"Well, you did," I said, "but forget it. How are you?"

"Fine," she said, "just fine. What about you? Who did you think I was when you answered me just now? You didn't sound too pleased."

"In point of fact", I told her, "I thought it was Magnus. I had to do a chore for him… I've written you all about it in my letter, which you won't get until tomorrow morning."

She laughed. I knew the sound, with the slight 'I thought as much' inflexion. "So your Professor has been putting you to work, she said. That doesn't surprise me. What's he been making you do that has turned you into a performing seal?"

"Oh, endless things, sorting out junk, I'll explain when I see you. When do the boys get back?"

"Tomorrow," she said. "Their train arrives at a hideous hour in the morning. Then I thought I'd pack them in the car and come on down. How long will it take?"

"Wait," I said, "that's just it. I'm not ready for you. I've told you so in my letter. Leave it until after the weekend." There was silence the other end. I had dropped the usual clanger.

"Not ready?" she repeated. "But you must have been there all of five days? I thought you'd fixed up with some woman to come in and cook and clean, make beds and so on. Has she let us down?"

"No, it's not that," I told her. "She's first-rate, couldn't be better. Look, darling, I can't explain over the telephone, it's all in my letter, but, frankly, we weren't expecting you until Monday at the earliest."

"We?" she said. "You don't mean the Professor is there too?"

"No, no…" I could feel irritation rising in both of us. "I meant Mrs. Collins and myself. She only comes in the morning, she has to bicycle up from Polkerris, the little village at the bottom of the hill, and the beds aren't aired or anything. She'll be terribly put out if everything isn't absolutely straight, and you know what you are, you'll take a dislike to the place if it isn't shining."

"What absolute nonsense," she said. "I'm fully prepared to picnic, and so are the boys. We can bring food with us, if that's worrying you. And blankets too. Are there enough blankets?"

"Masses of blankets," I said, "masses of food. Oh, darling, don't be obstructive. If you come down right away it won't be convenient, and that's the plain truth of it. I'm sorry."

"O.K." The lilt in the K had the typical upward ring of Vita temporarily defeated in argument but determined to win the final battle. "You'd better find yourself an apron and a broom," she added as a parting shot. "I'll tell Bill and Diana you've turned domestic and are going to spend the evening on your hands and knees. They'll love it."

"It's not that I don't want to see you, darling," I began, but her 'Bye', still with the upward inflexion, told me I had done my worst, and she had hung up on me and was now making her way to the airport restaurant to order a Scotch on the rocks and smoke three cigarettes in quick succession before the arrival of her friends.

Well, that was that… What now? My anger against Magnus had been deflected to Vita, but how could I know she was going to catch an earlier plane and ring me unexpectedly? Anyone in the same situation would have been caught on the wrong foot. But that was the rub. My situation was not the same as anyone else's: it was unique. Less than an hour ago I had been living in another world, another time, or had imagined myself to be doing so, through the effect of the drug.

I began to walk from the library through the small dining-room across the hail to the music-room and back again, like someone pacing the deck of a ship, and it seemed to me that I was not sure of anything any more. Neither of mysellf nor of Magnus, nor of Vita, nor of my own immediate world, for who was to say where I belonged — here in this borrowed house, in the London flat, in the office I had left when quitting my job, or in that singularly vivid house of mourning which lay buried beneath centuries of rubble? Why, if I was determined not to see that house again, had I dissuaded Vita from coming down tomorrow? The excuses had been immediate, a reflex action. Nausea and vertigo had gone.

Accepted. They might strike again. Accepted also. The drug was dangerous, its implications and its side-effects unknown. This, too, accepted. I loved Vita, but I did not want her with me. Why? I seized the telephone once more and dialled Magnus. No answer. No answer, either, to my self-imposed question. That doctor with his intelligent eyes might have given me one. What would he have told me? That a hallucinatory drug could play curious tricks with the unconscious, bringing the suppressions of a lifetime to the surface, so let it alone? A practical answer, but it did not suffice. I had not been moving amongst childhood ghosts. The people I had seen were not shadows from my own past. Roger the steward was not my alter-ego, nor Isolda a dream-fantasy, a might-have-been. Or were they?

I tried Magnus two or three times later, but there was never a reply, and I spent a restless evening, unable to settle to newspapers, books, records or TV. Finally, fed up with myself and the whole problem, to which there seemed no solution, I went early to bed, and slept, to my astonishment when I awoke next morning, amazingly well.

The first thing I did was to ring the flat, and I caught Vita just as she was tearing off to meet the boys.

"Darling, I'm sorry about yesterday…" I began, but there was no time to go into it, she told me, she was late already.

"Well, when shall I ring you?" I asked.

"I can't give you a time," she answered. "It depends upon the boys, what they want to do, whether there'll be a mass of shopping. They'll probably need jeans, swimming-trunks, I don't know. Thanks for your letter, by the way. Your Professor certainiy keeps you employed."

"Never mind Magnus… How was your dinner with Bill and Diana?"

"Fun. Lots of scandal. Now I must go, or I'll keep the boys hanging about at Waterloo Station."

"Give them my love," I shouted, but she had gone. Oh well, she sounded happy enough. The evening with her friends and a good night's rest must have changed her ideas, and my letter too, which she seemed to have accepted. What a relief… Now I could relax once more. Mrs. Collins knocked on the door and came in with my breakfast tray.

"You're spoiling me," I said. "I ought to have been up an hour ago."

"You're on holiday," she said. "There's nothing to get up for, is there?" I thought about this as I drank my coffee. A revealing remark. Nothing to get up for… No more hopping into the underground from West Kensington to Covent Garden, the familiar office window, the inevitable routine, discussions about publicity, jackets, new authors, old authors. All finished, through my resignation. Nothing to get up for. But Vita wanted it to start all over again on her side of the Atlantic. Darting down the subway, elbowing strangers on side-walks, an office building thirty stories high, the inevitable routine, discussions about publicity, jackets, new authors, old authors. Something to get up for…

There were two letters on my breakfast-tray. One was from my mother in Shropshire saying how lovely it must be in Cornwall and she envied me, I must be getting so much sun. Her arthritis had been bad again and poor old Dobsie was getting very deaf. (Dobsie was my step-father, and I didn't wonder he was deaf; it was probably a defence mechanism, for my mother never drew breath.) And so on and so on, her large looped handwriting covering about eight pages. Pangs of conscience, for I had not seen her for a year, but to give her her due she never reproached me, was delighted when I married Vita, and always remembered the boys at Christmas with what I considered an unnecessarily thumping tip. The other envelope was long and slim, and contained a couple of typewritten documents and a note scribbled by Magnus.


Dear Dick, it read, my disciple's long-haired friend who spends his time browsing around the B.M. and the P.R.O. had produced the enclosed when I arrived at my desk this morning. The copy of the Lay Subsidy Roll is quite informative, and the other, mentioning your lord of the manor, Champernoune, and the to-do about removing his body may amuse you.

I shall think about you this afternoon and wonder if Virgil is leading Dante astray. Do remember not to touch him; the reaction can be progressively unpleasant. Keep your distance and all will be well. I suggest you stay put on the premises for your next trip.

Yours, Magnus.


I turned to the documents. The research student had scribbled at the top of the first, From Bishop Grandisson of Exeter. Original in Latin. Excuse my translation. It read as follows:


Grandisson. A.D. 1329. Tywardreath Priory.

John, etc., to his beloved sons men of a religious order, the Lords, the Prior and Convent of Tywardreath, greetings, etc.

By the laws of the sacred Canons it is known that we are warned that the bodies of the Faithful, once delivered for burial by the Church, may not be exhumed except by those same laws. It has lately come to our ears that the body of the Lord Henry of Champernoune, Knight, rests buried in your consecrated church. Certain men, however, directing their mind's eyes in worldly fashion upon the transitory pomps of this life rather than on the welfare of the said Knight's soul and the discharging of due rites, are busying themselves about the exhumation of the said body, in circumstances not permitted by our laws, and about removing it to another place without our licence. Wherefore strictly enjoining upon you the virtue of obedience we give orders that you, in resistance to such reckless daring, must not allow the exhumation of the said body or its removal to be undertaken in any way, when we have not been consulted, nor have the reasons for such exhumation or removal, if there were any, been examined, discussed, or approved; even as you wish to escape divine retribution or that of ourselves. While we for our part lay an inhibition on all and each of our subjects, and no less upon others through whom it is hoped apparently to perpetrate a crime of this kind, so that they should not, under pain of excommunication, afford any help, counsel or favour for such an exhumation or removal of this kind which is in question.

Given at Paignton on the 27th of August.


Magnus had added a foot-note.


I like Bishop Grandisson's forthright style. But what is it all about? A family squabble, or something more sinister, of which the Bishop himself was ignorant?


The second document was a list of names, headed Lay Subsidy Roll, 1327, Paroch Tiwardrayd. Subsidy of a twentieth of all moveable goods, upon all the Commons who possess goods of the value of ten shillings or upwards. Then were forty names in all, and Henry de Champernoune headed the list. I ran my eye down the rest. Number twenty-three was Roger Kylmerth. So it wasn't hallucination — he had really lived.

CHAPTER EIGHT

WHEN I HAD dressed I went to the garage and fetched the car, and skirting Tywardreath took the road to Treesmill. I purposely avoided the lay-by and drove down the hill into the valley, but not before the fellow at the bungalow Chapel Down, who was busy washing his caravan, waved a hand in greeting. The same thing happened when I stopped the car below the bridge near Treesmill Farm. The farmer of yesterday morning was driving his cows across the road, and paused to speak to me. I thanked my stars neither of them had been at the lay-by later in the day.

"Found your manor house yet?" he asked.

"I'm not sure," I told him. "I thought I'd take another look round. That's a curious sort of place half-way up the field there, covered in gorse-bushes. Has it got a name?"

I could not see the site from the bridge, but pointed roughly in the direction of the quarry where yesterday, in another century, I had followed Roger into the house where Sir Henry Champernoune lay dying.

"You mean up Gratten?" he said. "I don't think you'll find anything up there except old slate and rubble. Fine place for slate, or was. Mostly rubbish now. They say when the houses were built in Tywardreath in the last century they took most of the stones and slates from that place. It may be true."

"Why Gratten?" I asked.

"I don't know exactly. The ploughed field at the back is the Gratten, part of Mount Bennett farm. The name has something to do with burning, I believe. There's a path opposite the turning to Stonybridge will lead you to it. But you'll find nothing to interest you."