by Ellis Peters
What Jenny said was: ‘I never sat still for so long in my life. Do you think it will be counted to me for an acquisition of merit? I could have murdered him myself when I got him back, but I never so much as scolded.’
George thought it well to turn her mind away from what was over. ‘Have you heard from Toby? He’s going to be wanted at the trial, unless we get a guilty plea, which I very much doubt, though he did make some pretty damaging admissions at first. I expect he’ll take them all back.’
‘Toby’s at Worcester just now. Thespis raked in such a haul at Comerbourne, because of the publicity, they’re getting almost famous in their small way. Bookings even for next year! I’ll tell him you were asking, he said he’d keep in constant touch.’
‘Give him my love,’ said George, ‘and tell him to be good!’
His last call was far up the valley, and aside from the narrowing road that climbed over into Wales. The mixed forest closed over him gently, like cupped hands folding him in, spiced with conifers and airy with deciduous trees, well-laced with undergrowth below, and teeming with untroubled night-life, the primitive paradise ruled over by Willie Swayne. At the lodge George parked the car, and Barbara came round the corner of the log house to see who had driven in, Barbara in dungarees and sweater, both clearly the property of Willie the Twig. Her hair was loose about her in a raven cloud, and her face was as clear and radiant as a star. The two lissom red setters hugged her on either flank, and were jostled on the right by a fallow fawn, silvery and dun in the headlights, with huge eyes that wondered at him but were not afraid.
‘She’s only young, this year’s. Her mother got injured and had to be shot when Amanda was only a baby. She’s in love with Willie, he’s going to have trouble convincing her she’s a fallow doe. I should blame her?’
The exquisite creature danced away happily among the trees with the two dogs, her natural enemies, when Barbara haled her visitor into the house. In a very few miles Barbara had come a long, long way. The lodge was hectic, chaotic and primitive, there had been no attempt to impose order on Willie the Twig’s bachelor housekeeping. It was also comfortable, warm, wood-scented and intimate. Two people inhabited it, but innumerable friends, four-footed, winged, shy and secret, came to visit, confident of their welcome.
‘Then it really is going to turn out to be something momentous,’ marvelled Willie, dispensing drinks. ‘And no dealer gets the money value out of it, after all.’
‘Seems to be a matter for amicable negotiation between Macsen-Martel, the Trust and the Department how the value’s going to be realised and what will be done with it. But nobody’s grabbing for himself. Presumably it will be used to maintain the abbey. Not that anyone has any idea what its value is as yet.’
‘But what exactly is it?’ asked Barbara. ‘The whole of the abbey library, walled up there for safety? Did they hide them that way to save them, when the place was due to be plundered?’
‘Not a chance! Not rolled up and stuffed into holes, like that. No, the general opinion seems to be that by that time they were a tatterdemalion lot, without much Latin between the handful of them, and such was the surviving respect for learning, they just used their books for stopping when the wall fell into disrepair. But the irony is, of course, that by doing so they did preserve them – from possible destruction at the Dissolution, and from time and weathering and dispersal ever since. It’s going to take them weeks to take down the whole wall, as they have to now, and months, maybe years, to clean and recondition and sort all the fragments, but by what they’ve found already, it’s going to be worth it.’
Evan Joyce, doubly blessed, was taking part in the decyphering of those first texts. Bossie would undoubtedly claim a look-in as often as possible, and his fair share of the credit.
‘Nobody knows what it’s going to add up to by the end, but they’ve already reclaimed bits of the abbey accounts from round about fourteen hundred, and what’s exciting them much more, some passages from what seems to be a thorough-going historical chronicle, as detailed as Matthew Paris or St Albans, and about the same time. More than one hand, the original chronicler probably had continuers later. One more independent window on the Middle Ages. The sort of thing that will end as a treasure of one of the main national libraries, and be consulted by scholars for ever after.’
‘Instead of going to some private collector for a big price,’ said Barbara, ‘probably abroad.’
Yes, it might well have been like that, whether Rainbow had succeeded in running it to earth, or Colin Barron had stolen it from the thief in his turn.
‘He admits to having been on the tower with your husband that night. I think his defence is going to be that the fall was accidental, but it won’t stand up. I think he tried to get cut into the deal, and when he got nowhere, was certain he was on to a fortune, and felt he had an opportunity too good to miss. Silence, and night, and no witnesses. I think by then he had a fair idea of what your husband was carrying. Something acquired at choir practice – you remember? – and something that sent him hunting in the tower among the papers in the chest there… He knew it when he found it on the body, and he could do enough with it to connect it with the abbey, but I suspect Bossie’s particular interest in that wall was what made him turn his attention there, after he’d volunteered to do the rounds, and had the place to himself. Or thought he had!’
‘But I don’t understand,’ said Barbara, grave in recollection, ‘how Arthur ever came to let himself be inveigled to the top of the tower. Colin followed him up to where the chests were, yes, but what brought them out on to the leads?’
‘I think by that time it had already gone beyond discussion, and come to menaces. And Barron was younger, bigger, and between him and the way down. There was only one way to go. And time gained is time gained. Someone might have walked in below, something might have happened to scare the threat away. But nothing did. Evan Joyce had repented of his own curiosity and gone home, thinking no evil. There was only Bossie, down in the churchyard. Five minutes more, and he’d have gone home, too, and there’d have been no witnesses and very little evidence.’
Barbara sat cross-legged on the rug in front of the fire, her hands pensively clasped in her lap, and one of the setters stretched out beside her with his head on her thigh. She was silent and thoughtful for some moments before she pronounced the considered epitaph of Arthur Rainbow.
‘He wasn’t a bad person. In a way I liked him, and when he made a bargain, written or not, he kept it. I don’t complain of him. But though I never wished him any harm, I can’t be sad. And the really sad thing is that I don’t suppose there’s a single other person who can, either.’
They both went out to the car with him. The autumn night smelled of timber, fir-needles, moist fallen leaves, and the faint hint of frost. The dogs roused when Willie roused, and padded attentively at heel. The fallow fawn came out of the trees like a silver wraith, slender and silent. No, Barbara could hardly be expected to be sad.
‘Let me know when the wedding date’s fixed,’ said George at parting.
‘Wedding?’ said Willie the Twig, as though confronted by a conception rather surprising and totally irrelevant, as indeed it probably was. But on second thoughts he appeared to be finding some merit in the idea, even if it was no more than a decorative flourish to something that already existed and was guaranteed in perpetuity. ‘Yes,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘I suppose we might get round to it in time.’
‘I rather fancy having Amanda attend me up the aisle,’ agreed Barbara. ‘And we could find a nice solo for Bossie among the hymns. That would probably be the day his voice broke, and he did a belly-flop from a high C into a terrifying baritone.’
‘That,’ said Willie the Twig, ‘would be just right for our wedding, and I should enjoy it. But it won’t happen. You should know by now, that kid always falls on his feet.’
—«»—«»—«»—
[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]
[A Prooflist Rel
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Document creation date: 4.8.2011
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Ellis Peters
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