Chapter 12
Death must be so beautiful … to forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.
—Oscar Wilde, The Canterville Ghost
“Da!”
The word scraped over my tongue as I jerked awake, the blurred haze of slumber obscuring my sight.
Where … what? Da shouldn’t speak to Teddy thus, nor should Teddy speak to Da like that.
I had to fix this, I had to—eyes wild, I glanced about the room.
The curtains were drawn, and it was dark, but the shadowed forms of furniture slowly came into focus.
My heart leapt in my throat. This was not my room, not my bed.
My pulse fluttered as I flung back the covers and scrambled to my feet.
A smoky haze swirled and dipped with the rapid movement, and my gaze darted to the nightstand, to the incense burner—still smoldering—beneath the vase of fresh flowers.
Because this was not my room, but Wilhelmina’s, and I was now she.
With a great heaving breath, my knees buckled, and I sat back on the bed, bouncing with the weight with which my body resigned itself to reality.
It wasn’t real, only a dream. A detailed, terrifying dream that replayed the memory with such vividness, I was sure I’d been transported in time.
Everything I’d felt at that moment rushed back to me tenfold, gripping my gut before mercilessly twisting.
This one was not like the others. It was far stronger.
Far more … real. Forcing me to relive emotion in such detail that I had no choice but to remember every tiny detail.
I leaned forward and propped my elbows against shaking knees before burying my face in my palms. Lady Catherine had insisted I take to my bed. Yes, that was what happened.
But that was this afternoon. I straightened and launched off the mattress, making a beeline for the closed curtains before drawing them back.
My eyes widened as the full dark of deep night stared back.
I shook my head. Between the dream and the hour, disoriented didn’t quite describe the muzzy sensation I couldn’t shake.
Squinting into the nightscape, I leaned forward, touching my forehead against the cool glass of the window.
I didn’t want to remember; I didn’t deserve to. I’d been taught that grief always barred the way forward, that wallowing stalled progress, that ploughing ahead was the only way to get through the darkness.
Bury it. Keep it down. Lock it away. Forget it.
Throw all your energy into whatever comes next, for the dead will not thank you for falling apart. I closed my eyes, lavishing the chill from the windowpane.
Why now? I’d done so well keeping it buried, keeping it down, locking it away—
“Because ye can’t forget it, and ye shouldn’t.”
The blood froze in my veins as a voice—his voice—echoed through the room. Something gripped my chest, and building pressure fought against my lungs, desperate to expand. Breathe … I must—
“Ye big eejit. Did we go through all that for nothing? Look where ye are.”
“M-Michael?” I wasn’t sure how I uttered his name, but it left my lips on a breath, a prayer, a hope.
I opened my eyes and forced myself to turn, though every hair on my body snapped to attention, the legs of a thousand insects clamoring over my skin.
“Is it you?” I asked, surer now as my eyes flitted about the chamber, scanning every darkened corner.
The moonlight at my back illuminated Wilhelmina’s room, transforming the haze of incense into a sea of fog. Too much incense—more than I ever remembered burning before.
Turning was the most I could achieve, for my body would listen no more. Willing it to move would bear no fruit.
“Michael?” I called again, pulse racing in my ears as I … waited. Christ above, if anyone saw me. Standing, terrified, in my nightclothes, calling out to my dead brother, hoping that somehow, some way, he was—
The haze of incense shifted as a snaking draft ebbed through unseen cracks to grip its edges. But a draft would drag the smoke into a whorl, surely?
My eyes widened as I stared, and my lungs ceased their function.
One leg formed in the haze, then another, as a figure stepped through the fog. No, not through it, but … gathering it, pulling it into shape.
A scream died in my throat as a torso joined the legs, then arms, until at last a fog-formed likeness of my brother stood before me, tendrils of smoke billowing behind, hands of the dead reaching for him to drag him back through the veil between our world and theirs.
It smiled, he smiled, and my insides quaked with roiling fear.
“I told ye to live, Maggie,” he said, voice disembodied, echoing behind, beside, and before me. “For that, ye must remember.”
“I-is he with ye, Michael? Did ye find him, there, on the other side?” I whispered, asking the one question I didn’t want an answer to.
My brother’s likeness smiled and cocked its head to the side.
“The child? Nay. For the sins of the father outweigh the goodness of the mother.”
A laugh echoed somewhere in the house, and Michael’s likeness whipped around to glance at the door.
“She’s trapped here,” he said. “That’s why ye must remember. For to secure the future ye want, ye must save her.”
“What do you mean?” I whispered.
“The woman in white … here she comes.”
He turned back again, but his form wavered, melding into the haze that bathed the bedchamber, but not before I noticed him gesturing toward the incense burner on the bedside table.
“Remember it all, Maggie. The smoke will help ye.”
“Wait, Michael. What do ye mean—”
But I didn’t get the chance to beg him to stay, to answer my questions. For the woman in white’s voice cut through my mind, each word slicing deep—straight into the center of my soul.
You’re not the first to step in Wilhelmina’s shoes, child.
My eyes rolled back in my head then, and the world around me disappeared.
October 1846: Before
Beyond the cool glass pane, the world continued turning, but mine had slowed to the heartbreaking terror of defeat.
I thought mayhap … nay, I was almost certain … that Teddy had forsaken me.
That window had been my only means of entertainment these past months, the reflection—a specter of my old self—my only company, and each day I fought against the vise that gripped my chest; breath …
a struggle. Below, Merrion Square Park played host to chaperoned young women, promenading down straight, manicured pathways before suitors, their fine silk dresses screaming titled fortunes.
And why wouldn’t they? The park was for the exclusive use of residents of the square, and the square was home to titled families of the British court.
And I a cuckoo, locked away in the townhome of Lady Grace’s own father.
I hadn’t seen my family in eight months. Within two weeks of Teddy asking Da for my hand, I had been bundled into a coach bound for Dublin on February 7, 1846, with naught but a small sack containing fresh stockings and a shift.
Confusion gripped me throughout the journey. Why would I be better off surviving pregnancy in Lady Grace’s city residence? Why could I not travel with Teddy, who was Dublin-bound for university? Why could I not bring one of my sisters for company?
Upon arrival, I was met by a fierce housekeeper, who spoke not a word during my entire stay. At least she kept me fed and watered—a prized heifer, set to calf.
Michael wrote, and so did Da, though my replies, outlining concerns about the wedding details, went unanswered.
His lordship had agreed to the marriage, under the condition that I gave birth in Dublin, where I would be provided the comfort and nutrition required to grow a healthy child, given the crisis caused by the blight.
He’d even requested an audience before my departure, where he’d smiled so kindly and welcomed me to the family, before explaining that he would prefer I concentrate on the task at hand, and Teddy and I would be wed once I had naught else to worry me.
Truly, the gesture had been so thoughtful that it had warmed my heart and reassured me fully. I would be wed to the boy I loved, the boy who would make my family’s fortune, the boy I’d set my hat at.
And yet … I had expected Teddy to at least visit in his free time, given our proximity, but he never came. At first, I thought his final-year studies must have been brutal to keep him from me. But my letters went unanswered, and I knew then that I was alone.
Stop. Breathe. Think. That’s all he had to do when speaking with his father, and I couldn’t help but worry that something had gone awry.
And so the months passed, with me only permitted to stare out the window at the hustle and bustle—so as not to garner attention from anyone, given my delicate condition and the unorthodox circumstances of our union.
Until Lady Grace arrived, breathing new hope five months into my confinement, ready to hold my hand for the imminent birth.
And pat my shoulders when the midwife announced that my child—our son—was dead.
Dead. Gone. This beautiful life I had created—we had created—dashed out before he could even know his mother’s love.
And he had cried so very fiercely upon arrival, so fiercely that I’d laughed with relief, despite the bone-splitting pain.
Before he was whisked from the room to be bathed.
Before the midwife began working on drawing forth the afterbirth.
Before the physician who’d tended me throughout my pregnancy shuffled solemnly into the room and gently told me that he hadn’t made it.
That he’d been born malformed, unable to function for long outside the womb, and disfigured enough to cause distress if I were to view him.
In the end, Lady Grace took the reins and insisted they shroud him immediately. That it would be best not to see him.