After dressing, she made her way down to the cavernous kitchen to prepare the stove for the day ahead and put out breakfast for the servants in the hall just off the kitchen.
Then she woke the remaining housemaids and set to work laying fires in all the important rooms on the main floor. Despite her lack of talent at silence and invisibility, she was permitted to keep this task, since it did not intrude in any way on those still sleeping upstairs. First, she cleaned the fireplaces of residue from the day before, after which she put in paper and wood and kindling, finally setting flame to it.
From there, straight to the kitchen for an almost endless round of helping the cook, Mrs. Dorothy Owen—Dot to her friends—with anything and everything.
Clean the dishes from the servants’ breakfast, help prepare the food for the family’s breakfast, wash the dishes and scour the pots and pans afterward. And then repeat the process for lunch and dinner, with each meal more elaborate than the last.
By the time she finished her day, she would have worked at least seventeen hours straight with only precious few stolen moments to sit down. She did this six and a half days a week, for Fanny was the kitchen maid.
Fanny was seventeen, looked twelve, and had been with the household since exactly that age.
In fact, her only real break came at four in the afternoon, nearly a dozen hours after she’d first arisen, when the servants—or at least those who could afford to spare a few minutes from whatever current task was at hand—took their own tea.
On this particular day, those with the few moments to spare who were seated around the wooden plank table in the servants’ hall included: Mrs. Ruth Murphy, the housekeeper, the big set of keys tied at her waist jangling even as she took her place at one head of the table; Myrtle Morgan, Her Ladyship Fidelia Clarke’s personal maid; Agnes Hunt, the head housemaid whose chief task was tending to Lady Katherine; Becky Hill, another housemaid and the inheritor of Fanny’s early morning task of lighting the fires in the family rooms; and Mrs. Owen, the cook.
Absent, because occupied elsewhere, were: Mr. Ernest Wright, butler; Mr. Albert Cox, Lord Clarke’s valet; Jonathan Butler, the first footman; and Daniel Murray, the second footman.
Fanny sighed to herself over the absence of men—she did prefer the men to the ladies—and she sighed even harder over the absence of Jonathan Butler and Daniel Murray. Both were a bit past twenty, Fanny considered both to be passing handsome, and she would welcome either as a life mate, were she ever to be so lucky, as she very much wanted to be. Fanny dreamed of the day she would marry a passing handsome man who would take her away from all this, or at the very least, give her some company at night and cause to move out of her wretchedly tiny room.
Ah well. Even if no men were in sight, she could at least take this welcome break to burst out with what she had scarce been containing inside her little body for hours now.
“I think it must’ve been a vampire, don’t you?” she gushed at the table, eyes open wide.
“What are you talking about, Fanny?” Mrs. Owen asked as she slathered a thick slice of bread with butter.
“Why, the thing that got Mr. Harvey,” Fanny said, rearing back a bit as though Mrs. Owen might be daft. “Will Harvey’s uncle.” She sighed when she said the name, Will Harvey being one whom she found even more handsome than the footmen, even if Will Harvey smelled earthy and never wore a fancy clean suit of livery like the others did. “Did you not hear what the deliveryman said when he brought the things to the back door earlier? About the death of Ezra Harvey?”
“Of course I did, but—”
“What other explanation can there be?” Fanny said, eyes wide once more. “You have a man with his heart ripped out, clearly dead, and then next thing, he’s up and walking around again, forcing his wife to shoot him in the head.”
Myrtle Morgan and Agnes looked decidedly queasy at this, pushing their plates away, while Becky shuddered.
“Fanny!” Mrs. Murphy admonished. “I hardly think this is—”
“I know what you’re going to say, Mrs. Murphy,” Fanny cut her off. “You’re going to say that I shouldn’t be saying such things while the others are trying to enjoy their tea. But I’ve read Mr. Bram Stoker’s Dracula, you see, and the only explanation for how a dead person can then be not dead, however briefly, is if that person were attacked by a vampire to begin with and then became one himself.” A puzzled look came over her face. “Of course, that doesn’t explain how Mrs. Harvey could have killed him with a shot to the head—in Mr. Bram Stoker’s Dracula it has to be either a sacred bullet, which I doubt Mrs. Harvey would have on hand, or a stake through the heart, or you can even decapitate it and stuff garlic in the mouth—but still, if there’s a vampire loose in the village, don’t you think we all ought to know about it so we can be properly prepared?”
“Fanny!”
The voice that admonished her this time did not come from Mrs. Murphy. This voice was male, which should have been welcome to her, except it came from neither Jonathan nor Daniel, the two passing handsome young footmen. Rather, it came from Mr. Wright, the butler himself.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.
“I was only trying to explain to the others,” she said, “how whatever attacked Mr. Harvey must have been a vampire, turning him into one, too, because that’s the only possible explanation—”
“Enough!” Mr. Wright raised a firm hand. “Where do you get these ideas?”
Fanny began to explain again about Mr. Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
“Enough!” If anything, the hand was firmer now; the voice certainly was. “I knew I never should have taught you to read. I forbid you to discuss this nonsense any further.”
Of course, Mr. Wright was wrong. He hadn’t taught her to read. She’d learned some in compulsory school, which she’d been in until age ten, and then taught herself the rest. But, she thought, it might not be the best time to correct him on this matter. Mr. Wright never liked being told he was wrong, particularly when he was already angry.
“All right, Mr. Wright,” Fanny said, lowering her eyes to her plate.
But all the while she thought, I could be right.
Chapter
Three
Normally, Will Harvey enjoyed a good long walk, no matter how far and no matter what the weather. But when he’d received word earlier in the day that his aunt had sent for him, that something horrible had befallen his uncle, Will had borrowed one of the horses from the stables at Porthampton Abbey, riding hell-for-leather until he’d arrived at the little croft his uncle had tended for as long as Will could remember.
He’d dismounted to a scene of chaos. His aunt stood over the corpse of his uncle, still screaming—his aunt, not the corpse. There were villagers as well, too many to count, nor could he remember now who all had been there so he could name them in his mind. It had taken some doing, but eventually, he’d managed to piece together the story.
His uncle had gone out early, as was his habit, to do a bit of farming. But when late-morning teatime came and went, and he had not yet returned, Will’s aunt had gone out looking for him.
She’d found him not far from the humble cottage, his body mauled by some animal, his heart ripped out. Her screams had been loud enough to draw the closest neighbors, and word had spread from there.
Everyone was adamant: his uncle had been dead. There was no possible earthly way he could have survived that gaping hole in his chest.
Will had been sent for, but it was a long walk to Porthampton Abbey on foot, and once there, it had taken the messenger some time to have Will located so he could deliver his sad message.
After the messenger had departed to find Will, some of the neighbors stayed behind with Will’s aunt, at least until the hysterics had passed. But then they’d returned to their own homes, their own farms. Because, bad as they felt for Jessamine Harvey, there was ever the work, always more work to be done. From dawn until bedtime, it was the life of the farmer.
&
nbsp; It was after everyone had gone that Will’s aunt had heard a noise and, turning, saw a man—no, a monster, she’d said—standing in the open doorway. When he lurched her way in a menacing fashion, she didn’t think twice before grabbing the shotgun and shooting him several times in the head. It was only when she was sure he was dead that her mind cleared and, recognizing the clothes she’d seen just that morning, knew it to be her husband.
If anything, she screamed louder this time.
The villagers came again, which was where things stood when Will arrived.
Everyone believed her. As crazy as her story sounded, everyone believed her.
They’d all seen Ezra Harvey dead, over there—they knew it to be true—and now he was dead in quite a different way, over here.
More than one villager clasped hands to breast and prayed.
How was such a thing possible?
A dead man walking.
But then one of the villagers thought to run to get Dr. Zebulon Webb—chiefly, the doctor to the Clarkes; secondarily, the doctor to the village—and when he arrived, he offered a different interpretation.
“Jessamine,” he said, “grief, as I know too well, can take many forms.”
The widow tried to interrupt, but even as he spoke gently, he would not let her.
“And your grief,” Dr. Webb went on, “has taken the form of a hysterical hallucination.”
“I know what I saw,” she insisted.
“But what you have described is simply not medically possible.”
“Explain this to me, then: If there is blood on the grass over yon, where he died, then how did the body get here?”
“Why, that is easy. In your hysterical grief, no doubt wishing your husband still alive, you dragged the body here yourself. As for the rest of what happened afterward? More hysterical grief. I am deeply sorry for your loss.”
But not so sorry that he didn’t excuse himself five minutes later to go home and change for a dinner engagement up at the abbey.
Not long afterward, the neighbors had dispersed. For a grieving neighbor, they no doubt would have stayed a bit longer. But for a neighbor whom the doctor described as hysterical? A word that sounded too alarmingly close to “insane” to their minds? Nobody wanted to remain too close to that. They’d been drawn along for a time by the madness, but now their minds had been cleared by the doctor’s reassurances—the doctor was, after all, a man of science, wasn’t he?—and it was time for them to go. As has been said, there was always the work.
Now, as for the past several hours, it was only Will and his aunt.
As night had fallen, he’d lit the lamps for her and as many candles as he could find—it didn’t feel as though the sad home could possibly be made too bright now.
Then he’d sat in a chair next to hers before the fire he’d made in the small fireplace. And as he sat, he tried not to think about his uncle, or what remained of him, lying under a sheet upon the table in the kitchen, legs extending over the edge. It would be the next day before a hole could be dug in the churchyard to bury the body, and they’d not wanted to leave him outside where the animals might get at him. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say: get at him further, Will thought, a laugh almost escaping. How could he think to laugh, even if it was only almost, at a time like this? With his uncle, whom he had loved, the only father he’d ever known, dead and in such a horrible fashion? It occurred to him then that he just might be near hysteria himself, and not the hysteria of mirth but of madness brought on by grief.
But he couldn’t let any of that show. There was Aunt Jess to think about, to take care of.
Outside, when there had still been other people crowded around, Will had not had the opportunity to view his uncle closely. But when he’d carried him the few steps from the doorway to the kitchen table and laid him down there, he’d finally had the opportunity. He dearly wished now that he hadn’t taken it.
He would not look again.
He wondered if his aunt was feeling the same near-hysteria he was at the thought of his uncle lying there, how he looked under the sheet.
Will stole a glance at his aunt. She was not yet forty, and while she had always appeared older than her years, tonight she looked twenty years older. He would have liked to comfort her, to offer some small sympathy in the form of an embrace, but her ramrod posture told him that, just now, such a gesture would not be welcome.
It had been so long since either had uttered a word that it came as something of a surprise when his aunt said, “You believe me, don’t you?”
His instinct was to open his mouth and immediately reassure her—he could do at least that much for her, couldn’t he?—but then it occurred to him that what she would want, far more than any reassurance, would be the truth.
Fifteen years ago, when he was but two years old, both of Will’s parents had been taken by the influenza. With no other relatives able or willing to take on a child, he’d been taken in by his aunt and uncle, who’d never had any children of their own.
He didn’t remember a thing about his own parents. But he knew everything about his uncle and aunt. His uncle had taught him the value of a hard day’s work—to Will’s mind, no man had ever worked harder than his uncle. His aunt had taught him the value of the truth—no woman had ever been more honest than she.
Perhaps he’d waited too long to answer, because his aunt spoke once more, this time on a topic wholly unrelated.
Perhaps, after all, she did not want to hear his answer if it would not be in her favor.
“Won’t they be mad up at the house,” she said with a gesture of her chin, as though the house might be just a few feet away instead of the distance it was, “that you never came back today?”
“They won’t be,” he said, “and if they are, it is of little matter.”
“Little matter? And what would your uncle say if he could hear you now? We’re talking about your job, boy.”
“And it is a job that I am extraordinarily good at. There are other grooms and stable boys at Porthampton Abbey, but even the master of the house has said: none are better, even if he never seems able to remember my name. So they will hold my job for me today. If you need me tomorrow, they will hold it then, too. However long I need, that long will they wait for me.”
“You seem too sure of yourself, Will. Perhaps too proud, too.”
And yet he could see, from the first glimmer of joy he’d seen in her eye on this most wretched of days, that she was proud of him, too.
He thought about everything this woman had been to him—she and his uncle both—and how steady she had always been, no matter what the world and life threw her way.
She had always been honest.
She had never been the slightest bit insane.
There were still so many questions, and yet…
“I find that I do not want to believe you,” he began carefully, determined to make sure that each word rang true. “I do not want to believe you, because the tale you tell is so…fantastical, I don’t wonder that others doubt its truth. And yet I further find that, based on everything I have ever known about you, no matter how impossible what you claim happened might seem, I cannot but believe that the impossible must be—somehow—possible.”
She stared at him long and hard then, as though looking to see if he were only speaking so to humor her. Whatever she saw must have satisfied her, however, for at last her body lost its ramrod posture as she near collapsed with visible relief. No matter what else had happened that day, clearly the very worst was the sensation that no one believed her. And even if everyone else went on disbelieving her, perhaps even that would be all right so long as she still had Will and his belief.
“Thank you,” she breathed.
And when he moved closer, she did permit him to embrace her.
Tears came then. Not like the hysterical ones earlier in the day; these were tears of pure sadness, and Will’s eyes, at last, dampened, too.
“There’s one more thing I nee
d to ask of you,” she said.
“Anything, Auntie.”
“That…” She inclined her head toward the kitchen. “That… I cannot wait until tomorrow and the churchyard. I cannot think with it there. That… In the end, I swear, that was no longer him.”
“Hush now,” Will said. “It is all right.” He took one of her work-worn hands in one of his, patting the back of it with his other. “Then we shall burn it.”
Chapter
Four
Grace sat on a velvet bench before the mirror of the vanity in her bedroom as Becky Hill, one of the housemaids, stood behind her with a silver-backed brush. Grace had already exchanged her afternoon clothes for formal evening wear, and all that remained was: What should they do with her hair?
“What do you think, Lady Grace?” Becky asked.
Already, they’d tried up, down, a twist of the auburn tresses to the right side of the head, a twist perched on the left, all of which Grace had rejected because she was unsure. Grace couldn’t help but feel sympathy for the tiniest smidgen of impatience Becky had allowed to slip into her tone. If she was honest with herself—and she always tried to be—she’d have to admit that even she was impatient with her own inability to decide on such a simple matter.
“Oh,” she finally said with mild disgust at herself, “just do whatever you think is best. I’m sure it will be fine.”
Grace thought to herself how Becky, just a year older than Grace’s own sixteen, always looked so tidy with every brown hair perfectly in place. Of course, Becky, most of the articles of her appearance dictated by uniform code, had little choice in the matter, but still.
“Well, I think you should just cut it all off!” came a giggling voice from the canopy bed behind her.
Grace swiveled the top half of her body to see her younger sister, Elizabeth—alternately Eliza, Liza, Lizzy, or Bess, depending on who was speaking to her, but mostly Lizzy—propped up on both elbows as she stretched out on her stomach across the bedspread, her legs bent at the knee so that her calves swung back and forth in the air.
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