Three miles up the river Thames from the center of Oxford, some distance from where the great colleges of Jordan, Gabriel, Balliol, and two dozen others contended for mastery in the boat races, out where the city was only a collection of towers and spires in the distance over the misty levels of Port Meadow, there stood the Priory of Godstow, where the gentle nuns went about their holy business; and on the opposite bank from the priory there was an inn called the Trout.
The inn was an old stone-built rambling, comfortable sort of place. There was a terrace above the river, where peacocks (one called Norman and the other called Barry) stalked among the drinkers, helping themselves to snacks without the slightest hesitation and occasionally lifting their heads to utter ferocious and meaningless screams. There was a saloon bar where the gentry, if college scholars count as gentry, took their ale and smoked their pipes; there was a public bar where watermen and farm laborers sat by the fire or played darts, or stood at the bar gossiping, or arguing, or simply getting quietly drunk; there was a kitchen where the landlord’s wife cooked a great joint every day, with a complicated arrangement of wheels and chains turning a spit over an open fire; and there was a potboy called Malcolm Polstead.
Malcolm was the landlord’s son, an only child. He was eleven years old, with an inquisitive, kindly disposition, a stocky build, and ginger hair. He went to Ulvercote Elementary School a mile away, and he had friends enough, but he was happiest on his own, playing with his dæmon, Asta, in their canoe, on which Malcolm had painted the name LA BELLE SAUVAGE. A witty acquaintance thought it amusing to scrawl an S over the V, and Malcolm patiently painted it out three times before losing his temper and knocking the fool into the water, at which point they declared a truce.
Like every child of an innkeeper, Malcolm had to work around the tavern, washing dishes and glasses, carrying plates of food or tankards of beer, retrieving them when they were empty. He took the work for granted. The only annoyance in his life was a girl called Alice, who helped with washing the dishes. She was about sixteen, tall and skinny, with lank dark hair that she scraped back into an unflattering ponytail. Lines of self-discontent were already gathering on her forehead and around her mouth. She teased Malcolm from the day she arrived: “Who’s your girlfriend, Malcolm? En’t you got a girlfriend? Who was you out with last night? Did you kiss her? En’t you ever been kissed?”
He ignored that for a long time, but finally rat-formed Asta leapt at Alice’s scrawny jackdaw dæmon, knocking him into the washing-up water and then biting and biting the sodden creature till Alice screamed for pity. She complained bitterly to Malcolm’s mother, who said, “Serves you right. I got no sympathy for you. Keep your nasty mind to yourself.”
From then on she did. She and Malcolm took not the slightest notice of each other; he put the glasses on the draining board, she washed them, and he dried them and took them back to the bar without a word, without a glance, without a thought.
But he enjoyed the life of the inn. He especially enjoyed the conversations he overheard, whether they concerned the venal rascality of the River Board, the helpless idiocy of the government, or more philosophical matters, such as whether the stars were the same age as the earth.
Sometimes Malcolm became so interested in the latter sort of conversation that he’d rest his armful of empty glasses on the table and join in, but only after having listened intently. He was known to many of the scholars and other visitors, and was generously tipped, but becoming rich was never an aim of his; he took tips to be the generosity of providence, and came to think of himself as lucky, which did him no harm in later life. If he’d been the sort of boy who acquired a nickname, he would no doubt have been known as Professor, but he wasn’t that sort of boy. He was liked when noticed, but not noticed much, and that did him no harm either.
Malcolm’s other constituency lay just over the bridge outside the tavern, in the gray stone buildings set among green fields and neat orchards and kitchen gardens of the Priory of St. Rosamund. The nuns were largely self-sufficient, growing their vegetables and fruit, keeping their bees, sewing the elegant vestments they sold for keenly bargained gold, but from time to time there were errands a useful boy could run, or there was a ladder to be repaired under the supervision of Mr. Taphouse, the aged carpenter, or some fish to bring from Medley Pond a little way down the river. La Belle Sauvage was frequently employed in the service of the good nuns; more than once Malcolm had ferried Sister Benedicta to the Royal Mail zeppelin station with a precious parcel of stoles or copes or chasubles for the bishop of London, who seemed to wear his vestments very hard, for he got through them unusually quickly. Malcolm learned a lot on these leisurely voyages.
“How d’you make them parcels so neat, Sister Benedicta?” he said one day.
“Those parcels,” said Sister Benedicta.
“Those parcels. How d’you make ’em so neat?”
“Neatly, Malcolm.”
He didn’t mind; this was a sort of game they had.
“I thought ‘neat’ was all right,” he said.
“It depends on whether you want the idea of neatness to modify the act of tying the parcel, or the parcel itself, once tied.”
“Don’t mind, really,” said Malcolm. “I just want to know how you do ’em. Them.”
“Next time I have a parcel to tie, I promise I’ll show you,” said Sister Benedicta, and she did.
Malcolm admired the nuns for their neat ways in general, for the manner in which they laid their fruit trees in espaliers along the sunny wall of the orchard, for the charm with which their delicate voices combined in singing the offices of the Church, for their little kindnesses here and there to many people. He enjoyed the conversations he had with them about religious matters.
“In the Bible,” he said one day as he was helping elderly Sister Fenella in the lofty kitchen, “you know it says God created the world in six days?”
“That’s right,” said Sister Fenella, rolling some pastry.
“Well, how is it that there’s fossils and things that are millions of years old?”
“Ah, you see, days were much longer then,” said the good sister. “Have you cut up that rhubarb yet? Look, I’ll be finished before you will.”
“Why do we use this knife for rhubarb but not the old ones? The old ones are sharper.”
“Because of the oxalic acid,” said Sister Fenella, pressing the pastry into a baking tin. “Stainless steel is better with rhubarb. Pass me the sugar now.”
“Oxalic acid,” said Malcolm, liking the words very much. “What’s a chasuble, Sister?”
“It’s a kind of vestment. Priests wear them over their albs.”
“Why don’t you do sewing like the other sisters?”
Sister Fenella’s squirrel dæmon, sitting on the back of a nearby chair, uttered a meek “Tut-tut.”
“We all do what we’re good at,” said the nun. “I was never very good at embroidery—look at my great fat fingers!—but the other sisters think my pastry’s all right.”
“I like your pastry,” said Malcolm.
“Thank you, dear.”
“It’s almost as good as my mum’s. My mum’s is thicker than what yours is. I expect you roll it harder.”
“I expect I do.”
Nothing was wasted in the priory kitchen. The little pieces of pastry Sister Fenella had left after trimming her rhubarb pies were formed into clumsy crosses or fish shapes, or rolled around a few currants, then sprinkled with sugar and baked separately. They each had a religious meaning, but Sister Fenella (“My great fat fingers!”) wasn’t very good at making them look different from one another. Malcolm was better, but he had to wash his hands thoroughly first.
“Who eats these, Sister?” he said.
“Oh, they’re all eaten in the end. Sometimes a visitor likes something to nibble with their tea.”
The priory, situated as it was where the road crossed the river, was popular with travelers of all kinds, and the nuns often had visitors to stay. So did the Trout, of course, and there were usually two or three guests staying at the inn overnight whose breakfast Malcolm had to serve, but they were generally fishermen or commercials, as his father called them: traders in smokeleaf or hardware or agricultural machinery.
The guests at the priory were people from a higher class altogether: great lords and ladies, sometimes, bishops and lesser clergy, people of quality who didn’t have a connection with any of the colleges in the city and couldn’t expect hospitality there. Once there was a princess who stayed for six weeks, but Malcolm only saw her twice. She’d been sent there as a punishment. Her dæmon was a weasel who snarled at everyone.
Malcolm helped with these guests too: looked after their horses, cleaned their boots, took messages for them, and was occasionally tipped. All his money went into a tin walrus in his bedroom. You pressed its tail and it opened its mouth and you put the coin in between its tusks, one of which had been broken off and glued back on. Malcolm didn’t know how much money he had, but the walrus was heavy. He thought he might buy a gun once he had enough, but he didn’t think his father would allow him to, so that was something to wait for. In the meantime, he got used to the ways of travelers, both common and rare.
There was probably nowhere, he thought, where anyone could learn so much about the world as this little bend of the river, with the inn on one side and the priory on the other. He supposed that when he was grown up he’d help his father in the bar, and then take over the place when his parents grew too old to continue. He was fairly happy about that. It would be much better running the Trout than many other inns, because the great world came through, and scholars and people of consequence were often there to talk to. But what he’d really have liked to do was nothing like that. He’d have liked to be a scholar himself, maybe an astronomer or an experimental theologian, making discoveries about the deepest nature of things. To be a philosopher’s apprentice—now, that would be a fine thing. But there was little likelihood of that; Ulvercote Elementary School prepared its pupils for craftsmanship or clerking, at best, before passing them out into the world at fourteen, and as far as Malcolm knew, there were no openings in scholarship for a bright boy with a canoe.
One evening in the middle of winter, some visitors came to the Trout who were out of the usual kind. Three men arrived by anbaric car and went into the Terrace Room, which was the smallest of all the dining rooms in the inn and overlooked the terrace and the river and the priory beyond. It lay at the end of the corridor and wasn’t much used either in winter or summer, having small windows and no door out to the terrace, despite its name.
Malcolm had finished his meager homework (geometry) and wolfed down some roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, followed by a baked apple and custard, when his father called him to the bar.
“Go and see what those gents in the Terrace Room want,” he said. “Likely they’re foreign and don’t know about buying their drinks at the bar. Want to be waited on, I expect.”
Pleased by this novelty, Malcolm went down to the little room and found three gentlemen (he could tell their quality at a glance) all standing at the window and stooping to look out.
“Can I help you, gentlemen?” he said.
They turned at once. Two of them ordered claret, and the third wanted rum. When Malcolm came back with their drinks, they asked if they could get a dinner here, and if so, what the place had to offer.
“Roast beef, sir, and it’s very good. I know because I just had some.”
“Oh, le patron mange ici, eh?” said the oldest of the gentlemen as they drew up their chairs to the little table. His dæmon, a handsome black-and-white lemur, sat calmly on his shoulder.
“I live here, sir. The landlord’s my father,” said Malcolm. “And my mother’s the cook.”
“What’s your name?” asked the tallest and thinnest of the visitors, a scholarly-looking man with thick gray hair, whose dæmon was a greenfinch.
“Malcolm Polstead, sir.”
“What’s that place over the river, Malcolm?” said the third, a man with large dark eyes and a black mustache. His dæmon, whatever she was, lay curled up on the floor at his feet.
It was dark by then, of course, and all they could see on the other side of the river were the dimly lit stained-glass windows of the oratory and the light that always shone over the gatehouse.
“That’s the priory, sir. The sisters of the Order of St. Rosamund.”
“And who was St. Rosamund?”
“I never asked them about St. Rosamund. There’s a picture of her in the stained glass, though, sort of standing in a great big rose. I ’spect she’s named after it. I’ll have to ask Sister Benedicta.”
“Oh, you know them well, then?”
“I talk to ’em every day, sir, more or less. I do odd jobs around the priory, run errands, that sort of thing.”
“And do these nuns ever have visitors?” said the oldest man.
“Yes, sir, quite often. All sorts of people. Sir, I don’t want to interfere, but it’s ever so cold in here. Would you like me to light the fire? Unless you’d like to come in the saloon. It’s nice and warm in there.”
“No, we’ll stay here, thank you, Malcolm, but we’d certainly like a fire. Do light it.”
Malcolm struck a match, and the fire caught at once. His father was good at laying fires; Malcolm had often watched him. There were enough logs to last the evening, if these men wanted to stay.
“Lot of people in tonight?” said the dark-eyed man.
“I suppose there’d be a dozen or so, sir. About normal.”
“Good,” said the oldest man. “Well, bring us some of that roast beef.”
“Some soup to start with, sir? Spiced parsnip today.”
“Yes, why not? Soup all round, followed by your famous roast beef. And another bottle of this claret.”
Malcolm didn’t think the beef was really famous; that was just a way of talking. He left to get some cutlery and to place the order with his mother in the kitchen.
In his ear, Asta, in the form of a goldfinch, whispered, “They already knew about the nuns.”
“Then why were they asking?” Malcolm whispered back.
“They were testing us, to see if we told the truth.”
“I wonder what they want.”
“They don’t look like scholars.”
“They do, a bit.”
“They look like politicians,” she insisted.
“How d’you know what politicians look like?”
“I just got a feeling.”
Malcolm didn’t argue with her; there were other customers to attend to, so he was busy, and besides, he believed in Asta’s feelings. He himself seldom had that sort of feeling about people—if they were nice to him, he liked them—but his dæmon’s intuitions had proved reliable many times. Of course, he and Asta were one being, so the intuitions were his anyway, as much as his feelings were hers.
Malcolm’s father carried the food in to the three guests and opened their wine. Malcolm hadn’t learned to manage three hot plates at once. When Mr. Polstead came back to the main bar, he beckoned Malcolm with a finger and spoke quietly.
“What did those gentlemen say to you?” he said.
“They were asking about the priory.”
“They want to talk to you again. They said you were a bright boy. Mind your manners, now. You know who they are?”
Malcolm, wide-eyed, shook his head.
“That’s Lord Nugent, that is—the old boy. He used to be the lord chancellor of England.”
“How d’you know that?”
“I recognized him from his picture in the paper. Go on now. Answer all their questions.”
Malcolm set off down the corridor, with Asta whispering, “See? Who was right, then? The lord chancellor of England, no less!”
The men were tucking into their roast beef (Malcolm’s mother had given them an extra slice each) and talking quietly, but they fell silent as soon as Malcolm came in.
“I came to see whether you’d like another light, gentlemen,” he said. “I can bring a naphtha lamp for the table, if you like.”
“In a minute, Malcolm, that would be a very good idea,” said the man who was the lord chancellor. “But tell me, how old are you?”
“Eleven, sir.”
Perhaps he should have said my lord, but the ex–lord chancellor of England had seemed quite content with sir. Perhaps he was traveling incognito, in which case he wouldn’t like to be given his right form of address anyway.
“And where do you go to school?”
“Ulvercote Elementary, sir, just across Port Meadow.”
“What are you going to do when you grow up, d’you think?”
“Most probably I’ll be an innkeeper, like my father, sir.”
“Jolly interesting occupation, I should think.”
“I think it is too, sir.”
“All sorts of people passing through, and so on.”
“That’s right, sir. There’s scholars from the university come here, and watermen from all over.”
“You see a lot of what’s going on, eh?”
“Yes, we do, sir.”
“Traffic up and down the river, and such.”
“It’s mostly on the canal that there’s the interesting stuff, sir. There’s gyptian boats going up and down, and the horse fair in July—the canal’s full of boats and travelers then.”
“The horse fair…Gyptians, eh?”
“They come from all over to buy and sell horses.”
The scholarly man said, “The nuns in the priory. How do they earn a living? Do they make perfumes, anything like that?”
“They grow a lot of vegetables,” Malcolm said. “My mum always buys her vegetables and fruit from the priory. And honey. Oh, and they sew and embroider things for clergymen to wear. Chasubles and that. I reckon they must get paid a lot for them. They must have a bit of money because they buy fish from Medley Pond, down the river.”
“When the priory has visitors,” said the ex–lord chancellor, “what sort of people would they be, Malcolm?”
“Well, ladies, sometimes…young ladies…Sometimes an old priest or bishop, maybe. I think they come here for a rest.”
“For a rest?”
“That’s what Sister Benedicta told me. She said in the old days, before there was inns like this, and hotels, and specially hospitals, people used to stay at monasteries and priories and suchlike, but nowadays it was mostly clergymen or maybe nuns from other places and they were convales—conva—”
“Convalescing,” said Lord Nugent.
“Yes, sir, that’s it. Getting better.”
The last man to finish his roast beef put his knife and fork together decisively. “Anyone there at the moment?” he said.
“I don’t think so, sir. Unless they’re indoors a lot. Usually visitors like to walk about in the garden, but the weather en’t been very nice, so…Would you like your pudding now, gentlemen?”
“What is it?”
“Baked apple and custard. Apples from the priory orchard.”
“Well, we can’t pass up a chance to try those,” said the scholarly man. “Yes, bring us some baked apples and custard.”
Malcolm began to gather their plates and cutlery.
“Have you lived here all your life, Malcolm?” said Lord Nugent.
“Yes, sir. I was born here.”
“And in all your long experience of the priory, did you ever know them to look after an infant?”
“A very young child, sir?”
“Yes. A child too young to go to school. Even a baby. Ever known that?”
Malcolm thought carefully and said, “No, sir, never. Ladies and gentlemen, or clergymen anyway, but never a baby.”
“I see. Thank you, Malcolm.”
By gathering the wineglasses together, their stems between his fingers, he managed to take all three of them as well as the plates.
“A baby?” whispered Asta on the way to the kitchen.
“That’s a mystery,” said Malcolm with satisfaction. “Maybe an orphan.”
“Or worse,” said Asta darkly.
Malcolm put the plates on the draining board, ignoring Alice as usual, and gave the order for pudding.
“Your father,” said Malcolm’s mother, dishing up the apples, “thinks one of those guests used to be the lord chancellor.”
“You better give him a nice big apple, then,” said Malcolm.
“What did they want to know?” she said, ladling hot custard over the apples.
“Oh, all about the priory.”
“Are you going to manage those? They’re hot.”
“Yeah, but they’re not big. I can do ’em, honest.”
“You better. If you drop the lord chancellor’s apple, you’ll go to prison.”
He managed the bowls perfectly well, even though they were getting hotter and hotter. The gentlemen didn’t ask any questions this time, just ordering coffee, and Malcolm brought them a naphtha lamp before going through to the kitchen to set the cups up.
“Mum, you know the priory has guests sometimes? Did you ever know them to look after a baby?”
“What d’you want to know that for?”
“They were asking. The lord chancellor and the others.”
“What did you tell ’em?”
“I said I didn’t think so.”
“Well, that’s the right answer. Now go on—get out and bring in some more glasses.”
In the main bar, under cover of the noise and laughter, Asta whispered, “She was startled when you asked that. I saw Kerin wake up and prick his ears.”
Kerin was Mrs. Polstead’s dæmon, a gruff but tolerant badger.
“It’s just ’cause it was surprising,” said Malcolm. “I ’spect you looked surprised when they asked me.”
“I never. I was inscrutable.”
“Well, I ’spect they saw me being surprised.”
“Shall we ask the nuns?”
“Could do,” said Malcolm. “Tomorrow. They need to know if someone’s been asking questions about ’em.”