The Wren Hunt

by Mary Watson

‘Even on good days,’ she stepped closer, lowering her voice, ‘when I try to read the positions of clouds, divide the sky into different spheres, it just throws up garbage.’

  ‘How long, Maeve?’ I asked. Through the open door, Aisling was still absorbed in the TV. Sibéal had disappeared.

  ‘A while,’ she sighed. ‘Since I was sick.’

  ‘Last May?’ I was incredulous that Maeve had gone so long without seeing anything in the clouds.

  ‘I’m worried about Sibéal.’ She wiped her hands on her printed flowers. ‘Her birthday is in March.’

  ‘You need me to take a look?’

  ‘No blood,’ she said. ‘And please don’t tell Smith I asked. I know it’s dangerous, but if you do it only once or twice, surely that can’t hurt?’

  Maeve was like a child stealing sweets from the candy jar. Just a small one, not realising how quickly they added up.

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  As I reached the back door I turned. ‘Maeve? Why did Smith ask about Birchwood? What’s that about?’

  ‘Nothing to fret over. Just a rumour that a bunch of judges from Birchwood are coming here.’

  ‘So, schoolkids?’ I said, pulling the door open. ‘A bunch of posh thugs like David?’

  ‘Exactly. No problem there.’

  I stepped outside, relieved. Smith had been right, it was nothing.

  ‘Wren,’ Maeve called before I shut the door.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  I nodded and went home. We were spoiled by our talents. We could question the present and search the past for what we missed the first time. If our talents were like maps, mine was one where some intrepid traveller had forged ahead and found the lay of the land disappointing. So he had embellished it. Added caves and secret passages. And extra dangers. Here be dragons. Mine would be an acid trip kind of map. But sometimes it would trick you and other times it would guide you home. You just never knew which.

  TWELVE

  Handle carefully

  I stayed down at the lake, watching the lilies among the water weeds. They seemed to call to me in an echoing song. ‘Do they not get lonely?’ I asked Lady Catherine. I would hate it if they were lonely.

  AdC

  Another week had passed and I was nowhere close to getting into the archive. I wanted to scream with frustration. Nearly a month at Harkness House and I was still indexing diaries and compiling guest lists for endless parties. Nearly a month, and I was still looking over my shoulder. That dreadful anticipation of when David would don an invisible mummer’s mask and finish what he’d started on Stephen’s Day. Complete the promise he’d made when he took my hair.

  ‘Handle carefully, some of these are very old.’ Laney carried a pile of books to my desk. She made an excellent torturer. She had an impressive ability to know when I was at breaking point, and how to tighten the screw ever so sweetly.

  ‘You need to be especially thorough with these.’ She handed over two fat volumes. ‘Lady Catherine’s garden journals. They’re from the archive. Even Cassa hasn’t had a chance to read them. You’re the first.’

  ‘Lucky me.’

  From the window, I saw Tarc emerge from the garden and head towards the office.

  Grabbing Lady Catherine’s Garden Journal: Volume I, I escaped to the library. I didn’t know if he’d vandalised the standing stone at the Laceys’ farm; just being in the same area that night wasn’t exactly evidence. I didn’t want to think about it.

  The garden book was a whole new level of dull. Lady Catherine meticulously documented her planting and weeding habits, as well as regular updates on the general health of her plants. Seems the roses had an awful time with aphids in the summer of 1870.

  ‘Just kill me already,’ I whimpered, banging my head against the table. My face turned to the side, the cool wood against my skin, I stared at the archive door.

  ‘Pretty.’

  I heard Cassa’s voice just as her hand reached out and touched Maeve’s combs in my hair. I sat up hastily, searching for an excuse. But really there was none. I’d seen Cassa berate Cillian for sloppy posture, I’d seen her make Laney squirm for work slightly less than perfect. And there I was, sleeping on the job. I waited for the harsh words.

  But she smiled. ‘I haven’t forgotten my promise.’

  She spoke sweetly, but I couldn’t shake the sense of a honeyed threat.

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘To show you more of Arabella’s paintings.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘They’re in storage.’ As she moved, I caught sight of her hands. Long and elegant, with a diamond and moonstone ring. Soil stains in the creases of her fingers.

  ‘But we’ll exhibit them at an Arabella de Courcy Retrospective next month. At the Huntsman. I want you there when we open.’

  As she walked away I said, ‘Cassa?’

  At the foot of the staircase, she turned her head.

  ‘What really happened to Arabella? Why did she leave her family to live in the woods?’

  I felt some empathy with Arabella, maybe because we’d both lost our parents. And because we were both drawn to the woods. It bothered me that she’d been disloyal to augurs, that her actions led to more mistreatment of us by judges, when she was one of us herself.

  Standing there in the shafts of light from the high basement windows, Cassa looked almost ethereal.

  ‘This story,’ she said, ‘the truth about Arabella … When I tell it, I ask for something in return.’

  She turned her face to mine, searching. I got the sense of a taut line that stretched from her to me, as if she was reeling me in.

  ‘What do you ask for?’ I said.

  ‘Do you really want me to tell you?’

  Blank promises were dangerous. And to make one to a woman like Cassa was insane. And yet I badly wanted to know.

  My hesitation broke the moment. It was too late. The line had slackened. She was already going up the stairs.

  Cassa was gone but the delicate top notes of her perfume lingered. I had the strangest feeling of having had a conversation with a ghost or a dream. Like it hadn’t really happened.

  It was later in the afternoon, after hours of Lady Catherine’s garden and the many people who had admired it, and all the bloody weeds, when I realised that I knew the code to the door.

  Laney had been in and out of the archive all day. I’d tried watching her pin in the number, but I only managed to see that it started with three, the rest of the numbers obscured by her sharp silver talons.

  Made of shiny chrome, the keypad was sleek and stylish. But as a security device it was daft. Every time a number was entered it emitted a different key tone. It was only after I’d heard it for the tenth time that I realised I could work out the sequence by figuring out the sounds the different keys made.

  I waited until Laney was bossing the caterers in the kitchen. Certain I was alone, I hummed the tune while I played the keypad. After a few minutes, the door clicked open.

  I’d always felt the odd one out in our grove, my sense of pattern a distorted, discordant thing. I’d once seen a picture of a crazy spiderweb after the spider had been fed caffeine. That was me, a wonky spinner, like a caffeine-addled spider.

  But here, I’d done it. I’d discerned the code through the pattern of the key tones. Maybe I wasn’t as rogue as I’d feared.

  I pulled the door shut without going in. Instead, I went back upstairs to the office. Restless and fidgety, I waited at my desk until Laney was ready to lock the office.

  ‘I’m going to push on with the indexing for an hour or two,’ I said. ‘That OK?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘But stay in the library, I’m turning on the alarm here.’ I was leaving the room when she called after me. ‘There’s an Arabella fundraiser in the white room this evening. Don’t get underfoot.’

  The house felt different outside of office hours. The constant stream of people in the daytime seemed to shrink it. And now, resettled to full size, it
felt cavernous. After checking the staircase, I entered the code and slipped inside the archive.

  Laney had been busy. Books, document boxes and folders were stacked on the shelves in no discernible order. I felt a sudden panic at the volume of stuff. How was I meant to find a single map in that clutter? I felt annoyed with Basil Lucas: was all that paper really necessary? Wouldn’t someone think of the trees?

  Frustrated, I leaned against the table. I picked up the carved wooden box beside me. Like the one on Sibéal’s desk, it was an augur’s puzzle box, something my ancestors crafted to amuse themselves. This one was much larger, with a more complex puzzle. To open the box, wooden slats were moved around to complete a pattern.

  I turned the box over. It was open, which meant that the code had been cracked. I turned the box over again, examining the pattern. For an augur, it was laughably easy, a child could do it, but those easy puzzle boxes could be deceptive. I shut the box and pushed the lever that locked it, unravelling its code. Then I looked for the real pattern, the hidden one. The less obvious pattern that would open the bottom cavity that Cassa might not know about.

  It took a few minutes to push the small squares and circles into position. Moving the last slats, I hesitated. In the archive, with its damp and dusty books, I felt a sense of foreboding. It always turned out badly when nosy girls opened secret boxes. Look at Pandora, that didn’t work so well for her.

  I heard a bump against the library wall and I started. And then another, like a small animal was trying to break in. Then another, against the archive door. My heart wild, I stared at the door, half expecting David or Cillian to kick it down.

  Then I registered the low hum of the vacuum cleaner. Angela, the housekeeper. My legs jellied in relief.

  I’d been in the archive for nearly an hour. Security monitored the house. I was being reckless. I lifted the lid, now locked to the top cavity. Inside the small bottom compartment was a square of paper.

  ‘How’s things?’ I heard David call over the Hoover. Angela turned it off, but I couldn’t hear her soft voice through the thick wall.

  ‘Here, I’ll carry that up the stairs for you.’ I could just about make out David’s words as my unsteady fingers unfolded what I’d found.

  Returning the box as it had been, I left the archive a few minutes later, the page tucked into my pocket.

  At the top of the basement stairs, I paused at the sound of laughter and music coming from the white room. The Arabella fundraiser.

  I stopped for a moment. To my right was the garden door, I could slip out quietly and steal away with my prize. To my left, the house was crawling with judges.

  I should go home. I’d found something new, something that might help us. But that night, I had a rare opportunity to watch Cassa outside of our normal workday.

  I hesitated. Then turned left.

  THIRTEEN

  Watching you

  In the garden, I had the most extraordinary desire to put my tongue to the wet mulched leaves. I was surprised by their cool, refreshing tang.

  AdC

  I slipped into the small alcove beside the white room, probably the old servers’ entrance. Cracking open the door, I looked inside.

  The white room was glorious. Giant flower arrangements stood on huge pedestals. There were easily fifty people, and I was surprised to see so many girls my age; not the usual crowd for a fundraiser. The girls were so polished in their expensive dresses, perfect make-up and swishy hair as they stood beneath the sparkling crystal chandeliers with their champagne flutes. I watched from my corner, probably grey with a faint layer of dust from the archive.

  Near the string quartet, Tarc also watched. He was dressed in black, and seemed to be working, but that didn’t stop a group of girls from swaying over to him. They chatted easily, the girls laughing. Their bodies were soft and leaning towards him. Something bitter as beer churned inside me.

  And it occurred to me that if there was any truth to the stories of the tuanacul, they would not be the wild tales that Sibéal loved but something quieter and more essential. Something infinitely more frightening. They wouldn’t throttle you with their roots and vines. They would observe you furtively, the way a forest watched a girl running helter-skelter. They would be detached and knowing. They would be strong and sure. In this way, I could understand how Arabella might love a tree prince.

  Something at the main entrance to the room drew Tarc’s attention. I followed his line of vision and saw Cillian gesturing to him with the hand signals he’d used in the woods. Tarc left, and my gaze drifted across the other guests.

  Cassa was in the centre of the room. A line of girls, each waiting their turn to speak to her. Pretty maids all in a row. I stared for a moment, trying to figure out what was going on.

  Then I saw her. She was wearing a white dress that set off her dirty-blonde hair. She was beside Laney, laughing. I couldn’t move.

  There was no reason for Aisling to be at Cassa’s party. Yet there she was in white tulle. She turned, looking in my direction like she knew I was there. She was different in that room. She looked like the other girls, glamorous, confident. She stared at the darkened doorway and I shrunk back. Aisling stepped towards me, her arm stretched out, but I turned away and fled.

  I was turned inside out. Had Maeve sent Aisling? Why would they hide this from me? What else had they not told me?

  In my haste, I’d headed for the main door. But as I neared it, I heard the sound of laughter from the other side. Not wanting to encounter Cassa’s guests, I quickly turned round and made for the side door near the drive.

  I was almost at the glass door when I heard the boys coming. Panicked, I ducked into a dim room and watched as Tarc and Cillian passed by. They moved with such quiet intent, and again I wondered if it was Tarc who’d hopped over the Laceys’ fence and run through the fields towards the standing stone.

  Some seconds after they’d left, I slipped out of the door. Keeping to the wall, I followed them. It was beyond foolish. I couldn’t think what they’d do if they caught me. Something rustled behind me. I turned but saw no one. I scanned the garden, the door, checking the shadows for movement, but there was nothing.

  At the corner of the house, the boys were out of sight. I searched the paved drive, the trees along the perimeter wall. Ahead was the garage where Tarc and David kept their cars. My heart thudding, I crossed the open space between the house and garage and crept towards the driveway. Peering around the wall, the boys were at Tarc’s car parked in front of the garage.

  ‘What time are we meeting Canty?’ Cillian said, then lit a cigarette, cupping his hands around the flame.

  ‘Nine.’ Tarc checked the time.

  ‘What’s he got?’

  ‘Says he knows something.’

  ‘You trust him?’

  ‘Not in the slightest.’

  ‘Want me to ring David?’ Cillian took a leisurely drag. ‘He’s probably getting his pretty frock on.’ Cillian had one of those slow voices that always sounded like he was a little bored.

  ‘Nah.’ Tarc looked towards the garage, and I pressed my shoulder against the wall.

  More silence. They didn’t strike me as bosom buddies, those two. Tarc was restless, moving aimlessly.

  ‘What’s the deal with David and Wren?’ Tarc said.

  ‘No deal,’ Cillian said and looked at the glowing tip of his cigarette.

  ‘So why does David always look like she just peed in his cornflakes? She dump him or something?’

  ‘Not a chance,’ Cillian said. ‘David wouldn’t tap that. I mean, she’s not bad, but she looks like she’d scratch your eyes out.’

  Yuck, did he just say ‘tap’? Of course boys talked about girls like that, and girls did the same with boys. I wasn’t exactly innocent of it, but I didn’t like hearing it. Not about me.

  ‘Something not right about her, don’t you think?’ Cillian was looking at Tarc.

  ‘I guess she’s a little jumpy maybe.’ Tarc sounded cautious.
Reluctant. ‘Seems nice.’

  Nice. How lame.

  ‘If you’re looking for a nice girl, go back inside,’ Cillian said. ‘There’s a load of them, girls like us, and wearing their pretty dresses and heels. I’m sure they’d love to get to know you.’

  ‘Not tonight, thanks,’ Tarc said.

  I leaned back into the wall, feeling the rough surface soothe the ache in the palms of my hands. The boys fell quiet. Time to go.

  I peered out for a last look, only to see Cillian shaking his head, staring at Tarc with a broad smile. Then he laughed. ‘Oh man, this is hilarious. Wait until I tell David.’

  I frowned, wondering what I’d missed.

  ‘He took her hair, you know.’ I could hear the smirk in his words.

  ‘David took Wren’s hair?’ Tarc was incredulous. ‘Why would he do that?’

  Cillian stared at him for a moment. I wondered if he’d tell him about the chase. About their game. But then Cillian laughed. ‘David thinks she’s hiding something. Wanted to draw her out.’

  ‘She’s just a girl.’ Tarc sounded moody. Distracted.

  ‘You hear she stabbed him after Christmas?’ Cillian went on. ‘Just like that. Right through the hand.’

  ‘Wren?’ Tarc whipped round to face him. ‘Stabbed David? Why?’

  Cillian shrugged, saying, ‘Who knows what drives crazy. Just watch your back with that one.’

  His elbow was around my neck before I knew he was there. I knew the smell of him, the feel of him. I struggled against his choke, scrabbling at his arms.

  ‘You spying on us, Wren?’ David said, pulling tighter.

  I tried to break out of the hold but I was no match for him.

  ‘I knew you were up to something,’ he said as I pushed against him. Maybe I could slam him into the wall. Bash his head or stick his ear with my trusty letter opener.

  As I struggled, my bag fell, thumping to the ground. There went my letter opener. David shifted slightly, enough for his hold to loosen. I inched forward. But I’d barely taken a step when he grabbed me again, tighter this time.