TGOH Chapter 1

Prologue

There are times when those dreams come.

Dreams of my own death. Dreams of those around me dying. Dreams of being chased.

When she woke from such dreams, the duvet and sheets were always soaked through with sweat, and every inch of her body had gone cold. Too frequent to dismiss as mere bad luck.

Dreams begin ordinarily. As most dreams do.

For instance: a return to long ago, when she was still young. To the time when the adults around them would look at the children and call them their 'sweet little angels.' Or dreams of the whole family gathered near the fireplace. The scene was warm, and the laughter was merry. Even in her dreams, Veronica was happy.

But in an instant—just the blink of an eye—the scene would have turned entirely on its head.

A darkened interior. Thunder. A summer downpour. Raindrops clawing at the windows and lightning cleaving the sky. A sky stained violet. And herself, running——

Every light in the manor had been extinguished. Not a soul to be seen.

Had the windows broken? Puddles had formed throughout the house. Summer storms run warm. Veronica's bare feet, moving fast, came down squarely in a puddle directly ahead.

Splat!

The sound of a viscous liquid spraying upward. Not once—twice. She lifted her head.

Someone had Veronica's hand and was running ahead of her, just within reach. Veronica was not alone. It was only a dream, and yet her heart hammered as though it meant to split through her ribs. Whenever Veronica's pace began to falter, even slightly, whoever was running ahead would shout to pull her back.

"Vera! Don't look back! Keep running!"

Keep running. It's catching up. Run.

Then the lightning flashed again—and in that whiteness Veronica saw them. The dead maids. There was no time to scream. The footsteps behind her had not stopped.

If she wanted to live, she had to run.

That thought filled her mind until there was room for nothing else.

"Shh——"

The dream always ended in the same room. Veronica and someone flung themselves through the door of a small room at the far end of the corridor. They locked it. They hid. They fought to quiet the breathing that would not be quieted. But the one pursuing them knew Veronica was here——

The axe fell on the door. The wooden door was being hacked apart, blow after blow. Veronica——

Veronica woke with a small scream. That dream again.

She lay there gasping until the pale morning light came to meet her. The same dream, cycling back again and again. Some philosopher had argued that dreams were the reflection of the unconscious, but Veronica had never experienced anything resembling this in her waking life. Was it, then, something inexplicable—a premonitory vision?

But this was London in the age of the Industrial Revolution, when machines did more work than people. To believe this dream was a portent of something would be the quickest route to a lunatic asylum for Veronica Highfield.

'Foolish thoughts.'

A portent, indeed. It was only a bad dream.

She thought that, shook herself free of it, and was just rising when a scream tore through the house and banished the last of her sleep entirely.

"Madam! The master! The master——!"

Chapter 1: Two Funerals

It happened in the very last year of the nineteenth century—in the autumn of 1899.

Thirteen years had passed since Veronica Upton left Hamilton estate.

Among London's social circles, Veronica Upton—now Highfield—was considered to have made a fine match, late as she had come to the marriage market. Not a love match, admittedly, but those around her had always maintained, with the persistence of a catechism, that love would grow in time.

Veronica had agreed. The love that burns bright burns out the moment the wood runs low. What a person needed was trust. Not a seasonal passion, but the faith that this person regarded her as a human being deserving of respect.

In that regard, her husband Henry Highfield had been a good man.

Veronica treated him with trust and respect. He returned both. Theirs had been a temperate marriage.

Had been.

"Madam!"

That morning began with what was nearly a scream from the butler. Veronica started and ran out into the corridor. Hans, white to the lips, was rushing toward her with a letter clutched in one shaking fist.

"Hans—my husband—why——"

"The master—an accident, Madam!"

The sound of breath sucked in sharply came from every corner of the house at once. Somewhere, a young housemaid began to cry. Mrs. Culbert, who managed the household, was already moving to comfort her, but there was no containing the shock as it spread from room to room. Veronica stood with her mouth slightly open.

"My husband—why? How?"

"He was returning from London—a business meeting—and on the way back—the horse bolted——"

The colour began to drain from Veronica's face.

"——the carriage went over the cliff. When people reached him after word got out, he was already——"

No one remarked on the fact that she had come running out in her nightclothes and bare feet without stopping for a dressing gown. Mrs. Culbert hurried to drape a robe over her shoulders, but Veronica could not think even so far as to put her arms through the sleeves. She stood rooted where she was.

Her trembling lips parted.

"He's at the hospital. Tell me he's safe, Hans."

Hans extended the telegram with hands that shook so badly he could barely manage it. For a man past sixty, the news was a blow of staggering force. They had driven that road hundreds of times. The Highfield horses were well-trained. How a thing like this could have happened—none of them in that house could make sense of it.

Veronica unfolded the letter, and the words that met her eyes were ones she did not recognize.

「…and therefore we regret to inform you of the death of Henry Highfield.」

There was even a postscript: that the coffin bearing his remains would arrive shortly. Veronica stood clutching the telegram, reading it again and again with the blank determination of someone who cannot quite accept what they are reading.

Weeping began to rise from the corners of the house. Her own expression must have told them the news was not a lie. The sound of hooves quickened outside. The carriage bearing the coffin was already crossing through the gates of Highfield estate.

The memory of those weeks had not dimmed. The fortnight of funeral proceedings consumed her entirely, and by the time she had seen him laid to rest in the family plot, Veronica's mind was worn to rags—too battered to feel anything so coherent as grief. Shock makes a person numb.

The butler came to her with a letter sealed in a black envelope.

"Madam. A letter for you."

The outer envelope had caught rain somewhere on its journey and was bloated and warped at the seams. It passed into Veronica's hands. That this letter would alter the course of her life utterly—even Veronica herself could not have imagined it.

「Dear Veronica,

I've lost count of how many years it's been since I last saw you. I heard about Mr. Highfield's passing. I am so terribly sorry.

I'm ashamed to send you this letter when you've just buried your husband, but Father has died.

Will you come to the funeral? It's a selfish thing to ask—but the people at Hamilton need you right now. And so do I.

I'll be waiting for you at Hamilton.

With love, Ian Julius Hamilton.」

The death of the man who had been like a father to her struck Veronica like a blow to the head. Two funerals in less than a month.

She could not quite believe that Ian still remembered her. The two of them had barely exchanged so much as a word in the thirteen years since Veronica had left Hamilton. And with the fever at thirteen having wiped her memories of that time clean away, Ian felt all the stranger to her now. He had sent only a brief letter of congratulation when she married.

Veronica stared at the letter with a quietly unsettled heart. She murmured.

"…A funeral."

And Hamilton.

She was no longer the sort of woman to grow soft over childhood memories of an old manor house—not anymore—but something in the sound of that name on her own tongue made her feel oddly displaced. A sensation that moved just beneath the skin, like unease. Was this what other women called feminine intuition? Or was it something else—a forewarning of something?

"Something…"

Something she had forgotten. But she could not name what it was, and so Veronica stood there with a frown and the letter in her hands until she noticed it had been sent a week ago.

There must have been some incident on the road that had delayed its delivery. Not all the roads of the British Empire were well-kept.

That was unfortunate.

A standard funeral ran two to three weeks. Given the time a train journey to Hamilton would take, she reckoned she might just manage to arrive at the very tail end of it. Today was her last day at Highfield estate in any case, so leaving early could do no harm.

With a restless, unsettled heart, Veronica rose from her chair, letter in hand.