Page 19 of Kept 2
He was right, she was waiting, as she waited every evening – only this night I was determined not to succumb to her evil desires.
“I leave in the morning for Ereston,” I told her, standing in the doorway, “I do not plan to return.”
“Oh, you will return,” she laughed, turning from me and walking back into the room.
“I know not what creature you are,” I growled then, “but you have no hold over me.”
“Do I not?” she laughed. “Nicky, I have held you in the palm of my hand from the very first night you stayed with me. You drank my blood. I drank yours. You are mine to Keep, bound to me until I tire of you, which may be some time, or not, depending on my mood.”
“I did not drink from you, monster.”
“The wine, you fool, was laced with my magical blood – I offered it to you, and you drank from it willingly. Everywhere you go, I can track you, everything you feel, I know. Now you are angry, determined – but it will not always be so – you will learn to love me, they all do, you are mine for all eternity.”
“No magic is needed to know how I feel,” I spat, “I have told you that I despise you. Weeks you have used my body, weeks you have asked me what I want. Ever I have answered the same thing. I do not want you, and that will not change.”
“Have a safe trip, Nicky, sit awhile with your lady,” she smiled then, her face benign.
I turned on my heel and left. Somehow her last words were more ominous than her threats. If indeed I have drunk her blood, unknowingly, I pray the priest will know how to cleanse my body, and my soul of such wickedness.”
New Entry
Constance, my heart, my soul, is dead.
I have been weeping, most profusely, for many days. Even now, my hand shakes and my tears fall as I record what has befallen. But my resolve to join her in the afterlife also grows, and it is that which prompts me to write, for I have struck a deal that will deliver me back into her arms before too long, I hope.
I arrived unannounced at her home, our lesser manor house, mid-afternoon five days ago, to the ringing of bells.
The hairs stood up on the back of my neck as I dismounted, ungreeted in the stables, tethered my mount myself, as I have never had to do before, and approached the front door. No footsteps rushed down the hall to open the door. No little lap dogs rushed out barking to greet me. The house stood as though abandoned, apart from the peal of the bells, which I knew, could only mean that someone had died.
I immediately thought Mr Ingleby, Constance’s father, had passed. He was much stressed since his fortunes had collapsed. I imagined I must have missed the horse and rider sent to inform me, as I was on the road heading here.
Upon knocking at the door, I waited an interminable time before it was opened by none other than Constance’s mother, her hair shorn, her dress of mourning black.
“How did you know?”
“Know, my lady?”
“I did not write, we were told not to write,” she frowned, looking left and right behind me as though confused and suddenly frightened. “I did not write.”
“Pray, Mrs Ingleby,” I grasped her hands and stared earnestly into her face, she looked twenty years older than when I had left, just 18 months prior, “tell me what is afoot. Who are you mourning?”
Yet even as I asked it, I knew, on some deep, dark level, I knew.
“Why, Constance, my daughter,” she replied, “my dear daughter, Constance.”
She spun then, and hurried down the hall, turning sharp left into their small parlour, where the sound of bells was pealing.
I followed, my feet dragging like a man walking to the gallows, my breath trapped in my throat.
Entering the room, I saw her. My love, my life. Illuminated by candlelight, serenaded by the small bells being rung by a choir boy, standing as he had been paid to do, unobtrusively in the corner.
Laid out, her hands crossed over her still breasts, her face was thinner than I remembered and yet, just as beautiful. She was so tranquil, as though she had paused, mid-sentence, to concentrate on something, a tiny frown just noticeable on her otherwise smooth brow.
I fell then, to my knees, my grief erupting from my throat in a roar of agony, and I sobbed, I’m not ashamed to admit it, like a baby.
None came to comfort me. Her father sat where he had upon my entering the room, nearby her corpse, his hand stroking her hair. Her mother stood at her feet, staring down at her as though once again confused about who she was, or where she was.
Later, much later, I rose and staggered to my Constance. I pulled one of her hands from her breast, and held it to my face, and breathed in the scent of her palm. She had only died that morning, and was still pliable, soft; she still smelled as I remembered, of the rosemary and lavender she picked and pocketed as she walked the grounds, admiring the flowers. Only her hands were not smooth as they had once been, they were calloused, here and there blistered, her nails broken and skin, more tanned than I had ever seen it.
