Ladygrove

by John Burke

  She stood beside him, took the glass, and positioned herself as his guiding hand instructed.

  In some odd way the thickness of the glass plate added a new dimension to the flat picture, as if the lettering were etched into it as it had been etched into the stone. Moving an inch this way and an inch that way, to get different textures of light through the letters, Bronwen picked them out slowly and out of order. After she had established the main words, the blanks seemed to fill themselves in of their own accord:

  Pray f— deliv-rance f— …

  She narrowed her eyes. Letting the picture go ever so slightly out of focus, one got a clearer sense of what the lines must be.

  And the sense, unless they had both misread the inscription, was a distressing one:

  Pray for deliverance from

  Matilda

  who did leave piouf feclufion

  to feek worldlie gratification

  but waf thruft back in

  for her own good.

  ‘That can’t be right,’ said Bronwen. ‘It must surely be “Pray for deliverance for Matilda”.’

  Caspian leaned again over the picture. ‘No. The word is there: “from Matilda”.’

  ‘But why?’ Bronwen was writing the full text out on a sheet of paper. When she came to the end, she shivered. The awfulness of it: thrust back in for her own good.

  What had that poor, long-dead creature done?

  ‘I think,’ said Caspian quietly, ‘that just to set our own minds at rest, we will after all deliver the pictures to Ladygrove Manor on our homeward journey.’

  That night Bronwen was snared in a cruel, confused dream. Trying to fight her way out of a suffocating cupboard, which at one moment was in a corner of the Caernarvon house, at another somehow transported to the heart of Ladygrove maze, she was pushed back over and over again. Gasping for breath, she tried to set her shoulder against the door as it closed for what she was sure would be the last time. Then a hand stole over her shoulder and around her back, and she woke up moaning to find Caspian turning her gently, insistently towards him. He soothed her, murmured her into drowsy contentment; and while she was still half-asleep he came gently and lovingly into her, and she dreamily responded and then slept, fulfilled and well pleased.

  * * * *

  They had telegraphed their time of arrival to David, and the trap was waiting at the station, driven by a groom who explained that Sir David had been called away to a small fire in one of the barns. Last time they had made this journey, it was to the sound of their friend’s enthusiasm. Now they travelled the circuitous route over a ridge, down along a side of the valley and at last into Mockblane and over the bridge, in near silence, not wanting to say anything which the man might pick up and pass on to the other servants; and, as they drew closer to Ladygrove, having nothing else they wished to talk about.

  At the door Judith was waiting, just as on that last arrival. But she had changed. At first glance Bronwen could not determine where the change lay: she was perhaps a trifle haggard, yet at the same time showed a certain inner complacency—which might have been accounted for by the child within her, but somehow was not.

  ‘David will be back as soon as he can. He’ll be so pleased to see you again—and the pictures. They’ve been successful, have they?’

  She led the way into the hall.

  Bronwen and Caspian followed, and stopped dead in the centre of the polished floor.

  What had happened?

  Their minds reached for each other.

  ‘You managed to settle everything in Caernarvon?’ Judith was asking.

  The house is worse. The house, everything. Much, much worse than before.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘I want a daughter,’ declared Judith, ‘not a son. And not born in this house.’

  Margaret nodded a vigorous, no-nonsense nod. Herself the mother of one girl and one boy, she was briskly certain that the order of birth mattered nothing and that averages would probably work out as tidily for all normal people as they had done for her.

  ‘Whichever it is,’ she said breezily, ‘you’ll be glad to have it out, so you may start thinking about the next.’

  Judith managed a wan smile.

  David’s sister was tall and bony, her complexion leathery from years in an inimical climate, but handsome. A woman accustomed to giving orders and coping smartly with crises, she had come home to Ladygrove Manor with curling upper lip and a contrarily wide, spontaneous grin. Brusque disdain alternated with bursts of heartiness. From the moment of first meeting her sister-in-law, she made it plain that for normal women having a child was perfectly normal—of no greater consequence than dropping a foal in a paddock, nudging it to its feet, and licking it, and then going off for a skittish canter across the meadows.

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ she conceded as the two of them sat at the open window surveying a scene which had grown wearisomely familiar to Judith, ‘for wanting to be away from here for the confinement. I was thousands of miles away for mine, heaven be praised. Atmosphere of this place’d dampen anyone’s spirits. Can’t think why you let yourself be dragged here.’

  ‘David had to take over the estate.’

  ‘Shouldn’t have let him. Do you no good, no good at all. Put a bailiff in, collect the rents and invest the profits, live where you choose to live.’

  ‘David loves it here. He has always wanted to come back.’

  ‘Only because he didn’t have to spend all his time here when he was young. Not like me. Fine for him, coming home from school for the holidays and being spoilt—the young master, y’know—and then off to study, and then off to London, and back again when it suited him. I had them—father and mother, I had them—day in, day out. Unhealthy place this, always was.’

  Margaret got up and glared out of the window with the ferocity of a colonial administrator, arms akimbo and bony hips askew.

  Judith said: ‘David will never want to leave here. It wouldn’t be fair to ask him.’

  ‘You’d be glad to see the back of it though, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I…I’d like to be away when the baby’s born.’

  ‘So you shall be. Tell him.’

  ‘He has promised.’

  ‘Make sure he keeps to it.’ Margaret’s sisterly scorn was a tart, invigorating tonic. Then she stooped and looked out, hunching one shoulder up. ‘Here come those friends of yours.’ The mere word ‘friends’ conveyed a judgment on two inexplicable, unreliable eccentrics.

  Bronwen and Alexander Caspian came round the end of the terrace, she with a bulkier camera than she had used last time, he carrying a plate box as before. They glanced up and Bronwen waved, slowing in the hope that Judith would join them.

  She hesitated.

  ‘Better keep an eye on them,’ said Margaret in cheerful mistrust.

  Judith was surprised by her own uncertainty. When Bronwen and Caspian had gone away, she had longed for them to come back—and soon. Now that they were here, they did not seem such close friends as they had once been. That close communion she had once admired now seemed sly, secretive, insultingly unforthcoming. But here they were; and it was she and David who had invited them. She went down on to the grass.

  ‘We were wondering,’ said Bronwen, ‘whether the footbridge has been repaired yet.’

  ‘lt has, yes. Everything’s perfectly normal again.’

  ‘Then perhaps I can get inside this time.’ Bronwen added, as if the answer were of no consequence: ‘When you say perfectly normal, does that mean you’ve overcome the other troubles as well?’

  ‘Oh, those silly vapours of mine?’ Judith was reluctant to tell too much, and even in herself not sure precisely what there was to tell. ‘Truly, I can’t account for those. So silly.’

  ‘You mean you can go in and out as you please?’

  ‘As I please, yes.’

  ‘Whatever are we talking about?’ Margaret was almost as tall and imposing as Caspian. Until she had reached a secure judgment on him she s
et herself against him, chin raised, at her full challenging height.

  He smiled courteously at her, but addressed Judith. ‘Bronwen won’t be satisfied until she has taken some pictures of the interior.’

  ‘There’s so little to see. Nothing of any real importance.’

  Again there was an unspoken question as the two consulted each other in that strange way of theirs. Judith reluctantly supposed she must escort them into the maze to demonstrate how innocuous it was. They would not be in there for long, and it would mean nothing to them: a picture or two and they would go away, and she would be left to enjoy it in peace.

  Until David took her to London. In London they would meet again and she would see them differently. Everything would be different in London. It was just this place that put things in the wrong perspective. Perspective…one of David’s favourite words.

  She must have a girl and escape the malediction, so that there should be no strife betwixt her and David.

  Judith led them down the slope and unfalteringly over the bridge.

  In the maze she took no wrong turning. Smoothly she let herself be steered this way and that, deflected and guided and accustomed to each step so that she would soon be able to do it in her sleep. The others trod behind her, not exchanging a word.

  She began to sympathize with Lady Brobury. It was essential to have somewhere private and personal, some secluded corner in which to shut oneself away from people, even one’s friends.

  Sunlight warmed the cold stones of the anchoress’s cell. Inside it remained cold, but was musty no longer, no longer as she had first encountered it. The floor was swept, revealing not the packed earthen floor she had first expected but a single smooth stone slab, its surface broken only by a scattering of twigs.

  Surprise pricked at her mind. And although she had not spoken, Bronwen responded involuntarily: ‘What is it?’

  The twigs, said Judith. But she did not say it aloud. Looking down expressionlessly at the pattern of rowan, oak, and ash laid out on the stone, she knew it had been altered since she was here yesterday; and knew that even if she had understood the reason she would not have wanted to talk about it.

  Bronwen set up her camera and took pictures of the exterior. Light within was too uncertain for a satisfactory study of the cell’s interior. Then there were a couple of pictures of a corner of the maze, and one of a junction of three deceptive paths. Margaret watched the procedure with a superciliousness that would have done credit to her mother.

  Shepherding them out of the maze, Judith paused at the exit and looked back. She felt an impulse to go in and sit down, on her own, in silence. Walking there and back in their company had tired her unreasonably.

  Margaret said sharply: ‘My dear Judith, what’s troubling you?’

  ‘I’m a little fatigued. I suppose I must have done too much this morning.’

  ‘Nonsense. You’ve done hardly anything this morning. Really, this place is having the most deplorable effect on you.’

  Caspian offered Judith his arm. She hesitated fractionally, then accepted it. Margaret tried to walk alongside, but every few seconds showed a tendency to stalk impatiently ahead.

  The Dowager Lady Brobury was waiting for them.

  It seemed to Judith that her mother-in-law was always watching over her nowadays—not flutteringly and volubly, as she had been a few weeks earlier, but calmly, waiting patiently, setting herself unassumingly back from the scene, yet always a part of it.

  Margaret marched up to her mother. ‘I’ve a good mind to take Judith with me to Hereford.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘Until David condescends to arrange things for her in London.’

  ‘You’re so impulsive, Margaret. I had hoped you’d have grown out of such things.’

  ‘It will do her good.’

  ‘It’s out of the question.’

  ‘What do you mean, mother—out of the question? If Judith wants to get away—’

  ‘Does Judith want to get away?’

  They were all looking at her. Judith wanted to shout yes, of course she wanted to get away, she must get away…David must take her. David would take her.

  ‘When David’s ready,’ she said.

  Lady Brobury nodded. ‘Still trampling your way through other folk’s plans,’ she said to her daughter.

  ‘I still think it would do Judith a world of good to have a rest.’

  ‘She may rest where and how she chooses.’ Lady Brobury bestowed a bland smile on the group and turned away, disappearing unhurriedly into the house.

  She was hardly out of earshot when Margaret said: ‘Something’s happened to mother. She is so direct. So sure of herself.’

  ‘She’s getting over the shock of—’

  ‘Of father’s death? Oh, there’s more to it than that. She used to be such a fuss, forever dabbing and dabbling and then dodging away. Now she looks so smug. As if she knew something the rest of us don’t. And I don’t care for it.’

  Judith had to laugh. Margaret’s indignation was so direct and explosive, brooking no nuances or half-measures.

  ‘She always wanted to be in the centre of things,’ Margaret went on, ‘but father talked her down, and went against her wishes in running the house or…oh, in anything at all. And she never had quite the right manner to impress the villagers or the farmers, so she couldn’t get any satisfaction from playing Lady Bountiful. Poor mother—I always felt she had missed something and didn’t even know what it was she had missed. But now she has the air of having found something. I’m not at all sure it’s good for her.’

  ‘You make it sound as if she’s taking the wrong sort of medicine.’

  ‘Depending on the ailment, that’s rather a.…’

  Margaret’s voice trailed away. It had occurred to her that the Caspians were still close at hand. Her lips tightened. Family matters were not for discussion in front of strangers.

  Bronwen tapped the edge of the plate box her husband was carrying. ‘When we’ve put all this away, perhaps we could stroll over to the village and deliver Mr. Goswell’s prints.’

  * * * *

  On the bridge they stopped for a moment. It commanded a view to one side of Ladygrove Manor, to the other of the village. The contrast in the colours of church and cottages had been wiped out by the growing sullenness of the sky, and even the water below the bridge lacked its usual sparkle. Shadow touched the idyllic scene, which Bronwen had carried away in her memory.

  She said: ‘What do you make of the situation now?’

  ‘I agree with Mrs. Henderson. Something has happened to her mother.’

  ‘To the whole house. And to Judith—or is beginning to happen to her.’

  ‘Mrs. Henderson notices it only in her mother.’

  ‘Since we were last here.…’ Bronwen groped for a way of expressing it, then gave up the struggle. Her thoughts were Caspian’s thoughts, her questions his.

  He said: ‘Something was driven out. And something else, something worse, is filling up the vacuum.’

  They went on their way.

  The Reverend Frederick Goswell was effusively delighted to see them. He offered chairs in the window overlooking his garden and the churchyard beyond, and stood above them, accepting one print at a time, bobbing his head in appreciation, and setting each one carefully on a side table when he had finished with it.

  ‘Excellent. Most commendable. I envy you your skill, Mrs. Caspian.’

  They saved the picture of the inscription until last.

  Now his head shook instead of nodding. ‘Ah, what a pity. But one could expect little else, could one? In a few months’ time, perhaps, if we can find a mason with sufficient skill to clean out the lettering, we may be able to interpret it.’

  ‘With the aid of the original plate and a magnifying-glass,’ said Caspian, ‘we have reached an interpretation.’

  ‘The wonders of modern science! I can scarcely credit it.’

  Caspian laid on top of the neat pile of prints
a sheet written in his fine, regular hand. The vicar read it; mouthed a few words over again; and jerked his head back in protest. ‘But this is not possible.’

  ‘We can see no other reading.’

  ‘Praying for deliverance from Matilda? Really, Dr. Caspian, your eyes have deceived you. Obviously the inscription enjoins us to pray for the soul of the revered Matilda—a quite common form of wording.’

  ‘That was my own first thought. But my wife has also studied the inscription most painstakingly, and is equally convinced.’

  ‘And “thrust back in for her own good”,’ Mr. Goswell’s head shook ever more vigorously. ‘This is deplorable. Why should a young woman of such known holiness be reviled in such a manner?’

  ‘Why was the plaque set in your chancel in the first place?’

  ‘I have no records of its installation, but the concept is natural enough. When the old site by Ladygrove Manor was taken over and this new church built, it was surely in reverence and affection that the memory of Matilda of Mockblane should be recalled here, too. Later apostates may have tried to obliterate that sacred memory, but the original intention can hardly be doubted.’

  ‘To guard against Matilda’s lingering influence?’

  ‘I will not hear it. There is some error somewhere. Whatever other unhappy spirits may have plagued these parts.…’ He stopped.

  ‘There have been spirits, then?’ said Caspian crisply. ‘Manifestations? Revenants?’

  ‘The sins of the fathers—’

  ‘What did you do’—the revelation blazed suddenly in Caspian’s mind, and Bronwen felt it burning through to her—‘in Ladygrove Manor?’

  ‘Yes, you, vicar. What did you drive out?’

  ‘I don’t know what right you have to ask me this.’

  ‘So you did meddle.’

  ‘That is a most offensive word, Dr. Caspian. I did no more than my duty.’

  ‘To whom?’

  ‘To the family that has been generous enough to appoint me to this living. They were distressed; there was undoubtedly a disruptive force within that house; and I am thankful that it was in my power to drive it out, as you put it.’

  ‘You mean you—’