Chapter 23

23

" T he original fortification would have begun life as a wooden tower surrounded by twenty-foot spiked timbers mortared together with mud and grass," Ben said. "Under William the Conqueror's directive, Draggan Wardieu turned this remote outpost of the kingdom to a stone fortress that would enable him to hold and defend the lands they had won from the Saxons. He declared it would stand for a thousand years and thus far his prediction has proved true. I suspect, with care, it could stand a thousand more. Mind your step here."

They were walking down a narrow alley between the ruins of low stone outbuildings. Despite the clear weather and warm sun, the rutted ground beneath their feet was mud and Ellen had a newfound appreciation for the rubber duck boots as she squelched this way and that.

As they walked Ben pointed out the likely buildings that might have housed the smithy, with its iron forge, the barracks that would have housed the lord's personal guard, and next to it, the communal bathhouse.

"Contrary to popular beliefs, medieval lords and ladies were quite fastidious about their hygiene. It was common for visiting nobles or knights to stop at the bathhouse first, where they might, depending on rank, be assisted in a scrubbing down by the lady of the house herself. Nudity didn't become scandalous until the fifteenth century, about the same time bathing was thought to be hazardous to the health, giving rise to the phrase: it's time for my yearly bath."

The bathhouse was at one end of a square courtyard. In the centre of the yard was a stone fountain with a deep basin.

"The castle was built with an ingenious system of collection on the roof that channelled fresh rainwater here and into the storage cisterns in the undercroft, and prevented them from running dry. Over the years, the fountain was added but the sides have cracked and caused leaks, which is why the tract we came up on is usually mud."

There were buildings on all four sides of the courtyard, with lichen-covered brickwork and beautifully detailed stone archways. These inner buildings had generously sized mullioned windows, some with shutters still intact. Between the outbuildings there were alleyways and narrow staircases that gave access to upper floors. There were a half dozen smaller towers with castellations and turrets, many with carved gargoyles crouching at the peaks and corners, glaring down over the courtyard. The weathered nature of the stonework varied from section to section showing where there had been additions and renovations through the centuries.

As they crossed the cobbled stones, Ellen's gaze again turned to the overshadowing presence of the main keep and she could swear it rose taller and taller with each step forward .

"It is quite an intimidating structure," she said, tipping her head back to look up at the saw-toothed crenellations that crowned the rooftop. Attached to the keep were the two fattest towers, one at the east corner and one at the west. Neither had the conical roofs of Disney fame, but they both flew long red and black pennons that trailed out in the light breeze.

"Henry's idea," Ben explained. "He liked the tradition that dictates a castle's colors should be displayed when the owner was in residence. Wormsley ordered the flags raised the day you arrived."

"I got the distinct impression he was hoping I would stay."

"I shouldn't think Ethan is the only one."

Ellen lowered her gaze from the roof in time to see Ben flick his away.

They had stopped beside a relatively modern utility shed that had been built beside a covered stairwell attached to the keep. He exchanged the picnic basket for two high-powered flashlights and a fanny pack with spare batteries. He left his backpack with their picnic lunch inside but kept his camera slung over his shoulder.

"Watch your step on the stairs as we go up," he said, handing her one of the flashlights. "Some of the mortar has crumbled and the edges are soft."

He turned on his flashlight and waited for Ellen to do the same, then entered the covered stairwell.

Ellen followed and found out the hard way that she had to tip her head to the left to keep from scraping it on the arch directly above. The staircase rose in a steep diagonal that hugged the outer wall of the keep and even with the brightness of the flashlights, it felt like the sides were closing in on her .

"Until the addition of the outbuildings, this would have been the only way to enter the keep," Ben said. "As you have doubtless noticed, the ceiling space is sharply slanted. It was deliberately designed that way to obstruct a man trying to fight his way up with a sword. Most fighting men were right-handed and other than stabbing straight ahead, they would have had difficulty attacking a defender coming down from above. Those defenders, naturally, would have the width on their right side and thus the advantage."

Ellen's advantage, at the moment, was watching Ben climb the stairs ahead of her. The way his jeans fit was distracting enough for her foot to slip off a broken lip of stone and nearly send her plunging face-first into the butt she was so shamelessly admiring.

She caught herself with a sharp curse and smiled up at him as he looked back.

"I'm okay. Just not fond of confined spaces."

"You should have said something, we could have gone in another way. I wanted you to experience the full effect. Should we turn back?"

"No. No, please keep going. I'm fine, really."

A gloved hand was extended toward her, palm up. She looked at it for a moment, feeling doubly foolish, but in the end, reached up and slipped her hand into his.

In another few moments they reached the top and she found herself standing on a six-foot-wide landing that overlooked a dark, cavernous room too long and too wide to guess the measurements. As strong as the beams from the flashlights were, the light could not reach very far into the shadows. Directly to her left was a raised platform with a jungle gym of scaffolding supporting tarps that hung over what appeared to be six panels of cathedral windows two storeys up. Several of the stained-glass panes were broken or missing, but the majority were intact and astonishingly beautiful.

"Another of Henry's projects. He wanted to restore the windows to their full glory."

"Has the work stopped?"

"I like to think it has only been paused. Remind me when we are back at the house to show you a sheaf of medieval illustrations depicting what the panels may have looked like in their heyday. Most keeps would not have had windows at all, but since this wall backs onto the cliffs, the lord was free to display his wealth. The great hall," Ben said, his voice echoing hollowly in the gloom, "was the beating heart and lungs of the castle, the place where any lord worth his salt would have put all of his triumphs and prosperity on display."

He extended his hand again to lead her down a flight of a dozen steps onto the main floor of the hall, feigning a knightly escort by way of a fingertip hold.

Ellen was mesmerized. She aimed her flashlight into the belly of the hall but the beam barely broke through the gloom. The smell reminded her of the catacombs beneath the streets of Paris, where millions of skeletons had been unearthed from cemeteries and rehoused in miles of old salt mine tunnels. In here it was the centuries worth of nesting birds and dampness that combined with the scent of abandonment and neglect to coat the back of her throat.

Ben aimed his light to the left. "Up there, on the raised dais, the lord and lady would be seated along with honored guests. They would eat off gold or silver plate set on tables covered in fine linens embroidered by local nuns. Knights and lesser nobles would be seated down here at long trestle tables placed along each side of the hall, with no linens and slabs of stale bread for trenchers. In its earliest incarnation there was no minstrel's gallery—" he shot his light upward to dimly reveal a stone balcony over their heads. "That was added some time after the fifteenth century as were the wooden panels on the lower half of the walls. There would be pigs and chickens, maybe a whole side of beef or mutton being roasted over deep fire pits at the far end of the hall. Tumblers and jugglers would perform inside the square for the amusement of the guests in exchange for a meal and place to sleep by the fire.

"You noted the two biggest towers? One would have housed the private chambers of the lord and lady on the upper level, their children below. The other tower would be used by privileged guests. Common folk simply rolled themselves in blankets and slept on the rushes. There would be huge iron sconces mounted on the walls and free-standing candelabra placed every few feet to provide light. Making candles was a full-time job that kept a dozen servants busy all day. Unless the lord was very wealthy, beeswax was a luxury and the candles were made from animal fat, adding to the general ambiance of the room."

"It's wonderful. And amazing," Ellen said quietly.

"And this is only one chamber. There are scores if you include the outbuildings. Nooks and crannies everywhere to explore, hidden treasures to uncover, sealed doors to breach, even a family crypt. And there, through that shadowy doorway—" he pointed to a dark niche to the left of the dais— "was the chapel where we found some amazing books and records hidden under the altar. Henry was quite determined to explore every corner and uncover every secret these chambers might hold. I'm told he lost a good deal of interest following his wife's death. According to Mrs. Winklebottom, he didn't venture up the hill for nearly four years afterward. Not until a brash young professor of archaeology came knocking on his door, bold as you please, and asked if he might explore the ruins."

"You were able to revive his interest?"

"Not right away. But I am nothing if not persistent if I want something badly enough."

He seemed, in the eerie light, to be staring at her mouth when he said that for one wildly exhilarating moment Ellen thought he was on the verge of kissing her. She even leaned in a little, for she doubted she would stop him, but he was already turning away.

"It might surprise you to know there is a vast undercroft beneath where we are standing. Besides an exceptionally spooky crypt, it houses a few dozen storerooms that had not been opened in anyone's recent memory. Behind one sealed door, Henry and I found an entire armory comprised of swords, shields, suits of armor, lances, pennons, and over five hundred matchlock muskets—the kind the musketeers used—all in bloody pristine condition. In another locked cellar we found a dusty rack of barrels containing brandy that was smuggled over during the French Revolution."

"Is there a dungeon?"

"No self-respecting castle was without one. Bloodmoor's is in a sub-basement and Henry was quite disappointed to find it empty. No skeletons, no racks, no implements of torture. We did find a rather terrifying sally-port that opened out to the cliffs, most likely used for easy disposal of bodies that were no longer of use."

She shuddered. "I can see why, with you here, my uncle's enthusiasm was rekindled."

"I enjoyed his company immensely. He had his share of peculiarities, as do we all, and yes, to give Miriam her due, sometimes he would wander off on his own into another room and I would hear him talking as if he was having a conversation with someone."

"A ghost?"

He laughed softly. "Don't you ever talk to yourself?"

"Only four-letter words if I've stubbed a toe or… or broken a fingernail. So does that mean you don't believe in ghosts?"

Instead of a direct answer, he dazzled her with another smile. "Spend time digging up old bones and opening chambers that have been sealed for a few hundred years, and the mind does start playing tricks. While I have never had the good fortune to encounter one, I do not discount the notion of ghosts in general. I do believe the spirit or soul or electrical impulse… whatever you want to call it that keeps us alive… must go somewhere after the body dies. If it gives someone comfort to believe the spirit of a departed loved one hovers over them like a protective angel, who am I to… to crush their fantasies? What's more, I will even admit there were times I've been up here alone and felt as though I was being watched. Lingering memories of childhood nightmares, I expect, but still, as you say, a creepy feeling."

He noted her small frown and started to smile, possibly to assure her that he was perfectly safe and sane, but Ellen spoke first.

"After we left the library that first night, I saw something. It happened so fast I wasn't even sure I'd seen anything at all."

"What was it that you thought you saw?"

"Well… I was looking in the mirror and it was me. But it wasn't me. It was a reflection, but it wasn't an exact reflection."

"What do you mean, not an exact reflection?"

"For one thing, the hair was different. It was much longer and in a far less modern style. Her nose was crooked, her mouth a little thinner. And where there should have been a reflection of the shelves stacked with folded sweaters behind me, in the mirror, there was a painting of some sort. A mural, perhaps? It was a man on horseback with dogs running alongside. The man was wearing something bright blue in color. I only caught a glimpse of it for a few seconds, but it reminded me of a picture of some medieval nobleman. Big man, big blue robes and a funny striped balloon-like hat on his head with a tall feather sticking up."

Ben was staring and Ellen could feel the heat rising up her throat again. "I know it sounds crazy, but—"

"Come with me," he said, and snatched up her hand.

"What? Where?"

"Just come."

He took her down the length of the hall, past the huge fire pit, and along a narrow corridor to the base of a staircase. From the spiral shape of the flight of steps, Ellen guessed they were climbing up into one of the towers.

They passed by a landing and carried on to the upper level where Ben's flashlight revealed a thick oak door banded in strips of black iron. A shiny twentieth century steel padlock had been affixed to the door and he fumbled in his backpack for a moment to produce a ring of keys.

"We've bolted most of the doors. It discourages all but the most diehard thieves."

He slotted a key into the lock and twisted until it sprang open. The door was heavy, the hinges rusted, and the effort to push it open caused the muscles across his back to ripple with the strain. But he managed and aimed his flashlight inside.

Ellen followed him into the chamber, still not sure why he had dragged her up the stairs in such a hurry. It was a large room, the far wall curved to conform to the shape of the tower. It was empty but for a two-foot-high platform set against the flat section of wall. Thick wooden posts at each corner formed a frame to suggest this was where a bed would have been, and because the whitewashed walls were decorated with faded sprigs of painted flowers, it also suggested the chamber had been occupied by a woman.

Ben was across the room struggling with a pair of warped shutters. When he opened them, an empty bird nest slid out of the deep, recessed niche and a gust of wind came through the broken window panes, scattering a cloud of dust that instantly hazed the beam of sunlight.

Ben coughed and wiped his hands, then beckoned to Ellen. "Over here."

She followed him around a corner into a small antechamber. At first, she saw nothing apart from a bazillion cobwebs hanging like veils from the ceiling, drifting in the sudden drafts. But when he aimed his flashlight at the wall behind her, she turned and gasped softly.

There was a hunting scene painted on the whitewashed stone. The details were faded, the paint chipped away in places to the bare stone, but she could see a man wearing blue robes sitting astride a galloping horse. Hounds were running alongside, and in the distance, at the top of a hill, was a stag with a tall rack of horns.

Ellen whirled around but there was no mirror on the opposite wall, only a blank stone wall.

"Was this something like what you saw in the reflection?" Ben asked.

Ellen looked back at the painted mural and for a moment, could not answer, dared not answer. Because it was exactly what she had seen in the mirror .

"Okay, now I am really creeped out," she said, backing away a few steps.

"You're sure this is what you saw?"

"Positive. There should have been shelves behind me. There were shelves behind me, filled with folded sweaters. I was in my uncle's dressing room and I was… okay, I admit I was snooping a little, peeking into the cupboards. I found a beautiful yellow dress that I assumed belonged to my aunt, and I held it up in front of the mirror. It took a few seconds for me to realize that something wasn't quite right. The image staring back at me was not me. She was definitely not holding up a yellow dress, and when I saw the hunting scene, it was startling enough to make me turn and look behind me. When I turned back, whatever it was, was gone. It was just me standing there in my nightshirt." She looked at Ben and added faintly, "At the time, I blamed the wine and whisky, and Miriam talking about ghosts."

She could feel the breath trembling in her throat as she moved closer to study the mural again. The bright beam of the flashlight caught the faint traces of blue in the man's robe, the balloon-like shape of the hat he wore.

"It had gold stripes," she said, touching a patch of missing paint. "And a feather. And—" the beam of her flashlight roved lower— "there were three hounds running alongside. The stag was here," she said, pointing to a blotch of brown that no longer had any recognizable shape, "and… and…" She searched the mural, frowning over something that was not there.

"And?"

"And I'm not sure. I think there was something else, but I can't quite see it." She backed up again, but after a few moments of futile concentration, she gave up and walked back to the main chamber. Dust motes were having a party in the beam of sunlight and as she passed through them on her way to the window, she left little swirling eddies sparkling in her wake.

Ben joined her and leaned casually against the stone ledge of the window.

"You asked me, but I neglected to ask you: Do you believe in ghosts?"

She looked at him, debating what to answer. "I don't exactly dis believe. Especially since I have been experiencing one or two strange occurrences lately."

"Stranger than seeing a reflection of someone else in a mirror?"

"It wasn't the first time I'd seen her."

She said it so quietly he had to lean in. "Not the first time?"

She moistened her lips, then told him about the reflection in the window of the book store, and the figure of the girl standing at the edge of the forest. To his credit he did not look at her like she'd lost a few cents off the dollar. Rather, he seemed quite interested to hear more.

"Why do you think it was the same girl?"

"Unless every girl in Lincolnshire has long blonde hair, she looked like the girl I saw in the mirror, only...."

"Only?"

"Only both of those times she was dressed in leather pants and a kind of old-fashioned hooded tunic. I thought she was in costume, like the sales clerk in the bookstore who was dressed up like one of Robin Hood's merry men. When I saw the girl in the forest, she had a bow and arrow. She looked so real, I started to walk toward her. I know she saw me because she lowered the bow and tilted her head like she couldn't believe what she was seeing either."

"What happened when you got closer? "

"What happened, was that the ground was soft and I was wearing heels. Ethan called out and I turned around, and when I looked back, she was gone. I told Ethan what I'd seen, but he brushed it off as a local hunter."

"Which is quite possible," Ben conceded.

"Unless you saw the same girl beside a lamppost and again in a mirror. I mean, I've had weird things happen before, but never anything like this."

"Dare I ask what you consider weird?"

She huffed out a breath. "Well… inconsequentially silly little things, like I almost always know, before I answer it, who is on the phone when it rings. And I've never had to use an alarm clock. I just sort of set the time in my head before I go to bed and that's exactly what time I wake up in the morning. I've never lost anything, not even as a child. I just close my eyes and think about what I'm looking for and… I see it and know exactly where it is."

He tipped his head and studied her expression, and she could sense that he knew she was not confessing to quite everything.

"Okay, so… yes, there was the incident in the cemetery that scared the bejesus out of me."

"I'm an archaeologist. I like cemetery stories."

Ellen shook her head a little.

"Come on. You can't hold back now."

"Oh, very well. But you won't believe me; I almost don't believe it myself."

"You can read the diary of a girl who wrote in a language no one else can make heads or tails of. You may well have seen an image of that very same girl several times since you arrived in England. At this point, I would tend to believe anything you tell me."

She had no argument to offer. "It happened a few months ago. I was at a friend's house and had borrowed her car to go and put flowers on my father's grave. It was a hot, beautiful sunny day, not a cloud in the sky. I was pulling weeds and generally tidying up the site when it suddenly got very dark and very cold. I looked up and these huge black clouds had come out of nowhere. The wind had picked up and even though it was mid summer, there were dried leaves blowing everywhere. I had a sleeveless sundress on and my teeth were literally chattering from the cold. I ran back to the car and turned the heater on full blast to try to warm up. My girlfriend lived nearby, no more than five minutes away, and when I got there, the sky was clear, there was no wind; it was a bright, hot, sunny day again.

"I told her what had happened and of course she thought I was crazy and suggested we go get a pizza, have a few beers. Believe me, I was all for it, but I realized I had run back to the car in such a hurry, I left my purse by the grave, so we had to drive back to get it. She walked with me to the plot and by the time we reached it, the sky had turned dark with black clouds, the wind had picked up, leaves were blowing around again, and both of us were freezing cold. If that wasn't creepy enough, the tombstone right beside my father's had fallen over. Or been pushed. It is a huge cemetery and I suppose it could have been blamed on vandals but there was absolutely no one else around and I had only been gone maybe twenty minutes, surely not long enough for someone to upend a huge slab of granite.

"Naturally, we ran like scared chickens back to the car. Neither one of us said a word on the way to the pizza place and despite her usually being the first one to regale a crowd with a story or share a bit of gossip, my friend never mentioned the incident again. I started to talk about it once and she turned white and left the room. She hasn't really talked to me since."

"You said it was the gravestone next to your father?"

"Yes. That of an old gentleman who lived through both wars and died at the ripe old age of ninety-two." She paused and drew a sharp little breath. Her eyes, when she turned to stare at Ben, were huge. "His name was Robert Loup."

Ben was vaguely distracted. The light was streaming through the window, causing her skin to glow and the blue of her eyes to sparkle like the clear turquoise waters of the Caribbean.

"I'm sorry? I didn't—"

"Robert Loup. Loup is the French word for wolf." She waved a hand to encompass the room around them. "Dragons and wolves?" At his continued blank stare, she shook her head and pressed her fingertips to her temples. "No, I'm sorry. Ignore me. I'm imagining connections where there aren't any, looking for explanations for all of this where there aren't any. I guess I'm still angry that I had a family I didn't know about; aunts and uncles and God knows what else that my father never told me about, including an ancestry, according to Ethan, that goes back seven hundred years. A week ago I was wondering how to juggle bills so I could pay my rent and here I am standing in a castle that I apparently now own, talking about seeing ghosts and visiting cemeteries to an unconscionably handsome, level-headed man who probably thinks I'm stark raving mad."

She buried her face in her hands and exhaled a huge sigh.

Ben gave her a moment to regroup, then gently grasped her wrists and eased her hands away from her face. "For what it's worth, I don't think you are the least bit mad, let alone stark ravingly so."

She closed her eyes and shook her head again. "I don't know… I just… I don't know. I'm sure Ethan is beginning to think he made a bad decision bringing me over here."

He tucked a forefinger under her chin and waited until she opened her eyes and looked up. "I doubt he would think that even if you started wandering around the moor looking for Heathcliff. Did he run screeching from the room when you told him you could read the rose folio?"

"No," she admitted.

"Did he bat an eye when you said you saw a woman with a bow and arrow in the forest?"

"I'm not sure he believed me."

"Ethan may seem a little eccentric and anachronistic, but he has been closely involved with this family for most of his life. In fact, according to Abigail, Henry has been his only client for the past twenty years, so he may well be accustomed to the heirs of this castle recounting odd experiences. I expect he might be just as nervous and uncertain as you, wondering if, once you do get your feet planted solidly on firm ground, you will cut him loose and bring in your own people from New York."

Ellen watched his mouth forming the words, her chin tingling where his finger was touching. "I don't have any ‘people' in New York to bring. Not unless you count Austin Carter, a junior associate in his family firm, who settled my father's estate—what little there was of it. But I'm told he buggered off to become a hermit on some mountain in Tibet, never to be heard from again."

Ben's smile widened and the pad of his thumb brushed across her chin. "To be honest, Miss Bowe, I don't know how you are coping with all of this. A different country, a different lifestyle, a house full of strange people.... it is a great deal to absorb in a week, or even a month, let alone a few days." His eyes narrowed and his brows came together in a slight frown. "Not to change the subject, or, rather yes indeed, to change the subject…did you say… unconscionably handsome and level-headed?"

Her gaze crept slowly back up to his, keeping pace with the blush that rose in her cheeks. "Did I?"

"I could swear that was what I heard. I shall reluctantly accept the charge of level-headedness, despite it sounding one step above boring. However, you should know I took great care with my shave this morning so as not to look like an absent-minded professor whose only interests extend to old bones and drafty castles."

She felt another shiver ripple down her spine. "You have other interests?"

His thumb traced the shape of her lower lip and he started to bend his head closer. Ellen braced herself, thinking this time he really was going to kiss her, but in the next instant he abruptly drew away.

Something had caught his eye. Something over Ellen's left shoulder.

She half turned… then turned fully around to join him in staring at marks that had been crudely scratched into the surface of the stone block. They were faded with age and almost illegible, but they were suddenly as visible as ink blots on a blank sheet of paper.

They were initials.

EW

"Enndolynn Ware," Ellen whispered. "She was here."

That was when they both heard a soft scraping sound and saw tiny beads of mortar fall out of the W and land on the ledge.