“Richard III. That’s who comes after Edward V. I never can remember.”
“What happened to Henry VII?”
“He’s down a bit—that man with the long fur coat. And then there’s—”
“Henry VIII. I know him.” She stopped before him and he surveyed her glassily, his brows proudly arched. “He had six wives, and he chopped their heads off when he got tired of them.”
“Not all of them—some of them just died. That’s Queen Elizabeth with the red hair. She liked to win arguments, too.”
“What do you mean ‘too’?” Carol asked suspiciously, but he had moved on to a slender gentleman with a little pointed beard.
“That’s Charles I. He got his head chopped off.”
“I didn’t know you were allowed to chop kings’ heads off.”
“There was a war.” He stopped, his eyes narrowed a little, as though he were trying to remember something. “The Civil War. He lost his head, and after him came—”
“Charles II?”
“No. Cromwell.”
“He’s not in the guidebook.”
“He wasn’t a king. He was a Puritan.”
“I thought the Puritans all left England and went to Massachusetts.”
He shook his head. “They were very strong followers of Cromwell during the Civil War. They didn’t like churches with stained-glass windows and bell-towers and statues, and they destroyed a lot of them during the war. They also didn’t like the way Charles I was ruling. So they had a war in 1642 and chopped his head off in 1649, and put Cromwell in to rule. But when Cromwell died and his son began to rule, they decided anything else was better than him, and they asked Charles II to come back.”
“That was a good bird’s-eye view of the first half of the seventeenth century,” Uncle Harold said behind him, and they turned. “Well, are you about finished?”
“Dad, we haven’t even seen the Chamber of Horrors yet,” Bruce said. “We got stuck on the Stuart Kings.”
“Oh, by all means,” Uncle Harold said. “Take your time.” He tucked Aunt Catherine’s hand under his arm. “I’ll go and commune with the famous statesmen.”
“What is the Chamber of Horrors?” Carol said, looking over Bruce’s shoulder as he turned pages.
“It’s full of murderers, criminals…old-fashioned tortures…” His voice died away. He stood frowning down at the guidebook, and for a moment Carol did not even hear him breathe. “Carol—”
“What is it?”
“Look at that man in the picture.”
“Hold still, I can’t—Oh…” Her fingers closed tightly on his wrist as she stared at the pale grim face half-hidden under his thumb. Her voice rose in a wail. “He’s a ghost—what’s he doing in the Chamber of Horrors?”
“Sh! He’s not in the Chamber of Horrors.” He looked around. “Come on. This way.”
Carol followed him out of the room. They saw the man again, one of a group of people in a motionless wax tableau. They stopped in front of it. Five men sat at a table. Their hats and clothes were dark; there was no lace on their plain white collars and cuffs. A small boy stood before them on a footstool. His hair was bright in the somber room. There were bows on his shoes and round his knees. His collar was peaked with points of lace. Behind him a portly man wearing a helm and a breastplate of steel quieted three anxious women whose rich clothes seemed to draw the light away from the darkly dressed men.
“It’s not him,” Carol said softly.
“But it could be.”
“It’s not.”
“That’s not the point…Carol, those men are dressed exactly like the ghost was—and the girl has that same kind of white lace collar, and her hair comes down in curls like that woman’s—she’s from their time.”
Carol stared at them. They were frozen in some elusive, unexplained moment. “What are they doing?”
“‘When Did You Last See Your Father?’ It’s a reproduction of a painting.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I don’t—” He lifted his head, looking down the room. “Dad.”
Uncle Harold left Mary Queen of Scots kneeling with her head on a chopping-block and came to them. “Problem?”
“Yes. What is happening here?”
“Oh, It’s quite simple. The men in black are Puritan leaders. They are looking for the boy’s father, who is evidently a Royalist leader, because if he were a good staunch Puritan, he wouldn’t let his family wear such rich colorful clothes. One of the women is probably the boy’s mother.”
“Would that be during the Civil War?”
“During it, or shortly after it, I expect. The Puritans seem to be definitely in power.”
“Dad. That painting in your study—this reminds me of it.”
Uncle Harold glanced at him. “I didn’t know you had looked that closely at it.”
“Yes. I like it.”
“So do I. The dress seems to be of the same period, doesn’t it. Perhaps she was looking for her father, too. She always seemed to me to be looking for someone…I wonder where your mother is. I think I left her in the Chamber of Horrors.”
“I’m here,” Aunt Catherine said. “And I am starving. Intellectual pursuits always have that effect on me.”
“But Dad,” Bruce said, “we haven’t seen the Chamber of Horrors yet.”
They were finally ready to leave, when Carol saw the wax statue of a small old woman in black, with spectacles on her nose and a fringed shawl about her shoulders. She looked oddly out of place among the richly dressed dignitaries of past ages.
“Who is that?”
Uncle Harold smiled. “That is Madame Tussaud. She made that statue of herself over a hundred years ago. It was she who made the first statues for this museum.”
They had supper, and then Uncle Harold took them to a play. The play had a prince dressed in mournful black who saw an armed ghost, and the ghost spoke of foul murder by poison and would not stay past dawn. Carol watched quietly until the ghost vanished; then she leaned over and whispered in Bruce’s ear, “Maybe the man with the sword murdered Edward.”
“Sh.” After a moment he whispered back, “Maybe Edward killed the man with the sword.”
“Maybe the girl—”
“Sh—” said someone behind, and they quieted.
“One may smile and smile,” said the prince, “and be a villain.”
The play ended with his death. Soldiers came to carry his dead body off-stage, and then the lights went on, and people clapped, and he came back on his own feet, smiling and bowing. Carol looked at Bruce.
“Do you remember the part where Hamlet was with his mother, and he saw the ghost, but his mother couldn’t see it?”
“It’s only a play.”
“I know, but it happened to him. And it happened to us. I wonder why ghosts do that.”
Bruce yawned. “I don’t know. I expect he was imagining the whole thing.”
“He was not.” She stood up and followed Uncle Harold out.
“Did you enjoy it?” he said.
“Yes. But I didn’t expect everyone to die in the end.”
Uncle Harold found the car keys and unlocked the car. “In Shakespeare’s day they rather enjoyed stages full of dead bodies.”
“Well I enjoyed it, too. But it was still sad.”
They drove around the city the next day and visited great ancient buildings with a bewildering array of names: the Tower of London, the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace. When they got to Westminster Cathedral, their feet began to hurt. Carol looked at it, shifting from one foot to another. It was a vast building, striped red and white, with round arched windows, and domes, and many-sided towers. “It’s so big…” Carol said. It ran the length of the city block. Uncle Harold laughed.
“All right. It can wait for another trip. You’ve seen enough tombs for one day.”
They had some lunch, and then started back. Carol slept most of the way. She woke finally and saw in the distance a small tow
n of grey stone houses and outlying farms and a church on a hill in the middle of it, the grey spire rising clear of the trees.
“We’re home,” Uncle Harold said cheerfully. And beside Carol, Bruce slouched lower in the seat, his hands in his pockets, and she heard the slow whisper of his sigh.
VI
A GREEN VAN HAD TAKEN UNCLE HAROLD’S PARKING place in front of the gate.
“What on earth—” Uncle Harold said. He parked behind it. The closed doors of the van said in bright orange letters: MIDDLETON CIVIL SEWAGE. “Is something wrong with our plumbing?”
“Perhaps someone broke a water pipe,” Aunt Catherine said. “I don’t think the city would be interested in our plumbing.”
They got out and collected suitcases from the trunk. Two men stood at the edge of the field where the road ended and watched them. Uncle Harold went over to talk to them. The church bells rang the half-hour. Bruce looked at his watch.
“What time is it? My watch stopped.”
“Four-thirty,” Aunt Catherine said. “Bruce, will you take your father’s suitcase in, please. Hello, Emily.”
“Hello, my dear,” Emily Raison said. “Did you have a nice stay?”
“Yes, it was very nice. What are the plumbers doing here?”
“Oh, my dear, we’re in for a bit of noise. They’re going to put a drain in the street.”
“A drain? What for? Nobody’s drowned yet in this neighborhood, and it’s been here for centuries.”
“They say the street slants, and all the rain goes into the field, and it makes the field muddy when they want to practice soccer. We’ve had a lot of rain this summer, you know. Bless me—Bruce, what did you do to your poor face?”
“I fell in a blackberry bush,” Bruce said patiently.
“Oh, it looks terrible. You’re so lucky you still have your eyes. My Uncle Herbert had to have a glass eye when he ran into a nail in a fence. But he was poaching.” She turned back to Aunt Catherine. “Well, my dear, I expect you want to go in and have a nice hot cup of tea after that long drive.”
“And a footstool under each foot,” Aunt Catherine said. “Only Harold has the house keys.”
Carol sat down on her suitcase. Uncle Harold came back and she stood up.
“Do you know what they’re going to do?” he said indignantly.
“Yes. Emily told us.”
“I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous. They’d make a man’s home unfit for living in for two weeks, just so they can get rid of a few mud puddles.”
“I know,” Aunt Catherine said soothingly. “You’d think they never heard of rubbers.”
“I won’t be able to write a word.”
“I know.”
“I won’t be able to think!”
“Maybe you could find something else to do for a while. Meanwhile, if I don’t get off my blistered feet, you’re going to have to carry me over the threshold, suitcase and all.”
“Oh.” He looked down at the keys in his hand. “I was wondering why you were all standing out here. I’m sorry. Shall I go down later for fish and chips? It will save you cooking.”
She smiled. “That would be lovely.”
Carol sat in her window-seat after dinner, with a postcard of the Tower of London on the windowsill in front of her. She frowned over it, nibbling on her pen. Finally she wrote “Dear Mom and Dad,” and somebody knocked on her door.
“Carol?”
“Come in.”
Bruce came in. She moved her feet, and he sat down beside her on the window-seat.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m writing a postcard. I can’t think of anything to say. Nothing I think of makes any sense. Dear Mother. How are you? I am fine. England is very nice, only they have problems with ghosts and drains—”
He laughed. He twisted himself around and stared out of the open window, his chin resting on one fist.
“I just wanted to think, and I thought it might be easier to do it out loud.”
She nodded. “I’ve been trying to think, too, only it isn’t doing much good.”
“What we’ve got is two ghosts left over from the Civil War period walking through a wall. It doesn’t make any sense. The man must be a Puritan. And the girl doesn’t look like she is—she’s too pretty.”
“Some Puritans probably were pretty. They couldn’t help it.”
“You know what I mean—her hair is in curls, and her dress is the same color as her eyes are, and her shoes have fake roses in them.”
Carol’s head turned slowly. “Her dress is the same color her eyes are?”
“Cobalt blue. Didn’t you notice? We could have a worse-looking ghost to worry about—she doesn’t have fangs or a wart on her nose, and if she appeared by your bed at night you’d only have a mild attack. Anyway, she probably isn’t a Puritan. So why are they in the same cellar?”
“They’re both waiting for Edward.”
“Who is Edward? And where is he? If we can see them, why can’t we see Edward?”
“Why should we see either one of them? They’ve been dead for centuries. What good does it do for ghosts to hang around after they’re dead?”
“Maybe they got stuck in time, doing one thing over and over again, like a broken record playing the same thing over and over.”
“Well, why can’t Father Malory and Uncle Harold see them, if they’re stuck? Why does it have to be us?”
“I don’t know.”
They were silent. Below them, the fishpond was a grey still shadow in the gathering dusk.
Bruce said, “She doesn’t say much. I wonder if she knows we’re there. There are times when it seems she’s looking straight at you, until you remember she’s a ghost, and she can’t see you…or can she?” He shook his head. “We’ll never figure anything out until we can find out why they go through that wall. I’m tempted to tear it down, except I’d never be able to explain to Dad if there’s nothing behind it. And I don’t see what could possibly be there.”
“Edward is a Royalist leader. The man with the sword is a Puritan leader. He wants to capture Edward. The girl is trying to help Edward hide.”
“Behind a brick wall? And where is Edward? When she says ‘Edward. Come,’ why doesn’t he come?”
“She’s talking to us, then. We’re supposed to come.”
“How?”
Carol puffed her cheeks and sighed. “Maybe Edward was a pirate, and there’s a buried treasure behind the wall, and he and the man with the sword fought over it and the girl…”
“Yes—what about the girl?”
“I’ll think of something. Anyway the man killed Edward, stole the gold, and locked Edward’s bones in the treasure-chest, and that’s why we never see him.”
“Ghosts don’t need bones. If they can get out of coffins, they can get out of treasure-chests. And why would a pirate bury a treasure so far inland?”
“I don’t know.”
“There must have been something behind that wall. But what?”
“Another room?”
“There’s no trace of another room. And if there was one, why would they have sealed it off? People don’t usually build cellars that extend farther than the house.”
“What about a hiding place for Royalist leaders?”
He smiled. “We’re going round and round, like squirrels in one of those moving tracks they put in cages. It seems logical that Edward was a Royalist leader, and she might be trying to hide him. But I don’t know how she did it without knocking the wall down, and there’s not much sense in that; you can hide a man more easily than you can hide the evidence that you’ve knocked down a wall to make a hiding place. And somebody put the wall back up—if it was ever down. I don’t know.” He rubbed his eyes. “Let’s talk about something else awhile and maybe we’ll think of something accidentally.”
“All right. Alexander has your picture of the flowers. He said he likes it, but he’ll give it back to you if you want it.”
In the fadin
g light, she saw his face flush scarlet. He made a sudden movement as if he were going to rise, but instead he sat quietly, staring out the window. He was silent for a long while. She picked up the postcard and frowned at it. She began to write. He stirred finally.
“Did you think of something to say?”
“Finally. How do you spell Madame Tussaud?”
He spelled it for her. Then he said, “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps the girl was trying to hide Edward from the Puritans and the man with the sword found his hiding place…Perhaps Edward was someone she loved—her brother, or—no, she’s too young to have a husband. It was someone—her brother or a cousin or a friend, that she cared about, and she saw him killed and that’s what keeps her coming back—her sadness. She keeps living it all over again.”
The next day, during breakfast, the drilling began. It was not loud, but its dull, monotonous persistence wore away the tranquility of the morning. Uncle Harold endured it with patience, sipping his tea.
“In any society,” he said, “there is bound to be a conflict between the people who want to write history, and those who want to drill drains for soccer players underneath their windows. There must be a happy meeting-point somewhere, but in this case I think I will yield and go work in the Cambridge library.”
“Oh, good,” Aunt Catherine said. “I’ll go with you and do some shopping.”
“Dad,” said Bruce.
“Yes.”
“I was—I was wondering. Do you have something I could do to earn money? I need tires for my bike and new paint, and all I’ve got is nine pence.”
Uncle Harold looked at him silently a moment. He put his cup down. “You want to work?”
Bruce flushed. “Yes. Please.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound that way. I was just wondering this morning what we were going to do for a gardener for the next two weeks, and here you are, practically begging to mow the lawns and clip the hedges once a week.”
The House on Parchment Street Page 7