by Candace Camp
“It’s the same,” she breathed, reaching out her hand toward it, then letting it fall, not touching it. “Oh, Stephen…it’s exactly the same.”
Her eyes began to water, and her stomach felt like a chunk of ice. She sat back down abruptly. “This is impossible.”
“I know. But when you began to describe it and its contents, I suspected you must have seen this casket.”
“But how—” She raised her gaze finally from the gleaming box and looked at him. “I don’t understand.”
“I don’t either. But I want you to look at what’s inside.” He opened the clasp and raised the lid. There was a pile of golden objects inside the little box, including a small dagger with a jeweled gold hilt. On top lay a large cross, also made of gold, about four or five inches long, and in the center lay a cabochon ruby.
Olivia stared at the cross. She had guessed that it would be in there, after seeing the gold casket, but even so, it made her stomach queasy to see the actual object, exactly like the one she had seen in her dream.
“I did not see the dagger,” she said.
“No? What about this?” Stephen pulled out a necklace, long oval gold beads strung together, each bead cunningly etched.
“That’s the necklace,” she said a little breathlessly. “It was in the box, too.”
“It’s not a necklace,” Stephen replied, holding it closer to her. “It is a rosary. See, there are different shaped lozenges for the Pater Nosters and the Ave Marias. And each bead, if you’ll look, is carved with a biblical scene. It’s excellent craftsmanship.”
“It’s beautiful,” Olivia responded. “And the girdle she wore? The jeweled belt? Is it in there?”
“No. I have never seen anything like that. But there are some necklaces and rings and such. Do you recognize any of them?”
He held out the box to her, and Olivia stood up and took it in her hands. As she grasped it, she was suddenly swamped with a strange feeling. Her stomach roiled, and it was hard to breathe. The blood drained from her face, leaving her ashen.
In her mind Olivia saw the woman she had dreamed of the night before. Lady Alys was with the knight she loved. They were outside in a meadow, sitting beside a pond. It was, Olivia realized, the same pond where she and Stephen had gone the first day she was at Blackhope.
Lady Alys was leaning against the knight, his arm curled around her, and they seemed to be lazily daydreaming in the sun. Alys looked up at the knight, her face soft with love. They were facing toward the pond, smiling and talking, absorbed in each other. They did not see, as Olivia saw, another man standing some distance from them, hidden among the trees at the edge of the meadow. His hair was black, as was his small pointed beard. A gold ring glinted on his finger, and the silk tunic he wore was richly embroidered with gold thread at the neck. He was watching the couple, his face stamped with a cold, fierce hatred.
An overpowering sense of evil swept Olivia, and her throat constricted. She could not breathe. She swayed, her eyes rolling up.
“Olivia!” Stephen jumped forward, his arm going around her waist as she slumped into a faint. With his other hand, he grasped the gold box.
He thrust the box onto the desk with one hand, his other arm lowering Olivia gently into her chair. Worriedly, he took her wrist and felt for her pulse.
“Olivia. Please, wake up.” Visions of her slipping into the same unconscious state as Babington played terrifyingly through his head. “Sweet Lord, wake up.”
He started to ring for smelling salts again, but just then Olivia’s eyelids fluttered, and she opened her eyes.
“Thank God.” Stephen let out a sigh of relief. “Are you all right?”
“I—I think so.” Olivia looked confused. “What happened?”
“You fainted. I’m not sure why. I handed you the Martyrs’ casket, and you looked very strange and fell into a faint.”
He slipped his hand behind her back and helped her straighten.
“Oh,” Olivia said, covering her eyes with her hand. She felt weak and a little sick to her stomach, as well. “I saw something. I’m sorry, I really can’t explain it well. But as soon as I touched that casket, I saw Lady Alys.” She described the scene to him, along with the man in the concealing woods who watched the lovers.
“Do you think it was the lady’s husband?” Stephen asked.
“Sir Raymond? Yes, I think it was. Hatred poured from him. His eyes were glittering with anger and I was just flooded with this horrible sense of evil.”
“Evil?” He responded. “There are those who would say her husband was the injured party.”
“But you didn’t see this man. He was—I don’t know, the feeling of evil was so strong. It was more than jealousy or anger. I can’t explain it. But it made me feel quite ill.”
“I could see that.” Stephen moved away and leaned against his desk, stretching his legs out in front of him. He looked at Olivia, whose color was returning.
“All right,” he said. “What is happening?”
“I haven’t any idea,” Olivia replied. “I have never experienced anything like this in my life. What do these things mean that I keep seeing? And why am I seeing them? I would think I was going utterly mad if you had not seen some of them, as well.”
“But I have. And I am quite certain that you are not mad.” Stephen reached over and took her hand and squeezed it, gazing down into her eyes.
Olivia gave him a wobbly smile in return, her eyes unexpectedly filling with tears. Stephen pulled her to her feet and into his arms, holding her lightly. “No. Don’t cry. None of this is worth your tears.”
Olivia leaned her head against his chest. It was amazing, she thought, how easy this was becoming. It felt so good to be near him, to let him encompass her with his strength. She was growing accustomed to their chats every evening in his study, to seeing him at breakfast and dinner, to walking with him in the garden or sharing tea with him.
It was foolish, she told herself, weak and foolish. Soon she would be leaving, and she would not see him again. She would return to her normal life, a life he did not share. She would be on her own again, pursuing her enthusiasms with the help of only Tom Quick. She would no longer discuss the happenings of the day with Stephen or see his smile…or feel the touch of his hand on hers.
She blinked away her tears, calling herself all kinds of a fool. She straightened and moved from him, turning her back and surreptitiously wiping away her tears. It was time to stop acting like a ninny.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice came out a little husky, and she cleared her throat. “I am afraid I have an abominable headache. It makes me a little weak. I do not usually give in to tears that way.”
“You have had a good number of shocks the past few days,” he said. “We all have.”
“I am having a bit of trouble,” she admitted. “What I seem to be seeing and feeling goes against everything I believe in. I cannot believe that these visions are real, that these are ghosts!” She turned and looked at him, her eyes wide. “In all the investigations I’ve done, I have never seen a ghost. I have never had a dream like the ones I have had recently, or—or seen people who are not there. And not only that—I have felt so clearly what they were thinking and feeling.”
“I cannot explain it.”
“Nor I. Even though I do not believe it, let us suppose that Madame Valenskaya or one of the others is amazingly expert in the practice of mesmerism, or hypnotism. And let us even say that it is possible, if one is so expert, to make a person believe they see something that isn’t there, or to make them have dreams about a particular subject. And let us also imagine, since we are saying that they can do these other things, that they are able to implant in us the successful suggestion that we forget when and where and how we were hypnotized.”
“All right. Given all those unlikely things…”
“There are still logistical problems. When and where did they do this hypnotizing? You had your first dream about this couple in London, befor
e Madame Valenskaya came here. Before you even met her. Isn’t that true?”
“Yes.”
“And since we have been here, there have generally been other people about, including the servants. I cannot see how anyone could have hypnotized me or you without someone else noticing. Unless they did it in the dead of night. And there have been so many details to the dreams—words and feelings and the minutiae of the people’s appearance, what their clothes were, what the box and its contents looked like—and there have been so many visions. How could they have implanted all of that in both of us?”
“It stretches the limits of credibility,” Stephen agreed.
“But even if all that could somehow be explained away or believed, there is still this problem—How could I have known what the box looked like or what it contained or what any of the contents were? I had never seen it before, and neither has Madame Valenskaya or the other two. Yet I saw the box and its contents down to the last detail. I knew its size, and I knew that it had engraving around the edge. I knew exactly how the rosary looked, even though I didn’t know it was a rosary and thought it only a necklace. Madame Valenskaya could not have described it, because she has never seen it. There is no way she could have seen it before, is there—a drawing or anything?”
“No. She has never been in this house, and as far as I know, that box has never left it. I know my father never removed it, and I don’t think Roderick would have, either. As I said, it’s something of a superstition in the family. None of us would have risked losing it. And I have never heard of any drawings of the box or its contents. As far as I know, it is not even known outside this family.”
“Then I cannot believe these things could have been the product of hypnotism. And if it isn’t that, what is it?”
They looked at each other for a long moment, neither of them wanting to actually say it. Finally Stephen sighed and said, “Ghosts? I feel like an utter fool saying it, but I cannot see how any of this could have been engineered. The dreams…the visions…”
“Mr. Babington’s fit?” Olivia offered.
“Do you think it is part of this?”
“I don’t know. But it seems to me that we have two sets of events. On the one hand, we have Madame Valenskaya’s séances and the things she says—the idea of the lost souls, the Martyrs’ treasure, the music and raps and the supposed voice of your brother.”
“The monk in the garden. The crying in the sitting room,” Stephen added.
“Yes. All of those things can be explained, and they all pertain to the gold casket. Then we have had an entirely different set of things: the apparition of the medieval woman in the great hall and the dreams you and I have had about this woman and her lover and husband. All of those are disturbingly inexplicable by any rational means.”
“That would mean that we have Madame Valenskaya and her daughter and Mr. Babington and their tricks, none of which are real. And an entirely different set of ‘spirits,’ which do seem to be real. Completely disconnected,” Stephen said.
“Not completely, though. The gold casket figures in both of them. And Mr. Babington at the séance the other night—his talking as if he were possessed, the seizure, the coma. That all seemed quite real, as well.”
“Yes. This casket.” Stephen walked over to the desk and stood for a moment looking down at it. “It was part of the Martyrs’ treasure. And that was in the sixteenth century. Yet you dreamed about the medieval woman holding the box and its contents. When you held the box, you saw a very clear vision of the woman and her husband and the strong sense that the husband was evil. And those people appear to be from four hundred years earlier than the Martyrs.”
Olivia was silent for a moment, thinking. “Perhaps the treasure that Lord Scorhill hid consisted of family heirlooms. Maybe the box and even the contents had been handed down for generations. They could have felt, as your family does, that they were more precious than even more expensive jewels.”
Stephen nodded thoughtfully. “That could have been why they hid them away so securely. They could have taken their other valuables or sent them to family or friends, but they wanted these oldest, most precious objects to stay here in Blackhope where they belonged, even if it meant that no one ever found them again.”
“What about the room where your family found the casket? Are you sure that the martyred Lord Scorhill built it?”
“You mean, could it have come from an earlier time? And maybe the Martyrs didn’t even know of its existence?”
Olivia shrugged. “I don’t know. It just occurred to me that maybe it was wrongly assumed that the treasure belonged to that Lord Scorhill. It seemed the likely explanation, but no one really knew that the martyred family built that room or put the gold box in there.”
“Let’s look at the room,” Stephen suggested. “I have to put the box back, anyway.”
Olivia stared at him. “But that is the secret room. You cannot show it to me.”
Stephen quirked an eyebrow. “Frankly, the secrecy of the room bothers me less right now than a number of other things. Anyway, all you will know will be the location of the secret room. If you turn away or close your eyes, you won’t see the mechanism of how the door operates, and, believe me, without that knowledge, I don’t think anyone could open it.”
“All right. If you are certain.”
“Positive.” Stephen wrapped the box once again in its velvet covering, then picked it up and tucked it under his arm.
They left the study and went up the stairs to the bedroom wing, walking past the family’s bedchambers. Several doors down from the last of the bedrooms used by the family and their guests, Stephen turned a corner and opened a door. Inside lay a smaller chamber than the one in which Olivia was residing, furnished in the style of Louis XIV.
Stephen stepped back to allow Olivia to enter, then went in after her and pushed the door, not noticing that it did completely shut. “We rarely use this room,” he told her as they walked to the middle of the room. “It is one of the smaller guest rooms, and it’s occupied only when the house is exceptionally full. It is not a favorite room of guests. I remember one cousin who stayed here when I was an adolescent who demanded that my mother move him to another room.”
“Why?”
“I’m not entirely sure. I think it was because of the cold.”
“It is chilly,” Olivia commented, rubbing her arms. “I presumed it was because the room was not in use.”
“Yes, but even when there is someone staying here and we have the fire lit, it isn’t a particularly warm room. It’s on the north side, and the fireplace doesn’t seem to work well.”
“Should I close my eyes now?” Olivia asked.
“Yes.”
She did so, and to her surprise, he bent down and kissed her lightly on the lips. Her eyes popped open, and Stephen chuckled.
“Sorry. I could not resist.” He hesitated for a moment, then kissed her again, more lingeringly this time. He was still carrying the velvet-wrapped box under his arm, which made an embrace awkward, so after a moment, he stepped back with a sigh. “All right. Close your eyes.”
Olivia, feeling a little giddy from his kiss, closed her eyes again and also turned around to face the other direction, just for good measure. Behind her, she heard Stephen crossing the floor.
Behind her, Olivia heard a click, then the swish of something moving. Stephen said, “All right. You can look now.”
Olivia turned. Stephen stood beside a narrow door, a piece of the wall, actually, that had swung away from the rest of it. Beyond it lay a small, dark room. She walked over to join Stephen and looked inside the secret room. It was small, the size of her dressing room at home, and it had no furnishings except for a small, narrow wooden table. There were no windows, so that the place lay in a perpetual gloom. Stephen stepped inside the room, ducking to go through the low doorway, and crossed to the table to set the box upon it. He turned to Olivia.
“Come in.”
Olivia hesitated, th
en took a step inside. She stopped abruptly. The room was frigid. However, it was not the cold that stopped her, but the sense of something hovering in the air, heavy with menace and evil. It pushed against her body, its tendrils slithering around her. Thick and black, it tugged at her, curling around her throat….
Dragging in breath with a gasp, Olivia jumped back out of the room. She stared at Stephen, trembling, unable to speak, her eyes wide and her face drained of color.
“Olivia?” Stephen frowned in concern, starting toward her. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
She shook her head, unable to formulate what she had felt as she entered the room. Her stomach churned, and she felt weak and dizzy, as she had earlier when she had touched the small golden casket.
Stephen joined her in the bedroom, his arm going around her. “Did you see something again?”
“No. But it was—I felt it. I—there is evil in that room.”
“Evil?” He glanced back at the inner room.
Olivia did not follow his gaze. She could not even bear to look into the room again. She turned and walked over to the small straight chair by the door and sank down on it. Stephen watched her for a moment, then turned and closed the section of the wall. Once it was closed, there was no indication of where the line of the door was.
He went to Olivia and squatted down in front of her, taking both her hands between his. “Is it like it was downstairs?”
“Yes. But worse.” She looked at him. “You must think me foolish and weak.”
“No, of course not. I have never seen you to be either one of those things.”
“I feel it. But I couldn’t stay there—the feeling was too strong. I felt his presence in that room. I couldn’t go inside. It was as though he were pushing on me, smothering me.”
Olivia shivered, and the shiver set off a score more inside her, radiating out from her core. She wrapped her arms around herself, unable to stop her trembling. She felt chilled to the bone.
“Here. Let’s get you to your room,” Stephen said, standing and pulling her up with him.
He put his arm around her and walked her around the corner and down the hall to her room. He found one of her shawls lying across the back of a chair and wrapped it around her shoulders. The room was not cold; it was, in fact, quite pleasant. But Olivia could not stop shivering. He guided her over to the bed and opened the chest that sat at the foot of it. He pulled out a light knitted blanket and wrapped it around her, too. Then he took her in his arms and held her gently, the warmth of his body soaking into hers.
