Perhaps because she had spent the whole day sat in a chair, she did not feel tired once her head hit the pillow. Instead she lay there, her mind wandering again and again in the same direction. William Nye. Doggedly, she steered her thoughts away from the width of his shoulders, the strong column of his tanned throat and the way his dark hair fell across his forehead and toward his general objectionableness.
He had made it entirely clear, she thought, that he intended for them to lead entirely separate lives. The parlor bar had been converted for her exclusive use and she was to be confined to it, leading an unconnected existence to the rest of the inhabitants of The Merry Harlot. It scarcely seemed practical, she thought, but he seemed determined to promote the scheme.
Fleetingly, she allowed herself to remember how he had come after her when she had fled to the cliffs, then hastily pushed such recollections away, before she had to examine her own behavior that day. It was too bad that he seemed determined to deprive her of any company, even if it was only Edna’s. If ever she tarried too long in the kitchen or scullery he seemed to pop up and send her away. She had almost expected him to show up that morning and chase Gus Hopkirk out of the parlor. It seemed funny now, that he hadn’t, she pondered. Almost as funny as Nye sharing with Gus that she was a schoolteacher.
She simply couldn’t imagine Nye indulging in idle conversation let alone with her as the topic. And yet, he must have, for how else could Gus have known? She shifted over onto her back and stared up at the ceiling beams. It was most odd. Irritably, she twitched at her bedsheets and remembered something that had been niggling away at the back of her mind since that morning. Namely, where she had heard the name Grayking before. Finally, she remembered. Edna had told her it was the name of Werburgh’s favorite goose! Mina sat up in bed.
Gus had said that the monastery was a place of pilgrimage because they housed the holy bones of St Grayking. St Grayking? Mina frowned. Surely the early church had not sainted a goose, even if he had been miraculously raised from the dead by his mistress? Who would travel miles and weather untold hardships to pray at the resting place of a bunch of old goose bones? Mina lay slowly back down, clutching her blanket. Had Gus been spinning her a yarn, she wondered? The words had certainly tripped off his tongue easily enough.
But why would he? What would be his motivation in telling her a bunch of untruths like that? Ghost stories were meant both to entertain and to frighten the listener. Slowly, she turned his words over in her mind. She had found Gus’s tales entertaining and when it came to the sounds the hauntings were supposed to evoke—the dragging and the rolling of the monk’s cart—she had been scared. For those were the sounds she had heard now several times from her window in the early hours of the morning. Involuntarily, her eyes darted to the closed curtains.
Had he known that? And if so, how could he? He would only know if the sounds were of an earthlier nature, she thought. If they were made by men, intent on some dishonest purpose, then it was not beyond the realms of reason, that they might try to mask their actions by spreading tales of ghosts and apparitions. It would not be the first time such a device had been employed. Mina was sure she had read of such things in her women’s periodicals. Cutthroats and thieves who had sought to ensure their hideouts were shunned by law-abiding folk, by the spreading of false rumors of specters and ghouls.
The only serious falling out she had with her own father had been on the occasion he had found out about her own juvenile scribblings. She had been reading a tale about the haunting of a highwayman by his murdered accomplice to their pupils during their Thursday afternoon sewing hour. Those stories had turned the outright pity in those girls’ eyes into admiration. ‘Oh miss, you’re an author, miss’. ‘It’s as good as anything in ‘Milady’s Fancy’, miss’. ‘You ought to send it in, miss, really you ought’.
Her father had warned her that the female brain was more delicate in its balance and should not be overset with unhealthy stimulus which could depress or send it feverish. Mina had pointed out that more than half the stories in the lady’s periodicals were written by women and her father had seemed to think that proved his point. Periodicals were a vastly inferior reading material and she should be cultivating her mind by devoting her studies to that of worthy books written by men.
Mina secure in her own excellent health, had privately disagreed. She knew that her own Papa was far more prone to stomach upset and colds than she. If her physical form was so robust, then why not her mind also? While it was true, that she had often lay shivering in her bed as a tree branch tapped her window, imagining untold horrors, it was also true that the same frisson of fear held a lot of enjoyment for a girl whose life otherwise was rather colorless. She enjoyed reading thrilling tales and she did not believe they were bad for her.
More importantly, Papa turned a blind eye to the fact his pupils purchased such materials, so why should he not allow his daughter a vicarious thrill or two also? Mama did not read at all, and yet Papa did not lecture her to self-improvement.
