Greenway House, later
They had an afternoon of air-raid trials, urging the older children and toting the small ones down from the nursery to the drawing room, far from the roof where an incendiary might start a fire. Timed and timed again, then gas mask training and play, then a messy meal and a fraught bedtime, one of the girls suddenly afraid of the dark. When Bridey finally had them all down, she only wished for her pillow. But Gigi goaded her downstairs, following the scent of baking bread, the promise of warmth. At the kitchen door, Bridey peered in cautiously. The mistress was the center around which the clock of Greenway turned, but she had no desire to meet her.
Mrs. Scaldwell looked up from the table. She had an empty cup in front of her and a shawl wrapped around. “Come in before the heat rushes out,” she said. “Not a moment’s peace.”
Bridey sat down with her embroidery frame, a swatch of flowers half done. Busy work for fidgeting hands.
“Where’s the mister Scaldwell?” Gigi said, warming herself at the oven. The Arbuthnots had presumably gone to bed but no one asked after them.
The housekeeper looked her over. “Home Guard. I wouldn’t like to be out, day like this. The cold is in my bones tonight. Can you hear that wind?”
They listened to the howl and moan until it chilled Bridey more.
“Like the wisht hunt going by,” Mrs. Scaldwell said.
“Which hunt?” Gigi said.
“The Devil’s hunt, my lover,” Mrs. Scaldwell said.
“Oh, is it a story?” Gigi said, settling in at the table. “Let’s have it.”
“Oh, no, Gigi,” Bridey said. “It’s too late and dreary for a story like that.” She’d only been hoping to get warmed a bit, not be nattered at. Stories sometimes gave her a stomachache, anyway.
“It’s no story.” In the dim light, Mrs. Scaldwell seemed an old woman, her bagged eyes hidden in shadow. But they’d already heard about her nephew, a young fellow in the Royal Air Force lost in February. An aeroplane crash, four men. Another thing Gigi had from the daily girl Edith, who moved in and out of all divisions of the house in the performance of her chores. “The Wistman’s Wood is fact enough,” Mrs. Scaldwell said. “Not far of here, as it happens. There you’ll find the stunted trees of the moors, bent into knots by a thousand years of wind like this. You’d be glad to avoid the old copse there any time of night or day, because the wisht man lives in that grove with his dandy dogs.”
“His dogs?” Bridey said hopefully.
“Hellhounds, Bridey, do keep up,” Gigi said.
“One night the Devil disguised himself as the huntsman Dewer and rode out his pack for the hunt. But he was not one for foxes, him. What he hunted was the souls of the unbaptized. Of the innocent child.”
The sampler in Bridey’s lap slid to the floor. She retrieved it, grasped it. “We shouldn’t leave the children alone too long.”
“Now it happens,” said the cook, undeterred, “a man of the moors, a Mr. Todd, was stumbling back from the pub to his home, where he knows his missus will be sharp with him for the money he’s drunk up. They’ve a wee one at home and nothing to eat for their supper. He’s in trouble, this Mr. Todd. On his way home, Mr. Todd felt the wind blowing up around him and saw a pack of dogs stirring the air and howling. Why, it’s his neighbor upon the moor, the huntsman Dewer, riding by in fine form! Todd called out to the master of the hunt in full voice, ‘Have you had good sport?’”
Mrs. Scaldwell’s performance of Todd’s voice was the creak of an old nail coming out of a plank. It traveled Bridey’s spine. This was why she hadn’t wanted to hear about the hunt. She was done up, now. Stories strung one’s nerves tight and plucked at them, tuning them for dread. Why should she be a plaything? But Mrs. Scaldwell’s black eyes kept Bridey pinned in place—
“‘Why, yes!’ answers Dewer,” Mrs. Scaldwell said. “And he threw Mr. Todd a small bundle. ‘Here, share our kill,’ he cried and was away, the hooves of his ride and the paws of the dogs thundering off and shaking the ground.”
There was a rumble of thunder, as though Mrs. Scaldwell controlled not just the room but the skies, too. She smiled. “Now Mr. Todd,” she continued. “He believed this fresh joint of meat the huntsman has given him will keep his wife sweet when he returns, so he hurries home to present it to her. He’ll be a fine provider then, won’t he?”
Bridey had the thought that Mrs. Scaldwell was no longer the same woman inside her own flesh.
“Back home at last,” Mrs. Scaldwell said, “the Todds unwrap the bloody bundle to begin their feast, and they find indeed fresh meat . . . the body of their own child!”
Bridey cried out, couldn’t hold it in.
Gigi threw her head back and howled with laughter, and Mrs. Scaldwell nodded, pleased.
Bridey pulled herself in tightly, imagining the Gray’s Anatomy chart of muscle groups, all flexed, taut. When she had herself stitched back together, when she could stop imagining a little child—
She turned to Gigi. “What was funny? It was horrid!”
“It’s only a story,” Gigi said.
“Everything is stories,” Mrs. Scaldwell said. “But some are built on truth, or half-truth, at least.”
“A half-truth is a lie,” Bridey said, before she could think which side of that argument she might need to claim.
“Half-truths sometimes tell the truth better than anything else,” Gigi said. “If you listen to a room of people boasting and telling stories, you’ll find out what truly matters to them. What they’re scared of. What they’ll put up a fight about.”
Bridey glanced her way. Listening to a room of people, a hobby now? “Well,” Bridey said. “I’ve heard another tale near enough to it, but it happened around the corner from some other place.”
“The Devil lives all places,” Mrs. Scaldwell said.
“Well, that’s the truth,” Gigi said.
Bridey was surprised, as she hadn’t got any sense that Gigi would believe in the Devil or hell, or even heaven, which some did, even as they ignored the rest.
“Never think the Devil can’t be where you meet him,” Mrs. Scaldwell said. “Whether he’s called the wisht man or no.”
Something scuffed outside in the corridor.
They all turned to the closed door, expecting Scaldwell to come through from his rounds of the estate. Or the mistress, perhaps. She liked a cup of cream as a treat, so said Edith.
When no one came through, Mrs. Scaldwell glanced between them and got up and Bridey imagined a dark figure behind the door, the wisht man, cloaked like Death and carrying a scythe, and then the figure was suddenly something worse, not a monster but the wounded, the destroyed, patched together and dragging—
Bridey stood, the sampler falling to her feet.
The door opened to little Doreen.
“What are you doing out of bed?” Mrs. Scaldwell said, but the little one had the bright eyes of fever. Strands of her hair stuck to her head and she had sick down the front of her nightdress.
“I’ve seen him,” the little girl said. “I’ve seen the wish man.”
“Good Lord,” Gigi said.
This is what came of stories. Bridey was only happy to escape before Mrs. Scaldwell started another. “The poor dear,” Bridey said. “Let’s get you back upstairs.”
“I’ll send up some elderberry blossom tea,” Mrs. Scaldwell said, going to light the hob. “That’ll settle her stomach.”
Send enough for two, Bridey wanted to say.
“He lives in the woods,” Doreen said.
Mrs. Scaldwell stared. “And a cool cloth for that head.”
Bridey scooped up Doreen and carried her upstairs, the girl’s hot cheek against her own. A half-truth was a lie, she’d said so herself. But it might also be an opportunity. She would have to prove herself a nurse now, ready or not.
At Doreen’s bed, the blackout paper on the window was peeled back to reveal the dark trees of the wood that lay beyond the walled gardens. Bridey put the child in clean pyjamas borrowed from another’s cubby and put her to bed, but for a moment, sitting on the edge of the cot, Bridey imagined Doreen had seen something, someone. She reached out to press the paper flat to the glass.