The Dead of Winter (6 page)

‘And there really is no possibility that you could have been mistaken, Michael? None at all?’

‘No, sir,’ I said. ‘I know what I saw. Why will you not believe me?’

‘It’s not a question of believing or not believing –’

‘But it is, sir!’ I said vehemently. ‘That’s just what it is. If you told me, I would believe you.’

‘Yes, Michael,’ said Jerwood with a smile. ‘I think perhaps you would.’ He shrugged his shoulders and shivered. ‘I’m a lawyer. I look to the evidence. I simply cannot understand why someone would ask for our help and then disappear when we stopped to give her the assistance she craved. It makes no sense.’

‘I know, ’ I said. ‘I’ve gone over it in my head a
dozen times. But whether it makes sense or not, that’s what happened.’

I looked back towards Hawton Mere. Even from this distance it seemed malevolent: a monstrous toad waiting to pounce.

‘Besides,’ I said, waving my arm at the scarecrow, ‘this is nothing like what she was wearing. I only caught a glimpse of her, but even so, I could tell that she was just dressed in some thin linen shift; that was all.’

Jerwood had been pacing around, but at these words he stopped in his tracks and turned to me. The look on his face was a little like the expression Sir Stephen had worn in the dining room just before he left us. It was a look of wonderment.

‘What did you say?’ he asked.

‘I said that she was wearing nothing but a linen shift, sir.’ I was a little concerned by his sudden change of tone. ‘She was soaked to the skin, her hair coal-black, all wet and dripping. She was pale, sir: deathly pale.’

Jerwood turned away, holding his head in his hands and muttering. He gazed back towards Hawton Mere. When he looked back at me, his expression was a mixture of confusion and sadness.

‘Why did you not say this at the time?’ he asked.

‘I tried to,’ I said. ‘But no one was listening to me.’

Jerwood glanced this way and that, as though he thought the woman might suddenly appear. A flock of birds flew by, their wings whistling as they passed.

‘Do you know who she is?’ I asked.

He looked at me for a long time, his face flickering with thought.

‘No,’ he said after a long pause, shaking his head and walking swiftly away. ‘No, I don’t,’ I heard him say again, as if to himself. But everything in his expression said that he did.

I did not see Jerwood again until lunch, and with Charlotte there I did not feel able to broach the subject. No sooner had we finished eating than the lawyer was readying himself to leave.

I walked out on to the road to see his carriage off and as it drove away up the track and away from Hawton Mere, I heartily wished that I was sitting alongside Jerwood. He looked at me and waved and his face bore the same curious expression as on the road that morning. What did he know and why would he not say?

I carried on up the track as far as the scarecrow. Its ragged dress fluttered in the breeze. Its crudely
drawn face stared back at me from its sacking head and I turned away, back towards the house. How stark it looked. How bleak. All human life was hidden from view. Hawton Mere seemed to close in on itself, wrapping its heavy walls all about like a great cloak. I trudged back to the house with a heavy heart but resolved to at least attempt what Jerwood had asked: to accept that this was an ordeal that had to be undergone for the sake of my future freedom. All I had to do was see out the next few days.

As unlikely as the notion of missing Jerwood may have seemed a day or two before, all the misgivings I had harboured about staying in that house multiplied at his departure. For one thing, dinner without Jerwood was even more awkward, if such a thing were possible. Sir Stephen was still feeling unwell and so Charlotte and I were left alone. But it was as if the lawyer was the only common ground we had and without him we were lost for words.

Charlotte had apparently exhausted her supply of questions the previous evening and struggled to make any conversation at all. To be fair, she
received precious little assistance from me in that regard. We ate the vast majority of the meal in silence.

That night, to my surprise, I slept soundly and woke refreshed. Sunlight streamed in through my bedroom window and some of my inner gloom seemed dispelled by its touch.

As I dressed I looked at the portrait of the young Sir Stephen, bathed now in light, and saw clearly for the first time what a strange and dismal figure he was even then, his expression part-way between sadness and fear.

I wondered to myself if a person could be born with a melancholy disposition, or had something happened to him some time before this picture was painted? Or maybe, I thought, it was simply this house. Too long a time spent in such a joyless place was bound to take its toll on a young mind. All the more reason, I reminded myself, to leave Hawton Mere as soon as I could.

Charlotte joined me for breakfast. Our conversation was no less stilted than it had been the previous evening, but she did seem in better spirits. She encouraged me to roam where I wanted in the house, so long as I did not disturb Sir Stephen by going to his study in the tower. I had no desire
whatsoever to do that, so it was hardly an issue.

‘Come along, I want to show you something,’ said Charlotte when we had finished. With that she linked her arm through mine and led me through the hall and then a number of rooms until she opened one of two very tall doors to reveal an enormous library.

‘This is my favourite room in the house, Michael,’ said Charlotte. ‘I have loved it ever since I was a little girl.’

As we moved through the room, she brushed the shelves and the books they held with her hand, gently, as though they were the flanks of beloved horses.

‘My father was not one for great shows of affection,’ she said, ‘but he did indulge my mother’s love of books. It was she who built up this library. It is her memorial.’

Charlotte turned to me and smiled, sensitive perhaps to the effect this talk of her mother might have on me, but it did not make me sad. If anything it lightened my heart to think that we shared some fellow feeling on this subject.

‘I will leave you now, Michael,’ she said. ‘Enjoy the books.’

I was touched that Charlotte trusted me to be
left alone in the library among those treasured books and, eager not to lose that trust, I stood a while in awe of the place, not quite daring to actually handle any of its works.

The library contained more books than I think I had ever seen in one place. I had discovered my enjoyment of reading during my mother’s illness. Before that I had never really understood the appeal – or indeed the purpose – of reading for pleasure, but I now found that I could spend hours with no other diversion than the solitary exercise of reading a book, and by the vehicle of those pages would be transported to faraway lands on fantastic adventures. More and more this love of reading had become a medicine and tonic for my troubled heart and mind.

But the library at Hawton Mere made few concessions to the interests of children. I did spend some time looking through a beautifully illustrated book about birds, but I soon tired of atlases and encyclopaedias and left the library in search of something else to keep me amused.

Hawton Mere was an ancient house and so did not have the layout of a normal dwelling. The rooms followed on one from another in a vast wheel, each room much as the last, filled with great
gloomy beasts of furniture. Some squatted in corners, some reared up against dark wood panelling and walls papered in dizzying patterns of deepest red and green and blue.

Dour faces stared down at me from filigreed picture frames, and trophy stag heads fixed me with their dead eyes. Stuffed birds perched warily under dusty glass domes.

The more I walked the circuit of the house, the more uneasy I became. I began to have a sensation of walking a maze, turning corner after corner, not knowing what it was I was going to find at each turn. Then, returning to the hall, I found Clarence the wolfhound standing in front of me and my heart skipped a beat.

‘Don’t mind Clarence,’ said Hodges, walking in through the door with a basket of logs. ‘He won’t hurt you. Go and say hello to Master Michael, you silly dog.’

With that, Clarence loped forward and nudged my hand until I stroked his head. The great beast’s tail began to wag and I looked up to see Hodges with a grin on his face.

‘He likes you, sir,’ he said.

‘Does he?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes,’ said Hodges. ‘Bit the hand off the last
boy who tried to stroke him.’

Hodges laughed at the look of horror that must have appeared on my face.

‘I’m only joking, sir,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘Clarence wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

I wasn’t entirely convinced of Clarence’s gentle nature, but I was sure he meant me no harm. He was evidently not allowed beyond the hall, however, because he stopped at the door as I continued my travels, whimpering a little at being left behind, until Hodges called him into the courtyard.

I continued my explorations. The house now seemed deserted and a curious expectant hush had descended, like that in the moment before a clap of thunder. From every wall and every mantelpiece a clock was ticking, and this ticking deepened and synchronised until it became the hammering I had heard before. Every reflective surface in the house appeared to tremble at its beat. How could I be the only one who heard it?

I moved from room to room, retracing my steps in a circuit of the house, searching for the source. Once again I stood at the top of the stairs leading down to the priest hole.

I had not appreciated it before, but the stone steps led down into the walls themselves, creating a
passageway bored into a hidden place beneath the skin of the house.

I was determined to know what was making that noise and that determination was enough to overcome my sense of unease and allow my feet to move down the steps.

The banging was definitely louder now and there could be no doubt about it. Someone was inside that place. Whatever Jerwood said about there being no other entrance, someone was banging on the inside of that panel, desperately trying to get out.

I rushed to the panel and pushed, but it wouldn’t move. I searched for some kind of lock, but there didn’t seem to be one. I pushed again and this time the panel opened inwards with such sudden ease that I tumbled forward.

There was actually quite a drop and the shock of falling in and the pain of landing, combined with the impenetrable darkness, utterly disorientated me.

Then something moved. I didn’t see it, as the feeble light coming in from the open panel illuminated nothing.

‘Hello?’ I said, my voice sounding frail and feeble. ‘Is there someone there?’

All at once I knew that I had to get out of that place. Whatever it was in there with me, it was not right; it was not right at all. I could sense it readying itself to move, to pounce.

I turned and sprang for the open panel, but the thing in there was quicker. I felt – no, sensed – it brush past me at speed, hurling itself at the hole. I saw a shadow pass in front of me and the panel door was slammed shut.

Blackness. Utter blackness. I leapt at the place where the light had been, clawing at the panel with my fingernails, but it seemed sealed shut once more. I was trapped!

The panel would not budge. I banged and shouted, but there was no response. I listened, my ear pressed against the wood, but the only sound was my own gasping breath. I banged again and called out. The blackness was so thick it felt as though I were breathing it in and choking on it. I felt as though I were drowning in ink.

I pounded on the back of the door until my fist hurt, and I began to wonder if all noise was so effectively smothered by those thick walls that no one would ever hear the blows, just as no one was going to hear the oaths and curses I bellowed.

I slumped down, drained by my exertions at the
door. I was in no danger, I told myself. Surely I would be missed before too long and, though it was a big house, there were only so many places I could be. I must not panic.

But however calmly I talked to myself, that place was too foul to allow such efforts to slow my galloping heartbeat. With my sight denied by darkness, all my other senses seemed honed to a new sharpness. Something reached out towards me, I was sure of it – so sure I raised my arm to fend it off, but of course felt nothing there.

But feeling nothing did not soothe my spirits. No sooner had I lowered my arm than I was just as convinced that something was crawling towards me. I kicked out with my feet; again, I felt only the dank air about me.

These were phantasms of the mind, I told myself, nothing more, nothing more. They could not hurt me. They were not real. And yet with every passing second I became surer that there was more than my mere imagination at work in that place. There was something there. Something vile and terrible: a darkness made physical.

I hammered at the panel again, my blows becoming both more desperate and more exhausting. I could not even see my own fists pounding in front
of my face, but they throbbed with pain. A deeper blackness within that foul gloom was congealing at my back, its cold and terrible presence chilling my blood. At any moment I felt that it would overwhelm me and smother me in its pitiless embrace. I yelled out with all the force my choking lungs could muster.

Suddenly the panel opened. Light from the passageway that had once seemed so dull and feeble now shone in like a dazzling sunburst.

I scrabbled out as if I had the hounds of hell biting at my feet and leapt across to the other side of the passageway, my whole body shaking with fear. Big arms enfolded me and a kindly voice comforted me. It was Hodges.

‘Master Michael,’ he said. ‘What on earth were you doing in there, sir?’

I tried to reply, but my mouth was unable to shape the words. I looked up and was startled to see a figure standing in the doorway at the top of the steps who, to my slowly adjusting eyes, was little more than a silhouette. As I blinked and tried to make out who he was, he shrank back, covering his face, pressing himself into the wall, whimpering, looking from me to the priest hole and then back to me. To my astonishment he began to scream.