by G. P. Taylor
Bia looked at Jago, hers eyes asking what they should do.
‘We have to walk,’ Jago said. He looked into the car but could not see the man’s face.
‘Walk? Walk? I wouldn’t hear of it,’ the man said as the black car door opened automatically with a sudden click. ‘I insist that I give you a lift.’
‘Mr Draigorian told us to walk,’ Bia said as she tried to step back, only to become tangled in the hedge of spike strands from the brambles.
‘Draigorian would say that. I know him well enough and he would not mind if I took you there. Hugh Morgan is my son. You have nothing to fear.’
Jago peered into the darkness of the car. There on the leather seat was an old man. His face was thin and framed with long overgrown white eyebrows. His skin was sun-darkened and wrinkled.
‘You know Draigorian?’ Jago asked as the man smiled at him.
‘Longer than you could ever imagine,’ he replied, his bright blue eyes staring at Jago as if he were trying to peer inside his head. ‘Old friends, old, dear friends,’ he sighed.
‘I suppose …’ Jago said as Bia untangled herself from the thorns.
‘Of course. There shall be no suppose. Whilst I have petrol for this car it shall be used to the best of its ability and what finer thing than to give you both a lift to my son’s house.’ Morgan held out a welcoming hand. Without them seeing, the chauffeur had got from his seat and was now pushing them both towards the open door. ‘Quickly, quickly, Rathbone,’ Morgan said. ‘We are blocking the road.’
Jago looked back just as he was pushed into the car. The road was empty, desolate and overgrown. It didn’t look like the kind of lane that many cars would use.
‘Are you sure it’s all right?’ Bia asked as she was pushed onto the leather seat next to the old man, whilst Jago slumped on a fold-down shelf that came out of the compartment dividing the car.
‘Comfortable?’ the man asked as the car sped off. ‘I always love it when a journey is so wonderfully interrupted. I am Ezra Morgan – and you?’ he asked, staring at Jago.
‘Jago Harker, and this is –’
‘Biatra,’ Morgan answered. ‘You look so much like your mother. I do believe she was a friend of my son when they were younger. A shame how promising friendships can go the way of winter wisps.’
Ezra Morgan raised an eyebrow and laughed. The sunburnt creases of his face wrinkled deeply with his smile. Bia sighed and sank back into the leather seat and looked out of the window of the car. It was the first time she had ever been carried in such a machine. Once, when she was smaller, her father had taken her on a steam Sentinel autobus. It had drudged over the moors out of Whitby, its coal engine hissing and filling the road with steam. Bia had leant out of the open window of the Old Glory and smelt the smoke. It had faithfully taken them all the way to a nearby town, where her father had bought presents for Christmas, secret gifts for her mother. As the steam bus returned, the stoker had served hot chestnuts in paper bags that had been cooked in the firebox. Until the war, life had been that way for Bia. Memory on happy memory had filled her time with joy.
The thought of that day went as quickly as it had arrived.
‘Did you know my mother?’ she found herself saying.
‘I did,’ Morgan replied. ‘She would often come to the house with her sister. It was at that time when I went away. The war has forced me to return.’ Morgan coughed and pulled a starched handkerchief from his pocket and wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. ‘I never thought I would have to come back. Some places have just too many memories.’ Morgan steadied himself. ‘And you, Jago, where are you from?’
‘London,’ Jago said as he noticed the driver looking at him through the rear-view mirror. ‘Just arrived, an evacuee.’
‘His mother –’ Bia started to say.
‘Is dead,’ Jago continued, knowing what Bia would have said and wanting to keep this a secret. ‘She died on the day I came here.’
‘Poor lad,’ Morgan muttered as if he were talking to himself. ‘For some, death is so final. Strange, you remind me of someone I know, but cannot think who. It is your voice, it has a familiarity.’
‘My mother said I sounded like Alvar Lidell reading the news,’ Jago replied as he looked at Bia and bade her be silent with a nudge of his foot.
‘London born and bred?’ Morgan asked as in his mind he examined Jago’s voice for the familiar tone he was sure he recognised.
‘Yes,’ Jago lied, and he kicked Bia again.
‘First time in Whitby?’ Morgan asked. Jago nodded. ‘No connection with the town?’
‘Not one,’ Jago answered. He could see from Bia’s look that she could not understand why he didn’t tell the man the truth.
Ezra Morgan scrutinised Jago and Bia before he replied. Jago was caught for a moment in his stare.
‘If I were to see you both in the street, I would say that you could be related. Strange thing is that in some way we all are. Our common ancestors must all have come from the same place. Here we are, travelling to Hawks Moor, brought together by circumstance and Crispin Draigorian sending you on an errant errand.’ Morgan settled back in his seat and looked as if he had found the answer to his question.
The road climbed further and, just as Jago had seen in the dream, the hedges gave way to open moor. Ezra Morgan said little else other than to point out several landmarks on the way. Jago wondered why he hadn’t asked the nature of the errand. The car dipped into a small ravine as the road clung to the side of the slope. A canopy of trees soon covered the journey and darkened the sky.
Jago heard the sound of the tyres change as the Daimler left the stone road and slowed up the drive towards the house. As he looked out of the window he felt a churning start in his stomach. The place seemed familiar, as if he had seen it many times before. It did not seem to be his own memory, but one he had shared with someone else. Jago did not know if the house had been described to him in a childhood story. When he saw the arched doorway and climbing wisteria, he was sure that he had seen Hawks Moor before.
‘Beautiful,’ Bia said as the car slowed to a halt outside the house.
‘Windswept, eerie and far to cold to live in,’ added Ezra Morgan. ‘If only the war had not forced me home from the land beyond the forest.’
Jago sat rigidly in his seat, unwilling to move.
‘Are you sick, Jago?’ Morgan asked.
‘No,’ he stammered ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Stay where you are and I will go for Hugh and your errand will be complete,’ Morgan said, and he stepped from the car as Rathbone held the door open.
‘What’s wrong?’ Bia asked, wondering why Jago suddenly looked so white and bloodless.
‘I don’t know. I had the same feeling from before, just when the bomber attacked,’ he said. He shivered and rubbed his face with his hands to rid himself of the dizziness. ‘I know this house. It sounds stupid but I know every inch of the place.’
‘From your dream?’ Bia asked.
‘More than that. It is as if I have lived here,’ he answered.
The door to the house opened. Standing in the frame, tall and gaunt, was Hugh Morgan. He stepped quickly towards the car.
‘I hear you are sick. Rathbone, take the lad to my study and I will bring something from the kitchen,’ Hugh Morgan said as he leant forward and looked at Jago closely. ‘Better carry him – doesn’t look too well.’
Jago didn’t know what happened next. The last thing he saw was Hugh Morgan staring at him as the darkness. In the blackness he could hear faint, urgent voices, footsteps on wooden boards and the closing of doors.
When Jago opened his eyes, he was in an upstairs room. He knew exactly where he was. It all seemed so familiar. The fireplace, the tall vaulted ceiling, the wooden paneled walls were just as his imagination told him. Nothing differed from his expectation. This was not the studio, as Hugh Morgan had said, but the library. The one thing that was different to how he thought it would be was that there were
no books. Where he somehow knew the shelves had once been were now paintings. At the far end of the room, where the most light streamed in, was a small array of wooden stands, a table littered with paint pots and several unfinished canvases.
Rathbone had propped him by the fire on a chaise lounge. Jago felt the soft pile of the red velvet sofa with his fingers. He looked to the mullioned window with its thousand panes of lead-lined glass. A long table covered in a purple cloth sprawled in front like an altar; on it rested candlesticks and a book.
Rathbone fussed with a plaid cover by his feet as he stared at Jago.
‘Better keep still until Master Hugh arrives,’ he said. He stacked two more logs onto the fire and bedded them into the embers with the toe of his boot.
‘Is this the library?’ Jago asked as his head cleared and the churning in his stomach ebbed away.
‘Library? Hasn’t been a library for many years – what made you think that? Been here before?’
The door to the room opened and Hugh Morgan walked in carrying a wooden tray stacked with cups, plates and curiously shaped pieces of bread. Bia followed sheepishly, her eyes looking quickly about the room, the fishing bag still over her shoulder.
‘You must have fainted. They can’t be feeding you enough – and with the shock of your mother being killed …’ Jago looked at Bia and wondered what she had told him. ‘Hugh knows my mother,’ Bia said excitedly. ‘They were friends, it’s true.’
Morgan looked at Jago before he spoke.
‘Don’t look so worried. You can call me Hugh,’ he said as he brushed back the long strands of his hair with his fingers. ‘Bia has told me all about you. Feeling better?’
Jago nodded as Hugh Morgan put the tray on the floor by the fire and pulled up a chair for Bia. He leant against the stone fireplace and looked at Jago. ‘She says you had something similar this morning before the bombing.’
‘Could be something I have eaten,’ Jago replied.
‘Tallow’s cooking may be many things, but dangerous it is certainly not.’ Morgan said as he smiled at Bia and handed her a cup of tea. ‘Weren’t you at the Penance Hedge the other day?’
‘You were the man with the bundle of sticks,’ Jago said.
‘It’s what Morgans have to do. That bundle of sticks is a curse to this family but thankfully the hedge lasted the tides and so we will all be safe.’
‘What would happen if it didn’t?’ Jago asked.
‘Then the fury of the curse would fall upon the town. When my ancestor killed the hermit, it darkened all of our hearts.’
‘It was just a man in a shack,’ Jago answered.
‘If only that were the case, Jago,’ Hugh Morgan answered. ‘What happened was more than a legend and it would not be worth our while to fail in our task. As a Morgan, I cannot risk the consequences. The hermit cursed us with more than having to build a Penance Hedge. Anyway, enough of this,’ he said as his voice wavered. ‘Crispin Draigorian telephoned to say you had something for me?’
Bia handed him the fisherman’s bag.
‘It’s in there,’ she said, suddenly remembering the remnants of the sandwiches.
‘Cheese?’ Morgan asked as he lifted the snakeskin case from the bag and brushed the crumbs away.
‘Mr Draigorian showed us what was inside,’ she blurted. ‘We never looked. He told us all about it.’
‘Did he indeed?’ asked Morgan as he laughed. ‘Then it saves me an explanation.’
[ 15 ]
Blood
TEA LASTED AN HOUR. Hugh Morgan built up the fire and as they talked they drank two more pots brought eagerly by Rathbone, who was always reluctant to leave and listened to much of what they said. The hour slipped easily into another hour and then another. Morgan finally looked at his watched and sighed.
‘I had forgotten what it was like to be your age,’ he said mournfully. ‘Your mother and I would talk this same way and Martha would listen – just like you, Jago.’
‘Martha?’ Jago asked, saying the first word in over an hour. ‘Did you say she was called Martha?’
‘Maria’s sister. Martha was the quiet one, a year younger and just as pretty,’ Morgan said as he looked inquisitively at Jago.
‘And they both came here?’ he asked.
‘Often,’ Morgan said.
Jago looked at Bia. It all suddenly made sense. He remembered what his mother had said. Find Maria … Without the picture, he had no proof. Then he realised why Bradick had taken it from him. His mother would have been recognised – everyone would know who Jago was.
‘Why did her sister leave Whitby?’ Jago asked.
‘How did you know?’ Morgan said, not knowing why the lad should ask such a question.
‘I told him,’ Bia said as she chewed on a piece of cold toast and supped the last of her tea from the china cup.
‘Does it matter?’ Morgan enquired reluctantly.
‘I would like to know,’ Bia said. ‘If she’s alive then she is my family, Aunt Martha – there’s a peaceful sound to the name.’
Jago said nothing. This was not the time; coincidences did not happen.
‘If you had ever met her, you would know how peaceful she really was,’ Morgan said as he got up from the fireside and walked to the window and looked out across the moor to the sea. ‘No one knew why she left. Martha said nothing, gave no indication she would leave. One day she was here and the next she had gone.’ The man shrugged his wide shoulders and slung his hands in the pockets of his tweed trousers. ‘Funny how lives change. I went to university and when I had returned your mother had married and Martha had not come back. I am so glad that old Draigorian sent you here today. I had heard there was an evacuee in town but never thought our paths would cross.’ Morgan thought for a moment as he looked at the thick, black clouds coming in from the sea. Jago could see his reflection in the window glass and thought how handsome the man was. ‘Let me show you the house before you return to Whitby. I am sure Mrs Macarty won’t mind.’
Bia looked at Jago and begged him with her eyes not to refuse. ‘I’m sure you could manage it, Jago,’ she said, willing him to get up from the sofa.
‘It doesn’t have to be for long,’ Morgan added. ‘I get so few visitors, fewer since Father has returned. There is a labyrinth, an ancient maze of hedges with a statue at the centre.’ Morgan stopped suddenly, as if he had said too much.
‘We’d love to,’ Bia replied as she took hold of Jago by the hand. ‘You can rest later. Let’s walk?’
Jago stood reluctantly. The pain in his stomach had long since gone. He had stayed on the couch to listen to the stories that Morgan had told, thinking that if he moved or interrupted in any way they would stop. There was something about Morgan that he liked. In so many ways he was just like Mr Cresco. He could suspend disbelief and speak in such a way as to take your mind to the place of which he spoke and through your inner eye see what he saw in his imagination.
‘Mr Draigorian said you were an artist,’ Jago said as he pulled the plaid cover from his legs and got to his feet.
‘I studied fine art at Hatfield College – Durham University,’ Morgan replied. ‘I try to be the best I can.’
‘Why haven’t you gone to war?’ Jago asked.
Bia looked at him as if it was something he should not have said. Morgan saw her face.
‘I don’t mind, Biatra,’ he answered. ‘I have a rare blood disorder that will come upon me as I grow older. It started when I was about your age, Jago. I am not allowed to fight; it’s as simple as that. Anyway, there are more ways of overcoming an enemy other than by throwing bombs at them.’ His sharp words ended the conversation. Jago knew not to ask again. ‘Let me show you the house.’
Morgan strode from the window and opened the door. He didn’t looked at Jago until they were in the long corridor that led from the studio down the dark stairway and into the grand hall below. Just like at Streonshalgh Manor, the walls of Hawks Moor were covered in paintings. It was as if every space had to b
e filled. But here, unlike the Manor, Jago did not feel that the eyes of every man and woman following him as he walked along behind Bia and Hugh Morgan.
‘Are these pictures of your family?’ Jago asked, already knowing the answer.
‘A tradition made by men – always have a painting of everyone who has ever lived. I prefer to take photographs and then paint over them or bring them into my art in some other way.’ He pointed to the largest painting on the wall – the portrait of a man in a ruff collar stared down. ‘It was all his fault. That is the man who killed the hermit – he and two of his friends.’
‘Why does he have blood on the back of his hand?’ Bia asked as she looked at the trickle of faded cinnabar threads that snaked to his fingers.
‘That, Biatra, is the true cost of killing the hermit. What the popular legend does not say was that Tristan Morgan was attacked by something in the shack. Something that he tried to kill and that the hermit was protecting.’
‘They didn’t tell us that at school,’ she replied.
‘It does not make a good story. My family have been painted as murderers and thieves when in reality they were hunting a creature that the world believed did not exist,’ Morgan answered quietly.
‘A Vampyre?’ Jago asked. The word had come to his mind as if he could read the mind of Hugh Morgan.
‘That is one name for the creature. Whatever it may be called, it attacked Tristan and his companions. All of them gave their blood that night and the curse has been with us ever since. Did they tell you that at school, Biatra?’ Morgan asked as he turned from the portrait and walked to the staircase.
‘And this?’ Jago asked as he stared at a painting of a boy about his own age.
‘That’s me,’ Morgan said cheerily. ‘It was done before I went to university by a friend of my father.’
‘Looks like you, Jago,’ Bia said as she pushed him to one side. ‘It does look like you.’
Hugh Morgan took another look at the painting and then at Jago. ‘How strange. I would never have noticed until now. You look like I once did.’ He stared closely at Jago.
‘Who painted it?’ Bia asked. She tried to make out the scrawled signature at the bottom of the picture.
