The Honours (28 page)

CHAPTER 24

SO MUCH FOR OPERATIONS IN SALT-MARSHES

D
elphine gazed out across the acres of mud and flooded trenches. She thought of the Battle of Albert – almost 20,000 British men killed in a single day. What was her life against all of theirs?

She glanced at the shotgun, cold and cumbersome in her grubby hands. Mr Garforth was right – she was an idiot for wanting to go back there, for thinking she could make a difference. Dr Lansley had thought he could fight them – had shown more bravery than she would have ever imagined – and look how he'd finished up. Even wily old Propp had lost in the end.

She spat. Pink, coppery phlegm fizzled in the dirt. Terns swept past the sun, shrieking.

In
The Art Of War
, Sun-Tzu said: ‘If forced to fight in a salt-marsh, you should have water and grass near you, and get your back to a clump of trees.'

Staring over the shining, treeless expanse, Delphine thought what stupid advice this was. How could you
not
be near water and grass on a marsh? And how were you supposed to get your back to a clump of trees when there weren't any?

She and Professor Carmichael had argued in roistering, passionate volleys over Sun-Tzu's reputation as a master strategist. The Professor had said that all modern military tactics were footnotes to Sun-Tzu.
Delphine had said she didn't care, that Sun-Tzu was an idiot who said vague, obvious things like ‘don't be too hasty, but also don't be too cautious', and why didn't he explain how to dig a pit trap so soldiers fall into it, or how to train hawks to drop vials of acid on enemy generals, or how to fight with blades attached to boomerangs. The Professor had said he didn't think they had boomerangs in Ancient China. Delphine had said that wasn't the point – the point was it was stupid, boring book.

Professor Carmichael was probably dead now. Mrs Hagstrom too. She had watched them drop to their knees in a gale of black wings. What about Daddy, and Mother? Were they slumped against a wall somewhere, run through on javelins, heads hanging slack and grey, their hair matted with blood?

If she returned to Alderberen Hall, she would die.

She had seen the size of the swarm rising above Prothero Wood. There had to be more than a hundred of them. And who was that figure in the bone-white plague mask, the one standing in the door when Dr Lansley had been shot?

What had Daddy said about Mr Kung?
The balance of his mind was upset
. And so he had walked willingly into the sea, thinking he could travel to another realm.

Perhaps it had finally happened, just as Eleanor Wethercroft and Jacqueline Finks-Hanley and Prue Dunbar had said it would. Perhaps she had snapped. There had been no monsters. Daddy and Mother were safe. Dr Lansley was still alive.

But if she had imagined it all, where had she found the double-barrelled shotgun? She closed her eyes and pushed the thought away.

Behind the sound of her breaths and the rush of the sea rose another sound. A familiar sound. A sound that made her breath catch in her throat.

Ticking.

She wheeled round, scanning the sky. To the east, behind a poplar windbreak, a dark shape climbed in a slow, thumping spiral.

Delphine half-ran, half-fell into the trench. Freezing water splattered up her legs.

No, no, no . . .

She pressed herself to the trench's gooey wall and peered over the top. The thing was still there. It was using the heat from the cornfields to gain altitude. Any moment it might break back towards the Hall, or strike out northwards, over the marshes.

It's not real . . . it's not real . . .

A pulse galloped in her ears. It looked real. It sounded real.

But if this monster was real, then all the others were too. Daddy and Mother and the Professor and Mrs Hagstrom and Miss DeGroot were in mortal peril. Dr Lansley was dead.

If it was real, she could kill it. That was the final test.

She slipped her finger over the trigger. Terns screamed. The monster continued to rise.

The girl with the gun crouched waiting.

INTERLUDE 2

G
ideon smelled lemons again.

He pushed twists of tissue paper up his nose and pressed on with his painting, angry at the intrusion. It was all in his fancy.

The attic made a better studio than the stables. More compact. More focused. He added a little more dark sienna to the blue he was layering up on the cell floor. A splodge of Chinese yellow clung to the corner of the palette like pus squeezed from a boil. Perhaps that was where the scent of lemons was coming from. No. Don't be stupid.

The electric bulb dangling from a low rafter picked out the ridges of his brushstrokes, patterning the canvas with little glowing 7s. It reminded him of the evening sun bronzing the sea in Valencia, the rumbling wagons heaped with lemons, the feel of cool dimpled skin beneath his fingers, hitching a ride up into the hills with his easel and a couple of cocas wrapped in wax paper and a flask of iced tea. Lizards basking on hot flat rocks, shadows oozing from the silver lime trees. The blood-drenched sunset. The suffocating stars.

Enough. He sipped his tea. His lips puckered.

A phrase from Debussy's
Préludes
was repeating in his head. Was it in his head? Perhaps Mr Propp was playing piano downstairs.

Gideon tore up more tissue paper and plugged his ears. There,
that was better. He massaged a crick in his neck. He rolled a cigarette.

He thought he felt an impact through the floor. Just a door slamming. He closed his eyes. Deep inside his stopped-up head there was only him and the thunder of blood.

He smoked his cigarette and the attic filled with oily meshes. The tobacco made his pulse race and he returned to the canvas with vigour.

Through tissue-blocked ears he was sure he heard gunshots. Was everything all right downstairs? He pushed the question aside. Dr Eliot said that phantom sounds and smells were like uninvited guests: greet them with a smile, but don't offer them a room for the night. When they see that they're not welcome, they'll leave of their own accord.

Gideon wiped a hand across his mouth. He could feel gems of perspiration clinging to his top lip.

Dr Eliot had said he was to do mental arithmetic whenever he felt his mind was out of balance. Dr Eliot said simple exercises helped to restore order. Mathematics took as its focus objective truth, and truth was axiomatically the highest form of mental health. Try reciting your multiplication tables, he said.

Gideon squinted at the canvas and saw 7s. Every brushstroke was a 7, the angle of the painted window frame was a 7, the fallen woman's hair was a writhing carpet of tiny tessellating 7s.

He multiplied 7 by 7 and got 49. If you rotated the number 4 clockwise by 45 degrees, it was two 7s mirroring each other. That made 779. If you subtracted the number of 7s (2) you got 777, the number of God. 49 and 2 was 492. 492 plus 777 equalled 1269. And if you took 1269 from 1935 you were left with the number of the Beast.

‘I am calm and happy,' he said. His voice sounded distant and foreign.

He began unbuttoning his shirt. He was not giving in to this nonsense again.

He thought of Delphine, how she walked with the heavy steps and twitching vigilance of a soldier.
He
had done that to her. And
Anne. He had always meant to protect her, but his sickness was crushing her. Worst of all, she blamed herself.

Disembodied sensations scratched at the roof tiles. Gideon clenched his fists. He lay on the warm attic floor, shuddering. Tears ran into the tissue paper in his ears.

The Debussy grew louder and louder in his head. He heard a van backfire; a ewe miscarried, disgorging a steaming purple cadaver. All the smells and tastes and sights and sounds in the world were being sucked towards the house.

His body seethed with digits. He was the Hall. He could feel its bleak geometries deep in the black earth.

Time sped up and he saw that all creation was a great plunging cycle of birth and torment; millions burnt to atone for his sins, and he could hear them screaming, broken on the wheel. He was the axle; it turned around him.

The 7s were turning to 6s. He had to stop the cycle.

He rummaged through brushes and empty milk bottles and rags scabby with paint until he found his art scalpel. He held the blade up to the light, felt himself losing his nerve. He pictured Anne's horror when she heard the news, Delphy weeping. God! But wouldn't they live better lives without him, without his sickness dragging them down?

He stared at his wrist. Bluegreen veins roadmapped a pale and freckled arm. He took a deep breath, placed the blade against his skin, and the light went out.

Gideon blinked. He was in darkness. He swayed, unsure which way was up. Had he gone blind? Was this Hell?

A voice spoke to him in the secret language God teaches the dead.

Gideon's breath stopped in his throat.

‘Arthur?'

ACT THREE

September 12th 1935

What is a dance? No more than order cloaked in chaos. Like all of nature – like a tree, like the wind – it appears wild, but when we explore deeply we discover it arises from Law. The dancer may seem to be dragged first this way, then that, by the vagaries of whim, but in actuality, every step is planned. This, then, is the essence of dancing: to ride the changing winds; to surrender to fate and, in surrendering, to become its master.

–
Meetings With Mephistopheles
, I. G. Propp

CHAPTER 25

PARABELLUM

O
n the floor in front of the hearth, Mr Garforth rolled out a map. He placed a mug on either end.

‘This is a plan of the Hall.'

‘I can see that.'

His bloodshot eyes thinned. ‘You promised you'd listen.'

‘We've gone through this.'

‘And so will we again.' He slapped the paper. ‘You'll enter here.'

The map was yellow and wrinkled. It showed a plan of all three floors. The ground and first floor looked like dumbbells: the square east and west wings connected by a long rectangle of rooms and corridors. The servants' quarters, underground, were a smaller block. In the bottom-right corner, separate from the rest, were the stables and the generator room.

‘So you'll come through here,' he tapped the dark line that marked the door from the cellar to the corridor below stairs. ‘Along here,' his finger drew a line east, past the gun room and the game larder, ‘is where they are being held.' He circled the pale box of the scullery.

‘Is my father there?'

His hand slid from the map. ‘Let's hope so. The only hostages they saw were in there.'

‘How many?' The heat of the fire was making sweat stand out on her brow.

‘Lots. They're tied up. Three vesperi on guard in the room. More patrolling the corridor.'

‘How do I get past them?'

‘At nine p.m., the Little Gentlemen will shut down the generator. The rest is up to you. Whatever you do,
don't
waste time trying to get into the gun room.'

‘But I could give guns to everyone,' said Delphine. ‘We could take back the Hall.'

‘You're going alone because you're fast and small. If it comes to a standing fight, we'll lose. We're not raising an army. We're saving lives. That includes yours. You're none of you trained soldiers.'

‘Daddy is. Professor Carmichael is.'

‘So was Dr Lansley. Look what happened to him.'

‘Why didn't the monsters just kill everyone?'

Mr Garforth dug a fingernail into his whiskers. ‘Maybe they still plan to. Maybe they need information first. What did you say Mr Propp said? Something about handing over a child?'

‘Yes, a girl. I thought he meant me, but . . . why would they be after me?'

‘Promise me,' said Mr Garforth. ‘Get in, get out. By the time they realise what's happened, you'll be long gone.'

‘All right,' she said. ‘But what about the three guards? How do I distract them?'

Mr Garforth swept his hand across the map. ‘Throw 'em some bait.'

CHAPTER 26

FORGIVE ME, COMRADE

A
s Delphine reached the end of the tunnel, the light was dying. Her satchel of grenades thumped at her hip, the sawn-off shotgun weighty in her hand. The safety of the cottage lay behind her. At the top of the ladder was the Hall. The cool air reeked of wet clay.

Her torch threw a dimming ginger circle over the ladder. She looked at the shotgun. She looked at the ladder. She looked at the shotgun.

In her head, she heard Mr Garforth reprimanding her. He never let her cross so much as a puddle till she had ceremoniously broken and unloaded the gun, showing him the smooth cold cartridges snug in her palm like exotic eggs. If she rolled her eyes, he would launch a diatribe cataloguing the grim fates of those who, like her, thought themselves too busy for caution; folk like Ned Nevins' lad, who dropped a shotgun climbing onto the back of a hay cart after the harvest festival and blew his face off – yes, the safety was on – who survived, after a fashion, living blind and hideous in an attic, spooning pap into his ruined mouth. She had heard the story so many times – three, in point of fact – she could barely look at a stile without the Nevins boy's milky, shot-pocked eyes rising in her imagination like the glowing links of Marley's chain.

She thumbed the locking lever (oiled by Mr Garforth so it moved
smoothly) and broke the sawn-off barrels, holding a palm over the breech to stop the shells jumping out. She balanced the gun on her forearm like a bird of prey. She switched off the torch.

Her satchel swung as she climbed the ladder. She was going back. After everything that had happened, she was going back. Her head swam. Her fingertips felt numb.

She stopped beneath the heavy oak trapdoor. She listened.

There was only her breathing.

She felt about for the latch and drew it. Slowly, slowly, she raised the trapdoor with her head.

Blackness. She smelt mould and vinegar. She listened again. Nothing. She lifted the trapdoor a little farther and the sack covering it slid back with a hiss. She placed her shotgun on the floor and switched on the torch.

Dust motes swam bronze and aquatic in the torchbeam. Cobwebs hung from the wine racks like seaweed.

She crawled out and gently lowered the trapdoor. The dust coating the floor was gritty, damp and salted with mouse droppings. She wiped her hands as best she could on her knickerbockers. She picked up the shotgun, checked the shells were in place and shut the breech. It closed with a satisfying
clop
.

The wine cellar was three small rooms linked by stone archways. There were bottles of Lacryma Christi and bottles of calvados, clarets and champagnes, and in the dying torchlight they seemed to breathe. Set into one wall was the dumbwaiter shaft connecting the cellar with the kitchen, dining room and master bedroom above. A mahogany barometer lay on its side, the face smashed in. She crept past ale kegs stamped with the local brewery's mark, a pair of bull's horns. At the foot of the stairs, she stopped.

A flight of steps led up, lined with wooden struts. At the top was a door.

She crept up the creaking stairs. Fishing in a slip pocket of her bandolier, Delphine pulled out a long brass key. On the other side of the door was the corridor that linked the kitchen to the servants' quarters, game larder and gun room. She put her ear to the keyhole and listened.

Something was coming.

She held her breath. Footsteps padded from the larder, past the door. They stopped.

Beneath the sawn-off barrels, her palm grew slick.

The footsteps continued.

Delphine crept back down the stairs and shone her torch on the glass face of a carriage clock. It was almost nine o'clock.

She walked across the black cellar to the dumbwaiter, brushed dust from the panel. The button for the kitchen was smooth and black and humped.

She placed a jam-tin grenade in the dumbwaiter car, struck a match and pressed the button with her thumb. Somewhere in the shaft, a motor started. The car began to rise. Just as it was about to move out of sight, she touched the flame to the fuse.

She ran back through the cellar and up the stairs and at the door she paused. She held her breath.

The clocks struck nine.

In the kitchen, two vesperi, one with a triangular notch docked from her soft dark ear, were talking.

They spoke in short, crickling bursts. The first vesperi, the shorter, ran his stubby fingers along the ridge of the smooth oak worktop. He looked at his hand. He said something to the second vesperi. She snapped a retort.

The second vesperi opened a drawer and took out a whisk. She shook the whisk and it rattled. She slotted it into her belt.

The clock on the shelf began to chime. She wheeled round, noseleaf flaring as she chirruped an alarm call. A second clock on the wall beside the range made a straining noise, then a tiny pair of doors snapped open. A figurine dressed all in red puttered out along a set of wooden battlements. It stopped before a silver bell, tilted back as if surprised, then began striking the bell with a hammer.

A third clock went off, a fourth.

An animal groan came from the open hatch at the far end of the room.

The vesperi's hands went to their daggers. The second vesperi pop-whistled instructions to her partner.

Something was rising. The first vesperi held back but his comrade advanced, her blade out in front of her.

The hatch opened onto a shaft. In the darkness, a cable was moving. Rising into view was the lip of a wooden box.

Her wings fanned. She approached on talontips.

The box was lit from within. It stopped with a shudder.

It was open at the front. Inside, something fizzed and smoked – a stub of black rope, stuck in a tin.

She squinted.

The lights went out.

The bomb went off.

Delphine heard the concussion, trains shunting in a distant yard. A couple of seconds later, the door rattled in its frame. She waited.

Chittering. Several sets of footsteps passed the door, moving rapidly from left to right, dashing for the kitchen. She let them fade, and as the clocks finished chiming she opened the door.

Her eyes were used to the dark. The corridor was clear both ways. Clutching her sawn-off, she crept east, past the gamey pong of the larder and the locked gun room, to the open doorway of the scullery. She pressed her shoulders to the wall, clutched the shotgun to her chest, listened.

Soft, steady weeping. A cough.

She hugged the abbreviated barrels, whispered the simplest prayer she knew:

Dear Lord, please
.

She swung into the room.

To her left, people tied to chairs: Mother, Professor Carmichael, at least eight. Alive. Gasps. To her right, a lone vesperi raised its hooked dagger. She rounded on it.

It stared at her gun. The brindled fur covering its scalp and cheekbones ranged from chestnut to black with ruby notes.

The creature looked up. Its nostrils were little sideways mouths that flexed and pinched. It tossed its dagger onto the stone
flagging, then slowly raised its palms. Its eyes were hazel, like Mother's.

A chair leg scraped.

The shotgun bucked and the thing's head burst like a gourd, painting the wall. She felt warm fluid on her cheeks and chin. The lower half of a torso slumped. One leg skittered and danced against the stone floor.

Delphine
.

Through the ringing in her ears she heard groaning. She reached for her bandolier and discovered that her hand was shaking.

‘Delphine!'

She turned. Professor Carmichael was struggling against his bonds. He was perched on a chair far too small for him, wrists bound behind his back. She watched the motion of his lips. ‘Untie us.' He had a bruise on his forehead the size of an egg.

Everyone was here, just as the Little Gentlemen had said, everyone, except . . .

She set down her satchel, took out her pocket knife and began to go from person to person, slitting their bonds. Besides Mother and the Professor there was Mrs Hagstrom, Alice the maid, the blacksmith Mr Wightman, Reggie Gillow, and two gentlemen she vaguely recognised from previous symposiums – most likely they had arrived early, hoping to catch the ear of Mr Propp – all ashen, shivering, drunk.

Mother barely noticed when Delphine set her free. Her gown was torn round the throat. She stared into space with the hollow calm of one who expects only misery.

Delphine looked about. There was no Lord Alderberen, no Propp. No Miss DeGroot either. She gripped Mother's shoulder, shook it.

‘Mother?' she said. She could barely hear her own voice. ‘
Mother
.'

Mother looked up. She blinked at Delphine, glancing around as if seeing the room for the first time.

‘Oh God,' she said. ‘What are you doing here? I thought . . . I didn't know . . . '

‘I came to save you.'

Mother stared. Her thin arms swept out and she dragged Delphine to her greedily, clutching, hugging.

‘Oh, you silly girl,' she said, rubbing her wet cheek against Delphine's hair. ‘Oh, you silly, silly girl.'

Delphine wriggled and Mother let her go.

‘Where's Daddy?'

Mother wiped her eyes.

‘I'm so sorry, Delphine. I don't know.'