“Sure.”
He lit two candles in the stove top, fixed them into candleholders, and gave Clare one. Then he led her to the door, switching off the kitchen’s lights as he passed them.
Clare pulled the coat tighter as they crossed the empty room and approached one of the doors in the back. Since he’d given her his coat, he only wore a shirt. “Aren’t you cold?”
“A little. But I don’t mind it. Careful here.”
He led her down five steps and into a stone room. A large bolted bronze door opposite them caught in their candlelight. Unlike the main parts of the house, the area hadn’t been well maintained. The bronze was tarnished, and dirt had accumulated between the stones lining the floor. Bare bulbs hung from the ceiling to light the walls.
“Is this part of the house for the staff?” Clare guessed.
He gave her a quick smile. “Correct.”
A tall stone archway to Clare’s left drew her attention. She could see a step down but no farther. Shadows clustered inside the entryway, and she thought she could hear a very faint dripping noise coming from the space.
Dorran was focussed on the door ahead, though. The small window in it was too fogged for Clare to see through. Dorran put the candle on the ground while he unbolted the door and pulled it open. Then he motioned Clare into the room.
As she stepped through the doorway, lights flickered to life, starting right above her and reappearing every four feet down the long, rectangular room. The space was warmer than the rest of the house, enough that the cold no longer bit at Clare’s face. Shelves lining the walls were full of metal and wood implements. At least twenty raised garden beds were spaced evenly throughout the area, and organic smells filled her nose. After spending so long in the house’s stuffy hallways and rooms, being surrounded by something natural was like a breath of fresh air.
“Is this…”
“Our garden.” He stepped in behind her and closed the door. The lights were warmer than the kitchen’s, and they highlighted Dorran’s dark eyes and the line of his jaw. “It is expensive to have food delivered to the property, so most of what we eat is grown on-site. The gardens were dug up shortly before the family left. Sadly, the chickens and goats are gone too.”
She leaned over one of the garden beds. The soil looked rich and dark.
“If we have nothing but tinned vegetables and rice to eat, we will soon start craving fresh food. I thought it would be wise to restart the garden. It will use up our fuel faster but will help extend our food stores.”
Clare thought it was probably a smart move. She brushed her hand over the dirt. “It’s still warm.”
“It was heated until a few days ago. The insulation has protected it from the worst of the cold.” He pointed to the lights above them. “They’re full-spectrum bulbs, which imitate sunlight. They will need fuel to run. But we can save petrol by heating it through the furnace. That is my main motive for being cautious with the lights. If we budget carefully, we should have enough fuel to keep the garden lit and warm for a while.”
“It’s heated by a furnace? Like a real, wood-burning furnace?”
“Yes. In the basement, below our feet.” He paced along the garden beds, examining the freshly turned soil. “We have plenty of seeds. I thought we could start with plants with a short harvest time. Lettuce. Beans. Some of the seeds can be eaten as sprouts too. I will come back later and begin work.”
“Why don’t we start now?” Clare tilted her head. “I had a garden at my cottage. I can help.”
“I would appreciate it. But your arm is still healing, and you must be tired. Perhaps another day.”
She laughed. “You don’t have to worry about me so much. And I want to help. I think I’d go crazy if I had to stay in bed all day.”
“Hm. As long as you’re not too tired.” His eyes warmed. “I’ll see to reviving the furnace. You could begin planting. Gloves are on that shelf. Seeds are on the bench. I will be back within twenty minutes.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Clare pulled on a pair of thick gloves as she watched Dorran leave through the tarnished door. He seemed familiar with the staff’s areas of the house. Something told her that he was used to working in the garden. If she’d been stuck in the mansion with no freedom and no real job, she probably would have started looking for chores to do too.
The seeds were arranged in large labelled glass jars on a bench running across the back wall. The quantity surprised her. She was used to buying packets with a hundred or two hundred seeds for her own garden. Winterbourne had tens of thousands.
I guess the garden has been running for a long while. Feeding a large family and sixty staff three times a day would be no small feat.
The shelf also held an array of miniature stakes and pens. Clare used them to mark out the area she was planting. Her own garden was more of a hobby than a necessity, and she grew as many flowers as vegetables. Winterbourne’s garden was a different matter. She tried to guess how many plants would provide full meals for two people without planting so much that it became a waste. More challenging was the fact that the jars only listed the plant variety, with no instructions on how deep or far apart the seeds needed to be buried.
Clare set several rows of tomatoes and lettuce, which she had practice with, but hesitated on everything else. She liked to be useful, but Dorran had left the garden completely in her hands, and that was more pressure than she was comfortable with. Even if I get out of the house within a few days, Dorran will probably need the garden to get through the rest of the winter. I can’t mess it up for him.
She bit her lip as she stared at a jar of capsicum seeds. She couldn’t remember how it liked to be planted. She put it on the edge of the garden bed and went in search of Dorran. He’d said he would be in the basement, which she guessed was accessed by the archway they had passed on the way to the garden. Clare picked up her candle as she left, being careful to close the door behind her to keep the heat inside.
She approached the archway but stopped on the top step. No light came from the basement. Cool air rolled out of it, prickling her skin. She tucked her chin into the coat’s collar. The stairway made her uneasy, as though it exuded a toxic odour that her conscious mind couldn’t detect but her subconscious shuddered at. She stared into the black abyss, and all she wanted to do was turn and run.
Don’t let this house sweep you up in its aura. It’s just a basement. Nothing more. She took in a deep breath, held it, then stepped into the void.
Chapter Nine
The change in atmosphere was palpable. It covered Clare like water, sinking into the crevices in her clothes and saturating her. Her hair, still damp, chilled her. She held the candle ahead of herself so that the light could cover the walls, but the flame guttered as it fought against the frigid air.
“Dorran?” She tried to call for him, but the word came out as a gasp. Her only answer was a slow, steady dripping noise.
With each step she descended, she felt less connected to the real world. When she looked back, she could no longer see the archway, the garden, or any trace of light. It was just her and the darkness, wrapped around each other, tangled so badly that she began to worry they would never be separated again.
Her feet finally touched even ground. Clare’s breathing was shallow, but even so, the cold air invaded her body and robbed her warmth. She licked dry lips as she tried to see into the room. The candlelight caught on a handful of dulled shapes—something metal, something glass. She couldn’t identify any of them. She couldn’t see Dorran. But she could hear a scratching noise. It came from above her and below her all at once, like fingernails on stone or dying breaths dragged through rotting lungs.