The Hidden People

by Allison Littlewood

  And then I blinked and stared harder at the keyhole, knowing suddenly that there was something wrong with it. The metal, and the door around it, was laced with little scratches from all the years of locking and unlocking it had endured. Why so many? Did country folk habitually trouble to lock their doors? I imagined the village settling into somnolence, the light fading from the sky, the last strains of a violin dying against the greater darkness, all men retreating at last to their beds. Why should they lock their doors? It did not meet my image of the place; it was something that divided them from the bustle and modernity of the City as surely as the blackness of the night, unleavened by a single gaslight along the road.

  Yet here were the signs of it. Was it simply a defect in Jem Higgs’ nature to be so suspicious? What was it exactly he had guarded against?

  It’s not a good ’ouse. Not a lucky ’ouse, neither.

  But it was a solid house, a fine house for a man such as he, one he could only afford to rent because other men had spurned it. A fairy house; the den of little folk, if the stories were to be believed. And the men who told such tales—should I even care what they thought of me? How could they prevent me walking along the road with my head held high?

  A sound broke into my thoughts: footsteps were approaching the cottage along the Reeling Road. Had Mrs. Gomersal decided to renew her appeals? I threw the door open to see a stranger, a farmer’s lad, his face red and his back bent, sweating through his shirt-sleeves in the heat. I thought of sending him around to conduct his business at the back door, but it did not seem worth the trouble. He came panting up to me, leaving the gate swinging. Rustic syllables broke from his mouth, as bluff as they were brief and impossible to decipher, but he thrust a packet towards me and I took it. I gave him a penny for his trouble, presuming that payment for what he had handed over would be requested at some later date, and he turned and went away, revealing a damp line where the shirt clung to his back.

  The parcel was unpleasantly warm and pliant. I pulled open the paper a little and stared down at the red mess in my hands. It was calf’s liver, deeply purpled, along with a few small chops. The pungent scent of iron assailed my nostrils and I grimaced as I wrapped the things again as best I could. I imagined it on the roasting jack before the fire, the redness turning to black, the surface crackling to reveal fissures of crimson. I stared after the boy, visible now only as a little cloud of dust as he made his way back to the village. I was not sure how he had got along so fast unless it was that I had stood and stared longer than I had believed. Was he afraid of the place, to hurry so in the hot sun? But of course I knew the answer to that.

  I pushed the door closed with my heel and deposited the foul package in the kitchen. The contents spilled from it and I left it to bleed upon the table. I passed through the parlour and went up the stairs and into my room. I could think only of opening a book and hiding myself within its pages. It did not appear to signify much which one I read: the true account which sounded so much like fiction, or the fiction which was laced with the true beliefs of the folk I moved among.

  I was so happy to-day. I waited and waited for Jem to come in and I could hardly bare to sit still. I did some sewing but I could not do that neither, I just pricked my finger, so I walked up and down the lane instead. At last I saw him and I waved and he saw me but he didn’t wave back. I suppose he wondered what was up, but he didn’t hurry neither. It was making me cross by then, but then he weren’t to know. So I told him all that moaning and wondering can stop now, because he’s going to be a papa.

  At first he looked moithered and he shook his head as if he didn’t know what I was on about. And then he asked, Really? and I said, Yes, really, and he scratched his head.

  Haven’t tha got more to say than that, I asked him, and he said it was just that Aikin’s lass has started with the bairn, and he thought it was that I was on about, and it was my turn to be dazed: did he think I was accusing him of summat? Did he think me daft? We all know whose bairn that is.

  And then he sorter smiled, and then it were gone, just like that. There was just that one little bit when he actually looked happy. And then he said, did I get it the same place as her?

  I didn’t know what to say at first. He’d wanted it so long, going on and on about it, and now I was going to be a mamma, and I’d thought of nowt but sewing little caps and blankets for its bed since I realised.

  I got right mad with him then. I said if I had, at least it would be a handsomer bairn than his own, and he looked at me like to throttle me. I’ve seen him mad, but not this mad. His lip went white and for a while he didn’t say owt, and it were like he didn’t hear owt I said, but then he looked at me and told me he had found my bonnet. I knew which it was straight off, the one I hid, the one with little green flowers on. And he asked me who I wore it for, since it weren’t him, and I said I was saving it for best. And he said where did I get it from, since it wasn’t from him, and I said I saved up and got it my self, but I could see he didn’t believe me. And I couldn’t say nowt then, since I couldn’t answer. All I could think to say was, baby or bonnet? Which is most important? And I don’t know which he thought, because he didn’t answer me either way.

  So that were that. I told him, and he were mad anyway. I cried, but I didn’t let him see.

  I shook my head over the sad words, the loneliness my cousin must surely have felt in her predicament, and then I remembered: changelings were said to be barren, weren’t they? But Lizzie had been with child. So if Jem truly believed in fairy-lore, as he claimed, there was no possibility that he could have thought her a changeling! And this matter of the bonnet, somehow wrapped up in shame—someone had given it to her. Was it a sweetheart? I could not believe it of my cousin, and yet I remembered the words written in her own hand that I had earlier read: I hid my new bonnet. I think perhaps I should not keep it, but then why should I not have such a thing . . .

  It cast her in a new light. Fairy struck? Fairly struck? Even so, the acceptance of a gift was not necessarily the emblem of some deeper guilt. The words she had written in her journal had been for herself and her alone, and in them she had shown herself to be Jem Higgs’ true wife. At the same stroke, she demonstrated that he had had reason—earthly reason, outside the realm of enchantment—to hate her; perhaps to do violence upon her, perhaps even to wish her dead.

  I closed the book, catching the faintest scent of dried petals and dust, and I wondered afresh at his insistence that such a journal existed. His thread of hope was that its revelations might loosen his bonds, but if he had truly seen it before, he had surely not read it all. What I held at this moment in my hands could only draw the noose tighter until it closed for ever upon his miserable neck.

  I hurried across the room and concealed the document once more, not beneath my pillow but in the hiding place Lizzie had once chosen for it behind the wainscoting. Then, in a manner more business-like than I had moved for days, I wrote a note to my father, explaining that I had been unavoidably detained in settling my cousin’s affairs, and that I would do everything I could for the family, and that further to such matters, he may rejoice in the news that his own would soon be extended. In anticipation of such happiness I closed my brief correspondence, his respectful son, & cetera, & cetera, and signed with an unwonted flourish.

  As I cast my eyes over what I had written—finding, indeed, that I could barely remember the words—joyous occasion, and happy addition, almost feeling other words (barren; unnatural; fairy; shrew) being overwritten, I heard the soft tones of my wife rise in a pretty lullaby, and I felt with full force all the weight of my recent neglect. I stood, smiling. My wife, along with my unborn child, occupied the adjacent room. There she was, no doubt full of fond thoughts, imagining in the corner a carven crib; the purity of the white shirts she would sew to encase those tiny limbs; cradling her arms, already sensing there the warm and lovely weight.

  I heard the words she sang, and my smile faded from my lips.

  As I walke
d out one sweet morning

  Across the fields so early . . .

  I hurried to find her, to impress upon her my deepest affection and assurance of our happiness together, so that her song, like my words, may be overwritten. Helena could sing a new song, one of love and gentle motherhood. I would take her in my arms and banish all that the recent days had placed between us. I pushed her door wide and my smile faltered.

  O there I met with a bonny maid

  As bright as any fairy.

  Her voice was sweet, but her expression was not. Her face was drawn and twisted; I had never before seen it so. She looked older, dried-out and harsh, and full of dried-out, harsh thoughts. She held out a hand as she turned towards me and it remained suspended in the air, as if it were clasped in another’s; as if she were being led in some dance. Her eyes narrowed as they focused upon mine. She was wearing my cousin’s dress, which hung loosely upon her form, the sleeves limp upon her arms where the cotton had worn to thinness, and I realised she had not fastened it.

  As if to show me the truth of this she turned again, gracefully spinning on one foot. The other toe struck the floorboards with a dull clunk that was surprising in its loudness. I started at it, though she appeared to notice not at all, and I thought of the parson’s words as he spat them in my face:

  All are children of Lilith; they are nothing of Pan. Only emissaries of Satan himself, aye, of old Mister Splitfoot as they call him, and by their split feet shall ye know them.

  She turned again: clunk. And again. Her face turned to me and away; turned to me and away, like something glimpsed in a daedalum, a trick I had once seen whereby glancing through slits in a spinning cylinder lent the illusion of animation to certain lifeless images printed within. I recalled, uncomfortably, that “daedalum” was said to mean “wheel of the devil.”

  My wife resumed her singing.

  “Where are you going, sweet maid?” said I,

  As by the hand I caught her.

  I reached out for her hand, stopping just short of touching her. Her other hand, upheld and twirling sensuously in the air, bore the mark of the iron horseshoe.

  She laughed, then, a long trill with cruelty but no sense in it.

  “I’m going home, kind sir,” she said,

  “I’m nought but your own aunt’s daughter.”

  My mouth fell open, she laughed harder and I reached out and grabbed her hand at last. Hers was cold. “Stop it,” I said. “Will you cease at once, Helena!”

  “Helena, is it?” She bowed, allowing her dark hair to fall across her shoulders, and peered up at me through the tangle in a coquettish manner more suited to a soubrette upon the stage than a wife. It was awful, almost lascivious, and of a sudden I could hear rough cries and rougher music, the raucous calls of costermongers; I saw the unseemly flash of a mottled thigh.

  She went on, “Not Helena, my dear. You see, I am changed—quite, quite changed!” She gave another awful peal.

  “You are unsettled, my dear. It is your condition, I know, and your—You must go home at once. A physician must attend you.” I already knew, however, that none must know of this. No one must see her with her senses thus deranged.

  “Oh, but I am home already! I am home, among my own folk, my dear, just as you wanted. I live in her house, I sleep in her bed and now I wear her clothes for you. I wear her shoes, just for you. I am her for you, my dear, devoted husband! Why, I can be anyone you like!” She held out a lock of hair. “Do you like this form? You have the notion I can take another, if you wish it, do you not? Is that what you yearn for when you wander the hill at night?”

  “You are not her.” I barely knew what I said.

  “No, I am not! I shall never be her.” She sighed. “I shall never be her again.” There was something in the way she spoke, as if some hidden meaning was intended, but I could not fathom it. My hands shook; I felt like a man in a fever. This was so bizarre, so—changed, I could barely believe it to be my wife at all. And after what I had written in my letter to my father . . . he would be so happy; he would believe all was well with the world. I could not send it. I would tear the paper to shreds.

  I covered my face. I must do something to stop this, to know, though I knew not what I needed to know—and then I pictured myself striding to the top of Pudding Pye Hill and discovering the cool, dark place that lay beyond the oaks. There I would find the cold iron cutting into the ground, casting its spell, keeping the doorway open.

  I shook the idea away. My wife’s was an infectious madness; I could not be so influenced. Now she cavorted and twirled like a child in the nursery and I wondered, was this how Jem Higgs had seen his own wife—seen her, and allowed the malady to seize hold of his own brain? Had he himself been in his right senses?

  And then I did know what I must do. I had judged the man, and I was certain I had done so aright, and yet I saw now that just as Yedder Dottrell had skirted the fairy ring, I had skirted the heart of the matter. I must see the man who had killed her face to face: I must stand before him and look into his eyes. I had to see for myself the callousness and the evil within him and know it for what it was. And I must look upon his madness, so that I could understand it, and so that I could recognise it if I saw it again.

  Chapter Twenty

  It was difficult to describe my feelings as I followed the warden through the narrow doors and into the passageways that twisted in a quite indecipherable fashion through the tall, stern building. There had been little to suggest, from its façade, what lay within; only the sharpened wrought-iron railing, gleaming coldly, gave any clue as to its purpose. The prison was built of grey stone, rendered darker against the insipid sky. A sense of dampness hung about it, which I felt more sharply after the endless warmth of Halfoak.

  My visit had involved a rather tiresome train journey, taking me yet deeper into the barbaric north. I had unfortunately failed to gain the corner seat in the compartment and the window had been particularly ill-fitting, admitting an unfortunate influx of smuts and cinders. I had endeavoured to blow them from my frock-coat the moment I alighted, but the smudges remained.

  The gaol was situated not far distant from the centre of a rather small city and even deep within those dank walls I could still hear the sounds of its citizens going about their regular business: the rumble of cartwheels and the chatter from a coffee stand, the shouting of a Lucifer-seller, his cries vying with those of a man selling pigs’ pettitoes. Such sounds were not unfamiliar to me, and yet I found myself listening for the twitter of birdsong and the steady swishing of scythes cutting down the hay. I suspect my reluctance to immerse myself once again in city ways was in part caused by my errand; I could never have imagined, when I first laid eyes on Lizzie, that her little hand on my arm would lead me to such a place.

  Helena had not smiled as I left the cottage and she did not wave a handkerchief in farewell. I wished it had not been so; I wished I had known how to break the silence that had crept between us. I only hoped she would conduct herself well during my absence. I could not abide the thought of her traipsing and dancing through the village, around the green, past that blasted oak. I could not bear the thought of the folk watching; I would not have any of mine gawped upon in such a fashion, to have her beauty and gentility mocked by uncouth ignorance.

  I had looked back only once to see her standing at the door, her cool, smooth forehead unlined, her deep, liquid eyes in shadow so that I could not see their expression. At least she had not turned away as soon as I set foot upon the white road—indeed, she had not moved at all. She could have been standing in that place for ever, her straight figure belonging behind the little green gate, and I pushed away the uncomfortable ideas that presented themselves to my mind at the sight of her.

  I had not locked the door behind me—indeed, I saw no way that I could do so, even had I any desire to shut my wife in a prison of her own. At least she had been calm, to all outward appearance anyway, when I gave my explanation for leaving her; that I was trying to ascert
ain the facts of a crime and nothing more. I had not permitted myself to dwell on whether my words were true.

  Now the train had swept me from her, along with all the foolish superstitions which riddled the place like worms in wood. I left behind me only a trail of steam—that, and one thing else; a rather unfortunate mishap which I hoped did not bode ill for my journey. We had not long left Kelthorpe when there came a cry of “Fire, fire!” and everyone rushed to press their faces to that rattling window. I turned myself to see a mass of gold: a hay field, and at first I could not know what was the matter, until I saw a plume of smoke rising from one of the ricks. A flying cinder from the train must have landed there, and men were swarming towards it, trying to seize bundles of hay and carry them to safety before the fire could spread, but it had done so already: the hay was dry and desiccated, and caught at once.

  I saw no more; it was swiftly behind us. We jounced along and I settled into my seat, reminded uncomfortably of the unease which could exist between progress and country, rationalism and superstition. I reminded myself on which side of the argument I stood, and I found myself thinking of the wise woman who epitomised all that I hated about Halfoak: its ignorance, its reliance on outmoded ideas, a belief in a magic which could never have existed. I wondered how her stupidity could be called “wise.” Surely it was only out of some primitive fear of bewitchment or the evil eye; a similar reason for the fairies being called the “good” folk. Should she too not be dragged from her filthy hovel and into the light?

  I could almost hear her laughter echoing from the walls about me now, clouding my brain with anger as if she had indeed bewitched me with some curse. I could still see her expression as she looked out of her window at my wife. The idea that she had ever come to exert any degree of control over what had happened to sweet Lizzie was dreadful to me. I wondered if the constable even knew of the beldam’s part in this sad affair. Should she too be locked away and awaiting the Assizes? I was not yet ready to consider speaking to him, however. I must see Jem Higgs for myself, and after that, I might know what I should do.