ES Chapter 4

The editor had said as much: that mental illness ran in House Etheldore. If the former lord had developed the condition early, they might well have confined him to the estate—the family and their representatives handling the lordship's duties in his stead.

So it was genuinely serious after all. The hereditary illness.

And then—was the current lord all right? Honestly, even accounting for a recent succession, a man who had not shown his face outside once was very unusual. The transition of the estate had seemed strangely quiet, she'd thought—and now she found herself wondering whether he had already started to lose his mind, already in exactly the same situation as his father—

She arranged an expression of worry.

"......But is that all right? He's still the lord, after all—he'd have had so much that needed attending to. If everything is simply handed off to other people's keeping, doesn't that mean House Etheldore will collapse in the end?"

"I can see what you're thinking, but it isn't quite like that......"

"Isn't quite like that?"

Ayesha caught the trailing end deliberately. It was a habit the work had given her: when someone's sentence dissolved before it finished, repeating that last fragment signalled careful attention and applied just enough pressure.

"Well......"

The woman hesitated for some time. Then, dropping her voice to a murmur, she leaned in.

"It's because of his face. According to rumor, he had a large, grotesque scar—and that was why he wouldn't meet with people."

"Pardon? A scar?"

Nothing she had heard before.

The two women exchanged a glance.

"......Miss, just let what we've told you go in one ear and out the other. Barely anyone around here knows any of this—and people like us gain nothing from knowing too much about the affairs of the highborn. We only know as much as we do because we have relatives who worked in that house."

"Ah...... yes. I'll be careful."

She answered quickly and added, quietly:

"Quite. A large scar on the face—appearing at official functions would be no easy thing. It's understandable he'd have become afraid of meeting people. He must have been in some serious accident. That the former lord should have gone through all that......" A small pause opened. "How terrible for everyone."

"Terrible—hardly."

There.

Inwardly, she cheered. The moment she had heard that phrase—relatives who worked in that house—she had sensed immediately that this woman was not, by nature, particularly tight-lipped. In truth, it was a fairly universal human quality: when you have information someone else wants to know, the mouth itches. So she had quietly placed her bait—and terrible had rubbed the woman exactly the wrong way.

"Getting like that after turning on his own blood... well."

The murmured addition, half to herself, carried more than Ayesha had expected.

The companion pressed her lips shut.

"But what can you do when the family history is so wrong in the first place. I've thought about it any number of times and I keep coming back to it—I think the land that estate stands on is cursed."

"Even so. Killing your own father—does that make any kind of sense?"

"His mind had gone completely. He'd stopped recognizing his wife—the woman he'd lived alongside his whole life—and his only son. Couldn't tell them apart from strangers. When a person goes that mad, no one can know what they'll do."

Once the hardest part was past the first sentence, the women were swept in instantly. No further prompting necessary. Ayesha simply listened.

"Even so, he should have found a more moderate means. An only son—raised with such care, at that. That he killed his own father with his own hands—I genuinely cannot understand it."

"But according to my great-aunt: she heard screaming and ran to the room, and the former lord's face was already soaked in blood. It was the grandfather who swung the candlestick first. At the time—the moment his mind snapped—he'd been in a fury about some so-and-sos trying to take over the house by impersonating his family. Whether father killed son or son killed father, it was always going to end in catastrophe."

"Horrible, in any case. Small wonder the grandmother—after seeing all of that—hanged herself immediately after. There's something uncanny about how everyone in that family comes to a bad end. I'd understand if there were ghosts in that house. Think of how much grief must have nowhere to go."

The deeper she got into the story, the more of a spectacle it became.

'Wait. Is this really about the grandfather? This actually happened?'

"You see? Makes your skin crawl, doesn't it. Such a strange and dreadful incident that most people don't know about—even the ones who left after that day stayed quiet about what they'd witnessed for a long time after. After all, something terrible had happened to the family they served. The shock of it. The grief."

"So when they said the former lord had been injured on his face......"

"Of all things, it was the lit candlestick the grandfather swung—it caught him in the eye. He lost the sight in one eye, and a large burn scar formed from the corner of his eye all the way down his cheek. After that, no one saw him again. Perhaps because of that, he didn't marry until he was nearly thirty."

"And barely managed it then. Being House Etheldore, someone did eventually come along who was willing to accept a one-eyed, scarred husband—but......"

The trailing pause.

"Who could have known the lady would die in difficult childbirth. At least the child was born safely—that much was something. Honestly, remarrying wouldn't have been easy for him after all that. With all those calamities and the line still not cut off—I don't know whether to call it holding on by a thread or call it remarkable."

"......I see."

The editor's voice moved through her mind, sudden and brief.

'Ayesha—have you ever heard of the tragedy of House Etheldore?'

Indeed. With all of this, the word had been earned.

'So—what kind of person was the current lord of House Etheldore? His grandfather had developed severe mental illness and been killed. His grandmother had witnessed a father-and-son catastrophe and hanged herself. His father had killed his own direct ancestor, and from that event bore wounds that had kept him confined to the estate, effectively, for the rest of his life. He had not lived a single day alongside his mother.'

Could a son raised under such tragedy possibly be all right?

Unease arrived in her.

Was she walking of her own accord right into a place she had no business setting foot?

On the other hand, knowing the situation had made her more interested, not less: what Langfield Manor would turn out to be, what the former lord looked like now—and given that the current lord was searching for spiritualists and mediums, the story these women had quietly outlined was clearly not the whole of it; how many more secrets might lie concealed inside House Etheldore.

The problem was the man himself: a high-born noble backed by an overwhelming force, and she would be going in bare-bodied, with no one nearby to call on.

While her journalist's instinct and her human instinct for avoiding danger held each other in sharp opposition, the shared carriage carried its passengers one by one to their stops. The women got off before her, leaving Ayesha behind.

"Take care of yourself, miss."

"Dear me—the rain's come down even harder. Might fall all night."

Each time the curtain was drawn back, the downpour hammered her ears like something battering the outside of a drum. Before she knew it, Ayesha was alone.

The carriage raced at full speed down the rain-sodden road. When gusts of wind struck the roof and walls with their long, trailing wail, it lurched. Ayesha held both suitcases against her and endured the dizzying, headlong race.

After being shut in the dark all day, battered against the hard carriage seat, her whole body had settled into a low, pervasive ache.

How far had she come, she wondered.

Unfamiliar territory. No way of knowing where she was. Ayesha opened the curtain and raised her voice.

"How much farther to Worsley?"

"Ah—!" The coachman wheeled around. "Good Lord—I didn't know anyone was still on board!"

"Where did you say you were going?"

"Worsley!"

Their voices kept getting swallowed up. Both shouting as loud as they could.

"Worsley? We passed that a good while back. I'm on my way home!"

Ayesha snatched up her bags and came off the seat like a spring releasing.

"Wait—let me off here, please! ......Ah—cold!"

She had thrust her head past the curtain. The water pouring off the roof caught her full across the shoulder.

"Now? There's nothing out here—it's all open country."

It was. The carriage was travelling a single road with not a soul in sight, let alone a village. A rainy night, the moonlight completely obscured, and in every direction there was nothing she could make out.

At this rate she'd be carried all the way to the coachman's house. She needed to find something before that happened.

Ayesha stamped her feet and peered beyond the diagonal sheets of rain slashing white lines across her field of vision.

A single isolated building came into view.