Hall.
“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Grayling,” she said. “I would doubtless benefit from the services of a guide, and I shall therefore accept your offer to see me safely home, if I will not be causing you any inconvenience.”
“None at all,” I assured her. “I come to Haughtonlin every day, and walk further up the valley whenever the whim takes me. It might be to my advantage to pioneer a trail that might take me all the way to Raggandale in future.” I said it carelessly, and only realized afterwards that it must have sounded like an expression of my intention to visit her there—but she only thanked me courteously, and smiled.
I was back in Haughtonlin bright and early, but I went to the graveyard before presenting myself at the Black Bull. I was kneeling by Emily’s grave, oblivious to all else, when I was interrupted by a voice from behind, which said: “I thought it was you, Mr. Grayling.”
I turned to look at Mary McQueen. In her all-black outfit she seemed every inch the mourner. Her expression was equally somber.
“I would have come to the Black Bull within the quarter-hour,” I said, a little stiffly. “There was no need to come to find me.”
“I’m sorry,” she replied, “but I felt a little uncomfortable at the inn. Even though you were so kind as to explain my situation last evening, the landlord and his wife seemed a trifle put out by the presence of a female guest with neither chaperone nor luggage. I can’t imagine why—this is Victorian England, after all, when ladies may take the Grand Tour unescorted.”
“This is Yorkshire,” I reminded her. “An alien land.”
She nodded in vague agreement, and then looked pointedly at Emily’s grave.
“She was my fiancée,” I felt bound to explain, although she had not voiced a question. “She died of a fever shortly before her nineteenth birthday. I wanted to bury her at Stonecroft, next to my mother, but her parents would not hear of it.”
“I’m sorry to have disturbed you in your mourning,” she said, politely—although she made no move to leave. “I thought that you seemed unhappy yesterday, but I could not fathom the reason why.”
“There is no reason for me to inflict my unhappiness on others,” I replied, as I got to my feet. I walked back with her to the Black Bull, where I had a brief word with the landlord to make sure that he understood the reason for my presence and why I was heading the wrong way along the valley in the young lady’s company. There was gossip enough about me in the region, without generating more of a less respectful sort.
The day was bright enough when we started out, but the cloud-cap on the ridge was even lower than usual, and we were surrounded by mist even before we had reached the lip of the granite basin that held the bog. The light of the sun made the white mist sparkle slightly, but the vapor was so thick that we could hardly see the ground beneath our feet, and I knew that navigation would be direly difficult. I thought that I had been there often enough in recent weeks to find my way, at least until we cleared the moist ground and had to clamber up the remaining rocky slopes to the crest of the moor, but I was too optimistic. By the time that the hands of my watch indicated noon I was quite lost, and no longer knew in which direction the ridge lay.
Had I been alone, I would have turned back a hour earlier, when I was still sure in which direction Haughtonlin lay, but I had represented myself to Mary McQueen as a guide, and had promised to get her home; pride delayed me until I had no idea where I might be. I was about to call a halt and take stock of whatever clues I could find, hoping to recover my bearings, when I found myself confronted by a wall of granite, so dark in hue as to be almost black. It loomed up at least ten feet, and then was lost in the mist. I was sure that I had never seen it before—nor had I ever seen the crevice that gave access to a cave not unlike the one in which I had found Mary McQueen sheltering the day before.
“We had better rest for a little while,” I said. “The sun is at its zenith now, and there is a chance that the cloud will lift, or even dissipate altogether, giving us an opportunity to see where we are.”
The woman in black laughed softly, but not unkindly. “It’s a poor explorer who forgets his compass,” she remarked. Without any hesitation, she stepped into the dark opening in the rock-face.
I started to protest, on the grounds that it would be pitch dark inside the cave, and that I had no more brought a lantern than a compass, but her black form had already vanished into the interior. Instead of calling after her, I followed her into the darkness.
I had expected it to be cold inside the cave, but no sooner was I within it than my face was bathed by a draught of warm air. If that were not surprising enough, the air was strangely scented, not with the animal reek of a fox’s den or a wildcat’s lair, but with a curiously sweet perfume, like the odor of warm honey. I stopped dead, but I did not turn back towards the silvery mist. Instead, I said: “I must confess, Miss McQueen, that I am quite lost. I have let you down, and I’m sorry.”
I heard her laugh again, but the sound seemed to come from a distance, and it was as much a trill as a laugh, more akin to birdsong than any familiar expression of human merriment.
“I must confess, Mr. Grayling,” she said, then, the words flowing like a cradle-song, “that I have not been entirely honest with you. Although I really am in residence at Raggandale at present, I am no stranger to this cloud. I am not lost at all—but I hope that you will forgive me for my deception very soon.”
I had not the least idea what to make of this speech, and my confusion was further augmented by a strange sensation that stole over me, which I attributed to the effects of the sickly air that I was breathing in. I felt unnaturally calm—inwardly more peaceful than I had felt in months, certainly since Emily had died and perhaps far longer than that. When a hand took mine and drew me further forward into the darkness, I went meekly, with not the slightest pang of anxiety.
The floor of the cave sloped downwards, and felt somewhat slick underfoot, but I did not slip or stumble as the invisible hand drew me on. My calmness lapsed by degrees into a near-somnolence, and I lost track of time and direction, although I feel sure that the path we followed as by no means straight. The tunnel was broad, though, and I never had to stoop to save my head from being bumped or scraped. It was almost as if it had been deliberately hollowed out in order to accommodate the passage of human beings—or something of similar size. The air grew warmer, and sweeter still, until I had the feeling that I was no longer breathing air at all, or moorland mist, but something infinitely richer and more nourishing to body and soul alike.
We walked for a long time in total darkness, although I cannot estimate whether it was for tens of minutes or several whole hours. Eventually, though, we came into a part of the cave where the tunnel broadened much further, into a series of chambers, which were illuminated by a soft bioluminescence produced by some kind of fungus that grew thickly upon the walls and roofs. The light was faint, but perfectly white; once my eyes had adjusted to its magnitude, it was like seeing by starlight on a cloudless but moonless night. The return of visual sensation dispelled my somnolence, without threatening my tranquility in the least.
My guide was little more than a silhouette against the background radiance, and her pale face did not seem to reflect the light with any distinctness at all, being little more than a dull grey blur atop her thick-clad body. She was no longer alone, and I realized that we had probably had invisible company for some time. The further we progressed through the sequence of chambers, the more individuals of the same kind I saw, passing along the pathway we were following in the same or the opposite direction. Somehow, I formed the impression that I was in some kind of religious community, and that the creatures swarming around me were devotees:
