‘Aunt Alice,’ I said to her that evening, when we were pursuing some sherry before the meal, ‘I want to tell you about something I saw on my walk today, coming here to the town.’
Pleased to see me, she turned to me a willing, expectant face, but no sooner did I mention the house in Salter’s Lane than she laughed.
‘Dear boy, I shall have to think you obsessed by the place. Are you intending to buy it? I should certainly be delighted to have you live in the town, but not in such a miserable property.’
I replied, rather irritably, that nothing was further from my desires. Looking rather crushed, she sought to make amends. ‘I’m sorry, Frederick. I am sure that London is more suited to your temperament than such a dreary backwater as Steepleford.’ After which much of the evening was spent in my praising Steepleford and herself, for I felt ashamed of my bad temper. When I was a boy, this aunt had been very kind to me, and deserved far better of me than three-yearly visits laced with petty ill humour.
By ten o’clock we were friends again and playing cards, and so I reintroduced my topic. Although I admit I stuck strictly to the facts as I saw them, omitting all the other sensations I have outlined.
‘The oddest thing, Aunt, is that I could swear the window that I saw had not been there previously. It was very high up, almost into the roof, rather small, yet somehow extremely noticeable. Although I have only once — to my recollection — looked at the house before, yet I thought I remembered it quite well, and I truly believe there never was a window in that position — however fantastic this may sound.’
As women will, my aunt then said something damningly practical. ‘So many of the house windows there are closed up with ivy and creeper. Could some of this overgrowth simply have fallen away, and so revealed the casement you speak of?’
Such a banal solution had not occurred to me. I agreed that she was probably correct. To myself I said that I must put up with the necessary boredom of my visit, and not try preposterously to dress it up with invented supernatural flights.
The following morning, I penitently accompanied my aunt on her round of social calls. By midday, my face had set like cement in a polite smile, and thus, as we crossed Market Gate Street, I found myself beaming at a small, nondescript man in unostentatious dress who had touched his hat to us.
‘Ah, Mr Polleto,’ said my aunt, magnanimous to a fault. ‘What fine weather we are having.’
Mr Polleto conceded that we were. He had a flat dusty voice, old even beyond his bent and well-aged appearance. In it my ears caught just the trace of some foreignness. Then I found myself introduced, and not standing on ceremony, as my aunt had not, I shook hands with him. What a hand he had! It was neither cold nor hot, not damp, but rather dry — it did not have much strength in it, certainly, yet nor was it a weak hand. But an uncomfortable hand it was. It did not seem to fit in mine, and I sensed it would not fit in anyone’s.
‘Mr Polleto has resided in the town for quite three years now, I believe,’ said my aunt, when we had parted from him. She then told me of the general disappointment that he had not lived up to his name. ‘He has the cottage by the old tiltyard.’
But I was not interested in Mr Polleto and his indescribable handshake. His face I had already mislaid, for he was one of those men who are eternally unmemorable, or seem so — for if ever seen again, somehow they are known at once, as I have already demonstrated, and later must demonstrate further.
However, now I wanted my lunch, and was dismayed to find my aunt was leading me to yet another doorstep. I rallied rather feebly. ‘And which lady is this, Aunt Alice?’
‘No lady, Frederick. This is the house of our local scholar. I have some purchases to make and will leave you here, with Mr Farbody, who has written and published pamphlets.’
‘Indeed,’ said I. But just then the maid let me in, and presently I was taking a glass of very drinkable Madeira in a sunlit library with Mr Farbody, who had at once addressed me thus: ‘My good sir, I understand you are interested in the history of the Hawkins house.’
‘Well, it is a curious tale,’ Farbody continued, requiring little prompting from me. ‘Did you know that the farmhands hereabouts, and workers and their families in the town, have kept up a tradition that the spot is cursed?’
‘I remember someone saying that people refuse to go along Salter’s Lane by night.’
‘Well, that, of course, isn’t always to be avoided, but they make a to-do about it. The thing is, it seems, not to look at the building. I’ve heard of girls, if they are due to be married, still binding their eyes with a scarf and having to be led, should they need to pass the house even in daylight.’
‘And all this because Amber Maria Hawkins was thought a witch?’
‘Ah, she was a witch, if the tales may be believed,’ and here Farbody winked at me. ‘She could see treasure in the ground, for one thing. No one knows her origins. Josebaar said he came across her one day in the woods. She was probably a gypsy girl, but all alone, bright-haired and straying with her arms full of wild flowers. He took a fancy for her, and perhaps she for him; it seems so — or else she liked the idea of his status in the town. He had already made some money and his family was an old one. And if she was a gypsy or itinerant, homeless and without kin, all that may have appealed to her, do you see. So there and then she is supposed to have said to him, “You may sport with me, and I will let you. Or you may marry me and I will make you rich.” And he said, “How might that be, seeing you are in rags?’ To which Amber Maria replied simply, “I will bring you silver and gold.’“
At this, the rhyme came into my head again and I interrupted. ‘I thought it was she who was to have the gold and silver?’
Farbody smiled, and lit his pipe. ‘It does seem she could have been rich on her own account for sure, if she’d cared to be, for the next thing she did was point at the ground under a tree and say to Hawkins, “Dig there, and you will find a large store of coins.” Even money likes money, so he dug in the ground, and — hey presto! — found a box of gold pieces, deep down and undisturbed for a century. “When he asked her how she knew where to dig, she shrugged and said, “I saw them.” Nor did Amber do this only once, but several times, apparently. And in the same way she could find items that had been lost. And once she is supposed to have seen a sheep that had fallen down a deep well, which animal was then got out alive. She could see, you understand, through things. Through the earth, through stone, and through certain other natural materials — though not, I think, through metal, which may account for the metals in the rhyme.’
‘What does the rhyme mean?’ I asked him.
‘It’s essentially to do with binding her, shutting her up where she couldn’t do harm. You see, Hawkins was besotted with her some while, but then he began to be afraid of her. He’s said to have told the priest, “She will sit quiet all day and only look at me.” When the priest said that many a man would be thankful for such a placid, adoring wife, Hawkins replied she did not look on him, but into him. And he said that once he had told her hotly to leave off, for he was a sinner like all men, and if she would keep on staring in such a way, she would see his foul and mortal corruption. To which she gave this strange response: “Men say always they are wretched and tainted by flesh and sin, but in all men there is such goodness and beauty, as in the earth and all living things, that it is to me like my food and drink, and I can never be tired of having it.”‘