he could not recall his journey back from the wake. And where were his clothes? In a belated attempt at modesty, he dragged the sheet from the bed and wrapped himself up, then took the candle and searched the room. There was not much to see. A small wardrobe. A plain wooden chair. A chest of drawers with a basin, jug and mirror on top of it. His bag was by the door, with his purse still in it. But there was no sign of his cassock or underclothes. His humiliation was complete.
He lifted the jug of water to his lips, took a few deep gulps, then bent his face over the washbowl and emptied the remainder over his head.
He lay down on the bed and stared at the raftered ceiling. He suspected they had got him drunk on purpose, in order to make a fool of him, but he had no one to blame but himself. Dear Father, forgive me for the shame I have brought upon thy holy office …
For several minutes he remained without moving, pondering how best to make his escape from Addicott St George. Once he had recovered his clothes, he could try to leave on foot – scale the mudslide in the road and walk to Axford; it would take him four or five hours. But how would he get from Axford to the cathedral? And how would it look to return without May? Perhaps he could find some way through the woods and lead her? It did not strike him as a realistic prospect. Eventually he rolled over on to his side, meaning to try to go back to sleep, and instead found himself eye to eye with Father Lacy’s rimless spectacles. They were lying on top of a small book bound in pale brown leather and had a steely, reproachful look that reminded him of the bishop. He moved the glasses gingerly to one side, picked up the book and held it close to his face. The Proceedings and Papers of the Society of Antiquaries, Volume XX – the volume missing from the shelves downstairs.
He hesitated, sniffed the leather and ran his thumbs over its scratched surface, then toyed with the cover. It was another sin he was contemplating: sin upon sin, the serpent’s apple. Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. Yet he was curious, and youthful inquisitiveness, despite his indoctrination, on this occasion overcame his training. He sat up and rearranged his pillow to support his back and opened the book.
At first he was disappointed. It was soon apparent that the volume consisted merely of the minutes of the society’s meetings over a period of four years, bound together in book form. The paper was of poor quality, the type small and crooked, like a row of bad teeth, the binding loose; it looked and felt like an amateur production. The members assemble
d quarterly at a London tavern, the Crown and Garter in Pall Mall, and their meetings invariably followed the same pattern. First they would discuss the business of the society: correspondence, approval of minutes, admission of new members, the acquisition of objects offered for sale, the exhibition of antiquities belonging to the society, which archaeological projects should be funded and which abandoned. Then they would listen to a paper presented by a member. The same names recurred: Mr Shadwell (President), Mr Quycke (Secretary), Captain Stewart (Treasurer), Mr Shirley, Colonel Denny, Mr Howe, Mr Berkeley, Mr Fauquier … Perhaps four dozen men in all. The papers reported on excavations of grave sites, of houses and factories, and of a great wide straight highway to the north of London that was almost a hundred feet across; they catalogued discoveries (fragments of travelling machines constructed of metal that were now barely more than rust stains in the earth, instruments for communication, household utensils, public statues and memorials); and they aired theories (‘How did the ancients make music?’, ‘What was lost in The Cloud?’, ‘Tombstone inscriptions of the late pre-Apocalypse era’, ‘The Great Exodus of London’).
Much of it was too arcane for him to understand, and he leafed through it quickly until about two thirds of the way through he came across the striped feather of a partridge protruding from the top of the pages. It drifted down on to his chest. The meeting it marked had been held at the end of spring some thirteen years previously. After the approval of the minutes, matters arising and correspondence, the fourth item on the agenda was a report by the President.
Fairfax rolled on to his side and held the text closer to the candle.
Mr Shadwell begged leave to notify the society of a most significant discovery that had recently been made in the course of the excavation of the mass grave at Winchester.
A plastic box had been uncovered containing correspondence addressed to a Professor Geoffrey Chandler, a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Unfortunately, there had been an ingress of damp that had destroyed, or rendered indecipherable, the bulk of the material. One letter, however, had been sealed in its own plastic wallet, and this was found to be in near-perfect condition. Mr Shadwell had made a copy, and asked permission to read it aloud to the society. His proposal was approved unanimously.
The Second Sleep Page 5