One thing Hugo did like about England was the suddenness with which its cities seemed to end. One minute you would be neck deep in traffic, crawling past kebab shops and pet stores, and the next minute the road would start to flex and bend, sweeping you through the greenest of countryside. It was as if these ancient English towns and cities had dug themselves into the land over the centuries, too afraid or respectful of the countryside to spread their grimy fingers into the fields and woods.
And so, twenty minutes after turning the Cadillac’s key in the heart of London, Hugo and Pendrith found themselves flying through the countryside, the concrete and glass of the boroughs replaced by freshly plowed fields of brown knitted together by the winding strands of green hedgerow that divided up the landscape around them.
As they passed Welwyn Garden City, Hugo gave Pendrith instructions on how to program the car’s GPS, and soon they were on automatic pilot. Hugo signaled to exit on the northern end of Stevenage, but Pendrith tutted at the GPS and told Hugo to take the Letchworth exit.
“I shoot pheasants up this way, remember? Know the route better than that bloody instrument.”
Two minutes after leaving the highway, Hugo turned left up Lannock Hill, the kind of narrow, steep, and hedge-lined road that explained England’s smaller cars. The Cadillac roared with irritation, and Hugo clenched the wheel, hoping no other vehicle would crest the hill and start down toward him. Other than the lumbering tractors and once-a-day buses that populated these roads, Hugo figured he’d be bigger and heavier than anything else he’d meet.
They made it to the top unmolested, and Hugo eased off the power to direct the car through several bends. Then the road straightened and the hedges backed off, giving them a view of green pastures to the left and right.
“Weston is just a couple of miles ahead,” Pendrith said. “Interesting place, too.”
“That so?” asked Hugo.
“It’s got one of those wonderful legends, from hundreds of years ago. Chap named Jack O’Legs lived in the fourteenth century; they say he was a giant.”
“A giant.”
“Indeed. He used to rob wealthy travelers and local merchants alike back on that road we just took, that hill. Then he’d give money or food to the poor, after taking his share.”
“The original Robin Hood?”
“Right,” said Pendrith. “Except things turned out a little badly for our man Jack. He was captured by a co-op of bakers who were fed up with him stealing their food. If I remember the story right, they blinded him with hot pokers and were about to kill him when he asked to be allowed to shoot one last arrow from his mighty bow and then be buried wherever it landed. He fired his arrow and it traveled several miles in the air until it hit the roof of Weston Church and bounced into the graveyard.”
“How convenient.”
“Quiet, man. If you don’t believe me, you can see it for yourself.”
“Meaning?” Hugo shot him a quizzical look.
“Meaning his grave is still there.”
“Are you serious? He actually has a grave at the church? After six hundred years?”
“This is England, old boy. We build things to last, including churches and burial plots. You Yanks might learn a thing or two from us.”
“So how big is this grave, if old Jack was a giant?”
“Well, there are two stones marking the head and foot, and I was told they are fourteen feet apart.”
Hugo smiled. “I like that story. No one has ever dug him up to check?”
“Good Lord no!” Hugo heard real outrage in the man’s voice. “That would be sacrilege.”
“After six hundred years, I don’t think he’d mind.”
“It’s a churchyard, for heaven’s sake.” Pendrith leaned forward and looked at the GPS screen. “Looks like the place we’re headed for is just the other side of Weston.”
They slowed as the road narrowed, houses appearing out of nowhere on either side, white and red-brick row houses that looked as though they’d settled into the earth. Heeding the voice on the GPS, Hugo turned left past a tiny store that doubled as the post office, then paused at a four-way stop. The car growled as he pressed the accelerator and they drove up behind a tractor rumbling along the main street. To their left he saw a wide triangle that was the village green, immaculately kept and with a pond in its center. Three weeping-willow trees leaned over the hollow, dangling their branches into the water as if trawling for fish, or testing the temperature. To their right was a high brick wall that ran for several hundred yards.
“What’s behind there?” Hugo asked.
“Not what, but who,” Pendrith replied. “That’s Dunsmore Hall. The family owns the hall, as well as Dunsmore Manor, Weston Lodge, and the vicarage.”
“Like their privacy?”
“Don’t we all? Very nice people, as it happens. They’ve been in the village since the days of old Jack O’Legs himself. Probably the ones who helped bury him,” Pendrith smiled. “Super people now, though, very active in the community.”
“And very active,” Hugo guessed, “in the pheasant shooting business?”
Pendrith harrumphed. “Around here it’s a tradition, not a business. And they happen to be excellent hosts.”
A minute later the land to their right rose and the houses on both sides gave way to hedgerows and thickening woods.
“That was it?” asked Hugo.
“That was Weston,” Pendrith agreed. “If we’d gone straight instead of past the post office, we’d have seen more. The cricket field, a couple of pubs. Up that road is the church.”
Hugo looked ahead and to the right, where Pendrith was pointing. A narrow lane rose away from the road, running parallel with it for fifty yards before cutting right into some trees. The church, and Jack’s famous grave, was out of sight from the road.
They drove on, and the road narrowed and darkened as stands of oak and birch rose up on both sides. The trees fell away after a mile, but the sense of darkness and closeness remained because the road itself sat low between high banks topped with thick hedges. Every hundred yards or so a lay-by had been cut into the earth to allow cars to pass each other.
A mile outside Weston, with nothing but muddy brown fields on either side of them, the polite voice from the GPS instructed Hugo to take the next left. He slowed, eyes searching for the entrance to a road. There it was, a lane slicing through the hedgerow to meet them. He glanced at Pendrith, who just shrugged. May as well go in.
The Cadillac fit through the narrow opening to the lane, but only just. The lane itself was straight as an arrow and may once have been tarmac but was now more gravel than anything.
“Looks like an old Roman road,” Pendrith said. “They crisscross the countryside out here, all of them straight as can be. My father used to tell me that they were straight so the Britons couldn’t hide around the corners and ambush Roman soldiers. No idea if it’s true or not.”
Silver birch trees lined the road like sentries, their branches forming a canopy over the car, wrapping them further in darkness. The car rocked and bumped over the potholes, and the tires spat gravel at the grass embankment, but after a hundred yards Hugo saw no end to the lane.
“There!” Pendrith was pointing ahead and to the right, to a footpath leading away from the road into a spinney. At the entrance to the path, Hugo could make out the dark silhouette of a man. He was standing with one foot on the stump of a long-dead elm, a shotgun held loosely at his waist but aimed directly at them. Hugo stopped the car twenty yards short of the man, who wore a green Barbour jacket and whose face was obscured by a cap pulled low over his eyes.
“This car bulletproof?” Pendrith asked.
“His shotgun won’t do much more than scratch the paint, so we should be fine,” Hugo said. “Until you get out, of course.”