Countess Lucy And The Curse Of Coberley Hall

by Guy Sheppard

In this it was remarkably insistent.

  ‘Be quiet,’ I hissed. ‘You’ll bring James.’

  Starting forwards, I went straight to the first in line of the eight Cavaliers seated on their horses. There was something wry or mocking about the manner in which each man skewed his face at my approach. One after another they inclined their brows in mirrored mimicry of my movements, they unstuck stiff arms and necks from globules of varnish as though they would rediscover from me their precious ability to perform certain punctilios. Each took it in turns to give me a slight bow as if he were about to sweep his feathered hat with a single swipe past his saddle.

  My animated presence sparked an odd enlivenment.

  Because the Cavaliers were painted in the same style, fashion and colouring, their congenerous similarities showed all to be allied in nature of origin. Thanks to the crazing in its deep blue enamel surface and those patches where gold had worn back to silver, there was no doubt in my mind that the ring that Lizzie had come by so mysteriously did genuinely represent the era that the portraits depicted. And more. For, while the picture frames might be from different centuries, all the men had the face of the captain on my finger. Here were the long black curls, goatee and moustaches of a Cavalier in scarlet from whom everybody else had taken their likeness. That went for Joseph Jones’s self portrait downstairs in the great hall, too.

  With a mourning ring you could be reminded of a person otherwise too readily forgotten. You could literally keep hold of that distinctive laugh in their voice, that certain look in their eyes, as well as the touch, smell and taste of their skin. Did we not speak of a man or woman giving up the ghost? That’s to say, his or her apparition was a principle of life or living spirit. It could survive? But for how long?

  The ring identified the man’s features but not his identity.

  Notwithstanding the mystery, I felt very content with my little piece of detective work. That’s because I now thought I knew who he was.

  22

  It was mid-evening when a violent gale blew from the north. I felt obliged to cover my face as insufferable clouds of soot fell down the chimneys to fill my throat and lungs. They reduced me to fits of coughing. Each annoying, sickly blast shattered the house’s already peculiarly fragile frigidity, yet in no actual breakage did the threat materialise. Doors remained on their hinges, windows stayed shut and portraits hung straight on the walls as Cavaliers and I rode out the storm.

  I fled from room to room past the quivering flames of dimming candles and deafeningly loud as the awful wind was, I thought I heard coming from Coberley Hall’s ancient porch the rat-tat-tat of someone knocking.

  The raps sounded intermittent but inescapable. It was on such a day that I had once been forced to brave thunderclaps that burst over the sea at Brighton. Then I’d clutched both hands on my penknife – I’d felt rise inside me a savage self that belied my age. Resisting my drunken stepfather’s curses and growls on the other side of my bedroom door, all I had had to do was to turn the key to meet the monster. Back then I was alarmed by those first, murderous thoughts. I was five.

  ‘Okay. I’m coming.’

  If I had grown up to become a policeman it was because I had chosen to use my sense of injustice to fight my hatred.

  *

  The moment I twisted the heavy iron ring on the porch’s thick oak door, it blew back on me most violently in the blizzard. Above me, a fiery white ball of lightning set the window’s garish family shield ablaze. Its nine awful crimson lozenges, more hideous drops of blood than hearts in this light, reflected red on the diamond slabs on which I stood. Each dazzling discharge looked set to connect house to heaven.

  ‘Anyone there, at all?’ I cried.

  My desire to quell someone’s impatience was of paramount concern to me, but when I turned to re-enter the porch there was no one there. Something about this out-of-body experience left me feeling foolishly light-headed. I could not tell what or why. Regardless of any childhood nightmare, no one swept by me in the hallway’s chilly glow.

  The whirling air was cyclonic, not preternatural.

  Beside me, a door stood open to some stone steps down which a few wet footprints slimed. I decided to follow.

  ‘Sara?’ I called into the gloom. ‘Is that you?’

  Once in the bowels of the house, the air blew doubly cold, I discovered. Mortar in the thick cellar walls exuded the ghastly smell of oysters mixed with lime and sand where walls were as dry and dusty as a crypt. Awfully winding stairs exited from rooms far above me down which the necessary girl had once carried people’s night soil from bedchambers to the fields. I raised my cigarette lighter to illuminate the dark curves of fat wooden barrels that reeked of very old claret. Mounted on pale red bricks, each cask had a tap at which James could fill his stone bottle ready for his lordship’s wine-cooler in the great hall.

  Really, I should have been upstairs in the library, should have been studying heraldic cartouches on every ancient enfeoffment at my disposal in order to document my actual and mental reinvention as Coberley Hall’s new owner. Instead, all my immediate ambitions fell away. My toe nudged something. On the stone floor lay a book.

  Judging by such words as I could decipher on the brown leather binding, the vellum pages contained sailing instructions and a description of harbours in the new colony of Virginia in the Americas. When someone dropped something in such a hurry they were being more than inquisitive, they were looking out of desperation and frustration because over time there were other things they might have mislaid? It was an ancient portolano.

  Whoever had just visited the cellars had left open in a dark corner the heavy lid of a large, iron-banded chest, I noticed. The closer I inclined my head to see inside, the more I inhaled the faint aroma of some sweet fragrance. Hundreds of years ago, the oak interior had been stained purple with a perfumed dye or juice recommended by an herbalist to deter insects. I was looking at the chest that Joseph Jones had once seen fit to remove to his library. This was the coffer that had started him on his perilous journey back to the past. It smelt of thyme and cypress. Of my own possible embarkation, I was nothing if not sceptical.

  All the same, I dared to touch somebody’s personal belongings, tried to control my terrible inquisitiveness. ‘Of course, I should simply throw out any old clothes, shoes and jewellery that appear at my fingertips,’ I thought. Suddenly there swept over me a chilling sensation, a black superstitious fear of something not unfamiliar, so that I, perfectly aware of my mistake and wary of the impossibility of it, recalled the feel of my own wife’s wardrobe. I was stricken by remorse, but did not suffer a tear. My stab of consciousness, not conscience, lasted but a few vivid moments.

  Seconds later, the intervening fabrics and textures, through whose touch such impressions had been conveyed straight to my heart, again smelt of someone else.

  Thankfully.

  Tucked into the side of the chest lay a woman’s white velvet face mask once worn to hide the ravages of smallpox. Since it had been made to conceal ugly pustules while they healed, the slender moulding gave a clue to its wearer’s true shape and profile – it was more lifelike than death-mask.

  That’s where I should have left it, but could not. I felt able to disown a few pangs of curiosity but not of desire.

  So it was I rushed to run my hands almost involuntarily over the fine, soft silk of white sarsenets and starched gauze muslin tiffanies. I kissed silky lawn sleeves on a beautiful, deep blue gown and admired point lace handkerchiefs made wholly with a needle.

  Laid on top of a dark brown dress with wide ivory-coloured sleeves was a bag as big as my hand. This was no ordinary pouch with its brown velvet top sewn with pretty red thread but an almost grotesque thing of skin and scales. Its lizard-like surface was grey and white and tautly stretched across three long toes, at the end of which hung an equal number of polished gold claws.

  Although the pouch had lost its lustre, there was no mistaking what I was holding. Swinging from its loop of plait
ed silk string was the webbed foot of a bird. I turned it over and out tumbled a few black and silver coins. Stamped REGINA ELIZABETH around their edges, most were groats worth pence, not shillings. Was this all the money the owner had been able to muster at the last minute, I wondered? For if this had been her travel chest, it looked packed and ready to go.

  Hidden in the clothes of the dead was a bundle of papers, on the cover of which was penned in thick black ink a title: THE QUEENE-LIKE CLOSET or RICH CABINET of the Countess Lucy Pope. OPENED: whereby is DISCOVERED Several ways for making of Metheglin, Sider, Cherry-Wine, &c. TOGETHER WITH Excellent Directives FOR COOKERY: As also for Preserving, Conserving, Candying etc. Unfolding the ribbon-bound pages very slowly, I found Lady Lucy’s writing to be very florid but elegant, whose ‘d’s and ‘p’s were all curly tops and tails and each swanlike ‘s’ was stretched and slender like a modern letter ‘f’.

  In July 1644 she had written down in this, her ‘receipt’ book, a list of ‘victualle and other necessaries needed to feed his Majesty. Item for one doz. gulls. Item for VJ signettes. Item for VJ doz. Pewettes. Item for ij doz. Egrettes etc.’

  It put me in mind of the purse again. Since from the 12th century all swans had been owned by the monarch and were hunted only with royal permission, it had to be assumed that the king had not objected to dining on Coberley Hall’s own birds? Had Lady Lucy had the swan’s foot made into a souvenir for such a significant visit or had Charles I later sent it to her as a present, I wondered?

  It was but a conjectural reading of a significant moment in someone else’s history, yet long afterwards when a man read about things dearest to someone else’s heart, he could still enter her confidence? When he became her confidant he became her bold, impudent sharer of her successes and failures, he could see beyond the mask.

  Twice, by way of afterwords, she noted that the green parts of soapwort, when bruised and boiled in water, could help wash her delicate hair, while common centaury might yet cure her freckles though the bitter herb was ‘very wholesome but not very toothsome.’ Since I was reading the countess’s innermost thoughts I encroached upon her wishes, ambitions and secrets. Because I thrust myself into her privacy uninvited, I came into her company, so to speak, I could begin to hear her long lost voice. She was particularly concerned to find a cure for the staggers in ‘my deare horse Abby’.

  I felt it my duty to keep the book safe, felt a jealous need to depart with it at once under my jacket. Accordingly, I slammed shut the chest, ready to skulk from the tenebrous cellars, when my burning gaze fell upon the lid.

  Gouged between heavy iron bands were the words: ‘Let no pittifull soule for evere more open this damnable chest without they wilt bring great greife upon this house. T.P.’

  It was only after I had taken a horrified step backwards that I was able to relight my cigarette lighter and shine its flames at the initials. They were Thomas Pope’s. I felt nothing but outrage, and that not entirely clearly. It was as though a vision flashed into my head – I could not in any way prevent it – then took charge of me, heart and soul.

  So it was that the 2nd Earl of Downe had come across his wife before she could leave Coberley Hall to set sail without him for America? He had caught her red-handed?

  *

  What seemed like a very long time ago, my descent into the netherworld of the cellars had been surprisingly easy. I had simply followed in the footsteps of Joseph Jones. But as the picture of the Sibyl in the great hall had warned me, while the gate to the realm of the dead stood open night and day, to retrace my steps and return to the upper air to breathe again, that was the real toil, that already felt more arduous. When I arrived panting at the great oak staircase I saw how its spiky wooden dog-gate stood open and the steps dripped fresh drool.

  Sure enough, back in my bedchamber, that flea-bitten white sight-hound lolled lazily on my bed, I discovered. I went to the window to watch dusk creep across the formal gardens’ grass parterres and topiary all the way to the orchards. From there Lord Hart followed the flagged walk that led out of the rosarium, I noticed. This was less someone trying to exercise himself back to health than a man who feared he might again miss some vital appointment. With his grey hair falling over his shoulders, he came to a halt on the icy grass directly below my room.

  He was wearing his wholly unsuitable white suit but had pocketed his tinted glasses as he turned his face to the horizon. There he gazed west at the spot where the moon rose with defiance and impunity. He let its rays play over his rather inelegant nose and thin bloodless lips like someone who had forgotten what warmth really was. In his other hand was his dragon cane on which he leaned very slightly.

  Like a man on tenterhooks, he waited impatiently by the garden’s statue of Venus, peered, as I did for a while, into the dark side of twilight.

  *

  So it was that I chose to wrap myself in my bed’s white and gold counterpane and clutch my black leather bag close to my chest. Suddenly that odious smell from the fields arrived to fill my reluctant nostrils with its taint of organic, rotten matter.

  Not that I cared.

  When someone like me closed his eyes at night he wanted to draw a veil over his memories, not have them come to him by some afterlight.

  Yet still my dreams drifted where it was darkest.

  Day 6. April 3. 2014.

  Biopsy not done yesterday. Hopefully today. Sickness cured with anti-nausea drug. Lizzie better – brighter. Of course they haven’t said it is terminal.

  They don’t have to.

  ‘Did you bring my clean nightdress?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Didn’t take much to A& E.

  ‘What’s on the news?’

  I don’t know. I can’t bear to know, as if the world has shrunk to one bed in hospital.

  Her face grows ever tauter and bonier, her skin colder and paler. Dry lips crack terribly. Her blood-shot, ebony eyes, robbed of clear sight by a dark curtain across her vision which frustrates her endlessly, still shine with a resistance that is quite heroic. Like an afterglow.

  ‘She came to me again last night, Colin.’

  ‘Please don’t trouble yourself with such silly nonsense.’

  ‘She says she can’t wait to show me her dresses.’

  ‘What dresses?’

  ‘The ones she has kept for me since I was a child.’

  ‘You can’t go on like this, Lizzie. It’s not helpful.’

  ‘But she’ll be so disappointed.’

  Day 5. April 4. 2014.

  Back home briefly. Pleased flat is so neat and tidy. Stomach still very swollen. Can’t do up skirt. Not enough Tramadol to ease pain.

  *

  I woke at dawn and walked into Lady Lucy’s closet to look out the window. Overnight more dreadful snow had fallen to entomb the house and my hands and feet felt absolutely frozen. Slowly, the white courtyard below was becoming a spider’s web of thinning shadows while the sun crept over the rooftops. It promised to be a good day, however. Had the Countess of Downe stood here like me? Had she, too, felt real hope rise with the sun through this same fixed window? I traced the trite script scratched on the little iron ventilation plate and read it aloud again:

  It is part of Virtue never to abstaine

  From what we love tho it shall prove our bane.

  I’m transcribing the words to my journal, I’m making sure to account for them in the ledger that I’ve taken from the library. I’m doing it before I lose track of which month it is, I’m continuing to write down an account of everything I’ve seen and heard in Coberley Hall since the first day of my arrival. I’m penning it the same way Countess Lucy did in her receipt book.

  I rest the ledger on my black leather bag which I have on my knees. Nevertheless, the curious greyhound sniffs its soft sides most annoyingly. It takes a dog’s nose, so attuned to the smell of meat, to respond to the almost carnal odour.

  But it is all right, all locks and catches remain secure. A house this cold can preserve
things forever.

  Should anything happen to me, someone needs to know why I didn’t leave here while I still had the chance.

  23

  Still I rocked wide awake on the edge of my bed. I tried not to breathe too deeply but really thought my stomach would never settle. It was thanks to that noisome smell off the fields again. But who was I to worry if there was something physiological about such an old house’s nooks and crannies? What ancient abode did not wreak of rottenness, I told myself happily. Just because something vilely decomposing floated in the air, should I literally be so foolish as to lose good sleep over something not in the slightest incorporeal, supernatural, let alone metaphysical?

  At that moment I detected the sound of music. Since there was no electricity in the house I hesitated to suggest that anybody was playing such an unusual composition on disc, tape or vinyl, could not see how this was somebody’s bizarre download.

  The tune sounded reassuringly remote, yet defied all sense of distance. The more I listened the farther away the music drifted – the less, and it permeated closer and closer. ‘What the hell!’ I thought and my temple throbbed. For, above the twang of viol and theorbo came the whistle of a flute which poured through walls without visible interstices. Never before had I jibbed at such a lovingly and mellifluous melody. It was coming from the direction of the long gallery, I decided.

  ‘Damn it,’ I cried, ‘I can’t bear your infernal racket any longer.’

  Fuming at this most unexpected intrusion, I heard heels skitter elsewhere along the landing. That they did not sound like footsteps exactly but more of a slither, I could not rightly explain. By now I was in the withdrawing room. But should I follow, into the obscurity? I briefly returned to retreat to my bed. Then again, why should I delay a single second? I felt my stomach begin to churn once more. I had to lean on the doorjamb and open my mouth to stop panting before I could summon up the necessary courage.

  Moments later, the greyhound overtook me, inquired after the footsteps, too. A patch of spilt darkness deepened into something altogether more solid ahead of us.