by Jane Godman
I was able to make out her shape in one corner of the cellar. She was lying on an old mattress that had been placed on the floor. It felt stiff with dirt when my hand encountered it, and a foul odour of mingled mould and stale sweat rose from its surface. Eleanor’s hands and feet were tied tightly with twine, her eyes were wide pools of terror in the pale oval of her face and she was gagged. Even in the dim light, I could see the deep bruise that marred her left cheek and blackened the skin under one eye.
“Hush, Eleanor dearest. I’m here now.” I sat down on the floor beside her. Her pitiful cries made sharp tears of hopelessness sting the back of my eyelids. I blinked them away. “I’ve hurt my arm, so I’ll be clumsy. But let me get that gag off first.” I’d underestimated not only how awkward I would be, but also how much pain it would cause me to attempt any movement of my injured arm. Breathing hard with the effort, I managed to undo the strip of cloth that had been tied at the nape of Eleanor’s neck and gently remove the handkerchief that had been stuffed into her mouth. She drew great noisy gusts of air deep into her lungs with a horrible rasping sound, while I ineffectually patted her back with my good hand.
It took me much longer to untie her hands. The twine was so tight it had cut into her wrists and every fumbled effort of mine to untie the knots only succeeded in hurting her. In between my frustrated muttering and Eleanor’s occasional yelps of pain, she told me what had happened.
“Oh, Dita,” her voice was strained from crying. “I wanted to go away with Sandor so much. From the minute I saw him, I just knew he was the answer to my prayers. And he said he felt the same.” I decided there was nothing to be gained from telling her the truth about Sandor at that time. She would find out soon enough, assuming we managed to escape from this cellar prison. “He told me that he was an impostor, he wasn’t really a baron. I didn’t care. I loved him. I even told him about Tristan, and he said we would send for him to be with us. But, of course, we knew my parents would never approve, so we had to steal away in the middle of the night. And it was such an exciting adventure, Dita!” She sounded even more childlike than usual. “We arranged to meet by the little pergola at two in the morning. I was a few minutes late and surprised to find he wasn’t already there. I waited and waited, and then I heard a footstep. I turned to greet him—I was laughing because I wanted to tease him for being late and say it was supposed to be the lady’s prerogative. But it wasn’t him.”
“It was Eddie,” I supplied for her, and she began to cry weakly.
“It was. But he didn’t look like himself. He looked—oh, Dita, I don’t know how to explain it!—he looked like an animal of some sort. A ferocious, snarling creature. But he was smiling as well, as though he done something that gave him great pleasure. It was horrible! And when he spoke he was so calm. He said ‘I can’t allow you to do this, Eleanor’ as though he was caring for me. But, Dita, when he held out his hands toward me, they were bright red with blood!” The tears flowed faster now. “I tried to run, but he caught hold of me. He—” her voice trembled “—he hurt me, Dita. I remember seeing his fist come toward my face and then nothing until I woke up in here. I’ve counted two nights since that one. Eddie has come in now and then to bring me food and water. The pain in my head is so bad sometimes it makes me sick. I kept thinking ‘Sandor will come,’ but he can’t, can he? Oh, Dita, please tell me I’m wrong! Tell me it was not Sandor’s blood on Eddie’s hands!”
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, and, interpreting my words correctly, she burst into such a prolonged storm of weeping that I began to fear for her sanity. Eventually, I felt the first fraction of give in the knot at her wrists, and, although the light was so poor, I bent my head closer over my work. When her hands were finally free, Eleanor threw herself into my arms, causing me to cry out in pain. Begging my pardon, she set to work freeing her legs, which proved an easier task. We sat on the odorous mattress, leaning against each other.
“Will he kill us, Dita?” Eleanor’s tearful voice prodded into life the dark, poisonous snake of fear that lay coiled in my stomach.
“No, because we will find a way out before he returns.” I tried to infuse the words with a bright confidence I didn’t feel. I struggled to my feet and gazed around, trying to focus on the dim shapes I saw around the room. I noted and discarded the usefulness of a table, an old rocking chair, a mangle that appeared to have no handle and a dolly tub. There was an abandoned jumble of garden implements in one corner. An idea began to form. I felt my way carefully through them until I found what I was looking for. The hoe was rusted, but intact. I unwound the scarf from my neck and looped it through the head of the hoe. I wanted to tie it in place, but I couldn’t manage it with one hand. I took my makeshift flag back to Eleanor, and together, we achieved a reasonable knot that secured the bright strip of material in place. Although the coal chute had not been used for some time, that part of the cellar was still redolent with the scent of black dust. The entrance to the chute from the outside world was several feet above my head, but I managed to push the handle of the hoe upward and rest it on the steep slope of the brickwork. It stood upright with the tip onto which my scarf was tied, just poking out into the wintry sunlight above. I knew Cad would recognise it as my scarf if he saw it, but surely anyone who noticed it would find it strange and consider it worthy of further investigation. I pinned my hopes on that.
Eleanor drifted in and out of sleep, a circumstance that worried me. It seemed to indicate that Eddie’s blow to her face could have caused more damage than just bruising. I sat down next to her and commenced the long wait for something to happen. The sensation of being hidden away here, below a world that was turning and living and breathing without us, sent a trickle of fear down my spine. A pipe dripped somewhere beyond the range of my vision, the insistent noise branding itself into my brain. Maddening, infuriating, but, nevertheless, comforting because it reminded me that I was still part of that world. Cad will miss me, I told myself firmly. He will come.
But will he find you before Eddie gets back? Another voice, this one sly and insidious, nudged insistently at my consciousness with the question.
* * *
I sensed Eddie’s return even before I heard him. When footsteps rang out above my head and approached the cellar door, I did not allow myself to hope that rescue had arrived. I knew it was him. He stood at the top of the stairs, looking down into the gloom. He held a branch of candles aloft in one hand and their amber haze threw twisted, dancing demons into the depths of our prison. Grainy light played across Eddie’s features, lending them a harshness I had never seen before. The lines and planes of his face were thrown into sharp relief, almost as if he wore a mask, a caricature of himself. Fear rippled through my nerve endings and settled in the very marrow of my bones. He kicked the door closed behind him and descended the stairs. When he reached the bottom, he set the candelabra and a pitcher of water down on the table and turned to me with the same mischievous grin he always used in greeting. I was more frightened by that than by anything else he had done before.
“Has she been crying again? She never bloody stops.” He jerked his thumb toward Eleanor. I noticed, with a sinking heart, that he wore my scarf knotted around his neck in place of a cravat.
“I think she is seriously hurt, Eddie,” I tried to keep my voice calm. “The injury to her head seems to have caused this incessant sleepiness. It worries me.”
He sighed and came to sit next to me on the floor. Leaning back against the wall, so that our shoulders almost touched, he bent his long legs and leaned an arm across his knees. “This is a mess, Dita,” he said with a sad little shake of his head.
“It needn’t be, Eddie.”
“You have no idea. You couldn’t begin to comprehend what it’s like inside my head,” he said quietly.
“Tell me,” I urged. “I might be able to help.”
He chuckled. “Can you stop him? Because that’s the only way to help me. Get him out of my head.”
“Who?” Bu
t I knew the answer.
“He is my master, Dita. He controls me. I hear his voice. He tells me what to do. Dear God, Dita, the things he tells me to do! I think sometimes my head will explode.”
“Whose voice do you hear, Eddie?” The candles flickered miserably in the musty gloom, trying to stretch their meagre fingers into the dark corners. “Uther Jago’s? Or is it Arwen Jago who speaks to you?”
“Does it matter?” he asked petulantly. “They are one and the same, after all. And now, they have claimed me, as well. They have managed to keep the chain of evil going. My master is always with me. Behind me and beside me. Urging me on. Willing me to do more. Although he speaks with my mouth, his words impart the venom of two hundred years of hate. I have become nothing more than a guest in my own body.”
I wanted to ask why he had not fought to be rid of this unwelcome presence, but when I remembered the tortured look his face often wore, I knew he battled hard every day. Eddie was weaker than the master he spoke of. He had lost. And while it was long-dead Jagos who planted the seeds of festering madness inside him, it was Eddie himself who, with his hatred of his family and his name, fed them and allowed them to grow.
“Why have you taken Eleanor?” I asked. “What has she done to make you hate her so?”
He started to laugh then. Genuine laughter that shook his whole body. “Oh, you don’t see, do you, Dita? Eleanor said you did, but you don’t.”
“See what?”
“I don’t hate Eleanor,” his voice was quiet again now. “I love her. But not as a brother should love his sister. Ours is not what the world would call a ‘natural affection.’”
I closed my eyes briefly. “It was you,” I whispered. “You were the man Lucy found Eleanor with.”
“I went away,” he explained, his voice still soft. “She told me I must. My dear mama sent her son and heir packing. She told us both that we carried the Jago taint and that it was always stronger here at Tenebris. She said I must stay away for as long as I could. My father must never find out. Eleanor would be sent away to a school that could help her to see what was right. She is not very strong—mentally or emotionally.”
“I know. I didn’t see it at first. I thought her immature and didn’t know that there was more to it. She has all the sweetness of a child, but it means she cannot be held responsible for her actions.”
He slammed his right fist into his left palm in sudden fury. “You sound like her! That is what she said! My own mother blamed me. She told me that Eleanor could not bear any blame for what happened. The fault was all mine.” He buried his head in his hands. “She was right, of course. But I couldn’t help myself.” He turned pleading eyes upon me in the gloom. “After all, Uther himself bedded his own sister.”
“You cannot make Uther your excuse! Or your example,” I scolded, forgetting, for that instant, the danger I was in. “If you love Eleanor as much as you say, why have you done this to her? Imprisoned her here, hurt her?”
“Because she was planning to run off with Karol, of course,” he said, turning to look at the prone figure on the mattress. “They were together on Montol Eve.”
A memory resurfaced. “But I saw her kissing you.” I had refused to believe the evidence of my own eyes at the time. And, of course, I had been somewhat distracted by subsequent events.
“Eleanor said you had seen us. She thought you would tell my mother. Or Cad. The idea filled her with shame, and she ran away from me. I looked everywhere for her. I climbed onto the balcony outside her room, wanting to go to her and comfort her. The window was unlocked and I stepped inside. They didn’t know I was there. They were too busy laughing together, making love.” His expression changed, twisted into something I had never seen before. Pure evil shone in the depths of his eyes. I knew that was how he looked as he plunged the knife into his victims. Because it was no use trying to fool myself any longer that the murders and Eddie’s current behaviour might still be unrelated. As if to provide further irrefutable proof, he drew a long, thin knife from his coat pocket and studied it thoughtfully. “That ape Karol was fucking my sister. My sister. Then I heard them making their plans to leave. I was angry. I wanted to kill them both there and then, but I decided to wait. It would be more fun to let them think they had succeeded. I left the way I had come.”
“And then you met Vicky,” I stated matter-of-factly. What chance would that poor girl have had against the storm of violent rage coursing through Eddie at that point?
“I was making my way back into the house and the silly little bitch was looking for Cad. Someone had told her he was in the garden,” he said dismissively. “She was nothing more than a whey-faced whore with her skinny body and mass of hair. Looked like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, just like all the others. She told me she was a virgin and saving it for her wedding night, but she offered to suck my dick like an old pro. I enjoyed killing her.” His smile was faraway, dreamy, and he fingered the blade reminiscently. I tried to control the shudder of terror and revulsion that ran through me. His voice changed and throbbed with sudden regret. “I wish I could have loved you, Dita. You will never know how much I wanted it to be you. When I first saw you in Paris—my God, how you stunned me with your beauty!—I knew that if anyone was going to be able to break the spell of the past, it would be you. Then we became friends, and your friendship became the best thing I had in my sorry mess of a life. We should have stayed away from Tenebris.” I thought of the murdered girls in Paris, but I remained silent. Eddie believed the darkness that haunted him resided here at Tenebris. He was wrong, of course. It was inside him. The memories might be more concentrated here, but he would carry the Jago legacy with him wherever he went.
“I know how hard you have tried to fight the past,” I told him softly, cradling his head against my shoulder. Despite the horrors of what he had just told me, somewhere deep inside this broken man, my sweet, excitable, funny friend Eddie still existed. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to reach him. “But it was too strong for you. You couldn’t defeat Arwen or Uther, whoever it is that speaks inside you.”
“He told me to destroy your pictures. I had to obey him, Dita, even though it broke my heart.”
“Why did he want you to do that? What could he hope to gain from ruining the paintings?”
“I think it was to prove his power over me. He knew that I used thoughts of you to drive him out of my head, or at least keep him at bay. If I could fix an image of you in my mind, sometimes I could blot out the sound of his voice. He wanted to break that link with you. I love you, and I loved those paintings. So they had to go.”
My mind did not want to make the logical next step. If the things Eddie loved had to go, what did that mean for me? Instead of examining that thought, I looked across at where Eleanor lay on the mattress, like a discarded bloom that has been crushed between cruel fingers. “Let her go,” I said, “Please, Eddie. Eleanor is not to blame for any of this. No one is.”
“She is to blame,” he spat, his expression changing from contrition to venom in a heartbeat. “She knew and yet she still married my father. She bore him children, knowing that the taint of the Jagos was not dead. She carried me inside her and nurtured me with her blood. Then she brought me into the world to face the Jago nightmare alone. This time it is Lucia’s legacy. She must be made to pay for what she has done. The part of her that gave me life, all signs of her womanhood, that is what must be destroyed.”
I knew from those words who was driving his madness. Oh, Arwen Jago had claimed others before his evil gaze alighted on Eddie. But whereas Uther had been a willing conduit back into the world, poor weak Eddie had tried to fight. And in doing so, his mind had been all but destroyed.
* * *
I couldn’t tell how much time we had passed in silence. “Let me give Eleanor some water. Please, Eddie?” He shrugged moodily and I went over to tend to his sister. It was a struggle to support her and hold the cup to her lips with one hand, but I managed it at last. She drank gratefully an
d subsided so that her head rested on my shoulder.
“Take care of him for me, Dita. Promise me you will take care of Tristan.” It was little more than a sigh, but Eddie heard it.
“Another of your bedfellows, sis?” he snarled. “Wasn’t Karol enough to satisfy you?”
“Tristan is Eleanor’s son,” I said. Ignoring Eleanor’s desperate attempt to hush me, I continued with what I now knew to be the whole truth. “He is your son, too, Eddie. More lives than your own were broken when you slept with your sister.”
His face was still and watchful in the half-light. “You are lying,” he said eventually. He made a pathetic attempt at a laugh. “Dita, you lying bitch! You’re saying this just to get out of here.”
I returned his stare in silence. He broke the impasse first, lowering his head into his hands and then throwing it back at a near impossible angle. A wild, animal howl escaped him and I winced, drawing Eleanor closer as she trembled fearfully. The inhuman sound went mercilessly on and on, echoing around the confined space until I thought it would drive all traces of sanity from my own mind. I watched helplessly as, squatting on his haunches, face gaunt and eyes smouldering, my friend Eddie finally gave way to the madness that had tried so hard and for so long to claim his soul.
“Make him stop, Dita. Please,” Eleanor pleaded.
“No. Let him make as much noise as he can.” I pressed my lips close to her ear to whisper the words. “Someone might hear. This may be our only chance.”
Eddie’s eyes fell on us again as we cowered together in the corner. “You evil slut! How could you keep this from me?” He flew at us and hauled Eleanor to her feet, wrapping his hands around her throat. My efforts to pull him away were in vain, and I feared I would be forced to stand by and watch while he choked the life out of her. Her hands beat wildly against him, like moths fluttering helplessly against a windowpane. She began to wilt like a rose carelessly plucked and then discarded. As her knees buckled, he tossed her aside and she fell, unconscious, to the floor. His eyes turned to me and I caught a glint of candlelight on the blade he pointed at me.
