Ferney

by James Long

  ‘The picture. Well, it was never quite like that. He changed it around a bit, you know. It was all right when he first did it, but that was just a rough sketch, he said. When it came back from his studio there were a lot of little fancies added in.’

  I couldn’t see it that clearly, she thought. ‘What sort of fancies?’

  ‘That little trickle of a stream was ten times the size for a start and he’d made the roof all tiled over and he didn’t like the hill. Said it spoilt his composition, so he’d made it all flat. I ask you. This place. Flat.’

  ‘But for all that, it’s the house.’

  ‘First picture of it. Still, that’s just one moment in amongst a lot of others.’

  ‘Do you know how old the house is?’

  ‘There’s no real way of saying how old something like that is. You start with a hut, maybe, and if it’s in a good spot people go on wanting to live there, so they build it a bit stronger when it falls down, first wood, then perhaps a stone wall or two. They might build more on it here or there. Who’s to say what makes it that house? But your house has been around a good long time one way and another. The right-hand end, the cellar and the kitchen and the room above, that’s new. Built the year Queen Victoria was crowned.’

  New, she thought? That was 1837.

  ‘They put a new front door in then,’ he said. ‘Can’t think why they did it, but I never got round to putting it right.’

  ‘You lived there?’

  ‘Of course I did.’ Disappointment crossed his face. He paused and considered. ‘Well, on and off, you might say.’ Then he looked at her so that she had to meet his gaze. ‘You’ve got a feel for history, haven’t you?’

  ‘I love reading it,’ she said. ‘It’s what I like most, I think. Mike’s always very good for me, tells me the bits I don’t know.’

  ‘I could tell you a story about that house.’

  ‘I want to know everything there is to know about it.’

  ‘All right, but you have to help me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  This was it, he thought. Would she do it?

  ‘You’ve got to try imagining it going on, the way I tell it to you. Try and get the pictures in your head, then maybe you can fill in the bits I can’t tell too well. Can you do that?’

  She smiled uncertainly. ‘I’m not sure I know quite what you mean, but I’ll try.’

  ‘All right then,’ he said. ‘This happened three hundred years ago. You’ll have heard of Jamie Scott?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘That’s what people in these parts called him. The Duke of Monmouth, he was. Bastard son of King Charles.’

  ‘The Monmouth rebellion?’

  ‘That’s it,’ he nodded approvingly. ‘Good man, the Duke. He could be a bit of a twit, but he was good at heart. A lot of people backed him round here. Thought he had more right to the throne than the other one. James the Second. What do you know about him?’

  She thought. ‘He landed at Lyme Regis, didn’t he? Marched up towards Bristol and got beaten at Sedgemoor.’

  ‘Took a lot of men from these parts with him. Cloth-making was a big thing round here in those days and the weavers, they were Protestants, you know, almost to a man. It went with the trade. King James, now, he was trying to put the Catholics back on top. Cruel too, the way he was going about it, so all those weavers went off to join Monmouth as soon as the word spread that he’d arrived. Barely a weapon between them, so they took axes and scythes lashed on to long poles.’

  ‘Brave people.’

  He snorted. ‘It was pathetic. They were doing what they thought was right, sure enough, but really – Protestant, Catholic, what difference does it make? It’s all mumbo-jumbo.’

  She wanted to find out why he’d said that, but she didn’t want to stop the flow. ‘Go on.’

  ‘All right now,’ he said. ‘Now it’s your turn. Imagine this. You’re down at the house. The same house you’ve got now. It’s thatched, not tiled. Just like in the picture. No kitchen on the end and the old stone’s still there, leaning over a bit, but still there. Imagine it.’ He watched her and she closed her eyes. ‘Can you see it?’

  ‘Yes.’ And she could, vividly.

  ‘I can tell you the very date: July the seventh, 1685. A Tuesday. It’s evening, twilight just coming on. Been a rotten month for rain, but it’s gone away now. Puddles everywhere. You walk out of the house to watch for your man, then you decide to come up here, up the hill to meet him, because he often comes back this way. Just like you came up this time. He’s here, sitting on this stone. Can you see him clear?’

  Gally wasn’t so sure but she played along with it. ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘What’s he wearing?’

  Needing something to say, she pulled an arbitrary image into her mind’s eye. ‘Oh. A sort of waistcoat. A jerkin, is that it?’

  ‘Ah! Yes, it is. What colour?’

  ‘Light brown.’

  ‘What’s he got underneath it?’

  She frowned at what came to her but the image defied her attempt to change it. ‘Nothing,’ she said, puzzled. ‘You’d think he’d have a shirt on, wouldn’t you? Just the waistcoat and trousers.’

  ‘And can you say what the trousers are made of?’

  ‘Leather, it looks like. That must be hot in the summer.’

  ‘Leather for what he does. He’s been breaking in a horse, a bad horse. Vicious. Leather for protection. The horse tried to bite him. Tore his shirt. The lady of the house has kept it to mend, see?’

  Gally was pleased Ferney was playing along, making something of her off-the-cuff ideas. It stopped her feeling foolish.

  ‘What’s he look like?’ asked Ferney.

  ‘I can’t see,’ she said. ‘Dark hair. Thickset, not too tall. Nice looking.’ She wanted to hold him.

  ‘There’s no news of all the men who went. No time for it yet,’ Ferney said. ‘Old Walter Bottle came home three days back, wounded in the arm. Swore he was sent home and hadn’t deserted, but you can’t tell with him. He said there’s been a fight at Keynsham and there’s no food and scores of men are leaving the Duke. Anyway, the man and the woman – they’re standing there talking when they hear a sound and they turn. There’s horsemen coming towards them.’

  She made a little sound of slight alarm.

  He paused, taking it in. ‘Horsemen are frightening, aren’t they? Power. That’s what horsemen have got if you’re on foot. Height to cut at you from, speed and weight to run you down and these weren’t just horsemen. These were army. Soldiers. Could have been anyone in that time, could have been ready to do anything. But there weren’t many of them. How many are there? Quick.’

  Gally jumped. ‘Three,’ she said.

  ‘Three men, dead in the saddle, swaying as they ride. Filthy with mud, blood and torn clothes. The horses are no better. One of them shies, rears, throws his rider. What happens?’

  ‘You . . . the man goes to it. Says something. Very quiet. Calms it down.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ferney. ‘Then what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She had her eyes screwed right up tight, trying hard, starting to be bothered by it. He saw that and eased the pressure.

  ‘One of them spoke. A Dutchman or some such – Byser the Brandenburger, they called him. “Who are you for?” he said. “Monmouth or the King?” Well, you didn’t answer questions like that, not if you wanted to live long, so the man said, “Depends who is doing the asking.” “I’ll have an answer,” says the other and he draws a sword, but the man in the middle, a man who looks like he has seen the pits of hell, puts his arm out to stop him. “No more of that,” he said. “I’ve got enough deaths hanging round my neck already.”’

  ‘He was Monmouth,’ breathed Gally.

  There was a long silence. ‘He was. The other was Earl Grey,’ said Ferney, ‘and he told them that all was lost. They’d been slaughtered around him all because of a flooded ditch they couldn’t cross and an enemy who heard them c
oming in the night. Now they were riding for their lives and they needed shelter. They still had armour on, not the right style if you want to go unnoticed, and they had a drum. Think about the drum.’

  She thought for a count of five.

  ‘What colour do you see?’

  ‘Blue,’ she said, ‘with a lion and unicorn in gold, but battered and cut.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said with excitement in his voice.

  Her heart was beating fast and he put his face very close to hers. ‘What would you have done with men like that?’

  ‘Taken them home. Fed them.’

  ‘Even if your man was against it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t respect a man that was against that.’

  ‘That’s what she said.’ He clasped her hand and she felt an electric buzz go up her arm. ‘So they took them back to the house, careful that no one saw. Offered them a bed after they’d washed their wounds and given them food, but the men wouldn’t take it. They thought they’d get a ship from Dorset if they were quick enough about it. The gates were closing. Then she said, “Don’t go like that. Go in old clothes. We have some smocks.” The Duke was all in, lost his spirit, but he almost laughed at that. “On horseback?” he said. “Shepherds on horseback?” “No,” she said, “ride like that in the dark if you must. Send the horses off before dawn. Walk after that.”’

  ‘And what happened?’ asked Gally in a voice that was trembling.

  ‘They found a cousin, a friend to guide them through the night, Richard Madox, but they were caught in the morning. The Sussex militia had them even though they split up. That’s what the books say now. Some soldier found him hiding in a ditch.’

  She imagined the glorious rebellion ending in a muddy ditch. ‘Ferney. The rest of that? Is that from a book?’

  ‘Do you think it is?’

  She looked down at the ground and her eyes were wet with tears. ‘No,’ she said and her voice broke. ‘No, damn it.’ He gave her space, just watching, and she looked at him in wonder. ‘I don’t think this is a good idea,’ she said.

  ‘It was your idea,’ he said gently.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. You’re muddling me up. I don’t think I want to play this game any more.’ She stood up, wishing Mike was down at the house.

  ‘One last bit,’ he said, and there was something in his voice she couldn’t ignore. ‘They had to get rid of the drum, and the armour. They had to get them out of the way and they were glad they did when Jeffreys’ men came to pry out the truth behind Madox’s cover-up. No one found the stuff and that was just as well. But that wasn’t all. Monmouth gave the girl something to keep for herself. What was it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I really, really don’t know.’

  Ferney’s voice was insistent, reaching into her head, almost shouting, and he rose to his feet, ‘His gold ring, that’s what, and what did she do with it?’

  ‘I DON’T KNOW.’

  ‘You do know. Just tell me.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Just say the first thing that comes into your head, then that’s it. The story’s over.’

  Panic was rising in her at the thought of the ring, the terrible, deadly ring. ‘Oh please. I’m not enjoying it any more.’

  ‘The first thing.’

  She closed her eyes, clenched her fists and could suddenly see only one thing. ‘Under the front door step,’ she wailed.

  ‘Under the step,’ he repeated, nodding, and his voice was quiet and kind now. ‘That’s the story. It’s finished. It had to be done.’

  She turned without saying goodbye and stumbled down the hill, staring ahead of her, seeing in her mind’s eye three tired horsemen riding down in front of her. Halfway down, mind racing, she looked at the house and it seemed smaller, thatch over slate like a double exposure. At the bottom, by the gate, she reached out for the wooden latch, but her hand met smooth, modern metal.

  She saw a blur of concerned builders looking at her as she walked in through the gate on uncertain feet, eyes red. She kept her face turned away from the house, not sure which house she would see. What she had just been through had drained all her strength, left her scoured out, limp and nervous.

  ‘Are you okay, love?’ Rick called, putting down his shovel.

  Summoning up the strength to mumble something reassuring, she let herself into the caravan. She was so tired and it was much, much easier to give in to the tiredness than to face its cause. Lying down full-length on the thin seat she went immediately to sleep and the day went on without her.

  She woke screaming in the quiet, sidelong, falling light of evening to the soft songs of birds finishing their business. She lay very still, whimpering, her heart thudding, as the Boilman and the Burnman crept back into the fringes of their loathsome hiding-place dragging their lumps of disfigured flesh. ‘I’m in the caravan,’ she said to herself. ‘I’m awake. It’s all right.’ She wished Mike was there, keeping absolutely still, feeling any movement would commit her to some course of action, some relationship with her surroundings that might not be wise.

  She breathed deliberately, deeply, like she’d learnt in the childbirth classes. It usually displaced fear by sorrow which was almost but not quite as awful. This time, instead of the memory of that draining birth that wasn’t, she heard instead the calm assurance of Ferney’s voice. ‘You’ll be all right this time.’

  The speed of her pulse and the hollow tension in her stomach proved some of the fear was still there, and there was a swollen ache behind her eyes where the day’s experiences had kicked bruises in her brain. By slow stages she regained control of her racing blood, using the breathing, and when she had the upper hand she was able to see that the fear wasn’t coming from the memory of the dream any more, but from herself. Nor was it fear of anything other than herself, not even fear of the unknown, but rather a fear of the immensity of the consequences of pushing open a closed door. The house was the source of it. There might be beasts waiting beyond the door but she knew there was love. It was the love that frightened her most.

  She rubbed her hands hard over her face to squeeze out these irritating fancies. She stood up, opened the flimsy latch of the caravan door, looking down at the ground, then took a deep breath and lifted her gaze in deliberate challenge to the house.

  It was just the house, nothing more. Fresh mortar gleamed bright in the revived stonework at the kitchen end. Boards, ladders and scaffolding poles enveloped it in the twentieth century. Fancies fled away, leaving her embarrassed and a little amused at herself. She stood still for a long time gazing at it, wondering how old Ferney could have filled her head so easily. What started as relief began to taste like disappointment in her throat.

  A puff of wind carried a faint trace of a horse’s whinny and reality fought with seventeenth-century stories. She walked slowly towards the front door, knelt by the stone step, knowing in half of her brain that there could be nothing there, no ring to bring nightmares in its train, but also knowing she needed to prove that fact to the other half. The step itself was heavy, worn into a subtle scoop by the friction of a million shoes. A long crowbar moved it after much struggle, then another five minutes of tugging and levering won the battle as inch by inch she slid it to one side. Hard-packed earth confronted her.

  She had the run of the builders’ tools. A pickaxe for the first assault, then a spade, and the crowbar again to prise out the larger stones. It got harder as the hole grew slowly deeper, and somewhere around the two-foot level she came to realize there was no remaining promise in what lay below. A clear victory for common sense, she knew, so why did it make her feel so sad?

  There seemed far more earth than would fit back into the hole and when she had pounded and stamped it as flat as it would go, the step refused to bed neatly down and sat unsteadily, raised a little above the surrounding ground. The last of the sun gleamed on its edge and she wondered how long it had been since that part of the old stone had last been warmed by direct sunlight.

>   She went to bed early, tired out again – the caravan’s flimsy water supply unable to rid her skin of all the grime from her digging. Sleeping with one hand curled up under her cheek, it might have been the faint smell or the touch of the drying traces of earth in the creases of her skin that prompted her dreams. A cavalcade of her day blended into them, love mingling with fear. She was straining again to lift the stone but it was easier. She was stronger and there were helping hands, powerful hands – the hands of a man who wore a jerkin and leather trousers, a man she loved with a painful depth. She was digging with a tiny spade, more like a blunt trowel, using it one-handed. Paralysing fear, dream-fear dragged at every movement. Hide it fast, her brain screamed, hide it before we’re seen, caught, killed. Boilman and Burnman were somewhere there, starting to harden in the shadows. Her hands were moving so slowly.

  A motorcycle went up the lane in a sudden crescendo of high-pitched exhaust and Gally stirred in her sleep, rushing out of the wreckage of the dream in time to avoid the worst, groping towards waking. The sound faded and she plunged down into sleep again, spared the horror, trying to get back to the man.

  He was there but he was different and only the love was the same. Smaller, dressed in cloth not leather, with marks of past hardship on his face. Then he grew smaller still and she knew she’d been tricked. He was just paint and you couldn’t love paint. All that groaning love still in her and she was suddenly bereft, the tiny picture the only trace left of him. The whole picture spread out before her then and she saw it, bright and clean – an absurd, muddled dream mixture, a flat horizon behind, tiles where there should have been thatch on the roof and where there were now slates. The caravan and the digger were there in front painted in old oils. Through the still picture, a pair of magpies flew and landed on the thatch.

  She sat bolt upright in the caravan somewhere between sleep and waking and groped for the curtains. Clean moonlight let her share its private view, painting the house with a narrow palette of solid blues and greys, bringing it closer. It was light to see unicorns by, but there was only the house. Shaking the clumsy sleep from her fingers, she reached for paper and pencil.