The Gates of Sleep (18 page)

“And we leave their souls in your capable hands,”
Marina laughed.

The parson caught sight of the stack of stools, and
grinned. “Well, well. Have you managed to persuade John Parkin the
Younger to contribute as well?”

“It wasn’t a matter of persuading,”
Marina said, laughing, each laugh coming out in a puff of white on the still
air. “We told him that if he supplied the materials when Uncle Thomas
promised to teach him joinery, he could keep what he made—but
if we
supplied it, what he made would be going out on Boxing Day!”

“Now,” Margherita smiled. “Don’t
make him sound so ungenerous. I think he quite liked the idea. He certainly
wasn’t averse to it.”

“And he’ll have a trade when he’s
through, which is more than his father has,” the parson’s wife
pointed out, in that no-nonsense way that village parson’s wives,
accustomed to a lifetime of making do on the meager proceeds of their husband’s
livings, often seemed to acquire. “I don’t see where
he
has anything to complain of!”

When the cart was unloaded, they declined the invitation to
tea—the parson’s resources were strained enough as it was—and
took their places in the cart again. The pony was pleased to turn around, and
made brisk time back to Blackbird Cottage.

But without warning, just as they passed the halfway point
between the village and the cottage, something—happened.

Marina gasped, as she reeled back in her seat beneath the
unexpected impact of a mental and emotional blow.

It was like nothing she had ever felt before; a sickening
plunging of her heart, disorientation, nausea, and an overwhelming feeling of
doom that she could not explain.

She clutched suddenly at her aunt’s arm, fought down
a surge of panic, and invoked her strongest shields.

To no effect. In fact, if anything, the sensation of
dread
increased tenfold.

“What’s wrong?” Margherita exclaimed,
startled.

“I don’t know—” Marina choked out. “But
something is. Something is horribly, horribly wrong—”

The feeling didn’t pass; if anything, it deepened, and
she closed her eyes to fight against the awful plummeting feeling in her
stomach, the rising panic.

“Hold on—I’ll get you home,”
Margherita said, and slapped the reins on the pony’s back, cracking the
whip above its ears and startling it into a trot. Marina clung to her aunt as
to a rock in a flood, struggling against fear, and completely unable to think
past it.

“Oh no,” the phrase, loaded with dismay, that
burst from her Aunt’s lips, made her open her eyes again. They were
nearly home—they had rounded the corner and the wall and gate of
Blackbird Cottage were in sight—But there were strangers there.

A huge black coach drawn by a pair of expensive carriage
horses stood before the gate. And the sight of the strange carriage made her
throat close with a panic worse than anything she had ever felt before.

In the space of a single hour, Marina had been plunged into
a nightmare. The problem was, she was awake.

She sat on the sofa in the once-familiar parlor that had
seemed a haven of familiar contentment, between Aunt Margherita and Uncle
Thomas.

But in the last hour, every vestige of what she had
thought
was familiar had been ripped away from her.

She sat, every muscle rigid, every nerve paralyzed, her
stomach knot and her heart a cold lump in the middle of her chest.

On three chairs across from them sat four strangers, three
of them in near-identical black suits, all three of them with the same stern,
cold faces, the same expressionless eyes. They could have been poured from the
same mold. They were lawyers, they said. They had come here because of her.
They were lawyers who, from this moment on, were in charge of her—and her
parents’ estate.

Estate.

For her parents, it seemed, had made their last trip to
Tuscany. There had been a dreadful accident, which at the moment, mattered not
at all to her. She couldn’t think of that; it meant nothing to her.

What mattered was that the people she had called aunt and
uncle all her life were nothing more than family friends—who, because
they had no ties of blood, had absolutely no rights whatsoever with regard to
her, and never mind that they had raised her.

She was being taken from the only home and people she had
ever known, to go to a place she had only seen in her uncle’s sketches.
Oakhurst. Where total strangers would be in charge of her, telling her what to
do, controlling her for the next three years. And she had no choice.

“The law,” said the tallest and thinnest of the
three, “Is not to be trifled with.”

Her rigidity and paralysis broke in a storm of emotion. “But
I don’t understand!” Marina wailed, clinging to her Aunt’s
arm.
“Why
can’t I stay? I’ve lived here all my life!
I’m
happy
here! You can’t—you
can’t
make me go away! I won’t go! I won’t!”

Her face was streaked now with the tears that poured from
her eyes; her eyes blurred and burned, and she wanted to get the pony-whip and
beat
these horrible men out of the house, out of
her
house, and drive them
back to whatever clerkly hell they had come from. For surely no one who could
say things like they had to her could come from anywhere other than hell. She
was not trifling with anything—
they
were the ones who were
trifling with her, treating her like a goose that could be bundled up in a
basket and taken wherever they cared to take her and set down in a new place
and never notice!

“I won’t go!” she repeated, hysterically,
turning to the fourth stranger in the room, and the only one standing. “I
won’t! You can’t make me!”

The policeman from Holsworthy looked uncomfortable; he
inserted a finger in the collar of his tunic and tugged at it, as if it was too
tight. The three lawyers, however, were utterly unmoved. They could have been
waxwork figures for all the emotion they displayed.

“We have explained that, miss, several times,”
the one who did all the talking—the tallest, thinnest, and
coldest—said yet again. He spoke to her in tones that one would use with
the feebleminded. “With your parents dead intestate, that is, without
leaving a will, and your nearest relative perfectly willing and able to assume
guardianship, you cannot legally remain with—these people.” He
looked down his long nose at Margherita and Thomas. “They have no blood
ties with you, and no legal standing. Whatever your parents may have meant by
boarding you with them, it doesn’t matter to the law. Your
legal
aunt is not only prepared to assume responsibility for you, she has sued to do
so, and the court has agreed. That is the law, and you must obey it. This
policeman is here to see that you do.”

It was
very
clear from his expression that he did
not approve of her current situation; that he did not approve of artists in
general, and her aunt and uncle in particular. That, in fact, he considered
artists to be only a little above actors and thieves in social standing.

Marina searched her aunt and uncle’s faces, and saw
nothing there but grief and resignation—and fear. There was no hope for
her from them.

If she had allowed her body to do what her mind screamed at
her to do, she’d have been beating those horrible, horrible men with a
broom—or jumping up and running, running off to hide in the orchard until
she froze to death or
they
went away without her.

Her heart pounded with panic, and her throat was so choked
with tears she could hardly get any words out.

I’ll call up magic! I’ll call up Undines
and Sylphs and I’ll drive them away!

Oh yes; she’d call up magic—call up Undines
that could not function out of water and Sylphs they could not see. And do
what? If these—these
lawyers
had been mages, perhaps she could
have frightened them—if they had been the least bit sensitive, perhaps
she could have influenced their minds and made them go away. But it would not
be for long. The next time there would be more lawyers, and more policemen. And
there would be a next time. The law was not to be trifled with.

It was all so impossible—In a single moment, her life
had been turned completely upside down, and
no one was doing anything to
help her.
This
couldn’t
be right! This just
couldn’t!

Her parents were dead.

How could it have happened? It seemed like something out of
a Gothic novel—there had been a horrible accident in Italy—a
boating accident, the lawyers said. They’d drowned. Oh, they were
definitely dead, their bodies had washed up on the beach within a day, and
there were dozens of people to identify them.

They hadn’t left a will. How could they not have left
a will? Aunt Margherita seemed stunned, too stunned even to think; she hadn’t
said a dozen words since the lawyers broke the news. But there was no will, and
her guardians were not her
legal
guardians.

Somewhere in the jumble of lawyers, estate managers, and
men of business had been someone who had known where
she
was, and when
her real aunt—someone she had never even heard of until now—had
been told of the accident, had been told that Marina was living here, she had
taken charge of everything.
She
—Arachne Chamberten—had
sent these lawyers to take her away.

Now this person that Marina had never heard of, never seen,
and never wanted to see, was legally in charge of her, her property, her very
life until she turned twenty-one.

And this person decreed that she must leave Blackbird
Cottage and go to Oakhurst.
Immediately.
With no argument or
opposition to be tolerated.

Aunt Margherita and Uncle Thomas sat there like a pair of
stunned sheep. Of course they were in shock—it had
always
been
clear to Marina that her aunt and uncles considered her real mother and father
to be their dearest friends, even though they only had contact with them
through letters anymore—but Hugh and Alanna were dead, and Marina needed
them now!

And they might just as well have been waxwork figures for
all the help they were giving her!

“I don’t
want
to leave!” she
wailed, looking desperately at the policeman, fixing on him as the only
possible person that might be moved by an appeal.

“Sorry, miss,” he mumbled, turning very red. “I
know you’re upset-like. I mean, know it’s a shock, to lose your
parents like this—”

I don’t care about that!
she screamed
inside.
Don’t you understand? My real parents are
here,
and
you’re trying to take me away from them!

But—she couldn’t say that, much less scream it.

“Miss, it’s for your own good,” the
policeman said desperately. “These gennelmun know their business, and it’s
for your own good. You oughtn’t to be with them as isn’t your own
flesh and blood, not now. And it’s the law, miss. It’s the law.”

Her throat closed up entirely, and she felt the jaws of a
terrible trap closing on her; she understood how the rabbit felt in the snare,
the mouse as the talons of an owl descended on it. if
only Uncle Sebastian
was here! He would do something, surely
—But Sebastian was off in
Plymouth and wasn’t expected back until tomorrow—

There could not have been a better time for them to arrive,
or a worse time for her. Her chest ached, and black despair closed down around
her.

The lawyers had made it abundantly clear that they were not
going to wait that long—that in fact, if Marina balked at going, the
policeman that they had brought with them was perfectly prepared tuff her into
their carriage by force. She saw that in their eyes—

—and in his. He would apologize, he would regret
having to manhandle her, but he’d do it all the same.

No escape—no escape—

They couldn’t have gotten the Killatree constable
to go along with this—kidnapping!
she thought frantically. Which was
probably why they had brought one from Holsworthy. A Holsworthy man wouldn’t
know them. A Holsworthy man wouldn’t have to answer to all of Killatree
tomorrow for helping strangers tear her away from Blackbird Cottage and her
guardians.

“Pack the girl’s things,” said the second
lawyer coldly—the first words he’d spoken so far—looking over
Margherita’s shoulder at Sarah and Jenny. “And hurry up about it.
We have a long journey ahead of us.”

“Ma’am?” Sarah said, looking not at the
lawyer, but at Margherita.

“Do it,” the third lawyer snapped, “Unless
you’d care to cool your heels in gaol for obstructing us in our duty,
woman.”

Shocked, angry, Sarah’s gaze snapped to the
policeman, who turned redder still, but nodded, affirming what the lawyer had
said.

Sarah made a choking noise, and Jenny turned white.

“But—” Marina’s spirit failed her
utterly, and she slid to the floor, sobbing, her heart breaking.

She remained dissolved in tears while Sarah and Jenny
packed for her, huddled against the seat of the sofa. Margherita just held her,
speechlessly, and Uncle Thomas sat, white-faced, as if someone had shot him and
he hadn’t quite realized that he was dead yet.

She sobbed uncontrollably while Hired John grudgingly
loaded the trunks and boxes on the top of the waiting carriage. She wept and
clung to Margherita, until the policeman actually pried her fingers off of her
aunt’s arm, and pulled her away, wrapping her cape around her, ushering
her into the carriage, almost shoving her inside.

There was nothing in her mind now but grief and despair.
She continued to weep, inconsolable, tears pouring down her cheeks in the icy
air as the carriage rolled away, leaning out of the window to wave, hoping for
a miracle to save her.