Death be Not Proud (10 page)

Stories. She could see she had my full attention.

“Just local tittle-tattle, embellished over the years, no doubt, but quite intriguing, nonetheless.”

Dad's eyebrows were drawn so close together, barely a millimetre existed between them.

“Joan, I have to tell you – and I'm sorry to have to say this in front of you, Emma – but my daughter has been quite unwell lately. We have been very worried about her.”

“Dad –
no
,” I moaned.

Mrs Seaton smiled. “Well, I can see you have obviously been going the rounds with a pugilist, but you're on the mend now, aren't you, my dear? Now, where were we…”

“Joan, that is not the whole problem. Emma has been quite… low… recently, and Penny and I don't want her indulging in anything that might be
unhealthy
.”

“
No,
Dad,” I hissed, my face scarlet.

Mrs Seaton looked first at my father, then fixed me with an interested but hard stare.

“Surely there can be no harm in a little genealogical investigation, Hugh?” she said to him while still looking at me.

“The young man in question is a Lynes,” my father continued, disregarding my glare.

“Leave him out of it,” I warned, my temper only just under control.

“A Lynes?” It was Mrs Seaton's turn to be intrigued. “But not from around here, surely? The family died out centuries ago.”

I couldn't help myself. I swivelled where I sat and faced
her, engaging her full attention to the exclusion of my father, who glowered at us from where he sat.

“But he is – he
must
be. Matthew Lynes; his family did come from this region, I'd stake my life on it. I know the family was supposed to have died out, but…”

She didn't let me finish. “Doesn't he know where he comes from?”

“He either doesn't know or doesn't want to say.”

Her eyes sparkled. “Well – a mystery
and
a man's involved – how splendid. I'm
so
glad you dropped by. Hugh, I have a little job for you. You remember where the kitchens are?” He nodded, subdued. “Good, I'm parched, and I'm sure we could all do with a pot of tea. Do be a dear, will you?”

He started to say something, but she raised a bird-like hand to stop him.

“Don't worry about Emma. I'll make sure we don't discuss anything… unhealthy. Come along, my dear, I'll show you the chapel.”

 

Joan Seaton led me through a series of dark corridors, each looking more dilapidated than the last, until we reached the highly decorated arch of what had once been a fine perpendicular church. The arch and doorway had been absorbed into the body of the house when the manor had been extended. She patted the gently eroded figure of a saint.

“This is what remains of St Martin's; it fell into disrepair several centuries ago when the village all but disappeared. My husband's family adopted it and it was still consecrated up until the outbreak of the war.”

She turned the wrought-iron handle, and together we heaved the huge door open. She hopped down the raised stone step, more spry in her advanced years than I felt at
nearly sixty years her junior. She tweaked a Bakelite dolly switch, and a number of dim bulbs soaked the interior in a wash of yellow light. The church smelled of damp stone and decaying plaster, white flakes of distemper hanging like patches of peeling skin from the walls. Above our heads, wooden angels, borne on dainty columns of stone, smiled benignly from the hammer-beam roof, and beneath my feet were worn images of knights on horseback and fleur de lys in alternate red and cream squares. All of one aisle had been lost to time, the pillars now blindly embedded in a featureless wall. But the other aisle remained intact, and Mrs Seaton drew me towards the far end beneath a sun-bright window. I let my eyes adjust. The figures of a man and a woman slept on a raised marble tomb set against the wall. Darkened through years of neglect, but still clearly discernible, their mode of dress defined their religious ideology and the era in which they died. I knew – even before I deciphered the basic Latin inscription set in the plaque on the side of the tomb – who they were. Buried decades apart, Henry and Margaret Lynes lay together in devout repose. Either side of the plaque, two other figures knelt in supplication: one a young child, the other clearly older but defaced, so that only the kneeling body remained. I ran my fingers over the mutilated form, feeling the score marks where a metal blade had been taken to the cold marble: this had been no random act of vandalism but a calculated violation of someone's memory.

“Quite strange, isn't it?” Mrs Seaton was saying. “We always wondered why this one was targeted so deliberately.”

To suffer such condemnation in an age where belonging – whether to your family, your village or your God – was everything, must have been like being consigned to a living death. My heart went out to this stranger across the centuries.

“His name was Matthew Lynes,” I said, quietly. “He was their eldest child and his name has been expunged from the parish records as well. He must have done something heinous to have deserved this.”

“
Matthew
Lynes – yes, of course.”

His name seemed to strike a distant chord, and she became suddenly and vibrantly alive.

“But he wasn't removed from
this
, my dear.”

She took me by my shoulders, shuffling me back until I could see the window above the tomb through which the sun streamed, throwing rainbow colours across the tiled floor.

A memorial window, the sort you see in parish churches everywhere, celebrating the good fortune of the family, and recording its endowment of the church at which they worshipped. It must have been made sometime before the outbreak of the Civil War, perhaps in the 1630s, although I found it difficult to pin a date to, as the style of the image looked at least a decade earlier. I scanned the window, the finely painted detail bearing witness to the wealth of the three generations of family it depicted.

The family had been divided into age groups either side of the window – men on one side, women on the other, facing each other. The oldest generation wore high Elizabethan clothes, heavily decorated and rich in colour; this must be Henry Lynes the grandfather and his wife – who, I remembered, carried the same name as I did. Next, Henry and Margaret opposite each other in simpler, dark attire with less extravagant collars, the fabric of their clothes still expensive, the cut of the doublet and the full dress, ample. Margaret must have been dead for some years when the window was commissioned, her face fresh and youthful, her blue eyes bright, but it was the figures opposite her that kept
me transfixed. Below the image of her husband, a baby bound in shrouds, eyes closed in death, and the other – a young man of about twenty, handsome even in glass, his hair radiant gold – unmistakably a Lynes – unmistakably
Matthew
.

A sudden, violent thrumming filled my ears and the room rotated horrendously, light fading fast as I sank towards the ground and it swallowed me whole.

 

“My dear, are you all right?”

Mrs Seaton's thin, knot-veined legs in flesh-coloured tights stood over me, her face a mixture of curiosity and concern. Her long necklace of jade beads swung as she bent towards me. The ground felt hard, the cold tiles rigid beneath my back. I blinked, feeling stupid. I managed to sit upright without the aisle cavorting around me, then clambered to my feet, leaning against the Lynes tomb for support.

“Don't tell my father,” I said queasily.

“You took me by surprise; that was quite a spectacular faint. What could have caused that now, I wonder?”

She looked up at the window so familiar to her, trying to see it through my eyes.

“I expect it's nothing more exciting than low blood sugar.” My head pounded – a mass of conflicting information at once vying for attention. I checked the window again, expecting it to have somehow changed, but Matthew still regarded heaven as calmly as if he were standing next to me, his hands together in prayer, a tiny painted line across his little finger indicating a ring.

Matthew.
My
Matthew?

What madness was this? Blood burned my veins, pushing prickled sweat to the surface of my skin. I felt overwhelmed as much by the visual imagery as by the significance it held.
I blinked, and blinked again, but the image remained the same.

“Are you quite sure you are all right?” Mrs Seaton was asking. “I can fetch your father if you wish, my dear?”

That shook me out of myself.

“No – thank you. Really, I'm fine.” Yet I couldn't take it all in, trying to imprint the window as best I could. “Would you mind terribly if I take some photos while I'm here? It'll save me so much time trying to describe things in words.”

Mrs Seaton seemed relieved at the normality of the request.

“No, of course not, take your time. I'm going to see if your father has managed to locate the kettle. Please don't faint again when I'm gone; it does quite give me palpitations and I don't think my old heart can take it.” She turned to leave the church.

“Mrs Seaton – please, don't say anything to him…”

“I won't,” she assured me. “As you say, there is nothing to tell.” She glanced at the window once more, then hopped up the step like a sparrow.

 

I went and sat down with my back against a column and stared up at the window, and at the painted cross around which the little family worshipped.

“I don't understand,” I implored. “Please help me to
understand
.”

Black branches of an old yew, grown vast with age, waved against the glass, throwing figures into sudden darkness through which sharp shafts of sun struck. Random shafts, shifting then stilling as the wind dropped, leaving his face radiant and alive. I breathed out slowly. One thing appeared certain: if that was Matthew, then whoever he lived with in Maine could not possibly be his father and mother, because his
parents
lay stone dead and buried in front of me.

I took a series of photographs from every conceivable angle using the little mobile phone Matthew had given me and which I carried close as a reminder of him. It seemed somehow fitting that I captured his past using something of his so ostentatiously from the present. I tried to persuade myself that the image in front of me must be an ancestor of his, his striking looks no more than a genetic throwback to an earlier age. It would have made sense – would have taken a far lesser leap of the imagination. But that Matthew's image looked serenely out of the past I believed to be beyond debate.
Complications
– he had once told me came between us. Complications.

 

I took one final look around the church before closing the door behind me, reluctant to leave, not knowing when – or if – I would see him again. I made my way back the way we had come and heard my father's deep bass and Mrs Seaton's clear peal; they were laughing.

 

“Tell me about the stories,” I urged, once I had my hands wrapped around a delicate bone china cup filled with strong, fragrant tea. I almost sat in the fireplace trying to keep warm. Mrs Seaton – cheeks glowing with the unaccustomed company and the thrill of an unsolved mystery – began to talk.

“Henry Lynes the elder had two surviving sons – Henry and William.” I nodded, remembering the family tree. “Henry was the elder by quite some years and he had been betrothed from a young age to Margaret Fielding, who was the heiress to one of the minor noble families in the area. Well…” she inched forward like a schoolgirl eager to share some fresh piece of gossip, “the younger son – William – was quite taken by Margaret and tried to persuade her to break
off her betrothal to his brother. Of course, that would mean that the Fielding fortune would be his, putting him in a much stronger position politically as well as financially. Their father got wind of the situation and told William in no uncertain terms what would happen if he tried any tricks like that again.” She placed the palms of both hands together. “Now, all was well for the time being; Henry married Margaret and it seemed like a happy union and she gave him an heir – Matthew – wasn't it?” I nodded again. “What a
coincidence
…” she mused, her eyes suddenly on me. I didn't react and she shook her head a little before continuing. “Anyway, tragedy struck when, a few years later, she gave birth to a baby who died shortly after, and Margaret died days later.” So, my supposition had been correct on that point. “Henry was heartbroken and he never married again.”

“Where did the gossip enter into the equation, then?” I asked, puzzled, as so far the story seemed straightforward.

“Wait – I haven't reached the good bit yet.”

Even my father leaned forward, eager to catch every word. The old woman's face became animated, her normally still hands circumscribing the air.

“Henry went about his daily life with one eye on his estates and the other eye on Heaven. He had a reputation as a plain-speaking, pious man with Protestant leanings, so it came as no surprise when he backed the Parliamentary cause at the outbreak of the Civil War. William, however, had developed a reputation of quite another kind. He had never forgiven his brother for marrying Margaret and seemingly held a grudge. He never married but had a string of liaisons with some notorious women. Old Grandfather Lynes died fearing the reputation of the family would be lost, and he charged Henry with the task of sorting William out. Well,
of course that was
nonsense
, my dear; William was having far too much fun to allow his older brother to do anything of the sort. William took up with a group of Royalist supporters just to spite his brother.” She broke off to catch her breath as her voice became increasingly thin, and patted her flat chest, making the jade beads vibrate with the motion.