‘Thank God, you’re home.’
Burdon greets us at the door but he addresses me, rather than Leonora. It’s in no way disrespectful, but it is notable. We step inside, place our purchases on the hallstand, and begin to untie the ribbons of our hats.
‘What is it, Burdon, that cannot wait two minutes?’ Leonora asks sharply.
‘It’s young Mrs Morwood, Mrs Morwood. She’s had a fall.’
‘A fall?’
‘Down the stairs.’ The man’s lips are pale, his hands clasped tightly in front of him – I wonder if they might shake otherwise – and he nods upwards.
‘How long ago and where is she now?’ I ask before Leonora takes over. I collect my basket and wait, poised for an answer.
‘Not half an hour. She’s in bed; Mrs Charlton is attending to her.’
‘Did she say anything? I mean, as to why she fell?’
He shakes his head but his lips press tightly again. I shall have to corner him later.
I hurry up the stairs, ignoring Leonora’s grumbling about Jessamine’s seeking attention. I wish I did not hear her telling Burdon to bring afternoon tea to the library downstairs even though we’ve just had lunch, but perhaps it is best that I see her daughter-in-law without prying eyes and ears.
Jessamine is terribly pale against the white covers, eyes closed and there’s a bruise already darkening on her forehead. Mrs Charlton has the younger woman’s skirts pulled up to expose her bare feet. The right ankle is swollen and turning blue. Is it broken as well?
I put my basket down and gently shuffle the housekeeper aside. ‘Would you mind getting a wet cloth, Mrs Charlton? And a wet towel too.’
She could have already done this but I fear she’s panicking; her mothering heart makes her unable to think straight. Two incidents involving her girl so close together are worrying. But she obeys me quickly, happy to have direction, I think. When the housekeeper returns from the bathroom, I firmly wrap the cool wet towel around the swollen ankle, then I examine Jessamine’s brow. There’s no blood; the skin did not break. From the basket I take a small jar of calendula ointment; I dab a liberal amount on the egg on her forehead. I will do the same later to the ankle when it is cooled.
‘What happened, Mrs Charlton?’ I ask. There is a pitcher of water on the bedside table and a glass. I take a paper packet of ground dried butterbur and feverfew, recently and fortuitously purchased from the apothecary, pinch in a measure then mix it. I sit Jessamine up, prop myself behind her and open her lips. I pour a little into her mouth, and gently massage her throat to make her swallow. I do this twice more; not all the liquid is gone, but most. I continue to hold her upright a while longer as I wait for the housekeeper’s answer.
‘She fell down the stairs.’ But her eyes slide away.
‘Mrs Charlton, you may tell me anything. In fact, you should tell me everything. Did you witness the fall?’
Slowly, the older woman nods.
‘I was barely three feet from her. She wasn’t even near the top of the staircase. She hadn’t slept well these past two nights. All she wanted was some fresh air, a little walk, so we left the room. Then…’
‘Go on.’
‘It was like a mist, thin and white as poorhouse gruel, but somehow… somehow it fair picked her up and carried her. I could see her feet, they weren’t even moving, there was just her hair and nightgown trailing along as she was whisked to the staircase and tossed down.’ She shakes her head. ‘You’ll think I’m mad.’
‘No, Mrs Charlton. I don’t.’
‘And why’s that?’ she asks and it’s a challenge, quite rich from someone who’s just confessed to me what she did.
‘Because, Mrs Charlton, I have seen stranger things than you might imagine. Now, please go and make a warm broth for Mrs Morwood – beef will be best, not too thick.’
She stares at me for a moment, then nods, says, ‘Any vegetables, Miss Todd?’
‘Only green ones and just a little salt; do not bring bread.’
‘Yes, miss.’ She almost bobs a curtsey before she remembers who I am. ‘You’ll stay with her?’
‘I’ll stay with her.’
* * *
That night I sit by Jessamine’s bedside. Luther was determined to share his wife’s bed no matter how she felt, and argued with me until Leonora appeared and settled the matter. He finally moved some of his things to one of the guest rooms on the lower floor. It was difficult to send Mrs Charlton away but at last exhaustion if not common sense prevailed; she’d sat up the previous night with Jessamine after all. She was easily persuaded to leave her chatelaine with me in case I should need to open a door or cupboard in a hurry. If she’d been more alert she might have questioned that more closely but she did not.
I sit by the big bed with its blood-red hangings. The colour of passion, they say, my mother said. Whenever we’d change house, change patrons, she’d redecorate her bedroom in the new one. An array of crimsons, carefully calibrated to inflame the senses, oil burners for heady scents, silky sheets – honestly, I don’t know how she didn’t slide off them, but perhaps that was the point.
Now I sit beside Jessamine, who lies in this bed, my uncle’s bed, and think there’s been no passion here, at least not for a long time. Power, yes; domination, yes; pain, yes. Passion, no.
Jessamine whimpers in her sleep, tosses her head from side to side. I touch her shoulder, stroke her hair, whisper Hush, and she settles.
‘I’ll tell you a story, shall I?’ There’ll be no answer, but this will help me pass the time, for my interest in Murcianus’ Book of Strange Places has waned.
‘Before the world became as it is today, there was a witch who fell in love. She was the daughter of a woman who knew the secrets of gallowberries and how to walk between worlds, but that’s a tale for another time.’ I clear my throat. ‘The young girl – her name is lost for all our names are lost in the end – watched her mother leave this world, hounded. Then the girl took her revenge on the men who’d caused it and left her alone. She did not think that they’d had families themselves.
‘She found refuge with another woman, another witch, who was kind, kinder than her own mother had been (even if our mothers are unkind, Jessamine, we love them, we cannot help it, and we will avenge them). And she fell in love, though she’d not sought it, with the son of one of the men who’d killed her mother and whom she in turn had killed.
‘For a time, life was sweet, but all refuges are brief things. Her friend died. And the man she loved discovered her true nature, that of a witch, and every bit of love he’d felt for her was magically, alchemically transformed to hatred – so fast, so fast! And thus she did the only thing she could…
‘She whispered a word only witches know and he became a hound, a wolf of sorts, and he remembered only his devotion to her for wolves have no hatred of witches. He was loyal beyond all creatures and followed her through flood and fire – he followed her into the maw of a most terrible winter, and who knows? Perhaps he follows her still.’ I realise I’ve crept forward as I’ve told, my fingers clutching the bedsheets. I release them and sit back, clear my throat. ‘This is the story you asked to taste, whether it be sour or sweet, it is done.’
She doesn’t stir.
‘The point is, Jessamine Morwood, that most men will turn on you. And the only way to guarantee their loyalty is to make them into something else. Someone should have told you that before you married.’
Who told me that story? My mother? Or one of the old women in a variety of kitchens in a variety of houses? Those behind whose skirts I sought refuge from my mother’s temper, or from the master of the house who wanted me to disappear for my presence reminded him that my beautiful mother was encumbered with more than simply some challenging personality traits.
Who told me this tale? I cannot remember. Too many recountings collected over the years, too many heard and read and used as salve for wounds I did not invite. I wonder that I chose to tell poor Jessamine this one; I wonder if it will give her ill-dreams. I feel bad – surely she’s got enough.
* * *
Eventually, I doze in my chair, until I feel a shift in the air, a drop in temperature, hear the strange whispering I’ve heard before, in the houses I shared with my mother after her death. I open my eyes as Heloise moves in front of the last of the embers glowing orange in the hearth (I can see them through her, slightly obscured as things are by a thick rain); tiny flames flare, lick up in the wake of her passing as if to follow.
‘Mother,’ I say, soft and low.
She comes to stand in front of me. I put my hand out and touch Jessamine’s arm so gently that she does not wake. The light in Heloise’s eyes blazes. Dead though she might be, she still looks ill, still looks like she did in her last days of life, lying on that sweat-soaked mattress, unable to speak, sleeping more than anything, glaring when she was awake, grasping at my hands and digging her nails through the skin and into the flesh. I still have scars there that can be seen; little knots I can always feel under my fingers.
‘Mother, do not harm her. She’s done you no ill.’
Again, the fire in her gaze seethes; she gnashes her teeth, jerks her head forward on her neck like a snake. Not a noise in any of it, but her meaning’s unmistakable; I’ve only ever heard the whispers in my sleep, or rather in that place between sleeping and waking where nothing is quite real.
‘Mother, you do not even know her.’ But I think I know the problem: she thinks this woman took her place in this house she was meant to inherit. She thinks if she hurts Jessamine, she’ll hurt Luther. ‘Mother, she has stolen nothing from you. And she has suffered in her time here, trust me.’
Still there’s no softening of her expression; her hands wring as if around Jessamine’s throat. ‘If you haunt her, I will not help you, no matter my promise.’
That seems to get through and Heloise leans down, her face to mine, her breath like stinking rime even though there’s no air to come from her lungs. I feel flecks of ice hitting my skin. I don’t breathe, I don’t wish to take her death in, yet I do not sit back or try to avoid her. That was never the way to manage my mother in life and death hasn’t changed her. I learned early on that cringing away made everything worse; being brave didn’t stop her tantrums but somehow lessened their impact. In Whitebarrow, as a ghost, she did not leave the rented room, remained there as she’d done in the last part of her life; at least until I moved and she found me after a few days. I wondered then if she was too afraid to wander or felt she could not. I’d set no traps for her, when there seemed no need. How long after I’d left the house that was not mine did she go looking for me? How long before she ventured forth to find me? She travelled swiftly, but then they say the dead often do.
‘Leave her be, Mother. Leave her safe. You will have what you want, just as I swore, but her safety is the price.’ I do not tell her about the priest, my father; not yet. Who knows what she might do?
Heloise straightens slowly, gives Jessamine one last baleful look. I’m not certain I can trust her. Other measures will need to be taken. I watch as my mother leaves, ignoring the door, passing through the wall, off in the direction of her own room.
I do not sleep the rest of the night.
* * *
In the brief breath before proper dawn breaks and the servants rise, I leave Jessamine alone. I slip down to the kitchen and find a sack of salt, then creep back up the stairs and along to the locked room that used to belong to Heloise. That belongs once more to her. The key turns easily this time; soon I shall have my own.
I’ve lived so much of my life in darkness, taking secrets without permission. I fall so easily back into the habit of a lifetime. Quickly, I open the door and step into the cold, cold room.
My mother sits by the window again. She doesn’t bother to look at me, which makes my task easier. I open the neck of the sack and begin to pour salt along the lines where the walls meet the floor. Around the edges of the room I go. Heloise only takes notice as I trickle a thin trail by her; thin but it’s all I need. She stares at me but doesn’t seem to comprehend. Why would she? No one’s ever done this to her before, she’s never been contained. She does not know the lore of ghosts and spectres, whereas I stole it from all those clever books I read when I should have been cleaning shelves, emptying bins and pails.
Finally, I close the boundary, across the threshold. I open the door, carefully hopping over the line of salt, making sure the hem of my gown doesn’t disturb the integrity of the new border. I turn. Heloise is looking out the window.
‘Mother,’ I say. ‘You must stay put for the moment. I cannot trust you to do that, can I?’
She doesn’t even glance over her shoulder.
‘I will release you when I can. Be patient.’
Heloise will know what I’ve done only when she tries to leave here again, when she tries to pass through the walls easily as breath through muslin. She will be enraged. But she needs me; I have made my promises and I have never yet let her down. Except once – when I let her die. But I will make amends.
I do not believe she will leave Jessamine alone. I bear the woman no ill will – she had no real choice where she married – and I would not have her children lose her so soon. But whatever happens, Jessamine cannot remain in this house. She cannot remain in easy reach of Heloise. I would not see Jessamine harmed further. I need to consider my options. I will need Leonora as an ally.