I sat back and watched the moors swallow us whole until there was no groomed green grass to break up the barrenness of this wasteland. And then, before I was prepared for it, the carriage turned south and the ocean suddenly became a part of the world.
Mrs. Pettigrew, with a glance out the window, remarked, “We’re on the Whitby road. It won’t be long now.” I scooted over to the window on the left side of the carriage and watched the undulating coastline.
The water looked grey-blue in the afternoon light and wide enough to swallow everything I knew about life. The sharp angles of birds in flight dropped and lifted and dropped again above the water. I knew nothing about birds that lived near the ocean. I would have something new to ask Henry about.
I looked back and forth between the two windows, with the sea on one side and the moors on the other, both prospects overwhelming me with their vastness and their strangeness. The sun was beginning its slide over the horizon, the light fading when we came upon a town—the famed Robin Hood’s Bay, which I had heard about for as long as I had heard about Blackmoore.
I looked with greater interest at the steep, cobbled streets and the 45
J u l i a n n e D o n a l D s o n red-roofed houses that flowed down the hill toward the ocean. “Did Robin Hood really live here, once?”
“Legend says he did,” came Mrs. Pettigrew’s response. But legend and truth were two different things.
“Don’t you know? For certain?”
She glanced up briefly from her knitting. “Nobody knows for certain, my dear.”
I remembered what Henry had hinted at—something about smuggling. “But are there still clandestine activities taking place here? Like smuggling?”
She clucked her tongue in disapproval. “Of course not! What a fanci-ful imagination you have!”
I sighed with disappointment. Leaning forward, I lowered the window and caught my breath as the salty cool air rushed over me. If I were an outlaw, this would be a place I would choose for a stronghold. The streets were narrow, the houses crowded together like a band of ragtag rebels, shoulders crammed together, elbows locked. The angled red roofs met and blended and tumbled down the hill to the water’s edge.
A moment later, the carriage stopped, the door opened, and Henry climbed inside. His shoulders seemed to fill the small space, and he smelled like the salty wind and the moors. He grinned at my look of surprise and sat beside me. “I don’t want to miss this,” he said, then rapped on the carriage roof. It rolled on.
The anticipation in his eyes made my heart quicken. Blackmoore must be near. I wished for speed, for flight, for “finally” to come.
Henry leaned forward, looking out the window, and pointed, saying, “There. On the top of the cliff.”
I leaned forward eagerly, and he moved back to allow me the full window’s view to see Blackmoore for the first time. I stared, then stared again.
The light of day was fading, the sky painted navy. The building that stood between ocean and sky looked dead black. The house was misshapen, just as Henry had made it in the model, with one wing stretching much 46
longer than the other. It hunched on the edge of the cliff like a deformed creature, and the candles that lit the windows from within made it look as if it had a dozen eyes, all turned toward the sea. As the daylight faded, I blinked while the image before me shifted and blurred. Whether it was my imagination or a trick of the light, I knew not, but for a moment the house looked to me like a hulking bird of prey, with wings unfolded, ready to drop from the precipice into the empty sky.
I blinked again, shaking my head to fix the strange twist in my eye-sight, and my heart pumped. But it was closer to excitement than fear— this energy that coursed through me. I had wanted this my whole life.
Now I had it. I had my visit to Blackmoore, and come what may, it felt as if everything in my life had led me to this place at this time.
I sat back, feeling breathless, and found Henry’s gaze on my face.
“Well?”
Shaking my head, I found myself speechless and could only smile. It seemed good enough for him, for he settled back with a contented smile on his face and watched me watch out the window as we approached his future home.
Daylight had vanished completely when the carriage wheels struck the gravel of the courtyard. Blazing torches illuminated the area as a footman stepped forward and opened the carriage door, holding out a gloved hand for me to take. I took it and stepped down onto the gravel. Walking away from the carriage, I tipped my head back to take in the extent of the house. It was a great hulking thing, perched here on the edge of the world between ocean and moors, an anchor of dark stone and towering walls.
Before this day, I had imagined the building—the dark stones, the peaked roof, the staggering line of chimneys—but I had imagined it in vacancy. Now I saw the bulk of it loom between a dark sky and a barren cliff that bore the brunt of endless crashes of ocean waves. The chill that ran down my spine reached beyond the cold wind and the fine salt spray. This building was born of an austere atmosphere made real. It was a haunting in stone.
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J u l i a n n e D o n a l D s o n The ocean wet the air, flavoring each breath with salt and freedom and foreignness. The towering building loomed overhead, darker than the darkening sky. The moors stood like a stretch of barrier—an impenetrable wilderness hemming and shielding and pushing this building toward the ocean. It was wild and dark and grand and tall and fierce and haunting all at once. And it thrilled me to the core. It thrilled me and it frightened me, for it whipped at my carefully closeted heart, much as the wind had whipped at my hair and skirts and sent my bonnet tumbling.
Such unfettering was possible within this sphere that I felt to shrink back with the power of what I felt here. I smelled the ocean and the peat.
I tasted the salt in the air, and I heard the haunting cries of birds. The wind whipped at me still, with a cold blast from the ocean. This was a place where things came undone. This cliff would come undone by the crashing of waves. These stones would come undone by the wind. What power would it have in me? What in me might come undone here? So many things could be unfettered, could be loosed, could be thrown to the wind and the waves in this primal place of wilderness and natural power.
Henry flashed me a look of excitement as he walked quickly toward the open doors. I followed him just as quickly, eager to breathe my “finally” when I crossed the threshold of Blackmoore for the first time.
Henry waited for me at the door and watched as I walked into the great hall that I had first seen in miniature through a tiny wooden door.
Here the details were the same as in the model—the white-and-black checkered floor, the ornately carved fireplace to the left, the arched opening at the opposite end—but the scale made everything feel new and foreign. I felt rather than saw the loftiness of its ceiling, which was swallowed up in darkness, despite the roaring fire in the fireplace and the candles lit all around. The cold ocean wind followed us through the door, chasing at our backs, causing the flames of the candles to flicker and cast strange shadows about the stone walls and floor. Despite the fire and candlelight, the room was losing the fight against darkness.
An older servant with the regal bearing of a butler approached Henry, 48
bowing and saying, “Welcome home, Mr. Delafield. I trust your travel was uneventful?”
It was the word home that caught my attention. I looked at Henry’s face and recognized it in an instant. That excitement to be here—those hurried steps—the look of happiness and contentment and deep peace filling his features: this was home to Henry.