The Abbey Farm Curse Ch 10

The Abbey Farm Curse

Chapter Ten.

June and I made love, and I do mean made love, long into the night, with the result that we were late up. We didn't mind, we lazed around for the rest of the morning, ate an easy lunch of left over pasta and salad, and generally behaved like the couple of young lovers that we had already become. It's strange, isn't it; how sometimes two people can click together immediately they meet? I suppose it's the proverbial love at first sight, even though we first met in such bizarre circumstances. We were due at the farm for dinner, and we were so relaxed and easy going that we were almost late, but we managed to arrive precisely as the food was being served and I was able to introduce June to Angie and Willow as we all sat down for what I didn't expect would be an easy meal. A couple of glasses of wine helped break the ice, as did some nondescript and inconsequential chatter, but we knew that eventually we'd need to broach 'that' subject. It was a case of who would find an easy way to do it first.

'You know.' Began Angie, looking up abruptly. 'You're not at all what I thought an historian would be like, so I think we can talk to you.'

June smiled and nodded. 'Good. I was hoping you could.' She hesitated and then went on. 'I don't know if Gary's told you, but I know at first-hand what the abbey can do, and so, I believe, do you?' It was said as a question, intent on drawing Angie out.

Angie was still a little reticent. 'We know strange things happen here, is that what you mean?'

'Yes, the abbey makes you want to do things you wouldn't dream of anywhere else. Has it happened to you?'

'You know about that from your own experience?'

Willow snorted with exasperation. 'Look, will you two stop fencing? The point is.' She looked at June. 'We need to know that if we talk openly to you about what has happened we won't end up in the tabloid press. So if you tell us what it made you do, then we'll feel much happier about being frank with you.'

'Gary hasn't said anything to you?' June asked, diplomatically omitting to say I'd already been as frank with her as it was possible to be.

'No, he said you told him things in confidence and so he can't. So you tell us. We don't need details, but we need to know we're on the same wavelength.'

June looked thoughtful for a minute, then. 'All right.'

She took a deep breath. 'If I say to you that in one of the rooms upstairs in this house I've shared a double ended dildo with a woman while at the same time sucking her partner off, will it ease your minds?'

I'd watched and listened quietly, but I couldn't help exclaiming. 'You didn't tell me about that!'

'I can't tell you everything at once, can I?' June smiled a little bashfully. 'You know what this place is like, so don't imagine it was something I'd have done normally, but then, because of where it was I'm not ashamed of it either.'

'What's it like?' Asked Willow unexpectedly.

'What?'

'Sharing a dildo.'

'Good. Try it sometime if you're into girls.'

My cock was beginning to unfurl at a thought flitting through my mind, the thought of June and Willow together. Bizarrely, jealousy didn't come into it.

'She is,' Angie told June. 'And she's good at it, too.'

The comment brought a blush to Willow's cheeks and a giggle from June.

'Before we get side-tracked...'

I thought it was time to bring the conversation back to the subject in hand, and we spent the next hour with the girls telling June their take on what had happened. Once again she was the master of diplomacy, asking occasional questions, looking amazed at some things they said and nodding sagely at others, and never mentioning that she already knew most of what she was being told. Then, when we stopped talking she gazed at her shoes for a little while before starting to speak in her turn. We were all soon as relieved as I was at her non-judgemental attitude and, as we had hoped, her outsider's view brought a certain amount of clarity to things.

'It seems to me that the important people here are you and Gary,' she told Angie. 'Because nothing happens except when you're both there, and apart from the episode by the pool, nothing seems to happen unless you both climax. I don't know why, but it appears your orgasms opened the first window, although because it's still only happened a couple of times that might yet be coincidental, especially after what happened by that pool.'

She paused for a moment and Willow butted in.

'If it's just Gary and Angie who matter, then why do I feel so damn randy all the time?'

June nodded her understanding. 'It seems that everybody who has ever lived here has felt like that, and people like me who've just spent time here. I think you're just experiencing that, but Gary and Angie together seem to have a special influence here, that's why the time windows.'

'That makes sort of sense,' Willow agreed, 'and it's not an easy power to defy. In fact we think that episode by the pool was the answer to us resisting it the night before, so if that's the case it's certainly not all coincidental.'

They hadn't said anything about that to me, so obviously the girls been talking while I was away and coming to much the same conclusions as I had.

'Okay, then presuming it isn't a coincidence,' June went on, 'and I don't think it is either, then for some reason the abbey, or rather the land it's built on, is trying to tell the two of you something, but I don't know what that might be. It does seem that you're significant to it in some particular way. I do think that the site was probably originally dedicated to some ancient fertility deity, but somewhere along the way something happened to turn it from promoting natural pleasure and fertility to promoting gratification and depravity. I'd like to think you were shown the couple by the pool as proof that the site wasn't always so distorted, and the Celtic threesome as proof that sex was once fun here too. I sense that some kind of presence here wants to return it to that more innocent state. Maybe it thinks you and Gary are the ones who can do that, though I haven't a clue about why - or how.'

We all sat silently for a few minutes as everybody tried to absorb what we'd been told. Incredible as it might have sounded, it clearly made sense and wasn't far from what we had thought ourselves.

'So what shall we do?' asked Angie. 'I mean, how do we get to the bottom of it?'

'I don't know, but that pool seems significant, your second vision there probably came from about three thousand years ago when it was clearly venerated by the people who lived then.'

'Three thousand years?' Breathed Angie, incredulously.

'Yes, late Bronze Age. But it could be later, say two to two and a half thousand. That would be in the Iron Age, but they didn't stop making bronze simply because they discovered iron you know.'

'What about the other scene?' Willow asked her.

'That was almost certainly Iron Age, and Gary was probably right when he guessed it was about the time of the Roman invasion.'

'Why do you think it would be religiously important?' I asked her.

'I don't know, I've never seen it, and I've never looked properly at that patch of weeds where it was. Can we go and take a look at it?'

'Well, yes if it will help.'

'The truth is Gary,' she shrugged, 'that I don't know what will help, but it can't hurt, can it?'

'Unless it decides to give you a first-hand look at how it was in the Bronze Age.' Angie told her. 'That might help.'

There was a hint of derision in her tone, as if to say I don't need a lecture, I need a result. I was about to say something, but June ignored the sarcasm and answered seriously.

'I wouldn't mind that happening,' she responded, 'At least I'd know what you mean then, and yes, it might help.'

It was time to change tack. 'Come on then, let's go and take a look.'

We all trooped out into a lovely warm late spring evening, silent apart from nature's noises, and made our way over to where we had been before. Now we knew its origin, the unusual hollow was obviously the remains of a dried up pool, and I couldn't help but wonder if, somewhere under the nettles and weeds growing at its centre there lay still buried a beautiful bronze sword. The more mercenary part of my brain tucked the thought away for the future.

'Well, I can guess why the pool was special to the people of the Bronze Age,' June commented when she got there. 'I'd not thought of it before, but how many pools do you know that occur naturally at the top of a hill?'

'I can't think of any, apart from this one,' I answered. Strictly speaking it wasn't exactly at the top, but near enough.

'Exactly. They're not unknown, but they're rare. Most pools are formed at the bottom of hills by run-off, but you do get one or two that are fed by a spring or by a geological fault, and then they can be wherever the fault comes to the surface. This must be one, and I'd guess that alone would make it take on magical significance in ancient times.'

'But what meaning would its position near the church have?' Willow asked.

'Well, none directly. I would hazard a guess that the end of the ridge became endowed with religious importance and was looked on as a holy site in Bronze Age religion because of a sacred pool being here. Don't forget those standing stones you saw, with that grove planted around them. They would be there for a long time, until Christianity arrived probably, and Christianity often simply took over older sacred sites that it came across and turned them to its own use.

'That's it!' I exclaimed slamming the heel of my hand against my forehead.

'What is?' Angie asked the question for the three startled faces that gazed at me in consternation.

'Come on, I want to show you something.'

Without waiting I stood up and marched off towards the church ruin, eager to check on the thought that had jumped into my mind. There had been something about the pagan altar that had worried me when I'd seen it, and now I thought I knew what it was.

'Where are we going?' June asked, trotting to keep up.

'I want to look at something in the church.'

'Is that safe?' asked Willow, coming up alongside me.

'We'll soon find out.' Angie answered for her as we reached the empty doorway. 'What is it anyway?'

I walked across to the oversized altar and bent down to examine the stonework, immediately seeing what I suspected was true.

'You remember the grove with standing stones we saw in the Iron Age? The one June was just on about?'

'Yes.' Willow looked vaguely intrigued.

'Well come and look at this. Part of it is still here.'

All three followed me a little reluctantly and looked to where I was pointing.

'What?' asked Angie.

'Look at this altar. You remember the altar stone we saw in the Iron Age? Well it's still here, hidden inside the Christian one. I wonder why?'

I pointed to where some of the carvings had crumbled away at one corner, revealing how a thin skin of new stonework covering the ancient massive Druidic altar.

'So it is!' exclaimed June. 'That might be important. It might be the reason why this place is so sexually charged. In fact, more than might be, I'll lay odds on it.'

'You make it sound like a bloody battery,' Complained Angie, 'and anyway, that doesn't account for my bedroom.'

'Maybe not, but she could still be right,' Willow told Angie, 'and maybe it is a kind of battery, a battery storing sexual energy.'

'Okay, so why don't we sit ourselves down here then? If it is charged up that's bound to start something off, especially if you and I sit together.' Angie was looking at me as she spoke.

My first thought was of June, but she was nodding her encouragement.

'Yes, okay, why not?' I told her, heading for what was left of the north wall, figuring to sit in the day's fading sunlight. 'But we're not going to get horny with each other.'

'No, I don't expect us to,' She came to sit beside me. 'We'll just sit here and let the church do the rest.'

'If it wants to,' Willow put in, folding her long legs and placing herself elegantly alongside Angie.

'Yeah,' I agreed. 'We're not in charge of anything really, are we?'

June sat quietly down beside me and took my hand. I could feel her trembling slightly and her hand held mine just a little too hard.

'You all right?' I asked her.

'Yes, I'm fine.' She looked sheepishly at me with a self-conscious smile. 'I want something to happen, but I'm scared silly that it will.'

'Don't worry.' I squeezed her hand reassuringly. 'Probably nothing will, but even if it does it's more exciting than scary.'

She nodded her understanding and we all lapsed into silent waiting, wondering if we were all being silly waiting for something that wasn't going to happen and half hoping that it wouldn't anyway. For the next few minutes nothing happened except that June's grip on my hand loosened gradually and soon we were coming to the conclusion that the abbey wasn't going to play ball this time.

'How long are we going to sit here?' Angie asked, the impatience of youth showing through.

'Getting bored?' I asked her with a teasing smile.

'No, getting stiff.' She suddenly giggled. 'Although that's usually your problem when this place gets started, isn't it? Not that I going to complain about it, you understand, especially when the results are so nice.'

I was going to refute her observations, wondering how she could speak like that with June next to me, but the last few words of her remark had come as if from a distance. The sounds of nature surrounding us faded, our vision started to close and I realised we were on our way into the past once more. The bloody place must have been listening to us.

'Hang on June, stay with us, this is it.'

I just had time to caution her as my vision collapsed in on itself and the usual soft white noise overwhelmed my hearing. As I went under I hoped she had heard and understood my hasty warning.

We had begun in the ruined church and that's where we came to, except it was no longer derelict. We were still in a group but now by the south wall of the nave, and what a difference. Our vision cleared to find us standing in a blaze of candlelight surrounded by rich and glorious tapestries and gleaming woodwork. This was the church in its heyday, when the abbey had attracted the wealth of many patrons and wielded power over nearly half of Shropshire.

Apart from June, we'd all travelled back before and so we kind of knew what to expect, but to find ourselves suddenly standing in such a holy setting was very disconcerting. After a minute or so we began to get our collective nerve back and we stood staring about us at the former magnificence of what we only knew as broken down walls and a pile of old stonework, and I was glad to see that for all her earlier nervousness June was gazing about her with profound fascination and no sign of fear.

'My god, isn't it lovely?' Her voice carried a note of awe as she whispered her admiration for the old church. 'Just look at that carved screen, and all those wonderful paintings.'

The walls were covered in brightly coloured pictures depicting scenes from the scriptures, reminders of the rewards and retributions promised in the Bible. June was gazing around her now with eyes as shiny as a child's, pointing out the details that caught her attention. The fact of being transhipped centuries into the past hadn't fazed her at all, but then, she is an historian I suppose, if only in an amateur sense. I wondered fleetingly what a professional historian or archaeologist would give to have the same experience.

'Aren't they wonderful? There would have been no excuse for being bad then, with the penalty up on the wall in front of you every time you stood listening to a sermon. There's no pews you see, the congregation used to stand in those days -- or is it 'these days'?' She grinned happily at her own confusion. 'The only seats are those misericords in the chancel, and they're only for the monks to rest their bottoms on during night services.'

She was pointing through the rood screen to what looked like choir stalls with fold down wooden seats, each tipped back seat with a wooden lip at the front so that a monk might lean his behind on it while still standing for the service.

The screen door was open, but directly before it stood a large and heavy oak table, with a thickly embroidered altar cloth laid over its centre and two big brass candlesticks standing at each end with lighted candles in each. It was while we were looking at this that Willow suddenly noticed distant movement in front of the high altar.

'Look! We're not alone after all.' She pointed to the figure of a man in sumptuous and heavily embroidered ecclesiastical robes standing with his head bowed before the altar.

'I didn't think we would be.' Angie answered, still whispering automatically. 'We always get shown sex acts, and they're bloody difficult to do when nobody is there.'

'Alright, smarty pants,' I told her, chuckling at her scornful observation.

'Is it always like this?' Asked June. 'Not the banter. I mean, do you always find yourself on the side-lines?'

I hadn't thought of it before, but that was how it was. We were like so many spectators at a sports event, always watching, never participating. But that's how it had to be if our presence was purely transient.

'Pretty much,' I told her, 'we can't be seen, we can't change anything, and we can't interact with anyone 'cos we're not really here!'

'That's a bloody shame, isn't it?' Angie grinned lasciviously. 'It'd be good to find out if anything has changed sex-wise.'

That idea caught me on the hop. I thought I was pretty broadminded, but I'd never even considered that idea. But then again, three modern day women are quite enough -- if I ever get to bed Willow, that is.

'Angie!' I exclaimed, shocked by her suggestion.'

'So, who is that by the altar?' Angie asked, ignoring me and speaking to nobody in particular.

'I'm not sure,' June answered her. 'I'm not up on medieval vestments, but looking at those I'd guess he's pretty high up, and he's certainly not a monk, that is for sure. Probably a something like a bishop I would think.'

As she said that, the 'bishop' came forward through the door from the chancel to stand in the nave in front of the massive oak table, facing down the body of the church. Then he picked up a small bell that stood by one of the candlesticks and rang it, holding it high and putting on a rather severe and imperious look.

At his ring the door at the end of the church opened and four people stepped through, one tall elegantly dressed woman of around fifty years of age, and three young monks in brown habits acting as an escort, one either side of the woman and one walking behind. The last one carrying a bag made from sacking. They walked slowly forward across in front of us to about six feet from the table where they all stopped, the woman directly in front of the Bishop.

The woman spoke. 'I have come in answer to your summons, my Lord Bishop.'

So June was right, he was a bishop.

'Thank you Countess, but you had little choice having publicly admitted fornication with Sir Edmund.' The Bishop regarded her coldly.

'My god,' June exclaimed, whispering excitedly. 'She's the wife of an Earl. I wonder which one?'

'Countess, do you repent your sins and seek chastisement in order that you may be absolved?'

'I do, my lord, I am ready to accept your judgment.'

'Brother Mark and Brother Simon, make the Countess ready. Brother Edgar, prepare to administer punishment.'

We all stood at the side of the church looking in amazement at the scene unfolding before us. We knew, or I did at least, that the religious courts dealt with breaches of moral law instead of the King's Courts, but I don't think any of us, June included, thought punishment was meted out quite so summarily.