‘We could scare him off with a ghost,’ this diminutive genius offered brightly. Three suppressive voices at once opined that of all people, Rainbow would be the last to believe in ghosts, since he didn’t believe in anything he couldn’t buy, sell or boss. ‘Besides, he’s been in the house more than four months now, where’s this ghost been all that time? He’d laugh his head off!’
‘He wouldn’t if everybody else was laughing,’ said Bossie thoughtfully. ‘Laughing at him! That’s the one thing he wouldn’t be able to stand. He can’t be all that sure of his ground, he’s always been a townie until now, this is a new venture for him. We’ve let it go on too long, but it’s still new. Once shake him, and he won’t think it worthwhile fighting it out, he’ll make off to the town again. But it’s got to be a real shocker to prise him loose. After all, he can sell the house, can’t he? It’s all done up beautifully, he needn’t lose on it, it’s a walk-in job, ready for occupation. He’d realise and get out. If we can make him a laughing-stock.’
He had them all eating out of his hand by this time, as he usually could do at need, if only by reason of his overwhelming vocabulary. Bossie was twelve years old, only child of a marriage between a classically-educated intellectual and a shrewd, practical farmer’s daughter, brains on both sides of his parentage, and an insatiable thirst for knowledge in the product. He was relatively small for his age, but compact and tough, as plain as the plainest pike-staff that ever carried a deadly pike, with corrective glasses to eradicate the infant consequences of what is technically termed a lazy eye. His colouring was nondescript brown, with thick dun-coloured hair that grew in all directions, and unnerving hazel eyes enlarged unequally behind their therapeutic lenses, which in a few years he would discard, to become disarmingly human. Altogether, a walking time-bomb, propelled by precocious intuitions and abilities, and restrained by a classical and liberal education. He knew he was formidable, but he didn’t know how formidable.
‘And how do we do that?’ wondered Ginger, reserving judgement.
‘Well, he’s a dealer in antiques, isn’t he? That’s how he’s made his money, and that’s his weakness, because you can’t know everything about everything, and antiques is practically everything. So if we hooked him on an antique that would get him foaming at the mouth, thinking he’d cornered a fortune, and then show him up either as a cheat who was pinching something belonging to someone else, or a fool who’s fallen for a common forgery – you think he’d stand up to that? I don’t! He’s got a reputation to lose in the trade. He’d spread his wings and fly, as fast and quietly as he could, and hope nobody outside here would ever hear of it.’
They mulled that over in silence for some moments, and found but one fault in it. Ginger dispiritedly put it into words. ‘That sounds all very well. But we haven’t got an antique to shove under his nose, real or fake. And even if we had, we wouldn’t know how to set about it.’
‘But I have,’ said Bossie portentously, sinking his voice to hollow depths of conspiracy. ‘And I DO!’
‘Dad,’ demanded Bossie, emerging with knitted brows from behind an enormous book containing full-page illustrations from the Stonyhurst Gospels, ‘how late did they go on writing in uncials?’
Sam barely looked up from his desk, and showed no excitement or curiosity whatever at this sudden enquiry. No question from Bossie, on any subject from Egyptian hieroglyphs to nuclear physics, could surprise his parents. He was an insatiable sponge for knowledge of all kinds.
‘Oh, it petered out round about the eighth to the ninth century, I suppose.’
‘Pity!’ said Bossie. ‘It’s easy to read. How did they write after that, then?’
‘It got more and more loose and cursive, and a lot harder to read, you’re right there.’
‘Where can I find a copy, say about late thirteenth century?’
Sam got up good-naturedly, and reached down a book almost as large, and opened it for him at one of the facsimile plates. ‘There you are, probably rather a better script than most, it’s out of a Benedictine chartulary, thirteenth century. They were letting out some land at farm. That’s a fair sample.’ He went back to his work without further question.
Bossie studied the page before him critically, and jutted a thoughtful lip. ‘What’s this word here? Look! “p’tin suis, et terra Fereholt cu’ p’tin’ suis.” ‘P’tin’isn’t a proper word.’ His Latin was good, but he had not so far been called upon to cope with unextended mediaeval examples.
‘Those are the contractions the clerks made,’ Sam reassured him absently. ‘With all the copying they had to do, they adopted a method of shorthand. They could understand and translate it, even if their bosses couldn’t. And probably a lot of their bosses couldn’t read, anyway, so they had to leave it to the clerks. “P’tin’ suis,” is “its appurtenances.” They were farming out some piece of land you didn’t name,“with its appurtenances, and the land of Fereholt with its appurtenances.” ’
‘Not a bad idea, shortening everything like that,’ Bossie approved, with a purposeful gleam in his eye, as though he had seen a short cut round a laborious chore. ‘Can I borrow this for tonight?’
‘Sure! Bring it back when you’ve done. Want the Latin dictionary? Or shall I extend the whole page for you, so you can read it yourself?’ And he pushed back his chair, and was really looking at his son now, willing to ditch his own current labours to assist in whatever Bossie was grappling with.
‘No, thanks, that’s all right.’ Bossie sensed that his disclaimer had been a shade hasty, which might indicate an undertaking on the suspect side. But he knew all the words calculated to intimidate parents, and was adroit in using them. ‘It’s all right for me to ask,’ he explained generously, ‘but I mustn’t let you help me.’ And drawing breath for the coup de grâce, ‘It’s for a SPECIAL PROJECT!’ he said with enormous dignity, and bore the chartulary of the Benedictine brothers away to his own room.
During the week following these curious activities of Bossie Jarvis, Arthur Everard Rainbow came home from choir practice somewhat later than usual, and instead of dropping his music-case casually on the hall table, carried it through to his own sacred study, clasped under his arm with jealous fondness. His wife, who had sailed out from her drawing-room to meet him, letting out with her floating skirts the murmur of voices and the sound of well-produced string music, noted his passage with mild interest, went back to her friends with a shrug and a private smile, and said, without any particular intent, and without paying much attention to the words she used:
‘Arthur’ll be in in a few moments. He must have discovered an unknown Bach score, I should think, he’s hugging his music-case with a lover’s gleam in his eye. You never know where you’ll strike gold in our business, do you? Even at choir practice it can happen.’
There were at least a dozen people in the room at the time. He liked her to stage her musical evenings when he was due to be missing for most of the time, it gave a relaxed atmosphere in which tongues might be loosened and defences lowered. That way she gathered more information, as they dropped their guard. Drinks had little effect upon her, he was pretty sure her guests never got much in return for their own advances.