Darkwater

by Catherine Fisher

  “That’s more like it.”

  That night in bed, he was cold. Frost was forming outside the window, a white intricate pattern. Deep under the bedclothes he muttered, “So what happens to her on New Year’s Eve?”

  “He takes her away. To some dark, supernatural place.”

  Tom was silent. Then he said, “She’s scared. And what does that make Azrael?”

  Simon sighed sleepily and turned over. “God knows. Ask Sarah.”

  He couldn’t. There was no sign of her. Next day, the twenty-third, he went up and hammered on the bedroom door twice but there was no answer, and it was firmly locked. But when he came down to the lab and put on the white coat Azrael had lent him, his fingers touched something icy in the pocket and he pulled out the keys he had given her; one for the upstairs room and one for the outside door. So had she gone? Or had copies made? That worried him. Things might go missing. It would be his fault.

  Azrael said, “Stop daydreaming, Tom.”

  “Sorry.” He dropped the keys back and glanced quickly at the watch; an old-fashioned fob watch. He was timing a peculiar process; Azrael was dripping a liquid from a pipette into a flask, one drop every two minutes. Exactly. “Now,” Tom said.

  The globule grew, wobbled, fell. It spread on the pink stuff in the flask, giving off a brief stink.

  “Mmm,” Azrael muttered.

  “This afternoon,” Tom said, “I have to help out downstairs. Getting things ready for the Waits.”

  “The Waits?”

  “A sort of carol service. By candlelight. It starts off in the great hall every Christmas Eve. The founder gave money for it.”

  “Ah.” Azrael smiled narrowly. “The founder.”

  Tom glanced at him. “You must know about her,” he said carefully. “Oh . . . now.”

  Azrael squeezed the pipette delicately. Another drop fell. “Suppose you tell me,” he said slyly.

  “Be careful,” Simon muttered.

  Tom ignored him. “Her name was Sarah Trevelyan. She started this school. She made it so that local people—poor people—could have an education without needing any money. Fishermen’s sons, and girls from the factories.”

  “How very generous.” Azrael stirred the mixture smoothly. “And what else did she do?”

  Tom kept his eyes on the watch. Maybe she’d been lying after all. “Plenty. There are the Trevelyan almshouses, the village library, the old people’s cottages down Gannet Lane. She paid for the harbor defenses and the lifeboat. There’s a Trevelyan Scholarship for something, and all sorts of charities and funds. Now.”

  The drop plipped.

  “You forgot the Cottage Hospital,” Azrael said mildly.

  Tom’s heart thumped. He looked up, and a gull screamed by the window. “If you knew, why ask?”

  Azrael shrugged. “I suppose I like to hear it. So many good things in one lifetime. Why do you suppose she spent all that money on her tenants, Tom? She must have been an extraordinary woman.”

  The door creaked. Scrab’s greasy head came around it.

  “Staying for Christmas are yer?”

  Azrael gave a delicate smile. “I’ll be away. Just for the day.”

  “Ah. Knew it.”

  He withdrew, tripped over the cat, and swore.

  “Now!” said Tom, remembering.

  The pink liquid heaved. It separated. Faint coils of smoke rose from it.

  “Have you seen her?” Azrael asked quietly. In the utter silence the rasp of the cat’s tongue was enormous. A sudden hiss of sleet rattled the windows. Tom looked up.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I suspected as much. Mephisto said the room held the scent of her yesterday. So she’s early. And the father of lies, the tramp, is back too.”

  Tom dumped the watch on the bench and whirled around to face him.

  “Who are you?” he breathed.

  Azrael smiled sadly. “That would take too long to explain.”

  “What do you want with her! She’s scared!”

  “She has no need.”

  “She said you’d come for her.”

  “That much, I’m afraid, is true. She has”—Azrael glanced at the almanac on the wall—“eight days left.”

  “Then what?”

  “The price must be paid.”

  “What price? Her life?”

  “Time, Tom?”

  “What?”

  “TIME!” Azrael glanced at him in sudden anxiety. “When? WHEN?”

  “I don’t know!” Tom grabbed for the watch. “Now! No! Wait!”

  But the drop wobbled and fell, and the flask erupted into an instant acrid yellow hissing steam that made them cough, clouds of it mushrooming up and filling the room, so that the cat spat and ran, and Azrael had to rush over and wrench the window open, and they both hung out coughing and retching.

  Cold sleet slashed their faces. In the bitter gale the sea to its horizon was empty, a spumy-gray agitation of waves, the cliff tops sheep-gnawed and deserted. Azrael turned, leaning his back against the sill. He took out a silk handkerchief and glanced ruefully at Tom.

  “Sorry,” Tom gasped.

  The dark man was still a moment, wiping his eyes. Then he sighed gracefully, and limped back to the scorched and ruined flask.

  “Still a few more things to add,” he said quietly.

  “I should have remembered to tell her about the tramp!”

  “She might know by now.” Simon opened the gate to the Bear Garden and listened. “Voices.”

  “Tate?” Tom said instantly.

  “Don’t be paranoid.”

  In the twilit garden the bears were dark blue shadows, glinting with frost. From the claws of one a great icicle hung. Tom listened. There was the far-off sea, and a fox up on the moor. There was a car on the road. And there were two voices.

  They were coming from a small summerhouse that leaned in one corner, its dilapidated roof mended with corrugated iron. Old cricket stumps and a lawnmower were stored in it. Now light gleamed from its cracks. Simon crept nearer, Tom close behind. The grass was crisp under him, the shadow of the Hall blackening the lawns.

  “It’s her,” Simon whispered. He moved aside, and Tom saw Sarah. She had her back to him.

  “When?” a voice asked her.

  “Tomorrow night. Or better still, Christmas Day. That’s a good time for it.”

  “No chance. For a start he won’t stay here, girlie.” They recognized the tramp’s wheeze. “Too holy a night for the likes of him.”

  Tom stepped closer.

  A dog gave a short yelping bark. Through the door’s crack he saw Sarah turn.

  “Is it the hounds?” the tramp breathed.

  “No.” Sarah opened the door and pulled Tom in. “It’s your useless messengers.”

  The summerhouse was lit by a single candle stuck in a splintered table. The tramp had been lounging in an old striped deckchair; now he sank back in relief. “Lord, laddies. I thought it was all up with us then.”

  Tom looked at Sarah. “Azrael will be away for Christmas. And he knows you’re here.”

  She shrugged, sitting on an upturned bucket.

  “She thinks,” the tramp said in disgust, “that talking to him will help. Asking him, all polite like, to let her be. Useless folly. No one gets clear of that one.”

  Sarah glared at him. “This is my problem.”

  “And I’m sent, girlie, to help thee solve it. Of course, if tha’d listened to me before . . .”

  She stood, scowling. “Forget it. My mind’s made up. And I’ve got things to do. A new will to write, for a start.” She looked at Tom. “You stay out of this. I’ve had a hundred years to get used to the idea.”

  “Aye.” The tramp took
out his cigarettes. “And how thou’ll pay for ’em.”

  Sarah marched to the door. “Get out of my way,” she snapped, and as Simon moved she swept past him into the dark night.

  The tramp rolled a cigarette. “Trevelyan to the core,” he said, with a sort of pride. “She won’t beg, whatever she thinks. ’Tis we that’ll have to do it then.”

  “Do what?”

  “What she won’t. Azrael wants a soul. That’s his right. But he’s fond of a bargain. All we have to do is get him a substitute.”

  He puffed. Blue smoke drifted. “Who’s thy worst enemy in all the world, Tom?”

  “Steve Tate,” Tom said, without hesitation.

  The tramp winked, shook the match out and threw it away. “And how would thou like to be rid of him forever, eh?”

  twenty

  The darkness was crooked.

  It was wet, the earth a sludge sliding under him, and then the stench making him feel sick, a stench of rottenness, of stems and stalks crushed, and the bloated, light-starved polyps of fungi that grew on the softening pit props.

  His leg hurt. He drifted in and out of the darkness, but always the pain troubled him and the rain woke him by dripping on his face. Simon was there, and it wasn’t soft earth his head was propped on but Simon’s lap, and it was Simon who was yelling desperately to the searchers above. But no one could hear him.

  Tom shifted, and deep under his ear in hollow caves an invisible river roared. “Hello lover boy,” it thundered. “See you tomorrow.”

  He woke instantly.

  “What’s wrong?” Simon muttered.

  A farm truck grumbled by outside. Early lights were on in the houses toward the harbor. A robin was singing. It was Christmas Eve.

  Slowly, Tom let himself relax.

  “I was dreaming about being down that pit. I’d have died if it hadn’t been for you.”

  “Too right.” Simon lay with his arms behind his head. “Kept you warm, kept you alive. Don’t think I’ve ever talked so much in my . . . life.”

  Tom almost smiled, lying back on the pillow. He had been nearly three days in the bottom of the shaft. When they had pulled him up on the swinging stretcher he had seen all their faces looking down at him, circling crazily, and his mother’s had been white and creased, as if the long terror had dried everything up in her, shriveled her life. And he had never told anyone Steve Tate had pushed him in.

  But now he said, “I told the tramp to get lost. It’s a crazy idea.”

  “But tempting.” Simon considered. “I mean, really tempting. Look at Tate, the scum of the earth. Think how he’s likely to turn out. Then look at Sarah. All the things she’s done. Who most deserves to live? It’s no contest.”

  “I don’t want him dead.” Tom drew his knees up and clasped them.

  “Don’t you?”

  “No. Not dead. Just . . .”

  “In hell,” Simon whispered.

  He was quiet at breakfast.

  “Going up to the Hall?” Paula asked, putting lipstick on. “Or has the mad scientist given you the day off?”

  “Sort of. He’s not mad. He’s okay.”

  Paula pursed her lips. “I tell you what, he’s handsome. Is he married?”

  He looked at her in alarm and she giggled. He liked it when she did that.

  He spent most of the day lazing around, avoiding the Hall. He and Simon walked the cliff path along to Mamble and back, and all the way they saw no one, only skuas and terns and the gray round heads of seals out in the choppy waters. It rained once, a great lowering shower that pattered against Tom’s hood, and when they got back home the tree was lit in the window and the house seemed a refuge.

  Simon, quite dry, sat on the window seat and said, “We should invite Sarah over for Christmas dinner. She’ll be all on her own up there. A few cans of beans isn’t much to live on.”

  Tom pulled on a dry sock. “We could.” He knew his mother would tease him, though.

  As it got dark he stood at the window and watched the twilight gather. Another day lost. There were only seven left now. The worry of it mingled oddly inside him with the secret excitement of Christmas. As if something huge would happen.

  They had a lift up to the Hall from John Hubbard, who ran the local taxi. Tom sat in the back with Simon, and as they turned into the drive he saw to his surprise that it was lit all along its length with white lanterns, each burning a strange bluish flame.

  “These are new!”

  Paula nodded. “Scrab put them up. I don’t know where he got them.”

  The driveway was thronged with people. And Darkwater Hall was alive, its door wide open, all its windows lit. Great swags of holly hung down the banisters and in the black-and-white hall an enormous tree stood, extravagantly decorated with tartan bows and candles.

  Tom took a mince pie off a tray, and a glass of hot wine.

  “Not too much of that stuff,” his mother muttered, but two of her friends came over then and he managed to slip away. Behind him, at the foot of the stairs, the band started up with “The First Noël,” and the Waits got themselves together in a chattering, fussy straggle.

  The Waits were the singers, of all ages; lots of children, men with lanterns, women well wrapped up with scarves and hip flasks. They whistled and clapped as the Gray Mare came prancing out, the skeleton of a horse’s head decked with ribbons and mounted on a stick; a sheet was pinned around it and the horse’s jaw clacked as the man underneath pulled the strings. They would carry it around the parish; an eerie, half-forgotten custom. It had always scared him stiff when he was a kid.

  “Enjoying yourself?”

  Sarah was standing behind him, nibbling a mince pie. She looked tired and strained, her hair lank and unwashed. In the crowd no one had noticed her. He stepped back. “Are you?”

  “Yes.” She glanced around defiantly. “It’s nice to see the things I started are still going strong.”

  “Don’t pretend. You must be worried.”

  “And the mare too!” She licked her fingers. “I got really interested in folklore. Well, for the first thirty years.”

  “Sarah. There must be . . .”

  “I told you.” She turned, angry. “You don’t need to feel sorry for me! Besides, I’m going to talk to Azrael. Where is he?”

  The carol rose to its chorus. Tom shrugged unhappily. “In the lab?”

  “Right.” She turned; he drank the last of the wine in a gulp and followed, pushing through the crowd to the stairs, dumping the plate and glass and running up after her, the hot drink pulsing in his head. Below them the carol ended with clapping; the band swung into the slow solemnity of “Silent Night.”

  But Azrael wasn’t in the lab. As they came to the door on the first floor with HEADMASTER on it they saw the cat. It was washing on the woven matting. It looked up at them.

  “I should have known,” Sarah said drily. She turned the handle.

  It was a huge room, and a fire was burning in the hearth. Azrael was standing with his back to them by the tall windows, looking out into the night. He wore his long outdoor coat, as if he were waiting for some taxi. Perhaps he saw their reflections. He was smiling when he turned.

  “My dear Sarah! After all this time.”

  “Hello, Azrael. You haven’t altered a bit.” She walked across the soft carpet to a small table covered with a cloth, then sat down and calmly poured some tea.

  For years she had dreaded this moment. Yet now it had come, it was nothing but relief. It had been a fierce defiance that had brought her back; if she had to die, here was as good as anywhere, it was hers at least, the place she had sold her soul for. And she had forgotten how likeable Azrael always was.

  “Two cups,” she said quietly. “You were expecting me.”

  Azrael tipped
his head. “Of course. I have been for some days.”

  She spooned in sugar. “I did think about staying away. Hiding out in South America or somewhere. I could still go.”

  “Nowhere would be far enough, Sarah.”

  She glanced at Tom. “Sit down. And where’s your brother?”

  Tom shrugged, surprised. He realized he hadn’t seen Simon since they arrived. Azrael’s eyes watched him, strangely bright.

  “Two things. That’s all I want,” Sarah said quickly, watching Tom sit. “First of all, was I responsible for Simon’s death? I need to know that.”

  Azrael looked shocked, then concerned. He came over to the sofa.

  “You?”

  “I saw you both.” She turned to Tom. “Long before you were born, in a sort of . . . jar he has. I dropped it, well almost. You were all shaken up. I need to know!” she snapped at Azrael. “Whether what happened to them later was because of that.”

  Azrael frowned, and sat slowly. Finally he said, “I had no idea this was on your mind. The truth is, Sarah, I don’t know. All things are connected in the Great Work, all times and places, all minds. Everything that has ever happened in the world is threaded with everything else in a vast intricate web. Whether things would have worked out differently is not for us to know. You meant no harm. You were only curious.” He glanced over. “I’m sure Tom doesn’t blame you.”

  “Of course I don’t!” Tom felt hot. He had never heard anything so ridiculous.

  “All right.” Sarah nodded, nettled. “So you won’t tell me.”

  “I can’t, believe me. I have no knowledge of—”

  “Knowledge! You have plenty of that.” She looked at him sharply. “In a hundred years you get to see a lot of people die. My father. Martha. I know all about you, my lord.” She drank some tea and put her cup down, her hand shaking slightly.

  “I see. And the second thing?” Azrael asked gently. His long fingers caressed the cat as it climbed up to him. Sarah was silent a long time. Then, abruptly, she stood up.