Sarah was right. Green-brown eyes lurked in the shadows at the back of the room. A white sheet concealed most of the face, but she could see the pupils, trained on her with an unnatural scrutiny.
‘A painting. It is just a painting, Sarah. Look, it does not blink.’
Elsie dug through the clutter, pulling and pushing objects out of her way. Dust powdered her dress grey, trailing from the hem in ribbons. The painted eyes kindled as she grew closer, as if greeting an old friend.
Elsie seized the end of the sheet covering the portrait and dragged it away. The material snagged as it moved, finally coming loose with a ripping sound.
‘Oh!’ Sarah cried. ‘It’s . . . it’s . . .’
It’s me, Elsie thought with horror.
It was a girl, about nine or ten. A button nose and pursed lips. Eyes that simultaneously beckoned and dared you to come closer. She was staring into the face of the child she had been: the girl with her youth ripped out.
How? Her mind stuttered and stopped. The face before her eyes was her own, yet she felt no kinship with it. Go away, she wanted to scream. Go away, I am afraid of you.
‘It is not a painting,’ Sarah said. ‘That is – it’s painted, but it is not a canvas. It seems to be free-standing.’ She put her book down, pushed forwards and poked her head around the back of the figure. ‘Ah, no. It is flat. But it has a wooden prop, you see?’
Elsie’s field of vision expanded. The face shrank into proportion and she saw the painted girl in full. Waist-height, like a real child, the figure represented was dressed in olive silk with a gold lace trim. A tissue apron drifted around her legs. She did not have blonde hair like Elsie; it was red-brown and piled up onto her head in a kind of pyramid, threaded with orange ribbon and beads. She held a basket of roses and herbs at her waist. The other hand was raised, pressing a white bloom against her heart. She was not of this century; perhaps not even of the last.
‘Remarkable.’ Sarah rested a hand on the outline of a shoulder. The colours had faded with age and there were little scuffs on the woodwork. ‘It is as if someone has cut out the figure from a painting and mounted it on a plank of wood.’
‘Does it . . . Does it not remind you of anyone?’
Sarah nibbled her lower lip. ‘A little. Around the eyes. It must be one of the Bainbridge ancestors. We cannot be surprised if she looks a bit like Rupert.’
‘Rupert?’ she repeated incredulously. But then she saw it: just a whisper, creeping through the chipped paint. She looks like me and Rupert. Her heart seized. Was this what her baby would look like?
Sarah ran her hand along the wooden edge of the arm. ‘She’s beautiful. We must take her downstairs. Let’s put her in the Great Hall. We might be able to lift her between us. If we – oh!’ She sprang back. A shard of wood impaled her palm. ‘Ouch.’
‘Come here.’ Carefully, Elsie held Sarah’s fingers within her gloved ones. ‘Grit your teeth. One, two – three!’
The splinter slid out. Beads of blood welled up from the puncture mark; Sarah raised it to her mouth and sucked.
‘These antiques do fall apart,’ Elsie said. ‘Probably best to leave the thing where it is.’
‘Oh no, Mrs Bainbridge, please! I would so love to have her in the house.’
Elsie shivered. ‘Well, perhaps you should get a servant to move it for you,’ she said reluctantly. ‘Thicker skin.’
Behind them, the floorboards screeched. ‘Dash it!’
Elsie spun around. Mabel the maid lay crumpled beside the door with her skirts spread about her.
‘Heaven above, what are you doing, Mabel?’
‘Tain’t nothing I’ve done! Floorboard gave way and swallowed me foot!’
‘Goodness me!’ Sarah rushed forward, her own injury forgotten. ‘Are you hurt? Can you feel the ankle?’
‘Yes, I can darn well feel it! Hurts like hell.’ Mabel bit down on a spurt of pain. ‘Miss.’
Taking an arm each, Elsie and Sarah wedged their shoulders beneath Mabel’s armpits and hauled her free. A smell emerged from the hole in the boards; something reeking of wet ashes and decomposition.
Seated on the floor, Mabel reached out to prod her ankle. ‘Torn right through to my stocking. Lucky the whole bleedin’ leg didn’t come off.’
‘We had better fetch Mrs Holt,’ said Elsie. ‘I am sure she will have a poultice to put on it. Whatever were you doing, Mabel, sneaking up behind us?’
Mabel lowered her chin onto her chest. She looked more truculent than ever. ‘Didn’t mean no harm. This door ain’t been open since I come here. Wondered what was inside. Then I heard Miss Sarah cry out, like. Thought she needed help. Lot of thanks I gets for it,’ she added sourly.
‘I’m very grateful,’ Sarah said. ‘Come here, I’ll wrap your skirt around the cut. Keep pushing on it until we can bind it with some bandages.’ She moved tenderly, but Mabel still moaned. ‘How strange that you should come in just then! Mrs Bainbridge and I were about to fetch you. We wanted your help moving our new discovery downstairs.’
‘What discovery?’ Sarah pointed to the wooden figure. Mabel looked up and recoiled. ‘Bleedin’ heck. What’s that?’
‘Mabel,’ Elsie said, ‘I appreciate you are injured but that is no excuse for your continued bad language. Please remember the company you are in.’
‘Sorry, ma’am,’ she mumbled, although she did not sound contrite. ‘It’s just – I never seen anything like that before. What is it, a picture?’
‘No. We believe it is some kind of ornament for the floor. A standing figure. Not a statue or a painting but somewhere in between.’
‘I don’t like it.’ Mabel’s jaw set. ‘Looks at me funny. Would give me the creeps, something like that.’
‘Hogwash,’ said Elsie. ‘It is no different from the portraits that hang in the corridor.’
‘It is,’ Mabel insisted. ‘It’s nasty. Don’t like it.’
Elsie’s skin prickled. She found it uncanny herself, but she was not about to admit that to a servant. ‘It is not necessary for you to like it. You are required only to move it for Miss Sarah and clean it.’
Mabel pouted. As if coming to her defence, a fresh pulse of blood pushed up through the gash on her ankle. ‘Can’t do no cleaning now, can I?’
Elsie sighed. ‘I suppose I had better fetch Helen.’
Helen regarded the wooden figure, hands planted on her broad hips. Crinkles appeared beside her eyes as she squinted through the dust. ‘Is this new, ma’am?’
‘New?’ Elsie echoed. ‘No, I expect it is very old.’
‘No, ma’am, I meant new to the house. I’m sure the master had something like it.’
A spasm in her shoulder muscles. To hear Rupert spoken of like that, as if he were still present, still in charge here. ‘He never mentioned such an object to me. We didn’t have one in London, and if he found one here . . . Well, I have not seen another around the house, have you?’
Helen shrugged and picked up the figure. ‘Can’t say I have, ma’am.’