Chapter Eight
Wayfaring
Early the next morning, out on the cliff path, eighty-year-old William Sabine ambled slowly along, his head down, thin hair plastered to his crown. Frosty dewdrops hung diaphanous in the air, soaking through the clothing of anyone senseless enough to be out wandering. His only concession to the damp morning was a ragged brown muffler wrapped across his chest beneath his inadequate, shabby coat.
He’d have stuffed his hands into his pockets for warmth were they not already filled with treasures. Tiny leatherbound books, not one of them under a hundred years old, a fine compass, several stubby pencils, a vial of India ink and a tarnished fountain pen in its worn leather sleeve, all of which jostled in a jumble of rubber bands and crumpled handkerchiefs.
He pressed a hand to his chest pocket at regular intervals, struck with sudden worry, before sighing in relief. The keys – his own particular responsibility – were still there.
He had no idea how long he had been walking, but his feet were wet inside his leather slippers. He wondered vaguely where he’d left his shoes. He was glad he’d set a fire in the grate before he went out. Would it still be burning? He couldn’t quite remember when he’d set off or, for that matter, where he was off to.
Nicholas had wanted that Baedeker ; he knew that much. Was that where he was going? Did he have an appointment with a dealer today?
‘Oh dear,’ he said through a ragged breath that sent white fog floating in clouds across his vision.
He’d stopped to wipe his cold, clammy forehead with a handkerchief when all his attention was stolen by the sound of a robin singing its hardest from the tall wall that lined the path on his left.
The robin hopped into view in a mossy recess in the stones, which were dotted all over with fuzzy orange lichen and the first curled fern fronds waking up at the end of winter. Even through Mr Sabine’s filmy eyes, the red of the robin’s breast against the orange and green made a lovely sight.
‘Hallo, tiny fellow,’ he croaked hoarsely. ‘Where’s your lady friend?’
The robin sang again, and, to the man’s delight, it was met with an answering call from the scrubby gorse that lined the cliff edge to his right.
A second robin appeared, singing brightly.
Mr Sabine observed them with childlike wonder, his eyes wet, as the birds set off together in chirruping, tumbling flight along the path.
‘Sing your hearts out!’ the man told them, his reedy voice swept away in the swirling wet air. He shivered as they disappeared and his brows fell, dismayed.
He looked about the spot where he stood like he’d been suddenly placed there.
‘Nicholas will wonder where I am,’ he muttered. ‘Oh dear, oh dear.’ His soft slippers scuffed the loose stones of the path as he moved off again and the grey wintry weather set in around him.
Far along the path ahead, the lights of Clove Lore glowed through the low cloud. A flag flew on the turret of the Big House, and the chimneys smoked thickly from the higgledy-piggledy collection of slate roofs dotting down the sloping spine of the village. Had Mr Sabine been thinking clearly, like he had until recently, he’d have thought how like heaven it all looked.
The robins kept singing, concerned only with their courtship and answering the impulse of the turning wheel of the year. William Sabine tried to whistle in imitation of their song as he walked slowly towards the village, the hazy memory of an armchair, a warm fire and floor-to-ceiling books somewhere down there in amongst the tumbledown cottages calling him on.