The Family Blood

  Quenby Olson

  World Tree Publishing

  The Family Blood is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locals or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 Quenby Olson

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-10: 0-692-18981-5

  ISBN-13: 978-0-692-18981-8

  Published in the United States of America by World Tree Publishing.

  First Edition: September 2018

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 WTEP B1837

  Dedication

  To my family.

  All of this is for you.

  The Family Blood

  * * *

  * * *

  They gave me my own room, up at the top of the house. After all of the fuss and the crying marking my arrival, I was glad of the promise to be placed away from them, away from my cousins—the twins—who pretended to be afraid of me, cowering behind Aunt Debney's skirts when I was first brought into the sitting room. It was their expressions that betrayed them: the sneer on the boy's face, nose slightly upturned as if he'd walked too many times into a wall, while the girl alternated between biting the inside of her thumb and sticking her tongue out at me. Such a greeting it was, until they were addressed by name—Madeleine and Matthew, Matthew and Madeleine—as they were chivvied forward, shoulders prodded until they bowed stiffly and uttered an awkward "How d'you do?" in tandem with one another.

  I could not tell if their dislike stemmed from stories they'd heard before my arrival, or if their hostility was a mere representation of how they viewed all that was new and different. But there I stood, clad in black silk and crepe, my hair lank and uncurled about my shoulders, like an ill-favoured doll left in the garden to suffer through a rainstorm. I was older than them, but they had the advantage in numbers, and so I knew there would be no gaining their friendship, no loyalty from them based on an adherence to the bonds of blood and family.

  Another sneer from Matthew when Uncle Gregory turned his head to regard me better in the glow of the gas lamps adorning the walls. Madeleine—I will not deign to refer to her as 'Maddie' no matter how often the family attempted to force me into using it—plucking at the fine ruffle edging her pinafore, all crisp and white and a stark contrast to the smudge of shadow I represented in the stuffy room.

  And there was my audience as it began again.

  As constant as the thrum of my pulse or the rumble of traffic beyond the walls, there is the ringing in my ears, the hiss of a whisper always on the cusp of turning into words. A part of me had hoped it would all be done with me, that the deaths of my parents, my aunt, poor Father Crusoe would be taken as enough of a sacrifice to soothe the clamor of voices that plagued me. Or that removal from the house I had always lived in would leave them behind, like pieces of furniture left to moulder beneath dust cloths and to be chewed on by mice.

  But, no. While my aunt and uncle offered their stingy reception, made up of pinched expressions and pinched off declarations of how much gratitude I owed them for letting me into their home, those other voices twined around my thoughts. In sinuous phrases, they told me of the animosity they already held towards me, and beyond that, the sins they had committed before I'd ever stumbled so gracelessly into their lives. Everything I had no wish to know laid bare, and all of it mingling with the same taunts and whispers that gave me no rest.

  The room was small and cold, I was told, drawing me from my thoughts. The fire not yet lit and the bed unmade. I was a day early, Aunt Debney claimed. The letter had stated I would arrive on the twenty-first, and there I stood, a full twenty-four hours off schedule, and still so much to be done before the house could be prepared for me.

  "We could set up a cot for you in the nursery," my aunt said, bending down to speak to me, her corset creaking. She reached out a hand as if to place it on my back, to stroke my hair or my shoulder or impart some manner of comfort to me. But instead her fingers curled back, biting into her palm as she straightened up again. She coughed then, a poor disguise for her reluctance to touch me. And I wondered why she had allowed me into the house at all, her brother's child, his only child, trailing the scandal of his untimely death in my wake.

  I was too old for the nursery, but beyond that, I had no wish to leave myself as greater prey for my cousins' torments. Were I to share a room with them, even only for one night while my own was being prepared, I would no doubt be subjected to all sorts of pinchings and cries and foul whisperings while I burrowed my head into my pillow. I bore enough of that sort of thing without their meddling.

  I turned down her offer, all quiet politeness and grace. My mother would have been proud. Aunt Debney appeared relieved, and so I was shuffled away into the kitchen while the bed was prepared and a fresh fire laid. The lower parts of the house had all been fitted with gas and proper lamps, but I would have my fire and an allotment of candles, if that suited me well enough.

  In the kitchen, I sat on a stool, a plate of cold buns and cheese put in front of me and a cup of lukewarm milk pushed into my hands. The buns were stale, but I ate them, unable to predict what sort of sustenance would be regularly provided for me in this place. The family looked to be healthy enough; Uncle Gregory and Matthew both rather plump around their stomach and beneath their chins, but that did not promise I would be given enough to eat, especially coming into the house with my weight already at a deficit.

  The servants eyed me warily. The cook—a short woman with sleeves always pushed back, the curls of hair that escaped from her cap clinging to her forehead and neck with perspiration—gave me no notice at all. But the other servants glanced up from their work once in a while, hands caked in flour and dough hovering over forgotten bowls while they watched me. They had heard the stories, no doubt. The ones leaked to the papers despite Uncle Gregory's attempt to hush them up. Tales that took on a more lurid turn with every printing, ink-smeared fingers thumbing through the pages for the next revelation or scandal.

  But the facts could not be so easily hushed from my memory. I watched my mother and father die, watched them tear open their own throats beside the corpses of my aunt and a friend of the family. Watched the darkness that took them seep out from their wounds and flood the entire room. And there I stood, their bodies crumpled to the floor around me, the blood of my own mother streaked across my hands, across my face.

  I was fetched an hour later, the housekeeper leading me back to my room, my aunt having taken to her bed for the afternoon because of a sudden headache. I saw no sign of my cousins as I mounted the first flight of stairs, nor again the second. A paltry fire burned in the bedroom's grate, the bed now covered with blankets that smelled of dust and storage. What things had come with me were already put away—a wardrobe filled with dresses in colors too bright for me to wear, dresses I would have outgrown by the time it was proper for me to wear them again.

  I owned three black gowns, along with the various accoutrements of stockings and gloves to match. My single black bonnet sat on a high shelf in the wardrobe, higher than I could reach, and my cloak hung on a peg inside the door, still damp and boasting a hem coated in dirt from the journey here.

  I thought of my dolls, then. Their fine clothes, muslin and even silk trimmed with pearls and lace. Curled hair and glass eyes that gazed up at me with the hues of gemstones. Their carved wooden cradle. Perhaps the ones who had packed my things assumed I was too old for such frivolities, or that toys were unacceptable while I was in mourning. But still, I wanted them. To smooth down their skirts, tie the ribbons in their hair, pretend I cared for them as much as my mother had hoped I would.

  The housekeeper left me, without a word or a promise as to when I would be wanted again. I sat on the edge of the bed, a hard bed, and crossed my ankles, folded my hands in my lap.

  The rain pattered against the window behind me. A single window, round and set high enough in the wall that I would be forced to stand on the balls of my feet on the mattress in order to peer out of it. There were other sounds that met my ears: footsteps beneath me, the opening and closing of doors, the cadence of a household thriving with life.

  And the whispers, of course. Waking again from a rest that had given me such a short reprieve. Fool that I was, I had gone and hoped they had already taken enough from me to be satisfied.

  ***

  I took my next few meals in my room, alone. It would come to me later that Aunt Debney kept me separated from my cousins on purpose, most likely to avoid any vile influence I might have on them. I did not begrudge her this. I had no wish to spend more time with Madeleine and Matthew than was necessary.

  I woke to the sounds of scratching and giggling outside my keyhole, to dead spiders laid out like a bouquet on my pillow. Though the course of the day they they would run past my door, footsteps shaking the walls and the floor until the very dust in the air shuddered with their movements. And then their nurse, Mrs. Prim, would find the pair. Each time, I heard her scold and sigh, her voice a fierce whisper that gave away her frustration with them.

  They ordered me to stay in my room until I was called. It was spoken as a temporary thing, that perhaps I was merely made to wait for an adjustment to be made in the household's routine. I passed the time without the aid of books or toys, waiting for each meal to arrive, brought by one of the maids who s
et the tray on my table and scurried away as if a devil was biting at their heels.

  I did everything to keep my mind occupied, for it was when I allowed my thoughts to wander that the clamour of voices sought to make themselves heard. And so I recited former lessons from memory, the kings and queens and prime ministers, snippets of Shakespeare and Donne I recalled from my father reading them aloud. And then breakfast and luncheon and a small supper, broken by counting the flowers on the yellowed wallpaper and the nails holding the edges of the floorboards in place.

  They called me on the third day. The housekeeper looked over my gown and asked if I had a better one tucked away. I replied that I did not, the finer ones all in inappropriate colors and styles. She huffed a little, mouth pursed and eyes fixed on me—blaming me for this inconvenience—before she searched the wardrobe, found a ribbon, and roughly pulled my hair back into a tight braid.

  She led me downstairs. I did not know why I was being summoned, but I was led to the main sitting room, the same space in which I'd been greeted with pursed lips and sneering faces. Aunt Debney sat in a chair near the fire, her feet propped up on a small, upholstered stool. She set down her work when I entered—some sort of sewing or embroidery—and kept her gaze on me while she nodded towards the housekeeper and dismissed her from the room.

  "Stand up straight," she told me. All the greeting I would receive, I supposed. "You favour your mother. Really, there is very little of my brother in your face. A pity, that." She picked up her sewing again and pinched the needle between her fingers. "You are eight years of age?"

  "Nine," I corrected.

  She looked up again, dark eyebrows arched over light brown eyes.

  "Ma'am," I amended.

  "I understand you did not have a governess?"

  "No, ma'am. I was to have one later this year, after my next birthday."

  Her nose wrinkled, brow furrowed either at an ill-favored stitch or my words. I could not be certain which had earned her ire. "I take you have settled in well enough?"

  Well enough. A phrase with enough room attached to allow me to give her the answer she wished without speaking an outright falsehood. "Yes, ma'am."

  "You are to remain in your room when visitors come to call. I would also prefer you refrain from playing with the children. They have…" Her head tilted first to one side then the other. "... delicate sensibilities. We have shielded them as best we could from all of the gossip currently surrounding you, and I will not have any hint of it repeated in their presence. Their curiosity, a facet I often do everything within my power to cultivate, is a thing in need of curbing when it comes to you."

  She returned to her sewing, her mouth pursed as she worked. In and out, in and out, the needle and thread sliding through the fabric. I did not know if that was all, if I had been dismissed without a word. So I stood there, in the middle of the room, my feet pinched in the plain black boots, my thumbs sliding idly over the thin strip of velvet trimming on the cuff of my sleeve.

  "You have three gowns, yes?"

  I blinked at her. When I did not immediately reply, she raised her head, hand poised over the next stitch to be made.

  "Black gowns," she reiterated. "Three of them?"

  "Yes, ma'am. One I had already. The other two were purchased for me before I left London."

  "More than enough, then, considering." Those brown eyes flicked back to her work. My father's eyes, I thought, and pushed the musing away before I could dwell on it and any hurt it could bring. "The color does not suit you, not at all. Of course, it's less punishment than you deserve."

  "What do you mean?" The question tumbled out, yet I felt no regret that I had not stopped it in time.

  But she did not answer, merely shook her head as she looked again at her stitching, turning it slightly towards the light from the window behind her. "Your mother, and that sister of hers…I know of their inclinations, those 'sittings', as they called them." Her gaze darted to me and back to her work. "I've no idea how far you've been corrupted, but I assure you now, there will be no such thing as attempting to talk to spirits or contact those who have died in this house. It is all devilry, and I will have nothing to do with it." Anything else she might have said, she tucked away, lips sealed tight between her teeth. "Back to your room, if you will."

  The housekeeper stood in the hall, chin held high and hands clasped over her waist when I found her. She nodded that same chin towards the stairs, and I obeyed, afraid even to slide my hand over the banister for fear it should draw some complaint from her. She accompanied me back to my room and saw me inside again, seated on the bed before she closed the door behind her. I waited for the click of the lock, would not have been surprised to hear it. Only her receding steps reached me through the door, then a thump and a shout from one of the children, from some other part of the house. They would no doubt come and find me now that there was no one to see them and catch them at their tricks.

  ***

  After a week, I was permitted more freedom around the house. I still did not take my meals with the rest of the family, nor did I have any lessons with the children. The latter I believed was less because of my aunt's continued insistence on keeping me from Madeleine and Matthew and more to do with the period of bereavement allotted to me.

  I would have preferred something to do, so when I was allowed to wander about—so long as I did not linger where my aunt or uncle or cousins were—I kept myself tucked away in the study, where there were at least a few books and paper and stubs of pencils kept in a desk beneath the window. Breakfast done away with, I walked down there, keeping to the back stairs, away from the nursery where I could hear my cousins reciting their lessons, from the front of the house where Aunt Debney welcomed her morning callers.

  The study was left cold, no fire lit, the lamps turned down. Uncle Gregory preferred to work in his office in the bank, and so this room, with its heavy, masculine furniture and dark wood panelling was left empty for the majority of the day. A book from the shelf, a few biscuits pilfered from the kitchen, and I settled into the largest chair, my feet hidden beneath my skirt, the end of my braid curling over my shoulder as I read.

  Hours slipped away. The cat, a ginger tabby whose name I did not know, sauntered in and leapt onto the arm of my chair, purring loudly before he walked around himself twice and laid down with his front paws on my wrist. I scratched at his ears, my eyes reading over the same line three times before any of it made an impact on my thoughts.

  With the cold and the quiet, the soft, contented rumble from the throat of the animal beside me, I could almost believe my mind was my own again. The horror I'd witnessed less than a fortnight before had passed into the realm of nightmare and forgotten tales, something too dark, too heinous to hold onto as truth.

  The door to the study opened, hinges creaking softly. My hand on the cat's head paused as my gaze abandoned the page of my book. The children crept into the room—I say 'children,' despite the fact they were only a year or two younger than myself, and Madeleine equal to me in height—making a great show of their furtive behavior, in order that I might better have my attention caught.

  As soon as they were certain they'd been sighted, Matthew straightened up, raising a head topped in dark, silky curls. "What are you doing in our father's room? You're not allowed to be in here."

  At the time, I commended myself for neither closing the book on my lap nor ceasing with my slow petting of the cat's head, though the creature's purring had quieted the moment my cousins entered the room. "I was not told I could not come in here." I did not elaborate that one of my instructions had been to avoid spending too much in their presence.

  "You're touching our things," Matthew went on. He approached me, bold and slightly imperious, and shoved the cat from the arm of the chair with his hand. "And he's not to be in here, either. Mrs. Prim says he'll claw up the furniture and leave his fleas everywhere."