The Triple Goddess (104 page)

‘Brazen hussy,

Very fussy,

Loves to gussy,

Never mussy.’

And in jocular vein,

‘As I was walking by St Paul’s

A woman grabbed me by the…arm;

She said you look like a man with pluck,

Come inside and have a…cuppa tea.

It might cost a tanner, it might be a bob,

It all depends on the size of your…mug.’

Lastly, as he saw the familiar glimmer of lights below, Dark orated a couplet by that same Smith of Smiths, Sydney, quondam Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, who was so often quoted by one who was not dear to him:

‘Serenely full, the epicure would say

“Fate cannot harm me, I have dined today.”’

Chapter Thirty-Six

‘You know, Violet,’ Dark mused the following night after dinner, as he sat in his comfortable chair in the hall living area before the fireplace and removed the band from a cigar; ‘I was thinking about what you were saying about dismantling the Church of England. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a jolly good idea, but I wonder whether it’s worth all the aggro. The Church seems to be doing such a good job of destroying itself, we might as well sit back and let it finish itself off.

‘It would save a lot of effort on our parts. I mean, here we are, an intelligent couple relaxing in each other’s company, and enjoying the finer things in life. We could use the time to travel and see the world. Thank you.’

This last comment was addressed to the cigar-cutter, which, having propelled itself through the air to snip the reverend’s cigar, was drifting back to its station next to the table humidor. Dark always got a kick out of this, as well as the way a flame appeared from nowhere dead on cue, and an ashtray skidded up the moment it was needed.

He moistened the cigar with his lips, rolled the straight-cut end in the heat, and drew it slowly alight with soft puffs. Then he closed his eyes and buried his proboscis in his brandy glass to inhale the heady fumes.

When he did not receive a response to his suggestion, the reverend withdrew his nose and looked to Violet...and sat bolt upright. For Lady Enderby was gimleting her protégé’s skull with the most frightening stare, as if he were a rat. Dark’s skin prickled; he began to sweat and the hair rose on his scalp. The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees, the cigar pulled from his mouth and extinguished itself in his brandy, and the glass fell to the floor and broke. Reaching behind him in his chair, he grabbed the cushion and hugged it to his chest like a teddy bear.

He prayed to himself that he might have dozed off, and be having a bad dream brought on by his unaccustomed gourmet intake playing tricks on his brain.

Violet spoke in a voice that was the more sinister for being quiet. ‘I think tonight it’s best you don’t return home, Fletcher. Unshakeable resolve is what I told you I needed from you. I was under the impression that we understood each other.’

Dark, knowing now that he was not asleep, whimpered, ‘We do, Violet, we do.’

‘I’m not so sure. I’m going to take you in.’

‘T-take me in?’

‘Give you an opportunity to reflect, and work on your attitude. The timing, though regrettable, is opportune. As it happens I have today been advised that there’s a matter requiring my urgent attention at home. It seems that one of my erstwhile colleagues has decamped the organization...done a runner, a bunk. I’ve been asked to incorporate his responsibilities into mine. I’ll have a seat on the Board and, under the rules of rotation, an opportunity to become, in due course...a very important person indeed. Another first of the sex, in fact.’

Lady Enderby’s tone returned to normal, the fire died out of her eyes, the temperature went up fifteen degrees, and she shifted her glance. ‘ffanshawe, escort Fletcher to the Dark Tower immediately. The Dark Tower! It could have been named for him, couldn’t it Fanny?, so he should be quite at home there. It is time to wash this man right out of my hair and get some highlights.
Jamais plus la politesse
.’

Still clutching the cushion like a lifebuoy, Dark shrank into his seat as ffanshawe, wearing a hideous smirk, bore down on him, plucked the cushion from his grasp, sent it skidding across the floor and pulled him to his feet. Violet, ignoring her guest’s stammered apologies for his stupid and ill-considered remarks, picked up a copy of
The Lady
and began perusing it.

‘The stairs were dark, the stones were dank,

The chains around his ankles clanked;

The air was fetid, stagnant, rank;

The clothes upon his body stank.

Light fled before them. Eery the gloom,

Bone-chilling the looming darkness

As the eye of Evil took in his soul,

And enveloping Despair entombed

Him in its barren womb.’

The words came easily to the reverend’s mind as, after passing through the green baize door that separated the mistress of the Moated Grange’s quarters from those of her domestic, and to the rear of the building, he dragged the ball and chain of his despair up the winding ascent of the Dark Tower.

For a tower it was and indisputably dark, and much higher than he was expecting, judging from the number of steps on the circular stone staircase.

Dark tried to focus on the indistinct figure ahead of Lady Enderby’s major-domo. ffanshawe was carrying a shapeless lump of candle on a saucer, the flame from which guttered and smoked in the draught caused by his motion. A ring of keys at his waist was so full that it bristled like a rolled porcupine. The indolent air seemed put out at the intrusion in its domain and, in the leaping light, fantastical silhouettes did a war dance on the curved walls.

The reverend did his best to pick out with eyes and feet the narrow and uneven steps before him, and keep up; but because ffanshawe held the candle before him, the miniature beacon was inadequate and he tripped frequently. When, many minutes later, he was sure that his legs were about to buckle under the strain, and the next stair proved not to be where it should have been, he lost his balance and pitched forward with the feeling that he was falling over a cliff. He just managed to recover himself in time.

ffanshawe turned and, as the orange flame flickered on the walls like the stripes on a tiger’s hide, the jarred Dark saw that they had arrived at a landing. Selecting a key, his guide inserted it into the lock of a small but solid-looking door, and turned it in the wards. It grated, and the hinges creaked as he turned the handle and pushed the door open with his shoulder—the wood had warped.

To the reverend’s relief, his escort went in first rather than stepping to the rear—apparently he did not consider his charge to be a flight risk, and Dark followed.

As ffanshawe revolved in the middle of the room the candlelight plucked the darkness like a dust-sheet off some simple furniture.

It was a round space, very small without being claustrophobic, and clean with no musty smell owing to the two windows being open. The ceiling sloped sharply, as if the room was immediately underneath the roof, so that a person of medium height could only stand upright in the centre of the room, the floor of which was bare except for a plain rug. The walls were whitewashed.

There was a deal table with a huge triple-wicked beeswax candle on it, a box of plain white stick candles and a supply of matches, a chair with a raffia seat, a three-quarter-length cheval adjustable mirror in a wooden frame, and, along one wall, a low-slung iron-framed bed.

There was no ceiling light and no evidence of any lamps or electrical sockets. The only source of heat was a little fireplace with a grate, next to which was a neat pile of logs that were not much larger than the kindling sitting next to them in a trug.

At ffanshawe’s beckon, Dark stooped under a low-framed connecting door and glimpsed a bathroom, so small-scale as to be almost dollhouse-like, with a half-sized tub, a toilet with a mahogany seat, and a marble-topped iron washstand with a ewer beside an enamel basin. White bath and hand towels were folded on an open shelf.

His duty done, the sallow cicerone was impatient to leave. He held his flame to the big candle on the table and the shadows disappeared. Then with a contemptuous look that said, ‘Here you are, and here you stay,’ ffanshawe walked out, pulled the door hard to, turned the key twice, and rattled the handle to verify that it was locked.

As the sound of ffanshawe’s footsteps down the stairs receded, silence filled the room with what came to Dark as a welcome neutrality after the stress of the last hour, and his first reaction to his imprisonment was a feeling not of captivity but release. Now that his gaoler had left, the atmosphere in the circular space of the cell, despite its Spartan nature and the lack of electric light, or perhaps because of them, was pleasant. The reverend brushed a dead moth from his sleeve and peeled a cobweb from his face. Going to the bed and lowering himself onto his knees, he looked underneath it, saw nothing there, got up, and pulled back the patchwork counterpane.

The sheets, which were of coarse stiff linen, had been aired and smelled of lavender, and there was a soft woollen blanket, and two more folded on the foot of the bed. Peeking from under the pillow was a flannel nightshirt, in a pocket of which, when he took it out and unfolded it, he found tucked a red Phrygian-style nightcap.

This he put on. After admiring the effect in the mirror, feeling a
frisson
of adventure he lit a small candle from the large one on the table and went into the bathroom. Another mirror, a round one for shaving, hung on the wall over the washstand, on which was set a new toothbrush in a mug, a tube of toothpaste, a bar of soap still in its wrapper, and a safety razor.

With relief came exhaustion, and now that he was satisfied that he had seen all there was to see, and that nothing was lurking to surprise him, Dark returned to the main room. He closed the windows, removed his outer clothes, pulled on the nightshirt, blew out the candles, slipped between the sheets, pulled the nightcap over his ears, and straightway fell asleep.

He was awoken at dawn by a noisy parliament of birds outside the window, and a lot of scratching under the eaves as they flew in and out about their business.

Despite the earliness of the hour he had slept continuously and felt refreshed. Lying on his back with his arms folded behind his head and twiddling his toes, he watched with fascination the moted beams of early sunlight that refracted through the diamond-leaded glass of the window onto the ceiling and floor. It occurred to him how different he felt to the way he normally did first thing at the Annexe.

Then he recalled his dream. He had been in the same room, but had contrived to crawl out of the window and clamber up a drainpipe onto a steep slate mansard roof. From there he saw that his accommodation was indeed in a chateau-style turret atop a tower, exposed and solitary, on the farthest side of the Grange from the entrance.

The rambling property was constructed in a combination of Elizabethan herringbone brick and Queen Anne styles. It was surrounded by gravelled courtyards and landscaped lawns and stone terraces, and wrought-iron gated and walled parterre. There were flower and rose, and greenhoused kitchen, and herb, gardens; and a bulrush-lined moat patrolled by various species of wildfowl including mallard, teal, widgeon, and moorhens, and on which two black swans were sailing with their wings arched over their backs.

Beyond the main courtyard with its fountain, and the hump-backed bridge, and areas of massive rhododendrons and other shrubbery, was an extensive parkland containing massive wide-spaced specimen trees, some of the aged limbs of which had been lopped and some propped up. Contained by a ha-ha and iron rail fences within the great park were herds of shaggy longhorn beef cattle, and milk cows, and a flock of sheep, and some paddocks with horses. Fallow deer were grazing on the edge of an area of woodland abutting a large lake.

Beyond the perimeter of the estate, interspersed by clearings was mile on mile of forest that stretched all the way to the northern range of hills at the horizon...which was strange because such natural density had not existed since mediaeval times.

There was no sign of any settlements or other buildings, or people.

The scenic part of Dark’s dream had ended abruptly, when he felt a rush of air above his head, and looked up to see an enormous white-feathered bird like a giant dove, swooping down upon him. Knocked off balance by the bird’s wings, he lost his grip and fell. Whether he hit the ground or not he did not know, for that was the end of his out-of-body experience and he had no recollection of anything further until he woke up.