The Unburied

by Charles Palliser

  ‘I’m glad to see you’ve recovered your spirits,’ I said.

  ‘I beg your pardon for having disturbed you last night, old fellow,’ he said, lowering his eyes. ‘As it turned out, I scared myself much more than I frightened you with that story.’

  ‘You certainly seemed to be very frightened. Do you remember that you were muttering about vengeance and punishment and justice?’

  He turned away to tend to the coffee. ‘I had a nightmare about Gambrill, the Cathedral Mason. You remember that he had a journeyman who was suspected of being involved in his murder? His name was Limbrick and many years before, his father died in an accident on the Cathedral roof in which Gambrill was badly injured and lost an eye. His widow said at the time that the two men had quarrelled and she accused Gambrill of killing him.’

  ‘Gracious heavens,’ I said cheerfully as I sat down and began to attack my breakfast. ‘What a murderous little town! Then was she the woman you were talking about?’

  He looked startled. ‘The woman? What did I say?’

  ‘It was hard to make it out. You mentioned a “she” who was insisting on closing someone’s account. Was it the young man’s mother?’

  ‘The young man’s mother?’ he repeated staring at me. ‘What can you mean?’

  I could not hide my surprise: ‘Limbrick’s widow, of course. The mother of the young workman.’

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Yes, it must have been. She had been brooding for years about her husband’s death and goading her son into avenging him.’

  As we breakfasted – hastily, because Austin was in danger of being late for school – I said that I was going immediately to the Dean and Chapter’s Library in the hope of speaking to Dr Locard, though my letter would only have reached him yesterday. Austin explained that his duties would preoccupy him until the evening but that we would dine together in the town.

  We left the house and Austin closed the door behind him. ‘You may come and go as you please and have no need of a key.’

  ‘Don’t you lock the door?’ I asked.

  ‘Never. But I hide the keys.’

  I wondered what he meant by that for it seemed strange to hide the door-key when the door itself was not locked. And in fact, since he put it into his pocket as we set off, he must have been referring to another set of keys.

  The Close was as cold and foggy as it had been the previous day. Peering up, I noticed some doves cowering under the eaves of the Cathedral and it occurred to me that one sees more clearly in the fog because one has to look harder. The sight of the birds performing their elaborate dance on the narrow ledges brought to mind a Scottish castle I had once stayed in which stood on a perilous cliff beside the ocean. Our room was at the top of a lofty tower and seagulls would perch precariously on the window-sills and utter their melancholy cries like insistent soothsayers.

  Austin told me he could not give himself the pleasure, as he put it with a grimace, of introducing me to Dr Locard because he was already late for his first class, but he directed me to the south-eastern corner of the Upper Close where the Library was, and then hurried off.

  When I had climbed the worn stone stairs and pushed open a heavy oaken door, my nostrils were assailed by the smell of old books, ancient leather, beeswax and candles. A long and handsome gallery was before me for the Library had originally been the Great Hall of the Abbey. This floor was divided at intervals by bays projecting at right-angles from the walls and carrying bookshelves so that there was only a narrow way through its centre. The bays were big old oak constructions rising to a height several feet above a man’s head. This part was the old chained library and many of the books were still fastened in that way.

  A young man was sitting at a desk near the door. He stood up as I came in. When I told him I had business with Dr Locard and that I had written to him, to my delight he said that the Librarian was expecting me and asked me to follow him.

  ‘This must be a pleasant place to work,’ I ventured as we began to walk the full length of the gallery.

  My companion was a little plump, in his late twenties, with a face which, though not handsome, conveyed that its owner was clever and amusing. He nodded vigorously: ‘It is perfectly delightful in the summer but in the winter, somewhat dark and cold for my taste.’

  ‘It seems cosy and cheerful enough now,’ I said. ‘And one might almost be back in the seventeenth century, so little appears modern.’

  Just before we passed through a door at the end of the gallery into what seemed once to have been a different building, the young man turned and said: ‘You’re quite right, sir. I often feel as if some of the extraordinary characters who worked here at that time are looking over my shoulder: Burgoyne, Freeth and Hollingrake.’

  ‘That can’t be altogether reassuring,’ I suggested and he laughed, and then composed his features as he knocked on a door to our left and walked straight in. It was a big ancient room with oaken panelling all round the walls, a number of tall and heavy display-cases, and a large black book-press filled with ancient leather-bound volumes. A man was seated at a desk beneath the window and he stood up as we entered. He was tall and still handsome in his middle fifties, with fastidious grey eyes that conveyed much acuity but little warmth. I knew of Dr Locard’s reputation as an excellent scholar – though his field was not my own – and in particular, as a fine Latinist.

  He greeted me by name and we shook hands. I seated myself at his invitation and he introduced me to my escort who, he explained, was his first assistant and whose name was Quitregard. The young man made to leave but Dr Locard called out as he reached the door: ‘Would you tell Pomerance to bring coffee for my guest and myself.’ He turned to me: ‘Would you care for a cup?’

  I accepted with thanks.

  Quitregard, however, replied: ‘Pomerance has not arrived yet, sir. Would you like me to bring it?’

  ‘Please don’t bother on my account,’ I said. ‘I’ve just had my breakfast.’

  ‘Very well. Then we’ll defer it until Mr Pomerance condescends to favour us with his presence.’

  Quitregard left and Dr Locard nodded at the closing door: ‘That young man will make a fine librarian one day. His Latin is very adequate and he is familiar with a variety of early hands.’

  I told him his assistant had impressed me very favourably and then we turned to our business.

  ‘Your letter arrived yesterday and I am perfectly intrigued by it,’ the Librarian said. ‘For although the subject is far removed from my own area of interest, the Library subscribes to the Proceedings of the English Historical Society and so I happen to have read both your paper and Scuttard’s response to it.’

  ‘I’m very pleased to hear that. But I hope you were not convinced by Scuttard’s argument?’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of venturing an opinion in an area of such complexity outside my own province. But he was very persuasive. He is a scholar of remarkable abilities and achievement – though still barely forty – from whom even greater things are expected. His book on the eighth century has blown away much of the mist of unsupported assumptions which has until now obscured the subject.’

  I was rather taken aback by this response. ‘However that may be – and I think he dismisses too readily some very brilliant insights by earlier scholars – he is wrong in this regard.’

  Dr Locard looked at me dispassionately: ‘If you find what you hope to, you will completely destroy his argument. What I don’t understand from your letter, however, is why you are so optimistic.’

  ‘I don’t know if you are familiar with the name of the antiquarian and scholar, Ralph Pepperdine?’

  Dr Locard nodded. ‘The author of De Antiquitatibus Britanniae?’

  ‘Just so. Well, he died in 1689 and left his papers to his old College – my own, as it happens. Shamefully, they have never been properly examined. Just two weeks ago I looked at them because I was coming here and remembered that Pepperdine had once visited this town. I found a letter written by him whil
e he was visiting this Library in 1663.’

  ‘Really? I imagine it might offer an interesting perspective on the Foundation at that difficult time.’

  ‘Indeed so and there is something in it which will, I think, be of particular interest to yourself.’ I removed from my portfolio the handwritten copy I had made. ‘Pepperdine gives a description by an eyewitness of the death of Dean Freeth.’

  ‘Really? Does it differ significantly from the accepted version?’

  ‘That his death arose from a misunderstanding of the orders given and was completely unintended?’

  ‘Yes, though that version was proffered by the officer in charge who had every reason to account for it in that way.’

  ‘Pepperdine gives a completely different explanation.’

  Dr Locard smiled. ‘Then it makes all existing discussion of the incident entirely inadequate. When a competent historian of the Foundation appears he will be in your debt.’

  ‘Is there not already such a history?’

  ‘Nothing since a ponderous work published in the middle of the last century. And there is nothing of any quality in prospect, though there are some amateurish efforts being undertaken whose use of the sources is most unscholarly. What does Pepperdine say?’

  ‘The opening of his letter need not detain us. He describes the journey and the state of the roads and says he arrived two weeks earlier and is lodged in the Palace with his old friend, the Bishop. This is the interesting part:

  At supper yesternight with Mr Dean I heard an account of the death of the late Dean which gives the lie to the story given out. As you most likely know, when the Parliamentary forces captured the town, they shamefully made the Dean a prisoner in his own dwelling because he was mightily affected to the kings party and it was feared that he might incite the people to resistance. My intelligence is from one Champniss who has been a Canon Residentiary here for upwards of four decades and greatly loved the unfortunate Freeth. On the morning of his death, Champniss saw six troopers enter the Close who appeared to be drunk and who forced their way into the corner where the Library is. Then they started to sack the building – smashing the windows and looting and stealing. The old man told me that the Dean must have seen this from one of the windows of his Deanery and that, mightily perturbed by this act of desecration, he hastened forth from his dwelling in order to restrain them in defiance of the state of arrest under which he had been placed. When Champniss saw him run into the building he feared for his life and himself hurried thither in order to remonstrate with the soldiers. When he rounded the corner of the building a minute or two later he found the Dean kneeling on the ground in front of the soldiers clutching a document and praying. Champniss heard him begging aloud for God’s forgiveness for his murderers – one of whom was a mere boy who was in tears. As Champniss came up to him, the Dean saw him and urged him away with his hand. Two of the soldiers seized Champniss and forced him away from that place and just at that moment he saw an officer approaching who he knew bore a grudge against the Dean which was wholly unjustified. As he turned the corner a few seconds later he heard the discharge of two or three pieces. Even as the old man recounted this incident that happened about twenty years ago, he was in tears.

  I broke off. The implication is clearly that the officer himself ordered the Dean’s death, is it not?’

  ‘The image Pepperdine presents is so emblematic that it arouses suspicion.’ Dr Locard compressed his lips in an ironic smile. ‘Do you know the work of Charles Landseer?’ I nodded. ‘It would suit his mawkish sentimentality, would it not? Even to the sobbing boy-soldier for there is usually a good-looking lad in his pictures. Can you not imagine a canvas called “The Dean of Thurchester prays for his murderers”?’

  I smiled. ‘But even allowing that the old man was partial, that does not discredit his account.’

  ‘Of course not. But it is also possible that Pepperdine is misreporting the old gentleman’s words.’

  ‘I can’t imagine any reason why he would do that.’

  The Librarian regarded me speculatively for a moment. ‘Really? My principle as a historian, when I am faced with a conflict of evidence, is to work out what view of events each witness regarded it as being in his own interests to promote. That seems to me to be the best chance one has of arriving at the truth. So in this case, if Pepperdine was writing to a powerful Royalist he might have good reasons for weighting the story in the Dean’s favour, might he not?’

  ‘His correspondent, Giles Bullivant, was merely another scholar with no political influence. He and Pepperdine were interested in the transmission of classical texts in the late middle ages, and that was why Pepperdine had come to the town. He was to be disappointed in his hopes because little had been done to sort out the manuscripts after the sacking of the Library.’

  ‘And I’m afraid that you will find that little has been done in the succeeding two centuries.’

  I gazed at him in astonishment.

  ‘That is the literal truth. Nothing has been done to most of the manuscripts since they were roughly sorted out in 1643. What does he say about where he found the manuscript which interests you?’

  ‘He is exasperatingly imprecise: I searched the upper floor of the Old Library and found nothing of interest. The manuscripts in the undercroft of the New Library are grievously disordered and it would be the work of many days, or even weeks, to examine them and not worth the labour since they seem to be for the most part records of the abbey in the old times.’

  I broke off. ‘Can you explain what he means?’

  He smiled. ‘I will show you, for very little has changed since he wrote those words.’

  I shrugged my shoulders to express my surprise and continued with my account of the letter. ‘Then he writes: I chanced upon a manuscript of some interest, I suppose, to those who concern themselves with the early history of the uncouth tribes who ruled in this land in the age of darkness before the Conquest. It recounts – in woefully bad Latin – the story of a king whose former tutor is slain before his eyes by the heathen who have captured his capital, of which the old man is bishop. I therefore left it where I had found it.’

  ‘And what do you believe he had found?’

  ‘Since he knew nothing of the Anglo-Saxon period, Pepperdine did not recognize that the manuscript he was summarizing was a version of a story in Grimbald’s Life.’

  Dr Locard started. As calmly as I was able I said, hoping he would not notice the tremor in my voice: ‘I am convinced that it is nothing less than Grimbald’s original text.’

  ‘In that case, it would establish beyond all argument how much Leofranc altered his source.’

  ‘And prove that he did not compose the whole thing, as Scuttard absurdly maintains, but merely revised the existing text.’

  ‘That would constitute an earthquake in Alfredian studies, I assume.’

  ‘If Grimbald is largely authentic – as I believe – his Life would have to be taken seriously as a major source for the period.’

  ‘You must be eager to begin the search. Let me show you the Library.’

  He led me back into the great hall and we ascended an old wooden staircase to the huge upper floor where daylight came in through the top half of the tall windows allowing me to admire the handsome hammerbeam roof.

  ‘After the looting and the fire,’ Dr Locard explained, ‘hundreds of books and manuscripts were gathered up where they had been thrown. The printed books were placed on the ground floor and were sorted out over the next months and years, but the manuscripts were an immense problem. Many of them were in obscure languages or in hands that were hard to read so the Librarian made a crude division: they were sorted into those which were to be catalogued as soon as possible and those which could wait.’

  ‘On what basis was this division made?’

  ‘Those that could wait were for the most part the Foundation’s own muniments – fabric records, rent-rolls, and so on – and they were taken down to the undercroft of the
New Library and have hardly been looked at since then. The important ones were brought up here to be catalogued.’

  He showed me the section of the shelves on which the manuscripts were kept.

  ‘And has that been done?’

  ‘That work only started eight years ago when I became Librarian.’ He paused and said with quiet impressiveness: ‘In another six months I expect to be able to report to the Dean and Chapter that we have finished. Those which remain to be done are for the most part ones which should have been placed in the undercroft in 1643.’

  ‘I congratulate you, Dr Locard.’

  He nodded in brief acknowledgement. ‘Let us go down to the undercroft now.’

  We descended the stairs and as we passed along the length of the lower floor, we encountered the young assistant at his desk in one of the bays. ‘Ah, Quitregard,’ said Dr Locard. ‘Would you bring a lamp and accompany us down to the undercroft?’

  A moment later we had passed into the part of the building known as the New Library and from which the undercroft was entered, and were making our way carefully down a dark staircase with the young man in front of us to light our way. That was essential for it had no gas-lighting and was nothing more than the ancient cellarage of the old hall, and smelt strongly of dust and spiders and old paper.

  The undercroft was huge and for several minutes the two men led me around the maze of ancient book-presses, at each turn more shelves laden with bundles of yellowing manuscript and ancient leathern cartularies coming into view in the flickering light in Quitregard’s hand. It was immediately clear to me that Pepperdine had been right: it would be the work of years rather than months to sift through these heaps of paper and vellum.

  Thank goodness’, I said, ‘that I do not have to search down here.’

  Dr Locard stopped and turned to look at me: ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Simply because Pepperdine did not search through them and therefore did not find the manuscript here.’