Paul didn’t bother to remove his head from the other woman’s shoulder. He had awoken from his nightmare and it had all been some terrible misunderstanding. Everything he hoped for had come true.
“But she has. She’s alive again.”
The woman ran her fingers through Paul’s hair and raised his chin so she could look into his eyes. “No, my love, I am not.”
His face fell, and he slowly backed away from her, dragging his brother with him. I quickly grabbed them both by the shoulders a little more roughly than I meant to and held them tightly before they could run off.
The great house before us was more appealing than the dark, oppressive gloom of the orchard, with the shadows that twitched and snaked about the ground, but I would not hesitate to escape the way we had come. I considered the woman who purported to be Mrs. Darrow. To anyone who might ask, I would deny that I had any belief in ghosts, but then what of the man in black? A mysterious shade prone to the company of corpses was just as unlikely as the resurrection of a young mother taken before her time. Was she a liar, a ghost, or something else altogether?
My heart continued on its perilous drop deep into the nether reaches of my chest, and I realized with no small amount of revulsion that I might soon begin to panic in the way I had witnessed other women do, as I was perhaps expected to do. But I refused to faint or swoon; the fearful emptiness I felt inside instead began to swell, blood raging in my ears, until it changed into something solid and substantial. Nothing would happen to the children—I would not allow it. It was a very odd sensation, unlike anything I had ever experienced. We were in danger, true danger, and it thrilled me to know that I was equal to the challenge presented.
Perhaps the woman saw this fearlessness in my gaze, which I imagine had become rather hard and fiery, for it was then that she sighed, her comfortable, dignified composure falling away. She folded her hands before her like the woman from the portrait in Mr. Darrow’s study and began to look a bit desperate.
“Please, I’ve come back to you.” She took a step forward, and the boys huddled against me. The woman stopped again and smiled faintly. “I suppose I should have expected as much. I’ve been gone from you both for so long.”
“And Father.” Paul had let go of me, but did not move toward the other woman. He spoke with a slight edge in his voice.
At the mention of Mr. Darrow, the woman quickly looked back at the house and then returned her gaze to Paul. “Please don’t be angry with me. I never wanted to leave you, which is why I’ve come back. I would have returned to Everton, but there were rules I had to agree to.”
“Come home with us.” James stepped away from me to join his brother’s side.
The woman shook her head. “This is my home now, and you’re welcome here anytime you’d like.” She motioned to the massive house.
The boys looked at one another, and then to me, but I remained unconvinced.
“Do forgive me for being skeptical,” I said, trying to contain the smoking flesh and boiling blood surging beneath the confines of my skin. “But how can we be sure that you are really Mrs. Darrow, and not some impostor intent on doing us harm?”
“I can see that my husband chose well.” She paused at this, making an implication that was not lost on me. “If that were my intention, why would I be reasoning with you to believe my story? Wouldn’t I have done something by now to prove your point?”
“I do not pretend to understand the whims of the dead.”
“A wise decision. So you believe me then?”
I shot her a steely glare and changed the subject. “This place is hardly fit for children.”
“How can you be sure? You have not yet been inside. The House of Darkling can be whatever you choose to make of it.” She had begun to regain her confidence, much to my dismay, and her lips formed into a tight smile at her own cleverness. I would have none of it. I turned with the children pressed against me and began to trot briskly back into the orchard. The woman called after us, desperate once more, which was the only way I would deal with her. Desperate people are more likely to make mistakes.
“Please! You must give me the chance to prove myself! Ask me anything. Something that only Lily Darrow would know.”
I stopped at the edge of the orchard and turned around slowly, searching my mind for every scrap of information I had ever learned about my employer’s late wife.
Paul spoke up before I could. “What was the name of the lullaby you used to sing to us?”
The woman smiled and closed her eyes for a moment, as if listening for the music on the soft wind that began to blow through the orchard trees, the fruit on their branches swaying in the breeze. “ ‘Every Night at Everton.’ We made it up together, and it was different every night depending on what had happened during the day.”
This was enough proof for both of the children. They returned to their mother’s side and hugged her tightly, immediately sorry that they had ever doubted her intentions. I, on the other hand, was dubious even as the thrill of danger dissipated into caution. When a person died, they did not come back to their children, but if this had somehow been reversed for Mrs. Darrow—and I was not convinced that it had, nor that this was not some elaborate ruse to take advantage of the children of a wealthy widower—then why had none of my loved ones been able to do the same? It was for this reason and this reason alone that I followed them into the great house with unease, remembering those that I had lost and hoping against hope that if what the woman said were true, then perhaps the place contained more than one departed soul.
The parlor was small and intimate, the walls lined with square wooden panels and elaborate tapestries depicting the room itself filled with a strange pantheon of creatures, perhaps from some obscure mythology or religion with which I was unfamiliar. As I stared at the fabric, examining the intricate patterns and threading, I realized with some bewilderment that the shapes were changing, reknitting themselves from left to right in an impossible act of defiance of the rules of scientific propriety, recasting the occupants of the room until I recognized myself and the children as carefully constructed embroideries. I reached out to pull aside the tapestry, but I stopped myself before I could uncover the mechanism enabling its manipulation. Against my better judgment I preferred to believe, if only for a little while longer, that the house and the alleged Mrs. Darrow were part of something extraordinary.
A squat, muted chandelier hung low from the ceiling, casting the room in dim amber light. I sat on the edge of a thick leather armchair, determined not to sink back so far as to be rendered incapacitated should the strange situation spiral any further out of my control, even as I promised myself that it would not. To my bewilderment the cushions expanded as if the chair were fighting against me so that I might be more comfortable. Was it possible for furniture to become offended? I firmly kicked the leg behind my right foot, and the chair regained its former shape.
Before sitting down, Mrs. Darrow gently touched three of the wooden panels along the wall, each of them clicking open to reveal the different components of a full afternoon tea spread. She removed cups and a steaming pot from the first, a pedestal of finger sandwiches and scones from the second, and a chocolate tea cake from the last. I fought to ignore a pang of sympathy as I realized that the cake was the same as Mr. Darrow had provided during our midnight tea. She left it on a plate to the side of the table, as conspicuously untouched as her husband’s had been. I imagined the two of them sitting alone in two different houses, Mr. Darrow at Everton and Mrs. Darrow at the place called Darkling, staring at the empty chairs that surrounded them, silence shrieking, with tea cakes perched on lone plates like ceremonial offerings to memories not quite dead.
I eyed the boys carefully as they sat beside the woman who claimed to be their mother, sprawled on a plush divan before the large stone fireplace at the front of the room. The flames contorted into various shapes, casting shado
ws of flickering animals and their masters along the back wall. The children marveled at the trick for a long while, slowly drifting off to sleep as the alleged Mrs. Darrow watched me back, her eyes gleaming in the firelight, as dangerous and silver-green as a cat’s.
“Your tea will cool,” she said. Both boys were nearly asleep in her lap; even Paul, who was too old for that sort of thing.
I looked at the saucer and brought the cup to my lips, careful to seal them to the rim so as not to allow any of the liquid into my mouth. I was already at a disadvantage if the woman meant us any harm, a fact I firmly kept at the forefront of my mind, and sitting in the parlor of a woman who claimed to be dead, in a strange land with shadows that crawled and pieces of fruit that walked, the least I could do was avoid a potentially poisoned cup of tea.
I brought the cup away from my mouth and placed it back onto the saucer sitting primly in my lap. The other woman turned away from me and gazed into the fire.
“Is my husband well?” The tone of her voice was emotionless and elusive. It reminded me of Paul’s.
I considered the question before I answered. A vague, bland answer might lead to an informal inquisition, but a detailed one might hint at a relationship that was more involved than was true.
“I’ve been with the Darrow family for nine months, and in that time I’ve come to know Mr. Darrow as two very different people. The first man smiles when someone says something clever and eats as voraciously as the groundskeeper. But then there are times when he sees something either in the house or in the boys that makes him grow very distant. He is my employer, and so I don’t pretend to know him as one might know a friend, but whenever he is overcome by such an episode, I’ve begun to suspect that he’s thinking of what he has lost, and there is a sadness in his distance that leads me to believe that he may forever remain two people: one struggling to enjoy life, and the other trapped in sorrow.”
The woman did not look away from the fireplace. Her chest rose and fell in an uncomfortable quiet broken only by the ambient sounds of the room—the embers in the fire crackling; the grandfather clock chiming; something shuffling across the floor in one of the upper chambers of the great house. I brought the cup to my lips again, pretended to drink, and set it back onto the saucer.
“You are very thorough, Mrs. Markham.”
I placed the saucer on the table between us and stood to circle the room. I spotted a bookcase filled with obscure texts whose titles seemed to be in a language I had never seen before. I fingered the spines lovingly and turned back to Mrs. Darrow. “The one detail I find myself most curious about at present is the fact that I’m having a conversation with the alleged late wife of my current employer.”
The woman smiled, and the stoic decorum that had framed her every action since we entered the house partially melted away. She lifted herself gingerly out from beneath the children and stood before the fireplace.
“You are right to be suspicious of me.”
“The children believe you. Who am I to disagree with them? But by all accounts Mrs. Darrow died.”
“So I did.”
“I have lost many people from my life—my mother to cholera, my father to a heart attack, and my husband to a fire—and when they died, they did not come back.” The end of the last word sharpened in the air for a pregnant moment until I began again. “While I do not doubt the power of a mother’s love for her children, I will not believe that the love of my family was somehow inferior to yours.” I said this evenly, without hope of masking the jealous curiosity that had replaced my confidence, but I was determined nevertheless to have a cordial, honest discussion. “In order for this conversation to continue, I feel that I must ask—why you?”
The woman did not appear to be surprised at the directness of my question; in fact she seemed relieved. The alleged Mrs. Darrow spoke facing the fireplace, a silhouette before the flames.
“When I first took ill, I told anyone who would listen that I would conquer my sickness, that I would not accept anything less than a full recovery; that God was testing me. I followed the doctor’s instructions: I continued with my social engagements, I ate healthily, exercised regularly, and yet each day I grew more weary.
“Food began to make me queasy, and I lost the ability to stand under my own volition. I became confined to my bed and slowly wasted away until the skin hung from my bones, loose and pallid. People came to my bedside and whispered words of solace and comfort, but that was of little consolation after I went blind, and even less when I lost my hearing.
“You would think that a person in such a state would be adrift in the darkness, but I could still feel; I could still smell. I knew when my family was nearby; when Henry kissed my forehead or pushed a strand of hair from my face, when James took my hand into his to keep me company, just as I knew that Paul could not bring himself to see me bedridden. I knew that I would die and that they would miss me, though death was a thing I craved more and more each day.
“The very act of breathing slowly drove me to the brink of insanity. Even in my delirium I found it ironic how a thing that gives one life could become the most unbearable part of living. The moments between each breath grew further and further apart, a series of contractions as I delivered my own end, until finally, I stopped.
“I realized I had died when I opened my eyes and could see again. A man stood before me, as unremarkable and ordinary a person as I have ever encountered. He wore a black suit and a bowler hat, and he held out his hand. He said nothing, but he did not have to. I knew who he was, and what he expected me to do. Free from illness, I felt revitalized, elated even, and yet something whispered to me: a voice in the place between life and death. It spoke to me, whereas Death did not; it told me I was special, and that exceptions could be made for any rule. It told me the story of my life, one that did not end with a woman in her sickbed.
“The forgettable man in the ordinary black suit grew fainter and fainter, retreating down a corridor made of light until he was gone altogether. The voice grew more substantial, until there was a hand, and it took me someplace else . . . to a place for the Things That Do Not Die.”
I felt a chill run through my body. I was near a window, and the darkness outside seemed to press against it, flexing the glass with an ominous groan.
“And here you stand,” I whispered.
“I do not know why it was different for me. Perhaps I was in the right place at the right time. Regardless of why the opportunity presented itself, I took it. Children need their mothers, little boys most of all.”
I paused at that turn of phrase. The old nightmare of my mother’s death returned, as did the voice of the mysterious woman from my dream, who, it was now so obvious, sounded very much like Mrs. Darrow. My heart fluttered with a mixture of anger and fear. I approached the divan with the sleeping children, clutching the lip of the seat.
“The children can’t stay here. It isn’t safe.”
“Nothing on the estate would dare hurt the children.”
“And their governess?”
Mrs. Darrow, for by that point I could no longer pretend to think of her as anything else, stepped closer and put her hand over my own. She was warm to the touch, more so than any living person I had ever encountered. With the children between us, I relaxed for a moment.
“I mean no one any harm,” she said.
I looked her carefully in the eyes, their catlike quality replaced by something more somber and quiet. Suddenly her intrusion into my dream seemed more sad than threatening.
“I’ve dreamt of you. You tricked us into coming here.”
“I did what I had to do in order to see my children.”
“What is it that you want from them?”
“More time.”
“To what end? You have passed on, and it can’t be healthy for them to meet you somewhere in between.”
“Is it any worse tha
n allowing them to grow up without me? You must have seen what happens to some children who lose their parents.”
A barrage of heartless, foulmouthed little boys passed before my mind’s eye, hitting and shouting, stealing and spitting, raping scullery maids in the middle of the night.
“That can be avoided.”
“Yes, it can. That’s why I came here. They don’t have to be without me. I don’t have to be gone.”
The woman moved her hand up, grasping my wrist. There was a desperation in her grip.
“You never were.”
Mrs. Darrow dropped her hand away and turned back to the fireplace. The flames licked at the embers, which had stacked themselves into something like a house.
“I’d like them to visit Darkling, when they can. Time passes differently here, and it would be as if they’d never left Everton. My husband would never know.”
“You don’t wish to see him?”
“He can never know.”
“He’s lost without you.” My throat tightened as I said the words.
“You must not tell him!” The woman’s voice raised in pitch, waking the boys with a start.
“Mother?”
Mrs. Darrow was back at their sides before they could lift their heads, kissing their faces gently as she lifted them off the divan. I felt that I had touched upon something important, perhaps even powerful. She was afraid, and her feelings for her husband were clearly complicated. Suddenly the situation became very manageable. She was no different from any other person and could be manipulated if necessary. I was surprised at the callousness I had discovered within myself. It was not in my nature to have thoughts so overtly cunning, but then I had never been faced with such a dangerous situation. I wondered if the person one becomes when faced with such things is the person one truly is, or only a temporary mask worn to survive. Again, a shiver ran through me.
Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling Page 6
