Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling (5 page)

“Well, it's Susannah Larken. She's one of the most honest, reliable people that I know, and—”

“I believe her.”

“You do?”

“Every word that she said. I've been meaning to speak to Brickner about the way he's handling the investigation, or lack thereof, but I've been preoccupied.”

“I'd be very grateful.”

“In that case, I'll be sure to pay him a visit tomorrow. You can count on it.”

He nodded to me, and together we moved the plates and scraps of food back into the kitchen, leaving them in the sink for Jenny, the scullery maid, to take care of the next day. With that done, we awkwardly parted ways, and I found that I had to restrain myself from looking back at him as he left for his chambers. I hated myself for my slavish devotion to propriety, but what else did I have to be devoted to?

I went to my room next to the nursery. I felt relieved at the thought of allaying Susannah's concerns, and at the possibility of finding whoever had killed Nanny Prum. Sleep came, but not without a struggle to quiet my mind.

I dreamt of Heatherdale, my family's estate, where Jonathan and I lived for three glorious years. The dream was a recurring one, but as with the others, it was always different. I found it strange that this time I was detached from the scene, watching myself sleep in bed with my husband, his strong arms around my waist. I felt larger than myself, my body not a body at all, wrapped between the bones of the house, shifting them dangerously out of place. There was also a great heat radiating from my skin, curling the wallpaper to black char, eating away at the wooden beams that supported the house, and it caused me to expand with reckless abandon. I cackled, and sparks erupted from my throat in a plume of black smoke.

Jonathan woke gasping for air. He shook the other Charlotte awake, and together they ran through the house. But it was too late. I was all around them, singeing their skin and hair, choking them quickly back to sleep. Jonathan noticed a curtain that I had not yet touched, one of the only things that had not been burned. He wrapped it around his wife's body and picked her up in his arms, even as she struggled and screamed for him to stop, and plunged them both into the flames.

I tried to stop him. I tore at his skin until it blistered and cracked, at his hair until it burned down to the scalp, but still he ran through the remains of the manor, not stopping until he was outside, collapsing into a ruined heap while his wife cried over him, begging him to wake up as the man in black observed the scene in silence, the light from the flames extending his shadow over the dying underbrush.

CHAPTER 4

A Lesson in Dreaming

T
he next morning, after taking breakfast downstairs with the children—Mr. Darrow was good as his word and had already left to meet with Constable Brickner—I marched the boys up to the schoolroom to begin their daily lessons.

During the first few weeks after my arrival, Mrs. Norman and I scoured the empty rooms of the manor, lifting the covers off of antiquated pieces of furniture in search of practical desks, and kicking up small clouds of dust as we traveled through parlors, bedrooms, and servants' quarters that hadn't been used in generations. We eventually discovered a small attic at the top of the east wing of the house.

It was large enough that it had a proper staircase rather than one that had to be pulled down from the ceiling, and very little was actually stored up there. The ceiling was low, and both sides of the room slanted at an angle, reaching up to a point like a church steeple. It felt very much like a small country schoolhouse, with windows on each end of the wide room, and I knew when we found it that it was just what we needed.

Having discovered a desk in an unused study (presumably belonging to Mr. Darrow's father or grandfather), I had Fredricks and Roland carry it up into the attic. It was not an easy task, but then, as I reminded them, neither was the education of children. The desk was placed at the front of the room for my own use, before a blackboard Nanny Prum had kept in the nursery. Two low tables were found for the boys, and they were placed far enough apart as to avoid easy physical confrontation. The back of the schoolroom contained many of the items that had been found there upon its discovery. I arranged some old end tables, rusted gaslights, and empty picture frames into a sort of artists' corner, stocked with supplies I had brought to the house myself. An intellectual education was of course deeply important, but I felt that an aesthetic curriculum was equally worthwhile, especially in light of the late Mrs. Darrow's rather prolific creative accomplishments.

Each day I began the boys' lessons with arithmetic. Mornings were best suited to intense study, as it loosened the mind for the interpretation of literature later on in the day. Whenever I felt that I was losing their attention or interest, I would quickly end whatever it was they were doing and challenge them to tackle some artistic accomplishment.

That afternoon, in the difficult time before lunch when children begin to think with their stomachs even though the next mealtime is at least an hour away, I was still fixated on the problem of dreams. The boys looked tired, and I myself hadn't been able to sleep very well after the nightmares of the past few evenings. It was silly that we should all suffer so much from self-inflicted trauma. I once read that dreams were the products of unacknowledged emotion and feeling, and that setting them down with either words or images often lessened their power. To understand fear was to control it.

Paul yawned. James followed suit, and I was obliged to set down the book of poems they were reading through and send them to the back of the schoolroom.

“That's quite enough of that. I have a new task for you.”

James yawned again. “But it's nearly time for lunch!” He clutched his stomach as if he would waste away to nothing before the end of the hour.

I ignored him. “You are to describe your dreams from last night with either drawings or prose.”

Both of the boys grabbed the colored pencils on the table and ignored the mention of prose, despite the fact that this was my favorite medium. I frowned but said nothing, remembering that their late mother had created the majority of the artwork that decorated the walls of Everton.

Paul began scribbling furiously without hesitation. He paused every few minutes to look out the window, and continued drawing, in fine detail, a meticulous landscape of Everton from a bird's-eye view. James had more trouble deciding what to draw. He had many dreams every night, and so choosing the most exciting and violent one to illustrate was no small task. Eventually he settled on what he knew best and began sketching the hulking black thorax of the Spider Queen.

When the boys had finished, I led them back to their desks and asked them to present their artwork. James, who always demanded to go first and threatened to throw a magnificent tantrum if he didn't get his way, had found no purchase with me by using this tactic, despite a glorious performance involving impressive physicality with thrown chairs, toppled tables, and broken vases, during which I clapped and cheered him on as if I had paid for the privilege of his outburst, and eventually he relented to alternating turns with his brother. Nevertheless, it was his turn to present first. He stood from his chair and moved to the front of the room beside the desk.

“I drew the Spider Queen.” The paper contained a black blob of a body with eight spindly appendages, but the face of the creature was very much like that of a young woman, with curly silver hair and pretty features. “She lives in a cave beneath my bed and eats up the goblins whenever they try to steal my breath. Sometimes she has me over for tea, and sometimes we're friends, but other times she sends her children after me because I've stolen some of her treasures.” He stopped and clutched his stomach again in an effort to remind me of his delicate and very hungry condition, but I did not let him return to his seat.

“But why would you steal from her? It sounds as if she's doing you a favor by gobbling up the goblins.”

James looked at me as if I were quite slow. “To buy back Mother's soul from the Goblin King.”

My heart sank, and for a moment I did not know how to respond. What was there to say? It was a beautiful, sad sentiment, but I quickly recovered. “Why would he have your mother's soul? She went to Heaven.”

The boy thought about this and shrugged his shoulders. “I dunno. It was just a dream I had.” I nodded to him that he could return to his chair.

Paul stood up and took his place before the blackboard. He held up his re-creation of Everton, which now resembled something like a treasure map.

“Last night I dreamt that I went to Mother's house.”

I took a deep breath and wrung my fingers together. This was not going at all the way I had expected. But then, what did I expect? The boys had lost their mother. Of course they were dreaming of her. I
knew
that they were dreaming of her. I had lost my mother nearly fifteen years before and
still
dreamt of her. It was not something that ever truly went away. The three of us would perhaps always be bound by our grief, never truly finished with the long nightmare of loss. But if that were true then we were also bound together searching in our dreaming for new memories of the mothers we lost. Children need their parents in whatever form they're available, and I shivered for a moment as I thought back to one of my dreams the night before.

Children need their mothers.

Paul continued to explain his drawing.

“She came for me in the night and led me through a wood.” He pointed to his illustration of the old-growth forest behind the house. “The wood turned into an orchard, and there was a great house. Mother said we couldn't go inside just yet, that we had to do it in person. She's waiting for us.”

The specificity of his dream was unnerving. I folded my hands on the desk and peered carefully at the young man. “Why would she do that?”

He looked down at the ground, his large blue eyes fixated on nothing particular but still lost in thought. He spoke without looking up. “She misses us.”

With those three words he nearly reduced me to tears. I felt the years of built-up sorrow at the loss of my own mother materialize as a tightening in my chest and the prickling sensation behind the eyes that heralded the impending arrival of tears.

“Paul”—my voice almost broke—“your mother is gone.”

He finally looked up, his face creased in a pleasant, knowing expression that should have been impossible for someone who had just turned thirteen. “I know. But every now and then, when we're in the village, and I see the back of a lady with long black hair, I always hope that it's her; that everything I remember is wrong. That she didn't die. It was all just a misunderstanding.”

It was almost identical to what his father had told me that first night in the music room. We stared at each other in silence for what felt like a long while, until James grew tired of not being the center of attention and spoke up.

“Can we go?”

“Lunch isn't for twenty more minutes,” I reminded him.

“Not to eat; into the woods.” He pointed at his brother's map.

“Whatever for?”

The boy shrugged, and his older brother spoke up. “Aren't some dreams true?”

While I wanted the boys to find solace in the idea that their dreams were not real, I hadn't anticipated them finding so much relief in the notion that they were. If I took them into the woods, they would find nothing there and be forced to face the fact that their mother was truly gone. If I did not, then it was likely they would find some way to use the map when I wasn't looking, and the last thing I wanted was for the boys to go off into the wilderness on their own, especially in light of the fact that whoever had killed Nanny Prum was still at large. There was only one option: I would take them, show them the reality of death, and deal with the consequences as they came.

“I suppose we
could
take our lunch outside this afternoon; I do enjoy picnics.”

At the mention of a meal James clutched his stomach again and did his best to look pathetic. Paul looked over his handmade map with a frown, but said nothing.

“Does that sound like something you'd both enjoy?”

The older boy folded the map carefully and placed it in his pocket. “Yes, thank you.” He smiled placidly. I was beginning to notice that he was unreadable when he wanted to be. It was an unnatural quality in one his age, and I made a note to watch him more carefully.

“Can we go now?” James whined, taking my hand before I could respond and leading me down to the parlor, where I had them wait as I negotiated our picnic with Mrs. Mulbus. Luckily, Jenny was in the village running an errand, and so the usual shouting and arguing that accompanied a visit to the kitchen was replaced with complaints from Mrs. Mulbus about the scullery maid's tardiness and general laziness. As I provided a sympathetic ear to the cook's woes, she had no trouble procuring a basket full of finger sandwiches, slices of roast chicken, bread, cheese, pork pies, and fruit for our afternoon adventure. She even supplied a sturdy blanket for the occasion.

After I'd collected the boys, we set out from the back of the house and found a patch of grass at the edge of the forest still awash in sunlight. It was unseasonably warm despite the impending arrival of winter. I spread the picnic blanket over the ground and laid out the contents of the basket. As we filled our stomachs, the shadows of the tree branches marked the length of the meal like a sundial, and when we finished, I fell back into the tall grass. The children danced around me in circles like giants among the dying wildflowers, happy and full, finally collapsing into a breathless, red-faced heap of tousled hair and grass-stained shins.

“We all fall down!” James giggled into the hem of my dress as Paul tugged at his leg in an effort to twist it off. The little boy squealed, and I sat up with a dramatic sigh.

“Paul, must you do that to your brother's leg?”

“It wouldn't come off when I pulled.”

“I imagine it might be difficult to continue the day's activities if you have to carry your brother's leg around.”

“Maybe, but he won't give me back my map.”

“James?”

“But I want to look at it!”

“It seems to me that I've done a very poor job of teaching you the importance of sharing, and it may be time for a precocious little song.”

James scrambled up and serenaded me with a series of high-pitched screams, a sound that, despite the ringing it left in my ears, spoke of the intimacy and affection that had quickly formed between us in the weeks since the loss of Nanny Prum. Paul put his hands over his ears and attempted to trip his brother.

“Yes, you should run! You've heard me sing! But by now you must also be aware that I happen to find threats and subterfuge a much more effective means of communicating with inscrutably dense children.”

James stopped running and turned to squint back at me. “What's
dense
?”

I leapt from the ground and snatched the paper from the young boy's hands. I was so quick he barely had time to register what had happened before I handed the homemade map over to his brother.

“Paul, what does
dense
mean?”

“That we still have a lot to learn about the world.”

“That will do for now, I suppose.” I kissed James on the head and lifted him into the air, placing his legs so they straddled my waist. He scowled but put his arm around my neck anyway.

“Now, where does it say to go next?”

Paul held the map close to his face. It was eerily accurate as he compared it to the landscape, looking across the field toward the overgrown forest up ahead.

“Over there, into the woods.”

“Off we go then.” I set James back on the ground next to his brother and gathered up the remains of the picnic into the basket. As we marched away from the field, the sun slid behind the twisting, knotted tree branches and the ground swelled with half-buried roots and rocks, both big enough to trip over and small enough to get trapped at the bottom of a shoe.

“Paul, how much farther?” I asked, becoming a bit nervous as the shadows grew longer.

“It was just ahead in my dream.”

I said nothing for a moment, prepared to let reality speak for itself as it tore away the curtain of hope to reveal the cruel actuality of death, which had been unable to grab hold of the children, even though James, at least, had been at their mother's side when she had passed on—a prime example of the power of the heart to overwhelm the mind. “And what do you expect to do if there isn't anything there?” I said after a while.