The House on Parchment Street

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “That rubble down there is the public street!”

  “May I ask who needs a public street at this particular corner of Middleton? Do you? Or you?” They shifted uneasily, avoiding her eyes.

  “What about the Soccer Team bus? It can’t drive on the sidewalk!”

  Mrs. Brewster drew herself up. She stared at them over the arched bridge of her nose. “Soccer! If a group of grown men whose brains are in their feet cannot manage to walk half a block more to kick a ball about a field, then they have changed very sadly from those men whose courage and faith built this tunnel, and we are in sore straits indeed. What are you laughing about, Harold Lawrence? You have been plaguing me for days about this tunnel; this is no occasion for levity.”

  Uncle Harold composed himself. “I’m very grateful you’ve come,” he said. “I didn’t expect to see you.”

  Mrs. Brewster sniffed. “I should think not, after what your son did to my flowers.”

  “He didn’t do that,” Carol said indignantly. “Neither did Alexander. They were opening your priest tunnel when that happened.”

  Mrs. Brewster’s eyes moved to her face. They were black and searching, like birds’ eyes, and Carol met them stubbornly.

  “In my day,” Mrs. Brewster said, “young girls did not run about in bare feet, and they waited until they were introduced before they spoke.”

  Carol felt her face redden. Her mouth set tightly; her eyes did not move from Mrs. Brewster’s face. They gazed at one another across the fallen tunnel.

  “I know,” she said. “And they didn’t have the courage to find out why a girl was walking through a stone wall for three hundred years.”

  Uncle Harold’s hand dropped gently on her shoulder, as if in protection, but Mrs. Brewster was silent. She looked away across the field, her eyes narrowing as though she were trying to see something that had happened a long time before. Then she looked back at Carol, and the rigid lines of her face softened until she was almost smiling.

  “I should have guessed. So that is where the tunnel was.”

  Carol heard Uncle Harold draw a sudden breath. He cleared his throat, as though his voice had not gotten through the first time. “You saw a ghost, too?”

  Mrs. Brewster looked around at the ring of silent, staring workmen, and her voice firmed. “You have nearly ruined what should be an historical monument, of more use to the public than this corner of road. I suggest you spend your time now removing that mess of rubble, because that is what you will be ordered to do as soon as I state my grievances to the Middleton Civil Sewage Company.”

  The workmen looked at each other out of the corners of their eyes. One of them took off his cap and threw it bitterly on the ground. “Priest tunnels. Historical monuments. Why couldn’t priests stay in churches where they belong, instead of running about in tunnels—Where does this tunnel end, then?”

  Mrs. Brewster looked at Uncle Harold. He shrugged slightly. “Bruce didn’t make it to the end.”

  “And with these imbeciles we may well never know.”

  “Here!” a workman said indignantly. “There’s no need to get personal.”

  “I,” Mrs. Brewster said ominously, “have only just begun.”

  She turned and went into the yard toward the house. Uncle Harold and Carol followed her. Aunt Catherine was waiting for her at the door.

  “Hello, Mrs. Brewster,” she said cheerfully. “Have you met my niece, Carol?”

  “Yes, I have, Catherine,” Mrs. Brewster said. “She is the most sensible person I have met in years. Good morning, Bruce. What are you doing out of bed? You should not inflict the sight of your wan face on healthy people; it’s depressing. Where is my tunnel? I wish to go into it.”

  Bruce blinked. “You can’t—I mean, the hole is small, you’ll have to sort of wiggle—”

  “Then I shall wiggle.” She took her hat off carefully and gave it to Aunt Catherine. Bruce looked at Uncle Harold. He was gazing at Mrs. Brewster as though she were something as wondrous and indomitable as the great grey church or the priest tunnel. Bruce turned slowly on his crutches.

  “It’s in the last room, with all your other antiques.”

  She went through with Uncle Harold’s help. He switched a flashlight on. The light danced across the ancient stones, tracing the curved lines of them. She was silent a moment. She laid one hand lightly on the firm walls.

  “I had not expected anything so well-made. Nor did I ever expect to approve anything you instigated, Bruce. You have done well.” She turned. “Harold, do you think there are people living who would know how to restore this properly so that one day I can go through it to the end?”

  “It’s quite possible,” Uncle Harold said, helping her back into the cellar. They went upstairs. Mrs. Brewster pinned her hat on.

  “I will find such people, as soon as I inform the sewage company that they may not put their drains in my priest tunnel.” She paused a moment, looking at Carol. “You questioned my courage. For me, it was not a matter for courage, but a misunderstanding. I only saw the girl once, and living in this house, surrounded by old things, old memories, I simply assumed she was one more rare and beautiful thing that belonged within these old stones…She was a secret and unforgettable dream to me, for I was a passionate, imaginative child. Then I went away to school and I forgot about her. As I grew older, I had less time, less inclination for dreaming…It never occurred to me that she might have had a life, a purpose of her own. How did you guess that I had seen her?”

  “You embroidered a picture of her,” Carol said softly. “Emily Raison said you copied it from the picture in the study, but you put a wall behind her instead of an arch, because when you saw her, there was a wall behind her.”

  Mrs. Brewster nodded. “I had forgotten about that. You are quite correct.” Her white brows drew together. “That is strange…”

  “Yes,” Uncle Harold said a little dazedly. “Whoever painted that picture must have known about the tunnel, or guessed it was there, but he was in no position to do more than guess…”

  “Yes. I wonder who did it. It was a much more sensible thing to do than to get hysterical as Susan did.” The sudden opening of the front door missed her by inches; she turned icily. “I beg your pardon.”

  “Oh—sorry,” Alexander said. Father Malory blushed behind him under Mrs. Brewster’s gaze.

  “That is no way to open a door.”

  “It’s the only way this one will open. I got somewhat excited when I saw the hole in the street.”

  “One should never be too excited for common courtesy. Though I admit this is an extraordinary occasion. Good morning, Father Malory. I enjoyed your mass yesterday, although I think it would have sounded less dreadful had you not permitted my grandnephew to sing. It is a pleasure watching young boys do something constructive for a change. If Mrs. Crane writes a letter to the Bishop complaining about you, I shall write to him complaining about Mrs. Crane.”

  Father Malory’s blush deepened. “Thank you. There’s no need to write. I have a problem.”

  “So does the Middleton Civil Sewage Company,” Mrs. Brewster said. She turned back to Carol. “Why was the girl going into the priest tunnel?”

  “She was leading somebody through. We think he may have been a priest, and she saw him killed or captured by Puritan soldiers. There were other ghosts; they were waiting for him in the tunnel.”

  “Good heavens,” Mrs. Brewster said. “And you and Bruce had the patience to unravel such a mystery? Why did you not get hysterical and run?”

  “Where?” Bruce said. “I live here.”

  Mrs. Brewster looked at him, almost surprised. Then she said dryly, “There are many ways of running. I imagine you know most of them. I am grateful to you both, and to you, Alexander. When the tunnel is made safe, you will be the first to see where it ends.”

  Father Malory gave a soft cough behind her. “It ends in the church broom closet.”

  They stared at him. Uncle Harold said weakly, “How on
earth do you know?”

  “I told you I have a problem. I followed the ghost yesterday—”

  “You followed the ghost!”

  “I lied to you. It wasn’t actually a lie, but I intended it to be. I misled you—”

  “Stop quibbling,” Mrs. Brewster said. “And stop interrupting, Harold.”

  “I didn’t go to see Mrs. Murphy. I went down and waited in the cellar until four o’clock. You see, there was no one else to do it, and I knew how disappointed Bruce and Carol would be if it were walled up before they could know where it ended. I didn’t see the ghosts, but I trusted that they had seen them. So at four o’clock I went through to the end.” He paused. “You were quite right to stay out. The mortar seems to be cracking in quite a few places. Well. I found Edward. That’s my problem. I’m not sure what to do with a three-hundred-year-old set of bones.”

  The hall was silent. Bruce lowered himself onto the bottom stair.

  “I knew it,” Carol said tightly. “I knew they killed him in front of her.”

  “Are you sure it was Edward?” Uncle Harold asked.

  “There were bits of black cloth on the bones…

  I think they must have closed the tunnel then, with the same stones that they had used to build the wall. That’s why there was no trace of it.” He paused again. A gentle morning wind set the leaves chattering above the wall. “There was a silver cross on a chain that had fallen between the ribs…I suspect he was a priest. Perhaps that’s what kept her—awake. The feeling that he was dead, walled in the tunnel, with no one to know, no one to mourn him, as well as her anger against the men who had killed him and gone unpunished.”

  “That poor child,” Aunt Catherine said wonderingly. “Why don’t you bury him?”

  “I thought of that. But I’m not sure…He’s probably an Anglican priest. I could give his bones to Father Nichols of St. Martin’s parish, but that would involve a bit of explaining, and Father Nichols is an admirable man, but eminently—factual.”

  “On the other hand,” Uncle Harold said, “if he had been buried, he probably would have been buried across the street, since his family was here.”

  Father Malory nodded. “It’s only that I don’t want to bury him in the wrong place and have the girl wandering about unhappy. She’s very persistent.”

  “I don’t think she’d care where he was buried,” Carol said, “as long as she knew somebody else cared that he was buried.”

  “I hardly think he would have spent this much time himself arguing about where his bones were to be laid,” Mrs. Brewster said tartly. Father Malory turned to her.

  “I disagree,” he said mildly. “People’s feelings about religion were very intense and very intolerant then. If a man died for a particular faith, he wouldn’t want to be buried in somebody else’s graveyard. The girl may feel just as intensely.”

  “I should think,” Aunt Catherine said, “that after three hundred years, she may feel like taking a rest.”

  “Perhaps you’re right. I’ll put him in our graveyard then; after all these centuries there should be a good mixture of Catholic and Anglican bones. But I’m not sure what to do with that animal.”

  “What animal?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not sure what it is. A small dog, perhaps, or a cat. It’s lying beside him. It was apparently trapped when the tunnel was closed.”

  Carol made a small, inarticulate sound. She dropped beside Bruce and said breathlessly, “That cat! The black cat—You saw him, Uncle Harold.” The laughter welled in her, sudden and senseless, and she yielded to it, leaning against the banisters, giggling weakly. “It kept disappearing in the cellar—It was a ghost.” She heard Bruce whimper beside her; he gasped. “Please—Don’t make me laugh—it hurts—”

  “I can’t help it; it’s so funny. Uncle Harold always thought it was real, and all the time it was three hundred years old, running around looking for its bones—”

  “I yield,” Uncle Harold said. His voice quivered helplessly. “The evidence is overwhelming.”

  Mrs. Brewster gazed down at their tearful faces. “Really,” she said. “Bruce Lawrence, if you could have laughed like that six months ago you would not have felt like being such a source of intolerable annoyance to your neighbors.”

  They went down to the cellar at a quarter to four and sat among Mrs. Brewster’s antiques on her table. Specks of mortar dust revolved in the sunlight from the broken window. Bruce traced a pattern in the pale dust on the floor with the end of his crutch.

  “Dad says we’ll go to Scotland as soon as I can walk decently. So you’ll have a whole week there, at least. You’ll like camping.”

  “Then I’ll have to go back home. And then back to school…” She sighed. “Nothing exciting ever happens at school. Nothing this exciting will ever happen again.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that now. Worry some other time.”

  The cellar door opened and closed. They were quiet, listening to the soft footsteps on the stairs. Alexander came through the rooms toward them. He smiled.

  “I thought you might be here. If she comes, I’ll cry. You’ve never seen me cry, have you? I can do it as well as Roger Simmons.” He sat down on a book box.

  “If she comes,” Bruce said, “I’m giving up.”

  “She won’t come,” Carol said. “I bet she won’t. Edward’s bones aren’t in there anymore. There’s nothing to come back for.”

  “I hope you’re right. I’m so tired of thinking about her that a corner of my brain is all worn out.”

  “Properly speaking,” Alexander said, “a brain doesn’t have corners. It’s all rounded, with grooves, and what she’s done is worn a groove in your mind, so you’ll never forget her.”

  “That’s all I need. A groove with a ghost in it.” He looked at Carol. “Are you ever going to tell anyone about her and Edward?”

  “I was thinking about that,” Carol said slowly. She picked up a tiny china golden-haired shepherdess and frowned at it absently, tracing the lines of it with her fingers. “My friends will ask me ‘What is England like?’ and they’ll be thinking of castles and those guards with the big fur hats, and rock groups. And I’ll be thinking of a cellar underneath an old house with a tunnel and a ghost in it. Things are different from the way you think they’ll be. I don’t know. Maybe I will, except my mother would worry. She wouldn’t believe me, because she can’t see the tunnel, and she would think I was coming down with something. I could tell my best friend. But I don’t think she even believes in history. It’s hard to, when all the houses and stores and freeways and buildings around you are so new. But I suppose I will tell, because it’s so exciting that it would be too hard not to talk about, but…I don’t really think anyone will believe me. Not really. I wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Will that matter to you?” Alexander asked softly. She shook her head, smiling.

  “No.”

  The bells played their slow, familiar melody into the still afternoon. They rang four steady, strong notes, casually as though there were not three people listening to them without moving, without breathing, still as the antique figurines on the dusty table. The faint echo of bells seemed to linger unendurably in the silence. Bruce’s shoulders lowered. He drew a long breath. He caught Carol’s smile and laughed suddenly.

  “Say it. Say I told you so. Have the last word.”

  “I told you so,” she said contentedly.