Since they'd moved in, she'd made one concession to the distressing atmosphere of the box room: she'd put the brightest possible bulb on the landing and had Peter put an equally strong one in the box room's single socket. (Oddly enough, the children loved playing in the box room.) Tonight she turned on both lights and stood for a moment on the threshold, staring at the dark bulk of the carved wooden chest.
It did not move. The carvings did not writhe or gesture. A faint odor of lavender and cinnamon was detectable, mingling with old leather, wool, and camphor: homey smells, compatible with the room's use. Not a shadow stirred.
With swift steps, Amy crossed the room and tugged up the lid of the chest. Just as she'd thought. The two torn sheets, rough-dried, were neatly folded on top, her maxi- skirts just below. But one was a check and the other black. Where was royal blue, or red, or green with a fur-trimmed collar? She sat on the edge of the chest and lifted one stack of garments, Patricia's outgrown jumpers and skirts, Peter's shirts and underclothes, socks. She turned in the other direction and sorted through business suits, vests, more jumpers, her crepe and wool party dresses. At the bottom were two pairs of old drapes and some glass curtains, white. Nothing gauzy blue. No ornate headdresses. No costume belts. She delved to the wood of the chest's floor and found only the mundane things she expected.
Fran was a literal child: if she'd said she'd dressed in green with no buttons and a fur collar, she had. Puzzled, Amy ran her eyes over the contents of the shelves; nothing there surely but Christmas ornaments, boxed games, lampshades, empty jars, young Peter's tenting and backpack frame, oddments of china set aside for a jumble. On the other side of the door, the tea chest containing Peter's business papers, books, the family's suitcases as neatly stacked as they'd been since the day after removal from London.
Yet Sally Merrion had been dressed in royal blue… a queen's color… and gauzes!
A flash of color caught her eye and she turned toward the chest, blinking. She could have sworn that the topmost sheet had been, however fleetingly, a brilliant blue. To reassure herself, she smoothed the sheet, but her fingers told her that it wasn't velvet, just worn linen. She stood up, closing the lid of the chest, almost dropping it the final few inches as the full weight of the wood tore the lid from her fingers' inadequate grasp.
She'd ask Fran in the morning where she'd found those dress-up clothes. Possibly she'd misunderstood.
The frisson caught her by the back of the neck before she'd reached the safety of the door. It was like a hand on the scruff of her neck, pulling her back to the scent of some childhood crime: an injunction against a cowardly retreat.
In spite of herself, Amy turned back into the room and stared around her. The scent of lavender and cinnamon was cut by a sharper smell, vinegarish. Then a sweetish odor, familiar but unnameable, assailed her, an odor as sharp as the previous intangible command to stay. Stiffly, Amy walked back to the chest, set her hand on the lid, imagining, as Sally might have, wondrous costumes in which to be medieval ladies-in-waiting… and a queen.
No torn sheets, no dull woolen jumpers now lay exposed, but royal blue velvet, a deep red wool dress, a green surcoat fur-trimmed, and belts, encrusted with rough-cut bright stones set in the dull gleam of gold links.
She let the lid drop and the compressed air smelled of sweat, human and horse, of stale food and spilled, soured wine, heavy perfumed musk mixed with camphor. Weakly, Amy sank to the cold stone floor, impervious to that chill.
"The Alderdyces came into money…" Mr. Suttle's words came to mind.,
Had some Alderdyce child, or adult, dreamed of hidden treasure in the old keep? And found it in the chest?
Amy shook her head, fighting to think rationally. Did the chest grant wishes, then? Pray God it was only one wish and Fran had had the chest's quota for them all, and that was the end of the matter.
She thought of gold and jewels, rich fabrics. Oriental silks, and gauzes, of ornate Arabian leather slippers. And opened the chest. Her heart pounded as she dropped the lid on those same imagined riches.
Mrs. Mallett? She'd lived in Tower Cottage for years, spry till the day of her death. Hadn't Mr. Suttle said so? Wanting for nothing, the house and grounds supplying her requirements.
Amy laughed, a single sound, hard and strained, like her credulity. What had the widowed Mrs. Mallett lifted the lid to find? A body? As Peter had whimsically suggested.
The sweetish odor, familiar but unidentifiable, pervaded the box room.
Amy screamed, a soft tortured cry, her hands stifling it to a whisper, lest Peter or Patricia hear her. That same sweetish odor had filled her nostrils as she'd knelt before Peter's coffin in the church. How could the house have killed her Peter in that bombed-out public house. It couldn't have… Illusions! Her longing for him that day!
"NO!" The single negative was as low as it was firm. She spread her hands, fingers flat on the lid of the chest, denying what could be if she so desired. "No!"
She spread her arms across the chest in repression, in supplication, in prayer. This was just a chest with old clothes in it, two torn sheets and some dresses waiting for parties, for children to grow up to fill. This was just an ancient tower, used as part of an old house, a house where children could grow up in healthy country air, on fresh vegetable and milk, and where they could pick apples and pears in an orchard and bramble berries from hedges. Just an old house that had served many families in the same way.
The nauseating sweetness dispersed: lavender and cinnamon returned, and the smell of night and rain.
Slowly Amy pulled her arms together, rose to her knees before the chest. She placed the heels of her hands under the lid and, swallowing against the dryness of her throat, pushed upward. Her body blocked some of the light from the overbright bulb, but she saw the comforting white of old cotton sheeting, caught a whiff of her favorite cologne, impregnated in the dresses stored in the chest, a hint of the cedarwood. It was as she'd wished. She let the lid down gently and leaned her forehead weakly against the edge.
It took her a few moments to gather enough strength to rise. Really, she told herself as she walked toward the door, she ought not to attempt to do so much in one day, though they'd enough bramble jelly to last years, even with the amount Peter slathered on his toast.
She switched off the light and closed the box room door behind her. Her fingers hovered briefly over the key. No, she could not lock out what had apparently happened or lock in whatever it was. That would be superstitious as well as downright useless.