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None of them spoke or moved. There brooded over all a fearful calm. What Gwynplaine saw was a torture chamber. There were many such in England. The crypt of Beauchamp Tower long served this purpose, as did also the cell in the Lollards' prison. A place of this nature is still to be seen in London, called "the Vaults of Lady Place."
She buried her face in his shoulder, sobbing brokenly: 'Oh, Harold! It was too awful. I never thought, never for a moment, that my poor dear mother was buried in the crypt. And when I went to look at the name on the coffin that was nearest to where I was, I knocked away the dust, and then I saw her name: "Margaret Norman, aetat 22." I couldn't bear it.
Of course I know she cannot be moved from the crypt. She must remain there. But there needn't be all that dust. I want you to come there with me some time soon. I fear I am afraid to go alone. I want to bring some flowers and to tidy up the place. Won't you come with me this time? I know now, Harold, why you didn't let me go in before. But now it is different. This is not curiosity.
She started at the noise, and then smiled, in scorn of her momentary fear, as she took up the ring that had occasioned the sound, a ring plain and solid, like those used as signets in the Middle Ages, with a large dull opal in the centre. What secret could that bauble have in common with its ghastly companions in Death's crypt?
Service, which had been going on in the choir when we arrived, had now ceased; but from the crypt below arose a chant so harsh, vibratory, and void of solemnity, that we were irresistibly reminded of the subterranean chorus of demons in "Robert le Diable." Two of us ventured below and discovered the chapter, all robed in purple, sitting round a pall with a presumable coffin underneath.
It is of basilica form, with a nave and aisles flanked by sixteen columns of sandstone. As at S. Miniato, the choir is raised over a lofty crypt.
One of the pillars of the crypt proper is called the Rob Roy pillar, for behind it the great outlaw is supposed to have hidden. Near it is the shrine of St. Mungo, patron saint of Glasgow, who has presumably risen in the hierarchy now that Glasgow has been made a county. Facing the shrine is a window decorated with a portrait of Edward Irving, clothed as St. John the Baptist.
And every clambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed, Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!
This is the "haunted chamber of Creslow" haunted by a lady, Rosamond Clifford, the "Fair Rosamond" of Woodstock, often heard, but seldom seen, by those who stay at night in the room, which she enters by a Gothic doorway leading from the crypt.
It appears that in ancient times there was great quarrelling over the possession of his bones, and that Archbishop Odo, declaring his grave to be neglected, carried them off to Canterbury, but after much disputing a small portion of the saint's remains were restored to Ripon. Beneath the corner of the nave is the singular crypt known as Wilfrid's Needle.
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