Anne Brontë Nightwalker

Chapter 16

I escape to my bedroom to dress after William begins a fire and places Woody before it. Although my house is three stories high including the steeply peaked turret, my bedroom is in a broad basement built deep into the ground. Ivanhoe follows softly as I descend the narrow staircase. I'm dazed. I'm alone with William Hardcastle in my robe. What would my sisters say? A smile breaks over my face and I can't help giggling like a schoolgirl.

Always, I was the proper one, impeccable with propriety, the strictest lady and the loneliest. Our natures didn't appeal to men, nor our features. Desire burned within us all, yet the potency of our imagination, our greatest power, eclipsed us. Who can compete with Heathcliff or Rochester? It was far more thrilling to consummate our desire in dreams than to settle for an all too common man.

But, there is nothing common about William Hardcastle.

I enter my bedroom. In spite of the 19th century antiques, it's more simply furnished than above. An armoire stands against one wall, carved and dark in the Gothic style. The other wall holds a demure English dresser with a simple wooden box upon it. Near the fireplace a pale grey chenille chair sits beside a small table, upon which lies The Gospel of Mary. In the corner stands a dressmaker's mannequin. She is made to my exact measurements and pinned and draped in swathes of dark fabric.

The bare walls are painted a soft cream. And in the room's center looms the crowning jewel: my sanctum. A source of security more psychological than physical.

It is a tall, oak-paneled bed with great hand-carved doors and a paneled ceiling enclosing a deep mattress within. When the doors are shut and secured with heavy locks on the inside, I'm encased in a cocoon of perfect blackness. I have covered the mattress in the softest sheets and cashmere throws and draped an old silk comforter of faded burnt orange across it to remind me of the dying sun.

Emily would be intensely jealous. She dreamed of a bed like this and depicted one, albeit much simpler, in Wuthering Heights.

For now, the doors are open and Ivanhoe jumps onto the bed and stares out at me with glittering emerald eyes. It's almost as if he's mocking me.

"I know," I say, smiling, "there's a man in the house. And a dog." It occurs to me that Woody is perhaps a greater affront to Ivanhoe's sense of normalcy than William. I bite my lip. This isn't good. I should not be entering into conversation with a college professor. In no way should I be fostering understanding.

"This isn't about connection," I tell Ivanhoe. "This is about intelligence gathering. Knowledge is power. I must find out why Santos suspects me so that I can avoid this sort of situation in the future. And I must know what happened in Afghanistan."

I slip on a simple black dress, T-backed and trimmed in lace, and high, grey knit slippers that hug my calves like soft woolen boots. In my former life, I was fiercely modest, and have sewn my own restrained clothes since my mortal days. Lately, I am succumbing to vanity with more and more ease, cutting dresses out of the softest velvet or silk, trimming them with lace or satin ribbons embroidered with the finest metallic thread.

My self-righteous morality falters with each passing decade. After all I have seen, a velvet ribbon hardly seems like a crime. With each fallen life I catch and swallow, my compassion for human frailty grows. We are fallen angels, all of us. And the longer I live in darkness, the harder beauty grips me. It no longer seems like an evil, but a blessing, a balm against the carnage and ugliness of the world.

I glance in the mirror I've placed in a corner in order to check my handmade work. It's the only mirror in the house. Despite the legends, Night Walkers have reflections, but I rarely look at myself. Tonight I'm pale with hunger. My shoulders are bare and my skin looks pearl white against the narrow strip of lace that runs down my back. Again a sensation of nakedness arises, and I smile at myself with a tenderness I never found in my first 29 years. It's only a sleeveless dress I'm wearing, falling below the knee, trimmed in a slender band of lace. To a 21st century college professor, I'm sure it is nothing risqué.