Legend of the Seventh Virgin (2 page)

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.”

I crouched as far from the hole as I could while I wondered whether I ought to dash out and run. I remembered that it would not be easy to scramble out of the hole and they would almost certainly catch me — particularly now that the others had come.

Mellyora was looking in through the hole and it took a second or so for her eyes to become adjusted to the dimness; then she gasped. I was certain that in those few seconds she thought I was the ghost of the seventh virgin.

“Why …” she began. “She …”

Johnny’s head came through. There was a brief silence; then he murmured: “It’s only one of the cottage children.”

“Be careful there! It might not be safe.” I knew the voice now. It belonged to Justin St. Larnston — heir to the estate — no longer a boy, but a man, home from the University on vacation.

“But I tell you there’s someone in there,” Johnny replied.

“Don’t tell me the lady’s still there?” Yet another voice, and one I knew as that of Dick Kimber who lived in the Dower House and was at Oxford with young Justin.

“Come and see for yourself,” called Johnny.

I was crouching closer to the wall. I didn’t know what I hated most — the fact that I was caught or the way they looked on me — “one of the cottage children!” How dared he!

Another face was looking in on me; it was brown, crowned by untidy dark hair; the brown eyes were laughing.

“Not the virgin,” commented Dick Kimber.

“Does she look like it, Kim?” said Johnny.

Now Justin pushed them aside to look in. He was very tall and thin; his eyes were serene, his voice calm.

“Who is it?” he said.

“It’s not an ‘it’,” I replied. “It’s a Miss Kerensa Carlee.”

“You are a child from the cottages,” he said. “You’ve no right to be here, but come out now.”

I hesitated, not knowing what he intended to do. I pictured him taking me to the house and accusing me of trespassing. Also I did not want to stand before them in my scanty Holland smock which was becoming too small for me; my feet were well shaped though brown, but I had no shoes and they would be grimy. I washed them in the stream every night because I was very anxious to keep myself as clean as the gentry but, having no shoes to protect them, they were always dirty by the end of the day.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Dick Kimber, whom they called Kim. I should always think of him as Kim in future. “Why don’t you come out?”

“Go away,” I retorted, “and I will.”

He was about to step into the hollow when Justin warned: “Careful, Kim. You might bring the entire wall down.”

Kim remained where he was. “What did you say your name was?” he asked.

“Kerensa Carlee.”

“Very grand. But you’d better come out.”

“Go away.”

“Ding ding bell,” sang Johnny, “Kerensa’s in the well.”

“Who put her in?” continued Kim. “Was it due to sin?”

They were laughing at me, and as I stepped out of the hole preparing to run, they made a circle round me. In half a second I thought of the circle of stones and it was as uncanny a feeling as that which I had experienced in the wall.

They must have been noticing the difference between us. My hair was so black that it had a blue sheen in it; my eyes were big and they looked enormous in my small face; my skin was smooth and olive. They were so neat and civilized, all of them; even Kim with his untidy hair and laughing eyes.

Mellyora’s blue ones were troubled and in that moment I knew I had underrated her. She was soft but she wasn’t silly; she knew far better than the others did, how I felt.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of, Kerensa,” she said.

“Oh, isn’t there!” contradicted Johnny. “Miss Kerensa Carlee is guilty of trespassing. She’s been caught in the act. We must think up a punishment for her.”

He was teasing, of course. He wasn’t going to hurt me; he had noticed my long black hair and I saw his eyes on the bare skin of my shoulder where it showed through my torn smock.

Kim said: “It isn’t only cats who die of curiosity.”

“Do be careful,” ordered Justin. He turned to me. “You’ve been very silly. Don’t you know that scrambling about a wall that has just collapsed could be dangerous? Moreover, what are you doing here?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Now get out … the faster the better.”

I hated them all — Justin for his coldness, and talking to me as though I was no different from the people who lived in the cottages on his father’s estates, Johnny and Kim for their teasing, and Mellyora because she knew how I felt and was sorry for me.

I ran, but when I came to the door of the walled garden and was at a safe distance from them, I stopped and looked back at them.

They were still standing in a semicircle watching me. Mellyora was the one I had to stare at; she looked so concerned — and her concern was for me.

I put out my tongue; I heard Johnny and Kim laughing. Then I turned my back on them and sped away.

Granny Bee was sitting outside the cottage when I reached home; she often sat in the sun, her stool propped up against the wall, her pipe in her mouth; her eyes half closed as she smiled to herself.

I threw myself down beside her and told her what had happened. She rested her hand on my head as I talked; she liked to stroke my hair which was like her own, for although she was an old woman her hair was thick and black. She took great care of it, sometimes wearing it in two thick plaits, at others piling it high in coils. People said that it wasn’t natural for a woman of her age to have hair like that; and Granny Bee liked them to say it. She was proud of her hair, yes, but it was more than that; it was a symbol. Like Samson’s, I used to tell her, and she would laugh. I knew that she brewed a special preparation which she brushed in every night and she would sit for five minutes massaging her head. No one knew what she did except Joe and me, and Joe didn’t notice; he was always too busy with some bird or animal; but I would sit and watch her do her hair and she used to say to me, “I’ll tell you how to keep your hair, Kerensa; then you’ll have a head of hair like mine till the day you die.” But she hadn’t told me as yet. “All in good time,” she added. “And if I was to be took sudden, you’d find the receipt in the corner cupboard.”

Granny Bee loved Joe and me and it was a wonderful thing to be loved by her; but what was more wonderful still was to know that I was the first with her always. Joe was like a little pet; we loved him in a protective sort of way; but between Granny and me there was a closeness which we both knew about and were glad of.

She was a wise woman; I don’t mean merely that she had good sense; but she was known for miles round for her special powers and people of all sorts came to see her. She could cure them of their ailments and they trusted her more than they did the doctor. The cottage was filled with smells which changed from day to day, according to the remedies which were being brewed. I was learning what herbs to gather in the woods and fields and what they would cure. She was also believed to have special powers which enabled her to see into the future; I asked her to teach me, too, but she said it was something you taught yourself by keeping your eyes and ears open, and learning about people — for human nature was the same all the world over; there was so much bad in the good and so much good in the bad, that it was all a matter of weighing up how much good or bad had been allotted to each one. If you knew your people you could make a good guess as to how they would act and that was seeing into the future. And when you became clever at it, people believed in you, and they’d often act the way you had told them to, just to help you along.

We lived on Granny’s wisdom; and we didn’t do too badly. When someone killed a pig, there would be a good joint for us. Often some grateful client would put a sack of potatoes or peas on our doorstep; there would often be hot baked bread. I was good at managing, too. I could cook well. I could bake our bread and pasties, and turn out a fine pie of taddage or squab.