The Essex Serpent(93)

Francis, meanwhile, held his ground. He assumed he was afraid, since his palms were wet and his breath was coming fast, but as far as he was concerned that was no reason to turn tail. He rarely thought of Cora – not out of contempt, but because she was a constant, and so seemed hardly worth troubling over. But he thought of her then – of how often she bent over a fragment of rock, and sketched it; of how she’d beckon him over and tell him the names of what she’d found. Perhaps he could do the same, here, or something like it: observe a phenomenon at the closest of quarters, and make a report, and show her. The idea satisfied him; he walked on, and beyond the pale curtain the sun rallied, and the fog began to thin. The wet mud glistened gold, and water began to run in rivulets towards the shingle; there again was the sound of grinding, and a dark shape shifting a few yards distant appeared as slowly as if it were just that moment being formed out of the air. Francis stepped forward. A low gust came from the east and whipped at the fog, and there was a bright clear moment in which he saw plainly what it was that had been cast up on the shore.

He numbered his feelings as accurately as any of his treasures: first it was relief he felt, as his breath slowed and his heart’s beating subsided; then disappointment; then hard on its heels came mirth. Laughter bubbled up in him and could not be suppressed; he had to ride it out like a coughing fit, or as if he were being sick. After a while the laughter died back, and he was himself again, drying his eyes with his sleeve, considering how best to proceed. What he’d seen was gone now – hidden behind a fresh bank of fog, or borne out again on the lapping tides – and it was important to settle on what he should do next. Certainly he ought to tell somebody, and it was Cora he thought of first. But no – he ought not to have been out-of-doors so early in the morning – he imagined her discarding his account in favour of explaining that he had done something wrong, and the idea was intolerable. Then he remembered Stella Ransome, and how he’d visited her in her blue bower, and how she’d let him touch her treasures, and how readily she’d understood that in his own pockets there’d been a bent coin, a fragment of gull’s egg, and the empty cup of an acorn. He’d grown so used to being greeted with bemusement and suspicion that her immediate affection earned her his absolute loyalty. He’d tell her what he’d seen, and she’d tell him what to do.





Dear Mrs Ransome

I want to tell you something. Please may I visit at a time convenient.

Yours sincerely Francis Seaborne (Master)

PS I will put this through your door to save time.





8


Dr Garrett found a branch fit to bear a stocky man. Hanging would doubtless be unpleasant: he’d have much preferred a high drop and broken neck to long slow pressure on his throat; but he understood it, and knew how his tongue would loll, and his bowels loosen, and how blood vessels would lay scarlet cobwebs over the whites of his eyes, and he’d never been afraid of anything he understood. He fumbled at the buckle of his belt, favouring his wounded hand (as if it mattered now what damage was done, or how he pulled at the stitches!), and as he looped the strap through the silver buckle to form a noose his thumb moved across the ridges which formed the symbol there. There it was, the coiled snake, the sign of his profession: the darting tongue picked out with the engraver’s tool, the winking eye. It was a mockery – he had no right to it – to think that once he’d walked proudly bearing the sign of gods, of goddesses! Worse, it called to mind Spencer – his long anxious face, his loyalty, his habit of seeming always to be dashing after him to prevent some disaster. How extraordinary it was that all the while he’d sat leaning on the gallows he’d chosen, numbering his reasons for living and setting each one aside, he’d never once thought of his friend. It was as if his presence was so constant, and so taken for granted, that he’d come to be barely noticed. Again he traced the symbol, resentful of its intrusion, and tried also to set Spencer aside. He was a grown man, after all, with pockets as deep as his heart was large – dull on first meeting, but generally liked: he’d miss Luke, but no more than if he’d gone to another country. But Luke knew this to be untrue. Since their days side by side at the college bench flaying open severed hands to see their bones and tendons Spencer had conferred on him a friendship more unerring than any brother could’ve shown. He’d patiently borne every slight and insult (of which there had been many); by wealth and good manners deflected the rage of tutors and debtors; had by his silent approval enabled every small step Luke made towards his goal. By slow degrees they’d established an intimacy more easy than that with any lover either had known: Luke remembered a time when Spencer, after too much wine, had lolled against his shoulder, and how he hadn’t moved for fear of waking him, though his arm grew stiff and sore. Luke pictured him – waking now in the George, perhaps, in his absurd striped pyjamas with a monogrammed pocket, his fair hair receding, probably thinking of Martha first, then of his friend in the adjoining room; how he’d dress too neatly and come quietly down for his egg, wondering when Luke might wake; how then he’d grow uneasy, and come knocking on the door – would he go to the police, or come searching himself? Would he find his friend hanging there, with the buckle of his belt shearing the flesh behind his ear – might he scrabble at the branch to bring him down?

No – it was impossible to think that he could do such harm – and it was also unfair: must he really struggle numbly on for the sake of George Spencer? How humiliating it was that neither the hope of professional glory nor the possession of Cora Seaborne might keep his neck from the noose, but nothing more than a friend. How humiliating – and another failure, even at the end! The calm he’d felt receded, and in its place was the old familiar rage: he thrashed wildly at the grass with the belt, sending up clods of mud, while behind him in the branches of the oak something moved because it had seen the sun.