Of Midnight Born (16 page)

“Give it to me,” Serena said.

“Gladly,” the gypsy said, holding it up, a full moon tethered to a chain. “Only one thing. There is the matter of the price.”

“Price? What price? I have no coins to give you. I have nothing even to trade with you!” Hadn’t the woman noticed she was a ghost?

“You have information.”

Serena frowned at her. “What type of information are you seeking?” She would not help this woman to steal from Woding, if that was what she had in mind. Neither would she allow her to blackmail or otherwise cause harm.

“Tell me your name, and tell me something about yourself that no one knows,” Madame Zousa said.

“Why?”

“I fear I will not be paid for my time if you do not!” Madame Zousa said frankly. “Things did not go as I had planned this evening. No one wants a Gypsy who tells them nothing, or worse, who has a fit and collapses in the middle of the drawing room. Give me the information that I ask, and perhaps I shall be paid well enough to feed myself for a few weeks.”

That was a plea that Serena could understand, and there
was
something she would like everyone to know. She told that fact to Madame Zousa, along with her name.

The Gypsy laid the chain across her outstretched hand.

Marcy screamed.

Serena and Madame Zousa both jumped, startled. Serena went invisible, still holding the chain with the medallion, and Madame Zousa rushed back to the bed, trying to shush Marcy. The maid continued to scream.

The door opened and Serena ran for it, intending to pass right by whoever was there, her body solid now so she could hold the chain in her hand.

It was Woding, his hair mussed, his dressing gown barely closed. “Serena!” he said, and stepped toward her as she was trying to pass through the doorway. Too late to stop herself from colliding, she went formless and passed through him.

The medallion dropped to the floor, and her body filled with stars. It was the only thought that would come to her as she drifted, stunned, in the hall just past him. He looked equally stunned, leaning against the doorjamb with a vacant expression on his face.

It was nothing like passing through others had always been. Instead of cold nausea, warmth was what she felt, warmth and a tingling sense of life glittering up and down every fiber of her being. Mixed impressions of Woding himself flitted through her mind: memories of people she did not know, circumstances she had never experienced, sensations she had never felt. For a brief moment she saw herself from his perspective, drifting stunned and pale in the dark of the hall, her hair a weeping willow about her.

Alex was dimly aware of hysterical sobs coming from the room, and distant-sounding voices. “The head! I saw the floating head!” one cried, while the other soothed and hushed in crooning tones. It was as if someone else, not him, were hearing those sounds. His whole body was too busy trying to make sense of what had just happened.

The closest thing to it in his experience was that moment immediately after reaching sexual satisfaction, when the pleasure was still filling one’s senses, but the physical efforts have ceased. It was not the climax itself, but the languorous bliss that followed. Coupled with it was a sense of sharing—of having blended souls with a person—in a way that was not humanly possible.

Wild emotions not his own flamed and died in fireworks throughout his awareness. Fear, anger, determination, lust. He sensed a will that was stronger than steel, tempered by
soul-searing hardships. He saw visions of green pastures, and the valley below Maiden Castle in a lonelier time. He saw a smallish keep that was cold, stark, and unyielding. There were men who were equally so, as well as a brief glimpse of a worn woman with love and softness in her eyes. Death. Corruption. Flames and blood and the clash of swords.

He heard a woman’s voice singing in his head:

“There were three ravens sat on a tree, Down a down, hay down, hay down, There were three ravens sat on a tree, With a down.”

The sensations and images began to fade, and he pushed himself upright against the doorjamb, his head still feeling drunk with the essence of Serena’s soul. He saw her a few feet away, floating just above the floor, her hair a wild waterfall around her. She had been, for a moment, part of him, and her thoughts had been his.

He saw her begin to take notice of where she was, and for an instant saw himself as if through her eyes, leaning against the jamb like a man who’d been punched in the gut.

She bent down and picked something silvery up off the floor, but before he could tell what it was, she had regained her senses and was away like a deer, her pale form disappearing around a corner.

He took a step to follow, then realized the futility of it. If she had needed his help against the shadow, she would have stayed and asked him for it. She could be anywhere in the castle—or out of it—by now. He pulled his dressing gown more securely closed, and turned his attention to the two women in the room.

It was, Alex thought, like a group of judges convening to discover and decide the fate of an accused criminal. Sophie and Blandamour, the nurse Miss Silverlock, Beth and Rhys, Marcy, Dickie, Underhill, Sommer, and even Otto were sitting spread around the blue drawing room, looking variously curious, frightened, affectedly bored, or self-righteously angry, depending upon their individual character and purpose. It had seemed only right to include the servants, as they’d had their own ghostly experiences, and if left out of the convocation they would most likely have come up with something worse in their own imaginations.

Madame Zousa stood by his side, the center of their attention, dressed in a gown equally as old and garish as her last one had been. It was, he noted, suspiciously clean and well mended for a garment belonging to a supposedly nomadic woman living in a caravan in the forest. Madame Zousa, he suspected, was most likely known at home as Mrs. Penryhn, or some similarly Cornish appellation. She probably had a pilchard fisherman for a husband.

He couldn’t blame the woman for trying to earn some extra money, though, however much he disapproved of her fraudulent methods, and at least in this case he knew that she had been in contact with Serena last night, just as she had been hired to be.

“Madame Zousa has informed me that the name of the ghost of Maiden Castle is Serena Clerenbold,” Alex said to the assembled group, eliciting a collective intake of breath, followed by much whispering.

“We knew it was Serena already,” Rhys said. “That information is not new, and certainly not worth Sophie’s wasting her money.”

“You
did
contact her, Madame Zousa!” Sophie said over Rhys. “I knew you would! Tell us, what did she look like? What did she say?”

“Clerenbold, did you say?” Blandamour asked.

Madame Zousa chose to answer the vicar first. “That is what she told me. Serena Clerenbold.”

“Interesting,” Blandamour said.

“What is?” Sophie asked her fiancé.

“The name. It is not a common one, but I think I may have come across it once or twice before, in records of the area. It caught my eye because it seemed such an appropriate name for an age that valued chivalry. It means ‘bright and bold.’ There are some parish records in this county that go all the way back to the eleventh century. I studied them once while tracing my family’s history.”

That caught Alex’s interest. “Do you think you could find the reference to the Clerenbold family again?”

“I might be able to, given time.”

“I should very much appreciate it,” Alex told him. Here would be written confirmation of her life, and perhaps further clues to what had brought Serena to the state she was in now. The images she had left by passing through him had played and replayed in his mind the remainder of the night. He wanted to know what the reality was behind them. He wanted the whole story, both from her words and from history.

“Even if there is a Serena Clerenbold somewhere in the records, it does not prove anything,” Rhys said, apparently having decided to take on the role of devil’s advocate.

“Miss Woding asked of Serena’s appearance,” Madame Zousa said, leaving the sentence dangling and effectively silencing Rhys. Even he was not immune to curiosity on that
score. “Marcy will be able to confirm what I am about to say, for she, too, saw Serena in my room last night.”

Dickie’s eyes went wide, his mouth dropping open as he turned accusing eyes on the girl. “You didn’t tell me!”

“’Tis true; she came in the middle of the night,” Marcy said.

“Most likely a dream,” Rhys muttered, only to get a not-so-subtle nudge from his wife.

“Hers is a unique face,” the Gypsy said. “Long, with high cheekbones and black eyes that tilt up at the corners. There is a mark of some sort across her face,” she said, and drew the line of the scar with her fingertip across her own skin.

Alex was glad that Serena was not present. He had intuitively sensed that her scar was part of what made her so unwilling to be seen. She would not have appreciated having its presence announced to this group. He himself had not known that Madame Zousa had seen Serena quite so clearly.

“Her hair is long and wild, of a pale blond. Her skin is white as milk, transparent in the dark. I could see the shadows of the wardrobe through her.”

“And she had no body, just hands!” Marcy added. “Her head floated, glowing like a lantern held high in the dark.” The maid sounded as though she was enjoying herself. “She about scared the life out of me, but I scared her, too, for she vanished like
that,
” she said, snapping her fingers. “The moment I opened my mouth to scream. She must have hit Mr. Woding on her way out, though. Didn’t she, Mr. Woding, sir?”

All heads rotated back to him. “I am not certain what happened,” he said, in a slight stretching of the truth. “Madame Zousa, you said that there was a message that Serena gave you to tell us?”

No matter his blandishments last night, Madame Zousa had refused to divulge this one part of her conversation with Serena until she was before the assembled group this morning.
The woman had a sense for the dramatic, and fully intended to take advantage of her treasured information.

“She said that she wanted it known by one and all that on her wedding night her husband did not bed her. She insists that she died a maid, as chaste as the day she was born.”

“Then why would she kill her husband?” Sophie asked.

“Maybe she had been longing for her husband to exercise his marital rights, and got upset when he didn’t,” Rhys said, causing Beth to give him a reproving frown.

“Why would that be what she wished us all to know?” Beth asked.

Madame Zousa shrugged. “She did not say.”

“There must be a reason,” Beth said.

“You’re a woman,” Rhys said. “Why would you do such a thing, if you were her?”

“To regain my honor if it had been unfairly besmirched,” Beth said.

“For respect,” Sophie said. “No one cares a whit for a fallen woman.”

“To catch a man!” Marcy said loudly, then slapped her hand over her mouth, her face going red.

“Come, what man is there for her to catch?” Rhys said. “She’s dead.”

Beth and Sophie looked at each other, brows raised, then turned their eyes to Alex. Rhys saw the look and followed it to its target, and everyone else’s eyes slowly followed suit.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Alex scoffed.

A wicked light entered Rhys’s eyes. “Perhaps it
would
make a sort of sense. She went after you the first time you were here, after all. Maybe it was love at first sight. It could be she has become obsessed with you.” He leered. “You are, after all, a fine figure of a man. What woman could resist?”

There was muffled laughter from the group.

“What rot,” Alex said, growing uncomfortable under the teasing. It would have helped if he hadn’t had so many
dreams where Serena lay beneath him, her legs wrapped around his hips.

“Have you not seen her even once?” Beth asked.

“I have had no problems with her,” he said.

Rhys grinned. “That is not what she asked, cousin mine.”

“Oh, Alex, you mean you
have
seen her?” Sophie complained. “I cannot believe you would be so cruel as not to tell me!”

“Mr. Woding,” Dickie asked from behind the others. “Is it true you have seen her?”

“She was in your bedroom, wasn’t she?” Underhill asked, then said to the group, “I heard her in there, pounding on the walls.”

They were all staring at him, waiting for his response. He found, rather to his surprise, that he did not want to tell them what he knew of Serena. It felt like a violation of the fragile bond they had formed to repeat in front of a group the things she had told him.

“I have seen her, yes.” He could admit that much without harm.

“Where?” several voices asked.

“On the stairs. In the hall. Various places. Mostly she seems to be watching whatever is going on, that is all. I do not believe she means to harm anyone, despite her earlier activities. She may simply have regarded us as uninvited guests.”

“And now?” Rhys asked. Alex noticed he had gone a shade paler than when he had been so gleefully poking fun. “What was she doing up in Madame Zousa’s room, scaring the daylights out of the maid? That does not sound particularly friendly to me.”

“She came to give me the message,” Madame Zousa said. “I asked that she show her face, and she did. It was only unfortunate chance that Marcy should wake.”

Alex knew the real story from the Gypsy, and was glad
that she had chosen to keep it quiet, whatever her motives. He doubted she wanted it known that she had called up uncontrollable, molesting phantoms that had even a ghost frightened. It would not be good for a fortune-telling business that catered to women.

“Was she in this room with us last night?” Sophie asked Alex.

He made a noncommittal sound and directed the conversation elsewhere, relieved when the discussion began to devolve into a rehashing of last night’s events. Madame Zousa reshaped events to her own benefit, and Alex was inclined to let her. She might not be precisely what she said she was, but he would not forget what she had endured, according to Serena, and that she had given Serena the medallion to help soothe her fears.

He quietly excused himself from the gathering, his own curiosity satisfied as to what message Serena had given Madame Zousa.

Rhys followed him out of the drawing room, joining him on his way out the door. “Do you need some fresh air after all that nonsense?” Rhys asked, sounding as though he wanted very much to believe it had indeed all been untrue. “That supposed Gypsy is quite the tale-spinner.”

“She does have a talent for drama,” Alex agreed.

Rhys walked quietly beside him across the courtyard and to the path atop the lower wall, then spoke again. “You meant what you said in there, that you have seen her several times?”

“Whether for good or ill, I did.” He would not prevaricate with his cousin.

“Then you should leave this place, Alex. Much as I like the thought of Serena spying on you, I have a bad feeling about it.”

“She is not going to harm me. She did not even push me from that wall when we were children.”

“You do not know that.” When Alex did not answer, Rhys looked at him. “Or do you?”

Alex shrugged.

Rhys laid his hand on his cousin’s shoulder, stopping him. “How do you know that she did not push you?”

“She told me.” He would not lie to his cousin, but neither did he wish to explain. Serena’s confession was too personal for that.

Rhys’s hand dropped, his face going sickly. Alex thought that Rhys, for all his childish ghost-story glee, was not adjusting well to this situation. “My God, Alex,” he croaked out, “you’ve been talking to her.”

Alex resumed walking, heading for the corner bastion. He felt curiously distanced from Rhy’s concern. It was more of an inconvenience than a warning that he should be cautious. He knew Rhys had no way of understanding his unique relationship with Serena. No one could understand.

“Alex, this isn’t right; it’s unnatural,” Rhys said.

They reached the bastion, and Alex went to lean against the parapet, gazing out over the distance. The valley below was hidden beneath a low-lying layer of fog, making the castle seem to float upon a dreamworld. Like a memory of sex, thinking about the encounter with Serena in the doorway brought back an echo of the sensations. It was too overwhelming an experience to willingly do again, yet its effects entrapped his mind with a compelling fascination.

“Are you listening to me?” Rhys asked.

“Of course.”

“You’re not behaving normally. This…this
thing,
Serena, she is doing something to you. Leave this place. Go back to Bath. You are spending too much time alone up here.”

“I’ll think about it,” Alex said. He could feel Rhys frowning at him.

“I have to go back to the farm today, but Beth would like
to stay on as long as Sophie is here. Would that be all right with you?”

“You and your wife are always welcome,” Alex said, turning his attention to his cousin and smiling. “You know that.”

Rhys sighed, abandoning his earlier arguments. “I almost think it is worse leaving you with the two of them than leaving you alone with your ghost.”

“Serena doesn’t talk half so much,” Alex agreed.

Rhys gave a short laugh, without much humor. “I might feel better about this all if I had seen her myself. It’s beginning to seem as if I am the only one who has not had some encounter.”

“But you have,” Alex said. “The night I fell, she woke you up. She was afraid I’d lie there the rest of the morning and bleed to death.”

“
She
woke me?” He grunted in astonishment. “I never knew.”

“She’s not evil, Rhys.”

“Just…be careful. That’s all I ask.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“I know, Alex. God, I’m sorry. I sound like an old woman. I should stay out of your affairs.”

They walked the perimeter of the castle together; then Rhys went inside to gather his things. Alex continued on to the garden, the latch of the iron gate making its familiar clank as he opened it.

No one was working in the flower beds today, and the walled space was quiet in the noontime sun. The craggy cherry tree stood on solitary watch over the lesser plants and blooms. He followed the path toward it, and stopped underneath its sparse branches. Another limb was showing signs of disease, the leaves withering away.

He tilted his head back, looking for further signs that the tree was moribund. A twinkling of silver caught his eye. He
squinted at it. Hanging from the topmost branch, the small silver medallion twisted at the end of its chain.

It dawned on him then that there had to be some connection between Serena and the cherry tree. The hints had been there since he first saw the tree as a child and felt that it watched him. Could it be that she was buried nearby? The thought that even at this moment he might be standing over her remains unsettled him. It was an unwelcome reminder that she was no longer of this life, however strong her reality felt in the night.