Viscountess Boudica At The Tower

Boudica wears her talismanic photograph of Guy Fawkes

Back in the days when Viscountess Boudica lived in Bethnal Green, she visited the Tower of London and experienced a supernatural encounter with Guy Fawkes. Since she was evicted from her flat and rehoused in Uttoxeter in 2016, Viscountess Boudica has entered into a mystical union with Guy Fawkes who has accompanied her constantly as her guardian angel through the travails of existence.

Recently, when she made a rare trip down south to visit her mother in Braintree, I arranged to meet with the Viscountess to enjoy an afternoon visiting the Tower of London so that she could recount her story to me in the place where it all began.

Since she has been gone, I have been concerned about her well being and anxious to discover how life has treated the Viscountess after her departure from Bethnal Green in such ignominious circumstances. So I am delighted to report that she appeared to be in the best of health, glowing with colour, and nicely turned out in a powder blue wool overcoat matched by a toning floral blouse.

Once we had wearied ourselves, trudging around the battlements in the drizzle and squeezing through the half term crowds on the narrow staircases, we repaired to the refectory. There Viscountess confided her extraordinary tale – published today with Boudica’s own photographs and drawings.

“Whenever I travelled on the Underground, the lights would always flicker when the train stopped at Tower Hill and I could not understand why. So, back in 2014 on December 9th, it was a Tuesday I remember, I came to the Tower with my friend Christopher, a little Essex boy.

We went into this little room in the Bloody Tower with a painting of an old gentleman wearing a blue tunic. There was no-one else in there, so we took some pictures and all of a sudden it went very cold and I could smell something like burnt matches. I looked at Christopher and he said ‘I’m not having this.’ Later when I looked at the picture there was letters spelling ‘G U I…’ and then they vanished.

We went into the White Tower and, as I was looking at the Armoury, I had this sense that someone was watching me. Christopher said, ‘I’m bored now, can we go home?’ So I said, ‘Fair enough,’ but I thought ‘I am coming back.’

The following week, on 16th December, I returned to the room in the Bloody Tower where the picture had been and there was nothing there. Up the stairs I went to the White Tower and looked in the Armoury. I had the strangest feeling, I was getting pains in my head. I thought, ‘I can’t understand it’ and I smelled the burnt matches again.

Then I came over with this sense of grief. The attendant who was standing beside the door as you go up the stairs asked me, ‘What’s the matter? Have you seen a ghost?’ I said, ‘I have,’ and she replied, ‘It must be Anne Boleyn?’ So I said, ‘No.’ She asked, ‘It must be Richard III?’ I said, ‘No.’ ‘The two princes?’ she asked. So I said, ‘No,’ again. She enquired, ‘Who have you seen?’ so I explained her, ‘A man with a tall pointy hat and a beard.’  ‘No-one’s seen him for over four hundred and twelve years,’ she exclaimed. ‘As I went up the stairs, he just appeared,’ I told her.

He had these piercing blue eyes and I was totally captivated. He winked and smiled and vanished. As I climbed down the stairs, I could not help but think about what I had seen.

Then I had a cigarette outside and was looking at the ravens. This bush was moving even though there was no wind and I could hear these words saying, ‘Thou darest not say that one day thee will again be mine.’ I shot out of there and went past where they used to mint the coins. I was looking in the window and it was all blank, but as I took a picture with my camera, he appeared. That is him in the picture.

It was like something had come back to me that I had lost, yet I could not figure out what it was until I went had my tarot cards read in July 2015.

I knew the girls, Tricia and Debbie and her sister quite well, so I paid Tricia the twenty-five pounds and off we went down the stairs. She asked me to pick a card, but all of a sudden the cards started flying about and the lights were flickering. Tricia looked at me and said, ‘I’m going to have to stop this session.’ So I asked her, ‘Why?’

She said, ‘Standing behind you is Guy Fawkes, your husband. Can you feel his presence?’ I said, ‘I can feel a weight on my shoulders.’ She told me, ‘There was a link forged in 1583 when he stabbed his wrist with a knife that had ‘passion of christ’ engraved on the blade. But you got married on Tuesday 5th November 1602. Father Garnet was the priest and you were married somewhere outside York.’

‘He has always been with you,’ she explained. ‘When you went to the Tower of London, he had been waiting for his love to return. He is your protector.’

Later, when I was admitted to hospital with a thrombosis in my leg. They asked me to contact a friend or next of kin but I could not get hold of anyone. The doctor advised me to stay until someone came for me and I thought, ‘I don’t know what I am going to do.’ It was about eleven o’clock at night when the doctor found me and said, ‘I saw your husband sitting beside you when you came in. He’s a bit old fashioned isn’t he, with that tall pointy hat and those piercing blue eyes?’

They gave me my discharge papers and I felt his icy hand on mine but I could not see him. All the way, as we walked home up Vallance Rd to Bethnal Green I could feel his hand in mine and smell the camphor. I thought, ‘This is the strangest feeling, feeling comforted yet I cannot see who it is.’ When I got home, I could see his image like a black mist with a pointy hat kneeling beside me.

I rang up Tricia and told her what had been happening. She said, ‘Guy Fawkes was there, wasn’t he? He will always be there and the love affair will always continue.’

I came from Dublin around 1570 with my parents and we used to work in Yorkshire, as labourers moving from one farm to another. So I never went to school. I remember our first meeting. I was down by the old oak tree when he came along and it was love at first sight. He said, ‘You are mine and you always will be,’ yet he was supposed to return to me on 5th November and he never came back…

I should had been there, I could have warned him. I never understood why they did not have a look-out, but in those days men were secretive. You could not ask too many questions. On 12th April, I bought him a lantern in a shop in Stonegate in York and gave it to him on his birthday.

As Tricia said to me, ‘There is a love that is not diminished in time and it never will be.’

It is a comforting thing. I can feel him at night rubbing my hand.”

Boudica’s photograph of Guy Fawkes

Viscountess Boudica & Guy Fawkes at home in Uttoxeter

Photographs and drawing copyright © Viscountess Boudica

You may also like to take a look at

The Departure of Viscountess Boudica

Viscountess Boudica’s Domestic Appliances

Viscountess Boudica’s Drawings

Viscountess Boudica’s Blog

Viscountess Boudica’s Album

Viscountess Boudica’s Halloween

Viscountess Boudica’s Christmas

Viscountess Boudica’s Valentine’s Day

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