The ceiling was no less impressive in reproduction, but something else caught Leventhorp’s attention. A small inset photograph clearly showed the section of wall painting depicting the torments of Hell, of which he had previously only caught the barest of glimpses behind the scaffolding. The artist had clearly taken great relish in enumerating the miseries of the damned Parliamentarians and their fellow-travellers—as inventive and gruesome as any medieval Doom. Leventhorp studied the agonised faces of the unrepentant sinners as they were crammed into Hell’s gaping maw: naked, shivering, and somehow very familiar.
Still clutching the heavy volume, he ran out to the Great Staircase, and compared each face from the Brockstone wall paintings with his ancestors’ likenesses. They were identical. Each face, from his recently deceased third cousin to the scowling enmity of Sir Samuel had been incorporated into the apocalyptic wall painting, and each writhing victim had been given their own attendant demon and unique mode of torture. At the very edge of the dismal procession, one figure had been left seemingly unfinished, as if the space were being readied to take the artist’s impression.
He put the volume down and went searching for his car keys. He decided that he would drive over to Brockstone and get to the bottom of whatever mischief was going on. No matter what obscure genealogy had led him here to Gaulsford, he felt some sort of family honour was at stake and the memory of Clark’s deliberate shielding of the wall painting from him smacked of subterfuge and contempt. He would demand to see it, and observe Clark’s reactions: even if it were a mere bagatelle and mockery on his part, it was certainly in dubious taste and he would have no compunction in venting his disgust to the supercilious estate manager.
The gates of Brockstone were locked, but a small postern gate was open and Leventhorp entered unseen. He walked through the landscaped gardens and past the chapel, which was wreathed in a sombre gloom. There were no owls in flight tonight; only strange rustlings and cries from the nocturnal fauna in the surrounding undergrowth broke the stillness of the moonlit night.
As he approached Brockstone Court, the house was in darkness except for a single light which blazed in the Great Hall. Leventhorp crept up to the mullioned windows and peered inside. The dust-sheets had been removed from the scaffolding and Clark was kneeling on the upper tier with an artist’s palette and brush in his hands. After a few minutes of thoughtful dabbing at a segment of the wall painting, he climbed down from the scaffold and stood back to admire his handiwork. Leventhorp threw himself down amongst the shrubbery as Clark strode over and flung open the window to dispel the lingering paint fumes. From his den amongst the leaves, Leventhorp could see the light in a far annexe switch on and then a gurgle of steam rose from the drains. Clark was obviously cleaning himself up, having finished his artistic efforts for the day.
Leventhorp rose again from his hiding place and leaned over the windowsill to better observe the wall painting, which was now clearly visible through the unencumbered scaffolding. He saw his ancestors held up for public humiliation in various ridiculous and lurid scenarios, just as the magazine article had reproduced, except now, viewing the images in person, their impact was exponentially greater. At the sight of this obscenity, he felt the old familial acrimony against the Sadleirs rise within him like a sudden delirious fever. It was just as Mr Clark had described: an instinctive, almost genetic hatred. Like fox and hound, like barn owl and shrew. Before he knew it Leventhorp had scrambled over the windowsill and made his way into the Hall.
Up close, the images were detailed and exact renditions of Sir Samuel’s lineage, with the likenesses of each figure deliberately copied from the family portraits in the Great Staircase at Gaulsford. And now, he saw to his disgust that the final figure had been completed by Clark with Leventhorp’s own visage, with his doppelgänger staring gormlessly into the Hellmouth whilst being intimately skewered by the red-hot poker of his demonic companion.
He climbed up onto the scaffolding for a closer look at this outrageous work of pictorial libel. And as he regarded the awful images he felt a destructive urge rise with in him, an iconoclastic zeal as fanatical as any of his forebears. A drum of turpentine stood amidst the painterly paraphernalia on the topmost tier of the scaffold. Leventhorp unscrewed the cap and began to fling the contents at the wall paintings, feeling a deep satisfaction as the images dissolved into chaos, their outlines collapsing and streaming down the walls in streaks of colour like some abstract expressionist mess by Jackson Pollock.
Leventhorp broadcasted the solvent without discrimination. Cromwell and Ireton faded into nothingness, angels and demons were united in their common fate; even the majestic finery of Charles II took the brunt of a well aimed squib and dissolved into a gelatinous ichor which dripped onto the floor in variegated puddles. The images were fading into obscurity, evaporating into the bare outlines limned by their under-drawings. The air was now shimmering with fumes and Leventhorp ran to the window to escape the choking vapours of the turpentine. The distant sound of a door slamming signalled to him that Clark was returning for a final review of his work. Leventhorp eased himself back out the window and hurried through the grounds to his discreetly parked car before the alarm could be raised.
Back in the safety of Gaulsford, he poured himself a large whiskey and retired to the library to contemplate the consequences of his impetuous actions. He was at a loss to explain himself. It was as if the vengeful spirit of his ancestor’s Puritanism had short-circuited the centuries to possess his soul for a brief moment of insanity. Thankfully, more by good luck than by good judgement, he had kept his leather driving gloves on, so no incriminating fingerprints had been left at the scene should the police be called.
Yet the question still remained unanswered: what was Clark doing painting an image of him on the walls of Brockstone Court? He had told Leventhorp that his family had served the Sadleirs for generations—did their service include more than just simply rendering the daily round of household duties? Was Mr Clark the hierophant of some vengeful ritual against the Lords of Gaulsford: a legacy of Dame Sadleir’s unquenchable ire? And what was the meaning of the strange prayer-book and its vicious and unauthorised psalmody?
The words of the local historian circled in his mind: Highly irregular. Both a curse and an invocation.
He needed to consult a bible, and unsurprisingly, there were several to choose from in the Gaulsford library. He climbed the unsteady ladder, lifted down an old Victorian leather-bound copy of the King James Version and opened it at the Book of Psalms, number 109.
Was he, Jonathan Leventhorp, being cursed somehow for the iniquity of his own forebears? Cursed via some unforgiven hereditary guilt for the grotesque vandalism of Sir Samuel so many generations before?
Leventhorp thought about his previous life eking out a pathetic existence on the other side of the world, and the equally peripatetic careers of his forebears at Gaulsford—was the line meant to apply to him as well? It seemed eerily apposite.
But this surely wasn’t fair; this couldn’t be the actions of a beneficent deity, one who begged us to turn the other cheek, to love one another as ourselves? Leventhorp began to wonder what strange being the Sadleirs had invoked: this demiurge of Brockstone, this jealous God, brimming with wrath and vengefulyea, unto the tenth generation. He read the awful maledictions of the psalm again.