"There has been no harm done Captain. . . ?"
Not only did Mother have an unerring ability to rank an officer on a cursory glance at his uniform, she had a way of cocking her head, almost coquettishly, which brooked no naysaying. I almost laughed at the Captain's obvious discomfort.
"Captain Wentworth, at your service." he said, sweeping off his hat.
"Newly of Ladywell Manor?" Mother finished for him. "What a provident meeting, for I was just saying to Mr. Wilkinson this same morning that we should be calling on you to make your acquaintance. I have two daughters you know; Anne, my eldest, and Lucy, both of whom you see here with me. Tell me; is the house to your liking? I hear that it is a dwelling of some magnificence, but well past its former glory? They say that Cromwell himself made a visit, but surely that is just local legend?"
And now the Captain had made his final tactical error. By allowing Mother a beginning, he was caught, deep in her web. She would go on for minutes now, answering her own questions, and the Captain would not escape until he had invited both Lucy and I to call on him at his leisure.
I turned to Lucy, hoping to catch her with a conspiratorial wink, but my sister was looking away, across the bath, to where a second naval officer was walking swiftly towards us. He was younger than the Captain, and less grave, more dashing, but there was a weakness around his mouth that spoke to me of a man of many vices, and I disliked him immediately. Lucy however had no such qualms. She gasped, a sharp intake of breath that only I could hear, and I knew immediately that she was smitten.
"Lieutenant Barclay at your service ladies," he said, with a grin that would melt a snowman. "I'm sorry to tear you away sir," he said to the Captain, "But that business of ours has become urgent."
Captain Wentworth turned slowly, and once more I saw his eyes tighten, and the fear take him.
"It is not yet done?"
"Not by a long chalk sir," the lieutenant replied.
They took their leave and departed, suddenly, heading for the deep shadows of the lower baths, leaving Mother, for the first time in living memory, speechless.
~-o0O0o-~
In truth I do believe I could have forgotten about Captain Wentworth if Lucy had managed to stop her girlish gushing over "the dashing Lieutenant Barclay" and his "impish smile." But I was forced to endure her prattle all the way to the Milliners, and thenceforth throughout the carriage journey home.
Not that Mother proved any better. No sooner had we arrived home than she was regaling Pater with the tale of the navy Captain and her near escape from drowning.
Pater bore it with his usual good grace, then, with his usual incision, asked the question we should have asked ourselves.
"And, pray tell me, what was the business that brought these fine gentlemen to the Baths so early in the morning? And what was so urgent as to so quickly drag them away from my fine and obviously unattached daughters?"
Mother's flow of verbiage was barely stilled.
"I'm sure it is of no import. And I'm equally certain that we will be hearing more, especially from that charming young lieutenant... he fair took a fancy to our Lucy."
Pater harrumphed; a sound that only he could muster.
"I'm sure they were all correct and proper. But the baths are no place for gentle folk... not with doxies being slain so close by."
Mother's mouth flapped open, shut, open again.
Pater looked like he might continue, but one of Mother's looks soon put a stop to that.
"Not in front of the girls," she hissed, and ushered us from the room.
Lucy tried to listen at the door, but they had lowered their voices, too low to hear.
Besides, Lucy was excited enough to burst, and listening at doors fell a far-off second best to talking of the "delightful Lieutenant Barclay."
I repaired to my room with a headache, but was soon forced back downstairs by curiosity after hearing a knock on the door.
Sister Lucy was at the foot of the stairs, twirling as if held in a dance, squealing with delight. She held a letter in her left hand, and every few seconds she glanced at it, as if to make sure it was real and she was not dreaming.
"Oh Anne," she said, seeing me descend. "Come and see. We have been invited to Ladywell Manor... and look..."
She waved the letter at me.
"My name is in front of yours... and it is signed by my Lieutenant Barclay."
She made three more twirls around the floor, then suddenly stopped. She began to wail, as if in pain.
"But I have nothing at all to wear."
~-o0O0o-~
The carriage deposited us promptly at seven thirty in the drive outside the imposing edifice of Ladywell Manor.
I would have stopped to consider the exterior qualities of such a fine house, but Lucy was already skipping away into the house, drawn on by the sound of a harpsichord from inside.
She was so eager in her haste that she failed to notice the twin balls of flowering hawthorn, one on either side of the door. The chill I had previously felt at the Baths returned, as if I had just been plunged into a cold dark sea, and it was with a heavy heart that I followed my sister into the Manor.
~-o0O0o-~
The foreboding stayed with me all the way along the grand corridor, but the sound of the harpsichord grew louder, and the chatter of conversation rose alongside it. By the time I arrived in the Manor's great hall, I found myself once more anticipating the evening ahead.
My first thought on entering the hall was that the officers had invited all the young ladies of Bath. But on closer inspection, it was to be found that the ladies present all shared the common happenstance that they were all yet unattached... in fact there had never been even the slightest rumour that any of them had even been close to an attachment, and I included myself in that number.
It seems that Lucy and I were tardy in arriving, for most of the group were already deep in conversation, all save Captain Wentworth, who stood, somewhat forlorn, by the fireplace. Ensuring that Lucy was occupied. . . which indeed she was, having placed herself firmly at the shoulder of Lieutenant Barclay. . . I made my way towards the fireplace.
Just as I approached, the harpsichord player, a young officer, stopped and made his way back towards a group by the card table. And as I was about to speak, Captain Wentworth left the side of the fire and made towards the instrument.
The hubbub in the room stopped suddenly, and all the naval officers' eyes turned towards the Captain. Several of the ladies present made as if to protest, but they were hushed and whispered into silence until it was so quiet that we all heard the creak of the stool as the Captain lowered his weight onto it.
Lieutenant Barclay was first to move, leading Lucy into the middle of the floor. The rest of the officers soon followed, each taking a lady until they were formed up in a double rank in the centre of the room, leaving only myself and Captain Wentworth in want of a partner.
In other circumstances I might have been moved to protest at this slight, but my eyes were drawn to the Captain, sitting at the harpsichord, so still, so quiet, staring into the distance with sunken, haunted eyes. My heart lurched to see him so pained, and I started to move towards him.
Then he started to play, and all other thoughts were driven from my mind.
~-o0O0o-~
He started slowly; as did the dancing pairs. At first it was a tune I thought I almost recognized, a farandole with Mediterranean influences. But it soon diverged from anything with which I was remotely familiar.
Faster and faster his fingers danced on the keyboard, swifter and swifter went the dance. Louder and louder did the music crash in the room, my heart bounding in my chest.
The dance had become something heathen and frantic; the dancers faces flushed, their eyes staring sightlessly ahead as they spun across the floor in ever more intricate patterns.
And still the Captain played.
His touch on the keyboard grew less refined. As he shifted into a minor key the dancers stamped their feet
in time, and from below our feet, from nether depths, came an accompanying guttural chant, as of many voices raised in unison.
Lucy was spun past nearby, and I called out to her, but she was lost to me, caught in a trance where all that existed was the dance.
I too felt the desire grow in me, the promise of wild abandon, free from all constraints of fashion and polite discourse. Indeed, I may have succumbed, but, just at the point when the dance reached its most frantic, I happened to glance at Captain Wentworth, and all other thoughts left my head at the sight of the despair etched on his features.
Once more Lucy spun past me. I could see that her colour was high and flushed, and, as they danced, Lieutenant Barclay was grasping at her in a most unseemly manner.
The Captain continued to pound the keyboard, the muscles at his neck taut and stretched as if they might at any moment snap. He stared at something beyond the dancers, at the far side of the hall.
When I turned to look, I saw a heavy oak door swing open, showing only blackness beyond.
~-o0O0o-~
The subterranean chanting grew louder, almost overcoming the noise of the harpsichord, and somewhere deeper still, a crazed flautist blew trills and arpeggios in counterpoint. Beyond the door something moved, a greater darkness deep in the shadow, and once more I felt the cold chill of the sea.
I know not where the strength came from, but I walked over to where Captain Wentworth sat, and placed a hand on his shoulder.
He turned his head, slowly, looked up at me, and it was as if a veil had been lifted from his eyes.
He stopped playing, and a deadly hush fell suddenly over the room like a shroud. The dance faltered, stopped. All across the room ladies, flustered now, disentangled themselves from over-eager partners. One by one, still flushed but trying to regain decorum, they hurried from the hall, until Lucy and I were left alone with the officers.
The Captain seemed unable to take his eyes from my face.
"Wentworth!" Lieutenant Barclay called out loudly. "What do you think you areyou're doing?"
The Captain reached up, and, smiling, gently stroked my cheek.
"Thank you," he whispered. "Leave now. Quickly. I will get word to you if I can."
At the far end of the room the oak door swung wider open, and once more I heard the crazed flautist.
The Captain's eyes started to lose their focus.
"Go," he pleaded. "Go now!"
I took Lucy by the hand and together we fled out into the night.
As we left the Manor the eyes in the hawthorn gazed at us, greedily.
~-o0O0o-~
The next morning I tried to enter a discourse with Lucy about the events in Ladywell Manor, but she refused to brook any such discussion. Indeed, her head was so full of the delights of the "charming Lieutenant Barclay" that I believed her to be still under the spell of the dance.
I turned instead to Mother, but after explaining to her the strange occurrences at the hall, she passed them off as youthful exuberance, and chided me for not entering into the spirit of the evening. Indeed, she even intimated that I was destined to remain a spinster if I retained my singular attitude, and that I should do more to comport myself in the same manner as did Lucy if I ever wanted to become attached to a large house and five thousand pounds a year.
Pater proved no better at allaying my troubles. He barely moved from behind his newspaper as I regaled him with my tale, and when I was done, he harrumphed and mumbled words to the effect that I should have known better than to trust a sailor.
Once more I repaired to my room with a headache.
~-o0O0o-~
And once more my attempts at solitude were to be disturbed by a squeal of excitement from my sister.
On descending, I found her clutching a letter.
"I am invited to the manor once more, tra-la-la-la-la," she sang. "My lieutenant is smitten with me and cannot bear to be without my company."
"And what about Anne?" Mother enquired from the parlour doorway. "Is she also to be included?"
"No... It is for me alone," she said, and waved the letter towards me. "Besides, there will be dancing."
She twirled away towards the drawing room, singing to herself.
Mother gave me her I-told-you-so look, and retired back to the parlour.
I was about to take myself back upstairs when there was a knock at the front door.
I opened it to find Mr. Jacks the peddler standing on the doorstep, cap in hand.
"Begging your pardon miss," he said in his thick country brogue. "Would you be Miss Anne? Only, he said it had to be delivered to your hand."
"Who said?" I asked, though in truth, in my heart, I knew the answer and was not surprised when it came.
"The naval man, ma'am," he said. "He gave me this."
He held out two sheets of paper, written in a fine stylish hand, but would not let me take them.
"The Cap'n said there be a farthing in it for me... if you get my meaning ma'am. Given that it is all being done in secret like?"
He tapped the side of his nose and chuckled, a liquid, rumbling thing that spoke of something ruined in his chest.
I gave him a penny for his trouble, and counted it to be cheap for, when I closed the door on the departing peddler and scanned the first line, it near left me breathless.
"My dear Miss Anne," it read. "You have awakened in me something I thought long since dead."
I would read no more standing there in the hallway. For a third time I retired to my room.
I could scarcely contain my excitement, but that soon turned to dread as I scanned the pages before me.
~-o0O0o-~
"My dear Miss Anne.
"You have awakened in me something I thought long since dead.
"Until I laid eyes on you after the abomination in the Baths, the part of me that is Captain Wentworth had been asleep for nigh on a year, and to explain my actions to you, both in the Baths and at that accursed dance last night I must ask your forbearance in the telling of my tale.
"I was not always as you have so recently seen me. A year ago... it seems like an age to me... I was a newly appointed Captain of the King's Navy, proudly taking the HMS Valiant from Valetta to join the fleet in the Bosphorus.
"Alas, we were fated never to reach safe port, and she was struck against rocks in a storm. Seventy five good men were lost to the sea; and soon after, the rest of us came to wish we had shared their fate.
"The island on which we found ourselves was little more than bare, sun-blasted rock and thorny scrub, and for near half a day we could do little more than nurse our bruises and mourn our dead. But the prospect of a cold night to come led us to take the only shelter we could find, a deep cave, protected by a tangle of sharp thorns. Every man of us suffered a myriad of cuts as we forced our way into the shelter... And in doing so, every man of us sealed our fate, and we became the dreamers of the sleeping god.
"That first night we did not of course realize it. We slept beside a black pool of stagnant water in the depths of the cavern, and we dreamed... of vast empty spaces between the stars, of bible- black seas that lay, still and silent over a cyclopean ruin in which we slept, waiting, waiting for the stars to be right.
"But a morning came, and we forgot our dreams... Until the next night, and the night after... until the dream was what was real.
"After forty nights those who have been waiting came to us, the blind ones from the deep places.
"They taught us the old rhythms, and they showed us how to dance, and how to use the thorn to call others to join us.
"When we were ready, we, the brothers of the thorn, were sent out to find the brethren of the deep ones, the ones who kept the old wells; temples to their god beneath the sea. We would find them, and dance for them, and bring them up out of the deep places, for the stars are turning, and the rising of Great C'thulhu is nigh..."
~-o0O0o-~
I had to stop reading, for the words had raised a black fear in me, a realization that
if I read on, my closeted existence would forever change. But when I remembered the first sentence my Captain had written, my heart lightened once more, and the strength grew in me to continue.
~-o0O0o-~
"Since that day, I have dreamt the dream of the sleeping god.
"We have raised the Deep Ones across Europe; I remember the catacombs of Medina, and a cold crypt deep under the holy city in Rome; but there are many others that are little more than a memory, of rough music, of dancing, and of the ones turned mad as C'thulhu wakes in their dreams.
"And so, finally, to home, and the lady's wells.
"We brought the deep ones up through the pool under the bath. A doxy, trapped by the thorn, was with us, but the dream was too large for her to hold and, before our very eyes, C'thulhu started to awaken in her.
"She shrieked abominably as the god tore through her flesh, great pustules forming and bursting in a spray of snake-like tentacles that snapped and cracked in the air like whips.
"And something within me chose that moment to awake; I now believe it was because you, Miss Anne, were nearby. I burst from the black crypt, into sunlight and the sweet vision of your face.
"And ever since then a new dream has been growing, blotting out the nightmare, a dream in which your smiling face draws me once more into the sunlight.
"But in my heart, I know it can never be, for, as you are of the light, so I am of the dark, and of the thorn.
"Therefore I shall do the only thing that is left for me, and deliver you a warning... Come no more to Ladywell Manor.
"I must take your leave and dispatch this, for even now I feel the pull of the deep black places. I hear the flautist, and I will dance for him.
"Come no more to Ladywell Manor. There are pale things in the depths there that eyes so full of sunlight should never see.
"And beware the hawthorn, for, merely let it draw your blood and you will be lost to the dreaming god, as I am, lost in the blackness.
"Lost to the dance."
~-o0O0o-~
I confess, I read through the whole letter twice before its import struck me.
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