Виктория Холт - The legend of the seventh virgin

Why, it had been asked, did the St. Larnstons not have all evidence that there had once been a mine there, removed? What purpose did it serve? It was unsightly, and something like sacrilege to leave it there beside the legendary stones. But there was a reason. One of the St. Larnstons had gambled so heavily that he had become almost bankrupt and would have been forced to sell the Abbas if tin had not been discovered on his estate. So the mine was worked, although the St. Larnstons had hated the fact that it had to be within sight of their mansion; and down into the earth the tinners had burrowed, working with their crooks and pokers, picking out the tin which was to save the Abbas for the family.

But once the house was saved, the St. Larnstons, hating the mine, had closed it There had been hardship in the district, so Granny told me, when the mine was closed; but Sir Justin didn't mind that. He didn't care about other people; he was all for himself. Granny Bee said that the St. Larnstons had left the mine as it was to remind the family of the rich tin underground to which they could turn in times of need.

The Cornish are a superstitious race—the rich no less than the poor— and I believe that the St. Larnstons looked on the mine as a symbol of prosperity; while there was tin in their land they were safe from financial disaster. There was a rumor in existence that the mine was nothing but an old scat bal—a disused mine—and some of the old men said they remembered their fathers saying that the lode was running out when it closed. The rumor persisted that the St. Larnstons had known this and had closed down the mine because it had nothing more to offer; but they liked to be thought richer than they were, for in Cornwall tin meant money.

Whatever the reason. Sir Justin did not wish the mine to be worked and that was the end of it.

He was a man both hated and feared in the country; on the occasions when I had seen him riding on his great white horse or striding along with a gun on his shoulder, I had thought of him as a kind of ogre. I had heard tales about him from Granny Bee and I knew he considered that everything in St. Larnston belonged to him, which might have some truth in it; but he also believed that the people of St. Larnston belonged to him, too— and that was a different matter; and although he dared not practice the old seignioral rights, he had seduced a number of the girls. Granny Bee was always warning me to keep out of his way.

I turned into the meadow so that I could go close to the Six Virgins. I paused beside them and leaned against one of them. They were arranged in a circle looking exactly as though they had been caught swaying in a dance. They were of various heights—just as six women would be; two were very tall and the others were the sizes of fully grown women. Standing there in the stillness of a hot afternoon, I could believe that I was one of those poor virgins. I could well imagine that I should have been as sinful and having sinned and been found out I should have danced my defiance on the grass.

I touched the cold stone gently and I could have deceived myself quite easily that one of them bent towards me as though she recognized my sympathy and the bond between us.

Crazy thoughts I had; it was because I was Granny Bee's granddaughter.

Now was the dangerous part. I had to run across the lawns where I might be seen from one of the windows. I seemed to fly through the air until I was so close to the gray walls of the house I knew where to find the wall. I knew too that the workmen would be sitting in a field some distance from the house eating their hunks of bread, all brown and crusty, baked that morning on the open hearth; we called them manshuns in these parts. Perhaps they would have a little cheese and some pilchards or, if they were lucky, a pasty which they would have brought from home wrapped in their red handkerchiefs.

Making my way cautiously round the house I came to a small gate leading into a walled garden; on these walls peaches grew; there were roses, too, and the smell was wonderful. This was trespassing proper, but I was determined to see where those bones had been found.

On the far side propped against a wall was a wheelbarrow; there were bricks on the ground with the workmen's tools, so I knew I was in the right place.

I ran over and peered through the hole in the wall. Inside it was hollow, like a little chamber, about seven feet high and six feet wide. It was clear that the thick old wall had been deliberately left hollow; and studying it I was certain then that the story of the seventh virgin was a true one.

I longed to stand in the spot where that girl had stood, and to know what it felt like to be shut in, so I scrambled through the hole, grazing my knee as I did so for it was some three feet from the ground. Once inside the wall, I moved away from the hole, turning my back to the light and tried to imagine what she must have felt when they forced her to stand where I was standing now, knowing that they were going to wall her up and leave her for the remainder of her short life in utter darkness. I could understand her horror and despair.

There was a smell of decay about me. A smell of death, I told myself, and so strong was my imagination that in those seconds I really believed I was the seventh virgin, that I had extravagantly cast away my chastity and was doomed to frightful death; I was saying to myself: "I would do it again."

I should have been too proud to show my terror, and I hoped she, too, had been for although pride was a sin, it was a solace. It prevented your demeaning yourself.

I was brought back into my own century by the sound of voices.

"I do want to see it." I knew that voice. It belonged to Mellyora Martin, the parson's daughter. I despised her, for her neat gingham dresses which were never dirty, her long white stockings and black shiny shoes with straps and buckles. I should have liked to possess shoes like that but, because I couldn't, I deluded myself into the belief that I despised them. She was twelve years old, the same age as I was. I had seen her at one of the parsonage windows, bent over a book or sitting in the garden under the lime tree with her governess reading aloud or sewing. Poor prisoner! I said then, and I was angry because at that time I wanted more than anything in the world to be able to read and write; I had a notion that it was the ability to read and write, more than fine clothes and manners that made people equal with one another. Her hair was what some would call gold but which I called yellow; her eyes were blue and big; her skin white and delicately tinted. I called her Melly to myself, just to rob her of a little dignity. Mellyora! It sounded so pretty when people said it. But my name was as interesting. Kerensa the Cornish for Peace and Love, Granny Bee told me. I have never heard that Mellyora meant anything.

"You'll make yourself dirty." That was Johnny St. Larnston speaking.

Now I shall be found out, I thought, and by a St. Larnston. But it was only Johnny who, it was said, would be like his father in one respect and one only—that was as far as women were concerned. Johnny was fourteen. I had seen him sometimes with his father, a gun on his shoulder, because all the St. Larnstons were brought up to hunt and shoot. Johnny was not much taller than I, for I was tall for my age; he was fair although not as fair as Mellyora and he didn't look like a St. Larnston. I was glad it was only Johnny and Mellyora.

"I shan't mind. Johnny, do you really believe the story?"

"Of course."

"That poor woman! To be shut up ... alive!"

"Hello!" A different voice this. "You children, come away from the wall."

"We're looking to see where they found the nun," said Johnny,

"Nonsense. There's absolutely no evidence that it was a nun. It's just a legend."