Katherine Woodfine - The Midnight Peacock

‘Oh heavens! I shall never dare set foot in the East Wing again!’ exclaimed Sarah.

‘There’s no ghost in the East Wing,’ interrupted Tilly. ‘You ought to know better than to believe that sort of codswallop.’

Lizzie turned on her. ‘Well, Tilly Black, if you’re so clever, then why don’t you go into the East Wing and see for yourself?’ She stared at Tilly crossly for a moment, and then added: ‘Right now – on your own. Go on – I dare you – or are you too afraid ?’

Sarah and Ella exchanged wide-eyed glances.

‘She doesn’t really mean it,’ said Ella after a moment. ‘It’s so late – and dark – no one would blame you if you didn’t fancy it, not after what Lizzie just told us.’

‘What Lizzie just told you is a pack of nonsense,’ said Tilly, getting to her feet. She was going to nip this in the bud at once – otherwise Sarah would probably keep her awake half the night having nightmares. ‘I’m not in the least bit afraid to go to the East Wing,’ she declared. ‘I can tell you for certain that I won’t find any ghosts there – but perhaps, if you’re lucky, Lizzie, I’ll be able to finish that dusting you’re in such a hurry to avoid.’

With that, Tilly walked swiftly out of the Servants’ Hall, and into the passageway.

Sarah came running after her. She had only been at Winter Hall for two months, and she still looked very small and unsure in her starched white apron and cap.

‘Tilly!’ she burst out. ‘You aren’t really going to the East Wing are you?’

‘I’ve said I will, and so I will,’ said Tilly crisply.

‘But – but – you can’t !’ exclaimed Sarah, hastening to keep up with Tilly’s longer strides. ‘There really is something funny about the East Wing, honestly there is. Old Mary told me she’d heard noises there late at night. And Jamie, the gardener’s boy, said that he’d seen lights floating around high up in the windows. Even Mrs Dawes thinks there’s something queer about it. I heard her saying so to Mr Stokes.’

This was quite a long speech for Sarah. Tilly stopped and contemplated her for a moment. ‘They’re just rumours,’ she said, more gently. ‘The East Wing isn’t haunted . There are no such things as ghosts, Sarah.’ She added in a sharper tone: ‘And don’t start hanging about with the gardener’s boy. Mrs Dawes won’t like it.’

‘But how can you be sure that there are no such things as ghosts?’ Sarah persisted.

‘Because it isn’t scientific ,’ explained Tilly, striding off again. ‘There isn’t a single spot of proof that ghosts exist, you know. I read a book all about it. All the scientists agree. Ghosts are just . . . made up .’

‘Well, you should at least let me come with you,’ spoke up Sarah bravely, as she scuttled along beside her. ‘You can’t go there all alone!’

‘Of course I can,’ said Tilly. ‘I’ve been in the East Wing at night alone dozens of times – and nothing terrible has happened to me before, has it?’ She didn’t wait for an answer, but went on: ‘Anyway, you should get back to the Servants’ Hall, or Ma will be wondering where you’ve got to. I’ll be back in no time – promise.’

At that, Sarah nodded reluctantly, and disappeared back towards the Servants’ Hall. Tilly grinned to herself. She knew Sarah wouldn’t want to risk trouble with Ma, who was Cook at Winter Hall, and ruled all the kitchen and scullery maids with a rod of iron.

Of course, Ma wasn’t really Tilly’s mother. She’d worked that out for herself before she was five years old. It was plain as day to anyone with half a brain that they couldn’t possibly be related. Ma was small, round and rosy, with fairish hair that was always pinned back smoothly into a neat knot under her cap. Tilly, on the other hand, was tall and rather bony, with a lot of curly black hair that was a struggle to twist into anything even halfway resembling a neat knot. Her eyes were dark brown, her eyebrows were black and bushy, and her skin was brown too. It wasn’t just that she didn’t look like Ma, she stood out like a sore thumb amongst the other maids, with their blonde hair and pink and white complexions.

Tilly’s real mother had been a lady’s maid in this very house. She’d died here, giving birth to Tilly, fourteen years ago. No one seemed to have any idea who Tilly’s father was; Ma said he was probably just some common good-for-nothing who had turned her poor mother’s head, God rest her soul. ‘And let that be a lesson to you,’ she would say to Tilly, although Tilly was never quite sure what the lesson was supposed to be.

But it didn’t really matter to Tilly that she didn’t have a father. After all, Ma and the other servants at Winter Hall had been all the family she had ever needed. She’d been helping Ma in the kitchens since before she could walk properly, and now that she was almost fifteen, she was a proper housemaid with a frilly white apron for when she served tea in the Drawing Room. She felt quite grownup – certainly far too grown-up to pay any heed to Lizzie’s nonsense about things that go bump in the night.

Now, she pushed open the green baize door that separated the servants’ quarters from the main part of the house. From here, she could hear the familiar sounds of the family and their guests in the Dining Room: the clinking of glasses; the rumble of conversation; Her Ladyship’s tinkling laughter. The big hallway looked exactly as it always did, with the enormous grandfather clock ticking, and the faces of generations of Fitzgeralds gazing down upon her from the oil paintings that hung on the walls.

Tilly couldn’t recall a time when she didn’t know every inch of Winter Hall – from the cobwebby wine cellars down below to the attic bedrooms up in the rooftops. She knew each creaking floorboard and each of the old leather-bound books in the Library. When she had been very small, she had even given names to every one of the stuffed foxes and birds in His Lordship’s study. Now, she was different: taller, almost grown-up, but nothing at Winter Hall had changed a bit. In spite of the recently installed electric lights and the wonderful new motor car, everything always felt exactly the same.

Once, she had loved that sense of comforting familiarity. It had meant home . But lately, the sameness of Winter Hall had begun to get on her nerves. Tilly longed for something new and different, but her days just kept on going like clockwork: the gong sounding for luncheon; tea served promptly at half past four; Her Ladyship scolding her maid as she dressed for dinner; and below stairs, the maids ironing and the footmen polishing the silver and His Lordship’s valet brushing his shoes. Even the story of the supposedly haunted East Wing was an old tale that she’d heard half a dozen times before.

Just the same, as she went down the corridor, Tilly suddenly wished she had let Sarah come with her after all. It wasn’t that she was scared – of course she wasn’t, she wasn’t an idiot . But this part of the house did feel rather dark and lonely.

The East Wing was the oldest part of Winter Hall. Once in a blue moon, Her Ladyship would bring some visitors to look around; they would exclaim in delight over the antique furniture, the beautiful carved chimney-piece, the canopied bed upon which it was said Queen Elizabeth herself had slept. But most of the time, the family didn’t come here, preferring to keep to the plush comfort of the more modern West Wing with its electric light and running hot and cold water. The only one who was really interested in the East Wing was the youngest Fitzgerald daughter, Miss Leo: Tilly knew she sometimes spent hours here, looking at the pictures or making drawings of the old curiosities she found.