“This is my office number and address,” she said. “If you need anything while you are here. A cup of tea, books on historic folklore, or just a friendly face. I have a lot of maps too. Old ones especially. The family has a large collection.”
“Thank you, I may take you up on that. I’m here to do a bit of exploring.”
“It’s one thing to be shown the path. Traveling it is something you can only do on your own.”
This whole conversation was surreal, Jac thought. “What made you say that?”
“We all share a consciousness. We breathe in each other’s air. Sometimes two souls can see each other’s shadows even when the sun isn’t out.” Minerva looked up at the fogged-out heavens. “It’s sunnier in Jersey than any of the other isles. But we’re having a bleak spell just now. A fog like this can linger for days. And if it turns cold, the damp can get in your bones. It’s almost as if after the summer rush of tourists, the island wants to rest, so she pulls closed the shutters and locks the door. It shouldn’t stop you, though. Sometimes I think secrets prefer the mist. We have a lot of hiding places here, not just our banks but the caves. They are our real treasure. That’s where the island myths are most alive.”
The deep sonorous foghorn blasted once more.
“We’re coming into port now,” Minerva said. “It’s good to come home.”
Jac searched the morass for any sign of land or buildings or boats, but all she saw was a thick gray wall of shadows.
Eight
SEPTEMBER 14, 1855
JERSEY, CHANNEL ISLANDS, GREAT BRITAIN
Being haunted is frightening. That, I might have guessed. But I never could have imagined how debilitating and exhausting it would be. I feel as if I am being consumed, suffocated and overwhelmed. Oh, how much attention all the spirits crave. And how clever they are to tempt me, promising to imbue me with powers. I have become addicted to their adoration. Terrified by their intensity. What a sacred horror I feel in their presence.
Some of the spirits no longer constrain themselves to visit during the séances but now come to me afterward. By disturbing my sleep night after night they play havoc with my temperament. I cannot shut my window or my door on them. Walls are not barriers for these bloodless creatures. I cannot keep them at bay.
For the last four nights, one has been bolder than any of the others.
It begins with odd noises once the house has gone to sleep and all the lamps are extinguished. Floorboards groan, windows creak. My belongings stir even though the shutters are closed tight. Papers fly. And slowly a light fills the room, a brightness not of this world. In its center is the woman the islanders call La Dame Blanche.
She visited the table once last year and then not again till the day after I saw you on the beach. Since then she has returned each day. And not just to the séances. This prehistoric coquette calls on me in my room, teasing me while I dream, causing me to awaken. Standing before me, this ancient temptress, who is as beautiful and skilled as any Parisian whore, offers me her favors. In exchange she wants what the Shadow wants-for me to write poetry in her honor.
I know I can never satisfy my longing for a ghost. The thought alone is madness! But I crave her. I want to experience her in the way that only mortals can experience each other-with taste and touch and smell. But she has none of these. She is shadow and smoke. Knowing that makes no difference. My passion won’t listen to logic. And so my poetry fills with her. My sleep has begun to suffer. Day after day, I find myself desiring to commune with the dead more than with the living.
And I am no longer alone in being aware of her. La Dame’s spirit is so strong she is seeping through the membrane between the corporeal world and the fantasy world. My barber claims he saw her skulking around our house late one night as he made his way home. The grocer’s boy claimed to have seen her while making a delivery early one morning when it was not quite light out. Terrified, he ran away and hasn’t been willing to make any more deliveries to us.
Have you heard the local legend of this Woman in White? She’s one of the Druid myths that the islanders are so fond of retelling.
About one and a half kilometers from my house at Marine Terrace an imposing menhir rises from the ground. This is one of the great standing stones of Jersey, dating back to Druid times. Of that there is no question. What is less certain is the legend connected to the stone. It is said to be the vessel for the lady’s spirit, her prison during the day, where she pays penance for her crime. Only at night is she allowed to roam the island; at the first rays of sun, she is sucked back into her jail.
La Dame murdered her child. In our séances she had admitted as much and claims she is the first woman on Jersey to have killed her own infant. Her punishment has lasted for the last three thousand years, and she imagines that her soul will be forever imprisoned in the great standing stone.
Yesterday afternoon she visited our séance once again, talking of eternity, infinity and the sentence she was serving for her crime. Afterward I retired to my room and spent several hours transcribing her conversation, hearing her voice in my mind and writing down all the details she shared. As I worked I became more and more heated and uncomfortable. I opened the windows to let in the breeze, but no sooner had I done so than that infernal barking started up. The noise was a terrible distraction. But when I shut the window, I found myself almost unable to draw breath.
Throwing down the pen, leaving the paper on my desk without putting it away, I fled down the stairs and out the front door. Gulping fresh air, I raced to the beach. I needed to be by the sea, far away from the Lady’s smothering soul and the sound of the hellhound.
I had walked for only fifteen minutes when I heard a man call out to me.
“Monsieur Hugo?”
I turned to find the head man of the honorary police force, the connétable Jessie Trent. His silver-tipped baton caught the moonlight and gleamed.
“Good evening, Connétable.”
Trent was a tall, fit man with deep lines around his eyes and perennial frown lines crossing his forehead. I ran into him often during my nocturnal rambles, and over the last two years we’d talked about everything from the political problems on the island to the difference between sons and daughters. His first wife had died in childbirth three years before, after delivering their fifth son. He had remarried; his new wife had recently given him his first daughter. He always struck me as an unusually responsive father: there was always a child’s plaything sticking out of one of his pockets to bring home to his brood, and that night was no exception. I noticed a bit of red cloth tied in such a way that it resembled a dog.
“Have you been out walking long, sir?” Trent asked.
“Not more than a quarter of an hour. Is there a problem?”
“Did you hear that infernal racket?”
“The hounds? Yes. Why?”
“There’s a child that has gone missing. Her mother said there was a dog barking near the house. It has everyone nervous. You know islands like ours are full of fool legends. We’re out looking for the little girl.”
I’d heard a lot of the folklore about the dogs on Jersey. The most often repeated involved a black dog that roamed the cliffs of Bouley Bay in the parish of Trinity. Walkers who have encountered the hound claim he circles them at great speed and then simply disappears.
“Whose child is missing?” I asked.
“Tom Meecham’s. Do you know him?”
“The fishmonger?”
Trent nodded. “Lilly is a pretty thing. Just ten years old last week.”
He spoke about her as if he knew her and he probably did too. If I was correct his oldest was about that age.
“How long has she been missing?”
“We can’t be sure. Lilly went to bed along with her two sisters around seven o’clock when Mrs. Meecham settled down to do mending. About an hour later she heard a dog barking outside the cottage. It didn’t sound regular to her. Or to her dog, she said. He started pacing by the windows and growling. It was disturbing enough for her to get up and go around closing up. When she reached the room where her children sleep, their window was open and Lilly’s bed was empty. First she searched the cottage. Then the garden and the lane. Lilly’s a good girl, and very attached to her mum. If she had heard her calling, Lilly would have come out. When she didn’t, Mrs. Meecham sent one of the boys to the tavern to tell his father. Meecham came straightaway to me. Children don’t go missing often in St. Helier. Of course we have our runaways who stow away on boats, but never as young as ten, and boats don’t leave port at night.”