Read Online Green Darkness by Anya Seton - Free Book Online

around the edge of the moat.
    “Well,” said Lily a trifle disappointed, “
we
want to see everything.” She looked at Dr. Akananda and Sue, then more carefully at Celia. “What’s the matter with
you,
dear?” she said laughing. “You act moonstruck.”
    Celia jumped. She gazed hastily down at the moat. “I was watching the swans.” Two of them were gliding under the bridge amongst the flowing green weeds.
    “Oh, yes,” said the guide, “the Queen herself had us sent a pair, after swan-upping day. Now this entrance tower has an interesting feature. You see the zigzag stone slit here, it’s really a device to let those inside the manor safely see anyone trying to get in. Quite ingenious. And now the courtyard, entirely enclosed by the buildings, rather small as these things go. Those stocks over there by the Great Hall were often in use for punishment.”
    “Punishment?” repeated Sue, wide-eyed. “And is there a dungeon too, where they tortured people?”
    “There is a dungeon,” answered the guide patiently. “Almost under the entrance tower, but we don’t show it, it’s too dark and dangerous.”
    The guide led her party across the cobblestones to the eastern part of the quadrangle and unlocked a massive oaken door. “This entrance leads into the vestibule outside the Great Hall. There were structural changes made in the last century on this side of the Hall, otherwise it has remained much as you see it for five hundred years.”
    Lily, Sue, Akananda and Celia filed into the Hall, which was suddenly flooded with sunshine through the tall mullioned windows to the left. The guide continued to point out features—the original oak roof timbers, the grotesquely carved fourteenth-century corbels, the Flemish tapestries.
    Lily and Sue made delighted exclamations. Akananda watched Celia. Her face had flushed, her mouth opened, and her uneven breathing was audible. The doctor quietly took her arm and pushed her down on the cushioned bench below the window, noting that her pulse was pounding.
    “That bit of armor over the fireplace,” said the guide impressively, “was found when they drained the moat many years ago—a Roundhead soldier the experts say. Now we’ll proceed to the old crypt, then upstairs. Is there something wrong, Lady Marsdon?” she asked as she turned. “You seem unwell—the heat perhaps?”
    Celia heard the question from a vast distance, like a poor connection over a transatlantic phone. She licked her lips. “I’m all right,” she said. “I guess it’s the heat.”
    Lily made an impulsive move and would have gone to her daughter. She was stopped by a small commanding shake of Akananda’s head. “I’ll take care of her, Mrs. Taylor.”
    Lily at once obeyed the prohibition in his eyes. She was reassured as he wished her to be, and turned back to the guide. “I can’t wait to see the rest of this fascinating place.”
    “Me, too,” said Sue. “What’s the little door next to the big door on that wall? It doesn’t go anywhere.”
    “Oh, that.” The guide smiled. “That’s a niche where they found the skeleton of a girl when they reconstructed this south wall in eighteen-seventy-two.”
    “Skeleton!” cried Sue rapturously. “What was she doing in the wall?”
    “I’m afraid she was
put
there. It’s rather disagreeable, but this happened in many old houses, centuries ago.”
    “You mean she was walled up
alive?
” Sue gaped at the low empty niche. “Where’s the skeleton now?”
    “Ah, that we don’t know,” said the guide, bored with a question she had so often been asked. “No doubt the bones were dispersed . . . Now, if you will kindly step this way—”
    Sue was not yet satisfied. “But don’t they know
when
she was walled up, or who she was? And doesn’t her ghost do some hauntin’?”
    The guide answered a trifle curtly, “It has been said that the skeleton might have been Dame Dorothy Selby, who is supposed to have warned the Parliament