Seasons in the Mist, #3

By Deborah Kinnard

(I’m sorry for the late post. My internet connection has been down all day.)

“This way, then. Mind your step. These stairs are old, and not in the best repair.” From a pocket of her slacks, Sheila removed a huge cast-iron key and tried the lock. Jess expected the heavy iron-hinged door to creak in protest, but it swung open silently as if kept well-oiled. Sheila flipped a wall switch. “It’s not very well lit, either. We’ve neglected this part of the house. A pity, but family fortunes don’t grow on trees, do they?”

Jess followed her into a narrow passage that opened onto a large, high ceilinged room. Walls of the local gray stone formed bays along each side, with pointed arches framing doorways into other parts of the wing. A fireplace that could have cooked an entire ox took up one end of the room, its mantelpiece a narrow, angular funnel with carved corbels as trim. The roof beams, dim in the late afternoon light, appeared be hewn from tree trunks. Vagrant beams of sun slanted, dancing with dust motes, through narrow leaded glass windows. “Wonderful,” she breathed. “It’s the great hall, isn’t it?”

“Yes. The oldest remaining part. We think this range might have been a fortified manor house, but that portion’s long gone.”

“Those high windows look defensive.” Jess pointed. “Before they were glazed. And those squarish holes, up high on the wall? See the ones I mean? They could have held beams for a second story. That would be the solar, if this dates back as far as I suspect it does. ”

“My word,” Sheila said on a chuckle, “you are the genuine article, aren’t you?”

“I’ve lived and breathed the middle ages since I learned to read.” Jess turned three-sixty, taking it all in, breathing, getting the feel of the old hall deep into her bones. And yet the experience wasn’t entirely pleasant. Like a roller coaster—scary and exhilarating, and vaguely unnerving because it must end all too soon. “How can you bear to leave it unlived in? Not to use it?”

“Well, there’s a reason.” Sheila’s expression changed, took on a sorrowful air. “It looks long-abandoned because it was. Bertie’s ancestors had the money to restore it. They didn’t want to.”

She looked a question at her hostess. Sheila continued. “They feared the places in this wing where one can sense something.” The dog gave a fretful whine and Sheila reached to scratch her huge bristly head. “There now, Wenna. That’s the girl.”

The dog’s unease triggered Jess’s. “Something unpleasant?”

“Worse, I’m afraid. All these old piles have their ghost, their cold room—call it what you like. I almost think we English would be disappointed if they didn’t. As for Mossock’s, it’s no Victorian ghost. Ours goes back many generations. The tales Bertie’s grandmother threatened him with! That old harridan. She put fear into that boy, let me tell you. She warned him if he were rude, she’d let him spend some time in the old hall with the ‘Gray Lady.’” Sheila scratched the dog’s ears, making it sidle closer.

“What? Who was she?”

“Nobody now knows. But she’s called gray for good reason. Nobody’s ever actually seen an apparition, mind you. It’s more sensed than visualized. Those who report her presence call it an overwhelming feeling of displacement. As though she’s lost somehow, and grieves for someone. Yes, grief. Soul-deep and almost too much to bear.” Sheila’s eyes clouded and Jess wondered why, but in a second the look vanished. “According to legend, the Lady first appeared in the Trevorgas’ time. They held the manor in the sixteenth century. The Lady wouldn’t make herself known to just anyone. Only those of the family—and sensitives—could feel her.”

“Sensitives?”

“People like me, luv. And like you.”

“I’m not.” Jess took a step back. “There are no such people.”

“No, of course not. You’re a modern woman. Practical. Such stories are no more than rubbish, aren’t they? Feelings, impressions, these have no root in fact.”

Something motivated Jess to whisper, “And yet—I’ve always had the strongest possible desire to come here. To visit England. To do my work. To learn the stories forgotten long ago, and tell them.”

“Yes.” Sheila sounded unsurprised. “You were called, maybe by the Lady herself. Maybe, in time, she will tell you why.”

A link clicked shut. “You spoke of passion, and how it’s not always easy.”

“I spoke on impulse, but it’s true. Even before you were stranded at Heathrow, I felt our paths would cross again.” She gave a grin almost impish. “My foolishness doesn’t always make sense, even to me. What your journey entails, I can’t say. But I do feel that in time, you’ll know.”

“God brought me here,” Jess said quietly.

“You’re a believer?”

“Yes.”

“Well, He has many mysterious ways,” Sheila replied. “Past finding out.” The dog gave a higher, more insistent whine. “But that’s a conversation for another day. Come, the old stables are out this way. Wenna wants to show you her new litter of puppies.”

* * *

Despite the “Gray Lady” and Sheila’s enigmatic words, Jess slept well that night. The disturbance of her inner clock meant that she snapped full awake at four AM. Raking her hands through her hair, she went to the deep window seat and opened the casement. The air smelled of dawn and kelp, seawater and anticipation, with a faint and unfamiliar floral tang. Below the window, birds heralded the morning, foreign English—Cornish?—birdcalls, gentle and insistent.

The ocean muttered accompaniment below the cliffs. It waited to be explored, and she felt its pull as it beckoned. After a hasty shower, she pulled on jeans and a sweater—she’d already learned that here they were called jumpers—and went to make her own discovery of a Cornish morning.

Almost without intention, she strolled down the garden toward the ancient hall. All around her, wildflowers, colorful annuals and plants she didn’t recognize bloomed in a lush profusion of color and scent. Behind her, a premature sun crept over the horizon. This puzzled her until she remembered England lay at a higher latitude than Chicago, making for shorter nights at this season. The damp-spangled richness of early dawn added its peculiar luster to a trip that already seemed surreal.

Dew wet her sneakers from the thick grass near the old hall. Jess wished she’d brought her notebook to jot impressions as she strolled its perimeter. The architecture strongly reminded her of photos she’d seen. Mid- to late-thirteenth century, she calculated, not later. The long-and-short corner detail, the shape of the arched doorways, the slender semi-defensive window apertures—all these features shouted of its early date.

She stepped across the ruin of a stone wall to approach the hall more closely. Beyond one corner, a worn dirt path led to an area she hadn’t explored. Funny, how this path alone looked ungroomed, lacking the fastidious upkeep of Mossock’s other areas. Jess shook the dew off her sneakers and followed the dirt trail round the corner of the building.

Set exactly at the wall’s midpoint in the building lay an ironbound oak door. Smaller than the others, this door almost looked out of place. Jess tried the handle and it swung smoothly inward. She tiptoed in, afraid it might lead to an ancient privy or something equally uninviting. She looked around a cool stone corridor, as yet untouched by the warmth of morning. Faint, dust-laden dawn beams served as its only illumination. Though the passage obviously wasn’t often visited, it seemed tidy and maintained. Jess took a step away from the door.

Between one heartbeat and the next, the narrow hallway went cold. Mind-numbingly cold. Jess gasped and reached for support, her hand landing on the stones of the wall. She found it almost icy. No help here. The sensation lingered and deepened, and another overlay it.

Grief. A woman’s sorrow, too deep for tears.

She almost cried out, so overwhelming was the sensation. Around her something shifted and went dark. She felt consciousness ebb. Though she’d never felt faint in her life, the sensation was unmistakable. She sagged against the wall, both hands flat against it, searching for handholds the surface didn’t offer, afraid she’d go down.

She did not.

Instead, the blackness ebbed. Her head quit whirling and the wall stopped quivering. Her world righted itself into a normal Cornish early morning. Outside the open door she heard the birds’ random twittering. The impression of sorrow had fled, and the passageway’s cool was only the expected chill of a shaded stone building. Jess sighed. Wiping her clammy hands on her jeans, she strode back down the passage and out the door.

The man in the garden hadn’t been there a moment before. She stared, and the man stared back, his jaw hanging open. He looked a mess—tangled dark hair hanging onto the shoulders of a dirty loose shirt, slacks ending just below the knee, and bare, grimy feet. On his head sat a shapeless cap, looking like a chair cushion emptied of its stuffing. In his big, gnarled hands he pushed a crudely constructed wooden wheelbarrow with no sides. It overflowed with small wood and bare branches.

It cost nothing to be courteous. “Good morning,” Jess said.

The man jumped as if she’d thrown a rock at him. He gabbled something in a tongue she didn’t recognize, made a hasty sign of the Cross at his chest, dropped the barrow which dumped its contents, and ran.

She gaped after him. He ran as though he wouldn’t slow down ‘til London.

“Well!” she muttered, taken aback. It cost nothing to be polite, but apparently that small courtesy was beyond him.

Shaking her head, she rounded the building’s corner. And stopped dead in her tracks. Her heart sped up alarmingly and she thought again she might faint.

Mossock—the Mossock she’d slept in—wasn’t there.

In its place, she saw several ancient stone buildings attached to the great hall. Two-story ranges in the same architectural style straggled to the right, including a high, round tower with arrow-slits in place of windows. A single-story range off to the left backed onto wooden outbuildings with roofs of slate or thatch. The ruined stone wall over which she’d stepped had morphed into a wall higher than her head, enclosing a garden fragrant with herbs and undersized, richly aromatic roses. To her right, a horse stamped and blew through its nose in a wooden stable. The aroma of the stalls almost overwhelmed that of the garden.

She took another step forward, her heart hammering. Smoke rose lazily from the wooden outbuildings, carrying a scent of cooking food. Hens scratched, loose in the rutted yard. A rooster greeted both Jess and the morning in the usual way.

But this was not the morning that should be.

Again, I think the pace is good. There’s a good balance between description and action. And this twist at the end will push things forward nicely.