The Pale Companion (29 page)

I too waited for an instant. Waited and thought. Then set off in pursuit of Oswald. Of the two men he seemed the more promising quarry. I could hear the steward crashing deeper into the wood, and I suppose I was curious to know what he was about.

This questing among the trees was turning into a habit, and a foolish one at that. So it proved on this occasion. You’ve probably heard enough about N. Revill getting lost in the woods before, so I’ll cut it short and simply say that there came a moment – a couple of minutes after I’d started off on Oswald’s trail – when I became aware that there were no more clumsy, blundering sounds coming from up ahead. I stopped, holding my breath.

All was quiet, apart from the little sounds of little night creatures.

So I’d lost him. Well, I was no hunting dog.

Then, all at once, a twig snapped behind me, and I knew that Oswald, if it was he, had somehow managed to move round in a half-circle and finish up at my back. There’s a world of difference between the thrill of the chase and the terror of being pursued. I knew Oswald for a dangerous, perhaps a desperate man. Had he seen me? I was wearing dark stuff (that funeral feast). I did not dare look round for fear he might catch sight of my pale face in the gathering darkness. But I knew he was there. The back of my neck told me so.

I could feel the first touches of panic. My breathing started to come fast and I had to fight to restrain it. I cast frantic glances around. It was almost full night down in the heart of the wood, although it was barely mid-evening up above. The sky was sullen and overcast. We had shrugged off the fine weather of midsummer. The shapes of the trees overhead seemed to be cut in a familiar pattern. I recognized Robin’s hiding-place, his den, or rather the great belt of trees which topped the bank under which it lay.

Behind me, there came a rustle of leaves, a pause and then another rustle. The very caution of the sound seemed to tell its own tale of stealthy approach. Without thinking, I dropped to my hands and knees. Perhaps instinct made me assume an animal posture. On the floor of the wood, I tried to penetrate the darkness with my eyes, to find the hole which led to Robin’s lair. There it was! I crawled forward but found nothing more profitable than a flat patch of shadow. A shift to the left. No safety there either. Things seemed noisier at ground level with its scuttlings and scufflings. Like a cornered animal I swung my head from side to side. Get up and confront your enemy like a man, I told myself, but did not move. I sensed rather than saw a shape up ahead and rapidly shuffled in the reverse direction. Entirely by chance I found I was backing into the woodman’s den. This stinky, muddy hole now felt familiar and comforting. The tight passage widened into the cleared-out hollow beneath the bank. Very faint glimmers showed through the lattice-work of roots.

Here I remained, at first staying on all fours and then shifting to a more comfortable sitting position. My situation was that of an animal cowering in its lair while some larger beast prowls round the outskirts, sniffing for a way in. I strained my ears but could hear nothing more than the sounds of the wood. Perhaps I’d been mistaken, maybe Oswald had not cunningly circled round to take me by surprise, and what I’d heard and glimpsed was no more than the fuss and fume of an overheated brain. Even so, I decided to stick it out a bit longer in Robin’s hole. Whereas on earlier visits I had been, frankly, frightened by the place, now it seemed the safest spot in the woods.

Reaching back to prop myself on outstretched arms – if I was going to stay here I might as well be at ease – my hand hit something hard which shifted at the touch. By feel rather than sight I established that it was some sort of container. Naturally I remembered the box which Robin had shown me and which I’d later retrieved and shown to Fielding, its contents proving to be animal (beetles) and vegetable (rags of paper) but otherwise unrewarding. Had Robin secreted a whole hoard of little boxes in his lair? I shook it. Something inside. I took firm hold of the box, intending to examine it later on.

After a time I grew tired of crouching in the dark. The sounds beyond the woodman’s den – rustlings, scrapings, little soughings and sighings – did not resolve themselves into a definable human threat and I judged that, if there had been anyone there, he would have grown as tired of waiting as I’d become and gone elsewhere.

So it proved. No one leapt on me as I crawled out of the smelly den. No one fastened himself to my heels as I once again tracked through the twilit wood, resolving not to enter it again under any provocation. I reached the open ground with relief. It was mid-evening. There was no sign of life in front of the west face of Instede. I glanced down at the box which I was holding. It looked like the original leathern one, the one which had disgorged beetles and paper and which had broken on the ground. In fact, it seemed to me that a crude repair had been made to fasten the lid back to the box. This was, well, odd.

Standing in the meadow between wood and house, I gingerly opened the box. No beetle stirred in its innards. But there was a wad of paper, tidily folded away. Evidently, in this adventure, it fell to Revill to make these finds – and then, usually, to make a fool of himself.

But before I hared off to tell Justice Fielding of my latest discovery, I should ensure that there was actually something to report. So, removing the wadded paper, I carefully placed the box on the turf. Then unfolded the sheets. There were half a dozen of them, crisp and quite clean. My heart beat a little faster to see how each was covered with large writing. Not a cultured hand, I’d say, but legible and clear enough.

Clear enough for the purpose. Which was . . . plain and not plain. I read the papers once. Then, with growing bafflement, read them again. It was a story of sorts. A picture began to emerge in my mind. It was like a landscape glimpsed through mist, mist which thins from time to time to let you see the outline of hills and plains before closing once more and leaving you uncertain and confused about where you are, where you’re going.

I carefully refolded the sheets and replaced them in the box, tucked it under my arm and, yes, hared off towards the house and my guide in these matters, Justice Adam Fielding.

“I have a painful tale to tell, my lady.”

Lady Penelope sat stiffly in her chair in the inner room of her apartment, the quarters which until so recently she’d shared with her husband. She was veiled and garbed in black, as she would be for many months to come, although the black would soon begin to transmute to a fetching dark purple. Unbidden, I found myself thinking about her prospects of remarriage. I rated them as good. Though she’d endured some harrowing days recently and although there were others still in store – the violent demise of her husband, the incarceration and imminent execution of her son – she retained a drawn beauty. There’d be quite a few attracted by her name and her refined looks. Besides, I’ve observed that marriage has in it something of the quality of an old, comfortable habit. If it’s temporarily shrugged off on the death of a spouse, with most people it seems only a moment before they shrug themselves into another suit of clothes, as though they cannot bear to wander all naked and by themselves through this large world. Needless to say, I speak without experience in this business, but one day . . . no doubt . . .

“Believe me, Penelope,” continued Fielding, “that I would not have requested this assembly if there had not been the most pressing reasons. Reasons which concern all of us.”

I noted that he’d called Lady Elcombe directly by her given name. Enlightenment only came later.

Lady Penelope gracefully – almost coquettishly, it seemed – inclined her black-cowled head towards Fielding. Yes, I thought, you will surely remarry and soon, at the same time marvelling at the extraordinary capacity of women to bear up through trials which would flatten men.

“I wonder that there can be anything more painful,” she said.

Adam Fielding looked round the room. There were half a dozen of us gathered there. In addition to Lady Elcombe and the Justice and myself there was Kate, of course, and Cuthbert Ascre and Oswald (who gave no indication that he’d lately been wandering in a wood). Night pressed against the windows. In his hand, Fielding held the collection of paper which I’d given him scarcely two hours earlier. What the sheets told him was so startling that he’d at once called this meeting with my Lady and her son and the steward, apologizing for breaking in on her mourning.

“My young friend here found these sheets this evening in the wood-hole belonging to Robin. Rightly, he brought them to me. They tell a story which only you, my Lady, can confirm. And while it may be painful for you to have to do so, be assured that – if this tale is true – then we can clear your son Harry of his father’s death.”

I saw Lady Penelope’s hands tighten on the arms of the chair where she sat stiff, upright. She said nothing, though.

“My Lady, you will remember that shortly before the, ah, day of the wedding, I talked with you and Lord Elcombe about the death of Robin.”

“I remember.”

“Your husband said that that unfortunate individual had been born on the estate and then departed with his mother, only to return at some uncertain date, since when he had been dwelling in the Instede wood – for many years perhaps. It seemed that Robin had returned to his birthplace when his mother died, although nobody knew whether this was so or not. That is, nobody knew whether Merry – that was the name she was known by, was it not? – whether Merry was alive or dead.”

“Why should they?”

Lady Elcombe’s voice revealed how the strains of the last few days had taken their toll. She spoke barely above a whisper.

“Indeed, why should they?” Fielding echoed. “She was only a simple woman, with something of a name for herself among the estate-workers.”

“This was before my time.”

Again the whisper.

“Not quite, my Lady. Even if she did leave Instede not long after your arrival.”

“Are you sure of your ground, Justice Fielding?” said Cuthbert. He had moved in the direction of his mother, perhaps with an impulse of protection. Kate’s face wore a look of troubled sweetness, though whether for her father or Lady Elcombe I could not tell. Oswald looked on as impassively as an obelisk.

“Not altogether sure of my ground,” said Fielding. “That is why I must tread carefully. Perhaps . . . perhaps it would be less painful if I told a story. After all, what is in these sheets may be just that, a fiction.”

“Tell your story, sir, and be done with it.”

“Very well, my Lady. There was once a woman who came to a great estate as a new bride. Within the space of half a year or so she had done her duty by her husband and produced a male heir. The child came early and for a time they thought he wouldn’t survive. But he did, in fact he daily grew stronger and healthier. Hourly. Their rejoicing was short-lived for, although it was evident that the child was likely to thrive, it was also plain that all was not well with him. Not in body but in mind. The mother knew this soon enough, and the father – even if he could not bring himself to see it straightaway – knew it too.

“Now this couple were tender-hearted, at least in that they did not at once expose the child or abandon it to the elements as our forefathers might have done. But they could not accept the idea that this . . . simpleton, this natural . . . would one day grow up and come to man’s estate. The odds were that he would die. Many children do. The unwanted ones especially. But this one was different. However feeble he was in mind, he showed every sign of health – rather as if all his strength was being diverted from his wits to his sinews. Who can blame them for how they felt? Who can blame them for what they did next? They were helped by the fact that few people were aware of the birth. The child had come early, as I say, and when it became plain that all was not in order, pains were taken to keep him out of the public eye.”

There was a profound quiet in this dark room, illuminated only by a clutch of candles. I wondered at Master Fieldings’s cruelty and had to trust that he had some higher purpose in mind. Lady Elcombe had half turned in her chair but, like the rest of us, she was hanging on the Justice’s every word.

“There was also living on the estate a working woman who’d got a name for herself as loose and careless. She possessed a son too, a long lolloping thing who ran wild. She’d had others no doubt, ones who’d run wild to their graves. In particular she’d very recently borne a child which cried its way through half a dozen days before giving up the ghost. It was to this woman that the mother and father turned . . . or perhaps it was the father only. Many children are put out to the wet-nurse. Now, the wet-nurse may be poor but she should be a woman of good character since everybody knows that children imbibe the character of their nurse together with their milk. This woman was poor, certainly, but not virtuous. She was a slattern. Careless, neglectful, loose in the hilts. Which was the very reason why the mother and father . . . or perhaps it was the father only . . . surrendered their baby to her. They knew she would not be over-concerned for her charge and that, even if she didn’t actively seek to end it, she would take no great pains to keep it alive. So the baby was put in the care of Mary, this was her name, and the mother and father washed their hands of their first-born.”

“No,” said Lady Elcombe. She spoke in the same low tone, looking away from us. “No, please do not think that the mother forgot her child. She believed that she was cursed for her action. She thought God would strike her down – or at the least make her barren.”

“But he did not,” said Fielding in a gentler tone. “Within the allotted space of time she gave birth to two more sons who were well enough in mind and body. The father was pleased. The succession to the estate was assured. As a sign of this, the parents gave to the older son the same name as had been given to the first boy. The wife had performed her duty. The wet-nurse Mary did her duty too in a way, or she did what was expected of her. Not so long after she accepted the charge of the baby, she vanished altogether. Went away with that great lolloping son of hers and perhaps with the young child. Nobody knew whether the child was still alive or whether he hadn’t died and been buried, hugger-mugger, in the woods. Whatever was the case, her disappearance must have been a great relief to the mother and father. Perhaps they’d even paid her to disappear . . . or perhaps it was the father only . . . At any event, it seemed to solve the problem.