The Hidden People

by Allison Littlewood

  Then came a garden where the rows of nurturing plants were almost smothered by roses of all colours: blood-red, pink, white, yellow, apricot, all of their petals burnt brown at the edges by fierce sunlight. The house after it must be the one I sought.

  As it came into view I thought it the most dilapidated I had yet seen in the village. Paint peeled from the sills; slates hung awry from the roof; its brickwork was slimed with moss. My heart sank to look upon its dismal visage. The garden gave no relief; it was bare, dry earth, with only a few attenuated weeds, and lying amongst them, a broken fork and a tiny knitted glove.

  The windows were open, but I heard no sound, not the shriek of a baby nor the cooing of its mother. I had pictured a neatly dressed girl dandling a child as apple-cheeked as herself, handing the white-clad bundle to my smiling wife—but that image fled. Helena would never touch the progeny from such a home; she would not be soothed by it. Why had I ever imagined she could be comforted by any child other than her own—a false child?

  And yet I was here. It would be foolishness itself to leave without trying the door and seeing what opportunities might present themselves. I half pushed, half lifted the gate aside, walked to the door and knocked.

  There came a rattling and a rustling, followed by . . . nothing. I raised my fist to knock again, but the door was suddenly dragged open. A girl stood there, not cheerful and apple-cheeked as I had hoped, but narrow of face and pale. Her fair hair was lank and dirty, darkened to the colour of damp straw. Her features might have been considered neat—she had a smooth forehead, a straight nose and rather lovely rosebud lips. Her eyes, a somewhat pretty shade of blue, were dull and lifeless, and the paleness of her cheeks sapped any vitality from her. Her grey dress was shabby, and her apron of doubtful white. Her hands and arms were speckled with flour.

  She made a somewhat sad impression, and I could not help but think, she was pretty, once.

  She made no greeting, and so I spoke. “Good morning. Are you Essie Aikin?”

  “Who wants to know?” Her pretty lips tightened into an unprepossessing arrangement and she folded her arms before her.

  I was a little taken aback at her rudeness, though by now I should have known to expect no better of the uneducated inhabitants of Halfoak; I should make allowances for lack of schooling and opportunities for betterment. But I did not expect that such a bold, saucy creature would make us even a maid of all work. Still, I said to her, “I came to speak to you on the matter of some employment.”

  She stared at me before blinking once. She did not appear sensible of my words, and it occurred to me that she was probably exhausted: so recent a mother, open to the ridicule of an unforgiving society, she must barely have slept since her condition had made itself plain. And yet here she was, cooking: she was at least industrious, then.

  “Tha’d best come in.” She drew back to allow me to pass and all my misgivings returned at the prospect of stepping into the dank little home. After a moment I did so, though I found myself hoping for an instant that no one had seen me.

  “My name is Mr. Mirralls,” I said. “I am currently residing at th—”

  “I know who you are. An’ I know where tha’s stoppin’.” She eyed me sharply. She gave no sign that she was aware of her own ill manners.

  I took a deep breath, reminding myself that her situation demanded Christian pity from those who knew better than herself. “We require a maid for the remainder of our stay, though I fear that may be short. The duties are the usual for such a position—cleaning, washing, and a little cooking. I understand that you are in need of useful occupation—”

  She screwed her features into a scowl. “That ’ouse—”

  “—is unlucky, yes. So I have heard it said, though only from unreasonable superstition, and without any cause to which I could possibly lend any credence.” I hardly knew why I persevered. If I could not secure the services of such a one as she, none other would step forward to fill the lack—but it had taken less than a moment to see the condition of the room, which appeared to serve as kitchen and parlour alike. The flimsy deal table was greasy beneath its current covering of flour and dough; the hearth was sooty; a filthy pan full of little tied cloths containing who knew what was set upon the floor as if ready to be set to boil.

  “I can offer generous recompense for the short time you would be needed,” I went on. “I understand that you have particular circumstances . . .”

  Even as I spoke the words, I realised there was no sign of a child: no cradle in the corner; no rattle; no little peg-doll wrapped in cunningly fashioned rags; no soft blanket; no white caps. The baby must be sleeping upstairs, away from the smoke and the busyness of making dinner; or perhaps it was in the care of a relative. “If it becomes difficult, you could bring your young charge with you, as long as—”

  Her eyes widened further and her mouth fell open. “Me what?”

  “Your charge—surely you know what that means? Your baby, of course.”

  “Me babby . . . ?”

  “Yes—you are Essie Aikin, are you not?”

  She made no reply, only stared, until I was the one to look away.

  “But it’s not ’ere, sir,” she said, and I returned my gaze to her face, which was now quite white.

  “Not here?”

  A tear welled at her eye and her lip quivered. I was altogether mortified, although I did not know what I had done, and furthermore, how it should be undone. I stood there as she wept, until at last I said, “Whatever has happened?”

  “Dun’t you know, sir?” She looked all around, as if to seek help in every corner of the room. “I thought everyone did. My babby got stole. I ’adn’t even named it. It weren’t but a few weeks old, an’ the fairies come and took it away.”

  The walls pressed in around me, growing closer moment by moment. I felt as if every strange word, every odd idea, every wild story I had heard since my arrival in Halfoak had followed me here. I had not the slightest clue as to what I should say.

  Essie said nothing either; her tears turned to sobbing until her shoulders shook. At last she began to sniff.

  “What happened? Pray, tell me.”

  She wiped at her nose with the back of her wrist, smearing her face. “’E was taken, sir. They left another in ’is place. An’ I tried and tried to make ’em give ’im back ter me, my little boy, but—but they din’t do it!”

  I frowned. “They left another—what, they left you a changeling? What made you think so? However did you know it was not your own child?”

  She looked me squarely in the eye. I would have taken it as an impertinence had the circumstances not been so strange. “Does tha think I wouldn’t know me own blood, sir?”

  I did not know how to answer, but she had not finished. “I saw it, sir, the fairy thing. Mary Gomersal ’elped me—she were kind to me. She went to t’ wise woman. She made me see what it was.”

  I remembered the shack, the woman’s touch in my hair; my wife, standing in a dead wood in a fall of sunlight and pollen. “So what did you do?” I breathed, feeling that everything hung upon her answer—the past, the future, everything I had seen since I came to Halfoak. She stared at me, and I realised I could find the answer without her; I had held it in my hands.

  A sound floated through the open window: whistling. Someone, perhaps more than one, was approaching down the street. Divine service had finished. The villagers were coming home.

  I forced myself to reach out and touch the girl’s thin shoulder. “I am sorry,” I said, and I rushed from the pitiful house, my soul aching in sympathy, but every fibre of me relieved to put the sight of her behind me. I caught a glimpse of Jem’s cousin, Thomas Aikin, coming down the lane, Yedder Dottrell at his side, their faces drawn and harried in the light of day. I did not wish to speak to them; I did not wish to have to explain myself, much less for them to know that I had seen them at midnight, waiting by a fairy door, for I would be trespassing on matters that were not my concern. I turned instead in the opp
osite direction and walked away from them. I did not look back, though the lane ended abruptly in another stone wall adorned with little pink flowers. A stile led into the field beyond and I clambered over it, uncaring of what kind of figure I must cut.

  I walked alongside the wall until I saw another stile in the distance. It must let onto the white road, somewhere beyond the inn. I hastened towards it, then stopped dead and stared. There was a scarecrow in the field, its out-thrust arms clad in a green coat, and it wore a red conical cap upon its head. Its eyes, little wizened nuts, shone brightly in its face.

  The words the girl had spoken returned to me: The fairies come and took it away.

  I frowned. Had something fallen into place at last, or had I truly stepped into the land of dreams? I felt that I had been waiting for some kind of revelation; that it was within my grasp—that this, rather than my wife’s illness, was the reason I stayed. I had wanted so badly to know the truth of what had happened to Lizzie, but it had never occurred to me to wonder if the fairies had ever done such a thing before.

  I started once more across the field, redoubling my haste. I knew now where I must look to discover what I sought. I needed to return to the cottage—I had to finish reading my cousin’s journal.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I burst in at the cottage door, eager to rush upstairs and retrieve the battered old book from its hiding place, but a small thing gave me pause: a soft scraping sound coming from the parlour. I peered into the room to ascertain its source.

  Helena was sitting at the table, in front of a feast. She must have laid out everything we had: there was salt pork, cheese, bread, butter; some cold tongue, a few cut radishes from the garden; pots of numerous kinds of preserves. She indicated it with a gesture, as if to say, See? I am trying.

  “We shall eat together,” she said, her voice calm, “and then we shall pack up our belongings. Is it not time that we left this place and went somewhere else? We could return to London. We could be there by tomorrow. We can leave it all behind us. We shall never need to look upon the hill again.”

  “But Helena . . .” She tilted her head. “Helena, my dear, I cannot eat just now. There is something I need to do—things I need to discover. I cannot possibly leave Halfoak just yet.”

  She made no reply; she did not protest or weep, though the musculature of her face began to change, becoming more firmly set as all turned to coldness. I had seen such an expression upon her face before; I did not need to look upon it again. I quietly left the room, closing the door behind me, and I ran up the stairs, two at a step.

  I pulled back the faulty wainscoting and dragged Lizzie’s journal from its nook with eager fingers. I flicked rapidly through the pages. Some I had seen already; then, I had thought them dull, irrelevant to her case, but I sought them out now. I could not read quickly enough. My cousin had not discriminated. She wrote of everything she saw about her: the weather; the doings of her neighbours; Jem’s struggles with his business; what they ate for supper. And then I found:

  Essie Aikin is with child! That chit! She’s knapped, aye, and I know who’s it is, an all. I don’t know what to think. I suppose I didn’t expect anything else from him. Right glad I am I kept that bonnet. Might as well have summat. But such things he said! And all to nothing.

  Essie bloody Aikin. She were there in front of his nose, wasn’t she, and probably shoving it in his face till he couldn’t help himself. He’s only a man, after all. The little cat! What a witch she is!

  Jem told us about it this morning, before he went into Halfoak to measure up for harvest boots. There he was, going on and on about pay-day pockets and I hardly knew where to look, but I don’t think he suspected me of owt. Anyhow, then he said Mrs. Calthorn had noticed Essie’s belly swelling and that was it, she was turned off at once. How I laughed! It serves her right. Mrs. Calthorn says there won’t be any money for her neither, she should have thought of that, she shouldn’t have been such a trollop. Wonder what she’d say if she knew whose it was!

  And Jem said that’s bad, but what did Essie expect? A palace? Marriage? Don’t make me laugh. I reckon she might be getting some of their brass anyroad, but Jem said Edmund Calthorn spends over his means already and he won’t get more from his mother, though he’s got debts shouting louder than hers. He said he’s good for nowt. Well, I reckon he must be good for summat, else Essie’s belly wouldn’t be getting big, not like mine, but I thought better of saying it. Anyway, he’s right, in a way. She shouldn’t have expected nowt and nowt is what she’s going to get. I wanted to laugh again then, but I didn’t.

  Still, I’m glad it was only a bonnet and nowt else. Though I could cry when I think on it, in spite of all that.

  That had been written months ago; when she resumed it was all dullness once more; just life, going on as it always had. There were more little complaints about her husband—he kept busy in his workshop, never quite gaining enough business or earning enough for her liking, and that made me think of Ivy’s words. Had Lizzie truly been haughty? But my cousin had been dainty and delicate; of course she would have kept herself aloof from the likes of Ivy Gomersal. She was surrounded by roughness; little wonder if she craved a bit of finery to lighten her days. And if he could not provide for her comfort, he should not have married her.

  If he had not married her, she would still have been alive.

  I skipped those pages regarding only the minutiae of day to day, and then I found an entry I had read before, the one where his cousin’s lass had “started with the bairn”; the one where Lizzie told of her own impending motherhood. I did not read it again, but moved ahead just a little.

  They say that the baby won’t even suckle right. It did at first, they say, but now they’re all talking about it. It’s stopped feeding, as if it don’t want human food, that’s what they’re saying, like it isn’t the same baby no more. Sounds to me like Essie don’t know what she’s doing, but some of them’s saying worse than that, and her father’s got his earlugs wide open. I said to Jem, I bet he does, him not having two pennies to rub and another mouth to feed, but he got right mad then and I shut up. He’d not have owt to say against her father, not even by me, and that’s the truth. Cousins is cousins, he says, like as if they were even cousins at all, and I can laugh but he don’t have to listen, not if he don’t want to.

  I skipped over more of it, about some little matters concerning Jem’s business, about pecuniary woes that were not of any moment, and found:

  Mary Gomersal said it’s true. It’s all over Halfoak, though I bet no one’s telling the parson, not if they value their earholes. She went to visit—said they couldn’t pay for physick so she’d see what she could do. I said nothing to that, though I could have. See, I am learning to hold my tongue, even if Jem’d say summat else.

  Yedder told Jem about it in the inn and he told me. Mary Gomersal went and looked all over the bairn, looked for marks, and said she found one, right on its belly. Essie said she’d put the iron scissors under its blanket and the Bible under its crib, and Mary said that weren’t any good, she’d warned her before, and it were too late now.

  They didn’t like that, not at all, but she said it weren’t a matter of what they wanted and wished, not now, and they said she looked right hard at Essie at that, which made me laugh.

  Mrs. Gomersal picked it up and rocked it, and the bairn burst out roaring and its face went red. She held it near the fire and it went redder still and Mary shook her head over it. She talked to it and said in God’s name this and God’s name that, but it only cried some more, and she shook her head and said they all had to leave it in the house and go outside.

  So they did, and only Mary went up and peered in through the window. And she watched and watched some more, and then she called them over. And what did they see? Yon baby waggling its hands and sucking its toes, smiling, all calm and quiet and happy like, and she said that proved it, because it were only happy when it were nursed by its own, them as none of them could see. S
he said that’s what they do, when every one else goes out the fairies come in, and they take care of their own. She said if she looked side-on she could see the light of them darting all about, and that was proof of what it was.

  I didn’t say nowt to that. I don’t reckon Essie was right happy. She said it’d be all right, and if it wasn’t hers she’d take care of it just as if it was, and she cried. It was enough to soften her father anyroad, and Mary Gomersal just shook her head and said she’d get some medicine and sort it out, and she went away again, still saying Essie’s baby were already gone and only she knew how to get it back again.

  And still the man refused to confess! To hang must surely come as a relief—what a monster must he be, to remain here, where he had committed such dreadful deeds? Did he merely fear the torments to come? For surely he would find himself in Hell, and it would be his turn to burn, for ever and ever.

  I heard a step upon the stair. I listened to its progress, followed by the door opposite mine opening and closing. At first there was no other noise, but then came the soft sound of someone singing.

  Look, Lizzie, look, Lizzie,

  Down the glen tramp little men.

  One hauls a basket,

  One bears a plate,

  One lugs a golden dish

  Of many pounds’ weight.

  I secreted the journal beneath my pillow before slipping from the room. I did not knock before entering my wife’s.

  She lay upon the bed, staring up into the canopy, much as I had a few minutes before. Her face was pale. She suddenly reminded me of the painting of Ophelia, singing her last sweet song to the world and quite, quite mad.

  I said her name in a low voice; I felt that more would startle her. She had not acknowledged my presence in the slightest, had not even looked at me. I leaned over her to see that her eyes were glassy; she was focused on nothing; the pupils did not adjust. She only began to sing once more, in a slow and haunting voice: