Whichever, she now led him away from the temptation of the oak trees. A little beyond them, the path divided, one branch turning away from the river and mounting the steepening fellside.
“Where does that go?” he asked.
“Up to Foulgate, the Gowders’ farmhouse. Beyond that, it turns into Stanebank, which curves round the edge of Mecklin Moor and drops down past the Hall. Do you feel up to such a physical challenge?”
Again the mocking ambivalence.
He said, “I’m in your hands.”
“Let’s take things easy then,” she said. “In fact, why don’t we take a rest?”
Just past the bifurcation, a rough bench had been created by setting a length of wood onto two logs beneath a tall tree whose elegant leaves were freaked with crimson and amber. Across the river they could see the stumpy tower of St. Ylf’s. Something moved on it, then vanished. A big bird, perhaps. Maybe a raven.
She sat down. There was scarcely room for two and Mig remained standing, but she looked up at him with a smile and said, “Don’t just stand there like Alexander, blocking the sun. Come on, there’s plenty of room.”
He squatted down beside her, their flanks pressed close. He could feel her warmth through her thin dress and his light cotton trousers. He even imagined he could feel the pulse of her blood through the veins of her thigh. He sought for words to break the silence which seemed to be wrapping itself around them, pressing them ever closer.
“It’s an ash,” he said, looking up. “Like Yggdrasil — isn’t that what the Norsemen called the tree which holds up the world?”
“Well, well,” she said, turning his way so that her breast brushed against his ribcage. “Such expertise. I see that I am the one who has been deluded, Mr. Madero.”
“Yesterday we agreed on Mig,” he said.
“That was before you were expelled from the garden,” she said.
“No. I think that you were still Migging me in the churchyard. I was certainly Freking you.”
“Well, I shouldn’t like to be thought of as the sort of woman who would let herself be Freked without Migging in return,” she said, with a mockery of coquetry which was still coquettish. “So, Mig, I’ve let you see what’s important to me. Now I’ll shut up and give you a turn. What is it that makes your life worth living?”
He recalled her warning — never complain, never explain — but he felt a strong impulse to tell her everything about himself. Why not, when he’d unburdened himself so comprehensively to Sam Flood?
He began to talk. She was a good listener. He recalled from his Shakespeare how Desdemona with a greedy ear devoured Othello’s discourse, and while Frek showed no sign of weeping, or offering for his pains a world of kisses, she did sigh sympathetically from time to time, and looked deep into his eyes, and once — it was as he described his fall from the mountain — she put her hand on his knee and dug her fingers in deep.
Even if in the beginning he’d purposed any restraint, by the time he reached the latest end of his tale, all thought of keeping anything back had fled. He told her about the journal, his translation of it, and even gave the gist of Max’s information and advice.
When he finished speaking, he felt that they were in such a state of emotional intimacy, its physical counterpart could only be a gauzy thickness away.
He shifted slightly on the bench and put his arm along her shoulders as if to steady himself. She turned her head toward him. Her mouth was slightly open, he could see the glimmer of her small white teeth, the pink moistness of her parted lips.
He moved his head toward her.
She said, “Now that was really fascinating. I’m almost sorry I have to go.”
And stood up.
He looked up at her, bewildered and frustrated. Was this some part of the courting ritual he’d simply never reached? So far as jousting with the opposite sex went, he might look like a mature man of the world, but his learning curve had stuttered to a halt at the age of sixteen.
He heard himself saying foolishly, “But you can’t go yet.”
“Can’t I?” She spoke the words as if this were some proposition in logic she needed to examine. “Why?”
“Because… because there are things I need to discuss. About what I’ve told you… what I should do next.”
“I’m not clear,” she said. “Are you asking for a general comment, or a specific recommendation as to how you should proceed?”
“Both. Neither. I don’t know.” He was speaking wildly, like an inarticulate teenager. He pulled himself together. “Your family and mine are both concerned here. Your father is at least entitled to see the words that Father Simeon wrote. But I suspect that if I made a direct approach, he would set the dogs on me.”
“No worry there, then. Our dog is not only a crook, but a very old Labrador who might attempt to lick you to death, but no more.”
The light tone should have been reassuring, but it wasn’t. If anything it was slightly condescending.
He stood up, his bad knee stiff as an old oak root, and he looked her straight in the face.
“Perhaps in that case I should go to the Hall now and explain what has happened.”
“No point. Daddy’s out and I expect my grandfather’s taking his morning nap.”
“His nap? Oh, we mustn’t disturb old Mr. Dunny’s morning nap, must we!” he said savagely. “I can guess how much he looks forward to it.”
She looked at him with a faint smile and said, “If you’re referring to his dalliance with Mrs. Collipepper, yes, I believe he does look forward to it. In any case, it’s practically a family duty. Her mother and her grandmother were housekeepers at the Hall too. It’s one Woollass tradition I don’t think Daddy’s concerned himself with, but in these matters Grandfather’s an absolute stickler.”
More shocked than he cared to show at this frankness, Mig said, “I’m sorry, it’s none of my business. But I too have a strong sense of family which he might understand. I want to do the right thing about Simeon’s journal and I’m sure if I could just sit down and talk with your father or grandfather, we could come to some accord.”
She thought about this then nodded. “You may be right. I’ll see what I can do.”
“And what about you?” he asked, unable to let her go without having their own relationship spelled out clearly. “I thought we were reaching some accord, too.”
“I think we did,” she said. “I certainly found your story interesting, if a touch sad.”
“Sad?”
“Yes. It seems to me that a vivid imagination, a rather unfocused religiosity, and a hysterical medical condition have combined to make you interpret a couple of simple coincidences as a message from God. Which is indeed sad in a man of intellect and education. You’re not put out, I hope? I know my directness can sometimes offend.”
“No, no,” he said, trying for control. “I suppose I had hoped for something a little more empathic from someone as immersed in an ancient myth system as you seem to be.”
“You shouldn’t confuse immersion with absorption,” she smiled. “I am a scholar. My interest is primarily academic. Yours should be also. Personal involvement may add a spice to research, but it should never be allowed to get in the way of objective truth.”
“Truth,” he echoed. “A young man who was one of my ancestors was shipwrecked on these shores and treated monstrously — you’ll admit that as true, I suppose?”
“You forget, I haven’t studied the document myself,” she said. “But, accepting your interpretation as accurate, you shouldn’t ignore the fact that he was also treated with more kindness and compassion than an enemy of the state might have expected in those troubled times. The Gowder woman saved his life and offered him all the comforts a woman can offer a man. His life was saved a second time by my own ancestors, at no inconsiderable risk to themselves. Would an English sailor shipwrecked in Spain have received the same treatment, I wonder?”
“I don’t think there’s much point in compari
ng brutalities,” he said.
“Of course not. In any case, behavior must always be judged in the social context in which it occurs. I see you have the Swinebank Guide with you. His take on the events at Foulgate makes interesting reading, don’t you think? There are two sides to everything. Now I must be off. I’ll talk to my father and grandfather and ring you later. I can’t offer you more than that, Mig, believe me. Good day. I’ll be in touch.”
She walked away, upright, unhurried, a column of pure white light in a world of shifting colors. He sank back down on the rough bench and watched her go. Into his mind, uninvited, dropped Winander’s comment yesterday about the marble angel.
Cool even in the sunlight.
The sun dappling his bare arms did not seem so warm now. A winged insect settled on the back of his hand. It was a pale green and translucent white, a lacy fragile thing.
But when he brushed it off, it left a red mark on his skin.
4
Mecklin Moss
FOR SEVERAL MINUTES AFTER FREK’S departure, Mig sat, staring sightlessly at the river’s sparkling surface. He felt unhappy, he felt frustrated, above all he felt foolish.
He had observed the cycle of desire and rejection often enough during his school and university days, and sometimes when he wasn’t too busy struggling to subdue his own body, he had felt rather smugly that an intelligent observer probably knew more about the game than many players.
Wrong! And the result? Here he was, a twenty-seven-yearold adolescent, feeling sorry for himself!
To divert his mind from these painful speculations, he opened the Illthwaite Guide and read again the passage describing the fate of the waif boy.
It was an ill-judged attempt at diversion. Emotional and sexual frustration was a mere cat’s-paw compared to the tempest stirred up by the measured terms of the Reverend Peter K. He felt again what he had felt that first night as he approached the Stranger House — the mist swirling around his head; the fear coating his tongue; the desperate pumping of his lungs inflating the chambers of his heart to bursting point.
He leapt up to escape it, but he bore it with him. And when he reached the fork in the path which led to Foulgate Farm, his feet seemed to turn uphill of their own accord.
But the ghost of an experience four hundred years old could not serve to strengthen living limbs, and certainly not to lend grip to a pair of casual shoes which were fine for a gentle stroll but ill suited to this increasingly rough and rugged track.
Soon he was back wholly in the world of here and now. His bad leg was aching and he was breathing so hard it must have sounded like the approach of a traction engine to the inmates of Foulgate.
The Gowders certainly looked as if they’d anticipated his coming, he thought with a shiver. They were standing in their cobbled farmyard, one holding a plane in his hands, the other a bradawl. Between them on a trestle lay a half-assembled coffin.
This, he thought with a shock of recognition like a blow, this was the house in which that other Miguel had fought with Thomas Gowder. There was the barn in which he had first lain with Jenny Gowder. Across these cobbles and up that track ahead he must have fled, almost naked, from the fury of the younger brother.
And these two men standing looking at him with eyes that were neither surprised nor welcoming, these were the descendants of that Andrew who had driven the wooden spites into Miguel’s hands and feet, and left him hanging from the blasted oak tree.
One of them spoke.
Laal, he thought, recalling what Sam had said about identifying them.
“Can we help you, mister?”
“I’m going to Mecklin Moss,” he said.
“Then you’re going right,” said the other. Who must therefore also be Laal.
It was very confusing. It was hard enough separating the living from the dead without the separation of the living from the living being a problem too.
He made his way carefully around them and out of the other end of the yard. He was sure they would stand and watch him out of sight, but after only a couple of steps he heard the rasp of the plane.
Their indifference felt more of a trouble than their interest.
The track here was wider and rutted by wheels. It wove upward through tummocky drumlins, and soon the buildings of the farm were out of sight.
Beyond the drumlins this main track began to bear to the left, following the contour of the fell. Eventually it must curve downhill and become Stanebank and descend to the Hall. But at the highest point of the curve, his feet chose a narrower path, scarce more than a sheep-trod, which led straight on.
He knew with a certainty beyond need of proof that this was the way his young terrified ancestor had fled.
The main track had been worn to the visible bedrock but now, as the ground leveled off into a relatively flat expanse of moorland, he felt the path beneath his feet become increasingly soft and damp, as though here the earth’s bones lay too deep to reach. Yet strewn across this marshy moorland were huge boulders, deposited there by God knows what glacial drift or subterranean tremor.
He paused to examine two massive slabs, or perhaps the halves of one even vaster rock, leaning drunkenly against each other to form a lofty tent. The dark recess looked uninviting now, but in a storm with no other choice it must look almost welcoming. That someone had found it so was suggested by a circle of scorched earth at its mouth. Fire, the fourth element, which might help a man survive the perils of the other three, when earth became treacherous and air surged with invisible violence. As for water, no longer content simply to seep up around his shoes, it now gleamed darkly in sinister pools amidst the coarse grass, and soon he found even apparently solid patches of bright green turf dissolving beneath his feet to sink him deep in clinging mud.
He glanced at the sketch map in the Guide. While not detailed enough for precise navigation, it confirmed that he was on the edge of Mecklin Moss. Mecklin Shaw must be somewhere over to his left. Or rather, must have been. Even in the Reverend Peter K.’s day, it had almost disappeared. Now, a century on, what could remain? But to that other Miguel, as he glimpsed the darkness of the trees swaying against the lighter darkness of the sky, it must have looked to offer some slight hope of refuge.
Ahead, now as then, there seemed nothing but the certainty of getting irretrievably bogged down in the space of a couple of dozen meters.
His thoughts turned to Sam Flood’s namesake who had drowned himself up here in the Moss. Self-destruction, a fearful choice for any man, for a priest far worse. And what a place to choose! No simple plunge into deep drowning waters was on offer here, but a long struggle out through quag and bog till at last the mud held you fast and you must prostrate yourself as though in worship to bring the longed-for end.
He shuddered and said an intercessory prayer for the poor lost soul. A man who by all accounts was informed by an overwhelming desire to do good.
Much good it did him.
A bitter tribute to futility.
He arrived at the place where the wood must have been.
All traces of it had vanished, at least on the surface. Perhaps deep below there still lay ancient roots. But for too long now there had been no thirsty trees and, left undrained, inevitably the ground had been taken over by the relentless slough. He had no way of knowing for certain this was the right location. So far he had experienced nothing more up here than the natural reaction of any sensitive being to such a dreary place.
It could be that, having brought him so close to the end of his voyage of discovery, his otherworld guides were leaving him to his own devices. If so, he should feel glad. They had often been uncomfortable traveling companions, and dealing with this world on this world’s terms looked likely to present enough problems to occupy him fully.
But no man who has for so long felt different is ever completely grateful to lose the feeling.
He turned his back on the Moss. Another thin trod ran away downhill to rejoin the curve of Stanebank. It was in this direction
that the other Miguel, bleeding and lame, must have staggered after Jenny Gowder had released him. Knowing what her own fate must be were she caught in his company, she had not dared to help him further, yet what she had already done was an act of great courage.
And so the injured youth had limped and crawled downhill till he was too weak to move further, then lain exposed to the savagery of the elements till by the grace of God the young Woollass had chanced upon him.
He had much to thank the Woollasses for, thought Mig. It had been that sense of obligation, as well as his sense of desire, that had made him unburden himself so comprehensively to Frek. Now it was up to them.
He set off down the trod and within a few minutes found himself rejoining the relatively broad track of Stanebank.
Left would take him back to Foulgate, right must lead downhill past the Hall.
That was his quickest and easiest way, though he found himself unhappy at the prospect of meeting any of the Hall’s inmates in his present befouled condition. It wasn’t just his shoes that were ruined. The mud had managed to reach his knees, though he had no memory of ever sinking so deep.
He set off down the grassy track. Walking downhill on a firm surface was a pleasure after the Moss. He felt as strong as he’d been before his accident. Soon the Hall came in sight. He paused where a natural terrace on the fellside gave a fine oversight. The ground dropped steeply then began to level off toward the kitchen end of the house. A flat area scooped out of the slope and leveled with gravel caught his eye. It looked like a niche prepared to receive some piece of garden statuary. Maybe Dunstan had picked up a marble Venus on his last trip to Rome! He worked out that one of the first-floor windows he could see was probably the old man’s bedroom. Perhaps even now he and the statuesque but very non-marmoreal Pepi were enjoying themselves up there. With an example like that, no need for a late starter like himself to worry. He still had half a century to learn the game!
The thought stayed with him as he strode past the Hall and as he approached that other reminder of the possibilities of age, the Forge, it returned to make him smile again.
The Stranger House Page 28