Once Upon A Haunted Castle: A Celtic Romance Anthology

by Eliza Knight

  “The lad is right there,” the servant said quietly. “Lenore watched him bleed to death as the master built the stone wall around her. Then, when the stones were piled up and she begged for mercy, the master set the lad on fire. She was left to breath in the scent of his burnt flesh in the end.”

  It was a horrifying, tragic tale as Havilland looked at the bones of the lovers. What a vile, grisly ending for the lovers and being that she loved Jamison so, she could only imagine the distress and turmoil that Lenore must have gone through, seeing the man she loved killed before her eyes. It was more than Havilland wanted to ponder.

  There were more pressing things at the moment. Havilland was sorry for the dead but more concerned for the living. It was clear that horrible and dark dealings were happening in this awful castle and she was seized with panic in her desire to leave. She could not remain here and fall victim to a madman.

  Pushing herself away from the wall, she moved on shaking legs to take the oil lamp from the servant, and picked up the dagger from where she had set it near Lenore’s rattling bones.

  “I must collect my husband and we must leave this place,” she said, her voice trembling. But her gaze moved to the old servant, bandaged and scrawny. “It was clear that you did not want us here. You were very rude earlier. Why did you not take us aside and tell us of the danger we were facing?”

  For the first time, the servant looked pained. “I couldna risk the master’s wrath,” he said. “I would tell ye after ye retired for the night but when I went to warn ye, I heard yer screams down here.”

  Havilland understood a great deal now. “So you came to find me?”

  He nodded. “I had to warn ye.”

  Her gaze lingered on him. “But you are still risking your master’s wrath,” she said. Then, she turned her head in the direction of that terrible room with its littering of bodies. “Did you warn any of the others?”

  The old man seemed to sag a little, the weight of his existence, of his life, bearing down on him. Some of the light went out of his one good eye. “I tried,” he said quietly. “It is difficult when the master is ever-lurking. He is lurking nearby even now. But when I stand before God, I should like to tell him that I did at least once good thing in me lifetime. I’ve watched the master kill many a good man in his quest to punish Lenore’s killer. I canna stand by and watch it happen again, so ye must go. Get yer husband and leave before it is too late!”

  Havilland didn’t need to be told twice. He is lurking even now. Those words terrified her. On shaking legs, she raced back to the spiral stairs, running up them as fast as she was able, scurrying through the darkness until she came to the small chamber where she had left her husband. Only the chamber door was ajar now; she knew for a fact she had shut it.

  Curious, she pushed the door open only to find the host standing over her heavily sleeping husband, a very large and wicked looking dagger in his hand.

  Havilland screamed at the top of her lungs.

  “Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—

  “Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!

  Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

  Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!

  Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”

  Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

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

  Part Four

  Thing of Evil….

  “Jamison!”

  Havilland’s piercing cry rang out in the dark room, startling the host and naturally causing him to turn in her direction. Havilland would never forget the look on the man’s face, something between rage and pure evil. But in that fraction of a second when the host looked at her, Jamison heard her cry and, roused from his heavy sleep, rolled off of the pallet as fast as he could. In doing so, he knocked the host’s legs and the man tumbled sideways, towards Havilland, and lost his dagger. But Havilland still had hers; as the host stumbled towards her, she brought the dagger up.

  The host saw the flash of a blade in her hand and roared, lashing out a big hand and knocking it away. Havilland, who had grown up around warriors and had learned to fight as one, struggled to keep from panicking. She dropped to her knees, under the strike of the host, who was now trying to swipe at her with his hands and his feet. Havilland took a kick to the thigh but it wasn’t enough to hurt – she was more concerned with regaining her dagger and it was all she could focus on. On her hands and knees, she propelled herself across the floor, straining to grab the hilt of the dagger that proved to be just far enough out of her reach.

  While Havilland scrambled around on the floor, Jamison claimed his broadsword where it lay atop his saddlebags. By this time, the host had crashed into the wall near the door but he was still trying to kick at Havilland, who was on the ground trying to reclaim the blade that the host had knocked away from her. All Jamison had to see was his wife fighting for her life. After that, the man they called The Red Lion within him roared to life. The warrior in him came out, the husband so intent to protect his wife, and he leveled the broadsword in his hands offensively.

  Death was in the air.

  In truth, there was little fight because the host was fed with madness. He wanted to kill so badly that he was slapping and kicking at everything, in every direction, and it was clear that he had no battle plan in mind. His only plan was to strike. As he charged towards Jamison, Havilland managed to reclaim her dirk and in a swift and cunning movement, brought the blade up, beneath the host’s line of sight, and plunged it into the man’s chest. As the host screamed and gurgled, a horrifying sound, Jamison brought his broadsword around, carving into the host’s neck, killing him instantly.

  Nearly decapitated, the host collapsed on the floor, the blood from his wounds spreading across the dusty wood, pooling in thick red rivers.

  It was over as fast as it had begun.

  Gasping with fright, Havilland launched herself at her husband, throwing her arms around his neck. Jamison was groggy but alert, and he held his wife tightly as she wrapped herself around him, her arms around his neck so fiercely that she was in danger of strangling him. His heart was beating a mile a minute and he had no idea what was going on, but he surely intended to find out.

  They’d just killed a man and he wanted to know why.

  “What happened?” he demanded.

  Havilland was near tears at the thought of coming so close to losing her husband. “He was going to kill us both,” she said. “He has an entire room down below where he throws the bodies of the travelers he has killed. Jamison, there are dozens of dead men down there. And… and I found his wife. He killed her, too!”

  Jamison wasn’t much clearer on the goings-on in that halting explanation. “Ye found his wife?” he repeated. “I dunna understand any of this, Havi. How did ye find her? What is going on?”

  Havilland wouldn’t let him go. He kept trying to peel her off of him, but she held fast. He finally stopped trying. “You were sleeping and I heard tapping on the door,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “I opened the door and found the big black bird there. I thought it had been tapping on our chamber door.”

  Jamison was struggling to understand her. “The bird was rapping on our door?”

  She nodded, her face in the crook of his neck. “I thought so,” she said. “But then, it seemed, that the tapping was coming from somewhere else and the bird… oh, I know you’ll think me mad, but the bird wanted me to follow it. I swear to you that it did, Jamison. I think… I think it was trying to show me Lenore’s bones as a warning!”

  Jamison digested what she was telling him. A prophetic bird, the bones of Lenore… it had his head spinning and he struggled to make sense of it all. She had finally loosened her grip enough that he could set her to her feet, and he did, putting his big hands on her face and forcing her to look at him.

  “
Tell me from the beginning,” he said calmly, hoping his manner would calm her down as well. “The bird tapped on our chamber door and ye followed it. The bird took ye tae see some bones?”

  Havilland nodded, taking a deep breath to ease her racing heart. “Aye,” she said. “The bird led me to the level below us and there was this wall of stone… and the stench… and the bird was knocking at the wall of stone so it seemed that the bird wanted me to look at the stone as well, so I did. When the stones came away, there was a skeleton chained to the wall, buried back beneath the stones.”

  Jamison was listening grimly. “What made ye think it was Lenore?”

  Havilland tried to shake off the horror of her memory. “Because she was wearing a gold chain with a charm in the shape of a harp,” she said quietly. “Do you remember what our host told us? He bought his wife a necklace with a harp charm. It was the same necklace!”

  A sense of horror was starting to creep over Jamison with the realization of what she was telling him. “And she was behind a stone wall?” he said, baffled and appalled. “But why?”

  Havilland dared to look down at the bloodied corpse. “He was mad,” she said. “The servant told me that it started when he found his wife with a lover and killed them both. Oh, Jamison, it is terrible… he stabbed the lover and forced his wife to watch him bleed to death. Then, he chained her up and built a wall around her, sealing her off from the world. But he went mad after he killed her and would blame unsuspecting travelers for the crime. There is an entire room of bodies down below, of men he has killed. Thank God the raven awoke me when it did. We might have become the next victims.”

  So their quest to seek shelter from the raging storm had put them right into the heart of a murderer’s lair. Shocked at the realization of the danger they had been in, Jamison tore his gaze off of his wife, turning to look at the dead man but catching sight of something in the doorway. He grabbed her, quick as lightning, and pulled her away from the door. Havilland gasped in fear but when she turned to see what had Jamison in defensive mode, she noticed the old servant with the bird on his shoulder, standing in the chamber door.

  “Ye!” Jamison boomed at the old man. “What madness is this? Why was yer master trying to kill us?”

  The old servant remained in the doorway, his gaze on his master. It seemed as if he were unable to look at anything else, shocked by the vision before him.

  “The lady told ye the truth, m’lord,” he said. “My master has been mad since he killed his wife. He kills everyone who comes to Whitecliff Castle, imagining them to be guilty of killing Lenore. He has been quite mad these many years.”

  Jamison was incredulous. “And no one ever found out what he has done?” he asked. “No one came looking for missing travelers?”

  The servant shrugged. “Some came,” he admitted. “But the master told them that he had never seen the people they were searching for. He told them to go away.”

  “And no one ever questioned him?”

  “Nay, m’lord.”

  It was a shocking awareness. “So he continued tae kill, did he?” Jamison asked, shaking his head in genuine amazement. “He was never caught so he continued tae do it. How long has this been going on?”

  The servant averted his gaze. “Years, m’lord. I cannot tell ye how many, but it has been many years.”

  It was an astounding story. Jamison was starting to put the pieces of it together but it was still quite upsetting to him and quite baffling. He coughed in the midst of his ponderings, a chesty sound, but he realized he wasn’t feeling as poorly as he had been earlier. It would seem the wine and sleep, short as it had been, had done him a little bit of good. But he had awoken into a madhouse and was still trying to get his bearings. As he coughed and hacked, the old servant spoke softly.

  “I would say that the dead have finally been dealt justice, m’lord,” he said. “Ye have avenged them this night.”

  Jamison looked at him in surprise. “I was simply defending myself and my wife,” he said. “I awoke tae a man standing over me with a dagger in his hand. There was nothing else I could do but respond in kind.”

  Havilland didn’t look at it that way. She was more inclined to agree with the servant. “That is true, sweetheart, but don’t you see?” she said. “The servant is correct; you have avenged the deaths of so many. For Lenore and her lover, you have dispensed justice. Mayhap… mayhap we were meant to come here and do this, Jamison. So many souls crying out for justice and you, my strong knight, heard their cries whether or not you realized it.”

  Jamison looked at his wife, seeing the light of admiration in her eyes. Havilland had accused her sister of being a dreamer but the truth was that Havilland was a bit of a dreamer, too. She was also quite spiritual and philosophical, reading omens and seeing truths in situations where none really existed.

  At least, Jamison thought so. But her free-thinking nature was part of her charm and he loved that about her. He didn’t believe he was an avenger of the dead; he’d simply been defending himself. But Havilland saw it much differently. He gently pinched her chin.

  “Believe that if ye like,” he said, a faint smile on his lips. “For meself, I only acted in defense. I heard yer scream and saw the flash of the blade. I reacted as my instincts bade. I could not let ye fall victim to harm.”

  Havilland smiled at him, all of the joy and love she felt for the man fairly bursting within her heart. She reached out, caressing his cheek and, realizing he didn’t feel so feverish, lay a hand on his forehead, too.

  “Your fever seems to be gone,” she said, relief and astonishment in her voice. “How do you feel?”

  He nodded. “Better,” he said. He wriggled his dark-red eyebrows ironically. “Thank God that I am. As sick as I have been, I’m not even sure yer scream, as loud as it was, could have awoken me. This situation could have been much, much different.”

  The servant cleared his throat softly. “The master always has me drug the wine of his… guests,” he said quietly, ashamed of his admission. “About a year ago, a man stopped to rest for the night and the master strangled him while he slept. When we opened the man’s bags, he had medicaments, including a poppy powder that we have used to put travelers to sleep. The master told me to use the last of the powder on the both of ye this night but I dinna. I couldna. M’lady, I have medicaments from the bag, including the white willow ye asked for. The master would not let me give it to ye, but now… well, now he canna stop me.”

  He trailed off, looking at the body on the ground, an expression on his face suggesting that he was just coming to realize the implications of the situation. The man who had terrorized him for years was dead. Really dead. He couldn’t even remember how long he had lived in fear, being starved and beaten, losing an eye to a madman, but it began to occur to him that the terror, the fear, was over.

  The evil was gone.

  “Thank you for not putting the poppy in our cups,” Havilland said sincerely, noting that the little man was trembling. He suddenly seemed quite weak and vulnerable. “Your name is Pallas, is it not? I have not even had the chance to thank you for what you have done for us, Pallas. You have saved our lives and we will be forever grateful to you.”

  Pallas, still trembling, looked up from the body his master. “As I said, I couldna let him do such terrible things, not again,” he muttered. “I will find the medicament bag and bring it to ye. Mayhap there is something ye can use for yer husband’s illness.”

  Jamison watched the old man shuffle away. “Pallas,” he said. “My wife has spoken the truth; we are deeply grateful for what ye have done for us. Surely there is nothing keeping ye here now that yer master is gone. When we leave, ye are welcome tae go with us.”

  Havilland nodded her head eagerly. “Aye,” she said. “You cannot possibly wish to stay in this terrible place with its terrible memories. The castle is collapsing around you; this is no place to live.”

  Pallas hadn’t considered leaving Whitecliff. In truth, it had never occu
rred to him, not ever. He had no one to go to and no place to go. This was his home and had been for years. But the lady was correct; it was collapsing, a horrible place that wasn’t fit for a man to live in. Still, this was the only home he knew. He was an old man and change was difficult. He shrugged weakly.

  “Yer offer is kind, m’lord,” he said, “but this is me home. I have nowhere else to go. I will remain here and tend the souls of the dead. Mayhap they… they need a guardian. I couldna protect them in life… mayhap it is my duty to see to them in death.”

  “Bury them?”

  “Aye, m’lord.”

  Havilland looked at her husband, silently imploring him to convince the old servant to attend them, but Jamison wasn’t entirely sure what more to say. “Mayhap ye should go tae the nearest town and ask the priests tae help ye bury them,” he said. “It ’tis a big job for one man.”

  Pallas nodded. “I know, m’lord,” he said, somewhat contritely. “I tried to bury the first few men that the master killed, but he beat me when he discovered what I’d done. So I stopped trying. That was some time ago but now that the master is… I suppose I shall make the trip to Cullen and seek the priests and no one can stop me.”

  “But what about him?” Havilland asked, pointing to the body at her feet. “What do we do with him? He has done such hateful things, Jamison. He does not deserve to be buried with those he killed.”

  Jamison sighed heavily, looking to the man who had done such damage. He could still hardly believe he’d almost fallen victim to the man. There was anger in that near miss as well as a palpable sense of relief. God had surely been watching over them that night. Bending over, he reached down and grabbed the host by the wrists.

  “I will remove him from this chamber for now,” he said, looking over his shoulder at Pallas. “Where can I put him?”

  The old servant gazed down at the man he had grown to both hate and depend on. It had been an odd relationship but one he could still hardly believe had ended.