Murkmere (4 page)

I was fastening the latch on the window again when the door burst open and a girl marched in.

“If you think you’re to be my companion, you’re mistaken,” she announced. “You might as well pack up your things again and
go home.”

She could only be Miss Leah.

T
he was a tall, gawky thing, with fair, almost white hair, like cotton on a spindle, and so fine and light it blew round her
head with every movement she made. Her front was as flat as a wooden board, and her skirts, for all their delicate stitching
and costly material, hung round her in a sadly limp manner.

“Are you deaf? I said you could leave.”

I thrust my amulet back into my bodice and raised my chin. Unfortunately, she was at least a head taller and could look down
her long nose at me.

“It was the Master who engaged me,” I said, gathering my wits. “Is it the Master who orders me to go now?”

“It’s my own wish,” she snapped, tossing her head so her hair flew. “My guardian will do as I say, you’ll see. I’ve Doggett,
my maid. I don’t need anyone else.”

I took a chance. “If the Master agrees with you, I’ll go,” I said calmly. “Shall we go to him now, Miss?”

She gave me a long, hard look. “He’s resting,” she said shortly. “He always rests in the afternoon. I’ll ask him at dinner.”
She looked around, as if suddenly distracted, and wrinkled her nose. “This was where my old nurse slept. It smells of her
still.” She glared at me again. “I’ve no need of another nurse either!”

“I’m to be your companion, not your nurse,” I said, standing my ground. Aunt Jennet would have been amused at the idea. In
spite of myself I smiled, and Leah looked fiercer than ever. Then, suddenly turning on her heel and sticking her head out
of the open door, she bellowed “Doggett? Doggett?” in a most unladylike way.

We both waited, she eyeing me sideways and tapping her foot irritably on the floor. It was a large, ungainly foot, clad though
it was in a fine velvet slipper. “We’ll go out for a walk when Doggett comes,” she said abruptly to me. “If you’re to play
my companion till dinnertime, you might as well come with us, I suppose.”

I said nothing, but took my cloak from the wardrobe, glad to turn my back on her. I could still feel her staring at me, her
eyes boring into me with intense curiosity. After Silas Seed’s remarks, I was relieved that she appeared to have full use
of her mental faculties. And more than enough of them too, for there was a disconcertingly intelligent gleam in her eyes when
I faced her again.

“So — a girl from the village,” she said slowly. “The village I’m not allowed to visit. What’s your name, village maiden?”

“Agnes Cotter, Miss,” I said, lifting my chin a little, for I wasn’t going to forget my father had been chief thatcher. “But
you may call me Aggie, if you wish.”

She burst into loud laughter. I was staring at her, bemused, when there was a knocking on the bedroom door. “Come in, Doggett!”
she yelled.

The maid was a sallow-faced girl of perhaps sixteen, with a pursed, prissy mouth as if she’d bitten into a crab apple, and
small black eyes like beads.

“My maid, Dog,” said Leah.

No wonder the maid looks so sour-faced, I thought.

We left the house through a door in the kitchen quarters. As we trailed across the stable yard, I turned to look up. The back
of Murkmere Hall was as flat and featureless as the front, a slab of gray stone broken by long windows, mostly shuttered and
dark. I’d noticed the creeper that covered the front. On this side too it clung to the cracks in the stone and spread leafless
black tendrils in all directions; it even grew across a few of the upper windows.

The house that was now my home was imprisoned in a truss of dead, black bonds.

Leah set off across the parkland under the overcast sky, with the maid and me tagging behind, our breath puffing white.

“Where do you usually walk with the mistress?” I asked, keeping my voice low so Leah shouldn’t hear.

Doggett shrugged, her face surly. “Nowhere particular. She walks for a bit all meek and mild, then she tries to give me the
slip.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if she can, she’ll go to the mere. She knows I won’t follow her there.”

“Why not?”

She shuddered. “It’s bottomless, the mere, dug out of a marsh pool long ago. You’d drown if you fell in. She goes to see the
swans aren’t trapped in the ice. That’s what she says.”

“But swans have no need of our care,” I said, puzzled. “Nor does any bird.”

“Try that on the mistress! She don’t give a fig for holy things.”

“In the mornings when she has her lessons, do you walk with her to the watchtower?”

Doggett shook her head vehemently. “She goes with the Master. I’ll not go near that blasphemous place.”

I stared at her. But she’d quickened her pace to catch up with Leah, as if she didn’t want to say anything more, and I had
to hurry after them. It wasn’t easy to walk fast: the grass was winter brown and the ground hard and lumpy with rock-like
clods of mud.

Leah ignored me until she suddenly pointed with her gloved hand. “Look, there! Do you see it?”

“You mean the door in the wall, Miss Leah?”

We had reached the boundary of the Murkmere estate. A high stone wall ran as far as the eye could see, and in front of us,
set into it, was a stout wooden door with iron keyholes top and bottom.

“It’s locked. So are all the other doors and gates round the walls of Murkmere. And do you know why?”

“To keep out vagabonds from the Wasteland?”

Leah shook her head, and her pale hair under the black silk hat floated out like floss. “To keep me in. I’m a prisoner here!”

“Surely not, Miss.”

At once she went over to the door and began to push and kick it, as if to prove to me that it was locked.

I looked at Doggett. Her little eyes slid to her mistress, then she drew me away, out of Leah’s hearing, as if she were going
to tell me something. The next moment we heard the sound of running feet on the hard ground, and in the distance the cawing
of startled rooks.

We stared at each other and whirled round simultaneously. In the fading light, Leah was flitting away like a shadow.

“Quick!” I gasped. “We must run after her! Mr. Silas said not to let her alone!”

But Doggett stood there as if frozen, her face pasty with cold. “But she’ll have gone to the mere again.” She wrung her hands
together. She wore no gloves, like me, and her dirty nails were bitten to the quick. “Oh, what’ll I do? They’ll skin me in
the house if they find out!”

“I’ll come to the mere with you,” I said. “Between us we’ll find her.”

Doggett’s face set stubbornly. “It’s marsh all round and rushes sharp as spears. She knows the safe paths. Other folk could
sink to their death in that mire.”

“We must go and call her name at least,” I said impatiently. “We can’t abandon her! It’ll be night before long, and she won’t
dare linger. Does she have her amulet with her?”

“Amulet?” said Dog. “She wears none.” Her mouth twisted. “One day she’ll pay for it, and good riddance, I say!”

I was alarmed. No wonder Leah required watching. There was no time to ask why she did such a dangerous thing as to walk unprotected.

“Then at least show me the way to the mere,” I said. “I’ll look for her myself.”

Doggett’s face was glazed and moony in the gathering dusk, but at last she turned sullenly.

It was starting to freeze. I was glad to be moving. But the sight of the mere, thickly lidded with ice, and the dense fringe
of black rushes that grew up from the mud around it, chilled me further. There was a tiny island in the middle, a tangle of
dark boughs hanging low. A profound silence hung over the water, as if every living creature had abandoned it to night.

Leah was nowhere to be seen.

“Miss Leah!” I shouted. “Miss Leah! Where are you?” My voice was tiny, sucked at once into the darkening clouds above us.

Dog touched my arm and made me start. “It’s no good, Aggie. She’ll be hiding somewhere. We’ll never find her.”

I stared across the lake, straining my eyes to see Leah’s ghostly figure. Out on the ice the thin shadow of a bird, a heron,
stood motionless against the sky.

I wasn’t frightened, though I knew a heron’s significance and touched my amber at once. There was a dignity about the heron
as it stood alone in the dusk, an almost human quality. It looked like a gaunt old man waiting patiently for death.

Dog was agitated by my sudden distraction, anxious to leave the place. She stared at the heron in fear, and fingered the amulet
of red wool around her neck. “Come, it’ll be dark soon,” she said, and pulled at me.

We made our way toward the house, across grass that had become powdery and soft with frost. The cold bit at our cheeks.

“You won’t tell, will you?” she said. “I never tell.”

“Tell what?” I said, startled out of my thoughts. In my mind, the sadness of the lonely heron and the memory of my aunt at
our cottage doorway as she waved goodbye this morning had become mingled together. I felt a deep longing for home that made
my heart ache.

“That we lost the mistress again,” said Dog impatiently.

“But if she’s not returned, we must say something,” I said.

We had reached the stable yard, deserted and unlit by any lantern, silent but for the night sounds of the horses in the straw.
I was making for the back entrance when Dog grasped my arm to stop me and my cloak fell back. I thought of her
filthy chewed nails, which were digging into my flesh. I tried to thrust her away, but she hung on like a leech.

“Listen,” she hissed. “If you want to stay, you’d do best to listen to me. Say nothing of Miss Leah’s escape. If we slip upstairs
unnoticed, no doubt we’ll find her back already, pleased as punch with herself. That’s the way it always is.”

“But Mr. Silas —“ I began.

She gripped me harder. “Mr. Silas will whip me if he knows what’s happened.”

“Surely not,” I protested. “Mr. Silas is gentle and kind.”

Her breath was sour in my face. “You think so? Promise me you’ll stay silent?”

“I can’t,” I said, and thrust her away.

I hadn’t meant to use such force, but my arms were strong from lugging milk pails from the common to our cottage each morning.
She fell against the mounting block and must have bruised herself. When she got up, her look was malevolent.

“You know what a heron signifies, don’t you?” she hissed. “The Comin’ of a Stranger Who Brings Ill. The heron arrived today,
and so did you!”

I said nothing, for I knew the
Table of Significance
as well as she, and what she said about the heron’s meaning was true. And I realized I’d made an enemy in Doggett, something
I hadn’t intended and might well regret later.

We went in without speaking, and I followed her to Leah’s bedchamber, which was in the same passage as my own.

Dog had been right: Leah was already there. Her fire was lit and the room bright with candlelight. She was pacing restlessly
around as if it were a prison, her face stormy.

“Oh, Miss, where have you been?” cried Dog.

Leah paid her no attention. “My guardian wants to see you,” she said abruptly to me. “He’s staying in his bed for the rest
of the day. I’ve just visited him.”

“Is it another turn, Miss?” said Dog, all sweet solicitude. “I believe I know the cause.” She stared at me spitefully.

“The cold’s at his bones, that’s all,” Leah muttered. “He’ll be warmer in bed.”

“Should I go and see him now, Miss?” I said.

I knew from her manner that the Master and she must have disagreed about my staying, and that the Master had won the argument.
But I felt no gladness, especially when she glared back at me and said with a kind of cold triumph, “Yes, go! If you’re to
stay as my companion, you’ll suffer as I do — you’ll be a prisoner too!”

Both girls were looking at me with identical expressions of dislike as I left. I had never felt so alone.

I found the Master’s room by accident. I knew the room must be on the ground floor, but the passages were shadowy and deserted,
though my boots echoed on the stone as if invisible people followed me.

Then I saw the iron chair.

It was standing beside a door, which I guessed must lead to the Master’s room. Though the chair was empty, it still
seemed to hold his presence. Each bar was locked to the framework of the chair and had its own keyhole. I felt a shudder go
through me as I came up to it.

“What do you want here?” a voice said roughly.

My heart lurched. I hadn’t seen him: a footman standing in the darkness, his face lugubrious.

“The M-Master wishes to see me,” I stammered.

He knocked on the door. A woman’s voice called, “Enter.” The footman nodded at me, and I opened the door myself and went through.

The room seemed enormous to me, and very bright and warm and comfortable after the shadowy chill of the passage. There were
armchairs covered in velvet and brocade set invitingly before the leaping fire, and rugs in jewel colors over the oak floor.
On the walls, framed miniatures were hung together in a diamond pattern. Every polished surface displayed the pale luster
of porcelain or the rich shine of lacquer.

A room in which to enjoy one’s leisure
, I thought, at first.

Then I saw the physic bottles ranged along the shelves of a mahogany medicine cabinet near me: enough to stock an apothecary’s
shop. Beyond the cabinet was a table on which a cluster of glass measures held the twinkle and gleam of silver medicine spoons.

It was an invalid’s room, I realized, and smelled as much: the air was heavy with burning herbs and the bitterness of vinegar.
But I’d not thought the Master was ill; I remembered his ruddy cheeks that morning.

I turned in bewilderment and saw the bed, a great oak four-poster, with curtains of crimson damask drawn back. With a shock
I saw that the Master lay in it, his face as white as the pillows’ frills, his eyes half-closed. I wasn’t sure he was awake;
indeed, he might well be dead. Frightened, I tried to tiptoe out again, cursing my boots.