Philip Gooden - The Salisbury Manuscript

‘If you see them, give them a piece of my mind,’ said the sitting man. ‘I do not know what they expect to find in the triforium.’

He gestured behind him and Tom, glancing up, noticed a wooden enclosure that formed a kind of internal porch in the north-western corner of the building. There was a door, slightly open. Tom might have suspected a trap but he reasoned that men in such a hurry that they shoved aside a harmless old verger would not take time to close doors after them. By now, the younger verger had reached the injured man. Tom nodded to him and moved away before he could be asked any questions.

He stepped through the door of the enclosure and shut it behind him. He was standing in a stone-flagged lobby which, through a vaulted opening, showed the beginning of a flight of spiral stairs. There was no other exit, no different direction in which Fawkes and Eaves could have gone. Tom took the stairs two at a time, but the tight turns in the staircase and the smoothness of the old, worn steps caused him to lose his footing more than once. A little light came squeezing through slit windows.

He reached the top and paused to catch his breath and work out where to go next. But, again, there seemed to be little choice. A narrow passage led off to a railed gallery overlooking the nave. Was this what the old verger had called the triforium? After the dimness and constriction from the ascent to this level there came an abrupt burst of light and space. To his right the sun streamed through the windows, some of clear glass, some stained. To his left were the airy upper reaches of the nave. A small part of him that wasn’t preoccupied with keeping his balance — the guardrail was low — was aware that the sound of prayer had been replaced by singing which was thin and distant.

At the far end of the gallery was another lobby and a second spiral staircase. Tom halted for an instant. Each time he was listening out for sounds coming from ahead or above. Scuffling steps, the noise of a struggle perhaps, for he was convinced that Fawkes intended to do harm to Eaves. But there was no sound.

On the next level, Tom found himself above the vaulted ceiling of the nave. By now he was well out of the public area of the cathedral. The light, strong at this western end, was swallowed up among the massive timber frames that receded into the depths of the roof. It was like being inside an upturned ark. The wind, more evident at this height, rattled at the myriad of small panes in the west-facing windows. There was a walkway along one side of the roof, stretching above the pale domes of the vaults. Tom couldn’t be sure but he thought he detected a flicker of movement at the far end.

He started off along the walkway. It swayed slightly underfoot. This, and a rope strung between timbers which provided the only handhold, reinforced the feeling of being aboard a ship. It grew darker as Tom got closer to the end of the roof of the nave and he had to stoop slightly to enter a short passage where the walkway finished. This time he emerged into a large white-walled chamber which, he realized, formed one of the floors of the tower. A loud click startled him until he saw its source was an arrangement of wheels and cogs and cords that stretched through holes in the ceiling to the next storey. Above him must be the bells of the cathedral clock.

Tom was about to give up his quest, wondering whether Fawkes and Eaves had eluded him and taken an altogether different path through or out of the building, when he heard a distinctly human sound from the staircase which led to the floor above. It was a shout of alarm or a loud curse — he could not decide which — muffled but also magnified by the twists and turns of the stone spiral. Not the sound of an elderly verger or a discreet keeper of the bells. Tom approached the staircase, which was contained within one of the four great columns that ran up the corners of the tower.

He wished he had some object with him which might be used as a weapon. Even an umbrella would have given him confidence. But he had nothing. He could have gone off to get assistance or at least waited for it to arrive: Helen must have reached the police house by now. He might have delayed at the bottom of the spiral stairs, to intercept whoever emerged. But suppose there was some other route down from the tower?

Tom, torn between retreating and advancing, couldn’t recall a time in his life when he’d so consciously put himself in danger. There was a killer up the tower, there was another man (with God knows what driving him ) on his tail, and Tom behind them both.

He took the next set of stairs, passing an entrance to a second white-walled chamber which, a brief glance was enough to tell him, contained nothing except a set of bells, and so continued up an even narrower stone flight. He must nearing the top of the tower. He slowed, partly because his breath was running short, partly because he could hear voices.

He rounded a final twist in the spiral and his head came level with a floor which was of wood not stone. This was the topmost point of the tower and the base of the cathedral spire. If Tom had looked up he would have seen a central wooden column from which sprang a branch-like jumble of scaffolding and small platforms, used for repairs to the inside or access to the outside of the spire. The column soared up straight as a tent-pole and as thick as the main-mast of a ship. Near it was a great treadmill-like wheel which must have once been used for hauling blocks of stone.

But Tom did not look up to where the inside of the spire disappeared into dizzying darkness. Instead his eyes were fixed on the two men who stood facing each other a few strides away from the place at which his head protruded above floor level. It was Eaves the gardener and Fawkes the coachman. They were panting, both of them, and glaring at one another. Luckily for Tom, they were so busy breathing and glaring that they were quite unaware of him.

Fawkes was holding something in his hand. It might have been a knife. Tom could not tell since the light was poor up here. But, as if conscious that he was playing to an audience, Eaves said when he’d recovered his breath, ‘You won’t do much harm with that, Seth. It’s only a trowel.’

‘I grabbed it from your store,’ said Fawkes. ‘It’s got a pointy tip. You come near and try it, Adam.’

‘It’s not the pointy tip, Seth, it’s the mind behind it that counts. The mind and the will. Have you killed a man before? Have you?’

The silence from the other was answer enough.

I have,’ said Adam Eaves. ‘

‘I know. You killed my master Percy Slater. I was there.’

‘Poor old Percy Slater. Well, he shouldn’t have come out the house at that inconvenient moment.’

‘And you did for his brother too, didn’t you, Adam?’

‘We’ve been through that already, Seth. You know it doesn’t mean much to me, this killing lark.’

This was a shocking confirmation to Tom Ansell as he stood below the topmost steps. He remained very still.

‘So I say to you, Seth, that if I can deal with the two Slater brothers just like that — ’ and here the gardener snapped his fingers — ‘then I can deal with my own brother.’

Brothers? Eaves and Fawkes, brothers? Tom remembered that there been something faintly familiar about Fawkes the first time he’d seen him. A likeness to Eaves?

‘I’ll keep you here, Adam,’ said Fawkes. ‘I’ll keep you here until justice comes. I will prevent your escape.’

‘Oh, bugger justice,’ said Eaves. ‘You mind what I said to you earlier. If I swing so will you.’

‘I’ll take my chance on that. I’ve had enough of you and your tricks.’

There was a pause as if this was an answer that Eaves wasn’t prepared for. Tom heard the wind whistling through gaps in the fabric of the spire. Then Eaves said to his brother, ‘I suppose you think there’s no way out of here ’cept down the stairs.’