House of the Lost

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘Sister, you haven’t done anything—’

  ‘I’m a murderess,’ said Miriam. ‘They said I was all those years ago, when they made me confess.’

  ‘I don’t understand. But come back with me now…’ She edged nearer, hoping she could take Sister Miriam’s arm and pull her back.

  ‘I killed her,’ cried Miriam. ‘I killed Charmery Kendal! And now I have to atone.’

  Her voice rose in a cry of such pain that Catherine flinched. She went forward, grabbing Miriam’s arm. There was a moment when she thought she had firm hold of her, then she felt her own balance tip and realized Miriam had been about to jump and was taking Catherine with her. She fought for stability but it was already too late. The rain-swept night tilted all round her and the dark and treacherous river came up to meet her.

  The icy water hit her like a massive blow and she went under almost immediately, fighting and gasping, trying to strike back to the surface, but her clothes were instantly sodden and even the flimsy shoes were dragging her down. The world became a green choking cloudiness. Catherine gasped helplessly, and felt the water go into her lungs. There was a moment when she thought; I can’t die, not like this, and with the thought she was at the surface again, coughing and retching. Incredibly and blessedly, Theo was there, with Dr Innes behind him, both of them reaching out to her. Catherine felt Theo’s hands, strong and safe, pulling her to the landing stage. Somehow she scrambled up onto the wooden planks, and as she fell against him his arms went round her. There was the feeling of masculinity pressed hard against her and the scent of his hair and skin. Something seemed to explode inside her mind. There was a moment of the purest mental clarity she had ever experienced – as if she was drinking light or being caressed by colour.

  He released her and stepped back, looking down at her, still holding her hands. His hair was misted with rain and he looked pale although that might have been the cold night and the shock of what had just happened.

  ‘You’re safe,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’ She broke off to cough and half retch, spluttering up muddy water. ‘Sorry – disgusting.’

  ‘Come back to the house,’ he said. ‘Lesley’s fetching a blanket. But you’ll be all right – you were only in the water a few minutes.’

  ‘It felt like a lifetime,’ said Catherine, still coughing up river water. ‘Theo – what about Sister Miriam? Did you get to her?’

  ‘Innes tried to reach her,’ said Theo and glanced back at the dark waters behind them. ‘He didn’t reach her in time.’

  The funeral service for Sister Miriam, once Mara Ionescu, took place in the chapel at St Luke’s.

  ‘It’s semi private and it’ll be very brief and unfussy,’ said Michael Innes. ‘But if you could bear to come.’

  ‘We’ll all come,’ said Lesley. ‘Of course we will.’

  ‘Even though she confessed to killing Charmery?’ Michael looked at Theo as he said this.

  ‘Even then,’ said Theo.

  ‘The Bursar has managed to imply that her death was an accident,’ said Michael. ‘Suicide is very much frowned on within the Church.’

  ‘I think I knew that in a vague way. Isn’t it something to do with suicide being the product of despair, and despair being the ultimate giving up?’

  ‘Yes. In medieval times, the monks called it accidie. It’s still regarded as a very deadly sin, a weariness of the soul, a kind of spiritual sloth. So they’re trying to avoid Mara being given that label.’

  ‘The Church looking after its own,’ said Theo, half to himself.

  ‘It always has done,’ he said.

  After he had gone, Lesley said, ‘What a nice man. So gentle. But you have the feeling that under the surface he might be capable of being very ungentle indeed.’

  ‘I think he was probably quite fiery in his youth,’ said Theo, glancing at her.

  ‘I should think he’s still got the capacity for being fiery now,’ said Lesley quite sharply. ‘And I don’t know what you mean about “in his youth”. He’s not very much older than you.’

  As she went out of the room, Theo, slightly startled, looked across at Petra, who grinned at him. ‘Hadn’t you seen that coming?’ she said.

  ‘No, but – there must be fifteen years between them,’ said Theo.

  ‘About that,’ she agreed. ‘So what?’

  The funeral was as brief and unfussy as Michael had said.

  Reverend Mother read the famous passage from Ecclesiastes: ‘To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die, a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted. A time to kill, and a time to heal. A time to break down and a time to build up…’

  The familiar words spun round Theo’s head, as he tried to visualize the child of his story: Mara who had loved and tried to protect her brother so fiercely; who had sat in the fire lit cottage and listened with absorption to the old legends and stories of her darkly romantic country; who, inside the grim sunken gaol of Jilava, had been made to believe she was a murderess, and in the end had become one. He wondered if he would ever come to terms with what Mara had done to Charmery. He wondered if he would ever understand why she had done it, or if Michael would understand. He glanced at Innes, quietly seated in the front pew, his face shuttered.

  Reverend Mother was nearing the end of her reading. ‘A time to love and a time to hate…’

  Love and hate, thought Theo. I loved you, Charmery, and then for a while I hated you, he said to her memory. Every feeling I ever had for you was so intense, so exhausting. Even when you died, I couldn’t free myself from your ghost. I thought you were going to stay with me for ever. But I don’t think you will, not now. I think I’m letting go of you at last. And I think I’m glad, because you were burning me up.

  ‘…a time for war and a time for peace…’

  War and peace… Elisabeth and Andrei Valk had waged their own war; they had fought communists and believed so strongly in justice they had both endured imprisonment. But they had found some kind of peace in the end.

  And what of Matthew? Had Matthew found peace?

  As the mourners were ushered across the hall and into the refectory, Theo looked across at Matthew’s sketches still hanging in the same place. He gave them a half nod of acknowledgement. I know you so much better now, Matthew, he thought. We’re still talking about what my book will be called, but I’ll stick out for Matthew’s Story. He had not yet asked Petra or Michael where Matthew had ended up, but it had sounded as if he was still alive in the world. Theo was hoping one of them would know where. And unless it was somewhere impossible, like the far reaches of the Amazon, or the wilds of Tibet, Theo would try to meet him.

  The mourners were dispersing and the sun was sinking over the fens when Catherine, who had been helping hand round cups of tea and coffee and plates of sandwiches, summoned up the courage to say, ‘Theo, can we talk for a moment?’

  ‘Of course. Here?’

  ‘Let’s go out to the garden – it’s not all that cold.’

  ‘You look fully recovered from the dousing in the Chet,’ he said as they went through the side door.

  ‘I am. It’s four days ago anyway.’ Catherine looked at him and, with the feeling of plunging into treacherous waters of a different kind to the Chet, said, ‘Theo—’

  He stopped her. ‘You’re staying here, aren’t you?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Catherine, startled. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I think I knew when we got you out of the river that night,’ he said. ‘That’s when you made the decision, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it was. I thought I was going to drown,’ said Catherine. ‘And when I thought that—’

  ‘I wasn’t the one you reached for in your mind.’

  ‘No.’ She looked at him, grateful that he understood.

  He made a gesture with his hands, as if he was letting go of something. ‘We’ve sort of missed each other, haven’t we?’ he
said. ‘One of us should have been born earlier, or later, or in a different place or something.’ He stood looking down at her. ‘If we had met when you were eighteen…’

  ‘But at eighteen I wanted something different,’ said Catherine. ‘And when I was eighteen, you were – I don’t know how old you were, but you were probably still in love with Charmery.’

  ‘Yes, I was.’ Some strong emotion showed on his face for a moment, then he suddenly said, ‘Catherine, since we’re exchanging all these confidences – you met Charmery, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Just once.’

  ‘When?’ And, as Catherine hesitated, he said, ‘Was it nine years ago?’

  ‘Near enough.’

  ‘You were the one who helped Michael when David was born.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Catherine, seeing there was no way out of admitting this. ‘How did you know about David?’

  ‘Michael told me a couple of days ago,’ said Theo.

  ‘We agreed we’d never talk about it,’ said Catherine. ‘And I never have. But I’ve remembered David each year on the day of his birth.’

  ‘Have you? Thank you.’

  Catherine thought for a moment, then said, ‘Charmery said something, after it was over. I don’t think she intended either of us to hear it, but I did. She looked at the baby and said, “I’m sorry, Theo… I loved you so much.”’

  For a moment he could not speak and Catherine thought she had gone too far. Then he said again, ‘Thank you, Catherine.’

  As they walked back towards the main doors, he was silent, but as they crossed the hall, he suddenly said, ‘Shall you have any second thoughts about all this?’

  ‘About us, d’you mean? Yes,’ said Catherine, ‘I’ll have second thoughts, and probably third thoughts, too. But this is where I belong.’

  As he left, she stood for a moment watching him walk down the drive. It’s all right, she thought. I’ll probably have a few bad moments thinking about what might have been, but this really is where I belong. Here in St Luke’s, doing the work I studied and trained to do, seeing the years wheel by, fulfilled and deeply content.

  With a brisk squaring of her shoulders to shake off any might-have-beens, she went back into the convent to help Sister Agnes with the washing-up.

  Heathrow Airport was its usual seething mass of people and luggage trolleys, blared announcements in several languages and bewildering arrival and departure boards.

  Theo had checked his luggage in and gone to the departure lounge. Unless there were any delays, in about ten minutes’ time he would be called to board the plane and in three or four hours he would be in Switzerland. Petra had made the arrangements, and had promised that a car would meet him at Geneva.

  He sat back, enjoying watching the people for these last few minutes. Who were they and where were they going? A lot of them would be holiday-makers, even at this time of year, and almost as many would be travelling on business. Some would be families going to meet up with relatives.

  But none of them would be going to meet the grown-up ghost of a small boy who had haunted an old house in a remote Norfolk village.

  As his flight was called, Theo smiled, picked up his hand luggage, and went to board the plane that would take him to meet Matthew.

  Also by Sarah Rayne

  Ghost Song

  The Death Chamber

  Spider Light

  Roots of Evil

  A Dark Dividing

  Tower of Silence

  Visit www.sarahrayne.co.uk

  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2010

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © Sarah Rayne, 2010

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

  The right of Sarah Rayne to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  1st Floor

  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London WC1X 8HB

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  HB ISBN-13: 978-1-84737-332-8

  TPB ISBN-13: 978-1-84737-333-5

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-85720-059-4

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or

  locales is entirely coincidental.

  Typeset by Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd,

  Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  CPI Cox & Wyman, Reading, Berkshire RG1 8EX

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