The Lady in Yellow

by Alyne de Winter

  “Never let that gun out of your sight, Veronica,” Rafe said. “The minute the full moon rises, I want you to load it with those three silver bullets. And the moon will be full very soon.”

  ****

  Veronica was on her balcony gazing off into the twilight, going over in her mind all of the little things that went on between Rafe and she, picking through them for evidence that he shared her feelings, without question, without a doubt. She was well aware of her position. She had no one to answer to, she was free, but on the other hand, there was no one to care, no one to help her, if he should merely take advantage of her and throw her in the street.

  She held the pistol, looked into the chamber at the butt end of a silver bullet. The whole saga disturbed her, for clearly she was meant to destroy human beings who only appeared to be wolves. How could she do that? Rafe had said it was for the sake of their souls, but what of her soul? Was she to be forced to murder another human being? Perhaps someone she dearly loved?

  Crows flew over, so black among the autumn birches standing like ghosts in the mist that rose from the warm, wet ground, and collected like a cloud in the well. Veronica shivered as the old bell in the tower slowly tolled.

  CHAPTER 10

  *

  There was shriek. A hare shot out of the woods and began swiftly zigzagging up the lawn towards the chapel. A loud barking sound followed as one of the twins shot out of the trees, and chased it with that horrible four-legged gait. Veronica leaned over the balcony looking for the other. Surely this game of theirs had brought them back together. But no. One Jack alone bore down on the hare. It leapt into the air as if to escape over the hedge, but with one sweep of his long arm, Jack clawed it back and pulled it to the ground. Veronica held her breath and forced her eyes not to blink as the child stood up and, with the dead hare lying across both hands held out as if presenting a gift, stepped ceremoniously towards the house.

  “Where is the other one? Where? I’ve had enough of this.” Veronica was surprised at how annoyed she was. She threw on her brown cloak. There was deep pocket inside. She put the pistol into it, allowing her hand to linger on its ivory handle for a moment as if she could absorb its power. Then she dashed down the stairs, and out into the garden.

  It was windy. The moon was coming up between the cypress horns amid waves of rolling clouds. The stars began winking out, cold and sharp. Veronica pulled up her hood, but the wind blew it down again and swirled her cloak around her as if to carry her off. The bell was tolling off-key and somber. That sound seemed to turn the entire world askew.

  She hurried to the shelter of the woods. The wind died down among the trees. There was a shimmer of golden light around the well. She crept close enough to see three children standing among the lilies. They were looking down into the water, their faces bright white under the brims of their birch bark hats. She gasped. Among them was, not Sylvie, but one of the Jacks holding a china doll and a sheaf of sheer, white lilies.

  She watched them leave the well and drift, in their fog of light, through the trees as if they were looking for someone. Veronica followed them to the fringe of the woods and watched in astonishment as Sovay, glowing in a nimbus of golden light, took shape under the branches of a pomegranate tree bent before the empty doorway of the chapel. Her face glowed white; her gown began to glitter like yellow sequins as she called the children to her. They moved up the lawn and, as children gather around their mother seeking her loving and benevolent smile, encircled Sovay. They handed her their lilies, one by one, until her arms were filled with them. Her smile was the fanged grimace of a wolf.

  Count the souls, so many souls…one, two, three…,The wind took the rest as she counted the lilies.

  “Where is Sylvie?” The words lisped out of Veronica’s mouth unbidden.

  Veronica plunged down the pathway, headed for the tomb. She was almost at the mouth of the door when she heard the snap of branches breaking behind her, the sound of a heavy tread over the dead leaves. Her scalp tingled, her mouth went dry, and she froze. Its gruff, hot breath was on the back of her neck. Cold sweat poured down her sides. She almost spun around, but a strong, rough arm wrapped around her and squeezed her hard. Hot breath dampened her ear.

  “Get back into the house. Do not turn around. Just go back into the house and lock all of the doors. Now!”

  He let her go. Veronica ran blindly through the trees, crashing through low branches, hurtling out of the woods and not stopping until she saw the dark tower looming above. Then she grabbed her pistol and looked back. A large, dark shape was lumbering through the shadows of the woods towards the tomb.

  With a sharp burst of agony, Veronica cried, “Don’t make me shoot you. Don’t. If you do, I shall turn the gun on myself.”

  Shrieks and cries poured down from the tower. Veronica ran as fast as she could, barged into the tower door and pounded up the stairs.

  “No! No!” Jack’s voice echoed down. “Let me go!”

  “You must do as I tell you. You must!” Mrs. Twig shot back.

  Veronica burst onto the landing in time to see Jack screaming and snarling in the vice grip of Mrs. Twig as she tried to force the child through the grim door into the keep. Janet stood by, holding a large platter with the dead hare lying on it. A branch of candles stood on the floor throwing wild shadows over the wall, making the open doorway appear as black as the mouth of Hell.

  “Please! I don’t want to go in there!”

  “You know you have to. Just for tonight. There is a nice hare for your supper. Please now Jack. You know we have to do this.”

  “Not alone. Not alone. I’ve never been locked in there alone,” Jack cried.

  Mrs. Twig looked around. Veronica stayed back to see what would happen. Her heart was torn by the child’s cries, but she knew Mrs. Twig was doing what she had to do.

  “I’ll go in with you. How is that? You must just promise me that you won’t forget who I am. You won’t have to be alone Jack. I’ll be with you.”

  Mrs. Twig pushed Jack through the door and followed. Janet set the platter inside the door, and then picked up the candle branch and gave it to Mrs. Twig.

  “Please stand guard, Janet,” Mrs. Twig said. “If you hear anything. Anything at all. Let me out.”

  Janet nodded in agreement, and then closed the door on whatever was to happen in the tower that night.

  Veronica was astonished by the housekeeper’s courage. She would never have been able to be locked in with that child on a full moon night. Once all of the doors of the house were locked, she would be up all night praying for her, praying for Jack, praying for Rafe de Grimston whose roaring and screaming, even at that moment, reverberated through the woods. Veronica turned the corner silently, careful not to alert Janet who was staring at the locked door as if in shock, and tripped up the curve of the tower stairs. Up on the roof, the entire night sky, with its floating castles of clouds, moved over her. The moon was very large and close, filling the dark between the horns of the cypress trees as if it was about to pass through a gateway to earth.

  A terrible despair welled up in Veronica's heart. She sat down on the stone bench for a moment and listened to the to the high, clear howls echoing up from below. The woman’s screams. She put her face in her hands, but could not weep. She wanted to tear her hair. She stood up to gaze down at the woods, and finding the telescope lying on the bench, picked it up and trained it on the moon. After adjusting the focus on its marvelous craters and seas, she aimed the lens down at the birch wood, and searched the shadows for that hunched and howling creature that she loved. Moonlight spilled down into the clearing around the tomb, and there she saw an enormous wolf with the aspect of a man, raging at a girl in a yellow dress who stood in a mist of light with a lily in her hand.

  Was it Sylvie? Or had that other one come from across the sea?

  Veronica trained the telescope on the girl’s face, saw the beauty, the long white-blonde hair. Then she focused on the face of the Wolf Man whose eyes we
re filled with sadness. He shrieked, tore away, and leaped gracefully out of the woods and over the grass towards the meadows, no longer a man at all, but a large silvery wolf.

  “I’m expected to shoot him. That’s what he wants. Well, I won’t,” Veronica said. “I’ll leave before I’ll do that.”

  She hurried down the tower stairs to the landing and the tower door. Janet was gone. There was blood all over the floor, tracks going down into the house. Veronica stopped and listened for a sign that Jack the wolf was still locked in, but heard nothing.

  Mrs. Twig was hurt. She knew it.

  Veronica took the short cut through Rafe’s rooms, groping her way in the dark until she got out into the hallway. Mrs. Twig’s room was one floor down. There she found Janet coming out with bloody rags in her hands. The maid looked utterly distressed and shocked at the sight of Veronica.

  “What happened?” Veronica asked.

  “Mrs. Twig is ill. I’m not sure she’ll last the night.”

  “What’s wrong? Have you called the doctor?”

  “No Miss. We can’t have a doctor here. Not now. Me and Peggy will do the best we can to help her.” Janet stared at Veronica, silently pleading with her to stop asking questions.

  “Janet, I know what’s going on. It’s not a secret any more. She’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “Yes she has, Miss. But you don’t want to go in there. Like I said, she might not last the night.”

  Suddenly exhausted, Veronica dragged herself up the stairs to her rooms. She paused and looked into the twin’s rooms, so cold and empty and dark except for the moonlight streaming through the balcony windows. A sudden memory of Sovay looking through the windows like some wild predator enraged her so, she slammed the door shut.

  In her room, she poked up the fire, and then went out onto the balcony. The wind was high in the trees, full of the singing of the wolves. Yet, close to the ground, where the air was quiet and very still, Sovay and the children were floating in their sphere of golden light, all of one mind like a troupe of fairies, towards the tower.

  "She wants the other twin!"

  Veronica shouted down at the apparitions, screamed at them to stop. Then she ran downstairs, through the house, and out to the garden again. A roar erupted from somewhere too close by. Her hand flying into the pocket of her cloak, for the gun, she spun around.

  “What am I doing? I’m supposed to lock the doors,” she said.

  Veronica raced back inside and locked the door behind her. Then she ran around locking everything on the bottom floor, running through the servants’ quarters and locking the back kitchen door, checking the windows, locking them.

  “I hope I got everything,” she muttered as she ran up to her bedroom. Once inside she locked the door, and backed away from it, staring.

  ****

  Despite the excited state of her nerves, Veronica passed out in her chair by the fire. The haunting sound of an off-key bell invaded her mind. She began dreaming of a pack of small white wolves dancing in a circle below the tower. Veronica rose, still dreaming, and went out onto the balcony. She watched in astonishment as Jack emerged from the tower, turned into a small white wolf, and ran over the yard to join the pack. Several more white wolves dashed down the slope to join them. They all leapt about in a circle. Out of thin air, Sovay appeared, glittering and glowing in the dark center.

  The wolf pack vanished leaving Jack alone with his mother, a human child again.

  Chapter 11

  *

  The loud gonging of the grandfather clock woke Veronica. Cramped in her chair beside a cold, dead fire, she was staring absently at the embers when someone began knocking on the downstairs door. Ringing the doorbell. Calling out for Rafe. She finally got up, threw on her dressing gown and, grumbling a curse to herself, went downstairs to answer it.

  “We’ve found the remains of a child. We think he’s one of yours.”

  Officer Simms’s flat face was grim, his chin sunk into its double as he waited on the doorstep for a response. There was a farmer at the officer’s elbow, turning his hat in his hands, fretting.

  “What?” she asked. “What have you found?”

  The farmer broke in. “I didn’t know what it was. I mean…you know how it’s been the last few years. Wolves and all. That’s what it was, I swear. A white wolf heading for the sheep pens. A second didn’t pass before I had a shot off. I saw it limp away into the bushes. Left a lot of blood behind. Finished, I thought. But I wasn’t about to chase it further seeing as how it was wounded.”

  The farmer hung his head like a small child trying to hold back tears. “I swear it was a wolf, Miss. I swear.”

  Veronica eyes felt like cold mountainsides as she stared at the man.

  “The corpse is buried under a pile of dead leaves,” the policeman said. “Seems it’s been there a while. There were another death last night. A woman out calling her dogs in from the storm. Attacked by a big wolf. Worse than any of the others.”

  “It’s all over the papers, Miss.” It was Janet. She’d just come in with the newspaper and stood in the half light holding it up.

  Marauding Wolf Kills Farmer’s Wife.

  Veronica looked wildly at Janet whose face was like stone, staring at the policeman and the farmer.

  “Is Mr. de Grimston in? We need him to come down and identify the body. Strangely it’s not decayed. Animals haven’t gotten at it. Not even ants. You can see who it is----a small tow-headed child, about eight years old.”

  “It can't be!” Veronica glanced at Janet.

  Simms went on, “I wonder if that wolf survived the shot. Maybe Mr. Hodges here didn’t kill it after all. Crazed by its wound it was and attacked your boy.”

  “Mr. Rafe is still a-bed,” said Janet. “As is Mrs. Twig, the housekeeper.”

  “Haven’t you been missing a child?” asked the policeman.

  “Well, Jacques was away visiting. Wasn’t he, Janet?” Veronica looked to the maid as if she could save her from drowning.

  “Yes. We saw him off to France about a month ago. Mrs. Twig kept in contact through letters,” Janet said.

  Officer Simms looked at Mr. Hodges who looked warily at Veronica.

  “Its hard to mistake a child like that. I’m real sorry about what happened." Mr. Hodges tipped his hat. “I’ll be going. Tell Mr. de Grimston to come round to mine when he’s ready.”

  “Yes,” said Veronica. “I must wait for Mr. de Grimston. I am utterly unqualified to handle this.”

  “Will you give Mr. de Grimston my card?” Simms asked. He handed Veronica his calling card. “I expect to hear from him before the day is out.”

  “Will do, Officer. I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help. I pray it’s not one of the twins,” Veronica said.

  “Good day, Miss.”

  Officer Simms looked askance at the two women, nodded, and left.

  Once the door was closed, Janet rushed over to Veronica. “Mrs. Twig wants to speak with you. You must hurry.”

  Veronica followed the maid up to the housekeeper’s rooms. Only one candle burned in the dark. The smell was awful. Mrs. Twig lay in her large, curtained bed, breathing heavily. Her neck and head were bandaged, the hands on the coverlet thick with bunting. She opened her eyes and looked at Veronica. Her attempt at a smile was a grimace.

  Veronica fell into the chair beside the bed.

  “Mrs. Twig, I saw you go in there last night. I am amazed at your courage. But now…”

  The housekeeper’s voice was a hoarse whisper. Veronica had to lean close to hear her.

  “I shall die of this wound. But I shall come back. As one of them….”

  Veronica swallowed hard and thought of the task Rafe had given her. The purpose she didn’t want.

  “I am not sure what Mr. Rafe told you…. Sovay….was a skin turner from the start. I knew it long before Mr. Rafe did. Every month, another death…. She used to sneak back in at dawn to wash the blood off. I could see her from the kitchen window, for I w
as up preparing breakfast at that hour….. She came into the kitchen... swore me to secrecy. I had to obey or she’d kill me. Like this.” Tears sprang up in Mrs. Twig’s eyes.

  Veronica, understanding all, filled in the blanks to spare Mrs. Twig the effort. “Rafe told me he saw wolves come into the yard. That he had to shoot one in self defense. But it wasn’t a wolf at all. It was Sovay.”

  “Yes…But he shot it with only an ordinary bullet. Not silver. So she comes back. She also bit him. I tended his wound. We had to cover up her death…. For the sake of the children. Held the funeral at home. Placed her in that tomb…with Sylvie….”

  “Did Rafe know about Sylvie?”

  “No. He was in India when that happened. I took care of her…Saw to her burial. Told Mr. Rafe… it was an accident.” Mrs. Twig stopped to lick her parched lips. “After Sovay was buried, I insisted Mr. Rafe go to France. Get away from here until the dust settled. Sovay was well known... in society…would be missed. No one would believe she was what she was.”

  “But he started having nightmares there, in France. He told me. A lady in a yellow dress calling to him, leading him on. He dreamed he was one of them. A wolf man,” Veronica whispered. She continued, faltering. “After he told me, I thought he was just being delusional with guilt over murdering his wife. Even if it was in self defense. I also believed Sovay when she said she wasn’t really dead. I’m sorry, but I blamed you for keeping she and the twins apart. I even thought that, if Rafe could only see Sovay alive, as you saw her, that he might be relieved of his guilt. But I was wrong.”