The Dead of Winter (16 page)

But Sir Stephen’s wealth did not solely reside in the stones of Hawton Mere – far from it. Sir Stephen owned land for miles about and much property besides. He was a shareholder in many businesses, both here and abroad. It was Jerwood’s job as his lawyer and friend to make sense of this vast fortune and distribute it in accordance with Sir Stephen’s wishes. The distribution was simple at least. With Charlotte dead, the fortune was all to be directed to one person: the author of this tale.

When Jerwood explained that I was the sole heir to the whole of Sir Stephen’s estate, I was at first
shocked and then resentful. I did not want this money. I had done nothing to deserve it and I did not want the association with all the pain and misery of that place and that family. In particular, I did not want any link with Charlotte.

But Jerwood, in his kind way, and then subsequently the kindly Bentleys both convinced me that it was Sir Stephen’s will and I should not let pride check this great opportunity in my life.

Initially reluctant, I came to see the sense of what they said and eventually assented. Jerwood explained that I did not actually need to be involved in any of Sir Stephen’s business dealings. He had people in place to manage all those matters. When I had come to an age when I might take an interest in those affairs, then an opening could certainly be found for me. In the meantime, I was to continue with my education. The capital would be held in a trust for me and Jerwood would administer to my day-to-day needs.

Jerwood did have one suggestion though, one to which I was quick to agree. He suggested that it might be appropriate to bestow a sum of money upon each of the servants from Hawton Mere, giving a special sum to Hodges for his loyalty to Sir Stephen over the years.

Jerwood had already seen to it that the servants had gained employment elsewhere and was tireless in his endeavours to ensure that all those connected with the house were looked after. It was almost as if he took on the burdens of Sir Stephen with an enthusiasm – as though by so doing it brought him closer to his dear departed friend.

All this done, I returned to my former school – and how oddly normal that now seemed – and to a world that appeared childish after the events at Hawton Mere. I found that the boys who had been offhand when I had arrived now looked diminished in size and importance.

Perhaps because I paid them no heed, and perhaps because I now gave off an aura that spoke of my trials and adventures, some of the boys sought me out and I began, in a hesitating fashion at first, to form friendships for the first time for many years.

I was now a good and enthusiastic scholar. The teachers encouraged me to ever higher achievements, until one day I stood on the steps of my college in Cambridge, unable for a moment to quite believe my good fortune.

I will not bore you with tales of my university life, of the studies I undertook, of the friends I
made or of the girl I met and loved and who, when she took her leave of me one sunny day beside the Cam, drove me to take to the continent on a kind of Grand Tour.

I strode about the Alps in melancholy isolation, taunting death on more than one occasion with my reckless disregard for the weather or terrain – a wanderer above the clouds.

But wherever I roamed I could not rid myself of Hawton Mere. For many months, on many a night, I would have the same repeating dream that I was lost somewhere, surrounded by fog and mist, unable to discern any features at all.

I would walk and walk with no clear direction, but always I would find myself in the same place: at the moat’s edge at Hawton Mere, the water frozen all about.

Looking down I would see a shape beneath the ice, a form becoming more distinct as I watched, until I saw with mounting horror that it was the staring face of Charlotte, fixing me with a look of murderous hatred. The ice above her head would crack and I would wake bathed in cold sweat and shivering as though I really had been standing there.

I wandered the great cities of Europe, and saw
wondrous works of art and architecture. I wrote poetry of a particularly gloomy nature. But whatever solace I sought from nature or art, it was not forthcoming, and I began to yearn for the familiar voices of England.

I knew that if I was to leave Hawton Mere behind me, I had to face my fear, not try to hide.

I was in Sicily when I made the decision to return and found passage aboard a ship bound for Bristol. I never got on so well with anyone during all my travels as I did with Captain Mayhew, and by the time we docked in England we knew all there was to know about each other.

A seafaring man will usually trump a landlubber when it comes to the telling of tales, but he was forced to admit that my experiences made his life seem tame in comparison. He was fascinated and never once disputed a single thing I said, however extraordinary it must have sounded, however unbelievable.

By the time we had reached Bristol we were firm friends and I vowed to stay in contact with him through his shipping office and we both hoped that we might meet again some day.

I sent a telegram to the Bentleys and to Jerwood as soon as I arrived and then took the locomotive to London. The Bentleys met me at the station and could not have been more pleased had I been their own dearest son returning; and, in truth, they seemed like family to me now.

‘You are so thin!’ shrieked Mrs Bentley as she embraced me. ‘You’re not looking after yourself, Michael.’

‘I am quite well, Mrs Bentley,’ I said. ‘Honestly.’

‘Leave the boy be, Sybil,’ said Mr Bentley, straightening my coat and dusting the sleeves with his hand. ‘Don’t fuss, don’t fuss.’

We took a cab to their house in Highgate and I told them something – but by no means all – of my adventures, and they listened in rapt attention, punctuating the tale with occasional gasps of amazement.

Their house was just as I remembered it. I had spent many days here over the years. The Bentleys had shown me such kindness. If I could have stayed anywhere, I would have stayed there. They had
kept a room for me as they promised they would, and after an enormous dinner and a chance to hear the Bentleys’ news, I slept very soundly indeed.

The following day I took a cab to Lincoln’s Inn Fields to see Jerwood. The lawyer and I had a different relationship than I had with the Bentleys, but in some ways it was closer still for our shared experiences at Hawton Mere.

He greeted me at the door like an old friend and neither of us could speak for some moments. I knew that I had changed considerably in my time away, but he did not look a day older and was his usual, impeccably dressed self. But he did have one surprise for me.

I entered Jerwood’s study to find Hodges standing before me. My joy at seeing that fine fellow was tempered by the fact that the whole history of Hawton Mere seemed to be written in his face – quite literally so, with the burns he suffered in the fire still visible. But oh, how pleased I was to see him. He grabbed me by both arms and lifted me clean off the floor.

‘Master Michael!’ he said. ‘Thank God you’ve come back safe and sound.’

‘Well said,’ added Jerwood, picking up a decanter of port and pouring three glasses.

Hodges told us of his current employer, who sounded like a thoroughly decent sort, and of Mrs Guston and Edith, who held posts in the same house. Even Jarvis, the garrulous coach driver, was there.

‘Edith asked me to send her special best wishes,’ he said with a wink. I blushed a little and Jerwood seemed to enjoy this enormously.

On a sadder note, Hodges told me of the death of poor old Clarence. I reached into my pocket and brought out the whistle Hodges had made me that Christmas. I had carried it with me on all my travels and I told him it had brought me much comfort in my difficulties. He was very touched.

The events at Hawton Mere were never directly spoken of by us. The subject was never prohibited by anyone, it was merely an understanding among the three of us. None of us wanted, it seemed, to revisit that place, even in words.

But though I willingly complied for friendship’s sake, I had long before decided that the only way I would be free of those memories was to confront them. I decided that I would, one last time, look on the fallen remnants of Hawton Mere. The house and the things that had taken place there were never far from the forefront of my mind and,
worse, they still came unbidden to my sleeping thoughts.

I imagined that if I was to go to Hawton Mere, to see it as a ruin and nothing more, that this might in some degree serve as an exorcism. I was a child no longer. I had faced many dangers since that last day at Hawton Mere. I felt that I could stare it in its shattered face and say, ‘Be gone!’

I did not tell the Bentleys or Jerwood where I was bound, though Jerwood, I am sure, had strong suspicions. I caught the train to Ely and hired a horse and rode through those flatlands with a quickening heart. I spurred the horse on and we careered down those lanes as if the devil was at our tail. Then, all at once, we were at the track that led to Hawton Mere, and I kicked the horse on one more time.

I could sense the unwillingness of the beast to venture further. I could sense the fear in his great flanks and see the nervous twitching in his ears. I could feel his dread and he could no doubt sense mine.

If anything, the house looked more daunting as a ruin than it had as a complete house, with its crippled roof, its shattered walls and skull-like empty window sockets. It was as malevolent as a dead
house as it had been as a living one. More so perhaps.

The land all about it now seemed utterly poisoned, as if the sickness of the house had leeched out into the surroundings. The moat looked filled with tar, or worse, to be some kind of void – the blackness of some bottomless chasm.

I encouraged my reluctant horse to cross the bridge and it was a mark of its trust in me that it so successfully buried its fear and did as I asked.

The courtyard beyond the gatehouse was almost unrecognisable. It had once been contained by the buildings around it, but half of these had tumbled to the ground. Sir Stephen’s tower remained, but only as a severely wounded survivor, the back of it having collapsed entirely. I dismounted and tied my horse to a post, where it looked at me with a wide-eyed entreaty to make my stay a brief one. I smiled and patted its neck and whispered assurances that I would not be long.

It was as I spoke to him thus that I beheld, from the corner of my eye, a sudden movement some way off, beyond the broken tower. It was a fleeting glimpse and no more and I quickly began to wonder if I had imagined it when a flock of pigeons took flight from the roof and I smiled to
myself at my own childish jitters.

But it had not been a pigeon I had seen. Looking towards the back of the tower, I saw the movement again and realised that there was someone there, moving away from the main part of Hawton Mere, towards the end of the island on which it stood.

I started to follow, my view forever limited by fallen masonry or branches, and as I did so I began to have sorry presentiments about who exactly it was.

I had assumed that with Charlotte’s death, all ghostly activity would cease at Hawton Mere. It seemed not just lifeless, but lacking in all activity, all energy of any kind. I had hoped that Lady Clarendon was reunited with Sir Stephen and at peace now – or if not at peace, then at least at rest.

But as I finally turned a corner I could see full well that about thirty feet away was Lady Clarendon’s ghost, her back turned to me, looking out in grim contemplation of the black waters of the moat.

‘Lady Clarendon,’ I said. ‘It’s me, Michael.’

She did not move.

‘Lady Clarendon,’ I repeated.

Again she made no move, but stood there pale and still. I walked towards her with mounting
unease, for I wondered what new tragedy had entrapped her once again and forced her to haunt these ruins.

When I was a few feet away, I called her name again. This time she seemed to hear, and slowly turned around. Her wet hair hung across her face, but as she raised her head I saw that it was not Lady Clarendon at all, but someone else – someone I recognised all too well, despite the burns that disfigured her face. It was Charlotte.

As I recoiled in horror, her face shone with a light of pure evil. Her eyes that had been so bright in life were now white marbles, as if the fire had licked all colour from them. She was like some spider who had waited for this moment, and now the moment came she struck, lurching forward at terrifying speed. I ran as fast as my legs would take me to my horse, untying it with shaking hands and mounting just as Charlotte floated into the wrecked courtyard, her head to one side as if studying something peculiar – and then she rushed towards me.

The horse needed little encouragement to bolt and it launched itself through the gatehouse with such enthusiasm that I think it would have cleared the moat without the benefit of a bridge. We
galloped down that road away from Hawton Mere and I made no move to turn my head and look back. I would never look at that place again.

I decided in that instant that I would quit this country.

So now I sit, pen in hand, about to lay that pen down for good, having told my story to the fullest of my abilities. As I began, so I shall finish: if you have read these words and still cannot find yourself to consider the narrative anything more than the fevered imaginings of a young man who has read too many novels of a Gothic bent, then I can say no more than to assure you once again that I have said nothing but the truth on every line.

I telegraphed Captain Mayhew when I returned to London and told him that I wished to sail with him wherever he was bound. His response was that
he would be delighted to have me and that he was to sail to Argentina in a week’s time.

My parting with Jerwood was a solemn affair. I did not tell him about my visit to Hawton Mere and Charlotte’s ghost. I saw no need to burden him further.

The Bentleys were distraught of course. Mr Bentley was so upset I do not think I saw him twitch once – not even the merest spasm. Mrs Bentley seemed intent on making my departure impossible by breaking every bone in my body with her bear-like embraces. She assured me that the entire population of that part of the world were either cannibals or Catholics.