Someone in the House (22 page)

When we got back to the house Bea went upstairs to change, and I—this is hard to believe, but it’s true—I stood in front of the big mirror in the hall and started pulling my hair into different positions to see how it would look. Bea caught me at it when she came down. So we went to her room and she bustled around collecting scissors and combs and towels, and she gave me a haircut.

By the time she had whacked off nine-tenths of my hair, I hardly recognized myself. My face looked enormous and felt indecently exposed. Bea didn’t bother to ask me whether I had any makeup; it was obvious that I didn’t. She had quite a collection of little bottles and boxes and brushes, which she dumped out onto the top of the dressing table.

“They give these away as sales gimmicks,” she explained, rummaging through the miscellany. “I can never resist freebies, even when they are the wrong shade for me. There’s sure to be something here.”

I felt like the Sistine Chapel ceiling—if it was bare plaster before Michelangelo started work—and about the same size, when she began. I must say the results were artistic, in both cases. When I put my glasses back on, the face didn’t look like anybody I knew, but it looked good.

I admired myself, and thanked her; then I went to my room and admired myself some more, and changed into the only outfit I owned that could live up to that unrecognizable face—a print skirt and a low-necked white blouse. Posturing in front of my mirror, I wondered what Kevin would think of the new me. Would he notice? Would he laugh? In a sudden fit of shyness I changed back into my jeans. I wanted to wipe off the makeup, but was restrained by the knowledge that it would hurt Bea’s feelings. I felt ridiculous.

Kevin didn’t show up for lunch, which made me feel even more ridiculous. Roger was there; the conversation was banal to the point of boredom. No one raised the subject that should have been uppermost in our minds. After we finished, Bea shooed me out of the kitchen, saying she preferred to clean up alone, and Roger, with a conspiratorial wink and jerk of his head, took me aside.

“What is she up to now?” he demanded, as soon as we were out of the room. “She won’t talk to me. What’s she mad about?”

“She thinks you are taking this too lightly,” I said.

“Lightly! My God, I’m spending all my time on it. Listen, Annie, you don’t seem to be susceptible to this superstitious nonsense that affects her and Steve. Can I talk to you? I need a sounding board.”

What he really wanted was a Ms. Watson, to follow him around and make admiring noises. “Amazing, my dear Roger.” Well, I had been offered that job before. Maybe I had been wrong to turn it down.

“I’ll give it a shot,” I said. “But no commitments.”

“Good Lord, girl, I’m not asking you to marry me,” Roger said impatiently. “Come along.”

“Where?”

“The cellar.” He gave me a measuring look. “Unless you’re chicken.”

“Ha, ha,” I said merrily. “I was just kidding last night. There is nothing down there to be afraid of.”

“That’s what I said.”

I had convinced myself that my mood of the previous evening had been only a passing streak of morbidity, now conquered; and sure enough, as we made our way through the gloomy underground ways I felt nothing more than a mild touch of claustrophobia. Roger had brought a strong electric torch, larger than the usual flashlight, to augment the basement lights. I had expected he would go to the room that held Ethelfleda’s brass. Instead he opened the door of the neighboring room.

“You notice that this partition is relatively modern,” he began, flashing his light at the right-hand wall with its blocked arches. “Originally this room and the next were one. Agreed? We also agree, I trust, that it served as a crypt under the chapel in the fifteenth-century manor house. Actually, this part of the house is even older. The masonry is Norman, which makes it—”

I was getting tired of listening to a lecture. “Ten sixty-six,” I said. “William the Conqueror.”

“Don’t show off. Say 1100 for these walls. I looked for the Saxon stones that book mentioned; can’t find them. I suppose that part of the foundations was repaired. But they are surely here. That proves there was a building, possibly a house, possibly a church, on the site in 1000A.D. , maybe earlier.”

“So what?”

Roger gave me a disapproving look. Watson never said “So what?” I’m sure it was my flippant attitude that moved him to prolong his speech.

“Did you know that Warwickshire, where the house used to be, was one of the last parts of England to be brought under Roman control? It was thickly forested and thinly settled; the terrain was too tough for primitive farmers. Two of the famous Roman roads cut across the northern and southern corners, but there weren’t many settlements. After the Romans pulled out the Saxons invaded, somewhere around five hundredA.D. ”

“Then came the Danes, and then came the Normans,” I said impatiently. “What the hell are you driving at, Roger?”

“I am suggesting that the Saxon building was a church, not a house,” Roger snapped. “To use stone instead of wood, or wattle and daub, at that period, when fortifications were still mainly of beaten earth—”

“You mean your hypothetical Norman lord tore down a church and built his manor on the foundations? I doubt it, Roger. Like all the other bloody-minded killers of the Middle Ages, the Normans were good Christians.”

“That’s part of my argument. Are you going to shut up and listen without interrupting me every five seconds?”

“If you’ll get on with it.”

“I’m through talking for the moment. I want to show you something.”

He went to the far corner of the room and shone his lamp on the floor. When I hesitated, he gestured impatiently.

That whole room was paved with old tombstones. The one Roger’s light indicated was so worn that only the faintest shadowy traces of the original carving still remained. Stooping, Roger traced one of the designs with his finger. “Do you see it?”

I shrugged. I think it was a shrug, not a shiver. “A stick with two branches? A caduceus? A butterfly with a long tail?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s an ax, can’t you see? A double ax. See here. And here.”

He moved from one stone to another, pointing. “This stone has the doves as well,” he said obscurely. “And the horns. Here—doves, ax, horns.”

“I suppose they could be.”

“Oh, damn, you aren’t looking. Here—this way.”

Taking my hand, he dragged me out of the room and into the one next door. Ethelfleda’s brass shone bright in the lantern light. Roger pulled me down to my knees and pushed my head close to the surface of the brass. He stabbed at it with his forefinger.

“Steve assumed it was a cross. The shape isn’t unlike, I admit.”

The object he indicated was half concealed by the slender, flexed fingers. A long stem or shaft protruded below. Above the clasped hand were two branches, at right angles to the shaft. They did seem thicker and more angled than the arms of a cross, and the stem did not extend far above them.

I pulled away from Roger and struggled to my feet.

“You’re seeing things,” I said rudely. “What would she be doing with an ax?”

“Your generation is hopelessly illiterate,” Roger snarled. “Doesn’t the term ‘double ax’ mean anything to you?”

“Why don’t you just tell me?”

“Because,” said Roger, with deadly patience, “I want to see if the evidence I have collected conveys the same meaning to you that it does to me. That’s probably a vain hope; you are too ignorant. However. Next exhibit.”

He shone the light up, moving it slowly over the arches and capitals of the pillars forming part of the east wall. At one time the tops of the pillars and part of the adjoining arch had been carved, but it was no wonder we hadn’t noticed this before. Almost all the carvings were on the sides of the columns, within the shallow niches formed by the brick and mortar that closed the arches. They had a naive charm, like that of primitive art, and seemed to consist mainly of representations of animals—deer, and funny, unanatomical lions, rabbits, foxes, and birds.

“Somewhat unorthodox for a Christian chapel, wouldn’t you say?” Roger inquired.

“Why? There shall be a ‘melodious noise of birds among the branches, a running of skipping beasts’…‘and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.’”

“So you do know your Bible.”

“The Bible as Literature, English 322, Monday, Wednesday, Friday,” I said.

“Hmph. All right, we’re almost finished down here. Just a quick look at the other tombstones.”

Two of them, carved in stone, which had not survived the centuries as well as the brass, bore effigies of women wearing long archaic gowns. Silently Roger indicated the worn traces of objects held by both women. It was impossible for me to identify them.

Relieved to be on my way out, I relapsed into sarcasm.

“Maybe one of them is haunting Kevin,” I said. “It’s no fair for us to accuse Ethelfleda just because her monument is easier to read.”

To this ill-timed jest Roger replied with a grunt.

I was not as stupid as Roger thought. I could follow his general argument; it had something to do with the religious beliefs of the former inhabitants of the house. I was not convinced of the reality of his double ax, whatever it might signify, but if the ladies in the crypt were clutching that ominous symbol instead of a Christian cross, he might be excused for wondering about the nature of their beliefs. Therefore I was not surprised when the next stop proved to be the chapel.

It was so still. Even Roger was quiet for a moment, as if he felt the hush and tranquillity. Then, with an air of deliberate violation, he said loudly, “Damn. The lighting is terrible. Did you have a chance the other day to examine the reliefs here?”

“I didn’t. But I have a strange feeling I’m about to. Roger, why don’t you justtell me?”

I knew I wouldn’t get off so easily. Roger made me look at every carving. There weren’t many. The ribbed columns were plain, spreading up without a break into the ceiling ribs. Only the inside arch of the door and the window traces were carved, with garlands of flowers and hanging fruit and with the same motif of running animals.

Above the altar, under the high window, was a single basrelief, on a separate block of stone that was not part of the wall.

“Mary, Queen of Heaven, mourning over the dead Christ,” I recited. “It may be a pietà, Roger, but it’s no Michelangelo.”

“Look closer. Have you ever seen a pietà like that? Look at Mary’s crown and robes. Usually she is shown in the wimple and gown worn by women in the Middle Ages. Look at her…son. Beardless. Naked. And where’s the Cross?”

“I haven’t seen many pietàs,” I said crossly. “I suppose they vary. Like the pictures of Jesus painted by various ethnic groups—he’s black in Africa and has slanted eyes in Japan. Which makes good sense psychologically and theologically.”

“Oh, bah.” Roger threw his hands out. “You’re hopeless. Never mind. What I really need from you is muscle, not brain. Give me a hand with this.”

He jerked the cloth from the top of the altar. I bit back an exclamation of protest; the violence of his gesture had struck a deeply buried core of emotion. He bent, inspecting the stone under the altar table.

“It’s not flat up against the wall,” he said. “I caught a glimpse of something on the back surface; but there isn’t room to get behind it. We’ll have to pull it out.”

I didn’t say anything. Misinterpreting my silence, Roger said impatiently, “It won’t be difficult. We needn’t lift it, just push it out from the wall. I need someone to guide it from the other side.”

I have to admit Roger did most of the work. All I had to do was nudge my corner when the stone pressed against the wall. Finally Roger let out a grunt of satisfaction. “That’s far enough. Come here and have a look.”

The back of the stone was carved. The relief work was so deep that parts of it stood almost clear of the background, like sculpture in the round. A narrow rim of stone as deep as the deepest part of the carving framed it, as if it were set down into an open box. After a moment I realized why the perspective looked so queer. I was looking at what was meant to be the top of the stone. It had been tipped over onto its side.

I realized something else, and that was how amateurish the other carvings were. This wasn’t the work of a Lysippus or a Phidias, but it was professional, produced by a trained craftsman. It was also older, by half a millennium, than the earliest of the other reliefs.

The central figure was a bull, carved with such realism that its bellowing was almost audible. It had reason to complain; ropes bound it to a flat altar, and a man in long robes, wearing a hood, was cutting its throat. Blood gushed down into a footed bowl.