The Place of Safety

The Place of Safety by E.G. Swain

Mr. Batchel, an antiquarian residing at Stoneground, is visited by his pragmatical friend Wardle, who scorns Mr. Batchel's devotion to old documents. Mr. Batchel is engrossed in an inventory of church goods dated the 15th May, 1552, on which is recorded that Churchwardens John Spayn and John Gounthropp swore that two gilded censers, candlesticks, old painted cloths, and other implements had been in a chest robbed on St. Peter's Eve before the first inventory was made. Mr. Batchel believes the Churchwardens had themselves hidden the goods to preserve them from seizure under Edward VI's spoliation order, and hopes to find them someday, having watched every excavation near the Church for years without success. Wardle mocks the pursuit, arguing the goods, if they still exist, would be worthless "black scrap," and that they are not Mr. Batchel's property to seek regardless. He proposes his own theory—that the Churchwardens hid the goods rather than sell them—which annoys Mr. Batchel, who had meant to propose the same idea himself. Wardle spends his days gardening with Mr. Batchel's gardener. While transplanting aucubas in holes dug before the house, Wardle finds a length of lead pipe, which excites him far more than any antiquarian discovery would. The gardener traces the pipe to a covered well near the dining-room window, exposed by a trench along the front of the house. Examining the well, Mr. Batchel finds a rusted chain leading down into it, presumably once carrying a bucket. As he reaches to draw up the chain, he feels himself seized and pulled back—yet on turning, finds himself alone, the gardener and Wardle both occupied elsewhere with the pipe. Shaken, he returns indoors. At lunch, Wardle exults over having salvaged "a trifle over two hundredweight" of lead. Mr. Batchel, still disturbed, asks his friend's opinion on ghosts and describes the incident at the well. Wardle dismisses it with characteristic scorn, recommending "a month in the City." That night, Mr. Batchel takes his usual late walk with his terrier Punch, carrying his electric lamp. Punch behaves strangely, refusing even to chase a hedgehog and cowering at his master's heel. Nearing the path to the Lode, Mr. Batchel is astonished to see a boat drawn up at the water's edge—impossible, since a great sewer pipe crossing the Lode has blocked all boat traffic for twenty years. Unable to descend the treacherous slope in the dark, he continues his walk, intending to investigate by daylight. Punch suddenly bolts for the house in terror. Turning back toward the path, Mr. Batchel sees two unusually tall men, one gigantic, carrying a burden toward the water. Taking them for garden-thieves, he shouts for them to stop and shines his lamp on them, revealing that the nearer man, burly and square-headed, wears a cassock and the tonsure. The men avert their faces, drop their burden silently, and glide to the boat without sound, pushing off and vanishing toward the drain-pipe despite its being an obstacle to any real boat. Recovering himself, Mr. Batchel examines what the men left: a moss-covered, decayed wooden box, too wet and heavy to lift by hand. He fetches a chisel from the house, finding Punch shivering in his basket and unwilling to go back outside. Prying open the box, he finds at the bottom the bases of two candlesticks, and on top, wrapped in a painted cloth, the two gilded censers themselves—the very treasure he had sought for years. Overjoyed, he carries the censers into the house in his hat, locks up, and lays them on a handkerchief atop his bedroom chest of drawers. Unable to resist sharing the discovery, he wakes Wardle, who refuses to get out of bed to look, promising to see them in the morning, and falls back asleep. The next morning, Wardle, feeling ashamed of his surliness and secretly curious, enters Mr. Batchel's room before his host wakes and searches for the censers, but they are gone—not in the drawers or anywhere else. When Mr. Batchel wakes and sees the empty handkerchief, he leaps up in alarm and accuses Wardle of moving them. Wardle denies touching them and suggests they remain "where they've been this three hundred and fifty years." Mr. Batchel searches frantically and then leads Wardle to the garden path to show him the box's impression in the gravel and the discarded chisel as proof of the previous night's events, recounting the whole adventure—the dog's terror, the tonsured men, the boat, the opening of the box. Wardle remains unconvinced, repeatedly urging his friend to take a holiday. Breakfast passes largely in silence. Mr. Batchel gazes out at the now-covered well, wondering whether the censers' new hiding place will ever be found. Wardle departs by cab, calling back a final piece of advice as he drives away: "mind you take a holiday."

By E.G. Swain · Genre: Horror, Supernatural, Mystery · 6,956 words

First lines

"I thank my governors, teachers, spiritual pastors, and masters," said Wardle, as he lit a cigar after breakfast, "that I never acquired a taste for that sort of thing."

Wardle was a pragmatical and candid friend who paid Mr. Batchel occasional visits at Stoneground. He regarded antiquarian tastes as a form of insanity, and it annoyed him to see his host poring over registers, churchwardens' accounts, and documents which he contemptuously alluded to as "dirty papers. " "If you would throw those things away, Batchel," he used to say, "and read the _Daily Mail_, you'd be a better man for it."

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safety · shelter · protection · survival · refuge · isolation · community · trust · fear · conflict · resilience · hope

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