The Bone Quill (16 page)

Duncan Fox’s Studio

London

1848

E
m
landed face down on an oriental rug that smelled of cigars and wet dog, the nose of a confused beagle bumping up against her own. Matt landed on his feet, one on the rug and one inside a brass spittoon shaped like a turtle. Simon crashed head first into a potted palm tree.

The beagle leaped to its feet almost as quickly as Em, who in an instant knew they had animated beyond the painting and into the past again. It felt like a punch to the gut. She had wanted the painting to be by her mother, not Fox. Her disappointment made her ache.

Time-travelling to a Victorian artist’s studio gave Em a queasy feeling. She had never seen a place with so much furniture. Every open space had chairs: wooden, cushioned, low-backed and one looking like a throne. Em squinted at the throne. The lid on the seat suggested it was an old toilet chair.

Every space that didn’t have a chair had a side table, and every side table was cluttered with books and figurines. Then there were tall lamps and short lamps, all powered by gas, the tubing running along the rafters and out of sight. The entire place looked like it was one spark away from a blaze.

The walls were covered in framed and unframed paintings. The front windows were made of stained glass with four heraldic shields across the top panes. One looked like the crest of the Abbey, with the peryton on it.

And then Em looked up, noting the roof made of glass, the rows of skylights open to the late afternoon sun, and knew exactly where they had landed.

She helped her brother lift his foot from the squishy muck in the spittoon, then yanked him to the middle of the over-furnished room, her disappointment at not seeing her mother drowned out by her sudden excitement. ‘Matt! Do you realize where we are?’

Matt gawked. ‘It’s our flat!’

‘What?’ said Simon, setting the palm upright. Straightening up, he hit his head on a birdcage hanging from one of the rafters. The bird squawked angrily.

‘Our old flat!’ exclaimed Matt. ‘When we lived in London.’

They suddenly spotted a man standing at the other side of the room next to an easel. His dark hair was slicked back behind his ears, a scar running through his short black beard, and in front of him was the desk they had come to open, topped with the skull, the candelabra, the mirrored glass and Jeannie’s pewter goblet. He looked like a handsome head teacher with his hands folded behind his back and his posture ramrod straight.

‘That was as grand a theatrical entrance as I’ve seen,’ said the man. ‘Worthy of the Adelphi Theatre.’

Wiping his paint-stained hands on a white cloth over his shoulder, he offered Simon his hand first. ‘This may be rather a shock to you, sir, but I am Duncan Fox. This is September of 1848, the eleventh year of the reign of Victoria. Welcome to my London.’

‘It’s not as much of a shock as you might think,’ said Simon, accepting Fox’s hand and shaking it vigorously.

Matt was absorbing the details of the room where, more than a century in the future, he’d spend his childhood. It was just one massive room, the building a large Victorian mansion not yet divided up into flats. His smile at Fox was a little dazed.

‘You must be Matt,’ Fox said. Then he turned to Em, bowing slightly. ‘And you must be Emily. I have heard a great deal about all of you.’

‘How do you know who we are?’ Em asked curiously.

‘Because,’ said a familiar voice from the hallway, ‘I’ve been expecting you.’

Sandie was rushing up the stairs in a long, purple, velvet dress, arms outstretched.

‘
Mum!
’

The twins flew into their mother’s arms, knocking all three of them against the wall in a flood of sobs, hugs and kisses.

G
ulping
with tears and laughter, Sandie beckoned a stunned-looking Simon into her embrace as well. Duncan Fox rang a rope bell above the fireplace. As a semblance of composure eventually returned to the room, a servant carried in a silver tea service. Fox accepted the heavy tray from her and shut the door.

Sandie sat in the middle of the chaise longue with her arms wrapped tightly round both the twins. Simon emptied an inviting-looking armchair of books and newspapers, putting them on a nearby embroidered footstool. Duncan settled into a second armchair.

‘So which of you painted the picture we travelled through?’ asked Simon.

‘I did,’ Sandie said. ‘I travelled here the night I disappeared, and brought the goblet with me. Then I painted it here, hoping you’d spot the clue. I took it back to the Abbey via another painting. It was risky, but it was the only thing I could think of at the time.’

Em couldn’t stop staring at her mother. ‘I can’t believe we found you! We really found you!’

‘I knew you would,’ said Sandie. ‘How long have I been gone from our time?’

‘Almost two months,’ said Simon.

Sandie looked appalled. She squeezed the twins even tighter. ‘That was not my intention. You must know that.’

Duncan Fox was lighting a cigar, filling the room with pungent smoke. ‘Emily,’ he said, nodding at the tea service. ‘Would you like to do the honours?’

After tea was served, Em did her best to fill her mother in on what had been happening. Matt listened in silence through most of the tea and the conversation. He stood up and wandered over to the window to think as Duncan Fox turned a tap on the length of rubber tubing next to the door. One by one, the impressive array of lamps flickered to life as he visited them. Outside on Raphael Terrace, Matt saw a man walking along the kerb of the pavement with a long pole, lighting the street lamps.

He was pleased that they had finally found their mum, truly he was. But finding her reminded him of the tensions lurking below the surface of their relationship. She had bound his dad in a painting. Matt couldn’t escape that fact, no matter how happy he was that she was safe. Finding her here in 1848 just meant she had more secrets than ever.

Turning back to face his mother, he asked the question that had flashed through his mind the moment he had seen her dashing up the stairs.

‘How did you get here in the first place, Mum?’

‘Quite quickly after you were born,’ Sandie said, ‘I discovered that I could animate into paintings, travel to the time of their creation. Somehow my being pregnant with both of you triggered something dormant in my Animare DNA or … who knows? It doesn’t matter.

‘We were on the cusp of a new millennium. The Council of Guardians was tightening the rules, forcing more of our kind to go underground, to stay out of the public eye, to lie to each other about who and what we were. I could not reveal my time-travelling abilities to anyone.’

‘Dad found out, didn’t he?’ asked Matt belligerently. ‘So you had to get rid of him. You had to bind him in that painting.’

Sandie walked over to grip Matt’s shoulders. ‘It was nothing like that. I loved your dad, Mattie … in many ways I will always love your dad.’ She lifted her hand and gently swept Matt’s hair from his face. Her voice broke. ‘You are so like him.’

Y
ou’re
such a … a jerk, Matt! Can’t you see how you’re upsetting her?

Em wrapped her arms around her weeping mother.

Fox rose from his chair, obviously uncomfortable with all the emotion. ‘Sandie, I will carry the tea tray down to the parlour.’

Simon passed Sandie a handkerchief, as the artist headed for the door.

‘We were living at the Abbey, as you know, Matt, having just celebrated your third birthdays,’ Sandie continued, wiping her eyes. ‘I was painting, your dad was researching, planning to write his definitive history of the Abbey and its art.’ She looked up at Simon, ‘And you, Simon, had just joined us with Zach.

‘But Malcolm was terribly unhappy that we had gone into hiding after you two were born, and he was even angrier that his father Renard would not stand up to the Council of Guardians and their rules. Malcolm believed that with your powers, you – and he – could rule all the Councils of the world.’

‘That’s rubbish,’ Matt snarled.

His head was pounding, his emotions tearing between relief that his mum was alive and anger that she had taken his dad from him all those years ago. He wanted to hug Sandie, to protect her and he wanted to … to … he wanted to scream.

‘Matt,’ Simon said, taking Matt’s arm while dropping his voice and holding Matt’s gaze. ‘Son, walk it off … walk it all off.’

Matt began to circle the room slowly.

‘One night after the Abbey was quiet, I found your dad poring over Duncan’s diary,’ Sandie went on. ‘He had discovered it hidden in the vault. In the diary, Duncan explained that Hollow Earth truly existed, and wasn’t a myth at all.’

‘Renard showed us the diary earlier,’ said Simon.

Sandie paused to dry her eyes. ‘That night, your dad told me he knew that I could time-travel. He wanted me to go back and find out as much as possible about Hollow Earth. At first I thought he wanted the same things as Duncan did … does. But I came to realize that he wanted to use the beasts in Hollow Earth for his own purposes.’

‘Why didn’t you just leave?’ asked Matt. ‘Why did you have to bind him?’

‘Because, Mattie—’

‘Stop calling me that!’

‘Because, Matt, your dad was manipulating your powers with his own inspiriting abilities, which are incredibly strong. He is Renard’s son, after all. He planned to take you both from me. I caught him inspiriting you when you were just three years old, helping you animate yourselves into a painting … I could not let that happen again. Ever.’

Simon put his face in his hands. ‘I wish I had known.’

‘Simon, no one knew the depths to which Malcolm had already gone. Only Renard. And I made him swear on his honour as a Guardian and my friend to keep the secret.’

‘And what about us?’ asked Matt, his hands on his hips. ‘When were you going to trust us enough to tell us?’

Sandie sighed. ‘I was doing my best not to tell you any of this until you were older. I just wanted you both to be normal children.’

‘Well,’ said Em, her heart feeling lighter than it had in ages, ‘we’re having tea in Victorian London. I don’t think there’s much chance of normality any more.’

Sandie tugged Matt into her arms. For a few beats he resisted, then he let go.