Elizabeth and Zenobia

by Jessica Miller

  I wondered if I had dreamed it, in one of those dreams that feel as clear and real as life when you are in them.

  I looked down at the book in my lap and frowned.

  Yes, it must have been one of those dreams.

  4

  THE EAST WING

  I slid my empty teacup across the table to where Zenobia sat with her chin in her hands.

  ‘Don’t you want to read the leaves?’ I prompted.

  ‘You know I’ve given up fortune telling,’ she said.

  ‘But some terrible fate might await me,’ I coaxed. ‘I might get attacked by a…by a cat! A larger than normal cat! With sharp teeth and claws!’

  Zenobia lifted an eyebrow.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ I said. ‘You know you’re much better at thinking up terrible misfortunes than I am.’

  But she pushed the cup away. ‘Not today,’ she said.

  We had been four long, rainy days at Witheringe House and Zenobia was still no closer to finding any kind of Spirit Presence. As each day passed, free from ghosts or messages from Beyond the Veil, I felt my nerves start to ease. But Zenobia slid into a melancholy. Usually she enjoyed her melancholies, but this one was, even by her standards, extreme. And as much as I hoped she wouldn’t find a ghost, it made me sad to see her sadness.

  That afternoon I found a copy of Hamlet in the library. I took it to the seat by the rain-slicked window where Zenobia sat, and I pressed it into her hands. ‘Wouldn’t you like to read it?’ I asked. ‘I’ve marked all the gruesome parts.’

  ‘Maybe later,’ she said.

  I climbed onto the window seat beside her. ‘You know there’s a dead spider behind one of the curtains in the music room,’ I said. ‘Mrs Purswell must have missed it when she dusted.’ Zenobia had always loved performing elaborate funerals for dead insects. She lay them out on her black silk handkerchief and deliberated over whether to read from Edward Young’s ‘Night Thoughts’ (Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay!) or ‘The Grave’ by Robert Blair (Dull grave! Thy spoilst the dance of youthful blood!) for the eulogy. She almost always chose the Blair. His meter, she said, was more thrilling.

  ‘It’s starting to shrivel up,’ I said. ‘You know you love that shrivelly shape spiders get after they’ve been dead a day or two.’

  ‘I know what you’re trying to do, Elizabeth.’ She raised her head. ‘And I appreciate it, really. But you won’t cheer me. Nothing can cheer me now.’

  ‘It can’t be as bad as all that,’ I said, and I wrapped my fingers through hers.

  ‘But it is as bad as all that. I’ve done everything Madame Lucent instructed me to do and—nothing. We’ve searched every room in the West Wing with no sign of—’

  She dropped my hand.

  ‘Every room in the West Wing,’ she said again. ‘In the West Wing.’

  ‘Are you feeling all right, Zenobia?’

  ‘Oh, I’m better than all right—and do you know why?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Because a thought has just struck me, Elizabeth! We’ve searched only the West Wing—we haven’t explored the East Wing at all!’

  My stomach shrank.

  Zenobia sprang down from the seat and pulled me towards the door.

  ‘But we can’t go in the East Wing,’ I said. ‘We’re not allowed to. Father said.’

  ‘Your Father won’t notice if you go into the East Wing.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Your Father would hardly notice if you grew twelve feet tall, started speaking Mandarin, and set your hair on fire!’

  And she marched off down the dark corridor.

  I stayed, trying to convince myself that Zenobia was wrong. But I couldn’t manage it. Ever since Mother had left, I wondered if Father noticed me at all.

  ‘Wait for me,’ I called, and I followed Zenobia into the gloom.

  Zenobia stood in the front room. In one hand she held a rose, fresh-plucked from the arrangement in the dining room, and in the other, The World Beyond by Madame Lucent.

  ‘I’m quite sure that we’ll find our Spirit Presence in the East Wing, Elizabeth,’ she said. ‘I have a sense for these things.’ She squinted round the room. ‘Only, where do you suppose the East Wing is exactly?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. I hovered at the bottom step of the staircase, arms curled tight around the banister. ‘I only know I’m strictly forbidden to enter it.’

  ‘Well, help me look, would you?’

  I checked the books on the shelves.

  ‘After all, any one of them might prove to be the handle to a hidden doorway,’ Zenobia told me.

  Zenobia knocked on all the walls, in case there was an entryway hidden behind one of the panels. She did find a door half hidden behind a large dresser.

  ‘There’s nothing behind it,’ she reported. ‘Just an empty room with lots of dead moths on the floor. I took some lovely moth dust for my collection’—she showed me the powdery moth-wing residue on her outstretched finger—‘but we’re no closer to finding the East Wing.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘we’re not supposed to find the East Wing today. Perhaps it’s a sign.’

  ‘Of course!’ she said. ‘What an uncharacteristically apposite idea, Elizabeth!’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘If the East Wing is inhabited by a Spirit Presence—and I think we both know that it is—then surely the Spirit will manifest some kind of sign to guide us in its direction.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s what I meant.’

  ‘Here.’ She pushed the rose into my hands and opened the book. ‘Chapter Four,’ she muttered, ‘“Signs and Portents”. It’s merely a matter of finding the correct invocation.’

  Her eyes ran down the page.

  ‘Ah! Here it is!’ She cleared her throat. When she next spoke her voice was deep and filled the room from floor to ceiling.

  ‘O Spirit!’ she intoned. ‘Guide us down the Shadowed Path that leads to Your Presence!’

  ‘What now?’ I asked when the echoing of Zenobia’s words had thinned and stopped.

  ‘Now we wait.’

  ‘Wait for what exactly?’

  ‘A sign, Elizabeth, a sign. The sudden cracking of a window-pane or mirror. The appearance of a large black bird—crow, raven, the exact species doesn’t matter. Or—’

  I shivered as the air turned cold and watery. ‘Or a chill wind?’ I asked.

  Zenobia thought. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s unoriginal, certainly, but a chill wind could indeed be a sign.’

  The wind whipped up, rustling the curtains and swelling the tapestry on the far wall.

  And there, behind the billowing tapestry, was the beginning of a staircase.

  ‘Come,’ Zenobia said, pulling the tapestry back. ‘The Spirit World awaits.’

  I stood in front of the tapestry. My hands were shaking. They shook so hard, they shivered the petals of the rose.

  Zenobia crouched and stuck her head beneath the tapestry’s fringe. ‘It’s very gloomy back here,’ she reported, ‘which is extremely promising.’

  ‘You’re interested in the tapestry, Miss Elizabeth?’

  I straightened up and turned around. Mrs Purswell stood behind me. She held a flat wooden paddle for beating the dust from curtains and carpets.

  Zenobia stepped out from under the tapestry and regarded Mrs Purswell admiringly. ‘One day, Elizabeth, you’ll have to ask her how she does that. She’s elevated lurking to an art.’

  Mrs Purswell flicked the wooden paddle briskly against her skirt. She was waiting for my answer.

  ‘Well, it’s interesting, isn’t it?’ I stepped back as if to admire the scene it depicted: a group of people in medieval dress. Two men were standing under tree branches. And a woman, playing a pear-shaped instrument, was sitting in a field of embroidered wildflowers.

  ‘Perhaps it is,’ said Mrs Purswell. She looked at me carefully. ‘Mind you don’t find it too interesting.’ And she left, flicking her paddle as sh
e went.

  Zenobia pushed the tapestry aside so I could climb under it too, and when I paused with my foot hovering over the bottom step she whispered, ‘Will you come on, Elizabeth?’

  And just like that we were in the East Wing.

  The staircase was steep and narrow, and we had been climbing it a long, long time when it finally opened into a corridor.

  A very dark corridor. It might also have been very long, but it was too dark to see where it ended. Or if it ended at all.

  I blinked into the darkness until I could see that it was lined with paintings: portraits of people with thin, serious faces and old-fashioned clothes.

  ‘You’re dawdling, Elizabeth,’ Zenobia called over her shoulder, ‘and I’m quite sure you’re doing it on purpose.’

  ‘I was just looking at the portraits. I guess they must be my family.’

  Zenobia turned to a portrait of a woman in a tall silvery wig. She touched her fingers to the painting’s dusty frame. ‘Perhaps one of these portraits,’ she said, ‘shows our Spirit Presence—while they still walked among the World of the Living, I mean.’

  Then she tapped the dust from her fingertips into her pocket. ‘For my collection,’ she said.

  I hurried past a mean-eyed man—I hoped he wasn’t the Spirit Presence—and then past a lady who held a green feather quill in her hand.

  After the lady with the quill, the corridor came to an end.

  We stood before a door made of wood so dark it was almost black. Zenobia took the doorknob in her hand, swung the door open and went inside. I went in behind her.

  Inside, it was even darker than it was in the corridor. The air was thick and smelled of mouse. Even worse, when I took a step a sudden skittering started under my feet. And the room filled with eerie music, an out-of-tune violin playing a slow mournful song.

  My greatest fear. Zenobia’s greatest wish. This, then, was the Spirit Presence. And while it had always been my plan that if Zenobia did make contact with the World Beyond I would run as far as I could in the opposite direction, I found my feet stuck to the floor and my limbs unwilling to move.

  ‘O, Spirit!’ Zenobia greeted the Spirit Presence ecstatically. ‘You have Lifted the Veil to our Waking World.’

  The music kept on. Each note felt like a cold finger running down my neck.

  ‘O, Spirit, we are Eager to receive you!’ Zenobia’s voice rose and cracked.

  And then my feet came unstuck and the nerves in my arms and legs began working once more, and I knew I wanted to be far away. As far away from this room, from this whole wretched house, as I could possibly be.

  I turned to go outside, to run down the hall and down the stairs. But it was too dark to see properly and my outstretched hands found heavy curtains instead of the wooden door.

  I flung the curtains open and light came in.

  ‘A toy,’ said Zenobia with disdain. She held a clockwork kitten between two fingers. It had a blue ribbon round its neck, a violin tucked under its chin, and a bow held in one jerking paw. The notes it played grew slower and slurred together as it wound down.

  With the curtains open we could see we were standing in a nursery. Two bare cots were pushed up against one wall. I sat on the one nearest me. I pushed my palms into the thin mattress and waited for my heart, swollen with fear, to return to its normal size.

  Zenobia stood in the middle of the room with the flower held out in front of her.

  I looked around the nursery. A shelf held a dusty collection of books. Struwwelpeter. The Yellow Fairy Book. A ball, sewn from bright scraps of fabric, lay on the floor. A rocking horse rocked slowly in the corner. A murky mirror hung crooked on one wall. I caught myself in it. My reflection was shifting and rippled, more like the reflection you would find on the surface of a pond than a mirror’s glass.

  ‘I am certain there is a Presence here, in this very room,’ announced Zenobia. ‘Do you not feel it too? Do you not feel a frisson?’

  ‘I’d need to know what a frisson was before I could know if I felt one or not,’ I said.

  ‘It’s a delightful shiver of mystery and terror and pleasure all combined.’

  ‘I do feel a shiver, though I wouldn’t say it was a frisson. I’m inclined to put it down to the wallpaper.’

  Nursery wallpaper usually shows smiling suns peeking from behind clouds, or characters from Mother Goose, or sprays of soft pink roses growing over white lattice.

  This wallpaper was quite different. It was vivid green and it showed a garden, but a strange garden. Every inch of the paper crawled with vines and tendrils. The wallpaper’s plants grew in colours and shapes and sizes I had never known plants to grow in before. Their leaves were frog-skin green and rippled with veins. Their flowers were as bright as gems. They grew in star-shapes, and diamond-shapes, and cornet-shapes—any shape other than flower-shape.

  A twisted tree, sprouting dark spiky leaves, took up most of one wall. When shadows moved across the wall, they made it seem as if the leaves on the tree were rustling, as if the whole wallpaper garden was moving, slithering.

  ‘The wallpaper is grotesque,’ Zenobia agreed. ‘And not even pleasantly grotesque. But,’ she firmly closed both eyes, ‘you’ll never learn to sense the Spirits, Elizabeth, if you remain so concerned with earthly details like wallpaper.’

  I tried not to look at the wallpaper.

  But then something in it made me start.

  A pair of eyes.

  They belonged to a girl. A wallpaper-girl. A girl, maybe a little younger than me, who was looking out at me from the wallpaper just to the left of the windowsill.

  But not really looking at me, I told myself. How could she be looking at me? She was part of the paper’s pattern, nothing more.

  All the same, I decided I had spent enough time in the nursery.

  ‘Zenobia…’ I began.

  Zenobia’s head was tipped back and her hands trembled. She murmured incantations under her breath.

  ‘Zenobia, I really think we should—’

  ‘Not now, Elizabeth.’ Zenobia spoke from the side of her mouth. ‘The Presence is about to reveal itself.’

  A shadow fell across the room. My insides went cold.

  ‘It’s here!’ cried Zenobia. ‘The Spirit Presence!’ She rushed towards the shadow with open arms. Then she stopped. Her arms fell back to her sides.

  The shadow belonged to Mrs Purswell, who was standing before the window. She had come into the room without either of us noticing. Zenobia was right. Mrs Purswell really had made an art of lurking.

  ‘I rang the bell for tea nearly fifteen minutes ago,’ she said. She moved to the door and motioned for me to follow. ‘I will tell your Father you were in the library, reading something of a scientific nature. I will tell him you were so engrossed in your reading you didn’t hear me ring.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Purswell,’ I said, hoping that she didn’t notice Zenobia stamping her foot and crying, ‘How am I supposed to connect with the Spirit Presence when I am constantly being interrupted?’ Zenobia glared at the door. It squealed on its hinges and slammed shut.

  Only not quite. Mrs Purswell stopped it with one leather shoe squarely in the doorframe.

  ‘It’s only natural,’ she continued as if nothing had happened, ‘that you should be curious to explore your new house. But the East Wing is forbidden to you, as you know. I’m sure I won’t find you here again.’

  ‘No, Mrs Purswell.’

  I followed Mrs Purswell through the corridor, past the portraits, down the stairs that led back to the tapestry, out of the East Wing.

  Zenobia lagged behind me.

  ‘Elizabeth!’ she called. ‘Elizabeth!’

  ‘What is it?’ I kept my voice very quiet. Zenobia held out the flower. It wasn’t wilted. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I stopped and put a hand out to its petals. They had burst into blossom. Its leaves had grown big and turned a green so vivid they practically glowed. It had become the biggest and most beautiful rose I had ever seen.<
br />
  What could it mean, the flower bursting into life like that? I thought to myself.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Zenobia frowned at the flower, ‘but I know it means something.’

  5

  THE GARDEN

  After breakfast, Mrs Purswell appeared and took my marmalade knife and my crumb-strewn plate. But instead of carrying them back to the kitchen, she stood before me and said in a firm voice, ‘It’s a lovely day, Miss Elizabeth.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘It’s sunny for once. It’s the first sunny day since I came to Witheringe House, in fact.’

  ‘I would go outside, if I had the chance to, on a day like today. I would go outside and enjoy the sunshine.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘perhaps I—’

  ‘I certainly wouldn’t rattle around in the house. And I would steer very clear indeed of the East Wing. Oh yes, I’d go out. Into the garden.’

  She stood there, waiting, I realised, for me to say something.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘What an excellent—um—suggestion.’

  Outside, I tipped my face to the sky and let the sun warm it.

  ‘You know,’ said Zenobia, ‘when you smile like that, you look rather simple.’

  ‘It’s difficult not to smile,’ I said, ‘on such a nice day.’

  ‘I don’t see anything nice about it. She was wearing dark-tinted glasses and she stood huddled under a black silk parasol. The glasses and parasol were measures, she explained, to ward off the sunshine. ‘I find sunshine,’ she said, ‘rather vulgar. At least’—she let her glasses slide down the bridge of her nose so she could look at me over the top of them—‘the garden is atmospheric enough.’

  Atmospheric! The word I would have chosen was ‘dead’. The trees were bare and the lawn was bald. The only things that thrived in this garden were weeds. Weeds that choked the bowl of the birdbath and seemed to crawl underfoot.

  We walked, in the shadow of the house, up a sloped path that took us through rows of worm-eaten rose bushes.

  ‘What do you suppose,’ asked Zenobia, ‘is a respectable amount of time to walk about in the garden?’