The Unburied

by Charles Palliser

  The maidservant concluded by saying that by his honesty and his courage he had lifted the enchantment placed upon the princess and he should now accept her as his bride. The prince remained horrified and at last managed to say that he could not. He could not accept as his wife someone who had killed and eaten men. Opening the door behind him, the prince said he was going to raise the alarm and tell everyone in the castle that their princess had been the monster who had haunted the forest for so long.

  The maidservant laughed and told him that no purpose would be served by his action since everyone in the castle knew the truth. They were now celebrating the lifting of the hideous curse under which the whole kingdom had suffered for so long.

  The prince stopped, unable to decide what to do. And at that moment the princess, who had been gazing at him longingly all this while, told him that the maidservant had lied to him. She was none other than the witch who had enchanted her and forced her to kill her suitors. The prince had not yet broken the enchantment fully but if he would truly accept her as his wife knowing what she had done, the last traces of the enchantment would be overcome. If he rejected her, she would fall under the power of the witch once again and go back to haunting the forest. As she spoke those last words, and still with nothing to cover her but her long golden tresses, she began to advance slowly towards the prince.

  He raised one hand to ward her away. The maidservant smiled and said that the princess was telling the truth. ‘I am the witch who enchanted her,’ she said. ‘And the reason why your kiss inflicted such pain was that it was a reminder of the human love that the princess was denied while she dwelt in the forest and fed on dead men’s bodies. You must decide now whether you are going to accept the princess as your bride or reject her.’

  The prince found he still could not speak but he shook his head.

  The witch laughed and said: ‘Then do you wish me to give you back the weapons I made you give me in the forest?’

  ‘Yes,’ the prince cried.

  Instantly he heard a peal of laughter from the maidservant and in that instant the women and the room began to fade away. As the castle disappeared he felt himself fall through the air until he landed on a soft floor of leaves and found that he was back in the forest. In the moonlight he saw that he was wearing his suit of chain-mail and that his sword and his dagger were restored to him and that his shield was lying beside him. And when he looked round he saw his hawk and hound nearby and his horse standing a few paces away, tossing its head and blowing nervously through its nostrils. For then the young prince noticed the smell that was frightening his steed and realized that he was in the great clearing that was strewn with parts of bodies, and at that moment, as he peered towards the distant line of trees in the faint moonlight, he saw that something was approaching from the forest.

  Editor’s Afterword

  I was born in Hyderabad where my father was an officer in the Indian Army. When I had just turned twelve my parents decided to send me back to England to board at school, not merely because the climate was healthier and the education supposed to be better, but also because of certain difficulties at home. One of the consequences of these circumstances was that they were not well off and because I had some – though, as it turned out, not much – musical ability, and because of the financial advantages of my tuition and board being paid for, it was decided that I should become a chorister.

  The usual age for entry to the school was seven or eight and so by the time boys had reached twelve, alliances and friendships had formed from which I, as a late arrival, was necessarily excluded. With my Indian ways and the premature habit of introspection which the domestic problems had encouraged, I suppose I was an odd little boy. I had been an only child – at least since the death from yellow fever of a younger sister of three, which occurred when I was eight. I had adored her, and her loss and the other family difficulties which I had experienced had added to my melancholy cast of mind a precocious solemnity, with the result that I found it hard to join in and care about the childish concerns of my fellows. Arriving halfway through Trinity term I found that cricket was the great issue of the day and I had neither aptitude for nor interest in the game. Perhaps because I was shunned, unhappy and shy, I developed a severe stammer. (At least, I don’t know whether I had it before and if I did nobody remarked upon it in India where I chattered away to my ayah in Hindustani.) Since this fuelled the contempt of the other boys, I retreated increasingly into silence and spent as much time as I was able to on my own. It became something of a pastime when there were no flies to torment or cats to chase, to hunt me down and goad me into a fury when my stammer made my attempts to defend myself highly amusing.

  Disliked by the other boys, I was the object of disapproval on the part of the Headmaster even though I never tried to be naughty or to break the rules. But I seemed to get into trouble more often than any other boy and I suppose that was because I lived in a day-dream which meant that I didn’t notice that I was late or forgot things. The world I was imagining was more pleasant and more interesting than the one I was required to live in and I believe it enraged the Headmaster to see me lost in an invented realm.

  The Headmaster – as he was called, rather grandly since there were only two other full-time masters in addition to the assistant-organist who taught music – would fly into sudden rages during which he would hit us savagely and repeatedly. This was usually done without the ceremony of a cane on the hand or buttocks, but with the flat of his hand across our heads. The punishment for a serious offence, however, was to be formally caned by him on the buttocks. At that time his rages were inexplicable and no more to be investigated than the reason why it rained one day and the sun shone the next. When I was an adult I understood his bitterness, his frustration at his ambitions and hopes ending in the headship of a small and very undistinguished choir school in a distant provincial town. I later realized, too, that there were many occasions when his irascibility and unpredictability were due to his having taken intoxicating spirits.

  We learnt very little, partly because we were worked so hard as choristers. We had Evensong every day – except for Saturdays when there were no sung services. And we had Practice every day for an hour before breakfast and again for half an hour before Evensong. I was not gifted musically and so I was terrified of the choirmaster, a young man who was determined to raise the reputation of the choir and who had a particularly harsh way of dealing with us. Music at the Cathedral had fallen into a decline because of the prolonged ill-health of the elderly organist who for many years had had sole responsibility for the singing. (The Precentor was also old and had taken little interest for a long time.) And so in the hope of improving things, the Foundation had, some seven or eight years before my arrival, appointed an assistant-organist – a man who seemed quite old to us but was not forty at the time I am writing of. The appointment was temporary but had been periodically renewed because of the continued incapacity of the organist – at least, that was the reason that was given out. As well as playing for services and teaching us music, he was supposed to take over most of the old man’s responsibility for the choir, but he was lazy and preferred to spend his time slovening in the town’s taverns. Though he never hit us or did anything else, there was something about him with his queer slouching gait, his dishevelled dress, his crooked smile, and his sarcastic remarks that made us recoil from him and fear him more than we feared even the choirmaster.

  This more recent addition to the staff of the Cathedral had been employed only at about the time I myself began at the school, at the moment when the canons had finally acknowledged that the appointment of the assistant-organist had done nothing to raise the standard of singing. The choirmaster had therefore not selected me to be in the choir. He told me several times that I was not good enough to be a chorister. I did not disagree with him on that point, but although I disliked everything to do with the choir, at least there was the consolation that I did not stammer when I sang. That was not enough to s
ave me, and the choirmaster used to humiliate and occasionally beat me at Evensong if he believed I had sung off-key or had sung softly in the hope that he would not hear. He did this to the other boys, too, but I believed he made a particular butt of me, singling me out because of my poor musicianship and my stammer. And that was why I used sometimes to cut Evensong even though I knew the punishment that would follow. The choirmaster would report my absence to the Headmaster and he would hunt me down and cane me. But at least I would have respite for a few hours and the bruises from a flogging gave me a certain status among my fellows. A beating was sometimes preferable to being shown up and laughed at.

  I might mention that while the beatings by the Headmaster were bad enough, most of all we dreaded being invited to tea by the Chancellor to cheer us up afterwards.

  Our life was altogether fairly miserable. We were lodged in a dark old building – a former gatehouse – in the shadow of the Cathedral in the Upper Close. We slept in narrow truckle beds almost at the top of the ancient edifice. We were locked in at nine o’clock and were usually left all night to our own devices – which were unpleasant enough, for the bigger boys tormented and humiliated the smaller ones – and though I was among the oldest, I counted as one of the bullied.

  Although this happened less than forty years ago, it seems to me that that was another age. No school would be allowed these days to treat children in the way we were treated. The dormitory was completely unheated in the winter and, winter and summer, infested by rats. There were eighteen of us in this one big room whose windows we sealed as tight, during the bitter winter nights, as their rattling frames permitted. At half-past six we had to rise and dress in order to attend Early Practice, after which we had our meagre breakfast and then assembled in a big schoolroom on the ground floor – a room which was poorly heated by a single coal-fire and was always filled with the stench of the cheapest tallow-candles.

  Saturdays were my favourite time – at least, until it was dark for then my favourite day turned into the night I most feared; Saturday was the only night of the week when I was alone in the Old Gatehouse. Although my family had at one time had a connection with the town, I had no living relatives there. And so on Saturdays, after Practice and breakfast, when the other boys went to visit their families until the morning service the following day, I would find myself alone and completely without any adult taking an interest in what I was doing since the cook and housemaid had the day off. Or, I should say, taking an interest that I welcomed. I would spend a solitary day mooching about the town, returning for the bread and cheese left out for me by the servants. And on Saturday nights, rather than sleep by myself in the big room, I would carry my bedding up to the little top room under the roof – though that did not save me.

  It was because of this solitariness that I made the friendship as a result of which I became involved in the case.

  Of course I don’t mean to say that I was unhappy all the time. There were some moments when I enjoyed myself – lying with a book on the grass of the Lower Close in the summer or roasting chestnuts on the schoolroom fire in the autumn. Once or twice one of the younger canons, Dr Sisterson, invited us to his house where we were well treated by his friendly wife and his own children, and there were occasions when I joined in the games and it was forgotten that I was different and queer. Later – after the time I am now speaking of – I even made a friend, a quiet, timid boy of whom I had taken very little notice at first, except occasionally to wonder enviously how he managed to avoid being singled out and ridiculed for not enjoying rough games, loud noises, and so on. (He had a brother – much older than he – who worked in the Library.) Another consolation was that I found I enjoyed Latin and Greek which were taught by an old man who passionately loved the ancient literature and took a kindly and unselfish interest in us.

  But when I started again in the Michaelmas term after my arrival – after a dreadfully dull and lonely summer with an elderly uncle and aunt in a remote village in Cumberland – I became more and more unhappy. I passed whole hours in imagining how I might be set free. My parents might both die and since the fees would not be paid, I would be sent out into the world to earn my living. Or somebody might adopt me. And if neither of these things happened, then one day I would just run away. I had good reasons for wanting to.

  Not only was I bullied by my fellows, but all of us choristers suffered from the fact that there was another school in the Close. We choirboys were scholars, recipients of charity, and the fact that the school occupied the Old Gatehouse was used to insult us. The Courtenay boys were rich – at least, richer than most of us – and self-assured. They swaggered about the town in their distinctive garb – dark blue gown, blue knee-breeches and buckled shoes – secure in the possession of their own territory, the Lower Close, so that if one of us ventured into it they would beat us. On the other hand, they strutted freely around our territory – the Upper Close – and we were required to get smartly out of their way or take our punishment in kicks and blows.

  One Saturday, towards the end of September, I was crossing the Upper Close when I saw an old gentleman whom I knew by sight walking ahead of me, carrying a couple of things – a large object that looked like a book and a package – under his left arm, his right being occupied by the leather case which he always bore. He let the package fall and walked on without noticing. I picked it up, ran after him and handed it back. He was grateful and appeared to be very struck by the fact that I stammered so badly and by my sallow complexion and slightly exotic manners. He was intrigued to learn that I had been born in India and told me he had a passion for faraway places and showed me the book under his arm. It was a beautifully illustrated collection of maps, printed in Leiden, he told me, two hundred years ago. He explained that he collected maps and atlases and said that one day he hoped he would have the opportunity to show me his collection. I knew him only as the old man who lived in the big ancient house at one end of the Upper Close.

  I met him again now and then, and during October and November I talked to him perhaps five or six times – always outside his back-door. I happened to meet him on a Saturday when the Close was deserted and mentioned my solitariness on that day and it was then that he invited me to tea the following Saturday, telling me to mention it to nobody for it was to be our secret and he would not even inform his housekeeper but would buy the bread and cakes himself. I believed I knew what to expect for I had twice been invited to have tea with Dr Sheldrick who occasionally invited boys to his house in the afternoon. (The Headmaster either did not know or did not care about these visits – probably the latter for he and the Chancellor, both staunch members of the Low Church tendency, were allies in the convoluted politics of the Chapter.)

  I was by nature suspicious and already good at keeping secrets for, because of the difficulties in my family which I have mentioned and which very soon after this led my parents to live apart, I had been introduced at an early age to habits of secrecy and instinctive suspicion of the motives of others. My involvement in the so-called Stonex Case had a fearful effect upon me – all the greater because nobody ever knew of it. At the time I vowed to myself never to reveal what I had learnt in such an accidental manner. (In truth, there was nobody I trusted to whom I dared reveal it.) I had to nurse my secret and the burden of guilt that accompanied it without the relief of confiding it to another. I said nothing at all of what I knew and avoided all discussion of the matter until a few years ago when I was moved to write to a newspaper to correct errors of fact which had appeared in a grotesque article on the case. It was that letter which, in a way I had not foreseen or intended, drew me into the case again and which indirectly explains why I am writing this ‘Afterword’ now. Apart from poor Perkins’s wretched children, I suppose I am the last surviving victim.

  So one Saturday at the beginning of December I went into the house for the first time – the first of only two occasions, for I have entered it only once since then. (After the old gentleman’s death it was
sold by his sister who turned all the assets she inherited – principally, of course, the Bank but also various properties in and around the town – into cash within a few months of probate and went to live abroad. The house later became the office of the solicitors, Gollop and Knaggs – as it has remained to this day.)

  Tea with the old gentleman went off very well. He seated me at the table opposite him and talked to me as if I were an adult. He did not use the babyish language that the Chancellor employed and, above all, he did not bring up the question of beatings.

  He asked me about my studies. I told him I enjoyed Greek and Latin because I liked the master who taught Classics, and he confessed that he had hated those languages when he was a boy and had been a complete dunce at them. (I might remark here that it was because I enjoyed my studies under that kind old gentleman that I continued with them when I passed on to my public school and later went up to Cambridge to read for the Classical Tripos.) He told me that he, too, had attended the Choir School. We found that – despite the difference of some sixty years – the existence he had led was not very different from mine. There was another link between us for he told me that he himself had stammered when he was my age. We talked about the teachers. Mr Stonex asked me about the assistant-organist and seemed intrigued by the little I was able to tell him.

  It was almost time for me to go when he remembered that he had not shown me his atlases as he had promised to do. He wasted more time – as it seemed to me – in telling me how he had wanted to be a sailor or an explorer when he was a boy and that was how he had acquired his love of maps. He told me he had had to sacrifice his dreams of travel because he had had to take on onerous family responsibilities at an early age because of the premature death of his father. Then he talked, somewhat obscurely in my view, of how ironic it was that he had wanted to be a hero and had dreamed of returning to his native town fêted and lionized as a great warrior or bold navigator, and had, in fact, become a kind of hero but a secret one. He became quite upset as he described how, far from being thanked and adored, the reward for his heroism was to be despised and shunned. None of that meant anything to me then, of course, and it was only three years ago that I came to understand what he meant. (Little as I understood then, I remembered his words because only a short time later I found myself similarly nursing a terrible secret.) The old gentleman became so absorbed in his story that he forgot the time. The chiming of the grandfather clock – fortunately rather ahead of itself – reminded us of the lateness of the hour and when I had to take my leave without having been shown the famous atlases, my host promised me that I should come again soon and look at them properly.