Michael was prepared to accept – with a great many reservations – that the past could occasionally brush its cobwebbed bones against the present; he had encountered too many odd things not to give that belief some credence. Even Nell, who had shared some of those experiences, now admitted – albeit with even more reservations and scepticism – that past events might sometimes leave a lingering imprint that could be picked up by certain people decades afterwards.
But Michael could not and would not accept that it could work the other way round – that the present could affect the past. The likes of Einstein or Schopenhauer might be able to put forward a Euclidean argument about the concept of space and time or single continuums, and it was an alluring idea to imagine the conversation those two might have. You could even throw in H.G. Wells to spice it up a bit. But even though Michael would probably only have understood one hundredth part of it, if as much, he still would not give it any credence.
That being so, whoever Hugbert and his cohorts had seen standing at the window that night, it had been someone from their own world and their own time.
Having put this tiresome worry firmly in its place, it now occurred to Michael that the soldiers, according to Hugbert’s letter, had abandoned their attempt to capture Stephen Gilmore until the following night. That also being so, he could relax his guard for the rest of the night.
As for tomorrow – it would not matter if the entire Prussian Army and the Kaiser himself yomped around the gardens of Fosse House, chasing recalcitrant English prisoners to bring them to grisly justice. Because by tomorrow night Michael would be safely back in Oxford.
Seventeen
Autumn sunlight slanted across Quire Court. Nell, eating an early breakfast in the little kitchen behind the shop, contemplated with pleasure the prospect of seeing Michael this evening, then was annoyed with herself for behaving like a moonstruck teenager.
She was meeting Owen Bracegirdle at half-past nine, and by this evening she might have met Hugbert as well, admittedly only in epistolary form, but certainly more substantially than the fragmented sections in Bernard Bodkin’s book. Autumn sunlight slanted across the kitchen, and Nell’s spirits rose.
She wrote down the title and ISBN of Hugbert’s letters and folded the note into her bag, after which she put the ‘Closed’ notice on the shop door and set off. It occurred to her that she would be unreasonably disappointed if she and Owen did not find Hugbert.
But they did find him. There he was, neatly catalogued in the Bodleian’s customary efficient fashion, the entry sandwiched between somebody’s account of the Zeppelin raids and a study of Hindenburg’s war strategies in 1915.
‘Is it available for actual loan?’ asked Nell, peering at the details. She was perfectly prepared to read the entire book in the library, in fact she would happily camp out here for several days if necessary, but she would rather to take Hugbert home and read him in privacy.
‘It looks like it.’ Owen leaned over her shoulder to see. ‘Yes, it is. It’ll have to be on my ticket, but if I can’t trust you, I can’t trust anyone.’
It felt odd to actually walk out of the library with Hugbert’s letters stowed in her bag. Nell caught herself beaming every time she thought about it.
Owen insisted on buying them coffee at his favourite patisserie, and over several of the richest eclairs and doughnuts Nell had ever eaten he launched into a progress report of his own contribution to the Music Director’s book.
‘And J.B. is very pleased with Michael’s findings about Robert Graves and Stephen Gilmore,’ he said. ‘He thinks if Michael can establish that Graves really was at school with Stephen, the two themes – music and Great War poetry – will knit up very neatly, particularly with the Gilmore connection to the Palestrina Choir.’ He mopped a few doughnut crumbs from his waistcoat and said, ‘But I won’t bang on about that for too long, Nell, because I’ve got to get back to College, and I know you’re on edge to immerse yourself in those 1917 letters.’
‘Well, yes, I suppose I am.’ Nell had been managing not to cast longing looks at her bag, with the book stashed inside.
‘The call of the siren,’ said Owen, burlesquing the line. ‘Or in this case, whatever the masculine equivalent of a siren is.’ He grinned sympathetically, and Nell was grateful to him for understanding, although if a history don could not understand the lure of newly found, primary-source research material, there was not much hope for lesser mortals.
She returned to Quire Court, developing hiccups on the way from a surfeit of doughnuts, and made a cup of peppermint tea to quell them. She would sit in the little office at the back of the shop to read Hugbert, so she could keep the shop open and hear any customers who came in.
But Quire Court, with its little shops and mullioned windows and the remains of the original cobblestones, was drowsy and deserted today. It felt as if it might have sealed itself off from the clang of the modern world for a few hours. Michael had often said it was one of the places where time might be paper-thin, and that if you knew the right words, or the right place to reach out a hand, you would find yourself peering at glimpses of the Court’s past. Nell, walking under the arched stone entrance, thought this might be one of the days when the veil was particularly thin, although it might simply be that she was absorbed in 1917.
Once inside, she checked her phone messages, hoping Michael might have phoned to say he was about to set off for Oxford. He had not, however. Nell considered phoning him, but thought he might be caught up in the practicalities of Luisa Gilmore’s illness. If she had not heard after lunch, she would ring then.