Murkmere (10 page)

She went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “Silas’s father was steward to Mr. Tunstall’s father in the grand days of Murkmere, you
know; that’s why Mr. Tunstall won’t get rid of Silas now. The old Master even paid for Silas to go to school in the Capital.
He came back changed, they say. I was a tiny child wanting to play and he’d set butterflies on fire to tease me.”

She was silent awhile, her face bitter. My own heart was bitter too. I wondered if it would ever recover.

“That’s when I bit him!” said Leah suddenly. “On the right hand, it was. You notice he writes with his left now?” Her voice
was gleeful. “The wound went septic. It took so long to heal he had to learn to write all over again, with his left
hand.” She leaned closer and made a face at me. “He tasted of the dung heap!”

I shuddered; I couldn’t speak for a while, looking at her chuckle to herself. “He asked me to watch you, Miss Leah,” I said
at last. “It was spying he wanted, in truth.”

She snorted. “Do you think I don’t know? At least you’re honest.”

“But isn’t it your guardian’s wish? Isn’t that why Mr. Silas wants it?”

“Gilbert Tunstall worries about my safety because he loves me. Silas Seed loathes me. I’ve no idea why he spies on me.”

She began to stride around with her mouth turned down, touching her neck restlessly and easing the collar of her cloak as
if it choked her. Finally she flung round to stare at the window. “I hate this aerie of my guardian’s, though I’ve never told
him. There’s all that sky outside, but it’s shut away. I can’t breathe.”

“A strange place for a library,” I said. I could tell from the sharp glance Leah gave me that she knew exactly what I was
thinking.

“The Master wanted to be near the clouds. When I was small he’d come alone and watch them for hours.” She sucked her cheeks
in. “I know it’s impractical, mad. The cost of strengthening this floor, then constructing the lift, nearly bankrupted the
estate. All the pieces of the pulley system are welded separately. He cut down some of the Murkmere oaks to build the stairs.”
She sighed. “But he was determined to do it. He has a strong will.”

I watched the clouds beyond the glass piling on each other, thick as curdled cream. What strange compulsion would draw a man
to watch them alone, suspended between heaven and Earth, day after day?

When I looked back at her, Leah was studying me with her piercing gray eyes, an odd expression on her face.

“There’s another reason my guardian used to come. There’s something he keeps here. And I think you know what it is.”

T
he pointed to the floorboards by the double doors, where there was a muddle of dirty footprints, now dry, left by the melting
snow from my boots. I felt my cheeks go hot.

She was grinning at me, pleased with her keen eyesight. I couldn’t tell if she was angry yet or not; it was like that with
Leah. Sometimes her rage boiled slowly.

“It’s no secret,” she said. “Silas knows what’s in that room, and so do the footmen, Jukes and Pegg, but none of the other
servants come here alone. They’re forbidden, but anyway they wouldn’t come. They think the tower’s damned because of the books,
and they’ve probably heard what else is up here.”

“I’ll be damned, Mr. Silas says,” I whispered. “Oh, Miss, I’m sorry. I wish I’d never seen it.”

She looked at me blankly. “Damned? What on Earth are you talking about?”

Frightened again, I pointed dolefully at the doors. “The image of the Almighty.”

She let out a howl of laughter. “You poor goose.”

She caught hold of my hand, dragging me with her, ignoring my terrified protests. She leaned her weight against the doors
of the inner room and they burst open.

“Now, look,” she commanded, and gripped my hand so fiercely I couldn’t run. At that moment I was almost more frightened of
her contempt if I did so than of the thing that floated in the air above us.

“It was never alive,” said Leah. She looked at me, pitying yet amused. “It’s made of wood.”

In the light that came through the doors I could see that it was suspended by thin cords, inside a frame that was almost invisible.
“Touch it, go on,” urged Leah.

I felt a smooth-grained texture that was warm under my fingers. It swung slightly from its taut cords as I touched it, the
pale wood gleaming in the light. The outstretched wings were covered with linen, not skin after all; the frame was made from
thin bands of the same wood.

“But what is it, Miss?”

“It’s a flying machine,” she said, with a sort of triumph.

“You mean — a man could
fly
in it?”

“That’s the whole point of it, silly,” she said impatiently. “My guardian had it constructed before his last illness, from
diagrams in an old book. The carpenters were frightened to make it at first, because of the blasphemy, but he paid them well.”
She turned to me and her breath came faster. “This
contraption can glide on air, Aggie, it can take its pilot soaring through the sky. Isn’t it our dream to fly like the birds?”

I felt cold. “But that’s what happened to the avia, Miss. They had dreams, then were imprisoned in them forever.”

“But wouldn’t you want to fly if you had the chance, to fly out of this little life? Who knows what currents of air might
take you to other worlds, maybe better ones?”

“That’s blasphemy, indeed, Miss,” I whispered.

Leah slapped her skirts in disgust, and the sudden movement made dust rise like smoke from the linen wings of the flying machine.

“Blasphemy! Does everything always have to be sin and punishment? You sound like Silas. He said the Great Eagle would swoop
down on my guardian one day for building this. He’d suffer the same punishment as the avia.” She let out a sudden wild laugh.
“What sort of bird do you think my guardian would be?”

I shook my head, and her laughter died abruptly. We stood together in the shadow of the great wingspan.

Slowly my horror seeped away. It was hard to believe that the delicate contraption hanging above us was evil; it seemed to
grow more strangely beautiful as I looked at it. But it was too frail, too inadequate for what it would encounter in the teeming
sky. Even the padded body brace that hung from its wooden ribs was light as a puff of thistledown.

“How does it work?”

Leah roused herself. “I don’t know. It’s heavier than it looks. You can wheel the whole structure out into the other
room in its frame, but it takes two men. It can be launched from the window once it’s released from its cords. Then the wings
unfurl to their full breadth. There’s not room for that inside. My guardian could sail straight out into the clouds, only
now that his health is bad he can’t try it out. It stays in here, getting dustier and dustier.”

I knew the contraption was made of wood, yet it seemed alive. I felt its melancholy overwhelm me as she spoke; I sensed how
its bones longed for freedom while remaining motionless, impotent, earthbound. I looked at Leah, suddenly apprehensive that
she who longed for freedom would be tempted to escape in it herself one day.

But as if she knew what was in my mind, she shook her head. “I haven’t the courage, Aggie. What would make it stay up? I don’t
trust it not to crash into the treetops, let alone to reach the clouds. Its journeys are dreams inside the Master’s head.
I’m thankful he’s too weak to try it out. When I leave Murkmere, I’ll go in my own way.”

We left it alone with its sorrow at last, in the close darkness of the inner room, swaying forlornly in the draft as we shut
the doors: a dusty, silvery bird, with clipped wings.

The outer room was ominously dark. Outside the clouds had turned hard-edged as iron. “It’s going to snow again,” Leah said.
“We must leave.”

I turned toward the doorway obediently, but she had rushed to a cabinet. “The book! I forgot the Master’s book!”

She unlocked the cabinet and took one out, looked at its spine, and tucked it beneath her cloak. Then she glanced at
me and reached in again. Suddenly a book was thrust at me, leather-bound, smooth and soft, like a small animal. “You can borrow
it. Hide it away safely”

The first flakes were falling as we left the tower.

“We’ll head for the boundary wall,” said Leah. “We can cut across when we see the icehouse. There’s a sheltered walkway that
runs from it to the house.”

We stumbled across the snowy hollows behind the tower to a level area, broken by pine and silver birch. Snowflakes were already
beginning to fly into my eyes and mouth, whirling in all directions like feathers at a cockfight, but it was easier to see
among the trees, and the boughs gave us some shelter.

I noticed a set of dark footprints — man’s prints — in the snow in front of me, and beginning to fill with new flakes as I
slithered along, clutching my precious burden — my book — under my cloak. The fresh snow was slippery, and my feet seemed
too cold and clumsy to support me.

A keeper must have been this way earlier
, I thought as I followed the two trails: the keeper’s prints and Leah’s long, narrow ones.

Her cloaked figure was still a little way ahead, almost at the wall, when suddenly I heard her give a cry. When I caught up
with her she was speechless, white-faced, snow matting her hair where it trailed out under her bonnet and lying on the rabbit-fur
collar of her cloak. My own hair was stiff with it and my cheeks felt pinched and bloodless.

We stared at each other like two wraiths; then she pointed.

There was a man sprawled facedown among a confused mess of footprints not far away. As soon as I approached him I knew instinctively
and absolutely that he was dead, frozen to death as he lay in the cold. The outflung limbs were rigid, the heavy cape bunched
up over the still body.

Death is commonplace in the village: folk die from sickness every winter; the women go in childbirth. I’d been familiar with
death all my fifteen years; my own elder sister had gone when I was five. I wasn’t afraid. I approached the body with scarcely
a qualm, except of pity.

“It must be a keeper, Miss Leah,” I called back.

When she saw me so bold, she too came closer, not to be outdone, her pale jaw set. “Is he dead?” she asked nervously.

“I think so, Miss Leah.”

“He’s murdered, then.”

I stared at her. It was as if she stated a fact. “Murdered?”

She gestured at the footprints all trodden together around the dead man’s body “There’s been a struggle. See?” She looked
a little closer, putting her hand to her mouth. But there was no stench yet; the coldness of the air prevented it.

“We must get back quickly, Miss.” I looked through the snowy trees, half-expecting to see a dark figure emerge and threaten
us. But nothing moved except the falling snow, and the sifting of the flakes was the only sound.

Leah was peering at the body, as if fascinated. “He’s not one of our men. Not one of the keepers here. None of them has a
cape that color. He must be a trespasser. That’s why they’ve killed him.”

“Who’ve killed him?” I said, appalled.

“The keepers, of course. One with a knife, maybe another to bring him down first. There’ll be blood, but it hasn’t seeped
through.” She spoke carelessly, squatting down and brushing snow from the man’s cape. It was dark with moisture and pitted
with snow, but it would be green when dry, a forest green that might have hidden a trespasser in summer but was all too obvious
in winter.

“Leave him, Miss!” I cried. Next she would be lifting the cape to examine the mark of death.

“I want to see what he looks like.”

She was struggling to turn the man over. There was nothing I could do but help her, though my gorge rose as I touched the
cold, dead shoulders. He was heavy and it took both of us.

Then with a soft thump into the new snow the man was staring up at the sky. His jacket was caked with the frozen snow he’d
lain on.

“A handsome man, not old,” said Leah.

I stared down at the untouched face.

“I know who he is,” I said.

Y
ou know him?” Leah whispered.

My face felt frozen into a mask; I could hardly move my lips to speak. “He’s a packman called Matt Humble.”

Spring, summer, autumn, Matt had come to our village with his wares. One morning you’d see his sturdy figure come tramping
out of the early mist, all hung about with pots and pans, his pack full to bursting on his back. He’d stay a night, tell his
stories, then next morning be on his way again. Only last autumn, when I’d turned fifteen, Jethro had bought me a blue-green
ribbon from his pack to bind my hair. Matt had told us it was the color of the sea.

Snowflakes were falling into Matt’s open eyes. My own hand felt as cold as death, but with a clumsy finger I tried to close
the lids, to shut away that dreadful stony stare and bring him peace. It was no use; by now his eyelids were as stiff as vellum.

Leah seemed transfixed by the body. I could hear her panting. Her mouth was open, and she trembled with cold and a febrile
excitement that made her eyes burn in her bloodless face. “He must have been trespassing.” she said. “We don’t allow packmen
here.”

“That’s no reason to murder him!” I said, not caring that I spoke so sharply to my mistress.

She was surprised enough to drag her eyes away and look at me. “My guardian imagines danger for me everywhere. The keepers
act on his orders. Anyone caught trespassing is questioned and then, if the keepers aren’t satisfied …”

She didn’t finish. Nor did she need to.

“If they’d questioned him, they’d have discovered he was only a packman going about his work,” I said, appalled. “They must
have killed him in cold blood.”

She shrugged carelessly. “He’d no pack with him.”

It was true. I stared at Matt’s body in bewilderment, as if I could make it give up its secrets, my knees turning numb through
my skirts as I knelt in the trampled snow.
What had he been doing here? He must have known the danger that would face him if he dared climb the wall into the Murkmere
estate. And it was early in the year for him to be traveling
.