The Iron Thorn

12 The Chambermaid’s Tale

EVEN AS CAL worked to rekindle the kitchen fire, Bethina shivered. “This place … it was never a good place, miss, even before Mr. Conrad went missing.”

I paced from the table to the basin and back. I couldn’t seem to sit still. Bethina had seen my brother, spoken with him, held a rational-enough conversation to learn his name. His letter to me hadn’t been a fancy. “If you’re expecting me to believe in some far-fetched curse on this place, or some ridiculous heretic story …”

Bethina shook her head. “No, miss! It’s the Master Builder’s own truth. Graystone is built on burying ground, and that’s a fact. Puritans, I think Mr. Grayson said. The first Grayson here dug up the gravestones and planted them out in the oak grove, but they didn’t find all of the bodies. I know I ain’t supposed to believe in Spiritualism and things like that, but it’s a foul business. And during the heretic troubles some-odd decades ago, bootleggers dug passages in the cellars. There’s limestone caves about a mile on, down at the river. They left casks of money and liquor down there when the Revenue chased them out. And Mr. Grayson said the folks in Arkham have seen nightjars in the tunnels, too, and revenants—those glowing ghostish things that lead you off the path to drown in the underground pools.”

“What does this have to do with my brother?” I demanded. “Did he try to go into the caves?” The thought of Conrad trapped underground in some damp stony place, unable to call for help, seized me right about the heart.

Dean poured Ovaltine into a pair of chipped mugs with the flourish of a soda jerk. “Bethina.” He handed her a mug covered in ducks wearing glasses and smoking cigars. “Miss Aoife.” My mug was plain and blue, and Dean’s fingers whispered against mine.

Cal’s mouth turned down. “Where’s mine?”

“Only enough for two, and I think the girls need something to calm their nerves more than you do, cowboy.” Dean settled himself at the table again and lit a Lucky Strike, looking for all the world like he belonged in my father’s kitchen.

Cal stole Bethina’s chair by the fire and put his foot on the hob, grumbling. His ankle was returning to its normal size. At least that deceitful Alouette had been good for something.

Bethina blew on her mug. “Mr. Archibald hired my mother on when I was just a kid. I used to play in the front hall ’cause it had the slickest floors and I loved roller-skating. He was a nice man. Not cruel, but he had … strange habits.”

“I suppose wealthy folk often do,” I said curtly. I didn’t know why the urge to defend Archibald rushed words to my lips, but it felt right.

She puffed up like a banty hen. “I wouldn’t dream of questioning him. But all the same, miss, there was something not right about this house. I’d wake up from bad dreams and I’d have the most awful feeling that something was watching me, from the back gardens, staring up at my window.” She sipped her Ovaltine and made a face. “This milk is gone.”

“Working with what I have.” Dean waved his flask. “I think there’s a sip or two left, if you’d care to sweeten that.”

“Certainly not,” Bethina said primly, setting the mug down with a clack, as if the very idea of liquor were offensive.

“Someone watching you,” I prompted her to continue. I kept my irritation in check by tapping my bare foot against the tile floor. “Who was it?”

“I’d get out of bed to check that the window was locked up in the garret,” Bethina said. “And … I’d see them, out in the moonlight.”

“The mysterious Them. I got chills.” Dean had already polished off his cigarette and was up digging in cabinets. All he unearthed was an ancient packet of TreacleTarts, the pudding inside the pastry shell gone rock-hard from age.

“I call them the tall men,” Bethina said, her voice no bigger than the child with nightmares she described. “They were pale, too. Cold eyes. They came from the woods, single file. Every full moon, they came. I heard Mr. Grayson on those nights, pacing in the library.” She reached out and clapped her hand over mine and I started. Her palm was hot from the Ovaltine, while I’d gone cold. “I didn’t mean to snoop,” Bethina whispered. “I didn’t mean to be trouble.”

I wriggled my hand free. Hers was slick. “Bethina, what did the tall men want with my father?”

“I didn’t never want to find that out, miss,” she whispered. “They were awful, the pale men. Their pale fingers and their pale eyes … one looked up at my window, and I swear he stole the thoughts from my head. So bright to look on, in that full moonlight. So beautiful …” A tear slipped down her cheek, dangled unnoticed on her flower-petal skin. “I could have looked at him forever, even though I had the most awful nervous flutter in my chest when he caught my eye. I wanted to hide but I couldn’t.…” She stopped, and knotted her fingers together. “I fear I’m not making any sense, miss.”

“Trust me, you’re making more sense than a number of folks I know,” I told her. Even though she was scared and didn’t appear overly bright, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for Bethina. She’d been trapped alone in the house, and obviously whatever had visited my father had spooked the tar out of her. I gestured Cal out of her chair. “Let’s get you settled and then you can tell me the rest of the story,” I suggested, trying to be kind like the endlessly patient and immeasurably patronizing nurses at Nerissa’s madhouse.

Like the patients with their sedative-addled senses, Bethina didn’t cotton to the fact the entire act was for her benefit. “Thank you, miss. You’re not such a hooligan as you first seemed,” she said, dabbing at her cheek with the edge of her cuff once she’d sat. “Talking about the tall men … it does set me off sometimes, like a silly thing.”

“Forgive me, Bethina,” Cal said, “but could you have maybe seen a real man, flesh and blood, wearing an illusion cloak like in the Phantasm comics?”

“Of course not.” Bethina sniffed. “That Phantasm ain’t real.”

Cal flushed. Dean shoved a handful of stale TreacleTart into his mouth to muffle what would surely be a sound of derision.

“Did Conrad meet the tall men?” I asked. “Did they do something to my brother?” Conrad wasn’t like me. He was fearless, and he’d charge into something strange without a thought. I was the one who worried, who weighed logic before she did anything larger than pick out a new pencil from the box.

Bethina bobbed her head, but I couldn’t tell if she was acquiescing or trying to hide embarrassment. “One day Mr. Grayson was gone. Dismissed the staff in a note left in his gentleman’s parlor. Some clothes and favorite books, his sturdy boots and his shaving kit … all gone. He left his bedroom and dressing room in such a mess it took me all day to straighten up on my own. Even left his diary behind, tossed on the floor like trash.” She fiddled with her curls.

“And?” I prompted. “Conrad?”

“Mr. Conrad came a few weeks later. After your father had gone. A wild-eyed type, that’s for certain. Mr. Grayson would have been none too happy with his manners. Mr. Conrad wanted to poke about. He kept talking about some birthday and wanting to ask Mr. Grayson about his mother, which I didn’t understand none of, because Mr. Grayson’s not seen her in near fifteen years. But I still made up a bed and put on some supper. He was a decent sort, if you could get past his comportment.” Bethina’s voice dipped to a whisper, nearly lost in the crackle of the fire. “They came that night.”

“The pale men?” My tongue tasted of chalk.

“No, miss. It weren’t the pale men, it was something else altogether. Shadow things. Things I ain’t never seen the like of in all of my sixteen years on this earth.” She rubbed her hands together, looking to the darkness beyond the kitchen windows. “They didn’t whisper or laugh like the pale men. These creatures poured in, miss. They covered every inch of the place, and I shut my eyes tight so they wouldn’t see me. They took your brother out, toward the apple orchard, and poor Mr. Conrad didn’t even have time to call out. He left everything. Even his letters. Didn’t have stamps on ’em, so I did it, and dropped ’em in the post. I figured it was the least I could do. Then I holed up here ’fore dark in case those things came back again at night and I haven’t been out since. That was a week ago.”

So Conrad’s note had reached me under Bethina’s auspices. Conrad himself was vanished yet again. We’d been connected for so many months by strings of words, by only the smell of ink and smoke that I ached to see him, put my arms around him and hear his gentle rumbling voice telling gentle jokes at my expense. My wise brother, who’d know exactly how to handle the place I found myself in.

But Conrad wasn’t here, and it fell to me to be clever and worldly, to shoulder the load. I felt a bit like crying, but if I started having hysterics in front of Dean I’d never let myself live it down.

“Why didn’t you report this to the Proctors?” Cal asked Bethina. “It’s a kidnapping, and viral creatures are involved besides.”

Bethina shrilled a laugh. “What, and have the same Proctors believe I’m bound for the rubber house? ‘Living shadows kidnapped a heretic boy from under my nose!’ No thank you. I like my freedom if it’s all the same to you.”

I rose and set my mug into the wash basin, Ovaltine untasted. “That’s all? That’s all you know?”

Bethina flushed. “I’m sorry, miss, but yes. The shadows stole your brother, and that’s the whole of it. No one here except me and the mice.”

I wrapped my fingers around the edge of the porcelain drain board and stared at the stained tile of the countertop until the spots of water and mildew spun in front of my eyes. I started multiplying numbers, trying to keep my mind on an even keel, to hold my hopelessly jumbled thoughts at bay.

Conrad kidnapped by viral creatures. Conrad vanished without so much as a scream. Only time to pen the note. Conrad asking me, of all people, to rescue him. The vertiginous, swirling pool of madness rushed up at me and I shut my eyes, willing the images from my dreams to retreat. Order. I needed order. I opened my eyes again, started to count tiles, my lips moving.

“I suppose it was cowardly to shut myself up in the kitchen,” Bethina admitted. “But I wasn’t keen on swanning about with those things running loose. They might take me.”

“No one’s going to hurt you, darlin’,” Dean said. His words were directed at Bethina, but his eyes were on me. By the time I’d reached my eightieth tile, the swimming behind my eyes had retreated and I slowly unlocked my aching hands from the edge of the drain board. I hoped that Cal, Bethina and Dean would put my episode down to worry over Conrad. I wished that I could.

“I thank you for your kindness, even if you are a heretic,” Bethina told Dean. Dean’s eyebrow quirked.

“Keep a razor blade under that tongue of yours, eh?”

“I see what I see, sir.” Bethina crossed her ankles primly. In keeping with Graystone’s crumbling surroundings, her stockings had a run in them.

“That’s it, then,” Cal said. “End of the line. Conrad’s gone and so is your pop. We’d best be hoofing it back to Lovecraft and praying that we don’t get expelled.”

Conrad’s shaky handwriting floated through my vision, and his admonishment to me:

Save yourself.

“Bethina,” I said. “Did my father or Conrad ever mention anything about a book? A specific book, or perhaps a ledger?” I swallowed a lump “The … a … ‘witch’s alphabet’?”

Dean’s head came up, as if he wanted to interject, but he kept quiet.

Bethina frowned. “No, miss. I never heard them mention no witches. They seemed upright men, the both.”

The fire sighed in the draft, and that was the end of Bethina’s story.

While Cal escorted Bethina to her garret, Dean walked me back to the room where I’d recovered from the shoggoth bite. He shivered outside my door, and I didn’t think it was entirely from the winter air against his bare arms.

“Are you all right, Dean?” I hoped the question wouldn’t wound his pride too much.

Dean’s mouth quirked down. “I suppose, but I gotta say it—this is Weirdsville, kid. Your old man’s a spooky cat.”

Privately, I was beginning to agree with Dean. Aloud I said, “I expect you want to get back to Lovecraft and the Rustworks. Your life.” I reached for the roll of bills I’d secreted in the top of my stocking. “How much do I owe you for being our guide?”

Dean sucked his teeth. “This job’s a complicated bargain, true enough. More to it than blood or money.”

“What else is there?” I rolled my stocking back over my thigh and watched Dean’s fingers curl as they followed the movement.

“You’re a pistol, Miss Aoife. You sure you don’t belong with us down in the Rustworks instead of at that stuffy School?”

“Oh, keep your remarks to yourself,” I said, but only half cross. He returned my small smile.

“I figure that I brought heat on myself during that little airship adventure. Proctors might have my mug now, maybe even my name. Maybe I need some country air, until things cool off and I don’t end up down Catacombs way.” He shrugged. “Figured you might need a few more dragons slain before we settle up, princess.”

“There are no dragons,” I said, although a part of me felt immense relief that he wasn’t leaving yet. “And no princesses.”

Dean rolled his pack of Luckies free of his sleeve and tapped one out. “Not in this dusty old pile of bones, that’s for sure. But there’s you and there’s me, Miss Aoife. I’m calling that good enough.”

He tucked a strand of wild hair behind my ear with his long fingers. Dean Harrison smelled of cigarettes and embers, and I breathed him in like he was all the air there was. No, Dean couldn’t leave yet. I’d never had this reaction to anyone in my life. He couldn’t go. I was beginning to realize I needed him.

“Aoife.” Cal appeared from the direction of the landing. “Is he bothering you?”

I took a large, guilty step in one direction and Dean backpedaled in another.

“Not in the least. We were discussing his fee,” I said. My heartbeat was louder than thunder at the thought Cal might have been standing there for longer than a few seconds. “For being the guide.”

“Well, I sure hope it wasn’t for his wit and charm,” Cal said. “Listen, I’m going to sack out and you should, too. We need an early start if we’re going to make the city tomorrow.”

I felt my mouth take on its stubborn set, which usually heralded a detention or an extra essay on something like etiquette. “I’m not going back, Cal. Conrad needs me.”

“Aoife …,” he sighed. “We’ve decided this.”

“No.” I jabbed my finger at Cal. “You decided. My brother is kidnapped, and I’m going to help him. If you don’t want to help save your friend, then by all means, go beg the Proctors to forgive you.”

Dean touched the back of my hand, light as a kiss. “I’m out of this conversation. Sweet dreams, kids.”

“Please, Cal,” I said after Dean disappeared into another bedchamber. “Just sleep on it. If you still want to leave in the morning, then go, but I’ve made up my mind.” I reached for him, but he backed away. “I could use my best friend,” I whispered.

“Aoife, you’re not being rational,” Cal said. “Conrad’s gone Builder knows where. You need to go home before your whole future is slag, and mine too. If you cared you’d listen to me.”

“Why?” I demanded. I’d been holding my tongue all day, playing at politeness, and my frustration boiled over like a crucible left too long on a burner. “Because you’re the boy and so I must be hysterical to disagree with you? Because I’m going mad? Or”—I drew close to Cal, realizing for the first time how tall he’d become in the summer between last year and this one—“is it because you’re scared?” I demanded. “That’s it, isn’t it—you’re scared that we might find Conrad and he really will be everything they say he is in Lovecraft. That the perfect, clever Cal Daulton made a mistake in befriending him.”

Cal’s jaw twitched, and I thrust my chin at him, daring him to yell or slap me or do anything except stand there like a boneless scarecrow.

“You need to rest, Aoife,” he said finally. “Clearly, the events of the day have gotten your head in a muddle. You’re saying things nice girls have no business talking about.”

“Oh, go strip your own gears!” I shouted. “I’m afraid too, Cal. I don’t want to think that Conrad is mad, but he might be! Or he might be dead, or consorting with real heretics, but I’m not turning tail!”

“Well, forgive me if I don’t want to toss away my entire life for a guy who may or may not be leading his naive sister on the road to ruin!” Cal growled. “And forgive me for watching out for my friend!”

“If you believe that Conrad would hurt me on purpose,” I said, matching his snarl, “then we are not friends.”

With that, I stepped into my room and slammed the door in Cal’s startled face. I curled up on the musty bed and lay wretched and sleepless until dawn.