I also found the stables that my mother had been so excited about at the very back of the campus. It looked as if you could bring your horse out and take it for a ride through the woods that bordered the school grounds. I couldn’t see any signs of actual horses and wondered if they arrived with the students who owned them. That would be too bad if there no horses available for someone like me to ride, I would have to look into how that all worked.
As I returned to the dorm I stopped in my tracks for a moment to take it in. I wondered why it was such a different architectural style from the rest of the buildings. It looked to be from an earlier period than the rest of them, but my knowledge of architecture was practically nil, so I couldn’t be sure. I was just standing there idly, when my eye wandered up to my own window and I briefly caught a glimpse of a figure moving behind the glass.
It was my window, wasn’t it? Top floor, end of the hall – there was no doubting it. Was that a man’s face that had been looking out from my window? I was momentarily frozen, but I recovered almost instantly and quickened my pace towards the entryway. The figure had disappeared so quickly I couldn’t even be sure I had seen it. Who was it? Had my roommate arrived? Was that her father, accompanying her as my mother had accompanied me? The figure had looked too young to be the father of a girl my age: perhaps it was my roommate’s brother. Either way, I was very eager and anxious to find out who was in my room. I didn’t like the idea that some stranger was there unattended with all my worldly belongings. I think I had even left my dirty clothes from yesterday on the floor. This was horrifying – I had to get up there as soon as I could!
I walked briskly to the elevator and pressed insistently on the buttons, but it didn’t seem to be coming. If I were one of the only students here, what was keeping it? Finally it arrived and I was bursting with anticipation and nearly went mad waiting for it to make its creaky, slow ascent. I reached the top floor and did a little skip/sprint down the hall to my room.
The door was closed. They were there in my room with all my things with the door closed!
I didn’t know whether to knock, or just to let myself in. I pressed my ear to the door and listened. I could hear no one.
“Hello!” I tried to sound cheery as I rapped lightly on the door.
No response. I turned the key in the handle and pushed the door to my room back and stepped in to confront or meet or greet whomever I might find inside.
But it was empty.
Somebody had been in here! I had seen them! I had, hadn’t I?! I stood in the middle of the floor and turned slowly in a circle surveying the room. Who had been in my room? And why? Was anything missing? Nothing seemed out of place. I had nothing of value to anyone else anyway. Except the check! The blank check! Had someone overheard my mother giving that to me and come to my room to look for it? I ripped a volume of Shakespeare down from the shelf and thumbed through all the pages until the check fluttered out onto my lap. So it wasn’t that. Then why would someone break into my room? It hadn’t been the cleaning lady I had seen, it was definitely a man.
Sweat was trickling down my forehead and my shirt was sticking to me. Although the room was cool the humidity outside was oppressive and I flopped back down on my bed and tried to pull myself together. Had I been imagining things? Had it been a mere trick of light and shadow playing on the glass of my window? Was I just plain crazy?
Suddenly a man’s voice cut through my bewildered thoughts. “I’m sorry to have frightened you. I wasn’t completely certain you could see me. Very few people can.”
I bolted upright. My heart stopped dead.
There was a young man standing in front of the door, which automatically locked when shut. Older than me, but young. Perhaps twenty five. I couldn’t see all of him at first, for the adrenaline coursing through me had given me tunnel vision and I was locked solely onto his translucent, sea green eyes. As the rest of him came into view, I saw that those jewel-like eyes were set in an almost alabaster face, with a fine straight nose and sculpted jaw with sharp cheekbones. His hair was longish, and jet-black and combed back in an unfamiliar fashion. I was struck by how handsome he was and hardly noticed that his clothes were not of this century, but rather the early nineteenth.
Then, he was extending his hand to me and smiling kindly. I suppose that my heart must have started beating again, for I had not yet died nor even fainted.
“I would have presented myself in a much less alarming manner if I had been sure you could see me. I am Stefano. What is your name?”
Seeing as though I was incapable of even processing what was happening in that moment, it was hardly surprising that I had also been rendered incapable of speaking.
“Permit me,” he said as he reached out and took one of my hands in both of his, turned it over, and kissed the back of it. His touch was light as air, his lips on the back of my hand were almost imperceptible. A warmth like I had never experienced before flooded me and I felt calm and safe.
“Catherine,” I managed to whisper.
“I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, Lady Catherine.”
I smiled with fear and bewilderment.
“What…? How did you get in?” I asked and I noticed that he seemed to absorb more light than he reflected. “Are you the ghost?” I inquired tentatively, my voice nearly catching in my throat on the word “ghost.”
He chuckled softly to himself then took a breath before he spoke. “What is a ghost?” he shook his head, smiling. “I suppose you could call me that. I prefer apparition.”
I realized then that he spoke with some sort of European accent.
“Where are you from? How did you...”
My eyes were locked on his. They were so clear, so deep, so kind, his eyes. I felt like I was floating in a dream or under a spell and I wanted him to gather me up in his arms and kiss me like I’d read about it in romance novels.
“I come with this castle,” he began. “This was my castle back in Italy. I was a relatively minor Duke – a title I had inherited from my father, who had died when I was a young boy. I lived here with my mother and my uncle, who was my protector until I came of age. I was betrothed, when I was quite young, to a girl whom my mother and my uncle thought would make an astute match, both politically and financially. We were not in love and did not wish to marry, although we did become very close as friends. As I got older I eventually did meet a young girl, and I did fall in love with her and I did wish to marry her, but...” his expression clouded and his brow tensed, “there was this bar already against us, you see. My betrothed was sympathetic and even tried to help me in my terrible predicament, but before we could make any real plans the plague swept over the continent. My love was one of the first victims in our duchy. She was a servant, you see, and lived at my castle because she was in my employ. When she fell sick….” He turned his head from me and clenched his jaw. “When she fell sick, I wasn’t told right away. My uncle and my mother had her put out of the house. When I did eventually find out, I flew to retrieve her. I found her alone, in an empty cowshed on the outskirts of town, filthy and wet from the rain, covered in the boils already…I picked her up and threw her over my shoulder and rode as fast as I could in the downpour. She was dead before we reached my castle. I knew she would be,” he smiled sadly, “but I at the very least wanted her to die in a warm bed with someone who had loved her dearly by her side, so I had to try anyway. My mother was hysterical and screamed that that girl would kill us all: she and my uncle and the servants who hadn’t already, fled the castle. It turned out she was right. I myself came down with it very quickly and died a young man.” He turned to me and shrugged in sad resignation.
There was silence as his last words hung in the air. I wanted to reach out to him and take his hands in mine and say comforting things to him, but even though I felt like I had known him all my life, he was in fact a stranger to me. And besides, it was all very surreal and I couldn’t be a hundred per cent certain that it was even happening at all. At any
rate, I could think of nothing sufficient to say.
“But how is this your castle?” I asked finally. “You said it was yours, but we’re in America…”
“Ah, yes,” he seemed glad to be distracted from the story of his lost love and his own death and I was relieved. “After it was known that plague had entered the walls, no one would come near the place for years. It stood empty and abandoned until a gentleman as wealthy as he was eccentric decided to lay claim to the place. He had it dismantled brick by brick and shipped over to the new world in pieces. He had it rebuilt here, with much modification I might add, and he lived in it until his death. He had no heirs, and so bequeathed the building and the grounds to a young girls’ educational society that made it all into the school you are now enrolled in, with classes held on the lower floors and pupils residing on the upper floors, as you are now. Over the years, the school grew in prestige, it expanded, more buildings were added, the grounds landscaped, until it became something resembling its present state.”
“And you came over with the bricks on a ship?” I smiled to think of it.
“I did! I had never been to sea before as a mortal, and I’m quite glad of it! Watching the men suffer with the seasickness...not something I regret never experiencing!”
“But what happened to your...lady?” I wondered if her ghost was still with him, also snooping around my room when I was absent.
He looked at me very strangely then. He seemed quite at a loss for words as he narrowed his eyes at me and I was worried that I had upset him.
“I never met her soul again,” he said finally. “I suppose she was at peace and so proceeded on. I’m glad for it.”
Again there were no words that could suffice. Did he still carry a torch for this girl who had lived and died over a hundred years ago? Or had he healed? I wanted to know more, but I didn’t like to press him in case the memory was too painful.
“Anyway, I most humbly regret having troubled you. You were the first sign of life to appear here since school finished for the summer several months ago and I was eager to meet you.”
“Oh no!” I smiled. “You haven’t troubled me at all!” Then it occurred to me, “Have you been here before? In my room, I mean? I thought I saw you last night in the lightning but I couldn’t be sure if I was dreaming it or not.”
“Ah yes: me. You seemed very distressed and unhappy when you arrived, and yet when you were left alone your face changed and though you still had much sadness about you, you looked very beautiful in your sadness. I was disturbed in the night by the electrical charges of the storm, and so I came to check on you…I shouldn’t have, but please understand I only meant well; I would not harm you or interfere with you at all, and anyway I couldn’t. I am not of the...physical realm as you are. You understand?”
“Yes,” I nodded. He watched over me last night, I thought and I felt so calm and safe and content that I never wanted him to leave.
As if he had forgotten and now remembered himself, he abruptly jerked back into a more formal attitude and he said suddenly, “Lady Catherine, I am afraid that I interrupted your lovely walk through the gardens and I shall now bid you adieu, so that you might continue.”
“No it’s alright, I was already on my way back…” I protested, but he had already gone. Melted into air, into thin air, as if he had never even been there at all.
CHAPTER 3
There have been a few, very rare, occasions in my life when I was able to control my dreams. Within the dream itself, I was aware that I was dreaming and was able to go on the most incredible adventures. Whatever my heart desired was at my beck. After meeting Stefano I felt as though I had just awoken from some such lucid dream. The feeling of warmth and the pleasure and the joy of being in command of a fantastical world was the same. I don’t think I had ever in my life even believed in ghosts before. I had never seen any evidence of them, anyway, and didn’t believe any of my friends’ over-dramatic accounts of them. But he had said, “What is a ghost?” What did that mean? And that he preferred to be called an “apparition?” He had mentioned that his lost love had proceeded on to the next place – what did that mean? And why hadn’t he?
All this and more I pondered the next day as I wandered the grounds on that sultry afternoon. I found myself at the rose garden again, sitting on the little stone bench in the midst of the most intoxicating aromas. I remember my mother once complaining that roses so rarely had scent anymore, because they were bred for other qualities such as color and hardiness, and that the exquisite perfume had been neglected. These must have been some varieties of old-fashioned roses, because their scent was strong and permeating. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply.
Did something just rustle one of the bushes over there?
Hopefully I looked, but could see nothing. Was it him? Had he followed me here? If he had, why couldn’t I see him? And where did he go when he just vanished?
“Stefano?” I called tentatively lest someone should see me and think I was a loon for talking to myself.
But there was no response and no more rustling in the bushes. It must just have been a squirrel or a bird. Disappointment replaced the reverie which had buoyed me up since yesterday afternoon, and then the depression I had been suffering all summer, like a weight under my rib cage, returned and pressed down on me. I spent much of the afternoon in a kind of purgatory, wandering around the school grounds feeling lonelier than ever. Tired and listless, I eventually returned to my room to seek distraction in a book.
I sighed heavily as I pushed open the door to my room.
“Hello!” Stefano leapt up from my desk as I entered the room and bowed low to me.
At the sight of him, the weight in my chest lifted as rapidly as it descended and I was cheered once more.
“I was wondering,” he began cordially, “if I might perhaps have the pleasure of your company again.”
He was so handsome and his smile so sincere it was all I could do to keep myself from swooning. Why were there not any men like this in the world anymore? Maybe there were, but I was unlikely to meet them at high school – public or private.
“Of course!” I smiled gladly back at him, so happy to be rescued from the gloom. “I’ve just been for another walk and I was going to come back and maybe read something or have a nap,” I explained.
“Then please - do not let me interrupt,” he said as if he were going to leave again straight away.
“Oh no no – that’s not what I meant. I meant I had nothing to do really, so I’m very glad to see you!”
I suppose that in his time reading a book was indeed “something to do” and he still regarded it as such.
“Very good, then.” He sat back down after I had sat on the bed.
I noted his clothing now. He was dressed in breeches and boots as if for riding, with a double breasted frock-coat and high collared shirt with a perfectly tied cravat.
“We only met yesterday and you know I spent the entire encounter talking about myself and I never once asked you anything about you,” one corner of his mouth turned up in a sly smile.
“Oh!” I laughed nervously, “There’s really not much to tell!” I felt like the most boring person in the world sitting next to an early nineteenth century ghost.
“Where did you come from? Where is your family?” he encouraged me.
“Do you know what a lottery is?” I began as I wrinkled my nose flinchingly.
I poured out to him the whole story of how I had been torn from my friends and the house I had grown up in and the life I had known. I told him about the pain of life as a lonely, bored teenager living with her parents in a Florida retirement community. And I finished with a description of being a girl all alone in a big stone castle that had once belonged to an Italian Duke.
His green eyes were regarding me with great sympathy, but it was precisely that sympathetic look that prompted me to say with shame, “I’m sorry. It all sounds so self-pitying. There are people in the world who are starving or wh
ose loved ones are dying and the worst thing that happened to me was that my parents got rich and sent me to a fancy school.” I looked down at the scratchy coverlet on my bed.
“Hmm,” he said thoughtfully. “No, what I extracted from your story is that you are a girl whose home and friends and family and roots mean more to you than money. That the things that were the most dear to you cannot be replaced with material comforts. And that you have great feeling and are very sensitive. But also very self-aware and subsequently not self-pitying at all.”
“That’s a nice way to put it. Thank you,” I said very quietly, grateful for his compassion.
“But that is only your recent history. What else? What are your interests? Your tastes? Your hobbies?”
“Well, up until a few years ago I was very much into ballet. I loved ballet and had dreamed of becoming a professional dancer, but as soon as I got into doing pointe work it became rather obvious that I was not cut out for it!” I smiled. “Big feet, long toes, bad arches…” I smiled and shrugged. “I’ve always loved books and literature,” I continued. “I’m hoping to maybe get into riding here. There are stables, but I don’t have a horse.”
“I was a very skilled horseman!” he said proudly. “I loved to ride. And I had a beautiful country to do it in. I don’t think I was ever quite as happy as I was when I was alone on horseback. Have you ever been to Italy?” he asked me.
“No. I’d love to go. It looks like a dream world in photos and on TV.”
“Oh it is. It’s so magnificent. There’s nothing like it. The quality of the sunlight is even different there. It’s magic. I miss it a great deal.”
“Can’t you go back?” I asked tentatively.
“My soul is in these bricks,” he said by way of an explanation. I didn’t quite know what that meant, but I was worried that Stefano’s ghostly nature was a bit of a sensitive subject, like an illness or a genetic defect, and that I shouldn’t press him for answers.
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