by Liz Williams
“It’s a bit like stand-up comedy,” Stella said, and instantly regretted it because he probably didn’t know what that was, either. “It’s a little bit like the theatre.”
“That, I do understand. I have been to a theatre.”
They had reached the pub. It stood on what passed for Hornmoon’s main street, sloping down the hill towards the little river Horne. It had been built around the same time as Mooncote, and like the house, it seemed to have settled into the ground: low roofed, leaded windowed. It had no rooms that were not bowl-shaped. If you placed a marble by the skirting board, it would be in the middle of the bar within a minute.
Stella had to duck slightly under the lintel. The pub was half full and this would have to do: she had slightly dreaded a packed bar. She did not know the barman, who was new and middle aged. She ordered a medium white wine – there was a grown up drink for you.
“If I sit over in the corner,” she said to the barman, “Will I disturb anyone if I talk?” She held up her phone. “I’m recording some notes for something.”
The barman grinned. “Half the buggers in here talk to themselves. I don’t suppose anyone will mind. If they even notice.”
“Cheers,” Stella said. With Dark at her side, she went to the furthest booth and took out a notebook. Drinking with the spectral required some preparation, she thought. But it was good to be back. The walls were plastered a dull red, pooled with golden lamplight. Years ago, this place had been a fug of smoke, but now that was banned the only drift was from the fire, burning low in the grate across the room. Horse brasses lined the fireplace and Stella had counted all of them many times as a little girl, brought into the pub for a lemonade with her sisters. A hare, running. The moon, a crescent, above the evening star. The green man, gaping and vine mouthed. The brasses were to protect against evil, guarding the plough horses from elf shot. Stella liked to think of those horses: hairy at the heel, their manes plaited with hagstones and ribbon, the brasses on their harness reflecting the arrow bolts of the fairies.
“This place has not greatly changed,” Dark said.
“It was here in your day?” She pretended to speak into the phone but no one was looking anyway. Stella took a sip of wine.
“Yes. Although there was not all this – stuff – in it.” He gestured to the bar with its rows of optics. Stella smiled.
“Just barrels?”
“Sack. And ale, of course. Not wine, that was for the gentry.”
“It’s a girl’s drink these days.”
It was Dark’s turn to smile. “It was then.”
“Did you ever see Queen Elizabeth?”
“Once. I went to London. A great journey, then. And what a city. There was a bridge, with houses near to falling off it, and a great maze of people. She was walking across a green lawn starred with daisies and I had never seen anyone so fine – you would not have believed her, a Venus. Her dress was all pearl and cloth of gold and ruby. She was like the sun come to Earth.” His eyes shone in the firelight.
“She must have been one hell of a tough cookie,” Stella said.
“She was our world. We did all for her, at her bidding.”
It sounded a bit like a cult to cynical Stella, but she reminded herself that her ancestors’ mind-set would not be her own. Another culture, and surely some of them would have had issues with the Queen otherwise there wouldn’t have been all those plots… But she was beginning to suspect Dark of being a romantic. It was certainly interesting to talk to him, though, and he did not seem to mind. She sipped her wine slowly, ordered a veggie burger and chips, and waited for the text on her phone that would tell her that Bee and Nell had arrived back at the station and she would not have to go back to an empty house, should Dark disappear. The ghost rolled up his sleeves, as if he felt the heat of the fire. There were tattoos on his sturdy forearms, blurred and smoky. An anchor, a swallow. Designs that were familiar to Stella now, but mainly in a rockabilly context. Dark followed her gaze.
“The anchor, that means I’ve sailed the Atlantic. And the heart – well, that’s obvious. There’s a bee, further up.” He showed her, rolling the linen past his elbow. His skin still bore a faint tan.
“They all have meanings, then?”
“Yes. A dragon means you’ve sailed to China but I never got that far.”
“And the swallow?”
Dark smiled. “It’s said they never fly more than twelve miles from land. So when you see a swallow, you’re close to the coast. That’s why we had them inked upon our skin. A talisman.”
“That can’t be true, though. They migrate so they must cross the Channel. And that’s quite wide.”
He laughed. “Yes, I’m sure it’s just an old sailor’s tale. But I’m an old sailor, after all.”
Very old, Stella thought, but she did not say this aloud to her sister’s lover, the ghost.
Serena
Bee and Nell had gone, taking a taxi to nearby Paddington, and when they left Serena could no longer put a brave face on things and pretend that everything was all right, because it surely was not. Ben had gone into radio silence and she had made the decision not to phone him: she felt demeaned by it, needy.
“Sod him,” she told herself. “Bollocks to all this shit.” Swearing made her feel a little better. She went into the studio kitchen and made mint tea, because wine wasn’t a good idea either. She was damned if she was going to sink into a bottle just because her man had gone AWOL. And there was Bella to think about; tonight was a school night and Bells had already gone to bed, albeit probably to check up on Whatsapp. She needed a clear head, Serena thought.
It wasn’t just Ben who was preoccupying her. There was the collection, which had reached that point where you look at the whole thing and aren’t happy. Serena knew that this would pass: it always happened and it was always the same. She’d given up lamenting her own lack of talent, the awful clothes – less of the drama queen, these days. Just grit your teeth and forge ahead, telling yourself it would all work out in the end. The only way is through and all that. A bit like relationships, really.
And then there was Spica. The sudden appearance of the Behenian star, not glimpsed since, had completely thrown Serena. It was as though she’d been keeping her life in involuntary compartments: the stars belonged to Mooncote, to Somerset, not here in London. It wasn’t as though London didn’t have its own stuff, and she’d seen quite a bit of that, but the stars were not part of it. A warning, or a benediction? Or something else? Serena did not know and it unnerved her. She felt as though she had begun sailing upon uncharted waters, with solid land receding fast in her choppy wake.
She drank the tea and picked up a magazine that was lying by the chair: not one of the big ones, but a small, alternative fashion and music publication that had recently come onto the stands. This sort of thing usually went straight online but Serena preferred paper editions: she could clip and cut and paste. It was like being a kid again, but it played a real part in her creative process. She had not yet had a chance to glance through this one. Serena flicked through the pages and found Dana Stare’s face looking back at her: it hit her like a blow. Mesmerised, she scanned the shoot. Dana in black leather, standing on a moorland outcrop, in ebony lace against a candlelit mirror, in velvet like an Elizabethan mourner. Her hair fanned out; she wore her little secret smile in all the photos. Her face was cat-like above a ruff, feral glimpsed from the depths of a hood.
A sudden overwhelming fatigue struck Serena. Her eyelids drooped, she felt herself reel back in the chair. If she hadn’t known better, and been alone, she might have thought that someone had dropped something in the tea. As though Dana had cast a spell on her, from the pages below.
Right, thought Serena. Enough of this nonsense. You’re going to bed. She stuffed the magazine back in the rack, picked up the teapot and the cup and went upstairs to the large light room on the second floor. Once, this had been Eleanor’s studio, before she’d divorced whatever the husband’s name had been �
� some politician, Serena remembered – and moved out to the Judge’s house near Red Lion Square. Now, Serena had pulled a Miss Havisham on it, somewhat overdoing the lace even by her own standards, but if you couldn’t go for overkill in your own bedroom, where could you? The bed was a four poster, festooned in Victorian petit point, and candles filled the old iron grate. Serena lit a few, for firelight and fragrance, and the room slowly filled with freesia, vanilla, lavender. She collapsed onto the bed and shut her eyes.
And her mother was there. She sat by the side of the bed with an open book in her hands, just as she had done when Serena was a little girl, feverish or tooth-achey and wanting to be read to. Spica stood behind her like a lady in waiting, the sprig of sage pale against the forest of her dress. Her hair was threaded with the green fire of emeralds; her dark, arched eyebrows and firm mouth lent calmness to her face. Alys gave no sign that she knew the spirit was there.
“And then,” she said, and glanced up. “Ah, you’re awake.”
“Mum! Where are you?” Serena felt that she was speaking through a fog. The words fell out of her mouth as if she was spitting wool.
“I’m here, dear.” Alys seemed amused.
“No, I mean, where did you go? For your hiking trip. The one you never came back from.” She felt desperate to make her mother understand. But to her great surprise, Alys gave her a straight answer.
“Dartmoor.”
“What?” She felt a cold bolt of shock: Stella had thought that Alys had gone to Dartmoor. She’d even gone down there, Serena remembered.
“I went to Dartmoor, darling. Part of the Gipsy Switch, but I went on the train. I changed at Exeter, I remember – not sure where it was after that. Tavistock, maybe.”
“What the hell did you want to go to Dartmoor for? And why didn’t you drive?”
“I didn’t take the car, darling, because I wasn’t sure if I was coming back.”
“You didn’t even leave a bloody note! Nothing with the solicitors or anything. And you said you’d leave all the info with Bee. She had a terrible time – she thought she might have lost it.”
“I didn’t kill myself,” Alys said. “You know I’d never do that to you girls.”
“Why haven’t you told us this before?”
“I couldn’t reach you. But the comet is coming and things are starting to open up. Thank God. It’s been really frustrating for me, too.”
“But why did you go in the first place?”
“You don’t know this, Serena, but someone stole something from us. Something very important, after Father died. Father and I knew we had to get it back, and I’d heard on the grapevine that the thief had gone to Dartmoor, to trade the thing in.”
“What on Earth was it? Jewellery, or an antique – I didn’t think we had anything that valuable in the house.”
“I didn’t say ‘valuable’, Serena. I said ‘important’. It was a bone flute.”
“I’ve never seen such a thing in the house.”
“No. You wouldn’t have. I didn’t know it existed until Father died and he left instructions, but by that time it was too late: the flute had already gone.”
“Why is it so important? Is it worth anything?”
“It probably is – it’s very old – but that’s not why it was stolen. It’s the key to something to do with the family – it’s a magical thing.”
“Who stole it?”
“I don’t know their name. I know what they are.”
“What’s that?”
“Something old,” Alys said. She looked up, and the book fell from her fingers to land on the coverlet. Behind her, Spica’s lips were parted; they were both staring at something beyond Serena, beyond the bed. Serena turned to look and saw a fire, flickering against a dark wall.
“Alys?” But when she turned her head again, her mother and the spirit were gone.
Bee
Bee dropped her bags onto the hall floor. Why was train travel so exhausting? All you had to do was sit down for a couple of hours and watch the world go by.
“Stella?” But there was no sign of her sister, or the dogs. That was suspicious. Bee strode into the living room.
“Dogs! Nelson, Hardy!”
They were behind the sofa, like kids watching Dr Who. They crept out anxiously, their feathery tails giving an apologetic mini-wag. The reason for their shame was obvious: a bag of potatoes, only slightly chewed, strewn about the living room floor.
“Oh, dogs. You don’t even like potatoes,” Bee said. But they had been bored, their fawning looks said, and abandoned. She reassured them with fuss.
“Bee, I’m just going to freshen up, and I think I’m going to go to bed,” her cousin called from the top of the stairs.
“Okay. I think Stella must have gone out.”
Bee poured herself a glass of water from the kitchen tap, just to prove to herself that she was no longer in the city, with its multiply-filtered hydration. Then she opened the back door and went through to the garden.
It was quite dark. A sheaf of stars were scattered overhead, but the grass was damp. The garden smelled of apples, with the tart-spice fragrance of the chrysanthemums weaving its way through the air, and woodsmoke beyond. Bee took a deep breath, forcing London’s dirty legacy out of her lungs, and went into the orchard. They would soon need to start thinking about bagging the apples; there were too many windfalls already, cast down by the autumn gales, and although she usually left some for the fieldfares and redstarts, winter visitors who would need something to peck when the frosts came, Bee did not like waste and there were only so many apples that one household could eat, even if it was a jelly-making household. Hence the new small cider press, which she was dying to try out.
She paused by the elder.
“It’s coming,” the tree said.
“The comet?”
“No. The other.”
“I don’t understand.”
The elder gave a rustling sigh, as if in exasperation, and fell silent. Bee looked around for Dark, but he was nowhere to be seen. She spoke his name.
Then there was a flash of white at the orchard gate, from the lane.
“I can see a light,” Stella’s voice said. “They must be back.”
“Stel! It’s me,” Bee called. She did not want to make her sister jump.
“Bee!” Stella threaded her way through the windfalls, the dogs at her heels. Bee could see the shadowy figure of Dark behind her. Her sister was muffled up in a cowled sweater and jeans. “Bee, I’m bloody glad to see you.”
That was sweet, thought Bee, touched. But then Stella told her why.
“I don’t really want to involve Nell,” Bee said. Council of war, in the kitchen: Bee and Stella and Dark, voices lowered. “It doesn’t really seem fair –”
“She’ll think we’re nuts. ‘You see, Nell, I attacked a horned man in your room with a golf club and then Bee’s dead boyfriend appeared as a swarm of bees and chased him away.’”
“Operative words, nuts and your room.”
“God, what if something happens in the night?”
“I could watch over her,” Dark said.
“To be brutally honest, mate, I’m not sure if that’s an improvement. What if she wakes up and sees you?” Stella said.
Dark sighed. “She is not like you, your cousin?”
“Well, that’s it, isn’t it?” Bee said. “We don’t know. We’ve never had that sort of conversation. ‘We see ghosts, Nell. And other stuff. Do you?’”
“I suppose we could risk it and ask her,” Stella said. “She seems pretty cool. And she’s going to be here for a while, isn’t she?”
“She saw one of the Behenian stars. Spica.”
“What? Where?”
“At Serena’s house.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No, we both saw it. Except that Nell thought she was a model, thank God.”
“Oh yeah. That would explain the clothes, of course. But I don’t think she’s seen one her
e or she’d have said something, surely.”
“Let’s just leave it for tonight,” Bee said. “And see what happens.”
“I think we ought to tell her that I surprised an intruder,” Stella mused. “We don’t have to mention the whole antler thing.”
A half solution found, Stella went upstairs to break the bad news, leaving Bee in the kitchen with Dark. They looked at one another. Bee had not quite got past the oddness of seeing Dark in the company of someone else.
“It is the comet, I am sure,” the spirit said. “They are ill omens. They bring forth evil.”
Bee started to say that they were just lumps of celestial rock, but then she thought of the Behenian stars and fell silent. Abraham had explained astronomy to them, when they were little. About the orbits of the planets, the motion of the stars. How Aldebaran and Spica and Arcturus, Regulus and Procyon and Algol, the stars with their Arabic names and ancient lineage, proceeded in their fixed paths across the seasonal sky. How the stars themselves were great blazing suns, their physical composition and age determining the light that we see now: cold blue or fiery red, orange or sparkling pale. And those vast distant suns were obviously not the same as the calm-faced women with their jewels and their sprigs of herbs who paraded throughout the house, just as the moon was not the same as the dappled wooden horse who galloped over the spare room floor, and yet, somehow, they were the same: their appearance in the minds of men forming something other, something real. Microcosm and macrocosm: a system of correspondences, star and jewel and flower; number and planet and colour. Bee did not understand quite what the Behenian stars were, but she knew they were spirits in some manner of the same reality as Dark, and as the woman with the skirtful of apples whom she sometimes glimpsed in the orchard at dusk, her brow crowned with roses. Or the girl in the dawn-coloured dress whom Serena used to meet on the stairs, her forehead marked with the smudge of an ashy cross, or the little bright lizards that Bee had seen in the flames as a child. All of these things were part of Mooncote, and sometimes of other places, too, and Bee knew that many other places held their own mysteries. She thought of the smiling Sphinx by the shore of the Thames. It was, Bee thought, time to go to bed. She reached out and took Dark’s hand.
