The Witch of Willow Hall

by Hester Fox

  “You would have left me someday though. You would have gotten married and gone away and left me all alone.”

  “Oh, Emmy, I would never do that.” Though as soon as I say it I think of Mr. Barrett and shame flushes through me. “Besides,” I say, “one day you might have met a nice man and you wouldn’t want your older sister hanging about as you tried to kiss him, would you?”

  She screws up her face at the thought of kissing a boy and laughs. I smile too, though it’s difficult, knowing that she will never fall in love, never start a family of her own.

  “You don’t need to worry about me.”

  “But I do,” I say. Tears are welling up faster than I can blink them away. And then I finally ask the question that has tortured me, “Oh, Emmy, why did you do it? You must have known better. How could you have been so careless?”

  She regards me for a moment with her bottomless gray eyes, and then shrugs in my arms. “It was the little boy,” she says. “The little boy told me he would show me the mermaids.”

  I suck in a breath. “What little boy?”

  “The one in the water. He said he wanted a friend and that he would show me the mermaids if I was his friend.”

  She says it so matter-of-factly. A shiver runs down my spine. “Is the little boy like Wicked George? Can only you see him?”

  When Emeline was very young she had an imaginary friend who was always getting into trouble. George—or Wicked George, as he came to be known by Mother—was responsible for all sorts of things that were suspiciously like the kind of trouble little girls might get into. Could she have dreamed up a new imaginary friend that she never told me about?

  “How should I know if you can see him or not?” This line of questioning is obviously tiresome to her and she gives a little yawn, her chilly breath scented with pond water.

  I hesitate, wanting to hear more about this little boy, but I know better than to press Emeline on something she doesn’t want to talk about and risk her shutting down completely.

  She shrugs. “I thought I could get back out, that the boy would help me, but he didn’t. I didn’t mean to.”

  I can hardly breathe. “Oh, Emeline.”

  “You tried to find me, didn’t you? You came into the pond to try to find me.”

  “Yes,” I say. “I did.”

  “But I wasn’t there.”

  “No, you weren’t. Not until I was leaving.”

  She thinks on this for a moment. “John had to come pull you out.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I like John. He tried to help me.”

  “Yes, he did.” My breath catches as I wipe my eyes. “I like John too.”

  Emeline touches my cheek with her cold little finger. “He’ll try to take you away someday,” she says forlornly. “The little boy told me he will.”

  I catch her hand in my own and squeeze it. I want to tell her that a little hope has flared in my heart that maybe Mr. Barrett might see me the way I see him, that perhaps I won’t always be the younger, plainer version of the woman he actually admires. But even if he does return my feelings, there is no love worth more than the one I have for my little sister.

  “No,” I say fiercely, pulling her closer to me. “No, I’ll never leave you. Not again.”

  I’m afraid to go to sleep, to lose her again. We lie in silence for hours, one heartbeat shared between us, until finally I drift off. The next morning, sun streams in through the windows in piercing golden shafts. I roll over to an empty bed, the pillow damp, and the air smelling of stale pond water and weeds.

  * * *

  The next few days pass in a fog. I move automatically, dressing and eating, and occasionally finding my way into the library. More than once Catherine suspiciously asks me what I’m smiling about, but I just tell her it’s nothing. She wouldn’t understand how seeing Emeline, how holding her again, has left me dazed and with a renewed sense of hope. I hold my secret close, Emeline came to me, and me alone. I’ve wound her hair into a little braid, and coiled it inside a locket. I finger it constantly throughout the day, the metal warm and comforting against my chest.

  At night I lie awake, tensed for the sound of approaching footsteps, sitting up every time a log shifts in the fire. But aside from Snip, I have no visitors, and after four nights of fitful sleep and increasingly tiring days, I begin to wonder if it was no more than a dream.

  But on the fifth night, after having just resigned myself to falling asleep, a horrible sound wrenches me back awake. Heart racing, I bolt upright.

  It’s not Emeline, but Mother again, that terrible wail in which she indulged our first night at Willow Hall. Just like that night, it starts low and plaintive, building into an unnatural keening. I’m about to put my head under my pillow to muffle the sound when I chastise myself. Here is my chance to comfort Mother, to make amends for my lack of judgment in going into the pond. I throw on my dressing gown and pad out into the hallway. The wailing is louder here, each sob clear and ringing; it’s a wonder that no one else has been awakened by it. When I reach Mother and Father’s bedchamber, I give a hesitant knock. There’s no answer, and the wailing continues. I’m just about to try a second time when my hand freezes in the air.

  It’s not coming from behind their bedchamber door. It’s coming from the third floor.

  My rational mind tells me to go back to bed, that Mother is probably upstairs in the nursery, mourning Emeline and in need of privacy. But something irrational and morbidly curious tells me that it’s not Mother, and that I ought to go upstairs and investigate.

  Convincing my feet to obey me is another matter entirely. I move with small, hesitating steps, all the while the groaning sobs filling my ears, chilling me down to my bones. They grow louder as I near the stairs, and by the time I’m at the top I can almost make out distinct words.

  Wiping my sweating palms on the sides of my dressing gown, I freeze again, teetering on the top step outside the ballroom. Cold seeps from the floor through the soles of my unslippered feet, but I’m knocked backward by the overwhelming smell of smoke. I don’t see any signs of a fire, but I press my mouth into my elbow to keep from choking, and move closer.

  The voice, low and mournful, is not Mother’s.

  “My boy,” groans the female voice. “Oh, my boy.” The timbre is achingly hopeless, and fills me with sadness as much as it does horror.

  It can’t possibly be her, but I can’t stop myself from calling in a whisper, “Emeline, is that you?”

  The cries continue as if I hadn’t said anything. The thick smell of smoke winds around me like an embrace, but the air is clear as ever.

  Just as suddenly as it started, it stops. The words drop away, the cries evaporate, the smell of smoke recedes and a heaviness I hadn’t realized was pressing down on me lifts. I’m left alone with my thudding heart and dry mouth, and an uneasy sense that until this moment, I shared the company of something not quite of this world.

  Slowly and quietly, my legs shaking, I make my way back downstairs and to my bed. No doors open, no one peers out to ask me what all the commotion was. The house is silent and everyone else sleeps on undisturbed.

  * * *

  When I awake dazed and tired to the light of day, it seems impossible that the hellish cries of last night had been anything more than a dream, a figment of my imagination. When I ask Catherine if she heard anything, she gives me a peevish look and informs me that the only thing making sleep difficult for her are the lumpy mattresses here. Even though I don’t think Mother would admit to such an outburst, I ask her anyway if she’s had bad nights recently. She just gives a weary sigh, and I drop the matter.

  Over the course of the next few days I gradually I ease into a routine, tucking away the memories of my secret visit from Emeline, as well as the moans that apparently I alone heard in the night.

  Mr. Barrett hasn’t come
back since the day in my room, but if Father’s schedule is any indication, they’re both busy trying to tie up the land deal with Ezra Clarke to get the rights to the river that runs through his farm. I’m almost glad that Mr. Barrett hasn’t been round yet, as it gives me more time to emerge from my fog, more time to decide upon a book to recommend to him.

  I’m happily curled up in the library with Snip at my feet and a quilt round my shoulders as I pull out every book I think he might like and sort them into piles. I’ve just moved The Castle of Wolfenbach out of the Maybe pile for the third time when Catherine flounces in.

  “I need to go to town and buy cloth for my wedding dress, and Mother says you have to come with me.”

  A wedding dress seems like something of a leap to make from the one letter that Mr. Pierce sent her after the failed dinner. More likely she’s looking for an excuse to buy a dress to flatter her quickly changing body.

  I look at the organized chaos of my book piles, at the cozy fire licking and snapping in the hearth. “I’m busy.”

  I’ve been relishing the prospect of reliving my favorite stories as I sorted my books, trying to see them as if through Mr. Barrett’s eyes for the first time. But apparently even after everything that’s happened I’m still the responsible one, and Mother thinks that I’m somehow capable of keeping Catherine in check.

  “Please? Your books will be here when you get back.” Catherine’s tone is wheedling, artificially high, the kind of voice she used to use when she wanted a bigger allowance from Father. When she sees that I’m still unmoved, she adds, “You look like you just stumbled out of a crypt. Getting some fresh air will put some color into your cheeks for when you see Mr. Barrett.”

  I try not to care, but she’s touched upon my little spark of vanity that ignites whenever I hear Mr. Barrett’s name. So not even an hour after I’d resolved to spend the day with my books and memories of Emeline’s visit, I’m in a fresh dress with my hair pinned up off my neck and trundling toward town with Catherine.

  18

  THE WEEK’S RAIN has left everything clean and fresh, lacquering the world with bright, glistening autumn colors. As we pass along the edge of the woods and over the bridge into town, I realize just how much I’ve missed the world outside the walls of Willow Hall. Not the people and their dramas, but the steady, faithful rhythms of nature and all her secrets. High above us the lonely cry of a hawk rings out as if echoing my sentiment. How small we must look to him down here.

  Much to Catherine’s annoyance I open the carriage window and lean out, closing my eyes against the cool breeze. I’ve never seen a season transition with such fierce determination, and I’m inwardly grateful for the return of chilly nights, for a world tipped on the precipice of a great change. Summer felt like it would never end, stretching from the sticky days in Boston before we had to flee, to Emeline’s passing, and then to the swampy heat the night I sank into the water to follow her. I take a moment, letting the cool, damp air fill my lungs and course through my body with the promise of better things to come.

  “For heaven’s sake.” Catherine pulls me back in. “You’ve been shut up for days complaining of a cold, do you want to catch another?”

  I let her close the window, but as we approach town we begin to encounter other carriages, pedestrians, men on horseback, and I can’t help but catch my breath and look to see if one of them might be Mr. Barrett, half hoping that it is, half hoping that it isn’t.

  “I already told you that Mr. Barrett is at the Clarke farm signing papers with Father today, so I don’t know what makes you think we might run into him here.”

  I flush, more annoyed at myself that I’m so transparent than at Catherine’s keen perception. I give a little shrug. Her words don’t even merit a response, and I lean back and pretend to be absorbed in the book I brought along with me.

  When we arrive, Catherine waltzes into the little shop as if she were Marie Antoinette. “I’m looking for a satin or a silk. Something special, something that no one else has,” she says, breezing over the shopkeeper’s greetings and peeling off her gloves, making herself right at home.

  The man’s eyes glint in appreciation. We haven’t been back here since our first day in town when he tried to scare Emeline with stories of hauntings and ghosts. He had probably thought he’d lost our business forever. “Yes, of course, madam. Would you be so kind as to follow me? I have just the thing.”

  I roll my eyes and leave Catherine to her shopping and the shopkeeper to his bowing and groveling. As I wander around the small shop, I play a game of pretending what I would buy if it were me shopping for my wedding gown. I run my fingers over a soft bolt of mossy green satin, then put it back and let my gaze wander down the stacks of bolts. It’s not a bad selection, but I’m surprised that Catherine didn’t want to go somewhere with a bigger and finer stock.

  The shopkeeper is draping a length of silk over his arm, eagerly trying to gauge Catherine’s reaction. It’s an indecisive shade of yellow—almost green—and Catherine is oohing and ahhing over it like it’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen.

  I’ve found the cloth that I would buy, and I can’t help but wonder if it was made in Mr. Barrett’s mill. Of course he wouldn’t have woven it himself, but he might have felt it just the way I am now, checking the quality, making sure it met his standards before sending it off to be sold.

  As the shopkeeper brings out more and more fabric bolts, instead of becoming more excited, Catherine grows distracted, glancing out the window every few seconds.

  “What about this one?” I lift the corner of my chosen cloth, a pink silk so pale and soft that it’s almost white.

  The shopkeeper sets aside what he was showing Catherine and nods his vigorous agreement. “It’s been reported that Mrs. Griegson of Boston was seen wearing this very shade of pink at the opera last month,” he says in reverent tones. “Very hard to find, but I got my hands on this bolt straight from Waltham and you won’t find it anywhere else.”

  So it didn’t come from Mr. Barrett’s mill then. The pink suddenly looks drab and ordinary, and I remember that it’s cotton that he produces, not silk.

  “Yes,” Catherine says without looking at it. “Very pretty.”

  He ignores her distant tone, running a solicitous hand over a bolt of striped satin that even I recognize as being several years out of style.

  “The sleeves are to be fuller this season. Just imagine this puffed up at both shoulders, a dipped neckline, the colors setting off your lovely hair to its full advantage. Why,” he says, wetting his bottom lip with his tongue, “you won’t have a fellow in town who will be able to keep his hands off you.”

  Normally Catherine would give him a sharp word for his boldness and threaten to withhold her patronage, but she only murmurs distractedly, “Yes, I heard as much about fuller sleeves.”

  I ask the shopkeeper to excuse us for a minute and take Catherine by the arm to the corner of the store among the large barrels of sugar and salt.

  “You were the one who begged me to come with you, and you’re hardly even looking at anything,” I chide.

  She jerks her arm back, rubbing it as if I hurt her. “Oh, I don’t know,” she says irritably. She throws a glance over my shoulder at the counter covered in a rainbow of silks and satins. “The lavender one I guess.”

  I’m about to tell her that she is perfectly capable of asking for the lavender to be cut herself, when she takes a sharp breath, her eyes fixing on something beyond the window. I follow her gaze, but it takes me a moment to place the swaggering gait of the man she’s watching across the town green.

  “Catherine!”

  “Keep your voice down, will you?” She glances at the shopkeeper who’s pretending not to be interested in our conversation in the corner.

  When she sees my color rise, she hurries back to the counter and gives the shopkeeper instructions to cut her
off a length of the lavender silk and be quick about it.

  “Catherine,” I say again, catching her by the hand. “Did you know that he would be here?”

  Pretending not to hear, she counts out her money and makes a show of being absorbed in getting the right change. When I don’t let go she gives me a sharp look that says I had better wait until we’re outside.

  The shopkeeper takes an unbearably long time cutting the silk, all the while darting curious glances between us. I give him a hasty thanks and then drag Catherine out by the arm.

  Outside, Catherine whirls to face me. “That was rude.”

  “Is that why we came here today, really? Were you planning on meeting him all along?”

  By now Mr. Pierce has seen us, and he raises his hat in acknowledgment as he ambles across the green.

  Catherine throws a hurried smile at him, and then gives me an impatient little shrug, confirming my suspicions.

  “Mother told me to keep you out of trouble. I hardly think she would be grateful if she heard you went off with Mr. Pierce for the whole town to see.”

  “Oh, Lydia, don’t be such a sop. I’m already pregnant,” she says with a breezy wave of her hand. “What other trouble can I get into? Just find something to do with the carriage for an hour and I’ll meet you back here. Mother will be none the wiser. And besides...” She lifts the lavender silk in her arms to show me. “I can’t very well use this until there’s a proper engagement.”

  I open my mouth but then close it again, pressing my lips tight. The sooner she’s engaged the better, but why can’t she go about it in a proper sort of way? Mr. Pierce should have already made his intentions clear with Father, and he should be coming by the house where our parents can chaperone. I don’t like all this sneaking about.

  By the time I’ve started explaining this to her, Mr. Pierce has caught up to us. Catherine’s annoyance with me evaporates as she fixes a gracious smile on her face.