Barnaby and Robert were the first of the boys to arrive at the Manor on the Thursday afternoon. Lord St Clair had heard Barnaby’s car from far away, as it drove the high road through the Purbeck Hills. Most times the family used the small door cut into the side of the big Gothic front door of the Manor house. The doors stayed closed. Imperious. In one of Lord St Clair’s grand gestures, they had all helped open them, the creaking sound going out far into the hills. Through the grand doors gaped the hallway into the old house.

  They all waited on the high terrace above the newly cut lawn. Everyone who lived in the house. A tradition that had come to them down the centuries when the knights of old came home from the wars.

  When Barnaby’s Rolls-Royce came into sight at the end of the driveway through the trees, everyone took a deep breath. Like Merlin’s Bentley, the car was black, shining black with newness, Barnaby having only driven his new car out of the showroom in Regent Street the previous day.

  Lady St Clair smiled down on them as they got out of the car. The bride looked radiant, confirming Lady St Clair’s suspicions aroused by the sudden invitation to the wedding in Denver. Even if their invitation had come months in advance of the day, neither of them would have travelled to America. They were too old. Robert was married and going to be a father which was all that mattered. All mothers could tell when a girl was pregnant. There was so much happiness in their eyes.

  Walking forward as the trio came up the steps onto the terrace, Lady St Clair went first to her daughter-in-law and gave her a hug. They were old friends from the time Freya had spent at the Manor while Robert was writing one of his books. Then they looked at each other at arm’s length.

  “Welcome home, Freya. Welcome home. I just know how happy you two are going to be… Robert… Barnaby… What a lovely surprise.”

  “Why are the big doors open?” said Robert.

  “My sons have come home,” said Lord St Clair awkwardly. He never liked to show his emotions.

  “Merlin is on his way,” said Lady St Clair, kissing her sons on the cheek in turn.

  “What’s Merlin coming for?” asked Robert.

  “He’s bringing a surprise.”

  “Did he tell you anything?” asked Barnaby.

  “Of course not. He’s bringing down a girl who is going to be his bride.”

  They all trooped into the house.

  Barnaby would go back for the luggage after he had had some tea. He was nervous. All three of them were nervous. The big house was silent with disapproval. Only when the dogs burst out from somewhere inside did the old house seem normal to Barnaby. His mother was looking at Freya, directly at her stomach. After shaking hands, the servants had gone. Barnaby had given Mrs Mason a hug. Everything to Barnaby had seemed to be in slow motion. He and Robert had yet to agree on a way of broaching the subject of the parchments. They had agreed to say nothing the first day. Neither of them was sure who to speak to first. Now he was at home, the idea of asking his parents to tell a lie was impossible. All the bravado of being thirty years old and rich had evaporated. The disaster of Tina and Harry was nothing in comparison as to how he felt now.

  By the time they had drunk tea at the table laid out under the walnut tree in the garden, neither of his parents had mentioned the wedding. Or Harry Brigandshaw. His mother kept smiling at Freya. There was no doubt in Barnaby’s mind his mother knew Freya was going to have a child. He was not sure whether the smiling complicity was a good omen or bad. Barnaby just wished Robert would stop fidgeting. Maybe Merlin’s big surprise was telling their parents the family home was about to be dragged through the mud. Typical of Merlin. Doing it the right way. In person… As the idea of Merlin broaching the subject first made it seem worse, he got up from the tea table to take the dogs for a walk. Robert gave him a look of panic. The dogs began barking, dashing around the table with excitement.

  “What’s going on here?” said Lady St Clair. “What’s the matter with you two? If you’re worried about me finding out Freya is going to have a baby, I think it is wonderful. Truly wonderful for both of you. Children are the glue that holds together a good marriage.”

  “Oh, it’s not the baby,” said Robert with a faraway look of doom on his face.

  “Then what is it, Robert?”

  “I want you to both lie for me, Mother. Or my reputation, and with it this family’s, is in tatters.”

  “Sit down, Barnaby!” said Lady St Clair. “Now. Freya, you are now part of my family so you will stay. I presume you also know what is going on?”

  “We wanted to be sure we could have children.”

  “Very sensible. What we preach and what we do in this life are usually two very different things. Very sensible. Have you seen a gynaecologist?”

  “Only a doctor.”

  “You need a specialist. Especially for a first child at your age. This is your first child?”

  Freya nodded. Robert gave his mother a weak smile.

  “Right, Robert. You are the man of words. While your father is still sitting down, what do you want me to lie about? There are no secrets in this family, I hope… Out with it and don’t beat about the bush.”

  For ten minutes Robert tried to make out what he had done was all part of the business of writing books. Of how he wrote his books. Neither of his parents said a word until he had quite finished.

  “It wasn’t your great-grandfather who spent all the money,” said Lord St Clair, “it was your grandmother who threw the chalice at your grandfather. My father. Jolly good shot by all reports… You have a tremendous memory, Robert. I haven’t told that story for more than thirty years. You must have been a small boy. Everything you told your publisher and this Hank Curley is quite true. Only jumbled. All the family bits you heard as a boy have come together in a jumble. Only when you wrote it down in Holy Knight did it all make sense. I’ve read your book twice. You have my full approval. There are certain parts in all our lives we don’t shout about. Certainly not to strangers. We must just hope we learn from those mistakes.”

  “But we don’t have any parchments to show Hank Curley,” said Robert miserably. “However true my story may be based on fact, I told Max Pearl I had proof. Not legend passed down through the generations.”

  “But we do have proof.”

  “Where?”

  “I think we all deserve a glass of sherry. The proof can wait. It’s been in the house long enough. Suckling pig in the dining hall tonight. Done especially by Mrs Mason on the spit. Stop looking so worried, Robert. Do you think all those years ago I would tell you family stories that were not true? That would have been telling you a lie. Something your mother would never have permitted.”

  “Where are the parchments?” asked Barnaby.

  “Whoever said parchments? You said you wanted to show Mr Curley the proof. Then we shall. The parchments you thought of as paper are tablets in stone.”

  “You mean the family history is written in stone?”

  “Exactly. I rather think we had something to do with the saying, written in stone. But I’m not sure, so I would be lying if I claimed it for the family.”

  “Where are the stones?”

  “At Corfe Castle. Naturally. Where the story of our family began.”

  “But it’s a ruin. Clumps of pulled-down building blocks covered in grass and moss. Apart from the old keep there’s nothing left taller than a small tree.”

  “That’s what the ruins look like now. It’s what is underneath that I will show you. The castle in its heyday went down as far as it went up. Deep into the hill.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us children, Father?”

  “The one who inherits the title is told. Can you imagine all the archaeologists digging away if it became common knowledge? We St Clairs were not saints, you know.”

  “What about Curley? If he finds out what is under the ruins he will tell the world.”

  “Leave Mr Curley to me. Now, let us men go into my study for a glass of good Spanish sherry and let Freya talk to my wife in private. Can’t you see they are both bursting with things to say they would never let us men hear for a moment?… Does Merlin know all about this?… Good. I’ll show you all after he arrives with his big surprise, whatever that is going to be.”

  Robert thought he was walking on air to his father’s study where they found the windows flung open by little Mavis who was still letting in the summer air to compete with the smell of old books. Being told to go to his father’s study as a child was never good. Robert still expected the worst. How could something so valuable go unknown for centuries he asked himself, as his trembling hand took the first glass of brown sherry. Unlike most people who drank sherry in England, his father liked the sherry to taste sweet.

  “Maybe you had better sit down, Robert. I’m your father, don’t forget… She’s a very lovely lady and better still, she has brains. You are a lucky man… Now, let me see if I can find what I’m looking for.”

  The two brothers sat and looked at each other not saying a word. Both quickly finished the sherry. Barnaby sniffed as usual at his father’s bad taste in sherry. The paler, the drier was how his friends drank it in London.

  “Here they are,” said Lord St Clair a few moments later. “Some of them anyway.” He was carrying under his arm what looked like tubes made from rolled up paper which he put on his desk in front of his sons… “Now. What have we got here? This one is in French. So is this one.”

  Lord St Clair had unrolled what was in his hand.

  “What is it, Father?” asked Barnaby.

  “Here we are. One of the ones I was looking for. They’re all jumbled up I’m afraid. This one is in English, Robert. Come and read over my shoulder while I hold the damn thing open. They spring back into a roll if you let them go. I used brass weights at either end when I read them after inheriting the title. You were about six, Robert. I must’ve told you everything I read, not imagining you were taking it all in. Do you remember those winter nights around the big fire in the cosy room where I went to relax after a day’s difficult work? I must’ve been bursting to tell someone but couldn’t, according to the will.”

  “But these are the parchments I’m looking for,” said Robert, reading over his father’s shoulder.

  “Not really, Robert. Anyone with knowledge would know at a quick glance the paper is nineteenth century. This was the work of your great-grandfather. He was a scholar. My father was the reprobate who spent all the money and had the wine thrown at him by his wife. The fifty-year great love you talked about, Robert, was true but it was one generation back. From your child’s memory, you put the two stories together to come up with the thrown chalice across the great dining room table, the table that has been in the family for all the centuries. I must’ve talked about parchments. These parchments, but they were not in the wall of the great hall. Yes, there was a hollow ring when the silver cup hit the wall behind my father. Yes, there was a secret cavity but there was nothing inside when my father had a look. He was looking for something valuable to sell. To pay his debts… What we are looking at is one part of a book written by our ancestor’s grandson. Sir Henri Saint Claire Debussy’s grandson. In French, naturally. We came over with William the Conqueror from France… You are not the only writer in the family, Robert. Like so many things, what we are is passed down to us from our ancestors.”

  “But this is in English,” said Barnaby.

  “First my grandfather copied the tablets down in French. Then he translated the old French into modern English which is what you are reading now.”

  “Do the original tablets really exist?” asked Robert. “Or was my great-grandfather just a writer like me? Making stories up around the family legends?”

  “Oh yes, they exist all right. I’ll show you. When Merlin arrives. But of course, they are written in French so you won’t be able to read them… Now, who would like another glass of brown sherry? I heard a rumour that Mrs Mason is making her famous soused herrings you like so much, Barnaby.”

  “And suckling pig, tonight,” said Robert. “But you never slaughter piglets.”

  “Well, this time we had to – the poor old thing. Sally-Sue the sow had nineteen piglets. To paraphrase Old Warren, there weren’t enough tits, though I think he meant teats. They are the two smallest we are eating tonight. The rest of the piglets wouldn’t let them drink their mother’s milk. Nature has some terrible ways of making life survive. Every one of us is in a fight for survival and it never stops… Don’t you worry about this American, Robert. Leave him to me. The St Clairs have been around a long time… Now I have another good idea. Why don’t the three of us take those dogs for a walk in the fields? If you think about it, the mess you were in, Robert, was all my fault for talking out loud all those years ago and having no idea a small boy was taking it all in. Let alone going to write it down in a book thirty years later. It must be a great blessing in your work to have an almost total recall from that far back.”

  They walked for two hours in the summer evening, father and sons. Taking the same path on the same land the family had owned for centuries. Looking at hills and oak trees with the eyes given them, like the land, by their ancestors. They talked little and only about the nature that flourished all around them. Three men content with life, enjoying each other’s company and not having to talk.

  At the top of one hill, they looked back towards the village of Corfe Castle seven miles away. Behind the village that had nestled at the bottom of the hill for all the same centuries, they could see the ruins of Corfe Castle where it had all begun. Where the English St Clairs had morphed from the French Saint Claire… No one spoke as they looked.

  Then they walked back to Purbeck Manor in the soft gloaming, even the dogs silent, their tongues hanging loose to let them perspire from the evening’s exertion of fruitlessly chasing rabbits that always bolted back into their warrens.

  When they reached the Manor house all the windows were still open. Only the big Gothic door had been closed. There was another legend in the family that said that if the great doors stayed open after the sun had set, the sun would also set on the St Clair dynasty. The sun, as Lord St Clair said, as they walked through the small side door cut into the old oak, that would set that night behind on Purbeck Manor but never set on the British Empire, God save the King.

  When Barnaby heard his father go off on that one, he was not sure if the old man was being serious or pulling their legs. Like when he appeared to lose his memory when it suited him: when Father liked to become the vague old man living in the clouds and giving exotic names to his pigs.

  Later in the vaulted dining room that was only now used on special occasions, Freya was happy to see the piglets for the first time, cooking over the fire on the spit looking more like pork than pig. Only the one big, walk-in fireplace had a fire burning and just enough to roast the sides of the suckling pigs. Freya was told Mrs Mason had sat on the comfortable bench inside the fireplace for two hours with a long silver basting ladle and one of His Lordship’s bottles of brown sherry that Lady St Clair had brought to her earlier in the kitchen where the rest of the night’s feast was being prepared… Roast potatoes in the wood-fired oven cooked in lard… Roast chestnuts mixed with almonds and walnuts, all from the estate, chopped together into a paste and baked the size of dumplings in the same oven… Five vegetables from the garden… Rhubarb batter encrusted with brown sugar for dessert, which Mrs Mason knew was Barnaby’s favourite when he was still a child… Apple sauce with cloves and brown sugar… A rich sage and onion sauce made with herbs from the garden… Gravy placed in pewter gravy boats and left standing near the fire to keep warm, collected from Mrs Mason’s long basting, the juices flowing from the suckling pigs into catch-trays, the fire in the middle of the two suckling pigs that Mrs Mason had turned and basted as she drank down the bottle of sherry, throwing the last of the sherry over the pork, the crackling hard, thin and richly brown, just the way Barnaby liked his crackling, Freya was told by Lady St Clair as she sat down to dinner.

  On the long black oak table, pitted with age, were their platters, the trenchers waiting for the food, while next to the trenchers had been placed a single knife and fork. At each place setting stood a wine glass emblazoned with the family crest. Bottles of rich red French wine waited open along the table where the family now sat away from the heat of the fire, their corks having been drawn to let the wine breathe before the men went off to walk the ancestral fields.

  Freya had never seen anything quite so feudal. So old. So traditional. So beautiful. Quietly, as she sat at the table whose top was six inches thick all the way down to the distant end of the room where she was told in times gone by the servants sat below the salt, Freya pinched herself to make sure it was all real, that she, Freya Taylor from Denver, Colorado was now part of all this. That the child inside of her was a product of so much history.

 

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