| |
The night got colder as they headed back towards the Windmill, and though Ernest was inebriated, he hailed a coach to take them to Eden Hall. Constable Bertram stayed behind as they clambered into the stagecoach, helping both herself and Dolly to settle in graciously with gowns intact. He looked as sober as he had been in the company of the other three gentlemen earlier in the evening, though Ethel was sure she smelled a bit of wine on his breath when he said goodbye. It complimented his dusty attire.
When they returned, Ernest bid them goodnight, excusing himself to go and speak with Mr. Humphrey and Aloysius in the stables. It was just past nine in the evening when Dolly and Ethel parted ways in the hall, and Ethel was glad to see her room made up. Beulah had unpacked all her necessities and clothing, stored them away and turned down her bed. A humble fire burned in the fireplace, and a window had been cracked to let in a bit of air and expel some of the heat.
I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so tired.
Ethel changed into her bedclothes. It had been such a long day, and she wondered if all her time at Eden Hall would be so exhausting. “Perhaps I’m being overly dramatic,” she said aloud as she hung up the gown Dolly had so generously gifted. Ethel had been wallowing in dim misery for so long that she supposed the sunny glee Dolly offered would take some getting used to. She had taken to the girl. Who could not?
Despite her fatigue, Ethel smiled, resolved to find her cheer before the morning sun climbed the sky. Her Gladstone bag sat at the foot of the bed, and as she slipped beneath the covers, she retrieved her book.
A few more chapters before bed, I think. She read aloud till chapter nine and fell asleep at fourteen. There was the sound of bells tolling in the distance, dismissed by the roar of the tide and clap of wet logs burning to char in the hearth.
She woke in darkness to the whisper of phantoms.
––––––––
––––––––
The seas were churlish and pulled the rockweed from their roots to hover in a canopy atop the water’s surface. The bloated bladders that hung like beads from the rocking current, snapped and burst. The foam and bubbles entombed within their bellies, scorched her hands as Ethel struggled to swim, but her feet were anchored in place, buried beneath the rubble and dirt of the harbour.
She was almost there. Her fingertips skimmed the roiling plane of water that defined the sky from its briny depths. But every time she thought she’d been let free, the rockweed moved to curtain her nails and wrap about her fingers, and the seabed inhaled to pull her deeper.
Her lungs were full, her belly bulging and pregnant with water. She was wearing Dolly’s dress, and the pink chiffon crashed in the undertow like battered netting, catching at barnacles and broken shells.
Panic was a rabid beast inside her, but for all her thrashing and pulling and twisting, the pain of gulping in more water with every manic scream was a torrid realisation cut with dread.
Then the surface fell away. The little pockets of light that were almost imperceptible between the clotted bundles of seaweed, turned to darkness. As though filling its basin from some unknown source, the waterline rose until she could no longer see it. Her body bobbed in the current, but as the bonds at her ankles fell slack, she turned with stinging eyes to stare at Roland’s face.
His cheeks were swollen, his pallor ashen and blue. Small fish picked at the grime within his short-trimmed hair and beard, while black roe spilled like spume from out of his mouth.
He was buried in the seabed. His tomb of clams and periwinkles lined the walls of an empty casket alongside him. Ethel screamed and heard herself cry as her addled body floated upwards to finally breach the water’s surface, but as she clawed for purchase, pain shot through her belly.
––––––––
––––––––
The room was dark and her vision blurry as her eyes snapped open. Ethel sat up, like a twig broken in the path of phantom footsteps. Her chest sputtered from the adrenaline spawned from her nightmares, but as she grasped her breast and let her eyes adjust, Ethel’s body settled amidst the hill-like coverlets of Eden Hall.
The curtains had been drawn. The copper bed-warmer between the sheets was a fading heat against the chill that sat outside the thick canopy of her four-post bed. As Ethel settled, satisfied to pull herself beneath the blankets and wish away her foul dreams, she hesitated, a pain in her belly and a noise in the hall directing her glance.
“Hello?” she whispered, sure she had heard a voice. A staccato beat, like the thrum of a racing heart, stampeded in her ears. It was outside in the hall, then in the walls, and as she listened, its rhythm transformed to a drawn out moan from the floorboards.
“Is someone there?” she called, waiting for the response of her bedroom door. Though Ethel could not see past the heavy hung drapes of her bed, she knew it was there, just beyond.
She waited, straining to hear the sound of the door opening. Thoughts of her nightmares wove fright in her mind, and she wondered at the ghosts that would haunt Eden Hall.
What spirit would dwell in a manor so young, lest it came in the heart of a guest?
Silence lingered like a loathsome smell. Moving to investigate, Ethel stalled at the sense of something amiss. She reached below to pat at herself and groaned at the moisture within.
Her woman’s cycle had started, and it bloomed over the sheets in deep red, clotted carnations.
She sighed. “Oh, Lord hairy... what a nuisance,” Ethel muttered, looking beyond the curtains with a dismissive frown. She thought about rousing Beulah but decided against it. The woman would be tired after a long day of unpacking, and there was no need to disturb her when Ethel could manage.
She stood and shivered from the cold lying in wait outside the walls of her bedroom curtains. Forgetting her fears and suspicions, Ethel fetched her apron from her wardrobe, and secured it in place before removing her gown to be laundered. She donned a new nightdress and stripped what sheets had been fouled, before finding another blanket from the bottom of her dresser to lay across the mattress.
Her hands were cold when she’d finished and barely warmed when she blew into them. But staring at the made-up bed and then the hearth where embers cooled, Ethel looked back to the door that lay undisturbed, frowned, and bit her lip.
She was sure of hearing voices, muffled and quiet, but rambunctious, like children at play when they were meant to be sleeping. She crept to the door on the balls of her feet, her long hair draping down her back like a veil. Though the hinges groaned from use, Ethel was able to slide through a lithe opening into the hall. The grandfather clock ticked past one in the morning, its regal face adorned in shadow. The paintings on the wall were but dismal squares. A chill like an icy hand gripped the back of Ethel’s neck, causing the skin on her arms to prickle, but as the clattering sounds of movement echoed from down the stairs, her feet descended the staircase as her ears strained to listen.
Go back to bed.
Her heart leapt, as though it had been wrenched at from behind. Ethel turned, her eyes scanning the hall as her body leant back towards the railing. Nobody was there, and yet as her breath puffed like mad ghosts from between her lips, she was sure she had heard the voice. It was deep and final, a stout authority, not jovial like her brothers. It reminded her of Roland and pressing a fist to her chest as though warding off her nerves, she stared at a painting on the wall. A lone ship in a canvass of black waters. There was neither sun nor skies, just misty fog that clung as heavily as the darkness did to Eden Hall.
Ethel thought about returning to her room, wondering if her imaginations—spawned from dismal dreams–were giving way to ghoulish fancies. But the sounds from below chimed again, and steeling her grit, Ethel returned to the stairs, walking with fae-soft steps until she reached the bottom.
She passed the foyer, skirted the den, and glanced into Ernest’s office where his books were askew. A candle sat upon his desk and another on his gun cabinet, but she didn’t take them. They had long since guttered away. Ethel was amazed at how easily she guided herself through the house, recalling the blueprints and plans her father had managed to drape across every available space. To every last detail, the manor complied, though it wasn’t until Ethel had wandered towards the back of the house that she had spied a light.
The kitchens were lit, and the warmth of the stove permeated the pantry and the small labyrinth of servant’s corridors connecting outward.
Someone was speaking. A woman’s voice.
“I can hear you, you know. You’re barely discreet...” Ethel called out, rubbing her arms as they crossed over her front.
Dolly was at a table, a box opened in front of her. She was slicing limes, and a bottle of gin was set on the counter. She jumped at the sound, at Ethel’s sudden appearance in the doorway. Her robe was opened and her hair was loosened into long, tight curls. Her nightgown dragged on the floor.
“Ethel! What are you doing up so late, my dear?” Dolly asked, laughing away her alarm as she smiled and dropped the knife to suckle at her fingers. She made a face from the sour juice of the citrus fruit. “I didn’t wake you, did I?” Dolly asked, moving away from the counter.
There was a lantern on the table, the flame high, dressing the room in sunny light. Ethel exhaled. “I thought I heard a noise. Is everything all right? W-why are you up?”
Dolly nodded, backpedalling to retrieve her glass of gin and lime. “Quite all right,” she began, “Ernest has a bit of indigestion. I thought this may help him to bed.” She giggled, and Ethel watched the gin in the glass swirl with flecks of pulp.
“I thought I heard you speaking...”
Dolly paused, leaning in as though suspecting her to finish.
“You heard me?” She looked around, then spun to regard the space behind her. “There’s no one here...” she said as she returned and paused to consider the notion. She glanced sideways before returning her stare, and whispered, “Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?”
Was I? “I—” Ethel hesitated, watching as Dolly scanned the room with timid apprehension. Ethel could tell the concept of a voice was frightening her.
“I—uh... P-probably. You said that Ernest is sick?”
Dolly was relieved. She nodded her head.
“If he’s sick, it probably has more to do with staying out late drinking with Fritz and Mr. Carlow.”
“I would have to agree with that.”
Dolly chuckled as she gathered the lantern and smiled as they both walked out from the kitchens.
“Well,” she said, lacing her arm around Ethel’s, “the hair of the dog that bit you, right?”
Ethel nodded but didn’t relax. What was the voice in the hallway? Had her own demons and phantoms taken root in Eden Hall? A house her brother built, a legacy of her father, a home to dearest Dolly—spoiled by Ethel Arsenault—her black clothes and woeful mind and would-be-never husband, whose death had speared her heart.
