The Vavasour Macbeth

by Bart Casey

  He and Juric angled it out of the cage, starting off across the fields. “That was well hit, Juric. Well done.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I mean thank you very much for the second chance.”

  “Well, we all need a second chance at the end of the day in the nets against Percival, don’t we? Important thing is to make good use of it when we get it. And you certainly did that, Juric. Snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, I should say. And will probably be a good help for us against Merchant Taylors as well.”

  They reached the door of the gym and put down the mat. “Right, I’ll take it from here, Juric. Just let me have your pads and gloves and then go join your mates over there.”

  Juric unbuckled the pads from behind his legs and then ran off back to the edge of the field, where three of the lads stood waiting by the entrance to the path.

  That’s a good practice anyway, thought Stephen, dragging the mat through the door and into the gym.

  ~

  Heading home, even though Stephen had walked that way a thousand times before, it all seemed a bit magical to him. That early evening September light had an extraordinary clarity, almost otherworldly in its brilliance and purity. It splashed across the dull brick and stucco housetops, reflected in the mirrored surfaces of their windows, and transformed every color in the tops of the trees into something exuberant that he noticed as if seeing it for the first time. And this evening the daylight wouldn’t actually turn into darkness until well after seven. And then it would be bright again at six the next morning. These long days were so different from December and January, when it turned dark before school let out at four and the whole planet seemed to be so wet and dreary that you go mad with the gloom. Two different worlds.

  Entering his flat, Stephen saw the message machine light blinking, and he pressed the Play button while he took off

  his jacket.

  “It’s Miranda. I need to talk to you—it’s important. Bloody well give me a call tonight, will you?”

  Not likely, thought Stephen. Hadn’t seen or talked to her since the holiday. Wanted to let her cool down a bit. Then a beep and another message.

  “Stephen, good afternoon. It’s Hugh Rowe here. Thank you for your letter and the photocopies. I’d love to know more about what you’ve found, so please ring me in my office on 0345 756837. Next week I’ll be there most of Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon for my regular office hours. I’m sure you remember. Thank you.” Rowe had a funny way of sounding the last two words out: the first one heading down, the second one coming up. Very carefully said and yet very perfunctory as well—like he was talking to a waitress as she brought him his tea, or something.

  Well, well, never mind—that’s the great man himself, Professor B. H. Rowe. So he calls himself Hugh. Wonder what the “B” stands for on all his books—by B. H. Rowe. Probably Bertie or something. I wonder if he does remember me.

  No more messages. Stephen walked over to his table by the window, hung his jacket on the back of his chair, and sat down. He had several sheets of the old papers on the main surface in front of him, along with a transcription work-in-progress from that morning. To the right, his bookcase held a series of organized letter files and file folders, as well as the commonplace book resting on the top shelf at the end.

  Most of the day yesterday had been spent putting things in some sort of order—and there was still much more over at the vicarage. Anne Vavasour, he thought, who were you and just why did you save all of these papers?

  He owed Vicar Hamilton an update, and now should be as good a time as any, he thought, dialing the vicarage and picking up his notes. The vicar answered and Stephen talked him through the highlights so far.

  “Well, I’m starting to make an inventory of everything: just a simple numbering system and brief description of each item. If you wait and have an expert at an auction house or bookshop do that, it would be time-consuming and expensive, and you’d never know if anything went missing somehow.”

  “Very good, Stephen, if you don’t mind doing it,” said the vicar.

  “No, I don’t mind. I’m very excited to be discovering what you have here. You know, old books and such are a passion for me.”

  “Yes, I remember. Anything interesting yet?”

  “Well, first there’s that embroidered book, which does indeed seem to be Anne’s commonplace book from her school days. It’s very unusual for a girl of the period because she’s obviously reading Latin and Greek as well as contemporary foreign languages like French and Italian. Usually a girl would be trained only in the more female arts like sewing, music, and dancing. But she even has quotes from Roger Ascham, Queen Elizabeth’s own tutor. So her training was pitched very high—like a princess.”

  Stephen continued, “A few other things stand out. The first is a handwritten play or masque with many different handwriting styles. It looks like a group was editing it—lots of crossed out words and phrases and new sections written in the margins. I don’t recognize the content: it starts with some prolonged battle scene, swords swinging and so on. I’ll go deeper into it after we’ve got a handle on everything else. And another is a handwritten draft of Arcadia. That was a popular romance begun by Sir Philip Sidney around 1580. This copy is beautifully written. It must have been done by a professional scribe, and that makes sense because Sidney had copies made to circulate among friends. I haven’t been able to value it, but I do know Sotheby’s sold a printed first edition of Arcadia from 1590 for £14,000 or so in 1990, and this handwritten version should be much more, I would think.

  “The last thing I’ll mention is some sort of legal paper or deposition in a court proceeding between Anne and someone else. It’s from about 1621 and it’s all in Latin—which means it was from a church court and not a secular one. So I’ve sent photocopies of some pages from all these to my old professor at Oxford, and I’ll let you know what he says. After that we might share copies with a rare book dealer who was mine and Margaret’s classmate.”

  “Fancy that,” said the vicar. “Delia would have been so pleased.”

  “Also, a lot of the papers seem to be connected to a Sir Henry Lee. So I need to find out more about him, too. I’ve ordered a scarce biography of him at the village library—it will come from another library on interlibrary loan, and I should have it in a week or so. Meanwhile, I’d just be careful about saying anything about the value yet. I don’t think you should attract too much attention, and so on.”

  “Well, there already is an article in the Village Advertiser today,” said the vicar. “You’ll have to take a look at it. I’m afraid it’s all about ‘treasure in the tombs,’ as you might expect.”

  “I’ll look for it when I go out tonight. This is all certainly an out-of-the-ordinary experience,” said Stephen.

  “Yes, I mentioned it to Margaret when she called the other day. She seemed happy I had something exciting going on.”

  Stephen hadn’t expected Margaret’s resurrection on the call—he was deeply taken aback. He recovered and continued, “Well, that’s the report of the hour. I’ll bring these papers back on Saturday, if that’s all right, and take another stack to look at.”

  “Very good. Thanks for the update, Stephen.”

  Stephen put the phone back in its cradle. Margaret is happy indeed. He sighed.

  Seven o’clock.

  No more work today—the morning’s efforts and the afternoon practice had him a bit tired and peckish—so a quick meal out and a stop at the Village Arms for a pint or two sounded like just the ticket. Well, he thought he should give Miranda a call: no use adding fuel to the fire.

  He dialed Miranda’s number from memory, and after three rings the answer machine came on: “Hi, it’s me. I’m not around so leave me a message—with the time, too, if you don’t mind.”

  Stephen put the receiver back in the cradle. I’ll wait—too impersonal, all this voice mail stuff. I’ll catch up with her later.

  He threw some water on his face, checked
his wallet for cash and his ATM Barclaycard, grabbed his jacket back off the chair, and headed out into the evening.

  “Well, then the vicar hands up these bags, and they’re chockful with what they picked up in the vault. And two black wood boxes. Very careful of ’em they were, I can tell you. Didn’t let on a thing. And Stephen, the headmaster, is almost pissing himself with excitement, just grabbing the bags back when he comes back out of the hole and then carrying the lot off to the vicar’s house.”

  “What was in ’em, then? Did you have a look?”

  “Was there any jewelry you could see?”

  “No, that’s the shame of it. It all happened so fast. There was papers—but no telling what they had hid underneath. We couldn’t see what they were doing when they were down there. They kept well in the back. I just know they buggered off quick. Didn’t want to stop and show any else of us what they had.”

  A stonemason named John and his mates were hugging the rail of the bar at the Village Arms, where the flood at the church and the mysterious discovery were the topics of the day. Besides John’s eyewitness account, there was the account in the Village Advertiser, which was spread out on the bar, with a picture of the vicar outside the church. “Flood Leads Vicar to Treasures in Tomb,” read the headline. This was a lot stronger stuff than the usual zoning-board plan for a new zebra crossing or one-way system on the Advertiser’s front page.

  The vicar was quoted downplaying the find: “Only some family papers,” he said, pooh-poohing the rumors of treasure that were only natural speculation. He also said the headmaster of St. George’s, Stephen White, who had studied old documents extensively at Oxford, was inventorying exactly what was there.

  It all seemed very posh and suspicious. Probably it was something like gold, thought John, and not just stupid papers.

  “The vicar says what they found was in a tomb belonged to his wife’s own family, if you can believe it,” John continued. “Well, that’s very convenient, isn’t it? I’m sure I’d be saying the treasure was clutched in me sainted mother’s hands an’ all, if it was me.”

  “It’s not right, is it?” said one of his mates. “I mean, today his whole family’s living off the public charity—vicar of the church, my arse. He’s looting us...sending his daughter to Oxford and then she gets a big job on the telly while we’re the ones putting our hard-earned wages in the poor box.”

  “I’ve never seen you putting wages in any poor box,” said another fellow, to snickers all round. “More likely into your next pint.”

  “No, well, then you’ve never seen the inside of a church either in this life, have you, you bastard?”

  At that very moment, through the walls and over in the lounge area on the other side of the pub, Stephen was sitting at one of the waitress-served tables, nursing his fourth pint and staring again at the village newspaper.

  Amazing, but really true, he thought. The closer you are to any story reported in the media, the better you see all the bullshit distortion they add in to hype the facts. It’s all about selling newspapers, or radio or TV or anything. He’d offered that opinion to Margaret before. Surprisingly, she’d thought the same—even though she was on the side doing the reporting. She said, “People are always surprised when they read up their own interview. They think it will come out just like they’ve said it…but instead it’s all about what we’re thinking while we’re watching them talk: are they lying? …too full of themselves…exaggerating…hiding something…you know. And that’s the filter that changes things. That’s us. Of course, you can do it right, or you can make it up. And, sadly, people in my business do both.”

  Well, here it is: the buried treasure thing has colored everything. If they only knew, Stephen thought. Truth was, neither Vicar Hamilton nor Stephen gave a hoot about money—really couldn’t care less. If the vicar won the lottery, he’d give it all to the parish. And if Stephen had the winning ticket, he’d probably lose track of it in his flat, especially now that he had all those old papers. For Stephen, life was all just about teaching, history, words, and books—and he liked to help people. He had no idea about how much money he had with the house and an inheritance from his grandfather, but only that it was more than enough.

  Sipping his pint, he was pondering how the language and images were loading the article in the Advertiser: “buried treasure from the crypt,” “recovered loot,” “windfall for the vicar and his daughter, Margaret, the journalist and BBC presenter,” “spirited away the treasure into the vicarage,” “under lock and key,” “keeping tight lips,” etc. Bloody inflammatory, he thought.

  Stephen was just about to start reading it all over again when he looked up and saw Miranda making her entrance through the smoked-glass door of the lounge. She was stunning. So confident. Black miniskirt and close-fitting white top. A small black leather bag hanging from a long strap off her bare shoulders. A combination of good looks, fashion, fitness, and attitude, he thought. She paused as she came through the door, stacked herself onto her right heel and surveyed the scene. The Village Arms had been her home turf since schooldays. And her first words this night were a familiar “hello there” to barkeeper Jim and waitress Mollie before taking a close look around the half-empty room and finding Stephen.

  “Oh there you are, you bastard,” she projected. She frowned and swanned slowly over toward Stephen’s table. “Mollie, bring me my usual.” Stephen could tell she had cooled down. She lowered herself smoothly into the chair across, touched her elbows onto the tabletop, and cradled her chin in her hands, leaning forward. “I read all about you in the paper. So that’s where you went off to. Well, I suppose I can’t compete with buried treasure—least not if you don’t even wake me up to have a go.” A slow blink of her lashes and then she waited.

  “Miranda, I’m sorry. You were asleep and I meant to leave a note, but I forgot. The vicar telephoned me. He was in a state. He wanted me over there, and when I saw what it was I just forgot about the time completely. And it’s not all this rubbish about buried treasure. It’s just a bunch of old papers.”

  “And why didn’t you call me then? I left you a message on your bloody machine. It’s not an accident I’m here, you know. I had to come looking for you, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Sorry, I did call. But you were out and all I got was the machine—”

  “You know, it is a message machine. You talk in to it and then I can play what you say. Try that some time. Bloody hell.”

  Mollie arrived with Miranda’s gin and tonic. “I’ll have one of those, too,” said Stephen, relieved the crisis seemed to have passed.

  “Switching now might be bad for the head, luv,” volunteered Mollie.

  “Thanks. It’s all right,” he told the waitress. “I’ll have a lie-in tomorrow. I’m not working ’til next week.”

  Miranda drew herself back from the table and lit a cigarette. She sent the first stream of smoke out in a long low stream of gray. “Well, what have you found, anyway?” she asked.

  Stephen hadn’t really talked about it to anyone except the vicar. He cupped his hands around his drink and looked rather distantly toward her as he remembered the scene. “When we went down into the vault, there was an old tomb from Elizabethan days—you know, 1500 or 1600—and two wooden boxes. The vicar had thought the boxes were children’s coffins until the end of one came off in his hand. That revealed the papers: letters, journals, manuscripts, all in really good shape. It’s really odd because it was different then—people didn’t save paper the way you might now. I mean, they didn’t even really make paper in England. They tried to, but no one could get it right, and so they imported it from France and Italy. And you didn’t save it, you reused it. So if I wrote you a letter, after you’d read it, you might give it to the cook, and she might use it to line the baking pan. Or if you wrote something that was going to be printed—and now we’re really talking rarities—then as soon as they set the type, they’d send the paper over to the binders who’d use multiple sheets of it to
make the covers of a book or whatever. They would never have thought to save the original draft on the paper. That would have been too much of a waste. Sometimes they washed or bleached the ink off and then used it again—and you have all these old manuscripts where you can see two or three books that were written on top of one another. And the only people who did save paper were people doing business or law. They saved things that might be important later, like wills or deeds. No one saved ordinary letters, poetry, or things written for entertainment. But this person did save those things...or someone did for her, putting everything up in to that box. So it’s really odd.

  Very unusual.”

  He took a big swallow from his glass, letting Miranda jump in, finally.

  “Well, hand them over to me as you read ’em and I’ll bake you some biscuits.”

  Stephen smiled and went on, “I’m just trying to figure out what they’re all about just now. And it’s very hard to make out what the hell they are about, what with the old handwriting and the old language. Probably will take me forever—be my life’s work.”

  “Well, that’s great, love.” Miranda paused, seeming to slow things down a bit, and leaning back over the table toward him. “I’m very happy for you. But I need to talk to you about something else. Something quite important, and I’m sorry we’re doing this here in the pub, but might as well, I suppose.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I know we’ve never talked seriously about things...you know...like getting together or staying together for a stretch.” She was looking down at the tabletop as she said the words. She seemed unusually serious now, and he searched her face for what she was trying to say.

  Shaking her hair side to side, Miranda tossed her bangs away from her eyes and suddenly looked up directly into his face and eyes. Their eyebeams crossed and he started backward under her gaze. She took a deep breath and said very slowly, “The point is, lover boy, that you’ve stuffed me...you know, knocked me up. I’m expecting...in a family way...all of that. I’m the ma, you’re the da.”