Posted on Wednesday, 31 October 2007
It was a dark and stormy night, but Emma was warm and cozy, wrapped in a thick wool shawl before the drawing room fire. Her father would have been pleased to see how a screen was carefully placed behind her to cut off any chance of a draught, and the bowl of steaming gruel that sat at her elbow on a graceful occasional table. Emma, however, was not happy.
“The nerve of that woman!”
Knightly looked up from the book he was perusing. “What woman?”
“Our Highbury witch – Mrs Elton.”
Knightly sighed and put his book down. “How many times do I have to tell you that she wears black because of a death in her family?”
“Three years in mourning over her Great Aunt Hilda is excessive to my mind,” said Emma. “Besides, she is having a house party – one doesn’t have parties when one is in mourning.”
“Does this party have anything to do with your outburst?”
Emma took a spoonful of gruel and shuddered. “She visited me this afternoon, allegedly because she missed me dreadfully at her last soiree and she needed my personal assurance I would be able to attend this one. Of course it is not my presence she desires at all, but yours. ‘Knightly must bring you or I shall have to have words with him.’ that’s what she said.”
“You know, my dear, I cannot prevent her from calling me by my name.”
“Her familiar manner is most . . . revolting. And now we have to go to the Manse and sit about listening to Jane Fairfax . . .”
“Mrs Churchill.”
“ . . . Jane Fairfax play the piano and converse with these horrid guests of the Eltons. The ones from Maple Grove that she endlessly goes on about.”
“The Sucklings.”
“Yes – them. And no daytime half-hour visit will suffice. The Sucklings, apparently, don’t see people until after dark. It’s the new style among members of the Ton to only come out at night, or some such thing. Not that for one minute do I believe that encroachingmushrooms like the Sucklings are members of the Ton.”
“I’m quite partial to evening entertainment.”
Emma swept her hand about her. “This is how I like to spend an evening. And father too. Do you know she had the audacity to insist that he come? And in his delicate condition?”
“An outing may do your father some good.”
Emma gasped. “You know he has not left his bedchamber since . . .”
“Since his death. Yes Emma, but tomorrow we could coax him into this room and by the night of the party he might be ready to take a trip in the coach, well wrapped up, of course, and with a hot brick at his feet.”
“He’s not corporeal – shawls just slide right through him. And a hot brick would have no effect. You know how he complains of the cold – and we keep a roaring fire in his room at all hours.”
“Perhaps we can invite Mrs Bates to come and sit with him then, and you and I can go to the Eltons’ on our own. You know how she loves to come haunting.”
Indeed it was true. Mrs Bates haunted wherever and whenever she could. It would be a good thing for her father, Emma reflected, even if it did mean she would have to meet the annoying Sucklings.
That night Emma tossed and turned in her bed as the wind howled and whistled through the trees. Spine chilling screams erupted on occasion from the cellars, and there were weird bumpings and clankings that resounded through the house. All those normal homey sounds should have relaxed her, but even though her bed sheets were tied up in knots she could not get comfortable. In the end she gave up and put on a robe, grabbed up a candle, and padded out into the corridor and down the stairs.
Emma paused at the foot of the stairs as her candle flickered. The flame grew strong again and she moved forward cautiously. She walked directly to the wainscoting at the far end of the grand hall and pressed a panel, releasing the catch on a secret door that opened noiselessly. She slipped through the opening and down the winding staircase of the dark passage within. At the bottom of the staircase was another door. She pushed against it and it opened suddenly. A gust of dank air blew her candle out. At the same time a cold hand reached out from behind and grasped her neck. She withheld a scream and nuzzled against the hand.
“You did that on purpose!”
“Of course,” said Knightly, leaning closer and kissing her hair. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to sleep and would come down.”
“How is your project coming along?”
“Well, let’s just say that before long Baron Von Frankenstein will not be the only one with a creature of his own making at his beck and call.”
“Such a modern way of getting servants! When can you make me my own to use as a lady’s maid?”
“I was thinking a nursemaid would be more apropos.”
“Then you will have to spend your nights doing something other than robbing graves for body parts and firing up electrodes during lightning storms.”
“Emma, I have told you since we wed that the night is for work and the afternoon for delight. Go back to bed, there’s a good girl.”
Emma stared past Knightly’s shoulder, through the voluminous spider’s webs, to the heart of the cellar. There, laid out on a slab, was a form with all sorts of wires and tubes attached to it. Blood oozed from sutures on the massive chest. Slime dripped from a vat suspended in the gloomy darkness of the arched ceiling, where bats hung, their wings rustling. This was where her husband chose to spend his nights rather than with her. Had she known before they were married she would never have made that promise she had made him. She could not question his need for this reclusive retreat, nor could she join him. Her husband had all the fun.
There was a loud banging and a door opened in the far end of the cellar.
“It is Robert Martin with a fresh cadaver,” said Knightly. “You must go, my sweet. You know how shy he is of you.”
She grasped his shirt points and pulled him close to her, kissing him swiftly but deeply. “I will await you in the afternoon,” she said expressively, and ran back up the stairs.
In her room again, Emma chose one of Mrs Radcliffe’s books and snuggled into her tangled bed to read. She was sleeping peacefully in a few moments, her dreams filled with evil monks, dark riders, and mysterious underground chambers. It’s no wonder that she awoke refreshed and well rested.
The evening of the Elton’s house party came much too soon for Emma but she couldn’t back down once she’d promised to go, though she’d tried every excuse in the book.
“But who will eat father’s gruel?” was her last resort as Knightly was shepherding her out the door. “Both he and Mrs Bates are too ephemeral and you know father hates for a good bowl of gruel to go to waste.”
“As it would be too impolite to bring it with us, I’ve asked for it to be sent down to the cellar. Robert Martin will feed it to my creature.”
Emma clapped her hands together. “Why have I never thought of that? Nothing as sustaining as a good bowl of gruel – if anything brings life to your creature, gruel should!”
Knightly took advantage of the momentary diversion of Emma’s thoughts to pass her up into the carriage and they were off. A few miles’ drive brought them to the parsonage. The house was decorated very cheerfully. Black crepe was festooned from candelabra to candelabra and all the crosses were upside down. Emma was happy to see Mrs Weston in one corner and ran over to speak with her as soon as the introductions to the Sucklings had been performed.
:”What a positively ghoulish looking couple!” whispered Emma.
“My dear, they may be a little pallid, but I think that must be from lack of sun. You know they only come out at night.”
“Yes – it’s all the rage, so Mrs Elton would have us believe. But they are more than merely pallid – they are positively white”
“But such lovely red lips!”
Emma took another look at the couple’s lips, only to have Mr Suckling catch her eye. He winked lewdly, then opened his mouth ever so slightly to reveal perfectly white and pointed teeth. She turned away immediately, blushing furiously.
“The man dares to flirt with me across the room in front of his own wife and my husband! Such cheek! I knew they would not be our class of person!”
“Hush, Emma. You are imagining things. Let us sit down and listen. Jane is about to play.”
Emma looked toward the pianoforte. Marriage had not changed Jane Fairfax. Her hair still hung in lank, dark, dripping ringlets about her face. Her gown was still damp and plastered to her body. Her complexion still had that tinge of blue and her eyes still had a tendency to bulge. Her looks had never overcome her sad drowning a few years back. If Mr Dixon had managed to save her that day they’d gone out in the boat, her cheeks may still have been rosy, her ringlets may still have bounced, but instead he’d held tightly to his betrothed and Jane had lost her bloom during those five days that elapsed before the sea gave her up to the shore once more. It hadn’t, however, hampered her ability to play – in fact people remarked that her proficiency was vastly improved. Which only goes to show what a little sea bathing can do for one.
Not that Emma would go to such measures. She enjoyed the feel of blood pumping through her veins. She looked up and caught both Mr and Mrs Suckling’s eyes upon her and realized that they enjoyed the fact that blood pumped through her veins too.
“Insufferable!” she hissed.
Mrs Weston followed her glance. “Well you can hardly blame them, dear. Most of the guests are some form or other of the living dead, and what satisfaction could they get from people like that, I ask you?”
It was true. Almost everyone in Highbury was a zombie of some sort. It was Miss Bates’ fault, of course. She had bored them all to a point well past tears, beyond life, actually, with her ceaseless prattle. Emma had survived only because she’d stopped listening to Miss Bates years ago, no matter how badly done her husband thought it. It was better than a life as a dead person. And dead Emma did not want to be. Her liveliness was one of the traits her darling Knightly liked best about her.
Sadly, because of the fact that most of her neighbours were members of the undead, living in that realm between death and life, she really had no subjects to perform her matchmaking abilities upon. That, coupled with the promise she’d made her husband not to dabble in the dark arts, left her with not much to do but practice her sketching of a morning whilst looking forward to the afternoon. She glanced at her husband’s profile as he stood trapped in conversation by Mrs Elton. She knew herself lucky to have caught one of the few live ones left. Mrs Elton was aware of the benefits of life too, bestowing her most sparkling smiles upon him .
Emma felt her hackles rise. She knew her husband to be true blue, but who knew what witch’s brew Mrs E had gathered in the morning dew and set to stew. Just because men like Knightly were too few, coveting one’s neighbour’s husband didn’t really do. Emma knew she had to get rid of the shrew.
And she had to do it without spells or potions or voodoo dolls. Well, it couldn’t be that much harder than matchmaking – and she’d always been good at that.
Emma excused herself to her companion and circled the room till she came to stand beside the Sucklings.
“Mrs Knightly!” they both crooned. “We’ve been hoping to spend more time with you.” And they smiled their pointy-toothed smiles.
Up close Emma could see that though they were quite crass they had a certain seductive charm about them. The same type of charm she’d recognized in Frank Churchill all those years back. She’d almost fallen for him, until that evening when the moon was at its fullest, with a wispy cloud trailing across its bright face, and she’d discovered him in the shrubbery, unshaven, his clothes in disarray, baying at the moon. Thus her infatuation had come to an end and she’d discovered that for her it had always been Knightly.
“We’ve been admiring your rosy complexion,” said Mrs Suckling, interrupting Emma’s reverie before it was carried away to revelry with thoughts of her husband and their glorious afternoons together.
“Do you use Gowlands?” asked Mr Suckling suggestively. “Or is it just the glow of life?”
“French rouge,” said Emma. “It hides a multiple of sins.”
“Sins? Of the complexion? In one so young and beauteous? I think not,” said Mrs Suckling.
“Other sins, of course . . .” said that lady’s husband.
They both showed their gleaming incisors.
Emma swallowed hard and put on a false smile. “Have you been given a tour of the churchyard yet?” she asked sweetly.
They both shook their heads and looked at her expectantly.
“Meet me by the crypt at the stroke of midnight and I will gladly show you around.”
“Most intriguing!” said the Sucklings together.
Emma then excused herself with as alluring a smile as she could muster and slipped from the room into her host’s study. There she took up a paper and pen, and with bold strokes, almost the same as ones she knew fair well, she wrote a quick note, folded it, and hid it in the palm of her hand. She returned to the drawing room and joined her husband who was still Mrs Elton’s conversational victim.
“Picking strawberries after dusk might seem an odd excursion, but I am certain it could be arranged,” said Mrs Elton forcefully. “And Donwell Abbey has the best strawberries in these environs. The Sucklings are very fond of strawberries.”
“And I would happily entertain them any morning this week; afternoons are out of the question.” Knightly glanced swiftly at Emma. “But I do not see the benefit of strawberrying in the dark.”
“But my dear,” interposed Emma, “we could set out lanterns row upon row. The Sucklings must not miss anything that could add to their pleasure here.”
Knightly stared at her suspiciously, but Mrs Elton clapped her hands in delight.
“The very solution!” she exclaimed.
Emma suddenly leaned over and made as if to pick something up. “You dropped this?” She held the folded note out to Mrs Elton.
“Oh, did I?” cried Mrs Elton, taking the note. She unfolded it and ran her eyes over it. A secret smile crossed her lips and she glanced fleetingly at Knightly and then at Emma. “Yes, it is mine. You must excuse me.”
When she had gone Knightly appraised his wife. “You are up to something, my dear. You have not forgotten your promise to me, have you?”
“Never, dearest,” she answered. “But I have effectively freed you from Mrs Elton so I do not see that you have any reason to be cross with me.”
“As long as that was your only motivation, I thank you,” he said.
They moved to chairs close to the pianoforte and sat in harmony as Jane Churchill, nee Fairfax, played on, water dripping from the piano keys and puddling upon the floor around her. Her endurance since drowning was incredible – she could play for hours. Usually Emma found it maddening, but on this night she decided to let Jane have the limelight. Every so often she glanced at the clock on the wall as its hands ticked closer to midnight.
The Sucklings slipped out of the house just before the clock struck twelve and negotiated the churchyard paths until they came to the crypt. The moon was brimming full with silvery light. They could see a cloaked figure waiting for them. She was leaning against a pillar, her head tilted back, slim white neck gilded by the moonlight.
“Delicious,” sighed Mrs Suckling.
“Tantalising,” agreed her spouse. “May I go first?”
“Catch the moment,” said his wife. “I don’t mind seconds.”
He walked forward softly and laid his hand upon a trembling shoulder. “You know what I want,” he whispered huskily.
In answer she arched her neck even more seductively and he leant towards it, full red lips opening upon the snowy white skin. His arms came around her and she moaned in delight and then squeaked a surprised, “Oh!”
Mr Suckling raised his head, blood dripping from his fangs, and called to his wife. “Your turn.”
Mrs Suckling was there like a shot and soon had her mouth clamped to the exposed neck, gurgling and slurping in a feeding frenzy. Her husband pushed his head in beside hers and, not to be outdone, fed on the rich, red blood as ravenously as she.
Emma had slipped away from the drawing room on the pretext of visiting the commode and was watching from behind a yew hedge. Her victory was sweet but still she felt a chill flow up her spine that it could have been her and not Mrs Elton. Not a happy thought. She turned to see her husband behind her. He had a piece of paper in his hand.
“I picked this up from the floor,” he said. “I think you know exactly what is written here.”
That she did. Your neck undoes me. Meet me at the crypt at midnight. My lips burn for your silken skin. K.
She looked up at him guiltily.
“Badly done,” Emma, he said in his most severe tones. “Badly done indeed.”
The End