The House of Dead Maids (9 page)

I ran. I flew down that hillside, and if I had fallen along the way, I could not have tumbled faster than I ran. When I reached Himself, I caught him up under one arm and never for an instant slowed down. I wonder now how I did it, for he was more than half my size, and yet I tell you he felt as light to me then as if I held a feather pillow.

I took heed of nothing until I reached the low wall of the kitchen garden and the entire household came rushing out to meet us. There I fell and had to be helped to my feet and all but carried indoors. The first thing I noticed upon returning to my senses was Himself limping beside me and cursing with great precision and vehemence, like a hardened old sinner.

“Wisht!” I gasped, reaching out to catch his coat and shake him.

“Give over,” he said, dodging me. “You daft chit! I might have dropped my pirate.”

Then I was in the kitchen, seated on the bench by the hearth, and four somber countenances bent over me: Mr. Ketch, Miss Winter, Mrs. Sexton, and old Arnby, who had fetched me inside.

“What happened?” demanded Miss Winter in a quavering voice. “An injury? Gash? Broken limb?”

“Not a bit of it,” said Arnby. “She’s seen the cold ones. You’re a fool if you let her out of the house again.”

I spent the day quietly with Mrs. Sexton next to the blazing hearth, working on Alma Augusta. By afternoon, I had finished her petticoat, and Mrs. Sexton had found me a hank of sheep’s wool to stitch together and shape into her hair. Himself abandoned me to visit the stables with Mr. Ketch, but he came back from time to time, sorry to lose my company, and at last brought his pincushion pirate and played at my feet.

I did not speak of the horrors I had seen. At first, I was too shocked to bring them back to mind,
and then I was too worried about what they might mean. And then, I come from the servant class, where the habit of silence is strong. Telling secrets may mean starving in the street.

Himself once again demanded a real supper in the dining room, and I found the gathering every bit as awkward as the night before. Miss Winter ate daintily, so that I felt a graceless lump beside her, and acted as if she were alone in the room. Her face was perfectly composed, and one might have thought her bored, except that her eyes flitted here and there so strangely.

Mr. Ketch did not eat. He drank a good deal instead. He acted like a victim of fever, animated to the point of delirium. If he had been under my care, I should have put him to bed and sent for the doctor at once.

My charge was completely at ease. He did not appear to notice the agitation of his reluctant companions, and as for table manners, he made up his own. They disgusted us all, but I did not correct him, for fear Miss Winter should have occasion to correct me.

We had finished our simple meal, and Mr. Ketch was telling a pointless story about London when I became aware of a faint noise in the room, like the
crackling fur of a cat during a thunderstorm. The odd sound moved past me, and when it drew close to Mr. Ketch, he became even more excited, until I feared he might fall into a fit.

“Why are you afraid of that little boy?” Himself interrupted.

Mr. Ketch stopped speaking and gulped down his ale. Then he poured more from a pewter jug.

“What little boy?” I asked.

“The boy standing over there.” Himself gestured towards the faint noise. “I’ve watched him tag after Master Jack for days.”

“How curious,” remarked Mr. Ketch, with an attempt at a laugh. “I don’t see a boy. I see a wizened horror, all teeth and hair and fingernails.”

“How can a thing be all fingernails?” scoffed Miss Winter. “I see no one. I never see them,” she continued in a low voice. “I feel them instead. I wonder which is harder to bear.”

“He’s a boy my size, with a brown face,” said Himself. “He acts like he can’t see me. Like the girl Tabby talked to today, the one with yellow hair. She didn’t look at me either.”

“You spoke with someone?” demanded Miss Winter, her strange eyes searching my face.

“I spoke with Izzy, miss. And maybe with
some—some others; I’m not sure. But I don’t see her yellow hair—not as such, I mean. What I see has been dead for a long time.”

“She’s pretty,” Himself protested.

“She was,” remarked Miss Winter. “I suppose I should be grateful I don’t see them.”

“Why is the brown-faced boy here?” Himself asked.

“Why is any of them here?” murmured Miss Winter.

Mr. Ketch drew a deep breath. “If you must know, that boy was fond of me.”

“Fond of you!”

There, I knew I shouldn’t have said it. The words had slipped out before I thought. But it seemed wholly improbable that first Izzy and now a little boy should haunt this dreadful house out of love.

Mr. Ketch glared at me through bloodshot eyes and drank off his ale. “You doubt me,” he snarled. “You doubt my word. You do.”

“Never mind, Jackie,” warned Miss Winter.

I said nothing.

“No, Flora, we see here Christianity at work, and I intend to speak about it.” Mr. Ketch leaned towards her, pronouncing his
s
’s with great care. “My heathen git isn’t frightened by our ghosts, but
this pious little scrap of yours sees them as awful things that send her running home in terror. What are we to make of this, eh?” He favored me with a scowl. “That your churchgoing has spoiled natural innocence.”

I might have asked why he saw teeth and fingernails in his specter, but I knew not to argue with my betters.

“So you see, boy,” he went on to Himself, “you’re missing nothing with religion. Let them keep their guilt and their hell.”

Himself was listening with interest. “I’ve been to hell,” he said. Mr. Ketch laughed at that and poured another glass, and I felt it my duty to speak.

“Hell is a fact, and so is guilt, when a person misbehaves,” I said. “It’s shame enough to keep this boy in ignorance. He shouldn’t be lied to as well.”

“What is the truth, pray? That he should waste his life in humble servitude to others, hoping that a benevolent divinity will reward him? You won’t do it, will you, my boy—you’ll live just as you please.” And he nodded his approval at Himself’s enthusiastic reply.

“You’ll make a heartless villain of him, sir,” I protested, “with no conscience to teach him kindness. What should happen if you stood between
him and what he wanted? Should you counsel him to murder you in your bed?”

“In an instant!” thundered Mr. Ketch, slamming his fist down on the table. “I want no cowards in this house, no, by hell I don’t. And you would murder me, wouldn’t you, young rogue? I’m sure of it, you rascal. I tell you, there’s comfort in that.”

“That’s quite enough, Jackie,” said Miss Winter, rising from the table. “They can’t tell when you tease.”

The conversation raised Mr. Ketch to his old place in my charge’s affections. Himself was fairly overcome with hero-worship. He was still chattering away about it as I undressed him for bed that night.

“How brave he is!” he said while I scrubbed his neck with a cloth. “Doesn’t mind if I murder him. Glad of it, in fact! I hope I may do murder yet, he’ll be let down if I don’t.”

“Start tonight,” suggested Mrs. Sexton, to my complete surprise. “Tomorrow’s May Day already. Bah!” she grunted as she untied the bed curtains. “I’ve lived too long to wait on the masters and their maids.”

“Whatever can you mean?” I demanded, but she picked up the warming pan and left without tucking us into bed.

“Rogue wants to do murder,” announced Himself, wriggling away from my wet cloth. “Rogue says he’ll murder anyone who washes him.”

“Rogue can stay nasty and full of pins if he likes,” I retorted, “but I’ll have no dirty feet in this bed. Come back here if you don’t want to sleep on the floor.”

Izzy did not haunt me that night, but other thoughts haunted me instead. I am no quick study; my thoughts take their time. As I lay in the dark, I remembered again the man in the white shirt, and the presence of the unseen courtyard.

As I lay there, I swear I could feel the house settle into its proper place around me. Nearly a week’s exploration had taught me its stairways and passages, and I traveled them now in my mind. They had made no sense then; they had twisted upon themselves without meaning until I had learned their secret. Now I saw plainly that the house was not a whole entity, but rather three long, narrow buildings joined at their corners and shaped around an empty core. The barn made up the fourth side of the puzzle box. Seldom House was hollow.

As soon as I grasped this, I felt the narrow shaft at the center of the house begin to pull on my spirit like a whirlpool. It did not exist as an afterthought.
The house existed to surround it. I could feel that empty well tugging at me through the walls that shielded me from it, the black heart of this evil place, the focus of dread and mystery. I fell asleep aware of its presence, and I awoke determined to find it and learn the truth about the deadly place at last.

The day dawned cool, damp, and windy, with low clouds bucketing across the sky. Mrs. Sexton stood at the kitchen window to watch them after she gave us our breakfast. She had prepared sweet cakes for us with warm butter and berry preserves. Himself had been so delighted that he had made his pirate kiss her wrinkled cheek.

I had left Alma Augusta in the bedroom. She looked beautiful now in her red chintz, with her fair hair coiled up in a bun; before breakfast, I had warmed her scalp over a candle and fastened on
the little wig. Then I had propped her in the chair by the fire rather than bring her on my dangerous quest. Himself and his pirate saw eye to eye, but Alma Augusta and I were different. She was a lady now, and I didn’t want to spoil her pretty dress.

“Let’s play hide-and-seek,” I told Himself. “You hide first.”

I did not find him during our first several trials, for he was good at hiding and I was not seeking him. Our game gave me a pretext to roam about the house and look for the way into the courtyard. One by one, I examined the back walls of each wing, wandering the dim passages and holding up a candle to study them closely. But, try as I might, I could find no crack in the stone nor keyhole in the paneling that might indicate the presence of a door.

“I’m tired of this,” said Himself after waiting patiently for me yet again. “You hide now, and I’ll find you.” But I proved no better at hiding than I had been at finding, and he grew disgusted with me.

Having examined the wing that held the kitchen, including the passages outside Miss Winter’s rooms, I turned my attention to the wing that held the front door. The man in the white shirt had been closest to this part of the house. Perhaps he had come through a doorway to an outside flight of stairs. If so, the
door must be high in the wall. I began my investigation on the top floor.

“I’ve stood by the banister there, watching you,” announced my charge. “You weren’t hiding. You meant to be rid of me. I’m master, and I shan’t bear this. If you won’t play properly, I’ll tell Mrs. Sexton.”

“All right,” I admitted then, “I wasn’t hiding, and I haven’t been looking for you. I’ll tell you what I’m doing. I’m looking for the way into the courtyard we saw, where the man in the white shirt went. I can’t find a regular door, so you can help me look for cracks or keyholes, something unusual.”

We had come to the room at the top of the stairs with the painted leather panels, where Himself had sulked inside the enormous buffet. It was such a lovely chamber, I thought, with its warm colors and its fine work, but my enthusiasm abated when I recalled that Izzy’s ghost had appeared here. Leather panels, I mused, attempting to put her from my mind. What better material to cover a secret door?