To her it seemed as if an air of hopelessness, of damp decline, had invaded the place. She paused beneath a pale square of paneling. “There was a painting there Christmastime. Surely?”
“Venn sold it last week. Piers boxed it up and I took it to the station. It’s being auctioned in Christie’s.”
“So he’s short of money.”
“Sarah, he’s out of money.”
She shook her head. As Wharton led the way up the wide, curving staircase, she thought of how the Time-wolf had once slunk up here, its eyes sapphire fragments. On the landing, the ancient floorboards creaked.
The Long Gallery stretched before them.
They walked down it, but Wharton stopped abruptly before a bedroom door. “Reminds me. There’s something you might be able to help me with, because the damned beast won’t even look at me.”
He led her inside.
Jake’s bedroom.
It had been his father’s, and he had moved in there. His clothes lay on chairs, on a heap on the floor. His laptop sat on the mahogany dressing table.
Wharton pointed up. “Horatio. Quite lost without his master.”
She saw the marmoset. It was huddled in a heap of misery on the very top of the great curtain rail. It spared her a miserable glance, its tiny face screwed up.
“Horatio!” She reached up, her voice soft. “Come on. Come down.”
The creature turned its face away.
“Just won’t eat,” Wharton said gloomily. “If Jake gets back and finds him dead, there’ll be hell to pay.”
Suddenly he turned to her. “Though what if he never gets back, Sarah. What if . . .”
“Don’t panic.” She kept her voice firm. “Of course he will. Pass me that chair.”
It took ten minutes to coax Horatio down, but the grapes she found proved too enticing, and finally he jumped into her arms with a screech and snatched the fruit.
“Brilliant.” Wharton was delighted. “I knew he’d like you.”
She clambered down. The marmoset’s fur was soft and lustrous. It looked up into her face and chattered. Then it took another grape, held a handful of her hair, climbed onto her shoulder, and sat there, sucking. Its tail was a soft tickle around her neck.
She turned. “Right. Let’s go to the mirror.”
At first she was amazed that Venn had left it unguarded. Then, as she ducked through the viridian web that was spun about it, she noticed the new bank of security devices, the alarms and laser-thin beams of light that Wharton held her back from.
“Venn is more and more afraid of theft. Getting paranoid. There’s the control panel, and they’ve wired it up like the crown jewels. If there’s any sign of Jake coming back, the whole house will probably explode with alarms. This is what the portraits are paying for. We can’t go any closer than this.”
Sarah hissed in frustration. “Crazy.”
“Maybe. But that thing scares me . . . It seems to have a life of its own.”
The obsidian mirror.
It leaned, facing her, a dark sliver of glass in its jagged silver frame. In the angled shadowy surface, she saw a slanted image of herself, and her own face looked different, subtly altered. The mirror showed her herself, but for the first time a stab of doubt pierced her—did it show what was there now, or were its reflections warped and rippled through by time, so that she might be seeing herself seconds ago? Or did the mirror show not only the outward form but how a person felt? Their emotions? Their soul?
Wharton was talking. She dragged her attention back.
“. . . can do about any of it. I never thought I would miss that infuriating, arrogant wretch.”
She realized he was talking about Jake.
“Jake can look after himself.”
“So could his father. But what if we never see him again, Sarah?”
She patted his elbow, and walked as near as she dared to the network of lights. “Don’t worry. Keep believing. Gideon will find him. He promised.”
Wharton snorted. “If Summer knows that, Gideon might be torn into pieces by now.”
“You really have to . . .” She stopped. A brief glimmer, like lightning. “What was that?”
“What . . .”
“Did you see!”
She felt him hurry beside her. “I can’t see anything except . . .”
The mirror flickered.
For a brief, terrible moment it was not even there. They were in a place of utter darkness, the air a choking dust; all around them and over their heads, a crushing, suffocating mass of rubble and brick.
Sarah gasped.
Wharton swore.
Then the mirror was clear.
“What . . . where was that!”
Sarah stared at the obsidian glass, seeing her own eyes, wide and startled. She stared into the fear that the black hole had reached even here to engulf the world.
“That was death,” she whispered.
Jake sat on the wooden bed and gazed around the cell.
This was no police holding room—this was prison. They had brought him in a black police car, the bell on the roof jangling, and at least four heavy metal gates had clanged behind him. The air was stale and sour, the muted sounds of voices and the clatter of dishes marking other distant prisoners.
But it was still too quiet. Prisons should be noisy. He wondered if the military held him now, or whether Allenby had managed to keep him in his own custody, whether the blurted promise to tell all had tempted the man.
He scowled up at the cobwebbed ceiling. What a mess. What could he say? If Alicia had been running a spy ring, what the hell did he know about it?
He felt weary and out of ideas. His head ached and he was bitterly hungry—the empty plate by the door hadn’t been filled for hours. He would have given real money for a hot shower. Clean clothes. Even a toothbrush.
He scowled.
This was useless. All he needed to do was examine the room, learn the routine, make plans.
The prison that could hold Jake Wilde hadn’t been invented yet!
Ten futile minutes later he knew that it had.
And that he was in it.
On a gray day in early June my uncle summoned me to his study.
He said, “Well, my dear. It seems that today you finally come into your inheritance.”
I was astonished. “My inheritance?”
He cleared his throat. He seemed a little nervous. “Indeed. You see, it is exactly ten years to the day that your father had his, er, unfortunate demise.”
“He died? On this day?”
“Well . . . that is . . . An experiment must have gone wrong. The room was quite empty after the explosion. He could never have survived, of course, but his body must have been . . . entirely . . . My dear, I do not wish to distress you. Such details are not for ladies. Let us say his body was never found. Which made legal difficulties, as you must know.”
I sat tense with excitement. “I don’t know. No one has ever told me this before.”
“Er . . . yes.” He was very uneasy. My uncle was a small man, usually quivering with self-importance. I began to feel a strange hope creep over me.
He glanced down at a cream vellum envelope that lay on the desk. “A letter has come for you. I of course opened it, as your guardian.”
I gripped my hands together in anger. “I will take it now.”
“There’s no need. I will explain . . .”
I stood up. “I will take my letter, Uncle.”
He looked a little startled. I took up the missive and opened it eagerly. As he strode to the window and stood with his hands behind his back, harrumphing at the dismal scene, I read these fascinating words.
Messrs. Queenhythe and Carbury
Solicitors at Law,
Staple Inn, London
&nb
sp; Madam,
I beg to inform you that my client, your father, Mr. John Harcourt Symmes, is from this date legally declared deceased and that his estate, house, and chattels now revert to you.
Should you or your representative care to apply in person to our premises, we will supply you with all further details.
May I offer my congratulations on your good fortune, and commiserations on your loss.
I remain, Your most humble and obedient servant,
Marcus Queenhythe
I held the paper with trembling fingers. I could nor believe what I was seeing. My dull life of drudgery was over. I was an heiress!
My uncle turned. “I will of course set off immediately. The London house will need to be sold, and any money—”
“No,” I said quietly.
“I beg your pardon?”
I drew myself up. This was a moment I had dreamed of for years. I was not going to lose it now.
I said, “No, Uncle. I shall take the train to London myself tomorrow.”
“You! You’ve never been out of Yorkshire in your life . . .”
“Then it’s time I did.” I folded the precious letter. “As for my father’s house, it will not be sold. I intend to live there.”
He gaped. “A single woman! In London!”
“I will be quite able to afford a servant.”
“I utterly forbid it!”
Coolly I pocketed the letter and looked straight at him. “Uncle, you may bluster as you please. I often wondered why you took me in, when it was clear you had no love for me. Now I see that you must have been waiting eagerly for this day all along, thinking to obtain my father’s money. Well, I thank you both for all your . . . care . . . over the years. Rest assured I will repay all the debts you may have incurred on my behalf. But tomorrow, by the first train, I will leave.”
The years of humiliation and timidity and boredom were over!
As I marched to the door and closed it firmly I looked back and saw him mop his bewildered brow with a white handkerchief. “Bless my soul,” he breathed.
Needless to say I lay awake all night in a trembling terror.
But next morning, bag in hand, my heart quaking with fear and excitement, my head held high, I climbed aboard a train for the first time in my life and set off.
For London!
Immense, brilliant, terrifying labyrinthine London!
8
. . . It is told that there was once a man of that district named Oisin Venn. And that late one night of February he rode home from the wars, and wandered from the path, and long was he lured and mired by feylights and willows o’ the wisp in the marshy places of the moor. And he came to a deep wooded Combe and though he sensed somewhat of the danger, he entered that place.
And he became aware of the eyes of dark birds upon him, and of the malice of laughter.
Chronicle of Wintercombe
REBECCA DROVE CAREFULLY up the rutted lane.
Where it met the edge of the copse of firs, she parked and climbed out.
The wind from the sea was cold; she pulled her coat tighter, then hauled out her wellies. Pulling them on, she turned and trudged up the narrow track, the bag of groceries slung on her back.
Why he had to live out here, she had no idea.
There were cottages in the village for rent. Even on the Wintercombe estate. But then, he was working feverishly on this spell-thing, and he needed quiet.
As she came to the top of the track and opened the bleached wooden gate, she thought of Venn, down there in the ancient house, working equally obsessively with the obsidian mirror. The mirror that was Maskelyne’s. Had they gotten it to work? Had Venn already changed time to bring back a dead woman? Had Jake found his father? She hadn’t heard from Jake for weeks. The silence was unnerving.
A lapwing called and flew up, out of the gorse. The bushes were just starting to come into their mustard-yellow flowers, but something had frosted them hard. Term was half over. And she had so much work to do!
Trying to ignore the familiar guilt, she walked up and rapped on the back door. The cottage was a low, lopsided building, a Devon longhouse, once maybe the home of some medieval yeoman and his few animals. In the summer it was a holiday home for artists and romantic couples.
Now Maskelyne was camping out here.
“Come in, Becky.”
She ducked under the lintel.
“Brought you the food. And . . .”
She stopped. “So you’ve finished, then.”
Maskelyne was sitting at the oak table wearing an old overcoat, his chin propped on one hand, staring down at the peculiar pattern of discs before him. As he looked up at her, she caught that abstracted darkness in his eyes that seemed to be there more and more lately, since he had come so close to the mirror again. And the scar that disfigured his left cheek seemed deeper and more raw.
“I didn’t hear you come up,” he said.
She took off her coat and squeezed the rain from her long plait of red hair. “Too wrapped up in the spell.”
“I told you, Becky, it’s not a spell.” He gestured at the discs. “It’s not anything, yet.”
She could tell by his barely hidden despair that it wasn’t working. After a lifetime of watching him flicker like a ghost into her life, she knew the degrees of his anguish. She pulled a chair over. “What else would you call it?”
“A configuration. Have you finished your assignment?”
She shrugged. “Almost. The Wars of the Roses seem a long way off.”
Maskelyne sighed. “If my problems affect your degree, I will never forgive myself.”
She glanced around the room. “That’s my business. I told you, it’s fine.”
The room was almost cozy today. He had drawn the curtains against the rain, and a small bright fire of furzewood crackled and spat in the open grate. From the rafters hung great bunches of grasses and herbs she had no names for; their pungent dusty leaves desiccating into dusty scatters on the floorboards. The room smelled of charred wood and damp.
On the table were the discs. He had spent every hour since Christmas working on them, and now, finally, twenty-four were laid out in a pattern of six by four.
They were a few centimeters across, and each was of a different material. Some were stone—she recognized granite, limestone, basalt brought from the moor, some greenish shale from the river. Others, like the white discs of chalk and the black one of coal he had had to search farther afield for, in Wiltshire and Wales, sometimes staying away for days. A flint disc lay roughly chipped in the center. She touched it lightly. Beside it lay circles of wood, brass, silver, steel and copper, of glass and paper, cork and cotton, various plastics cut from a credit card, labels, a shiny CD. Others that disturbed her more were cut from skin, fur, fleece. Some were materials she couldn’t even identify, but certainly the central disc was of solid gold, resting in the center like a coin. It had cost a lot of money, some of it from her savings. This was the one he touched now, renewing a slow, silent process of moving the pieces, as if in some secret checkers game with himself, played endlessly, day and night.
“What will it do?” she murmured.
“It will bring them.” His husky voice was patient. “It will bring Venn.”
He moved a piece, sliding it with the softest of touches.
She went and put the kettle on, then came back, leaning closer.
Each of the discs was marked with a symbol. Some she recognized—the zodiac signs of Scorpio, Gemini, and so on. Others looked like warped letters.
She reached out to touch one.
“Don’t!” he said quickly.
“What does that one mean?”
“Mercury. The planet of speed and quicksilver. The thieves’ planet. This is Mars. This, Venus.”
She nodded. The disc made of silver had a m
oon-crescent; the central gold one a rayed circle that must mean the sun. “Astrology? Alchemy?”
He smiled, even as he moved the discs. “Both and neither. A science so ancient only ghosts remember it.”
She frowned. He rarely spoke about his life before he had leaped into the mirror. Jake had told her about Symmes’s diary—how Symmes had stolen the mirror from Maskelyne in some dingy opium den, sometime in the 1840s. But before that, who had he been? How had he come to possess the mirror? She wanted to ask. Instead she said, “You should have something to eat. I’ve brought some stuff.”
“Not yet.” His nervous fingers touched a clay disc, then slid a copper one, lightly. She went to the kettle, lifted it off the stove, and was pouring the hot water when she stopped.
She looked up. “Something’s happening,” she whispered.
The room had changed. There was a new dimness in the corners, a delicate sparkling haze. She put down the kettle and turned.
Shadows.
They were drifting, flickering over the walls and ceiling. Like the flicker of the faintest black-and-white film, people barely there, ripples of silhouettes.
“What is it?”
He didn’t answer. She crossed quickly to the table, scared by his silence. “What?”
The discs were moving.
With a sigh of satisfaction Maskelyne drew his fingers away, and still they moved. Their pattern was rapid, hard to see, a swift, silent rearrangement as if the elements themselves had taken up the dance, moving with purposeful gravity.
“How is that . . .”
“Hush. Watch.”
As the colors formed and re-formed, Rebecca wondered if they were making themselves into galaxies, into a set of concentric circles like some ancient diagram of the cosmos, some drifting clockwise, others counterclockwise, around the golden coin of the sun.
Maskelyne watched, tense.
The room darkened. The discs seemed to glow, marble and plastic and metal.
Then they stopped.
Breath held, she stared at the new configuration. Through the gently shimmering smoke she said, “Have you done it? What does it mean?”