Murkmere (20 page)

I tried to raise her spirits, she looked so drawn with worry, but to no avail. She waved my words aside and jumped to her
feet. “It’s not only that. I made a discovery just now. I noticed the doors weren’t quite shut.”

She went to the double doors and opened them, and I looked in over her shoulder. The flying machine still hung like a magic
thing, silent and motionless in the empty room, the pale wood catching the light that came in through the doors. Leah pointed
at the wood floor and I saw our own footprints from long ago still there faintly in the dust. But now there were the new,
clearer marks of curving lines cutting through the smudges.

“My guardian has come in here alone,” said Leah. “What does it mean, Aggie?”

“Nothing worrying, I’m sure,” I said soothingly.

“You don’t think he wants to fly the machine?”

“He can’t move it,” I pointed out. “You said yourself it took two men to push it out of here.”

I persuaded her at last to shut the doors. “You’ll not get answers by staring at it. Let’s go for a walk. Shall we go to the
mere and see the swans? We haven’t been for a while.”

She hesitated. “Perhaps it would be best if you didn’t come with me, Aggie. There’s a pen sitting now and you may frighten
her.”

I turned away so she couldn’t see my hurt. I knew she must have gone there without me to know.

Through the spring days, Murkmere Hall slowly began to prepare itself for the ball. Like a great hibernating bear, it was
awakened and dragged, blinking, from darkness into daylight.

Leah demanded that all the shutters be unlatched and the windows and doors opened so that fresh air could blow through the
house. The dust billowed across the floors and fled into corners, and housemaids armed with brooms swept it out again.

As each room was opened up in turn, the daylight showed cruelly how dilapidated the old house was: the faded, peeling wallpaper,
the damp patches on the ceilings, the holes in the rugs, the woodworm in doors and skirting boards. Leah’s face would darken
as she looked around her; then she would snap out an order at her trail of servants and be off to the next room.

The servants were doing their best for her, she had to acknowledge that. Even Mistress Crumplin had smartened herself up with
clean apron and cap instead of her grubby
frills, and was trying to regain the authority she’d lost so many years ago. But I could see the shine of avarice in the servants’
eyes and how they were busiest when Leah was about.

“I’ll spring-clean your chamber while you’re out, Miss Leah,” Doggett offered with unusual enthusiasm one morning, when Leah
was about to go off to her lessons in the tower and I was ready to walk with her as usual.

Leah, busy collecting books together, nodded without much interest, then she paused. “Why don’t you stay with Dog, Aggie,
and see if there’s anything of mine you could wear for the ball? She’ll show you where my clothes are.”

As Dog began to glower at me in her old jealous way, I said quickly to Leah, “But what about Doggett? Your personal maid should
look suitably dressed too.”

So it was that once Leah had left the room, the atmosphere between Dog and me was almost friendly. Dog seemed glad to have
an audience for her grumbles as she began to make Leah’s bed, on which the sheets and blankets had been bundled together in
a mound.

“Like a nest,” she said, in disgust. “What dreams Miss Leah must have to be so restless!”

She took the bedclothes off and put them by the door for laundering. Then she picked yesterday’s clothes from the floor, shaking
out each garment as if she wished she could shake its owner. I watched in silence as she went to the pair of heavy mahogany
cupboards and flung them open.

“It’s hard work keepin’ her clothes respectable, I can tell
you. The way she treats them! When she comes back from the mere, they’re all muddied and filthy.”

It took Dog a while to sort through the gowns, the skirts and bodices, petticoats and shifts, many bearing her neat darns,
though one needed sharp eyes to spot them. In the end I tried on two skirts, one of midnight taffeta, the other a grass-green
silk. The bodices of Leah’s gowns were too close-fitting for me, but I’d be able to let out the waistbands of the skirts.

“See,” said Doggett, as I stood in the dark blue taffeta, “if I cut off this hem and the one on the green skirt, they’ll be
the right length for you. Miss Leah can’t wear them any longer; look how the bottom edges are all frayed and dirty. You can
sew fresh hems. They’ll be good as new.”

She brought out a pair of long-bladed scissors from her work basket and swiftly cut the ruined hem away. Now my feet peeked
out, almost delicate-looking under the heavy folds. I shod them in imaginary slippers, with little silver heels. Doggett gave
me a black silk shawl sewn with shining blue beads, to hide my old bodice. She found a gray silk dress for herself; the hem
was much mended, but she said she’d have to take the skirt up anyway.

We paraded up and down the room in our new clothes and smiled at each other in mutual satisfaction. I saw myself at the ball,
my skirts uncurling like the petals of a flower, my hair bright against the black silk shawl, and I could have hugged Dog
in gratitude.

“We might be able to find you some shoes in the linen chest,” she said as I climbed back into my own drab skirts at last.

The chest, which sat at the end of Leah’s bed, was locked.

Dog put her hands on her hips and frowned. “I’ve never known Miss Leah to lock it before.” I thought there might well be some
papers to do with the ball in there, something she wouldn’t want her lady’s maid to see, a guest list perhaps. I knew a groom
had taken the invitations to the mail-coach in the nearest town only recently.

“Perhaps she has private business in it,” I said.

Dog snorted. “It’s where I keep the shoes she doesn’t wear much, like her old dancin’ slippers. She’ll need new ones for the
ball, with those huge feet of hers.”

Her little eyes flicked around. “I know where she keeps the key — I know where everything is in this room.” She gave me a
triumphant look. “I know what she keeps in that old jar of hers too!”

“I don’t think we should open it.”

“She’s no secrets from me! I see her newborn naked, morning and night. Anyway, her clothes are my business.” Dog marched over
to Leah’s bedside table and took a key out of a little checkered box. She held it up to me and winked.

Perhaps I had a premonition then, I don’t know. But I felt a profound reluctance to watch Dog open that chest, a sudden fear
of what it was Leah might be hiding away.

Doggett had no such qualms. With a complacent smile she fitted the key into the brass lock and turned it with difficulty.

I stepped forward. “Don’t, Dog! Leave it!”

But she had already flung back the lid.

T
here was a pause, long enough for her to gasp and let her breath out again in a shriek as she slammed the lid down again and
staggered back, her face as pale as cheese.

I rushed to her as she staggered, and half-lugged her over to the bed, where I made her sit down. Her forehead was greasy
with sweat. I thought she’d faint.

“What is it, Dog?” I asked, but I knew.

She held out the key mutely in her trembling fingers and I understood I was to lock the chest again. When it was locked up,
she seemed easier.

I came and sat close to her, patting her on the back encouragingly and trying not to screw up my nose at the smell of her
unwashed body. She put her bitten nails on the tatty red ribbon at her wrist, her amulet, and her breathing steadied. “It
can’t get out, not now.”

“I know what you saw,” I said. “It’s not alive, Dog.”

She looked at me in horror. “You know she has a bird in there?”

“It’s only feathers — a skin, a pelt. She found it by the mere one day. I was with her. She told me she’d not kept it.”

“It’s sacrilege, ain’t it, to keep such a thing? And in her chamber! No wonder she has bad dreams. My mistress is damned!”
Dog put her hands to her face and began to rock herself, moaning softly.

I tried to think what to do. “Let me help you to your room. You should lie down. It’s been a bad shock. I’ll tidy up in here.”

She began to wail. “I’ll lose my position! How can I look after Miss Leah now I know what’s in the chest? I daren’t come in
here again.”

“I’ll get rid of it,” I said quickly. “I’ll lock the chest again, afterward. If the mistress discovers it gone, I’ll take
the blame. But in turn I want you to do something for me.”

She turned to me, her eyes stretched wide, still trembling. I wasn’t sure if she was taking in what I said. “Dog, you must
tell no one of this, no one at all. Do you understand? If you do, I’ll tell the mistress it was you who pried, not me.”

She nodded, and I had to be content. I helped her to her room, which was stuffy with her sour smell, and pulled the grubby
coverlet over her once she’d fallen groaning on the bed. Strange how proudly she looked after Leah’s appearance, yet didn’t
care about her own cleanliness.

“Will you tell Miss Leah I’m sick?” she said.

I could see her eyes gleaming over the coverlet. She wasn’t
quite as faint as she pretended, I thought; and not unpleased at the opportunity to idle in bed all day.

“Miss Leah won’t return till luncheon,” I said. “I think by then you’ll be recovered.” And I left her.

Back in Leah’s bedchamber I knelt down, unlocked the chest, and looked in. Inside was a large gray and white bundle that took
up most of the space.

I had begun to shake. I forced myself to touch the thing, to take hold of it.

The pure white feathers melted softly against my fingers; the pearly gray skin was supple and smooth. It smelled of water
and weeds, and something oily or fishy.

Averting my gaze, I pulled it out. When I looked it was hanging glistening from my fingers, each feather lying snug and smooth
on the next. It was so light that if I breathed on it, it might have floated away.

I imagined Leah wearing it round her shoulders; I saw it nestling around her like a cloud, her long white neck rising from
the feathers.

But as soon as she put it on she would realize her true nature; she would be transformed into the unthinkable.

And there would be no escape, because the swanskin would cling to human flesh like a second skin; it would stick so fast you’d
peel your own away with it as you tore it off.

For a moment I stood, the swanskin hanging from my hand, while bile rose in my throat. I knew what I had to do.

I took it over to the fireplace, where the coals still smoldered.
With my free hand I used the poker, and a tiny flame licked them into heat.

I fed an edge of the swanskin into the golden center. I waited. Soon the flame would grow, rip along the feathers and turn
them black. I half-expected the swanskin to scream out in pain.

Burn
, I thought,
burn, and die
.

In a fever of agitation I waited for the feathers to shrivel up in a ball of fire. I stoked the coals up again, pushing the
skin in deeper as the coals turned from golden to red.

After a while I had to give up. The coals were used and ashy and had begun to splutter weakly under the swanskin.

The feathers are still too damp
, I thought desperately.
They won’t burn
.

I’d have to take the skin outside and bury it so Leah would never find it again. It hardly mattered where I buried it as long
as it was deep enough.

I found an old skirt that Doggett and I had rejected earlier. I was about to wrap it around the swanskin and carry the whole
bundle downstairs when my feverish gaze was caught by Dog’s sewing basket sitting on Leah’s bedside table.

I threw back the lid, and from among the neatly ordered spools of silk arranged inside, the gleaming scissors Dog had used
earlier winked at me.

Sharp enough to cut material, sharp enough to cut through skin and feathers. I’d destroy the swanskin utterly with those long,
sharp blades before I buried the pieces.

I crouched down on the floor and began to cut. The skin was oddly resistant, thicker than it looked; it was like cutting through
great wads of gray vellum. Gripping the handles fiercely, almost blind with the horror of it, I closed the scissors hard together
with both hands and the skin split at last.

Feathers rose around me; pieces of skin crackled emptily to the floor. I might have been skinning a goose for Aunt Jennet
but for the quantity of feathers. The room was full of them: on the bed, the table, the chest top, drifting around the base
of the wardrobe, everywhere. They were up my nostrils, in my mouth.

I couldn’t breathe. There was no air left in the room, only feathers, floating. I fell back against the bed; the scissors
dropped from my hand. My mouth was clotted, crammed, with them; I was choking. I tasted the dankness of the mere.

Then the door opened.