Brides of Aberdar

by Christianna Brand

  She sat erect and grim in her customary chair, the straight-backed chair with its delicate scrollwork, upholstered in a brocade, striped with pale flowers. The last chance: here positively here and now was the last chance to do what was right, to put her arms around her two beloved children and fight for them against the chill forces that threatened their future. But was it not those same forces that held her back? Echoes of a dream forgotten, thrummed in her mind. She said uncertainly: ‘Well, but Lawrence…’

  ‘As their guardian. Her family have known our family for generations. I’m the only child, I have—enough—to offer her, Lady Hilbourne; and my parents—’

  ‘Your parents it appears have not thought fit to consult the young lady’s former governess in the matter.’

  ‘Oh, Lady Hilbourne, it isn’t that. I’m sure that my parents—well, I think they haven’t spoken yet because they thought that Christine—’ He said rather miserably: ‘For such a long time it was Christine and me—Lyneth with her cousin Arthur, and Christine with me. I think they’re afraid that Christine may still—’

  The last chance: the final moment. But she felt the cold, like an icicle thrust into her heart, she heard in her ears the young voices, ‘Hil says… Hil thinks…’ and she found her own voice saying: ‘They think that because Christine may have failed to grow out of these childish loves, you and Lyneth are to sacrifice your own happiness? They are not the only ones to have expressed such an opinion.’ A moment of terrifying silence and she said: ‘I do not agree with them.’

  ‘Well, but… It seems presumptuous to say so, but if Christine—well, if she still cares for me… I can’t bear to hurt her. My mother says—she said, “You will break the child’s heart.” ’

  ‘A girl’s heart does not break as easily as that,’ she said, whose own young heart had broken so many years ago and turned to a block of ice. ‘And there is still Lyneth? If she loves you—and you seem very rich in feminine adorers, dear boy!—why must it be she who breaks her heart?’ Her fingers were clawed so that the blunt, polished nails made little arcs in the palms of her hands, but she said, lightly shrugging: ‘Christine has as many admirers as Lyneth. She will soon find someone else.’

  ‘If you believe that—who know them so well…’ He said joyfully: ‘Then you think I may propose to Lyneth tonight?’

  ‘You have my blessing at least,’ said her ladyship; and knew that any blessing of hers must be a dark and misshapen benefit indeed.

  Christine came to her as she still sat there, brooding; and at once her mood changed. ‘Oh, my child, how ill, how pale you look!’ Wrong, it had been wrong, wicked and wrong, to break this gentle creature on the wheel of her own despairs. But… Something urged me on, she thought: how can I fight against the unseen? And after all, could she help it if the foolish boy could not keep himself true to his own true original love? Did I encourage him to change? Is it for me to say who shall love whom, how am I to control their hearts? And for a moment her own bitter heart went back to the days of her own true love: where now was the tenderness of those long ago days? All gone, she thought: all gone in an hour… And she heard in her mind the snap! with which the pencil had broken across in his two hands and she had known her fate and turned her heart to stone. And yet… Had that hour not also been somehow preordained? Dimly, dimly, once again her mind remembered, the dream returned, a phrase only half-forgotten…

  ‘Never again…’

  Christine in the cloud of pale silk, crouching at her feet, gripping her hands, ‘Oh, Tetty—I’m frightened. I… Some guests have come but I…’

  She rose, startled, to her feet. ‘Guests arrived already?’

  ‘In the hall. Some people… But I didn’t know… Tetty, I don’t know who they are. A woman, very beautiful and a tall young man. They… He… He looked at me so strangely, Tetty, he stared and stared at me, his eyes… They said nothing, she took him by the arm and moved away with him, almost pulled him away as though she were angry with him. But he turned his head and looked back at me, and, oh Tetty!—his eyes…’

  She lifted the trembling girl to her feet. ‘Come, Christine, what nonsense is this? You are hysterical. Some people? What people? You know everyone invited here tonight.’

  ‘Yes, and I—I think after all I do know these people, I’ve seen them before. But long ago…’ She covered her face with her hands. ‘Long ago. Long ago, when I was a child. He—I remember that he looked frightened: that time that I saw him, I thought that he looked frightened. And, Tetty, I don’t know what to do, I don’t understand it—he looked frightened again tonight.’

  And not the only heart that was filled with fear. ‘Dear God! Well—! You are ill, Christine, we must say that you are ill, go to your room and lie down; only, dearest, they will say that it’s because of—Lyneth…’

  ‘It’s not because of Lyneth,’ said Christine. ‘That’s just heartbreak. This is fear.’

  Among the guests, no recognisable sign of a couple who might be less than familiarly recognised. Her ladyship moved like clockwork on her round of civilities. ‘Yes, our poor Christine… A little chill, no more… May feel well enough later to appear amongst us…’ If I could speak a word to those two children in secret, she thought, and beg them, ‘Not tonight! Not tonight!’ But Lawrence, exultant in her acquiescence, hardly made a secret of his present situation, Lyneth all laughter and blushes could not now be restrained. Bowing and smiling, moving here and there among her guests, stiff and expressionless as ever, she nevertheless watched in an agony of apprehension as the boy took his sweetheart’s hand and led her out into blue evening; and her cold heart wept. Too late!

  In the little courtyard outside the vacated dining-room, where a fountain played, Lawrence held Lyneth in his arms. ‘Oh, my darling, I’m so thankful, I’m so happy. You, who have so many people adoring you, I was terrified that I might lose you.’

  She said loyally: ‘Lawrence—are you absolutely sure? You know that Christine loves you too. She loves you—almost terribly, Lawrence.’

  He said uncomfortably, ‘It’s just left over from our being children. We loved each other then, we all loved each other, Arthur loved you, and I loved Christine. Only she’s so—faithful. But she’ll find somebody else now. You and Arthur don’t love each other any more; well, of course not, as your Tetty says, we were all just babies. And Christine—she has scores of admirers, she’ll have lots of proposals, she’ll find someone else to love.’

  ‘I’m not so sure, Lawrence.’

  ‘It’s only because… It’s difficult to say it, dearest, but if I’m—well, out of the way, then she can give herself up to being easy and free with other people, she’s so quiet these days and well, listless, people think she’s…’ But it was all intruding upon his own ecstatic happiness. ‘I have you, my sweet, lovely, wonderful darling and I can’t let anything interfere with that.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Lawrence, and I love you too!’

  ‘I couldn’t believe that you’d ever say that, I couldn’t believe you’d say yes. Sometimes I was sure you would… I even got a ring to offer to you… But then…’

  ‘Oh, Lawrence, a ring, a ring! What’s it like? Show me, show me!’

  ‘Well, that’s what I’m saying. I didn’t dare to bring it out here when I—when I was going to propose to you. I thought it seemed sort of presumptuous. I think I thought it would be bad luck.’

  ‘You left it at home?’

  ‘No, no; it’s in the pocket of my coat in the cloakroom.’

  ‘Oh, get it for me, Lawrence, do get it! And then we can go in and show them all that we’re really and truly engaged, we’re going to be married, we’re seriously engaged…!’

  A symbol, perhaps, a sign to Christine?—that this was fait accompli, done, finished with, no going back…? She leaned against the low wall that ringed the tiny courtyard and the love in her heart for her twin sister, fought with the old, ingrained determination that what she herself wanted, that must be hers. ‘Do go and get it, quick!’


  A young man appeared, strolling round the corner, propping himself negligently against the wall, smiling at her as she stood waiting—a slightly teasing smile as though he had perhaps overheard the proposal and acceptance, all the billing and cooing of two happy young people in love. She said, astonished for she seemed to have observed him at the party earlier, ‘Well—good evening! I’m afraid I don’t recognise you—please forgive me. Are you one of our guests?’

  ‘You might perhaps describe me as a guest,’ he said.

  ‘Might describe you—? What else? You’re not here as a burglar, for example?’

  ‘A little of that too, I daresay,’ he admitted.

  She looked at him more closely, a tall, strongly-built young man, with very brilliant blue eyes and red-gold hair—in his general make-up, not unlike Hil. ‘Are you—? You seem to have a resemblance to some of our family. Are you a relative? A remote cousin, perhaps?’

  ‘Fairly remote,’ he agreed. ‘But a cousin, yes.’ He glanced up away from her. ‘But here is—your fiancé—coming. I had better say—’

  She cared only to be with Lawrence, receive her ring. She said hastily, ‘Goodnight, then. Goodbye.’

  ‘—au revoir,’ he said, and slipped quietly away.

  Lawrence came, hurrying towards her, the little box in his hand. ‘Who was that I heard you talking to?’

  She shrugged. ‘Some young man.’

  ‘I didn’t see any young man.’

  ‘Love is blind! He was standing right here talking to me.’

  ‘Yes, well.’ He said, suddenly unwontedly ill-humoured: ‘I rather wish we needn’t have had your admirers intruding actually between my offering you my ring and giving it to you.’

  ‘He wasn’t an admirer—some vague cousin or someone. Anyway, how could I help it?—he just appeared out of the blue. But what does it all matter—let me see my ring!’ As he fumbled with the box, she said laughing: ‘I do believe you’re actually trembling.’

  ‘I hadn’t realised how cold it is out here,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is, suddenly. Quick, give me the ring and we’ll go into the warm.’

  He had the box open and it lay there, shining—the betrothal ring. ‘Lawrence—a sapphire? It’s beautiful, it’s beautiful!’ But the cold was piercing, their hands shook with it, the ring passing between them fell from his shaking fingers and lay there in the little fountain, winking up at them. ‘Oh, Lawrence!’ she said impatiently. ‘Look what you’ve done now! You’re really too clumsy for anything…’

  His bright face clouded over. Without a word, he stooped and fished the ring out of the shallow water and handed it to her. A little scared, she stammered out: ‘But Lawrence—?’

  ‘Put it on for yourself, Lyn,’ he said. ‘On your marriage-finger. Then I shall know that you really want to wear it there.’

  Her blue eyes filled with tears. ‘Of course I want it—of course I do!’ She held out her hand to him. ‘Please! I’m asking you.’

  But, ice-cola from the ice-cola water, it seemed as though it closed about her finger in a little band of pain.

  And the evening ended, the congratulations, the smiles and the kisses, and the carriages clip-clopped away; for a little while, the long, hilly driveway was studded with the twinkling points of the lantern lights. When they were gone, the night fell very dark. There were no stars.

  And the ghosts moved in.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE RUSTLE OF SILK, the swish of velvet against velvet, the faint, faint whispering of starched ruffs chafing… In their baskets in the darkened hall, the little dogs shivered and whined and a chill wind blew though there had been no opening of the great front door. She leaned in all her beauty, against the newel post at the foot of the stairs: Lenora. ‘So Diccon—another aeon of waiting is at an end and we are here again!’

  ‘We’ve watched and listened. We’ve not been far away all these years since the last one died, poor pretty Anne.’

  ‘We keep close in our hands the threads of contact with the old house: who else is to slam the doors and set alight the small conflagrations that keep our victims within reach? But at last came that other one and then immediately the governess—Lady Hilbourne, forsooth! And still the curse prevailed. You could hardly call those two happy brides!’

  ‘Hardly brides at all; the one moving out of the house, the other with a marriage lasting but an hour.’

  ‘So we had to be content with non-appearances; just—influences. And with this one, here in the Manor, we have had some entertainment.’

  He came to the staircase, stood a couple of steps below her, looking up into her face. ‘You find it all an entertainment. But… That poor pretty Welshwoman—what harm had she ever done to anyone?’

  ‘She had strayed like a foolish sheep into the dangerous fold of the Anathema. That was enough.’

  ‘You and your Anathema! What good has it ever done to you and me?’

  The blue velvet gown was hooped around her beautiful figure—not so tall as he, of course, but finely built, not an angle in any movement of the smooth, rounded limbs: the gem-sprinkled under-dress, jewelled slippers sparkling in the light of the dying fire as they had sparkled and glittered in the old sombre library, two hundred and fifty years ago. ‘It has given us—a purpose. A moment in the endless chain of moments that make up our eternity of greyness. They say among the living that a man can’t endure, even through his brief spell of lifetime, without hope. You know this yourself—intolerant as ever, you wouldn’t live an hour without it.’

  ‘And so condemned myself to an eternity without it. And you, also. Why need you have followed my lead?’

  ‘What, let you go off without your keeper to the courts of heaven! You’d made trouble enough in the courts below.’ She laughed. ‘Had you no fear of that old woman? A thousand times I thought you must be at last for the execution block. There was once you actually brushed by her in your impetuosity, rushing off upon your own occasions, never stopping to think for a moment.’

  ‘How could men fear her? She was like a wooden doll, a white-painted wooden doll, poking out head and hands from a great stiff bell of costume. I gave her due loyalty.’

  ‘And a sort of affection?’

  He said, shrugging, ‘Because I was not afraid of her. I should like to see her again; she grew grotesque but she was still—tremendous. She must be somewhere in the Other World but we never come across her. Why are we so isolated there, Lenora? What did we do wrong?’

  ‘All this I explain to you, Diccon, each time we come away back to this world. What we did wrong was the ultimate wrong. We were two sparks, two of myriads upon myriads of sparks, all ignited for no purpose but to fly up to the ultimate Light and augment its shining: to be part of the Light. We extinguished those sparks, each by his own hand, you for a faithless girl, I for love and care for you, my little impetuous feckless brother. We robbed the Light of our little specks of brightness and had nothing to offer but two smudges of lifeless black.’ She smiled down at him, putting her hand to his cheek where the great pearl hung in its gentle glow. ‘Why so serious tonight? Usually you’re all eagerness for the return, for the conquest of yet another Hilbourne heart. And this one the charmingest yet.’

  He looked back at her uneasily. ‘The conquest. I enjoy. Not always the aftermath. And this time I seem to feel somehow a sort of dread.’

  ‘A dread? What has it ever been to us, but an amusing game?’

  ‘A viciously amusing game,’ he said. ‘That’s why it’s played.’

  ‘You’ve played it many times readily enough. One girl after another—’

  ‘This time there are two girls,’ he said. ‘Alike as two pins. And I saw the—other—girl first, I thought she was the one intended, I supposed she was the bride.’

  ‘And in this one brief glimpse, lost your heart? You have forgotten, little brother, who and what you are. You have no heart to lose, you are a ghost, you are dead.’

  ‘I died for
love,’ he said.

  She regarded him thoughtfully. ‘Well—that’s true. It accounts perhaps for many things. For myself, there is no such thing as love, no thought of anything but the vengeance I swore so long ago. But with you, there is often something a little akin to human love—a fondness, at any rate. You felt it for the mother of these two girls, that pretty Anne. And for one or two before her—was there a Margaret? A dainty little blonde called Elizabeth?—they have all been blonde, the ones you’ve cared for; as your original Isabella was blonde.’

  He said slowly, almost painfully: ‘Lenora—have you not seen it? These two girls—Isabella was their ancestress: and they are as alike to her as they are to one another.’

  ‘Then beware of giving away this half-human heart of yours to either,’ she said. ‘Remember how she used you! And now another girl awaits you who seems not all that much better: having, herself, not very much heart to lose. But such as she has, is already a little turned your way since you interrupted her betrothals by the fountain pool. So forget the little sister who is not a bride, and come up to meet the one that is. For we haunt again!’

  And she took his hand and led him up the broad staircase to where, helpless, their victim awaited them.

  The experience of countless generations of her family had conditioned her, one must suppose, to acceptance of the ghosts. As the dogs in the hall, sensing their chill presence, had stirred and whined, so now her own pet in its little basket at the foot of her bed, started up a shrill yapping, and Lyneth opened her eyes and saw without astonishment the beautiful lady who had stood long ago, as her mother’s coffin was carried out of the house—and the handsome young man she had seen for the second time, earlier that same evening.

  Unprepared for an array of Tudor costume, her modern-day eyes transmuted into the dress of her own times the ruffs and hooped petticoats, the doublet and hose, the short cape of soft Moroccan leather with its fashionably dangling empty sleeve. That they should be here in the dawn hours in her own little room with its pretty, curtained, four-poster bed, seemed oddly to surprise her not at all. She caught up a shawl and, clasping it decorously about her, skipped out of bed and fell at once to performance of the hospitable duties of a well-bred young lady. ‘How charming to see you! Do please be seated—unless you’d prefer to come down to the salon? But it might be cold there, the house has seemed chilly this evening.’