Excerpt: The Breckenridge Curse: The Barghast of Fangden Heath

For my writer-nieces, with affection. Enjoy. :-)

[Disclaimer: While, in the creation of this novel, some names and even a few choice personality traits have been blatantly borrowed from Folke We Know, this is otherwise entirely a work of fiction.]

“A savage place! as holy and enchanted
"As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
"By woman wailing for her demon-lover!”

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Kubla Khan (or, A Vision in a Dream)

CHAPTER ONE

“Kitty,” Victoria moaned over the grind of carriage wheels and the persistent patter-clop of hooves, “my shoes pinch.”

“So you’ve said, pet,” Kitty responded with a fond smile. “Four times today—twice only since we left Whitby.” Lazily she turned another page in the book she was straining to read by the swinging coach-lamp. “You should have changed them while we were there.”

“I know. You’re right.”

Creaking, squeaking, as it jogged on its hook, the lantern created shadows and flares enough to drive anyone to distraction—never mind someone squinting to decipher the immortal words of Mr. Coleridge. The wild-waving light was beginning to make Kitty’s head ache. Beastly. At last she surrendered and tenderly closed her book, tucking its rose satin ribbon between pages twenty-eight and twenty-nine, to mark her place for later.

Her sister still grimaced and rubbed at the leather of her lately-cobbled boots.

“Why not simply remove them?” Kitty said.

“Because we must be nearly there. Besides, Aunt Carrie (were she here, poor darling)—”

“Which, sadly, she isn’t.”

“—would only cluck and moue. She would never approve of my stripping down to my stocking feet in a public conveyance.”

“She’d not approve of your crippling yourself merely for the sake of propriety, either. She’d yank off her own boots in less than a heartbeat, under your circumstances, and dare Society to censure her.” Kitty cleared her throat and, feeling a certain warmth rise to her cheeks, confessed: “Truth to say, mine feel uncomfortably tight as well.”

“Then why do you not unbutton yours?”

“For three reasons. Firstly, because they’d take far too much time to refasten, in the dark, before I could alight. Secondly, because I suspect mine chafe entirely through my own choices.”

“You elected to suffer sore heels and toes?”

“It isn’t the heels or the toes. More ’round the ankles. And it's only the righthand shoe.”

Victoria favoured her with a suspicious, inquisitive frown.

“I . . . I didn’t mention it earlier, dearest,” Kitty said, “because I feared you’d worry.”

“But?”

“But I’m wearing one of Aunt Caroline’s wee daggers. Only not in my bodice. I shoved it down inside my boot.”

“Oh, Kitty! You aren’t carrying her muff pistol, too, are you? Hidden in your reticule?”

“No,” Kitty muttered, “but only because I forgot to ask to borrow it. Well, one can’t be too careful, Vicki,” she added, in answer to her sister’s gasp. “We have only each other, this journey. We’re all alone.”

Perhaps not quite as alone as we’d like to be, she thought: for in that moment an animal howl split the night. Even Kitty felt a willy-shiver scrabble up the back of her neck; but Victoria drained of all colour, and Kitty knew she needed to keep Vicki focussed on the topic at hand, while at the same time altering the sombre atmosphere.

She cracked a grin. “It only goes to show how ill she is, that Auntie didn’t think to offer to send the pistol with me, in addition.”

Luckily Victoria seemed to find the change in mood both welcome and contagious. “That she didn’t insist you take it, in fact,” she continued their exchange.

“Yes.”

“With strict instruction never to leave it off your person.”

“Exactly.”

“Packing it away, for the trip, in a hatbox or one of the trunks, would never have satisfied.”

“No. Well, her advice makes sense, really. Can’t whip out a weapon in emergency if it’s locked away in the boot of the coach.” Kitty chuckled. “Auntie’s likely keeping her pistol near to hand, herself, even at home—no doubt under her pillow. An unpleasant surprise for old Pru, when next he comes to call—if she doesn’t agree with his latest judgment.”

“Kitty, for shame. You shouldn’t call him ‘old Pru.’”

“Whyever not? She does.”

“Not to his face.”

“No more do I—to his face.”

“Dr. Prufrock is not a mere surgeon, you know, he’s a real physician. And an elderly gentleman. Not to acknowledge as much is sadly disrespectful. What is the third reason?”

“What?”

“The third reason. You said there were three reasons why you didn’t simply unbutton your shoes.”

Kitty thought of their aunt, lying miserable in bed back at Glenstrath Lodge, with only their maid Jean for company, yet still managing to run as tight a ship as ever an admiral flying red from the mainmast, and another fond smile crept to her lips. “Because Aunt Carrie would never approve.”

Victoria, smiling also, reached across to squeeze Kitty’s hand.

After a moment’s silence, Vicki asked: “You do think she’s all right, don’t you?”

“I believe she will be.”

“Then why did she send us away? She’s never done so before. And Dr. Prufrock assured us there was no contagion. You don’t think we’ve spoken to her for the last time, do you? You don’t think she’s going to—?”

“She didn’t send us away, pet. She only contended that we’d have a happier time elsewhere, until she feels strong and hale again. And she thought we might prove a welcome diversion for Laurence.”

Victoria pouted and turned to the window. “Oh, pooh. Who cares about Laurence?”

“Vicki! It isn’t like you to be so uncharitable. Aunt Carrie says, now that he’s returned from University, only to find Pamela travelling, he’s virtually all alone in that sprawling house with Grandfather—and you know Auntie feels that to be stranded with Grandpapa for more than a day or two is a fate worse than death.”

“I’m sorry, Cat. I meant Cousin Laurence no ill, of course. But I remember him from before. I was positive his middle name was Satan.”

Kitty laughed.

“He was certifiably a demon.”

Kitty smiled. “He was ten years old. He’s twice ten, now.”

“Let us pray, then, that the passage of time has improved upon him.”

“Anyway, I don’t recall his having been so unbearable as all of that.”

“That’s because he liked you. He loathed me.”

“He did not,” Kitty said with a companionable chuckle. Her voice softened, recalling the springtime of her eighth year—a season filled with sadness and great change. “I thought him quite sympathetic to our loss. He did all a little lad could be expected to conceive of doing, to offer comfort or condolence. I found him kind, considerate, and well-mannered.”

“Hmph. If he was, it was only until after the funeral. Oh, fiddle!” Victoria said with moans anew, frowning and fishing beneath her skirts to manually exercise her toes, “it’s no good, I can’t so much as wiggle! I cannot bear to be imprisoned in these little leather torture-chambers for a moment more! They’re wonderful, but I should have listened to Auntie and you and not kept them on for so long at a time until they were properly broken-in. I only thought that perhaps, on the route between Glasgow and England, as we’d be doing more sitting than walking . . . .”

Another bestial wail, as of wild dogs on the surrounding moors, splintered the darkness beyond the coach windows. The sound was louder now. Closer.

“Here,” Kitty hurriedly suggested, “if your poor feet hurt so, lay them one at the time in my lap, and I’ll rub them for you.”

Victoria daintily, modestly stretched out one skirted leg. She put up her right foot first. Kitty proceeded to undo the button loops by hand—an act which only caused Victoria’s eyes to widen and blink in apparent dismay, and her gloved fingertips to fly to the lower lip she sat visibly chewing.

“Well, I can’t very well massage your foot with the shoe on, dear. Besides, we’re already without our bonnets. And you only just said you couldn’t stand to remain ‘imprisoned’— ”

But Victoria’s wince and cry, when Kitty finally commenced to rub her heel and toes, gave her concern enough to peel off the stocking, as well, and to inspect the problem by the orgiastic dance of the coach-lamp. “Oh, Vicki. Your dear little foot. The toes are blistered nearly raw. You simply cannot wear that shoe again until they heal.”

“Whatever shall I do when we arrive at the Hall?”

“We’ll get you down somehow. I think I can work your stocking back on without causing too much additional mischief. We’ll simply have to explain that you’re injured and cannot at present squeeze into a boot. Quickly, let me see the other foot. What time is it getting to be?”

Victoria—switching feet, presumably so that Kitty could unfasten her left shoe—reached for the carriage clock and held it still while she peered at its face through the wavering shadows. “Just past eleven.”

“Champion,” Kitty grumbled. “If the coachman’s estimates were right, that will have us pulling in at almost exactly midnight. He said, earlier, that we were to reach the Hall by half past nine.”

“That was before it rained. And before he had to stop to change that broken wheel.”

“I know. But I still deplore the idea that a houseful of tired servants, knowing that we are expected, may force themselves to remain up late, on our account. And we certainly won’t be looking or feeling our best, at first greeting. I wish we could have slept a bit, along the route.”

“Sleep is impossible, with all this bouncing about. Her Majesty the Queen is right: riding the rails is far ‘easier’ on the bones. I wish we’d come the entire way by rail.”

“You know we couldn’t have done. No station close enough to Fangden Heath. Besides, we’re lucky Aunt Carrie would consent to our travelling any portion of the distance by train. You know the strength of her opinions on the dangers of the railway.”

“Yet she doesn’t mind your galloping at a breakneck pace on horseback, all about the Highlands and moors, a veritable hobbledehoy.”

“She doesn’t mind racing hellbent, herself,” Kitty said, chuckling. “But she’d never be convinced to take a train. Never since Mr. Dickens was in that disastrous wreck in ’65.”

“Yes, I recall. We’d only just come to her, in the month or two before that happened. She was still such a curiosity to me, then. Her reaction on reading that account in the papers is one of my earliest memories of life with her.”

“Mine, too. You know, it’s said Mr. Dickens foresaw his death on the day of that train wreck . . . and he did die, on 9 June, the very date of the accident, five years later.”

“Kitty, don’t. You give me the shivers, when you say such things.”

On that note, the carriage lurched fit to take a ribbon at the fair, and Kitty and Vicki together reacted to save their hats, their parasols, and a luncheon hamper from going airborne and swapping seats. Kitty barely rescued Coleridge’s poems—lying, virtually unguarded at the moment of upset, on a corner of her violet merino travelling skirt—from a spine-snapping tumble. The near-catastrophe somehow prompted Vicki rather suddenly to remark: “Must you forever ride facing the back, like a man?”

Kitty smiled. “You know I’m equally comfortable sitting this way. And you see what advantages it holds. Why, how else could I doctor your poor aching footsoles?”

Just then came a panicked cry and a “Hode!” from the driver’s box, and the coach jolted to a necklashing halt. “Wot in ’evven’s nehm ells y’two?” Kitty heard the driver rumble. “Arta daft, or nobbut despert simple?”

Daft? Simple? Kitty set her lips, flipped back the window curtain to her right hand, and impatiently worked down the stubborn sash, admitting a chill night breeze scented with peat bog and damp. “I beg your pardon?” she shouted with no small indignance.

“Aoh, nay!—n’thoo, Miss!” clarified the coachman. “Sithee, ’tis tiah other women—both on ’em a-standin’ yon, in the heart o’ the dratted track, as gaumless as gooses! ’Tis dark, begow, teh mudda been kilt!”

Kitty traded shrugs and odd looks with Vicki. “Who are they?” she hollered.

“Egyptians, Miss. Travellers, most ’ud call ’em. Ah’ll soon shue ’em t’gate, though, Miss; doon’tchah yoong leddies fret y’sells. Na’then,” he said (apparently to the gipsies), “shift y’sells, ahta t’rood!”

“Nonsense, driver,” Kitty called, “my sister and I have Romanian blood in our own veins. Send the women ’round to the open window.”

“Mmngh. As th’seh, Miss. Thih mun soo-it tha’senn.”

“What did he say?” Victoria whispered.

“He said I must suit myself.”

Victoria snorted. “Pity he doesn’t know you better. He’d soon discover how little you require his encouragement.”

Kitty felt the carriage rock as the coachman climbed down from his perch. Perhaps he wished to be near to hand, should he be needed to protect his passengers from thievery. Meanwhile, two smallish figures draped in cloaks and blankets shuffled ever closer to Kitty’s window. Their heads were covered in colourful, fringed shawls, pinched closed at their chins by bony fingers, and their eyes, now partly visible in the light of the coach lamps, snapped black—like Victoria’s, Kitty thought. Like those of our long-ago ancestors. One woman, hunching in the shadows a bit behind the other, stood nearly a head taller than her companion, and had a worn, middle-aged face—drawn, haunted, and plaintive. A second woman, trudging slightly in front of the younger one, had acquired the face of a sun-dried apple doll. Wisps of death-white hair reached out, like ghostly fingers, from beneath her headshawl. Kitty nodded to her, and she nodded back. Then the old woman spoke, in English but with a heavy Old World patois—no doubt as our great-great-grandmother spoke—saying:

“Blessings upon you, good mistresses. Alms for a poor soul and her daughter?”

“Aw, Miss,” the driver objected, looking at Kitty and twining his cap in his hands, “allow me give ’em wot for. Theh be nobbut fleecers ’n’ beggars.”

“Nor we are not beggars yet!” cried the elder of the gipsies. “We come of a proud people—too proud by far to beg. We give in exchange for whate’er we receive. Cross my palm with but a bit of silver, mistresses, and you shall know your futures.”

Kitty clicked open her reticule and dug inside for a silver shilling, which she handed to the woman with a smile. “No fortune-telling necessary, madam. You are welcome.”

“Oh, I should like to hear my future, Kitty!” said Victoria, beaming.

“Then here is another coin,” Kitty said to the elderly gipsy, matching words to action.

“Bless you, kind Mistress, bless you.” The old woman neared the open window and put out her own hand to Victoria. “Your palm, my child.” Victoria peeled off one glove to comply, and smiled at Kitty. “You have a strong love line,” said the gipsy woman in an approving tone. Then her voice grew sad and weary. “You have known much darkness and grief in your young life . . . and you will endure yet more . . . but throughout all your trials, you will enjoy the immeasurable blessing of the love of family. And always beside you, there will be a man—handsome, strong, and kind.”

I suppose she feels she must say such things, to earn her way, Kitty thought. All fortune-readers predict love and happiness. But the woman’s words were all to the good, so far as Kitty was concerned, for Victoria nearly bounced with anticipation and joy.

“When shall I meet him?” she asked.

“Soon.”

Victoria, clearly pleased, momentarily turned her shining face to Kitty.

“You will find love,” the gipsy woman continued, still studying Vicki’s open hand, “as you have always done, in those places where perhaps you least expect it. You lost both parents to tragedy, very early in life?”

“Yes,” Victoria murmured.

“But you were fortunate to find a generous and affectionate guardian, were you not?”

Victoria nodded.

“Some spoke ill of her. They found her ways and her beliefs strange. You were not sure you could ever know peace in her home. Yet now, you have trouble recalling a time before her—a life without her.”

“Yes.”

The gipsy nodded. “Your love for this man, and his for you—it will be much the same. Of course, I need no second sight to tell you—both of you—that the moors at night are a dark and dangerous place, especially for two such as yourselves: ladies, unchaperoned and unarmed.”

(“Sithee ooz tawlkin’,” muttered the coachman. “Ta kilp pan a-callin’ ta
kettle . . . .”)

“Whither, if I may but humbly ask,” said the elder gipsy (this time addressing Kitty), “are you bound?”

“Fangden Hall. Do you know it?”

At the word “Fangden,” both gipsies gasped and Crossed themselves. The old woman dropped Victoria’s hand as if it had become white-hot, and leapt backward, away from the carriage door. “No, no, my children, you must not go there!” she cried. “To go there is to die! That is the home of Sir Stockhard Breckenridge, his body cold in the grave for over fifty years—and yet his spirit, and that of his tortured bride, still roams the land. Such was the force of his great evil. Such were the number of his sins and atrocities. The Breckenridge dead walk both heath and hall, and the curse of the Breckenridge blood spells doom for all who seek to spend even one night beneath the roof of the manor house! Turn back; turn back, before it is too late!”

“I’m afraid we cannot do that, madam,” Kitty explained. “But you need have no care for our safety. We well know of the so-called curse, and have visited the Hall before, unscathed. Well,” she amended, “more or less unscathed, at least.” An uneasy glance at her sister revealed, by the spectral glow of their lantern—long since suspended dead-still—that Victoria had gone as pale as flannel wool, and was clutching the cameo she wore at her throat: a throat cordoned off and garrisoned by a fashionably stiff, high collar, conveniently hiding the scars from a childhood encounter on these very moors.

An encounter with a large, feral hound.

“We are,” Kitty concluded, “of Clan Breckenridge ourselves.”

The elder gipsy gasped again. Something between terror and fury fired her dark eyes, pooled in lines of age and weariness and framed by the eerie shadows of the moonless night. She spat in the mud at her feet. “Then you both will receive only what you deserve. May God take pity and have mercy on your souls.”

“Now see here!” Victoria said, starting for the window, “we have visited Yorkshire only once before in all our lives, we don’t even know you, we’ve never done you or your daughter any harm!”

“I gave you money!” Kitty reminded the woman.

The old gipsy spat on the shillings, as well, and flung them back into the coach. She began to intone ugly words from the Bible, interspersing them with Romany chants and prayers. “‘If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with woman, then both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. And if a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death: and ye shall slay the beast!’”

“Your reference is vile and disgusting!” cried Victoria, “how dare you?”

“‘And if a woman approach unto any beast,’” the old gipsy woman went on, in ever louder and more threatening tones, “‘and lie down thereto, thou shalt kill the woman, and the beast: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them!’ Leviticus, Chapter 20!”

“‘Do not hold against us the sins of the fathers,’” Victoria countered. “The Book of Psalms, 79th chapter, eighth verse.”

“Never mind it, Vicki," Kitty told her. "Let us go.”

Victoria leaned further forward to shout at the retreating figures, before they could disappear entirely into the mist: “Only moments ago, you were prophesying love and felicity in my near future, and now it is to be blood and death?”

“Vicki, never mind it, I tell you! Leave them to their crazed beliefs.” Kitty stuck her head out at window to shout to the coachman—already causing the cab to sway as he climbed to his place on the box. “Drive on!”

From somewhere on the heath, her words were echoed—in the form of a spine-tingling bay and howl.