Midnight is a Place

by Joan Aiken

  "Why don't you put on your red coat?" Lucas said. "Hurry! I'll wait for you."

  "I do not have it."

  "Why not?" His voice sounded sharp, merely because he was puzzled.

  "I sold it," said Anna-Marie.

  "Sold it?" Automatically Lucas flicked the reins, and the pony started. But his attention was all concentrated on Anna-Marie, who sat staring straight ahead, with her small pale face so tightly controlled that it looked like the face on a shilling.

  Lucas had to control himself too. He was seized by a violent inclination to storm at her, shake her, push her off the cart and tell her to walk home. What a childish, silly, spiteful thing to have done! Well, it would be a long time before he gave her another present, she needn't think he was going to fling away any more of his hard-earned money on buying things for her to sell again.

  For the first time in many days a letter to Greg formed in his mind.

  "Dear Greg, I am driving through the main street of Blastburn, up Milestone Hill. Snow is falling out of the fog, like white leaves coming down from the ghosts of trees. (He was not satisfied with that, though; he would have to change it later.) Anna-Marie is with me, but she is in one of her peculiar, awkward, contrary moods. Today she sold the red coat I had given her—just to be rude and saucy, just to show me that she doesn't need the things I can buy with my wages. If I weren't older and bigger and a boy, I'd smack her ungrateful little head...." Forming the words in his mind cooled down his bad temper, and he looked about him more calmly as they drove up the hill, thinking that the vague foggy shapes of two pottery kilns looked like a picture of a Russian town that Mr. Oakapple had once shown him in a geography book.

  Then he heard a stifled sound beside him and saw out of the corner of his eye that Anna-Marie was wiping her cheek, trying to do it inconspicuously.

  "What's the matter now?" Lucas demanded. "Are you crying?"

  She took a great breath. "I—I am sorry, Luc-asse. It is nothing."

  "Of course it's something," he said angrily. "First you sell the coat I bought for you, then you cry. Nothing you do has any sense in it, if you ask me."

  At this Anna-Marie broke down entirely. "Oh," she wept, "I hoped that perhaps you would not ask about the coat—or that you would understand. I was so sorry to sell it. But the color showed up too much. It made me too noticeable."

  "Noticeable? How do you mean?" A new anxiety took hold of Lucas. "How can I understand if you don't explain what all this is about? Are the constables after you? Is it what I thought? That making cigars out of stubs is against the law?"

  "No," she sobbed, "not that. At least I don't think so. But it is some boys. The girls tell them about my cigar collecting and now they come and say that I must not do it, because only they have the right. I am sure it is not true, but they say it. And sometimes they upset my stall and spoil my cigars, treading on them. And if they see me in the street they chase me and throw stones, so I can go only in the small streets where there are no pieces of cigar. That is why for the last few days I have made very little money, and I am very much afraid it will be the same tomorrow—"

  "So that was why you didn't want to wear the red coat?"

  "And I sell it because I make so little money today I do not have enough to buy things for Monsieur Ookapool—"

  Lucas felt quite numb with rage. This is too much, he thought; just too much. Whatever providence is doing this to us ought to see that we have had as much as we can stand.

  "Was it they who bruised your arm?"

  "It was a stone. Usually I am quick to duck, but that time not so quick."

  "Just wait till I catch some of them—"

  "No, Luc! It is not only that they are big, but they are many. What could one person, two people, do against a whole crowd?"

  "We'll talk about it after we see Mr. Oakapple," he said.

  They had arrived at the infirmary. Lucas strode in, absent-minded with rage, and Anna-Marie, loaded with the basket, had difficulty keeping up with him. Suddenly he remembered and took it from her, then walked on, his forehead creased with furious concentration. They ought to go, they ought to leave the town, this was no place for Anna-Marie to be. But where could they go? And what about Mr. Oakapple? There seemed no limit to the number of problems that faced them.

  Mr. Oakapple, however, was visibly on the mend this evening. He lay propped up on pillows, instead of flat, and the bandages had been removed from his face, which was still red and painful-looking but not scarred or mutilated.

  When he saw Lucas and Anna-Marie, he gave a small difficult smile; evidently it still hurt him to move his cheek muscles. "Well! I had wondered who were the kind brownies who kept bringing me eggs and milk. I had thought it could hardly be Sir Randolph or Mrs. Gourd. So it was you two! I am very much obliged to you."

  "It was no trouble," said Lucas gruffly, and Anna-Marie, a pink flush suffusing her pallor, cried, "Oh, we are so please to see you better, Monsieur Ookapool!"

  "How are things up at the Court?" inquired the tutor. "Was very much damage done? My recollections of that night are all confused—nothing is clear—"

  Lucas hesitated. His instinct was not to upset Mr. Oakapple by telling him all the truth. But Anna-Marie burst out impetuously, "Why, monsieur, nothing is left at all—du tout, du tout! And Madame Gourd and Fanny and all the domestiques are gone away, and Sir Randolph, 'e is dead, and Lucas and me are living in the town. All is different since you have been ill."

  "Good heavens!" said the tutor feebly. "All Midnight burned? And Sir Randolph dead?"

  He seemed so shocked at the news that Lucas felt anxious and glanced about for a sister. One was passing through the ward. She came over and gave Mr. Oakapple a drink.

  "Is he all right?" Lucas asked.

  "Yes—yes—going on well. You can fetch him home in a week, I should think. But he will need to take life very quietly for several months after that; probably till spring."

  Home! Lucas and Anna-Marie looked at one another in consternation.

  Then Lucas said, "Sir, I'm glad to see you better, for we wondered if you had any friends or family who ought to have been told that you were ill?"

  Again the tutor smiled his small difficult smile. "No, you can set your minds easy on that head! Like yourselves, I have no one. My father died ten years ago, and my mother, two. There is nobody that you need have worried with the fact that I'm stuck here with my head in a bag."

  "Except us," said Anna-Marie gently. "We have been worried about you, monsieur."

  He moved one of his bandaged hands from under the covers and patted her awkwardly on the head. "Thank you, little one. You are a very kind girl. But you should not have troubled your small head about me."

  "Have you no friends at all, sir? Somebody that you might go to stay with when you come out?"

  "I can think of none," said the tutor. "Except my old master at the choir school, and he is very old by now; I would not wish to be a trouble to him. Perhaps I could get a room at your lodgings in the town. Who looks after you? Does Mr. Throgmorton see to the expenses for you?"

  "Well, no—" said Lucas.

  "Then how do you manage?"

  At this moment the sister returned to say that visiting hours were over, and they were able to escape without the need for going into long and difficult explanations.

  "Phew!" said Lucas, when they were outside. "It seems that his being better is going to make things more difficult for us, not easier—"

  "When he really is better it will be easier," said Anna-Marie.

  "But that's a long way away."

  "In the spring." She kicked a lump of snow and said, "If spring ever does come in this hateful town!"

  "It's only December now," said Lucas. "And we must certainly find a better place than Mrs. Tetley's to take Mr. Oakapple to; he'd never get well there."

  "Luc," Anna-Marie said suddenly. "I have an idea."

  "What is it?" he asked, with caution. He was so tired that even his mind felt stiff; h
e was not sure if he would be able to deal sensibly with any of Anna-Marie's ingenious ideas.

  "Well—all the big Midnight House was burn down—nothing is left there to live in—"

  "I know. You don't need to tell me."

  "But there is one place that doesn't burn, and I have only just thought of it."

  "I can't think of anywhere that didn't burn."

  "Do you not remember that first time we go driving with Mr. Ookapool and I ask, What is that mound, and he say, That is the old icehouse? Far, far away, in the corner of the park?"

  "Why, yes," said Lucas slowly. "Now you mention it, I do remember—"

  "Luc!" She grabbed his hand, really excited now, as the idea expanded in both their minds. "Why do we not go and look at it? Now?"

  "But it's miles away, and late at night!"

  "But the snow have stopped snowing, and the moon shines. And also I do not believe it is so very far."

  "But it's two miles to the lodge—"

  "I know—if we go up, all the way up the long hill and in at the big gate, is a long way. But I have seen, when I was in the park, there is a big tree shaped like a point d'interrogation, over by a little wood near the park wall—and, look, I can see that very same tree from here, against the snowy hill!"

  It was true. They had come out of the infirmary courtyard and were standing in the road. The infirmary was the last building on the edge of the town; up above it, the road ran beside snow-covered fields, which presently turned to moorland. And on the other side ran the high wall which encircled Midnight Park. And beyond the wall was the tree shaped like a question mark.

  "If we could get over the wall," said Anna-Marie, "then the icehouse is quite near that tree, so it would be not far at all from here."

  "Yes. But how do we get over the wall? Still it's worth looking, I agree.

  "People from the town used to go into the park to catch rabbits," said Anna-Marie. "I have often heard that poor old Gabriel say so, before he is always so drunk. There must be a way through somewhere."

  There was a long narrow copse, a kind of overgrown hedge—fir and holly mixed with little ash trees—growing beside the park wall. Without saying anything further, Lucas led the pony and trap off the road, and tied the pony under a good-sized fir tree, where she would be in shelter.

  "Come on then," he said. Across his mind flitted the memory of the old woman he had seen—the witch? But Mr. Oakapple had said that was a lot of nonsense. She might have been some poor old vagabond who had chosen to pass a night or so there....

  Anna-Marie gave a little skip. "Oh, I did so hope you would think this is a good idea!" she said. "If only there is a way through!"

  Luckily the moon, now the snow had stopped, was bright enough so that there was no difficulty in seeing what was to be seen. They walked straight through the copse until they came up against the twenty-foot-high wall.

  "Now which way should we go?" said Anna-Marie.

  "Let's try downhill toward the town first. It's most likely, if there is an entrance, that it would be as close to the town as possible."

  So they turned left and made their way downhill.

  When they came to the edge of the copse—

  "Good heavens," said Lucas, pausing. "That's Murgatroyd's Mill right down below. I didn't realize how much road must curve around. Why, the mill is absolutely next door to the park."

  "I suppose when my grandpère build the Mill, there is no town. Monsieur Ookapool tell me that the houses and the other factories come later. So he put his mill by his park."

  "I suppose so," said Lucas, brought up short by the fact, which he tended to forget, that it had been Anna-Marie's grandfather who had been the founder of this whole huge black clutter of factories and houses, wealth and poverty and employers and workpeople. And here was his granddaughter skipping through the snow under the midnight moon without a penny to her pocket!

  They had crossed a bare expanse of snow and entered another bit of the little wood.

  "Ah, ah!" cried Anna-Marie triumphantly. "Look! Look! Didn't I guess right?"

  If the moon had not been shining and the ground covered with snow, they might have missed the gap in the wall. For it was extremely narrow, and cunningly concealed beside the trunk and under the branches of a big old yew tree whose dark snow-laden boughs hung down all round, making a kind of evergreen cave. But because the moon was shining so brightly on the snowy grass of the park beyond the wall, the narrow crack showed up like a keyhole in a dark door with a light on the other side.

  "I can just get through—I think—perhaps it will be too small for you, Luc!"

  But when they had ducked under the yew and made their way to the gap, they found that it was about two feet wide and four feet high—quite big enough to get through comfortably. Someone had gone to considerable trouble to make the hole where it would not be seen; a thick growth of ivy on the other side obscured it from any but a close observer. Lucas noticed also that the stones at the top had been carefully mortared and a kind of rude arch contrived, so that falling stonework would not make the entrance bigger or more conspicuous.

  "And there is the icehouse!" whispered Anna-Marie.

  Somehow, now they were inside the park, they felt the need to proceed with caution. They moved silently over the snow toward the circular mound, which looked like a giant-sized molehill.

  "Hush!" breathed Lucas, when Anna-Marie's feet scrunched in the untrodden snow. Then he gripped her tightly by the wrist and stood still, cocking his head sideways, exercising his ears with the acute concentration that he employed when listening for hogs in the sewer.

  "C'est bien singulier," whispered Anna-Marie, "mais je crois que j'entends un bébé qui pleure!"

  Lucas, too, could have sworn that he heard a baby. But what would one be doing out in the middle of snowy Midnight Park at this time of night? They must, both of them, be imagining it. Perhaps it was an owl.

  They reached the icehouse and stole round it, looking for the entrance.

  "There are two doors, I remember—a big door and a little door—"

  "There!" Anna-Marie ran on ahead. A kind of cleft showed in the smooth, turfed-over side of the mound. When they reached it, there was a heavy wooden door, set in a stone arch.

  "It's sure to be locked," whispered Lucas. "And the key was probably burned in the fire; I daresay it was one of those big ones that always hung on the rack of keys in the kitchen."

  But when he gently tried the door's handle, it turned, and the door came smoothly back toward him.

  "Oh, quel bonheur! We can go in. See, Luc, all is coming out just as I told you."

  Anna-Marie was so pleased with herself that Lucas was sorely tempted to say something snubbing. Still it was true, she had suggested the place, and it wad all turning out as she had predicted. And, if the icehouse wasn't too cold—or rat-infested—or dripping with damp—there didn't seem to be any reason why they shouldn't consider living there. At least it was free.

  "I wish I'd brought my bull's-eye," Lucas murmured.

  A narrow dark passage led inward from the door. Anna-Marie's eagerness to lead the way suddenly left her, and she politely stood back to let Lucas move ahead. Although he had not got the lantern with him, he did have flint and steel and tinder.

  "We could do with a dry twig," he whispered. "See if you can find a bit of brush—"

  The words came to a stop in his mouth. For an inner door had suddenly opened ahead of them, letting out a mild glow of light into the rough stone passage where they stood.

  "Is that somebody come to call on me?" inquired a gentle voice, a voice that neither of them had ever heard before.

  PART THREE

  DAYBREAK

  Lucas felt Anna-Marie's fingers clench around his left wrist so tightly that his fingers, cold already, began to go numb.

  He too was greatly startled. A light, and a voice, in this dark, out of the way spot, were the last things to be expected. But, he realized, he did not feel very much frig
htened; whoever it was behind that half-open door could not possibly be as bad as the hogs or the rats in the sewers of Blastburn. So he went forward, blinking slightly, into the light.

  After all, it was not so very bright—hardly more dazzling than the moon on the snow outside. Three or four rush dips, set in pottery holders, burned smokily and gave a shadowy, flickering radiance. The remains of a log fire smoldered gently upon an open hearth, contributing little more than a dull red glow.

  Anna-Marie moved after Lucas and stood close beside him, still clutching his hand, while they took stock of the person who lived in the place they had hoped to inhabit.

  She was an old lady. The word lady immediately came into Lucas's mind, although her dress was extremely rough, made of woolen material, and covered with a sacking apron. She wore battered old boots as well, and her snowy hair was skewered up on top of her head in a large untidy knot by what looked like a twig of yew. She was tall—rather taller than Lucas—and thin as a scarecrow. In the dim light it was hard to make out the color of her cheeks, but they looked wrinkled and weatherbeaten, like the skin of an old apple that has been left in the grass all winter long. Her hands were thin as gulls' claws. But her face! Lucas thought he had never seen a face combining such authority and such goodness. The nose was so straight, and the sockets of the eyes so deep, that the old lady's face reminded Lucas of a yoke—the kind of yoke used for carrying two milk pails with a bar across the top—it had that firmness and strength. And her eyes, deepset in triangular caverns, were bright—bright—but what color in that hazy light, neither Lucas nor Anna-Marie could determine.

  "Well! This is an unexpected pleasure," said the old lady, smiling, when she, on her side, had taken a survey of Lucas and Anna-Marie. Her voice, clear and deep, rang like a bell in the stone-built place. "You made me a little anxious when I first heard you; there are some rough types in the town these days who occasionally come into the park for a bit of poaching, but I do not think that you are like that."