Murkmere

by Patricia Elliott

He fell silent, and when I looked up at him again, he was gazing at nothing, almost as if he’d forgotten me, the little frown back between his brows.

  He worries for her, I thought, he truly worries. I was hesitant about interrupting such worthy thoughts, but I had to seize my chance, else it would be gone.

  “Please, when may I see my aunt, Sir?”

  He focused on me with a start. “Why, Agnes, you’ve arrived only recently! Don’t you have enough time off as it is?”

  “I long to see her, Sir,” I said in a small voice. I clenched my hands together. “I worry for her all alone. If she should fall sick, or if the Militia should come to question the village …”

  He looked startled. “Who told you the Militia was coming?” His voice was strange and harsh, his eyes narrowed to cat’s slits as he stared down at me.

  I looked up in alarm, thinking that somehow I’d angered him. “No one, Sir. I don’t know why I said it.”

  I seemed to convince him. He went back to his desk and relaxed into the chair, stretching out and saying idly, “The Militia is quick enough to sniff out traitors, it’s true. I hear there are some pockets of unrest in the Eastern Edge, but I don’t believe there’s any ill feeling here in the village.”

  “Oh, no, Sir,” I said, since he’d made it sound like a question. “But we heard about the rebellion in the south last summer. The packman told us. The Militia killed the rebels, every last man.” It still sickened me to think of it.

  He studied my face. “What would you have felt if the rebels had been successful? Would you have thought it a good thing?”

  I shook my head so energetically that my braided hair loosened. “Oh, no, Sir! To have the country ruled by a rabble, no one to care for our welfare as the Lord Protector does. None of us in the village wanted that.”

  “All loyal subjects, then,” he said. “That’s good to know.”

  There was another silence. I cleared my throat. “Sir, my aunt?”

  Then we both heard it, the soft rustling at the window, the brushing of feathers against the glass.

  He waved a hand at it, his mood changed to lightness. “There’s your answer, Agnes,” he said. “You can’t see your aunt while the snow lies, but neither will she be plagued by unwelcome visitors!”

  His hand was ready to open the desk drawers as soon as I’d gone. “Come again soon, Agnes,” he said, and smiled. “But next time knock a little louder. A steward’s work is not for all eyes.”

  I smiled weakly back, and stood up, surprised to find that my legs felt wobbly, as if I’d escaped some danger. On my way out I passed a chair by the door. He’d left his three-cornered hat hanging over the corner of the back, and on the brocade seat lay a black-handled riding whip. It was both elegant and vicious.

  For an instant I thought of Dog, of her desperation when we lost Leah my first afternoon — and, fleetingly, I wondered.

  VI

  The Tower

  The snow fell all that afternoon and evening. Surrounded by glimmering curtains of flakes, Murkmere Hall was shut away in its own world.

  Leah looked white and furious. Jukes the footman had locked the main doors on orders from Mr. Silas, who said it was the Master’s wish. It was too dangerous for her to go to the mere, with snow hiding the ice. I passed the Master’s door on my way to the kitchens and heard her arguing inside: her voice raised and angry, the Master’s deep rumble patiently pacifying her for a second until she began again.

  For the rest of the afternoon, while the daylight lasted, she paced from window to window, as if the next she came to might show her that it had stopped snowing at last.

  When darkness had fallen, we went to her parlor to pass the time until she had to change for supper. Leah began to play Solo, slapping the cards down and muttering to herself. I took up the mending; my stitches weren’t as neat as Doggett’s, but it was something to do. The evening stretched before us, as bleak and boring as every other at Murkmere Hall.

  The prospect finally drove me to look up from my needle and venture, “It might be more entertaining for you, Miss, if we played a game together.”

  Leah paused. “You play cards?” she said in surprise.

  “Aunt Jennet taught me.”

  “Your schoolmistress aunt?” Leah looked disappointed. “Then I suppose she taught you improving games, like Calepin.”

  “We didn’t spend much time on Calepin.” I studied my stitches modestly. “Aunt Jennet considered my vocabulary sufficiently good without it. Indeed, we both thought Calepin profoundly dull.”

  I could feel Leah staring at me, as if a whole world of new possibilities were suddenly unveiling itself before her. “You know Palabra?” she demanded, in growing excitement. “Six Pairs? Niello?”

  I nodded to each, and she sprang up. “I’ve a special pack for Niello!”

  “Niello is over so quickly,” I said, for I knew she’d win it. I never won at Niello, even with ordinary cards. “And there’s not much skill in it, to my mind.”

  Leah was taken aback. “What do you propose then?”

  “Do you know Commotion?” I said slyly, for I knew she would not. Aunt Jennet had once invented it to take my mind off a toothache. It was the most amusing, rambunctious game I knew. And there was no skill in it at all.

  Leah’s face lit up, like a small child’s when offered a treat. “Commotion? No, I don’t know Commotion. Teach it to me.”

  We laughed and laughed, sprawling on the floor, our legs in all directions, skirts crushed, cards scattered. Leah’s fine hair hung down around her face and her cheeks were pink. By the end of the game I was giggling so much I could scarcely speak.

  Jukes had to cough several times before we realized he was there, his long face reproachful. “Please forgive the interruption, Miss Leah. I wanted to tell Agnes Cotter that the bell has gone.”

  “The bell?” I said stupidly, the giggles still bursting inside me.

  He nodded solemnly. “Mr. Silas thought you’d like to know, since you always come to Devotion.”

  “If Mr. Silas calls, then you must go. Mr. Silas runs this house.” The laughter on Leah’s face vanished so fast I might have dreamt that I’d ever seen her so happy and uninhibited. A moment ago I’d believed we’d become friends, as if the card game had wrought some alchemy between us. But now I saw that I was quite mistaken.

  By the following morning, the sky was clear and filled with bright white light, but it was evident the Master would not be able to ride through the soft deepnesses of snow to reach his books. The path to the watchtower was completely covered. It was decided that Leah’s lessons would take place in the Master’s rooms.

  But what about me? I thought. Am I to be a prisoner all day, shut inside like his ward, forever walking up and down these stone passages to pass the time?

  And a secret defiance began to smolder inside me. I had to get outside, into that white glistening world under the open sky.

  I waited, biding my time. It seemed an age while Leah ate her breakfast and collected her work. I followed at a distance as she made her way to the Master’s rooms, and I heard Jukes announce her. There was the sound of the door closing.

  Upstairs in my room, I threw on my cloak and fastened my boots with hasty fingers. It would be no use going to any of the main doors. They might be locked. But the back doors in the kitchen quarters would be open to allow for the coming and going of servants into the yard.

  By now I knew Murkmere’s labyrinth of passages and wove swiftly through them unnoticed, to a door near the pantry that led out to the vegetable garden. I was lifting the latch when Mistress Crumplin came jangling her way round the corner from the kitchen. She stopped when she saw me, the keys jumping at her waist, and eyed me suspiciously.

  “If you wish to walk, Miss Agnes, you should have someone with you — Doggett perhaps. I’ll call her.”

  “I’ll be perfectly safe, Mistress Crumplin,” I said. “I’ve been walking in the grounds before today without company. I’ve my amu
let with me and won’t be in danger by daylight, I’m sure.”

  But to my dismay Mistress Crumplin and her keys had already swung around. She was on her way back to the kitchens, shouting “Doggett, Doggett,” in her loud, flat voice; in a minute my chance of escape would be gone and the moon-faced Dog would be at my side.

  As she turned the corner, I slipped stealthily through the door and was outside, shutting it behind me with the tiniest click of the latch falling back into place.

  The new snow was soft but firm, with a slight stickiness that held my steps steady. I began walking away from the house as fast as I could, conscious of my lone, dark figure in the white landscape and, in the utter silence, the faint squeaking of the snow under my boots. I was frightened they’d send a foot-man after me or that I’d hear Dog herself wailing my name on the glittering air; but no one came.

  The snow lay in perfect folds, as clean and fresh and new as bride’s linen. It was piled up against the wall of the kitchen gardens, against the trunks of the oak trees beyond; the bushes looked as if they had been hung with tablecloths.

  I went through the door in the garden wall and skirted around the back of the stable block. I could hear the ostlers shoveling the snow away in the yard, but the buildings hid me. Then I saw the tower beyond the stables. The rise was smooth and glistening with untrodden snow, the trees a dark crest at the top.

  There’ll be no one there, I thought, no keepers working round it, no one outside or in.

  My heart began to thump. I didn’t think anything more than that, I didn’t put my real desire into words, but I began to climb the rise, drawing in deep breaths of the sharp air to calm myself.

  At the top I stood for a moment in the soft blue-gray shadow the tower cast on the snow. Nothing moved in the copse behind me. Far off I could hear the scrape of the ostlers’ spades on the stable cobbles, but round the tower the silence was frozen, as if I’d entered a magic world.

  I began to walk round the square walls, my boots crushing snow-matted weeds. The bricks glowed a deep blood red above the snow, but in the sunlight I could see where the salt winds were starting to eat them away. The huge winch and the chains that ran up to the top window were outlined with a delicate tracery of ice, the little house half-hidden under a crown of snow.

  Then I came to the door that Leah and Jukes had used.

  A brass latch, weathered and green, was set in the oak. No bolts, no keyhole, no iron bars or chain. I put my hand out and the brass was cold under my fingers. It lifted easily, as I knew it would. The tower wasn’t locked: the Master trusted his servants to obey him. Anyway, none of them dared venture so close to such a blasphemous place.

  The door opened under my hand, into darkness, scraping over a stone floor.

  At first I couldn’t make out anything after the brightness of the snow, but then I saw a vast, empty room, narrow wooden stairs at the far side rising under a brick arch. Some light came down from a small window high up; tiny dust motes danced in the beam. The air was musty, smelling of raw wood.

  I wanted to go in. I wanted to find the books, to touch them, to look at them. The words came into my head by themselves: I’ll be so quick, no one will know.

  I think I hesitated a minute, no more. In that minute the snowy air I’d drawn through my lungs seemed to fizz through my blood, filling me with boldness. I lifted my skirts, stepped in, and pulled the door behind me.

  If I’d thought of the consequences of being discovered, everything would have been very different.

  Silence closed round me, a different silence from outside, expectant, as if the tower were waiting to see what I would do.

  I looked at the stairs rising up through the dusty light from the window, and swiftly crossed the stone floor toward them before I could change my mind. The unstained oak boards were marked darkly by feet: Leah’s and Jukes’s, and Mr. Silas’s, perhaps.

  I put my own feet in their marks as if I too had a right to be there, and I began to climb, clutching the handrail and peering down at the shadowy rafters and supports that crossed the empty well. I was out of breath, and the sweat of fear was beginning to prickle beneath my clothes by the time I came up into the wide landing that ran round the top.

  To my left was an open space containing lift machinery. Through the far window I could see the chains that carried the lift up to this level each day, the iron supports that held it in place while the Master’s wheelchair was brought in over runners laid across the landing.

  Before me a door was half-open, light blazing through the gap. I stepped from the last stair, across the landing, and went through into the bookroom.

  The light was coming from what I took to be a huge door of glass, long and broad, reaching down to the floor in the outside wall of the room. It looked as if you could step straight out into pearly sky over the snowy trees of the estate; I could see the boundary wall, even the Wasteland beyond. It was like a picture in a frame, except that the clouds moved.

  But I was a child of darkness, brought up in the greasy gleam of tallow. I’d never seen so much light and space. I didn’t dare go near the window in case I fell out. I scarcely saw what was in the room itself: the cabinets of polished wood, with glass lids that reflected the clouds.

  Then I grew braver. I told myself that the window was shut firm until it was opened; that there was strong glass between me and the sky. Curiosity overcame me, and I began to investigate the cabinets.

  The nearest was filled with neat stacks of books. The largest were at the bottom, piled up to the smallest at the top, each carefully indexed with labels stuck to the underside of the lid, and handwritten. I read some of the titles: Visions of Other Worlds, The Fight for the Future, The Free Soul, Journeys in Uncharted Seas. I felt my eyes grow bigger and bigger, like a hungry man at a feast.

  But the lid was locked.

  I tried all the cabinets in turn, flying from one to another, forgetting my fear of the window. They were filled with books, but they were all locked.

  Sick with disappointment, I stared down. The faded leather covers were curling and ragged at the edges, the gold tooling of the titles almost worn away. They couldn’t have been more different from the readers I’d had in school, with their bindings of bright linen and the new white paper inside on which the black ink stood out boldly. Even now I could smell the sweet vanilla scent of that paper, so enticing until you realized the dullness of the words printed on it.

  But these were proper books at last.

  I looked around as if I might suddenly see a bunch of keys lying somewhere, on the mantel over the empty grate or on the seat of one of the chairs. Even the drawers of the desk were locked. I should have realized that the Master wouldn’t leave his possessions freely available for intruders.

  There were covered braziers around the room to protect the books from damp. I thought suddenly that someone must light them each day. I should go before I was discovered.

  But as I turned to leave, my eyes fell on the pair of double doors set in one of the inside walls. I’d been too distracted by the cabinets to pay them attention. They must lead to another room, somewhere else the keys might be hidden.

  I tried the right handle; it turned easily, and I stood on the threshold of a dark, windowless room that smelled stiflingly of dust. It was too dark to see where the room ended, but it seemed surprisingly large and something was filling all the space. I opened the door wider behind me to let in light.

  And then I saw the vast bird that floated beneath the ceiling.

  It wasn’t moving. It was dead, and had been dead a long time. Its body had decayed away into nothing. Only its giant skeleton was left suspended in the air, bare bones gleaming in the half-light, knobbed head reaching out for the kill. Even the feathers had crumbled from the huge papery wings. It was greater in size than any bird I had ever seen and, even as my mouth opened in a silent scream, I knew what it must be.

  Somehow I got out, closed the door, and stumbled out of the bookroom, my hand at my a
mber, my heart thudding, my hair coming down around my ears.

  Then far below me I heard the door open.

  VII

  Crow

  In panic I turned back to the bookroom, my boots thudding over the floorboards. One of the double doors to the inner room was still open, and I closed it. My hands were shaking so much it was hard to turn the knob.

  The only place to hide was behind the armchair on the far side of the fireplace. I darted over and crouched down behind its high, upholstered back, clutching my amber to me, thankful that the chair’s embroidered skirts hid my boots.

  Thoughts beat like frightened birds in my brain.

  I’d seen what no human eye should see. I’d discovered the real reason the tower was forbidden to the servants, the secret in the inner room. What would they do to me? Would they have me taken to the Capital? Would they simply dispose of me, in case I told what I’d seen? Who’d ever miss Aggie Cotter but her Aunt Jennet, and what could she do against the power of the Ministration?

  I could hear voices now, rising up the tower stairs: a man’s voice and a light, high one, a girl’s. Then the voices stopped and all I could hear was the soft swishing of a cloak over the boards outside.

  “She’ll be in here. There’s nowhere else.”

  “I’ll find her for you, Sir.”

  I recognized the voices of Mr. Silas and Dog. I had a sudden vivid picture of my dark footprints in the smooth white snow, and I knew how they had found me. Dog must have betrayed me; she’d followed my footprints and then returned to report to Mistress Crumplin, or even direct to Mr. Silas.

  At first I felt relief. Mr. Silas liked me; he wouldn’t report me to the Master. But then I thought, He’s a good, devout man; it’s his duty to report sinners.

  My eyes were fixed on the gold and green pattern of the chair cover. It blurred before me; I wouldn’t have been able to describe it though it was so close. My hands were damp with sweat, but I had to use both to balance me now, I was so stiff with kneeling. A whimper rose in my throat.