Chapter 19
Nineteen
If you ever find yourself in mortal danger, believe in ghosts. Keep your head. Oh, and trust your piglet.
The next morning, I called a greeting to Godric through the tapestry and set off for the kitchen alone. Outside, I paused to enjoy the peacefully falling snow that had turned the quadrangle into a puffy featherbed, before I set out for my daily review of the menus with Miss Wellington.
Halfway to the kitchen I stopped, because the door to the chapel stood open. Normally, it was kept closed and barred, ensuring that Mima wouldn’t catch her death of cold wandering through it.
Curious, I walked into the vestibule. If I were building a secret passage, I would disguise it among the elaborate wood carvings of vines and berries that lined one wall of the sanctuary.
The chapel was even colder than I remembered, its windows white with frost. I ran over to take a quick look at the vines, thinking that I’d need Sophonisba’s ermine cloak to give the chapel a proper search; my breath wasn’t a vapor, but a white cloud.
I peered at the carved vines for a minute before deciding to ask Godric if he and Lance had tried turning every wooden berry in search of knobs.
Already shivering despite my mantle, I turned around and dashed back across the chapel. Miss Wellington would be waiting for me.
When I reached the vestibule, the door to the cloister was closed.
I shoved the door, dismayed to find that it wasn’t merely closed; it had been bolted. One of the grooms assigned to shovel the walk must have seen it open and unwittingly locked me in. Yet I’d only been in the chapel for a moment. He had to be close by.
I banged and shouted as loudly as I could.
Then I screamed.
I heard nothing through the thick door. What’s more, the snow likely muffled my voice.
If I survived, I would insist that furs be hung in the vestibule. I had an hour, if that. I could stand by the door screaming, or I could try to find that passage, if it existed.
No time to be cynical. There would be time for that when I was a ghost, a time which hopefully wasn’t drawing nearer. I knew what a heroine in a novel would do.
I compromised. I ran over to the walls and poked at berries until my fingers were frozen, whereupon I tucked them back inside my sleeves, ran back to the door, and screamed.
At some point, I ripped strips off my chemise and wound them around my hands.
All the while, I prayed. I was in a chapel, after all. It seemed axiomatic.
But what did axiomatic mean? Did I know the definition? The cold was freezing more than just my fingers. My memory seemed to be going with it. Perhaps if I survived, they would find me as addled as Aunt Mima.
Thirty minutes later, my voice was hoarse, and I was losing the inclination to run.
I was unbearably cold. Part of my brain insisted that if I huddled in the vestibule, I could rest, since that room was a fraction warmer than the chapel.
Another part stubbornly forced me to run back and forth, even after I began stumbling.
I didn’t want to die. Bloody hell, I wanted to outlive Burnsby.
I wanted to hug Rosie one more time. I wanted to help her find love.
I wanted to raise Ophelia to be the lady I’d been too afraid to become.
And I wanted my own dreams to come true, big and little.
I wanted to make a snow angel with Godric’s body on top of mine.
I wanted to make love. I wanted to have Godric’s children.
All the things that I had barred from my life by marrying Burnsby raced through my mind, but they were becoming confused. Had I lived a life before him? Rosie’s face danced in my head. My father’s, too. They would be devastated if I died.
That was a certainty. I grasped onto my family’s grief and made myself run across the chapel one more time, beating ineffectively at the door and shouting. At this point, I was croaking.
No one answered. I staggered, turning back toward the sanctuary, my feet so numb that they felt as if they didn’t belong on my ankles. My very bones were cold, and my teeth had stopped clattering, which seemed like a bad sign.
I put my hand on the doorframe of the vestibule, gathering strength. Could I push at one more berry? Two more berries? Oddly, I felt somewhat warmer. Falling to my knees seemed like a good idea. After all, it was a chapel.
Then I saw a flutter of movement from the corner of my eye and flinched. The rats were coming, and I wasn’t even dead. That thought stiffened my knees.
Maybe they couldn’t get up onto the altar. Could I climb the altar to avoid being nibbled? It seemed a herculean task.
The flutter came again, and this time I turned my head, catching sight of something white near the far wall of the chapel. White, like fox fur. Like the ripple of Ophelia’s cape. It was gone as suddenly as it appeared. Was I hallucinating?
I walked over to that wall stiff-legged, as if my knees had frozen. Perhaps all I had below my waist were two wooden canes, the clothes-peg legs that a lady was meant to have.
No berries had been carved here. There was nothing to push. No ghost presented herself.
I thought the flutter came from an alcove that might have held the statue of a saint, years ago. The base where the statue would have stood was white with frost, and I didn’t want to touch it. My fingers curled with dread. But I did it.
I reached out and pushed down as if I were a statue, perhaps a Virgin Mary. I shoved as hard as I could and prayed as hard as I could—and let go.
A door opened in the wall, revealing a dark rectangle. I staggered through; behind me the door closed as silently as it had opened, leaving me in utter darkness.
Perhaps I was daft with cold because the air felt like warm velvet against my cheek. Darkness was not tangible. Tangible was Godric’s warm palm on my cheek, sliding down my waist, wrapping around my—
Goodness! Even on the brink of certain death—death by becoming a human icicle, no less—my body roared back to life. I wanted to live.
The passage was so narrow that I could touch both sides at once, but since my fingers were numb, I leaned against one side instead and forced my feet to move. I desperately wanted to curl up and take a nap, but if I died here, no one would know what had happened to me.
I kept going, step by step, focusing on Godric’s face. He would search for me. He would tear the abbey apart but would find no trace of me, the footsteps leading to the chapel long since swallowed by snow. They might decide I had ventured into the forest and been dragged away by wolves.
I couldn’t bear thinking of Ophelia’s face. Colette would care for her. Rosie would weep and so would my father. He would grieve for me and care for his remaining daughter.
No one would care for Godric. He would return to London, his temper a scourge against criminals, his heart cracked.
I staggered along the passage until it turned, and I turned with it. Didn’t Godric say that this passage ended in the kitchen? Or perhaps he didn’t know. My mind was so confused.
How would I find a protruding brick to open the door in this darkness? I might die close to people, just on the other side of the wall. No, I wouldn’t. I would rather beg for my life than surrender to my own death. I am an English lady.
(An axiomatic truth: English ladies do not beg.)
Abruptly I walked straight into a brick wall. The dislodged brick had been at Godric’s shoulder. I pretended he was beside me; he was feeling the wall, not me. I was too tired and cold.
Strangely, wonderfully, the wall was warm. I spread my fingers against it and, unable to find the dislodged brick, went down on my knees. My eyes were closed, but I fancied that I felt the brush of warm fox fur, as if an invisible cloak, the cloak Ophelia had worn, wrapped around me.
I mouthed, “Thank you,” just in case Hecuba was keeping me company.
At least I would die knowing what it meant to love someone other than a family member.
To be in love.
To be loved.
I felt a twinge of regret, followed a flash of gratitude because I heard his voice once again.
“Evie!”