Echoes in the Darkness
It was much later when the memory of the first conversation I had overheard made itself felt like a chill and sudden gust blowing off a distant sea. This was a land of legend and superstition, I told myself briskly. Cad was right. Stories about the local nobility would always be the juiciest source of gossip. And I clung persistently to that explanation for what I had overheard, despite a cold worm of doubt that tried to twist itself into my mind.
* * *
In my dream, I stood at the cliff’s edge, so close to infinity that my heart soared painfully out over the ocean. The wind plastered the thin fabric of my dress to my legs and tugged the pins from my hair. And I waited, lifting my face to receive the moon’s caress. When the hoofbeats came at last, they were in time with my heart. The black stallion halted beside me. Eagerly, I took the strong hand that reached down to me. The rider swung me easily up before him and I slid my arms about his waist. My cheek pressed against his chest and I felt his triumphant laugh vibrate through my whole body.
I don’t know where we rode or for how long. The midnight landscape flashed by in a blur. The mighty stallion clung faithfully to the outline of the cliff, its hooves now and then skittering dangerously close to the sheer drop. This moon-drenched land belonged to us. The night air was sweet with the tang of spray and cold. Below us the grating roar of pebbles flung against the cliffs by maddened waves accompanied the pounding rhythm of our ride.
The sleepy tranquillity of dawn was approaching when I slid from the saddle and gazed up at my companion. He gave me a flash of the same fallen-angel smile I had seen when he stood at my bedside. Then he was gone.
I awoke late that day and felt curiously rested and content. Details of the dream surfaced slowly, and I stretched luxuriously, exulting in the memory. Running a hand through my hair, I found it a tangled, salt-sticky mess. My lips tasted of the sea and my face felt wind-scorched. The sense of well-being that had engulfed me vanished and, with jerky, uncoordinated movements, I rose from my bed. It was nonsensical, I told myself, studying my windswept appearance in the mirror, to imagine it was anything more than a dream. My sleep had been restless, that was all. There was nothing sinister in that. I could not possibly have been on a wild night’s ride with the ghost of Uther Jago. Could I?
Chapter Nine
He turns his mind resolutely away from the girl. The young one who held a basket in one hand and struggled to keep her bonnet in place with the other. She had looked up at him with timid eyes and reddening cheeks. “Thank you, sir.” The shyly whispered words had been her last. But, no! Do not think of her. She was a mistake. That was why he had hidden her away instead of displaying her like his other grotesque works of art. Think of them, the nameless whores who hoisted their skirts for the first man to toss them a coin.
A different picture intrudes into his mind. A woman’s face. So beautiful you can’t not look at her. He clings to her familiar image, as dear and comforting to him as a remembered kiss.
“Dita.” No sooner has he breathed her name than he feels his master reach into his brain with hell-black fingers, probing and twisting.
“Forget her. She is a treacherous bitch.” The voice drips menace.
“No,” he whispers weakly, but the pressure building inside his skull is too great. Even for Dita, he cannot fight his master.
“Yes, I tell you. Just like all the others, she uses her womanhood to get what she wants. To trap an unsuspecting man into spilling his seed inside her whore’s body so that her belly is filled with the only thing she really craves. Now put the Hungarian slut out of your mind and do as I say. You have more work to do this night.”
* * *
I reached the bottom of the stairs as Porter, with a long-suffering expression, was eying a large box that had just been delivered. “From the estate of Lady Una Jago,” he said, distaste making his thin lips disappear. “Cousin of his lordship’s father, a lady who passed away a month or two ago. She liked to hoard.”
Lucy appeared then and requested the butler carry the offending item into the parlour. “Lady Una fancied herself as something of a family archivist,” she told me when the box had been placed on a side table and Porter had cut through its seals with a letter opener. “I have no idea what is in here, but her will apparently left certain items to Tynan. I told him I would see what the contents are and decide how best to dispose of them.”