The house of sorrowing s.., p.1
The House of Sorrowing Stars, page 1
Contents
Sixteen Years Ago
CHAPTER 1: The Marchpane Girl
CHAPTER 2: Disappointment
Interlude
CHAPTER 3: Forgotten Package
CHAPTER 4: Lost Doll
CHAPTER 5: Lady Chamberlain
CHAPTER 6: Leaving
CHAPTER 7: The House of Sorrowing Stars
Interlude
CHAPTER 8: The Library of Lost Souls
CHAPTER 9: Vivienne Castellini
CHAPTER 10: Dark Pleasure
CHAPTER 11: The Village
CHAPTER 12: The Lost Object
CHAPTER 13: Almond Trees
CHAPTER 14: Supper
CHAPTER 15: The Locked Room
CHAPTER 16: The Doll
Interlude
CHAPTER 17: Gifts
CHAPTER 18: Pumpkin
CHAPTER 19: Eloura
CHAPTER 20: The Girl in the Square
CHAPTER 21: The Woman in the Leaves
CHAPTER 22: Sweet Treats
CHAPTER 23: The Nursery
CHAPTER 24: The Wallpaper
CHAPTER 25: Oranges and Bluestone Cobbles
CHAPTER 26: Attack
CHAPTER 27: Defence
CHAPTER 28: Ravanna
CHAPTER 29: Secrets Revealed
CHAPTER 30: The Keymaker’s Loss
CHAPTER 31: The Sorrela Boat
CHAPTER 32: Bluebells and Bird-Boxes
CHAPTER 33: The Key
CHAPTER 34: A Socket Full of Stars
CHAPTER 35: Night Swim
CHAPTER 36: Little Bea
CHAPTER 37: Letting Go
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
About the Author
Beth Cartwright has taught English in Greece and travelled around South East Asia and South America, where she worked at an animal sanctuary. A love of language and the imaginary led her to study English Literature and Linguistics at Lancaster University, and she now lives on the edge of the Peak District with her family and two cats.
Also by Beth Cartwright
Feathertide
To my parents, who made so many things possible, especially to my father Phil, with endless love and gratitude, and to Joe, his shadow, his best friend, his world.
Sixteen Years Ago
The doll had been in the lake for so long that the water had rinsed almost all the colour from her clothes. What had once been a beautiful cornflower blue was now as dull and pale as a winter sky – more rag than dress. Her feet were bare, and one of her fingers had broken away. The bouncy chestnut ringlets of her hair were now two heavy twists that wrapped around her arms like dark rope. Her face was white and cold to the touch, and the apple blush of her cheeks and the small rosebud pout of her mouth had long since washed away. With unblinking emerald eyes, she stared at the sky as the garland of white flowers and feathers adorning her head slowly loosened and drifted around her like a scattered offering.
By the time she floated towards the banks of the island, the light was beginning to fade. A young woman was walking along the edge of the lake. She came there most evenings to listen to the gentle sound of the water. That evening she heard the flute-like note of a curlew echoing through the dusk. It would not be long until the soft hoot of an owl summoned the moon. She wondered if it was the same one that she had released a few days before, after finding it sprawled on a pile of leaves in its light speckled gown, its wing bent at an odd angle. The month before, she had found a baby robin shivering on the lawn. Unable to find its nest, she had nursed it back to health, waking through the night to feed it bits of hard-boiled egg from a toothpick. She had rescued so many animals on the island – and not only birds, but also salamanders, hedgehogs, mice and even a fox that had torn its neck on a rusty wire. A piece of its fur would forever be missing, but it lived. This is where she came to release them; chosen because it was far enough from the house not to be seen and it offered the secret shade of the chestnut trees. She was thinking of keeping a leger of them all, like that of a jewel merchant or a curator of the finest museum specimens. Her work was just as important as theirs, and she was determined it would count.
The warmth of the day hadn’t yet left her skin as she pulled off her stockings and walked towards the lake. Hitching up her dress, she dipped her toes into the cool blue water, then, unable to resist, she plunged in her whole foot, feeling the cold splash against her legs. There was no one there to see. Her brother was the only one who might come this way, but he was always too busy mending a broken lock or carving out a new one. She closed her eyes, tilted her face to the sky and inhaled the wispy scent of hibiscus, which every now and then caught on the gentle breeze.
On the island the dark always arrived swiftly. In a blink, the sun’s dramatic red flare would vanish from the mountains and the sky would glow like a long-burning fire. It was the magic hour – the hour of water and birdsong and fast-fading light. It was her time.
Something tickled her ankle. At first she didn’t give it much attention; wind-swept twigs and ferns were always finding their way into the water. She probably would have continued standing there with her eyes closed and her skirt bunched in her fists, dreaming and drifting, except that whatever it was suddenly grew insistent. It felt like the tapping of tiny impatient fingers on her skin – so strange that she finally opened her eyes and looked down. What she saw floating against her leg made her gasp in astonishment.
Gently, so as not to damage it further, she lifted the doll out of the water. It was heavier than expected, and it didn’t break apart in her hands, as she had feared. Carefully she shook away the water and unpicked a twig that had tangled in its hair.
‘Someone will be missing you,’ she said, staring into the doll’s eyes, still bright and shining.
Then she felt it, as she so often did when she touched an unfamiliar object. A vision, a connection. Only this time the feeling was difficult to explain. She waited, hoping that if she grasped the doll a little tighter with both of her hands, the meaning would come.
Usually the sense was sudden and sharp, like a pin-prick. Sometimes there was a sound or a feeling. At other times it came to her as a smell or a taste on her tongue. Her gift was an unusual one. The first time it happened she had been returning a dropped pendant to a lady in the street. As soon as she picked it up, she could hear the relentless sound of a baby crying. It was so loud that she had run away, covering her ears, before the woman even had time to thank her. A few months later she saw the same woman gazing excitedly in the window of a toy shop and, when she turned to leave, she saw the rounded swelling of her stomach, confirming what she’d already known.
Unfortunately the visions weren’t always that pleasant. One winter morning she had bought a bag of chestnuts from the old peddler on the street corner. As she popped one – still warm – into her mouth and crunched it between her teeth, she knew immediately that something was wrong. Instead of the burst of sweetness she had been expecting, the metallic taste of blood filled her mouth. She began to gag in disgust, clawing at her tongue and choking as she tried to spit out all the pieces. The peddler watched in confusion and guilt, but she hurried away, unable to explain. A week later, when she was standing in the bread shop, she saw a funeral procession go by. She didn’t need to look inside the coffin to know she’d find the old peddler lying there.
Another time she’d found a glove, its owner long gone. She picked it up, intending to lay it on a window ledge, in case someone came looking for it. As soon as she touched it, she felt a terrible burning sensation, so hot that she dropped it back on the ground as though she held a lit coal. She was convinced that it had left scorch marks, but when she turned her hand over, the smooth, unblemished skin said otherwise. The next day she’d heard that a house in the village had burned to the ground and all the people inside had perished. She would never know for sure if one of them had lost a glove, but she was almost certain they had.
This time it was different. It wasn’t a sound or a taste that came to her as she held the doll, but rather an unshakeable feeling. It made her heart lift, then fall, then lift and fall again like a choppy wave, but she couldn’t tell if it was bringing her closer to the shore or sweeping her further away.
Tentatively she turned the doll over in her hand, hoping she would sense something else, something more. It would have been so beautiful once and expensively made, but now its porcelain arms and legs were stained and its face was chipped. She could see that one of its fingers was missing and its dress looked like an old dishcloth. If it had once worn shoes, they were long gone.
But it is not beyond repair, she thought, her mind turning to the paints she kept in her room. She could use them to revive the doll’s cheeks and lips. Curling its hair would be simple enough – she had done her own enough times – and she could wash its dress and sprinkle lavender into the water to banish the mould. After all, she was used to rescuing things. Her brother would laugh and say she was almost grown, and far too old to play with dolls. She knew he was right, but it wasn’t the doll she was interested in, it was the person who’d lost it.
The last of the light vanished, deepening the sky from lilac to indigo and, in the lake below, the petals of the sorrowing stars were stirring. It was time to leave.
That night, as she fell asleep with the doll by her side, she could feel her cheeks damp, but the tears that fell were not her own.
Across the lake a young girl was crying into her pillow. A few weeks ago she had left her doll somewhere, but couldn’t remember where. Her father and her uncle had gone back to the little park they’d sat in that morning and retraced their steps to the café where they’d all eaten lunch. The following day they’d gone back to see if the doll was lying on the steps of the church they’d admired, but they were empty, aside from a pair of cooing doves. They spent days searching the village without any luck, and by the time they eventually wandered along the lakeside path, the doll had almost reached the island. Each time they returned empty-handed the little girl’s heart broke all over again, and the promise of a new doll did nothing to fix it. As she lay inconsolable in her cousin’s arms, her crying continued long into the night, and into the many nights that followed.
Her loss was a ripple in the water that could be felt far across the lake.
CHAPTER 1
The Marchpane Girl
Liddy spied yet another card lying in a silver tray on the hallway table. It was the fifth one in as many weeks and, just like all the others, it had her name written on the front. She instantly recognised the hand that had left it there, and her heart plummeted. It belonged to Jack Heathcote. Dipping her head to unwind her scarf, Liddy noticed that the top left-hand corner had been turned down, indicating that it had been hand-delivered. She felt a momentary flutter of panic at the thought of him still being there, sipping tea and discussing business with her father in the drawing room. She strained her ears for the sound of voices tucked deeper in the house, but none came. A quick rummage through the coat-stand confirmed that her visitor hadn’t stayed and she gave a sigh of relief.
She lifted the card from the tray, a gesture that brought with it a waft of something pungent and much too sweet, like rose petals stewed in rain. His mother’s perfume perhaps, or the trace of one of his many lovers. She didn’t need to read it to know what it would say – the cards all had the same nauseating sentiment, which was as sickly as it was false. In the last one he described her as his dearest creature and declared himself to be her most ardent pursuer. She shuddered at the thought. As soon as her mother had discovered that Jack Heathcote was the one sending the calling cards she’d begun planning the most lavish of weddings. Her father was equally delighted by Jack’s interest in his daughter; the Heathcote family came from a long line of shipping merchants and, with the right investment, he imagined his marchpane travelling to the distant corners of the world.
Liddy knew it wasn’t polite to ignore the card, but she didn’t care – she wasn’t about to give Jack the satisfaction of a reply. It might please her parents if she became the wife of a man with more lovers than plum puddings, but it certainly wouldn’t please her. Down the corridor she heard the rustling and folding of paper and then the swift shuffle of her father’s approaching feet. Quick as a minnow, she slipped the card into her pocket, just as he emerged from the shadows, carrying a small bundle of boxes in his hands.
‘No, no, no,’ he said, shaking his head, before she had a chance to undo the first of her coat buttons. ‘I need you to go out again; there is a very important sugar banquet happening right now, and our marchpane is to be the centrepiece.’
Liddy’s father thrust the boxes into her hands and bundled her back onto the street.
‘Hurry,’ he called. ‘These packages are for Jack Heathcote, and I think it’s about time you answered his calls.’
‘But—’ Liddy began, but her father’s face immediately hardened and her protestations fell away.
‘I told you, good men don’t wait for ever,’ he said sternly. ‘Especially the likes of Jack Heathcote.’
He slammed the door shut, leaving her alone on the street. Liddy wondered if there even was a sugar banquet or if it were simply a stupid ruse to bring them together. Reaching inside her pocket for the card that her father had obviously already discovered, she scrunched it into a ball. That’s my answer, and it won’t change, she thought, tossing it into the gutter.
A quiet storm brewed, and she strode across town in such a temper that the pounding of her footsteps startled a flock of pigeons into the air like a spray of bullets. She was so angry that she walked straight past her destination, and it was only when she reached the rowdy rabble of the Queen’s Head that she realised she’d gone too far and had to double back.
The Heathcote house was a large stone building on the edge of the town. From the outside it was a rather drab and tired affair, with crumbling walls and chipped paintwork, but once inside it became a different place entirely. When she had been too young to make deliveries by herself, she would accompany her father on his errands, and it was in the early dark of winter that she had first glimpsed the sumptuous world within. She had gasped when the door had opened for the first time to reveal a place of breathtaking opulence, unlike anything she had ever seen before. While they had waited in the grand hallway, her eyes had hurried over everything: a sweeping staircase, a polished floor, a sparkling chandelier, gleaming elegant furnishings. Then through a large open doorway her eyes had fallen upon a boy. He was perhaps a year or two older than her and he was pulling a mewling cat along the floor by its tail. Liddy had watched in horror as the boy began to spin the cat round and round. His laughter made her furious. Her father didn’t seem to notice, or perhaps he dismissed it as boyish mischief; either way, he ignored her tugs at his sleeve. Taken by surprise at seeing Liddy and her father standing there, the boy had loosened his grip and the cat seized its opportunity to escape. On frantic paws, it skittered straight for the front door, which had closed behind Liddy and her father. Without hesitation Liddy stepped back to turn the handle. A cold draught blew in and the cat brushed past her legs and was gone. The boy watched her with narrowed eyes and then smiled smugly. He didn’t look at her angrily, but as though she was a new challenge, which was even more unsettling. Liddy averted her gaze and shifted her feet back until she was hidden safely behind her father’s oversized coat.
In that moment Liddy learned that wealth couldn’t make everything shine and it certainly couldn’t buy manners.
On reaching the top of the steps leading to the front door, she now saw her scowling face reflected in the polished brass of the door knocker. The fixture felt too heavy in her hand, and she let it drop before she was ready. A shallow, dull thud half-heartedly announced her arrival. She tutted at herself; the walk across town had done nothing to abate her temper. She stood back, ready to hand over her father’s delivery quickly and scarper, but no one came. She tried again, this time with a thud loud enough to rouse the dead, but it seemed the dead were not listening – the door stayed firmly shut.
Behind her on the street, two children ran past, giggling. They were followed by a breathless woman hitching up her skirts, in slow pursuit. ‘It’s time you rascals were home for supper,’ the woman cried to the children, shaking her head and pausing to rest against the railings. After a moment she straightened herself and hobbled away after them. Liddy’s attention fell back to the door.
She knocked again and again, but still nobody answered. She felt a drop of rain on her head and looked up, to see an ominous dark sky: rain was on its way. Impatiently she placed the boxes on the step and peered through the nearest window, hoping to catch someone’s attention. The room within was dark and filled with shadows, but on the other side the light through an open doorway revealed a crowded room, and she could hear the very faint sound of laughter. At that moment the front door swung open and the suddenness of it sent her stumbling backwards; her foot slipped and she fell down the steps to the street below. Unharmed but embarrassed, she looked up to see Jack Heathcote standing above her.
‘Let me help,’ he said, moving towards her.
Liddy scrambled to her feet; she did not welcome the weight of his hand upon her arm. Straightening her skirt, she dusted off her coat and climbed the steps, then hastily snatched up the boxes and thrust them towards him.
‘You must be here for my party,’ he said, letting the marchpane boxes hang between them.
‘You are mistaken,’ Liddy snapped. ‘I came to deliver your marchpane – and only at my father’s insistence.’
