Chapter 6
I call to remembrance my song in the night: that ye maytell it to the generation following (Psalms 48 & 77)
The following morning it was Christmas. Fenestra and her mother put on their least tired clothes and went to church, Pert having left earlier as he was altar boy and had to put his surplice on and lay the prayer books out and the hymn numbers in the board above the pulpit.
The Vicar gave the same Christmas sermon every year, but Pert never listened anyway. He paid just enough attention to spot the peculiar intonation that would signal the end of the address and the dedication that followed it, because while the congregation mumbled the final hymn he then had to carry the collection plate and hand it to the Vicar at the altar. He rather liked being the only person other than the Vicar who was allowed past the sanctuary rail, though in truth there was nothing of interest there except the boxes of old papers hidden behind the altar cloth.
Pert had spent a number of hours searching through those boxes, hoping to find some books of stories which his sister would enjoy, or old papers about treasure and adventures. There had been a treasure once, in the town, but it had disappeared and no one knew what had happened to it. People didn't talk about it, though a small boy had once walked up to him in the playground and asked him about it.
“Don't you know where the treasure is?” the boy had said.
“No. Why should I?”
The boy looked disappointed. “Oh. I thought you would,” he said, and ran off to join his friends.
Pert guessed that this might have something to do with the unpopularity of his family, but neither his mother nor his aged Aunt Gittins would tell him anything. Aunt Gittins had raised his father when Grandfather Mascaridus disappeared and Grandma Floribunda died of shame and poverty. Then his father had disappeared too. He thought it was rather a distinction to have two of his forebears disappear mysteriously, and wondered if he would have to disappear too, in his turn. He hoped he would have time to sort something out for his sister first, to save her from the Emporium. He also hoped he would get to kiss Rosella at least once.
Rosella and her family sat in the pews behind the most important people of the town, Sir Humphrey Comfrey and his family, the merchants, Mrs.Wheable and the Widow Dolphin and Mr.Trumbull Underdown the fish merchant and his fat wife who was rather nice and once gave Pert a boiled sweet. Further back were the pews for the poor families, and it was here that his mother and Fenestra had their places.
Pert was glad when the service dragged to a close and the congregation left, rather more quickly than usual for Christmas dinner awaited them at home. The Vicar didn't linger either, but took a draught from the brown bottle he kept in the vestry cupboard, put on his coat and stalked down the aisle on his way to the Widow Dolphin's house at the top of the town.
Pert did his chores, straightening the hymn books and prayer books which would be needed again later, and changing the hymn numbers, and washing the vessels from the Christmas Communion earlier that morning. So long as it was daytime and the Vicar was elsewhere, he rather enjoyed being in the church. It was a gloomy place, but there was a lovely smell of old stone and old wood and damp paper. When you opened the cupboards in the vestry there was an added tang of incense long burned, and ancient cloth from the cassocks that were never used these days after the church choir dwindled and died.
He wondered whether to slip under the altar while he had the chance, and do a little more research in the boxes, but he still had to take the money to Mistress Grubb and then get back to lunch. He locked the great west door of the church with the key that was too large to fit in anyone's pocket, hid it under the usual stone, and ran down the hill.
The door of Grubb’s Emporium (Fine Fashion, Drapery and Haberdashery), was open when he pushed it, though the sign said “closed”. He walked hesitantly into the dim cave, walled with shelf after shelf of cloth, and lined with polished walnut counters. He wondered what the shop-girls did for Christmas. Did they get the day off so they could go home to their families, or did they have to stay here and have a cheerless Christmas meal in the basement?
“Can I help you?” asked a small voice. From the shadows at the back of the shop emerged a girl, plainly clad and pale. She was older than Pert, and had long straight hair that fell over her face.
“Oh, I didn't know if anyone would be here,” he said.
“They aren't. There's only me and Mistress Grubb, and she's gone out.”
“Why are you here? Have all the other girls gone home?”
“Yes. But I ain't got one to go to, so I has to stay here.”
“That can't be much fun.”
She laughed shortly. “Ain't never much fun round 'ere, an' that's a fact!” she said. When her hair fell away from her face Pert could see that she was ... not pretty exactly, but nice. She looked as if she might have known what fun was once, but had forgotten.
“That's sad,” he said. “You could come home with me. We're only having potato stew, but I'm sure there'd be enough. You could meet my sister. Mistress Grubb's offered her a job when she's fourteen.”
“No!” the girl hissed, and grasped his arm hard. “No! Don't let her come! Keep her away from here! It's dreadful, and the little girls cry themselves to sleep every night, and we're all so scared all the time ... you have to stop her!”
Just then heavy footsteps sounded outside the door, which was flung open with a crash. The girl leapt back and shook her hair over her face again.
“What's this? What's this? Having a little social intercourse, are you, my girl, behind my back? We'll see about that!” said Mistress Grubb, advancing heavily into the room.
“No, she was just telling me that you weren't here,” said Pert.
“Can't you read? We're closed! Oh, it's you. Well, I am here, so that was a lie, wasn't it? And lies are counted and have to be paid for later, Christmas or no Christmas. Got my money?”
“Yes.”
He held out the six pence. Grubb took it and sniffed. “Well, you'd better cut along then, hadn't you?”
Pert wanted to speak to the girl again, to say something kind to her, but could not with Mistress Grubb looking on, so he went to the door and stepped out onto the pavement. It was cold and bright, a weak sun groping its way down into the narrow street and making the cobbles shine. On the opposite pavement Rosella was marching down the street towards him. Behind were her four little sisters, unremarkable children, keeping up and holding hands nicely and not walking on the cracks. Pert crossed the road and stopped, but she strode past without acknowledging him, her big boots clumping on the pavement. Her legs were too thin for comfort, her skirt a little short for fashion, and her chin too high for casual conversation, but the smallest Prettyfoot smiled at him and turned her head to look over her shoulder. Pert walked on, feeling all right. A smile from even a tiny Prettyfoot was encouragement of a sort. Perhaps if he was patient he could work his way up the family, winning acknowledgement from one after the other until he reached Rosella herself.
Pert's Christmas presents were a great success. He brought them down from the attic before they sat down to lunch. The mouse had nibbled some of the tissue paper on one, but not so much that he couldn't tuck that bit in so it wouldn't notice. Fenestra was delighted with her puzzle. She ran round the table and flung her arms round his neck and gave him a rather wet kiss on the cheek. His mother smiled and said it was the most beautiful box, and he showed her how to smell the briny smell and listen to the sea. She didn't say much, but her eyes went a bit blurry so he knew she was happy. Or something.
She had made them both long knitted mufflers, made from wool she had rescued from all over the place so they were rather mottled. The predominant colour was dark blue, though, so he guessed that the main ingredient was wool from old fishermens' jumpers. The mufflers smelt slightly of tobacco and fish, but that was all right and they would be warm. Fenestra had made him a story, written quite neatly in pencil on assorted pieces of paper and tied togeth
er with a bootlace. It was about a beautiful princess who lived in a castle and was very unhappy all the time. He gave her a dry kiss this time, and said he would read it in bed.
The meal was potato stew as Pert had forecast, but there was some fish in it as this was a special occasion, and there was a treacle tart for afters. There was a bit of a delay at the start because Fenestra insisted on saying grace first. It was quite a long grace, and she included thanks for a great many things apart from food – her Christmas presents, the sun, snow, flowers, trees, shoes to keep your feet dry, her mother and her brother, and next door's cat of which she was quite fond. Then they ate.
As the last crust of treacle tart was finished, Fenestra asked her mother “What did she mean, Mother?”
“What did who mean?”
“The old witch, yesterday?” Fenestra said. Pert giggled.
“Hush, Fenestra, really! Don't ever let anyone hear you talking like that!”
“There's no one here, only us.”
“Fenestra, darling, you should know by now that there's not much in this town that woman doesn't know about. She hears everything. I don't know how she does it, but she does. You must be careful always, wherever you are, never to say anything that might annoy her if she hears. Not even at home.”
Fenestra shrugged. “All right. But Mother, tell me what she was talking about? She said we were robbers! We aren't robbers, are we? If we were robbers, we wouldn't be poor!”
Her mother sighed. “That's true enough, Lord knows. But she didn't mean anything by it. I said yesterday, it's just the way she is.”
“But Miss Throstle said something as well,” put in Pert. “She's said it before, too. She says I'll come to a bad end, like my father and my grandfather. How did they come to a bad end? I thought Grandfather Mascaridus was lost at sea? I know that's bad enough, but it happens to plenty of fishermen. That wasn't what she meant, was it? And my father – he just went off, didn't he?”
His mother looked at him for a long time. Her face was pale. “Your father was a good man,” she said slowly, “and no one knows what happened to him. He would never ...”
She closed her eyes and breathed heavily. Fenestra left her seat and put her arms round her neck.
“It's all right,” Mother said. “I'm all right. It's just that ... it was such a blow when he went, and not knowing, and wondering all this time, and people gossiping, and that bloody woman ...”
“Shh, now you're doing it!” cried Fenestra, and tried to cover her mother's mouth.
“Sorry, darlings. I must pull myself together. Come, Fenestra, sit on my lap ...” she pushed her chair from the table and pulled Fenestra to her, “and I'll tell you what I can. Which isn't much. When your father disappeared I swore to myself that I'd do my best to shield you from the rumours and the ugly accusations. This town is riddled with gossip, you'd think they had nothing better to do.”
Pert knew this was true. The traders in the Market Square gossiped all day with their customers, the shop keepers in the High Street gossiped with theirs, women gathered together in the street or on front steps to gossip, the fishers gossiped over their nets and the fishwives gossiped in gangs on the quayside. He had noticed how the young women went through a sudden transition – one moment they were fresh-faced, plump laughing girls in the top class at school, the next they stood with the other young wives on the fish dock, arms folded, hard faced and tight mouthed, watching the world suspiciously over their shoulders.
Even the school playground was awash with gossip, as though children kept so sternly to their tasks in the classroom had not time to run around and play, but must spend their pent-up energy on a web of scandal, resentment and petty feuding to make up for the life they missed during lessons.
“I thought I could protect you,” his mother continued, “but I see now that I was wrong. You were bound to hear about it sooner or later, so you'd better hear it right.”
"I was only a baby when your Grandfather Mascaridus died, so of course I knew nothing about it. All I knew was from things people let slip while I was growing up. There was talk of money, a treasure of some sort, which disappeared at the same time. But there was a great storm, some say the worst for a hundred years, and the wind tore the roofs off houses and the waves came right across the quay and stove in the windows of the Harbourmaster's office.
“Your grandfather was out in it. No one knew when he left, or why he went out when the weather was so dangerous. It was nothing but lunacy, but his boat, the Bight of Benin, was gone and his second mate was gone as well, and no one ever saw hide nor hair of them since.
“But the rumours started, you see. The treasure disappeared at the same time, so everyone just jumped to the obvious conclusion. The treasure was gone and Mascaridus was gone, so therefore they must have gone together. Your grandmother Floribunda died a year later, of grief, so they say.”
She paused. “Fenestra, could you get me a drink of water, please?”
Fenestra slipped off her lap and went to the pitcher, then returned and sat on her mother's lap again. Pert could tell she was beside herself with joy – a knee to sit on, a story to be told and a secret to cherish were all the things his sister held dear in life.
“What sort of man was my grandfather?” he asked.
“Well, I didn't know him as I said, but until that dreadful night, people say, he was a fine and respected man, a leader and an example to younger men. He was one of the Free Fishers, the little group of fishermen who made decisions for all the rest and saw that they all behaved fair and proper. After he went, a sort of rot set in. One of the other Free Fishers took to drink and fell in bad ways, and was killed with a knife when he got into a drunken argument in the tavern, and another started beating his wife so her family beat him back. And now there are no Free Fishers left, and everything's gone to wrack and ruin and Urethra Grubb is the most powerful person in town.”
“And my father? You must know more about him?”
“I know he was the bravest, quietest, truest man you could meet,” she said, “and I know he loved me. He was a skilled and respected fisherman, friends with everyone. He was even a lay reader at the church, and used to read the lessons quite often. He would never have left us, me with three children and the youngest still in arms – that's you, Fenestra.”
The girl smiled and kissed her mother. “We never talk about my sister, do we?” she said.
“No. We never do. Vernilia was my first-born, and the hardest. She was a difficult birth, she kicked and struggled as though she didn't want to be born at all, and as she grew up she never stopped kicking and struggling. She was an awkward, rebellious child, and when she got to the age when young men started taking an interest, she became completely wild.
“With your father gone nine or ten years before, I just couldn't manage her on my own. Your Great-aunt Gittins tried to talk some sense into her – for all she's a gruff old thing, she's got a good heart. She took your father in when he was orphaned, and brought him up to be good and God-fearing. But Vernilia wasn't going to take any more notice of an old woman than she would of me. When she was fifteen she told me she never wanted to see me again, and ran off with a sailor. And never a word since.”
She sniffed, and held more tightly to Fenestra. “That's why you're so precious to me, the two of you. You're all I have now.”
Pert thought Fenestra might cry, so tried to divert the discussion. “But my father, what happened when he went?”
“It was sudden, and I knew nothing. He said nothing unusual, he did nothing unusual, he spent his days in the way a fisherman does – mending nets, going out to sea, coming back, eating his
supper, once in a while a pint of ale in the inn, church on Sundays, just normal things. But one evening he ate his supper, said he was going to the Drop of Dew for a pint, and that was the last anyone saw of him.”
“But why do people lump him with his father, and the robbing and everything?”
“I don't know. It's not logi
cal, but malicious people don't require logic. There was no evidence that Mascaridus had anything to do with the treasure, but they still accused him of stealing it. I don't
think most of them even knew what the treasure was, or if it really existed at all, but that didn't stop them.”
“And when my father went, they did the same thing ...”
“Exactly. His father was a thief, they said, so the son must be a thief as well. Whether they thought your father Obadiah knew what his dad had done with the treasure and went to recover it ... I don't know how their minds work. All I know is that we've had black looks and curses and bad luck ever since, and that you'll probably be tarred with the same brush, though you're as honest a son as I could ever wish. But at least you'll probably be able to find a fisherman who'll take you as a foredeck hand. Some aren't fussy. But Fenestra ... when she's old enough, I don't think anyone will employ her because she's a Potts. So the only thing she can do is go to the Emporium ...”
Now his mother began to cry in earnest, and so did Fenestra. Pert managed to choke back his own feelings. A fine end to Christmas Dinner, he thought, and went to get ready for Evensong.
As he left the house the same enormous seagull was in the yard. It had managed to get the lid off the dustbin, and food scraps and pieces of paper and cloth blew along the bottom of the fence. It glared at him with its mad yellow eye, and did not flinch when he shouted at it. Seagulls were everywhere in this town, great arrogant birds that stalked the streets and intimidated the dogs and terrorised the cats, perching on cradles and prams and alarming the mothers, tipping lids off dustbins and rummaging inside, stealing food from the market stalls and investigating any open window. Their cries were a constant background and their droppings fouled every roof and chimney, corroding the stonework.
Poor Mr.Surplice, the curate, was already in the vestry when Pert arrived, flapping his hands and muttering to himself. Pert always thought of him as “poor Mr.Surplice”, and he was indeed a sorry specimen, thin and wan and scant-haired, his weak eyes peering through thick spectacles at a world he seemed not to understand at all. He lodged with a fisher family in the poorer part of town, and was bullied by the Vicar.
“My cassock ... my cassock ... I'm sure it was here ...” he said to Pert in a tone of despair. He was quite good on scripture and the meaning of various holy days, but ordinary things like clothes and food and money were incomprehensible to Mr.Surplice.
“It's in the cupboard where you left it,” said Pert, fetching it and holding it out for him to put on. He wondered if dressing curates was part of his job. When he had to help the Vicar with his robes he usually smelled whisky, but Mr.Surplice smelt only of fish and mothballs.
“Thank you, you're a good boy,” the curate said, and looked vaguely around. “My surplice ...?”
Pert held it up and dropped it over his head.
“A surplice for a Surplice!” the curate said, “ha ha!” He had made the same joke every Sunday for the last three years.
Pert smiled politely. “That always cracks me up,” he said. “Do you know anything about treasure?”
Mr.Surplice stared at him round-eyed. “Treasure? Whatever are you talking about?”
“I keep hearing things about treasure,” Pert said, “and I wondered if you could tell me anything about it.”
“Well, there was a treasure, I believe ... at least, not so much a treasure, but some plates and cups and things, quite valuable. But they vanished long ago.”
“Do you know how I could find out about them?”
“Why do you want to know?” Surplice grinned suddenly, and Pert realised that he was actually quite a young man. “Going on a treasure hunt, is that it? I say, what fun!”
“No, not really. It's just that people seem to think my grandfather had something to do with it.”
“Oh. Well, it was an awfully long time ago. Forty or fifty years at least. I wasn't even born, and when I was, it wasn't here. Nor was the Vicar, or ... well, hardly anyone. I suppose there might be some mention of it in the Church Council minutes, if they could be found.”
“Church Council minutes? Where would they be?”
“No idea, I'm afraid. And we wouldn't be allowed to look in them anyway. I expect they've been destroyed long ago. There hasn't been a Church Council these ten or fifteen years so far as I know. The Vicar does it all now. We could ask him, I suppose ...”
“No, don't.” Pert didn't know why, but it seemed a bad idea.
“Mm. Yes, I expect you're right.” He lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper. “Just between you and me, I try not to ask him anything if I can help it.”
“He's not very encouraging, is he?” Pert said.
“No, he isn't. I haven't felt encouraged for a long time ...” He thought for a moment. “There's just one thing ... my old tutor at the seminary was a noted scholar, Canon Flitch. His special interest was the history of this diocese. I venture to say that no man knows more about it than he. I could write and ask him. If I present it as merely an academic interest in the history of this church, he won't think to tell anyone about it. Yes, I shall do that! Now, it must be nearly time. Are the hymn numbers up?”
“Yes.”
“Good ... er, well done. Do you think you could close up after Evensong? If I don't get home promptly Mrs.Gammage won't wait supper for me, and lunch was ... a bit of a disappointment, if I'm honest. She's a God-fearing woman but I think she may have missed the bit about the milk of human kindness.”
Evensong was, as Pert had suspected, a wan affair. There were only a handful of old ladies in the congregation, and when the hymn was announced the only voices Pert could hear were his own and Mr.Surplice's. Pert was embarrassed by singing, and thought he didn't always get the tune quite right, but was pretty good at the words which probably made up for it. Mr.Surplice had rather a nice voice, a bit thin and reedy but tuneful.
The curate stumbled through a very short sermon about the true meaning of Christmas. Pert tried hard to take his duties and religion seriously, but the idea of being born twice was ridiculous however hard you looked at it. It was bad enough being born once. Mr.Surplice fled from the pulpit with a look of confusion and relief on his face. He almost tripped at the bottom where the uneven step was, but Pert was waiting and grabbed his arm.
“I can't remember what comes next!” Surplice hissed.
“Hymn, Offertory and Benediction,” whispered Pert.
“Oh, right. Thanks!”
The curate did his duty, doffed his robes and ran for supper. The congregation, their duty done, shuffled out into the windy night. Pert did his own duties with a light heart, skimming hymn books across the tops of the pews, then blew out the candles and felt his way through the dark to the back of the church. Inside the west door he paused and looked back. On the altar a single candle wick still showed a minute cinder which glowed and then winked out. The tall dark pressed down, and Pert thought of the saints and angels up there in the roof, peering down with sightless eyes. It couldn't be much fun being a saint. You spend your life in good works, get put to death in some uncomfortable and undignified fashion, and they reward you by hanging you in the roof and keeping you in the dark.
The Church Council came into his mind. If there were still any papers about the Church Council, perhaps they were in the boxes under the altar? He'd creep in during the week and have a look, he decided, and closed the door behind him. He trotted through the deserted streets, windows and doors bolted against the cold wind. By the time he got back to Pardoner's Alley his sister was in bed and his mother dozed beside the embers of the fire. She stirred as he locked the door, and got up and gave him some milk and a piece of bread which he took up to the attic with him.
On the way he opened Fenestra's door and peeped in. She was asleep, huddled under the blankets, and on the pillow beside her face, one hand holding them safe, were the muffler and the puzzle. He felt a strange welling of emotion, as though he wanted to cry. Poor Fenestra, he thought, she does
n't ask for much.
He wriggled under his heap of blankets, shivering. The attic was icy-cold, and the thin wind seeped under the slates, moaning. He put his candle into an empty jam jar on the floor so it wouldn't blow out, and carefully broke off part of the bread and put it on the floor boards near him. He drank the milk, and chewed on the rest of the bread. He wondered whether to read one of his books for a while, perhaps the one with the little diagrams in, but it was too cold to get out from under the blankets again.
His mouse appeared, pausing at the mouth of her hole in the chimney bricks, her nose twitching to see what he had brought her. Her little black eyes glowed in the candle light. Satisfied that he had done his duty by her, she ran across the floor and picked up her crust, and sat up not eighteen inches from his face and nibbled at it. It was bigger than she was. He slowly put out his hand and she dropped it and retreated a few inches. He used his fingers to break it into two, and put the pieces down again. She picked one up, ran with it to her hole and disappeared inside. A moment later she came for the second one, and carried that off. At the mouth of the hole she paused, looked at him for a moment, then vanished.
That was all the thanks you got, he thought. He blew out the candle and carefully tucked the edges of the blanket round his face so that only his nose and mouth were showing. He was generating a little warmth now, so he wriggled his toes to push his shoes off and stretched luxuriously. The wind whistled on the roof, the sound rising and falling. He imagined what he would see if the slates weren't in the way, the sweep of sky dusted with stars, the black bulk of Bodrach Nuwl stooping over the town and blotting out half the heavens, and the swooping wind curling round gable end and chimney pot, poking its fingers in every chink and cranny, sucking out what warmth it could find.
It had been a funny day. All this stuff about treasure. It was interesting that Mr.Surplice thought there really had been something, but what evidence was there that anyone in his family had anything to do with it? How could anyone possibly know? They didn't know for certain that the treasure had ever existed. And if it did, where did it come from? Where did they keep it? Had anyone ever actually seen it?
It was probably a load of old tosh. People believed what they wanted to believe, not what was real. They wanted to believe there was a treasure, and they wanted to believe that his family had stolen it, not that there was the tiniest bit of evidence. They wanted to believe it, because it was cosy to have someone to hate, someone to feel superior to. It made you a kind of gang, didn't it? If everyone had someone to hate, then they weren't hating each other, so they could feel they were all on the same side.
His mother had been right, though. It was hard to see what lay in wait for Fenestra. Nobody would give her a job if Grubb said not to, and she had to support herself somehow, at least until he was in a position to do it. The Emporium would be her only option.
It would be all right for him. He might be one of the hated Potts family, but he was already a skilled boatman. He could sail, and sew nets, and catch fish. He already knew some of the good fishing places. Each summer for several years he had gone out during the school holidays with old Walter Glibbery, who was so often drunk he didn't care who he sailed with. He was a good fisherman, or had been once, before he took to drink. He knew the best places, went out in the worst weathers, and could go further into the Stonefields than any of them, hauling crab-pots and looking for eels and lobsters. His boat was small but he took good catches. Trouble was, no sooner was his catch sold than he was in the alehouse spending it. When it was all gone he'd stagger home and his old wife would hit him with a chair leg. The next day he'd do it all again.
For Pert this had been an advantage. No one else would sail with a fisher who made no money, so Walter was glad to have him, and while the old man sat back with his bottle shouting instructions and advice, Pert had sailed and steered and cast and hauled and made himself a fisherman. When he had finished with school or school had finished with him, he would go out with Walter every day, and take his share of the catch, and save the money. And eventually he would have enough to buy a little open boat, and he'd go into business for himself. He would be all right, let them hate him or not.
Perhaps he could take Fenestra out with him. He thought fondly of sunny days, bobbing on a kindly sea two or three miles from shore, the willing fish in his net, and Fenestra sitting in the stern steering while he worked. Then suddenly Rosella was there too, hauling nets with him, brown and smiling and tossing her blonde locks, and the wind reached its fingers between the slates and ruffled his hair, and he slept.
The Black Joke Page 6