Barbara Cartland: Love comes to the Castle

Priest Holes, Secret Passages and Sinister Dungeons are to be found in most ancient English Castles and many Ancestral Homes.

I remember the first Priest Hole I saw, which was at Madresfield Court, the seat of the Earl Beauchamp. It opened unexpectedly in the centre of the floor where one would never expect to find it.

In a secret room in Longleat, the beautiful house belonging to the Marquis of Bath, the bones of one of his ancestors who had mysteriously been bricked up there centuries ago were found when workmen were making alterations to the house.

Today, children still find them fascinating and redolent with history and it is intriguing to speculate how many lives have been saved by playing what the children now call ‘Hide and Seek’.

‘What am I to do?’ Jaela asked herself.

She then walked ove the garden of the Villa, which was bright with bougainvillaea and hibiscus blossom. The lilies were just coming into bud and she well remembered how they had been her father’s favourite.

At the thought of him she felt that sickening stab in the heart that he was dead.

He had filled her whole life for the last three years and she had no idea now what to do with herself. She had been just seventeen when her mother died and her father, whose health had never been robust, had turned to Jaela to find comfort and support.

She loved being with him for no one had a sharper or more unusual mind.

Lord Compton of Mellor had been one of the most outstanding Lord Chancellors that England had ever produced.

As a Queen’s Counsel and then a Judge, his bons mots , his brilliant speeches and finally his judgements, had been the delight of the newspapers comment columns.

There was seldom a day passed when he was not referred to in the Press.

While his charm and good humour were the admiration not only of his friends but even of the criminals he sent to prison.

But plagued with ill-health he had retired to the South of Italy, which had been a great loss to his own country but a joy to his wife and daughter.

He had bought the lovely Villa Mimosa that was located by the sea between Naples and Sorrento.

They had been so blissfully happy there with their only daughter, who they had sent off to school in Naples.

No one had expected that Lady Compton would die first, but she had caught one of the pernicious fevers that Naples was plagued with from time to time.

Almost before her husband and her daughter could realise it she was dead.

It was then that Jaela had left school without even consulting her father to be with him all the time in the Villa.

She had discovered from her Headmistress who were the best Tutors of Literature, Music and History and she employed them to come to her instead of her going to them.

It was a very satisfactory arrangement, as her Tutors came early in the morning while her father was still resting.

So Jaela could then spend the rest of the day with him.

He, as she had often told him, was a whole encyclopaedia in himself. In fact Jaela often thought how exceptionally lucky she was to have such a brilliant man to teach her, guide her and undoubtedly inspire her.

“Do you realise, Papa,” she had said jokingly, “I shall have to remain an old maid for the rest of my life? For I will never find a husband as brilliant as you.”

Her father laughed.

“You will fall in love, my dearest, with your heart and not with your brain!”

“Nonsense!” Jaela argued. “I could never love a man who was stupid or could not talk to me seriously about the same subjects as you do.”

“Now you are frightening me,” her father exclaimed. “In another year I am going to send you to England to make your curtsey to the Queen and meet young people of your own age.”

Jaela did not say anything, but she knew that as long as her father lived she would never leave him.

The doctors had told her privately that he was a very sick man. His heart might give out at any moment and he must never exert himself.

Jaela was quite content to sit beside him on the balcony of their Villa or to walk with him very slowly around the garden in the sunshine.

Despite the doctors’ warnings that it might be dangerous, she insisted that, when winter came, on moving across the Mediterranean to Algiers.

There it was warmer and there were no cold treacherous winds in the evenings. These came straight, she knew, from the snow-capped mountains.

They had come back only a month ago to their Villa and she had thought that her father seemed better than he had been for a long time.

Then one morning, when she had least expected it, she went into his bedroom to find him dead.

He had a faint smile on his handsome face.

She felt certain that he had died thinking of her mother and that he was now with her.

‘They will be happy,’ she told herself, ‘but what about me?’

She knew that, if she was sensible, she should go back to England.

Her grandparents were all dead, but there were various aunts and cousins, any of whom would be delighted to chaperone her as a rather belated debutante.

But for the moment she was in deep mourning and her father had always laughed at the exaggerated ‘crêpe and tears’.

But women followed the example of Queen Victoria and it was what would be expected of her.

Especially as her father had been so important and there had been long obituaries of him in the English newspapers and then the Italians, because he had lived in Italy, had followed suit.

‘What am I to do?’

The question was still there as she moved towards the stone fountain.

It was throwing its water high up towards the sky, where it then turned into a thousand tiny rainbows.

If she was to stay here, as she would like to do, she would have to find a chaperone. But she wondered how she could endure what would be banal conversation day after day with a woman.

She was so used to the sparkling wit and wisdom of her father. They had duelled with each other in words and Jaela had argued with him just for the fun of it.

It was so exciting to hear him use every possible verbal means to defeat her.

‘Oh, Papa,’ her heart cried out silently, ‘how could you leave me when were so happy together here?’

She felt the tears come into her eyes, but she forced herself not to cry.

“If there is anything I really dislike,” Lord Compton of Mellor had said, “it is a woman who weeps to get her own way, but it is a weapon, my dearest, used invariably by your sex.”

“They do it to make a man feel strong and masculine and, of course, very superior,” Jaela had replied mockingly.

“That is where you are wrong – ” her father began.

And they were off again on one of their fascinating arguments, which usually ended with them both laughing at themselves.

Now there was nobody to laugh with and everything seemed very quiet and silent.

As it was nearly luncheontime, Jaela walked slowly back towards the balcony where her father had always sat.

The sunshine immediately turned her hair to gold.

It was not the soft gold of an English sun but the deep burnished gold that Botticelli had painted on Simonetta’s head.

It had been the despair of the dyemakers ever since.

It seemed almost to burn in the sunshine and to make Jaela’s skin dazzlingly white.

Her eyes, which were the blue of the Mediterranean in a storm, filled her whole face.

“I cannot think where you get your eyes from,” her father had often said. “Your mother’s were the blue of the sky and so I thought when I first saw them that nothing could be more beautiful.”

“And yours are grey, Papa,” Jaela said, “and when you are angry they are almost black!”