Bitterhall by Helen McClory (story books to read .txt) 📕

home. He cried but afterwards was a colder, more defiant sort to me and to all. I had such extreme affection for him, which I kept almost silently and unseen. I took care not to be servile in my manner but always restrained and quickwitted – I knew he would find nothing but disgust for me any other way.

James would ride all the time he was not kept by other tasks. He grew fair haired and tall, strong and well, with a charming smile that I saw him give only while on horses, and later, to women with whom he wanted to get his leg over. Still I do not think he liked horses overly but for the feeling they gave him of freedom on the quiet lanes and the leaping of hedges while chasing down some poor fox or other for the dogs to tear at. When the old master died and James inherited, he put some of his money in to further increasing the stock and to expanding the stables.

I turned the page.

To mark his first year of manhood and the new though ongoing improvements he was making, James held a ball at ‘Bitterhall’ and invited gentry from the nearby estates and from [illegible], where he had lively society friends – poets and advocates and the like. The ball ran late, but James slipped away before midnight. I was minding the guests’ horses and trying to compose some poems. Another man who was to help me was away with his sweetheart, which pleased me so I could work on my compositions in peace. James came in loudly, kicking at the door, and with a very fierce look to him and asked me to prepare his horse, which I did quickly and saying little. He rode out and I closed the doors behind him. Later I heard sounds of the horse cantering near, and went out to receive it, but she dashed past me into the stable. Two riders were now on the horse, beside James, a man in common clothing who looked pale.

‘Sir,’ I said.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ he answered, and lifted the man down. ‘Go to the house now please, I’m about my business,’ he said. He had the man by the shoulder. Barely a man, it seemed, by the look of him, with a thin young face, wary and frightened. All I did was nod and stepped outside. But after came a sound of disorder – I rushed in. The man was resisting, feebly I thought, and James stood to him angrily holding a knife at his throat.

‘Sir,’ I said again, cried his name and begged him not to hurt the man. But he, seeing that the man would not stop shouting, killed him there with the knife and after it was done had me bury the dirty straw.

I have no idea to what end James brought the man to the stable. The body we laid in a ditch by the road and I said to the other servants I’d heard it was a vagrant from the city had committed the murder in the early morning, and so this rumour duly spread. After we had returned from the road, the master cut his palm and mine and squeezed a little of our blood together into a brandy cup. We both drank and he declared us blood brothers, loyal unto death. I do not know if he believes it, or believes that I could be so easily taken in by the power of an oath surmounting a horrible act. Just because I am loyal to him – this he clearly knows, how deep my affection has been for him since our childhood.

I have never said anything and never will, not in fact for loyalty but in shame, except that I found I had to say it in some way however cowardly, because my heart couldn’t bear to keep quiet, and so wrote it like a kind of story. And now you have found it – never mind, it is likely that when the backing has come unstuck I will be dead, I am only waiting until the stables are furnished adequately and the horses are not so disrupted by the works before I force my departure from this world. I expect to go to the devil in due course. But I will see James there in Hell, I think, many more years after my own going. The man he killed, I learned later, was the son of a blacksmith in the nearby village. I want to write his name, but it isn’t possible without drawing the crime too clearly. As it is, it will stand better if there is an element of untruth about the thing, even with this confession.

Invisible

‘Oh my God,’ I said.

‘Very mysterious,’ said Mark in a flat tone.

‘Yes—’ I answered.

‘Oh well,’ he said, slapping the paper down on the counter. ‘I suppose it was too much to hope for neat answers and that.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘It’s right there.’

Mark drew back, and played with the paper – turning it over and around, craning his head. ‘No – am I missing something?’

I sat shaking, looking down at the confession. A cold wind swirled in my head, though I couldn’t think why.

‘It’s right there. James, his life, what he saw.’ Mark touched the paper, and I knew, ‘Mark – you don’t see anything. You don’t see anything.’

Mark eyed me over his mug, then flashed a clever look. ‘Did you know, Arthur Conan Doyle’s father saw fairies dancing over St Gyle’s Church and drew pictures of them ascending into a descending blue night sky. Not unlike,’ he said, gestured vaguely at the sky – a woolly orange – ‘this one. They locked him up because he was a drunk, too, if I’m remembering right. I’d say that reason, rather than the seeing of things. It’s not unforeseeable. An inability to fit into this world, to be stuck between this that and the other. It’s the chemical