Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [543]
No one knew when the men of Wiltshire first came to be called moonrakers; but it was smuggling that gave them the name.
A party of Wiltshire smugglers, hearing the excise men approaching one night, had pushed their load into a pond. Later, thinking the coast was clear, they had begun to try to get the barrels out again with poles and rakes. They had just started, however, when the excise men returned. It was then, when the excise men demanded to know what they were about that one of the men, pointing to the reflection of the full moon in the water explained: “See that cheese – we’re trying to pull it over here,” and he began slowly to rake the water. Slow and simple these Wiltshire men, the excise men had concluded as they rode away. And slow and simple, when it suited them, the Wiltshire men had always been, especially when it came to getting the better of interfering government officials.
Peter Wilson liked the run into moonraker country.
“I’ll buy that ring tomorrow,” he thought.
Doctor Thaddeus Barnikel paused before the door.
Could he go in?
Of course he could. He must. He had particularly been asked to come on urgent business, by the owner of the house.
He looked at the door worriedly. If only he could trust himself not to give everything away; if only he did not blush; if only at this moment he were not trembling.
He had been particularly summoned, on a matter of delicacy. Discretion was required. He was a doctor.
Still he paused.
It was pleasantly warm. The morning mist, hours ago, had given way to a mellow autumn sun. All around the close the yellowing leaves were gently falling in the faint northern breeze. They rustled along the north walk, gathered along the edge of the choristers’ green, piled into the stone corner of the little lodge by the south gate that led to the old bridge.
The cloistered seclusion of Salisbury close, with its cathedral rising like a stately tree, its sweeping lawns, and its low, receding lines of gracious houses, always seemed to Doctor Thaddeus Barnikel to have a poignant melancholy all its own in the Michaelmas season when the leaves were falling. But perhaps it was just his mood. The summer birds that infested its gracious old houses – the swallows, swifts, martins and the small company of starlings in the trees, had all long since risen with their shrill, busy cries and wheeled away, leaving the precincts to its year-round inhabitants – a few sparrows and thrushes, the daws who were sombrely picking over the green by the plane trees, the rooks in the elms, gazing down like so many black-robed canons in their stalls, and lastly a pair of kestrels who nested in the cathedral tower and from time to time circled the spire in a manner plainly suggesting that they were the true owners of the ancient building.
Only half the leaves were down, and the sun found warm and subtle colours everywhere upon the precinct’s crumbling surfaces. It was not only the green and moss in the crevices, not only the tawny and golden leaves, nor the grey green Chilmark stone, the long-leaded roof of the cathedral or the delicate shades of the red brick, red tile and the stuccoed fronts of the houses; no, the joy of the cathedral close was in the lichen. It was everywhere, in every nook and cranny, on great stone surfaces or the uneven churchyard wall: greens, yellows, rusty reds, ochres, creamy blues, light browns: the living lichen with its subtle colours grew everywhere.
He knew why he was summoned.
Had she not come to him privately, three months before, and begged him to speak to the young man?
He had done so.
It was a long interview. He made the position very plain. He warned, persuaded, even begged. And it had been useless. First the fellow rambled, then laughed at him, finally told him, in a friendly way, to mind his own business.
“Can you see no danger?”
“Frankly Doctor, no.”
“But what of your wife, man?” he had burst out. “Do you not realise you are giving her pain, and anxiety?”
“She has been to you?” The young man