Chapter 3 #2
The stomp through the wet grass and bracken to the edge of the Silent Pool wasn’t as onerous as I might have feared.
It was misty, yes, but it didn’t actively rain, and enough people had made the hike before us that we didn’t have to wade through knee-high grass to get there.
A path had already been trodden through the woods.
And it would have been a lovely walk, had it not been for the cold and the wetness and the ghost story Christopher saw fit to tell as we plodded along.
“A long time ago, there was a local woodcutter’s daughter who was taking a bath in the Silent Pool when a nobleman on a horse rode by.”
I snorted. “And instead of doing the polite thing and pretending he didn’t see the naked girl in the water, I suppose he felt compelled to stop and make conversation with her?”
Christopher’s lips twitched. “Of course he did. He tried to chat her up, but she wasn’t interested, and as the story goes, he was persistent and wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“Of course he wouldn’t. He was a nobleman on a horse, and she was a naked woodcutter’s daughter; he probably felt entitled to her attention.”
Crispin cleared his throat, but didn’t say anything. “Don’t worry, St George,” I added, “I’m certain you would have done the right thing and ridden by. What did he do, Christopher?”
“Nothing useful,” Christopher said, “by all accounts. She swam out to the depths to avoid him, and started to sink. She cried for help, but although her brother jumped in and tried to save her, they both drowned.”
“Of course they did,” I said. “The nobleman didn’t bother to help, I suppose?”
“If he did, there’s no record of it. Although in justice to him, maybe he didn’t know how to swim.”
I snorted, and Christopher continued. “When the woodcutter came to look for his children, he found them both floating in the water.”
“Of course he did. And the nobleman was long gone, I’m sure. Did he get what he deserved?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Christopher said, “although I doubt you’ll be satisfied by it. The woodcutter found the nobleman’s hat on the bank. The crest on it belonged to Prince John. The same Prince John—”
“—who fought Robin Hood and signed the Magna Carta and is generally known as the worst king England has ever had. That Prince John?”
Christopher nodded.
“You know,” I said, “I feel I may have heard this story somewhere.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Christopher said. “Our fields do intersect occasionally.”
Indeed they did. Christopher was a historian, while I had studied literature at Oxford.
Both Ritson’s Life of Robin Hood and Martin Tupper’s Stephan Langton; or the Days of King John were works with which I was familiar.
The story about the drowning in the Silent Pool was certainly included in The Days of King John; it might be in Robin Hood, as well.
“And now she haunts the place?” Crispin inquired over his shoulder.
“So the story goes,” Christopher answered from behind me. “Every evening at midnight.”
“Good thing it’s just gone noon,” I said cynically.
“Although that doesn’t make any sense, Christopher.
She wouldn’t have been swimming at midnight, nor would the passing nobleman have been able to see her in the dark.
If anything, she ought to be haunting the pool in the morning hours, when it’s more likely that this actually took place. ”
“Not a romantic bone in your body,” Crispin informed me.
I sniffed. “Pardon me for wanting my ghost stories to make sense.”
“It’s a ghost story, Darling. It isn’t supposed to make sense.”
“I don’t see why it shouldn’t. What would be logical, is for her to haunt the place she died at the time she died. If she’s not doing that, what is she doing? Why midnight? Why not four in the afternoon? Or ten, or two? There’s nothing special about midnight.”
“Of course there’s something special about it,” Crispin said. “It’s the witching hour, isn’t it? The turning of the day, and so forth.”
“But that’s arbitrary. Dawn or dusk would make more sense. Those are natural turnings of the day. Midnight is man-made, if you’ll excuse me leaving half of humankind out of the expression.”
He didn’t answer, and I added, “And speaking of half of humankind, why doesn’t her brother haunt the pool? He died there as well, didn’t he?”
“Midnight sounds better than four or ten,” Christopher said from behind me, “and it’s all moot anyway, Pippa. There’s no such thing as ghosts, and the story probably isn’t true in any case. Chances are good that Martin Tupper made it up out of whole cloth.”
Chances were good. Or perhaps it was a legend first, and that’s why he included it in the book. Archbishop Langton died not long after King John, in the early 1200s sometime. Tupper didn’t write his book for another six hundred years. Plenty of time for legends to start.
“You’re right,” I said. “Is that it, over there? I see water.”
The other two turned their heads to look. “Must be,” Crispin said. He added, as we came out of the trees and had an unobstructed view, “I have to admit, it does look spooky in this light.”
It did. It was the middle of the day, but it was gray and cloudy, a bit too warm and rainy for December.
With the tendrils of mist rising from the pool, and the naked trees reaching their branches toward the overcast sky like spindly fingers—and I suppose the ghost story helped, too—the Silent Pool was a distinctly eerie sight.
And that was before a shrill scream cut through the silence.
I grabbed onto Christopher’s arm. He grabbed onto Crispin’s, and for a second we all three stood there, breathless and taut.
Then the scream came again, and Crispin laughed. It was a bit choked, but a laugh nonetheless. “Fox. Must be dark enough, with the overcast sky, that they’re mating in daylight.”
I removed my hand from Christopher’s arm and smoothed out the wrinkles my grip had caused in the tweed. “I knew that.”
“Of course you did, Darling,” Crispin said blandly, while Christopher shot me a look.
“You did not. We live in London. Not a lot of foxes there.”
“Plenty of them in Wiltshire, though. We’ve all heard them before, I’m sure.”
“That doesn’t mean I was prepared for it now,” Christopher said and looked around. “I imagine it’s a pretty place when the weather’s nice.”
I imagined it was. The pool was spring-fed, crystal clear, and surrounded by trees: when the sky was blue and the trees had leaves, it was most likely a lovely sight.
“No sign of Agatha Christie,” I remarked. My voice was even, which allowed me to pretend that the ghostly atmosphere didn’t affect me.
Crispin shot me a sideways look. “Did you think there would be?”
“Certainly not. The pool was dredged a couple of days ago. They would have found her then, if she’d been here.”
Now that the fox—or vixen—had fallen quiet, the area around the Silent Pool was unsettlingly still. No wind rustled the bare trees; no water gurgled or lapped the bank. The place had been named well.
“Let’s go,” Christopher said, tugging my sleeve. “I don’t like it here.”
I didn’t, either, not that I was willing to admit it. “That’s fine. I’ve seen enough. St George?”
“Anytime you’re ready.”
Christopher turned and headed back in the direction we’d come. I followed, and Crispin brought up the rear this time. And if we moved a little faster than we’d done on the walk into the woods, neither of us mentioned it.
The rest of the afternoon was spent tooling around the area surrounding Newlands Corner.
We ate lunch from the basket I had put together, and then Crispin started up the motorcar and took us on a sightseeing trip across the downs.
We ended up in the little town of Shere, which is almost painfully picturesque, with lots of half-timbered houses with crooked walls, and medieval churches with spires reaching for the sky.
Christopher was in his element: he loves old buildings and the history that goes with them.
“Sometimes I wonder why he agreed to move to London with you,” Crispin commented as we trailed behind him as he went into raptures about the local architecture, flitting between houses like a lamb frolicking in a spring meadow. “One would have thought he’d be happier somewhere like this.”
“It wasn’t my idea to move to London,” I answered. “I didn’t come up with it and then make him take me there, if that’s what you thought. It was his idea as much as mine.”
He flicked me a look out of eyes the same cloudy gray as the sky. “I wasn’t accusing you of anything, Darling. Just saying that this seems to be more his speed.”
“Yes and no. He loves the history of it. Not that there isn’t plenty of history in London, too.”
Crispin nodded, since he couldn’t very well deny that.
“But it’s much harder to be queer in a small town. Beckwith is a nice little village, but it was suffocating.”
He opened his mouth. I could guess for what, so I added, “I’m not queer. I appreciate a handsome bloke as much as the next girl. Or as much as Christopher does, I suppose.”
He smiled, and I added, “But even if I were, it’s perfectly acceptable, isn’t it, for a woman to shack up with another woman? Nobody thinks anything of it. Everyone just assumes it’s because she couldn’t find a man to marry her, and so she’s moving in with a friend to share expenses.”
Crispin nodded. “Meanwhile, if a man does it, it’s immediately suspect.”
“Exactly. Macquisten’s ‘gross indecency’ clause failed in -21, so there’s no law on the books against female homosexuality. Nobody really talks about it, either. All these laws and raids and arrests to stop Christopher from living the life he wants, but nobody pays any attention to what I do.”
He gave me another sideways look, and I added, “I already told you, St George. I’m not queer. It’s just a figure of speech. I’m not sure I know any women who are.”
“Of course you do. You just don’t realize it.”
Perhaps not. Perhaps I was as willfully blind as everyone else to it.
“That aside,” I said, since it was none of my business what anyone else chose to do in the privacy of their own bedchambers, “Christopher had no chance to be himself in Beckwith. That was the main reason we went to London. That, and more independence in general. I love Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life under their roof. ”
Crispin nodded. “I would have done the same thing if I could have. Of course, my options were Sutherland Hall and Sutherland House, and one was no better than the other.”
No, indeed. When he hadn’t been at Sutherland Hall, the staff at Sutherland House had had instructions to report anything he did back to his father and grandfather.
“The independence must be nice, anyway,” I said, without thinking too hard about it.
“I won’t say I don’t appreciate it,” Crispin answered blandly, “although the circumstances leave a bit to be desired.”
No doubt. “I really think you could explain to Laetitia that you can’t get married right now, you know. Nobody would blame you.”
“Laetitia would. And the time to say that would have been two weeks ago, when Father…” He made a face, “—when His Grace kicked the bucket.”
“You might as well keep calling him your father,” I advised, “unless you plan to relinquish the title on grounds of being illegitimate. If you intend to keep it—the title—it’s just as well for no one to suspect the truth.”
“Sensible advice. Just a bit difficult to follow, you know.”
I nodded. He probably saw Uncle Herbert’s face in his head every time he said the word ‘father,’ and the whole thing went sideways.
“Thank you for taking us on this adventure,” I told him, and tucked my hand through his arm for good measure. He directed a startled glance my way, which I pretended I didn’t notice. “I know I’m being ghoulish—especially if she’s dead—but it’s all just so interesting, isn’t it?”
“If you’re being ghoulish,” Crispin said dryly, “so is everyone else.”
He pointed to an image of the novelist’s face in a shop window, cut from a newspaper and pasted onto a piece of paper, with the word MISSING in large letters across the top.
“If she were here,” I said, looking around anyway, “I’m sure someone would know it.”
“No doubt. At any rate, I was happy to do it. I’m always delighted to spend time with Kit.”
The end of the sentence—‘and you’—was pointedly missing, and the smirk he directed my way told me I was supposed to notice and comment on it.
“Charmed,” I told him, “I’m sure.”
He shrugged. “It’s a nice precursor to looking at shared stationery with Laetitia.”
I slanted him a look. “Is that what you’ll be doing tomorrow?”
He nodded. “New monogram, don’t you know?”
Of course. A lovely, entwined L and C, no doubt.
“Dump her, St George,” I said. “I beg you. Dump her, deal with the breach of promise suit, and wait to get married.”
“Would it do me any good to wait?” He slanted me a look back.
I wondered whether he knew that I knew about his feelings for me. Perhaps he thought that he’d been obvious about them, or perhaps Christopher had told him about our conversation. And now he was waiting for me to give him encouragement. To tell him that if he waited, he stood a chance with me.
And I couldn’t tell him that, because I didn’t know the answer.
I disliked him less than I had done, certainly.
Last December—as recently as half a year ago, really—I had abhorred his very presence.
Now I was walking down the street with him, arm in arm, giving him advice on his love life because I didn’t want him to be unhappy.
But I also wasn’t in love with him. I did know that for a fact. So—
“It couldn’t hurt,” I said. “With enough time, you never know what might happen.”
He nodded, and didn’t say any more, but for a second his hand covered mine on his arm.
Then he unhooked himself and called out, “Wait up, Kit!” before he left me standing there on the Shere High Street to run forward and fall into step with Christopher instead.
They put their heads together. I let them go on ahead as I stuffed both my hands in my jacket pockets because, for some reason, I felt cold.