To Sleep No More

by Deryn Lake

  It had to be done. She would fetch a bone from the palace the next day. If Debora Weston were to lose interest in Benjamin, it was essential that Robert Morley of Glynde should come to visit Baynden and the little cottage once more.

  Twenty-one

  The silver candlestick flew through the air, mercifully missing the beautiful fourteenth-century window, the pride and joy of Sir Thomas May, but denting the wall beside.

  ‘Hell!’ shouted the young man responsible, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his doublet. ‘Hell, hell, hell!’ Then he subsided into a chair and started to weep silently. Yet despite his tears he was as handsome as a summer day, in a dark Romany way, having a mass of curling black hair and vivid grape eyes.

  In looks the youth favoured his mother, Jane, a member of an old Essex family with a great estate at Horndon-on-the-Hill. The Riches of Horndon had been swarthy since the Crusades when, so legend went, Saracen blood had been introduced into their strain. Yet the beautiful diamond hid a terrible flaw, for on certain days the boy was rendered almost speechless by an impediment which made him incomprehensible. And it was this fault which led him to moments of bleak depression like the one in which he was presently submerged.

  Tom May — son and heir of Sir Thomas — considered himself especially unfortunate for he loved words, writing poetry and plays which he subsequently burned considering them to be unworthy. Truly he would like to have been an actor, to have joined William Shakespeare’s company and acted with them, first at the Globe in Southwark and now at their private theatre in Blackfriars. But three years ago Tom had seen Macbeth, written at the special request of King James himself, and had known then that though he would never deliver lines upon the stage, at least he could write them. His ambition to be a poet and playwright of note had been born. Yet now, sitting in his father’s ancient palace in Maighfield, he wept, unable to utter the words that were bursting to come out of his head.

  With a sigh Tom stood up, wiping his face on a silken kerchief, resolutely straightening his doublet and brushing his trunk hose into careful pleats. Then he made for the door, descending first a small spiral staircase then the grand stairs before turning right towards the domestic offices where he ran straight into Agnes Casselowe.

  The girl bobbed a curtsey and said, ‘How are you, Master?’

  Tom pointed to his mouth and shook his head.

  Agnes’s round grey eyes looked sympathetic. ‘Would you like me to play for you before I go home?’

  Tom nodded.

  ‘Shall I come to your room?’

  He nodded again and Agnes said, ‘I’ll be there in an hour. But not for long, mind. Jenna likes me in before dark.’

  Tom flashed her his glorious smile, making her wish that he was more interested in women and not destined to be a rum bawd as the other servants whispered.

  ‘Farewell for the moment then.’

  Agnes bobbed another curtsey and turning round, hurried through the buttery to the kitchen, just in time to see her sister take a large meat bone from the spit and slip it beneath her apron.

  ‘Jenna, what are you doing?’

  The girl turned a frantic face towards her. ‘Be quiet for the love of God. If I am caught, questions could be asked.’

  Agnes lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Is it for a spell?’

  Jenna nodded but said, ‘Don’t speak of it here. Agnes, I am running such risks for him. Is he worth it?’

  ‘Of course he is. He belongs to you — and to me too, in a way. If he marries anyone else everything will go wrong.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Agnes’s face lost its customary stupid expression and she said, ‘He was born to be our friend. Do you not think so?’

  ‘Yes ... no. I don’t know.’ Jenna frowned. ‘I used to believe that when I was small.’ She turned away, looking out through the kitchen window to where the shadow of the palace had turned the quadrangle into a shaft of twilight.

  ‘I often think that the courtyard reflects the pattern of our lives.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ answered Agnes.

  ‘Sometimes the place is warm and full of sunlight and sometimes it is dim, as now.’

  ‘So...?’

  ‘So some people have sunny lives and others shadowy — and others still have a combination of both. Why?’

  ‘Because that is the way of things.’

  ‘Is it?’ said Jenna questioningly.

  *

  ‘Who’s there?’ shouted Robert Morley, starting up so suddenly that his sword, lying beside his bed in its scabbard, was in his hand before he knew it.

  There was no answer, the room so still and dark, that it took all Robert’s courage to leap out of bed and make a search, thrusting his weapon beneath the bed’s broadsilk draperies, convinced that he had seen a tall, dark figure stand in the room and call his name. But there was no one hiding and, much relieved, Robert crossed to the windows, drawing back the curtains to let in the early morning light.

  It was a glorious April dawning and an early shower had already drenched the stone and flint walls of Glynde Place, built some forty years earlier by his father, William Morley. Relishing the air, Robert opened the window and leaned out, his thudding heart resuming its normal beat.

  The marriage of Robert’s ancestor Nicholas Morley to Joan Waleys — great-granddaughter of Sir John Waleis who had been alive in the reign of Edward III — had been one of great advancement for the Morley family. They had acquired the Waleis estates at Glynde and Maighfield as a result, and their consequent involvement in the iron industry which had boomed in the Weald during the last sixty years had made them a fortune.

  Thinking about his inheritance, Robert leaned out further to look at the house and parkland that would one day be his, and noticed that his sister-in-law, Ann, was already up and about and walking in the knot garden with her two young daughters, Margaret and Chrisogon. It was the births of these two girls that had finally put Robert in line for the Glynde inheritance, for up till then his older half-brother had hoped for a son. But now Harbert had devised his vast estate to Robert in the event of his death.

  A sudden compulsion to look over the lands that would one day be his sent Robert to the stables, after snatching a venison pasty to break his fast. There he ordered his speediest horse to be saddled up and, whistling cheerfully, clattered off over the cobbled stableyard.

  It was a glorious morning and as Morley turned away from the downs he saw signs of spring everywhere: thrusting green buds were opening and wild flowers already carpeted the woods, while in the heavens the sky was a soft rain-washed blue, and the shafts of sunlight heightened the fine pale gold of the primroses.

  Overhead a bird sang, seeming to call out his name and reminding him of his dream. Without knowing quite why, Robert found that he was turning his horse towards Maighfield, towards Baynden and to the adventure that he felt sure was about to begin.

  *

  A new moon. But not the clear, dark night Jenna had hoped for; instead an overcast sky with no sign of the newborn goddess, and a wicked wind lashing from the Channel. Yet, despite the threatening storm, Jenna rose from her bed shortly before midnight and, taking the phial containing the potion from its hiding place, made her way from the cottage in the pitch darkness, her only light a small and ineffective lantern.

  The night was fathomless, the crescent moon obscured by the menacing clouds and the wind driving the stinging rain hard in the girl’s face. Jenna peered into the downpour, her eyes searching for the distant line of hills beyond the Rother but they were lost in the low-lying cloud. And the river, too, seemed wide and deep, reflecting the ink-black of the sky and gurgling at its banks like a drowning child. It was frightening, and Jenna made her way through the thick clumps of bending trees with a fast-beating heart.

  ‘How can I love like this?’ she thought. ‘To walk in this terrible night and put myself in danger for a man who cares nothing for my life.’

  Yet nothing would have made her
turn back. She would have journeyed on through fire and flood to achieve her objective.

  The ground began to climb and Jenna’s pace slowed as she toiled up through the fields and woods to the summit of the Rother valley where, beside a well-worn footpath, grew a circle of trees. That magic rings had long been associated with witchcraft, Jenna knew as part of country folklore — it was said that Chanctonbury Ring was a place where rites were performed — but she did not know if that was true.

  As she entered the spinney the wind, howling bleakly in this exposed spot, tore at Jenna’s cloak, raising it from her shoulders and streaming it out behind like a fantastic pair of wings. Just for a moment, for one clear-sighted moment, she stopped short and saw herself as if she had stepped outside her own body.

  The girl she looked at, her black hair wind-blown and wild, her eyes glittering and strange, her long-fingered hands clutching a small phial of liquid, was still innocent. She might already have mixed a love potion, and stabbed a lamb bone nine times to bring Robert Morley from Glynde to Maighfield, but she had never really summoned up the full might of nature’s power. But now, in this rain-lashed and isolated place, she was about to step over the brink, knowing she could never return to what she had been before. And yet what choice had she? She must have Benjamin; it was not part of the scheme of things that they should be separated.

  A frenzy engulfed her and, not caring about the consequences, Jenna placed the phial in the centre of the ring. Then, partly because she was drenched through and partly because she believed nudity to be essential to the ritual, she threw her garments to the ground and stood long and lean and naked in the pouring rain. Then, very slowly, she started to dance.

  *

  The fact that the Lord of the Manor’s half-brother had arrived unexpectedly that morning and now, by ancient right, was occupying the room set aside for the Lord or his steward at Baynden, did not please Richard Maynard, tenant of the great house. Indeed, it was an irritant, breaking into his orderly life and making annoying demands on him in the way of food and shelter.

  He had been forced to have a meal prepared — while he on his own would have eaten little, preferring to sit before his hearth and drink himself to sleep. For Richard did not care to go to bed too soon, fearing the long night’s watches when he would be vulnerable to the Dark Lady.

  He had first seen the ghost on the day he had taken up residence in Baynden, eleven years ago now, in 1598. He had leased the house originally for seven years but had extended his tenancy with Harbert Morley when that period had lapsed. For by that time Richard’s unhealthy preoccupation with the place had him completely in its grip. There was something about the house that he found utterly fascinating and yet quite terrible.

  The first thing to strike him as odd had been that, though Baynden itself was unfamiliar, the land seemed recognisable; even that strangely silent bluebell wood. The very quiet of the place, the fact that not a breath of breeze seemed to move the trees, had set his heart pounding with fright. And after that, if Richard had gone there at all, it had been with at least two dogs panting at his heels, throwing sticks to make them bark and be rowdy.

  But the ghost was a different matter. On the day he moved in he had seen her at an upstairs window, quite immobile, and thought her to be one of the servants. Then he had passed her on the stairs and made way, again thinking it a serving woman he had yet to meet. She had walked right by him and he had seen a beautiful face stricken with grief, a lock of lustrous, dark hair escaping from a white wimple. The rush of intense cold as she had come close, and the fact that she made no sound as she moved, had set every hair of Richard’s head on end. Then he had watched her glide straight through a wall and heard the closing of a door that was no longer there.

  He had been so shocked that he had almost fainted. He, Richard Maynard, yeoman farmer, had had to sit on the stairs with his head between his knees in order to clear his reeling senses. But the strange thing was that when he had mentioned, over-casually, that he thought Baynden to be haunted, the servants had stared at him with blank faces.

  ‘How could that be, Goodman Maynard?’ one had said. ‘The house is new.’

  ‘No, but built on the site of something more ancient surely?’

  ‘Yes, reckon. There’s been a house at Baynden since way back.’

  After that Richard met the sad-faced ghost everywhere, even watching her come to his bedroom to gaze unhappily around. He realised then that nobody else did see her; that she appeared exclusively to him.

  Sometimes, in the loneliest part of the night, he would hear her sobbing, the sound going on so long and with a pitifully desperate note. On those occasions he would light as many candles as he could find and go downstairs to doze by the fire, fearing to be alone in the stillness. And now, as he sipped his home-brewed beer, aware of the sounds of the sleeping household, Richard hoped that the Dark Lady, as he had named her long ago, would rest quiet tonight and not disturb Robert Morley.

  As he finally slept in the chair, Richard dreamed of her; dreamed that he followed the Dark Lady out of Baynden and through the fields towards the wood. But there he grew frightened and looked round for his dogs, only to find they were not there but that, instead, Jenna Casselowe’s cat stropped itself about his ankles, arching its back and rubbing against his legs. Even in his dream Richard thought how extraordinary a creature it was — pure white, with eyes that he would not have believed possible in an animal; clear crystal blue with not a trace of green.

  Richard woke up abruptly, every nerve taut, but there was silence in Baynden, not even a distant snore breaking the quiet. Stiffly, he got to his feet knowing instinctively, though it was dark as the grave outside, that within an hour it would be dawn and that life on his farm must begin. Without even stopping to take a bite of food, Richard pulled a roughspun cloak around him and stepped out into the raw and bitter morning.

  The rain had ceased but the wind was wilder than ever, booming with a great voice down the valley and hurling against the yeoman like a physical force. He thought of going back for a moment but was too strict an employer for that, liking nothing better than to be visible to his labourers as they came through the darkness to work.

  With his head down, Richard started to make his way across the fields known as the Five Acres — and then stopped in amazement. Coming towards him out of the blackness, concealed in an all enveloping cloak, was a woman. Just for a second he wondered who it was and then that familiar height gave it away. The Casselowe creature was wandering about on her own, before the sun was even up.

  Silently Richard stepped behind a tree, though there was little need in such poor light, and Jenna walked right past him, totally unaware of his presence. As she did so her cloak blew back on the wind — and Richard’s eyes started from his head. He saw high, full breasts and long, lean legs. The slut was naked beneath her mantle.

  *

  Just as he was preparing to ride through the early evening to William Weston’s cottage a knock came on Benjamin Mist’s door. Answering it with none too good a grace, he felt his face grow even longer on seeing Jenna Casselowe standing in the twilight. He had not cast eyes on her since the night she had walked off in a fury, and now the memory of that hung in the air between them as she said, shuffling her feet, ‘I am sorry to disturb you, Benjamin, but my father’s milking stool broke this morning and it is difficult for him to manage without it. Would it be too much trouble for you to look at it?’

  Her tone was conciliatory, apologetic almost, and relenting a little Benjamin said, ‘You had better step inside. I can tell you now whether it can be repaired.’

  It was a curious split he thought; the leg fractured off so neatly that it looked almost as if it had been done deliberately. ‘How did this happen?’

  ‘Very simply. I sat on it and it gave beneath me.’

  ‘It’s a very clean break. I can do it tomorrow. I’m afraid I can’t start now. I am going out.’ He did not like to mention Debora in Jenna’s presence.


  The girl went rather white and Benjamin noticed for the first time how strained she seemed, but she said with a smile, ‘Then I must leave at once. I would not like to make you late.’ She turned as if to go and then her hand reached inside her basket and she said, almost carelessly, ‘Oh, I nearly forgot. Daniel sent you some beer remembering how much you enjoyed it the other night. Here it is.’

  She produced a stone bottle and put it down on the table. ‘How kind. I shall enjoy that later.’

  ‘You’ll drink it tonight?’

  ‘Yes, when I get back from Debora’s. But first let me take you home.’

  Despite the fact he had mentioned her rival, a smile — so vivid and so beautiful that it quite startled Benjamin — flashed across Jenna’s face. But thinking no more of it Benjamin turned away, pulling on his cloak and securing the doors as he led her outside.

  Twenty-two

  Maighfield at dusk and lights beginning to appear at the windows of the dwellings which stood on either side of the track that ran through the village’s heart. The glow of candles illuminating Aylwins, Master Aynscombe the iron-master’s house; the cottages round the churchyard lit by economical tapers; the palace blazing with every kind of light, for Sir Thomas did not care for stint in anything; the dark timbers of the house built for Sir Thomas Gresham and now occupied by the Houghton family, reflecting the light of candles which suddenly appeared in one of the rooms in the upper storey.

  As Debora Weston came out of the house next to the walnut tree, she turned with some speed down the track, the track that led from the village to the heights above Sharnden, passing through the cluster of cottages which formed the hamlet of Cokyngs Mill. For home to Debora meant protection and security; a place where the dreadful thoughts that sometimes beset her could be shut away in the privacy of her tiny bedroom; a sanctuary where no one could see how she wept and cried. For Debora could not remember a time since childhood when she had been truly happy.