Laetitia Rodd and the Case of the Wandering Scholar

by Kate Saunders

‘I have so little that I’m profoundly grateful for anything – thank you.’ I remembered the snippet given to me by the dairymaid, which I had dismissed as mere rumour; that Joshua had fallen out with his gipsy friends on account of a woman. At least part of it might be true.

  ‘Arden and I were speaking of your case this morning; he is very anxious to assist you.’

  ‘That’s kind of him.’

  ‘He was too polite to ask me outright, but I know he’d like me to pass on anything you tell me about your investigation – if agreeable to you, naturally.’

  ‘It’s perfectly agreeable to me, Mr Barton,’ I said, wondering why Mr Arden wanted to know. ‘I only tell you things I don’t mind making public.’

  He was amused. ‘That makes me sound like a notorious gossip.’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘A clergyman must always know the local news. My dear husband maintained that it was part of the job.’

  Rachel came back into the garden, followed by Mrs Richards with a tray of tea, and Mr Barton swiftly turned the conversation to mundane parish matters.

  The voices began as part of a dream and tugged me gently into wakefulness; low voices, rapid and urgent, so close that for a few sleep-addled seconds I thought they were in the room with me.

  Once I was properly awake, I realized that they were outside, under my window. I had left my casement open and uncovered, to make the most of the sweet night air, and Arthur’s voice floated up to me on a cloud of fragrance from the stocks in the flower bed.

  ‘It had nothing to do with him; I can’t for the life of me understand why you have to drag him into it.’

  Another voice – that of Mr Barton – murmured something I could not hear.

  I tilted the face of my watch towards a patch of moonlight. It was ten past one in the morning; the household had been asleep for hours.

  ‘But this is precisely why I need him,’ Arthur said, his voice weary and tearful. ‘He’s the only man in the world – but you’ve never understood—’

  I got out of bed, pulled my shawl around my shoulders and crept through the stripes and bars of moonlight to the open window.

  (I know eavesdropping is wrong, but must admit that my work had somewhat blunted my conscience in that area.)

  Arthur and Mr Barton were directly beneath me and I could see nothing of them except an occasional puff of the curate’s cigar-smoke.

  ‘—your duty to the people of this parish, for a start.’ Mr Barton’s voice was low and tight with anger. ‘You don’t even know the names of your churchwardens. You hold yourself apart, as if you didn’t live here—’

  ‘Not this again! What if I promise to come to the Haymaking Supper? What if I promise to drag poor Rachel out into local society? Won’t that be enough?’

  ‘You have no business at Swinford,’ said Mr Barton. ‘People are starting to talk.’

  ‘People are always talking. And they’ll talk more if I suddenly stop going there. You can’t mean it!’ Arthur’s voice shook. ‘Please, Henry! Try to understand how important—’

  ‘For God’s sake, man!’ snapped Mr Barton. ‘The japes up at Swinford are only the half of it! Do you honestly think that brute will keep his mouth shut?’

  ‘But you said you’d paid him.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot – he’ll be back for more as soon as he’s spent it. The sneering impertinence of the fellow made me sick. He could see how much I hated the whole business, and he was revelling in it.’

  There was a spell of silence, after which Arthur meekly said, ‘I’m really most awfully grateful.’

  ‘You know why I did it, and I wish you’d told me sooner – you should’ve thought of her, Somers, and your sacred duty to protect her, instead of scuttling off to Swinford like a coward.’

  I could hear that something in Mr Barton’s manner of speaking to Arthur had changed; he was angry and wounded – but why was Arthur, saintly Arthur, paying off a blackmailer?

  ‘Forgive me, Henry,’ pleaded Arthur. ‘I’m weak – I confess that I knowingly sought temptation. And that I’m a coward where Rachel is concerned. But how can I look into those great, trustful eyes of hers and tell her the truth about her husband?’ He was weeping now. ‘That’s what I’m praying for – to become the man she thinks I am. And that’s one reason I must pay at least a few more visits to Swinford; I’m in the middle of a novena.’

  Mr Barton let out a noise that reminded me forcibly of Matt – a combination of groan and snort, like an angry horse.

  With a string of oaths and profanities, he asked what a novena might be when it was at home – and when Arthur foolishly started to explain, he launched into another unprintable volley that made my ears tingle.

  ‘Listen to me very carefully.’ Mr Barton spoke quietly, but with such intensity that I heard each syllable. ‘Your sins are your own business. But if she gets hurt, I swear to God, I’ll kill you.’

  This struck them into a silence that stretched on for several minutes.

  ‘Henry,’ whispered Arthur eventually, ‘my dear Henry, please don’t be angry with me, don’t cast me aside! I know you are right and I’ll do everything you say. I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is ever before me.’

  This time the silence lasted so long that I wondered if the two of them had gone.

  And then a fox barked, and Arthur said, in more temperate voice, as if nothing had been said, ‘It’s ridiculously late; you had better sleep here.’

  ‘I can easily walk home,’ said Mr Barton. ‘It’s as bright as day.’

  ‘I’ll come to the gate with you.’

  They moved away, and I returned to my bed wishing more than ever that I could talk to Matt – though I knew that the first thing he would say was that he had been proved right about Arthur Somers, and I should not have interfered in the making of that marriage.

  Nine

  Once I knew that Arthur was being blackmailed, how could I help wondering why?

  Someone knew something that could ruin him, and I went through a mental list of all the usual things that ruined clergymen. I invite the reader to do the same; decency forbids me going into detail. I will simply say that during that long night I made certain connections, and (with no true understanding of the matter) concluded that poor Arthur must have succumbed to a particular and tragic temptation.

  I was not ready to face him over the breakfast table, and freely admit that I used my work as an excuse to run away. Next morning, clad in my stoutest boots and plainest black straw bonnet, and carrying a bottle of water, some bread and cheese and Jacob Welland’s sealed letter to his brother, I set out as the sun rose and the birds sang their dawn chorus. It was so early that the wild roses in the hedgerows still wore their gleaming diadems of dew; the sheer beauty and freshness of such a morning can lift the heaviest heart, and mine rose up in spite of itself. I made a determined effort to stop worrying about Rachel and Arthur; the ugly things I had overheard last night were none of my business, and had nothing to do with my case. My business was simply to deliver that letter.

  I was on a mission to scatter my message to Joshua Welland as near to the ground as possible, in every village, hamlet and settlement around the ancient woodlands at Freshley. The story told to me by Mrs Watts-Weston showed that Joshua had ways of getting information. He knew I was looking for him. If I had to nail notices to every mossy tree and out-of-the-way gatepost, he would hear me – whether he liked it or not.

  Knowing that my quarry was shy and solitary, I avoided the busiest roads and quickly lost myself in a maze of narrow lanes and winding paths, so obscure that the grass grew between the cart-tracks and the deep hedges were tunnels of greenery. There is nothing more fair than a midsummer morning in those last days before haymaking, and at first it was glorious.

  Everyone I met knew of me, and I spoke to them all – farmers in their fields, cottagers at their open doors, a laughing row of dairymaids sunning themselves upon a fence. I learned nothing new but that was not my purpose; I wa
s calling out to Joshua Welland as forcefully as a town crier with a handbell.

  Your brother is dying. I mean you no harm.

  The sun climbed in the sky and I stopped to rest on a wooden bench outside a solitary cottage, hidden away within a patch of woodland. For the modest sum of threepence, the old woman at the cottage brought me a cup of tea (typical cottagers’ tea, as I remembered wistfully: they left the teapot stewing all day over the fire until the brew was dark as molasses and strong enough to strip varnish; I hasten to add that it was delicious) and a bowl of strawberries still warm from the sun.

  A wood pigeon called out from a nearby tree, unseen hens fussed and scratched nearby, midges danced; it was very pleasant to sit in the dappled shade, and I stayed far longer than I had intended. My laziness had a good result, however; the carrier’s cart came rumbling up the track to the cottage, to deliver a kitchen chair and a large tin bath.

  Here was a splendid opportunity to scatter my message and rest my feet at the same time. I asked the carrier if he could take me to Shotton Barrow, where poor Hannah Laurie was buried, and he told me he could let me down at the nearest crossroads for sixpence.

  He was a glum, toothless, taciturn old man, who answered my questions about Joshua Welland in grudging monosyllables. I gave up my attempts to talk to him and tried instead to observe where he was taking me. The ancient woods at Freshley had stretched across half the county at one time, and though they had shrunk over the centuries, there were still hamlets and farmsteads that looked as if they had been swallowed up by a tidal wave of trees and forgotten.

  The horse halted in a deep green lane, and the carrier said, ‘Here you are.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes’m. Next turning.’

  We were only a few miles outside Oxford, yet this was the middle of nowhere. I handed the man his sixpence and climbed off the cart. The ‘turning’ was narrow, almost hidden by the hedgerows; I walked along it through the afternoon stillness, and presently came upon a little settlement of cottages and barns, clustered around a very small and ancient church.

  There is nowhere on earth more peaceful than a country churchyard on a sunny day. I halted for a moment at the lychgate, to let the profound restfulness of this place wrap itself around me. The gravestones were lopsided, splattered with lichen, names and dates worn away by time. Two sheep nuzzled at the grass, in the cool shade of a great yew tree. My beloved parents lie in just such a place, together until the end of days.

  I slipped into a reverie (‘Truly, can these dry bones live?’) and nearly jumped out of my skin when a child appeared at my elbow.

  ‘If you please, ma’am.’

  She was a skinny little thing of around twelve years old, in a washed-out calico sun bonnet.

  ‘Good gracious, you startled me! Do you live here?’

  ‘If you please, ma’am,’ the child said, frowning and solemn, ‘do you want to see the church?’

  ‘Yes, of course – but I’m searching for a certain grave here, a newer grave than any of these. Perhaps you can help me.’

  ‘I know how to show you round the church. The vicar learnt me how.’

  ‘The vicar?’ This was promising; the man might remember Hannah, and at the very least he would know where she was buried. ‘Where may I find him, my dear?’

  ‘He don’t come out no more,’ said the little girl flatly. ‘He learnt me all the things to say. Now I show people the church.’ She added, ‘For sixpence.’

  It was daylight robbery but I knew I would get nothing out of her until I had crossed her palm with silver; I gave her sixpence and resigned myself to the guided tour. The church was charming, and I was mightily amused by the way my guide rattled out all the information at breakneck speed, to get it over with as quickly as possible.

  The most remarkable thing inside the church was a large fifteenth-century tomb, upon which two stone effigies lay stiffly side by side with their hands folded. Their name was Warrender; these figures were all that remained of the great family that had built Binstock.

  Once the child had finished her recital, I established that her name was ‘Bess’ and asked if she could show me Hannah’s grave. She duly led me over to a stone under the yew, markedly newer than the others and set a little apart. It was very plain, but of the best York stone, and the inscription finely carved: ‘Hannah Elizabeth Welland – Till the day breaks and the shadows flee away’.

  ‘Do you remember this lady?’ I asked hopefully.

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘But of course you’re too young.’

  The plot was well-tended; the grass had been trimmed recently, and someone had planted a clump of forget-me-nots.

  ‘Do you know who takes care of this grave?’

  ‘A man comes,’ said Bess.

  ‘A man – what is his name?’

  ‘Dunno his name.’

  ‘Are you able to describe him?’

  ‘He’s got a beard, and long hair,’ she said promptly. ‘And a long black cloak.’

  I kept my voice steady, but here was something concrete at last. ‘How often does he come?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘I mean, is it once a week, or once a month?’

  ‘I dunno,’ repeated Bess. ‘He’s here sometimes, that’s all.’

  Joshua, of course; it was no surprise to me that he tended Hannah’s grave, though I did wonder who had paid for the stone.

  There was a distant shout and Bess ran off through the churchyard before I could ask her anything else. Never mind; I had found my first really solid point of contact. Although I could not risk leaving Jacob’s letter in such a place, I wrote a brief note (in faint pencil, on the paper wrapped around my cheese):

  To Joshua Welland – I have a letter for you from your brother, who is very ill and begs to see you at Rosemount, Hampstead, London. Yr servant Laetitia Rodd.

  I hid my message deep in the heart of the forget-me-nots. The afternoon was advancing, and my most immediate concern now was finding my way back to Hardinsett. I set out along the road, with no real notion of where I was headed, in search of any person or sign that might point me in the right direction. At last, when I felt I had been tramping for ages, and my long black skirts were covered with white dust, I came to a crossroads with a signpost, and recognized one of the place names that Mr Arden had written on the map he made for me – Freshley St Johns, close to both the river and the principal road to Oxford. I followed the road into the very depths of the forest.

  Now that I had recovered my sense of direction, I could no longer ignore the fact that I was extremely tired and giddy with hunger. There were no cottages in this part of the wood, and not another living soul in sight; I would have to be satisfied with the unappetizing remains of my bread and cheese.

  It was not easy to keep to my path; it had dwindled into a grassy woodland track and vanished altogether in some places. Another hour passed and I was forced to admit to myself that I was thoroughly lost. There were no paths now; I had managed to stray into the very heart of the forest and I suspected I was walking in circles.

  There was a pervasive smell of woodsmoke, which I tried to follow; at length I heard voices, and through a space in a grove of trees I saw the sugar-loaf shapes of two large charcoal fires, glowing hot and smouldering lazily. By sheer good luck I had found the famous charcoal burners, who had reportedly given shelter to Joshua after he left the gipsies. Did this mean I had found Joshua himself?

  Before I could decide how to make my approach, a large dog with a coarse brown pelt came snuffling angrily towards me; when he found me he barked loudly.

  ‘Who’re you? What d’you want with us?’ A man in a leathern apron, grimed and striped with soot, came crashing at me through the leaves. ‘Get out!’

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ I stammered, doing my best to stand my ground with that horrid dog snarling at the hem of my skirts.

  ‘Stop – leave her be!’ A young woman ran out after him, swift as a deer. ‘It’s a lady an
d she means no harm.’

  ‘Indeed not,’ I said quickly. ‘I have lost my way.’

  ‘Call him off!’ she snapped at the man.

  He looked surly, but did as he was told; man and dog vanished into the leaves.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  My rescuer was a self-possessed young woman, with an intelligent manner. She wore an apron of the roughest sacking and her face and hands were blackened with the grime of making charcoal, yet she bore herself with all the ease of a lady in her drawing room. Beneath the grime her face was decidedly handsome; she had the fine blue eyes, rosy complexion and black hair that recalled the beautiful country girls I had seen in Ireland.

  ‘I will set you on the right path, ma’am; where are you going?’

  ‘I’m looking for any road that will lead me back to Hardinsett.’

  The word was barely out of my mouth before the young woman nodded, and set off down the path, so briskly that I could not question her; after that it took all my powers of concentration to keep her in sight and not lose her in the trees; she led me with the blind assurance of someone who knew every stick and stone.

  At length she halted and waited for me to catch up, and I saw that she had brought me to a most enchanting little glade, a sunny clearing with a ruin of some kind at its centre; I could only make out a heap of mossy stones beneath a glorious blanket of ivy.

  When I reached her, the young woman pointed to an opening at the other side of the glade. ‘Follow that path and you’ll come out by the signpost; then it’s not more than ten minutes to the Oxford road.’ She turned around and began to walk away from me, without a backward glance.

  ‘Wait!’ I called after her. ‘You have been very kind; please let me give you something for your trouble!’

  Reluctantly she stopped, and turned to me with a look of amusement. ‘I don’t want money just for showing you home, Mrs Rodd.’

  ‘You – you know who I am?’

  She was openly smiling at me now. ‘You’re the lady who’s looking for Joshua Welland.’

  ‘Yes – and I heard that he lives with the charcoal burners – perhaps you know him?’