Murkmere

by Patricia Elliott

  “We’ve much to talk about,” said Lord Grouted. “It’s too long since you came to the sessions in the Capital. Time passes, things change.”

  “They do indeed,” said the Master dryly.

  The Lord Protector turned from him to inspect Leah. “Your ward?”

  Leah curtsied. She didn’t look at him.

  “So you come of age tomorrow, do you, Miss Leah? Well, well. I remember you as a little puking creature, tiny as a bird!” He hit his gauntlets together with a dull thud, and his teeth flashed in the candlelight. Leah bowed her head; a good thing, for I was sure her eyes would shrivel him.

  “My Lord, may I present my steward, Mr. Silas Seed?” said the Master, beckoning to Silas, who was standing close by. “No man could have a better steward than Silas. He’ll look after your needs while you’re here.”

  “Mr. Seed, eh? I recall you as a youth in the Capital. It’s good to meet you face-to-face again.” Was I imagining it, or did Porter Grouted’s tone have surprising warmth for someone he’d met so long ago?

  “But where’s your footman, My Lord?” asked Leah. “He must come inside, out of the rain.”

  Grouted let out a bark of laughter. “He keeps my fool silent. It angered me with its chatter on the journey.” He barked out through the door, “Bring the fool in now.”

  The footman came in, his silks clinging darkly to him; the bedraggled creature he dragged on the end of a chain was equally soaked.

  At first I was frightened, thinking it was a large bird; but then I saw it was a little man with bandy legs, wearing a jerkin and breeches of brightly dyed cockerel feathers. The feathers were bedraggled, like their owner. He had bare, filthy feet, and the chain was fastened round one scrawny ankle.

  “I hope your dousing has curbed your tongue, Gobchick,” said Lord Grouted roughly.

  “But it’s a dreadful evening, My Lord,” protested Leah, “unfit for a dog.”

  “Exactly.”

  The tiny man scampered over to her on the end of his chain, his grotesque shadow following, and patted her feet. She didn’t recoil, but put out a hand and gently touched the sodden feathers.

  “’Tis not a dreadful evening at all, Missy,” he said in a little, childlike voice. “Why, ‘tis fine!”

  “How d’you make that one out, Gobchick?” said Lord Grouted irritably, “when you’ve the evidence on your own shoulders?”

  The little man spread wrinkled hands and beamed. “Why, ‘tis the fine company here that makes the fine evening, Master.”

  Lord Grouted yanked the chain, and Gobchick fell over, his wet feet slipping on the floorboards. “A fine evening now, is it, fool?”

  “Dinner awaits us, My Lord,” said the Master, his voice tight.

  “Well, lead on, man, lead on, as best you can.” Lord Grouted gave a guffaw, jerking his head at the chair.

  Leah’s face was pinched with anger as she passed me, the Master’s expressionless as he trundled after her, pushed by Silas. Only Lord Grouted noticed me standing in the shadows, and that was because Gobchick put out a hand and touched my skirts as he was dragged along.

  It was a curious gesture, like a blessing. But instinctively I shrank back from the misshapen little brown fingers and must have let out a gasp, for Lord Grouted’s head turned, and for a moment his eyes stared into mine. In the candlelight I saw the heavy lids had no eyelashes: they were as hairless as his head.

  Then his eyes flicked away. I was worthless, not due any recognition from him, and the greatest man in the country passed on into Murkmere Hall.

  Though the rain ceased during the night, the weather remained dark and dank the next day. The house sat under heavy clouds, and we had candles lit in the rooms from dawn.

  A lady complained there’d been a rat in her chamber; another, of bats in the eaves outside her window and bent-legged creepies on the walls. I thought them foolish; we were used to such things, and worse, in the country.

  The gentlemen stood with their backs to the fires and their coats flipped up, muttering together even before breakfast. After consuming bacon, mushrooms, kidneys, roast pork, and fried cabbage, the company went for a constitutional, parading up and down the drive between the puddles, umbrellas at the ready, ladies on the gentlemen’s arms.

  I stared out of the window at them and giggled, but a little fearfully, for they made an imposing sight in the gloomy day, with the rooks circling overhead.

  Then they all went into Council, filing silently through into the withdrawing room, where extra chairs had been brought for them: thin-lipped, dark-clothed men and women organizing the country’s business.

  I could hear Lord Grouted’s harsh voice as he pushed them to his will. Since the Protector’s secretary had been left in the Capital, Silas slipped in like a shadow to take the minutes, and I saw how like the others he was, with his black coat, pale countenance, and lowered, secret eyes.

  As the afternoon turned into evening, I went to the Great Hall to see that all was in order: the fire drawing smoothly, the tables laid for dinner.

  The huge room was empty, the candles streaming in the draft. There was silent movement everywhere. In the silver bowls, which had been put in the center of every table, the flowerheads moved on the surface of the water, and in the corners the grasses rustled in their jars. I stood, breathing in the strange mixture of decay and flowers and liquid candle wax.

  In front of me a tapestry bulged in the draft.

  “Missy, Missy,” whispered a little voice, and the fool popped out from behind it, like a jack-in-the-box.

  I stepped back with a cry. He put his finger to his lips and twinkled at me over the top. His face was crinkled, like an apple left too long in the barn.

  I drew the little man into the shadows behind the great chimney. He carried the chain in one hand, still fixed to the metal ankle band.

  “Have you escaped, Fool?” I whispered. “You’ll be beaten for it. If you come with me, I’ll hide you.”

  He shook his head and the feathers quivered. “I ‘scapes regular, but not far, not for long. My legs too weak, see? I just need the air to breathe, pretty girls to see.” His eyes were merry.

  I couldn’t smile. “It’s cruel to chain you like a beast!”

  “I’s bread to eat. Sometimes he’ll stroke and pet me. Old Gobchick’s safe if he makes his lord laugh.” He peered up into my face. “Now tell me, little Missy, why you’re so afeard.”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “It’s not for old Gobchick’s hide, I warrant. Is it for someone else?”

  I stared at him and saw his eyes gleam. But I could say nothing about Leah to this child-man.

  “You know, sometimes they pretend Gobchick’s one of the avia, to frighten the people. But Gobchick can’t fly.” He flapped his arms up and down, and a red feather floated to the floor. “See? I stays on Earth and dreams.”

  “I wish I could set you free, Gobchick.”

  He shook his head. “We’ll all be free one day.”

  My skin prickled. “I must go. So must you. You’ll be found here.”

  “I’ll be found, Missy. Take one thing with you.”

  I paused, half-impatient now. “What is it?” I thought it would be a keepsake, one of his horrible garish feathers.

  “A thought, that’s all, from me to you.” He jerked his head at a tapestry that showed a tiny group of human penitents before the Great Eagle. “That some tell it different, the story of the avia.”

  “Different?”

  There was the creak of the door opening into the Hall from the passage; footsteps coming close and passing us. I stared at him, frightened for his safety, and he stared back, his bright eyes glazed, as if he hadn’t heard, as if he were somewhere else.

  “’Twas not a punishment,” he whispered, “but a blessing.”

  I didn’t have time to ask him what he meant. I left hastily, and when I looked back all I could see was the pale disc of his face, the dark hump of him squatting in the shadows, dreaming
. Free.

  I gathered my skirts and ran up the back stairs along the passage to Leah’s room. Guests progressing sedately to their own chambers to dress for the ball moved out of my way, murmuring disapproval, but I kept my head down.

  Dog was hurrying toward me from the opposite direction. “Oh, Aggie,” she panted. “I couldn’t come to the mistress sooner. Mistress Crumplin kept me folding napkins.”

  “There’s still plenty of time to dress Miss Leah, Dog,” I said calmly, though I didn’t feel so at all. I knew what was in her mind as she stared at me fearfully; it was in mine as well. Tonight Leah would surely wear the swanskin.

  It was still in the chest; I’d looked some days ago. Sick to my stomach, I’d pushed back the lid and pulled it out. A few white feathers had floated out onto the rug; there had been a square of skin still to sew. But tonight it would be finished, I was certain. Her secret treasure, perfect again.

  All her nights spent repairing it — what had they been for, but this night?

  The door of Leah’s chamber was shut. We looked at each other for courage. Then I put out my hand and, without knocking, lifted the latch.

  XXI

  The Ball Begins

  Leah turned from the long looking glass, a hand to her neck, as if she were almost shy of her appearance. As we came into the room, staring at her as stupidly as a couple of wild women, she gave a small smile.

  She looked beautiful: that was the only word to describe her. Her gawkiness was gone; her pale shoulders and arms rising from the draped material at her breast were fine-boned and graceful. The gauzy skirt floated around her so that she seemed to move in a shining silver mist.

  She had already gone beyond me in that dress; she had become someone I didn’t know. “Will I do my guardian justice?” she said.

  As I nodded dumbly, I could see out of the corner of my eye that the chest was still closed.

  “Shall I dress your hair, Miss?” said Doggett, anxious to take some credit for her mistress’s appearance.

  “No more powder,” Leah said, sitting down at her dressing table. “I hate the stuff.”

  Dog brushed her hair until it held the silver reflections of the dress in its gleaming strands. Then she dressed it simply, binding it back under the circlet of seed pearls the Master had given Leah for her birthday.

  “The silver earrings now, Miss, to set off the dress? And your crystal necklace?”

  “I’ll wear nothing. Those women will be weighed down with jewelry. I’ll not be like them.”

  When Doggett had gone, I pulled something from my apron pocket. “Happy birthday,” I said awkwardly.

  It was a bunch of pressed meadowsweet and buttercups, glued to bark and bordered with dried oak leaves. It seemed too crude now for the shining girl before me.

  She looked astonished. “Thank you,” she said, turning it this way and that, examining it so reverently it might have been created by a master craftsman.

  “It’s only a poor thing,” I said.

  “I’ve never had such a present before.” Then she looked at me in the mirror with large, dark eyes. “My guardian tells me he wishes to make an announcement at dinner. What can it be, do you think?”

  I stared back at her and gave a false shake of my head as if I knew nothing.

  Her eyes were clouded. “I wish I didn’t feel such foreboding, Aggie.”

  Back in my own chamber I dressed hastily.

  I’d lost weight in the past weeks and had had to take in the blue taffeta skirt, but I folded the black shawl into a sash to cover my clumsy stitches, and the blue beads and silk tassels looked as decorative around my waist. Another shawl, made of cream lace, covered my bodice. Then I brushed my hair until it crackled like a flame round my head, and re-twisted my ringlets.

  Not as beautiful as Leah, I thought, as I stared into the glass, but passably pretty. I touched my amber beneath the shawl and thought of my mother. How would she feel if she knew I was about to attend Blanche’s daughter’s ball: proud, or apprehensive?

  I could hear footsteps and voices in the passage outside. Guests were going downstairs. When they had passed I darted along to Doggett’s chamber.

  “Dog, are you there?”

  She was tying a clean pinafore round her gray silk dress when she opened the door, and we looked each other up and down with admiring grins.

  “The Lord Almighty Aggie, you look almost a lady!”

  I didn’t care for the “almost,” but let it pass. “And you, Dog! Let’s go and watch the dancing.”

  “Oh, lawks, do you think we should?”

  “We must support our mistress, Doggett, mustn’t we? We’ll stand somewhere we’ll not be noticed.”

  So we slipped down the dark back stairs and met no one; the servants were about their duties. The whisper of my taffeta skirts over the oak made me feel powerful and mysterious; it was a grown-up sound. I held my head high and narrowed my eyes as I noticed the lady guests did, until Dog began giggling at me. Her own face was freshly scrubbed for once, her eyes and mouth agog above the starched pinny.

  When we reached the ballroom it was still empty of guests: a vast, candlelit space waiting to be filled. In the golden light you couldn’t see how the statues were chipped and the pillars starting to crumble. The floor glowed richly after days of polishing; the mirrors set in their ornate brass reflected the light of the candles. The place glittered brave as a bauble, and as fragile.

  I pulled Dog behind a pillar at the end of the room farthest from the main doors, where we could hide behind an urn filled with rushes. Up in the gallery above our heads the musicians were tuning up. They didn’t notice us standing below them: there were too many flowers woven through the wrought-iron balustrade.

  “I used to watch the mistress at her dancin’ classes,” whispered Dog, gripping her rough hands together in excitement. “It’ll be the Cavalcade first.”

  “What’s that?” I whispered back, impressed. The only dances I knew were jigs and stick dances and swains’ requests.

  “It’s the acknowledgment dance, when the guests greet their host.”

  The musicians were playing properly now, music that held a striking rhythm and was quite different from the jangling, merry music of the fairs I’d visited. It seemed to me to speak of sinister things, of darkness, power, seduction.

  At the far end of the ballroom a footman opened one of the double doors and Silas came in, pushing the Master in his chair. The music hid the grinding of the wheels.

  Silas maneuvered the chair up a small ramp onto a dais in the center of the floor, which had been specially constructed so that the Master could view the dancing. Gilt chairs had been placed in a half-circle up there, but there was no one present to join him yet. When Silas left him, he looked a lonely figure waiting among the empty chairs, his great hands loose on his lap.

  At a signal from Silas, a footman walked the length of the floor and opened both doors wide. The candles flared, then steadied. The music grew so loud I thought the pillars might fall down around us.

  And then the first pair of dancers appeared, and my heart almost stopped. Dog gave a cry and clung to me.

  The first two dancers were not Leah and Lord Grouted. They were not recognizably human at all.

  Each dancer had a bird’s head, a black-feathered head, with a jutting beak. Stiffly, formally, they progressed up the ballroom toward the dais where the Master of Murkmere sat alone.

  They had entered the room only a little way when the next couple entered, their head feathers more mottled than the first, their beaks curved and cruel. And then the next couple, their bird heads so large it seemed they might topple off. Powdered skin and painted mouths showed beneath the beaks, and as they paraded before the Master the mouths smiled.

  Dog, who had clung to me since the entrance of the first pair of birds, gasped out, “It’s the avia, isn’t it, Aggie?”

  I’d been shocked myself at first, until I’d seen the faces. I pushed her away gently. “You know it
isn’t. They’re masks, that’s all.”

  But Dog looked fearfully at the macabre throng, as if she would take much convincing.

  Gradually the ballroom became filled with the two swaying lines of birds. They advanced slowly, then as they reached the Master, bowed their stiff heads to each other and to him before turning to repeat the process back down the room. As pair after pair came in, it seemed the lines would never stop growing.

  But then the music slowed almost to silence, the lines steadied, and down between them danced the very last pair: a girl in a shining dress gripped in the talons of an Eagle.

  The bird head was so realistic that it seemed the Almighty Himself had come to furious life straight out of one of the tapestries in the Great Hall and flown into the ballroom. Then I saw the thickness of Lord Grouted’s fingers on Leah’s fragile shoulders, the golden glint of a signet ring.

  But I couldn’t control a gasp, and Dog clutched me in real terror. Together we almost fell over the urn.

  “An impressive sight, isn’t it?” said Silas’s voice.

  I tried to pull myself together, while Dog cowered back against the pillar, looking as if she didn’t know which was more frightening: the Eagle dancer or the sudden, unnerving presence of the steward in all his sinister, black-silk elegance.

  But he didn’t bother to glance at her; his eyes took in my taffeta skirts, beaded sash, and lace shawl.

  “You plan to dance, Miss Agnes? Perhaps I can tempt you to the next one? It will be open to everyone.”

  “Oh, n-no, Sir,” I stammered, trying to hide my horror. “I don’t know any grand dances.”

  “I’ll teach you then. We’ll take it slowly in a corner by ourselves before we join the other pairs.”

  I felt my cheeks burn. I didn’t know how I could refuse without crossing him, and if I did, he might prevent me from attending the dinner where Leah needed my support.

  “Sir, you must understand — the bird masks — I’d not have the courage to step out among them. It would be blasphemous.”