Виктория Холт: Curse of the Kings

Then Sir Ralph died and there was more talk of the Curse. The man who had led the expedition and the man who had helped to finance it—and both dead! There must be some significance in this.

And then . . . my miracle happened. It was incredible; it was wonderful; it was like something from a dream. It was as fantastic as the fairy story. Cinderella was to go—not to the ball—but with the expedition to Egypt.

I could only marvel at the wonder of it; and I thought constantly of everything that had led up to this.

It really began on my fourteenth birthday when I found the piece of bronze in Josiah Polgrey's grave.

My fourteenth birthday was one of the most eventful days of my life because on it not only did I find the bronze shield but I learned some truths about myself.

The shield came first. I found it during the hot July afternoon. The house was quiet for neither Dorcas, Alison, nor the cook and the two maids were anywhere to be seen. I suspected that the maids were exchanging confidences about their sweethearts in their attic bedroom; that cook was drowsing in the kitchen; that Dorcas was in her garden; that Alison was mending, or embroidering; and that the Reverend James Osmond was in his study pretending to prepare next Sunday's sermon and in fact dozing in his chair—now and then being awakened by a sudden jerk of the head or his own genteel snore and murmuring: "Bless my soul!" and pretending to himself—as there was no one else to pretend to—that he had been working on his sermon all the time.

I was wrong, at least about Dorcas and Alison; they were most certainly in one of their bedrooms discussing how best they could tell the child—myself—for now that she was fourteen years old they believed she should no longer be kept in the dark.

I was in the graveyard watching Pegger, the sexton, dig a grave. I was fascinated by the churchyard. Sometimes I would wake in the night and think of it. Often I would get out of bed, kneel on the window seat and look down at it. In the mist it would seem very ghostly indeed and the grey tombstones were like figures risen from the dead; in the bright moonlight they were clearly gravestones but they lost none of their eeriness for that. Sometimes it was pitch dark, and the rain might be teeming down, the wind howling through the branches of the oaks and buffeting the ancient yews; then I would imagine that the dead had left their graves and were prowling round the churchyard just below my window.

It was years ago that I had begun to feel this morbid interest. It probably started when Dorcas first took me to put flowers on Lavinia's grave. We did that every Sunday. Now we had planted a rosemary bush within the marble curb.

"That's for remembrance," said Dorcas. "It will be green all the year round."

On this hot July afternoon Pegger paused in his digging to mop his forehead with a red bandanna handkerchief and regarded me in the stern way he regarded everybody.

"You've a taste for graveyards, Miss Judith," he said. "You'm like me, I reckon. As I stand here, turning over the earth, I think of the one who'll be laid to rest in this deep dark grave. Like as not I've known 'un all me life—for that's how it be in a parish like St. Erno's."

Pegger spoke in a sepulchral voice. I suppose this was due to his connection with the church. He had been sexton all his life and his father before him. He looked like one of the prophets from the Old Testament with his mane of white hair and beard, and his righteous indignation against the sinners of the world into which category all but himself and a very chosen few seemed to fall. Even his conversation had a biblical flavor.

"This be the last resting place of Josiah Polgrey. He's lived his threescore year and ten and now he's to face his Maker." Pegger shook his head gravely as though he did not think highly of Josiah's chances in the next world.

I said: "God may not be as stern as you, Mr. Pegger."

"You come near to blasphemy, Miss Judith," he said. "You should guard well your tongue."

"Well, what would be the use of that, Mr. Pegger? The recording angel would know what was in my mind whether I said it or not—so even to think it might be just as bad, and how can you help what you think?"

Mr. Pegger raised his eyes to the sky as though he thought I might have invited the wrath of God to descend on me.

"Never mind," I soothed him. "Why you haven't had your lunch yet. It must be two o'clock."

On the next grave lay another red bandanna handkerchief similar to that with which Mr. Pegger had mopped his brow, but this one, I knew, was tied about a bottle containing cold tea and a pastry which Mrs. Pegger would have made on the previous night so that it would be ready for her husband to bring with him.

He stepped out of the grave and seating himself on the curb round the next grave untied the knot in the handkerchief and took out his food.

"How many graves have you dug in your whole lifetime?" I asked.

He shook his head. "More than I can say, Miss Judith," he replied.

"And Matthew will dig them after you. Just think of that." Matthew was not his eldest son who should have inherited the doubtful privilege of digging graves of those who had lived and died in the village of St. Erno's. Luke, the eldest, had run away to sea, a fact which would never be forgiven him.

"If it be the Lord's will I'll dig a few more yet," he answered.

"You must dig all sorts and sizes," I mused. "Well, you wouldn't need the same size for little Mrs. Edney and Sir Ralph Bodrean, would you?"

This was a plot of mine to bring Sir Ralph into the conversation. The sins of his neighbors was, I think, Mr. Pegger's favorite subject, and since everything about Sir Ralph was bigger than that belonging to anyone else, so were his sins.

I found Sir Ralph, our Squire, fascinating. I was excited when he passed on the road either in his carriage or on one of his thoroughbreds. I would bob a little curtsy—as taught by Dorcas—and he would nod and raise a hand in a quick imperious kind of gesture and for a moment those heavy lidded eyes would be on me. Some had said of him—as long ago someone had said of Julius Caesar—"Hide your daughters when he passes by." Well, he was the Caesar of our village. He owned most of it; the outlying farmlands were on his estate; to those who worked with him he was said to be a good master, and as long as the men touched their forelocks with due respect and remembered he was the master and the girls did not deny him those favors which he desired, he was a good master, which meant that men were assured of work and a roof over their heads and any results which might ensue from his dallying with the maidens were taken care of. There were plenty of "results" in the village now and they were always granted the extra privileges over those who had been sired elsewhere.

But to Mr. Pegger the Squire was Sin personified.

Out of respect for my youth he could not talk of our Squire's major qualification for hell fire, so he gave himself the pleasure of touching on his smaller ones—all of which, in Mr. Pegger's opinion, would have ensured his entry.

There were houseparties at Keverall Court almost every weekend; in the various seasons the guests came to hunt foxes, otters, and stags, or to shoot pheasants which were bred on the Keverall estate for this purpose, or merely to make merry in the baronial hall. They were rich, elegant— often noisy—people from Plymouth and sometimes as far as London. I always enjoyed seeing them. They brightened the countryside, but in Mr. Pegger's estimation they desecrated it.

I considered myself very lucky to visit Keverall Court every day except Saturday and Sunday. This had been a special concession because the Squire's daughter and nephew had a governess and were also taught by Oliver Shrimpton, our curate. The rather impecunious rector could not afford a governess for me, and Sir Ralph had graciously given his consent—or perhaps had raised no objection to the proposal—that I should join his daughter and nephew in their schoolroom and profit from the instruction given there. This meant that every day—except Saturdays and Sundays—I passed under the old portcullis into the courtyard, gave an ecstatic sniff at the stables, touched the mounting block for luck, entered the great hall with its minstrels' gallery, mounted the wide staircase as though I were one of the lady visitors from London, with a flowing train and diamonds glittering on my fingers, passed along the gallery where all the dead—and some living—Bodreans looked down on me with varying expressions of scorn, amusement, or indifference and into the schoolroom where Theodosia and Hadrian would be already seated and Miss Graham the governess would be busy at her books.