Bride of Pendorric

by Victoria Holt

  I felt limp with horror.

  But there was more to be read and I went on reading.

  “October 20. I shouldn’t write in the book any more. But I can’t resist it. I want to write it down while I remember, because it’s fading fast and I am not sure … There was someone in the hall. I was frightened. But it was only old Jesse and he couldn’t see. I stood in the gallery, looking at the splintered wood. I wouldn’t look down onto the hall. I didn’t stay long. Old Jesse had run for help. He might not see me but he knew something was wrong. I ran into the nearest room because I had to get out of the gallery before I was seen. It was Deborah’s. I threw myself onto her bed and lay there, my heart thundering. I don’t know how long I lay there but it seemed like hours. It was a few minutes actually. Voices. Cries of horror. What was happening in the hall? I longed to see but I knew I must stay where I was. After a while there was a knock on the door. I was still lying on the bed when Mrs. Penhalligan came in. She said: ‘Miss Hyson, there’s been a terrible accident.’ I raised myself and stared at her. ‘It’s the gallery rail. ‘Twas worse than we thought. Mrs. Pendorric …’ I just went on staring at her. She went out and I heard her voice outside the door. ‘Miss Hyson, she be terrible shocked, poor dear. ‘Tis not to be wondered at … they being so close … so near like. I for one couldn’t tell the one from the other.’

  “I went down to the sea and looked at it. It was gray and cold. I couldn’t do it. It’s easy to talk of dying; but when you face it … you’re frightened. You’re terribly frightened. I’d been so stunned by the news that they’d made me stay in bed until it was all over. I didn’t see Petroc unless others were there too. That was as well. He was the one I feared. Surely he would know his own wife. But even so there was something I knew about Petroc. He wasn’t the same. The gaiety had gone, the lightheartedness. He blamed himself. The servants were talking. They said it was meant. And it happened right under the picture of that other bride. It was no good going against what was meant. Barbarina was meant to die, so that Lowella Pendorric could rest from the haunting. They wouldn’t go near the gallery after dark. They believed Barbarina was haunting Pendorric. So she is. She haunted Petroc till the day he died. So the story was true. The Bride of Pendorric had died just as the story said she should and she couldn’t rest in her grave.

  “I couldn’t go. I couldn’t leave the children. They call me Aunt Deborah now. I am Deborah. I’m calm and serene. Carrie knows though. Sometimes she calls me Miss Barbarina. I’m afraid of Carrie. But she’d never hurt me; she loves me too well. I was always her favorite. I was everybody’s favorite. It’s different now though. People are different towards me. They call me Deborah and what is happening is that Deborah still lives and it is Barbarina who is dead.”

  “January 1. I shall not write any more. There is nothing to write. Barbarina is dead. She had a fatal accident. Petroc hardly spoke to me again. I believe he thought that I was jealous of her, and that I did it hoping he’d marry me; he doesn’t want to know too much about it in case it’s true. I don’t care about Petroc any more. I’m devoted to the children. It doesn’t matter now that Petroc is never there. I’m not his wife any more; I’m his sister-in-law, taking care of his motherless children. I’m happier than I ever was since my marriage; though sometimes I think of my sister and it’s as though she’s with me. She comes to me at night when I’m alone and her eyes are mournful and accusing. She can’t rest. She haunts me and she haunts Petroc. It’s in the legend; and she’ll continue to haunt Pendorric until another young bride takes her place; then she will rest forevermore.”

  “March 20. I have been reading this book. I shall not read it any more. I shall not write in it any more. I shall hide it away. It worries me. Barbarina is dead and I am Deborah; I am calm and serene and I have devoted myself to Roc and Morwenna. Barbarina haunts me; that’s because it’s in the story that she should … until another bride takes her place. But reading this book upsets me. I shall not do it any more.”

  There was one last entry. It stated simply:

  “One day, there’ll be a new bride at Pendorric and then Barbarina shall have her rest.”

  So it was Barbarina who had brought me to this house, who had lured me to the vault, who had sought to kill me.

  I did not know what to do. What could I do tonight? I was alone in this house with Barbarina and Carrie, for the Hansons would be in their cottage in the grounds.

  I must lock my door. I attempted to get out of bed but my legs seemed unable to move, and even in my agitated state I could not fight the drowsiness which had taken possession of me. A thought came into my head that I was asleep and dreaming; and in that moment the book had slipped from my fingers and falling asleep was like entering a deep dark cave.

  I awoke with a start. For a few seconds I was still in that deep, dark cave of oblivion; then objects started to take shape. Where was I? There was the hexagonal table. I remembered the diary, and then where I was.

  I knew, too, that something had awakened me, and the knowledge quickly followed that I was not alone. Someone was in this room.

  I had fallen asleep so suddenly that I was lying on my back. I had been aware of the hexagonal table by turning my eyes towards it without moving my head. The heavy sleepiness was still upon me and the deep darkness of the cave was threatening to close about me once more.

  I was so tired … too tired to be afraid … too tired to care that I was not alone in the room.

  I’m dreaming, I thought. Of course I’m dreaming. For from out of the shadows came a figure. It was a woman dressed in a blue house coat. As the moonlight touched her face I knew who she was.

  My heavy lids were pressing down over my eyes; vaguely I heard her voice.

  “This time, there shall be no way out. They will no longer talk of Barbarina’s ghost … but yours.”

  I wanted to call out; but some waking instinct warned me not to, and I began to wonder whether after all I was in a dream.

  Never before in my life had I been so frightened. Yet never had I been so sleepy, and terror was trying to ward off my sleepiness. What was happening to me? I longed to be in my bedroom at Pendorric with Roc beside me. That was safety. This was danger.

  “This is a nightmare,” I told myself. “In a moment you will wake up.”

  She was standing at the foot of my bed looking at me while I watched her through half-closed eyes, waiting for what she would do next.

  An impulse came to me to speak to her, but something warned me that I must first find out what she intended to do. This had never happened to me before. I was asleep; yet I was awake. I was terrified; and yet it was as though I stood outside this scene, a watcher in the shadows. I was looking on at the frightened woman in the bed and the other whose purpose was evil.

  An idea hit me. I am drugged. The milk was drugged. The milk Deborah brought me. No … not Deborah. I didn’t drink it all. If I had I should now be in a deep, drugged sleep.

  She was smiling. Then I saw her hands move in a gesture as though she were sprinkling something over my bed. She went to the window and stooped for a few seconds; and then she stood upright and without giving another glance at my bed, ran from the room.

  I was aware of thinking: It is a dream. Then suddenly it seemed I was wide awake. I was looking at a wall of flame. The curtains were on fire. For one second, two seconds, I stared at them, while it was as though I emerged from that black cave to reality.

  I smelled petrol and in terrible understanding leaped out of bed and made for the door. I was not a second too soon, for as I did so my bed was aflame.

  It is difficult to recall what happened next. I was aware of the blazing bed as I pulled at the door handle and for one hideous second believed that I was locked in this room as I had been locked in the vault. But that was only due to my anxiety to get out quickly. The door was not locked.

  I pulled it open and had the sense to shut it behind me. I saw her then. She was running along the corridor, and I went after
her shouting: “Fire!” as I did so.

  She turned to look at me.

  I cried: “Quick! My room’s on fire. We must give the alarm.”

  She looked at me in bewilderment. I knew then that she was completely mad, and for those few dramatic seconds I even forgot the danger we were in.

  “You tried to kill me … Barbarina!” I said.

  Horror dawned in her face. I heard her whisper as though to herself! “The diary … oh my God, she’s read the diary.”

  I caught her arm. “You’ve set my room on fire,” I said urgently. “It’ll spread … quickly. Where’s Carrie? On this floor? Carrie! Carrie! Come quickly.”

  Barbarina’s lips were moving; she went on muttering to herself: “It’s there … in the diary … she’s seen the diary …”

  Carrie came into the corridor, wrapping an old dressing gown about her, her hair in a plait tied with a red tape.

  “Carrie,” I shouted. “My room’s on fire. Phone the fire brigade quickly.”

  “Carrie! Carrie! She … knows …” moaned Barbarina.

  I gripped Carrie’s arm. “Show me where the phone is. There’s no time to lose. We must all get out of the house. Don’t you understand?”

  Still gripping Carrie I pulled her downstairs. I did not look back, being certain that Barbarina, knowing the intensity of the fire she had started, would follow us.

  I never saw Barbarina again. By the time we had phoned for the brigade, the top floor was a mass of flame. All I knew was that Barbarina did not follow us downstairs. I have always believed that, rudely shaken out of her dream world, she had had no thought of anything but the incriminating diary. To her it represented the only way of remembering what had actually happened; and to have lost it would have been to have lost touch with the past. Unbalanced as she was, she had made a futile attempt to save it. I do not like to think what happened to Barbarina when she burst into that room which by then must have been a roaring furnace.

  It was nearly an hour before the fire brigade reached the isolated manor house and by that time it was too late to save it. It was not until we had telephoned for the brigade and the Hansons had arrived that we missed Barbarina. Hanson bravely went up to try to rescue her. We had to prevent Carrie from dashing into the flames to bring out her mistress, for we knew it was hopeless.

  Looking back it is hard to remember the sequence of events. But I do remember sitting in the Hansons’ cottage drinking tea which Mrs. Hanson brought to me, when suddenly I heard a familiar voice.

  “Roc!” I cried and ran to him; we just stood together clinging.

  And this was a Roc I had never known before because I had never seen him clearly through the fog of suspicion which surrounded him—strong in his power to protect, weak in his anxiety over my safety, ready to do battle with the powers of darkness for my sake yet terrified for fear some harm should come to me.

  SEVEN

  It is a year since that night and yet the memory of it is with me as vividly as when it happened. Perhaps, if one has come near to violent death, as I did, it is an experience which is never far from the surface of the mind.

  I often say to Roc: “If it hadn’t been that I was so absorbed in the diary I should have drunk all the milk; I should have been unconscious when Barbarina came into my room and that would have been the end of me.” To that Roc answers: “All life is chance. If your father had never come to our coast, you would not have been here at all.”

  And it is so.

  It is difficult to understand everything that went on in Barbarina’s mind; I am sure that for much of the time she believed she was Deborah. She could never have played the part so well if she had not; and her character must have changed after Deborah died so that she really did take on the personality of her twin. The more she behaved like Deborah, the more like her she grew, just as Deborah, when Petroc became her lover, began to be like Barbarina. The curse laid on the Brides of Pendorric became an obsession with her. It may have been that she believed Deborah’s spirit had actually entered her body, and that she had become Deborah; and because she constantly thought of the sister whom she had sent to her death, she believed she was haunted by her and it was for this reason that she was anxious for another bride to take over the role of ghost at Pendorric.

  But how can one follow the tortuous meandering of a sick mind?

  My conjectures must have an element of truth in them, though, because there was no doubt that I had been in danger from the moment I had come to Pendorric.

  Poor simple-minded Carrie, who had always been dominated by her charges, was easily caught up in this morbid dream life of her mistress: Barbarina and Deborah were one and the same; and Carrie believed it, while she alone knew that the twin who had fallen to her death in the hall at Pendorric was Deborah. At times she could not understand Barbarina’s interpretation of this strange phenomenon; namely that Deborah’s mind and soul were now with Barbarina. Carrie could only accept this by telling herself that the two of them were really alive.

  It was from Carrie that we gleaned a little understanding of Barbarina’s madness; but the years during which she had devoted herself to Barbarina and her crazy conception of life had undermined her own sanity and Roc was anxious that she should not be upset. He sent her away in the care of an old nanny of his who had a cottage on the Devon coast and there she is now.

  It was not so easy with Hyson, for Barbarina had tried to draw the child into her orbit. She saw in Lowella and Hyson a repetition of herself and Deborah; and because for most of the time she believed she was Deborah, she had great sympathy for the less attractive twin. Barbarina’s affection for the child was deep and possessive and Hyson was fascinated by the strangeness of Barbarina, who revealed herself more to the child than to anyone else. Hyson did not understand, but she was aware of the strangeness, and like Barbarina, learned to project herself into that make-believe world; Barbarina had hinted that she still lived and Hyson believed her; she believed that Barbarina would lure me to my death so that she might rest in her grave, according to the legend.

  It was from Carrie we learned that Barbarina had sometimes gone to the music room and played the violin, and that she sang Ophelia’s song; and that it was she who had waited for me to leave Polhorgan and had removed the sign on the cliffs in the hope that I, less sure-footed than those accustomed to the path, would have a fatal accident. She it was who had locked me in the vault, for the only other key to the vault had been in her possession; she had often paid secret visits to the vault as, according to Carrie, she told her she wanted to be with Barbarina. She would never have come to the vault had not Hyson been missing and she, guessing where she was, had decided to abandon that method of disposing of me, for the sake of the child. She had quietly unlocked the door before going to find Roc. Then she had tampered with the car and chance again had stepped in so that it was Morwenna who had had an accident.

  Often I reflect how easily the legend of the brides might have gone on and on; for few people can have come as near to death as I did, and escape. If Barbarina had been a cold-blooded murderess, I should never have escaped; but she was not that; if she had been, she would have planned more carefully; but she was caught in her world of make-believe; she was living on two levels and she could not see where reality and the dream world merged. I discovered that she had trunks of Deborah’s clothes and often wore them when she was in Devon. The Hansons were not aware of this, never having known Deborah, and when Carrie called her Barbarina they merely thought that Carrie was a little weak in the head. And Barbarina could lightly step back into the character of Deborah to assure them that this was so.