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CHAPTER 1
Atherton appeared in my rooms two or three days after my accident. He had heard about it from Burridge, which means the news must have travelled round most of Cambridge by then. By "Cambridge," I mean, of course, the university.
I did not know Matthew Atherton especially well, and it surprised me to find him there, all of a dither because he had forgotten something or other, a look of concern on his ample features.
"My hat," he mumbled, "I seem to have come out without my hat."
He belonged to one of the smaller colleges, and we had had little occasion to cross paths in the past. A shared interest in books, an occasional dinner party in the rooms of a fellow don, a chance encounter at a public lecture of mutual interest had, until that afternoon, been the sum total of our familiarity, if such it may be called.
Atherton is a curious-looking man, corpulent, yet almost dainty in his mannerisms. His features, which one would expect to be coarse in a man of such girth, are rather fine, if they do not, indeed, verge on the angelic, and his eyes seem to peer out from his face as if to say, "I am a prisoner in a body not truly my own." I cannot say I altogether like him, I would not go so far as that, but I confess to a certain admiration for him. He is aged somewhere between thirty-five and forty — I have not been able to ascertain the exact year of his birth — and is the son of respectable parents from Lincolnshire. His father was Bishop of Ely and, I believe, a man of learning in his own right.
Speaking of which, I have not mentioned Atherton's exceptional erudition. It was that which sparked my first interest, the day he called, for I knew him to have the reputation of one of the cleverest men in the university, and I found it strange to find him so much at a loss in my company.
Atherton is a Fellow of Sidney Sussex, at which college he has taught Greek for several years. My acquaintances tell me, however, that he is very much the leading man in this country in the science of philology (if science it can be called). Apart from the classical languages, he is reputed to be entirely fluent in Sanskrit and ancient Egyptian, and to be competent in both ancient and modern Persian (which he studied with Browne at Pembroke). He is proficient in Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic. French, German, Italian, and Russian he reads easily, and he "gets by" in Spanish and Portuguese.
But linguistic skills are but a fraction of Atherton's abilities. He sat for the mathematics tripos in the year following his Classics degree, and emerged Senior Wrangler of 1871. He was then only twenty. His knowledge of Greek mathematics is unsurpassed, and he has extended his interests to the Indian and Muslim systems, being the only mathematician of note to have a mastery of the native languages in which all the essential texts are to be found. Burton tells me he has published numerous papers and studies of the Arabic translations of Archimedes' Stomachion and Lemmata. All this in a man of between thirty-five and forty!
But these observations are by the by. They serve as a sort of introduction to Atherton and his personality, above all to alert the reader to his being a man of science as much as one of letters. He and I have since become — not exactly friends, for we are not of like temperament, but, shall we say, close acquaintances. How this came about, I shall presently relate.
He stood hatless in my room that day — it was a cold afternoon in December, and snow had begun to fall across the court — blinking as though the sight of my leg in bandages disconcerted him, as well it might. I had slipped some days earlier on an icy path in Trumpington Street, fracturing my right ankle, and was now confined indefinitely to my rooms in King's. Atherton brought with him the sound of singing, for the choir were just then practising for the Advent service, and my rooms are in the chapel end of the Gibb's Building.
"I heard ..." he began, and dried up at once. He is something of a recluse, and I do not think he had ever visited the sick before. For my own part, I was racking my brains to place him more accurately. An embarrassing silence ensued, he standing disconsolate, I scanning his features for a clue as to why he of all people should turn up in my rooms like this.
"Please," I said, "take a chair."
His clothes were damp from the snow, and small fragments of white, now melting, still clung to his unruly hair.
He sat and continued to look at me mutely, like a newly arrived undergraduate bereft of the powers of conversation.
"Will you take a sherry?" I asked. It was four in the afternoon, and I never normally touch any form of drink until I set foot in the Senior Common Room on my way to dine in hall; but I reckoned that being an invalid has its compensations, and Atherton did appear in need of something to warm him.
"You'll find a bottle in that cupboard," I went on, pointing to the corner, "and some glasses."
He nodded mildly and fetched the sherry without a murmur. His hand trembled slightly as he poured a measure into each glass. I was wondering what on earth to say to him. I am an historian, and though I have a tolerable knowledge of the Classics and one or two European languages, I did not think myself capable of following Atherton in an abstruse discussion of the higher realms of philology. As for mathematics, I fear I have never scaled its precipitous heights, indeed I count myself fortunate if I can add up my tailor's bill.
My fears were rapidly dispersed. He sat watching me for several minutes, taking an occasional nervous sip of sherry, as though steeling himself for some revelation or impertinence. The sound of choral voices drifted through thickening snow and thence through my window, enveloping me in the goodwill of the season. Botts had lit my lights, and had promised to return later with supper on a tray. I had almost let my eyes close, the better to enjoy the music, when Atherton found courage to speak.
"It's not for myself," he faltered. "I've come about my brother, the Reverend Edward Atherton. You may have heard of him."
I shook my head. He nodded distractedly and went on.
"Edward is my older brother. He came under my father's influence a great deal in his youth, and in consequence entered the Church. To be perfectly honest, he was never really suited to the ecclesiastical life. His deepest inclinations are artistic, and he has never had the ambition to seek preferment. Our father found Edward something of a disappointment. For all that, he is well liked by his parishioners. I do believe he is a good man, and that must count for something, must it not?"
He gave me a look of the most disarming innocence, all the more accentuating that angelic quality I had already marked in his features. I nodded my assent, and, with a smile that quickly faded, he recommenced his account of his brother.
"Edward is now the rector at Thornham St Stephen, out beyond March. I don't know if you've heard of it?"
Something came to mind, though I could not then have said quite what. A faint memory of a passage read in a gazetteer, or a reference in a local history. An event during the Reformation, perhaps.
The name is familiar, of course. But I can't say I ..."
"No, of course not, it's not a particularly important place, quite insignificant, in fact, and the church is not very remarkable. Though, to an antiquarian such as yourself ..." He paused, as if uncertain what interest an antiquarian might find in his brother's church.
"Quite," I said, trying to be as encouraging as possible. It had just came back to me that the church at Thornham St Stephen was outstanding. I noticed that he had set down his sherry as though fearful it might interfere with his train of thought. For my own part, I wondered where this was leading.
"It is not exactly on a matter of antiquarian interest that I have come here," he went on, "although I think that may come into it. I have heard ..." He seemed uneasy, and I began to have an inkling of what he might be aiming at. "That is, one or two of my friends have told me that you have an interest in matters ... shall we say, supernatural."
He halted, as though embarrassed by what he had just said, and looked at me with a most pitiable expression in his eyes. Now, all was clear; but there was something in his look I did not like, something that chilled me. Atherton had not come on a trivial errand. Whatever troubled him must be very serious indeed.
"I would prefer to speak of psychic phenomena," I answered. "It is the preferred term among those of us who take a scientific interest in these matters."
"Then you are not a believer?"
I hesitated, as I always do when challenged on this point.
"I would describe myself as an open-minded sceptic," I said. "And you?"
"Oh, I ..." He reddened and looked away, staring at the snow as it drifted past my window. I had asked Botts to leave the curtains open: I found it hard enough to be confined without being shut in altogether.
He turned his troubled gaze back to me.
"I was a thorough sceptic," he said, "and even now ... Yet, if you had seen my brother, heard what he has to say ... The fact is, my scepticism is all in shreds, and I must have help."
"Whatever is the matter?" I asked. My concern for him was growing every moment. He was shivering, though the temperature in my rooms was far from low. Are you unwell?" He shook his head.
"A slight chill," he said. "But I am greatly disturbed in mind. My brother — The truth is, I think he may be going out of his mind, indeed I fear for his life. You must help him. I beg of you."
"Surely a physician ..."
He shook his head quite violently, as though I had blasphemed.
"A physician would be useless, worse than useless. As for an alienist ..."
"No, of course not, I did not suggest that he is actually mad."
"It has been suggested. My mother has said as much. She thinks Edward should travel to Geneva or Vienna. Ever since our father became ill, she has been the force in the family. But I have defied her in this. Edward is troubled in his spirit, not his mind. That is why I have come to you, and not to any physician."
I shifted, feeling trapped by the bandages at the end of my leg. In the room above mine, Morgan was pacing back and forth, as he often did when wrestling with some intractable problem in logic.
"I really don't think this falls within my sphere at all," I said, imbuing my voice with as much regret and sympathy as I could muster for someone I scarcely knew. "Would your brother not be better advised to speak with his bishop, or whoever it is rectors consult in matters of the spirit?"
This latest suggestion elicited an even more violent reaction than that preceding it. Atherton jumped to his feet and walked about agitatedly for some time before returning, somewhat more self-possessed, to his chair.
"I apologise," he said. "You do not know me, and here I am in your inner sanctum, behaving like some sort of madman. What you must think of me, I can scarcely guess. Perhaps you will imagine that it is I, and not my brother, who requires the services of an alienist."
I shook my head in disavowal, yet I must own that I had already formulated much that same doubt in my own mind. Atherton was, after all, a virtual stranger, and nothing I had heard of his character had predisposed me to think of him as a fully balanced man.
"The fact is," he continued, "that my brother will not breathe a word about his troubles to his bishop. The Bishop of Ely reckons himself a rationalist, and he is particularly sharp in his criticism of anyone dabbling in mediumistic seances or anything of that character. He will not have it that the spirits of the dead may remain earthbound, and he regards the rite of exorcism as a popish heresy. It is quite out of the question for my brother to approach him, or indeed any of the senior clergy, on this matter."
"And what exactly is this matter?" I asked.
Atherton remained silent. Beyond my windows, beyond the snow, beyond the darkness binding us in, the voices of the choristers celebrated the coming birth of the Christ child. A shiver passed through me, as one had passed through Atherton earlier. I felt a sense of foreboding, a growing conviction that Atherton had not come to me on trivial business, that something dark lay at the bottom of his visit.
"There is a very great evil at work in my brother's church," he said. "Edward thinks ... He is certain that he has disturbed something that should have been allowed to rest." He fell silent again.
"Can you be more precise?" I asked him. "What, precisely, has happened at Thornham St Stephen?"
CHAPTER 2
"It all started about four months ago," he began. I watched him carefully as he spoke, as interested in the man as in his story. He spoke slowly, pausing to choose his words and phrases, uncertain of their possible impact on me — a linguist shipwrecked on the rocks of his own tongue.
"The church at Thornham St Stephen is one of the finest in the region, but much neglected on account of its surroundings, which are indifferent, and its position in a remote part of the fens, in the Isle of Ely. The main building dates from the fourteenth century: the foundations were laid in the reign of Edward II. But there is evidence of earlier structures. The crypt is Norman, and some graves date back to the eighth century."
"Of course," I said. "I do remember reading of it in Lyson's Magna Britannia."
"Ah, then you may also remember that St Stephen's is possessed of several notable features, among which is to be numbered a group of tombs built in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. One consequence of the village's remoteness was that it survived the Reformation and the Commonwealth with its treasures intact and its fabric undamaged. Cromwell's Roundheads never set foot there, and it still boasts the statuary and figurative ornamentation with which it was originally endowed.
"This is especially gratifying in the case of the largest tomb, a marble structure built in 1359 for one William de Lindesey. De Lindesey was at one time prior of a small religious house at Thornham St Stephen, when it was a dower church of Thornham Abbey. In later life, William himself became Abbot of Thornham. He left instructions in his will that he was to be buried in the chancel of St Stephen's, together with large sums of money for the construction of the tomb and prayers for his soul.
"It's a fine example of a parish-church tomb of that period, one of the finest in the country, I understand. But, if the Roundheads spared it, the years have not been kind. Many of its figures are eroded, and large cracks have appeared in the sides.
"This summer, my brother, who had been given the living at Thornham St Stephen about a twelvemonth before, determined to remedy the very evident dilapidation he saw throughout the church. I have mentioned, I think, that Edward is of an artistic temperament. He draws exquisitely, and has made quite a study of the churches in his region, making sketches of their most distinctive features.
"I should explain that Edward has been a member of the Ecclesiological Society since his student days at Cambridge. You are familiar with its work, of course?"
I was indeed familiar with the society and its traditionalist principles, with which I am in little sympathy. It was founded here in Cambridge as the Camden Society about fifty years ago, a clique of enthusiasts who wish to return the nation's churches to what they consider their true medieval style. They are fussy High Church people, rather too fond of incense and candles, vestments and altar frontals for my somewhat simple taste.
I nodded.
"Edward used to contribute articles to The Ecclesiologist, some of them quite learned pieces. Of course, he's not much of a scholar — he lacks the necessary patience and application. But when he tries he can produce work of a tolerable quality. You may even have read some of his articles yourself. There was one on the subject of misericords that I found diverting."
I shook my head wearily.
"I fear The Ecclesiologist was never a journal I read. That sort of thing is ... hardly to my taste."
"But you are an antiquarian."
"Of course. But that doesn't mean I wish to live in the Middle Ages."
He smiled awkwardly.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "A Shadow on the Wall"
by .
Copyright © 2000 Jonathan Aycliffe.
Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
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