The man who had gone for the lantern arrived, panting.
Farrow took it.
‘Best let me go first, my lady. Something else might give way.’
He descended the stairs, his boots crunching on the soil
and stones and fragments of wood. He disappeared under
the flat canopy where the unbroken timbers still supported
the three-feet depth of root-threaded soil and those above
waited and listened. After an interval they heard his feet
on the hidden lower stairs, and then he came into view
again. He looked awed and did not speak until Linda
asked impatiently, ‘Well, what is it?’
‘A church, I reckon; but sich a one as I never see… all pillars, my lady, and statchers, and the floor all coloured.’ He blinked and seemed to shake himself. “Thass safe enough. I know what happened; they shored over the entrance, whoever they was—and they knew their job, I’ll say that for them. But where the timbers ended they sopped up the damp, like, and when Job stood just on their ends they give way. Further in them pillars take the weight anyway. Thass safe enough, but I ain’t sure…’ He looked at Linda dubiously. Cursory as his inspection had been in the dim lanternlight, some of the ‘statchers’ had shocked him. But of course the ‘gentry’ had different notions. His sister, who before her marriage had been parlourmaid at Nettleton New House, had told him about some of the things they regarded as ornamental— negresses without a stitch to their name, holding candles; little china boys naked as frogs, supporting fruit dishes. ‘What aren’t you sure about, Farrow?’ Linda asked. ‘How this is going to work out with the building,’ Farrow said, almost truthfully, for part of his mind was grappling with that problem.
‘Oh yes, of course. And I shall have to write to Sir Richard… but now I must see it.’
That evening she was in the middle of writing to Richard when Hadstock arrived to act his part in the daily ritual. Laying down her pen, she said, ‘Oh, Hadstock, have you heard the news?’
‘About the church found underground? Yes, my lady. I have heard.’
‘I am just writing to Sir Richard about it; and I find that I have forgotten—or rather that I did not notice— many details. I wonder, Hadstock, would you, instead of saying all those same things over again, come with me while I take another look?’
‘But of course. Certainly, my lady.’ And behind those simple words were a statement and a question. You give orders, I take them. Why ask me?
‘I went down this morning with Farrow,’ Linda said, answering the question. ‘He hurried me round. There are some statues which, I am sure, he found embarrassing. But I have lived in India … and I assure you that these are, by comparison, most respectable.’
She checked herself. What on earth had provoked her to speak so confidentially to Hadstock, who might, for all she knew, share Farrow’s views and prejudices? She started again.
‘I could have asked Walters, or one of the Jarveys, or Daniel to come with me—but, to tell you the truth, all the servants seem a little … scared of it. They seem to think that anything so old and underground must be … sinister.’
And why should Hadstock think otherwise? He was a servant too.
With the first real feeling he had ever allowed any word of his to reveal, Hadstock said:
‘I should regard it as a favour to be allowed to look round, my lady. As a matter of fact I intended to ask your
permission to do so before I went home tonight. I have my lantern.’
‘We’ll go then,’ she said.
As they walked towards the place, with the lanternlight casting a yellow circle about their feet, she said with cautious primness:
‘You mentioned an underground church. It isn’t quite that. The statues are more of a… classical nature.’
‘Or possibly pre-Reformation English,’ Hadstock said, as though speaking to himself.
‘Would they use marble so much then?’ Linda asked. ‘This place is all marble—or at least I think so.’
‘Indeed, my lady?’ Holding the lantern in one hand, Hadstock with the other rolled back the piece of sailcloth with which Farrow had covered the hole. Then he descended five or six stairs and turned, offering Linda his hand.
‘With only one lantern,’ he said, as though to excuse this familiarity, ‘one of us must walk in the dark, so I’ll light my own steps and guide you down.’ ‘I meant to count this morning. I will now,’ Linda said. There were twenty-four stairs. Between them and the arched entrance was a square of tessellated pavement, thinly covered with soil and debris brought down by Job when he fell. Then there was the arch and, within, the pillared space, three times as long as it was wide, and lined with figures which Linda had modestly described as ‘classical’.
Hadstock seemed not to share Farrow’s embarrassment; holding the lantern high, he studied each one and moved on. Neither he nor Linda spoke. In fact within a few moments of entering the place she would have found speech difficult, for she was forced to press her teeth together to prevent them chattering. There was a deathly chill in the place; a chill of which she had not been aware on her earlier visit, when, in contrast with the atmosphere above ground, the subterranean space had seemed warm.
There was also—and she became increasingly aware of it as their progress brought them to the further end—a sense
of somebody watching. She attributed this to the statuary. All the figures, even those in the most unusual postures, were extremely lifelike, and as Hadstock caused the light to fall upon one it was rather like being introduced to a person; then the light moved on, darkness engulfed the figure, but it was still there, and watchful. Before their slow progress brought them back to the arched entrance Linda had decided that, as in so many other things, the simple untutored instinct of the servants had been right; there was something frightening about the place, and perhaps Mrs Hart, who when invited to go down and view the wonders had said, ‘No, thank you! To my mind anything that’s once bin buried is best left buried,’ had spoken more truly than she knew.
Outside on the square of pavement Hadstock stopped after Linda had stepped on to the stairs.
‘Just a minute, my lady, if you don’t mind,’ he said, and with his foot cleared a space and looked down, moving the lantern backwards and forward.
‘What is it?’ Linda asked, her teeth chattering.
‘Look,’ he said.
Pale stone-coloured squares, and brown ones and some of bright greenish blue, and some of pink and black and terracotta colour were arranged to make a picture—a huge black bull being slaughtered by a slim pale youth wearing a blue loincloth.
‘You’re cold,’ Hadstock said, and held the lantern to light the stairs ahead.
In the open the November night seemed warm as June, and the starlight more than ordinarily friendly. Linda drew a deep steadying breath and said:
‘Well, what did you think of it? It isn’t a church, is it?’
‘Not as we understand it. A place of worship, yes.’
‘Heathen?’
‘Pre-Christian.’ He looked down at the stairway, thoughtfully. ‘You should warn Farrow, I think, my lady, that he may stumble across another entrance.’ ‘Oh. What makes you think so?’ ‘Bulls were sacrificed there,’ Hadstock said, ‘and you’d
never get a bull, dead or alive, down by those stairs, they’re not wide enough.’
Linda allowed herself the shudder she had suppressed.
‘I felt something horrid about it. At least tonight I did. I didn’t notice it this morning, nor the cold.’
‘No. He was a sun-god.’
‘Who was?’
‘Mithras,’ Hadstock said.
Strangely enough, it was not until she had returned to her letter to Richard that it struck Linda as being remarkable that the bailiff should seem so well informed. She had actually written the words ‘Hadstock thinks that the place is …” when she realised that Richard would neither welcome nor believe Hadstock’s theories and would, at the same time, be surprised to learn that he had any and that she gave them any credence. At that point she was surprised herself; and, looking back, realised another thing—Hadstock, giving his views and theories about the mysterious underground place, had spoken with more assurance, more ease of manner than usual.
She scored out the last words she had written and, taking a fresh sheet of paper, wrote a hasty note to Mr Avery, the rector, telling him of the find and inviting him to inspect it and give his opinion. Mr Avery, whose antiquarian interests were genuine, though curbed by his slothfulness, was eager to visit any remains already excavated which appeared to bear out his theories about the Roman occupation of Clevely. He was at the Manor soon after breakfast; and Linda, finishing her letter to Richard at midday, was able to say, ‘Mr Avery has seen the place and thinks it was, long ago in Roman times, a temple of Mithras.’