Iomfats.org

As you may have noticed, I'm not much given to using the f-word. Not because I'm a prude, but because it seems to me to reflect poverty of language. Instead, on this occasion, I recall bellowing, "Bugger me backwards!"

I was on cloud nine, high above the earth. Alex and Hugo were down below shouting "What? What?"

I returned to earth enough to read the words to them, pointing to each in turn.

"Acted the sixth day of December in the fourth year of King Edward VI. Dyccon of Bedlam."

They both uttered the f-word, loudly. Charlotte, drawn by the din, came in and had to be told too.

"Well, tickle my pitcher!" she shrieked. I wasn't quite sure what she meant, but subsequent research confirmed my suspicion.

"The sixth of December!" Hugo exclaimed. "That's the same day as our show! And what's the fourth year of Edward VI?"

I counted on my fingers. "1550."

"And why's that bit in Latin?"

"Added by a college official, I'd guess. A note that it had been accepted and performed."

"And it really is Gammer, is it?" he asked anxiously. "Just with the other title?"

I was now like a cryptographer with the key to the code. Below the title the page launched straight into the text, with no list of characters. And because in our production the prologue was being spoken by Diccon, I had it by heart. As I slowly repeated it, the scribbles on the page began to fall into place. Old spellings, a minimum of punctuation, but they were the same. I had cracked the code.

As Gamer Gurton, with manye a wide stytche
Sat pesynge & patching of Hodg her mans briche
By chance or misfortune as shee her geare tost
In Hodge lether bryches her needle she lost.

"Yes,thank God," I said, in huge relief. "It's Gammerall right. Now . . . the first thing is to get the pages in order. Then I'll have to go through the lot to see if there are any major differences. But it's going to be a slow job, till I get my eye in."

So we sorted the sheets according to their numbers, forty of them, written on both sides. From time to time we noticed that single words had been crossed out and replaced by others.

"Look at this!" said Alex suddenly. "There are whole lines crossed out here. One, two, three . . . nine of them. Oh no, eight -- I think one's split between two characters."

A fewsheets on, Hugo found a further pair of lines crossed out. But that was all.

"Well, let's start with Hugo's bit," I suggested. "It's shorter." I got out my printed edition of Gammerin case it would help, and glared at the lines on either side of the crossing-out, trying to get an idea of whereabouts we were in the play.

Capital letters stood out from the rest, and there were five words in a row starting with capitals –H, K, C, T, S. The H surely belonged to Hodge. In the whole play I recalled only one capital K. Bingo! It was about Hodge's date with Kirstian -- 'Hodge:Kirstian Clack Tom Simsons maid.' Yes, and the next two lines fitted. Then came the two crossed-out lines. I wrestled with the wretched scrawl, comparing unknown letters and letter combinations with those I knew, and it took me half an hour to be sure of those two lines. And wow! What lines! I looked across at Hugo and Alex, bored by now and sitting on the sofa, heads together, chatting. Charlotte had long since disappeared somewhere.

"They're your lines, Hugo," I said. "Act II Scene 1. They're about your relationship with Alex. This is what you say, unexpurgated." (I give it here in modern spelling, the new lines in bold).

"Hodge. Kirstian Clack, Tom Simson's maid, by the mass, comes hither tomorrow.
I'm not able to say, between us what may hap.
She smiled on me last Sunday, when I put off my cap.
These five years past has been my sport to tumble Cock our boy,
But now I feel a pricking need to fill a maid with joy.

They looked at each other and burst into hoots of laughter.

"Watch it, Hugo!" said Alex. "You keep clear of Kirstian, or else!"

"Wouldn't touch her with a bargepole," Hugo replied. "OK, Sam. So now you know about us. We're in love." My suspicions were confirmed. "That's why I'm here. Not for this manuscript. We only found it last night. But I've been here since the end of term."

"These two weeks past has been your sport to tumble Cock your boy?" I suggested slyly.

"I wish," Hugo said, squeezing him. "God, I wish." He swallowed whatever he was about to say. "I don't call him Cock, though. I did try calling him Hernia, like Lysander did in the Dream."

"Bit rude that, wasn't it?"

"No ruder than calling him Cock. But when I started saying 'Oh joy, oh rupture!' he objected."

Alex punched him. "And I wish too. Mum knows we're in love. She's very laid back about it. But she does draw the line at tumbling. Even at us sleeping in the same room. Still, it's less than a year till I'm sixteen. Age of consent. I think she'll say yes then."

I marvelled at the love and trust that made him obey her. I wouldn't have obeyed my parents, not in these circumstances. "Roll on the day, then." I said in sympathy. "OK, I'll go back to the earlier lines. But they're likely to take even longer. A couple of hours, maybe."

It was now five. "That's all right," Alex said. "We'll be eating about seven."

"But can I use a computer? I may need to look things up online, and I'd like to type this up."

"Sure. I'll bring my laptop down."

He plugged it in and, not being able to help, they went next door to watch cricket on the telly.

Although alone, I still had the odd feeling of a benign presence and, as my eye grew attuned to the idiosyncracies of William Stevenson's handwriting, the job became easier. It was not much more than an hour before I was satisfied with the result. And it proved to be both a confirmation and a puzzlement. I typed it up, added what seemed to be appropriate stage directions, and went next door. Hugo and Alex were canoodling in front of the cricket, and I dragged them to the hall.

"Here you go," I said, pointing to the screen. "Act I Scene 4."

Cock[within]. I cannot get the candle light -- here is almost no fire.

Hodge.I'll hold thee a penny I'll make ye come if that I may catch thine ears!
Art deaf, thou whoreson boy? Cock, I say! Why, canst thou not hear us?

Cock.Tush, Hodge, I hear thee. I but move the inglecock
To blow the fire up.

[Noise within]

Hodge. By the mass! What the devil's that knock?

Cock. God's bones! Deep am I spitted! O that it should come to pass!
I backward fell, and the inglecock hath pricked me in mine arse.

[Emerges impaled by the inglecock]

Hodge. Thou cox! Thou whoreson ingle! Into thy shitten bum
Am I not the only neighbour whom thou allowest to come?
Stay still! I'll draw this varlet cock forth from my Cock's breech,

[Pulls it out]

Andto admit no trespass more, so I shall him teach.

[Spanks himlustily]

Gammer. Beat him not, Hodge, but help the boy, and come you two together.

"Wow!" they cried as they read it.

"Nice, isn't it?" I said. "I always thought there was more to those comings than meets the eye. But what the hell is an inglecock?"

They shrugged their shoulders.

"It sounds like a sort of bellows," said Alex. "But how do I get it up my arse? What is an ingle, anyway? Thou cox, thou whoreson ingle-- what does that mean?"

"Coxis a fool. Whoreson's a term of abuse, son of a whore, like us calling someone a bastard without meaning it literally. Inglemeans two things." I clicked the screen to bring up the online Oxford English Dictionarywhich was lurking behind my script."It can be a fire in the hearth. Hence inglenook, an alcove for the hearth, and presumably inglecocktoo, a cock for the hearth, whatever that means. And look -- inglecan also be 'a boy favourite (in bad sense), a catamite.'"

"What's a catamite?"

I typed it in. 'A boy,' the dictionary told us, 'kept for unnatural purposes.'

Alex was cross. "Itisn'tunnatural."

"Of course it isn't. That's just the OEDbeing old-fashioned. Anyway, your revered ancestor's got two plays on words here. There's inglethe hearth and inglethe boyfriend. And there's coxthe fool and Cockthe boy and cockthe prick and cockthe something else. Cockmeans all sorts of things." I typed it in. "Here you are. Noun 1, sense 20, a penis. Deriv ed from sense 12, a short pipe or spout or nozzle -- it doesn't necessarily have a tap to turn it off, like a stopcock does. Which makes sense. After all, a penis is essentially a short pipe or nozzle or spout, isn't it?"

Alex was giggling. "And once it starts spouting you can't turn it off. Though I haveseen one pipe that isn't exactly short." He put his hand on Hugo's crotch.

"The problem," I persisted in the face of this levity, "only arises when ingleand cockcome together."

"It isn't a problem at all," Alex said, now giggling fit to bust. "The cock arises automatically when it meets the ingle. And once they've come together you can't do much to stop it coming."

"Even when the ingle has a shitten bum?" Hugo was almost pissing himself with laughter too.

"And Hugo!" Alex's voice reverted to a squeak. "You've got to spankme!"

"Lustily. That means spank you hard!"They giggled on, until at last Hugo returned to the point. "Sorry, Sam. Let's get back to the inglecock. We still haven't got to the bottom of it."

Which of course sent them off again.

"Cock," I went on when the meeting was finally restored to order, "is trying to revive the fire. And therefore he tries to move the inglecock. But he falls backwards and knocks it over, which makes quite a shindig. And it pricks him in the arse. Impales him like meat on a spit. Hodge has to pull the thing out. So an inglecock must have some sort of spout or nozzle like a bellows does. But if you fall backwards onto a bellows it'll hardly find its way into your arse. And inglecockisn't in the OED, and there's nothing relevant on Google. I'm floored."

So were they. We printed out the new additions to the text, and we had to adjourn the meeting when Charlotte called us in to dinner. It was a great meal. Not just the food, but the atmosphere. She enquired, of course, about our progress, and Alex unconcernedly showed her the print-out. I couldn't imagine showing such a thing to my own parents. And, where my parents would have gone through the ceiling, she didn't turn a hair.

"It's uncanny, isn't it," she said, "that you two should be cast, all unknowing, as Hodge and Cock, and should fall for each other. And here's William prophesying it, almost. Giving you his blessing, in a way."

"Well, I know he approves," said Alex. "Don't you, William?" he asked into thin air.

Honest truth, I swear I sensed a message of agreement from somewhere. Wondering if I'd actually heard it, I looked round. Charlotte laughed. "You won't see him, Sam. Nobody ever has. But -- I know it sounds daft -- we often sense that he's around. He's not in the least eerie, just a comfortable presence. He's not so obvious to me. Maybe it's because I'm not a Stevenson by birth, or I'm the wrong gender. But he was obvious to Alex's dad, and to his father. And he's obvious to Alex."

He was obvious to me too. I don't think I'm unduly credulous, and I'm certainly not into ESP, but it was hard to deny what my senses told me. What a wonderful presence to have in the house.

"He lived here, you know," said Alex. "He was born up north, but when his dad built this place the family came down, and William grew up here. His parents died when he was about fourteen, so from then on it was all his. He lived here too when he had to leave Cambridge under Mary. But soon after that he moved up to Durham and married. It wasn't long before he died, though -- he was only in his forties -- and his wife and son came back here. We've been here ever since. And that chest in the attic's probably been here ever since."

"What else is in the chest?"

"We haven't looked properly. All we've seen is masses of legal-looking stuff. Someone'll have to plough through it, once we've sorted out Gammer. Once you've sorted her out."

As the meal progressed, I learnt a number of things I hadn't heard before. Alex's father and grandfather had both died quite young -- a worrying habit of the Stevensons, it seemed -- before there was any chance of passing on family lore to their sons. That was why nobody living had any idea of what might be in the attic. And once her husband was gone, all of Charlotte's energies were spent on bringing up Alex single-handedly and on making ends meet. She was a professional potter -- and, I gathered, a highly successful one who exhibited all over the place -- with her studio in one of the barns. Even so it was pretty clear, though she did not say so, that finances were tight. Giving a youngster as normal a lifestyle as possible and paying his fees at Hambledon, not to mention the prospect of university, does not come cheap. I knew that well. My parents had often told me so. On top of that was the surely phenomenal cost of keeping a place like Bumley Grange going.

She excused herself to return to her pots, while we did the washing up. Then Alex showed me my room.

"It used to be the main bedroom," he explained. "But when Dad died, Mum felt she was rattling around in it, it's so big, and she moved to a smaller one. So now it's just a guest room."

Big it was. And its crowning glory was a great four-poster bed, complete with curtains.

"I'm sure William slept in that," Alex said. "I slept here last holidays when my room was being patched up, and he was in it too. He wasn't at all, um, off-putting. I mean, he didn't mind me having a wank. In fact he seemed to approve."

"Even though he was a reverend!" Hugo marvelled.

"Not all reverends are stuffy," Alex pointed out. "Look at Crack." He was the school chaplain. "Anyway, the William who's around here isn't old and stuffy. He's quite young, about our age. And he thinks like us. I'm sure of that."

The omens were good. But it was far too early to put them to the test, and the damned inglecock was still niggling me. I decided to go back to the laptop, and they sloped off to watch a Prom on the telly. The answer, I told myself, must be somewhere on the web. The problem, as usual, was how to find it. Google was useless on inglecocks. But what about searching under their function? The things were for blowing a fire, so I tried 'fire-blower.' Over four million hits, all of which -- or at least the first hundred -- were either about modern machines or about people who eat fire. Forget it. What about 'hearth-blower'? Better, only 32,000 hits. I scrolled down the first page.

And there it was, or what might well be it.I clicked on it.

Cambridge University Press was announcing the contents of the Antiquaries Journalfor 2007 which included an article on 'Jack of Hilton and the history of the hearth-blower.' It proved to be one of those maddening academic sites where you have to pay for what you want. But at least it gave a short abstract, which read:

'The resurfacing of a late medieval hearth-blower for fanning the flames of a fire provides the opportunity for a review of the type. Examples of these anthropomorphic aeolipiles from England, all late medieval in date, are placed in context, both in time -- stretching back to the Classical period -- and in space.'

Uh? Anthropomorphic aeolipiles? AnthropomorphicI could do -- in the shape of a man -- but for aeolipileI had to return to the OED. 'A pneumatic instrument or toy,' it said, 'illustrating the force with which vapour generated by heat in a closed vessel rushes out by a narrow aperture.'

Warmer, definitely warmer. But just how did it work? What did it look like, apart from a man? Well, there was still 'Jack of Hilton' to Google. I typed it in. Only 36 hits. One of them was an old book.

'At Hilton, Staffordshire,' it said, 'there existed a hollow brass image representing a man kneeling in an indecorous position known as the Jack of Hilton. The image had two apertures, one very small at the mouth, another larger at the back. When filled with water and put to a strong fire, the water evaporated as in aeolipile, and vented a constant blast from the mouth, blowing audibly, and making a sensible impression on the fire.'

I was beginning to understand the principle. And indecorous? That was even more interesting.

Another item, better still, was a report of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford which had recently acquired Jack of Hilton himself. It described him as a 'hollow-cast copper alloy figure, 31 cm high, late 13th or 14th century. A rare example of an aeolipile: the vessel was filled with water and warmed on the hearth to fan the flames with a jet of air released through the steam–pressure created within.'

And alongside the description was a photo which showed just how indecorous he was.