Death, the Knight, and the Lady: A Ghost Story

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

I opened it. The first thing I saw was the picture of a skull drawn in faded ink upon the yellow title-page. Then, under the skull, written in what, even in those old days, must have been a boy's scrawl, this—

"The blacke worke of deathe herein sette downe is bye y^e hande of Geoffry Lely hys page."

Whose page? I knew well.

Then, on the next leaf, in the same handwriting, but smaller and more cramped, I read the following. It was written in the old English style, and the queer spelling of the words I cannot imitate, as I write only from remembrance.

"Before daylight of that dark and bloody day a week agone now, by lantern light we left the court-yard and rode down the avenue, Sir Gerald on his black horse Badminton, I on the bay mare Pimpernel. In the black dark of the avenue nothing could I see, but followed, led by the sound of Badminton's hoofs, the clink of Sir Gerald's scabbard, and the tinkling bells of the little hawke that sat hooded and drowsing upon his wrist.

"Had I followed a common man I might have asked of him what place hath a hawke on the wrist of a man with a sword by his side and pistols at his holster, but Sir Gerald I have followed my life long without question, and without question would have ridden behind him to death.

"In the road beyond the darkness of the trees we paused, each at five paces from the other; the clouds in the easternmost part of the sky were all cracked where the day was breaking through; a dour and dark morning was it, and no sound to hear but a plover crying weep, weep, and the little tinkle ever and anon of the hawke's bells.

"I watched the wind toss Sir Gerald's black hair and lift the plume of his hat, and let it fall, and lift it again, and let it fall, light as if 'twere the fingers of a woman at play with it. He was resting in his saddle as if a-thinking, then touching Badminton with the spur, he led the way from the road on to the moor, the two horses' hoofs striking as one.

"We passed the shoulder of the hill and down to the Gimmer side, and there by the river we stopped again and Sir Gerald sat and seemed a-listening to the mutter of the water and the wuther of the wind in the reeds; but he was in sore trouble, that I knew by the way his head was bent and by the sighs that broke from him ever and anon.

"And where his trouble lay I knew, for I had but to look the way his head was turned, and see Castle Sinclair, all towers and turrets, set up against the morning which was breaking quickly out from under the clouds.