House of Echoes

As she carried Tom through the great hall she glanced at the Christmas tree. Covered now in silver balls and long glittering swathes of silver cobwebs and decorated with dozens of small coloured lights it stood in the corner of the room like a talisman. Already she and Luke had placed a pile of parcels under it including one for each of them from David. Tomorrow Alice and Joe would arrive and with them lots more presents. ‘Me see tree.’ At the sight of it Tom began to struggle in her arms. ‘Me walk.’ As she set him on his feet he was already running towards the corner, his chubby hand pointing at the top of the tree. ‘Tom’s angel!’

‘Tom’s angel, to keep us safe,’ Joss agreed. Luke had lifted the little boy up so he could put the finishing touch, the beautiful little doll, made by Lyn, with its sparkling feathered wings. ‘Please,’ she murmured under her breath as she watched the little boy standing open mouthed below the sweeping branches, ‘let it keep us safe.’

They were half way through an early supper when the front doorbell pealed through the house and almost at once they heard the raised voices from the front drive.

‘Carol singers!’ Lyn was first on her feet.

The group stayed twenty minutes, standing round the tree while they had a glass of wine each and sang carols. Joss watched from the oak high-backed chair in the corner. For how many hundreds of years had just such groups of singers brought wassail to the house? Through narrowed eyes she could picture them as Anne and Richard in her story would have seen them, clustered in front of the huge fireplace, muffled against the cold, in boots and scarves, with red noses, and chapped hands. Their lanterns were standing in a semi circle on the table, and Lyn had lit the candles in the old sconces and turned out the lights, so there was no electric light save for the little coloured balls of glass upon the tree. Even the carols would have been the same – from This Endris Night they had launched into Adam lay ybounden. She let the words sweep over her, filling the room, resonating around the walls. Katherine might have heard these songs five hundred years ago on just such an icy night. She shivered. She could picture her so easily – long dark hair, hidden by the neat head-dress, her deep sapphire eyes sparkling with happiness, her gown sweeping across the floor as she raised a goblet of wine in toast to her lord …

Sweetheart! He had first met her at the Yule tide feast, his eyes followingthe graceful figure as she danced and played with her cousins. The musichad brought a sparkle to her eyes, her cheeks glowed from the heat ofthe fire.

Joss shuddered so violently that Lyn noticed. ‘Joss, are you all right?’ She was there beside her, putting her arm around her shoulders. ‘What’s wrong?’

Joss shook her head, staring down at her feet in the candlelight. ‘Nothing. Just a bit cold.’ The singers hadn’t noticed. They sang on, reaching effortlessly for the high notes, their voices curling into the beams. But it was their last carol. They had to move on to the Goodyears’ farm and then to the Rectory itself. Scarves were rewound, gloves pulled on, change found for their collecting bag.

The silence when they had gone was strangely profound. As if reluctant to lose the mood they sat on by the fire staring into the embers.

Katherine, my love, wait for me!

They were so nearly audible, the words, like a half remembered dream, slipping away before it is grasped. With a sigh Joss shook her head.

‘The carols were beautiful. You know, it’s strange, you would expect there to be a feeling of evil in this house if the devil lived here. But there isn’t.’

‘Of course there isn’t.’ Luke dropped a kiss on her head. ‘I wish you would forget about the devil. This is a fabulous, happy house, full of good memories.’ He ruffled her hair affectionately. ‘The devil would hate it!’

He was asleep when Joss climbed up into the high bed later. She had lain for a long time in the bath, trying to soak the chill out of her bones in water that was not quite hot enough to do the trick, and she had found she was pressing herself against the warm enamel, trying to extricate the last hint of heat from the rapidly cooling bath. When she finally dragged herself out onto the mat and wrapped the towel around her she realised that the heating system such as it was, fired from the range in the kitchen, had long ago turned itself off for the night with its usual ticking and groaning. There would be no more hot water and no more barely warm radiators until next morning when, with more ticking and groaning, the system would, God-willing, drag itself once more back into life. Shivering she looked in on Tom. He was pink and warm, tucked securely under his cellular blankets and fast asleep. Leaving his door a fraction ajar she crept into her room and reluctantly taking off her dressing gown slid in beside Luke.

Outside, the moon was a hard silver against a star-flecked sky. Frost had whitened the garden and it was almost as bright as day. Luke hadn’t quite drawn the curtains over the back window and she could see the brilliance of the night through the crack. Moonlight spilled across the floor and onto the quilt.

They were all there, in the shadowy room: the servants, the family, thepriest. White faces turned towards him as he burst in, his spurs ringingon the boards and catching in the soft sweet hay which had been spreadeverywhere to muffle the noise.

‘Katherine?’ He stopped a few feet from the high bed, his breathrasping in his throat, his heart thudding with fear. Her face was beautifuland completely calm.

There was no sign of pain. Her glorious dark hair, free of its coif, layspread across the pillow; her eyelashes were thick upon the alabastercheeks.

‘KATHERINE!’ He heard his own voice as a scream and at lastsomeone moved. The woman who had so often shown him up to thisvery room and brought him wine, stepped forward, a small bundle inher arms.

‘You have a son, my lord. At least you have a son!’

Uneasily Joss turned to Luke and snuggled against his back. The moonlight disturbed her. It was relentless, hard, accentuating the cold. Shivering she pulled the covers higher, burying her head in the pillow beside that of her husband, feeling his warmth, his solidity, reassuring beside her.

Frozen with horror he stared down at the woman on the bed.

‘Katherine.’

This time the word was a sob; a prayer.

Throwing himself across the body he took her in his arms and wept.

With a sigh Joss slept at last, uneasily, her dreams uncomfortable and unremembered, unaware of the shadow which drifted across the moon throwing a dark swathe across the bed. She did not feel the chill in the room deepen, nor the brush of cold fingers across her hair.

Katherine, Katherine, Katherine!

The name rose into the darkest corners of the room and was lost inthe shadows of the roof beyond the beams, weaving, writhing with pain,sinking into the fabric of the house.

His face wet with tears he looked up. ‘Leave me,’ he cried. ‘Leave mewith her.’

He turned to the servant, and his mouth was twisted with hate. ‘Takethat child away. He killed her.He killed my love, God curse him. Hekilled the sweetest, gentlest woman in the world!’

When she woke it was with a splitting headache, and only seconds later the realisation that she was going to be sick. Not pausing to grab her dressing gown she threw herself out of bed and ran for the bathroom, falling on her knees in front of the lavatory. It was Luke, gently stroking her head while she vomited, who wrapped something round her shoulders and later brought her a cup of tea.

13 (#ulink_43268be4-ec9a-5f46-85c9-c23fcdb44e70)

Dr Robert Simms was rector of the church at Belheddon from 1914 until 1926. Standing in front of the stained-glass window which had been erected to his memory in the church Joss wondered just how much he had been able to comfort Lydia in her last months. Had he sprinkled Holy Water around the house? Had he buried her son? Presumably he had buried her. The grave out in the churchyard was overgrown now with nettles and covered in ivy but, scraping away the moss she had found the inscription:

Samuel Manners, born 1882, died 1926also his wifeLydia Sarah Manners, born 1902, died 1925also their childrenSamuel, born 1920, died 1921John, born 1921, died 1925Robert, born 1922, died 1936

What happened to the sons of this house that they died so young? Walking back slowly up the path from the church towards the gate into the garden Joss stopped for a minute beside her brothers’ graves. Luke had cut the nettles now, and she had scraped away some of the moss and planted bulbs in the cold earth between them. She shivered. Edgar Gower’s words kept returning to her: ‘Don’t embroil yourself in the affairs of the Duncans; Belheddon Hall is an unhappy house, my dear. The past is the past; it should be allowed to rest.’ Was there something terribly wrong at Belheddon? And if there was, why did she feel so happy here? Why did Luke love it so much? Why had they not felt the evil which had so terrified Lydia and Laura?