The Stranger House

by Reginald Hill

  This and other details he noted with a scholar’s eye as he did a rapid preliminary scan through the books. There was much material here for his thesis in the form of a vivid contemporary response, sometimes at a distance, sometimes uncomfortably close up, to the see-saw rise and fall of Catholic fortunes in the sixteenth century. Alice’s delight in taking possession of her new home was clouded by news of the destruction of the county’s monastic centers. The Priory at Illthwaite, like Calder Abbey to the west, was an offshoot of the great Cistercian Abbey of Furness. Its main claim to distinction was that it had in its keeping certain alleged relics of St. Ylf which were associated with several instances of miraculous healing. When news of Calder’s destruction reached the Hall, Alice prayed that Illthwaite, being much smaller, might be overlooked, but a few weeks later she recorded that Thomas Cromwell’s men had appeared, the Priory had been pillaged, its treasures destroyed or stolen, and its buildings razed to the ground save for the Stranger House, which the dissolvers had used as their lodging and stables.

  Nor was there better news elsewhere. The dismantling of the great and powerful Abbey of Furness stone by stone was recorded with horror. A small cause for rejoicing was the news that the prayers of the locals in Cartmel had been answered and the church of the priory there was to be spared though the rest of the site was leveled. But generally it was a tale of woe and destruction.

  He skipped over the early pages which recorded the Woollass men’s participation in the 1536 Pilgrimage of Grace which had nearly cost Alice’s brother-in-law, young Will, his head. She gave thanks to God when Mary came to the throne in 1553, but it said much for her humanity that she reacted to news of Protestants being burned at the stake with the same revulsion she had shown at assaults on her coreligionists.

  Then in 1558, Elizabeth inherited the crown and the screws began to turn again. The anti-recusancy laws, first introduced during the brief reign of Edward, were reinforced and much more rigorously applied. And soon there began that great priest-hunt which was eventually to have such significance for the Woollass family.

  Alice had few illusions about her wild young brother-in-law, describing him at the time of her marriage as a railing, mery rogue, fit for little save drinking and laiking; yet I cannot find it in my heart to dislike him!

  Her delight in his marriage to Margaret Millgrove was unreserved. Her husband, however, had mixed feelings. It was in his eyes a low and unsuitable connection for a Woollass. Cloth merchants, he proclaimed, were little more than plebeian leeches feeding off the real work done by shepherds, shearers, landowners. On the other hand to get Will settled was much, and Edwin allowed his wife to persuade him into acceptance.

  However, as the Millgroves prospered and rose in social status, their enthusiastic embracing of the Protestant faith soon provided another source of contention. The story he’d heard from Southwell was all here, but from a much more personal perspective.

  Alice deplored the growing rift between her husband and Will, and was active in encouraging the friendship between Simeon and her own sons, till Will accused the Illthwaite Woollasses of filling his boy’s head with treasonable matter and forbade the visits. Simeon obeyed, and Will eventually added distance to duty by sending his son as the firm’s agent first to Portsmouth, then to Spain.

  Alice’s journals now took Madero where Southwell’s researches had not been able to go.

  When Will finally severed relations with Simeon, he commanded his wife to have no more correspondence with her son. Dutifully, she obeyed. But she had not been formally forbidden from communicating with her Illthwaite in-laws and through Alice she obtained news of Simeon, who had kept in close touch with his cousins.

  Alice was very careful never to record anything in terms which could incriminate herself or her family if read by a third party. Indeed, as Madero did his first rapid scan through all of the volumes which continued until just a day before Alice’s death in 1597, he had a sense of gaps which closer examination confirmed, with sentences half-finished at the foot of one sheet not resuming at the top of the next. Perhaps the dilapidation of the primitive binding had allowed some pages to be lost over the centuries. Or perhaps Alice herself on a rereading had decided that some entries were potentially too revealing.

  Nevertheless, with Mr. Southwell’s neat record in his hand, Madero was able to reconstruct various events.

  The search of Will’s house in Kendal had taken place on a December morning in 1587. On the same day, Alice had noted that a traveler from Kendal en route for the port of Ravenglass had stopped at the hall briefly for refreshment.

  Her next entry recorded, almost casually, that an officer of the North Lancashire Yeomanry, a gentleman of a family known to her husband, had called with a small troop of soldiers and asked permission to search the house and outbuildings for a fugitive priest. The search proving fruitless, the officer had apologized for disturbing them, then accepted their invitation to sit down with them and take supper.

  It was clear to Madero what had happened. As the searchers departed from Will’s house, Margaret had guessed that they were now heading for Illthwaite. She had then revealed to Will that she knew Simeon was in regular communication with his Illthwaite relations. Will would have flown into a fury but Margaret’s fears for her son were far stronger than her fear of her husband. Again and again she would have protested, “But think! What if our son is at the Hall and they discover him?”

  Finally Will’s anger had faded as he contemplated the likely result of his son’s capture. He had probably seen a heretic’s execution. Memory of those brutalities would be enough to drive even the strongest anger out of a father’s head. A trusted messenger must have been despatched to Illthwaite with orders not to spare his mount in his efforts to overtake the soldiers and warn his brother of the imminent search.

  Then he and his wife sat silent to endure the long hours till the messenger returned.

  Miguel Madero sat back from his work and let his creative imagination loose to roam this ancient house. He heard the soldiers arrive, registered Edwin and Alice’s indignant reaction, watched the men trample through the chambers in their vain search. The officer sounded like a man who would direct the searchers conscientiously but without fervor. As for his men, probably most of them were indifferent as to whether they were ruled by a Catholic monarch or a Protestant so long as they got paid. So poke about, make a bit of noise, goose the maidservants, but don’t do anything that might really piss off the family and make them chintzy with the victuals.

  Had Simeon been here? he wondered. Alice was too wise to give even a hint in her journals.

  The house had been searched at least once more after 1587. The second search in February 1589, conducted by the Yorkshire pursuivant Francis Tyrwhitt, seemed to have been a much more thorough job. Alice saw no reason to let discretion get in the way of setting down her typically forthright reaction to Tyrwhitt, describing him as having the fawning maner of a Welsh dealer trying to sel a spavind nag at a horse-fayre.

  It was during this search that the concealed room in the Long Gallery had been discovered.

  Typically Alice made no written admission that it was a priest-hole, saying only that They made grate commotion when they chanced on that privy closet which my late husband had caused to be created for the more secure storage of our precious goods in the event, which Godde forbid, that Civill Strife or foreign invasion disturb the peace of our beloved countrie.

  Clever old Alice to have a good cover story ready in case the authorities ever found the hiding place, though, of course, like a trout in the milk, a priest in the hole would be more difficult to explain away.

  You have e-mail.

  It was the voice of his laptop, dragging him forward four centuries.

  It was from Max Coldstream.

  Hi, Mig

  Glad to hear Southwell was a help. Nothing useful from Yorkshire yet. Tim Lilleywhite says he’s unearthed a fair-sized portfolio of Tyrwhitt’s personal records, but n
othing on Simeon other than a bare reference to his admission to Jolley.

  I passed your query about Molloy on to our library IT wiz who dug up some stuff. First name Liam. Seems to have been a competent freelance journalist who from time to time cobbled together books on topics he thought might titillate the debased palate of hoi polloi. Topcliffe and torture sounds very much his style. Our wiz came across a ref to a website which presumably went defunct with its creator, but evidently these things can have a kind of immortality of their own which may assist the Recording Angel in his work. The lad in the library seemed keen to try to track it down, so I said go ahead.

  Good luck at Illthwaite. Be careful. Not sure how far the laws of God or man apply in those remote places!

  Best, Max

  Mig smiled. Coldstream was very much an urban animal, a small cuddly hamster of a man who loved the cozy nest he’d created for himself in Southampton but had somehow contrived to have connections and influence all over the world. In Max all that the view out of the study window would have provoked was a shudder.

  Perhaps he was right. Perhaps other laws than those of God or man applied in this place.

  He dismissed the speculation and turned to another, almost as troublesome. Had Father Simeon visited the Hall during those turbulent years of his work on the English Mission? Madero felt sure he must have done. Yet it was strange, that lack of vibration he had experienced as he stood in the hiding place in the Long Gallery. He had been a touch disingenuous when he told Frek he had a certain sensitivity to that sort of thing. It went a little further than that. If he closed his eyes now and emptied his mind of all distractive thought, he could get a sense of…

  A strong human presence!

  “I’m sorry you find our family records so soporific, Mr. Madero.”

  He opened his eyes and sat upright. Frek was standing behind him.

  He reached forward and removed Max’s message from the laptop screen. Had she had time to read it? Did it matter?

  “Sorry, I was just…”

  “…communing with the spirits?” she completed. “Of course. Well, I’m sorry to drag your mind from the spirit to the flesh, but it’s time for lunch.”

  If only you knew how easily you can drag my mind from the spirit to the flesh, he thought.

  He stood up.

  “Lead on,” he said. “I have built up quite an appetite.”

  5

  An amicable pair

  SAM FLOOD AND THOR WINANDER SAT facing each other. He had picked up a wooden chair, tipped its contents on to the floor and set it down a couple of feet in front of her so that their knees almost touched.

  He leaned forward. At this distance the whites of his eyes were bloodshot and she could see a network of tiny veins on his strong nose.

  He said, “Let’s get one thing out of the way so you don’t build up too many expectations. You say it was the spring of 1960 your grandmother sailed?”

  “That’s right.”

  He said, “Our Sam Flood didn’t come to live here till the summer of 1960. A year later he was dead. So that seems to cut out any possible connection with your gran.”

  His tone was brusque, his expression blank, as if he were merely stating facts too abstract to be involving. But the stillness of his body gave this the lie. It was the stillness not of relaxation but of control.

  Sam said, “You said you’d tell me about him anyway.”

  “Did I? So I did. But I’m not always to be relied on, Miss Flood. I said I’d take care of Sam too, and look what happened to him.”

  He was trying to maintain a calm tone but she detected an undercurrent of savage self-reproach. For the first time it occurred to her that maybe people might be reluctant to talk about her mysterious namesake, not because there was something to hide but because there was something to hide from.

  But she’d come too far to back off now.

  “Look, I’m sorry if this is painful…”

  “Are you?” he said savagely. “Know about pain, do you?”

  “A bit.”

  “Yeah, yeah. The young know a bit about everything. OK. Let’s get this done.”

  He sat back and his gaze focused away from her.

  “Sam Flood,” he said softly. “Like I say, I don’t see any way you can be connected to Sam, but if you had been, then you’d have been very lucky. He was the best person I ever met. Absolutely. In every respect. The very best.”

  Suddenly he smiled directly at her. Or was it the other Sam Flood he was smiling at in his memory?

  “So how did a notorious reprobate like me meet up with such a paragon? By blind chance, as I would put it. Or by the grace of God, as Sam would have put it. For he wasn’t only naturally good, he was good by profession and vocation.”

  He paused while Sam worked this out.

  “You mean he was some kind of priest?” she said.

  “Indeed. You don’t look impressed by the information. Not your favorite people, perhaps? Mine neither, but that’s what Sam was, curate of this parish, no less, back in the days when the C of E could afford curates. Nowadays it’s only the fact that Pete Swinebank is virtually self-supporting that means Illthwaite still has a vicar of its own. Of course, in Pete’s case, the hereditary principle applies too, but he looks set to be last of his line, unless he’s been ploughing fields and scattering the good seed in places we don’t know about.”

  “Tell me about Sam Flood,” insisted Sam, sensing evasion.

  “That’s what I’m doing,” he said. “I met Sam when I was doing my art course in Leeds. That surprises you? Me with qualifications, not just a natural genius. My father saw there wasn’t much future in shoeing horses so he started to diversify. Even traveled abroad, which no self-respecting Illthwaitean did, met a Norwegian girl and married her. That’s how I got to be Thor. Fitted somehow, as Winander is a Viking name anyway. Windermere means the lake belonging to Vinandr. I sometimes think I’ll put in a claim.”

  For some reason this information put Sam in mind of her visit to the churchyard, but she brushed the irrelevancy aside.

  “So you met this guy when you were a student,” she prompted.

  “That’s right. He was at some vicars’ training college close by. There was this chap making some interesting furniture in the same neck of the woods. I rode out there on my motorbike one day to take a look round his workshop. The bike spluttered a bit when I set off back to town and I was just passing the college gate when it gave up the ghost. Also it started to rain. In a few minutes it was a deluge. A bus stopped close by and some young guys, students from the college, got out. Most of them sprinted through the gates, but one of them came over. He said, ‘Having trouble?’ I answered something like, ‘Who the fuck are you? The Good Samaritan?’ You know, really gracious.”

  “Nothing’s changed then,” said Sam.

  Winander grinned. He had a nice grin when it was spontaneous.

  He said, “Wrong. Nowadays I’d recognize this guy was my best chance of getting out of the wet and come over all pathetic. Fortunately, as you’ve guessed, this was Sam Flood, and ill-mannered crap like mine just bounced off him.”

  He paused, then repeated, “Bounced off him. When I said that to Frek Woollass, she said he sounded like Balder. You ever heard of Balder?”

  Sam shook her head.

  “Me neither, till then. Seems he was one of the Norse gods, the loveliest of them all both in appearance and in personality. He was goodness personified and everybody loved him so much that his mother Frigg had no problem getting everything that existed, animal, vegetable and mineral, to swear an oath that they would never cause Balder any harm. Eventually it became a favorite after-dinner game of the gods to hurl plates and spears and furniture and boiling oil at him, just for the fun of seeing it bounce off while he sat there laughing at them.”

  “Sounds more like the Pom upper classes than gods. I guess they didn’t have any videos to watch in those days. We’re drifting away from the story again.”
<
br />   “Not really. The only thing Frigg didn’t get a promise from was the mistletoe, which she reckoned was too young and slight to pose any danger. Another god called Loki, who got his kicks out of making mischief, took a sprig of mistletoe, sharpened it into a dart and gave it to Balder’s brother, Hod, who happened to be blind. Joining in the fun, Hod, guided by Loki, hurled the mistletoe and it pierced Balder right through the heart.”

  He fell silent. Sam had a feeling there was stuff here it might be dangerous to stir up. But all she wanted at this time were the straight facts.

  “So Sam the Samaritan helped you,” she prompted.

  “That’s right. Invited me to come and shelter inside. I did. We drank coffee and talked till the rain stopped. Then we went back out to the bike and got it to start. I said thanks to Sam. He was a genuine Christian with a real faith in human goodness. Not many around. Also he was a trainee parson, a Bible puncher, an idiot who felt called by God to waste his life standing around a drafty church, preaching to six old ladies on a good Sunday. Too many of them around. But Sam was different. I really liked the guy. He said he enjoyed football, so I gave him my address in Leeds and invited him to drop in next time he came to see United play. In fact I said if he came before the match, we could go together, and if there’s anything I hate more than religion, it’s football!”

  “He sounds a real winning character,” said Sam.

  “Indeed. And before your brutish antipodean mind starts getting the wrong end of the stick, let me emphasize the attraction was queer only in the sense of odd. I had no desire to fondle his bum. I’ll admit to enjoying the sight of him when we swam together in the buff, but it was an artist’s enjoyment in beauty, the same that I might possibly get if you were to strip off, my dear, but without any of the concomitant carnal stirrings.”