The House on the Strand

CHAPTER THREE

IT RAINED THE following day, one of those steady mizzles that accompany a drifting fog from the sea, preventing any enjoyment out of doors. I awoke feeling perfectly normal, having slept surprisingly well, but when I drew back the curtains and saw the state of the weather I went back to bed again, despondent, wondering what I was going to do with myself all day.

This was the Cornish climate about which Vita had expressed her doubts, and I could imagine her reproaches if it happened when the holidays were in full swing, my young stepsons staring aimlessly out of the window, then forced into wellingtons and macs and sent, protesting, to walk along the sands at Par. Vita would wander from music-room to library altering the position of the furniture, saying how much better she could arrange the rooms if they were hers, and when this palied she would telephone one of her many friends from the American Embassy crowd in London, themselves outward bound for Sardinia or Greece. These symptoms of discontent I was spared for a while longer, and the days ahead of me, wet or fine, were at least free, my own time for my own movements. The obliging Mrs. Collins brought me up my breakfast and the morning paper, commiserated with me about the weather, saying that the Professor always found plenty to do in that funny little old room of his down under, and informed me that she would roast one of her own chickens for my lunch. I had no intention of going down under, and opened the morning paper and drank my coffee. But the doubtful interest of the sports page soon palled, and my attention wandered back to the all-absorbing question of exactly what had happened to me the previous afternoon.

Had there been some telepathic communication between Magnus and myself?

We had tried this at Cambridge, with cards and numbers, but it had never worked, except once or twice by pure coincidence. And we had been more intimate in those days than we were now. I could think of no means, telepathic or otherwise, by which Magnus and I could have undergone the same experience, separated by an interval of some three months — it was Easter, apparently, when he had tried the drug himself — unless that experience was directly connected with previous happenings at Kilmarth. Part of the brain, Magnus had suggested, was susceptible to reversal, restoring conditions, when under the influence of the drug, to an earlier period in its chemical history. Yet why that particular time? Had the horseman planted so indelible a stamp on his surroundings that any previous or later period was blotted out?

I thought back to the days when I had stayed at Kilmarth as an undergraduate. The atmosphere was casual, happy-go-lucky. I remembered asking Mrs. Lane once whether the house was haunted. My question was an idle one, for certainly it did not have a haunted atmosphere — I asked simply because it was old.

"Good heavens, no!" she exclaimed. "We're far too wrapped up in ourselves to encourage ghosts. Poor things, they'd wither away from tedium, unable to draw attention to themselves. Why do you ask?"

"No reason," I assured her, afraid I might have given offence. "Only that most old houses like to boast a spook."

"Well, if there is one at Kilmarth we've never heard it," she said. "The house has always seemed such a happy one to us. There's nothing particularly interesting about its history, you know. It belonged to a family called Baker in sixteen hundred and something, and they had it until the Rashleighs rebuilt the place in the eighteenth century. I can't tell you about its origins, but someone told us once that it has fourteenth-century foundations."

That was the end of the matter, but now her remarks about early fourteenth-century foundations returned to me. I thought about the basement rooms and the courtyard leading out of them, and Magnus's curious choice of the old laundry for his laboratory. Doubtless he had his reasons. It was well away from the lived-in part of the house, and he would not be disturbed by callers or Mrs. Collins. I got up rather late and wrote letters in the library, did justice to Mrs. Collins roast chicken, and tried to keep my thoughts on the future and what I was going to decide about that offer of a New York partnership. It was no use. The whole thing seemed remote. Time enough when Vita arrived and we could discuss it together.

I looked out of the music-room window and watched Mrs. Collins walk up the drive on her way home. It was still drizzling, and a long, uninviting afternoon lay ahead. I don't know when it was that the idea came to me. Perhaps I had been harbouring it unconsciously since I awoke. I wanted to prove that there had been no telepathic communication between Magnus and myself when I had taken the drug the day before in the laboratory. He had told me he had made his first experiment there, and so had I. Perhaps some thought process had passed between us at the moment when I actually swallowed the stuff, so influencing my train of ideas and what I saw, or imagined I saw, during the course of the afternoon. If the drug was taken elsewhere, not in that baleful laboratory with its suggestive likeness to an alchemist's cell, might not the effect be different? I should never know unless I tried it out. There was a small pocket-flask in the pantry cupboard — I had noticed it the evening before — and I got it out now, and rinsed it under the cold tap. This did not commit me to anything one way or another. Then I went downstairs to the basement, and, feeling like the shadow of my boyhood self when I had sneaked a bar of forbidden chocolate during Lent, I turned the key in the door of the laboratory.

It was a simple matter to disregard the specimens in their jars and reach for the neat little row of labelled bottles. As yesterday, I measured the drops from bottle A, but into the pocket flask this time. Then I locked the laboratory door behind me, went across the yard to the stable block, and fetched the car.

I drove slowly up the drive, turned left out of the lane to the main road, and went down Polmear hill, pausing when I reached the bottom to survey the scene. Here, where the almshouses and the inn stood now, had been yesterday's ford. The lie of the land had not altered, despite the modern road, but the valley where the tide had swept inward was now marsh. I took the lane to Tywardreath, thinking, with some misgiving, that if I had in fact taken this same route yesterday, under the influence of the drug, I could have been knocked down by a passing car without hearing it.

I drove down the steep, narrow lane to the village and parked the car a little above the church. There was still a light rain falling, and nobody was about. A van drove up the main Par road and disappeared. A woman came out of the grocer's shop and walked uphill in the same direction. No one else appeared. I got out of the car, opened the iron gates into the churchyard, and stood in the church porch to shelter from the rain. The churchyard itself sloped away in a southerly direction until it terminated at the boundary wall, and beneath it were farm-buildings. Yesterday, in that other world, there were no buildings, only the blue waters of a creek filling the valley with the incoming tide, and the Priory buildings had covered the space the churchyard held today.

I knew the lie of the land better now. If the drug took effect I could leave the car where it was and walk home. There was no one around. Then, like a diver taking a plunge into some arctic pool, I took the flask and swallowed the contents. The instant I had done so panic seized me. This second dose might have a quite different effect. Make me sleep for hours. Should I stay where I was, or should I be better off in the car? The church porch gave me claustrophobia, so I went out and sat down on one of the tombstones, not far from the pathway but out of sight of the road. If I stayed quite still, without moving, perhaps nothing would happen. I began to pray, Don't let anything happen. Don't let the drug have any effect.

I went on sitting for about five minutes, too apprehensive about the possible effects of the drug to mind the rain. Then I heard the church clock strike three, and glanced down at my watch to check the time. It was a few minutes slow, so I altered it, and almost immediately I heard shouting from the village, or cheering, perhaps — a curious melange of the two — and a creaking sound like wheels. Oh God, what now, I thought, a travelling circus about to descend the village street? I shall have to move the car. I got up and started to walk along the path to the churchyard gate. I never arrived, because the gate had gone, and I was looking through a rounded window set in a stone wall, the window facing a cobbled quadrangle bounded by shingle paths.

The entrance gate at the far end of the quadrangle was open wide, and beyond it I could see a mass of people assembled on the green, men, women, children. The shouting was coming from them, and the creaking sounds were the wheels of an enormous covered wagon drawn by five horses, the second leader and the horse between the shafts carrying riders upon their backs. The wooden canopy surmounting the wagon was painted a rich purple and gold, and as I watched the heavy curtains concealing the front of the vehicle were drawn aside, the shouting and the applause from the crowd increased, and the figure which appeared in the aperture raised his hands in blessing. He was magnificently dressed in ecclesiastical robes, and I remembered that Roger and the Prior had spoken of an imminent visit by the Bishop of Exeter, and how apprehensive the Prior had been — doubtless with reason. This must be His Grace in person.

There was a sudden hush, and everyone went down upon their knees. The light was dazzling, the feeling had gone from my limbs, and nothing seemed to matter any more. I did not care — the drug could work on me as it wished; my only desire was to be part of the world about me.

I watched the bishop descend from his covered vehicle, and the crowd pressed forward. Then he entered the gate into the quadrangle, followed by his train. From some door beneath me I saw the Prior advance to meet him at the head of his flock of monks, and the entrance gates were closed against the crowd.

I looked over my shoulder and saw that I was standing in a vaulted chamber filled with a score or more of people, waiting to be presented, to judge by their hushed sense of expectancy. From their clothes they belonged to the gentry, and so presumably were permitted entrance to the Priory.

"Mark it well," said the voice in my ear, "she'll not wear paint on her face on this occasion."

My horseman, Roger, stood beside me, but his remarks were addressed to a companion, a man of about his own age or somewhat older, who put his hand before his mouth to stifle laughter.

"Painted or plain, Sir John will have her," he answered, "and what better moment than the eve of Martinmas, with his own lady safely brought to bed eight miles away at Bockenod?"

"It could be contrived," agreed the other, "but with some risk, for she cannot depend upon Sir Henry's absence. He will scarcely sleep at the Priory tonight, with the Bishop in the guest chamber. No, let them wait awhile longer, if only to whet appetite."

Scandal had not changed much through the centuries, then, and I wondered why this back-chat should intrigue me now, which, if it had been exchanged by my contemporaries at some social event, would have made me yawn. Perhaps, because I was eavesdropping in time and within monastic walls, the gossip held more spice. I followed the direction of their gaze to the small group near to the door, the favoured few, no doubt, to be presented. Which was the gallant Sir John — the same who liked a foot in both camps, if I remembered the Prior's comment rightly — and which the favoured lady of his choice, shorn of her paint? There were four men, three women and two youths, and the fashion of the women's headgear made it difficult to distinguish their features from a distance, swathed as they were in coif and wimple. I recognised the lord of the manor, Henry de Champernoune, the dignified, elderly man who had been at his prayers in the chapel yesterday. He was dressed more soberly than his friends, who wore tunics of varying colours hanging to mid-calf; with belts slung low beneath the hip, and pouch and dagger in the centre. All of them were bearded and had their hair curled to a fizz, which must have been the prevailing fashion. Roger and his companion had been joined by a newcomer in clerical dress, a rosary hanging from his belt. His red nose and slurred speech suggested a recent visit to the Prior's buttery.

"What is the order of precedence?" he mumbled. "As parish priest and chaplain to Sir Henry surely I should form part of his entourage?"

Roger laid a hand on his shoulder and swung him round to face the window. "Sir Henry can do without your breath, and his Grace the Bishop likewise, unless you wish to forfeit your position."

The newcomer protested, clinging nevertheless to the protection of the wall, then lowered himself on to the bench beside it. Roger shrugged his shoulder, turning to the companion at his side.

"It surprises me that Otto Bodrugan dares show his face," said his friend. "Not two years since he fought for Lancaster against the King. They say he was in London when the mob dragged Bishop Stapledon through the streets."

"He was not," replied Roger. "He was with many hundreds of the Queen's party up at Wallingford."

"Nevertheless, his position is delicate," said the other. "If I were the Bishop I should not look kindly upon the man reputed to have condoned the murder of my predecessor."

"His Grace has not the time to play politics," retorted Roger. "He will have his hands full with the diocese. Past causes are no concern of his. Bodrugan is here today by reason of the demesnes he shares with Champernoune, because his sister Joanna is Sir Henry's lady. Also, out of his obligation to Sir John. The two hundred marks he borrowed are still unpaid."

Commotion at the door made them move forward for a better view, small fry on the lower rungs of this particular ladder. The Bishop entered, the Prior beside him, sprucer and cleaner than when he had sat up in his tumbled bed with the scratching greyhound. The gentlemen made obeisance, the ladies curtseyed, and the Bishop extended his hand for each to kiss, while the Prior, flustered by the ceremonial, presented them in turn. Playing no part in their world I could move about at will, so long as I touched none of them, and I drew closer, curious to discover who was who in the company.

"Sir Henry de Champernoune, lord of the manor of Tywardreath," murmured the Prior, "lately returned from a pilgrimage to Campostella." My elderly knight stepped forward, bending low with one knee on the ground, and I was struck once more by his air of dignity and grace, coupled with humility. When he had kissed the extended hand he rose, and turned to the woman at his side.

"My wife Joanna, your Grace," he said, and she sank to the ground in an endeavour to equal her husband in humility, bringing off the gesture well. So this was the lady who would have painted her face but for the Bishop's visitation. I decided she had done well enough to let it alone. The wimple that framed her features was adornment enough, enhancing the charms of any woman, plain or beautiful. She was neither the one nor the other, but it did not surprise me that her fidelity to her conjugal vows had been in question. I had seen eyes like hers in women of my own world, full and sensual: one flick of the male head, and she'd be game.

"My son and heir, William," continued her husband, and one of the youths came forward to make obeisance.

"Sir Otto Bodrugan," continued Sir Henry, "and his lady, my sister Margaret."

It was evidently a closely knit world, for had not my horseman Roger remarked that Otto Bodrugan was brother to Joanna, Champernoune's wife, and so doubly connected with the lord of the manor? Margaret was small and pale, and evidently nervous, for she stumbled as she made her curtsey to His Grace, and would have fallen had not her husband caught her. I liked Bodrugan's looks: there was a panache about him, and he would, I thought, be a good ally in a duel or escapade. He must have had a sense of humour, too, for instead of colouring or looking vexed at his wife's gaffe he smiled and reassured her. His eyes, brown like those of his sister Joanna, were less prominent than hers, but I felt that he had his full share of her other qualities.

Bodrugan in his turn presented his eldest son Henry, and then stepped back to give way to the next man in the line. He had clearly been itching to put himself forward. Dressed more richly than either Bodrugan or Champernoune, he wore a self-confident smile on his lips. This time it was the Prior who made the introduction. "Our loved and respected patron, Sir John Carminowe of Bockenod," he announced, "without whom we in this Priory would have found ourselves hard-pressed for money in these troublous times."

Here then was the knight with a foot in either camp, one lady in confinement eight miles away, the other present in this chamber but not yet bedded. I was disappointed, expecting a roisterous type with a roving eye. He was none of these, but small and stout, puffed up with self-importance like a turkeycock. The lady Joanna must be easily pleased.

"Your Grace, he said in pompous tones, we are deeply honoured to have you here amongst 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 over-zealous — 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 travelled 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 favoured 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 curtsey, 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 jewelled 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 as 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 stuffing 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 his 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 woman'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 favoured 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, signalling 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 realised 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 amongst 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 entrance. 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, enquiring 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 Saint 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.