Patricia McKillip - The House on Parchment Street

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House on Parchment Street, The – McKillip, Patricia A.

CAROL CHRISTOPHER PUFFED HER CHEEKS, SIGHED, and sat down on her suitcases in the

middle of Parchment Street. The street was old and worn; it ended abruptly, running into a broad empty

field in front of her. On one side of the street was a graveyard. On the other side was a high stone wall

with a closed gate. Old trees arched over the wall; their leaves whispered softly against the stones. The

long windblown grass in the graveyard played the iron railing like a harp.

The warm summer wind swooped unexpectedly across the field, opened the gate, and set it creaking

aimlessly a moment. A massive square house sat firm and ancient beyond the wall, stone-grey beneath a

beard of ivy. Carol caught a glimpse of it before the gate slammed shut again. The street was empty, the

field was empty, and the only sound on Parchment

Street was the wind, agile as a cat, leaping over the old stone wall.

Carol stood up to get at the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out a letter. She sat down and smoothed

it flat on her knee, her eyes flickering over it until she found the part she wanted: "… There is no

ordinary street address; the House is well known in Middleton, being something of a historical

monument. There are no other houses on the street anyway, except for Emily Raison's house, which is

cheerful and modest and on the graveyard side… ." She looked up. A small white house with a sharply

pointed roof faced the graveyard, half-hidden in apple trees. Her head turned slowly toward the closed

gate and the grey house hidden behind it. She sighed again, softly, and folded the letter.

Six boys floated out of the graveyard on their bicycles. They skidded to a halt at the sight of her,

colliding gently with each other. For a moment they were quiet with surprise. She stared back at them,

motionless on her suitcases. And then, as though someone had pulled a string that set them in order, they

flowed into a neat circle around her, spokes winking under the sun.

"Coo, look at that hair."

"Carrots."

"No, it's more like fire. I wonder what she combs it with. Should think a rake."

"Look at those dirty jeans."

"And bare feet. I wonder if she's an orphan. I say, are you an orphan?"

Carol stood up slowly. Her hands clenched, the letter crumpled between her fingers. Faces spun around

her, curious, distant, mocking.

"She must be an orphan—she's nothing but skin and bones."

"She can't talk, either."

"Of course she can't. You won't let her get a word in. Shut up, the lot of you, and let her talk."

The street was silent again but for the ceaseless click-click of bicycle wheels. Carol's mouth clamped

tight. She bent and picked up her suitcases.

"She doesn't want to talk."

She took a step forward. The circle melted forward with her. Somebody snickered.

"Matchstick. That's what she is: a walking match-stick, lit."

Carol took a firmer grip on her suitcases. She swung them in front of her, and in three long quick steps

broke the circle, leaving one bicycle wobbling perilously. Another, jolted by a suitcase, smacked against

the curb and fell.

"Ouch!"

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She whirled, her face flaming. "Well, it's your own fault! I am not an orphan, and I'm sick of being told

I'm skinny, and I hope your spokes are bent, and as soon as I can write a note to my aunt, I'm going

home, and I'm not ever coming back to this country! Ever!"

There was a little silence. "Coo. She's American." The boy beneath the bicycle pulled himself free and

sat up, rubbing an elbow. He was big, fair-haired, with a slow even voice that bore no malice.

"Are you Bruce's cousin from California? Wait—" His hand went out as she turned. "What's your

name?"

She stepped across his bicycle wheel and kicked the gate open with her foot. She heard his voice,

slightly plaintive, before she kicked it closed again. "He told me her name—I've forgotten—" There was

a fishpond in front of the house. Great orange fish nibbling on the leaves of golden water lilies made

startled dives at her approach. The house, solid and square, had two rows of long windows and two

dormer windows jutting out from its high roof. Two great chimneys rose cold, motionless against the

sky. The stone wall stretched far toward the field, then angled to encompass a vast sweep of side yard.

Carol set her suitcases on the porch and pounded on the door. She waited a moment, flicking her long

hair out of her eyes, and she noticed then how quietly the stones rose upward before her, and how the

thin curtains breathed in and out of soundless rooms. She shifted impatiently on the steps, the anger

quivering in her. She lifted her fists to pound again.

There was a muffled voice shouting from the other side. "Why can't you go round to the back? I can't—

open—"

The door creaked again, moving a fraction of an inch. The voice belonged to a boy. Carol set her

shoulder against the door and shoved.

It sprang open in a chorus of noises: a wild garbled cry; the deep curly sound of a loosened spring; the

rapid beat of a clock bell counting hours. Carol caught her balance, clinging to the doorknob. For a

second, she did not move. Then she peered around the door in time to see her dark-haired cousin

disentangling himself from a grandfather clock.

"Of all the stupid things to do—Will you shut up?" He pounded on the grandfather clock. It whined to a

silence; the sound hummed a moment, golden, dying in the air. Bruce was silent, blinking in the dim

hall. He reached up, massaging his shoulder. "What are you doing here?"

"Don't worry. I'm not staying long." "Are you Carol?" His eyes, narrowed a little against the light,

moved slowly over her. He dropped his hand, leaving behind a shadow of grease on his shirt. He moved,

looking behind her." Where's my parents?" "How should I know?"

His eyes came back to her. "What are you angry about? It's me who should be angry, having people push

me into clocks when I have to get my bicycle fixed."

"I didn't mean to push you into a clock. I don't see why you have a front door if you don't want people

coming through it."

"Every house has a front door. I can't help it if this one is three hundred years old and has trouble

opening. I'd rather live in a modem house with a doorbell anyway." He stopped abruptly. His mouth

pulled downward at the corners, then twitched tight. "What —How did you get here? Mum and Dad

went to pick you up at the airport in London."

Carol was silent. She swallowed suddenly and sat down again on a suitcase. "Oh, no." Her hands rose

slowly, covering her mouth.

"Didn't your mother tell you?"

"I think so, but … there were so many people, and it was so much fun being by myself, doing things for

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myself … I just forgot. I took a bus to the station in London and then I took a train to Welling-borough

and then a bus to here. Then I asked where Parchment Street was and I walked here, only I thought I was

lost because I couldn't remember that there were supposed to be graves. And then… ." Color washed

into her face; her hands closed beneath her chin into fists.

"And then what?"

She stood up. "And then I decided to go back home. I have a round-trip ticket and I'm going. At home

they don't tease me. Much."

Bruce's mouth opened slightly. It curved, after a moment, into a soft, noiseless "Oh… ." He drew a

breath. "They just aren't used to people who are— different. This is a little town."

"Do they do that to everybody who looks different?" He nodded, his eyes steady, aloof on her face.

"Mm. And most of the time, I'm there to help. Only I wasn't, today, because I've been fixing a flat."

In the silence, the clock started ticking again, after a soft inner click, as though some piece had fallen

into place. Carol picked up her suitcases. "Well." Her voice shook on the word; she paused to steady it.

"Tell Aunt Catherine I'm sorry she had to go to London for noth-

"It's just what Dad would call facts. About me. He's a historian. After all, we don't have to like each

other. You came over for a month to get cultured. To see how people in a different country live. You

might as well stay for that, now you're here. You would just upset everyone if you went back home."

"Everybody here has upset me."

"People naturally upset each other. Perhaps in California, people all go barefoot with their hair in their

faces, but not in Middleton. People don't — people don't like strange things." He bent down, reaching

for her suitcases, and for a moment she could not see his face. Her voice came unfamiliar, distinct and

needle-sharp.

"You surprised me, too. I thought you would at least be nice."

His face, pink and white in the summer sunlight, flushed to the color of an even sunburn. For a moment

his eyes lost their aloofness, flicked uncertainly to her

face. Then his dark brows melted together into a scowl. He took the suitcases from her and turned to the

staircase. "I used to be," he said. "Your bedroom is upstairs. I'll show you, and then I have to fix my

bicycle. You can look around by yourself." The stairs, red-carpeted, creaked under their feet. "That's my

room, round the corner. Yours is on the main landing." They turned a corner and went up a few more

steps. He nudged a door open with his foot. "Bathroom's next door."

The room was small and sunlit, with a dark ancient wardrobe twice as big as the bed. There was a full-

length mirror in the door of it; she saw herself suddenly in it, tall as Bruce, her hair vivid, tangled from

the wind, her worn jeans doubled-patched at the knees. She turned away and went to look out the

window.

It faced Parchment Street. Across the rows of gravestones half-hidden in the trees, she saw a great grey

church, its spire drifting in the moving clouds. As she opened the window, bells played a familiar four-

tone melody, then tolled the hour.

"Four o'clock. Does it bother you, living across the street from a graveyard?"

He did not answer. She turned and found him standing behind her, his hands in his pockets, staring down

at the graves with narrowed eyes. The color had come into his face again.

"I hate it," he said softly. "Dad likes it. He likes old things. I do, too, when they're—when they're

beautiful. Like the church. But I hate this house."

He turned abruptly, restlessly. Then he turned back, leaning out the window, and shouted back at a

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chorus of staccato shouts and whistles that broke the mellow silence on Parchment Street.

"Hoy! I'm coming! I'm coming!"

A chain of bicycle riders poured through the gate, began to rotate around the fishpond. Carol stepped

back from the window. Bruce jerked himself back in. Somewhere below a phone rang.

"That'll be Mum and Dad, I expect. Phone's in the kitchen." He vanished. She stood a moment, listening

to the pound of his feet on the stairs, to the slam of the back door. She went down slowly, following the

sound of the phone down the dim hall, into a big cheerful kitchen.

A woman's voice said before she could speak, "Bruce? I tried to call earlier, but you weren't there. Is

Carol there? We can't find her anywhere; we think she might have gotten mislaid between here and

California. Your father is checking on that, and I'm trying to think how to tell Anne that her daughter is

somewhere on earth but we're not sure where—"

The smile began somewhere inside Carol before it touched her face. "Hello, Aunt Catherine," she said.

She opened the door for them two hours later, and Aunt Catherine hugged her. Then she held Carol at

arm's length to look at her, and Carol, who was taller

than her mother, only came up to Aunt Catherine's eyes.

"Look at that, Harold," Aunt Catherine said. "She's got my hair. Her mother's is black as a stovepipe.

And such lovely green eyes. I wonder where those came from. Have you eaten yet? We stopped for fish

and chips. This is your Uncle Harold."

Carol turned. A tall man with Bruce's dark hair, and smiling eyes, took the pipe out of his mouth and

held out his hand.

"How do you do. Where is Bruce? Have you met him yet?"

Carol nodded. "Yes." She cleared her throat. "I pushed him in the clock."

Uncle Harold's face smoothed. He looked down at her quizzically, the pipe smoke curling upward from

his fingers. "He wasn't rude to you, I hope."

"Oh—It wasn't because of that. He couldn't get the door open and I pushed. And he fell in the clock and

it started banging and it wouldn't stop. But it's all right now, I think."

"Well," Aunt Catherine said briskly. "I'm sure that clock has survived worse than Bruce climbing in and

out of it. Where is he?"

Carol's hand crept upward to the top of her head. "Bike riding, I think… . I'm sorry that you had to go to

London for nothing. My mother told me you were picking me up, but I forgot. Some days—some days

are like that. I forget to do what I'm supposed to,

and I push people into clocks instead. I can't get coordinated. I usually end up breaking something. So

now you know what you're getting for a month."

They were silent a moment. Uncle Harold said gravely, "I should think it required a definite amount of

coordination to travel halfway across the world by yourself, and still manage to catch the proper train

out of London. What do you think of the house?"

"Bruce said it's three hundred years old. I thought it would be more like a castle."

"It's as cold as one," Aunt Catherine said,

"Houses," Uncle Harold said, "are generally built with some degree of practicality. This used to be a

vicarage, a place where the parish priests lived, and they had neither the need nor the money for a castle.

Parts of it have been rebuilt from time to time, but other parts, like this stone floor and the great broad

beam above the fireplace, suggest that the house was not built three hundred years ago, but rather rebuilt

from an even older foundation."

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Carol looked down at her feet. The worn grey stone swept unbroken toward the kitchen. She curled her

toes. "No wonder it's so cold."

Uncle Harold smiled. "There. I didn't mean to begin a lecture on architecture." He turned to Aunt

Catherine. "Where's the chips?"

"Here," Aunt Catherine said, "under my elbow." She shifted a roll of newspaper that smelled of hot fish

into one hand, and dropped the other hand lightly on

Carol's shoulder. "Come and eat, and tell me how the American side of my family is doing."

They ate fish and chips out of warm greasy newspapers on the kitchen table as they talked. When Aunt

Catherine finished asking about the relatives she had not seen in fifteen years, Uncle Harold poured

himself a cup of tea and settled back for a discussion of American politics and education. Carol

interrupted him before he got too far.

"What kind of stove is that?"

"It's a trial," Aunt Catherine said. Uncle Harold blinked, as though his thoughts were reordering

themselves. Aunt Catherine stood up and lifted the two large smooth domes that covered the burners.

"It's Mrs. Brewster's stove. Mrs. Brewster is the woman we rent the house from. She probably has a nice

gas stove. This one runs on coal, and it has two speeds: hot and very hot. Which reminds me—I should

put Bruce's dinner in to warm." She got the newspapers full of Bruce's fish and chips and opened one of

the heavy oven doors. Uncle Harold looked at his watch.

"He should have been home an hour ago."

"I know."

"I wonder sometimes if he doesn't think he is living in a hotel. Is basic courtesy too much to ask of a boy

his age, or is communication totally impossible?"

"Perhaps he forgot," Aunt Catherine said gently. "Why don't you show Carol the house while I do the

breakfast dishes."

Uncle Harold looked at Carol. "Would you like that?" he asked, and she nodded, smiling. Then they

heard the click of bicycle wheels and the slam of the porch door.

"Bruce!" Uncle Harold shouted.

He opened the kitchen door and stuck his head in. "I've got to wash up—I'm all over grease."

"Come here, please."

Bruce's hand dropped from the doorknob. He came in slowly. His eyes moved once to Carol's face in a

stranger's impersonal glance. Then they dropped. "Yes, sir?"

Uncle Harold sighed. "Your mother is not a hired cook. She cooks because she loves us, and it would

pain her to see us starve. I've had to tell you that too many times before."

Bruce's shoulders twitched. "Yes, sir. I'm sorry I'm late. Is that all?"

"No. Look at me."

Bruce's eyes rose slowly. They looked at each other, their eyes alike, dark and aloof. Uncle Harold said,

"Mrs. Brewster disturbed me this morning with a phone call. She said she thought I should know that

you spent yesterday evening sitting in a tree in the square smoking. I am not sure whether she was

concerned with your health or the possibility that you and your friends might have set the town square

on fire."

Bruce's mouth dropped slightly. "Was that her with the flashlight? We couldn't think who it was. She

didn't say anything. She usually does."

"I imagine she does," Uncle Harold said. "I don't enjoy being bothered with phone calls like that before I

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am properly awake, and I wish you would refrain from troubling Mrs. Brewster. I am not going to

lecture you on smoking, because you are old enough to make your own decision about that. But what

has been troubling me is something different. I saw a ring of boys on bicycles tormenting Mrs.

Simmons' boy on his way to his cello lesson, and I was disturbed to realize that they formed a perfect,

orderly circle as they rode, as though they had practiced it many times before. I was never so ashamed of

you in my life."

He was quiet. Aunt Catherine's hands had stilled among the dishes. Bruce stared down at the table. Then

his head lifted abruptly, his eyes going to Carol's face.

She sat startled a moment by what she read in them, and then her face blazed. "I didn't tell," she

snapped. "I can fight for myself."

Uncle Harold looked at them bewilderedly a moment. Then his hand hit the table with a little smack.

"Not Carol, too—"

"He wasn't with them."

"It doesn't matter that I wasn't," Bruce said. "I probably would have done it, if I didn't know who you

were."

"That's a marvelous welcome to give to guests in your own country," Aunt Catherine said tartly. "It's a

wonder she didn't turn around and go home." "She wanted to." "I was going to." "Well, what stopped

you?" "Bruce!"

"I'm not being rude, I'm being curious. I would have gone."

"Well, I don't like running away from things. Or people."

Uncle Harold said distinctly, "Will you please apologize to her."

"I'm sorry," Bruce said tightly. He looked at Uncle Harold. "If you see that circle again, there won't be

me in it. Ever."

He turned and left. Uncle Harold dropped his head into one hand. Aunt Catherine washed dishes with a

harsh, rhythmic clatter. Then she slowed and turned to Carol, sitting mute in her chair with her hair

hiding her face. Aunt Catherine wiped her hands on her apron. She sat down beside Carol. "I'm glad you

didn't go," she said softly. Carol's shoulders moved in a little shrug. "I'm used to being teased. I'm

skinny, and I'm taller than half the boys in my class, and my hair looks like a haystack on fire, and I can't

walk up to the blackboard at school without stepping on somebody's lunch. But most of the time, I don't

let people bother me. I can't fight all of them." "Well, you're wiser than I was at your age. I

couldn't go down the aisle either without tripping over my big bony feet."

Uncle Harold dropped his hand. "Your feet aren't big and bony." His voice was tired.

"They were then," Aunt Catherine said. "I don't know what's troubling Bruce these days. He rarely talks

to us, and we can't read his mind. The only thing I can do is leave his fish and chips in the oven for him

and remember that once he had a very sweet smile."

Uncle Harold's mouth relaxed. He looked at Carol. "Well," he said gently, "are you still in the mood for

a guided tour?"

Carol sighed. "Yes. If I wake up hungry in the middle of the night, I don't want to get lost."

There were four large rooms on the ground floor: the kitchen; a room across from it that Uncle Harold

said had been the morning room where the vicars had once eaten their breakfast, but which was now

Aunt Catherine's laundry room; the living room connected to the kitchen, with a great, fat-legged round

table, and a fireplace built of huge squares of grey stone and dark, heavy, smoke-blackened beams; and

the room across from it, Uncle Harold's study, with his desk and papers and endless shelves of books.

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Upstairs were four bedrooms.

"It's a bit big for us," Uncle Harold said, "but I like old things. Most of the furniture belongs to Mrs.

Brewster. She was born in the house. Her father bought it when the church across the way turned

Catholic

again after four hundred years, and the new priests decided they didn't want to support a large, rather

chilly historical monument. Mrs. Brewster lived here until her husband died, and then she began to rent

the house. I've had my eye on this house for several years, but it wasn't until last winter that we were

able to rent it from her."

"Why did the church turn Catholic? I didn't know churches did that."

"The old Protestant parishioners died or moved away until there weren't enough people to support the

church. Sometimes, when that happens, the church is destroyed to make room for something else. But

the Catholic population in the town had grown out of its own little modern church, so they bought this

one instead of building a new one. It was Catholic, of course, when it was built first, because it is nearly

eight hundred years old."

Carol drew a slow breath. They were climbing the last part of the stairway, that led to the rooms beneath

the roof. "My father gave me a silver dollar once that was made in 1887. That was old, to me."

Uncle Harold smiled. "You live in a young country." They reached the landing. There were two small

rooms, one on each side of the hall. "This is where the maid and the cook would sleep, if we had them.

Now they're Mrs. Brewster's storage rooms."

Carol went into one. She knelt down on the window-seat between the thick walls, and looked out. Uncle

Harold unlatched the window and opened it. The scent of cool grass mingled with his sweet pipe smoke.

A single star hung beyond the high dark tower of the church.

"It's so quiet… ."

"Mm."

"At home, there's a freeway running near our house. I can hear trucks on it even late at night." She

looked down. "I wonder how Emily Raison can stand living in a graveyard."

"It doesn't seem to bother her. She doesn't like dogs, or cows in fields when she goes blackberry picking,

but she's not afraid of graves. There's no reason to be. The people in them lived in the same world you

and I live in, and often their thoughts about it were not very different from ours. Well. You've seen

everything except the cellar and the gardener's shed and—" Carol turned. "There's a cellar? I've never

been in one."

"Good heavens. Come along, then. I should go

down anyway and get coal to feed the stove tonight."

"Do you leave it on all night?"

"Oh, yes. It would take hours to heat it up properly

every morning." He switched on the hall light as they

went downstairs, and said meditatively, "I can't decide

which Catherine hates most: the stove or the stone

floor in the hall. It is dreadfully cold during winter."

He stopped in the kitchen to get the coal bucket,

then led her to a little door behind the main staircase.

She smelted cold stones and damp earth as he opened it. He switched on the light, and she saw narrow,

worn stone steps leading to a great black mountain of coal at the bottom. She followed him down and

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looked around as he cracked coal bricks with the edge of the can. There were two rooms beyond the coal

room; in the first one she found a freezer and a water tank and a cat licking itself on a pile of rags.

Its eyes caught light from the coal room and blazed at her like cut amber. Then they vanished as the cat

turned and slipped silently into the third room. Carol followed it.

"I didn't know you had a cat." She crouched at the doorway and called it softly. "We don't."

"There's one down here."

"Is there? They slip in, sometimes, through the broken windows. Emily Raison's cat Geraldine had a

litter of six down here once. Is it calico?"

"No. It's black. It's male." She called it again, her voice high, coaxing, and it moved across a table of old

china and fragile figurines so smoothly it seemed only a shadow. It faded imperceptibly into the

shadows, and she blinked, suddenly finding nothing to call. She moved into the room, looking behind

stacks of boxes of books, old picture frames, more china. The grey cellar stones in the twilight were

thick and old as the stones of the outer wall of the house. She saw a movement out of the comer of her

eye, and turned toward the window. She saw beneath it the slow fading of a man walking into the wall.

The touch of Uncle Harold's hand on her shoulder jolted her. She shivered.

"I called you," he said gently. "You didn't hear me."

She looked up at him. His face was calm, familiar behind his pipe. The full coal bucket was in his hand.

"You're frightened. What's the matter?"

Her mouth was too dry for speaking. She swallowed. And then she laughed, drawing a little jerky breath.

"It was your shadow, going across the wall. It scared me. I thought—it looked like—it looked like

somebody walking into the wall."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you. Don't let the house trouble you. It creaks quite a bit, but I doubt

if there are ghosts wandering through the walls."

He followed her back up, switching the lights off behind him. She turned suddenly at the top of the stairs

and looked down into the dark rooms. Uncle Harold waited patiently. Her brows crept together. She

looked at him puzzledly.

"But I wonder where that cat went."

II.

IN THE LIVING ROOM THEY FOUND AUNT CATHERINE

knitting in a rocking chair beside the fireplace. The fireplace, built of red brick with a mantel of dark

rich paneling, was enclosed in a deep alcove of thick stone from which unfamiliar things hung, gleaming

in the lamplight. Aunt Catherine's mouth was set in a straight grim line. Carol looked over her shoulder

to see what she was knitting, and she dropped her hands in her lap with a sigh.

"What is it going to be?"

"Heaven knows. I want it to be a scarf. Emily Raison is teaching me. She can knit whole sweaters."

"It looks all right," Carol said. She sat down on the brick ledge in front of the fireplace. Uncle Harold

came back from putting coal in the stove and sat down, dusting his hands. Something clanged faintly

in back of him, and he shifted his chair forward. A brass frying pan with a four-foot handle swung gently

against the stones behind him. Carol leaned forward to look at it.

"What is that?" She raised the hinged lid. "It's too heavy to be a popcorn popper."

Uncle Harold laughed. "It's an antique bed-warmer. The vicars didn't have electric heaters to warm their

rooms, so they put coals in the pan and warmed their sheets before they went to bed."

"There are times when I've been tempted to use it myself," Aunt Catherine said, frowning at her knitting.

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"You can't say you weren't warned," Uncle Harold said. "I warned you about English weather, but you

married me anyway."

"I was young and innocent. I wonder why there is a hole in the middle of my scarf… ."

Carol looked behind her at the row of fragile teacups on the mantel. She shifted, leaning back against the

stones, and glanced up to find a dark, unfamiliar shape hanging over her head. She stood up and reached

for it.

"Be careful," Uncle Harold murmured. "It's heavy."

The weight of the iron ball pulled her hand downward. She caught at it and numbed her fingers against

the spikes protruding from the ball. She shook her hand absently, staring puzzledly at the arrangement of

the ball, linked by heavy chain to a polished wooden handle. Then she said,

"Oh."

"It's a flail. Knights used them during the Crusades. I expect they were quite effective."

"I bet they were." She weighed it experimentally in her hand. The dark ball swung back and forth like a

pendulum. "I can't imagine really killing someone with one of these. There wouldn't be much left of

him, and you would have to see it. … It's a little like a baseball bat, I guess. You adjust the weight over

your shoulder and—"

The door opened, and Bruce came in. He stopped abruptly as Carol turned, and the iron ball, swinging

gracefully through the air, smashed one china cup to splinters on the mantel and knocked another to the

floor.

The ball bounced painfully against Carol's elbow, but she did not seem to notice it. She stared horrified

at the bits of cup at her feet. Uncle Harold took the flail from her limp hands and hung it back up.

"It's a bit damaging to civilization," he commented. Bruce closed his mouth. He held out a letter.

"I came—I just came down to give you this. The postman gave it to me this morning so he wouldn't

have to bother climbing the hill." His voice shook and he stopped. Carol raised her head. Her eyes

glittered with tears.

"I'm so sorry—" she whispered.

"Never you mind," Uncle Harold said. Aunt Catherine leaned over the side of her chair, a suspicious

pucker at the sides of her mouth.

"Soon as I finish this row I'll sweep it up. Don't cry. Mrs. Brewster has dozens of bone-china cups."

Carol sniffed. Her face, half-hidden from them in the fall of her hair, had flushed red. A tear trickled

down to the edge of her chin. Aunt Catherine dropped her scarf. She put an arm around Carol and led

her to the kitchen.

"She'll never miss them."

"It's one of those days when everything goes wrong—"

"I suspect you need a hot bath and a good sleep."

"I don't think that's going to help." She wiped her face on a dishtowel while Aunt Catherine took a bottle

of milk out of the refrigerator. "I don't know if this house will be able to stand me for a month."

"It's stood all kinds of people for more than three centuries," Aunt Catherine said. She shook the milk

bottle and poured half of it into a pan. "The first thing I broke in this house was a hideous Victorian vase

shaped like a green Chinese dragon. Harold accused me of doing it deliberately, and I think he may have

been right." She smiled as Carol laughed in the middle of a sniff. "Why don't you go up and get ready

for bed, and I'll make you some hot chocolate to take to bed with you."

Half an hour later Carol sat in bed drinking chocolate and listening to the house creak around her as it

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settled in the night air. Through the open curtains she

could see patterns of stars above the swaying graveyard trees. She reached down once and tucked the

covers more securely around her feet. The wind, still through the long twilight, had risen again, fresh

and chill. The church bells tolled a quarter hour half-muffled by it. Carol finished her chocolate and lay

back. The events of the long day ran in a kaleidoscopic stream through her mind. She rolled over,

drawing the covers in a hood over her head and shifting her feet to find a warm spot between the cold

sheets. The wind whispered through the eaves, shook the window, then turned and sighed away through

the trees. A floorboard cracked somewhere in the house. Carol rolled over again. She sat up finally and

drew her knees under her chin and rubbed her feet. They were icy. She sat for a moment, holding them.

Then she reached for her robe and went quietly downstairs, sliding down the banister.

She took the bed-warmer and the hearth shovel from the fireplace and brought them into the kitchen.

She found the coals in the stove behind a small door on the side. The thick heat pushed against her face

as she shoveled coals into the bed-warmer. She added a few more to the stove from the half-empty coal

bucket, closed the door, and replaced the shovel. Then she found thick dishtowels in a kitchen drawer

and wrapped them around the pan. The warmth melted through them to her hands as she carried it down

the cold hall, up the stairs. She put the pan between the bed sheets and lay down, resting her feet on top

of it. She drifted

to sleep lulled by the night wind and the soft pulse of heat slowly thawing her feet.

Aunt Catherine's cry jerked her upright in the morning almost before she could open her eyes. She heard

doors opening and rolled out of bed, kicking the bed-warmer open. A stream of ash fluttered to the rug.

She struggled into her robe and ran into the hall, nearly bumping into Uncle Harold, who was leaning

over the banister with a razor in his hand. There was a trickle of blood in the lather on his face.

"Catherine," he said. Bruce's door opened. He came out tying his robe, his hair sticking up.

"What's the row?"

"No coffee," Aunt Catherine said succinctly. "No breakfast. Harold, I will never cook another thing on

that stove. You can gift-wrap it and leave it on Mrs. Brewster's front porch."

"Catherine, what happened?"

"I don't know! I know I closed the coal door last night; I remember distinctly checking, but it wasn't

latched properly, and it may well have burned the house down."

Uncle Harold went downstairs, wiping the soap off his face. Bruce followed him, not noticing Carol on

the landing above him, standing white and still, her cold hands covering her mouth. She heard their

voices from the kitchen and moved finally.

The heat welled from the open kitchen door, warming the hall floor. The stove, both round burners

uncovered and red hot, seemed to shimmer. Aunt Catherine stood looking grimly at it. Uncle Harold

opened both oven doors. "I don't understand it," he said. "I do. Impulse."

"Catherine, not even this stove acts on impulse—"

"Aunt Catherine," Carol said. Her voice sounded

small, dreamlike in her ears. They turned to her, as

though hearing an unexpected note in it, and she drew

a long breath. "It was me."

"You," Aunt Catherine said blankly. Carol gave a little nod.

"Yes. I needed coals. For—for the bed-warmer." Their faces were still around her, bewildered. Her voice

dwindled. "My feet were cold."

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