by Sarah Rayne
She had not undressed because she had not had anything to undress into, so she pushed back the blankets, slid her feet into her shoes, and tiptoed across the room to the door. If anyone caught her she would say she was going to the lavatory. Zoia had said it was along the passage so it would be a reasonable thing to be doing.
The door made a scraping sound, and Mara waited, but nothing stirred so she slipped out into the dark passage, closing the door behind her. All she had to do was find her way to the ground floor, and look for an unlocked door or even a window. Once she was outside she would run down the hillside as fast as her legs could carry her. But the Black House was so big and so full of puzzling corridors and shadowy echoing halls that Mara began to panic. As she went warily through the shadows, glancing back over her shoulder every few minutes, the oil lamps stared down at her, and the Black House sighed and creaked to itself. She crept down the stairs, trying not to listen to the whispery echoes, and was just thinking the main staircase with the panelled walls should be ahead when she became aware of a sound that made her skin prickle with terror. Footsteps. Someone was walking through the dark corridors of the Black House. Zoia?
Mara did not wait to hear if the footsteps were coming towards her; she fled into the darkness, not caring where she went, only intent on finding somewhere to hide. She was out of breath and her heart was pounding so hard she thought it might burst out of her chest. She could no longer hear the footsteps, but there was another sound now, which was not the wind moaning in the chimneys or the windows rattling. Mara’s skin prickled and she forgot about escaping and hiding from the footsteps, because this was a thin crying. It made her think of her brother, because it was how he used to cry when he was very small and afraid of the dark. Was it children she was hearing? Very young children, frightened or in pain?
She was in a narrow, stone-floored passage, and the crying seemed to be coming from behind a door a little way ahead of her. It’ll be locked, thought Mara, staring at the door. Even if it isn’t, it won’t lead outside, and I’ve got to find a door that leads outside. I mustn’t think about anything else. She was starting to feel unreal, almost as if she might be asleep and inside a nightmare that had a fairystory mixed up in it.
She had not meant to open the door, but another sound came that changed her mind. The footsteps were coming back and now they were coming straight towards her. In panic, Mara reached for the handle of the door.
She tumbled instantly into a nightmare far worse than anything she had ever dreamed in her whole life. The thin sad crying had prepared her for the sight of children, but it had not prepared her for what was beyond the door.
A windowless chamber, very like the one she had been taken to earlier, but with a grey light filtering in from somewhere, showing up damp-looking walls. There was straw on the floor and several of the oil lamps hung from the walls. The room was divided into sections by iron grilles – frameworks made up of bars that did not reach all the way up to the ceiling, but created four or five enclosures, each one open-fronted but each one forming an unmistakable shape. Cages, thought Mara in disbelief. They’re cages like you’d have for animals.
But these cages did not contain animals, they contained children. Each cage held two small figures and there was just enough room for them to sit up and lie down. Most of them were little more than babies, and she had a sudden vivid image of her brother at this age, and how he had crawled at top-speed across the floor of the cottage, chuckling as he went, delighted with his own ability. Mara and her grandmother had laughed with him, snatching things out of his way so he could not knock them over or cannon into furniture. But these children could not do that; they could not toddle or crawl, because there was no room. All they could do was sit or lie in the tiny space inside the bars. This was dreadful, it was dreadful.
Several were crying with thin wailing sounds, but they stopped when they saw her and turned their heads, curious at this small interruption. Bright intelligence shone from most of their faces and several of them held out their hands. Mara wanted to run to them and take their little hands in hers and comfort them, but she did not dare.
The pity of it all slammed into her throat like a fist, and tears stung her eyes because these mites were so tiny, so helpless, and most of them were so pretty under the uncombed hair and shapeless grey garments. A scalding anger burned up, and she clenched her fists and made a silent vow to the children. I can’t help you now, said Mara to them, not this very minute, I can’t. But if I get away from here I’ll tell people about you. I’ll tell what I’ve seen and you’ll be rescued – I promise you’ll be rescued, even if it takes years and years.
She stepped back from the terrible room and closed the door. She was still trembling from seeing the room with the children, and had almost forgotten about escaping and about the footsteps. But to her horror, Zoia was standing in the narrow passageway. In a voice like a nail scratching across tin, she said, ‘It’s a pity you tried to run away, Mara. We don’t let people run away from here. It’s an even greater pity you snooped into that room because we don’t like people knowing the Black House’s secrets. Especially when we aren’t told secrets in return.’
Mara managed to say, ‘Matthew will tell you the secrets, I know he will.’ She tried to speak bravely but her voice came out muffled and hiccupy.
‘I hope he does. But until then, you’ll have to learn a lesson,’ said Zoia. ‘A lesson that will show you what can happen to snooping children who see things they shouldn’t, and who won’t share their secrets.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Zoia had heard people say the Black House was filled with ghosts, but she always denounced such remarks as superstitious nonsense. People who claimed the Black House was haunted were simply letting themselves be influenced by its slightly sinister appearance. Zoia would allow the sinisterness, but ghosts were tales for the credulous. She liked living in this shadowy old mansion with its tucked-away corners and twisty stairways and empty halls. It was one of the many things for which she was grateful to Annaleise.
Annaleise… Even touching the name in her mind brought a deep satisfaction. It was Annaleise who had brought Zoia to the Black House, and Zoia would have coped with far worse than living in this decaying grandeur to please her. She coped with the children who came here and was firm with them because she knew it was what Annaleise wanted. Occasionally some of them had to be punished, and Zoia did so efficiently and with detachment. She had been punished herself as a child – her father had a heavy hand with his leather belt and the belt had a thick buckle that cut her skin when it hit her bare bottom. No sense in beating a child through its clothes, he used to say, lifting his daughters’ skirts and taking down their cotton undergarments, his thick labourer’s hands lingering over the smooth young skin of their thighs.
Zoia, who was beaten more often than her sisters, had wept at the pain and the humiliation of those beatings, and crept into a corner afterwards to hide, but looking back she could not see that any of it had done her any lasting harm. Punishing the children at the Black House would not do them any lasting harm either.
It was unfortunate that the inquisitive child, Mara, had found the babies’ room. A punishment would have to be administered to her – something that would enable Zoia to show Annaleise how sensible, loyal and firm she, Zoia, was. She did not allow herself to think, even for a second, that this was the only means she had of impressing Annaleise nowadays, because such thoughts might have made her maudlin, and Annaleise would have no patience with that. She had no patience with sentiment or with any emotion. It had taken Zoia a long time to understand that and even longer to accept it.
Particularly since Annaleise had not always been so unemotional.
It had been more than fifteen years ago when they met. Zoia had been seventeen, a student, shy and awkward in the bewildering university world, determined to conceal her background from everyone. She was ashamed of her family who worked on the land for a pittance and who all thought Zoia h
ad ideas above her station. Her father had always said it was enough if you could read a little, write your name and add up your accounts. The idea of education was a fanciful thing for the rich, for the rulers of the country, not for the likes of them, he said. Her mother, reduced to a whispering subservience from years of fear, said it was best Zoia did what her father wanted. There was plenty for her to do: she could help with her brothers and sisters and bake and cook and do women’s work. It was good enough for most girls, she said, pleadingly.
But it was not good enough for Zoia. One of her teachers at the tiny local school, seeing the bright intelligence of this pupil, gave her extra lessons in secret. Later, she helped Zoia get a university place, providing a tiny sum of money which would cover the journey and help her through the first weeks. Zoia took it eagerly, and one morning simply walked out of the crowded cottage without telling anyone where she was going, boarding a bus – several buses – to the exciting new world she was entering.
For the first year of her university studies she worked very hard indeed. She was too timid to make friends or become part of any of the student activities, although there were plenty of parties and clubs she might have attended or joined. There were political activities as well – it was the late 1950s, and although the communist regime was as firmly entrenched as ever, people were daring to speak out against it and protest groups had sprung up, often small groups working in cautious secrecy, many of them within the universities. There were a number of these anti-communist groups at Zoia’s own university but she steered clear of them as much as possible, because, clearly, they trod a dangerous path. Some of these students were caught and branded enemies of the state, all were expelled and some were even arrested. Stories filtered back of forced labour camps and prisons where conditions were so appalling and the warders so brutal, prisoners sometimes committed suicide. These things were seldom spoken of in public, because the Securitate was everywhere, listening, spying, reporting to their masters.
Zoia remained on the fringes of it all, afraid of becoming too close to anyone in case they found out about her background: the illiterate mother, brothers and sisters, the father who beat his children and whose hands sometimes strayed between the thighs of his daughters. Once or twice she thought about letting her family know where she was, but she was too afraid that one of her brothers or sisters might come to find her. Best let the past be forgotten.
She watched, without envy, the senior students, glittering and assured demi-gods whose smallest word was received with respect and admiration. How did people only a few years older than Zoia herself come to be like that? Was it because they were cleverer than the rest? Because they were more attractive? Or because they came from families who had money and position? Occasionally she heard whispers that some of them supplemented their incomes by acting as informants – ferreting out people’s secrets and selling them to the Securitate. Hearing that made her even more careful and watchful about what she said and who she talked to. And then one night, hurrying to her small lodgings on the edge of the town, she ran into, not a demi-god, but a demi-goddess. Literally ran into her, so that the armful of books Zoia was carrying slipped from her arms and tumbled into the gutter.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said the demi-goddess. Her voice was strangely unresonant, at odds with her graceful movements, the slender ankles and heavy black hair like a raven’s wing. Zoia, kneeling on the pavement to scoop up the precious books that she had scraped together the money to buy and that were already mud-splattered, stared up at her.
‘Let me make amends by buying you a glass of wine,’ said the harsh-voiced, exquisite-featured creature. ‘There’s a wine bar just along here – I often go there. I expect you know it.’
Zoia did not say she had never dared venture into any of the bars or restaurants the other students frequented. She did not have time to wonder if she would be expected to buy wine on her own account, the goddess had already taken her arm and was propelling her along the street. They were suddenly inside the hot smoky bar and somehow a table in one corner was free, and they were facing each other over a carafe of wine.
‘A bit rough,’ said the goddess, grimacing slightly, ‘but drinkable. Let me fill your glass.’
Perhaps if Zoia had been used to wine there might have been a different outcome. Perhaps if she had not been so nervous, she might not have fallen so easily or so completely under the spell of the beautiful harsh-voiced one.
‘I’m Annaleise,’ said the goddess as if, thought Zoia, she might not know the name of one of the most glittering people in the whole university. As she lifted her glass again the wine cast a reflection in her eyes giving them a red glow. Devil’s eyes, thought Zoia, mesmerized. No, not devil’s, angel’s! She’s clever and admired and everyone knows who she is and I’ll have to pretend more than I’ve ever pretended in my life.
‘You’re an odd little thing, aren’t you?’ said the angel with the glowing red eyes. ‘I’ve noticed you watching me quite often. Why do you do that?’
Zoia managed to stammer something about being interested in student groups.
‘Political groups? Not those squalid little anti-communist people, surely?’
‘Oh no,’ said Zoia, who had not thought much about political beliefs, but flinched from being thought squalid.
‘Then you’re for the State,’ said Annaleise, at once, ‘and I’m always on the look-out for recruits.’ She leaned closer. ‘Why don’t you join us?’ she asked, and for a moment the harshness was smoothed out of her voice.
Zoia thought about saying she was too shy, but before she could speak, Annaleise said, ‘Let me pour you some more wine and we’ll talk about it.’
The taste of the wine was enjoyable, but far more enjoyable – far headier – was the knowledge that this goddess-creature was talking to Zoia as if they were equals. She talked with intensity about things Zoia had never dreamed existed: about how the world was going to change; how they were the people, the generation, the Party, who would change it; how there would be massive upheavals to bring about that change, but also how upheavals were sometimes necessary for the common good.
Zoia listened, entranced. But when Annaleise said she must come to tomorrow’s Party meeting, she drew back. In such an unknown situation she might betray herself; people might see through her. So she said she could not go – she had to study.
‘Oh, study can wait. And I want you there,’ said Annaleise, and this time the rasping voice slid down into something almost like a caress. ‘Do come, Zoia,’ said Annalise, and when she said her name, Zoia felt as if Annaleise had reached out to stroke her face.
Almost as if Annaleise had heard her say this, she reached out a hand across the table, and took Zoia’s own hand in hers. Her skin was like velvet or a cat’s fur, the nails polished and smooth. Zoia could hardly bear the comparison with her own rough-skinned hand. Annaleise did not seem even to notice. She turned Zoia’s hand over between hers, and brushed the centre of the palm lightly with her fingertips. At once an extraordinary sensation shot through Zoia’s body – a deep secret tingling, so that she gasped and her eyes flew to Annaleise’s face. Annaleise was smiling, her eyes narrowed. ‘All right?’ she said, and Zoia heard herself whisper, ‘Yes,’ without knowing what was all right or what she had agreed to.
What she had apparently agreed to was seduction of a kind she had not previously realized existed. But as they walked along the streets together, Annaleise’s arm came round Zoia’s thin waist. When they passed into the shadow of an old church, she bent and kissed Zoia on the lips, forcing her mouth open so that Zoia tasted the wine on Annaleise’s breath. She drew back, startled, but Annaleise only laughed and pulled Zoia very close against her so Zoia could feel the press of thighs and the swell of breasts through her clothes. Marvellous. Shameful. One ought not to feel like this, not about another female.
Later, in Annaleise’s rooms near the university which were silkenly and expensively furnished and which overlooked a quadrangle, s
he was lain on a bed and her clothes gently but firmly removed. Once she protested and tried to push away the questing hands, but Annaleise only laughed. ‘What a nervous little virgin,’ she said. ‘Don’t struggle against me. If you really don’t like it I’ll stop, but let me just do this – and now this… Oh, you’re not struggling now, are you?’
By ‘this’, Annaleise meant the butterfly fingertip touches on Zoia’s body – on her breasts which had become tip-tilted with passion, and then, shamefully and marvellously, between her thighs. Zoia was distantly aware of the chiming of the clock from the old church, but the outside world had ceased to exist for her; there was only this dimly lit room and the smooth porcelain skin of this goddess, and the mounting excitement that Annaleise was creating.
Then Annaleise drew back and stood up, reaching for her own clothes, and the excitement was cut off suddenly and painfully, like being prevented from drawing a deep breath or strangling a sneeze. Zoia half raised herself on one elbow and looked mutely at her goddess.
‘An introduction,’ said Annaleise, pulling on a silk robe the colour of the wine they had drunk earlier. ‘A prelude. You’re a very promising pupil, Zoia.’ She turned away, opening the bedroom door. After a moment, Zoia got up from the bed and fumbled for her clothes.
Walking home, her body remembered with a throbbing urgency, the feel of Annaliese’s hands. Lying in her own bed in the shabby lodging house, she went through the lonely ritual of self-satisfaction. It was not until she was finally falling into a troubled sleep that she remembered Annaleise had used the word prelude. Her heart lifted. Prelude meant just the start. It meant there was more ahead.
