The Darkling Bride

by Laura Andersen

  Damn. No surprise arrivals. Sibéal made the most of what she had. “I’m coming down tomorrow to speak to the local police. I should like to speak to the family members as well.”

  “I can arrange for a meeting in my chambers.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I prefer to see them at Deeprath Castle, which also allows me to view the crime scene at the same time. Surely it’s best not to drag this out longer than necessary?”

  “Do you have a warrant?” the solicitor countered, all business.

  “Do I need one?” she shot back. Then she deliberately softened her tone. “I understand that you represent the Gallagher family, and have done for decades. Surely you are as eager as they are to finally know the truth of what happened in 1992. No need for you to tell them I’m coming. I’ll place a call directly when we are finished and arrange matters with the family myself.”

  “Then I imagine you and I will be meeting before too long, Inspector.”

  “I look forward to it, Mr. Winthrop.”

  And that was the biggest lie Sibéal had told in at least a week. She was not at all interested in the Gallagher family solicitor. All her interest was reserved for the Gallaghers themselves.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  October 1879

  Evan walked beside Jenny Gallagher in the clear autumn air and told himself to focus on what he’d come for. Which was not, however tempting, Jenny herself.

  “You promised to tell me your version of the Darkling Bride legend,” he noted. “So why are we going to Glendalough?”

  It was two miles to the ruins of the monastic city that had once thrived in these mountains. When Jenny had proposed a visit, Evan looked doubtfully at her fashionable dress in white and purple stripes and asked, “Are you sure you want to walk?”

  “Afraid you won’t be able to keep up?” she’d answered, eyes widened in innocence.

  Now he dragged his attention away from her profile, the sharp, neat line of her nose and the curve of cheek and mouth, and asked again, “Why Glendalough?”

  “Because that is where the story begins. There can be no bride without a man. And where, this far in the mountains, was she most likely to meet a man?”

  “You’re telling me your bride ran off with a monk?”

  “You haven’t heard that version?”

  “It sounds unique.” He smiled. “Rather like you.”

  A London woman would have accepted the compliment as her due. Jenny eyed him sideways and said, “Flattery will not get you the story before I’m ready to tell it. Fortunately for you, this,” Jenny said, sweeping her right hand to encompass the scene before them, “is where the story begins.”

  The Gateway of Glendalough had been the entry to the monastic city, though all that remained now were bits of four walls enclosing a small, square space with arches front and back. When the gateway had been intact, these would have allowed entrance through the gatehouse.

  “Here?” Evan asked.

  “More properly, just here.” Jenny led him through the second arch and directed his attention to a large stone on the side of the path.

  Evan squatted down and tilted his head until he had a better angle to see what she was pointing out—not the stone, but the carving on it. Faint, but unmistakable—the plain outline of a cross, with an unusually wide flared base.

  “What was its purpose?” he asked. “And what does it have to do with the Bride?”

  “This is a Sanctuary Cross,” Jenny told him. “It marked the space where one who was being pursued could cross into holy sanctuary, where they could not be touched by civil or military authorities. This is where the Darkling Bride was first seen in these mountains…on a stormy night, when the monks found her clutching fast to the stone as though begging its protection.”

  Evan had heard a lot of versions of a lot of folktales over the course of his life. Never had he heard anything like Jenny Gallagher’s version of the Darkling Bride. Part of it, he knew, was the setting. Anyone who could stand in the Valley of the Two Lakes—surrounded by the stern peaks and ancient bogland to which St. Kevin had retreated twelve hundred years ago—and not feel the eerie slipstream of time and place had no sensitivity at all.

  But he was honest enough to recognize that most of the allure came from the storyteller. Jenny could be reciting the periodic table of the elements and he would still be enthralled. Not just because she was lovely, not just because she was charming, but because he could envision her as the Darkling Bride. Even in the light of day she retained that timeless quality he’d first noticed in the library.

  The bones of the Gallagher version of the Darkling Bride retained recognizable similarities to others Evan had read: the mysterious woman who appears from nowhere; her inability to communicate; her enchantment of a respectable man who abandons all responsibilities for her sake; the revelation of her identity by either saintly or demonic means; the resulting curse, either from goodness defiled or evil unmasked.

  But as with all folktales, it was the differences that were most illuminating. The Darkling Bride of the Wicklow Mountains had “skin of palest moonlight and hair of darkest night,” and she further possessed “eyes of an unholy blue.” Evan noted that phrase, for it was most commonly found in the legend of St. Kevin and Kathleen, the woman who would not stop troubling him. An interesting fusion there.

  The name the monks gave their mysterious woman was Aine, the traditional Queen of the Fairies. In this version, her inability to communicate was not because she was mute or traumatized or even, as in one bloodthirsty version, had had her tongue removed. More simply, she spoke a language not recognized even in this learned community.

  As she was so clearly distressed—and wore a gown and mantle of fine soft wool, marking her as a woman of wealth—the monks installed her in their guesthouse and awaited whatever or whoever pursued her.

  The longer Jenny Gallagher spoke, the more Evan fell under the spell of the soft Irish voice, until he began to feel the edges of reality fold inward. When he blinked, he could almost see Glendalough as it had been—prosperous and vibrant, the Round Tower and St. Kevin’s Church made new amongst the outlines of other buildings. They rose from their ruins like ghosts of stone and wood, and Evan let himself follow the illusion until he could have sworn he had fallen into the story itself.

  “Is there naught I can do for you, lady?” Niall asked. He was eighteen, romantic, and as a younger son of the Gallagher family, chivalry had been bred into his bones. And though he had lived and been educated at Glendalough since he was a child, he had taken no vows as yet.

  She did not answer—Aine rarely spoke, and then in words none here could decipher—but she appeared happy to see him. Each day, they would sit in this sheltered spot near St. Kevin’s Kitchen and Niall would talk enough for both of them.

  Stories of his family and childhood, Irish tales of heroes and tricksters, Bible lessons (when the prior came close enough to overhear)…Niall would talk and Aine would listen.

  Every day, he ended by asking her a few gentle questions.

  “Can you not tell us your name? Where you come from? We will protect you, lady, you need not fear what any man can do while you are protected by Our Lord’s grace in sanctuary.”

  And every day, she would simply regard him gravely with those eyes of unearthly blue and remain mute.

  Until the fifteenth day. As Niall rose and dipped his head to her in farewell, Aine said, in clear and perfect Irish, “Thank you.”

  It was then that Niall Gallagher took his vow—that he would never become a monk.

  It took a moment for Evan to realize that, first, he was not Niall Gallagher and, second, that Jenny had stopped speaking.

  “That’s it?” he asked. “What about the rest of the story?”

  “I thought you were the storyteller, Mr. Chase. Why should I do your work for you?”

  “It’s not as though I’m going to write a faithful account of any single Darkling Bride legend. I’m just looking for as many va
riations as possible, to provide…inspiration.”

  “And have I not provided sufficient inspiration?”

  Evan had never met any woman who could make his brain stop working with just a mischievous smile. He spent a precious few moments gathering himself, which allowed Jenny to drift away from the sanctuary stone.

  “Wait!” he called. “Just tell me this—does your Aine have a happy ending?”

  “If you want to know more, Mr. Chase, you’ll have to do your research.” She turned on her heel then and said over her shoulder as she moved away, “I suggest you start in the library.”

  DIARY OF JENNY GALLAGHER

  5 October 1879

  I felt my father’s eyes on us long after we’d passed from view of the castle. I was frankly surprised that he didn’t object to my walking to Glendalough with Mr. Chase, or insist on coming along. I am so accustomed to him watching—night and day, body and soul—and mostly I bear the weight of it without thinking. It is only since Mr. Chase arrived that I have found my father’s brooding concern at times unbearable.

  Mr. Chase is an antidote to that watchful fear. He is a cheerful, self-assured man who knows who he is, where he comes from, and does not intend to change himself for anyone else’s convenience. For all that—or maybe because of it—he has a deep and genuine interest in other people. Probably that is why he is such a good writer.

  He even manages to pay me the most banal of compliments while sounding genuinely sincere. Can any man truly be that transparent? I want to believe in his native goodness, but I have never learned to trust my own instincts. How could I, when my father is always watching—and warning.

  You are fragile. Vulnerable. Likely to be swayed by those of stronger minds. You must be watchful, never too violent in your likes and dislikes. I am too like my mother, they say. Weak.

  Evan does not make me feel weak.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  In the early afternoon, Carragh allotted herself half an hour to abandon her measured work and indulge her curiosity. While reading and noting and cross-checking pages in the fifteenth viscount’s catalog, she had felt the pull of thousands of books calling to her, waiting to seduce her with language and imagery and story—always and above all else, a story.

  She took a few minutes to walk the length of the library, taking her time to admire the lofty fan-vaulted ceiling that, more than any other feature, branded this space as a former chapel. There was a Catherine window high on the wall opposite the main entrance, and she shivered at the crimson and azure and plum glass set in the wide circle. It was—rarely for its time period—original, Deeprath Castle having been just far enough removed from Anglo-Irish society to protect some of its Catholic beauties. Along with this chapel, the castle grounds contained the walls and much of the stone floor that had been the original oratory for the Gallagher family, constructed in the early thirteenth century.

  Apart from its archetypal architecture, the remaking into a library had been done with sensitivity and a desire to match, rather than overwhelm, the chapel’s original design. No Restoration opulence or Regency flamboyance here, just dark wood beautifully finished into twelve-foot-high bookshelves that marched the length of the room on either side of a wide aisle, dividing into a number of bays with Gothic windows lighting the western side. The table set in the middle of the aisle looked as though it had been made for that spot—quite possibly it had—at six feet wide and almost twenty feet long. It would have fit a monastery, for a flock of literate monks copying and illuminating manuscripts. The only discordant notes were her laptop and the commercial-size fire extinguisher next to the main door. Aidan had ensured she knew where it was first thing.

  When she had paced off the length of the room, she stopped and studied the fitted cases with glass doors that covered the end wall in front of the rood screen. They might once have been curiosity cabinets, she thought, and there were still a few displays of a natural history sort. But mostly the cabinets were now filled with ledgers and diaries, boxes of papers and newspaper clippings that documented much of the Gallagher family history. It was where Aidan had spent his morning, though from what she could tell, he had not been very thorough. It seemed he was looking for something in particular, and not finding it, had quickly set aside whatever else came to hand.

  Prying into personal affairs was not part of her job description. Indeed, it might well get her fired. But it was so bloody tempting to see if there remained any trace of Evan Chase in those cabinets. Letters, articles, outlines…she knew it wasn’t likely. Surely the Gallaghers knew all about the promised Darkling Bride book that had never been published. If an unpublished manuscript by Evan Chase were somewhere in these papers, someone would have made it public by now.

  Despite all those good, sensible reasons to walk away, Carragh opened the first door of the first cabinet and breathed in the concentrated scent of the past.

  “How are you getting on?”

  If she’d had anything in her hand, she probably would have dropped it from guilty surprise. Carragh took a moment to compose herself before turning to face Nessa.

  “Off to a good beginning,” she replied. Nessa wore another simple and expensive outfit today, a charcoal wool skirt with a navy silk blouse and another of her lovely scarves, this one in shades of ivory and teal.

  “Good.”

  Carragh braced herself for more questions, but Nessa seemed distracted. She approached the table and the catalog put together by—Carragh quickly sorted family ties—her older brother? That was right, surely, for the fifteenth viscount had been Aidan’s grandfather, and if Nessa was his great-aunt, it meant she’d been his grandfather’s sister. One thing Irish families taught you was an ability to calculate relationships to a ridiculously convoluted degree.

  “Do you know where Aidan has gone?” It was asked with apparent casualness, but Carragh sensed the woman disliked having to ask an outsider anything concerning her family. And it put her in an awkward position, for if Aidan had not told anyone about the solicitor, she didn’t think she should.

  “He went into Rathdrum, I believe. Told me to carry on.” All of which was strictly true.

  Close to, Nessa’s skin had nearly the same fine texture as the onionskin of the catalog. “I had thought that returning to the library would be…unpleasant. As though it had been permanently tainted by what happened here. But now?” She looked around the space she must have known intimately since childhood and smiled faintly. “There isn’t a room in the castle that hasn’t seen death or grief. This one feels no different. I’m glad.” With a brisker tone, Nessa added, “If you don’t mind, Miss Ryan, I’ve arranged for you to have dinner in your room again tonight. Mrs. Bell will bring you anything you need.”

  “Of course. Thank you.”

  Just as well, Carragh decided as the woman left with the same abruptness with which she’d arrived. I don’t know if I can take any more Gallaghers today. Repressed and abnormally controlled, the lot of them, as well as arrogant. She’d take her three rowdy Ryan brothers any day. At least you knew where you stood with her family.

  But beneath her I-don’t-care attitude, Carragh knew she was indulging in one of her least likable traits: preemptively dismissing people before they could decide they didn’t like her. “Defensiveness,” her mother told her, “means you’re judging in advance of the facts. Which is exactly what you are accusing others of doing to you.”

  Appropriately chastened, by the interruption and her own conscience, Carragh stayed away from the family cabinets and worked flat out, with only sandwiches and tea sent in by Mrs. Bell, until six o’clock. After a long hot bath—the Deeprath pipes might groan, but they were made of sterner stuff than the ones in her grandmother’s townhouse—she put in her earbuds and listened to vintage U2 while reviewing her notes from the day’s work. Mrs. Bell, as promised, had brought her lamb stew and fresh bread on a tray, and she was in a perfectly relaxed mood and looking forward to her well-earned bed.

  When she finally h
eard the knocking, it sounded like it had been going on for a bit. “Sorry,” she called, scrambling out of the window seat where she’d been reading. “I had headphones in.”

  She opened the door to Aidan, dressed, as earlier, in black jeans and dark gray Henley. It looked very good on him, accenting his height and build. And what was she wearing? Sweats and a Red Sox hoodie, wet hair twisted into a knot atop her head.

  “Aren’t you coming down for dinner?” he asked.

  “You eat at nine o’clock at night?” she blurted out.

  “My sister’s just arrived with her girls. Nessa held dinner back for them. Won’t you come?”

  “I wasn’t invited,” she said, hearing that defensive note creeping into her voice. “And I’m hardly dressed to meet anyone.”

  “So you’re just going to lurk up here like a discontented servant?”

  “I’m not discontented. And I’m no one’s servant.”

  “I agree. So come downstairs and prove it.”

  She had never been able to refuse a dare. Aidan wouldn’t even let her change, as though fearing once she closed the door she would never open it again. He underestimated her. Facing down Nessa Gallagher in sweats wasn’t even close to the most uncomfortable thing she’d ever done.

  She heard the newcomers halfway down the main stairs—the shouts of overexcited children in a new place. She imagined that horrified Nessa, and the thought made her grin as she entered the music room.

  There were only two children making the noise of four or five. They were running literal circles around a harassed woman who looked far too young to be their mother.

  “Ellie, Kate, that is enough.” Nessa knew how to command. It quieted the girls, if not completely silencing them, so that she was able to say in a more moderate voice, “Kyla, it’s time to send them to bed.”