The Pale Companion

by Philip Gooden

  “Yes, I remember you come from down here. Your parents are country people.”

  “My father was a parson in a Somerset village. My mother was his wife. They are both dead.”

  “My mother died when I was quite young but not before I committed her to memory,” said Kate. “My father often talks of her. He tells me that I look a little like her now.”

  “She must have been a . . . beautiful woman.”

  The little pause was not for effect, I swear.

  “He is a partial witness,” she said, smiling.

  “All witnesses are partial,” I said meaninglessly, “particularly when they think they are not.”

  “I hear that you witnessed something strange the other night.”

  I felt suddenly confused – and not a little irritated – to realize that Adam Fielding kept no secrets from his daughter.

  “Yes, I told your father of something I saw, or thought I saw. But I would not like the story to get abroad.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it was in the nature of a dream or a nightmare . . . a shifting, uncertain image. You wouldn’t like your dreams spread among strangers.”

  “Am I a stranger?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. Shall we talk about something else?”

  “I’m sorry if I’ve angered you, Nicholas.”

  She reached across and half-grasped my hand. It was worth being irritated to have her touch me. She looked away.

  “What’s that in the water – over there?”

  I followed her gaze. All I could see was the glint of the sun on the surface. Kate rose to her feet and moved a few paces nearer the rushy margin of the lake. She shaded her eyes with her hand and peered intently at a stretch of water. I got up and joined her.

  “Where?”

  For answer, she pointed. I saw nothing except the gentle ripples and the swaying, feathery plants on the bank. Then at once something seemed to stir in the deeper, darker water beyond the place I’d been looking at. A rash of bubbles erupted on the surface, together with a queer hissing sound. At first I took it for a fish coming closer to the surface – a surprisingly large fish – a monstrously large fish. In Kate’s presence I steeled myself against stepping back from the lake edge. Whatever was down there, it could hardly clamber out onto dry land. It was no submarine beast, however, but something more like a long colourless bundle, cylindrical in shape, which appeared to be dragging itself up from the bottom of the lake, twisting slowly round and round and trailing ragged streamers behind it. The reflected sun and the muddiness of the water combined to make the object indistinct.

  Kate clutched at my arm. I heard her draw breath sharply. Just as the bundle seemed about to break the surface and disclose itself, it abruptly dropped down out of sight, as though a water-sprite or something worse had tugged it back to the lake-bed. There was a momentary flurry above the spot where the bale-like shape had disappeared, then all was flat and calm again.

  We stood there for some time, Kate still holding hard onto my upper arm. In other circumstances I would’ve been glad of this, glad of the chance to reassure and comfort her. But the truth is that I was shaken myself.

  “What was it, Nicholas?”

  “I don’t know.” I shivered. “But there is something rotten here at Instede.”

  “You must come and see this, Nick,” said Will Fall.

  “So you’ve said already.”

  “We look to the Paradise Brothers to provide something special.”

  “We? Will, you speak like a member of the laity, if I may say so,” I said, hardly troubling to keep the annoyance out of my tone. “Anyone’d think that you had never seen a band of players before, let alone been part of their mystery as a member of the Chamberlain’s.”

  The three of us – Will and I, together with his kitchen drab Audrey – were ambling towards the great barn where the Paradise Brothers were due to put on a new “play” for the edification of the estate workers. I was a little surprised that, in this delicate period before Lord Elcombe’s interment, they should have thought themselves licensed to act. Still, they were evidently driven by some species of spiritual fervour, rather than baser commercial considerations like the rest of us.

  “I mean no aspersions on my own company,” said Will, “but the Paradises remind me of an earlier period of playing.”

  “You’re not old enough.”

  “An era that was more direct,” he went on, ignoring my comment. “An era without so many refinements.”

  “You mean crude and clumsy.”

  “I mean rough-hewn and honest.”

  “Then we agree,” I said.

  “Anyway, Nick, I look forward to seeing what miracles they can work with bits of cable and harness. We enjoyed Judas a-hanging himself last time, didn’t we, Aud? Nearly as good as the real thing.”

  The short red-faced girl stumbling along beside Will seemed surprised to be addressed and muttered something incomprehensible in reply.

  “I wonder who they’ll kill today?” he said.

  I considered the remark out of place, given what had recently occurred at the great house, but it was no use rebuking Will: there was an honest, rough-hewn quality to him too. He said what he thought, without thought.

  When we got to the barn there was the same crowd of besmocked and breeched workers who’d gathered a few days earlier to watch the drama of Judas. Among them, I noticed Sam the grasping bailie and keeper-of-the-rope, as well as Davy, my informant in the household. It was interesting to see that, for all the makeshift circumstances of this presentation, an air of expectation, even of excitement, gripped the little audience. I wondered what Peter, Paul and Philip Paradise were going to divert us with this time. For sure, it would involve murder or self-slaughter – just like real life.

  Perhaps in deference to the tragic events at Instede, however, the Brothers had chosen a story without violence: the parable of Dives and Lazarus. You know the one. The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate. Then, later on, the rich man is shoved down into hell while the poor man is raised up into heaven, where he rests smug and snug in Father Abraham’s bosom. This is consoling for all of us poor (or not so rich) folk since it tells us that we shall ultimately be rewarded for our privations on this earth. And, more important, it tells us that the wealthy will suffer for their prior comforts. Most men, having to choose between pampering themselves or punishing their enemies, would surely choose the latter. So it is, I say, a satisfactory parable.

  I wondered at first whether the little rustic audience was going to be disappointed at the absence of murder and suicide – as if there hadn’t been enough of these things a few hundred yards away from where we were standing. But the Paradise trio were skilful. They knew how to draw an audience in, with simple or crude colours and effects: the arrogance of Dives and the humility of Lazarus; the descent into hell of the former, the ascent into heaven of the latter. This last trick was nimbly achieved by means of the same harness and pulleys which had been used to hoist aloft Judas Iscariot. As Paul “Lazarus” Paradise rose slowly into the air towards the heavenly cross-beams of the barn, where the sun shot his rays through some ragged places in the roof, so did Philip “Dives” Paradise sink down towards the hellish straw-strewn ground, where he writhed gratifyingly. This double movement, of a man rising and a man sinking in unison, brought little gasps of appreciation from the crowd. Even I was forced to concede that the Paradises, with their mastery of rope and pulley, knew a trick or two.

  Then Peter Paradise, playing the part of Father Abraham with protruding beard and furrowed brow, told us all of the gulf which divides Heaven and Hell and how none could cross it. Still “brothering and sistering” as if his life depended on it, he instructed us to turn our backs on wealth and pleasure and to preserve our immortal parts safe and uncorrupted. Among this raggle-taggle crowd this struck me as odd. What would they ever know of wealth? What would I ever know of it, come to that? As on the two previous occasions
when I’d been present at a Paradise performance, it was the parson’s share of the show. The trio of players, or Peter Paradise at least, were thwarted preachers. I remembered my father’s little tricks and turns in the pulpit. Well, no great distance separates the two trades.

  But Peter Paradise, with his white robes and his rabble-rousing delivery, went rather further than was wise. At some point – when exactly I couldn’t quite pin down – he shifted from those sermon-generalities which don’t really offend anyone to a direct attack on the late Lord Elcombe. There, he thundered, was a Dives, there was wealth in all its power and arrogance. And now where was this great, proud man? Where was he? Peter’s brows furrowed more furiously, his beard protruded more proudly. He looked about as if he expected Lord Elcombe to emerge from the crowd. Then he pointed at Dives still writhing around among the straw. Elcombe was where he deserved to be, that’s where. In Hell he surely was, languishing in anguish.

  I grew a little uncomfortable at this. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, they say, don’t they (if they’ve had the benefit of a Latin education)? Concerning the dead, we should speak nothing but good, if only for fear of what others will say about us after we’ve gone. Whatever Lord Elcombe had been or done in his lifetime, he was not yet below ground and here was his memory being traduced by these forthright players. I wasn’t the only one to feel uncomfortable. The crowd of workers who’d watched the parable with approval – and even enjoyed being told to eschew the wealth they didn’t possess – now started to shift and stir where they stood. There were murmurs and whispered asides. As Peter Paradise ranted on, there was even the odd voiced comment.

  “’t’aint right.”

  “’e weren’t so bad, the master.”

  “Wealth’s a curse to them as have it, without a doubt.”

  A responsive player would have tailored his delivery to these signs of unease and protest, would have been better advised to shut up altogether, but Peter had too much of the fiery parson about him to be deterred by mere disapproval. Remembering the brawl in Salisbury, I feared trouble. These Paradise people seemed to cause a stir wherever they went, as if their name promised not harmony but turmoil. Just as they weren’t really brothers, according to Cuthbert Ascre, so their message was anything but fraternal.

  As I’d done on an earlier occasion I tugged at one arm of my companion. But Will had his other arm fastened about his doxy and was too absorbed in palping her tit to pay me any attention so I turned to leave. And walked straight into Oswald the steward.

  I don’t know how long he’d been standing there by the barn entrance, regarding the antics of the Paradises and listening to Peter’s hell-fire talk. His long cadaverous face registered disapproval, though in truth it never registered anything else. My colliding with him seemed to prompt him into motion, into protestation.

  “Players, are you mad? Or what are you?” he said. “Have you no wit or manners to talk and act thus in a house of mourning?”

  For an instant I thought he was talking to me before realizing that his anger was aimed at the trio on stage. That peculiar dry voice, like a leaf rustling across dry stone, had an enviable carrying power. It scraped down the barn. Heads jerked round in surprise and then alarm. Sam the bailie shrunk into himself. There was a general air as of schoolchildren caught truanting. To emphasize his message, Oswald stretched out his long right arm and directed an accusing finger at the stage.

  Peter Paradise had already stopped in mid-rant. Now he pretended to have just noticed the presence of an intruder.

  “Who is he who interrupts the word of God?”

  There was a fraught silence. Most of the little audience did not come directly under Oswald’s control, but everybody on the estate recognized the stick-man. I suspect that Peter Paradise did too. Oswald’s next words confirmed it.

  “As you well know, I am Oswald the steward of Instede, and I tell you that you have no respect of place or person or time.”

  You had to admire the dry, assured tones of the man, even as they intimidated you. And you had to admit that he had some justification on his side. The crowd in the barn evidently felt it too, quite apart from their natural fear of the steward.

  “We respect only the word of God, brother.”

  The shafts of sun which shot through the looped and ragged sides of the building suddenly turned hotter. The air, flecked with motes of dust and wisps of straw, grew heavier. There was a collective sigh from the audience. Here was true drama!

  “No, player, here you will respect my word. And I say that you have no manners to rant in a house of mourning.”

  There was some fervent nodding and yessing among the audience, and not simply because they wanted to look good in Oswald’s eyes. Rather, the steward had brought them back to a sense of what was right and proper. It was a question of manners. Lord Elcombe might have been Old Nick himself, but it still wasn’t the done thing – it wasn’t the English thing – to kick a man when he was dead and down.

  Even Peter Paradise, armoured in his white robes and his whiter righteousness, sensed that he’d lost his grip on the crowd. His two fellows, Paul and Philip, had long since scrambled from their respective heaven and hell, and stood flanking their more solid brother. They made a formidable trinity. But, for all that, I considered Oswald was a match for them. Peter stepped off the raised area at the end of the barn which served for a stage, and strode through the audience which parted for him. Unobtrusively, I put a little distance between myself and Oswald. I noticed that Will Fall and Audrey had absented themselves altogether at some point during the last few minutes. They had better things to do.

  Now at the entrance to the barn Peter and Oswald stood face to face, mingling breaths, tangling eye-beams. The preacher-player gave an inch or two of height to the steward but he made up for it in bulk. Oswald’s garb was even darker than usual, in tribute to his late master, while Peter Paradise wore the white robes that signified him as one of the self-chosen chosen. Behind him were his so-called brothers, ready to follow his lead wherever that might take them.

  There was a long silence while each man waited for the other to do something first. To flinch, to speak, to raise a fist.

  Finally, Peter said, “Have a care, steward.”

  “You think that because you are virtuous, player, you have a licence to say what you please.”

  “We have my Lady’s licence, brother,” boomed Peter.

  “No longer. She has sent me to give you your dismissal.”

  “We will hear that from her lips alone.”

  “She has other business on her mind at the moment.”

  “There is no business greater than God’s, Oswald. Certainly not yours.”

  “While the late master was alive,” said Oswald, “he suffered her to entertain raggle-taggle groups like yours because what pleased her pleased him, but there is no need of that – or you – any longer.”

  Paradise looked abashed at this answer. At any rate, his beard drooped. If their patroness had indeed withdrawn her favour, then there was no place for the Paradises at Instede. Perhaps not knowing how else to respond, he repeated, “Have a care, steward.”

  He who is forced to repeat himself in a dispute has already half-lost (Revill’s law). Perhaps sensing this, the senior Paradise continued, with the same resonant boom, “Have a care I say, or you may find yourself making your bed out in the dark – like your master.”

  Then Oswald the steward did something very curious – very curious for him, that is. He laughed. He opened his thin mouth by more than a margin and from it emerged a crackling sound, rather like that made by dry thorny wood thrown onto a fire. It set my teeth on edge.

  It affected Peter Paradise too, affected him worse than words might have done. If you regularly play God, Moses and Abraham, I suppose you get used to being treated with respect. Paradise retreated a step and raised his arm, as he had in Salisbury when he went to brand Cain. But Oswald held his ground. And Paradise, lowering his arm, resorted once again to obscu
re threats.

  “I tell you, steward, that as God found out your master so too will his dart strike you, and that when you least expect. God alone looses the arrow of time, and no man controls his bow.”

  Oswald stood unmoved by this minatory if poetic outpouring. Eventually, realizing that he was not going to face down this man, Peter stepped around him and out into the clear sunshine. Philip and Paul followed. There was a collective sigh in the barn – of relief and, possibly, of regret that it had not come to a physical trial of strength between these two men. (My money would have been on Oswald.)

  The steward, who apparently had his own sense of theatre, waited a moment or two before casting cold eyes on the estate workers. No one dared to meet his glance. Then he said with weary contempt, “You are idle, shallow things. Get back to your work.”

  Meekly, they trooped from the barn, like chastened school-boys. I remained behind, wanting to differentiate myself from the others. Oswald’s gaze rested on me for an instant but, just before I would have broken it and looked down, he turned away and exited the barn.

  After a time I wandered out, musing on what I’d seen and heard. The day continued fine, the birds sang blithely, but my heart was full of murder.

  The murder of Lord Elcombe, that is. I pursued the ideas which I’d outlined to Justice Fielding, in particular the notion that, because they must have been standing close, Elcombe had known the person who killed him. However, as I’d just seen in the encounter between Peter Paradise and Oswald, enemies stand close too – when they are about to join battle.

  And Paradise’s final words filled my mind. All that talk of darts and arrows of time. A figure of speech, obviously, for time itself has no dart or arrow. Time has nothing, although it takes all that we possess. But a sundial has a kind of dart – in the shape of its gnomon. If we are to search for time’s arrow anywhere then it should be on the sundial’s face. Was Paradise’s choice of words just coincidence? Or was he making some subtle jest about the manner of Elcombe’s death? If so, it was in keeping with the disrespect of the remainder of his performance. Plainly, he did not mourn the death of Elcombe, that rich and godless man.