Page 39 of Mirrors of the Past

Sometimes, it helped being short.

To everyone else’s surprise, it seemed, she managed to win the apple, and the girls all clapped and cheered.

‘Viola is the next to get married!’ cried Nancy.

‘I wonder who to?’ said her sister Lucy, and they all started chattering excitedly about a fictional prince who would meet her and fall in love with her at first sight, and sweep her off her feet, and simply adore her.

‘I don’t want to be adored,’ she said, curtseying her thanks to them, then opening the blade on the penknife. ‘I know someone who would do that, and, no, thank you, I don’t want that at all!’ She fervently hoped that she wouldn’t get an “e” with her peel, even as she carefully pared the apple from top to bottom — Émile was not even to be entertained in that respect!

Finally, after a few cautious minutes, she had it — one long piece of peel, dangling from the knife. Everybody was around her now, watching eagerly as she tossed it over her shoulder — even Arthur was watching. He seemed to have forgotten about the tooth, he probably had his eye on her brother’s penknife more than the peel, but still . . .

Viola heard a gentle, slithery sort of noise as she tossed the peel over her shoulder and it landed on the floor. There was a beat, then a confused voice — Medora, Viola suspected — said, ‘But it’s just landed in a line. That’s not an initial!’

Viola turned to look — and the girl was correct. There the peel lay, defiantly in a straight line. ‘Jeepers,’ she said. ‘What sort of apples do you grow over here? We’ve always had something that at least looked like a letter in America.’

Everyone stared at it for a moment;, then Marigold, who was just learning her letters from her papa, knelt down and peered at it. She reached out a chubby finger and pointed at it.

‘Luh,’ she said. ‘It’s a little luh. Look. “Luh” for lollipop. Light. Lily.’ Here she smiled, naming one of her very favourite people in the entire world. ‘And luh for Unca Laurie.’ She looked up at Viola proudly. ‘Luh,’ she said again. ‘Unca Laurie.’

‘What? No!’ Viola was shocked. It was only the innocent words of a tot learning her letters and proud of what she knew, but, even so, she felt herself flush and she knew her face would have displayed all of her feelings, for everyone to see. ‘No. Not Unca Laurie. Viola won’t be marrying Unca Laurie.’

‘But it’s Halloween!’ the little girl said, all wide-eyed and innocent. ‘It is magical on Halloween.’

‘It is,’ said Pearl, stifling a laugh. ‘Listen to Marigold. She’s a very wise witch’s cat.’

Viola could see the little girl nodding proudly. ‘No,’ Viola said again, weakly.

‘One way to find out!’ said Medora. ‘The mirror and candle game.’

‘Oh, yes.’ One of the blonde girls clapped her hands — Viola thought it was Mabel. ‘Clara, please could you go and find a mirror? I think there’s one in the study. Isolde’s been using it to check her hair when Fabian’s been here painting her portrait.’ There was an indignant squawk from Isolde, but everyone ignored her and the tallest blonde girl added, ‘We need a candle as well — but that might not be very safe, actually. Because we don’t want the little ones copying and she has to walk up the staircase backwards . . .’

‘Wait. What?’ Viola felt completely cornered. ‘Walk up the staircase backwards?’

‘Yes. Traditionally, you’d hold a candle and look in the mirror at the same time, but I think we can just do it with a low lamp in the hallway this evening,’ said Medora. ‘Come on. Oh, this is so exciting.’ She reached out and took Viola’s hand and practically ran out into the hallway, dragging Viola with her.

Fabian passed them in the hallway with a bucket of clean water full of freshly washed apples, and swung it out of their way. ‘Easy, girls!’ he said, laughing.

‘Fabian, could you keep the little ones busy in there?’ asked Medora. ‘And the boys. With the apples? We just need the girls out here!’

Fabian shook his head and pressed himself into the wall as seven young women hurtled past him. ‘As you command,’ he said, waiting until they’d gone past before resuming his travels.

Viola looked helplessly over her shoulder at the morning-room door, hoping that one of the three adult witches in there would weave a spell and rescue her. But it was to no avail. The three witches themselves were at the door, eager to join in, and Viola had never felt more in the spotlight — and not in a good way. If she was dancing or something that would be a good spotlight experience. But this — this was not a good spotlight experience.

‘Here’s the mirror,’ said Clara, handing it over. ‘And now the lamplight.’ She lowered the lights in the hallway and blew out a few candles that were dotted around atmospherically. The hallway was plunged into an eerie gloom, but, despite herself, Viola began to feel a little excited. She didn’t believe in the folklore, but she could have some fun here. She could make up a man — who was nothing like Laurie — and spin them all a tale. It was a night for stories after all . . .

‘All right,’ Viola said. ‘I’ll do it. But you must all be quiet.’

There were rustles of skirts and sudden, nervous giggles, but, eventually, the girls settled down and Viola stood on the first step, facing them, her natural confidence bubbling to the surface.

‘“Shade of a shadow in the glass,”’ she said in a low, resonant voice, looking around the assembled faces. ‘“O set the crystal surface free! Pass — as the fairer visions pass — Nor ever more return, to be . . .”’ She walked slowly up the steps, backwards, as instructed. There was a delicious sigh from Medora and Mabel as the words of Mary Elizabeth Coleridge’s Gothic poem, The Other Side of the Mirror, echoed around the darkened hallway. ‘“The ghost of a distracted hour . . .”’ More steps backwards, as she held the mirror aloft and stared into it . . . ‘“That heard me whisper—” Jeepers! What the hell?’

Because, looming up in the background of the mirror, was a pale, dark-haired man, dressed in tattered Regency clothing. Then it all seemed to happen at once — she screamed, the girls screamed, she tried to move and her foot caught in the long skirt of her gown.

She clutched in vain for the handrail and lost her balance on the stairs . . . but before she actually tripped, tumbled and fell to certain doom, the man in the mirror reached out a bone-white hand and grabbed the back of her dress, hauling her backwards so she was suspended, half lying, half sitting on the stairs, rather than rolling inelegantly down them.

There was another scream from the top of the stairs and almost simultaneously, a voice which sounded not unlike Laurie Teague’s. ‘What the hell are you doing that for? It’s bloody dangerous!’