‘No.’ I look him in the eye. ‘No, I don’t.’
And as I wouldn’t put it past him to have kept some of the books back, I follow him out to his car, scanning the boot and the interior as he climbs in.
‘I’ll call about the restoration work,’ he says. He really is unbelievable.
‘Don’t.’ I shake my head. ‘I think it’s best if I find someone else.’
I walk a few steps down the hill, watching his car retreat, tracking it as it takes the narrow bridge across the reservoir, then it’s out of sight.
As soon as he is gone I feel the stillness.
I see him as soon as I turn around, standing in the dark afternoon, staring at me, squat, ugly face lined with misery and hate, a grey beard. In his hand he is holding a lamp. Greybeard doesn’t move even one fraction as I walk towards him, my heart quickening with every step. Never have I been so afraid, and never have I been so furious, so much so that I realise I am running at him.
‘Leave my family alone!’ I shout, in full charge and then—
There is nothing there. Not even a disturbance in the air. Nothing.
I touch my finger to my bruised head. He was there, it was there. But it was a knowing thing, a conscious thing. What I had seen was nothing more than a reflection, an echo of one moment that happened very long ago.
And yet my legs are trembling as l turn into the house.
Ma is standing in the doorway.
‘This time he’s come for me,’ she says with a faint smile. ‘I am so much a part of this place now that I’m a real Heaton …’
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
‘I found the lump the night before Jean came to tell me you’d called,’ Ma says as I pour her tea, strong and sweet. ‘Right big it is, too.’
She gestured to her right breast. ‘I thought maybe it’d go away. I don’t know how long it’s been there, maybe months. I been trying to pluck up the courage to go to the doctor’s, but what’s the point, Trudy? I don’t want those drugs that they give you, that radiation that makes you more sick than the cancer. I’ve been dreading it, wondering what the point would be. And then … then you and the lad came home, and I knew I had to try. I wanted to try, I was just working up the courage.’
‘Oh Ma, you must have been so scared.’
‘Not now.’ Her expression is one of resignation. ‘Not now Greybeard’s been for me, because now I know. Nowt doctors can do, is there?’
‘Ma, are you serious?’ I look at her. ‘That … shade or whatever it was out there, that nothing, doesn’t determine whether you live or die. It could be anything, it could be a cyst.’
‘Omens of death don’t turn up for a cyst,’ Ma says, taking my hand, and it hurts me to see how sad she looks, how defeated. ‘Look, lass, I know all that’s happened to you, and it’s been an awful tragedy, but you mustn’t feel sad about me. I’m only glad that Ponden called you back home when it did, for your sake and for me and the lad. To have you and our boy here, to feel like we’ve – we’ve made amends. It means the world to me. I can die happy, I can.’
‘No, you can’t.’ I shake my head. ‘Ma, do you think I’m going to let you die now? Now, when I need you more than I ever have? I always thought that Greybeard was a curse, that’s what everyone told us, but what … what if he’s a warning, Ma? And if he’s a warning, then that means there’s time to save you. We are going to the doctor first thing in the morning.’
Ma shakes her head, and a tear falls onto the table top; her fingers tighten around mine, her voice is tightly controlled.
‘I’m right scared, lass.’
‘You, scared?’ I smile. ‘There ain’t nothing in this world that scares my ma.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
A confession to Murder made this day on All Hallows’ Eve 1659.
I am an evil man who has done wrong and am set to burn in the fires of Hell. I write this confession, only hoping that after my death, Hell is where my soul may reside, and that it will not be those that I have wronged who will lay claim to me.
It was I who murdered William Heaton and did hide his body in a peat bog. I found him on the road, uninjured, and returning home after the war. He told me of his land, his wealth and his wife and child, and I that had none of this, desired to take what was his. A small girl that I had bought from a woman on the side of the road saw me do it, and though I paid no mind to her, I was wrong not to.
I married Heaton’s widow, beat her and her son.
I killed Agnes Bolton’s baby, the same girl that I had purchased years before, to keep her from exposing my crimes.
It were my actions that caused Agnes Bolton’s death, and I saw her buried in secret on unconsecrated land where she will find no hope of rest.
Now her revenant has found me and she will not leave me be. Not night nor day, not if I close my eyes, nor struggle to keep them open. I see her everywhere I look, head half drenched in her own blood, waiting for me.
Dear God, do not forgive me, I do not ask it, but let me burn in the sanctuary of Hell.
Dear God, do not let that woman take me.
At the very end of the confession, someone, perhaps Henry Casson himself, has drawn a portrait of a man and written his name underneath it, a crude sketch of an angry-looking man, wearing a furious scowl, with coal-black eyes and a long grey beard. It’s the image of the man I saw less than an hour ago.
Is that what became of Henry Casson? Did he became tied to this house, somehow, doomed to spend eternity as a voiceless Gytrash?
‘I’m going for a lie-down,’ I call to Ma and Will as I head upstairs, but instead of turning into my room, I walk into Cathy’s room, and I feel a little light-headed as I climb inside the box bed and draw the door shut.
‘Did he kill you, Agnes?’ I find myself muttering out loud as I look at the little square of night sky outside the window. ‘Is that what happened? He killed you and put you somewhere and you can’t be with your baby, is that is? And you, you bound him to this house, turned him into a wraith with no home or purpose except the foretelling of a death. Is that what happened, Agnes? I wish you would show me. Show me where you are.’
It feels like a dream when I see a hand with slim white fingers and broken, bloody nails extend out of the darkness at the end of the bed and reach for my hand.
It almost feels like that, but it’s not.
The whites of her eyes luminesce in the darkness, black at their centre as they stare at me.
‘Come,’ she whispers. ‘I have been your ghost. Now you will be mine.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Not in the dark of the box bed room any more, but in a dark that is so all-encompassing it feels like I have been swallowed whole by it, that I will be lost to it for evermore. I am curled against something, something rough and hard and freezing cold. Stone. A stone wall that, when I run my hands over it, is slick with moisture, and yet I cleave onto it, for at least it is solid, real. It reassures me that I am not lost in some dark eternity.
From somewhere else in the darkness I hear weeping, weeping that is almost silent. A drawing in of jagged breaths, a quiet, whimpered release. And then, behind me, I hear footsteps and the weeping ceases at once.
Bolts draw back, and a tall man enters, carrying a lantern before him, and as crude as the drawing was, I recognise him: Henry Casson – Greybeard himself. The room lights as I scramble up, backing against the wall in terror as he walks past me, setting the lantern on the butcher’s block. And then I know where I am: I am in the cellar and it is Agnes crying silently in the corner.
‘What do you cry for, Agnes?’ the man asks her, leaning against the very wall that I am cowering against, as if I am not here. But of course I am not here, not for him. I am the ghost here. My vision swims violently, terror spreading through me at the thought that this might be the rest of my existence, trapped in one moment of misery forever more.
He leans forward, his face cruel and harsh behind his scraggy, filthy beard.
‘Why
do you cry, Agnes? I saved you from the noose, didn’t I?’
‘I would have died with your name on my lips.’ Agnes stands and I see her as she really was for the first time. A girl, hardly more than a child, thin, dressed only in a cotton shift, bruises covering almost every inch of her frail body. ‘You took my baby from me, my child that had never done you harm, you took her from my arms and you … and you … and you …’ Her cries are gut-wrenching. ‘God’s mercy, please kill me now, Casson, I beg you, for I only want to die and be with her once more.’
‘You would have killed the child one way or another,’ Henry Casson says, licking his lips. ‘I warned you. I told you to leave this place, but you did not. What I did was cruel, yes, and bloody. It gave me no pleasure, but it was necessary, Agnes. You made it so when you ceased to fear me.’
‘Why did you not just let them hang me?’ Agnes wails, darting forwards as far as the heavy chains around her ankles will let her. ‘Why not let me be hanged?’
‘Because you are mine.’ Casson stalks across the room. ‘I paid good money for you, remember? You are mine and I shall do with you what I please, for as long as it pleases me.’
Bile rises in my throat as I watch him looming over her, his pleasure in cruelty pouring off of him, radiating into the flickering lamp.
‘You will not.’ Another man stands in the doorway, younger, not much older than Agnes, and I know at once that this is my ancestor, Robert Heaton. He has my father’s eyes.
‘You will give her to me. And you will leave this place forever.’
‘Why in God’s name should I do that?’ Casson turns on Robert.
‘Because when Agnes told me that you had murdered my father, she also told me where. I have found his body, Casson, and I know she speaks the truth; many know it. Many have been too afraid to say it, except for this one woman that you brutalised and tortured. Whose precious child you took from her. You are a killer, Casson, and a thief, and I have witnesses up and down the county willing to say so. You will certainly hang unless you relinquish Agnes to me and write over my house, and all of my property, back into the Heaton name, removing yourself and your son from my sight at once.’
Agnes watches, her face rapt, her eyes shining in disbelief, as her beloved comes to rescue her after all. And it kills me to see the hope there, to see her belief in their love that can endure even this torture.
‘And what? You’ll put aside your pretty, rich wife, for this whore?’ Casson’s laugh is bitter.
‘I will,’ Robert says. ‘For she is my true wife. And my true love. And though I am sorry for the hurt I have caused, I was not free to marry another.’
‘Robert!’ Agnes reaches out for him, but before Robert can reach her Casson strikes him hard in the gut, and it is only when Robert falls back at my feet do I see the punch delivered the blow of a blade.
But Robert is not finished. With almost superhuman determination he climbs to his feet, charging at Casson, whose head collides against the meat block, and he sprawls unconscious on the floor.
‘Come, Agnes.’ Robert hastily unlocks her chains, wraps her in his cloak. ‘I’ll take you far away from here, to somewhere you will be safe until this matter is sorted and Casson is finally gone.’
‘He will never be gone.’ It was Agnes who spoke, her voice as thin and as sparse as a single spider’s silk floating in the morning air. ‘He may leave Ponden Hall, but he will never be gone, I will not allow it. The moment death ends him, his soul will be brought back here to this place. To these halls and rooms that he coveted so. But he will never be allowed inside again, only stand outside as the centuries roll by, staring in at the life inside with longing and misery that will never end. This the curse I lay upon him.’
Robert starts at the sound of shouting from above.
‘Come, before his men find him and the whole house is awake.’
‘Go fetch me some boots and a shawl.’ Agnes presses her lips to him. ‘I am coming.’
As soon as he leaves the room she looks right at me and reaches for my hand.
Oh, but it’s cold, and the night is a bottomless pool of ice black. It takes me a second to understand where I am, and where I am not. I am not here in body, and yet I am here, on the very brink of Ponden Kirk, the wind tearing and snatching at whatever I am, doing its best to drag me into the wild air.
In the distance I hear the bark of hounds. I see the light of torches and hear the thunder of hooves – and then I see them, one black, moving shape against the night sky, Agnes and Robert, running for their lives.
‘They will be on us, Robert,’ Agnes says as they grind to a halt at the Kirk. ‘We can’t run any longer, my love; we can’t escape him this way.’
‘We can,’ Robert assures her. ‘We will find a safe haven and someone will take us in. I will protect you, Agnes, I swear it.’
Her face is luminescent as she stands there in the dark, her eyes shining as she gazes up at him, as the torches and the horses draw nearer.
‘All I ever wanted was to know that you truly loved me,’ Agnes says. ‘And you do, you really love me, Robert, you really do.’
‘More than my own heart,’ Robert says, holding her to him. ‘I wish I’d been a stronger man to know it before this moment, Agnes, but I loved you from the first, and I always shall until my last.’
Agnes pushes herself away from him.
‘And I love you. But I am bad, Robert. I killed a man and cursed another. I’m not the girl you once knew, and I can’t let you end your life for me.’
Her eyes meet mine, and there is one moment when we see each other so clearly it’s like glimpsing all of time in one heartbeat.
My cry becomes the howling wind as I watch them part before she runs off the edge of the Kirk and flies into thin air, before falling, her body breaking hard on the boulder below, tumbling limply into the depths of the valley.
‘No!’ I hear Robert shout in anguish, feel the thunder of the horses’ hooves, the shouts of the men. And then there is nothing but quiet and dark, and her eyes.
And then … nothing at all.
When I wake, I am standing in front of the closed bookcases in the library, and I know where Agnes’s body is hidden.
CHAPTER SIXTY
The crest of dawn arrives over the reservoir as I head up to the Kirk, painting the sky with streaks of silvery violet, and I revel in the birdsong, the glittering frost that makes mirrors of puddles, the grass crunching under my boots.
Once I’m at the Kirk I stop and stare at the splendour of the rising sun, caught for a moment as our earth bows towards it, bathed in its powerful light.
As I half climb, half slip, down the hillside, I have no fear, no doubt. It doesn’t take long for me to find the marriage hole and I rest my palm against it, remembering the day that Abe and I came here, and then I turn back to the craggy landscape, full of giant boulders, cleaved with deep fissures, and I begin to search for Agnes Heaton.
The minutes turn into a long, cold hour, but I don’t stop, because I know that what’s left of her earthly remains lie somewhere here. Of course, this is where Robert would have buried her, here at the place where she gave herself up for him – and Casson would have had no choice but to agree that with the men who surrounded him and had heard what Robert had to say. It would have been done in secret; there would have been no words of God for this poor girl, no chance of rest. Perhaps she followed her beloved home on that very first day, perhaps sometime later, but I know, as certainly as I know anything, that she is somewhere here.
Then, as I reach into the next narrow ravine, I touch a hand. A skeletal hand. Shining my torch in, I see she is laid out in a very deep crack in the rock bed, wrapped in a rotted cloak, the enclosing rock acting as her coffin. Shining my torch around the narrow enclose, I find what I am looking for, three words carved roughly into the hard rock.
Agnes Heaton, beloved.
‘I’ve found you, Agnes,’ I say into the wind. ‘I’ve found you, and I’m going to brin
g you home. Thanks to you I have all the proof I need to find a way to have you and your baby rest together. And everyone will know your story, now; so no more searching, Agnes. No more looking for you or your baby; you can both have peace at last.’
Turning my head into the wind, I hear something wonderful, just for a few seconds, and then it gusts away into the sky.
I hear a baby’s laughter, echoed by her mother’s.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Will laughs as I chase him round the house.
Spring has rushed in, full throttle, and we have flung open every window to let in the sun. The builders are about to start on the roof, so we run and we race, enjoying our time together before Will starts back at school, and I return to Peru to search for his father. Ma insisted I go now, though I offered to wait a little longer, but although the lump she had found had been dangerous, they removed it early enough to be sure of her recovery, and she is feeling strong and optimistic about life again. I even found myself thanking old Greybeard for showing up when he did, if I really did see him. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if it wasn’t just a trick of a light, and a very bruised head. At least, that’s what I tell Ma when she asks me.
I’m nervous about going, and I don’t want to leave my little boy, but he is nothing but optimistic, and since I told him that was what I was planning to do, he’s never stopped smiling.
‘You have to understand that I can only stay for a few weeks,’ I told him. ‘And then I have to come home to be with you, and to work on my book and get the exhibition ready at the Parsonage. I might not find anything this time, Will, or even the next time I go. And if I do, it might not be good news.’
‘It will be good news,’ Will reassured me, hugging me close. ‘I know it will. Here, I want you to take this with you. It’s important.’
The Girl at the Window Page 29