Dimanche Diller at Sea. Henrietta Branford

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      Next, Dimanche appeared on the path. Brother Betony watched her for a moment with a smile on his old face. He straightened himself slowly, and his black robe brushed soundlessly against the wooden railings of the bridge. An old wound pinched at the top of his backbone. He raised a pale hand to the back of his neck to ease the stiffness there, and faded slowly into the golden evening light.

      Dimanche sat down on the bridge and dangled her legs over the edge. She ran over the day’s events in her mind. The visit to the bank had upset Sister Verity dreadfully, though Chauncey Coin had been both kind and helpful. The police had been sent for, and Chief Superintendent Barry Bullpit was on his way. There was nothing to be done but wait, Aunt Verity had said.

      Dimanche did not agree. She stood up as the sun began to set and made her way out of Monks Wood as fast as she could. She did not want to be there alone, when darkness filled the silent space between the trees. Already the wood lapped round her like deep water. Beyond lay open country. A fallow deer, making for the fields to fill its belly with soft grass, startled Dimanche with a sudden cough.

      Hawthorn hedges criss-crossed the little valley, turning it into a giant’s chess board. Beside a deep pool of the Fenny, an old stone boathouse caught the light, and shone. On any other summer evening, Dimanche might have stopped to launch the raft she kept there, but tonight there wasn’t time. She must reach the old quarry before dark.

      The quarry was a disused chalk pit, hollowed out of the side of a hill. Protected from winter storms by a white cliff left by the extraction of the chalk, it looked across the wide sweep of the Fenny valley to the south and west. Private and secluded, this was the regular stopping place of Papa Fettler. The old barn, which had once held sacks of chalk, now made a stable for his pony. A spring rose nearby, providing drinking water, cold and clear, and very slightly bubbly. Papa Fettler had built a small round well, conveniently placed, and kept a cup and bucket handy.

      “Will you take a drop of my champagne?” he would ask Dimanche, when she called to see him there. Dimanche would take the tin mug, and dip, sip, and relish the clean taste.

      Papa Fettler’s home was a battered caravan. He travelled where fancy took him, and stopped where evening found him, and you could never be sure where that might be, but the quarry was a good place to look. On this particular evening Dimanche was very glad to find him there.

      “Well, Miss Dimanche,” he remarked, as she came panting round the bend of the cart track. “You look proper rattled. Will you take a bowl of mushroom soup? Or perhaps you’d like a dandelion salad?”

      Dimanche shook her head. “No thanks, I’m not hungry, Papa Fettler. And anyway there isn’t time.”

      “No time for supper? Why not, Miss Dimanche?”

      “Something awful’s happened, Papa Fettler, and we may all have to leave the Hilton Valley – even you!”

      “I doubt that, Miss Dimanche. There’s been Dillers at the Hall these many hundred years, and Fettlers in the Hollow. What’s got you flustered?”

      Dimanche sat down, gulped a mug of blackberry leaf tea, and told Papa Fettler, as quickly as she could, about the letter from Bludgeon & Bludgeon, and the break-in, and the thin man in the garden, and lastly about the theft of the Diller Deed and Title from the Rockford Market bank.

      “What are we going to do, Papa Fettler? What are we going to do?”

      Papa Fettler emptied out his pipe, unblocked the stem with a quill, scraped out the bowl with a little brass scraper, recharged it with tobacco from his leather pouch, and lit it with a spill from the fire. When at last he replied, it was with a question.

      “Do you know the story of Benedicta, Miss Dimanche?”

      Dimanche shook her head.

      “Then I’ll tell it to you. It’s a good story, and if you’re in trouble, you’d best know it. Listen.”

      Dimanche settled herself beside the fire, and tried not to fidget.

      “Benedicta was a wise woman,” Papa Fettler began. “Lived in Monks Wood five hundred years ago. She used to cure sick people, when she could. The villagers brought her bread and eggs and ale and suchlike, in return.

      “One afternoon, just on Midsummer – hot it was, like now, with the bees buzzing, and the Fenny splash-splashing, and the birds a-dozing on the twig – a woman brought her child to Benedicta to be cured of a fever.”

      Papa Fettler shook his head, as though remembering. He looked at Dimanche from under the brim of his wide hat, and his grey eyes seemed to see again all that he described to her. His battered brown face took on a sad and sorrowful fold of feature as he gazed into the little fire glow.

      “It was hot, like I said. Hot, and still, with the trees hanging over the Fenny like great green cabbages, and the air a-shimmer, and the fish down deep.”

      The sound of Papa Fettler’s voice grew faint and distant. Behind and underneath it, Dimanche could hear water lap-lapping, and heavy foliage rustling to a summer breeze, and a tired baby crying.

      “The woman put her child on Benedicta’s lap and stole away. Everyone knew that Benedicta liked to do her healing alone. She used to say the healing power flowed strongest that way, but it’s my belief that people’s conversation bored her, so she sent ’em packing. Babies was what she liked. Ought to have had a bundle of her own, but that’s another story. She loved a monk, you see, name of Betony. A poor choice from Benedicta’s point of view, because he was sworn to celibacy, and could never marry. He was a good man, see, and would not break his vows.

      “Well, the child dropped into sweet sleep in an instant. And there’s nothing makes a body feel more somnolent than to have a baby fall asleep on ’em, Miss Dimanche. Nothing. It’s the little wheeze and snuffle that they make, and the weight of their limbs as they give their body up to restfulness. Well. Benedicta smiled down at the child. ‘You’re cured already, you are,’ she said. ‘You must have been just on the turn.’

      “And with that, she shut her eyes, and fell asleep herself. And there they was, wise woman and wise baby, asleep in the shade by the banks of the Fenny.”

      Dimanche found her own eyes closing. Against her eyelids, patterns of green leaves danced, splashed by trembling river light.

      “Well. That was long ago.” Papa Fettler sighed, a sad and sorrowful sigh.

      “What was? What happened, Papa Fettler?”

      “The woman slept. The baby slept. A wolf came out of the wood. When the woman awoke, the baby was gone. There was nothing but a paw print in the damp margin of the Fenny to say where it had gone.”

      Dimanche opened her eyes and sat up. The sound of running and crying, of weeping and anger and lamentation, filled her ears, then faded.

      “How horrible. How absolutely horrible.”

      Papa Fettler nodded.

      “And there was worse to follow, nearly. Nearly, but not quite. The baby’s mother wanted Benedicta burned for a witch. Fetched up the faggots herself. But the village people wouldn’t have it. In the end, that poor mother came to her senses – revenge is nothing but a poison, Miss Dimanche, and when once the worse of her despair was past, she knew СКАЧАТЬ