Chapter 33 #2
“I would like you to move your men away. A few minutes will be sufficient. I shall visit my house, and when the slavers arrive, there will be no crawlers to bind.”
While I spoke, he straightened with military pride, his chin high. In his beautiful uniform, he looked quite picturesque. In a friendlier time, he might have been a European visitor posing for a portrait—French Captain at English Manor.
Just as I began to doubt, he bowed, a courtly motion different from an English bow, then strode away, issuing orders in French. His soldiers shouldered their muskets and followed, including another I had not seen by the far corner of the house.
I watched them reach the lane and walk south, away from the village.
When they were out of sight, I waved at the shrub, and Mr. Knightley and Augusta ran over.
I thought they might congratulate me—I had been somewhat daring—but they were too uneasy, watching Hartfield’s front door as if monsters lurked. As they did.
Augusta was pale, lip pinched in her teeth, hands clenched.
“Are you sure you wish to come in?” I asked her. She nodded. Mr. Knightley looked extremely solemn as well, so I asked him, “Are you sure?”
He relaxed his shoulders and chuckled, sliding the ax to a jaunty angle. “I am eager. I hear it is a charming house.”
The door opened easily, and for a moment I was simply returned to my life.
We kept a wall of mementos and keepsakes by the door, and the sight brought a flood of fond memories.
Guests often added tokens—a dried flower, a place card from dinner with a little note.
Perhaps Mr. Knightley would leave his ax.
But even in the entry, there were signs of disruption. The French troops had ransacked the hall wardrobe, throwing coats and boots in a messy pile. Panic squeezed my lungs; Hartfield had to be perfect…
I waited for the miasma, that specter of Papa’s unrelenting slide into illness. It did not come. Nor was there any sign of the questing, black ropes, the crawler’s bindings.
The house was very quiet. Silent. Nobody met us; the servants had vanished. Ever since Papa’s death, Hartfield had felt painfully empty, particularly when I sat with a good fire beside his favorite chair, but this stillness was disconcerting.
Augusta, kneading her wrists, retreated into a corner. Mr. Knightley, quiet and efficient, checked Papa’s study and the parlor.
“I wish you had met my Papa,” I said to him to have some sound. “Imagine if he were here, and we arrived to surprise him, already married.”
Mr. Knightley returned, satisfied with his inspection. “Would he be cross?”
“He would act very formidable and demand to know your living, and scowl when you said you were a musician, but he would scowl no matter what you answered. Secretly, he would be thrilled. He was a great romantic before his health failed. My mother and he were a love match. He always hoped I would marry for love.”
The memories caught my heartstrings. Romantic as he was, Papa had also hoped my fortune would attract a lucrative marriage and secure Hartfield’s future. Well, my fortune was stolen, and my marriage would not pay many bills, but even so he would have clasped our hands and beamed.
Gently, Mr. Knightley touched my elbow. “We cannot linger.”
“Of course not.” I dabbed my eyes and turned to Augusta. “You can still leave.” She shook her head and turned in the direction of the kitchen.
Together, we went through the house to the kitchen door. Cautiously, I tried the knob. It turned, but the door was immovable, blocked somehow. The bitter scent I had caught last time made my nostrils twitch.
“The garden door is even more sturdy,” I said, “and John has blocked all the windows. I think we should try here. Can we force it?”
Augusta spoke, her first words since we left the Westons. “It opens like this.” She went to the corner and pulled a string concealed by a little table we used for curios. There was a sound of heavy wood sliding aside.
Mr. Knightley took the lead. He kept the ax, leaned the rifle case against the wall, then turned the knob, pushing with his shoulder when the door resisted.
The bottom grated unevenly across the flooring, catching on clods of dirt.
It jammed half open, wide enough to enter.
A heavy wood bar was visible to the side, pulled away by the string.
That was new and certainly unnecessary for a kitchen.
The bitter scent flooded out, biting the flesh of my throat and depositing a scummy-sweet aftertaste.
The room was dark. Every window was covered.
Worse, I sensed something stir. A twining black rope skittered through my vision, illusory but profoundly wrong.
It swept completely through Mr. Knightley—I jumped at the sight—and stretched within inches of me, then pulled back as if burned and vanished.
“What is it?” Mr. Knightley asked. He had not seen it. He was peering into the dark.
“There is something within.” The odor made my voice hoarse. “Can you fetch a light?”
“Perhaps you should.” He had raised the ax two-handed, watching the dark opening.
I went to the parlor, found a flint and lit a lamp, and returned, adjusting the wick until it stopped smoking.
“Ready?” he asked.
I nodded, and he eased through the door, his motion falling into the supple forms of the morning exercises he practiced. I followed, then Augusta. In the lamplight, she looked as white as a sheet, but she did not hesitate.
The scent strengthened, but the kitchen appeared almost normal. Stove and fireplace, cold. Cupboards and drawers, neatly closed. Shelves with crocks and jars for flour and sugar and butter. There was our ancient, massive cooking table of dark oak and a small pastry table surfaced with marble.
But the windows were crudely boarded up from inside. The planks were studded with poorly driven iron nails, many of them bent. The floor was caked with dried mud and clay.
Mr. Knightley shifted the ax to one hand and lifted a wooden bucket from the floor. He sniffed it. “Pitch. They use it to waterproof ships.”
Augusta began a soft, desperate noise, uh uh uh. I followed her frightened gaze to some dim objects on the cooking table. “What are those?”
Mr. Knightley took the lamp and held it close. Two hinged iron loops were fastened to thick chains. The ends of the chains were bolted to the table.
“Shackles,” he said with profound disgust. “Like those on slave ships. Brutal tools. We have aided escaped slaves that lost a hand to infection or rot.”
“They hold the wyves for the binding,” Augusta whispered. She edged to the table, trembling. She laid her thin wrist beside one of the open, hinged circles as if measuring a bracelet at a jeweler. “Mr. Elton put them on me. Then he told me to pray. I could hardly bring my hands together.”
“How can that man claim to be God’s servant!” Mr. Knightley exclaimed in disbelief.
“He was always a monster,” I said. “Just one with a clever disguise.”
Mr. Knightley found another lamp on a shelf. He lit it and left it on the cooking table. The shackles cast long, wavering shadows. “Where are the crawlers?”
I had expected to follow the illusory tendrils, like greasy, living rope, but there was no sign of them. I turned slowly. “I am not sure,” I admitted. Tucked under my petticoat, the amulet pulsed, a second heart. Had it frightened them away?
Augusta pointed to the trapdoor, flush with the floor and across from the cooking table.
“Tell me that is not a cellar,” Mr. Knightley said.
“That is the cellar,” I said.
He undid the latch, then rubbed his fingers and sniffed them. “Pitch.” He pulled the trapdoor up and over, laid it flat, then held the lamp through, revealing steep, descending steps.
Augusta whimpered and edged away. “I cannot go down there.”
“You do not need to,” I reassured her. “I feel them now.” Light or sound had woken them.
More than one black binding flicked past my eyes, and beyond that, I sensed…
suffering. Pain. There was an answering surge of warmth on my breast, but it did not fill me with some grand sense of power. Instead, I felt pity.
“I hear… something,” Mr. Knightley said. “Emma, I am no longer sure we should attempt this.”
“When Mr. Elton brought that crawler, it would not approach me. They fear a great wyfe. Let me go first. I will only look. And, I have this.”
I drew the amulet from behind my clothes and rested it openly on my chest. It felt dense and vital, part of my being, not a passive decoration. Yuánchi’s scale shone now, visibly rippling with carmine and gold waves of strange fire.
I took the lamp from Mr. Knightley and descended the steps into the cellar.
It was not a deep cellar, dug down only five feet. The ceiling was the kitchen floor, built a little above ground. Together that gave enough space that one could stand upright, only ducking for the beams.
I stood that way, astonished, until Mr. Knightley arrived beside me.
Hartfield’s cellar had been a snug fit in the past, full of sacks of turnips and potatoes and grain, a few racks for wines, and wheels of cheese.
Now, it was a vast cave. The floor by my feet still had its fitted brick tiles, but a few steps farther, that fractured into churned earth. Ragged pits sank even deeper. The raw soil sucked up the lamplight, turning every shadow inky black.