There was also a smuggler’s cave reached by a secret stair. But now that the cave was empty of illegal whisky, even that felt oddly charming. In fact, the only places I did not feel at home were the basement, the backyard, and one room in the attic where the family’s dirty secrets were stored. Everywhere else I basked in the glow of contentment.
This had never happened to me before, but from day one I had understood that the house needed to be inhabited and little was required to make it feel like my home, thanks to Harris removing some of the more disturbing artifacts and secreting them in a hidden room in the attic. I loved every curtain and cushion and shrub in the yard, and felt they loved me back. It was perfect in every way. Except that I was not like my great-grandfather. I needed power—lights, a computer, and refrigeration. I am an effete creature of the late twentieth century and I require these things to be happy.
And now I had them—for the low, low price of one crying ghost. There is always a price, isn’t there?
Actually, there were fewer outlets in each of the upstairs rooms than I would like, but in some rooms we were lucky to have them at all. Mr. Benson had employed great ingenuity in this matter. The man was an architectural surgeon.
Case in point, the blue room. It was during the wiring of my grandmother’s old bedroom that I began to dream about the dark-haired woman. We had had to pull up part of the floor, which had proven rather easy because someone had made a secret compartment there already. In it I found a letter—unreadable and crumbling except for one little bit at the bottom of a page … and he ordered that she be putt to death, the executione to be no later than five of the clock. There being no road in this extremity of the woods, it was a deed witnessed only by those who came on foott…. And there was a brittle yellow handkerchief and a lock of brittle, butterscotch-colored hair that I believed came from an adult and not a child. The color was also very familiar. Touching it raised gooseflesh on my arms and I thought of stories of death contamination and how the sins of the fathers were visited on the children ’til Kingdom come, Amen.
Mr. Benson’s voice interrupted my sudden dread and shocked me into action. As little as I wanted to touch those artifacts, even less did I want someone else to see them.
“… glad that the leaf-peepahs have gone. They—sonova’oah—uh, sorry for the language. But I’ll be murdehd if I can see any way around this stud. I—are you okay, Miss? Did you find a rat?” Concern replaced annoyance. Apparently Mr. Benson expected to find rats and also expected me not to like that.
“No rat. I’m fine,” I managed to say as I scooped up the paper, cloth, and hair with reluctant fingers and hid them with my body. The hand that touched them went numb and cold.
“Why don’t you sit down, Miss. There’s no need for you to work here.”
“How about some lunch? Maybe we can think of another way around the wall when we get some food in us.” My voice sounded almost normal as I dumped them in the first receptacle I found. It happened to be my grandmother’s old jewelry box.
“Ayuh, that would be cunnin’. You make some wicked good chowdah, Miss. No one would guess you were from away.”
I forced a smile. This was a compliment of no mean order.
We ate. Mr. Benson thought of a work-around for the wiring. I sat with a cold hand that only gradually regained feeling.
The woman I saw in my dreams that night—and sometimes waking hours in the days after—was nameless and faceless, a figure of darkness that eyes couldn’t always detach from the rest of the dark around her. She never actually entered the house, though I thought she wanted in. Instead she stood in the garden looking up at my grandmother’s window, night after night, twisted hand raised in supplication. I think that she was crying as well as sometimes screaming, but it was difficult to tell because tangled hair covered her face and she was always standing in the rain. Even when it wasn’t raining.
At first I dismissed her as a nightmare, like one of Scrooge’s blots of mustard or underdone potatoes, conjured up by those horrible words on that yellow paper. But night after night she came back, and I know that after the first sighting I was not asleep when I saw her. Always in the same place. Always looking up at the same window. My grandmother’s window. I have always believed in my senses and I didn’t think my eyes lied.
It took my mind a while to accept that this room had belonged to people before my grandmother. This sounds stupid now, but so completely did the house belong to me that I just couldn’t seem to admit that I had ancestors who had been living and dying in that house for almost three hundred years. It was my house—mine—and for a while my great-grandfather’s. But the ghost persisted and eventually I did accept the emotional truth that others had felt this way before me. And, God willing, others would feel that way after. We didn’t own the house, the house owned us.
These facts reluctantly accepted, if not liked, it followed that this apparition was probably a relative who had lived here, and I found myself driven to discover who she was. Her dress was early eighteenth century. Back then, only my family had lived on the island.
I began to have daytime reveries, thoughts—memories almost—of a dark forest. I/she was always bound, riding in a cart. Though my daydreams revealed nothing definite of the identity of whose terrified thoughts I was sharing, I had begun to suspect that she was the woman who had been accused of ensorceling Everett and Bryson Sands’ ancestor, the lecherous Colonel Sands. The one who had cursed him from the gallows, and whose bloody handprint appeared on his tombstone and would not wash away. The legends were unclear about her identity and she was never named in the accounts I’d read, but the Wendovers have a certain “look” and this ghost had it. Like my grandmother. I have it too—the dark hair and strong features with even stronger bodies.
Information from beyond is a kind of lens that focuses the brain on things it didn’t see before though they had probably always been there, trying to gain our attention. Let me add that I did not fear her. I felt horror and pity at her state, but did not sense that she wished me harm. The ghost was not after me. She wanted something else. At least, I believed so. The pain she caused me with her memories was unintentional.
Consumed by an ever-growing curiosity and a desire to prove my theory that she was kin, I began going through all the books stored in the attic. At first glance the old books seemed boring and irrelevant, just like most of the other books in the library. I read lots of them and the pages were absolutely buttered with boring facts about boring people. The Reverend Hayworth, seeking the rewards of Heaven by shewing the prodigious benefits to avoidance with putrid locals and rootts of plants near unto the forest where word of the Savior who died to redeeme mankind has not yet been received….
You get the idea. But I persisted. The dry and wordy old tomes full of fading ink had been hidden in the attic for a reason.
First, I learned from some old letters and journals that my great-grandfather had been a philanderer before his marriage, and after his wife’s death he became reclusive. Peculiar. Hostile even. He saw ghosts and had visions—which he did his best to ignore. But between what he saw in the garden, and what I was able to gather from other sources, an idea began to form. Bit by bit, the story was revealed until I had a general outline of what was billed as a case of witchcraft, but which was actually a judicial murder, the law being used as a weapon to rid a man of an embarrassment instead of for justice for a real crime.
I was satisfied, incensed, and frustrated all at once.
My quest hadn’t reached the level of true obsession, but it might as well have because there was no way I could let the questions go, not with the woman crying outside the window, demanding my help. I was in danger of also becoming reclusive, peculiar, and even hostile, because I did nothing but read and reread old books and take notes on ancient events. It had become very important that she have a name—an identity so that she was not left labeled as “the witch.” She had been murdered, which was bad enough, but they had even stolen her name
and stripped her of personhood, turned her into an evil icon, a footnote in an obscure legend. Made it seem that she—the living, breathing person—had never even existed.
Finally I had a light-bulb moment and I turned to the family Bible, seeking an actual name in the one place where they would be listed. There, after much interesting but pointless reading of the most villainous handwriting on the planet, I hit pay dirt. One page had had a bit of parchment glued over a space at the bottom. It pulled away revealing a large blot. I was making some assumptions about the woman whose name had been blotted out at the bottom of the first page and why—after all, there were many things a woman could do to get disowned. The dates fit though, and the ink used to scratch out her existence was cheap and had flaked away in places when I coaxed it. It wasn’t totally clear, but I had an H, a space and then two n’s. I believe that her name was Hannah.
If she was the woman who was hanged as a witch then she had been nineteen when she died. Was murdered. The thing about hanging is that it isn’t a fast death, not like they show in the movies. It is only swift if the neck is broken and that rarely happens in an amateur lynching, which hers had been. Sure, it beat burning alive as had originally been suggested as punishment for her sins. But not by much.
And what of her relatives? I wondered if she had been cast off from the family before the accusation of witchcraft, or after. Had they done it to save themselves from public anger, or out of rage because she hadn’t wanted to accept her role as sacrificial veal? Was that why she cried at the window? Had they locked her out one stormy night after announcing she was dead to them?
Leaving the island was discouraged by the other islanders, as my grandmother had discovered when she fled all those years ago. But so were affairs with married men. Why had Hannah done it? True love? Because she had nowhere else to turn? My guess was that Hannah needed someone powerful to help her escape from the community that wanted her trapped on the island and that was why she had chosen Sands to be her lover. If anyone could arrange safe passage away from the islands, it was the colonel.
Whatever her reason, it was a mistake. Though his position was one of political power, Sands was a personal coward. For all his moralistic rhetoric, he was the illegitimate progeny of the first God-fearing Puritans. In other words, a politician and hypocrite. Faced with the possibility of public shame and loss of office for his adultery while assigned to his distant post, and a lover that would not go away quietly once someone had pointed a superstitious finger her way, he had used a charge of witchcraft to murder his inconvenient mistress.
There was no legal proof that this was the woman in my garden, of course, but I found emotional corroboration in the bed curtains I had discovered in the attic that also had a handprint on them, a kind of scorch mark that would not be brushed or washed away. I searched the trunks and crates for some other sign of her, some artifact, a journal or maybe a likeness, but if she had had her portrait painted, it was no longer among those stored in the attic.
Nor was there any known portrait of Colonel Sands from that era. I’d been researching the subject. Quietly. I didn’t want to start any rumors. There is a library on Goose Haven, about the size of a decent walk-in closet and open Monday through Friday, if they can find a volunteer. I had better luck at the historical society, but even that hadn’t offered me an obvious smoking gun. I thought about asking Harris, but I hate to put him to the effort of lying and evading—and he would probably do both if he thought the story was one I shouldn’t hear.
The other locals who would be in the know were just as bad as Harris. Only Ben knew of my suspicions, and even he didn’t know that I had started on my research because of the beseeching ghost who haunted my dreams and perhaps my garden as she tried to get back into the house she’d been barred from. For the lock of her lover’s hair? Or something else? Did she just want peace, or out of her cold, unmarked grave and into her old home? I hoped she didn’t want revenge because the only remaining objects of her rage didn’t deserve her hatred.
I looked at Teddy Roosevelt, leaning back in his chair and sipping a glass of port. I must have seemed unusually serious because he raised a brow. Bryson has a keen sense of priorities and I was sure that I ranked below his business dealings. But not a great deal below them. We had become friends of sorts.
It took effort but I forced a small smile and shook my head. It was Ben’s turn to talk and I could ask for no one more able to get the ghost stories flowing. We would get to my ghost later. I’d know when the time was right. And anyway I was in a bit of a quandary. What would Miss Manners say about entertaining the descendants of someone who had killed an ancestress? Did I try to make them comfortable by assuring them that it was nothing and to have some more coffee? Did I point a finger in accusation and denounce them as spawn of evildoers? Possibly she had never faced this dilemma. Certainly it seemed better to hold my enemies close while I decided what to do, though it seemed harsh to think of them as adversaries. The brothers were unaware that I knew of their extracurricular activities and therefore had no reason to be wary of me. Yet.
“The coffin lid was standing open and he drew near.” I tried to pay attention to Ben’s story since I could hear in his voice that it was nearing the climax, but it was no good. The ghost riding around in my head beat his story haunt every time.
Eventually Mr. Benson’s work was done. The floor was replaced and the hair, letter fragments, and hankie were locked in my grandmother’s old jewelry box, which now felt like a crypt. The house is riddled with secrets, but we had light on the hidden stairs that lead to a secret cave and even in the Bluebeard’s cupboard built into the attic. I was content in matters illuminatory and ready to take the next step to succor Hannah, but by then it was Thanksgiving and snowing, and leaving the island to do research was difficult. With the holiday came the unpleasant knowledge that Christmas was looming and I felt tired and unfit for hosting company with a ghost clinging close to my thoughts, like a second, unnatural shadow that dimmed everything I did or thought. Though I had half promised to entertain my neighbors as soon as I was settled, and I had a feeling that gathering everyone in one place and talking about my ghost might be the only way to discover the whole truth, I just couldn’t find the energy for a party.
I hesitated until it was too late to make any plans for Christmas.
There were more holidays available during Yule, but I felt incapable of pulling together anything for New Year’s Eve either. Though I did not really believe the legends attached to the island and the Wendover name, some of the other islanders did, so I set my eyes on Twelfth Night and a costume revel where ghost stories would be told. I got out the old writing case that opened with a small skeleton key, put aside Kelvin’s unfinished letter to the editor of a Bangor newspaper, chastising the paper for insufficient political perspective in their opinion column, and wrote out invitations in rhyming verse borrowed from Herrick on my great-grandfather’s lovely parchment stationary.
Now, now the mirth comes,
With the cake full of plums…
RSVPs had been swift and sent in writing. Except Ben’s. He had walked up the hill to tell me that he would love to come by and chew on some deer haunch and plum pudding.
Once I began planning the party my energy returned. The ghost stopped visiting my dreams at night as soon as my invitations were out, and New Year’s passed without a squall. No one drowned and the islands didn’t sink into the ocean. I didn’t look out of my grandmother’s window at night and was able to pretend that she wasn’t still there, crying in the garden.
Twelfth Night parties were easier to research than my poor ancestress because of the Internet and the fact that the parties are not secret and disgraceful. I compiled a list of traditional things for a festive dinner. Ben was right about the deer haunch. I wasn’t able to find red deer hind to be roasted by needfire, but Mrs. Mickle could order venison for my “coffin pies.” I also had to pretend that I was using flour from the last wheat harvest because my rea
ding assured me that this would keep both ghosts and faeries away. We would have oysters and clear soup and a fish course for befores. After the venison pies I decided to skip the next half-dozen traditional meat courses and head for dessert. We’d be stupefied if we actually ate the entire traditional meal and I didn’t want to set up a vomitorium. Fat, sugar, red meat, alcohol—not a meal for the health-obsessed. Fortunately none of my guests, excepting Brandy, was a fan of anything lite.
The menu was challenging for a small kitchen, but I was ready. My mom had been known for committing acts of gastronomic cruelty under the label of “kitchen creativity,” but my grandmother—bless her—had made sure that this sin would not be visited on future generations and insisted I learn how to cook. Armed with my ancestor’s cookbooks, I began making notes and modifying recipes.
A call from Barbara—Brandy—and then from Jack on Christmas Day suggesting they visit after the first of the year seemed at the time like excellent omens. I phoned Mrs. Mickle and added champagne and Bissinger’s chocolates to my grocery order, since they were Jack’s favorites.
Feeling heartened that I would not be alone in this difficult endeavor, I returned to the attic to hunt for a costume, using the lovely electric light bulb in the ceiling, until I found an Edwardian ball gown of faded pink lace in the trunk recommended by Kelvin. My great-grandfather’s cat really is an uncanny creature.
Twelfth Night (A Wendover House Mystery Book 2) Page 2
