Patricia Wyndham was staring up at a small grouping or series of paintings, most of them scenes from village life in Medieval times. The paints had faded over the centuries but they were still vibrant enough to admire and study. She was even staring up at the Duchess’s favorite series of Medieval scenes, the first one depicting a beautiful young maiden surrounded by her servants, all gowned in flowing white, a white wimple, high and conical with a pointed top balanced on her head, her pale angel’s hair cascading down her back. She was seated atop what appeared to be a stone fence, leaning forward slightly, listening to a young gallant who sat at her feet playing a lute. The Duchess had always fancied she could almost hear the sounds coming from that lute, so spellbound did the maiden appear. She looked at the next scene, this one similar, but the young gallant was standing in this one and reaching upward to pluck something that seemed to be hidden in the thick branches of an oak tree. What was he reaching for?
She looked down and saw that her mother-in-law was still in rapt contemplation of the ceiling and continued her own perusal. In the third scene, a servant was handing the maiden a cup of water and the Duchess saw now that the maiden hadn’t been seated on a stone fence, no, it was the ledge of the top of a well. The young man had pulled a lute from the branches of the oak tree. A lute in an oak tree?
Suddenly she froze. Her heart began to pound. Oh no, was it possible? She shook her head, then stared upward again. In the next scene, the young man was holding both lutes, one in each hand, and he was still smiling at the maiden, as if he were offering her one of the lutes, his attention still firmly fixed on her. In the next scene, he was still holding the lutes, but now he was looking over his shoulder. Someone was evidently there and the young man looked frightened. He’d taken the slender necks of both lutes and pressed the instruments together, back-to-back, holding them in one hand. A lute was perfectly flat on one side and bulged out on the other. Why, then, didn’t he press the two flat sides together? Why the pregnant sides? It was awkward and difficult to hold them that way.
“Hello, my dear. I trust you’re feeling up to snuff now? Of a certainty you are, else my sweet son wouldn’t have allowed you to wander about alone. I’m looking at the ceiling. When I first visited Chase Park so many years ago, I was drawn to this room because of the paintings. So many of them, beginning with scenes from the Conqueror’s time and moving up into the early years of the sixteenth century. In truth it was those last scenes that particularly fascinated me, for in some of them are my brave Mary, Queen of Scots, so stouthearted, so noble in the face of so much betrayal. You see there are no paintings of her beyond a child, so the artist must have stopped around 1550. But then I realized, just three days ago, that there was more to the paintings than just the artist’s renderings of historical times. Have you seen it yet, Duchess? Ah, yes, I see that you do. Amazing, isn’t it?”
The Duchess jumped, then looked down at her mother-in-law, who was still flat on her back. “It’s easier to see everything from here. Come down, Duchess, and I’ll show you.”
The Duchess stretched out on her back next to her mother-in-law. “Now, my dear, tell me what you see.”
“The maiden is sitting on the rim of the well and the oak tree is overhead. Just like the clues. Now, what about the Janus-faced nines and the monster?”
“The nine business has bothered me no end. It was just yesterday that I realized the truth of the matter. Look at the lutes, Duchess.”
“Yes, the lutes. I was just wondering why he was holding them back-to-back, surely difficult since they’re so fat.”
“Think about music, my dear, think about what you would have if the young man were holding them facing each other.”
“Oh goodness, it’s not about nines, it’s about music! Those are the nines, the Janus-faced nines.”
“I believe so. I’ve played the pianoforte all my life and I swear to you this is the first time I am truly thankful that my mama forced me to read more music than to dance in the moonlight, which I was finally able to do with Marcus’s father, that wonderful man. Do you know music, Duchess?”
“Yes,” she said, so excited she could barely speak, “holding the lutes that way doesn’t refer to nines, but to bass clefs, back-to-back bass clefs. Oh goodness, they look like nines. I’ve looked at these paintings since I was a child, yet I’ve never really looked, if you know what I mean. Even after knowing the clues, it simply never occurred to me that these paintings—oh goodness.”
“Yes, indeed. The paintings are so familiar to everyone, but they were painted for a reason, at least these Medieval scenes were. Now, look at the next scene. The young man is looking at someone, someone who frightens him—”
“The monster.”
“Yes, the monster,” Patricia Wyndham said with a good deal of satisfaction. “The young man is now pointing to the lute. At what, I wonder?”
“The bass clef, that’s what he’s trying to tell us. See, he’s pointing into the lower tree branches, then at the second lute. Ah, ma’am, we’ve been so very blind. The clues were here all the time, here for centuries, yet no one has ever thought, ever dreamed, except you, ma’am. I believe you’re quite the smartest person I know.”
“Thank you, dear child, but we don’t have that wretched treasure yet.”
“May I inquire what you, Duchess, and you, Mrs. Wyndham, are doing on your backs on the newly swept Aubusson carpet?”
“Yes, Spears, you certainly may. Come here and lie beside me and look up. You, my dear man, are in for a revelation. You asked me if I knew anything and yes, I most definitely know something now, as does the Duchess.”
Some ten minutes later Badger looked into The Green Cube Room, looking for Mr. Spears. He blinked. Mr. Spears, the Duchess, and Mrs. Wyndham were stretched out on their backs, all staring up at the ceiling. Esmee, the earl’s cat, was sprawled atop Spears’s chest, quite at her ease.
“What in the name of the devil and all his minions is going on here?”
“Mr. Badger, just excellent. Mrs. Wyndham doesn’t know everything, but she’s very close. Come here and lie beside me, and we’ll tell you.”
When Marcus strolled by a few moments later, looking for his wife, he heard Spears saying, “But who is the monster?”
He looked into the Green Cube Room and stared. The Duchess said without moving, “Marcus, do come here. We’ve nearly got the Wyndham treasure solved. Come and lie here beside me.”
He obliged her and stared up at the paintings. “Good God. I’ve looked at all those scenes over the years, admired them and the brilliance of the paint, the skill of the artist or artists, but I never really looked at them, never even thought to—”
“I know,” the Duchess said. “Me neither. Even if we’d known about the Wyndham treasure, I doubt we’d have connected it up with these paintings. But your mama did. That’s why she was lying here three days ago. She realized there just might be a connection between the treasure clues and these paintings. Do you know how old this room is, Marcus?”
“We’re in the oldest part of the house. I believe the Green Cube Room was one of just a handful left standing after the fire early in the last century.”
“Actually, my dear son, I just read all the journals left by Arthur Wyndham, who was then the third Viscount Barresford. The most god-awful boring accounts of his life you can imagine, but he was informative in the third diary. The fire was in 1723 and most of the Elizabethan manor was destroyed, all except for the Green Cube Room and the library, where you found the tome. They were literally the only rooms in this entire wing that held together. Arthur Wyndham said that distinctly. He wrote in his diary: ‘I have only the Green Cube Room and my library left and even they are so blackened with smoke I wonder if they will ever be as they were again. Although they have never been to my liking, they did survive and thus I’ll return them to what they were.’
“Arthur Wyndham also wrote that his father and his grandfather had both admired the paintings on the ceilings and so
he had them restored. Thank God he was a sensitive man, else all would have been lost.”
Marcus said thoughtfully, “Why is it called the Green Cube Room? I remember wondering as a child and even asking, but no one knew, not even my uncle.”
“I asked too,” the Duchess said, coming up onto her elbow, felt the pulling in her side and quickly lay back down again. “No one knew. Sampson suggested it might refer to the old panes of glass in the windows. He believed it likely the windows were mullioned and perhaps set with green squares of glass.”
“Yes, green glass, that would be it.” This was from Maggie, who was sitting with her hands wrapped around her knees behind Spears. “There’s something else. The room itself—don’t you see? It’s perfectly square.”
“Ah,” said Badger. “When the sun shines through the green glass into a perfectly square room then—”
“Yes, you’d have an illusion of a green cube, Mr. Badger,” Spears said. “Colored glass was quite popular years ago.”
“That could be it,” Patricia Wyndham said. “All old houses have rooms named the oddest things, like the Presence Chamber at Hardwick Hall, a grand room that’s so cold you shiver the whole time you’re in it.”
“Yes,” Badger said. “That’s from a ghost, no doubt.”
“Then there’s the Dial Room at Old Place Lindfield—I haven’t the foggiest notion where they got that name—then there’s the Punch Room at Cotehele House, where, I suppose, gentlemen imbibed liberally.”
“Yes,” Marcus said. “I think Maggie’s right. She’s solved the key to the name of this room.”
“Ah, look, Mr. Spears,” Badger said, pointing straight upward, “I see the well clearly now, and if I’m not mistaken there’s your bucket, Duchess, wood and bound in leather. But where’s that damnable monster?”
“Offstage, to the left, or nowhere at all,” Marcus said. “I’ve studied the rest of the scenes and there’s no horn-headed beast, no vile green gargoyle, nothing at all.”
“Oh there’s a monster, all right,” the Duchess said. “He’s there, even though we can’t see him. I can feel him, can’t you? Just look at the young man’s face in that final scene. He knows something awful is about to happen. It has to be the monster.”
“So,” Patricia Wyndham said, “in the first scene, our maiden is sitting on the edge of the well. The young man is playing his lute for her. He fetches another lute from the oak branches overhead. He then presses the lutes together and we’ve got our Janus-faced nines or Janus-faced bass clefs, and as the Duchess says, the monster’s there, just not seen by us. That takes care of all the clues.”
“Does it cover everything in your dream, Duchess?” Marcus lightly stroked his fingertips over her arm.
“I believe so,” she said, giving him a smile that made her mother-in-law momentarily forget the clues and the treasure and stare at them with delight and relief.
“That treacherous monk in my dream, or whatever it was, even hinted that the Janus-faced nines weren’t necessarily nines.”
“So much roundabout flummery,” Patricia Wyndham said. “Why didn’t they just give the treasure over to Lockridge Wyndham? So much nonsense and convolution and confusion. No wonder none of the succeeding generations of Wyndhams found a thing, and even forgot about it.”
“I daresay, madam,” Spears said, “that the monks weren’t alone in determining the disposal of the treasure. The Wyndham ancestor was certainly involved in hiding it, in providing clues to its whereabouts. Obviously he couldn’t show himself with sudden boundless wealth or the king and Cromwell would have heard of it. Given the uncertainty of the times, they would have most certainly removed the treasure, and quite probably his head along with it.”
“I’ll wager,” Badger said, “that old Lockridge Wyndham died before he could tell his children where the treasure was. Surely they must have known about it. It just got lost in succeeding generations.”
“And the monks wrote two separate books about it,” Marcus said. “One of them doubtless given to Lockridge Wyndham and the other given to whom? We’ll never know. At least it did end up with Burgess.”
“Others read it probably but didn’t realize what it was meant to say,” Maggie said. “Now, this is all well and good and a bloody wonderful history lesson, Mr. Spears, but where’s the Wyndham treasure?”
“There must be a small hidden space,” Marcus said. “That small space, my friends, must somehow be attached to this room. Of course, we haven’t a single clue what the treasure actually is.”
“Or the treasure could be above the room,” Badger said. He pointed upward. “The clue was to reach overhead for the nines, which the young man did. Then there’s the well, and that’s where the monster is, and perhaps the treasure.”
“But a well goes down, not up,” Patricia Wyndham said.
“Then,” the Duchess said, rising to her feet, unconsciously holding her side, “the hidden room or space is directly below the oak tree and the well, under the floor.”
“Not quite,” Patricia Wyndham said. “To be precise, and I believe that precision is quite the key here, we must look right beneath those Janus-faced nines.”
“Good God,” Marcus said. “Sampson, fetch Horatio.”
“Oh yes, Mr. Sampson, do hurry,” Maggie said. “I’m so keen to find the bloody treasure.”
The Aubusson carpet was rolled neatly against the far side of the room. All the furniture was moved away from a large area right below the Medieval paintings. Horatio, a carpenter with magic in his hands, was on his knees, his ear close to the wooden floor, lightly tapping his hammer. Suddenly, he raised his head and grinned, showing a wide space between his two front teeth. “M’lord, there’s no support beam running all along here. I think I’ve found the empty space.” He carefully began prying up the thick wooden strips of oak. Maggie was fidgeting, wanting him to hurry, cursing him and his persnickety ways. Who cared about the damned floor, who cared if it got scratched, wasn’t it covered with that huge old carpet anyway? But Spears shushed her, saying, “Perhaps you could accelerate your hammer’s momentum just a bit more, Horatio. It isn’t a sacred burial mound you’re digging up, after all.”
It broke the tension, but just for a moment.
“Now, now, I’ve got to go easy. I don’t want to splinter this old wood. Ah, yes, there it comes up, all clean and tidy.”
“Quickly,” Patricia Wyndham said. “Bring candles, Sampson!”
The space was made large enough for a man to ease down through the opening, which Marcus did, since he was the earl, though there was much grumbling, particularly from the women. “It’s filthy and black down here, Mother, you’d hate it. There are more spiders than you can imagine. And you, Maggie, you would have ripped your gown for certain and gotten nasty spiderwebs in your hair. As for you, Duchess, you just keep your mouth shut. You’re not well enough yet to fight with all the myriad gloom and bugs down here. Maggie, hand me down a branch of candles. I can’t see a bloody thing with just one.”
Then there was silence.
“Do you see anything, Marcus?” He looked up briefly to see his wife’s face peering down into the dark space.
“Son, speak up, or do you want your old mother to expire from unrequited silence?”
The space was long and narrow, but very confined, not more than four feet high. He had to bend over almost double. The space seemed to stretch on endlessly, perhaps the entire length of the Green Cube Room. He held up the candles and clearly saw the floor beams. There didn’t seem to be anything else, just blackness, choking dust, spiders, and enough cobwebs to smother a battalion. He continued searching, hunched over like an old man. Then the space ended after about twenty feet, obviously at the end of the Green Cube Room above. There was something leaning against a wall. The something wasn’t a treasure chest. He drew closer, holding the branch of candles out in front of him. He drew to a startled stop before it. He called out even as he choked on the airless dust, “Oh my God, what the hell
is this? A skeleton, yes, so it appears, but how’s that possible?”
Marcus held the candle closer and drew a deep breath. It wasn’t a skeleton, but rather a dummy, a figure probably stuffed with moldy old straw, a man to be hung in effigy, for there was a rope around his neck and the rope was drawn up tight and nailed over the dummy’s head to the beam above it. The figure was dressed in fancy clothes from Elizabethan times. Marcus lightly touched the lace on a sleeve and it fell into dust. He held the branch of candles closer. The cloth face had been carefully painted: there was greed and avarice and cruelty on that stingy, heavy face, and dissipation and utter arrogance in those glass eyes staring sightlessly up at him.
He realized with a jolt that it was the king himself, Henry VIIIth, his face very much like the portrait painted of him by Holbein, only a bit younger. Marcus thought idly that it had taken a lot of straw stuffed in the frame to fill up the king’s stout body. But why here? Hidden away?
He heard voices above him, all of them demanding, yelling, calling out, even the Duchess’s voice, and she sounded very testy. He grinned, saying, “The skeleton is really a man probably stuffed with straw, Henry the Eighth to be exact, all ready to hang in effigy with a rope around its neck. Just a moment, there’s more. Hold on.”
It was at that moment he realized the fat figure, all outfitted in purple velvet and ermine and a ruff that was wider than a wagon wheel around the fat neck, was too fat. It wasn’t stuffed with straw. No, it was stuffed with something else. He gently reached inside an opening above the ruff at the neck and pulled out a long string of the most exquisite pearls he’d ever seen. He pressed his hands against the rotting material and felt the shape of more jewels, coins, even several outlines of rosaries, a scepter. His fingers made out the curve of a gold-coin plate and a chalice. There was also the heavy outline of a book, probably the Bible, its cover no doubt embedded with jewels. There were most likely other precious Church relics as well stuffed in that body. It wasn’t moldy straw, it was the treasure from St. Swale’s Abbey and it had been here stuffed in that fat figure of King Henry VIIIth for well over three hundred years.