by Jemma Thorne
Retreat was preferable to listening to them, but I couldn’t go now. I wanted to return to the room down the hall – to see if the changes in me would bear more fruit there. But with the sisters upstairs, I couldn’t do so.
The call to dinner had never been so welcome. Jane reached to take my hand as I stood. The sisters left the room and I stayed behind to talk to her.
“Be good, Lizzy. No traipsing about getting into what is not yours.”
I frowned. “I must – I have to find out who she was.”
“Why? Why must you stick your nose into it? Just leave well enough alone.”
“Well enough? And what if you do become Mrs. Charles Bingley? Can you live in this house with the ghost still present?”
“I will never get the chance to find out if you’re caught out at some sordid night time activity. Please, Lizzy.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, but nodded slowly.
Jane needn’t worry. I would not get caught.
My belly was too tight with nerves to eat. I kept seeing the frustration in Jane’s eyes, kept feeling the gust of wind and ghostly fingers at my neck. And I couldn’t process any of these thoughts with the household bantering away about their trifling concerns. I tried to wipe the frown from my features to keep them pleasant and serene in present company, but the expression kept reappearing.
I had the sight?
I wanted to test it. To see if Jane’s presumption was accurate. Sure, I’d felt the spirit in the woods in a way I’d never experienced before. But I hadn’t seen the spirit as Jane had in the past – as I knew she wanted to avoid doing in the future.
Could I follow her lead and give up this reckless pursuit, too?
I didn’t think I could.
I picked at my food until the household was largely finished eating. When the men went to the parlour for a brandy, I excused myself and went upstairs.
They’d given me a room near Jane’s, but I passed it by and continued down the hall.
As I neared the room where we’d seen the light all those weeks ago, a strange hush seemed to quiet my footsteps and a slight buzz rose in my ears.
I was grateful for the lamps lighting the hallway, but as I approached the closed door to the room in question, a sudden gust of wind blew hard enough to extinguish the closest one. I stiffened and stretched my hand to open the door. The knob was ice cold, stingingly frigid.
“Miss Bennet?” a voice said behind me.
I jumped and turned, one hand over my racing heart.
It was the housekeeper. Mrs. Clayton was middle-aged, wearing a black dress with a starched white apron. She quickly relit the lamp as she said, “Your room is back this way, Miss Bennet. I can show you…”
I shook my head. “This room isn’t occupied, is it?”
“No. That room is not occupied.” She turned from me.
I couldn’t miss this chance. I scrambled for a way to ask…
“Not by the living, anyway?”
The housekeeper spun back to face me, her mouth stretched in an expression of surprise. “How…?” She considered me for a long moment, and straightened her shoulders. “What do you mean?”
I touched the doorknob again, but it wasn’t so cold anymore. It felt cool to the touch, but no more than a normal doorknob to a normal room.
I opened it and entered. No lamps were lit inside, but I could see the endless stretches of white covering the furniture. “No one seems to use it. Why not? It seems a fine room.” I had to focus on keeping my voice steady.
It wasn’t just the lack of light that made the room feel dark. The same strange smell I remembered from last time permeated the air, fiercer for the lack of circulation. It smelled of decay, not as a fine room in a fine house should. It smelled sinister.
I didn’t feel the spirit here that I’d felt in the woods. There was no whisper in my ear. Yet somehow I knew the spirit there was connected to this room – to the shadow I’d seen that night when I’d dragged Jane here to see the house and test its rumours for ourselves.
“I am not aware, Miss. For some reason it just doesn’t feel right. I don’t think it’s been occupied in years. I just moved here with the Bingleys, so I don’t know the history.”
“That’s the way it looks. Funny that no one will move into it, isn’t it?”
She blinked at me. “There’s one might know more. He lives on the property. A caretaker who’s been at Netherfield Park for an age.”
A caretaker? He might know something that could help me figure out whose spirit currently occupied the copse of woods.
“Where can I find him?”
“John lives at the end of the east wing, Miss. Down by the gardens. But such a visit would not be appropriate now. Let me see to him and if he’s willing you can meet him tomorrow.”
My blood rushed in my ears. John? What were the odds that the old caretaker had the same name as a man who had recently been assisting with an unmarked burial in the woods next to the house? Of course with a name like John it wasn’t necessarily out of the realm of coincidence.
I would have to wait until tomorrow to see my curiosity satisfied. I sighed, but the housekeeper waved me toward the door impatiently.
With her eyes still on me, I descended the stairs to see what might occupy my attention until I could sleep. Ideas of what might come on the morrow haunted my steps.
* * *
I didn’t sleep much that night. And though I itched to uncover answers to the questions swirling in my mind, I couldn’t traipse about the house with all of the occupants abed. Mrs. Clayton was already suspicious of my questions over the house. Each time she’d come into the room in the evening to serve she’d looked at me like she didn’t know what to make of me.
Jane’s illness was worse by morning. Before breakfast I sent for Mother to come see for herself how her eldest daughter fared. She came quickly, arriving by coach soon after breakfast, accompanied by Kitty and Lydia. They fawned over an annoyed Jane and then descended to sit over tea with the household – the part of the visit they’d been awaiting.
If I had not been so distracted by the Netherfield phantom, I would have steeled myself for the discomfort of Mother’s visit. Mr. Bingley bore her self-importance well, even answering kindly when she took to comparing Jane’s exceeding beauty with the plainness of every other female creature in the vicinity. The obviousness of the conversation’s direction made me consider kicking her under the table more than once. Mr. Bingley bore, too, my sisters’ constant references to a ball at Netherfield, which they felt was owed by some offhand comment he’d previously made. I glared at the both of them, but they would not quiet and Mother was too preoccupied trying to arrange a marriage for Jane to take notice of their tongues.
After a strange quibble with Mr. Darcy over a slight to country gentility, which I for some reason waded into in order to rescue the decorous Mr. Darcy from my mother’s misperceptions, the too-long encounter was finally at its end.
I sighed in relief once they’d gone, and began to look for an appearance of the housekeeper.
I spied her as I came from Jane’s room early in the afternoon, closing the door to the suspicious room down the hall. “Mrs. Clayton?”
She started and looked up guiltily.
I pretended not to notice her expression and moved toward her. “Did you speak with the caretaker? Might I visit him?”
“Why are you hunting around this house, Miss Bennet? This place is none of your concern.”
“More likely mine than yours, Mrs. Clayton.” I smiled, my friendly manner meant to put her off her guard. “After all, my home is just three miles from here. Come now, I am sure John will enjoy a visit from another Meryton soul.”
“Come along, then.” Mrs. Clayton led the way to another set of stairs at the end of the hall. These were narrow and steep – the servants’ stairs. We wound down and at the bottom entered a hallway that appeared much different from the one we’d left. This one was cool enough that goose bumps rose o
n my arms, with a threadbare brown rug stretching much of its length. It was sparsely furnished with the occasional bench and dotted with doors to rooms much smaller than the ones upstairs.
We went toward the gardens and I found myself holding my breath.
A strange sour stench…similar to the smell in the suspicious room upstairs, it became more pronounced as we proceeded down the hall.
Finally, Mrs. Clayton stopped before one door and gave a sharp knock.
“Yes? Come in,” said a voice that spoke plainly of very advanced age.
Without looking at me, Mrs. Clayton shoved open the door and then she walked away.
The odor assaulted me. The same reek I’d smelled upstairs. It carried a weight – it wasn’t just unpleasant, it was downright disturbing.
With a final glance at Mrs. Clayton’s swiftly retreating back, I took a deep breath of the comparatively fresh air outside the room, and stepped inside.
Chapter 6
The tiny room was dimly lit by a single candle. A small table and two chairs took up one side, and in addition there was room for only a narrow bed, where a prone figure stretched.
“John?” I gulped. I wanted to put a hand over my nose and mouth to prevent the stench from entering, but I could not be so rude.
The man was dying. That was evident from his sunken cheek and the hollowness around his eyes, in addition to the odor.
“Yes,” he breathed. He gasped for more air and I wondered if he’d survive the experience. “You’re…you’re the girl who wanted to know…about…” The last word rattled out of his lungs and he gasped again.
“I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t realize you were unwell.”
His gasp turned into what I thought might be a laugh. “Unwell? I may…not last…the day.”
I pulled a chair next to his bed. “Do you mind talking for a moment? I will go if you’d rather.”
“No. Stay. Take my mind…off it.”
Still, I knew he’d only have so many words to share with me, and so I knew I must choose my questions well. “John, how long have you been ill?”
“Nigh on…must be…more than a month…now. Caught up…it all caught up.” He coughed and the air clattered in and out of him alarmingly.
“Mrs. Clayton said you’ve been here many years.”
“All…all my life…in Meryton.”
I smiled at him and he watched my face, a slight smile creeping into his eyes, too. “Me as well.”
I let him rest for a minute. I wasn’t sure what to make of the timing of his sickness, which matched up well with the beginning of the rumours of a haunting at Netherfield Park.
“John, have you ever known a man named Bertram?”
The smile left his eyes, which stretched wide and fearful as he gathered the breath to speak. “Yes. Once…many years…ago. Forty years?” He shrugged and gasped for breath. “He was…terrible. Don’t…Don’t—” He broke off with an alarming rattle from his lungs and my heart sank.
Oh, no. So it was true. I had begun to hope that what seemed to be a kindly old man on his deathbed could not be the same John I’d seen. After all, there was no way this man was in the woods helping to bury a body last month. Even before his sickness he’d been an old man – older than the man she’d heard that night.
But something had been bothering me. If there had been two men in the woods that night, and on such a grisly errand, why could I never find a trace of their presence? The woods were not large, and there had not been any sign of a disturbance the size of a grave the next day.
What I’d seen that night was an apparition. Somehow I’d seen an event that actually occurred there forty years ago.
There was more I needed him to confirm. “Did something happen here, John? Something to do with Bertram? There’s a room upstairs—”
John sat up straight as an arrow, his hand shooting out to grasp my wrist. His eyes held ghosts, too many ghosts to ponder. “Yes. Bertram…murdered…he killed…Irene.”
“Bertram killed a woman? A woman named Irene?”
“Daughter…of gardener. Irene…so beautiful…” The strength went out of his grip, and I helped him recline again.
The beautiful daughter of the gardener. I thought of the whisper, the touch at my neck, the wind in the trees.
“And you helped Bertram to cover up the murder?”
He sighed wearily and shook his head. “It was…wrong.” He gathered himself. “I was wrong.”
A sigh to echo his sounded in my ear. I felt my spirit lighten, smelled a hint of fresh air in the fetid room. Fingertips traced down my earlobe and I shivered. She was here with us. Irene’s spirit was here.
“Irene wants you to know she forgives you, John.” The words weren’t mine. I spoke them for Irene.
He closed his eyes. “Can’t forgive…this.”
“She loved you, too. She wants you both to be at peace.”
Right after I said those words, I felt a strange brightness envelope me, and then it blinked out.
Irene had spoken her last words.
Tears leaked out from under John’s tightly closed eyelids.
I knew I should go. I’d come to deliver a message; I understood that now. There was nothing more I could do for John.
I left, wrapping my arms around myself. The air had cleared. I smelled nothing now of that strange stench that spoke of death and lies. I felt no sign of Irene’s spirit.
But I carried their story with me. The gardener’s beautiful daughter and the caretaker who loved her. The whole of it filled my head, placed there by a grieving ghost making final contact with her love.
I opened the door at the end of the hall and stepped out into the gardens of Netherfield Park. I wondered which of these plants had been tended by the father of a murdered daughter. I wondered how her family had dealt with Irene’s disappearance all those years ago, how they’d gone on without knowing what had happened to her. But Irene had not been concerned for them…her connection to this place, the tether that held her to this world, was John.
I knew now that Bertram Needham had been an esteemed guest of Netherfield Park – a distant cousin to its residents, very wealthy and possessed of a forceful personality that turned brutal at his darkest moments.
When he’d arrived, Irene was a hopeful sixteen year old planning to wed another servant of the house. Within months she was a fraction of herself; Bertram Needham wore her down with advances, with threats. Her family feared him. They did nothing.
I stopped walking amid the finely shaped greenery, cowed under the weight of Irene’s loneliness. When Bertram finally attacked her she did not defend herself; at least not the first time.
John hadn’t known the reason Irene stopped caring about him. She couldn’t tell him. And then all of the servants knew, thanks to a rumour that ran like wildfire through the house. At the time John had assumed she was taken with the gentleman housed in the southernmost bedroom on the second floor. That she was choosing it. He’d told her he couldn’t marry her, couldn’t love her – not after Bertram. John had broken Irene’s heart.
The memory made tears flood my eyes and I stood blinking in the sunlight, seeing shadows and light instead of distinct shapes. I tried to focus my senses on the world around me, the world today. I couldn’t allow myself to be swept away by the tide of someone else’s memory.
John had misunderstood entirely. Until that gentleman called for John’s aid late one night – told him that if he did not clean up the mess, Bertram would blame the murder on John. And who would believe the caretaker over a gentleman like Bertram?
I circled the paths in this part of the garden, needing to do something to attempt to soothe my nerves. Irene’s thoughts filled my mind. She had clung to this place when she died; she had worried for John. In her final moments of life, all she wanted was for John to know what had happened to her and acknowledge her love.
And then, after death, she was trapped.
I shook my head, trying to clear this knowledge o
ut. It felt fresh in my mind, potent with Irene’s emotion, as if she’d watched her love assist her murderer in her hasty burial just yesterday.
My face crumpled as the tears finally overwhelmed my ability to hold them back. I let it take me for a time, I collapsed against the house, my arms wrapped around my knees, and gave in. I felt all of Irene’s vast pain.
I didn’t understand why. Is this what it had taken for Irene to move on? Did she have to share her darkest regrets with someone like me? And did that mean I had to suffer alongside her? Did it mean that I was destined to take on the burdens of other spirits like her? Is this what having the sight meant?
This was the part that Jane had carried for me. She’d seen the spirits, taken the knowledge they’d imparted. For me it had all been a merry chase – mystery to liven my carefree days.
I understood now just how hard that had been on Jane. I understood her words earlier, her desire to never again take on the weight that tied a spirit to the living world.
But I wasn’t Jane.
I took a deep breath and shoved the ghost’s memories to the recesses of my mind. I guessed they would live on there and visit my conscious mind from time to time, much as my own memories were bound to. It was a scary thought, but in that way I would hold vigil for Irene, which felt about as proper as anything could at the moment.
I watched the clouds move swiftly overhead, gathering gray and foreboding. A bird chirped sweetly in a nearby bush and was answered by another. I could smell the coming rain. The earth waited for it, abundant and green below the dark cap of the sky.
I stood, feeling more myself, and smoothed my skirts. I felt the edge of my reticule, where I knew my pendulum rested. If I took it out, I knew I’d find nothing here at Netherfield Park. No remnants of the phantom Irene had manifested as her love lay on his deathbed.
I had helped today. Helped a dying man receive forgiveness for his greatest mistake. Helped a spirit find peace.
If the chance were mine again, I would help again.
I had much to learn of my new gift of sight, if I was to be ready to aid the next spirit that called.