The Lost History of Dreams

by Kris Waldherr

  “Isabelle Lowell was Ada’s niece,” John explained. “Hugh bequeathed her the glass chapel and Weald House, which had been Ada’s family home.”

  “Have I met this Isabelle Lowell?”

  “No. Nor have I.” John spoke as though ticking off items from a list. “Hugh’s solicitor wrote that Miss Lowell is a spinster. She was desperately devoted to Ada, who was like a mother to her. Took her death hard. You’ll need to approach her carefully—she probably hoped to see her uncle again one day. You’re to inform her of her inheritance, give her this envelope from Hugh, and inter his corpse inside the chapel beside Ada. Hugh’s solicitor wrote she possesses the only key for it, but has kept it locked all these years out of respect for Hugh’s wishes.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Not quite. To prove you’ve fulfilled his final request, you’ll need to persuade Miss Lowell to allow you to daguerreotype his corpse in the chapel.” An awkward pause. “She’s to pose beside him to prove she’s been notified of his death.”

  “What makes you think she’d be willing to do this?”

  “Hopefully Miss Lowell’s joy at finding herself a landed gentlewoman will make her amiable to her uncle’s demands.”

  Robert thrust the envelope back. “Shropshire is nearly to Wales.”

  “I’d hoped you’d do this as a favor to me, if nothing else. Until the terms are fulfilled, Hugh’s estate legally remains my responsibility.”

  “I have an occupation. I’m relied upon.” The truth was Robert feared leaving London for so long. What if Sida left for good? “I’ll give you the name of another daguerreotypist.”

  John set his hands on Robert’s shoulders. “It’s a delicate situation. We need a family member. Someone to intervene quickly—so far no one has learned of Hugh’s passing.” His voice dropped. “Do you know what happened when Lord Byron died? No one could decide where to bury him because of the scandal of his life—no Poets’ Corner, no Westminster Abbey. By the time his burial site was settled, thousands of people thronged his funeral procession, and people queued for four days—four days!—to view his body.”

  “You’re suggesting this might happen with Hugh.” Robert’s tone was disbelieving.

  John’s warm gaze sought Robert’s. “I don’t think you comprehend the situation, brother of mine. Once others become involved, chances are Hugh will end up buried apart from Ada.”

  Robert tried not to feel affected. But he was. As the brothers walked, he took in his childhood landscape: the fields of wheat latent with decay, the rows of oaks straining toward the blustery grey sky. Rolling stone walls, rough with mortar and moss. He was surprised how eternal it felt. More crows poured forth from the field beyond, their cries echoing in the cold. “It’s like they’re anticipating Hugh’s funeral,” John muttered, swatting at one. “I should hunt them just to reduce their damn numbers.” It was all as Robert recalled and yet somehow different.

  The hounds ran into the woods after a rabbit just as the brothers approached a cottage beyond an allotment. Robert’s heart gave a little thump of recognition. The cottage was set beside a slender stream and looked the same as when he’d last visited: the rough-hewn timber and plaster construction, the tangle of blood-red roses creeping along the walls even in winter. His eyes prickled with a peculiar heat as he recalled the fig and apple trees, the rows of beans and melons twined over willow stakes, the mill spilling with water. Now the small vegetable plot and fruit trees marking the front of the house looked abandoned from more than the season.

  “This had been Cressida’s home?”

  John presented the statement as a question, but he knew. Everyone knew.

  Robert nodded, his throat tightening. If he closed his eyes, he could still see Sida the first time he’d come upon her at the tailor shop in the village, bent over her sewing. “She’s Eurasian—you can tell by her eyes and skin,” John had announced; even then he was fascinated with India. “Half-caste. Don’t see many outside of Town.” But there was something beyond Sida’s appearance that had drawn Robert back the following day. When he’d returned, a sketch was set on the table beside her, a drawing of a mourning dove. It was the loveliest thing he’d ever seen. “Who drew this?” he’d asked. “Not you,” she’d teased. Her voice was warm. Welcoming . . .

  John’s voice turned as soft as the silks he favored. “You must miss her so.”

  Robert jutted his chin toward the cottage. “Who lives there now?”

  John gestured into the air with his hands. “Does it matter?”

  Her aunt must have abandoned the cottage after the scandal. Sida had loved its garden with a desperation, perhaps because it was the one place her uncle never ventured. When she wasn’t sewing, she’d sketch there, the tip of her tongue caught between her lips in blissful concentration.

  With this, Robert’s thoughts turned to his fourth-story room in Clerkenwell, where he prayed she awaited. An odd panic fell on him. If he didn’t leave in that moment, he’d lose his wife like Orpheus in his Ovid.

  Robert made an extravagant show of examining his pocket watch. “I must depart. If you could return to the house . . .”

  John stared at his mud-covered boots. “I’ll have Durkin take your camera to the coach stand.”

  “I appreciate this.” He couldn’t even muster the energy to warn how fragile the equipment was.

  “So you’ll leave me responsible for Hugh’s estate?”

  Robert didn’t answer.

  “Will I ever see you again, brother of mine?”

  In lieu of a reply, he offered John his hand. Estrangement was easier than loss.

  “This is goodbye, Robert?”

  “For now, John.”

  At last John accepted his hand. The handshake turned into an embrace, one that seemed to encompass all of their collective regrets. He doubted he’d see his brother again. Nor would he return.

  Once they broke away, Robert stole a last glance at Sida’s garden. He envisioned her waving to him as she was before their marriage, her blue gown fluttering against her limbs in the wind, her sable hair tumbling about her cheeks as she ran from the garden. Beauty amid the cruelty . . .

  Goodbye to that too.

  Just as he turned toward the road, John called out. “One last thing . . .”

  Robert looked back.

  “I’m only going to say this once, Robert. Just this one time,” John said, his words surprising Robert with their passion. “You of all men should understand—Hugh only wants to be reunited with his wife. To go home to her. Nothing more. Nothing less. Can you really deny him this?”

  The Glass Chapel

  Excerpted from The Lost History of Dreams by Hugh de Bonne, published 1837 by Chapman & Hall, London.

  As the Poet waited ’neath domed glass

  Whilst the clocks chimed forlorn for noon

  His fists stopping those who might trespass

  With dreaded words he dared impugn.

  ‘It cannot be,’ he wept. ‘She whose skin

  Was white as snow from winter’s blight—

  She whose lips were red as roses. Poison

  You say? Nay, it cannot be! Such spite

  Lives not in this kingdom.’ (Alas, ’twas so.)

  Then he cried : ‘Break the glass, but not to plunder!

  Let Eurydice rest protected from her foe

  On a bed of diamonds—a chimera of wonder—

  A home for her soul.’

  And thus the chapel in which they’d wed

  Became a house where worms were fed.

  *

  I.

  There was no one there. Six hours on a coal-spewing train from Euston, another three on a coach from Shrewsbury to the coach stand, which turned out not to be the warm, inviting inn Robert had hoped for. Instead, he found himself at the intersection of two spindly country lanes at the base of an isolated incline. A large oak, far wider than any he’d ever seen, marked the crossroad like a sentinel. Beside the oak, fields glistened with frost. Be
yond that, nothing.

  “Kynnersley on the Weald Moors,” the coachman announced, already reaching to unlatch Hugh’s coffin cart from the back of the carriage. John had gone to considerable expense to arrange for Hugh’s transport, even hiring a private carriage to meet them at the railway terminus in Shrewsbury.

  “Are you certain?” Robert asked, his breath pluming in the cold.

  “Quite certain.”

  Robert peered out from the coach. Though it couldn’t be more than half past three in the afternoon, the sky was weighed with an ominous gloom. It only contributed to his mood. Already he missed Sida with a yearning tainted by anxiety. She’d been waiting on their bed when he’d returned from his brother’s and had sobbed when he’d informed her of his task. “I’ll return to you as quickly as I can,” he’d promised.

  Robert climbed down from the coach, careful not to slip on the frozen ground. Ice shattered like glass beneath his heels. The envelope concerning Hugh’s bequest pressed against his ribs; to protect it, Robert had tucked it beneath his waistcoat next to his linen shirt. He’d memorized the address by heart: Miss Isabelle Lowell, Weald House, Kynnersley on the Weald Moors, Shropshire. Every time he’d shifted in the coach, the paper grazed his flesh.

  The coachman asked once he’d unlatched the coffin, “Is someone to meet you, sir?”

  “From Weald House. A Miss Lowell. Do you know her?”

  He offered a dismissive pout. “I’m not from these parts.”

  Robert squinted into the distance. The sky would be completely dark within the hour. A rumble of thunder sounded.

  “Is there somewhere I could wait that’s less isolated?”

  “Naught here in Kynnersley. Closest place with a public house is Wellington. That’s five miles from here”—the coachman pointed his whip at a distant point—“if you walk down that path through the moors. I’d take you but I need to return to Shrewsbury before the rain starts. Supposed to be nasty. Might even turn to sleet by morning.”

  “I’ll wait here then.” Better this than wandering alone through the moors at night dragging a coffin and his camera.

  “I expect you haven’t much choice.” The coachman held out his hand for a tip just as a faraway slash of lightning cut the sky. “Anyway, I think I see someone coming. Perhaps it’s for you.”

  “You just want to be off,” Robert said, bitterness infusing his attempt at humor.

  The coachman settled his hat over his brow as he side-eyed Hugh’s coffin. “Can you blame me?”

  Once the dust from the departing coach settled, Robert stared into the distance. The coachman was right: someone was coming. A low rumble shook the ground. A chaise-cart, a two-wheeled carriage such as a governess would drive, approached pulled by a single black horse. Robert could make out the dull gleam of dark cloth across the carriage hood. Brass livery.

  The chaise shuddered to a stop before him, the horse neighing in protest. A flash of bright teeth presented from the shadows beneath the hood, accompanied by a whiff of tobacco smoke.

  “Mr. Highstead, yes?” a rough voice called.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Owen Rhys, the groom. Miss Lowell sent me from Weald House to fetch you and Hugh.”

  Owen jumped down from the chaise. To Robert’s surprise, Owen’s deep voice belied his youth—he appeared no older than eighteen. His eyes and hair beneath his broad-brimmed felt hat were dark. Welsh heritage, Robert supposed. He was reminded how close Shropshire was to the border of Wales.

  Owen pointed to the coffin. “I assume that’s Hugh in there.”

  “He is,” Robert answered; he’d closed the casket himself.

  “I’ll take care of him.” Owen stomped out his cigarette, the smoke lingering, before he fastened the cart holding the coffin to the carriage with a thick chain. He pointed to Robert’s traveling case and tripod. “That yours too?”

  “I’ll take them. They’re fragile.”

  Once they were underway, Robert peered out from beneath the carriage hood, unable to see anything beyond trees and mist as they traveled. The sky was gloomy with storm clouds. Hopefully it would clear by morning so he could daguerreotype the chapel and be on his way.

  Robert asked, “How far are we from the chapel Mr. de Bonne built?”

  Owen’s mouth quirked. “You mean Ada’s Folly?”

  “Is that what it’s called?”

  “Mainly. We’ll pass it soon.”

  A moment later, the groomsman brought the chaise to a halt. “If you want to take a gander at Ada’s Folly, it’s over there, behind the grove of oaks. But hurry—think I heard thunder.”

  Robert climbed down from his perch, his boots sliding on icy leaves. He squinted into the dusk. He saw naught but a winter forest shorn of leaves. Tree limbs entwined like arms forbidding entrance. Below, a carpet of mist. And then at last, he saw Ada’s Folly, or the roof of it anyway: an arc of clear glass floating behind tree branches. It resembled a bell jar, if a bell jar could be large enough to cover part of a forest.

  It was a wonder. A miracle.

  His pulse speeding, Robert stepped toward the glass dome, nearly tripping on the tangle of tree roots crossing the forest floor. Ada’s Folly was much smaller than he’d expected, not much larger than a cottage; John’s description had made it sound far grander of scale. The chapel was octagonal of shape. Below the dome, milky glass covered the exterior of the stained glass, hiding the chapel’s secrets to outsiders. Ivy crept up its walls, as if nature were in the process of reclaiming the chapel for its own. This was a place that had been abandoned. Forgotten. As though it were too exquisite for the world to bear.

  Robert found he couldn’t speak. Couldn’t look away. Owen lit another cigarette, flicking ashes into the leaves beyond.

  “I remember when Ada’s Folly was built. I was a small child. My father said he never imagined such places existed.”

  “Your father saw inside it?”

  “No. Only heard talk.”

  “He met Hugh then?”

  “Not that either, Mr. Highstead. My mother did see Miss Ada once at church.”

  Robert’s curiosity rose. “What was she like?”

  “Beautiful. Light, but not of looks. Just the way she had about her. Mum said she mainly remembered her voice. It reminded her of bells.”

  Suddenly Robert sensed Ada’s presence from across the years, as though she’d arrived to welcome her husband home. He imagined her silvery voice. Her radiance. Spurred by this visceral emotion, Robert wished he could break open the chapel door to daguerreotype Hugh beside Ada’s grave. To see what no one living had ever seen. But this would not have been honorable. Nor would it fulfill the whole of Hugh’s last request; he wondered how Miss Lowell would respond to posing beside a corpse.

  Owen pointed at the rapidly darkening sky. “Storm’s about to start.”

  A second later a splatter of water beat against the coffin; a tawny owl let out a hoot; a flash of lightning struck. And then the rain began in earnest. Yet Robert couldn’t look away from Ada’s Folly. This time it wasn’t temptation that rooted his feet. It was a sense of futility. Even if he obtained Isabelle’s consent, how would he ever capture this glass chapel, this folly, this thing, in a daguerreotype? Beyond the technical considerations of light and shadow, it was so much more than he’d expected.

  It wasn’t a chapel bearing a corpse he’d traveled all this way to daguerreotype. It was a history: love, loss, and everything in between.

  * * *

  Robert’s first exposure to Weald House wasn’t of a house. It was of a dog.

  Just as the chaise carriage rumbled past the gate to the estate, a large black retriever leapt toward their cart, barking madly in the rain.

  “Down, Virgil!” Owen yelled. “Dammit, boy.” He said to Robert over his shoulder, “Excuse me, but the dog don’t listen. He’s so old it’s a miracle he’s still around.”

  Once they reached the dry stable, and the coffin was settled in an empty stall (“We can mov
e it later into the parlor,” Owen explained), the dog hewed close to their side, his long pink tongue lolling from his mouth.

  “He was Hugh’s dog?” Robert asked, taking a step back when Virgil shook water on his legs, just like his brother’s dogs. At least this one didn’t try to lick his hands.

  Owen reached for a lantern hanging on the stable wall. “No, he belongs to the house. Dunno where he came from. I don’t even know how he got his name.” He pointed beyond the stable, where the rain still spilled. “House is just over there, through the garden. Watch the beehive—’tis hard to see in the dark. Hurry!”

  Water plastered Robert’s hair to his face, his overcoat against his back, as Owen led them to a thick-planked door. The servants’ entrance—Robert had seen many of these during his time working as a daguerreotypist.

  As soon as Owen swung the door open, Robert was blasted with heat and light. Once his sight adjusted, he understood he was inside the kitchen. The room was dominated by a long table set before the fireplace, around which a pair of servants sat. They paused eating what appeared to be an undistinguished beef stew, their faces raised expectedly toward Robert. There was a thick-waisted older woman, her grey hair hidden behind a yellowed linen widow’s cap. The cook, Robert decided. Next to her, a girl of perhaps sixteen dressed in a grey dimity frock, her eyes widening with challenge beneath her gold hair. She was pretty, and knew it. Surely she was the housemaid. She twirled a curl about her finger. “You’re late for tea, boy.” Owen flushed crimson before replying, “Did you miss me, Grace?”

  “Ah no, but Virgil did,” she teased. “Give him a kiss.”

  The three servants erupted in warm laughter—a laughter that distinctly excluded Robert.

  “Hugh’s cousin is here,” Owen announced. “Mr. Highstead.”

  Robert took his hat off. Rainwater fell from the brim, pooling about his feet. “So sorry. I’ll clean that.”

  “No need, sir. I’ll get it.” The older woman rose from the table unsteadily. She wiped her mouth against a corner of her gravy-stained apron, revealing uneven teeth. “Mr. Highstead, how rude we are! Come, sit! I’m Mrs. Chilvers, the housekeeper—well, I also cook since we’re short of help. It’s true then? You’re his cousin?”