The Honours (36 page)

CHAPTER 40

YOU WILL DIE, BROTHER, IF YOU GO TO IT LONG ENOUGH

D
elphine lay on her belly, hidden amongst a splash of gipsywort in the dried-up riverbed. She listened to voles threading through brittle undergrowth, the thin eerie note of an owl. She was cold and wet. She waited for Stokeham and Cox to find her, the pistol to the temple, the white light.

If she stayed where she was she could survive till daybreak. Perhaps, by then, they would have given up searching for her. Perhaps they had already given up.

On the other hand, moving would be safest under cover of darkness. There was no sign of Stokeham's troops withdrawing, nor Mr Garforth, which meant that the plan had almost certainly failed.

But why hadn't Mr Loosley returned? Had Mr Garforth stopped him somehow?

As soon as Stokeham, Cox and Miss DeGroot gave up, they would head for the burial vault. They needed reinforcements.

If Mr Garforth was alive, he was in terrible danger.

Delphine thought of Dr Lansley and Mr Wightman and the male guest killed in the banqueting hall. She wondered if they were in Heaven now, or some black unplace of non-existence. She did not want to join them. If she hid here, and kept very still, the danger might pass. She might escape and keep on living for years and years.
She might learn to forgive herself the cowardice – but if she got caught, these few minutes would be her last on earth.

She understood now, the soldier's need for a talisman. She muttered in her head
please God, please God, please God
, but she knew too well that she was just one amongst hundreds of scurrying wretched creatures in the woods that night. She had no special claim on living. She was no more entitled to it than the anonymous guest who had died on the banqueting hall floor, or the dozens of vesperi shot, roasted or bludgeoned.

If Stokeham succeeded in seizing the channel, all England would be in peril. She might run a hundred miles and still die in the resultant war. Mr Wightman had died trying to flee. If death wanted you, escape was impossible.

She pictured Professor Carmichael, swinging his warhammer, colossal in his frenzy. She pictured Mother, squaring off against Miss DeGroot, her eyes hard, brilliant. She pictured dear Mr Garforth, warming milk for her in a saucepan, standing over it and stirring, so it didn't get a skin.

She listened. The entire wood seemed to hold its breath. The loudest sound was her heartbeat. Pressing her palms to the damp soil, she rose.

People had passed this way. Footprints trailed through the muddy earth, beside a long, shallow gouge, as if one of the party had been dragging a heavy object.

Delphine stuck to the shadows, creeping parallel to the trail, knowing with a sickening clarity where it would lead.

When she reached the edge of the clearing, she saw. The footprints and the drag mark led into the open tomb.

So they had made it inside. She heard a snap, threw herself flat. She held her breath, listening, praying.

A minute passed. No one came.

It was no good letting Stokeham hunt her. She had to find a weapon and fight back. If Mr Garforth was still alive, he needed her. She was a better shot than Cox. More to the point, his flintlock pistol was archaic and almost certainly waterlogged – a stupid affectation,
just like everything else about him. She wouldn't let them terrorise her any more. She would force them to retreat, and if they wouldn't retreat . . .

No one was invincible. Somehow, Stokeham would die.

The anger gave her energy. And she knew exactly where to look for a gun.

Hidden amongst wind-hunched oaks was a cottage.

The door was open. The horseshoe over the lintel had fallen to the ground.

She ran inside without thinking. Embers winked in the hearth. The table had been upended and crockery lay shattered across the tiles. She ran into the bedroom.

Propp's sister was gone.

Even as the hollow feeling spread through her belly, Delphine realised she had expected this.

In the back room she rummaged through packing crates and heaped bric-a-brac looking for something to even the odds. It was all junk. She found a box of fishing weights – could she drop some into a pillow case to use as a cosh? Mr Garforth had taken all the gins. There was a bottle of Young's Draw Game and some other, more sinister-looking concoctions. Delphine was sliding a small, brown glass vial of rat poison from the back of the box when she heard footsteps.

She pressed her back to the wall and held her breath. Her heartbeats seemed to shake her whole body. She listened.

The front door croaked on its hinges. It might have been the wind.

A snap. Perhaps a knuckle of wet twig popping in the fire.

She tipped her head back till her scalp touched the wall, listened for someone listening for her. She gripped the crab hook. It was not much, but better than nothing. The metal shaft could parry a knife and the curved part might work for gouging an eye. She was not sure she could really drive a hook into someone's eyeball. Then she thought of Mr Wightman's ruptured throat, and her fingers tightened.

She heard a breath. She had definitely heard a man's breath. A
box next to her slipped an inch. The entire contents of the shelf came crashing down.

‘Who goes there? Show yourself.'

Delphine stepped out from behind the door. ‘God. Professor.'

‘Delphine?'

‘I nearly hooked your eye out.'

Professor Carmichael touched a finger to the ridge of his cheekbone. ‘Listen. You have to come. Your Mother thought she'd lost you.'

Delphine took a step back. ‘Mr Garforth needs me. If I don't help him they'll bring more monsters, hundreds more – the whole country will be in danger.'

The Professor sighed with his entire body. ‘Now, you listen to me. You barely got out of that house with your life.'

‘Thank you, Professor.'

He swatted the air. ‘Stop it. You may be feeling very cocksure but you're just a child. You can't do anything to stop them. None of us can. This is a job for the army. We've enough witnesses that they'll have to believe us. We must get as far away as possible. After you left, your father collapsed. He had a funny reaction to a sting.'

A squat shadow appeared in the doorway. Axle squealing, Lord Alderberen rolled into the cottage.

The lower half of his face was puckered and shrunken as a peach stone, thick mauve lips pouting while his good eye ticked from Delphine to the Professor, back again.

‘Hello,' said the Professor.

Lord Alderberen nodded:
yes, yes, yes
. A few fine golden hairs floated above his bluish, pitted scalp. His shirt and grey flannel trousers hung in loose folds. He looked strangely childlike.

He reached into his lap. His arm was shaking. When he lifted it, he was holding a pistol.

‘Don't think I won't fire, because I will.' His tongue slopped over empty gums. ‘Any silly nonsense and I shall kill you both.'

‘Lazarus, really . . . ' Professor Carmichael raised his hands.

‘Don't you speak to me as if you know me!' Alderberen's voice
was shrill and lisping. ‘Just shut up and do as I say or God forgive me I shall end you both in this room.'

‘But we're on your side! We're not going to hurt you.'

‘I said shut up!' Lord Alderberen jabbed the pistol, a little black broomhandle Mauser, towards the Professor's belly. ‘Wightman thought I was bluffing too. I told him to stop where he was and he laughed. He actually laughed. A bloody dogsbody who spends his days patching drainpipes, and he laughs at
me
? He would've told the papers – he would've undone generations of hard work for his twenty pieces of silver. So I did for him. I shot him then I slit his fat throat as if he were an antelope. Now you, both of you,' he gestured at Delphine with the gun, ‘you come with me. I want you to walk five paces ahead of me, side by side. No more, no less. Remember, I shall be behind you. I can wheel this thing with one hand.' The Mauser wobbled in his grip. He frowned at the Professor. ‘If you try to run I shall shoot the girl first.'

‘But why? What have we done? We – '

Alderberen swung his arm to the right and fired once –
BLAM!
– into the fireplace. A gout of orange sparks went up and Delphine nearly fell.

‘Last warning.'

Alderberen pointed to the door with the pistol. Delphine looked at Professor Carmichael, who nodded.

She was halfway to the door when she heard a noise. She turned and the Professor was already on top of Alderberen, grappling for his throat. Alderberen made a noise –
gnuh
– and his face tightened, soft jaw retracting into his upper skull like the wet flesh of a limpet. Professor Carmichael stepped away. He had his back to Delphine.

‘Oh,' said the Professor. ‘Oh. Oh. Oh.'

He sat down heavily. He put his hands on his stomach. Sticking from his jumper was the handle of a letter-knife.

‘I warned you!' said Alderberen.

‘Oh,' said the Professor. He closed his fingers round the knife. There was blood on his fingers. He doubled-up.

‘Now,' said Lord Alderberen, aiming the pistol at Delphine. ‘Move.'

She hesitated. Professor Carmichael lay on his side on the tiles, gritting his teeth.

Alderberen narrowed his eyes. He pointed the gun at the Professor's head.

‘I'll shoot him like a lame horse.'

Slowly, Delphine turned and walked out of the door. The wind swiped at her hair, blowing so hard that she didn't catch Lord Alderberen's next instruction until the third time he said it.

‘To the ice house.'

CHAPTER 41

WHAT SHE STRIVES TO SHUN

M
ist rolled across the lake. Alderberen Hall was a skull lit from within.

Delphine paused at the top of the hill.

‘Why are you doing this?'

Hunched in his wheelchair, Lord Alderberen scowled beneath a caul of rainwater.

‘None of your bloody business.' Droplets clung to the Mauser's long black barrel. ‘Inside.'

Rain burst against the roof of the ice house in little white explosions, running down the low dark walls into boggy grass. The half-rotten door had been torn from its hinges.

Delphine rested a hand on the doorway. She took a deep breath, then turned.

‘Why does your father hate you so much?'

She expected him to pull the trigger. She watched the muzzle, waiting for the gun to kick. Rainwater streamed down his greyblue cheeks. He inhaled, a long stuttering motion. His bad eye closed.

‘My father is dead.'

As he slurred the final syllable, his chin twisted into his chest and he began to convulse. He clutched the arm of his wheelchair. His pistol hand cramped.

Delphine feinted left then sidestepped right. Alderberen swung
the Mauser towards her but she parried the barrel with her hook. The gun barked. A shot ricocheted off the ice house.

‘Why, you . . . ' Alderberen lunged for the hook. Delphine twisted her wrist, wrenching the pistol from his grasp. It dropped between his legs and landed on the grass. He clasped the shaft of the crab hook, reaching for the gun with his other hand. His face puckered with effort. ‘Bloody . . . damn . . . ' His fingers flexed and closed a clear foot above the gun. ‘Christ's sweet tree!'

With indecent ease, Delphine tore the hook from his grip and drove the blunt pommel into his chest.

The force of the blow knocked him upright, shoulders slapping the back of the wheelchair. He stared at her, wide-eyed. The chair began to roll backwards.

He swung for her, but his hands clipped his rising knees as the chair clattered down the steep hill, accelerating. Behind him the lake spread black and huge and silent.

The squeak of the axle built to an urgent trill. He tried to glance back. The chair hit a patch of reeds. The wheels jammed and the chair tipped.

From the top of the hill, Delphine heard the splash.

She waited for him to surface. Ripples radiated from the handles of the wheelchair. She almost ran to help him.

Then she remembered Mr Garforth.

Delphine took the Mauser from the wet grass and flipped up the safety lever with her thumb. She stepped over splinters of wood and ducked inside the ice house.

Rain drummed on the domed roof. The interior stunk of wet cement. Why on earth had Lord Alderberen wanted to take her here?

She squinted against the gloom. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. She was on the precipice of a deep conical pit. Perhaps thirty feet across and built of brick, its sloping sides narrowed to a funnel. She could not see the bottom. Rainwater drooled from the ceiling, finding channels in the brickwork so the pit seemed to ripple and flow.

She remembered following Propp here. What was all the fuss about? It was just a hole.

And then, she heard voices.

She could not make them out – the dimensions of the ice house turned every sound into a strange, keening echo – but when she closed her eyes and concentrated, it sounded like a woman crying.

Delphine pulled back the bolt on the Mauser and checked the box magazine. A cartridge sat in the chamber and there were more beneath. Lord Alderberen had fired twice, and once more when he shot Wightman. Assuming he had started with a full magazine and hadn't reloaded in between, she had seven rounds left.

Delphine sat down on the cusp of the pit. She slid her legs over the side. The walls were steep, but not sheer. Parts of the brickwork had crumbled, forming toeholds. She wedged the head of the crab hook into the mortar between two stone floor slabs, then turned and began lowering herself into the pit. She dug her foot into a crack, tested putting her weight on it. The brick held. Slowly, she descended, towards the voices.

Sections of brickwork were slimy with rainwater. She picked her way around them. Near the bottom the gradient flattened out, till she could turn onto her backside and shuffle the final few feet. In the floor's centre was an opening the size of a wishing well. Two rusted hooks were set into its perimeter. She held her breath. The pit seemed to close in around her. She glanced up at the distant roof. How would she get back out?

The voices were clearer; she was sure she heard Propp's sister crying. One of the others had the fruity, grating cadences of Mr Cox. And then, unmistakable, deep and lulling:

‘I forgive you both.'

Cox's sigh echoed through the chamber below.

‘Do you know, from the very first time we met, I knew you were a fraud. But like all habitual, inveterate liars, you have spent so long at your poisonous arts that you have deceived yourself. Even now, you act as if you are the injured party.'

In a series of small, cautious movements, Delphine lay on her belly and peered over the lip of the hole.

She saw a cave, illuminated by what looked like lamplight. The drop to the ground was at least twelve feet. A long shadow stretched into her line of sight, gesticulating.

‘It's over,' said Mr Cox. ‘You will return with us and be tried in public. Then you will be executed.'

‘I am glad to hear justice will be done,' said Propp.

‘Oh, cling to your sarcasm if it comforts you. Dozens of my loyal staff were murdered today. They came without guns, intent only on ensuring the safe return of my daughter. You slaughtered them wholesale.'

Delphine dug her toes into the brickwork behind her and leant forward a little more. She could see the horned silhouette of a harka – no, wait, it was just a statue – but Propp and Stokeham were still out of view. Where was Mr Garforth?

‘Why did you do it, Ivan?' said Miss DeGroot. ‘What did you want?'

‘Same thing as any dancer.'

‘What's that?'

Propp made a short, throaty sound that might have been a grunt or a pained laugh. ‘Balance.'

Delphine leant forward a little more. She felt her foot pop loose from its toehold. She threw an arm out to steady herself and slid forward on her tummy, knocking a nugget of mortar
click-clack
echoing to the floor below. Blood rushed to her head. The cave swung above her and she flailed at the edges of the hole, dropping the crab hook, grasping wet stone as she fell. She lurched rightways up before falling. She landed on her backside so hard that she saw white and her eyes watered.

Over three seconds Delphine saw and heard and thought this:

She was sitting in the middle of a cavern. There were six stone statues of harka, vesperi and humans. Mr Cox was standing to her left. He had taken his jacket off and the silk of his dirty gold waistcoat scintillated in the light of an oil lamp burning on the floor behind him. Miss DeGroot was to her right, thick arm swaddled in crimson fabric, cowlick bobbing over the knuckle of shrapnel lodged in her eye socket. Reggie sat beside her, milk-white under his short red hair, hollow-eyed, twitching. Propp was on his knees, his wrists bound – maybe he had never managed to untie them? – directly in front of her. Lying on her back in the centre of the chamber, next
to a black and twisting pool – the channel, surely – was the old lady, Propp's sister. She was pawing at the air, clenching and unclenching her delicate fingers. Between Propp and his sister, statuesque in a long black overcoat, stood Stokeham. A crack ran across the beak-mask, twisting its dour, aloof frown into a sneer.

She saw no child. Delphine felt the broomhandle grip of the Mauser in her palm. Miss DeGroot said ‘Hey!' then her arm burst its wrapping, sprouting wet pink cords that whipped towards Delphine.

Delphine raised the pistol and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

She had left the safety on.

A tendril wrapped round her arm.

‘You little rat!' Cox was charging at her.

Delphine thumbed the safety down and fired once, twice. She hit Miss DeGroot in the torso and chin. Reggie grunted and collapsed. The impact of the second shot twisted Miss DeGroot's head back; the cord round Delphine's wrist sagged, melting into stringy mulch. Delphine yanked her arm free, brought the gun round and shot Cox in the gut. He pivoted with the shot, his momentum carrying him into her. Delphine was thrown flat against the floor. Cox stank of tobacco and cologne and something chemical.

Propp was up on one foot. He stood with a gasp, grey eyes bulging. Stokeham did not react for a moment, then the mask swivelled, owl-like, to regard him.

Delphine's gun arm was trapped under Cox. He was heavier than he looked.

Stokeham marched at Propp. Propp let out a small, mournful sound, ‘Ah,' then Stokeham's leather gauntlets were round his throat.

Delphine rolled. Cox groaned above her. She tugged at the gun. Her hand slipped free. The splattered puce remains of Miss DeGroot's arm coalesced on the wet stone, knitting themselves into a single grasping limb. Even though Cox had been shot in the stomach, he raised a fist to pound Delphine.

Delphine rested her temple against the ground and closed one eye.

She shot Stokeham twice in the shoulder, feeling Cox buck with the impact. She tilted the muzzle up and blew a hole in the beak-mask's right lens. A spritz of juice and bone splinters left the back of Stokeham's skull. Stokeham toppled and performed a little jig on the ground.

Freed from Stokeham's grip, Propp staggered towards the pool. Miss DeGroot made a blustering sound – ‘Pwah aw pah!' – and her half-reconstructed arm reared up like a giant python. Propp had an arm round the old lady's shawl-wrapped shoulder.

He smiled.

‘Adieu.'

Miss DeGroot's big crude claw of a hand lunged at his throat. He tipped backwards into the pool, pulling the old lady with him. Delphine heard a slop, like a rock dropping into a swamp. The long liquid limb dived after him.

It surfaced clutching a triangle of shawl.

‘No. No!'

Miss DeGroot staggered across the cavern, ranting, swearing. She paused at the threshold of the pool. Her arm retracted and solidified, fingers pushing out of the undifferentiated stump, lengthening and separating. She made a fist, shaking with the effort, then unfurled her fingers one at a time. She was marinating in sweat, glorious. For a moment, she looked almost human.

She glanced back. Lamplight glinted in her eye.

‘Come on, Reggie.' She held out her other, human, hand. Reggie stood and walked to her.

‘Reggie, wait!'

Delphine tried to drag herself out from under Mr Cox. She felt a sharp pain in her hip. His coils of chestnut hair brushed her throat and it was this, of all things, that made her gag.

Reggie did not look back. He took Miss DeGroot's hand. They looked at their reflections in the pool. Miss DeGroot nodded.

Together, they fell.

Mr Cox caught hold of Delphine's wrists. She was trapped. A beaked silhouette appeared in the corner of her vision.

‘Well,' panted Cox, one eye screwed shut, ‘this
is
disappointing.'