The first showed a young man sitting on a heap of spoil, a notebook beside him that he was jotting in, the other hand holding a pipe. He was wearing what looked like a straw hat, and looked unaware of his portrait being taken.
In the corner was a signature: ‘P. Chorleigh’. At the top, more legible was the simple title: Edwin. The picture was done with care but also affection, she thought. This was an artist who had caught the young man’s profile, the eyelashes dark along the eye, a focus on the narrow nose and curved lips. The other paper was another portrait, of a young girl, clearly aware she was being drawn. She was laughing straight at the artist, fair hair tumbling over her shoulders, a hat on the back of her head and her hands pulled around her drawn-up knees. She was sitting on the smaller mound, the grass reaching over and almost obscuring the flat stone along the top. She was pretty, but the artist hadn’t lingered on her features like he had on the other one.
‘Molly,’ she read, turning the paper over to see the pencil inscription. Underneath was a line of inked words. She read them aloud. ‘Mary Evelyn Chorleigh 1895–1918. RIP.’
‘She was Peter’s sister,’ Alistair said, putting her coffee down a little unevenly. It splashed a few drops on the table so she moved the papers away from the liquid. ‘The story is she went overseas to nurse in the First World War. Grandpa Peter was a captain, I have a picture somewhere. He fought in France for three years, he was wounded twice.’
‘I’d love to see it.’ She looked around, saw a tea towel on the back of a chair and carefully dried the table and the bottom of the cup.
‘Don’t worry about that, it doesn’t matter.’ He seemed suddenly different but not drunk. ‘The picture’s on the landing upstairs. There’s a few of the family. Come and see them.’
Sage suddenly felt awkward. She shrugged the feeling off; he’d never been anything but polite to her. For a moment she remembered how she had trusted Elliott. But Chorleigh was different now, nothing like the intense young man who had nearly killed her. She took a breath, blew it out. ‘OK. Lead on. I’d love to see more. Did she die in the flu epidemic after the war?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose she could have done. She died in France, I know; she isn’t buried in the churchyard in Fairfield. Peter is, and his wife and daughter Claire.’
Standing on the wide stairs which were shallow, perfect for Victorian evening gowns, she could see rows of framed photographs. The carpet was filthy, covered in dog hairs and grass from the garden. Underneath she could just see the remains of a flowered pattern, all it needed was a good clean. ‘Do you know when the house was built?’
‘Actually, I do. It was started in 1886 and took two years to build. It was on the site of a smaller building that was bought by the family, for the land. There’s a bit of the original kitchen left, housing the boiler and the water pump.’
‘It’s a lovely house.’ The high ceiling above was stained brown in places and was bulging around the skylight that brought light down into the stairwell.
‘The roof leaks,’ he said, pointing at the corner where black staining had travelled down the wall, paper peeling away. ‘I can’t get anyone to fix it.’
She wondered where he got his money from – clearly he didn’t work. He pointed towards a landing where a large painting dominated the photographs.
Sage stared at the man in the picture, who stared back. He was good-looking in a heavy-jowled sort of way. Very dark, just a hint of silver at the temples, and piercing black eyes, quite different to Alistair, who had watery blue eyes and brown hair. But there was something about the way he tilted his head and the modern dress that identified him to Sage. ‘This is your father?’ He looked younger than in the photographs from the early nineties.
‘That was done when he became a verderer. Or when he was chief agister.’
‘What’s that?’ Sage couldn’t take her eyes off the brooding portrait.
‘An agister looks after the forest animals, makes sure people abide by the bylaws. My father used to be called out to injured ponies and deer on the road; he’d be responsible for putting them down if they were badly hurt. He had a special rifle for the job but he often just cut their throats if he was in a hurry.’
She could see this powerfully built man killing injured animals. He looked like he could do anything. There wasn’t a hint of softness in the picture; she wondered if the artist was nervous of him. She looked away and turned her attention to the photographs.
She immediately recognised Molly in a party dress that made her look even younger. She had tucked her hand into the crooked elbow of a fair young man who was smiling at the camera. Here she could see hints of Alistair, the hair curling back from the crown, softness about the mouth which suggested a smile. ‘Her brother Peter?’ she said, to herself as much as Alistair. ‘They were a good-looking pair.’
‘That was before they went to the war.’ He was standing close, a bit closer than she was comfortable with, and she stepped aside to get a better look at the picture he indicated. A smaller snap, it showed the two in uniform, Peter holding his officer’s cap, Molly in flat shoes and cape barely up to his shoulder. They both looked gravely at the camera, as if they had already been swept into the storm of the trenches. ‘This was the moment they went back after leave in 1918, in Scotland. The family didn’t see Molly again. Peter was there at her funeral; he wanted her buried in France and not back here.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, this was their father, my great-grandfather.’
The painting showed a balding man with a massive handlebar moustache, broad-shouldered and leaning towards the artist. He looked powerful, stern. Alistair’s presence was oppressive, and now she could smell the spirits on his breath. He was standing closer; she was wedged into a corner of the stairs.
‘He was a bullying bastard, like my father. He went to Cheam as well, and joined the army at the same age. He was an agister too, responsible for shooting injured horses. My mother told me Grandpa Peter hated him.’
‘Cheam?’
‘Prep school, we all went there. I went on to Winchester College. My mother insisted. It got me away from my father, but I got chucked out at sixteen. Then I went to the local college.’
She wanted to ask why but couldn’t frame the question. She looked back to the pictures. There was another portrait of Molly and Peter, presumably with their mother. She was seated, looking frail, a wispier, paler version of her daughter. ‘Did Peter attend Winchester College too?’
He nodded. ‘He was a bright student, I think; he was sent off to university afterwards. The family story is that Molly wanted to go too, but her father wouldn’t let her.’ He leaned in to look at the portrait, his shoulder brushing hers. ‘There was some sort of scandal about the excavation, maybe between Edwin and Molly. She and Peter were sent away to Scotland to stay with their grandmother after the dig. The local gossip was that she was having a baby. I never heard of one being born, though.’
‘Oh.’
He turned to her. ‘This family, always in the local gossip somewhere.’
‘Well, thank you for showing me that.’
‘That was my dad, with Brutus,’ he said, pointing to a colour photograph of a heavyset Chorleigh senior in huntsman’s uniform. The animal was glossy, dark, powerful. A young man holding the horse’s bridle made her look again. ‘It makes me sad to see that.’
‘Is that Jimmy?’
‘It is,’ Alistair said.
She leaned forward to stare at the grave face looking straight at the camera. ‘Can you tell me anything more about him?’
‘His dad was in prison,’ Alistair said, leaning forward too. ‘He worked for us for a couple of years. I have more pictures in my father’s bedroom,’ he said, pointing down the hall.
The darkness on the landing was brooding and strange, and seemed to have an effect on Chorleigh.
‘Perhaps another day,’ she said, sliding past him down a couple of stairs. ‘Now I’d like to have a proper look at tho
se site plans. It’s a wonderful record of a unique excavation.’
‘And the journal. It’s a mess, but you might be able to read something in it.’
She slowed her steps, trying not to give the impression she was speeding away from him. The dog was sat at the bottom of the stairs, for once subdued. ‘That would be interesting.’ She pushed through the kitchen door and turned to him. ‘This is very helpful of you, Mr Chorleigh.’ She kept her tone formal.
After a moment, he turned away and lifted the battered leather book from the table. ‘My mother told me about the notebook. It’s got pictures and letters in it too, only they are stuck inside. Maybe you can get it open. The only thing we could read easily is the name inside the cover.’
‘Whose name?’
He pulled the cover open a few inches and Sage winced in case he forced it. She could see it was a leather-bound notebook, about A5 size or slightly bigger, with irregularly cut, thick pages.
Chorleigh looked inside and held it up so she could see the confident pen strokes in black ink. ‘The archaeologist who disappeared. Edwin Masters.’
28
‘If I ever had believed in witches living in cottages in the woods, my beliefs were confirmed by this evening’s visit to Mrs Warnock.’
Edwin Masters’ Journal, 10th July 1913, evening
Mrs Bessie Warnock was bent over like a shrimp, peering out from under white hair in what was probably a bun twisted onto the top of her head some days before. She recognised Molly with a series of incomprehensible statements while staring at us. One of her eyes was milky with cataracts, I’m afraid it was hard not to stare.
Molly pointed to the gate beside the cottage. ‘Mrs Warnock says I can make us all tea, if you would be so kind as to sit on the bench in the garden.’
She disappeared into the grey interior, and we followed the little woman through a tall gate and into a surprisingly well-kept garden. There was a wicker rocking chair covered with cushions like a throne, and Mrs Warnock sat in it and waited for the three of us to dispose ourselves on the old bench. It sagged under our weight, but thankfully held. Professor Conway immediately introduced us, speaking clearly.
‘I’m not deaf,’ she announced. ‘What d’ye want to know?’
‘We are excavating an old earthwork at Chorleigh House. Hound Butt.’
She rummaged in the front pocket of her apron for a long-stemmed pipe. She appeared to look, fruitlessly, for some tobacco. Peter sprang forward, holding a tin of his. She laboriously loaded up the pipe, packing it with an orange thumb. When she went to return the tobacco, he asked her to keep it, blushing to the roots of his fair hair.
The pipe was lit, and we watched as she finally got a good draw and sat back. ‘Nay then,’ she said, rocking slowly. ‘It’ll be bad luck to go digging around that butt. They say the spirits of wolves haunts the mounds. Back in them days, before my time, before my granmer’s time, there was wolves in the forest. And bears, too. I see’d the bones when I was a girl.’ She pointed through the trees in the direction of the church. ‘The vicar, he knows. The bones used to be up the church, skulls and suchlike.’
The professor leaned forward again. ‘Mrs Warnock, what makes you think the barrows are associated with bad luck?’
‘I knows it. My cousin Arthur went up there courting, when he was learning to be a cattleman up at the old farm. Before the new house was built, this was. He heard such a wailing and crying from the barrows he ran away, broke his ankle in a ditch, had to give up farming. He ended up working as a butcher’s assistant in Lyndhurst.’ She made it sound like a terrible fate. ‘And the girl, Cissy Alton, she miscarried her baby, though folks reckon that was a good thing since she weren’t wed.’
Prof Conway nodded. ‘Many of these ancient places are associated with magic and curses. Even witchcraft.’
‘Well, I dunno about that, I’m a God-fearing Christian.’
Molly appeared, carrying a large tray with cups and saucers and an enormous pot of tea. ‘There’s no milk,’ she whispered to me, ‘but I put sugar out.’
The ritual of tea pouring went on as Prof Conway asked more questions. If he wanted to speak to someone who knows about witchcraft, who should he approach?
‘I s’pose I know about as much as anyone,’ she finally conceded. ‘As my granmer was a bit of a white witch. Kindly, like, and a churchgoer.’
‘I’m sure she was,’ he said.
She flapped her apron at a hen that was pecking around her feet. ‘Get off, Flo,’ she said, then slurped her tea. ‘There were a few girls here, needed to be kept regular, if you takes my meaning.’ She nodded to Molly. ‘Not wanting to offend the maid. And some people likes their future read. Cards and such like. I don’t know nothing like that. I was taught tea leaves, that’s good enough for me.’
‘And for me,’ Conway agreed, and sipped his own tea.
For a sixpence each, she agreed to read each of our cups, swirling the leafy dregs around and turning the cup onto the saucer.
We were a sad bunch. Molly would travel overseas to find her destiny, Peter would have the most pedestrian of lives with four children, two of each, coming back to live out his life in the forest. She foretold a journey for him, a long journey, where he would be away for many years. The professor she struggled with, saying he was a ‘fateful’ person, most hard to predict a future, but she guessed that he would have a love late in life that would break his heart. My future puzzled her the most.
‘Well, sir, it could go any way. There’s no clear path for you. But you will know a great love, one day. Soon, I reckon. It’s getting in the way of seeing your future.’
My heart gave a little leap, then. I had suspected that love was already creeping into my heart, even though I have always thought myself a cool creature.
‘Tell me, Mrs Warnock,’ Conway went on. ‘Are there any stories about why the barrows were built?’
‘That’s a longer story, sir,’ she said, her good eye staring at him. He held her gaze with an amused patience, like he might to a small child. Finally, she gave in. ‘’Twas a story of the people who came here, before Christian times. They worshipped their heathen gods in the forest – there are those who say they still do.’
He nodded, and waited for her to continue. I noticed his signet ring, then. A design was deeply carved into the face and it looked heavy, like an old seal.
‘They was terrorised by a monster, some say it was a giant wolf. It killed their best warriors, and still they couldn’t stop it. Then it took the son of the king, a child protected by guards. Finally, the king himself fought the giant beast.’
‘And?’ Conway prompted.
‘Well, he cut the animal’s head off with one stroke, and where it fell water bubbled up in a spring. They laid the wolf’s head in the water and it flowed, winter and summer, even in the worst of droughts. The king put up a stone cage to stop it getting out or being stolen. They says, if you takes the wolf head out the spring will dry up, all the springs in the forest will stop running. All the animals will die and the trees will blow away like ash.’
The story was surprisingly close to what we had discovered. I glanced at the professor, wondering if he too suspected our hound was indeed a wilder beast. ‘We shall certainly bear that in mind,’ said the professor, sounding sincere. ‘For no one should ignore the wisdom of our ancestors.’
* * *
When we got back to Chorleigh House I noticed a bicycle leaning against the gate post, and Peter grabbed my arm. ‘It’s that little tick, Goodrich. From the chemist. He’s probably brought the pictures up. I don’t want to see him, could you deal with him? Don’t let him speak to Father, he never liked him.’
‘Are you still friends, then?’
‘He’s all right. He’s not a bad bowler, plays for the village team. Just deal with him.’ This he hissed, and he jogged around the side of the house.
I was perplexed. I suppose Matthew Goodrich might have been overfamiliar with Peter too, taking advantage of
their acquaintance at school. I walked into the hall to see Tilly, the maid, arguing with Goodrich.
‘Can I help?’
Goodrich stepped back, smiled at me while his eyes glanced around behind me. ‘I was hoping for a word with Peter.’
‘Mr Chorleigh is detained,’ I said, a little stiffly.
‘Well, I have his photographs. But I would prefer to put them into his hands. Some of them are personal.’
‘I can assure you, the pictures are of a project we are working on together.’ I was aware of light footfalls behind me and Molly at my elbow.
‘As his sister, I’m sure I can be relied upon to deliver these to Peter, surely?’ Her light, amused tone was just right.
‘Very well, Miss Molly. But the letter is for his eyes only.’
‘Of course.’ Molly held out her hand and after a moment he dropped the package of pictures and a heavy envelope into it. ‘I will be sure to get these to my brother as soon as he is back. Good day, Mr Goodrich.’
She walked with dignity to the library and he walked to the door.
As he turned I saw his face, flushed with something, maybe anger. ‘Tell him he owes me an answer. Do you hear? Or I shall take my story to his father.’
I followed Molly into the library to find her trembling. ‘Well done, Molly. You were just the right amount of haughty. What a fellow!’
‘He used to be a friend of Peter’s so I suppose we gave him too much licence around the family. My father could never stand him in the house.’ She managed a laugh, put the envelope and packet down and pressed the back of her hand to her red cheek. ‘Gosh, I was a bit scared of him, he looked so cross. Where is Peter, by the way?’
‘He sneaked around the back. I’ll get him.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, snatching up the envelope and the packet of photographs. ‘And give him these.’
A Shroud of Leaves Page 24