“Touch me, and I’ll tell Mama that nothing pleases her spinster daughter so much as to dress up like a man and ride astride!”
“Oh! You won’t be alive to tell her! They’ll be burying you next to Lucien!”
“Now!” I heard Lucien say, and I pulled the shield off the lantern.
The sudden light caught the attention of the two Banes. But it was Lucien who caused William to give out a blood-curdling scream.
Charles clung to me, apparently more frightened by the scream than anything that had gone before.
“Lord Almighty!” Fanny said. “You frightened the life right out of me. What’s gotten into you! You’ll bring the whole house down on us!”
William, the color gone from his face, pointed a shaking hand toward Lucien.
“What?” Fanny said. “Speak up, now!”
“The Headless Abbot.”
“Headless Abbot! I don’t see any Headless Abbot! It’s just a light coming from one of those passages I told you about.”
“Don’t you see him?” William cried. “In riding clothes!”
“Are you back to giving me trouble over that? What’s it to you if I find men’s clothes more sensible for riding?”
Lucien tried moving closer to her. But while William swayed on his feet, Fanny was oblivious to him.
“William?” she said. “Are you feeling quite the thing?”
In frustration, Lucien materialized completely.
“Lucien!” William said, and fainted. Unfortunately, he was still on the stairs when this happened. Lucien tried to make a grab for him, but William fell right through him, tumbling down to the ledge.
Now Fanny screamed, but she obviously still could not see my brother.
“Fibbens, please take his lordship to safety,” I said, over Charles’s protests. “Ask Bogsley to bring some men with a litter to me.” And picking up a lantern, I limped out as quickly as I could to the landing, where William lay in a heap.
“Edward!” Fanny called, hurrying down the stairs and straight through Lucien without so much as a blink,
“Oh, help him, Edward!”
She stood nervously watching me. William made a groaning sound, and opened his eyes. “Edward?” he said dazedly. “Was it you all along?”
He then caught sight of Lucien standing behind me, though, and fainted once again.
I did my best to make him more comfortable. “Help will be here soon, Fanny,” I said.
“He’s broken his arm,” Lucien said, “but I don’t think he has any more serious injuries. Why do you suppose he could see me, but she can’t?”
“I don’t understand it,” I said.
Fanny, thinking I spoke to her, said, “Well I understand it! It’s all because of Lucien’s stupid story about the monk. He thought he saw the ghost. Just your lantern light, I daresay.”
We heard a sound then, a faint cracking noise from below.
Fanny’s face grew pale. “The abbot!” she said weakly.
“Henry,” I called, “are you down there in the dark eating walnuts?”
A long laugh echoed up the tower.
“Henry!” Fanny exclaimed. “Get help,” I said to Lucien.
“I’ll stay here, thank you,” Fanny replied. “Besides, you said help is already on the way.”
“Oh it is, dear Fanny, it is!” Henry said, lighting a lantern. He started up the stone stairs. “Where’s Charles?”
Lucien made a wild banshee sound, and swooped toward Henry. Nothing.
“Never mind the brat,” Fanny said impatiently. “Here’s your brother broken to bits!”
“I wouldn’t trouble yourself too much over William, Fanny.” Henry said. “He discovered my little plan, so I think it’s best if the next accident concerning an earl has something to do with trying to save my brother. Edward and Charles make a valiant, combined effort. Alas, it will be unsuccessful.”
“Will no one talk sense to me?” Fanny asked.
“Your brother Henry wants to be an earl,” I said. “So he murdered Lucien-right, Lucien?”
“Right.”
But Henry laughed and said, “Don’t tell me you think you can try that ghost business on me at this age, Edward! Now where’s that treasure? I warn you, I’m armed.”
“You’ll never own the Abbey’s treasure,” I said. “The Abbey’s treasure then, as it is now, was in the good men who have lived here-Lucien, and his father, and Charles.”
“Henry,” Fanny said, “tell me you didn’t harm Lucien!”
“Lucien? Oh, not just Lucien. Don’t forget his father and his ninnyhammer of a stepmother-you didn’t think that carriage overturned by chance?” I heard the sound of rock falling, and Henry said, “When I am earl, I shall have these steps repaired.”
“You’ll never be earl!” Lucien vowed.
I heard a commotion in the passageway. Fibbens’s voice was calling desperately, “Your lordship, no!”
Suddenly a white, headless figure with a bloodstained cassock came barreling onto the landing. Fanny, who did not see me grab hold of the small boy who carried it, let out the fourth scream to assault my ears in nearly as many minutes.
Lucien grabbed the pillow ghost, and went flying off the landing. Literally. Previously unable to support it, this time-perhaps somehow strengthened by his need to protect Charles-he was able to make the Headless Abbot billow impressively, and to aim it directly at Henry Bane. Henry fired his pistol at it, but the stuffed costume came at him inexorably, and knocked him from the stone stairs. His fall was harder than William’s, and fatal.
I called to Lucien, but he had disappeared.
TWO WEEKS LATER, WILLIAM, RECOVERED ENOUGH TO BE MOVED, left with his sister and the much quieter dowager for Bane House. They wanted to be home in time for Christmas, which was drawing near. William and his sister were getting along fairly well by then-as we all were-and none of us told the dowager about her daughter’s clothing preferences. Although a scandal of a far more serious nature had been avoided, both Henry’s duplicity and his death had left Lady Bane shaken.
But even with the Banes gone and the immediate crisis over, I was feeling dismal, as was Charles. One night he came to the library at midnight, upset-not because he saw a ghost, but because it had been so long since he had seen one. I tried to explain his father’s traveling coach analogy, but Charles wanted that coach to return. “At least for visits,” he said tearfully.
I took out the packet of letters again, and read to him-this time, the letter Lucien had written to me on the death of his wife.
“I used to be able to picture her so clearly after she was gone,” a familiar voice said. “To feel her watching over Charles and me, sharing our joys. Do you know, I believe I now know why Fanny and Henry couldn’t see me, but you who’ve loved me can?”
“Papa!” Charles cried out.
“Yes, my boy, I’m back-for a visit.”
GRADUALLY, OVER THE YEARS, WE SAW LESS AND LESS OF HIM. BY the time Charles had grown into a man, it was no longer necessary to trouble Lucien to be our ghost. By then, we knew how to recall his spirit in other ways-through fond remembrance, and the knowledge that we can never be truly parted from those we love.
AND THAT, I’VE COME TO BELIEVE, IS THE TRUE SPIRIT OF Christmas.
Unharmed
PACING MY SMALL CELL, TRYING NOT TO LISTEN TO THE racket around me.
They’ve just brought a meal to me, and I’m going to settle down to enjoy it. In the two days since Cindy’s death, I haven’t been able to get enough to eat. The authorities don’t know what to make of my appetite.
They’ve been by to see me a couple of times now; can’t make up their minds. I’ve watched them eyeing me, trying to figure out what went wrong, why I didn’t save her. Wondering if I killed her, or if it was an accident. They aren’t convinced of my innocence, but they’re equally unsure of my guilt.