“Go right up,” he said. “But use the back way; the front door hasn’t been opened in ten years. No need for it now with the house being empty.”
Leventhorp walked the short distance up the drive to the house. It had an imposing Tudor façade but, like Gaulsford, the building was clearly in its declining years, having reached the point where restoration had been abandoned and the occupants were merely erecting a temporary bulwark against the erosive forces of decay. A middle-aged man, sharply dressed, was waiting to meet him outside.
“Sir Jonathan! Well, this really is an honour for us! I’m Daniel Clark, the estate manager.”
“That’s certainly a big responsibility,” said Leventhorp, shaking hands and looking around at the wide expanse of house and grounds. “Have you been long in the job?”
“All my life,” said Clark, smiling. “My family have served the Sadleirs for six generations as loyal agents and retainers. I know of nothing else.”
“Ah, yes, the Sadleirs. That’s the reason for my visit. I have, what you might call, a piece of lost property to return.”
Leventhorp proffered the ragged package.
“I was rummaging in our library at Gaulsford when I discovered this book. It’s very old and, judging by the inscription, it belongs to one of the Sadleirs from way back. I thought I’d return it to its rightful home as a neighbourly gesture.”
Mr Clark accepted the ill-wrapped package with an air of bemusement, but as he finished unravelling its layers and began to examine the contents, he uttered a sudden cry of joy.
“The missing prayer-book! I can’t believe it! You know this has been considered irretrievably lost for over three centuries?”
Leventhorp saw how he handled it with the reverence of a holy relic.
“And you say it was in your library?”
“Yes. I have a horrible feeling that one of my ancestors may have borrowed it and forgotten to bring it back!”
“We’ll waive the late fees in this case, I think!” said Clark. “You have no idea what a priceless treasure it is that you have returned. On behalf of the Sadleir family, we are eternally grateful for your generosity.”
“Is it really that special?”
“Ah, so you have never heard of the prayer-books of Brockstone? You are not a bibliophile then, I guess? Well, let me explain. During the Commonwealth, the use of the Book of Common Prayer was banned outright. Even to own a copy was punishable by a fine, let alone having a new edition printed. Which is exactly what Lady Sadleir did in 1653, and so far as we know, these are the only examples from that period. I hope you realise that there are more copies of the Gutenberg Bible in existence than there are of the Brockstone prayer-book! There were, until now, just eight copies extant at Brockstone. The prayer-books used to be kept here in the chapel before an unfortunate incident of attempted robbery early in the last century necessitated their removal. As a result, they are all now safely stored in a vault at Lloyd’s Bank in the City of London.
“There are eight stall-boxes here in Brockstone Chapel and so, naturally, they required eight books, one for each stall. But of course, Lady Sadleir, as a woman, would not have been permitted to sit in the choir and would have followed the service from her private box pew. Hence there has to have been a ninth copy, her own personal one, which has been missing for over three centuries. Missing…well, until now that is!”
He opened the book at the title page.
“Hmm, I see someone has been scribbling in it at some time in the past.”
“Yes, I must apologise; I have a horrible feeling it’s in the hand of my ancestor Sir Samuel Leventhorp.”
“I expect that’s probably true. There was no love lost between your ancestor and the Sadleirs, that’s for sure. It almost had the aspect of a feud. It all came down, like so many things at that period, to religious and political differences. They were, you might say, natural enemies—like fox and hound, or barn owl and shrew.
“You must forgive me for saying that Sir Samuel was the worst sort of Puritan: bigoted, narrow-minded and puffed-up on the certainty of his own election to Paradise. Lady Sadleir’s royalist views were, of course, well known, but in addition to that, she had pronounced high church leanings, was certainly a staunch supporter of the unfortunate Archbishop Laud, and there was much speculation at the time that she may have harboured secret Catholic sympathies.”
“Ah, but you have no priest holes here at Brockstone Court, have you?” said Leventhorp.
“No, the only one you’ll find in this area is at Gaulsford. Now that’s very curious, don’t you think?”
Clark escorted him inside on a tour of the house, which was much the same as Gaulsford with its dreary accumulation of Grand Tour detritus and middle-range art and furniture. What did come as a surprise were the paintings on the walls and ceiling of the Great Hall. In the style of the Baroque master Andrea Pozzo, they receded in perspective to infinite heights in a virtuoso display of trompe l’œil, as if the ceiling itself had been lifted away to reveal a starry Empyrean.
At the centre, ascending to the glories of Heaven and supported by crowds of winged cherubim, was the figure of a crowned king, presumably Charles II, while at the edges of the triumphal scene, trampled underfoot in the outer darkness, crouched the squat figure of Satan and his attendant minions, a parade of grotesques straight out of Dante’s Inferno. Around His Satanic Majesty there writhed various figures in aspects of eternal torment. Not quite the Sistine Chapel, but effective nonetheless.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” said Clark. “It was one of the last commissions by Lady Sadleir, and dates from around 1665. It’s called The Triumph of Loyalty and the Defeat of Sedition. Those unfortunate chaps getting their what-for from the Devil are the Regicides. Cromwell, you can recognise by his grotesquely exaggerated wart; there’s Ireton, Harrison, Pride and all the rest.”
One corner of the room was covered in scaffolding and the entire framework was draped in cotton sheets as if to contain the spread of dust. At the bottom, a corner of the covers flapped open and Leventhorp peeked inside. The scaffolding was protecting a wall painting of the Doom or Last Judgement. It was a continuation of the torment of the Regicides from the ceiling, as a further series of unfortunates was dragged into the gaping jaws of Hell by eager demons. There was something odd about it, but before he could formulate just exactly what it was, the fabric was plucked out of his hand and firmly tied back in place by Mr Clark.
“It’s just some remedial work I’m doing on the wall paintings,” he said. “I’m a trained art restorer as well, you see. I learnt my trade at the Courtauld Institute in London when I was younger. The paintings are showing their age, three centuries of candle smoke and oil lamps has left them looking a little tired, shall we say, and in need of some curatorial TLC.
“I suggest we go and visit the Brockstone Chapel, and take the prayer-book back to its original home. Though of course, alas, it will have to end up in the bank vault with the rest of them.”
It was a short walk across the lawn and through a copse of beech trees to reach the chapel which, although small, had a certain quiet grandeur to it.
Once inside, the two men stood at the head of the nave.
“Let’s see what the psalm for today is,” said Clark. But as he flicked through the pages, the prayer-book sprang open at the missing leaf. “Oh, it’s been defaced! Not the first time that Sir Samuel has vandalised Sadleir property, I fear.”