Cornwall 1910
Even though I come from down by the river, I do know better. Only sixteen, just got to the manor, but I am not a girl to say that I have seen a ghost. Those words won't leave my lips. I left those superstitions down in the woods with my mother: the ghouls that haunt walls of houses; goblins that kindle fires beneath the beds of sleeping babes; greenmen watching from within the holes in rotting apples; whispers in the woods that turn to girls made of air whofollow you home, that touch your eyelids with dirty fingers while you sleep, and you wake to find their dark hair twisted on your tongue.
I come from down by the river but I have been to school, in a way; been to church. I've been taught. Those old tales of unchristian things belong down in the wet hollow of my home, in the one room of the cottage, not here, in the Manor. Not in the home of a gentleman. A Lord. A big white home with bright white columns like the very ladder rungs up to heaven, if the ladder had fallen on its side, that is.
No. No ancient tales for forest fools will come creeping from my tongue. I know what is true and what is not. But still, the Manor House is vast and in the winter dark I know see her. I saw nothing in the forest. It was easy to dismiss mother's tales, but here: the small form hovering at the end of the corridor; a shadow that - blink - and she disappears into the gloom. She exists as a flick of a grey dress turning a corner in the very corner of my eye; the patter of footsteps; a child's rapid breathing; the feeling of something: small, weightless, airy, following. My skin creeps whenever I am alone. I carry some thing from one place to another: a tray, a bowl of warm water, and turn, quickly, to be met by nothing but my own face frowning out from beneath the white frill of my cap, half reflected in the dark glass of wide windows facing out into black night. See nothing by my own distorted form bulging and bending on the curves of a silver plate, my hand floating in the air, the polishing cloth suspended. I think of going home.
If I have seen her, or felt her there in the dim winter day then I will not sleep in the full dark of night. At home, in Blissland Forest, I shared one stone room with my mother and all of my brothers. A fire was always lit and all of us bedded down together between the four walls of the cottage. To me, grunting and snoring like pigs was the sound of peace; warm bodies turning under blankets beside me. Now, I sleep alone in a maids' narrow iron bed. Only a candle to warm my narrow slice of bedroom all alone. Silence. I twitch at every creak the Manor makes. I lie awake, listening, my sheets wrapped tight over my feet so she might not reach out from under my bed and take my toes in her vaporous pinch. My skin creeps.
It is late. The Lord and Lady are safely in bed and there is no more to be done today, by us or any other. The tables cleared and cleaned, the floors swept, the Lords' wine spills scrubbed, the cigar ash brushed from the arms of the silken sofas. The kitchen is the warmest place; It is a raw chill night and bitter cold. The whole winter has been this way. The moon is full and the wind is up. It lifts the fat flakes of snow and whips them about outside the window. You might pretend that it is blossom in the Spring, peeling from the trees outside the window, if you had a strong imagination: if you wanted to feel warm. We do. We long for it. We sit around the kitchen table - some of us. There are plenty of servants here but the last awake are sitting in comfortable quiet by the last of the fire.
The cook, Rosie, whittles a little round dog with quick strokes of a knife. Her red tongue pokes between her teeth. Old Lloyd, the gardener watches the snowflakes dance in the frame of the kitchen window. There are two of Lloyd's garden-hands too. They help in the kennels. Twins: stocky, curly doubles of each other. One is Sebastian, the other Jowan. I don't know which is which. They throw cards on the table with a flit, flitting noise. One gathers up the stack in sunbrowned hands. Without speaking, shuffles, deals, and the game starts again. I wonder if they can hear what the other is thinking; I wonder if they know if the other wakes in his sleep, if they turn, and hold each other close.
YOU ARE READING
The Burning Burning Burning Wood
Historical FictionJeanie has spent her life half-hidden in the walls of Porton Manor, unnoticed and trapped in the shadows of the family who do not claim her. But as World War I approaches, she is sent to live with the lord's enigmatic mother, deep in the woods. Ther...
