The Moor - Laurie R. King [82]
He smiled. " 'This is my resting place forever, here I will dwell, for I have desired it.' Truly," he mused, "I have both desired and chosen. I had thought to have my daughter Margaret paint a picture in the church of the mother of God as Sophia, but we haven't got to it yet. It was my mother's name, Sophia."
"That is a portrait of you with her upstairs, isn't it? She was very pretty."
"Do you think so? Prettier than her anaemic-looking son, at any rate. The painter took against me, didn't like my asking so many questions about mixing paint and the techniques of perspective, so he made me look even more priggish than I think I actually did."
"It's a sweet picture," I protested.
He snorted. "You ought to see the thing I just sat for. Makes me look like an old boat."
"Is it here?"
"Oh no, hanging in London. What do you have to say about Sophia, then, Mary?"
So, at five in the morning in the echoing old house, we talked about theology. He was an interesting partner in conversation—as inquisitive as a child, but intractable and opinionated on the things he considered he knew; impatient with extraneous detail but insistent about the detail he thought important; utterly imperious yet innately gracious at the same time.
Curiously like another enthusiastic amateur I knew, in fact; two members of a dying breed.
When we had finished with that topic to his satisfaction, he turned to another. "Tell me what you make of Dartmoor, Mary."
To help myself think of an answer, I dribbled the last of the tea into my cup, milked it and sipped it and nearly choked on it—I had not noticed that we had been there long enough for the pot to stew cold and bitter. I hastily put down the cup.
"I don't know where to start. I did not care much for it at first."
"You hated it."
"I hated it, yes. You must admit, it's one of the least hospitable places in the country."
"A good place to be alone with one's thoughts," he said.
Perhaps with fourteen children in the house, I reflected, solitude in any form was beyond the price of rubies. "After a couple of days up there, though, it came to me that the moor is in many ways like the desert. Did your travels ever take you to Palestine?"
"Alas, no. I should have liked to visit the Holy Land."
"Yes, it is a powerful experience. And I think you would have felt at home there. The harshness of the desert shapes the people and keeps them materially poor, but it also gives an immensely strong sense of identity and belonging."
The old man was smiling into the fire and nodding gently. I went on.
"In truth, I found the sense of community here…daunting." I told him how, beginning with the girl near Postbridge pointing me towards Elizabeth Chase, everyone I met knew an irritating amount about me and my business. "Except for the villagers. They didn't know me, and when the moor men were with the village dwellers, they seemed almost to treasure the secret of who I was." I began to tell him about the night in the Mary Tavy inn.
As I progressed, he grew more and more animated, sitting upright in his chair, then leaning forward that he might see my face more clearly. He made me describe the songs and the singers in detail, and hummed the tunes that I might confirm which one the singers had used. His eyes positively sparkled when I told him about the authoritative claim the moor men laid on Lady Howard's song. When he had milked every drop of information from me about the music (he even made me hum the tune I had played on the tin whistle) he sat back in his chair, tired but pleased.
" 'Green Broom' I collected from John Woodrich, in Thrushtleton," he said, "and the tune your singers used for 'Unquiet Grave' was a melody I noted down for another song. Magnificent music, that. You like it?"
"It's very…human," I said after a minute.
"People now lack patience, have no taste for a song that is not finished in three minutes. Modern music puts me in mind