Gibbous House

by Ewan Lawrie

  Breakfast was served in a dining room that would have been commodious for a troupe of circus dwarves, if they had numbered fewer than six. We three gentlemen seated ourselves at a Lilliputian table in chairs of corresponding size. Miss Pardoner hovered by the sideboard on which rested a copper chafing dish better than any of the thin silver plate owned by the parish in the church next door. The kedgeree was a fine example, but the fish, though smoked, was not haddock. I complimented the household on the fine flavours of the dish.

  ‘Miss Pardoner prepared it,’ Harbinger said. ‘I fear I shall miss her skill in the kitchen when I return to my bachelor state.’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘In the kitchen?’

  Harbinger coloured and began to choke on a fishbone. Maccabi struck him several hearty blows between the scapulae.

  My ward, far from running from the room in high dudgeon, turned on me an icy rage. ‘Were I a man, sir, I should have satisfaction of you. Though I doubt you would treat a man as you have just done me.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said. The colour in her face made her suddenly attractive, and the prospect of having her under my dominion more pleasant still. It amused me, too, that she imagined I regarded any honour worthy of defending in a duel. The very notion seemed as outmoded as dancing a gavotte, and just as pointless, in my view.

  ‘In any event, your talents in the kitchen are to be commended, if this be a sample of them. What is the fish? Do tell.’ I smiled at her, which drew a murderous look from Maccabi, who seemed more affronted by the pleasantry than my insult.

  With remarkable self-possession, Miss Pardoner replied, ‘The fish were Craster kippers, Mr Moffat. Smoked herring, caught and cured in town. As Northumbrian as the Coquet river.’

  ‘As you yourself?’ I asked.

  ‘Sadly, no. I belong here as little as you do, sir.’

  Yes, I savoured the prospect of future days with Miss Ellen Pardoner.

  Harbinger survived the lodging of the fishbone in his gullet, despite Maccabi’s enthusiastic efforts to remove it via brute force applied to the dorsal region. The tableau cheered me quite as much as the fine breakfast, and then Maccabi addressed me directly for the first time in more than twelve hours. ‘Mr Moffat, we must be going if we are to catch the tide. Might I suggest we leave Miss Pardoner to arrange her affairs here. I shall of course arrange suitable means of transport for your... ward in Seahouses, on our way to your new residence.’

  ‘I should say, Maccabi, that I prefer that Miss Pardoner accompany us forthwith. I am sure the reverend is familiar enough with the young woman’s belongings to prepare them for consignment later.’

  The man’s incongruously jolly voice stumbled over an affirmation, and I laughed.

  ‘I have not the slightest doubt of that, Reverend.’

  It seemed for a moment as though Maccabi had not removed every piscatorial impediment to the reverend’s respiration, but he recovered himself.

  Maccabi and I had travelled side by side to Lindisfarne in the driving seat of the phaeton. The carriage was no high-flyer, thank goodness, as that design did not allow for a driver. Ours was a mail coach, mounted on mail coach springs, and as such it afforded a slightly less harum-scarum ride to the passengers – and the opportunity to further discom-mode Maccabi by sharing the rear seat with the interesting Ellen Pardoner.

  I myself handed the young woman up into the phaeton, while Maccabi found something of interest in the Church of Saint Mary’s bell tower. No sooner was I in my seat than Maccabi laid on the slightly recovered nag with a will. His impetuosity merely allowed me a closer acquaintance with Miss Pardoner’s undoubted charms. She shrank quite away from me, and I studied her for a moment. Ellen Pardoner was not beautiful, her nose was slightly out of true and her eyes appeared inherited from a shipwrecked sailor of the Armada, which is to say as brown as a colt’s. Nonetheless, I felt myself drawn to her, although I must allow that some of the attraction lay in the possibility of baiting Maccabi.

  ‘So, Miss Pardoner,’ I began, with a look at Maccabi’s ramrod back. ‘How come you to be quite the most attractive part of my inheritance?’

  She lifted her chin. ‘Mr Moffat, I am your ward and not your chattel.’

  ‘Quite so, Miss Pardoner. But are you not promised? Has not Northumbrian society worn away the flags leading to your – or rather my – door by dint of your expectations, if not your beauty? Have you not pledged troth?’

  Her eyes grew hot and I knew her for a woman of passionate temperament, though she spoke calmly.

  ‘It seems to me that any expectations I might have had now exist – or do not – according to your own whim, sir.’

  ‘Indeed they do, Miss Pardoner, indeed they do.’

  Miss Pardoner begged my leave to refrain from further conversation as she had passed a somewhat restless night. I noted the stiffness about Maccabi’s back subside as she did so, and I asked if her repose had been disturbed by an unwanted visitor. The ramrod returned in place of Maccabi’s spine, and I was content to continue the journey in silence.

  We jounced once more into Seahouses and ere the wheels had stopped spinning, Maccabi had alighted and handed Miss Pardoner down from the phaeton outside the garish green door of the notary’s office. My retainer produced a key from a pocket and let our party in. I was quite intrigued – it seemed that relations between the notary and my employee were closer than might be expected. We negotiated the auctioneer’s warehouse of a corridor and Maccabi stopped at the door to Brown’s office and held up his hand.

  ‘Miss Pardoner. Would you be so good as to remain without?’ He declined to give me instruction; I supposed he knew I would not comply. It was plain that my ward was equally disinclined.

  Placing my hand on her arm, I said, ‘Please, I’m sure my servant has his reasons.’

  The utterance served the two-fold purpose of keeping the young woman out and enraging each to my satisfaction.

  The Brewster’s Kaleidoscope of images that covered the room’s walls again induced a dizzy nausea in me, until my wandering eyes were arrested by the sight of Brown slumped on his desk. I noticed the pungent smell of the heavenly demon and the tell-tale pipe in the notary’s hand.

  ‘By his face you would not know it, but d___ me that voice must come from somewhere.’

  I looked at Maccabi for confirmation but answer came there none. He merely set about righting the cherubic figure in his chair, removing the pipe from his hand and hiding it in a drawer. It was full of papers as varied and jumbled as the ones I had been duped into signing.

  This gulling by border rustics still rankled but, as a man of means, I expected opportunity enough to pay them out. Maccabi raised the sash to dissipate the poppy’s miasma. He looked to me and pointed at the figure in the chair.

  ‘He must have taken his pipe late today,’ Maccabi said. ‘He keeps office from two in the afternoon until six, as a rule.’

  Then he opened the door to admit Miss Pardoner.

  ‘Don’t be alarmed, Miss Pardoner,’ said the toady. ‘Mr Brown is having his customary nap, he’ll awaken soon.’

  I saw myself how the young woman sniffed the air delicately – almost imperceptibly – before a tiny curl manifested at the corner of her mouth. The woman became more fascinating at every turn.

  Brown emerged rapidly out of the poppy’s spell. There were no cloudy-eyed moments of incomprehension, he became aware immediately that his secret was now known to at least one more, and he sighed. ‘How unfortunate!’

  ‘How so?’ I enquired, and Maccabi gave me a sharp look but held his tongue.

  ‘I do not care to be had at a disadvantage by a fellow such as you, Mr Moffat.’

  His rasping voice scraped any respect from the title, leaving ‘mister’ in the company of choicer epithets he might have used but for the presence of Miss Pardoner. His cherub’s chin slumped to his chest, and he said but one word: ‘What?’

  Maccabi started and placed a hand on the notary’s arm. I lifted a finger toward
the Jew and shook my head.

  ‘Naturally, I would like possession of the papers I was foolish enough to sign. All of them.’

  ‘Naturally,’ Maccabi echoed.

  Brown said nothing, nodded and withdrew the disorderly sheaf of papers from the drawer. The opium pipe fell to the floor and its blue and white porcelain bowl shattered. I wondered where the opium lamp was, and how he had sequestered it before the opium took him. My eyes must have been looking for it, for Brown said, ‘It is behind the Hogarth. Take a look.’

  At first I did not understand. Then I caught sight of the canvas depicting the moll at her toilette in a bawdy house. It was not a painting that I knew of. I approached and saw that the two bent nails holding one side of it to the wall were loose to the touch. Behind the canvas was a hollowing out of the plaster wall, and a beautiful example of an opium lamp on a tray of beautifully lacquered wood. It was as exquisite a piece of Chinoiserie as ever I had seen. How such a thing had arrived in an obscure notary’s office in Northumbria, much less the painting, I could not begin to hazard. I drew the Hogarthian veil over the secret place once more, as Brown’s grating voice began again.

  ‘The girl is still your ward. Do with the papers what you will – everything is a matter of record at chancery. You will not avoid that responsibility, try as you might, Mr Moffat.’

  ‘I do not intend to try anything of the sort.’

  I smiled at the three of them in turn before questioning Maccabi. ‘So, your purpose. Why are we here?’

  But it was Brown who answered. ‘Miss Pardoner is here, but I assume her effects are not, unless you found cartage on Lindisfarne. Jedediah, I will see to it. Get you on your way. Before Shabbat.’

  Again, I was put out of countenance by the impropriety of his relationship with Maccabi, who in truth owed fealty to me, his employer. Perhaps they both assumed I would renege on the contract I had unwittingly signed. If so, they were mistaken in me; there was far more prospect of amusement in keeping him in my employ.

  Once more we were aboard the phaeton, the beleaguered horse overburdened by the extra passenger and weary from the exertions of the past three days. Maccabi made as if to lay about the nag once more, but I stayed him with a sharp word, and I was duly rewarded with glances from both him and the young lady, though of quite different characters. I, of course, gave not a fig for his treatment of the beast.

  Not so much rolling as roiling northbound, I was surprised to feel anticipation at the prospect of finally reaching my new home. This thrill was dampened somewhat by the realisation that I was travelling the same road for a third time. It was indeed vexing to suspect that Brown, or Maccabi, had gone to great lengths to delay my occupation of Gibbous House.

  Catching Miss Pardoner’s eye, I enquired how she came to be entangled in my affairs. She gave me as cool a look as possible and retorted, ‘Once again, I find your choice of words unfortunate, Mr Moffat. However, if you mean to enquire after the history of my arrival at the home of Septimus Coble, I shall tell you, though it is a tale commonplace in most parts.’

  Maccabi’s ears seemed possessed of an astounding muscularity, for I could have sworn his right ear extended a quarter-inch in the direction of us passengers. The young woman cleared her throat and began: ‘My life began seventeen years ago, in June 183_, occasioning my mother’s deliverance from the trials of her own. I do not mean to say that her trials were any greater than those of any wife to a country parson with a living that kept him and his in impecunity, if not outright poverty. My father would have married again, if only to give his babe a mother, but his prospects were no better than his situation, and society did not consider him in want of a wife. My father did not survive beyond my fifth year himself.

  ‘The parish seemed to be my fate, until the new incumbent began a search for any relative of mine with the means and inclination to take over my education. The reverend must indeed have been a charitable man, if charity be measured in years and not affection, for I was eleven years in age before I was collected for delivery to Septimus Coble and his home here in Northumbria.

  ‘I saw Mr Coble daily at dinner. He was distant but made generous provision for me until his death. My tutors were diligent, if uninspiring, and it seems to me I have had an education of a kind not enjoyed by many women of any station. In fact, I had hopes of—’

  She broke off, remaining silent despite all my efforts to draw her out. I was not sure if I believed a word of her tale: she was too exotic a bloom to have sprouted from such meagre soil.

  The silence became too much for Maccabi as we passed Bamburgh Castle, and he remarked on the renovations. ‘The trust has paid a penny or two for that work. More than thirteen centuries of history in the castle.’

  He had slowed the nag’s pace – though I scarce believed that possible – to take in the majesty of the place, as he put it. I could not but reprove him.

  ‘Maccabi, it is my belief that time and money is wasted on the past. I am more concerned with the future, mine in particular. You would do well to look to yours. How distant lies the house, for I am heartsick at all this delay?’

  His back stiffened and he grunted, ‘Just past Budle Hall on the way to Spindlestone.’

  Which answer, of course, meant nothing to me, and I told him so.

  ‘Two miles, Mr Moffat. Two miles to your house, no more.’

  Chapter Ten

  Budle Hall – a featureless block of a house with all of the straight lines and none of the distinguishing marks of the new Palladian style – was some half an hour behind us. Rounding a corner, we came suddenly upon an estate wall that stretched as far as the eye could see. I held my peace, although I was impressed by the extent of my property. Maccabi stole a glance to the rear and I was glad I had kept my composure.

  A few furlongs further on, we stopped at a gatehouse. What had once been a building appropriate to its function was alarming in its present dilapidation. Not a pane of glass remained in the windows visible from the carriage. There were slates on the roof, but they appeared to have been dropped from the hand of a giant and left where they fell. Birds’ nests were visible through the holes in the roof, but nary a living creature stirred or gave sound. It was as sorry a place as ever I had seen.

  Maccabi, his mood apparently improved, leaped jauntily from his seat, producing a large ring of keys from somewhere about his person. A representation of a coat of arms adorned the gates: party per bend sinister, a unicorn rampant was the charge in one field and the other lay bare. Whether the unicorn was proper or some fantastical colour I could not say; I doubted that it was the crest of any family at all.

  The key turned surprisingly easily in the lock, given the rusted and buckled nature of the ironwork. Maccabi swung the gates wide with a flourish, made only slightly ridiculous by the discordant screech of the iron. Retaking his post, he drove the phaeton within, neglecting to secure the gates behind us.

  The drive was sweeping: it curved and rose up an incline that was injurious to the horse’s wellbeing. I looked upward to the crest of a hill. What I could only assume was a dome to rival St. Paul’s appeared from the crest. It looked like nothing more than the grey hump of a gargantuan crookback. Maccabi gave his unattractive laugh.

  ‘Your demesne, Mr Moffat. Fitzgibbon House.’

  ‘Fitzgibbon?’ I queried.

  ‘Look at it, sir. Just one of the reasons for its more customary name.’

  This sight was nothing to the horror that awaited on the other side of the hill.

  The disrepair into which the gatehouse had fallen was not in evidence, but Fitzgibbon House was a conglomeration of architectural styles that held no regard to harmony or beauty. The greater part seemed to have been completed when the most ridiculous extravagances of the Baroque style were in vogue. The dome itself was vast and, far from forming the hub of the house, strayed disconcertingly from the centre.

  There was nothing of symmetry about the design: the east wing boasted three towers enjoined by a cloistered w
alk, while the west had four spires of differing heights and construction. The materials of construction appeared to have been chosen by a magpie. Verdigrised copper on one spire, moorish tile on another; sandstone on that wall, yeoman brick on this. The monstrosity had been designed by – or for – a lunatic.

  The grounds surrounding the house had not had the benefit of a landscape gardener’s eye. It was a vista of spinney and copse interspersed with grassland, which, though not overgrown, was home to numerous sheep. Of all the fates I had ever imagined might befall me, gentleman farmer was not among their number.

  The horse came gratefully to a halt in front of the vast threshold. Being Northumbria, the huge doors were flanked by the seemingly ubiquitous lions, tails extended, though any house by the name of Fitzgibbon could have little to do with the Percys. Maccabi reached for the iron doorknocker, wrought in the shape of a monkey’s head. He moved it gingerly, although it was clearly of significant weight and unlikely to be damaged by his use of it. He let it give a single knock on the heavy plate affixed to the oak door.

  ‘Am I so fortunate as to have a household full of retainers, Maccabi?’

  He shifted from foot to foot momentarily; I had never seen him so hesitant.

  ‘Not exactly, sir,’ he said. ‘You have a cook, Mrs Gonderthwaite, and, well... ’

  He did not finish: the door began to open inward without the slightest trace of the creaks and groans I had been expecting. At first it seemed that the door opened by mysterious means, until I heard a voice emanating from about the height of my waist. A deep and heroic baritone emerged from a figure the size of a five-year-old. It seemed that no one in this forsaken land possessed a voice appropriate to them.

  ‘Mr Moffat, Miss Pardoner, welcome. Shabbat shalom, Jedediah.’

  I turned to Maccabi and asked the name of the manneikin.

  ‘My name, Mr Moffat, is Enoch.’

  ‘Enoch. It is not customary to address one’s staff by their... first names, I believe.’