The Master of Heathcrest Hall

by Galen Beckett

  Something awful.

  Ivy’s gaze went to an old stuffed wolf that was mounted upon a wooden stand nearby. Its glass eyes glinted, and in the flickering candlelight its gray fur rippled as if it was moving.

  “I’m not sure what it means,” Ivy murmured, more to herself than to Rose.

  All the same, Rose seemed to accept this answer. “I found a box with some tea in the kitchen,” she said, taking up the candleholder as she stood. “It was in the corner of a cupboard. It’s very old and dry. I could try to brew us a cup from it. I’m sure it’s not any good, but I think at least it should remind us of tea.”

  Like the shadows before Rose’s candle, the dream flitted away. Outside, the rain still beat at the windows, and a spasm passed through Ivy. Only it wasn’t pain this time, it was simply a shiver, for she was cold.

  “Yes,” Ivy said, “I would like that.”

  And she went with Rose to the kitchen.

  THE TEA was not so poor as they feared, for the leaves had been well-wrapped in a waxed cloth inside the box. Ivy wondered if it was Mrs. Darendal who had last used this tea. Had the housekeeper closed the box carefully, expecting to open it again soon? Or perhaps it had been the housemaid, Lanna, who had done so.

  But neither of them had ever opened the box again. Mrs. Darendal’s son, the highwayman Westen, had come to Heathcrest Hall intending to take Ivy away and so lure Mr. Quent into a fatal trap. Only Mr. Quent had arrived with soldiers, and they had shot Westen’s compatriots while the highwayman fled. After that, Lanna had returned to her family in the village of Low Sorrell. And Mrs. Darendal had perished.

  Ivy filled a kettle with water, then made a little fire in the stove. For this, she used some of the wood stacked beside the fireplace that dominated one end of the kitchen. That the cavernous fireplace had once been used to roast whole boars brought back by the earl’s hunting parties, Ivy had no doubt.

  Theirs was a decidedly smaller party; and once the tea was hot they took it to the parlor off the front hall. They had been spending much of their time in the little room, for it was easy to keep warm. The last several lumenals had all been swift and fleeting, while the umbrals in between had each been longer than the last, and a perpetual chill had settled over the house.

  As they sat by the fire and sipped tea, Ivy could only think of all the time she had spent in this room when she was a governess, tutoring Clarette and Chambley. Several volumes of the Lex Altania still resided on the bookshelf in the corner. How many hours had they spent being entertained by those battered old books! She would observe as the children took turns reading passages from them, all the while keeping an eye on the parlor window, waiting for the gruff and forbidding master of the house to return.

  Only he would never return again. Heathcrest Hall had no master now.

  That the house remained itself was a wonder, she supposed. It had been raining and dark the night Ivy and Rose emerged from the little grove of shabby trees and stumbled across the moor. Ivy was still astonished at Rose’s bravery throughout the entire ordeal. She had gone willingly through the door Arantus, and had followed Ivy across the dusty gray-green plain toward the stone arches that stood in the distance.

  Ivy had searched among the gates—those that still stood—looking for ones that opened onto scenes of crooked trunks and straggling branches. And of these, there was one in particular she was searching for, one she was certain she would recognize. All the while, Rose had demonstrated no trepidation, and instead had been fascinated with the stars above them, and the great purple crescent of the planet Dalatair. It was as if she had already known such things lay beyond the door. Ivy could only wonder what else Rose had discussed with the spirit of their father.

  At last Ivy had found the gate she recalled seeing on her previous visit to the way station. Though it was dark through the gate, and thus difficult to make out the scene, still there was a familiarity to the silhouettes of the trees beyond. That she was glimpsing the very grove that stood on the ridge just east of Heathcrest, she was certain.

  When Ivy told Rose they must go through, and not to be afraid of the trees or of anything they might do, Rose had merely nodded. Hand in hand, the two had approached the gate. One moment they trod on gray dust, and the next old leaves crackled beneath their feet.

  At once Ivy had felt the presence of the ancient trees. For a terrible few heartbeats there was a menace to the creaking and groaning of their branches as they shook under the force of a gale. Only then Ivy called out to the trees with her thoughts, and they listened and were soothed.

  A path opened before them, and Ivy and Rose followed it to the high stone wall that surrounded the grove. Ivy had wondered how they might scale it; she did not want to alarm Rose by having the trees pluck them up off the ground. But there was no need, for a great crack had opened in the wall—a gap Ivy was certain had not been there when she dwelled at Heathcrest.

  Whether the crack had been made from the outside, or from within, Ivy did not know but it was just wide enough for Ivy and Rose to slip through. It was with some reluctance that Ivy left the grove, and she brushed her fingers over the rough trunks as she did, feeling the life, the power, flowing like sap within them.

  I will come to you again, she thought.

  Then the sisters left the wall behind and made their way down the slope, through the heather and gorse. The night was so dark that Ivy half-feared she would not know which way to go. But memory served where sight could not. Soon they left the one ridge behind and ascended up the side of another. Just as they reached the summit, a gust of wind tore through the clouds, and the moon sailed free of its shroud. In the silvery light, a familiar, blocky outline hove before them.

  It was Heathcrest Hall. She had returned at last.

  A joy had filled her, and seizing Rose’s hand she had raced the last distance toward the house. Only as they approached, her joy was replaced by a sudden dread. On one side of the house, moonlight shone through empty windows, for the roof had fallen in, and the stones were stained black with soot. There had been a fire.

  A fear came over Ivy that she had lost Heathcrest as well, but this fear was lessened as they drew closer to the house. The windows were all intact on the main part of the manor, and the walls unstained. It was evident the fire had been confined to the southern wing. Then the clouds closed over the moon, and rain began to fall again. Hurriedly, the sisters approached the house, eager for shelter.

  It was only when they reached the house and found the front door locked that Ivy realized she should have expected this. Mr. Quent had closed up the house when they left for the city more than a year ago, and no one would have been in it since then.

  Ivy had stared dumbly for a moment, but soon an idea occurred to her. She took the Wyrdwood box, which she had carried all this while, and held it near the door. As she concentrated, several tendrils of wood uncoiled themselves from the box. They probed the lock like tiny fingers, then slipped inside the keyhole.

  Turn it, Ivy thought.

  There was a click as the tumblers moved within the door. Ivy coaxed the little twigs out of the lock and back into place upon the Wyrdwood box. Then she pushed upon the door. It opened with a low sigh.

  And that was how the lady of the house had returned.

  That had been well over a half month ago. Or at least, Ivy guessed it had been that long, for it was hard to know precisely how much time had passed. Though she searched room after room, there did not seem to be a working clock anywhere in the house. She had found an almanac in the parlor, but it was from years ago, its pages cracked and yellowed. Besides, even a new almanac would have been no use. The lumenals and umbrals alternated in the most fragmented and jumbled fashion. Sometimes a day appeared hardly to be half done when the world suddenly seemed to tilt and the sun lurched toward the horizon. At other times it was as if the sun stood still in the sky, withering all beneath its brutal glare.

  Despite the unpredictable series of lumenals and umbrals, one pattern
had begun to emerge. While the days varied in length, in general they were becoming shorter, while it was the opposite case for the nights. Though Ivy had no way to measure it, she was certain the umbrals were, in the average, increasing in duration. Often, by the time a sluggish dawn crept over the world, there would be frost on the windowpanes. And of late the moorlands around the manor had turned from gray-green to gray-brown.

  Sometimes, when it was dark, Ivy would dare to step out the door of the house and look up at the sky. Reading a few books upon the topic had in no way made her into an astrographer, but all it took was a keen eye to notice the changes in the arrangement of the heavens. The red planet, Cerephus, had continued to grow in size, so that it was now easily perceived as a disk by the naked eye. While not so large as the moon, it was nearly as bright, and cast a lurid crimson glow over the world.

  Even as Cerephus brightened, the rest of the heavens seemed to feel its growing influence. Other steady points of colored light, which had heretofore been sprinkled widely across the heavens, were now on the move. Each time Ivy observed them, they had traveled in closer proximity to Cerephus: purple Dalatair, pale yellow Loerus, silvery twins Acreon and Urioth, burnt-umber Regulus, and brilliant blue Anares. There were other planets too small to observe without the aid of the lens—Vaelus, Cyrenth, Naius, Eides, and far-off Memnymion. All the same, Ivy did not need to work the knobs and gears of her father’s celestial globe to know that these bodies were all moving in the heavens as well. Their orbits and epicycles were gradually and inexorably altering, so that soon all of them would be arranged like shimmering beads on a single strand pulled taut. And then …

  When twelve who wander stand as one, through the door the dark will come.

  Those were the first lines of the riddle her father had left for her long ago, hidden beneath the endpapers of a book. It was the riddle that had helped her discover the key to the house on Durrow Street. The key had been revealed when she arranged the celestial globe so that all the orbs representing the planets stood in a line. As she gazed at the sky above the dark moorlands, Ivy often wondered what other doors would open when it was not just the celestial globe arranged in such a manner, but the heavens themselves.

  Then she would shiver, and look away from the sky, and go back into the silent, empty manor.

  Such thoughts as these, together with all that had happened, could easily have made her morbid, and caused her to lie down in some black room in the house with no intention to ever rise again. But she could do no such thing, not when Rose had need of her. Furthermore, it was the case that the immediate and constant work of sustaining themselves occupied the great majority of their time, so that she had not the luxury of letting herself be consumed in terrible thoughts. In sum, when one is cold and hungry, it is difficult to consider much of anything else.

  That first night the two sisters huddled together in a corner of the front hall, holding each other for warmth beneath a musty old bearskin they had pulled down from the wall. At last both storm and night ended, and a wan morning ensued. Their first order of business was to find something to eat, for it had been many hours since they had had anything.

  An exploration of the kitchen quickly revealed that they were not the first who had come here with a similar intent. There was evidence of a careless fire in the stove, and dirty plates scattered on the broad plank table—though, by the looks of it, the trespassers had been here some time ago. Their mode of entry was quickly obvious, for the kitchen door had been forced open from the outside, breaking the latch. Ivy had thought herself so clever the night before in opening the lock at the front of the house, but it turned out they could have easily come around by the back!

  A perusal of the stone-walled larder off the kitchen showed that much had been looted. This had been done in such haste that several barrels of flour had been broken open to spill their contents, and pots of salted meat had been smashed. All these things were long spoiled by exposure to air and the work of rodents. But rummaging past this detritus soon revealed two barrels of flour that were undisturbed, as well as a good number of hard-rinded cheeses, a salted pork, a pair of hams, and various crocks containing dried apples, preserved apricots, olives, and even a pot of honey. Whoever had been here had not had much time to do their work, for which Ivy was grateful.

  As there was still wood in the niche by the fireplace, and a tinderbox on the mantel, they soon had a fire in the stove. Ivy found a knife to slice the pork and a pan to cook it in, and she mixed the renderings with the flour to make little biscuits. They ate these with a wedge of the cheese, and some of the apricots. The result was a meal that, given their famished state, seemed akin to a feast.

  The food warmed them, and lifted their spirits. After that, they had energy to make an exploration of the house. Ivy had half-feared that they were not alone here, that others might have entered the abandoned manor seeking shelter. But with the exception of spiders here and there, they encountered no other living beings.

  Other than the south wing, the house appeared in much the state Ivy last remembered it, with the exception of being damper and mustier, and the air yet bore a sharp, acrid tinge of smoke. How the fire had begun, she could only guess. Though given that the shell of the outer walls yet stood while the roof had fallen in, she suspected the south wing had been struck by lightning. No one had been here to stop the fire. But there must have been a hard rain soon after the strike to douse the flames, or else the whole house would have been destroyed. That it had not been was a thing to be grateful for.

  During that first day of exploring, they removed several blankets from the bedchambers and used them to make nests for themselves in the downstairs parlor. Ivy would not consider sleeping on one of the upper floors, for fear of being trapped by another fire. By the time this was done, another long umbral had commenced, though it was neither so cold nor terrifying as the first.

  Over those next days, they continued to work to improve their living conditions within the old manor. An exploration of the courtyard behind the house revealed that the kitchen garden, though it had gone wild, still bore a number of herbs and greens and even parsnips and radishes which they could use to augment the foodstuffs from the larder. Though the variety was still poor, by Ivy’s calculations they had now enough food to last at least a month if they were frugal.

  With food and shelter secured, clothing was their next priority. It was soon apparent that their dresses, intended for a warm day in the city, were not suitable for the damp chill of the West Country. So it was they spent a great deal of time going through every wardrobe and closet in the house, looking for something suitable to wear. Then, at the end of a corridor in the north wing, in a small chamber Ivy was certain she had never entered in her prior time at Heathcrest, Rose opened a cherrywood cabinet and let out a gasp.

  Ivy hurried over and saw at once the source of Rose’s astonishment, for the cabinet was filled with dresses. The dresses were all of an outmoded style, with many ruffles and bits of lace, but they were beautiful all the same, made of velvet and soft wool and heavy silk in hues of gray, deep violet, and blues so dark as to be all but black.

  “I wonder who these belonged to,” Rose had said, touching the gowns.

  Ivy had shaken her head. “I don’t know.”

  “Look.”

  Rose had bent down, then picked up something from the bottom of the cabinet. It was a porcelain doll. Its face was cracked, and its taffeta dress was yellowed. But it was still a pretty thing, with glossy black hair and faded pink lips and cheeks.

  “These gowns aren’t very large. They must have belonged to a girl who lived in the manor long ago.” She cradled the doll in her arms. “And this must have been hers as well.”

  Ivy thought of the large painting that hung above the first landing of the main staircase—the portrait that depicted Earl Rylend and his wife, as well as their son, Lord Wilden. And standing apart from them, almost lost in shadows on the edge of the painting, was a girl with dark hair and
eyes.

  “Yes,” Ivy had said, looking at the doll’s white porcelain face, “I think you must be right, Rose.”

  They chose several of the warmest dresses and took them downstairs, and then upon searching discovered scissors, needles, and thread in the old servants’ quarters. Over the next several days, Rose worked upon the gowns, altering them, and using pieces carefully cut from one to lengthen the sleeves or skirt or bodice of another.

  When she was done, they each had a new dress of warm wool to protect them from the chill; and as soon as she was done with these dresses, Rose began work on two more. She spent some of her time upon the doll as well, using leftover scraps to make a tiny dress for it, and employing some paints she discovered in a cupboard to smooth over the cracks on its face and brighten its lips. When she was done, the doll was so lovely that any girl might have considered herself lucky to have received it for a present.

  As she observed her sister sewing in the little parlor, Ivy could only be amazed. Both Rose and Lily had been through unimaginable ordeals these last years, first knowing poverty after their father’s illness, and then an even worse state following their mother’s death. True, they had experienced joy and comfort in their time on Durrow Street, but it had been a short interlude—and one wrested from them prematurely.

  Now they had fled to a cold, musty manor in the country. Yet throughout it all, Rose had made no complaint, and had been extraordinarily brave. Indeed, once Ivy assured her that Lily would be very well in the city, and was staying there to learn how to craft dramatic scenes for plays, the only fear Rose expressed had been for the sake of Miss Mew.