Bride of Pendorric

by Victoria Holt

  “Hyson!”

  “Yes, Favel. It’s Hyson.”

  Floods of relief! I was not alone. There was someone to share this horrible place with me. I felt ashamed of myself, but I couldn’t help it. I had never been so glad to hear a human voice in the whole of my life.

  “Hyson … what are you doing here?”

  She had come up the stairs and snuggled close beside me.

  “It’s … frightening … with the door shut,” she said.

  “Did you do this, Hyson?”

  “Do it … do what?”

  “Lock me in.”

  “But I’m locked in with you.”

  “How did you come to be in here?”

  “I knew something was going to happen.”

  “What? How?”

  “I knew. I came to meet you … to see if you were all right.”

  “What do you mean? How could you know?”

  “I do know things. Then I heard the singing … and the door was open … so I came in.”

  “Before I did?”

  “Only a moment before. I was hiding down at the bottom of the steps when you came in.”

  “I don’t understand what it means.”

  “It means Barbarina’s lured you in. She didn’t know I was here too.”

  “Barbarina’s dead.”

  “She can’t rest, till you take her place.”

  I was recovering my calm. It was amazing what the presence of one small human being could do.

  “That’s nonsense. Hyson,” I said. “Barbarina is dead and this story of her haunting the place is just an old legend.”

  “She’s waiting for a new bride to die.”

  “I don’t intend to die.”

  “We’ll both die,” said Hyson, almost unconcernedly; and I thought: She knows nothing of death; she has never seen death. She has looked at the television and seen people drop to the ground. Bang! You’re dead. In a child’s mind death is quick and neat, without suffering. One forgot that she was only a child posing as a seer.

  “That’s absurd,” I said. “We shan’t. There must be a certain amount of air coming into this place. They’ll miss us and there’ll be search parties to find us.”

  “Why should they think of looking in the vault?”

  “They’ll took everywhere.”

  “They’ll never look in the vault.”

  I was silent for a while. I was trying to think who could have done this, who had been waiting for me to leave Jesse Pleydell’s cottage and lure me to the vault with singing like some cruel siren of the sea.

  Someone who wanted me out of the way had done this. Someone who had waited for me to enter the vault, descend the stone steps, and then glided out from some hiding place and locked the door on me.

  I was recovering rapidly from my fear and realizing that I was not afraid of human scheming; I felt myself equal to deal with that. As soon as I could rid myself of the notion that I was being lured to death by someone who was dead, I felt my natural resilience returning. I was ready to match my wits with those of another human being. I could fight the living.

  I said: “Someone locked the door. Who could it be?”

  “It was Barbarina,” whispered Hyson.

  “That’s not reasonable. Barbarina’s dead.”

  “She’s in here, Favel … in her coffin. It’s on the ledge with my grandfather’s beside it. She couldn’t rest and she wants to … that’s why she’s locked you in here.”

  “Who opened the door?”

  “Barbarina.”

  “Who locked the door?”

  “Barbarina.”

  “Hyson, you’re getting hysterical.”

  “Am I?”

  “You mustn’t. We’ve got to think of how we can get out of here.”

  “We never shall. Why did she lock me in too? It’s like Meddlesome Matty. Granny was always warning me. I shouldn’t have come.”

  “You mean that then I should have been the only victim.” My voice was grim. I was ashamed of myself. It was a terrible experience for the child; and yet it was doing me such a lot of good not to be alone.

  “We shall stay here,” said Hyson, “forever. It’ll be like ‘The Mistletoe Bough.’ When they next open the vault there’ll only be our bones, for we shall be skeletons.”

  “What nonsense!”

  “Do you remember the night of the ball? We all talked about it.”

  I was silent with a new horror because the idea flashed into my mind that on that night when we had sat drinking soup after the ball, one member of our party may have thought of the vault as a good substitute for the old oak chest.

  I shivered. Could there be any other explanation than that someone wanted me out of the way?

  I gripped Hyson’s shoulder. “Listen,” I said. “We’ve got to find a way out of this place. Perhaps the door isn’t really locked. Who could have locked it anyway?”

  “Bar …”

  “Oh, nonsense.” I stood up cautiously. “Hyson,” I said, “we must see what we can do.”

  “She won’t let us.”

  “Give me your hand and we’ll see what it’s like here.”

  “We know. It’s all dead people in coffins.”

  “I wish I had a torch. Let’s try the door again. It may have got jammed.”

  We stood on the top step and beat against it. It did not budge.

  “I wonder how long we’ve been in here,” I said.

  “An hour.”

  “I don’t think five minutes. Time goes slowly on occasions like this. But they’ll miss us at dinner. They’ll start searching for us in the house and then they’ll be out, searching for us. I want to look around. There might be a grating somewhere. We might shout through that.”

  “There’ll be nobody in the churchyard to hear us.”

  “There might be. And if they come looking …”

  I dragged her to her feet and she cowered close to me. Then together, keeping close, we cautiously descended the steps.

  Hyson was shivering. “It’s so cold,” she said.

  I put my arm round her and we stepped gingerly forward into the darkness. I could see vague shapes about me and I knew these to be the coffins of dead Pendorrics.

  Then suddenly I saw a faint light and feeling my way towards it discovered that it was a grating at the side of the vault. I peered through it and fancied I saw the side of a narrow trench. I knew then that a certain amount of air was coming into the vault and I felt my spirits rising. I put my face close to the grating and shouted: “Help! We’re in the vault. Help!”

  My voice sounded muffled as though it were thrown back at me, and I realized that however loudly I shouted I should not be heard unless someone were standing very close to the vault.

  Nevertheless I went on shouting until I was hoarse, while Hyson stood shivering beside me.

  “Let’s try the door again,” I said. And we made our way slowly back to the steps. Once again we forced our weights against it and still it remained fast shut. Hyson was sobbing and bitterly cold, so I took off my coat and wrapped it round us both. We sat side by side on that top step, our arms about each other. I tried to comfort her and tell her that we should soon be rescued, that this was quite different from the old oak chest. We had seen the grating, hadn’t we? That meant that air was coming in. All we had to do was wait for them to come and find us. Perhaps we should hear their voices. Then we would shout together.

  Eventually she stopped trembling and I think she slept.

  I could not sleep although I felt exhausted, bitterly cold, stiff and cramped; and I sat there holding the body of the child against me, peering into the darkness, asking myself over and over again: Who has done this?

  There was no means of knowing the time for I could not see my watch. Hyson stirred and whimpered; I held her closer and whispered assurances to her, while I tried to think of a plan to escape from this place.

  I pictured the family coming down to dinner. How upset they would be! Where wa
s Favel? Roc would want to know. He would be a little anxious at first and then frantic with worry. They would already have been searching for us for hours.

  Hyson had awakened suddenly: “Favel … where are we?”

  “It’s all right. I’m here. We’re together …”

  “We’re in that place. Are we still alive, Favel?”

  “That’s one thing I’m sure of.”

  “We’re not … just ghosts then?”

  I pressed her hand. “There are no such things,” I told her.

  “Favel, you dare say that … down here … among them.”

  “If they existed they would surely make us aware of them, just to prove me wrong, wouldn’t they?”

  I could feel the child holding her breath as she peered into the darkness.

  After a while she said: “Have we been here all night?”

  “I don’t know, Hyson.”

  “Will it be dark like this all the time?”

  “There might be a little light through the grating when the day comes. Shall we go and look?”

  We were so stiff and cramped that we could not move our limbs for some seconds.

  “Listen,” said Hyson fearfully, “I heard something.”

  I listened with her; but I could hear nothing.

  I felt my way cautiously down the steps holding Hyson’s hand as we went.

  “There,” she whispered, “I heard it again.”

  She clung to me and I put my arm about her.

  “If only we had a lighter or a match,” I murmured as we picked our way to where I thought the grating had been, but there was no light coming from the wall, so I guessed it was still dark outside. Then I saw a sudden flash of light; I heard a voice call: “Favel! Hyson!”

  The light had shown me the grating and I ran stumbling towards it shouting: “We’re here … in the vault. Favel and Hyson are here in the vault!

  The light came again and stayed. I recognized Deborah’s voice. “Favel! Is that you, Favel?”

  “Here,” I cried. “Here!”

  “Oh, Favel … thank God. Hyson … ?”

  “Hyson’s here with me. We’re locked in the vault.”

  “Locked in …”

  “Please get us out … quickly.”

  “I’ll be back … soon as I can.”

  The light disappeared and Hyson and I stood still hugging each other.

  It seemed hours before the door was opened and Roc came striding down the steps. We ran to him—Hyson and I—and he held us both against him.

  “What the …” he began. “You gave us a nice fright …”

  Morwenna was there with Charles, who picked Hyson up in his arms and held her as though she were a baby.

  Their torches showed us the damp walls of the vault, the ledges with the coffins; but Hyson and I turned shuddering away and looked towards the door.

  “Your hands are like ice,” said Roc, chafing them. “We’ve got the cars by the lych gate. We’ll be home in a few minutes.”

  I lay against him in the car, too numb, too exhausted for speech.

  I did manage to ask the time.

  “Two o’clock,” Roc told me. “We’ve been searching since soon after eight.”

  I went straight to bed and Mrs. Penhalligan brought me hot soup. I said I shouldn’t be able to sleep; in fact I should be afraid to for fear I should dream I was back in that dreadful place.

  But I did sleep—almost immediately; and I was untroubled by dreams.

  It was nine o’clock that morning before the sun shining through the windows woke me. Roc was sitting in a chair near the bed watching me, and I felt very happy because I was alive.

  “What happened?” asked Roc.

  “I heard someone singing and the door of the vault was open.”

  “You thought the Pendorrics had left their coffins and were having a little sing-song?”

  “I didn’t know who it was. I went down the steps and then … the door was locked on me.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Hammered on the door; called out. Hyson and I both used all our strength against it. Oh Roc … it was horrible.”

  “Not the most pleasant spot to spend a night, I must say.”

  “Roc, who could have done it? Who could have locked us in?”

  “No one.”

  “But someone did. Why, if Deborah hadn’t come there looking for us we’d still be there. Heaven knows how long we should have been there.”

  “We decided to search every inch of the land for miles around. Deborah and Morwenna did Pendorric village and the Darks joined up with them.”

  “It was wonderful when we heard Deborah’s voice calling us. But it seemed ages before she came back.”

  “She thought she needed the key, and there’s only one I know of—to the vault. It’s kept in the cupboard in my study, and the cupboard is locked; so she had to find me first.”

  “That’s why it took so long.”

  “We didn’t waste any time, I can tell you. I couldn’t imagine who could have got at the key and unlocked the vault. The sexton borrowed it some weeks ago. He must have thought he locked it.”

  “But someone locked us in.”

  Roc said: “No, darling. The door wasn’t locked. I discovered that when I tried to unlock it.”

  “Not locked! But …”

  “Who would have locked you in?”

  “That’s what I’m wondering.”

  “No one has a key except me. There had only been one for years. The key was locked in my cupboard. It was hanging on the nail there when I went to get it.”

  “But Roc, I don’t understand how …”

  “I think it’s simple enough. It was a misty evening, wasn’t it? You passed the lych gate and went into the churchyard. The door of the vault was open because old Pengelly hadn’t locked it when he was there a few weeks ago and the door had blown open.”

  “It was a very still evening. There was no wind.”

  “There was a gale the night before. It had probably been open all day and no one had noticed it. Few people go to the old part of the graveyard. Well, you saw it open, and went inside. The door shut on you.”

  “But if it wasn’t locked why didn’t it open when we pushed with all our strength?”

  “I expect it jammed. Besides, you probably panicked to find yourself shut in. Perhaps if you’d not believed the door was locked you would have discovered it was only jammed.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  He looked at me in astonishment. “What on earth’s in your mind?”

  “I don’t quite know … but someone locked us in.”

  “Who?”

  “Someone did it.”

  He smoothed the hair back from my forehead.

  “There’s only one person who could,” he said. “Myself.”

  “Oh Roc … No!”

  He threw himself down beside me and took me into his arms.

  “Let me tell you something, darling,” he said. “I’d far rather have you here with me than in that vault with Hyson.”

  He was laughing; he did not understand that chill of fear which had taken possession of me.

  FIVE

  I could now no longer delude myself. I had to face up to all the fears which I had refused to acknowledge during the last weeks.

  Someone had deliberately lured me into the vault and locked me in, for I refused to believe Roc’s theory that the door had jammed. In the first moments it was true that I may have panicked; but when I had discovered Hyson and sought to comfort her, I had regained my composure. We had both tried to open that door with all our strength and had failed. And the reason was that it had been locked.

  This could only mean one thing. Someone wanted to harm me.

  Suppose Deborah had not come by? Suppose she had not heard our call, how long could we have lived in the vault? There was a little air coming in, it was true; but we should have starved to death eventually, because it was a fact that few people came t
hat way, and if they did we should not have heard them unless they had come close to the grating and called us.

  It might have been one week … two weeks. We should have been dead by then.

  Someone was trying to kill me, but in a way which, when my death was discovered, would appear accidental. Who?

  It would be the person who would benefit most from my death. Roc?

  I couldn’t believe that. I was perhaps illogical, as women in love are supposed to be; but I was not going to believe for one moment that Roc would kill me. He wouldn’t kill anyone … least of all me. He was a gambler, I knew; he might even be unfaithful to me; but he could never in any circumstances commit murder.

  If I died, he would be very rich. He had married me, knowing that I was the granddaughter of a millionaire. He needed money for Pendorric, and Roc and I were partners, so that my fortune would make certain that Pendorric remained entirely ours. This was all true; and whether I died or not, Pendorric was safe.

  I refused to look beyond that; but I did believe that someone had locked me into the vault in the hope that I should not be discovered until I was dead.

  I thought back over everything that had happened and my mind kept returning to the day when Roc had first come to the studio. My father must have known who he was as soon as he heard his name—there could not be many Pendorrics in the world—yet he had not told me. Why? Because my grandfather had not wanted me to know. Roc was to report on me first, take pictures of me. I smiled ruefully. That was typical of my grandfather’s arrogance. As for Father, he had probably done everything he did for what he would believe to be my good.

  And the day he died? Roc had seemed strange that day. Or had he? He had come back to the studio and left my father to swim alone. And when we knew what had happened, had he seemed … relieved, or had I imagined it?

  I must stop thinking of Roc in this way, because if I was going to find out who was seeking to harm me I must look elsewhere.

  There had been an occasion when I had taken the dangerous cliff path after the rain, and the warning had been removed. I remembered how uneasy I had felt then. But it was Roc who had remembered the path and dashed after me. It was reassuring to remember that. But why should it be reassuring? Because it showed that Roc loved me and wanted to protect me; that he could not possibly have had a hand in this.