A Great Deliverance Page 6

  It was a pre-Elizabethan structure by initial design, but one which had undergone a number of Jacobean changes that added to its air of rakish whimsicality. Mullioned windows winked in the moonlight that filtered through the wispy fog which had settled on the moors and was now drifting down into the dales. Walls were covered with Virginia creeper, its leaves burning the old stone to rich russet. Chimneys germinated upon the roof in a helter-skelter pattern of capricious warts against the night sky. There was a contumacy about the building that denied the very existence of the twentieth century, and this quality spread to the grounds that surrounded it.

  Here enormous English oaks stretched out their branches over lawns where statuary, encircled by flowers, interrupted the flow of the land. Pathways meandered into the woods beyond the house with a beckoning, siren charm. In the absolute stillness, the play of water from a fountain nearby and the cry of a lamb from a distant farm were the only auditory concomitants to the whisper of the breeze that soughed through the night. They might have been Richard and Anne, home to Middleham at last.

  Deborah turned back to the car. Her husband had opened his door and was watching her, waiting in his usual patient fashion for her photographer’s reaction to the beauty of the place. “It’s wonderful,” she said. “Thank you, my love.”

  He lifted his braced left leg from the car, dropped it with a thump onto the drive, and extended his hand. With a practised movement, Deborah helped him to his feet. “I feel as if we’ve been going round in circles for hours,” St. James remarked, stretching.

  “That’s because we have,” she teased. “‘Just two hours from the station, Deborah. A wonderful drive.’”

  He laughed softly. “Well, it was, love. Admit it.”

  “Absolutely. The third time I saw Rievaulx Abbey, I was positively enchanted.” She glanced at the forbidding oak door before them. “Shall we try it then?”

  They crunched across the gravel drive to the dark recess into which the door was set. A pitted wooden bench was tipped drunkenly against the wall next to it, and two enormous urns stood on either side. With the perversity of plants, one urn held a burgeoning beauty of flowers while the other was home to a withering colony of geraniums whose dried leaves fluttered raspingly to the ground as Deborah and her husband passed.

  St. James applied some considerable strength to the large brass fixture that hung in the centre of the door. Silence greeted its fading echoes. “There’s a bell as well,” Deborah noticed. “Have a go with that.”

  The ringing far back in the deepest reaches of the house immediately roused what sounded like an entire pack of hounds into furious howling. “Well, that’s certainly done it,” St. James laughed.

  “Dammit, Casper! Jason! S’only the bell, you devils!” Pitched very much like a man’s but with the unmistakable cadence of a country woman born and bred, a raucous voice shouted brisk reprovals behind the door. “Down with you! Out! Get back t’the kitchen.” A pause, followed by some desperate scuffling. “No, blast you! Out in the back! Why, you blackguard fiends! Give me my slips! Damn your eyes!” With that, a bolt shrieked back from the inside of the door, which was pulled briskly open. A barefooted woman hopped back and forth on the icy stones of the entry, her frizzy grey hair flying about her shoulders in bursts of electricity. “Mr. Allcourt-St. James,” she said without preamble. “Come in with you both. Damn!” She removed the woollen shawl she had thrown about her shoulders and dropped it to the floor, where it immediately became a rug for her feet. She tugged the edges of a voluminous, crimson dressing gown more closely round her and, the moment the others entered, energetically slammed home the door. “There, that’s better, thank God.” She laughed, a bellow both ungoverned and unrefined. “Pardon me, both. I’m generally not so awfully Emily Brontë. Did you get lost?”

  “Extensively,” St. James admitted. “This is my wife, Deborah, Mrs. Burton-Thomas,” he added.

  “You must be frozen solid,” their hostess noted. “Well, we’ll take care of that soon enough. Let’s get out of here and into the oak hall. I’ve a nice fire there. Danny!” she shouted over her left shoulder. Then, “Come, it’s just this way. Danny!”

  They followed her through the old, stone-flagged room. White walled, dark beamed, it was bonechillingly cold, with recessed windows uncovered by curtains, a single black refectory table in the centre of the floor, and a large unlit fireplace sinking deep into the far wall. Above it hung an assortment of firearms and oddly peaked military helmets. Mrs. Burton Thomas nodded as St. James and Deborah gave their attention to these.

  “Oh yes, Cromwell’s Roundheads were here,” she said. “They had a nice bite out of Keldale Hall for a stretch of ten months in the Civil War. Sixteen forty-four,” she added darkly, as if expecting them to commit to memory the year of infamy in the history of the Burton-Thomas clan. “But we rid ourselves of them just as soon as we could. Blackguard devils, the lot!”

  She led them through the shadows of a darkened dining room and from there to a long, richly panelled chamber where scarlet curtains were drawn across embrasured windows and a coal fire roared in the grate. “Well, Lord, where’s she got herself to?” Mrs. Burton-Thomas muttered and went to the door through which they’d just come. “Danny!” That brought a responding running of footsteps, and a tousle-haired girl of about nineteen appeared in the doorway.

  “Sorry!” the newcomer laughed. “Got your slips, though.” She tossed these to the woman, who caught them deftly. “Chewed a bit here and there, I’m afraid.”

  “Thanks, pet. Will you fetch some brandy for our guests? That dreadful Watson man finished off a good third of a decanter before he staggered off to bed tonight. It’s gone dry and there’s more in the cellar. Will you see to it?”

  As the girl went to do so, Mrs. Burton-Thomas examined her slippers, frowning at a hole newly chewed in one heel. She muttered beneath her breath, put the slippers back on her feet, and replaced the shawl—which she had been using as a sort of earthbound flying carpet in their progress through the house—on her shoulders.

  “Please do sit down. Didn’t want to light the fire in your room till you arrived, so we’ll have a bit of a chat whilst it heats up. Bloody cold for October, isn’t it? Early winter, they say.”

  The cellar was obviously closer than the word itself implied, for within moments young Danny returned with a fresh bottle of brandy. She opened and decanted it at a Hepplewhite table which stood under a portrait of some glowering, hawk-featured Burton-Thomas ancestor, then returned to them with a tray on which three brandy glasses and a decanter sparkled.

  “Shall I see to the room, Auntie?” She asked.

  “Please. Get Eddie for the luggage. And do apologise to that American couple if they’re wandering about wondering what all the uproar is, will you?” Mrs. Burton-Thomas poured three healthy drinks as the girl left the room once again. “Ah, but they came here for atmosphere, and by God, I can dish it up in spades!” She laughed uproariously and threw down her drink in a single gulp. “I cultivate colour,” Mrs. Burton-Thomas admitted gleefully, pouring herself another. “Give them a bit of the old eccentric and you’ll make every guidebook from Frommer to Ronay.”

  The woman’s appearance served as complete verification of this last statement. She was a combination of stately home and gothic horror: imposingly tall, with a man’s broad shoulders, she moved with a loose-limbed indifference to the priceless furniture with which the room was filled. She had the hands of a labourer, the ankles of a dancer, and the face of an aging Valkyrie. Her eyes were blue, deep-sunken above cheekbones jutting across her face. She had a hook-shaped nose that with the passage of years had grown more pronounced, so that now, in the uncertain light of the room, it seemed to be casting a shadow upon her entire upper lip. She looked about sixty-five years old, but age to Mrs. Burton-Thomas was obviously a very relative matter.

  “Well,” she was looking them over, “hungry at all?” You did miss dinner by about…” a glance cast towards the grand
father clock ticking sonorously against a far wall, “two hours.”

  “Hungry, my love?” St. James asked Deborah. His eyes, Deborah saw, were alive with amusement.

  “Ah…no, not a bit.” She turned to Mrs. Burton-Thomas. “You’ve others staying here then?”

  “Just one American couple. You’ll see them at breakfast. You know the sort. Polyester and showy gold chains. God-awful diamond ring on the man’s little finger. Kept me howlingly entertained last night with a discourse on dentistry. Wanted me to have my teeth sealed, it seems. The very latest thing.” Mrs. Burton-Thomas shuddered and downed another drink. “Bit Egyptian-sounding. Something for posterity, you know. Or was it to prevent cavities?” She shrugged with grand indifference. “Haven’t the slightest. What is this fixation Americans all have with their teeth, I ask you? All straight and shiny. Well, God! Crooked teeth give a face a bit of dash, I say.” She poked ineffectually at the fire, sending a shower of sparks out onto the rug, then stomped on these with terrific energy. “Well, delighted you’re here, is all I can say. Not that Grandpapa isn’t still doing flip-flops in the grave at my opening the place up to the tourist trade. But it was that or the bleeding National Trust.” She winked at them over the rim of her glass. “And pardon me for saying so, but this sort of life is ever so roaringly more amusing.”

  There was a clearing of the throat from the direction of the doorway, where a boy stood awkwardly in plaid flannel pyjamas, an antique smoking jacket several sizes too large belted clumsily round his slender waist. It gave his appearance an anachronistic panache. He carried a pair of crutches in his hands.

  “What is it, Eddie?” Mrs. Burton-Thomas asked impatiently. “You’ve done the luggage, haven’t you?”

  “These’re in the boot, Auntie,” he responded. “Shall I do ’em as well?”

  “Of course, you ninny!” He turned and scurried from her sight. She shook her head darkly. “I’m a martyr to my family. An absolute religious martyr. Well, come now, little ones, let me show you to your room. You must be dropping with fatigue. No, no, bring the brandy with you.”

  They followed her back through the dining room to the stone hall and from there through another doorway that took them to the stairway. Polished, uncarpeted oak stairs led to the upper regions of the house, swathed in deep shadows. “Baronial stairway,” Mrs. Burton-Thomas informed them, slapping her hand on its thick wood railing. “Don’t even make these dandies anymore. Come, it’s just this way.”

  In the upper hall she led them down a dimly lit corridor in which ancestral portraits battled with three Flemish tapestries. Mrs. Burton-Thomas nodded moodily towards the latter. “Simply must move them. God knows they’ve been hanging there since 1822, but no one could ever convince Great-grandmama that these things look better from a bit of a distance. Tradition. You understand. I battle it everywhere. Here we are, little ones.” She threw open a door. “I shall leave you here. All the mod cons. But you’ll find them, no doubt.” With that she was gone, dressing gown flapping round her ankles, slippers slapping comfortingly upon the floor.

  A tumble of coals upon the hearth welcomed them into the bedroom. It was, Deborah thought as she entered, the most beautiful room she had ever seen. Oak panelled, with the beguiling faces of two Gainsborough women smiling down from either end, it embraced them with centuries’ old welcome and grace. Small table lamps with rose shades put forth a diffused radiance that burnished the mahogany of the enormous four-poster. A looming wardrobe cast an elongated shadow against one wall, and a dressing table held an array of crystal atomisers and silver-backed brushes. At one of the windows stood a cabriole-legged table on which an arrangement of lilies had been placed. Deborah walked to this and touched her fingers to the fluted edge of one ivory flower.

  “There’s a card,” she said, pulled it off and read it. Her eyes filled with tears. She turned to her husband. He had gone to the hearth and lowered himself into an overstuffed chair that sat to one side of it. He was watching her as he so often did, with that familiar reserve, the only communication coming from his eyes. “Thank you, Simon,” she whispered. She tucked the card back into the flowers, swallowed an emotion she couldn’t define, and forced herself to speak lightly. “How did you ever find this place?”

  “Do you like it?” he asked in answer.

  “You couldn’t possibly have chosen anything more wonderful. And you know it, don’t you?”

  He didn’t reply. A knock at the door, and he looked at her, a smile dancing round the corners of his mouth, his expression plainly saying: What’s next? “Come in,” he called.

  It was the girl, Danny, a pile of blankets in her arms. “Sorry. Forgot these. There’s an eiderdown already, but Auntie thinks the world’s as cold as herself.” She walked into the room with an air of friendly proprietorship. “Eddie get your things in?” she asked, opening the wardrobe and plopping the blankets unceremoniously inside. “He’s just a bit thick, you know. Got to excuse him.” She studied herself in the wavy mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door, fingered a few wandering hairs just a bit more out of place than they’d been before, and caught them watching her. “Now you’d best beware of the baby’s cry,” she pronounced solemnly. It was as if she’d spoken exactly on cue. The hounds would surely howl next.

  “The baby’s cry? Have the Americans a child with them?” Deborah asked.

  Danny’s dark eyes widened. She looked from woman to man. “You don’t know? Has no one ever told you?”

  Deborah saw from the girl’s behaviour that they were soon to be enlightened, for Danny wiped her hands prefatorily down the sides of her dress, glanced from one end of the room to the other for unwanted listeners, and walked to the window. In spite of the cold, she unfastened the latch and swung it open. “Has no one told you about that?” she asked dramatically, gesturing out into the night.

  There was nothing for it but to see what “that” was. Deborah and St. James joined Danny at the window, where, in the distance, the skeletal walls of a ruined building rose through the fog.

  “Keldale Abbey,” Danny intoned and settled right in next to the fire for a confidential chat. “That’s where the cry of the baby comes from, not from here.”

  St. James pulled the window closed, drew across the heavy curtains, and led Deborah back to the fire. She curled up on the floor next to his chair, warming herself, allowing the fire to tingle against her skin.

  “A ghost baby, I take it?” she said to Danny.

  “An absolute one that I heard myself. You’ll hear it as well. Wait and see.”

  “Ghosts always have legends attached,” St. James noted.

  Glad you asked, Danny’s posture replied as she wriggled back into her chair. “As does this,” she said solemnly. “Keldale was Royalist, you know, during the war.” She spoke as though the late seventeenth century were only a week removed. “Loyal t’ the last man of ’em t’ the King. The village of Keldale, down the road a mile. You’ve seen it?”

  St. James chuckled. “We should have, but I’m afraid we came in from a…different direction.”

  “The scenic route,” Deborah added.

  Danny chose to ignore the diversion. “Well,” she went on, “was towards the end of t’ war. And old blackguard devil Cromwell”—obviously Danny had learned her history at her auntie’s knee—“got word that the Lords o’ the North were planning an uprising. So he swept through the dales one last, grand time, taking manor houses, ruining castles, destroying Royalist villages. Keldale’s well hidden.”

  “So we discovered,” St. James put in.

  The girl nodded earnestly. “But days in advance the village got word that the murd’rous Roundheads was coming. ’Twasn’t the village that old Cromwell wanted, but the villagers themselves, all o’ them that was loyal t’ King Charlie.”

  “To kill them, of course,” Deborah prompted as the girl paused in her story to catch her breath.

  “T’ kill every last one!” she declared. “When word came that Cromwell w
as looking for the Kel, the village got a plan together. They’d move every stick, every stitch, every soul t’ the grounds o’ the abbey. So when the Roundheads arrived there’d be Keldale, all right, but not a soul in her.”

  “Rather an ambitious plan,” St. James remarked.

  “An’ it worked!” Danny replied proudly. Her pretty eyes danced above rosy cheeks, but she lowered her voice. “’Cept for the baby!” She inched forward in her chair; obviously they had reached the climax of the tale. “The Roundheads arrived. ’Twas just as the villagers hoped. ’Twas deserted, and silent with a heavy fog. And throughout all the village, not a soul, not a stitch, not a living creature. And then”—Danny’s swift glance made certain her audience was with her—“a baby began t’ cry in the abbey where all the villagers were. Ah God!” She clutched her lovely bosom. “The terror! For they’d escaped Cromwell only t’ be betrayed by a babe! The mother hushed the baby by offering her breast. But ’twas no good. The wee baby cried and cried. They were desperate in terror that the dogs from the village would begin t’ howl with the noise and Cromwell would find them. So they hushed the poor child. An’ they smothered it!”

  “Good heavens!” Deborah murmured. She edged closer to her husband’s chair. “Just the sort of story one longs to hear on a wedding night, isn’t it?”

  “Ah, but you must know.” Danny’s expression was fervent. “For the sound of the babe is terrible luck ’less you know what t’ do.”

  “Wear garlic?” St. James asked. “Sleep with a crucifix clutched in one’s hand?”

  Deborah punched him lightly on the knee. “I want to know. I insist upon knowing. Shall I have my life blighted because I’ve married a cynic? Tell me what to do, Danny, should I hear the baby.”

  Gravely, Danny nodded. “’Tis always a’ night when the baby cries from the abbey grounds. You must sleep on your right side, your husband on his left. An’ you must hold on t’ one another close till the wailing stops.”

  “That’s interesting,” St. James acknowledged. “Sort of an animated amulet. May we hope that this baby cries often?”