ITwas Saffy who showed me to my bedroom. We walked quite a distance from the wing in which the Sisters Blythe now lived, and although our passage was long and dark, I was grateful that I wasn’t being led downstairs. It was enough that I was staying in the castle overnight; I didn’t fancy sleeping anywhere near the muniment room. We each carried a paraffin lamp up a set of stairs to the second floor and along a wide, shadowy corridor. Even when the electric bulbs weren’t flickering, the glow was a peculiar sort of half-light. Finally, Saffy stopped.
“Here we are,” she said, opening the door. “The guest chamber.”
She—or perhaps it had been Percy—had put sheets on the bed and arranged a small pile of books by the pillow. “It’s rather cheerless, I’m afraid,” she said, glancing about the room with an apologetic smile. “We don’t entertain often; we’re rather out of the habit. It’s been such a long time since anybody came to stay.”
“I’m sorry to have put you to the trouble.”
She was shaking her head. “Nonsense. It’s no trouble at all. I always loved having guests. Entertaining was one of the things I found the most fulfilling in life.” She started towards the bed and set her lamp down on the side table. “Now, I’ve laid out a nightgown and found some books, too. I can’t imagine facing the end of the day without a story to drop into on my way towards sleep.” She fingered the book on top of the pile. “Jane Eyrewas always a favorite of mine.”
“Of mine, too. I always carry a copy, though my edition’s not nearly as beautiful as yours.”
She smiled, pleased. “You remind me a little of myself, you know, Edith. The person I might have become if things had been different. If times had been different. Living in London, working with books. When I was young, I dreamed of becoming a governess. Traveling and meeting people, working in a museum. Meeting my own Mr. Rochester perhaps.”
She became shy then, and wistful, and I remembered the floral boxes I’d found in the muniment room, in particular the one markedMARRIAGE TO MATTHEW DE COURCY.I knew Juniper’s tragic love story well enough, but very little of Saffy’s and Percy’s romantic pasts. Surely they, too, had once been young and filled with lust; yet both had been sacrificed to Juniper’s care. “You mentioned that you were engaged once?”
“To a man called Matthew. We fell in love when we were very young. Sixteen.” She smiled softly, remembering. “We planned to marry when we were twenty-one.”
“Do you mind me asking what happened?”
“Not at all.” She began folding down the bed, smoothing back the blanket and sheet at a neat angle. “It didn’t work out; he married someone else.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. So much time has passed. Both of them have been dead for years.” Perhaps she was uncomfortable that the conversation had taken a self-pitying turn, for she made a joke then: “I was fortunate, I suppose, that my sister was kind enough to let me live on at the castle for such a bargain rate.”
“I can’t imagine Percy would have minded that at all,” I said lightly.
“Perhaps not, though it was Juniper I meant.”
“I’m afraid I …?”
Saffy blinked at me, surprised. “Why, the castle is hers. Didn’t you know? We’d always supposed that it would pass to Percy, of course—she was the eldest and the only one who loved it as he did—but Daddy changed his will at the last.”
“Why?” I was thinking aloud; I hadn’t really expected her to answer, but she appeared to be wrapped up in the telling of her story.
“Daddy was obsessed with the impossibility of creative women being able to continue with their art once saddled with the burden of marriage and children. When Juniper showed such promise, he became fixated on the idea that she might marry and waste her talent. He kept her here, never let her go out to school or to meet other people, and then had his will changed so that the castle was hers. That way, he reasoned, she would never have to concern herself with the business of making a living, nor with marrying a man who’d keep her. It was terribly unfair of him, though. The castle was always meant to be Percy’s. She loves this place as other people love their sweethearts.” She gave the pillows a final plump before collecting her lamp from the table. “I suppose in that respect it’s fortunate that Juniperdidn’tmarry and move away.”
I failed to make the connection. “But wouldn’t Juniper have been happy in that case to have a sister who cared so much for the old place living here and looking after it?”
Saffy smiled. “It wasn’t so simple. Daddy could be cruel when it came to getting his own way. He put a condition on the will. If Juniper were to marry, the castle would no longer be hers, passing instead to the Catholic Church.”
“The Church?”
“He suffered with guilt, did Daddy.”
And after my meeting with Percy, I knew exactly why that would be. “So if Juniper and Thomas had married, the castle would have been lost?”
“Yes,” she said, “that’s right. Poor Percy would never have borne it.” She shivered then. “I am sorry. It’s so cold in here. One never realizes. We have no need to use the room ourselves. I’m afraid there’s no heating along this wing, but there are extra blankets in the bottom of the wardrobe.”
A spectacular bolt of lightning struck then, followed by a crack of thunder. The feeble electric light wavered, flickered, then the bulb went dark. Saffy and I both raised our lamps, as if puppets drawn by the same string. We gazed together at the cooling bulb.
“Oh dear,” she said, “there goes our power. Thank goodness we thought to bring the lamps.” She hesitated. “Will you be all right, alone up here?”
“I’m sure I will.”
“Well then,” she said with a smile. “I’ll leave you to it.”
NIGHTTIME ISdifferent. Things are otherwise when the world is black. Insecurities and hurts, anxieties and fears grow teeth at night. Particularly when one is sleeping in a strange, old castle with a storm outside. Even more particularly when one has spent the afternoon listening to an elderly lady’s confession. Which is why, when Saffy left, closing the door behind her, I didn’t even consider snuffing my lamp’s flame.
