The Door in the Moon (18 page)

He stared at her. Made a deep bow. Then, like a bright moth from the window, he was gone.

Moll rubbed her nose. The carriage lurched and creaked as Long Tom clambered in. “What's going on, Moll? What's the idea? I thought the toff was our ticket in.”

“Change of plan,” she said, glancing at Jake. “If you've got one, that is.”

Jake's old confidence had come back. The decision to take control had made him feel sure, invulnerable. He put his arm round her and hugged her, feeling the thin bones. “No problem, Moll. You and me, we can do anything. Time travelers and thieves and pirate-princesses, us.”

She giggled.

But Tom muttered, “We can't blag our way in without a prisoner.”

“You've got a prisoner.” Jake took off his sword and handed it to him with elaborate politeness, hilt first. “You've got me.”

And as the Abbot returned, slow and broken-hearted through the Wood, he looked up and saw that every dark tree had silver eyes. And he cross'd himself and hastened, because it came to him that he was in a place beyond the knowledge of man. And that if he remained there one more hour he would be lost for all eternity in its mazes and dreams . . .

The Chronicle of Wintercombe

“H
OW ARE YOU
still here?”

“Because I'm either brave or stupid.” Piers lay curled in the hollow, and it was all Wharton could do to make him out. The white lab coat had become a suit of complete camouflage, so carefully formed of overlapping brown and sepia leaves and patches of bark that he blended perfectly with the background.

“Keep still now,” he muttered.

Above them the Shee host passed. It rippled like a gale driving a scatter of leaves, so light, delicate. Or like a flock of birds, the wind of its wings raising dust and flickering in the moonlight. There must be so many of them! Wharton kept his head down and felt the soil trickle down his neck.

Would they sense him here? He lay curled in the hollow of his own breathing.

Finally, the silence of the Wood was all that was out there.

Piers murmured in his ear, “Okay. We need to move. As soon as they realize you've vanished, they'll come back.”

“Move where?” The hollow was a cramped scrape under the bracken, leading nowhere.

He felt Piers's soft laugh.

“Out of this Wood.”

“How can we cross it with all of Them—”

“Not across, idiot. Nobody catches Piers. We go
under
.”

Something peculiar happened.

Wharton felt giddy and oddly hot. He had the strangest feeling that the hollow grew around them. The tree roots next to his hand became enormous. A nibbled acorn lying next to him was as big as his chest.

He said, “Piers . . .”

Piers grinned. “Don't worry, big man. Trust me. Come on.”

Because there was a tunnel now, and they were racing down it, and Wharton realized he was running, or he thought he was running, but did you run with your hands and feet and with your face so close to the earth? Had his nose always this been long and lean? And as he shot after Piers, he marveled that he could flee so fast, and without getting breathless at all.

And then, the smells!

He ran in an overwhelming stench of soil, leaves, the stink of sucked worms, the pungent sweetness of rotting fungi. He lifted his nose and sniffed, and there were unknown parts of him that were thin and wiry and quivered, that translated scent into a new language, into the colors of this place that were nameless, dimmed and dull, all drabs and grays and palenesses.

There was an itch on his skin and he licked it.

It was a peculiar thing to do, but it seemed normal.

Under roots, over swarming anthills, through a network of dark tunnels where the earth roof dropped worms onto his neck, he ran with loping strides and small swift feet. He heard all the chatter of the underground world, all its fumbles and scrapes; the muffled thuds of rabbits, the soft rasp of a badger's tongue. He knew that all around him, spreading like the invisible filaments of mycelium, lay the labyrinthine roads and ways of the underworld, a place without human or Shee, without light or any direction but the invisible magnetism of the deep rocks.

Piers was a sleek shadow ahead, and when he stopped and sniffed and began to scrabble upward, Wharton pushed in beside him and dug too, scraping the soil expertly with his hands that were long and hard and narrow.

Cold hit him.

A black patch of sky, brilliant with stars.

He poked his head out, slithered up, found himself on a bleak and featureless surface that stretched as far as he could see in every direction.

Piers slithered out beside him.

They sat, staring around. They were breathless and grimy with soil and their nails were broken and black.

Finally Wharton managed to say, “What the hell was I, down there? And where's Wintercombe Abbey?”

Piers ignored the first question. He looked around at the strange rocky landscape, irritated. “We should be there. The Shee are always moving everything about. There's never any sense or order to them.”

Wharton was already shivering in the bitter cold. “Piers. Don't tell me.”

The small man shrugged and stood. His lab coat was back, and under it his most scarlet waistcoat. He scratched his small wisp of beard.

“Yep.”

“No!”

“Afraid so.” He looked up at the impossible stars. “Has to be the bloody Summerland. Doesn't it.”

The sky in the east was a paleness; Rebecca could see a point of fire that was the planet Venus, shining brilliant and low over the Wood. Worried, she said, “Wait just half an hour. Just for more light.”

Maskelyne shook his head, tying the rope tight. “It's already too dangerous. It's Midsummer Eve and anything might happen.”

The wooden bird that had come with them, and was now perched on the bare curtain-rail of the attic room, made a cheep, and said, “Well yes, but then I think you're crazy to go after it at all.”

“He wouldn't have to, if you went,” Rebecca snapped.

The bird looked aggrieved. “I told you, last time I saw Summer she had me in her talons and I was about to get my head torn off. No way am I going out there.”

The room was the highest attic they had been able to find in the vast dim house. Maskelyne had wanted to go alone but Rebecca had insisted on coming, locking the cats and the wailing baby and the marmoset in the lab with the silent, black mirror. All the way up through the building they had found corridors and stairs and landings wreathed with ivy and sprouting flowers, until, on the highest corner of the gallery, Maskelyne had lifted a tendril of honeysuckle from the floor and said, “Look at this.”

Sweet scent crisped from it.

He had stared at the branch for a hopeless moment. “How can we ever win this house back from her, Becky?”

The door to the roof, when they had found it, had been warped and wrapped tight with weed, impossible to open. Here, though, the ivy had broken the window and was thick on the attic floorboards. Maskelyne tested the rope and fixed it securely to the window frame.

“The wood looks rotten,” she murmured.

“Probably is.”

“Then let me go. I'm lighter.”

“Than a ghost?” He smiled. “I doubt it.”

Before she could answer he had climbed up onto the sill, wriggled through, and swung himself out. In the pale predawn glimmer, the Wood was dark below, its branches close, its leaves a mass of shadow against the very walls of the house.

“Be careful.” She leaned out, twisting to look up.

A silhouette of darkness, he was edging along the narrow strip of roof toward the nearest chimney stack. As she watched, the wooden bird came and perched on her shoulder, its claws digging painfully in.

“Did Sarah really get out there?” she whispered.

“Oh, by the door it was easier.” The bird tipped its head. “She really knows this house, you know. She's got all sorts of hiding places round it.”

Rebecca nodded, not listening. Maskelyne had reached the chimney. He was lost in its shadow. Then his voice came softly back to them. “I've found the rope she tied here.”

“Follow it,” the bird said. “Somewhere at the end you'll find the gutter.”

“Go back down, Becky.”

“No. I'm staying.” She frowned. “Just hurry up.”

And then he was gone, and only a few scrapes over the tiles betrayed where he went.

Maskelyne moved cautiously along the rope. The rooftops of the building were an uneven landscape of slopes and gulleys, gutters and gables, the tiles great slabs of tawny limestone, clotted with moss and lichen, warm even at night to the touch. He climbed over ridges and slid down a steep slope, one hand tight on the rope, to find a level and wide walkway leading between a maze of chimneys. He followed it carefully, glancing nervously at the eastern sky.

Venus was fading, a pale speck. The sun would rise in the next hour.

Already, in the Wood, he could sense the stir of birds, their heads coming from under their wings, their dark, intent eyes opening.

At the end of the walkway the rope had been looped through a rusty stanchion next to an ancient metal ladder leading to a lower section of roof. He swung around and climbed swiftly down it.

Sarah certainly knew the house. He wondered how often she had climbed and explored it as a child, learning the complicated ruin it would become at the end of time.

At the bottom of the ladder was a gutter. He crouched quickly.

The gutter was deep and would carry all the water from the steep roof behind him. Normally it would have been wet, but with the long days of summer heat, even the small cushions of lichen near the drainpipe were desiccated and dry as dust.

In the bottom of the gutter, taped securely at the deepest point, was a plastic-wrapped package.

He tugged it away, the tape making a sharp ripping noise.

At that moment, as if his action had caused it, the molten tip of the midsummer moon pierced the corner of the chimney. Its horizontal rays lit his face; Maskelyne whipped the package into his pocket, and turned.

On the topmost rung of the ladder a white owl was perched.

Its feathers lifted in the dawn wind.

Its great dark eyes, circled with yellow, were fixed on him.

“Is that you, Lady Summer,”
he whispered.

Venn explored the damp cell wall with both hands.

It was solid stone. But there were niches and jutting slabs, and from somewhere above him, a tiny sliver of pale light was entering. It slid down, thin as a wand, and he stood in it and looked up and imagined the narrow crack somewhere in the darkness of the high ceiling. The moon was setting over Paris.

Behind him, the door unlocked.

He turned, fast, but it was a stranger who entered, a thin, officious-looking man in a brown coat and tricorn hat with a sheaf of papers in his hand. He peered at Venn, then at the papers, and put his hat carefully under his arm before speaking.