The corner door was new, and fitted with a lock. This bit was precious, and under treatment. They trooped in after their guide, Bossie with eyes mildly crossed in his passionate concentration, and nostrils quivering.
It was rather dim within there, after the bright daylight outside. The inner wall, windowed as they had observed, let in a certain amount of light, enough to show the lofty timbering of the open roof, and the layout of the flooring, which was carefully roped off in the centre to convey visitors round an area of newly-uncovered tiles, thick russet ceramic patterned in lighter reds and yellows, in designs that added up in fours. Bossie knew them for originals from the Middle Ages, and stared entranced. Spuggy, less impressed, shoved a toe under the rope and prodded the nearest corner.
A voice behind them in the doorway rapped loudly and indignantly: ‘Don’t do that!’ They all whirled guiltily to stare at the morose and officious young man who had distrusted them on sight at the entrance. He was just entering from the stable-yard, with an overalled workman at his shoulder, and obviously armed with authority. ‘We’re trying to get this entire pavement restored,’ he said sternly. ‘If you disturb what’s been done you can cause a lot of trouble. Now, please keep outside the ropes, or you’ll have to leave this section.’ And he gave even their guide a glower, but at once went on with his companion to the far end of the long room, and almost vanished in the dimness.
Bossie had paid attention to this interruption with no more than the surface of his mind. He was staring intently at the rugged surface of the north wall, windowless, jagged, of big, hewn stone blocks. The guardian ropes allowed access to this wall, indeed invited its inspection. It was massive but irregular, probably due for careful restoration, since it was obviously extremely old. The touchy warden and his foreman were conferring over it in the far corner, pointing out certain places to each other, where the stone had weathered badly, for at least three different types of stone appeared to have been used, so that some blocks were hollowed and worn into dimples, while some had shaved off into thin slivers at the corners. It had taken centuries to do it, but time was gradually winning if the game was to bring the wall down. Officialdom had stepped in just in time to save it.
‘You know where we are now?’ asked the guide.
They knew. They were on the other side of the wall he had pointed out to them at the beginning of their tour of the grounds. Beyond it lay what had once been the nave of the church. They were in the north walk of the great cloister.
‘This is the walk that was given over to study. Along the inner side it was glazed in for shelter, and all along it, where the brick wall is now, there were little secluded alcoves with desks, where the monks could sit and read. Come on, don’t let me down, tell us what they were called.’
‘Carrels,’ said Bossie, responding almost automatically. His gaze remained fixed on the stone wall, studying the ground along its base, beaten earth cut down to the gravel, all very neat and freshly cleaned. If the tiling extended to this point, it was still buried.
‘Full marks! Carrels they were. And on the other side, the church side, that is, along this stone wall, were the aumbries, big cupboards where the manuscripts were kept. I doubt if ours were very elaborate, but beautiful examples do exist, carved and decorated with beaten metalwork. This is the only wall left intact from the very earliest foundation here at Mottisham, that’s why it’s so precious.’
‘It’s been knocked about since, then,’ observed Ginger critically. His father was an excellent small builder. ‘Look at all this loose fill-in rubble stuck into it where it’s getting worn. They should have done something better than that to keep it in repair. Look how it’s crumbling. And you can see daylight through it in several places. Wouldn’t take much to start that piece there, look, it’s got a bulge already.’
It was true enough. The light inside there was dim enough to let the day glance in clearly in several minute interstices, and the section of wall had indeed a distinct bulge.
‘That,’ said the guide cheerfully, ‘is exactly why we’re taking steps to put it back into condition, but it has to be done with due regard to the old materials, you know. Couldn’t knock a section out and fill it in with modern brick, now, could we?’
‘You’re going to have a big hole here any minute,’ pointed out Spuggy Price helpfully, and prodded with an exploring finger where a long, narrow, crumbling wedge of mortar was sagging from its place. Proof positive of his rightness, the slice promptly fell out with a clatter, and the warden whirled from his colloquy with the working foreman just in time to detect the crime. Whether he was in a bad temper that day for some quite extraneous reason, or whether he really felt as strongly as this about his charge, he came surging out of his corner in a rage.
‘That’s enough! Now get these kids out of here, before they bring the whole place down. I knew we were going to have trouble, the moment I set eyes on them. No teacher with them, of course! Pure vandalism! If it rested with me the abbey would be closed to school parties. You, keep your hands to yourself from now on, and please leave this section at once.’
‘Sorry!’ sighed their guide, not greatly troubled but willing to be conciliatory. ‘I should have put a ban on touching at the start. No harm done, actually, all this rubbish will have to come out, once we begin the job. But I grant you we don’t want it out just yet. Might bring the roof down over us,’ he concluded, and met Spuggy’s offended gaze with a twinkle in his eye, and got a furtive grin in return.
The warden distributed a black glare among them, and stalked out with his attendant on his heels, and the boys breathed again, even giggled a little. ‘I didn’t do his precious wall any harm,’ said Spuggy. ‘How did I know that piece would fall out if I touched it?’
‘Still, you know,’ pointed out their guide reasonably marshalling them towards the door, ‘we’d better do what he says. After all, he’s the caretaker here, it’s his job to preserve what we’ve got, not connive at knocking it down. You can’t blame him for doing his job.’
They supposed not; and they left peaceably, all the more circumspectly, in fact, because the warden had gone no further than the open yard, and was clearly waiting to see them safely off the premises.
‘Was it a big library they had here?’ asked Bossie, as they walked back towards the gate. ‘Is there any of it left now?’
‘Not a thing, as far as I know. By the end, from all accounts, scholarship was very little regarded here, or sanctity, either. This was one of the houses that had degenerated badly before they were dissolved. There were only four or five monks left, and they had no very good reputation. They’re even supposed to have robbed travellers who came here, maybe even murdered one or two. The place was badly run down. Closing it was more or less recognising a fact, though of course the family that got the property benefited.’
‘But there must have been books. I wonder what happened to them?’
‘I wonder, too, laddie,’ agreed the guide whimsically, as he let them out to the drive, ‘I wonder, too! Maybe they’d sold them long before, maybe they bartered them for wine, maybe they used them for fuel when wood ran short in the winter. There’s certainly no record of any remaining at the end to be dissipated or destroyed. I doubt if the last few monks had any Latin between them. Maybe they used the leather to make shoes!’
They gathered at the bus shelter in the village, all of them watching Bossie, who had walked this far in unusual silence and deep, grim thought.
‘Was that where he found it?’ asked Ginger at last.
‘Yes. But it’s all been cleaned out there. It was silted up with rubble then, soil and stuff, and grass growing. There’s nothing there now. Not unless it’s still under the floor.’