Avenged Read online

  Boswick complies, but takes his time to do it. He scowls up at Steven and slowly rises. “Why’d you even come here?” he mutters angrily. “You’ve disturbed soil that hasn’t been touched in centuries.”

  “I came here because it’s my home,” says Steven. “Now get the hell out.”

  * * *

  After Boswick leaves, Steven consults with the man who drives the bulldozer. There’s a process in place to alert archeological experts whenever a construction dig encounters historical artifacts.

  I approach Miles, standing directly above one of the swords.

  “Do you think these swords were yours?” Phoebe asks.

  It’s hard to imagine, staring down at the tarnished ruins in the dirt, that I wielded one of these, particularly as a female. But I feel an undeniable pull.

  “Somehow, yes,” says Miles.

  “And there’s more here,” I say, surprising myself.

  “Yes,” marvels Miles. “You’re right.”

  If I focus, I can feel the untouched earth pulsing where other weapons lie.

  “The archeologists are going to have a field day,” says Miles.

  “And Reginald Boswick is going to lose his mind,” says Phoebe with a half smile.

  “Don’t you feel anything?” I ask Phoebe. “These swords have no effect on you?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t think so.”

  An emotion comes over me that makes me feel guilty. I’m glad she isn’t linked to these swords. In the short time I’ve known her and Miles, they have displayed powers that I’m not given, traveled through the centuries in a voyage that wasn’t offered to me, and far worse . . . I despise myself for thinking this, for the low pettiness within me . . . they are connected by love, and I have been the outsider in this trio. For once, it is nice to be the person who is included while someone else is excluded.

  “I wish I could move the soil myself,” says Miles. “Here, and here, and . . .” He continues pointing around the overgrown plot. “It will take the archeologists forever to see the pattern.”

  “There’s a pattern?” asks Phoebe.

  Oh yes, it seems the bits of iron lie in a ceremonial circle, roughly drawn across the yard.

  “A circle,” Miles answers her.

  “It’s interesting you would’ve had a sword, Eleanor,” says Phoebe to me. “You must’ve been a woman warrior.”

  I’m tempted to correct her, but I don’t know the truth myself, just a gut-level rejection of her words. I don’t bother to say anything, because there isn’t anything to say.

  “Pretty impressive,” says Miles with a wink at me. That wink undoes me every time. I wish he wouldn’t do it. He belongs to Phoebe, and that shared, secretive flirting gives me a lurch of false hope.

  “What do you think they’ll do with the objects after they process them?” asks Phoebe.

  “They’ll probably go to the museum in Rookmoor,” says Miles.

  “There’s a museum?” I ask. Miles looks disconcerted.

  “Yes. I suppose it was established after you died. I went when I was nine years old, as part of a school trip.”

  Phoebe grins at me and shakes her head slightly as she looks over at Miles. “Given that the past is trying to tell us things, don’t you think it would be a good idea for us to visit?”

  Miles looks embarrassed. “Of course, I should’ve thought of that long ago. It just didn’t strike me as important. It’s a lot of broken pots and old stuff.”

  “I’m going to kill you if the answer to all our questions is on display in a big glass case,” says Phoebe.

  He straightens up and gives her that magisterial look I adore. Strong Miles. “It would’ve been your fault for not enquiring. Plus, as it pains me to add, it’s impossible to kill someone who’s already dead.”

  “My fault for not enquiring?” sputters Phoebe.

  “You are the Arnaud in our trio,” I say, bolstering Miles’s playful jab. “It falls upon you to lead us in asking the pertinent questions.”

  “Listen, if I’m the leader, this whole mission is doomed,” says Phoebe. “But maybe our local tour guide here could show us the museum. You know, if you felt like it, Miles, and if the timing was right for us to learn stuff. Or we could just hang around and haunt the mansion for a few hundred years, like Eleanor.”

  I step back. Her joke went too far. She’s only been dead awhile and can’t imagine what it was like all these years, helplessly stuck in a region of no rest. Miles opens his mouth and I can tell he’s about to stick up for me, but before he can say anything, I feel Phoebe’s arms around me, tight.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I didn’t think before I said that.”

  I hug her back, amazed how nice it feels and how strangely right after my lifetime of not even thinking of touching my superiors in such an informal way, I perform a quick mental correction. She’s not my superior. We’re equals.

  “It’s fine, miss,” I hear myself say before I can bite back the automatic miss.

  “Thank you, miss,” she says back, and I smile at her gentle rebuff of my maid’s language.

  “Well, let’s hit the museum and solve all the world’s evil problems,” says Miles.

  “At least those in England,” says Phoebe.

  “Or maybe just those in Grenshire,” I say. “Let’s be realistic.”

  * * *

  We use intention to move to the museum. I’ve never been to Rookmoor. In my lifetime, the ten miles between it and Grenshire might as well have included an ocean. We’re on the front steps of a white stone building with columns. As I turn to look behind us, I see many cars chortling along and people walking quickly, chatting aggressively on their mobiles. I feel as nervous as I did in Paris, learning about crowds for the first time. When I was alive, the largest grouping of people I’d ever seen was the line of servants when we queued up for inspections, the head housekeeper checking our hair for lice and appropriately starched caps, ensuring our uniforms and aprons were fastidiously clean.

  “Let’s go in,” says Phoebe, and again we intention, through the heavy glass doors into the lobby.

  I love these spaces so much, the places where people have chosen to preserve certain things of the past. Sometimes they are the most valuable things, gold laden and set with jewels, but just as often they are the things used in daily life that gain significance by no longer being used. In Paris, I trailed after Phoebe’s family into several museums and found it fascinating to be confronted by objects I knew well, that had to be explained by a note card by the exhibit.

  Here in Rookmoor, few people are visiting—immediate relief for me. We walk from glass case to glass case. We see many objects from the Iron Age history of this area, things farmers dug up while plowing fields: clasps to hold a cloak snug around someone’s neck, bits of nails that once held something together.

  Miles races ahead of me and Phoebe. He doesn’t linger to read the plaques; he’s far more interested in finding something that makes our work pay off. Whatever that may look like. It’s probably not pieces of broken pottery and delicate plates from a porcelain factory that once thrived here, but I’m still curious enough to pause and learn more, as is Phoebe.

  Miles returns as I’m admiring a pearl choker that one of our wealthier citizens wore to the local Queen Victoria’s Jubilee celebration, sadly unattended by the monarch herself.

  “There’s nothing here about the Arnaud Manor,” he says.

  “There was probably a great diorama, and Reginald Boswick had it taken down,” jokes Phoebe.

  “It’s so strange there’s nothing here to note its presence,” I say. “The Arnaud Manor was the center of our lives. If one didn’t work there, one at least lived off the wages of a family member that did.”

  “Everyone’s trying to pretend it never existed,” says Miles. “They let it grow over with weeds, and blocked the driveway, and hoped the truth would die when the oldest generation does.”

  “Except that there are still rumors
about it,” says Phoebe. “You told me about Madame Arnaud when you found out I’d just moved here.”

  “Yeah, kids talked about it at school, especially around Halloween,” says Miles.

  “It’s a difficult task to completely suppress the fact of an enormous manor and its hundreds of occupants and servants,” I say.

  “And yet the museum is trying,” says Miles.

  I nod sadly. It’s too bad. We need help, unless the universe plans for us to stay ghosts forever . . . and I can’t imagine that it does. We have some kind of task to perform, and I have to fervently believe that once we do it, we’ll be released to rest in peace, just like the tombstones promise.

  “Well, let’s keep looking anyway,” says Phoebe. “Even if there isn’t anything labeled ‘Arnaud,’ there might be something that can help us. Eleanor, you especially should look at everything since you were part of the household when it was still in operation.”

  They both look at me, smiling, and I feel gratified by their trust. “All right,” I say. “I’ll continue looking.”

  There are several alcoves off the main exhibit hall, and I look thoroughly through all the ones on the west side.

  “Nothing?” asks Phoebe. She’s stayed at my elbow the whole time although Miles has left to do another brisk round.

  “I’m afraid not,” I say.

  Yet, in the second alcove on the east side, I see something I recognize.

  It’s a wooden chair from the Arnaud Manor, a small and unassuming one, lightweight with a ladder back and an embroidered cushion seat. The embroidery shows wildflowers arranged in a large wreath. I approach the chair with my eyes growing moist.

  “Are you okay?” asks Phoebe.

  I don’t trust myself to speak. This chair holds so many memories. It was stationed in a quiet hallway, a relatively private place once everyone was hard at work. Austin and I would sit there and steal a few kisses when we could. Austin worked in the Arnaud stables and had rarely set foot in the house until we met—then he used any manner of excuse to find his way in.

  The chair did something special besides providing a place for us to linger. When weight was placed on the cushion—whenever someone sat on it, that is—a click sounded from the chair’s interior and a brief, whirring sound came as some sort of mechanism prepared itself. And then: music.

  The chair was a sort of music box. It played a short, charming air. The first time Austin sat on it and it began playing, he’d shrieked and leapt up, the music ceasing the instant he rose. It was lovely, later, to kiss with that chiming accompaniment.

  As I stare at the chair now, I want fiercely to hear the song again, to be on Austin’s lap, winding my arms around his neck. It’s so desolate to see it with a golden rope stretched across it with a large placard reading DO NOT TOUCH. That chair deserves to be sat on, to have laughter ring out at the surprise of its voice . . . and now it sits in a dim corner, unused and unappreciated.

  The placard for the chair says, “Folk art seat cushion from Grenshire, an example of the cunning needlework once displayed by capable seamstresses. The mechanical chair plays the air ‘My Lady Cries for Her Love’ when the cushion is depressed.”

  So that’s what the song was called.

  “You have seen this chair before?” Phoebe asks.

  I nod. My heart is aching now, for a lad with a quick smile and drowsy eyes, a way with horses and a way with me.

  “Was this Madame Arnaud’s chair?” asks Miles. He has apparently noticed my and Phoebe’s staring at it.

  “No,” I say. “She would never sit in something so plain. This was something pretty for the servants. I have no idea where it came from, and I don’t think it’s important. It’s just that . . .”

  “What?”

  “I used to . . .” I choke out a sob.

  I feel Phoebe’s arm go around my shoulder as she presses me into her side.

  “Leave her alone,” she says.

  It’s nice to be released from the duty of explaining. I try to get hold of my emotions. I turn away as I rub my eyes, and I see several other objects from the Arnaud household.

  A standing lamp with an intricate stained glass lampshade. A statue of a nymph in love with her own outthrust hip. A wardrobe of white and gold that looks like it could’ve been from Versailles, although of course Madame Arnaud would’ve never taken such a large object with her when she fled to England.

  I stoop and read each of the cards through my tears, blinking them back as best I can. Not a single one says anything about where these objects came from, other than “Grenshire.” The name Arnaud is not mentioned.

  I stand up straight and look at Miles and Phoebe, regarding me with sad faces.

  “I’ll be fine,” I say. “That chair just walloped me in a spot still tender. Austin and I used to sit there. These other objects are from the Arnaud household as well, although not one of them mentions that fact on the descriptions.”

  “Why are they here?” asks Phoebe. “I remember that one wing of the house was completely empty, but the other wing was still filled with her furnishings.”

  I try to cast my mind back.

  “When the servants left.” I falter. “They may have . . . taken things and destroyed things. They were furious.”

  “You, too?” asks Miles.

  “I wasn’t there,” I say.

  I look one last time at the chair. “My Lady Cries for Her Love”—how apt that that was its tune.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The terror of being buried alive led, for some, to the quaint custom of installing bells above tombs, to be rung via a string leading directly into the coffin. What terror for the night watchman to hear the tolling across the fog-swept cemetery!

  —Victorian Funerary Customs

  The walls of the church are large river stones snugly fitted together. Arched windows hold stained glass with scenes so dusty they are difficult to discern now. To the side is the churchyard, with newer tombstones at the front, the etched names still sharp, the flowers in the metal vases fresh. They will run out of plots in another fifty years, I think.

  At the back, where the grass gets more tufty and the stones tilt from settling in the ground, the older residents of the cemetery lie. I pick my way through, seeing surnames I remember, giving me a jolt. I hadn’t thought about these people for centuries. With some names, a face floats up in memory, distinct, even words they have said to me coming from their lips, and for others only the name remains as the basis of my recollection.

  “Do you know exactly where he is?” Miles asks. I imagine he, too, is seeing names he knows, from long-dead relatives and friends of his grandparents.

  “Back here somewhere,” I say vaguely. I had followed Austin for a while after I died, but it proved painful. I’m aware I will no doubt see Husband of . . . etched on his stone and learn the name of some woman who took my place. I feel like I have visited his gravesite before, but I’m not certain. It wasn’t a place of vigil for me. By the time Austin died, I would’ve long given up on the idea we could somehow be reunited. If I did visit, it would’ve been in a scourge of tears, and I might not have truly seen it.

  “Can you use intention to get there?” Phoebe asks. It would make sense; all I have to do is picture the stone. I sigh and give an attempt. Valiantly, I try to see the grave I am not even sure I’ve visited.

  But instantly, I feel my stomach swoop down, the sensation that accompanies intention.

  “Well done, Eleanor!” says Miles, but it is Phoebe who has sense enough to give me a pitying look.

  Here we are.

  The tomb of my lover, whom I never got to love fully.

  It’s a plain gray stone, on the small side, but there does appear to be an incredible amount of writing and embossing on it. Moss has covered the indents of the letters and symbols. Of all of us, only Phoebe might be able to pull it away from the stone, but she gamely tries without success. So I kneel before it and try to “translate” through the veil of clinging greenery
.

  His full name.

  I hadn’t thought about his surname in so many years. It might’ve become mine had the world gone my way.

  He, Austin Fairecloth, and me his wife, Eleanor Fairecloth.

  His birth and death dates. These numbers are hard to see, so small, and sixes look like eights look like nines. I give up on that.

  With patience, I try to figure out the words that mark his passing. Dear son and hopeful heir to the promises of the old . . .

  “Does that last word say reign?” Phoebe asks hopefully.

  “I think so.”

  I’m mystified. “If he was important in the same way that we’re important,” I say slowly, “why did he die?”

  “You’re one hundred percent sure he died permanently?” Miles asks.

  I look at him earnestly. “If there were the slightest chance that Austin still roamed this world in the merest shadow of a manner, I would know it.”

  “I’m so used to thinking of us as an enchanted trio. How do we add a fourth?” Phoebe says.

  I nod. There are so many ancient precedents for a rule of three.

  “Maybe he would’ve only been heir by being allied with you,” Miles suggests.

  “Magical marriage,” I say. “The sealing together of our separate powers.”

  “Did he seem like he had powers when he was alive?” Phoebe asks.

  I pause. “Not that I recall. His family, though, as I’ve told you . . . they were deeply knowledgeable about the old wisdom here, the pagan past of Grenshire.”

  “Maybe they wanted him to be powerful, their only son, so they invented their own mythology over his being an heir somehow?” she asks.

  “Maybe.”

  “And that would mean the ‘clues’ on this tombstones are just the grandiose wishes of forlorn parents,” says Miles.

  “We’re making a big assumption here, that his parents created the language of the tombstone. Most children outlive their parents,” Phoebe points out.

  Which leads us to look for the nearby stones for his parents. It is only a few paces away. One stone for the both of them: Charles and Elsabeth Fairecloth. Unlike Austin’s tomb, it is a straightforward one that only remarks birth and death dates, and the legend Rest in Peace. I study the death dates, easier because this stone, removed from the shade of the willow, gets more sunlight and isn’t as covered by moss.