Autumn

by Lisa Ann Brown

  The ghost in grey passed through Arabel’s body on its way to peer endlessly out the window and Arabel felt the chill of its passing within herself. The spectre continued her pacing and Arabel wondered at the futility of her quest – her own, and the spectre’s. Arabel was trying to keep the negative energy away and focus on what she’d come to do but it seemed to be proving harder each step of the way.

  And then Arabel shook her head. Such nonsense! She would do what she could and that was all she could do. The dead would have to be satisfied with that.

  Arabel washed and dressed and went down for breakfast.

  She was not surprised to see Eli already in the dining room, eagerly consuming hot porridge with cinnamon and a cup of strong tea. He took one look at Arabel and the welcoming light in his eyes dimmed.

  “You didn’t rest well?” Eli asked.

  “I did just fine until the dawn. And then two men tried to rape and kill me,” Arabel replied evenly.

  Eli started. “What?”

  “A dream. A nasty, nasty dream,” Arabel elaborated.

  The server came by and Arabel ordered the same as Eli and within minutes was eating the nourishing meal.

  “They’re not going to scare me away,” she continued, “although they think they’ll be able to.”

  “Were either of them the man we’re looking for?”

  Arabel shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. And that’s the strange part. Who are they and are they figments of my imagination, or a nightmare of events yet to come?”

  Eli was worried, Arabel could see it. His jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed.

  “Perhaps you should go to Chief Constable Bartlin after all,” Eli suggested but Arabel could tell it was only a half-hearted idea. Even Eli didn’t really think it would help solve anything. It would only create further trouble and shift the focus away from the important matter of finding the killer of Lady X.

  Arabel was about to say so when a wild-eyed young woman rushed into the dining room. Her eyes darted back and forth, scanning the room, panic in every motion.

  “My sister!” she cried loudly. “My sister Klara, she’s missing!”

  Several dining room patrons jumped to their feet to question the woman and a server motioned them away into the hall. Arabel felt her heart drop to her feet.

  “Oh no,” she whispered as a chill settled over her. “Already…”

  Eli put down his tea and got to his feet. “I’ll get the horses,” he said and exited quickly.

  Arabel finished the last two bites of her porridge. It had cooled but the cinnamon was so cheery that it seemed to serve as a rebuke against any semblance of complacency. How fanciful I have become, Arabel thought to herself. Let that brightness serve as a weapon, a resistance to this evil. Let my very fancifulness work toward my goal. Let this light protect me from the darkness of man, the mendacity of needless hatred and the coming horror of further murder.

  Arabel vowed to herself that she would not give in to the sorrow which threatened to overtake her and numb her abilities to observe, partake and share. You will not win, she threatened the grey swirling energy and she pushed back from the table, eager to help the townsfolk by joining in the search for the missing girl.

  Magpie Moor was desolate, to Arabel’s mind. It was a vast tract of open, peaty wasteland. High in latitude, the drainage was poor and the few houses who had dared to adorn the bleak vista looked as miserable as the grey sky with its spitting rain. Arabel and Eli joined a search party of sixty people, further broken down into groups of ten. All were on horseback which would enable them to scout farther distances. Back at the Rosewood Inn, others were moving over the grounds on foot with bloodhounds to look for anything the riders might miss.

  The sister of the missing girl wept openly as they rode and was in Arabel and Eli’s group of ten.

  “She just went out to check on our horses,” she said through sobs and Arabel’s heart went out to her in sorrowful solidarity.

  Another member of the group rode beside the woman and sought to comfort her but Arabel knew such comfort was a small and cold embrace and would do little to thaw the terror which consumed the woman. Arabel hoped that the nightmare she’d had earlier was not a vision of Klara’s sisters’ fate.

  “Spread out and search in pairs,” the man in charge yelled to the group and Arabel and Eli moved off in the direction he gestured them to.

  The moor was silent; it seemed bare of all creatures. The heath grew stoutly and seemed to be the only vegetation the landscape would allow. Whipsie’s broad back felt reassuring to Arabel and the roan seemed to be as determined as her rider to locate and rescue the missing girl.

  “She can’t have gotten far,” Eli said, a worried frown displacing his normally pleasant countenance. “She was only missing for less than half an hour before they galvanized the search crew.”

  “On horseback though…”Arabel trailed off. Eli nodded grimly.

  “Do you think it was planned? Or a crime of opportunity? If indeed, a crime has been committed and the girl hasn’t just wandered off and gotten lost,” Eli speculated.

  “I don’t think the girl got herself lost,” Arabel answered bleakly, wishing her intuition was not telling her something dreadful had already happened. It was at times like these that she cursed the fickleness of her abilities. Why couldn’t she see what she wanted to see, when she wanted to see it? It had always been like this; a flash of knowing here, a psychic vision there, but no way to tame or regulate what or when. It was frustrating to have so little control over her own abilities and perceptions.

  Arabel glanced at Eli. He returned her gaze, a question in his soft brown eyes.

  “Did we only meet yesterday?” Arabel asked and Eli smiled.

  “I think we met a long time ago,” was his response, and Arabel found herself smiling back.

  “Indeed,” she said.

  Nature seemed to conspire against the search party as the rain came down in a violent temper and thunder clouds rolled in to add to the fury. The thunder roared close to Arabel and while she normally enjoyed a good thunderstorm, she was usually observing from behind a paned glass window and not getting soaked on horseback. Lightning cracked the grey sky and darkness hovered though it was barely mid-day.

  Arabel and Eli encountered no one else from the search party as they traversed the moor. They stopped to rest the horses near a soggy bog and Whipsie turned her great eyes upon Arabel, as if beseeching her for a respite from the elements.

  “Sorry old dear,” Arabel said ruefully, “but I believe we’re out here for some time yet.”

  “We’ll have to turn back in the next hour, though, if we’re to make it back to Murphy’s by nightfall,” Eli interjected.

  Arabel started in surprise. She had completely forgotten they needed to return home tonight.

  “You have to get back to work,“ she mused, “and I need to sneak in quietly and hope my grandmother doesn’t know I’ve been running around The Corvids with a strange young man, completely un-chaperoned!” Arabel’s lips twitched in a sudden break of humour as she pictured Amelia Bodean searching the house for her and noticing the unslept-in bed.

  Eli grinned at Arabel. “I’ve seen your grandmother in town,” he drawled laconically. “She’s quite formidable.”

  “Yes,” Arabel agreed without hesitation, “that she certainly is.”

  They continued to search, only turning back when they encountered another pair of the party who also had come up with nothing. Discouraged, Arabel and the others led their mounts to the main meeting place and she noticed immediately that the mood was utterly desolate as no one had found any clues at all. Klara was still very much a missing person.

  Back at the Rosewood Inn, the mood was darker and impatience and anger seemed to be mounting. A large, rough man addressed the proprietor in the lobby.

  “How do we know you haven’t done something to the young lady?” he snarled.

  The proprietor looked aghast. “We run
a respectable establishment here, sir, and no one has ever gone missing from our grounds before! While we are truly saddened and upset, we are doing all we can!”

  The large man did not seem appeased and the general air was filled with a tension so thick that Arabel felt no one was safe. It was as if the grey swirling energy was baiting them, laughing at their efforts somehow. Arabel knew she and Eli had to leave, and soon, as events were going to take a darker turn, so she ordered food to take with them and quickly packed up her small haversack.

  The ghostly woman in grey was standing at the window, peering out anxiously.

  “Let me know if you see anything,” Arabel said to her wryly, and then turned and vacated the premises.

  A Cracked Reflection

  The ride back to Blue Jay Hollow was uneventful and Arabel and Eli spoke very little, each lost within their own respective thoughts.

  Arabel received no further intuitions in the matter of the missing girl, the dead woman, or the three mysterious men and the grey swirling energy. All Arabel knew was that she desired a hot bath and a good meal, and directly following those, the haven of her own, sweet bed. Arabel wondered if she was shallow, to be yearning for these small comforts when one girl had lost her life and another might very well be fighting for hers at this precise moment.

  Eli glanced at Arabel. She was frowning as she rode and her black hair was slicked to her forehead from the precipitation. She looked so young and vulnerable that he wanted to comfort her but there seemed to be nothing to say. Eli sighed and wished again that Klara had been located and that their inquiries about the grey eyed man would have yielded some answers. Unfortunately instead of enjoying answers, they now had more questions than they’d had prior to setting out upon their journey.

  Eli knew they were both tired of traveling, just as he knew they were both discouraged and worried. He wondered if it had all begun with the finding of Lady X or if something had been going on prior to that, some hidden intrigue only now coming to light. The thought jarred Eli. It rang within him as a very real possibility and despite how much the intuition disquieted him, he could not seem to let it go.

  “Do you think Lady X was the first?” he questioned.

  Arabel glanced over at Eli, as if remembering suddenly that she was not alone.

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” she responded slowly. “I’m not sure. Why do you ask?”

  “It’s been bothering me for some time now,” Eli admitted. “Perhaps the story of Lady X leaving her husband for her lover is all a lie. After all, who is her husband? Why has he not stepped forward to claim the body?”

  “A good question,” Arabel replied, wondering what the update from Chief Constable Bartlin would be.

  “And where’s her damn lover, then?”

  Murphy Estates came into view and Whipsie let out a delighted whinny.

  “Someone’s glad to be home,” Eli declared as they cantered toward the stable.

  The stable master spotted them immediately and came over to take the reins. Arabel dismounted thankfully and gave Whipsie a quick lump of sugar and a few strokes of appreciation before the stable master led the horses away for their rubdowns.

  Eli turned to Arabel once they were alone. “I can help you tomorrow evening if you like,” he offered.

  Arabel smiled. “Come for supper. My grandmother will be at her club tomorrow night so you can keep me company.”

  Eli smiled back. He put his hand on Arabel’s arm, tentatively. The colours jumped to life in front of Arabel’s eyes – the blue, the green, the red infused with pink. Arabel felt suffused with energy, and warm, as if blushing.

  “See you then,” Eli said lightly, affording her one of his slow honeyed grins before turning away to enter the stable and resume work.

  For a moment Arabel simply stood there, watching, as the colours slowly faded and Eli’s lanky frame shrank from view. When the colors had completely disappeared, she turned and made her way up the tree-lined drive to the main house to see Shelaine before venturing home. Arabel hoped she would get lucky with a quick visit with her friend and then, perhaps more importantly, be able to sneak back into the house undetected by her grandmother.

  Arabel was lucky. Incredibly lucky. Grandmother Amelia Bodean was in a prayer circle and not to be disturbed. Arabel knew ‘prayer circle’ was generally code for ‘inebriated’ so she was able to make it to her room without interrogation. She had yet to understand how a prayer circle was formed with just one participant but it was folly to question her grandmother and Arabel was not foolish.

  Morna, their housemaid, was a plucky, motherly woman given to gossip and exaggeration but today even she didn’t need to embellish upon the horror of the last day’s findings.

  “They say she was…forced, if you know what I mean,” she was saying now to Arabel as brushed out her long hair with a fancy silver paddle brush. “Poor thing. Glad she wasn’t innocent!”

  Arabel turned to look at Morna. “Who says this?” she demanded.

  “Why, everyone,” Morna replied, “and there’s not a one to claim her body, even! The Chief said he thinks her husband’s folk are from outside The Corvids, so who knows when they’ll claim the poor lass. Not that anyone rightly knows who or where that husband is, mind you, or where her own dear folk might be.”

  Morna worked at a resistant knot in Arabel’s shiny hair, pulling her head this way and that. She tsked under her breath. “What’ve you done to your hair, missy?” she queried. “You’re all in knots, and you, not sleeping in your own bed last night!”

  “Well it wasn’t what you think,” Arabel returned with a smirk, for even she knew the facts of life.

  Morna finished up the brushing without further salacious comment but she did send a few sidelong glances at Arabel before she went to draw Arabel’s bath. Clearly there was more to this story than she was being told. Morna sniffed, a little put out that Arabel didn’t want to confide her womanly adventures to her, seeing as she told Arabel all of the juiciest gossip and even if she thought she might get in trouble with the sharing, Morna never omitted the best details.

  “How long has the prayer circle been going on for this time?” Arabel asked.

  Morna let out a long suffering sigh. “Mrs. Johnston has been locked in the parlour for the best of two days now. We leave the supper trays outside the door.” Morna shrugged her sturdy shoulders. “I’m glad you’re home though, what with that girl from Magpie Moor gone missing and all!”

  “What have you heard of that?” Arabel asked sharply, unaware that word would have traveled so quickly through the townships.

  “She’s another one like the one from the Priory,” Morna said. “That’s the story I’ve been hearing.” She placed a fluffy white towel down beside the rim of the bathtub. “All these young women leaving their marriages – and not one of their scurvy lovers turning up to help figure it out or tuck them safely away!” Morna’s disgusted tone echoed Arabel’s own anger and the heat of it filled the room.

  Arabel gladly stepped into the warm, fragranced water and felt it close around her like a favourite blanket. Her tired limbs and cold skin finally felt warmed. Arabel leaned back as Morna went to the door, lighting a few candles to keep the darkness at bay. Arabel hoped she wouldn’t fall asleep and drown in the bath, as all of a sudden, she felt incredibly tired from the strain of the last few days.

  “Thank you, Morna,” Arabel said thickly before dunking her head under the water for a moment to warm her head. She lay soaking in the water for a long time, revelling in the warmth while thoughts swirled in her head like bees.

  Two girls in such a short time. How many more were there to come and was Eli correct that this had been perhaps going on for some time? Arabel thrust her mind back over the last year – who had moved away or disappeared or been unaccounted for? She thought of the Gypsies – who could ever track them? She made a mental note to ask Eli to question them, to see if any of their numbers had vanished without word, or if anything suspicious
had been going on in the last year or so.

  Arabel was curious about the Gypsies. She wondered what Eli’s parents were like. Did his mother share his long thick lashes and expressive almond brown eyes? Did Eli inherit his father’s lean, muscular build and softly curling brown hair? And where did those beautifully chiselled cheekbones come from?

  And then Arabel laughed out loud. How can I possibly be thinking of him now as some sort of romantic object? she chided herself. How absurd! Or not…

  I must be very tired, she reasoned to herself with a small smile.

  Arabel never felt this way about any of the young men she chanced to meet. No one in all her years had really interested her, even in the slightest. When Shelaine would go on and on about some new fellow, Arabel would roll her eyes and laugh at Shelaine’s dramatic posturing. Arabel herself had never experienced the pangs of infatuation. She’d only had one real kiss and that had been on a dare. It had proven to be a big letdown.

  The boy had been nervous and Arabel merely curious. He had moved in awkwardly to meet her lips and his hand upon her arm felt clammy. His breath tickled Arabel’s mouth and she had had to fight back the persistent urge to laugh. Arabel knew it wouldn’t do to laugh at the poor fellow when he seemed so earnest and desperate to kiss her. His lips had been soft but when they met hers, she’d felt no spark, no tingle, no anticipation or desire. All in all it had been a bore. Arabel confessed to Shelaine that it had been a massive letdown and she’d since felt no pressing need to repeat the experiment.

  Of course the boy who’d kissed her hadn’t had those cheekbones she so enjoyed looking at or those expressive brown eyes. Arabel smiled to herself and realized ruefully that the bath was getting cold. Reluctantly she leveraged her body up in the tub and pulled the drain. The water circled the drain, rushing down the pipes and emptying the tub. Arabel watched the water as it circled down and it appeared to turn to blood. Alarmed, Arabel looked away and then looked quickly back. To her relief the blood was gone. She shook her head, as if to clear it, unsure if this was a vision or a reality. Sometimes it was difficult to tell, the lines blurred back and forth so often for her.