Death be Not Proud (8 page)

The warm scent of plants, green and growing, I found comforting in the bleak depths of early winter.

“Dad…?” I began. He looked up from the wooden greenhouse staging of his tiny potting-shed tacked onto the outside wall of the scullery, his brow knitted in concentration. “I need your help.”

He barely concealed his astonishment. It had been a long time since I had asked him for anything, and I didn't find it easy to ask now; but this rated as more important than my stubborn pride or hurt sensibilities.

“Oh? And what might that be?”

From somewhere in the scullery, my mother tortured the washing machine, its worn bearing grating against the dividing wall.

“I need to get to Oakham, and there's no bus there today…”

He made it easier for me. “And you would like me to take you?”

“Yes, please. I would drive, but…” and I waved my arms to illustrate my predicament.

“When do you want to go?”

“Now – this morning – if you're free, that is. There's some research I need to do there – some records I want to see first-hand. It shouldn't take long.”

He finished bedding-in the tiny cineraria seedling into its own pot, tenderly tamping down the loose compost around its fragile, translucent stem, before fixing me with one of his probing looks.

“Is this all part of what you've been working on for college?”

I nodded emphatically so that I wouldn't have to lie out loud. He adjusted the setting on the heater in the corner, and squeezed a fine mist of distilled water from the spray bottle, watching it settle over the series of pots ranged across the bench. He sighed, content.

“Well, I'll be ready when you are.”

I suppressed the urge to throw my arms around him and more sedately leaned forward to kiss his jowly cheek instead. He grunted, looking awkward.

“I'll tell your mother; she might want to come too. She hasn't been out in a long while and she deserves a break.” He didn't say it, but from the way he wouldn't look at me as he secured the flimsy door, I took him to mean she needed the break because of me.

 

Late last night, I had managed to trace the original records back to Oakham, the county town of Rutland, where I happened to know an archivist. I emailed him at a ridiculous
time of night, but he replied almost immediately and with an alarming degree of familiarity.

It hadn't been easy. The tiny parish of Martinsthorpe had drizzled into the footnotes of history along with the family of Lynes many years ago, and the meagre documentary evidence of its inhabitants was to be found scattered within the pages of the parish records for the larger community of nearby Manton. The records had been preserved in a broken series of bound volumes that had somehow survived the near extinction of the village. The old church had been absorbed into the body of the manor that now existed fragmentarily as a farm, becoming no more than the private chapel for the family of occupation. As far as I was aware, the Lynes never lived in the old house. Their lands had bordered the River Chater, and their manor had long since crumbled into the rich soil. But the Manton records were where their lives and deaths had been recorded, and this was where I must begin.

Mum opted to stay at home and finish knitting Archie's jersey, and we left her in the warmth as Dad and I slid across the ice-coated cobbles outside our house to the car parked beneath the Church of St Mary. I had heard the call of the Sunday bells as I dressed and ignored them, fearful of confronting the gaping hole where my heart had been. Yet now, as we nosed out of Stamford, following the gentle undulations of the frozen land, with each vale deepened by the low morning sun and their crests illuminated by the subtle light, for the first time since returning home, I felt hope where all before had been coloured by grey despair.

The small county town of Oakham competed with Stamford by virtue of the sheer allure of its honey-coloured buildings, all higgledy-piggledy old and new and, at its heart,
the marketplace and Buttercross stocks. This morning, the market was all but empty and the only people in sight were on their way to church or to buy a pint of milk and a paper.

My archivist friend looked as if he would rather be in bed. Greg owed me a favour, and he greeted me at the door to the squat stone building where the archives were kept, key dangling from his finger, his chin roughened by several days' growth. He scratched it as he eyed me, before giving me a hug and kissing me clumsily on both cheeks. He grinned ruefully.

“You could have given me a bit more warning; I'd have made myself more respectable.”

I thought that unlikely; I detected a shade of hangover in the bleary way he glowered at the sun.

“You always liked to live dangerously, from what I remember,” I reminded him with a smile. I had covered for him after one of his all-night raves at university when we were undergrads. It would have been his last chance had he been caught, and he would have been sent down.

“I suppose I owe you that one,” he agreed, “but you look as if you've been up to no good yourself. I take it you didn't get
that
climbing over a college wall after lights out.” He indicated my broken arm and I made a gesture of non-committal. “Serious?”

“Nothing as exciting as something I'd get sent down for.”

“Yeah, well… So you want to have a look at the Martinsthorpe records, do you? Any particular reason, or just general interest?”

I let my focus drift off into the distance and look vacant.

“Something like that.”

Nonplussed, he opened his mouth to reply, then thought better of it.

“Follow me. Can't promise we have anything. You've tried the main archival repositories, have you?” I nodded. “Nothing there?” I shook my head. “Well, we'll give this a bash, then.”

Most of Rutland's records were kept in Leicester or on microfiche in the county museum in Oakham. Just a few, though, were kept here. The metal racks held the odds and ends of records and artefacts no one else wanted to give shelf-space to in the tiny county. The cardboard boxes reminded me uncomfortably that I still had the journal in my possession and I wondered guiltily if it had been missed yet.

Greg ran a finger along the alphabetically organized shelves, stopping at “M”, and looked at me enquiringly. “Date?”

“1550 to 1650, or thereabouts.”

He selected several volumes and lifted them carefully from the shelf, supporting the fragile books with both hands. He carried them to a table set at one side, where a single light burned brightly in the otherwise muted light of the room. My heart beat a little faster and I felt as if life stirred in my veins – on the hunt, my quarry in sight.

“Anything else you need?” he said, laying the first book down reverently, aligning the foam book supports either side of the spine. I shook my head.

“No thanks, I don't think I'll be too long.”

He indicated behind him with his thumb.

“I've got stuff to do while I'm here. Give me a yell if you want anything.”

He retreated to the depths of the room, his shambling figure barely visible behind the shelving.

I traced the ridges of the brown leather book, noting the worn edges, the blunted corner where it had been dropped, the water stains on the hand-cut paper inside. It smelt musty
like the interior of an old church, an unmistakable smell, resonant with age. I leafed through, scanning each page briefly. The hand in which names had been inscribed changed – sometimes in a matter of months, sometimes after many years – as the incumbents came and went. The records were clearly incomplete, some indecipherable. A form of secretary script seemed to have been used in most instances, occasionally Latin, and the spelling of surnames depended on the level of literacy of the writer, or fashion, or the education of the family itself, but most were identifiable and some familiar. I found Seyton and Seaton, Harrington and Fielding and, by 1577, Henry Lynes. I even found Nathaniel Richardson senior, his death being the first of his family registered in the parishes of Manton and Martinsthorpe. This is what my grandfather had come to find long before my birth.

In the sixteenth century, the village had been more populous than now, but it still ranked as no more than a hamlet by today's standards, and it took me only minutes to find Margaret Lynes and the dead infant, their short lives all but obscured by water stains. I had missed the expunged name. The ink was scratchy, parts blurred where the lettering had worn; I concentrated hard, focusing on each line, not wanting to miss anything.

1607, 1608. I skipped a bit. 1609… nothing for January. A rash of deaths in February. March. A marriage in April, two in May. I ran my finger down the list without touching the page. Three births in June; two babies dying within weeks of each other. July – nothing. August. September – a flurry of activity as the Christmas conceptions were born and at last – on the thirtieth day of September 1609, a child born whose name had been obliterated by a single, thick line drawn deliberately and categorically through it. I sat back
and adjusted my eyes and tried again. The riser on one of the letters of the Christian name was barely visible – an “l” or “t”, perhaps. Only the very tips of other letters could be made out, but nothing that could be identified. The surname was a little better – the riser on the initial letter clear enough to be made out as an “L” and the line just stopping short of the final letter, which looked like an “s”. The descender of the second letter could be the tail of a “y”, so it was possible – probable, even – that this was a Lynes child, as had already been proposed in the past. I scrunched up my eyes and peered at the Christian name again, trying to count the number of letters behind the line. I found it virtually impossible to decipher. I thumped the table with my cast, making a harsh sound in the silent room. Greg appeared around the edge of a unit, looking even more dishevelled than he had done half an hour before.

“Problem?”

“I can't read this
blasted
name.” I scowled at it.

“Still impatient, I see,” he smirked, coming over to the table and bending close to the page, squinting at the name I pointed to. He stood up, fingering his chin, his thin, fair hair flopping untidily into his eyes. “It's been expunged.”

“
Ye-es
,” I said slowly.

“That's unusual.”

When I didn't respond because my pulse thudded incoherently as I restrained my frustration, he went on.

“Oh
ri
-ght, and I suppose you want to know the identity of the person, do you?”

“Uh huh. Please.”

He pursed his thin lips and looked at his watch.

“What's it worth to you? Fancy a pint at the White Lion?”

“Your degree, perhaps?” I reminded him again. I liked
Greg, but his pint would turn into three or more, and I wanted to get on.

“Worth a try. OK – follow me.”

He lifted the book from the table, carrying it over to a large flat-bed machine nearby. He slipped a stiff, thin sheet of what looked like plastic underneath the page and flicked a switch, illuminating it from beneath. He then picked up a small block which emitted an ultraviolet light, and drew it across the erased name. Greg peered at the computer screen above the table, angling the block to get a better view. I tried to make out the blur of lines, then suddenly, out of the indistinct shapes, identifiable letters emerged. I craned forward, my fingers tracing each letter on the screen, then fell back, stunned.

“
Matthew
,” I whispered. “It says
Matthew
.”

“Looks like it,” Greg said cheerfully. “Is that all you want?”

“Want?” I looked at him, dazed.

“Yes. Is that all you wanted to look at?”

“Oh. Yes; that was all I wanted to know. Thanks.”

My mind whirred, going around and around in circles like a hamster in its wheel frantically going nowhere. Matthew. Lynes.
Matthew
Lynes, born 1609, here in Rutland. What a coincidence. Greg switched off the machine.

“If it's the Lynes you're interested in, have you been to Old Manor Farm?”

I snapped back into focus. “No – why, what's there?”

“Not much, but there's a few bits from the period in the remains of the church. You'll need permission to see it, of course, but the old lady's quite accommodating. Why don't you give it a go? Turn right when you leave here and take Brooke Road south out of Oakham for a couple of miles, through Brooke, then left for about a mile and a half along
the track to the old house – bit narrow – gets boggy. Not much of it left now, but you can't miss it. Simple.”

I frowned.

“Right. Brooke Road. Through Brooke. Turn right, then left. To the end and you're there,” he simplified the directions for me.

“Right…” I said.

“That's right,” he grinned. “Time for a pint?” he added hopefully.

“I'd love to, but I've things I need to do. Here…” I stuffed a ten-pound note in his hand. “Have one for me – for old times' sake.”

He looked at it ruefully.

“That wasn't what I had in mind, Emma.”

I looked at him, puzzled, then twigged what he meant and reddened.

“Sorry, but thanks all the same for giving up your morning for me. I couldn't have done this without you.”

I stood on tiptoes and kissed his rough cheek. It was his turn to look bashful.

“Any time.”

I made good my escape with Greg trailing limply behind me to the door. My father waited in the car, his fingers tapping on the steering wheel. Greg leaned against the stone jamb, sagging to one side as if standing straight constituted too much effort. He raised his voice, calling after me, “I don't suppose you know what's happened to Dr Hilliard, do you?” I stopped with my hand on the passenger door, suddenly wary, and turned to look at him.