Darkwater

by Catherine Fisher

  “That will do, Scrab,” Azrael said lazily.

  When the man had scuttled out she said, “What happened to my grandfather?”

  Uneasy, Azrael leaned over and poured tea from the china teapot. “He was found, two days later, at the foot of the cliffs at Newhaven. He may have fallen over in the dark. Or perhaps, the shame . . .”

  Sarah stood up so abruptly that the cat turned, eyes wide. “That was your fault.” Suddenly she was so angry, it trembled through her. “You should have told him you didn’t want the wretched estate!”

  “I did.” Azrael was calm. “I swore before all of them I wouldn’t take it. I didn’t want his ruin. But he was proud. No Trevelyan, he roared, would ever go back on his word. If he had to start again without a penny, he would! He had courage, Sarah. Just like you. If it had been you, you’d have been too proud to ask for your losses back. You’d rather have died.”

  Slowly, she sat. He handed her a cup and she took it, reluctant.

  “Try the cakes. The cook is really very good at them.”

  They would have choked her, she thought. “No thanks. So you got everything.”

  “Everything. House, estate, paintings, horses, even the sheets on the beds and the flowers wilting in the vases. I won his past from him and your future from you. That’s why I want to help you now.”

  She took a swallow of the hot tea. It made her feel better. “How?”

  He lifted a small iced cake daintily with silver tongs.

  “You’ve lost your situation.”

  “Because I was stupid.”

  “Is that why?”

  “She wanted me to beat Emmeline,” Sarah said coldly, “and I wouldn’t. The poor little wretch has enough troubles. I felt sorry for her.”

  He was silent a moment, patting his knee till the cat jumped up. When he spoke again his voice was almost sly. “It didn’t seem like that to me.”

  She stared.

  “No, to me it seemed you were quite ready to cane the child. You didn’t care for it, but you would have done it. No, the reason you rebelled was that the woman Hubbard called you a menial, in front of me, and told you to repeat it. That stuck in your throat.” He smiled. “Just like a Trevelyan.”

  Sarah put the cup down, so hard that it clinked in the saucer and toppled over. “Why have you brought me here? Just to make fun of me?”

  “Indeed no. To offer you a new situation.”

  She stood, furious. “As some scullery maid.”

  Azrael’s eyes widened. He swung his legs off the footstool and swiveled around, concerned. “Of course not! Was that what you thought?”

  “I don’t know what to think!”

  “Please, sit down.”

  But she didn’t move, so he took a breath and said, “I’m a reclusive man, Sarah. Something of a scholar; my field is alchemy and all the strange old sciences of the Middle Ages. Old-fashioned now, of course, with our gas lamps and steam engines. But important to me. The Great Work, the old sages called it.” He leaned forward, his face keen and lit with enthusiasm. “The eternal, unending search for the most precious element in the universe. For pure gold, Sarah! For shining goodness!”

  As if he’d said too much, he stopped, and laughed. “I have a laboratory and an immense library, thousands of volumes, all untidy and muddled, that desperately need to be put in order and catalogued. I also need help with my experiments. I would like to pay you to do it. Twelve shillings a week. Rooms for yourself and your father, here in the Hall. He will be well looked after.”

  She stared down at him, utterly astonished.

  He smiled, picked the cat up again, and smudged crumbs off the cake. The cat’s pink tongue licked them from his finger. “Do please accept. I have no desire for fussy secretaries or prying university men. I want someone who loves learning. And don’t just think I’ve invented this for your sake. Believe me, I really need the assistance. You’ve seen Scrab.”

  She sank back into the chair, legs suddenly weak. “How do you know I like learning?”

  His glance was bright and amused. “Why else would you stay at that bearpit of a school? No, you’d be perfect, Sarah. We could work well together on my Great Work, to make gold, the most precious of things. Do say yes. But take time to think, if you want.”

  The fire crackled. Around her the portraits of cruel Trevelyans stared down at her scornfully. She knew she was betraying them by taking a job in their house. In her house. But back at the cottage her father would be coughing.

  “I accept,” she said.

  six

  Martha picked up the pile of shining coins and clicked them through her fingers. Then she dropped them back on the scrubbed boards of the table. “It’s a lot extra,” she said.

  “Mmm.” Sarah blew on the spoonful of potato soup and swallowed it even though it burned her tongue. She wondered how to explain.

  In the weak rushlight the page next to her chipped plate was shadowy. It was a battered dictionary, one of her father’s few possessions. She tore a chunk off the loaf, reading.

  ALCHEMY: The medieval science of the Philosopher’s Stone, the search to transmute metals into gold.

  Instantly, like a blow out of nowhere, the memory of her strange dream came back. She stopped eating, spoon paused in midair. The library. It was coming true. She was so amazed she almost didn’t notice Martha had sat down opposite. Martha never sat down in the mornings. There was too much to do.

  The stout woman pushed back her graying hair. Then she said, “Or did his lordship give you the money?”

  Alarmed, Sarah stared. “What?”

  Martha sighed. “Lord, Sarah, don’t play Miss Innocent. I know Mrs. Hubbard turned you away. I heard about it at the market yesterday.”

  Sarah dropped the spoon into the dish. “She didn’t turn me away. I left.”

  “It’s all the same in the end.”

  The baby gurgled in his crib; she gave him an anxious glance. “You’ve got your rent,” Sarah said hotly.

  “Yes, but I’m worried about you. Lord Azrael . . .”

  “What on earth makes you think I got it from him?”

  “This.” Quickly, as if she didn’t like to touch it, Martha took a small white card from her pinafore and laid it on the table.

  Sarah stared at it with cold fear. She had burned this. She’d watched it turn black and crinkle and fall into ash.

  She reached out and turned it over; it felt smooth and cool. The familiar words slid over its surface. I FEEL I OWE YOUR FAMILY SOME RECOMPENSE.

  For a second there was something darkly mocking in the sloping script.

  “It was in the ashes when I cleaned the grate.” Martha leaned forward and caught hold of Sarah’s wrist. “What does it mean? Why does he want to make all right, after years and years?”

  “It’s nothing. He’s given me a situation. In his library.”

  “His library?” Martha looked puzzled. “With books? But why you? There’s learned folk would suit him better . . .”

  Annoyed, Sarah pulled away. She took the soup dish to the scullery and scrubbed it fiercely in the cold greasy water. “Well, he’s asked me. He’s paying twelve shillings all found.”

  “You’re to live in!”

  Exasperated, Sarah turned. “All servants live in, Martha, and that’s all I’ll be. There’s a room for Papa too. It’ll be better for him than here. More like he’s used to.”

  Even as she said it she saw Martha’s shock.

  “But who’ll take care of him, the master? I always have! He knows me.”

  “There’ll be servants.”

  “Yes, and how they’ll despise him!”

  “I thought you’d be pleased,” Sarah snapped. “Or is it the rent you’ll really be missing?”

  In the sile
nce she knew it had been a spiteful thing to say. Martha turned and bent over the cradle; after a second Sarah crossed to the back door and opened it, feeling the wet breeze on her face, the wild cries of gulls over the plowed fields on Marazy Head. Out at sea a faint drizzle obscured the fishing fleet.

  After a long breath she said, “Sorry.”

  Martha had the baby out and was rocking him. Her face was flushed. “There’s talk about this Azrael,” she said obstinately. “That he spends nights in sorcery and speaking with demons. No one respectable goes near the Hall after dark. They say he’s found a way down to the caverns, and sometimes at night you can hear a roar like great engines churning underground. Ernie Marsden that lives out on the cliff says on full moon last week he looked out and saw the carriage there, and his lordship walking, at dead of night, looking over the sea. He’s a strange man, that’s for sure.”

  Sarah shrugged. “Gossip. He’s a scholar. And a gentleman.”

  “Indeed? They say the devil is a gentleman.”

  The dry voice came from the bedroom. Sarah jerked around in alarm.

  Her father stood there, supporting himself on his silver-topped cane. His face was mottled, and the black-and-gold silk dressing gown that had once been expensive fell loose around his thin body. He breathed heavily.

  “You shouldn’t be up!” Martha hissed. She gave the baby to Sarah and brought a chair quickly to the fire. Then she tried to take his arm.

  “Don’t fuss me, woman!” He lowered himself stiffly, chest heaving. It took him a painful minute to catch his breath; then he glared at Sarah. “So. You seriously expect me to go back to Darkwater Hall.”

  “I thought . . .”

  “You didn’t think!” His hands shook on the stained silver knob. “Not if you imagined that I would even cross the threshold with that . . . upstart living there. See my daughter a skivvy in her own house! Stay cooped in some attic and watch him . . . sitting in my chairs . . . eating from my table . . . taking the very food from our mouths!” His breath rattled; he spat into the fire. “What sort of Trevelyan have I bred? I’d starve here first.”

  Azrael had been right, she thought grimly. This whole mess had come from pride, and it was still crippling their lives. Well, she’d be the one to end it.

  “I’m going,” she said, firmly but quietly. “We need the money and he wants to make amends. If you don’t approve, Papa, then stay here. We can afford the rent.”

  Martha had taken the baby into the tiny scullery. They heard him wail in dismay as he was washed.

  Her father looked at her. He was so shrunken, every breath an effort. The silver cane and silk gown she had known all her life looked pathetic now, soiled bits of the past that he clung to stubbornly. His weakness frightened her. She came and crouched by the chair.

  “Don’t forbid me. Because I’d have to go anyway. I know it’s hard. But would you rather me be some fishwife, stinking of herring, or go cap in hand to the workhouse? At least this is a job, something respectable.” She waited, but he didn’t answer.

  They both knew she had to go, but he would never admit to it.

  She stood up wearily. “I’ll get my things together. I’ll be home on my day off.”

  It wasn’t until she reached the trundle bed that he put his head in his hands.

  “How in God’s name did we sink to this?” he muttered.

  There was little to pack—a few clothes, her mother’s cameo brooch, an old notebook, all stuffed into one of Jack’s sacks. He had come in from the fishing and was watching, uneasy. “Any trouble, Sarah,” he muttered, “and you come back. Just come back.”

  “Thanks, Jack,” she said, tying the sack up. Her father had gone back to his room. She glanced at the closed curtain. “Look after him, won’t you?”

  “Don’t you worry. We will.”

  Outside, she walked to the stile, climbed it, and looked back at the cottage. On the doorstep, Martha was waving the baby’s tiny fist.

  In the deep lane the wind died away. Between the stone walls a flock of bramblings scattered into the bare thorns of gorse. She walked quickly. There was no point looking back. And there was something inside her, she knew, that was glad, that wanted those warm, comfortable rooms, the soft carpets, the sense of being someone.

  She took the shortcut over the fields and into Darkwater woods. Usually she would have avoided this track, but she felt reckless and free, and it was quicker than walking up the drive. Most of the Darkwater estate was farmland, with small wooded ravines and combes in the folds of the cliffs. Every bay and cove along this coast belonged to it, every shipwreck, all the rents of the tenantry in the tiny hamlets, Cooper’s Cross, Durrow, Mamble, even the tollgate on the road to Truro. And these woods around Darkwater Hall, an ancient wildwood hardly thinned or managed, threaded with mysterious paths.

  She knew the way. But the drizzle thickened, a gray soaking mist moving in from the sea as the short afternoon waned. It hung around her like a fog. She stopped, one hand on a damp oak trunk, listening.

  The wood was silent. No birds. No gulls. Only the sea mist, closing quietly.

  For a moment, doubt about the whole thing overtook her. She weighed the sack, uneasy. Maybe she should go back. Maybe Martha was right. Then, just ahead, in the grayness, something loomed, and she groped toward it through the brambles and felt its cold hollows with her fingers.

  Stone.

  It was one of the Quoits.

  She jerked her fingers back instantly. The Devil’s Quoits, everyone called them. The story was that the devil had thrown them from the cliffs, aiming at the tower of the church, but they’d fallen here, a line of three leaning stones. That was another superstition. It might suit Jack and Martha, but not her. In one of the books in the school, she’d read that stones like these were put up by people thousands of years ago. Still, she didn’t like them.

  They leaned in the fog. Faint lichen grew on them, green splotches of spores, and they were scored with long grooves, as if by great claws. They barred her way. She’d go home.

  Not far behind, a dog growled.

  The sound made her flesh crawl. She turned and looked back.

  A padding of paws rustled and pattered in the thick drifts of invisible leaves. And then, far back in the smothers of drizzle, a great black shape was running toward her, muscled and lean, tongue lolling out, eyes like tiny red coals.

  She turned and fled. Breathless and gasping she struggled frantically through branches that whipped into her face, thickets of conifer and holly. All the fog seemed to be panting at her heels; behind her it thudded as if a pack of spectral hounds, dark as mist, was hunting her down, running with her, and as she ducked under a yew into darkness she stifled a scream, feeling a hot wet tongue on her neck, teeth catching her shawl. The fabric tore; yelling, she struck out at nothing with the sack, stumbling back out of branches into sudden space, a clipped hedge, a gravel walk.

  At once she turned and raced along it, under the dark fog-wreathed mass of the house toward the slot of light that was opening. Yellow lamp light streamed out; it sent her shadow out behind her, stretched and flitting, and she had a sudden horror that the shadow-hound would grab it and gnaw it, but even as she turned to look the door was pulled wide and the terrace walk above the sunken garden was empty but for drifts of fog through the light.

  “For Gawd’s sake,” a voice said irritably. “I’m not standing ’ere all night!”

  Scrab held the lantern up, eyeing her bedraggled breathless panic. Between his feet the cat slithered in, its fur soaked.

  She slid in and slammed the door. It felt solid at her back.

  Scrab turned. For a moment she thought he was grinning. “Welcome ’ome” was all he said.

  seven

  The dress was dark blue, with an ivory lace collar. It lay spread on the bed and she stared at it in
silent wonder. Scrab dumped the candle on the fireside table. “’Imself says you might not want to get yer breakfast with the workers. So . . .”

  “Yes.” She nodded decisively. “I will.”

  He shrugged, scattering dandruff. “Please yerself. Servants’ ’all. Seven. Now can a man get to ’is bed?”

  She summoned as much dignity as she could. “Yes. Thank you.”

  When he had closed the door she dumped the sack on the floor and collapsed onto the bed’s edge, running both hands through her soaked hair. What a way to come home! Because it was home. Or should have been. The thought gave her a sort of courage. Smelling toast, she raised her head and saw on a tiny round table by the fire a tray laid with the same porcelain cup and teapot that she had seen downstairs. Unlacing her boots she kicked them off, washed face and hands in the basin on the washstand, pulled her old nightdress on, and curled luxuriously in the velvet chair, enjoying the small clear flames and eating the toast slowly, its warm golden butter dripping onto her fingers.

  This was bliss. And Scrab hadn’t brought it; it had been here waiting. Azrael had been that sure she would come.

  Wriggling her toes in the heat, she thought for a moment of her father, coughing in his bed in the drafty cottage, but she poured the tea out quickly and tried to forget. The money would make things better for him. But if only he would have come!

  She looked around. The bedroom was small, but not a garret, its walls papered a deep red. The bed lay under a heavy coverlet, and in dimmer corners dark furniture lurked. A press, a tallboy, a small closet by the wall. The windows were shuttered. Tomorrow, she thought sleepily, she would look at it all, but she was far too tired now. But she did cross the soft carpet and open the closet warily.

  A tiny moth flitted from its cedar-scented darkness. It was empty, except for a big dark book, which she lifted down. It was a Bible. There was a clasp on it, but it wasn’t locked, and a long white feather had been pushed into one of the pages. It was heavy, and she took it to the bed.