The Midnight Folk Page 10

  Apart from these joys, church had few solaces. Often in the summer a swallow would flit about: when there was no swallow, the only thing to do was to look at the walls, which were full of queer things. For instance, if you looked at the lines of mortar which held in the irregular stones on the walls, you could sometimes imagine that they made pictures. Close to him there was a very good portrait of Henry VIII, thus:

  and a picture of a boat, thus:

  which filled in a lot of time. Then, in some of the walls were the mouldings of windows and arches long since filled in: it was quite good fun to imagine the windows and arches as still there, and to go through them into some jollier place than church. He knew all the memorial tablets within sight by heart, from Captain Porkins, late of the 91st (Duke of Cumberland’s) Light Horse, who was slain while doing staff duty at Hougomont on the Field of Waterloo, to

  ANNABEL BETHESDA MEE, Spinster of this Parish.

  She rests in peace till Wars and Tumults end,

  We an Example mourn, the Poor a Friend.

  But the chief pleasure in church was to look at the carved and painted figures arranged along the wall-pieces of the chancel-roof. There were sixteen of these on each side. They had been put there, with the chancel roof, somewhere about the year 1500. No one knew quite what they represented, for only a few of them were winged. They were “the busts and heads of men and angels,” so the guidebook said. Some tried to make up the sum of 32 thus:

  12 Apostles.

  7 Virtues.

  9 Worthies.

  4 Archangels.

  —

  32

  To Kay they were all sorts of things at different times. Now they would be the Condicote and Much Zennor Rugby football teams (with an umpire each), all lined up for kick-off; anon they would be the Australian eleven, 1882, facing the team of Cambridge University, which beat them; then on another Sunday one side of them would be A False Start for the Derby, from a well-known print, while the other side would be the start for the Grand National Steeplechase, 1839, with Mr. Mason on Lottery, and Mr. Martin, in his pink sleeves, on Paulina. Sometimes they would be Britons and Romans, and sometimes they would be the House of Parliament, with the East window coming in on them as Oliver Cromwell.

  After the service, people gathered outside the church in the broad walk near the porch. The governess was stopped by Mrs. Gossip, who had something to discuss with her. The two of them walked together deep in talk through the churchyard. A man whom Kay did not know, but who seemed to know him, clapped him on the shoulder and began conversation with, “Well, Kay, have you found the Harker treasure yet?”

  He started, because how could this man know how much the Harker treasure had been in his thoughts for these last few days?

  “Oh, don’t look so startled,” the man said. “I won’t peach if you’ve found it, but I’m afraid that there’s no hope of that. But there is a treasure that I wonder you don’t seek for.”

  “What treasure is that?” Kay asked.

  “Well did you ever hear of Bendigo, the highwayman? Benjamin, as people called him.”

  “I should think I had,” Kay answered. “He used to live in our stable when it was a house. But had he any treasure?”

  “Oh, I expect that he had a great deal of treasure,” the man said, “from robbing the stage coaches. I was reading an account of him in the Annual Register. He kept his mare Dowsabel, which is a French name, Douce et belle (meaning gentle and lovely), at the Cock and Pye, the inn where you go to see the hounds meet. They searched for his property when they caught him, but they never found anything. You ought to look in your stable for it.”

  “What sort of treasure would it be, please?” Kay asked.

  “Oh, purses of guineas, and repeater watches (that is, watches which will repeat, that is re-strike, the last hour that struck whenever you press a spring). Then I expect he took gold rings and pocketbooks full of banknotes. Those were more worth having, don’t you think, than pieces of eight, which were only worth four shillings when all is said?”

  At this point the governess claimed Kay and led him back to dinner.

  After dinner Kay thought, “Well, why shouldn’t I explore for Benjamin’s treasure?” The governess always passed her Sunday afternoons in her study, which she called “having some letters to write,” but he judged from her bitterness when he had been noisy in the garden on these occasions, that she really took a long nap.

  All through his life he had dreaded exploring that side of the garden, where the stables, that had once been Benjamin’s home, stood. In some undated past a man called The Tailor had been found killed in one of the outhouses there, “stabbed right through the skull,” as Ellen said, “which shows you the force that must have been used.” Today The Tailor seemed very far away and treasure very much in the air. “I’ll go,” he said.

  The stables (they were no longer used as stables) stood at the end of a long chain of buildings or ruins, which shut the garden from the road on that side. First was the barn, the thatch of which was green with moss and sunken into pits, which would presently be holes. Next to this was the dangerous brew-house, where cavernous old barrels stood falling asunder, as their hoops rusted through. The rotten floor was full of holes, through some of which you could hear the murmur of running water. Indeed the brew-house was a terrible place, which made one remember the worst that one had ever heard of Sweeny Todd.

  When he entered it this afternoon, another tale came back to him, that one of his grandfather’s workmen, who had worked in the brew-house, had so soaked himself with spirits that at last, as Ellen said, “he took fire and burned all blue. There was nothing left of him but some black oil on the floor.” However, Dr. Gubbins had thrown doubts on this tale.

  Beyond the brew-house was an open space, which had once been covered by the malting-house. It was now a jungle of giant heraclea, nettles, plantains, burdock and dandelion. Beyond this jungle was the pigeon-house built out like an apse from the wall of the stable. Both pigeon-house and stable were swathed more than a foot thick in ivy.

  As Kay came into this wilderness, a big grey cat, which he had learned to call The Phantom from the swiftness with which he fled, leaped from his sleep in the sun and disappeared. This time Kay saw that he had darted into a hole below a projecting stone, which looked like a paving-stone. After poking and digging at the hole for half an hour, he found that there was a hollow beyond and below it.

  He fetched a trowel from the tool-shed, cleared out the entrance, and grovelled on the ground, trying to see. Yes, there was a room or cave.

  Creeping into the house, he took some candle-ends and a box of matches from the pantry mantelshelf. By candle-end light he could make out masonry, slug-tracks and specks of quartz in the stone.

  “It must be Benjamin’s secret den,” he thought. “I’ll get down it to make sure.”

  He fetched a newspaper, in which Joe, the gardener, who came once a week, had wrapped his lunch. He lit this, dropped it into the hollow, and saw it flame down, lighting up a little cellar about five feet deep. Within a minute he had squirmed down feet foremost into this cellar, to explore. The phantom cat had long since gone by another hole between the stones, through which he could see into the garden. He could find no other opening. Roots of ivy thrust into the ground among the masonry; tendrils of ivy with bright, pale leaves, had trailed in through the holes. There were slug-tracks on the floor and walls. A dead centipede was phosphorescent in a corner.

  “What a lovely place,” Kay thought. “I shall be able to come here always and have it for my cave. I’ll bring bread and ham here. I’ll keep a catapult here. Perhaps I’ll run away some evening and sleep here. I wish I could get one of those lanterns with coloured lights; that would be just the thing for here.”

  He lit two more candle-ends. By their light he found a recess in the wall, where the stones had been removed. In this lay a padlock with the key rusted into it, half-a-dozen links of rusty chain, the heel-grip and rowels of a spur
, and part of a horse’s headstall.

  “These must be relics of Benjamin,” he thought. “The spur that he spurred Dowsabel with. I shall call this place Benjamin’s Lair.”

  Footsteps sounded outside. He saw Mrs. Scatternews coming down the path within a few feet of him on her way to call on the governess. He could hear her muttering, as was her way, “The bombazine, ninepence three-farthings; two pennyworth of tape, eleven-three; a penny reel, a shilling-three; two packets of best assorted—but they’re gone up: how much did Sarah say they came to?”

  “I can be here,” Kay thought, “and no one will ever suspect where I am. It’s the loveliest place that I’ve ever found, and I’ll spend all my time here always and have books and a clothes-brush, so that the dust won’t show.”

  He made another careful examination of the walls and then “Terang, terang, terang!” it was the bell for tea.

  When he came indoors he found that Mrs. Scatternews was more fun than Mrs. Tattle; she had been to Mr. Holyport’s lecture, the night before, on “My predecessors in this parish.”

  “Imagine the things that went on here,” she said. “The parish was honeycombed with crime. No sooner was the smuggling stopped, than the highwaymen broke out and stole Sir Hassle Gassle’s repeater watch worth five hundred guineas. No sooner were the highwaymen hanged, than out came the rick-burners, holding meetings and setting fire to property. Oh, it was dreadful! And all in red nightcaps, too, just as in the Reign of Terror. No sooner were they all sent to transportation, than back came the smugglers, only this time they came secretly, and left the brandy and wines at the doors, just as though they were the milk, and so cheap . . . Mr. Holyport read from the journal of the reverend gentleman who was rector here in the ’forties. He said that ‘although wages were lower than he had ever known them, hardly a man in the parish failed to find means for a Saturday intoxication.’ Then he went on to say how the parish now remembered only its criminals, Benjamin, the highwayman, and Mr. Galloway, the nickname of the smuggler, whereas in former times it remembered its saints, St. Alpig of St. Alpig’s well, who is thought to have had a hermitage near the river; and St. Conda, to whom the church was dedicated. He said that this was because courageous energy is always valued and remembered, and that though the highwaymen and the others often used their energy wickedly, they still used it, and risked their lives to use it. We shall have half the boys in the parish tomorrow playing at highwaymen and knocking people’s eyes out. I wonder that he did not tell the girls that they had better all take to being witches!”

  “Do you mind,” the governess said, in her very sweetest voice, “do you mind if we do not talk of witches? I am sure that we ought not to talk of them, because of course, well . . . really.”

  This ended the talk of witches.

  After tea Kay went back to the garden, thinking to explore the stable for some other relic of Benjamin. Usually the stable was locked, there being now no horses, but today, to his surprise, the door was open.

  The reason for its being open lay within on the wheelbarrow. There, on some straw, with a crimson, drunken face, lay Joe the gardener, fast asleep, breathing heavily. He was a very drunken man, who had been in the Afghan War. When sober, he could set wires for rats (which never failed) and sing “As I was a-walking by the light of the moon.” He could also dance two or three steps of the step-dance.

  Kay was afraid of him when he was drunk, because Ellen and Jane were. He edged away from him cautiously.

  Two stalls further down the line was the harness-room, which Kay could just remember, or thought that he could remember, in the warmth and glitter of use. A memory, so early that it might have been a dream, showed him that room all bright with a blazing fire, gleaming with bits, curb-chains, buckles and stirrups, and comfortable with the smell of saddle-soap and metal-polish. Two men, called Bob and Jay, had been there then, singing Twankydillo as they worked; and Bob had opened the marvellous carven corner cupboard, which had the arms of the Harkers, three oreilles couped proper, done above it between supporters. Inside there had been a blaze of shining things, the coach-lamps, and the silver turrets that old Mr. Harker had used when he drove four-in-hand.

  The corner cupboard was still there, but frowsy and cobwebby. Rusty bits of harness still hung on the nails; the grate was broken. Starlings in the chimney had knocked soot, mortar and scalings down into the room. Cobwebs containing bits of fly, bluebottle, gnat, clegg, bee, wasp and moth covered the window. There was a broken carriage clock still on the mantelpiece.

  Kay pulled the rusty key of the corner cupboard so that the door swung slowly open, to show its blackness of decay. Dry-rot was at work upon it; spiders, earwigs, woodlice and centipedes all had their dwelling there. There was nothing within except a scrubbing brush and a horse-picker. Kay took the scrubbing brush to serve as a clothes brush in Benjamin’s lair. On second thoughts he took the horse-picker too.

  In the next stall he found another treasure. Two years before, in the winter of the great frost, Joe had made him a toboggan by nailing battens across two runners. The toboggan had disappeared at the thaw; Kay had not seen it since; but now here it was, shoved aside, propped up against the manger; even the rope still on it. “The very thing I’ve been panting for,” Kay thought. “This will make a ladder down into the lair.”

  Outside the stable, on the walls which seemed to be directly over his lair, he noticed the toadflax. It had little, mouthed flowers of palest purple touched with gold, which reminded him of snapdragons, violets, and sweet-peas; it had vivid green leaves and thrusters of purple. Noticing it for the first time on this exciting day in that place, he remembered it always, as something even more strangely beautiful than most flowers.

  A solitary mushroom grew on the site of the manure-heap. He seemed to remember that Bob, in the old days, had grown many baskets full of mushrooms there. Now the giant burdock and the overgrown laurels had taken charge; all the garden was like that: weeded up.

  As he was clambering down the toboggan rungs into his den, the runners gave way beneath him, so that he fell. He found that one of the runners had sunk into the floor, through the run of some rat, into what looked like the lid of a box. On groping with the horse-picker, he pulled out the remains of a wooden box, long rotted into touch in the ground. Within its shell was mouldy stuff, which may once have been cloth. Underneath the mouldy stuff was something hard, done up in what felt like a mummy rabbit, which had been tied with strips of leather now broken. The wrappings unrolled to display a tin box rather more than a foot long, also tied with leather. The hinges were decayed through. The lid came off as he opened it. Inside was a bundle tied with oilskin, which contained a rather heavy net purse and a decaying mahogany box with battered metal corners. Kay opened the mahogany box first. It contained a pair of duelling pistols, by Turner, Milsom Street, Bath, 1803, so an engraved brass plate said. With these pistols, in little beds in the green baize, were wads, caps, a rammer and picker, and a neat carven horn with a stopper at the end. They were the real duelling pistols with the saw handles which he had read of in books. Rust had eaten deeply into their cocks and barrels, but they were still pistols, perhaps the very pistols with which Benjamin had made people stand and deliver. The purse, which was secured by sliding rings, contained six heavy bullets, a broken shilling of George III with a cross cut on it, a cameo ring, a monogram seal and a small pewter snuff-box embossed with a fox’s mask. He knew that the broken shilling had been cut with a cross for use against ghosts. Ellen had told him of a farmer who had shot a ghost with such a bullet at the Wantways, where the suicides were buried. “No ghost,” she said, “can stand silver marked with a cross.”

  In the bottom of the purse was a paper pulp, which seemed to be rotting Scottish banknotes. On the inside of the lid of the pewter snuff-box someone had scratched with a sharp nail the following inscription:

  S. 100 yds frm. S.S.S.

  ——————————

  J.G.Z. R.P.C.

  What t
hat meant Kay could not tell.

  “It’s where Benjamin’s treasure is hidden,” he said to himself. “South a hundred yards from S.S.S. What would S.S.S. be? Might it be,” he thought, “South of Seeking’s Stable? This may have been called Seeking’s Stable then. J.G.Z. and R.P.C.—I suppose that those are the initials of his gang. Now, a hundred yards south from here would take me into the Crowmarsh Estate.”

  Going out from the lair, he began to measure. Eleven yards took him from his lair to the garden wall. Beyond the wall was the road, roughly eleven yards across, counting in the grassy strips. Beyond the road was a higher wall, topped with broken glass; beyond that was the Crowmarsh estate. Twenty-two yards from a hundred left seventy-eight yards. Seventy-eight yards into the estate would bring him across a piece of orchard into a spinney of scrub, in which some tall fir trees grew. “It must be somewhere there,” he thought, “but I shall catch it if I’m caught trespassing there.”

  The bells began their lin-lan-lone to call people to the evening service. It was time for him to go indoors. The governess had walked off with Mrs. Scatternews. Ellen gave him his cup of bread-and-milk.

  “Ellen,” he asked, “how long ago did Benjamin live?”

  “Oh, a long, long time ago,” Ellen said. “In my grandfather’s time, in the French wars.”

  “Do you know if he had a gang, who went about with him?”

  “Why no, Master Kay. I think he was all by himself. They do say that the man who had the Cock in those days, a man named Morgan, was in with him. The Cock was a coach-inn, where the coaches stopped. They do say that Morgan kept a spy on the people who came by coach, to see if they had money or necklaces. If they had, he used to tell Benjamin, or send out a little girl to him to say dinner was ready. And he used to water the guard’s gun, too, so they said. And then Benjamin used to lie in wait for the coach and rob the people. He robbed Sir Hassle Gassle once as he was coming home from the races, near Gassle Court, and took his gold repeater watch worth ever so that was given him by the hunters. That wasn’t this Sir Hassle Gassle, but his grandfather.