‘A wake-up call of a novel an ingenious tour de force that is also a timely alert.’
Sunday Times
‘A gripping and topical evocation of civilisation’s fragility.’
Spectator
‘Human complacency and the urge to endure and inquire frame this masterly tale.’
The Times
‘When Harris is at his best – and here he is – he writes with a skill and ingenuity that few other novelists can match. In this case, the usual page turning pleasures are joined by something else: a sense that, through his historical-futuristic setting, Harris has found a unique vantage point to comment on the present This is a novel that not only makes you smile at its author’s brilliance, but induces a shiver of dread at how real it all seems.’
Financial Times
‘[An] absorbing, thought-provoking thriller.’
Daily Express
‘Ingenious.’
Daily Telegraph
‘He gives his imagination full rein in a gripping thriller that tells us a lot about our past, present and future.’
Sunday Express
‘A classy blockbuster from a wily old hand.’
Mail on Sunday
‘A truly surprising future-history thriller. Fabulous, really.’
Evening Standard
‘The book’s real power lies in its between-the-lines warning that our embrace of the internet represents some kind of sleepwalk into oblivion. It’s a provocative, tub-thumping sci-fi of which H. G. Wells might have been proud.’
Daily Mail
‘This vividly imagined, brilliantly clever novel is an absolutely class act.’
Sunday Mirror
‘Harris’s bleak imagined world issues a clarion call to the present, urging us to recognise the value of progress, the importance of woolly concepts like liberalism and the rule of law, and all the other ideals we’ve spent generations fighting for yet seem prepared to sacrifice on the altar of populism. For make no mistake, this novel [is] very much about the here and now . . . Harris is a master of plotting and, in elegant, understated third-person prose, he ratchets the tension ever upwards a page-turner.’
Observer
‘Harris is rightly praised as the master of the intelligent thriller. Genuinely thrilling, wonderfully conceived and entirely without preaching, [The Second Sleep ] probes the nature of history, of collective memory and forgetting, and exposes the fragility of modern civilisation.’
Daily Telegraph
‘[Harris] takes us on a thrilling ride while serving up serious food for thought . . . I doubt there is a living writer who is better at simultaneously making readers’ adrenaline pump while their brains whirr.’
Sunday Express
‘A return to the type of high-concept novel that made his name . . . The writing is elegant and pacy. The characters are fleshed out and the plot zips along.’
The Times
‘Harris . . . is a fearless writer. The prose is pure, elegant, never tricky and his imagination knows no bounds.’
Daily Express
‘Harris weaves a smart, intriguing story that cements his reputation as, in the words of the cover, “master of the intelligent thriller”. He’s that perfect combination of equally fine writer and storyteller; the narrative is satisfying and the prose is evocative. The world of The Second Sleep is plausible and richly imagined.’
Irish Independent
‘A brilliantly imaginative thriller.’
Reader’s Digest
‘As persuasive as it is fascinating.’
Scotsman
‘It’s hard not to credit Harris’s writing, no matter when and where it is set, with some sort of sidelong prescience.’
Irish Times
‘A gripping mystery.’
Tablet
‘As [Harris] flexes his imagination, you will be left pondering as often as you are page-turning.’
Herald
About the Author
Robert Harris is the author of fifteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy – Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator – Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave, Munich, The Second Sleep, V2 and Act of Oblivion. His work has been translated into forty languages and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in West Berkshire with his wife, Gill Hornby.
Also by Robert Harris
FICTION
The Cicero Trilogy
Imperium Lustrum Dictator
Standalone novels
Fatherland
What if Hitler had won the war?
Enigma
Secrets and intrigue in wartime Bletchley Park.
Archangel
Only one man can reveal the buried secrets of Russia’s past.
Pompeii
A corrupt world on the brink of a terrifying disaster.
The Ghost
The world’s greatest conspiracy theory is about to be exposed.
The Fear Index
It’s time to make a killing.
An Officer and a Spy
In the hunt for a spy, he exposed a conspiracy.
Conclave
The power of God. The ambition of men.
Munich
Treason. Betrayal. Murder. Is any price too high for peace?
The Second Sleep
What if your future lies buried in the past?
V2
The first rocket will take five minutes to hit London. Kay has six minutes to stop the second.
Act of Oblivion
They killed the King. Now they must run forever.
NON-FICTION
A Higher Form of Killing (with Jeremy Paxman)
Gotcha: Media, the Government and the Falklands Crisis
The Making of Neil Kinnock
Selling Hitler
Good and Faithful Servant: The Unauthorized Biography of Bernard Ingham
PENGUIN BOOK S
UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia India | New Zealand | South Africa
Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
Penguin Random House UK , One Embassy Gardens, 8 Viaduct Gardens, London SW 11 7BW
penguin.co.uk
First published by Hutchinson 2019
Published in Penguin Books 2022 001
Copyright © Canal K, 2019
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Penguin Random House values and supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes freedom of expression and supports a vibrant culture. Thank you for purchasing an authorised edition of this book and for respecting intellectual property laws by not reproducing, scanning or distributing any part of it by any means without permission. You are supporting authors and enabling Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for everyone. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems. In accordance with Article 4(3) of the DSM Directive 2019/790, Penguin Random House expressly reserves this work from the text and data mining exception.
Set in Spectrum MT
Typeset by Six Red Marbles UK, Thetford, Norfolk
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.
The authorised representative in the EEA is Penguin Random House Ireland, Morrison Chambers, 32 Nassau Street, Dublin D02 YH 68
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN : 978–1–787–46096–6
Penguin Random House is committed to a sustainable future for our business, our readers and our planet. This book is made from Forest Stewardship Council® certified paper.
To Sam
Until the close of the early modern era, Western Europeans on most evenings experienced two major intervals of sleep . . . The initial interval of slumber was usually referred to as ‘first sleep’ . . . The succeeding interval was called ‘second’ or ‘morning’ sleep . . . Both phases lasted roughly the same length of time, with individuals waking some time after midnight before returning to rest.
A. Roger Ekirch, At Day’s Close: A History of Nighttime
It was impossible to dig more than a foot or two deep about the town fields and gardens without coming upon some tall soldier or other of the Empire, who had lain there in his silent unobtrusive rest for a space of fifteen hundred years. He was mostly found lying on his side, in an oval scoop in the chalk, like a chicken in its shell; his knees drawn up to his chest; sometimes with the remains of his spear against his arm; a fibula or brooch of bronze on his breast or forehead; an urn at his knees, a jar at his throat, a bottle at his mouth . . . They had lived so long ago, their time was so unlike the present, their hopes and motives were so widely removed from ours, that between them and the living there seemed to stretch a gulf too wide even for a spirit to pass.
Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge
The hidden valley
Late on the afternoon of Tuesday the ninth of April in the Year of Our Risen Lord 1468, a solitary traveller was to be observed picking his way on horseback across the wild moorland of that ancient region of south-western England known since Saxon times as Wessex. If this young man’s expression was troubled, we may grant he had good cause. More than an hour had elapsed since he had last seen a living soul. Soon it would be dusk, and if he was caught out of doors after curfew he risked a night in jail.
He had stopped to ask directions in the market town of Axford, where a group of rough-looking fellows had been drinking outside an inn beneath the painted sign of a swan. After grinning between themselves at the strangeness of his accent, and imitating the refinement of his yeses and yous, they had assured him that to reach his destination all he needed to do
ROBERT HARRIS
was to ride straight towards the setting sun. But now he was beginning to suspect this might have been another piece of local mischief. For no sooner had he passed the high walls of the town’s prison, where three executed felons hung rotting from their gibbets, and crossed the river and entered open country, than heavy clouds had blown across the western sky, obliterating the sunset. Behind him the tall spire of Axford’s church had long since submerged below the horizon. Ahead, the road twisted and dipped between unpopulated ridges of dark woodland and stretches of wild heath daubed with streaks of yellow gorse before dwindling into the murk.
Presently, in the way that often in those parts signals a change in the weather, it became very still. All the birds went quiet, even the huge red kites with their incongruous high-pitched cries that had pursued him for miles. Chilly veils of sodden grey mist drifted across the moor and draped themselves around him, and for the first time since he set off early that morning, he felt moved to pray aloud for protection to his name saint, who had borne the infant Christ on his back across the river.
After a while, the road began to ascend a wooded hillside. As it climbed, so it dwindled, until it was little better than a cart track – ridged brown earth covered loosely by stones, shards of soft blue slate and yellow gravel braided by the running rainwater. From the
steep banks on either side rose the scent of wild herbs –lungwort, lemon balm, mustard garlic – while the overhanging branches drooped so low he had to duck and fend them off with his arm, dislodging further showers of fresh cold water that drenched his head and trickled down his sleeve. Something shrieked and flashed emerald in the gloom, and his heart seemed to jump halfway up his throat, even though he realised almost at once that it was nothing more sinister than a common parakeet. He shut his eyes in relief.
When he opened them again, he saw a brownish object up ahead. At first he mistook it for a fallen tree. He wiped his sleeve across his face and leaned forward in his saddle. A figure in a hessian smock, cowled like a monk, was pushing a handcart. He dug his knees into the flanks of his mount and urged her on. ‘God be with you!’ he shouted down at the curious apparition. ‘I am a stranger here.’
The figure pushed ahead even harder, pretending not to have heard, so that he was obliged to pass it once again. This time he wheeled around to block the narrow lane. He noticed the cart was piled with wool bales. He loosened the neck strings of his cape. ‘I mean you no harm. Christopher Fairfax is my name.’ He pulled down the wet fabric and lifted his beard to show the white cloth tied around his neck. ‘I am a man of God.’
A damp thin male face squinted up at him through the rain. Slowly and reluctantly the hood was drawn
ROBERT HARRIS
back to reveal a head entirely bald. Water ran off the shiny dome, upon the crown of which curved a bloodcoloured crescent- shaped birthmark.
‘Is this the road to Addicott St George?’
The man scratched at his birthmark and screwed up his eyes as if making a great effort of memory. Eventually he said, ‘Ye means Adcut ?’
Fairfax – dripping water, losing patience – answered, ‘Yes, very well, then – Adcut.’
‘No. There’s a fork, a half-mile back. Ye needs t’take t’other.’ The man looked him up and down. A knowing expression crept across his face – a slow, rural slyness, as if he were measuring a beast at market. ‘Ye’re young for the work.’
‘And yet old enough, I think!’ Fairfax forced a smile and bowed. ‘Peace be upon you.’
He tugged at the bridle and turned his elderly grey mare around, riding her carefully back down the watery track until he found the place where the road forked. It was almost impossible to spot unless one had been warned to look for it. So those wretches in Axford had indeed been trying to get him lost – a trick they’d never have dared attempt had they known he was a priest. He ought to tell the local sheriffs. Yes, on his way home he would do exactly that. He would bring the whole weight of the law down upon their stupid rustic numbskulls – imprisonment, a fine, a day in the stocks being pelted by stones and shit . . .
This second track was even steeper. Ancient trees on either side, already in full leaf, leaned in no more than a couple of yards above his head as if to confer. Their entwined branches shut out the light. Inside this dank tunnel night seemed already to have fallen. His horse skittered and refused to carry him further. He wrapped his arms around her neck and whispered in her ear, ‘Come on, May!’ But she was a grumpy beast, stubborn with age, more mule than horse, and in the end he had to dismount and lead her.
On foot, he felt even more vulnerable. He had twenty pounds in his purse for expenses, counted out a coin at a time by the dean the previous evening, and many were the travellers who had been murdered for half as much. His boots slithered in the mud as he dragged at the bridle. Oh, but this was a fine joke, he thought bitterly. The bishop might rarely smile, but that did not mean he entirely lacked a certain sense of humour. To send a man off thirty miles, to the furthest edge of the diocese, on such an errand, and on a clapped- out horse . . .
He pictured his colleagues gathering for their customary early supper – seated on the long benches in the chapter house in front of the huge fire, the bishop bowing his narrow grizzled head to say grace, his face in the blaze still the colour of an oyster, a flicker of malicious merriment in those small dark eyes. ‘And lastly we pray for our brother in Christ, Christopher
ROBERT HARRIS
Fairfax, serving our holy mother the Church tonight . . . in a far- off land !’
Some wretched nearby brook seemed to gurgle with laughter.
But then, just as he was despairing, a pale glow appeared at the end of the overgrown lane and after a few more minutes of weary dragging, he emerged into what was left of the day’s light to discover himself on the crest of a hill. To his right the land fell away sharply. Small fields with low dry- stone walls enclosed a scattering of cows, sheep and goats. Ramshackle wooden stalls had been weathered by the winter to the colour of pewter. At the bottom of the valley, about a mile distant, was a river with a bridge. Next to it, a small settlement of mostly thatched roofs was centred around a square stone church tower. Here and there, feathery lines of white-grey smoke rose and bled into the darker grey of the sky. The clouds above the enclosing hills were low and racing, like waves fleeing a storm out at sea. It had stopped raining. He fancied he could smell the chimneys. He imagined light, warmth, company, food. In the wet fresh evening air his spirits revived. Even May’s mood improved sufficiently that she consented to let him remount her.
It was nearly dark by the time they trotted into the centre of the village. May’s shod hooves clattered over the arched stone bridge that spanned the river and splashed along the muddy narrow street. His high
vantage point enabled him to peer into the whitewashed cottages on either side. Some had small front gardens with white wooden fences. Most opened directly on to the road. In a couple of windows, candles glowed; in one, he glimpsed the full pale moon of a face, quickly eclipsed by a curtain. He halted at the lychgate and looked about him. A cobbled path led through the graveyard to the portico of a church that he guessed must have stood square on this land for at least a thousand years; more likely fifteen hundred. Wrapped around the middle of the flagpole on the top of the tower, the red and white standard of England and St George hung damply at half-mast.
On the far side of the graveyard, beyond the wall, was a tumbling two- storey building with a thatched roof. On the threshold, now that he looked more closely, he could just make out the gaunt figure of a woman dressed in black, holding a lantern, watching him. For a few moments they regarded one another across the lichened tombstones. Then she lifted the light a little and moved it back and forth. He raised his hand, spurred the mare and rode around the perimeter of the churchyard towards the waiting figure.
chapter two
Father Fairfax makes the acquaintance of Father Thomas Lacy
She took him upstairs to see Father Lacy right away. He barely had time to lay down his bag in the passage, shed his dripping cape and pull off his muddy boots before he was following her, stiff and bow-legged from his hours in the saddle, up the narrow wooden staircase to the landing.
Over her shoulder she informed him that she was Mrs Agnes Budd, housekeeper, and that she had been watching out for him all day. Beneath her deference he detected an undertone of reproach.
He had to dip his head to pass through the low doorway. The bedchamber was cold and smelled of chloride of lime. The window was open wide to the bluish dusk; on the floorboards beneath its leaded panes, the rain had puddled. A black coffin lid was propped against a chest of drawers. The coffin itself
was on the bed. Candles stood on the nightstands on either side of the heavy wooden bed frame, along with a book and a pair of spectacles, as if the dead man had just finished reading. The flames of the candles flickered in the draught.
Cautiously he approached the coffin and peered down. The corpse was long and thin, packed in sawdust and bound up tight in a papery white linen shroud, like a chrysalis ready to hatch. A white lace handkerchief covered the face. He glanced at the housekeeper. She nodded. He took the two upper corners of the handkerchief between his thumbs and forefingers and lifted it away.
In his short existence he had seen plenty of corpses. They could scarcely be avoided in England at that time. They hung suspended in iron cages, like the wretched convicts in Axford, to deter the unlawful. They turned up overnight in doorways or on patches of wasteland, especially in winter, and lay there until someone could be bothered to pay the night soil man to remove them. During the recent outbreak of the putrid fever he had administered the last rites to babies even as he had closed the eyes of their grandparents. But never had he beheld a body such as this. The nose was broken, the eye sockets bruised. A deep gash ran across the forehead. The right ear was mangled, as if it had been chewed half off. Although an attempt had been made to mask these disfigurements
ROBERT HARRIS
with powdered white lead, the wounds shone greenish through the dust. The effect was grotesque. Unusually for a cleric, Lacy had no beard, merely grey stubble.
Bending to touch his head in benediction, Fairfax detected the maggoty stink of decay and drew back quickly. The old priest ought to have been in his grave some while ago.
‘He died how long since?’
‘A week, Father. The weather has been warm.’
‘And what hour is the burial?’
‘Eleven, sir.’
‘Well, I fear it cannot come too soon.’ He replaced the handkerchief over the broken face, stepped away and made the sign of the cross. ‘Peace be upon him. May the Lord’s faithful servant rest in the arms of Christ. Amen.’
‘Amen,’ said the housekeeper.
‘Come, Mrs Budd – let us cover the coffin.’
Between them they carried the heavy lid over to the bed and laid it on top of the box. Good plain carpentry, Fairfax thought – honest English oak painted black, the brass handles set along its sides the only ostentation, and a tight enough fit to hold in the stench.
Agnes pulled a cloth from her belt and wiped it clean. They contemplated it for a few moments, then she noticed the puddle beneath the window. She muttered under her breath and went over and mopped it up, then wrung her cloth out into the garden below.
As she reached to close the window, he said, ‘Best maybe to leave it open.’
On the landing, he took out his handkerchief and pretended to blow his nose. He could still taste the smell. ‘The marks upon his face . . . ? Poor fellow! How did he sustain such wounds?’
‘He received ’em when he fell, sir.’
‘It must have been a rare fall.’
‘A hundred feet, or so they says.’
‘They?’
‘Them that found him, sir – Captain Hancock, Mr Keefer, the church clerk, and Mr Gann, the blacksmith, among others.’
‘What time of day was this?’
‘He left the parsonage last Tuesday afternoon with his trowel in his hand and his strong boots on and never came back. A search was raised and his body carried home on Wednesday evening.’
‘He walked much?’
‘Aye, sir. He walked most places. Seldom rode. Gave up his horse a few years back.’
She led him downstairs and into the parlour, where a meagre fire burned in the grate, insufficient to take the chill off the room. A table had been laid for one.
‘Ye’ll be wanting supper, Father?’
An hour earlier he had been ravenous. Now the thought of food turned his stomach. ‘Thank you. But first I should attend to my horse.’
ROBERT HARRIS
He went back along the stone passage. Already he was calculating his escape. He was trying to remember the name of the inn he had stopped outside in Axford. The Swan, that was it. If the burial was at eleven, he could leave the village at one, and easily be at the Swan by supper time.
The front door had a heavy lock, shiny with newness. He opened it and stepped out into the small garden. The damp and glassy evening was fragrant with the scent of wet grass and woodsmoke. May had gone. He had left her tethered to the gatepost. Had he not tied her properly? He peered around the darkened village. No light showed. The deep country silence pressed like wadding against his ears.
Behind him Agnes said, ‘Don’t bother thyself, Father.’ Her voice in the quietness made him jump. ‘Rose will’ve stabled her.’
‘That’s kind. Please thank her for me.’
He felt obscurely irritated, for reasons he could not rightly specify. He picked up his bag and followed the housekeeper back into the parlour.
‘Now, Mrs Budd,’ he said, trying to be businesslike, ‘a few questions require settling, if I may.’ He set his bag upon the table, rummaged through it and pulled out his pen case and a few sheaves of paper. ‘First matters first . . .’ he smiled at her, trying to set her at ease, ‘is there ink in the house?’
‘What questions might those be?’ She looked wary.
He wondered how old she was. Fifty, perhaps. Sallow, plain-faced, hair already grey, eyes raw, presumably with weeping. How grief ages us, he thought, with sudden pity; how vulnerable we are, poor mortal creatures, beneath our vain show of composure.
‘I am charged, as part of my duties, with the delivery of Father Lacy’s eulogy – a task seldom easy even if one knew the deceased, but trickier still if one had never met them.’ He made it sound as if it was a problem with which he was familiar, although in truth he had never conducted a burial or composed a eulogy in his life. ‘I stand in need of certain simple facts. So –ink? I imagine a priest must have had ink?’
‘Aye, he had ink, sir, and plenty of it.’ She sounded affronted and went off, presumably to fetch him some.
He sat at the table, gripped the edge of it and took stock of the room. A plain wooden cross hung above the fireplace. The walls were a dull orange brown in the candlelight. The sides leaned in markedly and the ceiling bulged in the centre. Yet the room had a feeling of great solidity and antiquity, as if it had settled centuries before and nothing now would shift it. He imagined the generations of priests who must have sat in this very spot – scores of them, probably – quietly doing God’s work in this remote valley, unknown and forgotten. The thought of such unsung devotion humbled him, so that when Agnes returned, he tried
ROBERT HARRIS
to display some humility himself, by bringing over a chair so that she could sit opposite him, and talking to her in a kindly tone.
‘Forgive me – I should know this – but how long was Father Lacy priest here?’
‘Thirty-two years this January.’
‘Thirty-two years? Well nigh a third of a century –a lifetime!’ Fairfax had rarely heard of so long a tenure. He dipped his pen in the ink pot and made a note. ‘Did he have family?’
‘There were a brother, but he died years back.’
‘And how long were you in his service?’
‘Twenty years.’
‘And your husband, too?’
‘No, sir, I am long widowed, though I has a niece – Rose.’
‘The one who looked after my horse?’
‘She lives here in the parsonage with us – with me, I must learn to say.’
‘And what is to become of you both now Father Lacy is dead?’
To his dismay, her eyes filled with tears. ‘I cannot say. It’s been so sudden, I has given it no thought. Perhaps the new priest will wish to keep us on.’ She looked at him hopefully. ‘Will ye be taking the living, sir?’
‘Me?’ He nearly laughed out loud at the absurdity of the idea of entombing himself in such a place, but
realising how rude it would seem, he managed to stop himself. ‘No, Mrs Budd. I am the lowliest member of the bishop’s staff. I have duties to attend to in the cathedral. My task is to conduct the burial only. But I shall inform the diocese of the situation.’ He made another note and sat back. He sucked on the end of his pen and studied her. ‘Could not some local priest have taken the service?’
He had asked the same question of Bishop Pole the previous day when the task of officiating had first been entrusted to him – had phrased it diplomatically, of course, because the bishop was not a man who expected to have his orders interrogated. But the bishop had made a thin line of his mouth, then busied himself with his papers and muttered something about Lacy being a strange fellow and unpopular with his neighbouring colleagues. ‘I knew him when he was a young man. We were at the seminary together. Our lives took different paths.’ Then he had looked Fairfax straight in the eye. ‘This is a good opportunity for you, Christopher. A simple task, yet one that requires some discretion. You should be in and out in a day. I’m relying on you.’
Agnes looked at her hands. ‘Father Lacy had no dealings with parsons in t’other valleys.’
‘Why not?’
‘He went his own way.’
Fairfax frowned and leaned forward slightly, as if
ROBERT HARRIS
he hadn’t quite caught her words. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t follow you. “He went his own way”? There is but one way, surely – the true way? All else is heresy.’
Still she refused to meet his gaze. ‘I cannot rightly answer, Father. Such matters lie beyond me.’
‘What about his relations with his parishioners? Was he popular with his flock?’
‘Oh aye.’ A pause. ‘Wi’ most.’
‘But not all?’
This time she made no answer. Fairfax laid down his pen and rubbed his eyes. Suddenly he felt weary. Well, this was a just chastisement for his pride in the bishop’s favour: to ride eight hours to bury an obscure cleric, a heretic possibly, whom a good proportion of his parishioners apparently disliked. At least his eulogy could be short. ‘I suppose,’ he said dubiously, ‘I might speak in general terms – of a life well lived in God’s service, and so forth. How old was he when he died?’
‘Old, sir, yet still fit enough. He were fifty- six.’
Fairfax calculated. If Lacy had been here thirtytwo years, he must have arrived when he was twenty-four – his own age exactly. ‘So Addicott was his only parish?’
‘Aye, sir.’
He tried to picture himself in the old priest’s place. Planted in so quiet a spot, he was sure he would go mad. Perhaps over the years that was what had
happened. While Pole had risen to eminence, Lacy had been left to rot out here. An idealistic heart shrivelled to misanthropy by loneliness. ‘A third of a century! He must have liked it here.’
‘Oh aye, he loved it. He would never leave.’ Agnes stood. ‘Ye’ll be hungry, Father. I’ve prepared you something to eat.’
chapter three
Fairfax has an early night, and makes a disturbing discovery
She served him a simple supper of rabbit and sheep’s heart stew and a jug of strong dark ale, which she told him Father Lacy had brewed himself. He invited her to join him, but she excused herself. She said she had to prepare the refreshments for the wake. Of the girl Rose there remained no sign.
To start with, Fairfax picked at the food. But by some strange paradox of digestion, with each tentative mouthful his appetite revived, so that by the end he had eaten the lot. He dabbed at his mouth with his handkerchief. Every experience had a purpose, knowable only to God. He must make the best of this situation. The bishop would expect no less, and he would at least have a good story to tell over dinner at the chapter house.
He threw another small log on the fire in an effort
to soften the cold, then returned to the table, shifted his plate to one side and took out his Bible and prayer book. He struck a match, lit his pipe and sat back in his chair. For the first time he took notice of the ink pot – ink bottle, in fact. He picked it up and held it to the candle flame. It was of a curious design, three inches long and an inch wide, made of thick clear glass with ribbed sides. It had a hollow angle inset two thirds along the base so that the ink could be pooled conveniently at the smaller end in a reservoir. He had never seen one like it before. It was obviously ancient. He wondered how the old priest had come by it.
He set it down and began to write.
Nothing disturbed the silence save the ticking of the long- case clock in the passage. He became absorbed in his task. Christ’s final instruction to the Apostles before his Ascension was that they should stay in the city and await, in contemplation, the arrival of the Lord. Wasn’t that what Lacy had done? Stayed humbly where he had been placed and waited for God to show Himself? He could make something of that.
After an hour or so, Agnes returned to clear the table. When she came back from the kitchen, she announced that she was turning in for the night. ‘I’ve made thee a bed in Father Lacy’s study.’
She went around extinguishing the candles with a snuffer. He wondered what time it was. Nine? Usually at that hour he would be gathering with the others in
ROBERT HARRIS
the lady chapel for compline. But although it was an earlier retirement than he was used to, he did not complain. He could finish his eulogy in the morning. Besides, he had left Exeter not long after dawn, and his bones ached with weariness. He put his possessions back into his bag and knocked the bowl of his pipe empty against the side of the fireplace.
The study was smaller and more cluttered than the parlour. Agnes carried in two candles and set one down for him on the edge of the desk. The homemade tallow hissed and spluttered. Its yellow glow lit a couch with a thin pillow and a patchwork quilt, doubtless sewn by the housekeeper over the interminable winter evenings. In the shadows beyond its gleam he had a vague impression of well- stocked bookshelves, papers, ornaments. The curtains were already drawn.
‘I hopes ye’ll be comfortable here. ’Tis but two chambers upstairs – Rose and I shares one, and the parson lies in t’other. Mind,’ she added, ‘we could move him to the floor if ye’d prefer.’
‘No, no,’ he said quickly. ‘This will do me well enough. It’s only for one night.’ He sat on the couch. It was hard and unyielding. He smiled. ‘After such a day I swear I could sleep standing up. God keep you, Mrs Budd.’
‘And ye, Father.’
He listened to the sounds of her locking the front
door and the creak of the boards as she went upstairs. Her footsteps passed above his head. He said his prayers (Into Thy hands, O Lord ) and lay down on the couch. A minute later, he sat up again. At least a quart of the old priest’s strong ale was pressing on his bladder and he was in urgent need of relief. He groped around under the couch for a chamber pot, but found only cobwebs.
He took the candle and went out into the passage. He retrieved his boots from beside the front door and carried them past the parlour and the study towards the rear of the house. In the kitchen, the warm smell of baking lingered. Muslin cloths covered various dishes that Agnes must have made for the wake. He sat on a chair beside the back door and pulled on his boots.
Outside, the blackness and the silence were absolute. Accustomed to the hourly bells and lights of a cathedral city, to the night-time prayers and shuffling feet, to the sounds of the sailors up from the docks on the English Channel running from the patrolling sheriffs, he felt almost dizzy at such nothingness – as if he were poised on the edge of eternity.
And the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
It was hopeless to try to find the privy. He ventured forward a few paces, placed the candle-holder on the damp grass, hoisted his cassock, pulled down
ROBERT HARRIS
his drawers, planted his feet apart and pissed into he knew not what. The strong stream made a noise –percussive, unmistakable – that must have been audible on the other side of the valley, let alone upstairs, where he imagined Agnes and Rose cowering in alarm. Again it was all he could do not to burst out laughing.
He shook himself dry, rearranged his clothes, picked up his candle and stumbled back over the grass to the door. The timber was as old as the house, but the lock was new he noticed, as it was at the front. Like many townsmen, he had a romantic notion that country folk never locked their doors. Apparently this was not the case in Addicott St George.
He went back into the study, took off his cassock, threw himself down on the couch and fell immediately asleep.
Something woke him. He was not sure what. The room was in such darkness that between his eyes being shut and open there was no difference. The sensation was alarming, like being blind, or buried alive. He reasoned that if his candle had burned out, it must mean that several hours had passed and that his body had woken him as usual after the first sleep.
He thought he heard a man’s voice, muttering something he couldn’t quite make out. He strained to listen. There was a pause, and then it came again. He propped himself up on his elbow. Now the first voice
was interrupted by a second. Two men were talking –the rolling local dialect, ye, thee, thou : low, indistinct, almost musical, like the droning of bees. They were just outside his window.
He rose from the couch and stood swaying for a moment, trying to find his bearings. He edged forward, and at once his knee struck the edge of the desk. He started to utter an oath, quickly stifled it, rubbed his knee, then reached out and began feeling along the wall until he touched fabric. He burrowed his hands into it, mole-like, searching for a gap, parted the curtains, ran his palms over the small diamondshaped panes of cold glass, found a handle and opened the window. He stuck out his head.
The men had moved on. Away to his right and slightly below him two lights bobbed in the darkness. He guessed he must be looking out at the lane that ran along the side of the parsonage towards the church. Beyond the two lanterns were other, fainter lights, some stationary, a few moving. Far in the distance, a dog barked. He could hear the trundle of cart wheels.
Above his head, the floorboards creaked.
He shut the window and felt his way across the room to the door. He threw it open just as Agnes turned the corner at the bottom of the stairs. She was carrying a candle. Her hair was in curling papers. Over her nightdress she wore an outdoor coat, which
ROBERT HARRIS
she pulled tight around her as soon as she saw him. ‘Oh, Father Fairfax – what a fright ye gave me!’
‘What hour is this, Mrs Budd? Why does everyone wander about in this strange manner?’
She turned slightly and held her candle to the face of the long- case clock. ‘Two o’clock, sir, same as normal.’
‘In Exeter, the custom between the first and second sleeps is to stick to our rooms. Yet the villagers here are abroad. What of the curfew? They risk a whipping, surely?’
‘Nobody here gives much mind to curfews.’ She was carefully avoiding looking at him, and he realised he was wearing only his drawers and undershirt.
He took a pace back into the study and called out through the doorway. ‘Forgive my lack of modesty. This middle- of-the-night wandering – the practice is new to me. Might I take another candle? Two, if they can be spared?’
‘Wait there, sir, and I’ll fetch them.’ Her head still averted, she went past him into the kitchen. He searched around in the darkness for his cassock and fastened a few of the buttons, his fingers clumsy with sleep.
‘Here’s your candles, Father.’ She placed them on the floor just outside the study.
He collected both, closed the door and set one upon the desk. Rather than his usual nocturnal meditation, he decided that he might perhaps seek some fresh
inspiration for his eulogy. What better way to take the measure of a man than by the nature of his library? He began an inspection of the shelves.
Father Lacy had a hundred books or more, some plainly of great antiquity. In particular, he had a remarkable array of volumes produced by that army of scholars who had dedicated their lives to the study of the Apocalypse. Fairfax ran his finger along the titles – The Fall of Man . . . The Great Flood of Noah . . . The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah . . . God’s Wrath Against Babylon . . . The Ten Plagues of Egypt . . . The Locusts of the Abyss . . . The Lake of Fire . . . What a gloomy fellow he must have been, he thought. Little wonder his fellow priests had shunned him.
He took down a volume at random, Pouring Out the Seven Disasters: A Study of Revelation 16. It fell open at a well-marked passage:
And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.
And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of Heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done.
And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the Earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great.
And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell.
ROBERT HARRIS
He closed it and replaced it on the shelf. Such a collection would not have been out of place in the bishop’s library; to find it in a small parsonage in an isolated village struck him as peculiar.
He took up his candle again and moved along to the second bookcase, where his eye was immediately drawn to a shelf of small volumes bound in pale brown leather. He held the flame up close to the spines – The Proceedings and Papers of the Society of Antiquaries – and in that instant he became wide awake, for he recognised the name at once, even though he had been but a boy at the time of the trials. The organisation had been declared heretical, its officers imprisoned, its publications confiscated and publicly burned, the very word ‘antiquarian’ forbidden from use. He recalled the priests in the seminary lighting a bonfire in the middle of Exeter. It had been midwinter, and the townspeople had been as impressed by the heat as they had by the zealotry. And yet here was a set of the society’s works still extant – and in Addicott St George, of all places!
For a few moments, Fairfax stared at the shelf in dismay. Nineteen volumes, with a narrow gap where the twentieth had been withdrawn. What did this mean for his mission tomorrow? Lacy was a heretic: there could be no question of it now. Could a heretic be knowingly buried in consecrated ground? Ought he to postpone the interment, however ripe the corpse, and seek fresh guidance from the bishop?
He considered the matter carefully. He was a practical young man. Not for him the fanaticism of some of his fellow younger clergy, with their straggling hair and beards and their wild eyes, who could sniff out blasphemy as keenly as a water hound unearths truffles. His instructions were to be quick and tactful. Therefore, the wisest course would be to go on as planned and pretend he knew nothing. Nobody could prove otherwise, and, if necessary, he could always square his conscience with God and the bishop at a later date.
Thus resolved in the matter, he resumed his inspection of the study. Two more shelves were entirely devoted to the same perversion. He noted monographs on burial sites, on artefacts, on inscriptions, on monuments. It amazed him that the old priest had displayed them so brazenly. It was as if the valley, with its singular geographic isolation and its contempt for the curfew, existed somehow outside time and law. There was a thick volume on the ruins of England entitled Antiquis Anglia by a Dr Nicholas Shadwell, ‘President of the Society of Antiquaries’. He passed his candle quickly along the titles, tempted to linger but forcing himself not to look at them too closely, then turned his attention to the display cabinet in the corner of the room.
This was chest high, wood-framed, with a front of glass – ancient glass, he could tell, because it was completely clear and smooth, with none of the rippling
ROBERT HARRIS
effect produced by modern glazing. It was cracked in the top right-hand corner. The shelves were also made of the finest glass, and by the light of the candle the objects they supported seemed to hover magically in mid-air. All of them it was illegal to possess: coins and plastic banknotes from the Elizabethan era, keys, gold rings, pens, glassware, a plate commemorating a royal wedding, thin metal canisters, a bundle of plastic straws, a plastic swaddler with faded images of storks carrying infants, white plastic cutlery, plastic bottles of all shapes and varieties, toy plastic bricks all fitted together of vibrant yellows and reds, a spool of greenish-blue plastic fishing line, a plastic flesh-coloured baby from which the eyes were missing, and, on the topmost shelf, propped up on a clear plastic stand, what seemed to be the pride of the collection: one of the devices used by the ancients to communicate.
Fairfax had seen fragments of them before, but never one in such a perfect state of preservation. He felt drawn to it, and this time, despite himself, he could not resist opening the cabinet and taking it out. It was thinner than his little finger, smaller than his hand, black and smooth and shiny, fashioned out of plastic and glass. It weighed quite heavy in his palm, pleasingly substantial. He wondered who had owned it and how the priest had come by it. What images might it once have conveyed? What sounds might have emerged from it? He pressed the button on the front,
as if it might miraculously spring to life, but the glossy surface remained resolutely black and dead, and all he could see was the reflection of his own face, ghostly in the candlelight. He turned it over. On the back was the ultimate symbol of the ancients’ hubris and blasphemy – an apple with a bite taken out of it.
chapter four
Wednesday 10th April: an unexpected incident at the burial
He blew out the candles and went back to bed, pulling the patchwork quilt up to his chin. In the darkness he found it easier to put the symbols of the old priest’s heresy out of his mind. Indeed, such was his weariness that, despite his various perturbations, the hard couch soon seemed to dissolve beneath him and his breathing became deep and regular.
His second sleep was more dream-filled than his first, although afterwards he could not remember any of them, apart from the last, a recurrent nightmare that had started soon after his parents and sister had died of the sweating fever and around the time he had been sent to live with his elderly uncle. He imagined himself pursued barefoot through a strange neighbourhood, searching for a particular street, a
certain house, a special door. Only when he found it, after hours of searching – a mean, shabby building in a poor district – and broke open the lock and tumbled over the threshold did he see his family again. Silently, they held out their hands to him, and always in that instant he awoke.
His eyes flickered open. The room was grey with the early light. He felt an ache of unease at the back of his mind, turned his head and saw dimly the glass cabinet with its floating objects. The memory of the night returned.
He threw off the cover and kneeled by the couch. He clenched his hands in prayer so tightly his knuckles shone white. Dear Father, I thank thee for sparing me to see another day. Grant me I beseech thee the strength to resist temptation, and the piety to serve thy glory today and for ever more. Amen.
Keeping his eyes from the bookshelves and the cabinet, he stood, drew back the curtains and opened the little window. The air was cool and damp, silent, still. At the bottom of the lane he could see the church with its limp flag, the village behind it, and further beyond that, rising like waves, the steep green sides of the valley dotted with foamy white sheep beneath a low grey threatening sky.
On the table next to the windowsill a jug of water had been put out for him, together with a basin, a small mirror, a towel and a piece of old-fashioned black soap that stank of potash. He couldn’t bring himself to use
ROBERT HARRIS
it – to carry around that chemical smell all day would remind him too much of chilly mornings in the seminary, queuing shivering in his underclothes to use the pump.
He splashed his face with the cold water and ran his wet hands through his hair and beard, then inspected his appearance in the mirror. He had let his beard grow as all priests did. Like his hair, it was thick and dark. He was careful to keep it cut square in the modern fashion. And yet it seemed not to impart any sense of gravity to his appearance. His skin, pallid after a winter spent mostly in the cathedral, was too smooth. There was too much youthful eagerness in his eyes. He tried frowning at his reflection, but decided he looked ridiculous. The clock in the passage showed just after seven. From the kitchen came the sound of pots and pans being moved. He called out, ‘Good morning!’ and went through into the parlour, where the table had been laid for his breakfast. The window here looked directly along the cart track that served as the village’s main street. A woman was carrying a heavy pitcher carefully on her head, presumably on her way back from a communal well. A man in a smock was leading a mule. They greeted one another and walked on together. Fairfax stood watching until they were out of sight.
He heard a noise behind him and turned to find a young woman at the table in the act of setting down a plate. He had not heard her enter. For some reason he
had imagined Mrs Budd’s niece to be a plain, rough country girl. Instead she was slim, with a pale oval face, large blue eyes, and abundant black hair tied up by a blue ribbon that emphasised her delicate long white neck. The fact that she was dressed in mourning made her appearance all the more striking, and he feared he must have stared too hard at her, for when, after a pause to recover his surprise, he said cheerfully, ‘Good morning, you must be Rose – a welcome sight to brighten a drab day!’ she turned and fled without a word.
When it was clear she would not be returning, he sat at the table and gazed with regret at the plate of cold mutton and cheese. Such was his tragedy: to possess an ardent nature and yet be denied an outlet for it. In consequence he lacked any aptitude or experience with women. The society at the cathedral was exclusively male: chastity was the prime constraint placed upon the clergy. He could not deny to himself that he regretted the prohibition, but he struggled to observe it and had certainly never thought to question it. And yet it was said that in England before the Apocalypse most priests had been married, and that in the final decades, women themselves had actually been permitted to celebrate Holy Communion! Surely that was not the least of the blasphemies that had brought down God’s wrath upon the world. The door opened again and he turned eagerly in
ROBERT HARRIS
the hopes of making amends. But it was only Agnes carrying a teapot. ‘Good morning, Father.’
‘Good morning, Mrs Budd.’
‘Ye’ll take some tea? Father Lacy favoured Cornish, but we’ve Highland if ye prefers.’
‘Cornish suits me well enough.’ He watched her pour it carefully into the bowl, one hand grasping the teapot handle, the other holding the lid. ‘I fear I may have startled your niece.’
‘Oh, pay her no mind. She’s shy as a fawn.’
‘Still, I would have liked to have had some conversation with her.’ He added, ‘About her sadly altered circumstances.’
‘Ye’ll never do that, more’s the pity.’
‘Why not?’
‘She speaks not.’
‘What – never?’
‘No, she were born without the talent for it.’
Now he felt his clumsiness even more keenly. ‘I am very sorry to hear it.’
‘God’s will, Father.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Eighteen.’
After Agnes had gone, he cupped his bowl of tea and tried to imagine what would become of the poor girl after her home was taken from her. Would she return to her family? Would they even take her back given that she was dumb, and presumably hard to