by Guy Sheppard
The more I raised my fists to the skeleton the louder and harsher grew the screams of lice-ridden combatants, like wild animals, amid the smell of burnt gunpowder. No longer the surfy roar of some distant scene, I could make out the pain of individual soldiers. The brutal chipping of blades on armour and the boom of pistols put me in the presence of rival armies besieging and defending. These maddened, monstrous creatures choked on the smoke from their own muskets and the blasts of culverins. To the roar of their captains, they trampled the dead and dying to do something glorious as parched, riderless horses refused to drink from blood-filled puddles. A tongueless man put a finger to his jawless chin as his blind enemy felt for his eyes which slimed his cheeks. Now, on the cluttered ground, a helmetless Roundhead waved the stump of his severed arm, its veins pouring red in fountains each time he let out a howl. While the barely human laments reached a crescendo, I saw how the occupant of the chair clutched her fingers to the point of breaking, not at the shrieks of unlucky men shot in the thigh and bladder, but at me.
‘Hold, sir, would you behave worse than the beasts on the battlefield? Would you hurt even the dead?’
I fell back chastened and for a minute found not the strength to resist.
*
Whereupon her foul fragrance that hung about the room seemed less decomposition than arrested putrefaction, not least because two Spanish pockets of sweet-smelling violets hung from her waist to disguise her decay. Not only had someone rescued her from the grave, they had sought to give her back her name, appearance and history. In order to revive her life through bones alone they had gone out of their way to maintain their quality and condition, they had dressed her skeleton in her own dress and placed her away from direct sunshine.
But if the steel plate over the public doorway downstairs had been designed to keep unsympathetic detractors out, it had not kept her in? Without any skin to touch there was still sense to stimulate, despite no cuticle or cutis. Being nerveless, she was not inert. Any sinewy flicker or muscular tremor was not purely mine, any agitated or timid flinching did not just originate in my own highly strung and agitated reaction?
Where connection between bones had once been made by intervening muscle, these were all now wired together in the same relative positions as in life. The framework of bones was threaded in such a way as to re-unite every joint long after all animation or usefulness had elapsed. One drop-pearl earring, resplendent with its tassel of men’s hair, dangled from her ear cavity while a pearl necklace had been draped round the bare joints of her throat. Only the missing finger on her left hand detracted a little from everything she once was.
From the angle of the skull, her eye-holes could see down the lane and keep a look-out for the one man she hoped might be approaching. Had not George told me that he and Philip had done what she wanted?
Whereupon I felt in my pocket and drew out the little ivory box in which resided the bony segments of finger. As I pushed the pieces close to her fleshless grip, the fourth digit came together perfectly.
‘Forgive me Countess, for what I’m about to do.’
*
That’s when I noticed in her lap the swan’s quill. Ink sparkled across the surface of a letter.
‘Dear husbande, you are very fond of argument when you think I am a moste unfeminine and unnatural she-wolf. You suppose me repugnant to nature, cotumelie to God, a thing most contrarious to his revelled will and approved ordinace, and finallie I am the subversion of good order, of all equitie and iustice. You would not have me be your good Catholik wife since I cannot seat mysealfe at Coberley Hall without I bring gret greife upon you. You say that I must recant my heart’s one true love or damne my pittifull soule before the eyes of God, but I will not be more slave than creature evere was. To what sort shall you rank that Woman that tells Men of things stolen and lost, and that shew Men the Face of the Thief in a Glass and cause the dead to be brought back; who are commonly called ghosts? You and all who come to my house will have so many credible reports of such, as will allow not reason to doubt of it. For I cannot tell what more unkindness one of us might shewe another, or wherein we might work more wickedly than to bring ourselves into so miserable a state not to choose love by our own likinge. For let this cruell house beare witness that whosoever doth not let me love shall ever more have a window shew him his soul and make him sorry.’
*
I was standing in an awful feretory for saint-like relics, I realised, but it was in no way a tomb, it was a protest. So fanatical had been Joseph Jones’s love of recreating scenes from the English Civil War, yet so in awe of them had he become, so afraid of what he’d done, that he had vowed to continue his passion in death to make amends. Only, he had reckoned without his stepsons’ own obsession which was to subvert his greatest wish. Whatever little love they might once have felt for him had changed to hatred, they would not let him lie with the one he had exhumed according to the dictates of his last will and testament – they would have revenge in the afterlife.
*
That afternoon I carried my tools and black leather bag unseen into Coberley church. There I chiselled a hole in white limestone behind the broken, top right hand corner of a panel that depicted the Crucifixion of Christ in the north side of the chancel. Having created a gap no bigger than my fist, I opened my bag and took out its screw-top glass jar full of formalin in which floated its precious contents.
I opened the jar and removed the slippery mass of hollow organ. It beat in my hand at each contraction and dilation of my fingers. If this were the seat of every emotion, it did not feel dead despite any loss of sensibility.
Or, I was shivering because the church was so cold.
I placed in the hole the heart that the police pathologist had, at my request, incised from Lizzie’s body while she had lain on the mortuary table – I deposited it in the one place where no ghost could ever reach it. Then I cemented shut the orifice again for evermore.
I did what I promised.
39
Try as I might, I could not bear to stand before Countess Lucy’s portrait in the great hall while no matching frame filled the empty recess beside her. On the enormous, ornately carved chimney piece, her picture looked so unbalanced and wishful. Once more the ghostly, pale outline of the missing person cried out for redress and forever prompted the prospect of some secret purpose. No chatelaine should hang in such asymmetrical misalignment.
Consequently, I have decided to affix my own image beside hers to restore the balance. I am dressed rather flatteringly in rat-coloured cloak, silver lace collar and close-fitting breeches. Sitting astride my black horse, I am elegantly clad in a doublet of scarlet serge lined with tabby silk and trimmed with close-woven galloon in best Cavalier fashion.
I wanted the brushstrokes to be quite realistic, if not exactly as I appear in real life. Therefore, there is neither too much colour nor over-mixed oils in my long, flowing curls. At the very least the picture strives to capture my blue eyes and slightly crooked nose in some heroic pose.
Meanwhile, Lady Lucy grows more resplendent by the day. Posed in her low-cut, flowing green dress with its white under-robe worked with wild flowers, she can be seen in her true colours now that I have removed more grime from her varnish. Together, we look as if we have hung in the hall for hundreds of years. Her black, gold-tinted eyes shine with wakeful vigilance. At her waist dangle so many chains from her chatelaine that by now she must have a key to every room in the house. My overbearing presumption of ownership might sit awkwardly with hers, but who can deny that she makes us both appear the perfect couple, not least because something about her reminds me so much of Lizzie.
In some lights, the resemblance to my lost love is less a likeness than a leer, but generally I see nothing sly, lascivious or vampiric in her expression. True, an unusual translucency of flesh does sometimes show through by the firelight, but I do not agree that a wraith would better suit the description, I think that the lean, almost emaciated semblance simply has the sophistication, el
egance and grace that come with good bones. Her sharp, pearl-white incisors press lightly against her lip.
*
Once George’s body was dragged from the bog we buried him in the ordinary way in the churchyard at Coberley. As the new lord of the estate, I implored all the villagers to attend. No man should go unmourned after such a tragic incident.
Not for nothing did I give a fulsome eulogy.
Some while afterwards – I remember very little about it – I was doing a tour of the house when suddenly I felt drawn to re-examine with pride the plates and glassware on their long oak shelves. I had begun my impromptu inventory of my inheritance and felt quite beside myself with joy when I sensed someone else’s presence. There I was, the covetous owner of ink bottles, bedpans, paintings, swords, china, tapestries, clothes, clocks and all sorts of other quite bizarre objects that had been accumulated over time, when someone else’s hand seemed to guide me. It was the strangest thing in the world. It was as though they would have me fill their shoes, see with their eyes all the attributes of my forbears. A man could feel so much better when he had a genealogical tree from which to hang himself.
In fact, it was Marigold, come to collect her Ouija-board.
Next minute I had a need to sit down. My left side seized at some flash in my head. At a stroke, I felt my knees go weak and fail beneath me.
I could resist the sudden feeling of falling, but not of the void into which I fell. Since then, I have come to expect bouts of almost total greyness or blackness. The gatehouse and its Court of covered barns and Riding House are where I must now reside, I’ve accepted, which is just as well because Jan and Maria are coming to visit. Sara has found them a room in her cottage, which is better than anything James had to offer.
*
Fortunately, Rebecca is constantly present with pen and paper. When a man chooses to trade one life for another he needs someone on whom he can rely. A vision is a blow when it blinds the seer. Since I have someone on whom I can rely, I can trust her to record those things for which there are no real answers. When a man has such a kindred spirit he can share with her the secret of his guilt, grief and damnation in order to leave this world and try again in the next.
‘How are you feeling now, your lordship?’
‘Not bad, all things considered.’
‘What about muscle movement?’
‘Weak in my left side but it’s getting better. I think you could call it a timely warning.’
Rebecca pulls my blanket over my knees in my wheelchair.
‘Perhaps you should go back to the doctor?’
Despite the fire in the room I feel a chill creep through the window. This particular fog wasn’t forecast.
‘What doctor will accept an explanation that isn’t in any medical book?’
‘And you? What do you believe in?’
‘Visions. A vision. Here in broad daylight.’
‘Is it Lizzie?’
‘Not always, no.’
‘Hostile or friendly?’
‘Either. Like a waking dream.’
Rebecca unscrews the cup from my thermos flask as I keep watch on the lawn.
‘Does she talk to you?’
‘No.’
‘Does that make you afraid?’
‘Not afraid, broken-hearted.’
‘You never told me what happened to her, exactly.’
I sit forward in my chair in order to overcome my repugnance at so many pills. Then I toss back my head to swallow the inexplicable.
Of my own pain there can be no mitigation.
‘By the end, Lizzie couldn’t even ingest sips of ice-cream or speak clearly. All I could do was dab her lips with cotton tipped swab-sticks dipped in a 5ml artificial saliva solution. I had to moisten her palette, teeth and mouth floor while she took a cocktail of drugs to dampen the agony by way of a single syringe driver. She begged me to make up a lethal potion of painkillers for her to drink unaided through a straw, but she could no longer swallow any liquid because her stomach was regurgitating so much acid, it was burning her alive from inside. It was like being roasted in hell by the Devil, she said.
‘At the same time, she was so afraid that if I helped her commit suicide I would serve up to fourteen years in prison, was so fearful of how her last days on this earth would end, since she could barely see or talk to convey a decision. In fact, we both hesitated to take the gamble. Each of us was in a very dark place – couldn’t see the wood for the trees. Yet she was correct. By then her breathing was noisy and shallow, then slow and quiet. But as I took hold of a pillow and pressed it hard on her face and throat, a nurse walked in and caught me red-handed, just as the sun came up and the birds sang at 6.20 in the morning.
‘Lizzie died from her disease shortly afterwards. All charges against me were dropped but not before I went public to argue my case. That’s to say, Lizzie’s.’
Rebecca studies me with her sea-green eyes and then screws the cup back on my flask.
‘Truth is, you didn’t kill her, Colin.’
‘But I had it in me to do it, I released the bogy man.’
‘If you don’t let go you’ll never get out of this house.’
‘Every day offers some hope.’
‘You won’t change anything by trying to bring her back, Colin.’
‘What else is there?’
‘How often do you see her?’
‘Day or night. She never sleeps. Neither do I.’
‘Because she’s always in your thoughts and dreams?’
‘As I said, it’s not always Lizzie.’
‘But Lizzie is the one you long for?’
‘I live for each new appearance.’
Rebecca begins to push me along.
‘You do accept she’s safely interred now in the church, don’t you, Colin?’
‘I can’t think like that any more. If I can see her, she must still need me.’
‘When someone we love dies, they change us. We love them in a different way. We become them and they become us because we are the only living, breathing receptacle of their past life. They live through us for as long as we let them. Could it be that, far from cursing you, Lizzie is trying to lift the curse you’ve put on yourself? She’s gone but it was your life, too.’
‘You mean I’m grieving for a ghost only.’
‘She means that you should not give up on this life too soon?’
*
Since the sun is trying to shine, Rebecca has steered me along the walled path at the back of St. Giles. We have gone to the Gothic doorway in the crenelated defences next to the church in order to look through the gap into Coberley Hall’s inner courtyard.
‘Are you ready now, Colin?’
‘Yes.’
With that, my solicitous nurse opens her little black bag and takes out a syringe.
‘Ketamine can have a dramatic but often short-term effect in some patients whose lives are blighted by chronic severe depression.’
I watch her prepare the needle quite expertly.
‘It’s worth the risk.’
Rebecca works quietly and remains intentionally uncommunicative. By exchanging unspoken and unwritten confidences for a moment we are able to maintain the fiction that I am simply ill, I can charge her with special duties in the same way someone else might a spy or special agent.
‘If your lordship thinks what I am doing will work this time?’
I clutch my dragon-tipped cane and command the air. Rebecca manoeuvres my chair so that I can see clearly through the gap in the wall to the void beyond.
‘I do.’
‘Then I’ll go ahead and give you six infusions of up to 80mg during your three-week course of treatment.’
Slowly begins the series of pictures and visions, when in reality I’m still awake. I’m back in a dream world outside the laws of nature, I’m briefly inside Coberley Hall where lords and ladies walk the floors and Pan is back in place on his frieze on the wall of the screens passage. Once I fancy that som
eone tries the door to my bedchamber but it is probably only James doing his rounds. Hopefully it is not the wretched, thievish Viktor, though he may have seen what I did to George. After that, a restless silence hangs over everything, broken only by the ticking of the many clocks that mark time so ceaselessly even though I never see anyone wind their keys, not once. I feel as if I’m on the other side of all the hours and minutes that ever were. But I’m not mortified, I’m back in.
*
On the far side of the courtyard and behind the church, there stretches a wide, open meadow under whose surface resides the foundations of an old manor house. From about 1720 its estate, village and church were gradually left deserted for a hundred years. Tombs were smashed and brasses stolen from their slabs. Whole cottages fell into ruin, as did Coberley Hall. Soon the house was uninhabitable and the owners moved into the rooms over the old entrance gateway. Eventually the Hall was pulled down and most of its stone used to build a road, but sometimes in the twilight I see a woman cross the grass wherein lies the last of the rubble. At her side runs a white, three-legged greyhound. That’s when, for a moment, I’m drawn closer to a simulacrum of someone as she once was, only she picks wild flowers with such elegance in her green and white robe that she seems to glide along. Her self-absorption and distance suggest somebody beautiful and proud, who will forever point the way around her beloved gardens. As she lifts her face to glare at me with her empty eyes, her pearl earring and its keepsake give off a glimmer while on her hand shines her blue enamelled ring.
I now know what happens when you fall in love with the hereafter – the dead won’t rest without you. You have to let them go or they’ll take you with them, they’ll have you give up on this life far too easily. They’d have you care about no one but them, least of all yourself. At such times as I can’t bear to be alone, she strikes me as thoughtful and sorrowful, too. Those days, I dread that she’ll have done with me totally, that I might never be the one she’ll adore, only another of her pictures on the wall. Suddenly, though, she surprises me with her radiant smile at my return.
