The Earl Escapes

AUTHORS NOTEBecause the Catholic Church would not agree to King Henry VIII divorcing one wife to marry another, there followed the period known as the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when Catholic Churches and buildings were wrecked and Priests went in fear of their lives. It was at this time that Priests’ Holes were built into Churches and Stately Homes owned by Catholics in order to save their Priests from being slaughtered. These consisted of tiny rooms no bigger than cupboards, where a Priest could have a small Altar, a Crucifix and a chair and here he would wait until the danger had passed. There were many ingenious ways of concealing Priests’ Holes. One could lift the tread of a stair like the lid of a box and inside find a staircase leading down to a cellar where a Priest could hide. The Priests’ Hole I describe in this novel resembles the one in Madresfield Court in Worcestershire for many centuries the family seat of the Earls Beauchamp. CHAPTER ONE ~ 1886Valencia Hadley arranged the flowers that she had brought in from the garden in an attractive Chinese vase. She thought as she did so that it would be surprising if the Earl was impressed by them. Anyway the house looked more lived in than it would without flowers. It always greatly hurt her that the ancient rooms with their superb tapestries, their embroidered curtains and their antique furniture looked so dull and empty. It was as if they needed people to restore them to the life they had originally known at Dolphin Priory over the years. This meant that some of the chests, pictures and carpets were at least three centuries old. It was therefore, not surprising that they appeared a little dulled with age. At the same time she loved the house and everything in it and it had always been, in a way, her home. She spent many hours arranging the flowers in the long drawing room whose windows looked out onto the Rose Garden. As well she put them in the hall with its dark panelling and its tattered flags. These were relics of the many battles that the Earl’s ancestors had fought in. “Does it not seem strange, Papa,” she had said a week ago, “that the Earl has now been back in England for six months and yet he has not paid us a visit?” “I expect, my dear,” her father replied, “that after so many years abroad, he is enjoying himself among the bright lights of London and has no wish to bury himself in the country.” Valencia was just about to say that she did not feel in the least ‘buried’. Then she realised that her father was teasing her, as he very often did, about her preoccupation with Dolphin Priory. The sixth Earl of Dolphinston had inherited the title quite unexpectedly after both his cousins had been killed. One in the siege of Khartoum and the other in India. It had been a bitter blow for their devastated father. After the death of his younger son, William, he had given up any interest in living and had died slowly from, Valencia believed, a broken heart. Valencia’s mother, who had died some years earlier, had been a second cousin of the late Earl and her father was his Private Chaplain. It had been quite a long time before they had received any news of the heir to the ancient title and the three thousand acres where the house stood. He owned several other properties in different parts of England, but Dolphin Priory was the traditional seat of the Earls of Dolphinston. It was expected by all those who worked there that their new Master would be interested enough to pay them a visit as soon as he returned to England. Although it often took a long time for news to reach them all the way from London, they had heard that he had been an extremely brave soldier. He had been awarded special medals for great gallantry and there had been little else known about him except that he was a fairly remote cousin. Neither he nor his father in the memory of those who lived on the estate had ever visited Dolphin Priory. “You would have thought,” Valencia said, following her own train of thought, “that the new Earl would at least be interested in his inheritance and wish to see his new possessions even if he was not particularly excited about them.” The Vicar thought the same thing but he was too tactful to say so. Instead with his usual kindness of heart he found excuses for the new Earl’s odd behaviour. Valencia continued to think that it was extraordinary. “And now at last,” she said, as she stood back to appreciate her arrangement of flowers, “he is actually coming home.” She was wondering just what he would look like. Would he have the same air of authority and the same dignity that had so distinguished not only the old Earl but both of his sons? She had not seen them very often because they had served so long overseas. In fact, when they had been killed, she had not seen George, the elder, for five years and William for seven. She was then, of course, very young. Yet it was not difficult to remember how handsome they were and how kind to everybody who worked for them. These were nearly all highly skilled workers in occupations that had been handed down from father to son. The estate carpenter, for one instance, was the sixth generation of carpenters to work on the Dolphin Estate and the Head Gardener had succeeded his father, his grandfather and his great-grandfather. The same story applied to nearly everyone. From the gamekeepers who kept the woods free of all vermin, even though nobody shot there anymore, to the farmers who despite hard times had always managed to make the livestock reared at Dolphin Priory an example to the rest of the County. Valencia looked around the drawing room with its vases of lilac and syringa. And she thought that her efforts were even more attractive than usual. “I hope his Lordship is grateful,” she said aloud with a little smile. Then she remembered that if he did notice the floral arrangements, he would suppose that the gardeners had produced them. He would certainly not realise that neither Colton nor the men under him had any artistic aptitude. They were therefore only too willing to leave it to her. She went out of the drawing room and then saw the big bowl of tulips in the hall. It made a striking contrast with the dark Jacobean panelling. Then, as if she could not help it, she went into the library to find herself some books to read. She did so in case her father gave her instructions, which she was sure that he would, that she was not to go into the house again until his Lordship had left. “We must make sure, my dearest,” her father had said to her only last week, “that when the new Earl does arrive, he does not think we are imposing on him.” He paused before he continued, “It is very easy for a young man to be upset by continually being told ‘that is what we have always done’ or ‘this is the way your predecessor behaved’. In fact it is enough to make anyone with spirit feel rebellious!” He had to laugh as he spoke and Valencia thought that it was so like her father to think of other people’s feelings rather than his own. At the same time she could not help herself hoping that the new Earl would not introduce too many changes in the way things had always been run. The late Earl had, with the help of his sons, made everything, she thought, as perfect as was humanly possible. For anyone with new ideas to start changing anything at all in the house or in the grounds would obviously upset the older servants. They were set in their ways and it would especially offend them, when they had struggled through all the long years when there had been no Mistress at Dolphin Priory, they had done their best. ‘Perhaps the new Earl will get married soon,’ Valencia now thought, ‘and that might prove disastrous for us all.’ She was actually thinking of herself. She so enjoyed having what was called ‘the run of the house’. Ever since she had been a little girl, she had lived in the small but attractive house next to the Chapel. It had been assigned, when the Big House has first been built, to the Earl of Dolphinston’s Private Chaplain. She had therefore been accepted in the Big House and granted what she knew were special privileges. When she was a small child, she had been adored by the Countess who always regretted that, despite having produced two sons, she had never had a daughter. Valencia had also been very spoilt by the Earl’s servants because they loved her mother and her father. They knew that they could always turn to them with any personal problems they might have. The Vicar was not only private Chaplain to the Earl he was also in charge of the small Norman Church in the village. This was about half a mile down the long gravel drive bordered by oak trees. On Sundays there were always two Services in the village Church as well as one in the Priory Chapel for the household. Besides the indoor servants, there were the gardeners and grooms who lived in the cottages that were clustered around the Big House. After the Earl became so crippled that he could never leave his rooms on the first floor, Valencia, at his request, sat in the family pew for the Services her father took in the village. “I really don’t like to think of the pew being empty,” the old Earl had said to Valencia, “and, as you are very pretty, my dear, you will brighten it up and I know that everybody would like to see you there.” “Maybe they will think I am – presuming in your absence,” Valencia said as she had looked up at him anxiously. At sixteen years old she had no idea that she was already outstandingly lovely or how much the Earl appreciated her beauty. “You do as you are told,” he said gruffly, “and say a special prayer for me.” “I always do that, my Lord,” Valencia had replied. He had smiled and told her that he was glad of her prayers. But she thought now that it would be very presumptuous to continue sitting in the family pew without being invited to do so also to walk around the house as she had done for so long as if she owned it and to borrow books without permission. ‘I cannot ask him until he arrives,’ she placated her conscience. She took two books down from a high shelf where she hoped that they would not be missed. They were history books that she had been meaning to read for some time. She thought as they were heavy and closely printed that they would keep her busy until she could ask the Earl if she might borrow some more. Or when he left she could go back to the library and help herself as she had always done. Then, because she knew that time was passing and the Earl might arrive from London at the Station at about four o'clock, she hurried from the house. She walked through the garden towards the door in the Elizabethan wall. It led through an orchard into the garden of the Chaplain’s House. There was, as it had been built so long ago, an underground passage leading from the Chapel to their own house. Over the years it had grown damp and smelt musty, so that the Vicar seldom used it. Even Valencia, although the underground passage fascinated her, she found it gloomy and rather unpleasant. There were all sorts of ‘Priests’ Holes’ and what were called secret tunnels’ in The Priory, which George and William had enjoyed immensely as boys. They had jumped out at the housemaids when they least expected it, making them scream with shock. They hid from their Tutors, who gave up searching for them after a while and waited to punish them when they reappeared. Valencia knew them all, but what she liked more than anything else was being in the gardens.