The Pale Companion

by Philip Gooden

Richard Milford had given me the newly published book just before we’d left for the country. He handed over the volume, still crisp from the press. I could have sworn there was water in his eyes. It was obviously a solemn and proud moment for him, although I must confess that these little mysteries and sentiments of authorship are beyond me. Anyway, Milford trusted my judgment and wanted my approval, despite the differences we’d had from time to time.

  “A direct title, that Whore,” said Kate. “A London title. I don’t know how that would go down here. So what does he deal with on paper?”

  “What all poets deal with in their first volumes,” I said.

  “Love?”

  “Just so.”

  “Is he good?”

  “He has something,” I said guardedly. “A little something.”

  “Read me something of what he has then,” she said. “A little something.”

  “Let’s sit down. I can’t walk around and read aloud.”

  We reached the margin of the lake. Stone seats had been placed at irregular intervals round the banks. The stone was warm to the touch. We sat at opposite ends of a seat. I flicked through the volume although I already had an idea of which one I was going to read to her. Finding the page, I started without any throat-clearing preliminaries.

  When suns shall set their final time of all,

  And stars no longer light us with their fire,

  The moon herself withdraw from night’s fair hall,

  And darkness universal us enmire,

  Grieve not, o world – for one torch still remains.

  This, seen but once, will all that’s lost restore,

  Turn Nature’s course and break nocturnal chains,

  So ’stablish light on earth for evermore.

  Thy beauty ’tis which can this feat achieve,

  And, for a wonder, work it from the grave.

  For though foul death must us of thee bereave,

  There yet remains a glory shall us save.

  They who read my words in praise of thee

  Will never want a light by which to see.

  I looked up slyly, shyly, to watch how she was receiving this sonnet by Master Milford. Not that I was very concerned about Richard Milford’s words. All readers like to be complimented, as do all players, but not so much on the matter (which isn’t theirs) as on the delivery. Kate was looking at me intently. I was unable to read her eyes but saw the smile which tugged at the corners of her firm mouth.

  “That is very typical, I think,” she said.

  “Do you know his work? The book’s only just come out.”

  “Typical of poets. That they should welcome the end of the world and universal darkness . . . as long as it provides them with a conceit about a single light remaining.”

  “Extravagance is natural in love poets,” I said, feeling slightly defensive on behalf of young Milford. “They imbibe it with their mother’s milk. You don’t have to take what they say so seriously.”

  “Oh I think you do.”

  “You do?”

  “This seriousness is not about she who he loves, all he is serious for is himself.”

  I began to feel I’d made a wrong move in reading to her. What I’d wanted was to establish a mood, a mildly melting mood, not to initiate a discussion on the principles of love poetry. However, she persisted.

  “See at the end of it where he says . . . what is it? . . . They who read my words in praise of thee . . . Will never want a light by which to see. And by the way, if there’re no lights left in the world how could anyone see his words to read them, however brilliant they are? In any case what he’s praising there is not her beauty but his own writing. Isn’t it, Nicholas?”

  “Well, yes, I expect so,” I said, impressed by the way she’d memorized the final couplet after a single hearing, and thrown by her somewhat masculine application of common sense to the fragile world of the love-lyric. She obviously had something of her father’s clear intellect. “But remember what inspired him to write in the first place. Her beauty. Cause and effect.”

  “Oh,” said confident Kate, “I don’t suppose there was a woman in the case at all. He was writing his poem to the empty air.”

  “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t mean it,” I said.

  “No,” she said, “but it doesn’t mean he does either.”

  “If you say so,” I said, seeing we were going nowhere and tapping the binding of the book. “I know the gentleman but not quite well enough to question him on these things.”

  “There,” said Kate, and I was reminded by her small smile of satisfaction of my friend Nell and her pleasure when she bested me in argument.

  “One thing I’ve learnt, Kate, from this.”

  “Yes?”

  “That I shall not be writing you a love poem.”

  To my surprise she said nothing to what was intended as a piece of provoking banter but coloured slightly. Quickly, I moved to talk of something else.

  “You are visiting Instede for the wedding?”

  “I’m with my father. He is on other business now. There was a man died here a few days ago.”

  “On Friday last. He hanged himself from a tree.”

  “But I believe there are many stories about how he died,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Stories credited by the simple folk on the estate.”

  “Therefore Lord Elcombe, learning that the matter would almost certainly be enquired into, requested my father to look at the manner of this man’s death and pronounce on it in order to calm such speculations.”

  “As a Justice of the Peace his word is bound to carry weight,” I said.

  “Everyone knows my father,” said Kate. “He is respected the length and breadth of the county.”

  Her face softened. I remembered the way she’d spoken to him in their Salisbury house, mildly chiding and affectionate. Perhaps she had no other love in her life but him.

  “Isn’t this more of a job for a coroner?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  “You’ll have to ask my father that. But I know that it wouldn’t be worth a coroner’s while to look into it. They get nothing for a suicide.”

  “Well, the man who died certainly had nothing, nothing at all. He lived wild in the woods and was fed by members of the household. They believed that for as long as he lived down there he brought good fortune to the house.”

  Kate glanced over her shoulder at the glittering palace on the rise.

  “It’s still there,” she said.

  “I met the wood-man, met him twice, he was a strange creature, he wore animal skins but no shoes,” I said in a rush.

  “He gave you an audience?”

  “Yes, it was exactly that. He said he was lord of the wood, just as Elcombe is lord of Instede. His name was Robin.”

  “After Robin Hood.”

  “He was as ragged as the redbreast is in a hard winter,” I said. “Can I talk to your father about him? I have something to say concerning his death.”

  So Kate Fielding conducted me to her father, the Justice of the Peace. When I expressed surprise at her familiarity with the house she told me she’d been a visitor to Instede ever since she could remember.

  Adam Fielding and his daughter were much better quartered than we Chamberlain’s men on the top floor. It was apparent from the comfort of their apartment that Elcombe had a high regard for his guests and that he was earnest in his desire that Fielding should put a stop to the gossip and rumour about the death of Robin. I waited in an antechamber while Kate went ahead to prepare the way with her father. After a few moments she reappeared and told me to go in, saying that he had already seen us together. This main room faced east and looked out over the lake where we’d so recently been sitting. That Fielding was aware of our approach merely confirmed my impression of him as a man who made it his business to know all. The windows were open and sweet smells of summer sidled into the room. Fielding was sitting at a small table and making some notes. He looked up from his writing w
hen I entered.

  “Your worship,” I said, bowing quite low.

  “Master Revill . . . Nicholas,” he said. “I was wondering when we should meet again.”

  “The honour is mine, sir.”

  “You will not deny me some share in the pleasure of renewing our acquaintance, I am sure. Sit down, please. This is not my house but the servants are mine to command. Is there anything you require?”

  “No thank you.”

  “You are well looked after here too, I hope.”

  “Above our deserts, some would say.”

  Some, like Oswald Eden, I added to myself.

  “It would be a different story for each of us if we were looked after according to our deserts. Kate says you have something to tell me.”

  “Yes, sir. But first could you inform me . . . why you are here? Forgive me if that sounds impudent. I don’t mean it to.”

  Fielding paused for a moment as if gathering his thoughts then spoke. “A man has died in the grounds of this place by his own hand, it appears. Yet there are plenty of tales flying about concerning the manner of his death, and foolish talk of devils and wood-spirits. This would be unwelcome enough at any time but particularly now when all hands and eyes are meant to be directed towards the wedding. So Lord Elcombe has asked me to do what I can to set people’s minds at rest. It is, in any case, a situation where the law would – and should – have its say. Men ought not to die unregarded, whoever they are. Will that do?”

  “Thank you.”

  “But you already know this? Kate has told you.”

  “I needed to hear you say it, sir, since I’m not certain how welcome my words are going to be. They may not give much authority for devils or wood-spirits but they won’t set anybody’s mind at rest.”

  “Since I am just arrived, Nicholas, you shall be my first witness. Speak on.”

  So I told him.

  He listened intently. I spoke precisely. Everything about him, from his manner to his square-cut beard, from his profession as Justice to his cool grey eyes, suggested a preference for neatness and order. After I’d finished – it didn’t take long – he steepled his fingers.

  “Why do you think no one else has noticed this?” he asked at last.

  “I don’t take credit for any special perspicacity, your worship. It may be that others did notice but said nothing because Robin himself was, as it were, beneath notice. He was a strange man in the woods. Scarcely human in a way.”

  “What exactly was wrong with his hands?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose that long exposure to the elements had caused them to turn inwards like that or perhaps they had been so from birth. They resembled animal paws more than human hands. He could clutch at things but he couldn’t grasp properly. Certainly he would not have been able to weave the knot which I saw on the noose.”

  “Two knots in fact,” said Fielding. “You said that the rope was secured about the tree as well as around his neck.”

  “And the tree was not so easy to climb. Sam the bailie told me that one of his men had had some difficulty getting up it when they went to collect the body. And he is young and fit.”

  “Whereas Robin was thin and ragged by all accounts.”

  “Yes.”

  “Without much strength?”

  I thought of the way he’d scrabbled at me in his underground shelter.

  “Little enough.”

  “But sufficient, it seems,” said Fielding, “to shin up a tree, crawl along a branch, balance astride it somehow and stay up there for however many minutes it took to fasten the rope first about his neck and then to the branch – or the other way round – and make all secure enough so that neither knot should give.”

  I said nothing, wanting him to come to his own conclusions.

  “And in your opinion, Nicholas, he could have done none of these things?”

  “I don’t know. He was nimble in his own way, scurrying along the ground like an animal. He might have climbed the elm and the rest of it.”

  “You looked at the ground below the tree?”

  “Yes,” I said, a little gratified at my own thoroughness, “but it did not reveal much. Or anything at all, except that a number of people appeared to have stood on that spot.”

  “When they took down the body.”

  “It would seem so.”

  “Seems and appears. Seems and appears. But nothing is certain.”

  “No, your worship.”

  “You mentioned the rope. What was troubling about that?”

  “Robin fastened his garments, if you could call them that, with bits of thread and twine. Where would he obtain a rope to hang himself with?”

  “The house?”

  “The servants brought him odds and ends of food. They would surely have balked at a halter.”

  “Perhaps he kept one for just such an eventuality,” said Fielding, “like Hieronimo in that piece by Thomas Kyd.”

  “The Spanish Tragedy,” I supplied almost without thought but pleased to be reminded of the safer world of the stage.

  “Except that this is no fiction,” said Fielding grimly.

  “There’s more,” I said. “I didn’t mention this before because I wasn’t sure how you would respond to what I’ve said so far but . . .”

  “Yes.”

  Fielding again fixed his penetrating gaze on me as I described in more detail the second visit I’d made to Robin’s domain and the way in which the wood-man had showed me his lair, and the leathern-covered box. And the papers inside it.

  “Which you couldn’t read?”

  “He didn’t give me a chance. He wouldn’t let them out of his hold. Anyway there was little light to read by inside his hole.”

  “You’ve been back to retrieve them?”

  “No.”

  “What are we waiting for then?” said Fielding, rising for the first time from his writing-table. He grabbed a brocade doublet from the chair-back. “Come on.”

  He lead the way out of the room. I followed dutifully. There was no sign of Kate. Like his daughter, Fielding was familiar with the lay-out of house and grounds and within a few minutes we were on the western side of Instede and descending the slope towards the woods. He slackened his pace to allow me to catch up.

  “You can show me the tree as well.”

  For the second time I stood under the elm from which poor Robin had hung. I pointed up at the guilty branch – a gesture which was hardly necessary since the convenience of that limb made it the obvious choice for the would-be suicide. And then there was that small, dirty stub of rope waggling off the branch. I thought of a birth cord and felt momentarily nauseated. At the base of the tree were twigs and leaves, now losing some of their sappiness, and presumably torn off by Robin himself when he climbed up or by those who’d cut him down.

  Adam Fielding, dressed as he was in fine doublet and breeches, squatted on his haunches and examined the ground below the branch. Evidently he couldn’t see enough in this position for he soon got down on all fours, bringing his nose close to the forest-floor like a dog. He pushed aside some of the little accumulations of grass and leafage which had piled up there. He scooped up several handfuls of loose soil and let them trickle through his fingers. Then he got to his feet again and approached the base of the tree as if he was going to subject it to an interrogation. He pushed his face at the bark and walked around the tree several times. I stood by, uncertain what was required of me and unwilling to disturb him in his devotions. Eventually he stopped.

  “Look here, Nicholas.”

  I crossed over to where he stood.

  “This would be the place to climb up from, no? This knot here would allow you a foothold, and you could hoist yourself up using that cluster of twigs, could you not? In fact, from the way they’re bent down it looks as though someone has already taken this course. And then you might take hold of that branch round the corner . . . and so on . . . and so up . . .”

  For an instant I thought Fielding was g
oing to follow his own directions (I’ve rarely seen a more vigorous man, given his middle years). Then I was afraid that he might ask me to climb it. I don’t mind climbing trees but part of me revolted slightly at the idea of scaling one which had been employed in a hanging. However the Justice’s mind was already shifting elsewhere.

  “Now, Nicholas, you must take me to this strange man’s – what did you call it? – hole.”

  This was easier said than done. When I’d followed in the naked footsteps of Robin I had taken little heed of the path through the woods. For some time Adam Fielding and I blundered about in sun and shadow, stooping under branches and skirting dense clumps of undergrowth. The longer we spent in the wood the bigger it seemed to grow. I began to have an inkling of how Robin might regard it as a “kingdom”. On several occasions I thought I’d identified the hollowed-out bank standing next to a line of large trees. But each time I failed to find the entrance to the elusive earth. I started to sweat and grow worried. Some bird which I couldn’t have named began to make noises that sounded mocking, a kind of rippling ha-ha-ha.

  I wasn’t so much discomfited by not uncovering Robin’s hole as by the notion that I was wasting Fielding’s time. After all, it was I who had sought him out because I was troubled by the manner of the strange man’s death. I’d offered to show the Justice something which could be material in the case, and it was plain that I didn’t have the least idea what I was about. He was silent, probably because his patience was running thin.

  I wiped my eyes. Suddenly across the corner of my vision there flickered that white form which I’d first glimpsed in the woods some miles outside Instede. I turned to catch it – and it was gone. I felt dizzy. I grabbed a branch to support myself. Fielding was behind me. My mouth was open to say, or rather to stammer out, “Did you see . . .?” but it was apparent from his settled expression that he’d seen nothing. Perhaps it was imagination; safer to put it down to imagination.

  “Nicholas?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but I am not sure where this place is. The wood is bigger than I supposed.”

  “Let us abandon the search for now. It’s nearly dinner time, anyway.”

  I agreed reluctantly.

  “I rather think the way out must lie in this direction,” said Fielding, taking charge. We moved off to the left, like two gents out for a late morning stroll, although from time to time we were forced to go in single file.