The Honours

by Tim Clare

  ‘You’re alive,’ he croaked.

  Delphine tried to speak but her tongue was burnt. She coughed and it was a kick in the chest.

  ‘Steady,’ said the Professor, wincing with the effort. He looked back towards the house. ‘They’re coming.’

  Delphine sat up slowly, the Professor supporting her. Across the grass, limping in silhouette, came Mother, supporting a ragged and delirious Daddy. Flamelight turned their outlines golden.

  Rain fell in wafting layers. A few yards away, Mrs Hagstrom sat with Alice’s head in her lap, running fingers through her hair and murmuring to her. Alice’s chest rose and fell fitfully. Mrs Hagstrom’s shoulder had been clumsily bandaged with a stocking. Droplets ran down her hollow cheeks. Somewhere she had lost a shoe. The male guest whose name Delphine still did not know sat quietly beside her, hugging his jacket to his shoulders.

  Delphine leant an arm against the wet stone of the ha-ha and stood. There was something hard in the sleeve of her cardigan. She shook it out and the crab hook dropped into her palm. The metal was hot to the touch.

  She looked back at the Hall – fire was raging in the west wing. Blue smoke haemorrhaged through a collapsed section of roof, underlit, looming. Great orange flakes rose into the rain and withered. The long library was gone.

  Mother’s dress hung in charred streamers round her waist. She had draped a throw rug over her shoulders. Vapour spilled from Daddy’s lips. He was shivering. As they moved into the lee of the ha-ha, Mother waited to see if he could support himself. She stepped away.

  ‘Do up your shirt, dear.’

  Daddy started fastening the bottom button. His fingers were clumsy and slow. Professor Carmichael watched him warily.

  ‘Mrs Hagstrom needs a doctor,’ said the Professor. He glanced at the bloody slit in Daddy’s trousers. ‘We all do.’

  ‘His Lordship’s car was out the front of the house,’ said Mrs Hagstrom. ‘Reggie . . . uh, that is . . . it was due a wash. If it’s still there . . . I think I can manage the drive.’

  ‘Right,’ said the Professor. ‘I’ll head to Pigg and telephone for the police. They’ve a phone in the Brown Bull. Delphine, you go with Muriel. Get the car.’

  The Professor stood.

  Delphine hacked up a brown gobbet of phlegm.

  ‘I’ve got to help Mr Garforth.’

  ‘Mr Garforth?’ said Mother.

  ‘Henry.’ Everyone looked at Delphine blankly. ‘The head keeper. I’m afraid something’s happened to him.’

  ‘Delphine, this isn’t the time.’

  ‘If it wasn’t for him we’d all be dead!’ Delphine’s chest cramped and she paused to cough. ‘He made sure no more monsters can cross the channel.’

  Professor Carmichael raised a blackened eyebrow. ‘You mean . . . they’re French?’

  ‘No. I don’t . . . Never mind. Mr Garforth knows about it but he might need our help.’

  ‘Right. Fine.’ The Professor slapped a huge palm against his chest. ‘I’ll go and look for him. You stay with your mother.’

  ‘You don’t know your way through the woods. I’m going with you.’

  ‘You are not, Delphine.’ Mother grasped Delphine by the scruff of her cardigan. ‘You need to see a doctor.’ On top of the Hall, more tiles caved in with an almighty woof of sparks. Mother did not flinch. ‘I have given you tremendous latitude this evening and you have almost died and I won’t stand for it any more because I love you.’

  ‘Listen to your mother,’ said Daddy. ‘Ow!’

  He slapped his neck.

  Daddy examined his hand. Something like a smear of boot polish gleamed in the fluctuating light of the fire. Delphine stepped closer.

  ‘Giddy?’ said Mother.

  Daddy held out his palm. Across his fingers were the turquoise-magenta wings and smashed carapace of a hornet.

  ‘I think I’ve been stung.’

  At the far end of the west wing, the music room window blew out. Mr Cox, immaculate in riding coat and blue breeches, stepped out of the window. Behind him was Stokeham. Cox dropped down onto the gravel. He turned, reaching up to accept the leather gauntlet of his superior.

  ‘Get down,’ hissed the Professor. Everybody dropped behind the ha-ha.

  Delphine and the Professor peered over the lip of the stone wall, back towards the house.

  Rain dripped from Stokeham’s bone-white beakmask. Cox raked his fingers through his shining chestnut hair. From the shattered window clambered Reggie. Delphine could not make out his eyes. Sluggishly, he reached through the frame, reached into thickening smoke, and lifted out Miss DeGroot.

  ‘What on earth’s he doing?’ muttered the Professor.

  Miss DeGroot staggered as her feet touched the gravel. Her arm was wrapped in a singed curtain. It dragged as she took a few uncertain steps forward.

  Cox unhooked a flintlock pistol from his belt. He said something to Miss DeGroot. She did not appear to answer. Stokeham gazed across the estate. Cox began walking towards the ha-ha.

  ‘What do we do now?’ said Mrs Hagstrom.

  Professor Carmichael ducked back behind the ha-ha.

  ‘We can’t stay here,’ he whispered.

  ‘Alice can’t move,’ said Mrs Hagstrom. Alice whimpered and Mrs Hagstrom stroked her brow, shushing her.

  ‘Giddy?’ said Mother. She nudged Daddy, who was lying on his back. ‘Come on, now.’ She looked up. ‘He’s passed out.’

  ‘We have to go now,’ said the Professor.

  Delphine glanced over the lip of the wall and saw Cox walking a few yards ahead of Stokeham, one palm sheltering his pistol from the rain. Miss DeGroot and Reggie were following, her club arm flattening the wet grass. Miss DeGroot’s eyes were half-lidded. Cox was scanning the darkness. Unless he changed direction, he would be upon them in less than a minute.

  Delphine turned to Mother.

  ‘Keep everyone safe,’ she said.

  ‘What? Delphine, no!’

  Delphine ran east in a low crouch along the ha-ha. She waited until she was a clear thirty yards from Mother, Daddy and the others, then broke cover. Slippery grass squeaked beneath her soles. She glanced back at Cox.

  He had not spotted her. He was continuing towards the group’s hiding place. He seemed totally unaware. By blind luck he was about to stumble on everyone. Delphine almost called out, but that would make it too obvious a diversion. He had to believe she did not want to be seen.

  She began backing away. Cox was not even looking in her direction.

  A familiar ticking came from overhead. Delphine glanced up to see a vesperi swooping towards her, the drizzle bouncing off the outline of its wings. It called out to its masters. Stokeham whirled round.

  Cox’s eyes widened.

  ‘There!’

  Delphine turned and ran.

  A crack rang out. A breeze whipped past her ear. She felt a paralysing dread. She sucked the feelings down and focused on the woods. She just had to draw them away from Mother and Daddy and Alice and the Professor and Mrs Hagstrom. Her legs felt like bags of wet sand. Perhaps she should stop, turn and face them. She could spread her arms, close her eyes and wait for it all to be over.

  But what about Mr Garforth? He might need her. She couldn’t give up, not till she’d found him.

  The ground sloped down towards dark, close-packed trees. Any other night, the woods would have looked foreboding, but now the liquid black promised acres of precious cover.

  ‘Deeeeellphine!’ Cox’s hallooing voice bounced off the trees. ‘Come back! We only want to talk to you!’

  Fear spurred Delphine on. She was drawing them away from Mother and Daddy and the Professor, and that was all that mattered. If she could just make them chase her into the woods, everyone else would be safe.

  Stokeham was alive. A homemade grenade to the stomach and somehow Stokeham was alive.

  Another crack – a branch on the tree ahead shattered with a crazy ricocheting sound.

  ‘We don’t want to hurt you!�
�

  She was into the woods. Roots tore at her ankles and she fell and scrambled and she was into the bushes and away, dirt stinging her cuts and burns, soaked, breathless.

  CHAPTER 40

  YOU WILL DIE, BROTHER, IF YOU GO TO IT LONG ENOUGH

  Delphine lay on her belly, hidden amongst a splash of gipsywort in the dried-up riverbed. She listened to voles threading through brittle undergrowth, the thin eerie note of an owl. She was cold and wet. She waited for Stokeham and Cox to find her, the pistol to the temple, the white light.

  If she stayed where she was she could survive till daybreak. Perhaps, by then, they would have given up searching for her. Perhaps they had already given up.

  On the other hand, moving would be safest under cover of darkness. There was no sign of Stokeham’s troops withdrawing, nor Mr Garforth, which meant that the plan had almost certainly failed.

  But why hadn’t Mr Loosley returned? Had Mr Garforth stopped him somehow?

  As soon as Stokeham, Cox and Miss DeGroot gave up, they would head for the burial vault. They needed reinforcements.

  If Mr Garforth was alive, he was in terrible danger.

  Delphine thought of Dr Lansley and Mr Wightman and the male guest killed in the banqueting hall. She wondered if they were in Heaven now, or some black unplace of non-existence. She did not want to join them. If she hid here, and kept very still, the danger might pass. She might escape and keep on living for years and years. She might learn to forgive herself the cowardice – but if she got caught, these few minutes would be her last on earth.

  She understood now, the soldier’s need for a talisman. She muttered in her head please God, please God, please God, but she knew too well that she was just one amongst hundreds of scurrying wretched creatures in the woods that night. She had no special claim on living. She was no more entitled to it than the anonymous guest who had died on the banqueting hall floor, or the dozens of vesperi shot, roasted or bludgeoned.

  If Stokeham succeeded in seizing the channel, all England would be in peril. She might run a hundred miles and still die in the resultant war. Mr Wightman had died trying to flee. If death wanted you, escape was impossible.

  She pictured Professor Carmichael, swinging his warhammer, colossal in his frenzy. She pictured Mother, squaring off against Miss DeGroot, her eyes hard, brilliant. She pictured dear Mr Garforth, warming milk for her in a saucepan, standing over it and stirring, so it didn’t get a skin.

  She listened. The entire wood seemed to hold its breath. The loudest sound was her heartbeat. Pressing her palms to the damp soil, she rose.

  People had passed this way. Footprints trailed through the muddy earth, beside a long, shallow gouge, as if one of the party had been dragging a heavy object.

  Delphine stuck to the shadows, creeping parallel to the trail, knowing with a sickening clarity where it would lead.

  When she reached the edge of the clearing, she saw. The footprints and the drag mark led into the open tomb.

  So they had made it inside. She heard a snap, threw herself flat. She held her breath, listening, praying.

  A minute passed. No one came.

  It was no good letting Stokeham hunt her. She had to find a weapon and fight back. If Mr Garforth was still alive, he needed her. She was a better shot than Cox. More to the point, his flintlock pistol was archaic and almost certainly waterlogged – a stupid affectation, just like everything else about him. She wouldn’t let them terrorise her any more. She would force them to retreat, and if they wouldn’t retreat . . .

  No one was invincible. Somehow, Stokeham would die.

  The anger gave her energy. And she knew exactly where to look for a gun.

  Hidden amongst wind-hunched oaks was a cottage.

  The door was open. The horseshoe over the lintel had fallen to the ground.

  She ran inside without thinking. Embers winked in the hearth. The table had been upended and crockery lay shattered across the tiles. She ran into the bedroom.

  Propp’s sister was gone.

  Even as the hollow feeling spread through her belly, Delphine realised she had expected this.

  In the back room she rummaged through packing crates and heaped bric-a-brac looking for something to even the odds. It was all junk. She found a box of fishing weights – could she drop some into a pillow case to use as a cosh? Mr Garforth had taken all the gins. There was a bottle of Young’s Draw Game and some other, more sinister-looking concoctions. Delphine was sliding a small, brown glass vial of rat poison from the back of the box when she heard footsteps.

  She pressed her back to the wall and held her breath. Her heartbeats seemed to shake her whole body. She listened.

  The front door croaked on its hinges. It might have been the wind.

  A snap. Perhaps a knuckle of wet twig popping in the fire.

  She tipped her head back till her scalp touched the wall, listened for someone listening for her. She gripped the crab hook. It was not much, but better than nothing. The metal shaft could parry a knife and the curved part might work for gouging an eye. She was not sure she could really drive a hook into someone’s eyeball. Then she thought of Mr Wightman’s ruptured throat, and her fingers tightened.

  She heard a breath. She had definitely heard a man’s breath. A box next to her slipped an inch. The entire contents of the shelf came crashing down.

  ‘Who goes there? Show yourself.’

  Delphine stepped out from behind the door. ‘God. Professor.’

  ‘Delphine?’

  ‘I nearly hooked your eye out.’

  Professor Carmichael touched a finger to the ridge of his cheekbone. ‘Listen. You have to come. Your Mother thought she’d lost you.’

  Delphine took a step back. ‘Mr Garforth needs me. If I don’t help him they’ll bring more monsters, hundreds more – the whole country will be in danger.’

  The Professor sighed with his entire body. ‘Now, you listen to me. You barely got out of that house with your life.’

  ‘Thank you, Professor.’

  He swatted the air. ‘Stop it. You may be feeling very cocksure but you’re just a child. You can’t do anything to stop them. None of us can. This is a job for the army. We’ve enough witnesses that they’ll have to believe us. We must get as far away as possible. After you left, your father collapsed. He had a funny reaction to a sting.’

  A squat shadow appeared in the doorway. Axle squealing, Lord Alderberen rolled into the cottage.

  The lower half of his face was puckered and shrunken as a peach stone, thick mauve lips pouting while his good eye ticked from Delphine to the Professor, back again.

  ‘Hello,’ said the Professor.

  Lord Alderberen nodded: yes, yes, yes. A few fine golden hairs floated above his bluish, pitted scalp. His shirt and grey flannel trousers hung in loose folds. He looked strangely childlike.

  He reached into his lap. His arm was shaking. When he lifted it, he was holding a pistol.

  ‘Don’t think I won’t fire, because I will.’ His tongue slopped over empty gums. ‘Any silly nonsense and I shall kill you both.’

  ‘Lazarus, really . . . ’ Professor Carmichael raised his hands.

  ‘Don’t you speak to me as if you know me!’ Alderberen’s voice was shrill and lisping. ‘Just shut up and do as I say or God forgive me I shall end you both in this room.’

  ‘But we’re on your side! We’re not going to hurt you.’

  ‘I said shut up!’ Lord Alderberen jabbed the pistol, a little black broomhandle Mauser, towards the Professor’s belly. ‘Wightman thought I was bluffing too. I told him to stop where he was and he laughed. He actually laughed. A bloody dogsbody who spends his days patching drainpipes, and he laughs at me? He would’ve told the papers – he would’ve undone generations of hard work for his twenty pieces of silver. So I did for him. I shot him then I slit his fat throat as if he were an antelope. Now you, both of you,’ he gestured at Delphine with the gun, ‘you come with me. I want you to walk five paces ahead o
f me, side by side. No more, no less. Remember, I shall be behind you. I can wheel this thing with one hand.’ The Mauser wobbled in his grip. He frowned at the Professor. ‘If you try to run I shall shoot the girl first.’

  ‘But why? What have we done? We – ’

  Alderberen swung his arm to the right and fired once – BLAM! – into the fireplace. A gout of orange sparks went up and Delphine nearly fell.

  ‘Last warning.’

  Alderberen pointed to the door with the pistol. Delphine looked at Professor Carmichael, who nodded.

  She was halfway to the door when she heard a noise. She turned and the Professor was already on top of Alderberen, grappling for his throat. Alderberen made a noise – gnuh – and his face tightened, soft jaw retracting into his upper skull like the wet flesh of a limpet. Professor Carmichael stepped away. He had his back to Delphine.

  ‘Oh,’ said the Professor. ‘Oh. Oh. Oh.’

  He sat down heavily. He put his hands on his stomach. Sticking from his jumper was the handle of a letter-knife.

  ‘I warned you!’ said Alderberen.

  ‘Oh,’ said the Professor. He closed his fingers round the knife. There was blood on his fingers. He doubled-up.

  ‘Now,’ said Lord Alderberen, aiming the pistol at Delphine. ‘Move.’

  She hesitated. Professor Carmichael lay on his side on the tiles, gritting his teeth.

  Alderberen narrowed his eyes. He pointed the gun at the Professor’s head.

  ‘I’ll shoot him like a lame horse.’

  Slowly, Delphine turned and walked out of the door. The wind swiped at her hair, blowing so hard that she didn’t catch Lord Alderberen’s next instruction until the third time he said it.

  ‘To the ice house.’

  CHAPTER 41

  WHAT SHE STRIVES TO SHUN

  Mist rolled across the lake. Alderberen Hall was a skull lit from within.

  Delphine paused at the top of the hill.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’