Philip Gooden - The Salisbury Manuscript

Without giving any sign that he’d listened to these last words, Walter Slater turned away. He sat down on the makeshift bedding and buried his head in his hands. When he looked up again he seemed taken aback to find Selby still there. Selby was tired of standing. He went to sit on one of a handful of chairs placed in the room for the benefit of the bell-ringers.

‘You are a man of the cloth, Walter, as I am. We talk about the sins of others but less often of our own. Something has occurred to make you act in this very uncharacteristic way. You must either be sinning or sinned against. Which is it? Won’t you tell me?’

‘Oh, you want me to tell you, do you?’ said Walter Slater. ‘You want me to confess? Very well, I shall.’

Several miles away, in Northwood House, Fawkes was awakened by a shuffling and snorting from the horses. Fawkes — the coachman and valet and factotum to Percy Slater — chose to sleep in a loft above the stables rather than in the cold and cavernous main house. His master made no objection. Percy Slater ran an odd establishment, or more accurately he didn’t run it at all but let it fall to slow ruin about his ears. Fawkes might sleep where he pleased as long as he was available when required to convey his master about the place and for other odd jobs. So Fawkes had fashioned for himself quite a cosy area at the gable end which was once used for storage. He had equipped it with a simple bed and a chair and a little table. He liked the way he could look down on the world, even if it was no more than the world of the stables. It gave him the same feeling of apartness as driving a coach. He liked the privacy of the stables, the absence of visitors, not that anyone visited the main house. He probably preferred the company of horses to people. Percy Slater had once told him that he was like Lemuel Gulliver in the story but Fawkes did not know what the man was talking about.

Now Fawkes heard stealthy movements from down below and was wide awake at once. It was that sound which had disturbed the horses. Fawkes was used to the stable noises, the sound of exhaled breath, the creak of the wooden stalls during the night. But this was a human being.

He took hold of an iron bar which lay beside the bed, kept there for just these eventualities. A ladder led up from ground level to rest against one of a pair of cross-beams that supported the planks or flooring of Fawkes’s quarters. There was no light in the stables but Fawkes’s eyes were used to the dark, and he could just make out the uprights of the ladder from where he lay on his bed, snugged against the end wall. He listened as a first, experimental foot was placed on the bottom rung, then a second foot on the second rung, and so on. The ladder creaked slightly.

Fawkes waited, lying on his back, his head turned sideways to watch the top of the ladder, his right hand gripping the iron bar. Fawkes was not frightened. He did not scare easily. The advantage lay with him, since he was awake and the intruder did not know he was awake. Besides, he had an idea who it might be. In due course, a cap and a head appeared at the top of the ladder.

‘Stop right there, mate,’ he said. ‘I can crack you over the nut before you get a foot higher in the world.’

‘Why’d you want to do that, Seth Fawkes?’ said the head. ‘I mean you no harm.’

‘I know you and your games.’

‘Well, I’m a-coming up now.’

The head grew to a pair of shoulders, then added arms, torso and legs. There was something monkey-like about the figure which now drew itself over the edge of Fawkes’s living quarters. Meantime, Fawkes had swung from his bed and was fiddling with an oil lamp. But he kept the iron bar within reach just as he kept an eye on the new arrival until he had got the lamp hissing and glowing.

‘How’d you get in here?’ he said.

‘Through the door. And, before that, over the wall, Seth.’

‘It’s a high wall,’ said Fawkes. He was so unused to being called by his first name, rather than the more customary Fawkes, that to hear it was as odd as being addressed by a stranger. Yet the man sharing his little eyrie in the stables was, regrettably, no stranger.

‘Leaped it, didn’t I,’ said the intruder, referring to the wall.

‘Regular spring-heeled Jack, aren’t you, Adam?’

‘Enough of the complimenting. It’s a bloody cold night out. Got anything warm to drink?’

Fawkes had a bottle of port, filched from his master. Reluctantly, he uncorked it and passed it to the other man. He watched as Adam swung himself round so that he was sitting with his legs dangling into space. He observed that Adam was wearing a kind of knapsack, which gave him a hunched appearance. The other man threw back his head and tilted the bottle to swallow, exposing his neck and his Adam’s apple. A single blow there would do it, thought Fawkes.

Adam put down the bottle. He wiped his mouth. He looked slyly at Fawkes as he handed back the bottle.

‘I can guess what you’re thinking,’ he said.

‘Guess away.’

‘One quick push and I’d topple off here, wouldn’t I?’

Almost right, thought Fawkes, though it was more of a blow than a push that he was considering.

‘Why would I want to do that?’ he said, aloud.

‘To pay me back for that little joke on Salisbury station,’ said Adam.

‘Joke? Oh, that little joke. You pushed me on to the line.’

‘You were not pushed but fell. Just toppled off the platform when you saw me coming.’

‘You speak as if you was out strolling. Saw you sneaking up rather.’

‘Anyway, there was no danger, no train coming. You got up and vanished. No harm done. Just my bit of mischief after a good day out.’

Fawkes recalled that recent day out. He’d come in by train from Downton to visit a certain padding-ken or low boarding house run by a Mrs Mitchell. Fawkes had an understanding with Mrs Mitchell which went back many years. After their session together he’d ended up in the pub called The Neat-Herd (but universally known as The Nethers). There he had encountered Adam, not for the first time. They’d drunk quite a bit before Fawkes had to leave for the Downton train. Adam had been in an especially sprightly mood and had accompanied Fawkes to the station, darting around in the black garb he favoured. He was like a devil on wheels. Fawkes thought he’d got rid of him finally but his shadow had played that last trick on him on the station platform, bursting out to surprise him like some silly kid. Fawkes had been pissed enough to topple on to the track but retained enough of his wits to scramble out of the way pretty damned quick.

‘You do like mischief and games, don’t you, Adam?’ said Fawkes now, squinting down his forefinger as if he were aiming a gun. ‘You always have liked a spot of mischief.’

‘Keeps me going,’ said the other happily.

There was an irritating bounce to Adam, as if he was never going to be troubled or put down by anything. Seth Fawkes knew that bounce only too well. He said, ‘What do you want here?’

‘Your master asleep?’

"Spect so. Most honest people are at this hour.’

‘Your master honest? Ha!’

‘Beware of your tongue.’

‘I know Mr Percy Slater and his honesty. Didn’t he commission me to do a little job of breaking and entering a man’s room in a hotel because he wanted to know what documents that man was carrying? Letters and such to do with the honest Slaters.’

‘You should thank me for that commission, Adam. It was me as put your name forward to my master, knowing he wanted a spot of dirty work done.’

‘Well, thank you, Seth Fawkes. I am forever obligated to you. That shows you don’t bear me any hard feelings for that bit of larking about at Salisbury station. Your mistress now, is she at Northwood House tonight?’