Betrayal

by Gillian Shields

  I cautiously opened the door to the corridor and stepped into the main part of the school. A lamp outside the bathroom glowed dully. As I crept back to my dorm, I heard a soft noise. Standing at the other end of the long passage, at the top of the marble staircase, was the slight figure of a girl. Moonlight from the arched window over the stairs shone on her white nightgown and she stood unnaturally still, staring down over the edge of the banister, like a statue.

  Like a ghost.

  Thirteen

  Agnes?” As I stepped closer, I realized that this girl was not as tall as Agnes and that her hair was dark, not auburn. “Who’s there?”

  The girl ignored me. She leaned farther over the wrought-iron balustrade that was keeping her from plunging like a doll to the ground floor fifty feet below.

  “Be careful!”

  She slowly turned her face in my direction. Her dull eyes stared at me glassily, empty of any life or recognition. I had recognized her, though. “Harriet?” I called out in a low voice. “What on earth are you doing? You might fall.”

  Harriet didn’t reply, but just kept on staring and staring. She began to walk toward me, moving straight ahead with that ghastly, dead expression on her face.

  “Harriet!” I grasped her by her shoulders and something clicked in my head. She is not dead, but sleeping….

  Of course, Harriet was sleepwalking, that was all. She was still staring at me, blank eyed and unresponsive. Her hand twitched; then her head began to droop. I steered her toward a carved bench that stood near the top of the staircase and forced her to sit on it. As Harriet’s head lolled down and touched her chest she woke up.

  “Harriet, what are you doing out here?”

  “What?” she said, looking around vaguely.

  “Did you know that you sleepwalk?”

  “No…I mean…yes, sometimes, but not for years, not for ages.” Her eyes seemed to focus on me properly for the first time. “Please don’t tell anyone, Evie.”

  “Why not? Can’t the nurse give you something to stop you from doing it? You could hurt yourself wandering around in the dark. I think the staff should know.”

  “No, please don’t say anything! I don’t want anyone to know. I’m sure I won’t do it again.”

  “So what brought it on?” I asked.

  “It’s being in a new place, that’s all.” She looked at me pleadingly. “Please don’t say anything. They already think I’m…Anyway, what are you doing out of bed?”

  “Um…I was kind of half-asleep and I thought I heard someone in the corridor, so I came to look. That’s all. And we’ll get about a hundred demerits if the mistresses wake up and catch us. I guess we’d better get back to bed and get some sleep.”

  Harriet blinked fearfully. “I wish my mom were here.”

  I wanted to be kind, but she made me feel cold somehow, as though I couldn’t really be natural with her.

  “Look, Harriet, it takes time to get used to boarding school. You need to give yourself a chance to settle down and make friends. Then you’ll feel more at home.”

  The old clichés sounded so stilted and patronizing. She looked up at me with her dark, frightened eyes. “Do you really think I’ll make friends? I feel that no one likes me.”

  “Don’t be silly.” I tried to laugh. “I like you.” But I wasn’t really sure whether it was true.

  “Do you? Do you really?” Harriet stared at me, then smiled gratefully. “So I’ve got one friend, haven’t I? I’ll go to bed now. It’s funny,” she said as she stood up. “One of these rooms must have been Lady Agnes’s bedroom. It’s like we’re in her shadow…. Well, good night.”

  “Wait, Harriet, stay a second!” There was something I needed to ask her. “I’ve been kind of wondering whether your family has anything to do with Lady Agnes—you know, with the Templetons who lived here? Are you…um, connected at all?”

  She looked down, suddenly sullen again. “Aren’t we all connected, if you go back far enough? What does it matter, anyway?”

  “Please, Harriet, I—I need to know; it might be important.”

  The silence around us seemed to grow deeper.

  Harriet’s sallow cheeks flushed pink. “Templeton is my mother’s name. My parents are divorced and I hardly see my dad; he’s not really interested…. I mean, he’s really busy. Anyway, after they split up she wanted me to be called Templeton too.”

  “You said your mother was a student at the Abbey. Was that because she was related to the Wyldcliffe Templetons?”

  She looked embarrassed again. “That’s not very likely. My mother was here on a scholarship. I don’t think she really fit in. But she got this dumb idea that she must be related to them because of her name, and started to think that maybe she should really have been a lady with a big house and horses and money. She was obsessed with anything to do with Lady Agnes. She said I should act like I was Lady Harriet Templeton, and went on and on about Agnes as if she were some kind of family relative.” Harriet looked away with a bitter expression on her face. “That’s why Mom sent me here,” she added. “Since Dad left she’s never had time for anything but her job, so that she can earn enough money for me to come to this place and be a proper Wyldcliffe lady. But it was all a kind of dream. I didn’t really want to come. I—I miss her.”

  My heart sank. Poor Harriet. Poor sad Harriet.

  I watched her pad back to her dorm, then fled to my own bed. There was no rest for me that night. But it wasn’t Sebastian or the coven that kept me awake. It was the small, everyday tragedy of one plain, awkward girl, who was quietly suffering under the roof of this great house. As I tossed and turned I heard the village clock strike three. I groaned and buried my head under my pillow. I couldn’t cope with any more problems. All I wanted to do was to go to sleep, and dream of Sebastian.

  Fourteen

  FROM THE PRIVATE PAPERS OF SEBASTIAN JAMES FAIRFAX

  I hear the clock strike three. There is no rest for me this night.

  They are looking for me. The women who were once my servants now pursue me with deadly hate. And you, my darling girl, they hate you too.

  When I remember them, and my past dealings with them, my heart sickens. But these women, these Dark Sisters, whose hearts and minds I once controlled, have moved beyond my influence now. My powers have faded.

  Even so, I must rise from this sickbed; I must venture out and try to warn you—to stop them—I must.

  I can’t—

  I can’t—

  Oh, Evie, Evie, where are you? All I want is to hold you again, to protect you from what I have done to you. I would give anything to be able to walk and ride and run as I once did. Perhaps this is a punishment, this weakness, for my being so arrogant as not to realize my good fortune in the days of my strength.

  My body is weak. My mind is fading. But my love is strong, even now.

  I must tell you—I know what they want, those deadly women.

  Oh, it looks so harmless, so innocent! A pretty trinket around a pretty throat, that is all. A simple necklace, to be admired and then forgotten.

  How it burned me when I tried to touch it, the night you first showed it to me.

  The pain seared my mind but opened my eyes to the truth of who you were and what your necklace was. Then I knew how Agnes had contrived to keep her greatest secret from me.

  Oh, hide it, hide it from me! The Dark Sisters are not the only creatures who desire the Talisman. I also long for its silver tracings. I long for the depths of its crystal heart; I long for its powers that could set me free. Let no one see it. Let no one touch it. Keep it from them.

  Keep it from me.

  Hide it, Evie, hide it, before it is too late—

  Fifteen

  It was getting late. The short winter day was coming to an end. I was climbing the marble stairs to the dorm, my legs aching after a long and weary game of lacrosse. I hated the stupid game, all mud and sweat and bruises, and it was always made worse by the sneers of Celeste and her cronies. Come
on, Johnson, can’t you do better than that? Why are you so useless, Johnson? I wanted to lie down and close my eyes and sink into oblivion. The walls of the corridor seemed to swirl around me and the light from the lamps shattered into a hundred colors….

  Stumbling forward, I opened the door of the dormitory. The window was banging and the thin drapes around the beds flapped like sails in the icy wind. I shut the window, then knelt on the seat and looked out over the frozen hills. The sun was dipping low and red in the clear winter sky, and the snow was stained crimson, as if the whole world were on fire.

  “Isn’t it beautiful, Evie?” someone said behind me.

  I turned and there he was, an angel in the shadows, with his long dark hair and his deep blue eyes, and that smile that was only for me.

  “Sebastian!”

  I flew across the room and his arms were waiting. He caught me close and pressed me to him and I knew that the nightmare was over, at last.

  We clung to each other; then I broke away, torn between tears and laughter.

  “I didn’t know where you were…. Oh, Sebastian, I was desperate to see you. Where have you been?” A hundred other questions jostled against one another in my mind, but I couldn’t stop smiling, because I was happier than I had ever been in my whole life.

  “There’s something you need to know,” Sebastian said quietly, and the look in his eyes made me afraid. Now I saw how ill he looked, and how his clothes hung loose and crumpled on his lean frame.

  “Sebastian—what’s wrong?”

  “I’m running out of time.”

  So this wasn’t the miracle I had been hoping for. The church bell began to strike and the sound echoed crazily around the room. Time…time…there’s no time left…. The walls seemed to shake…. I grasped hold of Sebastian’s hand and he pulled me gently to him.

  “Evie, I’ve been sick and weary for so long, but I had to find you. I have to tell you something.”

  “What is it?” I asked, afraid to hear his reply.

  “That you’re the most beautiful girl I ever saw.” He smiled and my heart flipped over, but the clock was striking, calling to Sebastian from far away. But I couldn’t be sad, not now, not yet. I would be sad later, when the bell stopped ringing. Right now, at this moment, Sebastian was there, next to me, and I could smell the sweet warmth of his body as he leaned over to kiss me….

  There was a crash, a knocking at the door, and Miss Scratton entered the room, dressed in a long black robe. She held out her hand and said coldly, “Your necklace, Evie, give me your necklace.”

  The lights swirled again and I felt Sebastian slip out of my arms. “No,” I cried. “No, no, no…”

  “The necklace, Evie,” he shouted. “I have to tell you…hide it…don’t let them see it…they’re coming….”

  He seemed to vanish into the red glare of the dying sun, and all I could hear was Miss Scratton’s harsh voice: “Your necklace…your necklace…your necklace…”

  I woke up, sobbing under my breath. “No, no, no…” The sound of the church bell was drifting clear and high across the frozen valley. Three…four…five…six…

  Another day was dawning without Sebastian. I sat up, then dragged myself out of the dorm and down the corridor to the bathroom. Tugging open the door of one of the cubicles I retched violently into the basin. To be with Sebastian in my dreams, to hear him and touch him and hold him, and then to be flung back into the empty waking world was more than I could bear. I was sick again, spilling out my guts instead of my heart. Sebastian was out there somewhere, slowly fading from this world and sinking into the abyss, and I was still hadn’t found out how to stop it.

  I washed myself with cold water, trying to freshen my body and my mind. Water—my beautiful, translucent element: as quick as fire, as smooth as air, as weighty as earth…

  Hide the Talisman, Sebastian had said. Had it really been him, or was it my jumbled thoughts trying to make sense of things while I slept? Perhaps I had been too flippant about our escape from the coven the night before. The confidence I had felt then began to drain away. After all, if Sarah hadn’t been able to sense their movement through the layers of earth and rock they would have been upon us. The Talisman could have been taken. I could have been taken. It could have been my last week, my last day, as the note had threatened.

  As I dried myself, my hand brushed against the necklace, cool against my skin, hanging on its silver chain under my nightclothes. Although my high-buttoned school shirt and tie usually covered it up, there were times when I had to change into my gym clothes, take showers, lie in bed asleep. At any moment, one of the mistresses, whether she served the coven or not, might see it and demand it from me. Give me your necklace…give me your necklace….

  I had made a decision.

  I would trust my dream Sebastian. He had told me to hide the Talisman, and I would, until I was ready to use it. Pulling my robe tight, I hurried out of the bathroom and went back to the dorm. I crept over to Helen’s bed and shook her gently awake.

  “Shhhh!” I warned her. “It’s only me.”

  Helen sat up and yawned, pushing her hair out of her sleepy eyes. I knelt at the edge of her bed and tried to explain everything in a hurried whisper, before the other girls woke up.

  “After this weird dream and what happened last night, I think we definitely need to hide it somewhere safe,” I said in a low voice.

  “I think you’re right. Wearing it is like an invitation for them to come and get it. But where would be really safe?”

  I had already decided. There was only one place it could be.

  “Uppercliffe. No one will find it there.”

  “Okay. When?”

  Fortunately it was Sunday. We would be allowed out that afternoon.

  “We’ll go today, as soon as we can,” I said.

  Celeste turned over lazily in her bed and opened her wide, innocent eyes. “Go where?”

  I ignored her. The sooner the Talisman was buried out of sight, the safer it would be.

  Sixteen

  FROM THE PRIVATE PAPERS OF SEBASTIAN JAMES FAIRFAX

  I have been buried out of sight, here in this narrow, lightless place. But now, at last, I will get out. I will be free.

  I saw you.

  Perhaps it was an hour since, or a lifetime ago. I can no longer reckon such things. But I saw you, Evie. I touched you. I felt alive again. You always made me feel alive.

  Life, breath, strength—all because of you.

  I was waiting for you in the chamber in the Abbey that had once belonged to Agnes, though all was bare and altered. It was sunset. The earth was alive with fire and ice. Fire and water.

  Agnes and Evie.

  Agnes was like my sister, but you are my whole world.

  I waited for you. I heard your footsteps and the next moment you were in my arms. If I close my eyes, I can still recall the softness of your skin and the scent of your hair—I can feel the flutter of your heart, the sigh of your breath…

  Oh, God! How can I stand to be away from you for one single moment when I have so little time left?

  Seeing you has given me strength.

  I will reach you again, and not just in my mind. It was a dream, and yet not a dream. Now I need to make it a reality. You have awoken me, and I no longer feel so drained of life.

  I will get out of here.

  Evie, I will come to you, I will find a way.

  A light shines on my face. The darkness has receded slightly. The frost in me is thawing, and all because of you.

  Seventeen

  The snow had thawed overnight and the country lanes had turned into mud-spattered slush. Most of the girls in my class complained about wet feet and cold fingers during the long morning walk to the village church and back, but I had other things on my mind.

  Sarah and I were going to ride to Uppercliffe Farm that afternoon, and before our visit to the farm, I was going to have the first of the riding lessons that Dad had arranged. To be truthful, I wasn’t cra
zy about being on horseback again. Horses are unpredictable, aren’t they? It’s dangerous…. I had tried to shrug off Harriet’s silly comments, but my stomach had begun to flutter with nerves. Although I could sit on a pony and jog over the moors, I didn’t really know how to ride properly. I hoped the teacher wouldn’t expect me to gallop, or jump, or do anything fancy. I wasn’t afraid of swimming in the roughest seas, but I hadn’t been brought up around horses and I would never be entirely comfortable with them.

  After lunch, I went up to the dorm to change, pulling on the smooth new jodhpurs and shiny riding boots that Dad had given me at Christmas. I felt for my necklace under my sweatshirt.

  “Agnes?” I hesitated. “Agnes, tell me, am I doing the right thing? Should I take it to Uppercliffe?” The thin curtains around my bed stirred, as though blown by a breeze from the moors, and I heard the echo of a sigh. Then there was silence, except for the urgent beating of my heart.

  Sarah would be waiting. I had to go.

  I swung out of the dorm and clattered down the marble steps and reached the second floor, where the staff quarters were. Miss Scratton was locking the door to one of the rooms. She looked up and saw me, then beckoned me over.

  “I hear you are going out riding with Sarah? She made a request last night for you to ride over the moors together this afternoon.”

  “Um, yes…”

  “Be careful that you don’t stay out too long. It’s getting colder again, and I believe that more snow is on its way.”