Revelation

Tags

Ancient Mariner, Bourbon biscuit, Purgatory, seamed stockings, St Birinus, St Vitus

Virginia, PA to the Acting Head of St Birinus Middle School, was curious.

A woman had just gone into Snod’s study and she wanted to know the

reason. She could have sworn that it was that Welsh woman who had

played the harp in the end of term concert.  When Virginia went in with

tea and biscuits, silence descended until she had shown herself out

again.  Still, she had taken a closer look and it was that woman from St

Vitus’ School for the Academically-Gifted Girl after all and she was wearing a

lovely gold necklace with a harp charm , so she must be Welsh.

She had just sat down at her computer when Nigel Milford-Haven, Junior

Master, knocked on her door.

Excuse me, but is Mr Snodbury free at the moment? he asked, his face, as

usual, pale with stress.

Regrettably not. Virginia loved blocking ordinary staff’s access to the highest

authority.  He is in consultation with that Welsh teacher from the girls’ school-

the one who played the harp in the concert.

Welsh?  Nigel expressed his confusion.  She’s not Welsh.

Virginia wanted to interrogate him as to how a minion such as himself

could be privy to information about the ethnicity of his betters, but she

restrained herself and restricted her reply to: Well, why else would she be

wearing a harp round her neck? It would be like the Ancient Mariner being in

denial about his particular cervical-was that the right word?- decoration being

a proclamation that he was not the world’s biggest lover of all things

ornithological.

Nigel was hyper-aware that his form class would be destroying the room, so

he nervously answered quickly, before shooting off back to Purgatory: No, she

is Mr Snodbury’s daughter.

What?  Are you certain?  I didn’t know he was married!  Virginia was seriously

discomfited.  She had thought that she knew everything.  He doesn’t wear a

ring.

Nigel flushed, partly with pleasure, now that he knew his anonymous present

of jewellery had been accepted.  Well, please could I send John Boothroyd-

Smythe to stand outside your office?  He is being unusually, or, to be more

truthful- usually-disruptive.

Virginia nodded, not taking in the information.  She was shell-shocked.  She

would never have sought to ingratiate herself with a married man, seamed

stockings or not.  Hers, I mean.

Mr Snodbury, married!

She knocked and went into the study to clear the cups and tray. Yes, he

was wearing a ring.  Why had she not noticed this before?  She stole a

sidelong glance.

They both had the same jowly profile and looked annoyed at her interruption.

As she used her elbow to exit the room, since neither Gus, nor Drusilla

offered to open the door, so deep were they in conversation, she collided

with a boy that she recognised all too well.

Not you again! she shouted.  Don’t you understand in that infantile brain of

yours that we are all heartily sick and tired of your puerile and selfish

behaviour? Get back to your class and apologise to your teacher and if I ever

see you here again, I will personally not be responsible for what I do to you!

The semi-permanent smirk was wiped off John’s face and he fled with his tail

between his legs.  No one had ever spoken to him like that before and he

immediately got the message.

Yes, Ms Fisher-Giles, he whispered, awestruck, and ran, practically wetting

himself.

Virginia’s seamed stockinged legs almost gave way under her and she

collapsed into her chair.  Before she knew it she had eaten three

Bourbon biscuits.

Married, she muttered.  And I never knew.

The Equivocation of the Fiend

Tags

Act of Attainder, Ancient Mariner, Chief justice, Colchester oysters, Dame Alice Lisle, Ellingham, equivocation of the fiend, Great Hall, Habeas Corpus, John Hickes, Judge Jeffreys, Kings Bench, Lord Chancellor, Machiavelli, meteor showers, milk of human kindness, Monmouth Rebellion, Moyles Court, Nelthorpe, The Eclipse, The Hambledon, The Rising Sun, Wapping, Whigs, Winchester Castle

Clammie bumped into me on High Street, Suttonford.

What did you give Brassica to read yesterday, Candia?  She says that

she was up all night and couldn’t sleep.

Oh, just a short story.  I expect she was disturbed because Cosmo and the

twins are in the observatory, watching the meteor showers till dawn.

No, she was spooked.  I saw her down in Wintoncester, in The Square.

She was coming out of The Hambledon with several carrier bags.

Oh, I forgot about their sale.  I must go in and buy The Husband a new

Panama hat.  I love shopping in The Square.  That’s where The Eclipse

is, site of the execution of Dame Alice Lisle.  It put The Rising Sun opposite in

the shade as it were.

Who was Dame Alice Lisle? asked Clammie.

Do you want to be spooked out too?  Mind you, not as much as Cosmo will

be when he sees Brassie’s credit car statement!

Don’t tell me you have another story to tell, Candia!  You are becoming a kind

of female Ancient Mariner.

I’ll e-mail it to you tonight.  Then you can keep Brassie company in the wee

sma’ hours!

What’s it called?

The Equivocation of the Fiend.

How very Shakespearean!  I’ll look forward to it clogging up my inbox!

THE EQUIVOCATION OF THE FIEND

Maybe a writ of Habeas Corpus will liberate me from my confinement

and then I can steal away from this loathsome Tower and gain passage

abroad, but there is no Court competent to assist me in this wise and now

I am fast losing strength.  I am supposed to be thankful for the protection

I have, while the country demands that a retrospective Act of Attainder

should result in my condemnation for multitudinous murders.

The wheel has come full circle.  A mob had congregated outside my

house in Duke Street and mocked the bills which announced the sale of

my property.  Women screamed, offering me their garters, so that I should

hang myself thereby and men raged, advising me to cut my own throat.

I glugged another bottle of brandy to shut out their clamour.

However, I seemed to have one remaining friend – someone who knew of

my predilection for Colchester oysters.  A barrel had been left for me at

the Tower and I burst its bands eagerly.  Inside there was naught but

shells and a halter.  I apprehended its hint. The delivery youth jeered:

“Canst tell how an oyster makes its shell?”

He is not so dim as he looks.

Imagine! Chief Justice of the King’s Bench at thirty five and Lord

Chancellor before my fortieth birthday.  I followed orders and to this

attribute my rapid promotion and even more sudden declension.

I had another birthday recently and there was none to exercise common

charity towards me, or to share a celebration.  I stand accused of a

lack of the milk of human kindness.

I will never be permitted to forget the trial of Dame Alice Lisle.  In

contrast, she was deemed to have shown exemplary, even saintly,

compassion and hospitality towards distressed fugitives, but there was

considerably more to the case than was imputed.

I was compared unfavourably to Nero, Satan, Cain and Judas, but I only

sent Whigs to Heaven.  It was common practice to lash rogues with the

tongue and, after all, I had cross-examined some of the deepest-dyed

criminals in the land.  Their weeping and cries for mercy only served as

an irritant, much like the grit in an oyster shell, but without any valuable

outcome.

How difficult it was to extract the truth from Presbyterian liars! I grew

adept at sniffing one out at forty miles. (Hence the posy of herbs that I

was wont to hold to my nostrils.)  Severities may be properly used, I

believe, in common with Machiavelli.  Particularly in times of threat t

national security.

Yes, Dame Alice, I turned a deaf ear to your pleas and you could not hear

the foreman’s delivery of the verdict, by virtue of your three score years

and ten’s consequent infirmity.

A witch, I thought, whose husband had been a regicide and now the old

crone was denying knowledge of the nature of the indictments against

John Hickes and Nelthorpe, initially denying their presence in her house,

Moyles Court. Subsequently she pleaded that she had understood Hickes’

offence to be merely illegal preaching.  She stressed that she had no

sympathy with the Monmouth rebellion, but I persuaded the jury to re-

consider their verdict and, on the third occasion, she was pronounced

guilty, and rightly so, for the Law recognises no distinction between

principals and accessories to treason.

“Let the old witch burn,” I ranted, “and let it be this very afternoon.”

The interfering Winchester clergy made an appeal to me on account of

her age and sex and they gained a respite.  Our sovereign commuted

the sentence to beheading, out of his merciful bounteousness.

Now the populace desire that I should share her fate.  I am eclipsed – ha!-

a play on the title of the marketplace inn where she spent her final night,

before walking out of the first storey window, onto the scaffold.  They

said it should be ever after “The Eclipse,” as it drew all attention from its

neighbouring public house : “The Rising Sunne.”

Barter gave us the information.  She had entertained, concealed,

comforted and maintained the fugitive rebels. The Devil had inspired her

to quibble, as do all witches.  Equivocation is the nature of the Fiend and

all his subjects.  I have oftimes heard his voice in the courtrooms and the

serpent-tongued dame tried to move me by a reminder that she had bred a

brat to fight for James, but if she had been my own mother, I should have

found her guilty, notwithstanding her prevarication that she was being charged

with sheltering Hickes before he was convicted of treason. She stated that

subsequent evidence should not be admitted, since it had not been available.

Very clever: but anyone who harbours a traitor is as guilty as any who bears

arms, I believed, and I hold fast to the same conviction to this day.

“Nay, peace thou monster, shame unto thy sex,

Thou fiend in likeness of a human creature

See thyself, devil!

Proper deformity shows not in the fiend

So horrid as in woman.

Shut your mouth, dame,

Or with this paper shall I stople it.”

The reference was lost on most in court.  Fools pity  villains who

are punished.  Know this: that men are as the time is; to be tender-

minded does not become a sword.

It is more than three years since that fateful day in August in the Great

Hall of Winchester Castle.  Some say that a lady in grey haunts the inn

and that a driverless coach has been seen in the grounds of the Dame’s

Ringwood estate, drawn by headless horses and containing her phantom.

What is that nonsense to me?  Her head and body were given up to her

family, for burial at Ellingham, and now the Whigs have all but canonised

her, raving about judicial murder.

Yet, when I attempted to escape from this hell-hole, no one would shelter

me in a cupboard, nor a malthouse, and I was discovered at Wapping and

my disguise removed.  No port is free to me; no place that unusual

vigilance will not not attend my taking.  So, here I lie, and suffer the

agony of passing these stones: a pain as sharp as the gravel of her drive,

or an oyster’s grit.

Yet I still resort to my brandy. I am bound upon my own wheel of fire.

My reins are rubbed with sulphurous flames. The gods are just and of

our pleasant vices…  I waken to hear myself cry in the night and then a

distant rumble of carriage wheels approaches, or is it a more horrific

apocalyptic explosion?  Who is it that dare tell me who I am?

“What is that wailing?” I shout to the guard.

“It is the cry of women, my good lord,” he replies through the grille, most

caustically.  “Come here, most learned justicer.”  And then he laughs,

showing black tombstones in place of teeth.

“I have almost forgot the taste of fears.  I have supp’d full of horrors,” I

remark, before I remember the context. How malicious is my fortune that

I must repent to be just.

Equivocation – the only means of survival.  She was more skilled in its

employ than I.

(The grave of Judge Jeffreys was bombed by German aircraft during the War and his remains scattered.  The grave of Alice Lisle can still be visited in Ellingham churchyard.)