Christie Dickason - The Memory Palace

‘He looks just like a sausage pasty,’ said one of the boys. The rest of the on-lookers, fewer in number than before dinner, seemed torn between groans and a natural instinct to cheer.

‘Now fill the hole you’ve made in the bank,’ said Zeal. ‘I recall no mention anywhere of a legal right to dig holes.’

Harry ignored her, but Pickford gave the shovel to young Fox.

‘Now back one of the carts down here to the pond,’ ordered Harry.

‘How?’ Zeal stood up from the corner of Amphritite’s plinth, where she had stayed on guard during the dinner break.

From the arch in the hedge, Fox and Harry contemplated the maze. Then Fox set off towards the forecourt, traversing the maze with exaggerated care. A few moments later he reappeared with a measuring rod, which he held against the opening in the hedge.

‘We can’t get a cart down to the pond in any case, sir. It’s too wide to pass through this arch.’

‘Then cut down the hedge.’

‘That right is not given in the deed,’ said Zeal.

Harry turned to the estate manager. ‘Tuddenham, bring us that bill you had earlier, and three others, and an axe. The hedge is already ruined. And no one has mazes any longer, in any case.’

‘Tuddenham, please do nothing of the sort.’ To Harry, she added, ‘I have a maze.’

The watchers shifted in anticipation of new drama.

With an oath, Harry seized the nearest boy by the arm. ‘Come, my lad. You show us where the things are kept!’ He dragged the boy towards the stable yard, with carters hopping over the maze walls behind him.

Wentworth cleared his throat.

Zeal called a second boy and sent him to fetch her neighbour Sir Richard Balhatchet. ‘Beg him to make the greatest possible haste. For our part, we must hold them off until he arrives.’

Wentworth touched her arm. ‘Do you recall what you asked me yesterday morning?’

She and he arrived back on the pond bank just as Harry’s men returned with four billhooks and an axe. When Harry gave the order to attack the hedge, Zeal produced Wentworth’s pistol from the folds of her skirts.

‘Shit!’ said Pickford under his breath.

Harry was the only one to laugh. ‘She won’t shoot,’ he told his men. ‘Carry on.’

There was a long uneasy silence. Zeal leaned against Amphritite and braced her arm, which had begun to tremble under the weight of the gun. She aimed first at Fox. Then at his son. Then at Pickford.

Pickford scratched his neck and sat down. The others looked from her to Harry and back again. They laid down their billhooks.

Zeal watched Harry eye the tools as if considering even the gross impropriety of taking up one himself.

‘The law is on my side, madam,’ said Harry. ‘I shall call for a constable if you don’t let us proceed.’

‘Better than that, I’ve already sent for a magistrate.’

After examining the deed, which Zeal kept in a casket in the estate office, Sir Richard was forced to agree that Sir Harry did indeed have the right to remove the statues. But, on the other hand, Sir Richard also had to agree with Zeal that Harry could not cut down either hedge or maze.

‘That’s absurd!’ Sir Harry reached over Sir Richard’s shoulder to take the deed for a closer look. ‘What am I supposed to do?’ He threw his arms to the Heavens in protest.

‘Mind the candlestick on the mantle,’ Zeal said quietly.

‘This is a madhouse!’

‘Let me see that deed again.’ Sir Richard frowned at the document as if it would yield something it had failed to say before. Zeal wondered if the old knight had simply forgotten what it said. His once-keen mind had seemed to lose its edge quite suddenly, early that past summer, and his memory had begun to misplace things.

‘Most definitely can’t cut the hedge,’ said Sir Richard.

‘Then how am I to take possession of what is lawfully mine?’ demanded Harry. ‘Perhaps Doctor Bowler would care to pray for a miracle…should be easier to move hedges than mountains.’

They trooped out of the estate office back into the forecourt, where the carters, Wentworth, Bowler, Mistress Margaret and the others waited with faces ranging from expectant to glum.

‘Legal niceties!’ said Sir Harry bitterly. ‘All law and no justice!’ To Fox, he said, ‘You’re going to have to figure out how to get the statues without going through there.’

Sir Richard lowered his massive head and glared at Harry through his eyebrows. The carters examined the entrance to the paddock to the west of the maze garden.

‘Can’t get a wagon through over here, either.’

Beyond the paddock, stretching up to the high road, lay the hedge of the Roman field, reinforced with stones and willow hurdles set to try to stem the constant leaking of sheep. The stable yard and walled garden blocked access around the eastern end of the house.

‘I’m taking those statues, and I don’t care how!’ said Harry. ‘I’ll stay until someone works it out.’

‘An ox without a cart could reach the ponds through the paddock.’

Heads turned towards this unexpected voice. Harry looked startled, as if he had not known the man could speak at all. Indeed, given Wentworth’s absence from table during Harry’s short time on the estate, perhaps he had never before heard the older man utter. ‘You can’t drag a statue across the ground like a plough.’ Nevertheless, Harry eyed Wentworth with hope.

‘The Indians of the New World shift blocks of stone twenty times greater than that statue, without even horses, let alone oxen or carts.’

‘Pray, enlighten us,’ said Harry.

Though she was curious to hear Wentworth’s solution, Zeal went to see Sir Richard off on his horse.

‘A word in your ear, young mistress,’ the old knight murmured as he prepared to mount. ‘Keep an eye on that Fox man. Wanted me to have you arrested for threatening him with a gun. I told him not to be a fool, that you wouldn’t hurt a fly. What a business!’

When Zeal returned, the carters were prising planks from sides of two of the carts.

‘I’ve no doubt, sir, that you’ll pay me to replace the sides of my carts,’ Fox said to Sir Harry.

‘I’ll pay you if you ever manage to do the job you’re contracted to do.’

‘Four will be enough,’ Wentworth told the men. The reclusive fisherman had assumed authority with apparent ease. The carters obeyed him without question.

‘Imagine him knowing about things like New World Indians,’ said one of the knitters. ‘Or talking so much,’ said another.

As he gave orders, Zeal observed her future husband with increasing interest and surmise. I must ask him more about those Indians. She was looking forward to his wedding gift of truth even if she avoided thinking about any of the rest of it.

On Wentworth’s instruction, the carters led one of the draught oxen through the paddock. Then they laid the four cart planks on the ground, end to end in pairs, beside the recumbent statue.

‘You haul him up…’ Fox pointed at the two men on the pulley rope. ‘…then you lot over there swing him over the planks, crosswise, mind. Then you…’ he pointed at the first pair again ‘…let him down again, nice and easy. Ready?’

The men settled their feet and drew deep breaths.

‘Heave!’ cried Fox.

Nereus did not wish to be heaved. Instead, his weight drove the feet of the poles down into the mud. The harder the men tried to lift, the deeper they drove the poles into the ground.

‘I did say,’ said Pickford. ‘Straight off. Soon as I saw all this mud.’

‘God’s Teeth and Toenails!’ cried Sir Harry.

‘I’ve never had such trouble, ever before!’ exclaimed Fox. His scowl included Zeal in the trouble. ‘The thing acts as if it’s been cursed!’