Household

by Stevenson, Florence

  “Livia, no, no, no, it is an illusion. I suffer as you suffer, but it is an illusion.”

  She was past believing that warning. An illusion could not cause such frightful torture. She must walk but could not walk! She could not rise; her limbs were knotted. She must crawl. They were stepping back, preparing to let her through. There was a crash as if something had slammed against the glass, and at the same time she heard another sound, as if a door had banged back against the wall.

  The pain was suddenly, miraculously gone. Livia staggered to her feet. Looking down, she saw to her horror that she had been very close to the rim of the circle. As she moved back hastily, an arm went around her waist. She tried to pull awray, until on looking up she saw that Septimus was holding her. A cry escaped her. He was so pale and hollow-eyed as if he had suffered a grave illness.

  .

  “Ahhhh!” A long scream deflected her attention from him. Looking around her, she saw them, clad in the hooded capes she remembered from the dreams that had not been dreams. They had come. Of course, they had come! They had been standing at the rim of the circle chanting, but they were not chanting now. They were screaming, all of them, running hither and thither around the room, bumping into each other and cowering in fear as if trying to get away from something. Several of them were looking upwards, their hoods fallen back. She recognized Charlotte and Vivienne, and there was Christopher, dodging from—bats! Three huge bats were wheeling and darting about the room, descending to attack with powerful claws, to beat with mighty wings. She moved closer to Septimus, clinging to him fearfully. She had never seen bats attack anyone. They were such shy creatures, flying out at eventide to become lost in the trees, but these were not shy. And there was someone else. He had just walked in through the garden entrance, a tall man with golden hair and strange slanted eyes. He was smiling, but it was not a nice smile. He was angry, furious. He had left the garden door open, and now he was picking up one struggling cowled figure after another and throwing them out into the garden as if they had been made of rags rather than flesh and blood. Oddly, Livia did not feel afraid of him. Instinctively, she knew he would not hurt her. He had caught Vivienne in his arms now, and it seemed as if he would throw her out too, but no, he had changed his mind. Clutching her against him, he ran out into the darkness. Vivienne’s loud scream beat against Livia’s ears and was abruptly replaced by her wild laughter.

  Her strange hysterics was drowned by screams from those members of the Circle who still remained inside. Septimus’s arm suddenly grew rigid. He was staring straight ahead. Livia, following that mesmerizing gaze, saw to her amazement that an attractive and well-dressed young couple had arrived. One was a very pretty girl with blonde hair piled in a high pompadour. She wore a loose silk coat over an evening dress that seemed far too sophisticated for one of her years. She could not be more than 18, and Livia judged her to be even younger. The man with her seemed about 22. He, too, was in evening clothes, and though his coloring was dark, his features proved that he was either a brother or a cousin of his companion. Who were they? She did not think they were members of The Seventh Circle. No, she was sure they were not, for the four or five people remaining in the room were giving them a wide berth. In fact they, whom she now recognized as Christopher, Joyce, Charlotte, Charles and Mabel, were shrinking back, their faces drained of color and their hands raised as if they were warding off more bats.

  The bats, she realized with no little relief, were gone. Even though they had certainly created a welcome diversion, she could not like the ugly creatures. And where had they come from? The more she thought about it, the stranger their fortuitous arrival seemed—almost as if they had been sent! She paused in her thinking. On the face of it, the idea of bats being sent was ridiculous. It suggested that someone had been able to tame and guide them. She had never heard of anyone taming bats. It would have to be done at night because they all slept during the day but at night were hungry and hunting.

  “Livia, are you feeling better, my love?”

  “Better, yes.” She looked up at Septimus, and meeting his concerned gaze, her memories of the past few hours descended like a dark cloud. Hours? Had it been only hours? She glanced at the clock. It was a little after 11:00. She had been in the library for three hours; it had seemed more like three centuries. Yet the fear and the agony were fast fading from her mind. In their place were only questions, and these were being deflected by her curiosity concerning the brief bat invasion. “I am so confused,” she murmured. “These people... where did they come from? And why are the others so frightened?”

  They were more than frightened, she realized. They were hysterical, practically gibbering with fear as they bolted for the garden door, their screams reaching her from the garden and then fading into the night.

  “To answer your question,” Septimus said gently, “I believe they were afraid of what my psychic antennae tell me are your distant relations.”

  “My relations?” Livia looked at the young couple and received cordial nods from them both as they came over to her.

  “My dear child,” the girl said. “You are Livia, are you not? But I could not be mistaken, even if I had not known you were present. You have Mark’s eyes, and you bear a certain resemblance to my elder sister Kathleen. Also you have my father’s height. Don’t you agree, Colin?”

  “Yes, my dear Juliet.” He looked about him. “Where has Lucy gone?”

  “I didn’t see her go.” Juliet frowned. “But Swithin is ill.”

  “Yes, she must have gone to him, poor love.”

  “Who are you?” Livia demanded. “How can we be related and... did you say... Lucy?”

  “You’d best sit down, my dear.” The girl looked at her compassionately. “We have a great deal to tell you.”

  “My father...” she began concernedly.

  “Your father, my child, is in very good hands,” Colin assured her.

  “Yes,” Septimus agreed, “I am sure that is true.” Leading Livia to the couch, he sat down and drew her against him. Feeling his arms around her, she could no longer protest. Gratefully, she rested her head against his shoulder while Colin and Juliet, pulling up two other chairs, prepared to discuss family relationships.

  ❖

  Swithin Blake awakened from a disturbing dream in which he had been back in his family mausoleum in Boston, mourning the death of the only woman he had ever loved. But when he opened his eyes and looked toward the chair near his bed, he found to his extreme relief that it had been a nightmare. He smiled at Lucy. “I fear I ate too much at supper.”

  Her beautiful eyes lingered on his face. “I didn’t notice that, my love. You are not generally a heavy eater.”

  “There must be some reason why I had such a terrible dream,” he said shuddering.

  “A terrible dream?” she repeated. “What did you dream, my dearest love?” Her hand, cool against his forehead, gently swept his hair back.

  “I...” He paused and chuckled. “Do you know? I can’t seem to remember. It wasn’t very pleasant. I am sure of that.”

  “I’m glad you don’t remember it.” She looked at him lovingly.

  “Why are you sitting so far away, my darling?” he inquired. “Come to bed.”

  “Very well.” She dropped the cloak she was wearing and revealed a lacy shift beneath. Slipping under the covers, she snuggled against him.

  “Oh, Lucy, Lucy,” he said tremulously. “It’s been such a long, long time.”

  “A long time? Since we finished supper and came upstairs?”

  “It has seemed so to me. I wonder why.”

  “You’ve had a little illness. I expect that’s why you’re a bit confused.”

  “Have I been ill?”

  She stroked his hair. “Don’t you remember?”

  “Yes, I think I do, but I’m better now. How could I not be with you beside me, my only love. Do you know that you are all the world to me, Lucy?”

  She did not answer. She kissed him gently o
n his forehead and fluttered her long eyelashes against his cheeks before pressing her lips against his mouth.

  “You are here,” he murmured joyfully. “Have you come to stay?”

  “When have I ever left you, Swithin?”

  “I thought you... had.”

  “We agreed that it was a dream.”

  “A dream, yes. And may I have no more like those, ever in my life.”

  “I promise you, you will not.” She kissed his ear.

  “I shall hold you to it, my heart.” He sighed, and his voice grew weaker. “I am tired. I don’t want to be tired with you beside me, my Lucy. I’ve missed you so dreadfully all these long years.”

  “But I’ve been here with you. My, my, you’ve had some odd fancies tonight.” She put her arms around him protectively.

  “I expect I have. Kiss me again, Lucy.”

  She held him very tenderly and pressed another kiss on his lips. She heard his deep, rattling sigh, then felt him relax and lie very still, as once her grandfather had. She remained beside him a few minutes longer, and though he was past hearing her, she said softly, “Goodbye, my life, my love.” Slipping from the bed, she draped her cloak about her and went softly down the stairs and out into the rose garden.

  As she had expected, the sun was a faint red glow along the horizon and the nightbirds were flying to their nests or to their caves, while in other nests a sleepy twitter reached her ears, a twitter and a stirring. She bent to smell the dew-touched roses, and with her two fingers she nipped one off and kissed it. It was growing brighter in the east. She had always loved the sun. She was allowed one glimpse of its brightness, and in that moment she murmured, “Swithin.”

  ❖

  The sun was beginning its progress across the heavens when Mark, carrying a weary but still excited Vivienne in his arms, was arrested by something he saw on the grassy path that stretched between the rose bushes. He hurried the woman into the library and with unceremonious haste placed her on the couch, saying commandingly, “You’ll wait until I return.”

  She laughed up at him. “Yes, Master of all Masters,” she teased. Having made his wants known, he strode from the room and back into the gardens.

  Mark bent over what he had seen on the path. Tears formed in his golden eyes and slid down his cheeks. Amidst the keening of the banshee and her cat perched on the roof, he thought he heard his great-grandfather’s sorrowful lament as well. Kneeling, he bowed his head. Later, he began to dig a grave for Lucy among the roses.

  Part Five

  One

  The woman was tall and striking. She held herself like a queen, and though obviously past middle age, her face had an enduring beauty. If her skin were lined and her mouth pale, her eyes, golden rather than the unimaginative “hazel” used to decribe them on licenses and passports, were bright, young and, at this particular moment, fierce.

  She stood beside a huge pile of luggage and boxes like St. Michael at the gates of Paradise. There was a flaming sword in her fiery glance. She seemed to be daring anyone to challenge her right to be on the platform. She appeared totally oblivious to the fact that she was inconveniencing the people that surged about her, awkwardly avoiding her crush of paraphernalia, as they met relatives or rushed to the trains that thundered into and out of New York’s Grand Central Station in this autumn of 1921.

  Li via Grenfall was even angrier than she looked. Curse or no curse, she had been hoping that after New York she and her family could purchase the little Connecticut farm that their fabulously successful run at the Palace had enabled them to afford. She had the very place marked out in her mind. It would be in the vicinity of New Haven. It would be large enough to accommodate Septimus, herself, their children Richard and Kathie, and their adopted son Mark III, as well as Juliet and Colin, whenever they showed a disposition to alight in one place. And of course her great-great-greatgrandfather could settle in, too, even though he would probably cavil at anything smaller than his ancestral castle. She was sure of that just as she was equally sure that it was Erlina’s Bell’s curse that had doomed him as well as themselves to the series of fleabag hotels they had occupied in practically every city from here to Nome, Alaska.

  Looking at the train wheels, she could hear them chugging in her head, and just by way of diversion she mentally examined the cities they had covered, starting when Septimus laid down one magician’s cap and took up another. He had really surprised her when he informed her that he was a master of illusion and legerdemain, practices that supported him when he wasn’t heading covens. This secondary activity was far more lucrative than the elocution lessons he had given during his brief stay in Marblehead. It had been necessary because after her father died, there had been barely enough money to bury him. Mismanagement, speculation and irresponsible spending had devoured his fortune. The house had been mortgaged, and the furniture had brought a mere pittance.

  “Well, my dearest love,” he had said after the depressing revelations of the will, “we shall call ourselves The Great Grenfalls.” A mild suggestion that the Marblehead Mercury could be put on a paying basis had been gently but firmly ridiculed, and the advantages of herself in spangles and tights left no room for argument. A smile curled at the corners of her lips. She had not been of a mind to argue. If Septimus had insisted she be fired from a cannon, she would have agreed. Even now, she was still apprenticed to his sorcery.

  Boston to New York was her first experience in a train, also her first efforts at finding explanations for the pair of coffins that were an integral part of the theatrical props they transported from town to town. That first journey had brought her into such towns as Oshkosh, Kansas City, Toledo, Youngstown, Macon and Mobile. It had been grueling. The well-bred and once well-to-do young lady from Marblehead found that her training as a newspaperwoman was of scant assistance when it came to coping with the exigencies of the road.

  It had taken her months to accustom herself to upper berths and unheated cars, to sitting or even standing up all night when trains were crowded. She had loathed the cheap hotels or boarding houses where, like as not, they would be turned away by signs advising that the hostelry in question did not accept dogs or actors. Nor had she been very helpful when assisting Septimus with his illusions. He had been wonderfully patient with her and with her newly acquired relations, even though among the living there had been Mark Driscoll and his bride, Vivienne Mantell.

  Septimus had never liked Vivienne, and he liked her less when she joined them on the road. She hated traveling, but notwithstanding the vast difference in their ages, she appeared to adore Mark. She had once shocked livia by confiding that his lycanthropy added a special ingredient to their lovemaking. However her passion for him had not kept her from being flagrantly unfaithful to her lover. She left him for months at a time, coming back when she chose. He finally married her when she became pregnant with what she insisted was his baby.

  Livia grimaced at the memory of Vivienne; screaming her lungs out giving birth to Mark III in an East Saginaw boarding house in the year 1895. Compared to the agonies she had endured giving birth to Richard, the following year, and Kathie, two years after that, Vivienne’s travail had been remarkably easy. Unfortunately, it had taken place during a full moon when Mark was locked in the specially designed steel trunk Septimus had made for him. It had also been during a full moon that Vivienne had decamped, leaving them with her seven month old infant and the responsibility of informing her husband she had gone with a team of acrobats headed for Peoria. Probably it would not have added to Vivienne’s vaunted self-esteem had she witnessed Mark’s heartfelt relief. According to Juliet, Mark had only one love in his life, and that had been her mother, Lucy.

  Livia shuddered. It was unworthy of her, she knew, but she was still pleased that she had not been introduced to her vampiric mother. It had taken a great deal of mental adjustment to accept Juliet, Colin and Mark, not to mention the Old Lord, whom she could actually see if she put her mind to it, just as she could hear Molly, t
he banshee, and her ill-natured cat. Of course if was touching to think of her mother’s true death in the rose garden at sunrise. It had been a terrible shock to Juliet and Colin. When they were able to talk about it, they had told Livia that Lucy had always loathed her condition. They speculated that finding Swithin dead on the terrible night of the witches had been the final blow. Lucy had looked forward to meeting her daughter, they assured Livia, but she had never ceased to long for her husband in the years they were separated.

  Livia understood that. Though she adored her own children, her passion for Septimus exceeded anything she felt for either of them. It was the ruling factor in her life. In common with the foolish and lustful Mary of Scotland, she would have followed him around the world in her nightie. In a sense, that was what she would be doing once they boarded the train that would take them on their longest journey ever—across the country to a place called Hollywood. It was a town which, according to Mrs. Soames, the wife of a juggler who had shared their stint at the Palace, had nothing to do with either holly or woods.

  “It’s hot as hell, dearie. Don’t never snow out there ’cept up in the mountains. And it’s half bean fields and beaches. Most folk go out there to die. An’ you can’t tell me that movin’ pitchers is here to stay. Mark my words, you’n yourn’ll be back on the road quick as this.” She had snapped her fingers.