ENDERBY CASTLE
While their elders consulted together in the library the four young
girls, Odalite, Wynnette, Elva and Rosemary, accompanied by Le and
escorted by Joshua, walked across the courtyard, and entered the old
castle to explore its interior.
Le had in his hands a little guidebook to the castle and town of
Enderby, to which he referred from time to time.
Climbing over piles of rubbish, of fallen stones, covered with moss and
lichen, and half buried in rank growth of thistles and briers, they
entered an arched doorway, and found themselves upon the stone floor of
the great feudal castle hall, which had once re-echoed to the orgies of
the feudal baron and his rude retainers after a hunt, a foray, or a
battle, but now silent and abandoned to the birds of night and prey.
At one end of this hall was a great chimney—a chimney so vast that
within its walls, from foundation stone to roof, a modern New York
apartment house of seven floors might have been built, with full suits
of family rooms on every floor.
“And this is only the hall fireplace,” said Le. “The kitchen fireplace
is immediately below this, and still broader and deeper than this, but
we cannot get to it because it is buried in fallen stones and mortar. At
least, I mean, all entrance to that part of the castle is.”
They now noticed that the cavity of the deep chimney place was furnished
on each side with stone benches, built in with the masonry.
“Here,” said Le, “the wandering minstrel or the holy pilgrim, of the
olden time found warm seats in winter to thaw out their frozen limbs.”
Next they noticed that the hearth of the fireplace, raised about a foot
above the level of the floor, extended about a quarter of the length of
the hall itself.
“This,” said Le, “must be the dais for the upper portion of the table,
at which sat my lord baron, his family, his knights, and his guests,
while on each side of the lower part sat the retainers. But say! Here is
a trapdoor. Immediately under here must have stood my lord baron’s
chair. Let us look at that.”
Le referred to the guidebook, and read:
“‘Immediately before the hall fireplace and on the elevated dais is a
trapdoor connected with a walled-in shaft, descending through the
castle kitchen under the hall, and into the ‘Dungeon of the Dark
Death,’ under the foundations of the castle. In the rude days of the
feudal system prisoners taken in war, or criminals convicted of high
crime, were let down through that trapdoor into the Dungeon of the
Dark Death, and never heard of more. And the lord of the castle held
high festival above while his crushed victims perished below.’”
“Ur-r-r-r-r-r-r!” cried Wynnette, with a shudder. “That accounts for my
murderous instincts against Anglesea and other culprits. I inherit it
through my mother—from all these vindictive old vampires.”
“Oh, Le! let us go away. I don’t like it. I don’t like it!” pleaded
little Elva.
“No more do I,” said Rosemary.
“Stay,” said Le. “Here is something more about the place.” And he read:
“‘This trapdoor has not been opened for more than fifty years.
Tradition says that early in the last century a groom in the service
of the lords of Enderby secretly married my lady’s maid, and as
secretly murdered her and threw her body, together with that of her
infant, down the shaft, for which crimes he was tried, condemned, and
executed, and afterward hung in chains outside the wall of Carlisle
Castle. The trapdoor was ordered to be riveted down by the then ruling
Lord of Enderby, and has never since been raised.’”
“Ur-r-r-r-r-r-r!” again muttered Wynnette. “That’s worse than the
other.”
“Let us go away. Oh, I want to go away!” wailed Elva, trembling.
“Oh, please, please come away, Le,” pleaded Rosemary.
“Now just wait one moment, dears. You will not mind looking out of these
windows, loopholes, or whatever they are, that open through the
twelve-foot thickness of the outer wall. Great pyramids of Egypt, what
mighty builders were these men of old!” exclaimed Wynnette, walking off
toward the east side of the hall, where there were a row of windows six
feet high and four feet wide on the inner side, but diminishing into
mere slits on the outer side.
“Here the baron’s retainers could safely draw their bows and speed their
arrows through these loopholes at the besiegers without,” said Wynnette,
curiously examining the embrasures. “But, ah me, in times of peace what
a dark hall for the dame and her maidens.”
“Well, let us go on now,” said Le. “There is no means of entering the
lower portions of the building from the outside, but I suppose there
must be from the inside.”
So they left the hall by the side door and entered a corridor of solid
masonry, so dark that Le had to take a match and a coil of taper from
his pocket and strike a light.
This led them at last into a large circular room, with lofty but narrow
windows, through which the morning sun streamed, leaving oblong patches
of sunshine on the stone floor. A door on the side of the room, between
two of the windows, had fallen from its strong hinges, and the opening
was dark.
Le approached it, and discovered the top of a narrow flight of stairs
built in the thickness of the wall.
Le referred to his guidebook, and read:
“‘Strong chamber in the round tower west of the great hall, ancient
guardroom for men-at-arms. A secret staircase in the wall whose door
was in former times concealed by the leathern hangings of the room,
leads down to the torture chamber below.’
“Who will go down with me?” inquired Le.
“I will,” promptly answered Wynnette.
“And I,” added Odalite.
Elva and Rosemary would have shrunk from the adventure, but partly
driven by the fear of being left alone, and partly drawn by curiosity,
they consented to descend into the depths.
Le preceded the party with his lighted taper, and they followed him down
the steep and narrow stairs, and found themselves last in a dark,
circular room, with strong, iron-bound doors around its walls. Some of
these had fallen from their hinges, showing openings into still darker
recesses.
Le, with his taper, crept along the wall exploring these, and found them
to be dark cells, scarcely with space enough to hold a well-grown human
being. Many of them had rusting staples in the walls, with fragments of
broken iron chains attached.
Even the young midshipman shuddered and refrained from calling the
attention of his companions to the horror.
But he made more discoveries than these. Groping about the gloomy place
with his wax taper, he came upon various rusted and broken instruments
of torture, the thumbscrew, the iron boot, the rack, all of which he
recognized from the descriptions he had read of these articles
elsewhere; and there were other instruments that he had read of, yet
knew at sight to be of the same sort; so that at last, when he came upon
the grim headsman’s block, it was with a feeling of relief.
“What are those things, Le?” inquired Odalite, following him.
“Oh, rubbish, dear. Be careful where you step, you might fall over
them,” he replied. “And I think we had better leave this place and go to
the upper air now,” he added, groping along the walls to find the door
at the foot of the stairs down which they had come.
He found the place, but found also something that had escaped his
notice. It was a niche in the wall beside the door. The niche was about
six feet high and two feet broad; the opening was rough and ragged at
the sides, and there was a pile of rubbish at the foot, which on
examination proved to be fallen stones and mortar.
Le trimmed his taper until it gave a brighter light, and then referred
to his guidebook and unadvisedly read aloud from it:
“‘In the Torture Chamber. Cunigunda. At the foot of the stairs leading
down to this dreadful theater of mediæval punishment stands, in the
right side of the wall, a curious niche, high and narrow, which was
once the living grave of a lovely woman. About fifty years ago the
closing front wall of this sepulcher fell and revealed a secret of
centuries. A tradition of the castle tells of the sudden disappearance
of the Lady Cunigunda of Enderby, the eldest daughter of the baron and
the most beautiful woman of her time, for whose hand princes and
nobles had sued in vain, because her affections had become fixed on a
yeoman of my lord’s guard. In the spring of her youth and beauty she
was mysteriously lost to the world. Her fate would never have been
discovered had not the closing wall of the niche at the foot of the
stairs in the torture chamber fallen and disclosed the upright
skeleton and the stone tablet, upon which was cut, in old English
letters, the following inscription:
CUNIGUNDA,
Who, for dishonoring her noble family
By a secret marriage with a common yeoman,
Was immured alive in the 20th year of her age,
January 24th, 1236.
_Requiescat in Pace._
The poor bones, after six centuries, were coffined and consigned, with
Christian rites, to the family vault at Enderby Church.’”
“I say, Le, what a perfectly devilish lot those old nobles were! I proud
of my ancestry! I would much rather know myself to be descended in a
direct line from Darwin’s monkeys,” said Wynnette.
“But, my dear, these men lived in a rude and barbarous age. Their
descendants in every generation have become more civilized and
enlightened, you know.”
“No, I don’t know. And I like the monkeys a great deal better as
forefathers!”
“Shall we try to find our way to the ‘Dungeon of the Dark Death’? You
know, it is under the kitchen which is under the great hall. But stop a
minute,” said Le: and he referred again to the guidebook, and then
added: “No, we cannot go there. There is no reaching it. The only
entrance into that deep perdition is by the trapdoor, on my lord baron’s
dais, and down the hollow, brick-walled shaft that runs through the
middle of the kitchen into the abyss below.”
“I am glad of it. Let us go to the upper light. Look at Elva!” said
Odalite, in an anxious tone.
Le turned the light of the taper on the little girl, and saw her
leaning, pale and faint and dumb, on the bosom of her sister.
“My poor, little frightened dove. Why, Elva, darling, what is the
matter?” tenderly inquired the midshipman.
The kind sympathy broke down the last remnant of the child’s
self-possession, and she broke into a gush of sobs and tears.
Le handed his taper to Wynnette and took Elva up in his arms, laid her
head over his shoulder, and carried her upstairs, followed by Odalite,
Wynnette and Rosemary.
In the sun and air Elva recovered herself, and the little party left the
ruins to return to the new castle.
“I wonder my Uncle Enderby does not have that dreadful old thing pulled
down,” piped Elva, in a pleading tone.
“Pulled down!” exclaimed Wynnette. “Why, that ancient castle is the
pride of his life. The modern one is nothing to be compared with it in
value. The oldest part of the ruin is said to be eight hundred years
old, while the modern castle is only a poor hundred and fifty. Why, he
would just as soon destroy his own pedigree and have it wiped out of the
royal and noble stud-book—I mean, omitted from ‘Burke’s Peerage’—as pull
down that ancient fortress. Why, child, you do not dream of its value.
You have not seen a quarter part of its historical attractions. If you
hadn’t flunked—I mean fainted, you poor, little soul—we should have gone
up the broad staircase leading from the hall to the staterooms
above—many of them in good preservation—and seen the chamber where King
Edward the First and Queen Eleanor slept, when resting on their journey
to Scotland. Also the other chamber where William Wallace was confined
under a strong guard when he was brought a prisoner to England. Well, I
don’t believe a word of it myself. I suppose all these old battle-ax
heroes that ever crossed the border are reported to have slept in every
border castle, from Solway Firth to the North Sea. Still, the old ruin
is very interesting indeed. And if the makers of the guidebooks like to
tell these stories, why, I like to look at the historical rooms.”
Wynnette’s last words brought them to the new castle, which they entered
just in time for luncheon, in the morning room.