The snow still fell heavily, and the icy wind was making the window rattle, but the vast garden was not empty. The hangman, the master of the house, Mr. Godwin, was standing still as a statue in the sea of gray white, his hands thrust into his overcoat pockets the only indication that he was feeling the cold at all. An old man—Tom wondered if he was Mr. Pike and indeed he was—was clearing the falling snow from on and around a large tree stump. It was this cut-down tree that was the focus of the hangman’s attention, the great wooden circle all that was left from what must once have been a towering oak, now just a tombstone to that life, roots no doubt rotting deep in the frozen earth.
The hangman’s face wasn’t visible, but he stood with such a stiffness in his spine that Tom found it hard to take his eyes from him. The boy and the man might have stayed in their places all morning were it not for another figure hurrying out across the snow and breaking the moment. Mrs. Pike. She did not so much as glance at the tree stump, but instead spoke briefly to the hangman, who, his reverie broken, turned and followed her inside. As they passed under the window, Tom caught a glimpse of his face, all dark scowling rage, and it filled him with such fear that he wished he hadn’t looked out at the snow at all.
Once dressed, he stepped nervously out into the corridor. The walls were wood-paneled and gloomy, only one candle sconce—no modern gas lamps then—spluttering out a pale yellow light farther down, and he realized, with some disappointment, that the nursery was quite far from the rest of the house and he’d probably spent the night—apart from his visitors—quite, quite alone. There was a set of empty rooms near his bedroom, which he presumed must have been for a nursemaid at some time, but like the nursery itself, they had a forgotten air, and as he peered inside, Tom was sure the creak of the door was a moan of sadness for their lost purpose.
He turned his back and scurried toward the main staircase that cut down into the vast hall and linked the various wings of Thornfields. He kept close to the walls, and darted around the upstairs, his small hand quickly gripping each cold door handle and twisting. Most were, as the master sweep had said they would be, locked. Others were empty bedrooms, in one of which he spied a dressing table where a small mirror and hairbrush sat among various other mysteries of womanhood such as combs and small items of jewelry that told him the room must be Miss Darkly’s. The air that greeted him was cold as ice and the bed was hidden beneath a mountain of blankets. There had clearly been no fire lit in that room all winter. Tom wondered if he should perhaps take a ring or necklace from her table—she seemed strange enough that she might not notice—but he could not bring himself to step farther inside. He had an awful feeling that if he did, the door would slam shut behind him and some awful thing—scratch, scratch—would suck him up into the chimney and keep him there forever.
Downstairs, his heart in his mouth, he discovered more rooms locked. Were they filled with treasures or just unused? He saw no servants—although there must be some—and he couldn’t escape the feeling that the whole vast building was simply some kind of mausoleum. How could anyone live here, he wondered. Such luxury and yet no warmth. There had been more comfort in his dead mother’s arms than could be found in this great house.
As he crossed the hall toward the servants’ stairs, he heard voices coming from the library. A man, low, gruff, and angry, and a woman, distressed. The door was closed but the words carried through in the quiet, muffled and deadened. It was the hangman and Beatrice Darkly.
“You were in the chimney boy’s room last night, weren’t you?”
“I put the fire out, that’s all. I could not sleep thinking of the fire and—”
“You were by his bed. Looking over him. Mrs. Pike said there are footprints there. In ash.”
“I didn’t, Theodore. Teddy, I didn’t, it wasn’t me. I just—the fire—”
“Do not call me Teddy, Beatrice. We are not children anymore. That warmth is long gone now. You stay away from that boy. You don’t touch him. Don’t whisper your wickedness to him.”
“It was the fire. I only put out the fire.”
The pause that came after was long.
“Two years today. Two years.” His voice was a heavy sigh. “I will never forget the things you said, Beatrice. Everyone would laugh at her. No one would accept her. You were full of so much scorn. You, who should have been happiest for me. We never had the chance to find out whether she would have been accepted, did we? Did you say those things to her when she came here? Did you taunt her to her face?”
“I cannot remember. I did not—I cannot—you know I cannot—”
“You were a monster then, Beatrice. Are you still a monster now?”
When she spoke next, her voice was like the frost outside, cold and sharp. No longer pleading.
“Why don’t you just put me out, Theodore? Why don’t you just let me go if you despise me so much? A prison could be no worse than this life.”
The hangman laughed; an unpleasant sound that made Tom flinch.
“If I were to send you anywhere, it would be to a madhouse.”
“Don’t you say that, Theodore! Don’t you ever say that to me! Not to me!”
“I would. Don’t doubt it. Just give me more reason like this business with the boy, and I swear to the God almighty who damns you, Beatrice, it’s to the asylum you’ll go.”
Tom backed away, his eyes wide. He didn’t know what they were talking about, but he could hear the anxiety and anger in their voices and it made him feel sick. What happened two years ago? Why did the hangman hate Miss Darkly? Why did he want her to stay away from Tom? The footprints by the bed. Had that been her? Heels clipped against floorboard in his memory, and as they did so the library door swung open, and he was caught in the sudden light.
The hangman loomed large in the doorway, his broad chest nearly filling it, while behind him the nervy figure of Miss Darkly shrank back into the walls.
“Boy,” he said, abruptly stopping in his stride. “You’re awake. What are you doing here?”
“I’m going to the kitchen, sir. Mrs. Pike told me to.” His throat was still raw. “I heard what you said, sir.” The words rushed out. He didn’t like Miss Darkly—she made him think of witches somehow—full of bitterness and bile like in the stories his mother would tell him when he was very small, but neither did he want her to carry the blame for something she hadn’t done. Beatrice Darkly had been wearing shoes when she came into his room last night, but the footprints had been made by bare feet. “And it’s my fault, it was me. It was me who trod in the soot. I did it in my sleep, sir. I’ll clean it up, sir.”
It was a lie, but what else could he say? That he thought there was a ghost in the fireplace? Something terrible and terrifying and it came out and watched him while he slept? No. He could not say that. It would be him the hangman wanted to send to the asylum if he told a tale like that. But neither could he let someone else take the blame, because his mother, God rest her soul, had done her best, despite their poverty, to raise him to be honest and good.
“Go down to the kitchen, boy.” The hangman’s voice was cold. “I do not wish to see you.”
Tom nodded, whispered a final apology and almost ran to the servants’ stairwell. He hated this house. He hated the hangman and Miss Darkly. He hated his fear of the thing he’d seen in the chimney, his fear of everything. And he hated the master sweep. Oh, in that moment how he wished he’d died with his mother, and not been left all alone in this awful existence.
In the kitchen there was no sign of Mrs. Pike, but the old cook, a stooped woman with a hunch growing in her back and a dour face, ushered him silently to a stool next to the open range where various pots simmered. The heat immediately enveloped him, blasting away the freezing cold of upstairs. She ladled a thick, meaty stew into a bowl and handed it to him, alongside a rough hunk of bread. “Mrs. Pike says I’m to give you this,” she said. “And
don’t spill any on those clothes. A boy like you shouldn’t even be in them.”
A servant girl leaned against the table watching Tom. She was like a street cat, thin and alert. “You choked in the chimney?”
Tom nodded slowly, concentrating on spooning the delicious food into his mouth.
“Get back upstairs, Elsie,” the cook said. “Those floors won’t scrub and polish themselves. Mrs. Pike wants them gleaming.”
“Those la-di-da guests probably won’t even be able to get here in this weather.” The girl had barely moved from where she stood. “And I don’t see why they’d want to come at all.”
The cook scowled at her. “You don’t know what this house used to be like, back in happier times.” She glanced up to a small painting balanced on a shelf, its gilt frame out of place in the earthy common surroundings of the kitchen. “They’ll come, all right. Well loved, the Godwin family are, and you’d do right to mind that.” The cook shuffled into the pantry, muttering to herself, and as he chewed his food, Tom looked at the painting. Two children—a young man and a younger girl—sat in the boughs of a vast tree, looking at each other and laughing in the sunshine. It was not a very formal painting, Tom thought, for a house as grand as this, but it was full of warmth and love.
“That’s mad Miss Darkly and the master of the house when they were young,” Elsie said. “He wanted to burn it, that’s what Cook says, but Mrs. Pike brought it down here instead. For her and Cook to have. To remember how things were.” She pulled up a stool and sat opposite him. “Were you at the hanging yesterday?”
Tom was still staring at the painting. “What happened two years ago?” he asked. “Why is the house like this?”
Elsie shrugged. “I’ve only been here three months. They don’t talk to me about all that. They don’t like me. They say I chatter too much. But I do know this”—she leaned forward, all bright and alive—“whatever it was, it started him with the hanging.”
“Is it true that he studies their faces?” Tom whispered. “After they’re dead?”
“No one will say. Mrs. Pike’d sack me for asking, that old witch.” Elsie dropped her own voice, the pair of them conspiratorial. “But he doesn’t come home for hours after. And when he does, his mood is even darker than normal. Even Mrs. Pike stays out of his way. He sits in his study and just stares out the window, at the place that big old tree used to be.” She sat back. “They’re all mad here, that’s what I reckon.” Tom saw it then, the little shiver of fear under her confidence. “You just make sure it don’t catch on you, little chimney boy.” And with that, she grabbed her brushes and pail and was gone.
“You can’t stay here all evening,” the cook snapped at him once she returned, bursting his bubble of hope that he’d be allowed to remain in the warmth and help her with any tasks she’d see fit to give him. “If you’ve finished, then get back upstairs and find Mrs. Pike. She’ll find some use for you.”
“Where will she be?” he asked.
“You’ve got eyes. Use them. Try the dining room. If guests are coming, the silver will need polishing.”
Silver, Tom thought, his head filled once more with the shadow of the master sweep. A teaspoon perhaps.
“Now shoo.”
And so Tom reluctantly returned to the gloom and desolate cold abovestairs, and with no real idea of the layout of such a large house, all he could do to find the dining room was keep trying different doors on the ground floor and whispering the housekeeper’s name as he went. He was about to explore a shadowy corridor that ran off the central hallway when Miss Darkly rounded the corner. Her fingers picked at the skin around each thumb, tiny frantic actions. Her eyes widened when she saw Tom.
“You!” she said. “I was looking for you.” Tom’s skin crawled under her gaze and he was sure the temperature dropped slightly.
“I was in the kitchen,” he whispered, backing away.
She darted forward, hunching over so her face was level with his and gripping his shoulders in her clawlike hands. “You saw her, didn’t you?” she hissed at him, a fine spray of sour breath and saliva hitting his cheek. “You saw her in the chimney. She was by your bed in the night. I put the fire out, but it was too late. She knew where to find you.”
Tom said nothing but stared, terrified, at her eyes that darted here and there, lost in her own thoughts. “She torments me,” she continued. “I feel her watching me. She would reach for me when I saw her. And I knew, I know, that if she touches me I shall die, I know it. Even now, with barely a fire lit in the house, I can still feel her. She’ll never let me rest. She wishes to take vengeance on me. I cannot tell them again what I see. They say I’m mad and wicked, like my mother. They’ll send me to an asylum. They’ll say it’s bad blood. That it was all just me. But you,” she focused on Tom once more, “if you see her too, then we cannot both be mad, can we? It’s all I need. To know that I am not mad.”
“I didn’t see her,” Tom squealed, although the lie screamed in his mind in flashes of that awful eye behind a veil of black hair. Scratch, scratch. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me go, please!”
“But you did!” Beatrice Darkly wailed, as frightening to Tom as whatever was in the flues. “I know you did. And she came to your room. What does she want with you, chimney boy? I know what she wants from me, but what can she possibly want with you?”
“Let him go, Beatrice.” The hangman and Mrs. Pike had both appeared as if from nowhere, he holding a large glass of brandy. Miss Darkly did not take her eyes from Tom’s, but she did release him and straighten up. She smiled too brightly, the expression both tragic and terrifying.
“Then let her come for me and be done with it. I can take no more. I cannot.”
“Now, Miss Darkly, don’t go upsetting yourself.” The housekeeper tried to take the young woman’s arm, but she stepped out of reach.
“We shall have fires in every room, Mrs. Pike,” she said, laughing, almost hysterical. “Burn the wood. All of it!” She spun around, into the center of the hallway. “And I shall dance and dance whatever dance she wants of me, and it’s done.” She paused, breathless, and only then looked at the hangman, who stood, his face dark with loathing, watching her. “Perhaps I shall dance at the end of a rope. Yes, perhaps I shall choose that waltz to end it all. Perhaps that is what she wants. Is it what you want, Theodore? Would you like that? My brother of sorts? My beloved?”
“Don’t you talk that way, my dear,” Mrs. Pike said. “We have guests coming and we will close a door on the past. There has been enough gloom and mourning.” She shot a look at the hangman then, and Tom, mouth half-open with it all, wondered at her bravery to speak so to the master and mistress of the house. “Now go to your room, Beatrice dear, and I’ll send Elsie up with tea and some soup. You don’t eat enough. There’s nothing of you.”
“I’m so tired of it,” Miss Darkly muttered as she began to wander up the stairs. “I’m so very, very tired of being afraid. Of feeling so guilty. Let her come and be done with me.” She weaved her way to the top and then disappeared into the gloom.
“What did she say to you?” the hangman asked Tom when Mrs. Pike had hurried away. The boy had hoped to be ignored until the housekeeper returned, but that was not his luck.
“Nothing, sir.”
“God does not look kindly on liars,” he growled, “and neither do I.”
“She asked if I saw her.” Tom’s voice was small.
“Saw who?”
“I don’t know, sir. Someone in the chimney.” He swallowed hard, before saying the word aloud. “A ghost, I think.”
“There are no ghosts.” He stared up to the empty hallway above. “I would there were ghosts. She is driven mad by her guilt. And to think,” he muttered softly, before taking a long drink of his brandy, “I once believed I loved her.”
“More wood, Mr. Godwin, sir.” The voice, d
ry as twigs itself, made Tom jump, and he turned to see the old man from outside holding a large basket of chopped logs. “I took the liberty of bringing a wheelbarrow full in. Left them downstairs. Thought you might need more given this weather. I’ll put them in the library, sir.” Snowflakes were rapidly melting into his dark coat, and his face was lined and old, his back hunched over, and as he headed toward the door, he dragged one leg slightly behind him as if its weight was greater than the load he carried.
“Thank you, Pike,” the hangman grunted. “How much more of it is left?”
“Still plenty.”
“Then the boy should clean the chimneys. Now. Tonight. Let Mrs. Pike have her fires. Burn it all for her warmth. It’s only because of my affection for your wife that this farce of visitors has even been entertained.”
“I’m well aware of that, sir.” Mr. Pike nodded. The hangman looked down at Tom, fiercely angry, as if without Miss Darkly in front of him, the chimney boy would do well enough to take his rage out on. “He can work through the night if needs be. He’s rested enough. I have no time for workhouse children in my house. I am not my father.” He spat the words out and stormed away, down into a dark corridor that had not so much as one candle lit.
“Take this, boy.” Pike gave Tom the wood to carry, the weight of which strained his thin arms until they were screaming, and he hurried into the library and put it down by the fireplace. The old man came in after him, unscrewing the top from a hip flask that had appeared from his pocket.
“Don’t mind Mr. Godwin,” he said. “He’s got a good heart. Or at least he used to. Still in there somewhere.”
Tom picked up one thick chunk of wood. It was solid. Ancient. He could almost feel all the life it once held humming on his fingertips. “Is this the tree from outside? I saw it in a painting downstairs.”
Mr. Pike nodded and peered more closely at Tom. “You speak nice for a chimney boy.”
“My mother used to be a ladies’ maid before…” His words trailed off, his eyes still on the wood. Before him. Without him she’d still be alive. Still be working in a fine house in the town. She used to call him her joy and sing to him, but she can’t really have thought that. Not really. Not when she was freezing to death in an alley. “She said it would serve me well to speak well.”
Hark! the Herald Angels Scream Page 32