Fettigrew Hall - The Biography of a House

Fettigrew Hall - Chapter 6

Chapter 6 

As Megan drove along the narrow road, she was enchanted by the beautiful blue bells blooming along side. She saw a dirt road to the right and decided it was time to stretch her legs. The day was pleasant, though not as warm as she would like. The sun kept peeking through the fast moving clouds. She hoped today wouldn’t include rain. She put on her jacket and started down the path. She bent down to look at the flowers closely. An English friend of hers had said she and her friends picked blue bells by the arm loads as children, but now they were protected. Still, just picking one didn’t seem such a sin. She raised it to her nose and got the faint scent of sweetness. She plucked off the long stem, and then tucked it in her hair behind her ear.

As she wandered along the path she could see something between the trees. Coming closer it appeared to be a bridge about as wide as a carriage or maybe a small car. This went over a small stream. The water was barely moving and smelled sour, like rotting vegetation. Trees and brush were bent low over the water. Leaves and other debris surrounded the edges of the bridge on each side. Across the bridge was a more open area, and Megan could see a ruined stone building with a tower rising above it. Surely this was quite ancient. She found an opening to the tower around the side, but there was no door.

She had to step down to enter the tower, probably due to centuries of dirt raising the ground level outside the tower. The floor appeared to have decorative tiles on it. Rubbing her foot over the dirt, she could see primitive tiles with heraldic symbols on them. Entering the tower, she could see a winding stone stair built into the wall. Continuing through the room, she could see a large almost circular opening in an outside wall. A fluttering came from the next ruined room, and she heard the peeping of baby birds. Stepping through an opening she could see fledglings popping up from a nest in the far corner of the room, atop a cornice. The parent birds were flying in and out bringing worms to their babies. She stood very quietly watching to avoid scaring them. Returning to the front, she tried the tower.

The circular stairs were so narrow that she had to walk along the outside edges; even then her foot covered only half the width of the step. Looking up, there seemed to be a lot of light coming down, and the steps were a bit damp the higher she climbed. Megan supposed that it was mostly guards or soldiers who would climb these stairs to the battlements. They must have had smaller feet back then - even than hers. She passed a garderobe, but there was no foul smell, only the mustiness within the whole tower. At the top, she could see that the roof was gone, including some roof supports and some of the top stones. The area was about fifteen feet in diameter, so not large and not much room for more than two people due to the stair taking up part of the floor space. She could see out over the landscape and smell wet pine trees. Below was the path she had followed through the blue bells and in the distance, she could see a village church steeple peaking through the trees. Since she was unfamiliar with the area she could not guess the name. Megan could understand how this would have been a perfect lookout, as she could see for miles in all directions.

She breathed in the fresh air and wondered about the people who had inhabited this castle which was centuries old. Did women live here also? She wondered if women of that age could take pride in a house like this, as a modern woman would for her home. Perhaps not. This didn’t seem a welcoming place even if there had been tapestries on the walls and rugs on the floors. It was so cold and almost creepy, in a way.

Starting down the staircase, she was careful to step so that as much of her foot was on the outside of the stair and step down carefully. It was cold and dank up here, and she suddenly wanted to be on solid ground. Just as she reached for something to steady herself she slipped and nearly tumbled head first down the rounded staircase. She caught herself just in time, but her heart was pounding with fear when she began to recognize how stupid it was to be exploring alone. If she had fallen, she could have killed herself or lain there helpless and injured. There was no chance anyone was going to come by, and no one knew where she was. As all this came to her she had a vague feeling of some force pushing against her back. She turned to look back up the stairs. Of course there was nothing there, and she was just being crazy. Still, she was now truly freaked out and carefully got herself down the stairs as quickly as she could, grasping holes in the stone wall to steady her.