Once Upon A Haunted Castle: A Celtic Romance Anthology

by Eliza Knight

  He said it so sweetly, so longingly. Havilland began to feel some pity for him and she looked up at Jamison to see how he was reacting, but his expression remained emotionless. It was typical of him, especially in a situation like this. He didn’t really trust anyone he didn’t know but Havilland, with a softer heart than her husband had, was sorry for their host and his lost Lenore.

  “My sister can be a dreamer also,” Havilland said, sympathizing with the man she was so recently so frightened of. Maybe she was coming to understand him just a bit, or so she thought. “I understand the breed. I am sorry you lost your Lenore.”

  The host continued to stare into the fire, perhaps remembering the days of his fair Lenore. Those days never left him, truthfully, because he still expected to see her. She was still here, with him, in more ways than his guests would ever understand. She had never really left him at all.

  “She would sing, too,” he said after a moment. “She had a harp she would play and she would sing for me. When we were first married, I could not afford to give her a wedding gift so she played a harp she had made herself. Then, years later, I was able to purchase a beautiful harp for her in Inverness. I even bought her a necklace that had a golden harp charm. It was lovely, truly. She wore it always.”

  The frightening, odd man who had greeted them upon their arrival had somehow morphed into a grieving husband, capable of sorrow and emotion. Havilland could sense a lonely, sad man.

  “The necklace was surely lovely,” she said. “Unfortunately, I never learned to play music or even sing. Your Lenore sounds like an accomplished woman.”

  “She was very accomplished.”

  “Did you have children also?”

  “Nay. We were not blessed.”

  Jamison listened to the conversation carefully, preparing to step in and steer it in another direction, but his head was swimming with fever and he had been fighting off a coughing spell for the last few minutes. Any talking would only bring about the terrible cough and he was trying to avoid that, so he let Havilland speak to the Northman of his dead wife even though it probably wasn’t the best subject for them to discuss. He was coming to wonder if the man was delusional because the first words out of his mouth when they had entered the hall was of Lenore. He had been asking for the woman. Nay, this probably wasn’t the best subject for them to discuss at all and he knew he had to step in. Before he could interrupt their conversation, however, Havilland spoke.

  “You asked for Lenore when we entered the keep,” she pointed out. “I thought you might have mistaken us for a daughter named Lenore but if you have no children, why did you ask if Lenore had come?”

  Jamison rolled his eyes at her question. If his wife wanted to upset the man, then that was surely the way to do it. Havilland was honest and curious to a fault, but sometimes she lacked tact.

  “Havi,” he murmured. “Mayhap the man has his reasons. ’Tis not for ye tae ask him such things.”

  Havilland looked at Jamison, instantly contrite. “I am sorry,” she said quickly, looking between her husband and the host. “I did not… forgive me, my lord, for I did not mean to pry. I was simply curious.”

  The host looked at her, his old eyes glimmering in the firelight. “I called her name because I hold out hope after all of these years she will return to me,” he said. “I told you she is gone, and she is. She left many years ago. I have not seen her since.”

  Havilland was trying not to look too shocked. “Gone?” she repeated. “She just… left?”

  “Havi,” Jamison hissed. “Dunna press the man.”

  She looked up at him, contrite again because she didn’t realize she was being nosy, but the host waved Jamison off.

  “She is not pressing me,” he assured him. “Lenore left me a long time ago. I keep expecting her to return to me and I suppose that is why I called her name when you entered. My kinsmen left these shores a very long time ago and I remained because I cannot bear to leave Lenore. She is here, somewhere. Mayhap she will return someday and if she does, I must be here.”

  It was a sad and tragic tale. Jamison gave his wife a reproachful expression, suggesting she shouldn’t dredge up such terrible memories with a man upon whose hospitality they were depending, and she took the hint. Havilland wanted to ask more questions but she didn’t. Something seemed so sad and forlorn about the man now and she suspected it was her fault with her curious questions. Lowering her gaze, she returned her focus to the fire.

  “I am very sorry for you, my lord,” she said. “I pray she shall return to you one day.”

  The old Northman grunted. “As do I.”

  Further conversation was precluded as the raven screeched and flew down from its perch up in the shadows of the dark room. As Havilland turned, startled because of the bird, she saw the old servant shuffling in with a tray of food and drink. Jamison heard it, too, and turned as the old man placed the heavy tray on the table, trying to keep it from sliding down the listing side. The big black bird was on the floor now, hopping along behind the servant, bobbing about nosily.

  The bird gurgled and chirped, wandering around as the old servant carefully removed the contents of the tray and set them upon the leaning table. Havilland looked up at Jamison, waiting for him to indicate they could move to the table and eat, but Jamison remained where he was, watching the bird and the old servant. Before the old servant could get away, he held out a hand to stop the man.

  “Ye, there,” he said to the servant. Then, he pointed to the table with the food upon it. “Ye will take a drink of the wine before ye go.”

  The old servant’s face screwed up in both confusion and fear. “Me?” he stammered. “What would ye have me do?”

  Jamison moved towards the old man. “I just told ye,” he said. “Taste the wine and food before ye go. Do it now to show me ye didna poison it.”

  The old servant recoiled, his frightened gaze moving to his master, who was still gazing into the fire. In fact, the host hadn’t moved at all, not even in reaction to Jamison’s demand. It could have very well been construed as an insult. Jamison, however, was losing patience.

  “Do as I say,” he said, putting a hand on the old servant’s shoulder and shoving him towards the table. “Taste the food before ye go. If ye dunna, I’ll know ye poisoned it and I’ll kill ye.”

  The old man was clearly terrified. He shuffled back over to the table, picking up a steaming wooden cup and holding it to his trembling lips. He took a drink, set it down, and went for the other cup. After he took a sip and set that one down, Jamison broke off a piece of the stale bread and forced him to eat it. The old servant did, choking it down, before Jamison handed him a piece of the white, very dry cheese. There was blue mold all over one side of it.

  Mold or not, the old servant swallowed everything as he’d been ordered. Satisfied that the wine wasn’t poisoned, Jamison silently ordered the old servant away and beckoned Havilland away from the hearth. Hastily, she rose to her feet and quickly went to the table, taking the cup of hot wine her husband offered. She drank deeply as Jamison took his own wine, feeling the hot beauty of it course down his sickly throat.

  With the lure of hot drink and food, Jamison and Havilland forgot about their sad, peculiar host for a few minutes. They were reasonably dry and even if the food was stale and terrible, it was still something. Jamison used his knife to cut the blue fuzz from the cheese, giving Havilland the best parts of it while he ate her scraps. Havilland tried to share the good portions with him but he pretended not to be very hungry. She knew it was a noble lie but she didn’t argue with him. She did, however, pour her hot wine into his cup when he wasn’t looking. He was drinking his rather quickly and, being sick, she knew he needed it much more than she did.

  Tap, tap, tap….

  Odd knocking sounds could be heard about the chamber and Havilland, mouth full of cheese, looked around to see where they were coming from. She noticed that the bird was gone, having wandered off into the darkness again. The wind seemed to be
howling stronger than before now, for she could hear it up on the roof, singing through the holes and gaps of the derelict old castle.

  Tap, tap, tap… tap, tap….

  More tapping. It was faint and not particularly rhythmic. Her gaze moved up to the dark above them, the shadowed ceiling that they couldn’t see.

  “Do not be troubled,” the host said from his perch by the fire. “It is the bird. He makes the noise.”

  Havilland looked over at the hearth to see that the host had her in his line of sight. He had moved his chair and she’d never heard him. She wondered if her husband had, who was now nearly to the bottom of his second cup of hot wine, the second cup that she had poured in from her own cup.

  “I thought it was the wind,” Havilland said. “It seems to be getting stronger.”

  She could only see the outline of the host’s face as he sat by the fire, looking at her and into the dark of the room. There was something eerie about his silhouette against the shadows and the hesitation she felt towards him, the wariness, began to return.

  “It is the bird and nothing more,” he said.

  That sympathetic and sorrowful man seemed to be no more. It was in his tone, the wretched hint of something dark lurking inside. Havilland returned to the remainder of her bread and cheese, glancing at Jamison to see that the man was sitting with his chin nearly dropped to his chest. His eyes were closed. Concerned, she put a hand up and touched his forehead. It was on fire.

  “Jamison,” she said softly, firmly. “We must get you to bed. Your fever is raging.”

  Jamison was struggling to keep his eyes open. He was ill and exhausted, and the wine was making him extremely drowsy. Reaching out, he took her hand and kissed it.

  “Dunna trouble yerself,” he said hoarsely. “I will be well on the morrow.”

  Havilland knew it was a lie. He was worse than he’d ever been. In desperation, she turned to the host.

  “My husband has a fever,” she said. “Do you have anything I could tend it with? Dried white willow? Horehound? Coriander?”

  The host’s gaze lingered on the pair. “You have nothing to give him?”

  Havilland shook her head. “Nay,” she said. “If you have these things, or know where I can get them, I can pay for them, but I have nothing with me to tend him.”

  “You have money?”

  “Will you sell me any of these things that I have asked for?”

  The host gazed at her a moment before shaking his head. If Havilland had been better able to see the man in the darkness, she would have realized that she should not have told him they had money with them. That seemed to change his demeanor entirely.

  “I must ask Pallas,” the host said. “If we have anything to give you, he will know.”

  The host began shouting for his servant then, listening to the bird screech overhead in unison with the shouts. The more the bird cawed, the more the host yelled, now mostly at the bird, telling the feathered beast to be quiet. It was all quite noisy for a minute or two as the host, and the bird, yelled at one another.

  But then, Pallas appeared and the great winged animal flew out of the shadows once again and landed on the old servant’s shoulder. He twittered and fluffed his dark wings as the old man and the host muttered among themselves, discussing whatever they might have to cure Jamison’s fever. At least, that was what Havilland hoped they were chatting about.

  She could not have been more wrong.

  Midnight arrived to flashes of lightning and the howling of the northern winds, beating upon the old stones of Whitecliff with angry ferocity.

  The deadly, dreary hour had arrived.

  Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,

  Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.

  “Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;

  Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—

  Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—

  ’Tis the wind and nothing more!”

  ~ Excerpt from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”

  Part Three

  ’Tis the wind… and nothing more

  Tap, tap, tap….

  Havilland’s head came up.

  Lying in bed next to her snoring, sickly husband, she heard the tapping outside of the chamber door.

  They were crammed into a small, dark chamber on the ground floor of Whitecliff’s keep that must have been a storage room at some point, or even a guard room from the size of it. There was a hearth in it, barely warmed by a few smatterings of peat that the disagreeable servant had put into it, and hardly lit by an oil lamp made out of a broken cup with liquid fat in it and a hemp wick. It gave off a minimal amount of light into the tiny room that was close to the entry, so close that the sounds of the wind howled heavily against the small door the chamber, rattling it.

  … or was it the wind?

  Tap, tap, tap….

  Hearing the tapping in the darkness again, Havilland sat up, wary of the unnerving sound. The wind didn’t make such rhythmic beats and she swore that the tapping was against the chamber door. A big burst of wind and lightning came and the door rattled as she saw flashes around the edges of the old door frame.

  Beside her, Jamison was sleeping the sleep of the dead, terribly ill and without much comfort. The host and his rude servant didn’t have anything she had asked for, no herbs to help her tend him, so the only option was to ply Jamison with more wine to kill off whatever poisons were infecting his chest and put him to sleep. He very much needed rest.

  But he was feverish and after Havilland had put him to bed upon the tiny, dirty pallet they’d been offered, she’d remained awake, bathing his fevered face with cold water and a rag that the servant had provided. She had to do something to ease his sickness but there wasn’t much relief to be had, unfortunately, so she did what she could until he fell into a deep, heavy sleep. The wine had finally done its duty.

  And he was still sleeping, his snoring as loud as the thunder outside. He hadn’t heard the tapping. If the thunder hadn’t awoken him, surely a gentle tapping wouldn’t. Fearful, yet inherently curious, Havilland carefully rose from the pallet so she wouldn’t disturb him. Their saddlebags were close and she fumbled in one of them until she came across one of Jamison’s razor-sharp dirks. The man always carried a small arsenal with him and Havilland seriously considered taking two dirks, but she soon thought better of it and put the second one back into the damp leather bag. Once dirk was all she needed to shove in the ribs of someone who deserved it.

  Tap, tap, tap….

  More tapping at the door. Now, annoyance was joining her sense of curiosity. Her fear had mostly fled but her sense of caution was still strong. The wind howled and the lightning flashed again as she moved to the door. Hand on the latch, she hesitated a moment before yanking it open.

  Havilland had the dirk in her hand, defensively, fully prepared to threaten whoever was doing the tapping. But there was no one at the door; the room beyond was dark and vacant. There was no one at all, at least from what she could see. Puzzled and fighting down a tremendous sense of disquiet, she was about to turn back into her borrowed chamber when something poked at her foot.

  Startled, she looked down to see the big black bird at her feet. He was ruffling his feathers, poking at her feet again.

  Tap, tap, tap….

  “It was you!” she gasped at the bird, keeping her voice down so Jamison wouldn’t hear her. “Go away, you naughty bird. Go, I say!”

  The bird croaked at her. Then it hopped away, stretching its wings, before turning around and coming back to her again. Havilland frowned at the bird as it tried to tap on her feet again. She shoved it away with her foot.

  “Cease,” she hissed. “Go away!”

  The bird croaked and chirped, odd sounds coming from its big beak. It waddled away and she went to close her chamber door but then the bird returned, quickly, and tried to tap at her
foot again. She was about to shove it away from her again when she heard a sound out in the darkness.

  Tap, tap, tap….

  The tapping sounds were clearly not coming from the bird. Her unease returned as she gazed off into the darkness, wondering where the sound was coming from. Quite obviously, she should have shut the chamber door and crawled back into bed beside her husband, ignoring what she had heard, but she couldn’t seem to manage it. The bird was still croaking away, making odd bird noises and wandering the floor. It would move towards her and move away again, back and forth, until Havilland began to think that the bird wanted her to follow it. It was very strange the way the bird seemed to be trying to get her attention.

  Was it even possible?

  Havilland wasn’t sure what made her think that the bird was trying to coerce her into following it, but something told her that the bird was doing exactly that. The way it moved, the way it poked at her. Perhaps she was mad, reading more into the silly bird’s behavior than there actually was, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that the bird wanted her to follow.

  It wanted to lead her away.

  So he wants me to see something, does he? Glancing back at Jamison, Havilland could see him in the faint light from the weakly glowing hearth. He was dead asleep and didn’t need her at the moment. Perhaps the least bit curious about the bird, not to mention Whitecliff as a whole, Havilland didn’t see any harm in following the bird. In fact, maybe she was meant to follow him. Perhaps someone needed her help. Perhaps there were strange forces at work and she was needed, her only guide being the big, black bird. It seemed ridiculous to even think such things, but there were many thoughts rolling through Havilland’s mind at the moment.