Ladygrove

by John Burke

  ‘We didn’t mean—’

  ‘Save your breath and do as I tell you.’

  Panting, the two of them got below the end of the stone box and managed to slide it upwards against the plinth edge until it could fall back into place. David himself slid the heavy lid across.

  ‘I shall want to see you when you’re sober,’ His voice was steadier now, and terrifying.

  The two men shuffled sideways towards the door, afraid to turn their backs on him.

  Caspian took one last look at the coffin. A raised stone plaque on the lid had been engraved with deep, florid letters:

  R.I.P.

  Mortimer Maxwell Brobury, Bart.

  beloved husband

  of

  Charlotte Emilia

  The rioters had left the body of the church. Mr. Goswell stood in the porch, lean and dark and looking as if he might be capable of putting the evil eye upon each and every member of his congregation. Men were straggling away across the churchyard. One youth was bowed over a grave, vomiting. As David and Caspian brushed past the vicar and trod slowly down the path, there was a sheepish murmuring. Someone growled a curse to make it clear that he had not yet finished what he came to do; but another man edged forward and tried to begin a halting apology.

  David cut him short with a savage stab of his hand.

  ‘I’ll hear it all,’ he said, ‘when you’ve sobered up.’

  Margaret’s face was framed in the carriage window. Caspian would not have been at all surprised if she had chosen to spring out and join them, or set about the nearer vandals with one of their own sickles.

  David said: ‘I can’t possibly leave now. Not until I’ve cleared up this disgraceful business and given my bailiff the appropriate instructions. I’ll have the ringleaders out of Mockblane, and make the rest wish they’d never been born.’ He glanced back at the porch. ‘And I suppose I’ll have to do something about Goswell.’

  ‘He’s under your mother’s thumb.’

  ‘Or she under his. I must say I can’t abide the fellow or his methods, any more than my tenants can. But I’ll have to stand by him until I’ve put the rest of them in their place.’

  They reached the carriage.

  ‘You have no need to tell us,’ said his sister. ‘You’re staying—yes?’

  ‘I have no alternative.’

  ‘Obviously not.’

  Judith leaned across Margaret. ‘We shall have to turn back.’

  ‘No. You’re to go on.’

  ‘I’m not going,’ said Judith, ‘without you. I’m coming home. You can’t be on your own, with all this going on.’

  ‘I’d be more worried,’ said David, ‘if you were near.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Dr. and Mrs. Caspian will have missed the Lenhale train. I suggest you take them on with you to Hereford. Whether they then find a suitable train to London, or whether they choose to spend a night—’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve no spare accommodation to offer,’ said Margaret bluntly. ‘Judith I can manage, as we planned, but the house really isn’t big enough for—’

  ‘Whatever we decide, we’d certainly make our own arrangements,’ Caspian assured her.

  ‘If you do stay in the neighbourhood’—was David hinting that he would still like them to keep an eye on Judith?—‘I’ll see you when I come through Hereford to collect Judith. If not, we’ll meet when we’re all back in London.’

  Judith was silent, neither protesting nor accepting.

  ‘So,’ said Margaret breezily, ‘we’re back to our first idea—Judith with me, and you collecting her when you’ve finished what you’re doing…if you haven’t by then found a lot more things requiring your attention.’

  ‘I’ll be with you just as soon as I can.’

  Caspian got back into the carriage and settled himself beside Bronwen. Margaret had moved across to join Judíth. David leaned in to kiss his wife. She offered him her cheek but was trying not to look at him.

  ‘Have a lazy day or two,’ he said. ‘I won’t keep you waiting long.’

  The carriage resumed its journey. The street was as unnaturally silent as it had been unnaturally rowdy only half an hour ago.

  Caspian thought back to the cracked coffin, the torn face, and the lettering on the lid. To Margaret he said: ‘Your mother’s Christian name is Charlotte?’

  ‘Charlotte Emilia, yes. Actually it’s Charlotte Emilia Gertrude, but she got it into her head that Gertrude sounded terribly common. Mother does have those moods. What makes you ask?’

  ‘I was under the impression I’d heard someone call her Ceridwen.’

  ‘What an extraordinary idea. Who could possibly have called her anything like that?’

  ‘The swineherd, or so I thought. I thought he was referring to your mother, and being rather overfamiliar. I assumed it was a Welsh name. There must be plenty of families of Welsh origin along the Marches.’

  Bronwen had her head set back against the side of the carriage, staring at him.

  ‘Ceridwen?’

  ‘I’m sure that’s what he said. It is Welsh, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, yes, it’s Welsh. But scarcely what you would call a Christian name. Ceridwen was the earth goddess, the woman in the ark of Celtic belief who became mother of the world. Everyone’s true mother, the eternal all-mother, eternal because she was fired in the furnaces of creation, of earth and of under-earth, into enduring stone.’ Bronwen might have been reciting from some Cymric fairytale or, thought Caspian, translating from memory the hypnotic cadences of ancient verse. ‘She gives birth to all and devours all—makes immortal stone of fallible clay—to replenish herself and fashion those sons and daughters yet to be conceived. Men are allowed to love women of flesh whose clay will never be baked into eternity; and such women may love in return, and with their menfolk live and die, because of moral weakness. But the stone mother is the everlasting mother, incorruptible, impregnated only with that which makes her strong and forever impervious.’

  ‘What poetic legends some races have invented, haven’t they?’ said Margaret with patronizing amusement

  ‘Some of Ceridwen’s attributes and incarnations of the flesh,’ added Bronwen thoughtfully, ‘have been toned down in recent interpretations.’

  ‘And before they were toned down, what was she?’ For some reason Caspian found he was holding his breath as he waited for the answer.

  ‘Among other things, the sow goddess.’

  Now his breath snorted out. ‘Sow goddess?’

  ‘The world-mother who from stone delivers a farrow of flesh—eternity and fertility and destruction all in one. The sow who gives birth, and at one and the same time the sow who eats her young. Mortal life and death, but eternal renewal.’

  Caspian glanced at Judith, her head sunk forward in a doze or a pretence of dozing. This at least was something to be thankful for: that Judith was being carried minute by minute further and further way from Ladygrove; carried to safety, to await David and then be carried yet further, on to London.

  And he knew that he and Bronwen had a task to perform, whether David still expected it of them or not.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The cathedral tower leaned away above the mellowed bricks of the walled garden, a deep soft pink against scudding clouds. Judith sat in a sheltered corner with a rug over her knees. Here the walls retained the warmth, though as the sun went slowly round she had to move her basket chair a few inches from time to time to edge it out of the shade of the old medlar tree. Hard knots of fruit on the gnarled grey branches would be ready for picking in a few weeks’ time.

  A house martin soared, swooped, and settled on the sundial, twitching its tail as if it wondered whether the time had yet come to depart.

  Judith turned over a page of the book on the Malayan jungle, which Margaret had hoped would interest her. It all seemed remote and irrelevant, here in this secluded English garden, almost in the shadow of that very English cathedral. Yet the garden itself was also unreal
. The house had an unprepossessing frontage on to a narrow lane running from the cathedral close, but showed a fine, small-scale Palladian face to the lawn. One was so tidily, comfortably enclosed here. But Judith felt only discomfort. This was not her home; nor the home she had known in London. It was simply a place where she was waiting—a junction between one line of her life and another. She was ashamed of feeling even the slightest ingratitude towards cheery, generous Margaret who had brought her here; but all she really wanted was to be taken away.

  Margaret came out into the garden.

  ‘Mrs. Caspian has called to see us.’ She sounded none too enthusiastic. ‘I fancy she wants to make sure I haven’t let you run away.’

  The chair creaked as Judith pushed herself upright. It had been growing cool in that corner, and things were not much better indoors. The house had an unlived-in feel to it. It was well furnished and attractive, but one got the impression that dust covers had only recently been removed and would soon be draped back in place.

  Margaret had rung for tea, though Bronwen was waving aside any intention of staying long. ‘I merely thought that as I was passing I’d pay my respects and see how Judith was getting on.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure if you were still here.’ Judith had in fact given it scarcely a thought. ‘You decided to stay overnight, then?’

  ‘And probably another night or two as well. It seemed a pity to neglect the opportunity of taking photographs of the city.’

  Judith smiled politely. She supposed there was no reason why Bronwen should not stay on in Hereford, just like anyone else who chose to do so; yet was wary of her, obscurely troubled by the sense of both her and her husband prying, watching.

  The housekeeper bustled in with a tea tray. Mrs. Rodden was just the sort of kindred spirit one would have expected Margaret to engage: a bright-eyed woman with rosy cheeks and a broad smile which she kept directing at Judith—a healthy, sensible countrywoman’s smile saying that everything was going to be splendid, having children was splendid, today was a wonderful day, and there would be many more like it.

  When she had gone, Margaret poured tea for Judith and their visitor, and took over the conversation. Judith was glad to detach herself. Let there be a few conventional exchanges, a flutter of affable goodbyes, and then Bronwen would be gone and she could sink back into the quiescence of obedient waiting.

  David would soon be coming for her: perhaps today, later today.

  She thought of his face, and the cup and saucer in her hand rattled like chattering teeth.

  But of course I don’t really hate him. Can’t go on hating him. It will pass.

  ‘Are you cold, Judith?’ asked Bronwen protectively.

  Judith forced herself to sit quite still, apart from a shake of the head.

  Margaret went to the windows and twitched the curtains an inch or so inwards along the rail. ‘Too many draughts in this house. I can just hear what George will have to say when he gets here.’

  ‘The children like their schools?’ said Bronwen.

  ‘They’re settling in nicely.’ Margaret would not have contemplated any other possibility.

  Judith tried to envisage herself with a child—no, surely there would be two or three—who must be educated, sent away, brought home for holidays, fed and clothed and cared for. A few months ago she and David had talked at length about such matters, and laughed about them, and made and discarded a score of different plans. Now she could no longer see such a future clearly. She was not afraid, not pessimistic: just incapable of seeing what they had once foreseen.

  It will pass.

  ‘And if you don’t want to leave Judith alone,’ Bronwen was saying ‘I’ll be delighted to come and chat. While you go shopping, or visiting the children.’

  ‘Good heavens, there’s no need to fuss over her.’ Margaret was crisply dismissive. ‘If I’m out, Mrs. Rodden can do anything that’s needed. Excellent woman, I was lucky to find her.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that.’

  Then again, when Bronwen was taking her leave and being shown out, Judith caught a few snatches from the hall: ‘I don’t think Judith ought to be left alone…,’ and Margaret’s voice clipped and final, ‘No question of being left alone…told you…Mrs. Rodden’s a treasure.’

  Ten minutes later Judith pulled herself ponderously upstairs with the aid of the banister rail. From a small side window on the turn of the stair, probably inset into the wall for this very reason, she could peer along the lane to the gap where it met the street. Gigs, drays, coaches, and the occasional bicycle flitted across the gap. Sooner or later a coach would pull up at the kerb there, and she would be fetched.

  By David, of course.

  Of course. Her lips formed the words, and repeated his name; but with dwindling assurance.

  * * * *

  ‘Not if it means exposing you to dangers within Judith again,’ said Caspian gruffly.

  ‘I hoped you’d have recovered from those suspicions. If we’re really intended to protect Judith—’

  ‘What about your own protection? I won’t risk you.’

  ‘You’re still jealous.’

  ‘I won’t risk you,’ he said again, fiercely. ‘If you can stay reasonably close to Judith without making Margaret too irate, well and good. But you are not to let yourself be drawn into the maze of her mind. You hear me?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said with grudging submissiveness, ‘I hear you.’

  ‘Then you also hear that I love you.’

  She stood at the window of the hotel looking down on the busy street, and put out one hand to him. He came beside her, and their fingertips played together. ‘Yes,’ she said, this time without grudging a breath of it, ‘I hear you.’

  Twenty yards along the street from The Green Dragon they could just make out the entrance to the lane which went past Mrs. Henderson’s front door. Bronwen remembered her own reluctance, half an hour ago, to leave that door: to leave Judith.

  ‘But what is the danger?’ she fretted. ‘She can hardly be spirited away—or drawn back despite herself, as I was to Hexney?’

  That she would never forget. Its terrors had been overcome with this man beside her, this man who was now, blessedly, her husband; overcome by the strength of his mind after she had been remorselessly called back to the Fenland village that she had wanted never to see again. Life with him, love with him, had driven those terrors out and kept them at bay. But she would never forget.

  Caspian said: ‘I don’t think Lady Brobury, or whatever power works through her, has the psychic strength to reach out like that, over that distance.’

  ‘Then, unless she sends her swineherd, or he comes of his own accord—’

  ‘I can’t see him getting much of a welcome on Margaret’s doorstep!’

  They laughed. In broad daylight, above a busy Hereford street, the thought of the outraged Margaret and the lumpish Morris meeting again face to face could be funny. So quickly did the past lose its menace.

  Bronwen made herself think back to Lady Brobury and see her again, as she might have been in a photograph taken from its correct, numbered file. It was difficult to see her as a conscious villainess. But simply by sitting there in that lodge of hers, resentful and self-engrossed, she could ill-wish others, direct her spite at them, as village crones and would-be witches had done for centuries.

  And allow her swineherd to kill her husband…or will him to do so?

  The perspective shifted and distorted.

  ‘I have an appointment,’ said Caspian, ‘at the cathedral library. Would you care to stroll along with me?’

  Crossing the quadrangle of the cathedral close, they both glanced automatically at the other end of the lane. In that huddle of tiled roofs and intersecting walls it was difficult to tell which, if any, were the garden walls and roof of the house where Judith was staying. Then they were under the great bulk of the cathedral, with the bishop’s palace overlooking the river beyond. Up-river were high, clustering woods; and far off against the sk
y the familiar silhouette of the Black Mountains.

  The library opened from a cloister connecting the bishop’s palace with the cathedral. Inside, the dank stony smell of the cloister was replaced by the mixed aroma of old paper and parchment, leather, and varnished woodwork.

  The archivist was a residentiary canon who, in spite of confirming that Dr. Caspian had indeed made an appointment, was cautious about committing himself to any guarantee of producing specific documents.

  ‘I am not quite sure, doctor, what you’re seeking. As you’ll doubtless realize, many of our treasures have to be handled with the greatest care, not exposed to the light for too long, and not studied for—mm—purposes inimical to ecclesiastical precepts.’

  ‘I’m searching,’ said Caspian, ‘for records of religious foundations associated with Mockblane and Ladygrove Manor.’

  ‘Ah. The Broburys.’ The canon sounded even more doubtful. ‘You know the family?’

  ‘We have recently been staying with Sir David.’

  ‘Yes, yes. I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting him. I did have occasional contacts with his father.’ The bluish lips quirked slightly. ‘A bon vivant, Sir Mortimer.’

  ‘We’ve only known Sir David.’

  ‘Mm. Yes. Well, Dr. Caspian, we do have some church documents from Mockblane, and some reports submitted to various bishops. I’m afraid the collection is incomplete, however.’

  ‘Destroyed at the Reformation?’ guessed Caspian.

  ‘Not all, by no means. There were the usual losses, naturally. But many monasteries and other foundations entrusted their records into faithful hands. And once the first wave of demolition was over, the Church of England naturally wished to preserve and respect the historical evidences of its…ah…predecessors.’

  ‘Still, you say your collection is incomplete.’

  ‘There are some items which we know to exist but which we cannot reclaim for the library. Many attempts have been made, but…well, frankly, the situation is an odd one. At one time and another, especially when Puritan zealots had the upper hand, there were attempts to seize and destroy records which it was felt were best expunged from the face of the earth.’