The Printer's Devil (3 page)

The Abbey was indeed a ruin. All that remained were a few ragged lengths of grey wall with empty windows, the base of a tower, little bits of tiled floor and paving scattered among the grass. All the remains of men’s works were being reclaimed by Nature, like the city called the Cold Lairs in
The Jungle Book.
Weeds found precarious rootholds in the remnants of the walls and crept through cracks. Moss furred the stones. No-one had adopted the ruins: they were adorned neither by green National Trust signs nor by brown Heritage ones reading
‘Fenstanton Abbey, Historic Ruins’
- the sort of thing which Alan hated, as if people needed to be told that a place was a
‘Medieval Church’
or a
‘HistoricMarket Town’.

‘Now all we need is to find the well.’

‘South.’

‘Where’s south? Where’s the sun, and what’s the time? Ten to eleven. Oh...kay. This-a-way.’ Kim led the way across a larger survival of flagstones.

‘That must be it,’ said Alan, pointing to a ring of rusty railings and a peeling notice reading ANG R KE P T. He hoisted the camcorder up and fingered the switch. Through the eyepiece he saw an image of Kim, in monochrome, walking up to the railings, which were about four feet high, and looking over them.

‘It’s got some kind of a lid on it,’ she called. ‘I can’t see how it’s anchored. Let me just get some shots of it, then we’ll see if we can get it open.’

‘I have to tell you that I’m a bit nervous about going down there,’ said Alan, moving closer. Kim stepped back, and adjusted her tripod.

‘We probably won’t have to. I expect whatever-it-is is within arm’s reach. Or do you think it’ll be like the hidey-hole in
Tosca?’

‘More like the well in
The Treasure of Abbot Thomas.’

‘You mean when the bag put its arms round his neck?’

‘Oh, thanks, Kim.’

‘Get out of shot, now.’

‘Yes, boss.’

After a good deal of scrabbling, straining and swearing, not to mention sweating, since the temperature was well into the eighties already, the two of them managed to remove the rotting wooden cover from the well. Though in an advanced stage of decomposition, its underside coated with black slime, the wood was nearly six inches thick and still able to drive splinters into unwary hands.

Eventually they wrestled it loose and, panting, surveyed the black hole thus revealed, lined with glistening brick.

Far below, a dim gleam spoke of water.

Kim felt gingerly around inside the rim, but found nothing which suggested a hidey-hole: no crevices, no tell-tale loose bricks. She eyed the rusty iron rungs set into the wall with displeasure.

‘Looks like
Tosca
after all,’ she said gloomily. ‘Do those rungs look strong enough to you?’

‘’Fraid so,’ replied Alan. ‘I suppose I’d better go first, since I’ve got the light.’ He peered down into the depths. ‘Looks a bit Stygian.’

‘Okay, Mephistopheles, down you go. I’ll be right behind you.’

Alan knelt on the edge of the well and reached for the first rung with a tentative foot. After half a dozen cautious downward steps he began to trust them, and looked up at Kim’s face in a circle of sky.

‘I think it’s okay,’ he called, and an instant later the daylight was obscured by her descent. Alan gritted his teeth and continued, trying hard not to think of M R James. The camcorder in its case tended to unbalance him as it swung from his shoulder, and the well’s damp chill made him shiver after the dry baking heat of the day.

He had not gone very far down - twenty feet or so - when he discovered an opening, and shone his torch into it. There was a confused rattling sound, startlingly loud in the confined space of the well, barking at the echoes.

‘What the hell was that?’ demanded Kim in a strangled whisper.

‘Dunno.’ Alan crab-walked into the tunnel, and discovered the answer almost immediately as it widened into a cavern. ‘Bats! Must be hundreds of ’em. Oh, yuck.’

‘Bats?’

‘Look.’ A little nervously, he directed his light into the cave. Like fleshy fruit the bats hung, softly clattering their leather wings, taking startled flight when sudden and unnatural day hit them. He felt, rather than saw, Kim arrive beside him.

‘Jesus, did you ever see anything like it?’

‘Only on David Attenborough programmes. Be careful - I don’t think bat shit is very nice to get on you.’ ‘I don’t much care to get any kind of shit on me, thanks.’

‘It’s got vast quantities of ammonia in it, apparently.’

‘I can smell that.’

The cave, they found, was shaped like a bulbous mineral-water bottle, tapering at the far end. Its sides were rough enough for Alan to think that it was a natural cavern, discovered when the well was sunk.

‘Well, Toto, I guess we’re not in Kansas any more,’ remarked Kim, who had always entertained a fondness for
The Wizard of Oz.
A moment later, she added, ‘There must be another way out over there, otherwise how do the bats get in and out?’

‘Well, that’s a bit academic at the moment, because I don’t intend to go any further into this cave than I am at the moment, and I don’t give a bugger how the bats get in and out.’ Alan kicked crossly at the detritus underfoot, causing noisome dust to rise.

‘What about the umbrella?’ Kim asked suddenly.

‘What?’

‘The one in the car. Should stop the worst of it. Worth a try?’

‘We’ve come this far. I suppose so.’

‘You were the one who wanted to come in the first place.’

‘Yes. I know.’

‘Well, you keep the light. I can see all right. Don’t go away.’

Minutes later Kim returned with the dilapidated black folding umbrella which lived in her car (and rather resembled a dead bat itself), and the two of them picked their way delicately and on the uncomfortable verge of hysteria across the filthy floor of the cave, beneath the legion of hanging bats.

Why, Alan wondered absently, were bats so vilified? He knew part of the answer: their nocturnal ways, their ugliness, their smell
(en masse,
anyway) - their association with unpleasant legends.

Yet he had always been quite fond of the little pipistrelles which swooped on noiseless naked wings in the country dusk; this myriad of cave-born rodents, however, unsettled him at a level which was very profound. He supposed he was subject to atavism, after all.

‘It’s illegal to disturb them, you know,’ he whispered to Kim, who snorted.

‘Tell me how to get to the other side
without
disturbing the little bastards,’ she said.

Wings rattled as they passed, and Alan strained to hear the bats’ silent sonar. At length they reached the far side of the cave, which narrowed to a tunnel which a skinny man might just squeeze through.

‘Well, now we know how the bats get in and out,’ said Kim.

‘Yes, but we’re no nearer to finding whatever’s supposed to be here.’

‘Maybe someone else got here first.’

‘Ah hell, I hope not. All that brainwork and nothing to show for it.’

Alan swung his light morosely around, setting bats skittering as it passed them.

‘No. Nobody else would be daft enough.’ Suddenly he spotted something on the wall, and back-tracked with the torch. ‘Kim!’

Together they peered at the roughly-carved inscription.

AN THOU CANST READ THE vii BELLS WHEREAT THE MAGUS DWELLS THOU MAYST KNOW A THING MOST RARE WHEN THAT THE MESSAGE IS MADE CLERE.

‘Oh, no,’ groaned Kim. ‘A treasure hunt. I hate this sort of thing, I really do. Trust you.’

‘One reference,’ said Alan gloomily. ‘Just one reference to bells in the Abbey, and who knows what became of them?’

‘Hold the light steady. We should be okay with this film.’

Later, in the pub, they held a council of war, having brushed cobwebs and other less identifiable though equally unpleasant things off each other as best they could.

‘What we need is a local history society,’ said Alan.

‘No, first let’s see if there’s a second-hand bookshop in town, or even a junk shop. You never know.’

‘I have the feeling none of this is going to be easy.’

Good fortune was not evident at first. In a narrow musty bookshop, the kind of establishment Alan was chronically unable to pass by, they searched the shelves in vain until the proprietor, a middle-aged man with a professorial air, took pity on them.

‘Can I help? Looking for anything in particular?’ he asked.

Kim, who had been momentarily seduced by a book of old photographs of the area, jumped slightly, but Alan replied eagerly.

‘Fenstanton Abbey. I believe it had a tower, and bells?’

‘Yes - though hardly one person in a million would know that. Well?’

‘We’re ringers, you see—’

‘Alan, he doesn’t want to know that.’

‘Ah, were you ringing over at All Saints, earlier?’

‘No, not today, but I came here a week ago for a ring, and you see, I’m a writer, and I sort of got interested in the Abbey. So we thought we’d poke around again today, and see if we could find any details.’

‘Like what happened to the bells,’ put in Kim.

The bookseller puffed out his cheeks and expelled air. ‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘I’ve got a fair amount of stuff at home - which I suppose you
could
see, but I don’t want to let it out of my sight. No offence, but I don’t know you.’

Alan suppressed a surge of anger. ‘Just
seeing
it—’ he began.

‘That’s fine,’ Kim interrupted smoothly. ‘I can photograph anything we need, if that’s all right with you. I’ve brought plenty of film.’

‘Well, if you’d like to come back about five,’ said the bookseller, ‘you can toddle along with me. My name’s James Rendall, by the way.’

‘Alan Bellman.’

‘Good name for a bellringer. Sorry, I expect everyone says that.’

‘And this is Kim Sotheran.’

The bookseller shook hands. ‘You know about Roger Southwell, do you?’

‘Only that he was some kind of magician.’

‘Alchemist, really,’ James Rendall corrected him, ‘although his interests seem to have extended quite a bit further than that. Anyway, they say he hung bells in his tower to keep away an evil spirit which was haunting him. But you can read all about that later.’

The Journal of Fabian Stedman
I: The Maiden

It is a proverb with us in England, that every pavan has his galliard: by which expression is declared, That be a man never so wise or learned, yet every sage hath his moments of folly. Which expression is most apt in the matter of all men, for who can declare himself free from folly, whether it be in the cause of love, or avarice, or power over other men?

This day to ring St-Mary bells with the Scholars (the weather excessive hot and dusty), whither by and by comes Roger Southwell, journeyman to my master Daniel Pakeman (and wherefore they call themselves Scholars is a mystery to me for there is not amongst them any virtuoso or learned man that I can see); had nothing of him but nonsense, I never knew such a fellow for taking offence, or giving of it; he is forever drab-bing an you believe his tales; for myself I do not, he being so truthful as a Dutchman.

I took but little note on Roger, for I was listening to an account of the charring of sea-coal that Hugh Bishop had lately witnessed, in order to burn out the sulphur and render it sweet; how twas done was but by burning the coals in such earthen-pots as the glass-men melt their metal in, so firing these coals without consuming them; they put a bar of iron in each crucible or pot, the bar having on one end an hook so that the melted coals may be drawn out sticking to the iron. Then they do beat off the half-exhausted cinders, now deprived of their sulphury and arsenic malignity, the which can then make up sweet and clear pleasant chamber fires.

I fell once again to thinking of this ringing of bells, the which is only practised in this isle of ours: How admirable it is that in such a short time it hath increased, and that the depth of its intricacy is found out; for within these thirty or forty years last past, changes were not known, nor thought possible to be rang. And now we ring changes,
ad infinitum,
nor can any number confine us.

And on a paper I did prick out a pattern that I think three bells might follow most melodiously, that one might then leave the pattern and be replaced by another, that even the treble might ring, for wherefore should he be ever constrained as he is? But I will think more on this.

To return to this black man Roger Southwell, who was in such an ill humour this day, speaking much nonsense about the daughter of Master Pakeman (at which Nate Mundy hath nonsense of his own, that Master Pakeman hath a young mistress, the which I can tell him is not true; —I have seen her, she is most fair, quoth he; however I do believe that all he hath beheld is the man’s daughter Ann).

Roger saith he hath seen the girl in church, and means to seduce her Attentions through his art. For I must note that he fancies himself an alchemist or magus or some such; though for myself I think a man must study many years and be of altogether more sober temperament than the good Roger, an he would be a mage. Though I have seen Ann Pakeman myself and she is a comely Maiden, who would not be like to look with favour upon the journeyman of her Father.

However I expressed my scepticism to Master Southwell who then addressed me thus:

—Fabian do you come to my lodging when that we are done here and I shall show you how it is that I mean to woo Mistress Ann.

And I would fain see this thing, as what man would not, and went with him to his laboratory, and found it most wondrous strange. Tis a mean little attic, if the truth be told, and nothing in it but a pallet and by the window (the which letteth in so much light as a penny-candle) a bench.

Twas this bench that drew my attention, for upon it sate all manner of arcane things, alembics, glass ware of many and divers kinds, sulfurous powders, bottles and jars, dried animals, and, horrid to relate, human bones and a very skull, a mortar and pestle (the which inside was most strangely discoloured), divers books (one lay open, I read its title,
Pretiosa Margarita Novella,
the which I understood to signify,
A New Pearl of Great Price),
and many other items too numerous to mention.