Deadly Pleasures

by Martin Edwards

  The unlikely group who now spent time together – considerable time, indeed eternity − were Sir Mawdesley Mordaunt deceased, the underrated Elizabethan poet; the late Major Penitence Rackstraw of the New Model Army; the White Lady, who was reputed (if she really existed) to be the tragic daughter of the Victorian industrialist Lord Mordaunt, a man ennobled for dubious reasons (aren’t they all?); and the Black Dog, a creature whose habits were utterly medieval.

  Both Sir Mawdesley and the White Lady’s supposed father, whom some called ‘Mad Jack’, were previous owners of Mordaunt Castle, that great stronghold of crusading knights which proudly towered over Mordaunt Street, in Middleswick. It had been rescued from bankruptcy by a businessman of impressive corruptibility, then turned into a money-spinning gem of the heritage industry, in which it is a sought-after privilege for historic buildings to be haunted, though perhaps not by the Black Dog.

  Major Rackstraw acknowledged his companion with a slight squaring of the shoulders, a soldier’s gesture. If he had not been dismally pale to start with, he would have looked so now, for something had indeed startled him. Shock had turned him into a subtly more substantial figure. As he materialised in his buff coat before Sir Mawdesley in the Postern Tower, his appearance was oddly colourful, his aura unnaturally warm.

  ‘We are in extreme danger, sir!’ he exclaimed, full of urgency. ‘Traitors have a plot in hand.’

  The White Lady manifested herself with an abrupt shimmer, manipulating smelling-salts for Rackstraw’s use if he would accept; he did not. Although normally seen in desolate tears, she never let snuffling block her nose for excitement. ‘You look distressed, Major!’

  Her male companions exchanged nervous glances. One thing was known about the White Lady, if she ever existed: thwarted in love, she died of misery. Both Sir Mawdesley and the Major suspected she was looking for some new man to be miserable about. Neither wanted it to be him. Death had not deprived them of their senses of self-preservation.

  ‘Sit down and recover,’ she twittered. Major Rackstraw sighed. The woman had never understood supernatural life. Ghosts rarely sit down, even in a crisis, and there is a really good reason for that. Their ectoplasmic ability to glide through matter tends to deposit them in a heap on the floor.

  ‘Whatever unmanned you?’ demanded Sir Mawdesley, knowing the Major was a steady, thoughtful type. He had a mind of his own, as rebels usually do. He had besieged this castle valiantly in the Civil War and always said his capture was due to a Royalist trick.

  ‘Did you feel something?’ trilled the White Lady. ‘A scent? A chill breath of wind?’

  Ignoring her fancies, Sir Mawdesley asked gravely, ‘Did you see something, sir?’

  ‘It is …’ began the Major slowly, ‘a strange device.’ He faltered, grasping for vocabulary.

  The Black Dog gambolled out of the ether, reeking of bad breath and ready for play. ‘Good boy,’ said Sir Mawdesley absently as the Dog placed huge paws upon his shoulders and licked him. Mist wreathed about its head. Its red eyes blazed. Sir Mawdesley, once a fond owner of hounds, disentangled himself from the ghastly vision. The Black Dog rolled over on its back, seeking more attention. Major Rackstraw prodded its matted fur with one platform-soled Roundhead riding boot, in a vague attempt to scratch its belly.

  ‘Was it a Presence?’ shrieked the White Lady, once more convincing the others that, tragic life aside, she was a damn silly girl. Even the Dog slavered uneasily.

  ‘Where lies this Thing, sir?’ rapped Sir Mawdesley.

  ‘On the roof of Mad Jack’s Tower.’

  Sir Mawdesley sniffed down his long Elizabethan nose. His own improvements to this castle had been solid; he sneered at all subsequent flimflam. ‘After my time!’

  ‘Oh a pleasing bauble,’ teased Rackstraw, who liked taking a poke at aristocrats. ‘I should be obliged for your opinion, sir.’

  ‘Let’s to it then!’

  On leaving the courtyard all the ghosts paused, needing to readjust to the current ground level, which had been raised when Capability Brown conducted a garden makeover. The Dog dashed ahead, scampering over a drawbridge. ‘I hate,’ confided the Major to the poet in a low voice, ‘how that accursed creature snaps through a man’s ankles.’

  ‘And then disappears while you are shaking it off,’ agreed Sir Mawdesley, glumly tidying his ruff. The Black Dog tunnelled straight through the Mound, which the Major remembered as an artillery base for cannon. Nowadays it was a children’s play area, where some of the little hooligans seemed able to see them and hurled insults.

  Noticing the Major reminiscing, the White Lady said, ‘I mean to ask you one day, Major, why you came back?’

  Major Rackstraw faintly smiled. He did not answer, for it was not yet a question. Mad Jack’s daughter had been here with them less than two centuries, but even she hoarded interesting conversations, as precious as her long jet necklace, to be used in their eternal future, when desperate. Eventually, his answer would be that he never left. Captured during an attempted sally, he was thrown into the Dungeon, a desperate hole where his name was still shown to visitors, hopeless graffiti he had incised on the damp stonework alongside scratches counting off his days there. He died a prisoner.

  One day, before neglect claimed him, a considerate jailer had thrown him a volume of Sir Mawdesley’s poems. These were elegant comments on Time and Mortality – an irony, since their author had now defeated Time and immortally paced his own grounds as the most civilised of spirits. Alongside him, Rackstraw marched with sombre tread, eternally awaiting ransom which his friends never sent.

  The White Lady had strayed into spectredom at the castle, like a house guest who was deaf to hints to leave; there was no question she had been and always would be socially inept. The Black Dog hung around as a wraith because he liked being a menace.

  In the afternoon light the ancient walls and towers assumed a uniform mellow gold. This was no grey, bleak stronghold where discomfort ate into people’s bones. The castle was sturdy, hospitable, business-like – and even in winter much visited by the public. At the massive oak door to Mad Jack’s Tower, two anxious female tourists asked the ghosts the way to the public toilets. This question was regularly put to them by those who were spiritually aware yet who could not notice signs. Sir Mawdesley shuddered and gloomed, to no avail. Haunting could be hard work.

  ‘Quiver your aura, Major!’ giggled the White Lady. Rackstraw briskly waved an arm in the right direction. He honoured the rule that spirits could only hold conversations when warning sinful people they must change their lives or be damned. Needing a house-of-easement hardly came into that category. Warning people to repent and reform was equally hard work and the ghosts rarely bothered with it. This explains why so many serial killers, bankers and women who present decoupage kits on TV shopping channels are allowed to continue their terrible careers.

  Even though the castle guide always told tourists the ghosts’ stories when she reached the darkest passageway, they were rarely recognised as the apparitions who had been described. Now, they overheard the two women with the urgent mission decide these must be members of a historical re-enactment society, perhaps later to offer a presentation on ancient warfare or cookery. Annoyed, Major Rackstraw whizzed himself up the Tower at high speed.

  ‘Shall we walk?’ Sir Mawdesley asked the girl. An unnecessary question. Of course they walked; that is what ghosts do. They progressed up the winding stair with graceful motions, barely needing to lay hands on the sturdy rope banisters.

  They left the Black Dog outside, tearing about with its ears back in crazy joy at not being alive.

  The door at the top of the stairs was never padlocked, even though the roof was too dangerous for public access. A simple notice that said ‘No Entry’ was sufficient because visitors to monuments know better than to start bells ringing by defying the rules. When they wanted to be mischievous, the ghosts had been experimenting in how to set off alarms, but so far a method had eluded them. Ghosts are neve
r frightened by high rooftops that lack sensible parapets, so the poet and the girl eased themselves gently through the door and looked around without a qualm. They existed despite the worst Health and Safety can achieve.

  ‘Oh what do you think it will be?’ trilled the White Lady.

  ‘An anxious soldier’s lively imagination.’ Sir Mawdesley nodded at Rackstraw as he wafted ahead on the leaded roof. ‘He longs for the clash of arms and roar of cannon. Be calm. It may be a harmless bauble.’

  ‘Some bad trifle he ate,’ the White Lady agreed, missing the point as usual. Major Rackstraw could not remember the last time he had food. Even when he was alive, his cruel guards only threw him occasional mouldy crusts. Poor diet as a prisoner had killed him; at least it could not harm him now, or even cause him flatulence.

  He pointed coldly to an object which lay against one of the fantastically ornamented drainpipes installed by Mad Jack. ‘It is some piece of ordnance – yet none I ever saw in our armies.’

  Sir Mawdesley bent and peered, with eyes that had ceased to be perfect after too many evenings penning quatrains by candlelight. He made out a solid box shape, with wires attached.

  ‘A bomb!’ declared the White Lady. This was nothing new. Foreign anarchists had brought bombs to London in her day. She was not troubled by this one; it could not hurt a woman who had already died heartbroken. Then as soon as she had spoken, second thoughts struck. ‘Calamity! We cannot allow incendiarists to destroy my Papa’s Tower!’

  Sir Mawdesley felt almost pleasure at the thought of Mad Jack’s aberration being blown to smithereens; he had always denounced it as a gimcrack Italianate pleasure pavilion and could not bear the thought that conservation officers, those tasteless hirelings of Machiavellian government, adored it.

  The Lady’s indignant tone brought the Black Dog bounding up to see what he was missing. Before they could stop him, he pawed the device then peed on it; fortunately paranormal widdle, though steamy, had no effect.

  The Major considered logistics. ‘On any other tower, where the walls are constructed thick, it would blast the top off with small damage, but this flimflam is liable to collapse entirely, crushing everything below. We must take action. The bombarillo could be slung over and dropped below, to explode safely in the moat.’

  ‘Good sir, not by us.’ Sir Mawdesley was right. Ghosts could not lift objects physically. Nor was it likely they could attract attention and bring human help; the castle guide always declined to notice them, for she was a retired bookkeeper with a certificate in heritage studies, despite which she called herself a sensible woman. Although the security man felt funny in their presence, he knew he ate too much junk food so put his collywobbles down to that.

  Major Rackstraw assigned himself the role of reconnaissance. He wafted to the belvedere, whence he looked down into the car park at the rear of the stables. The others flittered up to join him as he checked for enemy incursions or unwelcome earthworks. The area was virtually empty, with just a few vehicles, most of which were parked as close to the castle entrance as possible. One car stood alone, oddly situated under trees at the far end. Rackstraw sent the Black Dog to have a look and the creature reported two figures were sitting inside, apparently not doing much.

  ‘Who visits our castle yet does not enter?’ demanded Sir Mawdesley.

  ‘Our terrorisers, by Noll’s nose!’ decided the Major.

  ‘Awaiting the outcome of their iniquity!’

  Major Rackstraw knew the car park was where he and his companions had once laid siege to Mordaunt Castle; they too had had to endure many hours of inactivity before the defendants emerged and captured him. He agreed that the two dallying individuals were quite likely those who had placed this device on Mad Jack’s Tower, now waiting to observe the damage. He pointed out that visitors and staff were in danger of their lives if the tower fell on them. Whatever purpose the bombers had, such violence was a criminal act; it was contrary to the Ordinances of War to assault civilians or even attack property.

  Sir Mawdesley, who enjoyed disputation, commented that those who took up arms in what they considered to be a worthy cause, generally believed they had no choice; they were driven to defy an authority that would not respond to reasoned debate. For them, their actions were not crimes. The crime, for them, was committed by those they opposed. He felt no need to draw comparisons with the Parliamentary rebels of the Civil War – though the White Lady did. Major Rackstraw would have reddened with annoyance, but was constrained by his ghostly rank, which made him remain ghastly.

  Mordaunt Castle must be a target because it represented the fabric of the nation. They discussed what kind of people might be making this gesture. Sir Mawdesley thought marauding Musselman corsairs wanting slaves for their galleys, with the Major inclined to believe they were heartless European mercen-aries paid by malignant monarchists to oppress the common people. The White Lady had no opinion. She had been brought up to bear nineteen children and thus have no time for politics. It had been thought sufficient preparation for the expectation of dying in childbirth to teach her to press flowers in tissue paper.

  The three human relics were united in loathing the threat against innocent people. Death had not dwindled the consciences they possessed in life. They decided it must be their task to prevent murder.

  ‘“The World’s a bubble and the life of man Less than a span”,’ quoted Sir Mawdesley, thinking, I wish I had written that. Even so, yearning in perpetuity for the existence he had lost, he was highly opposed to the taking of life prematurely.

  The Black Dog was indifferent to issues of conscience, but he wanted to thwart any activists who might be claiming to assert his animal rights. In life, the Dog had belonged to an extremely stupid peasant who had taught him deep suspicion of anything new – even if it might improve his own existence. Eventually, he bayed crazily and then produced a surprisingly good suggestion for dealing with the dangerous object: he had a friend in town, as all dogs of character do. His friend was not bound by normal spiritual rules about physical motion.

  The others saw the sense of it. They would fetch the poltergeist.

  Few people were aware of them as they made a stately procession from the Main Gate, floating out by the In lane, straight through a delivery van. Projecting themselves onto Mordaunt Street where, apart from the Dog, they rarely ventured, they gazed around curiously. Sir Mawdesley’s eye was caught by a wine bar, decorated for Christmas with cotton wool snow; in his previous life he had enjoyed a glass of sweet Canary. The White Lady exclaimed over the prettiness of the tinsel and lights, while the Dog tried in vain to knock over a Christmas tree. Major Rackstraw, who belonged to a strict puritan sect and abhorred Christmas, shuddered with dread that he was about to be lured into merriment or debauchery.

  ‘No time for it, man!’ quipped Sir Mawdesley cheerfully. He decided to come back later, without the others. Poets get better reviews if they have a reputation as debauched.

  Much of Mordaunt Street was less vibrant. Shops stood boarded and empty. Times were hard. Commerce was in decline and the once thriving high street faltered; businesses had closed as clothes and craft shops ceased to make a profit. A bookshop which had barely survived on goodwill finally failed too. Sometimes sad incomers took short leases, then disappeared in turn. Abandoned premises that were no longer used even as charity shops stood as symbols of recession. The phantoms drew into themselves, as they understood with a sense of extra melancholy that where they now walked was in its death-throes, the very place now ghostly. Decay was something they knew intimately.

  But people must eat (unless they are captives in dungeons). At the far end of the failing street stood a large modern supermarket. The Dog hitched a ride in a shopping trolley while the others slipped in unobtrusively.

  The store was a revelation to them. Alarmed by its single-minded crowds and astounded by the aisles of unfamiliar produce in colourful packets, they made all speed to track down the poltergeist. He was invisible. Even the ghosts only
saw him as a stressed bubble of spiky air, tearing about like a teenager. They gave thanks that in their times adolescents and children were miniature adults, subdued in the presence of their elders. Those were the days. Supposedly.

  They corralled the poltergeist against a BOGOF rack. Introducing themselves, they explained the problem at the castle. They told him how he could assist, since his role in life, or in the afterlife, specifically allowed him to lift things and move them about.

  ‘Can’t help. Gotta wreak havoc here!’ The poltergeist was tempted, nevertheless. He led a miserable life-after-death. He wanted to retrain as a computer virus. Nobody noticed his in-store efforts. When he moved packet soups to the olive oil shelf or skimmed frozen fish packets down the hardware aisle, the staff just supposed this carnage had been caused by their customers, while customers blamed devious marketing decisions. He got no credit.

  ‘Hmm,’ mused Sir Mawdesley cannily. ‘When our grenade goes off, methinks there will be a fine show of noise and fire!’

  If the poltergeist had possessed eyebrows, they would have shot up. The poet had rightly guessed that the mad force of supernature loved explosions. ‘Can I play with the matches?’

  ‘The device may roar enough, without benefit of a match cord,’ the Major assured him.

  ‘Oh, you’ve twisted my arm!’ Without more ado, the poltergeist wrapped himself up in a carrier bag, and bowled out of the store ahead of them, having fun looking like litter. Halfway up Mordaunt Street, a council refuse collector tried to spike him.

  Back at the Castle, Major Rackstraw groaned. A coach had arrived, disgorging a large party who were now ensconced in the Buttery with hot tea and scones while they listened to a lecture on medieval fortifications. The guide trundled through her Motte and Bailey notes while people gave most of their attention to scoffing. The Buttery was manned by broad-bodied Middleswick women who made all the cakes themselves; crockery clearance was womanned by a youth in the throes of a sex-change. Despite the generous portion-control exercised by the counter-queens, his role was to ensure a fast through-put in order to boost scone sales.