Ravenscourt Manor
Chapter 2 of A Murder of Crows, in which we make our acquaintance with a somewhat eerie house...
Welcome to A Murder of Crows, the first book in The Ravenscourt Tragedies, a gothic fantasy gaslamp web serial. In the first chapter, after the mysterious disappearance of her father’s Spirit, Abigail and her family recieved a most dismal invitation to stay with their estranged uncle at Ravenscourt Manor.
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Time is an odd thing. In the days leading up to a funeral, time can drag so slowly that you doubt it’s moving at all, and then, suddenly, there’s no time to even breathe. It starts passing so dizzyingly fast—a flying frenzy of packing and planning and repacking and cleaning and yelling at your little brother because he won’t stop touching your stuff and more packing, until, before you know it, your entire house is stuffed into storage boxes or wrapped under sheets, and all the empty rooms have been stripped bare.
Within a week, our entire tiny house had been clipped, cleared, and cleaned, and we were leaving. Mother piled our scant suitcases on the stoop of the house (”nothing more than you need,” she’d said. “It’s not as if we won’t be coming back, after all”), cut off the gas lamps and locked the door.
And that was that.
A buggy brought us to the station, and I couldn’t help noticing how closely Mother kept an eye on us as we made our way to the train. We settled into our compartment, and while Mother paged through her worn copy of Wuthering Heights and William amused himself by swiping matches from the snack trolley every time it passed, I watched the grey mountains of Caledonia sink outside our windows, turning into the moors and rolling hills of Anglica. Towns raced by in a blur of colour, and clouds grew thick overhead, a storm gathering as we sped towards a place I had never heard of in my life.
“What’s it like?” I asked without turning away from the window. “Ravenscourt?”
Mother paused her reading. “It’s where your father grew up. It’s where we met.”
I looked up at that. Before this moment, I’d never heard either of my parents talk about where they’d met or how they’d grown up—and that was strange, even though I hadn’t realised that it was strange until now. Dad had never so much as mentioned a place like Ravenscourt—and now we’d never get to know what he thought of it.
Yet Mother looked peaceful—almost nostalgic—fingering the metal locket that she was wearing under the collar of her travelling jacket as she remembered the place. “It’s built in the middle of a forest called the Blackwood,” she continued. “Some of the trees are older than humanity itself. I remember, we used to walk by the lake in summer…” She sighed. “And the house is something else all together—I think you’ll like it. Your father certainly did.”
“If he liked it so much,” I said, turning back to the window, “then why did he leave?”
Mother pursed her lips but said nothing, and our compartment fell back into silence.
By the time the train pulled into the station at Eboracum, the sky was dark with storm clouds, though the storm hadn’t broken yet. Mother hurried us through the station—its roof built like the nave of a great glass cathedral, all steel and smoke-stained glass arcing above us.
William kept getting distracted—and of course it was up to me to make sure he didn’t get tripped over while ducking down to tie his shoe, or get caught swiping sweets from the overcrowded candy stalls, or get lost because he’d stopped to watch one of the street magicians floating balls and fruit and candles in mid-air next to the ticket stalls.
It wasn’t really magic of course, which was why the man wasn’t worried about Inquisitors. The tricks were all thread and distraction and sleight of hand—magic might be useful for a great many things, most of them fairly evil, but floating apples was not one of them.
The way Dad had always explained it was this: the real world was really two worlds. There was the world of things—of apples and oranges and wooden balls and lit candles—and that world was ruled by the laws of physics, which were simple and immutable and easily reasoned out if you knew what to watch for.
But then, there was another world—the world of ideas. And that was where you had to watch out for magic. The reason magicians were so dangerous wasn’t because they could create flame or shoot lightning from their fingers, but because they had studied how to control minds. A skilled magician could trap a person in an Illusion of their worst fears, or drive them mad with a Curse—but if he’d wanted to create so much as a spark in the world of things, he would’ve had to use phosphorus and gunpowder, just like the rest of us.
Maybe it would’ve been better if magic weren’t invisible. If it left bruises or burns, you’d be able to see the danger and avoid it. But thoughts are trickier things, and that’s why the Inquisitors insisted that we needed them to protect us against magicians and their spells.
The “magician” made a show of turning his floating apple into an explosion of colourful sparks, and the gathered crowd clapped. A trio of passing Inquisitors didn’t even spare him a glance.
“Think he’d let me borrow a firework?” asked William before I managed to drag him away.
Uncle Edward’s coach (apparently, he was rich enough to have his own coach, coachman included) was waiting for us outside the station. After loading ourselves and our luggage into the carriage, there was yet another hour of sitting in silence while the world passed us by, dark, bare-fingered trees scraping the carriage windows as rain broke over us, the horses’ hooves and the carriage wheels clattering over the rough roads. William started to shiver, and I pulled him close, making sure both of our collars were up to cover our necks.
Finally, the rutted roads gave way to a cobbled drive, and in the distance, light flickered from a high tower. The trees grew thicker, and a brass fence loomed in front of us in the half-dark. As we passed under the gate that marked the boundary of the manor grounds, an icy chill ran under my skin, cold enough to make my bones rattle. I looked out to see the gate passing over us, strange shapes twisted into the wrought metal.
A Ward.
I twisted the ring on my finger, focusing my First Defence until my teeth stopped chattering, but the feeling refused to fade. Whatever Ward we had just passed through, it was even stronger than the Graveward at the cemetery, and it didn’t quite like the idea of us being there—not really.
Why ever would Uncle Edward need a Ward like that?
Why did he need a Ward at all?
Dark things flitted through the murk outside—but when I leaned forward to see what they were, there was nothing: just the rain and the leafless trees passing beyond the window, and my breath leaving a cloud of fog on the glass… until Ravenscourt House came into view.
Blurred through the windows and the rain, the house was a great big jumble of rough walls and dark windows and tiled roofs, the gables and towers all mixed up and twisted together to form a strange puzzle of black stone. The windows lay empty behind iron bars, without a single glimmer of fire or lamp light. I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone had told me it was abandoned—there was not a single hint that someone lived there now, much less that anyone had ever lived there at all.
And yet…
And yet, those empty windows gave me the creeping sense that someone—or something—was waiting behind them, watching.
The carriage rolled to a stop, and the driver opened the door for us, holding out a hand and an umbrella for Mother, both of which she took without hesitation. I leapt down without his help, to take a proper look at the great double doors of the house’s main entrance.
They lay wide open, revealing a dark, empty space that managed to be the complete opposite of welcoming.
The rain pounded on the stones around us, and Mother drew me and William next to her, sheltering all of us under the umbrella as she ushered us through those doors and into the darkness beyond.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. The entrance hall was smaller than I’d expected, though also taller: a square space with a ceiling so high that it lay hidden in darkness, the walls lined with cobwebby statues and dull portraits, and in every corner, some marble face or painted portrait was frowning about something. In front of us, a pair of grand staircases arced upward to the first floor.
While Mother shook the rain out of her coat, William tugged on my arm, pointing to the doors behind us, which had begun to move. As I watched, the doors swung shut, gears and levers ticking and grinding, the light and the wind and the rain of the world outside disappearing with one final click—
“Clockwork,” I whispered, but William’s fingers continued to clutch my sleeve. I didn’t push him away.
“Ah, Maris!” rang a voice from the top of the stairs. I looked up to see Uncle Edward making his way down the stairs, trailed by a lopsided couple in black. The man was tall, with a long, severe face, while the woman was short and round and dumpy—servants, I realised with a twinge of something like annoyance. Of course Uncle Edward would have servants. Mother had never had so much as a cleaning lady to help her with the housework, but Uncle Edward had apparently inherited all the things that Dad hadn’t: coaches and manors and Warded gates and all.
He shuffled down the last few steps into the hall and took Mother’s hand in his own. “It is so good to see you here,” he said. “How was your trip?”
“Exhausting,” answered Mother, handing her gloves off to the manservant and dismissing him with a wave. He took them with a bow and turned to busy himself with the luggage while the other servant lingered at the bottom of the steps. “But overall, the journey is quite pleasant, even if long,” continued Mother. “I just wish this had all been under better circumstances.”
“Of course.” Uncle Edward stepped back, his gaze shifting from Mother to land on me and my brother. There was something intense and searching in the way he looked at us, something quietly discomforting—I’d seen the same look on Dad’s face far too often: it was the look of a scientist who’d just discovered some fascinating new specimen.
“William and Abigail, I take it?” he said at last. He held out his hand, waiting for my brother to shake it. “You have grown a bit since I last saw you, young William.”
My brother simply looked at the offered handshake, and then back up to our uncle, his hands refusing to let go of my jacket. “I don’t remember ever seeing you,” he said simply.
Mother shot him a glare, but Uncle Edward gave a short laugh, and let his hand drop. “It was quite a while ago,” he said. “More than seven years, I think. You must be thirteen by now?”
“Eleven,” said William shortly.
“And have you been taking all your medicines?”
William looked to Mother for some sign, and she gave a short, exasperated nod. My brother refused to look up as he answered: “Yes, I have.”
Uncle Edward considered him for a moment, as if he wanted to ask more, but at last, he nodded. “Good boy,” he said, and though he didn’t go so far as to pat my brother on the head, he might as well have before turning his focus, finally, to me.
“And you, Abigail, my dear? How are we?”
His attention made me suddenly, keenly aware of the cold water still seeping from my coat, of the wind howling outside the closed door and the rain pounding against the stone walls. I was twisting my ring already without realising it, but still, my heart was pounding, though I didn’t know why. I didn’t trust myself to answer. Instead, I took several deep breaths, coiling them into the bottom of my lungs: the Second Defence.
The Second Defence is self-control, and you must master your breath to maintain it.
Slowly, the panic faded, like the tide going out, and I looked up to meet my uncle’s eyes. “I am quite well, sir, thank you,” I answered evenly.
He tilted his head, and I refused to let my gaze drop, breathing in my Defences to keep me steady. Finally, he shook his head and laughed, turning back to Mother and talking to her again—as if we’d never existed.
“I do think it has been far too long since you have visited, Maris. Perhaps a tour is in order?”
“Of course,” said Mother, though her hand moved to clasp my shoulder.
Uncle Edward must have noticed the gesture as well. “No need to worry about a thing,” he said, gesturing to the servants still hovering close by. “My housekeeper, Mrs. Thompson, will settle them into their rooms. And Galen will take care of the luggage, of course.”
Mother’s eyes flicked to William. “You’re certain that—”
“They can come to no harm within these walls. That much I can assure you.”
At last she seemed convinced. And when Uncle Edward offered his hand, she took it, following him into the shadows of the house.
I almost called out for her to stay—but the next moment, she was gone, and William and I were left staring at the sour-faced Housekeeper.
The Housekeeper seemed just as pleased as we were. She was pale, with heavily-lidded eyes, a wide mouth, and very little neck, which rather made her look like the unfortunate result of a misguided prince kissing a toad and turning it into a Housekeeper. As soon as Mother and Uncle Edward had disappeared into the house, she stalked toward a door on the other side of the hall and pulled it open. A dust-dark hallway lay beyond—needless to say, I’d met closets that were more inviting.
“Well?” said the Housekeeper, her voice a low, rasping croak. “Are you coming or not?”
William and I exchanged a look. My first instinct was to turn around, get back in the carriage, and catch the first train back to Caledonia, but that, unfortunately, did not seem like an option. So, with a deep breath, I made my way to the door, William still clinging to my coat. The Housekeeper nearly shoved us through, before slamming the door behind us, and pushing past to take the lead.
The house was a dizzying labyrinth of tight corridors and high-ceilinged galleries, and hall after hall after hall of locked doors. As the housekeeper led us down passages and up stairs and through windowless rooms, the keys at her belt jangling with every step, I tried to keep track of our route, counting rooms and paces and turns, but it was impossible. Past a set of double doors, we turned down a side hall, and at last, the Housekeeper unhooked the keys from her belt, unlocking the door to a small, dreary parlour.
A cloud of dust rose into the air as we entered, and William tried to wave it away—but before I could do much more than glance at the room (all I noticed were that the walls were painted a most disagreeable shade of grey), the Housekeeper spun us both to face her.
“These are your rooms,” she said shortly. “The main bedroom is through the door on your left, while the second door on the right leads to the other. The maid will bring you dinner in an hour. I hope you’re not picky.”
William coughed.
“Now, before you get too comfortable,” continued the Housekeeper, “there are some rules you are expected to obey during your stay here. First of all, locked doors are locked for a reason. You are well advised to keep your snotty little noses where they belong.”
Fair enough, I thought.
“Secondly, though the woods and gardens are free for you to explore, you may not leave the grounds without an adult or express permission. However, if you are not back inside before nightfall, the doors will be locked, and you will not be allowed admittance,” her face broke into a cruel grin. “The grounds are rather… unpleasant at night.”
I looked to William, who raised his eyebrows. Neither of us wanted to know what sort of unpleasant she meant.
“Finally,” said the Housekeeper. “Remember that you are here by the good will and charity of Doctor Crowe. If he asks you to do something, you are to do it immediately and without question. Is that clear?”
When neither William nor I responded, the Housekeeper gave a little sniff. “Of course,” she said, “if you wish to be obstinate, there will be punishments.”
“What sort of punishments, ma’am?” asked William.
But the Housekeeper didn’t answer. Instead, she gave us both one last heavy-lidded scowl, and stepped back through the door. “Welcome to Ravenscourt,” she said, before slamming the door behind her.
Her exit raised another cloud of dust, which set William coughing while I pulled off my boots, shook the water out of my coat, and took a moment to look at the room properly. My first impression hadn’t been wrong: a crumbly fire smouldered in the fireplace, with a vase of wilting flowers drooping on the mantle. The warped shadow of iron bars darkened the windows, and the couch and the cushioned chairs had become a feast for moths. I’d never seen a more disagreeable room in my life—up to and including the sitting room of our neighbour, Mrs. Evans, who owned a dozen smelly cats.
Dad would have had choice things to say about all of it. Perhaps he would’ve tried to identify the mould growing on the walls: P. Creeperserus or something like that—or made jokes about the paintings and the strange statues. The Housekeeper would’ve found it impossible to be so sour to him: he would’ve laughed it away, or perhaps even charmed a smile out of her. And Uncle Edward—
I wondered what he would’ve said to Uncle Edward. After all, they were brothers: they’d grown up together, once. But now I’d never know what they would’ve said to each other, because of course, the only reason we were here at all was because Dad was gone—
He was gone.
It still didn’t feel completely real. Half of me still expected him to walk in the door with a smile and a laugh, saying it had all just been a marvellous joke. The fact that we hadn’t got the chance to Rest him didn’t help. It left his ghost hovering behind every corner. Part of me even wanted to believe he was here—just waiting behind one of those locked doors…
But of course, that couldn’t be true. He’d left all of this behind long, long ago, and he’d never wanted to think about it again. Whatever had happened to our father—to his Spirit—there would be no figuring it out now. How Mother could have ever thought of bringing us here, to this unfamiliar house among strangers, I still couldn’t fathom.
“I hope we won’t be staying very long,” said William.
“I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”
Dinner was a sorry plate of cold meat and soggy potatoes, and Mother had tucked a note under one of the forks to let us know that her room was “just down the hall” though she’d conveniently left out exactly which way and which hall.
Afterwards, I busied myself unpacking my suitcase and William’s while he tried, with little success, to coax the fire back to life—but with our suitcases being so small, the entire thing didn’t take very long, and so I found myself tucking myself into the lumpy sheets of my lumpy bed for lack of anything better to do. The day had been tiring, but I still couldn’t sink into sleep. So I took deep breaths and tried running my Defences, Dad’s words echoing in my head:
The First Defence is always with you, but this ring will help you remember it.
The Second Defence is self control, and you must master your breath to maintain it.
The Third Defence is your heart and your sanctuary. Know how to find it and you will never be deceived for long.
I twisted my ring and counted my breaths and coiled the warmth of those Defences into my chest, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t find my way back to the sanctuary; my Third Defence wouldn’t work.
The rain pounded against the windows and the wind howled among the stones and I could hear the hallways creaking. Without the sanctuary, there was no escape from the strange, discomforting darkness of this unfamiliar room, and my mind couldn’t stop questioning what it meant, that the Third Defence wouldn’t work.
Was I simply tired—or did it have something to do with the Ward, or with Dad? Still, I must’ve slept a bit because I dreamed about a woman with ice for eyes and a pale face and somewhere a boy was screaming. But then I opened my eyes, and there was a face hovering above me: white and flickering with a strange, orange glow.
I screamed, then hit it with my pillow.
“Ow! Abby!” exclaimed William as he tumbled to the floor and the room plunged into complete black.
My heart was hammering. I glared at my brother—or at least, toward him, as best I could figure, in the darkness. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” said William, rustling in his pockets for another match. It hissed as he lit it, summoning a sphere of warm, yellow light.
“Yes, well, I was sleeping, if you didn’t notice!”
William frowned. “I just—I think there’s something in the attic,” he said, his voice small. “Maybe we should check on Mum? I mean, just in case—ow!” He shook out the match as it burnt his fingers.
“Just in case?” I said to the air while my brother fumbled with the matches. “She’s an adult. She can take care of herself. Besides, I’d be more worried about letting your sister sleep, if I were you.”
Another hiss, the match flared. William frowned at me. “But—”
“But nothing!” I said, pulling the blankets back over my head. “I was sleeping and you should be too!”
The room went dark once more as he shook out the match and shuffled out of the room.
But now that I was fully awake, finding my way back to sleep was worse than impossible. The howling and the creaking and the dripping refused to fade. And William’s worry gnawed at me as well: just in case.
Just in case what?
What was a very unpleasant thing to think about.
“You want to go check on Mum?” I asked my brother as I stomped back out into the sitting room. Luckily there were more than enough candles scattered around the fireplace from where he’d been trying to melt them. I swiped one up and held it out for him to light. “Let’s go then.”
We poked our heads into the hall, looking for any sign of which way to go, but there was none, so we settled for picking a direction at random and trying every door we came to.
Most of them were locked.
The few that weren’t led only to empty rooms. There was one done all in blue (and cobwebs), and another done all in red (with more cobwebs), and one wide hall with a beautiful grand piano in the corner, dusty and forgotten, which scattered sharps to the air when William ran his fingers over the keys.
“Shhhhhh!”
There was one dark corridor that seemed to go on and on into oblivion, and another wide hall lined all with windows, which showed nothing outside but a thrashing sea of treetops. A set of towering doors led to a grand library, lightning flickering through the far windows to reveal shelves upon shelves upon shelves of books. But among all those corridors and all those doors, there was still no sign of Mother.
We came to a gallery lined with portraits—all the former masters of Ravenscourt Manor scowled down on us from the left, while on the right hung their Lady Crowes. Atreus and Rosemarie, James and Elsabeth, Grahame and Lily Isabella—sixteen pairs of portraits stood guard over the hall until at the very end of the row, where the most recent Master should have sat, there was only an empty space, and across from it:
“Ariel Raban-Black,” I read from the nameplate. A woman with ice-blue eyes smiled down at us, her black hair pulled back from a delicate, bone-pale face.
A chill ran through the hall, and the candle went out.
I reached for William in the darkness, and his hand found mine. Every sound in the house felt a thousand times louder—the drafts creeping through cracked windows, the drip and drizzle of water outside, the soft patter of footsteps—
Footsteps?
The warm glow of a lamp appeared at the other end of the hall, and I pulled William behind me, stepping forward toward whoever it was. The corridor flooded with light—
And there she was.
Mother paused at the end of the hall, raising the lamp to look at us properly, and I had to raise an arm to shield my eyes against the light. For a moment, all three of us stood frozen, as if caught in the middle of a crime. But then Mother tsked, and she stalked toward us, adjusting the collar of her travelling coat.
“What are you doing wandering the halls?” she said. “At this hour! Why, you should both be in bed!”
“We were worried,” I said. “We couldn’t sleep.”
“We think there’s something in the attic,” added William.
“William thinks there’s something in the attic,” I clarified.
Mother tsked again. “Come now, there’s no use for all that. Let’s get you back to your rooms, and no more wandering!”
She ushered us back through the corridors, back down the gallery and past the dark hall, the light of her lamp throwing everything into sharp relief. “Are they taking good care of you?” she asked as she led us past the library doors.
William stifled a snort, while I shook my head. “Not really.”
“Well, that’s not at all—”
A scream sounded from above—a sudden, piercing shriek, silenced as soon as it was heard. I looked at William, whose face had gone ash-white, before both of us looked to Mother.
She was looking upward, but her eyes quickly flicked back to the floor, and then she was urging us forward again, down one of the side corridors near the library. “I shall have to have a word with the housekeeper,” she said, as if there’d been no interruption at all. “I dare say they haven’t had to accommodate many guests for a long time, but that’s hardly an acceptable excuse…”
William and I exchanged a look that said all we wanted to say to each other. We had all heard that scream—so why was Mother pretending she hadn’t?
“This is my room,” said Mother, unlocking a door near the end of the hall. “Now just let me—”
“We can get back to our room ourselves,” I offered. “It’s not far from here.”
Mother hesitated, her eyes darting to the hallway stretching behind us, and back to me. But then she bent down with a swift kiss for each of us. “Mind that you go directly back,” she said before stepping into her room, and watching us make our way back down the hall before finally closing the door behind her.
“You heard that scream, right?” said William as we turned into the next corridor. “I didn’t just imagine it?”
“I heard it,” I said. “Though Mum didn’t seem to pay it much mind.”
“And you don’t think that’s strange?”
Of course it was strange. Even stranger was the fact that Mother had been wandering the halls at all—and still in her travelling clothes, no less. What reason could she have to still be up? Had she been out and about all this time?
What had she been doing?
“I’m not going to be able to sleep,” said William when we’d reached our rooms. He made no move to open the door.
“What do you want to do then?” I asked.
In the end, we decided to go back to the grand library, slipping through the halls with the quiet purpose of a quest. The monstrous doors opened easily, despite their height, and we found ourselves among the books, the ghostly light of an early dawn just beginning to tint the windows blue. The library was so tall, so wide, that the corners were still cloaked in darkness. And all the walls of that entire space were lined with books: three full stories of them, with a maze of shelves below.
I didn’t know where to start. But before either of us could so much as take a single step toward any of the shelves, the doors slammed closed behind us.
I turned, only to find myself face to face with the old Housekeeper.
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