David Dickinson - Death of a Chancellor

‘Our father which art in heaven,’ she began, her voice sounding strange in the deserted crypt, ‘hallowed be thy name . . .’

It was nearly half-past seven when Powerscourt finished his letter. He read it through three times. Then he decided to leave it until the morning before he posted it and the two other versions he would send to the Archbishop and the Lord Lieutenant. He had decided to omit the Bishop of Exeter. Maybe he could improve it in the morning. As he set off through the drawing room to join Johnny and the children, he saw Lucy’s letter on the table. He read it once and called for the butler in his loudest voice.

‘McKenna! McKenna!’

The butler came running into the room. He had never heard Powerscourt shout before.

‘Do you know why Lady Powerscourt went into Compton this afternoon?’ said Powerscourt, staring hard at Andrew McKenna.

‘All I know is that there was a letter, my lord. It came about half-past four, I think.’

‘Did you see who brought it?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘No, my lord. Nobody saw the bearer. It was addressed to Lady Powerscourt at Fairfield Park. The handwriting might have been a child’s.’

Or somebody pretending to be a child, Powerscourt thought bitterly.

‘And did she go out straight away?’

‘Yes, my lord. She rode off into Compton at about a quarter to five.’

‘Right, McKenna,’ said Powerscourt, ‘can you ask the coachman to take Mrs Herbert and the two children back to the Cathedral Close. And ask him to wait outside her house.’ He strode out into the garden. Johnny and Anne Herbert were looking sadly at the remains of a small bird that seemed to have fallen victim to one of the Fairfield cats. Johnny was proposing burial underneath the trees, the children nodding slowly in agreement. None of them had been to a funeral before.

‘Mrs Herbert,’ even now Powerscourt remembered his manners, ‘the coachman will take you and the boys back into town as soon as you are ready. Johnny, we must go now. I think Lucy may be in danger.’

‘Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee oh Lord, and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.’ The closing prayer of Evensong, which Lady Lucy had heard so often less than a hundred yards from her dungeon, gave her some comfort. Fragments of prayers and bits of collects jumbled themselves up in her mind. She had prayed for the means of grace and the hope of glory She had prayed for the hope of grace and the means of glory She didn’t think God would mind if the message was confused. This after all was one of his own on temporary sojourn in the valley of the shadow of death. Then she heard a noise. Only when she heard it did she realize that up till now, fifteen to twenty minutes after her incarceration, she thought, she had heard absolutely nothing. No human voice, no passing carriages, no songbird gracing the walls of the minster with its music, not even the trebles of the choirboys could be heard down here. The walls must have been ten feet thick, built to last at the end of the eleventh century, rendering the crypt the perfect place for the contemplation of one’s soul in peace. Or the contemplation of your own death in peace, Lady Lucy said to herself, huddling ever closer to one of the central pillars. The noise was growing louder, a hissing noise, a gurgling noise, a noise that grew in volume as time went by. Lady Lucy was virtually certain what it was. Then she felt it running over her shoes. Water was flooding into the Compton crypt, not in a deluge, but in a steady flow that must surely fill the entire chamber if it continued. Lady Lucy began looking for the steps. Over there was higher ground. Twice she fell over and her dress and her blouse were soaked. What a frightful sight I’m going to be if anybody ever manages to find me, or if the monster decides to turn off the water, she said to herself. She thought of Thomas and Olivia grieving for a drowned mother. She wondered how Francis would cope on his own. Perhaps he would marry again. He didn’t seem to have very much luck with his wives staying alive, she reflected bitterly. Two drowned, one in the Irish Sea, one in the crypt of Compton.

At last she found the steps and sat halfway up to wait for the flood that would engulf her to rise slowly up the Norman pillars. Sometimes she thought it was subsiding, draining away perhaps through some porous section of the walls. Then it rose again, slowly, steadily, stealthily, almost like some wild animal stalking its prey in a jungle and waiting to pounce. Lady Lucy found herself thinking of her grandfather in Scotland who had dreamed of her marrying the Viceroy of India. He had taught her to shoot in case she needed to defend herself against hostile natives or marauding wild animals. Bullets would not help me now, she said to herself. I must remain calm, she told herself. If I panic or turn hysterical I shall die even sooner. She tried to imagine what Francis would say. She thought she knew exactly what his message to her would be. Hold on Lucy, I’m coming.

Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald were riding into Compton faster than they had ever galloped across the South African veldt the year before. Johnny had a dark bag on his back, filled with strange implements that would open doors and windows designed to keep intruders out. The sun was setting over to their right, the glorious greens of an English spring turning back to the anonymous grey of twilight. Once or twice Johnny glanced wistfully at some bird of prey hovering above the fields. Powerscourt was calculating how long it would take them to reach Compton. And how long the murderer had already had to kill his Lucy.

Lady Lucy had counted fifteen steps from the bottom of the crypt to the great door that had banged shut on her some time before. She was sitting on step number eight, peering at the tide of water that swirled about her feet. Not that she could see the water, but she heard its presence everywhere, rippling round the pillars, slurping along the walls at the back. She had drawn her feet up to the step beneath. As the water rose she was going to retreat higher until she ended up crouching on the top step with her back to the door. She had moved on from the prayers and the collects to St Patrick’s Breastplate. One of her grandmothers used to recite it to her as a lullaby at bedtime. The words had never left her.

‘Christ for my guardianship today: against poison, against burning, against drowning, against wounding, that there may come to me a multitude of rewards.

Christ with me

Christ before me

Christ behind me.’

Christ was not beneath her. The water was. It had risen again during her prayer. Lady Lucy retreated to step number nine. She found herself wondering why the murderer was so sensitive about the choir. Her mind went back to the conversation with the choirmaster when he had threatened to expel her for taking too much interest in the boys. They have a lot of new music to learn for the commemoration service, he had said, as well as the Messiah. What sort of new music? Catholic music? Music that would never gain countenance in an Anglican cathedral, perhaps? And the choirboys might have told her? Surely that was the answer. She would have to tell Francis when she saw him. Maybe the choirmaster was the murderer. Then Lady Lucy’s courage broke down and the tears rolled down her face to add a touch of salt to the malevolent flood beneath her. She might never see Francis again. He would never know how much she loved him, how she had loved him ever since that meeting in the National Gallery nine years before when she had talked with such passion about Turner’s Fighting Temeraire. The thought that Francis would never know how much she felt for him reduced Lady Lucy to bouts of uncontrollable weeping. The waters advanced again. Lady Lucy retreated. She was on step number ten now. Only five to go.