Rural crime is rampant so distrust of unannounced visitors is perhaps only natural. I am a stranger here these past seven years. I came in an odd route. I skirted the vast D’Eynscourte Estate for twenty miles to its north before I plunged in to memory along a myriad of narrow twisty lanes that crisscross the land.
The trees hemmed the roads in, forming an archway in places even as I occasionally glimpsed the distant lake and exquisite little medieval church by its shore. Once this was my second home, a magical playground where forests, streams and lake sheltered generous spirits, elves, faeries and the sweet secrets and sounds of vast childhood imaginations where naught but good is the outcome.
Now I know better; the world is full of weeping, far more than I can understand. Or something like that. Yeats, ever reliable for melancholy. Save for my midnight rambles to exhaust myself when I cannot sleep, I have not actually been to the Estate or near the Hall since the loss of Bess and Grace. As a family, we regularly visited Val, our oldest friend, the best man at my wedding and now Lord Valentine Fitzroy D’Eynscourte, the 23rd Earl. I could not bear to do so when left alone.
Parked at the rear of the Hall, the adornment of reverential spotlights illuminate with an ever-changing light show for Christmas gives a welcoming glow to the bleak afternoon. Though a gang of black silhouettes, bent almost crooked like slaves in the American south of old, picking Brussels Sprouts amidst the chill mist and frozen rutted fields as I drove here, may not enjoy the spectacle.
I sit in silence in my car, my mind back in those far off sunlit days as a child here. A shadow flits through the woods behind, observing. The reverent hush from tree and bush deepens as snow sheets down. A silhouette in a high window openly stares, hostile. A black pickup, all steel bumpers and roof top spotlights blazing, appears and halts two hundred yards behind me. Silent, threatening, tinted dark windows hide the possible six occupants. I cannot see the registration number. The vehicle appeared from nowhere five miles out as I cut through the maze of small lanes to the Hall and it almost kept up. No doubt warned of my presence by the web of CCTV cameras discreetly placed in roadside trees.
Why not? Crime against farms is all the rage, and I am charged with solving some, even if I resent farmers’ property somehow being more important than anyone else’s in Ancaster County.
The grey slab of the lower lake lies far off, a presence rather than fully visible through the falling snow. Memories rises unbidden: of summer days spent learning to swim on that lake shore, the tendrils of weeds weakly touching my and Bess’s legs. We revelled in the cool clear water, yet were guilty six year olds seeing Valentine sat forlorn on the beach by the church with my mother. His fear of those weeds dragging him down meant he never paddled or swam on his own land, just watched from a distance and never learnt how. Many years later we understood. He had only recently lost his father in a drowning accident abroad.
Enough. Memories mean only sorrow. I look at the imposing four-storey Elizabethan Hall, visualize its inner treasure where we once were innocent explorers. A ballroom, two staterooms, ten bedrooms, twenty other rooms, thirteen bathrooms, fifteen halls, twelve sets of stairs, two churches (one elaborate for the family and guests, one basic by the lake for servants), one grand Gallery, twenty entrances, six rooms making up the kitchen, two hidden tunnels and five priest holes. We counted them all once.
The valley to the front is a tapestried landscape of sweeping manicured lawns, discreetly placed copses and trees, follies inspired by classic Greece and Rome. All Capability Brown designed purely to bring aesthetic pleasure to the eye. And of course, the grand house on the hill looking down on all commoners proclaimed the power and wealth of its owner and that others should know their place. With nary a hint, even now of commercial work or farming to spoil his Lordship’s view.
My own village lies in the Malvingham Valley, over the hills and parallel to the east. The vale of my mother’s home in Lilburne-by-Spital is the same to the north-west. But our valleys look, feel, are totally different, devoted to the daily grind of agricultural production. Great tracts of soil making up huge fields for giant machines to toil over like insects through the seasons. Ploughing, dragging, sowing, crop spraying, tending, harvesting of golden wheat and the sharp yellow and then black of oilseed rape. Before ‘the whole beginneth again’ as the vicar proclaims in pulpit and pub for Harvest Festival celebrations.
D’Eynscourte Hall’s valley is all about ‘the look.‘ Deer roam free here, with only the echoing staccato of shotguns in pheasant season and the tally-ho and horn of the hunt to disturb the peace.
The Hall itself was originally built over four hundred years ago. By a woman of little standing when she began, yet so skilled at courtly politics that she rose high in Queen Elizabeth I’s estimation and patronage and married with royal approval five times, each one begetting a bigger fortune on widowhood. She set off the dynasty that grew to be one of the foremost families of the land, fuelled by trade in Caribbean sugar, Virginia’s cotton, tobacco and slavery.
Who can forget Valentine’s early childhood tutor, an earnest academic enamoured of the family history, explaining that my friend was the descendant of a story ‘epic’ in its breadth and depth. As a child, I too found it all wondrous with the tales of derring-do. Now I know it was just a violently grubby dash for cash. Far from epic in the classic sense of a story of heroes, heroines and honour helping to spawn a lasting civilisation. The D’Eynscourte saga is not one I can imagine attracting a Homer, Virgil or Dante.
What goes up, must come down. The D'Eynscourtes crashed and almost burnt. Lost without guaranteed vast incomes coming through as times changed, the family missed out, refusing to demean themselves by diversifying with the Industrial Revolution. They even thought despoiling India and Africa beneath them too. Instead it spawned men who retained power and influence locally but proved to be notably unlucky gamblers and rakes on the national scene. For the past two centuries, not a one of the scions of the family ever became sufficiently astute in marrying wealth or prominent enough at home or abroad in commerce, the military, the arts or politics to make their lineage financially secure. Instead drink, gambling, pornography, sadism, thuggery, treachery, cruelty and corruption hurtled the family to the edge of ruin and disgrace.
The Hall, the estate, fell into literal rack and ruin, including Albion House, the grace and favour home of the Bishop of Ancaster. Valentine’s grandfather and father huddled cold and distraught living in three rooms in one desolate wing at the last forty years ago. All was doomed.
Valentine’s wild if brilliantly clever father Rupert was destined to be the last estate owner in the sad line of M’Lord D'Eynscourte, men who would not be missed one jot as bankruptcy beckoned beneath re-mortgages and death duties. Until that is, a miracle. Rupert not only saved the day almost forty years ago by paying off all duties and debts. He created such wealth that the estate could be refurbished to its former glory and even greater magnificence. Tragically, for four-year-old Valentine at least, his father died to achieve this and left my friend an orphan, his mother already dead. Valentine never ever met his father. I at least had three years. Both mocked for having no father, we clung to each other from our first meeting.
My visit is unusual. Apart from jolting painful memory, another reason I stay away now is I do not want to harm my friend, his standing, his ambitions for official office locally, perhaps nationally. To be seen with a man who is still a notorious suspected murderer in the eyes of many could be grievous to him. Yet Valentine supports me always, declaring to all and sundry that he knows me to be innocent, even when to take the side of a heinous individual could be fatal to any wider aspirations he might have. It is probably put down as unreasoning loyalty from a man who in all else is a solid, dependable pillar of the establishment.
I also know Val himself finds it painful to meet me now and might just try to avoid it if I give him warning. He has only visited my Malvingham cottage once in seven years, a month soon after Bess and Grace di
sappeared. He teared up immediately and I had to drive him home as he was too overcome with sobs. I understood. He was a lifelong friend of Bess too since the age of five, was Grace’s beloved ‘Nuncy Val’ who often came to stay and play. I remember the overwhelming weight of such grief as an adult on meeting the death of a close loved one myself for the first time, having endured it when my father’s parents died a few years before.
Val and I meet only once a year now; to mark the day of Bess’s disappearance. It is best for him. For me too. We always talk about Bess and Grace, and that helps. For a while, but then, it is only the blur of white pain reignited.
***
There is a violent bang on my car window.
“Private property, are you blind,” cries a cultured voice with real menace.
All I can see is a very expensive tweed shooting jacket and trousers. Ramming my car door open sharply, I almost catch the man in the face as he is bending to add detail to his threat.
He clutches his flat cap to his head as he steps hastily back to avoid the sharp angles of the heavy door.
“You meant that,” the man bellows, moving forward threateningly, warming to the conflict that he clearly enjoys in a well-worn scenario he has undoubtedly carried out before. No doubt with help at hand as now with the pick-up’s four doors all opening. The old kid’s trick of a little guy starting a conflict in the street and then big kids appear to flatten you.
Face weather beaten, whiskified with purple tints becoming blue as the snow and wind blows cold, I recognise him at once despite our not having met for many years.
His voice calms instantly, “Oh, it is you, Mr. Cade, so sorry.”
Bull Junior, the estate manager, transitions easily to jocular and accommodating even as he waves help to stay away and the pick-up’s doors close without me seeing those inside.
His voice is clipped boarding school through and through, “I was into my ‘repel boarders routine’, a lot of intruders, rustlers, thieves these days.”
I nod dismissively, turn sharply when a larger shadow crosses my peripheral vision. The black pick up, hovering across the large gravel square, roars away. Is it the same one as has been seemingly following me all day?
“Can’t be too careful these days,” he goes on. “We saw you drive in. CCTV dotted around the estate. You took a suspicious route if I might say so. We have an intruder protocol, the boys gather.”
I cut in, nod at the departing vehicle. Were Cat Rudd or Stephenson there?
The answer is hesitant, “Lord no. Whatever made you think that?
“Good to see you in any event after all this time, welcome back to our humble abode Caleb,” is a smooth continuance, accompanied by the offer of an expensively gloved handshake which I accept even as I note the change of subject.
Bull always reminds me of a small bird, constantly jumping from one spot to another, inquisitive, aware, ever watchful of anything and everyone. I cannot even remember the man’s first name despite his being the Estate Manager for fifteen years now, taking over from his father soon after Valentine, Bess and I had returned to the area from University. Bull is the son of the family who brought Valentine up with the militarily austere Bull Senior as father figure, and the plump and jovial Mrs. Bull always cooking many a delight in the swelteringly hot kitchen of their large farm house six miles off in the woods.
Bull is my and Val’s age, was in the same school year, sometimes a fourth member of the Val, Bess, Caleb friendship group when in primary. He had never stuck for long somehow. Once Valentine went to boarding school aged eight, tragically Bess left our area then too. Bull had turned more to townies at Merian Comprehensive and then gone on to excel, by all accounts, at Agricultural College.
Accepted by all as a brilliant estate manager, local opinion splits over whether the modern diversified success of the estate is down to him or Val. Whoever, it is a multi-million-pound enterprise through farming, growing crops for energy as well as food, a quarry, farm shop, award winning cheese, ice cream, jam, chutney and piccalilli lines which sell by the million units everywhere from supermarkets to corner shops
I also recall the police reports on two call outs to Bull’s home, his parents’ old house, his wife withdrawing all charges after going to a refuge with the children for a week.
“But you are getting wet, Mr Cade, do go inside. Our Valentine is in The Gallery of Shields this time of day, or down in the private Church by the lower lake.”
Valentine told me a few years ago that he was returning to the Catholic faith, the one his family loudly renounced half a millennium ago in pursuit of power and wealth by being visibly Protestant, virulently anti-Rome and the Pope; in public at least. Five hidey holes for visiting priests in the house indicate that they may actually have been recusants throughout those turbulent times.
Bull walks with me through the Tudor gatehouse with its imposing astronomical clock and white bas-reliefs set into the brickwork by a skilled Italian craftsman centuries before.
“Church by the lake - if you remember, has been renovated. Loves it down there, all those memories for all of us as kids, swimming, hide and seek? Val works, reads down there, hours on end, day and night. We even had power and Broadband fitted, would you believe? Not the sort of place for humble folk like me.”
I cannot shake off my perpetual feeling that Bull – for all his humble behaviour – thinks he knows things beyond my understanding, making him always the most important person in the room even as he pays deference to whoever he is with.
He shows all this now as he goes on, “A beautiful peaceful place that eases the burdens of the world from his shoulders, Val says. You should try it. Bad place at night though.”
I do not reply. Does he know that I walk their grounds deep in the night sometimes? Is he giving me warning? Is there something to hide or just natural protection of your master’s own?
15
Sharp slanting snow and wind thumb the eyes, knife into head and bones in the moments it takes to reach the imposing doors fifty yards distant at one side of the quadrangle. An intricately paved path leads through the prim if snow covered lawns and sculpted flowerbeds.
The dark deep archway has the family crest and initials emblazoned upon the stone above the studded medieval door. From the walls, stare iconographic carvings of the cycle of battles between the ancient Virtues and Vices. The family emblem warriors stand steadfast with the good; their longstanding rivals for power and influence creep small, dark and leering amongst the named vices. Copied from the thirteenth century façade of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, the images look down sternly. I remember as a teenager first struggling to see how and why people had once oriented their lives around such ideas. Now I can see merit in them. I brace myself and heave at the gnarled, thick arched Elizabethan wooden doors that rack and moan as they move.
Within, electric bulbs, designed as candles on the walls, throw pools of light and shade at two-yard intervals on both sides of the vast Elizabethan Hall. Ancient polished wooden panels form the walls, and a wood slatted nave-like ceiling takes the room up to three floors in height where four large chandeliers illuminate the grandeur above and below. A balcony (for guests and spectators) runs around the whole at the second-floor level. I know from childhood usage that in places there are hidden peepholes, where the Lord or Lady could observe and hear what was going on below without their presence being known.
A stone fireplace large enough for a dozen figures to stand within dominates the far end with a mammoth log fire sparking red and orange flames. Two beautiful white stone caryatids in the shape of full size sculpted female figures support the ten-foot wide mantle. An apt picture show of the D'Eynscourte family history, given that women had begun their family and often struggled to maintain the grandeur against and despite the follies of their men.
Hail like bullets strikes the large mullioned windows at the second-floor level, the sounds piercing even the thick walls of this ancient place, The Great Gallery of Shields. Fo
r each of the two long walls is laden with a score of knightly medieval shields emblazoned with family crests; each accompanied by the arms of chivalry in epee, foil, sabre and long sword. Lovingly restored flag emblems on poles strut out and upwards in each discreetly lit shield’s domain.
I never liked the room’s cold dark violence even when, as a child, I saw it lovingly recreated from a wretched hulk to its present splendour by a team of craftsmen orchestrated by Bull Senior. Valentine’s stand in father, he relentlessly educated my friend on ‘The Family’, honour and duty in this very room.
Even knowing it as I do, I still stop and stare in wonder. Not least because the family only came to prominence long after knights roamed England, if they ever did. It is the D’Eynscourte claim to bear antecedence to such knightly families in the mists of time, whether true or mythical, that is celebrated as real here.
***
The sharp sounds of blades crossing and the slip and slide of courteous conflict complement the room. Two gleaming white figures, faces hidden behind dark face grilles are in the almost balletic fencing positions to feint and lunge, parry and riposte. Each is trying to touch the other’s upper body with the tip of his blunted epee while also avoiding such a fate himself. Their concentration is not affected one jot by the slight noise I make on entry or my presence in their peripheral vision as I walk quietly towards them and stop ten yards to one side. Moments of cut and thrust, the forward and back shuffling of clothed feet gripping on the specialist carpet. Nothing matters here save the slight crackle of the log fire in the far distance and the sharp touch of finely honed steel on steel as the music to this concentrated dance.
My oldest friend Lord Valentine lures his opponent forward slightly by exposing his own left side a fraction for a moment. Sensing his chance the man thrusts eagerly forward for the opening that is suddenly no longer there as Valentine feints quickly back to the centre and his weapon touches the man’s right shoulder not once but in a double hit for victory.
Bitter Pastoral_A DCI Caleb Cade Crime Thriller of rural Ancaster County. Page 9
