by Sarah Rayne
‘Yes.’ Michael’s eyes were shadowed, but he said, half to himself, ‘So there was a sister – a twin sister, who was taken back to Rede Abbas.’ He sat up a little straighter, as if pushing back the clustering shadows, and said, ‘Owen, it’s all tremendous. You’ve done a marvellous job.’
‘More to come though, dear boy. I just have to tackle the remainder of the diaries.’
‘We’ll look forward to hearing them,’ said Nell. ‘But I do wonder what became of Andrew and Theodora.’
‘We’ll probably never find out.’
But next morning brought a gleeful email from Owen, bearing an attachment.
Nell and Michael – I almost broke the keyboard on my computer in my haste to send this to you. It’s from the contact I have at the Bodleian – I told you how helpful he was in giving me access to Cuthwin.
Anyway, he was interested in the research – I didn’t tell him about Thaisa’s diary, of course, we’ll save that for a massive and dramatic announcement when we’re sure of its authenticity – and he delved a bit more. In some dusty and long-forgotten file, he’s found a letter that seems to have accompanied Egbert’s submission of the Cuthwin translation. He’s scanned it and sent it to me, and I’m forwarding it to you.
It was originally sent to a Bulkeley Bandinel – I do know that sounds impossibly Dickensian, or even Sheridan-ish (Sheridonian?), but he was a real person, a Reverend Doctor, Dean of New College, no less, and head librarian at the Bod for almost fifty years. Brother Egbert seems to have been a contemporary of his, and certainly knew him, because in 1858 he sent his translation of the Cuthwin papers, together with a covering letter. It’s that letter I’m attaching. Read and rejoice!
Owen.
Nell, too, almost smashed the computer’s keyboard to get at the attachment. For a sickening moment she thought her computer’s software was not going to recognize it, and she spent an agonized minute calling down curses on pdf files, Adobe Readers, and every other form of technological tool.
Then the attachment opened, and there it was.
My dear old friend,
At long last my opus magnus is completed, and I send it to you so it can be part of your august and scholarly collection.
Deciphering Brother Cuthwin and transposing him into more modern terminology has been an absorbing and even an emotional experience. Such brutal times our forebears lived through! If you have time, do glance through the pages so that we may discuss them when next we meet – which, please God, will be soon.
It was, though, disturbing to read Cuthwin’s description of how a young girl was walled up in an old bell tower which is still standing in Rede Abbas today. Sadly, that girl does not seem to have survived, and after working on that section I asked our own Father Abbot to hold a Mass for her, which we duly did, choosing St Theresa’s Feast Day.
However, there is a strange echo from that story, which reverberates down to our own time. You may recall I wrote to you about a young novice, Brother Andrew Fergus? Such an intelligent, sensitive young man, and the finest Precentor I have ever known – a real love for, and understanding of, music. (A somewhat robust life before he entered St Benedict’s, I believe, but I do not know any details, and it does not matter.)
We had to charge Andrew with the task of accompanying a young local girl to safety following a most unfortunate altercation here in our village. Brother Ranulf, Father Abbot and I felt Andrew was the best person for this, being recently come to St Benedict’s and therefore worldier than the rest of us who have been cloistered for so many years.
It was the purest chance and God’s mercy that we heard how a group of local people, incensed by what they felt to be an injustice, brought Andrew back and actually imprisoned him inside the bell tower. It was not thought there was much chance of reaching him before the tide came rushing in, but of course we had to try.
You may picture the scene, my old friend. Myself, along with Brother Ranulf, our infirmarian, Brother Wilfrid, and Father Abbot himself, went out to the tower. A storm-tossed night it was, with strange keening voices in the wind and even the impression of the great bell sounding from the tower. That could not be so, of course, for the ancient bell, known as the Glaum bell, was silenced during Cromwell’s dissolution of the religious houses. I believe it only sounded a few times, in fact, before the Commissioners removed its tongue, saying the inscription was ungodly.
And yet as we went through the darkness we all heard sonorous chimes from the Glaum bell, and we exchanged uneasy glances. I found myself remembering the inscription on the great bell of Schaffhausen Minster. You remember it, I am sure, from our studies and travels.
‘Vivos voco; mortuos plango; fulgura frango … ’ ‘I call the living, I mourn the dead, I break the lightning.’
When we reached the tower, it was to find that the villagers, may God grant them forgiveness, had imprisoned Andrew in the old bell-ringing room, boarding up the doorway. The sea was already starting to gush in and the lower room was several inches deep. However, Brother Wilfrid, a robustly built person, managed to wade up to the ringing chamber, and shouted to us to help him. There was Andrew, helpless behind nailed-up boards, and it took our combined strengths (which without Wilfrid would have been puny), to break through to reach him. He was in a pitiable state, shivering, icily cold and barely conscious. As we carried him down the stairs we feared he had fallen prey to delusions, for he broke away from us and began scrabbling beneath the waters filling up the ground-floor room. When Wilfrid and I attempted to take him through the door, he began to shout that someone was trapped under the floor.
‘Theodora,’ he said. ‘Theodora is down there. We must get her out.’
We stared at him, for Theodora Eynon was the young girl he had taken to Oxford. We did not entirely believe him, but he was so insistent, and so fierce in his struggles, that we had to help him.
‘Even if Theodora is down there,’ murmured Father Abbot to me, ‘she will long since have drowned – the water is already knee-deep.’
We could not stop Andrew in his frantic search, and it was a nightmarish time. The tower was dark, save for Brother Ranulf’s oil lamp (which kept flickering to almost nothing); all of us were drenched to the skin, and the water was rising. Still, we plunged into the waters with our hands, but I know we were all close to giving up. As Father Abbot said, even if Theodora was there, she must long since be dead.
Then Wilfrid shouted that a section of the floor felt insecure, and at once Andrew was at his side, both of them plunging their hands into the black sea, all of us thigh-deep in the lapping waters by that time.
Wilfrid had found several planks of wood laid on the tower’s stone floor, and by dint of working furiously and applying all his strength, the plank finally came away with a dreadful wet sucking noise. Above us the old bell mechanism stirred restlessly.
‘Don’t listen to it,’ said Father Abbot, as I flinched. ‘The best we can do is get the girl’s body out for decent burial now. That may be of some comfort to Andrew.’
‘If,’ I said, softly, ‘she is there at all.’
But she was. Wilfrid plunged his hands down again, and moments later he and Andrew were dragging Theodora free of the dreadful grave fashioned for her, and lifting her above the water level. Water streamed from her, and her hair hung over her face and neck in strings.
‘But Andrew – my poor good friend – she is certainly dead,’ said Wilfrid as we carried her outside.
Andrew said, ‘No. You don’t understand. She has … I believe she has her family’s taint. Their sickness.’
‘Taint? Sickness?’ We had reached the start of the cliff path, and were about to climb up above the high tide level.
‘Andrew,’ I said, ‘Wilfrid is right. She must have been dead for some time.’
That was when Andrew Fergus said, ‘No. She has catalepsy.’
And Theodora opened her eyes.’
Nell had hardly finished reading this, when the morning post arrived, slapping through the letterb
ox loudly.
It was a large envelope with the frank of Corby & Sons, Solicitors. The new lease, thought Nell. I’ve really done it. I really do have those two shops – Michael and I have them jointly. She considered this and realized she was smiling.
Corby’s had indeed sent the new lease, suitably and officially sealed, with Nell and Michael’s signatures at the foot.
With it was what Nell thought was called the Abstract of Title – the summary of all previous activity and ownerships or lessees of the property in question. She sat down at the kitchen table to flip through this. She had looked through her own lease when she took the single shop on, but this now included Godfrey’s shop. Curious to see if the monks figured anywhere or, indeed, if Edward Glaum and Seamus Flannery’s names were listed, Nell began to scan that part of the document.
She got as far as 1860. Because, in that year, the lease of Godfrey’s shop had been assigned to two people for ‘business purposes’. Their names were clearly listed.
Andrew Fergus and Theodora Fergus (neé Eynon). Purpose of business: Bookshop.
‘I’m so glad,’ said Nell, as she and Michael drove away from Rede Abbas after the inquest on Maeve Eynon, ‘that Andrew and Theodora finally got together. I think a bookshop was exactly right for them. And I’m more than glad that the wretched inquest of that poor creature, Maeve Eynon, is behind us.’
‘Yes. Suicide while the balance of the mind was disturbed. A predictable verdict. Poor old Maeve,’ said Michael. ‘I suppose she was the last of the family.’
From: Olive Orchard
To: Daniel Goodbody
Daniel –
I thought they gave Maeve Eynon a very nice funeral, all things considered. I’ve just heard, though, that she left specific instructions that she was to be cremated. However, in view of the curious circumstances of her death, the coroner refused to grant a cremation order. It seems a shame her wishes could not be followed, but it can’t make any difference to her whether she’s cremated or buried.
Don’t forget we still have to have that drink!
Olive
‘The traffic’s a bit snarled up, isn’t it?’ said Michael, as he and Nell drove back to Oxford. ‘We’re a bit later than I bargained for.’
‘Me too. That’s why I’m taking these side roads. It might avoid some of the snarl-up.’
‘Isn’t this,’ said Michael, presently, ‘the road where Beth photographed a house with a maple tree?’
‘It’s that turning there. We don’t need to take it – we can go straight down.’
‘No, let’s take it.’
‘Why?’
‘Only so I can tell Beth I saw the house.’
Nell nodded, and indicated left.
‘It is lovely,’ said Michael, as they reached the house.
Nell had slowed down. ‘It’s for sale,’ she said, suddenly.
‘Wasn’t it for sale before?’
‘No.’ Nell was seeing that her memory of the house had been exact. The big windows, the impression of book-lined rooms, gentle sunlight, companionship …
‘It says the keys can be borrowed from the agents,’ said Michael, looking at the ‘For Sale’ board.
‘It’ll be massively overpriced.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Mortgages and things,’ said Nell.
‘Royalties from book sales and things,’ said Michael.
They looked at one another.
‘Shall we at least borrow the keys and look round?’ he said.
Nell thought about the money it would take to buy this house. She thought about the money that had already been outlaid for Quire Court, but then she thought the shops might do extremely well, and she remembered that the antique workshop weekends were already amassing bookings. She remembered Jack Hurst observing how the newly created flat over the two shops would command a high rent.
She went on looking at the house, thinking that within its rooms would be a great deal of happiness.
Within its rooms would be Michael and Beth.
Michael said, hesitantly, ‘We could think about it, and borrow the keys another time.’
Nell reached for his hand. ‘Let’s borrow the keys now,’ she said.