The Salisbury Manuscript (21 page)

Hogg’s Corner

Several miles away, in Northwood House, Fawkes was awakened by a shuffling and snorting from the horses. Fawkes – the coachman and valet and factotum to Percy Slater – chose to sleep in a loft above the stables rather than in the cold and cavernous main house. His master made no objection. Percy Slater ran an odd establishment, or more accurately he didn’t run it at all but let it fall to slow ruin about his ears. Fawkes might sleep where he pleased as long as he was available when required to convey his master about the place and for other odd jobs. So Fawkes had fashioned for himself quite a cosy area at the gable end which was once used for storage. He had equipped it with a simple bed and a chair and a little table. He liked the way he could look down on the world, even if it was no more than the world of the stables. It gave him the same feeling of apartness as driving a coach. He liked the privacy of the stables, the absence of visitors, not that anyone visited the main house. He probably preferred the company of horses to people. Percy Slater had once told him that he was like Lemuel Gulliver in the story but Fawkes did not know what the man was talking about.

Now Fawkes heard stealthy movements from down below and was wide awake at once. It was that sound which had disturbed the horses. Fawkes was used to the stable noises, the sound of exhaled breath, the creak of the wooden stalls during the night. But this was a human being.

He took hold of an iron bar which lay beside the bed, kept there for just these eventualities. A ladder led up from ground level to rest against one of a pair of cross-beams that supported the planks or flooring of Fawkes’s quarters. There was no light in the stables but Fawkes’s eyes were used to the dark, and he could just make out the uprights of the ladder from where he lay on his bed, snugged against the end wall. He listened as a first, experimental foot was placed on the bottom rung, then a second foot on the second rung, and so on. The ladder creaked slightly.

Fawkes waited, lying on his back, his head turned sideways to watch the top of the ladder, his right hand gripping the iron bar. Fawkes was not frightened. He did not scare easily. The advantage lay with him, since he was awake and the intruder did not know he was awake. Besides, he had an idea who it might be. In due course, a cap and a head appeared at the top of the ladder.

‘Stop right there, mate,’ he said. ‘I can crack you over the nut before you get a foot higher in the world.’

‘Why’d you want to do that, Seth Fawkes?’ said the head. ‘I mean you no harm.’

‘I know you and your games.’

‘Well, I’m a-coming up now.’

The head grew to a pair of shoulders, then added arms, torso and legs. There was something monkey-like about the figure which now drew itself over the edge of Fawkes’s living quarters. Meantime, Fawkes had swung from his bed and was fiddling with an oil lamp. But he kept the iron bar within reach just as he kept an eye on the new arrival until he had got the lamp hissing and glowing.

‘How’d you get in here?’ he said.

‘Through the door. And, before that, over the wall, Seth.’

‘It’s a high wall,’ said Fawkes. He was so unused to being called by his first name, rather than the more customary Fawkes, that to hear it was as odd as being addressed by a stranger. Yet the man sharing his little eyrie in the stables was, regrettably, no stranger.

‘Leaped it, didn’t I,’ said the intruder, referring to the wall.

‘Regular spring-heeled Jack, aren’t you, Adam?’

‘Enough of the complimenting. It’s a bloody cold night out. Got anything warm to drink?’

Fawkes had a bottle of port, filched from his master. Reluctantly, he uncorked it and passed it to the other man. He watched as Adam swung himself round so that he was sitting with his legs dangling into space. He observed that Adam was wearing a kind of knapsack, which gave him a hunched appearance. The other man threw back his head and tilted the bottle to swallow, exposing his neck and his Adam’s apple. A single blow there would do it, thought Fawkes.

Adam put down the bottle. He wiped his mouth. He looked slyly at Fawkes as he handed back the bottle.

‘I can guess what you’re thinking,’ he said.

‘Guess away.’

‘One quick push and I’d topple off here, wouldn’t I?’

Almost right, thought Fawkes, though it was more of a blow than a push that he was considering.

‘Why would I want to do that?’ he said, aloud.

‘To pay me back for that little joke on Salisbury station,’ said Adam.

‘Joke? Oh,
that
little joke. You pushed me on to the line.’

‘You were not pushed but fell. Just toppled off the platform when you saw me coming.’

‘You speak as if you was out strolling. Saw you
sneaking
up rather.’

‘Anyway, there was no danger, no train coming. You got up and vanished. No harm done. Just my bit of mischief after a good day out.’

Fawkes recalled that recent day out. He’d come in by train from Downton to visit a certain padding-ken or low boarding house run by a Mrs Mitchell. Fawkes had an understanding with Mrs Mitchell which went back many years. After their session together he’d ended up in the pub called The Neat-Herd (but universally known as The Nethers). There he had encountered Adam, not for the first time. They’d drunk quite a bit before Fawkes had to leave for the Downton train. Adam had been in an especially sprightly mood and had accompanied Fawkes to the station, darting around in the black garb he favoured. He was like a devil on wheels. Fawkes thought he’d got rid of him finally but his shadow had played that last trick on him on the station platform, bursting out to surprise him like some silly kid. Fawkes had been pissed enough to topple on to the track but retained enough of his wits to scramble out of the way pretty damned quick.

‘You do like mischief and games, don’t you, Adam?’ said Fawkes now, squinting down his forefinger as if he were aiming a gun. ‘You always have liked a spot of mischief.’

‘Keeps me going,’ said the other happily.

There was an irritating bounce to Adam, as if he was never going to be troubled or put down by anything. Seth Fawkes knew that bounce only too well. He said, ‘What do you want here?’

‘Your master asleep?’

"Spect so. Most honest people are at this hour.’

‘Your master honest? Ha!’

‘Beware of your tongue.’

‘I know Mr Percy Slater and his honesty. Didn’t he commission me to do a little job of breaking and entering a man’s room in a hotel because he wanted to know what documents that man was carrying? Letters and such to do with the
honest
Slaters.’

‘You should thank me for that commission, Adam. It was me as put your name forward to my master, knowing he wanted a spot of dirty work done.’

‘Well, thank you, Seth Fawkes. I am forever obligated to you. That shows you don’t bear me any hard feelings for that bit of larking about at Salisbury station. Your mistress now, is she at Northwood House tonight?’

‘Mrs Slater is not here from one year’s end to another, as you know. She stays in London.’

‘What about the old woman?’

‘You mean Nan? You can say her name.’

‘Does she sleep tight?’

‘Don’t know, Adam. She don’t sleep here in the stables anyway.’

‘We won’t be disturbed then.’

‘Disturbed in what?’

‘We’re going on a little search,’ said Adam.

He shrugged the knapsack off his shoulders and unstrapped it. He drew some sheets of paper from it and began to study them.

‘Pardon me,’ said Fawkes. ‘You may be going searching, but I am staying here. For I have noticed that it is the middle of the night.’

‘Then we shan’t be seen.’

‘We won’t be able to
see
neither.’

‘We shall. The night is clear. No mist, no fog. There is a little moon to light our way.’

‘Whatever you want to do you can do by daylight.’

‘Too much risk. Besides, you know I like the dark. I work better then.’

‘I’m staying here,’ said Fawkes, but he spoke without conviction.

‘Pardon me but you are not staying here. I need your head. You know the way to Hogg’s Corner?’

‘It’s not a corner but a few oak trees behind the house. I don’t know why it’s called Hogg’s Corner.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ said the other. ‘That’s where we’re going.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve got a little scent that’s atickling my nostrils, a scent coming from Hogg’s Corner. You can bring that lamp with you.’

‘Don’t need a light. I know this place like the back of my hand.’

‘But I don’t after all this time,’ said Adam. ‘Besides I may want to do a spot of reading later. You got a spade in here?’

‘There’s a shovel for mucking out with,’ said Fawkes.

‘That’ll have to do. Get it as we go. And give me a swig from that bottle again. Have one yourself while you’re about it.’

Fawkes handed over the bottle of port, marvelling at the cheek of the man. Offering him to drink out of his own store! Once again, as Adam tilted back his head to swallow, he was tempted – very tempted – by the idea of striking him on the exposed throat. But he did nothing apart from take a draught from the bottle after Adam had returned it, in his own good time. Adam stuffed the papers back into the knapsack and slung it over his shoulder as a sign that he was ready. Then he shot out his arm and did something odd. He pressed his thumb into the great dimple on Fawkes’s chin.

‘There,’ he said, ‘been wanting to do that for a long time, brother.’

‘Keep your dirty hands to yourself,’ said Fawkes. ‘Don’t be so familiar.’

The two men clambered down the ladder to the ground floor of the stable and made their way past the stalls. The horses – there were only three of them since Percy Slater kept as reduced an establishment in here as he did elsewhere – moved uneasily at the presence of a stranger.

Fawkes found the shovel. He was quite glad to be holding something which might double as a weapon even if it was awkward carrying both shovel and lamp. He took care to walk behind Adam, holding up the lamp to throw some illumination ahead of them both. They entered the yard and Fawkes paused before unlatching the gate, wondering whether Adam had really come over the wall of the stable yard. They stepped out into the open.

‘What now?’ he said.

‘Kill that light,’ said Adam.

‘There’s no one to see,’ said Fawkes, though he’d earlier claimed not to need a light.

‘Even so.’

Fawkes obediently doused the light. They waited for a few moments until their eyes grew used to the dark. As Adam had said, the night was for once free of mist or fog. A quarter moon hung in the sky. The bulk of Northwood House was to one side, beyond the wall of the stable yard.

‘Lead the way, my friend,’ said Adam. ‘Take us to Hogg’s Corner.’

This was what usually happened when Fawkes was in company with Adam. He disliked and sometimes feared the other, but he tended to comply with his suggestions or orders.

They rounded the house and skirted the terrace and the planted beds which extended beyond it. The area was as neglected as the rest of the estate. Weeds sprouted between the flagstones of the terrace and the flower beds were barren or bedraggled. Fawkes looked back at the house. No lights in any of the windows but then there were rarely lights in Northwood House.

There had once been a clear division between the cultivated area and the parkland beyond the terrace and flower beds and lawn, marked by a ha-ha as the land dropped away. But the grass had grown up on both sides and the stone of the hidden retaining wall had been allowed to crumble, so the division was no longer clear even by day-light. All that was left was an abrupt drop between the two levels.

Fawkes knew it was coming and he knew that the drop wasn’t much more than four feet or so. Placing shovel and light on the edge, he leaped off into the dark. He half hoped Adam might leap after him and sprain his ankle or worse. Adam did jump but he was so light and limber that he seemed to bounce back up as he hit the ground, like a jack-in-the-box.

‘See there,’ said Fawkes, once he’d retrieved the shovel and the lamp. He was pointing ahead of him. ‘Those trees there, that’s Hogg’s Corner.’

The two men set off across the rough ground in the direction of a cluster of trees which stood in isolation on a kind of knoll about two hundred yards away. The little hillock stuck up oddly, as if a great head adorned with a few wild tufts had abruptly thrust itself up through the ground. An owl hooted. The men’s breath frosted in the air. The grass underfoot was so thick and tussocky that they were almost wading through it. The moon gave off a feeble glow. As they approached the oaks the ground began to rise slightly. It was obvious that the trees were old from their outlines alone. The trunks were thick and the branches twisted like ropes. The trees were grouped in a rough circle on the fringes of the knoll but it was so ragged and incomplete that it did not seem as though they been planted deliberately in that way. There was a cleared space in the middle like a bald patch.

As Fawkes and Adam moved under the low-lying branches, their feet crunched on the nuts and mast strewn on the ground. Adam halted in the centre of the approximate circle.

‘Now light the lamp again,’ he instructed his companion.

When Fawkes had done as he was told, Adam crouched down and loosened the knapsack from his back. By the light from the lamp, he examined a sheet of paper which he drew from the bag and laid flat on the ground. He stabbed his finger at a point on the sheet. Fawkes stood behind him, holding the shovel. He might have brought it down on the other’s head. But he didn’t. Instead he followed the next lot of instructions.

There was a reason why Seth Fawkes did nothing to Adam, despite the provocation and the opportunities. There was a reason he did not strike him across his exposed throat or whack him over the head with a spade. It was because the two men were brothers and because the fraternal bond still held, frayed as it was. Seth Fawkes was the older by a little more than a year. Until recently, they had not seen each other since childhood. Both had been born to a couple who worked on the Northwood estate in old George Slater’s time. They came from a large family in which all the children were given Old Testament names. Discipline was strong but there was also some attempt at education by the mother. The children had been taught to read and write, in a rudimentary fashion. Despite the mother’s care, though, Seth and Adam were the only survivors.