The Devil Defeated
At that moment, making them all start in surprise, a huge black bird suddenly appeared, flying wildly around the room.
It was a large, ugly bird, flapping about alarmingly, and Dorina instinctively jumped up from the chair by the Earl’s sickbed and moved to the side of the room.
Then while everyone else was watching the bird, which twisted and turned elusively, Dorina saw Jarvis Yarde pause for a moment.
The Earl, intent on watching the mysterious bird, had put his glass down on the bedside table.
With a movement so swift that she did not think it possible, she saw Jarvis drop something into the Earl’s glass – .
Author’s Note
In the second half of the nineteenth century in France there was an upsurge of Black Magic.
This was practised mostly by the intelligentsia who formed Satanical cults that celebrated the Black Mass, attempted to conjure up spirits, studied the prolongation of life and other occult sciences.
In Britain it was mostly confined to the countryside, where witches and witchcraft had flourished since the beginning of time. In Eastern England the fear of witchcraft was always intense and the Devil was reputed to be very active in Essex, where wizards were plentiful.
Nothing, however, superseded the fantastic orgies of the Hell Fire caves, where in the eighteenth century Sir Francis Dashwood celebrated Black Mass more grandly than anyone had done before or since. The caves are still open to the public at High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire.
Chapter one
1818
“Who do you think I have just seen?”
Rosabelle burst into the dining room as she spoke and her sister Dorina looked up from the end of the table, where she was spooning a pleasantly smelling stew onto a plate and said sharply,
“You are late, Rosabelle.”
“I know,” she replied, “and I am sorry, but I have seen the Earl!”
“Where did you see him?” Peter asked with his mouth full.
“In the Park,” Rosabelle replied.
Dorina walked round the table to put the plate of stew she had just served in front of her sister and said crossly,
“I have told you before, Rosabelle – and you have to listen to me – you must not go into the Park now that the new Earl is home, unless he invites you to do so!”
“We have always been allowed to go in the Park,” Rosabelle replied. “Why should he stop us?”
“Because he owns it, silly!” Peter answered.
Peter was eleven and at the age when he thought all girls were silly anyway and he added as if his sister did not understand,
“He could have you up for trespassing if he wanted to, so Dorina is right and we should keep out of the Park.”
Rosabelle pouted and she looked very pretty as she did so.
“I think you are all very disagreeable!” she said. “It was very exciting seeing the Earl. He was riding with three other very handsome gentlemen.”
“Did he see you?” Dorina asked.
“I was with Rover in the bushes and I crouched down so that he would not notice me.”
“You must promise me not to go in the Park again,” Dorina insisted in a firm voice, “and that includes the woods!”
Rosabelle and Peter gave cries of protest.
“But we must go in the woods, Dorina, we always have! If they are out of bounds as well as the Park, we will only be able to walk along the dusty road, which will be terribly boring!”
“I know, I know,” Dorina agreed, “but please, do as I say! I am sure if the Earl sees you, he will think you are intruding and that would be a mistake.”
“I don’t see why,” Rosabelle countered rebelliously.
She was just fifteen and at the age when she resented being told not to do something. At the same time, like Peter, she loved her elder sister and as a general rule they were both extremely obedient. Since Dorina, after her mother’s death, had taken over the running of the household, she had, in fact, found that they were very little trouble.
The door of the dining room opened and her father came in.
The Reverend Prosper Stanfield was an exceedingly good-looking man.
His hair, which was just beginning to turn grey, was a little untidy and there was a vague look in his eyes which meant that he had been enjoying his work in the garden and had no wish to be taken away from it for anything so unnecessary as a meal.
The Vicar had always been intensely interested in gardening and especially in developing rare species of cactus.
But since his wife’s death, which had made him so desperately unhappy that Dorina had feared for a time that he might take his life, he had concentrated fiercely on his gardening to help him forget his loneliness.
Now she noted as he sat down at the table that he had remembered to wash his hands and she said gently in a voice that showed how much she loved him,
“Have you had a good morning, Papa? I feel sure that your plants are doing well in the sunshine.”
“They are, indeed,” her father replied. “In fact I think that last one which you laughed at because it was so small, is at last beginning to grow.”
“You must show it to me after luncheon,” Dorina suggested.
She walked round the table to put his plate of stew in front of him and handed him the vegetables.
She noted as she did so that Rosabelle had taken so little cabbage that it was almost invisible on her plate. Peter, however, had helped himself to so many potatoes that there were only three left for his father.
Dorina said nothing and, having poured out a glass of cider for her father which was a present from a local farmer, went back to her own chair to help herself to what was left of the stew and vegetables.
Although she never complained, it was very difficult to provide food the family enjoyed without overspending the very small allowance her father could give her for the housekeeping.
If it had not been for Nanny’s skill in managing to obtain an occasional duck, chicken or pigeon from the farmers’ wives who came to Church on Sunday, they would have existed on a permanent diet of rabbit and scrag-end of beef because it was cheap.
Nanny was a good but plain cook and everything that came to the table, while nourishing, was not exciting.
However, Dorina could not think only about food, for she had too many other worries, the most important being at the moment how they could afford to send Peter to a good school, preferably Eton, where his father and his grandfather had gone before him.
If she was not worrying about Peter, it was about Rosabelle, who was growing into a pretty young woman who was becoming exceedingly conscious of her appearance.
She was, therefore, continually asking for new gowns, bonnets and shoes, all of which, unfortunately, cost money.
Now because she was annoyed with Dorina for rebuking her, Rosabelle said to her father
“What do you think, Papa? I saw the new Earl this morning! He was riding the most magnificent horse, a black stallion, which is quite different from anything that has been in the Yarde stables before.”
“The new Earl?” the Vicar repeated as if his thoughts were far away. “He has certainly taken a long time in coming home.”
“He has been in France,” Dorina said, “with the Army of Occupation and it is only recently that its numbers are being reduced and so many soldiers are returning.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” her father replied, “and it is a good thing that Yarde will have somebody to look after it again and, of course, the estate.”
“I hope the Earl will realise what should be done,” Dorina added in a slightly repressive tone.
Her father did not answer and Rosabelle piped up,
“I
heard Mrs. Champion telling Nanny that they had a riotous house party up at the Big House this weekend. She said there were ladies glittering like Christmas trees and the amount the gentlemen drank must have emptied half the cellar!”
“That is only gossip,” Dorina exclaimed, “and you should not repeat such stories!”
“I am telling you only what Mrs. Champion said to Nanny.”
“I don’t suppose they knew that you were listening!”
“How could I help it,” Rosabelle asked, “when Mrs. Champion is so deaf that she always shouts?”
Dorina decided it was undignified to go on arguing.
She thought it was a mistake for Rosabelle to be too interested in what was happening since the Earl’s return and she tried to change the conversation by talking to her father about his garden.
But the children were thrilled that something new was occurring in the quiet village of Little Sodbury, where everything appeared to be the same, month in, month out.
“I would like to see the Earl’s horses,” Peter was saying, “and I suppose there is no chance of my riding one?”
“You are to stay away from the stables!” Dorina told him, “as I told you to do, as soon as the Earl arrived four days ago!”
“They like my going there,” Peter protested. “Old Hawkins says I am as good at rubbing down a horse as any of his stable lads and you know, Dorina, he has let me ride around the paddock dozens of times.”
“That was very different. We knew the old Earl very well and he was very fond of us. I have explained to you both over and over again that we cannot take advantage or impose ourselves on the new Earl until we have met him and until he proves to be as kind as his uncle was.”
“Suppose he does not want to be kind to us?” Rosabelle asked. “Then what are we to do?”
“Manage on our own!” Dorina said sharply.
She looked across the table at her father, whose thoughts were obviously far away and after a moment she said,
“I was wondering, Papa, as the Earl did not come to Church on Sunday, whether it would be correct for you to call on him?”
The Vicar looked at her for a moment as if what she had said had hardly penetrated his mind and then he replied,
“I expect, if his Lordship wants me, he will send for me. In the meantime, I am too busy, my dear, to drive up to Yarde, only to find it to be a wasted journey.”
Dorina did not point out to him that it would take him less than ten minutes to drive from the village up to the front door of the Big House.
She had, however, the uncomfortable feeling that it might well be a waste of time if in fact the Earl had no wish to see her father and sent him away.
She therefore said quietly,
“I am sure you are right, Papa. Perhaps we shall see him in Church next Sunday.”
She thought as she spoke that it was very unlikely.
The whole village had been desperately disappointed that, after the Earl’s arrival at his ancestral home four days ago, there had been no one in the Yarde family pew at any of the Services that took place on Sunday.
The congregations, because they were unnaturally curious, had been larger than they had been for some time and even Dorina had found herself glancing continually in the direction of the West door until the Service started.
Now, because of what she had heard since the new Earl’s arrival – and gossip flew on wings round the small village – she was quite certain that he was not a churchgoer and, if they should ever meet him, it would be by chance rather than by his showing any interest.
Carrying the plates and the empty bowl that had contained the stew into the kitchen, Dorina found Nanny dishing up a large sponge pudding and covering it with strawberry jam.
“Mind your father has a big helping,” she said, as she fetched the warm plates from the oven, “he’s not eating enough at the moment to keep a mouse alive.”
“He ate all the stew I gave him,” Dorina said, “and I think he enjoyed it. It was delicious, Nanny.”
“I does me best,” Nanny said sharply, “but no one can make bricks without straw and unless you’re all to starve next week, you’ll have to ask your father for some more money.”
“It’s no use, Nanny. He has none,” Dorina replied. “I did the accounts with him last night and he was wondering how he could afford to buy a new cactus that he had heard was growing well in Kew Gardens.”
“Well, all I can say,” Nanny said tartly, “is for goodness’ sake, Miss Dorina, persuade the Vicar to grow food, especially vegetables.”
Dorina laughed and it was a very pretty sound.
“Mama tried that once, but she failed, Papa really loves his cactus and I have often thought it is because he has always wanted to travel to visit Africa and Brazil! As he plants and grows his cacti, that is what he is doing in his imagination.”
“And that’s about all we can afford these days,” Nanny said, as she handed Dorina the plates and put the pudding gently on top of them.
Then she opened the kitchen door and Dorina carried the food into the dining room.
When she had gone, Nanny gave a sigh and sat down on one of the hard chairs by the kitchen table.
She was over sixty and, after she had been standing for a long time, her legs hurt her and in the winter she often had a touch of rheumatism, which hurt her even more.
But she was not thinking of herself or her aches and pains, but of the children she had loved ever since they were born and how unfair it seemed that they should have to try to exist on so little when, according to reports, money was being thrown about like water up at the Big House.
Everything that happened in Little Sodbury was related to Nanny almost as if she had a right to it.
She had been the first person to be told when the new Earl arrived and every detail about his guests who came down from London the next day was hurriedly carried to the Vicarage.
It was not surprising that the inhabitants of the village who were all living in houses owned by the Earl of Yardecombe were interested in their new Master.
Living on the estate of Yarde, which was one of the great ancestral houses in England, they had all, from the oldest pensioner to the youngest child, taken it for granted that the sixth Earl’s son, William, would inherit when his father died.
They had known William from the moment he was born and to the older people in the village and on the estate it was almost as if he was their own son.
They had watched him through every age and learnt when he had measles and whooping cough that he suffered rather worse than their own children.
They were delighted when he was old enough to go out hunting with his father and thrilled when he shot his first rabbit and caught his first fish in the lake.
William was one of themselves and they looked on him with love and admiration and, as he grew older, with a possessive pride.
There was no one who did not suffer agonisingly when William was killed fighting the French in the Peninsula War.
Although their affection and interest was quickly turned to his younger brother, Charles, when in turn he was killed in an accident in Belgium during the manoeuvring of Wellington’s new Army a month before the Battle of Waterloo.
To Dorina, who had been virtually brought up with both of the young men, it had left a scar that had hardly yet healed.
Because they had been children together, the boys had run in and out of the Vicarage as she was able to run in and out of the Big House. She had felt indeed as if they were her brothers and, when they were gone, there was an unfilled gap in her life.
It seemed impossible to realise that William, who was two years older than herself and Charles who was one year younger, would never return, while the title and the Big House would go to a cousin whom she had never seen and about whom they knew nothing.
The old Earl’s first cousin had lived abroad a great deal of his life and his son, Oscar, although he was educated in England, had always spent his holidays abroad.<
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Dorina had learned that he had gone straight from school into the Army and apparently made a great success of his career, rising rapidly from Captain to Major and ending the war as a Colonel.
Actually that was all anybody knew about him.
He had never come to Yarde and the old Earl, who had always tried to be a father figure to all his relatives, had never talked about him to Dorina’s knowledge. In fact it was doubtful if he had ever met him.
“How can God be so cruel, Papa, as to allow both William and Charles to be killed?” she had asked her father. “Who is there left who really cares about us or the people who have looked to the Earl of Yardecombe to protect and guide them, as the last Earl did?”
Her father had put his hand on her shoulder to show he understood what she was feeling and replied,
“Many strange things happen in life, my dearest. While one rebels against them, it often happens that things turn out to be right when we least expect it.”
“I cannot see how it can possibly be right for both William and Charles to be killed!” Dorina had said angrily.
“I miss them, as you do,” the Vicar agreed, “and as I miss your mother.”
There was a pain in his voice that made Dorina know she was being very selfish by speaking of her own happiness when she knew that every moment of his life was a torture because he was alone and his wife was no longer with him.
They had been so happy together that it had never mattered if they had so little money or if the Vicar gave away far too much of what little they did have to the people who begged from him.
The Vicarage itself was shabby and very much in need of paint, but because the family always seemed to be laughing, the rooms were filled with sunshine and people who visited them did not notice that the curtains were faded, the carpets worn and the furniture needed to be repaired.
Then Mrs. Stanfield had died one cold December night when nothing they could do seemed to make the rooms any warmer.
She had caught a cold while visiting a parishioner who was dying in the village. It had turned to pneumonia and almost before they could realise it, she had left them.
The Vicar was so distraught that Dorina was afraid that she would lose her father as well as her mother.
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