Ellis Peters - George Felse 13 - Rainbow's End (20 page)

‘For God’s sake!’ said Toby, awed. ‘That wall’s heaven knows how thick.’

‘I know, but part of it’s rotten as rubble,’ said Ginger, whose father had taught him about building. ‘We saw it inside, this afternoon, you could see daylight through. Look, you can see light through it now.’

It was true. From this modest distance, and square to the affected area, Colin Barron’s protective light shone through very clearly in several starry points, the weak joint in his armour.

‘We were inside this afternoon. That part, it’s just left of where they’re standing. The wall bulges. I reckon it’s ready to go if we hit it right.’

‘We might kill them,’ doubted Toby fearfully.

‘There isn’t any other way. We’ve got to try.’

From the darkness under the house wall a hearty whisper blew into their colloquy like a gale-force wind. ‘You have positively got something there,’ owned Willie the Twig, coming round the concrete-mixer, ‘that I wish I’d thought of.’

They knew him, and were not disconcerted; everybody knew Will Swayne could move among the wild things in the forest and never be detected unless he wished. And he was an ally after their own hearts. Where Willie was, Barbara would not be far away. Her scent was on the air, shadowy there at Willie’s shoulder.

‘Weight forward of amidships, I’d say, either side now we’re two matched. You lot will have to gallop. And Barbie, make yourself useful, go back and tip off the police, they’ll have to rush him the instant they hear us hit. In case!’

Barbara, glittering, whispered: ‘Yes!’ as roused and resolute as the children, and turned and whisked away into the dark. ‘Give her two minutes,’ said Willie, ‘enough to pass the word, not enough for them to interfere.’ He lifted his side of the ladder, shifting back far enough to give it a prow calculated to do maximum damage before its crew reached the point of risk. Six of them now to man it, and the forward two could hoist most of its weight and balance it, while the lightest weights, Spuggy Price and Jimmy Grocott, manfully matched their small persons but immense pugnacity next in the line, and Toffee Bill and Ginger, the architect of the whole enterprise, brought up the rear with no spare length going to waste, and all their force behind the ram. It was all crazy and improvised and amateur, but at least it was action and thought, the sort of desperate sortie men might have mounted in the centuries when this place was first built.

The steady pattern of terrestial stars in the stone wall made their target perfectly clear. An area not more than five feet across, and a little below the middle of the height of the wall. That, Ginger said with certainty, was where the bulge was. And if anything was going to shatter Colin Barron, short of a thunderbolt from heaven, it was the whole wall at his left shoulder exploding on top of him.

‘Is it time?’ whispered Ginger, still captain of this venture, but without a watch.

‘Now!’ said Willie the Twig softly, and they all braced their arms firmly in the frame of the ladder, and leaned forward for the word.

‘Charge!’ croaked Ginger, and the whole half-dozen, eyes fixed unrelentingly on the area of stars, launched themselves forward in a vehement, unsteady trot, instinctively feeling for a rhythm, lurched into the double, gathered breath and accelerated into full, triumphant gallop many yards from the target.

It was something out of another world, mad and marvellous and exhilarating in its desperation, something that happens only once in a lifetime. Toby thought of all those short legs twinkling behind him, and all those enlarged hearts pumping adrenalin like crazy, enough to flood the old fish-ponds and overflow into the river.

The twin poles of the ladder hit the target dead-centre, with six translated personalities for motor. The check was merely momentary, no more than a slight jolt, before the points sheered on with only slightly retarded momentum, exploding into the light beyond in an avalanche of flying stones. Through a quivering, quaking gap three yards wide the victorious team with their battering-ram burst into Bossie’s prison. From the doorway George Felse, Sergeant Moon and two or three constables, closely followed by Barbara Rainbow, exultant, with streaming hair, surged in to meet them.

Through a stifling acrid dust-storm, thick as old-fashioned fog, George dived headlong for Colin Barron’s half-buried body, and fell on his knees to dig like a terrier at the litter of stones and rubble that covered him. Praise God, at the instant of total, deafening shock he had done the instinctive thing, dropped his captive to throw up both arms to cover his head. Not too successfully; there was blood as well as dirt in the thick fair hair, and he was stunned, but the damage looked relatively trivial. Concussion, probably, but no fractures. Like so many of the mediaeval walls that look so irreproachably solid, this one had been rubble-filled within the stone shell. But the point of impact had been barely six feet from his left ear, and the heavier ammunition had sprayed at that level, and effectively knocked him out. Bossie, held closely in front of him and shielded by his body, was somewhere there underneath, and with any luck no worse than winded.

George on one side and Moon on the other were still scooping away debris and lifting Barron’s weight aside, as Willie the Twig and Toby Malcolm came clambering in recklessly through the gap they had made, four dusty choirboys-errant hard on their heels, and all in a state of awe and exaltation at the wreckage they had produced, and total euphoria at its successful result. Minor avalanches still slid and muttered along the wall, where a tattered area of sky appeared, its shape changed every few seconds by the belated fall of one more precariously balanced stone. Coughing and spitting out gritty particles, they plunged enthusiastically into the work of rescue.

Thankfully they extracted Bossie, temporarily winded but without much more than a scratch on him, unwound him from rope and gag, retrieved his glasses unbroken, cleaned them, and stood him on his feet, as good as new. Doubtless he should have been in a state of nervous collapse, but there were no signs of it. As soon as he had any breath, he was as voluble as ever.

‘Aren’t you going to put handcuffs on him?’ he demanded, surveying his prostrate enemy. ‘It is him! He’s the one I saw the night Mr Rainbow was killed. When he locked the door I saw the light flash off that flat stone in his ring, and I remembered it. And I bet he’s got my parchment on him, too.’

Reaction might come later, but Bossie was Bossie yet, and not to be swept away immediately into Jenny’s arms, not before his vindication was complete. It was, in any case, an idea that was worth considering. With so great a cloud of witnesses, less than half of them police, just as well to lift the evidence on the spot, if it really was there, before any question of its provenance could arise.

The contents of Colin Barron’s pockets were without special interest, until they came to a deep breast-pocket inside his jacket, and drew forth something rolled up like an oversize stick of cinnamon inside a narrow suede bag.

‘That was Arthur’s,’ said Barbara immediately. ‘He had a set of those made once, when he’d got hold of some very special Georgian silver cutlery, and wanted to carry samples to show. I doubt if there’d be others exactly like them.’

Out of the case slid a rolled, brownish tube faintly marked with traces of faded ink. Unrolled, it also displayed clearly enough the fresh characters of Bossie’s effort, far too positive to be convincing for long.

‘Yes,’ said Bossie triumphantly. ‘That’s it!’ Who should know his own handiwork better?

‘That’s the thing I pinched,’ agreed Toby. ‘Plus my friend’s improvements, of course.’

Several pairs of eyes peered at the unprepossessing relic, between puzzlement and awe, willing to be impressed but unable to see any sane reason why they should be.

‘You mean,’ enquired Spuggy wonderingly, ‘that’s what it was all about? Just that bit of old stuff? Is it that precious?’

‘Two people evidently thought so,’ said George soberly.

‘Well, how about this, then?’ And Spuggy fished in the depths of his own overcrowded pockets, and produced a longish, flat wad of what looked like disintegrating plaster, and on the surface, indeed, was nothing else. ‘It’s that piece I poked out when we went round this afternoon,’ he explained simply. ‘It seemed to make that chap so mad, I’d thought I’d better not leave it lying around, so I slipped it in my pocket. But all the plaster bits started flaking off, and I found this other stuff folded up inside. Look!’

No need to exhort them, they were all looking, with disbelieving eyes, as he thumbed apart the edges of not one, but apparently three or four leaves of something that might very well be vellum. Stiff, inclined to crumble, but very slowly unfolding now to show remarkably clear edges of inner surface, preserved by being pressed together. There were certainly the marks of written characters there, the opening letters of line below even line. Gritty particles of mortar drifted from it as Spuggy held it up to view. ‘It looks like some of the same. And Bossie said it was where the other bit was found. Is this any good?’

For a moment nobody had breath to answer him.

‘Because if it is,’ continued Spuggy practically, ‘there’s some more of it down here among all this muck. I reckon it came down with the wall.’

As one they turned to stare, and then scattered to peer and rake and dig all along the broken area of wall, among the ruin of the north walk, where once the carrels and aumbries of Mottisham Abbey had been ranged, and the monks had both read and written. And first one excited voice, and then another, hailed fresh discoveries. Wherever the wall had weathered and fallen into holes, it seemed, the leaves of parchment had been rolled or folded and wedged into the cracks as filling, to be plastered over and seal the gaps. In the days of penury and decline, when repairs were impossible, something had to stop the holes to keep the wind away! The treasure for which Rainbow had died and Colin Barron had killed lay scattered in dust and rubble at their feet.

There was precious little sleep for anyone connected with the Mottisham affair that night. Even when Bossie had been restored to parents limp with reaction, but just resilient enough to receive him back with deflationary calm, even when Sergeant Moon and Willie the Twig had ferried all the victorious choirboys back to the bosoms of their families, with flattering accounts of their ingenuity and heroism, calculated to inflame parental pride and disarm parental rage, even when an ambulance had carried away a conscious but incoherent Colin Barron to hospital and strict guard, pending a charge of murder, and a flustered John Stubbs had arrived to complain bitterly about the wanton damage to his wall, the activity within the north walk of the cloister still continued. So momentous a find demanded a police guard until it could be taken over by the proper authorities, and a call after midnight to Charles Goddard, and another to Robert Macsen-Martel, had brought both gentlemen hurrying to view the unexpected windfall. Its value would not be assessed for a long time yet, and even its ownership might produce some problems, though none that could not be agreeably resolved, for the future endowment of the abbey was a cause dear to all the parties concerned.

Bossie, as voluble as ever, abruptly fell asleep almost in mid-sentence on the way home, and was carried to bed, sunk so deep out of the world that he never roused when they undressed him, sponged him clean of the dust of his adventures, and inserted him into his pyjamas. Jenny had qualms that this might be the sleep of withdrawal, and his awakening next day a recoil into horror, but Bossie rose fresh as a daisy after his short night, and headed for school with a purposeful gleam in his eye, and an epic tale to tell, which would lose nothing in the telling. There was still a faint pink line round his neck, but he seemed quite unaware of it. He went off eagerly to catch the bus, and left two very thoughtful people gazing after him.

‘He doesn’t seem to have been really afraid at all!’ said Jenny, both appalled and reassured. ‘How is it possible?’

‘Must be a question of faith,’ suggested Sam. ‘I suppose he really has imbibed a kind of religious certainty that the righteous must prevail.’

‘Good God!’ whispered Jenny. ‘Have we really prepared him as badly as all that for the world he’s entering?’

‘Or as well?’ wondered Sam, after astonished thought. ‘It hasn’t done so badly by him up to now, has it?’

After twelve days of intensive police business, George finally found time to pay a visit to Abbot’s Bale again, and look up all the interested parties. It was Sunday evening once more, and he took time out to attend the evening service at St Eata’s. The churchyard was reconsecrated by then, cleansed of the relatively innocent blood, and the trebles of the choir lifted up their earnest faces and angelic voices in a Stainer anthem, with Bossie soaring serenely into the stratosphere in a brief solo, and afterwards, during one of the Reverend Stephen’s more incoherent but disarming sermons, towed a small pink sugar mouse with a candlewick tail, courtesy of Toffee Bill, the length of the canton’s side on a nylon thread, while on the
decani
side they were busy composing one of the best of their hymn-line quatrains:

Miss de la Pole was nodding gently in her pew, apparently well content with the way things were being conducted after her retirement. In the organ loft Evan Joyce let loose the peals of glory with immense Welsh hwyl, and all the tunes were the time-honoured best of tunes, so that the congregation could enjoy themselves, as was only right and proper in worship. In fact, all seemed to be very well with Abbot’s Bale and St Eata’s church and parish.

Afterwards the Reverend Stephen, slightly shamefaced but smiling, showed George the sheet of paper the
decani
trebles had been circulating.

‘Actually, I collect them, but they don’t know that, of course. They always mean to pocket them, and usually forget, I’ve got quite a number. Considering everything that’s happened, there’s something psychologically profound about this one, wouldn’t you say? “When shrivelling like a parchéd scroll…” That’s Spuggy, you know. Who would believe such a line could be found in Ancient and Modern? From parched scroll to parchment isn’t far, you’ll agree. And then that last one – that was Bossie, of course. None of the others would have known it, and strictly speaking it’s cheating, because it isn’t in the hymnal, though maybe it ought to be. And in any case, the last-liner is allowed to use his imagination if he can’t come up with a real line. Do you suppose this is his inmost self speaking? It certainly isn’t any other part of him, it’s incredible any child could ride such an experience with such complete phlegm.’

‘I think,’ said George, ‘it’s just his love of sonorous Latin coming out naturally. I doubt if he’s ever applied it to himself.’

‘I hope not. Or that if he ever did, he’s already forgotten it. Of course he is bossier than ever, but that’s also natural. No doubt he’ll get his come-uppance some more subtle way, sooner or later.’

What Jenny said was: ‘I never sat still for so long in my life. Do you think it will be counted to me for an acquisition of merit? I could have murdered him myself when I got him back, but I never so much as scolded.’

George thought it well to turn her mind away from what was over. ‘Have you heard from Toby? He’s going to be wanted at the trial, unless we get a guilty plea, which I very much doubt, though he did make some pretty damaging admissions at first. I expect he’ll take them all back.’

‘Toby’s at Worcester just now. Thespis raked in such a haul at Comerbourne, because of the publicity, they’re getting almost famous in their small way. Bookings even for next year! I’ll tell him you were asking, he said he’d keep in constant touch.’

‘Give him my love,’ said George, ‘and tell him to be good!’

His last call was far up the valley, and aside from the narrowing road that climbed over into Wales. The mixed forest closed over him gently, like cupped hands folding him in, spiced with conifers and airy with deciduous trees, well-laced with undergrowth below, and teeming with untroubled night-life, the primitive paradise ruled over by Willie Swayne. At the lodge George parked the car, and Barbara came round the corner of the log house to see who had driven in, Barbara in dungarees and sweater, both clearly the property of Willie the Twig. Her hair was loose about her in a raven cloud, and her face was as clear and radiant as a star. The two lissom red setters hugged her on either flank, and were jostled on the right by a fallow fawn, silvery and dun in the headlights, with huge eyes that wondered at him but were not afraid.

‘She’s only young, this year’s. Her mother got injured and had to be shot when Amanda was only a baby. She’s in love with Willie, he’s going to have trouble convincing her she’s a fallow doe. I should blame her?’

The exquisite creature danced away happily among the trees with the two dogs, her natural enemies, when Barbara haled her visitor into the house. In a very few miles Barbara had come a long, long way. The lodge was hectic, chaotic and primitive, there had been no attempt to impose order on Willie the Twig’s bachelor housekeeping. It was also comfortable, warm, wood-scented and intimate. Two people inhabited it, but innumerable friends, four-footed, winged, shy and secret, came to visit, confident of their welcome.

‘Then it really is going to turn out to be something momentous,’ marvelled Willie, dispensing drinks. ‘And no dealer gets the money value out of it, after all.’

‘Seems to be a matter for amicable negotiation between Macsen-Martel, the Trust and the Department how the value’s going to be realised and what will be done with it. But nobody’s grabbing for himself. Presumably it will be used to maintain the abbey. Not that anyone has any idea what its value is as yet.’

‘But what exactly is it?’ asked Barbara. ‘The whole of the abbey library, walled up there for safety? Did they hide them that way to save them, when the place was due to be plundered?’

‘Not a chance! Not rolled up and stuffed into holes, like that. No, the general opinion seems to be that by that time they were a tatterdemalion lot, without much Latin between the handful of them, and such was the surviving respect for learning, they just used their books for stopping when the wall fell into disrepair. But the irony is, of course, that by doing so they did preserve them – from possible destruction at the Dissolution, and from time and weathering and dispersal ever since. It’s going to take them weeks to take down the whole wall, as they have to now, and months, maybe years, to clean and recondition and sort all the fragments, but by what they’ve found already, it’s going to be worth it.’

Evan Joyce, doubly blessed, was taking part in the decyphering of those first texts. Bossie would undoubtedly claim a look-in as often as possible, and his fair share of the credit.

‘Nobody knows what it’s going to add up to by the end, but they’ve already reclaimed bits of the abbey accounts from round about fourteen hundred, and what’s exciting them much more, some passages from what seems to be a thorough-going historical chronicle, as detailed as Matthew Paris or St Albans, and about the same time. More than one hand, the original chronicler probably had continuers later. One more independent window on the Middle Ages. The sort of thing that will end as a treasure of one of the main national libraries, and be consulted by scholars for ever after.’

‘Instead of going to some private collector for a big price,’ said Barbara, ‘probably abroad.’

Yes, it might well have been like that, whether Rainbow had succeeded in running it to earth, or Colin Barron had stolen it from the thief in his turn.

‘He admits to having been on the tower with your husband that night. I think his defence is going to be that the fall was accidental, but it won’t stand up. I think he tried to get cut into the deal, and when he got nowhere, was certain he was on to a fortune, and felt he had an opportunity too good to miss. Silence, and night, and no witnesses. I think by then he had a fair idea of what your husband was carrying. Something acquired at choir practice – you remember? – and something that sent him hunting in the tower among the papers in the chest there… He knew it when he found it on the body, and he could do enough with it to connect it with the abbey, but I suspect Bossie’s particular interest in that wall was what made him turn his attention there, after he’d volunteered to do the rounds, and had the place to himself. Or thought he had!’

‘But I don’t understand,’ said Barbara, grave in recollection, ‘how Arthur ever came to let himself be inveigled to the top of the tower. Colin followed him up to where the chests were, yes, but what brought them out on to the leads?’

‘I think by that time it had already gone beyond discussion, and come to menaces. And Barron was younger, bigger, and between him and the way down. There was only one way to go. And time gained is time gained. Someone might have walked in below, something might have happened to scare the threat away. But nothing did. Evan Joyce had repented of his own curiosity and gone home, thinking no evil. There was only Bossie, down in the churchyard. Five minutes more, and he’d have gone home, too, and there’d have been no witnesses and very little evidence.’

Barbara sat cross-legged on the rug in front of the fire, her hands pensively clasped in her lap, and one of the setters stretched out beside her with his head on her thigh. She was silent and thoughtful for some moments before she pronounced the considered epitaph of Arthur Rainbow.

‘He wasn’t a bad person. In a way I liked him, and when he made a bargain, written or not, he kept it. I don’t complain of him. But though I never wished him any harm, I can’t be sad. And the really sad thing is that I don’t suppose there’s a single other person who can, either.’

They both went out to the car with him. The autumn night smelled of timber, fir-needles, moist fallen leaves, and the faint hint of frost. The dogs roused when Willie roused, and padded attentively at heel. The fallow fawn came out of the trees like a silver wraith, slender and silent. No, Barbara could hardly be expected to be sad.

‘Let me know when the wedding date’s fixed,’ said George at parting.

‘Wedding?’ said Willie the Twig, as though confronted by a conception rather surprising and totally irrelevant, as indeed it probably was. But on second thoughts he appeared to be finding some merit in the idea, even if it was no more than a decorative flourish to something that already existed and was guaranteed in perpetuity. ‘Yes,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘I suppose we might get round to it in time.’

‘I rather fancy having Amanda attend me up the aisle,’ agreed Barbara. ‘And we could find a nice solo for Bossie among the hymns. That would probably be the day his voice broke, and he did a belly-flop from a high C into a terrifying baritone.’

‘That,’ said Willie the Twig, ‘would be just right for our wedding, and I should enjoy it. But it won’t happen. You should know by now, that kid always falls on his feet.’