The Pale Companion (28 page)

“Go steady now,” said Jack. “Steady.”

We hauled manfully on the line, hand over hand, for all the world as if we really were bringing in a large (and somewhat docile) fish. Most of my fear had gone now in the eagerness to see what we had on the end of our line.

There was a final noise, something between a belch and a slurp, and then Jack and I pantingly reeled in our great prize while the boat rocked.

A mat of greeny-brown weed bobbed to the surface, like a giant phlegmy bolus which the lake had at last seen fit to bring up. The rope and grapnel were tangled up in the weed. This was our valuable catch. Easy to see now how the rope had snagged on it and how it had eventually yielded to our insistent tugs. It was massy but not so heavy when detached from its resting-place on the bottom. Still powered by our efforts, it drifted towards us until it fetched up against the boat. It smelled rank.

I glanced up at the Fieldings and made some sort of apologetic movement. What now? But they were not looking at me or the little rowing-boat. Their eyes were wide and they were fastened on a point over my shrugging shoulders.

I turned round.

A little further out, perhaps a dozen feet or more, a fresh chain of air-bubbles rattled up from the lake depths. All at once, there burst from the water a man. His white head emerged first followed by his shoulders and trunk. He had a face, a ghastly face, and it was all swollen and slimed with green.

The surprise and terror in our boat were so great that we again came near to overturning, as we scrabbled to get away from this being from the depths. Fortunately, the island of weed which now sat snug alongside acted as a kind of anchor and prevented our capsizing.

“Jesus save us!” gasped Jack.

Michael Donegrace had turned white as a corpse. Will Fall’s mouth hung open. I could read my own reaction in their faces.

On the bank Kate was staring with horrified fixity. But Adam Fielding showed his presence of mind by calling out, “Steady, gentleman. He can do you no harm.”

Afterwards I wondered whether he’d known – or had a fair inkling of – what we’d find. Whatever the case, he was correct. The body in the water was beyond harm, either given or received. It was only the way it shot up from below that gave it the semblance of horrid life. It must have been roused from its green grave by our circling movements and by the disturbance caused by the rising island of weed. Once on the surface the body showed no signs of sinking again but bobbed in the wavelets with its chest protruding like a barrel. I knew instinctively that this was the massy pale shape which Kate and I had seen arrive near the surface and then drop back down out of sight. I suppose that then, a couple of days earlier, it wasn’t ready to rise. Everyone knows that the drowned, for all that they lack animation, possess a will of their own, coming and going as they please. The white streamers we’d observed were tatters of cloth tangled round the bloated form. They served only to emphasize its nakedness, at once waxy and greenish. Trailing fronds hung down like a sea-nettle’s.

Once we’d gathered ourselves, Fielding did not have to tell us what to do next. This was the “something” which we’d been despatched to harvest from the lake-bed. And now the body had done us the favour of turning up more or less unprompted.

With none of the banter which marked the beginning of our boat trip, in fact without another word except the odd muttered monosyllable, we disentangled ourselves from the raft of weed and paddled with oar and hand in the direction of the bobbing body waiting for us.

We’d misjudged our speed and thunked flabbily against the corpse. It seemed to twist about in the water and for an instant I thought it was going to sink down once more. But it promptly righted itself with all the unsinkability of a cork stopper. What did I say about the drowned and their determination? The wide, engrossed face gaped up incuriously, and I saw with a spasm of disgust that both of the eye-sockets had been emptied. But in that brief instant I had seen enough to know that, whoever this was, I did not know him.

I looked down and away, glad that its privities were still modestly swathed in cloth; a titbit for minnows there, otherwise. With a deal of effort, Jack and I got a couple of the ropes wrapped about the upper and lower portions of the corpse and Will Fall pulled with a will towards the nearest reed-free patch, which happened to be close to our starting-point. Young Michael Donegrace did a thing I would not have thought of and thus respected him for, when he clutched onto one of the trailing arms so as to reduce the drag on the boat and keep the body in a more or less steady position. Even so, with this mortal anchor, our progress was slow.

In the time it had taken us to secure the body and begin the return to dry land, Kate (presumably at her father’s request) had run back to the house to collect a handful of helpers. Meanwhile Justice Fielding walked round the shore, gravely keeping pace with us and every so often stroking his beard. Word of what was happening must have spread quickly through the funeral feast because a mixture of mourners and servants soon crowded to the water’s edge. With the sun behind them they looked like so many great black carrion birds. I couldn’t help wondering – wondering not then but later – what must have gone through their minds when they were summoned from despatching one body to attend to the unlading of another.

Closer to, I saw stamped on the ring of pale faces confusion, anxiety and dismay. Was there to be no end to the ill fortune afflicting Instede? At the front of the group was Fielding, looking no less troubled than the rest. As we drew into shallower water several men jumped in to assist with pulling the boat the last few yards, almost swamping us in the process. By the time the four of us were ashore we were almost as water-logged as the corpse. Luckily, others now took over the task under Fielding’s direction of hoisting our cargo out of the lake and onto the bank. Whereas in the water this unfortunate being had seemed bloated and gross, now, laid out on the grassy bank, he appeared small and pitiful. The onlookers made a wide half-circle about his form. Fielding and several others made a cursory examination of the body but, perhaps repelled by the empty eye-holes and gaping mouth, stepped quickly back. Apparently nobody knew this individual or, at least, nobody was prepared to lay claim to him. From the state of the corpse it did not seem to have been under the water for that long.

I don’t know the reason for what happened next. Perhaps it was the effect of this unsettling discovery in the lake. Perhaps it was the sight of those figures – those black carrion birds – gazing bemusedly at the waxy form on the ground. But I felt suddenly as though some kind of screen had interposed itself between me and the mourners, and that I was looking at a species, a race of beings, I did not know. Here was a dead man, naked except for a few wisps of cloth. There was a band of sable-suited mourners, gathered to grieve for the death of Lord Elcombe but finding themselves face to face with a superfluous corpse. It was plain that none of them – none of us – knew what to do. I was reminded of a sight I’d once seen in a field in my father’s parish, of a herd of cattle grouped about the prone body of a calf. The calf was dead. One of the cattle, presumably its mother, was licking it in a futile effort to restore it to life. But the rest of the herd stood about, unmoved, unmoving.

The scene by the lakeside lasted for only a few seconds but those seconds seemed to stretch to eternity.

So we all stood. All except one.

Glancing away I noticed a figure detaching itself gradually from the edge of the crowd. Without having been completely aware of his presence before, I knew at once that it was Oswald the steward and knew also that, if anyone was in a position to enlighten us in this business, he was the man. Knew it by instinct, in the gut.

At about the same moment that I came to the decision to see what he was up to, there was a shifting in the group. It was as if a spell had been broken. A dozen voices started up. Someone went to get the canvas from the bottom of the boat to shroud the body while half a dozen men made preparations to carry it off.

I also detached myself from the group. Oswald had more than a head start and already I saw his figure diminished against the house which, through some trick of the evening light, seemed to loom larger than ever. As I moved off, I passed Adam Fielding and we exchanged a look of . . . awareness, understanding.

The entire series I’ve just described – the summoning of help, the hauling-up of the body onto the bank, the uneasy moments when we’d stood mutely around our find – all this had occupied fewer minutes than it takes to tell. Consequently, there were still people making their way from the main entrance of Instede and down towards the lake to see what all the commotion was for. Only two men were going against this tide, Oswald the steward and Revill the player. Not once did the stick-man look back and it was this, rather than any mark of stealth or even great urgency in his manner, which convinced me that he was about some business which he preferred to keep private.

His steady, single-minded progress made it easier for me to keep him in sight as he skirted the southern side of the house and then walked down the west-facing slope fronting the wood where Robin had lived and died. At one point he stopped and scanned the woods then moved on with a slight shift of direction. It’s as if he’s searching for somebody, I thought, and realized that this was probably the reason he hadn’t looked round: all Oswald’s attention was to the front. As he neared the trees his stick-form seemed swallowed up in shadow.

There was little opportunity for concealment in the open stretch of ground between the house and the wood so I hung back at the top of the rise, noting the place at which Oswald entered the trees. When he’d disappeared into their gloom I waited a few moments before descending the slope at a run. As I approached the trees I slowed and tried to calm my breathing. Once again, the wood stretched in front of me, a low green cliff, unsettling and formidable.

It seemed to me that Oswald had made his entry a little to the left of where I was standing, not far from the spot where I’d first encountered Robin and close also to the elm where he had strung himself up. I walked forward and crossed the boundary between the meadow and the trees, and wondered what to do next. I didn’t have to wonder long. From somewhere off to my left there came the whisper of conversation. The voices were low and it was impossible to make out any words. Only one way therefore to discover who they were – or rather who the other man was and what business he had with Oswald.

I moved ahead slowly and with moderate care. In fact, the woody gloom made any other kind of progress difficult. From the tone of the conversation up ahead, however, it seemed that the two individuals were more absorbed in their own concerns than on the look-out for spies. Their exchange continued, somehow both hot and subdued at once. Carefully pushing aside low-hanging branches, I drew nearer to the speakers. And here was a tiny cleared space in the middle of which stood two shapes, one dark and one pale. I stopped well back from the edge of this and squatted down on my hams in the shadow of an anonymous bush. My clothes were still slightly dank from the lake. In the natural darkness of the wood, it was difficult to discern things clearly. But I had the advantage of knowing one of the pair. Oswald stood facing the other man and more or less opposite to my hiding-place. The other had his back to me, and I glimpsed only his stocky shoulders.

“You have reached the end of your road here,” said Oswald.

“You summon me only to tell me that?”

“There are no more pickings for you at Instede House.”

“That does not concern me. Pickings and leavings.”

There was something familiar in the voice. Who was it?

“How shall you live then?” said Oswald, with a kind of sneer.

“As birds do, brother.”

Of course! It was Peter Paradise. That thick-set build, the application of “brother” to all and sundry. But why was Oswald talking to this player whom he’d so lately cast out of the estate?

“As birds do – what, with worms and flies?”

“With what we get, I mean. With what God sends us,” said Paradise with a weary dignity.

“How if he sends you . . . this?”

So saying, Oswald raised one of his long arms as if to strike out at the other but he let it fall after a moment. I was surprised to see the steward, normally so impassive and controlled, give way to the threat of force.

“I tell you that you have outlived your welcome here, Paradise.”

Oswald almost spat out the player’s name.

“Buzz buzz, that is an old story.”

“And you know what happens to those who outlive their welcome? In your own words? They will find themselves making their beds out in the dark.”

“Like the wild woodman who was found dangling in here?” said Paradise.

“Like him.”

“Like your master?”

“Do not speak of him.”

“And he who did not grow gills yet would live under the water?”

I was amazed that Peter Paradise had heard so quickly of the discovery of the body in the lake.

“You can see that Instede is a . . . dangerous place,” said Oswald.

“It is a place of sin and corruption, I can see that,” said Peter Paradise. “But as for all your talk of going into the dark – there are more out there than there are in here. The dead must always outnumber the living, brother, if it comes to that. And remember it will not be dark for all. No, you cannot fright me so.”

Indeed, it seemed from his tone that Peter Paradise was as unaffected by the steward’s words as by the offer of violence. What I was watching was essentially the same scene of confrontation between Oswald and Paradise that we’d witnessed in the barn after the Dives and Lazarus performance. Threat and counter-threat. Then it had been Paradise who’d first raised his hand in anger before retreating, but now the boot appeared to be on the other foot. There was a long pause, then Oswald swung on his heel and struck more deeply into the wood, apparently trying to make some sort of exit.

Peter Paradise waited a moment longer then turned about and blundered past the very bush where I’d hidden myself. His straggling white beard and furrowed brow floated through the twilight. If he’d looked aside and down he would have seen me. But he didn’t.