The Woman In the Mirror

by Rebecca James

  Rachel spoke to an assistant, who showed her how the county archives worked and how to access family papers. She settled into a booth and opened the system. First, she searched for ‘Winterbourne Hall, Cornwall’. Up came reams of intelligence about the house, newspaper items from the turn of the last century, surveys marked with the park boundary, photographs detailing the south face and chapel, the stables and the crenellations that soared against the skyline – and it was strange to see Winterbourne like this, available to anyone, and in that availability the house became less exotic and interesting, more ordinary, more like any privately owned mansion. The photos didn’t convey any of the house’s sheer extraordinariness. Rachel supposed that unless you could hear the gulls and smell the sea you were nowhere near.

  She tried ‘Winterbourne Hall’ and ‘de Grey family’, which brought up information on her ancestors’ genealogy, eventually arriving at Jonathan, his wife and twins, but only touching the surface of what she already knew. Rachel needed to go further back, right to Winterbourne’s beginning, the forging of its bricks and mortar, and find out how the house had come into this world and by whom.

  Finally, she met her answer. She leaned in, absorbed.

  She read that a man named Ivan Randolph de Grey had built Winterbourne in 1810, favouring, quite evidently, the Gothic Revival style. It seemed that Ivan had spent time in France admiring the gargoyles and buttresses of its grander cathedrals, and, wishing to stake his ownership over that part of Cornwall (he was reportedly the richest man in the region thanks to his plumbing business, something about lead pipes and drainage systems that she skimmed over), he chose ‘the most extreme outcrop’ Cornwall had to offer: the renowned Landogger Bluff at Polcreath.

  ‘De Grey had his mind set from the moment he saw it,’ claimed the biographer, ‘desiring, as he put it, “a dramatic sort of place, where in winter thunder strikes with the fist of God and in summer the sun shines brighter than anywhere in England.”’ She learned that the project took four years and three months to complete and had resided in the de Grey family ever since. ‘It became an obsession for Ivan de Grey,’ the item alleged, ‘and remained the apple of his eye until his death in 1851.’

  So a megalomaniac had built the house: Rachel could well imagine that. But there was more. Some piece was missing, if only she dared look.

  Checking about her, nervous in case anyone should see but needing to rule it out, needing to read the words ‘no results found’, Rachel typed in ‘Winterbourne curse’. Did you mean ‘Winterbourne witch’? the system shot back. She paused over the keyboard for a moment then thought, yes; perhaps I did, and clicked on the link.

  And there it was. She knew immediately that she had stumbled across classified information. This wasn’t contained in the annals of Winterbourne’s acceptable, above-board history. This was something else. Legend of the Polcreath Witch Hunt, she read, December 1806. Winterbourne Hall site of Unlawful Witch Trial! Body of Mary Catherine Sinnett found drowned at Polcreath Point.

  Mary Catherine Sinnett.

  Rachel sat back, bewildered. She joined the dots immediately.

  M. C. Sinnett.

  The signature on the little painting of the cottage… The initials on the back of that horrible mirror, hiding all that time underground… The name struck her with clarity and conviction, sending a liquid shiver from her neck to the base of her spine.

  It’s how she got me, Constance had written. Winterbourne is hers.

  Rachel scanned dozens of pieces, as she slowly and disbelievingly assembled the story. It went that Ivan de Grey had coveted the site where Winterbourne now stood – that remote, craggy outpost – so deeply that he couldn’t get the land out of his mind, even when he learned that it was already occupied, namely by a spinster called Mary Catherine Sinnett. Mary Catherine had lived alone in her cottage for years, minding her own business away from the rest of the community, with a small livestock to sustain her modest needs. Rachel could picture it perfectly. After all, she had seen it herself. All she had to do was think of the little picture in her bedroom, the house surrounded by dark firs, the brown cow chewing and the upturned milk pails.

  Local witch took own life to escape punishment! Mob takes law into own hands! Mary Catherine Sinnett GUILTY of witchcraft!

  Rachel closed her eyes to better picture the woman. Mary Sinnett would have been plain, perhaps even ugly. Lank hair: a solemn expression. She might have been stained in some way, a birthmark on her cheek, or else an innocent skin complaint that might today be understood as eczema. Rachel imagined Ivan de Grey approaching poor Ms Sinnett’s cottage, conceding to knock on her door, this strange, lonely woman who possessed what he craved – and he wasn’t a man used to hearing no. After Ms Sinnett’s death, the article continued, it was alleged that Ivan and Mary Catherine had enjoyed a brief affair, although this was commonly believed to be a subterfuge on de Grey’s part, enticing Ms Sinnett to invest in their union as a way of extracting her land. When he was refused his reward, de Grey severed contact with Ms Sinnett and led a campaign against her that resulted in her death.

  Rachel was aware of the library going on around her, but it was as if she had entered another world. She pictured Mary Catherine and felt solidarity with her, this unfortunate woman who had stuck to her principles and been pursued to her end.

  Of course they had all believed she was a witch. Even without the great Ivan de Grey’s assurance, the evidence was clear. Mary was unmarried, she had no children; allegedly she concocted remedies using the herbs she grew in her garden. Once, Rachel read, a local man had crossed her path, only to develop a poison cough weeks later. The village’s crops failed two summers in a row. It didn’t matter that laws against witchcraft had been repealed decades before: communities like this continued long after to enact vengeance against suspected felons.

  And all along Mary Catherine had believed that Ivan had loved her.

  Occasionally I would hear her, Constance had said in her diaries. I would hear her singing, quiet and sad, of a man she’d loved and a broken heart…

  Rachel sat back in her booth. Part of her recoiled at the absurdity of what she was prepared to accept. It was one thing for this woman to have existed, to have endured a broken heart and a terrible persecution and to have died in the Landogger waters – but to still be residing at Winterbourne? To have haunted the family all this time, as, what, revenge for the duplicity she suffered? Another part couldn’t dismiss it. The theory was extreme, and yet it was the first thing that made any sense at all.

  It has always been here, this thing, at Winterbourne…

  Tempting the women into horrible games then destroying them one by one…

  Rachel had studied the injustices of witch hunts at school – in America, Salem and Hartford, but the principles were the same. It became an obsession… De Grey would have stopped at nothing to secure his land for Winterbourne, and thus the very foundations of the place, where Mary Catherine’s home had once stood, were damned from the outset. Mary had quite reasonably defended her position. She had lived there a long time and so had her family. She loved her home and wished to remain in it.

  Ivan de Grey was forced to conjure a plan. If this troublesome woman would not award him his prize, he would be sure to take it from her by some other means. Peering in one day at her spinster’s house, the plate for one and the cup for one, the pathetic little stall where she’d done her rudimentary paintings, it was easy to settle. Ivan had smiled, and so their romance, too readily trusted by Mary, who was naïve in matters of the heart, began. When Ivan’s cruel ploy failed to work, it wouldn’t have taken much to make her pay up. Dig a little and it wasn’t hard to find evidence, twist it this way and that: the ailing man, the failed crops, the birthmarks – women had burned for less. Whip round the villagers and secure their devotion – not a hard task for a man of his influence and standing – and settle on a date for her execution.

  ‘On the night of 12 December 1806, Mary Catherine Sinnett wa
s chased from Landogger Bluff and pursued down to the beach. Seeing no way to escape her fate, Sinnett herself entered the sea. Shortly after the New Year, her body was found washed up on Polcreath Beach, a little way down from where Winterbourne Hall now stands.’

  Rachel read the piece twice. All she felt was sadness. Sadness for a woman she had never met and who meant nothing to her, yet with whom she felt a strange attachment. She felt it for all those women who had been hounded to their ends in less enlightened times. Borne of men’s ignorance, men’s misunderstanding and fear of what they could not control. Rachel could see Mary Catherine clearly in her mind, rushing into the hostile sea, knowing her death was inescapable but that she had to claim it on her own terms: she could not be killed at the hands of another. The whole village united against her, united in their confusion and hopes for a better life, for surely this witch was responsible for every unhappy thing they had endured.

  The truth was here. The curse the de Greys had feared, whether it was true or not, here was why they feared it. But something was missing.

  Then she saw it.

  ‘Ivan Randolph de Grey moved quickly in building Winterbourne Hall, but during its construction he faced criticism over his handling of Mary Sinnett’s belongings. Glad at the freeing of the land, and failing to locate her kin, de Grey had dispensed with the contents of Sinnett’s home at a church auction, selling mainly to passing travellers with no knowledge of local legend. Instead of donating the gains to the community, de Grey channelled them into his project, maintaining that Sinnett’s assets, including the land she had lived on, belonged to him. De Grey preserved one item from the cache for his private possession: a gothic, elaborately framed mirror…’

  The mirror in the cellar, hiding in the dark…

  The mirror in the hall, throwing back a reflection she barely knew…

  Rachel swallowed, fear slipping under her skin. The mirror had never been bestowed on Laura de Grey. It had never been given freely. It had belonged since the start to Mary Catherine Sinnett, the woman murdered by Laura’s family, her memory sold with no more dignity or respect than a lamb to market. The mirror was it. It had been the mirror all along.

  Rachel closed the archives and grabbed her bag.

  Chapter 37

  Cornwall, 1947

  ‘Alice…’

  My name. Someone is calling my name.

  It is very faint, as if it is coming from a great distance. Then, louder:

  ‘Damn it, woman, what are you waiting for? Open the door!’

  Someone else is with him, then. A key rattles in the lock; and at last, at last, there he is… Jonathan, my Jonathan, and I must be dead, I must be dreaming, I must have crept into the forest and found my love inside because it cannot be real, he cannot be with me, divinely perfect in every way! He tears the rope away. I cough and splutter, my neck red with pain and the air as tight as thread through a needle eye.

  I look up at him. In one instant he is Captain Jonathan de Grey and in the next the man I used to love, my teacher, my friend; then he is decent, honourable Henry Marsh, then he is my tyrant father… I want to tell him to put the rope back with the others, in the forest where it came from. Put it back where Laura put hers.

  ‘What were you thinking?’ he begs of me. ‘You meant to do it to me again?’

  ‘I don’t deserve to live,’ I say. ‘I killed her. I watched her die. I could have helped her but I didn’t. I watched her die and they never suspected a thing.’

  ‘Mrs Rackstile,’ he throws over his shoulder, ‘she’s delirious. Fetch the pills.’

  His arms feel good. I could stay in them until the end of days. Perhaps he and I are already in the afterlife, and this is how it is. Heaven.

  ‘Whom are you talking about, Alice?’ he says. ‘Who died?’

  ‘The girl in the water,’ I say. ‘She never left. She found me. I’ve seen her, on the cliffs, by the sea. The children have seen her too. She came back. She found me.’

  His expression is one of such heartfelt concern that I kiss him. Softly he parts from me. ‘No, Alice,’ he says. ‘You had nothing to do with that.’

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ I say, ‘before you knew me. And you are glad to have known me, aren’t you, Jonathan?’

  He strokes my brow. ‘Shh,’ he says, ‘quiet now. It will be all right. I won’t let what happened to Laura happen to you. You are not safe here; I understand that now. I’m going to make sure you’re looked after, Alice. I promise.’

  His face shines gold like an angel’s. His eyes are the bluest I can think of. He is young and perfect, before the war, before Laura, when we were both young and unmarked and we had yet to make our mistakes.

  ‘I’m going to take you now,’ he says. ‘Where would you like to go?’

  I smile. ‘Paris.’ I have always longed to go to Paris. Robert promised me once that we would go, walk the streets together, be free, be happy.

  ‘Then we’ll go to Paris.’ Jonathan lifts me from the floor. After that it is like flying, or like riding Storm; we fly from my prison, away from the forest, away from the picture of the girl kneeling in the soil, away from the curtains and the stopped clock, passages rushing past at speed and then down the stairs and out into the night.

  Fresh air strikes me. I stare up at black, endless space, and the air is deliciously chill in my lungs, making them burn.

  Winterbourne watches me from the shadows.

  Jonathan puts me carefully in the back of the car. He touches my face, kisses me deeply, and his kiss tastes of salt and the sea.

  I close my eyes. And dream of Paris.

  Chapter 38

  Cornwall, present day

  Rachel returned to Winterbourne in the early evening. She was surprised to see Aaron’s Porsche parked on the drive, and when she opened the door he was waiting for her by the fire, his head in his hands. When he heard her, he turned.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked. It struck her that his appearance was changed: he looked worried, his face drawn. ‘What’s happened?’

  As Aaron explained that he hadn’t been able to leave, in the end, not without her, she was only half listening. She had greater matters on her mind. Everywhere she turned, Winterbourne was tainted, every wall, every hanging, every chair and table, all of it steeped in wretched history, somehow bigger than the death of Mary Catherine Sinnett, somehow more sinister and widespread than just that. She had felt the bad thing. She’d felt it when she found the bats. She’d felt it down in the cellar.

  ‘Fine,’ she said, ‘we leave tomorrow. But I need your help first.’

  Rachel went straight to it now – the monstrosity in the hall.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Aaron followed.

  They stopped in front of the mirror.

  ‘What are you doing—?’ he asked, as she tried to lift the frame on her own. The glass was turned away, mercifully, for she could not bear to meet herself in it.

  ‘I’m getting rid of it,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just trust me. Help me carry it, would you?’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  She considered the ways in which she could destroy the damned mirror – because she knew, intrinsically, that it had to be destroyed. It could not survive at Winterbourne. It could not be taken by anyone else; it could not be hung or admired or even hidden underground because it was dangerous, it was insidious; it would always find a way out. It had belonged to someone else, once, and no matter Rachel’s beliefs in things unseen, she could not abide the thought of it in the world any longer.

  It had to be returned. She might burn it. She might throw it from the cliffs.

  Returned.

  She looked out of the window. The sky was losing light. But they had enough time, maybe, to do it. ‘We’re going out to sea,’ she said.

  *

  Among the junk in the stables was an upturned rowing boat, splintered and debatably seaworthy – but it was their only option. It took an
hour to get both things down to the beach. ‘Careful,’ Rachel urged in the growing dark, as their muscles strained beneath the weight of the mirror, ‘don’t drop it.’ Aaron asked why she cared if she wanted it demolished anyway. ‘We can’t break it,’ she said. ‘We mustn’t.’

  The water was scattered purple, the sky pinpricked with the gloaming’s first stars. At first Aaron had argued about waiting until dawn: it was safer, surely, than this misguided outing by torchlight. But Rachel would not be deterred.

  ‘Nothing happens until it’s done,’ she said. ‘We don’t sleep, we don’t eat; we don’t leave Winterbourne. Nothing happens until it’s gone.’

  It was uncertain as to whether the boat could support the weight of the mirror. They heaved it in first, water splashing round Rachel’s ankles, chased by the occasional shiver of seaweed. She squinted at the pale beach and hulking rock, and was amazed at how much she could pick out in the swollen night, details heightened through her determination to see them, not to be blind, and as she glanced up the way they’d come she thought of Mary Catherine being pursued down the cliffs. Had she come this way? Had she turned to the sea and thought, This is the end?

  Rachel climbed in. Aaron followed with the torch.

  ‘We don’t need to go far,’ said Rachel, thinking about how far Mary Catherine had got before she surrendered to the waves. The water was calm, ripples lapping the prow as Aaron churned ahead. Below was ink. White glimmered where the moonlight caught the surface, and the glass in the mirror shone like a desolate lake, throwing the stars back to where they’d started. ‘Almost there,’ said Rachel, shivering but warmed by her will, as the pastel line of the shore inched further from sight.

  She grabbed the oars and took over. They’d be two hundred metres out now, at least. Mary Catherine’s mirror would sink and never be seen again. It would never wash up and never be found. She thought of the quiet of the deep, quiet and still, miles and miles of it beneath her, more mysterious than space. And in between those two things, the above and below, their little boat danced insignificantly and alone.