“You more or less quote Mark Twain,” observed Dymock. “Colonel Sherbum says something like that in Huckleberry Finn. Surprised, are you, Mr. Thunstone? But I have been to school, and I always liked American literature.”
“I like it, too. And I also like Claines, so far. Interesting, but quiet. The people seem quiet, mostly.”
“Here, as elsewhere, the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” said Dymock.
Thunstone laughed, because he felt he must. “Quoting American literature again. That’s Thoreau, the very first chapter of Walden. Is there really that much quiet desperation in Claines?”
Dymock frowned over that. “About the desperation I can’t be too sure, but the quietness is here. There’s a quiet about it that sometimes seems interesting. Even baleful.”
“Why?” asked Thunstone. “It may be the time of year. Close to the annual turning of the Dream Rock.”
“One of the reasons I came here was to watch that annual turning,'' Thunstone said.
“I’ll be watching it, too. Police duty.”
Dymock’s voice was stem to say that. Thunstone tried to ease his mood.
“It’s natural for you to speak like that,” he said. “It's characteristic. I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes.”
Dymock looked up at that, and a smile relaxed his face. “This time you’re quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson. We seem to stick to the American authors this morning, don’t we? But I meant to say, Mr. Gram Ensley was out on his front lawn just now, and remarked that he hoped to have you call on him this morning.”
“I mean to call, pretty soon. But, Constable, I wonder how I ought to feel about people asking about me here.”
“Why, as to that,” said Dymock, “part of it may be that you’re so big, if I may notice that. An upstanding figure of a man. Maybe the biggest man here just now, except for Albert Porrask.”
“Porrask,” Thunstone said the name after him. “What should I expect of Porrask? I talked to him last night, at the Moonraven. I didn’t know if he was being friendly or not.”
“If you had any doubt of that,” said Dymock, “you’d better keep that doubt. Maybe he takes notice of how big you are, too. For a long time here, he’s been used to people being more or less afraid of him.” “I’m not afraid of him,” said Thunstone.
“Good. Well said. But now I must be getting along.”
Dymock got on his bicycle and pedaled it away. Watching him, Thunstone saw that he stopped and dismounted again. He was talking to Constance Bailey, who wore brown slacks and a brown blouse, and tossed her dark hair back as she smiled and said something. Dymock smiled, too, not so officially. Thunstone said to himself that they made a nice-looking couple as they stood there together. He walked along toward the church of St. Jude’s.
Jude, he pondered. He remembered the General Epistle of Jude. That was one of the shortest books in either Testament, and by no means the most comforting. It was particularly emphatic in its preachment against “murderers, complainers, walking after their own lusts.” As for Jude, the author of that Gospel, was he clearly recognized as a saint? He seemed as obscure as the Jude of whom Thomas Hardy had written; he seemed not quite identifiable. Yet the church, and now Thunstone approached it, had been called St. Jude’s. For what reason, and for how good a reason?
He came to the edge of the churchyard, to where the Dream Rock lay. He studied it carefully, more carefully than when he had seen it before, with the curate David Gates beside him and talking. Plainly the stone pillar had been meant to suggest a human figure, and upon its head were faint, worn lines that might once have been a face with eyes and a mouth. He touched it with the ferrule of his cane, and as before he felt a humming sensation in his hand and arm.
After a moment, he turned the crooked handle of the cane around and freed the silver blade. He extended the point and touched the Dream Rock with it.
The blade sang audibly, shimmered. He felt the tingling shock so strongly that he fairly snatched his blade away. Some force was in that stone, and whatever it was strove hard against him. He returned the silver weapon to its cane, and bent to lay his hand flat against the fallen pillar.
No sensation this time. Apparently the Dream Rock responded only to the silver that St. Dunstan had wrought. Thunstone turned away and went back along Trail Street.
He looked across to Chimney Pots. Two men were in the frontyard near a white-flowered bush, apparently in conversation. Thunstone crossed over and entered the yard along a pathway of moss-tufted gravel.
The two men looked at him. One was squat and elderly and roughly dressed, and poised a hoe in his hand. The other was taller and almost gracefully slender, and wore a tailored jacket of small black and white checks and gray slacks. As Thunstone came nearer, he saw that this man was smooth-shaven, long-nosed, with creamy gray hair.
He moved with confident steps to meet Thunstone and looked at him searchingly, with eyes that were as dull blue as lead.
“Mr. Thunstone, as I think/' he said evenly. “My name is Gram Ensley. So you got my note, did you? So glad you came."
“I got it, and thank you for inviting me."
“Carry on here, Hob," said Ensley to the squat man. “I’ll see Mr. Thunstone to the house."
“Yes, sir, right you are," croaked the other man, and put his hoe to the ground. Thunstone followed Ensley to the porch.
That porch was high, made of rough, clinkery stone like the rest of the house. Its pillars rose to a high canopy of fitted slabs two stories above, and the porch floor was faced with rosy-looking old bricks. Ensley led Thunstone up three wide steps and pushed open a massive door of black-painted planks to usher him into a gloomy hallway, paneled in dark wood. Against a broad staircase that mounted upward stood a clothes tree hung with wraps and umbrellas, and next to that a suit of plate armor. Beyond in the house, a piano sounded. Someone was playing Schubert's “Moment Musicale," melodiously but offhand, as though it were more or less a memory of the music itself.
Thunstone stopped in front of the suit of armor, which stood like a steel image, masked with its visor. It was a fine specimen, delicately patterned here and there. He judged it to be of the early fifteenth century. Against it leaned a great hammer like weapon, with a rusty steel haft some forty inches long. He leaned his cane against the thigh piece of the armor and studied again.
“How beautiful," he said.
As he spoke, the music farther into the house came to an abrupt stop.
“I fear I can't properly identify that armor," said Ensley. “It must have been bought by some Ensley in the past, and set up here. As you see, it was made for a fairly upstanding man, one even of your size, but I wonder if the mace—the hammer there—belongs with the suit. That's a gigantic weight to wield. Hard to pick it up, even with both hands."
“May I try?"
“Of course."
Thunstone stepped closer, put out his big right hand, and lifted the hammer. It was heavy, he knew at once, heavier than sledges used to spike down rails on ties. He studied it a moment, then muscled it out until his arm was straight and horizontal. He could do that. Ensley made a silent gesture as though clapping his hands.
“You’d have been a famous man-at-arms a few hundred years ago,” he said.
Smiling, Thunstone leaned the heavy hammer back against the steel figure. Ensley led him to a great side door, opened it, and ushered Thunstone into a spacious room with dark, rich furniture. One wall of the room was shelved, with books on the shelves all the way up to the ceiling. The other walls were hung with drapes of rough, tawny cloth, and upon these were paintings in frames. They were curious paintings, cloudy-looking. A grand piano stood in the center of the floor, but nobody sat at it.
“Who was playing as we came in?” inquired Thunstone.
“Someone I have staying with me here,” was the reply. “Won’t you sit down?”
Ensley gestured him to a leather-cushioned armchair. “Cigarette?” Ensley
offered a silver box with cigarettes so dark as to look almost black. Thunstone could not tell their make.
“Thanks,” said Thunstone. “If you don’t mind, I’ll stick to an old friend I brought along,” and he produced his pipe and pouch.
“Of course.”
Ensley took a cigarette and sat in another chair. Thunstone filled his pipe and struck a match to it.
“Now then, Mr. Thunstone,” said Ensley, “I'll admit to a certain curiosity about you, a curiosity which, by the way, seems to be felt by others in Claines. That’s why I asked you to call. What brings you here, may I ask? And how may I help you, if it’s help you need?”
He asked the question so winningly, so hospitably, that Thunstone wondered if there were any sincerity in it. He drew on his pipe and smiled.
“Call it curiosity,” he said. “I came to England to speak at a meeting and to study in libraries, visit a few sites of old remains. Some friends spoke of this village of Claines, told about the figure of Old Thunder on the slope out there, and of the Dream Rock. They also mentioned some difficulty about getting permission to research such things. So, as I say, I came here from curiosity.”
‘‘Curiosity,” Ensley repeated him. “I take you at your word, Mr. Thunstone. You're from abroad, and so you can't be representing National Trust or the Department of Environment or any of those. If there's been difficulty about researching here—dragging through land that belongs to me, disturbing the people of Claines—perhaps it can be charged to me and to my people before me. I've even had to go to court a couple of times, but so far there haven't been digs or upheavals at Claines.”
“I take it you feel justified in that,” said Thunstone. “I might feel the same way if this place belonged to me. I hear that you own most of the houses in Claines, and lands beyond.”
“Including Sweepside,” nodded Ensley. “I inherited the property, yes. But I’ve been busy on my own part, making researches as I can. I've tried to inform myself on what to look for, and how to look for it. See here.”
He reached from where he sat and from an end table took a flat case the size of a big book. It was covered with a rectangle of glass and exhibited, on a bed of cotton, several flint points. He offered it to Thunstone.
“I've found those on my land,” he said. “Found them right here in Claines. I have others; when someone comes upon one, I pay him to bring it to me. Look at the workmanship of those stones.”
Thunstone knew something of stone artifacts, and immediately recognized these as fine examples. The largest of them was like a knife blade, say five inches long, tapering, finely flaked along one edge. The others were slender and tapered, like willow leaves. So beautifully were they worked that they suggested jewelry. The colors of the flints were various—rosy, slate-gray, tawny. These were magnificent examples of stone-working skill.
Thunstone studied every item of the collection, and handed it back to his host. “Beautiful,” he pronounced. “Skillfully done. I wish a friend of mine were here to look. She’s Jean Stuart, at National Geographic in Washington; she knows the Stone Age. Some of those smaller points may have been arrowheads; those people may have had bows.”
“Very likely,” nodded Ensley. •
“They could kill game from far off with bows/’ said Thunstone. “They could kill men, too, if they understood enemies and war.” Ensley chuckled, rather sardonically. “Undoubtedly they understood enemies and war, and waged war on enemies,” he said. “War had already been on earth, for many millennia. Do you read Pfeiffer? There’s his book on the shelf there, The Emergence of Man. Pfeiffer suggests that Neanderthal man invented war, maybe sixty thousand years ago.”
“I’ve read Pfeiffer,” said Thunstone. “In that same sentence, as I remember, Pfeiffer says that Neanderthal man seems to have invented religion. He describes Neanderthal burial sites, with traces of the flowers draped over the skeleton that once was a body.” His voice grew sad, for the thought always roused his compassion for those long-ago creatures that were striving to be man, to be Homo sapiens.
“War and religion,” said Ensley. “They seem to go together; they seem to have gone hand in hand all the way to the present.” “Whoever your flint-chippers were, they were splendid workmen,” said Thunstone. “Where did you find these specimens?”
Ensley smiled at that, a strange, tight smile made by clamping his lips wide across his face. “I dug up those points myself, here on my own property.”
“Your property in Claines,” said Thunstone.
“Specifically, up yonder on Sweepside. That land, this house—all my property in and about Claines—has been in the Ensley family for hundreds of years.”
“And you say you want no explorations on it.”
“No explorations that will complicate my own,” said Ensley. “I’ve posted Sweepside against trespassers, but I don’t forbid everyone. Mr. Gates, our worthy curate at St. Jude’s, may go up there if he wishes and if he promises to be circumspect. But he seems to want to interfere with the figure of Old Thunder; he’s outspoken against what he calls paganism.” Again he smiled tightly at Thunstone. “Who’s the true god of the world, anyway? The god you probably worship has his faults and admits them. In the Ten Commandments he calls himself a jealous god—admits to meanness. Somewhere else he says he won't forgive unto the third and fourth generation."
"You’ll find that in the Third Commandment," said Thunstone. "The fifth chapter of Deuteronomy, isn't it? Anyway, that was a long, long time ago."
"Not so very long," shrugged Ensley. "I don't know just how long ago Moses is supposed to have brought down his tables of stone from Mount Sinai, but I’d hazard that Old Thunder's figure on Sweepside was first cut out before that."
He spoke as though he knew what he was talking about. Thunstone drew on his pipe.
"I walked through your little town last evening after supper, as far as your fence at the edge of Sweepside," he said. "When I came back, I saw that I'd been followed by someone, who headed away among some trees behind your house here. I wondered who it was."
"Ah, who indeed?" said Ensley. "What did the person look like?"
"He had a draped coat and a low-pulled hat, so it would be hard to say what he looked like. He was square-built and not very tall, something the figure of your man working outside. The one you called Hob."
"Hob Sayle?" said Ensley. "Hob has been with our family for years, with my father before me. His wife cooks for me, and very well."
He rose, and so did Thunstone.
"See here," said Ensley suddenly. "If you'd like to go right now and walk on Sweepside, I’ll take you there. And when we come back, will you take lunch with me? I'll speak to Mrs. Sayle, and I'll wager she’ll have something worth the eating."
"Thank you, Mr. Ensley," said Thunstone. "You’re being very kind."
"Not at all," said Ensley.
CHAPTER 5
Ensley went through a door into a room beyond. Thunstone heard him talking, and a woman’s voice answering. Then Ensley reappeared.
“I’ve asked Mrs. Sayle to do us a sort of justice at lunch,” he said. “She says she has good seafood—this is a Friday—and a salad which she says will be a dream of spring, and some kind of sweet to follow. Does that sound good?”
“It sounds delicious,” Thunstone replied.
They went out together, upon the broad porch.
“That stick of yours interests me,” remarked Ensley. “Yet, if I may say so, you don’t seem to need it to walk with.”
“I carry it for old time’s sake,” said Thunstone. “It was given to me by a valued friend, Judge Keith Hilary Pursuivant.”
“I’ve heard that name,” said Ensley, nodding. “An American student of the occult and famous in his chosen field. Rather like yourself, I should think.”
“I’m flattered,” said Thunstone, “to be thought like Judge Pursuivant in any way whatsoever.”
“Are you ready for our little walk?”
They stepped down fro
m the porch and walked around the house to the left. On that side, yew trees grew close to the rough, dark wall, with barred windows looking down upon them from above. A slatefaced path skirted close to the yews. Beyond and behind the house, Ensley led the way to another path, moss-carpeted, that ran between clumps of trees. It was hard to see the houses of Claines from that position.
“We can go directly to a gate this way,” said Ensley. “Allow me to wonder, Mr. Thunstone, about your name. It has a legendary sound.”
“I can’t speak to its origin,” said Thunstone. “I do know that the name is English, and that an ancestor of mine came to Virginia in 1642.1 haven’t found any Thunstones here in England, not that I’ve looked very carefully.”
“According to the old story of Tom Thumb, King Thunstone succeeded King Arthur,” said Ensley.
“I didn’t know that anyone succeeded King Arthur,” said Thunstone. “I thought that when he was carried to Avalon by the three queens, the Saxons took over.”
They had come past the trees by now, walking among currant bushes. Sweepside was visible beyond.
“Why, as to that,” said Ensley, “Thunstone is a name with a Saxon sound, and there were various Saxon kings after Arthur. Come this way to our gate through the fence.”
Together they approached the gate in the wire. It was a simple gate, of weathered wooden slats nailed upright to two horizontal bars. On the far side, a roughly made bridge of stone slabs lay across the little stream. Ensley lifted a heavy hasp, opened the gate, and stepped aside to let Thunstone enter before him. Then he followed and hooked the gate behind them. Far up the slope showed the considerable stretch of Old Thunder, with the two men busy at its edge. Thunstone and Ensley turned their steps in that direction. All along the slope grazed sheep, some of them close at hand. The ground sprouted heavy green grass, with tufts of flowered gorse here and there.
“I’ve asked about your name, and that gives you the right to wonder about mine,” said Ensley. “My given name, I mean, Gram.”
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