Death of a Ghost Read online

  Ossian’s place was at the waxed table. There he would scratch designs of interlaced flowers, ready to drape prettily about the rim of a bowl or goblet. Adam engraved them, spectacles on, his hand steady as a cope stone. Or he would chisel out a martyr’s face in cameo, beat gold to nothingness between two parchment sheets, gild wood and plaster, tap roundness into a cup’s lip. Mother Bungay, sitting in the corner, burnished the finished vessels with a rabbit foot.

  Adam’s mystery began with the gold itself. That came from the merchants at Southampton, and there Adam would go to bargain. Damaged cups, rings and brooches arrived, ready to be melted and set in new forms. More often it was bezants and dinars, coins traded from Spain. Ossian would feel the gold press down his fingers, bite the beards of long-dead kings. He mourned the loss of so much good workmanship, even to his own master’s forge.

  “All things pass,” said Adam briefly when Ossian spoke of it. “And the Abbot must have a chalice for his mass.”

  Ossian knew the stages of that journey. The base metals must be sloughed off, gold parted from silver – a lengthy, careful working with fire and brick and salt. Adam would talk of purgatory then, the dreadful cleansing flame of God.

  “All metals long to be gold,” he taught, “just as all creatures long for heaven. We burn and scour and strip away their sin, and bring them to salvation.”

  “As you say, master.”

  But Adam longed to make gold truly, to teach lead to be iron, iron to be copper, copper gold. Such change was in their nature, he declared.

  “If the Switzers’ mines were left to brew till Doomsday, they would yield whole alps of gold. The angels would use it to gild the towers of God’s city. But we men, lacking time…”

  He broke off longingly.

  “Yes, master?”

  “Lacking time, we must squeeze nature into a narrower compass. Ah, Doctor Bacon knew it.”

  So Ossian would sit at his table, while his master worked slow-burning experiments from tubes and pots. Occasionally, Ossian was startled by an explosion or a shatter of glass. Adam’s fingers would be stained violently, blue or green, but Ossian knew better than to ask the reason. In all his years with Adam, he saw his master’s temper vexed only by this – the intractability of stubborn nature, which would not yield her deep secrets to him however he tortured her with heat, confinement and dire, corrosive liquors.

  “Who was Doctor Bacon, master?”

  “The most learned man since Merlin. Once, when I was young, I stood in a library where all the books were chained and daubed with gold, and I held a copy of his Opus Majus. They told me the words had been penned by his own hand. I could feel its power, though I hadn’t the Latin then to read it. I trembled, Ossian.”

  Adam was eloquent on the subject of Doctor Bacon. “He had familiars, devils at his command. He had a head of bronze that would tell the future, and magic to compel it. His art would have raised a wall round the whole island of Britain, if—”

  Adam had been animated briefly. Now he saw his apprentice’s face – curious, eager, puzzled – and his own face darkened. He drew his hand in front of it as if drawing down a veil.

  “Go now, Ossian,” he said, not ungently. “I have a work to make.”

  “HOW MUCH DID you two drink last night?”

  “My head’s fine. Now I think of it, Ossian never even turned up.”

  “You’re useless, Colin! Useless!”

  By now, Ossian was sitting up and staring at them suspiciously. “Have I been talking in my sleep?”

  “Not unless you snore in Morse code,” said Colin.

  “It’s time you were up, Ossian! It’s gone ten.”

  Ossian yawned. “Where’s the fire?”

  Colin laughed. “It’s Sue. She’s got a confession she wants you to make.”

  Ossian groaned and subsided under the covers.

  “We brought you breakfast on a tray,” said Colin. “You can’t complain.” He put the orange juice and a rack of toast on the bedside table.

  Sue, meanwhile, had taken a Sunday magazine to the balcony and was flicking through it, pointedly distancing herself from her brother.

  “You would never guess,” Colin said, “that coming in here was her idea.” He laughed again, nervously. “But Sue doesn’t like to get her hands dirty.”

  Ossian realised he wasn’t going to be let off. He crossed to the washbasin and splashed his face. Whatever dream he had been in the middle of when he awoke split and scattered. “So what’s the problem?”

  “I’ll be straight with you,” said Colin. “We’ve come to talk about the ghosts.”

  Ossian was aware of Sue’s eyes on his back. He turned slowly: “Who’s been seeing ghosts?”

  “Sue has, mostly.”

  Ossian hid his relief well. “Not you?”

  “Me?” cried Colin. “Oh, they wouldn’t show themselves to me. I’m much too coarse. Ask anyone.”

  “He says that because he believes the opposite,” Sue added, putting the magazine down fidgetingly, “but it’s true.”

  “Sue, on the other hand, is almost a ghost herself. Ethereal, Mum says.”

  “From her it’s not a compliment,” said Sue.

  “Don’t you think so too, though, Ossian? Don’t you expect to find her floating downriver with poppies in her hair?” Colin stepped behind his sister and spread her rippling locks across her shoulders.

  “I still know how to punch anyhow!” said Sue, proving it.

  “See, Ossian?” wheezed Colin. “Looks like a china doll but fights like a heavyweight contender. She’s cold and fair and cruel. The youths of Lychfont are all dying for love of her.”

  At that Ossian felt – to his surprise – a sudden tightening in his own midriff. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I was hoping you could give us a clue about that,” replied Sue. “I’ve been seeing spirits round Lychfont for weeks now, but since you turned up – well!” She rose from her chair and regarded him unblinkingly. “I know you have the gift. I have it too. You’ve seen them, haven’t you?”

  Ossian felt himself blush. Being asked that was like being discovered naked. He hoped, for one moment, that it was just a tease, a guess. But returning Sue’s gaze he realised she was entirely serious. Perhaps that was why she had been so alarming from the first. The only other place he had seen eyes like hers – so fired with green and blue, with a faint ring of sour-cream yellow about the iris, a lake of veinless white – was in the mirror.

  “Yes,” he sighed. “I’ve seen them.”

  “In the kitchen yard? Above the flood meadow?”

  Each question wrung from Ossian a sullen nod.

  “I knew it! Oh, Ossian, I’m so glad!” exclaimed Sue with quiet triumph. She looked as if she were about to hug him. Ossian actually took a pace backward, so startling did she suddenly appear. “You don’t know how lonely I was, thinking I was the only person round here with any sensitivity at all. Surely you understand! Seeing things no one else can see. Feeling things that make you—” she laughed with dizzy relief “—well, I used to think I must be mad.”

  “I still haven’t ruled that out personally,” commented Colin, who had taken Sue’s place on the balcony and was pretending to read.

  “Shut up, Colin. Didn’t you sense it too, Ossian, when we met? A kind of… kinship?”

  “I did sense it,” Ossian had to admit. Why? Why did he have to tell Sue this, just because she wanted to hear? “I knew right away. But I didn’t… know that I knew, if you understand that,” he added lamely.

  “Well, of course I understand! Isn’t that how it always is? Isn’t it all to do with the state between knowing and not knowing – the thing there’s no words for? Don’t look so confused! All I mean is, when you see a ghost, it’s not like walking into a lamp post, is it? You’ve got to squint – with your mind. You’ve got to allow it to be possible.”

  “I never really—”

  “You and me, Ossian, we’re different from the oth
ers. One foot on land, another in the ocean. I knew the moment I saw you. Soul mates.”

  Ossian decided abruptly that he’d had enough. “This soul mate wants to get dressed,” he said, walking to the open bedroom door. “So can you both get out now?”

  “And so forceful too!” said Sue brightly as she left. “Catch you later, Ossian.”

  After ten minutes Ossian clambered out on to the landing. His brain, he decided, did not take well to pre-breakfast pummelling from Sue and Colin. What a double-act they were! Sue with her sea-green gaze and dreamy voice, threatening and vulnerable by turns. And Colin, amused at Ossian’s strangeness and his sister’s, hoping to stir the water into stranger patterns yet. Yes, that was Colin – trailing through life like a finger through water, flecking the world with useless bubbles.

  Ossian had time to take a shower and find some trousers. The nausea he had woken to was beginning to subside. But he was not surprised to hear a knock on the door. Colin was coming back in.

  “Did you forget something?” asked Ossian coldly.

  “Forget? I don’t think so.” Colin hovered in the doorway, as if uncertain what to say. All his cockiness had fled. If Ossian hadn’t known better, he would have said he looked frightened. “Ossian, tell me. What really happened last night?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “At the King’s Head. I was there, you know.”

  “The King’s Head? What makes you think I went to the King’s Head?”

  Colin smiled quickly. Whatever he had been about to say, he had changed his mind. “Nothing. I must have been mistaken. Happens all the time. Even so, Ossian, I’ve got something for you.”

  Ossian frowned. “What’s that?”

  “Good advice. You’ll be saved a lot of trouble if you take it.”

  Colin came and parked himself on the edge of Ossian’s bed. He sat there quite a long time, hands on his knees, as if in a dream. When he spoke again, it was with the air of starting a new subject: “You don’t want to take too much notice of Sue, you know.”

  “Oh?”

  “She’s bored. All her friends are up in London and she’s stuck here waiting for her course to start. She’s going to study hydrotherapy, did she tell you?”

  “No. And don’t even try to explain it.”

  “When Sue’s bored, she can get – a bit fanciful,” said Colin regretfully. “Like just now, about the ghosts and stuff. Imagination runs riot.”

  Ossian looked at him steadily. “You were encouraging her.”

  “Me?” Colin looked shocked. “Not really – I was cutting her a bit of slack, that’s all. Sue isn’t the kind of person you can just say ‘no’ to, not straight out. You’ve got be a bit subtler than that.”

  That was probably true, Ossian realised. Sue would waltz past any Stop sign on principle. How did you deal with a person like that? Distract her probably. Give her something else to think about.

  “All I’m saying is, Sue needs careful handling. She can be very persuasive, and she’s got a way of making impossible things sound as ordinary as a loaf of sliced white. You mustn’t let – I mean – well, I wouldn’t want her to suck you into some fantasy of spooks and shadows. She’s good at that.”

  “Hmm. You seem immune at least,” said Ossian dryly.

  “I do, do I, Ossian? Well, I’m not!” Colin leapt up, with a sudden, startling vigour. His face looked suddenly thinner, wilder. “And I meant what I said about the Lychfont boys dying for love. Be careful, that’s all. Keep those hormones on a leash. It’s for your own good.” By now he was at the door, but as he left he looked back and added: “I’d say you’re just her type.”

  ADAM PRICE SAT by the fire and cracked his knuckles. “Our vocation touches that of physician, soldier, judge and priest. What surgeon knows more of anatomy? What judge can so skilfully sift truth? What priest can put a man so quickly in mind of his mortal soul as we can with a nail, a wooden screw, a rope? And when the plans of these great men miscarry, who do they turn to but us? We are the prop that maintains the commonwealth, the stitching that hems their fine garments.”

  “Yes, master.”

  In the box beside the fireplace lay Adam’s collection of keepsakes. When Ossian was younger Adam would set him on his knee and hold out the glittery things to touch.

  “This jewel I had from Master Campion, this from Humphrey of Marlborough,” he would say. “Mistress Shore wore this the day they parted her head from her body, poor lady.”

  The lace was still stiff with her blood.

  Ossian liked the jewels and lockets, but he preferred the ivory hilt of a small silver dagger carved with men in drooping sleeves. He preferred the long-nosed ebony monster from Ethiopia and the Cup of Potencies from Spain.

  “My gentlemen have all been kind,” said Adam. “Few of them gave me so much as a harsh word, even in extremis.”

  Adam was a goldsmith and an alchemist, but he had yet another craft, another forge. Sometimes a message would reach him from the castle upriver, or the London road would summon him. Then he would put off the leather apron and turn spruce and serviceable. Then his metal became tender, became flesh. It was human beings, not nature, that he put to the question. Adam would not have called himself a torturer – but no sorcerer compelling spirits knew better how to distil truth from that raw matter.

  Today the summons had come from the Abbey. Adam took the long leather bag, the one that clanked when he lifted it, and called Ossian from his table. Ossian sprang up; he had never been allowed to watch this work before.

  The woman in the Abbey cellar was terrified. Ossian saw her fire-thrown shadow on the far wall and thought flickeringly of the girl at the crossroads. But no – this was just some kitchen drab caught listening at the doorways: probably innocent, Adam told Ossian, having looked her over. Unlucky – idly curious at most. Hers was not the face a conspirator would trust, being too mean about the eyes and broad in the forehead. It was a weak, lascivious combination.

  Adam’s judgement in such matters was acute, but he was careful in his duty. He began, as was customary, by introducing her to the tools of his craft, the collar and tongs, the talons, the disfiguring harrow.

  “Your name is Jane Wood?”

  Adam’s shadow fell across her, blotting the sooty light from the archway at his back. The stone room stank of piss.

  “Y-yes, sir.” She could scarcely speak for fear.

  “You are to tell me nothing but the truth, Jane. If you lie, I will know. I have spirits at my command that will tell me.”

  Jane listened in horrified silence. Her eyes darted about. They lighted on Ossian and registered a dim surprise at finding him in such a place, but Adam – a man on whom nothing was lost – explained: “This is my servant. He too will know when you lie. You are not going to lie to me, are you, Jane?”

  “No – no, sir. I’ll tell you everything.”

  “That’s good. That is excellent, Jane. Together we will find the truth, yes? And – heavens, girl, what’s the matter now?”

  For Jane had given way to fresh sobs. Her body quaked and shivered.

  “Don’t let him near me, will you, sir? Don’t let him come near with those bloody paws and steal me away to hell!”

  She was looking directly at Ossian. Ossian had never seen such terror. He slowly realised that Jane Wood, in her imbecile fear, had mistaken him for one of Master Adam’s spirits. Adam took advantage of the situation. “If you are honest with me, Jane, I can protect you. Tell the truth, and St Michael himself will stand between you and this damned spirit. The truth will be your bright shield. But if you lie…”

  He looked solemnly into his beard, into the tangled maze of futurity. There was no need to unknot that riddle. Jane was already clamouring to speak.

  “Begin then with the Lord Hungerford. How long have you been in his service?”

  “Six years, sir, come Lady Day. My father was an ostler in his stables.”

  “Good, good,” said Adam en
couragingly. “When did you first hear of his going into France…?”

  Ossian stopped listening after a while. Adam would hurt no one today. Jane Wood couldn’t get the words out quick enough. And Adam seemed quite satisfied with the answers she gave – stupidly so, thought Ossian. Had he been paying attention, he would have noted how skilfully Adam managed his victim, directing her by delicate touches, keeping her to the point, and above all restraining her – for in her present terror she would have accused anyone he suggested, and what would have become of the delicate web of truth then? But Adam knew at once when she had gone too far and tactfully drew her back with a gentle word, where a threat would only have made her more extravagant.

  Jane knew nothing, in any case. Lord Hungerford had met such and such a one, the French ambassador’s man – but that was common knowledge. Alas, sir, she did not know if they had discussed the fortifications at Calais. They had talked of hawking and the recent flood. The Frenchman had drunk an inordinate amount of claret and on more than one occasion she had been obliged to strew new rushes… So her talk ran on. Adam managed to seem interested in every trifling detail.

  Ossian wished that Jane had been more obdurate. He hadn’t forgiven her for thinking he was a devil, nor Adam for allowing it. He looked down at his hands and assured himself that they were, after all, quite free of blood.

  But wasn’t there something devilish about wanting to watch others suffer? Something foul and squint?

  “Well, Ossian?” Adam asked as they climbed up from the Abbey cellars. “How does this trade strike you now?”

  Ossian said nothing, but kicked the top of the step and stumbled in the shock of sunlight.

  “Lost your tongue, boy? What do you say to the King’s service this morning?”

  “You never laid a finger on her!” said Ossian, and was amazed at the note of accusation in his voice.