Voices in a Haunted Room

My voice seemed to echo back to me; and then suddenly at the top of the staircase, I saw a strange figure. It was grey and hooded. I thought it was a monk or a nun standing there and I felt myself grow cold with terror. In that moment I really believed I was face to face with the supernatural.

I stood very still and indeed if I had tried to move I believe I should not have been able to do so.

The figure moved slightly; a pair of burning dark eyes seemed to be boring through me.

Then a voice said: “It’s Claudine ... Oh, Claudine, you don’t know me.”

I cried out: “Aunt ... Aunt Sophie.”

Then I knew she was back. Jonathan, Chariot and Louis Charles had gone over to rescue her. And Jonathan would always do what he set out to do.

What a homecoming that was!

Even as Sophie embraced me I heard my mother’s voice. She appeared on the stairs and Dickon was with her.

“Claudine! David! We didn’t expect you today.” My mother hugged me. “My dearest, you look so well. It is wonderful to see you “

“There is important news,” said David. “They have sent the Queen of France to the guillotine.”

Dickon, who had come out, did not speak. He stood very still and I saw that he was frowning.

“We were at the Cranthornes’,” went on David, “and the news came through to John Cranthorne. They wanted you to know at once.”

Dickon nodded and my mother looked at him anxiously. “We shall leave for London tomorrow,” he said.

There was a brief silence and my mother said: “You see what has happened.”

“Aunt Sophie ...” I began.

“It is wonderful that she is here.”

“And Chariot?”

My mother looked sad. “Chariot has not come back. Nor has Louis Charles. They have joined the army ... the French army.”

“Oh no!” I cried. “They’ll be fighting against us.”

“Fools,” said Dickon.

My mother laid a hand on his arm.

“Chariot was always fretting to get back,” she said. “At least he is alive and we have news of him at last.”

There was one question I wanted to ask and I felt too emotional to say his name. But my mother answered it for me. “Jonathan brought Aunt Sophie back with Jeanne Fougere. You remember Jeanne Fougere?”

“Yes, yes, of course. So ... Jonathan is safely home.”

My mother looked at me intently. “Yes, Jonathan is back.”

When David and I went down to dinner he was there. My heart leaped with excitement; he looked different-older and even more attractive than he had before he went away.

I looked at him quickly and then averted my gaze. I hoped no one noticed how the colour in my cheeks had risen.

Jonathan said: “I’ve been hearing about the wedding. So I have to congratulate you both.”

“Thank you,” I said faintly.

He came towards me and, placing his hands on my shoulders, kissed me lightly on the cheek.

“So,” he said scoldingly, “you stole a march on me.”

He gave a little laugh and I tried to smile. “How long have I been away? Eight months?

And I come back to find you a wedded wife!”

He raised his eyes to the ceiling. He had spoken as though it were a joke and I felt relieved in a way because he took it all so lightly.

“When did you return?” I asked.

“Two days ago.”

Two days, I thought. While I was riding in the Park, so contented, laughing, so happy, Jonathan had been coming home with Aunt Sophie. If I had known ...

Sabrina, who had joined us, said: “Dickon is so relieved that Jonathan is home.”

“Of course,” I said.

“Poor darling, it has been an anxious time for him.”

Aunt Sophie appeared then. That is the way to describe her movements. She glided rather than walked, and she was so quiet that one was almost unaware that she was there; and then suddenly one would lift one’s head and see those burning intense eyes in the half-shrouded face.

I wondered what she looked like without her hood and how deeply scarred she was by those terrible burns she had received in the Place Louis XV at the time of the wedding of that Queen who was now a headless corpse.

She wore a gown of delicate mauve with a hood to match. I could see the dark hair at one side of her face-the hood hid the other side. There was about her an ambiance of tragedy, of which all must be aware.

“We are very very happy to have Sophie safe with us.” My mother seemed almost pathetically anxious to make Sophie feel at home. She had always been like that with Sophie. I remembered that there were times when she almost seemed to hold herself responsible for Sophie’s disfigurement, just because she had been present when the disaster had happened and my father, who had at that time been engaged to Sophie, had brought my mother safely out of danger while my Uncle Armand had rescued Sophie. It had happened long before I was born-about twenty-three years ago, so all that time Sophie had been living with her disfigurement.

She must be nearly forty years old now.

“Jeanne Fougere has come too, I am happy to hear,” I said “I wouldn’t have left Jeanne behind,” said Sophie.