“Yes, it’s a bit of a squeeze, isn’t it?” replied the guide. “And I wouldn’t recommend that anyone try to climb inside. The last visitor who did so ended up in a dreadful pickle—just like Pooh Bear in Rabbit’s front door!”
“So why were they called priest holes then?” asked a bemused American tourist.
“Well, it’s all to do with the Reformation, you see. From the time of Elizabeth the First right up until the accession of Charles the Second, Catholic priests in England were ruthlessly persecuted by the Protestant authorities. They were, to all intents and purposes, outlaws. And so, they were forced to lead a clandestine existence, moving from safe house to safe house under cover of darkness, where they performed the sacraments for those families who stayed true to the old faith. Recusant was the term of abuse directed at these die-hard Catholics. And the fate of those captured was a grim one: to be hung drawn and quartered at Tyburn—and I needn’t remind you how awful a punishment that was! The priest holes, like the one you see here at Gaulsford, were intended as a last ditch place of refuge for a priest during a surprise raid. Many of them are ingeniously constructed in order to avoid detection and, indeed, this particular one was only rediscovered in Victorian times, so cunning is the concealment.”
“That’s all well and good,” said a man at the back of the group. “But there’s no evidence at all that the Leventhorps of Gaulsford were secret Catholics is there? Wasn’t Sir Samuel Leventhorp an ardent Puritan and a colonel in the New Model Army during the Civil War? And it was he who built this house was it not? Why would he put a priest hole in it? It just doesn’t make sense!”
The guide sighed to herself; there was always one know-it-all in every tour.
“That’s a good point,” she said, smiling politely, “but if we take the examples of any number of wayward politicians in recent times, we often find that the public persona and the private individual can be shockingly and even hypocritically at odds with each other. Yes, in public, Sir Samuel was the epitome of Puritan righteousness, but the existence of the priest hole tells otherwise. And now, ladies and gentlemen, let’s make our way back downstairs via the servants’ staircase.”
As the gaggle of tourists followed her out the door of the bedchamber, a solitary figure lingered behind. He flexed his fingers against the wainscoting to see if he could reveal the secret hiding place, but try as he might it remained firmly shut. There must be some knack to it, he guessed, and resolved to ask the guide for a quick demonstration after closing time.
He wandered back down the steps of the Great Staircase with its ancient walls lined with the stern portraits of his ancestors and paused before that of Sir Samuel Leventhorp, founder of the dynasty. The oil painting was rumoured to be an original by Sir Peter Lely, albeit created long after the death of the subject as a commission by one of his descendants. He studied the portrait with interest, and wondered idly what obscure genes from this long dead grandee were now forming part of his own make-up. Sir Samuel had an angry, intolerant face, deeply unlikeable, and his sombre, black-clad figure was every inch the model of puritan probity. The man smiled at the thought that his ancestor was as much a hypocrite as those ‘whited sepulchres’ his fellow Protestant dissenters fulminated against in their lengthy sermons. In a moment of hubris, he had himself recently sat for a new portrait to be hung at the top of the staircase; perhaps his own naturally sunny disposition would ameliorate the dour centuries of sour-faced and glowering Lords of Gaulsford.
He was the latest in a long line of Leventhorps, but he, at least, had no pretensions to religious enthusiasm. In fact, until a few months ago, he had no pretensions to anything much at all. He was plain Jonathan Leventhorp of Melbourne, Australia, and although dimly aware of his connection to Gaulsford, it came as a complete shock when he opened the door of his apartment to the private detective hired by the executors to track him down. A combination of childlessness, illegitimacy and premature death amongst the heirs-apparent had determined that the cadet bloodline from his great-grandfather’s side, of which he was the sole representative, suddenly stood to inherit the entire estate.
Jonathan had lived a feckless life in Melbourne, and cash was always tight. A hefty pile of final demand letters was accumulating unopened on the occasional table in his hallway, and the rancorous knocking and peering in the front window by assorted debt collectors left him cowering behind the sofa for significant portions of the day. For a brief instant, after the news of his inheritance had sunk in, he had envisaged himself living a country squire’s life: strolling his acres, maintaining a discreet pied-à-terre in London, nights at the casino with a charming debutante on each arm, polo matches, riding with the hunt and countless others of those pointless pursuits favoured by the English aristocracy. And not to forget, his heritage of fine estates, a household of fawning servants and endless rooms stuffed with priceless antiques and objets d’art.
But alas, even though Gaulsford House did indeed possess all these attributes, they were not his. The Leventhorps had, it seemed, been mostly absentee landlords through the generations, as if Gaulsford held some special repugnance for them. They preferred, instead, to spend the majority of their lives overseas in their Jamaican plantations, or latterly, in the upper echelons of the diplomatic service; and they had let the estate become run down. In recent years, crippled by death duties and unable to maintain the house from the meagre income of the estate rentals and home farm, they had gifted it to the National Trust. As a result, Jonathan’s inheritance merely amounted to a grace and favour apartment in the east wing and a small stipend from a trust fund at Coutts. Small though the allowance was, it was still considerably greater than his income from bartending and odd-jobbing in Melbourne, and the prospect of an early retirement at the age of thirty-eight was more than enough inducement to pack his bags and take the next flight to England.
For his first few weeks at Gaulsford, he had contented himself with simply exploring the house and grounds. The stately home was laid out much as it had been in Victorian times: a grand suite of master bedrooms were located on the upper floor, whilst on the ground level could be found the dining room, library and assorted day-rooms. The meagre servants’ quarters were hidden out of sight in the discreet service wing, and down in the basement stood the kitchens and pantries which were now peopled during the daytime with voluble re-enactors eager to expound on the drudgery of their everyday life below stairs to the tourists. In the stables, a short distance from the main house, could be found the cafeteria which sold cream teas to the coach-loads of hungry visitors after their obligatory rounds of the National Trust gift shop, where, if they so wished, they could purchase an assortment of scented soaps, tins of shortbread biscuits and other mass-produced bric-à-brac stamped with the coat of arms of the Leventhorps.
His new apartment looked out over a formal parterre towards the dark façade of Gaulsford woods in the distance. The house had remained largely unoccupied during the stewardship of his ancestors and of necessity, he supposed, all the lower ground floor windows, including those of his own rooms, were barred on the inside with substantial rods of iron to deter burglars and other undesirables. Though the east wing was officially out of bounds to the public, bands of horrible schoolchildren running riot in the grounds would still peer and make faces in through the windows as he sat and watched television, forcing him to jump up and shout some very unaristocratic language after them.
He found that he had the house to himself on most nights, after the National Trust staff had closed up and left. A security cum odd-job man lived in the Gaulsford gate lodge and was supposed to do the rounds once or twice during the hours of darkness, though Leventhorp very much doubted his dedication in keeping to this schedule. At night, Gaulsford was filled with the cacophony of creaks and groans made by all old buildings, but it didn’t feel haunted in the least, which was, he supposed, mildly disappointing to him. The only sounds that came to his ears were the distant barking of foxes in Gaulsford woods and the unearthly shrieks of the barn owls as their ghostly figures flitted back and forth across the lawns in search of their prey.