Christopher Uptake

by Susan Price

  The other half was fitted with coathooks, and a pair of old shoes lay in the bottom. There was nothing I could imagine anyone wishing to steal. I went over to the book-shelf, where I chose the next best thing to a book of jokes - a book of travellers' tales.

  Back in bed, I propped myself up on one elbow, so that I could tip the book close to the candle, which I had placed on the stool beside my bed. I pulled the covers over my shoulders, to keep off the draught from the shuttered window, and spent a while in reading of dragons; of how every household in Macedonia keeps a tame one, of the smallest variety; and of how they catch elephants. The dragons go out in packs to a known haunt of their prey, and there two of them tie their tails together and stretch them across the path, and all hide. By and by, an elephant comes along, trips over the tails, and is immediately savaged by the whole pack, who spring up from the long grass with wild cries and gasps of fire. A sight I wish I could see.*

  I read for longer than I had intended, and if I had not noticed that my candle was more than half burnt down, I would have gone on reading. I laid down my book, blew out the candle, and tried to sleep.

  At first I saw, behind my closed eyes, the ugly vision of Brentwood's severed head, but that passed, and I was falling deeper into sleep when several puzzling things came together and made sense. Irritable at finding myself awake again, I rose on one elbow, considered, and then, sighing, got out of bed, put on my robe and lit my candle. I should have to investigate before I could sleep.

  I went first to check the position of the privy. My room was divided from the Rents Room by a wooden partition wall, and the door into the privy passage was cut into this wall. The left-hand wall of the passage was of wood too, until it turned at a sharp angle; after that, both walls were of stone. It seemed plain to me that my bedroom and the Rents Room had once been one, and the corridor to the privy had been straight. Only the need to make the privy accessible from the bedroom when the large room had been divided into two had brought about the angle in the corridor.

  I went into the Rents Room. The privy could no longer be reached from there because the platform and cupboard completely blocked the way. The wall behind the cupboard was the same as the wooden wall in the privy passage. Could there be a gap - Bagthorpe's priest-hole - between the back of the cupboard and the wall?

  If I measured the distance from the doors of the cupboard to its back, and then, on the bedroom side of the wall, from the doors of the cupboard to the wooden wall in the privy passage, and there was a discrepancy, then there was a priest-hole behind the cupboard. Or perhaps just a space, with no access to it. Anyway, I had nothing to measure with; and how was I supposed to tell that I was measuring from the cupboard's doors when I was on the other side of the wall? It seemed easier to examine the wall. If there was an entrance, it must be through the wall of the privy passage, since to enter through the cupboard would mean passing through two thicknesses of wood.

  Wearily, I got up and went back to the privy passage. I stood in front of the planking wall. It looked just like any other planking wall. I tapped one of the planks with my knuckles, and thought it sounded hollow; but when I tapped again, it did not. Since the difference between a hollow and a solid tap had never before been important to me, I could not tell which was correct. Instead, I pushed on the planks to see if any of them would give, and I was still doing this when I heard a noise from the Rents Room. I stopped, covering my candle-flame with my hand, held my breath, and listened.

  I heard nothing for a moment, then a footstep; and then a whispering, a low, harsh susurration of voices through the darkness. I edged along the wall of my bedroom, still guarding my candle-flame. There was a thump, and, quite clearly, a voice said, "Careful. He's asleep.''

  The two men passed along the Rents Room and I heard them climbing the ladder to the platform. Carefully, holding the candle at arm's length behind me, so that its light would be hidden, I peered round the edge of the door. I could see the two men very faintly; fuzzy, moving dark shapes against the larger darkness of the cupboard. I could hear them breathing and I could hear cautious movements; quiet knocking, fumbling noises. I waited a little longer, then stepped out, raised my candle and asked loudly, "What are you doing now?"

  They jerked like puppets snatched upwards by their strings; and gaping, staring faces twisted round to me.

  I went closer. "What’s in that cupboard?" I asked, and, imitating indignation, "Are you robbing your master?"

  "No!'' said one, while the other looked shocked. The speaker came hurriedly down the steps from the platform, and I backed away a little. "I was sent," he said, "to find some papers."

  "At this time?" I asked. The talkative one nodded, and the other joined in, a moment late, but nodding even harder.

  "This is the second time you've woken me," I said, thinking it best to keep up my role of innocent, but disturbed and angry, guest. "The first time you were here to ask me if I needed anything; now you're here to find some papers for Master Brentwood. Does he often send you to look for papers after midnight?"

  The man looked me steadily in the face. "It's the master's way," he said, with the proud, rigid expression of a man who is lying for all he's worth, but will never admit it.

  "Oh,'' I said. "Does he like to lie in bed and think of you moving furniture?''

  Their eyes fixed on my face with a sudden, rather alarming, intensity. "We weren't moving furniture," said one, firmly.

  "It sounded as if you were."

  "We were looking for some papers the master wanted."

  "Don't tell me such tales," I said. "I didn't believe you before, and I don't believe you now. Why would he want rent-records at this time?''

  He still stared me in the eye like an honest man, so I was certain that he was lying. "The master can't sleep, so he - "

  "Oh rubbish," I said. "I can see that you're lying. In the morning - later this morning, I shall tell - '' But before I could finish my threat, the man held up a key.

  "He did send me - see? He gave me his own key to the cupboard. See?"

  "Oh. Did he?" I asked, looking at it.

  "Yes; the key of the cupboard - ain't it?" he asked his friend, and while he was looking away from me, I took the key from his hand. He swung round angrily, and I backed towards my bedroom door.

  "I'm keeping the key," I said. "Then perhaps I can sleep." Both of them glared, but they didn't know what to do. Bagthorpe had been right; the position of guest was useful.

  "The master won't like this," said the one who had been silent until then.

  "I don't believe he knows anything about it," I said, which was my story. “But if he does, I shall explain when I next see him. Goodnight, gentlemen."

  They hesitated, but made up their minds that there was nothing they could do. and left. I followed them to the door, and bolted it behind them. Then I hoisted up the heavy, awkward robe, and climbed the ladder to the platform and the cupboard.

  I had not much of my candle left, and its light was faint, but I hoped that it would last long enough to allow me to examine the cupboard. and I opened its door. I was sure one of the men had pushed something back into place; I had heard the noise.

  The shelves were fixed firmly enough, so it must have been one of the planks in the back of the cupboard, one of those on the right-hand side. The shelves would prevent the others being moved.

  There were three broad planks in the back of the cupboard on the right. Each one of them had a hook set into its centre, for hanging clothes on, but the corners of the shelves overlapped fractionally onto the first one, so that couldn't move. I took hold of the clothes-hook in the centre of the second one, and tugged hard. The top of the plank lifted out of its position in the cupboard, and, without thinking, I gave a harder, triumphant pull, and the plank came right out of the cupboard's back, striking the floor with a clatter, and sending me staggering back, almost to the edge of the platform.

  I stood, grinning foolishly, holding the plank by its hook in one hand, and my
excitedly flickering candle in the other, until I had recovered myself a little, then I went to look at the cupboard. The gap left by the plank revealed only the wall behind the cupboard.

  I was disappointed, but then I began to think again. Of course, for the look of the thing, the wall would be left behind the plank, but if there was a priest-hole behind the cupboard, and if it was entered through the cupboard, then that part of the wall would open somehow. I stepped into the cupboard, leaving the plank on the floor, and examined the gap and the wall behind it. I couldn't see how the wall could be made to move, but set my hand flat against it and pushed hard. Nothing happened. I slipped my hand higher up the wall and tried again. Still nothing. Sure now that I had been mistaken, I set my hand higher and gave one last shove, harder than ever, just for luck, and the bottom end of the wall swung up and hit me in the shin.

  The strip of wall showing between the cupboard's planks dropped back into place. I pushed at it again, carefully standing to one side this time, and watching to see how it worked.

  The planks making up the wall behind the cupboard were narrower than those used in the cupboard, but all those revealed by the gap in the cupboard's back had been fixed together, probably with wooden pegs, and they had been pivoted at a point higher than their centre, so that when pushed, they swung up, revealing a hole behind them. I had been right. So had Bagthorpe.

  I pushed against the plank until its lower end swung up, then I took hold of that end and lifted it higher. It was surprisingly heavy. I crouched down and supported its weight on one shoulder while I held the candle into the hole behind it.

  The candle’s frail light revealed that Bagthorpe and I had, after all, been wrong.

  The space behind the cupboard was narrow, as long as the Rents Room was wide, its grey boards covered in grey dust. It contained a roll of carpet and a large, deep linen-chest. It was obviously a place for hiding valuables when the owner was absent for any length of time.

  I was carefully withdrawing my head from the opening when something, some guess or prick of foreknowledge, made me pause. Since I was already crouching, half-naked, in the bottom of the cupboard, why not crawl right into the hiding-place and examine it?

  But no; what was there to see? I was tired and wanted to sleep. I made to withdraw my head again, but was attacked by a feeling of unease, an itching between the shoulder-blades and a discomfort in my joints which I have often felt when, without having made any plan of how I should write it, I have known that I was going wrong with the plot of a play. I felt that I should be doing the wrong thing by going back to bed; I should be missing something.

  Telling myself that I was going to look in the chest for Brentwood's heirlooms, I put the candle into the hole ahead of me, and carefully slid in after it. The plank pivoted down and shut me in, which I did not like, but I pushed the bottom of it with my toes, and was comforted by feeling it move slightly. I turned to look at the hole.

  The candle flickered erratically, and lit first one patch of the hole, then another, always leaving dark corners. I walked the length of it - a few paces. There was absolutely nothing in there except the carpet and the chest. The air was dry, thick and difficult to breathe. This is a place to hide valuables, I thought; nothing else. It was too flimsy to hide a man for any length of time. If he moved, he would be heard, and, after a day or two, I would imagine, he would be smelled.

  I opened the linen-chest and held the candle close to it; it was empty. I closed it, sighed, and thought of bed. There was only the wearisome business of replacing everything as I had found it. I turned and pushed on the plank to raise it, and was bothered again by that prickling sensation of not having done enough. All right, all right, I bargained with myself; I'll have a better look, and then I'll go to bed.

  I moved towards each wall in turn, almost instantly abandoning the idea that anything could be concealed behind them. One was the outer, stone, wall of the house. Of the others, one was the wooden partition wall of my bedroom, one that of the privy passage; and the remaining one backed on to the cupboard.

  That left the floor. I inspected the planks of the floor as well as I could with my dying candle, and could find nothing unusual, but I had bargained with myself that I would make a good search, and so I moved aside the linen-chest before giving up completely. It was a big, heavy-looking thing, and I put some effort into trying to move it. To my surprise, it skidded across the floor quite easily, and only the small size of the hole prevented me from falling over. I pushed it along the floor, and held the candle to the spot where it had been. There was a trap-door.

  I felt like shouting. A trap-door down into the space beneath the platform on which the cupboard stood. I was delighted, as if I had solved some difficult puzzle - although Bagthorpe, I was sure, would have suspected the platform as soon as he had seen it.

  I ran my fingers round the edges of the trap. It fitted very tightly into the floorboards, only the faintest crack showing. It took me several minutes to find the slight indentation which would enable someone with a knife to lever it up. My knife was with my clothes in the other room - and in any case, at that moment, my candle went out and left me in complete darkness.

  I waited for my eyes to grow used to the dark, but they didn't. There were no windows to the hole, and the plank was covering the entrance. No light at all. By touch I found my way round the chest, and by touch I had to find the right plank. I pushed against several with no result, and felt panic grow in my chest. What would happen if I could not get out? Would I ever be found, and might it not be even worse for me if I was? I was almost on the point of shouting for help when I felt a plank move; I pushed hard and carelessly, and it swung up and hit me on the shin again. I crawled out from beneath it, and, once out, limped over to the window and opened a shutter to give me a little light and some fresh air.

  The fresh air cleared my head; it also started me thinking again. As I fitted the plank from the cupboard back into its place, I guiltily remembered my delight at finding the trap-door. After all, what was I going to do with the knowledge, now I had it? Pass it on to Bagthorpe so that he can kill with it?

  What else can I do? I whined to myself. I had no answer. Anyway, I went on whining, it's good to find out things, to be curious. You never know when you might be able to use this in a play. This little incident might provide bed and board ten years from now. If you get out of here alive.

  I locked the cupboard with the key I had taken from Brentwood's men, and then I went to my bed. There was no need to worry about Bagthorpe yet, I had hardly anything to tell him. The next night, I would have a fresh candle, and I would know exactly what to do; and I would go through that trap-door and find out what a priest-hole was like. As I went to sleep, I was thinking: I'll have to keep hold of that cupboard key - and I dreamed of the cupboard key, but at least the dreams weren't nightmares.

  When I finally, reluctantly, awoke someone was knocking and I remembered that I had bolted the outer door, the door of the Rents Room. I lay listening to the knocking, too comfortable to get out and answer it, and, after a while, it stopped. I stared at my ceiling, and gradually, memories of how I had come to be so tired began to return - the priest-hole. I had found the priest-hole.

  And then whoever had been knocking before, came back and began to hammer on the Rents Room door again. I sighed, climbed stiffly from my bed, put on my long robe, and went to unbolt the door. Mistress Cowling stood outside on the landing.

  "Master Uptake!'' she said. "Are you well?''

  "Extremely well," I said. “And you?”

  "But you had bolted the door, and you have slept so long - we wondered if you were ill . . .''

  "Oh, there's nothing wrong with me," I said. "I bolted my door to keep the nightwalkers out. Two men came in here twice last night."

  "Two men, Master Uptake?''

  "They said that Master Brentwood had sent them, but I didn't believe it - Would he have done?''

  "Most certainly not," she said, coming past me into
the room. "Two of our men disturbing a guest? I hope you will point them out to me, Master Uptake, and I will see to it that they're birched."

  I remembered my own birchings, and decided that I could not possibly recognize the two men. Mistress Cowling found the window, which I had forgotten to shutter before going to bed.

  "Who left this open?" she demanded, and shut it an instant before she opened it again, as she opened the others. "Sometimes I despair," she said. "Would you like breakfast now?"

  "Please," I said.

  She went briskly to the door, her hands clasped in front of her, and the keys, scissors, thimbles and needle-cases jangling at her belt. At the door she turned, and said to me, "I am afraid you have missed my cousin. He waited, thinking that you might like to ride round the estate with him, but in the end he had to leave."