by Quenby Olson
"Now," Lady Francesca says, and says it again as if she's attempting to free something that has lodged itself on the back of her tongue. Slowly, she unfurls her fingers, her oval nails shining dully in the soft light from the nearest lamp. Her rings and bracelets clatter as she lays her palms flat on the surface of the table, and there's a nod to her partners before everyone moves to do the same.
The wood is cold against my skin, an unusual pleasure as the air behind us grows steadily warmer. The man to my right perches on the edge of his seat, his back straight but for the slight forward slouch of his shoulders. He glances at me out of the corner of his eye and gives me a benign smile.
Finally, Lady Francesca summons the full strength of her voice, but skimming beneath every word, I hear Marta's tutelage, shaping each syllable, drawing out every breath so there's something of a rhythm to her speech pattern. Almost a chant, and I realise that in all my years of speaking in front of others, I was never able to manage quite so well as this. In fact, her voice has such a hypnotic effect on me that I fail to attend to what she's saying, instead taking this chance to study the other people seated around the table.
There are no neophytes here, that much is plain. The older ladies know how to sit, their faces taking on the look of someone about to slip into a trance. I've no doubt they have all dabbled in the privacy of their own homes, invited neighbours over for an evening of rapping on the furniture, or perhaps shut themselves away for an hour or so while allowing the spirits to communicate with them though pen and paper. I sense the thinness of the barrier around some of them, and I wonder if it's my place to warn them away from experimenting any further.
Maybe it's because my mind is distracted by these thoughts that it takes a moment to notice the sudden drop in temperature, the cold that brushes over my knuckles as it pushes towards the outer edge of the table, but doesn't move beyond it. The other sitters have already reacted, and I'm conscious of them stirring in their chairs, their breath quickening as they take more air into their lungs than they seem to release. I look at Marta, ready to convey my astonishment at her protégée’s abilities. But her neck is corded with tension, and as the first prickling of dread places its pressure on the back of my own neck, I realise this is not part of the prearranged program.
But Marta's opinion on this turn of events is insignificant, as Francesca raises her chin, rolls back her slender shoulders and slides her hands forward until her elbows are locked straight. This is her moment, and the pleasure of the other sitters at this physical sign of an unknown presence in the room only serves to raise her self-assurance to undiscovered heights. Here is Lady Francesca, communer with the dead. Despite the departure from their well-rehearsed performance, Marta has to know what a stroke of good fortune this is for her current star.
"Please," Francesca entreats. "We must concentrate. Clear our minds of all troubling thoughts. Please," she says again, but this time, it's not to those of us seated around the table. "Is someone there?"
Beside me, the man with the benign smile twitches in his rounded shoulders. I close my eyes, my hands pressing down upon the tabletop as I search for some way to control the throbbing sensation that pushes up from beneath the heavily varnished surface. And while I do this, eleven others are opening their minds, begging the spirits to come through. I take no account of the odds against me, but focus on the force near the center of the table, probing it for a weakness, for anything that rings of familiarity. At this, the voices prowling at the edges of my conscious begin a round of jeering, but it's merely a distraction. The real menace is in front of me, putting pressure on the top of my head, on my chest, until it becomes too difficult to snatch more than a shallow breath to keep from passing out.
"Are you looking for someone? Is there someone here that you know, that you wish to contact?"
The tone of the questions puts Francesca's lingering immaturity on display. Until today, this has only been a farce, a well-calculated one, but nothing beyond the limits of what she or Marta could control. When the table shudders, rising a few inches before slamming back down to the floor, I know that something like this was already scripted to happen, but the timing is wrong. Again, I look at Marta, and the question is written across her face.
Are you doing this?
Oh, how I wish I could say yes. To claim control over all of this, and to have the power to bring it to an end whenever I would wish is a thought too tremendous to imagine. But even as I struggle to send a reply to Marta from the other side of the table, I notice that the terrible cold has dissipated, replaced by a strange, sultry warmth that may be nothing more than the mingling of our long-held breath hovering inches above the tabletop.
And here seems to be the end of it. I could almost feel disappointed if my personality tended in that direction. The table, great and monstrous thing that it was only moments ago, has transformed back into its more innocuous state, simply another piece of furniture resting beneath our splayed fingers. And there's my regret at having applied the word 'rest' to this carved block of wood, with that single syllable instilling a life into its grain, one I'd rather wish it didn't possess. Now the light regains some of its former brilliancy, the most opaque shadows banished to the room's farthest reaches, shivering near the drapes and behind Mrs. Damant's chaise lounge. The tension that held us all in thrall releases us, its grip loosening with such slowness I can still sense its touch, the lightest of tingles between my shoulders.
That it doesn't disappear entirely is what feeds the belief that this isn't an ending at all. Oh, nothing so blessed as that. This is but a pause, a brief intermission before the commencement of this evening's second act. But, as if working contrary to my suspicions, lines dissipate from the others’ foreheads, and shoulders begin to droop. Now that the unnatural cold has left us, everything wilts, starched collars and pinned curls flattening before my eyes. In the middle of this relaxed atmosphere, Marta chances a smile brimming with relief, and Lady Francesca takes the lead once more.
She speaks, but I don't attend to her voice. Her words fall out of her mouth as if they were learned by rote, sounding stilted and self-conscious after the jolt of spontaneity that carried us this far. The scrape of chair legs marks her rise from the table, and now the performance has fully resumed as we move swiftly forward to the next scene.
Francesca preens for a moment, her motions slow and methodical, an attempt to convey the calm we should all be feeling, before she moves towards the free-standing cabinet in the corner of the room. She enters by herself, opening the unmarked door and stepping inside. On cue, Marta rises to her feet and makes a quick round of the room, turning down the lamps again until the only light is a few thin seams of yellow from the edges of the covered windows.
It's awe-inspiring, how rapidly we shift back into something not far removed from the most banal of routines. I've seen all of this before. Not from Francesca, but from the dozens, the hundreds of others like her that used to exist. I wonder that Marta can settle for staging a show that follows such a rigid set of guidelines, but this is where I suffer from my ignorance for what the public truly desires. No real truth, no answers that delve into anything more revealing than the vaguest of details. And it's all these years later that Marta's instructions come back to me, like a lesson memorised from the pages of a children's primer.
Give them a show. It's the tension they want. The suspense.
Minutes pass while my eyes adapt to the light, or the lack thereof. And then a soft rapping sound comes from inside the cabinet. Marta beckons to one of the gentlemen at the table, and per her instructions, he walks to the cabinet and opens the door.
There sits our Lady Franny, her ankles and wrists bound to a straight-backed chair. The man examines Francesca's bonds, tests each of the knots along the pale stretch of rope used to fasten her down. And while the young man is so engaged, I slip out of my chair and move to Marta's side, barely a rustle from my skirts as I rise onto the balls of my feet and whisper in her ear.
&n
bsp; "You should stop this."
Her head whips around, the feathers that adorn her shoulders tickling my chin as she searches my face in the dim light.
"Are you out of your bloody head?" The words are clipped short, the touch of her tongue to the roof of her mouth producing more sound than her low voice.
"There's something here," I say, feeling foolish all of a sudden, like a child reporting the presence of a ghoul beneath her bed. "The table, Marta. I know your tricks, and that wasn't one of them."
"No." The whites of her eyes glint in the dark. "I assumed it was one of yours."
"I don't..." have any tricks, I want to point out, but I'm beyond wasting my breath in my own defense. "Call her out of the cabinet."
"In a minute." She turns as if to brush me off, but I realise it's only to step aside and treat me to a full view of whatever is about to transpire.
"Marta."
"Do you want your time with Ryall or not?" She holds up her index finger. "One minute."
I retreat to my chair, but instead of sitting, I stand behind it, gripping the back until I lose all feeling in the tips of my fingers. The man announces the knots to be genuine, the wood of the cabinet solid. Again, the door swings shut and we're left to watch the blot of shadow that hides Francesca from view.
One minute.
I stare at the center of the cabinet's door, my pulse ticking twice for every second that slips away. So consumed am I in the task of counting out such small measures of time I hardly notice the glimmer of white that appears at eye level with those seated around the table. After some hesitation, the faint oval shudders, and I notice it's rather far back, and only now begins to move forward.
The eyes are the first discernible things to greet us, cold as marbles, fixed and glassy. The entire head is swathed in shreds of white fabric, but not a thread shifts out of place, and I imagine they would stay that way if buffeted by the winds of a hurricane. There's no body to accompany the mask-like face, speckled and eerily translucent around the edges, as if I'm staring at the image of someone who dared to move while their portrait was being taken. I must admit, it looks very much like the disembodied head of a ghost, or at least, very much like the form that most people believe ghosts to take. Add the rough drag of a few chains, the mournful whistle of air pushing through a gap in the casement, and the scene would be complete.
But there isn't any noise to attend the materialization. There's the soft sound of breathing from those around me, and behind that, the tickings and creakings that every house produces when all conversations cease. And behind that, the whole of London, no doubt. But in here, the loudest thing is the rush of blood ringing in my ears. And the voices, always the voices, their tone taking on an urgency now, an excitement that begs me to spare some paltry show of attention for them.
It's these voices, my ever-present companions, that present enough of a distraction to draw my eyes away from the death-like face still lingering in front of the cabinet. Before me, the smudge of darkness that is the cabinet seems to grow and change shape, until I realise that it's the shadows, all of the darkness in the room shifting at once, pulling inward, converging on the large piece of furniture that stands there.
I make to run forward, but the pressure is already there, on my throat and my upper chest, and when I open my mouth to breathe, I feel the darkness clawing at the edges of my parted lips. A moment of panic overtakes me, because I recognise the malevolency behind these shadows, the same force that stripped me of my family so many years before. Behind me, Marta springs into action, but not as Francesca's rescuer. Instead, it's my arm she grabs, and in the middle of the tussle, the pale mask flickers once, twice, and goes out.
The moment the face disappears, everything changes. Cries shatter the silence that had enveloped us, and an insistent knocking that soon gives way to a dry scraping reaches our ears. A single tug pulls me free of Marta's grasp, and I shut my eyes as I stumble forward, wincing at the burning cold fingers that find their way around my throat. I fumble for the latch on the cabinet door, all the while holding my breath, the darkness right there, teasing my nostrils, settling into the lines at the corners of my squinted eyes. As soon as I feel the chill of the metal handle, I pull, my fingers slipping as I struggle with a single panel of wood that's suddenly infused with enough weight to frustrate the efforts of a dozen grown men.
"Let her go."
Listen to how soft my request is, the low note of supplication in my voice. I doubt that any of the sitters still loitering behind me took any notice of it, but it wasn't for them to hear.
I shiver as a new sensation takes hold. In front of me, all around me, the darkness condenses until I can't see even with my eyes wide open. A shudder ripples through the malignant cloud before it pulls back, retreating to the edges of the room with such speed that the return of the dim light nearly blinds me.
Tightening my grip on the latch, I wrench the door open, expecting to find Francesca still bound to her chair. But her body is wedged between the chair and the dusty floor of the cabinet, one of her arms raised up as if it were a shield.
And now Marta is beside me, the both of us scrabbling to reach inside, Marta occupied with shifting the chair out of the way while I clumsily reach an arm around Francesca's limp form and drag her out onto the parlour floor. It isn't until I'm on my knees, her body sprawled across my lap, that I finally gaze down into her eyes.
She is dead, I think. The first thought to enter my head, but I won't accept it. Even now, as my hands search her throat for any sign of life, I can feel the tenuous connection that keeps her here in this world. Brushing her dark hair away from her face, I stare down into her eyes, at the tiny red veins reaching towards the irises.
"Don't let them take you."
I lick my lips, a nervous reaction more than anything. There isn't enough saliva in my mouth to chance a swallow without choking.
"Come back," I say, the words gasping out of my lungs. "Come back. This isn't..." I shake my head. "Not yet. Not yet."
A moment passes. A tight circle of onlookers has taken shape around us, so close that if I were to suddenly straighten up, I would smack the back of my head squarely against Mrs. Damant's hip. The seconds turn into a minute, and both of my hands frame Francesca's face, my thumbs resting on the sharp slant of her cheekbones.
The sound begins in her chest, something like a gurgle, before her back arches away from me and a rattling breath floods her lungs. Then the coughing begins, and she reaches for her throat, her fingers flexing and curling like talons as her fingernails dig into her skin.
"It's all right." Like a mother, I sound, speaking to a child recently woken up from a nightmare. Still smoothing the hair away from her damp forehead, I cradle her in my arms as she rocks back and forth, her motions bringing her closer and closer until she presses her face into my shoulder and begins to sob.
"I’m sorry," I hear her say. Again and again into the crook of my neck. But it is not to me she speaks, and I cannot help but wonder to whom she owes such a litany of apologies.
The sobs quickly turn into violent shakes that rattle her from head to toe, and someone thrusts out a handkerchief as Marta walks around and leans over the two of us. When my eyes meet hers, I don't disguise the rage that overwhelms me.
"I gave you your minute."
She winces at this, but doesn't say a word.
"Our bargain?"
Slowly, she extends a trembling hand and applies the lightest of touches to Francesca's shoulder.
"Ryall is yours," she says, her usually strong voice faltering, stumbling over the words. "I’ll get you your audience with him. And anything else you may want of me."
Chapter Ten
* * *
* * *
Marta puts forward the suggestion that I return home with her, to spend the night in my old room. I know that her real intention is for me to keep an eye on Lady Francesca—as if my proximity hadn’t already caused the girl enough suffering—so I refuse her offe
r with as much delicacy as I can summon after such an experience, lowering my voice, bowing my head, promising to pay a visit after a full night’s rest has wielded its restorative powers on the both of them.
To sate my own need of restoration, I decide to walk home, my hands wishing for pockets my shabby skirt does not provide. Though the moon is large, its pallid glow doesn’t reach far below the rooftops, and I’m left to slog through the darkness that clings to the uneven cobblestones. I travel far enough that the urbane snobbery of Mrs. Damant’s neighbourhood is left behind, my slow stride now carrying me onto more dusty roadways, flanked by houses that grow closer and closer together until one is nearly grafted onto the next.
An unnerving lack of sound greets me here, the hubbub of the livelier streets pushed back until it can be mistaken for nothing more than a dull ringing of the ears. It is embarrassment, I think, that creates such an absence of noise, for the buildings here are still large, their patched walls carrying a history that climbs towards three figures, but their rooms no longer housing the same genteel respectability for which they were erected so many years before.
Nearly every trade imaginable is hidden from view, shirts being sewn in this basement, nails pounded into the heels of already broken-down shoes in that attic over there. Some of the street’s inhabitants have thrown off all attempts at retaining decency and simply hang up their wares for everyone to see. Even now, through a cracked pane of glass, I glimpse a bald man rearranging his shop’s window display to be ready for the next day’s business, the items for sale nothing more than bits of rag and useless military equipment, the latter better returned to the foundry from which it came.
There is no pause in my movements as I pass the grime-encrusted window. The man raises his eyes for a moment, perhaps to gauge my interest in his offerings, but I quickly look away, move on, away from the display, away from the gaze that remains pinned to my back until I’ve ducked around the next corner.
