The House on the Strand

by Daphne Du Maurier

  "Your Grace," he said in pompous tones, "we are deeply honored to have you here among us," and bent over the proffered hand with so much affectation that had I been Otto Bodrugan, who owed him two hundred marks, I would have kicked him on the backside and compounded the debt.

  The Bishop, keen-eyed, alert, was missing nothing. He reminded me of a general inspecting a new command and making mental notes about the officers: Champernoune past it, needs replacing; Bodrugan gallant in action but insubordinate, to judge from his recent part in the rebellion against the King; Carminowe ambitious and overzealous--apt to make trouble. As for the Prior, was that a splash of gravy on his habit? I could swear the Bishop noticed it, as I did; and a moment later his eye traveled across the heads of the lesser fry and fell upon the almost recumbent figure of the parish priest. I hoped, for the sake of the Prior's charges, that the inspection would not be continued later in the Priory kitchen, or, worse still, in the Prior's own chamber.

  Sir John had risen from his knees, and was making introductions in his turn.

  "My brother, your Grace, Sir Oliver Carminowe, one of His Majesty's Commissioners, and Isolda his lady." He elbowed forward his brother, who, from his flushed appearance and hazy eye, looked as if he had been passing the hours of waiting in the buttery with the parish priest.

  "Your Grace," he said, and was careful not to bend his knee too low for fear of swaying when he stood upright. He was a better-looking fellow than Sir John, despite the tippling; taller, broader, with a ruthless set about the jaw, not one to fall foul with in an argument.

  "She's the one I'd pick if fortune favored me."

  The whisper in my ear was very near. Roger the horseman was at my side once more; but he was not addressing me but his companion. There was something uncanny in the way he led my thoughts, always at my elbow when I least supposed him there. He was right, though, in his choice, and I wondered if she too was aware of his attention, for she stared straight at us as she rose from her curtsy, and the kissing of the Bishop's hand.

  Isolda, wife to Sir Oliver Carminowe, had no wimple to frame her features, but wore her golden hair in looped braids, with a jeweled fillet crowning the small veil upon her head. Nor did she wear a cloak over her dress like the other women, and the dress itself was less wide in the skirt, more closely fitting, the long, tight sleeves reaching beyond her wrist. Possibly, being younger than her companions, not more than twenty-five or twenty-six, fashion played a stronger part in her life; if so, she did not seem conscious of the fact, wearing her clothes with casual grace. I have never seen a face so beautiful or so bored, and she swept us with her eyes--or rather, Roger and his companion--without the faintest show of interest, the slight movement of her mouth a moment later betrayed the fact that she was stifling a yawn.

  It is the fate of every man, I suppose, at some time or other to glimpse a face in a crowd and not forget it, or perhaps, by a stroke of luck, to catch up with the owner at a later date, in a restaurant, at a party. To meet often breaks the spell and leads to disenchantment. This was not possible now. I looked across the centuries at what Shakespeare called "a lass unparalleled," who, alas, would never look at me.

  "How long, I wonder," murmured Roger, "will she stay content within the walls of Carminowe and keep a guard upon her thoughts from straying?"

  I wished I knew. Had I been living in this time I would have handed in my resignation as steward to Sir Henry Champernoune and offered my services to Sir Oliver and his lady.

  "One mercy for her," replied the other, "she does not have to provide her husband with an heir, with three stout stepsons filling the breach. She can do as she pleases with her time, having produced two daughters whom Sir Oliver can trade and profit by when they reach marriageable age."

  So much for women's value in other days. Goods reared for purchase, then bought and sold in the market-place, or rather manor. Small wonder that, their duty done, they looked round for consolation, either by taking a lover or by playing an active part in the bargaining over their own daughters and sons.

  "I tell you one thing," said Roger. "Bodrugan has an eye to her, but while he's under this obligation to Sir John he has to watch where he steps."

  "I lay you five denarii to nought she will not look at him."

  "Taken. And if she does I'll act as go-between. I play the role often enough between my lady and Sir John."

  As eavesdropper in time my role was passive, without commitment or responsibility. I could move about in their world unwatched, knowing that whatever happened I could do nothing to prevent it--comedy, tragedy, or farce--whereas in my twentieth-century existence I must take my share in shaping my own future and that of my family.

  The reception appeared over, but the visit was not yet through, for a bell summoned one and all to vespers and the company divided, the more favored to the Priory chapel, the lesser ranks to the church, which was at the same time part of the chapel, an arched doorway, with a grille, dividing the one from the other.

  I thought I might dispense with vespers, though by standing close to the grille I could have watched Isolda; but my inevitable guide, craning his neck with the same thought in mind, decided that he had been idle long enough, and, signaling to his companion with a quick jerk of the head, made his way out of the Priory building and across the quadrangle to the entrance gate. Someone had flung it open once again and a cluster of people, lay brothers and servants, were standing there, laughing, as they watched the Bishop's attendants struggle to turn the clumsy vehicle towards the Priory yard. The wheels were stuck between muddied road and village green, but this was by no means the only fun to be observed, for the green itself was crowded with men, women and children. Some sort of market seemed to be in progress, for there were little booths and stalls set up, some fellow was beating a drum and another squeaked on a fiddle, while a third nearly split my ears with two horns as long as himself, which he managed by sleight of hand to play simultaneously.

  I followed Roger and his friend across the green. They paused every moment to greet acquaintances, and I realized that this was no sudden jollification put on for the Bishop's benefit but some butcher's paradise, for newly slaughtered sheep and pigs, still dripping blood, were hanging upon posts at every booth. The dwellings bordering the green boasted a like display. Each householder, knife in hand, was hard at work stripping the pelt off some old ewe, or slitting a pig's throat, and one or two fellows, higher perhaps on the feudal ladder, brandished the heads of oxen, the wide-spread horns winning shouts of applause and laughter from the crowd. Torches flared as the light faded, slaughterers and strippers taking on a demonic aspect, working fast and furiously to have their task accomplished before night came, and because of it the excitement mounted, and the musician with the horn in either hand, wandering in and out among the crowd, lifted his instruments high to make a greater blast upon the air.

  "God willing, they'll have their bellies lined this winter," observed Roger. I had forgotten him in all the tumult, but he was with me still.

  "I take it you have every beast counted?" asked his friend.

  "Not only counted but inspected before slaughter. Not that Sir Henry would know or care if he was lacking a hundred head of cattle, but my lady would. He's too deep in his prayers to watch his purse, or his belongings."

  "She trusts you, then?"

  My horseman laughed. "Faith! She's obliged to trust me, knowing what I do of her affairs. The more she leans upon my counsel, the sounder she sleeps at night."

  He turned his head as a new commotion fell upon our ears, this time from the Priory stableyard, where the Bishop's equipage had finally been housed, taking the place of smaller vehicles, similarly furnished with wooded canopy and sides, and bearing coats-of-arms. Half-chariot, half-wagonette, they seemed a clumsy method of carrying ladies of rank about the countryside, but this was evidently their purpose, for three of them emerged from the rear premises, creaking and groaning with every turn of the wheel, and stood in line before the Priory entr
ance.

  Vespers was over, and the faithful who had attended were emerging from the church, to mingle with the crowd upon the green. Roger made his way into the quadrangle, and so to the Priory building itself, where the Prior's guests were gathering before departure. Sir John Carminowe was in the forefront, and beside him Sir Henry's lady, Joanna de Champernoune. As we approached he murmured in her ear, "Will you be alone if I ride to you tomorrow?"

  "Perhaps," she said. "Better still, wait until I send word."

  He bent to kiss her hand, then mounted the horse which a groom was holding, and cantered off. Joanna watched him go, then turned to her steward.

  "Sir Oliver and Lady Isolda lodge with us tonight," she said. "See if you can hasten their departure. And find Sir Henry too. I wish to be away."

  She stood there in the doorway, foot tapping impatiently upon the ground, the full brown eyes surely brooding upon some scheme which would further her own ends. Sir John must be hard-pressed to keep her sweet. Roger entered the Priory, and I followed him. Voices came from the direction of the refectory, and, inquiring from a monk who was standing by, he was told that Sir Oliver Carminowe was taking refreshment with others of the company, but that his lady was in the chapel still.

  Roger paused a moment, then turned towards the chapel. I thought at first that it was empty. The candles on the altar had been extinguished, and the light was dim. Two figures stood near to the grille, a man and a woman. As we came closer I saw that they were Otto Bodrugan and Isolda Carminowe. They were speaking low and I could not hear what they said, but the weariness had gone from her face, and the boredom too, and suddenly she looked up at him and smiled.

  Roger tapped me on the shoulder. "It's much too dark to see. Shall I switch on the lights?"

  It was not his voice. He had gone, and so had they. I was standing in the southern aisle of the church, and a man wearing a dog-collar under his tweed jacket was by my side.

  "I saw you just now in the churchyard," he said, "looking as if you couldn't make up your mind whether to come in out of the rain. Well, now you have, let me show you round. I'm the vicar of St. Andrew's. It's a fine old church, and we're very proud of it."

  He put his hand on a switch and turned on all the lights. I glanced down at my watch, without nausea, without vertigo. It was exactly half-past three.

  4

  There had been no perceptible transition. I had passed from one world to the other instantaneously, without the physical side-effects of yesterday. The only difficulty was mental readjustment, requiring an almost intolerable degree of concentration. Luckily the vicar preceded me up the aisle, chatting as we went, and if there was anything strange in my expression he was too polite to comment.

  "We get a fair number of visitors in the summer," he said, "people staying at Par, or they come over from Fowey. But you must be an enthusiast, hanging about the churchyard in the rain."

  I made a supreme effort to pull myself together. "In point of fact," I said, surprised to find that I could even speak, "it was not really the church itself or the graves that interested me. Someone told me there had been a Priory here in former days."

  "Ah, yes, the Priory," he said. "That's been gone a long time, no trace of it left, unfortunately. The buildings all fell in after the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539. Some say the site was where Newhouse Farm is now, just below us in the valley, and others that it occupied the present churchyard itself, south of the porch, but nobody really knows."

  He led me to the north transept and showed me the tombstone of the last Prior, who had been buried before the altar in 1538, and pointed out the pulpit and some pew-ends, and all that was left of the original rood screen. Nothing of what I observed bore any resemblance to the small church I had so lately seen, with the grille in the wall dividing it from the Priory chapel; nor, as I stood here now beside the vicar, could I reconstruct from memory anything of an older transept, an older aisle.

  "Everything's changed," I said.

  "Changed?" he repeated, puzzled. "Oh, no doubt. The church was largely restored in 1880, possibly not altogether successfully. Are you disappointed?"

  "No," I assured him hastily, "not at all. It's only that... Well, as I was saying, my interest goes back to very early days, long before the dissolution of the monasteries."

  "I understand." He smiled in sympathy. "I've often wondered myself what it all looked like in former times, with the Priory close by. It was a French house, you know, attached to the Benedictine Abbey of St. Sergius and Bacchus in Angers, and I believe most of the monks were French. I wish I could tell you more about it, but I've only been here a few years, and I'm afraid I'm no historian."

  "Neither am I," I told him, and we retraced our steps towards the porch.

  "Do you know anything," I asked, "about the lords of the manor in early times?"

  He paused to switch off the lights. "Only what I have read in the Parochial History," he said. "The manor is mentioned in Domesday as Tiwardrai--the House on the Strand--and it belonged to the great family of Cardinham until the last heiress Isolda sold it to the Champernounes, in the thirteenth century, and when they died out it passed to other hands."

  "Isolda?"

  "Yes, Isolda de Cardinham. She married someone called William Ferrers of Bere in Devon, but I'm afraid I don't remember the details. You would find out more about it in the St. Austell public library than from me." He smiled again, and we passed through the door to the churchyard. "Are you staying in the neighborhood or passing through?" he asked.

  "Staying. Professor Lane has lent me his house for the summer."

  "Kilmarth? I know it, of course, but I've never been inside. I don't think Professor Lane gets down very often, and he doesn't come to church."

  "No," I replied, "probably not."

  "Well," he said, as we parted at the gate, "if you feel like coming, either to a service or just to wander around, it will be nice to see you."

  We shook hands, and I walked up the road to where I had parked the car. I wondered whether I had been impossibly rude. I had not even thanked him for his courtesy, or introduced myself. Doubtless he considered me just another summer visitor, more boorish than usual, and a crank into the bargain. I got into the car, lit a cigarette, and sat there to collect my thoughts. The fact that there had been no physical reaction to the drug whatsoever was an astonishing relief. Not a suspicion of dizziness or nausea, and my limbs did not ache as they had done the day before, nor was I sweating.

  I wound down the car window and looked up the street, then back again to the church. None of it fitted. The green where the people had so lately crowded must have covered all the present area, and beyond it too, where the modern road turned uphill. The Priory yard, where the bishop's equipage nearly came to grief, would have been in that hollow below the gents' hair-dresser, boundering the east wall of the churchyard, and the Priory itself, according to one theory mentioned by the vicar, filled the entire space that the southern portion of the churchyard held today. I closed my eyes. I saw the entrance, the quadrangle, the long narrow building forming kitchens and refectory, monks' dormitory, chapter-house, where the reception had been held, and the Prior's chamber above. Then I opened them again, but the pieces did not fit, and the church tower threw my jigsaw puzzle out of balance. It was no good--nothing tallied save the lie of the land.

  I threw away my cigarette, started the car, and took the road past the church. A curious feeling of elation came to me as I swept downhill past the valley stream, and so to the low-lying, straggling shops of Par. Not ten minutes since the whole of this had been under water, the sloping Priory lands lapped by the sea. Sand-banks had bordered the wide sweep of the estuary where those bungalows stood now, and houses and shops were all blue channel with a running tide. I stopped the car by the chemists' and bought some toothpaste, the feeling of elation increasing as the girl wrapped it up. It seemed to me that she was without substance, the shop as well, and the two other people standing there, and I felt myself
smiling furtively because of this, with an urge to say, "You none of you exist. All this is under water."

  I stood outside the shop, and it had stopped raining. The heavy pall that had been overhead all day had broken at last into a patchwork sky, squares of blue alternating with wisps of smoky cloud. Too soon to go back home. Too early to ring Magnus. One thing I had proved, if nothing else: this time there had been no telepathy between us. He might have had some intuition of my movements the preceding afternoon, but not today. The laboratory in Kilmarth was not a bogey-hole conjuring up ghosts, any more than the porch in St. Andrew's church had been filled with phantoms. Magnus must be right in his assumption that some primary chemical process was reversible, the drug inducing this change; and conditions were such that the senses, reacting to the situation as a secondary effect, swung into action, capturing the past.

  I had not awakened from some nostalgic dream when the vicar tapped me on the shoulder, but had passed from one living reality to another. Could time be all-dimensional--yesterday, today, tomorrow running concurrently in ceaseless repetition? Perhaps it needed only a change of ingredient, a different enzyme, to show the future, myself a bald-headed buffer in New York with the boys grown-up and married, and Vita dead. The thought was disconcerting. I would rather concern myself with the Champernounes, the Carminowes, and Isolda. No telepathic communication here: Magnus had mentioned none of them, but the vicar had, and only after I had seen them as living persons.

  Then I decided what to do: I would drive to St. Austell and see if there was some volume in the public library that would give proof of their identity.

  The library was perched above the town, and I parked the car and went inside. The girl at the desk was helpful. She advised me to go upstairs to the reference library, and search for pedigrees in a book called The Visitations of Cornwall.

  I took the fat volume from the shelves and settled myself at one of the tables. First glance in alphabetical order was disappointing. No Bodrugans and no Champernounes. No Carminowes either. And no Cardinhams. I turned to the beginning once again, and then, with quickening interest, realized that I must have muddled the pages the first time, for I came upon the Carminowes of Carminowe. I let my eye travel down the page, and there Sir John was, married to a Joanna into the bargain--he must have found the similarity of name of wife and mistress confusing. He had a great brood of children, and one of his grandsons, Miles, had inherited Boconnoc. Boconnoc... Bockenod... a change in the spelling, but this was my Sir John without a doubt.