‘There seem to be a good many changes since I was here last time,’ said Fenella.
‘Really? When was that? I didn’t know that the old-style More to Come took guests.’
‘Neither did it,’ said Nicholas, breaking in with an abruptness which surprised and startled Fenella. ‘My wife hit upon this place for a meal when her car broke down one time. I’m afraid the best they could do for her then was a snack in the saloon bar and a dock glass of sherry or something or other. Now, then, let’s see what we are going to eat. You can leave the wine-list and we’ll order when we’ve chosen our meal.’
‘Oh, very good, sir,’ said the manager, completely changing his voice and attitude.
‘Why didn’t you want him to know that I’d actually stayed a night here?’ asked Fenella, when the man had gone.
‘I don’t really know,’ said Nicholas. ‘A sort of instinct prompted me. I’m superstitious about this village and its peculiar little ways, and I could wish you weren’t staying here. Wouldn’t some place in Cridley have been better?’
‘Rather a long way from your school, darling, and – well – I admit the village is a bit frightening in some ways, but I liked the Shurrocks and Clytie and I thought they’d be quite pleased to have me again. Of course I had no idea they wouldn’t be here.’
‘But surely when they answered your letter….’
‘It was only a printed card to say that a single room was available and it was initialled, not signed, so I didn’t think anything about it except to feel that the More to Come had gone up in the world to have printed cards.’
‘So it has, I must say. Wish I were staying here with you.’
‘Well, it won’t be so very long now before we get our own place, and we do get three week-ends out of four at Douston, don’t forget.’
‘God bless Hubert and Miriam. At least we can honeymoon while we’re with them. Shall I write you a bucolic Epithalamion, like Spenser’s, only more so?’
‘No. Tell me what this is all about – if I can remember it. I think I can. I heard it nine times altogether and in this very house.
Sagittarius be archer and shoot at the sun;
Capricorn butt bachelors and cause ’em to run;
Aquarius ’e stand wi’ ’is bucket o’ water,
Pisces come swimmin’ a christened babe arter.
Aries ’ave killed off the bleatin’ old wether …’
Nicholas interrupted her.
‘It’s a fertility rhyme, darling. Who repeated it to you?’
‘Nobody. The zodiac people chanted it down in the old church under the priest’s room and in the crypt when they were bringing up those bones they buried on the hilltop.’
‘Old Bitton-Bittadon repeated it to me once when he was in his cups, the old lecher.’
‘Was he really?’
‘A lecher? Oh, yes, and usually as drunk as a lord as well. Still, bibulous old backwoodsman as he was, he wasn’t a bad old boy, and certainly wasn’t the sort who made enemies.’
‘He certainly seems to have made one’
‘Yes, indeed. “Aries have killed off the bleating old wether.” And, talking of christened babes, the son, Jeremy Bitton-Bittadon, came home from his travels long, long before anybody could have expected him.’
CHAPTER TEN
The Charnel House
‘… and now there is nothing left of him but his bones.’
Frederick Marryat – The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains
Her brief courtship and her plan to marry another man in place of Talbot, coupled with her first experience of being truly in love, had left Fenella mentally breathless, spiritually uplifted and physically in such a state of exuberant health that she rose blithely in the mornings and passed her days in a kind of dreaming haze of surprised happiness, her only longing being for the next meeting with the beloved.
The village no longer seemed strange or unfriendly. In fact, during her walks abroad, she met with so many smiles and pleasant greetings that, after a few days, she found it almost impossible to recall her first impressions of the place.
She did not like to ask point-blank what had happened to the Shurrocks and their servants, or for an account which would explain the complete metamorphosis of the More to Come. Her room was comfortable, the food was good and Nicholas contrived to get away from the school every afternoon during games periods. At these times he drove over to spend a precious couple of hours with her and twice a week, when he was off duty, he dined with her at the inn and on Saturdays and Sundays they were together at Douston Hall.
Twice she made a pilgrimage to the hill-fort at the end of the village and came back baffled. She could no longer believe that she had been a witness to what she thought she had seen there on Mayering Eve. Nevertheless, she could not ignore the blackened ground where the bonfire had been, or the stamped earth which now covered the strange grave. It was after the second of these walks that she had an unlikely and terrifying dream and that the dream had an equally strange and terrifying aftermath.
Before that happened, however, she had another experience which left her uneasy and somewhat perturbed. Nicholas had dined with her at the inn and she had accompanied him a couple of miles on his way back to the school. He was driving his own car. She had left hers at the More to Come and had planned to return to the inn on foot.
It was a beautiful evening, and was unusually calm, a circumstance which, when she thought it over, struck her as having been sinister. As it happened, the school lay in the opposite direction to the hill-fort, and so, on her walk back, she decided to turn aside for another look at the seven springs from which the village of Seven Wells took its name, and which now had romantic associations for her. This time, of course, there was no Jack-in-the-Green to
