Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [572]
At first, no one thought anything of it.
It was some time since he had been seen about, but if he had decided to pause to look at something, few had the courage to interrupt the stiff old canon in his reverie. Perhaps it was unusual that he was not wearing his usual black, broad-brimmed hat. No doubt he was about to go inside again.
He was standing by the corner house on the east of the choristers’ green and opposite the entrance to the close. He seemed to be looking at something at the far end of the green, a little to the left of Mompesson House.
Several passers-by, bowing politely to the venerable figure and receiving no acknowledgement, tried to follow his gaze to see what it was that had so engaged his attention. But feeling it impolite to linger there without his invitation, they soon passed on and went about their business. Once a cart from the town had to make a detour to get round him and the driver silently cursed the arrogance of the clergy and the gentry who did not deign to move for him.
He was standing there when Ralph Shockley and his family left the house in New Street to walk to Old Sarum. He had not moved when they got back.
Around the middle of the day some urchins came by. They had less reverence for the motionless old figure in his antiquated black silk stockings who stood there like a petrified tree. They began to play a game around him.
And it was one of these children, early in the afternoon, who noticed something strange: something which, when he pointed it out, caused them all to go into peals of laughter.
For at the motionless canon’s feet there had now appeared a little puddle.
It was Doctor Barnikel who, mercifully, came by just afterwards, who understood what had happened, and who led poor Porteus home.
“I fear,” he told Agnes that evening, “his mind may not recover.”
The canon did not speak again.
It was, there was no doubt of it, a blessing that, on October 1 – the very day when Porteus had been brought to the old Manor House at Fisherton Anger where Mr William Finch ran his commodious and comfortable private asylum for the insane – the canon should have a second seizure, this time a stroke, and died.
“I am only sad,” Frances confessed, “that he should have lived to see the reforms.”
But the duty of Frances to her late husband was not over. She set out to protect his memory too.
She could not deny that his mind had been affected at the end – too many people knew. But in the year after his death, a minor change took place in Salisbury that gave her her opportunity: gas lights were introduced into the streets.
It was with amazement therefore that, in August 1834, Ralph Shockley heard his own sister say, with perfect seriousness:
“My poor husband, you know, was entirely well until the gas was introduced.”
“But he died before that,” he protested.
Frances ignored him completely.
“That gas is dangerous,” she maintained. “It turned my poor husband’s mind and killed him. It ought to be removed.”
“Let her think it,” Agnes begged him when he told her.
“The gas never hurt anyone,” he grumbled, irritated at his elder sister’s folly.
But, just to prove him wrong, Frances fainted by one of the lamps, the very next week, just as it was being lit.
“It’s the noxious fumes,” she said afterwards. “They made me faint. And when I think what they did to my poor husband . . .”
From this time on, she fainted by the gas lamps several times a year.
In 1834 Doctor Thaddeus Barnikel, beloved by all but always unmarried, suddenly died. In his will, he left the bulk of his estate to Agnes Shockley.
Ralph was not surprised.
“I always knew he loved you,” he said pleasantly, “even before I had to go away.”
“He was a kind friend,” Agnes answered.
“That’s why I asked him to look after you,” Ralph added. “Just to make sure he never . . .”
Agnes looked at him in surprise.
“Wasn’t that taking a risk?”
“Oh no. Not with him,” he replied cheerfully. “Or you, of course,” he added, just a moment too late.
EMPIRE
1854: OCTOBER
The afternoon sun gleamed