The Mistletoe Bride(3)

I can hear the sounds of merriment from below, and know someone soon will come. Lovell, soon, will come.

Then I hear the sound of the door to the room banging shut, blown by a gust of wind. I do not think it will matter too much.

It is confined, within the chest, and I realise the air will soon become stale. I try the lid and, for a moment, feel a spark of concern that I cannot move it, but I feel safe within the dark and am grateful for the solitude. I am warm and comfortable and know the seekers soon will find me, so I do not worry.

I close my eyes and wait for Lovell.

I did not mean to sleep.

My head fills with strange dreams, wild imaginings that follow one hard on the heels of the next. A kaleidoscope of brightly coloured glass, becoming darker. Like candles on a cake being blown out, one by one by one. My sleep grows deeper. Memories of the springs and summers and autumns of childhood. A winter wedding of tulle and silk, the white of the mistletoe bough and the green of the holly decking the hall.

The food on the marriage table grows cold, congeals. They are looking and calling out my name. It is no longer a game. Impatience turns to fear.

Lovell does not find me.

They hunted all that night and the next day. They ventured to the highest reaches of the house, but if someone did step into the bare room with the fleur-de-lis wallpaper, they investigated no further. If they saw the chest, they saw it was locked fast from the outside and did not think I could be there. When they called my name and I did not answer, they moved on through corridors and the attics.

By then, I could no longer hear them. I felt no pain or fear at the moment of my passing, just a simple slipping away.

I died as I had lived. Quietly, gently, leaving little trace.

I discovered I could still see things, in the house and beyond its boundaries. I could hear things and sense the shifting of the world, even though I was no longer part of it.

They drained the pond and scoured every square of the three hundred acres, extending the search beyond the gates to the villages of Farley Hill and Eversley, Hazeley, Heckfield and Swallowfield. They dragged the rivers, running high and fast at that time of year, the Whitewater and the Blackwater, the Hart.

Still they did not find me.

The weeks turned to months, the months to years. Lovell lost hope. He took to wandering the roads and the pathways through the woods, crying my name, and I wept to see him so broken.

Inside my oak tomb, my body grew thin and, in time, faded quite away. All that was left were bones, wrapped in tulle and silk, resting on a bed of blue cotton. Knowing I would have no peace until I was laid in the ground, I despaired that I would never be found. That I would be condemned to this half existence for all time.

Lovell grew old.

The children sang rhymes about him and pitied him, though they feared him too. When he died, he was buried in the grounds of Bramshill House where we had hoped to make a home together. And although I never had the chance to know him in life, my longing to lie beside him in death grew stronger, sharper, with each year that passed.

I had possession of these corridors. From time to time, some could sense my company. Stories of a white winter lady glimpsed in the upper floors each December. Rumours of footsteps heard running in panic from room to room, the wedding guests of years ago in their desperate search for the mistletoe bride.

Yet though the house was known to be haunted, still no one came to carry me home.

The years marched on, from one generation unto the next.

England waged war in the East and in Africa. On the lawns of Bramshill House, men played cricket and the white deer continued to roam the parkland. The story of Lovell and his fairy bride faded from memory. All those who remembered that night were long gone, their children and children’s children moved away.

A new century began. England was at war once more, this time in Europe. The sons and fathers of the villages, where once my Lovell searched, were sent to die at Boar’s Head and the Somme. With so many lying dead, how could the loss of one young bride so many years ago count for much? I heard tell that red poppies blossomed on the fields of Flanders and France where their bodies fell.

Here, each year, the berries of the mistletoe bough still bloomed white at Christmas and the leaves of the holly are green.

I continue to sleep.

When next I wake, it is summer.

Bramshill House has been sold. Since 1699, there have been Copes here. Now, the last of the family has relinquished his possession of the estate and its three hundred acres of land. Soon, a new owner will come and another story will begin.

The last of the boxes are going today. I can hear the footsteps on the gravel and a strange thrumming sound, the vibrating of an engine. No horses now, but rather rubber wheels and the ability to travel great distances.