by Alys Clare
My sister and I had always been each other’s confidante. Although I was much closer to my brother Nathaniel in age, and the same sex into the bargain, he and I had never been in sympathy in the way Celia and I were. Perhaps Nathaniel had only been doing what was natural in the eldest child, but I’d always felt he was more like a third parent than a brother. Even from when we were very small, long before Celia was born, I had been the one to want to explore, to push the boundaries set by our parents and grandparents, to break the rules if the end result seemed worth the risk. Nathaniel, however, never went along with it. I can still remember the adult expression on his small face as, greeting yet another of my wild ideas for a thrilling adventure with a disapproving frown, he would say, ‘I do not think that is very wise, Gabriel.’
I’d grown to adulthood believing he disapproved of me. Although I love him, I’m never sure that I actually like him.
The arrival of Celia into my world, however, brought the sibling that I’d longed for. Although I was nine when she was born, we understood each other from when she was old enough to understand anything. We were two of a kind; I once heard an old family retainer, long since dead, remark to a friend when she thought I wasn’t listening that Celia and I must be old souls; the instant and easy closeness between us meant, in her view of the world, that we had loved each other in another life.
I don’t know what to think about that.
But I do know that Celia and I had always defended each other, told lies for each other and automatically, whatever the point at issue, sided with each other. And, in the course of the dreadful events of last year, we’d been privy to each other’s greatest and most terrible secrets.
Of all people, my sister knew how to treat a confidence.
So I told her where I’d been the previous night, who I’d gone with and what we’d brought away with us.
When I’d finished my tale, for a few moments she didn’t speak. She was frowning, and I guessed she was amassing her thoughts.
Which indeed she was.
‘The first time people had to protect their stained glass was, of course, when King Henry changed the nation’s faith and destroyed the monasteries,’ she said.
‘Of course.’ I nodded sagely as if I’d known that all along.
‘Which was’ – my sister shot me a sharp glance that told me she wasn’t fooled for an instant – ‘from 1536 onwards. It wasn’t just the glass that the king’s vandals destroyed,’ she went on, and I heard Grandmother Oldreive’s old resentments and anger in her voice, ‘it was everything that reflected the Catholic religion, so statues, icons, relics, reliquaries and everything else popish went the same way.’ She paused for breath. ‘Then when the old king died and his son Edward came to the throne – and that was in 1547 in case it had slipped your mind’ – another pointed glance my way – ‘the rules were pretty much made by the adults who advised him, since he was only ten, and the iconoclasts who were howling for stricter reform made the most of it. There was a royal injunction that said shrines, pictures, paintings and anything at all depicting miracles were henceforth against the law, and all the beautiful old stained glass had to be replaced with plain panels.’
My grandmother, I reflected, must have felt the hurt deeply. For a moment I wondered if she’d actually known the beautiful St Luke panels I’d seen last night; it was possible, although she and the rest of my family hadn’t habitually worshipped in the church at Tavy St Luke’s, their home, Fernycombe, being some distance away. But might not the rumoured beauty of the panels have attracted visits from the curious?
‘There was of course a powerful Catholic revival when Mary came to the throne,’ Celia was saying, ‘but her reign only lasted five years, and the preoccupation of the queen and her ministers was burning heretics rather than redecorating the churches in the Catholic style, and then, with the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1558, Protestantism was made the state religion and that was that.’
‘I thought Grandmother Graice was a great admirer of the late queen?’
‘Oh, indeed she was,’ Celia agreed. ‘When Elizabeth made her famous comment about not wanting to open a window into men’s souls, in effect telling her people that what they believed was up to them as long as they didn’t make a fuss about it, Grandmother said it was the wisest thing a crowned head had ever said.’ Her eyes took on a faraway look, and there was a faint smile of reminiscence on her face. ‘The Romans took the same view, you know,’ she said. ‘You had to worship the official state gods, because those who held the power believed the empire would fail otherwise, but you could worship any other god or goddess you chose in addition.’ She turned to me. ‘Sensible, weren’t they?’
‘Mm.’ But I wasn’t really thinking about the Romans, or even about the late queen. I was thinking about the hours my sister must have spent in our grandmother’s company; about how, although Celia was so lovely and, on the surface, possessed the required womanly skills and virtues, there was so much knowledge stored away inside her head, and she had the intelligence to benefit from it.
‘So you reckon the five panels came from the little chapel in Jonathan’s church and were probably put in around the time that the church was built?’ Celia asked.
‘Yes. Well, that’s what Jonathan thinks, and I could see for myself that the glass is early medieval.’
Celia nodded sagely. ‘Ah, yes, Gabe, you always were the expert,’ she said softly.
I ignored that. ‘But the other one – the one with the beautiful angel—’
‘The beautiful naked angel,’ she reminded me.
‘Yes. That one’s quite different.’ I paused, thinking how to put my impressions into words. ‘The figures in the medieval glass – St Luke appears more than once, and there are some nuns and an image of Christ holding the lilies of the field – they’re very appealing, and the colours are wonderful, but the faces are a bit like a child’s drawing. You can tell what they’re feeling, but in a very simple way. St Luke, for example, when he’s pounding herbs, he’s clearly enjoying it because he’s got a big smile on his face.’
Celia nodded. ‘But the angel panel is different?’
‘Yes! His face – it’s like the most skilful, detailed painting. He’s stunningly beautiful, but he’s so sad. His expression goes straight to your heart, and you can’t help but think he’s seen what happens in the world and he grieves for it. That he’s been terribly hurt, and he’s suffering some pain, either emotional or physical, that will never end.’
Celia was looking at me in astonishment. ‘You really were affected, weren’t you?’ she breathed.
‘Oh, yes. Jonathan was, too. He – when we were back in his house looking at what we’d discovered, there was a power coming off the angel image – honestly, Celia, I’m not making this up – and it was a very uneasy power. We both felt it, and when Jonathan gathered up a handful of straw and covered it up again, it was a great relief.’
She was still watching me, and I knew exactly what was going through her head. She wanted to see the panels – particularly the angel panel – but she didn’t think Jonathan would let her, and she desperately wanted me to try to persuade him.
But she didn’t voice her thought. With admirable restraint, she said, ‘We should now ask ourselves where the sixth panel came from.’
‘Very well,’ I agreed.
‘I would imagine,’ she went on calmly, ‘that once it became clear that Queen Elizabeth wasn’t going to be the religious tyrant that her half-sister had been, some of the old Catholic families began to wonder if they might quietly re-introduce some religious stained glass in their houses, and probably their private chapels too, although I think that would still have been frowned upon. But—’
‘But if nobody had been making sacred stained glass for a generation because it was outlawed,’ I interrupted, ‘then who would they turn to?’
‘Precisely,’ she agreed. ‘The craft had virtually been outlawed, and there were no craftsmen and artists left. Peopl
e wanting to commission a new work would have had to search abroad, and the first place to enquire would probably have been Chartres, where masters in the art had long congregated.’ She looked at me, frowning slightly. ‘Possibly that’s another reason why the sixth panel looks so different; because the man who made it had been taught his craft in France rather than following on in the ancient English tradition.’
I nodded. It was logical.
As silence fell, I felt again the intensity of her desire to see the panels. I said, ‘I’ll ask him, Celia. I promise.’
‘In exchange for the wealth of information I’ve just imparted to you,’ she said with some asperity, ‘none of which you had any idea of before, so don’t even try to say you did, I think that’s the least you can do.’
Theo had had a long, hard day and was looking forward to shutting up the office and heading upstairs to sit in his comfortable chair, enjoy a glass of wine to sharpen his appetite for whatever Elaine had commanded to be cooked for their supper, and summon his three children for a goodnight cuddle before Elaine rounded them up and packed them off to bed.
But such domestic delights had to be postponed, for just as he was getting up from his desk, Jarman Hodge slipped into the office.
‘Can it wait till morning, Jarman? No it can’t.’ He answered himself before Jarman could, for he had seen his agent’s expression. ‘Come and sit down.’
Theo sat back heavily in his chair and Jarman perched on the bench on the other side of the desk.
‘It may be nothing,’ Jarman began, ‘but it set me to thinking and wondering, and I reckon I should share it with you.’
‘Go on.’
‘The stable lad – Cory – from Wrenbeare came to see me. Christopher Hammer, the groom, sent him.’
‘What did he want?’
‘He didn’t want anything, he came to tell me something. There’s been another intruder. Or, I suppose, it could be the same one, if we’re wrong about the original one – if he existed – being our little dead vagrant.’
Theo let out a deep sigh and muttered an oath. ‘I suppose I’d better hear the rest.’
‘It’s a garbled sort of a tale if ever there was one,’ Jarman went on, ‘but it seems there’s a young, simple, walleyed little scullery maid they all call Tatty – and before you ask I’ve no idea what her real name is – and they tend to take her mutterings with a pinch of salt. Anyway, she got really frightened a couple of nights ago when she went out to use the privy before bed, saying she’d seen a scary black wolf lurking behind the wall, and she was weeping, wailing, shuddering and the rest. They all told her there were no wild wolves in England and hadn’t been for hundreds of years, so then she changed her tune and said it was a ghost, or a bad spirit, or even Old Nick himself, and in the end one of the other women made her a strong soporific and put her to bed. According to Cory – who hasn’t really much right to call others simple-minded, when all’s said and done – Hammer and the other servants reckoned you ought to be told because you’d been asking about the other incident.’
‘But this girl – Tatty – said she’d seen a wolf. Isn’t it far more likely it was some big, hungry stray dog after kitchen scraps?’
‘Yes, probably,’ Jarman said laconically. ‘Anyway, there it is.’ He got up to go. ‘Kit Hammer sent Cory to tell me, and now I’ve told you, so I’ll leave you to your evening and head away home.’
‘Yes, very well,’ Theo said absently. ‘Thanks,’ he called out as Jarman closed the door out onto the road.
If Jarman heard, he didn’t reply.
Still thinking, Theo got up, closed his office, locked the outer door and at last went upstairs to join his family.
NINE
The next morning, the countryside around Rosewyke was hidden under a soft white pall. Over to the west, where the Tavy ran in its valley, the mist was particularly thick. There was barely a whisper of breeze to blow it away, and it would probably not dissipate until the sun in its waxing power rose high enough to dispel it.
Such early conditions always presaged a hot day.
Celia and I went down to the village to seek out Jonathan as soon as we’d had breakfast. We found him as he was leaving the church and on his way home, and, with a smile, he invited us to go in with him.
‘I have a fair idea why you’re here,’ he said.
I was going to make some comment about Celia being no more likely to leak the news of the discovery than either he or I, but Celia got in first.
‘Gabriel told me what you were doing the night before last,’ she said, walking close beside him and speaking very quietly. ‘I would love to look at the panels, if you don’t object.’
He stopped, looking down at her with an unreadable expression. I thought at first he was angry, but then he said, ‘It will be my pleasure to show them to you. As for objecting, it’s not for me to say who may or may not look at them.’
We had reached his house and he opened the door, standing back to let us precede him inside. We went through into his little room, and he waved us to the two chairs beside the hearth. Then he disappeared, returning in a few moments with one large sacking parcel, which he placed on the ground. Then, one by one, he held up each of the stained-glass panels so that the morning sun pouring in through the window lit them from the back.
Celia simply gazed at them.
As Jonathan laid them gently down upon the straw and the sacking, she said, ‘They are magnificent, and how right that you have dug them up from their hiding place.’ She stared straight at Jonathan. ‘What are you going to do with them?’
My sister is nothing but forthright.
‘They definitely came from the wall of St Luke’s Little Chapel,’ Jonathan replied. ‘I’ve made quite sure – I tried putting one in place yesterday evening and there’s no doubt about it. So I’m going to put them back.’
‘You’re certain that’s wise?’ I asked. ‘It’s possible there may be a risk, for we do not yet know quite where King James stands on the subject of religious images, and it might be better to find out what he—’
Jonathan turned to me. His green eyes held some strong emotion, stopping me in mid-sentence, but when he spoke his voice was calm.
‘The St Luke panels have been hidden away for far too long already. Their concealment has caused terrible anguish’ – for a moment his pleasant expression slipped – ‘and now they should be purified by being on display for all to enjoy.’ He paused, then added softly, ‘Washed with the warmth of the sun and empowered by the enchanting power of the moon and stars.’
It was a strange thing to say, quite unlike the usual speech of our vicar. Celia, who clearly thought so too, shot me a swift glance, but managed not to comment.
For some time we simply drank in the beauty displayed before us. Celia, I noticed, had a soft smile on her face. Looking at Jonathan, I saw with faint surprise that there was pain in his expression. At one point, his lips moved as if in silent prayer.
Presently he collected up the panels, handling them with great care, and went out to return them to wherever he was storing them. As it became plain he wasn’t going to show her the sixth one, Celia called out, ‘May I not see the last panel too?’
He stopped in the doorway, his back to us. For a moment he didn’t reply, and then he said, ‘It is not like these five.’
‘I know, Jonathan,’ Celia said. ‘Gabe told me.’ She hesitated, then said in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘If you’re worried that the depiction of a naked man is unfit for female eyes, let me remind you that I was married, and the sight of the human body, be it male or female, is not something that will make me swoon with horror.’
Jonathan made a faint sound that might just have been a suppressed laugh. He went on out of the room and along the narrow hall, and when he came back he had the last panel in his hands.
As he had done with the others, he held it up to the sunlight.
Seeing it in such circumstances rather than in the candlelight as I had done the fir
st time, I found that its power increased tenfold.
And now the sight of the beautiful face and body of the angel, his gorgeous feathered wings, his desolate blue eyes, affected me in quite a different way. The night before last, I’d seen it as an erotic image, but now somehow it seemed … purer.
‘Is there a Bible story for which this could be an illustration?’ I asked Jonathan. ‘Seeing the angel again, I am wondering if it may after all have been designed for a sacred purpose.’
Jonathan, too, was staring at the image. ‘The angel, I agree, bears no taint of the profane,’ he said. ‘I would be tempted to think you could be right, but look at the man on his knees.’
I did so, and immediately wished I hadn’t.
The bright sunshine revealed his expression with a clarity I hadn’t noticed the first time.
His hooded eyes had a look of calculation; of cruelty.
And his slack mouth appeared to be drooling.
Celia made a sound of disgust. ‘He’s slavering over that boy,’ she said. ‘He’s quite desperate to—’ Abruptly she stopped. She didn’t need to go on, for I was sure we all knew what the kneeling man had in mind.
Jonathan turned to her. ‘I think you’re right,’ he said softly.
‘Put it away!’ she said. I sensed a brief struggle in her: she wanted to look away, but the power of the image held her.
Jonathan did as she bade, and, as the bright colours disappeared beneath straw and sacking, once again there was the sense that the mood in the room had subtly changed.
Celia was quiet for the first stretch of the short journey back to Rosewyke. But then abruptly she said, ‘Gabe, there’s an aspect of this that goes much deeper than the finding of some beautiful medieval glass that’s been robbed of its rightful place and hidden away in a hole in the ground for decades.’
‘What do you mean?’
She sighed. ‘I concede that people with a sensitivity for good art and a fine eye for great craftsmanship can probably get very irate when they see masterpieces like those panels bundled away out of sight so nobody can enjoy them any more. But whatever’s affecting Jonathan is far more profound than that. When he said that stuff about the panels washed with sunshine and bathed in moonlight, I’d swear he was quoting the words of someone else.’ She paused to think. ‘Something’s troubling him badly. It’s – it’s almost as if he’s guilty.’
