“On the idea that we should avoid the possibility of children at all cost?”
He sighed. “You asked me to have faith. You cannot have faith without hope. And perhaps this is ours.”
She leaned against him, moving in unison with him, rocking in a slow easy rhythm so that the water sloshed back and forth but never spilled. She looked at it and smiled. “Maybe we won’t make a mess of things, after all.”
* * *
Leola sat before her dressing table and brushed her dark hair. There were a few strands of silver weaving their way through the mass. More and more all the time it seemed. Reaching up with one hand, she toyed with a cluster of them at her temple. She could have it dyed. There were ways, of course, but it rarely looked natural and always did damage.
“They are beautiful,” John said, coming to stand behind her and covering her hand with his. “Why do they worry you so?”
“I am not a young woman. Not anymore. I should be angry at you, you know? You wasted my best years,” she said, but the statement was softened with a smile and lacked any heat.
“Surely not your best,” he said. “You are a woman in your prime.”
She laughed scoffingly. “The prime of what? No. Not my prime. Not quite my middle years, I hope. But certainly there are more lines, more silver hairs and flesh not nearly as firm and supple as it once was.”
“You are as gorgeous now as the day I met you… and while I did waste a considerable amount of time, not so much that we are destined for a platonic dotage together,” he protested. “And I might point out, that you’ve wasted some time as well. Were it not for your unilateral decision to postpone our nuptials, we’d be married tomorrow and embarking on that life together a bit earlier. “
Leola sighed sadly. “It wasn’t because I wanted to. Adelaide and Eldren will need us tomorrow. I cannot say how or why I know that, only that I do. Our presence here is vital to their very survival, I think. Are you terribly disappointed?”
“I am,” he agreed with a wicked grin. “Heartbroken and despondent. There is only one cure for this terrible pain.”
His overly dramatic tone prompted more laughter from her. It was a strange thing, to suddenly discover the playful side of his personality. For years, he’d been so somber and serious. For a split second, jealousy reared inside her. Had he been this way with his first wife? Had he joked and played and teased in such a manner? Leola shoved the thought aside. It was unworthy of being entertained. He had loved his first wife as he should. And now he would love her, as he should. Comparing the two would only lead to misery and discontent.
“And what is it that would free you of such agony?” She asked.
He leaned forward and kissed her neck, his lips trailing hotly over her flesh until she shivered. Then he reached for the ties of her dressing gown. “It’s a very long story,” he said. “We should make ourselves comfortable on the bed to discuss it further.”
Her lips quirked upward in reluctant amusement. “You are not nearly as sly as you imagine.”
“But am I persuasive? I don’t care if I fool you, Leola, so long as we both get what we want in the end,” he confessed.
They would. She would make certain of it. Shrugging off the crimson silk of her dressing gown, she rose to her feet. With one gentle tug, the ties that held her nightrail together at the shoulders slipped free and the silk slithered over her skin until it puddled on the floor. Naked entirely, she faced him. “The bed might be more comfortable, but there’s better light here, if you wish to enjoy the view.”
“You are a wicked woman, Leola.”
“I should certainly hope so.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was early morning. Breakfast had been laid on the sideboard in chafing dishes. The staff were all bustling about in their finest clothes, loading onto the backs of wagons and carts that had been drafted into service to ferry them along. Some were singing, others were laughing. Adelaide watched them and felt a stirring in her breast. They were happy, but for many of them, Cysgod Lys was their home. Their parents had served there and it was their inheritance of a sort, to work in the same house for the same family.
Her maid entered then, somber and quiet. “My lady, are you certain you don’t have need of me this morning?” Dyllis asked, her face etched with concern.
“I’m certain, Dyllis. I will see you this afternoon, after your party. There is nothing that cannot wait until then. You should enjoy the service, enjoy the food, and I do believe there will be dancing… and I know there’s a footman who you’ve been flirting with,” Adelaide teased.
The maid gaped at her, her mouth opening and closing in a comically fish-like manner. “I didn’t—I wouldn’t—that’s not at all, my lady!”
“Then it should be,” Adelaide responded reproachfully. “What is a party for if not for dancing and flirting? Enjoy it, Dyllis. You’ve earned it, after all. This is a reward for all the hard work you’ve done. For the hard work you have all done!”
Dyllis smiled. “Yes, my lady. I shall endeavor to relax and enjoy myself… and not think of things that are done or undone here at Cysgod Lys.”
Adelaide hooked her arm through the maid’s and walked her to the door. “As it should be. Go. Be merry and bright.”
As the last of the servants exited the house, the silence of it, the utter quiet and stillness of it was disturbing to her. It was unnatural. Preternatural. Even as that word hummed in her brain, she felt that slight shift in the air, that strange sensation of things moving about her. Then the shadows on the wall leapt and twisted in a way that could have nothing to do with a change in the light. The hair raised at the nape of her neck and the overwhelming sensation of not being alone swept through her.
“Parlor tricks and nonsense,” Adelaide called out with false bravado. “I’m not afraid. I won’t be cowed by you, witch!”
The door opened and Leola joined her then. “You feel it, don’t you?” The question was uttered quietly, not precisely a whisper but definitely circumspect.
“I do,” Adelaide replied. “It’s easy enough to ignore when there is a houseful of servants and other people about. But when it’s just us—she’s choosing not to hide right now. She wants us to know she’s here, to feel her and to fear her power.”
Leola nodded. “It’s more than that. It’s like she’s circling us, like two fighters getting ready to square off. There’s a sense of… well, anticipation, I suppose.”
Adelaide considered that carefully. It was true enough. She wanted an end, whatever the outcome, she needed it to no longer be looming over her. “Then let’s get on with it, shall we?”
Leola took a deep breath. “Do you have the vials?”
Adelaide reached into the pocket of her skirt and retrieved the two small vials of her blood. They were small, silver filigreed vinaigrettes used for smelling salts. She’d cut her thumb that morning and filled them. The silence in the house was suddenly gone. Wind whipped along the corridors, whipping the curtains to and fro as doors slammed along the upper floors.
Eldren and Lord Mortimer appeared then, coming from deeper within the house. From the implacable expression on Eldren’s face, Adelaide could tell he was unimpressed with Igrida’s theatrics.
“To the cellars then,” he suggested as he neared them.
“Yes,” Adelaide agreed. “it’s time.”
Together, the four of them slowly made their way toward the cellar entrance. The stairs were still littered with rubble and debris from the explosion that had very nearly killed Eldren only weeks earlier. Thinking of it thusly, realizing that it had been such a short time when so much had happened in the interim, gave her a start. Had it really taken her so little time to fall so deeply in love with her husband? And to find her courage?
Three months earlier she had been terrified of her own shadow, hiding from her father’s disapproval, her stepmother’s bitterness and censure, and the judgement of all of society. Now, she was preparing to face off against an ancient e
ntity armed with nothing but a vial of her own blood. It sounded positively insane, as if it were she rather than Frances who should be locked away in an asylum.
Lord Mortimer had obtained lanterns for them and Eldren took one in his left hand and reached for her with his right. Placing her hand in his, Adelaide allowed him to lead her down into the dark, dank below. As she reached the bottom step, she didn’t hesitate. She turned to her left and everyone followed suit.
“How do you know?” Eldren whispered.
Adelaide smiled softly, “I do not know. I simply feel and allow it to guide me. That is the thing Leola has taught me above all else, to trust my feelings.”
“Then lead on, my wife. Let us bring this to an end.”
Placing one foot in front of the other, Adelaide traversed the narrow corridor. It was dark, damp, with a foul odor of decay. There were sounds in the darkness, the scurrying of rats, the tapping sound of insects’ legs on the stones. Beyond that, there was the whispering, the rattling of voices that should have long since been silent. The dead were with them, closing in on them with every step they took.
Behind her, she heard Madame Leola murmuring softly. It was a language she recognized though she herself could not speak it. Rom. Only on rare occasions had she heard it from her mother. As a child, when she’d been very ill, her mother had sat beside her bed all night murmuring those same words. It was strangely comforting, Adelaide thought.
In the midst of all the other smells, there was another one. Frances’ cloying perfume. “Hold the lantern high, Eldren,” she said.
He did so, and revealed a small space, an alcove carved into the stones, that was a feminine bastion in the ugly darkness. Several cushions were on the floor and a rug. There was also a small altar and shelves and tables bearing bottles and jars of heaven only knew what.
“So this is where Frances conducted her spells,” Leola murmured. “I had wondered how she kept her secret.”
“There must be another way in,” Eldren said. “She never passed by me when I was down here.”
“There are many ways in and out,” Adelaide said. “But yes, there is one tunnel that leads to the outside and that is what she used. Her walks and morning rides were nothing but a fabrication to cover her true actions.”
Even Leola frowned at the very specific knowledge that Adelaide seemed to be acquiring in that space. “How can you know?” The mystic demanded. “This is more than feelings or instincts.”
Adelaide frowned. “It seems as if the closer I am to the seat of Igrida’s power, the more my own is enhanced. That is a good thing. It gives us an advantage, I hope, but it’s terrifying nonetheless.”
“No. It’s fate,” Leola said. “It’s why she fears you. Power is not created. It exists. If you have more, she has less. It is balance.”
“And when she’s destroyed?” Eldren asked. “Where does this power go then?”
Leola said nothing, but her silence spoke volumes.
She didn’t want to be burdened with such power. She didn’t want it within herself nor did she want the veil it might draw to her throughout her life. But in the end, it wasn’t a choice. What she wanted was insignificant in the grander scheme of things. For the sake of those she loved, she had to put aside her own feelings. “It doesn’t matter,” Adelaide said. “It has to happen regardless.”
Moving deeper along the corridor, the other three followed close on her heels. Shadows flitted, moving in a frenzied way. They weren’t trying to stop them, but that didn’t make them allies. In the distance, she could see the dark, round shape of the well, and before it was a great, dark mass. Hissing, spitting like a cat, it raised its hand like talons and was ready to attack.
Adelaide reached into her pocket, closing her hand over the small silver encased bottle. Her blood. Igrida’s blood. It was the key to all of it, the key to ending the misery of over six hundred years.
“Stand down,” she called out.
The thing screeched at them, opening it’s mouth as if it were a great and gaping maw. There were no teeth, but black muck, just as she’d seen in her room that night, oozed from its lips.
With the vial in her hand, Adelaide flicked the small clasp that would open it. She felt the cold, thick liquid on the tip of her finger and prayed it would be enough. No sooner had that thought entered her mind, than the thing lunged forward. It loped like a hulking beast as it ran at her, seeming to pull the very shadows from the floor beneath it, becoming darker, larger, more menacing as it moved.
Eldren stepped forward, putting her behind him. It knocked him out of the way, sending him crashing into the wall. The thing then grasped her, locking it’s elongated fingers about her throat and squeezing. Adelaide lifted her hand smeared the blood from her finger onto what should have been flesh, but felt like leather over rotting wood. The creature, for that was what it was, screeched in anger and pain. It was not Igrida, merely a form she borrowed, a thing she’d crafted from the broken bodies of those she’d destroyed.
It retreated, merging back into the shadows from whence it had came, melting into them as it disintegrated once more.
“She’s in the well… and we need to get her out.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Eldren held the lantern aloft, peering into the dark, cylinder of the well. He’d have rather walked across broken glass that climb down in that small, dark space. But of all the people present, he was the one most capable of getting in and out of it. He heard a rustling sound and glanced over his shoulder. Adelaide and Leola were both removing their petticoats.
“What the devil are you doing?”
“The well isn’t so deep you’d require a rope to get in and out, but you will need a something with which to move her remains,” Adelaide said simply. “And it’s best if you don’t touch them with your bare hands.”
“I have no particular desire to do so, at any rate.”
Leola rolled her eyes as she held out her petticoat to him. “If any of her flesh, what remains of it were to transfer to you, or get upon your clothes that you wear away from here, it would render this all for naught. We must seal her body into the earth on the moor. Whatever earthly remains still persist, nothing can be allowed to remain.”
Taking the undergarment, Eldren lowered himself over the side. The well, if it was such, had been designed almost with steps. Every few feet was a stone that jutted out and provided purchase for him. It made him think that the space had served a different purpose altogether. Was it older than he’d suspected? Roman in origin perhaps? Could it have been a bath at some point? Only eight feet deep or so, and with the steps, it seemed likely. It had long since dried, however.
Kneeling on the spongy earth at the bottom, he used petticoat from Madame Leola to scrape the dirt back. He found her skull first. A tangle of matted hair and a sunken, leathery face with empty eye sockets. It seemed to stare up at him mockingly as he shivered at the horrifying sight.
“Toss down the other petticoats,” he called.
The white fabric flitted down like a ghost. Carefully, Eldren scooped out handfuls of dirt, using the now stained fabric. Each one, he placed carefully on Adelaide’s donated petticoat. When the body was freed, he carefully lifted it, moving it one slow agonizing inch at a time until he could roll it and the dirt up inside it. He wrapped it double in what remained of Leola’s.
“Get the rug from Frances’ little haven of horrors,” he instructed.
Down in that pit, alone with the withered corpse of the body that had once housed Igrida’s wicked soul, Eldren felt strangely exposed and vulnerable. There was a strong sensation of not being alone down there. Then he felt it. A soft breeze against his cheek, it ruffled his hair almost like a caress.
Don’t make me hurt you.
That same insidious whisper from the previous night, the one that had taunted him in the corridor, was once more reverberating inside his mind.
“Leave me be,” he demanded.
“Eldren, are you all right?” Adel
aide called out from above.
“Fine,” he answered sharply. Reaching up, he tugged at his neckcloth until the knot slid free. Yanking it loose, he reached inside his shirt and placed his hand over the agate pendant. Touching it offered him a sense of peace, even in that dark place. Lifting it from inside his shirt, he held it up. “You cannot hurt me.”
The sound of cruel laughter buffeted him.
You foolish man! I can hurt you without ever touching you… there is someone now whom you care for more than yourself.
Eldren felt a moment of panic. “Hurry up with that blasted rug! And Leola, if you have another one of those magical necklaces, put it on Adelaide right now.”
Apparently, Lord Mortimer had already fetched it because it was being lowered over the side as he asked for it. It was the final layer around the remnants of a once living soul. Lifting it up carefully, he passed it carefully to Lord Mortimer and then climbed out after.
As the body was lifted free of the pit, wind howled down the corridors and those shadows that had flitted to and fro before now coalesced into something dark and dense. Each step they took they were battling the wind, but not only that. The earth itself seemed to be sucking at their feet, hindering their progress.
“Adelaide, find the way out of here,” he called out.
There was no response. Eldren spared a glance at her and found her facing into the wind that seemed to have come from nowhere. Her arms were wide, her head was thrown back and her eyes were wide open and completely white, just as Madame Leola’s had been that night during the seance.
“What’s happening?” Eldren demanded of the mystic.
Madame Leola shook her head and called out, her voice barely audible above the howling of the unnatural wind. “I do not know! But I fear it does not bode well!”
* * *
On the moor, Warren dug. It wasn’t the most heroic of tasks, but it was one that needed to be done. Eldren had explained to him that they would have to find Igrida’s bones and remove them to the moor where she could be bound forever and that meant digging a grave. He wasn’t fit for the other tasks. The idea of searching subterranean chambers for ancient bones made him cringe. Of course, the idea of being on the moor made him cringe, as well. But at least there he was outside, he could feel the air on his skin and could draw it deeply into his lungs. Of course, there were downsides to his chosen chore.
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