Thornwood Hall, November 3rd, 18—
My Dearest Meg,
I take up my pen with a hand that trembles so violently the ink spills in blots across the page. Forgive the mess. I have no one else to write to, and the thoughts in my head will drive me to Bedlam if I do not set them down somewhere. Burn this letter after you read it. I beg you. If it were discovered, I dread to think what might follow.
You will wonder why I remain in this house after all I have witnessed. I have asked myself the same question a hundred times since August. The answer, as you know, is Mother. Her cough worsens with each passing season, and the sanatorium at Wickmere demands fees that would swallow a year of my wages. Lord Aldric pays me thirty pounds per annum, a sum that keeps the physicians calling and the fires lit in our little cottage. I cannot abandon her. And so I stay, and I watch, and I pray.
I must tell someone the truth about that night.
The official account, the one printed in the Ambernia Gazette and the Capital Chronicle, states that Thomas Harland forced his way into Miss Elara’s chamber with felonious intent. The newspapers describe him as a brute of low character, a lurking menace whose savage nature finally erupted. They have dubbed him the Coldwater Fiend, on account of his present confinement and the lawsuit he has since brought against the prison warder—a suit the press finds darkly amusing, as though a man accused of such villainy could possibly be the victim of anything.
Every word of this is false. I know because I was awake.
The household had retired early that evening. Lady Maris had taken a powder for her nerves and retired at nine. I had prepared Miss Elara’s room—turning down the bed, laying out her nightgown, placing the curling iron on the dressing table as she always required. She dismissed me at half-past nine with that sweet smile she wears like a painted mask. “You may go, Bessy. I shall manage perfectly well.”
I did not go far. My own room lies at the end of the servants’ corridor, a narrow cell under the eaves, but I was restless. The air pressed close and humid. I opened my window and sat beside it, sewing by the light of a single candle. I could see into the east wing of the house, where Miss Elara’s window glowed yellow against the darkness. Her curtains were not drawn.
I saw her.
She stood before her dressing table in perfect calm, her hair already loosened, her dressing gown tied loosely at the waist. In her right hand she held the curling iron. She examined it with the detached interest of a natural philosopher studying a specimen. Then she crossed to the fireplace, where a low flame still burned—she had not allowed the maid to extinguish it, claiming she felt a chill—and plunged the metal barrel into the embers. She held it there for a full minute, perhaps two. When she withdrew it, the iron glowed a sullen, murderous red.
I did not understand what I was watching. I could not fathom it.
She returned to the dressing table, placed the iron on the marble top, and stared at her own reflection in the mirror. Her expression was not one of distress or madness. It was one of calculation. She might have been balancing a ledger or plotting a dinner menu.
Then she pulled back the sleeve of her dressing gown, exposing the pale, unblemished skin of her left forearm. She paused. She tilted her head, as if listening for something. Then, with a motion so swift I could scarcely credit it, she seized the iron and pressed its hot barrel against her own flesh.
The sound that followed was not a scream. It was a gasp—a sharp, shocked intake of breath that was utterly genuine. I saw her body convulse. The iron clattered to the floor. She staggered back, her face twisted with authentic agony, and then, as if a switch had been thrown, she began to scream. Not the scream of pain, but the scream of performance. A theatrical shriek designed to rouse the entire household.
I was frozen at my window. My candle guttered and died, and still I could not move. I saw Thomas Harland burst into the room, his face white with alarm. I saw him rush toward her, his hands extended in assistance. I saw him stop short, bewildered, as she recoiled from him with a second, louder scream. I saw her deliberately upset the dressing table with her free hand, sending bottles and brushes crashing to the floor. I saw her wrench at her own gown, tearing the lace at the collar.
And then the corridor was filled with running feet. Lord Aldric arrived first, his dressing gown flapping about his legs. Lady Maris followed, her hair in papers, her face a mask of horror. The household pressed behind them. And Thomas Harland, that gentle boy who once carved me a wooden thimble for my birthday, stood in the center of the wreckage like a stag surrounded by hounds.
I saw it all. And I said nothing.
Why? The question haunts me, Meg. I wish I could claim fear alone, but the truth is more complicated. I have been in service since I was twelve years old. I have learned the art of invisibility, of seeing without being seen, of knowing without being known. A lady’s maid who speaks against the family that employs her is a lady’s maid who is dismissed without character and thrown onto the parish. My testimony would have been worthless against Miss Elara’s tears, against Lady Maris’s fierce maternal rage, against the weight of the Blackwood name. The constables would have laughed at me. The magistrate would have called me hysterical. Thomas would have been convicted all the same, and I would have been ruined alongside him.
So I held my tongue. I stood among the servants and watched Thomas be led away, his hands bound, his face blank with shock. I saw Miss Elara, her arm bandaged, her eyes glistening with tears, accept the ministrations of her mother and the family physician. I saw Lord Aldric’s expression, and in it I recognized something I had not expected: not credulity, but horror. He knew. I am certain of it. He knew, and he chose silence.
In the weeks since, I have become Miss Elara’s unwilling confidante. She knows I saw. She must know. Why else would she keep me so close, summoning me at odd hours to brush her hair or fetch her tea, watching me with those pale green eyes that seem to strip the skin from my bones? She makes no threats. She does not need to. Her presence alone is a constant reminder that I am entangled in a web I cannot escape.
Yesterday she sent me to collect a parcel from the stationer’s in the village. I opened it—I should not have, but I could not help myself. It contained a diary, bound in green morocco leather with a tiny brass lock. She has begun to write in it nightly. I have glimpsed the pages when I tidy her room. The handwriting is elegant, looping, full of flourishes. I have not dared to read more than a few words, but the fragments I have seen chill my blood. She writes of “puppets” and “patterns” and “the loom of memory.” She writes as if the world is a stage and she alone holds the script.
The newspapers continue their relentless feast. This morning’s Capital Chronicle carried an illustration—an artist’s impression of the assault, wholly fabricated—showing a bestial figure looming over a cowering maiden. The caption read: “The Blackwood Outrage: Justice Must Be Served.” Meanwhile, Thomas’s suit against the prison warder Coldwater is reported only in the back pages, and then with sneering contempt. The warder, they say, is a firm-handed disciplinarian who merely restrained a violent prisoner. Thomas is a liar and a brute. The loom weaves its pattern tighter with each passing day.
I have begun to gather evidence. Small things. A scrap of fabric from her torn gown, which I retrieved from the dustbin. The curling iron itself, which I hid before it could be cleaned—the metal still bears a faint impression of her skin. I do not know what I intend to do with these fragments. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps I merely wish to feel that I am not wholly powerless.
Last night, I crept to the library after the house was still. Lord Aldric’s study adjoins it, and I had observed him entering with a heavy ledger and emerging with a face like ash. I tried the door. It was locked. But through the keyhole, I saw him seated at his desk, writing with desperate intensity in a book that looked very like a private journal. His pen moved in bursts and starts. Once, he paused and pressed his hand to his eyes, and I heard him whisper a name—whether it was mine or Thomas’s or God’s, I could not tell.
I think he is as trapped as I am. Perhaps more so.
This morning, Miss Elara summoned me to her sitting room. She was arranging white roses in a crystal vase—her favorite flower, though I have noticed she always removes the thorns with peculiar relish. She did not look at me when she spoke.
“Bessy,” she said, in that light, musical voice that the gentlemen find so enchanting, “you have been with us for five years now, have you not?”
“Yes, miss,” I replied.
“And your mother is still unwell. The sanatorium at Wickmere. Such a costly establishment.” She snipped a stem and placed the rose in the vase. “I should be distraught if anything were to jeopardize your position here. Your wages are so essential to her care.”
The threat was unmistakable, yet uttered with such tender concern that a listener in the corridor would have heard only benevolent solicitude. I curtsied and murmured my gratitude. She smiled and dismissed me.
I returned to my room and wept. Not from fear, though I am afraid. I wept from rage. From the injustice of it. From the knowledge that Thomas Harland rots in a cell while his tormentor arranges roses and writes in her locked diary and prepares for the winter season, where she will dance and flirt and ensnare some unsuspecting gentleman into the pattern of her loom.
I will not burn this letter, Meg. I will keep it, hidden beneath the floorboard under my bed, with the other fragments I have collected. If something should happen to me—if I should fall ill, or be dismissed, or simply vanish—find it. Find it and take it to someone who will believe you. There must be someone in this world who values truth above reputation.
Your loving sister, Bessy
[The letter is folded and sealed with common wax. On the reverse, in a hasty, smudged script, a postscript has been added:]
Meg—I have just learned that a lawyer, a Mr. Finch, has been asking questions in the village. He represents the defense in Harland v. Coldwater. He is seeking witnesses to Thomas’s character. I think I must speak with him. Pray for me.
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