Shiverton Hall Read Online Free PDF Page A

lived in a large house in Bristol with his mother, a frail, consumptive woman who tried to keep out of his way as much as she could, and a huddle of terrified servants. A fearsomely clever and unscrupulous boy, he transformed his father’s business in a few short years, becoming England’s largest importer of slaves, and one of the richest men in the country. Much to Frederick’s relief, his mother succumbed to one of her many ailments in the winter of 1756. To celebrate he decided to build a house, away from the city, where he would have the privacy to do as he pleased.
    Lord Shiverton wanted his house to be a masterpiece, a symbol of his wealth and status. He bought an enormous stretch of land, ensuring that his home would have no prying neighbours for miles around, and employed one of the leading architects of the day. As he had an endless supply of slaves, and no interest at all in their welfare, the house was completed in record time, shortly before his eighteenth birthday.
    Alone and unsupervised, Lord Shiverton turned his house into a centre of wickedness. His friends, rich young gentlemen with a taste for more unusual diversions, would travel from London and Oxford to Shiverton Hall, where they knew that they could do whatever they wished, with no one else around, and no parents to stop them. It became one of the most popular destinations for the meetings of the Hellfire Club, whose motto was carved above the hall’s enormous front door, Fac quod vis (Do what thou wilt) , and which became part of the Shiverton family crest. The club members stuck true to the motto – they did what they pleased, how they pleased, no matter how immoral – with the shadowy figure of Lord Shiverton watching over them with silent approval. To the outside world, Lord Shiverton showed a respectable – indeed, very handsome – face, but cloistered in the stone walls of his house, the monstrousness of his true self was set free.
    As the years wore on, as is often the case with such men, Lord Shiverton became increasingly solitary and strange. His Hellfire Club friends had grown up and put their years of vice behind them, they had married and become upstanding gentlemen, some of them even members of the clergy. Rumours had begun to spread around Bath and London that Lord Shiverton was a practitioner of dark magic. The only men who still frequented Shiverton Hall were the blackest of the lot, tricksters, criminals and reprobates, and even they had begun to keep their distance.
    Lord Shiverton’s business interests were disintegrating, and because of his complete disregard for the health and well-being of the people he was trafficking, his ships were hotbeds of disease. One ship had sailed into harbour with only a few slaves still alive, the corpses of the rest having been tipped overboard. Once this news had circulated, people were unwilling to buy Shiverton’s slaves – not because they had an ounce of pity for the poor souls who had perished on his ships, but because they didn’t want their own households exposed to infection.
    Alone in his enormous house, his wealth and status leaking away, Lord Shiverton’s already twisted mind became increasingly disturbed. His fingernails grew to yellow talons and his greying hair curled down his back in greasy tendrils. He drank, and beat his slaves so savagely that they could barely walk.
    It was around this same time that girls began to disappear from Grimstone, the nearest village. What exactly happened to these girls was never discovered. The villagers suspected Lord Shiverton, but such was his power, and their terror of him, that they were unable to do anything. In 1799, four young girls went missing, never to be seen again, and if it weren’t for the last girl, Rose Watkins, many more might have vanished too.
    Rose Watkins worked as a barmaid in the Grimstone Tavern. She was seventeen, rather plump and very pretty. Rose herself was not unusual, but her mother, Ma Watkins, was very