Murkmere

by Patricia Elliott

  “First, we’ll open up the old ballroom; we’ll fling open the doors on to the terrace and air it thoroughly.”

  “Yes, Miss.”

  “We must check all the bedchambers to see they’re fit for guests and have them cleaned.”

  “Yes, Miss.”

  “We must check the supplies in the icehouse and make sure there’s the right quantity of livestock to be slaughtered, since I don’t trust Mistress Crumplin to do it.”

  “Yes, Miss.”

  “And then …” She rested her sharp little chin on her hand and looked at me dreamily, her eyes shining. Leah’s eyes were gray, but they always seemed strikingly dark in her pale face. “And then, there’s the ball itself. We’ll have flaming torches placed on the terrace so guests can stroll there.”

  “Yes, Miss.”

  “We’ll have candles burning everywhere. There’ll be garlands of flowers in the rooms, delicacies to eat …”

  “Yes, Miss Leah.”

  She flung down her pen. “Is that all you can say? And you must stop calling me ‘Miss,’ now that we are sisters. Anyway, no man or woman is superior by birth to another one.”

  “Sisters?” I said, and a smile hung on my lips.

  She got up and went restlessly to the long window, touching her neck. “Sisters, until you leave me for the village again.”

  “I won’t leave you, not for a long time yet.”

  “What about your sweetheart?” She faced me, and her eyes gleamed mischievously. “Won’t he want to ride away with you?”

  “What sweetheart?” I said, puzzled.

  “The young man you meet secretly.”

  I stared at her in consternation. She looked thoroughly pleased with herself. “I followed you. I saw you at the gates together yesterday evening.”

  When I couldn’t speak for my confusion, she had the grace to look a little ashamed. “I shan’t do it again, Aggie. I’ll leave you alone to kiss.”

  “He is not my sweetheart, and we do not kiss,” I snapped. Sometimes she tried me sorely. “He’s a family friend, a neighbor. He brings me news of my aunt. That’s why we meet.”

  “Oh, shame. No kisses, then,” she said wistfully. “I long to know what it’s like.”

  “What what’s like?” I said, wishing an end to the conversation.

  “Being in love, of course.”

  “You’ll know soon enough, I daresay,” I said briskly.

  She sighed. “Not me, Aggie. I know it’s not for me, don’t ask me how.” Then, as I was about to protest, her mood changed abruptly. “Why didn’t I think of it before? You must ask this boy of yours to send us some young people from the village. A dozen at least! They can help prepare for the ball. Tell him to say it’s my wish and the Master’s, and that they’ll be well paid. They can start once the harvest’s in.”

  Jethro shook his head when I asked him. “They’ll never come, Aggie, not even for the money. Time was when they trusted the Master, but now they think he’s on the side of the Ministration. He didn’t protect them when the Militia came.”

  “It wasn’t his fault!” I hissed at him indignantly through the bars of the gate. “He wasn’t told in time. He saved my aunt, didn’t he?”

  “They don’t like what they hear about Murkmere, Aggie, and that’s a fact.”

  “We can barely manage here, Jethro Sim, and that’s a fact too! We’ve a ball to prepare and important guests coming! It’s their duty to come and work here.”

  He put his hand through and took hold of one of my clenched fists. “Is it your duty too? What’s this ball to you, then, Miss Agnes Cotter? Who are you hoping to meet, now you’ve grown so fancy?”

  He was smiling. Unlike most youths, Jethro’s teeth were nice and white and even. Tonight I was suddenly unsettled by his smile, but more so by his tone and the strength of his fingers on mine. Without saying goodbye I pretended to flounce away.

  Leah wasn’t daunted by my news. “We’ll have to manage with the staff we’ve got, then,” she said firmly. “I’ll speak to the house servants sometime soon. We’ve lots of time.”

  “Of course we have,” I said. “The ball will be a fine occasion, I know it.”

  She took my hands. “It will be the finest the Protector’s ever attended, Aggie! But I can’t do it without you. We’ll make it so together!”

  The days passed. The last rags of snow melted away in the pale new sun; the estate bloomed misty green; and blossom budded white on blackthorn and hawthorn and crab apple, and on tangles of wild strawberry, so that it looked as if a new sprinkling of snow had fallen in the night.

  But the window of the bookroom, high above a foaming sea of cow parsley, showed us only the endless spaces of the sky, the clouds passing by and passing by again as if drawn by strings: the same clouds, it seemed, going round and round, as if they would do so forever.

  We felt we had infinite time up there, but in truth it was sifting away like the sand in my old clock; and all the while, though we didn’t know it, the clouds were changing over Murkmere Hall.

  PART TWO

  The Shadowskin

  XVI

  Marks in the Dust

  Some weeks later I walked up the rise to meet Leah in the bookroom.

  The watchtower was hidden from my view by the tender green stenciling of spring. In the lush grass, cows were grazing, and the path was fringed by young nettles and fragrant cow parsley chest-high, its flower heads white as new-washed lace before it yellows. I could hear birdsong; a robin hopped away at my approach and I thought suddenly of my copy of the Table of Significance. But though I lingered to see if Love would cross my path, the robin eyed me brightly from last autumn’s leaf fall and ventured no closer.

  Down by the gates the rooks had built their nests weeks ago, but rooks scarcely worried me nowadays. I’d not touched my amber for an age.

  In the bookroom Leah was crouched in the wing chair. I was disturbed to see a despondent, defeated look about her. “I’ve promised the servants extra wages if they work hard for the ball, but now I don’t know how we’ll pay them. Silas told me today that we’re on the brink of bankruptcy. That’s even without the cost of the ball.”

  “That can’t be true! Why, I’ve seen how his drawers are filled with gold coins!”

  “I wish I could see the accounts book myself,” she said desperately. “I believe Silas deceives my guardian over the figures. Sometimes men come to see him — strangers, who carry money bags. I’ve always thought they come to trade with us, to buy wool or corn or some such, but now I wonder if the money doesn’t go into Silas’s personal coffers.”

  I tried to raise her spirits, she looked so drawn with worry, but to no avail. She waved my words aside and jumped to her feet. “It’s not only that. I made a discovery just now. I noticed the doors weren’t quite shut.”

  She went to the double doors and opened them, and I looked in over her shoulder. The flying machine still hung like a magic thing, silent and motionless in the empty room, the pale wood catching the light that came in through the doors. Leah pointed at the wood floor and I saw our own footprints from long ago still there faintly in the dust. But now there were the new, clearer marks of curving lines cutting through the smudges.

  “My guardian has come in here alone,” said Leah. “What does it mean, Aggie?”

  “Nothing worrying, I’m sure,” I said soothingly.

  “You don’t think he wants to fly the machine?”

  “He can’t move it,” I pointed out. “You said yourself it took two men to push it out of here.”

  I persuaded her at last to shut the doors. “You’ll not get answers by staring at it. Let’s go for a walk. Shall we go to the mere and see the swans? We haven’t been for a while.”

  She hesitated. “Perhaps it would be best if you didn’t come with me, Aggie. There’s a pen sitting now and you may frighten her.”

  I turned away so she couldn’t see my hurt. I knew she must have gone there without me to know.


  Through the spring days, Murkmere Hall slowly began to prepare itself for the ball. Like a great hibernating bear, it was awakened and dragged, blinking, from darkness into daylight.

  Leah demanded that all the shutters be unlatched and the windows and doors opened so that fresh air could blow through the house. The dust billowed across the floors and fled into corners, and housemaids armed with brooms swept it out again.

  As each room was opened up in turn, the daylight showed cruelly how dilapidated the old house was: the faded, peeling wallpaper, the damp patches on the ceilings, the holes in the rugs, the woodworm in doors and skirting boards. Leah’s face would darken as she looked around her; then she would snap out an order at her trail of servants and be off to the next room.

  The servants were doing their best for her, she had to acknowledge that. Even Mistress Crumplin had smartened herself up with clean apron and cap instead of her grubby frills, and was trying to regain the authority she’d lost so many years ago. But I could see the shine of avarice in the servants’ eyes and how they were busiest when Leah was about.

  “I’ll spring-clean your chamber while you’re out, Miss Leah,” Doggett offered with unusual enthusiasm one morning, when Leah was about to go off to her lessons in the tower and I was ready to walk with her as usual.

  Leah, busy collecting books together, nodded without much interest, then she paused. “Why don’t you stay with Dog, Aggie, and see if there’s anything of mine you could wear for the ball? She’ll show you where my clothes are.”

  As Dog began to glower at me in her old jealous way, I said quickly to Leah, “But what about Doggett? Your personal maid should look suitably dressed too.”

  So it was that once Leah had left the room, the atmosphere between Dog and me was almost friendly. Dog seemed glad to have an audience for her grumbles as she began to make Leah’s bed, on which the sheets and blankets had been bundled together in a mound.

  “Like a nest,” she said, in disgust. “What dreams Miss Leah must have to be so restless!”

  She took the bedclothes off and put them by the door for laundering. Then she picked yesterday’s clothes from the floor, shaking out each garment as if she wished she could shake its owner. I watched in silence as she went to the pair of heavy mahogany cupboards and flung them open.

  “It’s hard work keepin’ her clothes respectable, I can tell you. The way she treats them! When she comes back from the mere, they’re all muddied and filthy.”

  It took Dog a while to sort through the gowns, the skirts and bodices, petticoats and shifts, many bearing her neat darns, though one needed sharp eyes to spot them. In the end I tried on two skirts, one of midnight taffeta, the other a grass-green silk. The bodices of Leah’s gowns were too close-fitting for me, but I’d be able to let out the waistbands of the skirts.

  “See,” said Doggett, as I stood in the dark blue taffeta, “if I cut off this hem and the one on the green skirt, they’ll be the right length for you. Miss Leah can’t wear them any longer; look how the bottom edges are all frayed and dirty. You can sew fresh hems. They’ll be good as new.”

  She brought out a pair of long-bladed scissors from her work basket and swiftly cut the ruined hem away. Now my feet peeked out, almost delicate-looking under the heavy folds. I shod them in imaginary slippers, with little silver heels. Doggett gave me a black silk shawl sewn with shining blue beads, to hide my old bodice. She found a gray silk dress for herself; the hem was much mended, but she said she’d have to take the skirt up anyway.

  We paraded up and down the room in our new clothes and smiled at each other in mutual satisfaction. I saw myself at the ball, my skirts uncurling like the petals of a flower, my hair bright against the black silk shawl, and I could have hugged Dog in gratitude.

  “We might be able to find you some shoes in the linen chest,” she said as I climbed back into my own drab skirts at last.

  The chest, which sat at the end of Leah’s bed, was locked.

  Dog put her hands on her hips and frowned. “I’ve never known Miss Leah to lock it before.” I thought there might well be some papers to do with the ball in there, something she wouldn’t want her lady’s maid to see, a guest list perhaps. I knew a groom had taken the invitations to the mail-coach in the nearest town only recently.

  “Perhaps she has private business in it,” I said.

  Dog snorted. “It’s where I keep the shoes she doesn’t wear much, like her old dancin’ slippers. She’ll need new ones for the ball, with those huge feet of hers.”

  Her little eyes flicked around. “I know where she keeps the key — I know where everything is in this room.” She gave me a triumphant look. “I know what she keeps in that old jar of hers too!”

  “I don’t think we should open it.”

  “She’s no secrets from me! I see her newborn naked, morning and night. Anyway, her clothes are my business.” Dog marched over to Leah’s bedside table and took a key out of a little checkered box. She held it up to me and winked.

  Perhaps I had a premonition then, I don’t know. But I felt a profound reluctance to watch Dog open that chest, a sudden fear of what it was Leah might be hiding away.

  Doggett had no such qualms. With a complacent smile she fitted the key into the brass lock and turned it with difficulty.

  I stepped forward. “Don’t, Dog! Leave it!”

  But she had already flung back the lid.

  XVII

  Destruction

  There was a pause, long enough for her to gasp and let her breath out again in a shriek as she slammed the lid down again and staggered back, her face as pale as cheese.

  I rushed to her as she staggered, and half-lugged her over to the bed, where I made her sit down. Her forehead was greasy with sweat. I thought she’d faint.

  “What is it, Dog?” I asked, but I knew.

  She held out the key mutely in her trembling fingers and I understood I was to lock the chest again. When it was locked up, she seemed easier.

  I came and sat close to her, patting her on the back encouragingly and trying not to screw up my nose at the smell of her unwashed body. She put her bitten nails on the tatty red ribbon at her wrist, her amulet, and her breathing steadied. “It can’t get out, not now.”

  “I know what you saw,” I said. “It’s not alive, Dog.”

  She looked at me in horror. “You know she has a bird in there?”

  “It’s only feathers — a skin, a pelt. She found it by the mere one day. I was with her. She told me she’d not kept it.”

  “It’s sacrilege, ain’t it, to keep such a thing? And in her chamber! No wonder she has bad dreams. My mistress is damned!” Dog put her hands to her face and began to rock herself, moaning softly.

  I tried to think what to do. “Let me help you to your room. You should lie down. It’s been a bad shock. I’ll tidy up in here.”

  She began to wail. “I’ll lose my position! How can I look after Miss Leah now I know what’s in the chest? I daren’t come in here again.”

  “I’ll get rid of it,” I said quickly. “I’ll lock the chest again, afterward. If the mistress discovers it gone, I’ll take the blame. But in turn I want you to do something for me.”

  She turned to me, her eyes stretched wide, still trembling. I wasn’t sure if she was taking in what I said. “Dog, you must tell no one of this, no one at all. Do you understand? If you do, I’ll tell the mistress it was you who pried, not me.”

  She nodded, and I had to be content. I helped her to her room, which was stuffy with her sour smell, and pulled the grubby coverlet over her once she’d fallen groaning on the bed. Strange how proudly she looked after Leah’s appearance, yet didn’t care about her own cleanliness.

  “Will you tell Miss Leah I’m sick?” she said.

  I could see her eyes gleaming over the coverlet. She wasn’t quite as faint as she pretended, I thought; and not unpleased at the opportunity to idle in bed all day.

  “Miss Leah won’t return till luncheon,” I sa
id. “I think by then you’ll be recovered.” And I left her.

  Back in Leah’s bedchamber I knelt down, unlocked the chest, and looked in. Inside was a large gray and white bundle that took up most of the space.

  I had begun to shake. I forced myself to touch the thing, to take hold of it.

  The pure white feathers melted softly against my fingers; the pearly gray skin was supple and smooth. It smelled of water and weeds, and something oily or fishy.

  Averting my gaze, I pulled it out. When I looked it was hanging glistening from my fingers, each feather lying snug and smooth on the next. It was so light that if I breathed on it, it might have floated away.

  I imagined Leah wearing it round her shoulders; I saw it nestling around her like a cloud, her long white neck rising from the feathers.

  But as soon as she put it on she would realize her true nature; she would be transformed into the unthinkable.

  And there would be no escape, because the swanskin would cling to human flesh like a second skin; it would stick so fast you’d peel your own away with it as you tore it off.

  For a moment I stood, the swanskin hanging from my hand, while bile rose in my throat. I knew what I had to do.

  I took it over to the fireplace, where the coals still smoldered. With my free hand I used the poker, and a tiny flame licked them into heat.

  I fed an edge of the swanskin into the golden center. I waited. Soon the flame would grow, rip along the feathers and turn them black. I half-expected the swanskin to scream out in pain.

  Burn, I thought, burn, and die.

  In a fever of agitation I waited for the feathers to shrivel up in a ball of fire. I stoked the coals up again, pushing the skin in deeper as the coals turned from golden to red.

  After a while I had to give up. The coals were used and ashy and had begun to splutter weakly under the swanskin.