Justice Hall (6 page)

“What are we to tell him?”

“He must leave this place. He no longer belongs here. It is laying its golden ropes around him, and choking him to death.” He glanced down to judge my reaction to this flight of fancy. When the side of my face told him nothing, he went on. “He thinks it a task required of him by his ancestors. A noble service. A sacrifice. It is not, I tell him, but his ears are deaf.” Stress had, I was interested to hear, brought the Arabic rhythm back into his speech.

“If your cousin has decided that family responsibilities require him to remain in this country, I can’t imagine that anything Holmes or I have to say will dissuade him.”

“Not say—but no, it is no good for me to tell you. You must see for yourselves, listen to him, draw your own conclusions.”

“Very well,” I told him. Then, since clearly he was not about to explain himself further, I changed the subject. “Where does the house name come from?”

“Not its appearance, if that is your question. You saw the boar’s head in the Hall? My ancestor who laid the foundations was hunting boar one afternoon in the year 1243 when the animal turned on him, and caught him unprepared. The tusks you saw on the head are real,” he added, “although the fur has been patched over the years. The animal would have gutted him in seconds, but for a badger’s den that gave way beneath the weight of the boar as it pivoted. That moment’s delay allowed Sir Guy de Hasard to set his spear and catch the charge. The boar died, Sir Guy lived, and the house he’d planned to build was moved half a mile up the valley to leave the badger in peace. There’s still a den there, in that copse you can just see over the hill.”

“Your people have lived here since 1243?”

“The first Badger Place was built shortly after that, although I should say the family had been here more or less forever. Seven generations of my ancestors have been born in the bed where now I sleep. I myself was born there. Half of them have died in that same bed. My people lived right here when the Domesday Book was compiled, not under the name Hughenfort—that came in by marriage during the last century—but the same family. Generation after generation farmed the land, reared their children, served the king, came home from the wars, and died in the bed where they were born.”

He seemed suddenly to notice the ever-so-faint air of wistfulness in his answer and the intensity of his gaze, because he blinked, then turned to me and added unexpectedly, “My sister’s son lives in the next valley. He farms this land; he will inherit it. He will move into the house, and die in that bed an old and happy man.”

“While Mrs Algernon’s pot of soup simmers away on the back of the stove.”

He granted me a quick smile, which made years fall away from him. “That I do not know. The old ways are disappearing. I have been away for twenty years, and the only thing I recognise is the land. The old order is gone. My nephew will not have a Mrs Algernon in his life.” He gave a last glance at his ancestral home, black and white and golden in the sun, then slapped the soft cap against his leg again and tugged it cautiously over his bandaged head. “However, if we don’t present ourselves to be fed, I may not have a Mrs Algernon for long, either.”

He gathered up the tray and led the way down the hill. I followed, thoughtful. Had he merely come to fetch me? Or to tell me that he trusted in the skills of the partnership Holmes and Russell? Or—odd thought—had he seen me sitting on the hilltop bench and been struck by a sudden desire for companionship?

Mahmoud—Marsh—at Justice Hall, Alistair here; it could not, I reflected, be an easy thing to be set apart from the day-to-day companion of two decades.

Breakfast was fortifying, the fuel of labourers. Afterwards, Holmes and Mrs Algernon bent over the scalp of an encouragingly irritable Alistair, pronounced themselves well pleased with the healing process, and replaced the bandage with a smaller plaster. Their patient stalked away, and Holmes and I went up to our rooms.

“We are to stay with Mah—with our old friend Marsh, then?”

“So it would appear. If nothing else, Alistair seems to have a minimum of servants at his disposal here.”

“He walked up the hill to tell me that Marsh was impressed by our skills, and that he might listen to us telling him to go back to Palestine.”

“So that is what Ali wants?”

“It sounded like it.”

“Should be a brief visit, then.”

So, our sojourn in the land of the gentry was to be a brief one. The thought cheered me considerably.

   With the sun actually generating a trace of warmth, the motorcar’s bear-skin remained in hibernation. Alistair sat in the front beside Algernon, although there was none of the easy banter of the night before. Our host had also shed his colourful pull-over, although around his neck was draped a brilliant purple scarf with lemon-yellow fringes, topping the handsome grey suit he wore beneath a trim alpaca overcoat. Both of the latter garments were considerably newer in cut than the formal garb he’d worn to Sussex. On his head was an equally stylish soft felt hat, although he did not appear to have bothered having new shoes made during the four months he’d been in the country. His cheeks were smooth, his hair combed over the plaster, and from where I sat I could see his right leg jogging continuously up and down, the body’s attempt to release the tension that clenched his jaw and held his shoulders rigid. When threatened in Palestine, Ali had generally responded with a drawn knife; I couldn’t help speculating what the country house equivalent might be. Cutting insults at forty paces? Charades to the death?

We moved along the unmetalled road in the glorious autumnal morning, keeping straight when we reached the sign-post of the night before. “Justice Hall” was an interesting name for a ducal seat, I thought, and made a mental note to ask for an explanation.

The roads improved as we went on. Soon we were running alongside a stone wall far too high to see or even climb over; it went for what seemed like miles, high, secure, and blank. I was beginning to wonder if we were circling the estate rather than following one side when Algernon slowed and the wall dropped away towards a gate.

This was a very grand gate indeed, ornately worked iron hanging from twin stone pillars on which coats of arms melted into obscurity and atop which unidentifiable creatures perched. There was a snug, tidy lodge house at one side, from which a boy of about twelve scrambled, pulling on a cap as he ran, to throw himself hard against the weight of all that iron to get it open. He came to attention as we drove past, tugging briefly at his cap brim. Alistair raised a hand to him, but Algernon said loudly, “Thank you, young Tom,” receiving a gap-toothed grin in return.

The wide, straight drive that rose gently from the gate was flanked by fifty feet of close-cropped lawn on either side, behind which stood twin walls of vegetation—huge rhododendrons, for the most part; the entrance drive would be a pageant come spring. Taller trees, most of them deciduous, grew above the shrubs, to protect them from the summer sun.

We travelled steadily towards an open summit; as we neared the top, Alistair instructed Algernon, “Stop for a moment when we’ve cleared the hill.”

Obediently, the driver slowed, timing it so that as we reached the highest point we were nearly at a stop already. The bonnet tipped a fraction, and then Algy set the brake and turned off the engine.

Alistair climbed out; Holmes and I did not hesitate to join him at the front of the car. The view was, quite simply and literally, stunning.

As far as the eye could see, Paradise as a cultivated garden. A vast sweep of greensward, undulating with delicate dips and rises, dropping to the long curve of a lake with a glorious jet of fountain spouting to the heavens, the whole set with centuries-old trees as a ring is set with diamonds. It was far too perfect to be natural, but so achingly lovely that the eye did not care.

“One can say this for Capability Brown,” Holmes drawled. “He knew how to think on a grand scale.”

“Mostly Humphry Repton, actually,” Alistair told him. “Not that it matters, except down near the water.”

But the house; oh, the house.

I was, truth to tell, quite set to detest the place. Whatever its age, no matter its architectural or historical importance, Justice Hall was keeping Mahmoud Hazr from his rightful and chosen place in the world. No pile of stones or family tree justified the disruption of a man’s life—of the lives of two men. Two good, righteous, valuable men who had been happy doing hard and important work, until a brother had died and a title descended on one. I had no illusions that anything Holmes and I could say might prise Mahmoud from his perceived duty, but I had come here intending to try my damnedest.

But oh, the house.

I had thought Alistair’s small mansion near to perfection, had found its human scale and diversity deeply satisfying. Justice Hall was another measure of human endeavour entirely.

The house was composed of three main blocks, with the largest, central portion set back between the two wings like a lion welcoming visitors between its enormous outstretched paws. Or like a sphinx; yes, there was something distinctly feminine about the Hall, its strength delicate rather than muscular. The drive crossed a stream that merged with the beautifully curved pond, and came to its end in a circle between the two paws; from where we stood, the drive looked remarkably like a ball of yarn stretched taut, awaiting the great feline’s attention and amusement.

Too symmetrical and unadorned to be called Baroque, too richly varied for a Palladian label, its stone some indeterminate shade between warm gold and cool pewter, with crenellations and domes and a wealth of windows that hovered just on the safe edge of excessive, Justice Hall was unlike any building I had ever seen. Rather, I corrected myself, it resembled other grand houses of the nobility, but in the way that a woman of strikingly original beauty resembles her inevitable crowd of imitators—the similarity is in one direction only. I felt I had never truly seen a country house before. It was almost improper to think of it as a mere “building”; this was an entity whose signal characteristic was its unearthly perfection.

The sun did not shine on Justice Hall so much as Justice Hall called forth the sun’s rays to fall at such and such an angle. We did not look upon it; rather, it invited our eyes to admire. It sat in its exquisitely shaped bowl and smiled gently on the careful arrangement of dappled deer on its slopes, the fall of shadows from its trees, the play of the breeze on the water at its base. In the summer it would glow; in the rain, its face would appear pensive; under a blanket of snow it would be a fairy-tale castle; in the moonlight, this would be the dwelling place of the gods.

Justice Hall was the most self-centred house I had ever seen. My heart went out to the man at my side: If Justice Hall wanted Mahmoud, I did not believe Ali had a chance.

As if he had read the thought on the side of my face, Alistair made a small sound, a grunt of disgust, or perhaps of despair.

“You see?” he said.

I do not know why it took me so long to consider that Alistair’s motives in seeking us out might not be purely philanthropic, but it was only at that moment that I perceived the stain of jealousy beneath his philadelphic goals.

Maybe, I thought, just maybe we will find that Marsh Hughenfort actually wanted to come home. Perhaps his eyes viewed the panorama before us with all the love and devotion of his Norman ancestors. His blood and bones, after all, were bred here; more than eight centuries of his people had devoted their lives to holding the land against all comers. Mahmoud must be nearing fifty, the time when a man’s eyes might well begin to tire of the dry, grey, comfortless, and infinitely treacherous desert and to seek the relief of green hills and childhood shapes. Perhaps Justice Hall’s seventh Duke had chosen to come home from the wars, to die as an old man in the bed where he had been born.

With that, I was no longer so sure of the coming discussion with the man I had called Mahmoud Hazr. I was bound by loyalty, without question; but there were two of my brothers here, and what suited the one might not, I now saw, suit the other.

Silent and thoughtful, I followed Holmes into the back of the motorcar, to continue our short journey into the glittering heart of perfection.

   The drive up from the main road had been perfectly straight, but once the summit was reached, its path began to curve with the contour of the hillside, less from necessity, since the descent was a gradual one, than to present a more dramatic approach. The track curved at the base of the hill, then dropped a fraction, so that for the last half mile one not only faced the house straight on, but felt as if the house lay above. I could not help speculating on the quantity of soil Humphry Repton had caused to be moved in order to create that subtly humbling approach.

As it was, Justice Hall waited foursquare at the head of her drive, occupying her terraces with the patient air of a queen awaiting obeisance. A wide bridge crossed the artificial lake that separated the house from the world outside the gates; as we drove over it, I happened to glance up at the roof line. A flag flew above the front portico, and below its gently undulating colours stood a figure, nearly hidden by the crenellations. A man, I thought, briefly glimpsed, and then we were circling around and coming to a halt before the house.