But I’m not the one it’s waiting for.
And as her hunger enveloped her, Trista tore the room apart.
She tipped the chest of drawers, so that all the drawers spilled out on to the floor, then scrabbled through the fallen clothes, rending them in her haste. Triss’s false pearls crunched like sugar. Books were clawed from the shelves, torn and swallowed, their leathery bindings dropped to the floor like discarded fruit husks. The straw boater and St Bridget’s blazer were bittersweet and heady and nearly choked her. The bedside table tumbled and the medicine bottles smashed. Now the carpet beneath Trista’s feet was covered in broken glass, coloured pills and sticky puddles of cordial and cod-liver oil.
All the while the dolls shrieked and clattered in outrage and fear, beating their fists of china and wood against their shelves. She grabbed a rag doll, feeling it twist and struggle in her hands, and heard it wail as her mouth engulfed it. Two clothes-peg dolls followed, then a porcelain Pierrot. The screams filled Trista’s ears as she fed in a frenzy, hardly knowing if one of the voices was hers. She was hardly aware of the cobweb tickle of her tears rolling down her cheeks. Her mind was filled with a white madness, and all sounds were meaningless.
She barely noticed when there was another noise beneath the hubbub, the sharp distant slam of a front door. Only the thunder of steps on the stairs roused her from her frenzy.
Fear sobered her in one drenching instant. Trista sprang for the bedroom door, leaping out on to the landing just as Piers Crescent came into view around the corner.
He stopped, stared. His colour and strength seemed to leak out of him. Trista had never seen him look so hollow-eyed, so desperate.
‘Triss . . .’ It was a barely audible whisper. A tiny, miserable flame of hope ignited in his eyes, and he took an eager step forward.
Terrified, Trista recoiled, baring her thorn-teeth in a hiss. Her mind was a furnace. All thought singed and sizzled into nothingness.
It brought Piers to a dead halt. Trista took advantage of that moment to flee into Celeste’s room. She had just leaped on to the sill of the open window when Piers’s voice reached her.
‘Wait! Please! Please! ’
Trista cast a glance over her shoulder into the room behind. Piers had stopped in the doorway, holding out one hand as if he could detain her from a distance. Her knees were still bent, poised for the drop to the yard. Something in his face, however, made her hesitate for an instant.
‘I won’t hurt you,’ he said, with a steadiness that evidently took some effort. ‘Please – I want to talk. I want to make terms.’
‘Terms?’ The word exploded from Trista, and the voice that spoke it was not that of a little girl. ‘You tried to throw me in the fire! ’
If I drop now, I can outpace him, I know I can . . .
‘Then your argument is with me, not with my daughters.’ Piers let out a long breath. ‘Your master’s quarrel is also with me. Tell your master – or your father, or whatever he is – that I want to make a bargain. I will hand myself over to him and suffer whatever revenge he sees fit. All I ask is that my girls be brought home safely.’
Master? Father?
Trista did not know what to feel. Triss-feelings of love, loyalty, hurt. Trista feelings of anger, outrage, fear.
‘You don’t understand,’ she said, her bitterness softened by sadness. Her voice sounded more human this time, but older than the hills. ‘You don’t understand the Architect, or me, or your own daughters. You don’t understand anything. You’re a loving father, but you’re blind. Blind enough to be cruel.’
Piers was in the dimness of the unlit room, but Trista thought she saw a pucker of tension and outrage in his cheek. It must have been years since anybody dared defy him, let alone speak to him in such terms. He took a hasty half-step into the room, but halted again when Trista tensed on the sill.
‘Then tell me – what can I do to get my girls back?’ His tone of desperation tore at her heart, in spite of everything. ‘What does the Architect want from me?’
‘He wants you to suffer,’ hissed Trista. Even now, she feared that the bird-things might be nearby and overhear her talking about the Architect. ‘Once upon a time you were useful to him. But then you broke the bargain. Now all he cares about is making you wish you were dead, and he knows the worst way he can hurt you is through your family. If you try to make a deal with him, he’ll pretend to listen, and tie you up in clever words, but he won’t give up his revenge.’
Piers stared at her for a few moments.
‘Why are you telling me this?’ he asked at last.
‘I tried to explain before,’ Trista answered with feeling, ‘but you wouldn’t listen. I don’t work for the Architect. I’m not his child or his servant. He had me made to look like your daughter, so you wouldn’t notice she was missing, and he gave me Triss’s memories. But I didn’t know what I was.’ Trista could not keep the rage and pain out of her voice. ‘I thought I was Triss. When I looked at you, I saw the father I loved. Then everything started going wrong with me, and I was terrified. I thought I was going mad. And I tried so hard to be well, so you wouldn’t have to worry about your little girl.
‘And then you tried to throw me on the fire. Do you know what would have happened if you had? I would have burned to death, screaming. That’s all. It wouldn’t have brought Triss back. Because the Architect doesn’t care what happens to me.’
Piers stood staring at her, lips pressed together as if the truth was a pill he was trying to avoid swallowing. He wanted to dismiss her words as changeling lies, she could see that, but even now she knew a hundred small details were falling into place in his mind with painful clarity.
For years the whole of Ellchester had held a flattering mirror in which Piers could see himself reflected. A man of vision and community spirit, a leading figure of the city, an ideal father and husband. Now Trista was holding up a very different mirror, with a twisted image he had never seen before. To his credit, however, he did not look away.
He made two abortive attempts to speak, before managing to frame words.
‘I was told that you—’
‘And Mr Grace believed what he said,’ Trista interrupted. ‘But he was wrong.’
‘I did not know.’ Piers dragged his fingers back through his hair. ‘I . . . All I thought of was my daughter. It . . . It seemed the only way to save her. That is all I care about – protecting my little girl.’
It was not quite an apology, for what apology could Piers give to the feral thing on his windowsill? It was close though. Perhaps this should have made Trista feel a little better, stirred her sympathies. Instead his words stung her to the quick.
This time it was not just rage on her own account but a turbulence of feelings – anger, pity, frustration and pain. Her mind was full of her other self, whom Trista had envied and despised. Triss the cherished. Triss and her nervous ailments, swaddled to suffocation . . .
‘I know.’ The bitter words were out before Trista could stop them. ‘She’s your precious treasure. That’s why you like to bury her.’
‘What?’ Piers reddened around the neck. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You and your wife,’ Trista answered starkly, ‘have been burying Triss alive for years. She’s miserable. She has no friends. She hardly ever goes out, and never gets to try anything new or difficult. She’s twisted up inside with boredom, and it’s poisoning her.’
‘How dare you!’ Despite Piers’s state of shock, this was evidently a blow too keen. ‘My daughter needs special care! If you had any idea of the pains my wife and I have taken . . . Theresa is ill !’
‘Triss is ill because you and your wife need her to be ill!’ snapped Trista. ‘Apart from Pen, your whole family is ill! None of you have been well since Sebastian died!’
She had broken the taboo and spoken the sacred name. A shocked silence followed. Piers seemed to be having trouble breathing. Trista knew her words were harsh, but they had the bitter taste of truth. They nee
ded to be spoken, and there was no gentle way to do that.
‘Sebastian died,’ Trista went on. It was too late to stop. ‘You were supposed to be in charge of the family, and in control. But he died and you couldn’t stop it happening. You tried. You made your bargain with the Architect, and it made everything worse.’
Piers had no answer. The tormented letters from Sebastian were in the very next room.
‘I think you tried to make up for it.’ Trista was probing deep in the family’s wound now, and she knew it. ‘Maybe you promised yourself that you would protect your other children from all danger. But you couldn’t do that unless they were in danger. That’s why Triss had to be ill – badly ill – so that you could save her, over and over again, the way you couldn’t save Sebastian.
‘I know you didn’t plan it like that – you thought you were just protecting her. But really all this time you’ve been teaching her to be ill. I know – I remember it all. I remember being told, over and over again, you can’t, don’t even try, you’re ill, you’ll make yourself unwell. And I remember being scared of the way my parents turned cold and angry if I ever liked somebody that wasn’t them, or wanted something that wasn’t home.’ Trista had to pause for an instant. The memories were not hers, but they bruised as if they were. ‘If Triss wants love, presents, kindness or her own way, she can get them by being ill. She can have anything she wants . . . as long as she doesn’t want to make friends, go to school, leave the house or get better. Of course she can’t get well – deep down she’s scared that if she does, her Mummy and Daddy will stop loving her.’
‘Triss could never believe that!’ exclaimed Piers aghast. ‘She knows we love her!’
‘Do you?’ Trista felt a pang as she saw her not-father blanch. ‘Or do you love the six-year-old Triss in your head, the one who never grows up, never looks at you differently and always needs you forever? She isn’t real. Your real daughter spends her life pretending to be her – it’s like a horrible game she has to play or she loses your love. Nobody is “your Triss” any more. There’s just a girl who play-acts all the time, and makes herself believe her own lies, and torments Pen out of misery and envy. She’s spoilt and spiteful and deceitful, and you have to promise that if I rescue her and bring her back, you will love her anyway, for the Triss she really is.’
A few moments passed before Piers seemed to take in the full import of her speech. Then he mouthed the word ‘rescue’ voicelessly to himself.
‘You . . . intend to rescue her.’ His tone was flat, as if he did not dare imbue it with any hope or energy.
‘If I can,’ Trista answered.
Piers looked utterly flabbergasted. ‘Then . . . you know where she is?’ He took on a look of pained hope. ‘Where? Tell me! Is she hurt?’
‘I don’t know where she is, not yet. She’s alive, or she was last night.’
Piers let out a breath, and then another thought seemed to occur to him.
‘And Pen? Little Pen?’
‘I thought you would never ask,’ Trista muttered nastily.
‘Where is she? Tell me you have not hurt her!’
‘Hurt Pen? After she saved my life?’ Trista could not keep the outrage out of her voice. ‘No. Never. But right now I think she’s safer with me. I don’t trust your Mr Grace not to decide that she’s a changeling too, and throw her in the fire.’
Piers looked anguished, perhaps at the idea that he could not be trusted with his own children. The thorny part of Trista’s heart gave a skip of malicious satisfaction. She could not help it. But there was another part of her that watched him with sadness and pity. She could not help that either.
‘If I find out where Triss is,’ Trista said quietly, ‘and if there is time, I will tell you, so that you can come to help rescue her. But now you must tell me everything that might be important – everything about your deals with the Architect.’
Seconds passed, then Piers winced before the cruel mirror he had been shown, and dropped his gaze. He swallowed down his protests and his pride and began to speak.
Trista listened, and all the while the part of her that was Triss sobbed to hear her mighty father sounding so humble, abject and destroyed.
Chapter 36
HUE AND CRY
‘I first met the Architect near the old cemetery district,’ Piers began. ‘The letter about my son’s . . . passing . . . had arrived that morning. My wife . . . It took some time to calm her. When she was asleep at last I went out, and walked through the streets without seeing them. I do not expect you to understand, but sometimes grief has a terrible energy . . .’ He trailed off.
Trista understood, and said nothing.
‘I was halfway down a dark, narrow alley when I realized that I could hear a second set of footsteps echoing against the walls. There was a man walking in step with me. He greeted me familiarly, and by name, so I answered automatically. I meet so many people, you see, and I cannot always recognize them afterwards.
‘He knew all about my work for the War effort – the harbour defences I helped to design in Kent – and talked of them so knowledgeably that I knew he must be someone of my own profession, or something similar. Then he offered his condolences for my loss. I was too miserable to care how he had learned of it. I told him that my son’s death was not certain, that mistakes were sometimes made, that perhaps another boy with the same name had died. Or perhaps his injuries were not as bad as had been thought, and that he might have recovered after the letter was sent. I must have sounded like a madman.
‘He called me his “poor fellow”, said that his house was nearby and insisted that I step in for a brandy to steady myself. There was a beautiful polished front door at the end of the alley – I thought that was strange, even then. Inside was a great studio, with light falling in through high windows. There were architectural drawings everywhere, on walls and easels. All my training told me that there was something wrong with the angles of that room, like badly drawn perspective in an old painting.
‘But I just stood there like a fool, drinking his accursed brandy and telling this complete stranger everything I felt. I told him that I would give anything to hear from my son again.
‘For a while he just stood there watching me. Then he told me that he “might be able to do something about that”. At first I thought he was going to recommend some spiritualist, one of those phony parasites who bleed the grief-stricken for money. But he laughed and said it was nothing like that. He told me that he could promise a nice, solid letter from my son within a week, if I did something for him in return. Then he led me over to look at his designs.
‘They made my skin crawl. They were plans for impossible buildings made possible. When I stared at each individual part of the design I could see that everything fitted, supported each other and made sense. I knew that it would work. But as a whole each design was madness, illogical. Trying to comprehend each as a building made my head hurt as if my brain was being twisted.’
‘But you agreed to build them anyway?’ prompted Trista.
‘Not at first,’ Piers answered. ‘It hurt my pride to consider passing another man’s work off as my own. If he had tried to bully me into it I would have resisted. But he shrugged, told me that I should not leave my decision too long, and then suggested we talk about something else. How could I banish his words from my mind?
‘In the end I agreed. The Architect asked for a list of Sebastian’s possessions, and was immediately interested when I mentioned the service watch.’
‘Did he say why?’ asked Trista quickly. Her spirits had leaped at the mention of the watch.
‘He said that clocks were servants of time but could be taught to be masters of it.’ Piers frowned, as if focusing his memory on the precise words. ‘He asked when Sebastian had died, and whether the watch had been on his wrist at the time. He was glad to hear that it had. When he examined it, though, he seemed dissatisfied, and said that it was not as strongly tethered to Sebastian as he had hoped – he suspected t
hat somebody else had owned or used it. He could still enchant it to control the flow of time, but he would need something else powerfully linked to Sebastian to bind it to my son in particular.
‘I came back to his studio the next day, and brought a lock of Sebastian’s baby hair, from my wife’s keepsake box. He opened the works of the watch and dropped in the twist of hair. The cogs jammed on it, and the watch stopped dead . . . at exactly half past four.’
Trista wondered if the hair was the only thing caught in the delicate grip of those cogs. Perhaps in that second Sebastian’s departing ghost had also been trapped, suspended in an eternal moment between life and death.
‘Where’s the Architect’s studio?’ she asked.
‘Gone.’ Piers shook his head miserably. ‘I went back, but found only a faded boarded door, and behind that a tiny cramped room covered in grime and cobwebs. I have been trying to find the Architect for days, with no success. Plainly he has no interest in talking to me.
‘When I spoke to Mr Grace this morning he seemed to think he had a line of investigation, but . . .’ Piers tailed off, his expression conflicted and uncertain. Perhaps he felt uncomfortable about revealing Mr Grace’s activities to Trista, even now. ‘But . . . he has chiefly been on your trail, so he has been tracing Miss Parish through her friends. We thought that would lead us to the Architect and my daughters.’
‘Can’t you make Mr Grace stop?’ she demanded. ‘If you tell him everything I just told you—’
‘He would not believe it.’ Piers shook his head with an air of finality, ‘even if I added my voice to yours. He has a terrible history with the Besiders.’
Trista remembered the black band around the tailor’s arm.
‘What happened to him?’ she asked.
‘It was before the War. His wife was a woman from a small village, brought up with all the old folklore. When she was very ill during childbirth, she told him that she believed she had accidentally angered “the Besiders”. She begged her husband to make sure that a pair of scissors was left in the cradle with the child to protect it. It seemed foolish and dangerous, so of course he did not.