Read Online Caught in the Light by Robert Goddard - Free Book Online
Authors: Robert Goddard
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The church was damp and cold, despite the sunshine. The interior smelled of age and must and past times layered one upon another. Services were fortnightly, according to the porch notices. This was an obscure satellite parish, its affairs administered at arm's length by the vicar of Witchbourne Hinton ten miles away. The graveyard was the usual yew-fringed plot of old and new stones, more old than new, with lichen and decay well established: one weeping cherub, a few Celtic crosses and two or three large ledger-slab bed graves in the southern lee of the tower. Beyond lay farm fields and a sunlit descent into Blackmoor Vale. The only oddity that struck me was an ornate stone-arched gateway leading from the churchyard into what was now a sheep-cropped pasture. There was another, more modest rear entrance, still apparently in use, but this gate looked as if it had once served some significant purpose. The only building visible in that direction was a farm. The gate itself was sealed with a rusty chain and padlock.
I looked at the church. No obvious clues stared back at me. The postcard was surely one in its own right, though. It had brought me to this place. Why? What could a virtually redundant old church have to do with Marian? The man down the road hadn't recognized the name Esguard. It hadn't featured on the cleaning rota or the list of church wardens. But it was a rural location, as I'd suspected. And ... Then it came to me. There were names all around me, on the gravestones. "They were just as real as you and me," Marian had said of Vienna's fore gathered dead at the Zentralfriedhof. "Maybe more so."
I started a systematic search from grave to grave, scraping out the lettering on the older stones with a penknife, though even then some remained illegible. After half an hour with nothing to show for my efforts, I reached the grander ledger-stoned graves closest to the church.
They were also some of the oldest and most heavily weathered. It was as much as I could do to trace the inscriptions. But I persevered, progressing painstakingly from the first Colonel something something Wheeler, Royal something, plus wife and son, all dead within a few years of each other in the 1820s to the second, where I probed meticulously with the penknife at the faint lichen-blotched outline of a name until... ESGUARD. It was there in front of me. JOSLYN MARCH MONT ESGUARD. Marian had referred to her husband as Jose, surely short for Joslyn. And now I was looking at Joslyn Esguard's grave. There was no mention of a wife or children, only some kind of address Gaunt's Chase, Tollard Rising and a record of his death 23 June 1838, aged 62.
I sat staring at that slab for a long long time. Was this the only
Joslyn Esguard I could hope to find? Or was he an ancestor of the one I was actually looking for? I couldn't tell, but now at last I sensed I was on the track of an answer. I'd had to have the way pointed out to me, of course. I'd never have got this far on my own. Was Marian really my informant? If so, the postcard had to be a plea for help the only kind of plea she could risk or contrive. The Esguards were an old family. She'd said so herself. Yes, that had to be it. She was married to this dead Dorset squire's great-great-great-great-grandson. And now I had an address. Gaunt's Chase. "Esguards have lived there for generations."
But where was it? I asked at the post office down in Tollard Royal, but learned nothing. I tried the pub with the same result. Then I made for Witchbourne Hinton. Parish records didn't fade as fast as human memory. I found the vicar in his gardening clothes, tackling an overgrown hedge. He was a placid, comfortably built, rural cleric in late middle age, happy enough, it seemed, to take a break from his labours to satisfy my curiosity. And it was immediately obvious that he knew the name Esguard. For a very particular reason.
"You're the second person to enquire about the family this year. Are you
The church was damp and cold, despite the sunshine. The interior smelled of age and must and past times layered one upon another. Services were fortnightly, according to the porch notices. This was an obscure satellite parish, its affairs administered at arm's length by the vicar of Witchbourne Hinton ten miles away. The graveyard was the usual yew-fringed plot of old and new stones, more old than new, with lichen and decay well established: one weeping cherub, a few Celtic crosses and two or three large ledger-slab bed graves in the southern lee of the tower. Beyond lay farm fields and a sunlit descent into Blackmoor Vale. The only oddity that struck me was an ornate stone-arched gateway leading from the churchyard into what was now a sheep-cropped pasture. There was another, more modest rear entrance, still apparently in use, but this gate looked as if it had once served some significant purpose. The only building visible in that direction was a farm. The gate itself was sealed with a rusty chain and padlock.
I looked at the church. No obvious clues stared back at me. The postcard was surely one in its own right, though. It had brought me to this place. Why? What could a virtually redundant old church have to do with Marian? The man down the road hadn't recognized the name Esguard. It hadn't featured on the cleaning rota or the list of church wardens. But it was a rural location, as I'd suspected. And ... Then it came to me. There were names all around me, on the gravestones. "They were just as real as you and me," Marian had said of Vienna's fore gathered dead at the Zentralfriedhof. "Maybe more so."
I started a systematic search from grave to grave, scraping out the lettering on the older stones with a penknife, though even then some remained illegible. After half an hour with nothing to show for my efforts, I reached the grander ledger-stoned graves closest to the church.
They were also some of the oldest and most heavily weathered. It was as much as I could do to trace the inscriptions. But I persevered, progressing painstakingly from the first Colonel something something Wheeler, Royal something, plus wife and son, all dead within a few years of each other in the 1820s to the second, where I probed meticulously with the penknife at the faint lichen-blotched outline of a name until... ESGUARD. It was there in front of me. JOSLYN MARCH MONT ESGUARD. Marian had referred to her husband as Jose, surely short for Joslyn. And now I was looking at Joslyn Esguard's grave. There was no mention of a wife or children, only some kind of address Gaunt's Chase, Tollard Rising and a record of his death 23 June 1838, aged 62.
I sat staring at that slab for a long long time. Was this the only
Joslyn Esguard I could hope to find? Or was he an ancestor of the one I was actually looking for? I couldn't tell, but now at last I sensed I was on the track of an answer. I'd had to have the way pointed out to me, of course. I'd never have got this far on my own. Was Marian really my informant? If so, the postcard had to be a plea for help the only kind of plea she could risk or contrive. The Esguards were an old family. She'd said so herself. Yes, that had to be it. She was married to this dead Dorset squire's great-great-great-great-grandson. And now I had an address. Gaunt's Chase. "Esguards have lived there for generations."
But where was it? I asked at the post office down in Tollard Royal, but learned nothing. I tried the pub with the same result. Then I made for Witchbourne Hinton. Parish records didn't fade as fast as human memory. I found the vicar in his gardening clothes, tackling an overgrown hedge. He was a placid, comfortably built, rural cleric in late middle age, happy enough, it seemed, to take a break from his labours to satisfy my curiosity. And it was immediately obvious that he knew the name Esguard. For a very particular reason.
"You're the second person to enquire about the family this year. Are you
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