The Mist in the Mirror (22 page)

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Authors: Susan Hill

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BOOK: The Mist in the Mirror
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The village street was as silent and deserted as before, almost as if it had been abandoned and left to crumble, for all the smoke rising thinly here and there from cottage chimneys. But I refused to let the eerie quietness and emptiness dampen my spirits now, and I intended to walk up a few paths and knock on some doors, in the weeks to come.

Making my way slowly through the silent, neglected gardens at the Hall, I realised that I was already beginning to feel quite differently towards the place, felt mounting excitement, saw possibilities in every corner, and longed for it to be restored to life again. Standing in front of the lead statue of the boy, which seemed so friendly and familiar to
me, I pledged rather fervently that I would work, give my whole life, to make Kittiscar a place of happiness and prosperity once again, no matter what the cost. There was no fortune, my relative said in her letter. But somehow, I determined, money should be found, I would work, things would be done. Above all, I needed to enthuse those around me, bring people up here, enlist their help in making Kittiscar the centre of a thriving village again.

I had wondered if the house might be empty, but the woman let me in almost as soon as my hand touched the bell, though she stared at me blankly and, for a few seconds, did not step back to let me into the hall. I said, ‘I am sorry it is a little late, but I have come again simply to go around the Hall, not to change or disturb anything just now, of course,’ I added, seeing her guarded, faintly hostile expression, ‘out of respect for my relative.’

‘You will not find anything of interest. It is an old neglected place, and Miss Monmouth had been very ill for some time. She confined herself to one part of the house.’

‘Yes. Nevertheless, I should like to see and begin to form plans.’

‘As you wish. Of course, it is yours to take away what you choose.’

‘Oh, I do not imagine I shall take anything away, not for a good while at least. I shall leave all the furnishings and so forth as they are until I have a feel of the place, and I have little of my own to bring. As I think you know, I came from years spent abroad, and had no home. My possessions are very few.’

She continued to stare at me but now a look of almost horror crossed her features when she spoke, her voice a whisper.

‘You surely are not planning to live here at Kittiscar?’

‘Why certainly I am! I have no other home. I am the heir to the house, am I not?’

‘But you cannot – surely you will not.’

‘Why do you say so?’

‘Because … because you are a Monmouth and a man.’

A sentence from my relative’s letter came to my mind. ‘I am sorry for you. There has been no trouble for me,
being a woman
.’ I felt a clutching sensation in the pit of my stomach. Whatever was wrong, whatever I had been warned about in the past and again now, had to do with Kittiscar Hall and the Monmouth family in reference to its male line. For a moment, I wanted to have it out with her there and then, to hear the full truth. But I did not ask. I dismissed it. It was some story, an old tale such as often attached itself to an old house. Some nonsense.

I went into every room at Kittiscar Hall that day. The sun was shining into those at the back of the house and, when I opened the shutters and pulled all the heavy, dingy curtains to one side, light flooded in. The furniture was dark and in many cases ugly carved oak, but although it was dusty and the whole place wore the same threadbare, neglected air, I felt heartened that the decay was not by any means far gone and sure that I could live in the place more or less as it was, once it had been given an airing. I pushed hard on the windows, but only one or two would open. Still, it let in some measure of fresh air and late sunshine here and there.

My relative had had precious few personal belongings; her clothes and linen were in the bedroom in which I had seen her body, together with a few trinkets and books. Otherwise she had left no trace of herself; it was almost as though she had lived as a caretaker of the place and made no impress of herself upon it.

I went everywhere, from attics to damp, unlit cellar, and down every passage and into every nook and cranny, and I felt nothing in the slightest degree fearful or dreadful there; I saw no ghosts, heard no strange sounds. It was merely dismal and gloomy, dark and curiously lifeless. My sense of
familiarity with it had been dimmed. I had no further, clearer memories and could only suppose that my childhood visits had been fleeting and very early. Certainly, I was sure now that I had never lived here. But my sense of the terrible woman in her room at the end of the passage was vivid still, and when I passed there I shrank back involuntarily, and felt the strong presence of someone beside me whose hand I clutched and in whose skirts I had hidden.

At last, I returned to the attic, wanting to look over to the open moor again, and wondering if I might make these my own quarters, at least for the beginning of my life here. I could furnish these empty rooms with a few of my own simple things, and there was a brightness and airiness up here that was absent from the rest of the Hall.

It was as I gazed through the grimy casement at the rooks swirling about in the tree tops and the rising purple line of the moor ahead, that, glancing to my left, I saw the grey stone walls of the building I had glimpsed down the path between trees on my first visit here, and now I saw that the roof went to a point, at the top of which was an old bell, and realised that I was looking onto the chapel belonging to the Hall, to which the men at the Inn had referred.

The woman was nowhere to be seen, and the house was quite silent, as I ran down through it and out at a side door I had discovered earlier led to a small inner courtyard, and thence through a wooden gate in the wall, directly to the overgrown grassy paths and shrubs at the back of the Hall. From here, I found my way, at times up to my knees in undergrowth and briars, to the path under the trees, and followed it, with a mingled feeling of curiosity and apprehension.

The sun had just set and the sky was darkening. To the east, I saw heavy clouds banking up.

Once, I looked back. I could see the side of the Hall and
its boundary wall, and one chimney, but there were no windows and I could not have been seen.

From somewhere, a blackbird pinked a sudden, angry warning, before fluttering low through the undergrowth. The rooks were cawing around the tops of the elms as they circled, settling down to roost. But the wind had dropped, and the air was quite still and even close along this narrow, overgrown path, through the overhanging trees.

Then, I came out into a small clearing, and the chapel was immediately in front of me, dark, still, and silent, grim in the last of the light. An iron grille stood in front of the low door, which I half expected to find padlocked, but as I touched it, it gave way at once, swinging open with a grating sound on its rusty hinges.

I hesitated before the wooden door, feeling suddenly cold and as though a shadow had fallen over me, and someone unseen but hostile was standing just a few feet away on my left side.

But I steeled myself, summoning up every ounce of resolution I possessed, for I knew that I was surely only responding to some melancholy mood of the time of day and the fading light, and the loneliness of my situation in this weird spot. At last, taking a deep breath and muttering an impulsive prayer for protection, I put my hand to the iron ring that served as a handle to the chapel door. It turned easily. I hesitated, before boldly pushing open the wooden door.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It was the smell that struck me first, a sour, penetrating smell of cold damp stone and earth; there might have been no air let into the building for a hundred years.

Two shallow steps led down into the body of the chapel, which was small and rectangular, with high, narrow windows in plain glass, and a bare stone altar at the far end.

I stepped down warily, and almost fell, as the flagstones shifted and tipped unevenly. The floor was cracked and sinking, and here and there great cracks ran, and bare earth showed through. The walls were stained with damp and mould, the pews unsteady so that as I reached out to the nearest one it rocked slightly. A small pile of prayer books and hymnals was mildewed over and, in front of the altar, the remains of a cloth had almost rotted away. But, on the wall, a lion and unicorn board stood out, the painted colours darkened but the form and gilding still clear.

It was a drear little place, stifling and airless, speaking only of ruin and decay. I walked slowly down the aisle, noticing that the floorboards beneath the pew benches were rotten and blackened, the stone ledges crumbling away, and that there was a rubble of old twigs and grasses on part
of the floor, where a bird’s nest had fallen through a hole in the roof.

At the far end, I noticed a low archway in the stone and went cautiously over to it, before I realised that steps led down into darkness, and recoiled, for the stench rising from below was foul, of decay and death as well as of the cold and neglect of years.

Then, I saw that the stones at my feet at this end of the chapel were engraved.

Here lies Joshua Monmouth
Born 1583 Died 1613
Here lyeth Digby Monmouth and his sons
Here lies … Here lies … Here lies …

I traced out every name. My ancestors were at my feet, how many of them I could not tell, for many of the stones were too broken and worn away to decipher.

Then I came to a last stone, close to the steps, and bending down, for it was growing darker now, traced with my finger the outline of the words.

Here lies George Edward Pallentire Monmouth

I stood. Every tomb, of every Monmouth of Kittiscar. Every male, for there was no woman buried here.

And then, my eye was caught by a plaque let into the wall, altogether more elaborate and flourishing in style. I went closer and read it.

This memorial erected to
Conrad Vane of Kittiscar.
Imperator
18–

As I stood trembling before it, horrified, confused and yet somehow at last in dawning understanding, I heard a sound and, turning, saw the door of the chapel, which I had left open, begin slowly, softly to close. I ran to it, reached
out and grabbed the handle, as I stumbled up the uneven steps. But rattle it, twist and turn and wrench it as I might, it would not yield to me. The door was not only closed but locked, and I locked in by it, trapped in the darkening, empty chapel. I fell and grasped the nearest pew, clutched at it and sat down, shaking and terrified. There was still light left in the sky, I looked up and saw it, a beautiful deep blue-grey, tantalising, beyond the high windows, the light of the outside world, which I could not reach. I got up and ran frantically round, clambered up onto another pew to see if I might get a purchase on the stones and climb up to the windows somehow, but of course I could not, there was no foothold of any kind and, in any case, the windows were barred.

I waited, trying to calm myself and to order my thoughts, but the feelings I had were more than those ordinary, inevitable ones that would have overcome any man in that situation. Outside the door I had sensed a watcher, a presence at my shoulder. Now, I felt it again. I knew that at my side was a presence, a looming, leering, triumphant, malevolent presence that had lured me here, where I was intended finally to be, a Monmouth among others long dead and buried and decayed.

I dared not turn my head or look over my shoulder. Instead I looked up and ahead.

He was standing at the open entrance to the crypt, I saw him, shadowy, hunched close to the stone wall. His body half concealed by the dark, heavy clothes he wore, his face slightly averted.

But I knew him, knew him from the seductive, smiling expression of decadence and silken cunning, knew him for my tormentor and betrayer, as well as for the murderer of my young innocent relative, and the corrupter of how many others, knew him for the way he had tempted me and led me on, from so long ago, at first all eager and willing to follow, and innocent, too, later bewitched and perverse,
half-reluctant, half-afraid, but nevertheless in thrall. That end of the dank, crumbling chapel seemed to exude Vane’s presence, as the walls had exuded him everywhere he had pursued me.

I was angry and filled with hatred, but most of all I was afraid, paralysed with fear of that dreadful, ghastly presence in the shadows.

The light was fading fast now, I could scarcely see ahead. Then, I heard the noise, the breathing. as I had heard it before; the walls seemed to heave in and out like a dreadful pair of spongy lungs, and to puff out foul air as they did so. I stood up suddenly, reaching towards the last dying light from the sky, through the windows above me, looked wildly all around that chapel for some escape, and then I cried out, ‘What do you want?
What do you want of me?
’ My voice rang round the stone walls and echoed mockingly back to me, and then I fell silent, and bent forwards, sobbing, my head on my hands, in fear and despair.

When I had gained control of myself again, and raised my head, fearfully, the place was pitch black and deathly silent. I peered forwards, and saw nothing, sat still, straining my ears, and heard nothing … He had gone.

Then, from far away, beyond the chapel walls, and the closed door, from somewhere outside in the night, among the trees or in the bare, deserted garden, or even out on the moor, faintly, I heard the boy sobbing, sobbing in all his young loneliness and anguish and despair, the same that I now felt, trapped and cornered and perhaps doomed, as he had been, for who would find me, who would know that I had come here? I had been lured to Kittiscar and to my inheritance, the last surviving male member of my family, and was no more intended to go free than my pale, tormented boy, or any of the others now lying under the slabs below my feet.

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