Cruel delusion.
She spoke, breaking his trance. "No, Karl, let me finish. I think I know how we can leave here without anyone seeing us."
He looked doubtfully at her, then saw that he had misread the expression on her face. The look was not of fear, but determination. With a tentative smile she added, "You are not the only one who has secrets."
* * *
Chapter Twelve
Written in Bones
Charlotte stoked the fire, then sat down in the chair opposite, watching Karl in the firelight; his pale skin burnished by a watery red glow, his hair a mass of black and deepest auburn, eyes shadowed pools of amber and jet. The more they talked, the closer she felt to him; yet, paradoxically, the more enticing and mystical he seemed.
"When I was a child," she began, "my sisters and I used to come and play in this house. It had been left derelict for years and it was such a gloomy, haunted place, but we felt drawn here."
Karl smiled. "Ah, the delicious torment of frightening oneself."
"But that was all Fleur and Maddy wanted to do; they were insensitive to the real aura of the place, they had no regard for its age or its secrets… " Charlotte paused. She had never realised how passionately she held these feelings, after all the years of keeping them to herself—partly for fear of ridicule. But I can keep nothing from Karl… and I don't want to. "Once we came here when I was about nine or ten, and Fleur and Maddy were challenging each other to see who dared to go furthest into the cellar. I didn't like the way they were carrying on; they didn't even know what they were frightened of, except the dark and the spiders… but I felt there was a presence down there and I knew it was wrong to disturb it. Almost sacrilegious, like running and shouting in church. I was too timid to say so. They thought I was hanging back because I was scared, and they teased me until I got upset and told them how disrespectful I thought they were being. I probably sounded like a prig as well as a coward, so they decided to teach me a lesson. Fleur insisted we all three go down into the cellar together—and once we were down there, they fled and locked me in. Well, I was afraid, but—"
"Wait a moment," said Karl. "Why would your sisters play such a cruel trick on you?"
The unexpectedness of the question deflected her thoughts and she felt the wings of self-concealment closing round her, an uncomfortable sensation. She didn't want to talk about it, but his gaze was insistent. "It matters, Charlotte."
"Haven't you guessed, Karl? You're so perceptive. You've seen pictures of my mother, you know how my father is with us… "
"Your sisters have always resented him loving you the best," Karl said softly.
"But I didn't want to be favoured—not if it meant they hated me for it! How can I explain? It wasn't that I felt he loved me best, but that he was always expecting something of me that I couldn't give."
"And it made you feel responsible for your father's happiness?"
"Yes. I suppose it did."
"That is a dreadful burden to place on a child."
"Oh, but I don't blame him!" Charlotte said quickly. "He must have loved my mother so much. It wasn't my sisters' fault either. Father did tend to overlook them, so they took it out on me. They were lucky in other ways, both having such confidence in themselves, never any self-doubt. I was so timid, I never knew how to defend myself. My whole childhood seemed to be spent working out ways to win their love… letting them have their own way in everything."
"And you found that you cannot buy love in that way?"
She nodded ruefully. "Yes, I know that now. All I achieved was to make them take me for granted. It made things worse, really. Oh, don't misunderstand; I love them and they love me, in their way. But I have so longed to be like them, to be part of their world, and I never could. They'd think I'd gone mad if they knew."
"But this has caused you real pain." There was such concern in Karl's eyes. "Haven't you ever told them how you feel?"
"I couldn't. The roles we assumed as children are too ingrained; I couldn't change now if I wanted to, and they could never see me any differently."
"You are changing, Charlotte, and they are more afraid of it than you," he said. "But they must realise you cannot stay the same, just to make them feel safe. You should talk to them."
She swallowed. His words, the warm glow of his eyes, brought her close to tears. "I was telling you about the cellar."
"Yes. Go on."
"I was fearfully upset that they'd shut me in, and the atmosphere. A sort of heaviness, like layers and layers of age… like hundreds of voices murmuring, just out of earshot. So cold, so full of grief. I ran back up the steps and tried to open the door, imploring them to let me out, but they wouldn't answer. I wasn't going to humiliate myself by pleading with them; perhaps I had a subconscious desire to outwit them, I don't know, but I went back down the steps and across the cellar. It was pitch dark, of course, and I kept tripping over things. Finally I stepped over the edge of a hole and really bruised myself, although I didn't fall far. I'd landed on some steps. I sat there and cried for a short while, but when my bruises stopped hurting I went down the steps and found they led down to another cellar or a corridor. It was completely black, so I'd no idea where I was. There were twists and turns; I felt my way along a wall. I kept walking and walking."
"Don't ever again tell me you are not brave," said Karl.
"I was nervous, of course, but more than that I was… fascinated. The harm intended to me came from my sisters, not from the house. Something drew me through that tunnel. So hard to put these feelings into words, Karl, and it must sound so strange—but whatever haunts this house is sad, not evil. I almost wanted to touch it.
"I don't remember how far I walked but I've worked out since that it must have been just over a mile. The tunnel led from the manor house to an old ice house in the garden of Parkland Hall."
Karl looked intrigued. "Does anyone else know this tunnel is there?"
"No one has ever mentioned it. I don't know whether it was an escape route in the Reformation or the Civil War, or something much older. Meanwhile my sisters had opened the door and found that I'd vanished, and they were so alarmed they fetched my aunt. They got into terrible trouble for what they'd done, of course. When I reappeared I was scolded too, because I refused to tell anyone how I'd escaped. That's why I'm sure Aunt Elizabeth doesn't know about the passageway. I don't know why I was so stubborn about it; except that it was my secret, and keeping it was the only revenge I could take."
Karl was looking into the fire, thoughtful, his face half in shadow. "So you never told anyone. Can you find this tunnel again?"
"I hope so. If we could slip away so no one knows we've gone… "
"Now I understand why you ran down into the cellar when I had frightened you so badly. You were going to escape."
"Not consciously, but I suppose it was half in my mind."
"You are still free to go whenever you wish," he said.
Charlotte looked down. "Don't, Karl. I've made up my mind."
His voice was grave, sad. "And by giving you the choice I have made things even harder for you. If I'd kept you prisoner, the responsibility would have been mine alone. Instead you have had to make a decision that you feel to be wrong, and to bear the guilt for it."
A thin, hard trickle of coldness went through her. "That's true. But if I took no responsibility for this at all, I'd be deceiving myself."
"That's a very brave admission." She looked at him; she had never seen him look so serious. "We should go soon, while we have the cover of darkness and most of the night to escape," he said. Yet he did not move, only went on gazing at the flames.
"What are you thinking?"
He gave a slight shake of his head, met her eyes. "That I would rather brave your brother and the police than the cellar."
"Why?" she exclaimed. "Don't tell me you're afraid, I won't believe it!"
"Did I ever say that I don't feel fear?" he said with a touch of self-mockery. "The atmosphere you desc
ribed in the cellar—I sensed it too, both times I was there. You say you felt nothing evil in it, Charlotte—but I did."
His words froze her. Suddenly she was very aware of the ancient house that contained them, its silence and shadows. She said, "The first time I really spoke to you was in the cellar, do you remember?"
"Of course." His eyes were warm.
"We talked about ghosts, then you said we should go back upstairs because it was cold… "
"I was not being considerate. Something down there disturbed me. It still does. But I won't be stopped by what is probably only some remnant of human superstition."
"No, don't dismiss it." An old pain was surfacing inside her but she let it rise, let the words come. "I believe that events can imprint themselves on a place forever. My mother… my mother died giving birth to Madeleine. Sometimes at night I can still hear the echo of it—as if the screams have stopped but the air's still ringing with them."
Karl was silent for a moment; watching her, his eyes dark and intent. Then he said, "Yet you don't fear your mother's spirit."
"They are two different things! Her pain is not her self. The pain is not a ghost."
"Still a terrible thing of which to be aware."
"Yes. And yet even that doesn't really frighten me."
"You are extraordinary, Charlotte," he said quietly. "Just when I think I have understood you, there is another twist. To be sensitive to pain and death yet not to be frightened. What is it you feel?"
She felt defensive then, almost a touch of anger. "I know I'm strange, that I don't react as people think I ought to. To be in such pain and only to be released from it by death—it makes me feel a kind of awe. It stops me breathing. I want to touch it… "
"Not to turn away?"
"No. To understand." She sat pinned against the upright chair back, found herself shaking. "Perhaps it's all in my imagination; I was less than two years old when she died, and I don't know how much is memory and how much imagination. But I feel very close to my mother. I talk to her and she listens. She is everything I'm not."
"You don't think," said Karl, leaning forward, "that what you are communing with is simply an idealised version of yourself?" Charlotte jumped up, suddenly rigid with indignation. "How dare you say that? You don't know anything about it, you've no right to make such judgements."
He reached out and took her wrist, stroked his thumb over her pulse. "Forgive me, I went too far. But, my dear, it is not your fault that she died, that your father could not accept it. You should not feel guilty for not being her. In trying to please your father and your family you have lost sight of your self. When they attack you, you cannot defend yourself, because you see no self to defend. People love Madeleine because she believes she's worthy of it. But you are just as worthy, you have just as much right to consideration and respect—not only from others but from yourself. Do you believe what I am saying?"
She looked at him. He sounded so earnest, so purely human, that the knowledge of what he was—the incongruity of the two—slid through her like ice. Her friend, her lover; yet also a ruthless creature that fed on life… She knelt down, leaned across his knees, felt his hand stroking her hair. "I'm frightened to be myself, Karl."
"You cannot let the patterns of your childhood poison your whole life."
"It's not that. Father thinks I'm some kind of angel; my sisters and aunt think I'm just a mouse. But inside I'm neither of those. That's why I'm shy, why I hide from everyone. I am scared of what I really am. I am a bad person, Karl. The fact that I'm here with you, doesn't that prove it?"
***
Pierre lay in the hedgerow where Karl had abandoned him like a toppled mannikin, watching the half-globe of night slide towards morning. The loss of blood had turned his limbs stone-heavy and he was paralysed.
Not once did he lose consciousness; it would have been a blessing, he thought, if vampires had that human weakness. Instead he remained aware of every second dripping into the lake of time, every tiny shift of the stars across an interminable night.
You bastard, Karl. You won't get away with this. Throw me away as far and as hard as you like and still I will come creeping back…
Now the grass was sheened grey with twilight and he watched tiny beetles struggling and stumbling along the blades; frantically busy, yet desperately slow. A bird began to sing in the hedgerow; he was aware of its bright eyes through the stiff mesh of twigs. Oh, shut up, he thought. You are no use to me.
Pierre began to hallucinate. Revolutionaries were rushing towards him, arms raised, ragged clothes flying. Bandaged necks, they all had bandaged necks. They were dragging him towards the guillotine and he was fighting them, shouting, "I am no aristocrat, you fools, I am one of you… " But they saw through his words; they knew what he was and that the only way to destroy him was to decapitate him.
He shuddered from head to foot with horror and the figures faded… all except two which kept coming towards him, their necks all wrapped up, and they must be real because he could feel their heat…
Fool, he told himself. These are human beings, not figments of my imagination!
Their heat flowed out before them like a bow-wave as they came along the lane, reaching him long before they did. Relief swelled through him, and with it the lashing, ravenous snake of thirst. Yet he still could not move.
Two boys of about twelve, muffled up in caps and scarves, on their way to school. With all his strength he forced a groan from his lips and they saw him and came to him.
"Is it a scarecrow?" said one.
"Nah. It's a tramp. P'robly drunk."
Scarecrow? Tramp? Don't they realise how much this overcoat cost? They leaned over him; clouds of breath, sweet with milk. Bright hard eyes, like the bird. Yes, that's it, come closer…
Pierre pushed the words through his fossilised lips. "Help me… "
"Sounds foreign," said the second boy. As he reached down, starvation cracked through Pierre like a whip and his arm shot out as if controlled by a primitive brain of its own. Suddenly he was half-sitting up, pulling both children towards him. Tearing a scarf away with his teeth and then, oh then, life flowing hot into his collapsed veins.
While he fed on one boy he held the other to his chest, his grip tightening as his strength returned. It had happened too fast for them even to struggle, though one was letting out faint, high-pitched moans of protest.
As he fed on the second child he found himself sobbing with gratitude, murmuring, "Merci, merci… " But as his head cleared he pushed them away, appalled at himself for being thankful. He propped them against each other on the grass verge and thought how sweet they looked, a pair of grubby sleeping cherubs.
"Gratitude is so undignified," he said, regarding them with affection. "But thank you anyway, children."
Pierre thought they were not quite dead; perhaps they would survive, if someone found them soon. He wasn't really interested. Turning away, he tried to enter the Crystal Ring.
It was like pushing against a closed door. Nothing there. His usual shimmering awareness of a dimension layered beneath the visible world had gone. It was like losing a sense, being human again, a mole pushing blindly through a tunnel…
It will come back. It always does. But still there was that undercurrent of panic. What if this time it doesn't?
Nothing for it but to walk. I should have asked them where the hell I am before I breakfasted. He sighed to himself, but as he strode out along the lane his spirits began to improve. It was a cursed nuisance to have to travel like a human, but perhaps he could catch a train. To move among them, to pretend to be one of them, was always pleasant. And by tonight, my dear Karl, I shall return to Parkland.
***
"Dress as warmly as you can," said Karl, "and bring some food. I think the workmen will have left a flashlight or at least an oil lamp in the kitchen."
Now the moment had come, Charlotte did not want to leave. Talking to Karl, she had felt more and more at ease with him, bathing in his radia
nce as she had that night in the study, when she had only wanted to sit with him and listen to the rain… but time, as always, stabbed cold fingers of reality into their refuge.
She glanced out at the black sky streaked with smoky violet. David was waiting out there in the cold, worried sick, his heart aching for Edward and for her. Dear God, what am I doing?
She wrapped herself in the warm brown coat that Elizabeth had sent, trying fiercely to suppress her guilt; trying not to think of anything at all—except finding the way out.
Pulling on a hat and gloves, she followed Karl on to the landing and down the stairs. Lit only by the faint fireglow from the solar, the hall was as dark and fathomless as a cathedral. No longer did this house feel benign to Charlotte; the air was fogged with malevolence, as if the dreaming ghosts imprinted in its walls were beginning to stir into consciousness.
She kept her eyes fixed on Karl's back as they descended. He looked prepossessing and in complete control; but the ring of their heels on the treads recalled other echoes. David shouting a warning; Edward rushing up the stairs, blindly heroic. The narrow gleaming fire of Karl's eyes as, silent and ruthless, he tore into Edward's neck then sent him sprawling down the stairs…
The house had absorbed these events and now screamed them back at Charlotte's heightened senses.
Strange and terrifying, that her perception of Karl could change so suddenly. He had seemed gentle and protective in the glow of the fire; but this darkness, cold and pain-laden, seemed to strip away his humanity and reclaim him as its own.
A Taste of Blood Wine Page 28
