White Stone Day (29 page)

48

Bissett
Grange, Oxfordshire When midnight mists are creeping, And all the
land is sleeping, Around me tread the mighty dead And slowly pass
away. She dreams about Eliza now, ever since her visit to the
graveyard. At times she see a falcon hovering overhead. Her mother
too appears in her dreams, and she sometimes encounters a hedgehog.
Though the dreams vary, their inspiration remains stubbornly
consistent: her discovery of the name Eliza. That she was mistaken
for a ghost. Mr Boltbyn's odd reaction to the name. The hedgehog in
the graveyard – all remain equally fresh in her mind, yet with
nothing to unite them but a suspicion she is at a loss to articulate.
As Mr Boltbyn once said, when one finds oneself at a loss, the thing
is to shake things up generally and then have another look. For this
reason, and because she can think of nothing better to do, and
because she is beginning to think there might be such a thing as
ghosts, Emma has decided to take her investigation further, beginning
with another visit to the graveyard – which, she suspects,
contains Eliza. She will undertake this exploration in the dead of
night. She will include Lydia, whose eyesight is particularly sharp.
Having formed their plan on Friday afternoon, the two sisters lie
awake until the hour when the house is utterly silent, then slip out
from under their sheets, creep out of the room, and fly silently down
the halls and stairs in their white nightgowns, like puffs of cotton.
Squeezing through the big front door into the night, they keep low to
the ground until they are in the shadow of the old clock turret; now
they break into a run – past the quadrangle and stables, around
the greenhouse with its roof of glass plates, past the paling onto
the footpath, which narrows into a sheep–walk beneath the
chestnut trees. 'This is the way to the graveyard,' whispers Emma.
'See how it was worn down by skeletons, on their way to the Roland
Stones? These are quite recent.' 'Emma, you said nothing about ghosts
when you proposed this 248 BISSETT GRANGE, OXFORDSHIRE adventure. You
know there is no such thing as ghosts.' 'That is true. But there are
skeletons – you have seen them in picture– books,
surely.' 'What do the skeletons do at the Roland Stones?' asks Lydia,
trying to maintain a grown–up tone of voice. 'They meet at the
Knight Stone and dance the Skeleton Dance,' replies Emma. 'Oh,' says
the younger girl, for Emma pronounced the words in such a
matter–of–fact way that she feels she really should know
about the Skeleton Dance, everyone else in Oxfordshire does. 'Come,
Lydia, let us proceed quickly. But watch how you go, for the path is
uneven. Bony feet have been puncturing the mud.' Puncturing the mud,
repeats Lydia to herself, then hurries after her sister, for it is
unthinkable that Emma should wander out of her sight. T am not fond
of graveyards, Emma. I hope we are not going to see skeletons there.'
'Not this time. Tonight we are going to visit Eliza.' 'Eliza? Do you
mean, the girl in the picture?' 'That is the one.' 'What is she doing
in the graveyard?' 'That is what we must find out.' At the entrance
to the ruined cemetery, the rusted gate pierces the darkness with its
sharp spikes, while the skulls, grinning in the uncertain
illumination of the moon, alternately appear as rough stone and as
sallow skin. Hello, they say to Emma. We have been waiting for your
return. 'You said there would be no skeletons, Emma,' Lydia whispers,
clutching her sister's arm. 'I am as frightened as ever I wish to
be.' From a nearby pond, a frog voices a reply – gibbet,
gibbet, gibbet . . . Holding Lydia's hand, Emma draws her sister
through the graveyard to the grave–mounds at the rear. Thin
grass covers the fresh soil like the hairs on the back of a man's
arm; how– ever, Emma is surprised to discover that someone has
scattered dozens of tiny white stones upon the most recent mound, in
the way that people litter rose petals upon the grave of a loved one.
Peeking out from between the blades of new grass, they seem to glow
in the dark. Lydia stoops down, picks up one of the pebbles and rolls
it between her fingers. 'Where do you suppose these came from?' 249
WHITE STONE DAY 'I have no idea,' Emma replies. 'I am certain they
were not here before.' 'It is a mystery,' says Lydia, who is glad she
came after all. 'We must speak to Mother about it.' 'And not Miss
Pouch?' 'No,' says Emma. 'I do not think Miss Pouch will do.' Danbury
has chosen to sleep alone tonight, for he has come down with a
headache. In his estimation, his headache stems from two causes. For
one, the mental exertion during Boltbyn's visit the previous day
tired him damnably. For another, he no longer finds Mrs Lambert's
physical presence such a pleasure. Notwithstanding a degree of animal
rapport between them, she has begun to tire him with her damned
questions, her ongoing enquiries as to what he is thinking. From a
drawer in his bedside table he retrieves the photograph – to
Danbury's eye at least, a masterpiece, and well worth the effort; in
fact, increasingly he has come to prefer the photograph to the woman
herself. It has been two hours since he took a sleeping–draught,
and still his headache pounds with an almost martial rhythm, yet
eventually he sinks into a restless doze, so that it takes him a
moment to distinguish the pounding in his head from the pounding upon
the door. 'Who the devil are you? Name yourself!' Lush's distinctive
shape appears, silhouetted in the doorway. 'It is about Mrs Lambert's
daughters, Harry.' 'Confound it, what the devil do you mean,
disturbing me at this time of night?' 'They are running willy–nilly
about the estate. They have seen the graveyard.' 'Why should I give a
damn?' 'You do not see it, do you, Harry? People are not quite as
stupid as you suppose. Fortunately for us both, I have arranged that
they be taken care of.' 'Put on a light, damn it, I'm not conducting
a discussion in the dark.' 'Put on the light yourself.' 'What the
devil do you mean by that?' T have come to extend my resignation,'
says Lush. 'Don't talk such rot.' 'Contrary to what you think, your
Grace, there are men who lead an 250 BISSETT GRANGE, OXFORDSHIRE
existence independent of you; men who don't give a tinker's damn
about Bissett Grange. As of tonight, Harry, I am one of them.' Before
the duke can come up with an appropriate reply, Lush turns his back
and exits, slamming the door as hard as ever he can. 251

49

The
Roland Stones Local legend has it that an invading king and his
retainers once stood upon this ridge, which commands a view of two
counties, and were met by the witch of Lower Shipton; when they
threatened her with their lances, she turned them into stone. Having
made her point, the witch turned herself into the elder tree that
still stands at the crest of the mound near the King's Stone, with
his men in a circle some distance away. Since that time, witch, king
and retainers have become friends. In the dead of night, they are
said to walk down the hill together, to drink from the spring. These
spectres may have settled their differences, yet a malignancy
remains. The neighbouring farmers, it is said, cannot keep their
cattle penned on certain nights, for the gates will be open come
morning. While clearing nearby fields, oxen refuse to pull certain
stones from the ground, for fear of an unseen presence below.
Occupants of homes and taverns trace lines with yellow chalk around
the hearth and along the edge of the floorboards, so that spirits may
not enter through the chimney or cellar. Whitty dislikes puns, but
the term 'roiling stones' in Boltbyn's rhyme is rather apt. He has
always avoided places such as this – superstitious locations
which attract credulous visitors from all over; yet this is the only
practical way to approach Bissett Grange. According to his
consultants in the Grass, the Danbury estate fairly prickles with
mantraps, silence– trained mastiffs and armed game–keepers.
Only the Roland Stones, being in public trust for the local tourism,
provide an approach across the lawns. Lawns were created by noblemen
so that an approaching enemy could be spotted far away. Hence,
Whitty's pre–dawn excursion. He pays the fare to the elderly
driver in his heavy black cloak; the man resembles a rook perched
upon a ledge, seen against the faint, reddish clouds – red sky
in the morning, sailors take warning– Therefore it is going to
rain – an unpleasant prospect, for Whitty has no umbrella. He
watches the vehicle clatter across the grass and down the road back
to town. As the silence of the countryside closes in, he becomes
252THE ROLAND STONES aware of a presence, or a number of presences –
angular giants in cloaks of stone. Having no heads to speak of, they
appear balefully non– committal. Feeling rather spooked, he
walks to the crest of the ridge overlooking the lawns of the estate,
a series of undulating rises, bordered on either side by thick woods.
Everything has been shaped as though it were designed to be viewed at
only one angle – from the eye of the House of Danbury. Again he
feels a presence, as though someone is watching. It occurs to him
that he has no idea what he is looking for. Indeed, that is the
Whitty way – to stumble into the unknown, then to blindly crash
into objects willy–nilly, with no means of stopping or steering
himself other than to throw out his face as an anchor. It can get a
man in trouble. It can leave him open to unexpected attack. In the
distance, the window–panes of a round room at the rear of the
house glitter in the low morning light as though beckoning him to
come down. And what is he going to do when he gets there – peer
into the windows? Prowl about until luncheon? You there! Halt! Stand
as you are! The voice appears to issue from the mouth of the cave
known as the Wayland Smithy, which is thought to contain the ghost of
a blacksmith. Once the correspondent's heart has returned to its
proper place in his chest, he is appalled but not altogether sur–
prised to see the tall, blanched form of the lieutenant–colonel,
followed by Corporal Weeks, emerge like newly risen corpses in their
ragged reds. Run! shrieks the voice within, but Whitty chooses to
ignore it, in the hope of brassing it out. 'Lieutenant–Colonel
Robin. And Corporal Weeks. Good day to you both, gentlemen. A
splendid morning for a ramble in the country, don't you think?' With
heightened unease he observes the percussion pistol held in the
thumbless hand of the better–sighted but less stable of the
two. He has no doubt that its possessor, despite his disability, is a
dead shot. 'Prepare to fire,' says Robin, whose dark glasses and
white hair give him a spectral cast. My good sir,' says Whitty, as
calmly as he can, 'I was led to believe that you were above shooting
unarmed Englishmen. How extremely inconsistent of you.' 'Pish–posh,
sir. Are we inconsistent, Mr Weeks?' 253 WHITE STONE DAY 'We is not,
sir. We follows our orders to the letter.' 'Of course you do,' Whitty
replies. 'You slaughter women and children on demand.' 'Women and
children?' asks Weeks, lowering the pistol slightly. 'Explain what
you mean,' says Robin to the enemy prisoner. 'Explain what you mean
by that statement.' 'I refer to the murder of innocent girls, sir.
English girls, at that. Wayward ones I grant you, but hardly monsters
like yourselves. I wonder that you keep up the pretence of
Englishness at all. Good heavens, you are no more English than a
Sepoy at Cawnpore! Did you bury them, when your superiors had their
fill of them? Or did you cut them to pieces and throw them down a
well? Women and children in pieces, like a ghastly puzzle of flesh!'
Like a ghastly puzzle of flesh! the corporal echoes, in an altered
voice, as though transported to that faraway location. 'Tot,
corporal!' says the lieutenant–colonel, flask in hand. As Weeks
drinks deep from the flask, the voice in Whitty's cranium reasserts
itself – Run! – and is obeyed with vigour. 'Stop him,
corporal! Can you see him? Shoot on sight! Hazar!' 'Yes, sir! I have
him, sir!' With the instinctive surge of concentrated focus that
follows the receiving of an order, the corporal aims, fires –
and wounds the air. 'The enemy has disappeared, sir! He was in my
sights, and disappeared!' 'Where, Weeks? Can you see him now?' The
two men scan the field, which glows in the long morning light, like
green glass, cracked by the long, angular shadows of the Roland
Stones. 'He began to run, I had him sighted, and he vanished! This is
an evil place, sir, a place like nothing I have ever seen. Since we
arrived in this place, I have not slept an hour!' This much is
obvious to Whitty: he has fallen into a ha–ha. He might have
seen it in advance, but the shadows confused him; it is some comfort
that, had he responded in a more capable manner, he would have been
shot in the back. Long ago, a series of narrow ditches were dug
across the field to contain the sheep that occasionally graze here,
eliminating the need for fences, which would spoil the view from
Bissett Grange. Thanks to the ha–ha, the lawn appears as a
picturesque, unbroken expanse. To a pedestrian who might wish to
wander the field, however, it is as if an 254 THE ROLAND STONES
enormous axe has chopped several deep wedges straight across –
trenches with steep slimy walls and a hazard to be sure, especially
if the pedestrian is running headlong from the barrel of a gun. Lying
at the bottom of the ha–ha, Whitty takes stock. On the bright
side, he has broken neither legs nor arms – though he has
turned his ankle, which is already beginning to throb. His moment of
reflection is interrupted by a voice above and behind him –
After him! Forward! Seize bim! – in the distinctive bellow of
an officer on parade, and disconcertingly close at hand. In a state
of animal panic, Whitty scampers on three limbs in the manner of a
crippled stoat down the length of the ha–ha to the woods edging
the field. Only when he finds himself in deep shadow does he dare
climb up the side and assess the danger. He barely manages to scale
the ha–ha and to poke his head over the edge when his foot
slips, and he finds himself tumbling right back down again. Hazar,
Weeks! There he is! Sight him in the shadows by the wood! Shoot at
will! Above his face, a white wound appears in the trunk of a beech
tree where his head was a second ago, followed by the crack of the
corporal's pistol. Twice in as many minutes he has saved his life by
falling down a ha–ha. Again Whitty struggles to his feet and
breaks into a run, with poor success, for the ankle pains him badly.
There he is! Reload! Shoot or capture! Seize that man! Seize him!
After scrambling up the slope at the end of the ha–ha, leaning
upon a willow for balance, he assesses his options: he can surrender
and be killed face to face, or crawl away and be shot in the back.
For the most part, that covers the field. He therefore resolves to be
shot as late as possible and with maximum difficulty, and at maximum
cost to his executioner. Glancing at the willow supporting him at
present, at the level of his chest he notices a branch two inches
thick, extending about six feet like a large riding–whip, which
suggests a plan. No – to call it a plan would be an
exaggeration. Better express it as Things To Do While Awaiting
Execution. Whitty is no expert on trees, yet from hard experience at
Eton he knows that a willow has an exemplary spring to it, sufficient
to cause severe pain. Positioning himself so that he might intercept
the oncoming rumble of soldiers' boots, he grasps the branch with
both hands and pulls it back as though it were a sort of catapult.
Crouched in the brush, muscles straining, he waits – but not
for long, as the 255 WHITE STONE DAY muffled sound of two sets of
boots draw sufficiently close that he can distinguish between them.
Reasoning that the man of lower rank would take the lead, he waits
until he hears the voice of the lieutenant–colonel a few feet
away. 'Reloaded, corporal?' 'Loaded, sir!' The corporal passes, and
Whitty lets the branch fly. 'Mr Weeks! I am down!' Whitty peers
around the trunk of the willow to see the lieutenant–colonel
writhing on the ground just a few feet away, clutching his eyes with
both hands. 'Are you hit, sir? Are you wounded?' The corporal stops
and turns, torn between responsibilities. 'Carry on, Weeks! Leave me
and carry on! He is in the woods nearby! After him! That is an order!
My eyes!' Blast, thinks the correspondent, whose hope was that both
pursuers would be delayed by his attack. Now he is left with a lone
adversary – the one who has the pistol and is prone to
hysteria. Retreating deeper into the forest, he suppresses a shudder
at the ominous sense of enclosure, of being swallowed up by an
enormous land–whale with digestion to follow. His first
response is to thrash about the underbrush, but he thinks better of
it. When in Rome ... If you wish to remain inconspicuous in a forest,
imitate a tree. Not a difficult challenge, to imitate a tree, to
stand as straight and as still and as silent as possible, breathing
as little as possible. Rather like being dead, actually. Just another
piece of the forest, growing up or rotting away as the case may be .
. . From the stillness of his position he can now hear that Corporal
Weeks is doing a good deal of thrashing around; at one point a pistol
appears in a shaft of light a short distance away, pointing at the
correspondent's stomach; however, all at once Whitty hears the clumsy
but alarming flutter of a thrush partridge, which alarms the soldier,
who wheels about, fires twice in the direction of the sound –
and steps directly into the open jaws of a mantrap. Oh! I am hit! Oh,
Mother! A cruel device, a mantrap, it has caused many a poacher to
lose a leg – even a life, should blood poisoning set in. At a
minimum, with two sets of iron teeth meeting at his tibia, a man can
think of little else. Upon discovering the corporal's discarded
pistol (an Adams type, he notes), Whitty feels emboldened enough to
inspect the wounded man lying in the foetal position on the forest
floor, clutching his leg with 256 THE ROLAND STONES both hands, iron
jaws sunk deep into the muscle of his calf, blood soaking the ground
beneath him. 'Sir, I am afraid I must leave you in the care of your
superior officer. Should you bleed to death in the meantime, I invite
you to think upon Eliza, whom you murdered, and who is waiting to
haunt you when you go–' 'I do not know what you mean, sir,'
says the corporal through clenched teeth, as he removes his belt and
wraps it above his knee as a tourniquet. 'The girl died, yes, but we
were not to blame, it were an accident.' 'You can be certain that it
was no accident. But your employer would know more about that. Being
newly arrived in London, were you under the impression that you
served some sort of brothel–keeper – a slave–
master who buys and sells living children?' 'Such trade is a business
in the East like any other,' replies Weeks through gritted teeth,
while struggling with the jaws of the mantrap. Whitty admires his
ability to carry on a conversation under these circumstances. 'In
Britain the trade in children is more of a scandal, especially among
the gentry. One's reputation might suffer. A well–born
gentleman will go to great lengths to assure confidentiality.' 'Were
we tricked, sir? Into thinking it were an accident?' 'It would seem
so, from what you say.' 'Therefore no women nor children have died at
our hands?' 'That much you can lay claim to, yes.' 'Then praise be,
for we was to sin again.' As Whitty emerges from the wood into the
long shadow, he sees the lieutenant–colonel on his knees,
feeling for his glasses with one hand while covering his eyes with
the other, and bellowing, 'Corporal Weeks! I need you!' 'Corporal
Weeks is down, I am afraid,' says the correspondent. 'He is as much
in need of your assistance as you are of his.' Whitty reflects on how
one's confidence improves with the possession of a pistol. 'Who are
you, sir? What is the nature of your business?' Having found his
glasses Robin picks them up, only to discover that they have broken
at the bridge, so that it is necessary to hold the lenses over his
eyes in order to see. 'It is for you to understand what sort of
business you have got yourselves in, sir. Have your associate look at
this and report back – if you really wish to know.' 257 WHITE
STONE DAY Whitty takes from his pocket the obscene photograph of
naked Eliza, and hands it to the lieutenant–colonel. Puzzled,
the officer attempts to decipher it, using one of his lenses as
though it were a magnifying–glass. Securing the pistol in his
pocket, Whitty hobbles down the hill in the direction of the house,
keeping to the edge of the wood so as to avoid any ha–has to
come, and without the slightest idea what to do next. 258