Blackened (25 page)

We reach some bushes that look vaguely familiar, and suddenly it dawns on me where we are. My gaze travels upwards and onwards to a small cottage, a small cottage with black walls. Black walls. Blackened Cottage! Charles!

Dark emotions and memories surge within my breast yet I feel as though I am seeing the building for the first time. Trailing wisteria now graces the walls, its green vines and lilac tendrils softening the harsh black, bringing beauty to the bleak cottage.

Clara tugs me on and we reach the end of the back garden. Together we run across the makeshift bridge and up the garden which is wilder than ever with long sweeping grass and rampant nettles, the wind rushing at us, pushing us back.

My hope that Charles is here is fleeting; no light is on in the cottage. No-one is home.

I test the back door. It is unlocked. We rush inside and I guide Clara through the kitchen, past my husband’s study and into the living room.

Sun shines in through the windows, but the low ceilings, black beams and unlit fire maintain a dim, shadowy light.

We smile at each other through the gloom. We have made it! Clara’s small face is transformed into a rare, delicate beauty, red ringlets falling over her eyes like a pink-cheeked cherub.

“Would you mind lighting the fire?” I say, “I shall fetch the makings for tea.”

I enter the kitchen, excitement buzzing around my heart like a bumble bee around a succulent rose. Charles may not be here at present, but at some point he will return, and when he does he shall have the best surprise of his life!

Moving to the cupboard, I pluck up two tea cups and lift the teapot, glad to find it containing enough water.

Turning towards the window, I think I catch sight of something as it darts behind a bush. I gasp and my hand flies to my pounding heart. Leaning closer to the glass I squint against the sun, but nothing moves out there other than the leaves and the grass as they are subjected to the wind’s vicious onslaught. Still, I cannot shake the feeling that something was there. Perhaps it was just a cat or a rabbit, but I have to be sure. I will not rest easy until I have checked.

Glancing around the kitchen, I see the rolling pin and pick it up. Slowly, I exit the kitchen by the back door and step down into the wild grass. The wind assaults my ears; howling, moaning, wailing, loud, bitter and violent, invasive and chilling.

I take one small step. My heart is clanging, head ringing. Despite the frigid wind, my skin is afire with dread. I look at my hand. The knuckles are white from gripping the rolling pin too tightly. I relax my grip a little, but not much.

I take another small step. And another.  And another. Nothing moves save nature’s greenery.

I stride forward this time, confidence growing. If Mortimer had followed us to Blackened Cottage, surely one of us would have spotted him.

Peering around a tree trunk, I see nothing. My grip on the rolling pin relaxes even more. I stride down to the river at the end of the garden, recalling my imagined adventures with Bethan. Loss bites at me and tears bead in the corners of my eyes. Blinking, I turn back and walk up the garden. He is not here. My tension evaporates.

Stepping into the kitchen, I try to close the door behind me, but it will not co-operate. Turning, I push my body weight into the door, but the wind is too strong; it is pushing back. Irritated, I place the rolling pin on the counter and push with both hands and my chest. Finally, it clicks shut. Frowning, I turn and pick up the teapot in one hand and the teacups in the other, and walk through the kitchen into the living room.

Clara kneels dutifully in front of the fire stoking the flames.

She looks up at me, stands and relieves me of the tea pot which she places on the rack above the fire.

“Please, sit down awhile,” I say indicating a small armchair, “I shall fetch us some blankets.”

Running up the stairs, I listen to the creaking floorboards as I walk across the small landing. I pause outside the big room; the room that I formerly thought belonged to Eddie and his imaginary friend Jack. It is strange to know that neither Eddie nor Bethan ever set foot in this cottage.

I turn and enter my room. It looks the very same. The bed has not been touched. The blankets remain crumpled, the pillow hanging over the edge of the mattress. On my desk sits my quill and ink pot, a piece of blank parchment and the vase of flowers that Jean-Bernard gave me, now dead.

Slowly, I reach down and pull open the desk drawer. Inside, are hundreds of diary entries along with a pile of neatly folded letters bound by a blue ribbon - letters to Mama. Tears come slowly, building and building, as the enormity of my three year delusion takes hold.

I crawl onto the bed and curl into a ball, hugging my knees to my chest as I try to reconcile myself to the truth. But everything is out; I am finally
letting it go
as Reverend Pettigrew says.

I start to run through all of the terrible things I have been through. I cannot help it. My tears fall heavier, faster. My chest heaves and I gasp for breath as my breathing intensifies.

After a while, how long precisely I know not, I uncurl and slowly sit up. My head is foggy, my eyelids swollen.

Guilt pinches me; Clara! She is alone downstairs and has been for some time. Hurriedly, I gather up some blankets, leave my room and cross the landing. I jog down the stairs and enter the living room.

“I am so sorry Clara. I…”

Clara is sitting in the armchair asleep. Villette – how long since I have seen her soft white fur – lies on Clara’s lap, also sleeping. I creep up to the chair, lightly stroke my kitten’s dandelion fur and wrap a blanket around Clara’s shoulders. She moans but does not wake. Turning slowly, I tiptoe over to the fire and sit cross-legged in front of it. The small clock on the mantelpiece reads two o’ clock. I wonder when Charles shall come home. The thought fills me with glorious anticipation.

Thirsty, I glance around to look for the teapot – Clara must have moved it when it boiled – and my breath catches.

Mortimer is here, in this very room, looking down at me with a smirk on his lips.

Everything stands still and goes very quiet.

“Hello darling,” he whispers.

In his right hand, he holds the shotgun.

“If you come quietly, I shall leave her alone,” he says, glancing in Clara’s direction, “after all, it is you and you alone who I want.”

I shakily get to my feet, hoping all the while that Clara does not wake up.

As I turn to face Mortimer, I wonder that it does not occur to him that his daughter may lead someone back to his cottage to find me.

“I shall take full possession of you in the woods and then I shall dig your grave while you lie in the dirt writhing in agony. I shall sit and watch you bleed to death and then I will chop you into pieces and bury you. You have proven today that you are not to be trusted. This is the only prudent action that remains I am afraid. It is God’s will.”

For a fleeting moment he appears genuinely upset; in the next, his eyes darken and his lips twist into a smirk. Shouldering the shotgun, he seizes my waist and throws me over his shoulder. I gasp for breath as the impact winds me. I want to pummel my fists into his back, scream and struggle, but I cannot for fear of awakening Clara and turning his merciless attention to her.

Helpless tears roll down my cheeks as he carries me through the kitchen into the garden.

Charles will never find me now. He will never know that I returned to him, body, mind and soul before I died.

Despair more wretched than any since the loss of Eddie and Bethan overpowers all else, and, hopeless and defeated, my spirit can battle on no longer.

Closing my eyes, I detach myself from reality, preparing for the unspeakable violence that shall soon be thrust upon me.

C
HAPTER 26
S
ACRIFICE

After a short trek through the woods, Mortimer heaves my weary body off his shoulder and roughly pushes me onto the hard ground. He swiftly straddles me, crushing my thighs with his knees, hands wrapped tightly around my wrists forcing them down into the damp soil.

I squeeze my eyes shut, willing it to be over. In the blacks of my lids, a round circle hovers, burnt orange: the sun’s shadow. The wind thrashes my hair, my face; a dancing, laughing, mocking vortex, so alive, so free.

I know Mortimer is staring down at me; I can feel his eagerness, sense his soulless eyes burning into mine, hear his rapid breathing, smell the sour stench of his breath and body. I cannot help tensing every muscle, but I do not move. My fight is gone. To struggle is pointless – I know that now. He has won.

“Open your eyes,” he murmurs.

I obey instantly. Turning my head and looking to the right to avoid eye contact, I see the shot gun leaning against a thick tree trunk. The tree is only an arm’s length away. Given the strength of the wind, it is surprising that the gun still stands. The bark on the tree is grey, dry and peeling. Its roots spread far from the base, so strong, rigid and unyielding. If only my flesh were so durable.

“Look at me,” Mortimer says softly.

Immediately, I turn and meet his eyes. They are the colour of the bark: a lifeless, ashen hue. He trails his tongue over his upper lip and smiles, revealing those brown, rotten teeth.

“I like it when you are so eager to please me,” he says, letting go of my left wrist and stroking his index finger down the side of my face.

I do not even flinch. On command, my body is growing increasingly numb as my mind distances itself from reality. I have accepted my fate. Mortimer will make me suffer and I will die and Charles…I must not think of Charles, of what could have been. Thoughts of my husband shall serve only to deepen my torture.

My one consolation is that I have freed Clara from a lifetime of suffering. In a way, I have sacrificed my life for hers, and I take a little comfort in that one thought.

“Look at me, connect with me,” Mortimer growls.

I obey.

“Good girl,” he whispers, holding my chin and lightly stroking his thumb down my neck, “perhaps I have been a little rash with my decision. Perhaps, given more time and training, you will make a good wife.”

Alarm pushes through my barrier – no! I do not want to go through more uncertainty. I want this over with. Why can he not just kill me?

He must see my eyes widen for the softness in his face abruptly dies. His teeth clench, his jaw hardens and his eyes narrow darkly.

“No. I do not believe I have been rash. You are a treacherous little whore like Judas and you must be punished!”

I feel the sting of his palm and I gasp. Again, he hits me. I cry out, tears beading. He laughs and savagely grasps my hair in both hands. Standing clumsily, he drags me across the mud by my hair. My scalp screams – the pain is too much- clumps of hair come away, torn out, but I do not struggle. The less I struggle, the quicker it will be over. My body must be a dead weight, but he pulls me along the woodland floor with remarkable speed.

He stops, moves to stand above me and spits, “You deceived me and thus you deceived the good Lord, and for that you must be mightily punished!”

He kicks my side hard, once, twice. I did not know such pain existed. It is worse than child birth, worse than anything I have ever known. I curl up into the foetal position, try to swallow the nausea and the searing waves of pain that ripple through my core, shaking my body, making me wish I could die. Still I do not fight back.

“Whore!” he snarls, and grabbing my waist he turns me onto my front and pushes me face down into the dirt.

I can barely breathe. Mud seeps up my nose and I have no channel through which to inhale. Panic overwhelms everything, hot, agonising, mind-crushing panic. Even though I want to give in, I start to fight back. Almost of their own volition, my legs begin to thrash and thrash and kick and scream. I want to live – I must live – I have to live. Charles loves me. He loves me. I must survive to tell him I love him, to make him aware that I am me, I am his.

But Mortimer’s hand is like a boulder upon the back of my skull and the mud is a river and I am drowning. His thighs are pressing into my kidneys; I am all pain and panic and suffocation.

“Whore,” his voice is against my ear, breath warm, moist.

Gripping my hair, he wrenches my head back so that I am looking up into his upside down face. The muscles in my neck screech and I gasp. Slowly, taking immense pleasure in my fear, he wraps his other hand around my throat.

I splutter and breathe, splutter and breathe. I can breathe once more but my panic does not recede. Mortimer is smiling but from my viewpoint he looks like a sad clown with mad, mad eyes. I know what he is about to do.

Still holding my throat, he releases my hair and runs his hand lightly down my back, pausing just above my buttocks. He inhales sharply and I feel his heat pressing down on me: hard, hot, pulsating, terrifying.

I begin to cry, wish I could pass out as his hand kneads my flesh through my dress and his breathing grows raw, ragged, fast. His hand is moving again, moving down, tracing a light path down my thigh, my calf.

“Lissssbeth,” he moans.

I squeeze my thighs together, trembling, as he rolls my skirts up inch by inch.

“Such beauty,” he murmurs.

He abruptly releases my throat, which is at once a relief and a threat. I turn my left cheek against the mud so that I can breathe and close my eyes willing it to be over. I despise this feeling of helplessness; hate myself in this moment, my own weakness.

A memory of Christmas, of Charles and I walking hand in hand towards the church, snow melting beneath our boots, wetting our hair, holly shimmering, Venus beaming. Tears flow down my cheeks. It was the night Charles proposed. I remember his expression; his joy, hope, fear all moulded into one vulnerable, loving gaze. There were tears in his eyes and his hands shook.

A hand grasps my bare upper thigh. I gasp, the memory shattered. Tense, bracing for savagery.

“Ah Lissssbeth,” he moans.