The Veil Lifted

The Veil Lifted

Floating along the cobbled main street, I hover outside the Black Bull, where once I entertained punters with ghostly tales. My behaviour was the subject of endless discussion, but my friends knew the truth. Others were more than happy to indulge in conjecture or false reports. Biographies of my sisters only made matters worse — they rarely did me justice. More often than not, I was cast as the villain of the piece, a disreputable figure incapable of fulfilling his artistic dreams and bringing shame to his family.

Yet it didn’t begin that way.

Born into a household steeped in creativity, I showed early promise. At seventeen I painted a likeness of my three sisters in oil. One section troubled me so much that I covered it over, leaving a curious shape in its place. Visitors still puzzle over it.

Naturally, it would have been unseemly for my sisters to grace the Bull with their presence. Their few indulgences were confined to home and hearth or the communion rail. Yet the Bull, oddly perched beside the church, has long been a favourite haunt. The publican kept me topped up with gin and I was even granted a chair of my own: the parson’s son’s chair, they called it. I became one of the village’s “characters.” Still am, though in a different way now. Visitors point to my chair, giggling and whispering; half-afraid I might be listening. Perhaps I am.

Almost as soon as I could write, I began inventing stories and poems. I could even write with both hands at once, producing neat lines in parallel, and won praise for translating classic works. My great love was poetry and some of my verses appeared in print under a nom de plume long before the world had heard of my sisters. But once their books began to circulate, accompanied by endless speculation over the authors’ true gender, I might as well not have existed. They went to some lengths to keep their fame hidden — even from me. Especially from me. My eyes and ears, however clouded by illness, were not easily deceived. I saw the letters arriving in bundles, eagerly awaited and hurried into the parsonage parlour, where the door was kept firmly closed.

For the past two weeks I’ve been tempted to desert the Bull’s rustic charms for the more elegant Cross Keys across the road. Its window bore a notice inviting writers to gather at eight o’clock on 26th June — my birthday. Could this be a chance to rekindle my literary passion, to find kinship among those who understand the power of words? After so long adrift in darkness, could I still create something meaningful? A crack of light seeped into the cave of melancholia I have never quite escaped.

Inside, the fresh-faced proprietor, Wilson, a man whose hands were as familiar with the church register as they were with a pint glass, greeted me like a long-lost friend. “Come in, come in,” he said, taking my cloak and guiding me to an alcove where a small group were gathered around a table. “Here they are. Writers striving to uncover the unseen currents that lie beneath the surface of a tale.”

Adjusting to the candlelight, I studied them. A diminutive, yet severe woman with spectacles perched high gazed sharp and uncompromising, as if constantly measuring the world against some impossible inner standard. Beside her, a quiet woman whose refined features were etched with sorrow, smiled timidly. The third, tall and spectral, radiated a raw, untamed energy, as if she carried the wildness of an open landscape within her very bones.

The evening unfolded. Cara, the severe one, read a chilling tale of injustice at a girls’ school, written with such clarity that I thought instantly of my eldest sister, arguing with passion in our lamplit parlour, rebelling at the very notion of feminine docility.

Then Annabel, the quiet one, read a story of love lost to duty. The ache in her words dragged me back to my own disgrace — as a tutor, consumed by an intoxicating attachment to a woman far older, already married. The affair ended in dismissal. I slunk home to the parsonage, where my sisters barely acknowledged me. Years later, on learning the husband had died, I rejoiced too soon. In spite of being sent small sums and brief notes of encouragement, the longed-for reunion never came. One night, drunk and wild with despair, I howled her name in the Bull until they carried me home.

Elara, the spectral figure, spoke next. Her words rang with an ancient power, a poetry of doomed love played out on wild hills.

Finally, Phineas, a straight-backed old man who sat at the head of the table, recited a spiritual poem with a primal force that spoke of stone and harsh weather. Hearing it, I shivered. It might have been the voice of our childhood — the sagas we invented on the moors, peopled with heroes and villains of our own making. His tone carried a melancholy, elemental force.

At last, my turn came. In spite of my nerves, I managed to read a lament for lost dreams, and to my surprise the words rose in intensity as if pulled from some hidden vein. Phineas clapped slowly, eyes fixed on me. “A remarkable piece,” he said in his low rumble. “An afflicted artist, but a true one.” For the first time in years, I felt I was being seen as a writer, not a failure.

At the end of the meeting a beaming Wilson invited me to return, and I did. Although he wasn’t a writer himself, at our next gathering he proposed the rest of us write a collaborative tale, stitched together from our contributions. “Words may be imbued with magic,” he whispered, candlelight dancing in his eyes. “I’ve seen it happen. They give life to lingering spirits, breathing long after the story ends.”

In the following days, reinvigorated by the task of writing, I barely registered the outside world. Yet the deeper I delved into memory and prose, the more the veil between worlds seemed to thin. Shadows in the parsonage wavered at the edge of vision. Passing the outside windows, I was convinced I could see people I didn’t recognise moving from room to room. In the moonlit churchyard, people lingered over the graves, whispering. I told myself it was laudanum or grief. But the sense of unreality thickened.

At our final session, as each writer read their passage, I noticed Cara had brought with her a rectangular object wrapped in cloth which was placed to one side. I wanted to ask what it contained but felt foolish. Perhaps I didn’t want to know. In any case, I was soon distracted by her passionate prose. Her words seemed to roar like a tiger against the bars of convention, resonating desire for change. Afterwards we passed a few moments in silence. When Annabel rose trembling from her seat, her words filled the room with grief and longing. A few minutes later, Elara’s verses tugged at me with a faith that was resolute yet edged with the mystical. Phineas spoke of how redemption could be found in the moors’ raw beauty.

When they finished, Wilson declared, “Tonight, our words have been lived, not just told.”

There was nothing left to say. A warmth enveloped me, a peace that quieted the restless ghosts. Then the veil I had sensed all along, the very veil that had masked the true nature of my life, began to lift. It fell away like cobwebs turning into the gossamer wings of a butterfly. My companions shimmered before me, their forms wavering until they resolved. The three women: Cara, Annabel, Elara… they were no more. In their place stood Charlotte, Emily, and Anne.

“Now, for the true unveiling,” Phineas announced — except he was no longer Phineas, but my father, Patrick: erect, white-bearded, cravat rising to his chin, the faint Irish brogue still evident, the eyes sparkling, yet tender.

Wilson helped him lift the covered object onto the mantelpiece. When the cloth was pulled away, there stood the portrait. My portrait. The blank shape of the pillar I had painted was gone. In its place, rendered in youthful oils, stood a boy of seventeen, holding a palette, his gaze fixed on his three sisters. On us. My own face looking back at me.

Charlotte stepped forward, her familiar, knowing smile softening the severity of her face. Emily rose, ungovernable and moor-born, wind in human form, yet carrying the wisdom of the ages. Anne, gentle Anne, took my hand, her touch both real and otherworldly.

“Branwell,” Charlotte said softly, voice free of censure. “You are part of us. Our story was never whole without you.”

Tears blurred my vision — all I had wanted was to make them proud — but now the space in my heart overflowed with a new-found peace. Charlotte pressed a sprig of dried lavender into my palm. “I meant to give you this, Branwell,” she whispered. “But you were gone when I returned from gathering it.”

Together, the four of us left the Cross Keys and stepped out onto the cobbled street — past the church, past the apothecary, past the half-cracked tombs. In the distance, the moors called to us in a language we understood. At times misty and brooding, at others stark and windswept, the moors had always been the backdrop to our stories, watching as we traced our childish steps along their slopes. Now we were drawn onward into a budding purple of early summer heather, where secret waterfalls dipped through the hollows. Linnets called in rich staccato, golden plovers hid in tussocky nests, and before long the air would sweeten with the scent of ripened blueberries. It was the only place that had ever been truly ours — the place we called home.