"It seems such a lonely place for a church," said Githa. "I often wonder if there used to be a village here in the Middle Ages. It's a chapel of ease now to Elphinstone; we only have service here on Sunday afternoons, except on the first Sunday in the month. Not many people come, only a few of the farmers about. I wish I could take you inside, but the door's locked, and the clerk lives too far off for us to go and borrow the keys."
By peeping through the windows they could see the ancient carved choir stalls, and some tattered flags, placed as memorials of long-ago battles. A few sculptured tombs, with knights in effigy, were also dimly discernible in the transept.
"They belong to the Denham family," explained Githa. "They used to be the great people of the neighbourhood once, and they still own Malbury Hall, that quaint old place with the moat round it. No, they don't live there; it's let to some Americans. The Denhams are too poor now to keep it up. This is their coat of arms over the porch—a griffin holding a sword. Once they used to come to church with all their followers; it must have been a grand sight. I often wish I could shut my eyes and catch a vision of it. They tied their horses to those yew-trees; the rings are still there. Then they would come clattering with their spurs up the paved path, and the ladies would come too, with little pages to hold up their Genoese velvet trains, and the very same bell would be ringing that rings now, and perhaps some of them would sit in the same places that we do. They were all baptized, and married, and buried here."
"And do they haunt the church?" asked Gwethyn with a little shudder.
"Many people say they do. I don't think anyone cares to come here after dark. Sir Ralph is supposed to walk, and Lady Margaret. They go down that path, towards the Wishing Well."
"Really a 'wishing well'?" queried Gwethyn.
"So folks say. It's very, very ancient. Shall we go and look at it? Oh, we shan't meet Sir Ralph and Lady Margaret! Don't be afraid—it's hardly dusk yet."
Githa led the way along an overgrown little path among the bushes. In a corner of the churchyard, overshadowed by thick trees, lay the well, a pool of water about six feet square, with walls like a bath. A few broken pieces of masonry lay about.
"It's sometimes called the Black Friar's well," continued Githa, still acting as guide. "He lived during the great Black Death in the reign of Edward III. The church was closed then, because the rector and most of his flock had died of the plague; but one of the Dominican friars used to come from Cressington Abbey and preach in the churchyard to the few people who were left, and baptize the babies in this well. There was a sort of little chapel over it once, but that's supposed to have tumbled down long before the time of the plague, perhaps even before the church was built."
"What have Sir Ralph and Lady Margaret to do with it? Did they die of the plague?" asked Gwethyn.