Fair Weather

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  He stayed two days and I enjoyed most of it. We acted like the kids we were, threw the milk at each other when it went sour and clotted, burned the pottage while trying to reheat it without adding water, chased the hen when she laid an egg under my stool and I stood on it, and sat around the kitchen hearth to tell stories, like old times.

  “Stephen’s getting bigger at last,” said Walter.

  “He’s fourteen years old,” I said, “or maybe fifteen. He can’t have stopped growing yet.”

  “It’s experience really, isn’t it, that makes you grow up,” said Walter. “Anyway, he’s got more sense than you’d think. He gave me a message for you. He says you ought to come home.”

  “I am home,” I pointed out.

  “Back to the forest house. Stephen says we all miss you and worry about you and it’s really dangerous for you to be on your own now.”

  “I’m not coming back,” I said.

  Walter sighed. “Stephen says you got all uncomfortable because things had changed and we weren’t just piglets snuffling together anymore. Talking of marriage, and murder and everything, well, it made you feel like the odd one out and maybe you thought you were spoiling things for the rest of us too. So you left.”

  “Well, that’s astute of Stephen,” I admitted. “Actually, he was the first to start avoiding me after you went on and on about marriage. So I’m glad he worked that out. Perhaps Vespasian talked to him too. But I can’t come back. Not yet anyway.”

  “I’d never live in London again,” said Walter. “It’s better in the forest. I love it. It smells so sweet. I love the birds singing and the wind in the tree tops.”

  “You’re getting poetic.” Then I thought of something, and how odd it was he’d come if he didn’t like London anymore. “How did you know I was here? Did Vespasian send you?”

  Walter squirmed, blushing. “He did suggest it,” he admitted. “He says you’re in danger.”

  “If I am,” I said distantly, “then it’s as much from him as anything else. I won’t come back.”

  “Well, I just thought I ought to try,” said Walter. “I mean, Vespasian wasn’t especially vehement about it. He told me I’d find you back here in the old house though I don’t know how he knew. Guessed I suppose. So the danger can’t be that bad.”

  “If he really wanted me back,” I sniffed, “he would have come and got me himself.”

  It was early on the morning of the twenty sixth of October that Walter left. He broke fast with me first. Being winter, Molly wasn’t laying much, but we managed a boiled egg each, stale rye bread and half a mug of ale. We sat at the kitchen table with the hen clucking fretfully under our feet and the sun knocking at the grime on the oiled window cloth. He had a long walk and wanted to get off early. There was the smell of burned out ashes and mutton tallow from last night’s candle. Walter had stolen me a whole sling full of candles but I wish he’d managed to get the expensive beeswax instead of tallow, which stank and spluttered and spat rank smut and kept going out.

  “I’ll miss you,” I said, which was quite true.

  “Then come with me, silly girl,” he said. “It’s a good life in the forest even if we are outlaws. What happens if the sheriff turns up here and arrests you? Asks about Vespasian? Or you get caught stealing and there’s no one to come and help?”

  “I’ll move on soon,” I said. “I promised Jack Saddler I would and I know I’m not really safe here.”

  “Stick with your pride and your silly ideas then,” said Walter, standing up. “I’m off.” He said one more thing before he went, standing on the doorstep in the pale sunshine, with his small pack slung over his shoulder and his dark hair in a mess. “I do love you in a way, Tilda,” he said. “I’m not even embarrassed to say it. You’ve changed a lot in the months since we left London. If you ever need anything – you know – a special friend or something, then tell me. I’ll do what I can.”

  “Thank you, Walter,” said Tilda. “I hope I see you again soon. And I hope you find someone nice to marry one day. Please don’t go off to the crusades.”

  He marched away down the road with a grin, shaking his head as if I was a lost cause and not worth answering. I never did see him again.

  Chapter Thirty Four

  I left Tilda sweeping out another mouse nest from the kitchen corner. The mice were nibbling at everything and the rats were stealing the eggs. She was bare foot, trying to protect her new shoes, and she was missing Walter. She wasn’t admitting to herself what else she was missing.

  With a lurch of vertigo I separated, saw her small pale face and the aura of long brown curls fade into the shadows while absurd noises jangled inside my head. The telephone was ringing, the hen squawked as it dashed from the broom, the kettle was steaming furiously as it clicked off, Tilda stubbed her toe and sneezed as feathers flew, one or both of us got the hiccups, then there was Brahms playing somewhere. I was Molly again.

  I tried to ignore the telephone but it kept on. Finally I pulled myself into the present and answered it. It was Bertie and he was fine and thought he might come back if I’d have him back into the spare room and he promised he’d be no trouble. As if! I hiccupped Tilda’s hiccups and said O.K. I supposed he was a bit like Walter though twice his age and half his intelligence but any company was good sometimes.

  I took the tea I made into the living room and sat staring at the blank television screen. A few days before I had wanted to revert to Molly because I’d needed the explanations I thought I could only get in this world. Now I was here, I wished I wasn’t. My mind was a medieval mind and I was an eighteen year old medieval girl with a destiny she feared. I, she, her, there was a confusion of mental spirals. Although as Tilda I spoke an ancient form of English barely intelligible to a modern ear, my mind always spoke and heard in the language I knew. Now, for the first time perhaps, I found I was thinking in antique words and had to force myself into modern Molly again. A slow apathy of timeless inertia imposed. So I did nothing for several hours and allowed myself unconscious rest.

  Then finally I took the mug of tea, which had gone stone cold in my hand, and shoved it in the microwave. I checked the date on the local newspaper which had been pushed through my letter box and still lay folded on the passage carpet. It said the twenty sixth of October. I rustled through the pages. There was no mention of murder, police enquiries or magical occurrences. When the microwave bleated, I retrieved my reheated tea and went back into the living room where I sat and stared at the blank television screen until my cup went cold again.

  It was then I noticed, hanging small and quite unobtrusive on the wall over the fireplace, the little wooden carving of a snake that ate its own tail. I accepted its presence completely. I had almost known it would be there.

  At about five thirty when it was already getting vaguely dark outside, I switched on the repaired central heating, which I should have done before because it was freezing, searched for my mug of tea which I eventually found, equally freezing, back in the microwave, and turned the television on. Something about the insistent modern blare and the platitudinous self importance of the programme finally woke me up and I was home, Molly again, and ready for action.

  I wrapped up, scarf, coat, gloves, thinking just how much warmer life in medieval times had been, and went out. I trotted down over the little bridge and behind the Post Office to the Smith and Joker and ordered a hot toddy. Then I sat with it in the alcove and waited for Thomas Cambio to turn up.

  He arrived all tweed and dark green mackintosh as I remembered him. He saw me at once and brought his drink over, just as though we’d had an appointment. “You look cold,” he said. “Wouldn’t you like to come and sit by the fire?”

  “No thank you. I’ve decided that close contact with real fires makes me positively dizzy. But I’m delighted to see you again. I was really hoping you’d be here tonight.”

  “Perhaps,” he suggested, sipping his whisky, “we could have this one drink and then you might like to come back to
my place for a long talk. That’s why you came, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “I’d be interested to see your place.”

  “I shall walk you home afterwards of course,” he said. “Unless you decide to go straight back to Merrie Olde England.”

  I said, “It’s not so merry at the moment.”

  He had a very tiny cottage not far from mine and even closer to my counsellor, Ruth Ableside, who I had decided not to see again. We wiped our boots on his hedgehog mat and he unlocked a door so tiny that he had to bend to fit inside. He turned on the electric light and lemon welcome sprang into life. There was flowered wallpaper and a rose patterned carpet. It looked like the country cottage of an ancient and genteel old lady. It certainly didn’t look like anything this man would have chosen. For a moment it reminded me of something designed by a film studio, a clichéd representation of country charm. “Come in, come in,” he said. “Tea, or coffee?”

  “I remember you make lovely coffee,” I said.

  He smiled, hanging up the mackintosh. “I spent a lot of time in Italy you know and they’re fanatical about their coffee there. Venice. I loved it. Lived there for a few years.”

  “In which century?” I wondered.

  “Several,” he said, quite seriously. “And of course, it was where I first met Vespasian, though by a different name.”

  The couch was chintz and deeply cushioned. I nursed my coffee, Wedgwood china and a chocolate biscuit. “I dreamed,” I said, “a few nights ago. I wanted very much to ask you about something and I dreamed about you and you answered me. Was that just a dream?”

  “Just a dream?” He sat opposite me. There was a small fire which had burned low. He poked at it and released the reluctant flare, adding another log until the fire turned huge and filled all my eyes. Then he put his feet up on a padded stool and raised his coffee cup. “My dear young lady, we must never speak of just dreams. Yes, I dreamed of you as you dreamed of me. I answered your question. I would have come over to you, but I was a little caught up you might say, too busy, in another time.”

  “So that snake thing’s a symbol? In alchemy? Something magic?” I leaned forward and found myself whispering. “Would you be surprised if I told you it followed me here? It’s in my own living room now. Nothing’s ever come backwards or forwards with me before. Only daisies – and injuries – and this.”

  For the very first time, I thought he looked distinctly surprised. His face was suddenly animated and he blinked twice. Then he quickly shut the emotions off. “Surprised? No, not at all. You say it was placed in your convent room by this person Malcolm? A powerful alchemist, I assume. So most unwise, I think, to touch this thing.”

  I felt I was missing something. “Would you? You have such amazing power. Would you destroy it for me?”

  He frowned. “I should like to help, but no, I think not. It’s probably better left alone. In the meantime,” he smiled again, brightening, “tell me what you’ve been up to.”

  I told him. I particularly told him about the convent and the Abbot in some detail. Then I took a deep breath, which was increasingly difficult in the suffocating heat of the tiny room, and said, “Dear Mister Cambio, I really don’t want to sound as if I’m trying to be clever. I trust you. You’re the only person who understands all this and really helps me. But you go back to the same time and places I do, and you must become someone there, just like me. Are you, is it possible, when you go over there, are you Abbot Bernado?”

  He took a moment, as if he was unsure whether to be pleased or not. “Well, you’ve a remarkable instinct indeed,” he said eventually. “I hadn’t expected you to guess so quickly. But of course, when I’m him, he has his own personality and isn’t totally under my control – just as you find with your friend Tilda. Unfortunately, Abbot Bernado sometimes has his own ideas and I was sorry to be so inhospitable, dear Molly. I should certainly never have asked you to leave the convent, especially at such a difficult time. I shall try and make it up to you.”

  I smiled and relaxed. Knowing about the Abbot explained a lot and gave me confidence. Tilda didn’t always listen to me either. “That doesn’t matter at all. I understand. It’s just nice to know.”

  “Then let’s move on from the coffee to the wine,” said Thomas. “And relax a little further. What else can I tell you? What else can I help you with?”

  “Oh, with Vespasian,” I said at once. “Tell me more about him and fill in the blanks.”

  I hadn’t noticed when it happened, or even how, but the electric light had diminished into fire flicker. Shadows crept close. “Forgive me, but I’d have thought dear Vespasian is hardly the point here,” Thomas said quietly. “He’s almost irrelevant now. It’s these other people, Arthur, Malcolm and the rest of that sinister group, which you need to concentrate on.”

  “But you said you don’t know any of them,” I pointed out, almost apologetically. “Besides, she’s busy trying to hide the fact, even from herself, but Tilda’s obsessed with Vespasian. She’s been in love with him for years.”

  Thomas raised his brows. “I understood from you that she wanted to kill him?”

  “Well, perhaps she does. And I do too – though I couldn’t really, of course. Not actual murder. I doubt if she could either, but she’d like to.” I looked into my lap and played with the stem of my wine glass. “But that doesn’t stop her feeling what she’s always felt for him.”

  “Ah, young ladies,” smiled Thomas. “Will we ever understand them?” He sounded just like the Abbot.

  “But,” I said, “you always seemed to like Vespasian. You warned me he was – dangerous. But you said you respected him. You called him the hub and said he was fascinating and charismatic. But Abbot Bernado doesn’t like him at all and says he’s capable of great evil. So, which is which?”

  “Both perhaps,” said Thomas. “Remember that the Abbot is a practising prelate and believes in organised religion. He’s now heartily ashamed of his previous associations and his knowledge of alchemy. If the bishop discovered his past, he might be excommunicated.”

  I finished my wine. “You keep talking about alchemy but it sounds like magic to me. I read up a bit from the library on the old pagan beliefs before the church moved in, but none of it sounded very scientific. I mean,” I knew I was missing the point somewhere, “it seemed to be all about nature spirits and trees and herbs and the magic of sacred groves, a bit – well, fanciful and sixties hippy. Vespasian believes in herbs and potions but alchemy’s about the philosopher’s stone and turning base metals into gold and discovering science.”

  Thomas refilled my wine glass. “Oh dear me no,” he said. “I’m amazed you have the facts quite so muddled. And you so closely involved, too! I really must put you right.”

  It seemed to be the heat of the fire and the movement of the flames that made me sleepy, rather than the wine which was light and fruity and I was pleased to find that it wasn’t going to my head at all. Yet somehow I found it hard to concentrate on Thomas’s explanations. He seemed to be sitting closer and occasionally patted my hand, which I found sweet but strangely disconcerting. “Most believe alchemy began in ancient Egypt, once known as Al-Kemia of course,” he said, “though some say it came originally from Atlantis. The Greeks learned from the Egyptians when Alexander the Great conquered the great civilisations. Plato and Pythagoras were naturally both adepts but they merely adopted the Egyptian teachings of Thoth. Then the knowledge grew more sophisticated through the early Jews who incorporated it into the Cabala, and finally with the Arabs of the middle ages. They were quite the most civilised peoples during our medieval times you know. The original Zoroastrians developed the mysteries and much Asian knowledge and yoga was absorbed. Then the Knights Templar of course. There have been enormous strides forward since then, the Rosicrucians and naturally the Masonic Lodge, with Newton, Blake and even a certain Mr. Jung, but that is all quite irrelevant to your story, for we must stop with Tilda, Vespasian and my dear Abbot. Besides, as history raced for
ward, so the alchemic association with the old pagan spirits began to wane, and that changed its course considerably.” His voice was almost a chant. I could hardly follow it, yet it also drew me in. It felt hypnotic. “Venice was the great trading power of the west at that time and the Venetians adopted much of the more profound knowledge, both mystic and chemical, of the Arabs and Persians. I believe that’s where Vespasian honed his studies. He was originally sent to the University of Bologna as a very young man when his father the baron was still alive. Vespasian’s mother was Italian. Perhaps you knew?”

  I shook my head. “He looks rather Italian perhaps.”

  “Well, that’s of no matter,” continued Thomas. “He was an only child I believe and heir to the title of course, but his parents were alive and wealthy and in good health, close to the throne and friends of King Richard’s mother. A difficult woman, Eleanor of Aquitaine, but that’s another story.

  At that time, I was already slipping in and out of the mind and body of one Bernado Schiavone, who was studying theology in Venice and was ambitious. So when he met Jasper, son of the English Baron de Vrais, half Norman, half Italian and a young man of seductive charisma, I became as interested in alchemy as Bernado.

  The principles of alchemy have since been kidnapped by Christianity with such stolen symbolism as the Holy Grail, but at that time it was still pure mysticism. Of course, there were those obsessed with medicine, gold and chemistry, the desire for wealth of course, but also the desire for understanding and knowledge. Base metals into gold – well, some dabbled with the idea. But the real foundation of alchemy was the desire for eternal life, not of the body as some now suppose, but of the spirit.”

  “I thought the soul was more what the Christian church preaches,” I muttered.