Most Secret (2 page)

“You are blooded,” declared he. “It is better so.”

But was it?

The quarrel leading to the duel, I recall now, was with poor Bunny Whipstead, Squire Whipstead’s son, who never did anybody the least harm. The last time I saw Bunny must have been close on forty years ago, at Alexandre Man’s Coffee-House behind Charing Cross. We got drunk with a pair of actresses from Covent Garden, and I cannot call to mind whether or not he married one of ’em; but, anyway, a few weeks later he went off with Johnny Burgoyne to fight the Americans, and got killed somewhere.

However, speaking of tippling with actresses in taverns reminds me of my grandfather again, and of the time they discovered the dead man in a cupboard: the question as to the identity of the skulker with the bone-handled knife, and the relationship borne by such events to the Secret Treaty of Dover.

In order to understand all this from the beginning—especially a small matter of piracy in the English Channel—I must tell you first of the ring. It is the ring which explains the whole affair.

Fetch the lamp, now, and hold it up to his portrait over the mantelpiece. This is Rowdy Kinsmere as he looked when Kneller painted him in 1678. You see the heavy peruke falling to his shoulders, the dark-grey velvet coat and silver-grey waistcoat, his pleased expression as he seems to open one eye and say, “Damme, sir, did you mention a cup of wine? Why, hang me, sir, I don’t mind if I do.”

You have seen it a thousand times, but I wonder if you have ever observed that ring he wears on the left hand resting on his sword hilt?

The painter shows it as a vague blue stone. It was actually a very fine sapphire, almost (as you shall hear) a unique sapphire. King Charles the First, of Glorious Memory, gave it to his aide-de-camp, Roderick Kinsmere’s father, after Newbury fight in the Great Rebellion. The sapphire was cut into the likeness of the king’s head, an astonishing piece of craftsmanship, some dozen years before the king’s real head fell under the axe outside the Banqueting House at Whitehall. But that ring is not in the possession of our family now, though “Buck” Kinsmere, whose true name was Alan, handed it down to his son. It is buried in the coffin of the woman … no matter. Set down the lamp again.

Buck Kinsmere, my great-grandfather, was in no great danger of persecution by Cromwell’s Protectorate. Still, he followed Charles the Second into exile two years after his own son was born and his wife died here at Blackthorn. You might have thought he had done enough already, having fought in every major engagement since Edgehill, lost an arm at Naseby, and flung away his fortune in the king’s cause; but he only did what many another gentleman did, quietly, in the mysterious ways of faithfulness. After the Restoration he returned here and presently died. He was weary, and always a trifle puzzled that the oak trees should look the same on the lawns, and the summer rains still whisper, whether a Stuart sat on the throne or no.

Meanwhile my grandfather had been brought up (with casual proddings, now and then, as you would doze before a fire and give it an occasional poke to make sure it doesn’t go out) by his uncle Godfrey and a tutor named Dr. Harrison.

This Harrison was a great scholar, and also a notorious toper. He used to get fuddled every night at dinner, and then go down the south meadow to the Avon and recite Virgil by moonlight. One night in the sixteen-sixties he was ripping out something especially noble, Dido’s funeral pyre or the like, and thrashing his arms above his head, when he fell into the river and was drowned.

This occurred just at the curve of the valley where we have put the stone bridge now: where the Avon is narrow and very still, and dark green with the reflection of its banks. So they buried Dr. Harrison in Keynsham churchyard, and all his scholarly cronies staggered to the funeral. I remember my grandfather telling me that one of them read a fine Latin oration over the doctor’s grave, which brought tears to everybody’s eyes. But it concluded my grandfather’s classical education just at the point where all he could remember was that
virgo
does not necessarily mean “virgin,” and some complicated business about the movements of the sun and the earth—he could never remember exactly what, or anything about it, except that you demonstrated it by means of oranges.

Of religious education he had, I regret to say, little. This was partly due to a curious circumstance which nobody has ever explained. The land, it is true, was under the domination of the Puritan clergy. And these Puritans, although sour enough fellows, were either not so tyrannical as we suppose nowadays, or else they had a suspicion it was not altogether safe to cross a Kinsmere; in any event, they made few attempts to enforce their form of worship on the people at Blackthorn. But they would send missionaries, in steeple hats and grey worsted stockings, to exhort with the godless. Being a hospitable sort of man, my grandfather’s uncle Godfrey would at least have admitted and fed them, except for the circumstance I was telling you of.

Uncle Godfrey had a favourite bull terrier named Goblin. Now Goblin, everybody agreed, was a tolerably mild-mannered dog, as dogs go. Yet it so happened that the very sight of a clergyman of any sort seemed to drive him into a frenzy. Nobody could control him. No sooner would he see a steeple hat coming through the lodge gates and up the hill than down he would streak after it in a fury of cannibal glee.

“Eh, Goblin,” they would all cry. “Parson, Goblin! Go it, boy!”

And Goblin took that advice to the letter. He chased one nimble Man of God across two meadows, a cornfield, and the river, and finally treed him in the apple orchard; and the stablemen had to go down with pitchforks to get him off. My grandfather told me that this particular divine must have been the fastest sprinter in holy orders, because so fine a performance never occurred again. Anyhow, what with Goblin pursuing clergymen at the first sight or sniff of a square-toed shoe, and a standing bet with the head gardener as to which portion of each one’s anatomy would receive the most damage, I regret to say that Roderick Kinsmere was accorded no vast amount of ghostly counsel.

Indeed, you will perceive that even for those times Blackthorn was considered a somewhat careless and demon-infested place. The village hanged a witch or two among our tenantry; but at Blackthorn they believed in witches, and regarded this as fair enough. Otherwise it was a lazy life. Nobody paid great heed to the weeds or nettles, or the fact that pigs would escape through the kitchens into the house; I can remember this occurring in my own time.

When Buck Kinsmere returned after the Restoration, of course, they made some attempt to put a better face on it, because Buck Kinsmere was a great diplomat, and a fine soldier, and polished with the airs of court. Yet, beyond the few duties he would hold to, he seemed to take little interest.

Sometimes he would assemble his household in the great oak library, which later was so much damaged by fire in sixteen-ninety-one, and he would offer up thanks for the safe return of Charles the Second, confusion to his enemies, and prayers for the soul of Charles the Martyr. The morning sun would just be touching the mullioned windows of the room, not lighting it greatly. My grandfather remembered him standing with his back to the hood of the tall stone fireplace, in his long curling hair and lace collar. His eyes would be shut, with one hand extended towards the windows, the gilt-edged prayer-book under his empty left sleeve; and the household all kneeling, silent, around him.

Then sometimes he would take my grandfather into the main hall, to show him his pistols hung up on the wall, and his old breastplate with the rusty bloodstains upon it He would bid my grandfather never to forget two things: the loyalty he must bear to his king, and the memory of his mother who was dead. Buck Kinsmere said quietly that, when his son came of age, the boy must at length go to court among the noblemen, and that the inheritance from Roderick’s mother had made this possible.

She must have been a clear-headed little lady, Mathilda Kinsmere. She had been Mathilda Depping, the shipman’s daughter; her father owned a stout fleet of merchant vessels which put out from the port of Bristol to trade in rum and slaves. When Edward Depping died, and she married my great-grandfather, Mathilda Kinsmere had the fleet sold so that there should be no taint of trade in the family; but she would not allow her husband to throw all her fortune as well as his own into the royal cause. Thus it came about that a part of this fortune, approximating ninety thousand pounds, was put into trust for my grandfather with Buck Kinsmere’s friend Roger Stainley, the head of the great Stainley banking house, which is known all over the world nowadays.

Their destinies were to cross in singular fashion, because … but no matter for that, now. This inheritance was the precaution Mathilda Kinsmere took. You have seen her portrait in the Long Gallery, all stiff with lace after the Dutch style, with her red cheeks and merry eyes. But she died notwithstanding, of rust that got into a cut finger: she and Buck Kinsmere still loving each other so much that his was the worse heartbreak when he knew she had to go.

Still!

I do not wish to tell you of the ghosts and shadows you may find here, but of my grandfather growing up and going to London for his great adventure.

He had a pleasant time of it at Blackthorn. His uncle Godfrey taught him the use of small arms, particularly the four-foot double-edged rapier and the new-style, much lighter cup-hilt—narrow of blade, without cutting edges but needle-sharp for play with the point alone. They used to practice on the bowling green, where it was shady. The serving-girls would run to the windows, and Dr. Harrison sit under a plum tree with his pipe and a jug of cold punch, to watch some pretty rapid fencing matches there.

But what drew everybody round to shout, especially the men from the stables over the way, were the quarterstaff bouts. To see a whirl between two well-matched fellows, each with a seven-foot staff shod in iron, is a rare thing nowadays. When I was down from school once I saw Jem Lovell, the West Country champion (he was a Somerset man, though he settled in Devon), fight a Welsh challenger at the fair on Hanham Green; but today the sport has pretty well given place to boxing.

There was small notion of social dignity at Blackthorn after Buck Kinsmere died; and, my grandfather having acquired great proficiency in the quarterstaff art, a circumstance occurred which brought him wide notoriety in the country.

This fell out in the year 1669, when he was past his twentieth birthday: a genial, easygoing young fellow, with a knack of using long words in addition to his other accomplishments, and a nice eye for a wench.

Of his nimbleness with the quarterstaff Uncle Godfrey was especially proud. So it fell out that one night at a magistrates’ meeting Uncle Godfrey drank a bottle too many, as old gentlemen will do. He got up on the table and offered even money on his nephew to crack the skull of any man in Somerset within half a stone of his weight. Whereupon a visiting landowner from the Mendips instantly offered two-to-one odds on a promising carter of his village, and a match was arranged—under terms of the most absolute secrecy—to take place at Blackthorn.

It so happened that this same carter (as the Mendip gentleman well knew when he made the wager) had been accustomed to drive twenty-odd miles every week in order to ogle a certain pretty dairy maid of our village. Which dairy maid was already—most reprehensibly, I grieve to say—a safe conquest of my grandfather, and well satisfied with the arrangement. Being informed of this fact did not please the honest carter. To the contrary, he swore by all his gods he would “smash yon yoong zur’s poll for ’ee, and lay ’ee down dead, look.” The J.P.’s felt themselves justified in expecting results of a tolerably lively nature. They had arranged for the presence of a small chosen group to watch the encounter on the bowling green: all very secret and orderly, as befitted their magisterial dignity.

You will, no doubt, anticipate what occurred.

On the appointed date, the whole countryside roundabout bore the general aspect of fair day. The good peasantry, still exulting in the free-and-easy reign of King Charles the Second, were full of what we should nowadays describe as “beans.” Having already wagered their shirts on this bout, they were out to see fair play. They came flocking in, horse, foot, and wagon, in their best clothes. They rang the church bells, shot off squibs, hanged unpopular characters in effigy, danced in the taverns, and generally fortified themselves for the occasion. They also contrived to catch a bailiff and hold his head under a pump.

My grandfather, it need hardly be said, was immensely well-liked in the district. By nine o’clock in the morning he was down among them, settling the score for their beer, saluting the women, and inviting everybody to Blackthorn for the mêlée.

The opposing faction—consisting of a strong body of Mendip backers—arrived drunk towards one o’clock in the afternoon. They marched up the High Street singing “Here’s a Health unto His Majesty,” and broke a number of windows by way of diversion. Certain delays ensued, due to the outbreak of sporadic fights, and the discovery of one unlucky fellow (suspected of having been an exciseman for the late Commonwealth’s tax on ardent spirits), who was chased as far as Kingswood and thrown into the pond.

The bout took place at three o’clock, and was an epic. It lasted for an hour and twenty minutes, 8 1/2-foot staves bound in iron, without either the carter or my grandfather being able to land a blow that would stretch the other insensible. By this time they were both so furious, what with the futile whirling and cracking of quarterstaves, their own injuries, and the spectators’ goading yells, that they could endure it no longer. They flung away weapons and went for each other fists, claws, and teeth.

This was the true battle. It shot and fizzed round the bowling green like a grounded skyrocket, the spectators buckling out to make way for it, and then closing in behind with howls of encouragement. It rolled away off the green, making the manure fly in clouds and scaring the very wasps out of the flower beds. It got up presently, danced a trifle, and reeled past the smithy (which stood where the summer arbour stands now). Here my grandfather stumbled on a wagon wheel, and they pitched forward into the dust again. The carter tore loose long enough to lay hold of a light hammer and throw it, which might have won the day for him; but it sailed through the forge window instead, and did no damage. Eventually the battle wound up in a horse trough over against the stables, both contestants being hauled out exhausted, half-drowned, and almost unrecognizable, when Squire Thunderman decided it was time to cry quits.