"The Stranger House" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hill Reginald)

2. Inquisition

Mig Madero was more relieved than he cared to admit to be in the car. Physiotherapy routines got you mobile, but the last half-hour had proved yet again the old hiking adage that the only thing that gets you fit for walking steeply uphill is walking steeply uphill.

The drive to the Hall took less than a minute and the woman next to him showed no inclination to talk. The wide rear seat removed any risk of physical contact, but he found her closeness vaguely disturbing. Despite her icy pallor, warmth came off her and with it a scent composed of whatever perfume she used underpinned by faint traces from her own skin and flesh. She was beautiful, no argument about that, with a fine delicate bone structure that reminded him of the angels in the murals in the seminary chapel, but with flesh enough on her to turn the careless mind from the sacred to the profane.

Frek. The English loved their diminutives. It was his mother who started calling him Mig. Frederika was a lovely name, but Frek had intimacy.

The car came to a halt, rather to his relief, and he turned his attention to the less troublesome attractions of Illthwaite Hall.

His first impression was of an extremely appealing house with little sign of that self-consciousness which comes from a desire to impress one’s neighbors. The tall twisting chimneys belonged to the architecture of fairy tales, and the timbering too he had seen often in the children’s books in his mother’s house.

He stared up at an ornately carved stone set above the lintel of the brass-studded oak front door. On its left side was a coat of arms with three roses: one red, one white, one golden. On the right stood an angel with a sword, its robes white, its weapon silver with a smear of scarlet along its edge. Between, picked out in red and green, were some words, crushed so close together that reading them wasn’t easy but he’d had plenty of practice at deciphering ornate and obscure scripts.

Edwin Woollass Esquire and Alice

His Wife made this house to be built

in the Year of Our Lord 1535

Cruce Fido

“‘I trust in the cross,’” Madero translated.

“Our dog’s a crook,” said Frek Woollass as she went by him and opened the door.

“Family joke,” said Woollass. “Usually left behind with childhood. Come in.”

A good three inches shorter than his daughter, he moved with the determined gait of a man who anticipates obstacles but doesn’t intend walking round them.

“It’s a lovely spot, isn’t it?” said Sister Angelica. Her voice was gruff without being masculine, and it had a fairly broad accent which Madero, who had early recognized the importance of the way you talked in his maternal milieu, identified as Lancastrian. “Very welcoming. Pity about the knocker, though.”

The cast-iron door knocker, shaped like a wolf’s head with mouth agape and teeth bared, looked as if it were keen to bite the hand that raised it.

They followed Woollass into a broad entrance hall, so dimly lit that Madero got little impression of it other than lots of wood paneling and a few wall-mounted animal heads as they passed quickly along, down a little corridor and through another door which wouldn’t have looked out of place in a dungeon.

The room it opened into had a flagged floor with at its center a vaguely oriental-looking circular carpet whose yellow-and-umber design stood out boldly against the gray granite. On it stood four wooden armchairs around a low oak table. The effect was rather theatrical, as though a single spot were lighting up the action area of an open stage. A huge fireplace almost filled one wall. No fire was needed today, but a tall vase full of multicolored dahlias burnt on the hearth and above the fireplace was the same coat of arms he’d seen over the entrance door.

As he took the chair Woollass indicated, Madero began to feel the past crowding in and sense other shadowy presences in the room which if he relaxed and admitted them might let themselves become more visible. But for the moment, he wanted to concentrate on his host and this unexpected nun who’d sat down on his left.

As if he’d asked for an explanation out loud, Woollass said, “I invited Sister Angelica along this morning because she is an old friend of the family as well as being something of an expert on matters historical, procedural and legal.”

“You’re overselling me as usual, Gerry,” said the nun, smiling at Madero.

Woollass took the chair opposite Madero and leaned forward slightly.

“So let me look at you,” he said, fixing him with his keen gray-blue eyes. “Your letter was interesting, but letters tell us only what their writer wants us to know. Forgive my directness, but I’ve never been a round-the-houses man. If you want to know something, ask it, that’s the best way for simple uncomplicated souls like me.”

Was that a faint sigh of disbelief from his left? Madero didn’t look but fixed his attention wholly on Woollass.

“I quite understand, Mr. Woollass,” he said. “It’s no small thing to open up family records to a stranger. I’m happy to answer any questions and, of course, you have probably already contacted my referees, Dr. Max Coldstream of Southampton University, and Father Dominic Terrega of the San Antonio Seminary in Seville.”

“Indeed. Let’s have some coffee while we’re talking.”

On cue, the door opened and his daughter came in carrying a tray. It was a delight simply to see her walk across the room and set the tray down.

She took the remaining seat to his right and began to pour the coffee.

Woollass said, “The floor is yours, Mr. Madero.”

So Mrs. Appledore’s word had been apt. He wasn’t going to get near the Woollass papers without an inquisition. The nun was here to cast a properly religious eye over him. And the daughter…?

He glanced at her as she raised her coffee to her lips and he had to force his gaze away as he found himself transfixed by the gentle tremor of the upper visible portion of her pallid breasts as the hot liquor slid down her throat. He had a sudden vision of her stretched naked, her bush burning like black fire against the snow of her body. It was his first truly erotic fancy since the illness that had marked the change of his life direction, which meant the first since sixteen that didn’t crash up against a vocational imperative. Perhaps that was her function, to see how easily distracted he was! Well, they’d be disappointed. Old habits die hard and the mental screen slid easily into place. The troublesome image was still there behind the screen, but he was back in control and with luck a little dry conversation could prove as effective as prayer and cold showers.

He fixed his gaze on the man and said, “As I explained in my letter, I’m doing a doctorate thesis on the Reformation, but I do not want to retread the old ground of power struggle, of political intrigue, of wars and treaties, of saints and martyrs. I want to approach it through the personal experience of ordinary men and women here in England who lived through – or in some cases died because of – these changes. I want…”

“Why England?” interrupted Woollass.

“I’m half English. Through my maternal family history I became aware that not too long ago there were still laws which discriminated against Catholicism in public life. The more I learned of English history the more fascinated I became by the survival of such a strong Catholic presence, especially here in the north, despite long periods of highly organized and legally imposed repression. Eventually I formalized my interest into a thesis proposal in which I stressed that I wanted to base my researches not on the great families who figure in the public records, but on ordinary families like my own.”

Woollass nodded and said, “That answers, why England? Now, why Woollass?”

“A simple reductive technique, I fear,” said Madero. “I wrote to all the surviving families who figured in Walsingham’s record of recusants.”

“Hmm. So it was little more than a disguised circular we got,” said Woollass. “I usually dump those straight in the waste bin. So you’re saying your interest in my family is purely because I replied affirmatively, Mr. Madero? If I hadn’t bothered, or if my reply had been negative, you would have crossed us off your list?”

“I’m afraid so,” he said. “A disappointment, but one of many.”

Woollass looked at him doubtfully, then glanced at the nun, who leaned forward so that she could look directly into Madero’s face and said, “But it would surely have been an especially big disappointment, considering the family had a close relative who was a Jesuit priest working on the English Mission?”

Damn, thought Madero. Here it was. They were concerned that his real interest might be Father Simeon. He hadn’t anticipated such sensitivity. Too late now for explanation. Mention of his stop-off in Kendal would simply confirm Woollass’s doubts.

But for a serious historical researcher to claim complete ignorance of the man would also look very suspicious.

He said, “Certainly, knowing that the family’s problems must have been compounded by such a relative added a little to my interest. But the Woollasses were far from unique in this. And, had the priest been a son rather than just a nephew…”

He gave a Latin shrug. Make them feel superior, remind them you’re a foreigner.

Sister Angelica nodded in agreement, then in a brusque matter-of-fact tone she said, “I gather you were yourself studying for the priesthood, Mr. Madero. Would it distress you too much to tell us what made you change your mind?”

Her source was Father Dominic, he guessed. Perhaps others also. The great Catholic world could sometimes be very small.

“No, it doesn’t distress me. I discovered that my sense of vocation had vanished.”

“And that didn’t distress you?” she asked on a rising note of concern.

“I said my sense of vocation had vanished, not my faith,” said Madero. “I thought it was God’s will that I should be a priest, then I realized it was His will that I should do something else. Why should that trouble me?”

“But you have been distressed, I understand, physically if not mentally?”

Edie Appledore’s knowledge of his background had prepared him for this.

He said, “I had a climbing accident. I damaged my skull, my left leg and my spine. Happily after many months’ convalescence I am completely recovered.”

His left knee gave him an admonitory twinge and, feeling Sister Angelica’s keen eye upon him, he added, “Except for my knee, which will take a little longer.”

The nun smiled and said, “So you’re untroubled by doubts, Mr. Madero?”

“Completely,” he said. “Though occasionally by certainties.”

She let out a snort of amusement and nodded again, this time at Woollass, who said, “Thank you, Mr. Madero. If you’d give us a few moments…? Perhaps you might care to see some more of the house? My daughter would be pleased to give you a short tour.”

“That would be delightful,” said Madero.

He stood up and followed Frek out of the room.

“So,” he said. “You pour the coffee but you don’t actually get a vote.”

She said, “What makes you think I haven’t voted already, Mr. Madero?”

His name in her mouth was like being caressed by her tongue…

He said hastily, “It would be, let me see, Henry the Eighth on the throne when the Hall was built?”

“That’s right,” she said with a faint knowing smile as if well aware of the subject he was changing. “But I’m afraid that unlike most houses of such antiquity, no one of royal blood or indeed of any particular distinction has slept here.”

“Not even Father Simeon,” he said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because the home of close relatives of acknowledged Catholic sympathies must have seemed very attractive in times of need.”

“By the same token, when the hunt was up for him, it must have been one of the places most likely to be searched.”

“No doubt a hiding place had been prepared. Is there a priest-hole?”

She said, “If there is, who better than an expert like yourself to discover it?”

She spoke seriously, but he thought he could detect mischief in her eyes.

She led him back into the main hall. By now his eyes had adjusted to the dim light and he was able to take in more detail.

“This is the original Tudor hall, somewhat modified,” said Frek. “Purists would probably say it’s been ruined, but my ancestors were rather selfishly more concerned with their own convenience than Heritage. When something wore out, they replaced it.”

“Like the staircase,” said Madero.

At the far end of the hall, an ornate staircase of a design he didn’t recognize but which certainly wasn’t Tudor curved up to the first-floor landing.

“You noticed. Just as well, or I might have started thinking you were a fake, Mr. Madero. Yes, originally there was a stone spiral, great for sword fights but a little perilous for the old or infirm. Some eighteenth-century Woollass doing the Grand Tour spotted this one in France and brought it back with him. If you’re interested you can see the old stone treads out in the garden. They were used in the construction of a summer house. Waste not, want not, is the Woollass motto.”

“I thought it was our dog’s a crook.”

“Hardly in the house two minutes and already quoting our jokes,” interrupted a high, rather nasal voice. “The mark of a true researcher or an investigative journalist. Good morning, my dear.”

A tall, slender man was coming down the staircase. Clad in a long silk dressing gown of cardinal red, he might indeed have been an old Prince of the Church, come to give audience. He certainly had the features for it – wide brow, deep-set eyes, high cheeks, aquiline nose, and a mane of white hair so fine it gave the impression of an aureole.

“Good morning, Granpa,” said Frek, standing on tiptoe to kiss his inclined cheek as he paused on the penultimate step. “How are you today?”

Madero could see a resemblance here, much more than he could detect between either of them and Gerald Woollass. Perhaps the short plump genes and the long slender ones leapfrogged each other down the generations.

“I am well, surprisingly so, for which I give due thanks. And you I take it are Mr. Madero. I’m Dunstan Woollass,” said the old man, offering his hand which had a large ruby ring on the index finger. “Welcome to Illthwaite Hall.”

Resisting the Spanish half of his blood which tempted him to kiss the ring, Madero shook hands. Dunstan Woollass didn’t release his hand but kept a hold of it as he completed his descent, and now Madero had to resist his more frivolous English blood which tempted him to break into “Hello, Dolly!”

To restore the balance of sobriety he said, “I believe you are a historian yourself, Mr. Woollass. My supervisor, Max Coldstream, edits Catholic History and he recalled with pleasure several excellent articles you had submitted to the journal.”

What Max had said was, “Woollass… There was a Dunstan Woollass. Don’t know if he’s still alive, but he was a man of some influence in northern Church circles. In fact, I’m pretty sure he got one of those decorations the Vatican dishes out from time to time. Used to write a bit in Catholic journals, more a polemicist than a historian, though he did submit the occasional article to CH. Euphuistic in style and rather fanciful in content, I recall. But occasionally there were shafts of light and wit.”

There was light and wit in the old man’s eyes now. The same bright blue-gray eyes as his granddaughter. And the same faintly mocking expression.

“Indeed? I wish I could recall his frequent rejection slips with equal pleasure,” he said. “Yes, I have dabbled a little, but I have never been more than a dilettante. It is a pleasure to welcome a real scholar to Illthwaite. Not that I am dressed to suit the occasion. You must forgive my dishabille. These days I emerge by slow degrees from the pupal state of sleep. I need nourishment to give me the strength to dress, yet I have never been able to master the complex geometry of breakfast in bed which inevitably leaves me sticky with marmalade, itchy with crumbs and scalded by coffee. So I descend to the kitchen where no doubt the divine Pepi is even now pouring my orange juice and creaming my eggs. Ah, speak of angels and they shall materialize before our eyes.”

The woman who’d appeared in a doorway at the left end of the hall was handsome enough but hardly angelic. In her forties with dark brown hair pulled tight in a bun above a wide forehead, big gray-blue eyes and a generous mouth, she wore a nylon housecoat which strained across her large breasts and broad hips.

“Pepi, this is Mr. Madero, the famous scholar. Madero, this is Mistress Collipepper, our invaluable housekeeper, the third of that name to have taken care of us poor feckless Woollasses. We’re terribly hierarchical in Illthwaite.”

The eyes registered Madero without any interest then moved on to the old man.

“Come on, Mr. Dunny, afore you catch your death standing there in the draft,” she commanded.

“Audio, obsequor. Good luck to you, Madero. Incidentally, my grandfather, Anthony Woollass, wrote a short history of the parish. Like me he was very much an amateur – the book was privately printed – but you’ll find a copy in the study bookcase if you care to spare it a glance. À bientôt, or should I say hasta luego?”

He released Madero’s hand and followed the housekeeper through the doorway.

“He is… remarkable,” said Madero. “And I noticed he seems to anticipate the Star Chamber will find in my favor. Does he, like yourself, cast a vote in absentia?”

“You mustn’t probe our secrets before you have clearance, Mr. Madero,” she said. “Now, what next? Are you interested in pargetting?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never pargetted,” he replied, his English blood still in ascendancy.

Before she could respond to his frivolity, Gerald Woollass appeared.

“There you are, Mr. Madero. I’m pleased to tell you that I’ve decided that your application to be allowed access to some of our early family records should be approved.”

Frek clapped her hands together once, not so much a gesture of spontaneous joy as a formal signal of accord.

Madero said, “I’m honored and grateful. Thank you very much, sir.”

“Yes yes,” said Woollass, flapping his hand as if to dislodge a persistent fly. “A condition is that you sign a note of agreement giving me the right to see, emend or veto any passage in your thesis which refers to my family. I have had such a note made out in anticipation of a successful outcome to your interview. Is this agreeable to you?”

Just in case I do try to sneak in something he doesn’t like about Father Simeon! thought Madero as he said, “Naturally, sir.”

“Good. I presume you’d like to start right away? You will find the note of agreement on the desk in the study. Be so good as to sign it and give it to Frek. Lunch is at one. No documents to be removed. No photography. Presumably you’d like this. Its weight suggests you have come well prepared, but not, I hope, with cameras.”

He handed over the briefcase which Madero had left by the side of his chair.

“No, sir,” said Madero, opening the case. “Just a laptop, plus pen and paper as a failsafe. Oh, and there’s this, which I hope you will accept as a token of my gratitude.”

He produced a bottle of what an expert eye would have recognized instantly as the rarest and most expensive fino in the Madero Bastardo range.

Woollass took it and said, “Ah yes. Sherry. Thank you,” then walked away, swinging the bottle by his side.

“Sorry,” said Frek. “We’re not really a sherry family.”

“De gustibus non est disputandum,” murmured Madero.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” said Frek. “This way.”

She set off up the stairs, her hair flowing down her back like a black torrent into which he felt an almost irresistible impulse to plunge his hands.

On the landing she paused and said, “The study’s that way but you might like a quick glance first at our Long Gallery which gets a para to itself in Pevsner.”

“By all means,” said Madero.

In fact the Long Gallery wasn’t all that long but it had some interesting stonework and a fretted ceiling in need of restoration. A line of round arched windows admitted the morning sunlight to illumine the row of family portraits on the opposing wall. He paused before one of a handsome young man, looking very dashing in modern military uniform.

“My grandfather,” said Frek.

“I thought it might be. He has medals.”

“Indeed. One of them is the Military Cross. He was just old enough for the last couple of years of the war, but typically he seems to have made up for lost time. Afterward, I think he wanted to forget it. He says it was his father’s idea to have him painted in uniform. It can be an uncomfortable thing, trying to keep a proud father happy.”

“Indeed it can,” said Madero rather sadly. “But a good man will always try.”

He walked slowly down the gallery, feeling himself watched by all those slatey eyes, living and dead, till he came to the portrait which had caught his attention as soon as he entered, partly because it had pride of place on the cross wall at the end of the room, partly because it was the only one to show two people.

As he had guessed, they were Edwin and Alice Woollass, depicted full length, almost life size, when they were both into middle age. She was a sturdy woman with lively intelligent features, he much taller with a serious ascetic face.

“Interesting,” he said.

“Indeed,” said Frek. “If only because she was the first and the last woman the Woollasses thought it worthwhile having a portrait of.”

“Perhaps you will change their minds,” said Madero with an effort at gallantry.

“I think I may change more than that,” murmured Frek. “Have you seen enough?”

Something in her voice made him look more closely, then he said, “Ah. The priest-hole.”

“You’ve spotted it then?”

“Now I look more closely,” he said, “I see there’s a certain asymmetry about the room. There should be another meter of wall after this end window.”

She stepped forward and ran her hand down behind the portrait. There was a click and the whole picture swung out of the wall to reveal an opening.

“Clever,” he said. “Clearly constructed as an afterthought, hence the asymmetry.”

“There was no need of priest-holes in 1535.”

“Of course not,” he said, stepping through the aperture.

He’d seen far worse hiding places. A man could stand upright in here. There was a faintly musty smell. With the picture back in place it would of course be pitch-black. He stretched out his hands and leaned with his palms against the wall. Then he closed his eyes and stood stock-still for a good half-minute before stepping back out.

“Was that a prayer you were saying?” she asked.

“No. I was just trying to get a sense of what it must have been like.”

“And did you?”

“Oddly, no.”

“Why oddly?”

He hesitated then said, “I’m usually quite sensitive to… that sort of thing.”

“Perhaps terror, hunger, thirst, angry voices, metal-shod feet tramping, mailed fists banging, are necessary for a true appreciation of that sort of thing,” she said.

“True,” he said. “So is it recorded that Father Simeon ever took refuge here?”

“It’s recorded that the house was searched at least twice, including this chamber, and no trace of him was found,” she said. “Why so interested in Father Simeon?”

“I’m not really. But your father seemed a little sensitive on the subject.”

“Not without cause. A priest in a Catholic family is often as much a cause for concern as pride, as perhaps your own family discovered.”

She was sharp.

“But you must be impatient to get a start,” she went on. “Follow me, please.”

She walked away with an effortless almost gliding motion he found so much more effective than any seductive hipwaggling could have been.

The study was on the same floor as the gallery, a broad high room though with only one window. Against the side walls stood a pair of matching bookcases in dark oak. From the window he could see the plume of smoke still rising above the Forge, and further below, across the river, the stubby chimneys of the Stranger House. But Madero only spared the view a passing glance. His main attention was focused on the desk.

Here was God’s plenty. Half a dozen octavo volumes, cased in leather. Three folio ledgers. An abundance of loose sheets of varying sizes in two open box files.

For a moment he felt disturbed by such liberal cooperation, as perhaps a bright mouse might scenting the ripe cheese so generously scattered over the floor of the trap.

But in some things mice and men, bright or not, have no choice.

“Here’s the letter of agreement,” said Frek. “Sorry.”

“No need to be. Your father’s a wise man,” he said, scribbling his signature.

“Have you read it properly?” she asked doubtfully.

“I heard what your father said it contained. To study it would be both redundant and offensive,” he said, handing her the paper.

Their fingers touched. To prolong the contact, he did not let go immediately.

“I’m grateful for your help,” he said.

“How do you know you’ve had it?” she said, pulling the paper from his hand. “If you turn left out of here then left again into a short corridor, you’ll find a bathroom first on the right. I think that’s all, unless you have any questions?”

“No. You have given me all that I want. I shall have no excuse for not getting down to some good productive work, unless I let myself be distracted by the view.”

It was not consciously intended as a clumsy compliment but he realized that was how it sounded even before her eyebrows arched. He felt himself flushing under that amused gaze and turned to look out of the window at the panorama of valley and hills which was what he had consciously been referring to anyway.

“Yes, it is lovely countryside, beautiful and brutal by turns,” said Frek, as if she valued both qualities equally.

The window was slightly open and he heard voices below. Looking down, he saw directly below him the Range Rover parked outside the front door. Gerald and Sister Angelica were getting into it. A moment later, the engine started and the car pulled away.

“Now that’s interesting,” said Madero.

Where the car had been standing was a mosaic in the form of an eight-pointed star with at its center a circle of gold infilled with white. There were letters printed both in the white and on the gold margin.

“You recognize it, of course?”

A test? He closed his eyes, remembered what Max had told him, ran his mental eye over the possibilities and said, “The Order of Pius IX. Virtuti et Merito.”

“Well done. My grandfather received it years ago, long before I was born. My great-grandfather, the one who insisted on the portrait in uniform, again wanted to mark the distinction with another painting. Grandfather refused, but finally compromised on a permanent reproduction of the award itself. Even here he insisted that the commemorative design should be set at ground level where people would tread on it and only see it if humble enough to lower their gaze. In fact this room gives the best view. It’s a pebble mosaic, using stones from local Irish Sea beaches. You saw the designer briefly when we first met. Thor Winander, down at the Forge.”

“A talented man.”

“Oh yes. Thor has many talents,” she said with her secretive little smile. “Now I’ll leave you to get down to work or admire the view as you please. Till lunch, then.”

She left. It would have been easy to indulge his fantasies a little longer, but at the seminary he’d been famous for his concentration. Before the door closed, he was riffling through the loose sheets. Builder’s plans, household accounts, letters in various hands.

He put them to one side and opened the first of the leather-bound volumes. The page before him was covered in a minuscule scrawl. He took a powerful magnifying glass out of his briefcase and began to read.

Within a very few minutes all residual thought of Frek and her lily-white flesh had vanished from his mind.