This is where Jean-Claude and I, knowing that this must be pure fantasy or mean-spirited bullshit, should be shouting, “You can’t be serious” and “Go tell it to someone who just got off the boat, Limey,” but this is the Deacon speaking, so the young French Chamonix Guide and I look at each other intently for a long few seconds, turn back to the Deacon, and say in total solemnity and almost perfect unison…
“Yes. We’ll go.”
And so it begins.
Chapter 2
So there at the center of the most beautiful 9,400 acres in the world resides a permanently broken heart and an eternally damaged mind.
T he car ride from London to the Bromley estate in Lincolnshire takes us about two hours, including a lunch stop in Sandy since we are running ahead of schedule and don’t want to arrive early, but by mid-afternoon, still a few minutes ahead of schedule, we’ve reached Stamford Junction. We are only a couple of miles from our destination, and I admit to feeling nervous almost to the point of nausea, although I’ve never been carsick before—especially not in an open touring car on a beautiful summer day with pleasant breezes smelling of farm fields and forest, astounding scenery on all sides, and a perfectly cloudless blue sky above.
A sign names Stamford Junction “Carpenter’s Lodge” in the usual British way of obfuscating everything, and we turn left down a narrow lane. A ten-foot-high solid masonry wall blocks the view on our left for all of these last two miles.
“What’s the wall for?” I ask the Deacon, who is driving.
“It encloses a small part of the Bromley estate,” says the older climber around his pipe stem. “That’s the famous Bromley Deer Park on the other side of the wall, and Lady Bromley doesn’t want her deer—tame as they are—jumping out and getting hurt.”
“Or allow the poachers to get in all that easily, I imagine,” says Jean-Claude.
The Deacon nods.
“How big is the Bromley estate?” I ask from the backseat.
“Well, let me think,” says the Deacon. “I seem to remember that the previous marquess, the late Lord Bromley, set aside about eight thousand acres for farmland—most of it usually fallow and used for hunting—about nine hundred acres of woodland, pristine forest going back to Queen Elizabeth. And I think only about five hundred acres for the deer park, gardens, and grounds, all tended year-round by a small army of foresters and gardeners.”
“Almost ten thousand acres of estate,” I say stupidly, turning to stare at the high wall as if I might suddenly be able to see through it.
“Almost,” agrees the Deacon. “In truth, it’s much larger than the ninety-four hundred acres here. The village of Stamford we passed through back there officially belongs to the Bromley estate—as did all the people living in it and in the other hundred and forty–some residences around Stamford and edges of the estate—and there are several dozen commercial properties, in and beyond Stamford, that Lady Bromley still owns and administers as part of the estate. When they said lord of the manor in the old days, they meant it.”
I try to imagine this. I’ve seen huge patches of privately owned land, of course. On my summer climbing trips during my years at Harvard, I’d headed out west to climb in the Rockies, and some of the ranches the train passed through probably approached or surpassed half a million acres—perhaps a million. Someone out there told me that while a cow needed a little less than an acre to graze on happily back in my home state of Massachusetts, the same cow would require more than forty acres just to stay alive in the high plains of eastern Colorado or Wyoming. Most of the huge ranches out there grew sagebrush, rabbit brush, and a few old cottonwood trees along the creeks—if the land had any creeks. Most of it did not. The Bromley estate, according to the Deacon, has 900 acres of ancient woodland used for…what? Hunting, probably. Strolling in. Shade for the tame deer when they get tired of hanging around the sunny parts of their dedicated park area.
The wall curves away to the south, we drive a bit further and turn left down a narrow and rather rutted road, and then suddenly we are passing under an ancient archway into the estate. There is a large gravel approach here—no estate house or gardens or anything of interest visible all the way to the green, hilly horizon—and the Deacon parks our touring car in the shade and leads us to a carriage, complete with mustachioed driver and two white horses, waiting near a narrow asphalted road winding away into the green depths of the estate. The carriage is so ornately bedecked with badges and doodads along the sides and back that it looks as if it might have been designed for Queen Victoria’s coronation parade.
The driver hops down and opens the topless carriage’s door for us. He looks old enough that he, too, might have taken part in Queen Victoria’s parade. I admire his long, pure-white twin mustaches, which make him look a bit like a very tall, very thin walrus.
“Welcome back, Master Richard,” the old man says to the Deacon as he shuts the door. “If I may be allowed to say so, sir, you look very fit indeed.”
“Thank you, Benson,” says the Deacon. “You do as well. I’m delighted that you’re still livery master.”
“Oh, only in charge of the entrance carriage now, Master Richard.” The old man spryly hops up to his place in front and takes the reins and whip in hand.
As we roll out onto the lane, the sound of the carriage wheels—iron, not rubber—on the asphalt surface and the clop-clop of the huge horses’ hooves make it probable that anything we say in a normal tone of voice won’t be heard by Mr. Benson. Still, we speak with heads leaning close and just above a whisper.
Jean-Claude: “Master Richard? You’ve been here before, mon ami.”
“I was ten years old the last time I was here,” says the Deacon. “And spanked by one of the butlers for punching young Lord Percival on his prominent snout. He cheated in some game we were playing.”
I keep turning my head, trying to take in as much as I can of the perfectly mowed and manicured hills, trees, bushes—a lake of some acres sends light flashes toward us as the wind ruffles it into low waves—while far off to the south I believe I can see the beginning of formal gardens and the hint of a tall building on the horizon. But it’s far too broad and expansive to be a single building—even for Bromley House—so it must be a village of sorts.
“You were—are—a social equal to the Bromleys?” I whisper. It’s a rude question, but I ask it out of surprise and slight shock. The Deacon had insisted that I go to his tailor at Savile Row to get a bespoke suit for this meeting—I’ve never owned one that fit so well or felt so good on me—and he insisted on paying for it, but I had been certain from the months together in Europe that the Deacon had no great reservoir of funds to fall back on. Now I’m wondering if the next 9,000-acre estate beyond Stamford is called Deacon House.
The Deacon shakes his head, puts away his pipe, and smiles ruefully. “My family has an old name and no money left for its final disappointment of a scion…me. It’s not legal now to surrender one’s hereditary title, but if it were, I would do so in a heartbeat. As it is, I have attempted to avoid all use of and reference to it since I returned from the War. But way back in another century, I occasionally came here to play with Charles Bromley, who was about my age, and his younger brother Percy—who had no real friends or playmates for reasons you’ll discover soon enough. That all ended on the day I punched Percival in the nose. After that, Charles came to visit me instead.”