Their quest had ended, while mine had just begun, but, as the farmer down at Treesmill had warned me, I should find nothing. I knew only that yesterday, in another time, I had stood in the vaulted hall that formed the central feature of this long-buried house, had mounted the outer stairway to the room above, had seen the owner of the dwelling die. No courtyard now, no walls, no hail, no stable- quarters in the rear; nothing but grassy banks and a little muddy path running between them.
There was a patch of even ground, smooth and green, fronting the site, that might have been part of the courtyard once, and I sat down there looking into the valley below as Bodrugan had done from the small window in the hall. Tiwardrai, the House on the Strand… I thought how, when the tide ebbed in early centuries, the twisting channel would stay blue, revealing sandy flats on either side of it, these flats a burnished gold under the sun. If the channel was deep enough, Bodrugan could have raised anchor and made for sea later that night; if not, he would have returned on board to sleep amongst his men, and at daybreak, perhaps, come out on deck to stretch himself and stare up at the house of mourning. I had put the documents that had come by post this morning into my pocket, and now I drew them out and read them through again. Bishop Grandisson's order to the Prior was dated August, 1329. Sir Henry Champernoune had died in late April or early May. The Ferrers pair were doubtless behind the attempt to remove him from his Priory tomb, with Matilda Ferrers the more pressing of the two. I wondered who had carried the rumour to the Bishop's ears, so playing on ecclesiastical pride, and ensuring that the body would escape investigation? Sir John Carminowe, in all probability, acting hand in glove with Joanna — whom he had, no doubt, long since successfully taken to bed.
I turned to the Lay Subsidy Roll, and glanced once again through the list of names, ticking off those that corresponded to the place-names on the road map I had brought from the car. Ric Trevynor, Ric Trewiryan, Ric Trenathelon, Julian Polpey, John Polorman, Geoffrey Lampetho… all, with slight variations in the spelling, were farms marked on the roadmap beside me. The men who dwelt in them then, dead for over six hundred years, had bequeathed their names to posterity; only henry Champernoune, lord of the manor, had left a heap of mounds as legacy, to be stumbled upon by myself; a trespasser in time. All dead for nearly seven centuries, Roger Kylmerth and Isolda Carminowe amongst them. What they had dreamt of; schemed for, accomplished, no longer mattered, it was all forgotten. I got up and tried to find, amongst the mounds, the hall where Isolda had sat yesterday, accusing Roger of complicity in crime. Nothing fitted. Nature had done her work too well, here on the hillside and below me in the valley, where the estuary once ran. The sea had withdrawn from the land, the grass had covered the walls, the men and women who had walked here once, looking down upon blue water, had long since crumbled into dust.
I turned away, retracing my steps across the field, low-spirited, reason telling me that this was the end of the adventure. Emotion was in conflict with reason, however, destroying peace of mind, and for better, for worse, I knew myself involved. I could not forget that I had only to turn the key of that laboratory door for it to happen once again. The choice, perhaps, put to Man from the beginning, whether or not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. I got into the car and drove back to Kilmarth. I spent the afternoon writing a full account of yesterday to Magnus, and told him also that Vita was in London. Then I drove to Fowey to post the letter, and arranged to hire a sailing-boat after the weekend, when Vita and the boys were down. She would not experience the flat calm of Long Island sound, or the luxury of her brother Joe's chartered yacht, but the gesture showed my will to please, and the boys would enjoy it. I rang nobody that evening, and nobody rang me, with the result that I slept badly, continually waking and listening to silence. I kept thinking of Roger Kylmerth in his sleeping quarters over the kitchen of the original farmstead, and wondering whether his brother had thoroughly scoured out the bowls six hundred and forty years ago. He must have done so, for Henry Champernoune to lie undisturbed in the Priory chapel until that chapel had crumbled into dust as well.
No breakfast in bed the following morning, for I was too restless. I was drinking my coffee on the steps outside the french window of the library when the telephone rang. It was Magnus.
"How are you feeling?" he asked at once.
"Jaded," I told him. "I slept badly."
"You can make up for it later. You can sleep all afternoon in the patio. There are several lilos in the boiler-room, and I envy you. London is sweltering in a heat-wave."
"Cornwall isn't," I replied, "and the patio gives me claustrophobia. Did you get my letter?"
"I did," he said. "That's why I rang. Congratulations on your third trip. Don't worry about the aftermath. It was your own fault, after all."
"It may have been," I said, "but the confusion was not."
"I know," he agreed. "The confusion fascinated me. Also the jump in time. Six months or more between the second and third trips. You know what? I've a good mind to get away in a week or so and join you so that we can go on a trip together."
My first reaction was one of excitement. The second, a zoom to earth. "It's out of the question. Vita will be here with the boys."
"We can get rid of them. Pack them off to the Scillies, or for a long day at the Land's End, scattering banana skins. That'll give us time."
"I don't think so," I said. "I don't think so at all." He did not know Vita well. I could imagine the complications.
"Well, it's not urgent," he said, "but it could be a lot of fun. Besides I'd like to take a look at Isolda Carminowe." His flippant voice restored my jagged nerves. I even smiled. "She's Bodrugan's girl, not ours," I told him.
"Yes, but for how long?" he queried. "They were always changing partners in those days. I still don't see where she fits in amongst the rest."
"She and William Ferrers seem to be cousins to the Champernounes," I explained.
"And Isolda's husband Oliver Carminowe, absent at yesterday's death-bed, is brother to Matilda and Sir John?"
"Apparently."
"I must write all this down and get my slave to check for further details. I say, I was right about Joanna being a bitch." Then, abruptly changing his tone, "So you're satisfied now that the drug works, and what you saw was not hallucination?"
"Almost," I replied, with caution.
"Almost? Don't the documents prove it, if nothing else?"
"The documents help to prove it," I countered, "but don't forget you read them before I did. So there is still the possibility that you were exercising some kind of telepathic influence. Anyway, how's the monkey?"
"The monkey." He paused a moment. "The monkey's dead."
"Thanks very much," I said.
"Oh, don't worry — it wasn't the drug. I killed him on purpose; I have work to do on his brain cells. It will take some time, so don't get impatient."
"I'm not in the least impatient," I replied, "merely appalled at the risk you appear to be taking with my brain."
"Your brain's different," he said. "You can take a lot more punishment yet. Besides, think of Isolda. Such a splendid antidote to Vita. You might even find that—"
I cut him short. I knew exactly what he had been going to say. "Leave my love life out of this," I said. "It doesn't concern you."
"I was only about to suggest, dear boy, that moving between two worlds can act as a stimulant. It happens every day, without drugs, when a man keeps a mistress round the corner and a wife at home… That was a major find on your part, by the way, landing on the quarry above Treesmill valley. I'll put my archaeological friends on to digging the site when you and I have finished with it."