The Rookery

by Deborah Hewitt

  Alice opened her mouth to question her, but without a single word of explanation, Reid grabbed her folders, spun around and staggered from the room like a drunkard.

  Alice sat in confused silence for several minutes, unable to process exactly what had happened. Reid had once thrown a mug through a window. She’d shouted and spoken harshly, her words barbed. But she’d never stooped to manhandling Alice in one of her temper tantrums before.

  Alice rubbed her arm, frowning. That deranged woman would never touch her again, that was for sure. But what the hell had set her off? And what was she hiding? Something to do with that Fellowship leaflet? Alice examined the red marks on her skin, left by the professor’s nails, and shook her head, disgruntled.

  Well, she could forget the photocopying, Alice decided bitterly. She moved to snatch up the folder of papers that had slipped to the floor. Gathering them together, she shoved them into Reid’s marble cabinet, under her desk. But the professor didn’t return.

  There was a rap at the door several hours later and Alice stared at it suspiciously. If that was Reid, back for round two . . . She slipped off her stool and swung the door wide.

  ‘Yes?’ she demanded.

  There was a figure waiting for her in the corridor, leaning against the wall with hands in her pockets. It wasn’t an apologetic Reid.

  ‘Sasha?’

  Alice’s shoulders sank with relief at the sight of her.

  Thank God.

  Right now, a familiar face outside the myopic university campus was exactly what she wanted to see. Someone she could unload on without holding back. Someone who knew exactly what she was going through – Sasha had once feared her own legacy. Skilled with water, she’d blamed herself for her sister’s drowning and suppressed her gift until it exploded out of her. The frequent cause of flooding when they’d lived together at Coram House, Sasha had taken tentative steps towards accepting her legacy. They might not see each other every day – or even every fortnight now – but there was always something comforting about being with Sasha, even if she was the least sentimental person Alice had ever met.

  She moved forward to greet her friend, and Sasha held up a hand. ‘Oh no. We’re not huggers. Put those arms away.’

  Alice couldn’t help but laugh. It punctured the tension building in her chest, and she felt a new lightness steal over her.

  ‘You have no idea how pleased I am to see you,’ said Alice.

  Sasha had caught the sun, and her already-dark skin was a deeply rich shade of brown. She was wearing a pair of wide trousers with braces over a maroon blouse, her halo of springy black curls tied back with a matching bandana. Her unique sense of style always made Alice feel depressingly unfashionable.

  On her shoulder sat her nightjar. The bird, simply patterned, with downy, mussed-up feathers in an earthy palette, was calmly watching Alice.

  ‘Fancy a drink?’ said Sasha. ‘And then you can explain why you’re looking at me with heart eyes, and why you’ve been sneaking around with Worzel Gummidge.’

  ‘Who?’

  Sasha pushed away from the wall, leaving Alice to quickly grab her bag from the lab and hurry after her.

  ‘The human scarecrow . . . August,’ Sasha tutted. ‘I can’t deal with your lack of eighties pop culture references. Modern history. Aren’t you supposed to be a history graduate?’

  ‘Funnily enough,’ said Alice, ‘eighties pop culture didn’t come up much in my dissertation about Bismarck’s unification of Germany.’

  They looked at each other. A grin crept onto Alice’s face, and an answering smirk slid across Sasha’s before she rolled her eyes and pushed through the door that led out to the quadrangle.

  ‘He’s been cagey about it,’ said Sasha. ‘But I have spies everywhere. One of them saw you together. Not together together – Crowley would kill him – just together.’

  ‘Someone saw us at The Necropolis?’ asked Alice.

  ‘You went to The Necropolis?’ asked Sasha, suddenly animated. ‘Why?’

  ‘What? But you said—Then who saw us?’ said Alice, confused.

  ‘Pippa Stridley was drinking at The Rook’s Nest and said she saw August with a woman. As soon as she described her – terrible hair, boring clothes, total lack of eighties pop culture knowledge – I knew straightaway it was you.’

  Sasha stopped, and Alice shunted into the back of her.

  ‘My curiosity,’ said Sasha, ‘stems from the fact that each time me and Jude arranged to meet up with you, August declined – he was always too busy with his top-secret new job to join us. But now it looks like he wasn’t that busy after all.’

  Alice winced. ‘He was doing me a favour, that’s all, but I didn’t want to worry anyone.’

  A new batch of wine-coloured berry clusters had erupted from the branches of the mulberry tree, drawing blackbirds and finches from the skies to feast on them. ‘So go on then,’ said Sasha, detouring across the cobbles towards the bench beneath the branches.

  A pair of students approached from the other side of the quad with the same destination in mind, but Sasha beat them by seconds. She dropped down onto the bench and shot them a raised eyebrow.

  One of them elbowed the other as they slunk away, the bronze telescopes poking from their satchels rattling and clinking. Astronomy students. One of them picked a berry from the tree as he passed and held it out on his palm. It swelled to the size of an apple, then a grapefruit. His friend murmured, ‘How the hell are you doing that?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ he answered, laughing. ‘But it won’t stop!’

  ‘You should’ve entered the competition,’ said his friend.

  ‘I tried! Failed the preliminaries months ago!’

  Two blackbirds, circling overhead, swooped towards the melon-sized berry with aggressive flutters and squawks. Hooting with laughter, the students tossed it away and pelted across the lawn towards the crowd packed in to watch the competition.

  Alice watched them with a keen eye, thinking of her conversation with Bea at the abbey and Tom’s new page-turning skills.

  Sasha grabbed Alice’s sleeve and pulled her down onto the bench.

  ‘Go on then,’ said Sasha. ‘It’s been a month. Fill me in.’

  ‘You know I saw Crowley?’ said Alice.

  ‘Of course I do. He stole my visiting night, then came home and barely spoke for days.’

  A solid thirty minutes or so later, in which Alice had opened the floodgates and allowed everything to spill out – the trip to The Necropolis, her death sentence, Holly, the House Mielikki test, the binding draught, the attacks, Reid – a frowning Sasha said, ‘But you’re okay now? Whatever you think had gone wrong, the draught has healed it?’ Sasha leaned back, running a contemplative eye over Alice. ‘You look better than last time I saw you.’

  ‘I’m not sick any more,’ Alice confirmed.

  Sasha blew out a breath and shook her head in disbelief. ‘Shit, Alice. Why would you keep that to yourself? Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Alice’s mouth ran dry. ‘I just . . . I didn’t want to worry you with something you couldn’t fix. But it’s okay. As long as I get my hands on the other two doses of binding draught, I won’t get sick again.’

  Sasha looked at her, her expression serious, and Alice waited for the verdict. Then Sasha shook her head and made an apparent effort to normalize the tense atmosphere.

  ‘So,’ she said. ‘You’ve been back in the Rookery about – what, six months? – and you’ve already found yourself with a mystery enemy. Classic Alice.’

  Alice managed a wry smile. ‘Not that mysterious.’

  She tipped her head back and allowed her gaze to wander over the sky; dusk was beginning to draw in and there was no heat left in the air.

  ‘So you don’t know if this Lester guy is making lucky guesses or whether he’s one of the Fellowship?’ asked Sasha, pulling out two flasks and handing one to Alice.

  Alice shook her head, uncapping the flask and taking a swig: gin and elderflower.
‘Nope,’ she said. ‘And now I don’t even know whether my boss, Vivian Reid, is caught up with Marianne too.’

  ‘Sounds like you’ve been winning over lots of new friends here,’ said Sasha as she loosened one of her braces. ‘Where’s your evidence your boss is involved with Northam?’

  Alice struggled to raise a smile. ‘I found a Fellowship leaflet in her paperwork.’

  ‘Incriminating,’ said Sasha, following Alice’s eyeline to the sinking sun. ‘Mind you, they toss those leaflets out like sweets. You’d probably find one in half the houses in the city. I once caught Jude using a folded one to clean the spokes of his wheelchair, and he knows they’re banned from the house.’

  ‘Well . . . yeah, maybe. I just don’t know any more. And I don’t know how things stand anyway now. I mean, I know Marianne hates me, but technically . . . technically—’

  ‘They should be worshipping you,’ finished Sasha with a grin. ‘A testament to how screwed up their thinking really is.’

  ‘I think Marianne’s a fraud,’ replied Alice. ‘I don’t think she worships Tuoni as much as she worships power. If I hadn’t been the fly in the ointment – if she’d actually managed to birth her own . . . messiah . . . with Tuoni . . .’ Alice frowned and took a sip of her drink. ‘Imagine if she’d been successful. She’d have used a baby to bring about total destruction – but only, I think, because she’d have enjoyed the power.’

  ‘You’ve got to hand it to these tiger moms.’

  Alice glanced sideways at Sasha and laughed shortly.

  ‘If it was possible for that woman to have a child, it’d be the spawn of the devil, not the spawn of Death,’ said Sasha, her hair bouncing as she leaned back. Then she added, ‘You come out with the upper hand in that comparison, in case that wasn’t clear.’

  Alice smiled, and then lapsed into a sigh. She was suddenly very, very tired. A roar went up from the crowd on the lawns, and Sasha narrowed her eyes.

  ‘Cream of the Crops competition,’ explained Alice.

  ‘Show me what kind of rubbish goes on in this place then,’ said Sasha, getting to her feet and scooping up her flask of gin. She strode towards the source of excitement and Alice trekked after her.

  Groups of students stood around with glasses of weak lager in their hands, laughing and cheering at something on the grass. Others sat cross-legged, watching with one eye as they chatted to friends. Every now and again, a whoop of delight would ripple outwards. The atmosphere was not so much that of an organized competition as a Sunday kick-about at the park. Drinking appeared to be the real priority.

  On the grass, however, there were four competing groups – all wearing T-shirts bearing their House’s symbol. The furthest two teams, half a dozen students representing Ahti and Ilmarinen, sat opposite each other with an old log between them. The bark was hissing with both steam and smoke while the students flicked and gestured at it, faces sweaty with determination.

  ‘What are they doing?’ asked Sasha.

  ‘I think,’ said Alice, ‘the Ilmarinens are trying to set it on fire and the Ahtis are trying to keep it wet enough to stop them. It’s a war of attrition.’

  Sasha snorted derisively, and they both turned to peer at the groups representing Mielikki and Pellervoinen. A log lay between them too, except that this one was partially submerged in what appeared to be a huge glass basin of mud and steaming water. The outer layer of bark was ridged but appeared almost polished – and it was changing colour. Ripples of translucent orange, deep red and dark grey moved through it before returning to an earthy brown.

  ‘What’s going on there?’ said Sasha.

  ‘Pellervoinen are trying to petrify the wood into stone,’ answered the person in front of them. It was the berry-growing astronomy student. He shot Sasha a nervous smile and then an admiring glance. ‘It’s how you fossilize wood. They’re trying to replace the organic matter in the wood’s cell walls with minerals and sediment. Stone versus plant. House Mielikki are trying to resist.’

  Alice squinted to try to watch them more clearly, remembering the slices of ornamental stone tree and petrified tables made of quartz she’d seen at the market. She smiled to herself. She’d thought the trader was trying to scam her. Stone trees?

  The astronomy student cleared his throat and then threw in casually, ‘Hey, next year I’m going to enter this myself, if you wanted to come and . . .’

  Sasha stared at him until he trailed away, red-faced. She stepped back from the crowd, shaking her head in bemusement. ‘Weird,’ she said, necking back a mouthful of gin. ‘All of them.’

  They headed back towards the quad and Alice glanced over at her.

  ‘You know Crowley assumed I was with someone?’ said Alice as the crowd erupted in another roar.

  ‘I do know.’

  ‘A guy called Tom. He works as a technician, but there’s nothing – literally nothing – between us. Not like that.’

  Sasha nodded and sat heavily on the empty bench. ‘And . . . this is something you want me to slip casually into conversation?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Alice, looking up at the cloudless sky. ‘I don’t know how to get past what he did.’ Then, ‘You got past it,’ she added. After all, Crowley had lied to all of them.

  ‘We sat down and talked it through with him. Fully. Everything out on the table,’ said Sasha. ‘Have you tried that?’

  Alice pulled a face. Sasha knew she hadn’t.

  ‘I’m still worried that if I talk to him I’ll forgive him.’ She shrugged. It sounded ridiculous when she said it out loud. Alice was just glad Sasha had come today. The way she’d been feeling about her situation and the possibility of Marianne rearing her ugly head again, she might easily have caved and sought him out, just to be with someone – anyone – that she didn’t have to pretend with. But Sasha had scratched that itch for her instead.

  Sasha nodded and took a slug of gin from her flask. ‘Forgiving Crowley isn’t a weakness,’ she said at last. ‘It isn’t giving in, it’s . . . moving on. And sometimes that takes more courage. It’s harder to climb out of a trench and run across no-man’s land than it is to hunker down and wait out the war.’

  Alice’s mouth curved into a faint smile. ‘Nice analogy.’

  ‘Thought you’d appreciate the history theme,’ said Sasha.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, resting on the bench and drinking together. Alice was grateful for the edge Sasha’s visit had taken off her nerves. Reid’s manic behaviour had left her jumpy.

  ‘I need to get back,’ said Sasha, getting to her feet. ‘I’ve got work in the morning.’

  ‘See you in a couple of weeks?’ said Alice, standing too.

  ‘Maybe instead of me coming here, you could come to Coram House for a change?’ said Sasha, one eyebrow rising sharply in question.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Alice. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Don’t think too long. Someone might just come along and snap Crowley up while you’re dithering. I know a lot of women who go wild for men that look like stoic undertakers.’

  Alice snorted and looked away. Crowley had once been stoic to the point of indifference. There was an emotional echo left by Sasha’s words, and it took Alice a moment to figure out what it was. Then it struck her: Jen had once described Crowley as an undertaker too.

  ‘I’ll let you know,’ she said, forcing a smile.

  Sasha nodded and made to leave, taking a shortcut across the lawn.

  ‘Oh,’ Sasha added, turning back. ‘This Lester guy . . . I’ll make some enquiries – see what I can find out about him. But he doesn’t stand a chance against you. If he tries it again, you show him what you’re really made of.’

  Alice’s cheeks flushed and something caught in her throat. ‘Hey, keep your voice down,’ she managed with a grin. ‘Anyone would think you care.’

  ‘Well, I care about August and Crowley too,’ said Sasha, ‘so the bar is set pretty low.’

  Alice laughed, and Sasha paused for a mo
ment. They shared a quick smile, and Sasha turned again to go.

  ‘Wait!’ called Alice. ‘Come to the Midsummer Festival with me! I’ll introduce you to the mentor House Mielikki assigned me. You’ll like her. And Tom too.’

  ‘Which festival?’ asked Sasha, stopping by the fir trees.

  ‘The Ukon Juhla at Crane Park Island.’

  Sasha shook her head. ‘I’ve already made plans to do the one at Hyde Park.’

  ‘Please, Sasha,’ said Alice. ‘It’ll be fun.’

  ‘I can’t. Jude’s taking me to meet some of his friends from the Royal Mint.’

  Alice’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Oh. At midsummer? Wait, are you two . . .?’

  It was Crowley who’d once revealed that Sasha had feelings for Jude – but as far as Alice was aware, things had never got off the ground between them, and they’d moved past it months ago.

  ‘No,’ said Sasha emphatically. ‘We’ve drawn a line under that. Jude’s my best friend, and some friendships are too important to risk on romance. And maybe it’s just what happens when you wait too long – the chance passes you by.’ She shrugged. ‘There’s a life lesson there,’ she said, cocking an eyebrow at Alice.

  ‘You’ve been reading the philosophy books again, haven’t you?’ said Alice with a groan.

  Sasha laughed. ‘Actually, I have. Philosophy of rationalism versus empiricism, trying to make sense of my life during my lunch breaks at work.’

  ‘I should introduce you to my boss,’ said Alice, shaking her head. ‘So what do the books say?’

  ‘They say . . . don’t wait for the spark to die before you tell someone how you feel. Not unless you want to try sparking a wet match.’ She heaved a sigh. ‘Or maybe that’s me, not the books. Anyway – midsummer? We’ll see. We might swing by Crane Park after the first bonfires are lit at Hyde Park. It’s all downhill from there, so . . .’ Sasha turned and started walking backwards, towards the fir trees and the door. ‘I’ll see you soon,’ she said, with a quick wave.

  Alice smiled at her retreating back. ‘Yes,’ she shouted, ‘at the Midsummer Festival.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Sasha, shaking her head from afar.