by Ellis Peters
He went willingly, as soon as he had divined the reason; and the moment they were well away from the wall an intent voice round the region of his upper arm hissed at him: ‘Mister, I couldn’t talk there, you can hear right through. That’s Bossie he’s got in there! We’ve got to get him out!’
‘I know!’ agreed Toby in the same urgent undertone. ‘We’re trying to. It’s full of police round there, but we can’t get in. He’s threatening to hurt Bossie if we do. Hey, you’re Bossie’s stand-in, aren’t you? Spuggy?’
‘Yes, we’re all here, four of us. We had to come back. He told us not to, but we had to, we couldn’t leave him on his own.’
‘Took long enough, didn’t you?’ complained Toby ungratefully, going blindly where he was urged, by a guide so close to the ground that he trod it as knowingly as a mouse.
‘I know, we waited outside for a bit, and then we had to get into cover because the coppers came round there. They’re watching the place now, they’d never have let us come in. We had to go a long way round, and we got a bit lost in the dark. But we’ve been here ages now, only we didn’t know then what to do.’
But now they did know? Marvellously, the small, fierce voice sounded sure of itself. Somebody had thought of something that could be done, and this mite was both spy to report the latest state of battle inside the north walk, and now recruiting sergeant for the cause. If a police constable had wandered round the corner he might have hesitated; any civilian was as good as in uniform. He hauled his prize in among the stacked timbers and scaffolding poles under the wing of the house, and three more shadows popped up to receive them. The tallest stood slightly higher than Toby’s shoulder.
‘There’s a bloke here got a bit more weight,’ announced Spuggy tersely. ‘I think he’s game.’
The tallest of the nocturnal waifs eyed the larger shape dimly outlined, and said at once: ‘Eh, you’re the chap who visits at Bossie’s place, aren’t you? Look, we’ve got to have some help. Where do we need the top-weight on this thing, fore or aft? For a ram?’
Toby peered at the ground, dropping to his knees to be sure of what was being offered him. A large, folding ladder, three-fold, and long at that, left here among the plant. Surely more than aluminium by its weight, some sort of stout alloy. By the size of it, it was meant to be strong, and its ends jutted formidably.
‘For God’s sake!’ said Toby, awed. ‘That wall’s heaven knows how thick.’
‘I know, but part of it’s rotten as rubble,’ said Ginger, whose father had taught him about building. ‘We saw it inside, this afternoon, you could see daylight through. Look, you can see light through it now.’
It was true. From this modest distance, and square to the affected area, Colin Barron’s protective light shone through very clearly in several starry points, the weak joint in his armour.
‘We were inside this afternoon. That part, it’s just left of where they’re standing. The wall bulges. I reckon it’s ready to go if we hit it right.’
‘We might kill them,’ doubted Toby fearfully.
‘There isn’t any other way. We’ve got to try.’
From the darkness under the house wall a hearty whisper blew into their colloquy like a gale-force wind. ‘You have positively got something there,’ owned Willie the Twig, coming round the concrete-mixer, ‘that I wish I’d thought of.’
They knew him, and were not disconcerted; everybody knew Will Swayne could move among the wild things in the forest and never be detected unless he wished. And he was an ally after their own hearts. Where Willie was, Barbara would not be far away. Her scent was on the air, shadowy there at Willie’s shoulder.
‘Weight forward of amidships, I’d say, either side now we’re two matched. You lot will have to gallop. And Barbie, make yourself useful, go back and tip off the police, they’ll have to rush him the instant they hear us hit. In case!’
Barbara, glittering, whispered: ‘Yes!’ as roused and resolute as the children, and turned and whisked away into the dark. ‘Give her two minutes,’ said Willie, ‘enough to pass the word, not enough for them to interfere.’ He lifted his side of the ladder, shifting back far enough to give it a prow calculated to do maximum damage before its crew reached the point of risk. Six of them now to man it, and the forward two could hoist most of its weight and balance it, while the lightest weights, Spuggy Price and Jimmy Grocott, manfully matched their small persons but immense pugnacity next in the line, and Toffee Bill and Ginger, the architect of the whole enterprise, brought up the rear with no spare length going to waste, and all their force behind the ram. It was all crazy and improvised and amateur, but at least it was action and thought, the sort of desperate sortie men might have mounted in the centuries when this place was first built.
The steady pattern of terrestial stars in the stone wall made their target perfectly clear. An area not more than five feet across, and a little below the middle of the height of the wall. That, Ginger said with certainty, was where the bulge was. And if anything was going to shatter Colin Barron, short of a thunderbolt from heaven, it was the whole wall at his left shoulder exploding on top of him.
‘Is it time?’ whispered Ginger, still captain of this venture, but without a watch.
‘Now!’ said Willie the Twig softly, and they all braced their arms firmly in the frame of the ladder, and leaned forward for the word.
‘Charge!’ croaked Ginger, and the whole half-dozen, eyes fixed unrelentingly on the area of stars, launched themselves forward in a vehement, unsteady trot, instinctively feeling for a rhythm, lurched into the double, gathered breath and accelerated into full, triumphant gallop many yards from the target.
It was something out of another world, mad and marvellous and exhilarating in its desperation, something that happens only once in a lifetime. Toby thought of all those short legs twinkling behind him, and all those enlarged hearts pumping adrenalin like crazy, enough to flood the old fish-ponds and overflow into the river.
The twin poles of the ladder hit the target dead-centre, with six translated personalities for motor. The check was merely momentary, no more than a slight jolt, before the points sheered on with only slightly retarded momentum, exploding into the light beyond in an avalanche of flying stones. Through a quivering, quaking gap three yards wide the victorious team with their battering-ram burst into Bossie’s prison. From the doorway George Felse, Sergeant Moon and two or three constables, closely followed by Barbara Rainbow, exultant, with streaming hair, surged in to meet them.
Through a stifling acrid dust-storm, thick as old-fashioned fog, George dived headlong for Colin Barron’s half-buried body, and fell on his knees to dig like a terrier at the litter of stones and rubble that covered him. Praise God, at the instant of total, deafening shock he had done the instinctive thing, dropped his captive to throw up both arms to cover his head. Not too successfully; there was blood as well as dirt in the thick fair hair, and he was stunned, but the damage looked relatively trivial. Concussion, probably, but no fractures. Like so many of the mediaeval walls that look so irreproachably solid, this one had been rubble-filled within the stone shell. But the point of impact had been barely six feet from his left ear, and the heavier ammunition had sprayed at that level, and effectively knocked him out. Bossie, held closely in front of him and shielded by his body, was somewhere there underneath, and with any luck no worse than winded.
George on one side and Moon on the other were still scooping away debris and lifting Barron’s weight aside, as Willie the Twig and Toby Malcolm came clambering in recklessly through the gap they had made, four dusty choirboys-errant hard on their heels, and all in a state of awe and exaltation at the wreckage they had produced, and total euphoria at its successful result. Minor avalanches still slid and muttered along the wall, where a tattered area of sky appeared, its shape changed every few seconds by the belated fall of one more precariously balanced stone. Coughing and spitting out gritty particles, they plunged enthusiastically into the work of rescue.
/> Thankfully they extracted Bossie, temporarily winded but without much more than a scratch on him, unwound him from rope and gag, retrieved his glasses unbroken, cleaned them, and stood him on his feet, as good as new. Doubtless he should have been in a state of nervous collapse, but there were no signs of it. As soon as he had any breath, he was as voluble as ever.
‘Aren’t you going to put handcuffs on him?’ he demanded, surveying his prostrate enemy. ‘It is him! He’s the one I saw the night Mr Rainbow was killed. When he locked the door I saw the light flash off that flat stone in his ring, and I remembered it. And I bet he’s got my parchment on him, too.’
Reaction might come later, but Bossie was Bossie yet, and not to be swept away immediately into Jenny’s arms, not before his vindication was complete. It was, in any case, an idea that was worth considering. With so great a cloud of witnesses, less than half of them police, just as well to lift the evidence on the spot, if it really was there, before any question of its provenance could arise.
The contents of Colin Barron’s pockets were without special interest, until they came to a deep breast-pocket inside his jacket, and drew forth something rolled up like an oversize stick of cinnamon inside a narrow suede bag.
‘That was Arthur’s,’ said Barbara immediately. ‘He had a set of those made once, when he’d got hold of some very special Georgian silver cutlery, and wanted to carry samples to show. I doubt if there’d be others exactly like them.’
Out of the case slid a rolled, brownish tube faintly marked with traces of faded ink. Unrolled, it also displayed clearly enough the fresh characters of Bossie’s effort, far too positive to be convincing for long.
‘Yes,’ said Bossie triumphantly. ‘That’s it!’ Who should know his own handiwork better?
‘That’s the thing I pinched,’ agreed Toby. ‘Plus my friend’s improvements, of course.’
Several pairs of eyes peered at the unprepossessing relic, between puzzlement and awe, willing to be impressed but unable to see any sane reason why they should be.
‘You mean,’ enquired Spuggy wonderingly, ‘that’s what it was all about? Just that bit of old stuff? Is it that precious?’
‘Two people evidently thought so,’ said George soberly.
‘Well, how about this, then?’ And Spuggy fished in the depths of his own overcrowded pockets, and produced a longish, flat wad of what looked like disintegrating plaster, and on the surface, indeed, was nothing else. ‘It’s that piece I poked out when we went round this afternoon,’ he explained simply. ‘It seemed to make that chap so mad, I’d thought I’d better not leave it lying around, so I slipped it in my pocket. But all the plaster bits started flaking off, and I found this other stuff folded up inside. Look!’
No need to exhort them, they were all looking, with disbelieving eyes, as he thumbed apart the edges of not one, but apparently three or four leaves of something that might very well be vellum. Stiff, inclined to crumble, but very slowly unfolding now to show remarkably clear edges of inner surface, preserved by being pressed together. There were certainly the marks of written characters there, the opening letters of line below even line. Gritty particles of mortar drifted from it as Spuggy held it up to view. ‘It looks like some of the same. And Bossie said it was where the other bit was found. Is this any good?’
For a moment nobody had breath to answer him.
‘Because if it is,’ continued Spuggy practically, ‘there’s some more of it down here among all this muck. I reckon it came down with the wall.’
As one they turned to stare, and then scattered to peer and rake and dig all along the broken area of wall, among the ruin of the north walk, where once the carrels and aumbries of Mottisham Abbey had been ranged, and the monks had both read and written. And first one excited voice, and then another, hailed fresh discoveries. Wherever the wall had weathered and fallen into holes, it seemed, the leaves of parchment had been rolled or folded and wedged into the cracks as filling, to be plastered over and seal the gaps. In the days of penury and decline, when repairs were impossible, something had to stop the holes to keep the wind away! The treasure for which Rainbow had died and Colin Barron had killed lay scattered in dust and rubble at their feet.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
« ^
There was precious little sleep for anyone connected with the Mottisham affair that night. Even when Bossie had been restored to parents limp with reaction, but just resilient enough to receive him back with deflationary calm, even when Sergeant Moon and Willie the Twig had ferried all the victorious choirboys back to the bosoms of their families, with flattering accounts of their ingenuity and heroism, calculated to inflame parental pride and disarm parental rage, even when an ambulance had carried away a conscious but incoherent Colin Barron to hospital and strict guard, pending a charge of murder, and a flustered John Stubbs had arrived to complain bitterly about the wanton damage to his wall, the activity within the north walk of the cloister still continued. So momentous a find demanded a police guard until it could be taken over by the proper authorities, and a call after midnight to Charles Goddard, and another to Robert Macsen-Martel, had brought both gentlemen hurrying to view the unexpected windfall. Its value would not be assessed for a long time yet, and even its ownership might produce some problems, though none that could not be agreeably resolved, for the future endowment of the abbey was a cause dear to all the parties concerned.
Bossie, as voluble as ever, abruptly fell asleep almost in mid-sentence on the way home, and was carried to bed, sunk so deep out of the world that he never roused when they undressed him, sponged him clean of the dust of his adventures, and inserted him into his pyjamas. Jenny had qualms that this might be the sleep of withdrawal, and his awakening next day a recoil into horror, but Bossie rose fresh as a daisy after his short night, and headed for school with a purposeful gleam in his eye, and an epic tale to tell, which would lose nothing in the telling. There was still a faint pink line round his neck, but he seemed quite unaware of it. He went off eagerly to catch the bus, and left two very thoughtful people gazing after him.
‘He doesn’t seem to have been really afraid at all!’ said Jenny, both appalled and reassured. ‘How is it possible?’
‘Must be a question of faith,’ suggested Sam. ‘I suppose he really has imbibed a kind of religious certainty that the righteous must prevail.’
‘Good God!’ whispered Jenny. ‘Have we really prepared him as badly as all that for the world he’s entering?’
‘Or as well?’ wondered Sam, after astonished thought. ‘It hasn’t done so badly by him up to now, has it?’
After twelve days of intensive police business, George finally found time to pay a visit to Abbot’s Bale again, and look up all the interested parties. It was Sunday evening once more, and he took time out to attend the evening service at St Eata’s. The churchyard was reconsecrated by then, cleansed of the relatively innocent blood, and the trebles of the choir lifted up their earnest faces and angelic voices in a Stainer anthem, with Bossie soaring serenely into the stratosphere in a brief solo, and afterwards, during one of the Reverend Stephen’s more incoherent but disarming sermons, towed a small pink sugar mouse with a candlewick tail, courtesy of Toffee Bill, the length of the canton’s side on a nylon thread, while on the decani side they were busy composing one of the best of their hymn-line quatrains:
‘When shrivelling like a parchéd scroll,
Far from my home on life’s rough way,
Why restless, why cast down, my soul?
Timor mortis conturbat me!’
Miss de la Pole was nodding gently in her pew, apparently well content with the way things were being conducted after her retirement. In the organ loft Evan Joyce let loose the peals of glory with immense Welsh hwyl, and all the tunes were the time-honoured best of tunes, so that the congregation could enjoy themselves, as was only right and proper in worship. In fact, all seemed to be very well with Abbot’s Bale and St Eata’s church and parish.
Afterwards the Reverend Stephen, slightly shamefaced but smiling, showed George the sheet of paper the decani trebles had been circulating.
‘Actually, I collect them, but they don’t know that, of course. They always mean to pocket them, and usually forget, I’ve got quite a number. Considering everything that’s happened, there’s something psychologically profound about this one, wouldn’t you say? “When shrivelling like a parchéd scroll…” That’s Spuggy, you know. Who would believe such a line could be found in Ancient and Modern? From parched scroll to parchment isn’t far, you’ll agree. And then that last one – that was Bossie, of course. None of the others would have known it, and strictly speaking it’s cheating, because it isn’t in the hymnal, though maybe it ought to be. And in any case, the last-liner is allowed to use his imagination if he can’t come up with a real line. Do you suppose this is his inmost self speaking? It certainly isn’t any other part of him, it’s incredible any child could ride such an experience with such complete phlegm.’
‘I think,’ said George, ‘it’s just his love of sonorous Latin coming out naturally. I doubt if he’s ever applied it to himself.’
‘I hope not. Or that if he ever did, he’s already forgotten it. Of course he is bossier than ever, but that’s also natural. No doubt he’ll get his come-uppance some more subtle way, sooner or later.’
