by Guy Sheppard
Sasha’s head hung low. Her tail did the same. Clearly she could not escape the sensation that, merely by exploring the grounds with him, they were inviting some colossal catastrophe or mortal calamity?
They followed the edge of the tree-lined lake until a substantial, brick-built garage caught his attention.
Sasha sniffed and growled.
A stag’s white, empty-eyed skull hung over double doors while a little blue and white wooden sailor with a black cap stood guard at the apex of the roof.
‘You asking me?’ said Jorge and tugged pointlessly at a rusty padlock.
It was then that he thought to fetch a crowbar from the greenhouse. As for the actual business of breaking and entering, he did try not to do any damage, though naturally he did.
A ten-foot-long dinghy was parked inside the shed on a trailer.
This had to be the craft in which Luke had been seen exploring the river so thoroughly last summer? He clambered over the gunwale and crouched down at the stern. It had room for three adults and was a versatile day vessel with a good turn of speed under sail – if there was no wind it could be rowed or a small outboard would push it along.
The biggest elver net that he had ever seen lay concertinaed at his feet, as if ready to be extended and towed behind the boat.
Strictly illegal, it could have caught a person.
A flute lay gathering dust on one of its seats, Jorge noticed. Had his friend sought to charm his catch with music? His sense of glee was soon overtaken by the sight of something bright sparkling at his feet.
Such a find was both unnerving and forbidding.
Few people could buy such saltwater pearls anywhere in the world any longer.
It was an antique earring.
He began moving all sorts of spares for navigating treacherous channels in the River Severn, should any more treasure lay concealed underneath.
Here were torches with spare batteries, a navigating light, spare fuel and engine oils, bilge pumps, hand bailer and flares. His hands touched upon a sound signalling device and spare full filter element.
For, while the boat could be sailed or rowed, it needed its trustworthy outboard motor to negotiate the river’s powerful tides.
A muddy spade lay on the transom.
Sasha suddenly let out a bark and ran outside to sniff the air.
Jorge followed, wondering why on earth she was staring at some invisible presence beyond the gardens.
An excited howl issued from her throat that responded to something only she could see or hear.
Meanwhile, the roof’s watchful sailor waved his white paddles. He signalled a cold blast of wind from the estuary. Performed urgent semaphores with both arms.
‘What’s wrong, Sasha? What are you doing? Why are you behaving so weirdly?’
Her whole behaviour he recognised only as worryingly fretful.
Still could he scarcely believe the evidence in his hand. By what strange occurrence had someone sought to wear such a precious earring in Luke’s boat, anyway? What dangerous circumstances?
Why sail at all to meet whom on the river?
It wouldn’t be until he searched a lot further that he’d learn more.
*
Next morning, as a pair of snow-white egrets flew past him like ghosts, Jorge sat on the vicarage’s terrace and unfolded the local newspaper that he now had delivered daily from Berkeley.
He focused at once on its black headlines: Missing Man Identified.
Beneath the headline he read: “A man found in the River Severn has been named as long-term resident of Berkeley Ian Grey (84). So badly decomposed was the skeleton that it had to be identified by its teeth. Police have not ruled out foul play.”
‘ He that takes the devil into his boat, must carry him over the sound ,’ whispered Jorge gravely, but so quietly that only Sasha, who sat at his feet, caught his drift.
She breathed as great a sigh of relief as he did.
By all accounts that body should have been Rev. Luke Lyons.
29
‘Saturday, August 6th it is, then?’ said Sabrina, looking resplendent in her long pale gown on their way into the keep at Berkeley Castle. She stroked the spine of the little silver sea-serpent in her ear as she spoke.
Ellie was ecstatic.
‘At last I can send out my wedding invitations. I’m so lucky.’
Sabrina turned her head with curiosity. A little smile, for him alone, curled one corner of her mouth, Luke noticed.
‘Lucky? Is that what you believe?’
Ellie beamed.
‘Sounds great. Agreed, brother?’
He beamed a thin smile back.
‘One person’s loss is another’s gain, it seems.’
Ellie stiffened.
‘Sorry, what?’
‘Stephen Rivers’s death saves the day, is all.’
‘You think?’
‘He and Reverend James were going to have their reception at the castle on the 6th of August, after their civil ceremony. All of a sudden there’s a vacancy. It’s as if it was meant to be.’
Ellie gave him a quick dig in his ribs.
‘Shit, Luke, I’ll gladly take another bride’s place to get what I want.’
‘Don’t thank me, thank Sabrina. She did it all.’
‘Somehow I don’t think so.’
‘Always.’
‘If there’s anything else you need to tell me, brother, please do?’
He put his hand to his head and hot veins throbbed in his temples.
‘I’m fine.’
‘Honestly Luke, you look like death today.’
‘Don’t be silly. It’s nothing. Really.’
‘What’s that nasty red spot on your clerical collar?’
‘I had another nosebleed this morning.’
Sabrina trailed her heady perfume whose ocean fragrance dissolved something briny in the air. It smelt of salt-filled breeze, rock pools and sun-bleached driftwood as she beckoned them to follow her up a narrow, spiral staircase.
‘Mind your heads on the low doorway.’
‘I’ve always wanted to have a wedding in a castle,’ said Ellie, ‘but my first husband wasn’t so keen.’
‘You divorced?’ said Sabrina.
‘Widowed. My husband drowned when our car skidded into a lake in Scotland. The road was icy. I lost control. Saved my son but not him.’
‘Drowned, you say?’
‘Okay, I’d been drinking which didn’t help. He didn’t stand a chance.’
Sabrina shed some of her haughtiness in favour of agitated concern, even as she assumed a pace more reckless than before.
‘People say drowning is painless but what do they know? How can they possibly understand what it is to suffocate so cruelly? Can anyone really anticipate what it is to feel fear at the last moment of our lives, knowing that the next breath we take will be full of water?’
‘I imagine what my sister is trying to say is that she wants her wedding day to be a truly fresh start,’ said Luke. ‘Just the way she has always dreamed.’
The oddly emphatic way in which Sabrina reacted seemed on a par with his own disturbed state.
He had little idea what to make of her sudden discomfort. He could only rightly gauge the strength of his own.
Ellie kept firm hold of Randal’s hand round each bend in the cold, stone corridor as he skated after her in his shiny black school shoes.
The boy’s enthusiasm came as a welcome distraction.
‘Oh, my! Isn’t this place fantastic? It must be such fun living here.’
‘This is the castle in which King Edward II met his fate hundreds of years ago,’ said Sabrina. ‘Sometimes you hear his ghost scream at night.’
‘Why was he killed? Was he a bad person?’
‘Come, shall I show you where it happened?’
Sabrina welcomed them all into the King’s Gallery where she led them to the grille in the wall of the Guard Room.
There she lowered her eyes as
if the thought of wanton cruelty to someone of truly royal blood still filled her with horror.
‘Edward’s evil queen had him imprisoned while her lover wrongly claimed descent from ancient kings.’
Randal looked over the wooden rail into a dark pit.
‘Is it very deep?’
‘Thirty feet at least. Edward was up to his knees in water into which all the channels of the castle ran. On some days it smells of the sea.’
Randal called into the gloom; listened for the echo.
‘Did he drown down there, then?’
‘Not exactly. When the pit failed to kill him his traitorous queen had him murdered.’
‘I bet they chopped his head off.’
‘No, legend has it that someone inserted a red-hot iron into his anus by way of a drenching horn.’
‘Wow. He must have suffered horribly.’
‘Such is the savagery of vengeful lovers when they usurp someone else’s kingdom. They show no mercy, no matter how ancient the lineage.’
‘Sounds about right,’ said Luke, laughing. ‘Do we care, is all that matters?’
At which moment he pictured the crooked body of a man fatally broken and writhing in agony.
He was lying on his back with his legs wide apart while his eyes sought help from heaven.
His coat was torn open and his head propped in someone else’s hands, as confused voices bent over him to confirm he was dying.
That man was him.
‘Oh bloody hell.’
Ellie seized his arm.
‘Luke? What’s wrong?’
Too late. The room went blank.
It blackened and blistered.
*
‘What happened?’
Ellie was cradling his head on her knees when Luke opened his eyes at the floor.
‘You fell.’
‘I really didn’t.’
‘Went out like a light…’
‘How long for?’
‘A minute, at least. Did I not say you looked ill? You should see a doctor.’
‘Sorry.’
‘You only just missed hitting your head on that metal handrail beside you by a couple of inches.’
Sabrina came back with a glass of water.
‘Here, drink this.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Too long on your feet,’ said Ellie. ‘Not enough blood being pumped to your head. Soldiers on sentry duty suffer the same fate.’
Luke tried to focus on things around him in a daze.
‘Where’s Sabrina?’
‘Gone to get more water.’
His outstretched hand came to rest on a very large, very elaborately engraved cypress chest on whose lid some ships floated by in full sail.
Galleons rode the waves in formation. They were bedecked with dozens of red and white ensigns as if at some great regatta.
He leaned on it for vital support.
To his swimming brain the ships appeared to see-saw on the waves at a great rate of knots.
Sabrina returned.
‘Here, reverend, drink this. Is not water also the life-blood of our existence?’
This time their hands touched briefly round the glass. He felt something course through him that took all his senses by storm. The coldness, the boniness, the slenderness of her hand, all together were they nowhere so appropriate as in the living dead. Yet they shocked and stung him awake, too.
It was no good, he would have to sit on the seaman’s chest for a while longer.
At which point Sabrina scrutinised his face rather searchingly. He had, in fact, no answer to the unexpected pity she would feel for him now.
‘Is this chest full of treasure?’ asked Randal as he traced its elaborate curves of dark wood with the end of his finger. ‘I love it. I want to climb in. I bet it has sailed to the end of the world and back.’
Sabrina laughed. She drew Randal gently aside. Narrowed her eyes at him.
‘It’s thought that this particular chest belonged to Sir Francis Drake who visited the castle in the sixteenth century. Such sea-rovers extended the borders of the known world, they embarked on great adventures beyond all known boundaries, both on land and sea, and into their own souls. Yet the dark, unfathomable caves of ocean are still the last places on Earth of which mere mortals know very little. Monsters and mysteries still exist, don’t you think, in the immense expanses of water that surround the lands of this globe?’
Randal grinned.
‘I’d like to be a famous sea captain, one day.’
Sabrina again reached beneath the lace and pleated chiffon on her arm. She scratched skin with sharp nails. She shot Luke that critical and partial smile that was peculiarly her own.
‘We say of Sir Francis Drake that he was a great explorer but really he was a buccaneer, slaver and pirate. He traded in African men and women and robbed the Spanish of their gold. Has it not always been the same? Have not men always set sail with the highest hopes, only to sink very low in their own estimation? Yet still they would rather scuttle their own ship than surrender, such is their insatiable longing for treasure.’
She curled her long, sharp nails ready at any moment to claw sore skin inside the net’s undersleeve and so draw more blood.
She felt driven to do it out of habit, but Luke wondered if it were not also a sign of something truly impatient with the shortcomings of them all.
He stood up, a little unsteadily.
‘H’m, well, yeah, I’m feeling fine now. Please show us where all the guests will dine on Ellie’s big day.’
*
Sabrina did not so much as offer them a cheerful wave as pass on the sombre stares of the gloomy royal portraits on the wall.
She glided steadily along the darkest passageways as if her favourite places were those in which the history of the castle was most evident.
Her cream silk gown, lavishly decorated with lace, tassels and trimmings gave her the appearance of a frustrated bride herself.
As they went in single file up one level and down another in the labyrinthine stone corridors, Ellie held back slightly.
‘Hey, Luke. Notice anything unusual about our guide?’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, she smells divine for a start.’
‘What should she smell like?’
‘I’m talking perfume. That could be Sargasso Oscar de la Renta or Wood Sage and Sea Salt by Jo Malone.’
‘Well done, you.’
‘I wish that was all.’
‘What then?’
‘That dress of hers is rotten under her armpits.’
‘I’m not smelling that.’
‘Look closely,’ said Ellie. ‘The silk chiffon that lines the lace yoke area has deteriorated with age. There might not be any underarm staining that you usually get with vintage dresses, but beneath both sleeves that lining is so fragile that it could tear at any moment. I’d stake my life on it.’
Sabrina trod the great hall’s cavernous interior with an air of authority which seemed rather chilling but also enthralling, since she now had room to swish her antique gown across the wide, blue and grey stone floor.
She appeared to deplore the person she herself had never been allowed to become; she regretted not being rightful queen of a mighty fortress like this one.
Her toes, all the while, flexed restlessly inside her sharkskin shoes.
‘Come Randal,’ said Sabrina and extended her long bony hand his way. ‘For a day you’ll be able to live in your very own castle.’
Ellie clutched her faux fox fur cashmere poncho to her throat and shivered.
‘Will it be this cold?’
Sabrina looked surprised.
‘Cold? I hardly noticed.’
‘I should say so. It’s positively freezing.’
‘Then on the day we will light you a great fire.’
*
Sabrina flung open the door to the castle’s Inner Bailey. Gave a gasp. It was both appreciation of the fresh, salty air that blew
up from the river and something else.
She rattled the dangling skulls of seabirds on a bracelet while, with sleight of hand, she adjusted a slide made of white whale bone in her fine red hair.
Her silvery green eyes flashed like waves. Such was her steely gaze that Luke soon found himself hanging upon her every look and word as she led the way to ancient terraces from which they could all gaze down at the lawns below.
Randal admired four ancient cannons that stood high above the bowling green and pointed towards the River Severn.
‘Aren’t children wonderful?’ said Sabrina. ‘They are so new and innocent in this world, such welcome fresh blood. What better way to secure one’s legacy than to nurse one’s own?’
‘I suppose so, yeah,’ said Luke. ‘Do you have children?’
‘Really brother,’ said Ellie, ‘whatever do you mean? Please forgive him, your ladyship.’
Sabrina smiled her thin smile.
‘No, I don’t have children but I can trace my history back to Troy. You’ve heard of Troy, haven’t you, Randal?’
‘I once drew a picture of the Trojan Horse at school.’
‘Well, it’s said that such ancient kings once ruled these lands, too… Perhaps you’ve told Randal this famous story before, reverend?’
‘Not at all.’
In truth, his mind was still in a whir as her voice quickly gathered momentum.
‘Well, my boy, I get my name by way of Locrinus, who was one of the sons of the Trojan Brutus who founded Britain. Locrinus ruled part of Britain called Loegria. When the Huns defeated his brother Albanactus, King of Scotland, brave Locrinus led an army there and defeated them. With the invaders scattered, he fell in love with one of his prisoners, a German girl called Estrildis. He visited her secretly in a subterranean palace in New Troy, or London as we know it now. Soon she fell pregnant. Bore him a daughter called Habren or Hafren. It’s a Welsh name which, in Roman times, came to mean Sabrina.’
Randal wriggled.
‘Sabrina is a nice name.’
‘But Locrinus, you see, was already promised to Gwendolen, daughter of Brutus’s second-in-command Corineus. For honour’s sake, he was forced to marry her, but his passion for his true love never diminished. When Corineus died seven years later, Locrinus left his wife to marry Estrildis. I rejoice that I was born of such great devotion. Blood is thicker than water, even though the tide keeps its course.’