Best New Horror #26, page 27
He patched himself up with some TCP and a plaster from the first aid box in the front desk and returned to his exploration of the library. In the upper ranks were some remarkable old volumes, with the most exquisite tooled and gilded bindings. Perched high on the rungs of the rolling ladder which wobbled and bowed alarmingly under his weight, he took down a fine example bound in blue morocco leather and decorated with gilded armorials. Even though it had been many years since Leventhorp had darkened the door of a church he recognised it immediately as a Book of Common Prayer. The title page confirmed his intuitions.
THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER & ADMINISTRATION OF THE SACRAMENTS AND OTHER RITES ACCORDING TO THE USE OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
Printed by Anthony Cadman, at the Sign of the Oak, Boscobel, MDCLIII
He took it over to the reading desk and examined it under the light. The fly-leaf was inscribed in a fine flourishing hand:
Anne Sadleir. Her Booke.
Underneath this was written:
May God in his good time restore this land to its pristine happiness, the Vulgar People to their former obedience, and God bless and restore Charles the Second, & make him like his most glorious Father. Amen.
April 1653, Anne Sadleir, Brockstone Court.
But below, in a different hand, was scrawled.
Blasphemy! Treason! Papists to a man!
As Leventhorp flicked through the pages, the fragmented childhood memories of dull Sunday mornings at the interminable cathedral services at St Paul’s in Melbourne came flooding back: prayers to be used in storms at sea; earth to earth, ashes to ashes; not three eternals, but one eternal; a man may not marry his father’s mother. When he came to the readings for April 25th he saw that the page had been torn out as if in a fit of rage. In the shredded remnants of the margin were traces of annotation in the same intemperate hand as before.
Treason! Popery and witchcraft!
For an instant, he saw the scowling face of Sir Samuel Leventhorp swim before him. The date on the flyleaf was 1653, which fitted well with the likelihood that it was he who was the author of the accusatory marginalia. He read the inscription again, and he supposed that unless it was a gift (which seemed most unlikely) the book properly belonged to Lady Sadleir of Brockstone Court or her heirs.
The name Brockstone was vaguely familiar to him. On the wall of the library was a framed map of the Gaulsford Hundred, broken up, no doubt, from some dull compendium of county history from the 1800s. And sure enough, it showed that Brockstone was a stately home just a few miles further down the River Tent from Gaulsford. But who was Anne Sadleir? He lifted down a hefty volume of Burke’s Landed Gentry. Brockstone Court, it related, had been built in 1554, by one Sir Thomas Sadleir. His son Ralph Sadleir, known to many as the “Noble Mr Sadleir” from Walton’s Compleat Angler, had married Anne, the daughter of Sir Edward Coke a noted Jurist, in 1601. It seemed that Lady Sadleir had spent the majority of her life in quiet retreat at Brockstone and was a collector of obscure manuscripts including a curious illuminated Apocalypse later donated to Trinity College, Cambridge.
He looked again at the map; as the crow flies, Brockstone was barely three or four miles away. Perhaps he might pay a visit, use the book as an introduction, anything to combat the dreary isolation of his days at Gaulsford.
Behind the house stretched the vast and dark demesne of Gaulsford woods. According to the map, a path led through its gloomy recesses emerging after a couple of miles onto the banks of the river Tent, where it followed the meandering watercourse until it came to the gates of Brockstone Court. And so, on a fine autumn day, Leventhorp decided to walk the three miles or thereabouts to his neighbour’s estate, clutching the prayer-book, safely cocooned in a parcel of bubble-wrap and yesterday’s newspapers.
The walk through the woods took longer than he expected. Though it was indeed a public right of way, it was clearly one of the less frequented ones, and several times it dwindled to little more than a dirty rabbit track through the undergrowth. Eventually, he heard the gentle sounds of running water and the path emerged onto the bright and green banks of the upper reaches of the river Tent, where a much more pleasant stroll could be had through the fields and pastures of Hertfordshire. The path finally disgorged itself over a stile a few yards away from the grand Tudor gateway to Brockstone Court. Through the trees he could see the grey walls of a chapel and further beyond, the grand elevation of Brockstone Court itself.
Leventhorp called at the gate lodge, hoping to enquire if it were possible to talk to the current owners.
The building was unoccupied and seemed to be in use as a lumber-room for various agricultural implements; he heard the purr of a ride-on lawnmower not far away and flagged down its driver. The owners of Brockstone were, it seemed, absentee landlords just like the Leventhorps and the house and its demesne were run by an estate manager. The gardener rang through to the house and announced (to Leventhorp’s parvenu delight) that Sir Jonathan Leventhorp of Gaulsford requested an audience.
“Go right up,” he said. “But use the back way; the front door hasn’t been opened in ten years. No need for it now with the house being empty.”
Leventhorp walked the short distance up the drive to the house. It had an imposing Tudor façade but, like Gaulsford, the building was clearly in its declining years, having reached the point where restoration had been abandoned and the occupants were merely erecting a temporary bulwark against the erosive forces of decay. A middle-aged man, sharply dressed, was waiting to meet him outside.
“Sir Jonathan! Well, this really is an honour for us! I’m Daniel Clark, the estate manager.”
“That’s certainly a big responsibility,” said Leventhorp, shaking hands and looking around at the wide expanse of house and grounds. “Have you been long in the job?”
“All my life,” said Clark, smiling. “My family have served the Sadleirs for six generations as loyal agents and retainers. I know of nothing else.”
“Ah, yes, the Sadleirs. That’s the reason for my visit. I have, what you might call, a piece of lost property to return.”
Leventhorp proffered the ragged package.
“I was rummaging in our library at Gaulsford when I discovered this book. It’s very old and, judging by the inscription, it belongs to one of the Sadleirs from way back. I thought I’d return it to its rightful home as a neighbourly gesture.”
Mr Clark accepted the ill-wrapped package with an air of bemusement, but as he finished unravelling its layers and began to examine the contents, he uttered a sudden cry of joy.
“The missing prayer-book! I can’t believe it! You know this has been considered irretrievably lost for over three centuries?”
Leventhorp saw how he handled it with the reverence of a holy relic.
“And you say it was in your library?”
“Yes. I have a horrible feeling that one of my ancestors may have borrowed it and forgotten to bring it back!”
“We’ll waive the late fees in this case, I think!” said Clark. “You have no idea what a priceless treasure it is that you have returned. On behalf of the Sadleir family, we are eternally grateful for your generosity.”
“Is it really that special?”
“Ah, so you have never heard of the prayer-books of Brockstone? You are not a bibliophile then, I guess? Well, let me explain. During the Commonwealth, the use of the Book of Common Prayer was banned outright. Even to own a copy was punishable by a fine, let alone having a new edition printed. Which is exactly what Lady Sadleir did in 1653, and so far as we know, these are the only examples from that period. I hope you realise that there are more copies of the Gutenberg Bible in existence than there are of the Brockstone prayer-book! There were, until now, just eight copies extant at Brockstone. The prayer-books used to be kept here in the chapel before an unfortunate incident of attempted robbery early in the last century necessitated their removal. As a result, they are all now safely stored in a vault at Lloyd’s Bank in the City of London.
“There are eight stall-boxes here in Brockstone Chapel and so, naturally, they required eight books, one for each stall. But of course, Lady Sadleir, as a woman, would not have been permitted to sit in the choir and would have followed the service from her private box pew. Hence there has to have been a ninth copy, her own personal one, which has been missing for over three centuries. Missing…well, until now that is!”
He opened the book at the title page.
“Hmm, I see someone has been scribbling in it at some time in the past.”
“Yes, I must apologise; I have a horrible feeling it’s in the hand of my ancestor Sir Samuel Leventhorp.”
“I expect that’s probably true. There was no love lost between your ancestor and the Sadleirs, that’s for sure. It almost had the aspect of a feud. It all came down, like so many things at that period, to religious and political differences. They were, you might say, natural enemies—like fox and hound, or barn owl and shrew.
“You must forgive me for saying that Sir Samuel was the worst sort of Puritan: bigoted, narrow-minded and puffed-up on the certainty of his own election to Paradise. Lady Sadleir’s royalist views were, of course, well known, but in addition to that, she had pronounced high church leanings, was certainly a staunch supporter of the unfortunate Archbishop Laud, and there was much speculation at the time that she may have harboured secret Catholic sympathies.”
“Ah, but you have no priest holes here at Brockstone Court, have you?” said Leventhorp.
“No, the only one you’ll find in this area is at Gaulsford. Now that’s very curious, don’t you think?”
Clark escorted him inside on a tour of the house, which was much the same as Gaulsford with its dreary accumulation of Grand Tour detritus and middle-range art and furniture. What did come as a surprise were the paintings on the walls and ceiling of the Great Hall. In the style of the Baroque master Andrea Pozzo, they receded in perspective to infinite heights in a virtuoso display of trompe l’œil, as if the ceiling itself had been lifted away to reveal a starry Empyrean.
At the centre, ascending to the glories of Heaven and supported by crowds of winged cherubim, was the figure of a crowned king, presumably Charles II, while at the edges of the triumphal scene, trampled underfoot in the outer darkness, crouched the squat figure of Satan and his attendant minions, a parade of grotesques straight out of Dante’s Inferno. Around His Satanic Majesty there writhed various figures in aspects of eternal torment. Not quite the Sistine Chapel, but effective nonetheless.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” said Clark. “It was one of the last commissions by Lady Sadleir, and dates from around 1665. It’s called The Triumph of Loyalty and the Defeat of Sedition. Those unfortunate chaps getting their what-for from the Devil are the Regicides. Cromwell, you can recognise by his grotesquely exaggerated wart; there’s Ireton, Harrison, Pride and all the rest.”
One corner of the room was covered in scaffolding and the entire framework was draped in cotton sheets as if to contain the spread of dust. At the bottom, a corner of the covers flapped open and Leventhorp peeked inside. The scaffolding was protecting a wall painting of the Doom or Last Judgement. It was a continuation of the torment of the Regicides from the ceiling, as a further series of unfortunates was dragged into the gaping jaws of Hell by eager demons. There was something odd about it, but before he could formulate just exactly what it was, the fabric was plucked out of his hand and firmly tied back in place by Mr Clark.
“It’s just some remedial work I’m doing on the wall paintings,” he said. “I’m a trained art restorer as well, you see. I learnt my trade at the Courtauld Institute in London when I was younger. The paintings are showing their age, three centuries of candle smoke and oil lamps has left them looking a little tired, shall we say, and in need of some curatorial TLC.
“I suggest we go and visit the Brockstone Chapel, and take the prayer-book back to its original home. Though of course, alas, it will have to end up in the bank vault with the rest of them.”
It was a short walk across the lawn and through a copse of beech trees to reach the chapel which, although small, had a certain quiet grandeur to it.
Once inside, the two men stood at the head of the nave.
“Let’s see what the psalm for today is,” said Clark. But as he flicked through the pages, the prayer-book sprang open at the missing leaf. “Oh, it’s been defaced! Not the first time that Sir Samuel has vandalised Sadleir property, I fear.”
“How so?” said Leventhorp.
“Well, this is called the new chapel, but in fact, it was built in the mid 1650s or thereabouts to replace the one desecrated by Sir Samuel. That unfortunate edifice was the original chapel at Brockstone and was built, as was standard at the time, as an annexe to the house in 1554.”
“Desecrated? I hope you’re not suggesting Sir Samuel was one of these Aleister Crowley black magic types?”
“Oh no, not at all! In fact, quite the opposite—though Lady Sadleir might well have said he worked at the Devil’s prompting.
“I’m sure you’ve heard of the iconoclasts, those Puritans who interpreted the commandment against graven images to the letter of the law. William Dowsing in East Anglia was the most celebrated example, a self-appointed ‘Inspector of Monuments’ who went from church to church shattering statues, destroying rood screens and altars, stained glass and anything else that smacked of high church tendencies. Many people admire the austere beauty of East Anglian churches; little do they realise that it’s mostly the result of Dowsing’s destructive rampage!
“The scourge of iconoclasm did not confine itself to East Anglia: the contagion soon spread over the border here into Hertfordshire as well. Fired by Puritan zeal, Sir Samuel Leventhorp commissioned himself as the iconoclast inquisition in the Gaulsford Hundred, and together with a band of thugs armed with pickaxes and mallets he sought out every country church and chapel for some twenty miles around. And, eventually, in his rounds of destruction he paid a visit to Brockstone in 1648. There is an extract of his report to Parliament in the Victoria County History which we have reproduced in the guide to the chapel—it’s rather a depressing thing to read.”
He handed Leventhorp a photocopied piece of paper which gave a history of the fabric and integuments of the chapel and indicated the relevant passage in his ancestor’s own words.
At the Chappell of BROCKSTONE, we brake down XIV superstitious pictures and crucifixes, IX winged angells on the chancel and VII cherubim on the roof, and a Popish inscription in brass Sancta Maria ora pro nobis. XVI windows to be broken down and the chancel cross taken down. Gave severe instruction to my Lady Sadleir to level the altar steps, brake down the communion rails and remove the Popish silver ere I return.
“How appalling!” said Leventhorp.
“Yes, Lady Sadleir was most upset, and was said to have cursed the Leventhorps and their heritage, in true Old-Testament fashion, yea, unto the tenth generation and all that.”
Clark stopped and suddenly flushed red. “Oh dear, I forgot about your relative’s recent passing. Please excuse my insensitivity and accept my sincerest condolences.”
Leventhorp shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure you can tell from my accent I’ve not had much doing with the English branch of the family. I never met him or indeed any of the Gaulsford Leventhorps. I have no idea even how he died.”
“Probably just as well not to know,” Clark said, quietly. “Those sorts of details can upset one unnecessarily.”
After a brief moment of uncomfortable silence, Clark conducted Leven-thorp down the nave and pointed out the various features of interest to him.
“The original Brockstone chapel was an opulent affair erected during the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary when certain Protestant ordinances were being relaxed. After the desecration by Sir Samuel, it seemed that Lady Sadleir considered the whole edifice to be irretrievably defiled and as an act of defiance she demolished it and built the chapel we have today in a secluded location away from the house. After the Restoration in 1660, it was redecorated in the high church fashion you see around you.”
“And nothing from the original chapel survives?”
“Not quite. By sheer chance, one or two relics are still with us. If you follow me to the chancel you’ll see in this display cabinet that we have the remains of some paintings on wood, dating from about 1430 or thereabouts, perhaps salvaged by the Sadleirs from the dissolved priory of Stanford Magdalene. These images formed the lower part of a rood screen in the original Brockstone chapel, and it is conjectured that there would have been several other panels, all of which are now unfortunately lost. This particular panel was hidden in the rafters of one of the local tithe barns and only rediscovered quite recently, when they were being converted to holiday lets as is the fashion around here. You can see the results of your ancestor’s iconoclasm, a pretty thorough job I fear. The painting depicts three saints, and though severely damaged, by the various accoutrements, we can identify them as St Michael, St George and St Thomas Becket.”
The cabinet was opened so Leventhorp could inspect the images up close. The faces had been gouged out, quite literally de-faced. A fanatical assailant had attacked the painting in a frenzy of religious enthusiasm with a chisel or some other sharp instrument and the scarred woodwork remained as a testament to the grim determination of Puritan iconoclasm.
Identified by their accoutrements, Leventhorp thought to himself; so tragic really, like some poor murder victim who can only be identified from their dental records.
