The Honours (13 page)

They stood for a while, Daddy marking time with his slow, regular hammer blows. Dust seethed from the boulder's compacted crown. She kept expecting it to shatter, but instead it conceded sulkily, shedding crumbs, slivers. The Professor had his hands on his hips. He was gazing towards the lake.

‘Bugger, isn't it?' he said.

Daddy said nothing, but grunted with the downswing.

‘That business at the symposium the other night,' the Professor said. ‘Nobody thought anything of it, you know.' He examined the back of his hand. ‘In case you were . . . Nobody thought anything of it.'

Daddy paused, the sledgehammer trembling above his head. He looked at the ground and took a breath.

‘Thank you.'

The Professor rubbed a palm against his shirt.

Daddy brought the hammer down. The rock broke like a sugar lump.

North of the house, Prothero Wood waited like an army.

As she walked the ferrets towards a line of shushing elms and blossom-dappled horse chestnuts, Delphine thought back to February, and St Eustace's, and the night of the fire.

The binding of Eleanor Wethercroft went like this: Delphine spent two days laying the foundations, pretending Eleanor's treachery was forgotten, a silly misunderstanding! Then, under the pretext of a ‘surprise', Delphine had led her blindfolded down to the boiler room after lights out, told her to spread her arms – Eleanor giggling at first, shrieking with delight when Delphine slipped the first cool noose over her wrist – and secured her to pipes on opposing walls with two lengths of sailing rope tied with rolling hitches.

The idea was to scare her. The idea was that Eleanor would struggle and sniffle and submit, and Delphine would insist she apologise – for the beastly things she'd said about Daddy, for the awful beastly lies. But Eleanor did not cry. When she realised she had been tricked, she became very still; she hung her head and her long brown hair spilled down over her knees. She waited. She breathed.

Delphine did not move. And she realised what should have been obvious: that she was the one who was scared. She was scared of the girl who stood a full hand higher than her, scared of what would happen once the bonds were cut.

Delphine ran. She scrambled up the steps and when she got to the top she slammed the door. She had abandoned Eleanor in the boiler room, until the fire came.

Delphine stepped over fat, twisting roots, pushing into the shadows. Propp had fooled Daddy, he had fooled Mother, and now he was coming for Delphine.

He was winning everyone's trust, all the while covering their eyes,
binding their hands. One day very soon, he would turn and lock the door.

And then there would be no escape.

She saw him.

Mr Propp stood ahead in the clearing, fingers laced over his tailbone. Delphine watched from behind a hawthorn bush, Lewis and Maxim nuzzling around its base, yanking at their strings.

He brushed something from the shoulder of his greatcoat. All around him, lilacs bloomed with lush, stinking abundance. The burial vault was grey and squat, more a bunker. A larch, evidently uprooted in a storm, lay broken-backed across the roof; ivy smothered tree and vault in a carpet of shining, green-black scales. Propp took it all in with an air of professional interest, like a mason surveying a new plot. He used the head of his cane to prod at the wet moss around the base of the tomb. He walked a slow, flatfooted circuit; Delphine shrank back behind the bush.

Apparently satisfied, he took his pipe from his coat and located his mouth through the bristles of his white moustache. He patted his pockets for a box of matches. He cupped the pipe, struck a match and puffed. Smoke oozed between his fingers. He extinguished the match with a flourish, then began walking back into the woods, straight towards her.

She glanced about for cover; if he came any closer, he would spot her. A couple of yards away, the lower branches of two beeches threaded over a shallow basin, creating a pocket of shadow.

Propp paused. His pipe had gone out. As he reached for his matches she picked up the ferrets, darted across open ground and flung herself flat under the interwoven boughs.

Lewis and Maxim squirmed in her grip. She pressed her face into the earth, ears ringing. Over the roar of her breathing, she heard the sigh and crackle of footsteps. She glanced up. Propp was off to the right, shuffling back towards the Hall with his hands in his pockets. Smoke trailed behind him in a raggedy white pennant.

She counted to twenty before crawling out.

The dark granite showing through in flashes was clean and new and uncarved. When she stepped through intermittent light to tease aside a dry curtain of ivy, she found a name:

PETER STOKEHAM, 3rd EARL ALDERBEREN
1810–1884
JOHN 11:44

Delphine backed away and regarded the tomb with what she hoped was a sombre expression. She could not imagine what Propp had found so fascinating.

Maxim and Lewis were at her feet, grappling zealously. The ground was damp and mossy; this was the border of the marshlands, the beginning of labyrinthine trenchworks that covered the final mile between wood and sea. A distant, lazy droning came from the bushes.

All she knew about Peter Stokeham, and all anyone ever said about him, was that he had been Lord Alderberen's father, and he had been mad.

Delphine lay down on the moist ground. She pressed a cheek to the fragrant moss and closed her eyes.

Madness. She wondered what it was like, living with brain fever. Some scientists said that madness was in the blood. They said it was passed down like blue eyes, an incorrigible, marrow-deep part of you.

Perhaps she was mad. Perhaps Propp was a wise, kind man just as Daddy said. After all, his most vocal critic was Dr Lansley, a man who exuded loathsomeness. The thought was at once horrifying, and a bitter relief.

Perhaps Propp would help Daddy, and they would go back home.

She felt a tug on the strings. She opened her eyes and saw the world sideways – a wall of patchy grass on the left; on the right, some distance away, a welter of lilacs. The strings described a pair of taut white lines that ran, like tram wires, from knots on her middle and ring fingers, to the bushes. Again, a tug. She got up.

Ivy wrapped the fallen larch in glossy scales. Maxim and Lewis were nowhere to be seen.

She followed the strings to where they disappeared into the lilacs.

‘Max! Lewis!' She could drag them out if it came to it, but they had to learn to follow her commands so that one day she could use them to carry messages or foil burglars or simply terrorise Dr Lansley, gnawing through his deaf-aid cable, lunging at his stupid, rash-stippled throat. Mr Garforth said males were no good as ratters, because they were too big, and got stuck in holes.

The lines tightened. The ferrets were using the extra slack to explore deeper.

She listened. The sweet stench of lilacs was overpowering. Beneath the hum of bees, she heard scrapes, clatters and a soft popping.

‘Max? Lewis?' She swept aside lilacs with her forearm. The lines went slack.

Lewis burst from the bushes, his hindquarters flipping up almost over his head, then Maxim followed, a flicker of cream. She crouched and the ferrets galloped into her outstretched arms.

Behind them, the undergrowth crackled with the fast, angry movement of a wild animal.

Delphine ran. Something burst from the bushes with a screech. The ferrets bucked in her clumsy grasp. She heard the thump of wings.

She hared into the woods. She glanced back. A dark shape flickered between the silver birches. She leapt over a snarl of roots and kept running. Her vision was narrowing. She hunched and clutched the ferrets to her tummy, her forearms tangled in string. The pounding of wings grew louder.

She zigzagged through the pine coppice, dry needles crickling under her heels. She leapt the streambed and as she landed, she felt something slip from her grasp. She pivoted on the ball of her foot and Lewis lay U-shaped with the winged creature bearing down on him. She yanked his string and he skidded along the dirt towards her. The air was vibrating as she snatched him up with her good hand. She ran, disoriented, over flat, soft ground. Her hand throbbed, her lungs burned and she could taste copper. She clenched her teeth and ran harder.

Delphine had read tales of rabid dogs chasing hunters through
forests. It had to be an infected bat, bloated and enraged by disease.

She ducked, barging shoulder-first through a brake of thorn bushes, branches tearing and crackling and the
huff huff
of the bat's wings drawing closer and closer. Its bite would be fatal. Where could she go? What was she supposed to do?

The woodland floor sloped beneath her, the gradient putting power into her strides, and something slapped her eye and she cried out and stumbled and her left foot skidded in something nasty. She lurched, throwing an arm out, smashing her knuckles into a tree, steering into the stagger, and regained her balance. Sweat streamed down her neck. She swiped the back of her hand across it and her hand came back red.

The hill steepened; her sandals whipped through fragrant air. She glanced back and the creature swooped at her face. She swerved and it surged past her ear and something leathery brushed her throat.

She yelled but the bat was gone. She saw a flash of black off to her right. The creature wove through the trees, wings tucked in for speed, coming for her.

It was huge. Like an angel.

She was going to die. She was going to die and not at the hands of spies or criminals or an assassin sent to protect the interests of shadowy cosmopolitan financiers, but bitten to death by a rabid bat, alone, so close to her parents, an agony of fever, burning, burning.

A haphazard fence marked the edge of the treeline. She was much farther east than she had thought. Wire twisted round slanting posts and through a belt of dry nettles. Beyond was a thick green ocean of wheat. Maybe she could lose the creature in that. The nearest stile was more than fifty yards to the right. Her vision was blurring. She'd have to jump the fence.

She threw her good hand out for balance; Lewis writhed in her sweaty grip. A screech told her the bat was at her shoulder. She lashed her arm back and forth and shrieked through gritted teeth and lost her footing and the fence was lurching towards her and she jumped – a clean launch off her right leg, the creature's panting falling away as the soft wheat spread its welcoming arms, then something yanked her ankle and the ground swung up to meet her
and she dropped Lewis and Maxim and threw her arms out and a tremendous crack –

She lay on a wooden board. Her arms were on fire. She tried to lift herself up. The wheat had turned purple. The bat's silhouette spread as the creature descended on her, blotting out the sun. She could not see the ferrets.
I'm about to die
, she thought. She felt no fear. The ground gave beneath her, something clipped the back of her head –

– a brittle purring, like a thumb drawn across the bristles of a broom. Pops. Ticks.

Flat blackness.

Something dry and hooked scraping her cheek –

When Delphine woke up she thought she was dead. Then she thought she was blind.

She was on her back. She was somewhere black and silent.

She lifted her head. A rush of wooziness; the world tipped. She lowered her head. The world settled.

Every bit of her hurt; her arms, neck and face throbbed and ached. She balled her hands into fists. She could not quite close the last two fingers on her left hand. She brushed fingertips across her throat and face. They were still intact. She touched her forehead and noted, with satisfaction, the rough, crumbly texture of dried blood. She probably looked awful.

She listened. She became aware of a rustling, snuffling, and at the same moment a faint tension on the two strings tied to her fingers.

‘Max?' she called, and the name rang, suggesting stone, space. ‘Lewis?' A patter, like the beginnings of a landslide, then two long, stinky bodies were rubbing up against her face. ‘Ha! Hello. Hello, boy.' She reached out to pet them, felt a shooting pain in her shoulder.

She lifted herself up onto her elbows, more slowly this time. A wave of nausea crested, passed. She sat up. She smelt wet earth. She could not turn her head all the way to the right. Her bottom lip had swollen up. Mother was going to be furious.

She twiddled her fingertips in front of her eyes, saw the faint impression of movement. She looked up. Blackness. Whatever hole she had fallen through had sealed itself.

She cursed herself for not owning a lighter, or at least carrying a box of matches. She might be surrounded by all sorts of mysterious hieroglyphics (or more likely, she corrected herself, the remains of a Roman villa) just waiting to be revealed by a lit match raised tremulously above the intrepid explorer's head. Perhaps this was a lost treasure vault of the Stokehams, perhaps the discovery would make her family rich. But then, they were already rich – at least, Mother was.

Delphine scolded herself. This was no time for daydreaming. She had nearly died back there.

She clapped a hand to her neck. Had she been bitten? She had cuts and grazes all over. What if she had been infected?

The thought made her breathing quicken. She had to get home. Gingerly, she stood. She held one hand above her head in case it met resistance but there was plenty of room. She could not put weight on her right foot.

This was real. This was genuine peril and now that it was happening she longed for boredom. She had heard the warnings about naughty children wandering off into the countryside only to fall into dene holes or abandoned tin mines, their putrefied remains winched out weeks, perhaps months later. You died instantly, if you were lucky. Unlucky ones broke an ankle and lay keening in the dark like trolls, till they starved.

‘Hello?'

She yelled, suddenly frantic, and realised that she was not, as she had first thought, in a chamber, but at the end of a tunnel. Behind her, it terminated in a heap of what smelt like earth and rubble. In the other direction it stretched into the distance, and since she could make out its bare outline, light had to be coming from somewhere.