The Lady in Yellow: A Victorian Gothic Romance Read online

  Veronica wasn’t sure of where the conversation was going, but she had to admire the child’s ability to argue a point.

  “Indeed. There are hospitals in cities, like London, where they look inside these bodies before they bury them. It's how doctors learn their craft.”

  “So, we’re studying the blood of a sick, poor person then, or a criminal, or some disreputable person,” said Jacques. “Not a queen.”

  “Nor an enchantress,” said Jacqueline.

  Veronica felt as if she were floating on a bleak and windless sea. They were clever, these children.

  “Well, blood is blood. We are all made in God’s image. We all share the same substance, the same blood. Otherwise, how could transfusions be performed? If one of you needed blood, I could give you some of mine and you would rally. Even though I am a commoner and you are aristocrats, it would make no difference.”

  “It would,” said Jacqueline.

  Veronica shut the biology book. “Let’s change the subject for now,” she said. “What else would you like to study today?”

  It seemed history was their pet subject. Though they could not name any major battles, they were both able to rattle off the names of all of the kings and queens of Europe, with jovial asides about the mad ones. Arguing about who knew more about the parentage of Ivan the Terrible, their conversation grew so heated, that Veronica had to end the class early for fear of a row.

  Alike as they were, they didn't agree on everything.

  *Eleven

  That evening, Veronica sat on the balcony in her dressing gown, forefinger pressed tightly between the pages of her novel. Mist poured down the lawn, swirled slowly through the trees, crept toward the tomb shining dimly in the moonlight.

  The imaginings of the novelist were no match for her own. Belden House was unlike anything she'd ever experienced. Mr. Crowe had suggested to her that the twins might be a bit mad, but it seemed they were of a different breed all together. Grateful as she was to have the job, she wondered if she was the right person for it. What could she, with her simple convent education, teach children who took such outlandish notions as magical blood, as gospel?

  And to see a wolf in garden was the last thing she'd bargained for.

  Perhaps she'd been mistaken. It could have been a fox.

  She soothed the scars on her hands and wrists where Tala had bitten her deeply enough to draw blood. Her heart beat rapidly with an impulse to flee.

  "Oh, dear God," she muttered and put her hands over her face. She took a deep breath and stared out at the spectral trees. "I've got to calm down."

  Softly at first, then slowly growing louder, a bell tolled through the fog. The sound was deep unearthly, compelling as if the bell ringer sought to pull one's soul away from its moorings. Softly, dimly, ancient-sounding voices crept into Veronica's mind, humming down an eerie minor scale, then rising up again. Lost in wordless thought, she floated back inside.

  Though she locked the French doors behind her, she could still hear the bell. The sound echoed, holding her attention, then faded into silence.

  Firelight played over the walls, flickering into the treasure room under the archway, catching, in a shadowy dark corner, the gleam of a white rocking horse. Veronica hadn’t noticed it before. A faded tapestry hung behind the horse, a medieval scene of horsemen dashing through the forest. The scene seemed to move in the dance of flame and shadow, to have come to life. She wondered if there were a door behind the tapestry, opening into a secret room, or perhaps a series of rooms, containing a collection of discarded childhood memories. Rooms without windows. Completely interior chambers.

  Outside, a high, thin wail rose up, making her shiver. A wash of moonlight illuminated the filmy curtains that wafted in from the floor length windows. Veronica put her hand on her chest to calm her heart.

  A howl rose up.

  What is that?

  Veronica wondered if she had the nerves for mysterious old houses in the untamed wilderness of the Yorkshire moors. She stroked her face with her hands before covering her eyes. Foxes didn't howl like that.

  It was best to go to bed and forget. Sleep had a way of sorting things out, solutions arising with the sun.

  Eyes riveted to the moonlit curtains, Veronica walked slowly to her bed. She sat on the edge looking out through the balcony doors. That music...it was beautiful, soothing as a lullaby, but also haunting as if to instill uneasy dreams. She got under the covers and pulled the bed hangings tight.

  Murmuring a prayer, she pressed the silver crucifix against her chest. The Lord would keep her safe.

  Yet, Veronica’s mind kept re-playing what she’d seen in the garden earlier that day: a hare running swiftly up the lawn, a white wolf chasing it down. She rolled onto her side, and buried her head in the pillows.

  Veronica had just fallen asleep when, just below, a high-pitched wail climbed the air, then faded.

  Wide-awake, she got up and went out to her balcony. The moon cast long shadows over the grass. Though the night sky had cleared, remnants of mist still clung to the roots of the birch trees, gathering in the wishing well among the lilies like a cloud. She couldn’t see the animal that had whined anywhere. The only sounds, accompanied by the chirruping of frogs around the well, were the voices of the children singing.

  "Green grow the lilies, o...

  Bright among the bushes, o..."

  Who had allowed them to go out at this hour? Didn't Mrs. Twig know about the wolf?

  Looking down toward the wishing well, Veronica leaned anxiously over the baluster. "Jack! Come inside!" she shouted.

  Alarmed for their safety, she grabbed her dressing gown, hurried downstairs, and dashed through the French doors to the back yard.

  The twins were at the wishing well, singing, slowly, as if to drag out the dirge-like cadences of the tune. Veronica hurried toward them. Halfway across the lawn, she slowed her step, peering into the shadowy bars of the birch grove.

  Was it in there?

  The lilies rustled. A white beast leaped out to the lawn, bounded over to Veronica, and pressed his body against her.

  "Wolfgang!" she whispered.

  Gasping with relief, she gripped the fur at the dog's neck and waited for the twins.

  "Miss Everly!" they cried.

  "What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?" Veronica said under her breath.

  "Playing. We always do. You shouldn't worry about us, Miss Everly," said Jacques.

  "Especially not after tonight," said Jacqueline with a calm, steady gaze. "It's the last night of the full moon. We'll be finished tonight."

  "Finished with what?"

  "Its only eleven o'clock," said Jacques.

  "Past your bed time," Veronica said.

  Noses in the air, the twins brushed past her. The dog broke free and ran along with them. Struck speechless, Veronica watched them cross the lawn into the moon-cast umbra of the house and go inside.

  She looked up at the moon glowing at the top of the trees. Three nights full. The last night... for what?

  Veronica glanced back at the well. What had they been up to? Hanging a doll or something?

  That tune began humming in her mind again, intensifying, freezing her limbs so that she couldn't move, as in a nightmare.

  The air, the land, the trees were glimmering. A pale yellow light bloomed up from the hollow of the wishing well, gathering like mist.

  The lilies trembled.

  A glowing, golden-haired beauty, dressed in an ornate yellow gown of great antiquity, a crown of birch twigs on her head, drifted out onto the lawn.

  Veronica held her breath and stared.

  The lady in yellow stared back.

  Her eyes flashed red.

  Veronica stumbled as if she'd been struck on the chest. Then, with a sound like a low, moaning wind, the lady turned toward the lilies, and slipped back into them like smoke returning to its fire.

  *

  Twelve

  Veronica woke on the ba
lcony, damp and freezing in her dressing gown. The deserted yard, steel-grey in the pre-dawn light, reflected the vague, empty, depression that gripped her.

  She got up and headed down the hallway to look in on the twins. They were gone. Their beds were perfectly made. At this hour, they should still be tucked up under their covers, sound asleep. Especially after their late night escapade.

  It wasn't proper for children to be so independent. It wasn't manageable.

  She listened for noises of people moving around downstairs. Nothing.

  Veronica sank down on Jacques’s un-rumpled bed. Mrs. Twig had told her that they disappeared. She should expect it.

  Still. It was unnerving.

  What were they doing out there last night? And how she gone from being out in the yard, to waking on her balcony just now, with nothing in between? It was as if the entire incident had been a dream part remembered, and part forgotten.

  The de Grimstons certainly had their ways.

  Veronica went back into her room determined to attend to things she could control, like washing, dressing, and fixing her hair. The hipbath was large with a scrolled back and a marvelous water pump in the shape of a crane. She filled the kettle with water and put it on the copper to boil, threw in some dried rose petals into the bath.

  She spent ages soaking in heat and fragrance. As her tensions seeped away, she wondered how she'd lived without such baths for so long. By the time she was finished dressing, the clock was gonging seven.

  She went downstairs to find Mrs. Twig.

  The housekeeper was in the kitchen lifting a whistling teakettle off the hob. Her auburn hair hung in a loose plait down her back. She looked haggard, as if she hadn't slept in days.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Twig.”

  “Oh, good morning, Miss Everly. I’m just making tea. Janet, bring the tray, will you?”

  Janet came around a corner with a tea tray.

  “Take it out to the dining room please, for Miss Everly.”

  With a quick bob, Janet did as she was told.

  “It’s Peggy's day off,” she explained, pulling a chair up to the fire. “Sometimes I’m glad of it.”

  The housekeeper seemed set on taking tea alone in the kitchen. Veronica bit her lip. She needed to talk.

  “Mrs. Twig? I should like to have you join me for tea, please,” she said.

  Mrs. Twig shot Veronica a resentful glance, then surrendered.

  “All right,” she said.

  They sat at the table in the small conservatory, quietly giving thanks before drinking their tea. Feeling splendidly revived, Veronica reached for a warm scone and slathered it with butter.

  “Were you able to sleep last night?” she asked Mrs. Twig.

  “No, Miss Everly. Not well.”

  “The children are gone.”

  “As I told you.”

  “For how long?”

  “It's over now. Don’t worry. Take the morning off. I am having a fresh carpet laid in the classroom.”

  Veronica stared at Mrs. Twig, trying to assess the housekeeper's attitude. She was fizzing over with questions, but knew she would have to move cautiously if she wanted answers from Mrs. Twig.

  Mrs. Twig drank her tea slowly, looking as if she’d never wake up.

  “Mrs. Twig… The children... They were down at the well last night.”

  "Oh, that's not unusual."

  So maybe it was not a dream. But something else came to her that she had forgotten.

  "I think there was someone else there----all in a yellow."

  Mrs. Twig looked up in shock. "What?"

  "Yes. A lady in a very old yellow gown. She came out of the area around the wishing well."

  Mrs. Twig sniffed and seemed to study her tea. “What did you do?”

  “Why, nothing. Who is she?”

  “I don’t know, Miss Everly.”

  “She had long golden hair, past her knees. The gown was cut quite low in front. She was very beautiful, but here was something... unpleasant about her. Wicked."

  Mrs. Twig stared at Veronica, sipped her tea. Her hands were visibly shaking.

  "Now I remember... the way she looked at me..." Veronica shook the impression off as if it could stick to her.

  Staring, Mrs. Twig bit her lip.

  Veronica went on. "I thought I might have dreamed the whole thing, but I've never had a dream like that before. And I have no idea what happened between the time I saw her in the yard, and woke on my balcony at dawn."

  “Are you sure it wasn’t one of the Jacks? They do love to play games and tricks,” Mrs. Twig said.

  “No. She was a grown woman,” Veronica said. A new possibility dawned on her. "Mrs. Twig? Is Belden House haunted?"

  Mrs. Twig started, then veiled her eyes. “Perhaps you were dreaming, Miss Everly. You were curious about the extra desk, and so you dreamed of another child.”

  “She wasn't a child. And she wore a peculiar little crown made of birch twigs.”

  Mrs. Twig stood up and quickly cleared her tea things from the table onto a tray. Stifling her disappointment with that response, Veronica set her cup and saucer on the tray. Mrs. Twig brought the tray to the sideboard, pausing there as if she were struggling to decide whether to speak or not.

  “I don't know what to tell you, Miss Everly. This is an old, old house. Many lives have been passed here, many souls are buried on its grounds."

  "In that tomb?"

  "For one. Enjoy your day off, Miss Everly. Good morning.”

  Without even glancing around, Mrs. Twig went out of the room, leaving Veronica alone.

  

  Veronica was grateful for another day off, glad for the chance to walk off her tension by exploring more of the seemingly endless grounds of Belden House. She slipped on her brown cloak, and headed out over the lawn, determined to forget her questions and enjoy the peace and beauty of the morning.

  Though she wanted to see what went on at the wishing well, a sense of foreboding stopped her. Steering clear of the area, she took the right hand path toward a wall of mossy, grey stone with a blue door framed in branches of pink climbing roses. The door opened into an autumnal vision of green shrubberies around a white ash tree that dripped scarlet leaves over the grass. Moss roses loosed petals into a marble fishpond filled with mirrored sky and lily pads. The tranquility of the garden was inviting, but Veronica didn’t enter. Rather, she hung in the doorframe restlessly digging her fingernails into the wooden frame.

  Where were the twins? Where were they?

  As if someone tapped her on the shoulder, she spun around. Her eyes fell on the tower looming up in the near distance. Cloaked in moss and ivy, window slits clogged with red leaves, the tower called out to her from the ancient past as if to say, I, who have been here always, know the secrets of this place. She walked over the lawn into its shadow, and blinking from the brilliant rays of the sun streaming over the battlements, searched the windows for signs of life.

  “Jack!” she shouted.

  She expected one of the twins to lean out smiling, a head of pale hair gleaming against the tarnished stones. But not one red leaf trembled, not one face appeared at the window, human or otherwise.

  She looked down through the birches. Just visible in its little clearing, was the tomb. Feeling on the verge of a great discovery, she hurried over a carpet of fallen leaves and broke through a mesh of twigs into the hushed silence of the woods. Sweeping down a little thread of bare earth, she stopped at the edge of the clearing. Gloom gathered there, shadows and decay.

  Carved of white marble, its scrollwork softened by the elements, its crevices blackened by lichens and dirt, the tomb was a melancholy sight. Four white marble angels mourned on the corners of the roof. Large, hooked letters scrawled over the lintel, inscribed the name: De Grimston.

  The heavy, iron door was closed.

  A low breeze stirred the dry leaves at Veronica's feet. She stepped toward the tomb, coming close enough to see, through a thick, stained
glass window, lights glimmering inside.

  “Jacques? Jacqueline? Are you in there?" she called.

  Receiving no answer, she slowly approached the door. Hanging by the neck, just inside the lintel, was a china doll. Veronica reached for it, lifted its translucent yellow dress to inspect the dark splotches beneath. Its cloth body was stained with blood.

  She did not want to imagine what the twins were up to. Picking up her skirts, she left the birch grove and kept walking until she was at the house and safely in through the French doors. She pulled them shut, and turned the lock, hard.

  There were voices in the vestibule. One was Mrs. Twig, the other the rich, baritone cadences of a man.

  *

  Thirteen

  Veronica unfastened her cloak, patted her hair down, and smoothed her skirts, pulling bits of twigs and yellow leaves off her hems. Then she crossed the room and looked through the door into the vestibule.

  Still dressed in beaver hat and traveling cloak, was the man in the portrait himself, Rafe de Grimston. Though a bit rumpled, he was the tallest, handsomest man Veronica had ever seen. A loose lock of dark hair hanging over an intelligent eye, rugged jaw under smooth skin slightly shadowed with a growth of black beard, he moved with an air of confidence and grace as he tipped the man who brought in his bags. As Veronica took in these impressions, his slightly husky baritone voice boomed around the room.

  “Where are the twins? How do they like their new governess?”

  Mrs. Twig looked straight at Veronica.

  “Well, here she is Mr. Rafe. Come, Miss Everly.” Mrs. Twig nodded her head sideways toward Rafe.

  As Veronica stepped into the room, Rafe's eyes seemed to take her in, his gaze intensifying as if to absorb her image into their striking blue depths. He quickly masked the look with a smile.

  Overcome with shyness, Veronica stopped in her tracks. Heat rose up her neck and spread tyrannically over her face like fire.

  “This is Miss Veronica Everly. This is Mr. Rafe de Grimston, Miss Everly.”

  Mrs. Twig brought them together. Veronica extended her hand, but couldn’t bring herself to look at her employer. This is what came of snooping in his rooms, she told herself----her guilt was rising like a red flag.