by M C Beaton
When she was finally allowed to escape to her “bed” that night, she lay down with a feeling of anticipation. She expected to be wafted back to that dream banqueting hall where the dream Duke would be waiting for her. But nothing happened. Only exhausted sleep and the waking in the chill dawn to a feeling of loss.
As the day wore on, she saw several of the men gazing at the freshly washed, midnight cloud of black hair which now tumbled down her back and, feeling uneasy, she found a piece of string and tied it up on top of her head in a severe knot. “If only my ghost had really existed,” thought Alice, afraid of these new lecherous looks and particularly afraid of the Groom of the Chambers whose shoe-button eyes had fastened greedily on her budding bosom as she had bent over to lift a pail of water.
But by evening, exciting gossip had filtered down from the upper chambers and it seemed as if the servants’ hall was in a fever of excitement. The Duchess had threatened to divorce the Duke. The ladies of the house party had all been throwing the Duke amorous glances, and it had come out in one splendid row that the Duke had managed to pleasure all four of the younger married ones during the watches of the night.
Alice, huddled in the scullery over the pots, suddenly thought she knew who was responsible for this seduction of the married ladies of the party. She felt sure it was the wicked ghost masquerading as the present Duke. But it had been a dream. Hadn’t it? She resolved to go to the banqueting hall, just one more time, and if he was there, she would give him a piece of her mind.
The butler was in a furious temper because two bottles of his best claret and one bottle of French brandy were found to be missing. Also, a fine raised pie had been stolen from the larder. One accused the other and eventually the blame fell on the small knife boy who was sorely beaten. Since he had laughed maliciously when Alice had received her beating, she found it hard to have any sympathy for him.
The house party was due to leave in the morning to make the long journey to London, and so the servants were being allowed to go to bed early. Alice was just finishing her work when a shadow fell across the pots. She turned around and found herself staring up at the cadaverous face of the Groom of the Chambers.
He moistened his lips and stared down at her and his hand slid around her waist.
“Alice! Alice! Where is that good-for-nothing!” cried the angry voice of the Cook, and Alice, with a sob of relief, made her escape.
She could hardly wait for the servants to go to bed, sitting hiding in the shadows so that no one would notice her. At last they were all abed and the great house was quiet.
Alice slipped quietly upstairs, through the great hall and up the stone stairs. Sending up a little prayer, she pushed open the door of the banqueting hall.
Empty.
She gave a disappointed sob and sat down at the table, tired and frightened. A ghost might be a poor sort of friend, but she had felt somehow that they could be friends, as if the grave had removed the vast social gulf which lay between them. She arose and walked slowly and miserably through the patches of moonlight to the portrait which hung between the windows.
“Please come back,” she urged, staring upward. “Don’t let it be a dream!”
“Odd’s Fish! Can’t you leave me alone?” said a cross voice directly behind her.
Feeling a surge of gladness, she turned around. “Oh, sir! You’re back,” she cried and then looked at him, wondering for one awful moment whether it was the present Duke. For the ghost was dressed in a magnificent frogged dressing gown and morocco slippers. He was without his wig and his short cropped hair looked silver in the moonlight.
“That voice of yours,” he went on, “seems to be able to positively shout in my head. There I was bedrooming in the guise of my descendant. There were the luscious charms of Lady Helen spread out under me. And then you come in and, damme, I have to come here. You’ve got to stop it, you know.”
“I’ve got to stop it!” cried Alice. “What about your philandering?”
“That is my affair—or affairs—my prudish wench. Well, since you are here and I am here, I may as well hear your whinings. Who has been beating you today?”
“No one.”
“Well, there you are! Now if I can just… er… take up where I left off…”
Alice sank to her knees and clutched at a fold of his dressing gown. “Oh, please, ghost,” she cried. “Help me escape from here.”
“Help you… My dear child, simply open the door and walk out, damme.”
“I can’t. I have no money. Nowhere to go.”
He frowned down at her and then stretched down his hand and pulled her to her feet. He led her to the table and lit the candles and sat down next to her.
“My late wife—may she never materialize—went mad before her death and buried her jewels.”
“Did you drive her mad?” asked Alice.
“Don’t be impudent. No. She drove herself mad. Opium, brandy and mercury in that order. Where was I? Ah, yes, the jewels. Well, she died before me. I knew where she had hidden the jewels, of course. Poor Agnes could never keep anything secret. I left them where they were for it amused me to see the efforts of my relatives trying to find them. I shall show you where they are. You dig them up, take them to a pawnbroker and you’ll have money enough for a Duchess.”
“Who will accept jewels from me?” cried Alice. “I am a dirty, common scullery maid.”
“Yes,” said the Duke heartlessly. “And spineless too. I make a very generous suggestion and all you can do is…”
“Couldn’t you pawn them for me?” said Alice, her eyes shining with hope as she clutched his sleeve. He fastidiously removed her fingers from his arm. “My dear child,” he drawled. “I find that I only exist in the hours of darkness. I do not know yet whether I can exist outside Wadham. I am bored and tired of your whinings and whimperings. Besides, I was enjoying myself immensely before you arrived on the scene.”
“You are heartless,” sobbed Alice.
“Of course, I’m dead,” said the Duke reasonably. “Ghosts do not have hearts. I don’t know what they do have. But there it is.”
He rose from the table and strolled from the room, whistling a jaunty air.
Alice sat for a long time where he had left her. He was a heartless philanderer. She thought of Lady Helen, a voluptuous brunette. It was easy to attract men when one had all the money in the world, and surrounded by servants who had nothing else to do but to dress your hair and sew your clothes and fetch your paint and powder. When one was rich, one could flirt with the men one wanted to flirt with, thought Alice sadly. “But for me, that really is a fate worse than death. If I get with child, then I will be pushed out of doors.”
The next day, she resolved not to see the ghost again. The house guests departed and the servants reported that the Duchess was still berating the Duke and the Duke was still pleading his innocence.
Alice scuttled quietly about the kitchen, trying to hide when Mr. Bessant, the Groom of the Chambers, made his stately entrance. But somehow, his dark, little eyes always seemed to be fastened on her in a greedy way.
At last it was night and time for bed. Thanking God for the departure of the guests, the servants took up their bed candles and made their way to their various quarters.
Alice lay down on her pallet and stared up into the blackness of the scullery. She was fully dressed because she had never known the luxury of undressing for bed.
Then all at once she knew she had to try to see the ghost again.
Quietly she rose to her feet and as silently as a shadow, made her way back up to the banqueting hall. She paused on the stairs thinking she had heard a step behind her but, when she turned around, the hall was deserted.
She scuttled on up the stairs only to find the banqueting hall empty. She knew she could not call him. She had not the courage. And he would be angry with her.
Then she heard the door opening and swung around, a smile of welcome on her face. Mr. Bessant, the Groom of the Chambers, made
his majestic way into the room and Alice slowly got to her feet, staring at him in fear and horror.
“Well, well,” said Mr. Bessant, breathing in an urgent, raspy way. “Our little kitchen wench is trespassing and our little Alice will be whipped within an inch of her life and turned out of doors.”
“I haven’t done nothing wrong,” pleaded Alice.
“Oh, but you have.” There was a silver cup lying on the table. Mr. Bessant slowly picked it up and put it in his pocket. “I found you stealing this and took it from you. You’ll hang.”
“Oh God,” said Alice. “Oh, sir, it’s a lie.”
“Of course it is.” He grinned. “But who will believe you? But if you are a sensible girl and do as I tell you, we’ll say no more about it.”
He suddenly reached out and hooked his finger in the ragged bodice of her dress and pulled her up against him. “Now,” he said harshly, fumbling with his other hand at the flap of his trousers.
“Oh, ghost!” cried Alice in her mind. “Please come. Help me!”
She wrenched and struggled and Mr. Bessant drew back and struck her on the mouth with one hand and clubbed her over the side of the head with the other. The blow made her feel sick and faint and, as she reeled trying to regain her balance, he caught her in his arms.
“What the devil is going on here? Zooks! A rape!”
Alice gave a gasp of relief and Mr. Bessant abruptly released her and stared at the vision facing him, his eyes popping. The Duke was wearing his gold coat and his powdered wig and all his jewels. He slowly drew out his sword by its jeweled handle and pressed the point of it to the shaking Groom of the Chambers’ throat.
“Unhand the wench and get thee gone or I will split thy gizzard, thou foul lump of carrion,” said the Duke in measured tones.
“Avaunt thee Satan!” cried Mr. Bessant, making the sign of the cross. Now, that was supposed to work when faced with the supernatural, but this ghost had obviously not read the right books and the sword point never wavered.
Mr. Bessant backed toward the door, white and trembling. “You’ll burn for this piece of devilry, Alice Lovesey. You’ll burn,” he whispered and then he ran from the room.
“Now why didn’t he think I was his master?” said the ghost peevishly. “I am uncommonly like the present Duke, think you?”
“No,” said Alice bitterly. “The present Duke would not have rescued me. And your clothes! You are wearing the same clothes as in your portrait. They will kill me.”
There came a great clamor and uproar from below stairs. “Yes,” said the Duke thoughtfully. “I think they will. How tedious. Let us go. I shall hide you.”
Alice put her hand in his and he led the way out of the banqueting hall at a leisurely pace. Alice cringed against him as a party of servants appeared at the bottom of the grand staircase, brandishing knives and clubs and torches. The Duke looked down at them dispassionately. Then he stretched out his arms. “Booo!” he said.
The servants screamed in fear and scattered. Until that moment not one of them had believed Bessant’s story about a ghost, believing instead that there was some masquerader loose in the Hall.
“It’s the wicked Duke come back from the grave!” cried one, and the Duke let out a great horrible laugh which rang round and round the walls.
“That was really rather good,” he said in a pleased way, listening to the echoes. “I was quite good at amateur theatricals, you know.”
Alice found that her teeth were beginning to chatter. She was all of a sudden filled with superstitious terror of the Duke and at the same time, she knew she had to follow where he led.
He led her through a maze of corridors, then up to the fourth floor and along another series of passages until he finally opened the door of a small empty room. He crossed to the fireplace and pressed something under the mantel. A section of the wall swung open revealing a dark passage.
“Don’t be frightened,” he said, “It’s not witchcraft. I had to hide my mistresses somewhere in the old days. Ah, memories, memories!”
He lit a candle and led the way, Alice creeping after him, trembling with shock.
The passage did not lead straight down to hell as she had feared, but to a pleasant, paneled bedroom with a large four-poster bed.
“Wonder of wonders,” said the ghost, jerking back the bedclothes, “It’s dusty but not damp. Go to bed, my girl, while I try to light a fire. You’re shaking like a jelly.”
As Alice began to climb into bed, he said, “Stop! You are surely not going to bed in those dirty clothes. I see you have cleaned yourself somewhat, but those rags are filthy and very probably are full of livestock.”
“I allus sleep in my clothes,” said Alice weakly.
“Wait there. I shall find you something. I can float, did you know? Very quickly. It is quite exhilarating.”
He disappeared from the room and Alice waited, shivering and numb. He returned very quickly, carrying a frothy confection of lace and satin over his arm.
“I borrowed this. Put it on,” he said, tossing it to her.
“It’s still warm,” said Alice, “and perfumed.”
“Oh, I had great fun collecting it. Do put it on and stop fussing. Ah, here we have wood and a tinderbox. We shall be as cozy as can be.” He bent over the fire and Alice crept around the far side of the bed and pulled the hangings closed to act as a screen. The nightgown fell like a whisper around her poor, emaciated body. She pulled at the string that held her hair and let it tumble down about her shoulders.
She shyly walked around and stood next to the Duke who was warming his hands at a crackling blaze.
He looked up at her in surprise and then stood up and put his hands on her shoulders, looking down at her with a wicked smile on his face.
“Why, Odd’s Fish, but you are quite beautiful in an undernourished way,” he murmured, his hands sliding down over her shoulders.
Then he stiffened as he felt the weals on her back through the thin material of her nightgown. “Zooks!” he muttered. “What cruelty has come to my home.
“Get into bed, child. We shall talk tomorrow night. You must sleep all day for I shall not be able to be seen until dark.”
“Where are you going?” whispered Alice.
“To haunt,” he said blithely. “To create the fear of hell in the servants’ hall. A-haunting we will go!”
Alice crept under the covers. She would never sleep again. For what was to become of her? And then it seemed as if she plunged over a high cliff and headlong down and into the deepest sleep she had ever known.
Chapter 2
There’s a lot to be said for toad-eating. See how it can exorcise even the lively ghost of Wadham Hall.
The present Duke, being apprised of the reason for all the rumpus, called all the servants together. In blistering tones, with icy hauteur, he told them in no uncertain terms what he thought of the manifestation of the night before. It was his considered opinion that his staff had been raiding the cellars. His Duchess was no less frosty. Her pale eyes raked the shuffling hangdog servants with contempt. The Groom of the Chambers was given a Severe Warning. Ghosts did not exist except at the bottom of a brandy bottle, when like the proverbial genie, they had been known to emerge along with green snakes and horned devils and the like.
The staff were severely ordered back to their posts with the grim warning that a public whipping and instant dismissal—no matter how high the rank of the servant—would result, should any of them again alarm the ordered calm of the Hall with childish and drunken tales of… pah!… ghosts.
The staff shuffled out. Mr. Bessant promptly decided that some accomplice of that wretched scullery maid had been playing a trick on him, probably one of the family’s by-blows which peopled the countryside. He accordingly took out his humiliation and spite on the next in line, and so it went right down the scale until, if the ghostly Duke had appeared at that moment among them, they would simply have ignored his existence.
Alice awoke to the so
und of rain slashing across the windowpanes of the room. She had slept late and was very hungry. Had Alice had a less arduous life, she would have been consumed with superstitious fear. But she had recently decided that if there was a heaven, then it had forgotten her and, if hell existed, it must be like the kitchens of the Hall and therefore an evil not to be feared since she was already well acquainted with it.
As far as she was concerned, she was warm and rested for, it seemed, the first time in her life. She was used to hunger pangs since often she was not allowed to cease her toil in order to eat. So she settled herself in the great bed to await the return of the ghost neither worrying about the day before, nor fearing the day to come.
