Page 7 of The Book of Lost Stories

The housekeeper came out and, informing them that none of the family was at home, kindly begged them to enter.

She conducted them around the very fine public rooms, elegantly furnished and hung with portraits of tall, dark and glowering Rayven menfolk and their ringleted, simpering ladies, until finally Lady Basset declared she must rest for a while.

‘While you do so, I wonder if it might be possible for me to see something of the cellars that run under the ruins of the old abbey?’ asked Alys, greatly daring. ‘Only I have heard so much about them.’

‘I’ll be bound you have, and all the young ladies are mad to see them,’ the housekeeper replied indulgently. ‘They think it romantic, or some such nonsense. But they come out again quickly enough, miss!’

However, she sent a servant with a lantern to conduct Alys through the vaulted and eerie subterranean depths of the building and she thought it quite delightfully atmospheric.

The further they went, the danker and more interesting it became, and the more she felt the weight of the old house, constructed of stones taken from the abbey, pressing down on them.

She did not see any bats or chained skeletons, of course, but the imagination of an author can supply those with the greatest ease.

She was enchanted. The lantern lit up carved faces grimacing in the corners, fluted pillars, strange stone channels, some running with water, and even the occasional large cobweb when they ventured deeper.

But eventually, when the long-suffering servant seemed to be convinced that his lantern was about to go out, Alys had reluctantly to retrace her steps.

Lady Basset had been given tea and macaroons while she engaged in a long gossip with the housekeeper and looked so rosy and animated that Alys was in hopes the change of scene alone would improve her aunt’s health considerably.

They set off on the last few miles of their journey and Lady Basset repeated to Alys all the details she had elicited of the fatal carriage accident that had wiped out the last Lord Rayven and his heir at one stroke, elevating Serle Rayven, member of a cadet branch of the family, so unexpectedly to title, fortune and family seat.

A soldier, he had been obliged to sell out just as things were becoming eventful on the continent and return home.

This was interesting, but for her part Alys was delighted to find inspiration for the setting of her novel – and probably further novels to come – from her visit to Priory Chase. She felt she could have developed quite a taste for visiting mouldering ruins, had she freedom enough.

*

They bowled into High Harrogate in the late afternoon, passing an open expanse of green with people promenading upon it, one or two fine hotels, and such houses and shops as Alys had never seen in her life.

‘It is a candle to the sun, compared with London,’ Lady Basset said, ‘but the nearest I have come to civilization in many a year. I hope we are to be given a good dinner. I have been quite famished this last hour and more.’

Alys looked at her in astonishment, for she had not ceased eating sweetmeats throughout the journey, except when being shown over Priory Chase (and even there she had consumed most of a plate of macaroons).

In a trice they were pulling up outside their lodging, found for them through the good offices of Mrs Franby’s friends, and Alys dutifully helped Lady Basset to settle into their very comfortable chambers.

Her maid began unpacking immediately, while Alys did the same for her own modest belongings in the small adjoining bedchamber.

Then they changed and dined below with the other inhabitants of the house, a strange experience in itself.

The long table was organized not by rank, but by seating the newest arrivals at the foot of the table.

Apparently this was the custom there, and a very sensible one it seemed to Alys.

She exchanged shy smiles with a fair young lady seated a little way above her, who looked to be about her own age.

Lady Basset was by now quite done up and retired immediately afterwards, and Alys of necessity went with her, but they were to rise betimes tomorrow and take the water at the Sulphur Well.

‘And after that, we will explore the shops, perhaps,’ Lady Basset said, when Alys went in to say goodnight. ‘We must put our names in the visitors’ book, go to the library … perhaps even promenade in the rooms at Low Harrogate.’

‘So long as you are not quite exhausted, Aunt.’

‘I am sure, from what I have heard of the curative effects of the Sulphur Well, that I will soon be quite restored to health,’ Lady Basset said optimistically. ‘Besides, the lady next to me at dinner was telling me of a milliner that I quite long to visit.’

Alys, still full of restless energy, abstracted two of Lady Basset’s candles from the candelabrum on her mantelpiece on her way to bed, for her small chamber was much less luxuriously appointed and she feared to run out.

Then, in nightgown and shawl, she wrote long into the night, revising several passages in the light of her new experiences.

Her lantern illuminated grinning and malevolent faces carved on the crumbling stone columns of the cellar and clammy fingers brushed across her cheek … She gasped, then took herself severely to task, for it was but a cobweb.

The humble spider, spinning here in solitary darkness, would not harm her. Only mortal man was to be feared, if she did not find a way to leave this place.