It was still happening. Things being done to her and she had no control over any of it. But she could take control. She could. Robert might have the box now, but as far as she knew, he still had no way of unlocking it. He still needed her for that. She was sure of it. Or Zacharie. Maybe his ring? She sat up and wiped away the tears with the back of her hand. She had to talk to Zac. Warn him. She looked at her watch. He wouldn’t answer. There was the evening performance at the circus and he would be high up on the wire. That was okay. She’d leave a voice message. “Don’t think I’m mad, but there’s this man who knows about our rings. He scares me. And there’s a box, a very special box my grandma left me and the ring is the key. Only it won’t open it. Not yet. And now he has the box. And he followed me to the circus. And he knows about you. And that you have a ring, too. And I don’t know what any of it means. Can you call me?”
Now all she could do was sleep. Just sleep. Sleep was good.
* * *
Micky shook her awake. She was standing next to the bed, still clutching the little wax figure in her hand. “My stomach hurts,” she said. “I feel ever so sick.”
Claire opened her eyes, tried to focus on her sister’s face closing in on hers. “Tell mum. She’ll sort you.”
“She’s being sick. She said to get you. I feel ever so hot.” Micky had hold of Claire’s hand and was pressing it against her forehead.
She does feel hot, Claire thought. Really hot.
“Okay. I’m coming.” She sat up, still holding Micky’s hand, which felt clammy, and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “Let’s go and see how Mum is.”
For a second, Claire just stood in the doorway and looked at her mum rolling around the bed, clutching at her stomach and moaning. “Mum?” Claire was beside her now.
“Oh God, Claire,” she whispered. “It feels like I’ve got ants crawling all over me. My tongue’s tingling. It’s so weird. I feel really weird.”
“Shall I get you some paracetamol?”
“No good,” her mum whispered. “Can’t keep it down.” Her eyes started to roll up into her head and she was making a noise as if she had swallowed her tongue and was choking on it.
Micky crawled onto the bed and buried her face in her mum’s side. She was wailing horribly. A high-pitched, grizzling, liquid noise that set Claire’s every nerve on edge.
“I need to get a doctor,” Claire was muttering to herself. They hadn’t registered with one yet, so she would need to call Grandma’s old one, though she knew in her heart that it was too late for that. Her mind just didn’t want to accept it. “Number. Number. Where’s the number?”
She ran downstairs and started scrabbling around in the hall table drawer, looking for Grandma’s address book. It wasn’t there. But the more she panicked, the worse things got. She flicked desperately through the Yellow Pages, her mind a blank. Name? She couldn’t remember the doctor’s name. Would her mum be able to tell her? Back upstairs she looked down at her mum lying there, her face all sunken and grey. And Micky had stopped crying and her breathing was ragged and harsh.
Claire picked up the phone and called 999. Seven minutes. The ambulance would be there in seven minutes. Bear with them… the services were very stretched. She rang her dad’s number, then his mobile. No reply.
She ought to stay with her mum and Micky. But she couldn’t bear to. Terrified she would look down at them and know it was too late and they were both dead.
She mustn’t think about that. She’d go and open the front door instead. At least she’d be ready when the ambulance came. But, oh God, there on the step was a black rat, stiff and cold with a trickle of blood coming from its nose. She shuddered and pushed it away with her foot. Then she saw another, lying on its back at the side of the path; its eyes closed, its mouth open in a perfect ‘O’ and its tiny paws stiff and supplicant as if it were praying.
She ran back upstairs now and looked helplessly at her mum and Micky. Then she started to cry, whispering, “Please, please, please,” over and over. She took her mum’s hand and it felt cold. “Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.” Anger and frustration and hate started to bubble up inside her. Her dad. Why wasn’t he here? Where was he? Then she heard a voice call out in the hall. She ran to the top of the stairs.
“Claire?”
The relief of seeing someone, anyone, was just so great that she didn’t stop to ask what he, Robert, was doing there. And anyway the ambulance arrived then and everything was forgotten in the rush to get her mum and Micky, still clutching her wax doll, onto stretchers and into the ambulance.
Claire would have climbed in as well, but the ambulance men were firm. No room, they said. They looked at him standing close beside her, his hand on her elbow, supporting, restraining.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll take her.” She ought to have done something then. Taken control. Got a taxi to take her to the hospital. But she didn’t. Felt… and it seemed ridiculous later… that it would be impolite to refuse his help, even though he made her feel afraid. So they stood together, on the pavement, in the pool of light from the street lamp. And watched as the ambulance doors were shut and the ambulance, blue light flashing, pulled away. Then Robert turned to her and asked if there was anything that needed to be fetched from the house.
“My backpack,” she whispered, still in a daze. “Can I have it? It’s under the kitchen table, I think. It’s got my phone in it. Oh, and mum’s handbag. Upstairs by her bed.”
Her mum never went anywhere without her bag. Everything went into it. Everything. Even the little wax doll.
“I’ll get them. You sit in the car.”
She allowed herself to be tucked up in the passenger seat. “And keys. On the hall table…”
He disappeared into the house and came out just a few minutes later, carrying both bags and locking the door behind him. She saw him stop on the path; look down at where the rats were lying. He pushed one with the toe of his shoe. He was still smiling when he slid into the driver’s seat.
* * *
The journey to the hospital only took five minutes. There was very little traffic that late at night. But every one of those minutes felt like ten. And when they stopped at a red traffic light she cried out in frustration and hit at the dashboard with her fist.
He reached across and rested his hand on hers. It felt heavy. Hot and dry and heavy. She kept her eyes fixed ahead. “Do you think they are going to die?” she asked.
He took his hand away and said nothing and they drove on in silence, until at last they pulled up outside the hospital entrance. He leaned across her to push open the passenger door. She pressed herself back into the seat; held her breath, not wanting to breathe in the smell of him.
“You go in,” he said. “I’ll find somewhere to park.”
She jumped out, clutching her backpack.
“Wait!” Her mum’s bag. He was holding it out for her. She took it and slammed the door shut. He drove off. She felt the relief of it turn her legs to water.
* * *
Accident and Emergency. She had never seen one this busy before. And they’d been loads of times to the one near her old house. Micky always seemed to be breaking things; a toe, a leg, a finger. Always falling out of trees, off her skateboard or bike.
It was totally manic. People everywhere. Noise. Bright fluorescent light. She had no idea what to do. There was a reception desk, but the woman behind it was harassed, didn’t listen to what Claire was saying, told her to take a ticket from the machine, sit down and wait her turn. Claire tried to say that it was her mum and sister who were the patients, but the woman was on the phone now and shooed her away with a hand. Claire took a ticket. Number 45. But a nurse had only just called out 38.
She went and sat down on the only spare seat, between a woman with a black eye and a man nursing a clumsily bandaged hand, dripping blood, and sat there in a daze. Her arms and legs felt heavy. She could hardly move them. A headache was starting. The top of her skull w
as so sensitive that even touching it with the tips of her fingers was painful. Her throat was tightening up. Her eyes felt dry and sore. She looked up at the clock on the wall. Two minutes past midnight. She registered that it was now officially her birthday, and that he was taking a long time to park the car. Perhaps he’d gone home and left her? Yes! But how would she get home if he had? She didn’t have more than a couple of pounds and her mum never had much either, using her card to pay for everything. She wanted her dad. That was all she could think of. An adult to come and lift the weight of responsibility off her shoulders. It was too heavy. She didn’t want it. Wasn’t old enough, even at 14, to take it.
“Forty-five. Number forty-five!” Someone was calling out her number. She held up her hand. Half stood up. A nurse holding a clipboard was threading her way towards her. Claire sank back down onto her seat and let the nurse come and hunker down beside her. She was brisk and efficient. As soon as Claire told her the story, she took down her mum and her sister’s names. Told Claire she’d go and find out what was happening to them and come back when she knew anything. She stood up, patting Claire on the shoulder and telling her not to worry. She was sure everything would be fine.
Claire thought about ringing her dad again. She took her mobile out of her backpack. But she ought to go outside to do that. And supposing the nurse came back then and couldn’t find her? No one was looking. She’d send a text. She checked there was a signal then surreptitiously keyed in ‘At hospital. Urgent. Call me.’ She tried to send it, but the screen just flashed ‘Message sending failed’. Oh no. She slipped the phone into her jeans back pocket. And soon the nurse was back and carrying the little wax doll they’d had to prise, she said, from Micky’s hand. “Better if you look after it,” she said, with a shudder. “Gives me the creeps.”
Claire was sitting there clutching it, when Robert came.
“There weren’t any spaces. I had to drive round for ages before I could find somewhere.” And while he was talking, he took the wax doll out of her hand. “See. It’s melting in the heat. It’s all squashed now. No use at all.” He pocketed it.
Good. He could have her mum’s too. Before it melted and made a mess. Claire unzipped her mum’s bag. Fished around inside. But there was no wax doll.
“Never mind,” he said. “It helped.”
Helped? What was he talking about? Her mum and her sister had nearly died.
“Has anything happened yet?” he said calmly. “Is there any news?”
* * *
It wasn’t until two in the morning that the nurse was able to tell them anything. She’d taken Claire and Robert into a side room and was sitting opposite Claire and leaning in towards her and looking earnestly into her eyes.
“It’s not bird flu. That’s for certain. We think it’s some sort of poison, but we don’t know what yet. I shouldn’t tell you this.” She looked a bit embarrassed. “But the doctor Googled the symptoms and they’re a perfect fit for aconite poisoning. But that’s incredibly rare. Is there anywhere they could have come across it?” Now the nurse was looking up at Robert, who was standing close behind Claire’s chair.
It couldn’t have been his ‘medicine’, could it? Had he given some to her mum and Micky? Should she say something? She could feel his hand resting on her shoulder. Just the touch of his fingers, but enough to make her feel afraid. He shook his head.
“We stomach-pumped them both, just to be on the safe side. And we’ve given them the antidote for aconite.”
She could feel Robert’s thumb pressing in on her neck; his fingers fan out over her collar bone.
“But it will take a few hours yet for it to work. After that we’ll move them up into the wards. You can come in and see them now, if you like. But then I’d go home if I were you. Have you got hold of your dad yet?”
Manuscript 8
My mother never did wake again. Though Nicholas lifted her up and carried her back to the house. Though he gave her more of his medicine and bled her copiously.
I watched as the life drained out of her and felt a terrible pain in my heart at it. My mother, the very last of my flesh and blood. For my brother had died at birth and I had no aunts or uncles that I knew of, no grandparents for they were long dead.
“If only we had the 21st spell, Margrat, then we might bring her back to life again,” he sighed, “But it is not time yet…”
“And no one has the em…” I quickly swallowed my words. I had never heard Nicholas talk of the Emerald Casket, and did not want him to hear of it from me, or know more of my meeting with Christophe.
Now my mother was dead, Nicholas and I dug her grave together and she was buried alongside my father. In the darkness I faced the stark truth. I was alone and had no one to care for me.
But it seemed that Nicholas thought differently, saying, the very minute we were out of the black, suffocating heat of the cellar, that I must leave the house and go with him. “It is not safe for you to stay here Margrat… a young girl, all alone. Besides…” And this is when he told me, “Your mother has left a will making me your guardian.”
I said that I did not believe him.
He took me into the parlour then and, with a key he took from his pocket, opened the box seat of my mother’s oak chair. Inside was a will, written in her hand… I knew it well… and bearing her true signature, Catherine Jennet. It was dated the third day of September. Just yesterday.
Nicholas watched me as I picked up the will, let it curl back into a roll. Was quick to stay my hand as, seeing a candle still alight on the mantlepiece, I thought to catch the will in the flame and burn it.
There was no time to pack. Nicholas was in a hurry to be gone. Besides, he said, it was dangerous to take clothing and linens and the like, for they might harbour infection. Though I noticed that he was careful to tuck the will inside his coat. “No Margrat, you shall have all new things.”
New things. Once I would have danced and sung and clapped my hands in glee at the thought of it.
So I left the house with nothing but the clothes I stood up in and the ring still on its thread about my neck.
“I think it safer,” he said, as we stepped out into the lane, “if we go by the river.”
So we went, Nicholas holding my hand tight, not by the Ludgate, but on foot down St Peter’s Hill to Poles Wharf. All the while Nicholas looking about him.
“Who or what is it you are afraid of?” I asked, breathless, for he pulled me along at a great rate. “Not… the rope-walker… for he must have left the city.”
He did not answer, but gripped my hand more tightly and would not even let go when I stumbled and fell to my knees. Instead he pulled me up so sharply I yelped in pain. And it wasn’t until we reached the wharf and Nicholas was handing me down into a wherry that I looked back and saw Christophe. I am sure it was he, though he slipped from view as Nicholas took one last look about him and then jumped down into the boat.
I had not been out on the river for a long time. But it seemed busier than ever now. The waterman told us that many people, hoping to be spared the plague, had abandoned their houses and were living, whole families squeezed together, on boats. We passed many of these, at anchor in midstream and in rows of two or three or more together. The waterman rowed us on up, past Bridewell and the cloisters of Whitefriars. Midday now. The bells rang out across the water and the sun blazed down. The creak of the boat’s timbers, the rhythmic swish of the oars and the glitter and glint off the water, made me feel light-headed.
On past the great houses of Essex Place and Arundel Place and to Somerset House and its river stairs. The waterman expertly brought us in, shipped his oars and jumped out onto the wharf side to tie up. Nicholas jumped out himself and turned and held out his hand for me, pulling me up.
A lane led up from the river, alongside the garden wall of a big house. We went along it, Nicholas holding my hand still. Then we passed into the Strand.
A little way down and set well back, we came to Nicholas’s house. It
was three storeys high, brick-built and very fine, its many windows glittering in the bright September light. Plaster panels set between them, decorated in relief, with what I saw at once were Egyptian figures. It was different in every way from my own house, which was built of daub and wattle and had grown higgledy-piggledy over a great many years, with no clear plan in view. The architect of this house had a mind that was controlled and clear of purpose.
I straggled after the Doctor as he went up the front steps. Taking a key from his coat pocket, he unlocked the great carved oak door. It swung open and I followed Nicholas into blackness; for all the shutters were closed and there were no candles lit.
It had been hot as an oven outside. Now the cold struck up through the stone floor and made me shiver.
It is like a tomb, I thought. And even when Nicholas folded back the shutters and light flooded in, the chill remained. Now I could see that there was panelling to the walls and fine plaster moulding on the ceiling. There was an immense chimney piece with pillars of jet, but no fire lit.
It had the feel of a mausoleum. And there were no servants anywhere to be seen. They must have all run away, I thought, like Jane. There was a carved oak chair by the fireplace. I sat down heavily upon it. I looked down at my filthy skirts, my muddied shoes; at my hands grimed with black. I had not washed or changed my clothes or cleaned my teeth for days and days. And I had not noticed that I stank, until now, for the whole world had smelled the same.
“You need to bathe,” Nicholas said, as if reading my mind. “I have clean clothes already laid out upon your bed.”
Wickedness Page 11