Murkmere

by Patricia Elliott

  Aunt Jennet had never thought I had much of that. I nodded solemnly, nevertheless.

  “She’s my ward and heir to Murkmere, and there are those who’d be pleased to have her in their power.”

  I was startled. “What do you mean, Sir?”

  He lowered his voice, glanced at the door. “I’m talking about kidnapping.”

  “Kidnapping?” I whispered. I thought of the soldiers of the Militia, who took young girls for their pleasure. But the Master hadn’t meant soldiers, surely, but those who plotted against the Ministration.

  “What about her moral danger, Sir? You know she doesn’t wear an amulet?”

  Something glinted in his eyes. “I’m concerned with her welfare here on Earth, Agnes. Morality is not much good to her if she’s dead.”

  He seemed angry, and I was confused. Beneath my eye-lashes I swiftly scanned the Master’s form and saw no protection at neck or wrist, no amulet. What did that mean?

  Perhaps he saw my distress, for he stretched up his arm and put his hand on mine as if to reassure me. I found it difficult not to recoil. His fingers were as cold as the grave, as if the Birds of Night already sucked at his soul.

  “The contract binds you to be Leah’s companion, Agnes, but friendship is a hundred times more valuable than the heavy words of contracts. Above all, I’d like you to be a friend to Leah.”

  “Yes, Sir,” I said doubtfully.

  He took his hand away. Though I was relieved to be free of its clammy pressure, I thought I’d disappointed him.

  “You must tell Mistress Crumplin if there’s anything you need,” he said, sounding weary. “She’ll explain everything, and provide you with clothes. You’ll collect your wages weekly, like the servants, from the steward’s room. Is there anything else you want to ask me before you go?”

  The lines around his mouth were more marked this evening. But I had one urgent question.

  “Can I return home for Devotion, Sir?”

  “Devotion?” His eyes opened fully and stared at me. “My good steward is guardian of my servants’ souls and takes a prayer meeting every evening. That will surely be enough devotion for you.”

  The Almighty was the guardian of men’s souls, no other. But the Master’s lip was curling: he’d meant it as a joke.

  A lump of disappointment came into my throat. Soon I was due to read aloud from the Divine Book in the village Devotion Hall for the very first time. Now I would miss the honor and Aunt Jennet the reflected glory.

  “But if I’m not to go to Devotion in the village, when may I see my aunt, Sir?”

  “You must arrange that with Mr. Silas. He’ll arrange for a man to ride with you along the Wasteland road.”

  At least I was not to be a prisoner as Leah had said. “But, Sir, I walk it alone always!”

  “But now you work at Murkmere,” he said patiently “There are secrets, things men would like to know that they could learn from a companion to the Master’s ward. We wouldn’t want you to disappear suddenly, and then to find your body in a bog days later. I’m a Minister, Agnes, and have many enemies.”

  I stared at him in dismay. I’d begun to be contaminated by a dark world of which I knew nothing.

  The anteroom door inched open again. “You’ll have your free time when Leah takes her lessons,” the Master remarked louder, watching it. “I hope you’ll find enough to do.”

  For a moment I thought I’d not heard him correctly. “But won’t I stay with Miss Leah while she’s in the tower, Sir? Can’t I sit with her in the bookroom?”

  “So you’ve heard about the bookroom already, have you? But you’d be a distraction to her. Besides, I allow no one into the tower but the two footmen whose help I need to reach it, and Mr. Silas, who sometimes brings me the accounts there.”

  “You mean I won’t be able to read the books?”

  He frowned. “The books wouldn’t interest you. They’re old, some of them ancient.”

  “I’d take great care of them, Sir!”

  A little color came into his face. “What is this? None of my staff has ever shown the slightest inclination to read them before. They consider them blasphemous.”

  “But books aren’t blasphemous, Sir!”

  He laughed shortly. “Not the ones you’ve read, you poor goose.”

  I was too upset to speak. Did he think me foolish?

  His voice was stern. “I repeat: you’re not to go to the watchtower. It’s a forbidden place, you understand?”

  “Yes, Sir,” I managed, dejectedly.

  He wagged his head at me as if I were a young child with a whim. “Come now, be cheerful. You’ve the whole of Murkmere in which to roam! Why should you want to go to the tower?”

  IV

  The Battle of the Birds

  If you’re staying,” Leah said, “you’d better make your-self useful.”

  Scuff had found me as I came out of the Master’s room, to tell me that Leah wanted me in her parlor. I found her writing at a little bureau, scratching furiously away at the parchment sheets and cursing every time a nib broke. There was an open book beside her at which she sometimes glanced for reference.

  “You can cut more quills for me; I’m running out. Sit over there.” Without looking at me, she nodded brusquely at a hard, upright chair. Beside it was a table on which lay a silver tray piled with feathers.

  No one would dare commit sacrilege by killing birds, but it was permitted to collect the precious feathers they dropped. You were allowed to use the feathers in the making of quill pens, and I’d heard that bunches of feathers sold by specialist vendors in the cities fetched high prices.

  I knew how to make and cure pens; Aunt Jennet had showed me how to do it with the occasional feather she’d pick up from the fields or common. But I’d always hated the stiff, lifeless feeling of feathers between my fingers. It made me uneasy, frightened even, to touch them.

  Without speaking, I went to sit down by the table. I wondered fearfully if a feather from a Bird of Night might not be among the bunch lying on the tray, and I’d be damned without even knowing it. I felt for my amber on its leather strap and took it up over my head, laying it carefully down close to the feathers on the tray. I should be safe enough now.

  Leah looked up as amber clicked against silver. Quickly, and trying to control a shiver, I took up a long brown-dappled feather, and in my right hand the small penknife, which had a blade sharp enough to slice through stone.

  She means me to cut myself! I thought. The candlelight shone on Leah’s silver-fair hair and fiercely pursed mouth as she went back to her work, and the feather gleamed between my shrinking fingers.

  I pulled myself together, and soon the concentration it took calmed me. I worked quietly and carefully, stripping some of the lower barbs away, then making a sloping cut at one end of the shaft’s point. If a quill has a good hollow and is cut and cleaned well, it holds the ink for longer.

  “What is that jewel?” said Leah suddenly. I looked up with a start to see her looking over at me again. How long she had been watching me I couldn’t tell.

  By the tray, my amulet glowed golden in the candlelight. “It’s amber, Miss,” I said.

  She rose and came over, gazing at it in fascination. “Fossil resin, but pretty, nonetheless. I’ve seen the same around the neck of Silas Seed.” To my horror she picked it up to examine it closer. “Do you understand its properties? I believe that if you rub it for long enough, it gives off sparks of light.”

  “Oh, please, don’t do such a thing, Miss Leah,” I begged. “It’s my amulet, and you might rub it away!” I stood up, with my hand outstretched, waiting for her to give it back.

  Leah stood regarding me, with the strap dangling from her hand and the amber swinging to and fro like a golden heart. “I like it,” she said slowly. “Perhaps I’ll keep it for myself.”

  “Give it back, please, Miss,” I said desperately. “It keeps me safe. You should wear an amulet of your own.”

  “A village girl
lecturing me on religion!” she said. But she didn’t look angry, more amused. “What do you think will happen to you without this, Aggie? Shall we wait and see?” She scissored the fingers of her free hand at me like a beak. “Will you be pecked to death in the night?” Then she began to back away, dangling the amber on its strap, a smile still playing around her lips.

  Too frightened to be left by the tray of feathers without protection, I took a step after her, and then another. My heart began to thud with distress and frustration. She was goading me to make a grab for it, and then I would be dismissed for assaulting my mistress. Now she was standing on her chair so that she was taller than ever. She spluttered with laughter as I reached up uselessly.

  It was a game to her, I realized suddenly. She didn’t want the amber at all, but at the same time she was not going to give it back easily. She wanted me to jump up and make a grab for it, and I was sorely tempted.

  I stood still and looked up at her smirking face. “The amber was my mother’s. She wanted me to have it, none other. Please give it back.”

  Her hand paused. “It was your mother’s?”

  “Yes, and it’s precious to me.”

  The smile had left her face, I was pleased to see. “Where’s your mother now?”

  “She is dead, Miss,” I said, in a choked voice.

  We gazed at each other for a heartbeat, then Leah climbed off the chair. Somehow the amber was back in my hand. “Tell me about your mother,” she said urgently. “Tell me everything about her, every little thing you can remember. I want to know about mothers.”

  She sat down, arranged her skirts, clasped her hands on her lap, and looked up at me expectantly, suddenly docile.

  “I don’t remember my mother at all,” I said, bewildered and upset. “I was too young when she died.”

  Leah stared at me in silence, as if testing the truth of what I’d said. I put the leather strap back over my head, slipping the amber down safely beneath my bodice. Slowly I calmed myself.

  I didn’t meet her gaze. I’d already seen the hunger and disappointment in her eyes.

  I’d scarcely recovered from this episode and only cut a few quills when a bell sounded in the passage outside. Its doleful clanging made me start; the blade of the knife almost slipped against the flesh of my fingertip. The bell tolled on, heavy and gloomy, echoing back, then fading gradually.

  “Is it suppertime, Miss?”

  “Devotion,” Leah said, not looking up. “A gong sounds for meals, the bell summons souls. Our worthy steward thinks it’s more appropriate that way.”

  “May I go, then, Miss?”

  She frowned, as if irritated at being interrupted again, and the quill paused. “You wish to go to Devotion?” she said, as if it were the oddest request on earth.

  “Oh, yes, Miss, I must.” So should you, I thought, if you’ve any care for your own soul!

  She stopped writing at last and looked at me scornfully, as if she had guessed what I was thinking. “The Master has employed a prig for my companion,” she said. “And a pious prig to boot!”

  Silently, I collected the feathers I’d worked on and laid them back on the tray. My hands were trembling. I didn’t want her to see how much she’d hurt me.

  But that night I hated her.

  Devotion was held in the servants’ dining hall, close to the kitchen quarters: a long room with stone walls and small, bare windows, darkened by the night outside.

  All the long tables except one had been pushed back, and the candles in pewter holders set on them sent a flickering light round the room. The remaining table was at the far end, the chairs placed in rows before it. When I went in everyone had taken their seats, and some were already kneeling on the stone-flagged floor. A pair of kitchen maids peeked at me curiously between their fingers.

  There was no spare chair. I’d have to stand at the back.

  Dog’s greasy head turned toward me, and she prodded her neighbor and whispered something. The other girl turned to stare, and whispered back. I saw them both cover their sniggers with their hands.

  Heat rose in my cheeks. I was conscious that I looked different. I wasn’t wearing a cap and apron, my hair had come loose from its bindings and sprung around my shoulders, and my much-patched best dress was too tight around the waist. But I stared grimly back and the girl’s gaze fell.

  The low murmuring in the hall died abruptly. Everyone rose as Mr. Silas swept in, a great leather book under his arm. He went to stand behind the top table, putting the book down before him. In the silence I could hear the quick breathing of the maid in front of me.

  He looked up. “Sit down, please.”

  There was a shuffling of feet and scraping of chairs. I had no choice but to remain standing, with a table digging into my back. I couldn’t even shrink into the shadows against the wall. But they had forgotten me, those squint-eyed, sniggering girls. Their whole attention was on Mr. Silas. Everyone in the hall waited.

  Mr. Silas paused, opened the book slowly, and then his beautiful voice began.

  “In the distant beginning of the world man walked in the rain and shared the greening land with cat and cow, donkey and rat. Bird was god, for he flew in the air and could see all there was to be seen. The greatest bird of all was Eagle. He had laid the egg that was the world.”

  The familiar words of the Preliminary had been read. Now the Responses began. My lips repeated them automatically, but my eyes admired the soft glow on the steward’s face from the candles on the table.

  A thick golden haze quivered in the hall. From time to time he looked up and his dark eyes swept us like a flame.

  “The Great Eagle lays the egg of the world …”

  “But the Crow tries to steal it from him,” we answered together.

  “The Great Eagle tells the Robin and Wren it is their inheritance …”

  “But they heed Him not.”

  “While they play and dally, Crow seizes his chance and summons the Birds of Night.”

  “They fight for possession of the egg that is the world; they fight the Birds of Light.”

  I thought of the Birds of Night. It’s written in the Divine Book how in the skies they fought the Birds of Light, tearing out their throats for possession of the world, while far above them the Great Eagle watched in solitary majesty.

  Mr. Silas held out both hands to us, and the ruffles at his wrists dissolved like foam into the sleeves of his velvet jacket. His voice was earnest and passionate. “Then let us remember that that Battle is not yet done. Let us remember that the Battle will be won by the Light, in righteousness and truth. For what can the Birds of Night do if we so allow them?”

  “They can steal our souls,” we muttered together, and a shudder ran through us.

  “What must we do to protect ourselves?”

  “We must follow the path of righteousness and humility.”

  And we must wear our amulets, I thought to myself, as double insurance.

  The Responses were at an end; it was the time for the evening sermon. Mr. Silas closed the book and looked up with a smile. I thought he’d caught my eye, was smiling at me, and I smiled back.

  “We all know the old story of the avia, those men, back in the greening time, who dared desire wings so they might fly like the Gods. We all know their punishment. They were trapped between two forms for eternity, forever half-bird, half-human. That must be a warning to us, a reminder. We must be content with our humanity and accept our frailty.”

  Like everyone else, I knew the story of the avia. At the beginning of the world a group of men and women weren’t content with the skills they’d been given, but wanted to fly like the Birds. They had grumbled together, and Crow over-heard them and told Eagle.

  When I was small, it had frightened me to think of the Great God plummeting like a thunderbolt to Earth to deal with the small band of humans who’d dared rebel against their lot, who’d wanted the freedom of flight. I imagined their guilt and fear as they looked on the vast feathered wing
s that could touch distant galaxies. I could hear their moans as He turned the cruel, unforgiving side of His Eagle face toward them. Like them, I could see His bill sharp as death, His eyes empty. In my mind’s eye, I saw the men, women, and children draw closer together, like nestlings in the great shadow of the Eagle’s wing, their wails like the cheeping of birds.

  “You were not happy with what you were given,” He said. “You were created men, to labor on Earth, yet you envied the wings of the gods. For this each of you must be punished — you and your children, and your children’s children — through all eternity. Your human soul will be trapped within the shape of a bird, but you will be neither the one thing nor the other. You will never be content.”

  The story of the avia had always sent a chill through me. It was the last thing I wanted to hear my first night at Murkmere.

  Mr. Silas had finished speaking. The girls in front of me gave a little sigh together and looked at each other with dazzled eyes. The rows of servants stood as he took one of the candlesticks from the table and passed down between them. The men — footmen and stablehands, keepers and estate farmers — stood with bowed heads as he greeted them. He came to the female staff standing together and patted a maid’s head, made a soft remark to another girl, smiled at yet another, seeming to share out his favors equally among them. If he was aware of their simpers and blushes, he didn’t show it.

  I longed for him to pick me out, smile at me, say something. But he didn’t speak to me, stuck on my own at the back. He left without noticing me at all.

  The Master didn’t join us for supper. Leah and I sat alone in the small dining room next to her parlor. Though I was hungry again, I’ve no idea what we ate that night: the food stuck like warm wool in my mouth. Leah didn’t bother to make conversation, but I’d catch her staring at me, with unblinking gray eyes that looked black as night.