Spider Light

by Sarah Rayne

  She would have to hide. Quire’s park was quite big and there were lots of trees and shrubberies, but Simon and Thomasina knew every inch of the parkland because they had grown up and played their games here. Maud shuddered away from the thought of what kind of horrid games those two might have played as children.

  Then she saw the little path that turned off the carriageway and wound into the trees and beyond the copse, and she remembered the cottage Thomasina’s father had built to house workers on the estate, and Thomasina nowadays rented to that poacher–the man everyone said was a scandal and a disgrace. Sullivan, that was his name. Irish. He was a poacher and probably a thief. He had a daughter a few years older than Maud; Maud did not know her, but she thought she had a peculiar name. Something to do with hedgerows or meadows or something.

  She stepped back into the deeper shadows, pulling her cloak more firmly around her, so that no glimmer of paleness would show from her gown. Yes, there went the footsteps again. Somebody was definitely creeping through the darkness behind her.

  Maud bit down a gasp of fear, and began to run down the narrow path. The soles of her boots skidded in the soft wet ground several times and low branches caught at her hair like snatching goblin fingers, but she was beyond caring. She had no idea if Mr Sullivan or his daughter would hide her, and she could not think how she would tell them what had happened, but surely they would not turn her away.

  Here was the cottage, directly ahead of her. She had a pain in her side from running, but she was almost there and she was almost safe.

  The cottage was in darkness. Maud supposed she should have expected this, but somehow the sight of the curtained windows brought her to an abrupt halt, and doubt rushed into her mind. Could she really hammer on a stranger’s door at this hour–it must be well past midnight by now–and say she was being pursued by two mad creatures who did terrible things to her body?

  She glanced back nervously; there was no one in sight, but she could hear her pursuer coming along the path. Maud darted around the side of the cottage, keeping well in the shadows, and there, at the back of the building, was a little huddle of outbuildings jutting out from the main part of the cottage. Wash-house and privy, most likely. Would they be locked?

  The first one was locked, and Maud, gasping with terror, hearing her pursuer coming along the path, moved to the other one. Wash-house, was it? Coal shed? It did not matter because its lock was a brittle flimsy affair, and it snapped when she pushed against it. The door swung in and Maud tumbled thankfully inside, closing the door and leaning back against it.

  It was the cottage’s wash-house. It had a stone floor and brick walls, and on one side of the door was a big mangle with a huge copper boiler on the other side, nastily crusted with green where the pipe came out of it. Other than this there was only a deep sink under the little window; the window itself was a bit grimy and cobwebby so the outside looked blurred as if there was thick fog everywhere.

  She was shaking so badly she was almost afraid her ribs would break, and there was a pain in her chest from running along the path. But she kept her eyes on the door. Doors could be dangerous things; you never knew what might lie behind them.

  After a moment she managed to stop gasping for breath, and listened for the sound of her pursuer. Had he gone? No, here he came, walking quietly, but betrayed by the wet ground–she could hear his feet squelching in the mud. Her heart began to hammer against her ribs all over again. He would surely look in here, and he could not fail to see her.

  He was trying the other door–there was the impatient clicking of its latch, and then a soft creak as he pushed against it. Would he see the broken lock on this door? There was nowhere she could hide, but was there any way she could fool him by wedging the door closed? Maud looked frantically about her. Could she drag the mangle across the door? No, it was much too heavy for her, and even if she could manage it, it would take too long and he would hear her.

  There was a scrape of sound outside, and Maud gasped and shrank back against the wall. As she did so there was a movement at the window, and a face appeared in the blurry oblong. It pressed against the pane, the features distorted and terror engulfed Maud so overwhelmingly that for a moment the dank room spun sickeningly around her. She bit down a gasp of fear, because if he heard her, if he realized she was here…

  But he already knew she was here. Even if he could not see her, he would have sensed her presence in the way predators sensed the presence of their victims.

  The latch clicked and the door swung open. The rainy light lay across the floor, and when Maud slowly turned her head she saw the figure outlined in the doorway–an impossibly tall figure it seemed to be, wrapped in a long dark cloak, the hem swishing around booted feet.

  The figure stepped inside and spoke. It was not Simon after all, it was Thomasina.

  In a perfectly ordinary voice, Thomasina said, ‘My dear child, what on earth are you doing here? Let me take you home.’

  Thomasina spoke as if nothing very unusual had happened, and for a moment Maud stared at her and wondered if she had dreamt that firelit bedroom and Simon’s body suffocating her.

  Then she said, ‘You pretended to be asleep, but you weren’t. You’ve been following me.’

  ‘Of course I followed you. You were not very subtle, Maud. Scrabbling in the wardrobe for your clothes, and getting dressed in the bathroom. Did you think I didn’t know what you were doing?’

  ‘I won’t go back to Quire House,’ said Maud, and was pleased to hear her voice sounded quite brave. ‘If you try to make me go back, I’ll scream for help.’

  ‘Scream away. There’s no one to hear you. Cormac Sullivan’s not very likely to be in his own bed at this hour of the night, and his daughter will be at Latchkill–she’s a nurse and she’s on night duty. So scream until your throat bursts: no one will hear you.’

  Maud had no idea if any of this was true, or if Thomasina was just saying it to keep her quiet.

  ‘And,’ said Thomasina, not giving Maud time to reply, ‘even if you did scream, and even if anyone did hear you, I have only to say you’re a young relative and your mind is a little disturbed; that I’m caring for you.’

  ‘No one would believe that,’ said Maud, but she knew people would believe it, because of who Thomasina was. Miss Forrester of Quire House. Important and rich and with that indefinable authority that everyone recognized and respected. Yes, people would believe Thomasina over Maud.

  As if she had heard this last thought, Thomasina said, ‘My poor child, of course people would believe you were disturbed. I would only have to tell them how I found you huddled in a dank wash-house, when all the time there’s a warm comfortable room for you at Quire House, and people there who love you and want you back. You’re not displaying much sanity at the moment, are you, Maud?’ She paused, and then said, in a soft, pitying voice, ‘You do know what happens to people who aren’t sane, don’t you?’

  Latchkill…The place of locked doors and barred windows…The place you must always avoid when it’s spider light…

  Maud said, ‘Yes, I do know. But I’m not mad.’

  ‘Of course not. But perhaps confused. And so you’d better come back with me and be properly looked after,’ said Thomasina. Incredibly there was a note of affection in her voice. She held Maud’s arm very firmly, and took her outside, pushing the door closed with her foot as she did so. Maud tried to resist but Thomasina’s hands were too strong. As they went back across the park Thomasina talked soothingly–something about soon being home and how no one needed to know about this absurd flight through the darkness.

  Maud, by this time sobbing with despair, scarcely heard her, but when Thomasina said, ‘Where on earth were you going anyway?’ she replied, ‘I was escaping from you. And Simon. I was running away because of what he did to me.’

  ‘Then you’re definitely a little mad,’ said Thomasina lightly. ‘Half the girls in the county would like my cousin to make love to them. He’s greatly admired. In fa
ct he’s considered quite a matrimonial catch. I was even thinking we might arrange for the two of you to be married. Wouldn’t you like that? Simon would, I know. Oh do stop crying, Maud, and don’t shudder like that. It would be a wonderful marriage; your father would be delighted. But we’ll talk about it properly in the morning.’

  As they went inside Quire House, Thomasina said, ‘Don’t try shouting to the servants, will you? We don’t want them knowing you’re a little disturbed. In a small place like this people do love to gossip, and gossip is never particularly kind anywhere. Within twenty-four hours the whole of Amberwood would be convinced you were a raving lunatic.’

  Maud thought: that’s quite true, but the real truth is that she’s afraid of people knowing what she and Simon did to me. She glanced at Thomasina; in the dim light of the passageway off the main hall, Thomasina’s eyes were wild, and she was frowning, as if she was making plans in her head. Her grip loosened slightly and Maud wondered if she dared attempt to get away. She could run back along the hall and out through the garden door again. But when she tried to remember if Thomasina had locked or bolted the door when they came in, she could not. And even if she ran as fast as she could, Thomasina would stride across the park again, as she had done earlier, and catch her.

  She thought Thomasina would take her back to the big bedroom overlooking the park, but when they reached the first floor, Thomasina hesitated.

  ‘The real worry now, Maud, is that for the moment I don’t think I can trust you not to run away again. And I don’t want you to do that, my dear. So not this room, I don’t think. It’s too near the main part of the house and there’s no lock on the door. So I’m afraid–yes, I really am afraid it will have to be the next floor.’ She glanced at the narrower stairs leading to the second floor. ‘But you’ll be perfectly comfortable up there.’ Again the smile. ‘I wouldn’t let you be uncomfortable,’ said Thomasina. ‘I think too much of you.’

  ‘Do you?’ said Maud, staring at her.

  ‘My dear girl,’ said Thomasina, ‘don’t you know I’m absolutely devoted to you?’

  CHAPTER TEN

  Donna and Don Robards had been absolutely devoted to each other. They had been all in all to one another and had not needed anyone else. Donna and Don, a single entity against the world. It had always pleased Donna to think of them in that way, and it pleased her now, even with Don dead.

  Within the family they had been Domina and Don. ‘So pretty,’ their half-Spanish mother had said when they were small. ‘The old names for lord and lady.’

  Their father, with his permanent round of meetings and reports and too much to do, had liked the names as well. He said they were echoes of almost defunct academic terms for a fellow of Oxford or Cambridge. Not that Domina and Don would need university careers; there would always be more than sufficient money for them to live comfortably without having to work at all. Trust funds were being set up, investments made…Domina and Don, fortune’s darlings.

  ‘And Domina is so good with her little brother,’ their mother told everyone, delighted with the timing of her children’s birth, perhaps even slightly smug at having managed a three-year gap between them. It was exactly right: it was wide enough for Domina to look after Don while they were small, but narrow enough for it to dwindle to nothing when they were grown up; to allow them to be friends.

  To the nearly four-year-old Donna, Don’s arrival in her world had been the most wonderful thing she had ever known. He was perfect, this small brother. She spent hours staring into his cot or his pram, sometimes stroking his face. From the very start she had fought his battles and flown into a rage if anyone criticized him. ‘Sweet,’ said their mother indulgently. ‘Domina is so protective of Don.’

  When Don reached his teens, people said he was spoilt and a bit selfish and lazy, but that often happened to the children of wealthy parents. Donna knew this to be untrue and mostly due to sheer jealousy. Don was not spoilt and he was not really selfish or lazy. You might perhaps say that different rules applied to him, and you might also add that you did not apply the rules for a carthorse to a thoroughbred.

  The simile of a thoroughbred pleased her–Don was sleek and aristocrat-looking, he was exactly like a thoroughbred. His hair was fair and silken, and he was slender and supple. In the summer holidays he lay in the garden of their house, just wearing cotton shorts. Donna usually joined him, pretending to read, but secretly watching him, and seeing how his skin gleamed with health. Once or twice he had asked her to rub sun-tan lotion over his back–he could never reach it all himself and he liked his tan to be even. His skin felt satiny and warm under Donna’s hands, and the scent of the lotion and the sun’s warmth and the masculine scent of his body blurred together in her mind. She spent a long time rubbing the lotion into his back, and when it was done she waited for him to say he would turn on his back so she could rub the lotion on his front, but he did not.

  Lack of money was not something Donna ever thought she would have to cope with, but when she was eighteen and Don was fifteen, their parents died and they had to cope with it very abruptly indeed.

  Donna was never sure, afterwards, how they got through that time. She had been grief-stricken, of course she had, but Don had been in pieces. He cried for hours over their parents’ death, flinging himself on his bed, not bothering to hide the sound of his sobbing. He pushed Donna away when she tried to put her arms round him, thinking this was the one time they should cling to one another.

  But Don had not wanted Donna’s arms. Leave him alone, he’d said. His life was in tatters, and he would never get over this, not if he lived to be a hundred. He wanted to die in this bed, now, tonight; he knew he would never be happy again. Dramatic. Even melodramatic if you wanted to be truthful. He had always been like that and he always got over it, but it had torn Donna apart to hear his grief.

  And then within days–days!–of the double funeral, they had been dealt a second blow. Their father, it seemed, had been teetering towards bankruptcy, and his business–outwardly so prosperous–had been on the verge of collapse for months.

  Donna listened to the solicitors who came to the house to talk to them, and had at first simply stared in blank incomprehension. No money? But that was utter nonsense; of course there was money, there was a great deal of money. Their father had been extremely wealthy–everyone knew that, said Donna. They had this house, cars, ritzy holidays. Her mother bought expensive clothes and jewellery–it was a joke within the family that even mundane things like tights or face flannels went on the Harvey Nichols account. Donna and her brother had both been to costly boarding schools; Don, only fifteen, was still at his school, of course. There were trust funds, investments, fat share portfolios, many of them intended to safeguard her and Don’s future. It could not be right that there was no money.

  But apparently it was right. As well as there being no money, there were a number of debts and business obligations to be met. There were salaries due to the people in her father’s company which had to be paid, said the solicitors solemnly. This house would have to be sold, and the cars and most of the furniture would probably have to go as well–there were some quite valuable pieces and one or two good paintings. There would have to be a proper valuation, of course; they would see to that as soon as possible. Unfortunately the house was heavily mortgaged and the bank would probably call in the debt fairly soon, but something might be salvaged.

  Well no, Donna and Don would not be thrown homeless into the world–of course they would not, said the solicitors, shocked at such an idea. A little money would have to be squeezed from somewhere, and a suitable place found for them to live. Unless there was anyone in the family who might take them in? Ah, there was not. No relatives? Oh dear, that was a pity. Well yes, they did appreciate that Donna was eighteen, and therefore an adult…Oh yes, she would almost certainly be regarded as Don’s legal guardian. And a modest house, or perhaps a little flat would somehow be managed for the two of them.

  Donna did not wa
nt these stupid smug men squeezing out money to buy a modest house or a flat for them to live in, and she did not want them computing income and selling things or knowing all the details of her father’s financial ineptitude. But she did not let them see this, and somehow she managed to control the cold furious rage that welled up inside her. She asked if her mother had been aware of the situation, and the solicitors hemmed and hawed and avoided her eye, and said, Well, possibly she might have, but they were not here to judge.

  It was instantly obvious to Donna that her mother had known all along. She had known all about the mounting debts and the tangled finances, and Donna, realizing this, hated her mother very fiercely indeed for continuing to expect expensive holidays and first-class travel and lavish entertaining. She hated her father as well, for continuing to provide all those things, and for not giving so much as a hint to Donna or Don. When Donna thought about her father’s deceit and her mother’s selfish extravagances she knew she would never forgive either of them, and she was very glad they were dead.

  She had politely told the solicitors that she and her brother would be perfectly all right. No, they did not need anyone’s help, thank you so much. They would manage. They did not want anyone finding somewhere for them to live; they would find their own place. Donna had already left school and would look after Don, who must, of course, finish his education. Two more years that would be.

  To herself she thought that even though they were financially out in the cold, at least she and Don still had each other.