On every side around the graceful slopes of hills intercepted one another in a little-changing prospect while I trod the highway across green Radnor Plain. I passed the prehistoric Four Stones in their black-grey stoicism, passed Doomsday parks, passed old cottages with slate-shingled roofs. Above an avenue of oaks the square tower of St. Stephen’s in Old Aidenn had been gradually mounting the sky ahead of me, and in due time I diverged from the road and climbed the oak avenue to the village.
What would I find beneath that Norman tower? Hints of symbolic meanings of the “deathless arm” were rife in mind. Are the descendants of Sir Pharamond Kay living yet? Perhaps—and the suggestion caused me to bate my breath—one of us guests in Highglen House actually belongs to the family of Kay. This supposition had not occurred to me before as a live idea. Now it had force. It was, too, an hypothesis that offered scope and direction for investigating, and in a subject where I was more or less at home. Perhaps (a big perhaps) I might play a large part yet in the untwining of these twisted skeins.
I will not say that I was growing excited while I procured the church key from its custodian in one of the handful of straggling houses remaining of the mediæval town: I had, in fact, been excited and eager all during my walk across the monotonous plain. I entered the churchyard by the lych-gate; the place was overcrowded with crumbling stones among the red-barked yews. The men and women with shears, who trimmed the grass along the graves of dear ones, looked at me, I thought, with more than ordinary interest; there must have been marks of eagerness in my face. I unlocked the wire-screen outer door, found the portal within the vestibule unfastened, and entered the little church.
The empty air smelled sweet and sanctified. The hour was clouded, and I wished that some of the oil lamps hanging from the low roof might be lit, for the interior was rather cavernous in the absence of sun. Searching, I seemed fated to encounter everything but the thing I sought. These were features with a reputation: the rood screen of fan tracery and leaf-flower-and-grape carvings, that unique organ-case dating back to the Gothic period, the window of St. Catherine’s Wheel—but I spent not a second apiece on them, looking with greater interest at the tombstones in the floor, at the memorial tablets between the windows, and at the ’scutcheons painted on the wall with colours still bright.
A flash of lightning drove the darkness from even the remotest corners of the church, and my heart gave a leap. That instant I had seen a long, bulky object in a recess of the chapel on my left.
It was the tomb of Sir Pharamond, stained and gnawed by centuries. The effigies of the lord of Aidenn and his lady rested there in stone, with small beasts recumbent at their feet. I lit a match to examine the face and figure of the man. The crown of the head was clean gone, and a fragment of the chin had fallen away, but it was impossible not to recognize the sharp, malignant features, the keen lips, the close-set eyes as being those of the paintings in Highglen House.
The left arm of the effigy lay across the breast, the mailed fist clasping a broken sword. The right arm was missing.
At first I thought that, like the pieces of the head, it had been a prey to time, but careful examination by the light of a second match proved the carving to be complete: the chain mail ended neat at the shoulder. No right arm had ever been there.
In haste I stooped and lit a third match to read what might be decipherable of the inscription, but another lightning flash disclosed the words still distinct on the side of the tomb, and I read while it thundered:
Let Trecchours be Ware My Right Arme Shall Not Dye For soo I have Ordeyned