Beloved,
Was a time when I knew peace in your presence. Though, to be truthful with myself, there were as many times when your presence plunged me into deadliest danger. Or pain. Or fear. But the peace is what I remember and long for. Were you here, I would seize you by the shoulders and shake you until your teeth rattled. What is the meaning of this truncated message you have sent me? Did you fear to entrust too much information? Did you suspect how cruelly your messenger would be hunted, or how she would suffer such a tortured death? What need could compel you to knowingly risk her to such a fate? I ask myself that, and the only answer I can find is that if you did not, she would face a worse one? What, I ask myself, could be worse? And then I wonder what sort of danger you yourself are in right now, that you did not bring this message yourself.
All I have are questions, and each one is a torment to me at a time when I am overwhelmed by other concerns. You have set me a mysterious task with few clues. I fear it is an essential one. But just as essential are those already in my hands. The raising of my daughter … Shall I again abandon my own child, this time to go in search of yours? Too little information, old friend, and too large a sacrifice.
Unfinished letter from my father’s desk
I stood alone in my room and listened to Shun shrieking out in the hallway. Bitterness rose in me. After all I had gone through tonight with him, all I had done to help him, one cry from her, and my father ran off and left me standing in the semi-dark in soggy clothing. I pushed the lid of the chest up higher and strained to reach the bottom and, by touch, discover something dry and comfortable I would wear to bed. I pushed past winter socks and itchy wool shirts. My fingertips touched something, and then I got hold of it and pulled it up from the bottom of the chest.
It was a warm, felted nightrobe. Red. My favourite colour. I carried it closer to the fire to look at it. It was new and unworn. I turned the collar inside out and knew the stitches. My mother had made this. For me. Made it and set it aside, as she had so often done, to be pulled out the moment I outgrew my old one.
I shed my wet garments where I stood and pulled the new nightrobe on over my head. It fitted well, save that it was a bit long. I lifted it to walk. It made me feel elegant to have to catch up my skirt when I walked, even if it was only the train of my nightrobe.
The ghost cried out, a long distant wail that lifted the hair on the back of my head. I stood frozen for an instant. Then it came again, closer and louder. Two things happened in that moment. I knew I should never have left a cat in the spy-maze, and I abruptly deduced that yes, my chamber did have an entrance to the secret corridors. It just wasn’t where I had thought it would be.
I pushed open the door to the maid-servant’s room. The firelight barely reached into the room. I went back for a candle. The pale stranger’s bedding was as she had left it, crumpled on the bed. I knew better than to touch it. I edged around it and as I did, my feet tangled in something and I nearly fell. I cried out, in fear of the infected bedding and the ghost cried in response.
‘Just a minute!’ I hissed low. ‘I’m coming. Be quiet and I’ll give you a big piece of fish.’
Water. The cat wanted water. I should have known that. He’d already found and claimed his salt fish reward, and now he was thirsty. ‘Water, then. And sausage from the pantry. But be quiet until I can get to you. Please.’
A rumbly miaow of agreement and warning. If his reward was slow in coming, he was going to sing the stones down around me.
Heart thundering, I looked down at my feet, fearing to see a flood of biting insects climbing my legs. Instead, I saw only the hem of my nightrobe and, when I lifted it, my bare feet against the plank floor. Holding my robe high and bringing my candle close, I stooped down. I stared. I could feel that my foot was on top of something not the floor but I couldn’t see anything there.
I hiked my nightrobe higher so I could grip the hem in my teeth and curled my toes. They clasped fabric. Light and soft. I reached down and pinched it between my forefinger and thumb and as I did, a flap of it fell over, revealing once more the butterfly wing pattern on the underside. I dropped it, startled. And again, my foot was apparently bare against the floor, but half of my toes were gone. One corner of the cloak was upturned to show the delicate panes of colour. As I stared in astonishment, my toes slowly formed on the fabric. I could feel that the cloth covered them but I could see them.
I pinched the butterfly colour part of the cloak up between my thumb and forefinger and stood. Now I could see it. It hung from my uplifted hand, a garment of riotous colour and very little weight. This, then, was how we had not seen her in the bed. The strange words of the messenger came back to me. ‘It takes on the colours and shadows.’ No wonder she had cautioned us not to discard it. It was a treasure from an old tale! Abruptly my fear of contagion vanished, to be replaced with the certainty that if my father saw this, he would take it from me and probably destroy it to protect me.
I set my candle on the floor and standing carefully free of the bedding’s touch, I shook out the cloak and folded it, butterfly side out. It made a surprisingly small packet. I thought to myself that such thin fabric would be delicate and of small use against wind or rain. I resolved to take great care with it.
Stripy Cat miaowed again. ‘Hush!’ I cautioned him. Then I suggested, ‘Dig or scratch where you see my light. I’m trying to find the door.’
The faint scrabbling came from under the bed. I didn’t want to touch the bedframe but I did. I seized it in both hands and with an effort pulled the heavy bed away from the wall. It seemed to me it was much heavier than it needed to be, and I suspect it had been made so just to discourage a servant from moving it.
I lifted my candle and edged past the bedframe to the wall, to peer and poke at the wooden panels. The cat clawed diligently, even frantically. I could not see an opening or trigger, but when I put my hand where he was scratching, I felt a draught. And the sound, it seemed to me, was much louder than it should have been. ‘Be patient,’ I warned him again, and suddenly thought of the door in the study. I shut the door to the room and studied the hinges. No false hinges but there was one plank of wood behind the door that was narrower than its fellows. I caught my nails in the edge and tugged at it till it swung out. Behind it was a lever covered in cobwebs and spotted with rust. I pulled it and it groaned. It did not travel far, but a section of wall behind the bed suddenly moved out of alignment. The cat’s excited miaow was louder now.
‘Shush!’ I warned him. I suspected I had very little time until my father returned. I needed to hide my cloak, banish and reward the cat and be back in my room before I was missed. I returned the narrow panel to its place, gritted my teeth and edged around the contaminated bed. When I leaned on the displaced wall panel, it swung in. I stepped inside, pushing the cat back with my foot. ‘Don’t go out here! There’s no water here,’ I warned him. He growled but backed away. I tucked the cloak under my arm, set down my candle and used every bit of my strength to pull the bed back into place. That done, I stepped into the secret corridor and pushed the concealed door closed behind me.
Cat first, I decided, and he was pleased that I did so. ‘Take us back to the pantry,’ I suggested in a whisper. ‘To the fish!’ Stripy led and I followed. Twice he stopped so abruptly that I nearly trod on him. But he knew the way and we reached the concealed door in the pantry and together we emerged there. I had to pile up boxes to reach a fine string of sausages hung out of our reach. Again, I wished for a belt-knife. I had to bite two of the sausages free of their fellows. The cat called piteously, reminding me it was water he craved most.
Together we ventured into the kitchen where I found water for him. He drank and drank while I examined my butterfly cloak. The fabric seemed to be much sturdier than its light weight would indicate. When Stripy had finished drinking, I rewarded him with the sausage and let him carry it out into the kitchen yard. He was padding away into the night when I called after him, ‘What about the rats? Did you kill any?’
He had killed several, and discovered and made an end of two nests of babies. ‘Will you come back tomorrow?’
It wasn’t likely. He hadn’t liked being confined with no water. He was accustomed to coming and going as he pleased. He trotted away, tail high, into the cold night. I could scarcely blame him. I’d left him trapped and waterless for hours. But his discovery of two nests of baby rats was something I could not ignore. I would have to find a feline ally, and soon.
I heard a whisper of sound from the house and suddenly recalled that I needed to hurry. I darted back into the pantry just as I heard someone come into the kitchen. I pinched my candle out and by touch found my way back into the secret corridor. I drew the door shut behind me. The dark became absolute. I promised myself that I now knew my way well enough that I needed no light. I tried not to think of any rats Stripy had not killed.
It took me a time but I groped my way back to the small cubby that looked down into my father’s study. A tiny beam of light was coming in the peephole. I peered out and saw my father move to close the study doors. In a moment, he’d open the door.
In the dark I shook out my butterfly cloak and then refolded it so that the invisible side was out. I could not see what I was doing. I hoped I had left no betraying edge of colour showing. As I heard him open the panel door, I hid my cloak on the shelf behind the candle supply.
The dance of his candlelight preceded him. Light and liquid shadows flowed and spread. They came around the corner like a wave of water and engulfed me. I sat quietly, my extinguished candle in hand, until he reached me. As the light touched me and he saw me, I heard the sigh of relief he expelled.
‘I thought I might find you here,’ he said gently. Then, as he looked at me, ‘Oh, my dear … did your candle go out, too? Such a night it has been for you. My poor little cub.’
He had to crouch to be in my hidey-hole. When I stood, he bent deeper to kiss me where my hair parted. He was still for a moment as if he were smelling me. ‘Are you all right?’
I nodded.
‘Is this where you want to come when you are frightened?’
That I could answer truthfully. ‘Yes. This place is mine, more than anywhere else in Withywoods.’
He straightened and nodded back at me. ‘Very well.’ He tried to roll his shoulders but could not in the cramped space. ‘Come with me, now. We both need to get some sleep before dawn.’
He led the way and I followed him out of the secret corridors and back into his den. I watched him close the panel and open the tall doors. I followed his candle as we went back to the main part of Withywoods. At the foot of the grand staircase, he halted. He turned and looked down at me. ‘Your room will need to be thoroughly cleaned before you can sleep there again. And my room is too untidy. I suggest we sleep in your mother’s sitting room, where you were born.’
He did not wait for me to agree. I followed him as we went to the pleasant chamber that had once served as a nursery for me. It was cold and dark. My father lit a branch of candles and left me there while he went to get a scoop of coals from another hearth to start a fire. While he was gone, I brushed cobwebs from my new red nightdress. I stared about my mother’s dimly lit room. We had not spent much time here since she had died. Her presence was everywhere, from the candles ready in their holders to the emptied flower vases. No. Not her presence. It was her absence that I felt here. Last winter the three of us had gathered here almost every night. My mother’s work-basket was still by her chair. I sat down in her chair and set it on my lap. I pulled my feet up under my nightgown and hugged the basket to me.