The Haunted Martyr

by Kenneth Cameron

  Denton made his way down a corridor all in brown, with varnished brown woodwork taking up most of the walls and worn brown boards underfoot. The library was really only the set of shelves he’d been pointed towards; otherwise, the room was given over to a huge typewriter on a table, two stacks of collection plates, pegs with assorted clothes hung on them—presumably the lost and found department—and a bicycle that he thought would be the rector’s. One rather florid-faced Englishwoman, looking as if she’d been walking on the Downs, was standing by the shelves and said, ‘Oh, hello,’ as if they’d known each other for years.

  ‘I’m looking for Debrett’s,’ he said.

  ‘Second shelf.’ She was reading standing up, perhaps trying to see if the book in hand was one she’d already read.

  Denton glanced along the shelves, was surprised to see one of his own novels—but not surprised to see more of Mrs Gaskell’s and Ouida’s.

  He took the Debrett’s to the table by the typewriter and quickly found the Easleigh title. He made notes in his book—dates, names, children—without caring about the minor permutations of family that seemed to fascinate admirers of the aristocracy. To his surprise, Fra Geraldo had been only the fifth Lord Easleigh; the first had materialised from the cabinet of wealth at the end of the eighteenth century. Denton had thought that noble families all went back to the Conquest.

  The woman who had been reading passed behind him and said, ‘See you in church, I hope,’ and swept out with a lot of noise of skirts.

  The rector, having stood aside for her, veered in. ‘Such records as we might have are in the tower. Apparently there’s a trunk, maybe two, and old accounts and a lot of stuff are thrown in there when we finish with them. I’ll give you the key if you want to climb up. Can’t promise anything.’

  ‘I’d also like to get more information about the Sommerses—the Easleighs, if that’s what they’re called.’

  ‘No, they’d be the Sommerses; I think only the holder of the title is Easleigh. We don’t pay much attention to any of that Down Under. Tell you who could, though—there’s an old tyke I take communion to every week, as he can’t get about any more. He’s mad for the titles and their doings. Gets a couple of rags sent out from Blighty, all about them; has a pile of books. Go see him. Tell him I sent you. Nice old buffer, although don’t tell him I said that. Actually gave me a brown ale instead of sherry, would you believe it—“Porter for Porter,” he said. I could have wept in gratitude. In this job, you go out and about to a lot of old ladies and gents; the snake-piss they give you to drink would gag a platypus. Sir Martin Gort. Likes you to use the “sir”. You go see him.’ He wrote something on a card and put it down in front of Denton. ‘Wave that at him; he’ll know it’s me. I suppose you want to make your ascension into the tower now?’

  ‘No time like the present.’

  ‘Wait until you see the stairs.’

  The stairs, however, were merely narrow and steep; there wasn’t enough of the tower to make them long, as well. Above was a small room reached through a trap; the stairs went on up to another trap and, presumably, a bell or bells. Denton stopped in the room, which held mostly cast-offs of congregations past—a few broken chairs, several large crates full of long-out-of-style clothes (perhaps the last stop for the lost and found department), several awnings, now raddled, that might have been a bad idea for the church windows in the Neapolitan summer.

  Denton made his way to several trunks pushed together below a broken window through which birds evidently came and went: bird droppings were frequent. He knelt and opened a trunk and began to rummage through it. After twenty minutes, he knew he was in for a dirty afternoon; after an hour, his hands were grimy, his face taut with the feel of dust. He had been once through all three trunks, found nothing likely, was now methodically emptying them one at a time. He found old hymnals, old prayer books, old prize books (‘Edwin Latham, Most Proficient in Memorisation, 1837’) that the recipients either hadn’t taken or had given back to the church, old plans and programmes for now-forgotten jumble sales and lawn parties. He found records of pledges to the church, of bequests, of gifts; he found records of moneys paid in pounds and francs, dating to well before Garibaldi. He found correspondence about prospective rectors and vicars. He found papers so mouse-chewed as to be nothing but a kind of damp lacework.

  The second trunk was more of the same, filled out with old, rotted vestments. Somebody’s boots had found their way there, very small in size and very out of fashion. Twelve issues of Every Saturday. A packet of brochures about the steamship route from Marseilles to Alexandria by way of Naples. That, oddly, was the first mention of Naples. The church, whatever its geography, was really in England.

  Such choir records as there were he found in the third trunk in the backs of the vestrymen’s accounts. The collections, counted and initialled by two sets of initials, were kept in the various coinages of their day, now and then with the intrusion of Spanish or German coins. Perhaps because the choir was considered an expenditure (the choirmaster’s meagre stipend, gowns, music), the choir was put at the back of each ledger. Little was revealed to Denton that interested him until, raising small explosions of dust as he threw the books down in disgust, he found the volume that included Fra Geraldo’s tenure as choirmaster.

  And there he was: ‘To Mr Sommers for music 9s/6d’. ‘To Mr Sommers 12s/3d for the Christmas’. ‘For Henson for singing Gt. Jehovah 1/2 crown’. And then there was an entry that quickened Denton’s pulse and made him forget the dust: ‘To Mr Sommers for housing the boys L1/11s/3d’.

  Housing the boys? The choirboys? In the Palazzo Minerva—or hadn’t he bought that yet?

  Denton skimmed more and found nothing, looked at the next volume, then the one before. Nothing and nothing.

  He returned to the first ledger and at last found, not in the section devoted to the choir, but under Irregular Employees and Labour, an entry for ‘The Italian Boys, to have 6p each for each time they sing and 3p each per week that they rehearse, to include…’ And there followed a list of names. Only two of them meant anything to Denton, but those jumped out at him: Michele Esposito…Edouardo diToledano. Nonetheless, he copied all nine names into his notebook. Might DiNapoli be able to find them if they were still alive and in Naples?

  ‘Bit smutty up there, I think,’ Porter said when he came down the stairs. He was standing there as if he’d been waiting.

  ‘I’m a little grubby. Still…’

  ‘Found something? Oh, good! Never like to see a man labour in vain. Well, do go call on old Gort. You may not get anything out of it, but he will. And if you’d like to make a contribution to the foundation, there’s a box by the door as you go out. Ah, that is generous. Good of you. Do come back. Come on Sunday! Come every Sunday—!’

  His voice faded as Denton walked through the churchyard and back into the world of Naples.

  He gave the list of choirboys’ names to DiNapoli and told him to try to find them or their families.

  ‘Every other person in Naples got one of these names!’

  ‘I thought you knew everybody. Look, DiNapoli, they were very poor, so you know where they must have come from.’

  ‘Half them peoples, they got moved out by the Risanamento. These guys be fifty years old now, older, they’re maybe dead. Maybe they emigrated. Maybe they don’ wanna be found.’

  ‘Find one. Just one.’

  ‘You gimme a needle in a what-you-call-it—on a farm.’

  ‘Haystack.’

  ‘A pile of haystacks.’ DiNapoli looked at the list.

  ‘This one is Michele ’l ubriacon’, huh?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Him I don’t have to find, then.’

  ‘I want to talk to him, though. I had him and then he ran away.’

  ‘He moves around. I ain’t seen him in a few days. I look.’ DiNapoli said it without enthusiasm and went off with a sick man’s posture. The only thing wrong with him, Denton thought, was Janet’s absence. Well, he w
as suffering from it, too.

  He had got something from his visit to the English church, but not enough. He needed to talk to the man who was ‘mad for titles and their doings’ and so sent a note to ask if he could come by the next day. The answer came first thing the next morning: Sir Martin Gort would be delighted to have him visit that afternoon.

  In the same mail was a brief letter from Maltby. Denton winced when he read, ‘By the time you get this, I shall have left Naples.’ He remembered Maltby’s look of appeal just before he had fled the dismantling of Fra Geraldo’s chapel. He must have known then that he was leaving; he must have wanted some sort of goodbye. Denton had been too caught up in that spectacle to give him the chance.

  ‘I wish to thank you for all the help you have given me,’ Maltby had written. Denton winced again: what help? ‘Thank you for everything, and I hope we will meet again under more propitious circumstances.’ It was signed Frederick L. Maltby. Denton hadn’t even learned his first name before.

  It was not the happiest way to start the day. Maltby was a bit of a wart, but he had succeeded in making Denton feel guilty—a sin of omission. He walked to the flat of the man who knew all about the nobility with a sense of gloom.

  Sir Martin Gort was a thin old man in a beautifully made grey frock coat, faintly wheezing as he sat in a hard armchair to receive Denton. An Italian maid who looked somewhat younger than he and as tough as a prison matron fussed over him and glared at Denton as if he had come on some evil errand, then vanished.

  ‘Forgive me for not getting up,’ the old man said. ‘My legs, you know.’ His hair had thinned to a baby-like sparseness, chalky white and a little yellow on the top. His gaunt cheeks were yellowing, too.

  Denton made polite apologies and explanations, sat where he was directed, described his errand.

  ‘Ah, the Sommerses. Yes, you mentioned them in your note.’

  Denton was relieved that the old man remembered it.

  ‘The Sommerses,’ he said again. ‘I confess I never saw the fifth Lord Easleigh, though I believe he was long active in the poorer wards of the city. Certainly, he was in Naples long before me.’ He shook his head. ‘When I left India, I thought I would live in England, but I found London less familiar than Hyderabad. And I liked a warmer climate. Naples seemed to me about right. What is it about the Sommerses you’d like to know? Let me say, I don’t trade in gossip, can’t abide it, but I do take an interest in genealogy.’

  ‘The family, really. The history.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ The old man seemed to wiggle slightly. ‘I do like aristocratic history. Well, the first one, you know, started as a regimental agent during the American War, made rather a packet. After the war, he put his money into slaving ships and made another packet! He was a great benefactor of the Tory party and so was given the title. A viscount by letters patent, I believe. The title has to do with the village where he was born, I think—Easleigh, in Sussex. Never been there. Nor have you, I dare say. Doesn’t matter. He lived to a great age and so all but cheated his eldest of the title—the mother was a Desmond, I think the cadet branch, no distinction but said to have been remarkably pretty as a girl—where was I?’

  ‘He lived to a great age.’

  ‘Just so, he did. When he passed away, slaving had been banned, so the second earl went into the India trade. Not the best time for it; in fact, he had no head for money and so ran through a great deal of it—more than was good for the estate, if the rumour-mongers are to be believed. His passion was hunting—he was a regular with the Melton—and he did a good deal of coaching, and so on. Sometimes rather high spirited, I believe. He married an iron man’s daughter, quite a good deal of money, and they say he went through that, too, although I don’t know about such things.’

  ‘The family was poor, then?’

  ‘Oh, not poor as you might say poor, but for a viscount, perhaps so. I have always thought it dangerous to give inherited titles to such people—life peerages are so much wiser. I believe in the old families—the Spencers, the Devonshires—whose bloodline has been long established and who breed true. New money gives a certain vigour for a generation or two, and then—’ He sighed.

  ‘The Sommerses have gone downhill?’

  ‘Well, the second Lord Easleigh was not wise. His son was a military man and hardly lived in England long enough to call it home, as I hear it. Killed in one of the Zulu Wars. Cetawayo’s impis, I suppose. He had two sons; the second son was the chap who just died in Naples; he became the fifth in the line after his elder brother, who was the fourth, died unexpectedly in one of the cholera epidemics. This one—your one, I mean, the Naples monk or whatever he was—was as I understand it rather a radical, some sort of artist, and there were stories—I hate to retail stories; they’re so unkind—that he had to leave England because of an indiscretion. Most unsuitable, if true. Bit of a black sheep, perhaps.’

  ‘He never seems to have married.’

  ‘I think not. At any rate, the title has gone to a—I just read about it in a court circular, really a kind of round-robin letter for those of us interested in genealogy; where is it?—oh, no matter, I remember the gist. The sixth Lord Easleigh is still a boy, it seems. Seventeen, I think. Not the happiest of stories: his mother was one of the daughters of the fourth Lord Easleigh—that is, the Naples one’s elder brother, making her his niece—did I say he had three daughters—the fourth one, I mean? Well, he did, and not a brood mare in the lot. Not for sons, at any rate; they did produce a multitude of daughters, but what good is that to the title? I suppose it was a heritage from their mother, whose name I can’t even recall. The new peer’s mother—or her husband; I believe he is an engineer, as they are settled in Birmingham; it was one of those unfortunate marriages—one of them, anyway, was determined to produce an heir, as none of her sisters had, and so she kept on having children long after it was either wise or seemly for her to do so, and even after one of her sisters had a boy, she at last presented the world with this boy. He’d never have got the title, except his cousin—the boy born ahead of him to one of his mother’s sisters and who should have inherited—was killed a few years ago in an accident on the steam underground. A cautionary tale, if one could take the meaning from it.’

  ‘But there’s no doubt about the succession?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. It’s all quite simple and direct, as you’ve just heard.’

  ‘And he inherits everything?’

  The old man chuckled. ‘“Everything” of whatever there is left. Each child in each generation has had some money, of course; I think that the monk, the fifth, was probably on some sort of remittance, although I shouldn’t say it, until he inherited. It won’t be one of the great fortunes, I’m sure.’ He chuckled again, apparently with satisfaction.

  ‘He owned a palazzo here.’

  ‘In a most insalubrious neighbourhood, I believe. The value cannot be great.’

  ‘But I’ve been told that he had plans to endow a charity.’

  ‘Oh, dear. Well, not to speak ill of the dead, but I should say he passed away just in time. I don’t believe in noble titles’ being passed on without the money to support them.’

  ‘The fifth Lord Easleigh lived very modestly.’

  ‘Yes, and let the title and whatever properties he owned in England go to rack and ruin, I’m sure. He should have been at home, minding his properties and fathering an heir! I have no patience with such men.’

  Denton stayed long enough after that to drink a small glass of Madeira (he wasn’t offered the brown ale—some judgement, he supposed, that the old man had made of his character). And to promise to call another time. The old man said that he had few callers and he liked a good chat. He never went out. Soon, Denton thought, he would go out for the last time, that one-way journey. He thanked him and left.

  Another afternoon, DiNapoli not available, he climbed the Gradino di Chiaia towards the upper town. He could go anywhere alone now, partly because he felt confident of the city, pa
rtly because of the sword stick, the blade polished as bright as a silver spoon and the mahogany smoothed and oiled. It went with him everywhere. It had been only slightly disheartening to him to learn that the local thugs and the petty cammoristi carried revolvers.

  The stone steps passed between old buildings, the stairs really another alley, but one that happened to head towards the sky—laundry fluttered overhead; women sat outside doorways and gossiped, everything stopping as he passed by. At the top, the gradino opened into an irregular little stone piazza. Denton crossed it and headed for a far corner, hoping to find steps to carry him higher.

  A cracked voice cried, ‘Texas Jack!’

  Denton turned. Eight or ten boys were clustered on the far side of the little piazza where there was a stone balustrade and a view towards Posillipo and a bit of sea. At the kids’ centre was a little theatre the size of a steamer trunk, at its front a puppet Pulcinella in black mask and domino. He waved a stick and shouted again, ‘Texas Jack! Dio mio, uno cowboy!’

  The kids squealed.

  Denton, amused, called, ‘Buon’ giorno, piccolino.’

  Pulcinella took great offence at being called ‘little one’. He moved back and forth the width of his theatre; he put half his body outside it and shook his stick. He said something in Nnapulitan’ that made the kids scream with laughter.

  Denton walked towards the little theatre. The kids, suddenly unsure whether he was angry, parted for him. He went close to the stage but to the side, leaned towards the puppet and said, ‘Piccolino, ma che naso!’ It was true, Pulcinella’s black mask had a big nose on it.

  The puppet was incensed. ‘Naso—io? Naso!’ He turned to the kids. ‘Guardi—guardi!’ He put his stick just under Denton’s own huge nose. ‘Il Pizzofalcone!’ The Pizzofalcone was a major—and noselike—landmark.