Death at Blenheim Palace

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Badger had been on the Blenheim lake, man and boy, for nearly seventy years. His father had maintained the Blenheim Fishery before him, and his grandfather and his great-grandfather before that, so that Blenheim’s lake was not only a family occupation, it ran in Badger’s blood.

The great, sinuous lake, which occupied an area of some hundred and fifty acres, had not always been there, of course. Before there was a lake, there had been only the pretty little river, the shallow, rippling River Glyme, meandering lazily between steep, wooded banks through Rosamund’s Meadow, where sheep were put to graze under the frowning brow of old Henry’s stone castle on the brink above.

That had been a great many years ago, centuries, even, but a pen-and-ink drawing of the drowned river, its meadows and cliffs and the looming castle, hung on the wall in Badger’s cottage. The drawing had been done in a rare moment of idleness by Badger’s great-great-grandfather, who had an artist’s eye and had left a yellowed portfolio of other sketches in mute and moving testimony to a forgotten past: the ancient buildings of Old Woodstock; a race meeting on the Four-Mile Course on the high ground north of the old king’s palace; and the palace itself, where the great Queen Elizabeth, then a princess and a threat to her Popish sister Mary, had been imprisoned in the gate house, which had been reduced to a ruin of rubble-stones by the later bombardments of the Civil War.

Even as a child, Badger had loved his great-great-grandfather’s drawings, and especially that of the river, for it was the only extant trace, it seemed to him, of a dim and ancient time, before powerful men laid their hands heavily upon the land, changing it and all of its creatures-a time before the Royal Park swallowed the village commons, before the Marlborough dukes and other large landowners did all they could to deprive free men of their freedoms, oppress the tenants, and strip the land of all that belonged of right to the people. Badger was no Radical, but he had heard that half of all England was owned by only a hundred and fifty families, and he agreed with Joseph Chamberlain, who described the gentry as an idle and parasitic class who toiled not, neither did they spin.

The green valley of the Glyme was gone now, and Rosamund’s Meadow and the steep hills and even the old castle, for during the time of Badger’s great-grandfather, the river had been dammed, submerging itself and its environs. It was the celebrated landscape architect, Capability Brown, who had achieved this feat, having been commissioned by the fourth Duke of Marlborough. The Duke (the same duke who collected the famous Marlborough Gemstones) had charged him with transforming the stark Blenheim woods, streams, and meadows into something greater and more impressive than the sum of their disparate parts. Brown had dammed the river and created the lake, a spectacular feature that captured the attention and the admiration of all who saw it. That had taken place over a hundred years ago, and now only a few remembered all the smaller beauties that had been sacrificed to achieve the larger.

Badger’s small stone cottage-the Fishery Cottage, where four generations of his family had lived-was located at the upper end of the lake. This area was called the Queen Pool, and being fairly shallow, with expanses of bullrush and bur-reed along the shores, was always busy with water birds: ducks and grebes and geese, as well as teal and wigeons and wintering cormorants. And of course, the dukes had always kept swans, which swam in elegant majesty the length and breadth of the lake.

But below the Grand Bridge, the water became much deeper, for the little Glyme had been edged there with tall cliffs. This was the part of the lake in which Badger was most interested-professionally interested, that is, for it was his duty to ensure a continued supply of fish by restocking, when he judged it necessary. It was also his duty, each day, to provide sufficient fresh fish for the Duke’s table, which he did by setting nets and dead lines, and spending several pleasant hours a day with a fishing pole.

Depending on the time of year and Badger’s luck, the Duke might dine on tench, rudd, roach, perch, or (His Grace’s favorite) pike. Badger, who was past seventy, had fished for five dukes: three Georges, a John, and this latter-day Charles-Sunny, to his family. All the dukes, to Badger’s mind, had been bad ’uns, which he attributed to their living in that monstrous palace and having more money in their pockets than mortal man ought, so that they felt little compassion for the plight of ordin’ry folk. And while they might consider themselves grand sportsmen, they were not sportsmen at all, in Badger’s scornful view, for they had no idea of the habits of fish, fowl, or game, and shot at (and often missed) only what was driven up before them.

But the present Duke, the ninth, was the worst, and Badger’s animosity toward him had grown deeper and darker with each passing year. The man cared only for the palace and the Park, and took no thought for people. He was, Badger thought, a very cold fish. This was proved by the fact that the Fishery Cottage had seen not one bit of repair since the early days of the eighth Duke, and the cottages of the Farm’s laborers were in an equally dilapidated state. And while the Duke’s pheasants fed on bread and hard-boiled eggs and nested in clean, sweet-smelling straw, the cottagers lived with empty larders and leaking roofs. Moreover, the Duke was not friendly to the village, and kept the Duchess-the richest woman in the world, as everyone knew-from doing anything more than making the usual courtesy calls on the sick.

It was no wonder, then, that the entire countryside shared Badger’s view that the ninth Duke was a hateful and mean-spirited man. And no wonder that this view fostered another: that, as the Duke treated them meanly, so meanly should he be treated in return.

And this explained why only some of the fish Badger took found their way to the Duke’s table, the remainder going instead to the tables of the poor in Woodstock, where the bread from the Blenheim kitchen also went. And why he had taken to fishing once or twice a week at night, and laying a half-dozen extra dead lines for pike in the deepest and coldest part of the lake, and setting another trammel net, some twenty yards long and six feet wide, not far from the sluicegate in the dam. All this required restocking the lake rather more frequently than one unaware of these activities might have supposed necessary, but the Duke didn’t notice.

It was mostly at night that Badger tended the dead lines and net, especially when the moon was the palest sliver or was beclouded and gave a fitful light, when the quiet lake was a sheet of beaten silver and there was only the call of the owl and the night jar to break the silence, and the soft plashing of the lines as he took them up, unhooked his catch, rebaited with small live fish, and dropped them down again.

Tonight, Badger had taken his mackintosh with him, for the storm that had been gathering since late afternoon seemed about to break. It was past ten and gone full dark, and the freshening breeze brought with it the smell of rain. Honest folk were all abed, except, of course, for the Duke and his guests in the palace, where lights were showing in the windows of the east wing.

But then, Badger knew, they weren’t honest, not a one of ’em above taking what didn’t belong to them. Like the lady he had caught that morning prowling in his boathouse, obviously looking for whatever she could steal. Or the girl who rowed his yellow boat across the lake and let it go adrift, so that it fetched up against the dam, where he had to go and retrieve it. Or the other, who…

He grinned and lit one of the Duke’s cigarettes. O’course, he’d been paid for that, and well enough to keep his mouth shut.

Other folk who, like Badger, were no more honest than they had to be, might also be abroad, for there was a brisk local trade in the Duke’s hares and rabbits and squirrels and even an occasional deer, as well as the Duke’s hen pheasants and their tasty eggs, in season. And while His Grace’s keepers should have been out on armed patrol, preserving His Grace’s peace, they generally preferred to stay (with the other honest folk) quietly in their beds and let those others own the night. Without the bounty of the Duke’s Park, Woodstock’s poor would have been much hungrier. There was an irony here that did not escape Badger.

The quarter moon, beset with moving clouds, was making a poor showing just over the trees, and the warm breeze carried a light pelting of rain. Hearing thunder rumbling somewhere in the distance, Badger put on his mackintosh. He had already brought up one large pike-twelve pounds, if it was an ounce-and his fingers were beginning to tingle the way they always did when he was about to bring up an even bigger one.

The great fierce pike-they could grow to nearly fifty pounds-inhabited the deepest part of the lake, its coldest, darkest waters. They sported a formidable set of jagged, knifelike teeth set in powerful, springlike jaws that could catch and hold the largest prey, alive or dead. The occasional guest who fished on the lake rarely caught one, for pike were shy and elusive, easily spooked by the shadow of a boat above them, or even by the moving track of clouds across the water. This was why dead lines were so effective, and while the Duke’s gentlemen guests sneered at them as “unsporting,” that was of no concern to Badger. His purpose was to catch these illicit fish, not just for the extra coins they put in his pocket but for the deep and rich satisfaction he felt in his soul when he reflected on the fact that His Grace’s fish-indeed, the very best and the largest of his fish, the fish he most coveted for his table-were going to feed His Grace’s poorest neighbors. And that, sirs, he thought to himself with pleasure, is sport enough.

But Badger’s tingling fingers seemed to have misled him after all, for that first large pike was the only one yielded up by the lake. The hooks rebaited and the lines replaced, Badger took up the oars and, keeping to the tree-lined shore, rowed downstream toward the dam and the sluicegate, where the trammel net lay. If all else failed, the net, well hidden in the weeds, would certainly fill the basket in the bottom of his boat with tench and roach and perch, which would do as well among the poor as pike. And there was just time to clear it out before the storm broke. Already the rain was coming harder, and he was glad for the mackintosh.

In a few moments, he had reached the edge of the shallower, weed-filled stretch where the trammel net was staked. He shipped the oars, stood up in the boat, and took up the twelve-foot wooden pole that he used to propel the rowboat through the weeds. When he reached the net, which was held up by large flat corks, he laid the pole aside and began to haul it in.

But the net was extraordinarily heavy in his hands, either with the weight of a tremendous lot of fish, or having snagged something under the surface of the water, so that the more he pulled, the more difficult pulling became. Finally, he let it go and began to pole along the length of it, looking (as he now thought) for the snag and thinking that he should have to light the bull’s-eye lantern he had brought along with him, to see how to work the net free, if he could without tearing it. And if he could not, he should have to come back tomorrow night, when the weather was more kindly.

A few yards along, he saw where the net was sagging, weighted by something beneath the water. Cursing under his breath, Badger took the net in both his hands and pulled up on it with great effort. At that moment, a jagged flash of lightning lit the sky, and he saw that the net was not snagged on something, but that something large and inert was caught in it-and not a fish, either, for the net was designed to hold fish alive and wriggling. It might be a submerged tree branch, except that the foresters kept the Park trees so neatly groomed that this did not seem likely. Bent double, breathing hard, Badger hauled, and stopped, and peered down into the water. And then hauled again, harder and faster and with a mounting panic, as he realized that the large, inert thing that was caught and held in the net was a human body.

There was another flash of lightning and a thudding, rolling rumble of thunder. As the horrible thing rose toward him out of the depths, the dead flesh gleaming whitely in the dark water like the bloated belly of a dead carp, the mass of long, loose reddish hair floating like trailing weed, Badger saw to his horror that it was a woman, and that she had not died by drowning. Her throat had been slashed from ear to ear, and the pike had been at her face.

At that moment, the heavens opened and the rain came crashing down.