WOLVERDEN TOWER. Allen Grant
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It would never have fallen if they had not destroyed it. And even then--I was there when they pulled it down--each stone clung to each, with arms and legs and hands and claws, till they burst them asunder by main force with their new-fangled stuff--I don't know what they call it--dynamite, or something. It was all of it done for one man's vainglory!"
"Come away, dear," Mrs. West whispered. But Maisie loitered.
"Wolverden Tower was fasted thrice," the old woman continued, in a sing-song quaver. "It was fasted thrice with souls of maids against every assault of man or devil. It was fasted at the foundation against earthquake and ruin. It was fasted at the top against thunder and lightning. It was fasted in the middle against storm and battle. And there it would have stood for a thousand years if a wicked man had not raised a vainglorious hand against it. For that's what the rhyme says?
"Fasted thrice with souls of men.
Stands the tower of Wolverden;
Fasted thrice with maidens' blood.
A thousand years of fire and flood
Shall see it stand as erst it stood."
She paused a moment, then, raising one skinny hand towards the brand-new stone, she went on in the same voice, but with malignant fervour?
"A thousand years the tower shall stand
Till ill assailed by evil hand;
By evil hand in evil hour.
Fasted thrice with warlock's power.
Shall fall the stanes of Wulfhere's tower."
She tottered off as she ended, and took her seat on the edge of a depressed vault in the churchyard close by, still eyeing Maisie Llewellyn with a weird and curious glance, almost like the look which a famishing man casts upon the food in a shop-window.
"Who is she?" Maisie asked, shrinking away in undefined terror.
"Oh, old Bessie," Mrs. West answered, looking more apologetic (for the parish) than ever. "She's always hanging about here. She has nothing else to do, and she's an outdoor pauper. You see, that's the worst of having the church in one's grounds, which is otherwise picturesque and romantic and baronial; the road to it's public; you must admit all the world; and old Bessie will come here. The servants are afraid of her. They say she's a witch. She has the evil eye, and she drives girls to suicide. But they cross her hand with silver all the same, and she tells them their fortunes--gives them each a butler. She's full of dreadful stories about Wolverden Church? stories to make your blood run cold, my dear, compact with old superstitions and murders, and so forth. And they're true, too, that's the worst of them. She's quite a character. Mr. Blaydes, the antiquary, is really attached to her; he says she's now the sole living repository of the traditional folklore and history of the parish. But I don't care for it myself. It 'gars one greet,' as we say in Scotland. Too much burying alive in it, don't you know, my dear, to quite suit my fancy."
They turned back as she spoke towards the carved wooden lych-gate, one of the oldest and most exquisite of its class in England. When they reached the vault by whose doors old Bessie was seated, Maisie turned once more to gaze at the pointed lancet windows of the Early English choir, and the still more ancient dog-tooth ornament of the ruined Norman Lady Chapel.
"How solidly it's built!" she exclaimed, looking up at the arches which alone survived the fury of the Puritan. "It really looks as if it would last for ever."
Old Bessie had bent her head, and seemed to be whispering something at the door of the vault. But at the sound she raised her eyes, and, turning her wizened face towards the lady of the manor, mumbled through her few remaining fang-like teeth an old local saying, "Bradbury for length, Wolverden for strength, and Church Hatton for beauty!"
"Three brothers builded churches three;
And fasted thrice each church shall be:
Fasted thrice with maidens' blood.
To make them safe from fire and flood;
Fasted thrice with souls of men.
Hatton, Bradbury, Wolverden!"
"Come away," Maisie said, shuddering. "I'm afraid of that woman. Why was she whispering at the doors of the vault down there? I don't like the look of her."
"My dear," Mrs. West answered, in no less terrified a tone, "I will confess I don't like the look of her myself. I wish she'd leave the place. I've tried to make her. The Colonel offered her fifty pounds down and a nice cottage in Surrey if only she'd go--she frightens me so much; but she wouldn't hear of it. She said she must stop by the bodies of her dead--that's her style, don't you see: a sort of modern ghoul, a degenerate vampire--and from the bodies of her dead in Wolverden Church no living soul should ever move her."
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