Christabel's Room: A spellbinding Victorian gothic romance Read online

  ‘Och, no, Angus, we shall be respectful.’ She laughed, low, under her breath, rocking back and forth as though enjoying some grim, bitter joke of her own.

  The horse trotted on, and soon through the snow I saw the solid outline of a small, stone croft-house, so low built as to appear as an outgrowth of the rocky hillside. A dim light showed the shape of one square window. Angus Fraser reined the horse to a halt before the cottage door, and Mrs. MacDonald climbed down from the brougham. Then, letting her eyes flicker from Angus’s face to my own, she said suddenly, ‘There was justice at Creagdhubh, Angus. Justice. Good night, then, Angus.’ And with no word to me at all, she disappeared into the dark building.

  Angus Fraser sent the horse on with a gruff roar and a crack of the whip over its back. I sat silent beside him as the brougham bumped and swayed behind the hurrying animal. I felt chilled and frightened by the strangeness of the woman and the veiled meaning of her words. As if knowing my thoughts, Angus growled under his breath, ‘Och, the Cailleach.’

  I looked up, puzzled.

  ‘The old woman, you’ll no need to be paying her any mind. She is a bitter-tongued old hag, she is that, and the truth is not in her.’

  I nodded, silently, but his words could not completely lift the shadow she had cast over me, and I half thought that Angus Fraser himself, in spite of what he said, was still disturbed by her.

  I had no more time to think of the matter, though, for as we swayed around a last precipiced bend, the view opened out ahead, revealing the sharp outline of a house, high on the edge of the cliff.

  ‘That is Creagdhubh,’ Angus Fraser said quietly.

  I looked up the deep ravine that separated us from the house. The night was almost on us, but the snow had stopped for a while, and I could see clearly the humpbacked shape of the stone bridge across the ravine and the shape of the house as well, steep roofed, with peaking dormer windows trimmed with spiky, wooden ginger-breading. In style it was less like the elegant country homes I had known in England than it was like the crofter cottages of the villages. It appeared to have grown from just such a cottage, extending itself by vast, rambling, disjointed wings, upwards against the steep hillside and downwards to the precarious lip of the ravine itself. Rising above the main roof of the building was a rugged, square tower, its spiked, pagoda-like roof silhouetted like a fortress against the sky.

  We passed the little gate house, a replica in architecture and ornament of the big house itself, guarding the bridge that spanned the deep burn. The horse’s iron shoes clashed on stone as we crossed the bridge, the sound ringing eerily down the sides of the black ravine, mingling with the rush of the burn far below. As the brougham rolled across the cobbles and halted in front of the heavy, arched doorway, the great ivy-hung front face of Creagdhubh flung its shadow across us, shutting out the last of the dying, winter light.

  Chapter Three

  Suddenly the great door swung open, warm light flooding onto the cobbles, and Uncle Iain was standing there, looking splendid in his kilt, his arms outstretched in greeting. At that moment he seemed to embody everything safe and friendly, and after the recent chilling episode and the whole strange journey, I practically flung myself from the brougham and into his embrace.

  ‘I’m so glad to see you, Uncle Iain,’ I said, and then without reason, I was actually crying.

  ‘Elspeth, what’s wrong? Has something happened?’ he asked, leading me inside, with Angus Fraser following with the luggage. I shook my head.

  ‘No, really, it’s nothing,’ I protested, feeling silly. ‘It’s just that the journey has been long, and I’m very tired.’ I smiled up at him and he looked reassured.

  ‘Well come in, my dear, and we’ll have some tea. I’m sure that will help.’ He guided me into the drawing room, where a great fire was blazing on the hearth and comfortable chairs were arranged around a small table already set for tea. ‘I’ll just tell Mrs. Cameron that you’ve arrived, my dear,’ he added, after I was seated near the fire. He stepped from the room and I relaxed in the chair glad to be done travelling, to be warm and dry and among friends.

  I looked about myself at the room. It was large and tastefully decorated, with delicately patterned, deep-green walls, and rich velvet curtains hung from shining brass rings. The floors were richly covered in Oriental carpets and before the fire, with its elaborate brass-fender, was a magnificent tiger-skin, great fangs bared in mock attack. I remembered suddenly that Uncle Iain had spent time in India, shortly after university.

  The room was hung with many portraits, undoubtedly of Uncle Iain’s family, but one only caught and held my glance. It was a splendid painting of Christabel, capturing everything I had remembered of her famed, gypsy beauty. She was dressed as I had remembered her, in deep-red velvet.

  The door latch clicked, and I looked up, startled, having heard no footstep. A young woman stepped into the room and I caught my breath involuntarily, for her face was a mirror of the portrait on the wall. So this, then, was Rowena.

  She had been riding, evidently, and still wore her black riding-habit and boots. Her cheeks were softly coloured by the cold air, and her hair, damp from the snow, was only loosely tied at the back and fell in shining waves about her shoulders. Her black eyes surveyed me coolly, a slight question in them, and I hastily stood up, feeling desperately conscious of my rumpled tweed costume, my hair which was coming undone and straggling messily, and my undoubtedly tear-streaked face. ‘I’m Elspeth Martin,’ I said awkwardly, painfully realizing that it was I and not she who both looked and sounded like an embarrassed schoolgirl.

  ‘Of course,’ said Rowena. ‘I remember you very well; you’ve hardly changed,’ she added delicately, and I wondered if there was malice in the statement, or if it was simply a declaration of the truth.

  ‘Well you certainly have changed,’ I said honestly, swallowing my pride, ‘I would hardly have known you, except …’ I stopped myself, not wanting to upset her with comparisons to Christabel, but then she finished for me, ‘Except that I look exactly like my mother. I know.’

  She looked up at the portrait and then back at me, with a look of amused, even defiant, pride.

  I was glad when Uncle Iain returned just then, because I really did not know what reply to make to this remarkably assured fifteen-year-old.

  ‘So you’ve found Miss Martin,’ he said to Rowena, putting his arm around her waist. I noticed that he was keeping the formality of address appropriate to my position as Rowena’s governess. I wondered if he expected her to follow suit. Somehow, it now seemed inconceivable that she would submit to my discipline in the classroom, or anywhere.

  As if in response to my thoughts, she said, ‘Yes, Elspeth and I have just been discussing our earlier acquaintance, haven’t we?’ she smiled faintly at me.

  I nodded, a little uncertainly perhaps, for Uncle Iain glanced oddly at Rowena, but said nothing.

  The door opened, and a maid entered with a tea trolley of elaborate design, plentifully loaded with cakes and pastries. The tea service was set out on the table and again I was struck by the beauty of it.

  The silver and the trolley and indeed everything about the room, although striking and in perfect taste, seemed somehow at odds with the house and its location. As if the interior of the room had been plucked up from some gracious French château and transported magically to this rugged, windswept fortress.

  Even Uncle Iain, big and sturdy in his heavy tweed clothing, seemed alien here in his home; a bit of the moor come down into the drawing room.

  Then I realized that the silver, the trolley, the room, were all Christabel’s of course; her taste, her choosing, her hand, had made it this way. Her own exquisite loveliness was infused into the very fibre of the house, haunting it now like her ghost.

  ‘Would you care for some tea, Elspeth?’ Rowena was standing at the little table, the curving spout of the teapot poised over a Crown Derby cup.

  ‘Oh, yes, thank you,’ I said quickly, taking the offered cup
. Rowena poured tea for her father and herself, handling the fragile china, the delicate silver spoons, with practised grace. She was a perfect hostess.

  ‘Where’s your brother?’ Uncle Iain asked, ‘I thought he had been with you.’

  ‘Yes, we were riding together,’ Rowena replied, seating herself opposite me. ‘But when we were returning from the stable we saw that the brougham was back and he decided to go up to his room.’ She spoke calmly, but the inference was clearly that Gordon had preferred not to meet me. I glanced involuntarily at Uncle Iain, but he had turned away.

  After a moment he said quietly, ‘I will ask him to come down. Excuse me, Elspeth.’ He left the room without turning to face me. I looked across at Rowena. Her face was smoothly expressionless.

  ‘Do try one of these cakes, Elspeth. They are delicious,’ she said, with the same faint smile.

  Uncle Iain was away for several minutes, much longer than it would have taken simply to ask the boy to join us. Rowena asked me politely about my journey and about my father and other relatives in London. If she found anything strange in her brother’s absence, she made no indication, and looked up with only mild interest when he stepped into the room behind his father.

  He was a handsome young man, slim, with fine features and a romantic tangle of dark, curling hair falling over his forehead. His eyes were dark like Rowena’s, but expressionless. Rowena had greeted me with cool defiance, but Gordon showed only a sullen indifference.

  ‘Gordon,’ Uncle Iain said carefully, ‘You remember Elspeth Martin.’

  ‘Hello Gordon,’ I said, smiling and extending my hand. He took no notice, only nodding curtly in acknowledgement.

  ‘Will you have some tea, Gordon?’ Rowena asked, unperturbed by his manner. I wondered if he was always like this, or whether my presence had somehow provoked his resentment. I noticed he was studying me with an expression of actual disliking.

  ‘No thank you,’ he replied eventually to his sister. ‘I have something to discuss with Roderick. Excuse me.’ He slipped past his father who, although looking acutely embarrassed, made no attempt to stop him, and was gone.

  There was a long moment of awkward silence, then Uncle Iain stepped forward into the room, clapping his hands together in exaggerated enthusiasm and said, ‘I say, Rowena, those cakes do look good.’

  ‘Do try one, Papa,’ she responded, smiling sweetly. The black eyes flickered to me and quickly back to the table before her, but I was sure I had seen amusement, and perhaps even triumph, in that glance. Suddenly I was angry. If Rowena and Gordon had some mutual plan to make me feel unwelcome, it certainly was succeeding. But my anger passed in a moment when I thought of Uncle Iain. Surely his children’s behaviour must have troubled him more than it did myself.

  Still, I was just as pleased when we had finished our tea and Mrs. Cameron, Uncle Iain’s housekeeper, had been summoned to show me to my room. She was a woman in her sixties, neat and sturdy, with a warm, friendly manner and a kindly face. At that moment she seemed an oasis of proffered friendship in a hostile desert. She led me up the curving wooden staircase, with its elaborately carved bannisters, and down a long, red-carpeted corridor into the east wing of the house, that portion that stood on the very edge of the ravine. Mrs. Cameron stopped before the last door at the end of the corridor and gently turned the knob. Within, the light of the oil lamps revealed the most beautiful room I had ever seen.

  The walls were done in a light, floral pattern of pale greens and touches of apricot. The curtains and hangings were pale apple-green, the high four-poster bed trimmed with the finest of white lawn and pale-green velvet. It was a room so light, so airy, that it seemed that beyond the velvet curtains at the great window there must be a bright, spring day, instead of the winter evening I knew was there.

  There was a dressing table with elaborate mirrors, a white and gilt wardrobe, and a writing desk of matching design. The carpets, too, were luxurious and of the same light, airy colours.

  ‘Oh, it’s beautiful,’ I exclaimed, looking about in delight.

  ‘It is that, indeed,’ said Mrs. Cameron, smiling, ‘and a shame it has been, all of it going unseen for so long.’

  I looked up, inquisitively, and she continued gently, ‘I hope you’ll not be minding, Miss Elspeth, but you see, this was Lady Christabel’s own room, God rest her, poor soul.’ She was silent a moment, saddened, but then went on, ‘I’m so glad Sir Iain has seen fit for it to be used again. It’s not natural shutting his memories and his sorrows away in it. Many’s the time I’ve come to clean here, I could have wept to see all her lovely things hidden away in the dark. She’d not have been liking it herself, I am sure; the curtains drawn and the sun shut out. Still, it’s not for me to judge,’ she chastised herself. ‘Forgive me, Miss Elspeth, but I am so glad that you have come here. It’s because of you he’s opened the room again, you know, you being so young and fresh; it’s like good spring air back in the house. And I’m sure he is right, that we will all be the better for your being with us.’

  ‘Oh; thank you for saying it,’ I said impulsively. ‘Somehow I wasn’t so sure it was right, my coming here,’ I added hastily. ‘Rowena seems so … self-sufficient, and Gordon …’ I paused, having really said more than I had intended.

  ‘Och, that one,’ said Mrs. Cameron, sharply, then a little more gently, ‘Gordon has taken his mother’s death very hard. Perhaps in time …’ her voice trailed off. ‘And don’t you be paying much mind to Miss Rowena and her fine airs,’ she added, giving an ironic emphasis to the ‘Miss’. ‘She is not always so sure of herself as she would have you think.’

  I nodded, a little doubtfully at that.

  I had noticed the tall, curtained window as I entered the room, and I crossed to it now to inspect the view. Drawing the drapery aside, I looked down and involuntarily caught hold of the window sash for support. Below me the wall of the house, entangled in ivy, plunged down to a ledge of rock a bare three feet in width, and below that, shining wet in reflected light, the cliff fell away a dizzying seventy feet to the dark water below. Even at this height, through the glass, the sullen murmur of the burn could be heard.

  Mrs. Cameron was standing beside me looking down also. ‘Aye’ she said slowly, ‘Alltdhubh, the Black Burn.’ She spoke the name as if she hated it. ‘That is where she fell,’ she said in a whisper and, surprising in this Calvinist land, crossed herself.

  I shuddered and turned from the window, letting the pretty green curtain fall across its dark aspect.

  After bathing and dressing myself in a gown of amber brocade, freshly pressed by Mrs. Cameron, I felt refreshed and ready to face dinner with the household of Creagdhubh.

  I glanced once more in the mirror of the delicate dressing table, pleased with the way the colour of the brocade brought out the hints of gold in my hair. Deciding that now, at least, I no longer looked like a travel-worn schoolgirl, I closed the door of the beautiful room behind me and made my way down the stairs.

  In the drawing room, Rowena was waiting. She stood up as I entered and now she really was the mirror of the portrait on the wall, for she was wearing the very dress in which Christabel had been portrayed. There was no doubt that the gown became her; the colour and style were perfect complements of her own beauty. But it was also utterly inappropriate for her age, a style so décolleté, so sophisticated, that I myself would have hesitated to wear it. I was amazed that Uncle Iain would permit his fifteen-year-old daughter to appear at his own table thus attired.

  ‘Will you have some sherry?’ said Rowena as I entered the room.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ I replied calmly, intent on revealing nothing of my surprise. Rowena, it seemed, was going to be a very surprising girl, and if I was to have any effect on her I had best not be easily shocked. Underneath the serene exterior, I sensed something of a determined little troublemaker, who, in another situation would have led her form at school into feats of daring and mischief. Here, with a smaller, more adult audience, her methods were di
fferent, but I imagined the end was still to shock.

  What was still unexplained, was why Sir Iain permitted this behaviour. Later, after Rowena had led myself, her father, and her brother in to the dining room and seated us at the magnificent mahogany table with its centrepiece of ornamental silver pheasants and elaborate candelabra, I began to understand. She sat facing her father, dignified and gracious, seeing carefully to the needs of her companions, making adult conversation in her low, silky voice. She was so like Christabel that even for me mother and daughter merged, becoming a person in whom Christabel was alive again.

  I fought against the comparison, but it was eerily real, and I knew it was realer still to the lonely man at the head of the table, watching willingly as his daughter recreated his lost wife.

  Chapter Four

  Dinner that evening was an uneasy affair, and although the meal was as delicious as the surroundings were lovely, I had little appetite. Uncle Iain seemed nervous and tense, and I noticed that he too hardly touched his food. He smiled reassuringly at me across the wide polished table, but even his familiar and friendly face could not dispel the strange mood of the evening. Rowena’s soft voice slipped smoothly over the formalities of the serving. Still, I felt somehow that the grace with which she enacted her duties as hostess was calculated less to make me welcome than to impress upon me how little I was needed by the young mistress of Creagdhubh.

  But Gordon was worse. Rowena merely made me feel unwelcome. Gordon frightened me. He slouched in his chair, sullenly inattentive, only occasionally speaking and then in short clipped phrases addressed to his father or sister. To me he said nothing, but occasionally when I glanced up suddenly I caught him staring intently at me with his strange eyes which seemed to soak up darkness from the shadowed corners of the great room.

  Once our eyes met, and something cold and angry flared briefly in his, something challenging and bitter that faded then as he let his glance flicker off my face and back to emptiness. A crawling shiver ran down my back and a coldness, came over me that the warmth of the roaring fire could not penetrate.