Charles Palliser (72 page)

“Why, Master Johnnie, they’re not worse!” she exclaimed in surprise, gesticulating to indicate that I should keep my voice down. “I reckon the vestry-men do the best they can but times are bad for everyone and there’s a fearsome number of famblies on the paritch. It’s the weather, and the Irish coming over and working under rates. The winters have been hard, and there’s been times when there’s been nought else to eat but nettles. But at least we don’t have the freehold. Them’s the ones I pity.”

I was about to ask what she meant but at this moment — some time past midnight —

Sukey’s aunt came in saying in a loud whisper: “Heaven be praised! The Lord seed fit to roll away her mountain and she died under the Blood as peaceful as any saint in the county.”

“Why, Auntie, Neighbour Treadgold weren’t never no Methody !” said Sukey.

“Indeed, child. But the Lord is infinite in His mercy and she ketched a-hold of the foot of the Lamb as she was a-dying.”

Then she saw a stranger sitting by the fire and it was some time before she could be made to recognise in me the neatly-dressed little boy she had last seen several years ago.

When she had taken off her bonnet, seated herself beside us, and eaten some of the broth that had been kept waiting for her, Sukey said : “Auntie, tell Master Johnnie the name of Sir Parceval’s lawyer as you used to see come and visit him at ’Ougham.”

She looked at us both in surprise and said: “Oh, you mean Mr Barbellion?”

Sukey looked at me in triumph.

I was taken aback, but I believed the old woman must have heard the name from Sukey and transferred it by mistake to Sir Perceval’s lawyer.

“I think you must be mistaken, Mrs Twelvetrees,” I said gently.

“No, I am not, saving your honour,” she protested. “And I’ll tell you what. Do you remember that day — oh, I don’t know how many year agone now, for you were only a very little chap, saving your reverence — when that fierce genel’man all in black met you and Susan in the buryin’-ground hard by, and give you both such a fright as she told me about arterwards?”

I nodded.

“Well,” she said, “that was Mr Barbellion, wasn’t it?”

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A chill ran through me at this for the old woman sounded very sure of her facts.

“Yes,” I said. “But did you see him?”

“Well, just you listen to me a minute, saving your honour,” she said tartly. “Now a little earlier that day I had been walking past the Rose and Crab with young Harry on my way here when that same genel’man, Mr Barbellion that I knowed from ’Ougham, pulled up in a chaise and arst Harry to hold the horses and promised him a penny. And when he got down he arst me to direct him to the vestry-clerk, so I showed him Clerk Advowson’s house and left him there. And it was soon arter that as he scared you both, as Susan told me arterwards. And I can tell you what he wanted of Mr Advowson — and he can tell you himself that what I say is the Bible truth. And what he wanted …”

I had stopped listening as I tried to work out the implications of this revelation, and, seeing the effect it had had on me, Sukey put her hand on her aunt’s arm to quiet her.

My world was turned upside-down by this news. First it occurred to me to wonder why the Mompessons wished my mother and me harm: why they had bribed Bissett to cheat us and then incited my mother’s creditors to take action against her. They must have wanted to apply financial pressures against her in order to force her to sell the codicil to them. Well, they had achieved their purpose. But then I wondered if this revelation cast any light on the puzzling question of why they had sent me to Quigg’s school since it was essential for their interests that I remained alive. I cast my mind back over the sequence of events that led me to the school: Mr Steplight had come to us at Mrs Fortisquince’s and we had gone there because Miss Quilliam had brought Mr Barbellion to our lodgings in Orchard-street. Mr Barbellion! Suddenly it burst upon me that we had been mistaken in assuming that Miss Quilliam had betrayed us to our enemy that day. On the contrary, she had indeed gone to Sir Perceval and he had sent his attorney, Barbellion!

Now the room swam about my head as the question thrust itself at me: who, in that case, was it that Mrs Fortisquince had approached when, at my mother’s request, she had ostensibly gone to Sir Perceval? If she had indeed gone back to the Mompessons then surely the confusion about Mr Barbellion would have been cleared up!

Therefore, perhaps she had not gone to them and so Mr Steplight was not their agent, even though he had come in the Mompessons’ carriage and with their livery-servants in attendance. And there was that strange remark he had made in the carriage on the way to the school.

Now suddenly I began to see the solution. Mrs Fortisquince had not taken my mother’s message to the Mompessons but had contacted our enemy! My original suspicions of her were justified. Her coldness when we first went to her and her warm reception of us the second time were in some way explicable in the light of this. And in that case Mr Steplight was an agent of our enemy. As I was staggering under this shock I suddenly realized that this meant that our enemy had the codicil for my mother had given it to Mr Steplight! And this meant that he — whoever he was — wanted both of us dead!

Now at last I knew why Mr Steplight had taken me to Quigg’s school: the intention was to kill me. Well, I had escaped, but with a sickening sense of dread I realized that I had left my mother trusting Mrs Fortisquince and Mr Steplight and wholly in their power. But who was Mr Steplight? At that moment the Latin phrase he had quoted as we had travelled north swam into my mind and

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this time I recalled where it had come from: Mr Sancious’ letter to my mother had employed the same tag in order to allay her worries about the investment!
Surely Mr
Sancious and Mr Steplight were one and the same individual.
He and Mrs Fortisquince were in alliance! I had to rescue my mother from them. I would set off for London tomorrow.

I looked up and saw Sukey and her aunt watching me curiously. “I’m sorry, Mrs Twelvetrees,” I said. “I didn’t hear what you said.”

“I was just saying that he wanted Clerk Advowson to show him some of the old paritch-books, seemingly.”

She could be no more precise, but here was another puzzle to brood over. Why was the Mompessons’ lawyer so interested in this parish? There were many mysteries now and the more I thought about what I had learned, the stranger it began to seem.

Presumably it had been Mr Sancious who had been responsible for the attempt to abduct me from the village. But if that were so, how had he discovered where my mother and I had been living?

Shortly after this Sukey’s aunt went to bed at the other end of the cottage and, seeing me silent and inattentive, my old friend suggested I should turn in as well.

When I was settled comfortably I whispered to Sukey who was banking up the fire with turves: “Do you recall that day Mr Barbellion so frightened us in the graveyard?”

“I shall remember it to my dying day!” she said with a shudder. “He were just like a great black fetch.”

“What was he doing? Wasn’t he looking at one of the old tombs?”

“I believe he were. Aye, ’twas that big one by the great yew.”

“That’s what I thought.”

We wished each other good night and I tried to sleep. It came on raining heavily and water dripped through the thatch, but even without this, the things I had just learned would have kept me awake for a couple of hours. How had Mr Steplight come to Mrs Fortisquince’s house in the Mompessons’ carriage? Was he in some way connected with them, though their interests and those of our enemy were surely starkly opposed? And what was Mr Barbellion examining that day in the church-yard?

The next morning I woke up long before first light at about four. I heard Sukey giving Harry his breakfast and shortly afterwards he went out. Mrs Twelvetrees now emerged and I also arose and found the floor an inch deep in muddy water which was running into the brick gutter down the middle.

“Why, bless you,” Sukey said seeing my astonishment. “This happens ’most every time it rains.”

While I was breakfasting on oatmeal and buttermilk Sukey’s aunt went out to help a neighbour with her wash for the sake, as Sukey explained, of getting her dinner.

“Sukey,” I said, “I mean to go on to London today.”

“That’s nonsense!” she cried. “I beg your pardon, Master Johnnie. But you need to rest and gather your strength.”

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“No,” I said. “I’ve told you about my mother, haven’t I?”

Seeing that I was determined she said: “Very well. But I can be just as stubborn.”

She went to a dark corner and reached up into the thatch among the cobwebbed beams and then returned with a piece of soft-leather: “Hold out your hands.”

I did so and she poured into them the contents of the little package. The money was mainly made up of pennies, ha’pennies, and farthings, but there were some six-pences and even an old shilling, bent so that the porcine features of the second George looked even more like a sucking-pig astonished to find itself wearing a wreath.

“Seventeen shilling and four-pence three-farthings,” she said.

“I can’t take this,” I protested. “This is all the money you have, isn’t it?”

“I know you’ll pay me back one day.”

“I can’t leave you with nothing.”

“But how will you get to Lunnon with only a few pence?” she asked, for I had not been able to conceal from her my penurious situation. “Take it for your dear mam’s sake.

It’s to help her as much as you.”

I saw the force of this, but I continued to resist, and only eventually was agreement reached. I took three shillings which I believed was just enough to get me to the capital.

I had one task to perform before I left and so, telling Sukey I would be back soon, I made my way to the church. I found the graveyard deserted except for a tall figure at work cutting the grass at the other end. I pushed through the unmown grass that grew waist-high and found the corner by the yew-tree where I believed Mr Barbellion had been standing with his lanthorn that winter evening I had first seen him. The tomb he must have been examining was an old vault-grave of nearly three hundred years of age with a high railing around it.

The stone-work was overgrown with ivy and beneath that, moss clung to the surface.

When I pulled some of the foliage away I found that the lettering was badly worn. I could, however, easily make out the name “Huffam” which occurred several times: there were a James Huffam, a Christopher Huffam, several John Huffams, (though I saw no Jeoffrey Huffam), as well as any number of Lætitias, Marias, Elizabeths, and so on, included as “Wife” or “Daughter of the Above”. There were other names: Ledgerwood, Feverfew, Limbrick, and Cantalupe. Many of the dates were in Roman numerals and most were between about 1500 and 1600, the latest being 1614.

Passing into the church, which was deserted and gloomy, I made my way towards the door into the vestry. I knocked, and when there was no response, entered.

The only light came from a candle on a desk at the other end where a balding figure was bent over a great volume. He looked up and said indignantly: “What are you doing here, boy?”

“Don’t you know me, Mr Advowson?”

He looked at me in amazement: “Master Mellamphy!” he exclaimed and reached for his wig that lay beside him and placed it on his head saying: “Scratches terribly, yes, scratches a man’s scull beyond endurance.” Then he said gravely: “I’m sorry about your mother’s affairs. That was a bad business, a bad business.” He glanced almost apologetically at my ragged clothes: “It grieves me to see you looking … well, not as you were before.”

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When I had fended off without too much damage to the truth some preliminary enquiries about myself and my mother, I asked: “Mr Advowson, I know this is a strange question but it may be very important. Do you recall a gentleman coming here just before Christmas nearly six years ago?”

It seemed to me that he blushed.

“I believe I do,” he said.

“It was a Mr Barbellion, wasn’t it?”

He nodded solemnly.

“I have a particular reason for asking this. Will you tell me what he wanted to know?”

He sighed: “I always knew that ill would come of it. Yet it was not wrong of me to help him, surely?”

“May I ask what he wanted?”

“The first thing was to see all the entries relating to marriages going back many years.

Oh, more than fifty years. We had to go through all the old parochial-registers in the vestry-chest. Every blessed one.”

He turned and pointed towards a huge oaken chest with rusting metal clasps that was lying in the corner. There were two others nearby, even older and dirtier and rustier.

“Why, we got back to the time almost before the old King and that’s a great many years ago.”

“What was he looking for?”

“That I cannot tell you, for whatever it was, he failed to find it. And very disappointed he seemed, yes, very disappointed.”

I was disappointed, too. And yet it seemed to me that Mr Advowson, who carefully avoided my gaze, was holding something back. I examined the chests and noticed on the oldest of the three that there was a faded design emblazoned in red letters on the wooden top. When I looked more closely I recognised it as the quatre-foil rose that was so familiar to me.

“Did you search through that one?”

“No, of course not, young fellow,” he said impatiently. “For that has nothing to do with this parish.” He adjusted his wig and said: “Why you see, Master Mellamphy, it comes from old Hougham Hall and concerns nought but a family of that name.”

Then that explained the rose design.

“Mr Barbellion did not wish to know about them?” I asked.

“Well if he did, he didn’t mention the name to me. You wouldn’t know anything of them, Master Mellamphy, for it was many years ago they lived around here. They used to own the property that the Mompessons have now. I recall my grandfather worked for them as a coachman. They lost everything many years back through foolish speculation and sold up to Sir Perceval’s father.”