Pebbles from a Northern Shore

by Peter D Wilson

  *****

  It was an attractive village where they stopped for lunch, the pub was generous in its helpings, and the home-made pie too good to waste any part of it. They clearly needed time for digestion before continuing. From the outside, the church showed every sign of being true rather than neo-Gothic, and Anne was eager to look round it. John was less keen, but very willing to humour her.

  She was not particularly anxious for a guide, but inside was a verger, who glanced up from repairing a notice board and said he would be with them in a moment once he had finished. That done, he asked civilly enough if without particular interest whether they had come from far away, but when told he really came alive. "You must see this, then," he said, leading them to a side chapel. "We're particularly proud of this chapel anyway, but there's actually a connection with Ernscar. Now where's that paper …" And rummaging round, he produced a leaflet describing its foundation and features with the text of an ancient legal document, damaged when discovered but mostly legible, prescribing the endowment in 1470 by one Alison, widow of Nicholas Palmer, knight.

  It stipulated that a Mass be said for the repose of his soul and that of her father - "You see, here…" - Thomas Miller of Ernscar in the county of (indecipherable), annually on the fifteenth day of April in perpetuity. "Of course, the Reformation did away with all that." He didn't actually add "nonsense" but it was clearly to be understood. Anne found herself rather shocked that pride in the bequest should be untouched by shame at defaulting on the only condition, and mentally exchanged her intended paper donation for a coin, not of the highest denomination.

  "It's lucky there was no effigy, otherwise the place might have been smashed up. The vandals did enough damage to the glass in the nave, and no one was daft enough to tell them what the chapel was originally for. Her grave used to be just outside, with three of her sons and their wives according to old records, but they disappeared when horses were kept in the churchyard during the Civil War."

  "Not Sir Nicholas himself?"

  "No, there's a story that he was lost at sea coming back from some business in Flanders. He'd been on several diplomatic missions, and it was probably one of those, but in any case he had other connections over there. I'm afraid there's nothing else we have of real note. There used to be a few tombs from the late 1600s, but the stones had to be removed a while back. Supposed to be unsafe. Still, there are some others that are quite old, if you're interested in that sort of thing."

  The old man clearly meant well so they thanked him but declined the suggestion. Not too far away, they found a church evidently more sympathetic to the idea of Masses for the dead, and Anne left an offering to cover the next ten years - well short of perpetuity, of course, but a gesture in the right direction.

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