Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling

by Michael Boccacino

  “Wonderful to meet you, my dear! I’m Nanny Prum.” She released me from her grip and I quickly tried to catch my breath.

  “The pleasure’s all mine.”

  The woman cackled and slapped me on the back with a hand like a round steak. She took my arm and led me down the hallway.

  “I expect we’ll be like sisters, or at the very least a pair of silly aunties to little James and Paul! Such good boys, sweeter children I’ve never known. Very different temperaments, mind you, but sweet just the same. I wouldn’t go so far as to call them angels, because they are children, after all, but their hearts are in the right place. Although I suppose you’re more concerned with their minds, hmm?”

  “Their well-being is my primary concern.”

  Nanny Prum nodded in approval and led us up the grand staircase, careful to avoid the holes in the red fabric that covered the stairs, and the cracks that had started to appear in the wood.

  “So you’ve met Mr. Darrow?”

  “Yes, he seems to be a fine sort of gentleman.”

  “To be sure, very fine and rather strapping if you ask me. But then his late wife, the boys’ mother, was also very beautiful. Such a pair they made! So sad that she was taken from this world so young. But it is not for us to dwell on such things. We must help the children forget.”

  “I’m not sure I would say forget, exactly . . .”

  In hindsight, it was the first and only disagreement we ever had, and one, I’m sorry to say, that I would win. I would not let the children forget their late mother, or their nanny.

  We turned the corner at a painting of a nocturnal landscape with a castle looming in the distance. Nanny Prum pointed to it as we passed.

  “Mrs. Darrow enjoyed the fine arts: painting, singing, sculpting, that sort of thing. Although I daresay she had a rather morbid aesthetic.” She stopped at the end of the hallway and entered the nursery.

  The children were waiting for us. Paul was nearly thirteen at the time, thin and pale with dark hair like his mother, whose portrait hung in Mr. Darrow’s study, and intense blue eyes. His brother, James, was four; a sandy blond–haired little boy who wore a light, playful expression on his round, dimpled face. He held a small bouquet of wildflowers, and bowed politely while his older brother leaned against the wall.

  “We are very pleased to meet you.” said James.

  “And I must say I’m very pleased to meet the both of you! I knew there was already one gentleman at Everton, but I had no idea I’d have the pleasure of acquainting myself with two more. And what lovely flowers!” I clasped my hands together in approval and smiled as I was expected to do, even though I had no idea what I would do with them. Flowers always made me nervous, especially when given as gifts. One is expected to keep them alive, to help them flourish for a short while, and if they do not, well, then what does that say about a person? Too much can be inferred from such a failure: Is she simply incapable of keeping anything alive? Dear me, I do hope she does a better job with the Darrow children! And so on and so forth. “I haven’t smelled anything so wonderful since I was a little girl in India.”

  James immediately perked up. “You lived in India?”

  “Yes, for many years. My father was stationed there when I was about your age.”

  “Did you get to see a cobra?”

  “Within striking distance! But thankfully it was under the spell of a snake charmer at the time, so it was probably much less of an adventure than you’d like to think. But I did see many wonderful things, and if you’re at all interested I’m sure we could devote a small portion of our class time to the discussion of the Far East.”

  “Please, ma’am!”

  Paul appeared to be uncomfortable during this entire exchange. He looked around as if he couldn’t wait to leave.

  “I do apologize, Paul. Sometimes I forget that not everyone is interested in hearing my stories.”

  “Oh, it’s not that, ma’am. It’s just that we’re late, you see.”

  “Late?”

  Nanny Prum pushed me aside and took the boy by the arm. “Not now, Paul dear. We can do that some other time.”

  But I continued to press the issue. “On the contrary, I have no intention of disrupting anyone’s daily routine, especially if they have an appointment elsewhere.”

  “It can wait.”

  “Really, I would feel just dreadful if I imposed on anyone my first day here.”

  Nanny Prum sighed, shrugged her large shoulders, and released the boy. “If you insist. I’ll help the boys with their coats.”

  I assisted Nanny Prum with this endeavor and followed them out of the house into the sunlight. She and I walked beside one another as the boys trailed ahead of us, Paul with his hands in his pockets, quiet and distant, and James, skipping along singing some nonsensical song at the top of his lungs. We followed the path down to the entry gate and turned onto the road that led to the village of Blackfield below, situated comfortably at the base of the hill that provided Everton with a justified air of importance.

  The village was full of thatched buildings and cobblestone streets. It was a small, wholesome sort of place despite having two pubs. Nearly all the people of Blackfield found this to be a sign of progress and perhaps evidence that the village was slowly becoming a town, except for Mildred Wallace, who complained bitterly to anyone who would listen that one pub was sinful, but two was simply decadent. After a while it was left to poor Mr. Wallace to listen to her ravings, as the rest of the villagers would turn around corners or move indoors as soon as they saw Mildred coming. It went without saying that this had something to do with Mr. Wallace’s frequent patronage of both establishments.

  We continued down the road until the buildings were overtaken by farmland and rolling hills. St. Michael’s stood on its little hill at the edge of the town, a small country church with stone walls and a quaint, well-kept vicarage. A graveyard sat between them, and as we neared it Paul hastened his pace. He was through the gates and winding around the tombstones before I realized what we had come to do. James caught up to his brother and they knelt before a sizable headstone that bore their mother’s name. The earth was still settling where she had been buried. Nanny Prum held me back as the boys chattered with enthusiasm at the plot of dirt that held their late mother; she spoke to me in a soft whisper as different from her normal voice as was possible while the children updated their mother on everything that had transpired since their previous visit.

  “They come every day, the poor dears. I’m not sure that James even understands what’s happened to her. He didn’t cry at the funeral. But Paul . . . it cut him deeply.” Even as she spoke it was apparent that Paul was taking the most time talking to his mother, and James became distracted by a pair of butterflies. To Nanny Prum’s horror, he chased after them, hopping from one grave plot to another. She shouted after him. “James Michael Darrow, stop that at once!”

  Paul ignored his brother and continued his conversation with his mother, but he was surprised when I joined him before the tombstone.

  “Please don’t stop on my account,” I said to him. The sun was heavy in the sky.

  The boy squinted at me, and then looked on as his nanny chased after his brother, the hem of her skirts in her hands as she tried to avoid offending the dead. “She thinks it’s strange.”

  “It’s difficult for people who have never lost someone close to them to understand what it’s like.”

  Paul looked back at the tombstone and traced the inscription of his mother’s name with his fingers. “I was the only one who wasn’t there when she died.” He looked up at me, a question in his expression.

  “Why was that?” I asked.

  “I couldn’t bear to see her like that. I tried, I truly did. I held her hand and I kissed her cheek, but then she would begin to wail. It wasn’t even her anymore. It was as if something had taken her place,
this thing that lived inside her skin, not even human, only just alive. I didn’t want her to see me cry, so I kept away. I’m a coward.”

  “You are no such thing,” I said, placing my hand tentatively on his shoulder. “She knew how you felt, I’m sure of it.”

  “I dream about her almost every night,” he sighed.

  I thought of my own dreams. I looked forward to them more than most things in life, and even when they turned into nightmares, I still found a sense of relief in seeing my mother dance or hearing Jonathan laugh. They became real in a way that memory could not make them.

  “That must be wonderful.”

  “Sometimes. But when I wake up I have to remember that she’s gone.”

  James shrieked in the distance. Nanny Prum had lifted him by the waist and held him under her arm. The little boy was screaming so ferociously that the vicar stepped out of his cottage to see if someone was being murdered in the graveyard.

  “Is everything all right?” Mr. Scott was a few years younger than my father would have been had he survived, and his hair billowed over his head, threatening to blow away completely as he looked frantically for the source of the screaming.

  Nanny Prum waddled over to him, full of cheerful exuberance. “Yes, Vicar, quite all right! Little James must learn to respect the dead.”

  Paul and I left the grave and joined the others before the cottage. Nanny Prum set James back onto the ground and straightened her dress, even though it was so heavily starched that it was impossible for it to wrinkle. She introduced me to the vicar, and he inquired about my family before becoming embarrassed by the question when he learned that I had none.

  We continued our daily trips to the graveyard, despite Nanny Prum’s apprehensions about appearing to be too morbid, and every day Mr. Scott made a point of it to greet us before we left. It was something the boys and I would continue to do even after she died.

  Nanny Prum’s tombstone was not so very far from Mrs. Darrow’s grave, and while the boys had considerably less to say to their late nanny than they did to their late mother, they did keep her updated on the happenings at Everton. Paul even began to bring her bits of gossip he had overheard from Ellen and the other servants, and while I scolded him for eavesdropping, I did not dissuade him from continuing to bring her news she might have enjoyed while she was alive.

  James frequently grew tired of the game before it was time to turn back, and so he would go through the graveyard familiarizing himself with its other residents, having grown out of the habit of skipping from grave to grave thanks to the persistent conviction of Nanny Prum’s large, heavy hand against his bottom.

  Paul always seemed less morose on the walks back to Everton. We had a specific route that we followed through Blackfield, starting with Mr. Ingrams at the blacksmith shop, who pulled and twisted burning metal in a shower of sparks like it was taffy, then to Mr. Wallace, who was the local clockmaker in addition to his duties as the village drunk. None of the clocks kept the same time, and so every moment in the shop was punctuated with the clanging of chimes or the cooing of a cuckoo, but the boys didn’t mind. James relished the noise, and Paul watched with genuine interest when Mr. Wallace opened the clocks to show him the interlocking cogs and springs. He even smiled.

  After the clock shop it was impossible to avoid Mrs. Totter’s bakery. She always kept the door open, even on the coldest days of the year, and the scents of freshly baked cakes and chocolate croissants and mincemeat pies all tangled together, snaking through the streets of Blackfield, a crisp, golden brown siren’s call promising a warm, full stomach. I only let the boys purchase one item a week, usually a cookie the size of a dinner plate, but for the most part our trips to Mrs. Totter’s were largely exercises in excruciation.

  Mrs. Willoughby’s dress shop was next, since that was where Susannah worked as an apprentice seamstress, and the week after Nanny Prum’s funeral we found her alone in the front of the shop, pushing over a dressing mannequin out of frustration. She jumped when she saw us in the doorway, and then blushed furiously at her own display, her emotions laid bare with the mannequin rolling about on the floor.

  “Hello,” she said in a surprised, falsely tranquil voice, brushing away a strand of red hair that had fallen into her eyes. She bent down to pick up the dummy. “How was the church?”

  I frowned at her while her back was turned, but quickly removed the expression from my face. This was how the people of Blackfield referred to our daily visits to the graveyard. Most of them couldn’t bear to name it for what it was, except for Susannah, who normally had no qualms about describing things exactly as they were.

  “It was fine.” I smiled, not judging her for attacking the lowly mannequin, who, for all I knew, might have had it coming after a day of uncooperative participation in the fine art of dressmaking. “And how are you?”

  The question uncorked the remaining emotions that Susannah had thus far been successful in containing. She gripped the mannequin so tightly that I could have sworn she bent its metal frame. She sat down with a beleaguered sigh. “Dreadful, Charlotte, just dreadful!”

  I sat down beside her, amid the reams of fabric, which Paul examined thoughtfully with his hands, listening but not really listening, lost in his own morose thoughts, while James pulled needles of all shapes and sizes from their pincushions and stuck them into chairs and tabletops with a violence unique to little boys, absolutely determined to not be bored by the dull conversation of adults.

  Susannah went on. “Brickner came by the shop, to tell me, to tell me, that I was mistaken in what I saw—the hysterical ravings of a frightened woman. Can you imagine?” She was waving her hands as she spoke, before catching herself, and stopping. “Well, I suppose you can. But I wasn’t hysterical, not then anyway, not that night. I know what I saw. Wild animal indeed!” Susannah sat back, deflated, and looked at me with searching eyes, waiting for me to say something.

  “It goes without saying that I believe you, and so does half the village for that matter.”

  She seemed genuinely relieved by this, and whatever was taken from her by Constable Brickner’s lazy certainty was replaced with newfound confidence, stronger than before, like mended bone.

  “Then why doesn’t Brickner?” she asked.

  “Simple people like simple explanations,” I said before I could stop myself. Paul stifled a small laugh.

  Susannah smiled briefly, and then became dark and serious once more. “It’s not for myself that I want to be believed, you know. I don’t need justice served, but she most certainly does.” She nodded curtly and looked past the boys at some distant memory of Nanny Prum, who some months before perhaps sat in that very same spot, having a very similar conversation about something moderately less sensational than murder.

  “I would think,” I said carefully, trying not to get her hopes too high, “that Mr. Darrow would be of a similar mind.”

  “Could he be convinced to speak with Constable Brickner?”

  “I don’t know about convincing, really, but it could certainly be suggested, yes.”

  Susannah leapt up from her chair and threw her arms around my neck. “Oh thank you, Charlotte!”

  “No need to thank me yet. Wait until I’ve at least done something mildly useful!” I hugged her back and extricated myself from her embrace, rising to leave with the children before she found it necessary to inflict upon me the same force of emotion that she showed to the poor dressing mannequin, who now appeared fatally dented along one side. Paul helped me pull James away from the cutting shears before he could do any damage to them. The three of us continued on our way through Blackfield, rising with the incline of the path to the steep hill that held Everton, hidden behind a line of trees dusted with autumn.

  When we arrived back at the manor, I sent the boys inside and wandered through the wood at the back of the estate until I found the flattened patch of earth where Nanny Pr
um had met her end. Even with the onset of fall, it was impossible to deny the peculiar ring of dead grass and brittle, shriveled plant life that encircled the place where she had died, the center of it still stained with flakes of dried blood as dark as the shadows that cloaked the man in black’s smiling, hidden lips.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Mistress of Everton

  Mr. Darrow was not the sort of tragic figure to stay forever locked away in his study, which was itself one of the last bastions of Everton’s former glory, with waxed oak-paneled walls, a tidy, ash-free hearth, and antiquities that had been collected from around the world by the master of the house and his late wife, whose adventures had been chronicled on the marble globe that stood at the center of the room, their travels marked by glittering jeweled pinpoints of color. No one ever saw Mr. Darrow tend to the cleaning of his study, but as he did not allow anyone else to do it for him, everyone supposed that that was what he did when he was alone, perhaps beating the curtains with sullen determination as he stared longingly at the portrait of his late wife that hung above his desk.

  But he was not always in his study. There were a number of occasions where I went to the door, in need of additional pocket money for school supplies, or to seek his permission for a day trip to a particular castle or battlefield, and I would find the room empty. No one knew where he went, and no one could say that they saw him depart. He did not like to leave Everton, and so I imagined him haunting the shadows of the hallways or drifting into unused rooms, resting on a chair that had long ago been covered over in cloth sheets, or pausing before a clock to wonder if it had stopped with the death of his wife.

  He did not usually dine with us, and so the children and I were visibly surprised when two weeks after Nanny Prum’s funeral he sat down at the head of the table in the dining room, looking rather dour until Fredricks, the butler, who either was very drunk or had completely forgotten how to use his own hands, lost hold of the soup kettle and tipped it down the front of his uniform. After establishing that the liquid was not so hot as to be scalding, everyone laughed together, and even Mr. Darrow seemed to enjoy himself for a brief moment, but then he looked at the other end of the table, where the late Mrs. Darrow would have sat, and he retreated into his comfortable melancholy. I do not know why he chose that night to join us. Perhaps the reality of Nanny Prum’s death had sunk in and he needed the company, or perhaps he was reminded of his children’s existence and sought to comfort them with his distant, sad presence.