Murkmere

by Patricia Elliott

  In the boathouse I helped her release the little rowing boat and climb into it. All the time I was choking back tears. When I went back outside, down the wooden steps to the shore, the boat had slipped out into silver water that was as soft as silk.

  She brought it around to where I stood. Holding the painter in her hand, she stepped out onto the shore to say goodbye. I knew I would lose her as soon as she began rowing away.

  I clung to her, but she disengaged herself gently, looking over my shoulder. “Wipe your tears, Aggie,” she said. “There’s someone coming for you.”

  I turned and saw the youth in the brimmed hat striding along the path toward us. The light shone on the brim and on the face beneath, and I saw it was Jethro.

  XXVIII

  Shadowskin

  We stood on the little beach by the boathouse and looked at each other in silence. Jethro must have seen the tear stains on my face, but he said nothing, nor made any move to comfort me. He was red and awkward, and I couldn’t dismiss the hurt of so many empty fortnights.

  “Why didn’t you come?” I said at last.

  “My father was taken sick. I couldn’t leave him. It’s the truth, Aggie, I swear. Then I came immediately to Murkmere to ask for a job, hoping for a glimpse of you. They offered me work in the stable yard, and I took it.”

  “You followed me to the copse near the tower, didn’t you?”

  “Aye.”

  “You saw Silas Seed fall to his death?” I put my hands to my face, and then he did come closer.

  “He was a bad man, but men are made so by their time. He’d twisted good and evil in his mind.” He took my hands away and held them tenderly. “Tell me what’s been happening, Aggie.”

  And so I did.

  Behind us, the little boat was sliding slowly away across the water, toward the misty outline of the island. When I turned to watch, it was as if I sat in it myself. I could feel it rock as I rowed, the tug of weeds on the hull, and in my nostrils was the smell of soaked wood, and white mist like wet wool.

  Leah’s figure was blurring; I could just see the light glint on the seed pearls she wore like a crown in her hair. I raised my hand and let it drop, and as I did so the swans came gliding out from the reeds and encircled her, drawing her away with them into the mist.

  It was as if they were taking her home.

  “We’ll tell no one, Jethro, no one must go after her.”

  “If that’s what she wants.”

  I hesitated. “Do you think she’ll truly change into a swan?”

  He thought for a moment, then said in his slow, considering way, “Does it matter? She’s escaped. She’s free of Murkmere. It’s her choice.”

  In a choked voice I said, “But what about me? I’m bound. The Master’s will imprisons me here now.”

  “Opportunity’s no prison, Aggie. You’ve the chance to change things.”

  I thought a little, then looked up at him and smiled. “Since when did you grow so wise, Jethro Sim?”

  He put his arm around me. I felt his strength, the steady beat of his heart against me, the muscles that would tend my land. My robin, my Love.

  “Will you change things with me, Jethro?”

  The Lord Protector ordered that Gilbert Tunstall, Master of Murkmere, and Silas Seed, his faithful steward, both be given the ceremonial burial rites due to them.

  The guests, who had come for a ball, finished their visit by attending a double funeral. We stood in the rain under black silk umbrellas, a gathering of ravens surrounding two freshly dug graves.

  Later Dog told me that the members of the Ministration always packed mourning clothes, for wherever they went, someone was always certain to die.

  I was never questioned about Silas’s death.

  A tragic accident, they said, though some cast dark looks at me when they learned I’d been alone with Silas before-hand. But Jukes, and even Pegg, insisted that I’d known nothing of the Master’s codicil, so why should there have been any foul play? Most agreed that Leah had somehow been involved. The girl had been unstable like her mother, and the fact that she was missing so mysteriously surely proved her guilt.

  Of course Lord Grouted demanded that the estate and the Wasteland be searched for her, and all the surrounding villages and towns. But he didn’t bother to send men as far as the Capital. A girl alone would never manage to travel so far safely, and then survive there.

  When the search had continued for a week without success, the Lord Protector spoke to me. “We can’t accept you as a member of the Ministration, but we must now acknowledge your caretakership of the estate. It’s a poor place, and you can only do with it what you can.” Then he gave me his blessing before he rode away.

  It was an ironic gesture. He took most of the servants with him.

  But Scuff and Dog stayed with me.

  Leah was the closest I’ve ever had to a sister. I loved her, for all that she was the most provoking, unpredictable girl on this Earth. And now she’s gone.

  Each year I wait for the first leaf to drift down at the end of summer. It’s usually the birches that turn first. I catch a small, yellow leaf in my palm. Then I know it’s her birthday, as it was on the day she left; and I go down to the mere and wait for her. I listen for a girl’s footfall on the dry path behind me. I imagine her hands over my eyes, her breath hot on the back of my neck.

  “Dearest Aggie! I’m back!”

  Two birthdays have passed, and Jethro warns me that she may not return, but I don’t believe him. She was always curious — like me, Aunt Jennet would say. Sisters, indeed. She’ll come back because she’ll want to know what’s happened to us all here at Murkmere.

  And I shall tell her, with my new dignity, “We’re managing well. We share the produce, from bad harvests and good, and the village and the estate support each other, as they should. Aunt Jennet runs the household and Jethro’s my steward.”

  At this her eyes will gleam and she’ll give me a poke. “You see, Aggie, you had a sweetheart all along and didn’t know it!”

  Shall I tell her how hard life is here? How sometimes it’s too much to bear? Then, even Jethro and Aunt Jennet can’t comfort me, and I long for my old carefree days back again, when I knew nothing and had no responsibility.

  But love and responsibility go together. I said I’d do this for Leah and I will.

  In the tower the books lie untouched, but one day I’ll have time to read them.

  Leah said the swanskin was her shadowskin.

  Perhaps I’ve grown into my own shadowskin now. I’m no longer the silly, ignorant girl I was when I first came to Murkmere. Perhaps my shadowskin was always there, waiting for me to grow into it.

  Jethro has always been doubtful that Leah changed shape. He thinks she rowed on in the mist, beyond the island to the dark scrub on the other side of the lake, and made her escape from Murkmere over the wall into the Wasteland.

  But I know the truth.

  That first evening I saw her.

  The bodies of the Master and Silas had been brought in earlier in the day. They lay side by side on the dais in the empty ballroom, surrounded by the musty incense of dead flowers.

  I was in my bedchamber, fastening Leah’s old green silk skirt around my waist and trying to feel brave. For I had to face all eyes tonight in my new position as caretaker of Murkmere. The Lord Protector, the portly gentleman, the disapproving stick, the lady with the red mouth — tonight they would pay me attention.

  My window was on the latch, and I became aware of a deep throbbing sound coming from outside.

  Puzzled, I went over and pushed it farther open. Above the distant cowsheds, the sheep pens, and the sodden meadows of the estate, the evening sky was streaked with dark rain clouds, as if ink had run to spoil its glow.

  Then I saw the single swan, flying.

  Its wings were haloed with light. They beat the air steadily, like the pulse of a heart. The swan’s neck was outstretched, white against the darkening sky. On it flew, purpose
fully, away from Murkmere, until I lost it among the clouds.

  Leah told me once that the Murkmere swans have had their wings clipped; they can’t fly. When I told Jethro what I’d seen, he smiled and said it must have been a wild swan from the Wasteland.

  But I don’t think so. I know it was Leah.

  All men see things differently.

  I was fastening the latch on the window again when the door burst open and a girl marched in.

  “If you think you’re to be my companion, you’re mistaken,” she announced. “You might as well pack up your things again and go home.”

  Aggie’s life in the village was as normal and dull as any girl’s, until the master of the nearby manor, Murkmere, sent for her to become a lady’s companion to his ward, Leah. Wild, moody Leah wants nothing to do with Murkmere, and Aggie’s new job is not at all what she expected. As preparations begin for a grand ball celebrating Leah’s sixteenth birthday, Aggie becomes deeply enmeshed in dark plots that surround Murkmere, and she must find a way to save herself and Leah from the deadly betrayal that awaits.

  Suspenseful and haunting, Murkmere envelops you in an unforgettable world between history and myth.

  Patricia Elliott was born in London and grew up in Europe and the Far East. She has worked in publishing in London and in a children’s bookshop in New York. She now teaches a course in children’s literature at an adult education college. She lives in London with her husband, two sons, and a yellow Labrador named Fingal.

  Don’t miss Ambergate, the companion to Murkmere.