Curious Warnings - The Great Ghost Stories Of M.R. James (71 page)

“Filled and sealed, eh?” said the Squire. “If I could bring myself to touch it, I dare say we should find the seal. So that’s what came of his boiling and distilling, is it? Old Ghoul!”

“What in the world do you mean?”

“Don’t you see, my good man? Remember what he said to the doctor about looking through dead men’s eyes? Well, this was another way of it. But they didn’t like having their bones boiled, I take it, and the end of it was they carried him off whither he would not. Well, I’ll get a spade, and we’ll bury this thing decently.”

As they smoothed the turf over it, the Squire, handing the spade to Patten, who had been a reverential spectator, remarked to Fanshawe: “It’s almost a pity you took that thing into the church: you might have seen more than you did. Baxter had them for a week, I make out, but I don’t see that he did much in the time.”

“I’m not sure,” said Fanshawe, “there is that picture of Fulnaker Priory Church.”

T
HE PLACE ON THE EAST COAST
which the reader is asked to consider is Seaburgh. It is not very different now from what I remember it to have been when I was a child. Marshes intersected by dykes to the south, recalling the early chapters of
Great Expectations
; flat fields to the north, merging into heath; heath, fir woods, and, above all, gorse, inland. A long sea-front and a street: behind that a spacious church of flint, with a broad, solid western tower and a peal of six bells.

How well I remember their sound on a hot Sunday in August, as our party went slowly up the white, dusty slope of road toward them, for the church stands at the top of a short, steep incline. They rang with a flat clacking sort of sound on those hot days, but when the air was softer they were mellower too.

The railway ran down to its little terminus farther along the same road. There was a gay white windmill just before you came to the station, and another down near the shingle at the south end the town, and yet others on higher ground to the north.

There were cottages of bright red brick with slate roofs … but why do I encumber you with these commonplace details? The fact is that they come crowding to the point of the pencil when it begins to write of Seaburgh. I should like to be sure that I had allowed the right ones to get on to the paper. But I forgot. I have not quite done with the word-painting business yet.

Walk away from the sea and the town, pass the station, and turn up the road on the right. It is a sandy road, parallel with the railway, and if you follow it, it climbs to somewhat higher ground. On your left (you are now going northward) is heath, on your right (the side toward the sea) is a belt of old firs, wind-beaten, thick at the top, with the slope that old seaside trees have. Seen on the skyline from the train they would tell you in an instant, if you did not know it, that you were approaching a windy coast.

Well, at the top of my little hill, a line of these firs strikes out and runs toward the sea, for there is a ridge that goes that way. And the ridge ends in a rather well-defined mound commanding the level fields of rough grass, and a little knot of fir trees crowns it. And here you may sit on a hot spring day, very well content to look at blue sea, white windmills, red cottages, bright green grass, church tower, and distant Martello tower on the south.

As I have said, I began to know Seaburgh as a child; but a gap of a good many years separates my early knowledge from that which is more recent. Still it keeps its place in my affections, and any tales of it that I pick up have an interest for me.

One such tale is this: it came to me in a place very remote from Seaburgh, and quite accidentally, from a man whom I had been able to oblige—enough in his opinion to justify his making me his confidant to this extent.

I know all that country more or less (he said). I used to go to Seaburgh pretty regularly for golf in the spring. I generally put up at the Bear, with a friend—Henry Long it was, you knew him perhaps—(“Slightly,” I said) and we used to take a sitting room and be very happy there. Since he died I haven’t cared to go there. And I don’t know that I should anyhow after the particular thing that happened on our last visit.

It was in April, 19—, we were there, and by some chance we were almost the only people in the hotel. So the ordinary public rooms were practically empty, and we were the more surprised when, after dinner, our sitting room door opened, and a young man put his head in.

We were aware of this young man. He was rather a rabbity anemic subject—light hair and light eyes—but not unpleasing. So when he said: “I beg your pardon, is this a private room?” we did not growl and say: “Yes, it is,” but Long said, or I did—no matter which: “Please come in.” “Oh, may I?” he said, and seemed relieved. Of course it was obvious that he wanted company; and as he was a reasonable kind of person—not the sort to bestow his
whole family history on you—we urged him to make himself at home.

“I dare say you find the other rooms rather bleak,” I said.

Yes, he did; but it was really too good of us, and so on. That being got over, he made some pretense of reading a book. Long was playing Patience, I was writing. It became plain to me after a few minutes that this visitor of ours was in rather a state of fidgets or nerves, which communicated itself to me, and so I put away my writing and turned to at engaging him in talk.

After some remarks, which I forget, he became rather confidential.

“You’ll think it very odd of me” (this was the sort of way he began), “but the fact is I’ve had something of a shock.”

Well, I recommended a drink of some cheering kind, and we had it. The waiter coming in made an interruption (and I thought our young man seemed very jumpy when the door opened), but after a while he got back to his woes again.

There was nobody he knew in the place, and he did happen to know who we both were (it turned out there was some common acquaintance in town), and really he did want a word of advice, if we didn’t mind.

Of course we both said: “By all means,” or “Not at all,” and Long put away his cards. And we settled down to hear what his difficulty was.

“It began,” he said, “more than a week ago, when I bicycled over to Froston, only about five or six miles, to see the church. I’m very much interested in architecture, and it’s got one of those pretty porches with niches and shields.

“I took a photograph of it, and then an old man who was tidying up in the churchyard came and asked if I’d care to look into the church. I said yes, and he produced a key and let me in.

“There wasn’t much inside, but I told him it was a nice little church, and he kept it very clean, ‘but,’ I said, ‘the porch is the best part of it.’

“We were just outside the porch then, and he said, ‘Ah, yes, that is a nice porch. And do you know, sir, what’s the meanin’ of that coat of arms there?’

“It was the one with the three crowns, and though I’m not much of a herald, I was able to say yes, I thought it was the old arms of the kingdom of East Anglia.

“‘That’s right, sir,’ he said, ‘and do you know the meanin’ of them three crowns that’s on it?’

“I said I’d no doubt it was known, but I couldn’t recollect to have heard it myself.

“‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘for all you’re a scholard, I can tell you something you don’t know. Them’s the three ’oly crowns what was buried in the ground near the coast to keep the Germans from landing—ah, I can see you don’t believe that. But I tell you, if it hadn’t have been for one of them ’oly crowns bein’ there still, them Germans would a landed here time and again, they would. Landed with their ships, and killed man, woman and child in their beds. Now then, that’s the truth what I’m telling you, that is. And if you don’t believe me, you ast the rector. There he comes: you ast him, I says.’

“I looked around, and there was the rector, a nice-looking old man, coming up the path. And before I could begin assuring my old man, who was getting quite excited, that I didn’t disbelieve him, the rector struck in, and said: ‘What’s all this about, John? Good day to you, sir. Have you been looking at our little church?’

“So then there was a little talk which allowed the old man to calm down, and then the rector asked him again what was the matter.

“‘Oh,’ he said, ‘it warn’t nothink, only I was telling this gentleman he’d ought to ast you about them ’oly crowns.’

“‘Ah, yes, to be sure,’ said the rector, ‘that’s a very curious matter, isn’t it? But I don’t know whether the gentleman is interested in our old stories, eh?’

“‘Oh, he’ll be interested fast enough,’ says the old man, ‘he’ll put his confidence in what you tells him, sir. Why, you known William Ager yourself, father and son too.’

“Then I put in a word to say how much I should like to hear all about it, and before many minutes I was walking up the village street with the rector, who had one or two words to say to parishioners, and then to the rectory, where he took me into his study.

“He had made out, on the way, that I really was capable of taking an intelligent interest in a piece of folklore, and not quite the ordinary tripper. So he was very willing to talk, and it is rather surprising to me that the particular legend he told me has not made its way into print before.

“His account of it was this: ‘There has always been a belief in these parts in the three holy crowns. The old people say they were buried in different
places near the coast to keep off the Danes or the French or the Germans. And they say that one of the three was dug up a long time ago, and another has disappeared by the encroaching of the sea, and one’s still left doing its work, keeping off invaders.

“‘Well, now, if you have read the ordinary guides and histories of this county, you will remember perhaps that in 1687 a crown, which was said to be the crown of Redwald, King of the East Angles, was dug up at Rendlesham, and alas! alas! melted down before it was even properly described or drawn. Well, Rendlesham isn’t on the coast, but it isn’t so very far inland, and it’s on a very important line of access. And I believe that is the crown which the people mean when they say that one has been dug up.

“‘Then on the south you don’t want me to tell you where there was a Saxon royal palace which is now under the sea, eh? Well, there was the second crown, I take it. And up beyond these two, they say, lies the third.’

“‘Do they say where it is?’ of course I asked.

“He said, ‘Yes, indeed, they do, but they don’t tell,’ and his manner did not encourage me to put the obvious question.

“Instead of that I waited a moment, and said: ‘What did the old man mean when he said you knew William Ager, as if that had something to do with the crowns?’

“‘To be sure,’ he said, ‘now that’s another curious story. These Agers—it’s a very old name in these parts, but I can’t find that they were ever people of quality or big owners—these Agers say, or said, that their branch of the family were the guardians of the last crown.

“‘A certain old Nathaniel Ager was the first one I knew—I was born and brought up quite near here—and he, I believe, camped out at the place during the whole of the war of 1870. William, his son, did the same, I know, during the South African War. And young William,
his
son, who has only died fairly recently, took lodgings at the cottage nearest the spot, and I’ve no doubt hastened his end, for he was a consumptive, by exposure and night watching.

“‘And he was the last of that branch. It was a dreadful grief to him to think that he was the last, but he could do nothing, the only relations at all near him were in the colonies. I wrote letters for him to them imploring them to come over on business very important to the family, but there has been no answer.

“‘So the last of the holy crowns, if it’s there, has no guardian now.’

“That was what the rector told me, and you can fancy how interesting I found it. The only thing I could think of when I left him was how to hit upon the spot where the crown was supposed to be. I wish I’d left it alone.

“But there was a sort of fate in it, for as I bicycled back past the churchyard wall my eye caught a fairly new gravestone, and on it was the name of William Ager. Of course I got off and read it. It said:
of this parish, died at Seaburgh, 19—, age 28
. There it was, you see. A little judicious questioning in the right place, and I should at least find the cottage nearest the spot.