Behind These Walls

A mysterious young woman shares her history in this enchanting tale by Eirin Thompson.

There was something quite fascinating about the costumed interpreter at Hardfield Hall . . .

AFTER the fire, I broke things off with Jamie. When I looked in the mirror and saw the scars that would always be with me, I didn’t want to be a bride who set people talking for the wrong reasons.

I didn’t want them to coo over what a rock Jamie was, marrying me despite my disfigurement, standing by me.

The fire wasn’t my fault. It certainly wasn’t his.

Now I had no choice but to put up with my scars, but there was no reason why Jamie should.

“But I still love you, Ellie,” he insisted. “This doesn’t change anything.”

It did. It altered everything. I was no longer the girl Jamie had dated, and to whom he had proposed.

I was damaged.

Strangers stared at me on the street and in shops.

It was only right to end things with Jamie, and set him free to love someone else, someone beautiful.

Being without him broke my heart, but I was determined not to let it show. I went back to work, helped Mum and Dad in the house, saw friends. Mum knew, though. “Ellie, how about taking a break, getting away from everything for a while – it might brighten you up.”

It wasn’t a bad idea. Wherever I went, people would still look twice at me, but a change of scenery might do me good.

“There was an ad for coach tours in the paper at the weekend,” Mum said. “Now, where did I put it?”

Sure enough, a local firm was running a series of trips, lasting from four days to a week.

It wasn’t as exciting as going somewhere hot, but it would all be organised and I’d be guaranteed travelling companions.

I found one setting off in just a fortnight, rang up and got the last place. Pulling out my suitcase, I opened it to find things from my last holiday. Jamie and I had gone to France.

There were postcards, a bottle of sun-cream, the receipt from our hotel.

We’d had a great time.

I didn’t think I’d need my shorts and halter-tops this time around – the tour was of historical England.

I expected the grand buildings we’d be visiting would be impossible to heat and therefore chilly, even in summer.

****

Our tour guide was called Avril, and as everyone else was in pairs or groups, I sat with her at the front of the coach.

She was busy for much of the time, filling in forms, texting her office and calling ahead to where we were going, but she chatted when she could and shared sweets with me.

The first morning, we had breakfast at our hotel, then set off for Hardfield Hall, an Elizabethan residence.

“We have a short DVD, which we’ll show you now, introducing you to Hardfield,” Avril said.

“On arrival, there’ll be twenty minutes in the coffee shop, after which you’ll be shown around by living history interpreters.

“They’re a knowledgeable bunch, so feel free to ask them all your questions!”

Hardfield Hall, I learned as we travelled, had been built between 1593 and 1600 by the Sackville family, and was what is known as a “prodigy house” – a large, showy country house built by courtiers and other wealthy families.

At the Hall, our first interpreter introduced himself as Robert Sackville, the original owner.

He was not a courtier, but he was expected to accommodate Queen Elizabeth and her

entourage of up to 150 members of court, when she was in the area.

The monarch was known for speaking her mind if hospitality was not up to scratch, we heard, but Hardfield Hall had always met with her approval.

Sackville was welldressed, wearing a green velvet jacket with puffed shoulders and a white ruff around his neck.

“He looks the part,” the woman next to me said. I nodded.

After giving us facts about the house’s façade he led us to the kitchen, where we were met by John, the cook.

“Welcome, dear gentlefolk, to the kitchen of Hardfield Hall. Here, we are preparing a banquet.

“As thou seest, we have a civet of hare, a quarter of stag which has been a night in salt, a stuffed chicken and a loin of veal.”

Our group gasped, but John wasn’t finished.

“This enormous pie contains a whole roe deer, a gosling, three capons, six chickens, ten pigeons and one young rabbit.

“For seasoning or stuffing we have a minced loin of veal, two pounds of fat and twenty-six hard-boiled eggs, covered with saffron and flavoured with cloves. “That is the first course!” Everyone giggled.

Robert Sackville’s “man” – a kind of valet – took over the tour, showing us along draughty corridors, hung with huge portraits in oils. Then Agnes, a “waiting gentlewoman”, led us upstairs.

At this point I realised I needed to go to the loo.

As Agnes stopped to introduce the portraits on a long gallery, I seized the opportunity and scampered off.

On my return, the party had moved on without me.

I strained to hear their voices, but failed.

I’d just have to look around until I found them.

Opening the first doors, I discovered not a soul.

Behind the third, however, was the welcome presence of another living history guide in a saffroncoloured velvet gown.

“I’m so sorry to land on you out of sequence,” I began. “I’ve become separated from my party. I’m Ellie. I haven’t been on a tour like this before.”

The interpreter was in front of a huge, empty fireplace, and as she turned to face me, I saw that she was wearing a veil.

“Ellie. Is that the diminutive form of Eleanor?”

“I suppose it could be, but in my case it’s just Ellie – that’s all I’ve ever been called. Who are you?”

“I am Katherine Sackville. My father, Robert, built this house.”

“I’m glad I’ve met you, Katherine – or do people call you Kate?”

I couldn’t read her expression because of the veil, but she seemed to flinch.

“Only one person ever called me Kate, and that was a long time ago.”

“It must be an interesting job,” I said, “showing people what life was like hundreds of years ago.”

“A job? I do not know what thou intends.”

“Oh, sorry!” I blurted out. “You must stay in character, I suppose.”

Katherine sat down on what looked like an uncomfortable sofa.

“Thou art most strange,” she observed.

I didn’t think she meant my scarring.

“Since I’m here, why don’t you tell me your story,” I suggested.

“My story?”

“About yourself, your life at Hardfield Hall.”

She clasped her hands. “Very well. The Hall was built when I was a girl. I lived here very happily with my mother and father, brother and sisters.

“My father was kind and he believed that daughters should be educated as well as sons, so I learned Latin and French, Mathematics, Astronomy and Philosophy.

“My father said a learned woman would, in turn, educate her children.”

“Do you have children?” Katherine turned her head to the fire.

“I did not marry.”

“Well, where there’s life, there’s hope – right?”

“I will never marry.” “What makes you so sure?” I asked.

“I’ll tell thee. Through my childhood, my father’s dearest friend was Walter Wyntour.

“They had fenced and hunted as young men, and loved to sit by the fire recalling those days.

“We Sackville children had been playmates to the Wyntour children – indeed, we cared for them like kin.

“One day in summer, the eldest son, Richard, declared his love for me.”

“Ooh! Exciting!” I said. “Did you feel the same?”

“I felt like his mirror image. We were so happy. We rushed to tell my father and his father, and all were overjoyed.”

I could sense that joy in the way Katherine sat, puffed up with gladness. Then her shoulders drooped.

“Alas, it was not to be.” “Why? Did he meet someone else?”

“I became ill. The physician was sent for. He told my father and mother it was smallpox.

“It was expected I would die, and if my sisters and brother were similarly afflicted, then it would be the end of our family.”

“But you survived!”

“I did not die, and my sisters and brother were kept away and were spared. But my face . . .”

“You were scarred,” I murmured.

“Dreadfully scarred. I could not expect my Richard to love me any longer when he saw me. I wrote to him, releasing him from our contract.”

“What did he say?”

“He returned a lengthy epistle declaring that he loved me and would always love me, and that the smallpox scars were of no consequence.”

Just like Jamie had done with me. I sighed.

“But you couldn’t accept his assurances?” I asked.

“I could not and would not. He wrote that my beauty was seared on his eyes and would live there for ever.

“He said my skin like winter cream and my rosy cheek would come again in the faces of our children.

“I yearned to believe he could love me still, but wished him instead to be happy with an unblemished bride.

“My parents understood. We concocted a tale that I had run away. They looked for me, sent riders to every

I was no longer the girl Jamie had dated, to whom he had proposed

corner of England, but they could not find me.

“The reason is that I lived in secret, in this house, for the next three years, hoping that Richard would consider himself free to marry another.

“My parents kept the truth from everyone – the servants, my siblings, and especially Richard and his family.”

“You didn’t get to see your sisters and brother any more, or even your maid or cook?” I gasped.

“I saw no-one except my father and mother.”

“That must have been incredibly lonely.”

“Like living in darkness without a chink of light. But worse was to come.

“One night my father brought the news that Richard had died, crossing a river on horseback.

“Someone had said they had seen me in Norwich – they had not, of course – but he had gone in search of me. He had drowned.”

Though she wasn’t really Katherine Sackville, and though it had all happened such a long time ago, I felt tears prick my eyes.

“What did you do then?” I asked. “Did you come out of hiding?”

“When my father told me of Richard’s fate, I was desolate, and we three were ashamed of our deception, without which Richard would have surely lived.

“I died within two weeks, of a broken heart.”

“How peculiar!” I said, wiping my eyes. “Having a living history interpreter tell of her own death!”

“Thou art truly most strange,” the young woman said again.

“Look, I don’t think anyone’s coming back for me. I’d better try to find where they’ve gone.

“It was lovely meeting you, Katherine – and you told your sad story beautifully.”

When I re-emerged on to the upper floor, I could hear distant applause.

I hurried towards it and rediscovered my party, gathered round a harpsichord.

At least, I thought it was a harpsichord, but the young female interpreter in the seat introduced it as a virginal, before playing a piece by William Byrd.

She said her name was Elizabeth Sackville, and she was the youngest of the house’s family.

They had been a family of six – mother, father, three daughters and a son – but one daughter, Katherine, had disappeared, aged twenty, and had never been seen again.

“My mother and father mourned her loss for the rest of their lives,”

Elizabeth said. “It came to be known as the Mystery of Hardfield Hall.”

“Were the servants suspected?” one woman in the group asked.

“My father would not allow one ill word to be spoken of the servants. He put all his faith in them.

“Riders were sent to every part of England in search of Katherine, and we never could understand why our sister would take flight in such a manner.”

“But you found out, in the end,” I pointed out.

“No, madam. We never did learn of our sister’s fate.”

“But the smallpox, the veil! Richard Wyntour!”

“Katherine was afflicted with smallpox, it is true,” Elizabeth replied. “I see you have been making a study of our family.

“But while it was a cursed ailment, I assure you my sister did not die. She lived, in spite of it.”

“But she was terribly scarred.” My hand strayed to my own scars.

“I have heard this, but I do not know, for we siblings were sent away during her illness, and afterwards I never saw her again.

“As I told those gathered here, she simply vanished.”

“But that’s only part of the story,” I insisted. “Tell them about her great love, Richard, who had proposed to her, and how she kept herself from him to spare him from having to marry a disfigured bride.”

“My sister was once betrothed to Richard Wyntour, the son of my father’s oldest friend,” Elizabeth conceded.

“He was bereft when Katherine left, and searched in every place for her.”

“Come on, tell it properly,” I urged. “Tell them what happened to him.”

Elizabeth looked mildly disgruntled, but it was such a perfect tale, though sad, that I thought the group deserved to hear it.

“One night, wading across a stream . . .”

“A river, it was a river!” I insisted.

“Perhaps it was a river, then – anyhow, he fell from his horse and was drowned.”

“He was looking for her when it happened! He was looking for Katherine, his love.”

Richard must have been the one person who called her “Kate”. I imagined him dying with her name on his lips.

“Ellie?” Avril, the tour guide, was looking at me a little oddly. “How do you know so much about the Sackvilles – are you related?”

“No!” I said. “But I got lost, and then I found the guide who plays Katherine Sackville, the one who supposedly disappeared, and she told me what really happened!”

Elizabeth and Avril looked at each other.

Then Avril turned to me. “What do you mean, ‘the guide who plays

Katherine’? There is no interpreter in that role.

“The only family members portrayed are Robert and his wife, Anne, their daughter, Elizabeth, and son, James.”

“But I just saw her,” I insisted. “She was wearing a veil and sitting on the sofa and she told me the whole story.”

“She must have heard the story before,” the interpreter said, dropping her characterisation somewhat. “Have you visited Hardfield Hall previously, madam?”

“I’ve never been here in my life,” I promised, but I was starting to get a peculiar feeling.

****

When I’d said Jamie and I were attending a party on a boat, Mum and Dad were concerned about the danger of someone falling into the water.

We promised not to drink too much, and to be careful out on deck, and we kept our word.

What we didn’t expect was that someone would be careless with the lighter used to light their birthday cake candles, and that it would fall into the hands of a small child.

When I saw the flames, I was down in the seated cabin.

I screamed at everyone up above to get off the boat quickly, and on to the floating boardwalk.

There was a thundering of feet overhead. It seemed everyone was up there except me.

Then, just as I was climbing the ladder to the deck, I heard a child’s crying coming from the bunkroom.

Despite the flames, I had to go back down – there wasn’t anyone else.

I grabbed the little boy, wrapped him in a blanket and bundled him through the smoke, but I knew already that my long hair had caught fire.

I practically threw the child up the narrow ladder, and felt someone pull him to safety.

Then I fell back into the cabin.

That’s all I remember before I woke up in hospital.

Would I do things differently, now that I see the cost of my going back down those steps?

No. I believe I saved a life, and maybe that’s why I was in that place, right there, right then.

When I saw the extent of the scars on my face, I cried. Mum and Dad cried. The nurses cried.

Jamie didn’t cry. Jamie kissed me and hugged me and told me I was still beautiful.

He was the one who’d rescued me, but he’d made a better job of his heroism than I’d done of mine, and lost only some hair and his eyebrows.

I’d pushed him away. Perhaps that was an insult to him.

Was I really saying he wasn’t a decent enough person to see past the scars to the “me” inside?

Did I really believe he couldn’t handle a few lingering stares from strangers?

If he thought I’d bolted, he’d have looked for me, just like Richard had looked for Katherine.

I remembered the balcony at the Hôtel

Castille in Brittany, where he’d proposed a month before the fire.

And our great happiness as we hugged each other tightly.

I didn’t want Jamie to drown in misery, and I didn’t want to nurse a broken heart.

I rang him.

****

“Good to see you’ve got your sparkle back,” Mum said. “I don’t know what happened on that coach trip to turn you around, but you’ve come back a new woman!”

“It’s a funny story, actually,” I said. “I’d tell you, but I don’t think you’d believe me.”

I hardly knew what to believe myself.

The End.