A Crowded Coffin(23)

She paused, looking at him with a slightly abashed grin. ‘I know, I know, it sounds unbelievable but it’s what we’ve always been told, so now naturally it’s gospel truth. Where was I? Lucius was evidently a practical man and decided this was a good place to build, so the angel’s blessing was the icing on the cake. There was a good spring, running water.’ She pointed to a stream sparkling in the sunshine lower down the field. ‘Good access but easily defensible too, and on a slight hill. No wonder he apparently “looked on his work and found it fair.”’

They had been skirting the low-lying scrub in a field away to the west of the house and she led him now towards a copse atop a rise at the far edge of the meadow. ‘It’s said that he had the stone carved, later on, to make it look more like an angel and built the atrium of his house around it. Money doesn’t seem to have been a problem as he got going on building the house straight away. Look, this is it; this was where the central courtyard of the villa is said to have been.’

‘Why did they build the new house so far from the original villa?’ Rory squinted against the light as he looked back towards the farmhouse.

‘Grandpa says the stream probably got silted up and turned marshy, which, in turn, would bring mosquitoes and malaria. They used to call it intermittent fever, or ague, he said. Building the new house higher upstream would solve the problem.’

‘I didn’t realize malaria was endemic in England,’ Rory said absently, as he examined what he could see of the stone with a critical eye. It stood about four feet high, the base all but vanished under layers of earth and generations of shoots and saplings of the alders that surrounded it. ‘I suppose it does look a bit like an angel,’ he conceded at last. ‘If you allow for two thousand years of wind and weather. And squint a bit.’

She looked at her watch. ‘We’ve got a bit longer before we need get ready. Look, come and sit down over here for a minute.’ She waved a hand towards the stone boundary wall. ‘Grandpa was told that this would have been the middle of the villa complex but at some point they built that stone wall right across, probably at the time of the Enclosures, which is why the shape of the fields changed completely. That would be why the copse is in the angle of the walls and not out on its own. Anyway, Lucius finished building his house and then looked round for a wife but he took his time about it; very picky type from the sound of it. It’s said that he had a fall out hunting and was nursed by “a maiden of high repute and high beauty”.’ She came from a great family, the legend says, and he “did fall heart long and steadfastly in love with her to her great joy.”’ Ain’t love grand?’

She glanced at her watch. ‘You might as well have the full works,’ she nodded, giving him a brief run-down of the origin of the Attlin name. ‘So, by-blow or not, Edmund Atheling married Edith, the last of Lucius the Roman’s descendants.’

They were sitting on the sun-warmed stone of the old wall, listening to the splash of the stream that had featured in the Roman legend. Edith was making garlands, weaving heads of pinky-red clover in with starry daisies and varying the colour with speedwell and sprigs of wild thyme while Rory chewed contemplatively on a blade of grass.

‘It’s an amazing story,’ he said lazily. ‘I’m quite prepared to believe every word of it. Would I dare doubt Miss Evelyn Attlin? It’s the kind of place anything could happen.’ He frowned for a moment, remembering that something certainly had happened only recently but before Edith noticed his hesitation he asked casually, ‘Are there any ghosts around, do you know?’

‘In a place this old?’ She smiled then looked curiously at him. ‘You really did think you saw Dame Margery the other night, didn’t you? Oh all right,’ as he shook his head. ‘I know you think you ought to be rational about it or blame your medication but the ghost of Lucius Sextus Vitalis has been seen in this very spot.’ She waved a hand expansively to encompass the copse and the entire field. ‘He is reported to wear his army uniform and looks very noble and impressive and it’s said that only the family ever see him.’

It was her turn to fall silent for a moment, a thoughtful expression on her face as she stared at the ancient stone, then she scrambled to her feet. ‘Time to go.’

She set off but Rory lingered by the angel stone. ‘Hang on, Edith, there’s something a bit odd here. It looks as if the soil’s been disturbed, just here behind where the plinth must be.’

‘What? Show me.’ She stared as he fought his way out of the trees and pointed to the mass of soil he had spotted by the roots of an alder sapling, inches away from the ancient stone itself, but not easily visible from the field. Another tree seemed to have been jammed carelessly into a hole. There were signs that someone had definitely been at work on the bank and as Rory backed out of the mass of vegetation, he frowned as he brushed soil off his jeans.