The Salisbury Manuscript

by Philip Gooden

  ‘Don’t need a light. I know this place like the back of my hand.’

  ‘But I don’t after all this time,’ said Adam. ‘Besides I may want to do a spot of reading later. You got a spade in here?’

  ‘There’s a shovel for mucking out with,’ said Fawkes.

  ‘That’ll have to do. Get it as we go. And give me a swig from that bottle again. Have one yourself while you’re about it.’

  Fawkes handed over the bottle of port, marvelling at the cheek of the man. Offering him to drink out of his own store! Once again, as Adam tilted back his head to swallow, he was tempted – very tempted – by the idea of striking him on the exposed throat. But he did nothing apart from take a draught from the bottle after Adam had returned it, in his own good time. Adam stuffed the papers back into the knapsack and slung it over his shoulder as a sign that he was ready. Then he shot out his arm and did something odd. He pressed his thumb into the great dimple on Fawkes’s chin.

  ‘There,’ he said, ‘been wanting to do that for a long time, brother.’

  ‘Keep your dirty hands to yourself,’ said Fawkes. ‘Don’t be so familiar.’

  The two men clambered down the ladder to the ground floor of the stable and made their way past the stalls. The horses – there were only three of them since Percy Slater kept as reduced an establishment in here as he did elsewhere – moved uneasily at the presence of a stranger.

  Fawkes found the shovel. He was quite glad to be holding something which might double as a weapon even if it was awkward carrying both shovel and lamp. He took care to walk behind Adam, holding up the lamp to throw some illumination ahead of them both. They entered the yard and Fawkes paused before unlatching the gate, wondering whether Adam had really come over the wall of the stable yard. They stepped out into the open.

  ‘What now?’ he said.

  ‘Kill that light,’ said Adam.

  ‘There’s no one to see,’ said Fawkes, though he’d earlier claimed not to need a light.

  ‘Even so.’

  Fawkes obediently doused the light. They waited for a few moments until their eyes grew used to the dark. As Adam had said, the night was for once free of mist or fog. A quarter moon hung in the sky. The bulk of Northwood House was to one side, beyond the wall of the stable yard.

  ‘Lead the way, my friend,’ said Adam. ‘Take us to Hogg’s Corner.’

  This was what usually happened when Fawkes was in company with Adam. He disliked and sometimes feared the other, but he tended to comply with his suggestions or orders.

  They rounded the house and skirted the terrace and the planted beds which extended beyond it. The area was as neglected as the rest of the estate. Weeds sprouted between the flagstones of the terrace and the flower beds were barren or bedraggled. Fawkes looked back at the house. No lights in any of the windows but then there were rarely lights in Northwood House.

  There had once been a clear division between the cultivated area and the parkland beyond the terrace and flower beds and lawn, marked by a ha-ha as the land dropped away. But the grass had grown up on both sides and the stone of the hidden retaining wall had been allowed to crumble, so the division was no longer clear even by day-light. All that was left was an abrupt drop between the two levels.

  Fawkes knew it was coming and he knew that the drop wasn’t much more than four feet or so. Placing shovel and light on the edge, he leaped off into the dark. He half hoped Adam might leap after him and sprain his ankle or worse. Adam did jump but he was so light and limber that he seemed to bounce back up as he hit the ground, like a jack-in-the-box.

  ‘See there,’ said Fawkes, once he’d retrieved the shovel and the lamp. He was pointing ahead of him. ‘Those trees there, that’s Hogg’s Corner.’

  The two men set off across the rough ground in the direction of a cluster of trees which stood in isolation on a kind of knoll about two hundred yards away. The little hillock stuck up oddly, as if a great head adorned with a few wild tufts had abruptly thrust itself up through the ground. An owl hooted. The men’s breath frosted in the air. The grass underfoot was so thick and tussocky that they were almost wading through it. The moon gave off a feeble glow. As they approached the oaks the ground began to rise slightly. It was obvious that the trees were old from their outlines alone. The trunks were thick and the branches twisted like ropes. The trees were grouped in a rough circle on the fringes of the knoll but it was so ragged and incomplete that it did not seem as though they been planted deliberately in that way. There was a cleared space in the middle like a bald patch.

  As Fawkes and Adam moved under the low-lying branches, their feet crunched on the nuts and mast strewn on the ground. Adam halted in the centre of the approximate circle.

  ‘Now light the lamp again,’ he instructed his companion.

  When Fawkes had done as he was told, Adam crouched down and loosened the knapsack from his back. By the light from the lamp, he examined a sheet of paper which he drew from the bag and laid flat on the ground. He stabbed his finger at a point on the sheet. Fawkes stood behind him, holding the shovel. He might have brought it down on the other’s head. But he didn’t. Instead he followed the next lot of instructions.

  There was a reason why Seth Fawkes did nothing to Adam, despite the provocation and the opportunities. There was a reason he did not strike him across his exposed throat or whack him over the head with a spade. It was because the two men were brothers and because the fraternal bond still held, frayed as it was. Seth Fawkes was the older by a little more than a year. Until recently, they had not seen each other since childhood. Both had been born to a couple who worked on the Northwood estate in old George Slater’s time. They came from a large family in which all the children were given Old Testament names. Discipline was strong but there was also some attempt at education by the mother. The children had been taught to read and write, in a rudimentary fashion. Despite the mother’s care, though, Seth and Adam were the only survivors.

  In fact, Fawkes had long believed his brother Adam to be as dead as the rest of his siblings. Adam had got into frequent scrapes as a youngster, then the scrapes turned to petty crime. He drifted to the city of Salisbury, become involved with the law when acting as a ‘crow’ or lookout for robberies and, before long, disappeared into the smoke and anonymity of London. After a few years with no word or sign, Seth Fawkes assumed that his brother was dead or in gaol or transported. If he ever thought about it – which he didn’t much – then he was relieved rather than sorry. He’d always regarded himself as the respectable one, growing up on the Northwood estate when George Slater lived there with his various wives and continuing to work there even as the place decayed further under Slater’s son. Eventually there were only the two of them left, him and Nan (and Percy Slater of course), to occupy a great echoy house.

  So you could have knocked Seth Fawkes down with a feather when, one evening in The Nethers scarcely a year before, he noticed a weathered individual eyeing him. The moment Seth caught his glance, the other moved towards him though he was plainly sitting and drinking and minding his own business in a corner. Seth wasn’t a great one for company but he did enjoy a jar or two after he’d been to visit Mrs Mitchell. He liked to wet his whistle and sink himself in memories of Mrs Mitchell’s frowsty bed before it was time to return to Northwood House and the stables.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’ said the weather-beaten man with a crooked grin.

  Seth Fawkes looked round. The place was full of laughter and smoke. There were other empty seats and benches. He shrugged, although when the other sat next to him on the bench Fawkes instinctively shifted a few inches away. He would have moved further but he was wedged into a corner.

  ‘You don’t know me, do you?’ said the man, placing his pint carefully on the table before tapping his fingers on the battered surface.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I know you though . . . Seth.’

  Fawkes looked at the other man properly. ‘Mr Fawkes to you,’ he said. His companion wore
an expression that wasn’t so much cheerful as filled with glee. He said, ‘It’s like a birthmark on you, that hole. Can’t get rid of it this side of the grave.’

  Automatically, Seth Fawkes’s hand flew to his shaven chin, to the great dimple that sat in the centre of it.

  ‘Mind you, you could grow a beard to disguise it,’ said the other. ‘I have found that small things are the best disguise, Seth. Even a change of name can work a trick. Spectacles now, they’re good. When people look at a face, see, they notice the spectacles but they don’t take notice of what lies beneath ’em. Or you can change the colour of the hair with a dye. I recommend a touch of rastik, comes from the East and gives a reddish tinge to the hair. Women of a certain sort use it but I always say why should we be denied the benefits available to the fairer sex, eh? Then, afterwards, you wash it out, see –’

  ‘Why are you talking to me?’ said Fawkes. But there was a sinking in his guts even as he said the words.

  ‘I haven’t finished yet, Mr Fawkes. Let me finish and the answer to your question will be clear. And you might learn something useful. The point of using this dye on your bonce, this rastik, is that people remember reddish hair just like they remember spectacles. And that will be how you’re described afterwards if there’ve been any witnesses, described as ‘a fellow with red hair’, see. By that time naturally you’ll have washed all the red out and, well, nobody is going to know you from Adam. From Adam, I say. Do you know who I am yet, Seth?’

  As if to reinforce what he’d just said about dyes, the man took off his cap and ran his hand through his short, sandy-coloured hair.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Fawkes. ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘You’re right there, mate. It’s not Jesus.’

  ‘You bugger,’ said Fawkes.

  ‘Closer,’ said the weather-beaten man, replacing his cap. ‘I’ve been called worse in our own tongue and in many other tongues besides.’

  ‘Adam, it’s you,’ said Fawkes. ‘Jesus.’

  The man called Adam made to stretch out his hand towards Seth’s face. He seemed to want to touch the dimple in his bare chin, the mark by which he’d been able to identify him, although it was more of a mocking gesture than an affectionate one. But Seth jerked his head away and rammed himself further into the corner.

  ‘Aren’t you pleased to see your long-lost brother, Mr Fawkes?’

  ‘I’d rather you’d stayed lost.’

  ‘Well, there I cannot oblige you. Fact is, I have decided after a lifetime of wandering round this great globe of ours to return to the land of my birth, to the very town where I first saw the light of day.’

  ‘How can I be sure you’re who you say you are?’ said Fawkes. He knew the truth well enough but was desperate to pick holes in it.

  ‘Oh-ho, like the Claimant, is it? You think I mightn’t be who I say I am?’

  ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Fawkes. He had an inkling, though. Like the rest of England he had heard of the Tichborne Claimant but he did not read the papers and was not interested in long-running law cases.

  ‘This geezer who everyone thought went down with his ship off South America somewhere but, lo and behold, he turns up in England after many years trying to claim a fortune. Lord, Seth, I have been away many years and I’m better informed than you are. But if you want to be certain I am Adam, then let me tell you this . . . and this . . . ’

  And he went on to reel out a string of family details about their dead parents and their dead siblings (Abel and Shem and Abigail and so on) – details of which any trace or memory, apart from with these two, had long since dropped off the face of the earth. Seth Fawkes admitted defeat. He took a long draught from his pint and, sighing, screwed himself further into his corner. Adam grew more cheerful or gleeful and went off to get their pots refilled.

  When he came back, Seth said, ‘What do you want here, Adam Fawkes?’

  ‘I admit to Adam but not to Fawkes, no, it’s . . . something else instead. I have enjoyed a variety of surnames. Let me see. I have been called Farmer in Australia and Quarles in Canada and Leigh-Smith in the United States and other things in other places. But I’ve always kept the name of Adam through thick and thin, ’cept once when I passed as a woman. Wasn’t Adam then, oh no.’

  ‘None of that tells me what you’re doing back here,’ said his brother, both disturbed and faintly disgusted by the other’s account of his false identities.

  ‘Now, Seth, the way you say those words tells me you think I’m up to something.’

  ‘You’re always up to something, Adam. Mischief and the like.’

  ‘Nothing could be further from my mind,’ said Adam with a twinkle in his eye. ‘I wanted to breathe my native air, return to the bosom of my family or all the family that’s left me. By the way, I hear you’re not married, Seth, you’ve got no woman, no little nippers to trouble your slumbers.’

  ‘Suits me,’ said Seth Fawkes, realizing with irritation that his brother must have been asking questions about him.

  ‘I heard old George Slater had died quite a while ago and that Percy lives in Northwood now. I always had a soft spot for Percy. He comes here sometimes for the ratting in the barn, doesn’t he?’

  Seth said nothing. He wanted to keep Adam out of his life even though the younger man had only just elbowed his way back into it. He certainly did not want his brother returning to Northwood House and attempting to strike up some sort of acquaintance with Percy Slater. Perhaps he feared they might hit it off.

  ‘What happened to that holy joe brother of his?’

  ‘He’s in the Church,’ said Seth, squinting down his finger at Adam as though he was sighting a gun and half wishing that he was holding an actual weapon. ‘He’s what they call a canon in the cathedral.’

  ‘Is he now?’

  ‘There’s no place for you here, Adam,’ Seth suddenly declared. ‘Northwood isn’t like it was when – when you last saw it. The place has gone downhill. There’s only me and Nan left now –’

  ‘Nan? That old bat. She must be a hundred and six if she’s a day.’

  ‘Percy’s wife is never there but passes her time in London.’

  ‘Do not trouble yourself, brother,’ said Adam, patting his neighbour on the shoulder. Again, the gesture was more mocking than reassuring. ‘I haven’t come back to go and bury myself at Northwood. The place was a country hole all those years ago and I don’t suppose it’s any different now. Although there was one thing . . .’

  He fell silent for a moment and, to cover whatever he’d been about to say, sank his face in his pint-pot. Then he went on, ‘Tell the truth, I’ve come back to these parts for a bit of peace and quiet. Last place I was in I had to get out of a bit smartish for reasons we needn’t go into. So now I’ll just find myself a cosy billet in town and won’t trouble you at all. Though it would be nice to meet sometimes, wouldn’t it, brother? Talk about the old times.’

  ‘I’ve got to be going to the railway station now, Adam,’ said Seth, pushing himself out of the corner and waiting for Adam to shift himself. ‘Got to be getting the train back to Downton.’

  ‘I’ll keep you company,’ said Adam.

  And so he did, jigging and skipping and jawing while they made their way through the outskirts of the town and Seth wondered how he could shake him off. Fortunately, he left Seth before they reached the station. Adam asked his brother if he could recommend a good bed-house in the town or – as he said they called it in the United States – a cat-house. Seth pretended not to know what his brother was talking about.

  If Seth had hoped not to see Adam again he was to be disappointed. However, his brother did not cause any overt trouble – at least, not to his knowledge – and he assumed that he must have found his cosy billet. Seth didn’t ask him where and Adam didn’t volunteer any information.

  They encountered each other from time to time in The Nethers and Seth’s animosity towards Adam started to fade. He had no wife or children or friends apart from Mr
s Mitchell (who was a paid friend), he preferred the company of the horses in his master’s stable if he was honest. Nevertheless he had a brother.

  Adam let slip little hints of how he’d passed the intervening years, not honestly it seemed. He’d done his share of thieving and he hinted at darker business. Occasionally at their meetings Adam would pass over an item as a kind of peace offering. It would be a thing of such small value, like a toasting fork, that if Adam had stolen it Seth wondered why he went to the trouble. Nevertheless he accepted it because, in part, he was slightly afraid of Adam and this seemed the best way of keeping him quiet.

  And so when he learned that his master Percy Slater wanted to find out what was in the personal luggage of a certain young lawyer from London, Seth indicated to his brother that there could be a little job for him. Now he regretted that closer involvement with Adam. For it seemed to have led to this moment now when the two of them were crouching by moonlight in Hogg’s Corner.

  Back in Northwood House, Percy Slater was not asleep although it was well after midnight. He was not even in his bedroom. Instead he had been slumbering in his smoking room, over the dying fire, the guttering candles and a couple of near-empty bottles. Slumbering until some sound awoke him. His hearing was good, whatever else about him had decayed. It was a sound from outside. He hoisted himself to his feet and moved unsteadily towards the window. There was a little moonlight. By it, he could just see, pressing his gaze to the pane and screwing up his eyes, the silhouette of a figure standing on the untended ground beyond the terrace and by the ha-ha. For an instant the figure was poised there and then it dropped out of sight. Percy rubbed a hand over his eyes. When he looked again a second shape was wavering against the darkness before it too fell from view. Slater stared out into the night for several more bleary minutes, not quite sure of what he’d seen or whether, indeed, he’d seen anything at all.

  Then his attention was caught by a spark of light, a tiny flicker that appeared from amid a circle of trees in the park. Percy began paying attention now. He knew the location of the light. It was coming from the little knoll known as Hogg’s Corner. The flicker went out for an instant and Percy realized that it was someone passing in front of it.