Seven Strange Stories

by Rebecca Lloyd

  Then, as if there had not been enough drama and queerness for all of us to endure, something very strange occurred in the sloppy half-drunken mind of Lord Mallet that fairly brought Lady Mallet to the brink of apoplexy. He attempted one morning to re-introduce himself to her as if all his debauchery and cruel usage in the past had no weight or meaning.

  Lady Mallet and I were sitting together in the window seat of her apartment playing piquet when Hog pushed open the door and entered, breathing heavily with his wig disarranged and the flounces of his shirt reddened with wine. He had attempted to apply white powder to his face, something not usual in him, and he had made such a poor job of it that I was close to laughing.

  My mistress and I stood up quickly, scattering our cards to the floor, and together we stared at him. To describe Hog as ugly is a pointless exercise in the obvious, but the involuntary movements of his chins at the faintest swivel of his massive square head was a revolting sight of a still higher order of magnitude.

  ‘I hope I find you well, Elizabeth; it is a while since I have seen you,’ he began. ‘And this will be your little handmaid Coral-Anne, who claims to be able to read, yet has not visited my library despite my invitation for her to do so. Therefore, it strikes me that she is no more than a poseur—cannot read a word, just pretends she can in order to puff herself up in front of the other servants.’

  Lady Mallet stepped out in front of me, so that I was half-hidden from his sight. ‘I am most surprised that you should visit me, Richard, most surprised!’ she cried out. ‘Are you keeping well?’

  ‘I have not won anything for a fortnight now; I suspect that Lord Maury is cheating, but I cannot prove it. However, I will not keep you from your diversions longer. I came in person as I thought to win your approbation. But whether I do or not, I must ask you to present yourself to my bedchamber this night,’ he said, ‘promptly after I have eaten.’

  When the odious creature had gone, I expected Lady Mallet to wilt and draw in on herself and to fall into a terrible gloom. Instead she did a wonderful thing—but it is not something I ever have prattled about at the servants’ dining table, and I must ask you not to convey this to anyone of your acquaintance either. She ripped, with wonderful savagery, the pieces from her hair, disassembling it in wild swipes as she ran around the edges of her apartment. She looked quite mad. Almost as if she had eight arms, she at the same time tore at the bodice and sleeves of her gown and at her petticoats below, but finding herself truly trapped, she sank to the floor and called for me.

  When all was calm and she lay upon her bed wrapped only in a linen sheet, she explained how very thankful she’d been that he’d forgotten her over all these months and that he’d found divers ways to entertain himself with his companions, both men and women. But she had always dreaded a moment might come when he had need of her again. ‘He is an animal in all his ways,’ she whispered, leaning towards me so that a scent arose from her skin that reminded me I should collect water and bring it up to her rooms.

  ‘She says he is an animal in all his ways,’ I proclaimed in the servants’ dining hall during dinner.

  ‘There can be no one amongst us that does not know that,’ Mrs Rivers replied. ‘All here are more interested in whether or not you have glimpsed the Thing of late, Caroline.’

  ‘The Thing,’ Patrick whispered. ‘Do you imagine it ever comes outside and roams about at night? Sometimes when I am bedded down in the stables, the owls stop their hooting suddenly, and I fancy it is because they have seen the Thing lingering in the darkness close by.’

  ‘And last night, the door between our rooms and the main house was left unlocked, and who is to know if it does not creep in and spy on us while we sleep?’ Susan Blagget said.

  I had for a while now felt under great pressure, not just to report sightings of the Thing, but to produce intriguing stories about it—I have hinted as much to you before, I believe. I am woefully sorry I did not resist the temptation, but it was the only way I knew to offset the jealousy directed at me by the other women on account of my elevated position and my education. Their jealousy frightened me, it was now strong on the part of Rose and Susan and a growing manifestation in some of the other women. Even Adelaide who I had depended on so much when I first arrived was inclined to be cool towards me. It was pointless to attempt to tell them a lame story; it merely increased their frustration with me. Particularly on evenings when they were bored or ill-tempered, they had a great hunger to hear stories of the shrouded figure and were so pressing about the matter that I affected to take on some of the vigour and cunning I had observed in my grandfather when he told stories in our village.

  ‘So, tell us, Miss Wilson,’ Patrick said, ‘do not keep us in suspense.’

  ‘I have seen it,’ I told them and the room became quiet. ‘Lady Mallet goes in and out of its apartment quite boldly now, whereas in the beginning there was stealth about it. I have seen her enter with plates of food, and meats, and jugs of water and sometimes milk. I have seen her go in there with clothes of her own that she no longer cares to wear. As to the Thing—I have seen it lingering in the passageways, but always in that great cloak with the deep cowl. Only two days ago, it was out and gazing over the balustrade to down below and I saw its hands. I had been returning to Lady Mallet’s rooms by way of that corridor as it is a shorter distance, and I had been told to hasten back with some thread that was delivered and left in the great hall. I stopped dead at the sight of the creature and pressed myself against the wall.’

  Rose Gifford and Susan Blagget had risen from their places at the table and were clutching each other and swaying from side to side. Mrs Winters had the fingers of her right hand pressed tightly down on the base of her neck. ‘Don’t stop,’ she whispered, ‘you must tell us every detail leaving nothing behind.’

  ‘How close were you to it, Miss Wilson?’ Susan Blagget asked.

  ‘About ten steps or so,’ I replied. ‘I caught sight of its hand for a moment as it came out of the cloak and reached into the confines of the cowl to scratch and rub. It did stink mightily.’

  ‘Did it have claws?’

  ‘It was just a hand, although spindly,’ I answered, ‘. . . and not good to look at. Not entirely unlike a claw I suppose.’

  ‘Did it see you?’ Patrick asked, ‘did it turn to look at you if you were so close?’

  ‘I think not; it was distracted in rubbing at its face. It made a noise that was something between whistling and groaning.’

  ‘Patrick and I have a name for it,’ Martin announced. ‘We call it the monster Orgorp.’

  ‘Orgorp?’ Mrs Rivers repeated, and for a second I saw that she was inclined to laugh. ‘Very well, Orgorp it shall be, and Miss Wilson will tell us in detail each time she glimpses it. It has been in this house in hiding now for, what? Two years, I think.’

  And so Mrs Rivers had unwittingly given me free reign on the subject of Orgorp, and because she had done so, the last vestiges of restraint were removed from me. From that night onwards, I furnished the staff with divers stories of glimpsing the monster coming and going to its chambers—some were true, others, I have to confess, entirely invented. What I told them, they all believed, and in particular the younger servants who felt me to be trustworthy because I could read. And as the curiosity my companions had about the monster Orgorp increased day by day, it was as if I was under a faerie spell, and obliged to create the kinds of tales that would feed their need for terror and strangeness—for I had convinced myself that they fed upon my mental morsels happily like birds on breadcrumbs, because they partly or wholly, desired to be terrified. Perhaps this was our own depravity at play down in the servants’ dining hall, and yet an unexpected consequence of my deliveries was that they grew less quarrelsome and peevish towards each other, and the women used me a little more kindly than they had before.

  I told them a great wealth of stories about the monster, I claimed to have seen it disappear in front of my very eyes or to have drifted a pretty distanc
e off the ground one evening. In summary, I put it into their minds that the creature was supernatural, and in that way the limits to the imagination were removed entirely, as surely a ghost can do anything and logic was not required in my story-telling. Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps ghosts have their own logic, but since it is unknown to mortals, it may as well not exist. Although I should not boast about it, my tales were so convincing that I came close myself to believing in what I had created.

  ‘I for one, do not believe in ghosts,’ Rose declared one evening, sticking her lip out in defiance and looking very puffed up.

  ‘So you have said before,’ Patrick reminded her, ‘yet you were afraid when Orgorp appeared up there, and you saw it, were you not?’

  ‘I was startled, that is all.’

  ‘You are lying, Rose Gifford, you are trying to appear more intelligent and modern than you are,’ Patrick said. ‘Every normal person believes in ghosts. So, imagine this. It is a winter afternoon and all outside is wild with wind and rain. The house is dark inside and those deathwatch beetles are a-click-clicking. You have been sent to sweep up some leaves that have blown into the great hall and as you kneel with your brush, you see shadows all around you that do not seem natural, and while they cause you unease, you become aware that you are being watched from above and looking up you see a gigantic figure that seems to shimmer and fade and its eyes are enormous and brim full of . . .’

  ‘Shut up, Patrick!’ Rose shouted. She picked up a piece of bread, and standing up, flung it all the way down the table and hit him square on the cheek with it. ‘Things are bad enough in this house without your stupid tales,’ she said. ‘I saw Hog roaming about really early this morning, and he’s gigantic enough. I had to squat down behind the oak-chest by the stairs so he didn’t see me. And Cook has been complaining again about missing food, milk in particular, she thinks I steal it and says she will ask for locks to be put on the larder doors to prevent further losses.’

  ‘Yet you are one giant ear when Miss Wilson tells us about Orgorp, are you not?’ Patrick persisted, flinging the bread back at her as Mrs Rivers raised her hands into the air and opened her mouth to speak.

  Rose shrugged and tossed her head. ‘Her stories make the time at Hogsmoor go quickly, and I do not believe she deliberately tries to frighten us, she is too infantine to have such cunning.’

  My cheeks began to burn at her words and I bowed my head, as all eyes were upon me. The depth of my deception caused me terrible anguish and I would fain have dropped through the very floor itself in my shame.

  ***

  It was as if I lived two separate lives, one with the other servants on the lower floors and another in Lady Mallet’s apartment high up in the house. I became bolder in my dealings with her as I realised that both her manner and appearance were very much façades—ones that her high-living society demanded of all the women they called ladies. The change in her since she had taken up her duty towards Hog was dramatic. She would return to her own chambers with swellings and bruises and I found her greatly subdued.

  ‘But why must you go there?’ I asked one afternoon while I smoothed Goulard’s paste on her swollen hand. I realised instantly that it was a foolish question. ‘. . . I mean, after all this time,’ I continued, to give justification to my enquiry.

  Lady Mallet shrugged and turned her head towards the window to look out. I glanced there too; the day was bleak with a capricious wind ploughing through the tops of the elms that lined the avenue to the front of the mansion. ‘If we could have all the pleasures of youth,’ she murmured, ‘but without the consequences of our natural impulsiveness at that age, how free we would be. Why must I go there? Because he is, when all is said and done, my husband,’ she replied. ‘I imagine that he will tire of me soon and return to his scabby punks because when he asks certain things of me that offend my dignity, I feign bewilderment or perform so badly that he is left in a thunderous mood and leaves off pestering me.’

  ‘He makes you play the donkey game, does he not?’ I said—for I was sure that he must do.

  ‘I have never heard of that Wilson, what is it?’

  ‘You support yourself on hands and knees and he comes behind you . . . in preparation for climbing on your back as if you were a beast of burden . . . a donkey.’

  ‘Enough girl! Where did you learn that?’

  I was not willing to tell her how I came by that knowledge. ‘They play it in my village,’ I answered quickly. She lowered her face into her hands and the crown of her head looked very child-like without her hairpieces. ‘I feel,’ I continued boldly, ‘that in that game, the woman should be riding the man. As she is slighter in build it would be a fairer thing. He could easily tolerate her weight upon his back. Whereas the reverse could not, in the majority of cases, be true.’ Lady Mallet looked up at me slowly and I was startled to see that she was smiling when only a while before she had been wretchedly weeping. ‘I would go further; I do not think it necessary for the players to remove any clothes to play Donkey, it only makes them a shameful spectacle to be showing their shirts and shifts and glimpses of naked skin.’

  ‘I have never heard that activity called Donkey before,’ she said, ‘although I have heard it referred to as Backgammon. Do you know why men like to be the . . . rider?’

  ‘It is the nature of men to want to be on top in all things except those to do with children?’ I ventured, not knowing in the slightest degree the correct response to her question.

  ‘Good answer and in addition, many of them, Lord Mallet included, do not like to see the face of the donkey they are riding, for fear it will be covered in too many patches and be too highly painted. Oh . . .’ she stopped talking suddenly and looked upwards. Never have I seen an expression quite like hers was at that moment; there was great mischief and mockery in it, savagery almost. Then she regarded me for a long time before saying another word and I was truly transfixed. ‘Do you like Lord Mallet, Wilson?’ she asked eventually.

  I both shook my head and nodded at the same time for I did not know what was expected of me, but suddenly I found myself thinking that she was supposing I might play Donkey with him in her place and without another thought, I rose up and shouted. ‘I find him a repulsive man, vicious and uncouth, Lady Mallet! Do not ask me to go near him, for I will leave Hogsmoor House on the instant if you do.’

  She raised her hand and I thought she was going to strike me, but then she dropped it slowly into her lap and half smiled. ‘Well, then we are certainly the same in our feelings for him,’ she said, ‘and just now an idea came to me for which I will need your help. I will explain it in a day or so when I have made preparations.’

  ***

  She took me for a walk around the grounds on the side where the two streams run together and the yellow leaves float in the water. There are stone seats there and she had me sit beside her for a short while in utter silence. I knew her well enough by then not to look at her or begin to talk myself. ‘Wilson,’ she said eventually.

  ‘Lady Mallet?’ I stole a corner glance at her and noticed one of her mouse eyebrows had begun to come away from her forehead. She had, not many days previously, decided that she no longer wanted me to apply green vitriol to her eyebrows to blacken them as she had become afraid that vitriol could poison her. Instead, she made me pluck her eyebrows out entirely in favour of the artfully cut skin of mice.

  ‘You know my visitor who has chambers on the third storey?’

  ‘You mean the shrouded one, Lady Mallet? Yes, I am well aware.’

  ‘Of course you are, Wilson, and from very early on, I do believe. I speak to you in the utmost confidence now, but it has been in my mind for some time to expel . . . the shrouded one. Yet I find myself unable to do so.’

  ‘Is there no one who could intervene on your behalf?’ I asked.

  ‘No. The problem is entirely mine. If I was to expel her, she would haunt the streets of the nearest town, or take her wretchedness to London and terrify people to their deaths.’<
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  Ah! So the monster was female, and if it really had been a familiar, Lady Mallet would not have wanted to rid herself of it, as people say familiars are hard won by witches and proudly sported . . . at least I recall my grandfather once saying something of that nature as he and I inspected an enormous toad in the lane close by our cottage.

  ‘Does she exhort power over you, Lady Mallet . . . in some fashion?’ I ventured.

  I saw her shoulders drop. ‘You could say so, yes, although you would be surprised at the nature of that power, I dare say.’

  ‘Has she no home?’ I whispered, looking down at the pebbles by our feet.

  ‘She is a true outcast. However I have found a solution, a way to make her indispensable to me. Are you listening, Wilson?’

  ‘Yes, Lady Mallet.’

  ‘Well, you know that I am now required to appear in Lord Mallet’s rooms in the evenings on Tuesdays and Sundays. You know also how greatly I hate it and how he will bang me about if I do not apply myself to his particular needs. Well, she will be going in my place, and you will be escorting her there.’

  I was seized with panic and confusion, and spoke without thinking. ‘Orgorp?’ I said loudly.

  The strip of mouse skin had peeled away further and now hung, stiff with glue, down the side of her face close to her hair. I longed to reach out and smooth it back, but durst not as I could see that she was very tense. ‘Orgorp?’ she repeated. ‘What is that word?’

  ‘It is a saying from Dorset,’ I replied, ‘it simply means tell me more.’

  ‘Well, my visitor has agreed to take my place in his bedchamber in exchange for dwelling at Hogsmoor House permanently. I was very surprised that she did agree as I explained clearly what would be required of her, but she seemed to take the idea lightly.’