Accursed Abbey: A Steamy Regency Gothic Romance (Nobles & Necromancy Book 1)

by Tessa Candle

  Elizabeth wished, as they ascended at a creeping pace and her headache grew more insistent, that she could retreat into slumber as her travelling companions had done. Then the vehicle stopped entirely.

  This could not be good news, for it was far too soon for them to have reached the first village. The others all remained asleep. She did not wake them, but, desperate for some cool air, she quitted the carriage to see what the matter was.

  She looked around for Tonner. He was at the head of the horses, and starting to lead them over to the side of the road nearest the rock face. The fog was rolling in thicker and thicker. Elizabeth surmised that he was forced to stop, for it would soon be impossible for him to see the road from the driver's seat. In fact, he did not seem to see Elizabeth.

  It would be some time before the fog lifted and they could proceed, so Elizabeth decided to walk and stretch her legs. The fresh air was already doing her headache some good, and she was loath to return to the stuffy carriage.

  She resolved to not stray too far. The fog was as thick as her mother's porridge. She smiled at the thought, and at the same time her heart clenched with a wretched spasm of loss. It was strange how these little memories came, unbidden.

  There was a tale that her mother had told her of how, as a little girl, she had one day awoke early and made porridge for her mother, Elizabeth’s grandmother, with the help of their cook. Elizabeth did not know what possessed her mother to make breakfast, nor had her mother ever hinted at an explanation. Her mother kept adding more and more oats, thinking that if some oats were good, more would make it better. The end result was entirely predictable, but Elizabeth's grandmother nonetheless ate the porridge happily.

  It was a funny little story and it circulated through the family, resulting in her father always saying, on foggy days, “This fog is as thick as your mother's porridge.”

  Such a sweet recollection—how could it make her so sad? Tears bloomed on the rims of Elizabeth's eyes. But she knew that tearfully was the only way she could recollect the happier days of her childhood, before her father's madness began.

  Just as she was thinking of turning back to retrace her steps, a glow in the mist caught her eye. She thought it might be some sort of trick of the light, but it looked like a fire. She drew closer and its amber light became more pronounced.

  She wondered who could possibly be out on the roadside lighting a fire in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps a peasant was out gathering mushrooms or firewood and decided to light a fire to keep the fog at bay until it lifted. She should not intrude upon this stranger, but Elizabeth could not help her curiosity.

  She drew nearer until she saw a woman's face, glowing by the light of the flames. She started. The face was her mother's. Elizabeth blinked, believing that the eerie half-light of the fog and the recent memory of her mother had her eyes playing tricks on her.

  As she peered again, stretching her face forward through the mist for a better look, the woman spoke. “Elizabeth, come. Do not be afraid.”

  “Mama, is it really you?” She thought she must be losing her wits.

  “It is I, as you can see. Only I do not have much time, so come sit with me while I tarry here in this earthly realm.”

  Elizabeth was too shocked even to cry. She made immediately for her mother's side and bent to embrace her.

  “No, my love. We cannot touch.”

  Elizabeth's hands fell to her sides in sad defeat. Had Orefados sent this dream to torment her? Had she been drugged again, somehow?

  Her mother seemed to read her thoughts. “I am not from that vile man.”

  “You know of him?”

  “He has played us all a wicked trick and dealt a mortal blow to our family. And now I see he wishes to ensnare you as well.”

  “When you say a mortal blow, mama, do you mean he has killed you and papa? But did you know him, then?”

  “We did not, but your father's enemy did. However, I must not speak of the things I have learned in the other realm. I am come to tell you of the things that I learned on earth.”

  “But tell me then, mama! I have so missed your kind counsel and have often wished that I had made better use of it, while I had it.”

  “My counsel is this: you must not blame yourself for what Orefados has done to persecute those you love. Other people are to blame for this, not you. And you must not believe the lies that he tells about me and about you. He is a crafter of lies. His traps are woven from them, and his bait is poisoned with them.”

  “But he says I am wed to him by his strange arts.”

  “You may despise to even honour such an assertion with any reply at all. Only know in your heart that it is not true, that it is so patently false as to render the effort of refutation utterly unnecessary. Now I must go.”

  Her mother's image began to grow faint and Elizabeth stretched out a hand to detain her. “I beg you, do not go. I miss you so, Mama.”

  As though she had not heard her daughter's plea, Elizabeth's mother proclaimed in a fading voice, “Say no more, 'The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge.'”

  Then she was gone. Elizabeth wept bitterly. What did that mean? How had she so failed as a daughter that she should be thus tormented? Why must she endure her loss all over again?

  A hand wiping a tear from her cheek roused her, and she opened her eyes to find herself in the carriage again. Mill was looking into her face with concern.

  He put an arm about her shoulders. “There now, my darling,” he cooed. “It was only a bad dream. You are safe here with me.”

  She buried her face in his chest and wept quietly, for the profound sadness of the dream remained in her heart, even at waking.

  Chapter 59

  Canterbourne was overcome with guilt as he tried to soothe Elizabeth. She had cried out for her mother in her sleep, and he was once again reminded of his father’s misdeeds. How she suffered for that evil, for the obsession that drove his father to destroy her parents with black magic, leaving their only child an orphan.

  In fact, her cries had awakened him from his own strange dream, though fortunately it did not feature a visit from his departed father. But it did feature Giuseppe, who had been admonishing him not to blame himself for the evil wrought by his father against Elizabeth's family, and further not to let his guilt make him hold secrets from his wife.

  But Canterbourne could not tell Elizabeth. It was as much to preserve her own peace of mind, as to preserve her good opinion of him. He wanted to protect her.

  He cursed himself for falling asleep when he should have been holding vigil, in case Orefados showed up.

  But then again, how could the mage catch them now? They had seen no sign of him yet, and by now they must surely have too great a lead. But even as he so reasoned, Canterbourne could not shake the feeling that he must be watchful, that they were not out of danger.

  Elizabeth—and the memory of the family his father had destroyed—were owed much. He would not fail her again by falling asleep on his watch, no matter how safe they seemed.

  She stirred from his chest and wiped her tears. “You must think me a great ninny, Mill. I am sorry. Only the dream seemed so real.”

  “I think nothing of the sort, my love.” He swept back a stray curl from her forehead. “I think you have the most tender, precious heart, and I adore you.” Her face seemed almost more tormented at these words. She must be thinking of all that had recently transpired. “After everything you have endured these past days, anyone's sleep would be disturbed.”

  She looked out the window then. “Is the fog gone?”

  “What fog?” He looked out the window. “Has there been fog?”

  “Oh, I must have dreamed it. Only it seemed so very real.”

  He wondered if he should pry. Lenore was still sleeping soundly, so he thought he might intrude enough to ask, “What happened in your dream, my love? I mean, if it is not too painful to speak of.”

  “I think it should relieve my feel
ings to share it with someone.”

  As she recounted the dream, Canterbourne paled. He could not say precisely why, because all dreams were odd, were they not? But this one struck him as particularly so. He was only slightly put at ease when Elizabeth told him of her mother's opposition to Orefados in the dream. This, at least, suggested that it was not some horrid trick from the mage. For otherwise it sounded so much like a fairy tale as to make Canterbourne suspicious.

  But he could hardly keep his countenance when she told him of her mother's words, that her father's enemy knew Orefados. Oh, if she knew who her father's enemy was! How differently would she look upon her husband, the spawn of her father's enemy, and the means by which this enemy paid for the wicked services of Orefados against her family.

  Then Elizabeth said, “And just before she left me, my mother said something very odd. It is from the bible, I believe. 'Do not say the fathers eat sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge.' Or something like it. Do you know that verse?”

  Canterbourne gasped. “Yes, I know it.” He had only just heard it recited to him. It could not be. How could the same biblical passage have been spoken in both of their dreams?

  “Mill, are you quite well? Whatever is wrong?”

  Should he tell her of his dream? Might it not lead her to think more deeply on the matter, to try to reason out who the father and the children might be, and who, indeed, had cultivated the sour grapes?

  “It is nothing, my love.” He kissed the top of her head. “It only surprised me, just now, to hear that scripture repeated to me. It is one that Giuseppe admonished me with.” It was sort of true, for Giuseppe had appeared to him in the dream and spoke those words.

  “Admonished you? To what undertaking?”

  “Well, let us say encouraged then. I believe he meant to fortify me against gloomy reflections upon my father's conduct.”

  Elizabeth seemed to accept the explanation, but fell silent. Canterbourne wondered if the apparition from her mother was a true communication, and if her mother would eventually tell Elizabeth the whole story.

  He shook his head. He did not believe in such things and he ought not let his guilt tease his fancy into a frenzy. He encircled Elizabeth in his arms and brooded guiltily upon how little he deserved her.

  Chapter 60

  It was on the third day of travel that they began to reach altitudes that made Elizabeth a little sick. Her own dark thoughts and the mercurial moods of Mill had not left her with much spirit. She was readily sunk low by a feeling of exhaustion, a complete intolerance for any wine or ale, and a profound craving for meat, as bloody as possible, though she could scarcely digest it when Mill ordered it for her at the inns along the way.

  As she sat in the inn where they had decided to stop for the night, and ate her dinner, almost without enjoyment, she contemplated their position.

  Lenore was determined to be cheerful and smiled whenever she was addressed, but when Elizabeth glanced at her in moments of repose, she could detect in Lenore a lingering anxiety and listlessness of spirit. She spent a great deal of time hovering over her rosary. And even Silverloo seemed uncharacteristically sober.

  There was, in fact, great reason for cheer, though none of them appeared to be sensible of it. They had seen no sign of Orefados, and it seemed impossible that he should ever catch them now.

  Still, they all apparently felt the improbability that he would let them go without giving chase. Elizabeth looked at the shadowed face of Mill and resolved that she must find some way of cheering him.

  “The mistress downstairs says that there is to be a travelling troupe entertaining in the public room this evening.” She smiled and straightened a little wayward curl at Mill's collar. “Shall we not partake of some amusement?”

  Lenore gave a look that showed she did not approve of public houses, but did not venture to offer any correction to Elizabeth, and merely bowed her head in acquiescence.

  Mill said, with a fond look that could not conceal a shadow of sadness, “Whatever will make my wife happy shall always be agreeable to me.”

  Elizabeth contented herself with this reply. She hoped that, although her scheme was received with so much indifference, it might yet lift the spirits of her loved ones, as soon as they were amid the gaiety and had something to distract them from relentless rumination.

  And so it was. The skirts and jackets of local costume, the warmth of a cheering fire and a danceable tempo combined with the lilt of the exotic and unfamiliar instrumentation was diverting enough that it elicited smiles from all the group.

  Elizabeth noted that whole families came to the little evening of diversion, not just men. This arrangement seemed to put Lenore at ease. And the children danced about merrily, giving as much entertainment as the musicians did, until they began to yawn. Then the musicians made room for a hobbling old storyteller, flamboyantly attired in a pumpkin orange dress and red head kerchief, who gathered the children around and began to tell tales.

  The dialect she spoke in was not comprehensible to Elizabeth, but Lenore understood it and translated as best she could.

  The story went thus. There was once a family of children so large and so predominantly naughty that the parents exhausted themselves with efforts to feed and discipline them. Mother and Father worked very hard every day, and when they came home from their little field, they usually found that their children had failed to do their chores and were up to some mischief. The weary parents had to spend their last reserves of energy spanking and chastising the bad children. Living thus had fairly worn out the poor parents, and Mother's health, in particular, was dwindling.

  One day she returned home early, for she was very ill. She found that her children, instead of attending their catechism as they should, had contrived to use the pages of their little book to kindle a fire, which gave them great amusement.

  Mother was aghast and immediately threw her taxed and worried frame into the task of extinguishing the flames before the whole house caught fire. The children laughed and made merry to see her rushing about.

  She went to take up water from the barrel, and found that her youngest had not refilled it, as was her duty. Then she went to the kitchen garden to take a bucket of soil, but found that the oldest children had not tilled the soil, as they had been bid, and there was only hard sod before her. She went to the laundry line to find a wet sheet, for surely her middle child had hung the washing. But no, this task had not been done either.

  Finally fearing that the house should burn and her children perish with it, the poor, frantic mother hurried as fast as her weakened frame would carry her and threw her body upon the flames to extinguish them.

  She put out the fire that her rotten children had started, but was burned so badly that she expired, just as her husband was returning home from the fields.

  From her last words and the sight before him, Father surmised who was responsible for the fire that his wife had died extinguishing. The children were frightened of his wrath and hid themselves from view.

  “That is right!” called out Father, addressing the shadows where he knew the accursed brats were concealed. “Hide yourself from me, for I do not wish to have another sight of you. You are undutiful, monstrous children, and you have killed your own mother with your evil works. For this, shall you surely go to the devil.”

  The children trembled with fear and began to think how they might escape.

  “But I shall not beat you, this time,” continued Father. “Instead, I shall let you leave my house. You may go and hide in the mountain caves and live on such sustenance as you can find and forage, but do not return here. For my part, I hope that the Goblin of the Mountain, who creeps here and there in the alpine tunnels, shall find you out, eat you and use your worthless hides to make leather for his boots.”

  Elizabeth looked around to see how the children might be receiving such a horrid story. They were smiling. They seemed not at all surprised, but enraptured, as if hearing a tale that they had
heard many times, but that nonetheless engrossed them. And though they were lulled by the knowledge of its end, they still strained toward it, as if there were some possibility that the old story should fly off course and dash over a great alpine cliff, instead of proceeding along its well-beaten path, as all knew it ought.

  Mill looked as though he were distracted, and Lenore was nodding soberly, as if to add her amen to the great moral truth that was to be taught in the tale.

  The end of the story was that the seven brothers went off to live a brutish existence among the caves, ever in fear of the Goblin of the Mountain. But the youngest daughter stayed behind and contritely took her punishment at her father's hand. She grew up a penitent and well behaved maiden, who worked very hard to run the household and never shirked her duties or omitted to pray fervently.

  As an afterword, when Father was dying, he had a vision of the seven brothers who had been captured by the goblin and locked in his larder. Father relented. The girl went forth and saved the brothers, with assistance from Frau Holle, a local minor deity, who approved of her devotion to duty and scripture. The youngest daughter brought the brothers back so that they might receive their father's forgiveness before he died.

  Upon receiving his forgiveness, the seven sons changed over from their brutish aspect into the clean and radiant physiognomy of Christian gentlemen, and the siblings all lived contentedly together ever after in dutiful hard work and harmonious devotion to God.

  It was not that Elizabeth disapproved of this ending, however conveniently syncretic. But she could not feel that the moral of the story justified the shocking content that led up to it. She thought it too horrifying a tale for the tender hearts and susceptible minds of children. And yet, the children were very far from being terrorized by it.

  They seemed happy to have heard it and yawned complacently as they were carried away by their mothers to sleep on or under the tables that had been pushed to the wall to make room for the dancing. They fell calmly into slumber, tucked under shawls, cloaks and rough blankets.