The Room Beyond

by Stephanie Elmas

  There were bright red circles in her cheeks and her eyes were sparkling with excitement.

  ‘OK, let’s get dressed.’

  Seven of us eventually congregated in the grand hallway for the beginning of the hunt. I was surprised to see Eva there, joining in, dressed in a thick fur coat. She seemed to be avoiding my gaze. Raphael was there too.

  ‘We have to look for the first sign,’ announced Estella, sombrely, and Beth squeezed my hand until it felt as if most of the bones had been snapped in half.

  ‘Look, old Harold’s got it!’ Robert exclaimed, dashing over to a suit of armour in the corner. A rolled up piece of paper had been tucked into the mouthpiece and was only made discernible by the dangling end of the red ribbon that tied it.

  ‘Uh, I thought that was blood dripping from his mouth!’ cried Beth.

  Olly unleashed the clue and read from it with great pomp and gravity:

  Seek that which takes us up and over

  Close to the place with the four-leaved clover.

  Everyone paused in deep concentration.

  ‘Estella once found a four-leaved clover in the bottom field,’ murmured Raphael.

  ‘Yes you’re right,’ cried Estella. ‘I was just thinking that. It was years ago and Daddy helped me press it under lots of books in the library.’

  ‘The bottom field it is then!’

  The bottom field turned out to be a muddy bog. I squelched across it ahead of everyone to try and keep up with Beth who squealed triumphantly through the air,

  ‘Look... up and over... the clue’s on the stile over there!’

  ‘Well done!’ I shouted, beaming at her success.

  She looked ready to explode with pride and clutched onto Olly as he read the next clue:

  See the smoke above the great pane,

  Find the place from whence it came.

  ‘Oh that’s easy,’ said Eva, casually lighting a cigarette and hugging her coat around her. ‘The great pane must be the stained glass window on the side of the east wing.’

  We trudged back through the mud and found it soon enough: a massive stained-glass window set in the far side of the house depicting saints and angels and writing in Latin. Nestling on the roof above it was a cluster of six chimneys, only one of which was emitting a curling wisp of smoke.

  ‘Now all we need to find out is which room that chimney belongs to.’

  ‘It has to be the Rose Room,’ concluded Estella.

  But when we arrived, sweating and breathless in the shabby old parlour of that name, we found nothing but an untouched hearth that hadn’t been used for a decade. Seconds later the scroll was found tucked away under the stone mantelpiece of Rupert’s haphazard office next door.

  Find me safe in the turtle dove’s wings

  Close to the place where tonight the parish sings.

  ‘Is there a midnight mass tonight in the local church?’ I asked gingerly.

  Raphael smiled. ‘Well done, it’s just on the edge of the estate. Let’s go!’

  I could feel my face colour up with the glory of my small success and my heart fluttered in spite of myself. As we marched back across the estate, breathing steam clouds into the air, I thought back to all those Christmases with Jessica: the endless telly, the dry roasted turkey breast and the inevitable game of draughts to break things up a bit. I swallowed hard with shame at thinking about Jess like that, but it felt so glorious to be part of a real family for once.

  The old Norman church rose up like a pile of building blocks by a side entrance to the estate. To get to it we had to walk out through stone gates and around a small and picturesque lodge cottage that guarded them to the right. Now all we needed to do was find a turtle dove.

  ‘Shall we go inside the church, maybe there’s a statue or something?’ suggested Estella.

  ‘No, they’re not in the church. They’re close to it.’

  ‘I’ve got it!’ shrieked Beth suddenly. ‘It’s the wooden carving in Miranda White’s house!’

  ‘What wooden carving?’

  ‘The one that sits on the kitchen dresser.’

  ‘Let’s go and have a look then, I know where the key’s hidden,’ said Olly.

  I felt myself pause, my eyes locked on them in dumb amazement. The group ran back to the lodge cottage by the gate.

  Miranda White

  I knew that name already of course. She was the woman in the old photograph that Seb carried about with him. He’d described her to me as a ... rather special person in my family. Yes, that was it. They even shared the same surname. But now, it seemed, she was connected to the Hartreves as well...

  By the time I entered the old and deserted building, they’d already found the next clue, nestling in some wooden wings in a lumpy Victorian carving of two turtle doves.

  ‘Why do you call this place Miranda White’s house?’ I asked, not even sure if anyone was listening.

  ‘Because a woman of that name once lived here, a long time ago. No one has ever lived here since.’

  It was Eva who spoke, with a soft and almost loving voice. I gazed back at her.

  ‘But Seb once told me about her...’

  ‘Oh just be quiet,’ she hissed through gritted teeth, her face turning to stone.

  ‘Why? What are you hiding?’

  ‘Just go away,’ she gasped.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Please God! I keep trying to tell you and you don’t listen. It’s only going to get worse if you stay.’

  I stared back at her face so hard that it started to turn into zigzags. And then my feet began to retreat, clumsily, almost tripping over myself, and as soon as I got out of that place I began to run, fast across the fields, swallowing back my every instinct to scream out into the wintry air until I was far enough away not to be heard.

  ‘Serena!’

  The pounding of sprinting feet was suddenly catching up with me, hunting me down. I pushed my legs harder until they burned but my pursuer was too fast. A hand pulled me by the shoulder, spun me round. It was Raphael.

  ‘Leave me alone!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I have to get away from, all of you! I don’t belong. I shouldn’t be here. Eva keeps telling me to go, but she won’t say why.’

  He peered back at me, his face pale and riveting in the cold air, drinking my words in as they came tumbling out of me, half crying half shouting. ‘And now Miranda White! Who the hell was she, really? I’ve seen her picture. Seb doesn’t tell me anything about himself you know. It’s all bloody secrets!’

  ‘OK, calm down,’ he said. All that running had made his dark eyes fill with water. He still held me by the shoulders, the warmth of his hands bearing down on me. ‘You want to know about secrets. Fine, I’ll tell you. But you have to tell me something first.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tell me about you. Why are you different?’ His hands edged down my arms, squeezing them tenderly but firmly. His eyes devoured my face.

  ‘I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You can see things Serena, things that you shouldn’t,’ he said, urging me closer towards him. ‘I keep trying to work out why. It’s all I ever seem to think about... Tell me, has something awful ever happened to you? Have you ever been in great danger? Injured perhaps...’

  ‘No, stop talking!’ I squealed, shrugging him off. ‘And get your hands off me!’

  I pushed him away and marched on through the mud, but he came back again.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ he shouted, anger suddenly splintering through his voice. A thrill of ecstasy tore up my spine at the sound of it and I hated myself for it immediately. ‘I want you, you know,’ he yelled. ‘And I have a habit of getting what I want.’

  He grabbed at me again and drew the back of my head towards him, pressing his mouth against mine. Every instinct urged me to push him away again, to lash out, belt him hard across the face. And yet for one brief moment, as if I barely belonged to myself, I fell right back into him, li
ke a tumbling pack of cards into his warm inviting mouth.

  But, as I kissed him back and drew my fingers through his dark hair, the gentlest touch rippled across my skin. My eyelids fluttered closed and I felt the soft caress of arms, Seb’s arms, entwining themselves around my body.

  I pulled back, gulping hard, guilt and fear washing over me like freezing rain.

  ‘No! NO!’

  I kicked him in the shins until he yelped out and then I ran, unstoppable now, faster than I’d ever moved in my life with the wind wailing around my ears.

  They call it adrenalin: the thing that fires human beings up, but it’s much more than that. I saw it more as a kind of burning magic that pulls you up and out of disaster and sweeps you along with invisible strings. It had saved me once before, on the worst day of life, and here it was again, giving me a free ride back to the house, to my locked bedroom and the safety of my bed.

  1893

  The room was pitch black and yet she could still see the outline of the moving figure. It came closer towards her bed: round shouldered, looming.

  ‘Lucinda are you awake?’

  ‘Yes, I was never asleep.’

  The scratch and flutter of a flame sparked up and Alfonso’s face bobbed up and down in the air, surrounded by a halo of light.

  ‘We have to leave my cherub. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘No, not again!’

  ‘I know, but we really have to go. There are two men this time. I’ve seen them drinking downstairs three times now. Franz says they converse in English when they think that no one else is listening. We can’t be too careful.’

  A sob lodged itself in her throat. It was becoming so difficult to breathe.

  ‘Where are you taking me now?’

  ‘A train leaves in an hour for Leipzig.’

  ‘Soon we’ll run out of land to flee across. This child will be born in the middle of the ocean.’

  ‘Nothing of the sort darling, nothing of the sort. I’ll summon Claudette to pack your things and Franz will help to get us on the train.’

  Outside a fresh blanket of snow had made the world white again. Plumes of steam exploded from their mouths and the horses danced about on the spot, kicking down through the snow to the hard cobbles in protest. There was no method of lying or sitting with any degree of comfort anymore so she pressed one side of her ribs flat against the carriage wall and squeezed her eyes shut.

  ‘When I open them again I’ll see the train. And the train will have a bed. And I won’t have to move from it for a long time,’ she told herself.

  But at the station the railway line was empty, speckled all over with stones made white and furry by the snow.

  ‘It must have been delayed,’ she heard Franz mutter to Alfonso. His mouth was half concealed by a thick muffler, but his round red cheeks still stuck out over the top. If she squinted a little she could squash his face to look like someone else. Yes, that was it, all round and rugged – Daddy. And if she raised her top eyelids up a bit she could lengthen the face out, make it slimmer. Tristan.

  ‘Monsieur Eden, Madame is fainting again I think!’

  ‘Wait, I’m coming.’

  Darkness.

  Am-ber Am-ber Am-ber Am-ber

  ‘Madame, you are awake now?’

  Claudette’s round face appeared over hers, her eyes as small and dark as two raisins plopped on top of a nice pie.

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘On the train, you can hear it? It came two hours late but we have a cabin now.’

  Am-ber Am-ber Am-ber

  ‘Where is Alfonso?’

  ‘He found a bed, in another part of the train. You want me to find him?’

  ‘No, let him sleep.’

  Through the carriage window the white world glared back at her. It was snowing again; the small flakes attacked the glass, slamming their heads against it in a bid to get in. Nothing but white. If only they could have gone south.

  ‘Aaah!’ A blade of pain shot up through her pelvis.

  ‘Are you alright Madame?’

  ‘Yes... I think so. Just the baby, moving I think.’

  ‘Lie back, change your position.’

  She fell back against some cushions but a burning sensation now came up from her chest into her throat.

  ‘No, it’s no good, I need to sit.’

  ‘And you need to eat Madame! You are still so thin.’

  ‘No no, I have no appetite, you know that. Just hold me up and I’ll rest. That’s it, thank you.’

  Sleep came in flurries now, just like the snow, with cold biting memories that made it easier not to sleep at all. Ah. That pain again, like a sudden dagger pushing up through her. And the tiredness was hurting too, sitting on her eyelids, urging them down into sleep...

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I work for your father. My name is Walter Balanchine.’

  ‘Haven’t I seen you on stage? You were staring into people’s eyes, hypnotizing them. You made a caged gorilla disappear.’

  ‘Yes, that’s one skill I have, among others. I rarely perform to the public nowadays.’

  He was like a scarecrow with a little shrivelled head. The sight of him had made her feel mildly nauseous.

  ‘Did my father send you?’

  ‘Yes he did. He wanted me to give you this. It’s rather a lot of money as you can see.’

  ‘And I’m to have it in exchange for what?’

  ‘The removal of your husband.’

  His face hadn’t moved an inch.

  ‘What are you suggesting? Has my husband something to be scared of? Is murder one of your many skills?’

  ‘No. No one would get hurt. But I could certainly make your marriage disappear. Documents, records. I could even make the world believe that you were never married in the first place.’

  His eyes had stroked her. Beckoning. Urging. There was beauty in there, in all that ugliness. It came from his eyes. It had almost made her want to...

  ‘Get out of my house!’

  ‘I will come back. Your father has asked me to be persistent.’

  ‘Come back as many times as you like, but I’ll have nothing to do with you. And tell Lord Hartreve that he won’t succeed in buying his daughter for all the money in the world.’

  ‘Ha!’

  ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘Yes, fine. Just a bad dream. Where’s Claudette?’

  ‘Sleeping.’

  Am-ber Am-ber Am-ber

  Alfonso was holding her hand. He had lost weight; his neck now hung down over his collar in folds of empty skin and his face had a mottled, withering pallor, with rings as dark as charcoal under his eyes. She’d wished him dead once, but never would she have imagined that it would happen like this.

  ‘You have the document still?’

  He patted his jacket where the inside pocket was. ‘Of course, although I’m sure it won’t be necessary.’

  ‘Tristan’s spies. Have we fooled them?’

  ‘Well they’re certainly not on this train. I’ve been up and down checking. We’ll be safe in Leipzig.’

  ‘We were safe in Paris. We were safe in every other place along the way. Oh!’

  ‘Are you alright dear?’

  ‘Yes, it’s nothing. I just feel so weak, that’s all.’

  ‘If only you’d eat.’

  ‘I don’t have the stomach for it. You know how sick it makes me.’

  ‘Then rest now. Just rest.’

  Ambeeer Ambeeer Ambeer

  The train was grinding to a halt and there was sunlight on her face now. Perhaps they’d travelled somewhere warm instead by mistake. She forced herself up on one elbow, her stomach so heavy now, like a great boulder strapped against her.

  ‘Oh, more snow! More damned snow!’

  The train finally stopped; there were busy voices outside. She tried to heave herself up further, but her arms felt ready to snap. And what was that on her legs? They felt sticky. Gosh, they were soaking.

  ‘Claudette!’
>
  The door swung open but Alfonso’s head thrust itself around the door instead.

  ‘We’ve arrived. I’ve called for a carriage and I’ll carry you out now.’

  ‘Yes, but put as many blankets around me as you can. I’m awfully cold.’

  The stickiness was making her legs itch.

  ‘I need a bath,’ she sobbed.

  ‘We’ll go straight to an inn.’

  ‘Aaaah!’

  It hurt to be picked up now and there was that dagger again, digging even deeper than before and this time twisting a little, just making the pain last that bit longer.

  The inn was the worst they’d been in yet. The walls of her room were covered in brownish lined paper that made her eyes itch and the air was filled with the smell of stewing meat from the kitchen below. She retched into her handkerchief but the effort of it hurt her body even more.

  ‘Claudette, you must change my clothes,’ she gasped. ‘My legs are all wet.’

  The maid carefully unbuttoned her dress. It hurt to be touched but the young woman was an expert now at sliding off her garments with the least possible fuss.

  ‘Your petticoat. It is soaking Madame.’

  ‘Yes I know. Please let’s not talk about it.’

  ‘But I think it is important. The baby, are you in pain?’

  ‘I am always in pain. Just let me sleep.’

  The woman on the balcony was getting wetter and wetter. And her face... all that agony locked in one expression.

  ‘Can I help you? Why are you so wet? Have you fallen into the lake?’

  ‘Do you know nothing of how to behave in decent society?’ she asked through the glass door, with eyes so sad.

  ‘I fell into a lake once, I nearly died.’

  ‘You stole my husband.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s alright, because I’m going to give something back to you. I’ve planned it all. I’m going to make you happy.’

  Her eyes opened. ‘Aaaaaaaaah!’

  ‘The baby is coming Monsieur. You must go and find a doctor.’

  Claudette’s back was turned away from her, but she could see fear in the woman’s bent posture, in the way she wiped her hands repeatedly against her skirts.