Valley of Nightmares Read online

  “Well, it’s certainly as neglected as the moon in daylight, if that’s what you mean,” I said with a grimace at one of the mutilated stone lions. Ceri appeared at the door with an enquiring expression, and I escorted Anika into the house. I still wasn’t sure I’d interpreted what she was trying to say correctly. By the way she ducked her head and glanced about her nervously as she entered the house, I could tell she was uncomfortable being there. But, I reasoned, as I held up the teapot and Anika nodded gratefully, she was probably more used to being turned away from the gates by the householder than invited inside.

  As I filled the kettle and put it on the stove to boil, I heard the crash of breaking china and an accompanying girlish wail. Sadly, neither of these sounds was out of the ordinary when Gwladys was doing the dusting. I dashed off to see what had happened, leaving Anika and Ceri alone in the kitchen.

  When I returned some time later, toast had been made and buttered, and a pot of jam unearthed from a cupboard and placed on the table. Ceri was tucking into this feast with obvious glee. Tea was brewing, the dishes were washed and the table looked suspiciously like it had been scrubbed clean. Anika was in the process of brushing the floor, and Shucky, regarding her with a slavish expression in his eyes, was gulping down fresh water from an earthenware bowl.

  “You don’t want a job, by any chance, do you?” I asked, briefly outlining my plight.

  She looked up from her task. “No,” she said slowly, in her heavily accented English, “but I will make you, how do you say this? A deal?”

  * * *

  Six caravans and a covered wagon formed a circle on the wilderness at the rear of the house. Washing was strung on lines between carnival-coloured carts, fires burned sweet, acrid smoke into the late afternoon and the harsh music of the Romany language rang out. Lean, rangy, clever dogs busily toured the area around the house, and their presence left me feeling unaccountably reassured. Shucky, fancying himself one of their number, joined them and was tolerated rather than accepted. After suffering Mrs. Price’s grim cooking and my own spectacularly bad efforts, the smell of delicious soups and stews cooking in huge pots attracted Ceri and me down to the camp on a regular basis. We were always made welcome at the informal, fireside meals. Bright-eyed, barefoot children rolled and played on the grass, and Ceri, shy at first then gaining in confidence, joined them. I liked seeing her flushed, happy face after she had been included in their rough-and-tumble play. It seemed to me that her life so far had not provided many opportunities for fun, but the gypsy children were showing her how to enjoy herself.

  This was our deal, Anika’s and mine. The local council had passed an act prohibiting the gypsies from staying on public land. In return for a safe place on our field, the gypsies would help me set the house to rights. Anika explained that they would move on before the summer was over. Or sooner if the mood should take them. They made no plans, she explained. Part of me envied them that freedom.

  My thoughts kept turning toward Gethin, and what he might have to say about this unorthodox arrangement, particularly about his niece’s growing familiarity with the travellers. But he wasn’t there to comment, and my thoughts dwelt on him on an all-too-regular basis anyway. I had made one attempt to telephone his London office from the village post office. The postmistress had painstakingly endeavoured to connect me, but each effort had failed miserably, so I had abandoned that plan. By striking this deal with the gypsies, I had done what was necessary, I reassured myself, to keep us fed and the house clean until he was able to arrange for another housekeeper to replace Mrs. Price. And, most of the time, I succeeded in convincing myself.

  Gradually, the old house began to throw off its cloak of gloom. Vidor mobilised a group of men, and soon the guttering was repaired, the missing coping stones replaced and loose shutters fixed back in place. The outhouses proved to be a treasure trove of tools, wood, paint and varnish. After much debate, Ceri was given the casting vote and the shutters—whose original colour was indeterminate—were painted a bright cornflower blue. The weeds and brambles that had claimed the drive were cleared, and the persistent ivy trimmed back. Inside the house, Anika overcame her reservations and made the kitchen her particular domain, and it gleamed. The range was permanently lit and the kettle always boiling. Anika’s specialty was baking, and the tantalising aroma of bread, cakes and pies replaced the empty, stagnant air. Ceri and I collected a mismatch of comfortable chairs and bright cushions, and the once-neglected kitchen became our favourite place to sit during the day. I took charge of the cleaning and was joined by a small army of giggling, chattering traveller girls. We threw windows wide and allowed the crisp, fresh air to drive out the stale scent of neglect. Floors were scrubbed, curtains taken down and washed, wood and brass work polished, rugs and furnishings beaten. We reclaimed the corners from the spiders. Even Gwladys began to wield her feather duster with panache.

  Curiously, the effect on the house was exponentially greater than the effort we put in. So when we polished the wood panels in the hall, the sunlight crept in and, rejoicing in the change, touched the wood with golden kisses. When I cleaned the parlour windows, the carpet and furnishings instantly brightened and the whole room acquired a cosy glow. Taran House was starting to rejuvenate itself. It looked, at last, like someone cared.

  * * *

  “She was quite a nice lady,” Ceri said, following my gaze to the photograph of her mother that sat on a shelf in her bedroom. Getting her to go to sleep was marginally less painful than having a tooth extracted without anaesthetic. As soon as it was bedtime, all she wanted to do was talk. I usually had to tell her firmly that, once I had read her a story and tucked her into bed, all conversation was at an end.

  It seemed an oddly distant remark for a child to make about her mother, until I remembered that Ceri had spent half of her young life at an Austrian boarding school. I glanced again at the photograph. Even in the grainy black-and-white print, Christina Taran had a brittle, glamorous air about her. Nothing could have been more stark than the contrast between my own coltish limbs and fair, milk-maid freshness than her dark, intense beauty. Gethin had loved her; perhaps he still did. If she is anything to go by, Lilly, you are a million miles from being his type, I scolded myself.

  “But she was always…” Ceri searched for a word that was outside her eight-year-old vocabulary. “Scared,” she finished. I substituted “nervy” just from the rarefied air Christina exuded in her picture. “Of course, she couldn’t come and see me very often, because she was so busy,” she added. Busy doing what, I wondered with a glance of dislike at the dainty, sharp-featured face in the picture. It was true, I supposed grudgingly, that a diplomat’s wife would be involved in entertaining, but my heart still went out to the little girl who was able to say those words so matter-of-factly.

  “You don’t have any photographs of your father,” I said as I tucked her in.

  Ceri shook her head, wide dark eyes gazing fearfully at me over the edge of her blankets. I was amazed at the abrupt change in her manner. All at once it was as if the life had been drained from her. Without another word she turned her face to the wall, saying quietly, “I think I’ll go to sleep now.” This was such an unusual state of affairs that I stood still for a long time, watching her. When I finally tiptoed to the door, she called me back softly. “Will you stay with me until I fall asleep, please, Lilly?”

  I lay down on the bed next to her, and she curled up against me with a sigh of relief. Before long, her deep, regular breathing told me she was slumbering. But I stayed where I was. In the dim light of the still-lit gas lamp, I gazed at the picture of a woman who was too busy for her own child. And I wondered about the man Christina had married. A man who stole his brother’s fiancée. A man whose daughter did not have his photograph in her room. A man who could strike a chatty eight-year-old dumb with terror at the mention of his name.

  * * *

  Ceri and I sat on the grass and lea
ned against the monstrous trunk of the ancient yew that reigned over the lawn. Shucky rested his head on my knee. Like the house, he had started to blossom. He no longer looked like nothing on earth. There was flesh on his skeletal frame, and his coat had a new glossy sheen. Shucky now looked like a dog who had an owner. Ceri made a daisy chain and placed it on the dog’s head, while I studied the drama of the view. The early-evening sky was a fine rosé wine, and I drank it in eagerly. Ahead of me Mount Taran loomed dark in the fading sunlight while closer to me the windows of the old house echoed the last rays of day. The blue shutters softened the harsh yellow stone, mellowing it to a faded, rustic tint. Taran House had been designed to resemble a Tuscan villa, slumbering in the tender embrace of the valley. As the shape of the gardens emerged from the primeval riot that had claimed them, the true, breathtaking beauty of this majestic place began to appear.

  Anika’s description of the house as the moon in daylight was fading. When I first arrived, Taran House had been a shimmering, ephemeral essence of its former self. Unable to compete with the brightness of day it, like the moon, had performed a sombre song of night. It was shaking off that illusion. With a whispered shout of renewed glory, Taran House was announcing its presence once more.

  And, for the first time, I saw it clearly. I saw what the architect’s intention had been in building the house precisely where it was, and in the chosen style. Taran House was a precious stone set in the jewelled splendour of the mountainous cradle. It deflected and reflected the light and mood of the valley. Silver-tinted rays broke through fragmenting clouds directly above the clock tower, emphasising the position of the house as the absolute heart of the giant rocky circle. My heart expanded with bittersweet belonging. I knew why Gethin loved it, and why he was so saddened at his brother’s lack of concern.

  At that precise moment, Shucky, for some reason best known to himself, lifted his head to stare at the house. He gave a low, rumbling growl, drawing back his lips to show sharp teeth. I followed his gaze. He was looking up above the nursery wing, and I thought, at first, that the movement at one of the clock-tower windows was a trick of the evening light. But, when it happened again, I watched more closely. It was unmistakable. There was a man in the clock tower; his silhouette was clearly outlined against the narrow strip of dusky glass. My heart gave a dull, frightened thud, even as my brain told me it must be Vidor. Although why my taciturn Romany friend would be in the locked tower at this, or any other, time of day eluded me. The figure moved away from the window, and in the same instant, Vidor staggered around the corner of the house carrying a pile of logs.

  I pointed mutely up at the window, and he shielded his eyes with one hand. A waxen, wary face appeared briefly against the pane, too far away to be recognised. I was sure, however, that it was a man. Vidor dropped the logs he was carrying and ran toward the house with Shucky hard at his heels. The face disappeared.

  I was seized by impatience and anxiety. I lived through a series of forevers before Vidor emerged again. But when he did, he shrugged helplessly and pantomimed that he had not found anyone. He pointed at the windows and then toward the sun, which was sliding behind the mountain, its golden paint box streaking the sky with twilight stripes of amber and bronze. Vidor’s meaning was clear. The fading day had fooled our gullible eyes into thinking we had seen a ghostly shade inside the tower. Slowly, I nodded my agreement. But neither of us actually believed it.

  Chapter Six

  “Vidor, can you see if there are any mousetraps in the outhouse, please?” The question was greeted with silence, followed by Vidor’s truly terrifying frown. Anika translated and Vidor barked out a sharp response. They always sounded like they were in the middle of a blazing argument, but I had quickly learned that they actually loved each other deeply and tenderly.

  “He say no mouses here,” Anika told me.

  “They are in the clock tower, right above my room.” I addressed Vidor directly, pointing upward. The noises had been particularly loud last night. In fact, I think there was a mouse carnival going on up there. It was so bad that a faint trickle of dust had fallen from the ceiling onto my bathroom floor. Vidor shook his head stubbornly. “Can you ask him to put traps up there anyway, please, Anika?” I asked. She repeated the instruction, and Vidor, with a muttered sound—which may or may not have been a curse—stomped off to the outhouse.

  Ceri and I had embarked on an exploration of the unused rooms. We were gradually unveiling a vast, shabby shrine to a bygone era. I was saddened by crumbling plaster, peeling wallpaper and rotting window frames. One whole wing of the opulent, iconic villa had been damaged by a leaking roof that had left its legacy in damp patches seeping through the walls. An interesting display of green mould and orange fungus claimed the cornices and skirting boards. Casual dusty heirlooms—broken crockery, cracked crystal and paintings in ornate, splintered frames—threw out peppery motes when we disturbed them. Yellowed newspapers catalogued events that Taran House had outlived. In the shadowy corners of spacious unloved chambers, we uncovered occasional gilt amongst the sadness of the dross. A grand piano sat in the lonely squalor of an empty room. A series of rooms, clearly at one time a master suite, had been designed to echo the grandeur of Versailles. I sighed over the painted ceilings depicting cherubs courting voluptuous maidens and mirrored panels lining the walls.

  Tucked away in a corner of this room, a stack of pictures framed in heavy, carved wood rested against the wall. One of them, smaller than the others, caught my eye. It resembled a page from a medieval manuscript. Ornate borders of entwined holly and ivy had been drawn by a painstaking hand. The text, written in a flowing copperplate script, was hard to decipher. Tracing the words with her finger, Ceri read it aloud.

  When the true darkness descends, stay indoors. Tend your hearth. Keep the night at bay with songs and laughter. Protect your loved ones and honour your ancestors. When the huntsmen stir, you are not safe. They will not fear your hallowed pathways. Shrieking ancient curses, they will sweep down the valleys and fleet through the mountain forests of your mind. The past is not dead. It will return, like these wild hunters, to stalk your dreams.

  At the top of the page, a vivid illustration depicted ghostly huntsmen traversing the night sky. The scene was drawn in tints of grey, and the only other colour was the dripping gore-red in the bloody snarl of the hounds.

  “What does it mean, Lilly?” Ceri asked in a muted voice.

  “It must be part of an old story,” I told her with brisk determination. “I must say, it’s a great shame if it has been torn from an old book.”

  She drew a thoughtful finger over the figures that flew across the page. We returned the frame whence we had found it, carefully turning the picture back to face the wall. By tacit, unspoken agreement, we avoided exploring the clock tower on these excursions.

  On one of our forays into an empty bedroom, we discovered an old trunk. It was a jewel in its own right, with scarred oak panels and decorative iron clasps. It was, I pointed out in a dramatic whisper, like a pirate’s chest. Ceri, less fanciful than I, regarded me indulgently. She insisted on opening it immediately, and beneath a layer of tissue paper, we unearthed a treasure trove of old-fashioned evening dresses and accessories. Slippery silk and crushed velvet slithered through our eager fingers in a shimmering riot of contrasting pastel and bright. The dresses were from a bygone decade: straight, drop-waisted and ending below the knee with opulent trimming, feathers and furs. Ceri slipped a blue beaded gown over her head, holding it up above the ground with one hand and dipping me an elaborate curtsey. She unearthed a sequinned headband decorated with peacock feathers and added this to her ensemble.

  “Now you,” she ordered, delving back into the trunk and emerging with a shimmering white strapless gown edged with gold. I pulled it on over my schoolmarmish blouse and sensible skirt and preened before my audience of one. Giggling conspiratorially, we made our way down to my bedroom to find a mirror. Decidin
g there was still something missing, we both added a splash of scarlet lipstick and stood back to admire ourselves. I slid my arms out of my blouse and discarded it, arranging the daring neckline of the dress more becomingly.

  “Teach me to dance!” Ceri squealed, clasping her hands together in supplication. “Oh, say you will, Lilly! Please.”

  There was more space in the schoolroom, so, in our borrowed finery, we traipsed back up the nursery stairs. I twirled across the floor, my feet remembering the steps as I went. Ceri laughed delightedly. I held out my hands to her and she joined me. We cavorted around the spacious room as I hummed one of the tunes from the show. Nearing my finale now, I released Ceri and went into a tap-dancing spin, arms flung wide, and hurtled straight into the granite chest of Gethin Taran.

  “Ooof!” The breath left my body in a rush, and I staggered slightly. With lightning reflexes, he caught me by my upper arms and steadied me. Over my head, his eyes took in his niece in her borrowed finery. The feathery headdress she wore had slipped down at a rakish angle, and her garish lipstick was smeared. His enigmatic brown eyes lowered to take in the full effect of my own outfit.

  Releasing me without commenting on our current occupation, he said, in a colourless tone, “Miss Divine, Ceri, I will see you both in the parlour at six, when I look forward to hearing all about how your—ah, lessons—are coming along.” He paused in the doorway and looked back at me. “And, Miss Divine, perhaps we could also have a conversation about the changes you appear to have made to the domestic arrangements? I am most interested to learn how I have managed to acquire some interesting new tenants in my absence.”