The Girl from Rawblood

by Catriona Ward

  “One of these days, she went with the child alone to the moors. And she did not come back for lunch, and then not for tea. At around four in the afternoon, the day, which had been fine and bright, was abruptly covered with the fog that, as you may know, in that part of the country, descends with no warning. It is like being swaddled in wool. It descended on the house, on the valley, crept in at the doorframes, and filled the windows with moving cloud.” Here, Miss Brigstocke paused. “This holds some particular horror for me,” she said. “I am afraid of the fog. Being in it…is very much how I imagine death—nothing in the world but thick white and the sound of one’s own footsteps. But this, I suppose, is by the by.

  “As the mist rose about the house and there still was no sign of them, concern was changed to fear. Mr. Villarca was quite beside himself. It is understandable. Dusk approached, and all the household was assembled with lanterns and torches and turned out to find her. They marched in a long line across the moor, calling her name and holding the lights high. But the air was so dense, the late afternoon almost dark as night. The lamps dimmed and winked on either side as they drifted farther and farther apart. It would have been very easy to step on a loose stone and fall, to tread unwary into a bog and sink and never be seen again. Or even to wander too far and be lost on the endless heath until you perished in the cold and the black. The searchers had begun by fearing for her, you see, but now, they began to fear for themselves. They trod carefully and shivered and called to one another that perhaps they should return to the house. All except Mr. Villarca, who ran ahead, heedless, calling his wife’s name in the lowering air. Voices travel so strangely in the mist, have you noticed?

  “At length, there was heard a great screech from ahead, like stone breaking. Sometimes, when razing buildings, a great metal ball is used. You know the thing I refer to? It hits the brick and the girders and the glass in the windows with a sound that is not like a crash, not at all. It is a shriek, a grinding shriek. That is what this sound was like. The searchers waved their torches and stumbled toward the terrible noise, calling all the while. As they crested the rise of Bell Tor, they saw below, through the ribboning mist, what looked like a broken spider splayed upon the grass. It was Mr. Villarca, holding his wife and his son in his arms. She was insensible, wet through, her cambric dress streaked with mud. The boy was crying and speaking to his father. Whatever was said, it made Mr. Villarca give another of those terrible howls. The servants tried to pry him from Mary, for it was plain her arm was broken. At first, he only wept and held her, but he had to let her go, because the child was clinging to him, still talking very quickly in Spanish. Alonso, that is his name. At least they had the good sense not to name him after his father. Alonso. Poor little boy.

  “They put her in a blanket and carried her as best they could. But as they were approaching the house, Mary woke, and the sight of her eyes was enough to freeze the blood. She stared sightless under the flickering lamplight and would only say, ‘I have seen her.’ Which made little sense, but she had of course received a great shock. Each time she spoke, her husband wept. But they all got inside, and the doctor was fetched, and the arm splinted, the child calmed and bathed, and that should have been the end of it.”

  “Villarca,” said the reverend. “Peculiar. Where have I heard—?”

  Miss Brigstocke looked sharply at him but went on. “After that, Mary was confined to her bed for some time. She had taken a chill on the moor. But other ailments, less explicable, plagued her also. Her eyes troubled her a great deal. They became very sensitive. She complained that the world was very dim. A veil was over everything. She could not abide daylight—her eyes streamed, she shrank from the gentlest sunshine—but nor could she bear darkness, for then, she saw things that were not there. The maids were woken in the early hours of the morning by her weeping and lamenting—that there was mist in the room. She could not see, for all the mist. Once, she threw a pitcher at a figure who, she said, stood in the middle of the room, bald and like a worm. She howled for it to take its gaze off her. Its great white face hung over her at night.

  “She had a great conviction that a grave had been dug outside her window. She would spend hours looking at the particular spot with her clouded eyes. It was pretty: on a rise, beneath an ancient cedar tree. She said a murdered girl was buried there. It became such a mournful and incessant refrain that her husband had the hill dug up one day. They turned up yards and yards of earth, probed down into the ground, made an absolute mess of it. There was nothing to be found, of course. No unmarked grave, no girl. But still, Mary stared at the ravaged hill. Sometimes, she said, she heard the spade turning the earth, heard the corpse fall into the deep hole.

  “She began to shun her husband and her child. There were no more days in the sunshine on the moor. She lay in state with the curtains drawn. Mr. Villarca would have taken her away, to some continental rest cure, but Mary would not go. She blamed him in some measure for what had befallen her, for marrying her at all. ‘Why did you give this to me, not telling me the price?’ Her voice was always very carrying.

  “And as her sight went, so did her reason. She flew into rages, running through the house, white-eyed and blind, breaking china. She wounded herself, hurling herself into walls, and bloodied her head with beating it on doors. She said the child was never to be brought to her, for she might hurt him. Those were the words—she might hurt him. Did Mary mean herself, or…? Anyhow, it seemed a wise prohibition, in the circumstances.

  “When one day, Leopoldo Villarca was not to be found, it was thought by some that he had reached his limits. Men, you know, have their limits, all. It is something I always bear in mind. He was there one evening at the supper table, and he kissed his son good night… The next morning, he was gone, and so was a horse from the stable. One may draw one’s own conclusions. And people did, mind you.

  “His absence seemed a relief to Mary. She became more docile, in fact, and submitted to seeing a doctor who was very good with eyes, though he said there was little to be done. The cataracts that had formed on them were well advanced, and permanent. She even admitted her son to her room for half an hour some days. She ate and strengthened somewhat, and her nights were quiet.

  “The bog threw up Mr. Villarca’s corpse two miles from the house, in open country. It was a shepherd who saw it. Boots, just boots sticking out of the ground. I daresay he thought he’d found a fine pair of hessians for nothing, until he saw what they were attached to. They are strange, bogs. They will take things down and hold them, preserving them in the dark for oh so long. But something shifts, and up it comes, good as new. And so it did. There was no telling how it had happened, but there was one thing… Well.

  “They were loath to tell Mary, I think. But she took it well. She shed a tear. Her eyes were like mistletoe berries now, smooth and white. She hoped he was at peace. She told them to take the child out of the house, into the village to his old nurse. He needed to be with other children, she said. And she would be in mourning, which might upset him.

  “That night, Quivers woke to the scent of smoke drifting through the high halls. When he broke down Mary’s door, it was too late—all was done. She was dead on the floor. Flame flickered about in her hair and had begun to creep up the curtains. They put it out. The room was filled with the haze of smoke; they could scarce see—it was like walking through mist. The poker was in her hand; the tip still glowed red. She had taken her eyes.

  “I know that after events such as those I have recounted, it is a common thing for people to say, Well, I always thought her queer or He was a bad lot—as if one could have seen it coming. So I do not wish to do that. But there was always something strange about them both. They were not people who would live long, grow old, and die… I saw it in their faces, during that brief time in Italy. They were both too feeling, too impassioned. They did not understand that one must… Anyhow.

  “I am not one for repeating gossip, but it was s
aid too that Mary was overly fond of Quivers. That he had detected smoke and reached her chamber very quickly on that fateful night…that he was often in the vicinity of her room.

  “And of course, Mr. Villarca, when he was found in the bog—I think I did not say—his eyes were gone, as if something had clawed at them until… It might have been anything. Who knows how long he lay in that mire? But yes, it gave people cause to think more, and they thought of Mary. It seemed too much coincidence. Had she taken his eyes too?”

  Reverend Comer rested his back carefully against the chair. “Horrible,” he said. “Horrible!” He felt weak. Such nastiness. It did not belong in this warm room, with the sound of clinking spoons. At length, he said, “You know a great deal about it, Miss Brigstocke.”

  “Why, yes. I have only recently come from near Rawblood. The house, you know, that they lived in.”

  The reverend felt an uneasy stirring in his brain. Some headline he had seen in the newspaper, two weeks past…

  “I thought it best to gain a thorough picture of what had happened,” Miss Brigstocke went on. “I chanced to be in the area, and in Dartmeet village, I fell into conversation quite naturally with the woman who had been the Rawblood cook. And of course, there were many others locally who had been a part of it, who had known the Villarcas. I was fortunate enough to come across some of them. The event was so sensational, you know, and so widely talked about; the press cannot be relied upon. But I think I have established the facts.”

  The stirring in Reverend Comer’s brain had become a thunder—a terrible feeling was upon him. He said, “Villarca. Mrs. Villarca, who was called the Devon Demoness in the Post… Do you mean to say, Miss Brigstocke, that it was Miss Hopewell…”

  “Yes, Reverend Comer. That is the vulgar name they gave the case.”

  “I had not connected it,” said the reverend. “How could I? How could I know? Her married name…” His forehead was covered in a light, cold sweat. Both cup and lip trembled as he sipped his tea. Hot drops fell on his waistcoat.

  Miss Brigstocke regarded him. Her black eyes seemed to him to have grown into two deep and dangerous pools.

  “How could you indeed?” asked Miss Brigstocke. “I quite see the difficulties.” She paused for a moment and went on. “Yes, I thought perhaps you had not heard the fate of your old friend Mary. So I came to tell you. You would of course wish to know what had become of her.”

  “Friend?” he asked. “We were barely acquainted…”

  “Well, yes, you were! You were there when she first met Don Leopoldo Villarca, that day in Italy,” said Miss Brigstocke. “You have visited his home, in fact! You spent a great deal of time with her and perhaps even made an offer! I would even go so far as to term it an intimate connection.”

  “Dear God,” said the reverend. His eyes darted from place to place, over the mercifully empty tea shop.

  “I doubt,” said Miss Brigstocke comfortingly, “that any person in this charming village would infer it on their own. Why, you yourself did not. Were it to be pointed out, however, I think you would inevitably become the object of much local interest. She being supposed a murderess…

  “It is not always comfortable to have old acquaintances from a different time of one’s life constantly about one. Meeting them in the street, passing them in the butcher shop… Sometimes, one prefers to let the dog sleep out his night, to let him lie.”

  He saw then, quite coolly, how men were driven to kill. He felt her neck in his hands, as though he were wringing it like a hen’s. He said, “What is it that you want?”

  Miss Brigstocke’s tone was light and brisk. “What do any of us want? I wish to be secure; I wish to be content, to be allowed to descend into old age with what dignity I can muster, with four walls around me of my own and no threat of the bailiffs. But I cannot see my way to it.

  “I wish I could settle somewhere far from here. There is a cottage in Scotland that I have very much admired. But alas, my state does not admit the buying of property. And my cousin, who as I said lives close by, has offered me lodging with her, and so I think I will come to live near Far Deeping after all…”

  He obeyed her cue like a man in a dream. “I believe,” he said, “that I can see my way to such a charitable enterprise as to…assist you to purchase that cottage. I have by me a draft on my bank…” With the logic of a nightmare, he realized it was true. He saw his hand remove it from his pocket. “For I was on my way to pay the accounts.”

  “I thought,” said Miss Brigstocke, “it being a quarter day, that that might be the case. How fortuitous.”

  The pen scratched on paper. She did not watch him write but turned her gaze to the window—when he offered her the draft, she took it with a little sniff, as if he had done something improper. Reverend Comer watched as all his capital, everything he had in the bank (bar thirty pounds) disappeared into a fold in the ragged gray mantle. “I think,” he said, “that I will not see you again, Miss Brigstocke.”

  “It is most unlikely,” she replied.

  He felt an ache deep in his belly, as though he had been pierced there. “How long did you watch me,” he asked, “and wait your filthy chance? No. No matter. I will say adieu.” He heard her stand, the damp fall of her cloak. But she did not go. She stood beside him. Her scent was heavy in his nostrils.

  “He stank of richness and bloody, buried deeds,” Miss Brigstocke said. “I thought he was to kill her. When I saw her end, I was sure it would be he who did it.”

  A sound came from her, a growl. Reverend Comer was put in mind of the sound of tearing flesh; he knew her heavy stench then for what it was. It was the lion cage, which he had seen in Padua. Hungry lions, beset with sores, pacing with their mad, yellow eyes.

  “They buried her at the roadside,” said Miss Brigstocke. “Like a pauper. I went to see. And there must have been some who loved her, because the mound was covered in flowers.”

  “It is too late to weep,” the reverend said. He felt the tinny bite of anger within. “You have everything. Your tears are not needed here—the goose is plucked.”

  Miss Brigstocke whimpered and cried out. “Would you believe,” she asked, “that my heart is broken? I have had to shift, all my life. I have been forced to it. But Mary… Would you believe that I loved her, in spite of all?”

  The reverend regarded her. “No,” he said. “I do not believe it.”

  Her entire being drooped. She pulled her terrible coat around her. She swiped at her wet, black eyes. “Good-bye,” Miss Brigstocke said, turned her old creased face from him, and went. The door of the tea shop creaked, and the bell rang a silver chime.

  When Reverend Comer emerged some minutes later, having settled his considerable tea bill, she was gone. The street was deserted save for a few souls hurrying through the rain, late for luncheon.

  1 “Midway upon the journey of our life/I found myself within a forest dark/For the straightforward pathway had been lost.” Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto I.

  2 “Help, please! We beg you to take us to Siena!”

  3 “Within that heaven which most his light receives/Was I, and things beheld which to repeat/Nor knows, nor can, who from above descends.” Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, Canto I.

  4 Her name is a flower, an eye, a flame, the woman, the curse… I see the ghost’s vomit. The devil strangle you! The souls of dead children. Shame, shame, shame! Madmen make more madmen, which makes madness.

  5 Shame!…Shame, shame, shame!

  THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER

  1919

  I’m all right so far. All I must do is avoid notice. Keep it simple.

  At Reading, there are shouts, a hold up. But they don’t concern me. Outside, a gray day, and everyone has loathing carved deep on their countenances. Rain shatters on the glass. The empty compartment smells of old dog.

  Two girls come in; I stiffen up a bit. They’ll have thi
ngs to say. They fuss in the seat opposite, turning like cats and settling their things. Their heads bend together, brown ringlets meeting a shining cap of tortured marcel wave. Their hands discuss me, pointing, fluttering. Sure enough, the yellow-haired one asks me what time we get to Paignton. All nice girls love a soldier and all that. Or is it sailor?

  I fold my arms, close my eyes. Sleeping people don’t answer questions, are not compelling.

  There is a shade of red that is urgently debated. Won’t do for a skirt, which would be fast. Line an opera jacket with it. Smart. The girls speak to each other slightly too loudly, as though there is some effect being strained at that they are just failing to achieve.

  Their voices scatter through the darkness behind my eyelids, knit themselves through the rhythm of the wheels on the narrow gauge. Four hours of this. Avoid notice, then home. I don’t know what I’ll find. I don’t know what’s left. And the other question, which wears at me. Is he alive? The letter is dated a year ago. I touch it where it sits in my pocket. It’s almost coming apart at the folds.

  It’s unlikely he’s alive. As I understand it, almost no one who was alive five years ago is alive now. Could go and see. It’s on the way… Something stirs, painful, in the depths. No. Keep it simple. Get to Rawblood.