The Pool of St. Branok (13 page)

“ ’Tis all this flooding, Miss Angelet. No good to the crops …”

“They are saying there really is a monastery here.”

“It seems they’m right. This here’s a wall.”

“Is it really?”

“Could well be, Miss Angelet. Not much of it to see … just enough to show it might have been. Look, ’tis over there.”

I shivered. I wondered if there was any sign of blood on the stone. It was there that he had fallen and struck his head. Foolish thought! The rain would have washed it away even before the last deluge.

I walked Glory over and looked at it. I couldn’t help but see him in my mind’s eye. I glanced across to the pool. It was swollen and the water was dribbling beyond that spot where we had stood by the willows and let him slip down to his watery grave.

I turned back to the men.

“I suppose all sorts of things could be brought up on the water?”

They looked puzzled. “Things that may have fallen in,” I said.

“Oh no, Miss Angelet. Reckon anything that went in would go right down to the bottom.”

“They say it’s bottomless.”

“Must have a bottom somewhere, Miss Angelet.”

“But they did say …”

“Well, them bells ’as got to rest somewhere, ’asn’t ’em?”

They laughed.

“I reckon there’ll be some as ’ull be hearing ’em after this,” said John Gurney.

“You can bet your life on that,” said his son.

I rode back. It was foolish to worry but anything connected with the pool made me uneasy, and I supposed it would as long as I lived.

I was amazed when a letter came from Jonnie to my mother. When I went down to breakfast she was reading it.

“Good morning, Angelet,” she said. “This is from Jonnie. He wants to come down.”

“That will be nice,” I said.

“He wants to bring a friend.” She glanced at the letter. “Gervaise Mandeville. They’ve been studying together. So I suppose he’s an archaeologist as well. Shall I read to you what he says?”

“Please do,” I replied.

“ ‘We’re so excited about this find at the pool. It sounds quite fascinating. We should love to come down. I am referring to a friend. He’s very enthusiastic and if I could bring him with me, it would be wonderful. Ever since Miss Gilmore wrote about the exposed wall, I was eager to come and see it. Could you put up with us both? We could of course stay at the inn if it wasn’t convenient. …’ ”

My mother looked at me. “What nonsense! As if we would let them stay at the inn. Of course they will come here.”

“He’s quickly learned about the discovery of the pool,” I said.

“He and Grace have been writing to each other. Naturally she would tell him such a piece of news.”

I felt a certain resentment. It was foolish. Why should they not write to each other?

“I suppose she thought he’d be particularly interested in that sort of thing,” said my mother. “And she was right. He’s hoping to unearth a monastery.” She added lightly: “He’ll be wanting to get down to the bottom of the pool to see if there are any bells there.”

I could not share her lightness though I tried to pretend to.

And this friendship with Grace? He had not written to me. Of course she had shown a marked interest in his archaeology. It must be due to that.

A few weeks later they arrived.

Jonnie embraced me warmly. He was full of enthusiasm. “And this is Gervaise … Gervaise Mandeville,” he said.

Gervaise was very good-looking, tall with blond hair and blue eyes. He seemed to be laughing all the time—even when one would expect him to be serious. It was as though he found everything a joke and such was his personality that when one was with him, one felt the same. I liked him from the moment I saw him. He was not so intense as Jonnie, although he was excited at the prospect of discovering a monastery—but even that seemed like a joke to him—as everything else was.

Having visitors from London was always refreshing. We were rather cut off from affairs in the country and the first night at supper we seemed to be catching up with what was happening in the outside world.

The war was by no means over. The Russians had not, contrary to the expectations of the people in the streets, given up as soon as they knew the British were on the way.

“It looks,” said Jonnie, “as though it might go on for a long time.”

He was very sad about it.

“Some people think we should never have gone into it.”

“Peterkin and Frances and Matthew do, I know,” I said.

“Peterkin and Frances certainly. Matthew has swung right round. He has made some stirring speeches in the House.”

I smiled thinking of Uncle Peter jerking his puppet.

Gervaise said lightly: “I’d give it another three months. Then we must win … if only to oblige me. I have a bet on with Douglas.”

“Gervaise likes a gamble,” Jonnie explained to us. “And Tom Douglas is as bad as he is. When the two of them get together they’ll wager on how many cabs they’ll see on the way to the club. I’ve seen them watching raindrops falling down a window … urging the particular one they have put their money on to move faster … as though it were a horse in a race.”

Gervaise grinned. “It brings an added zest to life,” he explained.

Grace was full of information about the discovery at the pool and she could talk knowledgeably on the subject. I wondered how interested she really was and whether she was doing this to please Jonnie.

They talked enthusiastically of what they were going to do.

“I suppose,” said Jonnie, “if we’re going to dig we have to get permission from the owner.”

My father smiled. “The Cador estate extends to the pool. It’s all Cador land.”

Jonnie beamed. “So all we have to do is ask you and Aunt Annora.”

“Exactly,” replied my father.

“And have we your permission?”

“I can only say,” said my father, “that I should be most interested to know if it is really the site of an old monastery.”

“Hurrah!” cried Gervaise. “We can go ahead.”

Grace said: “Shall I be allowed on the site?”

Jonnie turned to her beaming with pleasure. “I should be put out if you were not there.”

“I daresay you would like to be there, Angelet,” said my mother.

Jonnie smiled at me. “Of course,” he said. “You must come and help, Angelet.”

I felt very pleased that he obviously wanted me to go.

“We shall make the place famous,” said Gervaise. “Imagine the press. ‘Great Find by Students. Jon Hume and Gervaise Mandeville have outclassed the experts. Hitherto unsuspected monastery has been excavated from remote part of Cornwall …’ ”

“It was not unsuspected,” I reminded them. “People have been saying they heard the monastery bells for ages.”

“Ah, the Bells of St Branok! That will fascinate people. … We ought to have some bells rung … just to create the right atmosphere.”

“The bells,” said my mother, “are supposed to herald a disaster.”

“That makes it all the more exciting.”

“Heralded disasters often come to pass,” I said, “because people expect them to.”

“She is a wise woman, this daughter of yours,” said Gervaise, smiling warmly at me. “I’m all eagerness to get to work. Jon, I wager you twenty pounds that we’ve got that wall uncovered within a week.”

“I’m not the betting man you are,” said Jonnie. “I’ll wait and see.”

The next day they inspected the site. I went with them—so did Grace.

The place seemed to have lost its eeriness. It was only when I was there alone that the atmosphere seemed to envelop me. They inspected the jutting stone on which that man had cut his head.

“Yes,” said Jonnie, “it’s part of a wall. We’ll have to start digging here.”

He walked down to the pool, examining the water.

“I reckon,” he said, “that this was once a fishpond. They always had fishponds in their monasteries. They provided food for the monks.”

“We’ll try to fish,” said Gervaise. “Ten pounds for the first one who makes a catch.”

“Be serious,” said Jonnie. “Any fish in that pool would have been poisoned long ago. Heaven alone knows what has gone down into that water over the years.”

“Well, it will be fun to try. Let’s say a tenner for the first one who brings up anything at all. It might not be a fish. Angelet is looking disapproving. I’m sorry, Angelet. I’m really a very serious character under my skin.”

He smiled at me so charmingly that I wished I could tell him what I was thinking. I was sure he would have made some light-hearted comment and made me feel that I was worrying unduly.

That very afternoon they started to dig. They had brought the necessary equipment with them and they wore what they called working gear. My parents were very amused by them.

There was a great deal of comment throughout the neighborhood and it was largely critical. Mrs. Penlock expressed the general feeling.

“ ’Tain’t natural,” she said. “If it was meant to have been seen it would have been. If the good Lord sees fit to cover it up, that’s how He wants it.” I knew it was serious when the good Lord was brought in. His name implied that it was a question of right and wrong, and on such occasions Mrs. Penlock and the Lord were always together on the right side.

So I gathered that the exploration was unpopular.

“If it were meant to be discovered,” said Mrs. Penlock to me, “it would never have been covered up.”

“But it has been covered up, over the years. People have to discover these things. It teaches things about the past. People want to know and the Lord helps those who help themselves, remember.”

“ ’Tain’t natural,” was all she would say.

Protests came vociferously from one quarter. This was from old Stubbs. He lived in the cottage near the pool. He and his daughter Jenny were a strange pair. They had lived alone since Stubbs’ wife had died. She had been a kind of white witch who grew herbs and was said to be able to cure all sorts of ailments. Jenny Stubbs was as Mrs. Penlock said “Not all there.” She was in fact a little simple. She would go about crooning to herself, but she would be on the quay when the catch came in, picking up any fish that was thrown aside because it was not up to standard. I had seen her once or twice gathering limpets and snails. She made a broth of them, I believe.

They lived a hermit-like existence. Old Stubbs was said to be a footling which meant that he had been born feet first and therefore had special powers. He did occasional work, like clipping hedges; and my father had allowed the family to go on living in the cottage.

We were there, with Jonnie and Gervaise digging and Grace and I fetching and carrying, when the old man suddenly appeared. His eyes were wild, his hair unkempt.

He said: “Lay down them shovels. What be doing on our land?”

Gervaise smiled charmingly. “We are exploring and we have permission to do so.”

“Get off our land or ’twill be the worse for ’ee.”

“Really,” began Jonnie. “I don’t see what right …”

“This land ain’t meant to be disturbed. There’s people that don’t want it and won’t have it.”

“Why there’s no one here.”

The old man looked crafty. “They be ’ere … but you can’t see ’em.”

Jonnie was exasperated. Gervaise of course thought it was a joke; but nothing concerned with this place could be a joke to me.

“This land belongs to the dead,” said old Stubbs. “Woe to them as worries the dead.”

“I should have thought,” said Gervaise, “that they would have liked us to find their buried monastery.”

“You’m worrying the dead. ’Tain’t right. ’Tain’t proper. You go away from ’ere. Go back to your big city. That’s where you belong to be. No good will come of this I promise ’ee.”

With that he shook his fist and hobbled away.

“What an interesting character!” said Gervaise.

I told him about their cottage nearby and how he and his daughter scratched a living from the soil.

Gervaise was quite interested but Jonnie wanted to get on with the dig.

For three days they worked, but knowing the people well, we in the family were aware that there was general disapproval of the excavations.

“It’s so silly,” said my father. “Why shouldn’t we know if there was really a monastery there? Why all this objection?”

“You know how the people hate change,” my mother reminded him.

“But this is not going to change anything in their lives. I’d like to know how the story got about that there was a monastery there.”

“You don’t propose to drag the pool, do you?” said my mother.

“I hardly think that would be possible. But it would be nice to know that at least the monastery was there.”

What followed was inevitable.

A groom, exercising one of the horses, passed the site. It was dark, and he distinctly heard the sound of bells. They were coming, he thought, from the bottom of the pool.

Then there was talk of nothing but the bells.

They rang, didn’t they, when disaster was threatened? Someone had displeased God and you didn’t have to look far to see who that was. Dead folks didn’t want to be disturbed and it was reckoned that “all they monks at the bottom of the pool don’t take kind-like to people coming up from London and starting to dig all round their resting place.”

People were saying they heard the bells and it was always at dusk.

Two weeks had passed and I think that even Jonnie was beginning to realize that it was no use going on. They had uncovered what could be part of a stone wall. It might have been an old cottage. There was nothing to show that it was part of a monastery.

“We should need to have special equipment,” said Jonnie. “We’d have to go down a long way …”

“And possibly find nothing,” added my father.

“What a pity!” said Grace. “I am so sorry. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“Oh no,” cried Jonnie. “It was the greatest fun, wasn’t it, Gervaise?”

Gervaise said that he was satisfied. He had found new friends which was far better than an old monastery.

“Charmingly said,” replied my mother. “But I know you are disappointed. Never mind. Perhaps Pompeii will be more rewarding.”

“Well, we shall certainly find something there,” said Jonnie.

There had been some talk of our going back with him and staying in London for a while, but my father said he could not go for there were all sorts of problems to be dealt with on the estate.