The Coldstone (20 page)

“I haven't the slightest idea,” said Susan. She took hold of Camilla by a more or less paintless portion of her arm. “I gather you've abandoned the aviary. What are you turning the dining-room into now? A lion's den?”

Camilla thrilled with pride.

“Come and see!”

They squeezed out of one door and in at the other.

“There!”
said Camilla.

The dining-room was rather startling. The ceiling was bright green, the walls and floor black. There was no furniture at all.

“Are you going to sit on the floor?”

“I'd love to—with cushions, you know—scarlet, purple, orange, green, and gold—but I've
got
the dining-table and chairs. Cushions mount up
terribly.
It's a mahogany table, and the chairs have horsehair seats—you remember them—so I thought I'd just give them all two coats of gold paint, and do the sideboard sealing-wax red with a little gold worked into it.”

“And your sofa and chairs for the drawing-room?”

Camilla looked worried.

“I don't know—I can't
see
them yet. Perhaps green would be best—green and brown—banks, you know, and cushions in bright colours to suggest flowers. What do you think?”

“I think it would be unique,” said Susan truthfully. “And now—I really did want to talk to you.”

Camilla rumpled her hair.

“But you're staying of course?”

“Darling—
where?
”

“I could put the sofa into the dining-room—I think the floor's dry enough.”

Susan patted her.

“Angel! You'd take me in if there were ten of me and you hadn't a roof over you at all—wouldn't you? But I can't stay. I want to ask you about something, and then I've got to get back to Gran.”

“But you'll have lunch? I'm trying a receipt Sophy Karelin gave me—Oh!” She uttered a sharp exclamation of horror, stuck the paint brush back in her hair, and made for the nearer of the two closed doors. “I forgot I left it on! I do hope—”

As she opened the door, an intensive smell of fish and burning leapt into the hall and grappled with tire smell of paint. Susan followed her into the kitchen, wondering whether fish flavoured with paint would be better or worse than paint flavoured with fish. She hadn't any doubt when she got into the kitchen—the fish had it every time. A sort of blueish haze hung in the air. Camilla stirred vigorously at something in a saucepan. There was an undertone of cheese and onions.

Susan said, “Good Lord, Camilla!” Then she opened the window.

“I don't think the draught's good for it,” Camilla protested.

“Then it'll just have to be bad for it—unless you've got a gas-mask you can lend me. What on earth
is
it?”

Camilla stirred with happy enthusiasm.

“I think I was just in time. What a mercy I remembered! It's salt fish soaked in olive oil overnight and stewed with burnt sugar, and you serve it with little forcemeat balls made of cheese and chopped onions, with a touch, just the merest touch, of garlic. The Finns adore it—or is it the Letts? It's a national dish. I can't remember whether it's Finns or Letts—or Kurds.” She began to look worried. “Dear me, it's most unlike me not to remember, but she gave me several receipts at the same time, and I can't remember which is which. There! Do you suppose this is done?”

“Yes,” said Susan with her head out of the window. “Done—and overdone. And if you don't come out of this like a streak of lightning, I shall be done too—I really shall. Come back into the jungle and talk to me.”

She shut the kitchen door and the drawing-room door, and inhaled the paint-laden air with relief.

“Now!” she said. “I really do want to talk to you.”

Camilla's eyes roved to her paint pots.

“Can't you talk whilst I get on with the palm trees?”

“No, darling, I can't.”

Camilla looked disappointed.

“I ought to be getting on—I'm having a house-warming to-morrow night. You
must
stay for it.”

“I can't—I can only stay five minutes. Be an angel and clear your mind of jungles, and house-warmings, and Talks, and national dishes, just for five little minutes.”

“What is it?” said Camilla quickly.

Susan observed with horror that a flood of kindly solicitude was about to be unloosed upon her.

“Nothing—nothing. I only just want to ask you something. It's about the Colstones.”

Camilla looked a little disappointed. She wouldn't have wished Susan to be in need of sympathy, but she did love sympathizing.

“What is it?”

“Only a little thing, but I thought it was just possible you might know.”

“But I've never known anything about the Colstones.”

“I thought my father might have known about this, and if he knew, he might have told you.”

“What is it?”

“It's about Philip Colstone, who was killed at sea at the time of the Armada.”

Camilla's bright, restless eyes fixed themselves upon Susan's face.

“What about him?”

“Gran was telling me about it. When he was wounded he told William Bowyer, who was with him, to take a book out of his pocket and give it to his son, who was a child only six years old.”

“Well?” said Camilla. Her eyes had remained like bright fixed points.

“Well, I want to know what the book was.”

“What the book was?”

“Yes. I thought there might have been a tradition—I thought it was just possible my father might have told you something about it.”

Camilla ran both hands through her hair.

“It had a needlework cover,” she said. “Yes, needlework—awfully dirty and faded, but, I think, a pattern of roses.”

“Camilla! What on earth are you talking about?”

“Yes, roses—red—only the red had gone brown. And I can't remember whether the Museum wanted it on account of the cover, or because.… How stupid of me! But I shall remember in a minute.”

Susan seized her by the arm. This time she did not look to see whether she was covering herself with paint or not.

“Camilla—you don't mean to say you've seen it!”

“Of course I've seen it. How could I tell you about it if I hadn't seen it? I always told your father it was a mistake to let the Museum have it. Museums are
most
dishonest.”

Susan shook her.

“Do you mean to say my father
had
that book?”

“Yes, darling, of course he had it.”

“And he gave it away to a museum? What museum?”

“Not gave—only lent. But, as I said to him at the time, it comes to the same thing unless you're terribly persevering.”

“What museum?”

“That's what I'm trying to remember. It was either the British Museum or the Victoria and Albert—unless it was a private loan collection—but I don't think it was, though I do remember his sending something to a most interesting loan collection about the same time—but I think that was a water-colour which he was quite sure was a Turner. My dearest child, you really are pinching me most dreadfully!”

“Sorry,” said Susan. “Don't ramble, darling. Let's get back to the book. What was it?”

“I'm trying to remember, but I only seem to be able to visualize the outside. The needlework cover was made by Philip Colstone's wife, and it's got his initials and hers intertwined in the middle—a P. and an E. and a C.—but I can't remember her name.”

“It doesn't matter about her name. It's the name of the book and the name of the Museum that I want.”

“And I'm sure I've got the receipt somewhere. Your father was so terribly unbusinesslike that he would never have asked for one, but I simply insisted on having a receipt. And if I insisted on having that, it's not to be supposed that I wouldn't have put the receipt away carefully—now, is it?”

“I don't know—you might.”

“I'm most businesslike,” said Camilla. “It was your father who didn't seem to know what the word meant. I often told him so. Now let me see … where would I have put the receipt? It's sixteen years ago, and I think Edwina was storing a lot of my things about then. And then she went abroad, and I had to store until Connie had a house—but she could only take about half so the Fenwicks and Ursula divided the rest. And I know there were three despatch-boxes, but I turned one out ten years ago and gave it to Connie's boy when he was going to Australia—and it wasn't in that, so it must have been in one of the other two.”

Susan said “Golly!” under her breath.

Camilla laid a blue forefinger against her forehead.

“Just let me see.… The Fenwicks had their house burnt down … but my things were saved and Sarah O'Connell took them in.… I know there was a despatch-box there.… I'll have to write to Sarah.… I can't remember any more than that.”

Susan went away with her brain whirling. She had never hoped that the book was still in existence. She was so thrilled that she wanted to stop total strangers in the street and tell them about Philip Colstone's book. When she was half way down the flight of stairs she heard Camilla's voice calling her:

“Susan! Susan!”

She stopped, turned, and began to climb again. Camilla's voice came floating down to her, eerie and echoey:

“Don't come up. It's only the name of the book—it came to me suddenly.”

Susan's heart thumped.

“What is it?”

“
The Shepheard's Kalendar
.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The Shepheard's Kalendar
was by Spenser—Susan did know that; but she had never seen a copy or heard a word of it quoted. She thought over Camilla's vague statement, and, putting the private loan collection on one side, she decided that a book would be more likely to have been lent to the British Museum than to the Victoria and Albert—unless it had been lent, not as a book but on account of its cover, as a piece of Elizabethan needlework.

A sensible person would wait until Camilla found the receipt. A sensible person would reflect that, after three hundred and fifty years or so, a few more days, weeks, or months were neither here nor there. Susan wasn't a sensible person. When she thought about doing a thing, she wanted to do it at once, not to-morrow, or next week, or in a year or two. She wanted to find Philip Colstone's book now. She produced a sixpence and tossed up. Heads the Victoria and Albert; tails the British Museum. It was heads. Susan was a very feminine person; any decision that was made for her would always send her off at a tangent. She put her sixpence away, shook her head, and set off for the British Museum.

Finding the book was the slowest thing that had ever happened. People kept going away and fetching other people, and then going away again. She bore up, because quite early in the proceedings it transpired that they had a copy of
The Shepheard's Kalendar
in a needlework cover. Susan smiled at all the people who came and spoke to her, and the cumulative effect of a great many smiles was the appearance of a most charming old gentleman who actually produced the book.

Camilla had been right about the finely worked cover. The faint dead roses wrought upon it by the fingers of Philip Colstone's wife had once been red. Susan wondered whether they had been worked before she grew strange to him.

The charming old gentleman opened the book.

“You see, it's got his name and the date—‘Philip Coldstone, 1582.' And now here is what makes it really valuable, in fact unique—Spenser's autograph.”

Susan looked at the discoloured page. The ink was brown on Philip Colstone's name—a pale, wan brown, as if it had been written with the water of some stream long choked with rotting leaves. Below, in a different hand but even paler, were the words: “The gifte of his frende Colin Clout.”

She looked so puzzled that the old gentleman condescended to explain.

“That is Spenser's own name for himself in this poem, and also, as you will doubtless remember, in the later poem dedicated to Sir Walter Raleigh—‘The Right Worthy and Noble Knight Sir Walter Raleigh'—
Colin Clout's Come Home Again.
” He touched the signature with the tip of a long, careful finger. “It's unique—quite unique.”

Susan took the book in her hand and turned a leaf or two. There was a long title, a dedication to “the noble and vertuous gentleman, most worthie of all titles both of learning and chivalry, Maister Philip Sidney”; an introduction, and a “generall argument”; and then, “Januarie. Aegloga Prima.”

She went on turning over the leaves, the old gentleman, polite but in a fidget, at her elbow. And then all at once there were words scrawled on the margin, very faint, some of them crossing the lines of print. She turned the book. They were dreadfully faint.

She made out a word here and there.
Scutum
—that was a shield …
Merlino
… and two words together,
fons malorum.

The old gentleman came to her aid.

“Yes, that's curious—some spell or conjuration, I should say. It is a coincidence that you should have noticed it, because only about a week ago someone else was so much interested that he asked if he might make a copy. It is very faint, as you see, but I think we made it out. It is rather surprising really that the young man should have been so much interested, for his Latin was so rusty that I had to translate for him.”

“Will you translate it for me? What does it mean?”

The old gentleman adjusted his glasses, turned the book to get a better light, and traced the fading words with that long, thin finger.

“It's of no importance, you know. Here—yes—this is what it says: ‘The second shield …
lapis'
—h'm—I think that's what we made it out to be—very faint indeed … ‘the stone consecrated, or blessed '—h'm—‘by Merlin … to keep safe … the fount … of evils.' It is, as I said, some spell or charm against malefic influence.” His voice flowed on. “Merlin … an invention of Geoffrey of Monmouth, who got the idea from Nennius … Welsh vernacular literature … Joseph of Arimathea … Robert de Borron … Taliessin.…”