Page 3 of The Book of Lost Stories

Means of Escape

The existence of the ill-used and sorely troubled Lady Malvina first impinged on Alys Weston’s consciousness in a nightmare, which she later ascribed to the roast duck she had eaten at dinner (sent over by the squire), and the sip of Papa’s port she took to fortify herself for the ascent to her chilly bedchamber.

However it was, she woke very early next morning with the whole plot of a gloriously Gothic romance in her mind.

Springing out of bed, she lit a stump of candle, wrapped herself in an old shawl and, tossing her long plait of dark chestnut hair over her shoulder, proceeded to get her ideas down on paper before the prosaic light of day could dispel any of the thrillingly dark miasma filling her imagination.

Her captors travelled night and day with scarcely a pause, save for such meagre sustenance as they carried in their packs, through countryside that grew ever more craggy and mountainous.

The few sullen, sheepskin-clad peasants they met spoke in the language her mother had used to her in childhood, and Malvina came to realize that she was within the borders of Galbodia, beyond all reach of friends, family … or her beloved Alfonz.

The tall, raven-haired and sinister villain of the piece came to life on the page, rapidly followed by Malvina’s angelically fair betrothed, Alfonz.

Then she added a ghostly, monkish figure, the plot and characters unfolding before her hurrying pen as she sat, frozen and exalted, before the little campaign desk that her papa had carried with him throughout his soldiering days.

(It had fared rather better than he had, being battered but at least still all in one piece, which was more than one could say about Major Harrison Weston.)

The candle had guttered and died, and the sun long since weakly dragged its sorry self into the leaden sky over the Yorkshire moors, before she was disturbed.

Miss Laetitia Grimshaw, once Alys’s governess, but now occupying a nebulous position somewhere between under-housekeeper and companion, popped her head around the door, looking quite distracted, and with her muslin cap over one ear.

‘Alys? Are you ill?’ she called softly, then, on catching sight of her seated before the desk, came right into the room.

‘Ill? No, of course I am not ill!’ Alys said, blinking away Malvina and her perilous situation … and especially the image of her tall, dark, harsh-featured and fascinatingly villainous abductor, Raymundo Ravegnac. ‘Why should you think so? I am never ill.’

‘Well, you did not let the hens out, and it is not like you to be late for breakfast, my dear.’

‘Perhaps not, but I had the most brilliant idea for a novel in the night, Letty, and thought I had better get the bones of it down before I forgot it. Then it was so engrossing that I had no notion of the time passing.’

‘It was remiss of me not to notice your absence sooner, only the washerwoman is here and I was much engaged in sorting and counting linen.’

Laetitia’s general air of damp dishevelment and coarse cotton apron finally registered.

Alys said remorsefully, ‘I had quite forgotten that Mrs Clarke was coming today to see to the laundry. Let us hope my blue cambric does not run out any more, for it is getting to be sadly grey. And you did remind her to take care with the sheets we have not yet turned?’

‘Oh, yes, although she is so vigorous at pounding them that she gets quite carried away. I had best get back to her. Shall I leave you to compose the rest of your little story, or will you come down now?’

‘This is not just a story, Letty, but is to be an entire Gothic romance along the lines of Mrs Radcliffe’s wonderful tales, which I am sure we must both know by heart. I will read the outline of it to you later, but for now I suppose I had better hasten to get ready.’

Letty looked relieved. ‘That would indeed be best, for although Saul has seen to the hens, I am afraid the major is having one of his better days.’

Their eyes met in mutual comprehension and Alys exclaimed, ‘Oh, no!’

Letty nodded, a strand of mouse-brown hair, sadly out of curl from the steam, escaping from under her cap. ‘Yes, the news the squire brought to your papa yesterday, of the terrible tragedy at Priory Chase, has so enlivened him—’

‘ Enraged him,’ amended Alys.

‘Rage does enliven him,’ Miss Grimshaw pointed out. ‘So much so that he woke early, ate a coddled egg and dry toast and then sent down for the brandy, which he accused me of watering. I was quite quaking in my shoes, but I told him straight I would never dream of doing such a thing.’

‘No, for I do it myself, so your conscience is quite clear on that score,’ Alys assured her.

‘I don’t really know if it answers anyway, Alys, for if it tastes weaker he just seems to drink the more. And now he has finished the bottle, called for his boots and pistol, and gone into the garden.’

Alys sighed, for Major Weston, a feverish, emaciated invalid generally under the influence of intoxicating beverages, only now left his room when the fancy suddenly took him to shoot off his pistol in the garden.

Since he had lost his left arm and the sight in one eye during the disastrous retreat of the Duke of York’s army through Flanders in ’94, and suffered frequent tremors due to a recurrent fever, his aim was not what it once was.

‘Let us hope Saul remembers to stand well back, once he has loaded for Papa,’ she remarked, for the young servant, though amiable and obliging, was not noted for his high intelligence. ‘He will not be of much use about the garden if he has a hole blown through him.’

Miss Grimshaw shuddered. ‘I am sure he learned his lesson that time the major singed his hat.’

There was a sudden explosion from the garden below and the tinkle of broken glass, followed by a noisy mass exodus of startled rooks from the trees that divided the Dower House from Squire Basset’s park.

‘Oh, well, I suppose using empty bottles for targets at least gives them some use, even if we are picking glass out of the flowerbeds for ever afterwards,’ Alys said, then advised Letty to get back to the laundry. ‘Send Mary up with the hot water and I will be down directly.’

But by the time she had got downstairs the explosions and curses from the garden had ceased, and Saul, grinning as though he had just enjoyed a high treat, was assisting Major Weston back to his chamber, quite exhausted.

‘Good morning, Papa,’ Alys said dutifully, stepping aside to let them pass.

‘Well, Miss Slug-a-bed!’ he returned, his hollow-eyed face cadaverous in the dark passageway and his one, sunken dark eye burning with fever or drink …

or possibly both. There were traces still of the handsome man who had captivated her mother into an imprudent runaway match with him so long ago, Alys thought, even though he was now quite pared down to bones, selfishness and bad temper.

He grasped her shoulder suddenly with a skeletal, shaking hand. ‘You have heard the news that Lord Rayven and his heir are dead, girl?’

‘Yes, Papa,’ Alys said cautiously, for she could not see that the accidental death of two people she had never met, tragic though it might be, could concern her.

‘And now the son of that cheating blackguard Hugo Rayven is to inherit all!’ His face grew dark and twisted with anger and his grip on her shoulder became painful. ‘You will have nothing to do with him, do you hear?’

‘Of course not, Papa. How should I? Our paths are extremely unlikely to cross.’

He stared at her for a moment as if he had forgotten who she was. Then his hand dropped and he pushed past and went on up the stairs.

‘Now what maggot has got into his head?’ Alys muttered, as the stumbling footsteps passed overhead.

Even Squire Basset, papa’s cousin, by whose kindness they were established in the modest Dower House on the estate, was not on visiting terms with the Rayvens of Priory Chase, which was situated miles away, near Harrogate, although he might, she supposed, have occasionally shared the hunting field with one or other of them.

Alys broke her fast with tea and bread and butter fetched from the kitchen herself, since Mary, the one maid of all work, was by now engaged in helping Letty spread the first sheets to dry over the lavender and rosemary bushes.

Alys had taken full control of the housekeeping before her fourteenth birthday, and mastered the art of driving a hard bargain in the bartering of chickens and eggs long before that, but it was Letty who seemed to find all the tedious little household tasks quite engrossing.

A timid and self-effacing woman originally engaged by Squire Basset’s first wife as Alys’s governess, she had quickly and almost imperceptibly slipped into the role of general factotum to her strong-minded charge.

Due to Major Weston’s reclusive tendency, chronic invalidism and a selfish determination that his only child should devote her life to his care, Alys’s social circle was largely constricted to Sir Ralph and Lady Basset, his son, James, by his first marriage, and the rector and his good – too good – wife, Mrs Franby.

The nearby village of Little Stidding did not provide much in the way of amusement either, except for the weekly market, and although there were monthly assemblies in the nearest town, Alys had as much hope of gaining Papa’s permission to attend them as of flying to the moon.

Other than that, there was an unlimited supply of bleakly beautiful moorland to roam over, and a lot of sheep … among whom, of course, she did not include her dear Letty, to whom she was most sincerely attached, despite her being some twenty years her senior and quite scatter-brained.

So it was perhaps not surprising that Alys had found her only means of escape from this trammelled and unexciting existence in the world of novels and her own imagination.

And now that she had set out on the writing of an entire novel of her own, she possessed a whole new world she could, godlike, create for her own amusement, peopled by creatures that must dance at her command.

Soon the squire would send down yesterday’s newspaper from the Hall and she would have to read it to Papa, when he had recovered from his exertions, although at least he did tend to be as meek as a lamb for some hours after these sessions.

Meanwhile, alone in the dining parlour with a half-eaten slice of bread and butter, Alys sat turning over possible pen names – male pen names – until eventually she fixed on Orlando Browne. She had no idea where the notion came from, but liked the sound of it very well.

Orlando Browne . Yes, he could take liberties with his characters and plot that a mere Miss might not, especially in the way of scenes of passion and violence, which she intended to sprinkle liberally throughout Lady Malvina’s history.

And her heroine would not be some frail, fainting creature – or, even worse, a pious bore – but a woman of sense and fortitude, who would be undaunted by the supposedly supernatural terrors that would beset her, for Alys was at one with the great Mrs Radcliffe in believing only in the rational.

*

Later, walking across the park to the Hall, Alys reflected that it was odd that the warm-hearted, good-natured, but undeniably vulgar second wife of Sir Ralph should have formed her literary tastes.

Lydia Basset had been an actress before her elevation to her present position, and she loved melodrama, adoring any tale that smacked of the Gothic.

Alys, frequently called on in the afternoons to read to her until she fell asleep, soon found herself eagerly carrying each new novel home for a more earnest perusal once Lady Basset had finished with it.

She read and reread them, especially those of Mrs Radcliffe, who had, for some reason, ceased to produce any more after The Italian , and Alys became quite an expert on Udolpho and an intimate of The Castle of Otranto and Rackrent .

In fact, she could probably have found her way around either blindfolded.

This had been her apprenticeship and she now felt fully ready to embark on her own novel.

As to those other vital requisites of the genre – romantic scenery and gloomy mansions – well, there were rocky and precipitous outcrops enough to please anyone in Yorkshire.

If she had not actually visited Priory Chase, the family seat of the Rayvens, romantically built among the ruins of an abbey, she had heard enough about it to fire her imagination.

Caves too … Alys adored caves, and had several times persuaded the owner of a local one to let her descend into the Stygian gloom where, lantern in hand, she would examine the pallid and interesting accretions formed by the slow dripping of water from the roof.

Emerging with a sudden start from her reverie, Alys recollected that both Lady Basset and Sir Walter Scott’s newly published Marmion awaited her at the Hall.

Picking up her pace, she cut through the wilderness past the hermitage, where old Jethro, in a hooded robe, was gloomily seated on a rock whittling something and did not even look up to pass the time of day when she called out a cheerful greeting.

It showed a rank ingratitude for the many fresh eggs she had bestowed on him, but she supposed a surly and reclusive nature was a requisite for the position of hermit.