The Mistresses of Wistmere: A Neo-Gothic Novel Read online

  The Billy Khay groaned and labored, tossing its cargo and passengers about as if it were straining to abort them. Selina, wedged securely between the rib and the narrow shelf that supported her cot, resisted the spasms of the ship. If ever there was a doubt in her mind about her journey to Scotland, it was at that moment. But as she breathed in the damp salt air and tasted the bile that filled her mouth, Selina swore by her life that she would be the Mistress of Wistmere.

  * * *

  A blinding rain cloaked the harbor and all but beat the passengers back onto the ship when it arrived in Scotland. With unsteady steps Selina and her servant boarded a coach to take them over the moorland to Wistmere. Stretching herself across the cold leather seat, Selina breathed a deep resentful sigh. How she longed for her soft bed and a warm fire.

  A concern creased Mayeya’s brow. Having gotten so large with child, her mistress had ceased being physically abusive, now only berating her with her tongue, and in two languages.

  “Are you ill?” The child-maid dared to ask.

  Selina glared at her, and Mayeya slid further away, her bag separating her from her mistress. Then she remained silent.

  Ignoring her servant, thoughts of comforts filled Selina’s mind, a hot perfumed bath, a steamy cup of tea, and the softness of a silky sari around her instead of a linen one. In spite of the cold and the rough ride, Selina fell asleep. Her dreams weren’t those of bodily pleasures but were plagued with shadows and dark faces with illuminated eyes and sharp teeth. She was jolted awake as the carriage came to a halt, and the driver threw open the door.

  “I canna’ go on,” he yelled over the storm. “I must turn back!”

  “Turn back? What do you mean? I cannot go back!” Selina’s words were barely distinctive over the howl of the wind.

  “Then ye’ll have to be gettin’ oot here, lassie.”

  The driver cared little that the foreign passengers couldn’t navigate the uneven terrain with its unavoidable stubbles of grass and ankle deep mud holes. Nor did he care that he discharged his passengers in a deluge that would soon soak through their feeble cloaks and chill them to the marrow.

  “I’ll be takin’ your trunk back with me. It’ll be stored until ye come for it. But here be your bags.” He tossed them to the ground.

  Half of his shouted directions were lost in the screeching of the wind and the groaning of the coach wheels as he turned the rig around. With blithe disregard, he pointed out the muddy route which they were to follow, and then he and the carriage disappeared into the driving rain, back the way he had come.

  Jerking her maid’s wrap from her, Selina draped it around her own body. The girl didn’t say a word. She picked up the bags, ready to do as she was bid. The black mud sucked at her ankles and the cold slapped her with reality. Tears poured down Mayeya’s cheeks. She had been wrong about Scotland. It was a thousand times worse than India!

  They hadn’t gone far when Mayeya saw a flickering light through the sheeting rain and strained to make out its source. Like a flaming pillar it beckoned to her as if it were the eye of the god Surya, offering warmth and light. She pointed it out to her mistress. Leaning on Mayeya, Selina set her course toward it and, as she did so, she cursed the coachman who was afraid that “the bloody mud will swalla’ the carriage”.

  “Cowardly man,” she spat. The curse that followed was in Hindi.

  Mayeya scanned the desolate moor which looked like the remote bowels of the sea, its grass being pushed to and fro by impassioned currents of wind and rain. Once her mistress stumbled, and she made an attempt to catch her. But Selina knocked her hand away as she gained her footing.

  “Indra!” Selina screamed. “Do not follow me! Go plague my enemies!” But the Hindu god of thunder and rain ignored her as if it were his intent to disavow this woman. Her plea turned to a scream as a ripping pain coursed through her distended abdomen. She doubled over, falling to her knees. As the knife of birth stabbed her, she writhed with the unrelenting spasms. Selina pulled herself from the stony bed of muck to a cluster of spindly bushes at the edge of the road. Only then did she allow her servant to touch her and assist her down onto the ground again.

  “It cannot be time! No, not now!” she cried, grasping her stomach.

  Standing above her mistress, Mayeya wrung her hands in desperation. She didn’t know what to do. She had never taken part in a birthing before and was in fear for her life if she did anything wrong. What if the babe didn’t come out? What if it was born dead? Her mind conceived all the evils that she had heard could happen when it was a woman’s time. Frantic, she ran to the middle of the road and looked first one way and then the next for any sign of help. There wasn’t any, and now the light that was there just a moment before was gone. Her eyes on her mistress, Mayeya’s fear swelled. Nothing but ill could come of the situation. She bit her lip as Mistress Craig cried out in pain. Shaking from the cold and terrified that she would do the wrong thing, the young girl then made the first unaided decision of her life. Snatching her bag from the ground, she slowly turned and then ran as fast as she could back across the road and into the field. Not once did she look back at her mistress. Mayeya didn’t stop running until she could no longer hear the screams nor see the form lying alongside the road. When she did slow, it was to realize that she had made a fatal decision, one that she would never be able to take back. Wiping her tears of anguish from her face, she ran out onto the moor and disappeared into the darkness.

  With curses upon her breath for Mayeya and unable to resist the impatience of life within her, Selina pushed with obedience, giving into a ritual as old as the earth. She felt herself being torn open as her body ejected her man-child. But the spongy form made no sound.

  Possessed by madness, Selina shook it, slapping the tiny back to make its lungs contract and breathe. As the dull thud of her slap vibrated through the infant’s unresponsive frame, Selina shoved it aside before collapsing into a void of unknowing blackness.

  Chapter Two

  The stagnant odor of years of smoked cigarettes and cigars permeated the reception room. Katherine sat by the receptionist’s desk in a heavy leathered chair contemplating her meeting with the solicitor. Her thoughts were interrupted as the door opened and a woman glided into the room. Katherine eyed the newcomer, whose lavender attire with matching laced gloves and beribboned hat filled the room with color. In her frugal brown outfit, she felt as drab and colorless as the walls that surrounded her.

  Katherine watched the woman run her fingers lightly over the softness of her purse and caught her brief disinterested scan. The look on the other woman’s face told Katherine that the woman had made a quick judgment about her, and she suddenly felt as menial as she looked. The woman moved to a chair on the other side of the room. Although she had a right to be there, the critical eyes of the woman made Katherine wish she could have waited in another room.

  The stagnant air in the office became even more uncomfortable, and Katherine coughed. The other woman waved her handkerchief before her face.

  “Open that window,” the woman ordered as she pointed to it.

  Had she not been ordered to do so, Katherine might have indeed opened the window. However, she chose to glare back at the woman, and coolly replied, “If you wish the window opened, then open it yourself.”

  A blush rose to the woman’s cheeks. “Well! How rude! Is this how servants behave in this country? I would have expected better.”

  Katherine looked away but said nothing.

  The window remained closed.

  Both women sat in the screaming silence, impatiently glancing now and then at the private frosted doors for a sign of life.

  * * *

  In the enclosed chamber, Neal Jameson’s secretary waited to present the letters pertaining to the case at hand. The solicitor stood glancing out of the window at the increased activity on the street. He considered the task at hand, that of Robbie’s will. Had he done all he could to execute it? Three letters were sent to Robbie’s
heirs, two complied, and one had been returned unopened and marked ‘deceased.’ The sending of the third letter was the secretary’s error. Neal knew that Robbie’s son was dead. Still the letter’s return made the solicitor feel as if he had failed to satisfy his lifelong friend’s final request.

  As he contemplated his failure, his secretary spoke, “They’re here, sir.”

  Neal already knew this for he had watched each one arrive. His guardianship was to begin. He wondered how he was going to handle these two young women who were so different from each other.

  “Shall I show them in?”

  “No, Harry, not yet.” Neal had been called back from holiday to handle Sir Robert Craig’s estate and wasn’t ready to settle his friend’s business. Instead, his spiritless eyes lingered over the view before him. The heavy cloak of fog gave the city a look of mystery, and the people moving about in it seemed ignorant of their own mortality. Neal knew about mortality for his best friend had met the dismal dispatcher of death not long ago. The gruesome details of Robert’s demise still haunted him.

  “How fleeting are the feet of life,” he uttered, “especially when greed speeds along their steps.” It was important to Neal that a man die with dignity and that his body be preserved in a dignified manner as well. He cringed as he envisioned Robbie’s proud form being forcibly shoved into a barrel of rum and sealed with pitch against the very air that once filled his robust lungs, air that upon death was corrosive to his earthly shell. Again and again he envisioned the bloated flesh of Robbie’s rum-soaked face, and he shivered.

  Neal poured a dram of dusky liquor into a small glass and silently toasted the sweeter memories of the adventures that he and his friend had shared. The comforting spirits trickled slowly down his throat and spurred a part of his saddened heart. As he placed the glass back on the tray, he eyed the dry sagging skin that spread over his own arthritic hand.

  “See what you’ll miss, Robbie,” he said, rubbing his stiff fingers, “ligaments and bones, tight and twisted, wrapped with dying skin that wrinkles while waiting for its time to rot off.” And though he stared at his hand, his mind drifted to the past, to a time when they both had strong hands. They used to be youthful hands, hands for holding a flask of whiskey and for squeezing a voluptuous maiden as they rolled in the warm grasses of the moor, hands for sharpening a sgian dubh as it cut through the roasted rump of a freshly killed stag, hands to fight for causes long forgotten.

  “We were barely bearded and eager, weren’t we Rob,” he whispered, returning to the window. “Two whiskeyed lads, pulsating with desire and neither of us able to keep our manliness under control.” An amused chuckle escaped Neal’s lips, and the echo of it came back as rustling paper.

  It was then that he remembered that his secretary was still silently waiting to attend to business.

  Neal moved to close the window against the street noises and said, “Sorry Harry. Seems like I can’t shake this moroseness today. Though I guess this is not the time to indulge oneself.”

  “No, sir, perhaps not.” Harry replied while handing the solicitor the papers.

  * * *

  The furthermost office door opened, and the secretary stepped into the waiting room. “Mr. Jameson will be with you shortly,” he announced. He had no sooner settled himself at his desk when the solicitor himself appeared. His tall graying form drew the women’s attention as he spoke.

  “I’m sorry to have kept you both waiting, but if you will join me now,” his large hand motioned to the room that he had just vacated.

  The woman in lavender rose. Katherine, too, rose and moved to enter the office. As she did so, she saw the woman’s eyebrows draw together in a deep frown as she cut in front of Katherine to enter first. Then Katherine watched as the woman sought out the softest looking chair in front of the paper-ladened desk. Sitting herself down in the only chair other available, a straight-backed wooden one, Katherine wondered who this woman could be and why was she there.

  Neal sat and studied the youthful faces before him for any signs of patrimonial endowments. But each face, veiled with anxiety, hid its heritage. The American is the hungry one, he judged, the other is the bitter one. Yes, they look just as Robbie had often described them.

  “I hope you both had an enjoyable and uneventful trip.” He paused for a reply, but received only affirmatory nods. He shuffled the papers before him. “Well, let’s begin. You have been summoned here because both of you, Mistress Belwood and Mistress St. Pierre, appear in Robbie’s will… that is Sir Robert Craig’s will. It was his wish that you be co-heirs in his estate and holdings.”

  Neal paused to see their reaction to this news. When there wasn’t any, he stumbled on, saying, “It is unorthodox for two women to be the beneficiaries, however, I assure you it’s quite legal. You both will share in the ownership of Wistmere and in Robert’s shipping business.” He looked at them, still waiting for a reaction. But the uneasy silence continued to choke the room. Neal then heard an intake of breath and looked at Mistress St. Pierre.

  She stared at the solicitor. Her face drained slightly of its color as she snapped forward in her chair. “You’re mistaken, sir. Surely you’re mistaken. I barely knew Sir Robert.”

  The other woman’s cheeks flushed as she sank back into the soft leather chair and smiled, “But… why me? Why did Robbie leave me everything?”

  A frown edged deep in Jameson’s brow. “You misunderstand, Miss Belwood. You and Miss St. Pierre are to share in the estate.” It’s odd that Robbie’s daughters questioned their own inheritance. As he scrutinized the puzzled faces before him, he suddenly realized why they seemed bewildered.

  “Don’t either of you know?” he asked, shaking his head in disbelief. “Didn’t either Rob or your mothers revealed the facts of your parentage to you?”

  “What facts?” The women demanded in unison.

  The solicitor drew in a deep breath and chose his next words carefully, thinking that they’d be received with mixed emotions. “You are both the only living children of Sir Robert Craig.”

  He waited in silence. For a moment, a long still moment, the only sound in the room was the man’s own soft, wheezing breath.

  Then May-Jewel Belwood exclaimed, “Oh, my Lord! Robbie, my father?” Visions of unexplained events flooded her mind: of presents, of rooms filled with toys when she was young and, as she grew older, of precious jewels and fine clothing from around the world, of mysterious arrivals and midnight suppers, her mother’s glistening eyes when Robbie came and went. He wasn’t just her mother’s favorite client. He was her mother’s lover, and her own father! Why hadn’t her mother ever told her? All those years she had spent wondering who her father was, and it was Robbie! She contemplated less about who her father was as she grew older, reasoning that her father must have been married and had his own legal children to consider and couldn’t, therefore, step forward to claim her.

  In the midst of these thoughts, May-Jewel’s mind turned to the woman who sat motionless beside her. The woman’s breathing had become stilled as if the revelation of her parentage was strangling her. The joy that May-Jewel had felt a moment before faded. If this woman, this servant, is Robbie’s daughter too, then… then she is my half-sister! My sister? The realization left her disturbed. Her mind whirled with the knowledge that she would suffer socially if ever this connection was known in Boston. For even in her mother’s secluded society, there were limits as to what was tolerated.

  Katherine leaned forward and placed her shaking hand on the desk as if to stand.

  “You must be mistaken.” Her raspy words were barely audible. “You have the wrong woman. I was nothing to Robert Craig when he was alive, and I am nothing to him now that he’s dead!” Each word spilled over her lips like a vile mass erupting from a rancorous heart.

  “No, you are indeed the right woman,” Neal Jameson said, his forefinger striking the desk with each word. “Are you not Katherine St. Pierre? Daughter of Cora St. Pierre? Who was born…”
r />   Katherine raised her hand to silence him. She didn’t want to listen to her vital statistics. She didn’t want to hear how she could be Sir Robert’s daughter, for if she truly was, she’d have her veins emptied of his blood, even if she had to drain it herself.

  But the solicitor continued with the details of how Katherine’s parents met. At fifteen, Cora St. Pierre, daughter of an islander and a French seaman, was to be sold to pay her uncle’s debts. It was Robert Craig who, hearing of this, had paid those debts, thus buying her freedom. “Robbie told me that he had every intention of leaving her with her people. But as she was very beautiful, he brought her home to Scotland instead.”

  Caught up in the story, May-Jewel leaned forward in her chair. “What happened next?”

  Mr. Jameson frowned at her forwardness, but continued, “Unfortunately, Rob didn’t think much beyond that one act. And Cora soon was with child.” He paused, waiting for his words to penetrate the thick veneer of the women’s social sensitivities.

  Katherine slumped back in her chair. She hadn’t known any of this! Her mother never even hinted at such things. Her mother and Sir Robert? Why had she not been told about him before? The sudden truth of her own birth and the exposure of her mother’s sin being divulged by one stranger and in front of another was almost more than she could take. Her ignorance of her own life left her defenseless. How mortifying was the knowledge that her mother had been bought, purchased as one purchased a frock or a fish! Her mind screamed with indignation, and she wanted to cry for her mother who had been caught between the worlds of affluence and poverty, caught in a limbo between belonging and not belonging. Katherine’s lifelong thoughts began to untangle. I didn’t belong. Even on the estate where I was born and to the man I was born of, I was only tolerated. I was tolerated at school and tolerated by the McGill’s as their governess but only because of my excellence, an excellence that was forced onto me in school by Robert’s money and the political favors owed him. Suddenly it made sense, her mother’s adoration of Sir Robert, their living on his estate, and her going to school, a privilege not granted to many girls. She remembered Robert and his thick copper hair and fire-colored beard, though he seldom came to the cottage to see them.