Christopher Uptake

by Susan Price

  "I'm sorry," I said. "Is he very annoyed with me?" She glanced at me, puzzled. "I annoyed him yesterday," I explained. "We argued - over religion. I thought that my oversleeping as well . . .''

  "Oh?'' she said. "He has said nothing to make me think that he is annoyed with you. You disagreed about religion, you say?"

  "A little."

  "But I thought - " She broke off, and seemed about to leave, but then changed her mind. "Aren't you a Catholic, Master Uptake? - Oh, forgive me for asking - " She was about to leave again.

  "No," I said, and she stopped. "I tried, but I'm not very good at it. Master Brentwood thinks it just a passing fad with me . . . When we began to talk about the Faith, I found myself in such strong disagreement with everything he said that . . . we quarrelled."

  She came a step or two back into the room. "And yet you wanted to become a Catholic."

  "Oh yes," I said sighing, and casting up my eyes. "I did. I thought I did . . . I wanted a deeper - a surer - a more certain - "

  "You wanted to be closer to God," she said, and I gratefully accepted that explanation. She stood and looked at me before saying, "I'll have your breakfast sent up immediately.'' She hurried out.

  I went into my room, dressed, and discovered the key to the Rents Room cupboard among the bedclothes, where I had fallen asleep holding it. I put it in my pocket. I intended to keep it until at least the next morning.

  After I had eaten breakfast, I wandered down the stairs into the hall, through the door beside the dais, out through the arch into the courtyard, and up the exterior staircase into the solar. There was an elderly woman in there, sweeping up the rushes on the floor. She was flustered when I went in, and dropped her broom, apologizing, and promising to be out of my way in a wink; but I apologized for interrupting her work, and went back down the staircase.

  I didn't know where to go. I tried the door of the chapel, but it was locked. I decided to go back to the Rents Room and read more of the travellers' tales - with one of the books on the Faith to hand in case Brentwood came in. As I reached the foot of the steps up to the Rents Room, Mistress Cowling came in from the courtyard through the hall's great door, and almost slid towards me in a hurried, guilty way. "I want you to have this," she said, and took something from her sleeve. It was a pamphlet.

  "Read it," she said, "but - you need not mention it."

  I knew she meant I should not mention it to Brentwood, but I said nothing. I was too surprised. She slid back into the courtyard as quickly as she had come in, and I went on up the stairs. Opening the door of the Rents Room I saw, on the platform, one of the men I had interrupted the night before. He was trying the door of the cupboard.

  "I locked it," I said, and he turned sharply.When he saw me, his face contracted into a vicious, foxy expression. "I seem to have lost the key," I added, preparing my story. He hurried down from the platform, passed me at a distance, and went out.

  I thought it might be a good idea to plant myself in front of that cupboard, and so I climbed up to the platform and sat at the table. To pass the time, I read the pamphlet Mistress Cowling had given me. It turned out to be one of those extremist Protestant papers: the kind I had read at the University. It called the bishops of the English Church, "filthy Romish cardinals,'' and accused the Church itself of "refusing to leave go of the tawdry rags of Popery." Oh good God, I thought, surely she's not a Puritan? It would explain the English Bible and the lack of warmth between her and her cousin, but - I was starting to feel like a mouse caught between two cats. What if they compared notes on me?

  This new threat made me want to explore the cupboard at once, and finish my job and get out before I brought more trouble down on my head, but I could not, in case someone came into the room and found the back of the cupboard open.

  I thought of bolting the Rents Room door, but if someone tried it and found it bolted, wouldn't that be suspicious? So I read the book of travellers' tales until I was interrupted by Mistress Cowling, who came in to ask if I wished to eat in the solar. Brentwood wasn't coming home, she explained, or he would have returned by then, and, if I preferred, I could have my meal in the Rents Room.

  I thought of the finery in the solar, and was so afraid that I would have to go through the ritual of napkins and handwashing alone that I quickly agreed to eat in the Rents Room. Mistress Cowling nodded, but remained by the table. I waited for her to tell me what she wanted. "Did you read it?" she asked, eventually, impatiently.

  "Oh - the pamphlet? Yes."

  ''Good," She smiled at me more kindly than she had done yet; waited a moment longer, then went away. I heaved a sigh of relief to be rid of her.

  My meal was brought up by a girl and, after I had eaten, I went down into the courtyard, and through the garden to the bank of the moat. I walked round to the lake, and, seeing some men about to put out in a small boat, invited myself to join them, and spent the afternoon fishing.

  There was some uneasiness between us at first, since they knew I was a guest at the house, and they were uncertain of how to treat me. One asked, after a while, "What are we supposed to call you, then?" and I shrugged and said, "Chris."

  After that we got on well enough, especially as I made no fuss about accepting the role of educated idiot among natural wits. We did not return until the early evening, and as I crossed the courtyard, Mistresss Cowling stepped from the kitchen and told me that I had better wash and change quickly, because Brentwood had returned and I was to dine with him.

  I was late when I reached the solar, and Brentwood was waiting with an appearance of patience which, judging by his mouth, was far from genuine. I washed my hands in the bowl in the corner and apologized, both for my lateness - and for missing prayers that morning. He said that we would forget it, although his tone suggested that he never would.

  He waited until we had been served, and then asked if I had enjoyed my day. I told him that I had, and how I had spent it, and a silence followed. Partly to make conversation, and partly from curiosity, I asked, ''Why won't your cousin eat with us, sir?" It was, perhaps, an ill-mannered question. He looked up at me, and held the stare and the silence for a moment.

  As always, his eyes caught the light and gleamed. "My cousin?"

  "Mistress Cowling."

  He said, ''Mistress Cowling is - or was - my mother's cousin." Then he returned to his meal, so pointedly that I did not want to speak again, and we ate, rose, washed and dried our hands before anything else was said. As we seated ourselves for the next course, Brentwood said, "I was sorry to hear that you were disturbed last night."

  I thought it best to say nothing more than "Oh, yes," and kept my eyes on my plate.

  "Two men, I was told, came into your room."

  "Not into my room, but into the Rents Room, yes."

  "What were they doing?'' he asked, in a tone of puzzled amusement, very different from the way he had spoken earlier.

  I did not look up at him, because I guessed that he knew exactly what the men had been doing. I looked at the coloured glass in the windows, and said, "I'm not sure. They seemed to be trying to open that big cupboard. They said that you had sent them to fetch some papers."

  He shook his head and smiled. "After everyone was bedded down? I sent no one."

  "I didn't believe them. I - forgive me, sir, I mean no offence - but I thought they were trying to steal something."

  He was raising a piece of meat to his mouth, but paused and affected to think this over. "I cannot imagine what they would steal, but - perhaps.''

  "I thought that you might keep something other than papers in the cupboard, sir, so I sent them away and bolted the door to keep them out."

  "Good, good; thank you, Christopher. You have the cupboard key too, I understand?"

  There he overshot himself. "How did you guess that, sir?" I asked.

  "The cupboard is locked, and my key is missing; then I am told this story of your being disturbed. It wasn't hard, Christopher."

  We didn’t speak again unti
l the meal was over. He didn’t even look at me, and whenever he had to raise his head his averted eyes and set mouth made it clear that I was not to attempt to speak to him. Even his remarks to his servants were the sharper for my presence.

  But, the meal over, as he was drying his hands after washing them, he said, "When are you returning to town, Christopher?"

  After a pause, I said, "Soon.''

  He said, "A pity. How shall you spend your evening?"

  "Reading in my room?'' I said.

  He nodded, and left so long a pause that I wondered if I was meant to go, and edged towards the door. "Have you the key on you?" he asked.

  "Key?"

  "The cupboard key, Christopher."

  "Oh! The cupboard - No.''

  "No?"

  "I - seem to have lost it," I said.

  He turned to the fireplace and leaned on the stone hood, his hand covering the dragon and the pierced fleur de lys. "It must be found," he said quietly. He was very angry. "That cupboard holds records of rents paid and owed.''

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I said. “I’ll do my best to find it. Good evening, sir.” I was glad to escape from the solar.

  Soon after I reached my room, a maid and a boy came up to help me search for the key. We searched diligently, looking under the bed, and under the tables, in between the pages of books, through my papers and belongings, on the window-ledges - I kept thinking of new places to look, and encouraging my helpers by saying that we must find it soon, but we didn't, because it was in my pocket all the time. Brentwood himself came up to fetch us to evening prayers and to ask if we had found the key yet.

  "I am sorry, sir; no," I said.

  "Christopher, this is important."

  "I know, sir, and I'm sorry for being so careless, but we have looked everywhere, and - ''

  "Christopher; this is no game."

  He sounded almost friendly again. I looked at him a moment, as if puzzled, although I knew very well what he meant, and then said, "Game? I don't understand - I think, sir, that I may have put it on the window-sill for a moment, and it has been knocked outside - into that bed of nettles below the window, sir. I think I remember putting it on the window-sill."

  And we looked at each other. I felt - reasonably - safe. He was not Bagthorpe, and he could not disprove my story, even if he cleared the nettles. It might be that I had been mistaken, and had not put the key on the window-sill after all. He suspected me of being up to something, for certain; but I could weather suspicion.

  "Come down to prayers," he said.

  On the hall dais, beside Brentwood, I went through the motions of prayer before taking the candle set out for me and climbing the stairs. In the Rents Room, I bolted the door behind me, and took down a book to read while I gave the household time to go to sleep.

  I did not read, except for the same few words over and over again. I kept lifting my head to listen. Time yet for them to be asleep? I knew that there had not been; scarcely ten minutes could have passed.

  I wandered from the Rents Room to my bedroom, and back. There was a fire burning in my room, so I blew out my candle, to save it until I needed it, opened the shutter and peered out into the darkness, watching the shape of the trees waving against the fainter darkness of the sky. Who would hear me, anyway? Brentwood was tucked up in the tower at the other end of the house. Mistress Cowling was high above me. The servants bedded down in the hall could probably hear nothing but their own snoring. But I went on waiting.

  The fire burnt down and settled to charring away the thick log of wood that had been laid across it to keep it alight until morning. Now, I said to myself. I lit my candle at the fire and went out into the Rents Room.

  Now that I knew how to manage the cupboard, it did not take me long. I unlocked it, took hold of the clothes-hook, jerked out the loose plank and laid it on the floor, then pressed on the upper end of the wall-planks, and caught their lower end as they pivoted up. I ducked under them, into the dry, grey hidey-hole behind the cupboard.

  I didn't waste time there either. I dragged the chest aside with one hand, set the candle on the floor beside the trap-door, and levered the trap up with my knife. It came easily, and I put the square of wood to one side and peered down into the darkness underneath. I could see nothing, and holding the candle over the hole did not help. The light seemed to bounce back from the blackness. The air rising from under the platform seemed moister than in the hide where I knelt, and brought with it a faintly unpleasant smell - slightly sour, slightly musty. But the only way to find out what was down there was to get into the hole.

  Being so dark, it seemed deep as a well, but from outside the platform came only midway between my elbow and my shoulder, and reason said that this hole could not be much deeper than the platform was high. I sat on the edge of the hole, dangling my legs into the darkness, and lowered myself into it. I could not help being afraid that the floor of the hole was somehow receding and becoming bottomless. My whole body prickled as I went down, and the hole seemed to grow narrower as my back became wider.

  But my feet struck the floor below while my head was still above the trap, and I sighed with relief, and reached out an arm for my candle, drawing it down with me as I crouched and sank into the hole.

  The candle lit very little of the darkness, and made confusing, flickering shadows at the corners of the floor and ceiling. Crouching, one hand on the floor to support me, I moved round in a circle. I saw walls, of stone and wood, all hung with flounces and long, dirty strings of cobweb. I saw rushes on the floor and a straw mattress in one corner, with a cup lying on its side close by; and a candlestick and a bundle of candles. There were many spots of candle-grease on the boards. The mattress was worn and wispy, as if it had been used. The place was a priest-hole.

  Something lay in the opposite corner, grey and blurred in the light from my single flame. I held up my candle, peering at it. It was something humped and long - a voice in my head cried out loudly in alarm as I thought I recognized what it was - but I edged closer and closer, shedding more and more light on the thing - and then I saw it clearly, and in thrusting myself back, away, with both hands and feet, I banged the candle down on the floor, and it went out.

  I had seen one of my nightmares while awake. After my first, frantic shove away from the thing, I stopped, trembling. My mind, as locked and frozen as my joints, repeated and repeated what I had seen: A bloated, almost shapeless face, black and purple, lying in a wide, black stain. Bloated, discoloured, misshapen, like the nightmare faces that come and peer at me as I fall asleep.

  I shuddered - deep, unsettling tremors which wrenched at my whole frame and left me more sick and cold with each attack. And then, as I was unable to see anything before my eyes, I saw in the darkness behind them. I saw that thing in the corner lifting its battered, bloated head; I saw it crouching, and then dragging itself towards me. I scrambled across the dusty floor in the dark, scratching and kicking at the wooden floor until I banged into a wall.

  Stupid, I thought; stupid panic. Why are you so afraid? That is a man, a badly hurt man, and if he is still alive, he needs help.

  I turned, setting my back against the wall. I looked at complete darkness; I could see nothing, either close to me, or at a distance. I should not have moved away from the place where I had dropped the candle. I could not tell one direction from another, and when I tried to reason out which way was which, I seemed to feel the whole box which enclosed me gently swinging upside down. I had no idea where the trap-door was, nor where the injured man lay. I felt about in the darkness for something which would give me a sense of direction. I did so reluctantly, for I did not like the idea of touching the man unexpectedly. My hand touched something harsh and rustling - straw - and I clutched at it. The straw mattress.

  I felt round me until I found the walls which made the corner the mattress lay in, and then I had a good idea of where I was, and in which direction the hurt man lay. I crawled on hands and knees through the darkness to him.
r />   I saw, in my head, a series of small, bright pictures – I saw myself touching the body, and I saw it seizing me and pulling me towards its hideous face. I saw that somewhere in its swollen, bruised flesh, it hid teeth. I could not rid myself of these ridiculous ideas, or dispel the fear they brought with them, although I tried to hold it down.

  My reaching hand touched cloth, and I snatched it back and wiped it on my own clothing. I sat on my heels in the dark for some time, trying to ignore the pictures that unreasoning fear put into my head. It was a man: nothing more. A man in such a state that I should pity him, not fear him. I wasn't a mere animal that runs simply because it smells blood. But part of me still feared the man as if he had been a devil or monster, or something unnatural.

  I reached out and found the cloth again; then felt it over until I found the face. It was cold; as cold as metal in winter. That chill, soaking up between my fingers, proof that the man was dead, ended my fear. I sat beside the body and, for the first time, wondered who it had been before it had been beaten into that ugly lump of bruised meat. The answer came very readily, as if I had known it from the beginning. It had been Bagthorpe's other man, the unsatisfactory one; the one who wouldn't have noticed if the pope had come on a visit. Poor soul; he must have noticed something - and then I thought: Who killed him? And the obvious answer to that was: Brentwood.