The Coffin Path_'The perfect ghost story'

by Katherine Clements

  Still, I’m frustrated by the mystery. These things cannot have disappeared. I think of Sam and his questions about the missing coins just a few nights before. The boy is always in and out of Father’s study – the only one allowed such licence – and he’s been in the house these last few days, tending the lamb. Could he be playing some sort of misguided game?

  ‘Where’s Sam?’ I ask.

  ‘He was in the kitchen earlier,’ Agnes says, ‘mewling on about that milk-stinking creature and getting under my feet.’

  ‘Well, then, let’s ask him.’

  Back in the kitchen, we find the lamb curled up in a crate by the fire, but no sign of Sam. I hear movement upstairs – the creak of boards and a low, regular thunk, as if someone is tossing a ball onto the floor of the room above.

  I go to the foot of the kitchen stairs and call Sam’s name into the dim-lit space above. There’s no answer, but the thudding continues, interspersed with a low scraping sound of something heavy being dragged across the boards.

  I climb a few steps, peering into the gloom, and call again. He cannot hear me. I mount the stairs, irritated now by everything that has come to pass today. There is still so much to be done before the light fades and I have no time to play nursemaid to my father or his charge. He does wrong to indulge the child – it encourages disobedience. I’ve indulged Sam too, letting him cosset the lamb in the way that Father cossets the boy. I should have sent him home days ago and seen to the creature myself.

  I reach the upper floor and realise the sound is not coming from the room above the kitchen as I thought. The room where Agnes has her bed is empty. Instead it’s coming from the chamber opposite.

  This chamber was once a fine bedroom with a grand old tester bed and a large window with far-reaching views. We never use it now – we never have visitors in need of it – and in these last years it has become a storeroom of sorts, gradually filling with disused farm equipment and forgotten odds and ends. Last year we used it to store fleeces when the barn was too damp, and the room still holds the dense, greasy smell of sheep.

  The sound is louder now, a rhythmic thunk, a pause, a heavy, grating ssshrrrrrssssst, as if Sam is tossing a ball or hoop and dragging it back across the boards before repeating.

  I lift the latch and open the door. ‘Sam?’

  The noise stops.

  The shutters are closed and there’s scant light through the cracks. I doubt they’ve been opened in months.

  ‘What are you doing in here? Come downstairs. My father has something to ask you.’

  There’s no answer.

  I step inside.

  The curtains are drawn around the tester bed, the ancient embroidered vines and flowers now ragged, decayed by moths and mould. A stack of crates in the corner is draped in cobwebs and wisps of fleece. At the hearthstone, a pile of soot and muck has spilled from the disused chimney, but there is a distinct, acrid smell of burning – wood smoke tinged with animal tallow. There’s a thick carpet of undisturbed winter dust on the floorboards. Somehow it feels wrong to stir the silence.

  Though I can see he’s not in the room, I speak Sam’s name.

  Of course, there’s no response. I leave and shut the door. As I begin to make my way back down the staircase, the noise starts again.

  Thunk . . . ssshrrrrrssssst . . .

  Angered now, I storm back up the stairs. ‘Enough, Sam. This is no time for games.’

  Silence.

  I swallow the unease that threatens and stride into the room, tug back the drapes on the bed and am lost in a flurry of dust that chokes my throat. Sam is not there.

  I go to the window, squeezing behind an old chest and dislodging a moth-eaten Turkey rug that releases a storm of sooty smuts. I prise open the rusted hinge on the shutter. The murky daylight is not much help but is enough for me to see that no one is in the room.

  With a weird tightness in my throat, I close the shutter and listen. Nothing. The room is strangely still. Even the ever-present breath of the wind is absent. But it’s cold – the kind of snow-bound chill that creeps into the bones – and the charred stench in the air stings my nostrils. My skin shivers into goose bumps. Perhaps the noise is just rats in the walls, now quieted by my entrance. I picture them, jet eyes glittering, noses quivering with my scent, waiting until I leave.

  ‘Down here, Mercy,’ comes Agnes’s call from below, and I’m glad to answer, fastening the door and hurrying down the steps, ignoring the hard pulsing of my heart.

  In the kitchen Sam is kneeling next to the lamb’s box, stroking the creature’s small white head.

  ‘He says he knows nothing about it,’ Father says, still scowling at Agnes.

  ‘Where have you been, Sam?’ I ask, crouching, one hand on his shoulder, welcoming the human warmth of him.

  ‘Out in the privy.’

  ‘You weren’t upstairs?’

  ‘No.’ He doesn’t look at me but goes on petting the lamb. I sit cross-legged next to him.

  ‘And you didn’t move the inkwell?’

  He’s silent for a few moments.

  ‘Or the coins. Are you sure you didn’t take the coins?’

  No answer.

  ‘You won’t be in trouble if you tell the truth.’

  He cannot hold my gaze. ‘I did not take them.’

  I’m tired of this. I run my hand over the lamb, its dense fleece warm beneath my palm. It gives a bleat. ‘You’ve done well with this little one, but I can manage now. He’s out of danger. You can go home with your pa tonight.’

  Sam’s eyes are a conflict of childish indignation and pleading. ‘I didn’t take them. Please don’t send me away.’

  ‘See what you’ve done? You’ve upset the boy,’ Father says to Agnes, but she doesn’t retaliate – she’s closed in on herself, as she does when she knows she won’t win a fight and there’s nothing to gain in trying.

  ‘I’m not sending you away, Sam. You can come back and check on the lamb in the morning. But you must be missing your ma. And what about your little sister? They need you too.’

  He gives me an accusatory look: You have failed me. You don’t understand.

  As if summoned, the outside door opens and Ambrose enters, stamping his feet, the stranger, Ellis Ferreby, in his wake.

  Sam runs to his father and flings his arms around his hips. Ambrose ruffles his red curls, so like his own, though these days Ambrose keeps his own scalp as close-shorn as a summer sheep.

  Ambrose nods to Father, who has softened a little at the sight of Sam’s dismay, then asks, ‘Agnes, can you spare some bread and cheese for our new man?’

  But Agnes is leaning heavily against the table. She’s turned the colour of three-day-old milk. She stumbles a few steps towards the buttery, where she stops, steadying herself against the wall.

  I’m up and by her side in a moment.

  ‘Just one of my turns . . .’ she whispers, under her breath. I hold her hand and feel her heart racing. ‘Leave me be.’ She gives me an imploring look.

  I glare at Father as I send Sam to fetch bread and a hunk of cheese. His anger has brought on Agnes’s troubles – these attacks have happened before, often after a quarrel. I blame him for it.

  ‘Ambrose, help Agnes to her bed.’ Ambrose comes forward and puts an arm around Agnes’s shoulders, gently guiding her towards the stairs. As they leave, she glances back at Ellis Ferreby and I read her shame and horror at her frailty exposed before a stranger. But all the time Ellis Ferreby is silent. He makes no offer of help and shows no concern. Save a grudging nod towards Father, he says nothing at all, but hovers at the side of the room, like a shadow, watching and waiting until he’s watered and fed, as if it is his due.

  Chapter 5

  ‘What do you make of him, the new man?’

  Dority pushes a lock of hair behind her ear, leaving a dusting of
flour across her cheek. ‘He’s all Ambrose has talked about these last two nights. I think he’s taken a liking.’ We both know that Ambrose never admits to friendship with any of the men we employ; he considers complaining about their failings his duty and his right. ‘So . . . what’s he like?’

  ‘I’ve barely seen him,’ I say, though this isn’t true.

  I had come across them that morning, Ambrose and Ellis, building byres behind the barn. It will be Ellis’s job to tend any orphan lambs and recuperating mothers by night and he wants them close, so the dogs will help keep foxes away.

  Bracken ran ahead to greet them, greedily licking the fingers that Ellis offered. It had taken me several minutes to bring her to heel. I cannot understand her fancy for the man. I felt his eyes follow me. He stares at me whenever our paths cross. There’s no lechery in it, but no respect either. I’m a curiosity, to be peered at and made sense of. If I were a more timid sort of woman, it might unnerve me, but it’s not the first time I’ve been looked at this way.

  I think back to our first meeting at the falls and wonder why I did not send him on. Even now, when I could settle his wages and tell him to go, I choose not to. It seems to me there are secrets in his silence, and purpose in his stare. But he’s proved a good worker and, though he’s not said so, Ambrose is pleased. I was bred to be wary of strangers and ever since the day I saw the figure in the fog, I’m more watchful and less certain of my own judgement. My nerves have begun to play tricks on me. I find myself starting at Bracken’s barks and shying at shadows like a spring-green stripling. I’d laugh at myself if the memory did not conjure such a sense of misgiving.

  ‘Where did you find him?’ Dority asks.

  ‘He found me.’

  She puzzles. ‘What do you mean?’

  But I need not answer. We’re interrupted by Sam racketing through the door with a pail of peat clods.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Dority puts aside the dough she’s been working, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘Mercy’s come to see you.’

  Sam puts the bucket down by the hearth and sidles over to his mother. She puts a protective hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Why have you not come to see us, Sam?’ I ask. ‘We’ve missed you at the Hall these last few days.’

  He stubs the toe of his boot into the earth between the flagstones.

  ‘Do you not wish to care for your lamb?’

  At this he looks at me. ‘I do.’

  ‘Then why not come?’

  Dority strokes his hair. ‘Have you something to say to Mercy?’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘Sam, we agreed . . .’ There’s a tightening in her voice.

  ‘No, we didn’t.’

  ‘Sam . . .’

  He pulls away from Dority growing red-cheeked. ‘Why won’t you believe me?’

  ‘Sam, you must do as your father said.’

  ‘No! Why won’t anyone listen to me?’ Sam glares at us both. I’m shocked by the frustration and hurt in his eyes. He turns and runs outside.

  Dority sighs. She crosses the room and checks on the sleeping child in the cradle – the baby, Grace, born just half a year since – then picks up a small object from the mantel above the hearth and places it on the floured tabletop. It’s a gold disc, blinking jewel-bright amid the barley dust. I recognise it immediately: one of Father’s missing coins.

  ‘I found it under his pillow, but he swears he didn’t take it. I’m sorry, Mercy. I don’t know what to say.’

  I pick it up. The metal is frostbite-cold.

  ‘It belongs to your father, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ I stare at the coin in my palm. It makes my heart heavy to think that Sam would lie to me. ‘Is this the only one you found?’

  ‘Yes. Are there more?’

  ‘Three are missing.’

  I see a flicker of dismay as she takes this in. ‘I can’t understand why he would do such a thing,’ she says, barely able to meet my eye. ‘I’ve tried to persuade him to take it back, to confess and apologise. I even threatened to take him to Pastor Flynn for penance, but he refuses. He swears he doesn’t know how it came to be there. I can’t understand it at all.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s scared. Father has been in a temper of late. You know how he can be.’

  ‘Sam’s become so secretive. He never tells me anything.’

  ‘What does Ambrose say?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Oh, he’s no help at all. Says the boy is just growing up. Says I worry too much. But of course I worry, especially since Will . . .’ She stops herself. Ambrose forbade us to speak of what happened, as if to do so would tempt the Devil a second time, and Dority is loyal to a fault. ‘Is worry not a mother’s job?’

  Ambrose may be right. I’ve noticed creases appearing on Dority’s brow, the hollows at her collarbones, the greying beneath her eyes, and put it down to winter’s hardship and the trials of nursing a babe.

  ‘To think he’s stolen from your father,’ she goes on, ‘who’s only ever been good to us . . .’

  ‘There may be more to it. I’ll take this back to Father and see what he says. Don’t punish Sam until we have the truth.’

  ‘But if he’s taken anything from Scarcross Hall—’

  ‘Father will forgive him. Father would forgive him anything.’

  She sighs again, thinking. ‘He said he doesn’t want to be blamed for things he hasn’t done. What does he mean?’

  I tell her about the disappearance of the coins and the missing inkwell, and Father’s fiery outburst over the whole affair. She listens, twisting her fingers in her apron. When I’m done she goes to the door and stands at the threshold, looking out. After a time, she turns back, fear in her eyes, and wipes a tear from her cheek.

  ‘Well, one thing is certain,’ she says, forcing a smile. ‘Someone is not telling the truth.’

  Though she will not say it, I know what she’s thinking.

  There’s an old rhyme, well known in these parts, that the weavers teach their children. On dark nights, you can still hear it sung from rush-lit cottages, chanted in time to the click-clack of the loom. When we were young its macabre message delighted us and we would dare each other to sing it aloud, dancing about the White Ladies like heathens, the wind tugging at the heather wound into our hair:

  One coin marks the first to go

  A second bodes the fall

  The third will seal a sinner’s fate

  The Devil take them all

  Chapter 6

  Ellis Ferreby is used to the rain. He knows that up on the moors it can be deceptive. A light mist can drench the thickest cloth, leaving it heavy and sodden; a spring shower can creep beneath collars and under cuffs, find cracks in the sturdiest boots. A day begun in sunshine can end in a soaking. He has seen men beaten by it – softer men, southern men – men whose fingers chap until they bleed and whose feet rot and stink until they lose toes. To spend a lifetime up here, you have to be born to it.

  The two newcomers, John Bestwicke and Henry Ravens, are born to it.

  They had arrived yesterday, at dusk, taking up their berths in the hayloft alongside his own. Bestwicke, the man he’d met in the tavern in the village, seemed pleased to find him there and keen to share the paltry portion of pie he’d brought. The hills are full of hardy men like Bestwicke, a widower, with decades of shepherding behind him, and Ellis feels comfortable in his company. He’s small and wiry, dressed in patched, mended breeches and worn boots. His smile is all black gaps and brown teeth, but it’s honest, and there’s something youthful about his sharp blue eyes.

  The other, Ravens, is younger, shovel-fisted and loud-mouthed, with a lean, handsome face. He’s only silenced this morning by the sore head he must be suffering from the drink he’d put away. After half a bottle of spirits, Ravens had chattered and boasted, liquor-laced breath steaming i
n the cold night air every time he laughed at his own joke. He talked of himself, and of other local men that Ellis doesn’t know, as if making a point: I am known here. This is my territory. Ellis will have to tolerate such displays, if he is to stay.

  Today they will bring the flock down from the winter pasture to the in-bye land nearest the house, ready for lambing. The fog has lifted but the sky is heavy with fat grey-bellied clouds. In the copse by the house, wet-feathered birds hunch on bare branches. Up on the fell, where the sheep are wintered, the ground is marshy with melting snow, strewn with hoof-churned hay. But, here and there, unlikely green shoots reach through the soil, and this morning, when he pissed outside the barn, he had watered a patch of winter wolfsbane, the scent of spring sharp in his nostrils.

  Once out on the land, Bestwicke and Ravens prove themselves fit and sure-footed. He follows their lead. They know this country. They know where to find the flock, the best routes to drive the sheep down, the unmarked boundaries between the Booth land and the common grazing on the moor, the smits that mark Booth’s animals from the hundreds of others that share the space. More importantly, they know the traps: the bog that can swallow a man whole, the hidden becks, hags and hollows that might cause a fall, a broken bone, or worse. He trusts them because he trusts the unspoken bond between shepherding men. He puts his faith in them because he has no choice.

  She is here too, of course, with Garrick, and the two dogs, Bracken and Flint. She was waiting for them beneath the sparse shelter of the copse. When she saw them coming she set off up the hillside so Garrick had to stride ahead to catch her.

  Thick as thieves, Bestwicke had said, of the lead shepherd and the mistress. Ellis watches them, the way their bodies move in tandem, barely speaking, communicating by gestures and nods, in the language of sheep and fell and dogs. He notices the way she turns her face into the wind and shuts her eyes, breathes deep, the way another woman might breathe in the scent of a flower garden.