‘A beggar dipping my poor, dented, leaky thimble in a river of gold, I was baptized.
‘And I was not alone. Sixteen hundred and ninety-seven of my fellow citizens, though anticipating the kind of programless musical heresy for which the performer is renown, little suspected we were about to embark upon so savage, so primeval, so visceral a trek across a tumultuous Jordan.
‘My editorial commission is to document that brief voyage in twelve hundred words. Then I must describe what I saw, because I have no words for what I heard. In fact, I’m confident there are none.
‘Allow me to take you there, then.
‘Every seat is full and the murmur of conversation among those that fill them is curiously constrained, awaiting a supernatural troubling of the waters. The lights dim, resolving to a single pinpoint of spotlight on the stage which, through some trick of the eye, seems adrift in the void.
‘The minutes pass but the murmur, rather than increasing with impatience, falls silent. Even the coughs, sneezes and errant guffaws that typically season anticipatory silence are absent.
‘Still another minute passes until the restless silence becomes absolute. Then, into that stark little sphere of light, rolls a wheelchair, and in the wheelchair the boy who, in recent years, has become the maestro’s constant companion.
‘The silence, rather than being broken by the appearance of the boy, is heightened; his delicate white hands cross in his legless lap and he seems to be waiting for something, perhaps to be animated by a puppet master somewhere in the shadows overhead? I would be hard-pressed not to believe the auditorium itself inhales sharply, then holds its breath.
At last the boy speaks.
‘’Albert doesn’t want anyone to applaud,’’ he says. “So please don’t.’’
‘Then he rolls out of the spotlight.
‘The walls echo a wave of whispers as the comments are translated, mouth-to-ear, mouth-to-ear around the theater.
‘Slowly, the spotlight widens, revealing a Steinway grand piano, at which the maestro is already seated.
‘Despite the injunction, an habitual smattering of spontaneous applause erupts, but is quickly silenced with sibilant shushes.
‘Then the first note. A C#. That’s all it was. A C#. Any monkey with a finger can play a C#. Any puling infant. Any madman, dog, or vertebrate can press the necessary key to produce at C#. A herring thrown from the gallery at the keyboard on just the right trajectory could produce an unmistakable C#.
‘How, then, is this a C# like no other?
‘But it can be described no other way. The maestro played a C#.
‘He holds the note and it races around the room like ball lightning, etching shadows on the silence and, diminished by each retelling, draws we mortals down, down, down, into the maelstrom to come.’
Miriam looked at the picture of this miracle-worker who, with a single note, had so enspelled an audience of those who, every day, passed her on the street without taking the least notice.
She wasn’t impressed.
There was more, but she flipped the page and read the closing paragraph.
‘I know from personal experience, as do many of my readers, that the silence following a prolonged fusillade of cannon fire presses almost more painfully on the eardrums than the concussions themselves. It’s a poor and tongueless comparison to my experience last night as the last note rang, like a single line tossed from land by which we were dragged to shore having long since been cast from whatever vessel we had set sail in. We were a host of Peters, unable to maintain our footing, reaching with muted cries for the Messiah to take our hand and calm the storm.
‘I read my words and cannot believe myself capable of them. I have lost all objectivity. I have ceased to function as a critic and become a disciple. I offer no excuses. You have my twelve-hundred words, but twelve-hundred times twelve-hundred from this feeble pen would fail to capture the perils and the ecstasy of the voyage that began with a single C#, played by a man possessed; whether by angels or demons, only the hearer can decide. As for me, I am born-again, freed to believe the impossible.’
Miriam heard the clang of a familiar bell—which may or may not have rung a C#—and looked up to see the trolly approaching. She quickly balled the greasy waxed sausage paper, crumpled it in the newspaper and stuffed the little bundle in a nearby bin.
She sucked saliva from her cheeks and prepared for the assault.
Chapter Fourteen
Mid-afternoon of the day following the concert the limousine returned Albert and his modest entourage to Oxburgh Hall where an agitated vicar awaited, pacing in the gravel in the courtyard.
“That’s James Simon,” Angela observed.
Albert had been napping to the pleasant cadence of the wheels and the genial banter and teasing that had developed between Jeremy Ash and Angela. His sleep-shrouded eyes drew the vicar into focus.
“Who?” Jeremy wanted to know.
“We met him yesterday at Langar Chapel. He’s the vicar,” said Angela.
The car pulled to a stop and Balfour, who had approached at the double to open the door, thrust his head in. “I’m so sorry, sir. The gentleman,” he cocked his head in the direction of the vicar, “has been most persistent.”
Albert got out of the car, by which time Balfour had grown another head, that of Simon the vicar, which loomed over the butler’s left shoulder. Despite his propinquity, he called out Albert’s name rather more loudly than necessary.
“That’s all right,” said Albert, sensing Balfour’s dilemma. “I know him.”
Relieved, Balfour stepped aside and redirected his energies to helping the driver with Jeremy’s wheelchair.
“I’m sorry to be a carbuncle on your butler’s backside,” said the vicar, wrestling a piece of paper from his overcoat pocket. “But you have to see this.” He thrust the paper at Albert, who opened it. Angela looked over his shoulder.
The paper was a printed copy of an apparently ancient document, written in a language of which Albert recognized only a few words, and these held no meaning. His expression indicated as much.
“After you left yesterday, I couldn’t stop thinking about that FOSS business. I mean, it’s been there all along, hasn’t it? Right under my nose. But I never really gave it the time of day until you expressed an interest. Well, that train of thought put me on to an old school chum of mine,” said the vicar, retrieving the paper as the trio walked toward the steps leading to the front door, “more than a chum, actually, if you know what I mean. Corliss, her name is. Gloria Corliss. ‘Gloris’, we used to call her. Well, I did.
“In all events,” he continued as they climbed the steps, “she’s a great scholar; lives with one foot in the Middle Ages. So I rang her up and asked if she’d any idea what this word meant, this FOSS.”
They entered the great hall and intersected Deirdre Ponsenby–Blythe–Hamilton as she emerged, somewhat flustered, from a room to the left. “I beg your pardon. I was on the phone and simply couldn’t ring off. Lord and Lady Bedingfeld, you know.”
Albert was about to remind her that he didn’t, when she continued. “I heard your concert on the BBC last night. Simply, well, I was going to say ‘smashing,’ but that doesn’t do it justice, does it? Simply breathtaking?”
She seemed to be asking a question. “I don’t know,” said Albert, observing that she seemed to be breathing without difficulty at present.
The Housekeeper smiled and ignored him. She lobbed a glance at his companions. “Shall I tell cook to expect another for dinner?”
Albert loved questions he could answer. “Yes. This man is . . . a minister.”
“Vicar,” said Simon, leaning forward with an outstretched hand. “Vicar of Langar Chapel.”
“Langar, yes. I didn’t recognize you without your collar, vicar. I’ve attended your services. Last Easter’s I found . . . provocative.”
It was not an appraisal for which Simon had a ready response, but he smiled with a good will. “May I
hope it didn’t send you to the Mohammedans, as they used to say?”
For the first time in Albert’s brief experience of her, the housekeeper smiled genuinely, meaning the full battalion of her dentures were advanced for inspection. “One can only hear so many Christmas or Easter sermons, Mr. Simon, without anticipating them somewhat and, therefore, not listening as carefully as one might? Yours dispelled any such lethargy. Most stimulating. I am reminded of it still.”
The vicar inclined his head. “Lost two families that night. Haven’t seem them since.”
Deirdre Ponsenby–Blythe–Hamilton led the way to the sitting room, where a warm fire crackled in the fireplace. “Some plants don’t respond positively to pruning.”
The exchange passed Albert by entirely, but he was enjoying himself, nonetheless. He liked the vicar. He liked Angela and Jeremy Ash and was pleased that they had taken a liking to one another. He liked Balfour and Deirdre Ponsenby–Blythe–Hamilton and the maid, what’s-her-name, and the large silent man who helped Jeremy with his wheelchair and ate sandwiches. And he liked that no one was talking to him, and he wondered, as he walked with his hands behind his back at the rear of the little parade, if the Spanish lady would sleep in his bed again that night.
Did ghosts sleep?
He smiled.
In time, Deirdre Ponsenby–Blythe–Hamilton had arranged everyone about the fireside to her satisfaction, made sure they all had tea and a bit to nibble on, and left.
“So,” said Simon, as the door closed behind her, “back to Gloris — Gloria. She, well, she was a good deal more interested in that word FOSS than anything else I’d ever had to say, and within an hour had faxed me this.” He flattened the document on a little round table.
“I can’t read it,” said Albert, for whom a second-reading proved as opaque as the first.
“No, well, no. Of course. It’s a mish-mash, a little old French, old English. Some Latin for good measure. Not uncommon for documents dating from the 1200s, as this one does.”
“What does it say?” Angela asked, catching a crumb of watercress in the palm of her hand as it escaped her lips.
“As to that,” said the vicar, “it’s frankly a bit obscure, even for Gloria who, as I said, is a scholar with particular interest in those days, and widely regarded as an expert in its language. But this,” he said, tapping the paper, “is recognizable to one and all.”
Angela and Jeremy Ash nearly bumped heads as they bent in for a closer look.
“Foss!” said Angela.
“Foss?” said Albert, suddenly interested.
“Foss,” declared the pastor with satisfaction.
“But what does it say? Why obscure?” Jeremy Ash wanted to know.
“Gloria wrote it out for me,” said the vicar, withdrawing another piece of paper from his pocket and unfolding it, “with the caveat that it is a rough translation with numerous lacunae. I quote:
“‘My dearest lady. I fear the Fates have, at long last’—something or other, Gloria speculates ‘overtaken’—‘me. My breath comes’ something. ‘Labored’ perhaps? ‘and this ancient heart, ever your faithful servant, bleeds with’ something, something, ‘of my children. With great reluctance I have’ something , something ‘to Foss, ever their companion, and compelled him to swear their safe disposition as’ something, something, something ‘where you will find them, both Magnus and Utique. Your Lord, your servant, your slave.’Johannes.”
“Johannes,” Angela repeated. “John?”
“And not just any John,” said Simon. “King John.”
Albert had heard the name recently. “Wicked King John?”
“The same,” said the vicar, as proudly as if he’d just discovered that monarch’s bones beneath the coffee table.
“Who was he writing to?” asked Angela.
“Given that he refers to his children, probably his second wife, Isabella, as he’d had no issue by his first wife, Isabel.”
Albert took the translation from Simon and studied it, hoping some hidden meaning would leap from the pages, and it did, after a fashion. “He was dying,” he said.
“So it would seem.”
Apparently the meaning hadn’t been as obtuse as Albert had imagined. He resumed his inspection. “Foss was a servant?”
“Of some kind. Very likely.”
“And he was supposed to take care of these children, Magnus and. . .and this other one?”
“MagnusandUtique,” said Simon. “Latin for greatest and least. I think he’s referring to something else, something he put this Foss in charge of. Possibly for delivery to Isabella and the children?”
“Depends on how you read ‘ever their companion,’ said Angela. “Was he ever the companion of the children, or of Magnus and what’sit? Who were John’s children, anyway?” Angela asked.
It was such a logical question, Albert thought. But it wouldn’t have occurred to him in a decade. He wondered, not for the first time, how he could be so completely insensible to things that, in retrospect, were so blatantly obvious?
“They were quite an illustrious bunch, actually,” said Simon. “In no small part because their mother — by all accounts one of the great beauties in Europe at the time—was one politically savvy and, not to put too fine a point on it, determined woman, as well. However, it’s the eldest son that’s of most interest from an English perspective. Henry. Who became king, of course. Henry the Third.”
The obvious question that now occurred to Albert was, ‘why was the son of John the First called Henry the Third instead of John the Second, or John junior?’ and he was just about to put air behind it when Angela spoke. “This Magnus and Ubiquitous. . .”
“Utique,” Simon corrected.
“Utique. You’re saying it’s some kind of code?”
Simon seemed impressed. “As a matter of fact, that’s Gloria’s theory.”
So vividly was Albert reminded of a code he’d stumbled upon in Tryon, North Carolina, that he could almost taste the sulphur in the fire that resulted from its interpretation. He sipped his tea to clear his palate.
“Code for what?” Jeremy Ash demanded.
The curate shrugged. “That’s the question. What two things might John, on his deathbed, be sending—via this Foss—to his wife and children?”
Once again it was Angela who asked the obvious question. “Where was the letter sent from?”
“Well, unfortunately there were no such thing as postmarks in those days,” said Simon, smiling as if he’d made a joke, but the smile faded into a little cough when a quick scan of the faces around the table made it evident he hadn’t. “One can make an argument, given the fact that John died at Newark Castle, that that’s where it was sent from, on or shortly before the day of his death; October 19th, 1216.”
A particular cluster of words stood out for Albert, and he said them aloud. “‘Where you will find them’. Foss didn’t take those things, that big and little, to the queen. The king was telling her that Foss had put them somewhere safe.”
Deirdre Ponsenby–Blythe–Hamilton entered the room with a fresh pot of tea and began, unobtrusively, warming everyone’s cup.
Jeremy was growing restless. “Doesn’t your friend know what those words mean?”
Before Simon could reply, something Sir or Lady had said about the painting of the man inThe Blue Robert chose this particular moment to return to Albert’s memory. “Treasure.”
“Treasure?” Angela and Jeremy Ash echoed simultaneously.
“What makes you think that?” Simon asked.
Albert told them.
“Are you talking about King John’s treasure?” asked Deirdre Ponsenby–Blythe–Hamilton, brushing the crumbs of Albert’s scone from the coffee table into her palm.
“Crown jewels?” said Albert, reminded of Jeremy’s earlier speculation.
“So the story goes,” said the housekeeper. She brushed a hair from her forehead. “One of those legends of dubious provenance fueled by commercial interests in
the area. Like King Arthur and Tintagle. Robin Hood and Sherwood Forest.”
“I remember now!” said Simon. “King John lost the treasury wagon when he tried to cross a river. . .”
“The Wash,” said Deirdre Ponsenby–Blythe–Hamilton, “near Wisbeck.”
Simon leaned over Albert’s shoulder and whispered in his ear. “That’s about thirty miles west of here.”
“Vicar’s right,” the housekeeper affirmed. “And, because the course of the river, as well as the shoreline itself, have wandered over the years, hordes of treasure-seekers have perforated the countryside for miles about over the years looking for it; meaning tinkling coffers for local trade. That’s thereal treasure. King John’s unintentional bequest to the economy hereabouts.”
“I was right!” said Jeremy Ash excitedly, slapping his missing knee. “I told you it was all about crown jewels, remember?”
Albert remembered.
“So, it’s never been found?” Angela asked.
“Heaven forbid!” said the housekeeper. “Half the businesses between Swaffham and Swineshead would have to close their doors.”
Something occurred to Albert. “But there were two things,MagnusandUtique. If Magnus is the Crown Jewels. . .”
Jeremy picked up the thread. “Then what’sUtique?”
No one hazarded a guess.
Albert didn’t know he’d fallen asleep, but he must have. He hadn’t heard the lady approach, or noticed her get into bed. But now he felt her breath on his neck; the rhythm of a very slow waltz.
He’d been thinking of King John, and Foss, andMagnusandUtique; and his thoughts of them—though as indistinct as fog—were still warm. But if he’d fallen asleep, their thread must have been severed at some time, or maybe they’d followed him to that realm where reality had no dominion, and now, in the indistinct shadows of night, were reluctant to empty from their basket of illusion whatever they’d gathered there. His temples hurt.
“I thought you’d never wake.” The woman put her arms around him and squeezed. She was surprisingly strong for a ghost, Albert thought.
Coda: The Third Albert Mystery (The Albert Mysteries Book 3) Page 18
