Blight E-Book

Tom Carlisle

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 414

Beschreibung

A brilliantly atmospheric horror novel about people disappearing in a small, claustrophobic village and whispers of a terrifying local legend called the tall man. Perfect for fans of The Loney and Devil's Day. 1897. James Harringley is summoned home from London to his rambling family mansion in the north of England. His father is sick, deranged, and James must return, confronting the horrors he tried to forget: the labyrinthine house, the madness and secrets which poison their bloodline and, most frightening of all, the spectre of the tall man – an eerie visage who promises to whisk children away and make them royalty in the land of Faery. James returns to the house and finds his father and brother at war, and the nebulous substance of his childhood brought into unbearable relief. He remembers the whispers about the tall man. But can he trust his own memories? Then the groundskeeper Janey has had her baby kidnapped, one of many child disappearances connected with the house and the nearby village. There are those who blame the tall man, while others believe a more earthly culprit is responsible. James must sift through the ramblings of his father, the scepticism of his power-hungry brother and the uncertain fabric of his own memories to discover the truth.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

‘Tom Carlisle combines his gothic elements – the cursed landowning family, the uncanny pact, the lurking primal presence, the dark side of faery, the hero’s reluctant return to his roots – into a potent magical brew often evocative of Machen but grippingly original.’

Ramsey Campbell

‘An intriguing debut.’

Priya Sharma, Shirley Jackson and British Fantasy award-winning author of All the Fabulous Beasts

‘There are worlds beneath worlds in Tom Carlisle’s compelling debut novel, which evokes Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow in its sustained Gothic creepiness and its undercurrent of unspeakable cosmic horror.’

Tim Major, author of Snakeskins

‘An intriguing folk horror novel, with a Faustian twist and a family drama at its core – right up my street!’

Paul Kane, award-winning and #1 bestselling author of Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell, Before and Arcana

‘Blight embroiders an intriguing historical setting around a primal fear, to create a lurching nightmare. A splendid addition to the annals of truly nasty folklore.’

E. Saxey, author of Unquiet

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Blight

Print edition ISBN: 9781803360720

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803360737

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First Titan edition: October 2023

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

© Tom Carlisle 2023.

Tom Carlisle asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

To Mel –

I finally wrote you that ghost story

“What profit is there in my blood, when Igo down to the pit?

Shall the dust praise thee?”

PSALM 30:9

1

1883

THE LETTER came to the house he shared with Gabriel. A timid knock at the door, the postboy slipping the envelope through the crack to James. It was from Harringley Manor, he knew that right away: he saw it in the smoothness of the paper, its pointless opulence.

He slipped it into his jacket pocket, hoping Gabriel would stay dozing a little longer. James knew how Gabriel would react if he saw it. He’d tell James to throw it away unopened, might even take it from him – gently, tenderly, but forcefully. Maybe he’d be right.

But Gabriel thought that throwing away your history was easy. For him it was: he didn’t have the weight of a family name behind him, the shadow of a great estate over his life. James knew what his father would think if he could see this neat little two-roomed apartment – to him it would seem poky, cluttered, a far cry from the Manor’s Tudor grandeur.

This block had been built with high ideals, to provide a superior dwelling for Newcastle’s working men so they in turn could work for the good of the city. That was the vision, although James’s father wouldn’t have seen it that way. He’d have seen a red-brick building full of strivers, upstarts – men just a stone’s throw from the Quayside with ideas above their station.

As he passed through the living room James picked up a small and rather tatty yellow grammar book from the end-table by the door, tucking it into his inside pocket. It was a gift for the coffee-seller. Its shabbiness bothered Gabriel: he and James had worked hard to carve out a life for themselves here, but sometimes all this still felt like a façade, a veneer of respectability that could crumble at a single misstep.

James had seen Gabriel’s displeasure when he returned from work yesterday holding the book. Gabriel hadn’t said anything, but James had bristled at his silent judgement nonetheless: what was the point of reinventing yourself, he wanted to ask, if you couldn’t reinvent yourself as someone you liked? But there’d been no point picking that fight again. After all, a life like theirs was built on compromises – and James was well practised at holding his tongue.

Outside the city was stirring – and although the sun was yet to reach their block, there was already a steady stream of men heading up the steep hill towards the city centre. The street was dotted with coffee-sellers brewing up over their braziers, and bakers’ boys trying to get close enough to the flames to warm themselves without being obvious. James pulled his jacket tighter around him – it was smart but not especially warm, another concession to looking respectable.

For the past six months he’d bought his coffee from a boy by the name of William, whose efforts to better himself were painfully obvious. There was nothing casual about him: from his deferential manner to his poorly concealed Geordie accent, and his damp, recently laundered clothes steaming in the heat from the fire, everything screamed of self-consciousness. It was all so familiar to James. Even after seven years here, he still remembered what it had been like as a newcomer, trying to convince the city’s businessmen to take him on as a clerk and dreading the darkness of the slums if they refused.

William was already lifting the coffee pot as James approached with two mugs in hand, and today James handed over the grammar book along with his payment. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Sorry it’s not in better condition.’

The boy took the little yellow book, turning it over in his hands and frowning. ‘Much obliged, sir,’ he mumbled, nodding in gratitude but not meeting James’s eye. ‘What’s it about?’

‘Could be just what you need,’ said James, himself a little awkward. ‘Less exciting than a novel, but a damn sight better for helping you understand how to blend in.’

William met his eye now, his expression quizzical. ‘Blend in, sir?’ Behind his eyes there was a glimmer of fear, as though he were a frightened animal recognising an unseen predator.

James put a hand on his shoulder. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘You’re doing well. But—’ He closed his eyes, aware of what Gabriel would say if he heard James speaking like this. ‘Let me know if I can help in any way. It’s a hard thing, what you’re doing.’

The boy stuck out his lower lip and nodded. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said, thoughtful. ‘Thank you very much.’ He sniffed, tucked the yellow book into his inside pocket. ‘Enjoy your coffee.’

Back home in the firelight, James removed the letter from his pocket. The hand was his brother’s.

James,I’m writing with a heavy burden. Father’s not himself, & he hasn’t been for some time. His mind isn’t what it was. Last year he stepped down as a magistrate, & now he barely leaves the house. He’s confused, agitated even.

God only knows I’d hoped never to hear the Tall Man’s name again – my hand trembles even to write it – but I’m afraid that, in his old age, Father has returned to those superstitions, & I fear I’m not strong enough to help him back to sanity alone.

Perhaps you buried this stage of your life long ago. I would not blame you for that. But if you retain any love for this family, for your father, I urge you to return as quickly as you’re able. I fear that Father may not have long left, & although he may be beyond help, I hope we can yet save his legacy.

Enough. I have made my plea, & I trust it to God. I pray this finds you, & that you see fit to set aside whatever bitterness still dwells in you in pursuit of reconciliation. Send word of your coming when you’re able.

I remain your brother,

Edward.

He recognised that tone right away – it was the house speaking, the voice in the back of his head he spent every day trying to bury. Here in Newcastle, people spoke to him plainly, without that peculiar blend of assertiveness and deference; that was why he liked it.

But he heard the fear behind Edward’s words too, and knew right away that this was a letter he couldn’t bury. Maybe Edward didn’t understand what it meant, but James did. If the Tall Man had returned, if his father had truly seen him again, then all his family’s efforts had failed – and the void was reaching out into the world once more.

*   *   *

Half an hour later James was shoving clothes into his travelling bag, Gabriel watching from the doorway; no matter how casual Gabriel’s posture, he couldn’t hide the tension in his jaw and shoulders. ‘Don’t do this, James,’ he said, his careful tone a little strained. ‘You’re out of that world. Don’t put yourself back into it.’

James only glanced up, keen not to meet Gabriel’s eye for too long. He couldn’t bear that look of concern. ‘I have to, Gabriel,’ he said. ‘Pass me my stick.’

Gabriel held out the gnarled, twisted thing across outstretched palms, as he had the day he’d given it to James. It was still the most beautiful thing James owned. ‘You broke with them once,’ Gabriel said, holding onto the stick for a second longer than he needed to. ‘No sense in trying to mend it now.’

James shook it off. ‘They’re not bad people,’ he said, searching for his shaving brush, his razor. ‘Just insular.’

Gabriel scowled. ‘You told me you were done with them,’ he said. ‘Looks to me like your brother only had to ask and you’re on a coach back to Yorkshire.’

James paused and studied Gabriel’s face. The familiar contours he loved so much: the harsh line of stubble at Gabriel’s jaw, and those resolute, pained eyes, as if the whole world could be conquered with enough effort. It was madness to leave him. And yet. ‘That’s not fair,’ James said eventually. ‘My father’s in trouble, Gabriel. Real trouble.’

‘He broke your leg so badly you couldn’t walk for a month. You don’t owe him anything.’

‘He’s still my father.’

Gabriel shook his head. ‘You promised me you wouldn’t go back, James. You swore.’

‘I didn’t promise you that,’ James said. ‘You heard what you wanted to hear.’

He saw Gabriel flinch at that, and he felt dreadful. But he could see Gabriel recalling their conversation too, and realising his error: there was a resigned look in his eyes. ‘You know I can’t lose you,’ Gabriel said finally, holding James’s gaze. ‘I told you that.’ He paused, sighed. ‘So help me understand. You’ve spent the best part of a decade building yourself up from the ground after what your father did to you. After what that place did. Why the hell would you want to go back?’

James ran his hands through his hair, trying to justify the decision to himself as much as to Gabriel. ‘He’s an honourable man,’ he said eventually. ‘Fought to keep the mine open for as long as he could. Put himself forward as a magistrate when the seams ran dry. He’s spent the past twenty years trying to make sure that village is safe and prosperous.’ He sighed. ‘He has his flaws. But what he did, he did to protect me and Edward.’

‘That’s exactly the kind of statement that tells me you shouldn’t go back there.’

‘Gabriel, I have to go.’ He could feel a headache coming on. There was already too much to think about. He didn’t need this too. ‘I suppose I’d best send him a telegram. Let him know to expect me.’

But Gabriel was still brooding. ‘If you were going back to cut his throat—’

‘Listen,’ James said. ‘My father spent years telling Edward and me to beware of the Tall Man. Years.’ At that name, James felt a familiar vertiginous terror – as though by speaking of him, he might be summoned here. ‘Now my father’s gone looking for the Tall Man, although God only knows why. If he’s done that, then things are worse up there than I ever imagined.’

‘They’re not your responsibility anymore.’

‘You don’t know what it’s like growing up in a family like mine,’ he said, his voice pained. ‘Families like mine have a duty to the land and its people. You’re connected to them.’ He rolled his eyes, trying to bridge the gap with this man who was so unlike him. ‘I don’t suppose you’d know what I mean if I called it noblesse oblige?’

That almost made Gabriel smile. ‘As if you even had to ask.’

‘People rely on families like mine. They look up to them. Even now.’ He paused, not wanting to catch the look of disdain in Gabriel’s eye. ‘If my father’s in trouble, it’s not just him who’s affected. You know that.’

They were silent a moment – both thinking of the day, not two weeks ago, when they’d stumbled through a crack in the world and seen the void first-hand. It was coming for them. There was no longer any denying that.

‘And what about your duty to me?’

‘Don’t do that, Gabriel. Please.’

‘You say you owe this to them,’ said Gabriel, crossing the room to James and putting both hands on his shoulders. ‘But your life is here, James. With me. Don’t forget that.’

‘Never.’

2

BY THAT afternoon James was jammed into the corner of a stagecoach, wedged onto a bench with four other men in various stages of disarray: factory workers, judging by their grimy hands, no doubt heading out to Yorkshire to seek work in the clean air.

He felt a deep and lingering tiredness in his bones. Through the window came flickers of a landscape half-remembered. Long, straight roads disappearing into the horizon. A steep valley, with sharp rocks buried in a blanket of heather that was just beginning to bloom. There were houses pinned back against the moor, their doors and windows small, their stones weathered by the years.

On the roadside were the skeletons of sheep, bleached by the sun, their bones angular pictures of agony. Men in rags working the fields. Vast towers of stone James supposed were cairns – he didn’t recall them being so imposing. How much loss it must have taken to create such a monument: a village destroyed in a landslide, a whole town taken by pestilence.

The priest used to speak of home as a sanctuary: a place with doors you could shut against the world, a place of rest and refuge. Man is forever restless until he finds his home in God, that was how he put it. But the only place James had ever felt that was with Gabriel.

Never here: not in these hills, beneath this bloody sunset.

James’s last memory of home was a door in the walls of his adolescent bedroom: a rectangle of pure darkness, the wood panelling set to one side, revealing a tunnel stretching impossibly deep into the guts of the house. He remembered running for it, running with a sense of elation so strong that it could almost have been terror – knowing how close he was to being free of that place—

And then somebody had grabbed him roughly from behind and when he turned, there was his father’s red face, and the mahogany cane cracking through the air. The first blow knocked the wind from him, but that was only the beginning of his agony. Harder and harder the blows came – into his shoulders, his sides, his head – until, finally, he found merciful oblivion.

He assumed after that his father had stopped. James spent the next two weeks in bed, reading as best he could through a black eye, but it was six more weeks before he could walk on his right leg – even now it was still slightly crooked, and ached on cold winter nights. He and his father never spoke of that night again: he wondered if the old man even remembered it.

*   *   *

He spent a sleepless night in an inn outside Castleton and awoke stiff and cold, but the coach soon sorted that out. Its windows were steamy before he even got in and after less than an hour there was sweat plastering his hair to his head. All around was the smell of unwashed men. Shit and mud and piss and blood.

Everything he’d brought from the house reminded him of Gabriel. The yellowing pamphlet with its story of a subterranean world, the pages now soft and crumbling. The sketchbooks filled with their angular caricatures of the neighbours. And the stick, of course. That beautiful, twisted thing was the first thing he reached for in the mornings.

If only he’d realised how alone he’d feel without Gabriel by his side. But Gabriel was a hundred miles away now – a lifetime away, at least while the railways stopped at the moors.

James wondered if anyone in Yorkshire would know him when they saw him. His case bore a different name, and the emblem of a different family – he’d bought it for sixpence, in the corner of a public house, on his first week in the city – and these days he had a new voice too. Coarse and abrasive, filled with the flattened vowels and rough slang he’d learned in Newcastle. He’d been using it so long now it felt it had always been his. He had the same old face, though, albeit nicked with scars, and gaunt with hunger and sleeplessness. When he looked in the mirror he couldn’t see much resemblance to his father, except a certain sly smile when he got his way. He supposed that meant he looked more like his mother, not that he could remember any of the paintings of her now. Supposedly they weren’t a good likeness anyway.

Once more he removed Edward’s letter from his pocket, and reread it carefully. He’d been foolish to come back here. Haste and grief had made him sentimental.

But he couldn’t forget what lurked beneath the soil. The hum of the void, its monstrous force, drawing the world down into itself. The Tall Man its unlikely warden.

All those years his father thought himself wiser than the Tall Man. Thought he could defy those iron rules, save this place from darkness by his own strength. He’d believed he could teach them a better way. How wrong he’d been.

The view from the coach window should have been charming. The stagecoach rolled over the moors and into the village, its long road bordered on one side by houses and, on the other, falling away to the village green. In places, James could even see the skeletal frames of several massive new structures, each of them a monument to hope – and then, lining the hillside dead ahead of him, were the woods. The sky was clear, the birds singing, and all James could think about was the blood he’d seen shed on this street, the terror he’d felt amongst those trees.

He’d thought he remembered this place, but his memories had been only pencil sketches, their shadows a pale imitation of the greater dark.

When he saw the house at the top of the hill, its silhouette vast and austere against the darkening sky, he felt his skin prickle.

It was just as it had always been; of course it was.

3

WHEN THE coach crested the hill, James saw Edward waiting by the gatehouse, his long coat pulled tight and his arms folded to his chest. He hung back, motionless, while the coachman hauled James’s travelling case from the roof in a single swift motion and set it down on the ground. He seemed content to let James bear the weight of his own luggage – but then James supposed he shouldn’t have expected to be welcomed home like the prodigal son.

As a boy Edward had been ruddier and more robust than James, a stocky blonde boy who always seemed better fed. Now he too seemed a little worn thin, the hollows in his cheeks deeper than they once were, the skull beneath his skin easier to discern. Age had softened the distinction between them, pulled their faces into a warped mirror image of one another.

Edward was studying James too, taking in his cheap work suit, apparently unsure whether to offer a hand or to try and embrace his brother. He didn’t look much like he wanted to do either. Eventually he stepped forward from where he’d been leaning against the wall and gave James a slight, formal nod.

‘Thank you for coming,’ he said. ‘I didn’t expect you to arrive so soon.’

‘I’m grateful you let me know. I’ve been away a long time.’

‘Yes, you weren’t that easy to track down.’ Edward sounded prickly, almost offended.

‘I wasn’t trying to be,’ said James, trying to sound conciliatory. He’d not come here to pick a fight. ‘I didn’t leave home under the best terms.’

‘I suppose not. It wasn’t the easiest place to grow up.’

The house lay behind Edward, at the end of a long driveway. James couldn’t see it, but he could feel it. ‘Tell me about Father,’ he said, not wanting to let the silence linger too long. ‘How is he? What can I do?’

‘You remember how he used to warn us about the Tall Man? Told us he was a liar, a curse on this place, that we shouldn’t even entertain the thought of him in case he appeared?’ Edward was silent, letting the memory hang in the air.

‘You think he’s changed his tune,’ said James eventually. ‘He’s starting to reconsider.’

Edward nodded. ‘For the past three months he’s been preoccupied with the Tall Man. Obsessed with how this place has changed since you left, and how he’s to blame.’ He studied the village below him, little pinpricks of light among the blackness. ‘There’s a darkness here,’ he said, ‘I can’t deny it. But now he seems to be – seeking it out.’

‘What’s he seen? What’s happened?’

‘The servants say he’s taken to wandering at night. When they find him, there’s mud on his feet, and more than once he’s vanished for hours without leaving the slightest trace…’ Edward trailed off. ‘I thought all of this had stopped when you left us,’ he said after a second or two.

‘Do you think he’s trying to get to the woods? To… him?’

At this Edward glanced around, as though realising where they were for the first time. As he did, a sudden, horrible flicker of memory assailed James: he was sheltering on the edge of the woods in a storm, not more than twelve years old, and a figure was coming towards him through the sheeting rain, tall and thin. He felt a roiling in his guts, a nausea that had to show on his face.

‘Let’s head on up,’ Edward said. ‘I expect you’re hungry. Most days the coach rattles by here an hour or so earlier than this.’ He set off towards the house at pace, leaving James to stump after him.

Everywhere James looked there was decay. What grass he could see was patchy and brown, the trees gnarled and twisted. The long pathway was lined with rotting shrubs; where James recalled bright colours, now there were only wilted leaves at the end of long, drooping stems. He could make out dandelions in the shrubbery, their bright yellow heads bobbing in the breeze, swaying in a hypnotic dance. Ragweed, nettles, a great clamour of weeds snarling over one another. The air was heavy with the smell of rot.

‘I don’t remember all this being so overgrown,’ he said when he caught up with Edward, but Edward seemed not to hear him, so determined was he to get inside. A short way up the driveway, James came to a halt, his leg in agony.

‘Edward, wait,’ he called, and to James’s relief his brother stopped too. His shoulders were slumped in a sigh. ‘I can’t do this.’ Edward still hadn’t said anything, and James had the sense he was trying to muster his courage. ‘There’s more, isn’t there?’ he said.

Edward turned to face him. ‘You remember Janey?’

James searched his memory; so much of what he remembered from his time here was hazy. Eventually it came to him. ‘The groundskeeper’s daughter? Stocky little thing?’

‘The groundskeeper herself, now, actually,’ said Edward, raising an eyebrow. ‘Her father passed away a few years ago.’

Another flash of memory: finding Edward in the nursery, watching from the floor as a young woman sliced the flesh of her arm from wrist to elbow, her face placid. He swallowed back his nausea. ‘Like the – like the governesses?’

‘No,’ said Edward curtly. ‘His heart gave out. He’d been unwell for a while.’

‘Thank God,’ said James, a little shakily. ‘Still – I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be,’ said Edward. ‘It’s not as though we were close.’

Of course they weren’t. ‘The estate’s a lot for a young girl to take on,’ said James. ‘Hardly surprising if it got the better of her.’

‘Actually, Janey was excellent,’ said Edward, a little affronted. ‘Until she got herself pregnant.’ Edward left the statement hanging, as though he’d have liked to disown it.

‘And the child—’ James swallowed hard. ‘Did she leave when it was born?’

Edward shook his head, a brisk, irritated gesture. ‘The child’s gone,’ he said, kicking at the dirt. ‘And Janey too. She took off a couple of weeks ago, and took the boy with her.’

‘Do you think something… happened to him?’

‘God knows. Maybe.’ He sighed. ‘Or maybe she got out. Like you did. Ran away.’ They were in view of the house now, its imposing frontage casting an even deeper shadow over them. In the gloom his brother looked haunted, his cheeks gaunt and his face hollow, as though something were eating him from the inside out.

‘Is there any chance it was the old man’s?’ said James, recalling the night he’d stumbled across his father in the village, a local woman on his arm. Until then he’d never realised the old man had desires. ‘Was he tupping her?’

Edward winced at his brother’s coarseness. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I don’t mean to sound callous. But this isn’t really about Janey either.’ He folded his arms, apparently deeply uncomfortable. ‘You’re an uncle,’ he said. ‘You’ll meet Sophia – my wife – up at the house.’ He wouldn’t meet James’s eye, sounded almost bitter. ‘You’ve a nephew. He’s nearly three months old now.’

‘My God,’ said James, dizzy with sudden emotion. ‘I didn’t even know you’d married – I mean, congratulations, for heaven’s sake – that’s wonderful news.’

‘Is it?’ said Edward. ‘Because I’m not so sure.’ His voice trembled. ‘Do you think the Tall Man will stop if he’s got Janey’s child?’

So that was what Edward wanted: reassurance. He looked utterly dejected, but James had lived in this house long enough that he knew there was no point in trying to comfort him. ‘You want me to tell you he can be stopped,’ he said, ‘but I’m not sure he can.’ He could feel the terror welling up in him again – he’d swallowed it for so long, but never entirely buried it. ‘If he’s back, Edward – if he wants your son – then you have to get out of this place once and for all. There’s no other way.’

‘Of course,’ said Edward with a resigned nod. ‘I was worried that’s what you’d say.’

‘Is that why you’re still here? Duty?’

Edward glanced down in the direction of the village, now no longer visible beneath the thick canopy of trees. ‘You know that if we leave this place, it’ll be the end of it. God only knows how Father’s been keeping it all afloat since the mine closed.’ He rubbed his temple. ‘Half the people here work on our land. If we abandon them for the city it’ll devastate them.’

James felt as though he’d lived through this argument a hundred times. ‘And what about your duty to your wife, or your son? Have you thought about how living here will impact them? This place would be bleak enough without the Tall Man.’

Edward’s pained expression suggested he’d thought about this more than he’d like. ‘What will it look like if we run, James?’ He shook his head. ‘If we abandon the village?’

‘When did you last go down there? I don’t know that those villagers think about the Harringleys all that much, if at all.’

‘That may well be true,’ said Edward with a little nod. ‘Still. Our presence here counts.’

‘Only if you’ve got something worth living up to.’

That stung Edward, James could tell. There was a tension at his jaw now, a defensiveness. ‘I can’t leave,’ he said, running a hand through his thinning hair. ‘It’ll be the end of this family.’

‘Wouldn’t that be a relief?’

Edward’s anger came without warning. ‘No!’ he yelled, barely able to look at James. There were years of history behind his words. ‘I’m not sure you ever loved this family, James,’ he said, staring into the trees. ‘As long as you’ve been alive you’ve been running away from it.’

‘That’s not true,’ said James, trying to hold his own temper.

‘You’ve been in hiding for seven years,’ Edward muttered. ‘Looks very much like running away to me.’

James didn’t say anything, but instead glanced up towards the house. He couldn’t shake the sense that its shadow was tainting their conversation. Now, it felt more like some great factory than a Tudor manor. It was wider and more squat than he remembered it, the three tall chimneys jutting up towards the sky like leafless trees, the windows small and deeply set. It was a strange, brutal, angular thing, quite at odds with the explosion of nature all around it; it sat uncomfortably amongst the trees, as though fearful they might swallow it up.

‘Look at this place, Edward,’ he said, nodding up towards its towering frontage. ‘It’s like we’re still pretending to be Henry Tudor.’

Edward spoke more quietly now, but his lip still twitched, as though at any second it might twist into a sneer. ‘That’s always been your problem,’ he said bitterly. ‘You want to throw away our history. Everything that made this family who we are today.’

‘Not throw it away. Just – examine it. Update our traditions, if need be.’

‘Those aren’t the words of a man who believes in this family.’

‘My God,’ said James, unable to hide his exasperation, ‘would you listen to yourself? A family’s not a matter of faith – it’s here, no matter whether we believe in it.’

Edward shook his head. ‘Enough,’ he said firmly. ‘Can we at least agree the Harringleys have been good to this place for nearly four hundred years?’ He fixed James with a stare, as though challenging him to disagree, but James held his tongue. ‘Now Father’s threatening our very reputation, and everything we ever stood for. So I’m asking you to help talk Father out of whatever madness he’s fallen into. Can you do that?’

James held his hands open in a gesture of helpless supplication. ‘I can try.’

Look at how well that ended last time, he heard a voice whisper inside.

4

AS A child James spent most of his life in the library, a vast rectangular room tucked away at the back of the house, its walls filled from floor to ceiling with books. Many of them were great scowling tomes on economics or animal husbandry, their pages dense with type and rimed with dust, but a small section of the room had been set aside for the servants, and James immediately gravitated to the more well-worn texts he found there. They were adventure novels, folk romances, knightly tales – some of them, he’d learn later, were classics of the form, but at the time he’d not known good from bad.

At first he simply pored over their pictures, the strange and arcane woodcuts he found among their pages, the maps of unknown lands. But as he learned his letters, the riddles seemed to unfurl themselves, and he found new worlds in which to lose himself. He recalled the day he first read a book by himself, curling up in one of the library’s wingback armchairs to read what turned out to be a simple tale of warring peasants, and re-emerging from a kind of trance hours later.

His father thought it was a waste of time: there was a business to learn, and James was neglecting it in pursuit of foolish stories. But James had been down to the village with his father, the two of them dressed up like lords and rattling down the hill in their carriage. He saw the fear beneath the villagers’ deference, their barely concealed anger; heard how hollow their thanks were when James’s father offered to organise repairs or delay a rent payment by a week. They loathed him, with his fancy clothes and his big house, and by extension they loathed his son too. He wasn’t sure if his father was too naive to see their hatred, or if he simply chose to ignore it. Either way, James couldn’t bear it.

When his father next sought James out in the library and asked for his company on a trip into town, James told him he’d prefer not to. He remembered his father pausing as though he’d been struck, his voice oddly cold when he spoke again.

‘You understand that one day this will be your job,’ he said.

‘Maybe I’d prefer that it wasn’t.’

His father’s bitter laughter surprised him. ‘That’s not a choice you’ll get, I’m afraid.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because families like ours have a duty,’ he said, after a moment’s consideration. ‘Those villagers need us to maintain order. To provide what they cannot provide for themselves. And to teach them how to live well.’ He held James’s gaze. ‘It’s a noble life.’

‘It doesn’t sound like it.’

He saw his father bite the inside of his cheek. ‘Well, it’s the life you were born to. So you’d better learn to accept it, or you’ve many miserable years ahead of you.’

Perhaps James might have made his peace with it, had his father not taken Edward along with him that afternoon instead. Edward had always preferred to follow their father around, and from that day he insisted on accompanying the old man when he travelled to the village to collect rents or supervise the harvest. When James asked him what they’d done, Edward’s answers were brief – we arranged men to unblock the stream, or we sent Ephraim Miller to jail for a week – but James was no fool, no matter what his father thought. He knew what it meant to his father to have a willing shadow, the bond those shared carriage rides would forge.

He was surprised to discover how little he cared.

*   *   *

Until he was eight, James hardly considered there was a world beyond the estate. He’d never needed to. The woods were full of mysteries he’d not even begun to exhaust.

Among the trees were the remnants of low stone walls, slippery with moss and overgrown with roots. The bones of some structure long forgotten. Somewhere out in the woods was a spiral staircase descending to a door in the earth, walls cool and clammy to the touch; he knew it because he’d stood for hours at the bottom of the hole, staring up at the aperture of light far above and feeling like the last person alive. He’d never found it again.

One afternoon he discovered a clearing filled with what looked like Grecian ruins, and a group of servants lounging on the grass. There was no fear in their eyes; when they saw him they just smiled, raising silent fingers to their lips.

He was an imaginative child, given to acting out stories he’d read in the estate’s library – and he spent one fine day imagining himself going upriver, some great explorer of the world’s undiscovered places, so engrossed in the progression of a stream that he’d not noticed the thick roots crisscrossing his path until they sent him flying. When he tried to push himself to his feet, his ankle stubbornly refused to support his weight, leaving James to crawl out of the stream on his hands and knees.

His first thought was dismay – this would never have happened to David Livingstone – but then came panic. Although the servants knew he was out here, they didn’t know exactly where, and he was far too deep in the woods for them to hear him calling. They’d surely come looking for him when he was absent from the dinner table, but that could be hours yet – and the thought of still being out here at night, listening to the sounds of movement among the branches, left him faint.

It was that last thought which set him calling for help, even though doing so felt futile. ‘Help!’ he shouted into the trees, but the only response was a scatter of birds somewhere out of sight. His voice sounded tiny and feeble.

He wasn’t sure how long it was before he gave up calling. By the time he did, his throat was hoarse and his mouth dry. The day was drawing on and the late afternoon had robbed the sun of much of its heat – he was already beginning to shiver in his thin shirt.

He couldn’t bear the thought of waiting another moment for help. He needed to be moving, towards the house, to safety and shelter. Anyway, his father would be appalled if he found his son sitting by the edge of a stream, calling for help like some defenceless animal.

He leaned against a tree trunk and tried to prop himself upright using the tree as a crutch, but it was no use. Every step he took on his wounded ankle sent a jolt of pain through his entire body, leaving tremors in his wake. He’d never make his way through the woods on foot: he’d have to crawl.

He pulled himself along on all fours for what felt like hours, the wet earth soaking through the elbows of his jacket, his whole torso bitterly cold. Whenever his body cried out in exhaustion or pain, he swallowed it and told himself he couldn’t stop; he had to maintain some kind of rhythm, a forward movement. But the woods felt endless, a natural labyrinth, and he had no way to tell if he was even heading in the right direction.

And then, from up ahead, he heard the voice. Leisurely, unhurried, a kind of drawl.

‘Looks like you’ve done yourself a mischief there, young master.’

Before him was a figure lounging against a tree, dressed in rags. In the gloom of the forest James hadn’t even noticed him appear; he could have been there some time, watching James stumble towards him.

He was a man in his early fifties, dark brows hiding sharp eyes, and a noble face under shabby stubble. On his back he wore an oversized brown coat, mended several times at the sleeves with little spiderwebs of multi-coloured thread and a huge, floppy hat. There was a faint smile on his lips.

‘I say, do you need some help there, young sir?’ the man said in that rough accent, when James was finished looking him up and down. Then, without waiting for an answer, he stumped across to James on a leg that looked halfway lame. ‘Come on,’ he said as he approached. ‘Roll up your trouser leg.’

James forced himself to stay strong as the man drew closer. Shuffled himself up against the trunk of a tree so he could push upright, and squared his shoulders like he’d seen his father do. Moments like these were a test, after all: you had to maintain your authority.

‘What are you doing here?’ James said. ‘This is private land.’

The man stopped a few steps away from James. ‘Is that so?’ he said. There was a new wariness in his tone, as if he was affronted. ‘Suppose I must have missed the boundary line.’

‘They’re clearly marked,’ said James, who knew no such thing – he’d not yet made it as far as the estate’s bounds – and the man’s eyes narrowed.

‘You’re sure of that, are you, young master?’ he said, a little more curtly. ‘No chance those fences are overgrown, or tumbledown?’

‘I’m not sure my father would care for that excuse,’ said James.

‘Your father being Mr Harringley, I suppose,’ said the man.

‘That’s right.’

‘Aye, I know him well enough,’ the man said, with a look of distaste. ‘Hard man, your father is.’ He rubbed at his nose with a dirty hand and sniffed. ‘Well, let’s see how grateful he is when I save his son from dying of exposure.’

Not very, James thought, but he kept that to himself.

‘I’d like you to lean on me, young master,’ said the man. ‘I’m going to bend down, and you ought to be able to get your arm around my shoulders. Mighty unwieldy, but it’ll do until we make it to where I’m camped.’

‘Can’t you take me back home?’ James said, hardly keen to spend another moment in these woods.

‘Later, maybe,’ said the man, a little wary. ‘It’s getting late, and there’ll be no moon tonight. There’s creatures in these woods I’d prefer not to stumble across in the dark.’ He didn’t meet James’s eye, but knelt, allowing James to hook his arm across a broad back before standing. From this close James was aware of the man’s strange, loamy smell: it was rich and musty, with a ferric tang.

On they stumped, a strange pair, the shabby vagrant taking the lead in their hobbling dance. On through the gloom of the forest, finding paths where there appeared to be none, through the narrowest of gaps between trees. Then, after what felt like an eternity and no time at all, James saw a low hill, and in front of it the dim light of a fire.

And then off he went, into the hillside itself, where a set of ragged steps led down into a dark hole. In the firelight James could see it was reinforced with what looked like thin wooden struts, a much more substantial construction than he’d been led to believe.

Despite the agony in his foot, he remained standing, propped up against the spindly trunk of a tree. He wanted to be able to run. If it came to that.

‘You live here?’ he called after the man, but there was no answer. He left it a moment, but the hole was black and abandoned, no flickering shadows that spoke of movement. ‘Sir?’ he called again. ‘Excuse me?’

There was only the crackling of coals, the rustle of leaves in the early evening breeze.

He should flee. He knew that then. This was not a good place. And yet he was just as lost as he’d been before, if not more so: deeper in the woods, further from the house. He needed this man, no matter how shabby and uncouth he might be. His choice was already made.

James loped around the fire with long, unsteady strides, staying close to the trees in case he needed to grab one for balance. Every step sent a stab of pain through his leg. He felt woozy, disorientated, only halfway awake. It took him several minutes to make it to that rough doorway, and there was still no sign of the vagrant.

‘Sir?’ he called into the earth. ‘Is everything alright down there?’

His voice echoed briefly and then was swallowed by the darkness. The light only penetrated a couple of feet into the tunnel and so he had no sense of how far it stretched, but for reasons he couldn’t articulate it felt immense. He imagined underground banqueting halls, throne rooms, churches to some lost earth god – an entire civilisation, living out its life, hidden just below the surface of the world.

If he closed his eyes he could see it. And it was beautiful: ornate and austere and yet warmed with a strange heat. Before he knew it, he’d taken a step into the tunnel, and then another—

And then he walked straight into the vagrant.

‘Leg feeling better, then, young master?’ he said, with a chuckle, rubbing his sternum good-naturedly where James had collided with him. ‘Won’t be needing this, then,’ he said, holding up a small stone bowl in his left hand. The inside was smeared with some kind of green paste.

‘I’m sorry—’ James said, filled with sudden anxiety – which wouldn’t shift, no matter how often that voice in his head repeated this is your home, your father’s land. He felt as if he’d transgressed on sacred ground. ‘I didn’t mean to – I was just wondering where you’d gone—’

‘Takes a while to make this,’ the man said, waggling the bowl. ‘Come back out into the firelight so I can see where to apply it, why don’t you?’

James glanced back over his shoulder at the tunnel, filled with a mad desire to see further into it, but he managed to pull himself away and follow the man back to the fire. ‘What is it?’ he said, setting up against a tree.

‘Don’t you worry yourself there,’ said the man, with a crooked smile. ‘It’ll do you no harm. It’s a simple poultice. Bring down the swelling, numb the pain.’ He nodded towards James’s ankle. ‘Afraid you’ll need to roll up your trouser leg, though. Won’t do much good for fabric.’ He held out the bowl, motioned for James to take it. ‘I’ll turn away,’ he said. ‘It’s only polite.’

James knelt and removed his shoe, pulled up his trouser leg. Beneath his sock his ankle was the size of a melon, criss-crossed with jagged blood vessels and covered in a dark bruising like a storm at night. It hurt to touch. James took a deep breath and scooped up some of the poultice, then smeared it over the areas that looked worst.

The change was instantaneous – the pain seemed to melt away, to disappear beneath the surface of his consciousness. He was still aware of it – as a dim, throbbing hum somewhere far away – but it could have been happening to another person altogether, in an entirely different world.

‘It’s incredible,’ he murmured, half to himself, and when he glanced up he could see the vagrant smiling. ‘Where did you learn to make this?’ he said, more loudly.

The man half-turned towards him, his eyes wider now. ‘My wife taught me how,’ he said. ‘It’s an old recipe.’

‘I’m grateful,’ said James, and he meant it. All his fear had melted away along with the pain; he felt only gratitude, and a strange lightness. He tested his ankle gingerly, resting more and more of his weight upon it, astonished that it seemed to support him. ‘I could even walk back to the house on my own now,’ he said. ‘My father need never know you’re out here.’

‘Ah, I’m not afraid of him,’ said the man casually. ‘What’s the worst he’ll do?’

James thought of his father’s rages, his unpredictable temper. ‘He’s very protective of the estate,’ he said. ‘He might be angry.’

Now the man turned to look at him directly. ‘It’s a special place, this,’ he said. ‘Maybe your father never realised exactly how special.’

James rubbed his ankle, only half listening. ‘I can see that,’ he said.

‘There’s a deeper wisdom in the soil here,’ said the man, with a new intensity. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying, young sir?’

James’s bewilderment must have been written across his face, for the fellow’s smile widened, and he went on. ‘You might never read the name of this village in the history books, but you best believe it’s part of this nation’s destiny.’ He gave a little chuckle, dipped his head, and when he looked up again James was startled to see his eyes were watery. ‘If you only knew what people here have given up,’ he said, the words catching in his throat. ‘The sacrifices they’ve made.’

James stood up straighter then, more alert, fear prickling across his skin. ‘Sacrifices?’ he said, trying to sound merely wary rather than afraid. ‘What kind of sacrifices?’

The man cocked his head, thoughtful. ‘This place takes the best of us,’ he said, half to himself. ‘Leastways that’s what I believe anyway. Explains why it took her.’ He looked rueful. ‘My daughter.’