Vengeance was, indeed, Edward’s, and it came quickly. Precisely a day and a half after my arrival, in fact. I was in my uncle’s library when Edward and Vincent decided to include me in their game.
“There you are!” Vincent cried as he peered through the door. I lay on the floor near the window, stretched out on my stomach. A monstrous atlas had caught my attention, and I’d lost myself utterly within its massive and discolored pages. “Come, cousin, we need you! Come along!”
I stared at him and hesitated. “What for?”
Vincent’s head vanished for a few seconds, and I heard a low hum of voices beyond the door. I suppose at this point logic should have intervened and warned me to unlatch one of the windows and remove myself from the library as quickly as I could, but I was a slave to curiosity.
“Here,” Edward declared with much authority as he pushed his way through the door, a white dress—or a dress that had been white once upon a time—draped over his arm, the rest of its bulk dragging across the floor. Behind him Vincent marched, his hands clasped behind his back.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Take that book away,” he ordered, and Vincent walked over to me and confiscated the atlas and threw it down on the floor, kicking it away. “Now come here.”
“Go on. We haven’t got all day,” Vincent urged with a sharp tug on my coat.
I scrambled to my feet and reluctantly approached Edward. My gaze was fixed in vague fascination on the dress, which was of a filthy yellow hue that reminded me of disease. A few spots of brown here and there looked ominous though I wouldn’t have been able to guess their possible origins. I stood before my cousin, who dusted off the dress with sharp sweeps of his hand, his face pinched in concentration.
“Here!” The horrid thing was flung over me, and I was suddenly engulfed in a sea of rotting silk and lace.
The weight of the dress muffled my cries of disgust and horror. I swung my arms about, grabbing and punching and tearing.
“Stop that! Fool!” Edward retorted from somewhere outside. “You’ll ruin this thing!”
I felt the dress tugged here and there till my head somehow managed to slip through the neck hole, and I was dizzily staring at my cousins once again. The dress hung loose around me, stained silk spilling onto the floor and flowing outward and around me like a tiny pond of decay and time. Edward and Vincent walked in a thoughtful circle like a pair of scientists closely observing a strange artifact. They hardly spoke above a whisper, touching and pointing at details here and there, nodding and looking quite intelligent as they carried on.
Presently they stopped.
“We found this dress upstairs,” Edward said, looking at me. “And we wanted to see if the rumors were true.”
“What rumors?” I pressed, shifting from one foot to another and listening to the heavy rustling of old silk when I moved.
“This dress was worn by a great-aunt. She died a long time ago—threw herself out the window when she was tossed aside for another woman. Those brown stains? Her blood, cousin. She was wearing this dress when she died from what I hear.” Edward grinned and leaned closer. “And you’re in it now.”
How I managed to tear the ghastly thing off me, I couldn’t recall. I was free of it in a moment, however, amid my cousins’ loud whoops of laughter. Parts of the dress were torn, and I stood on that dreadful pile of discolored silk, stamping my feet in a mad effort to obliterate its existence under my weight. Then I lunged at my cousins and struck Edward quite hard with a tightly balled fist. He walked about with a faint bruise under his left eye for a day or two, I think.
Mama was furious and refused to speak with me while I served my punishment: three days of isolation in my assigned room. I dreamt of her, however. Every night for three nights, I dreamt that she crept into my room under the cover of darkness, knelt on the floor beside my bed, and watched me for a moment. She said nothing, made no other sound but the soft rustling of her skirts against the floor. Perhaps the most curious thing about these recurring dreams was the palpable air of sadness that marked her presence, and somehow, I was convinced it had nothing to do with my behavior and its embarrassing consequence.
The sadness, I believed then, was one that wasn’t fixed in the present, but in another point in time entirely. It was an odd conclusion, brought about by an odd sensation and a quiet voice in my mind.
* * * *
Hetty was the girl into whose care I was deposited.
She was, I believe, no more than seventeen then. A typical country lass, admirably robust and vigorous, her freckled complexion frozen in a perpetual flush. She became my dearest friend for the remaining time I spent at my uncle’s. After my fit of hysterics in the library (the purported bloody wedding-dress being whisked away and hidden in some secret room in the house), Hetty was there to raise my spirits since Aunt Julia had ordered my cousins to keep their distance from me lest I tear them all to pieces before the month’s end.
Hetty scolded me for giving vent to my fury and comforted me with kind words and a tray of tea and cakes. I was to have my tea in my room alone, according to Aunt Julia—less risk of my emptying a bottle of poison into my cousins’ cups, I suppose. Hetty demonstrated a familial sort of fondness for me, something which I’d never before expected.
“You remind me of my littlest nephew,” she said one quiet afternoon as she watched me put up a gallant front gnawing through a piece of dry and tasteless cake. She sat on a chair next to my bed, one that was uncomfortably far too small for her. It was a miracle that she didn’t fall off.
I looked at her in some surprise. That was the first time she’d made any reference to her family, but I suppose my guilt was that I never thought to ask.
“Do you see him often?”
Hetty smiled impishly. “I really don’t want to see him at all, to be sure, Master Natty.”
“Why not? Is he very disagreeable?” I frowned. If I reminded her of her nephew, did it mean I was hopelessly disagreeable as well?
“No, no! Indeed, poor Jack was as far from being disagreeable then as he is now! My brother’s little boy lies in the churchyard of St. Margaret’s.”
“Oh. Dead, Hetty?”
She nodded, her smile softening as she turned her gaze to her hands. “Been four years now, I reckon. Very sensitive boy, Jack was. Very sickly.”
I hesitated, dismayed by the comparison. “I’m like him?”
“When he lived, of course! You silly thing!” She laughed heartily. “Jack had a good deal of fire in him, like you, but his poor little body was too weak for his spirit.”
“I don’t think I like fire. It gives me nothing but trouble.”
Hetty regarded me with a thoughtful tilt of her head. “But it’s your nature, Master Natty.”
“No one likes my nature.” I hesitated. “I make Mama too sad.”
“Ah, but I do! And so does your papa, and I’m sure your mama does, too.” She pointed at my little plate. “Now, come. You need to finish your cake and to stop sulking. If you go on like this, I can’t take you out to the garden for a quick walk.”
“Can I go riding sometime?”
Hetty laughed again. “All you need to do is ask your uncle. To be sure, Master Vincent’s been talking about showing you Ares—his pony. Master Edward might not like you, but his brother does.” Giggling softly, she leaned forward and whispered, “He said that you’re a damned fine soldier.”
“You really shouldn’t use bad words, Hetty. If you don’t get flogged for it now, you’ll have your tongue buried in hot coals after you die.”
“My stars, where did you get such an idea? Your papa?”
I shrugged and picked at another piece of cake. “No one. I just made it up.”
Unfortunately, any schemes of riding were quickly dashed because Vincent fell out of a tree and sprained his ankle badly. I’d nothing to do with his accident and made sure my aunt knew it. She said nothing, but I could tell she still disapproved of me, regardless, though she took care not to show it in Mama’s company.
Hetty and I began our daily walks in the garden, taking care to avoid my cousins. To do this we confined our time outside to a small area that was the least frequented as its location in my uncle’s estate offered no promising prospects. That is, it faced low hills sparsely dotted with sad-looking trees, the only indication of human existence being the rotting shell of a burnt farmhouse to the east.
Little by little, Hetty coaxed me out of my boredom with teasing references to stories her grandparents had shared with her.
“If you do this for me, I’ll tell you about this” and its thousand and one variations, depending on the situation at hand, was her magic spell. I was hungry enough for friendlier exchanges with anyone in that household to encourage her schemes.
I was far too young to care for idle stories about my uncle’s family—my nurse proved to be an insatiable gossip—so Hetty regaled me with a host of unusual stories her grandparents told her when she was about my age. The fascination I felt was childish at best because these tales were macabre, filled with some of the most dreadful situations involving supernatural forces that most rational adults would easily have dismissed. Ghosts, demons, goblins, creatures that stalked homes, forests, lonely roads, all hungry for revenge, salvation, or simple human contact, peopled these tales.
“They’re not real!” I argued once.
“Oh, but they are! My grandfather saw spirits wandering through an old churchyard when he was younger.”
“What for?”
“Why, they never knew that they were dead, of course! They moved around at night as they did when they were still alive!”
“But why wouldn’t they know?”
Hetty pressed a finger against her lips to caution me.
“Because,” she replied, her voice dropping, “there are those who simply can’t let go. They’re attached too closely to something or someone, and they can’t move on to the other side even after they die.”
“Someone?” I echoed, horrified. “People are haunted, too?”
“They can be, yes. Sometimes there are specters that appear before people actually die.”
I shuddered. “No, there aren’t! That’s silly!”
“Oh, but there are! I’m not talking about a banshee, either, which is the spirit of a woman—a fairy woman, really—haunting a family to warn them of someone’s death.”
“That’s not possible. You can’t haunt anyone unless you’re dead. Where else can the ghost come from?”
Hetty merely shook her head, smiling indulgently. “To be sure, Master Natty, I can’t say where the specter comes from. Does it appear as a warning? Does it appear because the person marked for death wishes to die so badly? Or does it appear because whoever sees it wishes for someone else to die so badly? Sometimes desperation—if you feel it so deeply like it’s tightly wrapped around your core—turns into something quite unexpected.”
I swallowed. “Have you seen something that’s like a banshee but isn’t?”
“No.”
I sighed and waved her away, grumbling at her silly attempt at trickery, while she laughed, an odd sparkle in her eyes.
By the time daylight waned and evening crept into my room, I’d be walking around in a strange daze, half-terrified and half-excited by all kinds of dark possibilities. The shadows that slithered soundlessly from behind the furniture or from the corners of the room suddenly dragged me into their world. I watched them flit across the floor or raise themselves up along the walls. I wondered where they fled in the day, how their dark world carried on with every passing minute. I wondered if they watched me sleep or read my books by the window.
Hetty didn’t have many stories about them, so I made up my own as I lay in bed, waiting for sleep to claim me.
They became the heroes of my crude nursery tales and led me into one grand adventure after another. With black, shapeless fingers they tugged at my nightshirt and pointed me in one direction or another, unknown journeys apparently lying in wait. In all those adventures, I was the fortunate traveler who dogged their steps with awed fascination, watching them conquer my uncle’s massive, elaborate garden on black steeds. Or, with their drawn swords, drive the hellish forces of my cousins back indoors and the cowardly warmth of a thousand candles.
Or, with silent gallantry, shield a pair of servants with a handsome black cloak as they spent brief, stolen minutes in the garden together.
Those were my little games, and for a time, I enjoyed them. Every so often I even thought to entertain my nurse with my creations, and I became a storyteller of dubious skill but of impressive imagination. I provided crude illustrations for my stories, which she happily accepted.
“There!” I said with a proud smile as I held up a torn sheet of paper with a drawing of a fiery horse.
“You’re as good as Master Edward!” she cried, but I doubted it, not having seen anything from my cousin that vaguely resembled a drawing. “I like it!”
I frowned. “You aren’t supposed to like it. It’s the Devil’s steed, galloping through the moors.”
“Ah! And what’s it supposed to do?”
“I don’t know,” I replied with a bewildered shrug. “Eat things? What do demon horses do when they’re not in the fiery pit?”
“Run around, I reckon—cause all sorts of trouble. I’m sure, Master Natty, that your demon horse can gallop up walls and over roofs.”
I blinked. “Are you certain?”
“Why, of course! Anything that belongs to the Devil can do all sorts of horrible things. Surely your papa would agree.”
I stared doubtfully at my drawing, shocked that I just managed to illustrate something quite horrific. I was ready for some hair-raising tales, but imagining a black horse cloaked with fire that galloped up walls and over roofs conquered my will, and I quickly reshaped the drawing into something less terrible. In the end, it turned into a horned snake with a tail tipped with fire.
When I felt lively enough, I’d put on a little production by throwing a blanket over my head and crawling all over the floor, moaning and sighing and doing what I could to become a convincing shadow character. Hetty, bless her, understood my aim well enough to play along, pretending surprise or terror when required and, in the end, becoming a significant part of my little world of make-believe.
By taking chilling fireside themes and shaping them with my own vision, I’d managed to overcome my initial fears of the unknown and the supernatural—or at the very least learned to minimize their effects. I continued to jump at sudden movements or feel my skin crawl at certain nocturnal sounds. Or I’d hide, suffocating, under my blankets when my imagination overreached itself, but I also found recovery to be quicker.
The gradual shift in my behavior encouraged Hetty, and she rewarded me with more cake and supernatural tales. For all her efforts, though, I’d grown to prefer my own little tales of shadow adventures.
* * * *
The month came to an end, and I regretted leaving Northwode Hall. Though I hardly spent time with my cousins as Mama had at first hoped, I still felt buoyed and refreshed, my imagination burning. I asked her if we could take Hetty back with us.
“Natty,” she said, sighing, as my uncle’s carriage took us back to Gatcombe, “I hope that you’ll understand the importance of this visit someday and how your remarkable behavior nearly affected all my hopes.”
“Oh—is it very important, Mama?”
“More so than you think, dearest, but I won’t talk any more about it.”
She smiled at me then—a familiar, comforting smile.
The day was brilliant, warm, and cheerful, but I suddenly felt a wave of coldness sweep over me. My skin prickled, and my spirits sagged under an odd sense of desolation. I slid down my seat and climbed next to Mama. I held her tightly all the way home, falling asleep against her breast when I felt her arms wrap around me, securing me with warmth.
* * * *
Mama and I visited Northwode Hall thrice more afterward—a surprise to me, given my wild behavior the first time around. In fact, I expected to be forbidden to step within the borders of Havenstreet, but I’d been forgiven, for the most part, that is, and welcomed back.
Uncle Edward had taken to me well enough, I suppose, but Aunt Julia kept her distance. Edward, being several years older than I, had gone on to mingle with the larger, more fashionable world around them before he vanished within university walls. He didn’t have time for me, and he didn’t seem to care much for the loss.
Vincent, who was two years younger than his brother, had a friendlier disposition, though he knew my place well enough to enjoy a good joke or two at my expense.
As for Marianne, who was a year younger than Vincent, she simply ignored me, all her attention bent on her coming-out and all the preparations that, I suppose, were required of her. Her governess, Aunt Julia, and another lady from their circle—one who traveled often to Paris, bringing back all kinds of fashion trends for Marianne—became her world. Marianne happily lost herself in the attention and all the fussing over her appearance and deportment.
I was pleased to see Hetty again, though she was no longer charged to be my temporary nurse. I was on my own, having shown myself to be much improved in temper and no longer in need of a guardian. I missed our stories, I must confess, and when she left Northwode Hall for Suffolk and a new employer, I was so despondent that I didn’t care to remain with my cousins.
I was eight, ten, and thirteen during those visits. When Edward first and then Vincent left for Oxford, my visits stopped, but Mama’s didn’t. She continued to see Uncle Edward and Aunt Julia though for only a weekend or half a week at most. All her visits, in fact, coincided with lavish dinner-parties or balls that my aunt and uncle occasionally held. Papa was invited, but he always refused, giving his parish duties for his excuse. He allowed Mama to go, however, having seen how much pleasure her visits to Havenstreet gave her, and Aunt Julia became her constant companion in Papa’s absence.
Her visits delighted me. When she returned home, Mama was always refreshed, almost as though she’d shed several years and had gone back to the height of her youth. In fact, at times I could barely recognize her. Her complexion glowed, her eyes sparkled with a bright light, and her humor was utterly infectious. She recounted her adventures at the dinner-table with so much spirit and energy that Papa and I were always reduced to amused and awed listeners.
“Do you remember Lady So-and-So and Lord This-and-That?” she’d ask Papa.
“Yes, I believe I do,” he’d answer, and from there a steady litany of accounts would come flying out of Mama’s lips.
“Sir Joseph Wellham was there, Frederick. Can you believe that he still visits Havenstreet? He’s so altered now, though—I never would’ve recognized him had Julia not presented him to me.”
“An old rival of mine, eh?” Papa laughed. “What a pity it is, then, that Natty didn’t come with you, Cecily. You’d have presented the boy, boasted about your family, and declared yourself the happiest woman on earth.”
Mama laughed with him. “I did! I did! Sir Joseph wasn’t pleased, I think.”
Past acquaintances and friends, some of them being former suitors of Mama, would come alive in the course of conversation. Papa indulged her, listening with a smile and laughing in turn, at times giving a clever or sly observation regarding a defeated rival of his, for which Mama would blush and scold him playfully.
You had so many gentlemen pursuing you, and yet you chose me, Papa seemed to say, and even though I was quite young then, I still felt a surge of pleasure and comfort in his triumph over his wealthier rivals.
“I’ve made peace with my brother at last,” she once told me when I was around twelve, I believe, her features all aglow as she set her sewing-basket on her lap.
“Were they very angry with you, Mama?” I prodded from where I sat on the floor, close to her chair, a small pile of books before me.
She nodded. Her eyes twinkled in the candlelight as she smiled at me, her manner surprisingly open and relaxed.
Papa was away visiting a sick neighbor and wasn’t expected back till after dinner. I suspected his absence contributed to her almost childish ease in the way she communicated with me.
“They were, I’m afraid, dearest, but I’ll tell you my story in time. Not now.”
“Are they angry with Papa?”
“A little less so, but don’t worry about that. I’m happy, and so is he.”
“Is he forgiven now, too?”
She hesitated for a fraction of a second, but I sensed it as though it were an hour. “Of course, he is!”
“What did you do to upset Grandpapa?”
Mama drew her shoulders back and regarded me with a faint smile. “I loved prudently, Nathaniel. I hope to see you do the same someday.”
The candlelight flickered, and Mama set her basket aside, stood up, and swept across the room with her beloved snuffers. She appeared so content and pleased with herself doing something as simple as trimming a candle’s wick that I simply couldn’t imagine her in any capacity other than a modest vicar’s wife, who worried about proper illumination.