Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [122]
To a man shocked suddenly awake, the gloom and cold of the lane was unwelcome. But the clouds that had recently brought a few pristine feet of snow were scattering from the moon, and patches of mingled moonshine and starlight shone here and there on the uneven surface of ice. The hooves of the horses and the iron-clad wheels of the coach made a racket as the coach proceeded apace without me, and I was left alone with the glitter of the stars.
Wrapping my cloak closely about me, I stepped into the fir-lined lane. Soon I was longing for a wandering 2:00 a.m. dram seller with Jamaica, cognac, strong beer, or a cup of mulled wine. I would have paid a good deal better than the going rate for another small drop of flame to warm my insides. But there was no help for it, so I scudded along with a will in the deep groove of wagon tracks, gazing around me at the black silhouette trees and the dazzle of stars and the faint twisting lights of the aurora borealis, barely visible so far from their native home. Although the shadows of the firs oppressed me with a sense of density—as if they might detach themselves from the ice-fringed trees and pour after me, plucking my sleeve and peering into my face with faces cut from crisp sheets of blackest night—I had a heartening fancy that the bright constellations had shed the snow that crested the tops of my boots and spilled inside, so that the world was knee-deep in tumbled stars.
At the top of the hill I stopped, panting from exertion in the icy air, and looked up at Saxton’s Folly. Old Flavel Saxton had spent his fortune on the house, a massive colonial edifice with additions and porches and outbuildings that included a mighty barn for carriages and horses. He died penniless and house proud. The Saxton twins, his great-great-grandsons, had managed to buy the home place back from the descendants of their ancestor’s creditors and to restore it to the antique glory of a century before. Further efforts had resulted in the gathering together of much family furniture and some four thousand books belonging to the original Saxton library, an enormous collection in Flavel Saxton’s unsettled times. Seen by moonlight, the manse resembled a natural cliff, altogether lifeless, shrouded in snow, and for a moment I lingered, half inclined to turn tail and fly down the lane rather than be taken into such frozen rockiness.
But soon I chided myself for a wayward fancy, long my undoing, and waded forward to cross the lawn. With a deal of care I scaled the treacherous, deep-draped steps to the door and clanged the knocker against its iron plate, sending snowflakes and tiny icicles flying. As if spirited to my summons, someone answered almost immediately, and I glimpsed a candle’s flame fluttering within a cupped hand.
“What’s this fuss and ruction—”
Blinking, a pink-nosed lady in an old-fashioned mobcap held up the candle to peer at me with cataract-clouded eyes but was soon thrust aside by Saxton, his face flashing with glad humor.
“No problem, Mrs. Molebury, none—it’s my boyhood friend, Mr. Hawthorne, who has been good enough to come swiftly when I called—fetch him a hot toddy, will you? He must be as cold as a churchyard stone.”
Saxton pulled me inside and ushered me to a bench beside a dying bed of coals. In a trice he had poked the half-extinguished embers into a semblance of life, added kindling and