Speaking From Among the Bones

by Alan Bradley

  “But why?”

  I was hardly going to saddle myself with someone old enough to be my father.

  “Have you ever heard of the Heart of Lucifer?”

  “Of course I have,” I said. “We were taught it in Sunday School. It’s a legend.”

  “How much of it do you remember?”

  “Following the Crucifixion of Our Lord,” I began, parroting almost word for word Miss Lavinia Puddock’s account to our childish ears, “it is said that Joseph of Arimathea brought to Britain the Holy Grail, the vessel which had contained the Blood of Christ. When Joseph laid down his staff at Glastonbury Abbey, it took root and there sprang forth a bush whose like had never before been seen. This was the famous Glastonbury Thorn, and from its branches was carved the crozier, or shepherd’s staff, of our own dear Saint Tancred, into which was set a precious stone called ‘the Heart of Lucifer,’ which was said to have fallen from the sky and thought by some to be the Holy Grail itself.

  “It all seems rather a muddle,” I added.

  “Well done,” Adam said. “You can see the crook of his crozier beside his face in the carving.”

  “The one that’s leaking blood,” I said enthusiastically.

  “Have you confirmed that in your laboratory?” Adam asked.

  “I was about to, but I was interrupted. I saw you taste the stuff in the church. What did you think?”

  “I shall wait upon your chemical analysis. Then we shall see if your test tubes agree with my taste buds.”

  “What were you going to tell me?” I asked. “The thing that you said I ought to know?”

  Adam’s face was suddenly serious. “In the latter years of the war, a person named Jeremy Pole, whom I had known slightly at university, was doing research at the Public Record Office when he made rather a startling discovery. While sifting through bales of quite boring charters from the Middle Ages he came upon a small book which had once been in the library, or scriptorium, of Glastonbury Abbey, which had been sacked—there’s no other way of putting it—by Henry the Eighth in 1539, in spite of the fact that the Benedictine monks were said to be at ease among royalty. I suppose that proves, if nothing else, that royalty was not at ease among the Benedictines. Westminster Abbey, as you will remember, began life as a Benedictine monastery.

  “Their libraries were known to have been a treasure trove of rare and unique documents; that of Glastonbury, specifically, contained a number of early and original histories of England.”

  As a matter of fact, I didn’t remember. It was a bit of history that I had never known, but I loved it that Adam pretended I did. He was definitely improving.

  “Here was the odd thing about Pole’s discovery: Although this ancient little leather-bound book was sandwiched between many packets of moldy cowhide court rolls, there were no corresponding marks either above it or below.”

  “It had been put there recently,” I said.

  “Excellent. That, also, was Pole’s conclusion.”

  “Someone had hidden it there.”

  “Full marks, Flavia,” Adam said. “Well done.”

  I resisted brushing off my shoulders.

  “When he leafed through it, he found that it was a household book, written in Latin and kept by the Cellarer at Glastonbury, a certain Ralph: expenses, and so on, and so on. Nothing very exciting. A few notes here and there on what was happening at the abbey: great storms, deaths, and droughts. Not a chronicle, as such, but more a notebook kept by a busy man who was more concerned with the stillroom, the bees, and the state of the herb garden—which is why Pole brought it to my attention.

  “As with many monastic documents, it was filled with scribbling round the edges—marginalia, we call it nowadays—little notes jotted in the margins about this and that: such things as "don’t forget the eggs,’ ‘metheglin for Father Abbot’s stomach’—metheglin was a kind of spiced mead, a fermented honey offshoot of beekeeping—all the craze in the monasteries—the Guinness Stout of its day.

  “At any rate, Pole was leafing idly through these notes—they weren’t really his field, you know—when the word adamas caught his eye: Latin for ‘diamond.’ A most uncommon word to find among monkish writings.

  “The text noted, in surprisingly few matter-of-fact words, the death of the bishop: Tancred de Luci.”

  For a few moments, my mind did not register what my ears had heard.

  “De Luci?” I said at last, slowly. “Could it be—?”

  “It’s altogether quite possible,” Adam said. “The de Luce name is, as you know, an ancient one, of Norman French origin. It has appeared in many different forms. There was, of course, famously, Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlcote Park, in Warwickshire, who was said—probably wrongly—to have had a young man named William Shakespeare brought up before him on a charge of poaching the Charlcote deer.”

  “Damn!” I said.

  “Quite,” Adam agreed.

  He picked up a pebble and shied it to one side of the dabbling ducks. There was a sudden excited quacking, a flutter of wings, and then they settled once more into their eternal dipping and diving.

  “But there’s more,” he added. “Would you like to hear it?”

  I gave him such a look.

  “A few pages later, Ralph the Cellarer records that the bishop has been laid to rest—you’ll be interested in this—‘att Lacey.’”

  “Not Bishop’s Lacey?”

  “No. It wasn’t given that name until after his death.

  “He was laid to rest, according to Ralph, who must have attended the funeral, ‘with greatte and soleymne pomp in hys mitre, cope and crozier.’”

  “The crozier having the Heart of Lucifer set into it?”

  “The very same,” Adam said in a low voice, as if there were some danger of us being overheard. “In the margin, Ralph made the note: ‘oculi mei conspexi’ and the single word ‘adamas’—which means, more or less, ‘I have seen this diamond with my own eyes.’ It’s interesting that he chose to write the marginalia in Latin.”

  “Why?” I demanded.

  “Because it would have been as easily understood by everyone at the abbey as easily as the English in which his notebook was kept.”

  “Perhaps someone else made the note.”

  “No, it was in the same handwriting. What it means is that we have an eyewitness report—or as near as damn it—to the fact that Saint Tancred was interred with his mitre, cope, and crozier, the Heart of Lucifer, and all.”

  “But why has nobody ever found this out?”

  “History is like the kitchen sink,” Adam answered. “Everything goes round and round until eventually, sooner or later, most of it goes down the waste pipe. Things are forgotten. Things are mislaid. Things are covered up. Sometimes, it’s simply a matter of neglect.

  “During the last century and a half, there have been amateur sportsmen who made a hobby of digging through the rubble of our island’s history, mostly for their own enlightenment and amusement, but with two recent wars, that’s come almost to a halt. Nowadays the past is a luxury which nobody can afford. No one has the time for it.”

  “Do you?” I asked.

  “I try to,” he said. “Although I am not always successful.”

  “Is that all, then?” I asked.

  “All?”

  “All that you wanted to tell me? All that I’ve given you my pledge not to repeat?”

  A shadow came over his face. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that it is only the beginning.”

  He picked up another pebble, as if he were going to toss it carefree among the ducks, but thought better of it and let the stone drop from his fingers.

  “The thing of it is,” he said, “that someone else within the past—say, ten years—has happened upon the scribblings of Ralph the Cellarer, and found them important enough to hide in a pile of old vellum. As is so often the case, I fear that there’s a diamond at the bottom of all this.”

  “Saint Tancred’s crozier!” I let out a whistle.


  “Precisely.”

  “It’s in his tomb!” I said, hopping from one foot to the other.

  “I believe it is,” Adam said. “Do you know anything about diamonds in history?”

  “Not much,” I told him. “Other than that they were once thought to be both poison and antidote to poison.”

  “Quite true. Diamonds were also thought to confer invisibility, to defend against the evil eye and, at least according to Pliny the Elder, to give men the power to see the faces of the gods: ‘Anancitide in hydromantia dicunt evocari imagines deorum.’ They were believed at the beginning of the sixteenth century, by a Venetian named Camillus Leonardus, to be ‘a help to lunaticks and such as are posessed with the Devil.’ He also believed they could tame wild beasts and prevent nightmares. The diamond in the breastplate of the Jewish High Priest was once believed to become clear in the presence of an innocent man and turn cloudy in the presence of a guilty one. And Rabbi Jehuda, in the Talmud, was said during a voyage to have placed a diamond on some salted birds which came back to life and flew away with the stone!”

  “Do you believe those things?”

  “No,” Adam said. “But I like to keep in mind that when a thing is believed to have a certain effect, that it often does. It is also wise to remember that when it comes to diamonds, there is one power which they possess without a doubt, and that is the power to make people kill.”

  “Are you talking about Mr. Collicutt?” I asked.

  “To be blunt, yes. Which is why I want you to keep well away from the church. Let me deal with it. That’s why I’m in Bishop’s Lacey. It’s my job.”

  “Is it?” I asked. “I should have thought it Inspector Hewitt’s.”

  “There are more things in heaven and earth than Inspector Hewitt,” Adam said.

  “May I ask you one question?” I said, screwing up my courage.

  “You may try.”

  “Who are you working for?”

  The air between us went suddenly cool, as if a phantom breeze had blown upon us from the past.

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” he said.

  •SEVENTEEN•

  Back home at Buckshaw, I hunched over my notebook in the laboratory. I had found by experience that putting things down on paper helped to clear the mind in precisely the same way, as Mrs. Mullet had taught me, that an eggshell clarifies the consommé or the coffee, which, of course, is a simple matter of chemistry. The albumin contained in the eggshell has the property of collecting and binding the rubbish that floats in the dark liquid, which can then be removed and discarded in a single reeking clot: a perfect description of the writing process.

  I glanced up at Esmeralda who was perched on a cast-iron laboratory stand, cocking her head to keep an eye on the two eggs she had laid in my bed: two eggs which I was now steaming in a covered glass flask. If she was saddened by the sight of her offspring being boiled alive, Esmeralda did not show it.

  “Stiff upper lip—or beak,” I told her, but she was more interested in the bubbling water than in my false sympathy. Chickens are much less emotional than humans.

  Steamed Eggs Deluxe de Luce, I called my invention.

  Mrs. Mullet’s ghastly hard-boiled eggs, with their green circle around the yolk, looking for all the world like the planet Saturn with its rings poisoned—the very thought of the things gives me the hoolibobs—had forced me to find a chemical solution to the problem.

  An eggshell, I reasoned, is composed chiefly of calcium carbonate, CaCO3, which, although it does not itself boil until it reaches a very high temperature, begins to decompose nevertheless at 100 degrees Celsius, the boiling point of water.

  Steamed, covered, for ten minutes, the crystalline structure of the calcium carbonate is weakened. After another ten minutes or so in cold water, the egg can then be given a light tap on a hard surface and rolled lightly under the hand along its equator until the shell shatters into crystals and can be peeled away almost in a single piece as easily as skinning a tangerine. The white is firm without being rubbery, and the yolk a perfect daffodil yellow.

  Farewell hard-boiled eggs. Hail Steamed Eggs Deluxe de Luce!

  It was a perfect solution for anyone who hates struggling with the shells of boiled eggs, or who bites their fingernails. I would write a cookbook and become famous. Flavia Cooks! I would call it, and I would become known as The Egg Lady.

  “Better Living Through Chemistry,” as the people at DuPont are forever telling us in their adverts in the Picture Post.

  I picked up my pencil.

  The Heart of Lucifer, I wrote, then crossed it out. On second thought, I tore out the page and held it to the flame of a Bunsen burner, then washed the black ashes down the sink. Much as I was aching to set down in writing the story of that priceless stone, I realized that I didn’t dare. It was not safe nor was it wise to commit certain things to paper. Diaries and notebooks could always be read by prying eyes. It had been known to happen.

  For now I would confine myself to people.

  ADAM TRADESCANT SOWERBY, I wrote on a new page, and underlined it. This was going to be difficult. I had such tangled feelings toward the man.

  —admits he’s a private investigator, but who is employing him? And how much does he know?

  It was odd, wasn’t it, that he had asked me no questions about my own findings. He seemed not in the least curious about anything I might have discovered.

  I drew a line, leaving more space for Adam Sowerby. I would come back to him later.

  —Miss Tanty, I put, fancies herself an amateur detective. Fortunately, she believes that Adam and I are, also.

  As Chairman of Altar Guild, has unquestioned access to the church at all hours. Admitted to being furious with Mr. Collicutt about not picking her up for her appointment, but hardly reason enough to kill him. Other motives? Musical ones, perhaps? She had cried out at the sight of dripping blood in the church,”Forgive me, O Lord”—then tried to convince me that it was staged. What did she need to be forgiven for? (NB: Pry it out of Feely)

  Which reminded me—I had still not analyzed the red residue on my hair ribbon. I reached into my pocket.

  It was empty.

  I leapt up from the bench and dug desperately in both pockets. The ribbon was gone.

  Surely it had been there this morning while I was talking to Mrs. Mullet. Or had it? I had certainly thought about beginning my chemical analysis, but had I actually touched the ribbon with my hand? Probably not.

  Had I lost it on the riverbank while talking to Adam? Or somewhere in Miss Tanty’s house?

  “Bugger!” I said.

  I might have dropped it anywhere: in the crypt, in the churchyard, in the tunnel, on the road to Nether-Wolsey, or in the butcher’s shop of that peculiar village. Or could it have fallen out of my pocket at Bogmore Hall? Was it still lying somewhere in those dusty corridors—or even in the prison cell of Jocelyn Ridley-Smith’s room—waiting to betray the fact that I had been there? Perhaps it had already been found by his father, the magistrate—or by the servant. What was the man’s name? Benson?

  No matter. I needed to get on with my notes before I forgot the details.

  Mad Meg—quite harmless. At least I believe she is. Although she was the first to spot the falling blood, she didn’t seem at all surprised. In fact, she immediately began quoting the Book of Revelation—as if she had come there especially to announce the miracle.

  Marmaduke Parr—Without even knowing the man, I can tell that he is one of those persons Father would call “an ecclesiastical chameleon.” Altogether a nasty piece of furniture. Why is he so determined to stop the exhumation of Saint Tancred? Or is it really the bishop who wishes to do so? Or the chancellor?

  Which brings us to:

  Magistrate Ridley-Smith—I’ve never clapped eyes on the man but I already dislike him intensely, if only for the fact that he keeps his poor son, Jocelyn, captive like a princess in a tower.

  My hand stopped writing.

 
Wasn’t it “passing strange,” as Daffy would say, that although Harriet had visited Jocelyn Ridley-Smith at Bogmore Hall—frequently, it would appear—that she had never demanded he be set free? Why not? That, perhaps, was the greatest question of all.

  My pencil broke with a snap!

  I realized suddenly that, between words, I had been gnawing on it and chewed the thing almost in half. I would have to continue later.

  Esmerelda gave a cluck and I saw that the eggs had boiled nearly dry. I had probably ruined them. I turned off the Bunsen burner and extracted the steaming eggs from the beaker with a pair of nickel-plated laboratory tongs.

  Using a glass funnel stuck into a flask as an egg cup, I gave the first egg a sharp crack with a graduated measuring spoon I had pinched from the kitchen and lifted off the top.

  The smell of hydrogen sulfide filled the air.

  Rotten egg gas.

  “A overcooked egg smells like a you-know-what,” Mrs. Mullet had told me, and she was right, even though she didn’t know the chemical details.

  Besides fats, an egg contains magnesium, potasssium, calcium, iron, phosphorus, and zinc, along with a witches brew of the amino acids, vitamins (which were not believed in by the Royal Navy until quite recently), and a long list of proteins and enzymes including lysozyme, which is found in milk, as well as in human secretions such as tears, spit, and snot.

  It made no difference: I was hungry.

  I was spooning out the first mouthful when the door flew open and Daffy stormed into the room. I must have forgotten to lock it.

  “Look at you!” she shouted, her pointing finger trembling.

  “What?” I said. As far as I knew I hadn’t committed any recent wickedness.

  “Look at you!” she said again. “Just look at you!”

  “Would you like an egg?” I asked, gesturing to an empty stool. “They’re a little overdone.”

  “No!

  “Thank you,” she added. Good manners were as persistent in Daffy as a speck of dust stuck in the eye.