Pike half laughed at that. “And look at you now.” He held out the flask, but Tom shook his head. The old man sniffed and took another swallow. “I need it for my leg. It’s no good in this weather.” His eyes darkened. “In this house. This miserable house.”
Tom stared at the flames in the grate, remembering Miss Darkly throwing water onto his in the night. “Why did you cut the tree down?” he asked.
“Too many memories for him. He stared at it all the time. Him staring, Miss Darkly refusing to look at it. It had to go. Mrs. Pike thought it would help.” He took another drink. “But now Mr. Godwin just stares at where it used to be.”
“Memories of what?” Tom kept his voice small and barely moved a muscle where he was by the hearth. Mr. Pike was talking to himself as much as Tom and perhaps now he’d find out why the hangman hated Miss Darkly so.
“She hanged herself from it,” Mr. Pike said, curt. “Two years ago tonight. There was a blizzard like this. Icy it was. She was like a tiny awful doll hanging there in the morning. I cut her down myself when we found her. Will never forget the sight of it. That black hair all fallen forward in front of her face. Her neck frozen tilted at that awful angle. Still, it meant no one else had to see her face. I did, though. I’ll always be seeing it.”
“Who was she?” Tom whispered. Black hair over her face. Pale, cold skin. There was a long pause with only the crackling of the fire, just as ours crackles now, in the silence. The old man lowered himself onto a footstool, his bad leg stretched out in front of him, and he sighed.
“In the east they call ghosts Yurei. I learned that when I was on old Mr. Godwin’s ships. Before my accident.” As he leaned forward to rub his leg, Tom saw a strange tattoo on his forearm, odd letters in a vertical strip, like those up on the wall. “He gave me a job here when I couldn’t walk properly. Me and Mrs. Pike. I was glad of it too, by then. Our boy had been born and died without me even holding him. That took my sea legs from me more than any limp could ever do. It gave Mrs. Pike a purpose again, to have a grand house like this to work in, and young Master Theodore and little Beatrice, the ward, to raise. I’d have worked for nothing just for her to have that. But still, I sometimes dreamed of the sea, and in those dreams it always carried me east, to those magical, mystical places with their strange ways. Brutal and beautiful all mixed up together. And the women”—he let out a sigh—“they were the most magical of all of it. So different. I’ve seen many men enchanted by them, but I never expected it of Master Godwin when he sailed away on his father’s business. That I did not expect.” He paused, his face darkening. “The worst of the Yurei, they used to say, are the Onryo.”
“Who hanged from the tree?” Tom asked, his small stomach filling with dread. Mr. Pike continued, oblivious to the boy’s question.
“None of us expected him to fall in love. Not in the east. Not with one of their women, enticing as they were, because we thought he was in love here. He was to marry Miss Darkly, you see, and they were happy. As they’d grown, their relationship had changed and any fool could see they only had eyes for each other. Thornfields was a house full of joy then. Warm. But, when that ship sailed, Theodore was a boy, and he came back, a year or so later, as a man. She knew straightaway, did Miss Darkly, clever as she is, that something had changed. He couldn’t look her in the eye, but he told her he’d met a woman in the east, Yuki, fallen in love and married her. He would send a message to the port where she waited, halfway to England, once things were straight with his father—never less than respectful was Theodore then—and she would follow him. But he’d wanted to tell Miss Darkly himself and give her time to adjust before his new wife was among them. But Miss Darkly, poor heartbroken soul, did not adjust. She raged. She was bitter. She said terrible, terrible things to Master Theodore. Called him a laughingstock and worse. Old Master Godwin—who was quite infirm by then and would die before the night that darkened this house—felt pity for her, even though she was behaving like a banshee, perhaps like her mad mother who’d died in that asylum, a crazed murderer. We all loved Miss Darkly, see? Even young Master Godwin still, in his own way, kept her in his heart. But she could not compete with his eastern beauty. Yet he could have forgiven her, her words, I think. Had events not turned out as they did.”
“What happened two years ago?” Tom asked, his voice barely a whisper. The secrets of Thornfields were tumbling from Mr. Pike, and he didn’t want it to stop. He thought perhaps he might be less afraid if he were to know what had trapped these people here in this melancholy.
“It’s hard to say. Miss Darkly says she can’t remember. She had a fever—the madness of her mother gripping her perhaps—and had been that way, on and off, since he’d told her about the marriage. But she was the only person here when Yuki arrived. Master Godwin was in Liverpool, Mrs. Pike had gone to her sister’s for the night—Miss Darkly had insisted she go—and I was away delivering some business papers. What happened that night? All I know is that Miss Darkly had wanted the new bride dead, had raged about it, and the next morning she had her wish. Yuki had hanged herself by the silk cord of her dress from a sturdy branch of that old tree. Mrs. Pike found her and I cut her down. Couldn’t let the young master see her like that, and it would have been days before his return anyway, the snow being thick and the ground treacherous, and we couldn’t keep her that long. She might have been beautiful in life, but death, and such a death, can do terrible things to a person’s face. It etches itself into the skin. She was no beauty then under the curtain of hair that covered her. I took her straight to the churchyard and she was buried.” He took a long drink from his flask. “That’s why Mr. Godwin became a hangman. To look at their faces. To see how they suffered. How she suffered. All to punish himself for not being here. For not saving her. Trying to understand why she would do such a thing after coming such a long way—to think what Miss Darkly could possibly have said to her that would make her doubt his love. How she would believe a scorned woman over his own pledge.”
“What do you think Miss Darkly said?” Tom asked.
“I’ve got the boy’s own clothes here.” A shadow fell across the door and both boy and old man looked up to see Mrs. Pike in the doorway, carrying a single candle and Tom’s now washed rags. “If he’s going back into the chimneys, then he’s not doing it in those breeches.”
“People will do terrible things for love,” Mr. Pike said to Tom before turning his attention to his wife. “I’ll sort the boy out. It don’t matter much if my clothes get soot on them.”
“Don’t you stay up late with him,” his wife admonished. “You’ve got a chill.” She looked softly at Tom. “And don’t you pay no mind to what Mr. Godwin said. Don’t work all night, there’s no call for that. I’ll put an old blanket in the drawing room and some bread and cheese. You can rest in there when you think you’ve done as much as you can, and then you can finish in the morning when the sweep gets back. Mr. Crockett won’t make it here before nine or so, I warrant. Not in all that snow. Just you make sure you clean up as you go. I need to tend to Miss Darkly before bed.” She left his clothes behind and disappeared off with her candle, and with the hangman nowhere to be seen, it felt as if the house had swallowed everyone up and there was just him and the old man left.
“Why are you telling me all this?” he asked.
“It’s like trying to spit a poison out, I suppose. No one talks about it. Not even my wife.” His eyes slid off to one side and his voice lowered. “I think you lied when you said you saw nothing in the chimney. I think you saw the Onryo.” His brow furrowed. “But I don’t know why she would show herself to you. Perhaps this is it. Perhaps she is finally coming for Miss Darkly. And if so, there is nothing we can do to stop her except pray that she chooses to leave the rest of us alive, for an Onryo has no empathy. It is pure vengeance and will wreak its will on any who come into its path.”
“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” Tom whispered,
even as the sudden draft from the chimney sucked up his words, as if something there were mocking him.
“They say an Onryo has the power to kill anyone instantly. To stop their heart with fright. But they prefer their chosen victim to live in torment and suffering. To be haunted. Sound familiar? Don’t you think Miss Darkly is suffering? I think she’s in the wood we burn, Yuki’s vengeful spirit, and now she’s in the flues and the fireplaces. Whatever Miss Darkly did or said that night, in death it invoked her wrath. There is nothing to be done if an Onryo marks you. There is no escaping that terrible fate.”
Tom stared at the old man, his eyes wide. Why would Mr. Pike say such a thing? Was it some cruelty to frighten him knowing he had the chimneys to clean that night, alone in the dark? Was it to make him get the job done quickly?
“So if you see it,” Mr. Pike continued, “try to stay calm. She doesn’t want you. She might be curious but that’s all. She wants Miss Darkly. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of her way. Pretend you don’t see her at all and maybe she’ll leave you alone.” He got to his feet, his knees creaking, and in obvious pain.
“Have you ever seen her?” Tom asked.
The old man shook his head. “I’m haunted by her enough. I saw her face that morning. I don’t need to see her now.”
* * *
—
And so it was that as darkness fell outside and the windows were shuttered against the cold, Tom found himself back in the clothes Crockett had given him, hanging a sheet across the chimney he’d nearly died in, thinking of vengeful ghosts, murderous women, and looming over it all was the shadow of the master sweep’s grasping greed and his cellar of soot and the hidden pocket in his trousers to hide a stolen object in.
At least Mrs. Pike had left two small candles lit, but with his brush gripped in his hand, Tom trembled at the thought of going back up into that darkness. Ghosts don’t exist, he told himself, but the thought was hollow. After the tale Mr. Pike had told him, he knew that what he’d seen in the flues was Yuki, the hangman’s bride, her vengeance come back as some inhuman malevolent spirit.
The thought of her waiting there for him made his breath freeze in his chest and when the drawing room door creaked open behind him he jumped, startled, half expecting to see her there watching him from behind that awful veil of hair, but instead it was the hangman himself. He came into the room, awkward, as if he didn’t belong there, gripping a lit candelabra in one hand and a small handbell in the other.
“Take this with you.” He handed the bell to Tom as he spoke curtly. “Ring it if you should find yourself in trouble. But only if that is the case. Disturb me just for childish jitters and I’ll have you beaten soundly, do you hear?” He spoke the last as if his kindness embarrassed him, gruff and fierce, although without the wolfish bite of Crockett’s threats. Now that Tom had heard the history of the house, and being a sensitive boy, he could see the pain and grief behind that hardened face and he found his fear of the hangman waning slightly. He murmured a thank-you and tucked the bell into his belt, and the man left without another word, leaving Tom alone with only the flues and what might be lurking inside them, for company.
He took a deep breath and steadied himself. He had no choice but to climb. He was, after all, a climbing boy, and if the Onryo didn’t kill him, then Crockett surely would. Once again he felt entirely alone in the world and for a moment just wanted to cry, but then he thought of his mother—not her face, he somehow couldn’t picture that—but of her voice and her song, and then crawled behind the sheet and to whatever awaited him.
As he climbed his mother’s song kept him company and he whispered along with her voice, so sweet in his head, the song going around and around and never finishing, soothing him in the dark as he worked.
Lavender’s green, diddle diddle,
lavender’s blue.
You must love me, diddle diddle,
’Cause I love you.
I heard one say, diddle diddle,
since I came hither,
that you and I, diddle diddle
must lie together.
And so, despite a constant ball of terror in the pit of his stomach, he climbed and he scrubbed, and let the cold and dark envelop him and surrendered himself to fate to decide if he was to be the next Tom-who-died. He kept his mother’s song in his head and his eyes firmly fixed only on what was in front of him, and with the hangman’s bell tucked into his waist he didn’t feel quite as alone as he should have. As the cold faded with his exertion, he could, for a while, keep his fear contained.
The hours passed. He had come down through the narrow flues into a few of the many locked rooms in the house, but they were all either entirely empty or so sparsely furnished that Tom knew he would find nothing in any dresser drawer or cupboard to take, but then, just as a clock ticked over to midnight, he clambered out of a large hearth and knew he had arrived somewhere special. After carefully wiping the soles of his feet with the inside of his shirt—which although already filthy, did knock the excess dust away enough that he would not leave obvious footprints on the wooden floors or rugs—he stood up and cautiously walked forward, his mouth a small O of wonder. The walls were covered with vast maps and charts, and paintings on silk of strange trees and seas and women with dark hair and strange clothes. There were cabinets and tables and cases displaying painted china vases and bowls and animals carved from green stone and all manner of treasures the likes of which Tom couldn’t even have imagined in his life of grime and starvation on the streets of the city where everything that might have once been bright was caked in mud and dirt.
Tom could do nothing but stare for a moment. Even aside from its contents, the room was the largest he had ever been in, two imposing fireplaces, one at either end, and it seemed to Tom that an endless magical world sat between the two. Art was not for the likes of him, and he had never seen so much beauty in one place before, and even dulled in the darkness, each item seemed to sparkle to the boy’s eyes. Breathless, he walked forward. He had no mind to steal from this room—although he was sure that at some point Crockett would demand it of him should they return to Thornfields in the future—but he wanted to drink each item into his memory and store it there to savor later when sore and aching and with an empty belly on a bed of soot in Crockett’s basement. He pulled the small bell from his trousers and left it on the corner of a table to stop it jangling as he walked, and then wandered the room, lost in his studies of the pieces of jade or china, eyes wide on the maps that showed a world so vast his mind couldn’t even comprehend it. In one painting a beast with water spouting from its head erupted from the roiling sea to ensnare an entire ship in its huge jaw and Tom wondered, once again, how anyone could think to go to sea if such monsters could live in it.
He was so absorbed in everything around him that he paid no heed to how far into the room he had wandered, and as he stood in the middle of that ocean of wooden floor and rugs, admiring a tiger painted on silk, he didn’t at first hear the soot dust falling from the other chimney, the sound not much more than a whisper as it sprinkled onto the flagstones.
Scratch, scratch.
Tom froze.
Another flurry of soot scattered out of the chimney, this time like hailstones against glass, and he slowly, so slowly, turned his head. Black hair hung down from the chimney, almost touching the grate.
Scratch, scratch.
One pale hand, clawed, with black nails at the end, gripped onto the chimney breast brickwork, feeling its way down, the cuff of a white shift visible against the blue white of dead skin.
Tom squeezed his eyes shut. She wasn’t there. She couldn’t be there. There are no such things as ghosts. His eyes were playing tricks on him. His breath panted out cold, the temperature dropping once more, making a mockery of his thoughts, and although he wanted to heed Mr. Pike’s words and stay calm and still so she wouldn�
��t see him, as more soot rustled in the grate, his terror was too great. He had to look.
He opened his eyes, and it took all he had to swallow his scream. She emerged from the fireplace, crablike, her arms and legs moving unnaturally, and as she crouched there on the wooden floor before him, her head tilted forward on her damaged neck so that her hair still hung long over her face, she looked up at him with that one terrible eye.
The Onryo. Yuki, or what was left of her. And she had seen him.
Slowly she unfurled, a series of awful jerky movements, unfolding a stiff puppet from a box, until she was upright. Despite having emerged from the flues, just as Tom had, her white shift was clean and the mottling of her skin stood out against it. She shuffled forward, as if her legs weren’t used to walking, and with each step, her black, furious eye stayed fixed on Tom.
Only when she raised one arm and reached for him did the moment break. His heart in danger of stopping in his chest, Tom turned to flee. The door, he knew, was locked. There was only one way out. The way he came in. Through the other fireplace. He raced across the rug, no longer cautious of leaving footprints behind, and only as he fell to his knees, hard enough against the stone to make him want to yelp and reached up to climb, did he risk a look back, expecting her to still be making her slow shuffle across the room.
But she was there, only a foot or so away from him, sitting back on her haunches, her feet planted wide, that one arm stretched out, thin fingers grasping for him. She let out a long hiss and scuttled forward.
Tom didn’t hesitate but climbed as if he was born for it, hurling himself back into the darkness, scraping his knees and elbows in his panic, shimmying up with no regard to the dust that filled his lungs and made him choke. Every moment he expected to feel her grip on his ankle as he had before, but nothing came, and only when the urge to cough overwhelmed him did he finally pause. She had not followed him. He was alone. There was no dark hair or scratching hands behind him, and he could feel her absence in the air that while cold no longer had that freezing chill about it.
Hark! the Herald Angels Scream Page 33