The Triple Goddess (57 page)

The group having reassembled in the breakfast-room, and agreed that there was nothing further to be done but wait, they availed themselves of the coffee, bread rolls, butter, and jam on the table, and the fresh tea that Mrs Skillet brought in, and argued over which football teams were most likely to score or no-score a draw, or to win their matches on Saturday.

As they drank and munched and disputed, they contemplated their employer, whose face, having exhausted the more colourful shades of the spectrum, was now ashen grey.

The valet remarked that the bloody quacks were taking their sweet time about it; and it was the opinion of the cook that if they didn’t get a move on it would be too late. Not that she put any faith in doctors, she added, and looking for a new job at her age was going to be a right royal pain in the A.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

That was not quite all. The following evening, when Arbella got home from making the arrangements for her father’s funeral—the continental trip with Jeanette had been postponed by twenty-four hours—there was an envelope waiting for her on the hall table.

She did not open it immediately, but took it up to her room that night. And then it was only after she got into bed, having spent a long time sitting on the window-seat looking out into the balmy night, and watching a nearly full moon riding high behind a veil of cloud, that she remembered it.

There was no letter inside, only a few sheets of old and yellowed foolscap paper, which had been pinned together with a size twelve Gold-Ribbed Hare’s Ear trout fly. The writing on the white pasteboard card that was also enclosed was spidery, but recent, and might have been inscribed with an italic-nibbed dip pen and Indian ink:

There is a lovers’ bond so strong that, irrespective of how long and distant their separation has been, and through however many incarnations they have been apart, the souls of those it unites are sure to be reconciled.

The faded brown, rather childish, script on the pages that Arbella read before she turned out the light was that of three poems. She read them aloud, slowly because she wanted to, and also because of the condition of the paper, which made the words difficult to decipher.

The pages were crumpled and possibly travel-stained, as if they had been carried in a pocket and exposed to the elements. As she did so, memories rose within her like the camphored contents of a storage chest, where they had long lain between layers of tissue paper.

This was the first of the verses:

De profundis

Can a thought meet a thought, purely in air?

Unwritten; unspoken, just understood

Between people who used to care about

Things in common, sharing what they could?

In downtime of the world, when we are blind,

When systems and formalities are dead,

Our tides flow not as tabled by the mind

But in uncharted currents of the head.

What stimulates a song to prompt a voice?

What quickens a pulse and fractures the dark

With light? How can two souls be ever at rest

Who lie nightly awake and await for Dawn’s

Alighting on the jewelled lawn, and tripping

Barefoot to the open window wherein

Love, never made, is reborn?

And the second:

Muse

At the furthest remove, without writing or speech,

An empathy can last forever;

In a vacuum, in some distant place beyond reach,

There are ties that no one can sever.

Please believe, my own self, wherever you are,

What cleanses my heart of regret

Is this truth I send winging to you from afar:

We were married the moment we met.

At the bottom of the page was inscribed, with self-conscious ornateness:

  Wat Ralegh, San Thomé, Guiana, 1617

Sixteen seventeen was the year that Sir Walter’s son died. Which meant that, at the time the fateful expedition was conceived, he was the same age as Arbella was now.

The third and last poem was by contrast written in an elegant feminine hand, and entitled
Penelope
:

When your ship returns

Guided by the stars;

When the bird of your arrival,

Straddling the cross-currents,

Lands after arduous adventures...

I will be here to greet you.

Assisted by much reading

In palmistry and horoscope,

I have drawn out the fabric of time

Upon the loom of circumstance,

Daily unmaking and reweaving

A shroud of memories.

One day I’ll sense an imminence,

And hear a cold floating

Harmonic scale; a bubbling

Curdling curlew’s cry, skirling

In hollow notes that chute

Like capsules of loneliness,

Amid the bellowing wind and

Billowing clouds that clutch

And dance across a light-besotted sky.

See how angular
at first we are

In unaccustomed company,

Home after so many adventures,

Storms and squalls; the scudding

Grey and long long rain.

Now understand, what seems like

Centuries ago, we never could,

Nor should, have made farewell;

Apart we never were,

Nor could we be, nor will;

For at that moment when you left

We were joined as on a monument

Standing, still, for ever.

The signature was that of

  Arbella Stuart.

OPHELIA

Chapter One

Time was, somewhere between then and now, a devil lady decided to leave her practice in London, where she was living in a flat in Belgravia. The competition had become too intense for her liking; the rent had gone up for the third time in the last three years; and the idea of leading a less cramped and more easy-going life was very appealing to her after many stressful years in the city. So the devil lady—or DL as we may call her, since in Hell one is not permitted a name—sent in a request to HQ, and, after the usual delays, was granted permission to look for a patch of turf in the countryside and to buy it if the price was reasonable.

Truth to tell, the DL did not have any choice in the matter. Younger, more energetic devils were vying for positions in the most densely populated urban areas. They made a sickening habit of exceeding their quotas, and as methods became more sophisticated, and criteria for evaluating results more stringent, many senior devils were finding that their own returns were inadequate by comparison. There was only one thing to do if the devil lady was to preserve a shred of dignity, and that was to head for the hills.

One day as she was leafing through
Country Life
, in the back where the minor sales were listed, the devil lady saw a box advertising a small village in Harrumphshire, freehold ownership of which came with the title of Lady of the Manor. This tickled her fancy and the price was decent enough. Property prices and the value of land were negligible in these remote parts, where commerce was non-existent compared to those in the metropolis.

The DL called the estate agent and made an appointment to view what was on offer. When she arrived, travelling first class on the train in an orthodox manner, the agent met her at the station and showed her around the neighbourhood in his Volkswagen Beetle. It did not take very long, and everything, though modest and unassuming in the extreme, seemed satisfactory. When the tour was complete, the devil lady asked to see the worst that there was to see. The man was taken aback; he thought for a minute and eyed her tail, the tip of which was shaped like an arrow or half a lozenge and peeking from the vent in her coat. The devil lady flipped the garment over it, but it crept out, curious as to what was going on.

Finally the agent sighed and whispered, ‘Well, there is a church. Sort of a church. Saxon, originally.’

The DL’s eyes flashed red. ‘Church?’ she snapped; ‘why, may I inquire, don’t the particulars say anything about a church?’

‘Well ma’am, it’s only a small place, and very run down,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t think it’d be of interest. It’s not included in the details because it has no value, being property of the Church of England. You can find it on the map: it’s marked with a cr.... Should you want to, of course. You may prefer not. No worries. But you wouldn’t be able to turn it into a house, or use it to store grain in, for example, unless it was deconsecr...’

‘Not of interest?’ The devil lady bristled. ‘All churches,’ she said, ‘are interesting to one;’—she stuck a long fingernail into the agent’s chest, and he winced as she prodded him with it in time with her words—‘and one
always
...
needs
...to
know
...
where
they
are
. Though, for your information, I’m what you might call Low Church. Now take me to this place; immediately,
s’il vous plaît...
or even if you don’t.’

The agent did as he was told, and indeed the church was far from impressive. It had a tired air to it and was badly in need of restoration. Also it was very cold: the temperature was lower inside than it was out- because the heating system, if it existed, was either not on or did not work. The plaster was dripping with moisture and falling from the walls and ceiling in chunks; there was a musty smell of mould, and mushrooms were growing in the corners. When they came out and walked round the back, they looked up and saw a tree growing from the parapet round the bell-tower, and a lot of moss on the roof.

Now that she had viewed the
tout ensemble
, the DL was somewhat placated. ‘Are regular services held here, every Sunday?’

‘Well,’ the agent replied, talking fast, ‘I’m not sure about that, not being of the religious persuasion myself, no ma’am, not me, no way no how. And judging from the state of the place, you wouldn’t think it was in use hardly at all if that. Everything is so old. My wife, who likes these buildings for their architectural interest only, you understand, should you care to, you may not, showed me a Saxon Mass-clock scratched on the wall.

‘Ah, here it is, see…if you like, on the corner of the porch. Now that’s what I call interesting. Possibly. Or not. It’s a sun-dial, basically, that’s what it is, a very basic one, and this hole in the middle is where the metal “style”, or
gnomon
, went. My wife, she told me that, she’s clever, she is, not like me. These grooves here on the corners of the stones were made by archers sharpening their arrows. Fancy that. Scratch-dials were how the field-workers knew what time it was, before alarm clocks were invented, and they were dependent on someone ringing the church bell to tell them when to get up, and when to go to Ma..., when to kneel in the fields and say their...and when to knock off work, ’smore like it, and go to dinner. Though perhaps only in the summertime, eh? Hrgh hrgh.