‘And it’s beautiful. All trees and flowers and – and –’
‘Sky?’ Lorna grinned.
‘Yes, and birds. But you never told me about Dickon – him the wood was called after.’
‘We-e-ll, Dickon was an ostler. Looked after Sir Francis Ainsty’s horses in York. Sir Francis had a daughter Ursula, who became a nun.’
‘At the priory here?’
‘Yes, though reluctantly. Ursula, an only child and heiress, couldn’t get a husband. She was considered ugly, you see. And since no man wanted an unmarried daughter on his hands in those days, Francis Ainsty sent Ursula to the nuns, paid them a good sum of money to take her, and made his nephew his heir.’
‘The miserable old devil! Surely Ursula wasn’t that ugly? I mean, wouldn’t her father’s money have made her just a little bit attractive?’
‘Seems not. Anyway, legend has it that no one offered for her, so her fate was sealed, as they say.’
‘Was she a hunchback, or somethin’?’
‘No. Far worse than that in the eyes of the people of Tudor England. Ursula had a harelip and a cleft palate too, I think, because she was supposed not to be able to speak properly.’
‘But things like that don’t matter these days. There’s an operation for it, isn’t there?’
‘Yes. As you say, it can be fixed nowadays. But four hundred years ago, people were very superstitious, and anyone born with a harelip was avoided like the plague, because they thought that if a hare ran across the path of a pregnant woman, it caused her baby to have a hare’s lip. Witchcraft.’
‘What a load of old rubbish!’
‘Ah, but was it, Ness? In those days, people believed in witches and a hare – a black cat, too – were thought to be familiars of a witch.’
‘Sorry, you’ve lost me.’
‘A familiar was another form a witch could take when she was up to no good, so a pregnant woman, startled by a hare, paid the price for it.’
‘Or her poor little baby did! But what about Dickon?’
‘Dickon was ordered by Sir Francis to deliver Ursula to the convent, the two of them riding horses. Ursula wept all the way there and Dickon was so upset that he proposed to her – or so the story goes.’
‘But she wouldn’t have him, him bein’ a peasant, sort of, and her bein’ high born?’
‘Wrong! Ursula accepted. Dickon had always been fond of his master’s daughter and protective towards her and couldn’t bear to see her locked away. And he wasn’t marrying her for her money because she’d been disinherited. You’ve got to admire Dickon.’ Lorna pushed open the back garden gate. ‘I feel like a cup of tea. Will you put the kettle on, Ness, and I’ll see if there’s been a call for me.’
‘From your husband? Lucky you’ve got a phone in the house.’ Few people had their own telephone. There had not been one in Ness’s Liverpool home. Very middle class, telephones were. She set the kettle to boil and had laid a tray by the time Lorna returned.
‘No joy. Mrs Benson from the telephone exchange at Meltonby said she hadn’t had any trunk calls from down south all day. Says her switchboard has gone over all peculiar since Dunkirk. Anyway, I wasn’t really expecting a call. More chance of a letter tomorrow, or the next day.’
‘Sorry, Lorna. Must be rotten when your feller goes off to the Army.’
‘Rotten. But I haven’t really taken it in. It feels like I’m in a daze, kind of. I – I haven’t cried, Ness. Not one tear.’
‘No, but you will when it hits you, queen. But if you don’t feel like tellin’ me about Dickon and Ursula, it’s all right.’
‘Oh, but I do. Having someone to talk to helps a lot, believe me. Where were we?’
‘We’d got to the bit where Dickon asked Ursula to marry him, even though she didn’t have a penny to her name.’
‘And Ursula accepted him, but I suppose they couldn’t just gallop off into oblivion. After all, Sir Francis would expect his servant back in York – plus two horses – so they decided Ursula should wait until the next saint’s day to run away. Sir Francis always gave his servants time off to go to church on saints’ days, so that was when it would be. Dickon would come and wait for Ursula who would slip away when no one was looking.’
‘And he’d wait for her in the wood – bet I’m right!’
‘Yes, but it wasn’t as easy as they’d hoped. Three saints’ days came and went, but getting out of the priory wasn’t as easy as Ursula had expected. In the end, she became desperate and tried to climb out of the window of her cell. But she fell and hurt herself badly. It didn’t stop her, though, from dragging herself to the wood. She died in Dickon’s arms.’
‘Gawd. And what did Dickon do then?’
‘No one seems to know. He just faded out of the picture, so to speak.’
‘So why is it called Dickon’s Wood?’
‘We-e-ll – and I tell you this tongue in cheek, Ness – Ursula is supposed to haunt the wood, waiting for Dickon to come for her!’
‘Ooooh! You haven’t seen her?’
‘To be honest, no one has seen her.’
‘But there must be some truth in it, or why did they call this village Nun Ainsty after her? Like keeping her name alive, innit?’
‘I rather think the people who came here all those years ago kept her name alive to make sure not too many more joined them. It wasn’t long after Ursula died that the nuns were turned out of the priory, and once the king had taken all he wanted, a blind eye was turned to the looting that went on. With the roof gone, the building started to decay. All that was any use was a pile of stones and quite a lot of land.’
‘And the people who came here weren’t afraid of germs an’ things the lepers had left behind?’
‘Seems not. Would you be, when there was priory land for the grabbing and stone to build your house with? Of course, the building material soon ran out. The manor took the lion’s share, and then Glebe Farm was built. Very soon, all that was left was what you see now – archways and columns and some of the cloisters.’
‘But weren’t people worried, pulling down a holy place? Didn’t they fear punishment from God?’
‘Why should they? Henry had made himself head of the English church. If the king could help himself, then surely so could anyone else.’
‘You reckon?’ Ness was clearly impressed. ‘You live nearest to the wood. Can you say, hand on heart, that the nun has never been seen there?’
‘You mean the nun’s ghost? Well all I can say, hand on heart, is that if she has I haven’t heard about it. Mind, Grandpa told me people said they’d seen her ages ago, on the odd occasion, though maybe they’d had a drop too much at the White Hart. But I wouldn’t lose too much sleep over Dickon and Ursula, if I were you.’
‘But haven’t you thought,’ Ness was reluctant to let the matter drop, ‘that every house in this village is built with stone from the priory, so who’s to say that every house isn’t haunted by Ursula? Or Dickon?’
‘Because they aren’t. It’s all a lot of nonsense. I’m sorry I told you now. You aren’t going to keep on and on about it, Ness?’
‘N-no. But I’ve got to admit I’d like to know more about those two, ‘cause there’s no smoke without fire, don’t they say? And had you