“You will not go anywhere, Agnes,” said Silas. “No one is leaving this room. I need to establish one or two things.”
“What things?” I said fiercely. I stood, gripping the bag, and looked at the open door behind him. “You’ve no right to stop us leaving.” It was as if he already thought himself Master of Murkmere.
“No right,” he agreed smoothly. “But the means to prevent you.”
And he brought out a tiny, wicked-looking pistol from a pocket inside his silk frockcoat, and pointed it straight at me. “First, you must answer some questions, Miss Agnes Cotter.”
XXVII
Silas
My legs trembled so that I thought I’d fall, but I didn’t let go of the bag. I’d never seen such a beautiful, deadly object. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Leah had put her hand to her mouth.
“Where did you get that pistol?” she whispered.
Silas smiled. “Your father gave it me before the ball. It’s illegal — imported, of course — but your father always broke the rules. He wanted me to carry it for your protection. I suppose he thought you might be in danger once the truth about your birth was out. There’s sweet irony in that, don’t you think? I’m protecting you now. You wish to live, don’t you?”
From the floor by her father’s body, Leah nodded, speechlessly. I couldn’t think. I stared at Silas like a mouse stares at a cat, and held the laundry bag against me.
“You were in the library, weren’t you?” he said to me. “It’s useless to deny it. Mistress Crumplin confirmed it.”
“I don’t deny it,” I said, with a dry mouth.
“And have you told anyone what you heard?”
“I haven’t had a chance,” I said bitterly.
“Say nothing,” said Silas. His hand holding the gun was steady, and steady too were his dark eyes staring at me with their threat.
“What are you talking about?” cried Leah, half-rising. “Put your gun away! Your master lies dead and you flourish a weapon! Where’s your respect?”
“I have none,” he said shortly. “Certainly none for you. I know what you are.”
“What?” she cried, white-lipped.
“Daughter of the cursed.” His mouth curled. “It’s not meet you inherit the estate and sit with the Ministration.”
Leah rose to her feet slowly. During the last few months she had grown almost to his height, and her eyes glittered sharp as daggers as she stared across at him. “The Ministration? You believe its members are better than I?”
“You’ll never join them. It would be a desecration. There’s proof you’ve inherited your mother’s nature. You’re avian.” He kicked the Master’s wig, and it slid away over the floor.
“You have to prove that,” I said furiously. “Murkmere is Leah’s by the law of inheritance. She’s rightful Mistress here now. It’s all in the will. The Master leaves everything to his daughter.”
His eyes glinted dangerously “What do you know of the will, Agnes?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I’ve never seen it. But I know it’s so. He told me.”
His eyes moved from me to the desk, but the pistol still held steady. “I believe you are a liar, Agnes,” he murmured. “If I’m not mistaken, it looks as if he was working on it tonight. And you were here, Agnes. Did you sign anything, witness anything? Did you?”
I shook my head, wondering how steady his trigger finger was. “He was writing, that’s all I saw.”
Silas moved sideways to the desk, pointing the pistol at me. The air coming through the black window lifted his sleek hair a little, ruffled the papers as he bent over them. He had no spectacles with him. He thrust aside the older, yellower sheets of parchment impatiently. It was what had been added tonight that he was interested in, and that sheet was still covered with sand. He shook the sand off onto the floor and held it out closer to the candle, squinting at it. The pistol didn’t waver as he read it.
“I see Jukes’s name here, and Pegg’s. They’ve both put their signature to this.” His eyes held the most intense and chilling hatred as he looked at me. “You have no knowledge of this?”
“N-no,” I stammered, my heart thumping.
He put the pistol down carefully so that the muzzle was toward us, and sat down in one of the chairs pulled to the desk. “I fear Mr. Tunstall wasn’t in his right mind when he wrote this tonight.”
Leah gasped. “That’s my father’s will, his wishes for the future. What are you going to do? You can’t alter it!”
“Indeed? Nothing’s simpler, I fear; merely a matter of writing in my own wishes. I’ve had to sign for him often enough when he’s been sick. I know how his hand writes. My own could do so while I slept.” The look he gave Leah was venomous. “My left hand is quite practiced now, thanks to you.”
He took up a quill and dipped it in the silver inkpot. Leah slumped back against the wall. “What is it you’ll write?”
“That I’m to inherit, not you,” he said, and his lips drew back in a smile. “I could wait for the Protector’s support in my election, but I have the chance right here. I might as well take it. Then I’m blessed by both master and mentor. And I know the Almighty wants me in a position where I can carry out His will.”
His anger had died away; he looked at her with revulsion and regret. “Murkmere would never prosper under you. All these years I’ve sent reports on your behavior to the Lord Protector. I know you’re not suitable for such rank. I even know you’ve found the swanskin that was your mother’s.”
Leah’s whole body tensed; there were goose bumps on her bare arms.
“So where is it?” he continued softly. “Where’s the swanskin? You’ve been keeping it in your linen chest, haven’t you? But it’s gone tonight. Where is it?”
Leah had not known that. Startled, she turned to me, and I, like the guilty thing I was, put the bag swiftly behind my back, and they both saw it.
“What’s in that bag, Agnes?” asked Silas slowly. His body craned over the desk. The quill in his left hand shone with ink, but for the moment he had forgotten the will.
“Nothing for you,” I said defiantly.
“You’ve the swanskin!”
“Aggie?” whispered Leah. She looked as if she could scarcely breathe.
I said nothing. Silas gazed at me thoughtfully, brought the quill to the parchment as if to start scratching out the Master’s words. I could see the pistol resting on the green leather cover of the desk, the exquisite mother-of-pearl handle, the ridged black nose, so neat, so elegant.
“It is the swanskin,” I said at last.
“I thought so,” he said, with satisfaction. “Now give it to me, and you and your mistress can leave here.”
“Don’t, Aggie!” cried Leah.
There was a terrible silence. They were both waiting for me: Leah with bent head, as if she’d given up, as if she knew that I could only surrender it now; Silas smiling grimly, quill poised.
The fire gave a dying crackle. The breeze blew in from the long black window, stirring the papers on the desk.
I thought of Leah’s life if she had the swanskin and gave up her girlhood: the coldness, the loneliness, the strangeness of living in another nature. It was what I’d been battling to protect her from almost all the time I’d been at Murkmere. If I gave the swanskin to Silas, she’d remain human; she’d find a new life away. I’d go with her, willingly.
She’d be my sister, my friend, forever. Together we could do anything.
“Come, girl,” said Silas roughly. “Or do you want me to take it for myself?” He looked meaningfully at the pistol.
I opened the neck of the bag and reached my hand in. I felt the feathers soft against my fingers. He watched me, his eyes narrowed. He wasn’t absolutely sure that it was in there. I sensed his uncertainty and, though it was pointless now, felt a bitter pleasure.
Then slowly I brought my hand out.
Silas couldn’t see what I held, and his impatience wouldn’t let him wait. He lunged over t
he desk, and the pistol fell to the floor, rattling away against the brick wall.
I came close to the desk, dropped the bodice that had wrapped the scissors, and pointed them straight at him. He gave a grunt of shock and jerked his chair back involuntarily, half-rising, hampered by the clutter of chairs at the desk. His own chair fell over and skidded away a little behind him. I threw the laundry bag at Leah, and he tried to dodge past me to get at her. Then he saw I was in earnest to stop him, that I was advancing on him with the scissors before me, the long blades glittering silver, sharp as swords. He thought I meant to kill him, and he gasped and lurched back again. And I came closer still to him with those murderous points, so that Leah could escape through the open door behind me.
I didn’t dare look at her. I pointed the blades so they touched his throat. And he gasped again and retreated still farther, close to the window. His legs caught in the overturned chair.
And the next thing, he was falling backward, almost gracefully, a backward dive straight through the open window, and all I could see was the black hole of his mouth open in astonishment as he fell into the night.
I stared at the empty window blankly. It had happened so quickly, I couldn’t take it in. I almost expected him to flip back up and jump nimbly into the room.
But nothing happened. There was silence outside, then an owl hooted. Behind me in the room I could hear Leah’s quick, shocked breathing. I began to shudder all over, and the scissors dropped from my hand and fell to the floor with a dreadful noise. I put my hands to my eyes and I think I started to weep, though no tears came.
Leah came over to me. She put a hand on my back speechlessly. It was a gesture of comfort, I think, though she was never one for showing affection.
I took my hands from my eyes at last. “Blow out the candles.”
She nodded, and seized up a candle-snuffer. We both went about the room extinguishing the light from candelabra and lamps. It was eerie in the darkness, with the night blowing in on the Master’s still body and the knowledge that Silas lay directly below us.
“I can’t look,” I whispered. “Is he dead, do you think?”
She hesitated a moment, then went to the window and peered out, clinging to the window frame to steady herself. There was no sound from below.
“He’s lying oddly, not moving.” I couldn’t see her face, but her voice was emotionless.
“Then I’ve killed him,” I said, my voice small and trembling.
“Greed killed him,” she said. “Besides, he would have killed us to get the estate, if we’d defied him. You did bravely. Murkmere’s well rid of him.”
“But you don’t want Murkmere.”
“I have to leave, Aggie. I can’t stay here. I can’t remain as I am any longer.” She paused. “Was that why you gave me the swanskin? Because you understood at last?”
“I don’t understand,” I said desperately. “I’ll never understand. All I understand is that you must make the choice for yourself.”
She came close to me and took my hands, pressing them earnestly. “All my life I’ve felt two people. It was as if I had a second skin, a shadowskin, that was waiting for me to grow into it. When I found the swanskin I understood.”
I said nothing; I could do nothing more for her. A terrible inevitability settled on me like a weight.
“We must leave the tower now,” she said. “I know Jukes better than Silas did. He’s a good man, and will come here when he doesn’t have word from Silas. He’ll make sure my father’s buried decently. Say nothing of what’s happened tonight, except that Silas lost his footing and fell.”
I tried to pull myself together. “We must put the room to rights. There shouldn’t be any signs of a struggle.”
We did our best in the dark, hastily picking up the chairs. I picked the pistol up by the barrel cautiously and shut it away in the desk drawer.
“Come on,” said Leah impatiently.
“Where are we going?” I said, but I knew.
“To the mere.”
I hung back but she pulled at me. “Come.”
And of course I followed her.
She didn’t bend to kiss her dead father as she left. The white lace shawl lifted a little in the draft as she hurried past his body. I followed her with a heavy heart.
We left the candles burning on the stairwell; they couldn’t be seen from outside. Then we slipped out into the night. The darkness was lifting a little; black clouds were blowing away like rags and exposing lighter sky. Soon it would be dawn.
We saw Silas’s body, spread-eagled and unmoving, on the ground to our right as soon as we came out through the door. His face was a white blur on the black grass, his features indistinguishable. Leah put a restraining hand on my sleeve in case I wanted to see the body closer; but I couldn’t touch that clammy flesh; I let her go over and feel for a pulse. When she shook her head, we didn’t speak.
We ran across the open ground then, and into the copse. Leah’s dress glimmered in the shadows; she clutched the bag to her breast. “Hurry!”
I sped after her, tripping over roots and nettles, my long skirts catching on brambles; but I was careless of them. My mind was dwelling fearfully on what was to come, yet I was determined to be with her till the last.
And then what would I do? How could I bear to lose her?
Inside I was crying like a baby, yet I said nothing, and Leah said nothing to me, but continued sure-footed over the dewy grass as if her life depended on it.
We came down to the mere. In the distance a white mist hid the island and the reedbeds, not the gray murk of winter but the soft, dense haze of late summer. Closer to the shore the water was silver, reflecting the sky in which the first streaks of dawn were beginning to appear.
Leah’s face was filled with the same pale glow. She was part of sky and water, and I was not.
Miserably, I followed her along the path to the boathouse. She’d been here with a knife recently and cut the nettles and brambles back. Around us waterfowl woke sleepily, quacking and splashing into the water at our appearance.
She stopped at last when we had reached the boathouse and turned to face me, clasping the bag to her. We looked at each other. Our skirts were ripped, our hair hanging down around our pale faces.
“You can’t come with me now, Aggie,” she said. “This last part I have to do by myself.”
I nodded dismally.
“I’ll take the boat to the island,” she said, strong and implacable.
“The rowing boat? Is it safe?”
“I’ve tried it out before now. It doesn’t leak.”
“Then what?” I said in a low, choked voice. “Where will you go?”
“To the Capital, of course,” she said. “I’ll live in the water-ways, the canals. I’ll be able to see for myself what’s happening in the seat of power!” She was deliberately trying to cheer me. “People will never guess that outside their gilded water palace lurks a spy! And then I’ll come back and tell you what I’ve discovered.”
“How can you do that?” I said, and felt my anger rise at her frivolity.
“I’ll come back, Aggie.” She gestured at herself. “Like this. My mother changed. So will I. All I have to do is want it enough, to choose to change.”
“And will you?” I said, and I felt my eyes fill with tears.
“Yes, to see you. I promise.”
I began to weep. “Don’t go, don’t leave me behind!”
“You have something to do for me, Aggie. You must tell me if I ask too much.”
“What is it?” I said, hiccupping, hating her for her coldness.
“It’s not only for me, but for my father. It’s in his will. You don’t know he added a codicil tonight, the addition that Silas was so anxious to obliterate. When I went to see him after dinner he told me what he was going to write.
“He’s left you the estate to run in my place, Aggie. ‘If anything should happen to my daughter, Agnes Cotter is to run Murkmere in her stead, with the help o
f whomsoever she shall choose.’ That’s what he wrote in the will tonight. I think he knew he had to do it urgently. He knew he was dying.
“I said I was agreeable to it, and I am, most fervently. There’s no one who could do it better.”
Her eyes held the silver of the water; she was shining all over in the silver dress as if an energy made of light coursed through her. “He must have known I’d never take over here. He liked to convince himself otherwise, but he must have known.” She turned to me impatiently, eager for my reaction. “What do you say, Aggie? Don’t say nothing!”
Amazement had dried the tears on my cheeks.
“You will do it for my sake, won’t you? For my father’s?”
“I’ll think about it,” I said slowly. “I can’t make the decision lightly. There’s my Aunt Jennet. I’ve left her too long. And anyway, what about Lord Grouted? How will he react? And the members of the Ministration?”
“They can’t do anything. It’s legal, Aggie, it’s been witnessed. You won’t belong to the Ministration or sit in Council, of course. Lord Grouted may well send spies to watch you, but he won’t see you as any danger to him. Murkmere’s a backwater. He wanted Silas here so he could send him all around the Eastern Edge to put down rebellion. Now he’ll have to send someone else.”
“I’ll think about it,” I repeated stubbornly. “How can I do it by myself?” I thought of the loneliness, and my heart shuddered.
“What about your sweetheart?”
“Jethro?” I said. “He was never a sweetheart, and he cares nothing for me.” My eyes filled again. I thought of Murkmere without Leah, and knew it was not possible.
She pressed my hand. “I must go. Please, Aggie. I can’t stay while you think about it. Do what’s best for yourself. I wouldn’t want it otherwise.”
I flung my arms around her. “I love you, Leah. Come back.”
Her arms came up and she held me briefly. I wondered if she truly loved me, or if she could. But a promise was a promise.
Murkmere Page 24