The House Where It Happened

by Devlin, Martina

  No two ways about it, it was ill-starred for Knowehead House that such a fiend should pitch up to mock and frighten us, just as the old dame turned feverish and took to screeching all manner of ungodly things. It left folk thinking he had some hold over her. Especially as strange things began taking place at Knowehead at the same time.

  Belongings went missing, disappearing for days before turning up in the rarest places. I found wee Sarah’s rag doll at the bottom of the turf basket, and the key for winding my master’s tall clock in a pitcher of milk. When I cut into an apple tart, what should be inside but one of the mistress’s shoe buckles? Before long, the hens stopped laying and we had to send out for eggs, while my master’s greyhounds refused to come into the house – even with bones to tempt them.

  Then there was the day Peggy McGregor found a hoof-mark outside the front door, sunk deep in the earth as if meant to act as a warning. Soon after, wee Sarah said she could hear feet on the roof at night, dancing a jig to fiddle music. Another time, her brother Jamesey insisted he saw a black dog with a long red tongue at the casement. The young master swore it spoke to him in a man’s voice, asking him to slip out and follow him. The childer took to refusing to kiss their grandmother goodnight, as had been their habit – they said whispers came from a big wooden chest in her bedchamber.

  Your head would be noddled trying to follow what was going on. The best you could do was say your prayers and mean them, and sleep two or more to a bed. And, during it all, old Mistress Haltridge was raving away, saying evil had returned to Islandmagee.

  But maybes the evil was there all along, biding its time. Looking for folk to use.

  * * *

  I was twelve when I went to live at Knowehead House as maid to the Haltridges, with plenty to keep me going from sun-up to sunset. My master was James Haltridge, Gentleman, born on the island same as myself, and he loved it the way I do though both his parents were reared in Scotland. My life has been commonplace, but my master was well-travelled. He visited lands where he conversed with men whose faces were as black as boot leather and as red as roof-tiles. He saw bears baited by a pack of dogs, and oxen roasted whole on a river wider than the length of Islandmagee, turned entirely to ice. He was chased on the high seas by French privateers, aye, and outran them, too. But for all those sights, he said there was nowhere on earth to match Islandmagee with its braes and its burns. “It burrows into your heart and spoils you for anywhere else,” he said oftentimes. I don’t seek to make a paradise of it, but I have to agree with him.

  Mind you, every paradise has its serpent.

  The mistress never cared for the place. Maybes Knowehead never took to her, nor her to the house. It can be hard on a woman to leave her people and live among strangers when she weds. What was happening inside her own four walls made her nervous, forbye. She stopped feeling safe in bed at night, especially when my master was away from home. That winter he was oftentimes in Scotland, trying to smooth over a legal dispute in the family involving an inheritance. It meant the mistress had most of the burden of the old dame’s illness, and she became a tricky patient to manage as her fancies caught hold.

  Old Mistress Haltridge took to screeching that Knowehead should be tumbled down, stone by stone – once, she even leaped out of bed and tore at the plaster on the walls till her fingers bled. That was odd, for a woman who used to say in the whole of her health, “Don’t think me boastful, but Knowehead House is surely one of the finest properties on the island.”

  Nobody could argue with that. It was built for my master’s father when he was minister here in the parish of Kilcoan More. I always loved how the road curved away just in front of Knowehead, pushing uphill, inviting you to catch your breath and notice how everything belonging to it was as neat as a new pin. Looking back, you saw a long, thatched house with lime-washed stone walls, rising two floors high, when only a few here were built to such a height. Trees planted near-hand gave shelter, and every year blackbirds nested in them – it did the heart a power of good to see them wee scaldies with their wide-open beaks. One of the trees always gave a fair crop of apples, and many’s the tart we filled with them.

  We had a dairy and a hen coop, as well as stabling for the horses, while at the far end of the yard stood a barn. The piggery and cow byre were on the downward slope, on account of the smell and mess. Dirt never bothered me, nor my master. The mistress was town-bred though, and never accepted the way the hens had the run of the yard. The notions she took would put a duchess to shame.

  We ate well in Knowehead. The land looked after you if you looked after the land. The Scotch settlers believed in working it, and the new folk were busier than the Irish they replaced. They ploughed and dug. They pulled rocks out of the yellow soil and gathered seaweed to use as manure on the potato crop. They fattened and enriched the fields so there was no need to let them lie fallow. “God helps those who help themselves,” said the planters. But the Irish called them cuckoos, and every now and again tried to shake them out of their nests. Except the Scotch weren’t for being pushed out. They built sturdy nests, and defended them with arms – aye, and with soldiers from Carrickfergus Castle.

  Some might say Knowehead could have been fancier, but I say it was a house built for living in rather than admiring. Rooms were added on as my master prospered. It was a solid, practical place, fit for purpose and serviceable, like a gown that gives years of wear and takes kindly to patching.

  The mistress was right about Knowehead, all the same. There was something other about the house. I noticed it the first time ever I set foot in it. Once in a while, it could give you a feeling – as if something was there, just out of the corner of your eye. A movement, quick as a fish through water. And your heart would skip in your chest. It was a house made up not of doors and floors alone. That’s the best way I can explain it. You’d have to stand inside Knowehead and breathe it in to understand what I’m trying to put across.

  “I’d sooner go to the poorhouse than spend a night in Knowehead,” my friend Mercy Hunter said every now and again. It never stopped her accepting gifts from old Mistress Haltridge, though, to pass on to her mother – like warm stockings the good dame knitted, though her fingers ached from holding the needles, and a blanket handed over with a blessing one bitter winter. Many’s the one had the benefit of her kindness about these parts.

  I stood up for Knowehead when anybody passed remarks about it. All the same, I knowed something was not quite right. The place was twisty somehow, like the horns you see on the odd cow.

  But it was a manageable twisty. Till Mary Dunbar landed in on top of us. She was a beauty, and beauty causes a disturbance. It brings disorder, despite seeming orderly to the eye. There was something twisty about her, daisy-fresh though she was.

  The reason Mary Dunbar came among us was because my master was obliged to make another trip, and felt guilty about leaving his lady yet again. Mary Dunbar was cousin to the mistress, and would keep her company. My master was a merchant, part-owner of a schooner that traded between Ireland and Barbados. Since he was a Presbyterian, he could not earn his living from the law, nor from any government position such as the courts or the excise office. And whether he attended it or not, he had to pay tithes to the established Church. As he said himself, you might just as well be a papist, except you’d be damned in the afterlife.

  Word came that a shipment of sugar, delayed by ill winds, had docked at last, and he needed to go to the Custom House in Dublin to see about selling on the cargo. But my master could see his lady was having a time of it, between nursing his mother and trying to hold her head high against the gossip – not that he ever allowed there was anything in it. He was blind about what went on at Knowehead House but he could not fail to notice how jumpy the mistress had become. He insisted it was lack of sleep from nursing his mother that made his lady give way to imaginings. But that wasn’t it at all. Her nerves were in ribbons from what she witnessed in the house.

  I saw some of the same things myself
and they couldn’t easily be explained. It was near-impossible to keep candles lit by old Mistress Haltridge’s bedside because something kept snuffing them out. And at times, when you sat with her, you’d hear footsteps in the yard below, circling the house. A man’s footsteps, heavy and purposeful. But there was never anybody there. I never clapped eyes on ghost or demon – I could not have stayed in service with the Haltridges if I did. But there was definitely a shadow in her bedchamber that took the shape of a man, though if you looked hard it melted away.

  Towards the end, the old dame kept up a caterwauling that would make a body’s ears bleed. One night, from dusk till dawn, she called on the Devil by all his names: Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer, Anti-Christ, Fallen Angel. When my master was told, he made out she was railing against the Devil, but Peggy McGregor and I were agreed it sounded more like she was calling on him.

  My master could pretend all he liked – and he would never accept there was anything untoward at Knowehead – but the strain took its toll on the household. I daresay he was just as upset as his wife, but at least he was able to saddle up his horse and leave everything behind. The mistress was tied to the house. And the household’s habits were turned throughother, between the doctor calling every second day, the neighbours in and out like Jack-in-the-boxes, and the minister and elders spending a good deal of time under our roof praying over the old dame – all of them needing to be fed.

  His lady was at the end of her tether, so my master came up with the notion of inviting Mary Dunbar to leave her parents’ home in Armagh and visit with us in Islandmagee.

  “You can’t ask someone to be a guest in a household where death might knock on the door any day,” said the mistress. “Your mother could take her last breath this very night.”

  “Who knows God’s design, Isabel? And you need a companion. No harm in sending an invitation – you often speak of Mary.”

  Ten years lay between the cousins, but they were on friendly terms before the mistress married my master. Back then, before the Dunbars moved away, they lived near-hand to one another in Belfast. As a wee mite, Mary Dunbar used to follow the mistress about, and she made a pet of her. My master had only met her once, and scarcely knew the young lady.

  It was on Candlemas Day that the mistress sat down at her writing desk to ask if Mary might pay a visit. I recall it clearly: the weather was sunny, and I thought I’d get a head-start on the cleaning.

  “This is shapin’ up to be the best day in months, mistress. I’ve a good mind to put the beddin’ on a bush to air, and have a go at beatin’ out the rugs.”

  “Mind you don’t disturb your master’s mother, Ellen. She’s asleep now after another restless night. I could do nothing to pacify her.”

  “I’ll work well away from her side of the house. But it would be a shame not to take advantage of the sunshine, even if there’s no heat to it.”

  “Do as you like, I cannot direct you. I have my household accounts to tally, and a letter to send by Noah Spears to Port Davy if it’s to make the post. Money goes nowhere these days. It’s scandalous it will cost me thruppence to get word to Aunt Dunbar.” She straightened her cap and wiped a mark from her skirts. Fierce particular about her appearance, was the mistress.

  “Never you worry about me, mistress. I’ll look about for what needs doin’. A day like this is a gift from the Almighty and it’s a sin to waste it.”

  “I’d rather see it dull, today of all days. ‘If Candlemas Day be fair and bright, winter will have another flight.’ That means it’s bound to turn wintry again. The old sayings have the right of it.”

  The mistress was always looking for causes to be unhappy. She was never one to see the good in anything. She whinged about all the time my master spent away from home on business, without being grateful for the presents brought back for her – he never returned without a trinket in his knapsack. I remember a pair of buttercup-yellow stockings – silk, if you don’t mind. Worsted ones weren’t fancy enough for her. No wonder the minister spoke to her about the sin of vanity. She was the most prideful woman on Islandmagee.

  It gave the mistress a lift when her aunt answered by return of post. She was excited enough to read it out to my master, not noticing I was there, polishing the furniture with beeswax, the smell making my head light.

  “Listen, James, Aunt Dunbar writes she can spare my cousin right willingly: ‘The change of scene is exactly what Mary needs after being cooped up all winter. Your uncle and I have been racking our brains for some place we could send her to take her out of herself. We worry about her being too much alone and prey to her thoughts. An only child can be somewhat isolated. It goes hardest on sensitive girls such as our Mary – their fancies seem to take shape more readily. However, I feel confident the fresh air and company on Islandmagee will do her a world of good. Your invitation is a godsend.’ Do you think we might be able to keep her till after Easter, James?”

  “She might stay for good if we find her a husband, sweetheart. And that should be no trouble if she takes after your side of the family.”

  “I know you’re anxious to attend to business. Will you still be here when she arrives?”

  “It depends on Mother. What kind of son would I be, to go haring off to Dublin and risk missing her last words? I’ll just have to be patient. It’s only twice in our lives we’re obliged to wait around: the first time for birth and the second for death. I can spare my mother a few more days. The poor soul is agitated enough without me taking off, and causing more distress. These visions of hers are the rarest thing – I never knew the like of them. I daresay if my father was alive he could find the words to put her mind at rest. But I can’t seem to make her understand she’s safe here in Knowehead. I’m afeared she’s not in her right mind at all. You know, only the other day she begged me to take her away from here.”

  “I heard her. James, would you not think of humouring her? She must have her reasons.”

  “I’m surprised at you, Isabel. She’s not well enough to travel. Besides, Knowehead House is where she belongs. It’s where we all belong.”

  “But if it’s causing her agitation. If she sees things that unsettle her . . .”

  “It’s all in her mind. I’ll hear no more on the subject.”

  Aye, he could order his lady silent, but he couldn’t force his mother to stay quiet. Only the night before, the old mistress had roused herself to cry, “The Haltridges are being punished! It willnae stop at me. There’s a curse on this family. It will hang over us till there isnae a Haltridge left on Islandmagee!”

  “What are we being punished for?” asked the young mistress, but my master stepped in and started spooning a potion into his mother, before answer could be made.

  I thought the old dame would resist, and force him to listen to her, but by then she was spent. She fell back on the pillows, her strength used up.

  Old Mistress Haltridge died on the 8th day of February, and as soon as ever she was in her grave my master started making arrangements to leave. Don’t think him cold-blooded – he loved his mother, his eyes were red-rimmed at the funeral. But time and tide wait for no man. “It’s the living I need to consider now,” he told his friend Frazer Bell.

  My master’s mother was taken four days before Mary Dunbar came among us. They never met. Would it have made a difference? It’s possible. Dead, the old dame could be turned this way and that to suit others’ needs. But if you met that decent woman for yourself, if you looked into her eyes and saw the charity in them, you might not be so quick to bandy her name about.

  Knowing the young lady was on her way meant my master was easier in his mind, making preparations to leave. That didn’t stop his lady from going at him, hammer and tongs, the day before he set off. I was preparing the bedchamber opposite theirs for the visitor, lending it a few of the mistress’s dainties to make it more welcoming, and I couldn’t help hearing their squabble.

  “James, now your mother’s gone, there’s something I want to raise with you. Ma
ybe you might think about it when you’re in Dublin. My love, could we look about finding someplace else to live?”

  “Surely you’re not picking up where my mother left off, Isabel? She took a strange fancy, brought on by the fever. I see no earthly reason why we should leave our home.”

  “But I don’t like it here. It’s not as if I haven’t tried. I’m nine years under this roof, after all.”

  “Aye, Isabel, I know it’s nine years. Nine joyful years, I was foolish enough to believe. I brought you here as a bride, and you told me you never saw a house that pleased you as well.”

  “That was before –”

  “Before what?”

  “Before I lived here. Before I knew what it was like.”

  “You’re talking as much moonshine as Mother did on her deathbed. But she wasn’t herself then.”

  “Was she muddled, James? Was she truly? I thought her lucid to the end. And with her dying breath, she tried to warn us. She saw Hamilton Lock – here in this house.”

  “She imagined she saw Hamilton Lock. There’s a world of difference.”

  “She called out his name. She threw her Bible at him. She ordered him, in the name of the Lord Jesus, to stay away.”

  “My mother never knew Hamilton Lock. It was just a name she put to a nightmare she had. But it’s a debauched name – best forgotten.”

  “Your mother saw his ghost. She was convinced of it. She told me he poisoned the air in Knowehead.”