Chapter 59
When Graham and Cam breakfasted with his father the following morning, he assured them that before they’d arrived from Ventnor, he’d spoken to all staff both inside and outside King’s Head so everyone was keeping watch for strangers.
Graham hated it, but how could it be a stranger?
Unless the stranger was hired by someone here.
More likely it was someone closer, someone here, someone who’d always been here.
Vereker had set guards since they’d come back to King’s Head.
They were never alone when they left the house.
Graham spotted Arlo, the most muscular stable lad, tough as an old Cornwall tin miner’s boot, from the corner of his eye when they’d left King’s Head to explore the Augustinian ruins some fifty feet behind the formal gardens and the orchard.
He was grateful, more so because it meant keeping Cam safe.
They were both dressed in old clothes, Cam wearing an old gown, faded to gray after so many washings, and stout boots, her hair in a thick braid down her back.
Even in simple black pants and an old loose white linen shirt, old scarred black boots to his knees, Graham still looked like a young god, well, in her eyes he did, and surely hers were the only important eyes.
As they walked through the orchard, Cam pointed out the Adams Pearmain apple trees. “It’s a pity we can’t enjoy them until August. Mrs. Tartle, Aunt Deveraux’s cook, made the most delicious apple pies, always claimed Adams Pearmain apples were the very best.”
Graham said, “When I first came, my father showed me Mr. Dickens’s orchard.
He said every year Mr. Dickens enters contests with other locals to judge the finest-tasting apples in the area.
He said King’s Head has won now five years in a row, claims Mr. Dickens sings marching ditties to the apple trees, some of them lewd enough to raise even soldiers’ eyebrows. The contest will be in September.”
They walked through a white gate from the orchard into the formal garden. Rhododendron and azaleas spread throughout. Cam said, “The bushes look like they are dying to burst open and bloom. It’s a pity they have to wait a bit longer.”
They wound their way through arbors and past stone benches along stone-covered paths, all beautifully maintained. Two fountains with naked Roman nymphs spewed water from their open mouths.
Graham pointed. “There, through the back stone wall, do you see the central section of the abbey?”
Cam had seen many ruins from Roman times in Bath and at Stonehenge, but this once-magnificent ruin made her mouth drop open. The Augustinian abbey had been huge, abutting thick Dutch elm trees, oaks and beaches that climbed up a steep hill behind the ruins.
They walked carefully over moss-covered dark stones or steps, nearly white from bird droppings.
Several arches still stood over collapsed walls.
The central core of the abbey still had standing walls, several rising up to at least thirty feet.
The floors were covered with rocks of all sizes and black dirt.
Graham said, “When I was here with my father in the middle of this big central hall I swore I could hear monks chanting.”
Cam tried, but she only heard the faint scurrying of rodents, a single bird song from a nearby Dutch elm.
“Here is the abbey scriptorium. My father read there were more than three hundred monks here working on illuminated manuscripts. I can imagine long benches lined up the length of this long room. See, there are still a couple of rotting wooden boards and the niches in that single standing wall.”
Graham grabbed her arm. “Take care, Cam, these stones could slide and topple you over.” She looked up into her new husband’s blue eyes and felt her heart full to bursting.
There was such concern for her. She smiled, gave him her arm despite the fact her boots were nearly as old as she was and had never let her slip.
“Come let me show you the monks’ cells. My father, Donner and I went through them on my first visit here. Some walls are still standing and two still have a couple of ceiling beams. In several of them you can still make out Latin writing carved into the stone walls.”
They walked into a very small room, the two remaining walls only waist high. Cam imagined all the loose rocks had been hauled away hundreds of years ago.
“Come, here’s the one I really wanted to show you.” In the second monk’s cell, two walls still remained, and there were two rotting overhead beams. Cam couldn’t tell if there’d ever been a window.
She stood in the middle of the small cell, tried to picture a man in a long robe, a belt or a rope around his waist, sandals on his feet. Was there a chair for him to sit on? There had to be a bed with thick ropes to hold a straw-stuffed sack. Did the monk have blankets in winter?
She whispered, “Their lives were so disciplined, so austere. I read so many of them died when their monasteries were destroyed because they didn’t know how to survive in the outside world.”
He nodded. “Evidently no one ever found the wealth from this abbey if indeed the abbot hid it here. My father told me stories of abbey treasure still abound. Simon and I were always—” He stopped cold.
He looked white. He grabbed her hands. “I saw us, Cam, I saw two boys, it had to be us—we were pulling at rocks, hoping to uncover treasure behind them, even under them. We were filthy, our faces grimed. Then—it was gone.”