The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [41]
We both deal in facts, as far as we can. But you of all people should know that a fact seldom crops up without a whole string of associated beliefs. That’s the world you journalists inhabit – a world of value judgements.
Everything is strained through a particular belief filter, You call it finding an angle. Right?’
‘So?’
‘Belief is more powerful than you might think. If something has been believed by a number of people for a long time, it has a subjective reality; and that can have real empirical effects.’ He held up the parchment. ‘Especially when you’re dealing with N-Space.’
Sarah shook her head. ‘I find that difficult to believe.’
She looked up. He was grinning at her.
‘Oh you!’ she said.
The conversation with the Doctor took place during one of the odd absences of Louisa, who, while vowing eternal love and friendship to her new chum Sarah, would every now and again slip away for half an hour or so, returning flushed and a mite tousled, talking nonsense at a rate of knots, as Sarah put it to herself.
144
This obviously concerned another of her ‘secrets’ and it wasn’t very difficult to guess what kind of secret it was, especially when the third time she was gone Sarah, who had been given permission to get dressed, caught a glimpse of her spotted white gown behind a hedge Just before a young man carrying a long-handled spade emerged and looked both ways before going towards the kitchen garden.
‘Who is he?’ she asked casually, when Louisa once more returned, burbling about the beauty of the sunlight on the sea and the sails of the fishing-boats looking like seabirds’ wings and –
She stopped, wide-eyed. ‘How did you know?’ she gasped. ‘Oh please, please, dearest Sarah Jane, do not tell!
Powly would send me to a convent, I know he would, and I would end my days a cloistered sister, a dried-up old maid, an ancient nun with nothing but my memories – and whiskers – and warts. The very thought throws me into an agony! I implore you to keep my secret clasped to your heart!’
Sarah, who had been trying to get a word in, assured her that her secret was safe. ‘Who is he?’ she said again. ‘The gardener’s boy?’
Louisa looked at her as if she were a witch.
145
‘Why yes,’ she said. ‘Or so he is taken to be by all who know him. But, to say the truth, I am persuaded that he is in fact –’ she lowered her voice ‘– Powly’s long lost heir!’
Sarah did her best to keep a straight face. ‘Does the Barone know he’s lost his heir?’
‘I know not. But he is not married; he has no son; there is no nephew, married niece or cousin to carry on the line.
The chief of all this must be that he needs an heir. He is an old man of forty! And Giuseppe tells me that his family is come down in station – and one has only to perceive that noble brow, that true patrician nose, that –’
‘Yes,’ said Sarah. ‘I expect he’s very pretty.’
For a moment, she thought that the sunny Louisa was going to be angry. But then she laughed. ‘To be sure,’ she said, ‘I am no unbiased witness.’
She ran to the door. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘I will show you the last of my secrets.’
It was with a hopeful heart that Sarah realized that she was being led to the courtyard near the clifftop. Perhaps Louisa had been disingenuous in denying any knowledge of the white lady. Perhaps this was the very secret she had been keeping to herself.
But when they went through the archway which led from the garden to the cloistered court, Louisa took her to the store-room built into the castle wall (which Sarah knew 146
before as the alchemist’s workshop). ‘There!’ she said, pointing dramatically to a perfectly plain bit of stone work above the sacks of vegetables. ‘Behind that wall we shall discover the secrets of the ages. That is where they lie, the mouldering bones of the evil monk, along with the treasure of the castello!’
We? Who was going to do this discovering, then? Sarah thought she’d better find out.
‘Why Giuseppe and myself, of course. As the clock strikes twelve, just as it happened in the book. And Powly will be so pleased to have the treasure,