Chapter 3: The Darkness of Boars Hill

The Misadventures of Leighton Fig

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Chapter 3—The Darkness of Boars Hill

The rain fell steady and slanted. The wind pushed raindrops against the windows in rhythmic sheets. A fog fell on the tangled woods of Tulgey Manor. The estate house sat deep in the recesses of Boars Hill, a historic countryside three miles west of Oxford’s City Center.

The misty dusk light painted the Great Room of Tulgey Manor with steel grey. Shadows filled the room as Dr. Bradley Kensington entered, lighting the seven-foot candelabra near the two-story cathedral window.

“Bring him in here,” said Dr. Kensington, pointing to the large leather armchair beside the candelabra.

An old grandfather clock stood in the corner shadow behind the armchair. Its deep and steady tick-tick, mixed with the pulsing sheets of rain on the massive window, broke the silence in the room. A tall, slender man dressed in a modern black suit and square, thick-rimmed glasses led a short, stout man to the armchair.

“Remove his hood and gag but keep his hands bound. And Carter, please bring us some tea,” said Dr. Kensington as he turned toward the window.

Gong-Gong-Gong-Gong-Gong-Gong struck the grandfather clock.

“Would you look at that,” said Dr. Kensington, reaching into the right side of his thick tweed jacket and pulling out his gold pocket watch. “It still keeps precise time. 6:00 p.m. on the dot.” Dr. Kensington spoke with a round Oxford accent that resonated in the room with depth and precision.

Carter removed the thick black hood from the stout man’s head. He took his time pulling off the duct tape across his mouth and smiled, watching the pain in the man’s eyes. Then, he left the room to retrieve the requested tea.

With glassy eyes and disheveled white hair, the bound man shouted in pain. Recognizing his captor, he growled again. “What in the Devil’s name is this, Kensington? You’ve lost your mind.” He gasped between sentences, frantic and confused.

“Come, come. You wouldn’t want to awaken the Devil from his slumber, would you?”

Dr. Kensington's cool, disinterested response snapped the stout man to attention.

“What—what is it that you want,” said the bound man, his voice calming and eyes darting from Dr. Kensington at the cathedral window to the shadowy grey corners of the room. “Judging by this room and where I think we might be, this isn’t about extorting me for funding.”

“Don’t be so dull, Peter. I don’t need money,” said Dr. Kensington, still looking absentmindedly out the window. “Especially the university’s money. Extortion? Where’s the imagination in that? I’m after something more, hmm—how shall I say it?”

As he pondered, Dr. Kensington reached into the left side of his tweed jacket and pulled out his pipe pouch. The pause felt like an eternity to Peter. The rain now pelted the window. The clock droned on. The scratch of Dr. Kensington’s match echoed in the great hall. The slow drafts on his pipe held the room like the slow drawing of a knife from its sheath.

Tick-tick, tick-tick.

“Then, what? What do you want?”

“I’m after history,” said Dr. Kensington in an eerie sing-songy manner, again drawing on his pipe and turning to the bound man in his armchair. “Really, Peter, I thought you’d show more tooth. You literature professors love your Illiad, your Milton. But when Achilles raps on your ramparts, you cower.” Dr. Kensington moved close to Peter, bent low, and whispered. “Your students will not miss you.”

Carter returned with a tray, kettle, and tea-ware of the finest China. He set it on the end-table next to the armchair and poured two cups of tea.

“Milk, sugar, sir?” Carter’s accent was thick and rough, the kind you find in Britain’s Western Midlands.

“A splash and a dash, thank you,” said Dr. Kensington as he stood up and resumed his spot near the window. “Peter?”

“I’ll have the same,” he said, looking down at his bound hands.

“Oh, quite right,” said Dr. Kensington, smirking with pleasure at Peter’s bound hands. “Carter. Unbind Dr. Helms. We wouldn’t want to deprive Oxford’s most renowned literary scholar of refreshment.”

Dr. Helms rubbed the red marks on his wrists after Carter untied the cord. He looked at Dr. Kensington and then at Carter and picked up his teacup. He sipped and closed his eyes. Carter gave a quick nod to Dr. Kensington and then left the room.

“There—how’s that, Peter? Better now? More civil?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Peter, what do you know about the medieval Celtic monks? The navigators. You know, Saint Brendan and the myths surrounding his pilgrimages.” Dr. Helms looked up from his teacup wide-eyed and paused. “Ah, rings a bell, does it?”

“The peregrinatio, of course, is what you mean,” said Dr. Helms. “Pilgrimages without destinations. What of them?”

“Indeed! Aimless wanderers, more like,” said Dr. Kensington, setting his lit pipe on the tea tray and picking up his teacup for a sip. “One can hardly separate fact from fiction in ancient literature. Isn’t that right?”

“It is a mixed bag, yes.”

“But this new manuscript. Tell me about it and the map found with it. It’s recently come into your possession. Is that right?”

Dr. Helms sipped his tea and held the cup in his lap. He looked out the window. The rain continued. Night had fallen, and the old clock ticked, tick-tick, tick-tick.

“That’s … correct,” said Dr. Helms. The pieces of his mysterious evening were coming together. The new “colleague” he met after his lecture at Christ Church College who’d brought him a “drink”—the sick feeling on his walk home through The Meadow and the stranger who helped him to the nearby bench. After that, all went black. “The map was in my briefcase. It was a highlight of my lecture. You know this.”

“I do. And your lecture was enlightening,” said Dr. Kensington, raising his teacup for another sip. “Saint Brendan, the Celtic monk navigator extraordinaire, not only beat the Viking Lief Erikson to North America hundreds of years earlier, but he established a settlement in now modern-day Vermont. Remarkable! Centuries later, the Vikings and Monks established mutual respect as the settlement became a hub for adventurers, treasure seekers, and the spiritually enlightened. It’s a highly dubious but truly fantastic tale. I was especially intrigued by your comments about modern-day ‘Treasure Hunters’ and the Viking tomb filled with mystical artifacts, maps, and gold.”

“You’re a Treasure Hunter, then,” said Dr. Helms, hanging his head and staring into his teacup.

“I like to say, ‘Antiquities Collector.’ Treasure Hunter sounds so pirate-ish. But you left out some key elements in your description of the map, like the fact that there’s more than just one map—there are several. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, there are.”

“And a former colleague of yours has one of them and recently purchased another. There’s a series of maps, is that right? Five total.”

“He wasn’t a former colleague. He taught briefly at Cambridge, then disappeared. I hardly knew him, nor do I know anything about his recent purchase.”

“But you know about the map he possesses now.”

“I do not.”

“Come now, there’s no need for games. This one, as you can see, is at its end.” Dr. Kensington motioned to Dr. Helms himself and to the expanse of the dark room.

“I don’t know about the other maps.”

“Do you think me a fool?” said Dr. Kensington sharply. He set his teacup on its delicate saucer, placed it back on the tray with obsessive care, and drew a deep breath, attempting to calm the fury welling inside his chest. He picked up his pipe, reached in his Tweed for another match, relit his pipe, and drew a deep draught as he walked back to the window. “I know what you know—what you’ve told your colleagues. I know about the other maps and who might have them. I know about Chesterfield, Vermont, the storied colonial Wrenlock Lodge. I know. I know it all!”

“You are no fool. Of this, I am certain,” said Dr. Helms, squirming in his seat and trying to steady his hands from spilling his tea.

Dr. Kensington moved violently toward Dr. Helms and struck him with the back of his left hand, still holding his pipe. “Don’t patronize me, you miserable excuse for a scholar!”

The blow bent Dr. Helms over the side of the armchair. He dropped his teacup, which spilled and shattered on the floor. He rose slowly, holding the left side of his face. He tried to sit upright, but the pain made him shudder and bend. Blood oozed from his mouth.

Dr. Kensington’s pipe split in half and cut the inside of his left hand.

Carter returned to the room. “Is everything okay, Dr. Kensington?”

“If I want your help, I’ll ask for it. Now, get out!”

“Yes sir,” said Carter, turning like a submissive dog and promptly exiting the room.

“Now look what you made me do,” shouted Dr. Kensington, his eyes wide and crazy, his hand bleeding. “I should …” He cut himself off. And, holding his left hand, he regained his composure, rolled his shoulders back in defiance, and settled his gaze on Dr. Helms.

“I will find him,” he said after a long pause.

“Maybe,” said Dr. Helms, who looked out the window again. His eyes had settled as he realized what was to come. He straightened his sports coat and sat upright.

“You have no idea the power I represent, Peter.”

“Perhaps not, Bradley. But at least I know that I don’t know. You mistake information for true knowledge. You think you know about the maps? What they are? What they’ll lead you to? Mere information. You’re too obsessed to gain true knowledge, true understanding. But after seeing you here, like this, I’m sure my words fall on deaf ears. So, whatever you’re going to do to me, I ask that you do it quickly. Achilles killed Hector. But he gave Priam his last rights.”

Dr. Helms sat resolute yet quivering. The cavernous room seemed to fill up with stale air. The whole place felt dank and forgotten. A sick fear poured over him. He felt desperate but unable to cry for help. Kensington would erase him—this, he knew.

“Is that what you want? Final moments to yourself? So be it. Carter will return your things and see you to the grounds. A shame how some of these old scholars lose their way in the night these days.”

“Thank you, Bradley,” said Dr. Helms, lowering his head.

“Don’t thank me.”

Dr. Kensington left the room without glancing at his colleague. After walking through the foyer to the Great Room, he turned again toward Dr. Helms.

“And Peter,” he said. “You are no Hector.”

Tick-tick, tick-tick.

Carter returned to the room moments later with Dr. Helms’s briefcase, cell phone, and umbrella and instructed him. Dr. Helms followed Carter out of the Great Room, down a long hallway, through the kitchen and mud room, and out to the back terrace. The steady rain blurred the night and made it impossible to see.

“Follow the path off the terrace. You’ll come to a gate. Go through it, then walk another quarter mile to another gate. That footpath will take you back down to the bridle path. Turn left. Eventually, the bridal path will merge into a paved road, which winds to a bus stop. I doubt the 4b will still be making stops. But from there, I think you know your way into the City Center.”

Dr. Helms wasted no time following Carter’s directions and never looked back on Tulgey Manor. He reached the first gate and felt encouraged. His mouth had stopped bleeding, and his mind felt clear.

Perhaps all this will pass, he thought.

His soaked feet slipped on the spongey turf. He picked himself up and kept walking through the downpour. He reached the second gate and looked back. Nothing. Nobody. He reached into his tweed jacket and pulled out his cell phone. The mist and rain made it difficult, but he tapped out a message: “AH, CRUEL THREE! IN SUCH AN HOUR … LIKE PILGRIM’S WITHER’D WREATH OF FLOWERS PLUCK’D IN A FAR-OFF LAND.”

He glanced behind him again and sent the text to an American number.

“He’ll know—he must,” he muttered as he reached the bridal path and turned left. Peering over his shoulder, umbrella in one hand and briefcase in the other, Dr. Helms fixed his gaze on the path ahead.

“The bus stop. I can make it,” he said as two ravens swooped over his head, cawing, and then disappeared.

Between his footsteps and the driving rain, Dr. Helms heard another sound. Was it a tapping? A rumble? He couldn’t make it out.

Clop-clop, clop-clop.

The sound was upon him—the breathing of a giant animal and the clop-clop, clop-clop. Out of the darkness, the animal came. It was a horse and rider speeding upon him.

Fumbling for his phone, Dr. Helms dropped his umbrella and briefcase, tapping another message when the horse rammed into him. The horse sent him into the thorny hedge of the bridal path and his phone into the field. He hung broken and lifeless in the limbs of the hedge, and his cell phone glowed in the muddy field.

The rider, wearing a long black trench coat and a bowler hat, wheeled the horse, trotted into the field, and dismounted beside the mucky phone. He picked up the phone and read the screen, whispering aloud: “STARS. NAVIGATORS.”

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Thank You

Thank you for reading Chapter 3 of The Misadventures of Leighton Fig. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have friends or family you think might enjoy this novel, please share it with them. I welcome your thoughts and reactions in the comments below. If enough of you ask in the comments, I will acquiesce and post Chapter 1 over the holiday weekend for your reading pleasure. :)

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The Tempest and The Bloom

If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my serialized novel, The Tempest and The Bloom. I’ll be posting the final chapters of this story this winter! Get caught up by clicking the button below.

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