Erlina left hastily before the minister pronounced his blessing, passing out of the gardens and losing herself among the trees that bordered them.
Richard, embracing the beautiful Lady Catlin Veringer, did not take a second look for his erstwhile helper; he was wholly concentrated on his bride, who had turned deathly pale. Uttering a low cry, she fell to her knees, her hands over her ears.
“What is it, my love?” he demanded concernedly. Catlin had been prey to some strange moods ever since that terrible night.
“You cannot hear?” she demanded in a trembling voice.
“No. What do you hear?”
“Molly... ’tis Molly,” she whispered, clutching his hand. “Molly, the witch, and her cat Grimalkin. Do you not hear her screamin’ and himself howlin’ out their torment?”
“I can’t say that I do.” Richard stifled a sigh as he added, “And who, my love, would Molly be?”
“Ach, many years ago she was burned at the stake as a witch on evidence given by Macklin O’Neill, my great, great, great, great-grandfather, whom she’d helped until he grew feared o’ her. An’ as she was writhin’ in the flames, her cat came an’ leaped up at my grandfather, who threw him, yowlin’n spittin’, into the fire with her, an’ when there’s a doom for the O’Neills they come back to warn an’ to gloat. They’re here. They’re here an’ ’tis because I’ve been wicked.”
It occurred to Richard that he had never heard her speak with so thick a brogue, and moreover did Irish aristocrats sound like the women who sold lavender on Dublin’s streets? Fortunately he remembered that it was mainly the great families of Ireland who boasted banshees. He said gently, “You haven’t been wicked, my dearest.”
“I have,” she moaned. “’Twas my body was used as an altar for those unholy doings.”
He was glad that her ’g’s had returned. He said, “I pray you’ll not be troubling yourself about that. There’s no more truth to that ceremony than there is to the supposition that the moon’s made of green cheese.” Taking her in his arms, he felt a strong surge of desire. “You are my goddess, my angel—and my altar, too, where I will worship.”
“Ach, you shouldn’t be saying that,” she chided. “’Tis a sacrilege!”
“Then let me be damned for it!” Richard responded lightly, thinking of Erlina Bell now. He owed her a debt of gratitude for insisting that the ceremony be held at twilight. In the month that had elapsed between the nights of Sir Francis’ Satanic revels, Catlin, while remaining at the Hold, had turned virtuous and refused him so much as a peck on her cheek. All that was changed now. With his ring legally on her finger, not to mention his child in her belly, there was no reason why they shouldn’t enjoy themselves to the full.
Lifting his beautiful bride in his arms, Richard carried her carefully back to the castle. Once in the huge bed where generations of Veringers had fulfilled their marital obligations, Catlin, evidently reassured by heavenly sanction, responded in a way that vanquished the burgeoning regrets that had been plaguing Richard of late.
Part Two
One
Catlin was dreaming.
As she moved restlessly on the wide mattress, beneath her the wood, sawed and fashioned into a bedframe, 180 years ago, creaked and groaned. Richard, aroused from a deep sleep, knew from his wife’s mutterings that the cat-encumbered banshee was riding through her dreams.
In the interests of self-protection, he edged carefully away from his wife’s flailing arms and quivering body both of which could inflict severe physical pain upon his spare form. He added a grimace to his second sigh, needing a woman and wishing that it might have been Catlin. A vision of what she had been when he first saw her and through the earlier part of their 19-year marriage, rose to tantalize him. Once she had managed to put the terrors of Medmenham out of her mind, or rather to the back of her mind, as he found out later, she had proved to be a gracious hostess and an ornament to the Hold. In those years, the neighboring gentry had flocked to the castle. Catlin, and on occasion, her brother Mahon, entertained and charmed them. She had been depressed when her first child had been born dead, talking a great deal of nonsense about Molly, the banshee, and her cat Gremalkin come to warn her. However, she recovered from the blow, particularly when she became pregnant almost immediately afterwards. Then she had started talking about that damned banshee again and a miscarriage had followed. She had cheered up mightily at the birth of Richard Anthony, a darkhaired, blue-eyed bouncing baby, who, Richard smiled, was the image of himself. Now 16-year-old Richard, called Tony, was already displaying a strong sense of responsibility as became his heir.
Catlin had been full of hope for the child she conceived only two months after she bore Tony, but she lost it during her third month, muttering about Molly again. It was after that miscarriage that she began to put on a little weight, he remembered. She gained more after her next baby was born dead, and she fell into a depression which seemingly could be appeased only by food. She was, however, only pleasingly plump at Kathleen’s birth. Their first daughter had been a scrawny, three-pound infant, but he had another smile for the tawny-haired, golden eyed beauty she was at only 14. Catlin cheered up mightily, and while she did not lose the weight she had gained after Kathleen’s birth, she was still beautiful and happy with her two adorable children. He would have been pleased, he recalled, if she had had no more lyings-in. Unfortunately it seemed that he had only to make love to her once for her to conceive. Before the births of Colin, twelve, and Juliet, ten, one child had been born dead and the other survived only until his first birthday. But why could not Catlin, like himself, have been satisfied with the four lovely children who had lived? Colin and Juliet were the equal of their older brother and sister—the boy dark and handsome, the girl fair, blonde and the image of her mother with her huge blue eyes and sylph-like slimness. He shuddered, praying that Juliet would never balloon out like the near-monstrosity that lay beside him.
As slender and willowy as Catlin had been when they first met, she had become a caricature of that ethereal beauty. Her lovely eyes and straight little nose were minimized by her enormous cheeks. At least four chins augmented her own, and from the size of her belly it was hard to believe that she was not expecting triplets!
It was not only the loss of her looks that depressed him. It was the superstition that seemed to rule her life at present. As often as he had told her that it was ridiculous to imagine that these children were born under a dark star and destined for misery, Catlin refused to believe otherwise. She had told him that that damned figment of her imagination, the banshee, had said as much. Moreover the creature had, she insisted, come to wail on their castle battlements to the neglect of her Irish haunts.
Thinking on it, it seemed incredible to him that he could have married a woman who saw portents in stones, brooks, trees, animals, birds and, as for the moon, sun and stars, not a day passed that one or another was not giving her cause for alarm.
Of recent years, she had spent hours on her knees in the old partially ruined chapel, which had been a storeroom until she refurbished it with her damned Papist crosses, statues and paintings. If he had not waxed so adamant, she would have installed a resident priest as well! Even so, she was always after him to bring one in—and always for the same reason. Ever since the death of her last child, she had believed herself doomed and damned by her participation in the revels at Medmenham.
“’Twas an altar for evil, I was,” she had cried as they had put the little coffin containing the remnants of Mahon, their late son and last infant into the family crypt in the churchyard. “It’s damned I am and my children, too.”
He had done his best to convince her that what she had observed had been naught but a cleverly designed mask along with winds which had probably been churned up by some sort of gigantic bellows. He spoke to deaf ears. Catlin’s one answer was to point out the loss of six children, tragedies she blamed on the terrible moments when she inadvertently had participated in that Satanic Mass. There
was no convincing her that she had been victim rather than perpetrator, for then she would remind him of her subsequent actions when she had behaved as shamelessly as any Covent Garden drab.
“You were drugged,” was always his response.
“I was possessed and could not have been possessed were not there evil in my own soul,” she had answered on more than one occasion. As she interpreted it, the evil had been in her wanting and welcoming his caresses, she, a virgin and a good Catholic girl. There were times in these last years when he wondered how their life would have been had he not fallen in with Sir Francis’ plans and instead had followed her to Ireland. Would he have wanted her as much once he got to know her? He was not being fair, and he knew it. Until her banshee-augmented depression had settled on her, she had been delightful.
“Lud, man, what’s happened to my sister of late?”
Richard winced. That was the voice of Catlin’s brother Mahon on his last visit, shortly after the death of his namesake. “She had such a sense of fun, and now she’s as grave as a nun.” Mahon had eyed Richard suspiciously. Though the Irish were known to be poetical, Mahon had not been speaking in rhymes; he had been shocked and depressed by the appearance and mental attitude of his sister. He had not visited them again, and Catlin rarely mentioned him. She was not given to saying very much on subjects other than sin, sorrow and fate. Richard winced. Of late, she had been constantly adjuring him to remember his immortal soul, something that appeared to trouble her greatly. Much as such references annoyed him, he did not argue with her on matters spiritual or ecclesiastical. Her voice had grown in proportion to her size, and she could shriek like her apochryphal banshee when aroused.
Operating on the theory that “soft answers turneth away wrath,” his conversations with his wife were more often than not, a series of nods. He used an emphatic nod for agreement, a hesitant nod for disagreement and a medium nod for almost everything else. It was amazing and gratifying how well that worked. He was quite sure that Catlin, who of late talked enough for them both, was quite unaware of his silences. It did not make for a particularly felicitous relationship, but he had ceased to expect felicity. Most men he knew never sought for it in the confines of marriage. They had mistresses to warm their beds and wives to bear their brats.
He did not have a mistress. If the truth were to be told, his desire for sexual adventures had been largely quelled on the night of the orgy, aspects of which could still bring a flush to his cheeks, amazing in a man who had just recently celebrated his forty-first birthday and was consequently in the “the yellow leaf of his life.” That melancholy reflection brought forth a groan, one he regretted immediately, for with a gargantuan wheeze, Catlin, who was evidently also awake, heaved herself closer to him and placed a heavy hand on his stomach.
“Richard...” she moaned.
He produced a yawn almost as prodigious as her wheeze, hoping it would quell her enthusiasm for chatter in the night. “Yes, my love,” he burbled through a second yawn.
Neither proved effective for she said fearfully, “Do you hear the cat?”
“No, my love,” he said soothingly.
“I do. I hear Molly also.”
“You’ve been having another one of your bad dreams.”
A pillow, dislodged by Catlin’s vigorous shaking of her head, slammed against Richard’s face. “’Tis no dream. There’s evil all around us. I feel it,” she intoned. Edging closer to him, she added, “Hold me, Richard, my dearest, for I am sore afraid.”
It was no small task to perform but Richard, thinking it was high time they had separate rooms, dutifully made the effort, while his wife sobbed noisily in the semicircle of his straining arms.
❖
On a higher floor in another wing of the Hold, Juliet Veringer awakened from a deep sleep, her ears alerted to the keening of the banshee and the howl of her cat. Surely, she thought resentfully, Grimalkin must have been the most ill-dispositioned animal in the world. However, with her quick faculty for understanding both sides of any given question, Juliet could imagine the poor creature wouldn’t enjoy being rooted out of whatever airy kennel it occupied merely to notify the O’Neills or those related to them of impending doom.
She frowned, wondering why she, only half an O’Neill and alone out of all the Veringer siblings, could see the cat in all its grey-striped glory, with the halo of fire around its head and its huge eyes green as the grass that grows on Ireland’s sward. She did not remember where she had heard the latter description, but guessed it had been confided to her by Molly in one of her quieter moments when she wasn’t wailing out one of her forecasts of doom.
Juliet had seen Molly, too. Thin as a bone she was, with the pale freckled skin common to the redhead she swore she had been in her younger years. Now her hair was white as the snowdrops that bloom near the lakes of Kilarney. That Juliet recalled, was another of Molly’s descriptions, told to her when she was a wee thing and the banshee had come to pass the time of day with her before she set up a howl on the castle ramparts. Molly also had green eyes, and she could make them shine like a beacon in the night but hadn’t a notion of where she’d learned the trick of that. And why, Juliet wondered, were they disturbing her sleep tonight? Probably they were also disturbing her mother and Colin, as well. Though they couldn’t see them, Colin, Tony and Kathleen could hear them. It had been a long time since the pair had set up such a chorus, and now there were no more babies to die. Juliet swallowed a large lump in her throat. There were still the four of them and their darling parents, as well.
She slid out of bed and pulling open the heavy oaken door of her bedroom, she dashed down the dark cold hall toward Colin’s chamber. It was only after she was inside and the door banged behind her that, in the act of leaping on his bed, she feared he might not care for this late invasion.
He didn’t.
“You jumped on my arm,” he stated sleepily and crossly.
“But I didn’t wake you,” she commented knowledgeably. “You heard them, too. Didn’t you?”
“I have been asleep,” he replied pointedly.
“You heard, you heard, you heard!” Juliet chanted.
Out of natural curiosity, her brother capitulated. “Did you see them?”
“Of course, I didn’t. They’re outside. Poor Molly. It’s cold tonight.”
“She wouldn’t be feeling the cold. She’s dead,” Colin reminded her.
Juliet shivered. “It must be dreadful to be dead. I hope it never happens to me.”
“If it does, you’ll just have to make the best of it like Molly.”
“Oh, you!” Juliet punched him. “You’d miss me, wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t expect I should.” He shrugged. “At least, I’d sleep the night through.”
“You weren’t sleeping tonight. You were listening to Molly and Grimalkin.” A sudden thought struck her, and she shivered again.
“You’re cold. You’d best get under the covers.”
“I’m not cold,” Juliet told him, but she also accepted his invitation, snuggling up against him. “I was shivering... out of fright.”
“You?” he scoffed. “You’re never frightened.”
“I was, too,” she said indignantly. “The last time Molly screamed like that—and the time before that—was because of the babies dying. You... you don’t think one of us’ll die?”
“Hush,” Colin soothed. “It could not be for that. They were all little.”
“Little people aren’t the only ones who die,” Juliet sobbed. “Molly was old and she died... burnt to ashes.”
“No one’s going to die, silly,” he said with conviction.
“She’s here for some other reason.”
“I wonder what,” Juliet murmured sleepily.
“You could ask her,” Colin said enviously.
“I’d never ask her,” Juliet said yawning.
“Why not?”
“I do not want to know.”
“You are a silly,” Colin
sighed.
Juliet didn’t answer. She had fallen asleep. Colin, looking at her moonlit face, smiled with a tenderness his favorite sister was never likely to see, and despite the keening of Molly, who was certainly going on longer than usual tonight, he followed Juliet’s lead and went peacefully to sleep.
❖
Kathleen Veringer, woken out of a sound sleep, glared in the direction of her window. Usually she awakened the minute the first rays of sunlight hit the panes, but it wasn’t the sun that had roused her. It was Molly’s blasted howling!
It seemed particularly loud tonight—an eldritch screech, she thought—and she was pleased, having just added “eldritch” to her vocabulary.
“Eldritch, eldritch, eldritch,” Kathleen muttered, almost tasting the new word. She loved to read but loved to ride just as much, and thinking of Jenny, the mare given to her on the occasion of her fourteenth birthday, a fortnight since, she could be up and riding into the forest. Wasn’t Molly loud tonight! She wondered what more was going to happen to this “accursed” family, her mother’s words. Thinking of her mother, Kathleen made a face. She would have to rise before dawn if she were going to ride that morning.
Every time Molly howled, her mother made them all go into that horrid cold chapel and pray! Papa didn’t hold with that, she knew, but for some reason he never argued with Mama on this matter. He only looked long-suffering and rolled his eyes around. It was a pity Mama did not spend less time in the chapel and more riding, but would there be a horse in the stable could bear her? She seemed to be getting fatter and fatter with every passing day. She wasn’t even pretty any more—and she had been beautiful. There was that portrait in the gallery, painted just after she married Papa. She had also been slim and smiling. She seldom smiled any more and was always so cross—and if Kathleen went riding on a Molly morning, she would be very cross indeed.
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