Murkmere (23 page)

The bars were heavy. I laid them down in the grate one by one. When I turned to him the high color had gone from his face.
“You’ve given yourself a terrible punishment with this prison, Sir,” I said gently. “Can’t you end it now?”

He flexed his fingers and stretched his arms. “Ah, that’s better, the pain’s gone. In some company I’m safest barred up, Agnes.
I can’t trust myself. I believe my wife’s death half-turned my mind.”

“But you’re recovered now, Sir.”

“I don’t think so. The Protector and his men have kept away from me for many years. They don’t think it either.”

“Don’t talk, Sir, don’t agitate yourself.”

He ignored me; I wasn’t sure he saw me at all. He seemed to be meandering, murmuring to himself. “How could a young man so
full of power and conviction tread the wrong path? And now he’s coming back here, my brother-in-law, the very person who thought
I wasn’t fit to rule over my own estate, that it should be given to another Minister!” He looked at me, and I saw that after
all his eyes were as alert as ever. “Should
I forgive Porter Grouted, Agnes Cotter? Or should I be barred up like an animal during the ball in case I harm him?”

I did my best. “No, Sir. You must show him you are in control.”

He shook his head slowly. “But believe me, if he says that my daughter is not to inherit my land, I think I may well kill
him. She must be accepted as my blood daughter now, my rightful heir. She loves this place as I do. She’ll look after it when
I’m gone.” He bent his head. “I nearly killed Grouted once before, you know. He’s head of the state and I shouldn’t have raised
my hand against him. I’m still a Minister, whatever I believe. I ought to respect him and his laws for the sake of the country’s
peace. That’s hard, hard for someone who doesn’t believe in the anointment rite. Do you believe in it, Agnes?”

“We’re taught to in school,” I said, taken aback. “Isn’t the Protector a vessel for the Almighty’s will?”

He gave a bitter smile. “Wait until you meet Lord Grouted, and then tell me whether that is so.”

As the spring nights passed into summer, I would feel my way through the dense blackness of the passage to Leah’s chamber,
not daring to take a candle for fear of being seen by Silas. Sometimes there would be light beneath her door, and I knew she’d
be working on the swanskin.

During the day I would trail her down to the mere and lose her in the thick undergrowth. The path we used to take was overgrown
now, and the stinging nettles were shoulder-high.

The cygnets had hatched, four ugly gray creatures with bent,
wormlike necks. They moved rapidly after their mother through the small yellow lilies that were scattered like bright coins
at the far edge of the mere.

The lilies put me in mind of the wages I was collecting each week and storing away for Aunt Jennet in an old sack, now clinking
satisfactorily when I took it from my cupboard. The last time I had been in Silas’s room he had pressed an extra revere on
top of the other two coins in my hand.

“I know you’re watching Leah, as I asked. I’ve seen you.”

I stiffened and tried to put the coin down on the desk but he forestalled me with his hand, wrapping it over mine. I shrank
back from his touch at once, and he sighed.

“We’re on the same side, Agnes. We’re both trying to protect Leah. Any heir and future Minister must be protected until they
come of age. That’s our duty, isn’t it, Agnes?” He leaned over the desk toward me. “Have you anything to tell me?”

His eyes were very bright and soft. They still had the power to make me weak, to make me believe he desired Leah’s safety
as I did.

“I’ve seen nothing,” I said truthfully.

So through those long days before the ball Silas watched me, I watched Leah, and Leah watched the Master. I knew she was anxious
about him by the way she hovered over him at mealtimes, more solicitous and gentle with him than ever. She was worried that
he’d not be well enough to entertain guests.

But it wasn’t only his health. I knew she checked the flying machine each day. I didn’t dare ask her about it. She hated
me now; she knew I followed her to the mere. She knew, and yet she knew nothing.

“Why are you always watching me?” she stormed. “You’re just like the others — Silas and Dog — spying. What are you afraid
I’m going to do? Grow wings and fly away?”

This was so close to the truth that I must have paled. She gave a contemptuous laugh and spat in my face. “You stupid dolthead,
don’t you know I’d never leave the Master?”

That was small comfort for me compared with the pain of her hatred. Jethro, seeing me still so pale and quiet when we met
next, gripped me through the bars of the gate and wouldn’t let me go.

“They’ll come looking for me, Jethro!” I hissed. “I can’t stay any longer. I have to play cards with Leah.”
She’ll play cards with me to amuse herself
, I thought sadly,
but she won’t speak to me
.

“Leah!” Jethro said in disgust. “Always Leah! Don’t you ever think of your aunt?”

“Of course I do!” I cried, stung. “I’m here for her sake.”

“And for Leah’s sake too, as you told me last time,” he said bitterly. “If you think of your aunt, what about me? Do you think
of me?”

I stared at him in surprise, and he stared furiously back. “Jethro, I do think about you, indeed I do. I wish I could tell
you …”

“What?” He pulled me closer against the bars.

“You’re hurting me.”

“Tell me.”

I looked nervously over my shoulder. After a fine day, a mist was blurring the edges of the drive. Though the keepers sometimes
worked late through the light evenings, the long slopes to the house where earlier I’d watched the horses pull the roller
mower were now deserted, the smooth grass silvered with an unmarked dew.

I turned back to Jethro and took a deep breath, pressing my face against the bars so close to his I could hear his breathing.
“This must be our secret, Jethro.”

“Yes?” His voice was eager, expectant.

“The reason I came back to Murkmere was because I learned the truth about Leah,” I whispered. “She’s no foundling. The Master’s
her father. But there’s more. Her mother, Blanche, his wife, was one of the avia. I stay here because I must save Leah from
that, Jethro.”

There was a long silence on the other side of the gate. He let go my hands, but I stayed pressed against the bars.

“Jethro? Do you believe me?”

“Oh, aye, I believe you. My father always said there were rumors about the Master’s wife.”

Quickly I told him about the swanskin, how I’d destroyed it, how Leah was trying to repair it, and how frightened I was that
one day she’d leave her human shape behind. “It’s not right that she should suffer such terrible punishment, Jethro.”

Jethro said nothing on the other side of the bars. His eyes wouldn’t meet mine.

“Jethro?” I said desperately, wanting his wisdom.

“Let it be,” he said, suddenly violent. His breath on my cheek was hot. “Don’t interfere.”

“What are you saying?”

His gaze shifted past me suddenly. “Hush,” he hissed, “someone comes.”

I was still staring at him like a loon, his face so close I could see the soft shininess of each hair of his beard and the
smoothness of his tanned cheeks above. Before I could turn to look behind me or say a word more, he was gone, running swift
as a hare for the Wasteland. By the time the keeper arrived at the gates, he had vanished.

It was that evening I noticed Leah’s hands.

I’d hurried back to play cards, but she was in no mood for them. She was in a temper, moving restlessly about the parlor,
ranting and stamping her foot.

“I can’t do anything for the ball without Silas there ahead of me. He’s taken it on himself to give the servants their orders
already, no word to my guardian or me. He usurps my guardian’s position all the time, and I can’t stop him!” She whirled round
on me as if I were to blame and flung out her hands.

I said nothing.

I sat stupefied with shock amongst the cushions on the settle, staring at the needle wounds in her flesh, the pocks of dried
blood, the red, ripped cuticles. Her long, slender hands that had known no hardship, that had worn gloves
against chapping winds and been smoothed nightly with chamomile cream, were now disfigured and raw, as if eaten by disease.

It was then I knew how painful her labor must be, night after night, as she struggled to pierce the thickness of the swanskin.

I wanted to weep for her, to stop it all. Yet still I sat dumb on the settle, fearful of letting out the truth.

My face must have shown my concern, for she snapped at me, “Don’t pity me! How dare you? I’m the Master’s ward, and one day
I’ll be Mistress here! Then it’ll be my orders they listen to!”

She gesticulated again with her ruined hands as she launched back into her tirade.

“Silas has picked the oxen to be killed and roasted. He’s filled the icehouse and the larders without word from me. There’s
hare and venison hanging up, have you seen? I’ve not even discussed the menu for the banquet with Mistress Crumplin and Gossop,
but I find he has spoken to them and it’s all planned. He’s even arranged which guests are to sleep in which bedchambers!
When I complain to the Master, he tells me how lucky we are to be able to depend on him!”

She sounded so desperate, I felt compelled to comfort her. “It’s better this way. What if he’d persuaded the servants to stop
idle and no preparation had been done?”

“We could have done it, you and I.”

“All of it? Without help from the servants?”

“They were working for me,” she said defiantly, “at the beginning.”

“Because of the money promised them. They wouldn’t have continued.”

She flashed me a furious look, though it was the truth and she knew it.

But she didn’t speak to me again that evening, retiring to bed with her temper and a book, so that as the candles burned down
I sat alone in the darkening parlor, with the painful knowledge that I’d let a chance for reconciliation between us slip away.

Jethro didn’t come to the gates again.

When the time for our next meeting came, I went down to the gates as usual, though this time I was more watchful. I didn’t
want to be surprised by the keeper again. While the rooks cawed mockingly over my head, I defied them and didn’t touch my
amber.

I waited and waited, all through the long, golden green summer evening, but Jethro didn’t come. At last in the fragrant twilight,
sick with disappointment, I slunk back to the house.

It wasn’t like Jethro to be scared off by a keeper. It was something else. It was what I’d told him about Leah. I never should
have mentioned the avia, for the old horror was still alive, passed down through the generations.

Jethro’s father — what had he told the small boy who wanted a bedtime story?

Two more weeks passed, golden days of sunshine for reaping the harvest. The keepers’ faces burned mahogany and were polished
with sweat.

But Silas, aloft on his horse, remained pale and elegant, his hands in soft leather gloves quiet on the reins, his face shadowed
by the rim of his hat. Only the dark hole of his mouth moved as he gave his orders.

Aunt Jennet would have enough bread to eat at last. The villagers’ hunger would be over, their stores replenished. It was
the first harvest I’d missed. I’d hear of the feasting from Jethro, the next time he came.

“Let him come, I need him,” I whispered.

Leah was becoming more fractious and ill-tempered as the ball came closer. The weather grew humid, the air heavy with the
threat of thunder that never came. Though I’d removed my quilted overskirt long ago, I prickled inside my dress as I endlessly
followed her, anxious about losing her for a moment.

Then, one oppressive evening while the storm clouds gathered overhead, it was time for Jethro to come again.

There was no figure waiting for me at the gates. I’d half-expected it, but a bitter lump rose in my throat all the same. It
was a month since I’d seen him, a month since I’d last had news of my aunt. With Leah so cold to me, I was lonely in the extreme.

But he might come still.

I clutched the bars as if his dear face were on the other side, close to mine again, but for all my fancying I couldn’t conjure
him from air.

My fingers were stiff and curled when at last I let go the bars and faced the drive again. There was candlelight in the windows
of Murkmere Hall, and house martins were twittering in and out of the eaves, busy feeding their young: tiny arrowheads swooping
low under the bruised sky. For a brief moment the sight of them brought me comfort.

I told myself I was glad to leave the gates and the quarreling rooks, the loneliness beneath the dark clouds. I didn’t look
back. It was too late.

“What does it matter to me?” I demanded out loud. “Not a fig, that’s what!” But it did matter. Jethro had abandoned me when
I needed him most.

I lifted my chin and quickened my pace. The Hall was where my duty lay. I must forget Jethro, for I’d other things to think
about.