The House of Whispers

by Laura Purcell

  ‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘Miss Pinecroft is sleeping. I came down to comfort Miss Rosewyn.’

  Rosewyn places her head upon my shoulder. My chest feels as if it may crack. At last, I am truly needed.

  And she needs me to have courage.

  ‘Miss Rosewyn is distressed, Mrs Quinn, and I cannot wonder why.’ I take a breath. ‘I regret to inform you that Creeda has been mistreating her.’

  Mrs Quinn looks as if I have struck her between the eyes.

  ‘Mistreating?’ Creeda gasps. ‘All I ever did was protect her!’

  My own mind is not sound; I am the last person entitled to laugh at this unfortunate, deranged woman. But perhaps that is why I hate her so much. I see in her the damage a maid can do to her mistress. I see elements of myself.

  I stare the housekeeper squarely in the face. ‘Look at her, Mrs Quinn. See how she is dressed. Her hair. Does she appear well cared for?’

  Rosewyn’s breath is hot against my neck. She presses in to me, whimpering like a dog.

  ‘But . . .’ Mrs Quinn blusters. ‘Miss Why, Creeda has cared for Miss Rosewyn for a great many years . . .’

  ‘That does not make what she is doing right. Mr Trengrouse agrees with me. What gives Creeda the authority to lock a member of the family in her room? For pity’s sake, do you not hear the girl crying at night?’

  Creeda moves uncomfortably. She is divided, I think, like her eyes. Two sides at war with themselves.

  ‘For safety,’ Mrs Quinn falters. ‘Isn’t it, Creeda? Like Miss Pinecroft and her wandering. Miss Rosewyn needs special care. She’s never been quite so . . . sharp . . . as others.’

  My temper snaps. ‘Neither have the staff of this house,’ I retort. ‘For it seems they will swallow anything. Miss Pinecroft does not wander at night! She never moves from the moment I leave her. And we do leave her, in her state of health, sitting unwashed in a room with no fire! God above. Do you wonder that she is so ill? Freezing day and night surrounded by whatever foul liquid Creeda keeps in the urns.’

  Poor Mrs Quinn. She has spent her employment afraid to say boo to Creeda, but now I am here, speaking with the passion of an avenging angel, and she does not know who to fear the most.

  ‘You just . . . being from London. You don’t understand,’ she says. ‘There’s nothing in the china. Is there, Creeda?’

  ‘Urine,’ I declare, before Creeda can answer. ‘It was urine, was it not? Ask Lowena and Merryn, they saw it too. Urine, nail clippings and human hair. Was that my hair, Creeda? She took some, Mrs Quinn, while I slept.’

  ‘That wasn’t yours!’ Creeda brays. Her hands clutch at her head. ‘It was mine. To protect me. The newer servants are higher in the cabinet.’

  Mrs Quinn has gone very pale.

  ‘Your bottled spells do not seem very effectual,’ I scoff. ‘They have done nothing to help Miss Pinecroft.’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know any more,’ she mutters. ‘I thought I knew their ways. But I’m getting old. Maybe I don’t remember it all.’

  ‘Creeda,’ Mrs Quinn exhales in astonishment. ‘Are you saying . . . All this Miss Why tells me about bottled spells and stolen hair ’tis true?’

  Creeda lowers her hands, offers a sly, defiant smirk. ‘Why do you suppose the fairies don’t bother you?’

  Queasily, Mrs Quinn reaches up to pat her cap. Whatever hair Creeda stole from her must have been cut long ago, but she still checks. ‘I can’t . . . I don’t know what to make of this. Whatever would the mistress say?’

  ‘She can say nothing!’ I cry. I know I am being cruel, but Mrs Quinn has buried her head in the sand for years. Only a violent tug will pull her out. ‘Miss Pinecroft has long been incapacitated, and she pays you to keep things in order.’ I gesture at Rosewyn, trembling and tear-stained. ‘This is not order. This is what happens when you are content to merely laugh along with the maids. Don’t you think it’s time you started taking your responsibilities as housekeeper a little more seriously?’

  It is as though I have slapped her. Mrs Quinn sways gently on her feet.

  Too much. My thudding pulse begins to falter. She will dismiss me on the spot.

  It is some minutes before the housekeeper gathers herself to speak.

  ‘Creeda,’ she says eventually. Her voice is dangerously quiet. ‘I think you’d better move to Gerren’s room. Until I’ve looked into this.’

  ‘You can’t keep me away from—’

  ‘I can,’ she replies coolly, and I am proud of her.

  ‘The child needs—’ Creeda begins, but again Mrs Quinn cuts her off.

  ‘I’ll stay with Miss Rosewyn tonight.’

  With a fresh sob, Rosewyn clings to me.

  ‘No!’ she cries. ‘Miss Why. I want Miss Why!’

  I thought I had heard her sing before, but this – this is true music.

  ‘Miss Pinecroft is unwell,’ I try to explain. ‘I must sit with her . . .’

  Rosewyn’s big blue eyes fill with tears. ‘Don’t leave me.’

  ‘Very well, very well,’ Mrs Quinn chides. She appears on the point of tears herself. ‘ ’Tis only one night. I’ll get one of the girls to watch the mistress. Miss Why can stay with you, Miss Rosewyn. And Creeda . . . Gerren’s room.’

  Creeda’s whole frame trembles against the iron banisters. It is impossible to tell whether fear or fury makes her shake so hard.

  ‘Now,’ Mrs Quinn demands.

  Her knobbly fingers ball into a fist. For a moment, I truly think she will do the housekeeper harm.

  ‘You’ll regret it!’ she warns.

  With that, she stalks up the stairs.

  Chapter 42

  I longed for this room. Downstairs, shivering by Miss Pinecroft’s side, I thought that Creeda was lucky to sit in Rosewyn’s chamber with the fire burning. But it is different by night.

  A swimming mass of shadows covers the table where Rosewyn sits to draw, sew and pull pages out of her Bible. There is something forlorn in the scattered pencils and ragged collection of gull’s feathers she has pasted to a piece of paper. These are not hobbies but pastimes: activities to speed the passage of hands around the clock. In gaol, they give the prisoners hemp to pick. I see little difference between the two.

  The jug of milk glows on the mantelpiece. I have known ladies display items of pride in this place: invitations from the best society hostesses, silhouettes of their friends. In Morvoren House, the mantelpiece is a monument to Creeda’s insanity.

  For all my brave words earlier, I cannot pretend she is alone in feeling there is a mighty power here lurking, always out of sight. I sense it tonight. Waiting.

  Or is that just a guilty conscience?

  Rosewyn sleeps on her back. One arm curls across her chest, mimicking the familiar gesture of cradling the doll. My searches of the room have been in vain; I cannot find the toy, yet that is hardly proof of the supernatural. Mrs Farley’s children were always losing things.

  But Rosewyn is not a child. . . .

  There is so much I do not understand about this house and the woman who sleeps in the bed before me. Who was her father? I cannot make out if she is truly simple or just a victim of circumstance. Would she have been this fey and infantile if her mother raised her, or have the days locked up in this house with Creeda taken their toll?

  I doubt the harm can be undone now.

  I changed into my nightgown and said I would sleep on the truckle bed, but I cannot settle myself to rest. Sitting instead on the stool before the dressing table, I stare into the mirror. It is molten gold in the firelight. My face is limned in amber, strange.

  What if I were one of Creeda’s changelings? Cursed to wander from place to place, unable to belong. I would not know if I was swapped at birth.

  Sipping at my laudanum, I think of the bottle in the cupboard that I replaced with one of weak te
a. One thing substituted for the other, as simple as that. A taste would expose the fraud there, but with a person . . .

  Maybe that is why all my employers die.

  Maybe that is why I can hear the fairies sing.

  I hear them now: a high, pure note soaring above the sea’s lamentation.

  The bottle of laudanum drops from my hand and lands on the carpet. I watch the liquid flow until it is nothing but an empty vessel and a sodden mark.

  When I glance up at Rosewyn, she sleeps on, no part of the heavenly choir. Yet she is touched. Blessed. An orb of light hovers at the foot of the bed.

  It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Painful in its loveliness. There is no fear, only an ache in my chest that moans, This, this. This is what you sought, but never found.

  Slowly, it rises. It is like a dream. I am rising too, standing on my feet as if I have been pulled up by an invisible string.

  ‘What are you?’ I whisper.

  It floats, heading towards the door.

  I dash to open it, terrified that the orb will burst against the wood. I am just in time. The light glides past my face as it leaves the room, its warmth caressing my skin and eliciting a sigh.

  How gently it wafts down the corridor. Helpless, entranced, I follow.

  I follow it all the way to Miss Pinecroft’s chamber.

  I grope inside my apron for the key, but before my fingers touch the metal there is a click, a whirl, and the door swings back on its hinges.

  Rosemary. Lemony and sharp, filling my lungs.

  The light drifts to the wardrobe, where it hovers and quivers.

  Deep inside my mind, a voice tells me to check upon my mistress, but it seems to speak in a foreign language. She feels far from me now, part of a distant land. Nothing matters. Nothing but the light.

  Before I realise what I am doing, I am standing before the wardrobe, opening the doors. Miss Pinecroft’s dresses hang ghostly in their pouches. The scent of rosemary is so dense that my head begins to ache. Rosemary can be medicinal, but I know instinctively that is not the use here. Nor is it to stop the moths. Rosemary for remembrance, rosemary to ward off nightmares. Rosemary to bind.

  The light intensifies. My gaze travels down to its furthest reach, where faint rays of amber lave against the wooden base. There is the usual clutter of dust, forgotten shawls and odd shoes. Unremarkable, and yet I am scanning it eagerly, waiting for something to appear.

  I drop to my knees. And then I see it.

  The pallor of a skull.

  I reach out. It is chalky, sharp at the edges. As I lift it to the light, it glistens and I realise it is not a fragment of bone at all but glazed china. Small blue flowers form a pattern that has faded with time. Other larger pieces lie tangled in a shawl. I spread it out on my lap. Needles of rosemary have dried to husks around the chips. Some are rimmed with a rust-coloured substance that I recognise at once as blood. Together, they make up a shattered teapot.

  There is a gurgle from the bed.

  Then darkness.

  The light is extinguished, the singing melts into air.

  Everything turns empty and hollow, cold as the soil of the grave.

  Liquid bubbles in my mistress’s chest. Frantically, I crawl towards her, the china falling from my lap and crunching beneath my knees. I do not feel it cut. I am only desperate not to be alone.

  Her hand reaches down from the bed and latches on my shoulder, tight.

  ‘Kitty.’

  Reality rushes back. I remember where I am, who I am. ‘No, madam . . .’

  ‘Mama?’ Her chest sounds like water slapping against rocks.

  Kneeling beside the bed, I search for her face in the gloom. I cannot see its lineaments, but I smell her sour breath.

  ‘Remain calm, Miss Pinecroft. It is I, Hester. Can I fetch you something? I have an infusion made from horseradish, mustard and orange rind—’

  Even as I babble on, I realise that it is useless. The labouring of her breath, the chest filling with fluid – I know what it means.

  Her hand squeezes all feeling from my shoulder.

  ‘Papa.’

  There is a sound like pebbles rattling, then water draining away.

  Miss Pinecroft’s hand falls limp and she has gone, slipped between the cracks.

  A shadow rises up the opposite wall. ‘Who’s there?’

  I tremble, the dead woman’s hand still against my shoulder. There are bumps, the sound of chair legs scraping against the floor. My mind seems to have lost all ability to function. My mistress is dead: that is all I can absorb. I have failed her and she is gone, gone forever.

  ‘Who is that?’ The voice repeats. There are sparks of light. I half expect to see the orb again, but this is no fairy. The woman is loud, afraid.

  Then there is an orange flare and I see dark eyes, huge in terror. ‘Miss Why?’

  She moves her tinderbox to light a candle beside Miss Pinecroft’s bed. It is Lowena.

  From the look of it, she has been sitting in the easy chair on the other side of the bed all night. I stare at her, stupefied, unable to comprehend how she has been there the entire time. Did she not see the orb? Hear me open the wardrobe?

  ‘What are you doing to Miss Pinecroft?’ she demands.

  Gently, I remove the wilted hand from my shoulder. ‘She is dead.’

  My words do not seem to strike her at first. It is only when she moves to the bed and sees the old lady that she gasps. She places two fingers against her mistress’s throat, as if she expects to feel a pulse. When she does not, she cries.

  They are noisy, unchecked tears.

  ‘I did not . . .’ I begin, realising how this must look. ‘I thought that I heard something and when I came to check . . .’

  But she is not listening. She is weeping fit to break her heart.

  ‘I . . . fell . . . asleep!’ Each word is gulped between sobs.

  Whatever Lowena might sleep through, it seems her tears have woken everyone else. I hear doors opening, footsteps. My eyes cast wildly around at the shawl and bits of broken teapot strewn across the floor, and the lifeless body in the bed. There is no way I will emerge from this scene in a good light.

  But before I can flee, candles are bobbing towards us. Mrs Quinn in a lopsided nightcap, Merryn with her hair in rags, even Gerren half-asleep.

  ‘I heard . . .’ I start again, gesturing helplessly at the corpse.

  Mrs Quinn covers her mouth with her hand.

  ‘I am afraid she has passed away.’

  Lowena pitches towards Merryn. ‘It’s my fault!’ she wails. ‘I fell asleep and the candle went out. I let her die!’ The pair embrace, crying.

  ‘I do not believe anything could have been done,’ I say, more to defend myself than Lowena. ‘The attack was too severe . . .’

  Gerren leans against the doorjamb, ashen.

  ‘I should never have left the poor girl sitting with her.’ Mrs Quinn shakes her head. ‘I should’ve done it myself. But we’re all topsy-turvy with you in the nursery and . . .’ She makes an impatient gesture, as if it is my fault and not Creeda’s. ‘What brought you to this room?’

  ‘I heard . . .’

  ‘Ah,’ she sighs. ‘That’s the trouble. Lowena can’t hear.’

  I blink at her. Each time I think this night cannot become any more surreal, it surprises me. Just how much laudanum did I drink?

  ‘What do you mean, she cannot hear?’

  ‘She’s deaf, of course.’ Mrs Quinn replies.

  ‘But . . . that cannot be. She has spoken to me, she . . .’

  ‘She wasn’t always deaf. Now she reads lips. But in the dark, with the candle gone out . . .’

  That accounts for the accent I traced – no foreign influence after all, but the effect of not being able to hear her own voice. Clearly, th
e misfortune has done nothing to impede Lowena’s other abilities – and yet the first unforgivable thought that comes to my head is that of course, something had to be wrong with her. There had to be some imperfection to stop the fairies from abducting her.

  ‘What an ill-advised notion to leave a girl who cannot hear in charge of a sick woman!’ I protest. ‘How would she wake, if she could not hear Miss Pinecroft gasping for breath?’

  Mrs Quinn bristles. ‘I’ve had enough of your opinions for one day, Miss Why. Always creeping about, never staying where you’re meant to be . . .’ But as she looks at the pitiful figure in the bed, and poor Lowena, her temper drifts away. She shakes her head. ‘I just don’t understand how that candle would burn out. Look, there’s still plenty of wick to it.’

  ‘Candles are always going out. They—’

  Gerren’s smoky voice cuts me off. ‘They snuffed un.’ We both look over at him, perplexed.

  ‘Gerren,’ Mrs Quinn says slowly. ‘Where is Creeda?’

  His mouth falls open. Snatching Mrs Quinn’s candleholder, he plunges out the door.

  Without thinking, I follow. He is surprisingly rapid, given his age. He takes the stairs two at a time.

  ‘Gerren, wait! What is it?’ I cry, trailing after him.

  He simply shakes his head.

  We reach the bottom of the staircase and turn left. I may not know his purpose, but I know where he is headed: the china room.

  Waves boom in the cove beneath the house, loud as cannon shot. Nearer, faintly, I hear the drips again.

  The flame of Gerren’s candle flattens and winks out.

  I can feel the wind that has extinguished it. Spitefully cold, just as it was when Miss Pinecroft opened the window. It must be open again. Although the door to the china room remains closed, it is fidgeting, twitching in its frame.

  ‘Creeda!’

  Gerren runs the last few steps and slams his shoulder into the door. Locked. He hits it again, kicks it. He is too old and exhausted to make it budge.

  ‘Let me.’ Pushing Gerren aside, I throw my full weight against the wood.