She was going back into it, and it was much worse.
The rocking movement of the train lulled Veronica. By the end of the journey, she was too tired to notice they were being been followed by a bright full moon.
Veronica had hoped to arrive in the morning so she could leave before nightfall, but when the coach entered the grounds of Belden House, it was near twilight.
Belden House in the snow was a desolate sight. The wide garden was blasted white, the bare trees frozen with every twig on end as the wind blustered against them. Icicles hung from the gables and gutters, rooks hunched on the frost-encrusted rooftops, doves huddled in the dark windowsills. Though it was a new year, no joy encompassed Belden House, no cheer could overcome its dreary mournfulness.
Veronica felt strange going back inside. One wasn’t meant to go backwards. Life was a series of births, leaving womb after womb behind until one left the womb of the earth for Heaven, or that other place whose fires burned too close by.
“I think this may be bad timing, Janet. I think the moon will be full tonight,” Veronica said. “I shall be forced to shoot him, won’t I? You’ve tricked me.”
“No, Miss. No. It’s the perfect time to help Mr. Rafe and the others as well. If it’s any reassurance, I’ve hidden the guns. After what I saw Mr. Rafe doing with his, I hid all the guns I could get my hands on.”
“Well, you’ve got enough faith for army, haven’t you? Too much in me, I’m afraid. Where is he?”
“Perhaps he's in his rooms. Do you want me to announce you?”
“No. I’ll go on my own.” Veronica went up the stairs.
First she wanted to look in on Jacqueline. The child’s bedroom was empty. She went up to the schoolroom. Jacqueline was there, looking out at the yew hedge, now a wall of snow-covered tapers. She was wearing a black dress; the white-blonde hair had grown long, almost to the middle of her back.
“Jacqueline, it’s me, Miss Everly.”
Jacqueline turned around. The pale green eyes were cold at first, then, at the sight of Veronica, they filled with tears.
“Miss Everly. You’ve come back!” She ran into Veronica’s arms.
Veronica stroked the child’s hair. “I’ve missed you. All of you.”
“We've missed you as well. Please stay with us, Miss Everly. Please don’t ever leave us again.”
Veronica thought it was best not tell Jacqueline her plans. “I must speak with your father, now. Go ahead and play and I shall see you later on. For tea.”
“I can’t play. Not alone. There’s nothing to do, and Papa says we can’t have another governess.”
“Well, run along to the drawing room and I’ll read to you. Your pick. Beauty and the Beast or something. All right?” Veronica said.
“Oh, yes, Miss Everly! I shall wait for you. But don’t leave it too late. The light fades fast in winter. It’s pitch dark by five o'clock. Mrs. Twig says.”
“Don’t worry,” said Veronica, rising to her feet. “I won’t be long.”
“It’s getting stronger every month, you know. Every year it will get stronger until I’m twelve. Then there will be no going back.”
“What do you mean?” Veronica asked.
Jacqueline ran out the door, leaving her china doll on the windowsill. Veronica didn't chase her. She knew the child well enough to respect her choice to run away.
As she gazed out at the yews, her hand glided toward the doll. She picked it up. It was quite grubby, as if Jacqueline hadn’t let go of it for weeks. She couldn’t forget how it had writhed in Mrs. Twig's hand that night in the kitchen. She put it back down so that it sat against the windowpane. Its fine muslin petticoat, ending in a froth of spider's web lace, enhanced the blondeness of its head, making it vaguely more substantial than a ghost.
Then the realization struck her.
“The curse must grow stronger with age,” she whispered. “It is firmly established at puberty. Before age twelve, it's possible she can be saved.”
Veronica steeled herself, ran out into the hallway, and knocked on Rafe’s door.
There was no answer.
She knocked again, harder.
“Rafe? Rafe! It’s me, Veronica.” She knocked again.
He wasn’t there.
Veronica pushed the door open and stepped inside. The room felt deserted. She checked Rafe’s bedchamber. The pistol that normally sat on the runner of red silk was gone.
Alert as a hunting dog, she wandered into the sitting room.
Bleak winter light streamed in through the tall conservatory windows, chilling the foliage black, infusing her heart with despair. She gazed up at the two portraits above the mantel and remembered the first time she’d seen Rafe and Sovay. Unknown, they had seemed so cultured, so civilized, so admirable. That impression was dashed now. Instead, they'd acquired a dark glamour that seemed, unexplainably, to increase their attractiveness, confusing Veronica more than ever.
Pulling away from the portraits, she wandered out to the passage with its tall Gothic windows. Through leaded panes tinted with frost, she looked down upon pure whiteness. Through bare trees, the solitary tomb was visible, the white masonry like a heap of snow, the angels on the rooftop dripping with icicles. Further away, up the slope, the ruined chapel was veiled under the crystalline swags of the yews.
Veronica hurried up the three steps to the landing, and faced the tower door. Mrs. Twig’s blood had been cleansed from the floor, but a streak of darkness remained. Skirting that direful place, she took the rest of the stairs up to the roof of the tower.
Veronica scanned the yard for a sign of Rafe, but saw only endless white. Perhaps he was behind the juniper hedge, in the Rock Garden, or in the other garden where the twins had trapped the deer, or deep inside the ruined chapel, waiting for the bell to toll. She thought she should go down and try to find him, but she stalled. It was painful to admit that she was frightened of him.
Twilight was sinking in, tingeing the landscape blue and violet. The sky was clear. It would freeze tonight. Deep in the house, the faint echo of the long case clock gonged the hour for tea, and she remembered her promise to Jacqueline.
A scream erupted in the birch wood.
Veronica looked out in time to see a white wolf fall upon a small animal and kill it. Then, as if she were coming out of trance, Jacqueline stood up, gasped a white rabbit by its long ears, and carried it to the house. Drops of bright blood followed her over the snow.
Veronica clung to the battlements, digging her fingers into the stone. The de Grimstons were past saving. And why was it up to her anyway? She had no power.
Stars began winking out.
A loud blast erupted from the Rock Garden. It sounded like gunfire!
Veronica held her breath as s shadowy figure broke through the juniper hedge into the yard. Tall, lumbering and brooding, she knew by the creature's blackness that it was Rafe.
The beast aimed a pistol at his heart, and roared.
Veronica's breath left her body. "Don't, don't!"
She ran down the stairs two at a time. Bounding out onto the landing, she found Janet dutifully leaning against the open door of the tower holding a platter with the dead rabbit flopped across it. Utter weariness was etched upon her face, yet the maid was clearly determined to do what was required.
Looking furtively about, as if she were ashamed of being seen, Mrs. Twig gripped Jacqueline by the shoulders with long pointed fingers, and pushed her toward the tower door. Though they still looked human enough, their eyes were oddly de-focused in the way of beasts, both of them raising their hackles as if wary of their customary imprisonment.
Mrs. Twig sniffed the air, then leveled her gaze on Veronica. Reddish fur was already creeping up her neck. Veronica gasped and covered her face with her hands. After having been gone for several weeks, the de Grimstons now struck her as freakish, nightmarish, wrong. Belden House did not belong on earth. It was mad.
“Oh, Janet! Why did you send f
or me?” Veronica whispered sharply.
Janet gave her a blank look. Using the rabbit as bait, she stepped into the tower, luring Mrs. Twig and Jacqueline inside.
Veronica needed her pistol. Did she dare face the man she loved that night of all nights without it? Remembering the terrifying beast in the tower, the iron bars of the window twisted open, the brutal death of the farm woman and the possibility that Rafe might have killed her, Veronica ran across the landing to the passage that led to his rooms. Once inside, she paused again to look at his portrait. So handsome he was in the picture, so sound, so exactly as she wanted him to be. And Sovay: so powerful and accomplished in her sorcery. How could Veronica fight her alone?
Hoping to find the gun Rafe had given her, the one loaded with three silver bullets, she rummaged through every drawer and wardrobe in his rooms.
She found nothing.
In desperation, she hurried to her old room. But for the moonlight streaming in through the windows, it was dark. So much had changed that it was difficult to believe she'd ever stayed here, had ever been happy in these rooms. Now, the hearth having been dead for weeks, it was as cold as a tomb.
Far off in the distance, the bell began to toll. Veronica froze for a moment, listening. Then, moving as if through heavy fog, she went out to the balcony and looked down into the yard.
The moon had risen above the bare trees, confusing light and shadows amorphously. It took several moments before she was able to discern the area of blackness that was Rafe.
He was standing at the dark, wintry hole of the wishing well. A light, like ectoplasm, rose up from the water. Roaring as if in pain, Rafe fell back. He lurched this way and that, struggling against the wolf spirit rising visibly within him. The gun flailed above his head. Had he loaded it with silver bullets? If so, were there any left?
Before she had time to finish the thought, Rafe was gone. The acid bright eyes of a wolf gazed out of the darkness. Is appalling shape grew denser and more real, then began to shimmer. Yowling, the creature writhed as if it were in the grip of agony. There was a flash, as of a spirit breaking free, and Rafe appeared, human again. Bent inward, swaying as if he doubted his state, he beat his head with his fists, lamenting. It did no good. He quickly shimmered from shape to shape. Amid wave upon wave of light, his jaws elongated, his ears perked up, and thick, black fur grew over his skin. Lifting his large clawed hands to the sky, he shrieked to the heavens, then shuddered, curling inward as if overcome with pain.
Where was the gun?
"Oh, what am I thinking?" Veronica cried, beating her head with her fists. She did not agree to kill him!
There was that sense of a tap on the shoulder again. Janet could have hidden the pistol somewhere in this room, where Veronica had left it. She slipped back inside, to the séance room, quickly lit some candles and looked around.
Working her way through the room, she came to the book cabinet with its etched glass doors. She tugged the latch. Locked. She rushed out to her old dressing table and felt in a drawer for a nail file. It was there.
As she picked the lock, the tune began softly humming in her head, so mysterious, so mesmerizing. It meant Sovay was coming. Soon the wolves would fill the world with their howling, and Rafe's transformation would be complete.
Fighting the power of the music in her head to bemuse her, she picked at the lock until it gave.
There, on the shelf, just as she'd suspected, was the pistol box.
The sound of a low, wintry wind whistled outside. A great roar rose up, and, at last, the cold, distant harmonies of the wolves.
Veronica opened the box and found the pearl-handled pistol. The scarlet lining, where the silver bullets should have been, was empty. She opened the chamber and found it loaded with one precious silver bullet.
It wasn't much, but it was enough.
She ran downstairs to the small conservatory. The plants looked like raised hackles against the moonlit panes. The statue of the fawn lay broken on the floor. Veronica looked through panes of leaded glass out into the yard.
The sound of the wolves was louder now. They were coming closer. Sovay would be among them. She knew it.
Rafe was still near the wishing well, hunkering down, a great mass of shadows against the whiteness of the snow. Veronica slipped to the French doors, opened them quietly, and stepped out to the terrace. Cocking her pistol, aiming it straight ahead, she prayed she would have time to reach out to Rafe, to say something before the beast completely possessed him, before she would be forced to do what he had so thoroughly trained her to do.
“Rafe?”
He swung his head up and gazed at her with dull, blind-seeming eyes. Utter surprise mixed with alarm returned him fully to human form.
“Veronica?”
His voice was gruff. His eyes, locked on hers, were filled with something like hope. “I see you’ve brought your gun. Use it then. Use it and put me out of my misery.”
He pulled his tattered shirt open, exposing his broad chest. Veronica’s heart swelled, stopping her voice. All she could do was look at him, drinking in the sight of his dark hair falling over his blue, tormented eyes. Elbows locked, the gun aimed at his heart, she shook her head and looked away. He’d taught her how to shoot. If she pulled the trigger now, the bullet would not miss.
“You’ve killed,” she said. "Haven't you?"
Rafe moaned. Swaying, lifting his hands to heaven, he sank down, collapsed in on himself, and disappeared in a ball of darkness.
Night made it difficult to know if he were still there, or had crept into the woods, if he were now wholly man, or beast, or still shimmering from one shape to another.
The old bell tolled its discordant note of doom. High, despairing howls erupted from the tower, the wolf calls of Jacqueline and Mrs. Twig.
"Rafe! Please! Tell me you did not kill the farm woman."
The darkness in the lilies growled.
Veronica swung the pistol toward the sound.
Curling out of the shadows, confusion clouding his eyes, Rafe bared his long teeth at Veronica and snarled.
“Stand back!” she shouted, jerking the pistol forward. “Stand back! I don’t want to shoot you. I don’t!”
“Why the devil not?” Rafe's voice coming out of this creature shook Veronica's sense of reality to bits.
His body was bending lower, his neck thickening, his jaws elongating, his face disappearing under burgeoning black fur. His blue eyes, steadily fixed upon her, turned red as blood.
“You’d better hurry, or you’re lost,” he rasped, and crouched as if to spring upon her.
Veronica staggered back. Veins of ice coursed up her arms, banged against her heart, raised the roots of her hair.
“Stay back!” she screamed.
"Shoot!" he roared.
Weeping, she raised the gun again, let it fall, then lifted it more urgently, pointing it at the beast.
“Did you have Janet summon me here? For this? Why me? Why do I have to do it?"
He seemed to laugh at her, sniggering under his steaming breath. His eyes were cold, provoking her to pull the trigger, yet his eyes were filled with misery.
Veronica looked up to the stars so distant, so remote, and felt utterly abandoned by God.
"I am so lost!" she cried.
Just before his paws hit the ground, Rafe straightened up. Then, lifting his claws, he let out a gruesome, heart-rending roar. He howled at the stars, at the afflicting moon; he roared into the dark at the evil that had cursed him.
As if in answer, shrieks pierced the air, howls fell like motes of fire from the window of the tower.
Distracted, Veronica swung toward the sound. Overcome by a terrible sense of dread, she turned slowly back to Rafe.
Crouching on all fours, ears back and growling, baring its long, sharp fangs, eyes blazing red, was a fully formed black wolf. Not a trace of the man glinted through its solid, muscular form. Sly, sinister, its tongue hanging long and dripping with saliva, the creature
was slinking toward Veronica.
Backing away, Veronica trained her pistol on the wolf. This thing could not be Rafe. It couldn't be!
“You’re not a wolf! You’re not a wolf!” she shouted.
The beast growled and leered at Veronica, its long tongue slathering, lolling out between its fangs. The fur along its back raised in spires, it began to sidle toward her.
Veronica felt her eyes grow wide. Shaking, she jumped back. The gun was slippery with sweat. The wolf that was Rafe gazed at Veronica with murder in its eyes.
“No. No. You’re not... You're not a wolf. You can't be."
Growling deep in its chest, the beast continued to prowl slowly forward.
Veronica's words trembled out hoarsely. "You are a man, Rafe de Grimston. Be that man. Be the man I love."
For a brief second, Rafe's true image flashed before her.
Like Beauty in the fairy tale, had she found the key to the curse?
"I love you. I adore you with my whole heart. I do."
The wolf rose up and stepped toward her. Still frightened and unsure, she aimed the gun at its heart.
"Stay back!"
The wolf howled, but softly. The beast seemed to melt, to grow warm, seemed about to become human again, then stopped.
A light appeared in the doorway of the ruined chapel, a yellow light.
Bright as the moon, Sovay floated out, then quickly vanished into a swarm of white wolves streaming toward them over the snow.
Veronica waved her pistol this way and that. She had only one shot!
Rafe, now both man and beast, stood up against the ghostly wolf pack and roared.
The sound of a penny whistle rose up from the wishing well, playing that mysterious, mesmerizing tune. Everything went still. Light swelled in the dead lilies, and two pale children in birch bark hats came out onto the snow. Enveloped in misty white light, holding long-stemmed lilies like magic wands, they stopped a few feet away from Rafe.
Papa... Papa... the voices vibrated softly on the air.
"Sylvie! Jacques!" Rafe's voice rumbled out.
Caught off guard, Veronica lowered her pistol.
Fast as lightning, a heavy weight fell on Veronica and knocked her down. She hit the ground hard. Breath knocked out, her stomach heaving, she was helpless as a ragdoll as wolf teeth tore her hair, gnawing toward her throat. Desperate, panting, she groped in the snow for the pistol that had flown out of her hand. The beast began snarling, rolling her over and over. Beating its head with her fists, Veronica screamed.
The Lady in Yellow: A Victorian Gothic Romance Page 32
