The Pale Companion (33 page)

Once more, I made to sit up but an instinct caused me to stay still, to lie close along the top of the slab.

There was something about him . . . what was it?

It’s easy enough to recognize someone on foot, from their pace, their posture and outline, even if you’re only halfway familiar with them. It’s harder with a person on horseback because together they make a new shape. However, I saw – now that the figure was only a couple of hundred yards off – that it was not Adam Fielding. I’d expected to see him, and that expectation had conspired with the hazy dazzle of the afternoon to make me believe that the approaching shape must be him.

Instead, it was Oswald the steward, Oswald Eden, riding a pale horse.

There was a gentleman I had no wish to meet.

I wondered whether, if I lay very still atop my slab, he might pass me by altogether. Foolish Revill, to have stood up earlier, shouting and waving. Then, in front of my eyes, pranced that treacherous beast Napper, fresh from his grass-cropping and ready for another bout of running, almost as if to draw attention to my presence among the stone rings. For, even if Oswald wasn’t sure of my exact whereabouts, he’d know that I wouldn’t be far from my horse.

I didn’t doubt that Oswald had come to harm me. Or, if that sounds too self-concerned, I didn’t doubt that he was up to no good and that when he found me in his way he would not scruple to harm me if he could. I thought of leaping off the slab where I lay stretched out like a sacrificial offering but he would have seen me shift for certain, if he hadn’t already noticed me.

It was Napper came to my rescue. That doughty little beast, all skirring white legs, saw in the distance an equine fellow. The fact that it happened to have a human being on top of it was immaterial. They say horses are sociable beasts, don’t they? Just as he’d earlier tried to make friends – or mischief – with Fielding’s dignified palfrey, so Napper now set off to make hay with Oswald’s pale mount.

The steward was a much better rider than I’ll ever be, and probably didn’t have much difficulty in controlling his own mount and seeing off the unwanted little Sweathland. I didn’t wait to find out. Oswald was distracted for a space, sufficient to let me stage an unobtrusive exit. I half rolled, half jumped off the far side of the slab, putting it between me and the rider. I landed awkwardly on the turf and a protruding stone stabbed me in the ribs but I took no account of that and scuttled further into the stone circles, sometimes on hands and knees, sometimes at a crouch. The monumental grey-white columns and cross-pieces, which had previously seemed alien, now offered shelter. Out on the plain I could hear whinnies and whee-hees and the odd shout. Good. Oswald was still occupied. Perhaps he wasn’t such a good horseman after all. Near the centre of the rings, I found a pair of fallen blocks angled together, perhaps a cross-piece and an upright. Even in their fallen state they stood taller than me. The grass here was longer and some straggles of bramble had thrown themselves across the slabs. Oblivious to the brambles, I snugged myself into the sunless corner. Huddled down here, I hoped to go undiscovered, at least if Oswald made only a cursory search. Then, when he’d ridden away, I would emerge from my hiding-place and walk to Salisbury, walk briskly, to get back to cities and men and civilization.

I waited. The sounds from the plain had died away. Again, I waited. I seemed to have been waiting among these stones for ever. The rings might have been magic circles inside which time was halted. But time had not stopped. I observed the shadows lengthening on the grass and inching up a facing stone. There was no sound, apart from insect hum and bird calls. A rabbit scuttered across the rubble-strewn centre of the circle. The place was pocked with their holes. Still silence.

I made to move. I was stiff from having huddled in the stone angle, and my hands and face tingled from bramble scratches. I was almost upright on my feet when I froze.

A clink of stone and a kind of shuffle somewhere behind me.

Quicker than thought, I dropped back into my hiding-place.

“Are you there?”

I had my mouth open to answer – it’s very difficult not to answer that question if it comes at you out of the blue – but stopped myself before any sound emerged.

“Are you there, Master Revill?”

It was Oswald. The dry, parchment-y tones sounded incongruous out here on the plain, away from Instede House where they properly belonged.

“I know you are there.”

If you know, then why do you need to ask? I thought irritably to myself.

“Master Revill, you can hear me for sure.”

It was easier now not to call out, not to respond. I schooled myself in silence. Although Oswald Eden’s words might indicate an innocent game of hide-and-seek, his tone suggested otherwise.

“I have something to give you.”

The voice shifted, seeming now close at hand, now more distant. I guessed that he was wandering randomly among the upright stones and the fallen blocks. I squeezed myself further into the angle between the two great slabs. Their scabby roughness, garlanded by strands of bramble, gave the illusion of shelter. The sun was in my favour, throwing its shadows outward from where I was cornered. If it came to it, I could probably hold my own in a tussle with Oswald, but I did not know what weapons he was equipped with. More to the point, I didn’t know what violence he might employ, how desperate he might be. For sure, he intended me harm.

There was a silence for some moments. Then, without being able to see or hear anything, I knew that the gentleman who sought me was on the far side of one of my slabs of stone. I
knew
he was close by. Perhaps it was that intuition which is nature’s way of balancing the scales between hunter and hunted. Confirmation came almost at once.

“Come on, Master Revill, no more games.”

Then the sound of scrabbling on the far side of the slab, coupled with a little emphatic breathing as Oswald hoisted himself on top of it. Presumably he was doing this for the same reason as I’d climbed one earlier, to get a better viewpoint.

There! I saw his shadow elongated on the grass. I saw and heard him pacing along the slanting surface of the stone as if he was walking on a stage. When he reached the end he stood and gazed around. I stayed stock-still in my hiding place. Oswald, in his customary suit of solemn black, appeared to nod to himself a couple of times before wheeling about to return the way he’d come. I looked down, perhaps out of the simple belief that if I didn’t see him he couldn’t see me.

Then he was above me.

His footsteps ceased; “aah”, he went; then he must have stooped down to pick up something because it made a scraping sound.

“Master Revill?”

I kept looking down.

“I can see you.”

Don’t move. Could be a trick to get me to move. Like a clever child. But not a child. Dangerous, this man Oswald. Now overhead. Will go away soon. Don’t look up.

“I can see you, Nicholas. What did
you
see that night? I fear you saw too much.”

I looked up from my pit, squinting through the strands of bramble.

His stick-shape, limned by sunlight, tapered up into the air. From where I cowered he looked . . . dangerous. In his hands he held a large round stone.

For some reason, I felt myself to be the wrongdoer, caught out, trapped, exposed. I smiled placatingly. At least, my mouth pulled vaguely in that direction.

“I say again, what did you see?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“That wasn’t the story you told in my Lady’s chamber.”

“I never named you.”

“But what did you say in your deposition before the Justice?”

“Whatever I said, it’s too late now. Justice Fielding has the depositions in his saddle-bag.”

I regretted the words before they were out of my mouth. I’d just given Oswald the perfect reason to stop and assail Fielding as he rode across the plain . . .
if he hadn’t already done so.
My stomach lurched to think how long I’d waited for Fielding’s palfrey to amble into view. Perhaps the steward had already disposed of the Justice and was now about to eliminate the last witness against him. For – even if I hadn’t said as much to Adam Fielding in my statement – there was little doubt in my mind of Oswald’s involvement in the dark doings of a midsummer’s night. Indeed, did not his words and behaviour now confirm his complicity?

I saw him raise both his long arms and stand with straddled legs, the stone held above his head. It must have been heavy; his arms were braced against the weight. The top of the slab where he stood was about seven feet above me. He couldn’t miss. Oswald mightn’t kill me outright when he let it fall but he’d certainly injure me badly enough to be able to finish me off at leisure. Nor could I get out of the tight corner where I was wedged, or not quickly enough before he launched the stone at my head. I have seen boys stone a wounded waterfowl – have done it myself, I’m ashamed to say. It is not difficult to achieve a strike.

I flinched in expectation of the blow. There flashed through my mind the idea of curling up into a ball so as to protect my head and delicate parts. But that would be to surrender to my assailant, to present him with a hapless, hopeless target, and something in me instinctively rejected this. Seconds seemed to lengthen to hours, to eternities. Still Oswald stood poised overhead, as though he had been turned to stone too.

“Wait!”

He had flexed his arms, preparatory to a throw. When I shouted, he paused. I suppose that throwing down a large chunk of rock on a poor defenceless individual is not
that
straightforward. You may be checked, for a moment, by notions of humanity and other fripperies. Even the hardest heart can house a scruple. So it was with Oswald. Or perhaps it was simply my arresting shout. Whatever the reason, he paused.

And this allowed Justice Fielding to get close enough to the steward to take him by surprise – or almost so. I’d spotted Fielding edging along the top of the slab and shouted out to distract: Oswald’s attention (and with the minor aim of preventing his braining me). Oswald spun round, sensing a presence behind him. In simple self-defence Fielding pushed at the steward. Or it may be that the latter simply lost his footing, overbalanced by the awkwardness of his posture as well as by the stone which he still held above his head.

Whether he fell or was pushed, the upshot was the same. Oswald toppled backwards and fell into the narrow angle where I lay. As he descended his head struck the facing slab. Somehow he appeared to slither down the stone wall, ending up on the grass. He lay there in a curiously restful position as though he was taking a nap, arms and legs fully extended and head propped up against the base of the slab. His head lolled in a way that I have never seen a head loll before. In the centre of his chest sat the round ball of stone with which he had intended to dash out my brains.

“How do you feel now?”

Oh it was worth nearly having one’s brains dashed out! To have Kate Fielding ministering again, as she had tended to me after my first escapade in Salisbury. True, my injuries weren’t exactly severe. Cuts and scratches, and a dramatic many-hued bruise on my side where a protruding stone jabbed me when I landed on the ground. Nothing to complain of. After all, others in this adventure were not bruised but dead – dead by rope, by drowning, by falling from a height, dead even by sundial.

“Hmm,” said Kate, looking at the discoloured area below my ribs, “that looks nasty.”

We were sitting in the parlour where I’d talked with her father less than two weeks before. It was a bright morning in Salisbury, and fresh country sun and country air streamed through the open casements, only a little admixed with the smells and noises of the town. Kate had insisted on giving me a thorough inspection, within the bounds of propriety of course. I was pleased enough to have her play the part of nurse, believe me.

“It’s not so bad,” I said, manfully.

“It’s a pity you didn’t get it seen to earlier. Then we could have applied the traditional remedy for this kind of bruising.”

“What’s that?”

“Fried horse dung.”

“Oh, a pity.”

“Of course it has to be put on almost straightaway otherwise it’s not much use. So we’ll just have to fall back on plantain again.”

“Never mind,” I said. “I’ll live.”

Later on, when she was palping and prodding my lower limbs, she encountered the scar of the stab-wound I’d received the previous winter on the roof of Whitehall.
*
After I’d stopped wincing, I could see that she was impressed. At least, that’s how I interpreted her expression.

“Another adventure,” I said casually. “Someone tried to kill me.”

“It seems to be a habit with you.”

“London, you know,” I shrugged.

“Oh, that is the wicked city you warned me about. With the wild apprentice boys and the desperate veterans.”

“I didn’t know you knew it, at the time.”

“I shall be there again quite soon.”

“You will?” I couldn’t keep the smile out of my voice or off my face. “With your aunt, the one in Finsbury Fields?”

“You’ve got a good memory, Nicholas.”

I wanted to say, how could I forget anything material to you, Kate? But instead I contented myself with some remark about actors and memory, as I had with her father on that fateful ride back from Instede.

“And since you are to visit there, Kate, I insist that you come and see the Chamberlain’s in performance.”

“I have already watched you do the
Dream.”

“But you have not seen us play in our home.”

“Home?”

“The Globe playhouse, I should say.”

“Your friend Will Fall was urging me to do the same.”

Again, the little twinge of jealousy.

“Ah yes. How did you enjoy your ride to Salisbury?”

“Well enough. He is a lad, isn’t he, Will.”

I couldn’t quite interpret this. Approval? Or disdain? Or amusement? So I went on to urge her attendance at the proper playhouse, explaining that the Instede experience wasn’t to compare with it.

“And besides when we were playing at Instede, everything was overshadowed by what happened afterwards,” I said, echoing the words of Parson Brown in Rung Withers. “It was no occasion of joy, but the prelude to melancholy. No, you must see us as we should be seen.”