'Guilt?' said Lockhart, 'What guilt?'
Mr Dodd gave him a quizzical look and said nothing.
'There's surely something we can do,' Lockhart said after a long silence. 'If she knows that we know…'
'She'll find another way,' said Mr Dodd. 'She's a canny old bitch but I have her measure.'
'Then what?' said Lockhart.
'My mind's been running to accidents,' said Mr Dodd. 'She should never go swimming in the reservoir.'
'I didn't know she did,' said Lockhart.
'But she yet might.'
Lockhart shook his head.
'Or she could have a fall,' said Mr Dodd looking across at the top of the peel tower, 'it's been known to happen.'
But Lockhart refused. 'She's family,' he said. I wouldn't want to kill my wife's mother before I had to.'
Mr Dodd nodded. He approved the sentiment. Having so little family himself he treasured what he had.
'You mun do something, else he'll not see the spring.' Lockhart's finger drew a gibbet in the dust at his feet. 'I'll tell her the story of Elsdon Tree,' he said finally. 'She will think twice about hurrying grandfather to his grave after that.' He got to his feet and moved towards the door but Mr Dodd
stopped him. 'There something you've forgotten,' he said. 'The finding of
your father.'
Lockhart turned back. 'I haven't got the money yet, but when
I have… '
Dinner that night was a sombre affair. Mr Flawse was in a guilty mood and the sudden arrival of Lockhart had enhanced it. Mrs Flawse was effusively welcoming but her welcome died in the glower of Lockhart's scowl. It was only after dinner when Mr Flawse had retired to his study that Lockhart spoke to his mother-in-law.
'You'll take a walk with me,' he said as she dried her hands at
the sink. 'A walk?' said Mrs Flawse, and found her arm gripped above
the elbow.
'Aye, a walk,' said Lockhart and propelled her into the dusk and across the yard to the peel tower. Inside it was dark and gloomy. Lockhart shut the great door and bolted it and then lit
a candle. 'What do you mean by this?' said Mrs Flawse. 'You've got no
right…'
But she was stopped by an unearthly sound that seemed to come from above, a shrill weird sound that echoed the wind and yet had a melody. In front of her Lockhart held the candle high and his eyes were gleaming as weirdly as the music. He set the candle down and taking a long sword from the wall leapt upon the thick oak table. Mrs Flawse shrank back against the wall and the candle flickered a great shadow among the tattered flags and as she stared at Lockhart he began to sing. It was no such song as she had ever heard before but it followed the tune above.
'From Wall to Wark you canna call
Nor voice to heaven from hell But follow the fell to old Flawse Hall
And list the tale I tell.
For old Flawse Hall has tales anew
And walls can sometimes see The deeds that wicked women do
And what their thoughts may be.
Aye silent stones can weep their woe
With never a word between But those that read their tears can know
The murder that ye mean.
An old man's taken a wicked wife
And the murd'ress to his bed While all the while she'd take his life
And see him shortly dead.
The grave's a place we all must gan
When Time has roiled away But finish the deed ye've just begun
And you shall rue the day.
Take heed, take heed and keep your head
For I your daughter doat And would not want her mother dead
Because I slit your throat.
So warm your husband's bed aright
And see the sheets are dry Or else I'll seek ye out the night
Wherever ye may hie.
But slowly, slowly shall ye die
Lest hell forgetful be So e'en the devil himself shall cry
Such tortures shall he see.
So Wife of Flawse remember well
When next in bed you lie The Widow Flawse will pray for hell
Afore she comes to die.
Aye Wife of Flawse of Flawse's Fell
Look straight upon this sword For 'tis the honest truth I tell
As honour is my word.
And I would die to see thee die
Should any harm befall The Flawse who heard my birthday cry
Beneath a dry-stone wall.'
Outside in the darkness Mr Flawse called from his study by the sound of the pipes played on the battlements of the peel tower, stood by the door and listened intently as the ballad ended. Only the breeze rustling the leaves of the wind-bent trees and the sound of sobbing remained. He waited a moment and then shuffled back to the house, his mind swirling with a terrible series of new certainties. What he had just heard left no room in his mind for doubt. The bastard was a true Flawse and his ancestry was impeccably of the same line that had produced the Minstrel Flawse who had improvised beneath the Elsdon gibbet. And with that certainty there came a second. Lockhart was a throwback born by eugenic circumstances out of time, with gifts the old man had never suspected and could not but admire. And finally he was no bastard grandson. Mr Flawse went into his study and locked the door. Then sitting by the fire he gave way privately to his grief and pride. The grief was for himself; the pride for his son. For a moment he considered suicide, but only to reject it out of hand. He must dree his weird to the bitter end. The rest was left to providence.
Chapter thirteen
But on at least two points the old man was wrong. Lockhart was leaving nothing to providence. While Mrs Flawse cowered in the darkness of the banqueting hall and wondered at the remarkable insight he had shown into the workings of her own mind and hands, Lockhart climbed the stone turret to the first storey and then by way of wooden ladders up on to the battlements. There he found Mr Dodd casting his one good eye over the landscape with a fondness for its bleak and forbidding aspect that was somehow in keeping with his own character. A rugged man in a dark and rugged world, Mr Dodd was a servant without servility. He had no brief for fawning or the notion that the world owed him a living. He owed his living to hard work and a provoked cunning that was as far removed from Mrs Flawse's calculation as Sandicott Crescent was from Flawse Fell. And if any man had dared despise him for a servant he would have told him to his face that in his case the servant was master to the man before demonstrating with his fists the simple truth that he was a match for any man, be he master, servant or drunken braggart. In short Mr Dodd was his own man and went his own way. That his own way was that of old Mr Flawse sprang from their mutual disrespect. If Mr Dodd allowed the old man to call him Dodd, he did so in the knowledge that Mr Flawse was dependent on him and that for all his authority and theoretical intelligence he knew less about the real world and its ways than did Mr Dodd. It was thus with an air of condescension that he lay on his side in the drift mine and hewed coal from a two-foot seam and carried scuttles of it to the old man's study to keep him warm. It was with the same certainty of his own worth and superiority in all things that he and his dog herded sheep on the fells and saw to the lambing in the snow. He was there to protect them and he was there to protect Mr Flawse and if he fleeced the one of wool, he fed and housed himself upon the other and let no one come between them.
'You'll have scared the wits out of the woman,' he said when Lockhart climbed on to the roof, 'but it will not last. She'll have your inheritance if you do not act swift.'
'That's what I've come to ask you, Mr Dodd,' said Lockhart. 'Mr Bullstrode and Dr Magrew could remember none of my mother's friends. She must have had some.' 'Aye, she did,' said Mr Dodd stirring on the parapet. 'Then can you tell me who they were? I've got to start the search for my father somewhere."
Mr Dodd said nothing for some moments. 'You might inquire of Miss Deyntry down over Farspring way,' he said at last. 'She was a good friend of your mother's. You'll find her at Divet Hall. She maybe could tell you something to your advantage. I canna think of anyone else.'