The Stranger House (16 page)

“Miss Woollass certainly keeps her side of a bargain,” she said.

If she hoped to surprise him, she failed.

“Yes, you know where you are with Frek,” he said.

“You can even see where you’ve been,” she said ironically. To her surprise her response made him roar with far more laughter than it deserved.

He led her from the workshop now into the house.

“Find yourself a seat in there if you can,” he said, “Won’t be a second.”

Chaos resumed in the room he left her in. The only chair with space enough to sit on looked as if it had been cleared by natural slippage and her feet rested on a slew of books. The floor was littered with artefacts ranging from a Valkyrie bust in sandstone to a giant wrought-iron corkscrew twisted into a granite cork. The main ceiling beam was covered with hooks from which depended a row of grotesque and sexually explicit corn-dollies which dangled there like Execution Dock on a bad day.

The only conventional piece on show was a portrait enjoying sole occupancy of the broad chimney breast. Its subject was a smiling young man with tousled blond hair standing beside an apple tree just beginning to blossom. He was leaning forward with his outstretched hands cupping a nest in which half a dozen chicks had just broken out of sky-blue eggs. Around his feet were primroses, cowslips, wood anemones, all the flowers of spring, while the hills behind were bright with the yellow of gorse. Yet nothing in this exuberance of vernal colour reduced the brightness radiating from the
youth. On the contrary, he seemed its centre if not its source.

“Ready for another?” said Winander.

He’d pulled on a T-shirt with the inscription
Love is an extra.
She checked the can in her hand, found once more it was empty. Beer and toast just vanished in Illthwaite.

She caught the new can he sent flying towards her, crushed the old one in her hand and looked for somewhere to deposit it.

“Chuck it in the corner,” he said, “I’ll probably be able to sell it to some rich Yank. Now, Miss Flood, as you’ve made it pretty clear you’re not interested in either my art or my body, what is it you’ve come for?”

“I told you before. I want to hear about my namesake. Look, let’s not pussyfoot, you saw me find the inscription on the church wall. You were up the tower, right?”

It was a guess but he didn’t even argue.

“Yes, I went up the ladder, partly because I don’t attend religious ceremonies, also to check to see if there were any evidence of your claim to have heard someone up there.”

“Why didn’t you just ask your Neanderthal chum? I was convinced I’d just made a mistake till I realized in the pub there were two of them.”

“I did wonder. But you don’t get far asking Laal questions he doesn’t want to answer.”

“Laal? That’s what you called the one digging the grave, wasn’t it? It can’t have been him up there, must have been the other. What’s his name?”

Winander took a suck of lager and said, “Laal.”

“They’ve got the same name? Isn’t it hard enough telling them apart anyway?”

“Impossible. That’s the point. But here in Skaddale we find a way of dealing with impossibilities. So the rule is, whichever one you’re talking to is Laal, which incidentally means little. The other one’s Girt, meaning big. But as you never talk to him, to all intent and purposes, he doesn’t exist.”

He cocked his head on one side as if expecting bewilderment, or at least dissent.

Instead, after a moment’s thought, she nodded vigorously.

“I like it,” she said, “It’s algebraic. And, paradoxically, even though it’s a device to counter the problem of differentiation, I presume they go along with it because to object would be to allow themselves to be differentiated?”

He shook his head and said, “Too subtle for me, Miss Flood. I’m just a simple Cumbrian marra.”

“Don’t know what that means exactly, but I know it’s a load of bull. You saw me read your inscription, Mr Winander—”

“My
inscription?” he interrupted.

“Come on!’ she said, “I recognized the style. It looks like half the inscriptions in the graveyard, and that fancy Italian stuff on your gatepost was the clincher. You saw me, and you decided you’d better check me out, to see if I was going to kick up a blue about it or go quietly. Well, now you know. I’m not going anywhere, and the only reason I’m going to be quiet is so you can tell me what the hell this is all about. So start talking, Mr Thor Winander, or I start yelling!”

Miguel Madero was deep in the past.

He was a fast worker and within a very short time he’d seen enough to make him feel enormously privileged to be allowed access to this material. There was stuff here which a lot of TV historians would have given their research assistant’s right hand for.

The octavo volumes were a combination of day-book and journal written over many years by that Alice Woollass whose name appeared on the date stone over the door. They required careful handling, the sheets having been sewn together, perhaps by Alice herself, and in many cases already either the thread had snapped or turned the hole in the dry paper to a tear. The leather cases were simply that, rectangles of animal skin cut to the size of the octavo sheets and folded round them for protection. Over the centuries the creases had become permanent. Part of Madero’s mind deplored that nobody had ever thought to have the books properly bound, but another part was thrilled to be in contact with material exactly as its creator had left it. As he brushed his fingers over the sheets, he felt that his spirit was brushing against the spirit of the woman who’d written them.

And it soon became clear she was a woman worth knowing.

The journal element was not continuous, for there were many periods of their life, such as childbirth (frequent), sickness (her own or a child’s, also frequent), and other emergencies or periods of intense activity when the opportunity and/or energy for writing was not available. Often it consisted of little more than an
aide-mémoire
account of domestic events. But from time to time Alice found leisure to indulge in longer, more reflective passages which allowed insight into her thoughts and concerns and personality.

She was, Madero worked out, only eighteen when the house was built and she lived another sixty-two years, during which time she saw first her son, then her grandson become master of Illthwaite Hall, on each occasion relinquishing just sufficient of her domestic responsibilities to her daughter-in-law and grand-daughter-in-law to affirm their status without noticeably diluting her own overall authority.

The first journal started with the arrival of the Woollasses in their new house. From what Alice wrote it was clear that, her youth notwithstanding, she’d been determined that her wishes and opinions about the layout of the building should be heard. In the journal she expressed her pleasure when she felt her desires had been met, but where they’d been ignored, she was vehement in complaint which she did not hesitate to pass on to her husband.

Yet she was no termagant bride, such as might make a man regret his folly in ever marrying. She was clearly proud of Edwin’s standing in the community, she admired the way he managed his affairs and his estate,
she praised and joined in his many acts of charity, and, though this was no confessional diary, recording and analysing the intimate details of a physical relationship, an early entry—
to our chamber betimes Jub. Deo—
suggested that she took as much pleasure as she gave in the marriage bed.
Jub. Deo,
which Madero read as a reference to the hundredth psalm which begins
Make a joyful noise unto the Lord,
was subsequently shortened to
JD
in its frequent appearances, the last of which was dated only a couple of days before Edwin’s death in April 1588.

This and other details he noted with a scholar’s eye as he did a rapid preliminary scan through the books. There was much material here for his thesis in the form of a vivid contemporary response, sometimes at a distance, sometimes uncomfortably close up, to the see-saw rise and fall of Catholic fortunes in the sixteenth century. Alice’s delight in taking possession of her new home was clouded by news of the destruction of the county’s monastic centres. The Priory at Illthwaite, like Calder Abbey to the west, was an offshoot of the great Cistercian Abbey of Furness. Its main claim to distinction was that it had in its keeping certain alleged relics of St Ylf which were associated with several instances of miraculous healing. When news of Calder’s destruction reached the Hall, Alice prayed that Illthwaite, being much smaller, might be overlooked, but a few weeks later she recorded that Thomas Cromwell’s men had appeared, the Priory had been pillaged, its treasures destroyed or stolen, and its buildings razed to the ground save for the Stranger House, which the dissolvers had used as their lodging and stables.

Nor was there better news elsewhere. The dismantling of the great and powerful Abbey of Furness stone by stone was recorded with horror. A small cause for rejoicing was the news that the prayers of the locals in Cartmel had been answered and the church of the priory there was to be spared though the rest of the site was levelled. But generally it was a tale of woe and destruction.

He skipped over the early pages which recorded the Woollass men’s participation in the 1536 Pilgrimage of Grace which had nearly cost Alice’s brother-in-law, young Will, his head. She gave thanks to God when Mary came to the throne in 1553, but it said much for her humanity that she reacted to news of Protestants being burnt at the stake with the same revulsion she had shown at assaults on her co-religionists.

Then in 1558, Elizabeth inherited the crown and the screws began to turn again. The anti-recusancy laws, first introduced during the brief reign of Edward, were reinforced and much more rigorously applied. And soon there began that great priest-hunt which was eventually to have such significance for the Woollass family.

Alice had few illusions about her wild young brother-in-law, describing him at the time of her marriage as
a railing, mery rogue, fit for little save drinking and laiking; yet I cannot find it in my heart to dislike him!

Her delight in his marriage to Margaret Millgrove was unreserved. Her husband, however, had mixed feelings. It was in his eyes a low and unsuitable connection for a Woollass. Cloth merchants, he proclaimed, were little more than plebeian leeches feeding off the real work done by shepherds, shearers, land-owners. On the other hand to get Will settled was much, and Edwin allowed his wife to persuade him into acceptance.

However, as the Millgroves prospered and rose in social status, their enthusiastic embracing of the Protestant faith soon provided another source of contention. The story he’d heard from Southwell was all here, but from a much more personal perspective.

Alice deplored the growing rift between her husband and Will, and was active in encouraging the friendship between Simeon and her own sons, till Will accused the Illthwaite Woollasses of filling his boy’s head with treasonable matter and forbade the visits. Simeon obeyed, and Will eventually added distance to duty by sending his son as the firm’s agent first to Portsmouth, then to Spain.

Alice’s journals now took Madero where Southwell’s researches had not been able to go.

When Will finally severed relations with Simeon, he commanded his wife to have no more correspondence with her son. Dutifully, she obeyed. But she had not been formally forbidden from communicating with her Illthwaite in-laws and through Alice she obtained news of Simeon, who had kept in close touch with his cousins.

Alice was very careful never to record anything in terms which could incriminate herself or her family if read by a third party. Indeed, as Madero did his first rapid scan through all of the volumes which continued until just a day before Alice’s death in 1597, he had a sense of gaps which closer examination confirmed, with sentences half-finished at the foot of one sheet not resuming at the top of the next. Perhaps the dilapidation of the primitive binding had allowed some pages to be lost over the centuries. Or perhaps Alice herself on a rereading had decided that some entries were potentially too revealing.

Nevertheless, with Mr Southwell’s neat record in his hand, Madero was able to reconstruct various events.

The search of Will’s house in Kendal had taken place on a December morning in 1587. On the same day, Alice had noted that a traveller from Kendal en route for the port of Ravenglass had stopped at the hall briefly for refreshment.

Her next entry recorded, almost casually, that an officer of the North Lancashire Yeomanry, a gentleman of a family known to her husband, had called with a small troop of soldiers and asked permission to search the house and outbuildings for a fugitive priest. The search proving fruitless, the officer had apologized for disturbing them, then accepted their invitation to sit down with them and take supper.

It was clear to Madero what had happened. As the searchers departed from Will’s house, Margaret had guessed that they were now heading for Illthwaite. She had then revealed to Will that she knew Simeon was in regular communication with his Illthwaite relations. Will would have flown into a fury but Margaret’s fears for her son were far stronger than her fear of her husband. Again and again she would have protested, “But think! What if our son is at the Hall and they discover him?”

Finally Will’s anger had faded as he contemplated the likely result of his son’s capture. He had probably seen a heretic’s execution. Memory of those brutalities would be enough to drive even the strongest anger out of a father’s head. A trusted messenger must have been despatched to Illthwaite with orders not to spare his mount in his efforts to overtake the soldiers and warn his brother of the imminent search.

Then he and his wife sat silent to endure the long hours till the messenger returned.

Miguel Madero sat back from his work and let his creative imagination loose to roam this ancient house. He heard the soldiers arrive, registered Edwin and Alice’s indignant reaction, watched the men trample through the chambers in their vain search. The officer sounded like a man who would direct the searchers conscientiously but without fervour. As for his men, probably most of them were indifferent as to whether they were ruled by a Catholic monarch or a Protestant so long as they got paid. So poke about, make a bit of noise, goose the maidservants, but don’t do anything that might really piss off the family and make them chintzy with the victuals.