The Silent Companions

by Laura Purcell

‘Mabel! Mabel!’ The girl looked almost feral. Tears streamed down her face. Elsie seized her shoulders and held her steady. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘How could you? How could you?’ Her fists pounded against Elsie’s breast. ‘How can you be so wicked? Oh, oh!’

  ‘What? What are you talking about?’

  ‘You know! You know!’ Mabel’s knees gave way; she crumpled to the floor. ‘It weren’t funny. I was that scared . . .’ She began to sob.

  Elsie released her and looked helplessly from Sarah to Mrs Holt and then to Helen. ‘Helen, can you try to get some sense from her?’

  Helen laid her beater on the floor. Tentatively, she placed a hand on Mabel’s shoulder. ‘Hush, now. What happened? It wasn’t . . .’ She dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘Did you see another one?’

  ‘She – she—’ Mabel could barely speak. ‘She must have put it in my room. Knows I hates them! All part of some – some joke!’

  Prickles darted up and down Elsie’s skin. ‘What is in your room, Mabel?’

  ‘As if you don’t know! One of them things!’

  She looked at Sarah. ‘No. That cannot be. Mrs Holt locked all the companions in the cellar. I saw her do it.’

  ‘Not this one. I never seen it before.’

  Blood thumped in her ears. ‘No. No, I will not believe this.’

  Rigid with determination, Elsie stalked down the corridor. She would see it with her own eyes. She would prove them wrong.

  The door swung open with ease, revealing Mabel’s narrow bed, the washstand and the prints on the wall.

  It was standing in the hip bath.

  A stout woman, brushing her hair. Her kirtle was the colour of pickled gherkins. She wore dirty linen oversleeves and an apron that fell to her ankles. Her expression teased as she swept the brush through the ends of her wavy brown hair, the other hand smoothing behind. It was a flirtatious look, yet somehow hostile.

  ‘Go on then,’ Elsie croaked. She was light-headed with a sense of her own bravado. ‘Move if you’re going to do it. Move, damn you, move!’

  The eyes remained still. But she heard, just at the edge of her consciousness, the sound of bristles tearing through dry hair. The scent of roses flared up, thick and choking. Suddenly it was very warm.

  Her mind would not stand it. Whirling round, she slammed the door shut and ran back down the corridor. Her legs refused to move with their usual speed. She was slow now, weighted by the baby. Vulnerable.

  The others were waiting on the landing. They had coaxed Mabel onto a chair and she was dry-faced, very pale.

  ‘It was locked,’ Mrs Holt said. ‘I swear it was locked. Mrs Bainbridge doesn’t have the key, Mabel. I just don’t understand how this has happened.’

  ‘Mabel.’ Elsie tried to keep her voice steady but it was a strange, swooping thing, beyond her control. ‘All of you. I want you to think, very carefully. Who has been in the house? We have had tradesmen and workmen. Gardeners. I want you to make a list. Someone, somewhere, for whatever reason, is playing a trick upon us. Putting handprints on the windows and . . .’ She frowned, distracted by a glint of light. ‘Mabel, are you wearing my diamonds?’

  Colour flared into the maid’s cheeks. ‘I were warming them, ma’am. That’s what Helen says they do, in the fancy houses. Ain’t it, Helen? Warm the mistress’s pearls.’

  ‘Warming them?’ Sarah cried. ‘A likely story! Mrs Bainbridge cannot even wear them during her mourning.’

  Elsie had ridden a crest of anxiety all day. It had to break. Anger flickered through her fear and she seized it with both hands. ‘Take them off!’ she shouted. ‘Take them off at once!’ Fresh tears spurting, Mabel grappled at the base of her neck, but her hair was tangled in the chain. ‘If you don’t take them off this minute, I will send you out of this house!’

  Helen stepped in with her steady, chafed hands. She unfastened the clasp and pulled the necklace away. Threads of Mabel’s dark hair still clung to the chain.

  ‘Didn’t mean no harm,’ Mabel muttered, rocking. ‘Didn’t mean no harm, didn’t deserve no bloody thing in my room.’

  There was a bang, then a shout rang out in the east wing.

  Elsie’s eyes met Sarah’s. ‘It sounds like they have prised the garret door open,’ she whispered. ‘Go and get the second part of that diary.’

  Sarah went at once.

  Mrs Holt paced up and down, pressing her hands together. ‘Dear me, dear me. What a to-do! And the laundry not even finished . . .’

  Elsie looked at Mabel, shivering in Helen’s arms. She felt calmer now; slightly ashamed of her harsh words. ‘Look, Mabel, whatever you think, I did not place that companion in your room. I am starting to hate them just as much as you do.’

  Mabel looked up at her, but she could not read the expression.

  Sarah returned at a run, breathless and empty-handed. She looked queer. Pale, shivering like a whippet.

  ‘Sarah, what is it? Has the book gone?’

  ‘No, it’s there but she didn’t . . .’ She gulped down a breath. ‘She didn’t want me to take it. I could feel that the poor soul didn’t want me to read it.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘She was in there.’ Sarah’s chin trembled. ‘Hetta was in the garret.’

  It was cold enough for snow, but Peters and Stilford sweated as they stood in the yard, swinging down the axe-heads again and again, thunk, thunk. Piece by piece, chunk by chunk, the wood splintered away, first brown then maggot-white, stringy and harder to cut. Peters rested for a moment, one hand on his hip. A miscellany of body parts lay heaped before him: wooden heads, severed wooden hands.

  Elsie huddled by the kitchen door with Sarah and the female servants, wearing her heaviest cloak. She wished she were a man. If she had strength to pick up an axe she would do it; hack that gypsy boy’s face to bits. She thought of the circular saw in the match factory, newly cut splints rattling from its teeth into the trough. A shiver ran through her.

  ‘It seems such a shame,’ whined Sarah. ‘They are antiques! My ancestor Anne Bainbridge bought them in sixteen thirty-five. Could we not at least have tried to sell them?’

  ‘Who would pay good money to have a bunch of dolls give them the willies?’ Mabel cried. ‘They’d have to be touched in the head, ma’am.’

  Sarah bit her lips. She was unhappy and it made Elsie feel uncomfortable. By rights, the companions belonged to a descendant of Bainbridge blood – not an interloper, a mere Bainbridge by marriage. She was destroying Sarah’s heritage. But what else was she supposed to do? Have them cropping up all over the house like jack-in-the-boxes, scaring the life out of them all?

  ‘The extra firewood will come in handy for the winter,’ Mrs Holt put in.

  Elsie’s skin itched. ‘No. I do not want to burn them inside the house. I do not think that would be . . . wise.’

  ‘Could I give it to the villagers then, madam? In Fayford?’

  The axe whistled through the air again, followed by the clop of falling wood.

  ‘Perhaps it is best if we just burn them here, in the yard.’

  Mrs Holt did not reply, but Elsie heard her little cluck of disapproval.

  Was she being foolish? It did seem silly, now the companions lay dismembered on the cobbles – a nervous reaction from an overwrought female. And yet the horses were uneasy, their ears flat, the whites of their eyes rolling. Beatrice the cow was keeping well back in her stable, lipping another clump of hay from her net. The animals knew. Animals always sensed these things.

  ‘Right then,’ Peters panted. Perspiration ran into his eyes. ‘Last one.’

  They all turned to look at the one Sarah called Hetta. Poised, silent and alone, she gazed over the massacred remains of her fellows; her smile serene, the white rose against her breast.

  Elsie did not think she could watch Peters chop this last one up. What would it be like to see the lineaments of that face, so like her own in childhood, fractured? The past amputated, then going up in flame
s.

  Peters took a step forwards.

  ‘No!’ It was Sarah. ‘No, please. We cannot! Not Hetta. She has suffered enough already.’

  Elsie averted her head so that the side of her bonnet hid Sarah and the companion from view. ‘We have to, Sarah. There is something about these things, something . . . wrong.’

  ‘How do you know it is wrong? You only know that it scares you.’

  A child’s hand on the window, the slide of those eyes . . .

  ‘Yes, it scares me. That is reason enough. What do you think it is doing to my baby, having all these jumps and frights?’

  ‘But Hetta is my ancestor. I’ve read about her, I feel that I know her.’ Sarah’s voice slid from pleading to desperation. ‘What if she is trying to contact us? If she is asking me to right an injustice? I cannot fail her!’They said that, didn’t they? That the murdered could not rest but wandered, seeking justice. Elsie knew for a fact it was nonsense. It must be that old woman Mrs Crabbly, putting notions into Sarah’s head. Mesmerism, indeed!

  ‘Miss Sarah,’ said Mrs Holt, ‘if I may be so bold as to say so . . . I’ve lived in this house since I was a young woman. We never had any ghosts!’

  Helen sniffed.

  ‘But you are not related to Hetta!’ There was a fanatic energy about Sarah. ‘She would not try to reach you. We are alike, she and I. Please let me keep her. At least until I have finished the diary.’

  A sound came from the pile of companions – a dry creaking, like beams settling. She had to decide. Soon it would grow dark.

  ‘Do it,’ Mabel whispered. ‘Hack her up and burn the buggers to hell.’

  Mrs Holt whirled round. ‘Mabel!’

  Elsie sighed. The world was full of them, past and present: sad, lonely little girls. She has suffered enough already. Was Sarah talking about Hetta, or herself?

  Elsie had already taken Sarah’s house and her diamond necklace. There was no doubt what Rupert would want her to do now.

  ‘Sarah may keep Hetta, if it is so important to her. But mark me, I want it kept locked up in the garret, not in my house, not anywhere near my baby.’

  ‘Oh thank you, thank you, Mrs Bainbridge!’ Sarah squealed. ‘I know you are doing the right thing.’ A red circle glowed on either cheek. Her eyes were glittering, like frost.

  ‘In the garret, do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, yes. I will keep her in the garret, that is no trouble at all.’

  Sarah seized Hetta as if she were snatching her from the jaws of death. She held the painted side against her body, but she could not manoeuvre it with her bad hand.

  ‘Who will help me move her upstairs?’

  Both Mabel and Helen stepped back.

  ‘For heaven’s sake!’ cried Mrs Holt. She jangled her keys and unlocked the kitchen door. ‘Come along then, Miss Sarah. My girls have become afraid of their own shadows.’

  As soon as they were inside, Elsie withdrew a box of matches from her pocket. Peters held out his hand, but she shook her head. She wanted to set the fire herself.

  ‘About time, too,’ whispered Mabel.

  Elsie approached the woodpile. The wind picked up and her veil billowed out behind her like dark smoke. She had a vision of herself, standing there, black and solemn.

  The companions were a jigsaw of parts: the gypsy’s hair, scalped; that horrendous stiff baby, severed in half. They could not scare her now. Withdrawing a matchstick, she scratched it along the sandpaper.

  A spark, a flare of blue, then the orange flame. Warmth prickled through her gloves. She watched the light bob in the breeze, feeling the power there in her fingers, ready to release with a single flick. She could smell the smoke already.

  ‘Do it, ma’am,’ Helen urged.

  She let the match fall.

  Wood cracked and the pile burst into a blaze. An eye watched her from beneath a flicker of flame. It melted, bleeding down the cheek, the colours running.

  THE BRIDGE, 1635

  I thought I had done the right thing. I thought all was well.

  The gypsy boy, who calls himself Merripen, is established in the stables. He has taken a solemn vow not to leave doors unlocked or abet his thieving kin. I know what these people are like.

  Ever since I relented towards her friend, Hetta has been all sweetness and light, running up and down the stairs with her spaniels bumping after her, cutting swathes of herbs for the kitchen and marvelling over my diamonds. I was surprised by her glee, but I was also proud of her. I thought she had conquered her disappointment like a lady. I assumed it was enough for her to have her friend in employment. How well Josiah has managed her, I said to myself. How was I to know? How could I dream that he had not even told her?

  It all started when the boys arrived. The weather was sultry, uncomfortably close. All morning the magpies chittered, cackling their secrets. But my sons were in high spirits, tumbling from their carriage on their gangly legs, slapping one another on the shoulders.

  James led the way into the Great Hall. Henry towered over him. He has shot up this year, tall and thin like a reed, like one of Hetta’s saplings. And Charles—! I never can believe that Charles came from my body. He is wide, sturdy and built with the strength of a mastiff. No wonder he wreaked so much damage; no wonder the midwife said . . . But that does not matter now.

  We were full of embraces, full of news. Dinner passed in a happy, raucous blur and Hetta was smiling, smiling all the while. Once we had eaten, she showed her brothers the preparations for the masque: trapdoors and levers; platforms made to look like clouds. She tried a pirouette and James swept her into his arms, flying her around the painted backdrop of a blue sky.

  It was then that another man arrived from Mr Samuels’s shop with boxes.

  ‘More!’ Josiah pretended to be scandalised, but I saw he was pleased with every single choice I had made.

  ‘We will astound the Queen with our curiosities,’ I said. ‘The Bridge will be the greatest showpiece she has ever seen.’

  This time it was the counterfeit people – the wooden figures Mr Samuels called his companions. What wonders they are! The lady from the shop was there, and many more besides: a sleeping child; a lady with her lute; a gentleman with a doxy on his lap.

  ‘God’s blood! Did you ever see the like?’ Charles went over and touched one with his fat hand. ‘A person stepped right out of a portrait!’

  Hetta gave a high, loud squeal of delight, like a dog when it sees its master. She bounded over to Charles’s side and gazed up at the figures, wonder written all over her face. As the boys chattered, she weaved in and around the boards, fingering their edges.

  ‘Hello,’ said Henry. ‘Henrietta Maria’s playing hide and go seek.’

  So that’s what we did all day while the servants worked to make the house perfect: ran about like children, placing the companions in the strangest places, trying to make each other jump.

  ‘They need to look real,’ I said. ‘I want people to come upon them and start. I want the King to bump into a companion and beg his pardon!’

  We found a thousand nooks and crannies in the house, a thousand corners to position them just right. As the light fell, the wooden figures watched me from their hiding places and they seemed to smirk, complicit. They promised to give the Queen the surprise of her life.

  ‘It will be a triumph,’ Josiah laughed. ‘The whole thing a triumph.’

  It had grown rather late, but none of us could settle for a quiet hour of reading before supper; we were feverish, highly strung. In less than forty-eight hours, royalty would be in our house. Already the place was coming alive in a way it has never done before. We had prepared as far as we could. Now there was nothing to do but wait.

  ‘When do we rehearse the masque?’ James said, pale and anxious in the candlelight. ‘I practised the steps you sent me but I would rather do it here.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I told him. ‘The players are coming tomorrow.’

  ‘The Triumph of Platonic Love. It sounds
very well, doesn’t it?’ Henry stroked the lace at his cuffs. ‘Not that we will rival Mr Jones’s pieces in any way, but I’m sure the Queen will be pleased. Do you dance, Charles?’

  The three boys erupted into laughter. I have seen Charles dance but twice since he was a small boy: it is not a performance designed to inspire maternal pride. He has no sense of time or grace, and his stout figure makes him most comical.

  Charles took the jibe on the nose, though he pretended to glower and shook his fist at his brother. ‘Oh, wouldn’t you like to see it? But I have no wish to put the Queen in a fright. I swagger on and do my speech, that’s all. And what a speech!’

  I was so busy laughing with the boys that I did not notice Hetta stealing up to where Josiah sat on the chair before the fire. It was only when I heard him speak that I turned to see her beside the armrest, tugging on his sleeve.

  ‘Yes, Henrietta Maria? What is it?’ She blinked her big eyes, green splintered with gold and brown in the firelight. ‘Well? What is it that you want?’

  I should have known then. I should have paid attention to the shadows scurrying over her face and the queer, frightening hush. But I just sat there, dumb, and watched them; watched Hetta point to her chest, her eyes alive with expectation.

  ‘How now?’ Charles called. ‘Speak up, little Hetta!’

  The boys hooted again.

  ‘Leave her alone, Charles!’ I snapped, but it only made them laugh harder. They were so excited, I believe they would have laughed at death itself.

  ‘It is only in jest, Mother.’

  ‘I really cannot understand what Henrietta Maria is trying to communicate,’ Josiah said. ‘Anne, have you any idea?’

  Slowly, carefully, Hetta rose onto the tips of her toes and turned a perfect pirouette, her arms arched above her tortoiseshell head. She looked like a dream, like a French courtier dancing ballet. I had not known she could dance like that. But the sight did not fill me with pleasure or a mother’s pride. I saw the light in her face, and the guilty scowl upon Josiah’s, and all the pieces slotted into place.

  ‘She wants to know her part!’ Henry bleated. ‘What part will Henrietta Maria have in the masque, Father?’