Wyndham Towers

 
     Of secret import, may be from the Queen,
     And they paused not for change of raiment even.
     And yet, in faith, that were but little like;
     Sir Richard had scant dealings with the Court.
     Still—if Northumberland were in arms again.
     ‘T was passing strange.  No beast had gone from rack.
     How had they gone, then?  Who looked on them last?
     Up rose the withered butler, he it was:
     They supped together, of no journey spoke,
     Spoke little, ‘t was their custom; after meal
     The master’s brother sallied forth alone,
     The master stayed within.  “That did he not,”
      Quoth one, “I saw Sir Richard in the close
     I’ the moonrise.”  “‘T was eleven on the stroke,”
      Said Gillian softly, “he, or ‘t was his ghost—
     Methought his face was whiter than my smock—
     Passed through the courtyard, and so into house.
     Yet slept he not there!”  And that other one,
     The guest unwelcome, kinsman little loved
     (How these shrewd varlets turn us inside out
     At kitchen-conclaves, over our own wine!)
     Him had no eye seen since he issued forth
     As curfew sounded. “Call me lying knave”—
     He of the venison-pasty had the word—
     “And let me nevermore dip beak in ale
     Or sit at trencher with good smoking meat,
     If I heard not, in middle of the night,
     The cock crow thrice, and took it for a sign.”
      “So, marry, ‘t was—that thou wert drunk again.”
      But no one laughed save he that made the jest,
     Which often happens.  The long hours wore on,
     And gloaming fell.  Then came another day,
     And then another, until seven dawns
     In Time’s slow crucible ran ruddy gold
     And overflowed the gray horizon’s edge;
     And yet no hosts at table—an ill thing!
     And now ‘t was on the eve of Michaelmas.
 
 
       What could it mean?  From out their lethargy
     At last awaking, searchers in hot haste,
     Some in the saddle, some afoot with hounds,
     Scoured moor and woodland, dragged the neighboring weirs
     And salmon-streams, and watched the wily hawk
     Slip from his azure ambush overhead,
     With ever a keen eye for carrion:
     But no man found, nor aught that once was man.
     By land they went not; went they water-ways?
     Might be, from Bideford or Ilfracombe.
     Mayhap they were in London, who could tell?
     God help us! do men melt into the air?
     Yet one there was whose dumb unlanguaged love
     Had all revealed, had they but given heed.
     Across the threshold of the armor-room
     The savage mastiff stretched himself, and starved.
 
 
       Now where lags he, upon what alehouse bench
     ‘Twixt here and London, who shall lift this weight?
     Were he not slain upon the Queen’s highway
     Ere he reached Town, or tumbled into ford
     With too much sack-and-sugar under belt,
     Then was his face set homeward this same hour,
     Why lingers he?  Ill news, ‘t is said, flies fast,
     And good news creeps; then his must needs be good
     That lets the tortoise pass him on the road.
     Ride, Dawkins, ride! by flashing tarn and fen
     And haunted hollow!  Look not where in chains
     On Hounslow heath the malefactor hangs,
     A lasting terror!  Give thy roan jade spur,
     And spare her not!  All Devon waits for thee,
     Thou, for the moment, most important man!
     A sevennight later, when the rider sent
     To Town drew rein before The Falcon inn
     Under the creaking of the windy sign,
     And slipped from saddle with most valorous call
     For beer to wash his throat out, then confessed
     He brought no scrap of any honest news,
     The last hope died, and so the quest was done.
     “They far’d afoot,” quoth one, “but where God wot.”
 
 
       The blackthorn bloomed anew, and the long grass
     Was starred with flowers that once Griselda prized,
     But plucked not.  She, poor wench, from moon to moon
     Waxed pale and paler: of no known disease,
     The village-leech averred, with lips pursed out
     And cane at chin; some inward fire, he thought,
     Consumed.  A dark inexplicable blight
     Had touched her, thinned her, till of that sweet earth
     Scarce more was left than would have served to grow
     A lily.  Later, at a fresh-turned grave,
     From out the maiden strewments, as it were,
     A whisper rose, of most pathetic breath,
     Of how one maid had been by two men loved—
     No names, God’s mercy!—and that neither man
     Would wed her: why?—conjecture faltered there,
     For whiter was she than new-drifted snow,
     Or bleached lamb’s wool, or any purest thing,
     Such stuff in sooth as Heaven shapes angels of;
     And how from their warm, comfortable beds
     These two men wandered out into the night,
     Sore stricken and distempered in their mind,
     And being by Satan blinded and urged on
     Did fling them headlong from a certain crag
     That up Clovelly way o’erhangs the sea—
     O’erhangs the sea to tempt unhappy folk.
     From door to door the piteous legend passed,
     And like a thrifty beggar took from each.
     And when the long autumnal season came
     To that bleak, bitter coast, and when at night
     The deep was shaken, and the pent cloud broke
     Crashing among the lurid hills of heaven,
     And in brief sudden swoonings of the gale
     Contentious voices rose from the sand-dunes,
     Then to low sobs and murmurs died away,
     The fishwives, with their lean and sallow cheeks
     Lit by the flickering driftwood’s ruddy glow,
     Drew closer to the crane, and under breath
     To awestruck maidens told the fearful tale.
 
 
       The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew.
     ‘T was said that once the Queen reached out her hand—
     This was at Richmond in her palace there—
     And let it rest on Burleigh’s velvet sleeve,
     And spoke—right stately was she in her rouge:
     “Prithee, good Master Cecil, tell us now
     Was ‘t ever known what ill befell those men,
     Those Wyndhams?  Were they never, never found?
     Look you, ‘t will be three years come Michaelmas:
     ‘T were well to have at least the bones of them.
     ‘Fore God, sir! this is something should be seen!
     When the Armada, which God smote and sunk,
     Threatened our Realm, our buckler and our shield
     Were such stout hearts as that young Wyndham was.
     The elder brother—well, Heaven fashioned him.
     Our subjects are our subjects, mark you that.
     Not found, forsooth!  Why, then, they should be found!”
      Fain had my good Lord Burleigh solved the thing,
     And smoothed that ominous wrinkle on the brow
     Of her Most Sweet Imperious Majesty.
     Full many a problem his statecraft had solved—
     How strangle treason, how soothe turbulent peers,
     How foil the Pope and Spain, how pay the Fleet—
     Mere temporal matters; but this business smelt
     Strongly of brimstone.  Bring back vanished folk!
     That could not Master Cecil an he would.
 
 
       The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew.
     Dark were the days that came to Wyndham Towers
     With that grim secret rusting in its heart.
     On the sea’s side along the fissured wall
     The lichen spread in patches of dull gold
     Up to the battlements, at times assailed
     By sheeted ghosts of mist blown from the sea,
     Now by the whistling arrows of the sleet
     Pelted, and thrice of lightning scorched and seamed,
     But stoutly held from dreary year to year
     By legions of most venerable rooks,
     Shrill black-robed prelates of the fighting sort.
     In the wide moat, run dry with summer droughts
     Great scarlet poppies lay in drifts and heaps,
     Like bodies fall’n there in some vain assault.
     Within, decay and dolor had their court—
     Dolor, decay, and silence, lords of all.
     From room to room the wind went shuddering
     On some vague endless quest; now pausing here
     To lift an arras, and then hurrying on,
     To some fresh clue, belike!  The sharp-nosed mouse
     Through joist and floor discreetly gnawed her way,
     And for her glossy young a lodging made
     In a cracked corselet that once held a heart.
     The meditative spider undisturbed
     Wove his gray tapestry from sill to sill.
     Over the transom the stone eagle drooped,
     With one wing gone, in most dejected state
     Moulting his feathers.  A blue poisonous vine,
     Whose lucent berry, hard as Indian jade,
     No squirrel tried his tooth on, June by June
     On the south hill-slope festered in the sun.
     Man’s foot came not there.  It was haunted ground.
 
 
       The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew.
     An oak stood where an acorn tumbled once,
     Ages ago, and all the world was strange.
     Now, in that year King Charles the Second left
     Forever the soft arms of Mistress Gwynn
     And wrapt him in that marble where he lies,
     The moulder’d pile with its entombed Crime
     Passed to the keep of a brave new-fledged lord,
     Who, liking much the sane and wholesome air
     That bent the boughs and fanned the turret’s top,
     Cried, “Here dwell I!”  So fell it on a day
     The stroke of mallets and the screech of saws
     In those bleak chambers made such din as stopped
     The careful spider half-way up his thread,
     And panic sent to myriad furtive things
     That dwelt in wainscots and loved not the sun.
     Vainly in broken phalanx clamorous
     Did the scared rooks protest, and all in vain
     The moths on indolent white damask wings
     At door and casement rallied.   Wyndham Towers
     Should have a bride, and ghosts had word to quit.
 
 
       And now, behold what strange thing came to pass.
     A certain workman, in the eastern wing
     Plying his craft alone as the day waned—
     One Gregory Nokes, a very honest soul,
     By trade wood-carver—stumbled on a door
     Leading to nowhere at an alcove’s end,
     A double door that of itself swung back
     In such strange way as no man ever saw;
     And there, within a closet, on the flags
     Were two grim shapes which, vaguely seen at first
     In the half light, grew presently distinct—
     Two gnomes or vampires seemed they, or dire imps
     Straight from the Pit, in guise fantastical
     Of hose and doublet: one stretched out full length
     Supine, and one in terror-stricken sort