The Second Sleep Read online

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  About the Author

  Robert Harris is the author of twelve bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy – Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator – Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave and most recently, Munich. Several of his books have been filmed, including The Ghost, which was directed by Roman Polanski. His work has been translated into forty languages and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in West Berkshire with his wife, Gill Hornby.

  Also by Robert Harris

  FICTION

  Fatherland

  Enigma

  Archangel

  Pompeii

  Imperium

  The Ghost

  Lustrum

  The Fear Index

  An Officer and a Spy

  Dictator

  Conclave

  Munich

  NON-FICTION

  Good and Faithful Servant: The Unauthorized Biography of Bernard Ingham

  Selling Hitler

  The Making of Neil Kinnock

  Gotcha: Media, the Government and the Falklands Crisis

  A Higher Form of Killing (with Jeremy Paxman)

  To Sam

  Until the close of the early modern era, Western Europeans on most evenings experienced two major intervals of sleep … The initial interval of slumber was usually referred to as ‘first sleep’ … The succeeding interval was called ‘second’ or ‘morning’ sleep … Both phases lasted roughly the same length of time, with individuals waking some time after midnight before returning to rest.

  A. Roger Ekirch, At Day’s Close: A History of Nighttime

  It was impossible to dig more than a foot or two deep about the town fields and gardens without coming upon some tall soldier or other of the Empire, who had lain there in his silent unobtrusive rest for a space of fifteen hundred years. He was mostly found lying on his side, in an oval scoop in the chalk, like a chicken in its shell; his knees drawn up to his chest; sometimes with the remains of his spear against his arm; a fibula or brooch of bronze on his breast or forehead; an urn at his knees, a jar at his throat, a bottle at his mouth … They had lived so long ago, their time was so unlike the present, their hopes and motives were so widely removed from ours, that between them and the living there seemed to stretch a gulf too wide even for a spirit to pass.

  Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge

  CHAPTER ONE

  The hidden valley

  LATE ON THE afternoon of Tuesday the ninth of April in the Year of Our Risen Lord 1468, a solitary traveller was to be observed picking his way on horseback across the wild moorland of that ancient region of south-western England known since Saxon times as Wessex. If this young man’s expression was troubled, we may grant he had good cause. More than an hour had elapsed since he had last seen a living soul. Soon it would be dusk, and if he was caught out of doors after curfew he risked a night in jail.

  He had stopped to ask directions in the market town of Axford, where a group of rough-looking fellows had been drinking outside an inn beneath the painted sign of a swan. After grinning between themselves at the strangeness of his accent, and imitating the refinement of his yeses and yous, they had assured him that to reach his destination all he needed to do was to ride straight towards the setting sun. But now he was beginning to suspect this might have been another piece of local mischief. For no sooner had he passed the high walls of the town’s prison, where three executed felons hung rotting from their gibbets, and crossed the river and entered open country, than heavy clouds had blown across the western sky, obliterating the sunset. Behind him the tall spire of Axford’s church had long since submerged below the horizon. Ahead, the road twisted and dipped between unpopulated ridges of dark woodland and stretches of wild heath daubed with streaks of yellow gorse before dwindling into the murk.

  Presently, in the way that often in those parts signals a change in the weather, it became very still. All the birds went quiet, even the huge red kites with their incongruous high-pitched cries that had pursued him for miles. Chilly veils of sodden grey mist drifted across the moor and draped themselves around him, and for the first time since he set off early that morning, he felt moved to pray aloud for protection to his name saint, who had borne the infant Christ on his back across the river.

  After a while, the road began to ascend a wooded hillside. As it climbed, so it dwindled, until it was little better than a cart track – ridged brown earth covered loosely by stones, shards of soft blue slate and yellow gravel braided by the running rainwater. From the steep banks on either side rose the scent of wild herbs – lungwort, lemon balm, mustard garlic – while the overhanging branches drooped so low he had to duck and fend them off with his arm, dislodging further showers of fresh cold water that drenched his head and trickled down his sleeve. Something shrieked and flashed emerald in the gloom, and his heart seemed to jump halfway up his throat, even though he realised almost at once that it was nothing more sinister than a common parakeet. He shut his eyes in relief.

  When he opened them again, he saw a brownish object up ahead. At first he mistook it for a fallen tree. He wiped his sleeve across his face and leaned forward in his saddle. A figure in a hessian smock, cowled like a monk, was pushing a handcart. He dug his knees into the flanks of his mount and urged her on. ‘God be with you!’ he shouted down at the curious apparition. ‘I am a stranger here.’

  The figure pushed ahead even harder, pretending not to have heard, so that he was obliged to pass it once again. This time he wheeled around to block the narrow lane. He noticed the cart was piled with wool bales. He loosened the neck strings of his cape. ‘I mean you no harm. Christopher Fairfax is my name.’ He pulled down the wet fabric and lifted his beard to show the white cloth tied around his neck. ‘I am a man of God.’

  A damp thin male face squinted up at him through the rain. Slowly and reluctantly the hood was drawn back to reveal a head entirely bald. Water ran off the shiny dome, upon the crown of which curved a blood-coloured crescent-shaped birthmark.

  ‘Is this the road to Addicott St George?’

  The man scratched at his birthmark and screwed up his eyes as if making a great effort of memory. Eventually he said, ‘Ye means Adcut?’

  Fairfax – dripping water, losing patience – answered, ‘Yes, very well, then – Adcut.’

  ‘No. There’s a fork, a half-mile back. Ye needs t’take t’other.’ The man looked him up and down. A knowing expression crept across his face – a slow, rural slyness, as if he were measuring a beast at market. ‘Ye’re young for the work.’

  ‘And yet old enough, I think!’ Fairfax forced a smile and bowed. ‘Peace be upon you.’

  He tugged at the bridle and turned his elderly grey mare around, riding her carefully back down the watery track until he found the p
lace where the road forked. It was almost impossible to spot unless one had been warned to look for it. So those wretches in Axford had indeed been trying to get him lost – a trick they’d never have dared attempt had they known he was a priest. He ought to tell the local sheriffs. Yes, on his way home he would do exactly that. He would bring the whole weight of the law down upon their stupid rustic numbskulls – imprisonment, a fine, a day in the stocks being pelted by stones and shit …

  This second track was even steeper. Ancient trees on either side, already in full leaf, leaned in no more than a couple of yards above his head as if to confer. Their entwined branches shut out the light. Inside this dank tunnel night seemed already to have fallen. His horse skittered and refused to carry him further. He wrapped his arms around her neck and whispered in her ear, ‘Come on, May!’ But she was a grumpy beast, stubborn with age, more mule than horse, and in the end he had to dismount and lead her.

  On foot, he felt even more vulnerable. He had twenty pounds in his purse for expenses, counted out a coin at a time by the Dean the previous evening, and many were the travellers who had been murdered for half as much. His boots slithered in the mud as he dragged at the bridle. Oh, but this was a fine joke, he thought bitterly. The bishop might rarely smile, but that did not mean he entirely lacked a certain sense of humour. To send a man off thirty miles, to the furthest edge of the diocese, on such an errand, and on a clapped-out horse …

  He pictured his colleagues gathering for their customary early supper – seated on the long benches in the chapter house in front of the huge fire, the bishop bowing his narrow grizzled head to say grace, his face in the blaze still the colour of an oyster, a flicker of malicious merriment in those small dark eyes. ‘And lastly we pray for our brother in Christ, Christopher Fairfax, serving our holy mother the Church tonight … in a far-off land!’

  Some wretched nearby brook seemed to gurgle with laughter.

  But then, just as he was despairing, a pale glow appeared at the end of the overgrown lane and after a few more minutes of weary dragging, he emerged into what was left of the day’s light to discover himself on the crest of a hill. To his right the land fell away sharply. Small fields with low dry-stone walls enclosed a scattering of cows, sheep and goats. Ramshackle wooden stalls had been weathered by the winter to the colour of pewter. At the bottom of the valley, about a mile distant, was a river with a bridge. Next to it, a small settlement of mostly thatched roofs was centred around a square stone church tower. Here and there, feathery lines of white-grey smoke rose and bled into the darker grey of the sky. The clouds above the enclosing hills were low and racing, like waves fleeing a storm out at sea. It had stopped raining. He fancied he could smell the chimneys. He imagined light, warmth, company, food. In the wet fresh evening air his spirits revived. Even May’s mood improved sufficiently that she consented to let him remount her.

  It was nearly dark by the time they trotted into the centre of the village. May’s shod hooves clattered over the arched stone bridge that spanned the river and splashed along the muddy narrow street. His high vantage point enabled him to peer into the whitewashed cottages on either side. Some had small front gardens with white wooden fences. Most opened directly on to the road. In a couple of windows, candles glowed; in one, he glimpsed the full pale moon of a face, quickly eclipsed by a curtain. He halted at the lychgate and looked about him. A cobbled path led through the graveyard to the portico of a church that he guessed must have stood square on this land for at least a thousand years; more likely fifteen hundred. Wrapped around the middle of the flagpole on the top of the tower, the red and white standard of England and St George hung damply at half-mast.

  On the far side of the graveyard, beyond the wall, was a tumbling two-storey building with a thatched roof. On the threshold, now that he looked more closely, he could just make out the gaunt figure of a woman dressed in black, holding a lantern, watching him. For a few moments they regarded one another across the lichened tombstones. Then she lifted the light a little and moved it back and forth. He raised his hand, spurred the mare and rode around the perimeter of the churchyard towards the waiting figure.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Father Fairfax makes the acquaintance of Father Thomas Lacy

  SHE TOOK HIM upstairs to see Father Lacy right away. He barely had time to lay down his bag in the passage, shed his dripping cape and pull off his muddy boots before he was following her, stiff and bow-legged from his hours in the saddle, up the narrow wooden staircase to the landing.

  Over her shoulder she informed him that she was Mrs Agnes Budd, housekeeper, and that she had been watching out for him all day. Beneath her deference he detected an undertone of reproach.

  He had to dip his head to pass through the low doorway. The bedchamber was cold and smelled of chloride of lime. The window was open wide to the bluish dusk; on the floorboards beneath its leaded panes, the rain had puddled. A black coffin lid was propped against a chest of drawers. The coffin itself was on the bed. Candles stood on the nightstands on either side of the heavy wooden bed frame, along with a book and a pair of spectacles, as if the dead man had just finished reading. The flames of the candles flickered in the draught.

  Cautiously he approached the coffin and peered down. The corpse was long and thin, packed in sawdust and bound up tight in a papery white linen shroud, like a chrysalis ready to hatch. A white lace handkerchief covered the face. He glanced at the housekeeper. She nodded. He took the two upper corners of the handkerchief between his thumbs and forefingers and lifted it away.

  In his short existence he had seen plenty of corpses. They could scarcely be avoided in England at that time. They hung suspended in iron cages, like the wretched convicts in Axford, to deter the unlawful. They turned up overnight in doorways or on patches of wasteland, especially in winter, and lay there until someone could be bothered to pay the night soil man to remove them. During the recent outbreak of the putrid fever he had administered the last rites to babies even as he had closed the eyes of their grandparents. But never had he beheld a body such as this. The nose was broken, the eye sockets bruised. A deep gash ran across the forehead. The right ear was mangled, as if it had been chewed half off. Although an attempt had been made to mask these disfigurements with powdered white lead, the wounds shone greenish through the dust. The effect was grotesque. Unusually for a cleric, Lacy had no beard, merely grey stubble.

  Bending to touch his head in benediction, Fairfax detected the maggoty stink of decay and drew back quickly. The old priest ought to have been in his grave some while ago.

  ‘He died how long since?’

  ‘A week, Father. The weather has been warm.’

  ‘And what hour is the burial?’

  ‘Eleven, sir.’

  ‘Well, I fear it cannot come too soon.’ He replaced the handkerchief over the broken face, stepped away and made the sign of the cross. ‘Peace be upon him. May the Lord’s faithful servant rest in the arms of Christ. Amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ said the housekeeper.

  ‘Come, Mrs Budd – let us cover the coffin.’

  Between them they carried the heavy lid over to the bed and laid it on top of the box. Good plain carpentry, Fairfax thought – honest English oak painted black, the brass handles set along its sides the only ostentation, and a tight enough fit to hold in the stench. Agnes pulled a cloth from her belt and wiped it clean. They contemplated it for a few moments, then she noticed the puddle beneath the window. She muttered under her breath and went over and mopped it up, then wrung her cloth out into the garden below. As she reached to close the window, he said, ‘Best maybe to leave it open.’

  On the landing, he took out his handkerchief and pretended to blow his nose. He could still taste the smell. ‘The marks upon his face …? Poor fellow! How did he sustain such wounds?’

  ‘He received ’em when he fell, sir.’

  ‘It must have been a rare fall.’

  ‘A hundred feet, or so they says.’

 
‘They?’

  ‘Them that found him, sir – Captain Hancock, Mr Keefer, the church clerk, and Mr Gann, the blacksmith, among others.’

  ‘What time of day was this?’

  ‘He left the parsonage last Tuesday afternoon with his trowel in his hand and his strong boots on and never came back. A search was raised and his body carried home on Wednesday evening.’

  ‘He walked much?’

  ‘Aye, sir. He walked most places. Seldom rode. Gave up his horse a few years back.’

  She led him downstairs and into the parlour, where a meagre fire burned in the grate, insufficient to take the chill off the room. A table had been laid for one.

  ‘Ye’ll be wanting supper, Father?’

  An hour earlier he had been ravenous. Now the thought of food turned his stomach. ‘Thank you. But first I should attend to my horse.’

  He went back along the stone passage. Already he was calculating his escape. He was trying to remember the name of the inn he had stopped outside in Axford. The Swan, that was it. If the burial was at eleven, he could leave the village at one, and easily be at the Swan by supper time.

  The front door had a heavy lock, shiny with newness. He opened it and stepped out into the small garden. The damp and glassy evening was fragrant with the scent of wet grass and woodsmoke. May had gone. He had left her tethered to the gatepost. Had he not tied her properly? He peered around the darkened village. No light showed. The deep country silence pressed like wadding against his ears.

  Behind him Agnes said, ‘Don’t bother thyself, Father.’ Her voice in the quietness made him jump. ‘Rose will’ve stabled her.’

  ‘That’s kind. Please thank her for me.’

  He felt obscurely irritated, for reasons he could not rightly specify. He picked up his bag and followed the housekeeper back into the parlour.

  ‘Now, Mrs Budd,’ he said, trying to be businesslike, ‘a few questions require settling, if I may.’ He set his bag upon the table, rummaged through it and pulled out his pen case and a few sheaves of paper. ‘First matters first …’ he smiled at her, trying to set her at ease, ‘is there ink in the house?’