Isis Read online

  My grandfather had kept a small pile of nude photographs of women, tucked behind an oversized 1835 edition of the Bible with a dark snakeskin cover. I sifted through these pictures, marveling at this secret wickedness of the Gray Minister. I looked upon these figures as if they would teach me what being a woman was within the world of men. I made up names for each of the girls—Biblical names like Delilah and Rahab and Ruth and Naomi and Jezebel, of course. I did not see them as lascivious in the least, for they seemed as my mother and I had in our pageant—works of art posed by a photographer who gave them flowers in their hair, or a tasteful hand drawn over their private parts.

  Even Jezebel, the naughtiest of them, had a garland of daisies across her small belly, and though her head was cocked back slightly and her legs parted, she seemed to be contemplating eternity as she lay there. I knew this was a gentlemen’s collection, but there was something pristine about these women, who, as nudes, could have been statues in great museums.

  I located the page in the Bible where each woman was mentioned and pressed the corresponding picture of the nude into that page. I drew Harvey to the library to show him the pictures. He acted shocked at seeing them, and told me they were not meant for delicate young ladies. But I showed him Rahab and Delilah and asked him, “Do you think she is lovely?”

  He blushed and shook his head. “No, not at all. Not lovely at all. Put those away, Iris. We really should burn them.”

  As I wandered deeper into my grandfather’s library—for behind every book was another, and behind every bookcase, another could be drawn out if the latch were located—I also found books of a very different nature.

  My grandfather’s old library still contained his books on the occult, for though he beat the Good Book with one fist, he studied demonology in order to learn the names of the devils he wished to cast out of the world. I spent many hours, unnoticed by even my governess, in the old mahogany-lined library and delighted in the wicked books. I read grimoires and the medieval texts as I learned Latin in the morning and the tales of witch-finders and demon-raisers before tea.

  I shared this with Harvey, who was—at first—aghast at my grandfather’s extensive occult collection, but soon joined me in delight as we began writing secret notes to each other, left around the house, in some ancient coded language supposedly created by the Chaldean Demon-Raisers or the Medieval Witch Alphabet. Harvey left little jokes for me that I then had to translate from the strange symbols of the codes, and I left brief notes of “Spence on warpath” or “The Gray Minister knows your sins” under his tea saucer, or folded neatly into one of his favorite magazines.

  4

  One night, after supper, I began crying for no reason that I knew. Harvey took me for a walk along the stone-hedges of the sunken gardens by the full moon’s light. The air was heavy and smothering with spring fragrances, and damp with recent rain. “Why so sad?” he asked.

  Although many things had been bothering me, I ended up speaking of our mother and her sorrows. Finally, I said, “And it’s because of our father.”

  “Ah,” Harvey said.

  “It’s as if . . . as if . . .” I fought back tears. “As if he’s dead.”

  “But he’s not.”

  “No. He’s in India or Burma or Australia or Africa. Everywhere but here.”

  “He is important for this country.”

  “But not us.”

  “No, not us,” he said, kissing the top of my head. “I know. I know. Let’s summon the dead, Iris. They can go bring father to us.” He chuckled, and I laughed as well at his light-heartedness. “We know that Chaldean summoning ritual.” He began saying it aloud.

  “Oh, you mustn’t,” I said, clapping my hand over his mouth. “What if it’s real?”

  “True,” he said. “It won’t work unless we go to the Laughing Maiden. Oh dear, Iris, you’ve been too influenced by all that reading and by Old Marsh himself. He is a crackpot. We could no more summon the dead than . . . than we could fly out the windows.”

  We made jokes about what kind of warriors we would call from the dead to go find our father and make him come home to us. At the Laughing Maiden, Harvey took my hands in his and we recited the words we’d learned from one of my grandfather’s books.

  Yet, as we suspected, no demon arose, no dead came to do our bidding.

  “It’s a pity,” Harvey said. “If the dead had asked for my first-born, I’d have said yes, for I shan’t have any children.”

  “None at all?”

  “None,” he said. “Look at our family, Iris. Our grandfather has lost his mind, our father never wishes to be with us. Mother is in her room drinking or taking those cures that cure nothing but drive her further into sleep. Spence is becoming a libertine.”

  “But you aren’t like Spence.”

  “Aren’t I?” he asked, and in his words I realized that there had been something of Harvey’s life he had always kept from me, as close as we had been. Perhaps he was different when he was at school. Perhaps he was not the boy I had grown up knowing as my brother. “I am like Spence in some ways. I just don’t show it as much as he does. I am private in my Spencerly ways and wiles.”

  “You’re nothing like him.”

  “If you say so, it’s settled then. But really, we are not meant to breed. Only you should have children. You are the good one.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because you understand love,” he said, and laid his arm gently across my shoulder. I leaned against him.

  We did not return to the house until well after midnight. We sat before the doors of the Tombs beneath the moon and spoke of what life might be like beyond Belerion Hall, what life had been on the island when we were young, and how I would always think of him as Osiris, and he would think of me as Isis.

  5

  I should mention that in the fall, winter, and most of the spring, I was under the thumb of a new and very stern governess named Edyth Bright, who was pretty and young and cruel. When I’d been younger, my governess had been a sweet woman named Miss Alice Ivey, who enjoyed children and the fun that could be had with us. But she accepted a marriage proposal and left us, and “Edyth Blight”—as Harvey called her—entered our lives.

  She was as lovely, physically, as the girls in my grandfather’s naughty pictures, but she carried a sourness about her that seemed to come directly from having to work among the wealthy. “Not everyone grew up with a room of her own, and if you intend to grow lazy and fat, I will put you out with the sheep,” she would scold me when I remained in bed late in the morning, or after the morning’s meal. “When I was a girl, I had oat cakes and water for breakfast, and took an ice-cold bath. It is a pity that such luxury is wasted upon someone your age.”

  During lessons, if I should mistake a noun for a verb, she would slap my hand with a stick until the tears came to my eyes. If I played a tune badly on the piano, she would rap my knuckles. Once, when I sat listening to one of her many lectures on the natural world, she complained that I played with my hair too much. She brought in scissors and told me to cut my hair in those places where my fingers wandered. I could not do this, and began sobbing, begging her forgiveness. She took the scissors back and grabbed the back of my scalp and cut a clutch of long hair. She held it up before my eyes and said, “Now you shan’t be so pretty,” and repeated this over and over again as if she were somehow broken on the inside.

  I felt completely as if I were her prisoner if my brother Harvey wasn’t nearby to rescue me. Spence sometimes looked in on my lessons, but without the intention of rescuing me. Spence watched my governess at times, and when she went to her bed at night, he often asked me what kinds of music she liked, or if she had a favorite flower.

  Once, when she was prickly with me, I told her that she was a servant of our house and to show respect. She reached for my shoulder and pinched me very hard and leaned over to whisper in my ear, “Someday, you might be where I am and I might be where you are. Someday, I might call you ‘servant.’�
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  It wasn’t until the winter of my fifteenth year, near the holidays—when I found her with my brother Spence, on the great oriental rug in our grandfather’s library— that I grew to truly hate her. Edyth lay in Spense’s arms; her blouse unbuttoned too far; her hair wild like briars; an animal heat in her eyes.

  Sprawled on the sofa and floor beside them were the pictures of the nude women. In an instant I realized that the pictures had incited their lusts.

  In the next moment, I knew that I finally could destroy Edyth and make her pay for her cruelty to me.

  6

  I stood in the doorway and said, “Disgusting! Look at you, Edyth Blight. You shan’t last long in this house now. No one in all of Cornwall will ever employ you again! No one in the entire country! You will be turned out into the street!”

  She glanced up at me, her face turning bright red—first with shame, and then with fury. “You little witch!” she cried out, while Spence, covering himself up, laughed and rolled to the side as if disinterested in my anger.

  I turned away haughtily, for I had won in the battle to rid myself of Edyth. I stomped my way along the corridor, heading straight to the West Wing, where my mother spent her days and nights in bed. Harvey had taken his books to her room that day to study and spend time with her. I would tell them about Edyth and Spence, and how they both needed to be thrown out of the house immediately. I knew that once my mother heard this, she would not let Edyth live under our roof one more day, nor would she hesitate to let others know of Edyth’s behavior. And Harvey would help, too. He could scold Spence and send him packing back to university again, and then everything would be good. And perhaps my father would come home to take care of us again.

  Edyth raced after me along the hallway, catching up too quickly. She pulled me aside into the alcove beneath a red velvet curtain. I could just see, through the glass of the window, the shape of someone in the garden below.

  The gardener’s son was out in the sunken garden, plucking at dried branches even while a drizzle of rain came down. I wanted to shout for him to come help me, but I struggled against Edyth’s hold.

  Out of breath, she warned me, “You cannot understand this. What men and women do. You do not know what you saw.” She tightened her grip on my wrists. “I will thrash you, Iris Catherine Villiers. I will thrash you but good. You cannot understand this. You think you do, but you cannot, you little witch.”

  “I understand perfectly,” I said, tears in my eyes. “Pretending to be above me. Pretending to have ideals and to talk about great art and literature. Cutting my hair because of vanity. Slapping me whenever the mood takes you. You are sloth and lust and vanity and all the sins combined. Let me go, I say.” My words had some effect on her, and she loosened her grip slightly. I shook myself free of her and turned toward the window.

  I pushed up the latch on the window, thinking that if Percy looked up at me and heard me shout, Edyth might leave me alone for now.

  As I moved the latch upward, she pulled me back around, grabbing hold of me again.

  “You swear you will tell no one,” she said as she shook me as if I were a rag doll. “Swear!” She glanced out the window, perhaps seeing Percy there, perhaps wondering what I might be capable of doing.

  “I will not,” I whispered in a snarl, seething as I spoke. “I will tell everyone. You will be ruined. You will be ruined. You will be out in the street before supper. You’re nothing but a . . . a . . .” I quickly tried to think of the worst word I had, but only my grandfather’s language came to me. “Harlot.”

  “Then you will be known as a little liar, missy,” Edyth whispered. “Spencer and I will say that you have an unclean mind. I will lock you up with your grandfather. I will . . . I will . . .”

  “What? What will you do to me? Kill me? Cut out my tongue? You’re a servant here,” I spat back at her, struggling against her as she held tight.

  I leaned toward the open window to cry out to Percy so he would see us and come help me.

  Edyth drew back and slapped me as hard as I had ever been slapped in my life.

  I felt the back of her hand as it whacked against my cheek.

  I fell backward against the window, the freezing pain along my face.

  Though this happened in a few seconds, it felt slow and endless, for I cried out in terror as I felt myself going through the opening window, backwards, droplets of rain on my face.

  FOUR

  1

  Edyth grasped my wrists. Her hands, moistened by sweat, began slipping. She grabbed my waist, but even this was too much for her.

  I saw the world upside down, where the gray sky was the earth and the green and brown earth, the sky. Percy Marsh looked up at me from the green sky, though his face was a wash of rain.

  Edyth grabbed my legs as I twisted, suspended, out the window.

  “Dear God!” she cried out. “Dear God!” She did not mean to let me go, I know that, although I was sure she would, for better I were dead than an eyewitness to her ruination. Yet she groaned and moaned as she held me there and called out for Percy and for Spence and for Harvey and for Mrs. Haworth and for Old Marsh to come help her.

  I hung there, looking at this new upside-down world, and thought: I am going to die. I am going to fall, and my head will hit the flagstones and I will be somewhere else in the next second. I will be wherever you go when you die. Heaven. Hell. The Otherworld. The Other Side. The Upside-Down Land.

  I saw the stone-hedges and remembered what Old Marsh had said, that they had been built from the local stones to keep the dead within their circle. I wondered if I would haunt this place after my fall. If I would stay within the flagstone walk and the cellars and the sunken gardens and the Tombs and the Thunderbox Room and the cliffside of Belerion Hall ever after because of the stone walls that ran along the estate’s edges.

  “Here? What’s all this?” I heard Harvey’s voice and the sound of shouts from down the hallway. Then, I heard his voice just above me. “Iris? Iris? Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid,” Harvey said. I felt relief at the sound of his voice. I knew that once he arrived, everything would be all right. I wanted to tell him about the terrible and evil Edyth Blight, and his awful twin Spence, but I was too happy hearing his voice as he came to my rescue.

  He and Edyth exchanged some words while I looked down at the flagstones below. How far was it? I wondered. How far a drop? If I fell, I might only break a leg. Or both legs. Perhaps my head would crack open. Perhaps Percy Marsh would run beneath me and catch me.

  Edyth’s grip on my legs began slipping again, and I felt a strange freedom as I thought more and more of just dropping.

  “It’s all right, Iris,” Harvey said, his voice soft and comforting. “Don’t be afraid. I want you to close your eyes. Will you do that? Close your eyes, and count to ten. Count slowly. By the time you open them, I shall have you here again, up here with me. We will laugh about this. Remember the Great Villiers Trapeze Brother-and-Sister Act? Why, I’ll swing you up and over the windowsill and you’ll be laughing by the time you open your eyes.” His hands were upon my legs, a vise-like grip.

  I felt Harvey’s strength as he began to slowly draw me up. I heard Spence’s voice, too, and for a moment felt other hands on me—both brothers were doing what they could to draw me upward.

  Beneath me, Percy and his father had run over, and two of the kitchen girls had run out from the rooms below. One of the girls covered her eyes as if she were looking upward at the sun, which I thought odd given the gray rainy day.

  Harvey continued to soothe my fears. “Just think of the Great Villiers Brother-and-Sister Trapeze Act. I’ll lift you up. Don’t be afraid. It’s just like when we were little and I got you up on the swing. Remember? Easy does it. Easy. Yes, close your eyes, yes, close them, Iris. Here were go . . .” He began to sing that little nursery rhyme that our father had taught him and he had taught me on the tree swing in our yard on the island. “Jack, swing up, and Jack swing down, up to the window
, over the ground. Swing over the field and the garden wall—Watch out for Jack Hackaway if you should fall.”

  I closed my eyes, finally. I felt him drawing me upward toward the window. He slipped a hand under my back. I knew I was nearly back over the window ledge and would soon watch Edyth get her comeuppance.

  I stretched my arms up to him, pulling at his forearms as I had as a little girl on the swings, as if I would climb atop his shoulders.

  A trapeze act.

  He gasped and groaned and shouted a quick curse as if something had caused him to fumble, and his hands slipped.

  I reached up again. I wasn’t afraid at all, for Harvey was not only half of the Great Villiers Brother-and-Sister Trapeze Act, but he would not fail.