The House Where It Happened

by Devlin, Martina

  “Peggy, I wud’n be surprised if it was you filled Mary Dunbar’s head with yarns about Hamilton Lock. You’re the one fanned the flames.”

  Her guilty face gave her away. “The young lady pestered me about him.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Just about his name bein’ used as a bogeyman, to put manners on the wee’ans. I never went into the whys and wherefores. I should a knowed better. Dinna tell on me, lass. I’m a foolish aul’ woman.”

  “So you didn't tell Mary Dunbar everythin’, Peggy?”

  “I tould her enough. She’s a lassie can set you talking. I hope I bain’t the cause of trouble.”

  “Aye, well, we’ll see about that. I’m waitin’ to hear what you said.”

  “Nothin’ about witches gatherin’ at Lock’s Cave. I on’y said it was a spot dacent folk avoided. I never mentioned the skull.”

  “What about the skull?”

  “You don’t know? You’re Islandmagee born and bred, I’d a thought you’d a heard.” She felt her way over to the fireside, and put her back to me. “Maybe it was hushed up deliberate. I daresay folk were ashamed at what they felt had to be done to him. But you have to know how Hamilton Lock died, surely?”

  “Aye. My da says the men of this parish went after him one night. Staked him to the ground, arms and legs outstretched. Drove a horse and cart over him, again and again, till every bone was broken and he had’n a breath left in his body.”

  “Did he say what was done to his remains?”

  “Buried at Lock’s Cave.”

  “After he died, Hamilton Lock’s corpse was cut into pieces an’ spread out, so he would’n be whole come Judgment Day and could’n enter the Kingdom of Heaven. They made six of him, and buried each part at a different spot. On’y the head went into Lock’s Cave.”

  My mind went back to Mary Dunbar’s fit, where she described a tribe of women round a bonfire, holding a skull and chanting: “Hamilton Lock, Hamilton Lock! We summon you up, Hamilton Lock!” I shivered.

  Peggy’s voice was cracked when she spoke again. “I’ve been studying on it, Ellen Hill. Ever since the aul’ mistress was taken ill over the winter, things have been goin’ from bad to worse in this house. Mistress Haltridge saw things. Things nobody else saw. But what if they were real enough? And what if Mary Dunbar is seein’ the same things?”

  “Do you mean the same things – or the same ghost?”

  “Aye, you folly me rightly. Hamilton Lock’s who I mean. It has to be him behind this. How his ghost made its way into Knowehead House, I could’n say. If prayers and bible-readin’ could keep evil out, he never should a got in. But mark my words – he’s under this roof, and any misfortune that happens here comes from him.”

  A chill ran from my neck to my heels, and I joined her beside the fire, holding my hands out to it.

  “And here’s somethin’ else to think on. Hamilton Lock has reason to hate the Haltridges.”

  The bell rang for service, interrupting her tale.

  “Why, Peggy? Quick, tell me.”

  “No, on second thoughts, best say no more.”

  “Peggy! You would’n leave me high and dry, surely?”

  But she laid her knobbly finger against her shruken mouth, and there was no budging her.

  * * *

  The minister’s coat wasn’t right dry, but he wanted it brought up to him so he could go home and work on his report for the Mayor, who was also the Magistrate. This would put the warrant for Becky Carson’s arrest on a proper footing. He was also keen to ask for men to be sent out, to help lead searches for places where the witches might meet. He believed if they could be kept from gathering, their powers would be watered down. Hugh Donaldson and Bob Holmes looked as if they’d just as soon head off home as well. But Mister Sinclair advised the elders to stay.

  “Lucifer is a subtle tempter. We cannot leave a houseful of womenfolk at his mercy. Mister Bell, you may go home if you have affairs requiring your attention.”

  Frazer Bell bristled. When Sobriety’s hooves could no longer be heard, he proposed keeping a vigil over Mary Dunbar. This arrangement put us in a fix, because the young lady could not be left overnight in the charge of men. A female had to be present for the sake of her reputation. So the mistress volunteered me, Peggy and herself to take it in turns – even though the only thing you could count on Peggy to keep open was her gob as she snored.

  It was agreed that me, Bob Holmes and Hugh Donaldson would take the first watch. Frazer Bell would wrap himself in a blanket and get his head down for a lock of hours in front of the parlour fire. Then himself, Peggy and the mistress would relieve us.

  To my surprise, Mary Dunbar was sound asleep by the time I had the house redd up and joined the men in her bedchamber. I could no more close my eyes with two strange men gazing at me than I could sail a square-rigger. But I daresay so much had happened to her since she came to the island, she could hardly tell day from night. She was fully clothed, for decency’s sake, with only her stays unlaced.

  Her bed curtains were closed at the sides but left open at the front, so we could see her. Everyone sat in chairs as far back from the young lady as possible, so as not to crowd her. Tell you no lie, it was hard to be at ease, with our candles throwing shapes on the wall and our ears straining. We jumped out of our skins at the slightest sound.

  “I knowed an aul’ hag turned herself into a bee and stung somebody on the tongue. It swelled up and turned black as pitch,” whispered Donaldson.

  Holmes gave him a look, as much as to say he should hold his own tongue. We were all of us jittery enough without adding grist to the mill.

  Then Donaldson produced a pack of cards from his waistcoat pocket, proposing a game to pass the time.

  “Mister Sinclair would have conniptions if he got wind of it,” said Holmes.

  “Where’s the harm?” said Donaldson. “Playin’ for buttons does’n count as gamblin’. We have to put in the night somehow.”

  I fetched my button box and we played for a time, until Donaldson mentioned the buttons heaved up by Mary Dunbar – “Supposin’ they belonged to the Prince of Darkness hisself?”– after which we lost heart for handling buttons of any description.

  “I heared tell of a man who used to sweat blood,” said Donaldson. “Out through his skin it would come, all of a sudden. He had a fallin’ out with a neighbour’s widow, who had the name of bein’ a witch. He thumped her boy for cheekin’ him, and called the lad a devil’s get. She cursed him for it, so she did.”

  “Does he still sweat blood?” asked Holmes.

  “No, he come by a charm for it. He had to stand under the moon at midnight on Hallowe’en, and turn about widdershins three times, chantin’ some words he was given.”

  “Yarns are all very well, but I daresay Mister Sinclair would tell us silent prayer is a seemlier way to pass the hours of darkness,” said Holmes.

  Silent prayer made it too easy to nod off. Heads were drooping before long. I have to confess to falling asleep myself. I tried to stay awake, but it was a battle with my body the mind couldn’t win. I don’t know how much time passed – it might have been minutes and it might have been hours – when a scuffling disturbed me. At first I thought it was mice. One time, a mouse ran up my master’s sleeve and down the other one, bold as brass. Unless you keep a cat, it’s impossible to be mice-free indoors. An owl will only keep them down in the yard. Our last kitling died during the old mistress’s illness and we hadn’t got round to replacing her.

  I heard the noise again, louder than before, and jerked awake. Mary Dunbar was tossing her head on the pillow. Her face was in shadow, but I could tell she was awake because the candlelight made two pin-pricks of light behind her eyelashes.

  It struck me then to wonder what it must be like to be Mary Dunbar. Was she frightened? She said she was, oftentimes. But what if it was excitement rather than fear that made her quiver? Look at her, with all these men jumping to her bidding, staying out of their beds
to protect her from something only she could see. Then I felt ashamed for failing in charity. It’s not as if any of this was her fault. It could as easily be the mistress afflicted by witches, or Peggy, or wee Sarah. Or me.

  Hugh Donaldson was snoring like the long-legged sow in our smallest outhouse, making the candle flames flutter. A violent gust of air crashed through his mouth, and two of the candles were blown out. That left only one flame burning. Dim though it was in the chamber, I was too weary to stand up and light them again.

  All of a sudden, I squinted at Mary Dunbar, hardly able to believe my eyes. The simplest way to put it is that she left the bed. But she didn’t sit up and get out the way a normal person would – she seemed to slide out and land gently on the floor, as if supported by invisible hands. The young lady didn’t fall, I know that much. It was too smooth, and there was no crash. It happened as easy as one of them wild swans gliding over Larne Lough.

  “In God’s name, leave me be,” Mary gasped, gathering herself into a ball.

  “Help her, one of you!” It was Frazer Bell, ready to take his turn, and getting an eyeful. The others leaped out of their chairs, rubbing their eyes and letting on they were watchful the whole time.

  Frazer and Hugh Donaldson put her back to bed, and when she was recovered she said the witches were teasing her again. “They lifted me up, meaning to throw me out the window. But I brought to mind our Lord Jesus on the cross, and asked Him to pity my suffering for the sake of His own. At that, they let go of me.”

  Well, Hugh Donaldson and Bob Holmes were fierce impressed by this, and Donaldson said the Lord never let anybody down in their hour of need. He insisted on leading us in a prayer of thanksgiving. But whiles I prayed, I was thinking to myself how she was nowhere near the window. And I never heard her call out to the Lord Jesus, nor nobody else for that matter, although maybes she did in her own mind.

  * * *

  The next morning, Peggy fried collops for the household, and I served them up. Master Jamesey and the wee missie sat rubbing their eyes, making a lip at all the extra folk at their table, because Frazer Bell was still with us, and the elders.

  “That’s my father’s chair,” the young master said to Hugh Donaldson, at the head of the table.

  “I’m only keeping it warm for your daddy.”

  “My father doesn’t need you to do that.”

  “Mind your manners, Jamesey,” said his mother.

  At that, Sarah slid off her chair and hid under the table, and there was a whole hoo-hah about getting her back out.

  I took myself out to the yard to work at the pots with a heather scrubber, trying to shift some of the baked-in dirt. Frazer Bell must have bolted his food because I made no headway before he was out after me.

  “Ellen, did you get a clear view of what happened with Mistress Dunbar last night?”

  I dried my hands on my apron and stood up. “I think so, sir, though it was gloomy in her bedchamber. ’Twas a pity only the one candle was left burnin’.”

  “Tell me what you saw.”

  “Well, sir, one minute she was in the bed and the next she was on the floor, and how she got there I could’n rightly say.”

  “Could she have fallen out?”

  “She could and she could’n. There was no sound till you spoke up. There’d have been noise if she fell. It was more like she floated out. Did you not see, sir?”

  “I’m not sure what I saw. I didn’t see her float. But I didn’t see her walk, either.” He ran his hand over the bristles on his chin. “It’s vital that we believe her. Otherwise she’ll be sent to an asylum for the mad. It’s either supernatural or lunacy – no other explanation is possible. And she’d never survive an asylum. Mary would be better dead than penned up with lunatics. I was in London a few years back, and did a foolish thing. You could pay a penny to go and view the inmates in Bedlam. As long as I live, I’ll never forget the spectacle. Some of them were hardly human any more. The bestial side of their natures had overtaken them.”

  I noticed how he forgot himself, and called the young lady Mary instead of Mistress Dunbar or even Mistress Mary. He was affected by her, and that’s the long and short of it.

  Peggy was sitting at the kitchen door watching the hens the whiles he was talking, or thinking, or whatever Frazer Bell was at. She must have been listening. When he went back indoors, she spat on the ground. “Mad or bad, it makes not a haet of difference. Thon wench is bringin’ down trouble on our heads.”

  “How can the young lady be held to blame for what’s happenin’ to her, Peggy? She’s in agony, so she is.”

  “She’s sufferin’ – I’ll grant you that. But she’ll be the cause of a dose of it afore she’s through. If you ask me, Mary Dunbar is being used like a funnel, to deliver trouble to our doorstep. Maybe if she was’n here, then n’ether would the trouble be.”

  Peggy had been at Knowehead for years before I was even born. She must know things about the house. But she had a habit of keeping her tongue stubbornly in her mouth if you showed too much interest in something. Still, I thought it worth trying her – she might let something slip.

  “You know the other day when you tould me about your first year or two on the island, Peggy? You were none too happy about the aul’ minister buildin’ Knowehead House here. On account of him movin’ thon big block of a Stone that stood where he wanted his house put.”

  “He never should a interfered wi’ it. Bigger’n than a kirk, it was. Must a weighed a good ten tons. The master was warned agin interferin’ with it, so he was. Folks were agin it. Then an Irish wise woman tould him to leave it be if he knowed what was good for him. She said it stood there since time before time was counted. An’ the aul’ gods – gods that belonged to these parts, the way his never would – they’d be offended if it was moved. He had her whipped out of the parish.”

  “The Stone was broke up, was’n it?”

  “Aye, took long enough, too. Weeks they were at it. The cattle they used to pull away the Stone from the earth caught some sort of sickness. Then one apprentice lost an arm. He was crushed beneath a chunk of rock that broke off and landed on him. Another lad threw hisself in Larne Lough. ’Twas said he had nightmares and kep’ wakin’ up in a sweat about the job they were at. The master had to do somethin’ to put heart in the men or there’d be no workers left in the finish up. So he stripped to the waist and hammered away at the job along with them, singin’ hymns and tellin’ Bible stories.”

  “An’ the Stone was dragged away, and Knowehead House built in its place?”

  “Knowehead House went up where the Stone used to stand, all right. But the Stone might not a been ready or willin’ to be replaced.” A chicken pecked near the kitchen door, and she pushed it away with the toe of her boot. “I heared Hamilton Lock was never done hangin’ round thon Stone. He was drawn to it, you might say.”

  “Was he there when the Stone came down?”

  “No, that happened when he was on his travels – up to no good elsewhere, I daresay.”

  “Maybes it was when he was hidin’ out in Scotland? When the law was lookin’ for him? So my da says.”

  “Aye, so it was. He was gone for years, and when he came back he was quare and put out to find the Stone gone. Had words with Minister Haltridge about it. Thon Lock was a man with no respect. He tould my master he’d live to regret it. A-coorse, what might really a niggled him was the loss of his own wee cabin, knocked, too, to make way for our barn. Minister Haltridge found Lock’s da another cabin, up Balloo way, and no harm done. But Hamilton Lock did’n see it that way. Nor about the Stone goin’. Fierce taken with it, he was. God alone knows what he got up to there.”

  “Maybes Hamilton Lock dabbled in witchcaft or some class o’ sorcery, Peggy. Maybes that’s why he had a thing about the Stone.”

  “I’d put nothin’ past him. Come to think of it, some of the stones his wee cabin was built from were used in the makin’ of Knowehead House. ‘Waste not, want not,’ said Minister Haltrid
ge.”

  That gave me a jolt. It was almost as though Lock had lived under the same roof as us – an appalling notion. ‘No wonder the aul’ mistress got worked into a frenzy and tore at the walls in her chamber, thon time afore she died. Was that the reason Hamilton Lock had a grudge agin the Haltridges, Peggy?”

  “Ask me no questions, I’ll tell thee no lies.”

  And I could get no more out of her.

  Chapter 8

  The elders jogged off after breakfast, Hugh Donaldson holding on behind Bob Holmes, and it was plain as the snout on your face they weren’t one bit sorry to leave Knowehead House.

  Frazer Bell saddled up Lordship and left too, promising to return. He leaned down from his stallion and took the mistress by the hand. “You will not have to deal with this on your own, Mistress Isabel. I am a poor substitute, but until James returns – and I trust that day will be soon – you can count on me.”

  “I plan to write to James today, Frazer. But he thinks I exaggerate everything. I’m not sure he’ll believe me when I tell him what’s been going on.”

  “Then bid him come home and see for himself.”