The Holy Innocents

It was not a long drop, perhaps only a distance of seven or eight feet, but I could have done myself more hurt than I did. As it was, I struck my head on the flagstones, a blow which made my senses reel, and twisted one leg beneath me.

How long I lay there, stunned, I have no idea, but it could not have been many minutes. Cautiously and painfully, I dragged myself upright, using my cudgel, which, by God’s providence, had fallen close at hand, as a prop to aid me in getting to my feet. My left ankle was very tender when I first put it to the ground, but after hobbling to and fro across the courtyard several times, the pain grew less and it was able to take my weight. I had been extremely fortunate to escape without any broken bones.

A glance in the direction of the covered gallery showed it irreparably damaged. Apart from the roof, which now sagged drunkenly in the middle, the walkway stood in two separate parts, the flagstones beneath strewn with fragments and splinters of wood, some of them sizeable pieces of timber. It would take the craft of a master carpenter, aided by his apprentice, to try to put it right, although in my estimation it was past repairing, a structure long neglected and rotted by the effects of the weather.

I realized that I had almost forgotten my original fear in the aftermath of my fall and concern for my body’s wellbeing. Now, it returned in full force, and I gazed up at the storeroom door above me, in terror of seeing some ghostly, childish face peering over the end of the broken balustrade.

There was nobody there, and the door was shut. At first, I thought it a trick of the moonlight, and stood on tiptoe, craning my neck, getting as close to the rickety structure of the gallery as I dared, but I was not mistaken. Whoever, or whatever, had opened the door had now closed it.

Again plucking up my courage, I decided to search the kitchen building. I hobbled towards the door and tried the latch, but it was barred and bolted. Moreover, the keys were not upon my person. Before retiring to rest, I had placed them for safekeeping beneath the mattress. Once more, fear pricked along my spine. Doors had been opened that night, but whether by witchcraft or by human agency I had, as yet, no means of knowing.

Before I had time to give the matter much thought, however, I was struck by another consideration, and one of more immediacy. As I did not have the keys upon me, I was unable to re-enter the front part of the house except by the bedchamber door, to which my only access was the gallery, now broken. I was trapped in the inner courtyard unless, by some chance, the intruder had also unfastened the door into the downstairs passage. But it, too, was locked and bolted.

Desperately, I cast about for some way out of my predicament. The moonlight aided my search, its pale beams showing me imperfections in the stone of the wall, outside the counting-house window, which might provide me with a foothold. I judged that the floor of the gallery at either end was still firm enough to support my weight, and if I could manage to scale the wall and heave myself over the balustrade, I would be able to re-enter the main bedchamber.

I laid my cudgel on the ground and began the ascent, my hands still slippery with fear. But as so often throughout my life, my height was to prove a blessing. A jutting stone some eight or nine inches above the ground and close to the gallery, enabled me to gain a foothold, and, by dint of clinging to another protuberance with my right hand and stretching my left arm as far above my head as I could reach, I was able to catch hold of one of the balusters. After a moment in which to steady myself, I swung my right arm across and grabbed a second baluster, allowing myself to hang by my arms from the broken structure, which creaked and groaned a little, but showed no signs of total collapse. Encouraged, I began to haul myself up by my hands until, after much sweating and heaving, I managed to fling first one arm, and then the other over the balustrade. This way, I obtained sufficient purchase to pull myself up until I found kneeholds between the uprights. Eventually, exchanging kneeholds for toeholds, I managed to get one leg across the handrail and, moments later, was crouched outside the open bedchamber door, gasping heavily from my exertions. My hands were scratched and bleeding, my whole body aching unpleasantly from head to foot. I straightened and stepped into the shelter of the room, closing the door behind me.

Yet again, for the past quarter-hour, or for however long my climb had taken me, I had forgotten my terror, but now, as before, it came flooding back. I picked up my abandoned candlestick, blundered downstairs and felt with trembling fingers for the bunch of keys beneath my mattress. They were still there and I gave a groan of relief Somewhere at the back of my mind had lurked an unacknowledged fear that they might have been stolen from me by my ghostly visitor.