The Stranger House

‘You following me, or something?’ she said.

‘No,’ he said, surprised. ‘This is Stanebank, I believe, which I’m reliably informed I need to ascend to reach my destination. It doesn’t look a sensible road to take my car up, even if it got over this bridge without scraping the exhaust.’

‘Why’d you want to drive anyway?’ said Sam. ‘It’s only a step.’

‘So I’ve been told.’

He nodded at her rather curtly and set off. After a few moments, Sam followed, already nibbling her chocolate. He was moving quite quickly but she didn’t doubt her ability to overtake him. Bleeding townie, probably doesn’t feel safe being more than a few yards from his car, she thought.

But as the track steepened and she came up close behind him, she detected a slight unevenness in his gait. Mrs Appledore said he’d been ill and the poor bastard was definitely favouring his left leg. Her own bruised hip gave a twinge as if in sympathy. She saw him switch the briefcase, which looked quite heavy, from one hand to the other as if to adjust his balance. All at once her plan to move smoothly by him, offering a nod as curt as his own, seemed pretty mean-spirited.

She fell into step alongside him and said, ‘Great to see the sun, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it is,’ he said.

He spoke evenly but she thought she detected an effort not to let her see he was breathing hard.

She said, ‘Like a bit of choc?’

He glanced at the bar and said, ‘You did not get enough toast for breakfast?’

‘Yeah, plenty. You were counting?’

‘I tried but I lost count,’ he said gravely.

The bastard was taking the piss! At least it meant he was human.

As if regretting the lapse, he went on quickly, ‘But thank you, no. It looks too dark for me. I prefer milk, English style.’

‘You do? I’d have guessed you’d have gone for black and bitter.’

‘Why so?’

‘I don’t know. The car. The gear you wear.’

‘I see. By the same token you should perhaps be eating a half-ripe lemon.’

Another joke?

Before she could pick her response he went on, ‘I’m sorry. I did not mean to imply your garments are anything other than attractive. Perhaps however we both err towards the episematic.’

‘Sorry, you’ve lost me.’

‘A zoological term referring to the use of colour or markings to enable recognition within a species.’

‘Like I’m telling the world I’m Australian? Why not? And what are you telling the world? That you run errands for God?’

She’s been talking to our landlady, he guessed.

‘There are worse jobs. I understand you are trying to track down some ancestor here in Illthwaite, Miss Flood. That must be fascinating, discovering your origins.’

Letting her know that he’d been brought up to speed too.

‘More frustrating than fascinating so far,’ she said.

‘Things not going well? Will it trouble you a lot if your quest comes to nothing?’

‘No chance of that,’ she declared.

‘You’re very confident. It’s not given to us to know everything.’

‘You reckon?’ she said, detecting a sermonizing note in his voice. ‘Why not? There’s no such word as unknowable. We must know, we shall know.’

‘That sounds suspiciously like a quotation.’

‘You’re right. David Hilbert, German mathematician.’

‘Interesting. I prefer, for now we know in part, but then we shall know even as we are known. St Paul.’

‘How was his maths?’

‘Better than mine, I suspect,’ he said. ‘He did say, Prove all things. Hold fast that which is good. How’s that for a mathematician?’

She considered then said, ‘I like it. And there was a mathematical Paul who said that God’s got a special book in which He records all the most elegant proofs.’

‘There you are then,’ he said, with a pleased smile. ‘It’s good to know our two Pauls had God in common.’

‘Not so sure about that,’ she said. ‘Mine was a Hungarian called Erdos. He usually called God SF, which stood for the Supreme Fascist.’

That wiped the smile from his face.

‘You don’t sound as if you approve of God, Miss Flood,’ he said.

‘I approve of mine. Don’t have a lot of time for yours,’ she said.

He looked taken aback by her frankness.

He said, ‘What form does your God take, if you don’t mind my asking?’

‘Why should I mind? If you really want to know something, asking’s the only way to find out. So let’s see. I’d say my God is the last prime number.’

He did not respond to her definition, perhaps because he was pondering it, more likely she thought complacently because he didn’t want to reveal he didn’t know what she was talking about. Or maybe, she thought with a bit more compassion, it was merely because he needed all his breath to maintain an even pace up the hill whose steepening gradient was testing her bruises. But she didn’t have far to go. A long low whitewashed house had come into view. At right angles to it stood a taller building, unpainted and windowless, with a broad chimney at the furthermost end from which issued the column of smoke Sam had observed earlier. Presumably this was the forge or smithy which gave the house its name.

A rough driveway to the house curved off the road. There was no formal gateway but the entrance was marked by a huge slab of sandstone on which was carved THE FORGE with underneath it in smaller letters Lasciate ogni ricchezza voi ch’entrate.

‘What’s that all about?’ wondered Sam.

‘Its English version is usually “all hope abandon ye who enter here”,’ said Madero. ‘In Dante’s Inferno it’s part of the inscription above the entrance to the Underworld. But here ricchezza, wealth, has been substituted for speranza, hope. I don’t know why.’

He sounded like a schoolteacher passing on information to a pupil.

‘I’ll ask,’ said Sam. ‘This is where I get off. You going much further?’

‘Up to the Hall, which cannot be all that far.’

Sam glanced dubiously at the road ahead which looked to get even steeper.

‘Why not rest your bones here a couple of minutes? I’m sure Mr Winander will be good for a cup of tea.’

He looked at her blankly for a moment, then said again with the polite formality of an adult explaining the grown-up world to a child, ‘Thank you, but I must go on. I have an appointment, you see.’

She opened her mouth, probably to say something rude, but was saved from herself by the sound of an engine. A Range Rover came bowling up the hill. It drew up alongside them. The driver was Gerry Woollass. Beside him sat a woman in a nun’s headdress. There was another woman in the back but Sam couldn’t see her properly.

Woollass got out and came towards them.

‘Señor Madero, is it?’ he asked, getting the pronunciation right.

‘Mr Madero in England,’ corrected Sam’s walking companion.

‘You’re on your hour, I’ll give you that. I’m Gerald Woollass.’

They shook hands, then Woollass’s gaze moved to Sam.

‘Miss Flood, good morning,’ he said. ‘And how are you this morning?’

‘Fit as a butcher’s dog,’ she said.

‘You and Mr Madero are acquainted?’

Odd question, she thought. Maybe he’s worried I’m on my way to the Hall too, and doesn’t like the idea of an awkward Colonial falling over his priceless antiques.

‘Nah, we just met,’ she said. ‘I’m on my way to see Mr Winander, and Mr Madero was kind enough to translate this inscription for me, but I still don’t get it.’

Woollass smiled. This was a first. He looked a bit more like the kind well-meaning man that Edie Appledore had described.

He said, ‘It means that if you’re so foolhardy as to step into Mr Winander’s workshop, you will be lucky to emerge with any money left in your pocket. Mr Madero, why don’t you climb in? You might as well join us for the last bit of your journey.’

‘Or if you prefer to walk, I’ll be glad to stretch my legs and join you,’ said the nun, stepping nimbly out of the car. She was lean and athletic, in her thirties, with a narrow intelligent face. The headdress apart, she was conventionally dressed.

‘Sister Angelica,’ she said, holding out her hand.

Madero shook it. Sam was amused to see how he dealt with this dilemma. She guessed he’d much prefer to accept the lift, but the nun had put him on the spot.

Then she was faced with a dilemma of her own as the nun turned from Madero to herself and thrust out her hand again and tried another friendly smile. It didn’t fade as Sam let her own fingertips barely brush the nun’s and said shortly, ‘Sam Flood. G’day.’

She caught Madero regarding her with disapproval and thought, what’s with him? Just because she’s a nun doesn’t mean I’ve got to give her the kiss of peace.

Sister Angelica’s smile didn’t even flicker and her voice was warm as she said, ‘It’s good to meet you, Miss Flood. Mr Madero, on second thoughts I think maybe we should ride, if you don’t mind. I just felt a small twinge of my rheumatism.’

Liar, thought Sam. You’ve sussed out that the poor bastard’s knackered and this is your good deed for the day.

‘As you wish,’ said Madero.

He held the door to let the nun back into the front passenger seat, then opened the rear door and put his briefcase inside. The woman sitting there leaned over to pull it further in and Sam got a good view of her for the first time.

She was in her late twenties, with a long fineboned face, beautiful if you liked that sort of thing. She had straight jet-black hair falling sheer below her shoulders. She was wearing shorts and a suntop, but the flesh exposed showed little sign of the onslaught of weather. Her face had an almost lilial pallor which against her black hair could easily have produced a vampirical effect, yet far from being cadaverous, she somehow seemed to shimmer with life. She had a full well-rounded figure and the kind of long legs which would have graced a fashion house catwalk. Her eyes moved over Sam with the measured indifference of a security scan. They were a bluey grey that was familiar—like the driver’s, that was it, but unlike his showing neither the potential for benevolence nor the presence of trouble. Her gaze held Sam’s for a moment, a smile which had something of mockery in it and something of enquiry too, touched her mouth briefly, then she sat back as Madero hauled himself in beside her.

‘My daughter, Frek,’ said Woollass. ‘That’s idiotspeak for Frederika.’

Madero shook her hand. At the same time a thunderous voice echoed out:

‘Morning, Gerry. Window shopping, are we? Why not bring your friends in? You never know, you might see something that takes your fancy.’

She turned to see that Thor Winander had appeared round the end of his house. Stripped to the waist and with a long-handled hammer resting on one shoulder, he looked more like the god of the Wolf-Head Cross than ever.

‘Morning, Thor. Another time,’ called Woollass. ‘If you’re ready, Mr Madero…’

As Madero pulled his door shut, he frowned at Sam as if she were an attendant footman he was wondering if he should tip. Then the car drew away.

You’re really making new friends this morning, girl, Sam mocked herself as she watched it go.

‘You waiting for a red carpet or something?’ called Winander.

He didn’t wait for an answer but disappeared towards the smithy.

Sam looked up at the sandstone block once more and jostled the few coins she had in the pocket of her shorts.

‘Wonder if he takes credit cards?’ she said to a passing raven.

Caw! replied the raven.

Or, as this was Illthwaite where they crucified boys and ghosts searched your room, it might have been, Cash!

2 inquisition

Mig Madero was more relieved than he cared to admit to be in the car. Physiotherapy routines got you mobile, but the last half-hour had proved yet again the old hiking adage that the only thing that gets you fit for walking steeply uphill is walking steeply uphill.

The drive to the Hall took less than a minute and the woman next to him showed no inclination to talk. The wide rear seat removed any risk of physical contact, but he found her closeness vaguely disturbing. Despite her icy pallor, warmth came off her and with it a scent composed of whatever perfume she used underpinned by faint traces from her own skin and flesh. She was beautiful, no argument about that, with a fine delicate bone structure that reminded him of the angels in the murals in the seminary chapel, but with flesh enough on her to turn the careless mind from the sacred to the profane.

Frek. The English loved their diminutives. It was his mother who started calling him Mig. Frederika was a lovely name, but Frek had intimacy.

The car came to a halt, rather to his relief, and he turned his attention to the less troublesome attractions of Illthwaite Hall.

His first impression was of an extremely appealing house with little sign of that selfconsciousness which comes from a desire to impress one’s neighbours. The tall twisting chimneys belonged to the architecture of fairy tales, and the timbering too he had seen often in the children’s books in his mother’s house.

He stared up at an ornately carved stone set above the lintel of the brass-studded oak front door. On its left side was a coat of arms with three roses: one red, one white, one golden. On the right stood an angel with a sword, its robes white, its weapon silver with a smear of scarlet along its edge. Between, picked out in red and green, were some words, crushed so close together that reading them wasn’t easy but he’d had plenty of practice at deciphering ornate and obscure scripts.

Edwin Woollass Esquire and Alice

His Wife made this house to be built

in the Dear of Our Lord 1535

Cruce Fido

‘“I trust in the cross”,’ Madero translated.

‘Our dog’s a crook,’ said Frek Woollass as she went by him and opened the door.

‘Family joke,’ said Woollass. ‘Usually left behind with childhood. Come in.’

A good three inches shorter than his daughter, he moved with the determined gait of a man who anticipates obstacles but doesn’t intend walking round them.

‘It’s a lovely spot, isn’t it?’ said Sister Angelica. Her voice was gruff without being masculine, and it had a fairly broad accent which Madero, who had early recognized the importance of the way you talked in his maternal milieu, identified as Lancastrian. ‘Very welcoming. Pity about the knocker, though.’

The cast-iron door knocker, shaped like a wolf’s head with mouth agape and teeth bared, looked as if it were keen to bite the hand that raised it.

They followed Woollass into a broad entrance hall, so dimly lit that Madero got little impression of it other than lots of wood panelling and a few wall-mounted animal heads as they passed quickly along, down a little corridor and through another door which wouldn’t have looked out of place in a dungeon.

The room it opened into had a flagged floor with at its centre a vaguely oriental-looking circular carpet whose yellow-and-umber design stood out boldly against the grey granite. On it stood four wooden armchairs around a low oak table. The effect was rather theatrical, as though a single spot were lighting up the action area of an open stage. A huge fireplace almost filled one wall. No fire was needed today, but a tall vase full of multi-coloured dahlias burnt on the hearth and above the fireplace was the same coat of arms he’d seen over the entrance door.

As he took the chair Woollass indicated, Madero began to feel the past crowding in and sense other shadowy presences in the room which if he relaxed and admitted them might let themselves become more visible. But for the moment, he wanted to concentrate on his host and this unexpected nun who’d sat down on his left.

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