‘Henry Gifford was here as a tutor to sister Muriel’s children. But he was principally at Combe to minister to our souls, in this very chamber where we are standing. He is – he was – a recent arrival in Combe, here only a matter of months. He replaced another . . . individual . . . who was a truly good man but who has been called to serve elsewhere. I will not conceal from you the fact that we did not care for Gifford. We felt obliged to give him shelter, however, because of what he was and who he represented.’
Shaw hesitated and glanced at his wife. She took up the story.
‘It is true that we have been harbouring a priest,’ said Elizabeth Shaw, speaking with more directness than her husband. ‘However, we came to believe that Henry Gifford had more worldly aims than the salvation of souls and the cause of the true religion. He talked easily about the death of tyrants and the ousting of lawful kings and encouraged us to talk of such things too.’
She glanced towards her son Robert. I remembered that he’d touched on the subject at yesterday evening’s meal. And that Gifford had quickly changed the subject.
‘Such talk is dangerous,’ said Elizabeth. ‘But it was not just talk. Gifford seemed to be in communication with other forces, external forces, who might prefer action to mere words. He received messages, visitors sometimes, that he would not tell us about. This is a quiet and godly house. We live secluded from the world.’
Gully was nodding vigorously. Elizabeth’s words were more or less what he’d said to me the previous day. Now William Shaw resumed.
‘We heard from a distant kinsman, Thomas Cloke, that he had an . . . object . . . of great value to deliver to us, or rather not to us but to Henry Gifford. That this was a secret affair was shown by the way the message was conveyed. Nothing was committed to paper, but all was done through hints and whispers. Then in due course you two gentlemen arrived here with Thomas. Alas, our fears were shown to be all too real by the attack on our very doorstep and the violent fate of our kinsman. Gifford seemed not at all concerned by the death but only troubled by the whereabouts of the . . . object.’
‘It was a book,’ said Abel. ‘We know about it. A book with covers made of wood and containing verses.’
‘Complete gibberish,’ I said before Abel could reveal more. ‘Couldn’t make head or tail of it. Meant nothing to us.’
But William Shaw and the others didn’t seem interested in our opinion of the Black Book of Brân or the implication of Abel’s words that we’d caught sight of it.
‘It brought matters to a head, the death on our doorstep,’ said the master of the house. ‘We held a family council, for we are, all of us, concerned in this matter. Gully joined us. There are no secrets between the Shaws and their steward.’
Gully looked resolute but also gratified at this compliment. He would surely have died to preserve this house and its occupants.
‘We talked long into the night,’ said Mary Shaw, the daughter. ‘We came to a fateful decision.’
I drew my breath in, sharp. Was she about to say that they had decided to do away with the priest?
‘We determined that he should leave Combe and leave straight away, on this very morning,’ said the son, Robert Shaw. ‘We came here to tell him so. We made a reasonable request.’
‘Merely that he should quit Combe,’ said Mary.
‘Quit our house today,’ said Robert.
I imagined the family arriving as a delegation at Gifford’s door. I would not have wanted to face them, so firm, so united.
‘Words followed,’ said the widow Muriel. It was the first time she had spoken. ‘Words followed and then blows.’
‘It was my fault, Master Revill, Master Glaze,’ said Gully now. ‘You should blame me and no member of the family.’
William Shaw put a hand on Gully’s arm, but the steward shrugged it off and continued.
‘I could not bear to hear Gifford say things against the family that was harbouring him. He called us traitors and apostates. He was holding the black book in one hand and the cross in the other.’
Gully raised both arms, clutching an imaginary cross and book in imitation of the priest. I noticed he referred to ‘us traitors’.
‘He was holding a large cross made of brass,’ said William Shaw. ‘It was stored in that cupboard over there. Henry Gifford was brandishing the sign of our salvation. He was speaking low and soft, but his voice was as full of venom as the sting of a snake. He kept on saying, “You shall not have it, you shall not have it”.’
‘The cross?’ said Abel.
‘Not the cross, but the book brought here by Cloke,’ said Elizabeth. ‘My husband asked him how he had laid hands on the thing, since Thomas had been shot and his goods and horse stolen before arriving at Combe. Henry Gifford claimed that the book was already in your grasp and that he had taken it from your bedchamber yesterday.’
‘That part is true enough,’ I said. ‘But the book was hardly in our grasp. Abel and I brought it to Combe without knowing it. Thomas Cloke had slipped it into one of our bags earlier in the journey – perhaps because he expected to be attacked.’
It was easy to be honest. I no longer felt in any danger from the Shaws and their steward. They were too busy accounting for their actions, as if we were justices. It was William who continued.
‘I approached Henry Gifford. Perhaps he thought I was about to take the wretched book from him. He became like a man possessed. He raised the cross higher in the air and made to bring it down on my head. I moved back in time and he missed but it was a wicked stroke. Then he held out the cross, half in threat, half in supplication.’
‘I came forward,’ said Gully. ‘I thought I could reason with Gifford. But as Mr Shaw says, he was possessed. The priest must have believed that I too was attempting to take the book from him, for he lunged at me and I stumbled and fell back on the floor. Then Mistress Mary here stepped forward to help me, and Gifford lashed out at her too.’
‘It is true,’ said the daughter of the house. ‘I tremble to remember it.’
‘I was angry now,’ said William. He was stroking his beard. His eyes were prominent. ‘There was a tussle and one of us wrested the cross away from Gifford and struck him a great blow across the forehead.’
‘It was I who struck him,’ said Gully, ‘and although I am ashamed that I should have put the instrument of our salvation to such an impious use, I trust that He who sits above and judges all our actions will absolve me of any murderous intent. I acted in defence of this family – and in defence of myself, of course.’
There was no defiance in the steward’s tone. Merely a plain statement of what had occurred in this chamber, the place where the family was accustomed to make its religious observances. Abel and I heard how Henry Gifford had staggered back, hardly able to see on account of the blood gushing from the wound in his forehead. It seemed that he was not so badly injured for, under the gaze of the distressed and distracted Shaws, he made a stumbling escape from the close-stool chamber, using the trapdoor and sliding down the stone chute that led to the drains and sewers of Combe.
He was still clutching the book as if his life depended on it. William Shaw likened Gifford’s disappearance to that of a rat creeping back into its hole, as if he would naturally retreat down the shaft rather than try a more orthodox exit. Perhaps he thought in his panic that the Shaws would try to stop him getting away from Combe.
Did they in fact try to stop him? No, said Elizabeth, they were horror-struck at the scene. Did they think they’d seen the last of him? Yes, explained William, since he had got his hands on the black book and no longer cared a fig for the spiritual welfare of the house, if he ever had. There were various secret exits from Combe, including a grille which covered the outlet from the drain under the kitchen and which might be removed to give access to the moat. From there a determined or desperate man could swim or wade his way to safety.
That was what they thought – and hoped! – had happened to Henry Gifford. He wasn’t so grievousl
y wounded after all. He’d escaped from Combe House, clutching his precious book. They’d never see him again. They’d be left to the peace and quiet of their estate. At this time the family were still in their day clothes – they had debated into the night whether and how they should confront Gifford – and they now discovered that their garments were spattered with the priest’s blood. They discarded their clothes and put on their night attire.
But Gifford had not got away. Whether he was more badly wounded than they assumed, whether he’d harmed himself in his descent down through the drains, he had evidently tried to emerge inside the kitchen, via the flagstone. His life fading, he had managed to dislodge the stone but did not have the strength to push it away and climb out. So Gifford expired face down in the muck and slop of the kitchen drains.
His discovery was almost as much a shock to the Shaws as it was to the servants of Combe. But not quite as much. William had pronounced the death an accident, knowing that his people would not question his opinion, but he observed the suspicion on Abel’s face and my own. So they had decided to give this full account of the previous night, a resolution that was strengthened when they overheard my reference to a ‘house of murderers’.
Later, I asked myself why it meant so much to the Shaws (and to Gully) that a pair of wandering players should listen to their story of how a corrupt priest had tried to steal a black-bound volume and then resorted to violence to keep it in his hands. It was as if we were justices and jury. And then I realized that the Shaws were appearing not in front of Abel Glaze and Nick Revill but before the bar of their own consciences. It wasn’t we who had to acquit them. Only they could acquit themselves. Their extended confession took place while Finder and Keeper skittered about the room until, growing tired, they fell in heaps in a corner.
There were a couple more questions.
What had happened to the cross, the one that had inflicted the head-wound on Henry Gifford?
No longer sanctified, it had been thrown into the moat, where it promptly sank.
And the book, the black book?
The Shaws did not want to know what had happened to it. The book, whose contents were unknown to them, had brought trouble to Combe. It had, presumably, led to the murder of their kinsman Cloke and to the frantic avarice of Gifford to possess it. Whatever the book was, it was not a sacred thing to be consulted and revered. Good riddance if it was down in the mud and muck of the house drains. Not that they were even aware of its title, but the Armageddon Text could stay in the mire until doomsday. It was I who had asked the question about the book’s whereabouts and I reflected that, because of Gifford’s explanation, we two players probably knew more about it than anyone else in the room.
And that was that. William Shaw directed half a dozen of his burliest serving men to accompany us a few miles along the road. The parting that we had with the Shaws was a formal one, neither warm nor cold. We were privy to their secrets but, even had we been inclined to, there would be little purpose in alerting the authorities to the demise of the priest. In fact, by helping him to his death, the Shaws had shown themselves loyal Englishmen and Englishwomen. They wanted no part in the seditious talk and rumours of plots which were swilling around this part of the country. The body of the priest, which was presently being washed and laid out, would be decently buried with the appropriate obsequies.
‘Decently.’ That was William Shaw’s word, and I think it applied to the whole household. They were decent people, well-to-do, God-fearing, honest and honourable and law-abiding, except insofar as they observed the older religious practices.
Shaw gave Abel a couple of sovereigns not so much as a way of buying his silence as in gratitude to my friend for helping to fish Gifford out of the kitchen drain. Mary Shaw expressed the hope that my uncle would still be alive by the time I got to Shipston on Stour. (I confess I’d forgotten my uncle and namesake in all the excitement.)
We rode out of the valley scarcely twenty-four hours after we’d arrived at Combe House. We had our escort of liveried servants, who rode fore and aft of us. I was glad of this as we retraced our passage through the belt of trees where we’d been ambushed the day before. There was no sign of the black-garbed men nor any trace of our companion Thomas Cloke, though I’d been half-expecting to see his body tossed casually into the undergrowth by the wayside. Surely, when they discovered that he wasn’t carrying what they were searching for, they would have no further use for his corpse?
As we reached the rim of the valley, Abel and I turned to look back at Combe. The house lay, jewellike, in its moat. The birds were singing while a breeze was combing the trees. The day was clear. You would not have thought that a murder had taken place so recently in the precincts of Combe nor that another man had met a violent end inside the house.
The main road was in sight. A band of travellers was trotting along, their passage raising swirls of dust. There were a dozen or more of them – all classes, to judge from their clothes – enough to deter all but the most violent robbers. This was probably the reason why they were travelling together in the first place. Anyway, Abel and I decided to take our chances by following in their wake. In truth, since no danger was in prospect, we wanted to part company from the liveried escorts and be about our own business.
So we cantered on, thinking we’d left the whole raft of priests, agents and recusants well behind us. At least I did. After a couple of hours our stomachs told us it was time for refreshment, and we reined in on a patch of ground, which, though surrounded by woodland, was not far from a scatter of cottages. We had bread and cheese and ale from Combe, so we tethered our horses while we sat on the grass and talked about everything that had happened over the last day and night.
It was then that Abel Glaze revealed his final surprise, the second of the discoveries he’d been about to broach to me in the chamber when we were interrupted by the Shaws.
He had the book with him, the Armageddon Text, the bloody Black Book of Brân.
VII
‘Jesus, Abel, what are you doing with that?’
Abel had retrieved the book from his bag. It sat between us on the grass, a tainted thing. Abel’s pride in pulling off a neat trick had turned to unease when he saw my reaction.
‘I took it from the kitchen drain. When I was down there with that Gifford, what should I see lying next to his body but this what do you call it? This Armageddon Text? While everyone was busy getting the body laid out on the kitchen flags, I tucked the book under my doublet so’s no one should see it and climbed out.’
‘In God’s name, why didn’t you leave it where it was? That’s what the Shaws wanted. Or rather, they never wanted to see the bloody thing again. I don’t want to see it either.’
Abel looked so crestfallen that his long nose actually seemed to quiver.
‘I thought it was valuable.’
‘I don’t know about valuable, but it’s certainly dangerous.’
I looked around as if we might be being spied on at that very instant. We were in sight of the road, but there were no riders close. The party of travellers had passed into the distance. I started because I thought I detected a movement in a nearby clump of trees and bushes, but it was nothing, only a pigeon taking flight.
‘All right,’ said Abel. ‘I’ll leave it here. Throw it into those bushes.’
‘You can’t do that.’
‘But you just said—’
‘I know what I said. But you can’t discard the book now. We’re lumbered with it.’
‘Perhaps it’s fate, Nick.’
I was about to say what I thought of fate, and in a particularly pithy way too, when I was distracted again by a stir in the nearby trees. More pigeons taking flight.
But not only pigeons. From the shelter of the trees there emerged, with much rustling and crashing, a band of men. Black-clad men. And not four this time, but five. One of them went to stand sentry at the roadside, while the others approached us.
Abel and I had already jumped to o
ur feet. We had no weapons. Our horses were tethered several yards away. As I said, there were a handful of houses in view but no sign of any of the occupants. In any case, I don’t think these tough and resolute-looking men would have been distracted from their purpose by the presence of a few locals. We were trapped.
All this flashed through my head, and probably Abel’s as well. But it wasn’t the principal thought in my mind. Instead, I stood there, mouth hanging open like an idiot, heart hammering away in my chest, the blood roaring in my ears. For striding towards us was the figure of Thomas Cloke. The dead man, whom I’d seen the previous day shot off his horseback perch and tumbling to the ground. The late Thomas Cloke who, out of cowardice or prudence, had slipped the Armageddon Text into Abel’s case. Not a ghost but a living, breathing, grinning piece of flesh.
Cloke walked with that familiar bounce. He was enjoying the looks of disbelief on our faces. He was wearing the same gear as on the previous day except for a clean shirt replacing the one that had been soaked in his own blood.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is I, Thomas Cloke.’
The other three men stood slightly to his rear, suggesting that Cloke was their leader. Two of them were carrying muskets. At the edge of the road, the fourth man kept watch against passers-by. I glanced sideways at Abel. He looked too dumbstruck to speak. So I felt it was incumbent on me to make some remark, to say something halfway intelligent.
‘You’ve been planning this a long time, Master Cloke?’ I said, even managing to strike a casual note.
‘A combination of planning and the willingness to seize an opportunity,’ he said. ‘When I heard that you and Abel Glaze were to visit the Midlands, we thought it would be a good moment to put a particular . . . plan into effect.’
The Lost Prophecies Page 31
