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‘Benneit?’
He tried to reach for the lamp, but it was very far away. He made another effort and managed to close his hand around the handle. Her hand closed on the handle as well.
‘Here, I’ll take it,’ she said, all panic gone from her voice and he closed his eyes, utterly humiliated but still unable to do more than stand there, his back glued to the wall, the stone cold and sharp through his linen shirt.
Her other hand closed around his and he forced himself to look down at it. It was small and fine and there was a faint scratch near her wrist. He wanted more than anything to raise it to his lips and breathe in her scent, but she was pulling him forward and they climbed the stairs which thirty years ago had felt so high he had been certain he was falling to the bottom of the earth.
He turned at the top stair of the crypt, the lamplight settling on the carved effigies of his ancestors once more. It was different from the image seared into his child’s brain the moment before the candle hit the floor all those years ago. Then it had been a stark mask of dark and light with the single brooch glistening atop the occupied tomb next to the empty broken one, like a cyclopean eye of a beast rising from hell. It was an image of evil and cruelty that was seared into his mind in the sudden and absolute darkness that followed the fall of his candle. And that darkness had lasted for ever.
‘Do you have any whisky in your rooms?’ Her question brought him into the present. Amazingly they were already in the small parlour connecting to his bedroom and the candle on the mantelpiece was only half-gone. It had not been an eternity, but moments. How was that possible?
She took his other hand, looking up at him, her eyes wide and worried.
‘Benneit? Is there whisky here or shall I fetch some?’
His hands tightened on hers. Don’t leave me, not yet.
‘In that cupboard.’ His voice was as rusty as the hinges on the gates to the north bay.
‘Go sit by the fire.’ She drew her hands from his and he let them go reluctantly and obediently went to the chair by the fire. The warmth, his chair, his room and mostly her presence were cleaving their way through the darkness and the shuddering horror was beginning to dissipate at the edges, making more room for more humiliation. He rubbed his hands over his face, dreading what was to follow.
‘Here.’
She handed him a glass and pulled a chair beside him.
‘Drink.’
The welcome burn of whisky chased back more of the mist and he drank in silence, awaiting his fate.
‘I should have realised,’ she said. ‘By the cave. Even in the carriage on the way north. It did strike me as strange even then, but I was too caught up in... I’m sorry I was so blind, Benneit.’
Oh, God, just leave me be.
‘Did something happen or was it always like that?’
I don’t want to talk. Go away.
He spoke anyway. ‘Same as you. My candle blew out exploring the crypt. I was four, perhaps five.’
Her breath hissed inwards. ‘Jamie’s age. Were you there long?’
A lifetime.
He had probably slept some of it, out of sheer exhaustion, and had been asleep when they first came looking. It had been the servants’ voices calling for him, but they had capped his horror—in his child’s mind the effigy had risen, a vision from hell, calling his name as it came to claim him and keep him there for ever, in darkness.
‘A night and a day. My parents had been fighting, again, and I ran away. I should have made my protest clearer because my father thought I was at The House with my mother and she thought I was with him at the castle. I wanted to go somewhere that would make them angry, but then I fell down those blasted stairs and my candle went out. They never looked for me until the next day and even then it took them hours to think of the crypt. I remember it was already evening when they found me because the first thing I saw when we reached the nursery was the sunset.’
‘A whole... Oh, my God. I was only there a few moments and I was ready to scream. And you were four. Oh, Benneit...’
She had his free hand pressed to her cheek. He could see into her mind. She was with that boy, another Jamie, her heart weeping for the horrified little Benneit. He was erased, reduced to that weak, terrified child. He jerked his hand away.
