Murkmere (24 page)

There were only two days left before the ball.

T
he storm came at last during the night, but in the vastness of Murkmere Hall the thunder was muffled. The dawn, when it came,
was chill and gray; the rain teemed down.

Leah began to lament before she’d even had breakfast. “I must pick the flowers today, and now they’ll all be wet.”

“You can’t go out in this!” I exclaimed.

“I can, and you must help me, you and Scuff and Doggett and some of the other servants too. The Hall must be decorated for
the ball.”

Nothing would persuade her otherwise, not even when the servant girls turned sulky and refused to budge from the house, saying
they had chores to do for Mistress Crumplin.

Leah looked half-crazed that morning, her hair un-brushed, her eyes wild and desperate. In the end it was only the two of
us who went out into the rain with baskets and
knives, and the hems of our skirts were quickly clotted with mud and slime. Overnight, the grassy spread of the estate had
returned to marsh.

Leah fretted all the while as she plowed across the wet ground. “The carriages won’t make headway; the roads will be treacherous
in the rain. No one will come.”

“The guests will come somehow,” I said as comfortingly as I could. “They won’t want to miss it.”

She didn’t acknowledge the remark. I had let her lead me to the mere, and now we began to fill our baskets in silence. The
dripping rushes and grasses were fiendish to cut; I thought uneasily that Leah was bringing the mere into the house.

As we made our way back to the house, soaked through, she turned her wet face to me and said suddenly, “Thank you for coming
with me, Aggie.”

“Oh, Leah,” I said, overcome.

But her eyes were distracted as she looked ahead at the Hall, its gray stone façade as gloomy as the lowering sky. She’d already
forgotten me.

The rain continued, all through that day and the next. The house felt damp and cold.

“Fires must be lit in all the bedchambers,” said Leah. She’d not rested all day, but had inspected all the preparations with
scant praise for the servants, whose faces grew sour as week-old milk.

I went up later to check that the rooms were warming. When I touched the walls, the old wallpaper still felt wet. More wood
would be needed upstairs before evening, but at least Silas was overseeing that. When I looked down from a window that overlooked
the drenched stable yard, I saw him with a youth who was busy chopping timber in the rain and whose sturdy outline reminded
me painfully of Jethro. The youth’s broad-brimmed hat was dripping; the heavy, oiled cape that Silas wore was slick with rivulets
of water. There seemed no end to the rain.

In the Great Hall, Leah was worrying that the logs in the vast fireplace were too damp and green to catch properly and didn’t
banish the smell of age. But the tables were polished and gleaming, ready for the banquet, and I knew the tapestries had been
beaten free of dust, for I’d helped in it myself.

“Tomorrow night it will smell of good food and wine in here,” I whispered to cheer her, as she went to stand at the head of
the receiving line.

A runner had just arrived, bringing news of the first guests, and the senior members of the household were hastily assembling
to welcome them: Silas, Mistress Crumplin, and some of the footmen and keepers.

Leah’s face was set and white; her hair — swept up, powdered and beribboned — seemed too big for it, like an oversized knit
hat that might sink if she moved too quickly. She wore an embroidered day dress of ice-blue silk, with ruffles at the elbows,
and long cream gloves hid her damaged hands.

She went to stand next to the Master, who had been wheeled to the head of the line. I saw them exchange a whisper, and he
took her hand and held it. The bars across his chair had been removed so he could move his arms freely. A fur rug covered
his legs, and he wore a pale-gold quilted waistcoat beneath his black silk jacket; a curled wig hid his hair.

Minutes passed, half an hour.

The rain fell steadily onto the steps outside, and the afternoon grew grayer. As they waited for their guests in the damp
draft from the open door, the Master and his daughter might have been carved from wood, so still were they, hand in hand,
staring at nothing.

The Master stirred at last.

“Where are these guests? The staff should go back to their duties. Silas, go out on the steps. See if you can glimpse the
carriages.”

Silas went out, and a second later was back again. “They’ve had to leave the carriages at the gates, Sir. The drive’s water-logged.”

Leah came to life with a sudden hysterical giggle. The Master ignored her and she fell silent, her hand to her mouth.

“Then take out umbrellas, they may need spares. And send our manservants to help their footmen with the luggage.”

Silas departed. The Master motioned Leah to wheel him out beneath the porch. And that was where the whole receiving line ended
up, all of us craning to see the first guests
come down the drive, for I too slipped out and stood at one side, the rain dripping from the lintel onto my painstakingly
curled ringlets.

The men and women of the Ministration came slowly toward us through the rain, dark figures in their voluminous traveling garments.
Their black silk umbrellas bobbed up and down as they picked their way carefully round the puddles. As the dark procession
drew closer to the house, a chill crept over me. The stiff spread of the umbrellas, the curiously jerky, pecking motion as
they walked, the black clothes: the Ravens of Death had come to Murkmere Hall.

I found myself clutching my amber. It was a long time since I’d done that.

Guests continued to arrive all through that long afternoon. The passages echoed with strange voices and heavy boots; the rooms
held the leftover murmurs of recent conversation. There were different smells in the house: the cloying bitterness of the
ladies’ white face powder; drifts of rich perfumes — gardenia, jasmine, musk; brandy-laden breath and travel-stained clothes;
sickly sweet hair pomade; the pungent scent of nero leaf.

I lurked in the Great Hall for as long as I could, curious to see the latest arrivals, but at last I had to take notice of
Mistress Crumplin’s wails for more help with the guests’ teas. Later, with aching feet, I went to help Leah with the flowers.

She was still wearing her gloves, filthy from shaking so many hands, and she kept them on while she furiously twisted the
long purple-flowered points of rosebay willow-herb into a garland of pale yellow grasses. The blue ribbons were dangling around
her ears.

“I should be allowed to attend the dinner tonight. It’s not fair!”

I tried clumsily to copy her garland. “Tomorrow you’ll be guest of honor.”

She shook her head so angrily that dislodged powder misted her lace collar. “I should be there tonight. I’m worried about
what my guardian will say to Lord Grouted.”

“But where is Lord Grouted?” I asked.

“He always arrives last. The Ministration will wait to go into dinner until he appears. He likes to keep both host and guests
hungry and fearful. No wonder my guardian hates him!”

We’d supped together in the parlor and had the candles lit by the time a footman knocked on the door.

“Word’s been sent that the Lord Protector comes, Miss.”

Leah stood up slowly, her face ashen. She held out her hand. “Come with me, Aggie.”

I took her cold hand, and together we left the parlor with its fire and candlelight and hurried down the passage to the Great
Hall, where tables glittered with silver cutlery and cut glass, waiting for the dinner guests. Beyond the fire’s bright circle,
the tapestries hung motionless, the violent scenes they depicted obscured by shadow. The huge room was almost
empty. Only the Master in his chair waited in darkness by the double doors, with Jukes and Pegg beside him.

Leah rushed to the Master and pressed her cheek to his. “You must be so fatigued, Sir.”

He patted her hand. “I survive, child.” He gestured at the footmen. “Bring a torch from one of the sconces. It’s too dark.
Light more candles.”

The footmen were about to obey when the knocking came, a truly thunderous noise, as if a god at least demanded entrance. Jukes
went at once to open the doors at the Master’s nod, but it was only the Lord Protector’s footman, resplendent in blood-red
satin, sent ahead to give notice of his master’s imminent arrival. I melted back into the shadows.

The outside doors remained open, and a chill breeze blew through the Hall, making the candles flutter. I saw Leah shiver.
Jukes took a torch and, holding it aloft, went out to stand beneath the porch. His hand was shaking; he couldn’t hold the
torch still and the flame tore raggedly in the wind.

The Great Hall was suddenly filled with noise from outside: the crunch and skid of wheels over stone and mud, the crack of
a whip, the frightened neighing of horses.

Leah started, but she didn’t speak. There was a short pause, a heartbeat, inside the Great Hall. We stood as if frozen in
an icehouse, listening to the tumult.

The Lord Protector cared nothing for potholes. Dog told me later she’d heard he’d driven his own carriage recklessly down
the drive in the darkness, and as it rocked and swayed
and the horses screamed in terror, he’d balanced on the carriage step and cracked the whip all the harder.

As I stood half-hidden by the tapestries, someone brushed past me.

“You shouldn’t be here!” hissed Silas.

But he was too distracted, too eager to be in the receiving line himself as the Lord Protector arrived, to wait for me to
go.

Boots clipped the steps. Then the doorway was filled with a dark bulk.

Porter Grouted was not a tall man; indeed you might almost have called him squat.

He had a massive head, which seemed all the larger since he was completely bald, and his pate, glistening with rain, was as
smooth and brown as tanned hide. No cravat could have made his great bull neck elegant. He was not at all the aristocratic
gentleman from the Capital I was expecting, and yet, as he came into the hall, shaking raindrops vigorously from his traveling
cloak, he dominated the room at once.

His eyes snapped round to survey the people waiting for him. Even with his lack of height, he towered over the Master in his
chair. There was a pause, too long, as they stared at one another.

“Ah, Gilbert. A long time, eh?” His accent was strong and ugly, the flat, nasal sound of the Capital.

“It’s been long since last we met, yes, My Lord.”

“Too long, Gilbert.” The Protector held out his hand without removing his gauntlet, and the Master took it.

“We’ve much to talk about,” said Lord Grouted. “It’s too long since you came to the sessions in the Capital. Time passes,
things change.”

“They do indeed,” said the Master dryly.

The Lord Protector turned from him to inspect Leah. “Your ward?”

Leah curtsied. She didn’t look at him.

“So you come of age tomorrow, do you, Miss Leah? Well, well. I remember you as a little puking creature, tiny as a bird!”
He hit his gauntlets together with a dull thud, and his teeth flashed in the candlelight. Leah bowed her head; a good thing,
for I was sure her eyes would shrivel him.

“My Lord, may I present my steward, Mr. Silas Seed?” said the Master, beckoning to Silas, who was standing close by. “No man
could have a better steward than Silas. He’ll look after your needs while you’re here.”

“Mr. Seed, eh? I recall you as a youth in the Capital. It’s good to meet you face-to-face again.” Was I imagining it, or did
Porter Grouted’s tone have surprising warmth for someone he’d met so long ago?

“But where’s your footman, My Lord?” asked Leah. “He must come inside, out of the rain.”

Grouted let out a bark of laughter. “He keeps my fool silent. It angered me with its chatter on the journey.” He barked out
through the door, “Bring the fool in now.”

The footman came in, his silks clinging darkly to him; the bedraggled creature he dragged on the end of a chain was equally
soaked.

At first I was frightened, thinking it was a large bird; but then I saw it was a little man with bandy legs, wearing a jerkin
and breeches of brightly dyed cockerel feathers. The feathers were bedraggled, like their owner. He had bare, filthy feet,
and the chain was fastened round one scrawny ankle.

“I hope your dousing has curbed your tongue, Gobchick,” said Lord Grouted roughly.

“But it’s a dreadful evening, My Lord,” protested Leah, “unfit for a dog.”

“Exactly.”

The tiny man scampered over to her on the end of his chain, his grotesque shadow following, and patted her feet. She didn’t
recoil, but put out a hand and gently touched the sodden feathers.

“’Tis not a dreadful evening at all, Missy,” he said in a little, childlike voice. “Why, ‘tis fine!”

“How d’you make that one out, Gobchick?” said Lord Grouted irritably, “when you’ve the evidence on your own shoulders?”

The little man spread wrinkled hands and beamed. “Why, ‘tis the fine company here that makes the fine evening, Master.”

Lord Grouted yanked the chain, and Gobchick fell over, his wet feet slipping on the floorboards. “A fine evening now, is it,
fool?”

“Dinner awaits us, My Lord,” said the Master, his voice tight.

“Well, lead on, man, lead on, as best you can.” Lord Grouted gave a guffaw, jerking his head at the chair.

Leah’s face was pinched with anger as she passed me, the Master’s expressionless as he trundled after her, pushed by Silas.
Only Lord Grouted noticed me standing in the shadows, and that was because Gobchick put out a hand and touched my skirts as
he was dragged along.

It was a curious gesture, like a blessing. But instinctively I shrank back from the misshapen little brown fingers and must
have let out a gasp, for Lord Grouted’s head turned, and for a moment his eyes stared into mine. In the candlelight I saw
the heavy lids had no eyelashes: they were as hairless as his head.