“Now that you speak of it, I don’t think that I’ve met with the name of Gram, either,” replied Thunstone. “Unless it’s a form of Graham.”
“No, just Gram. It’s always been Gram. A younger son gets the name in my family. You see, we’re titled—baronets—and my older brother has the title, and the manor, up north of here. But I was named Gram, and I got Chimney Pots and the estate here.”
“It's an interesting old house/' Thunstone said. “It must be very old”
“Most parts of it are. Here and there it's been rebuilt over the centuries. Now, here we come to what the people call Old Thunder."
They had come there indeed. Close at hand, the outline showed as a sort of ditch dug in the turf, a ditch fully two feet wide and several inches deep and many feet long on an uneven curve. Pale, chalky soil showed through. Ensley led the way toward where the men dug with flat shovels. One of them straightened up. It was Porrask, broad and bearded, wearing wrinkled work clothes.
“We've been at it since after breakfast, sir," he addressed Ensley. “How does it look?"
“First-rate," replied Ensley. “You've done well here. Others will take your places in an hour or so. Any complications?"
“Well, you might call something a complication," said Porrask. “Look up yonder, sir, where that clump is. That little witch girl, Connie Bailey's there, all hunkered over, up to something."
Ensley wheeled to look. A hundred yards or so up the slope crouched a little figure in brown, its hands busy.
“Why didn't you tell her she was trespassing?" growled Ensley. “Are you still sweet on her?"
“Well—" stammered Porrask embarrassedly.
“Since you didn't tell her, I shall."
Ensley strode away purposefully, and Thunstone walked with him.
As they approached, the figure straightened to its feet. It was Constance Bailey, sure enough. She stood and waited. As they came close, Thunstone saw that her black hair looked tumbled, her eyes were wide with apprehension. She held a little sheaf of green stems with yellow flowers, in hands that trembled.
“See here, my girl, I've had to warn you off my property before this," Ensley said forbiddingly. “I thought I’d put up signs enough to warn anyone who could read. I'll ask you to leave at once."
“I didn’t mean any harm, Mr. Ensley," quavered Constance Bailey. “I only came to pick some of this Saint-John's-wort."
She held out her fistful of gathered plants, as though it might plead for her.
“You throw that down,” Ensley snapped.
“But please, it's nothing to harm,” she begged. “It's a good plant, can help people.”
“Throw it down,” ordered Ensley, more fiercely.
She sighed, and obeyed. The plants fluttered to the ground from her slim hands.
“Mr. Ensley,” she said timidly, “I’m sorry if I did wrong, but could I ask permission to come back—gather—•”
“Yes, you did wrong,” Ensley broke in. “You've forfeited any right to ask favors from me. Get off this land, then. You're a trespasser here, and you can be thankful that I don’t prosecute you. Go on, go away.”
“Y-yes, sir.”
She went, her head bowed. Ensley watched and said nothing. Thunstone, too, was silent until Constance Bailey reached the fence at the bottom of the slope and went along it to the gate.
“Saint-John's-wort,” muttered Ensley. “Black magic.”
“I don't believe it's that, not quite,” interposed Thunstone. “It's always been used to fight black magic, even against vampires and werewolves, and I've heard that it's good as a medicine.”
“Maybe I should have let her pick more of it, at that,” said Ensley. “I know it can hurt sheep if they eat too much of it, can make their skins sore.”
“Do you mind if I pick up what she threw down?” asked Thunstone.
“Not at all, if you like. You're my guest here, not a trespasser like that little girl pretending to witchcraft.”
Thunstone brought out an envelope, knelt and carefully gathered the scattered stems. Flecks of pinkish red showed on the yellow blooms. He stowed them in the envelope, taking care not to bruise or break them, then slid the envelope into his inside pocket.
Constance Bailey had left Sweepside by then, had gone out of their sight. Ensley and Thunstone returned to the figure of Old Thunder. The head of the figure showed immense and pallid with the removal of turf, and two blotchy eyes were visible where greenery had been left. Thunstone looked at the semblance thoughtfully. The face bore a look of the face on the Dream Rock.
“How old might Old Thunder be?” he asked Ensley, who shrugged.
“That's difficult to answer. They've always said that he's always been here.”
“Might the Druids have dug him out? The pagan Celts?”
“No,” replied Ensley. “Druids were newcomers, hardly in England before the fifth century b.c. As for the Celts, they ruled here before the Romans, but most scholars think they came along from the European mainland, maybe even from what's now Russia. Men were here, flourished here, long before the Celts.”
“So far as my study goes, they flourished here for hundreds of thousands of years,” said Thunstone. “Piltdown man was a hoax, of course. But there's Swanscombe man, dated a quarter of a million years ago.”
“Probably he was our ancestor, yours and mine,” nodded Ensley. “England must have been tropical then, between the Ice Ages. Elephants here, and the rhinoceros. And Swanscombe man too, chipping flints and living a good food-gathering life. But I doubt that he made Old Thunder here. I'd judge that Old Thunder is as early as any hillside image we have in England. But, I'd hazard, no more than ten thousand years ago, just yesterday compared to Swanscombe man.”
“Ten thousand years!” exclaimed Thunstone, and Ensley laughed.
“It seems long to you, eh? But how long has been the life of mankind? Now then, shall we go back to the house? Lunch will be ready soon.”
Thunstone lowered the ferrule of his cane to the bared chalk of Old Thunder's outline. He felt a tingle in his hand and arm, not as strong as the one he had felt when he had investigated the Dream Rock, but it was there. He drew his cane away and went along with Ensley, to the gate at the foot of the slope. They retraced their steps through the currant bushes and around the side of the house.
Inside, Thunstone leaned his cane to the suit of armor that stood in the hall. Ensley escorted him into the book-lined front room.
“A splash of something to drink before lunch?” he urged. “Here, will you have whiskey?”
“Thank you.”
Ensley took a bottle from a sideboard and poured into two glasses. Then he spurted soda from a siphon—a gasogene, that was called by Holmes and Watson in the old stories—and handed one to Thunstone. “Cheers,” he said, lifting his own drink.
“Cheers,” Thunstone echoed him, and sipped. It was scotch, of course. When the English said whiskey, they meant scotch. It was good scotch.
“You say you came here for curiosity's sake,” said Ensley. “With someone like you, though, that means research. How does your research come on?”
“I don't know if it’s truly research,” smiled Thunstone. “I can only say that I'm glad I visited Claines. As for what I'm after, suppose I just call myself a truth seeker.”
“Truth seeker,” repeated Ensley, and took another swallow of his drink. “A looker into the nature of reality, is that it? Well, perhaps I’m a truth seeker, too. What is truth?”
“Pontius Pilate asked that once, and didn't wait for Jesus to answer him,” said Thunstone. “It’s a pity he didn't wait; Jesus was apt to give interesting answers to questions. The nature of reality, you say. The demonstrated fact is, when strange things are examined, the strangeness goes out of them. They become workaday facts. The impossible is always happening.”
“I like that,” said Ensley, wagging his head over it. “You're right, Mr. Thunstone; you have a way of being right. For instance, an impossibi
lity like space travel has become a familiar thing, almost a commonplace. The splitting of the atom—I suggest it's too bad that we made a reality out of that. What else? What story that's called impossible today? The vampire? The werewolf? The dead rising to haunt us?”
Thunstone did not remark that he had in his time encountered vampires, werewolves, and ghosts of the dead, all three. “What you mean,” he did say, “is that rationalization can take the super out of supernatural.”
“True again,” applauded Ensley. “You've finished your drink; will you take another? No? Then let's go into the dining room and see what Mrs. Sayle has for us.”
The room behind had a long table of dark, polished wood, set with lacy mats and silver and plates. A woman waited there, pudgy and round-faced, with red-dyed hair. She wore an apron worked in blue yam with stars. As Ensley came in, she looked at him almost apprehensively. Plainly she feared him.
“This is Mr. Thunstone, Mrs. Sayle, and I hope you've done us justice today," Ensley said loftily.
“Ow," she said, “quite simple, I fear, but I hope good. I'll just fetch it in."
And she bustled out.
Ensley sat at the head of the table, and Thunstone at a place beside him. There were glasses of cold white wine. Mrs. Sayle scurried in again with something in an oval china tureen, and held it for them to help themselves. It turned out to be a creamy Newburg of shrimp, and with it she served them small potatoes and greens cooked with tiny slivers of ham. There was also a salad of lettuce, sauced with something mustardy. Then she brought a straw tray with slices of crusty bread. Nothing simple about this lunch, thought Thunstone as he ate with a good appetite. He wondered why Mrs. Sayle sounded nervous.
“Those greens are picked here and there on my property," Ensley told Thunstone. “Wild greens. Hob gathers them; he knows which are good."
“Delicious," said Thunstone, eating a forkful.
“I take leave to observe how impressed you are with evidences of antiquity in and around Claines," said Ensley, refilling Thunstone’s wineglass from a carafe.
“Naturally I am," agreed Thunstone. “In America, we date antiquities back no further than, say, Jamestown and Plymouth Rock. Oh yes, and in Spanish America, to Columbus and the various conquests. Earlier than these things, we’re prehistoric. Though we’re not young in our prehistory, either. Some paleontologists reckon that men have been in America for forty thousand years, maybe even longer than that."
“Forty thousand years makes my researches here seem only of yesterday," said Ensley. “I mentioned, as I remember, that I incline to date Old Thunder at ten thousand years ago, the late Stone Age. But to that modest yesterday I pay very much attention.”
Thunstone was silent for a moment, then decided to say what he had in mind. “I wondered why you were so short and sharp with that pathetic little girl on Sweepside,” he said.
“Constance Bailey.” Ensley grimaced and glared above his wineglass. “That little poseur, that trickster,” he snarled out. “With her pretense of being a witch, what she calls the Old Religion. How old is witchcraft?”
“It’s prehistoric, I suppose,” said Thunstone.
“It’s a newcomer,” pronounced Ensley. “There are some oldish things in it, but for the chief part it’s just a mockery of various established faiths. Here, and in Europe generally, it’s a mockery of Christianity, apes Christianity and rebels against it. Among the Jews, it sneers at the Talmud. It's anti-Koran among Moslem peoples, and so on. And this Bailey wench, she coos her promises to ignorant people in Claines, tricks them into thinking she can help them.” He furrowed his face. “Those are some of the things I hold against her. Her witchcraft is parvenu, a lot newer than my yesterday we talked about.”
“Does she do harm?” Thunstone asked.
“She’s a nuisance. I don’t have time for nuisances in Claines.” Thunstone changed the subject. “You feel confident that you can refer the Old Thunder image to times ten thousand years ago.” “Well, as to that, stone tools have been turned up in the chalk of the outline. A couple of those points I showed you came from there. I suggest that Paleolithic people first dug Old Thunder out of the turf and down to the chalk for all to see.”
They finished their lunch, and Thunstone reflected that it had been a fine one, that Mrs. Sayle had not needed to apologize for it. Or had she? He and Ensley left the table, and in the front room Ensley chose another decanter from the sideboard and poured them small snifters of brandy. It was excellent brandy.
“I’ve decided to show you something else I’ve dug up hereabouts,” said Ensley. “Something I don’t show everyone.”
He pulled open a drawer in a desk and took out what seemed to be a bone, slender and brown with age, and perhaps eight inches long. He handed it to Thunstone. “What do you make of it?” he asked. “I’d say it came from the wing of a large bird,” said Thunstone. “From the wing of an eagle, I’d hazard. And look at it; it's been worked.”
Thunstone turned the bone over and over in his big hands. At the large end appeared a deep notch, and along the length showed six small holes that must have been made by a drill. There were scratched lines here and there, in triangles and squares.
“It seems to have been a flute,” said Thunstone, handing it back. “Did men of the Old Stone Age have those?”
“To judge from this one, they did. Probably they made some of their flutes from wood or reeds, long ago gone to dust. And undoubtedly they had drums, too, drums that have perished. But this is of bone. It has survived the thousands of years.”
Ensley set the notched end to his pursed lips, arranged his fingertips on the holes. Blowing, he achieved a trill of sound, and the movement of his fingers made it turn into a strange, minor melody. Thunstone felt a current within himself, like the current he had known when he had touched the Dream Rock, the outline of Old Thunder. Ensley lowered the flute and grinned.
“They could make music of a sort, right enough,” he said. “What else interests you, Mr. Thunstone?”
“These paintings of yours,” said Thunstone.
He took time to study the paintings. Two of them were so blurry as to defy critical appraisal. Another seemed to be a view of Sweepside, complete with Old Thunder, but there was an impression of fog. The last of the display was clear enough. It showed a prone cross with a human figure spiked to it, and around this danced a dozen smaller figures, grotesquely proportioned.
“Who did these?” he asked Ensley.
“My friend who's staying here,” Ensley replied, stowing the bone flute back in its drawer. “Talented at painting and other things. But from time to time she turns to me for guidance.”
She, Ensley had said. His guest, then, was a woman who could paint, could play the piano. Why hadn’t she appeared for lunch? Thunstone did not ask.
The two talked about trifles in Claines, and finally Thunstone took up his cane and said his good byes and thanks.
“Not at all,” said Ensley. “I’ve come to the conclusion that your presence here has its certain importances. Now, let’s see; tomorrow is Saturday the third, and I fear I’ll be fairly well occupied. What are your plans for Sunday?”
“I’ve been asked to come to church, and I’ll do that.”
“Well then, after church, would you care to come here for noon dinner and some more talk?”
“I'd be very glad to come.”
He walked out. Hob Sayle, at his work in the frontyard, stared after him but said nothing.
He strolled past the cottages to the west of Chimney Pots and to Mrs. Fothergill’s. Entering, he mounted the stairs. In the hall above, Constance Bailey plied a broom.
“Do you ever ride that broom?” he teased her.
“I just sweep with it,” she said shyly.
From his pocket he brought the envelope with the Saint-John’s- wort.
“Here,” he said, “these are the plants Mr. Ensley made you throw away. I picked them up and saved them to give to you.”
“Oh!�
�� she half-gasped and reached out for the envelope. Her slender fingers trembled against his thick ones. “Oh,” she said again. “I thank you, Mr. Thunstone.”
“I didn’t think that a plant called Saint-John’s-wort could be an evil one.” He smiled down at her.
“No, it’s good,” she said. “Mix its juice with olive oil and wine, and it’s good for cuts and bruises. You can rub it in for arthritis. It’s a holy plant.”
“And, being a white witch, you try to do good.”
“Yes, yes, and I know poor people in Claines who can be helped by this. Thank you again.”
He went into his room, sat down, and brought out his notebook to write down a number of things that had occurred to him during his visit with Ensley. After that he wrote a letter to Judge Pursuivant in America.
Outside in the hall, Constance Bailey bustled at her work. She began to sing, in a rather tuneful voice. Thunstone knew it was an old song, one he had heard when he was a little boy:
One I love, two I love,
Three I love, I say,
Four I love with all my heart,
And five I cast away . . .
Listening, Thunstone smiled above the pen in his fingers. For a moment, he almost joined in the song for the sake of old times, but decided against that. He let her sing the next verse by herself:
Counting leaves is not the way
A body's love to prove,
For the very one I cast away
Is the very one I love.
He heard her move away to work somewhere else. He studied the letter he had written and put it in an envelope. He thought of all he had heard, all he had wondered, since coming to Claines. He mused on a hint, from somewhere, of danger.
Finally he made a careful copy of all his notes from the first, and this took him considerable time. He wrote on a card, in big letters:
SEE IF THIS INTERESTS YOU. IF YOU DON’T HEAR FROM ME BY MONDAY OR TUESDAY, COME TO CLAINES AND SEE WHAT S HAPPENED. YOU MAY WANT TO BRING HELP.
Manly Wade Wellman - John Thunstone 01 Page 6
