The Hidden People

by Allison Littlewood

My mother had never known her, having died of an ailment of the heart some years previous to Helena becoming Mrs. Albert Mirralls. Our Yorkshire relatives were on my mother’s side of the family, though some illness had kept them from the occasion of her funeral, and after that unhappy event I had scarcely heard them referred to again; so it came as something of a surprise when Father suddenly leaned forward and said, “Do you remember your cousin Elizabeth?”

  I had so much thought of my cousin of the north as “young Lizzie” that for a moment I did not know of whom he spoke. Then I remembered, and I flushed. “Certainly.”

  “Well, a most singular thing has happened to her, my boy. You remember I told you of her marriage to a cordwainer—a shoemaker in Halfoak—James Higgs was his name, I believe.”

  I agreed that he had indeed told me of such a thing, perhaps two or three years since, although I still recalled my feelings upon hearing that pretty little Elizabeth Thurlston had consented to become plain Lizzie Higgs.

  “Well, it appears that a quite horrible occurrence has taken place, and you must not be shocked to hear us speak of it, my dear. But possibly you should prefer to leave the room?” This last was addressed to my wife, but she demurred, insisting in her gentle tones that she would stay. She ever had a way with my father—her own parent was Mr. Sherborne, a trader in possession of some repute, substantial means, and perhaps as importantly in my father’s eyes, no living sons.

  “Well, what do you think! She has passed away, poor thing. It is quite, quite terrible.”

  Now that he had not laid eyes on her for many a year, he sounded utterly contrite at her fate, but I did not reflect upon that. I found that a lump had risen to my throat and stayed there, and the sight of my father’s face, struggling as I knew he was to find words when words usually came so easily to him had filled me with apprehension.

  He turned and looked at me, his eyes shining momentarily as the gaslight flickered and hissed. “He has killed her, Albie.”

  He had not called me Albie in many a year, but I did not think of that either. I frowned. “Who? Who has—who would—?”

  “Her husband.”

  “What? Father, how could such a thing be? It must be false. No one would ever—”

  My wife reached across the table, placing her cool hand on my own where it had curled into a fist.

  “It appears that he was suffering under some delusion, my boy. Perhaps he was prone to it; I do not know his family. And those in the country—well, sometimes their thoughts run in unfortunate grooves. Unfortunate, indeed.”

  “Whatever do you mean?” My voice was taut with anger, my words blunt. At one time my father would have taken a strap to me for such a thing, but now he only sighed.

  “I am told he thought she is—or had been, rather, stolen away by the fairies.”

  My mouth fell open. It was Helena who spoke into the silence left by my astonishment. “The fairies?”

  My father raised his hands in front of him, staring at them for a moment as if the answer was suspended in the air between them, and let them fall once more. “It is apparently rather common where they come from. People believe all manner of things. Elves churn the butter; witches charm milk away from the cows; trolls populate the bridges and the woods. Why, when I was a boy, my own mother told me of a place called Runswick Bay, where a hob in a cave could cure the whooping cough, if he was persuaded with just the right charm.” He paused. “And sometimes, they say, the fairies take a fancy to a newborn babe or a lady of comely features—” here he glanced at me, ever so briefly, “and steal them away, leaving one of their own in their stead. Wearing a semblance of the one who is stolen, naturally.” A note of contempt stole, at last, into his voice.

  For a moment, I could not think how we had begun. I only pictured my cousin, stirred by the sound of a hundred clocks striking the hour all about her; the delight that was in her eyes. The delight that was in mine, when I heard her sing, in her beautiful voice, of beautiful things.

  I shook my head. “But, Father—how do we proceed from fairies to uxoricide? The killing of one’s own wife—of little Lizzie—? Both are surely naught but fancies. It cannot be so.”

  He cast a glance in my direction. “She was no longer a child,” he reminded me. “And fancies—sometimes, it seems, they can run too free, to the harm of all. James—or Jem, as I believe he was known—thought his wife stolen away and a changeling left in her stead. To one superstition is joined another: that various charms will effect to chase away a changeling, when the real wife or child must be returned. Such was his belief.” He paused. “Perhaps, after all, we must pity him, rather than—”

  “Pity? Pity!” For a moment I could only repeat the word. “If what you say is true, sir, we must—” Once more I felt Helena’s hand on my arm.

  My father rubbed his eyes. “One such charm entailed the holding of an afflicted person over the fire.”

  His voice was so low, it was a moment before I could absorb his words. I could not speak but words crowded in upon my mind: words and images too, and some of those images were terrible, and they stopped my breath.

  “She was burned, Albie.” He met my eye at last. Now he only sounded weary; weary to the bone. “He held her over the fire and she was consumed by it.”

  Helena made a choked sound; her hand left mine and went to her throat. I rose to my feet. I could not listen; I could not think. “Not possible,” I said. “Not possible!” I slammed my hand down upon the table. This couldn’t be. My cousin was a child. She was all artlessness and innocence, a shy smile on plump lips; delighted, nut-brown eyes. She was an angel; she was a bird. She was a sudden pure voice, and I heard it; I swear, in that moment, I did, returned as if to mock me.

  He made their glowing colours,

  He made their tiny wings . . .

  She was my Linnet. I had pictured her as a sylvan maid dancing in some green meadow, and perhaps now she was; perhaps she was.

  We spoke for a time of how awful it was, but I barely listened to the pronouncements of my father or the softer exclamations of my wife. I felt as if my blood were heated within my veins. It was like something from a savage land, or a history book, or one of the wilder romances that ladies liked to read. It surely wasn’t anything that could happen to a real person, let alone a relation, however distant in geography or condition of life; let alone my little Lizzie. I kept staring into the fireplace as if it could enlighten me, but it was cold. All about us was solid and dependable and just as it had always been: the gleaming mahogany; the heavily dressed mantle, with its velvet covering and fringe; the objets de vertu, each set upon its little circle of lace; an ancient needlepoint bearing the words from scripture: Teach me what is good. I could rest upon none of it.

  At last, Helena endeavoured to turn the conversation to brighter things, though with little success. We were a taciturn party and the hour was yet early when we retired to our rooms. I think that even then something was beginning to stir within me, an intimation that this incident would not let me go so easily.

  I met my father’s eye once more as we said our good nights, and I knew in that look that what had taken place would haunt him too. However, it did not strike me until afterwards that there was more than sorrow in his expression. Inconceivable as it might appear, I think an idea had started to grow within him that should never have taken root and yet which I could not bring myself to tear asunder; that if he had not taken our leave of my cousin that day, in the palace of crystal, everything might have been different. That in some distant and peculiar way, the terrible thing that had befallen young Lizzie was entirely his fault.

  Chapter Three

  The clock set into the old church tower was as curious a thing as I had seen, perhaps even since my cousin and I had glanced at each other from the opposite sides of a display case wherein stood the Tempest Prognosticator. There was no tempest now. Halfoak was drowsy with sunshine, making the old stone of its houses glow with golden light. The church at the heart of the vil
lage was built low to the ground, nestling like some wood mouse settling into its burrow. The tower was only a little taller than the rest of the structure, pockmarked with age and seen through a skein of floating pollen as if through a veil. Behind the church wall were glimpses of the final resting place of the flock to which it had ministered throughout the years. In front of it was the village green on which I stood, and behind me was an inn of ancient construction.

  Upon the green itself stood the tree which I knew at once must have given the village its name. A tall, raw, twisted thing, the oak was greened over with a canopy of leaves, and yet it stood upon only half a trunk. The damaged section was blasted, the wood charred and dead where it must have been struck by lightning. It had not been forgotten though, for coloured ribbons trailed from the living branches, soiled and limp, the remnants of some past Mayday celebration to welcome in the summer, perhaps, or maybe simply as a remembrance of how the village had come to be called Halfoak.

  It was the clock set into the church tower which most caught my eye, however. It had a plain white face, perfectly ordinary, as far as that goes. The hands were of black iron, or so it appeared, and were also perfectly ordinary, other than the fact that they were too many in number. The hour hand was shorter, as is usual; the other two were a little longer, and the same length.

  I blinked again. I realised I had heard of such things before, but I had believed them long vanished from the world. I almost heard a voice, excited and chattering: The railways ’aven’t come yet, not to ’Alfoak, but mebbe one day soon . . .

  Well, it had come here now, or within ten miles at least, and here was its witness: one of its minute hands showed Railway Time, otherwise known as London Time, marching across the land, set by the great Observatory at Greenwich and relayed across the nation by electric telegraph; whilst the other showed local time, that ordination originally fixed by use of a sundial, which even now I could spy set into the wall of the church, its gnomon and part of its dial plate quite rusted away. It had been some years since stationmasters were armed with almanacs and schedules listing all the differences so that passengers could be apprised of the necessary corrections to their watches as they travelled across the land. I looked at my own pocket watch now, and found, with equal parts of annoyance and amusement, that it had stopped at around midday.

  The time in Halfoak was either twenty-three minutes past five, or about that number until six o’clock; or perhaps both at once. Standing in the heart of the sleepy village, I bethought it a good thing that the clock was not required to tell the year, though the very configuration of its timepiece suggested somewhen in the past. I decided I should assume local time to be the one trailing, and I tried not to smile. At least I was not to catch a train by it; not yet, at any rate.

  I almost felt I had dragged the modern day into the heart of the riding along with my bag containing changes of clothes and some sundry items, which I had set down gratefully by the serving hatch of the Three Horseshoes a short time previously. I introduced myself and enquired if they had a room. It had felt like an age since I had alighted from the train at Kelthorpe, the nearest town, and hired a carrier to bring me the rest of the way by cart, since there was not a pony and trap to be found. I was now in the wilds indeed, somewhere close to the border between the south and west ridings, and I still felt rattled by the jolting journey; the springless cart was a far distant relation of the smooth and efficient hansom cab of the City. It was in some part due to my discomfiture that upon entering the inn I had walked into the taproom rather than the parlour, and yet it was there I had found my host, a Harry Widdop, according to the enquiries I had made.

  “We’s got two,” said the fellow, a suitably stout and ruddy-faced man with his shirt sleeves rolled about his elbows. “Which does tha want?” And he glared at me as if all my future happiness hung upon my answer.

  I explained that I had not had the good fortune to visit the region previously and that being the case I had no preference; which one would he recommend? At which he eyed me with suspicion, his eyebrows drawing down into a frown, his sandy mutton-chop whiskers bristling, and he slammed down the tankard he was engaged in polishing. He disappeared from view and I just had time to reflect that what these Yorkshire fellows lacked in volubility was more than amply compensated by their forcefulness of speech when he reappeared from a doorway to one side of the hatch. He gave a little toss of his head, which I assumed was an instruction to follow him from the public area into his domain.

  The door gave entry into a narrow passage. Widdop stopped only to choose, at length and with some forethought, a key from a peg on the wall, leaving an identical key hanging at its side. He led the way along the passage and up a narrow and creaking stair of bare and somewhat worn wooden risers and proceeded along a corridor carpeted in some long-faded pattern which ended in a white-painted door. He pushed it open—there was a keyhole, but the door was not locked—and brought me into a surprisingly bright and airy chamber with a well-curtained bed, a washstand and a dresser backed by a much-speckled mirror. The window stood slightly open, admitting a soft breeze smelling of summer meadows, but he crossed the room and abruptly pulled it closed. I was engaged in thinking that I should open it again the moment he quit me when he sharply pulled the curtains across, covering glass and shutters alike, and plunged us both into shadow.

  I endeavoured to keep the surprise from my expression, but I must have met his gaze somewhat stupidly for he pronounced, “If tha should want ter shut out t’ moon. ’S unlucky to look upon it, wi’ t’ moon up high.”

  I nodded, as if I had the first inkling of what he spoke, and he told me his terms—which were most reasonable—and, after pressing the key into my palm, left me alone in my new abode.

  The first thing I did, of course, was to cross the room, the boards beneath my feet surely announcing my every step to anyone below, and open the window. Off to the side were a collection of outhouses and the inn’s stables, but beyond them was a glory of rippling golden corn and flower-spotted meadows, culminating in the deeper hues of woodland. I could smell the new growth, the muskier smell of horse and from somewhere not too far away, the more chemical scent of washing. Still, it was all most idyllic, with only the distant forms of labourers in the fields to show that this was not the scene of some Elysian repose but a land required to nurture its occupants.

  I concluded that my room must face east and that upon the morrow, should I see the hour, I would be treated to a fine sunrise—or perhaps, remembering the landlord’s words—I should first see the moonrise. I wondered if his other room must be at the opposite end of the inn, thus being unlikely to see either, having the church to cover the sunset from view, and I considered it my good fortune that his hand had not strayed to the other key on the peg.

  I did not wish to wait upon that celestial occurrence, however, nor even to unpack the bag which I had placed at the foot of the bed. Quite aside from the need to begin the mission on which I had come I was eager to be in the fresh air, which smelled so wonderfully clean after all the yellow fogs and smoky fumes of London, so it was little time indeed before I descended the stairs once more, exchanging a nod with the landlord as I passed through the inn. I stepped outside, and from thence it was but a short step to the front of the church where I lingered, Railway Time and local time alike ticking away the minutes whilst sunlight bathed the nape of my neck.

  I turned my back upon it, somewhat reluctantly now that the moment had come, looking along the road to where almost the last homely cottage stood and towards the hill that rose to the north of the village. It was a landmark which must have been visible for miles about: no mountain, but it stood proud of the rolling pastoral slopes which surrounded it like an island jutting from the sea. It was notable both for its stature and also for its peculiarity of shape. Only a little taller than it was wide, the hill was quite round, culminating in a flattened top that made it look like nothing so much as an upturned pudding—no doubt the genesis of its name: Pud
ding Pye Hill. On closer examination I could see the top was not entirely flat, however: a narrow protrusion like a tombstone adorned its summit. This was, I had been informed, a tumulus or barrow, so it was indeed a grave or some other ceremonial place of ancient times. The only other natural irregularity upon the surface of the hill was the jutting crown of a small grove of trees. From this distance it appeared to me like nothing so much as a gathering of local gossips, bending towards each other to catch some choice morsel of news.

  That reminded me of why I had come, and my mood faded. I shifted my gaze down the hillside. About halfway up—neither up nor down, I thought, the words of the old rhyme coming to me—stood a single cottage. There was no sign of habitation, rather a general air of abandonment, though that might simply have been my fancy.

  Dust rose around me as I walked towards it, catching in the back of my throat. The ground was parched, rutted with old cartwheel tracks now set hard, and yet before I reached the foot of the hill I found a little brook sunk into a channel in the earth. Its banks were almost choked with long grasses and its bed with watercress, but it sung merrily along, revealing glimpses of shining brown pebbles between the shifting green. Its clarity and coolness made the day’s heat press upon me with greater intensity, and I longed to slake my thirst, even to rinse my face in the sharp, cold water.

  Naturally I did no such indecorous thing, but stepped across a little arched stone bridge, quite charming in its rusticity, and stopped for a moment to wonder what my cousin’s thoughts must have been upon the realisation that this would be her marital home. I could not imagine, but was flooded instead with a wave of anger that threatened to sweep me away. How could she have tied herself to such a blackguard? Did she have no intimation of his character? I remembered her shy glance, her clear voice rising so beautifully above the tinkling of the crystal fountain. She was an innocent! There was a fineness in her, and for a moment I stopped, unable to go on, overwhelmed by the thought of so sweet a dove being caged in such a manner.