The lightening that came with the storm was not the kind that looks like a split in wood, but the other, that brightens the dark sky for one second like a glowing bed sheet. Someone had left a casement window open and as we passed it, the wind extinguished my small taper and left us in darkness with only the rumbling noise of thunder around us. We stopped where we were. And then to my intense horror and revulsion, I felt Orgorp’s fingers gripping my arm and her stench had me close to fainting. Yet were I to faint in front of her, what could she do to me? In an instant, it was as if a different Caroline Wilson had appeared; a younger one who could apply no rational thinking to the situation. A great heaving mass of terrible thoughts assailed me; she would take off her cloak and reveal her face as I lay at her feet. She would have a snout and the eyes of a pig, she would have a face covered entirely in hair, a face made of slime, a face with a great horn on it and the ears of an animal, a wolf’s head, a snake’s head—I did not know! I pulled sharply away, and the hissing noise that came out of my mouth startled us both. Orgorp stood back.
Now I could take no more, for I was truly a-feared. ‘Who are you?’ I whispered at her. ‘What are you?’
I do believe she may have answered beneath the sudden noise of thunder, but if so, it was lost to me, although I can still remember, issuing forth from that dark shroud, several dismal groans such as would be made by a person in extremes.
She turned then, suddenly, and made her way alone to Lord Mallet’s chambers, and I stumbled back to my room in the darkness, using to my advantage the brief moments of illumination afforded me by the lightening.
Since it had been me who was responsible for escorting the monster Orgorp to and from Hog’s rooms, since I had had to walk in the gloom beside the stinking, creeping figure, since it was me who risked all if my complicity in this matter came to light with Lord Mallet, I should, I suppose, have wished it was also me who, stumbling upon the terrible scene of Lord Mallet’s death looked straight into the face of Orgorp in the dawn light. Yet I am glad it was Gideon Ashfield who was present, for when finally he began to tell me the story, I pitied him greatly as his face showed me how hideous the sight had been. ‘Monstrous’ was a word he used often when we were alone and he could unburden himself a little further, ‘Monstrous and ghoulish, Caroline,’ he said frequently.
‘Ghoulish how, Gideon?’
‘Like a half thing.’
‘That tells me nothing.’
‘Don’t press me further, Caroline. I’m not in the mood to think about it. Only—there were gaps in the wrong places.’
‘You have told no one except for me?’
‘I dare not. They would leave Hogsmoor House in an instant as you well know.’
***
The night of Lord Mallet’s death was a strange one indeed. Lady Mallet was informed as soon as the facts came to light. I did not escort her to Hog’s apartment, but stayed in her bed chamber not knowing what she might need on her return. I prepared some heavy cordial for her and waited. I still believe I heard her cry out from all that distance away; I heard a piercing shriek that made me shiver; it brought a bitter taste to my mouth, not through fear, but because the different emotions I could distinguish in that one sound were many and contradictory—I heard terror, delight, hysteria, anger and joy and beneath all, melancholy—and the notion that a single sound could contain such variation seemed to me a thing of awe.
On the following morning, Lord Mallet’s body was moved from his bed chamber into one of the central rooms on the first floor. The room had been draped in black cloth, and three watchers arrived and took it turn by turn about to guard the corpse and watch for signs of life as the funeral furnisher was fetched and arrangements made. Hog was truly dead, and on the day of the funeral a great band of black-clothed mutes arrived and lined the central stairway on both sides, from the room in which he lay all the way down to the main doors of the house.
I was quite addled by the sudden and unfamiliar tasks I was allotted by Mrs Rivers, one of which was to sort through the box of white lamb gloves that had arrived for the guests. I divided them into large and small and laid them out as neatly as I could on the marble table in the hall. I was aware that those mutes who were able to see me from their positions, were watching me as I worked and it caused me a feeling of great discomfort—such strange beings they were; such morbid and artificial expressions they had.
Lady Mallet appeared from her apartment from time to time to ask questions of Mrs Rivers to whom she had given charge of the arrangements. I was working nearby on one occasion when a curious conversation took place between them. Of course I had attended funerals in my own village before on a few occasions but they were plain affairs and their dignity was in their simplicity.
‘Where is the Funeral Furnisher, Grace?’ Lady Mallet asked.
‘He is up with Lord Mallet,’ Mrs Rivers said.
‘The watchers have left?’
‘Yes, some time ago.’
‘Tell the man I want the shroud tied securely.’
‘I believe that duty has already been carried out, Lady Mallet.’
‘Have you seen it?’
‘Yes, the shroud was nicely arranged.’
‘Tight?’
‘No, I would not say so. It was loose.’
‘But the watchers have done their job, so there should be no resurrection?’
‘No, Lady Mallet; it is certain that he has passed over.’
I stole a fleeting glance at them. That morning Lady Mallet had insisted I apply two coats of white to her face and that her rouge was strikingly apparent and her veins very blue. Both women were dressed in different tones of black, and I could still remember the unearthly feeling of Lady Mallet’s black silk gown slipping through my fingers as I helped her into it earlier.
‘The shroud must be adjusted nonetheless, Grace. Go and tell someone to make it as tight as possible; I do not want to find some weeks from now that the ghost of that man is wandering the house in those great flapping shoes.’
I felt my eyes widen at her words, but I affected to make it appear I had not been listening. I was thankful Rose and Susan, who had left the hall only minutes before, were not still present, as I knew the idea of Hog’s ghost—if they had not thought of it already—would fire up their imaginations to even greater heights than the business of Orgorp.
I would very much have liked to attend the funeral, being quite dazzled by the opulence of the affair and the dramatically mournful air assumed by all present, and it stung me that female servants were to remain behind, while the male servants, all dressed in their finery with flowing weepers, were expected to be present at the church.
By the time the mourning coach arrived, I had joined the other women in a side room on the ground floor where we had a good view of the proceedings. The beautiful black horses with their feather headdresses fairly took my breath away, and I had never seen a carriage so gleaming and imposing as that to which they were harnessed. We waited some while, fidgeting in our excitement to witness the removal of Lord Mallet. All we could see of the coffin itself was that it was covered in deep purple silk velvet, and that the handles, just visible as it was carried to the coach, were impressively ornate.
‘You may rest easy now my arse,’ Rose whispered, ‘he is nevermore.’
She was behind me so I could not see her, but I believe Mrs Rivers slapped her for that remark.
***
Lady Mallet, being free from her husband’s slobbering tyranny, found it almost beyond her power to act the poor lamenting widow as custom dictated. There were mornings when she woke up so cheerfully that she burst into song and although her voice was a very poor one indeed, she cared not one pin about that. Perhaps I did like her a little more, although her ill-humours could still rise as quickly as milk in a pan at the slightest provocation. I discovered also, that I pitied her for what she had been through. Yet my pity was tainted with a measure of scorn for the industrious manner in which she applied herself
to the facile customs and conventions of her class and in particular of her sex. When, therefore, she declared that she was no longer inclined to paint her face and style her hair with such precision and elaboration, I was slow to understand her. ‘But I have made ready your paints and prepared a fresh batch of lead powder, and you were keen to try the new Turkish rouge, Lady Mallet,’ I reminded her. ‘I have new mouse brows cut for you,’ I added.
She leant forward and stared at her cheeks in the looking-glass. ‘We were once thought beautiful,’ she said. ‘Did you know that when we visited London, people would cheer as we drove through St James Park? I don’t suppose you did, Wilson, being from the country of Dorset.’
‘No, Lady Mallet. Very little knowledge comes into the deep countryside. We remain very ignorant there.’ I was clutching her hairbrush and plucking from it the tangles of her long brown hair which was falling out a great deal at that time. If she was not insane, I wondered if she was becoming delirious to be talking so oddly; Gideon had told us that a family had been ravaged by spotted fever in a village house not too distant from the church where Lady Mallet had attended Hog’s funeral. ‘We were famous,’ she said. ‘Every man of means—many of whom were beasts rather than men—wanted to take us as their mistresses or marry us. Each day we received gifts of fruit, or flowers, or chocolate and jewellery, and our house was festooned with invitation cards. There were no moments when life was not delightful, and we did marry before long and very well indeed.
‘Yes, of course you did, Lady Mallet,’ I answered, moving my gaze from the bald patch on her head, to the heap of soiled clothes I had yet to sort through. I could make no sense of her rambling speech, and assumed she was celebrating her tremendous luck at the death of the old horror, for now she had what was left of his wealth but not his crude demands.
‘But who can tell when luck will drain away?’ she continued. ‘I have seen it so savagely turn its back that I am terrified a time will come when it deserts me also. From this day, I will only have rainwater on my face, Wilson. That and nothing else and you must begin to collect it for me in clean porcelain vessels. I wish to give up all contact with lead or mercury or vitriol. You may stop preparing vinegar of squills, and use only tansy for the fleas.’
‘And bedbugs, Lady Mallet?’
‘You may try sprigs of fern when they can be found, Wilson.’
She stared up at me and with time to study her, I was both moved and repulsed by the sight of her face. It had once been fine indeed but was now much destroyed by heavy painting with dark permanent lines settled into the skin and ungainly blotches straggling along the jawbone. She turned back to gaze into the looking glass as if in wonderment that she now lived and breathed unrestrained by the shackles of duty and domination that had bound her for so long.
And so with the changing of her habits and the simplification of her morning rituals, to which she added a new disdain for stays and busks and wore them only occasionally, Lady Mallet, her mind happily unhinged as far as I could ascertain, went about her day, and in the process of which my devoirs for her became fewer and less arduous, and of course, to my great relief, I was to have no more contact with the monster Orgorp.
‘Lady Mallet, may I ask something?’
‘Yes, Wilson, what is it?’
‘Will I be returning to my old wage, now that the extra duty is no longer required?’
‘No, indeed you will not. I have something else in mind for you to fill the gap. You will stay on your handsome salary.’
I was pleased, as you can imagine, as my plan to return to Dorset burnt as brightly as ever, although perhaps now in the new circumstances the urgency had rubbed off a little.
She and I had been spending a great deal of time outside, unless the weather prevented it. She wore neither gown, nor stays, nor over petticoat. She no longer required me to dress her hair in lard and powder. She roamed about the estate in her shift and a little woollen cloak, with a simple cotton house bonnet covering her head. Because she was so unencumbered, she was agile and I found it hard to keep up with her should she decide to run into the maze, or across the meadows. I felt now that my duty was to protect her from harm, as she had become quite child-like, although still as unpredictable as ever. Mrs Rivers had taken on the responsibility of not only paying wages, but managing all business at Hogsmoor House, and she wore the most elaborate chatelaine I ever saw with scissors and keys and such like hanging off it, and the lives of all of us became easier with the danger posed by Lord Mallet gone.
***
I know that you are waiting for news of Orgorp. Rest assured I am advancing towards it, if slowly. I felt it necessary to first tell you about Hogsmoor House after the death of Lord Mallet, and as daily life became so different from that day forth it required some detail in the telling, but now I will come to the point.
Gideon finally called me to a private meeting in his room so that he could tell me in detail of his experience on the night of Lord Mallet’s death. You can suppose that I was very curious to know about it, and that he was by now in such confusion and terror that he ached to unburden the facts upon another. I took the book by Mr Defoe back to him. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘it strikes me that the present life of Lady Mallet and that of the man Robinson Crusoe are not so very different in some respects.’
‘And who in Hogsmoor House is the hidden one leaving footprints in the sand, Caroline?’
I thought for a moment. ‘The unseen Orgorp.’
‘Or the unseen Caroline Wilson?’ he replied.
I was startled. ‘What is your meaning, Gideon, how am I unseen?’
‘Often when you tell your stories I find myself not believing them one wit, and so I wonder about the unseen Caroline Wilson and when she will reveal her true self.’
I was mortified; I could not look straight into his face. He had found me out in my lies, and I half imagined that he might have seen me with Orgorp in the dead of night and was ready to confront me. I found my heart beating wildly. ‘Can I sit?’ I asked.
‘Would you pray with me, Caroline?’
‘Gideon, are you in need of prayer at this very moment?’
‘I think it is you who is in need of it, Caroline.’
I hesitated; his face looked so anguished that I almost did his bidding. ‘Let us not be diverted, Gideon. You wanted to tell me about that terrible night, and I have come to listen to you. I cannot stay long for I am needed.’
‘I pity you, Caroline, for you have no idea what is beneath that dark shroud. All the stories in the universe that you could invent to frighten us with could not match the real horror of that abominable thing.’
‘Gideon, why do you call her a thing?’
‘You would not call the monster Orgorp “her”, if you had seen what I saw that night. You would not call it “her” for fear of offending the whole of your sex from the most arrogant to the most humble.’
I saw that he was becoming very agitated and so attempted a diversion from our subject. ‘You are leaving Hogsmoor on Wednesday, Gideon. Where are you headed?’
‘I am back to Lancashire and could not be more glad of it.’
‘You will be happy to see your family again.’
‘I will indeed.’
‘And what of work in that country?’
‘I will be on the land in the fresh air. Honest work, labouring,’ he answered, and I felt a pain in my heart for Dorset as he spoke.
‘It will not be long before you are free of Hogsmoor House, and I am sure we will all envy you on the day you leave. But now I must ask you to make haste with you story,’ I said, ‘Lady Mallet frets like a baby if I am out of her sight for long, and these days she is capable of using me most cruelly, and I must avoid her punches often. Tell me what you saw, Gideon, please.’
‘I said I would, and so I will, but you will regret your curiosity, Caroline, and I want you to swear once again that you’ll never tell it to anyone because the Devil must have fashioned that thing.’
; We had been standing the while and, on his pointing to the bed, we sat down side by side. I twisted in his direction so that I could see his face, and he divulged it all to me, although agonisingly slowly. When he had finished, he stared at me hard and said, ‘I could feel my hair upstarting I was that frighted by the sight of it, Caroline.’ I had been walking the corridors of Hogsmoor House over these months with something so terrifying to look upon that a grown man was all to pieces, and it was then that I knew that what I had created out of the monster Orgorp to gain the approbation of the other servants, was not one wit as terrible as the real thing now described to me. I was truly shocked. ‘I see I have thrown you into silence and I am sorry for it,’ Gideon concluded.
Later, in the dining hall, I was entirely without appetite. I sat half in shadow so I could hide my expression and remain unnoticed by the others. Patrick and Martin were talking about fishing and the number of stoats that gambolled around the stable yards. Mrs Rivers was describing how to prepare a mullein remedy to Rose and Susan who both had coughs and were waxy-faced and downcast.
Gideon was grimly whittling something with his new knife; it was to be a present for his mother on his return. From time to time, he looked over at me, pityingly, and although it was dark, I thought I spied the glint of tears in his eyes. It was awful how much he had changed since his encounter with the monster; his cool and confident air that had so marked him out from the others had entirely disappeared.
‘And what ails you, Miss Wilson?’ somebody asked. ‘You look all uneasy and dishevelled this night.’
I roused myself quickly. ‘I am well, thank you,’ I replied and managed to smile brightly, if briefly at all of them for an instant.
‘Being outside so much is colouring your skin a little, Miss Wilson, but it is by no means unpleasant, if you would permit me to remark,’ Martin said. ‘I am very much against the dead-white faces of the fashion; on women it looks ghoulish, and on men, buffoonish. As far as I can see it signifies nothing but vanity. And how is your charge these days?’
Seven Strange Stories Page 7