Now that I saw him in the candlelight, he was more beautiful than I had imagined. Skin marble white, paler than mine and glowing, and hair like the night sea’s glossy waves. His face was long and angular with a strong brow, like the artists’ renderings I had of the Arthurian knights. With his midnight blue wolf eyes, he stared at me, taking me in.
“Who are you?” I asked, my voice timid and feeble.
You and I have gone by many names. It does not matter what we call each other. What matters is that you remember. Do you remember, Mina?
His lips did not move, and yet I heard every word that he said. I wanted to ask a thousand questions, but one long and slender finger reached out and touched my lips. Locking eyes with me, he slid my nightdress from my shoulder. Shock waves rippled through my body as his finger followed the curve under my neck, dusting my chin, and slowly sliding to the other ear. Surely just one finger could not create this bedlam inside me.
Ah, so you do remember.
My heart palpitated wildly, but I was not afraid. Something familiar about him prevented me from fearing him, though I had witnessed how dangerous he could be on the banks of the Thames when he had thrashed my attacker.
“Yes, yes, I remember,” I said. I would have said anything to keep his hand on me, to wallow in the wild energy he brought to my body, and to stare into the infinite violet blue of his eyes. Though I said nothing else, every nerve in my body begged him to keep touching me.
What is your desire?
I did not have the audacity to say the words aloud, but this being knew me and knew my thoughts. Our eyes were locked, and our minds were linked. I felt connected to him in a way that I had not known with another person. We were not one, but we were in harmony, as if we were both parts of the same symphony. With eerie slowness, his finger moved down my neck to the breastbone and across my chest until it reached my nipple. Then something extraordinary happened. He held it there, barely moving but sending a wild sensation through my breast that resonated in every curve and turn of me. My body was like a musical instrument that only he knew how to play. I tried to breathe while he moved at the same deliberate pace to the other breast, all the while staring into my eyes. I was electrified, fierce currents dancing through my veins. I gasped for breath, which only heightened my arousal. I had no idea how long I lingered in this blissful place. It might have been minutes or hours, but I rode the wave of it, letting it wash me through with excitement.
You are mine again, Mina. I have waited for you and watched over you since you were a little girl. Do you remember those times?
He stopped touching me. He looked into my eyes, waiting for me to answer. But my thoughts took another direction. Here was the phantom that had been luring me out into the night since I was a child. Could it be that he was responsible for my father’s disdain and my mother’s rejection? Excitement slowly turned to anger. As much as I did not want to leave the blissful place, I could not help myself, and he read my thoughts.
I came to you to help you, Mina. You were in danger. You needed me.
I began shrieking at him. “Yes, I remember everything. I am Mina Murray, whose parents sent her away from home because she was a strange and frightening child. I have made my own way to a good life, a respectable life, and a life over which I have control. I am a teacher at a school for girls, and I am engaged to be married to a man who loves me.”
I knew that I was sabotaging my own pleasure and perhaps so much more by rebelling against him and whatever memories he wanted me to have. I knew I was fighting against the very ecstasy he evoked from my body. But just as I could not earlier resist submitting to him, I could not combat the hostility I felt now. He was asking me to remember the very things I had spent my life trying to forget.
Do you want me to go, Mina?
“Yes, go!” I cried aloud. “Leave me in peace before you wreck my life again.” I curled up like a fetus and began to cry. Soon, my body was racked with sobs and grief. I cried for a long time, until every tear was wrung from my eyes. Cold began to seep in again through my clothes. I uncurled myself and opened my eyes. My mysterious stranger was gone, and I was lying on the grass inside the stark ruin of the abbey in my nightdress, looking up at the stars.
I climbed through the empty window of the abbey and walked to the churchyard, where low lamplight flickered on the headstones. A cemetery at night may frighten some, but after my experience this evening, the familiarity of the place comforted me. I paused at the grave of a child, resting my hand on the wing of an angel so that I could wipe off the grit that was irritating the bottoms of my feet, when I saw two figures on the bench where the old whaler and I sat by day looking out over the sea. An unmistakably familiar wavy blond mane cascaded over the back of the bench, while a man’s form loomed over her, his face buried in her neck.
I had wandered into this scene involuntarily and should have run away as quickly as possible, but I was riveted by the sight of his mouth consuming her neck, her cheeks, her shoulders, sliding luxuriously back up to her ear and lingering there. He opened her shirt, exposing her bosom, and lifted one breast out of her corset. Then he picked her up and put her on his lap so that she straddled him, and I watched them in profile as he took her breast into his mouth, licking and biting her nipple. I was close enough to see his slick tongue lapping at her, and my own lust, so recently aroused, began to stir. The feeling was so vivid that I could imagine that it was not Lucy on that bench but me, with Morris Quince’s well-formed lips on my nipple and his huge powerful hands all over me. I stood still, relishing the feeling, when he looked up and saw me. His shoulders dropped, and he said something to Lucy, whose head jerked around.
“Mina!” Her voice was full of admonition. She jumped off Morris’s lap and stood up, taking big strides over to me. Her hands made two fists, which swung back and forth like a toy soldier’s. “Why are you following me?”
Her blouse was open, and I stared at the white skin of her breasts, which were still of considerable size considering her weight loss. The bruiselike marks I had seen earlier were more plentiful now and deeper in color.
“I am n-not following you,” I stammered. The cold night air, the strange events, and the shock of seeing Lucy, caught up with me. “I—I don’t know how I got here. I was walking in my sleep again.”
“Mina?” Morris was taking off his linen jacket and putting it over my shoulders. I am sure he was embarrassed to see me in my transparent nightdress. “You are all wet and you have no shoes! We must get you indoors.”
Everyone looked at my bare feet, which were stark white. My toes grabbed at the ground as if I were trying to hold myself to the earth.
“I cannot allow a lady to walk barefoot,” Morris said, looking around as if a pair of shoes would miraculously pop out from one of the graves. He looked helplessly at Lucy, waiting for her to suggest something. “I will carry her,” he said.
Lucy’s impatient expression said that she did not sanction the idea. “What would happen if we are seen, with you making such a spectacle?”
“I can walk in bare feet. I have done it many times,” I said. I wanted to disappear into the ether just as my phantom had done.
“But you look ill, Miss Mina. Your teeth are chattering. You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.” Morris’s eyebrows were squeezed tightly together, forming one long hedge across his strong brow.
“I—I have bad dreams,” I said, torn between taking comfort in his concern and Lucy’s annoyance at having been interrupted. Morris Quince’s kindness felt like a rope thrown to save me from drowning, but Lucy was not allowing me to hold on to it.
“We had better just go,” Lucy said. She nodded her head at the jacket around my shoulders. “You can’t take that with you.”
“But she is half naked and has had a shock.”
“My mother will see it,” Lucy said with finality, and I took the jacket off and handed it back to Morris. “I’ll give her my shawl.” She untied the shawl, which she’d looped around her
waist, and draped it on my shoulders. “We must part ways here,” she said to him, leaving him looking forlorn as he watched us walk away.
Lucy was silent for a while. She put her arm around me and pulled me close to her. “My, you are cold, Mina.” I snuggled closer to her, slipping my arm around her. I could feel the top of her hip bone jutting through her skirt. Despite her thinness, her body gave off immense heat.
“You are playing a very dangerous game, Lucy,” I said. “Half the town is probably still awake, what with the shipwreck.”
“He was walking me home when we decided to go to the churchyard to look out over the view. We had no intention of carrying on like that out in the open, Mina, but we are so much in love.”
The sky was mottled with shifting gray clouds that parted, revealing one bright, shining star. We walked for a few blocks, and when we turned the corner, Lucy stopped dead, her hand tightening around my shoulder, holding me back.
“I’m freezing—” I said, but Lucy interrupted me, pointing up the hill to the rooms. Fiery yellow light blazed in the bank of windows lining the two parlors, as if Mrs. Westenra was hosting a party in the middle of the night.
“She’s found me out!” Lucy wrapped her arms around her stomach as if her entrails were about to fall out. She bent over, gasping for air. I thought she might vomit on the pavement. “I cannot go in there,” she said.
“The lights may be on because your mother took ill,” I offered. That was the first thought that came to my mind. “Someone may have called for a doctor. Hilda, or a neighbor.”
“Yes. That is undoubtedly what has happened,” Lucy said, running her fingers through her snarly hair. “Oh dear, poor mother!”
Then her face took on the wild-eyed look that had become familiar to me. She took my hands in hers. “Oh, I am a terrible person. I am more worried that my affair has been found out than I am about my mother’s health; more concerned with it than with my poor friend, awakening alone in a strange place!”
Lucy’s eyes were wide and glassy, floating in the sockets above her gaunt cheeks. I was very cold and I knew by the burning lights above that the evening’s drama was not over. “We had better see what the trouble is inside.”
Lucy smoothed her clothes and checked her buttons. She brushed her skirt with quick little gestures, her hands like feathers. “Do I look composed?”
“More than I,” I said. “At least you are clothed. But you had better hide those marks on your neck and chest. I am assuming that Mr. Quince put them there?”
Lucy took the shawl from me and wrapped it around herself. “No matter what is said, or what questions are asked, leave the talking to me,” she said in a tone that was a far cry from the impassioned love victim of moments ago.
I had no choice but to believe in her. At school, while Kate liked to think of herself as the rebel, Lucy was the one whose quick tongue and blithe way of doing whatever she wanted put her above the rules. Kate was defiant, always making a spectacle of her disobedience, whereas Lucy felt entitled to do as she pleased and never expected anyone to stop her. I hoped she was still the girl who could get away with collecting money for candy and saying it was for the blind.
We walked up the stairs to the rooms and opened the door. The parlor was lit for company. A tea service sat on a pedestal table but the chairs flanking it were empty, as were the two divans that faced each other over a small, low table. The room looked like a theatrical set before the actors had arrived to begin the play. We ventured deeper into the parlor, where we heard voices from the hall. Mrs. Westenra appeared, a pink-and-white striped nightcap framing her face. She was followed by a night watchman in uniform.
“Merciful heavens,” she cried. “They are safe!”
“As I assured you, madam,” the policeman said. “During the summer months, young ladies like to stroll at night. No harm done, eh?”
“No harm? I nearly died from fright! What can you girls have meant by disappearing in the middle of the night? Lucy, are you trying to murder your poor mother? And Mina?”
The policeman stood behind the lady, his eyes averted. I suppose he was trying not to look at me in my nightdress.
Mrs. Westenra took a lap robe from the back of a chair and put it around me. “What is the meaning of wandering about in this unseemly condition?”
Lucy did not wait for me to answer but struck out on a defensive attack. “Mother, please calm yourself. Mina and I have been through our own nightmares this evening. Why is there a police officer here?”
“Why?” The lady looked in disbelief at the officer. Upon closer inspection, I saw that he was very young. His swallow-tailed coat with gleaming silver buttons, wide leather belt, and polished boots endowed him with authority that he did not yet own. I felt sorry for him having to deal with a distraught middle-aged woman prone to histrionics.
“Why?” Mrs. Westenra continued. “Because I woke in the middle of the night feeling poorly. I went into the bedroom to ask you to attend to me, Lucy, and I discovered an empty bed. At two o’clock in the morning! I did not know what to do. Hilda is spending the night at home, I was alone, and my heart—well, my poor heart. I thought I would die, it was pounding so loudly in my chest. I went to the window and screamed for help. I was shrieking like a madwoman. A kind gentleman sent word to the chief constable, who sent out a watchman—this delightful young man here—who has comforted a frightened woman. I might have succumbed to a full attack of angina had it not been for him. Why, he even mixed my medication for me. And perfectly so, I might add.” She smiled at him.
“You have been very brave, madam,” he said, adjusting the chin strap of his police helmet under his strong, square jaw.
Lucy stood tall, taking over the situation. “I cannot thank you enough, sir, for attending to my mother. Her condition causes her to become overemotional.”
Mrs. Westenra started to protest, but Lucy interrupted her. “It is all very simply explained. Mina suffers from the same sleepwalking malady as Father did. She has had some dreadful incidents recently in London, which she told me about the evening she arrived here. Isn’t that right, Mina?”
True to my promise, I nodded but kept silent, letting Lucy tell her story.
“I woke up and saw that she was not in the bed. From what she told me of her previous episodes, I knew that she could venture quite far, so I rushed outside. I should have left a note for you, Mother. I am very sorry, indeed. But I was desperate to find Mina before she came to any harm.”
“And are you quite all right now, miss?” the officer asked me. “Had you wandered very far?”
“Yes, to the churchyard,” I answered. “I go there every day because the view is so lovely. I suppose that my body simply led me there out of habit.”
“All the while in your sleep?” He looked suspicious now.
“Oh yes,” Mrs. Westenra said. “My late husband suffered the same illness. We used to discover him in the most unusual places. Sometimes he did not return at all but was found wandering the heath near our home in London.”
“Strange, indeed, madam. But I have heard of such things. My gran says that the spirits like to call out to us when we are asleep.” He smiled weakly, as if he did not know whether to believe his grandmother’s superstitions or not.
“Your gran must come for tea sometime when our friend Dr. Seward is here. He will set her straight on these matters,” said Mrs. Westenra, assuming the learned air I’d seen before when she had mentioned her discussions of medical affairs with John Seward. “It is the mind that imagines such things, the unconscious mind, which is a very different organ from the conscious mind. If you read up on the latest findings of medical doctors, you will see that I am correct.”
“I shall do that, madam,” he said politely, but smiling at Lucy. Because of his young age, I suspected that he wanted to win her good opinion, not her mother’s.
“Might we let this good man leave now so that we all can get some sleep?” Lucy’s technique for getting herself out of t
rouble had not diminished. She had lied to her mother and to the night watchman and was getting away with it. The officer was already taking steps toward the door.
“Lucy, dear, take the lamp to the top of the stairs so that our guest will have some light,” said the mother.
“Not necessary,” said the officer. But Lucy already had the lamp in her hand. When she turned around, her shawl fell from her shoulders, and the light illuminated the pattern of purple bruises and wound marks stippled against the cream white of her neck and chest. Against the bright lamplight, they were like roses flowering in the sun. Rings of tooth marks sat at the base of her neck, like red-rimmed eyes staring out at the world.
The officer squinted his eyes at Lucy’s neck. “Miss, were you attacked by someone?”
Lucy put the lamp down, but her mother picked it up, holding it up to her daughter’s face. The marks were even more awful in the brighter light offered by the proximity of the lamp.
Lucy put her hand to her throat. “What? No, of course not.”
Mrs. Westenra said nothing, but stared at her daughter’s neck. Rather roughly, she took Lucy to the mirror on the wall and turned her toward it, holding the lamp so close to Lucy’s neck that she jerked her face aside to avoid the heat of it. Lucy looked at her own reflection, and then shied away from it.
“You certainly look as if you have been attacked,” Mrs. Westenra said.
“Miss, if someone has hurt you, it will do you no good to protect him.” The officer now assumed the authority he had earlier lacked. “This is a peaceful place, and we do not take kindly to the sort of violence committed in London. If a lady is harmed in these parts, we find the culprit right away. We do not let him haunt our streets to commit more mayhem. You can be sure of that.”
“Lucy?” Mrs. Westenra seemed to be challenging her daughter. I was grateful that Lucy had made me promise to keep quiet. I was fearful for her, but at the same time I was curious to see how she would get out of this predicament.
She did not disappoint. Rather than turn red with shame, as she should have done, Lucy stood as defiant as a war goddess, her bruised neck held high. She asked her mother to sit down. “I wanted to spare you the details of the horror that befell me,” she said, putting a hand on her mother’s shoulder. “I was afraid that the shock would bring on an attack, and then, what would I do? I did not want to be responsible for causing that, Mother.”
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