The Yellow Scarf #2
With a shrug, she determined to make the most of the time she had left.
Told herself not to let her imagination run away with her.
According to her guidebook, the house itself had taken shape over generations around three sides of a courtyard, with a high blind wall on the river side.
When she reached the remains of a wide, circular well, and looked down into the narrow space, it crossed her mind that it was all less dilapidated than she’d expected.
And as Sophia moved further into the body of the house, she found her sense of it growing stronger.
She walked through a stone arch set into a wall and along a vaulted corridor to the main hall.
The roof was gone, so the high arched windows seemed to hang adrift, like flags, at the very top of the walls.
Stone turned green by age and ivy, the beauty of the fifteenth-century outline silhouetted against the October sky.
The remains of stairs leading up to the family’s private rooms.
Sophia turned and stepped back over one of the foundation walls, but stumbled and nearly lost her balance. She glanced down, then frowned. She could have sworn the outline of the wall had been little more than a mark on the ground. Now, it was several bricks high.
She shivered. It wasn’t like her to be clumsy or out-of-sorts.
Her thin summer coat no longer seemed adequate.
She tightened the belt and tucked her shiny yellow square scarf under her collar to keep warmer, but she still felt cold.
She put her hand to her forehead, wondering if she was coming down with something, but she didn’t have a temperature.
She didn’t feel ill, just chilly and rather odd.
As if she was somehow watching everything from behind a sheet of glass.
Both part of things and separate from them.
Increasingly uneasy, Sophia carried on. She refused to allow nerves to get the better of her.
Resolutely, she followed a cobbled pathway which led to the north wing and through a sequence of smaller rooms, with the hint of a small fireplace set into the north wall.
On to the east wing, now breathing the scents of the stables and working places of the house.
Leather and straw and guttering set into the ground, the scratch of the hot iron and the hiss of metal in the stone water tanks.
As Sophia walked, the colours and shadows seemed to deepen and take a more profound shape.
The elegant ruined outlines of Minster Lovell Hall were coming back to life, or so it seemed: the leaping flames in the great stone fireplaces in the hall, the walls soaring high above, the beauty of the arched windows.
The tapestries and wall hangings, long tables with candles and dishes laid for a banquet, sweet melody trickling down from the minstrels’ dais.
She could almost hear the song of lute and viol, citole and recorder, the mournful single beat of a drum.
Everywhere, white hawthorn and boughs of mistletoe.
Was this where the wedding feast had been held those hundreds of years before?
Where a young bride had danced and been admired but then vanished?
Sophia found herself looking into the empty space, imagining the ghostly outlines of men and of women, of servants and musicians, the lord of the manor and his retainers.
The mistletoe hung in the castle hall.
Shadow dancers, their features taking shape. Almost visible, almost returned. Sophia slowly moved on, feeling the unseen presence of others all around her, a prickling at the nape of her neck.
At last, she found herself at the foot of the tower that stood at the far south-west corner of the property. And she realised that her view of the gardens was obscured now by brick and stone.
The whispering was growing stronger, clearer.
A toast to the goodly company.
Sophia spun round and looked behind her. Still she could see no one, though she felt their presence strongly. Another flutter of nerves in her stomach: anticipation or premonition?
Now the echo of ancient words was clearer still, layered over the bristling disquiet of the day.
Sounds of laughter and celebration, whispering and billowing and creaking of the old house.
Footsteps on the flagstone floor, servants carrying and fetching, kitchen to table with dish after dish, doors opening and closing. A celebration, a feast.
Sophia felt the muscles in her stomach tighten.
It wasn’t merely that the house was shifting and changing its shape around her, but also that there was a growing tension in the air.
Beneath the echo of sounds of celebration and good cheer was a sense of threat.
The harmless process of imagining the house as it once was had become something else.
A crack in time, a slipping between this world and another.
She looked at the stairs. She didn’t want to go up, yet at the same time she felt she had no choice.
Sophia took a deep breath, then put her hand against the rough stonework to anchor herself, and began to climb.
Higher and higher she went, up into an octagonal turret nestled between the tower and the west wing.
A mournful wind was crying in the gables and there was a bite in the air warning of snow.
And when she looked out through the stone mullions of the window, there was a dusting of frost on the ground.
Sophia walked along a long corridor, towards the solar. Watching herself, as if from the outside, a woman in a cream coat and brown shoes, a yellow scarf knotted at her neck, heading towards a closed door.
Still the voices from the past called out to her. And again, the words of the old fireside song Sophia hardly remembered knowing.
The mistletoe hung in the castle hall.
Suddenly, without warning, the clanging of a bell cut through the domestic sounds of the house. Sophia stopped dead, the coarse alarum reverberating through her bones. Unseen hands pulling the bell rope in St Kenelm’s Church, warning of danger. Warning that the village was under attack.
Sophia began to run towards the closed door.
From below, shouts broke out. She heard furniture being dragged across the stone entrance hall and bolts being fastened, orders to secure all entrances. The ghostly inhabitants of the house were defending Minster Lovell Hall as once they had five hundred years ago.
Now, a violent hammering at the front entrance, clenched fists, and a harsh voice demanding admittance.
In the name of the king.
The sound of wooden sticks beating on the door as the soldiers tried to force their way in.
Open up, by order of the king. In the name of the king.
Then, without touching anything or feeling anything, Sophia found herself on the far side of the door and standing in a small and modest space, a private rather than a public place.
Here, was silence. And here, at last, she could see the outline of a person.
A young woman, sitting on a plain wooden chair in the centre of the tiny room.
Sophia watched as the woman became clearer, her features growing definite and distinct, like a photograph developing in a darkroom.
A fold of embroidery lay on a table close by, weft and warp, cotton threads of yellow and silver in the light of a single candle.
Her hands were still. Her blond hair was braided and shot through with white ribbon and she wore a white kirtle, decorated with mother-of-pearl beads, the long skirts pooled around her feet.
Despite her thudding heart, Sophia realised she was smiling. For although the carving in the chapel had been crude, this woman was clearly the model for the image carved on the bas-relief. A winter wedding, all white and gold, the hall decked in hawthorn and mistletoe.
Sophia wanted to ask why she was sitting here alone and she tried to speak.
Immediately she saw the young bride could no more hear her than she could see her and, in any case, she thought she understood.
She was seeking a moment of solitude, just as Sophia had craved a morning free from the chitterings of her aunt’s friends.
Wanting to forge some connection between her and the girl from the past, Sophia reached out. She encountered no resistance, just empty space, though as her hand fell back to her side, she felt the slightest of movements of cold air.
A sudden roar from down below. The sounds of assault and devastation finally reached their sanctuary. The stolen calm of the room was shattered. Once again, Sophia tried to speak, more urgent this time, but though the words formed in her throat, no sound came out.
Helpless, she looked at the girl, desperate for her to act. Her eyes were dark, with fear certainly, though not surprise. Sophia realised she had expected such an attack. Maybe not this day in particular, not her wedding night, but some time. She had known the soldiers would come.
Was that why she sat here alone? Had she been sent to the safety of the solar in case of such an attack?
Open up in the name of the king.
The tramp of men’s boots thundering up the stairs. Within moments, they would find the room. Find the woman here alone.
Hide yourself, hide.
She willed the girl to hear her and, this time, though Sophia’s words remained unspoken, she was on her feet.
Quickly, she put her things away, wanting to leave no evidence the room had been so recently occupied.
As she gathered her threads and sampler and stowed it inside a chest, a brass thimble fell from her fingers and rolled away into the furthest corner of the room.
Sophia tried to retrieve it, wanting to help, but her fingers found only air.
Hurry, quick. Hide.