Zipporah's Daughter

by Philippa Carr

  “You know my Evie and Dolly,” said Mrs. Trent. She looked at Evie with pride, and I immediately felt sorry for Dolly, who hung back a little, for I guessed she was very much aware of her deformity.

  The girls dropped a curtsy, and Mrs. Trent went on: “They think it’s lovely… you, Miss Claudine, and Mr. David, don’t you, girls?”

  They nodded.

  “Where’s your tongues?” demanded Mrs. Trent. “Haven’t you got something to say?”

  “Congratulations, Miss de Tourville and Mr. Frenshaw,” said Evie.

  “Thanks,” we replied simultaneously and David went on: “I saw you riding the other day. I must say you manage your horses well.”

  “Oh yes,” said Mrs. Trent, “I’ve had them brought up in the right way, both of them. I was determined my girls should be as good as anyone else.”

  “I’m sure you succeeded, Mrs. Trent,” I said. “I do agree about the wine being especially good this year. Thanks for letting us try it, and now I think we really ought to be going, don’t you, David?”

  “I’m afraid so,” he said. “There is so much to do round the estate.”

  “Don’t I know it,” said Mrs. Trent. “In my own little way, of course. Grasslands is no Eversleigh, but my goodness there’s enough to keep us busy. It was very gracious of you to call. We do appreciate that, don’t we, girls?”

  Evie said: “Oh yes, we do.”

  “And I’ll come and dance at your wedding. You girls will have to wait a bit for yours. But I’ve a feeling Evie won’t have so long. Well, we’ll see.”

  We rose and thanked her for the wine, and she came out with us to our horses. Evie and Dolly came with her and stood looking at us while we mounted.

  Mrs. Trent slapped the flanks of my horse affectionately.

  “I’ll be at the wedding,” she said. “I have a special interest in your family.”

  I don’t know why it was—perhaps because of the mood she aroused in me—but I thought the words sounded ominous.

  As we rode away, David said: “She is rather ill-bred, but I don’t think she means any harm.”

  So he must have felt the same as I did. I agreed that she was ill-bred, but I was not so sure of the harm; but my apprehension did seem rather foolish so I pressed my horse into a gallop. I felt I wanted to put a distance between myself and Grasslands.

  We slowed down as we came to the road. “They must have been at Grasslands for a long time,” I said.

  “Well, Mrs. Trent went there as housekeeper, and married old Andrew Mather.”

  “Yes, I heard that. The girls’ father was her son.”

  “Yes, by her first husband. He managed the estate very well until his death. Now she has quite a good manager.”

  “Grasslands is very different from that other house… Enderby.”

  “Very. Always was. It’s odd about Enderby.”

  “Do you believe that houses have an effect on people? They do say that Enderby is unlucky.”

  David laughed. “How can a house be? It’s only bricks or stone. They can’t change luck, can they?”

  “Let’s go and look at the old place. Just a glimpse. It’s up this way, isn’t it?”

  I turned off the road and David followed me. As we rounded a bend, there was the old house. I have to admit that even in broad daylight it sent a shiver through me. It looked dark and menacing, as neglected houses will sometimes. The shrubs about it were thick and untended.

  “It looks very dejected,” said David.

  “And at the same time defiant,” I replied.

  He laughed. “Can a house look so?”

  “Enderby does. Come on. I want a close look. Do you think anyone will ever buy it?”

  “Not in the state it’s in. It’s been empty for years. Because of its reputation probably.”

  “David, I want to look closer.”

  “Hasn’t Grasslands been enough for one morning?”

  “Perhaps because of Grasslands.”

  He looked at me puzzled. Then he smiled and said: “All right. Let’s go.”

  We tethered our horses to the post which was set there conveniently for the use of visitors and went to the front door. It was silent, eerie. There was a rusty bell which I pulled, and we stood listening to the jangling which echoed through the house.

  “No use ringing the bell,” said David. “Whom do you expect to answer it?”

  “Ghosts,” I said. “People who have lived in the house and can’t rest because of their sins. Wasn’t there a murder here once?”

  “If there was it’s ancient history.”

  “It’s ancient history that makes ghosts.”

  “Claudine, I believe there’s a side to your nature which I have not discovered. You believe in evil spirits. Do you, Claudine?”

  “I don’t know, but I should if I were made aware of them. In fact, David, I would believe anything in the world if I had evidence of it.”

  “Well, that is the crux of the matter. Are you going to believe without proof?”

  “Standing here… in the shadow of this house… I could.”

  “We can’t get in because there is no one to let us in.”

  “Is there a key somewhere… just in case of a prospective buyer?”

  “I believe it is with Mrs. Trent. She’s the nearest neighbour. You’re not going to propose that we go back and ask for it, are you?”

  I shook my head emphatically. “Still, I should like to explore a bit.”

  David, ever willing to please, followed me round the house. We fought our way through overgrown weeds in the long grass. When I found the window with the broken latch, I pushed it open and looked into the hall.

  “David,” I said excitedly. “We could climb through here. Do let’s.”

  He did, and standing in the hall turned to help me in, and soon we were there, looking up at the vaulted ceiling and the minstrels’ gallery and the wide staircase at one end of the hall.

  “That,” said David, “is said to be the haunted spot. It all started when someone in financial difficulties, I think, tried to hang himself with a rope suspended from the gallery. The rope was too long and he landed on his feet suffering terrible agonies. Ever since then the house has been cursed.”

  “Sabrina lived here in her childhood.”

  “Yes. But even when she was well she avoided coming here. The house was quite normal then because her mother, who was a very good woman, made it so. And after she died her husband was heartbroken and it reverted to its gloomy aspect. That shows, does it not, that it is people who make the house what it is—not stone and bricks?”

  “You win,” I said.

  And he laughed. He put an arm about me. “There you are, Madam. An undesirable property. But one which could be made desirable… by the right people.”

  “Who in their right minds would want to live in such a place? Think of all the work which would have to be done.”

  “Nothing that a few gardeners could not alter in a month. To my mind it’s the darkness. It’s all that growth outside.”

  “Come and look at the haunted gallery then.”

  We mounted the staircase. I parted the curtains. They were thick with dust. I went in and stood looking down on the hall. Yes, there was an eerie atmosphere. The house seemed silent, watchful.

  I shivered, but said nothing to David. He would not notice. He was too practical.

  We looked down to the other end of the hall, to the screens with the kitchens beyond. I could imagine the people who had danced in this hall; and I wondered what it would be like here when darkness fell. It really was ghostly, and one’s imagination might play tricks. No one would ever want to come and live here and the house would crumble and decay.

  We went up the staircase, our footsteps echoing through the house. We looked into the bedrooms. There were many of them, and some of the furniture must have been there for years—such as the old court cupboard in one room and the four-poster bed in another.

  I had a feelin
g that I wanted to be alone here—just for a few moments. David was too prosaic, too unimaginative to feel the atmosphere as I did. Of course, I was fanciful and was allowing myself to pretend I felt something which I had probably worked up within myself.

  I slipped into one of the rooms. I could hear David’s footsteps in another and I guessed he was examining the old court cupboard.

  Silence! Just a faint murmur in the trees which grew so thickly round the house. I heard a sound. It must have been the swaying lattice of the broken window downstairs, but it startled me.

  Then suddenly I heard a sibilant whisper. It seemed to fill the room. It was: “Beware… beware, little bride.”

  I felt myself go cold with horror. I looked quickly round. Someone had spoken. I had distinctly heard those words. I ran to the door and looked along the corridor to the staircase. There was no sign of anyone.

  David emerged from the room in which he had been.

  I said: “Did you hear someone?”

  He looked surprised. “There’s no one here,” he said.

  “I thought I heard…”

  “You’re imagining things,” he said.

  I nodded. I now had a great desire to get away. I had known there was something malevolent about the house.

  We went quickly down the staircase to the hall. All the time I was looking about me to see if there was any sign of anyone’s being in the house.

  There was nothing.

  David helped me through the window. I tried to stop my hands trembling as he helped me into the saddle.

  “Can you see anyone’s trying to make a home of that place?” said David.

  “I can’t really. I think it is full of evil ghosts.”

  “And cobwebs and spiders’ webs doubtless.”

  “Horrible.”

  “Never mind, my dearest. It makes you appreciate Eversleigh all the more.”

  Eversleigh… My home forever… surrounded by love, the love of my mother and my husband. And if Jonathan ever came home…?

  I tried not to think of that but I could not stop myself. I kept hearing those words: “Beware, little bride.”

  The days which followed were very busy and I forgot our visit to Enderby. It was only occasionally—and in dreams—that those words kept coming back to my mind.

  It was to be a moderately quiet wedding. The absence of Jonathan, Charlot and Louis Charles could not be lightly brushed aside. However much we tried to forget it, and while we were in doubt as to where they were and what was happening to them, ours must be an anxious household. It was seven months since they had left and that seemed a long time.

  The hall was being decorated with plants from the greenhouses and there was an atmosphere of bustle everywhere; savoury smells emerged from the kitchen and the cook was making an enormous wedding cake over which she seemed to be puffing and groaning every time I went into the kitchen.

  We should have a few people staying in the house—those who came from too far to be able to get home on the evening of the wedding day; those in the not-too-distant neighbourhood could attend the ceremony and the reception which was to follow and then start the journey home.

  The marriage was to take place in the Eversleigh chapel, which was reached from the hall by a short spiral staircase. It was not small—as chapels in country houses go—but on the other hand it was not large and would therefore, I was sure, be overcrowded. My mother had said that the servants could sit on the staircase if there was not room for them inside the chapel.

  The day after the wedding David and I would leave for London and would spend a week there before returning to Eversleigh.

  “The honeymoon proper is temporarily postponed,” said David, “but only until life settles down more peacefully on the Continent. Then for us it will be the Grand Tour. We may go through France if that is possible and perhaps visit some of the people and places you once knew. And then… on to Italy. In the meantime we shall have to be satisfied. Will you accept that?”

  “Needs must,” I said laughingly.

  I began to thrust aside my doubts. My mother was so pleased. I knew she had always favoured David. Why was it that she, who had chosen Dickon, the wildest of adventurers, and one least likely to be a faithful husband, should have chosen serious David for me? Perhaps for the very reason that she herself had chosen Dickon. I believed my own father was a man whom she had shared with many women. So perhaps that was the very reason why she preferred the steady one for her daughter.

  It was the night before my wedding. I opened the cupboard door and looked at my dress. Before the candles were lighted it looked like a woman standing there. Soft chiffon! The pride of Molly Blackett’s life. It was beautiful. I should be happy ever after.

  I undressed and brushed my hair, braiding it neatly into two plaits. I went and sat by the window and I asked myself if everything would have been different if Jonathan had not gone away. Suppose I could go back to the days before my birthday. It was on my birthday, with the arrival of the refugees, that everything changed. It was they who had fired Jonathan and Charlot with the idea of going to France. Charlot had always wanted to go back.

  Suppose those refugees had not escaped. Suppose they had never come to Eversleigh… Would this then be the eve of my wedding?

  I looked out into the distance. How often had I stood there straining my eyes to the horizon looking for a rider who might be Jonathan returning from France.

  But he had not come. Perhaps he never would come. Perhaps he would disappear as my Uncle Armand had—although he came back… when it was too late.

  Would Jonathan?

  I got into bed. It was difficult to sleep. I kept thinking about the future, sometimes fearfully. But what was there to fear? David loved me and he was the kindest of people.

  And if Jonathan ever came back…? Well, what if he did? I should be married then. His coming and going would be no real concern of mine.

  At last I slept and I awoke to find my mother standing by my bed.

  “Wake up, little bride,” she said. “It’s your wedding day.”

  I was coming out of my sleep and as I smiled at her I seemed to hear another voice, strange and ghostly: “Beware, little bride.”

  So I was married to David in the chapel at Eversleigh. It was a simple ceremony performed by the priest who lived on the estate and officiated on all such occasions. I felt a sense of fatality standing on the red tiles where generations of Eversleigh brides had stood before me.

  The chapel was so hot and the overpowering odour of so many flowers made me feel a little faint; but perhaps that was the excitement.

  David was smiling as he put the ring on my finger and said the words required of him in a resolute voice. I hoped I sounded equally determined to do what was expected of me.

  Then we were walking out of the chapel and I was aware of all the people there: Lord and Lady Pettigrew with their daughter Millicent; friends from the neighbourhood; and at the back of the chapel—suggesting to me a certain false modesty—were Mrs. Trent and her two grand-daughters.

  I could feel their eyes on me. But this was natural, for was I not, as the bride, the focus of attention?

  The servants who had been seated on the stairs hastily pressed themselves against the wall to make a passage for us, and so David and I, now husband and wife, came into the hall.

  My mother was right behind us. She was flushed and looked very beautiful; with her dark blue eyes and luxuriant dark hair, she was still a strikingly handsome woman.

  There were tears now in her lovely eyes. She whispered to me that it was so moving. “I kept thinking about the day you were born and all the funny little things you used to do.”

  “I believe that is how mothers are on their daughters’ wedding days,” I said, “so, dearest Maman, you only acted true to form.”

  “Come,” she said. “They are all returning now. We shall feed them right away.”

  Soon they were assembled in the hall and there was a buzz of conversation. Dick
on looked very pleased and I could hear his hearty laughter above the conversation. My mother was at his side and I thought: She is happier than she has been since the day Charlot left.

  I cut the cake with David’s help and I smiled to note the cook’s anxious eyes on us while we performed this ceremony, for the servants had gathered in one corner of the room.

  I nodded towards her to imply that it was perfect. She closed her eyes, and opening them, rolled them to the ceiling in ecstasy. David and I laughed together and went on cutting the cake.

  Mrs. Evalina Trent was talking to Millicent Pettigrew, rather to Millicent’s consternation, for her mother would most certainly not approve of Mrs. Trent. I think Evalina Trent knew this and was rather maliciously keeping Millicent in conversation although it was clear that she wanted to escape.

  “It’ll be your turn next, my dear,” I heard her say. “Oh yes it will. Take a piece of cake and put it under your pillow, my dear. Then tonight you will dream of your future husband.”

  Millicent looked over Mrs. Trent’s head and Mrs. Trent went on, indicating her two grand-daughters, who were close by. “Now my girls will put that cake under their pillows, won’t you, girls? They’re determined to see their future husbands tonight.” She turned to Millicent: “You’ll be staying the night, I daresay.”

  Millicent admitted that she would be.

  “Too far to travel back by night,” went on Mrs. Trent. “Dangerous, too. I wouldn’t want to travel after daylight. Those gentlemen of the road are getting bolder. They’re not content with taking a lady’s purse… They want something else besides, so they tell me.”

  Millicent murmured: “Excuse me!” and went over to join her mother.

  People came up to congratulate us; toasts were drunk and there was a great deal of laughter. Dickon made a speech saying how happy he and my mother were, and he stressed what an unusual state of affairs this was when a man’s son could marry his wife’s daughter and it could be the most perfect union imaginable.

  Everyone applauded, and the servants cleared away the food and dancing began. As was customary I opened the dance with Dickon, followed by David with my mother; and the others fell in behind us.

  I was tired and a little apprehensive, half relieved and half fearful, when the guests began to depart, leaving only those who were staying in the house.