Oxfordshire Folktales (22 page)

There a ship was waiting, about to sail to the Iberian peninsula. It was captained by Sir George Rooke, whom Lady Pye had bribed with her gold to ‘take care’ of her stepson. Sir Robert had been persuaded by Lady Pye that it would be in his son’s best interests to join the Navy. He would no doubt be posted overseas and would be safely out of reach of the gold-digging barmaid. This seemed like a severe but necessary measure. His son needed to sober up and see sense – a blast of sea air and Navy life might be just the ticket to put him on the straight and narrow.

A bucket of icy seawater shocked Hampden awake. Spluttering, he stood up, or tried to. The ground was unsteady beneath his feet. The men around him laughed – a rum-looking bunch, sailors of the English Navy. He was on a ship of the Fleet. Sir George Rooke introduced himself. ‘You are on your way to the Spanish main, Hampden Pye. Time to sober up and get shipshape! Put a uniform on man. You’re in the King’s Navy now!’

When he had gotten over his sudden and dramatic change in circumstance, Hampden Pye took to life at sea like a duck to water. When their vessel engaged the enemy in battle, Hampden Pye was right there, on the foeman’s deck, sword in hand, the first man on board. Bullets flying about him, he never felt more alive.

Yet in the fog of war, all manner of things can happen.

In the middle of a battle, Hampden was pushed in front of a canon by ‘Hairy-faced Dick’ and his head was blown clean off.

Back in Faringdon, the news was received by Lady Pye with what seemed genuine shock. She publicly displayed her grief, organising a memorial service in Hampden’s honour at Faringdon church; with it she hoped to lay the final obstacle of her plan to rest.

Triumphantly, she climbed into her coach and four, and as it drew away from the church she breathed a sigh of relief. Then she felt an icy presence in the carriage. Although she rode alone – the footman outside – she sensed another in the carriage with her, in the shadows on the opposite side; a figure of a man in Naval uniform. He was resting something on his knee. He leant forward, showing her the severed stump of his neck. Then he lifted up his head. The face of her stepson looked at her and smiled.

Her screams could be heard throughout the village, but the servants could see nothing and were quite concerned for the lady’s sanity. She was taken swiftly back to Faringdon House and was told to rest by her physician. Clearly the strain of her recent loss had been too much.

The servants were told that Lady Pye must be given plenty of peace and privacy – the very thing she did not need. She could never be alone! And she never was – she always had company. In hall or in bower, wherever the place, whatever the hour, Lady Pye muttered and talked to the air. Once, her servants found her, her eyes fixed on an empty chair.

Her young son showed little concern for his mother’s deteriorating health and erratic behaviour. He was more interested in the thousand pounds a year he was now due.

It was not until he too saw his stepbrother appear and he ran gibbering to his mother, that she was forced to reveal her wicked deed.

The headless ghost of Hampden also terrorised his old Captain at his club in Bath, where he had retired as an Admiral. As grey as a badger and as thin as a rake, Sir George Rooke always seemed to be looking over his shoulder, flinching at this and that. He would frequently go to the Assembly Rooms hoping to lose himself in playing cards, until his knaves stood upside down and the Jack of Clubs frowned at him. Then the kings, aces and best trumps started cavorting with the queens. Then he would look up and see Hampden Pye, counting the tricks with his head on his knees.

Hairy-faced Dick did not escape either. In Ratcliffe Highway, Hairy-faced Dick had set himself up with his Navy pension an old marine store full of rusty locks and dusty bags, musty phials and fusty rags. A great black doll hung over the door – but this could not keep a vengeful ghost away. The first to see it was Thirsty Nan, his lusty old woman who liked the sauce. She blinked and stared into the gloom of the store, calling ‘Who’s there?’ Out of the shadows came the headless ghost. She wailed and dropped her rum with a smash, running howling back to Hairy-faced Dick. ‘What is it woman? Stop your wail…’ The words stuck in his gullet – the pipe dropped from his lips. He went pale and fell to his knees as the shadow of a sabre fell across his terrified face. Thirsty Nan screamed and all went silent.

Hampden’s headless phantom haunted the graveyard of Faringdon church, where his memorial service had been held. His restless spirit worried the good folk of Faringdon for a hundred years before they were eventually forced to have the local vicar exorcise him – using a bell, book and candle. And so, in the early nineteenth century, Hampden Pye finally found peace, and so did the descendants of Sir Robert Pye – the former head of the household.

It was always at bedtime she would appear, just as you was tucked up nice in bed with the other boys in the dorm – the old stables and coach house which never seemed to warm up. Just after the lights had gone out and everyone had finally settled down – after a period of silence punctuated only by the steady breathing of the boys – would the soft footsteps be heard. They would come out of the lonely room on the top floor, go along the passage and down those damned creaking stairs. A chilling presence would enter their room, floating among the beds as the boys lay frozen in their bunks. Finally, mercifully, it would leave.

Many of the older boys had anecdotes of doors opening and slamming of their own accord. Door handles had been seen to move on their own and noises could be heard throughout the building, as if things were being picked up and dropped when no one was there.

One of them swore blind he actually saw her. He was a fey sort, of Irish blood; prone to superstition the cynical ones said; others said that he had the ‘Sight'. Wild-eyed and gibbering, he described her to his schoolmates, who gathered around, pale faced, huddled in blankets. ‘She was wearing a black flowing cloak with a purple ribbon in her auburn hair. She looked sad.'

It was 1854 at Crake's School, formerly Courtiers House – a red brick Georgian mansion. It had been purchased in 1846 for a low rent; the building had been in a sorrowful state. The master took no heed to the stories of the ghost, but this would explain why it was only twenty pounds per annum. Every pupil there knew the story of the ghost. They were told it – whether they liked it or not, on their first night in the dorms by older boys who delighted in the terror it induced.

Her name was Sarah Fletcher, they whispered, like some kind of invocation of evil.

On the 7th of June 1799, twenty-nine-year-old Mrs Sarah Fletcher committed suicide at Courtiers – as back then it was her marital home. She hung herself from the curtain rails of her four-poster bed using a handkerchief and a piece of cord.

It is said that she was driven to take her own life after she discovered her husband, who was a Captain in the Royal Navy, was arranging a bigamous marriage to a wealthy heiress. This she heard after she had received word that he had ‘died at sea'. When she got wind of this, Sarah went to the church and actually stopped the wedding from taking place – like a ‘mad woman' she was, the shocked guests had agreed, beside herself with rage and grief. The congregation looked at her with disgust, as though
she
was in the wrong.

And yet the Captain knew he had transgressed. The guilt flickered in his eyes as Sarah was dragged kicking and screaming away – like a witch being cast out of God's house.

Following this, Captain Fletcher returned to sea – but the betrayal and neglect was too much for Sarah to bear. By the time she hung herself, her husband was said to be en-route to the East Indies.

There was a tribunal and the jury, without hesitation, announced the verdict of lunacy.

Normally, a lot of cackling and howling follows this – much to the abject terror of the new intake, saucer-eyed behind the sheets.

What of poor Sarah? She is buried in the Abbey Church of St Peter and St Paul, Dorchester-on-Thames. Her epitaph reads:

‘May her Soul meet that Peace in Heaven which this Earth has denied her.'