“We appreciate it so little that once we threw a whole shipload of it into Boston Harbor.”
She laughed at that, perhaps more than the joke deserved. “Can I help you with what you want to know about Claines, then?” she asked.
“I hope you can.” Teacup in one hand, pen in the other, he looked at her. “I mean the pillar of stone. I heard it said that every year, about this time, the people turn it over where it lies. Do you know why?”
“Oh, ah,” she said again. “Yes, that does happen, but as to why, I'm afraid I can't hazard a guess. I only know that it's gone on, year after year, since ever there was a Claines, as I suppose.”
He wrote down what she said. “And how long has there been a Claines?” he asked.
“Forever, more or less. Our curate here at St. Jude's, young Mr. Gates, he might have a date of some sort.”
“I've heard his name,” said Thunstone.
“They do say that Mr. Gates wants to write some sort of history of Claines. And too, he might speak to that fallen pillar; it's called the Dream Rock. It so happens that it lies at the edge of the St. Jude's churchyard. You could ask Mr. Gates, and I'm sure he'd talk to you.”
Thunstone drank the rest of his tea. He finished writing, closed the notebook and put it in his pocket, and rose.
“Thank you for giving me tea,” he said. “You've been very hospitable, Mrs. Fothergill.”
“Not at all.” „
“Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll go walk about the town for a while.”
Cane in hand, he went into the hall and out at the front door, aware that she watched him go. He had a sense that something else watched, and wondered if that was a fancy.
CHAPTER 2
Bareheaded, Thunstone paused on the sidewalk. He leaned slightly on his cane and allowed himself a moment to look at what he could see of Claines.
On his side of the street were homes. Two of them stood east of Mrs. Fothergill’s, two small, respectable-looking little cottages. On beyond these rose a structure of some size.
It was of sooty-looking gray stone, it seemed to have a battlement above its front, and several chimneys ranged along the roof. Mrs. Fothergill had spoken of a place called Chimney Pots. Probably he was looking at it. He waited for a lull in motor traffic, walked quickly across Trail Street, and turned right in front of the Moonraven to continue along in front of the business houses.
They were, understandably, modest business houses. The Moonraven looked large in comparison with most of them. Thunstone strolled past a little cabin of a shop that proclaimed itself Post Office, but displayed postcards and boxes of candy in its window, then past another that promised Fish & Chips, then a larger one with long glass display windows and big letters above them, ludlam’s market. A little alley ran beyond Ludlam’s, and across Trail Street became a gravel-strewn cross street. Along that way on the far side Thunstone could see more homes, a sort of handful of them. Some were of the sort called workmen's cottages. Several larger ones with two stories probably were divided into small flats. Across the alley he paused again, in front of a gloomy place with a broad, open doorway and the information garage & machine shop, a. porrask. A massive man in stained overalls stood beside the gasoline pump—petrol pump, they would call it here in England—tightening something with a screwdriver. He turned and glowered at Thunstone with flinty eyes in a black-bearded face.
“Yus?” he croaked. “What is it?”
“I'm just walking along,” said Thunstone, and did so. The flinty eyes looked with disfavor at the silver-banded cane he swung.
Snuggled close to Porrask's enterprise was a pub smaller and shabbier than the Moonraven. Its sign called it the waggoner. Two men lounged there, presumably waiting for it to open at five o'clock. The policeman Thunstone had seen before brought his bicycle close and stopped, one foot on the pavement.
“Pardon me, Officer,” Thunstone said. “Can you give me some information?”
“If I have it, sir.” He was a young, rangy man with a long face and a heavy, neat brown mustache. “Do you mean, about Claines?”
“Yes, I'm here on a visit. Over across the street, is that the place called Chimney Pots?”
Both of them looked across. From that point, Thunstone had a good view. It was a massive building of rough, gloomy rock, that held bits of light, like sparks in dying coals. There were heavily framed windows above and below, a wide porch with pillars. The assembly of broad chimneys on the roof were each crowned with cylindrical pots.
“Yes, sir, that's called Chimney Pots,” said the policeman. “The owner is Mr. Gram Ensley, who owns a good deal of property here.”
The policeman's accent was what Thunstone had heard called an educated one. His manner was cordial, though official.
“You're well acquainted here?” suggested Thunstone.
“It's my business to be, though I'm not from here. I was bom in Newcastle; I went to college at Reading. When I joined the force, they assigned me to Claines.”
“I see,” said Thunstone. “Now, I'd like to meet Mr. Gates, the minister here.”
“Yes, sir—Father Gates, he'd like to be called, though he's a curate as yet, not a rector. This is a Thursday, and I'd look for him to be in his study at the church, there on ahead. St. Jude's, that is.”
'Thank you, Officer.”
Thunstone walked on toward the church. He had only glanced at it on the bus coming into Claines. At second glance, it was not a large church, nor yet a particularly impressive one. It had been built of smudgy-looking stone and was square and flat-roofed, with a small steeple to relieve the monotony of its architecture. At the side was a cemetery, dotted with small drab tombstones. A hedge ran around this except at the side next to the street. There lay a long, worn obelisk, grubbily pale, with grass tufted all around it. Thunstone walked to it and leaned lightly on his cane to study it.
The thing was eight feet or more in length, roughly rounded, and perhaps two and a half feet through at its largest diameter. Some kind of schist, judged Thunstone. He bent to see more closely. It had been shaped at some time or other, perhaps to simulate a human form, but what might have been shoulders had dwindled away with time. The top of the obelisk was, or had been, a roughly head like knob. On the surface of the rock were the traces of markings. They might have been deeply incised at one time, but years of wear and weather had reduced them to faintness.
A shadow fell at Thunstone’s feet, and he turned to look.
He had been joined by a youngish man almost as tall and sturdy as himself, dressed in dark clericals. The resolute-jawed face looked gravely curious. It was crowned with thick brown hair, closely curled. Deep blue eyes questioned Thunstone.
“I believe you must be the Reverend Mr. Gates,” said Thunstone. ‘Tm a visitor in Claines; Thunstone’s my name. And this,” he set the tip of his cane to the obelisk, “must be what they call the Dream Rock.”
“Yes,” said Gates, “that’s the Dream Rock, right enough.”
Thunstone felt a tremor in the hand that held the cane, something like a minor electric shock. He drew the cane away, and the tremor in his hand went away.
“The Dream Rock,” repeated Gates, “and it’s a bad dream where I’m concerned.” He looked at Thunstone. “I read folklore and antiquarian magazines, and your name is familiar to me. You have an appreciation of things. What’s your reaction to the Dream Rock?”
“When I touched it with my cane just now, I had a sensation like an electric current running up my arm.”
“Really?” said Gates. “It’s an evil rock, that. It survives from times of arrant paganism. Well, Mr. Thunstone, I'm glad that you came along.”
“A very intelligent young policeman directed me to you.”
“That would be young Constable Dymock,” Gates said. “In a way, he's coming along as I'm coming along. We both won university scholarships—he to Reading, I to Oxford. We both knew what careers we wanted; he wanted criminology, I wanted religion. I rather like Dymock.
We've begun more or less together in Claines.”
Gates looked Thunstone up and down.
“If you have a few minutes, you might like to come to my study and tell me what you think of Claines.”
“I'll be glad of the chance to talk to you,” Thunstone assured him.
Gates led Thunstone along a flagged walk to the church and around it to a handsomely cleated door of stained oak, then through that to a room lighted by two windows. Gates’s study was not of the tidiest, but Thunstone thought it was interesting. An inner wall was given over to shelves of books, clear up to the ceiling. There was a desk of pale wood, with papers and a typewriter and an empty teacup. Gates motioned Thunstone to an armchair and seated himself at the desk. His movements were easy but powerful.
“You say you felt a sort of current when you touched the Dream Rock with your cane,” he said. “That's a rather interesting cane, if I may say so.”
“It's a sword cane,” said Thunstone.
“Is it, indeed?”
“I'll show you.”
Thunstone turned the handle around and cleared the blade inside. It slid out of the hollowed shank. It shone palely. He passed it over to Gates, who took it carefully and narrowed his deep-set blue eyes to study it.
“A silver blade,” he said. “And there's an inscription on it.” His eyes became slits as he peered. “Latin,” he said after a moment, and read aloud: “Sic pereant omnes inimici tui, Domine. Yes, from the Psalms. 'So perish all thine enemies, O God.' ”
“The man who gave it to me says it was forged by Saint Dunstan, a thousand years ago.”
Gates was deeply impressed. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said.
He passed the sword back, and Thunstone sheathed it in the shank of the cane. “There happens to be at least one other like it,” he said. “That one belongs to my friend Judge Keith Hilary Pursuivant. He gave me this. But let me say that what interests me about you, Father, is that you're supposed to be working toward a history of this interesting little town.”
“This little hamlet,” Gates said, using the same word that Hawes had used at the Moonraven. “I should explain first why I happen to be here. I came as a curate to the parish at Gerrinsford, which includes Claines. But there’s a bequest, a very old bequest, that provides for St. Jude’s to be kept active, and so my vicar assigned me here. I’m not a true vicar as yet.”
He spoke as though he wanted to be a true vicar, and Thunstone said, “TTiat will follow, I’d think.”
“I hope so. I’ve done some articles on church matters that have attracted attention, and I have encouragement about the publication of my history of Claines.”
“I’ve already called Claines an interesting town,” offered Thunstone.
“We call it a hamlet because it isn’t truly a town,” said Gates. “We haven’t a mayor or any local government. No police department except Constable Dymock. And we aren’t a parish; we have just St. Jude’s and myself as curate. We don’t have even a great house.”
“How about Chimney Pots?” Thunstone asked.
“Oh,” and Gates smiled, “a pleasant place enough, but hardly a stately home of England. Have you been to any of those?”
“To a couple, with coach tours,” Thunstone told him. “Frankly, I felt like an intruder when I walked in. Of course, I was making certain studies.”
“Certain studies,” Gates echoed. “If I may hazard a guess, you’re a university man.”
“Not exactly,” said Thunstone, shaking his dark head. “I went to a small southern college—Carrington—because I could get some modest financial help if I played football there. After that, I took some graduate courses at Columbia in New York City and at the University of North Carolina, but no degree at either school.”
“You say you played American football,” said Gates.
“I was a center. That's not a particularly glorious position.”
“Is that anywhere near as violent a game as rugby? I played footer in public school, but I only boxed for my university.”
“From what I've seen of English football,” said Thunstone, “I’d hazard a guess that if you got into the American game in the gear you wear here, you’d be lucky to live two minutes.” He changed the subject. “But you said that you’re writing a history of Claines.” “That is correct. It’s a small place, but its history is a long one.” As Gates told it, it was a long history. Nobody could be sure how old Claines might be as a community. All that records could be made to show was that some sort of settlement had existed there since Roman times, and occasional digs and probings—it was hard for scholars to get permission to dig, it seemed—revealed that people had lived there in pre-Roman times, yes, even back to the Stone Age. Flint points had been turned up there, the sort of things that country people called elf arrows and even saw as weapons of supernatural force. And in medieval days, armed bands of rival lords had skirmished back and forth there.
But Claines, though so old, had never grown large. That, said Gates, was because it had never truly had room to grow. It stood on a sort of hummock of turfy ground, bounded in by marsh and fen. An example of that bounding was the turbid stream over which Thunstone had come in the bus, which bore the uninviting name of Congdon Mire. There might be three hundred residents or so, most of them employed in nearby Gerrinsford in factories and offices. There were a few sheep keepers and market gardeners. They lived in Claines, it seemed, because they had no wish or will to live anywhere else.
'That big slope of ground they call Sweepside,” said Thunstone. “With the figure they call Old Thunder. I’d expect it to be a promising place for archaeological exploration.”
“Perhaps so/* said Gates, “but it belongs to Mr. Gram Ensley, who owns Chimney Pots. Who also owns and lets out most of the houses in Claines. Mr. Ensley is fairly stubborn about allowing investigation on his land. One group of antiquarians got stubborn, too, and he got a court injunction against their coming. And he declined to talk to two different enterprises who wanted to build factories on Sweepside. He won't even rent land on Sweepside to people who would like to have market gardens there. He has flocks of sheep, and they graze there, and that’s all.”
“What about the residents here?”
“A decent lot they are, for the most part,” Gates summed up. “Claines might have been absorbed into Gerrinsford long ago except for the intervening swampiness, but it has stayed a backwater, and it has its individuality. People work hard, in Gerrinsford places or on what land they have, and they’re glad to be decently quiet at home after dinner. Oh, the young men and women may get on the bus and see a film in town, or otherwise amuse themselves there, but their fathers and mothers are content to sit and watch the telly if they can afford one. Some have the telly without truly being able to afford it. And this little church of ours is a factor,” Gates went on, brightening. “Always good attendance at services, and we have programs and festivals from time to time. And a group of church ladies is active, visiting the sick, helping unfortunate poor families.”
Gates paused, frowning. Thunstone waited for him to continue. He continued:
“If I could turn a certain element from what must be considered ancient paganism—ancient sorcery.” He gestured with a broad hand. “Up there on Sweepside, this very day, they’re hard at it cleaning the chalky lines of their superstitious Old Thunder figure.”
“And this Mr. Ensley won’t let scholars explore there.”
“Not he. He’s posted Sweepside. Nobody can go there without his permission. Though he allows the work on Old Thunder.”
“What sort of man is he?”
“Courteous enough, I must admit. He doesn’t attend church often, but from time to time he makes a contribution. A substantial contribution. Otherwise, he keeps to himself most of the time. He might talk to you. Like me, he's interested in Claines, and well he might be. He owns so much of it, both sides of Trail Street."
“Why is it called Trail Street?" was Thunstone’s next quest
ion.
“Because there must have been a trail there before there was a street, I should think. An old Roman road was traced along it by some survey or other. And a Roman road was apt to have followed a road of people older than Romans."
“That’s an interesting thought," commented Thunstone. He wrote busily, and again Gates narrowed his eyes to watch.
“See here, Mr. Thunstone," said Gates after a moment. “I’m going to ask you a cheeky question, and you can answer it or not just as you wish. Are you here in some sort of oEcial capacity?"
Thunstone laughed easily as he wrote. “Not in the least. I came to England to do some private research into England’s remote past. I’ve been to Stonehenge, Avebury, and so on. I’ve spent time in the libraries at Oxford and Cambridge, and at the British Museum in London. You said you’d seen some things I’ve written in folklore journals, so perhaps you know what I’m looking for. When I heard a mention of Claines, I came here more or less on impulse. I’m particularly interested in what you call the Dream Rock out there. You feel that it’s pagan."
“It was pagan, right enough," said Gates, shaking his head. “What chiefly disturbs me is the annual turning and what attends it. Midnight, and people hallooing and doing a sort of dance, right next to the church. It’s like a witches’ Sabbath."
Thunstone had seen witches’ Sabbaths in his time, but forbore to say so. “And you’d like to stop it," he prompted.
“I would indeed. The night of the annual turning is this coming Sunday, July 4—your own special holiday in America. And it’s also the third Sunday after Trinity. At morning prayer that day, I propose to deliver a strong sermon against paganism and sorcery." His heavy hand touched a stack of scribbled papers on the desk. “I invite you to come to church and hear it."
“I’ll be glad to do that." Thunstone rose and tucked his notebook into his pocket. “And perhaps we can talk further about Claines— about ancient paganism, too—when you have time."
“It would be a pleasure, sir.”
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