The Dead of Winter (10 page)

I returned to my room and walked across to the window to close the curtain. The moon had yet to rise and the marsh beyond the moat was invisible beneath the all-embracing blackness. Somewhere beyond, an owl shrieked.

The only illumination in the whole scene was two pale patches on the other side of the moat, where the light from my window, and that of another further along towards the tower, hit the earth.

All my confidence in the rational seemed to evaporate as I looked out. For I somehow knew she was going to appear; some secret sense let me know that she was there and, sure enough, she stepped into the light cast from that other window I surmised must be on the same floor as mine.

She slowly raised her head to look at the room from which the light came and, where I had once
been full of pity for her, I was now overcome with dread. How could I ever have seen her as being alive? She was as ethereal as the mist that swirled about her, always on the verge of dissolving into it.

More than that, her posture suggested fear and trepidation. She stood with all the timidity of a deer, as if the slightest sound or movement from the house would send her fleeing into the marshes.

I pressed my face against the window, my breath coming short and fast, fogging the cold pane of glass. I wiped the mist away with my sleeve and, as I did so, the ghost turned her face and looked straight at me.

The expression she wore was startling. Her eyes opened wide and her mouth moved as she seemed to talk to herself. Her gaze filled me with horror and I could not for a moment understand why she was staring at me with such strange longing. And then it came to me: it was not simply that she could see me; it was that she had realised that I could see
her
.

I closed the curtain. I could not hold her gaze.

Was it she who tried my door last night? I backed away slowly from the window, staring at it. What kind of place was this where the dead roamed among the living?

I don’t know how long I stood there, but eventually my legs felt so tired I feared they would not support me. I retired to my bed, leaving the lamp lit, a terrible phobia of that over-powering darkness having come upon me as I lay looking out towards the window.

And so it was Christmas Eve. I awoke to the sound of knocking and immediately felt my whole body tense with the same fear and trepidation that I had felt the previous night.

But it was only Edith. I stared at her with profound relief and my expression must have amused her because I saw she blushed at being looked at so intently.

‘You must have been dog tired, sir,’ said the maid.

‘Sorry, Edith?’

‘You forgot to turn your lamp off, sir.’

I nodded sheepishly, embarrassed by both the
show of fear it might reveal and by the waste of oil.

‘I’ll just go fetch you some warm water,’ she said, picking up the jug from the washstand.

As Edith got to the door, she put her hand on the handle but did not turn it. She looked back at me as I stretched and yawned.

‘Are you quite recovered from your accident, Master Michael?’ she asked.

‘It was just a scratch. I’m fine, thank you, Edith,’ I replied.

She blushed and hurried from the room. As soon as she left, it felt suddenly colder and I lost no time in getting dressed and going downstairs for breakfast.

I ate staring ahead at the tapestry curtain hanging at the other end of the room, and as soon as I had finished I could not resist walking over to it and pulling it aside to reveal the portrait.

My heart skipped a beat as I did so. Although it was an almost unrecognisably healthy and well-dressed version of the woman I had seen outside the previous night, still it was so clearly the same person.

The liveliness and vigour that the painting portrayed was so utterly different to the lifeless thing that walked these marshes. What did she want with
me? What could she possibly want with me?

I was walking back to my room after breakfast, when Charlotte slid out from the shadows by the doorway that led to Sir Stephen’s tower wearing a deep green velvet dress, the colour of wet moss.

‘Michael,’ she said with a warm smile.

‘Yes, Charlotte?’

‘Sir Stephen wishes to speak to you.’

‘He does?’ I replied.

‘Yes,’ said Charlotte. ‘He wants to talk to you – in private. He is in his study waiting for you. I shall take you to him.’

I nodded but was suddenly tongue-tied.
In private!
I was filled with trepidation about being left alone with my unpredictable guardian. Charlotte moved closer and placed a hand on each of my shoulders.

‘I love my brother, Michael,’ she said. ‘I only seek to protect him. If that makes me seem harsh sometimes, then I apologise.’

I was about to say that there was no need, when she continued.

‘I would ask you not to excite Sir Stephen unduly, Michael.’

‘I will try not to,’ I said, more than happy to comply.

‘Very well. Come along,’ she replied, turning and walking away.

I followed Charlotte and we entered that part of the house from which the tower sprouted. It was clear even to my untrained eye that we had entered a much more ancient part of the building.

Charlotte set off up a spiral staircase formed of great slabs of stones, whose walls were rough and bulging here and there with outcrops of rock and flint. It was dark and dank and a little dizzying as we climbed its vortex.

Eventually we came to a landing of sorts and a small arched doorway as one might find at the base of a church tower, formed of oak panels and studded with nail heads.

Charlotte grasped the metal hoop that held the latch and knocked three times, the sound tumbling down the stone steps. A muffled voice answered from inside and she lifted the latch and opened the door. She did not enter though, but merely smiled at me and edged past, disappearing back down the stairs and leaving me alone in the doorway.

‘Come in, Michael,’ came the voice again.

I walked through the door and was immediately taken aback by the scale of the room, which occupied the whole width of the tower and soared
upwards to a vaulted ceiling high above. Massive and well-stocked bookshelves lined the walls, an ancient globe stood nearby and there was a large telescope by the window. A huge hearth contained a modest fire before which sat Sir Stephen, in an extraordinarily grotesque high-backed chair, a book open on his lap.

‘Michael,’ he said, standing up as I entered the room. He was taller than I had realised from my previous encounter with his wilder self, though he was dressed identically in black from head to foot. His face was gaunt and pale and, all in all, he would have made a most acceptably sombre undertaker.

‘Come and sit down,’ he said. ‘Are you finding enough ways to amuse yourself at Hawton Mere? Charlotte has introduced you to the library, I gather?’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘Charlotte has been very kind.’

We both sat by the fire. Sir Stephen seemed restless. His left hand was in a constant state of agitation. The long fingers ended in long nails and they scratched and picked at the fabric of his trousers at the thigh. I could see that the area was worn and threadbare. His right hand would make occasional trips across to try and stop it, grabbing the wayward hand at the wrist.

‘Charlotte told me about the incident with the mirror,’ said Sir Stephen, so quietly it was almost as though he was speaking to himself.

‘I did not break it, sir,’ I said. ‘Honestly I –’

Sir Stephen put his hand up to silence me.

‘No need, Michael,’ he said. ‘No need to explain. I have not brought you here to chastise you about that mirror. I have always hated it. I shall not miss it.’

My guardian leaned forward, resting his long hands on his knees. The firelight twinkled in his eyes.

‘But I am intrigued,’ he said. ‘If you did not break the mirror, then who did?’

‘It … It just broke,’ I said. ‘On its own.’

Sir Stephen nodded, as if this information was simply what he had expected and nothing more.

‘And did you
see
anything before it happened?’ he said.

My first impulse was to tell him the truth, as I had done with Hodges, and yet I could not help but recall Charlotte’s plea for me to show some understanding of Sir Stephen’s mental state and do nothing to unnecessarily excite him.

‘No, sir,’ I said.

Sir Stephen smiled unpleasantly.

‘You are sure?’ he said. ‘You saw nothing at all?’

‘No, sir,’ I answered again.

‘And you have seen and heard nothing unusual during your stay at Hawton Mere?’

‘No, sir,’ I said.

Sir Stephen looked at me for a long time, saying nothing, and his gaze was horribly unsettling, like the stare of a praying mantis before it strikes.

‘Come on!’ he said, getting suddenly to his feet. ‘Let’s get some air.’

Sir Stephen strode across to an arched doorway between two bookshelves and disappeared. Feeling nervous but a little foolish at being left behind, I felt I had no choice but to follow him.

The doorway concealed another staircase going up. The walls and the spiralling steps were made of bricks and were so small that there was barely room to put one’s whole foot upon them and I had to climb them almost on tiptoe.

A wooden door greeted me at the summit and, opening it, I found that we were on the leaded roof of the tower, to one side of the little tiled spire. Sir Stephen was standing at the battlemented edge, looking down. I walked over to join him and he started at my approach as if he had quite forgotten me.

He recovered his wits enough to beckon me over. He was wearing a pair of strange round spectacles. They were tinted deep blue; I could not see his eyes. He noticed that I was looking at them.

‘I have developed an aversion to light,’ he said, seeing my expression. ‘It is quite a view, is it not, Michael?’

I had to confess it was. The land was so flat for miles around that the vista seemed endless, the horizon as white and flat as a frozen ocean – as though we stood in the crow’s nest of a ship trapped in ice.

‘My forefathers built this house for its strategic value – the marshes and the moat are its protection. But it doesn’t make the house very hospitable.

‘I was born here,’ he continued. ‘I played in the courtyard as a child. My sister and I ran about this house. When my father was away, there was occasionally laughter, even joy.’

I tried, unsuccessfully, to imagine either Sir Stephen or Charlotte as happy, laughing children.

‘I used to play with Hodges,’ said my guardian with a loud laugh. ‘Think of it! We were inseparable. We still are, I hope, though things perforce have changed between us. But he is a good man, Michael. Don’t be taken in by that gruff exterior.’

‘I never doubted it,’ I replied, though this was not quite true.

‘Charlotte used to play with us as well, I think,’ Sir Stephen went on, giving himself up to the memories. He took off his tinted spectacles and rubbed his eyes, trying to remember.

‘No, no,’ he said, replacing his glasses. ‘I can’t recall.’

He looked back down at the courtyard.

‘Ah, Charlotte,’ he said. ‘Where would I be without her strength? Where? She is too devoted, I often think. I know that she feels she cannot leave me, and yet I worry that I have stopped her from partaking of life’s joys – a husband, a family.’ At these words Sir Stephen’s smile disappeared and he turned to stride across to the other side of the tower, standing with his back to me as he stared out across the marshes. The sky was now an ominous grey and the wind felt chill.

‘We have a good deal in common, Michael, you and I,’ he shouted, without turning round.

‘Sir?’ I replied, wondering at how he might have reached such a conclusion.

‘You and I have known great sadness,’ he said. ‘I also lost my mother when I was still relatively young, and I thought I should never know such
pain again, but it was eclipsed when I lost my dear wife.’

He turned to face me as I approached him. His long face looked even paler now against the darkening sky and his tinted spectacles created the illusion of eyeless sockets.

‘She was such a lovely creature,’ he said. ‘So warm. So
happy
.’ He gave the word ‘happy’ a peculiar stress, as if he were describing an exotic spice. ‘She seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of happiness and, for a while, I didn’t feel the dejection that had plagued my youth. But all happiness is finite, Michael.’

I needed no reminding of that! He turned back to gaze between the battlements, staring up at the sky as though looking for something. He took a small bottle from his pocket, removed the stopper and took a swig.

‘Laudanum,’ he said, as he put it back in his pocket. ‘Dr Ducharme does not approve, but Dr Ducharme can go to hell.’

Sir Stephen looked at the lead beneath his feet for a moment and then back to me.

‘Do you sleep, Michael?’ he inquired suddenly.

‘Here, sir, do you mean?’ I asked, a little puzzled.

‘I rarely do,’ he said.

He lurched towards me.

‘They think I’m mad, you know. Because I hear things. But you hear things too, don’t you, Michael?’ He peered into my face. ‘Don’t you?’

And it was then that, for all Charlotte’s urging, I was suddenly struck by the simple fact that Sir Stephen deserved to know the truth. I knew what it was like to be disbelieved and it seemed unfair to pretend that I was also deaf to those noises.’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

Sir Stephen smiled. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you. So like your father.’

He stared at me strangely, and I could see my own reflection in his tinted glasses.

‘It has escaped, you know,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘It used to be simply noises. The noises were dreadful enough. But now sometimes I think I see it in the shadows.’

There was the sudden noise of pattering feet, as if a child had just run across the roof, and Sir Stephen wheeled round in a panic. I could almost see his heart pounding beneath his coat. One or two flakes of snow floated past on the chill breeze. I was about to tell Sir Stephen that I had seen Lady Clarendon’s ghost, when he grabbed hold of my arm.