•••
“Stroke, stroke, steady now,” whispered Mole Fontwell from the stern of the little wooden rowing skiff where he sat with both steering lines in hand. “Theo. Oar up a sec. You’re over-rowing Jonas.”
“yes!” Marsh panted. “Sit back there on your buttocks, Mole! Who’d you think you are, the bloody captain of the Pinafore?”
“He’s got the rudder,” Theo wheezed. “This current’s pretty strong.”
“He’s coxing for Brasenose again, off in his Lilliputian brain! We’re not in a RACE! It is midnight. I wouldn’t say this godforsaken stretch of the Urswick was jammed with boats tonight, would you?”
Mole steered them portward, toward the huge dark shadow of a willow tree that bent into the river. “If you keep shouting like that,” he said pleasantly, “we might as well have simply driven up to the church door, waving in at the vicarage as we went past the window.”
“We should have!” Marsh gasped, flinging backwards as his oar popped out of the water and sprayed his elegant trousers.
Mole pulled briskly on his guideline. “Here we are. Starboard, starboard. Backstroke, Theo, please. More, more. Mind that bough. Mind—oh, Jonas! Well, if you won’t listen!”
The three conspirators hopped ashore right beside the church.
Indeed, Saint Michael’s was so close to the Urswick that in earlier days, people had come by river to its services. No one did any more; in fact, not all that many came to Saint Michael’s by any means. The church was now fairly down on its luck, no longer being subsidized by family dukes, or by popish coffers, or by the state, or even helped out much any more by the earls of Newbolt, who from 1660 to 1919 had held the gift of its “living” (i.e., the right to hand out its ministry, cum comfortable income, to any ordained body they pleased). But in these secular democratic times, Saint Michael’s had to pay the price of independence and rely on its own parishioners, with a sideline in baked goods, innocent gambling devices, and the odd tourist buying a postcard or rubbing a brass. It was all the church could do to keep its doors open, much less repair them whenever they needed it. And the whole place needed repair, more and more so as centuries took their crumbling toll; but if it hadn’t been for the Countess Andrea’s hosting that fundraiser in the Bourne House Costume Museum, they wouldn’t even have been able to pay the contractor to do something about the “serious structural jeopardy” he’d said the supports of the chancel were in. “If these walls come down on your choir, don’t say you weren’t forewarned,” he’d told Mr. Brakeshaw, terrifying the old rector with nightmares of screaming, mutilated boys crawling out of the rubble next Sunday, and their parents bringing suit the day after. The rector had phoned the contractor in the morning, agreed to his terms, and begged him to start work as soon as possible.
“Norman arch,” said Jonas Marsh, shining his flashlight on it until Theo grabbed his arm.
The key was under the urn of geraniums from which Mole had seen Mr. Brakeshaw take it after a flustered search through all his many pockets, presumably for his own key. Inside, the small ancient stone chapel smelled cool and spicy. The stone faces of medieval Dawbneys glared open-eyed at the interlopers, as if startled by the darting lights. In their crannied tombs, Stanlow couples in wooden ruffs leaned on their elbows watching the three men tiptoe up the steps and into the sanctuary.
“Now just hold the torches,” Mole instructed them. “When I get there, you lower the books down the back of the stall. For God’s sake, don’t drop them on my head.”
“You’ve got your gloves?” Marsh’s hiss echoed eerily against the old vaulted stones.
“For the hundredth time, yes.” Mole Fontwell lay down on his belly in front of the draped altar, and then slithered off into darkness, as if—or so the dead puritan Mad Rob might have thought—his prostration before an altar, that idolatrous emblem of High Church popery, had transformed him on the spot into the serpent Lucifer.
Marsh hissed after him. “Be sure you really cake them in the dust.”
“All right?” called Theo, after Mole had gotten the loose panel off the rear side of the stalls and crawled beneath them. A muffled affirmation reverberated from under the choir seats.
Marsh paced the altar. “I bet the chest is locked after all.”
“Jonas, he got it open the last time he was here.”
“I bet he’ll chip it.”
“All right, Mole?” Theo called.
“All right.”
Jonas and Theo stared at the stained-glass windows, dead and black now, at the dead Dawbneys and dead Stanlows, at the risen Christ painted on a banner behind the organ, at each other.
“Got it,” came the spooky sound of Mole’s voice. “Wonderful! What a bit of luck!”
“What! What!” The two Americans crouched over the back of the choirstall, but couldn’t see a thing in the tiny wedge of space.
“There’s a coin in here. Didn’t spot it before. Wedged in a corner hinge. Looks like…no. Yes, wait! Good Lord, looks like Elizabeth!”
Jonas wagged his flashlight frantically. “Get it!”
“Not bloody likely,” called the disembodied voice. “It stays right where it is. Better for us. Right then, pass down the books.”
Suddenly, a hideous whack banged against a side window. “CHRIST!” Theo gasped, as Marsh flattened himself against the altar. They shut off their flashlights and listened to their panicked breath a while.
No one charged in with a gun or a warrant.
Finally, there was another thwack, then a noise like BBs hitting the stained glass. “Rain,” Theo finally whispered. “It’s raining hard. Must have been a tree branch in the wind.”
“Perfect,” Marsh growled. “We row back to the whoreson car in the whoreson rain! It’ll be pneumonia for me this time.”
“Books?” Mole was calling, a little impatiently.
So, slowly and carefully, Theo lowered behind the stall first the two small, perfectly genuine 1604 Books of Common Prayer. They’d also been donated by Mole, who’d declined to say what he’d paid for them, except “Not awf’lly much, really.” After seeing that enormous truck go by shouting, fontwell’s. of course, Theo wasn’t sure what “not awf’lly much” might mean to the biscuit heir. But they were ordinary prayer books, run-of-the-mill editions that any Anglican church would be always buying and losing and replacing, and discarding as doctrine changed and new editions appeared (as, for example, in 1660). There were, or had been, thousands of copies like those two prayer books.
The other book was one of a kind.
With a last rub of the soft scratched leather against his chest, Theo passed down the thin folio containing his play. No, he thought, as the twine slid slowly through his hands. No, not my play. Not Ford’s. Not Jonas’s and Mole’s. Foolscap, a Short Comedie, writ by Sr. Walt. Ralegh in the Tower.
“Good luck,” he said.
And he relinquished it.
Chapter 30
Enter Bastard
There be requisite effectually to act the art of cony-catching three several parties: the setter, the verser, and the barnacle.
—Robert Greene, A Notable Discovery of Cozenage
No gratitude was ever received with more blushing modesty than Dame Winifred Throckmorton’s gratitude to Messieurs Fontwell, Ryan, and Marsh (as she’d gaily introduced those three younger men to her neighbor Mildred by shouting up to The Heights’ thatched window from the lane below): “Guests of mine. Messieurs Fontwell, Ryan, and Marsh,” the old scholar had shrilled, and the bedroom curtains of The Heights had pulled immediately shut.
Time and again, Dame Winifred had told her three visitors that she couldn’t be more grateful, and each time had sent a flush of shame up Theo’s neck. She was grateful for Ryan’s evident happiness in seeing her again, for Marsh’s admiring (indeed, startlingly emphatic) praise of her work, and for Fontwell’s
kindly telling her she hadn’t changed a bit since Oxford (he meant it, too; in fact, he later joked that he’d recognized the egg stain on her misbuttoned, moth-pocked sweater vest). But far beyond these pleasantries, the old retired academic was grateful for their belief. For their willingness to believe that there might be, or even that there might once have been, a Raleigh play. For their faith that she wasn’t as off her head as everyone else seemed to suspect. After all, these three men were by no means, as she informed them, “brainless bumpkins off the common roads.” They were trained scholars; she’d read books by two of them (“A few quibbles, of course, but on the whole, sound, Mr. Marsh”), and she had personally trained the third—the only one who hadn’t gone into the business, as it happened; for which failure she’d occasionally blamed herself, and occasionally the Fontwell Biscuit Company.
Time and again, she’d said how touched she was by all the work they’d put in over these last months to master the background and analyze the possibility of such a manuscript’s existence. It was marvelous that they wanted to give over the next whole two weeks to working with her, and had taken lodgings right here in the village in order to be at hand. Theodore Ryan was clearly a man of his word, not like so many young people who simply said nice things to be polite and then forgot about them. Scarlet by now, Theo wanted to run from the room, abandoning the whole ridiculous scheme; in a way, it hadn’t been real until now, and the reality was awful. It didn’t help when Dame Winifred confessed that she felt a little ashamed of herself for having suspected that Theo would never even return to Barnet-on-Urswick, particularly after she’d received a postcard from him in America saying that he’d been called away by a friend’s sudden death. But how wrong to doubt the tall, large-boned, tawny young man (so Elizabethan looking, really); for it proved that his friend had been Rexford, the American playwright who, in fact, had died. And Theo Ryan had returned to Lark Cottage, and had brought his colleagues, just as he’d said he would.
They’d suddenly arrived at her (broken) gate, squeezed their way through the now seedy flower stalks, and rapped at her dangling brass door knocker which came off in Marsh’s vigorous hand. She brewed them tea, but forgot to serve it. She poured grayish chocolate cookies out of a box and scooped them back on the plate when, hard as lead, they thudded off the table. She threw a cloth over Orinoco, who screamed, “Kiss arse!” and worse every time Jonas Marsh came clicking and cooing near his cage, leading her to wonder again about her parrot’s previous owners. Jonas Marsh said they had a theory. She told them, “Sit,” which, after dislodging the cats Tom, Kit, and Wat, they managed to do. Then she folded her hands on her high stomach, placed her feet on a hassock (her very old toe stuck out of the top of one slipper), and commanded, “Speak.” Mole was to say that night, as they walked back to the King William Inn, that her high-pitched order had reminded him too vividly of their encounters at Oxford nearly thirty years earlier and had given him on the spot a terrific stomachache.
She listened to them, often with her eyes closed, for an hour. (Theo thought she might have gone to sleep, but Mole knew better.) From time to time, she asked a question or corrected a fact, but otherwise she quietly listened, periodically scratching a foot with her exposed toe or cleaning an ear with the stem of her glasses then running the stem through the thick gray thatch of her hair. Jonas did most of the talking, as Theo was in a moral torture and Mole appeared to have developed a stammer that tangled his tongue every time Miss Throckmorton stared at him over her glasses and said something like, “Not 1661. The Act of Uniformity; ’62, of course.” Or, “You’re muddling Naseby with Marston Moor, Archibald.” (This was Theo’s first inkling of Mole Fontwell’s true Christian name; the disclosure shed light on the man’s unwillingness to reveal it.)
Finally, Jonas finished, and Mole (who’d added biting his fingernails to his stuttering), stammered, “It seems at least possible, that is…”
Jonas took over, scowling at both his companions. “The point is, if Mad Rob did pilfer a Raleigh manuscript from Stanlow Lodge when they sacked the place, who’s to say Francis ever got it bloody back?”
“I’m thoroughly ashamed!” Dame Winifred clapped her hands together, and Mole froze in motionless terror like, thought Theo, well, rather like a mole. “Always took as my hypothesis,” she went on, “that the manuscript had reached Bourne House. Never doubted it—the fascinating allure of the fire, I expect. And, of course, other Raleigh books were there. Sheer stupidity!” She gave her temple the sharp reprimand of a slap.
Jonas Marsh reassured her, “It may be at Bourne, ma’am, if it exists. We only suggest that someone consider the possibility that old Dawbney pocketed it—” he pantomimed sneakily slipping something inside his beautiful jacket “—and kept it. We only suggest that someone research the collection at Urswick Castle with that in mind.”
This was as far as the conspirators had planned to cast their lure; any closer and a wary old trout like Dame Winifred might spot the line; she would have to swim to it herself. With a grimace, she said, “The Dawbneys do have books, but—oh dear, I’ve forgotten your tea!” What she poured into their cups was teeth-achingly cold, and (as Jonas later shuddered) acidic enough to tan plates of rhinoceros hide. She drank hers down without seeming to notice a problem, then continued, “But I’ve had the privilege of examining the Dawbney collection, and I must tell you it now consists largely of Victorian sermons and modern murder thrillers. They were obliged to sell their library in 1755. Gaming houses, card debts, rake’s progress, I’m afraid. The auction was cataloged, as I’m surprised you didn’t discover in your research, Archibald.”
Mole squirmed. “Well, we meant, what if that puh, puh, particular volume had been mispuh, puh, placed, you see, buh, buhfore—”
Jonas kicked Mole’s ankle, and Theo threw in, “Before the sale. We know there are no records of such a discovery at Urswick, but since the family has lived there since—”
“The Conquest,” the old scholar supplied, “and the Dawbneys are rather—” she glanced about her own cluttered sitting room “—rather slack. I myself had the pleasure of stumbling across some very nice first editions of Dickens for them in a box of old issues of Punch, which the marquess sold, I gather, in order to build that awful ‘Chamber of Medieval Tortures.’ So ghoulishly popular with the young.”
“Don’t allow it! Stretch the brats on the rack!” suggested Jonas Marsh, with a pounding of the tea table that sent the black cat leaping from the back of Theo’s chair across his lap. “Screw a few little feet inside the Iron Boot, and I bet they’ll soon stop drooling after horror dungeons!”
“No doubt,” conceded Dame Winifred. “But I’m just thinking…” She smoothed the pleats of her green tweed skirt over a rip she’d noticed. “There is another possibility. If in fact Robert Dawbney confiscated—and because of their shared imprisonment was particularly attached to—a manuscript by Raleigh…”
The three men waited with flat expressions.
She swam slowly closer. “Perhaps you weren’t aware of this. It is rather obscure. But there is evidence that Lord Dawbney, despite being pardoned, I must say generously, too, by ‘Indemnity and Oblivion’—had to be forced to return the Stanlow possessions he’d confiscated. Indeed, after the Restoration, he carried on so in public with his slanders against the king’s private life (quite factual, but still), that a warrant went out for his arrest. As I recollect, he escaped the sheriff’s men disguised as a lunatic—”
“That wouldn’t have been hard,” Theo noted.
“Indeed not. And hid himself in what had been the Dawbney family chapel. Saint Michael’s. Ironical, I always thought, for such a Puritan to seek, you might say, sanctuary.” Dame Winifred paused, closed her eyes, and considered this. Her tongue bounced about inside her mouth as if it were looking for something, then the keen old eyes popped suddenly open and she added, “Yes, might have kept such a relic as a Raleigh play right there with him. D
ied there of a stroke. Buried under the nave, west aisle.” Tapping the teaspoon against her cheek, she said, “Yes, there is Saint Michael’s. One might suggest it as another possibility.”
“But no records or rumors about such a thing in the church history?” Jonas asked with a skeptical frown.
“None whatsoever,” she admitted. “Moreover, I’ve had many conversations about my Raleigh theory with the rector of Saint Michael’s. Mr. Brakeshaw. He prides himself—with insufficient cause, I fear—on his knowledge of the Civil Wars, and he would have vaunted such a fascinating connection, I’m sure, had he ever come across the rumor.” Dame Winifred smiled with a blink of her wry hazel eyes. “Mr. Brakeshaw thinks me a dotty old woman and I think him a pompous and patronizing old man.” She shrugged. “Still, I make every effort to be civil. And I shall assume so does he; though, frankly, he might try a bit harder. Still, I suppose, better a man who quotes Marvell and tells me it’s Milton, than a man who doesn’t quote Marvell at all.”
Jonas Marsh politely sucked at the edge of his cookie. “Either’s better than a man who quotes a lot of Wordsworth and Keats,” he muttered.
“We might have a look at Saint Michael’s. Make some inquiries,” ventured Theo quietly. “I understand it’s small, which certainly can’t be said for Urswick Castle.”
Mole recited the speech they had planned for him, “We shouldn’t leap to ku, ku, conclusions. If Robert Dawbney had it, and that’s simply speculation, Robert’s home is where we should look for its truh, traces. That seems to me obvious.”
Foolscap Page 36