Chapter 6 #2
She bit her lip and darted a glance around, peering into the shadows at the end of the hall.
“Last night,” she whispered. “It was very late, but I was wakeful. I thought I heard a footstep, and yet not a footstep. It seemed to slither past my door. I could not move for a moment, I was quite paralysed with fear. And then, I do not know how I managed it, but I found the courage to open the door.”
She paused, her eyes round. I realised my own heart was beating very fast. Even the puppy had gone quite still under my hand, as if hanging on her every word.
“And then I saw it. Or rather the faintest impression of it. A swirl of grey and white, not quite a figure, and yet it was more than just a bit of mist. There was a shape to it. My breath caught in my throat, and it turned then, turned and looked at me, although it had no face.”
“Good God!” I cried. “What did you do then?”
She shrugged. “What could I do? I slammed my door and locked it tightly. I burrowed under the bedclothes until morning. I did not dare to come out until the sun was up. I shall never forget the way it looked right through me.”
I hastened to reassure her. “Mrs. King, I am so very sorry you were frightened. I can only tell you I have never heard of anyone in this house encountering a phantom in the whole of my life. And I have every expectation it will not happen again.”
She smiled, and this time her mouth was firm. “You are very kind to reassure me. I know you will not mention this bit of foolishness to the gentlemen. I should so hate for them to think me foolish.”
“Of course not. If anything else distresses you, you must come to me immediately. I insist. Now, I will wait here while you go to your room to make sure you are comfortably settled. If you require anything at all, just ring the bell. One of the maids will see to it, and I am but a few steps down the corridor in the Red Room. I will see you at breakfast, my dear,” I said.
She bade me good night, and ducked her head shyly, as if embarrassed at her nerves.
She clucked at one of the pups to follow her into her room and he did, waving his tail like a jaunty plume.
My own puppy started to wriggle, and I gave him a little pat on the bottom to send him on his way.
I stared at Mrs. King’s closed door for a long moment, then passed to my room, humming a tuneless song as I went.
Once in my room, I disrobed quickly and attempted with no success to persuade Morag to take Florence again.
“I will not,” she said, tucking my gown into the wardrobe. “She shakes like a poplar.”
“That means she is cold,” I told her in some exasperation. “She wants a little coat.”
“She wants an exorcism,” Morag muttered, slamming the wardrobe door. “If you don’t want nothing else, good night.”
I knew that tone well. It meant that I daren’t want anything else. I climbed up into the bed, stretching my toes toward the warming pan, careful not to touch it.
“Remind me to have a word with Aunt Hermia about your grammar. It is a disgrace.”
She said nothing, but poked up the fire and bobbed an exaggerated curtsey before taking her leave.
I regretted my flippancy. Morag might be a creature of the streets, but she had her dignity, and she had worked terribly hard to raise herself from the squalor of her previous life.
Her grammar had progressed substantially, and the worst of her brogue had been smoothed into something I could actually understand.
It was wrong of me to needle her about it, and I made a mental note to apologise to her in the morning.
I was far too cosy to leave my bed to deal with her at present.
She had done a masterful job of warming the bed, and from the way Florence was snuggled into her basket, I suspected Morag had lined it with warmed towels.
For all her sins, she was a thoughtful creature at times.
“Buone notte, Firenze,” I said, with a nod toward the basket on the hearth. “Good night, Florence.”
Florence growled in return, and I took up a book from the night table, determined to finish it.
It was a rather spicy little novel Portia had given me, and I was in agonies of suspense as to whether the beautiful English captive would choose to stay in the harim of the sensual sultan or make her escape with the dashing Spanish buccaneer.
I must have dozed, for when I opened my eyes, the fire had burned down and the book had slipped to the floor.
I blinked for a moment, uncertain why I had awakened.
Then I heard it, a soft slithering footstep just outside my door.
I glanced to the hearth and saw Florence, sitting up in her basket, ears pricked up, lips drawn back.
“Shh,” I soothed her softly. The hands of the clock on the mantel read two minutes past two.
I considered the matter carefully. Violante and Charlotte had both been abed by the time I had retired.
Portia would have rousted the ladies out of the drawing room and to their beds no later than midnight.
I had heard a flurry of doors closing just about that time.
So the ladies were accounted for, and even if the gentlemen had decided to play a game of billiards or retire to the smoking room, those rooms were on the opposite side of the Abbey.
I thought of Mrs. King, her lips trembling as she spoke of what she had seen.
For what I did next, I can only blame my own unseemly reading habits.
For years I wallowed in the unhealthy pursuits of Gothic heroines, tracing their footsteps as they wended their way through crumbling churchyards and decaying crypts.
I walked with them into ghoulish dungeons hung with chains, and mouldering attics festooned with cobwebs.
I thought them impossibly stupid, and yet when faced with the opportunity to chase a phantom of my own, I did not even stop to put on my slippers.
I snatched a lace wrapper from the foot of my bed and hurried to the door, easing it open as silently as any practised burglar.
I slipped out of my room and into the shadows of the gallery.
Bars of soft moonlight from the great Gothic windows illuminated the corridor, throwing the statues into sharp relief and casting sinuous, quatrefoil shadows over the floor.
I peered one way, then the other, searching the gloom for anything out of the ordinary.
Nothing. I waited half a minute, willing myself to breathe quietly. Still nothing, and my feet were beginning to freeze on the stone floor. I had just turned to regain my room when I saw it, there at the end of the gallery, flitting past a statue of Diana.
It was a ghost, or at least something that looked very like how I imagined a ghost should look.
It moved slowly, gliding soundlessly, perhaps a foot above the stone floor, and whiter than the marble of the goddess’ motionless arm.
The figure trailed ragged draperies behind it, foamy and billowing like fingers of damp fog on a moonlit night.
It paused then and so did my heartbeat. It was silhouetted against a tapestry of Venus and Adonis, silvered by the faint moonlight.
I stared at it from my place in the shadows, suddenly horribly aware that in my white lace wrapper, I was as visible to it as it was to me.
Before I could move, it gave a high, unearthly moan, then whirled and vanished, leaving behind nothing but a patch of shadow and the tapestry, stirring ever so slightly.
Before the tapestry had settled, I was back in my own room, door firmly locked, cowering under the bedclothes with a struggling Florence clutched to my chest. She kicked and fussed until I let her go, then marched to my pillow where she gave me a resentful look and promptly curled up with her tail over her nose and went to sleep.
It was not much, but it was some comfort, and I put a hand on her silky back.
She twitched, but did not move away, and after a long while I slept.
It was not until Morag unlocked the door with my morning tea, rousing me with malicious pleasure, that I realised what I should have known all along: that particular tapestry covered one of the hidden passages of Bellmont Abbey.
The Abbey itself had been lousy with them as it provided the brothers an easy means of moving from place to place without disturbing one another or exposing themselves to inclement weather.
Most had been blocked up or fallen into disrepair, but some remained, and a few were even used by the servants as service passages.
And though I could not explain how a human being could levitate as perfectly as my phantom had done, it would be a very poor ghost indeed to require hidden passages to creep about the Abbey instead of walking through walls.
And if the ghost was not supernatural, then one of the inhabitants of the Abbey was up to something highly irregular and thoroughly interesting. An intrigue was afoot, and I was determined to unearth it.
I hurried through my ablutions, eager to begin investigating my little mystery. I was thwarted by Morag, who insisted on taking her time with my hair, and Father, who sent a note requesting my presence in his study after breakfast.
“Bother,” I muttered, slipping the note into my pocket. The missive was perfectly courteous, but a summons from Father carried all the weight of a papal bull. “Finish, Morag. I’ve no more time to waste on your ministrations.”
She jabbed the last pins in my hair with what can only be described as unnecessary force.
I rose and hurried to the door, turning to smile sweetly at her.
“Mind you walk the dog. And I was quite serious about a coat for her. I’ve a pretty little jacket Plum purchased for me in Milan.
Persimmon is a frightful colour for me, but it should suit Florence nicely. ”
Morag crossed her arms over her chest and fixed me with a baleful stare. “I’ll not be sewing for a dog.”