Witchfog

by Isobel Robertson

  I hardly dared touch any of the heaviest stones, too afraid of what I might find beneath. I still could not erase the image of crushed bodies and bloodied limbs. Theo handled the heavy lifting, working his way steadily from one end of the building to the other, then doubling back on himself. I followed behind, hunting through the rest of the dust and chaos as we wound backwards and forwards.

  We took a short break in the early afternoon, returning to the cart to eat the sandwiches that Elspeth had so helpfully packed for us. And then we resumed our work, picking up the search at the spot where we left off. We examined the stone and waste in silence, with no conversation to lighten the mood. In truth, I no longer knew what to say to the man who toiled alongside me. He had worked so hard to help me, and what had I given him in return?

  By the time evening stretched the shadows of the orchard’s trees, my back ached and my eyes were sore from squinting into the rubble. I straightened up with a groan, my hands instinctively going to support my lower back. Every inch of me felt sore.

  “We’ll find nothing else today,” Theo said, his voice grim. “We can return when the sun comes up tomorrow, if you like. But the light will be too poor to continue the search today.”

  I sighed. “Let us return to the inn. Perhaps we can discuss our options on the way.”

  I barely knew whether I wished to spend another day searching. Was there any hope of finding this stone? Had there ever been any hope, beyond a foolish quest for the impossible?

  We made our way home shrouded in yet more uncomfortable silence. I was still aware of the heat of Theo’s leg as he sat far too close to me. Still aware of his dark gaze fixed blankly on the horizon ahead of us. But I felt more confused than ever before. What should I say to him? What should I do? I had spoken the truth about my age, and the need for Daniel’s permission, yet I knew somehow that it was not enough. Theo wanted more from me. But what could I give him?

  The Earl

  We returned to an inn courtyard that seemed surprisingly full of bustle for the late hour. Theo swung down off the cart with a frown, handing the horse’s reins to a stable boy. He strode forwards, no doubt intending to discover the source of the fuss.

  But I realised a moment before he did.

  An elegant couple stood in the courtyard, the man neat in a navy coat and gleaming top hat, the woman beautifully dressed in rich turquoise. They had turned to face the noise of Theo’s cart, and I could not keep the shock from my face. Daniel and Alexandra had come to find me.

  I threw myself from the cart, stumbling towards them. My guardian wrapped his arms around me, pulling me close against him as Alexandra kissed my hair. I almost sobbed with relief to have them here with me.

  “What are you doing here?” I managed, breaking away to stare up at Daniel.

  “You can’t imagine that I would ignore all your worries!” he said, his face carved with more concern than I remembered seeing before.

  “When he told me what he had seen, I suggested that we journey north straight away,” Alexandra said, her voice too low for any onlooker to overhear. I met her eyes and smiled shakily. My erstwhile governess must have worried for my safety, alone and so far from home.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” I said, my eyes welling with tears. “The last few days have been terrible - did Elspeth tell you about Sir Philip?”

  “The landlady told us the barest details,” Alexandra said, her eyes full of compassion. “Perhaps you can tell us the full story over dinner. We should be settled in a room shortly, along with a private parlour. I fear that our sudden arrival may have sent the landlady running off in something of a panic.”

  “You need not fear,” I said. “She is an extremely competent lady. And I would love to join you for dinner.”

  Dare I ask? Dare I set this in motion.

  “There is someone else who might join us,” I began, but Daniel was paying no attention, gazing over my shoulder with something that looked like shock.

  “Good Lord, is that Amberson? I’ve not seen him since we were at school together. Amberson, man, what are you doing here?”

  I turned slowly, painfully, as if my body feared to let me realise the truth. Theo stood behind me, frozen in the act of crossing the courtyard back to the cart.

  “Did you ever meet my ward, Lady Lily Gabriel?” Daniel asked. “But of course, you wouldn’t have. It’s been an age since you were last in London. Lily, please let me present an old acquaintance. This is Theodoric Amberson, Earl of Seafield. Amberson, it’s been years since I last saw you. What on earth are you doing here?”

  I couldn’t breathe. What did Daniel mean? Had he mistaken Theo for someone else? But I saw in Theo’s eyes that this was no misunderstanding.

  “Daniel Quiller, it’s good to see you,” he said at last, his voice more cultured than I had heard it before. “I own property in the area. Close local ties, you might say.”

  “I think I remember that now,” Daniel said, his voice easy and relaxed. “A grandfather, wasn’t it? You used to speak of him at school.”

  “That is correct,” Theo said politely.

  They made small talk for a few moments longer, the words skimming past me like water rolling off a stone. Theo was not a servant. Theo was an earl. And he had not told me.

  The Funeral

  The next day dawned bright and clear. Too bright, I felt, for a funeral. Elspeth had found a pair of black dresses for me and Alexandra to wear. They were surprisingly high in quality for an innkeeper’s widow. More appropriate for an earl’s sister, I supposed.

  I had discussed the truth of their identity with neither Theo nor Elspeth. I could not face it. Not now.

  We took Daniel’s carriage to the church, a small stone building a few miles away from the Hall. There were no other mourners. Having left all the arrangements to Theo, I did not know whether no one had been invited, or no one wished to come. It hardly seemed to matter.

  A short sermon, a few prayers, and we watched as Sir Philip’s coffin was lowered into the ground beside his parents. The last of his line. I supposed that I probably owned Killston Hall now, with no nearer relatives still living. My man of business could take care of it as he took care of all my other properties. I would not need to ever remember it existed.

  We returned to the inn once the first handful of dirt was tossed over the coffin. Theo remained behind, working alongside the gravedigger. What sort of earl carried out that manual labour himself? He still made no sense to me.

  “I am so sorry about Sir Philip,” Elspeth said softly in a rare quiet moment that afternoon, as I sat alone at a table in the common room.

  “Thank you,” I replied, not lifting my eyes from my teacup. Daniel and Alexandra had disappeared to their room sometime earlier, and I suspected that they had forgotten all about me.

  Elspeth slid into the chair beside me and I realised that she was about to broach topics I did not wish to discuss.

  “Theo told me what your guardian said yesterday, in the courtyard,” she began.

  “Don’t,” I said. “I have no interest in the issue. It is irrelevant.”

  “Irrelevant to what?” Elspeth asked, a hint of her brother’s sarcasm in her tone. “Lily, I know that you must be confused and angry, but you have to give Theo another chance. Let him explain everything.”

  “Your family affairs are hardly my concern,” I said in my best polite society voice. I knew not a trace of emotion showed on my face. “Tomorrow, I will leave for London and my normal life. I will forget everything I did here, and everyone I met.”

  I lifted my eyes defiantly - only to meet the gaze of Theo, who stood in the doorway of the common room. I could tell from his expression that he had heard my words. Silently, he turned and left. I almost sprang after him - but no. Why should I be ashamed of my words? They were nothing but the truth. Whatever the reason behind Theo’s strange secrets and convoluted history, I wanted no part of it.

  “Please excuse me,” I said politely to Elspeth. “
I find myself with rather a headache. I will retire for the rest of the afternoon, I think. Please have a maid summon me for dinner.”

  With a bright smile, I swept past her and up to my room. I heard Alexandra and Daniel giggling and talking through the thin wall. I would not disturb them. Instead, I pulled off my boots and lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. How long would it take to forget my experiences in Yorkshire? How long before I met another man and Theo’s face faded from my mind?

  A witch-hunting, grave-digging earl who worked as a servant. Whose sister was an innkeeper’s widow and worked for a living. How had they kept their identities secret from this entire community? More importantly, why? I could not imagine choosing to live as a servant. Even if they were impoverished, as was hardly uncommon amongst the upper classes, surely Elspeth could have married for money.

  I felt a shiver. Had Theo been after my money all this time? Had his entire guise been a way to get close to me, to seduce me into marrying him?

  No. Ridiculous. Whatever lies he had told me, I could not believe he ever intended to take advantage of my wealth. If only I knew what he had intended.

  Leave-Taking

  At last, the time had come to leave. My weeks in Yorkshire had proved eventful in ways I could never have foreseen. I would return to London a changed woman.

  Alexandra oversaw the packing of the coach, directing servants to place my luggage alongside her own. We would be rather cramped for the return journey, but that was my own fault for not bringing a coach on this ridiculous expedition. It had rained overnight, leaving the inn courtyard covered with mud, so I remained inside until the last moment, unwilling to ruin my last good pair of shoes. Thank goodness I had dozens more pairs at home.

  I offered my goodbyes as politely as possible, surprised when Elspeth swept me into a tight hug.

  “Please think about forgiving him,” she whispered in my ear, then let me go and stepped back.

  Theo moved forwards, his steps more awkward and hesitant than I expected.

  “Farewell, Lady Lily,” he said softly.

  “Farewell… Lord Theodoric,” I replied. He flinched, and I instantly regretted the words.

  “Theo,” I corrected myself. “Farewell, Theo. You have my undying gratitude for all you have done.”

  He smiled, the expression a sad one. “You need not fear that my assistance is at an end. I will make sure that Killston Hall is taken care of. You will, I assume, be its next owner.”

  “I expect so,” I said. “But I doubt I will visit. Your help would certainly be appreciated.”

  “Of course,” Theo said.

  The silence stretched out for a few moments as we gazed into each other’s eyes. My mouth seemed empty of words, my throat too dry to speak. And what was there to say? The end had finally arrived.

  “We must be going,” Daniel said. “A pleasure seeing you again, Amberson.”

  Theo tipped his hat politely. Then, to my surprise, he took my hand and kissed my fingers, as perfectly mannered as if he stood in a London ballroom.

  “Until we meet again, Lady Lily.”

  And then we were off, the carriage rolling along down the road, bumping over every muddy hole. I forced my gaze forwards, not looking through the window to see if Theo watched us as we went. I would rather not know.

  Frustration

  As my butler opened the door to my home and ushered me inside, I felt a strange wave of sadness. The elegant building seemed exactly as I left it, and yet it was not the same. Or perhaps, more likely, I had changed.

  I drifted up to my bedroom, marvelling at the light and colour. So different from the dour darkness of Killston Hall and the simplicity of Theo’s cottage. I suspected that it would take me a while to settle back into such luxurious living.

  “Has all been well while I was away?” I asked the maid who poured out my bathwater in front of the fire. She jumped visibly, splashing a little water over the side of the bath.

  “Yes, my lady,” she said, darting a wide-eyed glance at me. “All has continued as before.”

  As I dismissed her, I took a second to ponder on my behaviour. What sort of mistress was I that the servants jumped when I spoke to them? I had never been cruel, that I knew for sure, but I did not go out of my way to be kind. With a sharp stab of guilt, I realised that I did not even know the maid’s name. I would have to learn.

  But first, my bath. I sank into the hot water gratefully, letting the fragrant steam curl around me. My lady’s maid, Deborah, whisked my suitcase away, muttering over the state of the remaining dresses, and leaving me utterly alone to dream.

  For the entire journey back to London, Daniel had talked of nothing other than our failed experiment. Where else might the stone be? What clues might we have missed? I tried to turn my thoughts to those problems, but I seemed to have lost all control and discipline over my mind. Instead, I kept thinking of Theo. His dark eyes, his gentle hands, his determination to save me from my own narrow-mindedness. Without Theo, where would I be now? Dead in a moorland ditch somewhere, perhaps, or doing some mysterious dark deeds as the unwitting servant of the witches. I owed him so much.

  When I heard the murmur of voices downstairs, I almost groaned. Had it taken so little time for Daniel to return home and come to pay a visit? He was indeed obsessed.

  I pulled myself up out of the tub and grabbed my dressing gown from where it lay draped over the screen. I should not have sent the maid away, although at least I now had far more experience in bathing and drying myself.

  Wrapping the robe around me, I hovered in the corridor for the moment. The downstairs footman spotted me and tipped his hat. I smiled at him. Daniel was family, or near enough; I had no qualms about appearing in front of him while so informally dressed. Any other visitor, however, would have required that I spend a good fifteen minutes readying myself for company, a fact which my staff knew well.

  “Pray excuse me, but what is your name again?” I asked the footman as I passed him.

  “Adam, my lady,” he said with a bow.

  I nodded, trying to commit his name to memory.

  “Thank you for your thoughtfulness, Adam. And the girl who brought up my bathwater?”

  “Lucy, my lady. A good girl.”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” I murmured, then continued on past him, following the faint sound of voices.

  Daniel had ensconced himself in the pink drawing room, a tea tray already resting on the table beside him. There was no sign of Alexandra, which surprised me. Although she spent most of her time at Daniel’s house, she did still officially hold a position as my governess. Accordingly, she kept up the facade of residing in my townhouse.

  Coming to his feet, Daniel swept straight into an elegant bow and kissed my fingers. Catching my expression, he laughed and hugged me tightly instead.

  “It’s good to have you home, Lily. Alex sends her regards; she intended to join us here for tea, but she found herself rather exhausted. She is spending the afternoon in bed.”

  “A shame,” I said, ringing for a second tea tray.

  “Perhaps not,” Daniel said, his voice a little odd.

  I frowned as I looked at him. What on earth could he mean? It seemed that the mysteries and puzzles were not to stop just because I had returned home.

  “We can delay until tomorrow if you are too tired from the journey,” Daniel said. “But I hoped that we could immediately begin the work of searching for the stone. Examine Monsieur Lavelle’s notes and your own family papers. That sort of thing.”

  A few weeks earlier, he would not have even needed to make such a suggestion. I would have been in the library already, hunting through everything I could find in a desperate attempt to crack the code. But, somehow, the appeal of achieving the impossible seemed to be fading with each day.

  “We should not hold our hopes up too high,” I warned softly. “He is dead, Daniel. We may not be able to change that.”

  “We must try,” he said stubbornly. “And where is the
Lily who never leaves a challenge uncompleted?”

  I laughed at that.

  “I suppose I must accept this challenge. Let us finish our tea, and then we will begin the search.”

  First, we tried our master’s notes. There was nothing to find in them, but that came as no surprise; we had read them through a thousand times already. We knew everything that he had committed to writing. Next, my own family papers. If we had been led to Killston Hall, perhaps another scrap of evidence could lead us to the stone’s true home. But with such an array of assorted papers - letters, diaries, event invitations, business receipts - saved over decades, it posed a monumental challenge indeed.

  That first day back at home, we worked right through into the night. Formal dinner was not served; instead, I requested a tray in the library. We did not stop until midnight, by which time I could barely keep my eyes open well enough to read.

  “Tomorrow,” I told Daniel. “And bring Alexandra. We’ll need her.”

  By the time I awoke and breakfasted the next morning, Daniel had already arrived and settled in the library. A substantial pile beside him suggested that he had not slept. Still no Alexandra, which brought my frown back. Had she and Daniel quarrelled? Was he reluctant to involve her in this entire experiment? I hoped that there was no rift developing in their relationship; I loved them both.

  That day once again faded into nigh, without a single mention of the stone found anywhere in the papers. Once, triumphant, Daniel leapt to his feet, only to realise he held the very same document that had led me to Killston Hall in the first place. He slumped back into his chair.

  By the third day, we were running out of family papers, and I was ready to admit defeat.