I turned back to Jethro and took a deep breath, pressing my face against the bars so close to his I could hear his breathing. “This must be our secret, Jethro.”
“Yes?” His voice was eager, expectant.
“The reason I came back to Murkmere was because I learned the truth about Leah,” I whispered. “She’s no foundling. The Master’s her father. But there’s more. Her mother, Blanche, his wife, was one of the avia. I stay here because I must save Leah from that, Jethro.”
There was a long silence on the other side of the gate. He let go my hands, but I stayed pressed against the bars.
“Jethro? Do you believe me?”
“Oh, aye, I believe you. My father always said there were rumors about the Master’s wife.”
Quickly I told him about the swanskin, how I’d destroyed it, how Leah was trying to repair it, and how frightened I was that one day she’d leave her human shape behind. “It’s not right that she should suffer such terrible punishment, Jethro.”
Jethro said nothing on the other side of the bars. His eyes wouldn’t meet mine.
“Jethro?” I said desperately, wanting his wisdom.
“Let it be,” he said, suddenly violent. His breath on my cheek was hot. “Don’t interfere.”
“What are you saying?”
His gaze shifted past me suddenly. “Hush,” he hissed, “someone comes.”
I was still staring at him like a loon, his face so close I could see the soft shininess of each hair of his beard and the smoothness of his tanned cheeks above. Before I could turn to look behind me or say a word more, he was gone, running swift as a hare for the Wasteland. By the time the keeper arrived at the gates, he had vanished.
It was that evening I noticed Leah’s hands.
I’d hurried back to play cards, but she was in no mood for them. She was in a temper, moving restlessly about the parlor, ranting and stamping her foot.
“I can’t do anything for the ball without Silas there ahead of me. He’s taken it on himself to give the servants their orders already, no word to my guardian or me. He usurps my guardian’s position all the time, and I can’t stop him!” She whirled round on me as if I were to blame and flung out her hands.
I said nothing.
I sat stupefied with shock amongst the cushions on the settle, staring at the needle wounds in her flesh, the pocks of dried blood, the red, ripped cuticles. Her long, slender hands that had known no hardship, that had worn gloves against chapping winds and been smoothed nightly with chamomile cream, were now disfigured and raw, as if eaten by disease.
It was then I knew how painful her labor must be, night after night, as she struggled to pierce the thickness of the swanskin.
I wanted to weep for her, to stop it all. Yet still I sat dumb on the settle, fearful of letting out the truth.
My face must have shown my concern, for she snapped at me, “Don’t pity me! How dare you? I’m the Master’s ward, and one day I’ll be Mistress here! Then it’ll be my orders they listen to!”
She gesticulated again with her ruined hands as she launched back into her tirade.
“Silas has picked the oxen to be killed and roasted. He’s filled the icehouse and the larders without word from me. There’s hare and venison hanging up, have you seen? I’ve not even discussed the menu for the banquet with Mistress Crumplin and Gossop, but I find he has spoken to them and it’s all planned. He’s even arranged which guests are to sleep in which bedchambers! When I complain to the Master, he tells me how lucky we are to be able to depend on him!”
She sounded so desperate, I felt compelled to comfort her. “It’s better this way. What if he’d persuaded the servants to stop idle and no preparation had been done?”
“We could have done it, you and I.”
“All of it? Without help from the servants?”
“They were working for me,” she said defiantly, “at the beginning.”
“Because of the money promised them. They wouldn’t have continued.”
She flashed me a furious look, though it was the truth and she knew it.
But she didn’t speak to me again that evening, retiring to bed with her temper and a book, so that as the candles burned down I sat alone in the darkening parlor, with the painful knowledge that I’d let a chance for reconciliation between us slip away.
Jethro didn’t come to the gates again.
When the time for our next meeting came, I went down to the gates as usual, though this time I was more watchful. I didn’t want to be surprised by the keeper again. While the rooks cawed mockingly over my head, I defied them and didn’t touch my amber.
I waited and waited, all through the long, golden green summer evening, but Jethro didn’t come. At last in the fragrant twilight, sick with disappointment, I slunk back to the house.
It wasn’t like Jethro to be scared off by a keeper. It was something else. It was what I’d told him about Leah. I never should have mentioned the avia, for the old horror was still alive, passed down through the generations.
Jethro’s father — what had he told the small boy who wanted a bedtime story?
Two more weeks passed, golden days of sunshine for reaping the harvest. The keepers’ faces burned mahogany and were polished with sweat.
But Silas, aloft on his horse, remained pale and elegant, his hands in soft leather gloves quiet on the reins, his face shadowed by the rim of his hat. Only the dark hole of his mouth moved as he gave his orders.
Aunt Jennet would have enough bread to eat at last. The villagers’ hunger would be over, their stores replenished. It was the first harvest I’d missed. I’d hear of the feasting from Jethro, the next time he came.
“Let him come, I need him,” I whispered.
Leah was becoming more fractious and ill-tempered as the ball came closer. The weather grew humid, the air heavy with the threat of thunder that never came. Though I’d removed my quilted overskirt long ago, I prickled inside my dress as I endlessly followed her, anxious about losing her for a moment.
Then, one oppressive evening while the storm clouds gathered overhead, it was time for Jethro to come again.
There was no figure waiting for me at the gates. I’d half-expected it, but a bitter lump rose in my throat all the same. It was a month since I’d seen him, a month since I’d last had news of my aunt. With Leah so cold to me, I was lonely in the extreme.
But he might come still.
I clutched the bars as if his dear face were on the other side, close to mine again, but for all my fancying I couldn’t conjure him from air.
My fingers were stiff and curled when at last I let go the bars and faced the drive again. There was candlelight in the windows of Murkmere Hall, and house martins were twittering in and out of the eaves, busy feeding their young: tiny arrowheads swooping low under the bruised sky. For a brief moment the sight of them brought me comfort.
I told myself I was glad to leave the gates and the quarreling rooks, the loneliness beneath the dark clouds. I didn’t look back. It was too late.
“What does it matter to me?” I demanded out loud. “Not a fig, that’s what!” But it did matter. Jethro had abandoned me when I needed him most.
I lifted my chin and quickened my pace. The Hall was where my duty lay. I must forget Jethro, for I’d other things to think about.
There were only two days left before the ball.
XX
Porter Grouted
The storm came at last during the night, but in the vastness of Murkmere Hall the thunder was muffled. The dawn, when it came, was chill and gray; the rain teemed down.
Leah began to lament before she’d even had breakfast. “I must pick the flowers today, and now they’ll all be wet.”
“You can’t go out in this!” I exclaimed.
“I can, and you must help me, you and Scuff and Doggett and some of the other servants too. The Hall must be decorated for the ball.”
Nothing would persuade her otherwise, not even when the servant gi
rls turned sulky and refused to budge from the house, saying they had chores to do for Mistress Crumplin.
Leah looked half-crazed that morning, her hair un-brushed, her eyes wild and desperate. In the end it was only the two of us who went out into the rain with baskets and knives, and the hems of our skirts were quickly clotted with mud and slime. Overnight, the grassy spread of the estate had returned to marsh.
Leah fretted all the while as she plowed across the wet ground. “The carriages won’t make headway; the roads will be treacherous in the rain. No one will come.”
“The guests will come somehow,” I said as comfortingly as I could. “They won’t want to miss it.”
She didn’t acknowledge the remark. I had let her lead me to the mere, and now we began to fill our baskets in silence. The dripping rushes and grasses were fiendish to cut; I thought uneasily that Leah was bringing the mere into the house.
As we made our way back to the house, soaked through, she turned her wet face to me and said suddenly, “Thank you for coming with me, Aggie.”
“Oh, Leah,” I said, overcome.
But her eyes were distracted as she looked ahead at the Hall, its gray stone façade as gloomy as the lowering sky. She’d already forgotten me.
The rain continued, all through that day and the next. The house felt damp and cold.
“Fires must be lit in all the bedchambers,” said Leah. She’d not rested all day, but had inspected all the preparations with scant praise for the servants, whose faces grew sour as week-old milk.
I went up later to check that the rooms were warming. When I touched the walls, the old wallpaper still felt wet. More wood would be needed upstairs before evening, but at least Silas was overseeing that. When I looked down from a window that overlooked the drenched stable yard, I saw him with a youth who was busy chopping timber in the rain and whose sturdy outline reminded me painfully of Jethro. The youth’s broad-brimmed hat was dripping; the heavy, oiled cape that Silas wore was slick with rivulets of water. There seemed no end to the rain.
In the Great Hall, Leah was worrying that the logs in the vast fireplace were too damp and green to catch properly and didn’t banish the smell of age. But the tables were polished and gleaming, ready for the banquet, and I knew the tapestries had been beaten free of dust, for I’d helped in it myself.
“Tomorrow night it will smell of good food and wine in here,” I whispered to cheer her, as she went to stand at the head of the receiving line.
A runner had just arrived, bringing news of the first guests, and the senior members of the household were hastily assembling to welcome them: Silas, Mistress Crumplin, and some of the footmen and keepers.
Leah’s face was set and white; her hair — swept up, powdered and beribboned — seemed too big for it, like an oversized knit hat that might sink if she moved too quickly. She wore an embroidered day dress of ice-blue silk, with ruffles at the elbows, and long cream gloves hid her damaged hands.
She went to stand next to the Master, who had been wheeled to the head of the line. I saw them exchange a whisper, and he took her hand and held it. The bars across his chair had been removed so he could move his arms freely. A fur rug covered his legs, and he wore a pale-gold quilted waistcoat beneath his black silk jacket; a curled wig hid his hair.
Minutes passed, half an hour.
The rain fell steadily onto the steps outside, and the afternoon grew grayer. As they waited for their guests in the damp draft from the open door, the Master and his daughter might have been carved from wood, so still were they, hand in hand, staring at nothing.
The Master stirred at last.
“Where are these guests? The staff should go back to their duties. Silas, go out on the steps. See if you can glimpse the carriages.”
Silas went out, and a second later was back again. “They’ve had to leave the carriages at the gates, Sir. The drive’s water-logged.”
Leah came to life with a sudden hysterical giggle. The Master ignored her and she fell silent, her hand to her mouth.
“Then take out umbrellas, they may need spares. And send our manservants to help their footmen with the luggage.”
Silas departed. The Master motioned Leah to wheel him out beneath the porch. And that was where the whole receiving line ended up, all of us craning to see the first guests come down the drive, for I too slipped out and stood at one side, the rain dripping from the lintel onto my painstakingly curled ringlets.
The men and women of the Ministration came slowly toward us through the rain, dark figures in their voluminous traveling garments. Their black silk umbrellas bobbed up and down as they picked their way carefully round the puddles. As the dark procession drew closer to the house, a chill crept over me. The stiff spread of the umbrellas, the curiously jerky, pecking motion as they walked, the black clothes: the Ravens of Death had come to Murkmere Hall.
I found myself clutching my amber. It was a long time since I’d done that.
Guests continued to arrive all through that long afternoon. The passages echoed with strange voices and heavy boots; the rooms held the leftover murmurs of recent conversation. There were different smells in the house: the cloying bitterness of the ladies’ white face powder; drifts of rich perfumes — gardenia, jasmine, musk; brandy-laden breath and travel-stained clothes; sickly sweet hair pomade; the pungent scent of nero leaf.
I lurked in the Great Hall for as long as I could, curious to see the latest arrivals, but at last I had to take notice of Mistress Crumplin’s wails for more help with the guests’ teas. Later, with aching feet, I went to help Leah with the flowers.
She was still wearing her gloves, filthy from shaking so many hands, and she kept them on while she furiously twisted the long purple-flowered points of rosebay willow-herb into a garland of pale yellow grasses. The blue ribbons were dangling around her ears.
“I should be allowed to attend the dinner tonight. It’s not fair!”
I tried clumsily to copy her garland. “Tomorrow you’ll be guest of honor.”
She shook her head so angrily that dislodged powder misted her lace collar. “I should be there tonight. I’m worried about what my guardian will say to Lord Grouted.”
“But where is Lord Grouted?” I asked.
“He always arrives last. The Ministration will wait to go into dinner until he appears. He likes to keep both host and guests hungry and fearful. No wonder my guardian hates him!”
We’d supped together in the parlor and had the candles lit by the time a footman knocked on the door.
“Word’s been sent that the Lord Protector comes, Miss.”
Leah stood up slowly, her face ashen. She held out her hand. “Come with me, Aggie.”
I took her cold hand, and together we left the parlor with its fire and candlelight and hurried down the passage to the Great Hall, where tables glittered with silver cutlery and cut glass, waiting for the dinner guests. Beyond the fire’s bright circle, the tapestries hung motionless, the violent scenes they depicted obscured by shadow. The huge room was almost empty. Only the Master in his chair waited in darkness by the double doors, with Jukes and Pegg beside him.
Leah rushed to the Master and pressed her cheek to his. “You must be so fatigued, Sir.”
He patted her hand. “I survive, child.” He gestured at the footmen. “Bring a torch from one of the sconces. It’s too dark. Light more candles.”
The footmen were about to obey when the knocking came, a truly thunderous noise, as if a god at least demanded entrance. Jukes went at once to open the doors at the Master’s nod, but it was only the Lord Protector’s footman, resplendent in blood-red satin, sent ahead to give notice of his master’s imminent arrival. I melted back into the shadows.
The outside doors remained open, and a chill breeze blew through the Hall, making the candles flutter. I saw Leah shiver. Jukes took a torch and, holding it aloft, went out to stand beneath the porch. His hand was shaking; he couldn’t hold the torch still and the flame tore raggedly in the w
ind.
The Great Hall was suddenly filled with noise from outside: the crunch and skid of wheels over stone and mud, the crack of a whip, the frightened neighing of horses.
Leah started, but she didn’t speak. There was a short pause, a heartbeat, inside the Great Hall. We stood as if frozen in an icehouse, listening to the tumult.
The Lord Protector cared nothing for potholes. Dog told me later she’d heard he’d driven his own carriage recklessly down the drive in the darkness, and as it rocked and swayed and the horses screamed in terror, he’d balanced on the carriage step and cracked the whip all the harder.
As I stood half-hidden by the tapestries, someone brushed past me.
“You shouldn’t be here!” hissed Silas.
But he was too distracted, too eager to be in the receiving line himself as the Lord Protector arrived, to wait for me to go.
Boots clipped the steps. Then the doorway was filled with a dark bulk.
Porter Grouted was not a tall man; indeed you might almost have called him squat.
He had a massive head, which seemed all the larger since he was completely bald, and his pate, glistening with rain, was as smooth and brown as tanned hide. No cravat could have made his great bull neck elegant. He was not at all the aristocratic gentleman from the Capital I was expecting, and yet, as he came into the hall, shaking raindrops vigorously from his traveling cloak, he dominated the room at once.
His eyes snapped round to survey the people waiting for him. Even with his lack of height, he towered over the Master in his chair. There was a pause, too long, as they stared at one another.
“Ah, Gilbert. A long time, eh?” His accent was strong and ugly, the flat, nasal sound of the Capital.
“It’s been long since last we met, yes, My Lord.”
“Too long, Gilbert.” The Protector held out his hand without removing his gauntlet, and the Master took it.
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