The Ladies of Grace Adieu

by Susanna Clarke

  Yet there was something; at the one end of the lawn stood a round tower built of ancient-looking, grey stones, with battlements at the top and three dark slits for windows very high up. It was quite a tall tower, but in spite of its height it was overtopped by a monstrous hedge of pale roses that stood behind it and she could not rid herself of the idea that the tower was actually very tiny – a tower for an ant or a bee or a bird.

  "I suppose it is that monstrous hedge that confuses one. It must be a summerhouse. I wonder how you get inside – I do not see a door. Oh! Someone is playing a pipe! Yet there is no one here. And now a drum! How odd it is that I cannot see who is playing! I wonder if… Two steps forward, curtsey and turn…

  The words came from nowhere into her head and the steps came from nowhere into her feet. She began to dance and was not at all surprized to find that, at the appropriate moment, someone took her outstretched hand.

  Someone was crying very quietly and, just as before, Mr Hawkins knelt by Venetia 's chair and washed her feet.

  "And yet," she thought, "they will never be clean if he washes them in blood."

  The water in the basin was bright red.

  "Fanny," said Venetia.

  The crying stopt and a small sound – something between a squeak and a sniff – seemed to shew that Fanny was nearby. "Fanny, is it evening?" "It is dawn," said Fanny. "Oh!"

  The curtains in Fanny's parlour were drawn back, but in the grey light of early dawn they had lost all their primrose colour. And everything outside the window – Fanny's vegetable-garden, Robin Tolliday's barn, John Harker's field, God's sky, England 's clouds – all could be seen with perfect clarity but all had lost their colour as if all were made of grey water. Fanny began to cry again. "Perhaps she is in pain," thought Venetia, "for there is certainly a pain somewhere."

  "Fanny?" she said.

  "Yes, my love?"

  "I am very tired, Fanny."

  Then Fanny said something which Venetia did not hear and Venetia turned her head and when she opened her eyes she was in bed and Fanny was sitting in the wicker-chair, mending a hole in Mr Hawkins' shirt, and the curtains were drawn against the bright sunshine.

  "Oh, Venetia!" said Fanny with a sigh and a despairing shake of her head. "Where in the world have you been? And what in the world have you been doing?"

  It was not the sort of question that expected an answer but Venetia attempted one anyway; "I remember that I drank a glass of wine at Mr Grout's house, but I told him very plainly that I must come home, for I knew you were waiting for me. Did I not come home, Fanny?"

  "No, Venetia," said Fanny, "you did not." And Fanny told Venetia how she and Mr Hawkins and their neighbours had searched through the night, and how, just before dawn, John Harker and George Buttery had looked into the churchyard and seen the pale shape of Venetia 's gown billowing out in the darkness. She had been under the big yew tree, turning and turning and turning, with her arms spread wide. It had taken both of them holding tight on to her to make her stop.

  "Two pairs of shoes," sighed Fanny, "one entirely gone and the other in tatters. Oh, Venetia! Whatever were you thinking of?"

  Venetia must have fallen asleep again for when she woke it seemed to be late evening. She could hear the clatter of plates as Fanny got the supper ready downstairs; and as Fanny went back and forth between parlour and kitchen she talked to Mr Hawkins: "… and if it should come to that, she shall not be sent to the madhouse – I could not bear that she should go to one of those horrid places and be ill-treated. No, indeed! Take warning, Mr Hawkins, that I expressly forbid it…"

  "As if he would suggest such a thing!" thought Venetia. "So good as he is to me."

  "… I dare say that mad people are no more expensive to keep than sane ones – except perhaps in the articles of medicines and restraining chairs."

  Early next morning Fanny, Venetia and Mr Hawkins were at breakfast in the parlour when there was a loud knocking at the door. Fanny went to the door and returned in a moment with Mr Grout, who wasted no time upon apologies or explanations but immediately addressed Venetia in accents of great displeasure.

  "Young lady! I am expressly sent to you by Mrs Mabb who has bid me tell you that she will not have you creeping around and around her house!"

  "Ha!" cried Venetia, so loudly that Fanny started.

  "Mrs Mabb's relations and dependants," continued Mr Grout with a severe look at Venetia 's exulting expression, "have all been frightened out of their wits by your odd behaviour. You have given her aged uncles bad dreams, made the children afraid to go asleep at night and caused the maids to drop the china upon the floor. Mrs Mabb says that there is not one complete dinner service left in the house! She says that the butter will not come in the churns because you have given her cows malicious looks – Miss Moore, will you stop tormenting this lady?"

  "Let her give up Captain Fox to me," said Venetia, "and she shall never hear of me again."

  "Oh, Venetia!" cried Fanny.

  "But young lady!" cried Mr Grout. "It is Mrs Mabb that the Captain loves. As I think I have explained to you before, Mrs Mabb is as fair as the apple-blossom that hangs upon the bough. One glance of Mrs Mabb's eyes…"

  "Yes, yes! I know!" cried Venetia impatiently. "You told me all that before! But it is just so much nonsense! It is me the Captain loves. Had it been otherwise he would have told me so himself – or at least sent me a letter – but I have neither seen nor heard any thing of him since I returned from Manchester. Oh! Do not tell me that Mrs Mabb forbade him to come or some such other foolishness – Captain Fox is not the man to be dissuaded from doing his duty by any body. No, depend upon it, this is another trick of Mrs Mabb's."

  "Young lady!" cried Mr Grout, very much appalled. "It ill becomes a young person of no consequence, such as yourself, to go about slandering great people in all the dignity of their property!"

  "Mr Grout!" cried Fanny, unable to keep silent a moment longer. "Do not speak to her so! Use milder language to her, sir, I beg you! Can you not see that she is ill? I am, of course, extremely sorry that Mrs Mabb should have been put to any inconvenience by Venetia's going to the house – though I must say you make a great piece of work of it – and merely remark, in justice to Venetia, that all these cows and uncles must be extraordinarily nervous creatures to have been put in such a pickle by a poor, sick girl looking at them! But I tell you what I shall do. To keep her from wandering abroad and causing further nuisance to our neighbours I shall hide the green slippers the Purvises gave her – which are the only shoes she has – where she cannot find them and then, you know," Fanny concluded triumphantly, "she must remain at home!"

  Mr Grout looked at Venetia as though hopeful that she would admit defeat.

  But Venetia only said sweetly, "You have my answer, sir, and I advise you to go and deliver it. I dare say Mrs Mabb does not tolerate procrastination."

  For the next two days Venetia waited for an opportunity to go in search of Mrs Mabb but in all this time Fanny neither left her alone nor answered any of her inquiries about Mrs Mabb. But on the third day Fanny was called away after dinner to take some elderflower tea and peppermint cordial and other remedies to John Harker's maid who had a bad cold. As Fanny went up Church-lane to Harker's farm it seemed probable that among the things her basket contained were the green silk dancing slippers, for when Venetia came to look for them she could not find them anywhere.

  So she wrapped her feet up in rags and went anyway.

  In a golden light, by what the inhabitants of Kissingland were pleased to call a river and which other, less partial people would probably have called a stream, in a fresh green meadow, beneath blossoming May-trees, some children were playing. One boy with a tin whistle was the Duke of Wellington, another boy with a drum was the entire British army and four little girls in grass-stained gowns of blossom-coloured muslin gave a lively portrayal of the ferocity and indomitable spirit of Napoleon and his French generals.

  By the time Venetia passed by in the la
ne in search of Mrs Mabb her feet were very sore. She thought she would stop and bathe them; but as she went down to the river the two boys began to play a melancholy air upon the whistle and the drum.

  Upon the instant Venetia was seized by a terror so blind that she scarcely knew what she did. When she recovered herself she found that she was holding fast to the hand of a most surprized little girl of eight or nine years of age.

  "Oh! I beg your pardon. It was only the music that frightened me," she said; and then, as the girl continued to stare at her in astonishment, she added, "I used to be so fond of music you see, but now I do not care for it at all. Whenever I hear a pipe and drum I am certain that I shall be compelled to dance for ever and ever without stopping. Does not it strike you that way some-times?"

  The little girls looked very much amazed but did not answer her. Their names were Hebe, Marjory, Joan and Nan, but as to which was which Venetia had not the least idea in the world. She bathed her feet and lay down to rest – for she was still very weak – in the sweet green grass. She heard Hebe, Marjory, Joan or Nan observe to the others that Miss Moore had, as was well known, run mad for the love of handsome Captain Fox.

  The little girls had got some daisies to pull apart and as they did so they made wishes. One wished for a sky-blue carriage spotted with silver, another to see a dolphin in Kissingland river, one to marry the Archbishop of Canterbury and wear a diamond-spangled mitre (which she insisted she would be entitled to do as an Archbishop's wife though the others were more doubtful), and one that there would be bread and beef dripping for her supper.

  "I wish to know where I may find Mrs Mabb's house," said Venetia.

  There was a silence for a moment and then either Hebe, Marjory, Joan or Nan remarked contemptuously that every one knew that.

  "Every one, it seems, but me," said Venetia to the blue sky and the sailing clouds.

  "Mrs Mabb lives at the bottom of Billy Little's garden," said another child.

  "Behind a great heap of cabbage leaves," said a third.

  "Then I doubt that we can mean the same person," said Venetia, "Mrs Mabb is a very fine lady as I understand."

  "Indeed, she is," agreed the first, "the finest lady that ever there was. She has a coachman…"

  "… a footman…"

  "… a dancing master…"

  "… and a hundred ladies-in-waiting…"

  "… and one of the ladies-in-waiting has to eat the dull parts of Mrs Mabb's dinner so that Mrs Mabb only ever has to eat roast pork, plum-cake and strawberry jam…"

  "I see," said Venetia.

  "… and they all live together at the bottom of Billy Little's garden."

  "Do not they find that rather inconvenient?" asked Venetia, sitting up.

  But Hebe, Marjory, Joan and Nan could not suppose that there would be any particular inconvenience attached to a residence at the bottom of Billy Little's garden. However, they were able to provide Venetia with the further information that Mrs Mabb drank her breakfast coffee out of an acorn-cup, that her chamberlain was a thrush and her coachman a blackbird and that she herself was "about the size of a pepper-pot".

  "Well," said Venetia, "what you tell me is very strange, but no stranger than many of the things that have happened to me recently. Indeed it seems to me to be all of a piece with them – and so perhaps you will have the goodness to shew me where I may find this curious house."

  "Oh!" said one child, clapping her hand to her mouth in alarm.

  "You had much better not," said another kindly.

  "She could turn you into butter," said a third.

  "Which might melt," observed the fourth.

  "Or a pudding."

  "Which might get eaten."

  "Or a drawing of yourself on white paper."

  "Which someone might set fire to, you know, without meaning to."

  But Venetia insisted upon their taking her to Mrs Mabb's house straight away, which at length they agreed to do.

  Billy Little was an ancient farm labourer of uncertain temper who lived in a tumbledown cottage in Shilling-lane. He was at war with all the children of Kissingland and all the children of Kissingland were at war with him. His garden was at the back of the cottage and Venetia and Hebe, Marjory, Joan and Nan were obliged to bend low to creep past his uncurtained window.

  Someone was standing on the window-sill. She wore a brightly coloured gown, and had a cross expression upon her face.

  "There you are, at last!" said Venetia. She straightened herself and addressed this lady in the following words: "Now, madam! If I might trouble you to answer one or two questions…"

  "Where are you going?" hissed Hebe, Marjory, Joan or Nan and took hold of Venetia by her gown and pulled her down again.

  "Oh! Do you not see?" said Venetia. "Mrs Mabb is just above us, on the window-sill."

  "That is not Mrs Mabb!" whispered Hebe, Marjory, Joan or Nan. "That is only Billy Little's Betsy-jug, with his Toby-jug beside it."

  Venetia popped her head back up, and this time she observed the china lady's china husband. The couple were indeed jugs for they had large handles sticking out of their backs.

  "Oh! very well," said Venetia, crossly.

  "But," she thought to herself, "I have half a mind to push her off the window-sill anyway – for it is my opinion that, where Mrs Mabb is concerned, you never can tell."

  Beyond the heap of cabbage leaves and other dark, decaying matter, the path led past a sad-looking pond and up a steep bank. At the top of the bank was a smooth expanse of bright green grass, at one end of which a dozen or so tall stones and slates were piled together. It was possible they were intended for a bee-hive, but it was equally possible that they were simply left over from some ancient wall. Tall flowers grew behind them – meadowsweet, cow parsley and buttercups – so that it was the easiest thing in the world to fancy one was looking at a tower or castle-keep on the edge of an ancient wood.

  "Now this is odd," said Venetia, "for I have seen this place before. I know I have."

  "There she is!" cried one of the children.

  Venetia looked round and thought she saw a quivering in the air. "A moth," she thought. She approached and the shadow of her gown fell across the stones. A dark, damp chill hung about them, which the sunlight had no power to dissipate. She stretched out her hands to break apart Mrs Mabb's house, but upon the instant a pale-green something – or a pale-green someone – flew out of a gap in the stones and sprang up into the sunlight – and then another, and another – and more, and more, until the air seemed crowded with people, and there was a strange glitter all around, which Venetia associated with the sight of sunlight glinting on a thousand swords. So rapid was the manner in which they darted about that it was entirely impossible to hold any of them in one's gaze for more than a moment, but it seemed to Venetia that they rushed upon her like soldiers who had planned an ambush.

  "Oh!" she cried. "Oh! You wicked creatures! You wicked, wicked creatures!"; and she snatched them out of the sparkling air and crushed them in her hands. Then it seemed to Venetia that they were dancing, and that the steps of their dance were the most complicated ever invented and had been devised on purpose to make her mad; so she took great pleasure in knocking them to the ground and treading upon their pale green clothes. But, though she was certain that some were killed and dozens of others were sent away injured, there never appeared to be any diminution in their number. Gradually the strength of her own passion began to exhaust her; she was sure she must sink to the ground. At that moment she looked up and saw, just beyond the battle's fray, the pale, heart-shaped face of a little girl and Venetia heard her say in a puzzled tone, "'Tis only butterflies, Miss Moore."

  Butterflies? she thought.

  "It was only butterflies, my love," said Fanny, smoothing Venetia 's cheek.

  She was in her own room, laid upon her own bed.

  "A cloud of pale-green butterflies," said Fanny. "Hebe, Marjory, Joan and Nan said that you were crying out at them and beating them do
wn with your fists and tearing them apart with your fingers until you fell down in a faint." Fanny sighed. "But I dare say you remember nothing about it."

  "Oh! But I remember perfectly well!" said Venetia. "Hebe, Marjory, Joan and Nan took me to Mrs Mabb's house, which as you may know is at the bottom of Billy Little's garden, and Captain Fox was inside it – or at least so I suppose – and had Mrs Mabb not sent the butterflies to prevent me, I would have fetched him out, and…"

  "Oh, Venetia!" cried Fanny in exasperation.

  Venetia opened her hand and found several fragments of a pale-green colour, like torn paper yet not half the thickness of paper and of no weight whatsoever: the broken remains of two or three butterflies.

  "Now I have you, Mrs Mabb," she whispered.

  She took a scrap of paper and folded the broken butterflies up inside it. Upon the outside she wrote, "For Mrs Mabb".

  It was not difficult for Venetia to prevail upon Mr Hawkins (who loved her dearly and who was particularly anxious about her at this period) to deliver the folded paper to Mr Grout.

  Next morning Venetia waited hopefully for the return of Captain Fox. When he did not appear she determined to go in search of him again – which both Fanny and Mr Hawkins seemed to have expected, for Fanny had hidden Venetia 's dancing slippers in an empty rabbit-hutch in the garden and Mr Hawkins had fetched them out again half an hour later. Mr Hawkins had placed them upon Venetia's bed, where Venetia found them at three o'clock, together with a page torn from Mr Hawkins's memorandum book upon which was drawn a map of Kissingland and the surrounding woods – and deep within those woods, the house of Mrs Mabb.

  Downstairs in the kitchen Mr Hawkins was blacking Fanny's boots and – what was very strange – doing it very ill, so that Fanny was obliged to stand over him and scold him about it. She never heard Venetia slip out of the front door and run down the lane.

  The map shewed Mrs Mabb's house to be much deeper in the woods than Venetia had ever gone before. She had walked for an hour or so – and was still some way off from Mrs Mabb's house – when she came to a wide glade surrounded by great oaks, beeches, elders and other sweet English trees. At the furthest end of this glade a cloud of insects rose up suddenly against the sunlit wood and a man appeared. But whether he had stepped out of the wood or out of the cloud of insects would have been impossible to say. His hair had the appearance of being a sort of reddish-brown, and he wore the blue coat and white britches of