Unholy Writ

by David Williams

  David Williams

  UNHOLY

  WRIT

  Contents

  The Letter

  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

  For my Wife Brenda

  The Letter

  October the Nineteenth, 1644

  My dearest and beloved wife,

  I praye by all things Sacred that you and our sonne, my pretious heir, shall be safe out of this cursed Island before this word can reach you. If some delay hath prevented you this farre, make haste my love else we are all doomed. Take counsel from youre wise Father on the best course to the coast. If Norfolk is barred – and my Intelligences are so oertaken by events I now am no judge – but if ’tis barred then the man Rorke who bears this note will guide you well to Wales and thence to his native, Catholic Ireland.

  This writ, I go to Newbury with the half troupe that remains. There we muster for the King with others survived the dire history of this year. If the Victorie is ours then Fortune could return, but there is little heart and more of Turncoats in the counties here around where once commitment to our cause was greatest. Were we defeated and I spared, then pray for my life and sword for I will fight still while I have breath and there be ten of us to wreake a vengeance on this tyrant Cromwell, Anti-Christ and Heretic.

  With life at stake I have no mind for baubles, and ’tis well so. Our Properties here will fall to plunder or to forfeit left unguarded as now they must be. Take note though, should you ever here return in calm and rightful times, I have this day without the knowledge of a living Soul stor’d up in secret safety the jewels you did in haste forget at our sad departing. And with these are such other Valuables as I could with ease transport into the chamber of the tomb – trinkets, some silver, the gold plates, and – for sentiment – the Manuscript of the Will. Shake-Speare Playe in Arden Forest that my dear Father did prize so much, though ’tis of little value. The last survived So long ’tis fitting it be buried in the ground where it began.

  The tunnel to the place from the Pavilion cellar is clos’d and blockt by earth and stone made ready for such Work when first the tomb was fashioned. We’ll hear no more our Masses, you and I there, nor the good Father Connell need that protection readied for his sunken chapel – he is safely to France these six weeks since.

  Kisse our sonne for me a thousand times, and in the relay of those embraces give mind to him who dispatches in his thoughts ten thousand more to you with this poor script. Think well of him that is your Slave, but Servant also to his King, and love us both for it, for else there is no honoure.

  Take care I beseech you, and may St Christopher guard you now, and Blessed Mary all the days of youre life.

  Youre loving husband

  James.

  Chapter One

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said the Vicar, who was not much given to vulgar expletive in private.

  The Reverend Timothy James Trapp, late of Keble College, Oxford, two theological colleges (both wiser for the experience), and more church livings than befitted a bachelor in holy orders not yet thirty, normally reserved his less characteristic clerical pronouncements for larger audiences.

  Horace Worple, hedger and ditcher by trade, gravedigger by arrangement, did not constitute a large audience even by the standards of church attendance at St John’s, Mitchell Stoke. Nor was he even mildly affected by the Vicar’s echoing of his own vehement exclamation; simply, he did not hear it. Digging a grave at the side of a country churchyard was a labour that seldom attracted sightseers. A man so employed could thus rely on the modicum of privacy that suited his disposition, licensed his language, and protected his productivity.

  ‘Hell may be hot,’ continued the Vicar in tones that implied he was giving the matter earnest thought, ‘but I’ve never considered the possibility of blood. You could be right though, Mr Worple.’

  This time communication was established, with Worple conscious as he straightened his back that a pair of rubber boots overhung by a cassock hem were firmly implanted a few feet above eye-level from where he was standing at the bottom of a very deep hole. Words, too, he realized, were emanating from the six feet of clergyman towering above him.

  ‘Yes, warm for April, Vicar,’ he offered, wondering to himself what blood had to do with the weather. Perhaps Trapp had said flood; well, he might be ready with his sea-boots, but the weather forecast had said dry. ‘There’s rock ’ere,’ he went on, ‘just ’it it with this pick; given me a nasty jar up both arms.’

  ‘Rock, Mr Worple? Very unusual in this part of the world,’ said the Vicar, whose knowledge of geology in Oxfordshire, or for that matter anywhere else, extended to all of one spit. He recalled, though, the diocesan architect observing that the foundations of the west end were sinking into the clay soil.

  ‘Likely or not, I ’it it at seven six.’ The Vicar looked at his watch. ‘Seven foot six,’ continued Worple drily, ‘and reckon I’ll keep this ’un to the bare seven foot, otherwise ’er’ll need a pneumatic. Anyroad, Maggie won’t notice no difference.’

  Worple was well aware that the customary depth for a single grave was six feet, but since he charged by the foot, he had long established eight feet as a more suitable and seemly measure in a small village cemetery where grave-digging was at best an occasional trade, and competition for the job non-existent. In short, all deceased Anglicans in Mitchell Stoke were afforded ‘family depth’ repositories whether or not they left any surviving relatives likely to need accommodation at a later date.

  The reference to the late departed Miss Margaret Edwards, spinster of the parish for all her seventy-three blameless if wholly uneventful years, set Timothy Trapp thinking in directions entirely unassociated with the curious presence of rock under his own churchyard, not three hundred yards east of the south-flowing Thames, and several miles from known deposits of any substance harder than chalk.

  Leaving Worple to contemplate the firm foundation that was to be the Church’s final and fitting tribute to the temporal remains of its servant Maggie, the Vicar turned to thread his way eastwards to the gate that led from the churchyard to the broadwalk approach to Mitchell Hall – but not before delivering a friendly kick on the hindquarters of his not altogether faithful retriever Bach, who had employed himself the while doing a little gravedigging on his own account. Instead of immediately falling into step behind his master, Bach treated himself to the luxury of a roll on one of the heaps of subsoil that Worple had arranged with a neatness not improved by the resulting dispersement at one edge. After a generous but indecorous display of his upturned lower stomach and its appurtenances the dog took a friendly sniff at the top of Worple, relieved himself on an adjacent wheelbarrow, and bounded after the Vicar.

  Thus it was that Timothy Trapp was the last innocent human to see Worple alive, and Bach the last known recipient of a malevolent glance from that normally mild-mannered son of the soil.

  Mitchell Hall, seat of the Moonlight family for seventeen generations, was as well-preserved an example of mid-seventeenth-century country house architecture as you would find in Banister Fletcher or any other book of reference. The fact that it appears neither in the definitive nor the lesser coffee-table works of this nature
was in some measure the reason why the thirteenth baronet had so recently, reluctantly, but finally abandoned both residence and ownership.

  The Manor of Mitchell Stoke, together with the monastery it contained, had been presented to Sir Francis Moneleet, rogue, fugitive, mercenary, and knight – in that chronological order – by Henry VIII, for services rendered, nominally in defence of the Faith, usefully in the assault of enemy soldiery, secretly in the procurement of pliant females, but privately in the furtherance of personal ambition. The balance of these purposes had been nicely reflected in the actions of Sir Francis, who promptly shot the Abbot, raped his mistress, and looted the monastery, living off the substantial proceeds for the remainder of a fairly dissolute life, even by the standards then applying.

  It was not until the reign of James I that a pious Sydney Moonlight attracted sufficient royal favour to be rewarded with a baronetcy. It was his son, tactfully christened James, who succeeded to the title in 1629 and later built himself a mansion that more nearly reflected the family status than the monastic remains that had been adapted for its housing until that period.

  It was suggested later that Mitchell Hall had been designed by Inigo Jones himself. No documentary proof exists to resolve the matter, but twentieth-century experts have taken the view that James Moonlight was probably his own architect, freely adopting ideas from buildings he had seen in situ or in plan. Although a mannerist composition, the Hall bears a strong resemblance in one unusual detail to Stoke Bruerne, a house designed by Jones that existed in part, and wholly in drawn form, at the time James Moonlight was a fairly frequent visitor to Northampton. Simply, he married – and well – into a wealthy Northampton family, and it is likely that he was taken to see Stoke Bruerne in the building. It is certain that his wife’s substantial dowry paid for a variation of the same plan – if on a smaller scale – at Mitchell Stoke.

  Executed in flat Palladian style, the house is three storeys high, including a half basement. On the long, north entrance frontage the centre three of nine windows are framed from first-floor level by Ionic half columns. These spring from an entablature and rise in support of a plain pediment. The simplicity of this arrangement is somewhat marred by a weak protruding porch and steps in bad proportion to the rest of the centre bay.

  The southern aspect repeats the pattern of the entrance front but is more pleasing through the absence of a porch and basement. Here, on the garden side of the house, long Venetian windows let on to a wide, elevated terrace.

  The main pile of the house was originally flanked to the south by forward-standing, twin-storeyed pavilions linked to it by curved, enclosed colonnades. It is this feature which is reminiscent of Stoke Bruerne. Flanking pavilions were common enough adjuncts to country houses from the beginning of the eighteenth century, but none such existed in England – save for the example in Northampton – at the time Mitchell Hall was building. Indeed, unlike Stoke Bruerne, which remained uncompleted until after the Civil War, Mitchell Hall was finished in 1639 when James Moonlight was reaching the peak of his career and affluence.

  A Catholic, James had served the King and the ill-fated Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford. In particular he had helped Strafford in Ireland recruit an army of Catholics destined to put down the rebellious Scots. When Strafford was executed in 1641, James Moonlight repaired to Mitchell Stoke which he made his base, family and military, in good Cavalier country for several years, and well into the period of the Civil War. Being almost mid-way between Oxford and the Marquis of Winchester’s Basing House, Mitchell Stoke made an excellent staging post for King’s men en route between the two Royalist strongholds. It was however isolated and thus vulnerable to Cromwell’s men engaged on eliminating pockets of resistance when the war was drawing to its close in 1645. James himself had perished at the second Battle of Newbury and his home was sacked, then partially destroyed by a company of ‘Ironsides’.

  The western pavilion was burnt to the ground, but the damage to the rest of the house appears not to have been extensive. The ransacking was uncharacteristic of Cromwell’s men, normally well disciplined, and not given to loading themselves down with inedible booty. In this instance the treasures may have proved irresistible – for treasures there were in plenty.

  In the course of his relatively short life, James Moonlight not only built himself a fitting residence, but also filled it with works of art. The quality if not the size of the resulting collection may well have rivalled that inherited and acquired by the third and fourth Earls of Pembroke, two eminent contemporaries, and the brothers to whom Shakespeare’s First Folio was dedicated.

  Indeed, it is chiefly from family records at their home, Wilton House, and elsewhere, that it is possible to piece together a measure of James’s enthusiasm for the arts. He appears to have been a close friend of Philip Herbert, the fourth Earl. Their fathers too had been intimates.

  Certainly James stayed at Wilton on at least three occasions, and was a frequent caller at Durham House in the Strand, leased by the Herberts for a number of years. It was here that Sir Anthony Vandyck painted a full-length portrait of Sarah Moonlight, James’s young wife, shortly after their marriage in 1638. The quality of the picture is unknown; it is assumed to have been destroyed in 1645.

  James Moonlight made many purchases from the Earl of Pembroke and others over the years, including paintings, manuscripts and pieces of sculpture. It is not recorded that any part of the collection was recovered after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. It is known that Sarah Moonlight returned to Mitchell Hall then, from exile in France, with her son Francis, the third baronet. Whatever damage was sustained by the main building was evidently and quickly restored. This much is on public record since the work was paid for personally by Charles II, who had established a special regard for the still young widow while both were in exile.

  The King’s attachment to Sarah lasted at least long enough for the family fortunes to be in part restored along with the house. Although the western pavilion was not rebuilt, this may have been a matter of choice and not necessity. A frail, squat orangery had been constructed over the site by Commonwealth ‘tenants’, and Sarah let this remain, giving then, as now, a somewhat lop-sided appearance to the house on the southern, garden aspect.

  The monies that might have been expended in a complete restoration were perhaps saved for the more practical purpose of building a modest Dower House some three hundred yards to the east of Mitchell Hall. This work, commissioned by Sarah in 1662, is fully documented in records extant at the Soane Museum. The Third Baronet came of age in that year. His mother was 39, reason enough for her to be making provision for her own accommodation in the future – a future made more bearable by a life pension from King Charles II – a monarch who recognized an obligation for services rendered.

  The iron gate from the churchyard into the grounds of Mitchell Hall was locked. What was more, the lock was new – not that this made a deal of difference to Timothy Trapp since he had never possessed a key for the old lock; in any case he never carried keys. In common with most others who own the same habit, Trapp was quite used to gaining access, when he was entitled, by methods incongruous or even eccentric when compared to the simple process of turning a key. The vicarage was always open, and so was the church; in consequence, both had been promptly relieved of every movable object they had housed worth stealing shortly after Timothy Trapp’s installation six months before. From the Vicar’s viewpoint the result suited principle and practice. Principle: church buildings should always be accessible to all; practice: he, the Vicar, had lost every key placed in his care since the age of seven. Since there was nothing much of value left in either church or vicarage the keys to both had become superfluous. Few members of the Parochial Church Council gave this argument much support, but the sentiment was heartily endorsed by every tramp in the district.

  Since Trapp had been absent in what he called ‘retreat’ for the previous three weeks the locking of a gate that had never previously
been locked did come as a matter of mild surprise. The appearance of a new lock on the same gate came as no surprise at all. People were always fixing new locks in his absence, and had been doing so ever since he could remember. They had also been presenting him with new keys. No doubt some optimist would shortly give him a key to this lock. Meantime eight feet of pitted stone wall represented a minor obstacle compared to some he had surmounted in time past – literally and metaphorically.

  The gate was six feet high, and inset into a gap in the wall which topped it by two feet. Using gate and wall for hand and foot holds, with cassock hem tucked into belt, Timothy heaved himself over the obstacle, and dropped to the other side. The last part of this operation was less decorous than it might have been, and the incumbent of St John’s, Mitchell Stoke, landed flat on his back, arms and legs flaying. ‘Blast!’ he exclaimed very loudly.

  ‘Hoy, hoy! Hoy, hoy!’ screamed untold numbers of voices. There was a seeming thunder of many feet. Little oriental figures, swarthy, half naked, threatening and muscular, some holding picks, others brandishing shovels, one, the obvious leader, waving a particularly lethal-looking knife, raced down upon the Vicar and surrounded him as he lay in a tangle on the ground. With a bound the leader leaped upon his chest, pinning him to the ground. ‘Who are you?’ demanded this most unexpected of assailants.

  ‘I am the Vicar,’ replied Timothy who, even in the circumstances, had time to savour the incongruity of the introduction. Then with a practised bodily contraction and a well-timed heave, he sent his would-be captor flying over his head and crashing into the wall.

  Chapter Two

  ‘I’ll not apologize again then,’ said George Scarbuck with an extra touch of a native Yorkshire accent intended to emphasize sincerity. ‘Lack of supervision, that’s the crutch of the matter,’ he continued; the Vicar’s eyebrows raised a fraction. ‘I reckon you gave better than you got. Those little heathen have learned a lesson they’ll not forget in a hurry.’