Seven Strange Stories

by Rebecca Lloyd

  Since arriving at Hogsmoor House, I had noticed my dreams were taking on a different intensity, just as my grandfather had warned me they might. ‘You should not treat your dreams lightly,’ he had whispered to me before I left. ‘I do not think it is the same for others, but for the Wilsons dreams have meaning and can instruct you if you allow it.’ I kissed him and laughed, and promised I would remember his words, and no sooner was he out of my sight, than I turned my attention to other matters.

  ‘The dog will be tiny at nine days old; so that should not daunt you,’ Lady Mallet said. ‘Patrick can flay it for you and take away the head then you need merely to cut the body into four pieces and add it to the wine and paper and so forth. That is not complicated, Wilson. You can take that footman with you to the woodman’s house to choose the dog if you so desire.’

  ‘Thank you, Lady Mallet; I do not like to walk through that wood alone, I will be glad to have Martin for company.’

  ‘Ah! It was only the walk through the crooked trees, you should have said so, Wilson, you silly child.’

  Later, I went to my room to count the money I had saved. It was time for me to think of leaving Hogsmoor House seriously; were I to take the new coach, it might add some days to my homeward journey and be very costly, but it detoured around the outskirts of London and I would not be obliged to go into that wretched stinking city for one minute.

  It was true that in the servants’ dining hall we often spoke about the possibility of Lady Mallet being a witch, and in some of us the arrival of her shrouded companion only sharpened that belief. Now, for the first time even I began to think it possible that she was indeed a witch because it seemed clear that the abominable concoction she was expecting me to make for her was a spell. The idea of the body of a little dog was not so much the aspect that excited my imagination, but that it must be exactly nine days born. Surely that was witchcraft?

  Almost as if I had willed it myself by my thoughts, another discussion about witchcraft broke out that evening amongst my work companions.

  ‘You see that is why Lord Mallet never goes near her, because he found out what she was. I bet she has an extra nipple hidden somewhere on her body,’ Rose declared, looking very puffed up with her cleverness, ‘a teat, you know?’

  ‘Where is the nipple, Miss Wilson?’ Susan Blagget asked me.

  ‘She does not have such a thing,’ I answered, feeling flustered and hot in front of the men present, ‘and she is not a witch; you should all stop this talk. Many people these days think witches are creatures only of our imaginations.’ I said this last to dampen down their inflamed thinking; but I was, to speak truth, in two minds about the matter myself.

  ‘You have to tell us. You must have seen it when you put her to bathe.’

  ‘I never have put her to bathe.’

  ‘Over two years, never once?’

  ‘No. I bathe her feet and her face only. She asks for nothing else. She believes we should be cautious of hot water for opening the tiny holes in the skin and bringing us chills and fevers.’

  ‘So then, you do not know, Miss Wilson,’ Susan whispered.

  ‘I do not know what?’ I asked, hearing my own voice rising slightly in my agitation.

  ‘Whether or not she has a witch’s nipple for the feeding of her creature.’

  I sighed and pushed my bowl away from me, sickened suddenly with everything about Hogsmoor House and everyone in it. We had been joined lately in the dining hall by myriads of blowflies, the result we supposed of dead rats, ones that had not managed to flee when Cook had sounded the rat horn some weeks before. The constant presence of these robust black imps with their lazy blundering flight dampened my spirits still further.

  ‘You cannot fault Susan’s logic,’ Mrs Rivers murmured. ‘We have lived in Hogsmoor House for longer than you have, Caroline, and we have seen some very curious sights indeed.’

  ‘But, no one thinks witches are able to cause harm these days even if they do exist,’ I replied.

  ‘Only people who read think like you do. Or so I have heard,’ Susan whispered.

  ‘But we know witches are real,’ Rose Gifford said. ‘In the country I come from Jane Wenham was one who should have been drowned or hung but got away with her witchery. That was less than twenty years ago. My mother still talks of it with horror, as Jane Wenham made concoctions from rendered corpses, and she could not hide the fact of it from the rest of us. When I was an infant not yet able to speak, we used to pass the wretched woman on the road to market most days, my mother told me.’

  ‘And ghosts . . . what of them?’ someone asked. ‘I have seen plenty, even in daylight. Some of them flap.’

  ‘What are your thoughts on our topic, Martin?’ Mrs Rivers asked, ‘for you are quite well-travelled I understand, and should know a little of life.’

  ‘I believe that nothing should be dismissed, nothing ruled out. Perhaps the Maggot dislikes bathing because it would mean revealing the teat to Miss Wilson.’

  ‘There you are, Caroline Wilson,’ Rose declared, ‘Martin is a man with modern ideas and he is on my side in this matter.’

  ‘I said perhaps, Rose. That is all; I did not declare it as fact,’ Martin said.

  For someone who had appeared so wise and modern to me on the matter of how men regard women, Martin’s remark threw me into confusion and caused him to fall a little in my esteem. I had read the works of some much respected scholars who cast doubt on the very existence of witches, and I was eager to align myself with their thoughts, although my upbringing went much against their ideas, and so I struggled in a curious vacuum between belief and disbelief. The only one of us who did not become animated with the topic that night was Gideon Ashfield, who sat towards the end of the table in the shadows, and of course, he, like me could read and I wondered if he might become a safe harbour for my thoughts in the future, rather than Footman Martin.

  The following day, I was aching for home, and my heart felt as if it was swollen and bruised. I had dreamt of walking with my grandfather in sunlit orchards amongst falling apple blossom, only to awake in the filthy mausoleum of Hogsmoor House with its creaking doors and cold, inexplicable draughts. I did not yet have enough money to make my escape and now I had pushed that dream further away still as I had determined that when I met the woodsman I would offer him money in exchange for his silence. My plan was to make Lady Mallet’s concoction all except the dead dog, and how would it be possible for her to know any differently, unless indeed she was a witch and the concoction was a spell?

  I attempted to rehearse the meeting. The woodsman would be a cheerful and kindly soul, not half-toad, half-man, as Susan Blagget insisted on calling him. He would listen to my words. ‘I have been sent down from the house to take away one of your new born dogs,’ I would begin, ‘but if I do so, its head will be torn off and it will be flayed and quartered.’ In my imagination I allowed the woodsman many different expressions from horror to anger to sorrow as I spoke these words. ‘But, I will not do this, and so tell me how much money would buy a lie from you to say I had removed one?’ From there, I could not progress my imaginings, for I had never met the man and knew nothing of his character, and Martin had scarce come across him either.

  It was as if the weather that week absorbed my troubled thoughts, for we had frequent thunderstorms and the sky was whipped up into a fury by strong winds and bursts of pelting rain. Martin and I set out early and the walk across the two fields and over the stream and into the wood was harrowing both because of what I had to do and how the elements conspired to create fear in me. ‘We won’t be taking a dog,’ I announced as we came within sight of the woodsman’s cottage.’

  ‘Zounds! Miss Wilson, then why are we here, and in this foul weather?’

  ‘Lady Mallet suspects that I am hesitant about the dog and so it must appear that I have taken one in case she checks. I will appeal to the woodsman in the matter. Shush—that must be him over there beneath that tree.’

  ‘I will be happ
y to ask him if you cannot, Miss Wilson,’ Martin said.

  The woodsman rose to greet us and I felt that he could see by the solemnness of my face that I required his full attention, yet still he looked at Martin as if he was in command of the situation. I conjectured that it was a rude habit peculiar to our society and that in future times men would not sink to such behaviour for an instant.

  Inside his . . . place of abode, the woodsman had a wife, and also four children who were all under the age of seven by my estimation. They were pale and melancholy and the wife was badly pockmarked and dirty. She stared in silence at Martin and me as if we were the lord and lady of Hogsmoor House ourselves. The dog was in a corner on a crusty blanket and her young were blunt-faced wobbly little beings snuffling around her with tiny cries.

  ‘I have come on a strange mission,’ I began.

  ‘We are to take one of those puppies back to Hogsmoor House with us,’ Martin announced.

  ‘They are too young yet; you must come back in six weeks when they will be fit and strong.’

  ‘But it is Lady Mallet herself who wants one,’ Martin said.

  ‘I beg your pardon, I did not realise. Of course you must take one,’ the woodsman replied.

  Now I could feel an ill-temper rising in me. I had coins inside my glove warm against my palm. Martin may have thought me only a child in most things, but he was complicating a simple, if delicate situation. I stepped forward and taking off my glove, showed the woodsman my money. I saw his eyes widen and in the background, his wife craned forward to better see.

  ‘I will not take a dog from you,’ I said, ‘but it must appear as if I have done so. That is to say, should anyone from the house come down to ask about our visit today, I beg you to say that we did leave with one. I see there are nine of them, so should . . .’

  ‘You want to offer me money for not taking a dog which I would willingly give you without payment?’ The woodsman interrupted, staring at my face as if to divine how this could be, then looking down quickly at my hand again as if the money might vanish. ‘Is that your own money?’

  ‘Yes, of course it is,’ I answered.

  ‘So what is the meaning of it?’

  ‘The dog was to be killed,’ I said in a whisper, fearing to make the children cry.

  ‘Miss Wilson!’ Martin said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me so?’

  I turned to him then. ‘Because you would want to know the reason, and I am afraid to reveal it.’

  ‘You intend to give me money to pretend you took away one of my dogs?’ the woodsman persisted, and in his voice I could hear a lightness of tone.

  Before I could reply, his wife was in front of me with her dirty fingers clutching at my outstretched hand. ‘He will take a year to ponder on what you have just told him,’ she said, ‘as if philosophy is needed to bring a graceful twist to the business and give it legitimacy and dignity. You see, my husband is somewhat of an over-thinker. Thank you very kindly, we will tell every lie that we can dream up for this money, both droll and fancy. What is your name, miss?’

  ‘Caroline Wilson,’ I said, allowing her to pick the four coins out of my hand. Her husband made a curious hooting sound of triumph and disbelief and shuffled away so that his wife and I could converse freely.

  ‘Do you like dogs?’

  ‘I love them,’ I replied.

  ‘If you had chosen one, which would it have been?’ she asked, taking me by the hand to where the puppies now slept against their mother. They were downy and soft and I longed to touch each one of them.

  ‘The one with the black mark on his forehead,’ I said, ‘and the little black paws.’

  ‘In that case, your dog will bring us great luck, and we will call him Wilson and always keep him.’

  ‘Wilson,’ one of the children repeated, ‘Wilson.’

  I find it hard to think of that morning without tears coming freely into my eyes and I often wonder how Wilson grew and turned out.

  Martin would not speak to me on our return journey until we reached the second field with its flattened hay. From there we could see the great rugged outlines of Hogsmoor House with its towers and chimneys, and rook-lined battlements. ‘Forgive me for saying so, but I believe you are not as innocent as I first thought you, Miss Wilson,’ he began. ‘Not so naïve, I mean to say.’

  ‘I cannot help what you believe or do not believe about me, Martin. I am responsible only for my own thoughts—not yours,’ I replied speedily.

  Martin laughed. ‘You are as spirited and full of natural grace as I thought. Yet, there is something you are hiding, so does that mean you have at least attempted to influence my thoughts even if, as you say, you are not responsible for them?’

  ‘Maybe so, Martin, but it is not I who is the subject of this matter.’

  He struck his forehead with the heel of his hand. ‘Poh! I am so tired of Hogsmoor and its secrets, its indolence and ghosts and depravity. I shall be glad when I have enough money to leave.’ At that, another thought came to him and I saw it clearly. ‘You gave that man some of your savings, Miss Wilson, for the sake of a dog. For what reason was it to be killed?’

  ‘I am not entirely certain,’ I said. ‘Perhaps for witchcraft.’

  Martin’s face took on a curious blank look as I gazed at him. ‘Lady Mallet,’ he said. ‘I long thought she was one.’

  ‘You and all the rest.’

  ‘Now you too, don’t you?’

  I shrugged my shoulders. ‘I am all confusion, Martin.’

  ‘Who but a witch would give sanctuary to such an unnatural creature as we have in Hogsmoor House? Of course you have no answer for me, Miss Wilson.’

  I stared across the hedge into the hay field and a vision of Lady Mallet rose up before me so perfect in every detail that it made me shudder, and Martin, on seeing me do so, put his hand on my shoulder to steady me. I did not want to believe that each morning I touched the hair, scant though it was, and the face of a witch and sewed her clothes and emptied her body slops, and painted her ungenerous lips with Mercuric fucus. I did not want to believe there was any such thing as a witch, whatever the story of Jane Wenham.

  ‘I know you will only pester me until I tell you Martin, but you must promise not to discuss it with the others, especially Patrick as he is so inclined to melancholy. In different circumstances, in a happy house where there were no strange beings hiding in rooms and where the staff was not fearful all the time, it might have been easier to tell you.’

  ‘Miss Wilson, you can trust me with your secret.’

  ‘Very well. It is about a recipe I am asked to follow. A smallpox wash. The dog was to be nine days old, its skin flayed from it and its head torn off. The body was to be quartered and put into a solution.’

  ‘Poh! You poor girl. I had no idea. I am deeply sorry for you. Then what you did today was indeed noble.’

  ‘Perhaps, but suppose Lady Mallet really was a witch and she could sense that the solution was incomplete, what do you suppose she would do to me?’

  Martin shook his head, both in his amazement at my story, and because my question was far too difficult to answer, yet I saw clearly in his expression, and for the first time that he, as much as the most superstitious of them, Rose Gifford or Susan Blagget perhaps, did sincerely believe in witches and their craft. ‘You can only pray that the Maggot does not realise,’ he said, his voice low and drained of vigour.

  ‘The Maggot? Why must people call her that?’

  ‘It’s an old name for Lady Mallet that Mrs Rivers tries to forbid us to use in your presence in case the idea of working so intimately with a thing like a maggot would be more than you could bear.’

  ‘What? And that I would run away, I suppose, as did her last maid?’

  ‘It is in Mrs Rivers’ interest to keep you closely bound to Elizabeth Mallet because in the absence of a maid it is she who is called upon to make up the foul solutions the lady requires.’

  ***

  I made the smallpox wash. The snails we
re waiting for me in the back kitchen with a bag of flax and some lemons close by. I found the small wine and the Venice paper and laying all out before me, I picked off the rosemary flowers to the amount of eight pints in height. We had no sugar candy as the recipe required, but plenty of the sugar created by lead that Lady Mallet enjoyed so much, and this I used as a substitute. I worked throughout the day and siphoned the liquor into three stone jars. I will not avoid your question but tell you instantly that Lady Mallet had no inkling at all that the baby dog had been left out. I took her the first and strongest pint. She sniffed the mixture, poured a little into a bowl and gazed at it. ‘I feel safe now,’ she said. ‘Seal the jars and store them in the back pantry, and write on them so there can be no doubt of their purpose—for those who can read at least.’

  I backed away, holding the jar tightly, and could not have been more thankful. All the way down the stairs, across the hall, and into the dark lower regions of the house that smelt damp and earthy, I rejoiced, and thought of the dog Wilson running through apple orchards at the time of the blossom.

  I tried to turn my thoughts away from the pitiful fact that with so much of my money gone, my departure from Hogsmoor House was now a mere speck in the distance, and the only sustenance left for my soul were my daydreams. Distant though my return might be, I had decided that when I did reach home and safety again, I would buy myself a frolicsome dog and walk with him often on the cliffs. Perhaps he too could be called Wilson. A few letters had passed between me and my family and you can be sure that I kept the dismal truth about life and depravity in Hogsmoor House away from them—for they are simple people as cheerful and open as young sparrows and I would have it that they remained so.

  For the next month, life in the house continued in its usual curious manner. Martin kept his word and did not tell the others about our business with the dog, although from time to time he stared at me in a way that put me to the blush. Even so, I did not for one moment suppose he would endeavour to compromise me because of the secret I shared with him. I sensed it was more that he was keen to tell me about the Quakers he had befriended in our village and their philosophy of Quietism, as he had on several occasions attempted to discuss their thoughts with me.