by Kate Morton
Lucy couldn’t get the boat back to the jetty quickly enough. She tied it up, gathered her books beneath her arm, and started running towards the house. Although she did not often give herself over to glee, and rarely to singing, she found herself humming one of Mother’s favourite dance tunes as she ran and took it up with gusto. Arriving back at the house, she went first to the Mulberry Room, for although Edward did not like to be disturbed while he was working, she was certain that under these circumstances he would make an exception. The room was unattended. A silk cloth had been draped over the canvas and Lucy vacillated briefly before deciding that she didn’t have the time to spare. Next, she looked upstairs in the bedroom that he had chosen for himself, overlooking the woods, but there was no sign. She ran along the hallways, peeking into each room that she passed, even braving an eyeful of Clare’s longing simper when she checked inside the front sitting-room.
In the kitchen she found Emma preparing the evening meal, but when asked after Edward’s whereabouts, the maid only lifted her left shoulder before launching into an admonishment of Thurston, who had developed a most unpleasant habit of climbing onto the rooftop of a morning and using the Napoleonic Wars rifle he had brought with him from London to take aim at the birds. ‘It’s a terrible racket,’ said Emma. ‘I mean, maybe if he stood a chance of bringing down a duck that I could roast … but his aim’s no good, and anyway, he takes shot at the smaller birds what don’t make for proper eating.’ It was a familiar lament and Edward had asked Thurston many times to stop, warning him that he might shoot one of the farmers by mistake and find himself up on charges of murder.
‘I’ll tell Edward as soon as I find him,’ said Lucy, in her best attempt at placation. They had formed a bond of sorts, she and Emma, during the course of the fortnight. Lucy had a feeling that the maid had her pegged as the only other ‘normal’ person in the house. As the artists and models flew in and out of the kitchen in loose costumes and with paint brushes tucked behind their ears, Emma seemed to save all of her head shakings and tut-tuts for Lucy, as if they were kindred spirits caught in a current of madness. Today, though, Lucy could spare Emma only the minimum of attention. ‘I promise, I’ll tell him,’ she said again, already on the move, skipping sideways and through the front door into the garden.
But Edward was in none of his favourite outdoor places, and Lucy was almost dying with frustration when she finally spotted Lily Millington about to leave the garden by the front gate that opened out onto the lane. The sun was catching her hair so that it looked ablaze.
‘Lily,’ she called. At first the model did not appear to hear her so she called again, louder. ‘Li-ly.’
Lily Millington turned around, and perhaps she had been far away in her thoughts, for her expression was as if she had been surprised by the sound of her own name. ‘Why, hello there, Lucy,’ she said with a smile.
‘I’m looking for Edward. Have you seen him anywhere?’
‘He went to the woods. He said he’d gone to see a man about a dog.’
‘Are you meeting him there?’ Lucy had noticed that Lily Millington was wearing walking boots and carrying a bag over her shoulder.
‘No, I’m off to the village to see a man about a stamp.’ She held up an addressed envelope. ‘Fancy a walk?’
With no chance to tell Edward what she had discovered about the house, Lucy decided that it was better to fill her afternoon with an activity than to wait around, cooling her heels.
They strolled along the laneway, past a church on the corner and into the village. The small post office was next door to a public house called The Swan.
‘I’ll wait here,’ said Lucy, who had seen an interesting stone structure over where the roads crossed and wanted to have a closer look.
Lily did not take long, emerging from the post office with her letter in hand, a stamp now affixed on its corner. Whatever she was posting was heavy enough to require a Two Penny Blue, Lucy noted, and was addressed to someone in London.
Lily slipped it into the post box and they started the short walk back to Birchwood Manor.
Lucy did not have the art of small talk, not like Clare and Mother, and she wondered what one was supposed to say to fill the silence in such a situation. Not that she believed silence needed filling, not generally, only that something about Lily Millington made Lucy wish to appear more grown-up, more clever, more significant than usual. For some reason that would require unpicking later, it seemed important that she should appear as more than simply Edward’s little sister.
‘Lovely weather,’ she said, causing herself to cringe into her collar.
‘Enjoy it while it lasts,’ said Lily, ‘it’s going to storm tonight.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘I have a rare and wondrous ability to read the future.’
Lucy glanced at her.
Lily Millington smiled. ‘I have an interest in synoptic charts and chanced to see one in a copy of The Times on the postmaster’s desk.’
‘You know about weather forecasting?’
‘Only what I’ve heard from Robert FitzRoy.’
‘You’ve met Robert FitzRoy?’ Friend to Charles Darwin; commander of the HMS Beagle; inventor of barometers and the first ever Meteorological Statist to the Board of Trade.
‘I’ve heard him speak. He’s the friend of a friend. He’s working on a book about weather that sounds very promising.’
‘Did you ever hear him speak about the sinking of the Royal Charter and the creation of the FitzRoy storm barometer?’
‘Of course. It’s quite remarkable …’
As Lily Millington launched into a fascinating account of the theory behind FitzRoy’s forecasting charts and the science behind his storm glasses, Lucy listened with an avid 97 per cent of her attention. With the other 3 per cent, she wondered whether it was too much to hope that when Edward lost interest in his model, Lucy would be able to keep Lily Millington for herself.
Lily Millington had been right about the storm. The stretch of perfect summer weather came to an abrupt end late that afternoon, sunlight disappearing from the sky as suddenly and surely as if someone had blown out the flame within the world’s lamp. Lucy didn’t notice, though, for she was already sitting in the dark, secreted within a hidden cavity beneath the skin of Edward’s house.
She had spent a most exciting afternoon. After they arrived back from the post office, Lily Millington had decided to walk down to the woods to rendezvous with Edward. Emma, still busy in the kitchen, was happy to report that Thurston, Clare, Adele and Felix had taken a picnic tea to share by the river and were planning afterwards to swim, and that she herself was ahead of schedule with the dinner preparations and – if there was nothing that Lucy was wanting – was going to ‘pop back home for an hour or so to put my feet up’.
With the house to herself, Lucy knew precisely how she was going to spend her time. The initial thrill of discovery had dissipated, and in its wake lay the realisation that it would be a terrible folly to rush now into telling Edward about the priest holes. The floor plans were centuries old; it was entirely possible that the chambers had been sealed up years before, or else that the plans, though mooted, had never been put into place. How embarrassing it would be to make a big announcement only to discover herself in error! Lucy did not like making errors. Far better to investigate the secret hideaways herself first.
Once Emma had been sent packing and Lily Millington was little more than a flame-coloured speck on the far side of the meadow, Lucy pulled out the floor plans. The first chamber appeared to form part of the main staircase, which seemed so unlikely that Lucy thought initially that she must have been reading the plan incorrectly. She had climbed the staircase at least a hundred times by now and sat to read more than once on the elegant bentwood chair by the window; aside from a pleasant warmth where the stairs made their turn, she hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary.
Only when she fetched the magnifying glass from the cedar desk in the library
and began to decipher the letter did Lucy find the instruction that she’d been lacking. There was a trick step, the letter said. The first rise after the landing had been constructed so that it tilted, when triggered properly, to reveal the entrance to a small secret chamber. But be warned, continued the letter: for the design of the trapdoor was such that in order to remain discreet, the hidden mechanism could only be triggered from the outside.
It was like something out of one of those newspaper serials for schoolboys and Lucy ran to investigate, pushing aside the chair as she knelt on the floor.
There was nothing visible to suggest that the staircase was anything other than it appeared, and she frowned again at the letter. She studied the description, which included a sketch of a spring-operated latch, and then smiled to herself. Pressing each corner of the wooden rise in turn, she held her breath until finally she heard a small click and noticed that the panel had jutted out of position slightly at the base. She slipped her fingers into the newly revealed crack and lifted, sliding it into a recess beneath the next step. A slim, sly opening was revealed, large enough – just – to fit a man carrying no extra weight.
Lucy only considered for a split second before slipping down into the cavity.
The space was tight: not high enough for her to sit unless her head was bent so far forwards that her chin was touching her chest, and so she lay down flat. The air inside was stale and close; the floor was warm to the touch, and Lucy supposed that the chimney from the kitchen must run at an angle beneath it. She lay very still, listening. It was startlingly quiet. She shuffled sideways and pressed her ear against the wall. Dead, wooden silence. Solid, as if there were layers of bricks on the other side.
Lucy tried to envisage the design of the house, wondering how that could be. As she did, the realisation that she was lying in a secret chamber – designed to keep a man concealed from enemies bent on his destruction, with a trapdoor that might ease closed at any moment, leaving her alone in a pitch-black space, drowning in thick, broiling air, no one aware of what she’d found and where she’d gone – began to push in on her from all sides. She felt a sudden panic constricting her lungs, her breaths becoming short and loud, and she scrabbled into a crouched position as quickly as she could, hitting her head on the ceiling of the chamber in her rush to get free.
The second hideaway was in the hallway, and that was where Lucy was now. It was a very different prospect: a concealment within the wainscoting, tucked behind an ingenious recessed sliding panel that could be opened, thankfully, from inside or out. The space inside was not large, but it had a different feeling entirely from the stairwell chamber: there was something comforting about this hiding place. It was not truly dark, for one thing, Lucy noticed, and the chamber’s panel was thin enough that she could hear through it.
She had heard when the others returned from the river, laughing as they chased one another through the halls; she had heard, too, when Felix and Adele had their hissed spat about a joke (according to him) that had gone wrong (according to her); and she had heard the first great clap of thunder that rolled up the river and seized the house. Lucy had just decided to climb out of the space, and had her ear pressed close against the panel to make sure there was no one in the hallway to see her appear and discover her secret, when she picked out Edward’s footfalls approaching.
She considered emerging into his path and surprising him, and was wondering whether it might not be the perfect way to reveal to him the priest holes, when she heard him say, ‘Come here, wife.’
Lucy stopped still, her hand on the panel.
‘What is it, husband?’ Lily Millington’s voice.
‘Closer than that.’
‘Like this?’
Lucy leaned against the panel, listening. They did not say anything else, but Edward laughed softly. There was an edge of surprise to it, as if he had just been told something unexpected but pleasing, and someone inhaled sharply, and then—
Nothing.
Inside the hiding place, Lucy realised that she was holding her breath.
She released it.
Two seconds later, everything went black and a great rumble of thunder shook the house and the ancient earth beneath it.
The others were already in the dining room by the time Lucy arrived. A candelabrum stood in the middle of the unlaid table, nine long white tapers smoking towards the ceiling. The wind had picked up outside, and although it was summer the night was cool. Someone had lit a small fire, which flickered and popped in the grate, and Edward and Lily Millington were sitting by it. Lucy went to the mahogany armchair on the other side of the room.
‘Well, I’m not frightened of ghosts,’ Adele was saying, perched beside Clare on the tapestry-covered sofa that ran against the longer wall; it was a topic to which the pair returned frequently. ‘They are simply poor trapped souls seeking to be set free. I think that we should try some table-turning – see if we can invite one in to join us.’
‘Do you have a talking board with you?’
Adele frowned. ‘I don’t.’
Edward had his head bowed close to Lily Millington’s and Lucy could see his lips moving as he spoke. Lily Millington was nodding every so often and, as Lucy watched, she reached up to run her fingertips along the edge of his blue silk neck scarf.
‘I’m famished,’ said Thurston, pacing behind the table. ‘Where on earth is that girl?’
Lucy remembered Emma saying that she was going home to put her feet up. ‘She planned to be back in time to serve the dinner.’
‘Then she’s late.’
‘Perhaps the storm has waylaid her.’ Felix, standing by the rain-streaked window, craned to see something up on the eave. ‘It’s bucketing down. The drain’s already overflowing.’
Lucy glanced again at Edward and Lily. It was possible, of course, that she had misheard them in the hallway. More likely, though, that she had simply misunderstood. The Magenta Brotherhood were always adopting different pet names for one another. For a time, Adele had been ‘Puss’ because Edward painted her in a scene with a tiger; and Clare had once been ‘Rosie’, after Thurston made an unfortunate miscalculation with his pigments and gave her too much flush in her cheeks.
‘Every self-respecting house has a ghost these days.’
Clare shrugged. ‘I haven’t seen one yet.’
‘Seen?’ said Adele. ‘Don’t be so old-fashioned. Everybody nowadays knows that ghosts are invisible.’
‘Or translucent.’ Felix turned back to face them. ‘As in Mumler’s photographs.’
And A Christmas Carol. Lucy remembered the description of Marley’s ghost dragging his chains and padlocks; the way Scrooge could look right through him to the buttons on the back of his coat.
‘I suppose we could make a talking board of our own,’ said Clare. ‘It’s only some letters and a glass.’
‘That’s true – the ghost will do the rest.’
‘No,’ said Edward, looking up. ‘No talking board. No table-turning.’
‘Oh, Edward!’ Clare pouted. ‘Don’t spoil the fun. Aren’t you curious? You might have your very own ghost here at Birchwood, just waiting to introduce herself.’
‘I don’t need a talking board to tell me that there’s a presence in this house.’
‘Whatever do you mean?’ said Adele.
‘Yes, Edward’ – this was Clare, standing now – ‘what do you mean?’
For a split second Lucy thought that he was going to tell them all about the Night of the Following and her eyes pricked with tears. It was their secret.
But he didn’t. He told them instead the story of the Eldritch Children, the folk tale about the three mysterious children who, according to legend, had long ago appeared in the field by the woods, confusing local farmers with their skin that glowed and their long, gleaming hair.
Lucy could have laughed with relief.
The others listened, spellbound, as Edward brought the tale to life: the village people so eager to blame the strange yo
ung outsiders when crops failed and family members sickened. The kind old couple who took the children under their wing, moving them to the safety of a small stone croft within a bend of the river; the angry group that stormed the site one night, their torches lit and their bellies filled with fire. And then, at the last moment, the otherworldly sound of the horn on the wind and the appearance of the luminous Fairy Queen.
‘That’s what I’m painting for the exhibition. The Fairy Queen, protector of the realm, rescuer of the children, at the very point where the doorway between worlds can be opened.’ He smiled at Lily Millington. ‘I’ve wanted to paint her forever, and now that I’ve finally found her, I can.’
There was much enthusiasm from the others, and then Felix said, ‘You’ve just given me the most wonderful idea. It has become abundantly clear over the past fortnight that the day will never come when a breeze does not blow down that river of yours.’ As if to underline the point, a great gust rattled the glass windowpanes in their frames and made the fire hiss in the grate. ‘I am ready to retire the Lady of Shalott for a time. I say instead that we stage a photograph, all of us, just as Edward described – the Fairy Queen and her three children.’
‘But that’s four characters and there are only three models here,’ said Clare. ‘Are you suggesting that Edward should dress in the part of one?’
‘Or Thurston,’ said Adele with a laugh.
‘I mean Lucy, of course.’
‘But Lucy isn’t a model.’
‘She’s even better; she’s a genuine child.’
Lucy felt her cheeks heat at the prospect that she might be asked to serve as a model in one of Felix’s photographs. He had taken images of all of them over the past fortnight, but only for practice and not as proper works of art – not for possible display in Mr Ruskin’s exhibition.