Christopher Uptake

by Susan Price

  Not with his own hands, perhaps, but certainly the man had been killed on his orders, and the body hidden down here. I had arrived inconveniently, when he had thought that I wasn't coming after all, and had prevented all attempts to remove the body since.

  And I had felt safe with Brentwood because he was no Bagthorpe! The worst thing I had ever seen Bagthorpe do was to tweak a man's nose.

  I have to get out of here, I thought, before I am found and battered to death too. I went scrambling over the floor towards where I believed the trap-door to be, and my foot kicked something and sent it clattering away in the dark.

  My candlestick; I had to remember it and not leave it behind me. I groped after it, found it, and then had to find the trap-door. I began to feel the ceiling over my head; backwards and forwards, as far as my arm would reach - but there was so much space where the trap-door was not! I was panicking again when my fingers plunged high into cool air, and, falling back, found the edge of the trap. I pulled myself up, first my head clearing the hole, then raising myself on shaking arms to sit on the hole's edge, then drawing up my legs and - wonderful! being able to stand with straightened knees and raised head in the hiding-place behind the cupboard.

  I felt about for the square of wood and replaced it over the hole by touch; and then felt over the wall until I found the pivoting plank. I ducked under it, climbed out of the cupboard, and put the candle on the table while I replaced the plank with the clothes-hook, and closed and locked the cupboard doors. Then I felt safe, being certain no one could discover that I had been into the priest-hole.

  I crossed the platform, meaning to go to my room, but found my legs trembling under me, and, at the top of the ladder my knees gave way, and I staggered and sat heavily on the top step. I remained there for a while, covering my face with my hands, before finding the strength to go to my room. There I stirred up the fire and sat beside it, watching it burn.

  I could not stop thinking of the corpse. Again and again its monstrous, battered face found its way into my mind. I did not attempt to sleep, but sat the night out.

  While it was still dark I heard voices calling from the courtyard, and the beautiful sound of the drawbridge being lowered for the day. I would not be there to hear it raised again. Bagthorpe would have his information well before that evening.

  When I could see pale light showing round the edges of the shutter in my bedroom, I got up and unbolted the Rents Room door, ready for when my breakfast should be brought. But that was hours away yet, and, returning to my place by the fire, I must have dozed off.

  I was woken by a knock on the Rents Room door, and a girl looked round the edge of it. "Breakfast, sir?" she said.

  I told her yes, and thanked her, and she went away. I waited, rubbing my stiff, cold face, and wondering what to do. When the girl returned with my breakfast tray, I gave her the key from the cupboard in the Rents Room. "I found this," I said. ''Can you see that it is given to Master Brentwood, please?" I thought that having the key back might allay his suspicions, and the longer he remained uncertain of whether I was a threat to him or not, the more opportunity I would have of slipping away to Bagthorpe.

  "It was in my pocket all the time,'' I said. "I must have put it there without thinking. Can you see that he is told that?''

  The girl went away, and I was left to face my breakfast. I looked at the slices of bread and butter, the porridge and the jug of small beer, and then carried it all into the privy and tipped the food down the chute into the moat.

  Leaving the tray on the table in my room, I went through into the Rents Room and out on to the landing above the hall. The household was at breakfast below me.

  Brentwood, I supposed, was still in his draughty bedroom in the tower. I wondered if he had his cupboard key yet.

  I stood on the landing, watching and waiting, until people started leaving the tables, and the kitchen girls began clearing the dishes. Then I went down into the hall, thinking that among so many moving people, one more would not be noticed. The crowd would hide me as I crossed the courtyard to the garden gate too, and then it should not be too difficult to row myself across the moat in one of the small boats, so avoiding the gatehouse, where I might be noticed and questioned. But before I could even cross the hall, Mistress Cowling came up suddenly on my left side.

  "Master Uptake - How are you this morning? The girl brought me the key and I had it sent up to my cousin. I thought you would like to know."

  "Thank you," I said, watching my crowd disappear.

  "I am sure my cousin will be pleased to have the key back again. He does need it, you know."

  "Yes," I said, trying to edge past, then stopping short as a loud, prolonged, grinding, rattling noise came from the courtyard. Mistress Cowling and I looked at each other.

  "The drawbridge," she said. "It's being raised again. I wonder why."

  I couldn't speak. I knew why. She walked over to the hall door and peered out. As soon as her back was turned to me, I started towards the door at the opposite end of the hall, the one beside the dais. As I reached it, it opened, and through it came one of the men I had locked out of the Rents Room - one of the men I now knew to have been intent on removing a corpse.

  I backed away from him, and he smiled and held up a large, rusting key. Looking past me to Mistress Cowling, he said, "If you want anything from the garden, Mistress, you must ask the master for the key." She came back to us, protesting, but the man ignored her and turned to me. "Master Uptake; Master Brentwood says will you come to his room, please?''

  "Why?" I said.

  He looked surprised. "He wants to speak to you, sir."

  Mistress Cowling said, "Why has the drawbridge been raised do you know?"

  "Master's orders, mistress - Will you come, sir? He's waiting."

  I looked at Mistress Cowling, and her expression became so surprised that I think my alarm must have shown on my face. But what could I do except go with him? The drawbridge was raised, the garden gate locked.

  I followed the man through the door beside the dais, up the exterior staircase, and over the bridge to the tower.

  We climbed the tower stairs, and my guide opened the door of Brentwood's room for me. Brentwood, dressed in a long, sleeved robe, was seated in the high-backed chair beside the fire, reading. He looked up.

  "Come in, Christopher." He gestured to the settle opposite him. "Sit.''

  I crossed the room and sat on the settle, close beside the fire with its carved stone hood. Brentwood was reading again. He neither looked at me nor spoke. His man closed the bedroom door and went away down the steps.

  I waited for Brentwood to tell me why he had sent for me, but he ignored me, and continued to read. I looked about the room, and then at him again. He was still reading.

  "You wanted to see me?'' I said.

  Brentwood didn't look up, and I realized that I was being kept in that room while something else was done somewhere else in the house. For a long while I stayed very still on the settle; then I got up and crossed the room to the door.

  Brentwood gave no sign of noticing that I had moved. I opened the door and started down the narrow stair, but before I reached the first turn, the stair was blocked by the figures of Brentwood's two men. The leading man carried a candlestick in either hand.

  There was no room to pass them and I had to back in front of them until I was again in Brentwood's chamber. The two men entered after me, and the second remained leaning against the door. I turned to find that Brentwood had risen and was coming towards us, his book still open in his hand.

  "This one," said the first man, as he set a candlestick on the table-top, "was underneath. This one was in his room."

  They both turned and looked at me. "Christopher,'' Brentwood said, "what was the candlestick you were given last night doing in the priest-hole?''

  I had no more idea than he did. I looked at the candlesticks. One was tall, of pewter; the other small, battered, of black iron. I remembered seeing it beside the straw
mattress - and then I remembered kicking a candlestick in the darkness of the priest-hole, and groping after it. I had picked up the wrong candlestick, and carried it into my room thinking only that it was a candlestick, and making no comparison with the one I had taken into the hide.

  ''Can you explain, Christopher?" Brentwood asked.

  "I don't understand," I said.

  "I think you understand as well as the other did," Brentwood said, and I looked up quickly. He nodded. "You do understand. You have been into the priest-hole, and seen your fellow there."

  "I have been into the priest-hole, if that's what it is," I said. "I suppose you mean that place behind the cupboard? I found it by accident." Brentwood was resting one hand on the table, and looking down at the candlesticks. He didn't appear to be listening. "Your men - these - hung round that cupboard like flies round - naturally I investigated it. I wanted to find out what was so compelling about a cupboard that people got up to look at it in the middle of the night! I found the place behind it by accident."

  "I think you knew what to look for," Brentwood said, his eyes still cast down.

  ''I did! I'd seen them trying to open it," I said, flinging out one arm to point at them.

  Brentwood looked up at them. "He saw us with the cupboard doors open," said one of them, "but that's all.''

  Brentwood looked at me.

  "It wasn't hard to find that pivoting plank, for God's sake!'' I cried. "I found it by accident!''

  He continued to look at me. "The pivoting plank is in the wall, not the cupboard," he said, eventually, ''and it takes a determined effort to move it. It was designed so, to discourage people who might 'find it by accident'."

  I drew a deep breath and hesitated, but there was nothing for it but to stick to my story. "I did find it by accident. I found that part of the cupboard pulled out - by accident - and that made me suspicious."

  "And what did you expect to find?" Brentwood asked.

  "A - a hiding-place. For valuables."

  "Do you always search for the place in which your host hides his valuables, Christopher?"

  "I was curious."

  Brentwood turned away from me. To the two men, he said, "His candlestick was found in the priesthole? It was under the platform?"

  Both men nodded. Brentwood turned to me again, and spent a long moment in consideration of me. His eyes shone with two brilliant points of light. "I think you knew what to look for, Christopher. Who told you?" I shook my head. "Was it Bagthorpe?'' A jolt of surprise went through me.

  "Your fellow - whom you met in the priest-hole - said that a man named Bagthorpe had employed him to spy on me. A dark man, he said, in a blue coat."

  "I don't know anything of this," I said; and certainly I knew nothing of a dark man named Bagthorpe. "Please, sir; believe me. I did go into your priest-hole, as you call it, but I wasn't looking for it; I found it by accident."

  He lifted the candlestick up, put it down. "That seems to me unlikely," he said. He walked round the table, mounted the steps up into the window platform, opened the shutter, and stood looking out over his island and lake. A breeze blew through the window into my face.

  "I invited you here, did not I?'' He turned to face me, his shoulders partly filling the window and blocking the breeze. "I invited you here." He looked down on me with distaste. "This man Bagthorpe. What is he like?"

  I shook my head. ''I don't know anyone named Bagthorpe.''

  I can understand why you were employed," he said. "You lie so easily." He looked over my head suddenly, to the men who stood behind me. ''He is a spy," he said. "What shall I do with him?" There came a grunt from behind me, and I turned to see the man who had brought the candlesticks standing there with his arms folded. "You know what I think, master."

  Brentwood sighed. "Yes,'' he said. "Well – do it." He came down from the window and crossed the room towards the door.

  The man leaning against the door straightened. "Your pardon, master, but can we take him out to Furze Hill? There'd be nobody about to hear, and we could bury him easier."

  "And all those who would see him leave the house with you?" Brentwood said. "How should we explain why he does not return?

  "Pardon me if I'm speaking out of turn, master," said the other man, "but you're going to have to explain that when you get back to town."

  "In town I shall have to explain nothing," Brentwood said. "In town people come and go, and die so frequently that no one will be surprised." He glanced at me. "I shall say that he started back to town alone, and that as far as I know, he is alive and well. But here I would have to explain." The two men nodded and grunted and agreed.

  "Do not make too much noise," Brentwood said, "if you can help it. Put him in the privy when you have finished, and lock this door so that he will not be found. Do you understand?"

  "Yes, master," they said, and gave long sighs, and looked at me, and began readying themselves. One stretched his arms and clasped his hands above his head. The other bent at the knees and shrugged his shoulders.

  "I shall be in the solar," Brcntwood said. "Bring me the key." He passed behind the man in front of the door, and went out. The two men looked at me steadily, gathering up their strength, mentally preparing themselves. Their faces were calm, their eyes and thoughts turned inwards, looking at me as I would look at a sheet of paper as I planned the words I would write on it. Then one said, "All right, Tom?" and drew a knife.

  "All right,'' said the other, and they came towards me.

  I could not make a sound. But I could move, and move I did. I ran across the room to the stairs. I stumbled there, loose-jointed with fear, but scrambled up on hands and knees until I regained my feet, and then ran on as one of them grabbed at my ankle. I ran faster than they could, spinning round the turns, my hand slapping on the stone wall, up to the tower's battlements - and when I reached the top, where then? But I heard them on the stairs behind me, and I had to go up.

  At the top of the stairs was a door, and I slammed it shut, but could not lock it because the bolt was on its inner side. Had the time I’d wasted in shutting it been worthwhile? It would probably not take them so long to shove it open.

  I ran to the battlements and looked over. A sheer drop of fifty feet or more. Could I, possibly, jump and survive? While I guessed, I wasted time, and already they were at the tower door. I scrambled over the tower's low roof to the other side, and looked down into the courtyard. Not so great a drop as on the island side; but not a great difference either.

  I heard a snuffling laugh, and turned to see both men, both holding knives. They didn't lower their dignity by climbing over the leads. They strolled round the edge of the tower, taking their time, smiling condescendingly. After all, there was nowhere I could go.

  My desire to save my own life became a powerful desire to thwart them, to make their sneering confidence rebound on them. I would jump and die indiscreetly, and vex them and Brentwood. I glanced over the edge of the tower again - but it was so high. The thought of landing down there with all the impact of a fifty-foot fall turned me sick; why should I make their job easy for them?

  I backed round the narrow path between the battlements and the roof of the tower, my eyes on the two men, until I came to the foot of the turret steps. Once I had climbed those steps, I would be trapped; and my would-be murderers saw that I was trapped, and smiled even more complacently.

  I will jump! I thought, and I looked over the battlements again, and saw, below me, the roof of the solar and the long passage room which led from it. The drop was some eighteen feet - no, less. The roof was covered with hard tiles, not thatch; and there was every likelihood of my rolling over the edge and landing on my back in the courtyard, or, worse, on the lower ground behind the house. But what better chance had I? At that moment it seemed to me that the solar had been miraculously moved to that spot, simply to break my fall.

  I ran up the turret's steps, swung one leg over the wall, swung the other leg over; hung from my hands for scarcely a second
, and then dropped with terrible speed, convinced, as I let go, that I should be killed, or at least crippled.

  I scraped my chin on the wall, and hit the roof with a crash, landing on my hip and thigh, but with enough realization of what was going on to throw out an arm and catch hold of the apex of the roof. This slowed my fall, but wrenched my shoulder, and my fingers slipped loose. I went slithering feet first over the edge of the roof, landing in the alcove between the tower and the solar, where I fell to my hands and knees in a thick bed of nettles. I must have been unhurt, because I got up and, ducking beneath the wooden bridge, ran towards the gatehouse.