of today a commemoration of uncounted numbers slain in battle. I must remember to tell Magnus. I carried my load of groceries outside, dumped them in the boot of the car, and drove out of Par by the church road to Tywardreath. But instead of parking outside the gents hairdressers, as I had done the day before, I drove slowly up the hill through the centre of the village, trying to reconstruct that non-existent village green. It was hopeless. There were houses to right and left of me, and at the top of the hill the road branched right to Fowey, while to the left the sign-post said To Treesmill. Somewhere, from the top of this hill, the Bishop and his cortege had driven yesterday, and the covered wagonettes of Carminowes, Champernounes and Bodrugans, their coats-of-arms emblazoned on the side. Sir John Carminowe would have taken the right-hand fork — if it existed — to Lostwithiel and his demesne of Bockenod, where his lady awaited her confinement. Today Bockenod was Boconnoc, a vast estate a few miles from Lostwithiel; I had passed one of the lodge gates on my drive down from London. Where, then, did the lord of the manor, Sir Henry de Chainpernoune, have his demesne? His wife Joanna had told her steward, my horseman Roger, 'The Bodrugans lodge with us tonight.' Where would the manor house have stood?
I stopped the car at the top of the hill and looked about me. There was no house of any great size in the village of Tywardreath itself; some of the cottages could be late eighteenth century, but none belonged to an earlier period. Reason told me that manor houses were seldom destroyed, unless by fire, and even if they were burnt to the ground, or the walls crumbled, the site would be put to another purpose within a few years, and a farmhouse erected on the spot to serve the one-time manor lands. Somewhere, within a radius of a mile or two of Priory and church, the Champernounes would have built their own dwelling, or the original manor-house would have awaited them when the first Isolda, the Cardinham heiress, sold them the manor lands in 1269. Somewhere — down that left-hand fork, perhaps, where the sign-post read To Treesmill — the foot-tapping Joanna, impatient to be home, had driven in her painted wagonette from the Priory reception, accompanied by her sad-faced lord Sir Henry, and their son William, and followed by her brother Otto Bodrugan and his wife Margaret.
I glanced at my watch. It was past twelve, and Mrs. Collins would be waiting to put away the groceries and cook my lunch. Also I had to write to Vita.
I settled to the letter after lunch. It took an hour or so to compose, nor was I satisfied with the result, but it would have to serve. Darling, I said, I had not realised, until your letter came this morning, that you were actually flying back today, so you won't get this before tomorrow. If I've muddled things, forgive me. The fact is there has been a tremendous amount to do here to get the place straight for you and the boys, and I've been hard at it ever since I arrived. Mrs. Collins, Magnus's daily, has been wonderful, but you know what a bachelor household is, and Magnus himself has not been down since Easter, so things were a bit sketchy. Also, and this is the real crux, Magnus asked me to go through a lot of his papers, and so on — he keeps a mass of scientific stuff in his laboratory which must not be touched — and all this has to be put away safely. He asked me to see to it as a personal favour, and I can't let him down, because after all we are getting the house rent-free, and it's some sort of return. I ought to be clear of this chore by Monday, but want the next few days free to get on with it, and the weekend too. Incidentally, the weather has been foul. It rained without ceasing all yesterday, so you aren't missing anything, but the locals say it will improve next week.
Don't worry about food, Mrs. C has everything under control, and she's a very good cook, so you won't have to worry on that score. Anyway, I'm sure you can occupy the boys until Monday, there must be museums and things they haven't seen, and you will want to meet people, so, darling, I suggest we plan for next week, and by then there should be no problems.
I'm so glad you enjoyed yourself with Joe and family. Yes — perhaps, in retrospect, it might have been a good idea to have flown the boys out to New York, but it's easy to be wise after the event. I hope you're not too tired, darling, after the flight. Ring me when you get this.
Your loving Dick.
I read the letter through twice. It seemed better the second time: it rang true. And I did have to sort things for Magnus. When I lie I like to base the lie on a foundation of fact, for it appeases not only conscience but a sense of justice. I stamped the envelope and put it in my pocket, and then I remembered that Magnus wanted bottle B from the laboratory sent up to him in London. I rummaged about, found a small box, paper and string, and went down to the lab. I compared bottle B with bottle A, but there seemed to be no difference between the two. I was still carrying the flask of yesterday in my jacket pocket, and it was a simple matter to measure a second dose from A into the flask. I could use my judgement when, and if, I decided to take it. Then I locked the lab and went upstairs, and had a look at the weather through the library window. It was not raining, and the sky was clearing out to sea. I packed up bottle B with great care, then drove down to Par to register it and to drop Vita's letter in the box, wondering, not so much what she would say when she read it, as how the monkey would react to his first trip into the unknown.
My mission accomplished, I drove up through Tywardreath and took the left-hand fork to Treesmill. The narrow road, with fields on either side of it, ran steeply to a valley, and before the final descent sloped sharply to a humped-backed bridge beneath which the main railway line ran between Par and Plymouth. I braked by the bridge and heard the hoot of the diesel express as it emerged from the tunnel out of sight to my right, and in a few moments the train itself came rattling down the line, passed under the bridge, and curved its way through the valley down to Par. Memories of undergraduate days came back to me. Magnus and I had always travelled down by train, and directly the train came out of the tunnel between Lostwithiel and Par we used to reach for our suitcases. I had been aware, then, of steep fields to the left of the carriage window and a valley to the right, full of reeds and stumpy willows, and suddenly the train would be at the station, the large black board with the white lettering announcing 'Par — Change For Newquay', and we should have arrived. Now, watching the express disappear round the bend in the valley, I observed the terrain from another angle, and realised how the coming of the railway over a hundred years ago must have altered the sloping fields, the line literally dug out of the hill-side. There had been other disturbers of the peace besides the railway. Quarries had scarred the opposite side of the valley on the high ground where the tin and copper mines had flourished a century ago — I remembered Commander Lane telling us once at dinner how hundreds of men had been employed in the mines in Victorian days, and when the slump came chimneys and engine-houses were left to crumble into decay, the miners emigrating, or seeking work in the newer industry of china-clay. This afternoon, the train out of sight and the rattle spent, all was quiet once again, and nothing moved in the valley except a few cows grazing in the swampy meadow at the base of the hill. I let the car descend gently to the end of the road before it rose sharply again to climb the opposite hill out of the valley. A sluggish stream ran through the meadow where the cows were grazing, spanned by a low bridge, and above the stream, to the right of the road, were old farm-buildings. I lowered the window of the car and looked about me. A dog ran from the farm, barking, followed by a man carrying a pail. I leant out of the window and asked him if this was Treesmill.
'Yes,' he said. 'If you continue straight on you'll come to the main road from Lostwithiel to Saint Blazey.'
'In point of fact,' I answered, 'I was looking for the mill itself.'
'Nothing left of it, he said. This building here was the old mill-house, and all that's left of the stream is what you see. The main stream was diverted many years ago, before my time. They tell me that before they built this bridge there was a ford here. The stream ran right across this road, and most of the valley was under water.'
'Yes,' I said, 'yes, that's very possible.'
He pointed to a cottage the other side of the bridge. 'That used to be a pub in old days', he said, 'when they were working the mines up at Lanescot and Carrogett. It would be full of miners on a Saturday night, so they tell me. Not many people alive who know much about the old days now.'
'Do you know', I asked him, 'if there is any farmhouse here in the valley that might have been a manor house in days gone by?'
He considered a moment before replying. 'Well,' he said, 'there's Trevenna up back behind us, on the Stonybridge road, but I've never heard it was old, and Trenadlyn beyond that, and of course Treverran up the valley nearer the railway tunnel. That's an old house all right, fine old place, built hundreds of years ago.'
'How long ago?' I enquired, interest rising.
He considered again. 'There was a piece about Treverran in the paper once,' he said. 'Some gentleman from Oxford went to look at it. I believe it was 1705 they said it was built.'
My interest ebbed. Queen Anne houses, tin and copper mines, the pub across the road, all these were centuries later than my time. I felt as an archaeologist must feel who discovers a late Roman villa instead of a Bronze Age camp.
