‘SAY!’ HE CRIED, pounding down the stairs after Vincent. ‘Say! Wait a minute there!’
Surprised, Vincent spun to a halt on the first-floor landing. Harry came to a stop a few steps above him. He gripped the banister, trying to seem imposing. With his ears plugged again, nothing he touched felt real. His feet didn’t even seem to contact the ground, his breathing sounded panicked in his head.
Vincent was stalking towards him, demanding to know how he kept escaping the room. Harry blessed the crotchety old mind-reader who’d taught him to read lips, and all the pre-show audiences he’d spied on from behind the curtain, gathering those morsels of information people gave when they thought no one was watching. This man would be a damned sight harder to fool than a hall of country bumpkins, though. The best thing Harry could do now was to keep talking so Vincent couldn’t get a word in edgeways.
‘I lied to yah about seeing nothing in that lake.’
Vincent halted.
‘I did see something. Something big, filled with lights, made of metal. It is a machine.’ Vincent went to speak and Harry leapt in ahead of him. ‘I was afraid you’d make me go down there again. But I’ve decided that I want to go with you. I want to see what’s down there.’
The man raised an eyebrow at Harry and said something like, ‘Why would you want to do that?’
Harry hoped he was reading this right.
‘Why do you? I just want to know. Isn’t that enough? I’m pretty certain I’m not getting out of here alive, mister, and I’m not gonna sit around like some zeyde waiting for my end. I want to understand – to know what’s going on.’
This seemed to appeal to the man. He said something Harry couldn’t catch, and then stood looking up at him as if expecting an answer. When Harry remained silent, the man lost some of his amusement. He made a shooing gesture up the stairs.
Harry nodded and turned, trying to hide his relief. He didn’t even feel the man rushing up the stairs behind him, so when he was caught and spun and slammed against the wall of the upstairs landing, he was momentarily paralysed with shock.
He found himself pushed up onto his tiptoes, held against the wall by Vincent’s arm across his windpipe. The man was talking, his face calm and cold, his head tilted downwards. Harry couldn’t make out what he was saying, but considering that he was efficiently and methodically turning Harry’s pockets inside out, it felt safe to assume he was searching for something.
It only took moments for Vincent to satisfy himself that Harry hadn’t got what he was looking for. He leaned a little more of his weight against Harry’s neck, frowning curiously into his face.
‘… do it?’ he asked.
Harry responded by looking as defiant as possible.
Raising his eyebrows in patient warning, Vincent tweaked the collar of Harry’s borrowed jacket. ‘… think I … allow you … wander … stealing clothes. How … locks?’
Ah! Harry twisted his chin against the man’s forearm and forced a smirk onto his face. He flourished his hands. ‘Magic!’ he said.
The sudden dark rage this brought to Vincent’s face sent a spear of ice through Harry’s heart. It was just a flash, the briefest slip of the man’s patience, but it was enough. Vincent leaned closer. ‘… think I am?’ he asked, his dark eyes piercing Harry’s. ‘… superstitious savage … sangoma-ridden peasant?’ He gripped Harry’s face in one terrifyingly strong hand and squeezed, forcing his lips and teeth apart. ‘… don’t know a common pick-a-lock when I see one?’
Vincent’s scorching fingers probed beneath Harry’s tongue, behind his teeth and around his gums, hunting for the lock-picks that Harry was eye-wateringly glad he’d chosen to hide in his shoe. The search seemed to go on forever, and Harry was just thinking the man would shove his entire fist down his throat when, suddenly, Vincent dropped him to the ground.
He crouched against the wall a moment, his hand to his bruised face, shaken and mortified and trying to swallow down his fear. Then he straightened to meet Vincent’s eye. ‘Well? Find anything interesting?’
The man just tightened his jaw and jerked his head for Harry to lead the way back to the room.
TINA WAS SITTING in the chair by the window. She had put on a pale-blue wool dress and was pulling on her boots with one hand, holding fast to Joe’s with the other. Both she and Joe looked up as Harry was shoved through the door. He stumbled a few steps, and grinned his showman’s grin.
‘Our friend has agreed that I can join him,’ he said. Straightening his jacket, he turned to Vincent. ‘Isn’t that right, sir? We are all set for our voyage of underwater discovery?’
The man just swept the room with his eyes, nodded to Tina and left, shutting the door behind him.
Harry waited.
After the briefest moment, the door opened again. The man stared at him as if not knowing whether to laugh or scream. He held out his hand.
Harry wrinkled his brow, affecting not to understand.
The man just stood there, silently waiting.
Feigning puzzlement, Harry patted himself down, turning all his pockets inside out. At last, and with pantomime amazement, he found the man’s keys in his trousers.
‘Well now, how did they get there?’ he cried.
He palmed the keys to his left hand while offering the man his empty right. Palmed them right while offering his empty left. Then he lost them up his sleeve, before producing the entire set from his mouth.
The man’s expression did not flicker, his hand did not move, and eventually Harry laid the keys into his waiting palm. Vincent did not close his fingers until Harry’s had withdrawn. Then he spoke quietly into Harry’s head.
In our youth, Cornelius’ father would have rewarded such a performance by asking my father to cut off your hands. When you had recovered – and you would have recovered, because my father was a very fine surgeon – Cornelius’ father would have strapped you to a plough and made a mule of you. You would have eaten your meals from an animal trough for the rest of your miserable life. These are the methods Cornelius and I were taught to use when confronted with defiance. I want you to remember that. I want you to think about it the next time you are tempted to be insolent.
With that, he nodded politely to the other occupants of the room and left.
Harry stood motionless, regarding the blandly painted wood of the door. Then his knees failed him and he staggered back to sit on the edge of the bed. He removed his earplugs, sick of this vulnerable deafness.
Joe went to the door and tried the handle. The door opened a crack. He peeked outside. ‘He’s gone,’ he whispered. Sounding slightly surprised, he added, ‘He didn’t bother to lock us in.’
Conversations on
the Threshold
BY THE TIME Vincent had reached the bottom of the second staircase he had to stop and lean against the banister, completely given over to a fit of silent laughter. This caused him an unusual amount of discomfort, and so he sat on the last step, grinning up at Cornelius’ beloved horse, waiting for it to subside. He twirled the keys on his finger, thinking of the boy popping them from his mouth.
‘Such defiance,’ he said. ‘It has been years since I’ve enjoyed the like.’
Vincent lost his smile. It had been years.
Slowly he closed his hand around the set of keys, thinking of the American boy, and how even with his head deep in the lion’s mouth, he’d had the nerve to clown about. Vincent got to his feet, patted the dull, dead flank of Cornelius’ horse, and headed for the place he knew his friend would be.
CORNELIUS WAS SPRAWLED on the floor by the lower door. He did not look up as Vincent descended the steps, merely picked at a splinter in the doorframe, his head leaning against the wall at his back. Behind the door, the Bright Man sighed and moaned, beams of its light slanting through small gaps in the wood.
Vincent took a seat a few steps up. Resting his elbows on his knees, he threaded his fingers together, and considered what he was about to say.
Cornelius sp
oke first. ‘You have disposed of him, of course.’
Vincent frowned. His thoughts had been on the Bright Man – the revelation that the seer shared its thoughts; the possible answers presented by a machine in the pond. It took a moment to realise that Cornelius was referring to the boy called Joe.
Distracted and dulled by his proximity to the Angel, Cornelius continued to pick at the wood. Gradually it seemed to dawn on him that his statement had not been answered, and he looked at Vincent for the first time. ‘You have disposed of him?’ he asked.
Vincent winced apologetically. ‘He seems to calm the seer, cully. I thought perhaps—’
‘He is wearing Matthew’s clothes. Do not tell me you left him up there for Raquel to see.’ At Vincent’s silence, Cornelius groaned. ‘How many times are you going to do this to us? Every time you return from a trip, now, I am on tenterhooks thinking I may round a corner and, all unsuspecting, walk into some stranger wearing Matthew’s things. It’s torture, Vincent. Do you not understand that?’
Vincent huffed. ‘I have not been on a trip in decades. I think—’
‘Over and over I have had to convince you! Each time, again and again. Matthew is gone. He will never be back. Please will you reconcile yourself to this? Please.’
Vincent shifted uncomfortably, wondering how it was that he had once again managed to cause pain, when he only ever desired to make things better.
‘It is never my intention to distress you. It is just … the life they lead is always so appalling and squalid, and they always seem so likely to be him. Then when I get here … they are never anything like him.’
‘Nor will they ever be.’
‘You are wrong,’ said Vincent quietly. ‘Matthew will not stay away forever. He would not break his mother’s heart that way.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘Neither would he break yours, cully.’
There was a stricken silence. It was clear that Cornelius understood exactly what had been meant by that last sentence, and Vincent saw him freeze under the weight of it, motionless and terrified, waiting.
Just take one step further, Vincent told himself. Just one more step and we may, at last, be truly honest.
This was the closest he had ever come to saying it. The words were already on his tongue, already in his mind, poised: Matthew loved you, Cornelius. You loved Matthew. So much happiness you could have given each other. Why did you push him away?
But as usual, he faltered. He had lived his whole life indulging Cornelius’ charade. To speak now would feel like a betrayal, like the breaking of a pact made in silence long ago. Only Matthew – in all his freshness and confidence, all his self-knowledge and certainty – only he might have been brash enough and sunny enough to end this tired and poisonous game.
The silence between them stretched on. When Vincent dropped his eyes, there was a moment of almost disappointment, almost betrayal in Cornelius’ face; then he shut himself off. He sat back, his expression bland.
‘If you do not dispose of this latest mistake, I shall take him myself and put him in the oubliette with what is left of Wolcroft. Is that what you would like for him?’
Vincent grimaced. ‘Do not make yourself out to be crueller than you are, cully.’
Even slumped against a dungeon door, his clothes three days crumpled, and soiled with cavern slime, Cornelius could summon effortless élan.
‘Do not test me,’ he drawled, wagging a reproving finger. ‘I may delight in proving you wrong.’ He grew serious. ‘I will not have Raquel disturbed by this, Captain. Not when her humour seems so recently set to improve. I will tie a block to the knave and cast him into the well if I must.’
Vincent shrugged. ‘I shall give him a change of clothes and he will be just another boy. Raquel does not have to know that I … mistook him.’
Cornelius’ eyes narrowed. ‘Why am I having to persuade you to rid yourself of him? You had no qualms with his forerunners. What difference is there in him?’
Vincent hesitated. He almost said, I like them, this sorry little group. They appeal to me. But in the end, he told only half the truth. ‘The seer is fragile. He calms her.’
‘How so?’
Vincent rose to his feet. ‘This is one of the many things I hope to discover when I explore the pond.’
Cornelius pushed himself to sit up straighter, his face dropping. ‘What do you mean, “explore the pond”?’
‘I intend to go down there, cully. Today. I want to investigate the American’s machine.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous! That will serve no purpose! Why would you put yourself at such risk?’
Vincent turned and jogged up the steps. He smiled as Cornelius began staggering up behind him, calling out, ‘It does not matter what is in the pond – the extravaganza is in six days. For God’s sake, slow down! Come back and listen to reason!’
Vincent ducked his chin and put on a bit of speed, drawing Cornelius up into the house, out into the daylight, and away from the numbness and the torpor of the Angel.
The Things That Were
HARRY STARED INTO Joe’s same-but-different face. ‘So,’ he said. ‘So … I guess you’re better, huh?’ He awkwardly patted Joe’s arm. ‘Nice to see you again, pal.’
‘Joe,’ gasped Tina. ‘Will you hold my hand?’
Harry and Joe turned from the door to find her crouched in the chair by the window, her hands white-knuckled fists in her lap.
‘I’m sorry. Really I am. But the Angel is so frightened, Joe – it’s hurting me. I can’t seem to hold it back without you.’
Joe went to her side, and she took his hand. All the tension left her, and Joe smiled gravely, squeezing her fingers.
‘What have those men done to us?’ she whispered. She eyed his outfit as if for the first time, and then Harry’s. ‘They’re keen on people changing their clothes here, aren’t they?’
‘I have me own boots on,’ murmured Joe.
The three of them spent a vacant moment gazing down at the scuffed toes of his boots.
‘The rest of me has changed, though.’
Harry didn’t like the way Joe said this. He had an uncomfortable feeling they weren’t talking about clothes anymore.
‘I’m never going home,’ said Joe.
Harry nodded. ‘You’re right. We haven’t a hope of getting out of here. But I’m telling yah, Joe, I’m going down swinging.’ He threw a gesture at the creature in the bed. ‘I’ll burn this farkakte house down before I let them do that to anyone else … and as my last act on earth, I will set that angel free.’
Tina slammed her palm down on the arm of the chair. ‘Never going home?’ she cried. ‘Last act on earth? What are the two of you like?’
In a rage, she shook off Joe’s hand and surged to her feet, intent on storming to the dresser. Halfway there, she bent double, her face blanched. ‘Oh,’ she breathed.
Harry leapt to help, but Tina flung out an arm for Joe. He took her hand, and after a second or two she was able to straighten. ‘Thanks, Joe,’ she whispered.
She led them to the tray that Wolcroft had left on the dresser. One-handed, she lifted the cover to reveal what looked like two roasted pigeons and a small heap of apple sauce. There was a moment’s hesitation; then Tina laid the cover aside.
‘We’re going to eat,’ she said.
Harry eyed the strange, dark little carcasses of the birds. Tina cut him off before he could speak. ‘We’re going to eat,’ she insisted. ‘We’re going to stay strong, we’re going to stay together, and we’re going home.’
‘Tina—’ began Joe.
Tina abruptly pressed her fingers to his lips, silencing him. It was such an intimate gesture – so private and true – that Harry almost looked away from it.
‘We’re important, Joe,’ said Tina. ‘We matter.’
Gently, Joe took her hand from his mouth. He kissed her small, rough fingers. Then he bent to kiss her lips.
‘I waited too long to do that,’ he whispered.
She shook
her head, her eyes filling with tears. ‘These buggers aren’t the first to try and tell us we’re nothing, Joe. They won’t be the last, either. We’re getting out of here. You and me. Harry and Miss Ursula. We’re getting out of here. And then we’ll start to live. All right, Joe? We’ll go home and we’ll figure things out, and we’ll start to live.’
Joe just tilted his head, not answering.
At his silence, Tina’s eyes grew momentarily wider, then she turned sharply for the tray. ‘Right,’ she said, digging her fingers into the little carcasses, pulling the meat into three portions.
Joe kept his hand on her back. ‘I don’t need mine,’ he said softly.
She stopped putting the meat into its little piles. Her hands tightened on the plate.
‘I don’t need it, Tina.’
Without looking up, she slapped the three portions back together, divided it neatly down the middle and shoved half over to Harry’s side of the plate. ‘Eat,’ she said.
The meat was strong and dense and clay-like, the apple sauce almost too sharp to bear. Harry thought they complemented each other. It was the kind of dark, bitter meal warriors might once have eaten in Syria or Babylon: pre-battle fare. He ate determinedly, the girl grim and focused beside him. Joe stood over them both, silent and calm, his hand on Tina’s back.
When they were done, Tina wiped her hands in the fancy cloth Wolcroft had left for the purpose and went to look out the window. ‘Are you really going under the water with that man, Harry?’
‘Sure am.’
‘Why?’
‘There’s something down there. I want to see what it is.’
‘What if you drown?’
He paused, not wanting to think about it. ‘I won’t. I was under there for a long time last night, and I didn’t even want to take a breath. I just didn’t seem to need to.’
Tina leaned on the sill, apparently thinking hard. Joe’s hand rested against the dark tumble of her hair, keeping her with them.
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