"At your service, Father," he said in French, and before he crossed the room to the Prior's side exchanged a wink with the horseman.
"Come, then, don't dally," fretted the Prior, turning back to the bench. "I'll bring the letters later tonight, and instruct you further in the arts you wish to learn."
The horseman bowed in mock acknowledgement, and moved towards the door. "Goodnight, Father Prior. Lose no sleep over the Bishop's visit. Goodnight, Roger, goodnight. God be with you."
As we left the room together the horseman sniffed the air with a grimace. The mustiness of the Prior's chamber had now an additional spice, a whiff of perfume from the French monk's habit.
We descended the stairs, but before returning through the passage-way the horseman paused a moment, then opened another door and glanced inside. The door gave entrance to the chapel, and the monks who had been playing pantomime with the novice were now at prayer. Or, to describe it more justly, making motion of prayer. Their eyes were downcast, and their lips moved. There were four others present whom I had not seen in the yard, and of these two were fast asleep in their stalls. The novice himself was huddled on his knees, crying silently but bitterly. The only figure with any dignity was that of a middle-aged man, dressed in a long mantle, his grey locks framing a kindly, gracious face. With hands clasped reverently before him, he kept his eyes steadfast on the altar. This, I thought, must be Sir Henry de Champernoune, lord of the manor and my horseman's master, of whose piety the Prior had spoken.
The horseman closed the door and went out into the passage, and so from the building and across the now empty yard to the gate. The green was deserted, for the women had left the well, and there were clouds in the sky, a sense of fading day. The horseman mounted his pony and turned for the track through the upper plough-lands.
I had no idea of time, his time or mine. I was still without sense of touch, and could move beside him without effort. We descended the track to the ford, which he traversed now without wetting his pony's hocks, for the tide had ebbed, and struck upward across the further fields. When we reached the top of the hill and the fields took on their familiar shape I realised, with growing excitement and surprise, that he was leading me home, for Kilmarth, the house which Magnus had lent me for the summer holidays, lay beyond the little wood ahead of us. Some six or seven ponies were grazing close by, and at sight of the horseman one of them lifted his head and whinnied; then with one accord they swerved, kicked up their heels, and scampered away. He rode on through a clearing in the wood, the track dipped, and there immediately below us in the hollow lay a dwelling, stone-built, thatched, encircled by a yard deep in mud. Piggery and byre formed part of the dwelling, and through a single aperture in the thatch the blue smoke curled. I recognised one thing only, the scoop of land in which the dwelling lay. The horseman rode down into the yard, dismounted and called, and a boy came out of the adjoining cow-house to take the pony. He was younger, slighter than my horseman, but had the same deep-set eyes, and must have been his brother. He led the pony on and the horseman passed through the open doorway into the house, which seemed at first sight to consist of one room only. Following close behind, I could distinguish little through the smoke, except that the walls were built of the mixture of clay and straw that they call cob, and the floor was plain earth, without even rushes upon it.
A ladder at the far end led to a loft, only a few feet above the living-space, and looking up I could see straw pallets laid upon the planking. The fire, stacked with turf and furze, lay in a recess let into the wall, and a stew-pot simmered above the smoke, slung between iron bars fixed to the earthen floor. A girl, her lank hair falling below her shoulders, was kneeling by the fire, and as the horseman called a greeting she looked up at him and smiled.
I was close upon his heels, and suddenly he turned, staring straight at me, shoulder to shoulder. I could feel his breath upon my cheek, and I put out one hand, instinctively, to fend him off. I felt a sudden sharp pain on my knuckles and saw that they were bleeding, and at the same time I heard a splintering of glass. He was not there any longer, neither he, nor the girl, nor the smoking fire, and I had driven my right hand through one of the windows of the disused kitchen in Kilmarth's basement, and was standing in the old sunken courtyard beyond.
I stumbled through the open door of the boiler-room, retching violently, not at the sight of blood but because I was seized with an intolerable nausea, rocking me from head to foot. Throbbing in every limb, I leant against the stone wall of the boiler-room, the trickle of blood from my cut hand running down to my wrist.
In the library overhead the telephone began to ring, sounding, in its insistency, like a summons from a lost, unwanted world. I let it ring.
CHAPTER TWO
IT MUST HAVE taken the best part of ten minutes for the nausea to pass. I sat on a pile of logs in the boiler-room waiting. The worst thing about it was the vertigo: I dared not trust myself to stand. My hand was not badly cut, and I soon staunched the blood with my handkerchief. I could see the splintered window from where I sat, and the fragments of glass on the patio beyond. Later on I might be able to reconstruct the scene, judge where my horseman had been standing, measure the space of that long vanished house where there were now patio and basement: but not now. Now I was too exhausted.
I wondered what sort of figure I must have cut, if anyone had seen me walking over the fields and across the road at the bottom of the hill, and climbing the lane to Tywardreath. That I had been there I was certain. The state of my shoes, the torn cloth of one trouser leg, and my shirt clammy cold with sweat — this had not come about from a lazy amble on the cliffs.
Presently, the nausea and vertigo having passed, I walked very slowly up the back stairs to the hall above. I went into the lobby where Magnus kept his oilskins and boots and all the rest of his junk, and stared at myself in the looking-glass above the wash-basin. I looked normal enough. A bit white about the gills, nothing worse. I needed a stiff drink more than anything. Then I remembered that Magnus had said: Don't touch alcohol for at least three hours after taking the drug, and then go slow. Tea would be a poor second-best, but it might help, and I went into the kitchen to make myself a cup. This kitchen had been the family dining-room when Magnus was a boy; he had converted it during recent years. While I waited for the kettle to boil I looked out of the window at the courtyard below. It was a paved enclosure, surrounded by old, moss-encrusted walls. Magnus, in a burst of enthusiasm at some time, had attempted to turn it into a patio, as he called it, where he could flop about nude if a heat-wave ever materialised. His mother, he told me, had never done anything about the enclosure because it led out from what were then the kitchen quarters.
I looked upon it now with different eyes. Impossible to recapture what I had so lately seen — that muddied yard, with the cow-house adjoining, and the track leading to the wooded grove above. Myself following the horseman through the trees. Was the whole thing hallucination engendered by that hell-brew of a drug? As I wandered, mug in hand, through to the library, the telephone started to ring again. I suspected it might be Magnus, and it was. His voice, clipped and decisive as always, stood me in greater stead than the drink I could not have, or the mug of tea. I flung myself down in a chair and prepared for a session.
"I've been ringing you for hours," he said. "Had you forgotten you promised to put through a call at half-past three?"
I had not forgotten, I told him. "The fact is, I was otherwise engaged."