Darkwater (4 page)

six

M
artha picked up the pile of shining coins and clicked them through her fingers. Then she dropped them back on the scrubbed boards of the table. “It's a lot extra,” she said.

“Mmm.” Sarah blew on the spoonful of potato soup and swallowed it even though it burned her tongue. She wondered how to explain.

In the weak rushlight the page next to her chipped plate was shadowy. It was a battered dictionary, one of her father's few possessions. She tore a chunk off the loaf, reading.

ALCHEMY: The medieval science of the Philosopher's Stone, the search to transmute metals into gold.

Instantly, like a blow out of nowhere, the memory of her strange dream came back. She stopped eating, spoon paused in midair. The library. It was coming true. She was so amazed she almost didn't notice Martha had sat down opposite. Martha never sat down in the mornings. There was too much to do.

The stout woman pushed back her graying hair. Then she said, “Or did his lordship give you the money?”

Alarmed, Sarah stared. “What?”

Martha sighed. “Lord, Sarah, don't play Miss Innocent. I know Mrs. Hubbard turned you away. I heard about it at the market yesterday.”

Sarah dropped the spoon into the dish. “She didn't turn me away. I left.”

“It's all the same in the end.”

The baby gurgled in his crib; she gave him an anxious glance. “You've got your rent,” Sarah said hotly.

“Yes, but I'm worried about you. Lord Azrael . . .”

“What on earth makes you think I got it from him?”

“This.” Quickly, as if she didn't like to touch it, Martha took a small white card from her pinafore and laid it on the table.

Sarah stared at it with cold fear. She had burned this. She'd watched it turn black and crinkle and fall into ash.

She reached out and turned it over; it felt smooth and cool. The familiar words slid over its surface. I FEEL I OWE YOUR FAMILY SOME RECOMPENSE.

For a second there was something darkly mocking in the sloping script.

“It was in the ashes when I cleaned the grate.” Martha leaned forward and caught hold of Sarah's wrist. “What does it mean? Why does he want to make all right, after years and years?”

“It's nothing. He's given me a situation. In his library.”

“His library?” Martha looked puzzled. “With books? But why you? There's learned folk would suit him better . . .”

Annoyed, Sarah pulled away. She took the soup dish to the scullery and scrubbed it fiercely in the cold greasy water. “Well, he's asked me. He's paying twelve shillings all found.”

“You're to live in!”

Exasperated, Sarah turned. “All servants live in, Martha, and that's all I'll be. There's a room for Papa too. It'll be better for him than here. More like he's used to.”

Even as she said it she saw Martha's shock.

“But who'll take care of him, the master? I always have! He knows me.”

“There'll be servants.”

“Yes, and how they'll despise him!”

“I thought you'd be pleased,” Sarah snapped. “Or is it the rent you'll really be missing?”

In the silence she knew it had been a spiteful thing to say. Martha turned and bent over the cradle; after a second Sarah crossed to the back door and opened it, feeling the wet breeze on her face, the wild cries of gulls over the plowed fields on Marazy Head. Out at sea a faint drizzle obscured the fishing fleet.

After a long breath she said, “Sorry.”

Martha had the baby out and was rocking him. Her face was flushed. “There's talk about this Azrael,” she said obstinately. “That he spends nights in sorcery and speaking with demons. No one respectable goes near the Hall after dark. They say he's found a way down to the caverns, and sometimes at night you can hear a roar like great engines churning underground. Ernie Marsden that lives out on the cliff says on full moon last week he looked out and saw the carriage there, and his lordship walking, at dead of night, looking over the sea. He's a strange man, that's for sure.”

Sarah shrugged. “Gossip. He's a scholar. And a gentleman.”

“Indeed? They say the devil is a gentleman.”

The dry voice came from the bedroom. Sarah jerked around in alarm.

Her father stood there, supporting himself on his silver-topped cane. His face was mottled, and the black-and-gold silk dressing gown that had once been expensive fell loose around his thin body. He breathed heavily.

“You shouldn't be up!” Martha hissed. She gave the baby to Sarah and brought a chair quickly to the fire. Then she tried to take his arm.

“Don't fuss me, woman!” He lowered himself stiffly, chest heaving. It took him a painful minute to catch his breath; then he glared at Sarah. “So. You seriously expect me to go back to Darkwater Hall.”

“I thought . . .”

“You didn't think!” His hands shook on the stained silver knob. “Not if you imagined that I would even cross the threshold with that . . . upstart living there. See my daughter a skivvy in her own house! Stay cooped in some attic and watch him . . . sitting in my chairs . . . eating from my table . . . taking the very food from our mouths!” His breath rattled; he spat into the fire. “What sort of Trevelyan have I bred? I'd starve here first.”

Azrael had been right, she thought grimly. This whole mess had come from pride, and it was still crippling their lives. Well, she'd be the one to end it.

“I'm going,” she said, firmly but quietly. “We need the money and he wants to make amends. If you don't approve, Papa, then stay here. We can afford the rent.”

Martha had taken the baby into the tiny scullery. They heard him wail in dismay as he was washed.

Her father looked at her. He was so shrunken, every
breath an effort. The silver cane and silk gown she had known all her life looked pathetic now, soiled bits of the past that he clung to stubbornly. His weakness frightened her. She came and crouched by the chair.

“Don't forbid me. Because I'd have to go anyway. I know it's hard. But would you rather me be some fishwife, stinking of herring, or go cap in hand to the workhouse? At least this is a job, something respectable.” She waited, but he didn't answer.

They both knew she had to go, but he would never admit to it.

She stood up wearily. “I'll get my things together. I'll be home on my day off.”

It wasn't until she reached the trundle bed that he put his head in his hands.

“How in God's name did we sink to this?” he muttered.

There was little to pack—a few clothes, her mother's cameo brooch, an old notebook, all stuffed into one of Jack's sacks. He had come in from the fishing and was watching, uneasy. “Any trouble, Sarah,” he muttered, “and you come back. Just come back.”

“Thanks, Jack,” she said, tying the sack up. Her father had gone back to his room. She glanced at the closed curtain. “Look after him, won't you?”

“Don't you worry. We will.”

Outside, she walked to the stile, climbed it, and looked back at the cottage. On the doorstep, Martha was waving the baby's tiny fist.

In the deep lane the wind died away. Between the stone walls a flock of bramblings scattered into the bare thorns of gorse. She walked quickly. There was no point looking back. And there was something inside her, she knew, that was glad, that wanted those warm, comfortable rooms, the soft carpets, the sense of being someone.

She took the shortcut over the fields and into Darkwater woods. Usually she would have avoided this track, but she felt reckless and free, and it was quicker than walking up the drive. Most of the Darkwater estate was farmland, with small wooded ravines and combes in the folds of the cliffs. Every bay and cove along this coast belonged to it, every shipwreck, all the rents of the tenantry in the tiny hamlets, Cooper's Cross, Durrow, Mamble, even the tollgate on the road to Truro. And these woods around Darkwater Hall, an ancient wildwood hardly thinned or managed, threaded with mysterious paths.

She knew the way. But the drizzle thickened, a gray soaking mist moving in from the sea as the short afternoon waned. It hung around her like a fog. She stopped, one hand on a damp oak trunk, listening.

The wood was silent. No birds. No gulls. Only the sea mist, closing quietly.

For a moment, doubt about the whole thing overtook her. She weighed the sack, uneasy. Maybe she should go back. Maybe Martha was right. Then, just ahead, in the grayness, something loomed, and she groped toward it through the brambles and felt its cold hollows with her fingers.

Stone.

It was one of the Quoits.

She jerked her fingers back instantly. The Devil's Quoits, everyone called them. The story was that the devil had thrown them from the cliffs, aiming at the tower of the church, but they'd fallen here, a line of three leaning stones. That was another superstition. It might suit Jack and Martha, but not her. In one of the books in the school, she'd read that stones like these were put up by people thousands of years ago. Still, she didn't like them.

They leaned in the fog. Faint lichen grew on them, green splotches of spores, and they were scored with long grooves, as if by great claws. They barred her way. She'd go home.

Not far behind, a dog growled.

The sound made her flesh crawl. She turned and looked back.

A padding of paws rustled and pattered in the thick drifts of invisible leaves. And then, far back in the smothers of drizzle, a great black shape was running toward her, muscled and lean, tongue lolling out, eyes like tiny red coals.

She turned and fled. Breathless and gasping she struggled frantically through branches that whipped into her face, thickets of conifer and holly. All the fog seemed to be panting at her heels; behind her it thudded as if a pack of spectral hounds, dark as mist, was hunting her down, running with her, and as she ducked under a yew into darkness she stifled a scream, feeling a hot wet tongue on her neck, teeth catching her shawl. The fabric tore; yelling, she struck out at nothing with the sack, stumbling back out of branches into sudden space, a clipped hedge, a gravel walk.

At once she turned and raced along it, under the dark fog-wreathed mass of the house toward the slot of light that was opening. Yellow lamp light streamed out; it sent her shadow out behind her, stretched and flitting, and she had a sudden horror that the shadow-hound would grab it and gnaw it, but even as she turned to look the door was pulled wide and the terrace walk above the sunken garden was empty but for drifts of fog through the light.

“For Gawd's sake,” a voice said irritably. “I'm not standing 'ere all night!”

Scrab held the lantern up, eyeing her bedraggled breathless panic. Between his feet the cat slithered in, its fur soaked.

She slid in and slammed the door. It felt solid at her back.

Scrab turned. For a moment she thought he was grinning. “Welcome 'ome” was all he said.

seven

T
he dress was dark blue, with an ivory lace collar. It lay spread on the bed and she stared at it in silent wonder. Scrab dumped the candle on the fireside table. “'Imself says you might not want to get yer breakfast with the workers. So . . .”

“Yes.” She nodded decisively. “I will.”

He shrugged, scattering dandruff. “Please yerself. Servants' 'all. Seven. Now can a man get to 'is bed?”

She summoned as much dignity as she could. “Yes. Thank you.”

When he had closed the door she dumped the sack on the floor and collapsed onto the bed's edge, running both hands through her soaked hair. What a way to come home! Because it was home. Or should have been. The thought gave her a sort of courage. Smelling toast, she raised her head and saw on a tiny round table by the fire a tray laid with the same porcelain cup and teapot that she had seen downstairs. Unlacing her boots she kicked them off, washed face and hands in the basin on the washstand, pulled her old nightdress on, and curled luxuriously in the velvet chair, enjoying the small clear flames and eating the toast slowly, its warm golden butter dripping onto her fingers.

This was bliss. And Scrab hadn't brought it; it had been here waiting. Azrael had been that sure she would come.

Wriggling her toes in the heat, she thought for a
moment of her father, coughing in his bed in the drafty cottage, but she poured the tea out quickly and tried to forget. The money would make things better for him. But if only he would have come!

She looked around. The bedroom was small, but not a garret, its walls papered a deep red. The bed lay under a heavy coverlet, and in dimmer corners dark furniture lurked. A press, a tallboy, a small closet by the wall. The windows were shuttered. Tomorrow, she thought sleepily, she would look at it all, but she was far too tired now. But she did cross the soft carpet and open the closet warily.

A tiny moth flitted from its cedar-scented darkness. It was empty, except for a big dark book, which she lifted down. It was a Bible. There was a clasp on it, but it wasn't locked, and a long white feather had been pushed into one of the pages. It was heavy, and she took it to the bed.

The feather puzzled her. It was far too long for any bird she knew. It glistened, and there was a faint sweet smell on it. Sleepily she gazed at the page it had marked.

“
Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols; the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee.

“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning.”

It was the story of the proud angel that had been cast out from heaven in the great war of the powers of light and darkness; Lucifer, who had become devious and evil, become Satan. Not the sort of thing to read at night.

The candle spluttered. She put the Bible on the table, climbed under the heavy quilt, and blew out the flame. Something the tramp had said whispered through her head.

“
How are we all fallen so far?”

Only once did she waken.

Very late, it must have been. The moon had risen; as she opened her eyes she saw how it silvered the thinnest edge of the looking glass. Sarah lay stiff. The fire had sunk to a glow. All around her in its black stillness, Darkwater Hall lay sleeping.

Except for the footsteps.

Faint in the darkness, they creaked the boards on the narrow stair outside her room. Hardly breathing, sweat prickling her back, she raised her head and listened for them. Down the corridor they came, over the canvas matting; a slow step, halting.

She turned over, soundlessly, staring through the dark in terror at her door, at the faint slot of glimmering light under it, but the footsteps went straight past, even and steady, like a man sleepwalking or lost in thought. She didn't light the candle.

Instead she swung her legs out, unlocked the door, and opened it, a tiny fraction. Cold drafts stirred her hair. She put her eye to the crack.

The corridor was dim. Small moonlit squares slanted across it. At the far end was a door and she saw that someone was there, unlocking it. Keys clinked.

It might have been Azrael; in the dimness she couldn't tell, except that whoever it was was tall, and wore some dark robe. He opened the door.

And she heard, just for a moment, the distant, unmistakable sound of water; deep, running water, echoing in vast underground hollows.

Then he was gone.

Bolts were slotted tight.

The house was still.

Breakfast would be an ordeal, if the servants were all like Scrab. She put the blue dress on, tidied her hair, and looked at herself thoughtfully in the mirror. “Don't say much. Be dignified. Listen. Find out how things run.”

First, though, she went to look at the door at the end of the corridor, but when she got there she found only a long tapestry with some dusty hunting scenes on it. She lifted it and groped behind, but the wall was solid and paneled and thick with dust.

Bewildered, she let the folds drop, rubbing her hands.

Had she dreamed it? She didn't think so.

Uneasy, she found her way down. It had been dark last night, with only Scrab's candle flickering in the shadows, and this morning in the cold sunlight the house seemed very different. At the bottom of the stairs passages ran both ways, flagstoned and silent. She paused, hoping someone might come along.

It was very quiet. There was none of the bustle she had expected. Instead she had the strangest feeling that she was alone in this place, the only mortal here. And she didn't quite feel the same. The wet scared girl who had arrived last night seemed like someone different, as if this new Sarah in the blue dress, the finest dress she had ever worn, was a lost being who had come home.

She found another staircase and swished down it. Everything was clean. There was no dust, no cobwebs. There had to be an army of servants in a place like this.

But the servants' hall, when she found it, was quiet. A few plates lay on the tables, as if people had come and gone, but in the vast kitchens only a red-faced cook and a boot-boy were peeling potatoes.

“Help yourself, miss,” the woman said cheerily. Sarah did, puzzled. Where were the housemaids and grooms, the scullery maids, valet, butler and footmen? Where were the gardeners and coachmen, the skivvies and parlor maids? Surely they must be here.

She lifted a salver off a dish and found porridge. Another covered something made of scrambled eggs and rolled spicy pieces of mackerel. She ate porridge first, then piled some of the other on her plate, feeling the heavy knife and fork with satisfaction. In the kitchen the cook gossiped to the boy. Neither took any notice of her.

Just as she was feeling uncomfortably full the cat came in. It sat on the mat in front of the great range and began to wash its tail. She watched it, thinking of the black hound in the wood.

“Lord Azrael's compliments,” Scrab said hoarsely, making her jump, “and if yer ready I'm to fetch you to the library.”

She brushed off crumbs. “I'm ready.”

As she went out, the cat paused in its licking. It gave her one small, watchful glance.

On the way she asked Scrab about the servants. He scowled, sucking his teeth. “'Imself's a recluse. Likes a quiet 'ouse. The cook and I look after 'im.”

“No one else?”

“Boy, for odd jobs. Coachman. If 'e wants anyone else 'e gets 'em from the other place.”

She was silent a moment, lifting the hem of her dress as they climbed the great stair. “He's very rich then?”

“Rich enough.”

“These other estates. Where are they?”

Ahead of her, Scrab flicked a sour glance over one stooped shoulder. “Never you mind,” he muttered. His breath stank of onions.

The door closed behind her; she heard him walk away.

Slowly she shook her head in bewilderment.

This was the landscape of her dream. A corridor, very narrow, and all down it, as far into the distance as the light allowed, she saw books, great shelves of them, floor to ceiling; nightmarish numbers of books, chained, leather-bound, clasped, hinged. She walked under them, feeling their awe. On each side were doors; peering through, she found a series of small rooms, linking with each other, as if this whole wing was a maze of learning, and in them all more books, a muddled confusion of stacks and opened volumes. On the walls, stuffed animals gazed down at her glassily; between the two windows of the third room a double-horned rhino moldered, with the plaque
SHOT IN THE AFRICAN WILDERNESS BY JOHN WILLIAM TREVELYAN 1842
proudly emblazoned under it.

Outside, the winter lawns were bleak. Gulls squealed over the gray sea.

She wandered the rooms, picking things up, turning pages, wondering hungrily how and where she would start. This would take years to sort out. It pleased her, gave her a sudden, secret satisfaction.

The last room was the laboratory.

She opened the door and peered in, then knocked nervously, but no one was here. It was dim, all the window shutters firmly closed. She crossed to one and lifted the bar. The shutter swung inward; daylight turned the room cold.

She saw strange balls of glass that hung from the gilt ceiling, slowly rotating. All the walls were painted with huge, brilliant frescoes; blue and gold and green, great zodiac figures, the Goat, the Fish, the Scorpion, and over the fireplace strange symbols of sun and moon and stars. Even the small colored tiles in the hearth had odd foreign letters and twisted snakes. Machines, scales, peculiar devices littered every surface.

On the benches she walked between were open books, some centuries old, and scattered about them in total confusion strange objects; tubes of evil-smelling stuff, saucers of acrid powder, glass retorts with liquids plopping and boiling inside. She picked up a mothy furred thing and dropped it with a hiss of horror; it was the mummified paw of a small monkey, and she rubbed her hand hurriedly on her dress.

The room smelled musty and sulfurous. Astrolabes and globes and other instruments she didn't even recognize were piled around. An Egyptian figure with a jackal's head held down a stack of papers; lifting the top sheet, she found it was covered with the dark sloping writing that had been on her card. There were notebooks of scribbles and diagrams; carefully drawn wheels, a man with all the muscles outlined in his body, arrowed with unreadable symbols she guessed might be Greek.