by Kate Mosse
A third and a fourth and a fifth chime brought the same result. Gaston was frightened now. He flinched at the rattle of limpet-encrusted bones as, one by one, the visitors relinquished their cloaks. They shivered, draped in a few shreds of flesh, turning their awful faces left and right before the flames.
The church bell rang out again across the coastline. Gaston felt himself drawn forward, this time towards two children. As thin as he was, he knew he was not one of them and wanted to pull away, yet he found himself powerless to resist. The waifs clutched at him with skeletal hands, dragging the jacket from his shoulders, their tragic voices high and shrill like the desperate wind.
Gaston tried to cry out, but his voice was swamped by the voices of the drowned. Why was no one helping him? Why were the villagers standing by and allowing this to happen? He heard the tenth strike of the bell. Now the children were pulling at the buttons on his thin shirt, desperate to consign everything to the pyre before the final stroke of midnight.
‘Help me,’ Gaston called out, finding his voice at last. ‘They will take me. They want to take me with them.’
He tried to wriggle free, but the children’s hands were clamped fast around his ankles, his wrists.
The eleventh chime.
‘Help me please.’
At the very last moment, Gaston managed to shake himself free and leap back out of their reach. The children, cheated of their prize, threw off their cloaks and cast them onto the bonfire. It was now burning twenty feet into the air. The sparks danced against the night and the final stroke sounded.
The final toll of the bell.
Immediately, silence. Immediately, the ghostly congregation fell still. None of them, now, paid any attention to Gaston. They were as transfixed by the fire as he had been transfixed by their apparition.
Gaston realised that he could hear the surf once more. The sea was in motion, a gentle swell sending shallow waves up onto the sand. Normal for this time of year. The flames were diminishing. The magical garments of fire had almost consumed the stack of hazel bundles.
Then, the villagers on the far side of the flames drew back the hoods of their dark cloaks. Gaston gasped, recognising Régis’s mother and Monsieur Hélias too, standing to one side of the semicircle. As the bonfire burned down, Gaston saw the curate and, standing to his left, Mme Martin. None of them seemed to be able to see him, though. At least, they gave no sign of it.
One of the drowned stepped forward. A man with broad shoulders, though he was all bone and seaweed now. He paused and then bowed low to the living. The curate answered his gesture. The dead man leant forward and plucked a white-hot ember from the ashes, then turned to face the sea.
He held the ember aloft, as if in triumph, then he began to pace purposefully, steadily back down the beach towards their drowned village. The others fell into step behind him.
Gaston watched them go. Some of them seemed to hesitate before treading reluctantly into the surf. One after another they disappeared beneath the black waves until finally only the two children were left. They paused for a moment and turned back, whether towards the fire and its warmth or to invite Gaston to come with them, he could not say.
Then a few steps more and they were gone.
All at once, without his jacket and shirt, with the fire burned down to ashes, Gaston fell to his knees and sobbed, the tears running down his face and over his hands. Crying for those condemned to come ashore once a year to light their kingdom under the sea, crying for the grief and loneliness inside him that drew him to their company. Crying for his parents.
Then, the warmth of real arms around him and he was being pulled to his feet. The sound of a familiar voice.
‘Gaston, how do you come to be here?’
It was Mme Martin’s voice.
‘I didn’t mean to . . .’ he tried to explain. ‘I fell asleep. I didn’t know, I didn’t mean to spy.’
He felt a cloak being wrapped around his shaking shoulders.
‘You’re safe now, don’t worry. Everything will be all right.’
She walked him up the beach. ‘Everything will be all right.’
Monsieur Hélias picked him up in the trap, promising that Régis was back at the farmhouse and there would be a good meal waiting. He didn’t seem angry now and Gaston thought, perhaps, he had misjudged the man. As they rounded the headland, he turned in his seat.
‘Look,’ he said.
Some two hundred yards out at sea, where once the island had been, a light was burning. The drowned islanders had relit their warning lamp from the embers of the bonfire.
Mme Martin smiled. ‘Yes.’
‘But how is it possible?’ he said. ‘How can it burn beneath the waves?’
‘How is any of it possible?’ she laughed. ‘Perhaps it’s just a trick of the light.’
‘Even so,’ he said quietly. ‘I saw it. It must be true, somehow, mustn’t it?’
‘Who’s to say?’ she said. ‘We must trust to providence.’
‘What does it mean?’ he said, his voice little more than a whisper.
‘Perhaps only that we have to believe that the future can be different from the past.’ She paused. ‘I have been very proud to teach you, Gaston. I believe that you will give us all reason to be proud when you go away to boarding school.’
‘I can still go? I feared . . . I thought maybe not.’
‘The scholarship will pay your expenses and your parents’ money will be set aside for when you leave, for when you are a man. Your writing impressed the Board very much.’
‘And then what will I do?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mme Martin, but he could hear the smile in her voice. ‘Perhaps you will write a book about the legends of the Quibéron Peninsula. Set this story down.’
Gaston took a last look at the lamp burning out at sea, then turned back to face her.
‘Perhaps I will,’ he said.
Author’s Note
My lovely Uncle Geoff died in February 2011. A passionate musician and a Francophile, he was a great favourite at Christmas get-togethers with his stories of visits to festivals, food and music, all over France. The year when he fell asleep – properly asleep – on the floor under the Christmas tree, has gone down in family history. When my inspirational Auntie Margie* died last year, and their house came to be cleared, my cousins suggested I might like some of Uncle Geoff’s French books.
Three boxes were duly delivered. They contained, as well as notebooks and clippings from newspapers, a wonderful mixture of novels, cookbooks, art and illustrated guidebooks. But the biggest treasures were several volumes of Breton folk tales and legends. Some stories were similar to myths I’d heard from Cornwall or Wales, even Sussex, but most were new to me and came very specifically from the coastline and landscape of Brittany past and present.
‘The Drowned Village’ is the first of two stories inspired by those Breton folk tales and is dedicated to the memory of my uncle and aunt.
* The Reverend Margaret Booker was one of the founders of the Movement for the Ordination of Women. She was ordained by the Bishop of Chelmsford on 30th April 1994, the first woman to be ordained in that Diocese.
THE HOUSE ON THE HILL
Dean Hall, West Sussex
October 1922
The House on the Hill
All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.
from ‘Haunted Houses’
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
In the house on the hill, there was a light. A single, flickering flame in a room on the first floor, like a candle burning.
Daphne looked at it from her bedroom in Dean Hall, her hands resting on the cold stone window sill. Her train from London had been late getting in, so she’d barely had time to say her hello to her cousin, Teddy, before being shown to her room. The other weekend g
uests had arrived some time before. She hadn’t had the chance to explore the parkland and was surprised there was so substantial a house within the grounds. It looked both rather splendid and rather isolated, despite its proximity to Dean Hall. Set on the ridge of the hill between two clusters of trees, a façade of brick, perfectly symmetrical, red tiled roof and tall chimneys. Though half hidden in the shadows of the woods, Daphne imagined there’d be a fine view from the house across the South Downs and down to the sea some eight miles away. She wondered if Teddy knew who lived there or if the house even belonged to the estate. He had taken Dean Hall on a six month lease and this was the first of his weekend house parties. She doubted he knew much about the place yet, though he’d sent her a photograph from the letting agent.
In the dying light, Daphne could make out the silhouette of the arboretum higher up the wooded hillside. Spread out below that, she knew, were fields of yellow rape like squares of a patchwork quilt, furrowed and brown now in the autumn.
She shivered, feeling the chill air creep over her bare skin, and drew back inside the comfort of her room. Daphne pulled the window closed, stiff on its mullioned hinges, and rattled at the metal catch until it was properly shut. She lingered at the window a moment longer, her gaze fixed upon the flickering orange of light on the distant hill, mesmerised, until suddenly it was gone.
If she’d been a jumpy kind of girl, she might have squealed. As it was, Daphne felt oddly put out, as if someone had caught her snooping and blown the candle out. She pulled more roughly at the curtains than she’d intended to block out the encroaching autumn night. The brass rings rattled on the rails, but didn’t want to shift. She gave it up as a bad job and left them for the maid. At Dean Hall, Teddy had stressed in his letter inviting her for the weekend, there was still staff to keep things ticking over. Like in the old days, before the war, when everything was easier.
The old days.
If Douglas hadn’t deserted her, life would have been so different.
As Daphne started to dress for dinner, she thought of her temporary room in the boarding house in Berwick Street, the single gas ring in the kitchen shared by four girls like her, who had not been brought up to earn a living by typing or working in a shop. She thought of the tatty WC at the end of the corridor, and nylon stockings hanging over the bath, the scarcity of hot water, and could have cried for the world she had left behind. Mrs Daphne Dumsilde, it had such a ring to it. Douglas had promised to look after her, in sickness and in health.
But he had not looked after her. He hadn’t kept his word.
Daphne folded her travelling clothes on the armchair and shimmied into a silk underslip, appalled at how easily she had immediately fallen back into her habitual blue state of mind. Why spoil a perfectly pleasant weekend? Invitations had been thin on the ground – a woman alone was always awkward and her circumstances made it doubly so – and she was too proud to ask for help. At Dean Hall there would be plenty of hot water, plenty of food and drink, perhaps a little dancing and amusing company to keep the dark thoughts at bay. She was glad to be here. Her cousin had seen out the war in America and had been abroad when the business with Douglas happened – but she liked Teddy and was determined not to spoil his weekend by being dull and gloomy.
In her slip and stockings, Daphne walked to the armoire and took a cigarette from her case, trying not to notice the inscription on the inside of the lid: TO DEEDEE FROM DEEDUM, their little joke. She tapped it sharply to tighten the tobacco, picked up her Ronson and jabbed at it with her thumb until it sparked. That, too, reminded her of Douglas. How idiotic that she kept the case and lighter to remind her of happier times, when in fact the sight of them only made her feel worse.
Daphne inhaled, feeling the calming smoke seep down into her lungs. From the Oak Hall below, she heard the sound of the gramophone and whispers of jazz. Oddly modern music for so antique a setting. Madrigals and spinets would suit the wooden panels and trophies of big game hunts mounted on mahogany surrounds rather better than the smudged chords of Louisiana and New Orleans.
She glanced back to the window, wondering if there would be a light in the house on the hill again, but it was dark in the park. Night had fallen, stripping the shape and character from the pleasant Sussex landscape. Tomorrow morning, she promised herself, she would take a walk, perhaps sit a while and paint, aim for a likeness of the wonderful flint façade of Dean Hall. Or, rather, perhaps she would go in search of the house on the hill, and paint that instead. She felt strangely drawn to it.
Daphne stubbed out her cigarette and finished dressing for dinner. A soft pink silk dress, which suited her pale colouring, with a dropped handkerchief waist and low V beaded neckline. Peach stockings and a light woollen blue shawl, to cover her bare arms. A ribbon tied around her forehead, a mist of scent, and she was ready. Daphne hesitated a moment, then removed her wedding ring and left it on the table beside the bed. She didn’t know if other guests would know about her situation but, whether they did or not, where was the sense in inviting questions?
Her bedroom was at the far corner of the south wing on the first floor. She stepped out into the dimly lit corridor, hearing sounds of the party down below, feeling a mixture of shyness and nerves at the thought of a roomful of strangers. She walked slowly, past perfectly acceptable paintings of sea and countryside, until she noticed, close to the top of the stairs, something delightful. A wonderful doll’s house, painted façade of brick, perfectly symmetrical, red tiled roof and tall chimneys. In the gable there was a clock, showing the time set at three forty-five and the date: 1810. She ran her finger over the surface. There were ribbons of dust on the slope of the red roof and chimneys, but it was still charming. Daphne had owned a doll’s house when she was little. It kept her entertained for hours, as she moved the tiny people from room to room, inventing lives for them, playing house. This doll’s house was far grander and there was also something familiar about it. Daphne wondered if she’d perhaps seen a picture of it somewhere, it was so distinctive, but she couldn’t bring anything to mind.
The noise from the Oak Hall was louder now and Daphne knew she should go down and join the party, but instead she unhooked the latch and opened it up to look inside.
The wooden façade swung open, revealing the entire household from top to bottom. A staircase ran like a spine up the middle of the house. At the lowest level were the working rooms – servants and a flock of geese and ducks, the mud room with harness, and the kitchen, with brass copper pots and an old rocking chair to one side. Cloth and wood figurines of a cook, parlour maids, and butler and boot boy, all perfectly dressed in black and white and green waistcoats. On the ground floor, a red and grey tiled entrance hall, a stone fireplace with marble mantel and a grandmother clock. To the left, a billiard room with the green baize table perfectly smooth and, to the right the dining room, with twelve mahogany chairs set round a polished oval table, and a maid in black and white uniform dusting the sideboard. On the floor above, the ladies and gentlemen of the house, whiskered and gowned in a drawing room and, above the billiard room, a study. A leather-topped desk, complete with inkwell and papers, bookshelves and a brass side table on which stood the smallest of glasses and a fold of paper, like a letter waiting to be read. Daphne frowned, something about this room in particular setting a memory scuttling in her mind. The chair was on its side. She reached in and picked it up, placing it back at the desk.
On the floors above, the family bedrooms. Each perfect in their detail, porcelain washbasins and jugs, matching counterpanes and portraits in tortoiseshell frames. In the attic, the maids’ quarters and a nursery with a metal cot and blackboard and chalk.
The gong rang for dinner, its brass song reverberating up from the hall below. Knowing she couldn’t put off joining the party any longer, Daphne reluctantly stood up and closed the glass fronted doors. She wondered if the doll’s house had been modelled on a real house, if it had been made for the daughter of the family that once owned Dean Hall, or whether
it was a recent acquisition for decoration only.
The gong sounded again.
Daphne straightened her dress and her stockings, and was about to rush down the stairs when she noticed a pinpoint of light in the miniature study. Uneven, like the light from a candle flickering in a draught. She looked along the corridor, assuming it had to be some kind of reflection from the wall lamps bouncing off the glass frontage of the doll’s house, but the angles seemed wrong.
She cupped her hands over the glass and looked at the room on the first floor. Now, the study was dark again, of course it was, though the tiny chair was, once again, lying on its side. As if kicked away from the desk.
The final gong bellowed for dinner and, this time, Daphne heard Teddy shouting her name to hurry up. She ran to the minstrel’s gallery and waved down to the assembled company. She hurried down the stairs, suppressing a shudder as she passed the ghastly floor-to-ceiling display of stuffed birds. The hard beaded eyes and frozen feathers of the robins and blackbirds and malevolent cranes stood motionless behind the glass.
Teddy knew nothing about another house on the estate – though he knew there were a few grace-and-favour cottages for farm workers – and nothing about any of the pieces of art dotted around the Hall.
He was, however, an excellent host and the evening passed in a haze of vermouth and ragtime. The company was congenial and Daphne flirted a little with a boy who worked in a dispensary, putting out of her mind, for a while, the drab existence to which she would have to return on Monday morning.
Later, while the men talked finance, she got into a conversation with a girl from Surrey about the best new detective novels. Like Daphne, she thought Poirot rather tiresome and preferred Mrs Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey. An intimacy established, Daphne realised the girl was building up to ask about Douglas and everything came rushing back again, as it always did. Quickly, she excused herself and went in search of coffee. By the time she came back, the girl had moved on to someone else. It was, Daphne thought savagely, why she rarely ventured out. It was too dull always to have all eyes on her.
