Chapter 27
Deliver me out of great waters, from the hand of strange children (Psalm 144)
Pert's plans were laid in one direction, but in another they weren't going well at all. Sweet and timid Fenestra certainly was, but her skinny frame hid a steely determination and she was damned if she was going to stay home and be looked after when there was excitement and romantic adventure to be had.
"The tunnel!" she exclaimed. "Let's go through the tunnel, and do what we set out to do last night. Pert's busy, so we'll help."
"My dear little girl," said Septimus reasonably, "I think that's a job for ... well, for men, not a young lady of tender years."
"Tender years my foot! Rosella's got tender years too, and look at the danger she's in. Girls can be in danger too, and still be brave. And I've got Billy. He's brave enough for both of us!"
"I'll look after her," Billy said. "It's only dark an' that. An' the skellington, but 'e can't do nothing to us."
"But there's gunfire, and men in the streets! I couldn't possibly," began Septimus, but Fenestra would have none of it.
"Dear Septimus," she said reasonably and sweetly, holding his hands and gazing up at him with her eyes as large as she could make them, "I appreciate your kind concern, but I'm going. There won't be any gunfire or men in the vestry, will there? It'll be even safer than here. And I know where the key to the church is hidden, and I know how to get into the vestry, and I'll put a chair behind the door so no one can come in and interrupt, and I'll go on my own if you won't help us!"
She was irresistible, of course, as most determined young girls are. In any event Septimus had no experience in his life that could possibly show him how to hold out against such blandishments, and as Billy knew no fear himself he was not very sensible of danger to others, even to his adored Fenestra. In any case, it was just a tunnel. A candle is a reliable antidote to darkness, and underground there would be no cannon or pirates to worry about.
Billy led them not down the Bearward but by paths and alleys Fenestra and Septimus had never seen before, out of Pardoner's Alley and down between houses and gardens and yards, along narrow ginnels and down crumbling steps and out into the Canonry, across the road and into the churchyard. In the vestry they rolled away the carpet and raised the trap door.
Septimus had brought papers and books with him. “While you're gone,” he explained, “I'm going to sit here and be a diversionary tactic. If the Vicar comes I can always tell him I can't work anywhere else because of the noise, and I'm guarding the church in case of intruders. And I think I might actually try and write my own sermon for once. I usually get them from a book, but it would be interesting to talk about something else ... perhaps the dilemma of forgiveness?”
Down the steps Fenestra was very quiet, and held Billy's hand tightly. They carried a candle each, and looked round with wonder at the buried rooms. Then they took to the tunnel, remembering Pert's description. It was less sinister with two candles instead of one. They forged on in silence, no sound but the pad of their feet on bare earth and the rasping of their breath.
When they reached the spiral stairs they felt a little more cheerful and less awed. Stairs were more normal than a tunnel, somehow, even though they climbed in a little circle of light with the darkness pressing in behind. They crossed the two cave-rooms Pert had described, and Billy stopped.
“Now, we'm coming to the nasty bit, Pert said. We'm nearly at the skellington.”
Fenestra squeaked and covered her eyes.
“D'you want to wait here, an' I'll go an' look?” Billy asked.
“No way,” she said fervently. “I'm not waiting here in the dark. Besides, I want to see the skellington.”
“Not scared?”
“Of course I am. But I've got you, haven't I?”
So it was settled. They went slowly on until the dark shape by the wall was in sight. “Oo-er,” Billy said. Fenestra's eyes were enormous in the shadows. She kept very close. “Would you put your arm round me?” she said. “Thank you. I feel braver now.”
Billy stooped over the skeleton, while she stood very close and looked over his shoulder. As Pert had said, this was an old priest from a bygone age they neither knew nor cared about. They looked closely at the remnants of cloth.
"Yes," she said, "definitely a cassock like the Vicar wears. Look, it has bone buttons down the front." They saw too the collar, once a stiff white circle of heavily starched linen, now mildewed and eaten but still recognisable.
Billy reached down among the jumbled ribs and picked up the cross. The chain was round the skeleton's neck, and would not come free unless he either broke the neck apart or lifted up the skull. As he didn't wish to alarm Fenestra by doing either, he poked the tip of his pocket knife into one of the links and levered at it until the chain broke. He pulled the cross free, and there was a tinkle as more bones tumbled to the floor. Fenestra made a small noise and buried her face in his shoulder.
Holding it close to the candle, they turned the cross over and over. It was a simple thing, cast in some dull, heavy metal, with a small stone inset at the end of each arm. The stones shone with little lustre and did not look especially valuable. On the back of the cross were the engraved initials, “J.T.” That was good enough.
"J.T., Jedediah Tench!" she exclaimed. "He's not under the angel at all, he's down here! This is the Vicar's father, the old Vicar."
Billy tucked the cross into his pocket and they went on.
The daylight, when they reached it, was stunning. The wind blew strongly, warm and moist. Above were the continuous grey clouds, darker on the horizon. Below them the sullen sea was cold and unfriendly.
They began to look for the hermit, but there was no little figure moving where Pert had described the day before.
“There's one thing for it,” Billy said. “We can make our way down this path and then up the cleft with the trees in it, and then us'll be on that green bit at the foot of the cliff. That's where Pert saw the 'ermit. I wonder what ‘e thought was so important about an 'ermit?”
“I have no idea. I have a feeling, though."
"I can't see 'ow an 'ermit could possibly have got there either from above or below. There’s no paths or nothin’.”
“Isn't that the point of being a hermit?” she said. “I mean, you wouldn't be a hermit if you lived in the middle of town.”
“But 'e must 'ave come out o' the tunnel,” Billy said.
“Oooh! I get it! So he must have got into it from the vestry, and he must know about the skellington! I knew he must be important in some way!”
“Yes, that's the fing! Either be someone important, or know somethin’ important. Either way, we wants to talk to 'im!”
The path across the hillside was not so bad provided you watched your feet and didn't look to your left where the grass sloped away so steeply, and then stopped at the vertical drop. The wind snatched at their clothing, and they felt safer feeling their way along with one hand leaning on the grass beside them. The little path meandered up and down. Fenestra wondered what had made it. It looked like the sort of path sheep might make, but there were no sheep here. Perhaps it was rabbits. Their little droppings were everywhere.
Bird bones and bird skeletons and bird beaks were everywhere too, and there were holes in the grass all over the place. She knew that some seabirds like to nest in old rabbit burrows, and make them their own. She also knew that other seabirds – the great gulls, for instance, with their cruel beaks and mad eyes – would wait by a hole until a smaller bird emerged to be skewered and torn to pieces.
They reached the little ravine that cleft the cliffside and sheltered a tangle of small trees and bushes. Here the going was much more difficult because there was no path but at least if you fell, you wouldn't fall very far. Billy took the lead and proved adept at wriggling his way up and finding the easiest route. They were sheltered from the wind though the tops of the trees were tossing wildly, and began to feel hot and sweaty from their exertions an
d dirty from scrabbling in the earth and the bushes.
At the top they were able to stand and look up. They were at the bottom of the steep meadow where Pert had seen the hermit. Here there were more rabbit-paths, this time a criss-crossing labyrinth of narrow tracks so that whichever way you wanted to go, there was a convenient path to follow. There were more burrows, and more rabbits, and more bird remains. Above them the cliff shot sheer to the sky, and at the foot of the meadow another cliff fell to the rocks although they could not see it.
They set off on a diagonal track so that as they crossed the meadow they were also climbing to its top. They noticed that one or two of the tracks they crossed were wider than others, and turned on to one of them, thinking it might have been made by larger feet than a rabbit's. As they rounded the curve of the hill more bushes came in sight. Running downwards in front of them was another ravine, but deeper this time, with larger trees and the sound of rushing water flowing down. Billy stopped and sniffed the air.
“Can you smell something?” she asked.
Billy sniffed again. “Wood smoke!” he said quietly, “someone’s got a fire up here”.
On they went, more slowly this time, and presently the source of the smoke could be seen. It rose from among the trees in the ravine, a blue haze that was ripped away by the wind as soon as it got high enough.
“Quite cosy,” muttered Billy. “You can have a fire and no one will see the smoke 'cos the wind takes it away so quick. 'Ere, let me go first 'cos I'm sneakier!”
He wound away quickly along the path, and disappeared down into the ravine. Fenestra followed more slowly.
She found Billy standing transfixed at the foot of the slope. In front of him was a little clearing surrounded by bushes and mature trees. A dark cleft in the rock suggested a cave of some size, and in the bushes away to their left there was a stream flowing. In the middle of the clearing was a small fire with something roasting on a branch for a spit, and between the fire and the cave stood a man.
He stood calmly, showing neither hostility to, nor fear of, these intruders. He was thin and brown, clad in rags and tatters of what must once have been ordinary clothes. His feet were bare, and his hair and beard grey and matted. Behind the hair there were eyes of an astonishing blue. It was impossible to judge the face because of the beard, but he didn't look fierce at all.
For a moment no one spoke, just stared. Then the hermit drew a deep breath and said “The Lord preserveth the strangers!”
He spoke in a kind of chant, almost as though he might at any moment burst into song.
He spoke again, “Thou hast visited me in the night; thou has tried me, and shalt find nothing.”
“It's still daytime, though,” said Fenestra, “and we're not looking for anything. We just came to see who you were, and if you were all right.”
“Both young men, and maidens; old men, and children,” he said. He reached out a hand and pointed to her uncertainly. “Maidens,” he said, as though to reassure himself.
“Yes, I'm a maiden,” Fenestra said. “My name's Fenestra. What's yours?”
“How excellent is thy name in all the earth!” the man cried, and held his arms up. Then he hunkered down by the fire and began tearing with his teeth at the roasted rabbit on the spit. After a few mouthfuls he stopped, and offered the rabbit to Fenestra. She smiled and shook her head.
“Man did eat angels' food: he sent them meat ...” the man said. “Are you an angel?”
She shook her head again, and moved closer to him. “Don't you have a name?” she said again.
Pert had said that he thought the hermit had been singing or making speeches. Fenestra realised that he might instead have been preaching, or reading a lesson. Their father had been a lay reader, and read the lessons in church. She bit the inside of her cheek, to distract herself. She didn't want to think this thought just yet, it was too soon.
She was now sitting in the grass near the fire and beside the man. He reached out a gentle hand and touched her hair. Billy had moved closer, ready to intervene if needed, but the man seemed to have no malice in him. He was peaceful.
“Pretty,” the hermit said, “out of Zion, the perfection of beauty.”
She smiled at him again. “Come on, you can tell us. I'm Fenestra, and that's Billy. What's your name?”
“We will remember the name,” he said, stroking her hair again. “I will make thy name to be remembered.”
“Your name's Daddy, isn't it?” she whispered. “You're my Daddy.”
There was a long, long silence. Fenestra sat and smiled while the hermit touched her hair. Billy sat with his mouth open, not understanding what was going on but grinning all the same and ready for action at a moment's notice.
Fenestra held her breath. How had she guessed? She felt sure she was right, she felt it inside her, but how did she know who this was? She tried to keep her thoughts in check, not daring to let herself believe.
“Fenestra ...” Billy began, but the hermit was speaking. “O ... O ...”
Fenestra nodded, willing him on. “O ... O ... O ...” He shuddered and dropped his head. “Can't. Can't!” he wailed. “Thou holdest mine eyes waking! I am so troubled that I cannot speak!”
“You can, you can,” Fenestra cried. She got to her feet and held both his hands. “Say it for me. I'm Fenestra. And you're O ...”
“Obadiah!” he said with a great sigh, and beamed round at them. “Obadiah, Fenestra, Billy, Obadiah!”
He got up and wandered round the clearing, saying “Obadiah!” to himself. He stopped and looked at them in wonderment. “You know, I had forgotten ... it's been so long ... I never told, you know. I never told.” He paused and looked round uncertainly. “A boy. Another boy. P ... something ... and Ver ... oh, what ... Vernilia? Is there Vernilia?”
“No, not Vernilia, we lost her. But Pert's at home, waiting,” she said.
“And ... oh dear ...”
“Potentia? Your wife? Our mother?”
Obadiah nodded eagerly.
“She's waiting for you at home. We can take you home, and you can see her!”
“And now, Lord, what wait I for? No, I ... not yet ... I never ... I never told ...”
“What didn't you tell?”
“Oh, no, I never told!” Obadiah cried, and held his head and rocked back and forwards. “He hath smitten my life down to the ground, but I never told!”
“Ssh, ssh!” Fenestra comforted him, “you're my Daddy, it's all right, I'll take you home, ssh!”
Slowly under her tenderness he calmed, and looked around more clear-eyed than they had seen him.
“I never told anyone, you know,” he said reasonably. “I ran, and I hid, and I kept my counsel. It was comfortable here ...”, he looked around him.
“But that's over now,” she said. “You can come home now.”
“Can I? Is that why you came?”
“Yes. We came to take you home. Come!” She held out her hand, and he took it, and followed her quietly as she led the way back up to the meadow. Billy fell in close behind.
“Hold up my goings in thy paths, that my footsteps slip not,” said Obadiah.
Across the meadow and slantwise down they went, buffeted by the wind, the girl leading and the man following, and scrambled down through the crevice and the bushes, and then made their way across the first slope, but as they came in sight of the tunnel mouth the man changed.
“No! No, I can't! I saw, but I never! I never told!” he cried, and pulled back wildly. She tried to hang on to him and they struggled. Billy threw himself forward and grabbed her by the waist, fearful that she would be thrown down. He planted his feet in a rabbit burrow and set himself strongly and held on to her. At last she let go and relaxed in his grip, her face tearful and flaming.
“Daddy, it's nothing,” she wept, “there's nothing there, just dark, and we have candles!”
The man calmed now he was no longer being dragged towards the cave, and squatted down. He seemed to make a grea
t effort, and then turned to Billy behind him and said “I saw, you know. I was ... it was a shock, I couldn't believe what I saw and my mind went ... I don't know, somewhere else.”
“Will it help if you tells us what you saw?”
“I don't know. I'm not sure I can.”
“Shall we tell you?” asked Fenestra.
“Yes.”
“You saw ... a murder. You saw someone strike down the Vicar, and kill him!”
“Yes! No! No, not someone! It was God! The Lord struck him down! I saw The Lord, and the Devil behind Him!”
“God struck him down with a rock?”
“Yes! The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath!”
"Why were you here?"
"I had found the way under the floor, and thought my Daddy might have come out this way with the cups and plates and things, so I came to find out. And the Vicar he must have followed me to see where I went, and I didn't want him to see me, he was such an angry old man, so I hid. I didn't want him to know what I was doing. But he came after me, he was calling ‘Obadiah, Obadiah, I know you're there! You're not to tell anyone about this, you hear? This is a secret, you're not to tell! Obadiah? Come out, I know you're hiding! And then ...’"
He hid his face in his hands. Fenestra stroked his hair and put her arm round his shoulders, calming him. "Go on, and then ..."
He sat up and breathed hard, and continued in a strange, high-pitched voice, "... and then HE came, with his robes and the rock of His wrath, and therefore he was the wrath of the Lord, and behind him the Devil all in black with a flaming torch, and I knew it was written that the Lord shall swallow them up in his wrath, and the fire shall devour them ..."
He buried his face again, and spoke through his fingers, "and I hid, for His fierce wrath goeth over me; His terrors have cut me off, and I was cut off, and I couldn't go back for the wrath was waiting ..."
“Tell me. Tell us what God looked like.”
“He looked ... He wore His robes of glory ... He was in His wrath, He rushed out of the darkness, and He struck the priest. He struck and He struck, and He cried “You old idiot, what use are you? Do you plan to live for ever? Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord!” And He struck and He struck until there was no life left, and He had taken unto Him His vengeance. And the Devil held the flames and watched, and the blood, the blood! ...”
“Was it the young priest who killed the old one?”
“Yes. Yes, it was. He was the Servant of the Lord. It was the Lord's work, so I ran and hid in the bushes and I never told!”
“It was only men, Father. They were just men, wicked men, caught up in their evil jealousy and ambition. Just men. It was Silas Tench, and he killed his old father for living too long!”
“It wasn't the Lord?”
“No, just men.”
"And women," said Billy in an undertone, "That ol' devil sounds a bit familiar!"
Obadiah said “I can't go in there if he's there.”
“Then I'll go and get rid of 'im," said Billy. "I can do that, you know.”
They settled her father in the grass with his feet to the sea and the clean wind in his face to blow away the cobwebs of his confusion. Fenestra stayed to mind him, and Billy went into the
tunnel alone.
He walked until he came to the skeleton, and then he did the hardest thing he had ever done, though he would never admit it. It was harder than Merridew's cane, harder than the bullies, harder even than it would have been if it had been him facing up to Grubb instead of Pert. He gathered up the rattling bones into a bundle in his coat, and wrapped them as securely as he could so he couldn't see the skull grinning at him, and carried them back to the end of the cave. There he pitched the lot over the edge of the cliff. He listened for them rattling against the rocks, but the wind was too strong. The old man Tench was gone, and was forgotten as a dead man out of mind.
The rest of their journey was not difficult. Obadiah walked calmly with Billy and Fenestra in front, and showed no sign when they passed the scene of the murder. Fenestra wondered if they would ever manage to work out just what had happened, and why Silas had bashed his own father's brains in. It was clear that Obadiah's own mind was too addled to make sense of it, and might always be. The enormity of what he'd seen, and the shock that a man of God, a young man of the church whose authority he trusted, could do such an incomprehensible deed, had unhinged him and brought him low.
When they reached the bottom of the spiral stairs, Fenestra said she felt weary, and Obadiah picked her up without a word and carried her. She wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms round his neck without a qualm. As Billy walked behind she looked over her father's shoulder and mouthed “Phew! He does half pong!”
The trap door was closed, so they rapped gently on it and waited while Septimus cleared up his sermon and moved the table. Obadiah set down Fenestra, and they climbed up into the dim daylight of the vestry.
“You've been gone a long time,” said Septimus, “I was beginning to worry that I'd have to write a second sermon.”
“That would never do,” laughed Fenestra, "you don't know the first one's any good yet. Septimus, allow me to present my father, Obadiah Potts!”
There now arose the question of what to do with her father, who was of far too much interest to both Grubb and the pirates for comfort.
“Aunt Gittins!” she said. “She's perfect! She's out on the edge of town, she's old so no one will suspect, and Father will know her and trust her. We'll take him to Aunt Gittins.”
This was not accomplished without a great deal of care. Billy made Fenestra and her father hide under the supervision of the curate, while he reconnoitered at every step and street corner to be sure there were no pirates or emissaries of Mistress Grubb wandering about. From the town below they could still hear the thud of the guns, and the occasional crash as a ball struck home, but it did not seem that even the long sixteen could reach up here. The journey out of the churchyard and up the Canonry, then down through the back lanes to Aunt Gittins cottage, was nerve-wracking but successful.
“Oh my Lord!” said Aunt Gittins when she saw them. “I'm an old woman, are you trying to give me a heart attack? Quick, come along in before someone sees! Obadiah, is it really you? Come and give your old aunt a hug! However did you manage to get yourself in such a state?”
“He's been living in a cave, and eating rabbits!” said Fenestra.
Her aunt looked at her over her glasses. “Hmph!” she said. “This isn't one of your fanciful stories, you know! And who's this boy, and what's he grinning about?”
“This is Billy. He's mine. He always grins,” said Fenestra.
Billy held out his hand. “'Ow do, missus!” he said, and Fenestra thought there was the trace of a smile on Aunt Gittins' face.
“Now, let's get organised!” she said. “He needs a good bath, so young man Billy, do you go into the kitchen and put the kettle on the hob, if you please. And make sure there's water in it before you do!”
Billy moved towards the kitchen. “I am 'ouse-trained, you know,” he said quietly, “more or less.”
“And these clothes have to go, and be burned in the back garden. They're disgusting. One of the neighbours will have something he can wear, if I tell them I'm making a scarecrow for the runner beans. And I'll call Elsie Tonkin over. She used to be a hairdresser in her younger days, but she got so fed up asking people if they'd had their holidays yet that when she stopped hairdressing she vowed never to say another word in her life. Nor has she, either, but she doesn't mind getting her scissors out once in a while, just for the practice. She'll tidy him up and keep her mouth shut. Just don’t mention holidays!”
She began to help Obadiah out of his clothes.
“And you, young lady, you don't need to be here gawping at gentlemen at their toilet! This nice young curate must take you home and put you to bed. But I'll keep that young fellow of yours for an hour or so if you don't mind. He looks as th
ough he could be useful.”
Fenestra did mind, rather a lot, but she didn't argue. She knew when she was likely to be beaten, and she'd done her romantic heroine deed for the day.
“Cheer up!” said Septimus as they threaded their way through Billy's back doubles towards Pardoner's Alley. “He's back now, among normal people. I'm sure just talking normally and wearing normal clothes and doing ordinary things around the house will slowly bring his mind and his memory back. And he has your Great-aunt. She strikes me as a very capable person.”
“I'm sure you're right,” she said. “I'm just wondering how we're going to break it to Mother!”
“Why don't you leave that with me? If you tell her tonight she'll be rushing out across the town to see him, and that's a bad idea. No woman ought to be abroad alone at night with those pirates around. I'll tell her in the morning, and then I'll go with her to your Aunt's house.”
“Excellent,” she said. “That's a relief, to be honest. I wasn't sure what to do about it.”
Mother was pacing the floor in a lather when they got in. "Oh my goodness!" she cried, "I've been so worried, what with the banging and crashing, and I looked round and you weren't there. Wherever have you been? And where's Pert?"
Fenestra said "Pert's gone to get Rosella, I think. And we've ..."
"We've been up to your Aunt Gittins', to make sure she was all right," lied Septimus.
"And is she?"
"Yes, she's fine. And we've left Billy there with her for a while."
Fenestra took her milk up to bed with her. She felt exhausted and could think of nothing but sleep, but she pushed open Septimus's door on the way.
"You told a lie, you naughty man!" she said. "It was brilliant, I couldn't think what to say!"
"It was only half a lie," he said shamefacedly. "We did go there, and she is all right. I imagine I might be forgiven."
"I'll certainly forgive you," she said. "You're a lovely man." She put her arms round his neck and kissed his cheek. "There!" She gave him a second kiss. "But this doesn't mean you can do any lusting, you hear? You've got Floris to think of now!" and she slid off his lap and bustled out, leaving Septimus pleased but a bit confused.
She was really a most remarkable child, he thought. But odd, decidedly odd. How was it that you never knew where you were with women, yet you always felt they had you exactly where they wanted you to be?
The Black Joke Page 28