Memory and Desire (9 page)

Trevor opened the ironbound wooden doors and ushered Claire and Alec into the interior of the church. Claire smelled the odor of sanctity, dust, candle wax, and decay. Tall stained-glass windows glowed sullenly in the darkening afternoon, leaving the nave and its two columned aisles in deep shadow. Below the silence of the church was a subtle resonance, as though the songs and the prayers uttered there over the centuries had seeped into the walls.

“The church is dedicated to St. Thomas Becket,” Trevor said with his best tour guide's diction. “I'm not sure which early saint he displaced. The traces of the first two churches are almost gone, just a bit of Saxon foundation and some Norman columns in the crypt. This structure is mostly Perpendicular with some Early English remnants. The roof is late fifteenth century, older than the Hall."

Claire looked up. The ceiling was a tracery of carved and gilded wood, huge beams interlaced like toothpicks and apparently suspended from heaven. “It's beautiful. Such workmanship!"

Columns and arches led her eye down from the roof to the aisles, where human shapes—stone effigies—lurked in the shadows. The monument at her immediate left depicted a knight and lady lying side by side, he with his sword, she with her little lap dog. Claire deciphered the words, “William de Lacy,” half-hidden in scrollwork around the tomb.

“Died at Crecy, that one did,” said Alec. “And that one there, he died fighting for Warwick the Kingmaker in the Wars of the Roses."

Claire thought not of the knights dead in no doubt particularly messy ways on the field of battle, but of their wives sewing their samplers in drafty castle halls, waiting for a hoof beat at the gate. Chafing in their chastity belts, except chastity belts were a mordant Victorian fantasy.

They moved up the aisle to the monument of an earlier Richard Lacey, the builder of Somerstowe Hall. His effigy was more lifelike than those of his ancestors. He lay on one elbow holding a mason's compass, his stone-blank eyes gazing almost defiantly from below supple brows. Runs in the family, Claire told herself.

The monument to Cecil Lacey and his wife Lettice was a proper Puritan one. Busts of man and wife, their eyes lowered and hands folded piously, were framed by oval cutouts. Phillip Lacey's monument was a baroque extravaganza, swirling cupids and draperies carved from marble slick as butter. Phillip himself reclined on his tomb in a Roman toga, as though he were attending a banquet instead of trying to explain his way into the Pearly Gates.
The orgies were just games, St. Peter, Sir. Just a bit of a lark.

Suppressing a smile, Claire turned away from Phillip. One of the monuments stepped out from behind a pillar of the opposite aisle. She gasped and recoiled.

The living Richard Lacey leaned against the end of a pew, raised his clipboard, and started sketching an intricate conjunction of roof beams. His features were even less expressive than the stone ones.

“Oh dear,” said Trevor, “I'm dreadfully sorry, I should have told you we were not alone."

“No, no,” Claire stammered, “I mean, we're never really alone in a church, are we?"

That was lame, but Trevor smiled broadly. He stepped across to Richard and starting speaking some arcane language. “Hammer posts. Pendant bosses and angel finials."

“Scissor trusses,” replied Richard.

“Purlins and spandrels?” Trevor countered.

“Arch-braced cambered tie-beams,” Richard concluded, and the men nodded as though they'd successfully worked their way through a complex litany.

“The ceiling,” Alec explained to Claire.

“Ah,” she answered. She wondered what Richard felt like, returning to the home of his ancestors, whether skeletal shapes leaned over his shoulder as he worked. She promised herself she'd do a little genealogical research of her own sometime soon. Probably she'd find a bunch of serfs named Godwin touching their forelocks to some armored Norman baron named Lacey.

Trevor called, “Would you like to see our other treasures?” and guided Claire past Richard's perch. Alec lingered, eyeing his drawing.

She admired various carvings in wood and stone, polished memorial brasses, medieval chests, and a wonderful embroidered altar cloth that had been saved from Puritans who equated piety with destruction. All the while she kept glancing over her shoulder, trying to interpret Alec's and Richard's body language.

Alec, nonchalant inquiry. Richard, throwaway shrug and terse sentence or two. Alec, skeptical nod followed by a serious, murmured question. Richard, quick glance at Claire, then at Alec, then a negative shake of his head and painstaking attention to the drawing.

When Alec caught up with Claire at the door she already knew how he'd answer her question. But she asked anyway, quietly, while Trevor was fussing over a vase of flowers by the visitor's book. “What was all that in the pub?"

“Says he got a past-due notice on a bill he'd already paid."

“So why did he glare at me?"

“He wasn't glaring at you, he was angry at the bill."

“Yeah, right,” Claire said under her breath. Even Alec didn't look as though he believed that.

Trevor turned from the flowers and opened the door. “Would you care to join my wife and me for a coffee?” he asked.

“Thank you,” Alec and Claire replied simultaneously.

“Richard?” Trevor called. “Coffee?"

Richard hesitated, then said, “Yes, thank you.” He holstered his pencil.

Okay, Claire told herself, the more I hang around him, the more I'll find out about him. About Melinda and him, she amended quickly. She wouldn't be interested in him otherwise.

Yeah, right, she thought again, with the uneasy feeling Richard was thinking the same thing about her. She knew what she wanted from him. What was it he wanted from her?

The heavy door of the church opened with a muted squeal and shut with a solid thunk. The sky was now a lumpy gray. A mist of raindrops spun down the chilly air and tickled Claire's cheeks. Trevor, Alec, and Claire, with Richard bringing up the rear, tramped around the buttressed side of the church, through another gate, and into the garden of a graceful Georgian brick house.

Mrs. Digby met them at the door. She was the perfect foil for Trevor, the element earth to his element air. Her sturdy body was clothed in a modest house dress, her gray hair was cut in a no-nonsense style, and her face was touched only lightly with cosmetics, unashamed of having been lived in for sixty or so years.

“Priscilla,” Mrs. Digby introduced herself, and led them into a sitting room that was all the more comfortable for being rather shabby. There was even a cat—an ordinary corporeal one, Claire assumed—dozing on the hearth. It glanced up when everyone walked in and fell promptly back to sleep.

“How are your parents?” Trevor asked Alec. “We miss them hereabouts."

“They're getting on well,” Alec answered, and explained to Claire, “My mum's from Somerstowe, my dad's from the Isle of Man. They moved house a couple of years ago, to help out with the family museum and shop there."

“I bet you miss them,” she said politely. “Blessed be the ties that bind and all that."

“Please, sit down.” Trevor sorted Alec into a wing chair and Richard and Claire onto a sofa. They inched toward the ends, leaving the cushion in the middle a no-man's land. By the time Trevor walked Claire through ranks of photographs of their children and grandchildren, Priscilla had returned with the coffee tray.

“As you can see, we're amateur antiquarians.” Trevor gestured at shelves crammed with historical tomes, notebooks and folders, and the odd artifact.

“Who wouldn't be, in Somerstowe?” asked Priscilla. “Did you see the well? The panel is very nice this year. Richard designed it for us.” She poured coffee and passed cookies.

Claire made a noise of agreement and glanced at Richard. He stirred his coffee, his pose saying,
Oh that old thing? Just something I slapped together.

Trevor said, “It was Richard's father, Julian, who discovered The Play whilst doing ancestral research. Mind you, he held a chair in Seventeenth Century History at Oxford."

Claire nodded, impressed. Her father was a professor of Economics at Texas A&M University. Economics would've been at the top of her list of non-romantic professions, except engineering had it beat.

“Maud Cranbourne,” said Priscilla, “asked Julian to explore the old box rooms and attics at the Hall hoping he'd find valuable antiques. We expected he'd find furniture and vases, not a literary treasure."

“It must have been quite a thrill,” said Claire, “for Julian—Mr. Lacey—to get a look at his ancestors’ home."

“Oh, he'd been here many, many times. He and Dierdre and Richard used to spend their summer holidays here. Our children would play with Richard and Alec in the gardens of the Hall—Cavaliers and Roundheads was one of your favorite games, wasn't it, Alec? Richard?"

“That was a long time ago,” Richard said through his teeth. Which were long and carnivorous, Claire noted. Yes, his being here was considerably more than cosmic coincidence. It was fate woven tightly with free will—which, when you came right down to it, was why she was here, too.

She tuned back in. Trevor was saying, “...genealogical research follows on, of course. I give the odd lecture from time to time. My folk are originally from Kent, but Priscilla's a Brandreth, they've been here in Somerstowe almost as long as the Littles, the Fosters, and the Jackmans. Diana came here when she married Rob and the Nairs came to us ten—or was it twelve—years ago from London, looking out a quiet place to raise their children. Then there's Elliot Moncrief, who has no family here at all. He says he likes the country air."

“And a chance to lord it over the country folk,” said Alec.

“I'm afraid so,” Trevor said with a gentle smile. “But we all have our foibles and follies, don't we?"

Claire wondered if Elliot's superior attitude quite fit under “foible."

“The Laceys, now,” Trevor went on, “well, you find ‘de Lacy’ baronies all over the country, at Ludlow on the Welsh Marches, for example, not to mention the great houses at Kingston Lacy in Dorset and Polesden Lacey in Surrey. Then there are the Cranbournes, who were originally tradesmen from Birmingham."

Such a dull, conventional family the Cranbournes must have been, thought Claire, compared to the volatile Laceys they displaced. “Modern cash-flow aristocrats compared to the traditional landed type?” she essayed.

“Very much so,” said Trevor.

Priscilla topped up his cup. “If Julian had been working on his own I doubt he would have offered The Play for production. He was a meticulous scholar, probably would've spent years researching every detail of language and style. But Dierdre—she'd been one of his students, mind you—Dierdre Callander that was, never lost her lovely Scotch accent—Dierdre was quite the scholar herself and kept Julian's feet on the ground as well. She transcribed the manuscript for Maud, and calmed Julian's concerns when Maud sent it to the British Library to be authenticated. You were just a lad, Richard—twelve, thirteen?—I seem to remember you helping out even so."

“Yes,” he replied. “I helped out."

“Unfortunately, Julian didn't live to see how successful The Play proved to be,” Trevor added, “Not only here, but overseas."

“We do miss Julian,” said Priscilla with a sigh. “And Dierdre as well. Thankfully Richard has found his way back to us."

“Dierdre,” Alec explained parenthetically, “remarried and moved to Canada, is teaching at McMaster University, I believe."

“Yes.” Richard considered each cookie on the plate and selected a shortbread petticoat tail.

Claire couldn't imagine how he'd pry his teeth far enough apart to eat it. You'd think the Digbys were spilling some ghastly family scandal instead of chatting pleasantly. But Richard's parents had never met, never even heard of, Melinda.

Priscilla was asking, “Are you familiar with ‘An Historie,’ Miss Godwin?"

“Claire,” she responded automatically. “I've read it, and I'm looking forward to seeing it performed. I can see why it's popular—drama, romance, and based on a true story to boot."

“Ah, yes,” said Trevor. He leaned back in his chair and set his cup on a nearby table. The cat opened both eyes, saw his opportunity, and leaped into his lap. Cool, Claire thought. The little guy was a Manx, with only a stub of a tail. A gift from Alec's dad, maybe?

Trevor stroked the cat's back while he spoke. “Cecil Lacey was a wool merchant. He owned half the town and was its leading citizen, not to mention its magistrate. Elizabeth Spenser was chief needleworker for his wife Lettice. By 1665 Cecil and Lettice were beyond their youth, well into that disillusionment that happens to us all..."

Oh yeah, Claire agreed silently.

“...aggravated, no doubt, by the wounds he suffered fighting with Charles II during the Civil War. After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 Charles gave Somerstowe back to Cecil, as well as other preferments, but Lettice never believed he received enough to compensate him for the constant pain he suffered—and made her suffer as well. Gradually they found themselves moving toward the Puritanism they had once rejected. Or so Phillip wrote a hundred years later. Certainly the contemporary evidence supports his conclusions."

Alec sat back in his chair, cup and saucer resting on his knee, listening with the grave attention of a child hearing a favorite story. Richard held his saucer in his left hand and his cup in his right, lifting the one from the other and putting it back again as though trying to fit two puzzles pieces together. If he was bored he was too polite to show it. His eyes were downcast, the shadow of his lashes softening the almost harsh angle of his cheekbones, revealing nothing. But his hair was still standing to attention, rippling in the breeze from the open window beside the couch.

The cat's purr droned gently beneath Trevor's voice. “In 1665 the Black Death—the plague—once again came to England. This area had a rough time of it. The villagers thought the water from their ancient and perhaps sacred well would keep them safe. It didn't. Panicked, they searched for a scapegoat. Elizabeth had no family to protect her, only a younger brother."