Unwept

by Tracy Hickman

  Martha saw the pleading look but plunged on anyway. “A nightmare, I believe. She was in her nightdress and a man came into her room during the storm, touching her in a way that—”

  “Martha!” Ellis snapped. “Hold your tongue!”

  The young woman stopped speaking, a look of hurt and confusion coming over her face.

  “It’s quite all right, Ellis. Miss Kendrick means well.” Merrick chuckled in his deep voice. He inclined his head toward Alicia. “And what of you, Miss Van der Meer? I trust that now you are also thoroughly apprised of our Ellis’s shocking dreams?”

  Ellis blinked in disbelief. Did Merrick really mean for them to discuss her intimate dreams in the parlor?

  “Yes, Mr. Bacchus,” Alicia said, still not looking the man in the eye. “I believe I am thoroughly acquainted with Miss Harkington’s sordid imaginings.”

  “We were discussing the young woman’s murder,” Ellis interjected. She was mortified and desperate to change the topic of conversation.

  “Rather strange business, that,” said the young man with the brown curly hair and the slightly bug-eyed look standing behind Merrick. Ellis recognized him as Ely from the previous day. “I’m sorry that you ladies have to have been troubled about it.”

  “You are, of course, acquainted with Mr. Ely Rossini.” Merrick’s chin raised slightly, his head nodding slightly in the direction of the young men. “Joining us is Mr. Silenus Tune.”

  “Pleasure, ma’am,” Silenus said as he nodded in the direction of Ellis. He was slightly shorter than Ely, with a young, clean-shaven look. Ellis thought he had the kind of face that would look perpetually younger than his years would allow. There was a mischievous one-sided cant to his smile that left Ellis feeling wary.

  Ellis nodded slightly toward the young men.

  “Miss Van der Meer,” Merrick said, turning toward Alicia, “I should not trouble the constable about Ellis’s hobbies. He is far too occupied at the moment with idle gossip. I would much prefer that you visit me later in the day and express what you have observed to me at that time. Permit me to determine whether your thoughts have any merits which warrant troubling our constable.”

  “Of course, Mr. Bacchus,” Alicia started. “But I no longer think that is necessary—”

  “Of course you must,” Merrick chided. “It is your duty.”

  Alicia swallowed. “I really should not take up your time—”

  “But I insist,” Merrick said. There was menace in his smile.

  “It would be my pleasure,” Alicia said, looking away from Merrick once again.

  “That being settled, we have come to invite you all on an outing,” Merrick said, turning his most charming smile back on Ellis. “The storm has driven a ship up on the East Shore not far from here. I propose that we avail ourselves of this novelty today.”

  Martha clapped in excited approval.

  Alicia, Ely and Silenus all smiled at one another in anticipation.

  “Oh, how delightful,” Jenny said, entwining her arm around Merrick’s.

  “You cannot be serious,” Ellis sputtered.

  The other young people looked at her in disbelief.

  Merrick inclined his head, his eyes fixed on her. “Why, Ellis, you’re spoiling the fun.”

  “What of its crew and passengers?” Ellis demanded. “Has anything been done for their safety or their recovery? Who is caring for the injured?”

  “You need not concern yourself with the passengers or the crew,” Merrick said in soothing tones, his perfect teeth beaming with his warmest smile. “They are no longer aboard.”

  “Then we can hardly go traipsing about someone’s property,” Ellis continued. “The owner of the ship—”

  “Would be my uncle in Portland,” Merrick interrupted. “He has authorized me to take charge of the vessel, her cargo and the passengers’ personal effects. So, you see, it is all quite proper, Ellis.”

  She stared back at him. “That sounds rather a bit too convenient, Mr. Bacchus.”

  “Quite the contrary,” Merrick replied with a studied and cool, gracious manner. “If I tell you something about Gamin, you of all people may rest assured that it is already, absolutely true.”

  * * *

  The party left the porch of Summersend and proceeded down the lane on foot. Merrick had offered Ellis his arm and she had taken it perfunctorily and come at once to regret it. He had clapped his left hand over hers, pinning her to his arm like one of Jenny’s moths in the bell jar, pulling her with him as he strode down the muddy dirt road.

  Jenny followed somewhat sullenly after them as Alicia, Martha, Ely and Silenus chattered around her, excited for the promised diversion to come. All of the women’s hems were stained almost at once by the muddy pools of dirty water that remained from the previous night’s terrible storm, but the women seemed to take no notice of the state of their clothing, the ruining of the cloth or their mud-caked shoes.

  “A wrecked ship!” Martha exclaimed. “We must go and see it! We must!”

  “It’s just down at the harbor.…”

  The voice came unbidden from somewhere deep in Ellis’s memory, chilling her so quickly that she shivered in the morning sun. It was a young voice, devoid of any connection in time or context.

  “Everyone is going! Hurry!”

  Dread flooded through Ellis. She felt her face go pale, a cold perspiration breaking on her brow.

  “Please, Mr. Bacchus, I’m n-n-not well,” she stammered. “I must return to the house.”

  “It’s just your nerves, Ellis. I won’t have it.” Merrick pressed his hand down on hers with a strength that made her wince. “Besides, we’re already here.”

  Olive cloth. Clear glass. Red light.

  “Come look! It’s just at the harbor’s edge. You can see it through the window! Isn’t it thrilling?” Her smile was so excited just before she died.…

  Ellis cried out.

  Merrick ignored her distress and pulled Ellis through the trees above the seawall and onto the beach, the rest of the group rushing out onto the sands after them, chattering with excitement. The crashing of the waves was still carrying some of the force from the storm that had passed, breaking loudly along the shoreline.

  The Mary Celeste lay high up on the shore, her hull broken on the near side against a rock outcropping that rose up from sands. The sails were torn and shredded, flapping uselessly in the offshore breeze. A rope ladder lay over the near side of the ship, falling down over the rocks on which the hull was leaning.

  “Oh, do you suppose the people are still on the ship?” Martha asked in breathless excitement.

  “They might be,” Silenus teased. “Maybe they’re dead!”

  “Really, Sil, you mustn’t get her hopes up.” Alicia laughed.

  “Oh, how thrilling!” Martha tittered.

  “Isn’t it thrilling?” The girls’ voices echoed in Ellis’s mind. Fuzzy images pressed in against the edges of her inner vision.

  “I … I can’t,” Ellis balked.

  “Oh, of course you can,” Merrick said, pulling her toward the grounded ship. “We all can.”

  “No, I beg you to allow me to return to the house.” Ellis’s breath was quick and shallow, her words shaking as she spoke them. “I … I don’t think the doctor would approve.”

  “But he has,” Merrick assured her. He pulled her up onto the rock outcropping. “He and I discussed it just this morning. What are you afraid of, Ellis?”

  “This ship … there’s something familiar about—”

  “Oh, Ellis, must you stand in everyone’s way?” Jenny groused.

  “Quite so,” Merrick said. He swung his leg up onto the deck, then reached back, gripping Ellis this time not by the hand but firmly around her wrist. With remarkable strength he pulled her up from the rocks and onto the deck of the ship. “But it would be far worse to stand in your own way. This is just the sort of thing you used to love.”

  The deck of the ship leaned at strange angles, s
lanting backward toward where the cabins were located and slightly to one side. Ellis gripped the rail of the ship with white, bloodless hands. Silenus followed her aboard almost at once and began pulling the other women in their party aboard. In moments, Alicia, Jenny and Martha were joined by Ely and Silenus as they ranged back along the broken deck, prattling constantly with one another as they pointed out the most mundane of the broken ship’s pieces with the greatest of curiosity.

  Ellis drew in a shuddering breath.

  “All these terrors you fear are just ghosts of your own imaginings. You shiver in the darkness, you cry out in the night and then the lamps are lit and the sun comes up and all your fears are found to be shadows—dispelled once someone just shines a little light on them.” Merrick left her to explore the back of the ship. “I disagree with the doctor on one point: I do not think you need to remember your past at all. It was a bad dream and better left behind. Come back to us, Ellis, and leave your unpleasant dreams behind.”

  Ellis stayed by the railing, thinking about what Merrick had said. The ship had brought memories up from her past, but what if it was a past she really wanted to forget? What if something so terrible had happened to her that her mind refused to let her remember it? Wouldn’t it be better to let such memories remain buried?

  She thought of the dream she had of the man in her room the night before. It was, she reminded herself, only a dream, a fantasy woven out of her own imaginings. Maybe Merrick’s counsel was right; perhaps she did need to leave her unpleasant dreams behind.

  “A play! A play!” Silenus burst from the doorway leading to the aft cabins dragging something heavy behind him. “We must have a play!”

  “Oh yes!” Martha exclaimed.

  “What is that?” Alicia asked, trying to peer around Silenus.

  The young man swung the bulky object scraping across the deck planks to rest in front of him.

  It was a large steamer chest. A number of shipping labels stood affixed to its leather exterior, as well as several identification tags.

  “I found it inside,” the young man replied. “There are more in the cabins … surely enough for everyone!”

  Martha clapped her hands merrily and hurried toward the aft doorway. Alicia followed her almost at once, pulling down her parasol and laying it against a rack of belaying pins on the far rail. Jenny smiled and hurried to join them. Ely shrugged and followed, although with notable reluctance.

  “Mr. Bacchus!” Ellis said. Her outrage drove her from the rail toward the patron. “You must put a stop to this!”

  “Whatever do you mean?” Merrick asked, looking down at her.

  Silenus flipped open the dual latches, raising the lid. He pulled out a jacket and an embroidered shawl, smiled and then wrapped himself in both.

  “These are someone’s private possessions!” Ellis said.

  “Yes,” Merrick agreed. “And as I do not see anyone present to lay claim to them, at this moment they are my private possessions to do with as I please. And I think a play sounds most pleasing indeed.”

  Alicia emerged from the cabin door wearing a plain print dress and an apron. Dark, foul stains ran down one side of the dress around a long tear in the fabric. She was followed at once by Martha in an ill-fitting silk dress with a wide skirt. It, too, was stained from the neckline down to the waist. She held a doll dangling by one foot at her side. Jenny emerged a moment later in a black mourning dress and a lace cap. Last came Ely, wearing a captain’s peacoat and cap with a pipe in his hand.

  “Most excellent,” Merrick proclaimed. “What shall be your play, Mr. Tune?”

  “Oh, I should think ‘The Tragic End of the Mary Celeste.’” Silenus grinned. “Alicia, how do you die?”

  “I shall be murdered by my husband who was driven mad during the storm,” Alicia proclaimed as she clasped her hands to her chest. “I haven’t decided quite yet how, but I’m sure it will come to me.”

  “Oh, and me, too,” Jenny enthused, waving her crippled hand in the hopes of being acknowledged. “I caught him in the act and he murdered me, too!”

  “Oh, that is good.” Merrick smiled.

  Jenny beamed at his attentions.

  “Well, I suppose that makes me the murderous husband,” Silenus acknowledged with his own bow. “I’ll have to have killed the crew, as well, I suppose.”

  “Except for me,” Ely said.

  “Why except for you?” Silenus demanded. “Why should you be different?”

  “Because I’m the one who drove you into the storm,” Ely affirmed. “I had hopes of killing you in the storm before you killed me.”

  Silenus frowned. “But I was driven mad by the storm.”

  “And what about me?” Martha demanded, stamping her foot. The doll twisted, barely noticed in her grip.

  “You are why I drove the ship into the storm,” Ely proclaimed. “You can be my wife and you were going to run away from me with Silenus.”

  “But what do I do with this?” Martha asked.

  She held the doll up in front of her, dangling from the single foot by which she gripped it, its face turned away from Ellis.

  “Where did you get that?” Ellis demanded.

  “It was just sitting on the bunk in one of the cabins,” Martha said. “It didn’t belong to anyone.”

  “There was a child on board?” Ellis was aghast. “Give it to me!”

  “It’s broken,” Martha said, holding out the doll. “I didn’t think you wanted to play.”

  Ellis snatched the doll from Martha’s grasp and turned it over.

  “No!” Ellis breathed in horror.

  Everyone stopped at once, staring at her.

  The doll’s porcelain face was broken. A curved section of her forehead was missing, dropping down over where her right eye had been.

  Ellis screamed, dropping the doll on the deck. The porcelain head shattered against the planking. She knelt on the rough wood of the deck and, choking back tears she didn’t understand, began gingerly picking up the china shards.

  The party froze as all eyes turned upon Ellis.

  “Ellie, stop. It’s not worth fixing.” Merrick’s hand was firmly under her elbow, pulling her up.

  “But some little child will be so heartbroken.” Ellis gestured to the broken doll.

  “A child?”

  “Yes, like the little boy at the lighthouse.” Ellis heard the gasps of those about her.

  Merrick’s grip bit sharply into the flesh of her arm. “That’s not possible,” he told her in low tones.

  “Whatever can you mean?” She looked up and saw on his face concern warring with irritation.

  “Disgusting,” spat Alicia. Martha, next to her, shivered and looked away.

  “I don’t understand. Did something happen to the children? Where are they?” Ellis’s features tightened into a ball of perplexity as Merrick held her gaze. “Please, please help me,” she begged.

  Merrick drew himself up as if to answer, but Silenus stepped between Ellis and Merrick, causing Merrick to release his grip on Ellis’s arm. “It’s quite simple, really. There are no children in Gamin. Never have been. Never will be. Guess we’re as close as it gets. It’s for the best, you see.”

  But Ellis did not see. She spun on her heel till her gaze fell on Jenny, who silently shook her head in agreement. Ellis realized the only child she’d seen since her arrival was the boy at the lighthouse and now had been told that even that was impossible.

  She desperately wanted to tell Silenus, Merrick and all of them that they were mad but held her tongue, knowing that she was the one who’d been brought here to get well. She swallowed and once again found herself desperate for air, for escape.

  Ellis fled to the rail and down the ladder, desperate to get away from the doll, from the ship and the voices that spoke to her as she ran across the sands and back toward Summersend.

  As she blindly stumbled forward the image of a young woman floated up from her memory. “It’s just down at the harbor.… Come,
see!”

  And the girl smiled the moment before she died.…

  * * *

  Jenny’s bell jar of pinned moths stood on a small table near the entrance to Summersend. Ellis paused as she noted that Jenny had added more to her collection. The specimens were becoming quite crowded, though Jenny would never admit to adding any. Ellis thought she saw the wings of the great luna moth inside twitch.

  It was too much. Ellis lunged toward the stairs, grabbed the railing and ran up the steps two at a time.

  The sound of the ocean against the shore and a lazy pool of sunlight greeted her as she crossed the threshold of her room.

  Sanctuary.

  She shook uncontrollably, weeping. It must have all been a dream—had to have been a dream. The man in her room with the paisley mark over his face, the terrible thrill of his touch, they were both things of her imagination. She could not have seen the artist in the train station—she had died at least a week before. It all had to be in Ellis’s dreams.

  She looked about her, fighting to control her breathing.

  The room was real. The French doors were real. The trunk and the closet were both real. The dresser, the vanity, the bed … The bed is real. I saw the girl die. There are no children here. Are these real? She needed to touch the solid furniture pieces, to reassure herself that something was real and that she could tell the difference between her waking days and her nightmares.

  She kicked off her shoes and crossed toward the bed, tears already blurring her vision.

  As she stepped next to the bed, something sharp bit into her foot through her stockings.

  Gasping at the sharp little shock of pain, she picked up her foot and found a thorny limp white rose clinging to it. She reached down with a shaky hand and pulled out three thorns from the bottom of her foot through her stocking. A droplet of blood spread in a small circle on the bottom of her snagged stocking.

  Ellis began to scream.

  13

  THE MANOR

  An unseasonably cold wind spun the leaves in a small cyclone around the two women huddled together against the squall gathering in the late afternoon over Penobscot Bay. The previously clear skies had darkened with the onset of the thunderstorm rolling in from the sea. Lightning was already lancing across the sky as the pair approached the towering façade of the Norembega mansion. The stonework of its walls was bathed in a deepening red of a sunset retreating before the second storm while the black of its curved and clapboard woodwork seemed almost silhouetted against the fury approaching from beyond its massive shape.