The Shivering Sands

by Victoria Holt

  “That must be very nice.”

  I lowered my head to hide my smile.

  “You will find Allegra a handful, I don’t doubt. The vicar says her mind never stays on one subject for more than a few seconds at a time. A mistake to educate her. A servant’s child even though ... But it’s disgraceful. Such a complicated household ... and none of them related. It’s so odd of Sir William to allow that little Alice Lincroft to share. But she’s such a quiet girl. One can’t really take exception. She is treated like the others ... Sylvia is allowed to be their companion.” She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s very difficult, but since Sir William accepts them what can we do?”

  Sylvia seemed alert as though she were listening intently. Poor Sylvia! She would be one of those children who spoke only when spoken to. Again I felt grateful to my own parents.

  “And who is Alice Lincroft exactly?”

  “The housekeeper’s daughter, if you please. Mind you Mrs. Lincroft is a very superior housekeeper. And she was with the family before her marriage. She was companion to Lady Stacy, then she left and came back after she was widowed ... came back with Alice. The child was only about two years old then ... so she has lived most of her life at Lovat Stacy. It would be intolerable of course if she were not such a quiet child. But she gives no trouble—unlike Allegra. But that was a flagrant mistake. There’ll be trouble with that girl one day. I have often said so to the vicar and he agrees with me.”

  “And Lady Stacy?”

  “She died quite a long time ago ... before Mrs. Lincroft came back as housekeeper.”

  “And there is another young lady whom I am to teach.”

  Mrs. Rendall smirked. “Edith Cowan ... or rather Edith Stacy now. I must say it is all very odd. A married woman ... poor thing.”'

  “Because she is married?” I prompted.

  “Married!” snorted Mrs. Rendall. “I must say that was a very odd arrangement. I said so to the vicar and I shall continue to say so. Of course it is clear to me why Sir William arranged it.”

  “Sir William?” I put in. “Didn’t the young couple have anything to say about it?”

  “My dear young lady, when you have been at Lovat Stacy for a day you will learn that there is only one person who has any say in affairs there and that is Sir William. Sir William took Edith in and made her his ward and then he decided to bring Napier back and marry them off.” She lowered her voice. “Of course,” she excused her indiscretion, “you will soon be one of the household so you will discover these things, sooner or later. It was only the Cowan money which could have induced Sir William to have Napier back.”

  “Oh?” I was prompting her to go on but I think she realized she had been a little too communicative and she sat back in her seat, her lips pursed, her hands clasped in her lap, looking like an avenging goddess.

  The train rocked in silence while I was trying to think of an opening gambit which would lure the loquacious woman to further indiscretions when Sylvia said timidly: “We are almost there, Mamma.”

  “So we are,” cried Mrs. Rendall, getting to her feet and scattering parcels. “Oh dear, I wonder if this wool is the right ply for the vicar’s socks.”

  “I am sure it is, Mamma. You chose it.”

  I studied the girl sharply. Was that a little irony? However Mamma did not appear to have noticed. “Here,” she said to the girl, “take this.”

  I too had risen and took down my bags from the rack. I was aware of Mrs. Rendall’s eyes on them, assessing them as she had assessed me.

  “I daresay you’ll be met,” she said and gave Sylvia a little push after which she followed her daughter onto the platform and turning to me continued: “Ah yes, there is Mrs. Lincroft.” She called in her somewhat shrill and penetrating voice: “Mrs. Lincroft. Here is the young person you are looking for.”

  I had alighted and stood with my two large bags beside me. The vicar’s wife gave me a brief nod and another to the approaching woman and went off with Sylvia at her heels.

  “You are Mrs. Verlaine?” She was a tall, slender woman in her mid-thirties, I guessed. There was an air of faded beauty about her and I was immediately reminded of the flowers I used to press among the pages of books. A large straw hat was tied under her chin with light colored veiling; her large eyes were a faded blue; her face a little gaunt for she was very slender. She was dressed in grey but her blouse was a cornflower blue, which I suspected gave a deeper blue to her eyes. There was certainly nothing formidable about her.

  I told her who I was.

  “I’m Amy Lincroft,” she replied, “housekeeper at Lovat Stacy. I have the trap outside. Your bags can be sent up to the house.”

  She signed to a porter and gave him instructions and in a few minutes she was taking me through the barrier to the station yard.

  “I see you have already made the acquaintance of the vicar’s wife.”

  “Yes, oddly enough she guessed who I was.”

  Mrs. Lincroft smiled. “It could have been by design. She knew you’d be on that train and wanted to meet you before the rest of us did.”

  “I feel flattered to have inspired her to do so.”

  We had reached the trap. I got in and she took the reins. “We’re a good two miles from the station,” she told me, “nearer three.” I noticed her delicate wrists and long thin fingers. “I hope you like the country, Mrs. Verlaine.”

  I told her I had been used to living in towns so that it was something I should have to discover.

  “Big towns?” she asked.

  “I was brought up in London. I lived abroad with my husband and when he died I came back to London.”

  She was silent and as she too was a widow I wondered whether she was thinking of her husband. I tried to imagine what he would have been like and whether she had been happy. I thought not.

  How different from the vicar’s wife who rarely stopped talking and had told me so much in such a short time. Mrs. Lincroft would be, I imagined, almost secretive.

  She talked vaguely of London where she once lived briefly; and then she mentioned the east winds which were a feature of this coast. “We get the full force of them. I hope you don’t feel the cold, Mrs. Verlaine? But then the spring is almost here and the spring is quite lovely. So is the summer.”

  I asked her about my pupils and she confirmed that I should be teaching her own daughter Alice, as well as Allegra, and Edith: Mrs. Stacy.

  “You will find Mrs. Stacy and Alice good pupils. Allegra is not really bad—just high spirited and perhaps a little prone to get into mischief. I think you will like them all.”

  “I am looking forward to meeting them.”

  “That you will do very shortly for they are all eager to meet you.”

  The wind was keen and I fancied I could smell the sea, and now we had come to the Roman remains.

  Mrs. Lincroft said: “This was discovered quite recently. We had archaeologists down here and Sir William gave them leave to excavate. He wished afterwards that he hadn’t. It has brought crowds here to see the remains and there was an unfortunate affair. You may have heard of it. There was a great fuss at the time. One of the archaeologists disappeared and ... I fancy... hasn’t been heard of since.”

  “Mrs. Rendall mentioned it.”

  “There was talk of nothing else at the time. We had people prying ... It was very upsetting. I saw the young woman once. She came to see Sir William.”

  “So she disappeared,” I said. “Do you have any ideas as to how it happened?”

  She shook her head.

  “Such a forthright young woman. One can’t imagine how she could have done such a thing.”

  “What ... thing?”

  “Just walked off and told no one where she was going. That must have been what happened.”

  “But she wouldn’t have done such a thing, surely. She would have told her sister.”

  “Oh ... did she have a sister?”

  I flushed slightly. How foolish I was. If I were not careful
I should betray myself.

  “Or her brother or parents,” I continued.

  “Yes,” conceded Mrs. Lincroft “Surely she would have done that. It’s very mysterious.”

  I fancied I had shown too much interest, so I quickly changed the subject. “I can smell the sea.”

  “Oh yes, you’ll see it in a moment And you’ll see the house too.”

  I caught my breath in wonder, for there it was, just as I had been remembering it—that impressive gate house with its moldings, its mullions and arched transoms.

  “It’s magnificent,” I said.

  She looked pleased. “The gardens are quite lovely. I do a little gardening myself. I find it so ... soothing.”

  I was scarcely listening. A great excitement had come to me. This house thrilled, yet repelled me. The machicolated towers with their crenellations seemed to give a warning to those who would carelessly enter through the gate below. I imagined arrows and boiling pitch being thrown from the heights of those towers on to the enemies of the great house.

  Mrs. Lincroft was aware of the effect the house was having on me and she smiled. “I suppose we who live here are inclined to take it all for granted,” she said.

  “I was wondering how it felt to live in such a house.”

  “You will soon find out.”

  We were on the gravel path, bounded on both sides by the moss-covered wall, which led directly to the gate house. It was an impressive moment as we passed under the arch and I saw the door of the gatekeeper’s lodge with the peephole through which visitors to the mansion must have been scrutinized. I wondered whether anyone was watching there now.

  Mrs. Lincroft brought the trap to a standstill in a cobbled courtyard. “There are two courtyards,” she told me, “the lower and the upper.” She waved a hand at the four high walls which enclosed it. “These are mostly the servants’ quarters,” she went on. She nodded towards an archway through which I caught a glimpse of stone steps going up. “The nurseries are over that gateway; and in the upper courtyard are the family’s rooms.”

  “It’s vast,” I said.

  She laughed. “You will discover how vast. The stables are here. So if you will alight I will call one of the grooms and then take you into the house and introduce you. Your bags will be here shortly ... by the time I have given you tea, I imagine. I’ll take you to the schoolroom and there you can meet the girls.”

  She drove the trap into the stables, leaving me standing there in the courtyard. There was a hushed silence and now that I was alone I felt I had stepped right back into the past Ithe age of those walls which closed me in. Four hundred ... five hundred? I looked up; two hideous gargoyles projected from the walls, seeming to scowl at me. The Gothic tracery on the leadwork of the water spouts was exquisitely delicate in odd contrast to those grotesque figures. The doors—four of them were of oak, studded with massive nails. I looked at the windows with their leaden panes and I wondered about the people who lived behind them.

  As I stood there, though completely fascinated, I was again conscious of that feeling of revulsion. I could not understand it, but I felt I wanted to run away, to go back to London, to write to my music master in Paris and beg for another chance. Perhaps it was the evil expression on the faces of those stone images jutting out from the walls. Perhaps it was the silence; that overwhelming atmosphere of the past which made me fancy that I was being lured from this present century into an earlier age. I had a vivid picture of Roma coming through that gate into this courtyard, demanding to see Sir William, asking him if he thought his park and trees were more important than history. Poor Roma. If he had refused his permission, would she be alive today?

  It seemed that the house was alive, that those grotesques were not merely stone figures. Was that a shadow at the window over the second gateway? The nurseries, Mrs. Lincroft had said. Perhaps. But what more natural than that my pupils should be interested enough in their new music teacher to take a preview of her, when they believed her to be unaware of them?

  I had never been inside a house of such antiquity before, I reminded myself. It was the circumstances of my coming which made me feel as I did. “Roma,” I whispered to myself. “Where are you, Roma?”

  I could imagine that the gargoyles behind my back were laughing at me. I felt, as though something was telling me that I should not stay here, that if I did I should be hurt in some mysterious way. And with this feeling came the certainty that the riddle of Roma’s disappearance was hidden somewhere in this house.

  This is absurdly whimsical, I admonished myself in a voice which was just like Roma’s. How she would have laughed at such an idea. The romantic, Pietro would have commented, forever in me, peeping out from behind the poise, the air of worldliness.

  Mrs. Lincroft appeared and she looked so comforting that the illusion vanished.

  In fact, I continued to tell myself, I had not come here so much to solve the mystery of Roma’s disappearance as to earn an adequate living, to make sure of a roof over my head. Once I admitted that this was an end of my grand ambitions and looked at this venture as a practical and most sensible move, the more reasonably I should view my situation.

  Mrs. Lincroft led the way under the second gateway over which were the schoolroom windows. I paused to read the inscription.

  “You can scarcely make it out,” she said. “It’s in medieval English. ‘Fear God and honor the King.’ ”

  “A noble sentiment,” I remarked.

  She smiled and said: “Be careful of the steps. They’re steep and worn in places.”

  There were twelve of them leading to the upper courtyard; this was larger and bounded by tall grey walls. I noticed the similar windows with their leaded panes, the gargoyles and the intricate designs on the head of the water spouts.

  “This way,” said Mrs. Lincroft and pushed open a heavy door.

  We were in an enormous hall about sixty feet long with a vaulted ceiling and four window embrasures. Although the windows were large the panes were small and leaded which meant that there were dark shadows although it was only afternoon. At one end was a dais on which stood a grand piano, at the other a minstrels’ gallery. There was a staircase close to the gallery and two arched openings through which I caught sight of a dark passage. On the limewashed walls were weapons, and a suit of armor stood at the foot of the staircase.

  “The hall is rarely used nowadays,” said Mrs. Lincroft. “Once balls were held there ... and there were musical occasions. But since Lady Stacy’s death and since er ... Well, since then, Sir William has done little entertaining. An occasional dinner party ... but of course we shall be using the hall now there is a young mistress of the house. I daresay we shall have some musical entertainments too.

  “Shall I be expected to—?”

  “I daresay.”

  I tried to imagine myself seated at the grand piano on the dais. I could hear Pietro’s laugh. “A concert pianist at last. Through the back door, one might say ... No, through the castle gates.”

  As Mrs. Lincroft led the way to the staircase, I laid my hand on the carved banister and saw the dragons and the fierce-looking creatures engraved there.

  “I’m sure,” I said, “that no animals ever looked quite nice these.” Mrs. Lincroft again smiled her quiet smile, and I went on: “I wonder why they always wanted to frighten people away. People who want to frighten others are very often frightened themselves. That’s the answer. They must have been really afraid ... hence these fierce-looking creatures.”

  “Calculated, as they say, to strike terror into the hearts of the invaders.”

  “They would do it most successfully, I’m sure. It’s the long shadows ... just as much as those carvings, which are really too fantastic to be true, that give this feeling of ... menace.”

  “You are sensitive to atmosphere, Mrs. Verlaine. You will be hoping that there are no ghosts in the house. Are you superstitious?”

  “That’s something we all deny until we are put to the test. Then
most of us prove we are.”

  “You mustn’t be here, you know. In a place like this where people have lived for centuries within the same walls stories circulate. A servant sees her own shadow and wears it is a ghost in grey. Easily done, Mrs. Verlaine, in a house like this.”

  “I don’t think I am going to be afraid of my own shadow.”

  “I know how I felt when I first came here. I remember arriving in this hall and standing here terrified.” She shivered at the recollection.

  “And all turned out well, I suppose.”

  “I found ... a place in this house ... in time.” She shook herself slightly as though shaking off past memories. “Now, I think first to the schoolroom. I will have tea sent up there. I am sure you’re ready for it.”

  We had reached a gallery in which hung several portraits and I noticed some fine tapestries which I intended to examine later, for their subjects seemed most intriguing.

  She opened a door and said: “Mrs. Verlaine is here.”

  I followed her into a lofty room and there were the three girls. They made a charming picture, one of them on the window seat, another seated at a table and a third standing with her back to the fireplace on either side of which stood two great firedogs.

  The one in the window seat came towards me and I recognized her at once, because I had seen her coming down the aisle on the arm of her bridegroom. She looked so shy—she was uncertain as yet, I guessed, of her new dignity as mistress of the house; and indeed it was incongruous to think of her as such. She looked like a child.

  “How do you do, Mrs. Verlaine?” The words were spoken as though she had rehearsed them many times. She held out her hand and I took it. As it lay for those few seconds limply in mine I felt sorry for her and knew I wanted to protect her. “We are glad you have come,” she continued in that stilted way.

  Her hair was certainly her crowning glory. It was the color of corn in August, and little tendrils escaped to nestle on her low white forehead and at the nape of her neck. It was the only vital thing about her.