A Library Story for Hallowe'en.
[Written to read aloud at the end of a Hallowe'en party in the Community Library for about forty overexcited primary-age children. Probably 500 words too long for all except the oldest of them.]
I'm going to tell you a ghost story---at least, it might be a ghost story. It happened in a library, but not this one.
The only library I know with a ghost is in Oxford, and belongs to Merton College. It was built over six hundred years ago, when books were very rare and precious things. This was long before computers, or even mechanical printers, and every copy of every book had to be made by someone patiently sitting with a pen, through long days and cold evenings, writing every word on big, heavy sheets of paper or parchment. So to keep the books safe the library was built very solid and secure on the upstairs floor of the college, with narrow pointed windows and a high dark wooden ceiling like the inside of a barrel.
You get to the library through an old door studded with iron nails, and up a very wide creaky wooden staircase, which has footprints worn in it by hundreds of years of scholars climbing up and down to study in the ancient books. In front of each window there is a reading desk, for the best light---my story takes place long before electricity---and between the desks there are high old bookcases filled with books that are still rare and precious and very old. If a book is less than a hundred and fifty years old they keep it in a different library entirely.
Some of the bookcases still have the books chained to them, so you couldn't borrow them even if you wanted to, but you have to go to the case and read the book where it lives. That shows a proper respect for books!
There is one big window in the library, high and wide on the east wall like the window of a church, and underneath this there is a big globe, and a table, and a chest. The globe is not part of my story. The table is for the librarian, and the chest---well, the chest is about six feet long, and three feet wide, and three feet deep. It is made of thick oak planks, carved on the corners of the lid with grotesque heads pulling hideous faces (which they seemed to like, in the Middle Ages when the college was built), and bound in rough iron bands with a great iron lock.
Books, as I say, were very valuable, and if you wanted to borrow a book from the library, even to read it in your own room elsewhere in the college, you had to leave something equally valuable in the chest as a deposit until you brought the book back. The Fellows and professors would leave books of their own---and often when they died or retired or became bishops they would give their own books to the library permanently. The rich young men who studied at the college before becoming ambassadors or doctors or lawyers or lords, they could leave their silver plates and silver drinking cups.
Also in the college, though, there were poorer boys and young men on scholarships, called Postmasters, who did not have anything in the whole world valuable enough to borrow a book with. So of course it was much more difficult for them to study and pass their exams.
One of these Postmasters, named Hugh of Catford, is mentioned in the college records for the year 1411 as a very good young man. We know, though, that more than once he was punished for "conversing with a maiden within the walls of the college". Back then women and girls were not allowed to study at Oxford and after the gates were locked when it got dark they were not allowed in the college at all.
The maiden was Hugh's little sister Mary. The family was indeed very poor and as part of his scholarship Hugh was given a big dinner of bread and meat every night in the hall of the college. Hugh used to take some of this dinner away with him and give it to Mary for her supper, before he went back to his studies. If he didn't give the food to Mary she wouldn't get to eat at all.
But it was now late in October and the nights were drawing in. The gates of the college were locked even before dinner. Mary hid in Hugh's room during the afternoon and although he rushed straight from the hall with a loaf of bread tucked under his black gown, she could not go out through the gate. If Hugh was punished again neither of them would be able to eat.
"You must climb out over the back fence, into the misty meadow path called Dead Man's Walk", said Hugh. "We will have to sneak past the hall and library, but nobody will see you in this foggy dark. I will give you a leg up over the fence."
They tiptoed quietly under the windows of the hall where everyone was still eating dinner, and the chapel which was dark and empty. But as they passed the iron-studded door to the library, Hugh noticed that it stood just a little bit open.
"The librarian must have forgotten to lock the library," Hugh whispered. "Quick, take the loaf and follow me upstairs. If I can only borrow a book of Aristotle overnight I will be sure to learn enough to pass the exam tomorrow. But if I don't pass, they might take the scholarship from me. I have already been in trouble enough."
Mary was not at all sure this was a good idea but she went after him up the creaking staircase. She stopped at the top of the stairs without going forward into the gloom. The library was much too dark to read in, but Hugh knew where the book he wanted was kept. It was not a chained one.
Just as he took the book and turned to leave, they heard a noise. Over the librarian's desk at the end of the room there was a black hooded figure, poring over an enormous Bible by the light of the single moonbeam coming through the East window. They had heard the slap of the book closing together, still with the library key sticking out of the middle of it.
"What book is that?" asked the figure, in a voice that whispered like paper and rattled like the chains of the chained books.
It took Hugh a little while to find his voice. "Aristotle, sir. I will bring it back in the morning, honest!"
"All borrowings must be stamped", said the figure. "Come here and let me stamp you." Hugh now thought that this was just another student playing a joke, and stepped forward holding the book.
Mary was very scared and grabbed at Hugh. "S-S-Sortilege! she whispered. With a key and a Bible, that is witchcraft. Don't let him touch you!"
The figure reached out a long bony hand but did not take the Aristotle. It grabbed Hugh's hand. "Ouch!" shrieked Hugh. The very touch burned like ice. He was sure he could feel the letters I X I on his skin. (One, eleven. The first of November, the next day.)
"You will bring it back before dawn tomorrow," stated the figure, deep in its hood. "But, now, what will you leave in the library chest?"
Hugh had nothing with him at all. And he owned nothing in the world that could possibly be worth as much as the book. There was nothing anywhere in his bare little room, or in Mary's garret, or their parents' cottage in Catford, that could possibly go into the chest. He felt the figure's terrible impatience and knew he had to offer something. He pointed wordlessly to the loaf of bread, which Mary was holding.
"Yes!" intoned the figure. It stepped forward---could it really have been through the table?---and
seized not the loaf, but the shoulder of Mary herself. Neither of the frightened young people seemed to have any choice. Hugh had already borrowed the book, and had been stamped.
The figure guided Mary forward to the chest, and she toppled into it. As the heavy lid slammed down, the moonbeam vanished. In foggy darkness Hugh stumbled down the creaking stairs holding the volume of Aristotle.
We don't know what happened next. In the early morning before chapel, Hugh was discovered fainting outside the locked library door. The book was back on its shelf, and nobody mentioned Mary. The College records show that Hugh was too ill to take his exam that day. I like to think Mary was quite all right, and ate a rather dark and cramped supper in the chest.
But that doesn't explain why Roger Highfield, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, who is well over eighty years old now and knows more about that library than anybody else, has sometimes seen a small thin girl there in the evening when the library was closed. The library is no longer quite as dark and gloomy as it used to be, because during the reign of King Henry VIII they put in new side windows near the ceiling, and raised the floorboards by a few inches. Maybe it was just a trick of the dim light, but Dr Highfield says that when he's seen the girl, she's been standing near the top of the stairs---only her feet seem to be hidden inside the floor.
I'm going to tell you a ghost story---at least, it might be a ghost story. It happened in a library, but not this one.
The only library I know with a ghost is in Oxford, and belongs to Merton College. It was built over six hundred years ago, when books were very rare and precious things. This was long before computers, or even mechanical printers, and every copy of every book had to be made by someone patiently sitting with a pen, through long days and cold evenings, writing every word on big, heavy sheets of paper or parchment. So to keep the books safe the library was built very solid and secure on the upstairs floor of the college, with narrow pointed windows and a high dark wooden ceiling like the inside of a barrel.
You get to the library through an old door studded with iron nails, and up a very wide creaky wooden staircase, which has footprints worn in it by hundreds of years of scholars climbing up and down to study in the ancient books. In front of each window there is a reading desk, for the best light---my story takes place long before electricity---and between the desks there are high old bookcases filled with books that are still rare and precious and very old. If a book is less than a hundred and fifty years old they keep it in a different library entirely.
Some of the bookcases still have the books chained to them, so you couldn't borrow them even if you wanted to, but you have to go to the case and read the book where it lives. That shows a proper respect for books!
There is one big window in the library, high and wide on the east wall like the window of a church, and underneath this there is a big globe, and a table, and a chest. The globe is not part of my story. The table is for the librarian, and the chest---well, the chest is about six feet long, and three feet wide, and three feet deep. It is made of thick oak planks, carved on the corners of the lid with grotesque heads pulling hideous faces (which they seemed to like, in the Middle Ages when the college was built), and bound in rough iron bands with a great iron lock.
Books, as I say, were very valuable, and if you wanted to borrow a book from the library, even to read it in your own room elsewhere in the college, you had to leave something equally valuable in the chest as a deposit until you brought the book back. The Fellows and professors would leave books of their own---and often when they died or retired or became bishops they would give their own books to the library permanently. The rich young men who studied at the college before becoming ambassadors or doctors or lawyers or lords, they could leave their silver plates and silver drinking cups.
Also in the college, though, there were poorer boys and young men on scholarships, called Postmasters, who did not have anything in the whole world valuable enough to borrow a book with. So of course it was much more difficult for them to study and pass their exams.
One of these Postmasters, named Hugh of Catford, is mentioned in the college records for the year 1411 as a very good young man. We know, though, that more than once he was punished for "conversing with a maiden within the walls of the college". Back then women and girls were not allowed to study at Oxford and after the gates were locked when it got dark they were not allowed in the college at all.
The maiden was Hugh's little sister Mary. The family was indeed very poor and as part of his scholarship Hugh was given a big dinner of bread and meat every night in the hall of the college. Hugh used to take some of this dinner away with him and give it to Mary for her supper, before he went back to his studies. If he didn't give the food to Mary she wouldn't get to eat at all.
But it was now late in October and the nights were drawing in. The gates of the college were locked even before dinner. Mary hid in Hugh's room during the afternoon and although he rushed straight from the hall with a loaf of bread tucked under his black gown, she could not go out through the gate. If Hugh was punished again neither of them would be able to eat.
"You must climb out over the back fence, into the misty meadow path called Dead Man's Walk", said Hugh. "We will have to sneak past the hall and library, but nobody will see you in this foggy dark. I will give you a leg up over the fence."
They tiptoed quietly under the windows of the hall where everyone was still eating dinner, and the chapel which was dark and empty. But as they passed the iron-studded door to the library, Hugh noticed that it stood just a little bit open.
"The librarian must have forgotten to lock the library," Hugh whispered. "Quick, take the loaf and follow me upstairs. If I can only borrow a book of Aristotle overnight I will be sure to learn enough to pass the exam tomorrow. But if I don't pass, they might take the scholarship from me. I have already been in trouble enough."
Mary was not at all sure this was a good idea but she went after him up the creaking staircase. She stopped at the top of the stairs without going forward into the gloom. The library was much too dark to read in, but Hugh knew where the book he wanted was kept. It was not a chained one.
Just as he took the book and turned to leave, they heard a noise. Over the librarian's desk at the end of the room there was a black hooded figure, poring over an enormous Bible by the light of the single moonbeam coming through the East window. They had heard the slap of the book closing together, still with the library key sticking out of the middle of it.
"What book is that?" asked the figure, in a voice that whispered like paper and rattled like the chains of the chained books.
It took Hugh a little while to find his voice. "Aristotle, sir. I will bring it back in the morning, honest!"
"All borrowings must be stamped", said the figure. "Come here and let me stamp you." Hugh now thought that this was just another student playing a joke, and stepped forward holding the book.
Mary was very scared and grabbed at Hugh. "S-S-Sortilege! she whispered. With a key and a Bible, that is witchcraft. Don't let him touch you!"
The figure reached out a long bony hand but did not take the Aristotle. It grabbed Hugh's hand. "Ouch!" shrieked Hugh. The very touch burned like ice. He was sure he could feel the letters I X I on his skin. (One, eleven. The first of November, the next day.)
"You will bring it back before dawn tomorrow," stated the figure, deep in its hood. "But, now, what will you leave in the library chest?"
Hugh had nothing with him at all. And he owned nothing in the world that could possibly be worth as much as the book. There was nothing anywhere in his bare little room, or in Mary's garret, or their parents' cottage in Catford, that could possibly go into the chest. He felt the figure's terrible impatience and knew he had to offer something. He pointed wordlessly to the loaf of bread, which Mary was holding.
"Yes!" intoned the figure. It stepped forward---could it really have been through the table?---and
seized not the loaf, but the shoulder of Mary herself. Neither of the frightened young people seemed to have any choice. Hugh had already borrowed the book, and had been stamped.
The figure guided Mary forward to the chest, and she toppled into it. As the heavy lid slammed down, the moonbeam vanished. In foggy darkness Hugh stumbled down the creaking stairs holding the volume of Aristotle.
We don't know what happened next. In the early morning before chapel, Hugh was discovered fainting outside the locked library door. The book was back on its shelf, and nobody mentioned Mary. The College records show that Hugh was too ill to take his exam that day. I like to think Mary was quite all right, and ate a rather dark and cramped supper in the chest.
But that doesn't explain why Roger Highfield, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, who is well over eighty years old now and knows more about that library than anybody else, has sometimes seen a small thin girl there in the evening when the library was closed. The library is no longer quite as dark and gloomy as it used to be, because during the reign of King Henry VIII they put in new side windows near the ceiling, and raised the floorboards by a few inches. Maybe it was just a trick of the dim light, but Dr Highfield says that when he's seen the girl, she's been standing near the top of the stairs---only her feet seem to be hidden inside the floor.