Master of the Moors (17 page)

"Sylvia,
what's...?"

"Hush," she said in a
voice that sounded vaguely masculine, and when she turned to look
at him over her rippling shoulder, he saw that a feral grin had
split her face almost completely in half, needle-sharp shards of
bone glistening in the firelight. But her eyes...her eyes were the
worst of all and one look at those stretched eyesockets leaking
blue-white fire was enough to finally free him, to send him
flailing backward into one of the bed's thick oaken legs. Pain
exploded across his shoulders and he cried out. Fire raced down his
back; it was as if someone unseen were flaying him, and delighting
in their work.

"Hush," said Sylvia as she
swung around to watch.

This isn't how it
happened
, Mansfield told himself.
It didn't happen like this at all.

She approached him, her
arms lengthening into lithe black stalks, her hooked nails digging
into the floor, her beautiful breasts shriveling, darkening as the
shadows consumed her, her face elongating but still smiling, still
smiling...

He screamed.

***

Lightning stabbed the belly of the sky
and fresh rain cascaded from the wound.

Grady, Neil, Kate and Mrs.
Fletcher stood in the open doorway, the lamplight barely
penetrating the turbulent dark, turning the rain into silver
threads.

"Are ye sure this dance is
worth it?" Grady asked, grunting as he hefted the burlap sack full
of pumpkins, and Neil's turnip, over his shoulder.

Kate and Neil nodded.
"It's not that long a walk. We should be there in ten minutes,"
Kate said. "Five, if we run."

Neil scowled. "And what
will I do? Hitch a lift in Grady's sack?"

"You could wait and see if
it calms down a bit," Mrs. Fletcher offered. "It probably won't
last much longer."

"We're late as it is,"
Neil grumbled. "If we wait much longer there won't be much point in
going."

Thunder roared, making
them flinch. The rain hissed down even harder than
before.

"We're goin' to get
soaked," Grady said. "The lot of us will be laid up with colds in
the morning."

Neil sighed. "We'd be
halfway there in the amount of time it's taking us to debate the
matter."

"All right, all right.
Let's get on with it then."

"Fasten your raincoats
tight," Mrs. Fletcher said. "And go as quick as you
can."

"We will," Kate and Neil
said in unison and moved off into the rain, their lanterns cutting
short swaths from the dark.

Grady hesitated. Mrs.
Fletcher touched his shoulder. "Are you all right?"

He nodded. "Sure I am.
Just a feelin' is all."

"Well if it gets strong
enough, you turn right around and come back."

"Them two'd love
that."

"You're a grown man. The
decision is yours if you don't feel right about somethin', and
they'll have to like it or lump it, won't they?"

"I think in that respect,
you're gifted with more courage than I am," he said. "There are few
things worse than the wrath of two sulkin' children." He sighed
heavily. "Besides, they're right.'Tisn't often they have any kind
of a break from the boredom. I'd find it kinda hard to look at 'em
if I denied 'em this one."

"You're an old softy."
Mrs. Fletcher fastened the top button on his coat. "Now off with
you before you lose them in the dark."

He nodded and glanced over
his shoulder at her. "You'll keep an eye on the master?"

"I will."

"All right. Then do me one
last favor."

"What's that?"

"Have a cup of your fabled
life-restorin' tea waitin' for me when I get back, will ya? I'd say
I'll need it."

"Just for bravin' a storm
with those two terrors, I'll make a pot of it. Cake, too. And don't
forget to check the tavern for that drunken doctor."

"Right." With a salute,
Grady left the comfort of the doorway, the rain making a sound like
fingernails tapping against his coat. As fast as he could manage
with the burden of the pumpkins, he headed toward the dwindling
lantern lights up ahead, their muted glow like the eyes of some
night creature watching his approach.

***

Mrs. Fletcher waited until
she could no longer see Grady's light before she closed the door
and headed into the kitchen. She'd put a fruitcake in the oven
earlier, and already the delicious, heady smell of it permeated the
kitchen. She looked forward to helping herself to a slice when
Grady and the children returned.

Children
.

She sighed. Kate, and
especially Neil, already bristled at the use of that word, and she
supposed she couldn't blame them. Kate was sixteen now, with Neil
only a year younger than her. They were no longer children, and the
realization saddened her, just as it had saddened her to see her
own children growing into young men and women. She supposed the
death of her youngest had made her latch on to the others all that
much more. Soon she'd be forced to say goodbye to Kate and Neil,
and stand at the door waving them off on the respective paths to
their new lives. Her heart ached at the thought. Sometimes it felt
as if her only role in life was to witness and encourage the
beginning of everyone else's journey, to ready young lives for the
bold new world while in the process, guaranteeing she would be left
alone again, and heartbroken.

But it was still her job
and she had learned to accept it, no matter how heartbreaking the
process might be. She was the matriarch, and despite the title she
had worn in the Mansfield house for as long as she had been
here---that of charwoman---she considered herself more a mother to Kate
and Neil than anything else. Their own mother had died when Neil
arrived, and since that awful dark day, Mrs. Fletcher had looked
after the children, caring for them and tending to their needs as
surely as any biological parent. All of it done, however, with the
knowledge that, when they were grown and out on their own, they
would remember her only as the kindly old charwoman of Mansfield
House.

She quickly fetched a
glass of water and filled it at the sink to distract her from the
sorrow that was starting to bring tears to her eyes. This was her
life, she reminded herself, and this was how things had always
been. Mourning each child's passage into adulthood as if it equated
to death was futile and unfair to them and to herself. She had
scarcely given any consideration to her own parent's feelings when,
as a young girl, she'd married a coal-miner and moved to Cornwall,
visiting them only rarely. She'd felt no guilt at the time, and
didn't now. No intentional neglect had been involved. She had just
been too preoccupied with making her own life, and that was
sometimes just how things went.

Sniffling and chuckling at
her own foolishness, she set the filled glass of water on the
kitchen table and took a small bowl from the cupboard, into which
she scooped the still warm remains of the rabbit stew, careful to
avoid the large chunks of meat the master would not be able to
chew. Then she set the bowl, the glass of water, and a teaspoon on
a small oval tray and made her way upstairs.

The wind played a discordant tune
through the tin whistle eaves and bellowed down the flue. Rain
sprayed against the windows.

Mrs. Fletcher felt alone.
Despite the presence of the master in his bedroom, she couldn't
remember the house ever feeling as empty as it did tonight. It
seemed as if the weather was a cat pawing at a doll's house, with
her the only doll still rattling around inside. Momentarily, she
wished she'd accompanied Grady and the children to the dance. She
would gladly have braved the weather in order to avoid being left
on her own.
No, you're not
alone
, she chastised herself,
and it's unchristian and uncharitable to think
so
.

Perhaps it was not the
loneliness she disliked but the amount of thinking and self-pity
she allowed herself when there was no one around to distract her.
With an irritated shake of her head, she reached the top of the
stairs and turned, her eyes fixed on the tray as she carefully
headed toward the master's room.

I'll feed
him
, she decided,
then I'll get my embroidery, or perhaps a good book, and I'll
sit with him for a spell. It won't be so bad
. But she knew it would be. No matter what activity she
engaged in to discourage her melancholy musings, the hollow wind
and the tortured rasp of her master's breathing would be all she'd
hear.

Despite the promise she'd
made to Kate earlier, Mrs. Fletcher decided her vigil would have
many reprieves.

She reached the room and,
balancing the tray on one hand, eased open the door.

Inside, it was pitch dark,
with only the occasional flash of lightning illuminating the
huddled form on the bed. Mumbling a curse, Mrs. Fletcher realized
she'd left the matches downstairs and gently set the tray down on
the floor. On both sides of the upstairs landing, lanterns had been
set, their low flames fluttering, the tulip-shaped glass blackened
by smoke near the top. She went to the nearest one and adjusted the
wick so the flame rose, brightening the hall. A branch whacked
against the window in Kate's room and Mrs. Fletcher stifled a cry,
one hand clutched to her chest, her grip on the lantern tightening
reflexively. "Good Heavens," she whispered, taking a moment to let
her thudding heartbeat slow, before she held the lantern out and,
stepping over the tray on the threshold of the master's room,
brought the light inside. She set it on a locker directly across
from the door and once more adjusted the flame so that bright warm
light flooded the room.

Still unnerved by the bang
the branch had made against the window, she turned and went to
retrieve the tray, her shadow soaring up the wall ahead of her.
Sudden movement gave her pause.

"Master?" she whispered,
looking in the direction of the rumpled sheets. "Are you
awake?"

She stepped closer to the
bed and gradually the master's pallid features resolved themselves
from the gloom, his body little more than a wrinkle in the bed
sheets. Dark eyes twinkled in a withered face. She felt a shudder
ripple through her, immediately followed by shame that she should
react with such revulsion at so decent and beleaguered a man, an
employer who had never treated her with anything but kindness in
all her years of service to him.

"Master?" she said again
as she leaned over the foot of the bed.

"Florence..."

Her heart almost gave up
the ghost right there and then. Of all the sounds she'd expected to
hear in the solemn lonely house this night, her master's voice had
not been one of them. It filled her with fear, hope, and horror in
equal measures.

"Oh my God..."

"Florence," he said, his
voice a grated whisper. "You must kill me."

14

"Grady!"

The alarm in Kate's voice
stopped him in his tracks. He turned, raised the lantern and
squinted into the rain to see her face. "What is it?"

The look of terror on her
face filled him with the horrible notion that here, now, in the
middle of the storm, his recent fears were about to be realized. No
one would hear them cry for help, not with the thunder and the
rain, even assuming anyone had stayed home from the
dance.

She raised a trembling
finger and pointed at his chest, prompting him to look down, but
there was nothing there, nothing that he could make out at least.
"What?"

"The sack," she shouted.
"The sack of pumpkins."

"What about them?" he
asked, already feeling the burlap turn to ice between his shoulder
blades.

"It's moving!"

In an instant he dropped the sack and
stepped back.

"What's in there?" Neil
said, silver eyes moving back and forward in the
lamplight.

Grady shrugged,
momentarily forgetting that the boy couldn't see the gesture, and
moved only close enough to the sack to nudge it with his foot. The
material jerked in response.

"You're right," he told
Kate, who had moved to stand by his side, her lantern upraised to
cast more light on the twitching sack. It lay on the wet ground
like a body struck down, moving faintly in the last throes of
life.

"Maybe my turnip came to
life," Neil suggested wryly. "Like in that story you told us when
we were children, the one about 'Stingy Jack.' He choked to death
on---"

"That's enough," Kate
said. "And the turnip didn't come to life in that story. Neither
has this one."

Grady slowly stepped
around to the end of the sack. Looking up and blinking away the
rain, he said, "You two might want to back up a bit. I don't know
what's in here, but it's probably a rat or somethin'. You don't
want to be standin' there if he comes flyin' out, do
you?"