by Mary Malloy
“It’s hard to tell,” Lizzie answered. “Jackie was giving him a rather hard time about his theories on the Wife of Bath and he was clearly uncomfortable. Beyond that, I would have to say I didn’t notice anything.”
“Several people called to tell me about it,” Alison said, “and also to report on what a splendid job you did on your presentation. You got very high marks from some of the most critical people I know.”
“I wish you had been there,” Lizzie said.
They spoke for several minutes about details of the conference, and about Dante Zettler’s work, which had, lamentably, plowed no new ground in the field of Chaucer scholarship.
“I’m sorry he’s dead,” Alison said, “but since I have already told you that I didn’t like him, it would be hypocritical to spend a lot of time mourning his passing.”
Lizzie acknowledged the sentiment, but felt a sense of disquiet as they moved on to other topics.
“There were some publishers interested in the Weaver’s journal,” she said, handing Alison the business cards she had received in Oxford. “And enthusiastic interest.” She explained that there were also questions about the authenticity of the manuscript. “You will need to get it vetted soon,” she added. “There were several people there who really want to examine it.”
“I have been thinking about that,” Alison said. She laid the business cards on the table without looking at them. “As soon as I am up and around I’ll take care of it. I’ve had several calls from Tyler Brown in Canterbury, did you meet him?”
“One of his cards is in that pile,” Lizzie answered.
“He seems like a good sort,” Alison continued. “And very knowledgeable about Canterbury pilgrimages.”
“He’s from a historical society, though, and not likely to have the clout for publicity and distribution that a big press would give you. The book has attracted enough interest from serious publishers to warrant pursuing one.”
Alison was now comfortably set up in Hengemont, and far enough along in her recovery that Lizzie could talk to her about the things they had found in her house.
“This is the most interesting and important, I think,” Lizzie said, handing Alison the list of names. “Hockwold Bruce is on this list, along with your father and fourteen other men named Kent.” Lizzie had called the policeman in Castle Cary and confirmed that the driver of the car was the very same Hockwold Bruce who had known Alison’s father.
Alison studied the list intently. “Many of these names are familiar, of course, starting with my father and grandfather, but I also knew Frederick Wickersham.” She paused to think. “I knew two men by that name, in fact, father and son. Freddie and I were great friends as children. He died of a heart attack about twenty years ago. Very sad, he left a young family.”
“And his son is also Frederick Wickersham.”
“So he is. How did you know?”
“Jackie Googled him.”
Alison smiled at that.
“Is there any reason why one of them might want to hurt you?” Lizzie said seriously.
“Who? The Wickershams? Certainly not! I’ve known them all my life!”
“What about Hockwold Bruce?”
“Hocky? I’ve known him all my life too.” She shook her head in disbelief as she remembered the accident. “I have to think that it was just a coincidence that he was there. Otherwise, Hocky would have to have become senile with Alzheimer’s or some other kind of dementia.”
“Could this have anything to do with the secret your father said he would tell you?”
Alison seemed startled by the question, and after a first small gasp of surprise, was silent for several minutes. She picked up the list again and scrutinized it.
“How old is this?” she asked. “Do you have any idea?”
“We thought that the oldest part of it might have been started 450-500 years ago, given the number of generations represented—if those are generations.”
“If they are, then the last one is missing,” Alison said. “I wonder if I was supposed to be on the list—and Freddy Wickersham.”
“You would be the first woman on it,” Lizzie said. “Would Hockwold Bruce have been threatened by that?”
Alison couldn’t believe that was possible.
“Did he have any children?”
“No. He never married. In fact, for a long time he considered becoming a priest.”
“Anglican or Catholic?”
“Catholic, of course! All these families are good Catholics, long-standing Catholic families like mine.”
“If he didn’t become a priest, what did he do?”
“He ran some sort of society in Canterbury. A Catholic society as a matter of fact. They have kept the faith there ever since we lost the Cathedral to Henry VIII and his barbarians. That was a story my father told me often enough.”
Lizzie took this all in, but didn’t quite know what to make of it.
“There are some other things that I took from your father’s study,” she said, opening a folder of the loose papers they had collected at Alison’s house. “These things were tucked into various books.” She laid out the family trees and the two pages of astronomical calculations.
“This is familiar,” Alison said picking up one of the pages with the family tree, “and I have other versions of it. Let me keep these and I will compare them with what I know.” She put her hand on the other papers. “I told you that my father was an amateur astronomer. So were Frederick Wickersham and Hocky Bruce, by the way, but I have no idea what these are or if they are important.”
The fact that the atlas had the route of the pilgrimage drawn on it was interesting, but she didn’t know who had marked it in the book, or if it was meaningful. The most thrilling discoveries to her were the receipts and inscriptions in the early Chaucer volumes.
“That was Edmund’s idea and Jackie’s discovery,” Lizzie said. “We can have a note about it in the book, but Jackie might like to write about it separately as well, for a library publication.”
Alison said she was welcome to it. “I like your friend very much,” she said.
“She did a lot of work for us while she was here,” Lizzie said. “She found a list of articles raided by the Commission for the Destruction of Shrines, and will continue to look at it now that she is back in Boston.”
“What is your next step?”
“Literally my next step is along the ridge pathway between Shaftesbury and Salisbury. I have to get back to the walk, and another of my friends, Kate Wentworth, will be joining me in two days for that part of the path.”
“Is she as saucy as Jackie?”
“No,” Lizzie laughed, “no one is as saucy as Jackie. You’ll like Kate though. She’s a sea captain and has had many interesting adventures.”
Lizzie stayed that night at Hengemont, in the corner room that she had been so comfortable in on previous visits. After having been so anxious for so long about the walk, she found she was now very anxious to get back to it.
Chapter 23
Lizzie and Kate had chosen their rendezvous location six weeks earlier, sitting at the table of Lizzie’s kitchen in South Boston. At that time neither had any first-hand knowledge of this part of England, so they relied on the Ordnance Survey map and the Internet, and eventually chose a B&B because they liked the name: Peas Full Farm. It was in a village called Broad Chalke, named for the chalk ridge that defined the region. On top of that ridge had run one of the main thoroughfares across medieval England; it was now a footpath and Lizzie’s plan was to walk on it to Salisbury, the next great cathedral town along the route.
The days spent searching Alison’s house had put Lizzie behind schedule, and she could no longer make the walk from Shaftesbury to Broad Chalk unless she missed her rendezvous with Kate, which she was unwilling to do. She found herself on a bus instead, rolling up and down the hills of the Salisbury Plain through towns with picturesque names like Ebbesbourne Wake. Around her on the bus, the other passengers
might have been the cast for Canterbury Tales, traveling to a production of the play on the road. Across the aisle sat a woman of indeterminable age, probably about fifteen or twenty years older than Lizzie, who had her blond hair swept up off her neck and face and rolled into a crown of hair on the top of her head. If she added a veil, Lizzie thought she could be the Weaver or the Wife of Bath.
Kate Wentworth’s broad grin was a tonic when she saw her, and the two friends greeted each other with a hearty hug when they met at the Peas Full Farmhouse. As they stood in the yard, Kate pointed to a clear path that ran straight up alongside blooming yellow fields and up to the top of the ridge behind the farm.
“That’s our path,” Kate said. “It’s very clear on the map.”
The certainty with which she made this declaration gave Lizzie confidence. There would be no more confusion over where she was now that Kate was here. She thought about the difference between her two friends and the value of each as a companion on this adventure. Jackie knew books, their contents as well as their value. Not only had she been indis-pensible in tackling Alison’s library, but she had a vast knowledge of literature and had frequently amused and impressed Lizzie by her ability to quote from various authors. Kate’s skills were more practical. When she read a map she pulled out a compass; she had an application on her cell phone that allowed her to measure the angle of the sun above the horizon. She had sailed tens of thousands of miles, travelled by dogsled across Baffin Island, and Lizzie had once heard her describe eating raw seal liver. She had that indefinable but recognizable quality possessed by sea captains, a confidence that inspired confidence in others.
As it was early in the afternoon and there was time for a stroll around the village, they wandered and caught up on each other’s affairs. There was a lovely old church in town and they admired a carved stone Saxon cross and other statuary, including a wonderful band of angels playing the flute, harp, bagpipe, lute, and fiddle. As they finished their tour, Lizzie picked up a brief handout on local history in the vestibule of the church and was astonished to read that “the legend that Sir Gawain—the most famous hero of Arthurian romance—is buried at the top of Howgare Hill is possibly true.”
“Look at this,” she said to Kate. “I am being haunted by the Knights of the Round Table. Alison has absolutely convinced me that they are literary characters, and yet they are persistently described as historical.”
“It does say possibly true.”
“Yes, but it is not true, so how does the legend start?”
Kate had already pulled out the Ordnance Survey map and was looking for Howgare Hill. “I don’t see the place,” she said. “Maybe it’s a legend too!”
“The extent to which those stories have seeped into the local lore of the English countryside is really wonderful.” Lizzie took out her cell phone. “I’m going to send Jackie a text about this, she will love it!”
“There are a number of prehistoric mounds in this region,” Kate said, continuing to study the map. She pulled out a pen and began to circle them. “They are called tumuli in the key and we should pass a couple of them tomorrow.”
“If I were inclined to imagine any of the Arthurian knights sleeping under one of them, it would be Gawain, because he is the one sometimes associated with the Wife of Bath’s tale.” She thought for a moment of Dante Zettler and his description of Gawain’s encounter with the “Loathly Lady.” “In one version of the story, Gawain went on a quest to discover what women really want.”
“What is with that question anyway?” Kate asked. “If ever there was a silly question to pursue, that has to be it—and only a man would think of it.”
“I heard a lecture on it just a few days ago, and the guy who gave it died that same night.”
“Was he very old?”
Lizzie put her hand out and touched the stone of the church wall. She could feel where it had been cut with some ancient tool. “He wasn’t old,” she said softly. “He was younger than we are.”
“How did he die?”
“I don’t know,” Lizzie said, shaking her head. “Jackie and I had dinner with him and a few hours later he was dead.”
“Is it possible that Jackie talked him to death?”
It was impossible not to smile, as much as Lizzie felt the gravity of the subject.
“She did give him a pretty good earful of feminist diatribe, after which he looked kind of sick and left.”
“Who knows how many corpses are in her wake.”
Lizzie’s cell phone made a tone to indicate there was a text message.
“It’s from Jackie,” she said. “She must have known we were talking about her.”
“What does it say?”
“It says ‘read your email.’”
Lizzie went back into the nave of the church and sat down in a pew to open her email on her phone. There was a message from Jackie regarding the burial of Gawain.
“No other source refers to this location as the burial place of Gawain,” Lizzie said, reading aloud to Kate. “Thomas Malory says that Gawain died in battle at Dover and was buried at Dover Castle where ‘yet all may see the skull of him.’ William of Malmesbury, who wrote so extensively of Glastonbury in the twelfth century, says that Gawain is buried in Pembrokeshire. A chapel on the coast of Wales called St. Govan’s is said by some to be the resting place of both a saint of that name and Sir Gawain, though the similarity of names alone would be enough to warrant the claim by fervent Arthurians. Neil Fairburn’s comprehensive list of Arthurian sites in his Traveller’s Guide to the Kingdoms of Arthur doesn’t mention Howgare Hill or Broad Chalke.”
“There you have it. Jackie speaks and we listen.” She wrote a quick note of thanks back and added a line about the death of Dante Zettler.
They had a comfortable night at Peas Full Farm and left early the next morning up the lane between the fields to pick up the path across the top of the chalk ridge into Salisbury. Variously called the “Herepath,” the “Old Shaftesbury Drove,” and the “Coach Road to Bath” over the last several centuries, this might have been a route for the Weaver on her way to Shaftesbury and Salisbury en route to London. In the age of the motor car the main road moved from the top of the ridge to the bottom of it, and the oldest roads in the region could no longer be traveled by car.
The ridges, known as “downs,” spread across the south of England like the fingers of a hand stretched out from London. The paths on their crests were among the most popular footpaths in present-day England, Lizzie knew. Unlike the paths that so confounded her on her first day, these were not merely ancient rights-of-way indicated on the map, but real paths used by many walkers, and there was no question about their superiority over the road. Where the roads were bounded by antique hedges that confine them to a narrowness completely anachronistic to the vehicles and drivers currently upon them, the path up the down was perfect. The views from the tops of the ridges went for miles across the landscape, while the view from the road was often only the hedge.
The path was hard and clear for almost the entire distance that Lizzie and Kate traveled that morning, and while there were some uneven surfaces and a steep hill to climb at the beginning and to descend at the end, it was altogether a good walk. Lizzie found Kate an excellent companion, good humored, interesting and extremely observant. She spotted a weasel and a pheasant in the brush near them. Lizzie tried to argue that a small bird they saw was a chickadee and was informed that “chickadee” was the first word Kate spoke as a child, and consequently was a bird she knew better than Lizzie.
Descending from the top of the down, they passed an ornate and elaborate set of gates, mounted with stone statues, through which could be seen not a house, but a collection of old trailers and cars. On the other side of the wall a dog was howling and growling, and seemingly throwing himself against the side of a cage. It was a ferocious sound that was followed a few moments later by the sound of movement in the grass beyond the gate. As the two women prepared to meet their doom in
the jaws of a mad dog, a tiny little mutt came yipping its way out of the mysterious compound, a Yorkshire terrier-sized terror.
“The Hound of the Toonervilles,” Lizzie said to Kate.
Several miles outside of Salisbury, they began to see the spire of Salisbury Cathedral in the distance, a beckoning white needle.
“What are we hoping to find there?” Kate asked.
“I’m not certain,” Lizzie said. “The Weaver wrote in her journal that she presented something to the Cathedral, though unfortunately she didn’t say what. I wrote to the librarian there, Nora Stanley, whom I met when I was here last year working for George Hatton, and asked her if they have a record of anything in their collection that is marked with an old-style AW monogram.”
“Have you heard back from her?”
“I got a message that she is expecting us tomorrow, but she hadn’t yet found anything.”
They approached Salisbury via a bridge named after the painter John Constable, who produced the most famous views of the great church. Near a medieval mill, gigantic swans and a herd of cows provided the foreground for changing views of the cathedral as they walked along. At one point they stopped to eat the pears that had been given to them by the owners of the B&B, but as there were no options for a place to eat along the path, they weren’t able to get a real meal until they arrived in Salisbury in the afternoon.
As they walked across the vast expanse of lawn toward the great west face of Salisbury Cathedral with its carvings of saints and bishops, Lizzie was overcome with memories of the last time she had been there. On that strange evening, the heart of the crusader knight John d’Hautain had been taken from a small grave along the aisle of the cathedral to be returned to Hengemont. At that time she had only known that he was the ancestor of George and Edmund Hatton; now she knew that he was her ancestor as well.
She had not told anyone but Martin about the discovery of that relationship, but now she told Kate, as they stood in front of the cathedral looking straight up the massive front wall. Lizzie’s eyes worked back and forth across the carvings and then up to where the steeple pierced the sky.