The feather puzzled her. It was far too long for any bird she knew. It glistened, and there was a faint sweet smell on it. Sleepily she gazed at the page it had marked.
“Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols; the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee.
“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning.”
It was the story of the proud angel that had been cast out from heaven in the great war of the powers of light and darkness; Lucifer, who had become devious and evil, become Satan. Not the sort of thing to read at night.
The candle spluttered. She put the Bible on the table, climbed under the heavy quilt, and blew out the flame. Something the tramp had said whispered through her head.
“How are we all fallen so far?”
Only once did she waken.
Very late, it must have been. The moon had risen; as she opened her eyes she saw how it silvered the thinnest edge of the looking glass. Sarah lay stiff. The fire had sunk to a glow. All around her in its black stillness, Darkwater Hall lay sleeping.
Except for the footsteps.
Faint in the darkness, they creaked the boards on the narrow stair outside her room. Hardly breathing, sweat prickling her back, she raised her head and listened for them. Down the corridor they came, over the canvas matting; a slow step, halting.
She turned over, soundlessly, staring through the dark in terror at her door, at the faint slot of glimmering light under it, but the footsteps went straight past, even and steady, like a man sleepwalking or lost in thought. She didn’t light the candle.
Instead she swung her legs out, unlocked the door, and opened it, a tiny fraction. Cold drafts stirred her hair. She put her eye to the crack.
The corridor was dim. Small moonlit squares slanted across it. At the far end was a door and she saw that someone was there, unlocking it. Keys clinked.
It might have been Azrael; in the dimness she couldn’t tell, except that whoever it was was tall, and wore some dark robe. He opened the door.
And she heard, just for a moment, the distant, unmistakable sound of water; deep, running water, echoing in vast underground hollows.
Then he was gone.
Bolts were slotted tight.
The house was still.
Breakfast would be an ordeal, if the servants were all like Scrab. She put the blue dress on, tidied her hair, and looked at herself thoughtfully in the mirror. “Don’t say much. Be dignified. Listen. Find out how things run.”
First, though, she went to look at the door at the end of the corridor, but when she got there she found only a long tapestry with some dusty hunting scenes on it. She lifted it and groped behind, but the wall was solid and paneled and thick with dust.
Bewildered, she let the folds drop, rubbing her hands.
Had she dreamed it? She didn’t think so.
Uneasy, she found her way down. It had been dark last night, with only Scrab’s candle flickering in the shadows, and this morning in the cold sunlight the house seemed very different. At the bottom of the stairs passages ran both ways, flagstoned and silent. She paused, hoping someone might come along.
It was very quiet. There was none of the bustle she had expected. Instead she had the strangest feeling that she was alone in this place, the only mortal here. And she didn’t quite feel the same. The wet scared girl who had arrived last night seemed like someone different, as if this new Sarah in the blue dress, the finest dress she had ever worn, was a lost being who had come home.
She found another staircase and swished down it. Everything was clean. There was no dust, no cobwebs. There had to be an army of servants in a place like this.
But the servants’ hall, when she found it, was quiet. A few plates lay on the tables, as if people had come and gone, but in the vast kitchens only a red-faced cook and a boot-boy were peeling potatoes.
“Help yourself, miss,” the woman said cheerily. Sarah did, puzzled. Where were the housemaids and grooms, the scullery maids, valet, butler and footmen? Where were the gardeners and coachmen, the skivvies and parlor maids? Surely they must be here.
She lifted a salver off a dish and found porridge. Another covered something made of scrambled eggs and rolled spicy pieces of mackerel. She ate porridge first, then piled some of the other on her plate, feeling the heavy knife and fork with satisfaction. In the kitchen the cook gossiped to the boy. Neither took any notice of her.
Just as she was feeling uncomfortably full the cat came in. It sat on the mat in front of the great range and began to wash its tail. She watched it, thinking of the black hound in the wood.
“Lord Azrael’s compliments,” Scrab said hoarsely, making her jump, “and if yer ready I’m to fetch you to the library.”
She brushed off crumbs. “I’m ready.”
As she went out, the cat paused in its licking. It gave her one small, watchful glance.
On the way she asked Scrab about the servants. He scowled, sucking his teeth. “’Imself’s a recluse. Likes a quiet ’ouse. The cook and I look after ’im.”
“No one else?”
“Boy, for odd jobs. Coachman. If ’e wants anyone else ’e gets ’em from the other place.”
She was silent a moment, lifting the hem of her dress as they climbed the great stair. “He’s very rich then?”
“Rich enough.”
“These other estates. Where are they?”
Ahead of her, Scrab flicked a sour glance over one stooped shoulder. “Never you mind,” he muttered. His breath stank of onions.
The door closed behind her; she heard him walk away.
Slowly she shook her head in bewilderment.
This was the landscape of her dream. A corridor, very narrow, and all down it, as far into the distance as the light allowed, she saw books, great shelves of them, floor to ceiling; nightmarish numbers of books, chained, leather-bound, clasped, hinged. She walked under them, feeling their awe. On each side were doors; peering through, she found a series of small rooms, linking with each other, as if this whole wing was a maze of learning, and in them all more books, a muddled confusion of stacks and opened volumes. On the walls, stuffed animals gazed down at her glassily; between the two windows of the third room a double-horned rhino moldered, with the plaque SHOT IN THE AFRICAN WILDERNESS BY JOHN WILLIAM TREVELYAN 1842 proudly emblazoned under it.
Outside, the winter lawns were bleak. Gulls squealed over the gray sea.
She wandered the rooms, picking things up, turning pages, wondering hungrily how and where she would start. This would take years to sort out. It pleased her, gave her a sudden, secret satisfaction.
The last room was the laboratory.
She opened the door and peered in, then knocked nervously, but no one was here. It was dim, all the window shutters firmly closed. She crossed to one and lifted the bar. The shutter swung inward; daylight turned the room cold.
She saw strange balls of glass that hung from the gilt ceiling, slowly rotating. All the walls were painted with huge, brilliant frescoes; blue and gold and green, great zodiac figures, the Goat, the Fish, the Scorpion, and over the fireplace strange symbols of sun and moon and stars. Even the small colored tiles in the hearth had odd foreign letters and twisted snakes. Machines, scales, peculiar devices littered every surface.
On the benches she walked between were open books, some centuries old, and scattered about them in total confusion strange objects; tubes of evil-smelling stuff, saucers of acrid powder, glass retorts with liquids plopping and boiling inside. She picked up a mothy furred thing and dropped it with a hiss of horror; it was the mummified paw of a small monkey, and she rubbed her hand hurriedly on her dress.
The room smelled musty and sulfurous. Astrolabes and globes and other instruments she didn’t even recognize were piled around. An Eg
yptian figure with a jackal’s head held down a stack of papers; lifting the top sheet, she found it was covered with the dark sloping writing that had been on her card. There were notebooks of scribbles and diagrams; carefully drawn wheels, a man with all the muscles outlined in his body, arrowed with unreadable symbols she guessed might be Greek.
Then, in the far corner, something shifted.
She dropped the papers and stared over. There was a clutter of things there, an hourglass with sand running through and a lamp, but the movement had been behind those. Curious, she pushed through the benches and went closer.
She saw a tall glass dome. Somehow it seemed faintly lit from inside, as if lined with some phosphorescent material. Above it was a card scrawled with the word GEMINI, and a drawing of twin embryos linked together, so realistic it made her feel sick.
As she lifted her hand, something moved inside the dome.
She stopped. Had it been her reflection?
And then she saw that a boy was sitting in the dome; tiny and far away, but alive. Real! He was reading, his hair short and oddly cut, his clothes strange. He looked well-fed and healthy. She recognized him; he was the boy in her dream, so she crouched, fascinated, her huge face level with him.
How had Azrael imprisoned him here? Tales of horrors crept into her mind, of created beings, things grown from parts of dead men.
“Can you hear me?” she breathed.
The boy ignored her. He pushed a small white box into the wall, where it stuck and made a click. A lamp lit next to him by magic. And she saw she was wrong; it wasn’t one boy but two, one dissolving out of the other, identical, and the second twin could see her, because he jumped up and pointed, and his brother turned and said, “Where?”
Sarah leaped back. Her skirt caught the dome. It wobbled and she grabbed it in terror, the two boys tumbling about inside like toys, and the door opened behind her and in the mirror she saw Azrael’s face, white with shock.
“For God’s sake!” he hissed. “Don’t drop that!”
eight
Azrael drew a black curtain around the dome and pushed it into a small wall safe, which he locked with a key on his watch-chain. Then he came over and leaned against the bench, arms folded. His face was grave, and still pale. She couldn’t tell how angry he was. She clasped her hands behind her back, stopping herself from bursting out with ridiculous excuses.
“Well,” he said finally. “Perhaps Mother Hubbard was right. You are a troublemaker after all.”
“Changed your mind?” she murmured.
He smiled. “Once I set my sights on someone, Sarah, I never change my mind. But there ought to be some rules, don’t you think? The first can be that you never enter this particular room without me.” He picked up a smooth egg-shaped stone and rubbed it with acid-scarred fingers, as if self-conscious. She almost felt disappointed. So she said, “What was in that thing?”
He looked up, sly. “What do you think?”
“I saw . . . two boys. Twins. They were real, like live people. How can you keep them in there? Won’t they suffocate?”
He smiled again, shaking his head. “Oh, Sarah. Your education has been neglected. How we’ll change all that.” He put the stone down and limped down the bench, putting things back in their places. Then he took his topcoat off, tied a white apron on, and began to stir and examine the retorts. “What you saw was best described as an image. Real, but not real.”
“I saw it,” she said, stubborn.
“A vision. Beings that might exist elsewhere.”
“Spirits?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
The cat had come in. It picked its way along the bench delicately, over shells and carved wood and models of insects. Then it looked at her and mewed.
“Yes,” Azrael said absently. “Quite right. Mephisto says it’s time you started work.”
She stared at him. “Sorting the books?”
“Indeed.”
“Where do I start?”
He shrugged. “Wherever you wish. You’ll find everything you need out in the rhino room. Take your time. Enjoy yourself.” He stroked his dark faint beard and lifted an eyebrow. “After all, this isn’t Mrs. Hubbard’s academy. This is another world, Sarah.”
And it was. It was heaven. She could hardly believe she had fallen into it. There were books of history, Greek plays and Roman battles, atlases and prints of beautiful paintings; there were poems and novels and scattered pages of strange music and hundreds of sepia photographs of Egyptian mummy cases, their painted eyes wide. Above all, there were the mysterious and magical books of alchemy, bound in calf and leather, their stiff pages closely covered with the dark letters of unknown languages, of spells and philosophic musings and recipes and diagrams.
The quest for gold fascinated her. What process could transmute dull metal into a shining beauty? What sort of power would that be?
For hours she just browsed and read, turning strange, wonderful pages. Scrab shuffled up with a tray at some time but she barely noticed him; later, when she realized she was hungry, the food had long gone cold, the afternoon dark. She hadn’t eaten a thing, caught up in the enchantment and glory of the books.
Her head felt muzzy, her eyes tired. Picking up some meat and stiffened bread, she chewed it in delight, then crossed to the casement and opened it, letting a cold sea wind straight in.
Far out over the fishing fleet, the gulls and terns made screeching clouds; the lobsterpots were being lifted. Below, Lord Azrael was coming up the track on a pale horse. She hadn’t even heard him go out. Scrab came down to meet him, greasy coat gleaming.
Azrael waved up at her. “Don’t strain your eyes,” he laughed, the wind flapping his collar.
She shrugged. “I haven’t even started yet,” she whispered to herself.
It was easy to forget, in the library. All week she lived in its warm cocoon. The books were a spell; once she touched them, their stories and knowledge held her tight. Gradually she worked out a careful plan; to get them all down, room by room, shelf by shelf, and sort them into categories—history, science, religion—and then to number them, making accurate lists. There were thousands, and it would take years to do, even if she could stop herself reading them, but the idea exhilarated her. Already she had discovered a whole cupboard full of chained Bibles in unknown alphabets; the unknowable squiggles of their letters fascinating her. She had to force herself to get out and get some air, walking between the heavy October showers to the beach, where the hard sand was pitted with rain marks. She ate her meals alone and she slept deeply, as if all the worries of the world had been wiped away. Twice, sleepily, she thought she heard the distant unbolting of a door, and sometimes through her dreams ran the deep thunder of a hidden river, far below her pillow, echoing in the foundations and walls and vast chimneys of the old house.
And she didn’t go home. She didn’t even think of the cottage until Azrael mentioned it. Late on the night before Hallowe’en, she helped him open the great casements in the laboratory and wheel out the brass telescope. Scrab was there too, muttering in disgust at the oil on his hands.
“What you want with this contraption,” he said sourly, “I don’t know.” He ran a dark eye around the room. “Nor yet the rest of the junk I ’ave to clean.”
Azrael smiled. “All knowledge is in the heavens, Scrab.”
“And in ’ell, more like.” He shuffled out, wiping his palms on his sleeves.
“Why do you put up with him?” Sarah asked.
Azrael looked surprised. “He’s an old family retainer. I’d miss him, if he went. He’s devoted to me, of course.”
“It doesn’t look like it.”
He smiled, sitting at the eyepiece, and turned the scope to face the moon, adjusting the focus carefully. “And as for you, well, tomorrow is Sunday. Your day off.
You must go to church, and then home.”
“There’s too much to read,” she said evasively.
“It will wait. You’ll have a lifetime to read it all. Maybe more.”
She stared at him, but he was taking notes in the moonlight. So she said, “What if I don’t want to go?”
“You must. Otherwise my name will be further blackened in parish gossip. Sarah Trevelyan kidnapped and held against her will!”
He swiveled around, his face lit with mischief. “Or they’ll say we play cards eternally for the soul of your grandfather!”
The idea seemed to amuse him. He got up, took a pack from a drawer, and slapped it down in front of her. “Shall we, Sarah?”
“Don’t make a joke of it.”
“I’m not! I mean it. Cut the pack.”
Alarmed, she said, “Why?”
“Do it! For a wager. It will help you understand how he felt—the recklessness, the madness! I tell you what—I’ll wager all the books of my library. They could all be yours!”
She didn’t trust him in this mood. He jumped up and leaned over the bench, his lean face transformed with feverish excitement. “There’s nothing like it! The thrill of knowing you could lose everything.”
“I haven’t got anything to lose.”
“Of course you have!” He smiled, sidelong. “You have what we all have. You have your soul.”
Sarah went cold.
The feeling she had had once before swept over her, of being balanced on the edge of a dark bottomless pit of terror, wobbling, unsteady.
“My soul?” she whispered.
“Yes.” Azrael looked eager. “The most secret part of you. The real you. The spirit that will live for all eternity.”
He was joking, of course. And yet pictures from the old Bibles of the library began to haunt her, the terrible screaming torments of the damned, who had chosen evil, burning, lost in unimaginable suffering. She turned to the table. “That’s not funny.”