Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose [Stories]

The Odstock Curse

“Finally, ladies and gentlemen, finally I want to come close to home, to your home, that is to say, to Odstock and the bizarre events that happened in your village almost two hundred years ago, events that I venture to suggest still have the capacity to chill your spines.”

Dr Tom Staniforth peered over half-glasses at his awestruck audience. Truth to tell, he felt uneasy himself, not at his spine- chilling material so much as the fact that he had consented to give this talk to an open meeting in a village hall on — of all evenings — October 31st. The timing had not been his suggestion and neither had the title, Horrors for Halloween. He dreaded the possibility that some university colleague had seen the posters or otherwise got wind that a senior member of the Social Anthropology Department was sensation-mongering in the wilds of Wiltshire. He had come simply because Mother had insisted upon it. Pearl Staniforth had arranged the whole thing as a personal tribute to a former colleague of her late husband. And now, wearing one of her appalling red velvet hats, Mother was seated beside this old gentleman in the second row giving a sub-commentary and beaming maternally at regular intervals.

He was almost through, thank God.

“Forgive me if what I have to say about the Odstock curse is familiar to most of you, but I suggest it can still bear telling. I thought it would be instructive in the first place to relate the legend and afterwards to pick out the truth as far as one can verify it from reliable sources — by which I mean parish records, legal documents and, perhaps less reliable, the memoir of a contemporary witness, the village blacksmith. In the anthropological scale of things, it is all very recent.” He paused, widening his eyes. Having abandoned his academic scruples, he might as well milk the subject for melodrama. Spacing his words, he went on, “In the churchyard is an old gravestone partially covered by a briar rose. The stone has an intriguing inscription: “ ‘In memory of Joshua Scamp who died April 1st, 1801. May his brave deed be remembered here and hereafter.’ ”

With strange timing came a distant rumble of thunder that cued an uneasy murmur in the audience. The storm had been threatening for hours.

“Thank you, Josh, we heard the commercial,” Tom Staniforth adroitly remarked, giving the opportunity for everyone to laugh aloud and ease the tension. “The brave deed is a matter of record. The unfortunate Mr Scamp allowed himself to be hanged for a crime he did not commit. He was a gypsy accused of stealing a horse, which was a capital offence in those Draconian times. The real thief and villain of the piece was his feckless son-in-law, Noah Lee, who not only stole the horse but planted a coat belonging to Joshua at the scene of the crime. Joshua was arrested. He refused to plead and maintained a stoic silence throughout his interrogation and trial. He went to the gallows — a public execution in Salisbury — without naming the true culprit. You see, his daughter Mary was expecting a child and he could not bear to see her bereft of a husband, facing a life of misery and destitution.

“Joshua’s heroic act might have gone unremarked were it not for the gypsy community, who protested his innocence. They recovered the corpse of the hanged man from the prison authorities, brought him home to Odstock and gave him a Christian burial. Hundreds attended. And later the same year the real horse-thief, Noah Lee, was arrested at Winchester for stealing a hunter. He was duly hanged, which you may think made a mockery of Scamp’s noble sacrifice. But the truth emerged because Joshua’s daughter Mary no longer felt constrained to remain silent. Great sympathy was extended to her and she was well cared for. And Joshua Scamp became a gypsy martyr. The briar rose was planted at the head of his grave and a yew sapling at the foot. Each year on the anniversary of his execution they would make a pilgrimage here, large numbers from all the surrounding counties.

“Now it seems that after some years the annual visit of the gypsies became a nuisance.” Another clap of thunder tested Staniforth’s powers of improvisation.

“Have it your way, Josh,” he quipped, and earned more laughter, “but there must have been some justification for the rector of Odstock to have sworn in twenty-five special constables to keep the peace. Well, the blacksmith’s memoir claims that the yew tree by the grave had become unsightly and the rector insisted that it was pulled up by the roots — a job that the sexton duly carried out. Unfortunately this measure deeply upset the gypsies and a mob of them descended on the church. There were scuffles as attempts were made to keep them off the sacred ground. The crowning insult was when Mother Lee, the Gypsy Queen, was evicted from the church, where she had come to pray, and the door locked behind her. The lady in question was venerated by the gypsies. She was the elderly mother of Noah Lee, the horse-thief, and she had earned enormous respect for disowning her son and praising the bravery of Joshua Scamp.

“Whatever the rights and wrongs of it — and I imagine there was cause for grievance on both sides — the gypsies were deeply angered. They took their revenge by breaking into the church and attacking everything inside. The pews, the windows, the communion plate, the vestments, the bell-ropes: nothing was spared. The constables were vastly outnumbered and powerless to prevent the desecration. This is all on record.

“Late in the evening, Mother Lee, having allegedly spent some hours in the Yew Tree Inn, returned to the churchyard where her people were still at work uprooting trees. Perched on the church gate, she called them to order and addressed a crowd that included most of the villagers as well as her own flock. Gypsies, as you know, have always claimed powers of divination. Speaking in a voice of doom Mother Lee pointed to the rector and told him that he would not be preaching in Odstock at that time next year. She told the church-warden who had engaged the special constables, a farmer by the name of Hodding, ‘For two years bad luck shall tread upon thy heels. No son of thine shall ever farm thy land.’ The sexton was informed that by next April he would be in his own grave. Two half-gypsy brothers unwise enough to have been employed as special constables were told, ‘Bob and Jack Bachelor, you will die together, sudden and quick.’ And finally she dealt with the door that had been slammed in her face: ‘I put a curse on this church door. From this time whoever shall lock ’un shall die within a year.’ And legend has it that all the curses came true.”

Tom Staniforth let the drama of the story hold sway for a moment. He looked out at his audience and made brief eye contact with several. How gullible people are, he thought. They patently believe this codswallop.

“However, I promised to deal in facts, not legend,” he resumed in a businesslike tone. “Let us see what survives of the Odstock curse when we test it against reliable sources. The parish records are helpful. They tell us that the rector retired within a year, so that part is true, though we have no contemporaneous evidence for the throat cancer which was said to have robbed him of his power of speech. Nothing is known of bad luck afflicting Farmer Hodding except that his wife had a series of stillborn infants, which was not unusual in those days. I was unable to verify the story that his crops failed and his herd had to be slaughtered after contracting anthrax. The sexton, it is true, appears in the records of burials a few months after he was cursed. As for the Bachelor brothers, they are not mentioned in the register again, but superstition has it that a pair of skeletons found in 1929 in a shallow grave on Odstock Down belonged to them.” Staniforth raised his hands to the audience. “So what? Even if they were the brothers, a supernatural explanation is unlikely. The possibility is high that the gypsies took revenge and disposed of the bodies. The so-called power of the gypsy’s curse is undermined if they had to resort to murder to make it come true. To sum up, ladies and gentlemen, I have to say that I find the Odstock curse a beguiling story that, sadly for believers in the occult, falls well within the bounds of coincidence and manipulation.”

He stepped from behind the table. “That concludes my talk. I hope you are reassured and will sleep peacefully tonight. I certainly intend to, and I have spent more time on these legends than most.”

The reception he was given was gratifying. Pearl Staniforth, smiling this way and that as she clapped, prolonged it by at least ten seconds.

And there was a curious effect when the clapping died, because the storm outside had just broken over Odstock and the beating of rain on the roof appeared to sustain the applause. While the downpour continued no one was eager to leave, so the speaker invited questions.

A man at the back of the hall got up. He was one of the committee; earlier he had taken the money at the door. “What a wonderful talk, sir — a fitting subject for the occasion, and so eloquently delivered. I can’t remember applause like that. Just one question, sir. I don’t know if it was deliberate, only when you were discussing the evidence for the curse, you omitted to mention the gypsy’s warning about the church door. What are your views on that?”

“I apologize,” said Staniforth at once. “An oversight. I didn’t mean to ignore it. The story goes that in the years since the curse was made, two people locked the door and suffered the promised fate within a year. But one is bound to ask how many hundreds, or thousands, must have turned the key and survived. You are up against statistical probability, you see.” He smiled, a shade too complacently.

“No, sir,” said the questioner in his broad south Wiltshire tones. “With respect, you’re misinformed. The door has been locked twice since the curse, and only twice in almost two hundred years. The first time was in 1900, in defiance of the curse, when a carpenter was employed to make new gates. He was given the story, but he mocked it, turned the key and paid the price within the twelvemonth. They buried him under the path, between the gates he made and the door he locked. The second time was in the 1930s, when a locum was appointed while the rector was away. This locum dismissed the story as blasphemous and locked the door to uphold the power of the Lord, as he saw it. He was gathered shortly after. When the rector returned, he threw the key into the River Ebble just across the road and the church has never been locked since.”

Deflated, Staniforth said, “I’m obliged to you. I stand corrected then, but I’d still like to see paper evidence of the two alleged deaths.”

“If it didn’t happen, why would the rector throw the key away?”

“Oh, the church rejects superstition as much as modern science does. No doubt he thought it the best way to put an end to such foolishness.”

Happily for Staniforth the questioner was too polite to pursue the matter. The questions turned to the safer topic of witchcraft and after ten minutes a vote of thanks was proposed, coupled with the suggestion that as the rain had eased slightly it might be timely to call the evening to a halt.

For Tom Staniforth it had scarcely begun.

Old Walter Fremantle had invited the Staniforths back to his cottage for supper, not a prospect Tom relished, although he felt some obligation for the sake of his late father. Piers Staniforth and Walter Fremantle had gone through Cambridge together as history students and remained close friends even after their careers had diverged. Walter had become a museum curator and Piers a nationally known television archaeologist until his death abroad in the 1960s. From things Pearl had let slip occasionally it seemed that Walter had helped them financially after Piers died.

“Your father would have been so proud tonight,” Pearl enthused while Tom cringed with embarrassment. “You had that audience in the palm of your hand — didn’t he, Walter?”

“Oh, emphatically,” said Walter, as he tried to pour brandy with a tremulous hand.

Tom offered to help. It was a case of all hands to the pump. Already his mother had supervised the microwave cooking and he had served the soup and the quiche. And it tasted good. Convenience food — but less of a risk than home cooking by a seventy-five-year-old bachelor.

They had not been settled long in deep armchairs in front of the fire when Walter launched into a confession. Frail as he appeared, he was still articulate and there could be no doubt that what he told Tom and his mother was profoundly important to him. “Your talk tonight has stirred me to raise a matter that has troubled me for many years. I didn’t know you were an expert on the curse — didn’t even realize you would mention it. Up to now I have hesitated to bring up the subject, mainly, I think, because I am a coward by nature.”

“Far from it, Walter!” Pearl strove to reassure him.

Mother, will you shut up? thought Tom.

“It concerns Piers, your father. It was, I think, in 1962, towards the end of his life, that he came to see me for lunch one day. He was between expeditions, as I recall, just back from Nigeria and about to leave for South America in two or three weeks.”

“Our life was like that,” Pearl now chose to reminisce. “I scarcely saw him unless I went on the digs. I could have gone. The television people would have paid for me, but it was the travel, the packing and the unpacking. I was weary of it.”

“Mother, Walter is trying to tell us something.”

“Does that mean the rest of us have to be silent? It was never like that in the old days, was it, Walter?”

Walter gave a nod and a faint smile. “We were back from lunch and unpacking some of the objects Piers had generously brought back from Africa to present to the museum when I was phoned from downstairs and told that a woman had come into the museum and wished to donate an item to the local history collection. I’m afraid one gets all sorts of rubbish brought in and I was sceptical. This lady was apparently unwilling to return at some more convenient moment. However, Piers, ever the gentleman, insisted that I speak to her, so I invited her up to my office. The woman who presently came in was a gypsy, dressed like Carmen herself in a black skirt, white blouse and red shawl, which was most unsuitable because she was sixty at least, and large. I’ve nothing personal against such people, but she struck me immediately as someone I didn’t care to deal with. My guess was that she wished to sell me something.”

“They always do,” said Pearl, “and if you don’t buy they spit on your doorstep and give you the evil eye.”

“Is that so? In fact, this person, who wouldn’t give her name, incidentally, made herself a nuisance in another way, by relating the legend of the Odstock curse, at interminable length.”

“How tedious,” said Pearl, without much tact.

“I was familiar with the story,” said Walter, “and I tried to tell her as much, but she would insist on giving us her version, which she claimed was gypsy lore. At another time I might have been more inclined to listen, because there is a lot of interest in preserving oral folklore, but my time with Piers was precious and she was invading it. Piers was extremely patient and good-mannered about the whole thing. I think it interested him.”

“What was behind it?” Pearl asked.

“Mother, Walter is coming to that.”

“Well, I’ve no need to keep you in suspense,” said Walter. “She produced an iron key, heavily coated with rust, from under her shawl and placed it on my desk. Her son, she said, had found it on the river bank during the summer when the water level went down several feet. As a true Romany she knew it to be the cursed key of Odstock Church.”

“Good Lord! And she expected you to buy it?”

“She was making a gift of it to the museum. She said she wouldn’t offer it to the church in case someone tried to defy the curse. She said it would be safer in a display cabinet in a museum. I asked her if she seriously believed that the so-called curse was still potent. She gave me a look fit to shatter my skull and said that Joshua Scamp himself would deal with anyone so foolish as to lock the church door.”

“The hanged man?”

“Yes. The curse is everlasting.”

“Are you saying she actually believed that Scamp had some influence in the world of the living?”

“My dear boy, it’s the gypsy version of the tale. I thought it poppycock myself.”

“Exactly the point I was about to make,” said Tom. “You were being asked to believe in a malevolent spirit, as well as the curse. There are limits.”

Walter nodded. “That was my view when she presented me with the key. After she had finally been persuaded to leave, Piers asked me how much of the story I believed and I told him it was no doubt founded on a real incident that had been much embroidered over the years. Piers asked whether I proposed to display the key in the museum and I said certainly not. It seemed to me unlikely in the extreme that a key recovered from the river would be the very one that the rector had thrown in thirty years ago. Piers was more cautious in delivering a verdict.”

“That’s Piers all over,” Pearl commented with a smile.

“My point was that we had nothing with which to authenticate the key except the gypsy woman’s assertion. I said the only way to test it was to take the damned thing to the church and see if it fitted the lock. Piers advised me most adamantly not to take such a risk. He said the woman had impressed him and the power of the gypsies should never be under-estimated. We had an amiable dispute. I remember accusing him of superstition and he said he’d rather be superstitious and safe than sceptical and dead.” Walter hesitated and stared into the fire. Some of the rain was penetrating the chimney and hissing as the droplets touched the embers.

Tom asked, “Did you ever try the key in the door?”

Walter turned and Tom noticed that his eyes were suddenly moist and red at the edges. “Yes, I did. It was from vanity, really. I wanted the satisfaction of telling my old friend that I had been right. I rose early the very next day, determined to prove my point. I was ninety per cent sure the key wouldn’t fit, but if it did, I’d display it in my local collection with a note about the execution of Joshua Scamp and its aftermath. I remember it was a glorious morning and the rooks in the tall trees outside seemed to be chorusing me as I walked up the path to the door of St Mary’s.”

Pearl said impatiently, “Did it fit?”

“Oh, yes. It turned the mechanism inside. The bolt engaged. Only briefly, because I turned it back in the same movement. I was shaking at the discovery.”

“Remarkable.”

“And you lived to tell the tale,” Tom said robustly to the old man.

“Well done, Walter! You struck a blow for rational thought. What happened to the key? Did you put it on display?”

“It’s in front of you, hanging on that nail over the fireplace.”

Tom looked up at the notorious key, a rusty, corroded thing with a shank no longer than his smallest finger. It appeared innocuous enough. “May I handle it?”

“Please don’t.”

“It doesn’t frighten me in the least.”

“No. For God’s sake hear me out.”

“I thought you’d finished.”

Walter shook his head. “Bear with me. This is painful. A month or so after trying the key in the door, I was afflicted with physical symptoms I couldn’t account for. I became weary after no exertion at all and I lost weight steadily. My doctor put me through no end of tests. I had a full body scan. Everything. There was nothing they could diagnose, yet anyone could see I was wasting away. It was obvious to me that I wouldn’t see the year out unless some miracle reversed the process. I kept remembering how I had defied the curse and locked the church door.”

“It wouldn’t have been that,” said Tom. “Whatever was amiss with you, it wouldn’t have been that.”

“May I continue?” said Walter quietly. “One morning I was shopping in Salisbury and a woman approached me and asked if I would buy a sprig of heather for good luck. She was the gypsy who had presented me with the key. I said I needed all the good luck that was going and told her what I had done. She hadn’t recognized me, I had lost so much weight. She was visibly shocked by what I told her. I’m afraid I was feeling so wretched that I begged for her help. I offered her any money if she would help me to lift the curse. She could name the sum. She would accept nothing, not even a silver coin for the heather. She said my only chance was to wait for All Soul’s Night — Halloween — and then to invoke the spirit of Joshua Scamp by chanting his name three times. I was so desperate about my health that I was perfectly willing to try, but the rest of her advice was more difficult. I had to find a believer in the curse and speak that person’s name aloud.” His voice was faltering. “The curse would then be lifted from me and transferred.”

Pearl’s hand went to her throat. “Oh, my God!”

Tom felt his muscles tighten.

The old man said, “Yes, I thought of Piers. I remembered how he had almost pleaded with me not to try the key in the church door. He was a believer. In the few days left before Halloween, I wrestled with my conscience, telling myself it was all hocus-pocus anyway and Piers was an ocean away in South America. How could the shade of a dead gypsy who had never travelled out of England trouble a modern man in Peru? Yet I still hesitated. If I had not felt so wretchedly ill I would not have taken the risk. When you are reduced to shaking skin and bones, you will try anything. So on the night of Halloween, thirty years ago this night, I did as the gypsy advised. When I had three times invoked the spirit of Joshua Scamp, I spoke the name of my oldest friend.” Walter bent forward and covered his eyes.

“What happened?”

His answer came in sobs. “Nothing. Nothing that night. For a week... no change. Then... the second week, my appetite returned... I felt stronger, actually recovering.” He looked up, weeping uncontrollably. “In three months I was back to my old weight. The only thing I wanted was a postcard from my old friend in Peru.” He paused in an effort to control his emotions and added, barely audibly, “It never came. I heard one evening on the television news about the mud-slip, the fatal accident to Piers. Devastating. What can I say to you both? Through my selfishness you lost a husband and a father.”

Before Pearl could respond, Tom said gently but firmly, “Walter, it’s typical of your generosity to tell us this, and I’m sure it seemed to make sense to you at the time, but really it’s a misconstruction of events. It doesn’t bear analysis. I’m sure I speak for Mother when I say you can sleep easy in the knowledge that you had nothing whatsoever to do with Dad’s death. It was an accident.”

“No.”

“Your health improved because you threw off the effects of the virus, or whatever it was. We’ve all had mysterious illnesses that come and go. Yours was more severe than most.”

“I know what happened, my son. Believe me, I was dying. I know why it went away. I don’t deserve to be here. Your father should have been at that lecture tonight, not me.”

Tom leaned closer to him and said earnestly, “The whole tenor of my talk was that superstitions are founded on coincidence and false reasoning and this is a classic example. You were too close to events to judge them analytically. You accepted the supernatural explanation. Come on, Walter, you’re an intelligent man of good education.”

Pearl chimed in with, “I forgive you, Walter.”

Tom swung around in his chair. He was incensed. “For God’s sake, Mother — there’s nothing to forgive! He had nothing to do with Father’s death. This whole thing about the curse is mumbo-jumbo — and I’m about to prove it.” He got up and snatched the key from its place over the hearth.

“Don’t!” cried Walter.

Tom’s mother shrieked his name, but he had already crossed the room, grabbed his coat off the hook and stepped outside.

Pearl screamed.

Tom strode along the road towards the church, regardless of the driving rain.

Odstock Church stands alone, a few hundred yards from the rest of the village. Distant lightning gave Tom Staniforth intermittent glimpses of the agitated trees along each side of the road. The castellated tower and steep tiled roof of St Mary’s came into view, silvering dramatically each time a flash came. He refused to be intimidated.

Too far behind Tom to influence events, his mother and Walter Fremantle had started in pursuit. Neither was in any condition to move fast, yet they were trying to run.

Tom reached the church gates. Without pause, he stepped under the archway formed by two pollarded trees and up to the timber-framed porch. A lantern mounted on the highest beam lighted the path. The church doors were of faded oak fitted into a stone arch, with iron strap-hinges and a turning latch with a ring handle. A brighter flash of lightning turned the whole thing white. Tom found the rusted key-escutcheon, thrust in the key and turned it. The mechanism was a devil to shift. He was afraid that the key would snap under the strain. Finally it turned through a full arc and he heard the movement of the bolt sliding home.

Done.

He didn’t withdraw the key. He wanted others to know that someone with a mind free of superstition had defied the gypsy’s curse.

Hearing the footsteps of his mother and old Walter Fremantle, Tom stepped aside, away from the door. They would see the key in the lock. He was triumphant.

The glory was brief. Lightning struck the church roof. The thunder — an immense clap — was instantaneous. The ground itself vibrated. Scores of tiles loosened, slid down the pitched roof and fell. Two, at least, razor-sharp, cracked against Tom’s skull and felled him like a pin in an alley.

Neither Walter nor Pearl saw the body when they first came through the gate. The porch-light had blown when the lightning struck. They groped at the door, feeling for the key in the lock.

Walter located it and gasped, “He did it. I tried to stop him. I tried!”

Pearl found her son lying insensible against a gravestone, with blood oozing from a head wound. Whimpering, she got to her knees and cradled his damaged head. He made no sound.

Pearl rocked her son.

“Is he...?” Walter could not bring himself to speak the word.

Pearl ignored him anyway. The pride she had felt in the village hall when Tom was speaking with such authority had ended in blood and tears. She sobbed for the limp burden in her arms and the bigotry of rational thinking. She mourned her wise, never-to-be- forgotten husband and her rash, misguided son.

Gently, Pearl let Tom’s bloodied head rest in her lap. She brought her hands together in front of her, fingers tightly intertwined. Then in a clear voice she called the name of Joshua Scamp. She called it three times. She cried out passionately, “Take Walter Fremantle. He knows the power of the curse better than any man, having used it to kill my husband. He is a believer. Take him. For pity’s sake, take him instead.”

She remembered nothing else. She didn’t see old Walter unlock the church door, remove the key and take it across the road to the river and throw it in. She didn’t see him collapse as he tried to climb up the bank.

The next morning, in the intensive care ward at Odstock Hospital, Tom Staniforth’s eyelids quivered and opened. His mother, in a hospital dressing-gown, watching through a glass screen, turned to the young policeman beside her, gripped his hand and squeezed it. “He’s going to live!”

“I’m happy for you, Ma’am,” said the constable. “Happy for myself, too. Maybe your son can tell me what happened last night. What with you having passed out as well, and old Mr Fremantle dead of a heart attack, I was afraid we’d have no witnesses. I’m supposed to write a report of the incident, you see. I know it was the lightning that struck the church, but it’s difficult working out what happened, with all three of you going down like that.”

“However did you find us?” Pearl asked.

“Wasn’t me, Ma’am. Now I’d really like to trace the man who alerted us, but I’m not optimistic. No one seems to know him. Right strange chap, he was. Came bursting into a farm cottage soon after midnight, in fancy dress from one of them Halloween parties. Top hat and smock and a piece of rope around his neck. He nearly scared the family out of their wits, ranting on about a dead’un at the church door. Didn’t leave his name. Just raced off into the storm. Drunk, I expect. But I reckon you owe him, you and your son.”

Author’s footnote: I should like to pay credit to three sources for the story of Joshua Scamp and the Curse of Odstock. Wiltshire Folklore, by Kathleen Wiltshire (Compton Russell, Salisbury, 1975) gives the version told by Canon Bouverie about 1904; Wiltshire Folklore and Legends, by Ralph Whitlock (Robert Hale, London, 1992) has Hiram Witt the blacksmith’s memoir of 1870; and the fictional story of the lecture and its consequences was suggested by my son, Philip, who visited Odstock with me at Easter, 1993.