Chapter Text
Lord Edward Vincent Peter Horniman, Thirteenth Duke of Halstead, first heard of the apparition a few short weeks after the death of his father, when he noticed an odd smell emanating from the fireplaces at Halstead Manor. The fragrance, woodsy and clean, was not unpleasant. In truth, the duke found it rather deliciously medieval, like the tradition of strewing herbs meant to bless the home. All December the spicy, camphorous scent crept across the house, leaping from hearth to hearth like flame, until eventually it took up residence in his own bedroom.
Not having a valet, it took the duke some time to ask Mr Lawrence, the head butler, if the maids had been adding holly to his allotment of firewood. Perhaps it was an annual tradition that he had missed in his years away, before inheriting the title by complete surprise. Eddie could never recall if it was holly or mistletoe that was poisonous — possibly it was both —but he had a minor worry about adding even more psychoactive plant material to his daily life, given his month-long tenure as a marijuana farmer. (Granted, toxic smoke was likely nothing against the issues that already plagued a home built in 1550, like lead pipes and arsenic-tinted wallpaper, but one couldn’t be too careful.) But eventually he did remember to ask, and Mr Lawrence explained: “It’s juniper, Your Grace.”
“Juniper.”
“Some of the maids, they believe it to be…beneficial,” Mr Lawrence said, with the kind of diplomatic blandness Edward had often heard from UN observers.
“Beneficial? As in, to one’s health?”
“To one’s health and wellbeing,” Mr Lawrence said. “If you dislike it, Your Grace, I will tell them to stop.”
“I don’t dislike it,” Edward said. Given his mother’s preference for gin, it made sense that the smell of juniper made him feel particularly at home. “Do Mr Seacombe and the gardeners know the juniper is being harvested for this? If it’s the nesting grounds for some rare migratory bird, Geoff will have their guts for garters.”
“I believe the juniper comes from a local church, Your Grace. A Catholic church.”
There was something Mr Lawrence wasn’t saying. “Is there something you’re not telling me, Mr Lawrence?”
Mr Lawrence heaved a very put-upon sigh. “Some of the young ladies on the staff believe that burning boughs of juniper from hallowed ground will protect the Manor, and everyone in it.”
When it came to Gospel John Dixon, Eddie would take all the help he could get. The man had sent him a Christmas card, for Christ’s literal sake. If that wasn’t a threat, Eddie didn’t know what was. But he had a feeling that Mr Lawrence was referring to another sort of threat entirely. “Protect us from whom?”
“From what, Your Grace,” Mr Lawrence said.
Eddie asked the question, despite being almost certain he would not like the answer. “And what, exactly, is deterred by the smoke of juniper boughs gathered from hallowed ground?”
Mr Lawrence blinked at him placidly. Eddie saw the moment when the butler decided to tell him the truth. “The ghost, Your Grace.”
“She’s called the woman in white,” Geoff told Eddie later that evening, as he folded waxed paper around a slice of his homemade Christmas pomander soap: orange, clove, cinnamon, and rosemary.
Geoff had told him not to worry about the juniper. It was non-toxic, and in fact was used in “saining” rituals all over the UK this time of year to cleanse and bless the house. His own nan had done it four times a year, he said. Superstition was apparently the only way she could shift her husband’s lazy bones to clean the house.
Geoff slid the soap over to Eddie, who tied it with kraft twine. “She’s been around for ages, Your Grace. Every Halstead has one, practically.”
“Who is she supposed to be?” Eddie added that slice to the stack.
“What d’you mean?” Geoff slid him another square of soap.
“The ghost. Was she a maid who got thrown over, or a duchess who got thrown over, or some other, more obscure position that was actually available to women for the past six hundred years?” Eddie frowned as he tied the knot. “We didn’t drown an accused witch in the lake or something, did we?”
“Not to my knowledge, Your Grace. ” Geoff shifted weight from foot to foot. His fingers paused on the paper. “Though I’m sure the grounds have played host to some more esoteric types, a time or two, over the years.”
Eddie cut more twine. He laid each piece in a line, like freshly-dug graves. “Well, that sounds like a story, Geoff.”
“These woods are some of the last virgin forest in England, Your Grace,” Geoff said. “It’s one of the last surviving surviving slivers of the Forest of Andred. The Godalming Hundred, which contained Hetheringham and Guildford, was was one of the last areas of England to convert. So it’s full of shrines to Norse gods. That’s where they put all the abbeys and so on. And during the Hundred Years’ War, there were stories.”
“What kind of stories?”
“Oh, you know. Strange lights, voices calling your name in the dark. That sort of thing. Probably bandits. Did you know that the Little Red Riding Hood story, depending on the language, is a warning about bandits?”
“I did not.”
“It just goes to show you, Your Grace,” Geoff said. “There’s nothing new under the sun.”
“But a woman in white, that sounds…” Again, Eddie frowned. “Actually it sounds fairly generic. Isn’t it the title of a Wilkie Collins novel?”
“You’d know better than I would, Your Grace.”
“Have you ever seen her, Geoff?”
The soap slipped from Geoff’s hands. Cursing under his breath, he picked it back up and started wrapping it again. “Never seen a ghost, no.” He paused. “I tell a lie, Your Grace. In Antrim, once, I saw something at the foot of my cot. Just another bloke, sitting there, having a f-” At the last second, Geoff corrected himself. “A cigarette.”
“But you’ve seen nothing at Halstead you couldn’t explain,” Eddie said.
“Oh, there’s plenty at Halstead I can’t explain, Your Grace. Just none of it supernatural.”
They laughed, and finished wrapping, and then, just as Eddie was about to leave, Geoff stopped him. “All the same, Your Grace,” he said, eyes sparking as his body angled itself toward the house, “keep a weather eye out. And don’t go nowhere you don’t need to be, in the dark. We lost one duke to a bad fall. If it happens again too soon, we’ll get something of a reputation.”
It wasn’t as though Eddie hadn’t heard the stories, growing up. He’d even read some aloud for his father from the collected personal observations and correspondence of a succession of Hetheringham vicars, as part of his punishment for something or other involving a poorly-aimed croquet ball. The ghost stories — and the violent deaths preceding them — were the most interesting part of the vicarage memoirs, so Eddie’s head was chock-a-block with drowned maidens and hot-blooded duellists. Once he’d even written a paper on a murder ballad that originated from the village of Hetheringham.
And of course Halstead Manor was an old and venerable house, home to generations of births and deaths — and deaths in childbirth, which remained alarmingly common across the six centuries of Halstead’s history. It wasn’t as though this was the first cohort of staffers who believed they’d seen or heard…something.
So when a stagiare in the Halstead kitchens abruptly quit after seeing a “shape” at four in the morning that was there and then…wasn’t, Eddie wasn’t too bothered. When a maid heard laughter behind her and dropped a vase when she turned to find the room empty, Eddie was secretly glad. He’d hated that vase; it was a gift to Mother from Rosie’s dad, and Rosie’s dad was a miserable prick. (Eddie even told a version of this to the maid, who apologised to him in tears, and thus witnessed the precise second she realised he wasn’t sending her back to Odesa.) When Luna started barking at the walls for no reason, well, Luna was an older dog. Besides, dogs and cats saw different wavelengths of light than humans did, and the world was full of confusing new technology for them.
And if Edward heard the tricky floorboard creak outside his door, as though someone were pacing the hall, it was probably Freddy. Granted, Freddy (and everyone else in residence) knew to avoid the floorboard. Dad had been beyond clear about what he thought of anyone who made it sound more than once a day. Eddie didn’t even recall Dad telling him not to step on it. His feet just wouldn’t touch it. As a child, avoiding it had seemed very difficult, and then as he grew taller his stride lengthened and he stopped consciously thinking of it. Eddie couldn’t even recall the last time he’d made the sound. To him, the sound meant someone wanted to provoke the duke.
Now Edward was the duke.
And Edward was relatively certain that if a ghost had suddenly established itself at Halstead like a stray cat claiming a porch, it would be Tommy Dixon. And if Tommy Dixon were haunting Halstead, he’d likely be haunting the study where he died so suddenly. Moreover, he’d be haunting Freddy, who had actually done the deed, and not Edward.
Still, he didn’t ask the maids to stop the flow of juniper to the fires. (However, he took the long way around the Catholic church when driving through Hetheringham, on the off chance the priest wanted a word.) Keeping in mind Geoff’s story about his nan, it was entirely possible that the maids had their own traditions, and Eddie had no desire to interfere. Such things often had a secondary value, like the way some religious dietary practises (such as not drinking alcohol, or not eating meat) resulted in better long-term health outcomes.
Once at the crossing, an old lady had gotten very angry at Smithy, and they all joked it was the Evil Eye when he had a massive eczema outbreak the next day. Of course it was just stress, but it got infected. It got so that Smithy, whose skillset included long-range targeting and therefore remaining still and silent for hours, couldn’t stop fidgeting. And the constant scratching did rather undermine any air of authority he might have possessed. Finally, their medic Zeki took Smithy aside one night and covered him cloudy green olive oil and rolled an egg over him. (It was this, Zeki stressed, or something involving hot lead and cold water, or a loaf of bread and an onion. Smithy chose the oil.) Zeki then had Smithy throw the egg at a gnarled old tree clinging stubbornly to a nearby cliff’s edge. They all watched, flashlights trained on the tree, when he threw it. It broke bloody against the bark.
“It’s done,” Zeki said. “You’re good.”
The rash cleared.
“It was the olive oil, though,” Eddie told Zeki. “Organic, unrefined, unadulterated, with lots of Omega 3’s or what have you. It was the olive oil that did it. You just found a way to make him sit still.”
“Finish your dinner,” Zeki had said. The next morning Eddie woke up with a red ribbon tied around his left wrist. Eventually, it fell off. Edward noticed it missing when clearing customs in England. Possibly, it had fallen off on the plane somewhere, in the jostling and hauling of luggage. But when he counted back, he realised he’d last seen it on what would have been the day the old duke fell.
Dominique, the nanny who taught Eddie and Freddy their alphabet, numbers, and prayers in English and French, also taught them about duppies and haints and jhumbies. She taught Freddy never to complain of how much Eddie weighed whilst carrying him, because “only the dead are heavy.” She told Eddie to always be indoors before the sun was down, because “I’m not calling your name to the trees.” And Dominique always said that no one’s alone in Halstead Manor; someone is always watching.
Until now, Eddie had assumed that by “someone” she’d meant God, or Mother, or Grandmamma, though likely in the reverse order. But as he listened to the juniper boughs crackling in the dark, it struck him that perhaps she’d meant someone else. Something else. Something other.
Do you believe in ghosts?
Y u got 1?
The maids think so.
OFC they think its haunted
ur mum moves the furniture every week
When he was done laughing, Eddie still had no idea how to respond to this laser-guided attack on his mother’s character. But when he looked down, he saw that Susie wasn’t finished:
which means Halstead is haunted AF
cuz you move the chairs to confuse ghosts
Blanket says so
Eddie checked his watch. It was 01:01, which felt somehow auspicious and ill-omened at once. Not least because, unless he’d wildly misread things, Blanket was not supposed to be with Susie at that hour of the morning.
Blanket guards you 24/7?
JFC NO
OMG
WTF
YG
Eddie beamed. He wasn’t going to sleep. This was too much fun.
I merely wished to clarify.
There was a long pause.
S'OK
I get it
Ur nervous
About the ghost
Since XII saw it too
And tonight is the Solstice
The longest
Darkest
Night
Eddie checked the date on his phone. Susie was right. Tonight was the Solstice. The shortest day of the year, and the start of true winter. Eddie shivered a little just thinking about it. He caught himself wishing he had spent more time enjoying the slim daylight hours. But after tonight, the days would grow longer. Halstead would feel a little brighter. A little warmer. The room would not feel so dark and the bed would not feel so empty and he-
Behind Eddie’s head, something thumped, and Eddie’s head rocked forward, and he must have sworn loudly enough to be heard down on the stairs. Freddy came crashing through the door a moment later, brandishing an empty bottle of Chivas that he'd obviously nicked from downstairs and, of all things, a flare gun. “Where’d he go?” Freddy asked, pointing the gun at odd angles until Eddie grabbed his wrist and took the weapon away.
“Who?” Eddie asked. “Where did who go?”
Freddy blinked at him. “The chap you were yelling at, obviously. Where’d he go? Did you chase him off, with…” Freddy’s glazed gaze veered wildly about the room. Like Eddie, apparently, he hadn’t been asleep. He’d been quite the opposite. “Featherdusters and colourful language?”
“Didn’t you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“The noise! That’s what I was shouting at! There’s a fucking badger in the fucking wall!”
“That’s…” Freddy’s face craned over to look at Eddie squarely. “Oddly specific. Do badgers make a distinctive sound, Eduardo?”
Eddie rolled his head heavenward. He’d done this to himself. Again. “Fuck. I don’t know. Do they?”
“It’s just that the topic of distinctive animal sounds has been on my mind lately, as you might imagine, and-” Freddy paused while three very loud thumps sounded against the wall behind the massive painting of The Terror, “holy fuck what the fuck was that, Edward?”
“I have no idea,” Eddie breathed.
Freddy leaned over to him. “It’s fucking Dad fucking haunting us, is what. He’s in Hell blowing his top over your selling the wine collection.”
“Fuck off, Freddy,” Edward said, shoving him away. It wasn’t the whole collection. Just a massive chunk of it. And he’d done it for Freddy.
“So you agree with me that Dad’s in Hell.” Freddy refused to concede defeat. He continued wittering on about it as his brother marched him toward the door of the ducal apartments. “I’m just saying, Edward; the deepest pit of Hell is for traitors. Dante said so.”
“Dante was writing fanfiction, Fredward. Go to bed.”
Eddie slammed the door, locked it, moved the rifle out from under the bed, grabbed his pillow, and marched through the bathroom to the dressing room. Until last month, it had been the province of Dad’s in-home care nurse, and there was still a perfectly serviceable room in there. No fireplace, but it did have an admirable electric heater. Eddie switched it on and pulled the covers back on the bed. Unlike the ducal mattress, this one was modern and firm, and Eddie felt parts of his spine re-aligning as he laid down.
He was almost asleep when he realised his phone was still in the other room. The nurse’s bed was positioned to give it a view of the ducal one through the adjoining bathroom, and Eddie could plainly see the tiny glowing rectangle face-up on the carpet. With every new text or alert or pig-butchering attempt that pierced his Do Not Disturb screen, Edward saw the bedroom briefly cast in blue light. It would be easy to retrieve it. It would be the smart thing to do. But his eyes were so heavy. And his anger — undying, hungry, pitiless — had worn him out.
“Sorry, Susie,” he murmured, and went to sleep.