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CHAPTER THREE

LADY PHYTHIAN AND THE LANGSTRADE GHOSTS

“I don’t agree that the current vogue for Medievalism, of which Langstrade provides a prime example, is inherently anti-progressive,” Quentin Hope said to his loyal adversary—presumably in the response to the suggestion that it was, although Michael had not returned his attention to the argument in time to catch Escott’s last remark. “Progressiveness doesn’t require the past to be forgotten—quite the contrary. Without a keen awareness of the past, progress couldn’t be perceived, let alone properly measured and appreciated, and it’s entirely right that we should loyally celebrate centenaries and millennia of every sort, including imaginary ones. Centenary and millennial celebrations are inherently comparative, forcing us to observe and calculate how far we have come in the interim. It’s entirely justifiable for the present Earl of Langstrade, as the heir to an industrial fortune forged in loudly-clattering automated mills and secured by democratic hegemony, to set himself up in contradictory juxtaposition with the legendary Harold Longstride, a pre-feudal chieftain for whom life was little more than eternal agricultural labor, punctuated by occasional bloody struggles against violent marauders.”

“Langstrade’s not interested in drawing comparisons to demonstrate the superiority of modern civilization over ancient barbarity,” Escott retorted, scornfully. “His interest in the past is a purely nostalgic one, which represents a calculated antithesis to the mechanized source of his fortune and status. He’s trying to identify himself with the imaginary Harold Longstride, who was invented by his father for precisely that Romantic purpose. The reason that Langstrade is so insistent that his fictitious ancestor still haunts the grounds of the Hall, along with his retinue—even though the modern building bears not the slightest resemblance to whatever might have stood there in the ninth century, and in spite of the fact that no presently-discernible trace of any keep existed before the foundations of the Folly were laid—is that aristocratic privilege is based in the prestige of the past, and requires endorsement by it. The imaginary ghost of Harold Longstride is a quasi-paternal figure, symbolic of an imagined heritage, and his actual non-existence is testimony to the force of the longing that Langstrade experiences to turn his back on the bewildering present and the prospect of an even stranger future: a longing for continuity, stability and an end to the madness of progress.”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Escott,” Lady Phythian put in, sharply, “but the ghosts of Langstrade are certainly not non-existent, any more than they are quasi-paternal. As you know perfectly well, I have seen the phenomenon with my own eyes, on more than one occasion, and the number of other witnesses, in the course of the last twenty years, must run into the hundreds.”

“With all due respect, Lady Phythian,” said Hope, his voice dripping skepticism in spite of his conscientious attempt to feign a polite and placatory tone, “you can’t be sure that what you saw was Harold Longstride and his retinue tracking Emund Snurlson, as the more credulous witnesses to the phenomenon contend.”

“I never claimed that the apparition was Harold Longstride and his retinue tracking Emund Snurlson,” the dowager replied, tartly. “That was Old Harry’s interpretation, and it is not for me to question his opinion, but I had no way of attributing any particular identity to the apparition myself. I never had the slightest doubt, however, that what I saw and felt was supernatural in origin. Over the years, in fact, I am convinced that I have got to know it very well, and can certainly feel its presence whenever it is manifest—but I am still uncertain as to whether it is the spirit of a human being, or several spirits of several human beings. I am hoping that Dr. Carp might provide some illumination on that point, although his present somniloquist is something of a disappointment.

“The mere shadow of her predecessor, no doubt,” Escott suggested, merrily. In spite of his deep interest in the mysteries of the past, Michael concluded, the pessimist was obviously a Sadducee when it came to apparitions of the dead and other spiritual entities.

“I know that you have never seen any apparition when you have visited Langstrade in the past, Mr. Escott,” Lady Phythian said, sternly, “but that does not give you the right to disparage those who have. I’m no somniloquist myself, but I am sensitive to such otherworldly manifestations in my own fashion. I must insist on the absolute reality of the Langstrade ghosts, although I reserve my judgment as to the nature and identity of the spiritual entities in question.”

“That’s very wise as well as conscientious, Lady Phythian,” Hope was quick to put in. “Progress in the nascent science of psychognosis has been slow, I fear, compared to recent progress in mechanics, despite the best efforts of men like Dr. Carp, but people with open minds hope and expect that the situation will improve dramatically as time goes by. Your attitude does you credit, as does your insistence.”

The dowager did not seem particularly grateful for this intervention, and obviously suspected that Hope was insincere. Michael had the same suspicion.

“We’re being a trifle rude, I fear,” Escott countered. “We have three people with us who have not visited the Hall before, and even if Mr. Laurel has heard tales of the ghost, Signor Monticarlo and Signorina Carmela surely have not. Perhaps, Lady Phythian, you’d care to explain to them what it is that you have seen?”

Lady Phythian looked at Signor Monticarlo. Obliged to respond—and perhaps grateful for an opportunity to make a contribution to the conversation at last—the violinist nodded his head. “Si, Milady,” he said. “I will be most grateful—and Carmela too.”

Carmela nodded in agreement, and smiled, but could not manage even the faintest of “si’s.”

Lady Phythian nodded in her usual imperious fashion, then paused for effect before continuing, apparently slightly inflated by pride now that the distinguished violinist’s handsome dark eyes were fixed upon her, full of respectful curiosity.

“I’ve known the dowager Lady Langstrade since she was Millicent Houghton,” she said, “and I’ve been a frequent guest at the new Hall ever since the reconstruction rendered it fit to live in—at least once a year for nearly twenty years now, in good times and sad times alike. I’d heard vague tales of the ghost long before I ever got to see it, but they were generally regarded as servants’ gossip in those days. Although the old manor house was called Langstrade Hall, no Langstrades had lived in it for centuries—it was even owned, for a while, by relatives of mine, the Ashersons—and all the ghost stories associated with it were old enough to be treated with contempt. The reconstruction of the new Hall seemed to change that, though. Perhaps the ancient ghosts were disturbed somehow, and prompted to walk again—but I make no claim as to that.

“The first time I experienced an apparition for myself was seventeen years ago, but it was so slight—the merest of suspect presences—that it was only in hindsight that I realized what it must have been. The first time I saw ghosts, clearly and unequivocally, was in 1811. It was late at night, in August, during a heat-wave. I was in my usual room—the Yellow Room, it’s called now—which faces east. I couldn’t sleep, and I got out of bed in order to go to the window, in the hope that I might catch a breeze by leaning out, since none seemed to be capable of making its way into the room. That was when I saw a group of uncanny lights, moving slowly and methodically over what was, in those days, a vast lawn.…”

Escott opened his mouth as if to interrupt—presumably, Michael guessed, to inform the Monticarlos that the location in question was now the site of the Langstrade Maze—but Lady Phythian, intent on telling her story in her own way, silenced him with an irritated frown.

“I woke Millicent,” the dowager continued, “who woke the late Lord Langstrade, who summoned his butler, Heatherington, and his gardener, Jefferies, in order to mount an investigation. We all went out together, taking courage from our numbers. All five of us saw the lights from a distance, as we approached and agreed that they were not natural, but by the time we reached the ground over which they were moving, they had vanished into thin air. Jefferies declared that they must have been swarms of fireflies engaged in mating dances, but no one else believed that ridiculous suggestion for a moment.”

This time it was Hope who tried to interrupt, quite possibly to offer a learned discourse on the mating habits of fireflies, but again Lady Phythian refused to relinquish the floor.

“That,” the story-teller continued, emphatically, “was only the first time I saw the ghosts. Nine years ago, in 1813, the event was repeated, almost exactly. This time, again from the window of the Yellow Room, I was able to count the lights—there were eight—and was able to discern that they were ghostly lanterns, held aloft by shadowy hands, moving in strange spirals around a region at the further end of the lawn. Again, Jefferies, having arrived at the spot after their disappearance, declared that they must have been fireflies—but this time, Millicent, Harry and I had got much closer before the lanterns winked out, and none of us was in any doubt that they really were ghostly lanterns. That was when Harry—Old Harry, that is, not the present Earl, who was left to sleep, much to his annoyance—guessed that the apparition must be taking place on the anniversary of Harold Longstride’s combat with Emund Snurlson, and that the ghosts must be converging on the yew tree in the shadow of which the crucial fight to the death had taken place.

“The third time I saw the apparition, seven years ago, it was clearer still. This time, I was able to make out the silhouettes of the human figures carrying the lanterns. They were, alas, not pale and shiny, as ghosts are often said to be, but dark and fugitive. I am certain nevertheless that they constituted two groups of four, the second group seemingly tracking the first along their strangely convoluted spiral route—although both groups broke up before the second caught up with the first, and they were in complete disarray by the time they disappeared again.”

Escott, despairing of being able to get a word in edgeways, caught Michael’s eye and raised his eyebrows expressively, unnoticed by the story-teller.

“I saw the apparition one more, three years ago,” Lady Phythian continued, as unstoppable as the Sir Richard Trevithick, which was now traveling through the northern hinterlands of Hertfordshire at full steam, “but, much to my disappointment, instead of becoming clearer once again, it had returned to its former vagueness. Mr. Hope and Mr. Escott have never seen the phantom lanterns, even though they have been guests on the anniversary, but they always sleep in the Rose Room and the Lilac Room, both of which face south, and on the one year that they consented to wait up all night in case the ghost put in an appearance—four years ago, if I remember rightly—the phenomenon did not appear. They doubtless believe that I imagined the whole thing, and that it is partly because of my overheated imagination that the present Lord Langstrade insisted on completing his father’s plans for the Maze and the Keep, but I know full well that what Millicent, Harry and I saw was not natural, and that it really was connected to the Maze.”

Signor Monticarlo looked puzzled, but was too polite to interrupt; he merely exchanged a glance with his daughter, who smiled at him tenderly. Lady Phythian took the hint, though, and elaborated her explanation.

“In addition to hearing tales of the ghost,” she said, “I had long grown used to seeing the document on which the Langstrade Maze is designed. Whether it really is a copy of a design originally made by Dedalus of Knossos I have no idea, but I am certain in my own mind that there is something mysterious and magical about it. I feel it whenever I look at the diagram, in the same way that I often used to feel the presence of the Langstrade ghosts when sitting on the lawn where the Maze now stands, even in broad daylight. I have felt it even more strongly while exploring the maze itself, during the years when its hedges were not as intimidating as they are now.

“At any rate, the ghosts whose lanterns I saw were definitely walking the maze, even though construction of the present Maze had not yet begun when I first saw the apparition. They were heading from the periphery to the center: the location where the Keep and the yew tree now stand proud once again, in commemoration of the glorious summer of 822 A.D., when Harold Longstride defeated Emund Snurlson in single combat and blocked the progress of the Viking invasion—the renewals of which he succeeded in keeping at bay for the rest of his life, although his descendants could not, in the end, resist the incursions of Eric Bloodaxe.”

Lady Phythian nodded her head as she drew to her conclusion, as if to imply that what she had said was more than sufficient to confound the most determined skeptic who ever drew breath.

“With all due respect, Lady Phythian,” Quentin Hope said again, just as insincerely as the first time, “and without wishing to endorse the unreasonably stubborn skepticism of my friend Mr. Escott, I wonder whether we might be confusing causes and effects slightly. You claim that the ghosts, in appearing to simulate the movements of someone walking the Maze that Lord Langstrade subsequently constructed on their stamping-ground, were reproducing some past event or ritual—but I can’t help suspecting that your seeing the ghosts, and your interpretation of their movements, might well have been partially responsible for the first Earl’s decision to site the Maze there, and the second Earl’s decision to complete his father’s plan. After all, there was no previous connection, even in rumor, between the ghosts and the diagram, was there? They were two entirely separate components of the first Earl’s imagined family history.”

“I am by no means the only person to have seen the Langstrade ghosts move in that peculiar fashion,” Lady Phythian said, stiffly. “I was not the first observer to connect the pattern with the Maze, but once the connection had been pointed out, I was able to see with my own eyes, and feel with my own heart, that it was true. The present Lord Langstrade has seen the phantom lanterns for himself, and so have his wife Emily and his daughter Cecilia. They have all confirmed that the lanterns’ movements do correspond, very precisely, to the pattern of the Dedalus design.”

“That tends to be the way with ghost sightings in Britain,” Escott put in, as if to inform Signor Monticarlo of a relevant item of folkloristic analysis. “Each seer reproduces what previous seers have seen, although each one also tends to elaborate the pattern a little further. There is a kind of feedback process, by which the reported illusions not only sustain one another but collaborate in their own elaboration and sophistication. That’s what Hope would call the fundamental psychognosis of the phenomenon—the phenomenon of ghost-seeing, that is, not the supposedly supernatural phenomenon itself.”

Signor Monticarlo was manifestly mystified, the terms of this speech having far exceeded the competence of his English but he nodded anyway and said: “Si.”

“There was no illusion involved,” Lady Phythian insisted, her voice becoming frosty in spite of the sultriness of the carriage, whose atmosphere was becoming rather oppressive. “What I saw was quite real.”

Michael judged that the built-up tension was in need of relaxation. “Unlike Signor Monticarlo and his daughter,” he said, “I’m vaguely familiar with the legends surrounding Langstrade Hall, but I really ought to obtain a fuller and more accurate account of them before I take on the task of painting the Keep. Would you be kind enough, Lady Phythian, to explain to us in a little more detail what you mean by the Dedalus design?”

“The original representation of the maze,” Lady Phythian said, apparently glad to be able to say something that could not call her honesty or perspicacity into question, “or, at least, the oldest surviving representation, is a piece of parchment that now hangs over the mantelpiece in the large drawing-room, carefully framed and protected by glass. The old Hall was built in the ruins of a Cistercian abbey that had been built in the thirteenth century and destroyed during Henry VIII’s abolition of the monasteries. The abbey had been reputed to have custody of several holy relics and a number of scriptural documents. The relics had all been stolen, along with their reliquaries, and the documents removed—with one exception, which had been hidden in a niche in the old crypt. When the crypt was converted into a cellar during the building of the old Hall, that surviving parchment was unearthed.”

The dowager hesitated briefly, presumably because she was about to move back into the realm of rumor and fancy, but soon took the plunge. “The diagram on the parchment was thought at first to be a sketch for one of the mazes that decorate the floors of so many Gothic churches, but the diggers working on the new Hall’s foundations also found evidence of a stone maze that far antedated the Abbey and must have been prehistoric. There were not enough stones left to allow the design or precise extent of the prehistoric maze to be calculated, but there was sufficient similarity to encourage the conclusion that the design antedated the Abbey too. The parchment itself must be Medieval, but what it represents is apparently much older than the thirteenth century—or, indeed, the ninth.

“The former Lord Langstrade came to believe that the design depicted in the document was a representation of a maze designed to fulfill some magical or mystical purpose, connected to the first settlement of the valley by refugees from Minoan Crete, including the great engineer Dedalus, whose escape from imprisonment before the catastrophe that destroyed Knossos is plaintively symbolized in the myth of his manufacture of wings and the subsequent death of Icarus. I believe that Harry once considered recreating the Maze in the same local sandstone of which the Keep at its center was to be—and is—constructed, but the cost of construction would have been prohibitive, so his son contented himself with hawthorn hedges. The central hexagonal space is some fifty yards across in the actual version, and the distance between the two outer hedges is almost twice that; the total length of all the hedges is, I believe, more than a mile.”

“Why did Lord Langstrade build the Maze around the Keep?” Michael asked, helpfully. “Does he imagine that Harold Longstride built his own Keep within a maze that was still present in his own day, or merely that he was aware that a maze had once existed there?”

“Harold Longstride would presumably have been aware that there had once been a stone maze on the site where he built his Keep,” Lady Phythian opined, cautiously, “even if it had been broken up long before his own era. Legend would have told him as much.”

“In respectful recognition of his own legendary status, no doubt,” Escott murmured, so softly that Michael was not sure that anyone but he had heard the remark.

Carmela Monticarlo spoke in English for the first time, to say: “I hope that I shall see the ghost. I should like to see a ghost.”

“Unfortunately, my dear young lady,” said Escott, in his normal voice, “you might have to go into the Maze to do that, since the hedges have now grown so tall as to cut off the view from the first-floor, where I have stood by a window more than once by night, in the hope of catching a glimpse of phantom lights—in vain, alas.”

“I look forward to seeing the design,” Michael said, thoughtfully. “Indeed, I shall need to consult it very carefully, since I shall have to get to the heart of the Maze in order to set up my easel there.”

“Don’t worry about that,” said Escott, with a mischievous sideways glance at Hope. “I’m sure that Miss Cecilia will be only too pleased to guide you, as she has previously consented to guide Hope and myself—not only into the heart of the maze, but out again, when you need release.”