The Silver Swan Read online

  ‘Go away,’ she had said. ‘Go away.’

  The invisible knuckles had rapped their contempt remorselessly and she knew that she was going to lose control if something did not happen to save her. She took her head from beneath the pillows and jumped out of bed, plunging headlong towards her door. She heard the sound stop and knew that the thing was going to follow her but she fled on down the stairs, and on to her father’s saloon where a light beneath the door told her that he was still awake.

  With the malevolence just behind her she flung herself through the entrance and then stopped short. For sitting opposite her father — his legs in their fine silk stockings thrust out before him — and sipping a glass of ruby-red port, was her uncle Joseph and standing a few feet behind him and almost hidden in the shadows was Sootface the Negro.

  ‘Oh help me,’ she called out and running forward from its icy presence she collapsed sobbing at her uncle’s feet. And as if he knew something, as if he — with all the mysteries of that strange coast of Africa stirring in his blood and his ancient memory — was more aware than others, Sootface leapt in fright and uttered a cry. Joseph looked at him questioningly and the slave simply said, ‘The evil eye, Master. It was here.’

  John began to say, ‘Melior Mary, this has gone far...’ but Joseph interrupted him.

  ‘Be quiet, John. Can’t you see the child is half demented with fright? There’s something badly wrong.’

  ‘Joseph, she has been complaining for three weeks of a noise but nobody else hears a murmur of it. It is some childish prank gone hysteric and that’s the truth of it.’

  ‘Be damned,’ said Joseph standing up and putting Melior Mary to sit in his chair. ‘Have you seen her hair? Are you blind as well as foolish?’

  ‘I’ll remind you,’ answered John coldly, ‘that you stay in my house as a guest.’

  For answer Joseph merely picked up the candle tree and held it close to Melior Mary’s head. The rays fell on the lustrous hair where it sprouted as thick and as dark as her father’s and there amidst the jet was the unmistakable sparkle of silver.

  ‘What is it?’ said John. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘She’s going white. It is a condition associated with shock. Now what do you believe?’

  John merely grunted and by way of answer said, ‘Did Elizabeth send you here?’

  ‘Yes, of course she did. She had a premonition of this and she’s been proved right, I’d say.’

  Rather reluctantly John nodded then turned his attention to Melior Mary where she sat dwarfed and shrunken by the great chair. And the memory of her like that — the childish face pinched and haggard with suffering and made shadowy by the scarlet flames of the fire — remained with him till his last day.

  ‘What is happening to you, my daughter?’ he said.

  ‘I am haunted,’ she answered slowly, ‘and if something is not done I shall die soon because it is a wild terrible thing.’

  There was silence in the room broken only by the crack of burning logs and the spit of summer rain coming down the chimney and hissing onto the fire. Then Sootface spoke out of the darkness.

  ‘Let me keep vigil with her, Master. Let me wait with her until her mother can be sent for.’

  ‘Her mother will never set foot in this house again!’

  ‘Many years ago, Master, when I was a tiny boy — before the slavers came to take us — I knew a young girl who had a demon of her own. Nobody else saw it or heard it but nonetheless her father believed what she said to him. And he convinced himself that the house was haunted not the child — and so they moved. He was a poor man and he gave up everything to take his daughter to a safe place. For three months they had peace and then one day it found her again. She was fourteen years old, Master, and she hanged herself.’

  John hunched his shoulders irritably.

  ‘What are you trying to say to me, black man?’

  ‘Only that these children’s ghosts are to be taken seriously.’

  John sipped his port.

  ‘Is this some damned scheme of yours, Joseph? Do you want me to take Elizabeth back, is that it? Because if so it won’t work, do you hear?’

  Joseph went suddenly and dramatically white to the lips and his eyes were as hard as swords as he said, ‘I can see that you are an even greater fool than I imagined possible. For your future I give not a damn in Hell but to see you sacrifice your child to your monstrous love affair with yourself is beyond the limits of human endurance.’

  And he was gone from the room, his slave behind him, without another word. Melior Mary and John sat looking at one another, the effect of what had just happened making itself felt on both of them in different ways.

  Eventually he said gruffly, ‘You had better go back to bed.’

  She did not so much faint as crumple up like a worn-out doll. She had no energy even to cry, merely putting her head in her hands, her body heaving with silent sobs. John leaned forward and put his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘I shall come with you, Melior Mary,’ he said slowly and surprisingly. ‘Let this thing face me if it dare.’

  She got up from her chair, moving painfully like an old woman, and put her arms about him remembering, as she did so, that time in the Great Hall long ago when he had held her high and shown her the stained glass. The faint smell of outside, of the countryside, was still about him and she felt her love for him flow — just as it had then — despite his stubbornness and strange lack of sensitivity.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  It was very still in Sutton Place as he carried her up to her bedroom, his personal servant following behind them with a pair of candelabra held high over his head. It seemed to Melior Mary, her eyes half closing in the sleep that had been so long denied her, that the malevolence was watching them in the shadows, but by the time she reached her room even this dread thought had gone for she slept peacefully in her father’s arms.

  John put her down carefully on her bed, drawing the curtains round her. Then he took off his full-skirted coat and his waistcoat and dropped them with his wig onto a chair so that he stood in his shirt sleeves — his close cropped hair dark in the moonlight — gazing out over the gardens. He stayed for a long time like this, his mind racing over things long ago put into the back of his brain — tales of the curse of the Westons, or rather of those who dwelled in Sutton Place, and how happiness could never be their lot. He thought of his father and wondered what had happened to him long ago; a thing so bad that he would not speak of it even to his own son. And thus with his mind on a treadmill he eventually sat down and let his head sink forward onto his chest.

  At exactly two o’clock Melior Mary screamed wildly and shouted, ‘It’s here.’

  John sprang up and threw back the curtains of the four-poster. His child was sitting upright, wide-eyed and terrified, but of anything else there was no sign. Then, without any warning a pool of water appeared on the carpet before him and he himself heard the sound of gushing as another pool became visible by the door. Finally he witnessed what he would not have believed if another had told him. Melior Mary’s bedclothes were picked up as if by a hurricane and flung across the room.

  ‘In the name of Christ begone, thou fiend,’ he shouted. ‘In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost leave this room.’

  There was a moment’s pause and then Melior Mary heard that awful rustling gait go through the unopened door and start its slow progress along the corridor. But even as John put his arms round her to hold her tightly to his chest they heard a sound. In the Long Gallery an object crashed to the floor, followed by another.

  ‘Is it still here?’ said John. ‘Is it still in Sutton Place?’

  Melior Mary nodded her head, her lips forming words so faint that John had to bend his ear close in order to catch them.

  ‘It hates you,’ she said. ‘It will be revenged because of you.’

  He who was rarely frightened went pale.

  ‘Then God protect us both,’ he sai
d.

  *

  ‘...and if he won’t allow you back then I shall take the child from him by force and there’s an end to it.’

  Joseph stood in Elizabeth’s little parlour, an elegant elbow leaning on the mantelpiece, his wig powdered and curled, his clothes a blaze of cinnamon and maroon yet his eyes — belying all his rake of fashion appearance — as hard and glittering as facets of emerald.

  ‘But I do not wish to live with John Weston again. All I want is to save Melior Mary,’ Elizabeth answered him rather angrily.

  Joseph gave her a very straight look.

  ‘I think the two things may be inseparable but in any event there is no time to lose. If the man won’t come to his senses and send for a priest I hold out little hope for her.’

  Elizabeth went white and Joseph shifted his weight impatiently.

  ‘You are being very difficult Elizabeth. Get into my carriage now and go to your child. You have no choice.’

  She hesitated. She was torn with the two oldest loves in the world — a man and a child — and to worsen the situation Pope, the brilliant sprite, had become like a son to her, running to her arms for protection when the world became too much for him.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘John would not let me in.’

  ‘God in Heaven,’ Joseph said loudly, ‘you are making difficulties where there are none. I don’t know which of you is the more impossible — you or your self-opinionated husband. Good day to you, Elizabeth.’

  And he swept from the room, the trembling of his hand on the bejewelled walking cane betraying his anger more clearly than any words. In the sudden silence Elizabeth heard him clatter into the street, shout at Sootface, and slam the door of his carriage. Then the horses’ feet were straining at the cobbles and he was gone.

  Elizabeth never moved. She sat like a statue staring out of the window, not seeing the great castle that loomed over her house and all the others, nor the patch of brilliant summer sky behind it. She had no sense of time, knowing only that her life had reached its watershed. That in some way that would shortly be made clear, she would see that everything had been leading up to this moment, and that the path she trod from now on would lead not only her but those around her to their destinies. She was not surprised to hear Joseph’s carriage return, hear him walk slowly into the house, mutter to Clopper and then come and stand silently in her doorway.

  She did not turn at first, still so acutely aware of fate’s thin finger stretching out to touch her. And when she did finally move her head and see that it was John standing there, and not Joseph at all she felt the constricting chill of shock but no accompanying surprise. They gave each other a long, deep look. It had been three years to the month since they had last met.

  She saw things about him that she would not have believed possible. That his eyes were puffy and red and if he had been anyone else other than John Weston she would have thought that he had been weeping; that he came bare headed, his thick short hair dark about his face; that he had not changed his shirt and a button hung loose on his coat. He turned the hat in his hands awkwardly as if it helped him somehow to speak.

  ‘Elizabeth, I...’

  She stood up and he realized that she was tinier than he had remembered — a small, fair figurine of a woman.

  ‘I...’

  ‘It is about Melior Mary, is it not?’

  He dropped his gaze to the floor at which he stared fixedly and said gruffly, ‘She needs you. I fear for her. Last night...so terrible...I can’t...’

  He dashed his hand across his eyes.

  ‘Forgive me. I am so tired.’

  ‘What happened, John?’

  He looked at her again, neither of them moving by so much as an inch.

  ‘Melior Mary is haunted...’

  ‘I know. Joseph has been to see me.’

  ‘Last night this ghost...demon...went crazed. It displaced all the furniture in the Gallery, tore down paintings, defaced those of my ancestor Sir Francis and his wife — he who died with Anne Boleyn — and threw books to the floor. I told the thing to go in the name of Our Lord — and then she called out for you, Elizabeth. I am asking you, for our daughter’s sake, to...’

  He could not say the words. He stood before her humbled. For the first time in her life she saw the vulnerability, the pathos of John Weston.

  ‘I’ll come home,’ she said.

  Still he did not move but looked her straight in the eye and she saw that he had suffered enormously to bring himself so low in humility.

  ‘And what of Pope?’

  ‘I shall write to him today. I shall never see him again. But John...’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Let it be as if Pope never was.’

  But there John could not control events because, though he and Elizabeth vowed never to mention the poet’s name again, the power that dwelled in the little crooked body could never be forgotten by them or anyone else.

  John took a pace towards her and stretched out his hand awkwardly, like a blind man. She gently rested hers on his arm and wondered if the change in him would remain and as if reading her thoughts he said, ‘You’ll find me different, I promise.’

  And as he bent to kiss her on the lips she knew that she was truly going home at last.

  4

  ‘I adjure thee, O serpent of old, by the judge of the living and the dead; by the creator of the world who hath power to cast into hell, that thou depart forthwith from this house.’

  The exorcist stood in the Middle Enter — the name by which the great doors that led into Sutton Place had been known since the time the house was built — and looked about him. He knew, had realized from the moment he set foot in the place the night before, that he was in the presence of evil and that the frightened girl who had been introduced to him was the nucleus of the infestation. So much so that he was half expecting her to appear now as haunted children often did when he began the solemn ritual of conjuration of spirits.

  ‘He that commands thee, accursed demon, is He that commanded the winds, and the sea and the storm. He that commands thee, is He that ordered thee to be hurled down from the heights of heaven into the lower parts of the earth...’

  Something was moving, he knew it.

  ‘He that commands thee is He that bade thee depart from Him...’

  She was hidden somewhere and watching his every move.

  ‘Hearken, then, Satan, and fear. Get thee gone, vanquished and cowed, when thou art bidden in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ who will come to judge the living and the dead and all the world by fire. Amen.’

  He deliberately swept his hand upward in a gesture that set his emerald ring ablaze as he made a triple sign of the cross and, much as he thought, the sparkle of the jewel made her crane her neck. She was in the musicians’ galleries above him. He could just see the top of her head. As he always did in such a case he continued with the ceremony apparently unaware of her presence.

  He had been a very young priest at York Minster when he had first been called out to exorcise an evil agency from a house. There had been a child present then — a young boy — who had been dragged from his bed by the neck and pinched till the skin broke by his invisible persecutor. But it was only after another two years, and several more exorcisms of the same type, that it occurred to him that a child must always be present for this particular kind of haunting to take place. It was as if they were the unconscious attraction, the force which gave the malevolence its power. After that he had begun to concentrate on the children — praying for them, blessing them, making up his own ritual — cleansing them as well as the house. And it was only then that his exorcisms became famous. For he succeeded where others failed: he had stumbled on the way to banish the notoriously persistent demons that plagued the young. After a while he became known as the Stalking Priest and requests for his help began to come from further afield than York and its immediate surroundings. He was released from his other duties in the Minster by the Archbishop himself in ord
er to become a travelling exorcist.

  He had often wished that the law of God did not forbid the marriage of priests for he loved children, had a manner of dealing with them that was partly childlike, partly stern and withdrawn. In this he was aided to an extent by his appearance for though he was tall and thin, with the face and delicate hands of an ascetic, his smile lit up his whole appearance and made him seem boyish.

  He had once had the misfortune to smile too much at a seventeen-year-old girl plagued with a cruel ghost and she had fallen in love with him. And he, after wrestling with a conscience greater than any devil he had ever encountered, had reciprocated. He would never forget the shame of the passion, his disgust with his longing, his attempt to thrust away desire for her. But in the end his instinct had won and they had — virgins both — gone together to a bed of love and joy. The punishment had been almighty; his exorcism failed, the evil returned more violently than before and she, bereft of hope, had jumped from the top of Scarborough’s cliffs, crunching onto the rocks below. He had made confession direct to the Archbishop and been surprised at the response.

  ‘My son, you were tempted by the Devil and punished by God. I do not intend to inflict more upon you, nor do I intend to deprive you of your cloth. I have prayed for guidance and it is God’s will that you should continue to scourge evil from the souls of frightened children. Go hence in a State of Grace.’

  But though his sin might be confessed and forgiven how could he help his thoughts turning in the midnight watch to that fragile body lying like a broken flower on the rocks that had served as her executioner? How could he ever forget the touch of her hand, the turn of her head, the intoxication of awakenment, his metamorphosis from celibate to lover? And though nothing would ever dismiss the memory and though it was his living torment, he had no wish for it to go. His dreams of her were all that heartened him in a rigid life devoted to calling out the devil.

  The child above him was beginning to show herself as he left the Great Hall and started his slow ascent of the staircase, the skirts of his vestments rustling like leaves. As he went he recited the first five of the Gradual Psalms and sprinkled holy water about him, looking neither to right nor left yet aware that she was crouching, terrified, just behind the curtain that enclosed the musicians’ gallery in this part of the house. With a measured purposeful tread he began to walk down the corridor to where the drapery hung, crimson and still. He could almost feel the beating of her heart as his footsteps deliberately slowed down.