Standing expectant, in more ways than one, in a third floor arched window of the Château, Béatrice now watched from that self-same retreat as a solitary figure made his way up the same track broken not two hours ago by the hooves of war’s own calling.
A solitary figure. And it was not Hercule.
Eli was still some distance away but trudging fast. His body might be weary from a long night of hard labour within the church but his mind was racing. Indeed, he had never felt more alive. Having removed the slab, with no shortage of difficulty, the two of them had indeed discovered what the master had hoped was contained within. The tables, the source of myth, legend and hundreds of years of whispered speculation, were indeed there. They had been there all along. And they were absolutely beautiful.
At first they had looked like blackened metal disks; shiny, smooth and slightly reflective. It was only if one looked closer, or felt their slightly warmer touch, that they were revealed to be carved from a dark stone. Deep and black, like ivory. The huge granite slab in which they had been hidden had, at some point a long, long time ago, had two circular recesses carved into it, slightly deeper than the tables themselves. They fitted perfectly and their depth allowed them to sit within with no prospect whatsoever of them being damaged, if and when the slab was removed. Presumably created as some kind of signature, an intricate symbol carved to a lesser depth between the two recesses had the air of a family crest or a symbol of allegiance. Whoever might have carved this symbol, and it was presumably not the same hand as had carved the tables themselves, had clearly been a craftsman and extremely skilled with his tools. The edges were crisp and sharp, perhaps almost sharp enough to cut the finger if one were to press hard enough. What this signature might represent meant nothing to Eli, and nor had it to Hercule, but it clearly meant something. Hercule, for his part, really didn’t seem to care.
As for the tables themselves, glistening black and orange in the flickering torchlight, they were even more intricate and contained a level of detail which was surely beyond any tools or skills of the day. Each tablet of stone was intrinsically round in shape but possessed cogwheel-like protrusions spaced around its circumference. Each protrusion seemed as thought it might connect perfectly with one or more of the shapes its counterpart disk, dependent upon how the disks might be turned. On both sides of each, and as black as the disks themselves, were an almost infinitesimal number of symbols which had the air of letters without ever being legible. These hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny shapes seemed to sit on wave-riding lines which undulated mesmerisingly across the surface of tablets, crossing and interlocking. Never had Eli seen stone carved so finely, or so beautifully. Just to see them, if only for a few fleeting moments, made him feel as though he were indeed reading the words of this world’s creator.
With Hercule already gone, he doubted he would ever see them again.
As he approached the Château, Béatrice hurried out through the tall, narrow arch as best she could, her skirts hunched and her gait awkward. It was clear from her girth that there were not many more weeks to go before another Montmorency would be occupying this world. She took just a moment to look beyond Eli, down along the empty track, but she already knew the answer to her question.
“He has gone,” she said. It was not a question and he could tell that she was already fighting tears. “Without a goodbye.”
Eli said nothing. For now, there was nothing he could say.
Béatrice’s tone collapsed, as though all the spirit had been stolen from her voice. “They came this morning,” she said, looking around the morning scenery as though ruing her own mistakes. “The king’s men. Riding that same track not two hours past. I told them he was at the church in Serres, praying.” She looked up, pleading. “Did he pray?”
Eli nodded. “Yes, Madame,” she said softly. “He spent ’most half the night on his knees before that altar.”
Béatrice nodded, as though she understood. “Then perhaps his prayers will be answered?”
Without emotion, Eli said: “I believe they already were.”
Knowing nothing of Hercule’s true reason for visiting the church, and believing that Eli’s answer referred only to her husband’s calling to war, Béatrice sighed. “I should have told them he was elsewhere,” she said, as though blaming herself. “He would have been home before they found him and then he might have found the time to say goodbye. To me. To the children.” She glanced back and her head sank.
“He would still be gone, Madame,” Eli said. “That would not change.”
She nodded, softly. It was true.
Then a worried thought seemed to spring into her mind and her head lifted, her eyes meeting his full on and her face puzzled. “What of his things?” she said. “He has had a trunk packed for more than a week past. And saddlebags. Provisions and funds. He does not now take them?”
“I am to take them,” Eli explained calmly. “They ride north - now, as we speak - but come nightfall they shall rest at Aussonne. I am to take a cart and follow on. They are a few hours ahead of me already and it might even take me a few hours more, but I am to continue into the night without rest. I should catch them by the time the sun rises. In this way, not a moment is lost for them.”
Béatrice’s face fell once more. “And you..? Will you come back?” she asked. “To tend to the grounds? There is much to do to keep this place, and with Hercule gone…?”
“Truthfully, Madame, I do not know,” Eli said. He looked genuinely apologetic. “I understand that you have a trying time ahead, but I am not my own master in these events. Such matters are out of my hands. We will see where fate takes me. For now, we should make haste to ready a cart and gather his things. All will be needed.”
Béatrice nodded, sighing. “They will. And you have quite a journey ahead of you.”
“Indeed I do,” Eli agreed.
THIRTEEN
Tuesday, October 25, 1644.
Manningtree, Essex, England.
With the morning sun carving harsh through the thick canopy of leaves and illuminating an almost imperceptible yet ubiquitous mist still sliding in from the marshes, the forest was a maze of blinding near-vertical beams. Their intensity seemed so strong that it might yet scorch patches of the lavender which bordered the winding path as it weaved a drunkard’s route between the trees. Tiny late-summer insects flitted in and out of their glow as William and Rachael passed through, causing the mist to swirl brightly in their wake. In the distance the thin strains of yet another Mistley unloading could be heard, carried far on the still air.
It had been William’s intention to walk no further than the edge of the Manor’s grounds, but he had been enjoying the morning air too much to return so soon and, though her words were few, he also enjoyed having the young Rachael by his side. The presumptions of the villagers were quite incorrect, as he harboured no desires for the girl, but on no less than six occasions now her carefully spoken words had brought him clear foresight and not some insubstantial degree of good fortune and it left him feeling comforted in her presence. Moreover, the day would come where he might well be of a mind to escort another lady on such a walk and it did not harm to put a little practice into taking one’s time and travelling forward only slightly faster than the speed of life itself.
They were now halfway between Manningtree and Mistley, deep in the woodland of Furze Hill, named for the gorse and brambles which ragged the feet should one choose, somewhat unwisely, to veer from the path. William had been speaking for much of the journey, but not all of the way. Even he had seen the beauty in a few moments of silence here and there where only the birds could be heard. Many other silences were broken only by two donkeys, each from opposing sides of the village, who saw fit to regularly announce their continued presence between themselves as though perhaps asking each other what the weather was like over that side of town.
Rachael had looked worried when, in the kitchens, William had asked her to take a walk with him. But then, Rachael alway
s looked worried. She had seemed even more unsure when he had reached to take her hand, flinching, so in the end he had merely beckoned her, as though encouraging a wild fox to take a morsel of food. Ultimately she had followed, albeit cautiously.
Having filled the air around them with his own pleasantries and observations of the world, and believing from past experience that she had fully understood his words, William now felt it time to broach the matter which most occupied his mind. The world he as knew it was changing rapidly and his worries grew heavier by the day. Rachael, with her predictions of things to come, might just help him decide where it might be safe for him to hang his hat in the troublesome months which were undoubtedly riding in.
“I need the benefit of your vision,” he said. His tone was soft, as though he was still thinking.
Rachael said nothing. She just stared at the path ahead of her as she walked, as though retracing her steps and searching for something she had perhaps lost along the way.
As they reached a small clearing a roe deer, grazing quite peacefully until that point, looked up and took a moment to assess the situation. Stay or run? It did not take it long to realise that the latter was often the safest option and it soon scampered into the darkness of the trees, its gait crunching the leaves but swiftly growing faint as the dense forest enveloped it.
William brushed splinters from the roughened stump of a long-sawn oak and indicated that Rachael should sit and rest. She did, still looking unsure. He himself took a moment in which he stepped a short distance back into the clearing and looked up into the even clearer air which hovered above.
“I have no iron-clad allegiances,” he said eventually, dropping his head. “Not to things on this earth. And it pains me that so many go to war just because men tell them to believe the self-same things as I, but in differing ways.”
He looked to her, but still she looked only to her own feet. Sometimes it seemed to him as though, with this young thing, just to see the skies above or the beauty around might be to cast her eyes on something she felt incapable of ever reaching for.
“The folk of the village grow more Puritan in their practices by the day,” he continued, “and steadily my errands for the King do me fewer favours. But... village and country folk are a fickle breed and in the main they follow only good fortune. So, if the King should triumph in the field, then he shall triumph in their minds, for they will see his victory as strength. If he should not... then I fear my influence in this town might be lost. I shall be seen to be on the wrong side of conscience when the victor’s ideals ride into town.”
Whatever Rachael might now be thinking of him, if indeed she were of a mind sound enough to consider him at all, William knew that he was not at all afraid that his influence might be lost, only of whose influence might win the battle to replace it. Whether it be the devil of the Charles he knew, or the unknown devils of Essex or the rising Cromwell, he knew he must endeavour to keep control of Manningtree, for not one of the warring factions was to be trusted more than the other. If he did not retain his authority here then, somehow or other, the lives of those he saw as his responsibility would be diminished and he, like his father before him, had fought way too hard for way too long in order to bring peace to this place and its people.
He looked around the clearing and creased his face. It seemed as though his life itself had now become the very area in which he stood: everything clear before his face, but darkness filling the distance in every direction. A path needed to be taken - and soon - but the question was always the same and the answer always elusive... which to choose?
“The world is turned about itself,” he said, almost to himself. “The rabbit chases the fox. And now, the spectres of apocalypse are upon us all. Anxiety over judgments yet to come seem to have seeped into the very grain of daily life...”
It was well known to William that much of the puritanical thought now coursing through his beloved Manningtree was spread by those who would have their listeners believe that the Civil War was, quite literally, the apocalypse arrived. ‘Puritans’ – or ‘the godly’, as they called themselves – believed that the war around them was the clear start of a transition; the point at which the idolators would be slain and the pure would be saved. Many even believed that Christ himself might reappear to shepherd his new, more obedient, flock into a fresh dawn for mankind. For this reason they followed a simplified religion; one based on Scripture and nothing else. To most people church decorations, such as those of which the king was so fond, were fragments of heaven on earth. To Puritan reformers they were false idols that contravened the second commandment and imperilled the soul. Many things taken for granted for centuries had been under attack even before war broke out. ‘Idolatry is the principal crime of mankind...’ or so a polemicist had written as recently as 1641, ‘...the greatest guilt of the world, the total cause of judgement’. In response to such thoughts, even such innocuous items as the stained-glass windows in William’s own church were starting to be voiced in the same breath as astrology, magic and witchcraft by those around him.
The new breed of Puritans argued that such practices themselves originated with Antichrist, and that only the religiously uneducated failed to distinguish between the symbolic and the real. All of which meant that, as the tides which flowed in and around the minds of the Mistley and Manningtree parishes started to turn, he would do well to steer his own ship swiftly into whichever was most likely to be the safest harbour...
Which to choose..?
“Tonight Essex and the King gather again at Speen. Tomorrow they shall have at it. Have you perhaps an inkling for the outcome of this encounter..?”
He looked to Rachael expectantly.
For a few long moments there was nothing but the silence he had become so accustomed to when sharing her presence. Just the birds and the last of the breeze passing over drying leaves to offer any form of respite. Even the donkeys had completed their two-tone discourse. He could sense that there were indeed thoughts behind the deep brown pools of her eyes, but he did not know if they reflected on his quandary.
A thin cloud riding high on the wind cut the path of the sun and some of the brightness of the clearing was temporarily lost to them both.
Then she spoke...
Her voice was low and, as ever, sounded cracked and desperately unused. Its low rumble seemed to echo from the dense wall of trees which surrounded them. “None shall fall at Newbury’s second,” she said, still staring to her feet, her head rocking almost imperceptibly from side to side. Her hair was falling in blood red swirls now, the last trickling streams of black still flowing between and forming tight circles across the pale skin of her face. In the reduced light, it gave her normally innocent face a quite chilling air. “Even now Charles loses his head. It shall be removed. He shall perish complete before these ten years are at an end.”
William mis-heard. “What tenures?”
She continued, as though she had not heard. “Charles shall return to the throne. He shall rule a quarter decade until the shakes take him. That shall be eleven-forty-five.”
William looked puzzled. “I do not understand,” he said, crouching down and placing his hand gently on hers. He felt only the slightest flinch this time. “Is Charles to perish or is he to return? Surely, he cannot do both..? And, you know well that this is sixteen-forty-four, do you not?”
“Perish... Return... Perish.” Rachael said, carefully spacing the words in a dream-like state. “Eleven-forty-five.”
He waited - longer than he felt comfortable with - but she did not speak again.
Eventually he sighed and took to his feet once more, looking around at everything and seeing nothing. As ever, Rachael’s malaise meant that, like many who claimed to be oracles of the time (though Rachael made no such claims for herself) her words needed not just the oracle but also the mind of a wily interpreter. And that, he knew, was where so many of the troubles of the time found their source, in the many and varied interpretations which opposi
ng sides saw fit to follow.
“A wind of change is blowing.” he said, dismay etching into his voice. “I fear that home, as I know it, shall soon be carried away on its wings.”
Turning to Rachael he suddenly remembered, with some embarrassment, that she had seemingly lost a home far more irrevocably in times gone by than he. It brought to mind his words to her at the Convent: A home is where you find your future, not where your future finds you. And yet even now, with almost a full turn of seasons passed, the girl had seemed to find no peace in this place and no words he had offered had brought her any. Perhaps, despite his strong belief that with time and care he could raise her spirits again, he had been mistaken.
“You miss your home,” he said softly. It was a statement, not a question, and he was not expecting any form of response.
“Every breath,” she said, keeping the words under her own.
William smiled. “Then perhaps the fortune which spared your life in the French lands has not deserted you now, as you might suppose, but is simply on a journey of its own. A quest, shall we say? One in which it might seek out your home and find means to carry it back to you..?”
He walked over to what was clearly the oldest and most gnarled oak in the clearing, branches spewing wildly from its low shoulders as though scrabbling to stay afloat in the soft earth, and gently stroked the roughened bark.
“Home is important,” he said, as though delivering a lecture. “It is the soil in which we flourish and from which we seek to colour the world. Perhaps we should all find a truth carved into Old Knobbley’s thick skin? We forget our roots and change our soils with every passing season, and our growth is then diminished. Her roots, meanwhile, are set firm. Like a wizened old maid she sits here, year upon year, rising slowly with ’nary a care in the world. Many battles have come and gone. More shall follow I shouldn’t wonder, and yet her life remains serene. She shall outlive us all in a peace we can all but dream of.” He turned to face Rachael. “She staked her claim this place hundreds of years before our arrival and I will wager it shall still be hers hundreds of years after we are but food for her roots.”
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