Household

by Stevenson, Florence

  She looked about her nervously, wondering why a room that she had always believed to be quite large had seemingly shrunk to half its size. She preferred not to dwell on this anomaly.

  Trying to subdue a combination of nervousness and regret for having invited him into her bedroom, Livia indicated one of the armchairs and said with a creditable insouciance, “Will you sit here, sir? I must secure the shutters.” She hurried across the room to the east window and, pulling the shutters closed, wished she could remain there, speaking to him over her shoulder. Then telling herself sharply that her mental processes were beginning to resemble those of a girl of eighteen rather than a woman well into her twenty-eighth year and a newspaper editor to boot, she came back to the fireplace. Seeing that he was still standing, she slipped into one of the armchairs. “Please sit down, sir,” she invited.

  He cleared his throat. “I prefer to stand,” he said heavily. Though the light in the room was too dim to illuminate his features, Livia felt that he was disturbed. In fact, she had the strange impression that their moods had been exchanged and that it was he who needed soothing rather than herself, which had to be ridiculous and only emphasized the disordered state of her mind. She had seldom met anyone more self-possessed than Mr. Grenfall.

  “As you choose,” she said.

  After an awkward little silence, he said, “You have been worried about your dreams?”

  She nodded. “I have sometimes felt as if I might be going mad!” she exclaimed, again regretting another foolish outburst.

  “No,” he said positively yet gently. “You’re in no danger of that.”

  Though he could have no comprehension of what she meant, she felt oddly reassured. “I... I suppose I am being silly.”

  “No,” he said. He added, “Miss Blake, have you any knowledge of an... Erlina Bell?”

  “Erlina Bell?” she repeated, wondering at his question. “I’ve never heard the name.”

  “That’s just as well. Still, she knows you and...” He paused, drawing a long breath and releasing it in a sigh. “But first things first. I can see you are deeply troubled and confused, but I can see more than that, Miss Blake.”

  “More...” she repeated. “I do not understand.”

  He sighed again. “I hold myself responsible for the anguish you have suffered—are suffering. I never imagined that I could feel this way or that I could so bitterly regret all that has happened in the last three weeks. Before I tell you anything more, let me assure you that I am truly ashamed of myself.”

  Listening to this amazing declaration, her own confusion increased. “All that has happened in... in the last three weeks? I am not sure I understand you, Mr. Grenfall.”

  “You have been frightened and bewildered by your dreams. I...”

  “Please,” she interrupted. “I should not have mentioned them to you. You are a stranger...”

  “We are not strangers.” He stepped closer to her. “I know what has been tormenting you.”

  “You couldn’t! You couldn’t begin to understand the pain, the degradation, the...”

  “Degradation? No, that’s not true. You’ve not been degraded. You’ve been embarrassed, but only in retrospect. I am deeply sorry over that. I did not anticipate your dreams. There was a great deal I did not anticipate.”

  She regarded him incredulously. “You speak about anticipating my dreams. How might you have anticipated them?”

  “Because I am to blame for all that has disturbed you. Erlina Bell led us to you. It is only in the last week that I have begun to understand her real motivation. Her vengeance has long tentacles.”

  She had wondered about her own reason, but now she feared for his. He seemed to be speaking in mad riddles. “I do not understand you. Who is this Erlina Bell?”

  “The spirit of a witch, whose thirst for revenge has yet to be slaked. She first came to us during our Candlemas celebration.”

  “Candlemas?” she questioned.

  “For Christians it is a church feast but its rites are older than your church and we name it as one of our four great Sabbats.”

  “What is a Sabbat?” she asked, trying vainly to understand what he was telling her and at the same time becoming more and more perplexed by his evident depression and regret.

  “A Sabbat is a meeting of the witches. The four great Sabbats take place in summer, winter, spring and fall. During the rest of the year our covens, which number thirteen, meet on Friday or Saturday evenings for rituals and—relaxation. These weekly meetings are called Sabbats. There is a monthly gathering known as an Esbat.”

  “Witches...” She faltered. “There are no such things.” He looked away from her, saying gratingly, “I find myself actually wishing that were true. Yet more than that I wish your father had not raised you in such ignorance. I cannot blame him from wanting to protect you from the horrors of your heritage, but it would have been easier for you if you’d known, easier and safer so you might have protected yourself.”

  “I do not understand you.”

  “Your mother...” he began.

  “I know that my mother was a well-known medium. My father did not tell me but someone else did.”

  “Do you know anything else?” he demanded.

  “I don’t understand you,” she repeated and then recollected something he had said a moment ago. “Thirteen! Vivienne said I was your thirteenth member. You meet on Friday nights. I have read about witchcraft, the Salem trials, the beliefs... You’re not telling me that you... that I...?”

  He actually looked relieved. “Yes. For the last three weeks, my dear one, you have been present and participating in our weekly Sabbats. We are witches, my love. I am what is called a High Priest, and Eliza is the High Priestess.” As she started to speak, he raised his hand. “Best let me continue,” he urged. “On the night of Candlemas we conjured up certain spirits. Erlina Bell was one of them. She told us of a young woman now twenty-seven years old, her climacteric year, which means a year of destiny. She told us that we could tap a source of power as yet undreamed of and there for the taking—if we brought this woman into our coven. She gave us your name. We were dwelling in Salem, and she told us to move here. It took us several weeks to effect that move, and through my own arts, I was able to learn a great deal about you, including where I would find you. I met you, and the instant we locked glances I knew that the power was there. We knew, too, that the negative energies in the Pendergrass mansion would help us draw it forth. Murder, you see, leaves behind a psychic residue—and there were three murders and a suicide. You felt the chill in the air immediately. You are very, very sensitive—hence your dreams and hence your power.”

  “Power? I do not understand,” she cried.

  “You may remember Elias...”

  “Elias P. Martin,” she whispered. “Die, Elias...” She stared at him in horror. “I remember... oh, I remember now. You are saying that I helped... no, I cannot believe it.”

  “You helped,” he said. “That was part of the binding.”

  “The binding?”

  “In another week I could not have freed you. In another week, at the monthly Esbat, you would have been our creature, but that will not happen. I love you too much to destroy the intrinsic you, as the others have been destroyed and set upon the lefthand path from which there is no turning back, no will to turn back. I have told myself that you were not conscious of what was happening, but as I have said, you are sensitive—more so than any of us realized.”

  “What do you think I know?” she questioned. She was confused by his mention of poor Elias P. Martin, confused and terrified. Memories were flowing into her mind again. “What do you think I know?” she repeated, fearing the answer, fearing and yet pitying him for his obvious anguish. “Tell me.”

  He said very deliberately, “I think you know that you have lain naked in my arms. I think you know that you have danced naked in our rituals. I think you know that you and those of my coven joined in raising the negative energy that felled
Elias P. Martin. You do not know that we are paid to achieve these effects, paid to kill or drive mad. That is how we exist and grow rich. And when we find anyone with power such as you possess...”

  “I have killed a man!” she suddenly wailed. “Oh, my God, I have killed and... and I have really been with you, and...” She thrust her hands against her chest, as if to shield her body from his eyes. “How has this been possible? I do not understand.” Tears began to pour down her cheeks.

  “Martin’s not dead. And we would have been responsible for his demise—not you. It was not your design nor desire. It is your heritage, my poor girl. You are a child of the Veringers—I have divined that through my own arts—and over the heads of your family hangs the curse of Erlina Bell. It sent your mother and her family halfway across the world, wanderers all, the living and the dead. You, too, are doomed to become a wanderer. I might have saved you from this present evil, but Erlina Bell’s not finished with the Veringers or those who love them as I have come to love you.”

  “You love me,” she whispered.

  “I think I might have loved you from the first moment I saw you, but I did not recognize the emotion. I have never loved before. I was not meant to love. I am the seventh son of a seventh son, born to a family steeped in witchcraft and Satanism. I have served these dark powers all my life, but tonight I renounce them.”

  “The dark powers... Satan?” She backed away from him. “You are telling me that I... Oh, God, am I doomed to the fire everlasting?”

  “There is no such fire, my love. It is only a metaphor, a description of what has been called the ‘dark night of the human soul.’ But you will not experience that. You are neither doomed nor damned.” He reached out to her.

  “Keep away from me!” She shuddered. “I begin to believe you. And you... you brought me to them. The strangeness was real. I loved you and...”

  “Did you? And now, no more? I swear to you, Livia, that part of my life is at an end.” Moving to her, he put his arms around her.

  She thrust him away. “Please go.”

  “No, I cannot go. You need my protection. Believe me, my own love, my dearest.” He fell to his knees. “I kneel before you. I beg you to forgive me.”

  She did not want to look at him, but she did and could not doubt him, could not doubt the anguish in his beautiful, dark eyes, shamed eyes that were full of tears. He was not a man who cried easily, she knew that about him. Somehow she knew a great deal about him, without knowing why or how.

  “Oh, Mr. Grenfall...” She knelt beside him, touching his wet cheeks with a gentle finger. “You must not weep.” She stifled a sob and found that she, too, was near tears again. “Oh,” she cried out, caught in a vortex of emotion, “I do love you.”

  “My dearest.” He embraced her, kissing her hair, her cheek, her mouth.

  Her body throbbed with a need she barely understood. She opened her mouth to his kisses and moments later felt him fumbling with the hooks at the back of her bodice. She brought her lips close to his ear. “Let me,” she whispered. “I think I am beginning to remember a few magic tricks.” Laughing softly, she slipped from his arms and stripped off her garments as quickly as Vivienne and Charlotte had done that first night in the cloakroom. And all the while, she was aware that a great weight had been lifted from her mind and heart. She was not going mad. She might have been shamefully misled. She might have ventured close to the edge of a yawning abyss, but what she had experienced had been real, not imaginary.

  She let her garments fall to the floor. Turning, she saw him with the dim light on his magnificently muscled body. He looked even more like the wonderful Greek statues she had seen in the museum, but they were only cold marble. His arms were warm as he lifted her against his chest and carried her to the bed.

  Later, rejoicing in a pleasure that had blotted out the brief, sharp pain that had accompanied surrender, Livia freed herself from her lover’s arms and whispered, “I hope all that has passed between us is not another dream.”

  He did not answer her, but very soon she found herself in ecstatic agreement with one of her governess’s contentions that actions speak louder than words.

  Two

  Jamie Wilson was annoyed. His small brown eyes were filled with anger and his lower lip was thrust out. It was an expression that spoiled his still-boyish good looks and added at least five years in lines around his mouth and across his forehead. At this particular moment, he looked all of the 39 years to which he never admitted. His ire was occasioned by disappointment. He had expected to meet Lucy Veringer by the gates of the cemetery, and she had not arrived.

  Probably, at the last moment, she had been unable to get leave from the old crone to whom she acted as companion and whom she had described as a regular horror. No, he amended mentally, she had not actually told him that her employer was a horror; she had mentioned that she was difficult. The old bat did not go to bed until the wee hours and kept poor little Lucy at her side reading to her out of dull books, fetching and carrying, even though she had been hired as companion, not maid. Poor little thing! She was so pretty. She ought to be warming someone’s bed rather than straining her eyes over the religious tracts her elderly employer preferred.

  He had hoped that Lucy might give the woman those pills he had slipped to her last night. That would have sent her off at a good hour, and then he could have come to the house. He would have had ample time to make love to Lucy, and later, when she was asleep, he would have taken such jewels and silver as he could find and gone his merry way. As it was, he would probably have to wait until tomorrow night. Lucy was timid about administering those drugs, but she was becoming more and more passionate. He smiled. He could always get ’em going. He had a way with him. Every girl he had ever met had told him that. It was not entirely his looks. He had a gift of gab and a way of making the girl he was presently seeing think that she was the only one in his universe, even when he wasn’t really attracted to her, which he practically never was. Lucy was something different—a real treat! He would be sorry when he left her, but that was the breaks. Once he got into the house, that would be the end of the romance and onto the next.

  He chuckled. He often wondered what happened in the morning when the mistress or master discovered that their jewelry and silver plate had taken wing. He had learned that one girl he’d cozened had been sent to prison for a good long time. Another had killed herself, fool that she was. She had fallen for all his fine talk and actually believed he meant it when he whispered that they would marry. She had cried and cried when he had his way with her. She’d been a virgin, he recalled. He would not be surprised to learn that Miss Lucy was also a virgin, such a pretty creature. He could easily lose his head over this morsel. He had met her, of all places, right here in this graveyard. She had gone to put flowers on her late mother’s grave. She had been so frightened when she saw him looming out of the darkness. Though hardly more than medium height, he must have looked very big to that tiny little creature.

  He had come into the graveyard because he had seen a policeman he thought he knew. Having no desire to renew that acquaintance, he had dashed in here. Fortunately, he had caught his breath by the time Miss Lucy Veringer came down the path. He had walked her to the gates, and they had fallen into conversation. She had been very shy at first but had gradually warmed to him. They always did. They had parted with her promise to meet him last night, and she had been Johnny-on-the-spot!

  “Good evening, Jamie.”

  He turned. There she was, such a pretty little thing, with her fair hair piled up on her head under a wisp of a bonnet. She was wearing a long dark cape, but he could see the gleam of satin beneath it. She had come to meet him wearing her best bib and tucker. He had made a real hit with her, there was no doubt about that.

  “Hello there, Miss Lucy Veringer.” He smiled widely and bent to kiss her. She had allowed him to kiss her last night, and she had kissed him back, very shyly the first time. He had kissed her again, and then she had given
him a tiny little nip. It had set him on fire! He gestured at a stone bench. “Come and sit down, lovey.”

  “Very well.” She took a seat and did not protest when he sat very close to her.

  “I suppose you didn’t put the powders in the old lady’s tea, did you?”

  “I did, Jamie. It’s all arranged,” she told him breathlessly.

  “Lucy!” He bent to kiss her on the lips.

  When he finally released her, she said nervously, “Oh, Jamie dear, you don’t think they’ll hurt her, do you?”

  “Not a smidgin,” he replied with a low laugh. “They’ll just let her sleep a little harder and longer than usual, and meanwhile you’n me‘11 have ourselves a better time on a softer spot than this here stone bench.”

  “I shouldn’t let you come to the house, Jamie,” she said anxiously, “but...”

  “But you can’t resist me?” he inquired audaciously.

  “That’s true, Jamie.”

  “Can we go now?”

  “Not yet. She doesn’t have her tea immediately. Usually she takes it after she says her prayers.”

  “Christ, I can hardly wait. Mind if I have another sample, lovey?”

  “A what, Jamie?”

  “I want to kiss you again, baby mine.”

  “Please do.” She was in his arms, and damned if she wasn’t going for his neck. He winced. Her nip was a little harder than last night, but he didn’t mind, not if she let him return the compliment.

  “Let’s have a taste of...” he began and paused. She was still at his neck, and he was beginning to feel sort of weak. “Hey, honey, go easier,” he muttered. She did not appear to hear him. He tried to push her away, but he couldn’t budge her. Fear shot through him. He was feeling weaker, sort of all gone inside. “Hey!” He made another effort to break free but he couldn’t, and then he found he didn’t want to get away. Whatever she was doing was sort of pleasant. He was getting sleepy. He didn’t really want to sleep out here. He wanted to cuddle in her little bed and... he stopped thinking.