Authors: Patricia Elliott
T
he snow fell all that afternoon and evening. Surrounded by glimmering curtains of flakes, Murkmere Hall was shut away in its
own world.
Leah looked white and furious. Jukes the footman had locked the main doors on orders from Mr. Silas, who said it was the Master’s
wish. It was too dangerous for her to go to the mere, with snow hiding the ice. I passed the Master’s door on my way to the
kitchens and heard her arguing inside: her voice raised and angry, the Master’s deep rumble patiently pacifying her for a
second until she began again.
For the rest of the afternoon, while the daylight lasted, she paced from window to window, as if the next she came to might
show her that it had stopped snowing at last.
When darkness had fallen, we went to her parlor to pass the time until she had to change for supper. Leah began to play Solo,
slapping the cards down and muttering to herself.
I took up the mending; my stitches weren’t as neat as Doggett’s, but it was something to do. The evening stretched before
us, as bleak and boring as every other at Murkmere Hall.
The prospect finally drove me to look up from my needle and venture, “It might be more entertaining for you, Miss, if we played
a game together.”
Leah paused. “You play cards?” she said in surprise.
“Aunt Jennet taught me.”
“Your schoolmistress aunt?” Leah looked disappointed. “Then I suppose she taught you improving games, like Calepin.”
“We didn’t spend much time on Calepin.” I studied my stitches modestly. “Aunt Jennet considered my vocabulary sufficiently
good without it. Indeed, we both thought Calepin profoundly dull.”
I could feel Leah staring at me, as if a whole world of new possibilities were suddenly unveiling itself before her. “You
know Palabra?” she demanded, in growing excitement. “Six Pairs? Niello?”
I nodded to each, and she sprang up. “I’ve a special pack for Niello!”
“Niello is over so quickly,” I said, for I knew she’d win it. I never won at Niello, even with ordinary cards. “And there’s
not much skill in it, to my mind.”
Leah was taken aback. “What do you propose then?”
“Do you know Commotion?” I said slyly, for I knew she would not. Aunt Jennet had once invented it to take my mind
off a toothache. It was the most amusing, rambunctious game I knew. And there was no skill in it at all.
Leah’s face lit up, like a small child’s when offered a treat. “Commotion? No, I don’t know Commotion. Teach it to me.”
We laughed and laughed, sprawling on the floor, our legs in all directions, skirts crushed, cards scattered. Leah’s fine hair
hung down around her face and her cheeks were pink. By the end of the game I was giggling so much I could scarcely speak.
Jukes had to cough several times before we realized he was there, his long face reproachful. “Please forgive the interruption,
Miss Leah. I wanted to tell Agnes Cotter that the bell has gone.”
“The bell?” I said stupidly, the giggles still bursting inside me.
He nodded solemnly. “Mr. Silas thought you’d like to know, since you always come to Devotion.”
“If Mr. Silas calls, then you must go. Mr. Silas runs this house.” The laughter on Leah’s face vanished so fast I might have
dreamt that I’d ever seen her so happy and uninhibited. A moment ago I’d believed we’d become friends, as if the card game
had wrought some alchemy between us. But now I saw that I was quite mistaken.
By the following morning, the sky was clear and filled with bright white light, but it was evident the Master would not be
able to ride through the soft deepnesses of snow to reach his
books. The path to the watchtower was completely covered. It was decided that Leah’s lessons would take place in the Master’s
rooms.
But what about me?
I thought.
Am I to be a prisoner all day, shut inside like his ward, forever walking up and down these stone passages to pass the time?
And a secret defiance began to smolder inside me. I had to get outside, into that white glistening world under the open sky.
I waited, biding my time. It seemed an age while Leah ate her breakfast and collected her work. I followed at a distance as
she made her way to the Master’s rooms, and I heard Jukes announce her. There was the sound of the door closing.
Upstairs in my room, I threw on my cloak and fastened my boots with hasty fingers. It would be no use going to any of the
main doors. They might be locked. But the back doors in the kitchen quarters would be open to allow for the coming and going
of servants into the yard.
By now I knew Murkmere’s labyrinth of passages and wove swiftly through them unnoticed, to a door near the pantry that led
out to the vegetable garden. I was lifting the latch when Mistress Crumplin came jangling her way round the corner from the
kitchen. She stopped when she saw me, the keys jumping at her waist, and eyed me suspiciously.
“If you wish to walk, Miss Agnes, you should have someone with you — Doggett perhaps. I’ll call her.”
“I’ll be perfectly safe, Mistress Crumplin,” I said. “I’ve been
walking in the grounds before today without company. I’ve my amulet with me and won’t be in danger by daylight, I’m sure.”
But to my dismay Mistress Crumplin and her keys had already swung around. She was on her way back to the kitchens, shouting
“Doggett, Doggett,” in her loud, flat voice; in a minute my chance of escape would be gone and the moon-faced Dog would be
at my side.
As she turned the corner, I slipped stealthily through the door and was outside, shutting it behind me with the tiniest click
of the latch falling back into place.
The new snow was soft but firm, with a slight stickiness that held my steps steady. I began walking away from the house as
fast as I could, conscious of my lone, dark figure in the white landscape and, in the utter silence, the faint squeaking of
the snow under my boots. I was frightened they’d send a foot-man after me or that I’d hear Dog herself wailing my name on
the glittering air; but no one came.
The snow lay in perfect folds, as clean and fresh and new as bride’s linen. It was piled up against the wall of the kitchen
gardens, against the trunks of the oak trees beyond; the bushes looked as if they had been hung with tablecloths.
I went through the door in the garden wall and skirted around the back of the stable block. I could hear the ostlers shoveling
the snow away in the yard, but the buildings hid me. Then I saw the tower beyond the stables. The rise was smooth and glistening
with untrodden snow, the trees a dark crest at the top.
There’ll be no one there
, I thought,
no keepers working round it, no one outside or in
.
My heart began to thump. I didn’t think anything more than that, I didn’t put my real desire into words, but I began to climb
the rise, drawing in deep breaths of the sharp air to calm myself.
At the top I stood for a moment in the soft blue-gray shadow the tower cast on the snow. Nothing moved in the copse behind
me. Far off I could hear the scrape of the ostlers’ spades on the stable cobbles, but round the tower the silence was frozen,
as if I’d entered a magic world.
I began to walk round the square walls, my boots crushing snow-matted weeds. The bricks glowed a deep blood red above the
snow, but in the sunlight I could see where the salt winds were starting to eat them away. The huge winch and the chains that
ran up to the top window were outlined with a delicate tracery of ice, the little house half-hidden under a crown of snow.
Then I came to the door that Leah and Jukes had used.
A brass latch, weathered and green, was set in the oak. No bolts, no keyhole, no iron bars or chain. I put my hand out and
the brass was cold under my fingers. It lifted easily, as I knew it would. The tower wasn’t locked: the Master trusted his
servants to obey him. Anyway, none of them dared venture so close to such a blasphemous place.
The door opened under my hand, into darkness, scraping over a stone floor.
At first I couldn’t make out anything after the brightness of the snow, but then I saw a vast, empty room, narrow wooden stairs
at the far side rising under a brick arch. Some light came down from a small window high up; tiny dust motes danced in the
beam. The air was musty, smelling of raw wood.
I wanted to go in. I wanted to find the books, to touch them, to look at them. The words came into my head by themselves:
I’ll be so quick, no one will know
.
I think I hesitated a minute, no more. In that minute the snowy air I’d drawn through my lungs seemed to fizz through my blood,
filling me with boldness. I lifted my skirts, stepped in, and pulled the door behind me.
If I’d thought of the consequences of being discovered, everything would have been very different.
Silence closed round me, a different silence from outside, expectant, as if the tower were waiting to see what I would do.
I looked at the stairs rising up through the dusty light from the window, and swiftly crossed the stone floor toward them
before I could change my mind. The unstained oak boards were marked darkly by feet: Leah’s and Jukes’s, and Mr. Silas’s, perhaps.
I put my own feet in their marks as if I too had a right to be there, and I began to climb, clutching the handrail and peering
down at the shadowy rafters and supports that crossed the empty well. I was out of breath, and the sweat of fear was beginning
to prickle beneath my clothes by the time I came up into the wide landing that ran round the top.
To my left was an open space containing lift machinery. Through the far window I could see the chains that carried the lift
up to this level each day, the iron supports that held it in place while the Master’s wheelchair was brought in over runners
laid across the landing.
Before me a door was half-open, light blazing through the gap. I stepped from the last stair, across the landing, and went
through into the bookroom.
The light was coming from what I took to be a huge door of glass, long and broad, reaching down to the floor in the outside
wall of the room. It looked as if you could step straight out into pearly sky over the snowy trees of the estate; I could
see the boundary wall, even the Wasteland beyond. It was like a picture in a frame, except that the clouds moved.
But I was a child of darkness, brought up in the greasy gleam of tallow. I’d never seen so much light and space. I didn’t
dare go near the window in case I fell out. I scarcely saw what was in the room itself: the cabinets of polished wood, with
glass lids that reflected the clouds.
Then I grew braver. I told myself that the window was shut firm until it was opened; that there was strong glass between me
and the sky. Curiosity overcame me, and I began to investigate the cabinets.
The nearest was filled with neat stacks of books. The largest were at the bottom, piled up to the smallest at the top, each
carefully indexed with labels stuck to the underside of the lid, and handwritten. I read some of the titles:
Visions of
Other Worlds, The Fight for the Future, The Free Soul, Journeys in Uncharted Seas
. I felt my eyes grow bigger and bigger, like a hungry man at a feast.
But the lid was locked.
I tried all the cabinets in turn, flying from one to another, forgetting my fear of the window. They were filled with books,
but they were all locked.
Sick with disappointment, I stared down. The faded leather covers were curling and ragged at the edges, the gold tooling of
the titles almost worn away. They couldn’t have been more different from the readers I’d had in school, with their bindings
of bright linen and the new white paper inside on which the black ink stood out boldly. Even now I could smell the sweet vanilla
scent of that paper, so enticing until you realized the dullness of the words printed on it.
But these were proper books at last.
I looked around as if I might suddenly see a bunch of keys lying somewhere, on the mantel over the empty grate or on the seat
of one of the chairs. Even the drawers of the desk were locked. I should have realized that the Master wouldn’t leave his
possessions freely available for intruders.
There were covered braziers around the room to protect the books from damp. I thought suddenly that someone must light them
each day. I should go before I was discovered.
But as I turned to leave, my eyes fell on the pair of double doors set in one of the inside walls. I’d been too distracted
by the cabinets to pay them attention. They must lead to another room, somewhere else the keys might be hidden.
I tried the right handle; it turned easily, and I stood on the threshold of a dark, windowless room that smelled stiflingly
of dust. It was too dark to see where the room ended, but it seemed surprisingly large and something was filling all the space.
I opened the door wider behind me to let in light.
And then I saw the vast bird that floated beneath the ceiling.
It wasn’t moving. It was dead, and had been dead a long time. Its body had decayed away into nothing. Only its giant skeleton
was left suspended in the air, bare bones gleaming in the half-light, knobbed head reaching out for the kill. Even the feathers
had crumbled from the huge papery wings. It was greater in size than any bird I had ever seen and, even as my mouth opened
in a silent scream, I knew what it must be.
Somehow I got out, closed the door, and stumbled out of the bookroom, my hand at my amber, my heart thudding, my hair coming
down around my ears.
Then far below me I heard the door open.
I
n panic I turned back to the bookroom, my boots thudding over the floorboards. One of the double doors to the inner room was
still open, and I closed it. My hands were shaking so much it was hard to turn the knob.
The only place to hide was behind the armchair on the far side of the fireplace. I darted over and crouched down behind its
high, upholstered back, clutching my amber to me, thankful that the chair’s embroidered skirts hid my boots.