“The stupid old goat was behind that curtain until I came in to pretend I heard a call for help, and told Lady Hilbourne I would watch you while she ran to get help. She was too distraught to order me to go.” She seemed pleased with herself that she finally had me in her grasp.
“It was clever to poison Marcato’s draught. How is it that you did not succeed sooner?” The compliment seemed to please her.
“It was not until I met Otto that the idea came to me. I caught him one night, when he snuck into the London house to leave you flowers. He tried to bribe me, thinking that I was just a random servant. I thought of my mother, and I decided to seduce him.” I was shocked. She always seemed so innocent with me and especially around men, not to mention the fact that she now seemed so comfortable with the incestuous relationship that she was created out of, herself.
“It was not difficult, but I got too close. We even set the fire at the London house, together. I helped him out of the house, and I was running back when you came around the corner. I thought for sure that you saw me letting him out, but you told me to wake everyone because of the fire, and I knew you had not seen me with him.” She had a broad smile and she was blatantly proud of herself. Fleur fell silent again before speaking.
“I began to fall in love with him after the first fire...” There was a sadness in her voice.
“You... but you killed Eckhardt...” I was stunned thinking that not only had she seduced this man, she also fell in love with him, and then killed him.
I saw tears in her eyes, and I worried because upsetting her could only make my own position worse.
“He found out who I was. He wrote me a letter and told me that he would kill us both, you and I. I could not let that happen, so when I figured out his plan, I snuck down to the library and waited for him. I waited four nights before he finally tried to take you. It was good, though, because it gave me time to...” She seemed to be sobbing out the words, “...To get used to the idea that I would have to do it... so that he would not kill me. I was in love with him, and if it wasn’t for you, he might still be alive.” She wiped her nose with her arm, and I understood why she was so upset after killing him. It was not because she killed a man, but that she killed her own lover.
“You see why you have to die, don’t you?!” It was a screeching yell.
“You have hurt me in every way! Taken so much that should have been mine!” She stood and hit me again, much harder this time. I heard the blood drip from my chin onto the floor. It stung where she hit me, and I kept my face turned, but she did not hit me again. She was standing over me, smiling.
“It will not be long, now...” She said and went back to her seat. I was terrified of what she was planning to do to me. A slow smile touched her lips.
“You know, the fire at Rhineholt was my idea. He did it for me, because he knew how jealous I was of you. It’s why I told him I wanted you dead, because you were horrible, and I deserved all the beautiful things more than you, and he loved me enough to take them from you... even your family...” The maniacal laugh again, this time with her head back, the way that Eckhardt laughed the night he came for me. When she finally stopped, she was staring hard at me.
“The Eckhardts have wanted your death for some time. I believe your governess was paid to kill you as well. She was meant to push you down a flight of stairs, but she could not do it. There was a man, the Eckhardt’s messenger, who used to visit her when we were both children, he would bring her bribes to pay her off for killing you.” I remembered Hilda talking to a German man outside of my room late at night.
“She cared for you, though, and she gave all of it back to the family and threatened to tell your Uncle what they were trying to do if they made any more attempts at hurting you. Just think, if she knew who Bernadine was and what she did to your mother... We would not even be with you now.”
“I wonder that they didn’t come for me while I was in Germany?” I said.
“They were too smart for that. They would have been recognized, and your mother and grandmother were known to the nuns. It would have been easy to do, but surely it would have led back to them and then what would have happened? Not to mention, Otto was in love with you until the day you turned him down. He told me about your letters back and forth when you were in Germany. He wanted you alive... to be his wife. You were young and stupid, you did not even realize the magnitude of your interactions with him and how your innocence drew him in. Then you broke his heart.” She was looking hard at me again, and I thought she was going to hit me.
“You are sure this is what you must do to find happiness?” I asked.
“What about Marcato?” This seemed to upset her, and I realized it was a mistake to mention the Captain.
“He wrote to me to tell me that he was married. He put on a show, so that I would sleep with him. He paraded around with me on that ship so that I would go to him at night. I received the letter only yesterday.” She was looking into nothing, then. Staring straight ahead of her, and I was sure she blamed me for that as she blamed me for all the things that had gone wrong in her life.
“You were always so careless with everything. Doubling our wages, buying all of those dresses for balls, traveling all over... It is why I took the pages from your mother’s diary. I thought that if you gave me part of the riches I deserved for the blood that we shared... That I would get past my hatred... I cannot change that you made me kill Otto, and that I spent my childhood watching you grow up in that big house with all the beautiful things...”
“You grew up there too, Fleur...” I tried to reason with her.
“It does not matter. I lived in a tiny room connected with my Aunt’s, who I grew to hate. I lived in the big house, but not the same way that you did, amongst beautiful things that I could call my own... and now you cannot call them your’s, either, because they have burned.”
She seemed to be growing increasingly demented with each explanation.
“The other day... was it you that tried to choke me?” I asked. Another strange smile crossed her lips.
“I would have killed you, but my Aunt found me in your room and pulled me away. You had stopped breathing, I almost had you ... if she had not stopped me... The old goat was too soft. She cared too much for your mother, and she carried that guilt with her long enough that she cared for you, too. I should have killed her before tonight. I could see that she was losing her devotion to my need to kill you the night that I left the Eckhardt Bible open on your pillow. We fought over the second book. She wanted it to end. I threw it out the window hoping that she would try to go and retrieve it so that I would have time to finish you then. We heard your foot steps in the hall and hid behind the curtains. When you fainted, I nearly had her talked into helping me throw you from the window so it looked as if you jumped.” She seemed dazed, as though she was talking to herself.
“We picked you up... and if it wasn’t for you waking up right then... you would be gone.”
She was looking down at nothing for what felt like a very long time. I did not know what to say to her so I asked her one last question.
“What will you do to me?” I asked.
She smiled that slow, grim smile again.
“I will burn you, just as we did all that mattered to you.” She stood.
My breathing became heavier, and I shook so much that the chair I sat in began to shake with me. She planned to burn me alive. She came round the table and looked down into my face. She did not even look like the same person. This was someone I did not know. The Fleur I cared so deeply for did not exist, she made her up to fool me. The Fleur I tried so hard to protect from harm died when she discovered who she truly was. The sweet little girl I gave my childhood dresses to had hated me for her entire life.
“Fleur,” I said as she lit a candle.
“I cared for you, you know. I would have done anything to protect you. You can leave now, and never come back and I would not tell anyone what you’ve done. I will say that you ran away to find Marcato.” I spoke calmly. She was silent for a moment.
“It is too late... I have waited for this for longer than you know. I have dreamt of this moment...” She spoke more calmly than I did.
I was pleading with her.
“Fleur, it does not have to be this way. Let go of that past, this is not who you are meant to be...” She yelled at me, then.
“I know it’s not, that’s why I must do it!”
She walked to where Bernadine lay and looked down at her, then dropped the candle on the bed and watched the flames engulf the blankets as they had in my nightmares for so long. This is what I was being warned of all this time. She turned to look at me, and I screamed at her to stop this and save us both, but she closed her eyes and fell backward into the fire. I saw her body writhing in pain, but she did not scream.
I looked away.
I jerked at my hands to come free of the knots, but they held. My body was thrashing, trying to untangle myself, and the chair fell, pulling me back to land on my hands. I was sure my left wrist was broken. Looking to my side, I saw Bernadine’s lifeless body sprawled out across the floor, nearly enveloped in the flames that were dancing on the walls and furniture, now.
The smoke was heavy and even though I was on the floor, I coughed as I screamed for help. It seemed my voice was disappearing, as well. I heard the glass break and hoped that it might mean that someone would see the fire and that some fresh air would come in, but I began to feel tired and my chest burned. I was losing this fight, I could not breathe. The world went black.
I was back beneath the tree, my mother braiding my hair and humming that familiar tune. I turned to face her, and she smiled down at me. Looking up at her, I could see that she wanted me to be with her, but there was a sadness in her eyes. She spoke my name, took my hand, and opened it so we were both looking down at my palm. She held it to her lips.
My eyes sprang open, and I was coughing uncontrollably, lying on the grass somewhere near the house which was now fully swallowed by the fire. Julian was looking down at me, his face was covered with soot. I could see thin streaks on his face where tears fell. He held me to him hard.
“I thought I lost you... you wouldn’t wake up...” He said.
“I was with my mother...” I told him, and he held me tighter.
* * *
Later, Julian told me that he only came back from Kinlan’s to say he was sorry. He had a terrible feeling that he could not leave things as they were, and it ate at him all day until he finally decided that he needed to talk to me and sort everything out. When he got closer, he saw that there was smoke coming from the building, and that was when the windows broke out and a dark cloud burst out from them.
“I ran the rest of the way and then right into the house and up the stairs without even thinking, and there you were, on the floor. I picked you up, chair and all, and carried you out through the flames,” he told me.
“I tried to breathe life into you, it took a long time and I thought that you were gone... but you woke up.”
After that, Julian sold the plantation to the Hammonds. He said that he did not want to look upon that place again. With what he made from the sale, he built a smaller house, closer to the water, that he could conduct trade business from. He invited Avani to keep house there, and she agreed, bringing her daughter with her to learn to run the home because she was ‘
getting tired.’
Julian gave up the tea business altogether and has moved on to trading in spices and fabric.
Julian asked Leo to take over for him at Hilbourne so that he could work the land that we received in my inheritance. I was glad that Leo finally knew where he stood. We have begun to rebuild Rhineholt on the land where it once stood, and are staying with Li and Leo while Rhineholt is under construction. It is to look nearly the same as it did before the fire, with a few small changes, of course. A larger nursery, for one.
When Julian has business to tend to on the Rhineholt land, I come along and visit with Creeda. When I told her Fleur was gone, she was grief-stricken, and I did not have the heart to tell her the whole truth. She is delighted when we stay with her at Aven Cottage, and the house is just close enough for us to go and spend the afternoon at Rhineholt, watching the reconstruction. I find myself sitting beneath that old tree often, writing my story and listening to the white birds that nest there.
Li had her son in India, who she named for his father, and his fifth birthday is on Sunday. She is serenely happy and with child, again. Our daughter was born two months ago, only a year after we arrived home from India for the first time. It was four and one half years since we arrived in Cochin. The doctor says that the poison weakened me greatly and it would be very difficult for me to have any more children, but Julian and I are content with our little girl. He says that she looks nothing like him, aside from her grey eyes, but I see a certain mischief that could have only come from him. Her hair is not quite red, it is much lighter than my own.
I have called her Annalice... for my mother.
THE END
Dear reader,
Thank you for taking the time to read Walls of Ash. When I began this journey, I never expected to feel an urgent need to self-publish. Writing this book has given me something back which I thought was lost for many years: imagination.
Always,
Amber Newberry
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amber Newberry is a musician and writer who grew up in the South but later migrated to New England. With a variety of creative interests, writing became a hobby that was generally focused toward lyrics and poetry until she recently developed an itch to write a novel. With a flare for the macabre, Amber has made her home in Salem, MA with her very own bard and their three cats.