by G. P. Taylor
‘I don’t know his name. He was a friend of my father; he did the painting from photographs that were taken of me on holiday. I never met the man. All I can remember is he lived in a village in Wallachia. The painting arrived in a wooden box on my seventeenth birthday.’
‘You have a good memory for such things,’ Bia said as she again tried to read the inscription.
‘I should be able to remember it quite clearly. It was the day my father left this house without telling me where he was going,’ Morgan replied. ‘It rained that morning and I watched him put on his gabardine and hat and step outside. He never even said goodbye.’
‘You mean he just left and didn’t come back?’ Jago asked.
‘He arrived home at Hawks Moor eighteen years later, three days before war broke out. Father caught the last train from Paris and arrived on the doorstep as if he had never been away.’ Morgan paused and looked at them both. ‘I don’t know why I am telling you this,’ he said as he tried to smile. ‘There is so much to show you and the storm clouds are coming in from the sea.’
Jago could not be sure, but he wondered if Morgan was trying not to cry. The man turned away and took a sighing breath. Then he sped off down the staircase towards the front door and waved for them to follow.
The house was brighter here; the stair walls were painted white with pictures of landscapes in golden frames. In each was a different view of the same castle. It was tall, spired and set on a wooded hill above a lake. The land was thick with forests and in some of the pictures the moon came up from the earth in its fullness. Jago stopped at the nearest painting. He read the gold plaque pinned to the frame: 1815. The Land of the Forest.
‘Do you think it was true?’ Bia asked when she was sure Morgan couldn’t hear her. ‘About his father just leaving?’
‘What do you think?’ Jago asked. ‘He told us he had recently come back – of course it’s true.’
As they spoke, Rathbone stepped through the heavy curtain inside the front door. He straightened his chauffeur’s hat and looked up at them as they walked slowly down the stairs. Then he whispered to Hugh Morgan, who nodded and turned to them, a look of disappointment etched on his face.
‘I am afraid my father insists on seeing me,’ he said, the regret clear in his drawn voice. ‘Perhaps … perhaps you could look about the house until I return. I will show you the labyrinth when I come back – it is not a place for you to go on your own.’
Hugh Morgan stepped towards the door and pulled the thick green curtain away from the entrance.
‘So we can look around?’ Bia asked.
‘Of course,’ Morgan replied as Rathbone waited for him to step outside.
‘But don’t touch anything,’ Rathbone said before he followed on.
The door slammed shut and the air shook. Jago listened and there was silence.
‘I’ve been here before,’ he said as he stepped from the staircase onto the tiled floor of the hallway and looked across the expanse to the fireplace.
‘In your dream when you followed Strackan?’ Bia asked.
‘No. I mean I have been in this house before. I remember it but can’t think when it was. It must have been when I was a child.’ Jago looked up at the wooden stars embedded in the ceiling and etched with gold paint.
‘I thought you lived in London all your life?’ Bia asked.
‘I did, but I can remember coming here. It must have been a long time ago – when I was a small child. It’s the smell of the place – it hasn’t changed. We went to the studio, but then it was a library with lots of books.’
‘Why should you have come here? It can’t be true. You’re imagining it,’ Bia answered.
Jago thought harder. He looked as though he was racking his brain to find the memories he needed to make sense of it all.
‘My mother brought me here,’ he said slowly as he thought. ‘We stayed one night.’ He ran his fingers along the rough stone of the fireplace and hoped it would speak to him.
‘I’ll ask Hugh Morgan when he comes back. He’ll be able to remember,’ Bia said excitedly, knowing that if Jago were lying it would call his bluff.
‘No – don’t say anything. It’s too complicated,’ Jago answered quickly.
‘Then it’s not true,’ she snapped. ‘You’re lying –’
‘It’s not a lie, Bia. Honest,’ Jago said as he looked about the hallway. ‘It’s best he doesn’t find out – not yet.’
‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘If you had been here before that means your mother knew Hugh.’ Bia stopped speaking and looked at him. For some time, she studied his face. ‘What was your mother’s name?’
There was silence as they looked at each other.
‘Martha,’ Jago said solemnly. A thunderous crash lit the black sky, casting shadows of the mullioned windows across the floor.
‘Aunt Martha?’ she asked, hardly able to say the words.
‘I think so. The picture that Bradick has will prove it. It was taken in the ruins of the abbey,’ he answered slowly. ‘Maria and Martha together. Maria has to be Mary – your mother.’
The thought of Biatra being his cousin made him smile. Before he could say anything else, she had wrapped her arms around him and held him close. Her face was pressed against his as she kissed him on the cheek. Jago fought every desire to push her away. Then he gave in as he heard her sobbing gently.
When he held her close he could feel her body shaking. She felt soft and warm, just like his mother. Jago hugged her tightly as she tried to speak. They spent the time greedily trying to absorb the years they had missed of each other’s lives
‘Don’t leave me, Jago. You’re all I have left,’ she said. She was admitting to herself that her parents were dead.
Jago let go of his embrace and pulled back the long strands of red hair from her face.
‘It has to be a secret. No one can know – not yet,’ he said as he leant against the wood-panelled wall that stretched the length of the room along either side of the hall fireplace.
There was another crash of thunder. The sky sparked with lightning as the panel he leant against gave a dull click.
‘The wall’s opened!’ Bia said. She slid her fingers into a narrow slat that had come away from the other boards of limed oak. ‘It’s a door.’
Jago stepped aside as she opened it further to reveal a small room set into the wall next to the large stone fireplace. A candle burnt on a table by the far wall. A cladding of dripped wax covered the holder until it could not be seen. On the wall, high above everything else, was an old painting of four men. It was set in a gilded frame that looked as new as the day it had been made. The men’s faces were unfinished, as if the artist had been called away and never returned. Everything else about the image was perfect. Just like the painting of Tristan Morgan, each figure had the stain of blood across the back of a hand. It ran from the wrist and followed the course of the veins to the longest finger.
‘Who are they?’ Jago asked as he took Bia by the hand and stepped inside the room.
‘They look old. What are they wearing?’ She pointed to the figure of one man who stood in front of the others as if he deemed himself more worthy. The man wore a suit of armour over a vest of chain mail.
Jago shivered as he looked at the hand of the man in the armour. On the smallest finger of his left hand he wore a wide band of gold cut through with a woven trellis.
‘Cresco …’ Jago whispered the word, barely louder than a breath.
‘What?’ Bia asked as she closed the panelled door.
‘Nothing … I thought – but it can’t be,’ he said, stumbling over his words.
The storm rumbled outside. In the secret room all was still. The candle was as steady as a watchman at a shrine. It reflected on Bia’s face and softly lit her scar like an autumn moon.
‘We shouldn’t be here,’ Bia said as a sudden draught flickered the solitary light. ‘What if Hugh Morgan comes back?’
‘IF?’ shouted a voice – it was
Morgan himself, and he seized her by the arm and pulled her from the room. ‘If?’
‘It was an accident,’ she blurted quickly as she saw the resentment and anger in his sallow face.
‘Accident?’ he shouted as he bared his teeth like a dog.
‘My fault,’ Jago said as he stepped between the two and squared up to Hugh Morgan. ‘I leant against the wall and the door opened. You can’t blame Biatra.’
‘I told you to look around the house, not burgle the place,’ Morgan protested as he shook his head.
‘We didn’t know it was there. It was my fault,’ Jago said again, standing his ground.
Morgan breathed heavily as he pushed back his rain-sodden hair.
‘This makes it all the more difficult. You have complicated a matter that was already very complicated,’ Morgan said. He stepped towards the fireplace and gripped the stone with his hand.
‘We’ll go. We won’t tell anyone,’ Bia said as she stepped away from him, keeping Jago between them.
‘You can’t. The storm is too dangerous. By the time it passes it will be dark and you cannot leave the house and walk across the moor,’ Morgan answered. ‘Not alone and not tonight.’
‘But we have to get back. Mrs Macarty will be expecting us,’ Bia said as she moved towards the door. Morgan followed her every step with his steel-blue eyes.
‘I will call her. It will all be arranged for you both to stay here,’ Morgan snapped angrily.
‘What if we don’t want to?’ Jago asked.
‘Rathbone!’ Morgan shouted. ‘Biatra and Jago will be staying the night.’
The man stepped from behind the curtain, the heels of his long riding boots clicking against the tiled floor like the ticking of a clock. It was obvious from the smug look on his face that he had been listening to all Morgan had said.
‘Where will they sleep?’ he asked as he stroked the stubble on his chin.
‘The turret room. Light them a fire and bring them some supper. And Rathbone?’
‘Yes, Master Hugh?’
‘Lock the door.’
[ 16 ]
The Vampyre Quartet
TOGETHER THEY WATCHED the raindrops cascading down the window of the room. Dark clouds moved slowly in from the sea, each lined with lightning effulgence. The silver blades of bright light crackled and danced like angels tiptoeing across the black water. With each rumble of thunder, a knife-bolt hit the land, searing the sodden cliffs above the bay. Hawks Moor stood defiantly as it had done for eight hundred years. The wind beat against its ancient stones and ripped long throngs of wisteria from the walls. The labyrinth below the window shook its green hedges like a bristling dog. The storm drew closer and pounded the earth as if dragon wings beat above the house.
‘Will he let us go?’ Bia asked as she moved away from the window to be far from the storm.
‘He’ll have to. I think he wants us to stay the night, that’s all,’ Jago answered. He stood defiantly like a captain on the bridge of a stricken ship. ‘He just didn’t want us going back over the moor.’
‘They could have taken us in the car,’ Bia said as she warmed herself by the meagre fire that Rathbone had prepared when he had locked them in the room.
‘The roads will be flooded, he wouldn’t risk it,’ Jago said.
‘Then we stay here?’ Bia asked as she looked at the two beds on either side of the vast room surrounded by windows. ‘It feels …’
‘It’s just a room,’ Jago answered quickly before she could go on. ‘And Hugh Morgan is just a man.’
‘But if you sleep you might leave, just like you did at the Manor.’
Jago didn’t look at her. He stared out of the window as he thought what to say. Perhaps she was right and for some reason he had no control over his mind.
‘You sleep and I will stay awake,’ he answered just as the rain began to ebb away and the thunder stilled its breath. ‘I’ll watch over you.’
Bia looked at the bed by the window. It was propped against a narrow section of panelled wall.
‘Do you think there is another room hidden in here?’ she asked.
‘Looks old enough,’ he replied as he looked at the walls. There was one thing he noticed that was different about the room. Unlike every other part of the house, this room had no pictures. On every wall was a long window that formed each side of the turret. ‘Can’t be in the walls, though,’ he said after much thought. ‘If there is a secret way out of here then it would have to be through the floor.’
‘Then I’ll look for it. I don’t like it here. I want to go home.’
‘Home or Streonshalgh Manor with Staxley and the others?’ Jago asked.
She sighed. Bia could not go home. Her house on Church Street was empty. A missing-ribbon marked the door like all the others. Street was empty. A missing-ribbon marked the door like all the others.
‘We could go somewhere else,’ she said suddenly. ‘We could run away, start a new life.’
‘In a war? They would never allow it,’ Jago replied.
‘We are all the family we have. No one could stop us. We could get work – go to London, stay with your friend in his flat – live at your flat – find work,’ Bia spoke quickly, the words tumbling over one another.
‘How would we get there – walk?’ he asked.
‘If we had to. There’s a boat leaves for London every week, and the train. We don’t have to stay here, not any more. We only have a few months and then we’ll be too old for Streonshalgh Manor – they always move people on, especially the older ones.’
‘But how do we prove we are family?’ Jago asked. ‘We just have our own word for it.’
‘The picture that Bradick took from you. If we got it back then we would have the proof,’ Bia said just as the door lock clicked.
‘Thought you may need food,’ said Hugh Morgan as he stepped into the room. ‘The views from here are quite spectacular. My grandfather had it built so that he could see the ships sailing to Whitby.’ Morgan looked at their silent, glum faces and then went on. ‘You are not prisoners, you can go whenever you would like,’ he said.
‘Then why lock the door to the room?’ Bia asked.
‘It was to dissuade you from leaving. It is dangerous on the moor – especially in the storms,’
‘Frit we’d been got by Vampyres?’ she asked belligerently.
‘I knew your mother, Biatra. It is to her that I owe a debt of making sure nothing happens to you,’ Morgan snapped sharply. He placed the tray on the narrow table at the end of a bed. ‘Vampyres do not come into the equation.’
‘So when can we go?’ Jago asked.
‘In the morning,’ Morgan said calmly. ‘I have telephoned Mrs Macarty and Draigorian and told them of your predicament. You can go straight from here to Hagg House. I will get Rathbone to drive you.’
Jago leant against the stone mullion of the window
‘And you won’t lock us in?’ he asked.
‘As long as you don’t go prying into rooms where you should never be,’ Morgan replied as he took the four paces to the window and looked out.
The storm cleared slowly. To the far south an edge of brightness cut across the clouds. The last barrage of rain crashed against the leaded windows as icy droplets rolled across the roof to the iron drains. The rain washed the feet of the three hideous stone gargoyles that stood guard on the lintel caps.
‘Promise,’ Bia shouted from the fireside.
‘Is that a question or your answer?’ Morgan asked as he pulled his jacket tighter to keep out the chill of the room.
‘We promise not to go looking about the house,’ Jago said as he looked down on to the green-hedged labyrinth.
‘And not go outside?’ Morgan asked.
‘No,’ Jago said. ‘We’ll stay here.’
Morgan eyed them both warily and then smiled at Bia.
‘Just like your mother,’ he said. ‘I could never trust a thing she said – but will take you at your word.’
‘Wh
y did they plant the hedges so close to the house?’ Jago asked before Morgan could walk away.
‘That started with the Penance. Every year they would take what was left of the Hedge from the shore. The story is that each stalk pushed into the earth sprouted and grew. As they built the hedge year on year so the labyrinth was formed.’
‘Can we go in? I heard of a maze where you have to search for the centre and find your way out again,’ Bia said as she came to the window and looked out.
‘I have never been in. Tallow cuts the hedges and picks the weeds. It’s a place I have never had the urge to explore,’ Morgan said. Bia watched him closely as he walked to the door without looking back. ‘We serve breakfast in the kitchen. I’ll tell Rathbone to wake you.’
Morgan stopped and looked at Jago. ‘I would lock the door if I were you,’ he said as he took the key from his pocket and threw it on the bed.
The door closed and they listened to his footsteps clatter down the corridor and then fade away.
‘Are we staying?’ Bia asked.
‘Do you really want to run away?’ Jago asked.
‘I don’t want to stay in Whitby any more,’ she replied.
‘But what if your mother comes back?’ he asked.
‘I’ve thought about that. She won’t. I know it. I just didn’t want to dare believe she was …’ Bia couldn’t say the word. It was as if it was still forbidden.
‘Then we’ll get away. I have fifty pounds hidden in my room. We could use that and get to London. It would pay the rent on the flat – as long as you don’t mind the bombing,’ Jago said excitedly as the thought of escaping from Streonshalgh Manor filled his mind. ‘There’s one thing I have to do before we go.’
‘What?’ Bia asked.
‘Staxley. I have to fix him good so he won’t hurt anyone again,’ Jago panted.
‘Tomorrow night – we could wait until he fell asleep,’ Bia answered. ‘His room door doesn’t lock.’
‘And then we’ll get the train to London?’ Jago asked.
‘To London,’ Bia echoed. She smiled at him, wondering if it would ever happen.