The Staircase

A new short story
written and illustrated by DM Denton
author of
Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit

The Staircase
is based on true events
surrounding a haunting by Anne Brontë
and is included in the recently released anthology
I Know That Ghosts Have Wandered the Earth

     Who?
     At first, I didn’t think the question was directed at me. I didn’t want to be seen. If by some unintended wish I was, I didn’t feel inclined to answer, to reveal more than I had already.
     I didn’t want to be rude, either, the manners Aunt Elizabeth had instilled in me continuing to influence my judgment.
     It was the staircase I meant to be present for as I moved out of the shadows and onto its wide bottom step, Queen Anne in its demeanor and mine. Would there be the smell of polish and creaking on certain steps, its handrail smooth, cold, and substantial beneath my small hand? It was a miracle that I had found it again, and myself as eager and expectant as when the journey to my independent future packed more illusions—especially of the juvenile variety—than clothes.
     The staircase had darkened with age but in its afterlife had been restored for a brighter environment. Gone was the eighteenth-century oak paneling of its first home that eclipsed the rare beauty of its burred yew unless a candle was held near. Now surrounded by white-washed walls and ceilings, and light-fixtures with flames that didn’t flicker, the imperfections of the staircase’s wood glowed.
     Once again it seemed I was alone, or, at least, without anyone realizing my presence pretending to be other than it was. The first time I stepped onto the staircase I was still in awe of Blake Hall’s magnificence and certain I was at the threshold of an exciting time in my young life. In terms of my own actions, maintenance, faculties, and possibilities, I was just beginning.
     I intended to make the most of an opportunity for refinement and worthiness.
     It was April 1839. I was taken up a back way to a small but comfortable bedroom to briefly revive with refreshment and rest, leaving little time to tidy my appearance before I emerged less than an hour later. I walked along a paneled and papered hallway to a grander way down to meet new responsibilities, convinced the society below would put my shyness and insecurities at ease and improve and cultivate me. Lifting the mud-splattered hem of my skirt, I wished it clean and my petticoats, too, although I was wearing only one. I saw skimpy slippers on my feet rather than sensible boots. Somewhere, probably the drawing room, a piano was being played and there was singing, the latter much less in tune, but, as a young female child’s voice often was, sweet and pretty.
     My optimism in being entrusted with the care and education of children was enthused until I heard mockery and crying.
     A door slammed.
     A rude boy, no more than six or seven, bounded up past me, while the same stately woman who had met my arrival earlier with nothing more than was necessary to say, stood at the bottom of the stairs expressionless.
     I could go no further in that disagreeable direction.
     I hadn’t followed the fate of the staircase to revisit the pomposity, unpleasantness, and worse of the Inghams, or my own wickedness that I wasn’t proud of but seemed necessary at the time. I closed my eyes, counted to ten, opened them, and all that remained was my flight of fancy on those stairs.

     My faith had prepared me to settle in heavenly peace where I was reunited with those I loved, one in particular even more agreeable in the hereafter. I was rarely nostalgic for the life I had abandoned too soon, especially once Charlotte and Flossy were with me again. I have to—affectionately—blame Emily, who was still into haunting, for alerting me to the demolition of Blake Hall after what was salvaged of its character and worth had been auctioned off. That was as far as Emily was willing to go with the news, while Charlotte had long ago grown disillusioned with London, so I made a second trip there on my own.
     Of course, I could do nothing but watch the dealings that started at a Kensington antiques fair, continued miles away in a damp, dusty warehouse, and culminated in the staircase’s sale and a plan to send it to be reassembled even farther away from fitting in.
     By then, I was curious about the couple who had crossed the Atlantic to flaunt their money and steal a little of the old world to the new. Giving into the temptation to eavesdrop on Allen and Gladys Topping during their return voyage, I meant to limit my spying to their discussions about “the English treasures” purchased for their new house on a “long island”. Instead, my fascination with their engaging if sometimes vulgar speech and mannerisms and Gladys’ spontaneous operatic singing, which made her husband’s eyes shine, became an inexcusable intrusion upon their privacy.
     No sooner I returned to time without measure than Allen Topping was there. I wanted to ask him about the staircase but decided not to because he didn’t know me. He was greeted by a crowd of condolences for the loss of his wife. I often wondered if William ever felt bereaved over what might have been between us, but I was still too shy to ask him. Heaven, like earth, was full of unfinished love stories. I knew Allen would be all right.
     Gladys would be, too, for, as my dearest Flossy told me, Allen had left her with a special gift.    

    “Mr. Wyk, what is it?”
     Mr. Wyk reminded me of Emily’s Keeper, intimidating until he wagged his tail and nuzzled my hand for a treat he wasn’t supposed to have. I was sure he was a comfort to his mistress who, unlike Emily, had no rules that kept him off her bed or from roaming anywhere in the house. Not that Emily and Keeper were less devoted to each other, their reunion as intensely emotional as mine had been with Flossy.
      “Mr. Wyk?”
     The young Doberman Pincher ran up the stairs to the first landing, his snout down on his front paws and his spine rising as he resumed growling.
     I began to ascend, thinking to put him at ease again, but he backed away whining and turned to Gladys. She had one hand over her mouth while the other lifted a chamber stick that illuminated the fear and curiosity in her eyes.
     I waited for the question I didn’t want to answer.
     Who? it came, although it wasn’t spoken.
     Quickly, once and for all, in a whisper meant to be an impression, I told her.
     I was surprised she had heard of me, also of my sisters and brother, and had even seen the lovely moors.
     “Ah, she’s gone.” Gladys stroked Mr. Wyk’s ears and went down the stairs. I moved aside, forgetting I didn’t need to. The faithful dog wanted to follow her but waited for me to gesture him to.
     “You must be hungry, Mr. Wyk. Will anyone believe we saw her? I wonder if she’ll be back.”
     I have been, but not so Gladys has actually observed me again. It’s hard to be sure about Mr. Wyk; perhaps he no longer sees anything unusual in my visits.
     I often make a detour to catch a sunrise over the ocean from one of Quoque’s beaches, before returning to Sanderling where I like to go up and down the staircase, rather like a madwoman, which I would never have done in life, or, hopefully, put in a novel. Sometimes, I offer little noises and other signs that get Gladys’ attention but don’t disturb her too much or give away more than I have already.

Copyright © 2020 by DM Denton

Read about the actual events that inspired The Staircase:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2890155/Grand-wooden-staircase-linked-Bront-sisters-tracked-house-Long-Island-60-years-sold-auction.html

https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/spooky-tale-haunted-anne-bronte-8350862

https://hamptons.curbed.com/2014/12/30/10007170/did-the-ghost-of-anne-bronte-haunt-a-quogue-staircase

I Know That Ghosts Have Wandered The Earth
is available on Amazon
in paperback and for kindle devices and app:
US
UK
Profits go to the Brontë Parsonage Museum,
which like so many cultural institutions is struggling financially
during the pandemic.

A collection of illustrated stories and poetry
by members of the Facebook Page
A Walk Around the Bronte Table
compiled by Kay Fairhurst Adkins

More than 200 years since their births, the ghosts of the famous Bronte family – Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne – haunt their eager fans through novels, poetry, and the fascinating true story of genius tucked into unlikely spaces. It is all here waiting for you in this collection of spine-tingling Bronte-Inspired Ghost Stories, Local Legends, Paranormal Experiences, and Channelings. As one of our authors, Danette Camponeschi, says in her story Keepers of the Truth, “When shut inside during our own time of horror – while the world sleeps and waits and holds its collective breath – we continue the tradition of storytelling in our own way, keeping the truth alive and the imagination flourishing.” Open the cover of this book and enjoy a moonlit ramble on the moors. You never know what you’ll find…or what will find you…

Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine And Subtle Spirit
is available on Amazon
in paperback and for kindle devices and app:
US
UK

©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.

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The Singing Lesson

As promised, more excerpts from my publications. Two this time, from A House Near Luccoli and its sequel To A Strange Somewhere Fled

     She knew what she shouldn’t do. But the harpsichord’s graceful frame wasn’t the only one within reach.
     “I told you, don’t lean on anything!”
     She was forgiving and forgiven, but mostly frustrated with her voice that felt trapped in her head.
     “Sigh.”
     “Sigh?”
     “Like the wind worked into a gale.” Alessandro stood up and took her in his arms, his fingers climbing her spine.
     Surprise disguised shame as she didn’t resist him.
     “Most singers won’t wear corsetti. Haven’t you noticed the size of their waists?”
     She wondered how he might make fun of her.
     “No frowning. Sing and weep. Never frown.” He lifted her arms. “Sigh. For me.”
     She had to admit he was making it easier and easier to do so.
     “Keep your arms up.” His hands pushed against her diaphragm. “Make it a sliding note, higher, higher,” he dropped them from the inflation of her breasts, “with body and voice until you can’t feel any difference,” to her waist. “Reach from your toes.”
     She held on to pleasing him and not just as he wanted her to sing. She was learning, positioned to rise above the inexperience of her voice and fall for the consequence of his instruction, forgetting herself and willing to defy anyone or anything that might prevent her going further. He clapped and returned to the harpsichord, propping a knee on its seat, his fingers leading on the keyboard, his eyes directed toward the lyrics in front of him.
     She added them to the tune she wasn’t familiar with, either, faltering, like a baby beginning to talk or her father attempting Italian. Alessandro realized he was playing too fast, not patient but willing to accompany her until she could handle it the other way around. She appreciated his tolerance and did her best to show him, slowly putting the words together into melody and meaning, phrases rolling, his encouragement exaggerating her ability.
     He conducted with the sway of his head. “Entice! Enjoy! They’re not just notes, but many avventure, one giving way for the next.”
     Her breath and soprano’s range were reaching their limit.
     “Don’t struggle. Think of a kiss. Soften your mouth. Open it, lift your tongue.”
     She understood how he got himself in trouble but also made the best singers.
     “No. Birds. Think of how they hold their bodies and announce their throats before they make a sound. They believe they’re made for singing. They don’t try, don’t strain, and don’t hang on. They know they have to do it.” He gave his hand and heart to the music, remembering a stage warmed by candles and great passions. “Like flying. Or mating. Or dying.”
     She was silent.
     “You’re giving up?”
     “I need a lower key.”
     “You don’t.”
     “But … you said … the high note isn’t all.”
     “Did I?”
     “Yes.”
     “Sometimes I say things I don’t mean.” He rose to adjust her posture, gentler maneuvering her head, gliding around her. “But always, the range of a voice is like the heart for amore.” Her neck was alert to his next move. “According to the available singers or lovers.”
     Donatella continued to imagine someone walking in, whether a suspicious relation or just reliable and unreliable servant bringing limonata or, now it was almost December, mulled wine. A lady would know how to pretend she wasn’t compromised by anything than what was supposed and a gentleman would let her have her innocence.

     “Oh, I must hear Stradella.” Master Purcell swung out his arms as though into an embrace.
     “Let me choose.” Mama was irresistibly devious, lifting page after page.
     “Something lighthearted and melodious, if you please.” the young composer’s arms dropped. “As I feel sure he would have wished to entertain us.”
     “It is here.”
     “No, Mama.” Donatella realized her mother’s discovery and an ache in her stomach.
     Master Purcell was soon performing the selected music with his eyes and a delicate finger in the air. “Will you sing it, Mistress?”
     “Yes, yes. With my daughter, Donata, as she is shy. It’s her specialty.”
     “Really?” Master Purcell screwed his mouth, skeptical but interested.
     “In fact, Maestro Stradella might’ve written it for her.”
     “Oh, no, Mama. In Rome, before—”
     “You knew him?” Master Purcell motioned for Lonati who had been listening without comprehending what should have provoked him into having his say. “I would like to hear this, Carlo. I don’t see a bass viol, but Reggio can improvise. The ladies will sing. There’s only one score.”
     “I know it by heart.” Donatella blindly stepped back into her mother’s arms.
     “Of course you do, darling,” Mama’s soft voice blew into her ear.
     “Ah.” Purcell was watching them closely, and then turned back to Lonati, who was explaining the music to Reggio.
     There was the appropriate silence before Lonati was as elegant and amiable with bow and violin as no other activity afforded him. With every stroke, nod and faraway expression, he was an echo of Alessandro, exacting the very best from the composition and the late composer’s nature, generous with his talent, uninhibited with his playing, making the music his own only as he adored it. His reminiscent virtuosity swept Donatella onto the waves of Le donne più bella like a ship with a steady breeze in its sails, Reggio’s archlute-continuo encouraging the rolling sensation. Her mother’s grasp of her arm and escorting vocal weakened, soon leaving Donatella alone with each poetic turn of phrase and melodic ornamentation.
     Donatella listened, the sound of her singing always a surprise. She grew more and more trusting as she interpreted the aria with good legato, shading and tone, her jaw relaxed and her tongue in the proper position, her chest lifted but not too proud. Lonati flourished in-between her dreamy declarations, Reggio constant until the end that softened and lingered in harmony with her final passage.
     She kept her eyes closed, the silence longer than before the performance, as though her singing had not only used up her breath but everyone else’s, too.

Visit the novels’ booklaunch pages for purchase links and more:
A House Near Luccoli 
To A Strange Somewhere Fled

©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.

Traction

I have been delinquent in posting to this blog for the last few months, but with the care of my 91 year old bedridden, nearly blind mother and the house inside and out, a part-time job (working mostly from home), grocery shopping, etc. etc. all on my own, I can barely find the time and energy to write my next novel and try to get enough sleep, stay healthy – well, not completely disintegrate.

As anyone who follows this blog knows, I don’t often write about my personal life, unless indirectly through my prose and poetry.

Today, I feel an overwhelming need to put down my guard and express how discouraged I feel when it comes to getting some traction as an author. I had a nasty blow in the spring in regards to a response by a Brontë Scholar to my third published novel, Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A fine and Subtle Spirit, which knocked out the little wind I had in my writing sails. I thought I had gotten over it, but, I’m afraid, it and its author are still “living in my head rent free” – as someone I love and admire told me back when it first happened.

In thinking about my, at times, almost debilitating sense of discouragement, I felt that even if I might never achieve awards and best seller listings like other authors, I might hope for a few more readers who would find something entertaining, engaging, emotive, enlightening, and even enchanting in the novels and stories I’ve published thus far.

I didn’t intend for this post to seem like whining or begging for sympathy. I would rather it be a reminder to discerning, adventurous readers to discover choices outside and in the shadows of the obvious ones. I know I am not alone in my struggle to be a better known author.

In order to post more consistently in the near future, considering the time and energy constraints of my current personal situation, I will be sharing excerpts from my published novels and short stories – even a few from my current work-in-progress – hopefully, to offer pleasure and a little temptation.

Hope is like a harebell trembling from its birth.
~ Christina Rossetti

My first published novel was A House Near Luccoli
August, 2012, All Things That Matter Press

Visit the novel’s one-stop page for synopsis, reviews, trailer, buy links, and more!

Excerpt from Chapter Two

     The door opened. A harpsichord entered, hesitant, fragile, blushing and elegant with carved cheeks, perfect curves, and small feet. It was permanently adorned with sprays of roses and fern, lifted over the threshold by a lover who knew how to handle his passion.
     He wasn’t daunted by the heights to which it must yet be taken. “Bene, my spirito has ascended her to heaven.”
     “Now, my muscle, too.” A man of lesser age and quality took hold of the instrument’s narrowing end, swinging it around and walking backwards, resenting his position.
     Despina saw Donatella on the stairs. “Out of the way.”
     “Ah.” The new lodger widened his eyes, conducting the scene into civility. “Golone, let the maid pass.”
     The mistake might have been upsetting if he hadn’t smiled on Donatella’s self-conscious descent.
     Despina caught up with her sleeve. “See that breakfast is ready.”
     “I’m not hungry, just tired,” Signor Stradella defied reports of being troublesome.
     “Well, I could eat in my sleep.” Golone looked for any reaction, struggling sideways up stair by stair. Maestro’s eyes were down again, the harpsichord at his chest so with the sway of his head and posture of shoulders and arms he might play and carry it at the same time.
     “They brought it all the way from Modena?” Donatella found Nubesta in the breakfast room where hard boiled eggs, fresh anchovies, and chickpea polenta wouldn’t be wasted.
     “No. The Strata Nuova.”
     “Why wasn’t it delivered yesterday?”
     “Signor insisted he handle it himself.” Nubesta was thrilled with what she knew and Donatella didn’t. “So you were a thief in the night.”
     “I didn’t steal anything.”
     “That’s not what I meant. But you did what you said you wouldn’t.”
     “Well … yes … at his request.”
     “Bait.”
     “Ridiculous.”
     “You’ve never been hooked.”
     Donatella had been, then dangled and let go, almost before Nubesta was born.
     “Well, I don’t mind.” Nubesta was eating, slumped on the couch beside double doors opened onto an orchid filled conservatory.
     The young servant didn’t appreciate the limits of her life, hungry for experiences as for the breakfast not meant for her. It wasn’t that she was a bad girl—Despina wouldn’t have her in the house if she were—but her restlessness seemed more unfortunate than her circumstances.
     “We won’t see much of him.”
     “Will he invite his ladies?”
     Donatella didn’t want to think let alone talk about such things. She wouldn’t mind the continuo of a harpsichord stopping and starting as masterpieces were made, its vibrations inspiring the ornamentation of a violin. Soft sighs from a lute would be for the silence of the night when he couldn’t dream without a respondent in his arms. That was how it would be with him there, the sublime above their heads, any scandal somewhere else. Nothing would be seen of him but coming and going, or known of his needs except what the ladies of the household could respectably fulfill.
     “Should we take up a tray?” Donatella turned when Nubesta stood and swallowed.
     Despina had come into the room. “No. Don’t you listen? Signor is resting.”
     “Did he say anything about the apartment?”
     “He shouldn’t have any problem with it.”
     “Well, he seems easy to please.” Nubesta laughed like a woman twice her age.
     Despina stood at the sideboard to eat or not, waving away flies deciding for her. “Get some netting to cover this.”
     The maid was gone, her heavy steps as obvious as her scowl.
     “Close the shutters. The sun’s already hot and will fade the carpet.”
     Donatella plunged the beginnings of the day into night as perhaps the new lodger had done. No, his rooms were on the west side, with windows for viewing ships and sunsets.

©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.