Tina took him by the elbow, making him jump. She squinted at him as if through a fog. ‘Stay together,’ she whispered.
Wolcroft had reached the top of the stairs. ‘Your rooms are this way,’ he said, rounding the corner and walking from sight.
They found themselves in a corridor lined with doors. Wolcroft was just bending to place a key in a lock. ‘I apologise about the accommodations. But this was once Raquel’s room and with luck should still prove …’ He stopped talking, his head tilted as if listening to something. After a moment he nodded. ‘Vincent is taking care of the horses. Once he is done, we will bring you your baggage.’
He opened the door, and dull sunlight bled into the gloomy corridor. Wolcroft regarded the room with uncertainty. ‘Well,’ he murmured. ‘I suppose it is the best that can be done.’
Harry followed the women inside. Staleness hit him, and the oppressive smell of dust. The air had a crawling quality, as if aeons of invisible cobwebs had accumulated there.
‘The old woman can sleep in there.’ Wolcroft indicated a half-opened door, beyond which another bedroom slumbered beneath its own blanket of neglect. ‘Do not worry about the children, they shouldn’t bother you here.’ He glanced at the ceiling. ‘Also … pay no mind to any noises. They are harmless.’
To his guests’ amazement, the man turned to leave. Ursula Lyndon found her voice before he could shut them in. ‘You cannot mean that Mr Weiss shall sleep here!’
Wolcroft glanced at Harry. ‘I had not meant he sleep anywhere.’
‘Well, I seem to be your friend’s guest,’ said Harry. He smiled. ‘Might as well get used to me.’
Wolcroft’s grey eyes hardened. ‘I doubt you will be here long enough that I shall need to.’
‘You cannot make us share a room with a young man!’ insisted Ursula.
In a storm of barely suppressed impatience, Lord Wolcroft dragged his keys from his pocket, crossed the corridor and unlocked the far door. He flung it open, some comment poised on his lips, then froze. For a long moment he remained motionless, one hand on the doorhandle, the other clutching the frame, gazing into the room he had just opened. Then he slowly shut the door and quietly, almost gently, locked it. Without looking at Harry, he moved to the next room and unlocked that.
‘You can use this one,’ he said. ‘It used to be mine.’
He left without saying anything more. Harry listened to his muffled footsteps descend the stairs, then looked into the room that had been opened for him. It contained a small four-poster bed, its heavy drapes patterned in masculine gold and red. A heavy iron-bound chest served as a dresser; a small bookshelf held travel-sized novels. The windowsill was deep and filled with cushions, as if the occupant were used to sitting there. Everything was muted with dust, the air stifling.
‘Harry?’ He turned to find Tina clinging to the frame of the opposite doorway, gazing uncertainly at him. ‘Come … come in here with us.’
Harry went to her. Tina rested her fingertips against his chest, as if to confirm that he was in fact real, then drew him into the room. ‘Stay with me,’ she whispered. ‘They’ll be kinder to you, if you stay with me.’
Ursula grimaced. ‘Let’s not succumb to delusions of grandeur, dear. We all know what happened to Joan of Arc.’ She took a small brown bottle from the châtelaine purse on her belt and indulged in a bitter little swig of its contents. ‘No matter how luminous you are,’ she muttered, ‘you’re still just a seamstress.’
Tina went to the window, moving as if she were feeling her way through the dark. Her attention was once again fixed on the lake shrouded in fog far below them.
‘The winter stops down there,’ she whispered. ‘It’s all around us. The whole country full of snow, except for this one small place.’
‘An underground spring,’ said Ursula. ‘A hot spring.’ Harry glanced at her. ‘They should open a spa,’ she muttered. ‘Of course they would need to learn to be polite to their guests.’ She took another swig from her bottle.
‘The cold is eating its way in,’ whispered Tina. ‘Because … because the light is fading.’ She pressed her hand to the window, covering the lake with her palm. ‘There’s an empty space down there. It eats the light. Just like they eat the light.’ She turned to Harry, inspired. ‘They’re eating the light, Harry. Like …’ She made grasping gestures with her hands, as if trying to catch the words she was unable to say.
‘But you can see it,’ she insisted, as if he had contradicted her and she was desperate to prove him wrong. She pointed into midair, her eyes following the movement of something unseen and drifting. ‘It’s pure, all the threads of it, and it comes together around each of them.’ She joined her hands, slowly twining the fingers, demonstrating. ‘They’re wrapped in it. Trailing it. Snagging it as they walk. And they’re using it up.
‘We’re … at the same time, we’re giving it out.’ She spread her fingers again, bursting them apart as if demonstrating a firework. ‘And it feeds on it. You understand?’ she asked hopefully. ‘It feeds on the light, through them, and they get stronger – because they’ve been here so long they’re part of it.’
Harry shook his head, grief-stricken at how thoroughly unhinged Tina had become.
‘Listen, Harry! Do you not understand? They used to be like us. They used to feed it. Now they use it up!’
‘I’ll get you out of here,’ he whispered. ‘I swear to God, Tina. Whatever they’ve done to you, we’ll fix it.’
Her face closed up like a fist. ‘I’m not leaving Joe,’ she said.
‘Who is Joe?’ cried Ursula Lyndon. ‘Do you mean that young man from the depot? For goodness sake, Miss Kelly. He’s not here!’
Tina glared at her, and Ursula Lyndon surged to her feet.
‘I’d ask you to watch the way you look at me, madam! Talk about put a beggar on horseback. I might have known. Well, let me tell you, miss luminous, miss lovely, just because a man like Lord Wolcroft makes eyes at you doesn’t mean you’re set for life. Take it from one who knows – as soon as that pretty face of yours begins to line, you’ll be—’
‘Shush,’ said Harry, holding a hand up.
‘I beg your pardon!’
‘Aw, lady, just shush. Listen. Do yah hear that?’
The old woman stilled, the little brown bottle clutched before her, her eyes wide with the fear that Harry knew was sharpening her tongue.
He looked to the ceiling. They listened. It took a moment, but then it came again, very definite, very clear: a rustle, then a thump, then the slow, quiet sound of something dragging itself across the boards above.
‘What is that?’ asked Ursula Lyndon.
‘I don’t know,’ said Harry. ‘But I’m darned sure it’s no squirrel.’
Apparently unperturbed, Tina resumed staring at the lake. She pressed her hand to the glass again, as if telling something to stay in place. When she looked back, Harry felt there were miles between them, aeons. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.
‘Where?’
‘To find Joe.’
‘We should stay here,’ whispered Miss Ursula, her eyes on the ceiling.
Tina crossed the room and gently kissed the old woman’s powdered cheek. ‘You stick with me now. Don’t be scared.’
She went to the door. Overhead, the noise started again: the unmistakable sound of several large things dragging themselves across the floor of the attic; the uncertain scuffing of feet; the sense of a slow crowd moving.
Harry felt Ursula Lyndon press to his side. She once again took his hand. The sounds moved from where they were standing across the boards of the ceiling until they were directly above Tina. Then they stopped.
‘Are you coming with me?’ Tina asked.
Harry nodded. I don’t think we’re the only ones, he thought.
The Key
VINCENT KNEW RAQUEL had been surprised by his kiss, but he did not think she had been disturbed. Certainly she had not pulled away. She had, in fact, reciprocated, and when her lips had pa
rted in response to his gently probing tongue and her arms had tightened around him, Vincent had felt a thrill between them which he had not enjoyed for decades.
He would not like her to think it was the presence of the girl that had awakened him so. Though Raquel well knew his love of pretty things and it had never seemed to bother her, he hoped she understood that the girl invoked a response in him that was less sexual and more … what? More hunger, he supposed.
It was a different feeling altogether to lust.
Admittedly, when the villagers had first advanced upon her, Vincent’s fear had been that they would rape her. It had taken him back, all too vividly, to the many times on his father’s ship when a new delivery of slaves had brought about a frenzy in the men and they had indulged themselves with horrible abandon upon the helpless women of the cargo. At such times, Vincent would scamper up the rigging as far as he could climb – far from the shrieks and the crying; far from the catcalls and laughter. He remembered hating everyone then: the slaves, for revealing that side of his shipmates; his shipmates, for their cruelty; and himself, for retreating to the blue of the African sky and staring uselessly out to sea while on deck and in the holds below, men he thought of as family fashioned hell on earth from the only place he knew as home. Sometimes he had also hated his father, but mostly he had just hated mankind – its abominable weakness, its shameless, open, striving greed.
When, at the age of fifteen, he had felt the first stirrings of his manhood in response to the sights and sounds of the decks below, and when such sights and sounds had then begun to intrude into certain kinds of dreams, Vincent had known he was on the verge of losing himself. Shortly after, he had approached Cornelius with his idea. Within the year they had enacted their mutiny and fled from the monsters their fathers had been set to make of them.
Raquel said this history made him gentle with women. Vincent did not know about that – he never felt particularly gentle – but he supposed she would appreciate better than most gentleness in a man, her first husband having inflicted more than enough masculine torment upon her.
Raquel. Vincent missed her. He had not realised how much. Where had it gone – the intimacy, the warmth? How had he not noticed its absence?
Once Matt is restored, he thought, things will return to normal.
He smiled. It would be good to shake off the dust they’d been accumulating; to restore their life to the idyll it had once been.
He brushed the horses. Their muscles quivered beneath his touch, and as he worked the sun-flecked air of the stables warmed their dark hide, his dark hands, his lips.
Somehow, his thoughts of Raquel became entangled with those of the girl and that dress, and how she might look in it: turning beneath a bright light, quivering, her dark hair tumbling down, the softness of her breasts pushed up by the bodice—
‘VINCENT!’
Vincent jumped, embarrassed, and then amused. It would appear that the trip to Dublin had been slightly more refreshing than even he had appreciated.
Then Cornelius came slamming in from the stable yard and stole all the lazy sensuality from the air.
‘You took my key!’ he cried.
Vincent’s heart dropped. ‘Cornelius, you cannot mean to go below again so soon.’
‘What business is it of yours where I go and when? How dare you take my key!’
In a perfect storm of disgust, Cornelius flung himself at the jacket Vincent had left hanging by the door. He began rifling through the pockets, and before Vincent could stop him he had found what he was looking for and more.
‘You have the iron key, too!’ he cried, holding up the key to the old castle tunnels.
‘Calm yourself,’ said Vincent. ‘Cornelius!’
But Cornelius was already turning away, apparently intent on retreating underground.
He must not find Matthew! Vincent grabbed him, and Cornelius responded with immediate fury, twisting from Vincent’s grip and punching him in the face without so much as a warning.
The blow spun Vincent against the door, the bright taste of blood on his lips. He pressed his hand to his bleeding mouth and willed himself not to succumb to the instant, almost blinding, desire to beat his friend senseless.
When he was calm enough to turn, he found Cornelius had backed into the yard, a set of keys clutched in each hand.
‘Look at you,’ snarled Vincent. ‘Barely up out of the ground, and you want to return. You have not even taken time to change your soiled clothes or comb your hair – you presented yourself to Raquel in that condition – and here you are, already mindless again with need.’
Cornelius turned away without replying, heading for the orchard and the old castle ruins, the closest access available to his angel. Skewered with panic, Vincent strode after him.
‘Cully,’ he said. ‘Cully! I cannot afford to lose you yet. Stay with me for just a while longer. You can visit with your angel for as long as you wish afterwards. For days, for decades. Just help me finish what we started here first. There is still so much to do in the theatre. And … and the séance. Yes. We must prepare for the séance. And you had something else planned for the girl, too, didn’t you? The dress? You must do her up in that dress, for Raquel and me. Wouldn’t you like that?’
Cornelius’ fury softened, and he halted, looking about him in what could only be described as despair. Vincent gently took the keys from his hands.
‘What has upset you, cully? You are not usually prone to such temper with me. The last time you raised your fist to me was the week Matthew left us. Do you recall?’
‘Oh, don’t,’ moaned his friend. ‘Don’t … Poor Matt.’
Slowly, carefully, Vincent took him by the arm. When Cornelius did not shrug him off, Vincent led him to the orchard gate and sat him on the bench there.
Cornelius leaned his head in his hands. ‘I found myself in his room, Vincent. I had not meant to … It was such a shock to see all his things still there. The dust of ages on them.’ He shut his eyes as if against a pain. ‘Matthew.’
‘He will return.’
Cornelius’ anger flared again, cutting bright and unexpected through his grief. ‘Stop that!’ he snapped. ‘I’m sick of hearing it! I’m tired of telling you it will not happen!’
‘It shall happen. And sooner than you think. Then things will be as they once were, Cornelius. We will live again. Raquel will laugh and walk about and come on trips as she used to; you shall not spend your whole life underground, and I shall—’
Vincent stopped talking, realising with a start what he had been about to say.
‘You shall what?’ asked Cornelius, straightening. ‘What shall you do?’
Vincent shook his head.
‘What?’ insisted Cornelius, his eyes narrow, his face intent.
‘It has been over fifty years since I was in the village, did you know that? I had not realised it until Peadar said as much. Fifty years, Cornelius. Where did that time go? What have we been doing with it?’
Cornelius got to his feet. Vincent remained seated, squinting up at him as he blotted the sun. Cornelius’ face was lost in shadow.
‘You are not happy here,’ he said quietly. ‘You want to leave.’
Vincent thought about it. ‘I want more,’ he admitted.
There was a moment of unreadable silence, during which Vincent shaded his eyes, trying to see Cornelius’ expression. A cry of ‘Captain’ from the far end of the orchard made him turn. Luke was striding through the far gate, his face even sourer than usual.
‘Captain,’ he yelled again. ‘I have apples and I have wood pigeons what I caught in the traps. It’s the best I can do. If them doxies don’t like ’em they can bloody well lump ’em.’
Vincent found himself filled with an almost painful relief that the conversation had been diverted. He took the excuse to step out of Cornelius’ shadow, and, ignoring Cornelius’ eyes on his back, he followed Luke through the slants of late sunshine and the long grass of the orchard, as if keen to hear m
ore of what he had to say.
Cornelius stayed in the shade of the wall, and when Vincent glanced back, he had gone.
Rooms and Boxes
HARRY FOLLOWED TINA as she led the way from one side of the upper floor to the other, gently opening and closing doors as she went. Most of the rooms on their side of the house had been moth-eaten bedrooms choked with dust, but here in the other wing, Harry thought things felt more lived-in. The dust was not so deep; the wooden floor and certain pieces of furniture gleamed gently as if from regular use.
He glanced back down the sombre corridor they had just travelled. It was a brooding march of closed doors. As in the downstairs halls, stuffed animals lined the walls, and they seemed to watch as the huddled knot of intruders made their way past. Between the two wings, the top of the main staircase showed a graceful curve of banister. There was no sound from the lower floors.
‘This is a sewing room,’ whispered Tina, stepping through a newly opened door. The creatures in the attic above sighed as Tina crossed the threshold, then went very still overhead.
‘I think the poor things have decided to wait outside,’ said Ursula, her eyes on the ceiling. She met Harry’s eye, tinkled a little laugh. ‘How odd that I should say “poor things”. And yet it feels right, does it not?’
Harry nodded uncertainly. The old woman was behaving a little oddly.
This room was much less neglected than the others. In some places there was no dust at all. Unlit candles were everywhere, some new, some half melted, hundreds of them. Tina touched everything she passed, as if grounding herself, feeling her way through reality. She stopped by a tall window, framed in low evening light, and tentatively rested her fingers against the elegant black-and-gold neck of a treadle-powered sewing machine.
‘Wilcox and Gibbs,’ she whispered. ‘Very old-fashioned. I was saving for a Singer & Co. I never told Joe that. I was afraid it’d embarrass him, when he had so little. Such foolishness …’
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