“Let go of her,” says Phoebe.
“I’m Alexander,” he tells me, his voice lowered as if we’re alone in some quiet hallway of the manor rather than out on the grounds with Miles and Phoebe hovering close by. “What’s your name?”
“Miss Eleanor Darrow, sir,” I say, popping off an automatic curtsy. As soon as I do it, hot shame rushes through me and I shake off his hands on my shoulders, stepping back and running hands over my hair, tucked tidily into a long braid that runs all the way down my back.
He laughs uproariously as if this were part of an act, and probably it does seem so. “You doing a show here?” he asks.
He thinks I’m an actress filming something at the manor.
“Yes,” Miles jumps into the conversation. “A BBC program called Clueless at the Manor. You’ve watched it, I’m sure?”
“I think so,” Alexander nods. “I think my flatmates watch it. It’s good. You’re my favorite character.” He leers at me.
“Stuff off,” I want to tell him. I’ve had some experience with young men, old, too, showing an interest and thinking that a maid won’t fight back, that liberties can be taken. But the only kisses from me have always been given, not taken, and the recipient was always Austin.
“Yes, she gets star billing,” says Miles smoothly, with a wink at Phoebe. “And her trailer is twice the size of ours. Did you see the excavation here, with the swords being unearthed?”
“The whole town’s talking about it!” he hoots. “That’s why I came out. Had to slip past a whole bunch of security, so I came through the woods.”
It’s funny—as soon as he says the word woods, his whole demeanor changes. His eyes go wild and his body shakes.
“Are you quite all right?” I ask.
“Did you guys see all that?” he asks.
“See what?”
“That shite in the woods!”
“Nooo,” I say slowly. “What did you see?”
“Don’t go in there,” he says urgently. His head swivels around as if he’s afraid he’s being pursued.
“You were hurt in the woods,” says Phoebe gently.
He laughs but his face is in a snarl. “Hurt,” he says. “Funny way to put it, isn’t it?”
“We understand,” says Phoebe. “We’re the same way.”
“It got you, too?”
“We were ‘got’ in different ways,” says Phoebe. I see her take a deep breath. “I drowned, Miles was in an accident, and we’re not totally sure what happened to Miss Darrow over here.” She winks at me, but it doesn’t have the same impact as when Miles does it, which feels like some vaporous hand has reached into my stomach and given it a good squeeze.
“You drowned?” he repeats. “But they pulled you out and gave you mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?”
“No,” says Phoebe. “They didn’t pull me out in time.”
“But you . . . you’re here,” he says.
“Yes,” she says simply.
His hands clamp on either side of his head. “No, no, no,” he says. “It’s too much. I need to get home.” He looks briefly down at the swords in the pit. “They’re cool and all, but so not worth it. Crap, I shouldn’t have come!” He walks off a few paces, but returns. “Why don’t you guys go with me?”
He’s scared to go by himself. He was attacked somehow, but what on earth happened? We’ve squashed the evil at the manor, so what’s still around to kill anyone?
The powers unleashed by the swords, I think to myself quietly. Maybe Reginald Boswick really did have his heart in the right place.
“We need to stay here at the manor,” says Miles. “But we want to know what happened to you.”
Alexander lets out a peal of hysterical laughter. “I’m fine!” he says. “I’m totally fine. I just need a beer. Or ten. I’m going to go home and raid the refrigerator. You should come. I want to get out of here. I’ve got to go, man!”
“Where were you when everything happened?” asks Phoebe.
“Weird shite goes down in those woods, let me tell you!” says Alexander. “But I’m okay. I’ve got to get going, though.”
“Can you show us where?” Phoebe asks.
“No way,” he says, shivering. “I want to go home.”
Since Alexander seems drawn to me, I know I need to try to talk to him. “I know you saw something scary,” I say. “Can you tell us what it was?”
Tears of terror spring into his eyes. “You keep asking!” he says. “Please, just let me go home.”
I look at Phoebe. What next? I can’t be cruel enough to keep him here against his will.
“Alexander,” she says. “There’s a way you can be home instantly. You don’t have to walk through the woods, you don’t have to walk at all. We call it moving by intention. All you have to do is picture the place you want to be. But I should warn you that home isn’t going to—”
He’s gone.
She sighs.
“Well, looks like he’s an instant champ at intention,” says Miles.
“What do you think happened to him?” I ask. “Did you see the cuts on his face?”
Phoebe shudders. We all pause, sifting through the chaotic and brief encounter with Alexander. One thing, though, is clear. He was hurt and died here on the Arnaud property, and we need to let Phoebe’s parents know . . . because we have to protect Tabby.
* * *
We intention to the apartment of Phoebe’s family, sitting modern and clean in the middle of the otherwise-destroyed-by-time manor. I wonder if, after renovations are complete, the family intends to actually live in the grand, older part. Madame Arnaud had no trouble presiding over the hundreds of rooms, but I don’t know if Phoebe’s family will feel comfortable doing so.
They’re sitting down to dinner. I guess we spent a lot more time wandering through the churchyard than I thought. It’s hard to get a sense of time of day in the modern apartment because many of the rooms have no windows, set inside the larger manor house almost like nesting boxes.
Tabby sits in a high chair, and her stout fingers fish out elements of the meal as she disregards the plastic spoon on the tray.
“Mom would’ve never let me do that,” says Phoebe. “Tabby’s too old to be eating with her fingers.”
I don’t say a word. There are many things Tabby’s going to get away with in life, from her parents’ pure relief that she’s still alive.
“That’s messy, Tabby,” says Phoebe. She settles in next to her sister, crouching over to whisper in her ear, “Use your spoon.”
Tabby keeps blithely eating. She doesn’t notice Phoebe. This is the way it works—penetrating to her has usually required time and persistence.
“Tabby, we need to tell Mom and Steven something,” says Phoebe. “Can you help me get them a message?”
“What will that message be?” Miles asks. “Maybe we should work it out first. We don’t need to tell a toddler that some dead kid’s wandering around with cuts all over his face.”
“I’m just going to tell them to stay out of the woods,” says Phoebe. “That’s good enough, don’t you think?”
She appeals to me. “It’s a good start,” I say. “We don’t want to alarm them. Perhaps also tell them to stay away from the unearthed swords, since they seem to be connected somehow.”
“Woods and swords: no good,” says Phoebe. “Got it.”
Tabby is now drinking out of her sippy cup, a marvelous invention if ever I did see one, and Phoebe recommences calling into her ear. “Tabby! Tabby! I need to talk to you.”
These moments have come to vex me. Tabby loves her sister dearly, and is the sole member of her family who can sense her, but she isn’t always attentive to the idea that her sister is around. She’s caught up in her childish thoughts and fancies. Who ever knows what’s in the mind of a child, but she seems always caught up in things that don’t matter: begging for tiny crackers in animal shapes, loudly asking to be put down.
There was a brief period of time when Miles a
nd Phoebe were visible to everyone. They drank from hidden vials and became Sangreçu. Until the effects wore off, they were able to talk with their families and explain the horrible, unknown task we are meant to perform without fully comprehending what that task might actually be.
They drank without me. I wasn’t there, and they didn’t save me any.
I try not to think about it because they are my only friends after all these many years of haunting the manor and speaking fruitfully with no one. Most of the servant ghosts were stuck, more than Tabby, in their own small wants and self-recriminations, while I couldn’t bear to talk to the child ghosts. I’m grateful Miles and Phoebe are here now. It’s been like a feast set before me after years of eating crumbs.
Yet . . . when my mind wanders there, I could be fit to sob for their lack of bringing me into the fold. I could’ve been Sangreçu, too.
Who would I have talked to anyway? Anyone I knew or loved is long dead. But it is more the betrayal that stings than the actual loss of being temporarily able to cross over the thin veil between the living and the dead.
There’s more, too.
Although Miles and Phoebe can no longer communicate with the living, the Sangreçu blood still runs in their veins and makes them special.
“Tabby?” Phoebe urges. “Can’t you hear me? I’m here!”
My emotions master me, and I decide to leave. I throw Miles a glance, and he nods. He can tell. He knows I’m sad.
I intention to the front courtyard of the manor, the cobblestones now touched with pools of blackness, shadows that have fallen while we were inside. I walk to the side lawn, where orange cones encircle the area where the swords were found. A sign has been posted by an archeological authority, warning people to stay out. The bulldozer sits abandoned, its scoop sadly lying on the grass like a dog rests his head on the ground.
I’m troubled by the fact that I have no idea where I’m buried.
I must’ve known sometime.
I must’ve . . .
I decide that I want to return to the place that has held the most happiness for me in the years since I died, a meadow between the Arnaud Manor and Austin’s family’s cottage.
It’s wind blasted; any flower that thrives here is hardy and saucy, heads dipping insolently in a breeze that would un-petal others. I love this space. It is a meadow set apart, with a privacy naturally arranged by the growth of bush and tree and wild hedge. I can’t remember when I first started coming here . . . I’m not even really sure why it’s special to me.
I sink down into a perturbed rest. I can never sleep. That is a privilege for the living. But I try to rest my thoughts, let my mind fall blank.
A memory inserts itself.
I have endlessly replayed the events of my life in my mind to the degree that they fail to arouse my interest, even after pain has faded. But this memory . . .
It’s about the meadow.
CHAPTER FOUR
The yew tree’s ability to maintain its dark emerald needles year-round served, in ancient thought, as a metaphor for immortality. Moreover, the tendency of its branches to reroot themselves to form new, but connected, trunks illustrated death and rebirth. Yew staves were used in pagan Ireland to measure corpses and their graves.
—Mystical Trees, Runes, Wands
In my memory, Austin pulls me to the center of the field.
He’s hitched the horse to a tree branch. He’s supposed to be exercising the horse . . . Old Jerry. A lovely fawn-colored bay. Old Jerry. Just remembering the name brings a solid rush of smells, colors, emotions, sounds . . . I’m vividly lost to a self who doesn’t exist anymore. The version of me, Eleanor Darrow, who loved the firm neck of Old Jerry, who brought him apples from the kitchens, cutting them in half with my apron knife upon a rock.
And how I loved the lad who tended the horses.
Austin pulls me, and his grin is like to break my heart for all its ignorance of how the world will collapse around us later.
“What think you of the view?” he asks.
“Glorious,” I say.
“Indeed, lassie, indeed! And would you like it for the view as you stand in a window and look out, waiting for me?”
“What, are ye to be building me a window here in the field?” I ask.
“Aye, a window and a wall, and let’s say four of them, lass!”
I remember staring at him. Those lovely ruddy cheeks, his broad face with the deep blue eyes, his sandy-colored hair in unruly curls.
“Ought I to build you a house out here in this meadow, then?” he prompts.
“This could be our home?” I ask. I laugh, and I remember that the sound, delighted and sudden, drove a rook from its station. “But why would I live here in shame with the likes of you?”
“No shame when you wear my ring and carry my name.”
“But I’ve never been asked,” I tease.
The flash of his smile then. It had all been orchestrated. He plunges to his knee in the flowers, then casts about in them for a bit until he thrusts back up a blowsy bouquet for me. I take them and sink my face into their fragrance, happy to have a place to hide my blushing cheeks. I could sauce him and then regret it, my emotions so varied back then. He made me confident, and then I became shy.
“Miss Eleanor Darrow, as you have found a place of kind affection in my heart, and as our lives should be brought together in a manner that announces our tender feelings for each other to the world such that we may not be rendered asunder and may—”
“However did you find this many words in all the world?” I ask, amazed.
“Please, I have it memorized . . . rendered asunder and may find eternal happiness in that institution so revered throughout the ages by eager lovers who . . .”
I can’t help it. I laugh.
“Eleanor!” he says, thunderstruck.
“Austin, why are you talking like this?”
“I wanted it to be special. And you are laughing!”
“Did you not mean it to be . . . at least in part humorous?”
“No!” He looks incredibly indignant.
“But we never talk this way.”
“We never talk this way because we never speak of such important things.”
“’Tis true,” I say. I put my hand to the side of his jaw. Even now I believe I can conjure up the feel of that warm skin and the rough blond whiskers that scraped my palm.
“I wish you would marry me, Eleanor,” he says simply.
His eyes staring up at me. I understand photographs, the impulse to forever capture a moment and look at it whenever you like. If I could choose one instant from my entire life, the most intense and gorgeous trice, discarding all other views my eyes took in, it would be this: the look on his face, the promise between us, and behind his head stretching the green expanse of the meadow, his hair backlit by a ponderous horizon-bent sun.
Austin.
A sob escapes me.
I had forgotten why I haunted this meadow. It was the place of the most happiness I had ever been delivered.
To outwit my own emotion, I walk toward the tree where Old Jerry had been tethered that day. It’s so much bigger, its expanse of overarching limbs almost the size of a house now. It makes me think of that yew tree that Phoebe told us was beneath the surface of a pond on the Arnaud estate, glowing underwater with ancient symbols, an unpleasant burden trapped in its branches.
The yew was said to be magical. The villagers a generation before me cut it down, fearing its power, and flooded the site so the felled and impotent tree could not even be seen.
As I approach this tree, nothing more important than a bearer of acorns and a holder of horses, a feeling of unease comes over me.
Why?
I stare at its trunk. Only a few more strides will bring me to it.
I stop.
There is something awful on the other side of the trunk. Something desperately, awfully terrible.
I take a few steps backward.
I’m not ready
to face what’s over there.
Wishing Miles or Phoebe were here, I look around. I could probably draw them to me with intention—or better yet, get myself out of here. And yet, I need to confront my fears. I’m the girl who pulls a knife from her apron pocket to save the world . . . or at least thinks it will save the world.
I take a few steps forward and press my hand to where the tree trunk should be. I can’t feel it. My hand passes through it. I make the motions of “walking” around the tree to come to the other side.
I don’t know what I expect to see: a figure in black, a trap, a demon. But what I see seizes my heart instantly and brings me to my knees. I knew it was here but I couldn’t let myself remember.
It’s my gravestone. A small gray stone. No consecrated churchyard for me, as the stone states: ELEANOR DARROW, Dead by her own hand.
My mind pushes me back in time, to that terrible day when another maid told me Madame Arnaud yet lived. I knew my life was worth nothing; she’d find me and torture me far worse than anything I could do to quickly usher myself out of this life.
I did it so quickly I hardly had time to think, terrified she’d catch me first.
I didn’t leave a note or say good-bye to anyone. I had no idea where Austin was. As soon as the maid had informed me, I had raced out of the manor, leaving her spluttering with her coal hod heavy in her hands.
I’d bolted down the servants’ stairs to the ground floor, emerged out the kitchen yard, and ran for my life . . . ran to protect my life so that I might take it.
As I ran, Madame Arnaud might have been watching from any of those hundreds of windows, a smile toying at her lips. I’d been her lady’s maid and tried to kill her in her bed. Oh, I knew she’d love to watch me suffer, so I ran, my skirts in my way, my chest hot, and my breath a fire in my throat.
I ran here.
To the meadow where a future had been promised to me, where I was to live in a cottage built by the man I loved.
It was all ruined by my own presumptuous heroism.
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