It was some time later that the pain of the stiffness in her legs made her move. Staring round the room she realised the night light was flickering, the wick only a fragment in the last liquid drops of translucent wax. Still clutching the teddy bear she dragged herself to her feet and made her way back into the bedroom. The house was bitterly cold. She could hear the wind now, knocking the creeper against the windows. There was a hollow moaning from the chimney. Outside, the clouds were building and it was beginning to sleet. Her slipper was stiff with dried blood and her foot hurt. Making her way towards the door she went out onto the landing.
At the top of the stairs she stopped and looked down. They had turned the lights off; the great hall was in darkness. She swallowed, her right hand clinging to the newel post at the top of the banisters, listening to the wind howling in the huge chimney. It was very cold downstairs. They hadn’t lit a fire in the vast fireplace for days and the chill of the autumn nights had penetrated deep into the room. She took a deep breath and put one tentative foot
on the stairs, hearing the protesting creak of the oak. Her heart was thudding so loudly she could feel it in her ears. It made her feel dizzy, disorientated. She took another step down, the landing light throwing her shadow down before her. There was something lying on the stairs a few steps down in the shadows. She frowned. The others must have dropped something in their hurry. She took another step, staring at the soft glow of the polished wood on the step. It was white. A rose bud. She stood still, clinging to the banisters, staring at it, bile rising in her throat.
‘Leave me alone,’ she whimpered into the darkness. ‘Do you hear me? Leave me alone. What have I done to you?’
There was no reply.
She took another step down, still holding onto the wooden hand rail as though her life depended on it, and stepped carefully round the rose. Its scent was sweet and delicate, reminding her of early summer. She took another step, sliding away from it warily, and then another and another. A gust of wind hit the house and she felt the chimney shudder with the strength of it. Another two steps and she would be able to reach the light switch, illuminating the great hall, throwing gaunt reflections back from the glass, cold behind undrawn curtains.
Katherine. I’m here, Katherine.
One more step. Her hand reached out, the fingers grasping for the switch.
Katherine. Sweet lady, don’t die. Wait for me, Katherine. Why did your mother not send for me, Katherine? A pox on her for her hatred and her scheming.
The light came on with a sharp click and she stood, her back pressed against the wall, staring out into the room. A dusting of ash had blown out of the hearth, scattering across the stone flags. On the polished table the chrysanthemums which Lyn had picked a week earlier in the garden had wilted, their petals showering in a ring of sticky pollen.
I curse the child that killed you, Katherine. Would that it had died instead of you. Come back to me, Katherine, love of my life and my destiny …
‘Stop it!’ Joss shook her head, pressing her hands to her ears. ‘Stop it!’ The words were there, hammering inside her skull, echoing strangely without form. ‘Stop it! Leave me alone!’
She took a step out into the room, shivering violently, her hands crossed tightly across her chest. Opposite her the door into the main hall seemed a life time away. She took another step, afraid to run as though it might provoke some kind of pursuit. Another gust of wind; a movement in the hearth caught her eye, and she stopped again, staring at it as a shower of white rose petals floated gently into the room from the chimney and settled on the flags. In the kitchen the two cats, cuddled together in their basket awoke suddenly, their fur on end, and fled as one across the kitchen floor and out of the cat flap into the wind and icy rain.
‘No.’ She bit her lip. ‘No, please.’ Only another few steps and she would be through the door down the hall and into the kitchen, then out of the house. She took another step, her eyes straining into the corners of the room, then at a sound behind her she whirled round.
The door of the study had slipped off its latch and swung open as with a violent crash the French windows, not properly shut last time they had been used, flew open onto the garden. Wind and rain lashed through the room as the doors were hurled back against the wall. Running back she stared round in despair. Sleet was pouring into the room, soaking the carpet. She raced to the window and wrestled the doors shut, then switching on the desk light she locked them and pulled the curtains closed, out of breath with the effort. The papers from her desk were scattered across the room. She surveyed them miserably – the manuscript of the book, notes, letters, some of her mother’s things – all strewn across the carpet, some of them near the window, soaking wet. She left them. Running back to the door she stopped dead.
The figure was standing in the doorway to the great hall, huge and clear as he had been in the bathroom. There was no armour now. He was dressed in black and purple, his dark blue cloak swinging from his shoulders as he raised a hand towards her.
Her reaction was reflexive. She turned and wrenching open the nearest door, that of the cellar, she dived through it, taking the steps three at a time into the darkness. Sobbing she fled across the first cellar out of the diagonal light thrown down the steps from the hall and into the total darkness of the second. Crawling behind the empty wine bins she pressed herself against the cold damp bricks and held her breath.
The cellar steps creaked. Moaning, she crouched smaller, hiding her head in her knees, her arms clutched round her. She could feel him near her, his presence like an electric charge in the darkness.
Katherine. Come to me
‘No.’ She had stopped breathing. She could smell the roses – their scent filled the air round her.
He was close to her now, having no difficulty finding her in the darkness, seeing not a strange woman hiding amongst the wine bins of a twentieth-century cellar but the love of his life, lifeless on a bier – lifeless until he could breathe life into her with his love and tear the child from her, the child that had stolen her life.