by Caleb Krisp
Rebecca had stopped talking. I heard hurried footsteps. Then she was by my side, snatching the portrait from my hand. “That is nothing,” she said quickly.
But it was too late. I had already seen her. Flowing blond hair. Cherub face. Even her eyes, blue and green, were captured in the miniature painting. “That is Miss Rochester!” I cried. “But you said you had no picture of her.”
Rebecca looked lost. Uncertain. Her eyes shifted about, everywhere but at me. Something was wrong.
“The woman in the portrait,” I said, trying to swallow the dread rising in my throat, “the one I saw in the woodlands—she is your old governess, is she not?”
Silence. No, not silence. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.
I reached for the picture, but Rebecca pulled it away.
“Rebecca, who is she?” I was shocked to hear the anger in my voice. “Tell me!”
It worked. Rebecca looked at me.
“She is my mother.”
12
I could speak to the dead. I never used to be able to. In fact, I’d gone twelve long years without ever once chatting to a ghost. Now it was something I did a great deal. Murdered duchesses. Dead mothers. I spoke to them all.
It turns out, I’m rather good at it.
“This can’t be,” I said, pacing back and forth between the army of clocks in Rebecca’s bedroom. “It’s impossible. While it’s true that as far as girls go, I’m rather extraordinary, this is something else.”
“I’ve heard of such things before,” said Rebecca quietly. “There’s a lady in the village who will pass on a message from the spirit world for five shillings.”
“That is different,” I said, turning and walking the length of the room again. “Women like that have crystal balls and warts on their noses and whatnot.”
Rebecca poured me a glass of water and placed it gently in my hands. “Is it really such a bad thing, Ivy?” she said. “What you can do—it’s amazing.”
“It’s bonkers!” I snapped.
She sat down on the bed. She didn’t seem entirely surprised about my new talent—which I put down to the fact that she was barking mad herself.
“If I could talk to my mother the way you did, Ivy . . . well, I would be the happiest girl in England.” Rebecca looked up. “Did she have a message for me? Did she say anything about me?”
I sighed. “Only that she watches you from afar. I have a feeling she does it quite often.” If it made me feel any better to offer Rebecca some words of comfort about her dead mother, that notion quickly faded (which I put down to the fact that I was in shock and therefore slightly cold-blooded). “Your mother knew my name. How is such a thing possible?”
“I don’t know,” said Rebecca. “Perhaps you have always had this gift.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” I said.
“In time it might make more sense,” said Rebecca carefully. Her words curled their way into my ear like a worm. She knew something. Something that I didn’t.
“You knew, didn’t you, Rebecca?” I stopped right in front of her. “You knew that the lady I met in the woodlands was your mother. Yet you let me think it was Miss Rochester.”
She paled. “I didn’t want to scare you, that’s all.”
“But why weren’t you scared? After all, you had just learned that I’d had a lovely chat with your late mother. Now that I think of it, it was as if . . . as if you were not entirely surprised.”
“Of course I was,” said Rebecca, clearing her throat. “It was as much a surprise to me as it is to you.”
But I didn’t believe her. “Where did you go?”
Rebecca looked startled. “When?”
“Right after I told you about the lady in the woods, you ran off. In fact, you were in a terrible hurry. Where did you go? Or should I ask, to whom did you run?”
“I . . . I went to my room. I was overwhelmed and—”
“It was Miss Frost, wasn’t it?” I said. “You went to tell Miss Frost.”
Her lips began to tremble. She didn’t have to answer me.
“Why were you so keen to share the news with your governess?” I said. “Some secret business is going on between you and Miss Frost. She has caught you in her web. Made you an accomplice. What is going on, Rebecca?”
“She is trying to help!” she cried, jumping to her feet. “Miss Frost has important work to do. Horribly important. She cannot be everywhere. She cannot keep an eye on you and Miss—” She shook her head. “She needs my help, and I give it gladly.”
“What sort of help? Rebecca, what is so important that she needed to meet with you under cover of darkness in the schoolhouse? I demand you tell me!”
“Miss Frost . . .” Her voice was faint, her sigh was of defeat. “She wished to show me the picture you drew—the one of the gardener tending the roses.”
I recalled the picture. And I recalled Miss Frost asking to keep it. “Whatever for?”
“It was of Wickam.” Rebecca said this mournfully.
“Who?”
“Don’t you remember? I told you about him the day you arrived at Butterfield Park.” She looked at me with something like sorrow. “Wickam died last winter.”
Which was rather unsettling. But not completely surprising. Ghosts seemed rather fond of me. “Why did Miss Frost wish to show you that I had drawn a picture of a dead gardener?”
Rebecca looked agitated. Fidgety. “Don’t you think it strange, Ivy, all that has happened since you took possession of the Clock Diamond?”
“It’s slightly odd, I suppose. But a lady’s maid must be prepared for a certain amount of nonsense when she’s surrounded by a pack of aristocratic oddballs.”
Rebecca shook her head. “These strange events must be connected to the stone.” She was breathless now. Frowning. “You do see how everything began with that necklace . . . you do see that, don’t you, Ivy?”
“Well, of course I do, dear. But the peculiar events that have occurred since the Duchess of Trinity entrusted me with the diamond are no great mystery. Not to me.”
She looked positively puzzled. “They’re not?”
“Heavens no. In Paris, the Duchess warned me that dark forces were after the Clock Diamond. It’s clear I’m dealing with a band of wicked thieves. As I said, no great mystery.”
“But how do you explain the ghosts and the locks who attacked you in London?”
“Who told you about the locks?” I huffed. “Let me guess. Miss Frost?”
Rebecca ignored the question. “How do you explain these strange occurrences, Ivy?”
I shrugged. “I’m sure a grim old house like Butterfield has scores of ghosts lurking about—I just happened to have met one or two. As for the locks, well, they are nothing more than pint-sized fortune hunters—probably from the jungles of Budatta, where the diamond was first discovered, or perhaps from a disreputable circus. But they don’t frighten me. I bashed them silly!”
“But the book says—what I mean is, these locks don’t sound as if they are from . . .” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Our world.”
I snorted. Daintily. “Our world? How many worlds do you imagine there are, dear?”
“Two,” she answered with grim certainty. “I believe there might be two.”
I stood up and said, “You are a cherished friend, Rebecca, so I’d normally only say this kind of thing behind your back—but as your family already thinks you’re nuttier than an almond cake, I urge you not to go around talking of other worlds. It’s frightfully bonkers.”
“You must listen to me, Ivy,” she said, her face furrowed and pale. “Miss Frost is terribly worried about the birthday ball. She believes you will be in grave danger.”
“Calm yourself, dear. It’s a scientific fact that hysteria causes freckles, and in that regard, you’ve suffered enough. As for Miss Frost, she has warped your mind with her silly stories. Leave her to me.”
Rebecca fell into stony silence. Her eyes glazed and anxious. I retreated from the ticking bedroom,
but Rebecca’s voice stopped me in the doorway. “I’m sorry about everything, Ivy,” she said. “I hope one day you will understand and forgive me.”
With supper over, Cook had retired to her quarters. As such, I had slipped into the pantry and was finishing up a small snack. A few raw potatoes. Half a cabbage. My cravings were a slight concern, but I was certain there was a perfectly reasonable explanation. After all, I still loved cake. Only now I preferred to eat it by the pound. But I was still thin as a whippet, so no harm done.
When my belly was full, I was keen to vacate the pantry before the scullery maids returned with the dinner plates. I was hurrying across the cavernous kitchen when I heard raised voices coming toward me. Fearing discovery, I leaped back into the pantry. I had just taken up a crouching position behind a sack of raw sugar when Miss Frost and Miss Always strode into the kitchen. Miss Always was still wearing her bonnet and gloves. Neither one looked especially jolly.
“Do you want her to put the pieces of this puzzle together?” hissed Miss Always, stopping before the chopping block and taking off her hat. “She would tell the world.”
“And you would be exposed,” said Miss Frost coldly.
“We would be exposed.”
“Do not lump us together. We are not the same.”
“But we want the same thing.” Miss Always stepped awfully close to Miss Frost. Which was thrilling! “If Ivy is as remarkable as I suspect, why should I ignore it?”
Miss Frost laughed harshly. “You are deluded.”
“I am right!”
The hideous governess reached out and seized Miss Always’s arm. “I know what you are thinking, Miss Always, and I tell you this—if you try anything tomorrow night, I will stop you.”
My bosom friend hissed like a rattlesnake. “Unhand me!”
“Leave the girl in peace!”
Miss Always reached for a carving knife lying beside a bowl of peaches. She waved it rather freely before Miss Frost. Which was highly unexpected.
The grim spinsters were staring daggers at each other.
“Fortune favors the brave, Miss Frost,” said Miss Always. “We shall see who wins the day.”
It was entirely the wrong moment to sneeze. Yet sneeze I did. But quietly—having all the natural instincts of a stuffed bear. Miss Frost and Miss Always did not hear a thing. I was sure of it. Miss Always did glance towards the pantry. But only for a moment. Then Miss Frost gave a slight nod of her head. Miss Always lowered the knife—which was a heartbreaking disappointment—reached for a peach, and began to slice it.
When she spoke again, her voice was considerably louder. “It would ruin the surprise if Ivy knew I was planning a special celebration for her after the ball,” she said. “The poor girl deserves it after all she has been through. I know you find such things silly, Miss Frost, but you mustn’t tell Ivy what I am planning.”
Miss Frost smiled. “I won’t . . . for now.”
Dear Miss Always! Not a nefarious, knife-wielding lunatic. Just a dear friend planning a surprise party. I was seized by another sneezing fit. The pantry was violently dusty. I had little choice but to show myself. Miss Frost did not look terribly surprised when I stepped out. But poor Miss Always was positively stunned.
“Oh, Ivy,” she said, “I do hope you didn’t hear me talking to Miss Frost.”
“About my surprise party? No, dear, not a word.”
Miss Frost cleared her throat. “I have a letter to write, if you will excuse me.”
A great well of anger bubbled up inside me as I watched the prim and proper Miss Frost walk from the kitchen. Which was why I said, “I hope you will stop filling Rebecca’s head with any more nonsense about hidden worlds, Miss Frost. The girl is confused enough as it is.”
She stopped. Turned around. “My job is to educate her.”
“About things that do not exist?”
“The universe is a confounding place, Miss Pocket. Some believe there is another world sitting beside our own. A world hidden by the thinnest of veils. My job is to teach Rebecca not just what is, but what may be.” Miss Frost regarded me coolly. “As a girl who frequently speaks to the dead, I should think you would be more open-minded.”
I sighed. “Yes, yes, my silly drawing. Honestly, dear, is seeing the occasional dead gardener really so peculiar?”
“Actually, Miss Pocket, it is,” came Miss Frost’s crisp reply.
“I know of a castle in Scotland that has more than sixty different ghosts,” said Miss Always. “I don’t think there is anything remarkable about what Ivy has seen. Nothing at all.”
I wanted to kiss the dreary bookworm! Instead, I turned to her and said, “And what is your view on hidden worlds, Miss Always?”
“Complete nonsense.”
God bless Miss Always!
Miss Frost folded her arms. “We are surrounded by a universe that the naked eye cannot see—and yet it is there.”
“Unlikely, dear.” I shook my head. “Mrs. Crabapple, the head housekeeper at Midwinter Hall, was a keen student of the cosmology and tea leaves and whatnot. She had it on very good authority that the world is actually floating inside a frightfully large glass ball—rather like a snow globe.”
“I see.” I could tell by the slight flare of her nostrils that Miss Frost wasn’t at all pleased. “How does your Mrs. Crabapple explain the planets one can view through a telescope?”
“Stray balloons, dear. From birthday parties and such.”
Miss Frost’s mouth twitched. “That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. You cannot be this idiotic, Miss Pocket. I refuse to believe it.”
She stalked from the kitchen.
Miss Always looked mightily pleased. She sat down at the table, urging me to sit beside her—which I did—then offered me a slice of peach.
“She is no match for you, Ivy,” she said, grinning wildly. “What a clever girl you are!”
The ghost came just before dawn. I woke up with a start from a rather troublesome dream. She was there. At the end of the bed. Her enormous body, rippling and glowing like a lantern on a lake. Her ghostly blubber spilling over the sides of the tiny bed frame. She was smiling faintly. Smoke coiling for her mouth. I didn’t gasp or tremble. Despite the fact that she had flown at me in a murderous rage the last time we met.
“They don’t like each other,” she sang at me.
“Who, dear?”
The Duchess of Trinity groaned. “Miss Frost and Miss Always. They do not like each other.”
“Miss Frost is a horrible creature. She is full of mischief and skullduggery.”
“And Miss Always?”
“She is my friend,” I said. “My bosom friend.”
That seemed to delight the Duchess. She laughed, and as she did, starlight leaped from her hair.
I sighed. Felt rather cross. “You’re dead, so I assume you know a great deal more about what is happening in this house than I do.” I lit the candle beside my bed. “These locks Miss Frost told me about—I am certain it is nonsense just as Miss Always says—but what do you think? Are these strange little creatures real?”
The Duchess of Trinity closed her eyes. “Did the attack in Belgravia feel real to you, child?”
“Well, of course it did, you ghoulish fatso!”
“Then you have your answer.”
“What are locks? Who do they work for? And why am I seeing ghosts? Everywhere I turn there is mystery and secrets! What is happening, Duchess?”
She huffed. “I am a ghost, not an oracle.” The light pouring from her seemed to dim. Just for a moment. “You are right about one thing, child—there are people in this house who are determined to get their hands on the Clock Diamond. Miss Frost is one of them. She will try and stop you from giving Matilda the stone. She wants it for herself.”
“What should I do?”
“Be on your guard,” she sang. “Do not become distracted by intrigue and shadows. Remember why you came to Butterfield Park.”
“Do the l
ocks work for Miss Frost?” I asked. “Is she—?”
“Have you forgotten your promise to me?” hissed the dead woman. “That is why you are here, that is all that matters. Keep the necklace well hidden until the birthday ball and then hang it around Matilda’s neck. The rest is of no concern to either of us.” She sat at the other end of my bed, yet her voice seemed to whisper right into my ear. “Remember the five hundred pounds, child. Your future is a bright one, so long as you do as I have asked.”
Although she was dead and had recently tried to devour me, she also made a great deal of sense. All that mattered was fulfilling my mission. And collecting the reward.
And starting fresh.
“She thinks you are a menace,” said the Duchess. She licked her lips, and I noticed that her tongue was black. Which was revolting. “She does not like you at all.”
“Miss Frost?”
“Lady Elizabeth.” The Duchess fixed her eyes—two dark pools—upon me. “You have tried so hard to win her favor—but nothing works, does it, child?”
I shrugged, but I confess the situation bothered me. “The old bat is frightfully prickly.”
“I believe she would warm to you if only there was some way you could win her favor. It would please me to see you two becoming friends. Have you any ideas?”
“Perhaps I could read to her. Old people love that. Or I could fix her hair or file her bunions. I’m certain she has monstrous bunions.”
The Duchess appeared deep in thought. “It must be something simple,” she said. “Lady Elizabeth must not suspect you are trying to impress her.” She sighed. “When we were girls and we would quarrel, I used to know just how to make amends. But no, you will think it too silly.”
I tried not to appear eager. “I’m sure it’s terribly stupid, but just out of interest, what was it?”