‘Kuu?’ she mouthed.
The nightjar appeared with a snap of air. Hovering behind Alice, its body arched in a fighting stance that swelled her heart, the bird screeched angrily.
She glanced up at it, urging it with her eyes. ‘Go.’
Kuu instantly glided to the left and swooped away like a lightning bolt. The glowing cord that stretched between them was pulled taut, and thinned under the pressure of Kuu’s distance.
Alice tipped her head back, the landscape swimming around her, and closed her eyes. With one final puff of breath, she exhaled sharply, pushing herself out from her body, expelling herself into the air like a formless gas. Her deadly soul shattered into a million glittering particles, suspended above her body. And then – a throb of movement from Tom was like a beacon in a frozen sea. The dark cloud made of Alice, the invisible, shapeless thing she was, vibrated. She spread herself wide, seeping through the air, and reached for him—
Her eyes flew open. Heart hammering against her ribs, she dragged air into her lungs and bolted upright, trying to get a grip on her surroundings. It was dark. Her room was black and she was hopelessly tangled in the sheets. She wriggled sideways and fell out of bed, clattering onto the wooden floor. The sheets slipped and she struggled out of them, bursting up onto her feet. The back of her neck tingled, and her fists were clenched as she stood hunched in the space next to her bed. She waited for a movement or a sound in the darkness, but there was nothing at all. Flicking the light switch, she remembered the blackouts. No electricity. She moved to the window, where a small glimpse of moonlight lit a corner of the room. She squinted into the gloom with a wary eye. Nothing. She waited a while longer. Still nothing.
‘My God,’ she breathed, climbing back into bed. ‘Forget that bastard Tom, these bloody dreams are going to kill me.’
As she closed her eyes, Jen’s voice – not Tom’s – rang through her mind, harsh and rasping in a way the living Jen’s voice never had been. The nightmarish echo was disconcerting, and Alice’s eyes flicked open. Not Jen’s voice at all, she realized suddenly. She recognized it. It had been Marianne’s voice issuing from Jen’s mouth. Alice shuddered under the bedcovers. Was it a nightmare because she’d been to see Marianne? Or had Marianne induced this nightmare with her paper cut – for fun or a threat, to show that she could wheedle her way into Alice’s dreams if she wanted to? Or in anger, because Alice had tricked her out of Reid’s research notes.
‘Kuu?’
Her nightjar fluttered down to join her on the mattress and Alice reached out to stroke her. Her feathers were chilled, and Alice’s fingers tensed at the memory of the icy landscape and the sensation of expelling herself from her own body.
‘Will you stay close tonight?’ she asked the bird.
Kuu churred in response. The nightjar shuffled closer and tucked herself into the crook of Alice’s arm, rubbing her soft head comfortingly against her cheek.
Alice sighed and tried to sleep. Until she was sure Marianne’s paper cut wasn’t a threat, she’d start taking valerian or lavender before bed, to shut out any nightmares.
It was half past six in the morning and Alice had been huddled in the Abbey Library’s entrance for thirty minutes. Its opening hours were seven till midnight and not twenty-four hours, as she’d believed when she’d dragged herself out of bed that morning. Bea was expecting her to roll into the library for an update at nine, so she only hoped that Tilda was one of the librarian’s early birds.
Cramp buckled Alice’s legs, and she moved out from the arched entrance to pace the cobbled square and release the tension in her calves. The shadow of the ancient abbey, with its spire and bell tower, loomed over her. Ivy crawled up the face of the crumbling building, smothering it. Like knotweed, she thought, turning away.
At dead on the hour, the door clanked open and Alice, along with a handful of rather more studious-looking people who had also been waiting, tramped inside. The abbey was empty, the space simply an enormous dusty room with a hole in the floor leading to a winding subterranean staircase. Alice trudged after the others, through the hole and down the stairwell. Flickering oil lamps cast shadows over the rough walls; their faint lights illuminated the many darkened corridors that sloped off from the stairs. Alice plunged further into the bowels of the building, finally emerging into the upper floor of an immense atrium.
In the centre stood the vast Summer Tree, its tangled roots embedded in the ground-floor courtyard, five storeys below. The leafy crown stretched far overhead, its tapered leaves and crooked branches crushed against the glass ceiling.
The tree always took Alice’s breath away. Its towering magnitude made her feel she was in the presence of an otherworldly creature. It emanated power. Like a frozen warrior trapped in an endless battle with the walls caging it beneath the abbey, its thick boughs lashed out at its confinement, pressing their weight against the stone. An army of branches and twigs, like foot soldiers ordered by their general, invaded every empty space, coiling around pillars and curling into arches. The Summer Tree was wonderful and terrible in its immensity.
A granite staircase spiralled around the twisted trunk, leading from the top floor to the bottom – from crown to roots. Landings ran off it, leading to floors of bookshelves, tight passageways and discreet alcoves: everywhere crowded with books. Despite the early morning sky, clusters of fireflies drifted through the atrium, glowing like fairy lights.
Alice hurried down the staircase to the courtyard on the ground floor, and inhaled sharply at the scene of devastation. One crooked tree root bulged outwards, rising from the soil like a sea monster and dislodging the tiled floor. Down one narrow corridor, the walls listed and the ground tilted at an impossible angle. A rope cordoned it off, preventing access, but Alice could see heaps of damaged books scattered all over the floor. This was what had happened to Crane Park Island. The tree roots had grown and fractured the land. And this was where it had started, with a tumescent root burrowing deeper at one end and rising up to cause chaos at the other. She stood back to study it.
Footsteps over her shoulder caused her to step aside without thinking, but when she saw who they belonged to, she tensed in shock and hurried into an alcove. The shelves were still upright here, but they leaned heavily to one side, and all of the books had fallen into a haphazard clutter or had slipped off entirely. She flattened herself against the shelf, flinching when it began to sway against her. The whole thing might come down on top of her, and then they’d certainly hear her.
Gabriel Whitmore was talking to someone she couldn’t see. Talking was perhaps generous – he was whispering animatedly in the shadows of a corridor. Alice inched closer, curiosity spiking her adrenaline.
‘. . . death and destruction . . . the entire city . . . and there’s nothing that can be done about it!’
A calmer voice murmured something that Alice didn’t quite catch.
‘No one else can get down there,’ Whitmore hissed. ‘Do you understand? No one.’
Alice’s eyebrows slanted in suspicion. Who was he threatening? She leaned out further, but a rustle of paper nearby startled her and she darted back into the corridor. She watched as Whitmore strode out from the corridor, glanced around as though to check for observers and then swept up the stairs. Alice waited before slipping out and glancing down the corridor he’d exited. She just caught sight of a grey-haired woman vanishing down it and squinted after her thoughtfully.
‘Are you lost?’
Alice jerked in surprise. One of the librarians – a young woman in a long, sweeping dark dress with a pocketed apron filled with books – was stacking manuscripts and sheaves of paper in a neat pile by the alcove.
‘Can you tell me where to find Tilda Jarvis? Does she still—’
‘Third floor,’ said the woman, with barely a glance away from her manuscripts.
‘Okay, thanks.’
Alice eyed the staircase and set off to climb it again. On the third floor, she was sent to the fifth. Then the seco
nd, the ground, and back to the third again. By the time a small, wiry-haired man with red hair had sent her up to the empty fourth, she was beginning to seethe. Alice planted her hands on the spiral banister and looked out over the tree. Somewhere in this building, the woman she needed was avoiding her.
She considered calling for a bird’s-eye view from Kuu, but it always unsettled her, and made her vulnerable – she couldn’t protect her human body while she was squatting in a bird’s mind – and even when it alerted her to danger, valuable seconds were lost readjusting to her heavy human frame. No. A bird’s-eye view here might send her accidentally swaying and tripping down the granite stairs. Instead, she slowed her breathing and tried to block out all noise, all sensation, and just listen. Maybe she or Kuu would somehow sense this woman’s nightjar. After all, Alice had met her once, when she was too young to remember. But sometimes, she’d found, memories masqueraded as instincts. She closed her mind, shut down her thoughts and focused.
Somewhere, on the other side of the trunk, was a gentle churring . . . the flap of feathers . . . the rustle of wings in flight, gliding out of sight. In a trance, Alice reached out towards the sound . . .
‘Don’t,’ a sharp voice hissed in her ear, and Alice jerked to her senses and dropped her arm.
She turned to find a tall, angular woman with steely-grey hair pulled back into a bun staring at her. She wore a glove on one hand, and when Alice glanced at it without thinking, the woman snatched it off to reveal she was missing a finger.
‘The Lampyridae bite,’ she said sternly. ‘Don’t put your hands on the tree. Read the signs.’
Alice nodded vacantly. She’d met this woman before. Here, on these very steps, with this very same warning ringing in her ears.
‘I wasn’t trying to touch the tree or the fireflies,’ Alice murmured. ‘I was just . . . I heard a . . .’
She trailed away, her eyes fixed on the woman’s face. It hadn’t changed much. More lines, certainly, given she must now be around eighty years old, but it was undoubtedly the same woman from Reid’s memory. And – if she wasn’t mistaken – the same woman Whitmore had been remonstrating with.
‘You’re Tilda Jarvis,’ said Alice. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’
Alice stared at her. Now the moment had come, she seemed to have lost the ability to speak. Tilda, perhaps sensing this, took her by the arm and walked her to a quiet alcove, pushing her down onto a cushioned bench by the shelves.
‘Are you quite well?’ said the old woman, eyes bright as she studied Alice closely. ‘Your library fines must be appalling, judging by your—’
‘I think you helped arrange my adoption,’ Alice murmured.
The old woman’s smile instantly faded. Her face a mask of shock, Tilda lowered herself onto the bench next to Alice.
‘And why, exactly, do you think that?’ Tilda asked quietly.
Alice’s fingers crept to her pocket and she pulled out Reid’s photograph. ‘Because I think that this is you with Catherine Rose, who was also involved. And I think that the young woman on the end . . . might be my biological mother.’
Tilda swallowed thickly, the aged muscles in her neck strained. ‘You think that Leda Westergard is your mother?’ she asked. ‘Everyone knows Leda Westergard was childless when she died.’
Alice nodded. She slipped the signet ring from her finger and held it out to Tilda. The old woman glanced down at it and released a shaky breath.
‘What . . . name did they give you?’ she asked.
‘Alice Wyndham.’
Tilda’s skeletal fingers tightened reflexively around the pocket of her apron. ‘Wyndham,’ she said. ‘Yes, that was their . . .’ She trailed away and shifted in her seat, turning to fully examine Alice.
Alice took the opportunity to do the same. Tilda was a tall, sinewy woman, handsome, with a strong face and high cheekbones. Her hands told a story of their own; all wiry tendons and tiny scars, they spoke of strength and battles won and lost.
‘I saw you . . . in a memory,’ said Alice.
Tilda seemed unfazed by this strange admission. She nodded, her expression stern and yet softening.
‘You will have some questions. Ask me what you want to ask,’ said Tilda, without any preamble at all.
‘Was Leda Westergard my mother?’ Alice asked baldly. It was what she most wanted to know. No use building up to it.
‘Yes.’
A great breath rushed out of Alice. She shoved the signet ring back on her finger, her thoughts swamped. Leda Westergard. It was true. Chancellor Westergard.
‘I always hoped . . .’ Tilda shook her head and squeezed the apron again. ‘I must tell you – there’s a book. Here, in the library. I wasn’t sure . . .’ She trailed away.
‘There’s – a what? A book?’ asked Alice. ‘Which book?’ A sudden thought came to her – she remembered Reid, in the memory, saying that Tilda had planned to burn a book. This one?
‘Disguised as your mother’s biography. Chancellor Westergard: A Life in Service. I made it so that only Leda’s daughter could open it. No other borrower.’
‘But what’s—’
‘I wanted to destroy it, but . . . those were Leda’s own words to you. It would have been wrong to rob her of a voice in death.’
Alice couldn’t speak. Her throat closed up and there was a tremble in her fingers. She wanted that book. Badly.
‘Catherine pushed for me to leave it for you, and she was right in more ways than we could ever have realized at the time.’ Tilda made as though to rise from the bench. ‘I suggest you read it. You may find more of the answers you’re looking for in there, if—’
Alice grabbed her elbow and Tilda paused, glancing down. She searched Alice’s eyes, her expression pained, and then sat back down.
‘I only want a few minutes of your time,’ said Alice. ‘Whatever happened – I don’t begrudge you for what you did. I have the best parents, thanks to you.’
Tilda blinked hard and glanced away.
‘Catherine Rose and Leda – they were good friends?’ said Alice after a moment. ‘That’s why she was with you for the adoption?’
Tilda nodded. ‘Yes. Leda was closest to Helena, but she died around the time you were born. And . . .’ She cleared her throat. ‘Dear Catherine wanted so much to help Leda. She took her failure very badly. For a time, she blamed herself for Leda’s death.’
‘She . . . Why would she blame herself?’ asked Alice, with a cramped feeling in her stomach.
‘Because she was a medical student and she thought her training would allow her to save Leda’s life, but she was wrong. No one could have saved her. Leda knew that herself. It was why she chose your parents, while she still carried you inside her.’
Alice jerked back at this. Reid had said something similar, but she hadn’t realized Leda had been the one to find her a new family. Alice blinked away the sudden threat of tears and Tilda leaned closer, her eyes serious. ‘She chose well?’
Alice turned away to steady herself. ‘Yes,’ she replied shakily. ‘She did.’ There was a short pause, and then, ‘Did she die in childbirth?’
‘Yes.’
Alice stared hard at the wall. Growing up, she’d assumed her parents had died when she was very young, in an accident maybe. But this . . . Leda had never even seen her face, never held her baby. It felt so much more tragic, and fresh sympathy for this poor woman she’d never met swept over her.
‘Why was it – why was I – kept secret?’ asked Alice.
‘Oh,’ said Tilda with a brittle smile. ‘Your mother hid her pregnancy – first because she feared her political rivals might try to step in, and then . . .’ Tilda shook her head. ‘Only Catherine and I knew. Me, because I’d known her since she was a child, and her parents had died when she was barely in her twenties. And Catherine – well, Catherine latched on to Helena and Leda to try to separate herself from Marianne. We supported Leda as best we could. We tried, between us, to follow through with her wishes, but Catherin
e found it all very difficult.’
The old woman paused. ‘And when both Leda and Helena had passed away, Catherine left the Rookery herself – couldn’t bear the sight of it any more. I lost track of her over the years. I know that she turned away from practising medicine. I think she considered it a waste. She’d failed to save a life even before her career in saving lives had begun. She grew . . . hardened by her experiences. So she took herself off to one of the London universities to further her career – in research, I believe. Changed her name so she couldn’t be found, changed everything.’ She paused again, noticing that Alice’s eyes had dropped to her lap in thought.
Alice tried to sift through the bombardment of information to make sense of it. Her mother, the chancellor, had told hardly anyone she was pregnant. But she’d known she was going to die, and had picked out a pair of adoptive parents for Alice. And Tilda and Catherine had been the ones to deliver the baby to her new family. It felt . . . so odd, like someone else’s story.
‘Your mother had warned me not to return to watch you once she was gone, and I’m ashamed to say I ignored her. I watched you for a few months, just from a distance, but then your adoptive parents moved and I finally followed her wishes. I didn’t hunt you down to your new address. I . . . let you go.’
She was right. They’d lived in a different house in Henley when Alice was small. They’d moved when Alice was still in nursery, to the house next door to Jen’s. It would have been better for Jen if they’d never moved at all.
‘So I lost track of you,’ said Tilda, ‘and I lost track of Catherine, and instead, I stayed here to monitor your mother’s tree as best I—’
A puff of dust ballooned from the ceiling, sprinkling them with debris. They stared at each other in shock as white powder pattered into their hair and the walls of the alcove shook. The legs of the bench bounced and vibrated, and Tilda shot to her feet as a terrible groan reverberated through the library; it was the sound of a dying giant, or a—
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