“There we are. Nothing wrong with a home birth,” she said. “I was born at home. The midwife delivered me. My mum always said it was better at home. Too many germs in hospital. You never know what you might catch. Go in having a baby and come out with some deadly tropical disease that no one’s found a cure for. Besides which,” she said as she tucked Charlotte back into bed, “there’s less prying eyes and gossiping tongues at home, isn’t there?”
Charlotte blinked at her. The last thing she needed reminding of at this moment was her unmarried, disgraced state. Lily bit her lip.
“Shall I fluff your pillows a bit, Miss Grant?”
“I’m fine, thank you, Lily.” Charlotte didn’t bother to conceal the edge in her voice. She was in too much pain to care about the blundering girl’s finer feelings. And she was scared. Pray God, the doctor was a real one and not one of Mr. Hargest’s coven.
* * * * *
“I’m Dr. Faulkner and this is my assistant, Nurse Ray.” Through her pain, Charlotte became aware of a young doctor with ginger hair and a pleasant smile. Standing next to him was a middle-aged woman with short, permed, graying hair, and an equally friendly expression.
A wave of relief flowed through Charlotte’s brain. They seemed perfectly normal, qualified medical professionals. Hargest did not accompany them.
“You’re quite far along,” the doctor said, “but the baby is a little premature, so he or she may be a tad small and could need a tiny bit of help, but you’ll soon be greeting your new little one. So, hold tight and let’s get this baby born.”
Dr. Faulkner disappeared from sight. Nurse Ray took Charlotte’s hand as more pain struck with tidal force.
“Now,” Dr. Faulkner said, “push! This one’s in a great hurry. I can see the head. Push!”
Charlotte strained and screamed as she pushed with every ounce of strength she could summon. Minutes ticked by. Still the commands to push. When she had no more strength left, she still found some. The baby must be born. One final surge.
“That’s it! You’ve done it.” Dr. Faulkner came into view briefly. He grinned and his eyes sparkled. “You have a very handsome baby boy.”
Nurse Ray rescued her hand from Charlotte’s fierce grasp and a few seconds later, Charlotte’s baby let out his first protesting wail.
Relief turned to fear in a second. “Is he?” Charlotte could hardly bring herself to ask the question that had plagued her all the months she had carried him. “Is he…?”
Dr. Faulkner laid a hand on her arm. “Nurse Ray is wrapping him up in a blanket. He’s a good weight and you have a beautiful, healthy baby. Didn’t need any help at all. And he has a healthy pair of lungs in him.”
The nurse came into view. She held a soft white blanket with a squirming bundle and a broad smile lit up her face. “Here’s your baby, Mrs. Grant.”
Charlotte resisted the temptation to correct the nurse. All that mattered was that this baby was whole and healthy and betrayed none of the origins of his conception.
She held out her arms for him and the nurse laid him carefully down. Charlotte took a deep breath and looked down at a pair of blue eyes and a chubby pink face. Tiny hands with perfectly formed nails paddled the air. Gently, she pulled the blanket aside and saw the perfect limbs and torso. The child kicked, screwed his face up and began to bawl. From not wanting him, Charlotte’s emotions sea-changed and she was filled with a fierce, protective love for this helpless infant she had brought into the world.
No one is going to harm you. Not while I have breath in my body.
“Your milk will come through soon,” the nurse said. “Then you can feed baby.”
Voices spoke outside the room. The door opened and Hargest advanced toward the bed. A half smile played at his lips. His collar length white hair was neatly combed as always, and in his ever-immaculate morning suit and pristine white, stiff collar, he didn’t present the picture of a father who had been anxiously pacing the corridor.
He peered over at the baby, with scarcely a glance at the mother.
“Everything went extremely well, Mr. Hargest,” Dr. Faulkner said.
“Yes, so I can see. And I am sure I can rely on your discretion.”
“Absolutely. And Nurse Ray as well.”
“Good. Good.”
In Charlotte’s arms, the baby had quieted down and seemed to have drifted off to sleep. Once again Hargest peered down at him and Charlotte got a whiff of the expensive cigars her employer smoked. This time, as he straightened up, a smile creased his wrinkled features. “You have done well, Charlotte. As I knew you would.”
The kindness in his tone startled her. How could this man—so capable of extreme violence against her—show such gentleness? But, she reminded herself, even Hitler loved his dogs.
* * * * *
The days that followed only served to bring Charlotte closer to her son. She knew love she had never dreamed of. Yet, ten days after he was born, the child still had no name. Charlotte dared to raise the subject at breakfast.
“I must register his birth,” she said as Hargest ate his toast. She poured him more coffee.
“I will take care of that in due course.” There was an edge to his voice that sent a warning to Charlotte to tread carefully.
“I could go into Rokesby Green and save you the job.”
Nathaniel Hargest flung down the last morsel of toast onto his plate, wiped his hand on his napkin and threw his chair back. “I said there is no need. As there was no need to leave this house to buy that damned rocking horse. You are to stay here and look after the child until I decide his future.”
“His future? But his future is with me.”
“No, Charlotte. This boy is special. He is destined to serve the master. When he is five years old, he will be initiated. Until that time, he will live where I say he lives. He has much to learn.”
“No!” Charlotte’s cry came from the pit of her stomach. She doubled over, clutching her stomach.
Across the room, Hargest’s eyes shone red. “Don’t dare to defy me, Charlotte. You are the child’s mother and deserving of my respect. I allow you to live here in some comfort and that is my gift. I can remove it whenever I want. Don’t forget that. Get out of my sight and attend to my son. I hear him crying again.”
Charlotte fled the room for the sanctity of the nursery. This was what she had most feared. Hargest would groom her son into the same kind of monster he was. That couldn’t be allowed to happen. Somehow she had to stop it.
Her son was asleep when she crept out of the room and closed the door.
The next morning, the nursery was empty.
Chapter Fourteen
Charlotte stared. The cot was gone, along with her son and almost every trace of him. Only the antique rocking horse she had brought home so proudly. It stood in a corner, in need of a fresh coat of paint, but otherwise in perfect working order.
Anger spewed out from Charlotte, along with her tears. Physical pain racked her body. The terrible wrench of losing her baby. She quit the room and fled downstairs. In the kitchen she sped past the startled cook, into the scullery where she found what she was looking for. A mallet.
Leaving the cook staring after her, Charlotte hurried back to the nursery and straight to the rocking horse. She raised the mallet and brought it down hard on the wooden toy. The sound of splintering wood spurred her on to do more damage. She stopped when the thing toppled over, one of its rockers completely shattered and the rest of it looking sorry and beaten.
With a cry of animal pain, Charlotte thrust the mallet away from her. It skidded across the wooden floor and crashed against the skirting board.
She sank to her knees and let out her suffering. Great heaving sobs that tore from the depths of her soul and seemed never to end. For three hours, her tears poured out, dried up, only to be refreshed and flow again. Her throat ache
d and burned from the strain of her sobs.
No one came.
The house was hushed. Whether Hargest was home or on his foul business, she knew not and cared less. He had taken her son, as he said he could, and given him to strangers. He might as well have ended her own life there and then.
It was early afternoon when Charlotte emerged from the empty nursery. Disoriented and unsteady, she staggered to her bedroom and once again reached for her suitcase. This time no one came to stop her.
She filled it with her best clothes, her Book of Shadows, and her diary, locked it and heaved it off the bed. Five minutes later, she opened the front door to a blast of warm spring air.
She hesitated. Once again she thought of her sister. Newly married Marjorie, who didn’t even know Charlotte had been pregnant and certainly wouldn’t approve, or want to be saddled with her in her nice new, semi-detached home.
Fleetingly Charlotte thought of the tree. If she could only give herself up to it. Become one with the tree spirits.
Crazy thoughts. No. Marjorie it would have to be. She didn’t have to tell her everything. Just that Mr. Hargest had decided to dispense with her services. She could think of a good reason on her way there. Right now, she needed to catch a bus to the railway station four miles away.
With her back to the river, Charlotte began to walk up the gravel path leading to the main High Street. She got as far as the gate separating Hargest House’s land from the public highway.
The tall figure wearing his familiar top hat barred her way. He seemed to have appeared from nowhere. Charlotte gave a cry and dropped her suitcase.
“Where is my son?” She surprised herself. All the fear she had felt for this man had vanished. All she cared about at that moment was her baby, but she had allowed herself to think only of her own escape. Guilt poured into her mind. She would never be so selfish again.
“My son is being cared for. You will not see him until you are needed again.”
“And when is that?”
“When he is five years old. On the day you must present him to the master.”
“Never!”
He gripped her arm tight and Charlotte flinched from the pain. “You will obey me or you will never see him again. I am making this concession to you. Take it and this house and all that is in it will eventually be yours. Refuse and face the consequences.”
Charlotte saw the red flame in his eyes. She didn’t need to ask what the consequences would be.
Hargest pushed her back toward the house. Her suitcase remained where it had fallen. Charlotte no longer cared about the contents or if she ever saw them again.
Days passed and Charlotte once again found solace in her diary. She sat at her desk, staring out of the window at the willow tree and the passersby, laughing, sometimes embracing, swinging children high up into the air, throwing balls and sticks for their dogs. They lived happy, normal lives. Each one of them had far more freedom than she had.
It had been Marjorie’s birthday and Charlotte had toyed with the idea of pouring her heart out to her sister in a letter, but in the end decided against it. Marjorie had no concept of the supernatural. She would have merely been angry with Charlotte for becoming pregnant by her boss and, in any case, what could her sister do? Charlotte knew Hargest well enough to be certain he had hidden her son away where no one could find him. Even after this short time, the baby would have a new identity and would be brought up to recognize the destiny his father had mapped out for him.
Only by staying here would Charlotte have any chance of seeing him again—or even, by some miracle, getting him back. She had to hold on to that forlorn hope, however tenuous because it was all she had to live for. This monstrous deity Hargest worshiped valued the role of the mother enough to stop him from destroying her. He needed her, at least for the next few years. She would remain his virtual prisoner. So be it if it meant she would see her son again.
* * * * *
Months passed, the seasons changed, all slipping by virtually unnoticed by the woman who stared through her bedroom window, or went through the motions of keeping the house in order—the house that would, so she was told, be hers one day. Polishing silver and brassware kept her occupied, but nothing kept her mind off her one train of thought. Her son.
She never left Priory St. Michael these days, and her trips up to the shops were increasingly infrequent. Being the subject of hushed whispers, disapproving glances and hurriedly terminated conversations made her uncomfortable in the extreme. She preferred to spend her time tending her garden, planting, nurturing, and harvesting.
Another Midsummer Night brought another festival near the willow tree but, to her relief she was not required to attend. She spent the anniversary of the night she had conceived the little boy alone in her room, weeping softly.
The following day, she went down to the willow. Although it was warm, there was no one around. Some charred grass and ashes provided the only evidence of the previous night’s revelries. Charlotte kicked a burnt twig with the toe of her shoe. The leafy branches of the willow provided a canopy as she sat on the long, low branch and gazed upward at the patchwork blue sky.
She leaned back against the gnarled, ancient trunk, and closed her eyes. Lulled by the warmth, she drifted, and the sounds of the river, the birds singing, and the leaves rustling faded into the background. A strange sensation of weightlessness overtook her and when she opened her eyes, she gasped at what she saw. All around her was dark except that when she turned her head, a streak of light shone through from far beyond.
Charlotte slowly stood, testing the invisible floor beneath her. She looked down but could only see blackness, without form or substance. Her feet rested on something that was both solid and non-existent. She shrugged off the impossibility. Reason was for later. Now she had to find her way out. She made her way slowly toward the source of the light, putting out her hands in front of her and to the sides, hoping to touch some kind of wall, but finding none.
As she approached it, the light grew stronger, brighter, so that she had to blink and her eyes teared up. Instinctively, she raised her hand to her forehead, trying to shield herself from the harshness of the white light.
“Charlotte.”
The call was little more than a whisper. Charlotte stopped and spun around, but behind her was the same blackness that was above her, beneath her and to the sides. She turned back.
“Who are you? Where am I? What is this place?”
“You are safe, Charlotte. Safe with us.”
The tree spirits. She recognized their soft touch on her arms even if she still couldn’t see them.
“Let us guide you.”
The voice was behind her. Charlotte struggled to turn and face it.
“No. Our appearance will scare you. Walk forward. Let us help you.”
The light seemed softer somehow. She didn’t need her hand to shield her eyes anymore and it was being clasped gently behind her by something she wasn’t allowed to see, yet Charlotte wasn’t scared. Curiously, the granite block of grief she had felt these past months had lifted.
“You are here.”
Her arms were free. The light was now slightly to one side of her. The blackness was gone. She looked around at the strange room, with its walls of brick and mortar. Strange woody veins ran through them. Charlotte stared, fascinated. She looked down at her feet. Beneath her lay a bed of willow leaves, soft and spring green. Their sweet sappy smell drifted up to her nostrils. She plucked up courage to look around, but there was no one there. The spirits must have retreated out of sight. It wouldn’t have to be far. A few inches behind her was the familiar blackness.
In front of her, the wall was opaque, as if she was peering through a mist or a curtain of gauze. She reached out to touch it but her fingers found solid brick. It made no sense. She ran her hands down it, as she stood at arm’s length. She moved clo
ser, but still what she felt and what she saw remained at odds with each other. Impossibly so.
Through the haze, broken furniture, an old mattress, a kitchen stool with one leg missing, were all stacked in a corner of the room she recognized as the cellar of Hargest House.
“But this is impossible. I can’t be…”
“Your eyes tell you it is possible. You are part of the house now. Only for a short while. Then you will return and all will be well. But you will understand and remember, when it is the right time.”
“But my son. Where is my son? What has that evil monster done with him?”
“He is well and being cared for. He has a family.”
“But they’re devil worshipers.”
“All will be well, Charlotte. Now you must return.”
“I have so many questions.” Tiredness overwhelmed her. When she awoke, she was still sitting on the branch, leaning against the tree. She glanced at her watch. She had apparently been out of it for no more than ten minutes. Charlotte looked around. No one to be seen. In the distance the faint thrum of traffic reached her as it moved up and down the High Street. She stood and stretched. With one backward glance at the tree, she made her way slowly back to the house, struggling in vain to remember the strange dream.
By the time she opened the door of Hargest House, she felt refreshed, as if all the horror of the past few months had been lifted.
From then on, whenever she thought of her son, it was with a new hope. Somehow she knew. All would be well.
* * * * *
Over the next two years, Nathanial Hargest kept himself to himself and Charlotte was barely aware of his comings and goings. He had no further use for her at present. He was civil to her on the occasions when their paths crossed, but there was no attempt at conversation, except where staff was concerned. These days, she was barely aware of any of his satanic rituals. He seemed to have disbanded the coven, since the night she had conceived her son. Maybe he had no further use for them. Midsummer had passed twice with no sight or sound of revelry—and Charlotte had waited by her bedroom window at midnight, looking out toward the tree, but it stood in deep darkness.
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