Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton

by Rowland Hughes

  She opened the Dutch chest, which had once contained her wedding clothes, and put the rose in there, laying it down as softly as a mother would lay a child to sleep.

  She bent towards the mirror to blow out the candles and her heart gave a jerk as she saw three candle flames reflected in its surface. What had possessed her to light three candles – dire portent – tonight of all nights?3 A feeling of heavy foreboding weighed down on her. The sloping, shadowy walls of the attic chamber seemed to lean down menacingly towards her. The little narrow room was congested with the baleful memories of the men she had slain – Ned Cotterell, Hogarth, Jerry Jackson, and those unknown victims of the highway to whom she had never, till tonight, given a passing thought. And suddenly she was horribly afraid. Not of them but of herself. It was as though she were already dead, and watching her own lost spirit through some other person’s terror-stricken eyes.

  The spasm passed. She told herself, ‘Love is making you a coward,’ blew out the candles, and made her way furtively down the stairs and out into the moonlit night.

  The superb, fantastically large moon was rising behind the trees; gradually as it soared clear of the tree-tops it would diminish in size but increase in brightness, till it sailed high, serene and brilliant in the autumn sky.

  Except for a few fitful moonbeams its light had not yet penetrated to the yew glades as Barbara Skelton cantered down them. The stone urn that marked their juncture was barely visible as she passed it, a dull pallor against the darkness. It was here, as she remembered with a pang of triumphant pleasure, that she had made her bold, sudden, and successful assault on Kit Locksby’s heart. In years to come other lovers might make their vows or exchange embraces by it. But it would remain sacred to her, an unknown altar to her love, because no other woman would or could love so fiercely or so wholeheartedly as she.

  Out on Watling Street she roamed aimlessly to and fro, a forlorn and sinister figure. Her tingling nerves craved for action, but her mind was, as usual, occupied with thoughts of her lover. She talked in a low voice to Fleury as he paced along the roadside. ‘Fleury, Fleury. This is the last time we shall ride abroad on the highway lay4 – you and I. Never fret, we shall learn better delights when we ride beside our master. Ah, how my soul dotes on him.’ She patted Fleury’s arched neck, sighing to herself and longing.

  The moon reigned high now in the sky, diffusing a bluish light around it. A few opalescent clouds, like the torn wings of birds, drifted idly across it.

  And as Barbara Skelton sat there on horseback, her uplifted face bathed in the moonlight, she heard the urgent sounds of galloping hoofs coming along the high road.

  Instantly on the alert, she took refuge behind a cluster of trees. Here was her appointed prey. Unlucky traveller, she thought with malicious amusement, to be riding along Watling Street so late, but just not late enough to be Barbara Skelton’s final victim.

  All unaware the solitary horseman approached her hiding place.

  She took a deep breath, touched Fleury’s flanks with her heels…

  ‘Stand and deliver,’ cried Barbara, flourishing her pistol. The startled horse reared. As its rider controlled it, Barbara pointed her pistol at his head. ‘Down with your gold or expect no quarter.’

  The man said, ‘Ruffian! I have no gold, and I ask for no quarter,’ whipped out his sword and lunged at her.

  She sat swaying on her saddle, not from the wound but because his voice was the voice of Kit Locksby.

  She turned her horse and fled.

  Kit Locksby, staring after her in some surprise, thought, ‘The rogue did not show much fight. Well, maybe that prick from my sword will make him shy of attacking lone travellers in future.’

  He wiped his stained blade with a wry face. He thought himself a fool for it but he disliked shedding even a highwayman’s blood. How his sweet Barbara would scold him for being out so late on such an ugly robbing road. But when he told her of his father’s sudden, unexpected recovery, and how he had decided to travel by night so that he might spend all the next day with her, she would certainly forgive him…

  Barbara rode wildly for home. That she was wounded hardly troubled her – she was only dimly aware of the pain in her chest, and the feeling that something untoward and alarming was happening to her body – only the thought, ‘He must not know’. She must get home, safe, undiscovered, creep into her bed. She would find some excuse for being indisposed. Ah cruel! that she should lose, by her own folly, even a few days of his dear company. But he must never know. That was all that mattered.

  She passed familiar landmarks, trees, bushes, a pond, a barn, cottages, all dream-like in the moonlight. She was riding so hard, no wonder that she was getting breathless, giddy. She heard herself give deep sighing sounds. A damp, dark trickle was creeping down her coat. He had gashed her coat, torn too the white skin that he loved – her cruel, sweet lover.

  She slackened pace when she reached the yew glades, not that the urgency of her panic had abated, but because she was finding it difficult to breathe; she had grown so faint, it was an effort to sit her horse. The moon looked down indifferently. The yew glades were dappled with moonlight. She was afraid of falling off, sinking unconscious into that checkered moonshine and darkness. He might come to the house and find her lying here…

  Desperately she urged Fleury forward, clinging to his neck to keep herself in the saddle. He trotted in bewildered obedience to the little back door, stood still, cropping the grass.

  Barbara half slipped, half fell off his back. She must reach her room before the pain and deadly faintness engulfed her. How dark it was in the passage, and airless as a tomb. She staggered along, leaning against the walls, appalled at the sound of her own deep, gasping sighs.

  Something wet and warm trickled from her lips, her mouth was full of the acrid taste of blood. At the foot of the secret staircase she collapsed. In a last despairing effort she tried to drag herself up, clutching at the lower steps. But the blood was gushing from her mouth. She was choking, groaning. Life was ebbing from her in profound moaning sighs.

  She knew that she was dying, killed by her beloved’s hand. In her last conscious moments she thought in agony and also in triumph:

  ‘He will never see me grow old.’

  12

  COVER HER FACE …

  “Lie still, lie still but a little wee while.’1

  THEY FOUND HER lying there, in the early morning – she who had been known as the beautiful Lady Skelton, who had been so fine, delicate and elegant – lying in the pitiful disarray of violent death, a mysterious and appalling figure in mask and man’s clothes.

  She was carried up to her bedchamber, divested of her masculine attire, mask, pistols, cloak hidden furtively away, her terrible green eyes closed, the blood washed from her face and tangled bronzen curls. It was given out that Lady Skelton, sleep-walking, had fallen down the disused staircase and broken her neck. No one believed it. Rumours of blood, firearms, mask, outlandish gear, a strange and sinister mystery, sped from mouth to mouth. Few, at that time or for months to come, knew the true facts, but all suspected that their mistress had died a violent and shameful death. The whisperings, the pale, scared, yet eager looks, could not be hushed nor hidden, but all the funeral pomp that rank and money could command was thrown like a pall over the hideous scandal, concealing, it was hoped, the sudden, fearful extinction of that one personality under the solemn impersonality of death.

  Maryiot Cells was draped in black from ground floor to garrets. Every member of the household, from Sir Ralph to the youngest scullion or garden-boy, was clad in mourning clothes. Black coaches rumbled up to the door, disgorging relations and friends with drooping faces and lowered voices. The lower regions were filled with the smell of the funeral baked meats and biscuits. Rings, mourning scarves and hatbands were distributed to the gentry, gloves to all the retainers, money to the deserving poor.

  And the principal figure in this sombre pageant – Lady Skelton herself? The law decreed
that all persons, regardless of rank, should be buried in woollen. But some small but pure spring of generosity and pity welling up in Sir Ralph’s heart in this hour of his profound shame and horror, reminded him how fastidious Barbara had always been in her person and attire. The rigid, strange figure lying on the sable draped bed in the sable shrouded room still seemed to him the elusive, unaccountable, but on the whole docile wife of his imagination.

  The truth, so savagely incredible, had hardly penetrated yet beyond the outer surface of his shocked mind. He gave orders that Lady Skelton was to be buried in a Brussels lace ‘head’,2 a holland shift, with tucker and double ruffles, and long white kid gloves. The lace and gloves were provided by Lady Skelton’s favourite mercer, Mrs Munce of the Sign of the Golden Glove in the town of Buckingham.

  The day of the funeral dawned crisp and bright. The haws were scarlet against the pure blue sky. A milky haze veiled the ground. Grasses and brambles were rigid and glittering as crystals in the early sunshine. The woods were copper bright, but in the distance the slopes melted to a smoky blue. High in the morning sky floated the incongruous and belated moon.

  Inside Maryiot Cells all was gloom and blackness, even to the soles of the mourners’ shoes, but out of doors the world sparkled with the mellow radiance of early autumn.

  They buried her at night in the family vault in the churchyard of Maiden Worthy church. Twenty-two poor women in gowns and kerchiefs headed the procession, then came the household, then the family chaplain and another clergyman, a doctor of divinity, and then the coffin, the pall being borne by six young ladies, daughters of the neighbouring gentry, escorted by six young gentlemen, all with white and black cypress scarves.3 The family followed and a great throng of relations and of other ladies and gentlemen in mourning. And last of all, a servant led Fleury, the dead lady’s favourite horse. All was decent, solemn and in order.

  The body of Lady Skelton was met at the lych-gate by the choristers, and borne up the same path which less than seven years ago she had trodden as a young and smiling bride.

  Candles, flickering in the draught, pierced the obscurity of the church, casting a pale light on the pale and lowered faces of the mourners. The voice of the family chaplain, as he delivered the funeral sermon, seemed to flicker like the candles in the draught of a nameless spiritual malaise. He praised Barbara Lady Skelton’s domestic graces and virtues, her gracious manner, her piety, her charity to the sick and needy, and his praise in its fearful insincerity was more frightening than any condemnation. He said, ‘Her memory will live among us and breathe a pleasant scent,’ and his voice faltered at his own words, and died away.

  They shivered in the chill night air as they stood with flaring torches round the door of the vault. There was the shuffle of feet, a stifled sob, faint whisperings. They cast their boughs of rosemary on to the coffin – rosemary for the bride, rosemary for the corpse, symbol of the unity underlying all life and death. Avoiding one another’s eyes they quenched their torches in the soil.

  Then in darkness and in silence, bearing their smoking torches with them, they walked away believing, in their ignorance, that Barbara Skelton was at rest and would trouble her family and the neighbourhood no more.

  NOTES

  Introduction

  1 H. Tims, Once a Wicked Lady: A Biography of Margaret Lockwood (London: Virgin, 1989), p. 132.

  2 F.E. Smedley, ‘Maud Allinghame: A Legend of Hertfordshire’, in F.E. Smedley and E.H. Yates, Mirth and Metre, by Two Merry Men (London: Routledge, 1855), p. 1.

  3 J.E. Cussans, A History of Hertfordshire, vol. iii (1881; East Ardsley: E.P. Publishing, 1972), p. 115.

  4 Cussans, p. 115.

  5 This account of Katherine Ferrers’ life is largely drawn from two sources: C.W. Field, The Wicked Lady of Markyate: Studies and Documents (Robertsbridge, East Sussex: 1979); and J. Barber, The Wicked Lady: The Legend and Life of Katherine Ferrers (2014). Both are self-published works, though clearly the product of much research, and both broadly agree in their facts and their conclusions about the historical Katherine Ferrers and her connection to the legend. See also John Barber’s website: http://www.johnbarber.com/wickedlady.html.

  6 See Field, p. 3.

  7 Ann, Lady Fanshawe, The Memoirs of Ann, Lady Fanshawe, ed. H.C. Fanshawe (London: John Lane, 1907), p. 95.

  8 Field, p. 6.

  9 C. Hole, Haunted England: A Survey of English Ghost-Lore (London: B.T. Batsford, 1940), p. 94.

  10 I am indebted to Commander Richard Perceval Maxwell for my information regarding the life of his mother, Magdalen King-Hall, and for his hospitality when conveying it to me in person.

  11 Her older brother Stephen, served in the navy before becoming an MP and a distinguished print and broadcast journalist, famous for his political newsletter which championed opposition to fascism in the 1930s. Her older sister, Louise (1897–1983), was also a writer, publishing four novels and an edited version of the diaries belonging to her naval ancestors, between 1930 and 1946.

  12 D. Wallace, The Woman’s Historical Novel: British Women Writers, 1900–2000 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 79.

  13 Wallace, p. 4.

  14 Wallace, p. 6.

  15 M. Joannou, Women’s Writing, Englishness and National and Cultural Identity: The Mobile Woman and the Migrant Voice, 1938–1962 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 68.

  16 Joannou, p. 68.

  17 Wallace, p. 5.

  18 For Margaret Lockwood, too, the film would prove career-defining. As her biographer notes, ‘the role and the title were destined to become synonymous with her’, and ‘[f]rom that time on, for the rest of her days, she would never be allowed to forget that she was The Wicked Lady.’ See Tims, p. 133.

  19 W.B. Gerish, The Wicked Lady Ferrers: A Legend of Markyate Cell in Flamsted (Bishop’s Stortford, 1911), p. 6.

  Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton

  Finis?

  1 The Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women’s Corps of the British Army during the Second World War.

  2 Air Raid Precautions, the organisation responsible for preparing for air raids during the war, and dealing with their aftermath. Their duties included maintaining the blackout at night-time.

  Part I

  1 A reference to 1 Corinthians 13:12: ‘For now we see through a glass, darkly’.

  2 From Epistle 27 of the letters of Pliny the Younger, addressed to Licinius Sura. This epigraph comes from the famous translation of Pliny’s letters by John Boyle, Earl of Cork and Orrery, which was published in 1751.

  Lady Skelton at Home

  1 The phrase belongs to Thomas Browne (1605–82), from his Hydriotaphia, Urne Burial, or, a Discourse of the Sepulchral Urnes lately found in Norfolk (1658), in which he discusses the inconsistency in classical depictions of ghosts, specifically whether they can be harmed by mortal weapons.

  2 A skirt with a hem so narrow that it was difficult for the wearer to walk properly, fashionable in the few years leading up to the First World War.

  3 Kulanga is a small village in Northwestern Zambia, formerly within the British colonial protectorate of Northern Rhodesia. ‘Ujojo’ does not seem to be the name for an actual tribe or region – it is the Zulu word for the long-tailed finch, sometimes used as a name. The inaccuracy may be part of the satire of Colonel McRoberts as a typically bigoted example of colonial attitudes, insensitive to ethnic difference.

  4 A laxative made from rhubarb, ginger and magnesia, named after the British physician James Gregory (1753–1821).

  The Reticence of Miss Isabella Skelton

  1 From John Milton, A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634 (more commonly known as Comus), line 432.

  2 A type of bobbin lace (made from braided and twisted lengths of thread, held on bobbins) which originated in Valenciennes in northern France.

  3 An apple-pie bed was a type of practical joke – made with one of the sheets folded back on itself so that its occupant’s legs could not stretch out.r />
  4 A decorative certificate or scroll, probably on calf-skin vellum, to commemorate the occasion of their marriage.

  5 An ulster is a thick overcoat, made of durable material such as tweed. Traditionally, in the Victorian period, it would have featured a cape around the shoulders, though in the twentieth century the cape disappeared.

  6 A dolman is a wide cape or mantle worn as an outer garment by ladies, often folded over the arms in place of sleeves. It was particularly fashionable in the 1870s and 1880s, exactly when this chapter of the novel is set, so this is another instance of King-Hall’s very detailed and accurate depiction of period fashions.

  7 Frederic William Farrar (1831–1903) was one of the most prominent Church of England clergymen in late-Victorian England, rising to become Dean of Canterbury. He had earlier been a teacher at Harrow School and Headmaster of Marlborough College, before entering the church. His renown derived partly from his power as a preacher, and spread more widely due to his prodigious output as a writer; he was an author of fiction (particularly children’s fiction) and a prominent philological scholar, as well as a theologian. Highly progressive for his time, he became a friend of Charles Darwin and argued that the church should have no theological objection to Darwin’s theory of evolution, in principle, though he was not himself entirely convinced by Darwin’s evidence.

  Lady Sophia Met Her Match

  1 Like the epigraph to the previous chapter, this is from John Milton’s Comus (1634). In fact, it comes from line 434, a mere two lines later than the previous quotation.

  2 A slightly mysterious reference, as there is no record of an actual architect by this name. The name is suggestive of Josiah Wedgwood (1730–95), the renowned eighteenth-century potter, although he was not an architect. Wedgwood’s contemporary (and fellow innovator in design and marketing), the cabinet-maker Thomas Chippendale (1718–79), did take on many commissions for aristocratic patrons, helping them to redesign and furnish their grand stately homes with custom-made furnishings. ‘Josias Wedgeworth’ may be King-Hall’s fictional merging of these two preeminent figures of Georgian interior design.