Josse lay in bed, aware that, beside him, Helewise was already asleep. He did not want to disturb her, but his mind was too active for sleep. His head kept filling with random images and scenes from the past; his own past, in this very house.
Even as a child, somehow he had recognized that there was something very special – unique – about Southfire Hall. He had come, he supposed, to take it for granted during those successive visits before he had grown to manhood. When he had returned in later years – that Yule visit spent with the family was a good example – the days had usually been too full of chatter, song, laughter, good food and drink, and the celebrations of reunited kinsmen glad to be together again to allow much time for meditative introspection. Not, Josse reflected ruefully, that that was really one of his strong points, anyway.
This time, this sad time, when he had been summoned because his dear Uncle Hugh was in all likelihood dying, was different. Yesterday’s welcoming feast had been generous, and his cousins and their families were clearly relieved that Josse had made the effort and come to stay, but, despite the generous fare and the levity, the shadow of sick Uncle Hugh had hung over them all. Now that the injured man – Peter Southey – was also under Southfire’s capacious roof, the mood had become even more sombre, as if, without actually saying so, the inhabitants all felt that it was not seemly under the circumstances to indulge in cheerful gossip, laughter and boisterous fun.
And the resulting atmosphere – quiet, considerate, contemplative – had allowed the house’s own voice to be heard.
I am becoming whimsical, Josse told himself. Houses do not have voices!
But, from somewhere so close as to be perhaps within him, the soft response came: This one does.
He smiled, letting his eyes close. I’m falling asleep, after all, he thought. I am in that state in which waking and dreaming mingle. He let himself relax, surrendering to it, and almost at once, as if the house had simply been waiting for the chance, his mind filled with memory after memory; no longer small, scattered vignettes, as they had earlier been, but now joined into a cohesive whole, the scenes so vivid that it was as if he had been flung back through time and once more walked where his childhood self had walked …
‘If you ruin another gown, Aeleis,’ Isabelle says in a voice exactly like her mother’s, ‘I shall not help you mend or restore it, and you shall answer for the consequences.’
‘Don’t care,’ Aeleis retorts. She is four years old, a boy in a girl’s body, strong and mature for her years and scornful of her older sister’s ladylike ways. She grins at Josse, who is watching the scene anxiously. He knows he ought to support Isabelle, for she and he are the oldest children and it is ceaselessly impressed on them that they must control the younger ones – Isabelle’s little sisters and Josse’s younger brother Yves – and always Set A Good Example. So often is that phrase repeated, and in such severe tones, that, to Josse, its words have acquired capital letters. Not that he is very good at distinguishing capital letters; he can only do so in the beautiful bible in the parish church, with its gorgeously coloured illuminated initials at the start of each section.
But Josse doesn’t want Aeleis to start acting like a modest little girl. He wants her to go on being his companion-in-exploration and, indeed, his guide, for she knows her way around Southfire Hall much better than he does. In his defence, he has only been here three days, and has had little opportunity to creep off alone. He is nearly nine years old, big and well grown; soon he will become a squire, and what small part of his life remains his own will also be taken away.
This brief summer at Southfire is his last chance of freedom before the adult world claims him. He will go on coming here – his mother has told him so, and she is always right – but, otherwise, for so far into the future that it doesn’t bear thinking about he will be at someone else’s beck and call, under someone’s orders (probably several someones), and every single moment of every single day will be spent doing what he’s told.
No wonder, then, that, no matter what the consequences in terms of punishment, he is quite determined to enjoy himself while he can. Now, today, as soon as Isabelle has finished her lecturing, and provided Josse can evade his little brother (Yves is homesick and a bit clingy), Josse and Aeleis are planning to make their unobtrusive way beneath the house towards the entrance to the undercroft, where they will wait until the builders’ backs are turned and then slip inside. Assuming it hasn’t been discovered and blocked up since yesterday evening, they will then crawl behind a certain huge pillar and through the tiny space they found yesterday afternoon.
They have no idea what they will find there. They know it is so profoundly dark that you can’t even see your hand in front of your face, that it has a strange smell – ‘Like being deep in a mole’s hole with your nose right in the earth,’ Aeleis says – and that it’s so well hidden that nobody can have set foot in there for hundreds and thousands of years.
Josse says hundreds; Aeleis says thousands, but she always exaggerates.
Today Aeleis is carrying beneath her skirts a small stone oil lamp which she pinched from the kitchen. Some of the oil has slopped on to her hem, but she was careful to fill it so there should be plenty left for the rush wick to soak up. Josse has flint and steel to make a spark. They are determined to shed light on whatever it is they have discovered.
They reach the entrance to the undercroft. Nobody is looking their way; nobody is even in sight, although they can hear the master mason arguing with the master carpenter, loud voices raised in the still, warm air. They hurry into the cool, dim space. Rows of short, stubby pillars stride off into the darkness in front of them, their sturdy strength holding up that wide, vaulted roof and the unimaginable weight above it. Josse doesn’t like thinking about that.
He feels Aeleis’s small hand creep into his. He grasps it, glad of her touch. They hurry on, for the workmen may resolve their quarrel any moment and return to their tasks, and there is no time to lose.
They reach the pillar which conceals their secret. Josse has been thinking, and concludes that it is roughly in the spot where the house’s main entrance used to be, over on the south side of the main hall. He and Aeleis crouch down on hands and knees, preparing to go through the narrow little tunnel. Josse, being quite a lot bigger, has to crawl on his stomach. Again, he is uneasily aware of the colossal weight of earth and stone above him. He feels his heart beat faster, and it is hard to breathe. He forces himself to go on. He is close to panic. Was the tunnel as long as this yesterday? Have they come to the wrong place? Will he get stuck and die here? Should he somehow tell Aeleis, scrabbling along right behind him, to retreat so he can go back? What if he can’t go back?
But then abruptly he is out of the tunnel. Leaping to his feet, he stands upright in the pitch-black space. Aeleis’s voice, very close and horribly loud in the dead silence, says, ‘Here’s the lamp. Light it, Josse,’ and he obeys.
They stand in awe of the place they have found.
Is it a cellar? If so, it was a rich man who had it built, for, as they discover when they scrape away the earth, debris and dust of countless years, inset into the cracked and worn flags of the floor is a mosaic. It is made of tiny glazed stone tiles which, when Aeleis spits on them and rubs at them with her skirt, are revealed to be of many colours and placed so as to make up a picture. It is a strange picture: a very tall figure in a long pale robe stands before what is obviously a fire – orange and yellow flames like tongues – set in what looks like a round hearth. Out of nowhere a name flashes into Josse’s head: Hestia. He says it out loud, his voice soft, almost chanting the word.
‘She’s a goddess,’ Aeleis says knowingly. ‘She tended the sacred fire.’
There is a silence. Josse feels a chill down his back, as if someone had dribbled cold water on him. ‘We found a hearth,’ he whispers. ‘A real hearth. Remember?’
Aeleis nods. ‘We tried to make a fire but it just smoked.’
‘Aye,’ Josse agrees. ‘There was probably once a hole to make a draught, but it’d have got blocked up.’
‘The extension’s being built over where the hearth is,’ Aeleis says. ‘They’d have had to fill up the holes.’
‘Aye, they would,’ Josse says absently. He is thinking. An ancient hearth. A mosaic, probably far, far older. Fire. Tending the sacred fire.
And his Uncle Hugh’s house, where Josse’s maternal line have lived since memories began, stands above an area called Southover, and the house is called …
As if she reads his mind, or shares the process of his thoughts, or perhaps both, Aeleis whispers, ‘Southfire. Southfire Hall.’
The shudder comes again. Josse holds his breath, expecting the onset of deep, atavistic fear. It doesn’t come.
Aeleis, very close beside him, says confidingly, ‘It’s not a scary place, is it, Josse? It’s very, very old, and it’s dark, and it’s forgotten, but I’m not frightened.’
‘Nor am I,’ he quickly agrees. ‘This house is never frightening.’ It is as if he is at last putting into words something he has always known. ‘It’s – it’s a friendly house.’
Aeleis is nodding eagerly, her long, heavy golden-brown hair already half out of its tight braids and bouncing round her pretty, animated face in time with her nods. ‘I’m never scared,’ she says proudly. Then, with strict honesty, she amends the statement: ‘Well, I do get frightened when I have bad dreams, or there’s a big storm with bangs of thunder, but then it’s as if the house comes and comforts me, and I’m not scared any more.’ She pauses, then, sounding almost embarrassed, as if this is a whimsy too far, adds quickly, ‘If anything evil came, I reckon the house would kick it out.’
‘Mmm,’ Josse says absently. He’s sure she’s right, but he’s thinking of something else. The spirit of the house. This phrase, like the name Hestia, has just popped into his mind.
Is that what they’ve noticed, he and his little cousin? The presence of a friendly, protective spirit? Like her, he has often sensed a – a kindliness, is the best description he can come up with, within the old walls of Southfire Hall. Spirit of the house … Who said that?
He remembers. It was his mother, Ida; Uncle Hugh’s elder sister. When Josse was not much more than Aeleis’s age and being sent on his first visit to his mother’s kin so far away in the land called England, he had been so upset, the night before departure, and she had come to comfort him. ‘I don’t want to go away from you and I’m scared about going over the sea and what if they don’t like me and suppose I cry because I’m homesick and what if I get scared in the night and you’re not there?’ he had sobbed. And she had hugged him, and he had breathed in her loved, familiar scent of lavender and spices, and she had said softly, ‘You’ll be all right. The people are kind, and if ever for a moment you are frightened or unhappy, the spirit of the house will comfort you.’ He must have shown his doubt in his face, for, kissing him, laughing gently, she added, ‘I grew up there, and I know. You’ll see!’
He is jerked back to the present. Aeleis, with the short span of attention of a child not quite five, has got bored with the mosaic, and wandered off to explore a dark corner. She is digging in the dust and the dirt, and Josse thinks she is doing what she always does, and hunting for treasure. He has told her often that she’s unlikely to find anything, but her faith remains strong. He hopes very much it will prove justified. He is very fond of his little cousin.
He follows her to her corner. ‘I think there’s another gap here,’ he says, pushing at a roughly shaped stone that seems to be lying at an angle. Sure enough, it moves a little, and he increases his efforts. Aeleis, distracted from her digging, hurries to help. They work the stone loose, and presently crawl off along a long, dark, stone-lined tunnel that seems to be part of a whole network of similar tunnels. All of them are roughly square …
The sun is low in the sky when they finally remember that there is a world up there above the tunnels, the ancient cellar, the forgotten crypts and the old undercroft. In that world, people are probably wondering where they are and getting ready to be very cross when they find out what the two of them have been up to. ‘They mustn’t find out,’ states Aeleis firmly, ‘or else they’ll try to stop us coming back down here again.’
Try to stop us, Josse notes with a grin, not just stop us; Aeleis is not a child who willingly gives up on something she really wants, and she has virtually no respect for authority. They are back in the undercroft now – thankfully it is deserted – and, in the light that seems bright after the darkness of the older underground places, he can see that Aeleis is filthy, as is he. ‘We’ll have to be clever, and sneak into the house without being seen,’ he says. ‘First, though, we’ll make our way under cover to the area behind the kitchens, and get the worst of the dirt off.’
Their luck holds. They wash hands, faces and feet – both are barefoot – and Aeleis beats as much dirt as she can out of her skirt, then makes a pretty good attempt at re-braiding her hair. ‘Don’t go too far!’ Josse says with a smile. ‘You usually come in looking sweaty and bedraggled, and if you’re too tidy, your nursemaid will wonder what’s wrong with you. She might even,’ he adds, because he likes to tease her, ‘decide you must be unwell, and insist you go straight to bed and stay there.’
‘NO!’ yells Aeleis in protest. She sees Josse laughing, launches a flying fist at him, misses, and races after him as he flees for the sanctuary of the hall.
Later, still thinking about ancient fires, Josse seeks out Uncle Hugh. Hugh has just returned steaming and sweaty from doing whatever it is he does all day, and, his boots off and lying on their sides on the floor, he has pressed the soles of his bare feet on to the cold stone flags. There is a look of bliss on his ruddy, plump face.
Josse goes to sit on the floor beside Uncle Hugh’s bench. ‘Please may I ask you something, Uncle?’ he says politely.
‘Of course, my dear boy!’ Uncle Hugh replies with a big smile. ‘Questions are free!’
Not entirely sure what that means, Josse says, ‘It’s about this house. Is it very, very old?’
Uncle Hugh looks vaguely surprised, as if he had expected something rather more mundane. ‘Er – yes, yes it is,’ he says. The deep furrows in his brow suggest he is thinking hard. ‘Southfire Hall has been in the family for many generations,’ he says after a moment. ‘My mother Ediva’s great-grandmother built the original hall when she brought her new husband here. She was a big, strong woman, they say, like so many of our kin, both male and female.’ He smiles. ‘They made their dwelling in the old manner, which was a long house with a fire pit and aisles down each side separated by lines of pillars. Its door faced south. It was a wooden structure, and, in time, as the family began to prosper, wood was replaced with stone, and the hall in which we now sit was erected. More years went by, and now we have outgrown our hall and, as you see, we are building an extension, so that the members of the family no longer have to sleep all together with the servants and the animals.’
Josse, thinking it was a joke – his uncle’s grand house is no peasant dwelling – laughs politely.
Uncle Hugh regards him, his eyes kindly. ‘Oh, it’s true, young Josse,’ he murmurs. ‘Not many years ago, even a man such as I thought nothing of bedding down only a few paces away from his animals, and, indeed, the great majority of people still live like that, and will go on doing so.’
‘Oh,’ Josse says. Then, in case Uncle Hugh is about to begin one of those you-don’t-know-how-lucky-you-are lectures beloved of grown-ups, he heads him off. ‘And was there a house here before your mother’s great-grandmother built her hall?’ he prompts.
Uncle Hugh’s eyes have gone sort of soft. ‘Ah, now, here we leave the world of fact and enter into the realm of legend,’ he says mysteriously. Leaning closer to Josse, he says softly, ‘When I was a lad, a few years younger than you, young Josse, my nursemaid would tell me stories. She was old – Lord, she was so old!’ His face twists into an expression of wonder, as if, even now, he can scarcely credit what he is saying. ‘She had been nurse to Sithe’s children – Sithe it was who built the hall – and she claimed that, when she was a girl, she knew Sithe’s mother, Aeda.’ Uncle Hugh is staring at Josse with round eyes, as if he expects Josse to be deeply impressed. Since Josse has no idea who Aeda was, or why Uncle Hugh’s old nursemaid having known her should be so impressive, Josse is at a loss.
‘Oh, my!’ he says inadequately.
But he doesn’t think Uncle Hugh has heard. ‘They used to have fires on the downs,’ he is saying, his voice sounding strange; sort of distant, Josse thinks. ‘They were tended by special people, for to look after the wildfire was a great honour.’
‘Were they beacon fires?’ Josse asks. He has heard of beacon fires, and knows they have long been used as a means of passing a signal very rapidly over long distances.
‘Hm? Beacon fires? Yes, I suppose they served that function,’ Uncle Hugh says. ‘But it wasn’t their original, true purpose. The fires on the Caburn, and here at Southfire, were sacred fires, and they—’
But just then, at the very point where it’s getting really interesting, Uncle Hugh stops. Glancing down at Josse, a sheepish expression on his face, he mutters something like, ‘Not meant to speak of that in front of the youngsters.’
‘Was there a building here before Sithe built her hall?’ Josse asks again, forcing himself to sound very patient and polite. He really wants to know, for he is thinking of those mysterious tunnels that open off the dark crypt. It’s surely not likely that Sithe excavated so extensively beneath her wooden dwelling, so if she didn’t make the floor and the hearth, who did?
Uncle Hugh looks relieved, as if glad that Josse has asked him about something he is prepared to discuss. ‘Well, young Josse, I can’t swear it’s true, but old Nena – that’s my nursemaid I was telling you about – had a great fund of tales, and she used to say that, once upon a time, when this land was occupied by the invader who came from the south, wonderful dwellings called villas were built on the places where conditions were most favourable. Now these villas, Nena said, were so luxurious and so comfortable that each one, even if belonged only to an ordinary man, was fit for a king. She said one such villa was built up here, where Southfire Hall now stands, because the people from the south knew this was a good place, and that any dwelling constructed here would have a nourishing, protective spirit.’ Josse is about to question this rather extraordinary and totally fascinating statement, ask his uncle to elaborate, but Uncle Hugh is in full flow. ‘She said that once, when she was a girl, she had discovered old tunnels and passages that she said had been excavated back then. Of course –’ he smiles indulgently – ‘Nena was a great one for stories, and I expect she made it up. She said,’ he adds, again leaning close and lowering his voice, ‘that those old villas were heated by means of narrow, brick-sided trenches that ran beneath the floor, and that fires were lit so that the warm air ran down all the little tunnels! She said –’ now he was whispering – ‘that they used to send small boys crawling down the tunnels to light the fires and to clear away obstructions, and quite often the boys got badly burned, even killed, and that, if you listened very carefully on a still, dark night, sometimes you could hear their terrible screams.’
Josse feels sick. He remembers those little tunnels that he and Aeleis crawled along only today. He imagines a fire suddenly erupting, a blast of hot air, flames, smoke, trying to fight his way back and out to safety and getting stuck. Burning. Dying in agony. Nausea rises in his throat, and he swallows hard.
‘My dear boy, I’m sorry!’ Uncle Hugh’s concerned voice brings him back to the safety of the present. He is looking anxiously at Josse. ‘Dear Lord, but you’ve gone quite white! I am sorry,’ he repeats, ‘I had no idea that old tale would upset you!’ Uncle Hugh is a kind man.
‘It’s quite all right,’ Josse assures him. He has no intention of telling his uncle about his and Aeleis’s discoveries down beneath the house. Since he isn’t going to explain, however, there is a danger that Uncle Hugh will think his nephew a bit of a girl, frightened by an old nursemaid’s horror story. ‘I loved the story,’ he adds. ‘It didn’t upset me at all – it was just that I …’ He thinks frantically. ‘Just that I’m getting quite hungry, and for a moment I felt a bit faint.’
Uncle Hugh, who seems to know all about the prodigious appetite of growing boys, takes Josse at his word. He pats him on the shoulder, chuckling, and says, ‘Ah, what it is to be young, and have the day revolve around meal times!’ He struggles to his feet, reaching to pick up his boots. ‘I will see you at supper, young Josse,’ he says, and he strolls away.
Josse stretched, carefully so as not to disturb Helewise. He was sleepy at last, for the long excursion into the past had been almost hypnotic; as if he was already half in a dream. He thought back over all the memories that had just come pushing and shoving into his mind. How Aeleis had said she was never scared. How his mother had said that the spirit of the house would comfort him if he was sad or upset. How his Uncle Hugh had said the ancient people knew it was a good place to build, for it had a nourishing, protective spirit. How his own forebears had lived here, in this spot, for so long. It was no wonder, he reflected, that he felt so welcome here. The place was his ancient home; the very stones called out to him.
There was something else right on the edge of his thoughts; another memory, but a more recent one, and not of his uncle, or indeed any of his kinsmen on his mother’s side. He frowned in the quiet darkness, trying to bring it to mind. Something to do with tending the sacred fire …
As if in response to his attempts, suddenly the violent image exploded in his head. Without understanding how, he knew without a doubt that it was a vision he had experienced before. He saw immense flames searing up into the night, in vivid shades of violet, purple and gold, brilliant against the night sky. He saw a woman, very tall, dressed in a pale robe and with a circlet of silver around her head, set on thick hair woven in complicated braids. She cried aloud, a sound that sounded like singing, but he did not understand the words.
He seemed to hear a voice – his own voice – say, There is no magic in my family. Another voice – a beloved voice, that of Joanna, his lost love – replied gently, There is, Josse.
He stirred restlessly, disturbed by his thoughts. What was happening to him? Why, suddenly, was all this coming back to him, and with such vividness, such force? Was it somehow important that he remember these things? But why?
Drowsiness was overcoming him at last. He didn’t fight it, for he knew he was weary. He made himself relax, glad of Helewise’s warm presence next to him.
He closed his eyes. Yawned. Felt the pleasure of surrendering to sleep. And, just as consciousness faded, he thought – perhaps he dreamt – that someone said, The house is making it happen.
He smiled, already barely awake. His last thought was, How absurd!