The Silent Companions

by Laura Purcell

  Disorientated, Elsie let the lantern fall from her hand. Mrs Holt lit another lamp.

  ‘You!’ Sarah, shrill, behind her. ‘You’re meant to be . . . Why aren’t you asleep?’

  ‘God forgive you, girl, don’t you think I know poppy tea when I smell it? I knew you were up to something, but I never imagined you would try and take her out! Whatever possessed you?’

  Where were the companions? The Great Hall materialised around her. Suits of armour, swords, the oriental rug. There were no companions. There was only Mrs Holt and the pant of the gas lamps.

  ‘You are trying to take her away from me!’ Sarah screeched. Her hand latched on Elsie’s arm. ‘I won’t let you. She is no lunatic! They were right here, did you not see them? Didn’t you hear them, you foolish old woman?’

  The fight was still in Sarah. Not Elsie. Feeling had ebbed away, leaving her an empty shell. There went disappointment. Fear laid pooled at her feet. The last dregs remaining were something like relief. At least now, she would not leave Jolyon.

  ‘I heard nothing. There was nothing.’ Revulsion twisted Mrs Holt’s features. ‘Heaven above! You’re just as crazy as she is!’

  Sarah’s jaw jutted. For a moment, it really looked as if she would strike Mrs Holt, but then furniture crashed upstairs and footsteps clopped, unsteady, until Jolyon appeared in the gallery. He looked like a man in his cups: flushed, his hair out at angles. ‘What is this?’ He blinked at them, wrestling words from his drugged sleep. ‘I heard a scream and – Elsie? Is that you?’

  ‘It is both the ladies, Mr Livingstone,’ Mrs Holt called up. ‘I caught them trying to escape.’

  ‘Escape!’

  ‘I’m afraid they drugged you, Mr Livingstone. They are cunning. Far more dangerous than we feared.’

  Elsie would never forget the expression on his face: the blend of fear and wrath. For it was no longer Jolyon staring at her behind those red-rimmed, hazel eyes. Her dear boy spluttered out of existence with Mrs Holt’s words. In his place stood someone else, someone she’d prayed never to see again so long as she lived.

  It was Pa.

  ‘Let me out!’ Elsie’s palm slammed into the wood again and again, rattling the door on its hinges. Each blow vibrated through her ribs with white-hot pain, yet she did not stop. She could not stop. ‘Jolyon, unlock the door this instant!’

  ‘I cannot do that.’

  ‘Please! Let me out! I have been in here all night!’ Her voice soared off pitch. Hysterical, crazed. Even to her own ears, it sounded like confirmation of his diagnosis. ‘Jolyon!’

  ‘You are not well. I should have known.’ She heard his shoulder shift against the door. ‘I should have suspected long ago.’

  Her hand hovered an inch away from the wood. She was filling up with smoke; behind her eyes, her stomach, underneath her tongue. Bitter, choking smoke that was the past and the present, engulfing her with acrid fumes.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ How false it sounded. A line given to an actress in a play.

  ‘After Ma—’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I saw you, Elsie. I saw you put the pillow over her face—’

  ‘It wasn’t like that!’ she shrieked, jangling the handle again. ‘Listen to me, I can explain—’

  ‘I cannot believe a word you say!’

  ‘She was in too much pain. She was already on death’s door, it wasn’t a sin.’

  ‘Not a sin!’ he exploded. ‘Good God. Maybe poor Ma was right all along. Maybe she was not mad. The things she accused you of . . .’

  ‘All I ever did, I did for you.’

  She heard a sob break from him. ‘You did not do that in my name. You did not kill my mother for my sake.’

  ‘Jolyon, look. There are things I never told you, things—’

  ‘Stop!’ His hand knocked back from the other side. ‘Please, do not make me listen to it. Your words will send me mad too. Help is coming. I just need to keep you safe until the men arrive.’

  ‘Men from St Joseph’s?’

  ‘Mrs Holt has gone with the telegram now. It is the best place for you. They might be able to . . .’ He trailed off.

  Tears streaked down her face. How could this be happening?

  Each day the impossible became a reality, but it was easier to believe in wooden assassins than it was to accept that Jolyon, her Jolyon, was against her.

  She pressed her forehead to the door. Under the white paint, she could make out the pattern and knots in the wood, as if it were not just a barrier between them but a living thing, complete with veins and sinews.

  ‘Jolyon, consider again.’ She struggled to keep her breath steady, to sound like a sane person. ‘You know this is not in keeping with my character. With your own lips, you told Mr Underwood you would stake your life on my nerves.’

  ‘They are broken, and my heart with them.’

  She laid her palm flat, imagining his head pressed to the wood. If only he would look at her. If he looked into her eyes, he would know she was telling the truth. ‘You are too hasty. Ask Sarah—’

  ‘I have sent Sarah to her own suite! I cannot have her coming to your room, encouraging you in your delusions.’

  She slid to the carpet, landing painfully on her bad knee. ‘You cannot confine Sarah,’ she tried again. ‘You have no authority over her. You cannot treat us like prisoners.’

  ‘It is for your own safety. I know what is best for you.’

  But he didn’t even know who she was.

  She remained on the floor, empty and spent. Presently, Jolyon’s footsteps sounded in the corridor. The library door opened and then closed.

  Shadows of trees lay on the carpet by the window. Inch by inch, they lengthened across the floor. A detached part of her wondered which would get her first – the companions or the asylum. Perhaps Mrs Holt had sealed her fate by now; spelt out her doom in wires and crackles and clicks. Already, she felt the cold of a hospital dormitory closing in around her.

  Did she deserve it? Perhaps she did. Not for the companions, but for the other things. Pa, Ma. She could blot them out but they never left her; they ran, dark, in her bloodstream. In Jolyon.

  It was perhaps an hour later when she heard the noise: soft, at first, a crackle like logs yielding to a flame. She darted a look at the fire but the wood had burnt out. Again it came: a scratching, whispering sound. Right outside her door.

  Elsie cocked her head, listening. This time she heard little clicks. Then a door, creaking open.

  Jolyon’s wordless exclamation made her jump. Perhaps it was Mrs Holt returned? But there were no footsteps, no voices. Just that distant rustle, like twigs snapping. Or tiny bones.

  She lay down awkwardly on the floor. The sliver of light under the door only revealed a stretch of maroon carpet.

  Jolyon screamed.

  She bolted upright, wincing as pain seared along her ribs. ‘Jo?’ She tried the door handle. Still locked. He cried out again, a strangled word that sounded like her name. ‘Jolyon!’

  Now the sounds were amplified. Twisting, slithering. She thought of animals thrashing in the undergrowth, ensnared by branches. Dear God, what was happening?

  ‘Elsie!’ An anguished scream, bubbling with liquid.

  Furiously, she pumped at the handle, hammered on the door. She couldn’t get to him. She couldn’t get out.

  No torture could be more maddening: to hear and not to see; to be powerless while he howled. The air became stifling, impossible to breathe, pressing in close, close.

  Elsie cast about the room for an object to batter the door with. Her roving eyes fell upon the dressing table and she shot up a prayer of gratitude. Why hadn’t she thought of them before?

  She dashed over, ignoring the pain in her knee, and seized a handful of hairpins. With sweating palms, she bent the first pin and tried to get it in the keyhole. It missed. Again she lined it up, and again it skidded out of control. ‘God damn!’ Her hands shook as if she had the ague.

  Glass smashed.
>
  ‘Come on, come on.’ At last, she threaded the pin into the hole but it rattled and she couldn’t feel the tumblers. ‘Please!’

  Hiss. The pin fell from her hand. Hiss.

  There was another shout, and Jolyon’s voice died out. The silence was deafening.

  Seizing another pin, she bent it with her teeth and thrust it in the lock. Relief surged when the tumblers clicked and moved, and the door yielded to her hand.

  In the corridor everything was still. She hobbled out, gritting her teeth. Footsteps pounded to her left. When she turned, she saw Sarah hurtling in her direction, wild-eyed, Jasper at her heels.

  ‘Elsie! What happened? I heard screaming.’

  ‘Jolyon,’ she gasped. ‘Jolyon.’

  Sarah’s eyes widened. ‘Not them?’

  A noise burst from her lips: keening, animal. She had never known a pain like it. ‘No! Please God, no.’

  Without another word, Sarah nudged her shoulder under Elsie’s armpit and helped her to the library.

  It was a wreck. Books lay spreadeagled on the floor with their pages hanging loose. The carpet was a graveyard of paper, glass and shrivelled leaves. As they stumbled farther into the room, Elsie saw rips in the curtains which fluttered and danced in the breeze.

  ‘Jolyon?’ It did not sound like her voice – did not sound like his name.

  Ink splattered across the desk, splintered with shards of green glass from the lamp, but the chair behind stood empty.

  ‘Elsie! Over there!’

  She whirled round. The gypsy boy with his crook loomed before the fire. Something inhuman flickered in the flat face. Her eyes followed the direction of his crook.

  The middle window was smashed to a spider web. Cracks radiated from a central, ragged hole. Something snagged on one of the points. Material. Hair?

  The tattered curtains waved, frantic, motioning her away. But her feet moved without her permission, hopelessly drawn across the carpet, crunching on glass, to stand where the wind could slap her face.

  Dozens of Elsies stared back at her from the shattered window, each one a different shape. Elongated, squashed, missing mouths; her face melting. And she saw that the cracks were edged with blood.

  Taking a deep breath, she peered down from the sill.

  Her Jolyon, her boy, lay face down on the gravel, his neck at an impossible angle. Dead.

  The curtains gusted around, embracing her as she screamed.

  Once, when she was very young, Pa had burst her eardrum. It created a noise, a noise so intense that it was somehow more than sound, drowning everything but its insistent ring.

  After the noise had come severe pain. Burrowing into her head and making her dizzy, slackening her face. She felt everything and nothing.

  It must have happened again, for she could not see or hear. Time slipped past her as if she were no longer there.

  Suddenly she slammed back into herself, finding herself propped up behind the desk in the remains of the leather chair. Horsehair prickled through slashes in the fabric, rough against her tender skin.

  Sarah was on her left, waving a bottle of smelling salts under her nose. To the right stood Mrs Holt.

  ‘Another terrible accident?’ she was saying. ‘My eye! It’s her, you daft girl. She’s not right in the head. I’m going for the police.’

  ‘It was the companions, Mrs Holt! Elsie had only just come out of her room, I saw the door open. There is no conceivable way she could have got in here and . . .’ Sarah saw Elsie stirring back to life, and put the smelling salts down.

  ‘I reckon Mr Livingstone missed a trick when he wrote that telegram,’ Mrs Holt muttered. ‘He ought to have had you both committed.’

  Even his name was a blow to the gut. There was no Mr Livingstone now, no good to come of all her sorrow: there was just the wreck of a handsome young man lying splayed on the gravel like a fallen bird. ‘My baby,’ her numb lips said. ‘My boy.’

  ‘See?’ Mrs Holt jerked her head. ‘Crackers.’ She leant in close so Elsie could see the nets of wrinkles around her eyes and smell her old, peppery breath. ‘You might have lost a baby, madam, but that is nothing to losing a daughter full grown, the hope of your life. Seeing her skewered like a piece of meat on a roasting jack!’ Her face looked frightful, distorted with tears. ‘God knows I should pity you for your malady, but I can’t. I can’t do it. I only pray I’ll see you swing for what you did to her.’

  At any other time, her mind might have put the pieces together. But Elsie found herself staring at Mrs Holt with the same confusion that was lining Sarah’s brow. ‘What are you talking about? What daughter?’

  Mrs Holt ran a hand over her ravaged face. ‘I suppose there is no need to keep the secret, now. There was a reason Mr Bainbridge called me his angel. There was also a reason that I came out here to the middle of nowhere.’

  ‘Oh!’ Sarah breathed. ‘You were carrying his child.’

  She closed her eyes and nodded. ‘I was. You see, my mistress was so unwell and he needed . . . He was not a bad man. He wanted to do the right thing by both of us.’

  ‘So he advanced you. Gave you a house where you would be free from gossip.’

  ‘I hid the babe away at first. Then later, I trained her up to work alongside me in the house. I wasn’t daft, I never expected Helen to be raised with Master Rupert.’

  ‘Helen. Helen was your daughter? And so . . .’ Sarah placed a hand on her chest. ‘My cousin?’

  ‘She was. That wretched woman sitting before us has taken family from you too, Miss Sarah. You must let me go for the police.’

  Elsie did not fear Mrs Holt’s hatred. She yearned to cling to her as someone who had felt this same pain and survived. Or had she? The woman remonstrating with Sarah was not the same Mrs Holt she had met that first night. She was a hardened version, an iron version, bitter at heart.

  ‘Go,’ Elsie said. ‘Please. Go for the police.’

  Mrs Holt blinked her watery eyes.

  ‘No,’ Sarah cried. ‘No, Elsie, you are not thinking straight. You have to get out of here before the people from the asylum come and—’

  ‘Let them come. What does it matter, now?’

  ‘It matters to me! I need you!’

  Elsie laid her head back against the chair. ‘I won’t leave Jolyon. I won’t have strange hands washing him and laying him out. I’ll be there when he’s buried as I was there when he was born.’

  Sarah exhaled, her shoulders sagging. ‘Then I suppose . . . Mrs Holt is right. We must go for the police, or the asylum people will send for them the moment they arrive. It will look worse for us all if that happens.’

  ‘Three bodies in the house,’ said Mrs Holt. ‘Three.’

  ‘One of them outside. Come, let us bring him in before I go to fetch the constable.’

  ‘You?’ spat Mrs Holt. ‘Why would I trust you to go for the police? Only last night, you were trying to break her loose!’

  Sarah laid a hand on Mrs Holt’s shoulder and turned her away from Elsie, towards the fireplace. ‘It is a long trek to Torbury St Jude. You have been there and back today already.’

  ‘But will you honestly—’ Her sentence ended abruptly. Something was changing, shifting beneath her expression. ‘Did you do that?’ she hissed.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘That!’ Mrs Holt’s arm flailed out at the hearth. ‘Was that you or was it her?’

  ‘I do not understand you.’

  But Elsie did. She saw the change that had taken place while their backs were turned to the fireplace. Her skin crawled.

  ‘It wasn’t like that when I came into the room. Look at it!’

  Frantic white lines marked the wood. Deep, angry gashes.

  The eyes of the gypsy boy had been scratched out.

  Needles of rain hurtled past the open door. The afternoon air smelt strange: peaty and rich. Elsie tried to focus on the scent, to lose herself in it; anything to distance herself from the terrible scene playing out before her eyes.

/>   Neither Mrs Holt nor Sarah was strong. They half pushed, half dragged Jolyon’s body across the threshold. His head lolled, grotesque. Flecks of gravel stuck to his cheeks and the lashes framing his open hazel eyes.

  She had always tried to save him. God, how she had tried.

  They laid him out like a broken puppet on the same oriental rug where Rupert’s coffin had sat. Mrs Holt folded Jolyon’s sprawled arms so that the hands rested, overlapped, on his stomach. She frowned. ‘There are splinters on his fingers.’

  Elsie flinched.

  ‘There were splinters on Rupert,’ Sarah said. ‘And the baby.’

  The housekeeper’s lips twitched. Elsie could see her struggling with the unpalatable truth: believing; not wanting to believe; trying to prove herself wrong.

  ‘Did Mabel or Helen have splinters?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘I didn’t see. I didn’t check.’ Mrs Holt took a step. Stopped. ‘I might . . . go and look.’ She darted another glance at Elsie.

  Elsie understood. The housekeeper wanted to hate her. She would rather find Elsie’s bloody fingerprints around Helen’s neck than a spray of splinters.

  Poor Mrs Holt. Far better to believe your child was murdered quickly rather than stalked, living their last moments in a paroxysm of fear. She watched the old woman disappear behind the baize door and her heart went with her.

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Sarah bit at a strand of her hair, agitated. ‘What does this thing want? What did it fail to find in Rupert, or the baby? What does it need, exactly?’

  She swayed on her feet. ‘I do not know, Sarah, and I do not want to know. I am only thankful Jolyon is free of it now. I won’t give it another chance. Fetch me some water, please. I am going to wash him.’

  Sarah hesitated. ‘I’m not sure that you can. If the police come to investigate, they will want to see him . . . as he was.’

  ‘As he was!’ A dry sob came out. ‘Dear God, we all want that.’

  Sarah hung her head. ‘You do . . . You still want me to go for the police?’

  ‘Yes! Someone has to help us. We cannot face this alone.’

  ‘But they will not believe in the companions! What if they arrest us?’