The Bell Tower Read online

  Anyway, it seems there’s a clear reference to a copy of the song being placed in the monks’ library – specifically behind a shelf of books on church music. You’ll know, of course, that the entire contents of that library were brought out for preservation when the building was steam-rollered in the mid-1970s. Such a pity that the area lost another piece of Rede Abbas’s history, although I believe the building had become unsound (wretched English Channel creeping up on us and destroying our coastlines!), and there was no alternative.

  So Gerald is currently bustling around the house like a demented earwig, saying he won’t be able to sleep a wink tonight, and he’ll be off out to the library at crack of dawn to search the monastery papers and books stored in the cellars. (I swear Gerald spends more time in those cellars than he does anywhere else). But if he finds the song, he intends to distribute copies to the choir. If he can do that by nine a.m. tomorrow, he says they’ll have a good three hours’ rehearsal, and we can make an announcement at the start of the evening’s concert, telling the audience it’s about to hear music (and lyrics, I presume) that haven’t been sung or performed in public for the best part of five hundred years. I pointed out that (a) ‘Thaisa’s Song’ is generally supposed to be in quite ancient Welsh, which might faze even the most enthusiastic modern chorist, that (b) the programme is already arranged, not to mention printed, and that (c) we can’t go shoe-horning in an extra item a few hours beforehand. But Gerald says phooey and pish, the whole thing won’t take more than ten minutes to perform and will be a splendid finale.

  If you happen to pick this up before going to bed, I’d be glad to hear from you. Do feel free to ring, and also I’ll leave the laptop switched on for the next hour or so. I’m also wondering if somebody ought to warn Maeve Eynon that we could be on the verge of actually performing her private and particular bane. What do you think? She did seem really upset at the prospect.

  What a long email! But I had to bring you properly up to date.

  All best,

  Olive

  From: Daniel Goodbody

  To: Olive Orchard

  Olive – it’s almost midnight, so I didn’t like to ring you.

  It’s a slightly strange-feeling midnight, as well – I’d swear I heard the old bell chiming a short while earlier. Probably it was just a church clock from Puddleston or St Mary Abbas, though.

  Please try to dissuade Gerald from disinterring ‘Thaisa’s Song’ for tomorrow night! I definitely remember we all agreed to have a good rousing piece of music for the finale – something in which everybody could join, although at this hour of the night (and without looking out my notes), I can’t remember if we decided on ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ like the last night of the Proms, or ‘All You Need Is Love’.

  I’m afraid he’s also being a tad optimistic about the choir’s abilities. They’re good, but I shouldn’t think they’re so good they can learn and perform a 500-year-old song after only a couple of hours’ rehearsal. Particularly not if it’s in ancient Welsh and with dear old Mr Budd conducting them, because he’s as likely to tumble off the rostrum as to draw an ancient Welsh lament out of a group of modern-day singers.

  You’d better let me know if Gerald does find this wretched song. As you say, in sheer humanity, somebody will have to let Maeve Eynon know if it really is going to be performed, and I suppose that somebody had better be me.

  Daniel.

  From: Olive Orchard

  To: Daniel Goodbody

  Daniel, I’ve just spent fifteen minutes trying to talk Gerald out of his proposed search for ‘Thaisa’s Song’ (at this rate none of us will get any sleep tonight), and I’ve put all your points to him.

  He won’t be dissuaded, though. He says we should have flexible minds, and that Mozart (or perhaps it was Beethoven) often handed out final orchestral parts before a performance with the ink still wet on the pages, and Shakespeare and Ben Jonson thought nothing of penning the last scene of a play while the actors were on stage performing the first one to the audience. (I feel this could be something of an exaggeration, although I suppose much can be forgiven Elizabethan geniuses.)

  To answer your question about the closing music, we went for ‘All You Need Is Love’, on the grounds that it can go on for as long (or as little) as the audience want. There were objections that it was too modern, but somebody pointed out that it’s a universal message and everyone knows the chorus. The only suitably Elizabethan alternative anyone could think of was either ‘Greensleeves’ (beautiful but impossibly overused), a composition by John Dowland (beautiful but very religious), or one of the bawdier sixteenth-century ballads (lively but extremely irreligious, and we have to remember there will be children present).

  Curiously, I heard that chiming bell too. It’ll certainly have been from St Mary Abbas, though. It can sometimes be heard if the wind is in a certain direction.

  Olive

  THIRTEEN

  Michael Flint contemplated his Saturday with pleasure. He was looking forward to travelling to Rede Abbas and to being with Nell. He was even looking forward to the train journey.

  First, though, he dealt with the newest Wilberforce instalment, emailing it to his editor at a quarter to eight, after which he logged off very firmly, because Saturdays meant nothing to his editor. Michael had once received a request on Easter Sunday to condense two chapters into one on the grounds of production costs and the shocking price of paper, along with a plea that the work be done by Tuesday evening so the typesetters could start work as soon as they returned from their long weekend.

  Jack Hurst, rather surprisingly, rang him five minutes later.

  ‘Dr Flint, I’m not calling too early, am I?’

  ‘Not at all.’ Michael remembered Nell saying something about shelving or flooring being fitted in the shop over the weekend. ‘Is anything wrong?’

  ‘Well, you might say it is. Only I don’t want to trouble Nell – Mrs West – what with her being all the way in Dorset and not wanting to spoil her weekend—’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  There was a pause, then Jack Hurst said, ‘I can’t explain over the phone. Could you possibly come over to Quire Court?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes, now.’

  Quire Court, when Michael reached it, was still wreathed in an early morning hush. He parked the car and went across to Nell’s shop. Jack Hurst was waiting for him, his usually healthy, amiable face pallid and distressed.

  ‘Jack, what on earth’s happened?’

  ‘You’d better come and see for yourself,’ said Jack, leading Michael through Nell’s part of the building and beyond the wide archway that now linked Nell’s shop to Godfrey’s. Michael had just time to register that Hurst was making a very nice job of the conversion.

  ‘It’ll come as a shock,’ said Jack, pushing open the door to a small storeroom. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t find the words to explain – I did try on the phone, but it’s upset me so much—’

  ‘My God, you haven’t found a body, have you?’ said Michael, trying for a lighter note.

  Jack Hurst said, ‘That’s just what I have found.’ He pushed the door wide.

  The storeroom was windowless, but a thin light came in from the main shop and Michael saw clearly what lay in a hollow in the partly broken-up floor.

  Small. Impossibly and heartbreakingly small and vulnerable. The skeleton of a tiny child – a baby surely? It was lying on its back, the head turned slightly to one side. As if it was looking towards the door, thought Michael, through a scalding tumble of emotions. As if it wanted to watch the light for as long as it could. And its hand – oh God, one of its hands is lifted, and the finger bones are splayed out like a tiny starfish. Exactly as if …

  Exactly as if the tiny creature had tried to push away the earth covering it.

  He became aware that Jack was saying something about digging up the floor. ‘I started on it first thing, see, smashing up the stone flags, because that Darren’s bringing the oak strip
s to lay down, before we get on with the shelves. Only then—’

  ‘You uncovered this.’

  ‘Like a grave, isn’t it?’ said Hurst. ‘That poor little soul laid there, wrapped in a cloth – although it’s no more than strings of fabric by now, as you see – and a crucifix with it, and a small book. Prayer book, I should think.’

  Michael had already seen the book. He said, ‘Jack, we need to phone the police. This has obviously been under the floor for years – centuries, I should think – but I’m sure the police have to be called in for any kind of body.’

  ‘Would you phone them, Dr Flint? I’ll only start filling up again – you’d think I’d have more self-control, wouldn’t you, but I look at that little heap of bones, and I start thinking of my own kids – there’s a granddaughter now, did you know?’

  ‘I didn’t know. That’s a very happy thing to hear, though—’

  ‘And I’ve been thinking about when they were this tiny and helpless,’ said Jack. ‘And I keep looking at the way that hand’s lifted – you can see it, can’t you? Almost as if when it was laid in there it wasn’t—’

  ‘Yes.’ Don’t say it, thought Michael. Because if you say the words, that might make it real. He said, ‘It’ll be the way the earth fell when it was shovelled in. It would have heaped up and displaced the arm.’

  ‘It would be that, wouldn’t it?’ said Jack, eagerly. ‘And there could have been subsidence in a building this old. That’d cause a bit of movement.’

  ‘I’m sure it would,’ said Michael, who had only the haziest idea of what subsidence was, and an even hazier idea of what it might do.

  ‘But,’ said Jack, ‘I keep thinking how I nearly put the hammer straight through the poor little thing’s skull— I couldn’t know it was there, though, could I?’

  ‘Of course you couldn’t. Don’t think about it,’ said Michael, but his own mind had already seen, and shuddered from, the image of the hammer smashing down on the fragile skull.

  ‘And if I have to say all that to the police, I’ll get that upset, and they’ll think, Well, what a soft prat Jack Hurst is, silly old fool.’

  ‘They won’t think that; they’ll be used to people being upset over – over bodies,’ said Michael. ‘In any case, it’s much nicer to have feelings and emotions. Jack, if the power’s on in Nell’s shop, go through and put the kettle on and we’ll have a cup of tea while we wait for the police. I’ll call them now while you do that.’

  Because there’s the book, said his mind. I need to see the book before anyone else.

  He made the phone call first, though, explaining as well as he could what had been found, having to break off once because, as Jack had described it, he too was filling up with emotion. Who were you? he said to the small shape lying patiently there.

  The police were helpful and reassuring. Dr Flint would be surprised how often this kind of thing happened in old properties, they said.

  ‘We often say there’s a whole library of books you could write about the mysteries that get found in old houses,’ said the sympathetic sergeant who answered the phone. ‘Except that mostly they never get solved. But we’ll need to send out a forensic team – no, it doesn’t make any difference that it’s an old skeleton, we still have to try to identify it. Or to put a date to it at the very least. It’s a long procedure, and of course it’s not something that gets priority. But everything’ll be done respectfully, Dr Flint, you can be sure of that.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Michael, gratefully. ‘Do you want me to wait here? I’m supposed to be catching a train later this morning, but I can probably delay that a bit.’

  ‘Well, we’ll send someone out right away to get the initial details and photographs. Could you wait there for that? If we can make the site secure until Monday—’

  ‘I should think you can,’ said Michael. ‘The shop’s got a security system and so on.’

  ‘Sounds good. In that case, forensics can most likely come out on Monday and you can catch your train this morning.’

  The small bones of the arm and hand had fallen back and were lying alongside the fragile little ribs. Michael was deeply grateful for this. Probably he had hit the right explanation when he had told Jack the piled-up earth had pushed the arm into that reaching-out position. This would be a case of a child who had died a few hours after its birth, or even been stillborn, with parents who could not afford a conventional funeral and burial. The fact that the crucifix and prayer book had been laid with the little body indicated care and love, and the absence of malice or violence.

  Even so, it felt like a desecration to reach down to the small, faded book. It would almost certainly prove to be what Jack Hurst had thought – a prayer book, laid with the child when the makeshift grave was created, and Michael would show it to the police when they arrived. But if a king’s ransom had been at stake, he could not have left it there without looking at it.

  The book left behind its imprint and it also disturbed a faint flurry of something sweet and sad. Lavender, thought Michael, seeing the tiny grey flowers lying beneath. Whoever had put the book and the crucifix there had placed some sprigs of lavender there as well.

  Lavender. One of the holy herbs used in the temple in Biblical times. Called nardus by the ancients, mentioned in the Song of Solomon. The lines, imperfectly remembered, brushed against his mind. Something about, ‘Nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon … And every kind of incense tree …’

  Whoever had laid this tiny scrap of humanity here had cared enough to lay not only the crucifix alongside it, but also to sprinkle the holy herbs of the ancients over the little body. And then had added the book.

  The book was very old indeed. The cover was thin and soft, and the pages were so severely foxed they had assumed the shade of tanned leather. When he opened the book, using extreme care, the writing leapt up at him, faded, spidery, the crammed, crabbed script of at least three centuries earlier.

  What had Nell said? That she and Beth weren’t expecting to find a first-folio Shakespeare or an undiscovered Chaucer in the baked-bean carton. This would not be either, of course, and yet … Michael carried it out to the main part of the shop and sat down on a windowsill to study it. He could no longer hear the usual street noises, nor could he hear Jack Hurst rattling cups and saucers. The shop seemed to have fallen into a deep silence, and there was the impression of something fragile and cobwebbed being drawn aside. Other scents were overlaying the aura of newly sawn timber and freshly applied plaster – the scents of ancient furniture, which had stood in the sun for so many decades it had soaked up the warmth … And the lavender, he thought. Don’t forget the lavender, the holy herb of the temple.

  Above all of that, though, was the scent of forgotten vellum-bound books, crusted with age and scholarship; of long-ago memories confided to lost diaries …

  With extreme care he opened the first page, and was instantly aware of sharp disappointment. He could read the date at the top, which he saw with a leap of excitement was 1538, but he also saw that he would not be able to read much more. The writing was too spidery, too elaborate – too sixteenth century, thought Michael, torn between frustration and annoyance. Damn and blast, if I sit here for the next week, I won’t be able to decipher more than a few fragments of this.

  Odd words and phrases stood out, though. The name Seamus at the foot of the first page. The same name was on the next page, but this time it was written as Brother Seamus. On the same line was the word monastery. On the next page, clear as a curse, was the unmistakable name of Cromwell.

  Cromwell. 1538. And a monastery. The three things came together in Michael’s mind, because surely that was the era when the greedy, ambitious Thomas Cromwell had rampaged across the English countryside, ransacking the monasteries, his men looting the great treasure-houses of the religious fraternities. And it had all been in the name and in the service of a king of England – an England already poised on the brink of reform – but a king who gave that reform a hard pu
sh, because he intended to have Anne Boleyn in his bed, even if it meant slaughtering monks wholesale and burning alive any who dared say him nay. Henry ap Tudor: extravagant, wayward, arrogant sprig of a line that some whispered were usurpers. Henry VIII, King of England, Defender of the Faith.

  As he turned a couple of the pages with extreme care, Michael shivered slightly. It was all very well to make light-hearted jokes about Quire Court being haunted, and paint cartoon word-pictures for Beth about amiable ghosts, but what he was feeling now was on a different level. It was deep and chilling. He set the book down with as much care as if it really might be an undiscovered Shakespearean manuscript, and was grateful when the present came back into focus in the shape of a car pulling up outside, and then a voice calling to know if it could come in, and announcing itself as DS Cherry.

  Michael had thought the shop would have to be smothered in police paraphernalia and girdled with official tape saying things like, Crime Scene, Do Not Cross, with men stomping around in plastic suits and paper boots. He was more than half expecting that he would have put his departure to Rede Abbas even further back, but the police were surprisingly quick to appear, and dealt with the initial examinations very promptly. There was a team of three: DS Cherry, to whom Michael had spoken on the phone, a young forensic technician who looked as if he might be on work experience, but turned out to be extremely knowledgeable, and a uniformed constable who made careful notes. The forensic technician took photographs and measurements and soil scrapings, and Michael found himself willing the man not to say it looked as if there could have been movement after the soil and the stone slab were laid over the body.