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Have you met nice people?
She used to ask those kinds of questions when I started at the hotel. They dried up eventually when the replies were the same. This time, I considered my answer to be genuine.
Yes. Somebody helped me today carrying things.
I stopped there. I didn’t want to mention the ankle, which continued to ache.
I was still waiting for information on Dunstanburgh. Yvette had promised to get back to me with any ideas as to the origins of the horn and the cave, which she said seemed Arthurian and something somebody might have painted – so perhaps I had seen a picture of it somewhere. I racked my memories, but nothing came back to me.
I outlined the dead bed dilemma to Yvette.
Is there a ghost in the house?
Yvette’s humour fell short of laughs. It wasn’t what I needed. If I was tumbling into a rabbit hole, the last thing I wanted was jokes about hauntings. I flung back the cream duvet and opted for the best solution. I slept in the middle of the bed.
Thirteen
Prudhoe
Prudhoe means “proud hill” and has been the site of a castle since the Norman Conquest. The steep embankment overlooks the River Tyne, and presented besiegers with a disadvantage. It is the one castle in Northumberland that the Scots failed to capture. While the castle itself fell to pieces, the owners, descendants of the Percy family…
…the Georgian mansion sits inside the walls and its interior is fittingly in the Regency period. Quite at odds with the medieval…
Strange happenings are recorded at Prudhoe in the form of bouncing balls, grey women flinging themselves from ramparts and shifting white horses vanishing into thin air. There are reports of underground tunnels…
Itossed Alistair Braithwaite’s guide onto the passenger seat. Having reacquainted myself with the castle’s one page outline, I was probably better off not reading too much into his ramblings. He hadn’t helped me at Dunstanburgh.
Already sweating slightly, I lugged the camera bag over my shoulder and followed the signs. The energetic sun baked everything, and nearing the end of July, the heat had turned the grass yellow, wilted the daisies and dandelions, and cracked the dry mud.
Familiar natural features were incorporated into the scenery: a winding river, as opposed to coastline, and grassy embankments upon which were added man-made defences. Dominating castles were traditionally built on a promontory in a bid to escape siege engines and flying arrows. Even with those commonalities, each castle was unique; a happenstance that continued to feed my appetite. No two were the same; there was no blueprint for the perfect castle.
I used my film camera, frequently stopping to adjust the settings or change a lens or filter. The tilt and shift attachment proved invaluable. Gone was the distortion of converging vertical lines that plagued my earlier photographs. I preferred playing at using the worm’s eye – viewpoints from the ground; I also wished sometimes that I was a bird. Aerial shots were impossible without a helicopter.
The tree-lined and steeply inclined path led up to the gatehouse. The climb triggered another wave of drenching perspiration. I glugged on the water bottle. Inside the inner bailey, and on my left, was the manor house glued to the remains of the keep. The glazed panes and drainpipes were a sacrilege in my opinion; it was like fitting PVC windows on a four-hundred-year-old cottage. Mansions needed deer parks, duck ponds and follies, and shouldn’t be enclosed in medieval walls.
There was one item on my list for Prudhoe: an oriel window in the chapel. I rounded a corner to find what I was supposed to be photographing.
‘Oh.’ The disappointment was a grave addition to my existing one.
I had expected tall perpendicular window frames jutting out in a prominent position. Instead, the chapel’s oriel window was a boxed bay situated halfway up the exterior of the gatehouse, supported underneath by a shelf of stone that itself rested on a wall. Oriels were often used to show off stained glass, especially the family coat of arms. This one had narrow windows and no glass. According to Medici’s notes, it was the earliest oriel window in the north of England.
I performed my duty diligently and without enthusiasm, snapping both exterior and interior shots, trying to magnify the small appendage by augmenting the narrow windows with my zoom lens. And that was it. Done and dusted. One minor window with little merit; it told no tales nor excited my imagination.
Tears welled under my eyelids. Suddenly, without any kind of emotional build-up or logic, I lost my sense of purpose. The whole “photographing castles” adventure was rapidly declining into an anti-climactic self-indulgence. Whoever Medici was, he wasn’t interested in the romantic undertones, the stories buried beneath the surface of stone and grass. He couldn’t help me conjure up the things I felt. He was fascinated with eccentric details and architectural oddities. Why the heck had somebody like David, an eminent professor, attached himself to this lame project?
Fulfilling Medici’s requirements had left me jobless, alone and with nothing that might set me up as a pro. The camera equipment was a big incentive, but there was no prestige to be gained in a portfolio of somebody else’s eclectic photographs. I had not given any thought to what I might do with all the rolls of film I had used.
Conscious of other visitors, I hurried across the bailey and escaped attention in the farthest point: inside the east tower. In the shadows I hid, eyes downcast, and sniffled my way to a pathetic conclusion. I crouched on the floor and repacked the camera bag, slamming things into the foam casing with an uncharacteristic lack of care. Anger had replaced despair and embarrassment; I brushed away the wetness on my cheeks.
Enough, Robyn. I was wallowing in self-pity, and it was loathsome. I was obliged to finish the project whether I wanted to or not. What I needed was a couple of days in Newcastle in a proper hotel to fix my crazy hormones. I settled on my haunches, there in the dark corner of the tower, and slowed my breaths. The temperature dropped, plummeted to icy, and the hairs on the nape of my neck bristled. I went to move, then hesitated.
Ping-pong. Ping-pong.
A ball bounced down the stairs opposite me. Metallic and loud, it echoed sharply. I walked over to pick it up. A child probably dropped it. There was a floor above me, and I might not be alone in the tower. I reached out with my hand, fingers hunting across the stone floor, and found only dirt. I grasped at nothing.
There was no ball. The coldness I felt in my bones wasn’t from today, but from a different time. My mind had been travelling yet again. This damn gift wasn’t under my control at all. I stumbled backwards, aware of the eerie silence, the utter lack of reasoning that could account for the deception. It had never happened like this: eyes open and mind distracted by other things. I had to be meditative and calm, self-aware and open to the past. I raced to think of an obvious trigger, something hopefully innocuous. For the first time, I was afraid I was encountering actual ghosts. Standing up straight, with the sunlight streaming through the doorway, crossing my path and illuminating the ground, I remembered then what I had read. On this occasion Mr Braithwaite’s anecdotes were definitely to blame. Prudhoe was full of wild tales, and highly suited to my active imagination.
Hearing things had to be a sign of fatigue or something insidious. First the horn, now this bouncing ball. I seriously needed a proper break. I would email Medici an apology; I wouldn’t be able to keep up with his tight schedule. I grabbed my things and hurried out of the tower.
