Conservation. Sure. It was all leading up to this. It was all leading up to this, and this is nothing. No Dad, no Mum, no Eloise. And no me.
Kay thought that she had never been truly at the end until now. Of course the others would look for her. Of course they would go to Oidos and to Razzio and press them for answers. But Kay knew how rigid and silent those two wraiths could be; getting answers from them would take time. Kay had always made promises to herself. Her promises generally took a negative form: I will never … I will not … This time, she thought, she would make another kind of promise. If I get out of this place, if I can just get away, I will go home. I promise myself that I will go home, and I will take my family with me. Nothing will stop me.
She sat heavily on the floor, sliding down against the wall, scraping what felt like chunks from the skin over her spine. She hardly cared.
I don’t need a spine any more anyway.
Her lantern began to flicker. Kay was looking at it and tapping the tank at its base when one of the square stones in the alcove in front of her began to move.
She didn’t notice getting to her feet. She noticed being on them, crouching, holding the wall. She noticed the sweat that stood suddenly on her hairline. She noticed the light flickering, and she willed it to be steady, willed it to last.
And she noticed the stone, edging slowly forward, a metre away. She drew a pace closer.
With sudden force the stone lurched forward out of the wall and crunched to the ground beneath. It toppled over, one of its squared corners hitting the carving on the far side of the passage, chipping it. Kay took no notice. She was staring at the black hole left in the bricked wall of the alcove, through which the head of an iron staff had – only for a moment – protruded.
An iron staff topped by a snake writhing to the hilt of a sword.
I’ve seen that before.
And then the lantern gave out. In the heavy cloth of dark that was left her, Kay began to shout in inarticulate syllables. It felt as if the dark were forcing its way into her mouth in big wads and pads, stifling her attempts to form words. She was terrified, drowning in dark. Her lungs tore at the air, both trying and failing to take it in. After a few seconds, still panting, she clawed at the stone wall, at the grouted alcove, cramming her face against the stones, trying to listen. There was nothing. Every muscle in her body seemed to be wrapped around a nerve, and she was squeezing them all like a fist. She screamed again, this time calling out for help, calling out for rescue. Again she listened, and again she heard only her own breath and, as that faded, silence – that hum just above true silence that she knew was only the noise of her own skin, her own ears.
Why would you do that? Why would you leave me? Who would do such a thing?
In the dark Kay reached for the fallen stone. With both hands she hefted it into her lap where she sat in the void, her back to the stone wall, and cradled it as if it were her child and she its mother.
Hours might have passed. Kay’s body grew cold, her joints stiff. Her fingers where she gripped the heavy stone and her leg where its weight pressed into her flesh had long since become numb. She hadn’t cried; her cheeks were as dry as her throat. She felt neither hunger nor thirst. She felt nothing so acute as loneliness. All she knew, as the time of emptiness fell on her like a shadow in the night, was her own awareness of a slow loss of sensation.
Eloise. Mum. Dad. Eloise. Mum. Dad. Eloise. Mum. Dad.
The names circled in her head with a rhythm that had become her only time, her only space, her only sensation. She had heard other children talking about how your life passes before your eyes at the moment of your death. It’s not true, she thought.
What do they know? The names pass over your tongue.
And then only the names were left. Eloise. Mum. Dad.
She didn’t notice the footsteps when they first approached. She hadn’t been listening for them. She hadn’t been listening for anything. It was only after they had come and were drawing away again that she suddenly realized – like a body startled out of death – what she had very nearly missed.
The footsteps were passing on the other side of the wall.
Frantic, she scrabbled to her feet, turned and put her face to the aperture, screaming all the while for help, for rescue, for help and rescue, for anything, for those feet to return. She screamed so loudly and for so long that she couldn’t hear the voice answering her from beyond the wall. Her wildly working mouth had forced her eyes shut, or she might have seen the glow of another lantern, and might have seen, too – rather than felt – the hand reaching towards her through the gap in the wall.
‘Kay,’ said the hand. It hadn’t tried to grab her. Its flat palm – firm, facing downwards – had called for silence. ‘Kay, stand back.’
She stood back. After a few seconds something very hard hit the stones from behind. Then it hit them again, and again. They shook. And again. The mortar between them started to shake loose, and then the stones seemed to buckle. A bulge formed in the wall as, kick upon kick, it started to give way. At last, with a crunching and a crumpling sound, the whole wall tumbled into a heap in the passage before her. Light pooled against the white walls of the passage.
After a few more seconds, a long leg swung out through the gap. Kay rushed to the opening. Attached to the leg was Flip.
And then, at last, at long last, the sobs came.
Sacrifice
Flip allowed Kay to cry for a few minutes. They sat beside one another on the pile of stones, Flip holding one of her hands with both his, as if he were holding a butterfly or a breath of air. Kay knew he was eager to get away, to climb back through the hole – but he said nothing at all, only looked at her hand and, when she sobbed, raised his eyebrows at each gasp, as if to acknowledge, as if to honour it.
‘Kay,’ he said when her sobs had run out, ‘we need to go.’
As they climbed back through the rubble of the broken wall, Flip carefully guiding Kay’s steps over the loose stones, he tried to explain what had happened to him on that day at Pylos: how he had sat by the sea through the day and night, soaked and shivering, anguished by Phantastes’ accusation, worried about Will’s safety; how he had wandered back through the square at dawn, and happened as if by chance on the spot where Rex had died; how he had stood there, looking at the stone ground without a thought in his head, until by the first light of day he had noticed something curious.
‘With his blood, Kay, Rex had written on the stones. He must have used his finger. Maybe it was the last thing he ever did. The writing wasn’t neat, but it was unmistakable. I stared at it for hours, trying to decide what it meant.’
Flip had picked up his lantern. They were walking very slowly down a low, narrow passage. This tunnel had nothing like the ample proportions of the other, nor did it show any decoration at all. Flip nearly had to crouch in order to protect his head and shoulders from the rough rock above. But Kay noticed that he was watching the floor of the passage all the time, studying it as they passed.
‘What did it say?’
‘He wrote a word in Greek. Taphoi. Of course it would be in Greek. Obviously. We were in Greece. But it’s also what we call this place.’
‘The House of the Two Modes?’
‘No. These tunnels. The catacombs. The place of burial.’
‘Why do you call them that?’
Flip had stopped before one of the alcoves, and was pressing his fingers along the grooves between the mortared stones. Now he looked at her sharply. ‘Don’t you know what this place is?’
Kay just looked back at him. Without another word Flip passed her the lantern and crouched on the tunnel floor. In the sand and powder of the passage he drew a square with his finger, and then, through it, a cross, bisecting the sides of the square at their midpoints. Around them both he drew a circle; its circumference touched the corners of the square and the ends of the cross, binding the whole.
‘The square is the House of the Two Modes,’ said Kay.
> ‘Yes,’ said Flip. He looked up. ‘And beneath it are the catacombs: two passages at right angles running under the garden, and a huge ring around the whole structure. The catacombs, containing the tombs of the members of the Honourable Society. When wraiths and phantasms die, when they are killed, this is where we bury them.’
Kay almost dropped the lantern. Instead she held it with both hands. It shook. Every tiny hair on her body felt like a worm, and the worms were crawling all over her.
‘Can you die?’
Flip put his hand on Kay’s elbow as if to steady it. ‘Of course. My body can die and, when it does, it will be buried here. But, with luck, Philip R. T. Gibbet, Knight of Bithynia – he will live right on. In some other form, in some other time, some other Philip will arrive at the House of the Two Modes, and find the right room – it’s on the first floor, in the northwest corner, where the sun shines on the sundial in the afternoon, and the tables are strewn with dazzling knots. But my body will lie down here, interred and peaceful, until the last story has been told.
‘When I saw what Rex had written, at first I thought he wanted me to bring his body here. That is, of course he did – any wraith would have wanted that. I would want it. But something made me pause, and I sat there for hours thinking it over. Rex would have known we’d try to bring his body here, anyway. To write that word on the ground at that particular moment – it was for something else. Why did he suddenly need to tell us about this place at the moment of his death? What had he learned? From whom?’
‘Kat,’ said Kay. ‘She was the last wraith he saw.’
‘Exactly. Kat must have told him something. And then she drove a knife into him.’
Flip had gone on, and they were walking again – slowly. Kay held the lantern as high as she could while Flip studied the floor of the passage. Minute after minute, they carried their little light through the darkness. To Kay, every footfall seemed like the last, every bit of tunnel face, every stretch of rough pebbled floor the same. To left and right, at intervals, they passed the stone-block alcoves; at each of these Flip paused to touch his fingers to the mortar, shook his head, then moved silently on.
‘It’s no good,’ he said finally, and stopped. ‘I’ve been through this tunnel ten times, and I’ve not seen a single trace anywhere.’
When he looked at her, Kay held his gaze. In his eyes, in the deep points of his pupils, she saw his focus and intensity; in the bruised and slightly sunken skin below his eyes she read the sleeplessness of the last few days, his lonely journey from Pylos, the desperation of his search.
For what?
‘Flip,’ said Kay. She said his name slowly. ‘What are you looking for?’
He held out his hand, flat as a leaf, palm towards the ground. On the back, between the knuckles, there rested a single jack. Its metal arms caught the yellow light from the lantern, and glistened.
Kay made a sound. It came out of her throat. It was in her mouth. Her tongue made it and her lips shaped it. But it was not a human sound. Her whole body retched. After several seconds she sucked in air, fast, and started speaking words, fast, before she knew what they were.
‘That’s Ell’s jack. She gave it to Rex. In the Pitt. The building – Dad’s work. That night. Christmas Eve –’
‘It must have been in Rex’s hand when he died,’ Flip said. His voice was as gentle as his hand was still. ‘Kay, I thought you were down here looking for her, too. But you’re not, are you? Why are you down here in the catacombs, Kay?’
‘Oidos locked me in.’
In a single motion, Flip tossed the jack into the air behind Kay’s head, clutched her shoulder with his right hand, snatched the jack with his left, sank to his knees and folded her into an embrace as sure as anything she had ever felt in her life.
‘You poor child. I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea. I never thought that – I never thought.’
With sudden decision he pushed Kay away. His eyes were lanterns in the lantern light.
‘This is very important,’ he said. ‘What did Oidos say when she brought you down here? Did she say anything at all?’
Kay tried to remember the staircase – how excited she had been, sure that she would find out who she was and what she was meant to do.
She didn’t say anything.
‘She said I had to go first, because her legs weren’t what they were.’
‘Kay, think. Nothing else?’
She didn’t say anything except –
‘She said she had a place where, very occasionally, she brought things she wanted to forget. And she said she would have to forget me. And she shut the door.’
Just saying it made the tears start again in Kay’s eyes.
The darkness. The terror.
Flip took no notice. ‘I’ve been so stupid,’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking down here, in completely the wrong place. I assumed all along that it was Razzio, that it was Ghast, that they wanted Ell dispersed. Come on, Kay – run!’
Down passage after passage, back the way they had come, Flip led her, doubled over and loping as fast as his strides could take him in the cramped and narrow space. The lantern flickered and swung wildly behind as Kay raced after him, throwing exaggerated shapes along the rough walls as they passed. At the rockfall that led into the white tunnel Flip stopped and leaned for a moment to catch his breath. He set the lantern on the passage floor.
‘It was Oidos all along. Don’t judge her, Kay – don’t judge her for this. The bond between them was so strong. She can’t face a future without Rex in it. She can’t bring herself to look under that shroud, as I did. As Rex often did.’
Kay’s sides were splitting with the strain of the sprint. But her head was clear, and she knew exactly which shroud Flip had in mind. The shrouded figure standing in the corner. The future that Oidos will not see. ‘Why? What’s under the shroud?’
‘You mean you didn’t look? The third form of the Primary Fury. Eloise Worth-More, the Wraith of Jacks.’ Flip picked up the lantern and began to climb through the opening. ‘Watch your footing.’
He didn’t wait for her. He took the passage with long, urgent strides, the lantern held at arm’s length before him. His eyes scrutinized every inch of the ground, and when he drew up alongside the last of the alcoves, hard by the end of the passage with its white stone altar, he whistled between his teeth. As Kay drew up beside him, he was tracing his finger along the carved white stone above the vaulted shape of the stone wall.
‘She’s added this. Oidos. Look.’
Where his fingers touched the surface Kay saw three asterisks that had been rudely hammered into the stone by an unsteady hand.
‘Did she give you a lantern?’
Kay nodded.
‘She wanted you to find your sister. I don’t think Kat killed Rex that day in Pylos, Kay. Whatever that means. I think Kat told Rex that Eloise was here, in the House of the Two Modes, and then I think Rex sacrificed himself.’
‘But why would he do that?’
‘Because your sister has a part to play in whatever is coming, and he knew it. It was time for her story.’ Now Flip was running his fingers along the wet mortar, looking for a place where the gap was wide enough.
‘My fingers are too big,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to do it.’
As fast as she could, Kay thrust her fingers into the narrow gaps between the stones, picking and sliding and dredging out the wet mortar in thick slabs. It fell to the floor as she worked her fingers in and out along each row. Little by little the stones shifted and settled. At length a tiny gap opened at the top. Without waiting to be asked, Flip started working the top stone free, prising and pulling it, straining the tips of his fingers into the space. His face was as hard, as flat as the stone on which he worked. Kay stood back, impatient and desperate.
Flip had shimmied the first stone several centimetres from the wall. Now he dragged it out, allowing it to fall to the floor between his legs.
As he shook the pai
n from his fingers, still staring at the work to be done, he said, ‘Oidos is angry with him. With Rex. For leaving her. But she never wanted to hurt your sister. She wanted you to find her.’
One by one he pulled out the square-cut stones: six, then seven, dragging them out of the wall so that they toppled over one another and away from his legs. Finally the gap was large enough for Kay to peer inside, and with Flip’s help she scrambled up and over the wall, to drop into the tight space beside her sister, where she lay on a white stone slab.
Her chest was rising and falling in long, peaceful swells.
She was wrapped in a heavy wool blanket. On her stomach lay a silver horn.
By the time Flip had pulled away the rest of the stones, Kay was sitting next to the stone bed, holding Ell’s hand in her lap, caressing it.
‘She won’t wake up,’ she said. ‘Why won’t she wake up?’
Flip nodded behind him. Kay looked. Across the passage, in the chiselled white stone, the scene showed a sleeping form – a beautiful woman whose heavy tresses, like branches heavy with fruit and possibility, hung down from the stone bed where she lay. On her stomach lay a horn – the image of that still rising and falling with Ell’s breath – and above the scene, in a carved panel, had been cut the words of a short verse. Kay read it aloud by the steady light of the lantern.
‘The horn will wake the dreamer,
and the dreamer will wind the horn;
leap heart, the wind will catch you,
and the star will show in the morn.’
Twelve Nights Page 25