The Perfect Sinner. Will Davenport

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СКАЧАТЬ think it was wrong.’

      ‘It’s not your fault,’ said Batokewaye. ‘You’re a young man still. You can’t stop what can’t be stopped.’

      ‘It was a great sin and it should have been prevented. We’re not animals. There are rules. Even in battle we must remember…’

      ‘No.’ His voice was loud, cutting across me. ‘We may not be animals, but tell me this. You’re alone, walking in the darkest forest and you hear something rustle behind the next tree. What would you most want it not to be?’

      ‘A wolf,’ I said.

      He shook his head.

      ‘A bear?’

      ‘Not a wolf, not a bear, not a snake, not a lion.’

      ‘What then?’

      ‘Another man.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘I tell you, we’re not animals, we’re more dangerous than any animal.’ He looked down at poor dead John. ‘When did an animal do that to one of its own?’

      We talked until the sun first showed itself far away across the Somme, and by that time we were, what? Friends? Not exactly, not yet. Two people who sensed they were to know each other for years to come. Two people bound down the same road. I already knew that William Batokewaye would be a good companion on that road.

      At dawn, we saw King Edward’s great mathematical exercise begin, his clerks edging their cautious way onto the butchers’ field to reckon exactly how many flowers of the French nobility we had plucked. Sir Reginald Cobham, that stalwart soldier, called together anyone with knowledge of the French colours, because in so many cases, it was only paint and crests and armour which still distinguished one pulped face from another. I closed my eyes when I had seen enough, but the distinctive noise of the aftermath made just as vivid a picture through my ears. I could hear the horse teams snorting and stamping and the sliding apart of the piles as they pulled. The clank of armour against armour and the wet thud of dead flesh hitting the ground as the bodies of horses and men were tugged apart. Every now and then there would be a sigh or a moan as air squeezed from dead lungs and, in amongst it, all the time, there was the cheerful shouting of men who found what they were doing to be perfectly acceptable.

      ‘I want to find a peaceful place,’ I said. ‘Somewhere to think and to gather those thoughts and to say prayers. Somewhere away from Molyns and his like. Somewhere away from war.’

      ‘You have your leaky castle,’ said Batokewaye.

      ‘Walwayns? Walwayns is a hard place to get to and a harder place to stay in. Walwayns spells struggle not peace. It is all I can do to stop it coming to pieces around my ears. Every day I spend there, I am beset by troubles. The people are full of complaints, the air is full of rain and falling rocks, the fields are full of weeds and the kitchens are full of rats. Walwayns is a penance.’

      ‘I know a better place,’ he said quietly.

      ‘Tell me about it.’

      ‘It is in a fold of valleys and gentle hills, a short stroll inland from a friendly sea. A long lake, full of fish, protects it from that sea and there is a drawbridge on the lake to keep off raiders. The village is sheltered from the winds and it soaks up the sun like a sponge. It has a twisting narrow street, houses built of stone and the fields around it are full of fat beasts. It is close to Heaven and there is always beer in the jug and food in the pot.’

      ‘You come from this blessed place?’

      ‘I do.’

      ‘I wish it were mine to live in,’ I said.

      ‘It is, Lord,’ he replied.

      ‘I’m not a lord,’ I said.

      ‘The place I’m talking about is Slapton in Devon,’ he said, looking at me expectantly. ‘That’s why I call you Lord.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘You have not heard of it?’

      ‘No,’ and then, slightly irritated, ‘why did you laugh? Is it such a famous place?’

      ‘It should be,’ he answered, ‘to you at least. You are Lord of the manor of Slapton, as well as Nympton St George, Satterleigh, Newton, Rocombe and Northaller.’

      ‘Me?’

      ‘Yes, you. Did your father not tell you?’

      For the last ten years of my father’s life he had told me that I was the child of Satan, that he could fly like a bat, that we could eat the stones of the castle’s tower if we only boiled them long enough, and that he was the rightful king of the lost tribes of Egypt. He had never mentioned Slapton. ‘No, he didn’t,’ I said. ‘Does that mean you knew who I was all along?’

      ‘Not until you told me your name,’ said Batokewaye. ‘I knew Guy de Bryan was serving the King, but I didn’t know which one you were. I’m glad it was you.’

      ‘Did you know my father?’

      ‘I was ten years old the last time he came to Devon. It always puzzled us that he didn’t come again. It’s a fair place and there are rents collected year by year.’

      ‘Who collects them?’

      ‘My father’s the steward. He’s an old man now, but he’s honest’

      ‘Is there a house?’

      ‘There is Pool.’

      ‘What’s Pool?’

      ‘The manor house, a great house indeed. It lies in the bottom of the little valley that runs inland from Slap ton. It is a shaded place but well built in stone and it has more chimneys than you ever see in that part of the world, and there is enough wood stored in Pool’s barns to make smoke come out of every one of them. You’ll like Pool.’

      ‘I’ll come to see it, William Batokewaye. I need a quiet place. Shall you and I go there together when this war is through?’

      ‘There’s a lot more Frenchmen where these came from,’ he said. ‘That may be a while yet.’

       CHAPTER SIX

      Having erased Slapton so successfully from her own story of herself, it had simply not occurred to Beth that Slapton’s inhabitants would not have done the same. If no one in London knew she came from Slapton, it seemed that everyone in Slapton knew she had gone to London and even had quite a good idea of what she was doing there. It didn’t occur to Beth that her father might be proud of her, that he might talk about her as if they were often in touch. Carrying in her head the scornful childish caricature of this place as somewhere so cut off from the modern world that it lacked television, radio and newspapers, she had been counting on anonymity. It had come as an absurd shock to find that her father knew exactly what had been happening to her in the past forty-eight hours, that the neighbours had told СКАЧАТЬ