Lace for Milady (12 page)

His Grace was kind enough to lift his hat and say “How do you do?” in arctic accents. I believe Slack addressed a few remarks to him, but as Lazy Louie came trotting down the road on his big black stallion at that same time, my interest was turned to him. I wondered if Clavering, his sworn enemy, would say anything to him, issue any warning about taking
Nancy-Jane
out. He looked up as Lazy Louie rode by. They exchanged a meaningful look but did not speak. Glancing from one face to the other, I was struck by some little similarity between them—a way of holding the head it was, a stiff, arrogant, proud posture. Why a smuggler should hold his head so high I could not imagine, but I assumed his fine mount and fine home in town had given him ideas above his station.

We were no sooner home than Slack stuck her nose in her book again, and I was left alone with my riding habit, the neck of which I was having considerable trouble with. No number of hints had the least effect on my companion, and in a fit of pique I set it aside. I would go to the attic and rout amongst the discarded lumber there for retrievable objects. This was one part of my new home that had not been thoroughly gone over, and I harboured the foolish hope that I would uncover some rare piece of furniture or bibelot cast aside by one without my discerning eye. About the only thing worth carrying downstairs was a firescreen, in better shape than the one we had thrown out, and as it seemed our new one would never be completed, I mentally tagged it for rescue. For the rest, there was nothing worth having carried up so many flights of stairs. It would make good burning in the grate, however.

Before descending, I went to the window and surveyed the countryside. From this high vantage point I had a view of more of Belview than the tops of its towers, a better view than was allowed from the road. Seeing it from the east side rather than from the front, I noticed the number and size of the outbuildings, large stables, barns, ice house, and assorted little buildings whose function I could only imagine. My position gave a good view of the meadow, too, and I had my first glimpse of the ruined chapel of which I had heard so much. It was well and truly ruined; there was not a wall standing higher than a yard off the ground. No interesting spaces to show where the windows had been, or even the style of it. I looked, trying to gauge the distance from the spinney’s end to the chapel, to see if I could have a better view of the chapel from there, and as I looked, I noticed some movement.

There were two figures, and I was not so far away that I mistook them for anything but human figures. Two men were walking hastily and stealthily through the meadows, in the direction of the chapel. The hair on my scalp prickled, to think of the danger they were in.       This was what I had dreaded, that some poor illiterate souls would wander unsuspectingly into that trap-infested area, to have their legs mangled and go limping through the rest of their lives, like the man at the inn. The local people all knew about the traps, so these must be strangers to the area. They should be warned, but how to get to them without falling into the traps myself? I at least knew the traps were there. I must risk it, and walk very carefully. I ran, rather than walked, and decided to make the trip on Juliette to save time. I let her out to a canter as we went through the spinney, not slowing the pace till we came to the meadow’s edge. The grass was long at the summer’s end. Such a waste, no cattle grazing here, nor the hay even mown, and there were some considerable number of acres. So ideal, of course, for concealing the treacherous traps. Losing a foot was not the worst that could happen here. If one were left undiscovered, he could lose his life. I gazed beyond, searching for the men, and saw nothing. I had to take myself by the scruff of the neck and make myself advance for I was quite weak with fright.

At a careful walk, straining my eyes forward at every step, we advanced, Juliette and I, till we were within shouting distance of where I had seen the men. Then I began shouting and continued to do so till I got right up to the chapel, but there was no answering call, nor even a sign of the men. They had vanished. There was one mound of rock higher than the others, and I dismounted to clamber up on it for a better view, all in vain. The men were not to be seen. The thing was impossible, but it had happened. They couldn’t
both
be dead in a trap so soon. I looked beyond the ruins, but the tall grass was undisturbed. Behind me was my own path and theirs, several yards away, highly visible as a parting in the grass. Both trails stopped at the ruins.

This was my first opportunity to view the remains of the chapel, and I was highly curious to do so, but becoming more frightened than curious. The men could be crouching behind any pile of rocks, hiding with the intention of attacking me. I did no more than glance at a smallish excavation, a family chapel, not a church, with a few stones till remaining. Hardly sufficient to worry about anyone stealing, for they would not get the reconstructed temple two feet off the ground. My mind full of unanswered questions, I returned home through the same depression in the grass through which I had come, knowing it to be free of danger.

I now had another mystery to go along with my clanking grate, and as if to increase my apprehension, that object took to rattling again on Thursday. It was Slack who lifted her head from her book long enough to come up with a sort of an idea, one culled from her new interest, of course. “I wonder if it would be possible we are sitting on buried treasure,” she said. “It would account for Clavering’s not wanting anyone wandering about his lands; and if he doesn’t know exactly where it’s buried, it would account as well for his wanting to get Seaview back so that he could search, for it here.”

“We are on the coast—pirate’s treasure! Some of Captain Morgan’s loot from Cuba or Panama,” I said, taking it up the more eagerly to keep Slack’s interest from Bath.

“I was thinking more of some Clavering treasure, buried at one time or another due to some of the wars, the civil war or such.”

“Or concealed in the house itself! That would account for his being willing to pay thirty-five hundred pounds for the house. Slack, shall we have a house hunt?”

“You’re talking of ripping up floors and tearing out panelling, are you?” she asked, a trifle sarcastically, I believe. “It wouldn’t be hidden under the rug, or anything of that soft.”

“I have a much better idea. I’ll tear my house apart, stone from stone, at the end of nineteen years, and if there is any treasure hidden, we shall get it then.”

“Yes, an excellent idea,” she said, but I had already lost her to antiquity. Her voice had that vague quality with which she told me linen would be fine for lunch, or yes, a cabbage would make a marvellous shawl. This was the sort of conversation we had recently. She was off in another world, and to all intents and purposes I talked to myself.

On Friday morning, I found a more conversable person. Mr. Pickering, the builder, came from Pevensey to investigate the phenomenon of the noisy grate.

He was a plain, no-nonsense sort of a man, and I was curious to see what he would make of it. He began his examination in the saloon, at the grate itself. He had a little rubber-tipped hammer with which he tapped the stones, the oaken shelf, the hearth floor, and chimney lining. He also had a little apparatus called a level, a metal frame with a glass tube inserted horizontally, holding some liquid with an air bubble in it. This was placed in various spots to see if the house was out of kilter, built on a slant. It was not. The bubble of air settled comfortably in the centre of the tube, and I was informed my house was “straight” or “flat.” Next a measuring tape came out of his toolbox, and he measured carefully, muttering to himself the while.

“You’ve got yourself a mighty fine fireplace, ma’am. Your trouble ain’t here. I’ll just throw a ladder up to your roof and have a gander of your chimney.” This was done almost with the ease of expressing the intention. He was up there for the better part of half an hour, and I was soon informed that I had a mighty fine chimney and roof, too. All nice and flat, and with no loose masonry. He mentioned the possibility of a squirrel down the chimney, or a bird, but as the rattling went on during progressive days, including several in which a fire burned, I could not think a well-baked squirrel would be so rambunctious. The sounds were more in keeping with an elephant.

Next it was the basement, which was also proclaimed to be mighty fine. This was the last hope, and I went to the basement with Mr. Pickering. The Roman wall he did not recognize as Roman but did recognize as being mighty fine. I told him its origin, and he was interested. “Seaview (I used the name he would recognize) is built over an old Roman fort you know,” I told him. “The Duke of Clavering’s ancestors were so ill-judged as to build over it.”

"No," he said, shaking his head firmly.

I looked at him in surprise, pointing to the Roman wall. “The Duke himself told me,” I said.

“He’s wrong,” the man said simply. I don’t know why it should be, but the remark filled me with joy. How happy I was to hear that Clavering was wrong.

“Why do you say so?” I asked with the liveliest curiosity.

“They didn’t build
over
it, they built next to it, adjacent as you might say. If they’d built over it, they’d have used two walls. You’d have two Roman walls at right angles. You’ve only got the one, so the Roman fort, if that’s what it is, is out to the side of your place, not under it.”

I considered this a moment and found it sensible, as I might have expected from Mr. Pickering. He went on to make his point clearer. “I’m hazarding the fort was considerably bigger than Seaview. If it was exactly the same size, you’d have four Roman walls in your cellars, of course, but assuming it was bigger, and they were big things, you know, the man building Seaview would have used as much of the foundations as possible, two walls at right angles, and the rest filled in with earth to your own foundations, you see.”

I saw very clearly, indeed, and was cheered to know Clavering was wrong. "There’s something a bit off about this wall though,” Pickering went on. He had my whole attention. “You see how she’s set in a mite from the house wall above.

This was seen by following his pointing finger to a small half-window that gave a minimum of light to my cellar. And then I noticed what I had not noticed before. Looking out the window, the house walls jutted a good yard out past the cellar walls. The stones of the outer wall ran to the ground, but the cellar window was recessed to an abnormal degree.

"Odd they’d do that. It weakens the structure somewhat,” Pickering went on. “Why wouldn’t they have taken the house wall up straight from the Roman foundation? Must be a reason for it.”

Only one reason occurred to me. “A secret passage?” I enquired eagerly.

“She’d be a slim one,” he informed me, but did not deny the possibility, “And where would she go?” He looked around the cellar for a doorway, but it was clear at a glance there was no secret entrance to the basement. The walls were of uninterrupted stone except for the stairs from the pantry and the window.

“It goes behind this Roman wall into the Roman fort!” I shouted.

He shook his head uncertainly. “You don’t find much in the way of a secret passage in these newer homes. In the olden days they had priest’s holes and the odd time a passageway into a dungeon, like at Belview, but in these new homes..." In historical terms, a house only eighty years old is new.

“It is
possible?”
I asked.

“A very narrow passageway is possible. We’ll go above and have a look,” he said, and we went at a fast gait up the stairs back to the saloon. My hopes were not high. The panelling looked extremely innocent. Mr. Pickering went tapping along the walls with his knuckles this time, listening for hollow sounds, but shook his head despondently. He stopped at the parson’s bench, which I informed him sadly did not move. But it interested him. He was convinced it would swing aside to reveal a passageway if only we could find the magic means of movement. We spent the better part of an hour pressing every protuberance anywhere near it. It did not move. Pickering tried then to pull it away by main force, convinced it should come loose, but it was stuck to the wall in some immovable manner. It did not lift, slide right or left, or do a thing but sit as solid as a mountain. At length we had to give it up. I thanked him heartily, paid him, and took him to the kitchen for a glass of ale.

I was more convinced than ever that my house held hidden treasure, and convinced now that it had a secret passage, as well; but when an expert had failed to find it, how should I proceed? There was one who knew more about my house than I knew myself, who had known, for instance, that the parson’s bench did not come away from the wall. Clavering I was sure could tell me what I wished to know. I was eager to see him, not because he ever
would
tell me, but because I was looking forward to telling him he was mistaken in the location of the fort, and I also wanted to enquire whether he had managed to cripple the two unfortunate men who wandered into his meadow. He stayed away from us completely, however. Other than the one day we nodded in the village, we did not see him.

Chapter Eight

Slack, who must surely have had her book by heart at this point, continued perusing it at every free moment. Sewing, the fire screen, and all other hobbies were neglected. On the Thursday evening we settled in as usual before our fire, Slack with her book, I to work the buttonholes on my riding habit. I had worked on it during the afternoon, and it was done but for the buttonholes.

“Odd the Duke has not been to call all week,” Slack mentioned.

“You are eager to discuss Aquae Sulis, I gather?” I asked ironically. “Very likely he is gone to London. He mentioned he was to go soon. Mentioned it quite some time ago."

“Ah, very likely he is gone to Londinium,” she said.

I stared at her blightingly. “We have progressed in time to
A.D.
1813, Slack. If you mean London, please say so. There is nothing so ill-bred as flaunting your esoteric scraps of knowledge to puff yourself up.”