The Goat-Foot God

by Dion Fortune

  ‘That sounds promising. We might have a look at it.’

  ‘What about water supply?’ said Mona.

  ‘Ah,’ said the old gentleman, rubbing his nose. ‘You’re all right for that. Them old monks, they knew what they was about. You got a fine spring just above the ‘ouse, and the water comes down of it’s own weight.’

  They followed the road as directed, and presently, in a thick belt of firs, came to a gateless gap. They turned in, and bumped their way over a sandy surface till the firs gave place to open, moorlike pasture, dotted with clumps of gorse. It all looked pretty barren. They crossed the pasture and came to another belt of firs, and saw through them the loom of whitewashed buildings. They drove through a gap in the trees, and found themselves in the farm-yard.

  Round all four sides of it, with gaps here and there for ingress, ran a low, penthouse roof; rough tarred weather-boarding rose to meet it, evidently forming a long narrow cow-house or stable. Across one end of the yard was a very large barn with a very steep roof of ancient, lichen-blotched tiles. Across the side was a long range of old stone buildings, evidently used as living-quarters, dairy, store-rooms, and anything else that the work of a farm requires. It was much too large for a dwelling house, anyway. At the other end was a smaller and more roughly-built barn, evidently of later date than the rest of the buildings. A raffle of pigsties, calf-pens and cart-shelters occupied the extensive yard round which these buildings stood; the yard itself was unpaved, and must have been a quagmire in wet weather.

  Everything was boarded up and fastened with enormous padlocks. All the lower windows were shuttered, so they could not get a look-in anywhere.

  ‘Miss Pumfrey appears to be a lady of suspicious nature,’ said Hugh. He fetched a large screwdriver from the car and prised up one of the boards shoring up the penthouse. The board was rotten, and almost fell off. He put his head through the gap.

  ‘Look at that — these stables are cloisters! They’re all fan-arched.’

  ‘No, are they really? How perfectly marvellous. Do let me look.’

  Hugh drew back, and Mona popped her head through the gap. ‘Do you know that behind those mangers are stone-mullioned windows?’

  ‘Are there really? This looks absolutely ideal. Let’s rush off and find Miss Pumfrey.’

  ‘You can’t live on stone mullions. Let’s trace the water-supply.’

  They passed through a gap in the cloisters and came out in front of the house. It was a beautifully proportioned building of two storeys, rising to a high attic gable in the middle and stretching away on either side in long wings. High up under the gable was an empty niche that had evidently once held a statue. A few gloriously golden daffodils tried to make a garden against the grey stone walls, and then unfenced, barren pasture stretched away to a far belt of trees. No other human habitation, nor any sign of the work of man, was in sight. It seemed a most unpromising spot to try and do any farming.

  A heavy door, just like a church door, filled a pointed arch in the centre of the long low front. High, stone-mullioned, gothic-arched windows flanked it at regular intervals. The whole effect was very ecclesiastical.

  They turned the corner and found themselves beside the bigger of the two barns. ‘Obviously a chapel,’ said Mona, pointing to the remains of a mouldering cross on the gable-end.

  They went on in their circular tour, following a path that led through the small fir-wood at the back of the house through which they had passed on their arrival. The path ended abruptly in a miniature bog.

  ‘Well, we’ve found the water-supply, anyway,’ said Hugh, ‘only it doesn’t look very wholesome to me. I don’t know what you think.’

  ‘I expect there’s a culvert somewhere that’s blocked up or broken down,’ said Mona. ‘The water’s all right, look how clear it is; and this bog hasn’t been here very long; it hasn’t killed the grass.’

  ‘Well, I think we’ve seen as much as we can expect to see unless we commit a burglary. Shall we go back and call on Miss Pumfrey?’

  As they returned down the road to the village they saw the grocer standing outside the door of his shop waving what looked in the distance like an agricultural implement, but which, as they drew nearer, proved to be a huge key.

  ‘I’ve seen Miss Pumfrey,’ he cried as they came within hailing-distance. ‘She’ll sell. But don’t you give ‘er too much. It’s all falling to bits, and as bare as the back of your ‘and.’

  They took the key, and returned. The great ecclesiastical door creaked open unwillingly, and they entered. The place smelt musty. Unswept stone flooring stretched away on either hand, and what had once been large barn-like rooms had been roughly partitioned with heavy boards plastered with wall-paper. A fine stone staircase wound up ma wide spiral opposite the door. They mounted it, and found themselves in a broad passage that ran the whole length of the upper storey of the building. Out of it opened a number of small low doorways.

  ‘The monks’ cells!’ said Hugh.

  They entered one that had evidently been used to store apples, to judge by the smell of it.

  ‘Why, there’s no window,’ said Mona, ‘only a little grating up near the ceiling. They must have been a very austere order indeed.’

  Up again there led a small, narrow stone stair, winding in the thickness of the wall. Up this they went. At the top was a miniature church door, they pushed it open and entered, and found themselves in what had obviously been a small chapel.

  ‘There’s a queer feeling in here!’ said Hugh.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Mona. ‘You needn’t worry about that.’

  They descended to the ground-floor again, and saw cellar steps leading down into the depths.

  ‘We’d better have a look down here,’ said Mona. ‘This will tell us whether the place is dry or not.’

  They found themselves in a large groin-roofed cellar around three sides of which were low arched doorways, similar to the cell-doorways on the upper floor.

  ‘Good Lord,’ cried Hugh, ‘those are prison cells!’

  ‘No wonder the place has a funny feel,’ said Mona. ‘It must be a penal house belonging to one of the old monasteries.’

  ‘What in the world’s that?’

  ‘Some of the monasteries were as big as small towns. Naturally not all the monks were saints. They generally used to keep one priory where they sent the monks who wouldn’t behave themselves so that they shouldn’t corrupt the others. Sometimes the monks were just mad and harmless. Sometimes they were — not harmless. Do you think you will be able to stand the feel of this place?’

  ‘Why? What’s wrong with it? It only feels melancholy to me.’

  ‘It feels queer — uncommonly queer — to me, but not inimical. Let’s go and see Miss Pumfrey and find out its history.’

  The house whose chimneys the grocer had indicated proved to be a Georgian structure, imposing, but much in need of paint. An elderly parlour-maid opened the door. The drawing-room into which they were shown contained some very fine old furniture, but the coverings were threadbare. There was no fire, and the maid made no gesture of lighting one.

  A lady entered. She wore a sagging tweed skirt; a flannel shirt-blouse; a baggy, home-knitted jersey coat, and a pair of gold pince-nez. Her greying hair was twisted into a jug-handle at the back of her head and she wore a curled fringe.

  She greeted them coldly, did not ask them to sit down, and inquired their business.

  ‘I am looking for a small property about here,’ said Hugh. ‘I have just seen Monks Farm, and I think it might be suitable. May I ask the price?’

  ‘I really could not say,’ said Miss Pumfrey. ‘That is a matter for my solicitor.’

  ‘Are you willing to sell?’

  Miss Pumfrey hesitated. ‘I should prefer to let,’ she said.

  ‘I do not wish to rent a place. I prefer to buy,’ said Hugh, and he named a price that made Miss Pumfrey’s eyes glisten.

  They found Mr Watney the solicitor, as directed, and h
e proved to be a sprightly old gentleman who had a twinkle in his eye as he talked to them. He did not say very much however, until Hugh had handed over to him a cheque for a hundred as deposit. Then he opened out.

  ‘It is a custom with country lawyers to seal a land-deal with a glass of port. I have often wondered whether it is a relic of a Christian sacrament or a pagan libation, but I have never been able to discover. Some odd old customs linger on in the law. Did you know that when a case is settled out of court, the brief is always marked with the Sign of the Cross?’

  ‘I know there’s an odd scribble on it,’ said Hugh.

  ‘Well, that is actually the Sign of the Cross. And did you know that no priest can be a barrister? If a parson wants to change his cloth, he has to give up his orders. We got rid of the domination of the Church, but we kept the blessing on a settled case. Odd, isn’t it?’

  ‘You are interested in archaeology?’

  ‘Yes, very. In fact I am the president of our local archaeological society. The country round about here is most fruitful ground. We have Saxon, Roman and ancient British remains in layers one below the other.’

  ‘Can you tell me anything about Monks Farm?’

  ‘Dear me, yes, I can tell you a lot. It is one of our most interesting relics. There are some very curious stories attached to it. Do you know we had an inquest there once, on the bones of a monk who was found walled up in the cellar? Most interesting. I was able to identify him. He was a very famous sub-prior of the parent foundation. A friend of Erasmus, at any rate he corresponded with him. He was one of the first Englishmen to study Greek?’

  ‘What was his offence?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. It must have been something pretty scandalous because there is not a word about it in the records of the monastery. Merely a remark that he was replaced in his office by someone else. No reason given. It must have been something they did not care to put on record. Monks Farm, you know, was a kind of penitentiary. Bread and water and peas in their shoes, I believe. They had a lot of trouble at that monastery. We have never been able to find out what it was all about. The records have some very odd silences. Men removed from their offices and no reason given. A new abbot appointed by the Pope instead of being elected by the monks. Then a lot of monks distributed among the other houses of the Order and all the new officials brought in from outside. A clean sweep, as it were. But there were a number of monks who weren’t accounted for. They weren’t sent to other houses, their names just disappeared off the rolls. We’ve accounted for one of them, however, at our inquest, so perhaps the others went by the same route. You may find some interesting things if you excavate.’

  They drove back to town in the gathering dusk, and landed in upon Mr Jelkes just as he was getting his tea.

  ‘Well, T.J., we’ve done the deed. We’ve bought a house.’

  ‘You haven’t been long about it,’ said the old man. ‘I hope you’ve not been rash. What have you let him in for, Mona?’

  They gave him all the details, and old Jelkes nodded grimly. ‘They had a lot of trouble at that particular Abbey. One of the big Catholic historians made a valiant attempt to whitewash it of recent years. You think what it must have meant to these monks, shut up in their monasteries, when they got to work on the Greek manuscripts that the Renaissance brought to Europe. Supposing they got hold of the Bacchae, for instance, with the invocations to Dionysus? That must have livened up the cloister a bit. This prior, Ambrosius, I believe his name was, is known to have corresponded with Erasmus. His letters are extant. There is a letter from him about the purchase of a batch of Greek manuscripts for the Abbey library. The abbot was a very old man, in his dotage, I gather, and this Ambrosius practically ran the place. A prior is the second in command, you know. Then the Pope sent a visitor to have a look at them. That made them wild, for they had a special charter that made them exempt from inspection, and they chucked the visitor out. But the next thing was that the Pope sent them a new abbot, and the civil power enforced it. The old abbot was dead and Ambrosius was expecting to get elected. But he never was. He just disappeared and they got an Italian in charge of them. Then there was that clean sweep you’ve been hearing about. Something pretty bad went wrong with that monastery.’

  ‘Do you suppose that poor old Ambrosius was playing about with an invocation of Pan?’

  ‘How do I know? All I’ve read is the whitewashing and the reprint of the records. In come the manuscripts, and up goes the monastery. We know what Greek literature is like, and we know what monasteries are like. Then we find the smart young prior who worked on the manuscripts bricked up in a lonely grange, and we smell sulphur.’

  ‘Was he a young chap?’

  ‘He was about your age, Hugh, when he disappeared off the map.’

  ‘Poor devil, he has my sympathy. I wouldn’t have fancied being bricked up with the best part of my life before me.’

  Sleepy from the fresh air, Hugh got off to bed early. But sleepy as he was, he determined to try and recapture the trail of the previous experience. He felt somehow that he must do this thing regularly if he were to succeed with it. He turned on to his back, crossed his arms on his chest, and called up before his mind’s eye the picture of a sunny hillside above the sea in ancient Greece. But before he knew where he was, he was sliding off into dreamland.

  It seemed to him that he was lying on his back on a narrow plank bed. It was pitch dark, and the roof seemed to be pressing down on him and the walls closing in on him. And all the time he could hear the tolling of a bell. He felt a hood of some coarse woollen material like serge around his head, and folds of coarse serge material under his hands that were folded on his breast. In his dream he sat up on the narrow plank bed and pushed the hood off his head to wipe the sweat from his face. He passed his hand over his sweat-soaked hair, and found a round bald patch on the top of his head, as if the thick hair had been shaved away. Then in his dream he lay down again and drew the hood over his face, and concentrated his mind on one idea — to die with dignity and without struggling. Then it seemed to him that the sound of the tolling bell became merged in the beating of his own heart. The heavy beats grew louder and louder, and slower and slower, and then, all of a sudden, he found himself in the fresh air and full sunlight on the Grecian hillside, and ahead of him was the figure of the woman with the satiny back and softly moulded muscles.

  He leapt after her. Round his loins was a goatskin, he could feel the rough hairiness of it, but the upper part of his body was bare. The woman ahead had a fawnskin slung over her shoulder. She had an olive skin and her body was strong and muscular. In particular was he struck by the strong firm column of the neck. He pursued, but she did not so much flee as go on ahead of him.

  Suddenly sleep left him, and he woke up to find himself in a bath of sweat.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Real estate is not a thing that ever gets itself transferred from one owner to another expeditiously. Miss Pumfrey was not a person of whom one could ask favours in the way of obtaining possession, and Hugh reckoned he would find himself at a loose end for at least a fortnight.

  At breakfast next morning he said to old Jelkes: ‘What do I do about paying Miss Wilton? I’m taking up a devil of a lot of her time, and I suppose time is money with her.’

  ‘Does she suit you?’

  ‘Yes, first-rate. I like her.’

  ‘Then I should put her on the pay-roll, if I were you. What are the jobs you want her for at the moment? It’s too soon to start furnishing isn’t it?’

  Hugh was nonplussed. He hadn’t thought of any particular jobs for Mona to do. What he really wanted was to get some money into her hand without hurting her pride. ‘I had an idea that she might do a bit of research for me,’ he said, improvising hastily. ‘I’d like to trace out the history of Monks Farm.’

  Jelkes nodded. ‘There is sure to be a good collection of stuff in the library of the local museum. I bet there’s plenty of material available for piecing together by anyone who knows
as much as we do of the queer side of things.’

  ‘Yes you’re right. I’ll run her down to see old Watney and we’ll have a rummage round.’

  Once again the racing-car took the road north with Mona Wilton, hooded and clad in green, seated beside its driver.

  Mr Watney gave them a list of books to refer to, and a note of introduction to the curator at the museum, and off they went. The curator, a Mr Diss, proved to be just such another as Mr Watney, and the two were apparently cronies, being respectively president and secretary of the local archaeological society. The museum was the proud possessor of the Abbey rolls, and they had the interesting experience of looking at the actual entry of the purchase of the Greek manuscripts from Erasmus’ agent. The monks had paid thirty pounds for them — a substantial sum in modern money.

  The curator was called away, and left them in the hands of a youth with instructions to get them whatever they wanted. Hugh gave him the list Mr Watney had furnished, and the youth deposited a pile of books before them and disappeared.

  ‘Now then, we’ll share these out,’ said Hugh. ‘I’m an adept at skipping.’

  They got to work, and silence fell between them, which Mona was the first to break. ‘This is interesting,’ she said. ‘It’s the ghost at the farm.’

  Hugh left his chair and came round to her side of the table and sat down beside her, reading over her shoulder.

  The book that was open before them concerned local superstitions. Monks Farm bore a sinister reputation. It appears that it was not originally a penal house. It had been built by the infamous prior, Ambrosius, as a special place of retreat and meditation to which certain picked monks retired at certain seasons. It was not until the trouble broke out that it was turned into a penal house by the simple expedient of blocking up the cell windows and making the monks who were there, stop there, whether they liked it or not. Ambrosius was taken to his own special priory and bricked-up below-stairs as a warning and an example. The other monks were kept in their cells on a low diet till they died more or less naturally. They never saw the light of day again. In darkness and solitary confinement they waited their end. One man lived to be over eighty — fifty-five years’ imprisonment. Their jailers never spoke to them, and jailer replaced jailer till the last monk died, and then the place was abandoned. The ghost of the prior was supposed to walk round the cells, talking to his monks and consoling them.