‘Just a few. There’s a lot of other things to do here, as you know.’
Aidan went over to the big leather-topped table in front of the chimney place and leafed through a few papers that were neatly stacked beside a pile of hard covered exercise books. He frowned and went through them again, this time more carefully. ‘That map must be somewhere. I must have tidied it up. Can you see it anywhere, Sam?’
‘What map?’
Aidan didn’t give him a direct answer. ‘I wish I knew. I no sooner find it than it disappears. It’s a copy your grandmother made when she was a young girl.’
‘You’d think she would have better things to do.’
‘You have to know more of the story,’ said Aidan. ‘Anyway, it’s on an old sheet of paper, and all the places on it are marked with very tiny writing. I’d like to get it back.’
‘What are these?’ Sam tapped the pile of exercise books.
‘Uncle George’s diaries. At least they haven’t gone.’ He pulled out a chair and Sam sat on the other side of the table, opposite the ornate mirror. Aidan fumbled in his pocket and brought out his train timetable.
‘Do you want it back or shall I keep it?’
‘I’ll get myself another one,’ said Sam, lightly. ‘You can give that to Chloe when she needs it.’ He paused. ‘Is she in real trouble?’
Aidan nodded and Sam walked over to the big window and looked out. The hills behind the house were a clear gold-green but the pest house was out of sight, on the other side of the estate. He walked slowly back to the table. The mirror was gold with the low, straight light of early evening and sunlight skimmed the leather table-top. There was an air of friendliness about the library, as if all the books had good things to say and the possibility of evil seemed a long way off.
‘I want to know all about Chloe,’ said Sam.
‘This story goes back well before her. You have to understand the background or you won’t understand what’s happening to your cousin.’
‘You sound like my history teacher,’ said Sam, ‘he was always side-tracked. Okay, Aidan, I’m only teasing, I’ll be patient.’
Aidan leaned back and put his fingertips together. ‘Terrible things and wonderful things have happened here. It all started long ago, in 876 A.D.’ He took up a little book. ‘This is the first biography of King Alfred. It’s by Asser, who dearly loved the great Christian King. Of course, he was one of his bishops, so he might have been biased.’
‘What’s that to do with it?’
‘Patience Sam and forgive the old fashioned English. I’ll leave out the irrelevant bits.’ Aidan found the right page and began to read slowly.
In the time of the twenty-eighth year of King Alfred’s life, the Viking army went to a fortified site called Wareham. King Alfred made a firm treaty with the Vikings and gave them many picked hostages and relics so that they would immediately leave his kingdom. But one night, practising their usual treachery, they broke the treaty, killed all the hostages they had, and turning away, they went unexpectedly to another place called Exeter.’
Aidan looked up. ‘It was during that march that I believe they passed the monastery that was once here and sacked it. There’s also a legend that Alfred, who was pursuing the Viking army, arrived a few hours too late. The whole place was burning, the treasure had gone and most of the monks were massacred and buried nearby. In some ways that massacre still casts its shadow on our time. How can I explain?’
‘I’m a dab hand at monasteries,’ interrupted Sam, as if he almost didn’t want to hear about any shadow that might be affecting Chloe. ‘Let me see.’ He began to speak in a sing-song, ‘They worked the land, said and sung prayers, studied bibles or copied manuscripts by hand, taught and kept silence.’ He stopped and smiled ruefully. ‘My mother’s keen on all this.’
‘King Alfred was keen too,’ said Aidan, ‘he thought faith and learning walked hand in hand. He kept the belief even when things were really bad for him and he had to live hand to mouth in the Somerset marshes.’
‘Are you preaching again?’ Sam teased.
Aidan smiled. ‘I’m back to our local legends. They say that several monks survived the massacre by hiding in the stone mines. Some of them went off and ended up in the monastery Alfred later built at Athelney. The few who remained erected a wooden home and a chapel up in the field. The legend also tells us that out of gratitude for their survival, they built another chapel in the stone mines. It was to be used as a hiding place for church treasure, if ever the houses of God were destroyed again.’
Sam spoke glibly, ‘Henry VIII and the dissolution of the monasteries.’
Aidan was too intent on his thoughts to comment. ‘The past hasn’t gone,’ he said. ‘It lives inside us all. It’s more powerful than many think, especially for people who have had trauma in their lives.’
‘Like the Holocaust?’
‘In our century, yes. But even the deeper past can affect us.’
‘Are we back to Chloe?’
Aidan looked up. ‘Maybe. But we’re certainly back to Nimbus. His daughter’s death has aroused terrible feelings in him and the past surrounds him with its shadows.’
‘Is Chloe going to be all right?’ asked Sam quickly. To his shame, he found there were tears in his eyes.
‘We’re here to help,’ said Aidan gently. ‘With God’s help we won’t fail.’ He looked hard at Sam. ‘Whether you like it or not, you’re one of those people who are sensitive to the cusp of time, where past and present meet. Isn’t that true?’
Sam pulled a face. He remembered the sightings of his Dad and then there was the monk. Heightened imagination was how he liked to think of it, so reluctantly he said, ‘Maybe,’ and turned away from the subject. ‘It’s amazing! I actually don’t remember Alfred’s dates.’
Aidan laughed. ‘So the system does fail from time to time!’ He spoke as Sam might. ‘Alfred the Great 849-899 A. D. King of Wessex, a Saxon kingdom in southwest England. He became King of England by defeating the invading Danes and established the over-lordship of the West Saxon royal house. What is more he built the first English fleet, encouraged education, and translated several Latin works into English, becoming the father of English prose history.’
‘I won’t forget,’ said Sam. ‘Carry on.’
‘There’s too much to tell. What matters to us is that when Alfred built first a fort and then a house for monks at Athelney – that’s a little to the north of Kingsholt – it’s possible he sent monks from there to help rebuild this monastery. Anyway, the second building lasted right up to the time of HenryVIII who, as you know, pillaged and sacked the monasteries all over England, including our one.’ Aidan’s eyes grew concentrated. ‘The legend tells us that one of the books hidden in the underground chapel was a copy of the first fifty psalms, translated by Alfred himself in the last year of his life. He introduced each psalm with a little personal comment.’
‘Like what?’ asked Sam.
Aidan had a paperback copy of the translation on the desk. ‘This is what he wrote about the second psalm.’ He looked up. ‘Do you really want to know?’
‘I wasn’t a choir boy for nothing,’ said Sam, grinning. ‘Anyway I always like to know what people have to say and King Alfred was no mug.’
‘There’s nothing difficult about this,’ said Aidan and began to read.
Psalm 11
The text of the following psalm is called psalmus David, that is ‘David’s Psalm’ in English. It is so called because David in this psalm lamented and complained to the Lord about his enemies, both native and foreign, and about all his troubles. And everyone who sings this psalm does likewise with respect to his own enemies…
‘Back to Nimbus,’ said Sam.
Aidan nodded. ‘I suppose we could take a leaf or two out of Alfred’s book. He was a great fighter, as you know. He knew all about enemies and really understood King David’s cry for God’s help. After all, King David’s situation was not unlike his own.’
‘The effect of the past again.’
‘That’s true,’ said Aidan, ‘but to come back to the present. The only other West Saxon prose version of the first fifty psalms of the Psalter is preserved in a single manuscript, now in Paris, in the Bibliotheque Nationale. It was copied in the mid-eleventh-century. If there is a copy here, hidden underground, it makes it very valuable.’ He looked up, eyes shining. ‘It would help me to build the chapel and repair Kingsholt and maybe fulfil Uncle George’s dream, that is, if your parents were in agreement.’
‘You sound as if you believe there is a copy,’ said Sam, pulling a face.
Aidan looked solemn. ‘I really have no idea. What matters now is that Nimbus is sure the book exists and that it’s his by rights.’
‘There’s something about a Roman mine in Devon Myths and Mysteries,’ said Sam, thinking he’d better return the book.
Aidan gave him a searching look. ‘Now we’re on the subject, you might be interested to know that map I’ve lost is something to do with the stone mines. It may even have had something to do with the so-called treasure.’
‘Where did you find it?’
‘In one of the books but at that moment I didn’t have the time to study it.’
‘If you’re anything like my mother, you might have put it back and forgotten all about it.’
Aidan shook his head. ‘I wish I had.’ He wandered round the room looking at pictures, staring into the mirror, touching books, as if the room itself held many secrets.
‘What’s all this got to do with Chloe?’ asked Sam.
‘Everything,’ said Aidan, sitting down again. He leaned over towards Sam, clasping his work-worn hands together. ‘I think Nimbus is trying to win over Chloe for his own purposes and if he does, I’m not sure we’ll ever get her back.’
‘You mean he’ll —’ The idea was too horrible to voice. ‘Honestly, Aidan, it’s all rubbish.’ Then he remembered Chloe crying and felt confused. ‘Anyway, it’s her own fault. She’s got a mind of her own, hasn’t she?’
Listen to this,’ said Aidan, purposely opening an old, leather-bound book and leafing through it. ‘This is the Chronicle of Kingsholt, an early Victorian translation from Old English. It’s a local account of how the Vikings rode into this valley. This is the bit that matters.
The monks who escaped crept back from the woods to bury the dead. They dug a pit and placed the bodies in the mass grave. Some were clothed in their bloodstained, rough woollen garments, others were naked. They said prayers and threw earth over the bodies. It was widespread knowledge that if ever the grave was disturbed a darkness would spread over the valley. A curse.’
‘The pit,’ said Sam quickly. ‘It’s open. It stinks.’
Aidan nodded. ‘I believe the pit where the monks were buried is the very one Nimbus uses as a refuse dump. It was near the pit that I found Uncle George dead. It’s there I want to build a little chapel and bring back the light.’
They sat for a moment in silence. The sun had come out again and was shining through the window on Aidan’s head, hallowing his iron grey hair so it looked white, making him insubstantial somehow, and ageless.
‘The light against the dark. We must use everything we can.’
‘But legends,’ said Sam, pulling a face, ‘Come off it, Aidan, legends are for fun but they’re not true.’
Aidan looked thoughtful. ‘Not in our sense of the word. But they come out of big events and often give some sort of clue to what happened.’
There was a noise outside and Aidan stood up as if someone was watching him over his shoulder. Sam looked round. Was it the sudden dip in sunlight, the cloud that went over the sun? Or the slight wind that started up from nowhere and somehow fluttered in the old velvet curtains. Sam looked away from Aidan and into the mirror. To his surprise he no longer saw a reflection of his own face. The glass was covered in a white mist and he had the strong feeling someone was trying to break through.
‘It’s this place,’ he said, ‘it gets you in the end.’
Aidan spoke gently. ‘If you’re sensitive, as you are, Kingsholt, like many places of trauma, gives you a sort of passport to go into the past.’
‘That’s news to me,’ said Sam, jokingly. ‘When my Dad was around, he always kept my passport for me. At least I’m in charge now, or think I am.’
Aidan laughed and took advantage of Sam’s apparent good humour. ‘Come on, let’s go and have some tea.’
But Sam persisted. ‘It’s this place,’ he said again, ‘it’s creepy. I’ve never been on two levels at once at home.’
Of course, that wasn’t quite true. There was the time he saw Dad standing in his green pyjamas at the bottom of his bed, but that was a different thing altogether. He needed Dad.
Aidan interrupted his thoughts. ‘Chloe needs you, Sam. And so do I. We must break the darkness and help her.’
‘She doesn’t have to stay around, she has a mind of her own,’ said Sam firmly.
‘She’s captured,’ repeated Aidan.
‘She doesn’t have to be captured,’ said Sam, adding aggressively, ‘besides, she looks awful and is awful.’ He looked straight at Aidan. ‘You can’t believe those stories,’ he said scornfully. ‘History’s one thing, but they’re another.’
Aidan shrugged. ‘I believe sometimes, we’re given help to overcome evil through something as small and strange as a legend.’
‘But it might not be enough.’
‘It might not. But we have to act.’
‘How?’
‘You must use your good influence on Chloe. And I must build a chapel to God. These two things are intertwined.’
‘I don’t see how,’ said Sam, ‘but I’ll have a go. Chloe used to be nice and normal, you know. The truth is, her parents don’t give her any attention at all and I think that’s why she thinks Nimbus is great. He’s become her father.’
‘I didn’t know you went in for analysis, Sam,’ said Aidan with lifted eyebrows. ‘Anyway, all we can do is to have faith that she’ll become her old self again.’ He abruptly closed the Book of Kingsholt and put it beside Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Uncle George’s diaries. He looked tired.
‘I think it’s time to go.’ He strode out of the room.
As Sam stood up a limp darkness drifted over the library, as if a mourning cloth had been spread out and everything had lost its shape and colour. Aidan was already clanking the keys and beckoning him through the door. Sam carefully avoided the mirror as he turned to go. But in his mind he could see the monk with a white, rough woollen cowl drawn over his pale head, and a long, brown quill in his right hand.
Chapter Nine
Chloe stood by the hospital cage, next to Sam. A bird with an injured wing was hopping into a dish of water.
‘It’ll never survive,’ she said.
‘Yes it will. Aidan will make sure it does.’ Then after a while, ‘What’s the matter, Chloe? You’re so pale you look as if you’re going to be sick. I reckon it’s all those pills you must be taking. Look, why don’t we have some fun?’
She smiled. ‘It’s not an in word round here.’
‘Telling me!’
Chloe turned towards him, the words rushing out as if she was making a confession. ‘Leela tells me I’m a passerelle. It’s a word she made up. Sounds like a butterfly, doesn’t it? But it means sensitive to the past. Like our grandmother.’
Sam studied her silently. Would that account for her pale face, her glazed eyes, her lack of substance, her forgetfulness? Was she in the grip of the black past Aidan had talked about, that hung over the stones and woods, the shrieking massacre that came up from the open pit and infected the bones of the valley? Don’t exaggerate, he told himself.
‘Should be mentioned on the family tree,’ he said lightly. ‘Chloe Penfold – passerelle.’
‘Shut-up,’ she said, pressing her hands against her head.
‘Only a joke,’ said Sam. ‘As a matter of fact, Aidan mentioned it to me. He said it’s in th
e family.’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Chloe petulantly, ‘he’s not to be trusted. He’s the enemy.’
‘Well, he’s my friend.’ Sam looked at Chloe. ‘Anyway, whose enemy?’
‘It’s nothing to do with you.’
Sam waved his hands. ‘Okay. All is well, passerelle. Now, like I said, why don’t we have some fun for a change.’
‘Like we used to,’ she said, in a half-mocking voice. ‘Exploring the loft. That was your favourite, wasn’t it?’
‘Why not?’ said Sam, ‘there’s no age barrier, is there?’ He put his arm round Chloe. ‘Come on, let’s go and see what there is to eat.’
Chloe said she couldn’t eat lunch and went up to her room. She flung herself on the bed. If only it was like the old times. If only she could forget Nimbus. She wondered why it was so difficult when he was bringing her nothing but misery. Even now she could feel his deep hypnotic gaze, touching her, overwhelming her. The drink and pills made her feel strangely powerful, which was more than she did without them. But she must fight her feelings. She must get back the map and never see Nimbus again. Then the other voice started up, the one that felt sorry for an outsider, for she was one herself. The truth is Mum and Dad simply don’t care.
She forced herself to get up and go to the window. Leela was passing in her yellow sari and at the sight of her, some new innocence stirred in Chloe’s heart and mind. It no longer seemed impossible to go up to the attic and play around.
Sam was already up there, looking out of the dusty window. The room was full of junk and boxes and piles done up in string or rope.
He pulled out two puppets from an old box and held them up. Out of the two he chose the red cheeked clown wearing a blue striped trouser suit. He flopped it down on top of the dusty box so that its strings became tangled. Chloe picked up the other puppet and examined its fluffed-out brown hair and spherical grin. She danced it up and down. ‘Do you remember how we used to do plays?’
Kingsholt Page 6
