Resonance (17 page)

‘Are you well?’ he asked.

‘Except that I have missed you.’

‘As I have you.’

They put their arms around each other, and Harry’s mouth fell open and Ursula Lyndon gasped as the couple indulged in the most intimate of kisses. Wolcroft chuckled at his guests’ reaction and, as his friends continued their embrace, crossed the room to sit on a sofa by the windows, the very picture of contented élan.

‘My,’ breathed Raquel at the kiss’s ending. She seemed pleased but, Harry thought, a touch surprised. ‘Such passion,’ she said.

The driver, half-smiling, smoothed the heavy coils of her hair. ‘The journey has refreshed me.’

She frowned. ‘You do not look refreshed,
querido
. On the contrary, you look quite ragged.’

His dark eyes lifted to Tina. ‘That shall change.’

Raquel turned within the compass of his embrace. Pressing back against his chest, she examined the young woman before her.

Tina did not take her eyes from the driver, who she was regarding with fury. Seemingly amused at her rage, he murmured into Raquel’s ear, ‘Isn’t she luminous?’

‘She is like a candle.’

‘Cornelius found her.’

Harry felt another blaze of anger at this horrible reduction of Tina to nothing but a thing – but before he could protest, Ursula Lyndon swept ahead of him. ‘Oh, but Miss Kelly is just my companion,’ she said. ‘
I
am Lord Wolcroft’s guest.’ She advanced on Raquel, offering her hand. ‘Miss Ursula Lyndon,’ she said.

Raquel retreated with a grimace of almost fear. ‘What did you bring that here for?’

‘Raquel,’ tutted the carriage driver as he shut the secret door, ‘be polite.’ He gave Ursula a wry look. ‘Try not to take offence, ma’am. Raquel is not keen on contact with the elderly.’ He offered his own very dark hand. ‘I, however, should be
quite
happy to take an introduction.’

Ursula’s gloved fingers curled in on themselves. Harry was sure she was about to withdraw, but she stepped forward, her chin up. ‘I seem to have been mistaken as to your identity, sir,’ she said, as she and the driver shook hands. ‘I had taken you for a servant – it would appear that I was wrong?’

‘You would refuse my hand were I a servant?’ he asked.

‘I … I do not think you would have offered it, were you so.’

‘Because I would have known my place? Yet you offer me
your
hand. What is your place, then? Do you consider yourself more than a servant? My equal, perhaps?’

Ursula’s cheeks flared red. Her mouth formed around unspoken words.

‘Let her go,’ whispered Tina. ‘You don’t need her now you have me.’

Chuckling, Vincent put his arm around Miss Ursula. The old woman made an uncertain noise but allowed it. ‘Oh,
but she
is
necessary.’ Vincent grinned at Raquel. ‘We are to have a séance,
meu amor
. Miss Lyndon has proved quite the expert with the spirit board.’

Raquel huffed. ‘
Spirits
. Did we not have our fill of those during Cornelius’ witchcraft years?’

‘Raquel,’ protested Wolcroft mildly. ‘Witchcraft indeed.’

‘A sliver of wood pushed about a table shall hardly provide the answer to our decline! Sorcery never yielded reward before, why should it now?’

‘Because,’ said Vincent, ‘Cornelius has found himself a seer.’

Raquel’s eyes widened, and she turned to Tina. ‘Oh,’ she breathed. ‘Is that what she is?’

Ursula Lyndon followed her bright-eyed gaze. ‘But …’ she said, looking Tina up and down. ‘She …’

Vincent swung the old woman towards the door. ‘Go and get your things,’ he urged. ‘Set up the board. Let us discover what the girl can see.’

‘Now?’ whispered Ursula.

‘When else?’

‘Well …’ She seemed to gather her dignity. ‘Might one be offered a cup of tea? A morsel to eat?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Raquel.

‘But we’ve been travelling for days!’ cried Harry.

‘Come now,’ said Wolcroft, still sprawled on the sofa. ‘It has been a long journey. Our guests are fragile. Surely we can offer them a bite to eat?’ At Raquel’s silence, he lost his smile. ‘Raquel, I messaged in advance. You knew full well—’

Raquel occupied herself with smoothing the doll’s petticoats. ‘Rats got into the pantry,’ she said. ‘They ate it all.’

Wolcroft leapt to his feet. ‘We cannot just let them starve! That would be intolerably cruel!’

The carriage driver held a hand up to calm him. ‘Peadar will send to the big town, cully. There shall be supplies here within two days – unless the snow hems us in.’

‘Two days? Captain, you
know
what outsiders are like! They cannot wait that long. I messaged you to order
food
, Raquel! I asked that you order in
firewood
! Tell me you at least have their rooms made up!’

Raquel refused to meet his eye. ‘You said not in the house. That is what you said.’

Wolcroft spun to the driver as if seeking support, and the dark-skinned man sighed. ‘Oh, very well. You go and find them rooms, cully. Let them rest awhile. I will speak with Luke. Perhaps he can come up with something in the way of vitals for them.’

Raquel looked from under her eyelashes. ‘Put the crone upstairs,’ she said. ‘Where she belongs.’

Harry did not like her expression. Without thinking, he took Ursula Lyndon’s hand. The old woman didn’t object. ‘Where Miss Lyndon goes, we go. Right, Tina?’ He glanced at Tina, who all this time had not taken her eyes from the carriage driver. ‘
Right?’
he said. She finally turned her attention to him. ‘We’re going with Miss Lyndon, right?’

She nodded, slow and careful, and made her way to his side.

‘We stay with Miss U,’ she whispered.

W
OLCROFT LED THE
way upstairs. He took each step lightly and with grace, no longer seeming to need his cane, but the hem of his elegant morning coat was filthy,
his shoulders smeared with green as if he had been flung against a mossy wall.

The walls of the stairwell were lined with paintings: Wolcroft, Raquel, Vincent and the children, their portraits repeated over and over, a multitude of faces gazing down. Even the man called Luke had his own assortment of images. There was another face, too, repeated on the walls: a young man of perhaps seventeen, darkish-blond hair, wryly smiling eyes, the same amused warmth shining from each painting.

Could this be Matthew?
wondered Harry. There was no resemblance between poor Joe and the boy in these paintings, but looking around the walls, Harry couldn’t imagine who else the chap might be.

The family seemed to have a penchant for theatrics, especially the adults. Vincent and Cornelius in particular seemed to have gone through quite a phase of dressing themselves in old-time costumes, like Shakespearian actors. Harry passed a portrait of Vincent grinning, a cutlass resting across his knee, a pearl earring dangling from one ear. The name of the artist and the date had been scratched from the corner.

Harry slowed. His eyes leapt from painting to painting: none were dated. He turned to look at the portraits on the opposite wall. He looked back down the way he had come. He must have passed at least a dozen paintings of each person on the way up: a dozen Raquels, a dozen Vincents, at least a dozen Wolcrofts. Yet they all seemed the same age as now. Surely they hadn’t had all these portraits done at the same time?

Tina took him by the elbow, making him jump. She
squinted at him as if through a fog. ‘Stay together,’ she whispered.

Wolcroft had reached the top of the stairs. ‘Your rooms are this way,’ he said, rounding the corner and walking from sight.

They found themselves in a corridor lined with doors. Wolcroft was just bending to place a key in a lock. ‘I apologise about the accommodations. But this was once Raquel’s room and with luck should still prove …’ He stopped talking, his head tilted as if listening to something. After a moment he nodded. ‘Vincent is taking care of the horses. Once he is done, we will bring you your baggage.’

He opened the door, and dull sunlight bled into the gloomy corridor. Wolcroft regarded the room with uncertainty. ‘Well,’ he murmured. ‘I suppose it is the best that can be done.’

Harry followed the women inside. Staleness hit him, and the oppressive smell of dust. The air had a crawling quality, as if aeons of invisible cobwebs had accumulated there.

‘The old woman can sleep in there.’ Wolcroft indicated a half-opened door, beyond which another bedroom slumbered beneath its own blanket of neglect. ‘Do not worry about the children, they shouldn’t bother you here.’ He glanced at the ceiling. ‘Also … pay no mind to any noises. They are harmless.’

To his guests’ amazement, the man turned to leave. Ursula Lyndon found her voice before he could shut them in. ‘You cannot mean that Mr Weiss shall sleep here!’

Wolcroft glanced at Harry. ‘I had not meant he sleep
anywhere
.’

‘Well, I seem to be your friend’s guest,’ said Harry. He smiled. ‘Might as well get used to me.’

Wolcroft’s grey eyes hardened. ‘I doubt you will be here long enough that I shall need to.’

‘You cannot make us share a room with a young man!’ insisted Ursula.

In a storm of barely suppressed impatience, Lord Wolcroft dragged his keys from his pocket, crossed the corridor and unlocked the far door. He flung it open, some comment poised on his lips, then froze. For a long moment he remained motionless, one hand on the doorhandle, the other clutching the frame, gazing into the room he had just opened. Then he slowly shut the door and quietly, almost gently, locked it. Without looking at Harry, he moved to the next room and unlocked that.

‘You can use this one,’ he said. ‘It used to be mine.’

He left without saying anything more. Harry listened to his muffled footsteps descend the stairs, then looked into the room that had been opened for him. It contained a small four-poster bed, its heavy drapes patterned in masculine gold and red. A heavy iron-bound chest served as a dresser; a small bookshelf held travel-sized novels. The windowsill was deep and filled with cushions, as if the occupant were used to sitting there. Everything was muted with dust, the air stifling.

‘Harry?’ He turned to find Tina clinging to the frame of the opposite doorway, gazing uncertainly at him. ‘Come … come in here with us.’

Harry went to her. Tina rested her fingertips against his chest, as if to confirm that he was in fact real, then drew him into the room. ‘Stay with me,’ she whispered. ‘They’ll be kinder to you, if you stay with me.’

Ursula grimaced. ‘Let’s not succumb to delusions of
grandeur, dear. We all know what happened to Joan of Arc.’ She took a small brown bottle from the châtelaine purse on her belt and indulged in a bitter little swig of its contents. ‘No matter how
luminous
you are,’ she muttered, ‘you’re still just a seamstress.’

Tina went to the window, moving as if she were feeling her way through the dark. Her attention was once again fixed on the lake shrouded in fog far below them.

‘The winter stops down there,’ she whispered. ‘It’s all around us. The whole country full of snow, except for this one small place.’

‘An underground spring,’ said Ursula. ‘A hot spring.’ Harry glanced at her. ‘They should open a spa,’ she muttered. ‘Of course they would need to learn to be polite to their guests.’ She took another swig from her bottle.

‘The cold is eating its way in,’ whispered Tina. ‘Because … because the light is fading.’ She pressed her hand to the window, covering the lake with her palm. ‘There’s an empty space down there. It eats the light. Just like
they
eat the light.’ She turned to Harry, inspired. ‘They’re eating the light, Harry. Like …’ She made grasping gestures with her hands, as if trying to catch the words she was unable to say.

‘But you can
see
it,’ she insisted, as if he had contradicted her and she was desperate to prove him wrong. She pointed into midair, her eyes following the movement of something unseen and drifting. ‘It’s pure, all the threads of it, and it comes together around each of them.’ She joined her hands, slowly twining the fingers, demonstrating. ‘They’re wrapped in it.
Trailing
it. Snagging it as they walk. And they’re
using
it up
.

‘We’re … at the same time, we’re giving it out.’ She spread
her fingers again, bursting them apart as if demonstrating a firework. ‘And it
feeds
on it. You understand?’ she asked hopefully. ‘It feeds on the light, through them, and they get stronger – because they’ve been here so long they’re part of it.’

Harry shook his head, grief-stricken at how thoroughly unhinged Tina had become.

‘Listen, Harry! Do you not understand? They used to be like us. They used to
feed it
. Now they
use it up
!’

‘I’ll get you out of here,’ he whispered. ‘I swear to God, Tina. Whatever they’ve done to you, we’ll fix it.’

Her face closed up like a fist. ‘I’m not leaving Joe,’ she said.

‘Who is
Joe
?’ cried Ursula Lyndon. ‘Do you mean that young man from the depot? For goodness sake, Miss Kelly. He’s not here!’

Tina glared at her, and Ursula Lyndon surged to her feet.