“Quite a lot of traffic to and from the manor-house of late,” remarked the woman at the window, not answering my query of how I might get myself to Calipash Manor. “Telegraph yesterday, and was barely a week ago the prodigal son come in to send a letter. Queer fellow.”
“Mr. Vincent has come home, then?”
“Aye, for his father is soon for the grave, they say.”
“How is he queer?” I was madly curious about Orlando Vincent, the cousin I had never seen. I should remember later to ask him about Rotterdam, where he was educated. Might be able to write something for the Vase about Dutch schoolboys or something…
“Didn’t say nothing when he came in.” The woman’s frown would have shamed the devil himself. “Grunted his yeses and noes as if he had no human power of speech in him. Gave me a turn, he did. At first I thought he was the Ghast o’the Hills, come to take my soul. Mr. Vincent is very like the apparition, though of course his clothing is different.”
Her words made me laugh, which I could tell displeased her. As a child I heard tell of the ‘Ghast o’the Hills,’ some sort of spirit in a frock-coat that is said to haunt the parish of Ivybridge. Once I even thought I saw it…a childish fancy, of course. I am lucky that education—and, of course, living in London—has disabused me of such country superstitions.
“So you’ve seen the Ghast?” I asked, amused.
“You may laugh, miss, but around here, there’s precious few who haven’t seen the Ghast! He’s as real as you or I, and wanders at night moanin and groanin. It’s said he seeks a wife to keep him company.”
“And Mr. Vincent looks like him?”
“Well, he’s thin, tall, with that Calipash face. All thems what come from the Manor have a look, don’t they? In fact, you have it too, my girl. Are you related?”
I didn’t want to get into that. “I didn’t realize the Ghast was part of the Calipash Curse?”
“Well, that family’s queer, of course, so if this town had some sort of malign spirit, it’d come from thems what—”
“You hush your foolish old mouth, Hazel Smith! Telling ghost stories like a heathen. You ought to be ashamed!”
I turned ’round, surprised, and was pleased to see Old Bill, the groundskeeper and jack-of-all for Calipash Manor, standing behind me.
“Bill!” I cried, and embraced him. “How are you? Oh, just look at you!”
“Let us be gone, Miss Burchell,” he said gruffly. “Waited for you at the station, but they said you’d traipsed hither for your own purposes. Hold your tongue, we can talk on the drive. Lord Calipash is not long for this world and I have no wish to follow him into the grave if this weather turns wet.”
At first I attributed his poor spirits to his age, for he must be closer to seventy than sixty these days, white-haired and gaunt as a skeleton. But he got my trunk onto his skinny back and into the cart quickly enough; indeed, by the time he had scrambled onto the seat, ready to leave, I had hardly finished saying hello and asking after my guardian.
“Things are quite dire,” was his reply. “’Tis good you’ve come now, though you might’ve sent more notice of your arriving. Lizzie is beside herself getting your old room ready, not to mention the cooking for an extra person.”
“I telegraphed yesterday,” I replied, rather taken aback by this admonition. “And really, Lord Calipash himself invited me—bid me come with all possible haste!”
“As you say,” said Bill, looking at me askance as he chucked the reins.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Master’s not been able to lift a quill in some time,” he said with a shrug. “Before his son come home, I was writing all his letters for him.”
“You, Bill!”
“Aye. I went to the village school as a youth and learned to read, write, and cipher—no need to look so surprised, Miss! I do tolerable justice to my lord’s handwriting, he himself asked me to learn the trick of it when he was struck with arthritis. But now him that’s to be the next Lord Calipash has taken over the duty, so he says, but unless he posts the letters himself, nothing’s gone out in some time. Hasn’t asked me to go into the village since his arrival anyways.”
“But that woman said Mr. Vincent delivered the letter himself!”
“Did she now?”
“Yes…perhaps Mr. Vincent was the one who wrote to me. But, then, why disguise his writing? I should have come if he had extended the invitation to me, of course.”
“Couldn’t say, Miss. He’s a strange creature, full of notions and temper. Perhaps he thinks you are like him. I had to write to him in the Lord Calipash’s own hand, begging for his return, to get him to come! Ignored all the letters I wrote as myself.”
“Rotterdam is a very far distance to travel on short notice …”
“Aye, and the road to hell is a short and easy path! Honor thy father says the Bible.”
“Oh, Bill. I’ve missed you,” said I, shocked to find it was the truth, as I had always remembered him as the bane of my childhood. Somehow he knew when I was up to mischief and would foil my plans if he could, with a Bible verse ready to shame me for my willfulness.
I opened my mouth to ask him another question, one about Mr. Vincent, but my power of speech left me entirely at that moment. We’d crested a hill, and Calipash Manor had come into view.
I looked upon the ivy-wreathed front doors and the ancient moldering stone of the house, pale in the weird light of the coming storm, and felt a strange flutter inside my chest. I could not help thinking that the manor looked as if it had weathered a good deal more than ten years during my decade-long absence. The tower, where I had once held tea-parties with my dolls, or played at being Rapunzel, now looked so rickety it would not support a dove’s nest; the plentiful windows, upon which I had painted frost-pictures in the winter and opened to feel the breeze during the mild country summers, looked smaller, and dark with the kind of soot and filth one sees in London but few other places.
“I have been away a very long time,” I whispered hoarsely. “Drive ’round, Bill, so I may get inside and see the place.”
“Go through the front doors, Miss Burchell,” urged Bill.
This drew a laugh to my lips, and I wiped my eyes. “I am no lady, and certainly not the lady of the house. Drive ’round, the servants’ door was always good enough for me.”
“No, Miss. You’re here as our guest now, after all.”
I knew that tone, and it meant no arguing, so I thanked Bill and hopped down from the haywain. I was seized with a girlish fancy to take the steps two at a time as I had always used to do, but I only managed a few such leaps before my corset prevented further exertion. Thus I was sweaty-faced and breathing hard when I threw open the door—and saw the foyer for the first time in ten years.
The floorboards groaned under my shoes as I entered, and the high ceilings amplified the echoes of both footfall and wood-creak. The first thing I noticed was the watery light spilling in from the door was hazy with little swirling motes of dust. My hasty entrance had stirred the air more than it had been in some time. Indeed, filth and grime lay thick on every surface, and I was overwhelmed by the smell of mold. When I looked up, I saw the chandelier was missing more than one pendalogue, and the candle-cups did not look like they had held tapers in recent memory.
I could not move for astonishment. I remembered this room as a bright and welcoming space; recalled the sound of my guardian’s laughter as he would chase me, shrieking, through the hallways, much to the displeasure of the housekeeper, Lizzie, who said I should grow up wild.
Shouting and stomping startled me out of my reverie. It was a man’s voice I heard coming from the interior of the house—and all of a sudden there was a tall, thin fellow with messy black hair and bulging eyes at the top of the front staircase, then galloping down it! He was too busy howling at the top of his lungs to notice me.