The Triple Goddess (89 page)

The curate’s favourite point of all was a bowl-shaped tumulus or barrow, an ancient burial mound, which, because it was removed from the footpaths and in the middle of a side of the largest of the downs, was always a challenge to find, even for one who knew it as well as she did. Though she tried to identify some feature of the landscape that she might use to orient its position, there was no tree or bush, contour mark or outcrop to guide her to the spot; so, having no bearing to lose, she always had to cast about in different directions until she came upon it, each time thinking that now she had an atmospheric fix on where it was.

Emotionally the draw that the
genius loci
of this tumulus exerted upon her was powerful, magnetic, and she had come to regard the place as enchanted. Here on the massive flank of the hill, breathing its rarefied air, things might be understood that never could be when one was in the village fug. That which might seem of great pith and moment in the toil and moil of ordinary life here did not rate a thought for its consequence.

Far beneath the barrow’s hollow crown, Ophelia pictured a sepulchre into which the dust of skeletons had sifted from their shallow graves. Seated or lying protected within its timeless round, she felt that she was communing with the spirits of tribes whose crumbled bones had become part of the DNA of the hill, even of the
primum mobile
itself. Whether it constituted prayer or not she had no idea, but within the sacrosanct space of the ring she cupped her own lively flame like that of a candle as she sent out tremulous signals to the deep empathy that she felt beneath her, endeavouring to share with it a sliver of her own sensibility.

Often the sun would have just set when, after descending on her way home, she crossed the common outside the village and saw the lights of the first houses. Winding through the blackthorn scrub as darkness fell, in spring she would pause to listen to the nightingales starting up. But try as she might, now that she had returned to the denser atmosphere of the quotidian world, she who aloft had become proficient in so many languages could not interpret their garbled words. This she found frustrating. Then it came to her that these drab and tiny birds, who had no need of gaudy plumage or display to advertise their presence but only one means of expression, their entrancing voices, whilst they had no greater ability to articulate the divine language that inspired them than she, they shared the same sublunary medium.

The silences that interspersed the nightingales’ ungainly effusions were as lovely as the sound they produced:

“Jug-jug lugs snag,” commented the invisible songsters; “tereu.”

Quiet.

“Gargle gurgle pirouette.”

Nothing.

“Grate grate gravel, trill trickle grind whistle proop.”

“…”

Leaving the nightingales and walking down the fenced track to the Street, Ophelia was conscious that the person who came down the hill was not the same one who ascended it, and her aura she felt must surely be detected by anyone she encountered. Strangely, or not, she never met anyone at the end of her walks, and this had become a source of both of joy and relief to her. Once on the hard level of the road, as she approached the cottage her now confident steps often prompted the recitation of a flawlessly metrical verse that had nothing to do with her walk, which she had learned at school, William Johnson Cory’s translation of an epigram by Callimachus:

“

‘They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,

They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.

I wept as I remembered how often you and I

Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.

And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,

A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,

Still are thy pleasant voices, thy
Nightingales
, awake;

For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.’”

And so she would arrive home a little light-headed but cheerful, fortified by the belief that, whatever it was that she was a part of, there was not a devil in the land who could stand up to the merest fragment of it.

*

“Lady, greyer than your dogs,

Lined against the morning sky,

Strained against leashes,

All muzzled, tight-lipped, dry;

“Why? the questionable path,

And always at this time of day,

Visible only in early light…

Does in-between dissolve you?”

“Why? Because the hills in this light,

And at this distance, stretch and feel

Their ennobling strength; they hum,

And count the wandering sheep.

“Because I seek the unforgotten,

Since immortal Time turned back

Indulgently to sport with the nymph

Of decay, and left me here alone.

“Because I hold missing as still beautiful,

Though undetected by reined-in

Greyhounds and a wistful gaze.

Alone and pale, perhaps—loitering, never.”

*

Where the leaves skitter, there I;

Where the horse snorts and whinnies

In the dark, I; where the Green Knight

Returns each year to swing his axe

And spray bright blood upon the earth, I.

Where the viaduct spans the valley,

Entranced in fields of

Oak-struck permanence,

Where klaxon calls of pheasant cocks echo,

Where spirits linger like the

Fade from stained-glass light

In brick-arched windows of fog-pearled sight,

There I am and go.

There, here, recorded in the stream

Over and over, the swirls of life

Are present and unalterably replayed

And listened to;

There, here, liquid names are engraved

And the living and departed are recalled to where,

Grave-plotted from youth, they shall meet again

Who are dedicated and devoted

Without the means of saying so;

There, and here, they remain and shall return

Each year, life transcending

Forever and a year, soft-shelled and tender

And together after ending.

Chapter Twenty-Six

It was a beautiful morning when Ophelia picked her way down the hill with unusual haste, after an almost unprecedented dawn patrol that took in several of her favourite locations. It had been raining on and off for several days and the temperature was warm for the time of year. The banks were covered with creamy primroses, and stands of yellow and white daffodils and narcissi. There was a holy quiet in the beech wood, where tendrils of mist were still coiling around the boles of the trees, and moisture was dripping from the boughs and audibly seeping in the padding of leaves underfoot.

Unaccustomed as she was to appearing in public so early, Ophelia could not deny the thrill of being abroad in the respectful hush before Mother Nature had cast off her foggy blanket and arisen to greet the day; and she felt ashamed at the infrequency with which she lauded Creation at a time when everything seemed so much different to how it did later.

Ophelia and Effie had been invited to breakfast at the former Rectory, and had arranged to meet each other at the gates a few minutes before they were expected so that they could go in together. Effie would be arriving by horse.

Both women were shocked to receive an offer of hospitality from the devil lady; whatever prompted it had to be suspect and suspicious, and they debated for some time as to how to respond. Mrs Diemen would have the home advantage, and no doubt she had some fiendish plan in mind for confounding them, and through them, the hearts and minds of the other villagers. They would have to keep their wits about them and resolve to be strong. It was Effie who decided the matter. Foolhardy though it might be to accept—she admitted as much to herself—she was still glowing from her first encounter with the DL, and argued to a dubious Ophelia that the situation was as it was, and would have to be confronted if it were ever to reach its climacteric.

The curate speeded up to cross a field at the base of the hill behind the Annexe where Father Fletcher lived, as far away as possible from a small herd of Jacob sheep each of which had either four or six horns. Reaching the stile onto the footpath that led to the Street and the Old Rectory gates, she paused to enjoy the sight of half a dozen lambs playing King of the Castle around a tree stump. Consulting her watch, she saw that there were still ten minutes remaining until her rendezvous with Effie. When she reached the Street she stamped her feet to loosen the clods of clay, so much of which was clinging to them that it was as if she were walking in moon boots. Her moleskin trousers were splattered with mud that had already dried and hardened to a lighter colour, and they left marks when she scraped them off with her fingernails.

‘Well, what does she expect?,’ she muttered, ‘we live in the country.’ And she trudged on. When she reached the Old Rectory gates, which were open, she saw that Effie must already have parked, as she called it, the bay gelding who had transported her, for she was walking alone back up the driveway from the house to meet her friend. Effie’s journey must have gone well, for her appearance was as pristine as when she had left the cottage, except for one stray lock of hair, which she coiled behind her ear as she adjusted the strap on a bulging shoulder-bag.

Observing the state of her footslogging companion, Effie smiled. ‘For once you’re the one who looks as though she’s been cleaning out the Augean stables.’

‘Very funny. I prefer to call it a devil-may-care dishabille. Shall we? I assume you’ve tethered the beast.’

‘In the stable block. That black stallion of Diemen’s did its best to break out of its stall at the sight of us. Would have done, but it was loaded with steel chains. Didn’t look at all happy. There was foam around its mouth.’

Effie waited as Ophelia stood on one foot and wiped both sides of her hiking boots on a clump of grass on the bank outside the wrought-iron gates, and used a twig to ream out the rubber cleats. While disapproving of the air of status and exclusivity that the gates conveyed, as they squared their shoulders and marched through them the pair could not help but admire their intricate design and glossy sheen. The raked toffee-coloured gravel of the driveway, which crunched pleasurably underfoot, was so thick that one was in danger of twisting an ankle.

At the front door Effie yanked the brass bell-pull hoping that it would come away in her hand. It did not.

‘H’m. I wonder where those brute dogs are,’ said Effie; and she was answered by an outbreak of baying from within. ‘Pity. I was hoping that in this dog-eat-dog world they might have eliminated each other.’

Ophelia made use of the boot-scraper to no discernible effect, and the manservant, opening the door, smirked. ‘Car break down, Mother? I could hose you off if you like.’

Effie sniffed. ‘Not everyone needs a Land-Rover to go a country mile, you know,’ she said, addressing the hallway over the man’s shoulder in anticipation of the dogs bounding down the passage. There was no sign of them, however, and she was relieved to conclude that the decision must have been made to shut them in the back rather than keep them out to intimidate them. ‘After we’ve left I suggest you go boil your head.’

‘Too much to do,’ said the man. ‘There’s no rest for the wicked.’