A Skinful of Shadows

CHAPTER 16

Ten minutes later, a small murder of Crowes were gathered around Lord Fellmotte. White Crowe, Young Crowe and Old Crowe the steward all stared at the lolling form of their master, as if the moon had fallen and broken at their feet. A goblet of brandy had been brought from the kitchen, and Makepeace held it to the invalid’s lips.

‘My lord — my lord, can you hear me?’ Old Crowe peered into his master’s face. ‘Oh, this is bad. This is most perilous bad.’

Lord Fellmotte’s face was the colour of old china. His eyes were still alive, and through them Makepeace could see the ghosts glittering and seething with black fury, like beetles scrambling about on a burning log. However, somewhere within the complicated machinery of his body, some cog had moved awry, and now he could scarcely move.

Makepeace wondered if there was anything left of the original Sir Thomas within his mortal shell. Perhaps, perhaps not. But the heart that beat was his, and perhaps hearing of his son’s betrayal had broken it. Maybe there had been just enough of him left to destroy the whole machine.

‘We must move his lordship to his bedroom,’ declared Old Crowe. ‘Discreetly — the other servants must not know that he is laid this low. The family would not want to show such weakness at this time.’

Makepeace helped, and nobody stopped her. Once his lordship was safely installed in his chamber, the Crowes held a quick, whispered conference, their beaky noses almost touching.

‘We need a physician,’ Old Crowe muttered. His little black eyes moved to and fro, as if he were telling abacus beads with his mind. ‘We should send a man to ride round Palewich, Carnstable, Treadstick and Gratford, and find out whether there is any doctor that did not leave with the regiment.’ He turned to White Crowe, and asked the question that had been burning in Makepeace’s head. ‘What happened to James?’

‘James?’ White Crowe looked slightly taken aback.

‘Yes, James! Did James survive?’

‘I did not see him myself . . . but yes, I hear he was seen alive after the battle.’

James was alive. Relief sent warm prickles over the skin of Makepeace’s face and neck.

‘Then where is he?’ asked the old man. ‘Did he flee with Symond?’

‘No.’ White Crowe shook his head. ‘As I hear it, he stayed with the men and fought bravely, even when they were hardest pressed. I assume that he is still with the army, but I did not tarry making a list of the survivors. There was a great deal of confusion after the battle, and I thought that I should bring the news as soon as possible.’

‘You made no effort to trace him?’ Old Crowe’s face turned a dusky plum colour. ‘You of all people should know better! If his lordship does not mend, then the masters will soon need a new vessel! Symond is fled, Robert is lost, and the rest are scattered across the country. We need James!’

Makepeace held her breath. Her mind had been focused upon her half-brother’s fate and her uncle’s collapse. Suddenly she was presented starkly with her own danger. Very soon the Crowes would remember that they did not need James.

‘We will find him if he can be found,’ said Old Crowe. ‘And we must contact the rest of the family, or as many as we can reach. This is a matter for them to decide.’

He gave Makepeace a glance of suspicion and hostility.

‘As for that girl . . . she may be a part of this nest of vipers. In any case, we cannot have her running loose, talking to the other servants or trying to send word to James. Lock her up.’

Thus it was that Makepeace found herself locked in the Bird Chamber once again. Only when she heard the key turn after her, and knew herself alone, did Makepeace let herself slump against the wall.

The smell of the room woke Bear. He recognized the barred window, the cold and the peeling walls. His memories were foggy, but he knew it was a place of pain.

Oh, Bear, Bear . . . Makepeace had no comfort to give him.

What did Symond tell you, James? How did he persuade you to help him steal that charter? What did he say he would do once he had it? Did he promise you power, or fame, or freedom?

Did you know that he was planning to kill Sir Anthony, and betray the whole regiment? No. Of course not. You wanted to be a hero. You wanted to serve the King. You wanted to be part of a brotherhood of arms. You only knew half the plan, didn’t you?

‘Oh James, you mooncalf!’ she muttered aloud. ‘Why did you make a plan with him instead of me? You trusted the wrong kin!’

After four days of gruel and solitude, Young Crowe came to summon Makepeace from the Bird Chamber.

‘Make yourself presentable,’ he said sullenly. ‘The Elders wish to speak with you — in the Map Room.’

Heart pounding, she followed him down the stairs.

Hush, Bear, she thought, wishing that she could hush her own mind. Bear could not understand what was happening, but she suspected that he could sense her own subdued panic. She could feel him shifting uncertainly. Hush, Bear.

Buried in the heart of Grizehayes, the Map Room was windowless. Its light flickered from candles in little alcoves, their plasterwork louring with soot. The walls were divided into panels, on each of which was painted a different battle map. Most were great Christian triumphs — the Siege of Malta, the Siege of Vienna, and battles against the Saracens during the Crusades. Blue seas writhed around tiny identical ships. Generals loomed giant-like next to the minute ranked tents of their troops.

Seeing the shadowy outlines of three Elders waiting there silently, Makepeace wondered whether any of the ghosts within them had been at those battles. Perhaps they remembered seeing those painted sails billow, and those stitched cannons belch smoke.

As she entered with Young Crowe, two of the three seated figures looked up at her.

The first was Sir Marmaduke. Again Makepeace was daunted by his sheer size, and shivered as she remembered fleeing from him across the dark moors. The sight of him gave her a twinge of physical panic, like a mouse freezing at the sound of an owl’s call.

The second was Lady April, with her tin-white, knife-edge cheekbones and small, claw-like hands. She sat at the edge of her chair, watching Makepeace with unnerving, unblinking attention.

Makepeace’s gaze moved to the third figure, and the world seemed to twist out of shape. It was far younger than its companions, and yet there it was, in a green velvet coat and embroidered shoes. Every inch of that figure was as familiar to her as the lines of her own hands, but transformed by unutterable strangeness, like a thing from a nightmare.

He raised his head at last to look at her, and his mouth moved in a smile. She knew every detail of him so well — the double creases in his cheeks, the tiny nicks and scars from tumbles and fights, and his honest, scrapper’s hands.

‘James,’ she whispered, feeling her mind darken with despair.

The smile was not his, and behind his eyes dead things looked back.

CHAPTER 17

‘No,’ said Makepeace, very quietly. Her voice came out so faint and flat that she could hardly hear it. No, not James. I can bear anything but this. She was aware of the Elders talking nearby, but their words fell around her like so much hail. ‘James,’ she said again. Her mind seemed to have broken its axle.

‘God’s feathers, is she an actual imbecile?’ snapped Sir Marmaduke.

‘No, but she doted on her half-brother.’ Elder James gave Makepeace a wraith-eyed smile that was almost tender. ‘She was his faithful tool. They have been playing a game of sorts, imagining themselves captives like the princes in the Tower, and hatching little escape plans together. The spark and genius of the plans was always his. She was devoted, but too timid really for such a conspiracy.’

Makepeace clenched her teeth, and fought for self-control. If she lost her rein on her emotions now, all hell and Bear might break loose.

‘And you are sure she knew nothing about the theft of the charter?’ asked Lady April, in her glassy, chiselled voice.

‘Oh, she hid it for James overnight, but she had no idea what it was.’ Elder James’s mouth puckered briefly with sour amusement. ‘She was James’s cat’s paw, just as James was Symond’s instrument. Neither of them know where Symond has gone. Neither knew that he planned to flee.’

Even as she reeled with shock and anguish, Makepeace’s mind was struggling to take the truth on board. James was possessed. Her brother was now an enemy.

With a chill, she remembered Lord Fellmotte speaking of Sir Thomas’s memories as ‘a jumble, like an ill-sorted library’. The ghosts in James would have access to his memories. Everything James had known was now known to the Elders. Every secret conversation, every plan, every shared secret . . . the very thought made Makepeace feel sick and cold.

James must have been captured and dragged back to Grizehayes, so that Lord Fellmotte’s ghosts could be poured into him. And yet, even as this occurred to Makepeace, she felt a pang of doubt. The voice with which the new Elder spoke did not belong to James, but it did not sound much like Lord Fellmotte either.

‘Has it really come to this?’ Sir Marmaduke demanded, looking Makepeace over with undisguised disdain. ‘Look at her! How can we think of using this pockmarked little slattern?’

‘We do not have the luxury of time!’ retorted the James-Elder. ‘Lord Fellmotte is sinking fast.’

‘Well, perhaps we must use her as a temporary bolthole, until we have something better?’ suggested Sir Marmaduke.

Lady April gave a startling hiss of disapproval.

‘No! You know the risks we take every time we move abode! If we keep pouring ourselves from vessel to vessel like so much wine, some of us will be spilt. Have we not lost enough kin of late?’

‘Indeed!’ snapped the James-Elder. ‘Remember, during our last Inheritance, we lost two members of our coterie! After Symond ran us through, we lay bleeding for five minutes before that boy ran back to aid us. We were lucky that all seven of us were not lost.’

So that was it. The ghosts within James had not come from Thomas Fellmotte after all. They came from Sir Anthony, whom Symond had murdered on the battlefield. James must have run back from the fracas to help his dying relative, just in time to be possessed by Sir Anthony’s ghosts.

Numbly Makepeace realized that this had left her in terrible danger. James now had no room for the ghosts inside Sir Thomas. There were no other gifted within reach. At long last, the Fellmottes’ gaze had fallen upon Makepeace.

James and his stupid heroism . . . Makepeace closed her eyes, and tried to breathe. She could feel a heat building in her, a wordless, helpless rage and grief. Hush Bear, hush.

‘Is this girl even schooled?’ Sir Marmaduke was asking.

‘She can read and write,’ Young Crowe answered quickly, ‘and has a good seat in a saddle, but little more than that. She is hard-working, but not a creature of parts . . . It seemed so unlikely that your worships would ever consider her a suitable home.’

‘Worse and worse,’ growled Sir Marmaduke. ‘You know how much easier things are when they are suitably trained! Wearing some unschooled clod, you might as well be trying to dance a gavotte in riding boots. Vessels like that can take months to break in, and we do not have months! There is a war on, and we need Lord Fellmotte’s coterie at full strength!’

‘We have debated this to death!’ snapped Lady April. ‘There are other spares, but they are needed — tailored — reared for specific destinies. More to the point, they are all elsewhere, most of them fighting in the King’s name! Lord Fellmotte is fading. We need to act now.’

‘A woman cannot inherit Lord Fellmotte’s title or estate,’ pointed out Sir Marmaduke, but he was starting to sound pensive rather than argumentative. ‘At the moment Symond is the heir in the eyes of the law.’

‘Leave that to us,’ said Lady April. ‘We shall be sending dispatches to Oxford very soon. We shall have the King declare Symond a traitor.’

The casual tone took Makepeace’s breath away, and she could not help being a little impressed. We shall have the gardener cut back that hedge. We shall have my tailor take in the sleeves. We shall have the King declare Symond a traitor.

‘As for the other difficulties,’ continued Lady April, ‘the Crowes have them in hand. When Symond is disinherited, the next in line is yourself, Sir Marmaduke. If you were to let the title pass to your second son, Mark, who does not stand to inherit your own estates, then we might marry him to this girl once he returns from Scotland. Officially, your son would take the title of Lord Fellmotte and control of the estates . . . and unofficially he would accept the guidance of his wife.’

The Elders settled into silence, their features flexing and rippling. Three different conferences were taking place. Three ancient, deathly committees trying to reach a decision.

‘A cook is hardly a suitable match for our son,’ demurred Sir Marmaduke.

‘She can be made suitable,’ said Lady April. ‘Crowe — what do you have for us?’

Young Crowe cleared his throat, and opened a large, leather-bound book.

‘My father has found records of one Maud Fellmotte, daughter of Sir Godfrey Fellmotte and Elizabeth Vancy. They were from a minor branch of the family, all now dead, may God reward them. Little Maud lived just long enough to be baptized, then went to her eternal reward. If she had lived, she would be fifteen years old . . . the same age as Makepeace.

‘Let us suppose that Maud never died. She lived on, and became a ward of the family in one of their Shropshire properties. And now she is brought back to Grizehayes, so that she can become engaged.’

So this was the way Makepeace would be transformed into a ‘suitable match’. She would be given a new name, a new history, new parentage and a new future. Makepeace the under-cook would not just die, she would vanish like a soap bubble and leave no trace.

‘But . . . people must remember the real Maud!’ Makepeace blurted out, amid rising panic. ‘There must be a slab with her name in the family crypt!’

‘Her close kin are all dead and the household scattered,’ Young Crowe rejoined reassuringly, directing his words to the Elders, not Makepeace. ‘And names can be chipped away.’

Makepeace imagined the Crowes taking a chisel to a little memorial slab. Then she imagined them chipping away her own name, her face, her very self.

‘Maud is a little dead girl in the ground.’ Makepeace knew she had to hide her feelings, but this was a step too far. ‘I cannot steal her name.’

‘It is not stolen, but given!’ Young Crowe gave her a rictus smile of annoyance. ‘Think of it as a hand-me-down.’

‘But if I take on a new name, everyone will wonder at it!’ exclaimed Makepeace in desperation. ‘I am known here! In the house, on the estate, in the villages. If you dress me as a lady and call me Maud, nobody will be fooled! They all know who I am!’

‘Nobody cares,’ Elder James interrupted coldly. ‘You are of no consequence. You have nothing that we have not given you. And nobody in this whole county will raise their voice against us. If our dogs chased you across the moors until you dropped, nobody would help you. And nobody would breathe a word about it afterwards.

‘You are who we say you are. And if we say you are heir to a destiny greater than you ever deserved, and wealth beyond your merits, then that is what you will be.’

Hush, Bear. Hush, Bear.

Makepeace’s new prison was more luxurious than the last. It was a green silk chamber with lacquered furniture and a bed with embroidered hangings. It had been redecorated when it was thought that Symond might marry an heiress. In the clothes chest was fine, clean linen, a skirt of silvery silk, a summer blue velvet bodice with pearls along the neckline, and a white cap trimmed with lace so fine a spider might have spun it.

There was even a bowl with two hard, yellow oranges in it. Makepeace had occasionally cooked with oranges, and marvelled at the exotic, stinging smell of the peel when it was cut, but she had never eaten such rare fruit. Now the sight of them made her feel sick.

For a while, all she could think about was James. Brave, foolhardy James, always so in love with his own plans, and unable to see the flaws in them. Why hadn’t he told her about his scheme with Symond? Perhaps he had been proud to have outgrown her, and to be hatching schemes with a fellow man instead of his younger sister. And now there was no more James, only a shell of ghosts like their uncle.

Or was he quite gone? Makepeace found herself desperately scrabbling for hope. Two ghosts from Sir Anthony’s coterie had been lost during the Inheritance, so that must mean that James had five spectral intruders instead of seven. If that created a little more room, perhaps his personality had not been crushed to nothing just yet. He was young, angry and stubborn. Perhaps he was still fighting. Perhaps he could be saved, somehow.

However, right now she also needed to think about saving herself. Symond had fled. Sir Robert was dead. The war had scattered all the other spares and heirs. Lord Fellmotte was sinking fast.

When he died, the Fellmottes would tear her open, and rip out Bear when they discovered him. Then seven ancient, arrogant ghosts would crowd into her, and she would feel her own mind stifle and die.

Perhaps Sir Marmaduke’s son would refuse to inherit the estates and marry her. Surely it was possible? How could he want such a fate? Who would want to marry a rough-handed girl brimming with the ghosts of his grandfathers? How could he walk down the chapel aisle with her, and slide a ring on to her finger, under her watchful, dead gaze? How could he bear to take a monster like that to his chamber and father heirs on her?

But it would do no good, she realized. By the time Sir Marmaduke’s son was told of the arrangement, she would long since have been taken over by the Fellmotte ghosts. Even if he protested it would be too late to save her.

Makepeace made a quick search of the room. As she expected, the windows of her chamber were too small for her to squeeze through. She might have been able to signal through them, but there was no friendly eye outside to see. Her door was bolted from the outside. The embroidered sewing box contained no scissors or even pins, nothing she could use as a weapon.

Makepeace pressed her fingertips hard against her skull and tried to think. The Elders knew everything James knew. But James had not known everything.

There were hiding places she had never told him about, discoveries she had never mentioned. He did not know about the ivory device she had stolen from Sir Thomas’s precious collection of navigational paraphernalia, or the rag-rope she had quietly lengthened whenever an unwanted scrap fell into her hands. Most important of all, she had never told him about Bear.

I trust you, she had often told him. But was that true?

No, she realized, with a feeling like grief. All these years, even while she plotted with James, in her heart of hearts she had been waiting for him to betray her. When at last she had looked into his eyes and seen a host of dead enemies staring back, her mind had filled with a storm. But there had been an eye to that storm, a quiet core where a calm, relieved voice was saying: Ah, there it is at last. No more waiting for the sword to fall.

She had always loved James. But she had never truly trusted him. Somehow, this was the saddest realization of all.

A news-sheet on the dressing table caught her attention. As usual, reading it was a slow and painful process, but she was keen to see whether there was any news of Symond, and to learn the progress of the war.

The sheet had clearly been printed by someone staunchly loyal to the royal cause. Half the stories depicted the King’s troops surviving through courage and divine intervention. The other half ranted about rebel troops committing terrible crimes, cutting down women and children, hacking off the heads of stone saints, and burning hayricks. There were plenty of tales of miracles. He described the bitterly cold night after the Battle of Edgehill, and the way that wounded men had seen their injuries glowing with a soft uncanny light, only to find them partially healed when morning came.

One story caught her attention.

There was a soldier coming out of Derbyshire who barely survived a battle where many were lost and was after sadly transformed in manner and countenance. He said that he was afflicted with a ghost of one of his dead comrades who let him neither sleep or rest but whispered in his head and caused him to move and speak strangely. In Oxford one chirurgeon called Benjamin Quick operated on the soldier by boring a small hole into his skull with a device of his own invention, and afterwards the patient was quite returned to himself and never more complained of ghosts.

Makepeace read the story\n and reread it. Once again, a tiny candle of hope was flickering into life. It was possible that the doctor had simply cured a man of fever or delusion, but what if the soldier really had been haunted? Could you drive out a ghost using some new trick of science and medicine? That possibility had never crossed her mind before.

If there was still some trace of James inside his body . . . perhaps this doctor could save him.

CHAPTER 18

On Sunday, when the time came for the service, Makepeace took her new place in the raised gallery with the family.

After the Amens, the servants were allowed to trail out of the chapel, but the Elders remained seated. Makepeace had no choice but to stay with them. At last the living footfalls faded, and a crypt-like silence settled.

The priest spoke again.

‘In the late Battle at Hangerdon Hill, Almighty God in His infinite mercy took many of His servants from this world, and gathered them at His side where they shall stand in glory forever.’ And he spoke of the two long-dead Fellmottes that had been lost to the world when Symond’s knife ended his uncle’s life. Robyn Brookesmere Fellmotte, Knight Commander under Henry III, and victor at the battles of Crake and Barnsover. Jeremiah Fellmotte of Tithesbury, Privy Council member under four kings.

Now and then Makepeace thought she heard a faint, reptilian exhalation from the Elders behind her. Perhaps that dry hiss was all they had to offer instead of tears. They had lost comrades and relatives that they had known and counted upon for centuries.

Perhaps, also, this loss had cruelly reminded them of their own fragility. One quick stab and some mischance could rob them of eternity. They might find themselves smokily screaming like the commoner ghosts they despised, and melting into air.

The names of Sir Robert and Sir Anthony were only mentioned briefly. Their tragedy was secondary. They were bottles that had broken, spilling a vintage of great worth. Makepeace knew that the Elders saw her the same way. She herself was meaningless. She was only a fleshly container, waiting to be given meaning.

After chapel, a dressmaker measured Makepeace, and a cobbler examined her feet. More new clothes would be needed for her, now that she was ‘Maud’. She was not consulted on the colour or style, of course.

And then, in the early afternoon, Lady April came to inspect her.

‘Open your mouth,’ she said, and when Makepeace did so unwillingly, she peered closely at Makepeace’s teeth. She insisted that Makepeace take down her hair, and then raked a fine-toothed comb through it, and stared at the slender prongs for signs of lice.

Then there were questions, all asked in the same cold dispassionate tone. Did Makepeace have fleas? Any itches or pains? Did she still have her maidenhead? Did she get any headaches? Backaches? Moments of dizziness? Did she ever drink strong spirits? Were there any types of food that made her sick?

After this, Makepeace was told that she was to have a bath.

Makepeace received the news with trepidation. She had never had a real bath before, and she had heard people say that they were dangerous. The water could seep in through the holes in your skin, bringing all manner of sickness with it. Like most people, she usually just rubbed herself clean with a rag, and even then didn’t strip herself bare, but took off a few garments at a time so that she would not get cold. Nakedness would be a fine way to catch a chill.

In spite of her protests, the family’s big wooden bath was hauled out and placed in her new chamber in front of a blazing fire. Feet thundered on the steps as Makepeace’s fellow servants carried buckets of hot water up from the kitchen.

‘Can I have a screen around the bath, to keep away the draughts?’ Makepeace felt her face redden. She was in no hurry to remove her clothes in front of Lady April. Lady April had a woman’s body, but Makepeace knew that the hidden gallery of ghosts inside her would probably be male. If the Fellmottes preserved the ghosts of those they considered ‘important’, this was unlikely to include many women.

‘How quickly you learn to be delicate!’ It was hard to tell whether Lady April’s tone was contemptuous or approving. Her smile was too thin to read.

But a sheet was duly hung up around the bath to make a little tent, holding in the steam and keeping out prying eyes. Once it was in place, Lady April left the room.

We are about to wade into a warm river, Bear. Do not be frightened.

Keeping her shift on, Makepeace carefully stepped into the water, which was already starting to cool, and sat on the edge of the bath. Bear was nervous, but calmed when the water did not bite. Makepeace tried not to think of her pores opening, to create thousands of tiny holes in her defences. However, there was something luxurious and groggily soothing about the warmth and steam. She gingerly splashed water on to herself, and watched her blisters pale and soften.

A faint rattle at the far side of the room told her that the door had opened again, and then the sheet-screen parted to show Beth-around-the-house, one of the maids. She was holding a brush and a washball of grated white soap mixed with dried petals. Bear caught its scents of ash, oil and lavender, and was confused by them. He was uncertain whether soap was dangerous or food.

‘Beth!’ It was Makepeace’s first chance to talk to one of the other servant women unobserved since her ‘promotion’. She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Beth . . . I need your help!’

Beth flushed, but did not raise her gaze. She knelt by the side of the bath as if she had heard nothing, and she began dutifully making a lather.

‘I’m a prisoner, Beth! It’s a pretty cage, but it has a lock on the door, and someone guarding it day and night. I am in danger here, and I do not have much time. I need to get away from Grizehayes!’

But Beth would not look at her. It was too late to claim a friendship. Makepeace had always been careful not to care too much about the other servants, sensing the invisible divide waiting to gape between them. Now she could see that Beth must have regarded her the same way. Who could blame her? Why grow too fond of a piglet being fattened for the feast table?

Then, just for a moment, Beth did meet her eye. Please, said her frightened gaze. Please don’t.

‘They ordered you not to talk to me, didn’t they?’ whispered Makepeace. ‘But they can’t hear us now. And I won’t tell them.’

Beth gave her another quick glance, and this time Makepeace could not mistake the look of fear and distrust. Yes, you will, said the look.

And Makepeace understood. Makepeace herself would not report Beth to the Fellmottes, but soon Makepeace would not be Makepeace. She would be a vessel, and her new occupants would rifle through her memories at their leisure and discover Beth’s little disobedience.

‘Give me the brush,’ said Makepeace, her spirits sinking. ‘I can scrub my own back.’

Beth’s lip trembled, and she cast a desperate glance over her shoulder.

‘No!’ she whispered, face twisted with panic. ‘Please don’t send me away! I . . . They told me to wash you . . . to look for pimples or sores or scars . . . signs of sickness . . .’

So that was why the bath had been ordered. She was still being assessed for her desirability as a residence. Nonetheless, she could not fight the suspicion that she was also being laundered like linen, so that she was ready to be worn.

‘Then tell them about every wart!’ snapped Makepeace. ‘Every scar, and corn, and blister. Why stop there? Tell them I’m still mad, and I fall down in fits. Tell them I’m pox-ridden and pregnant.’

They’ll take me anyway, but I want them to feel sick when they do. If I can make them feel one grain as sick as I do, that is a victory.

Bear, Bear, forgive me, Bear. I promised you we would be free some day, but now we never will.

I wanted to protect you. That’s why I kept telling you to hush and hold back, so nobody would know about you. I kept you quiet. I made you meek. I never meant to tame you, Bear, but I did.

Sorry, Bear.

As night fell, she saw a carriage pull into the courtyard, and halt. There was to-ing and fro-ing around it, and for a while she dared to hope that one of the other heirs or spares had returned, or that Symond had been found. But nobody got in, and nobody got out, and the carriage just waited there, the twilight plating its wood in dull silver.

Not an hour later, they came for her.

The little table was heavy enough to use as a weapon, but light enough for her to lift. When the door opened she was standing behind it, and swung her table at the first person to enter with all her might. She had hoped that it would be one of the Crowes, who were at least ordinary mortals.

But it was not. It was Sir Marmaduke, with many lifetimes’ memories of feints and deflected blows. He reached out and tweaked the table from her grasp, fast as an adder’s strike. She barely saw his motion as the wooden weight was ripped from her hands.

She fought them as they tied her wrists and ankles. She tried to kick out at them, and thump them with her head, even as they carried her downstairs. She fought them all the way to the chapel.

CHAPTER 19

The chapel had become a haunted place. Only half a dozen candles burned, lonely lights amid the darkness. They illuminated marble plaques, an alabaster knight, a wooden effigy of a noble at rest, flanked by stumpy wooden mourners. Makepeace could guess whose memorials they were. It seemed that the eternal dead were the only bright things, the only real things, glowing in the well of darkness.

But Makepeace was real. The bite of rope into her wrists was real. The bruising grip from Sir Marmaduke and Young Crowe was real.

‘Mistress Gotely!’ she shouted, her voice echoing blasphemously throughout the chapel. ‘Beth! Alys! Help me!’ They would not come to her aid, she knew that. She was alone. But the other servants might hear her, and it would mean something to be remembered. She wanted them to know that she had not gone willingly or quietly. If they remembered that, she would still be something, if only a scar on their memories, a pang of guilt they tried to ignore.

One candle stood on the altar, which was spread with a crimson cloth. Deep red, mourning red. The embroidered silver cross spilt over the edge of the altar like the cleft in a tongue.

Before the altar stood two chairs, just as they had on Twelfth Night. One was an invalid chair, in which reclined Lord Fellmotte. His head lolled to one side, and his eyes glistened in the candlelight, moving, moving, like insects trapped under glass.

The second was the throne-like chair in which she had seen Sir Thomas convulse on the night of his Inheritance. Makepeace was forced into it, her bound wrists digging into her back. Young Crowe wound a rope around her middle and tied her to the chair-back.

‘Stop making an exhibition of yourself!’ hissed Lady April, emerging from the shadows. ‘You are in a house of God — show some respect!’

‘Then let God hear me!’ It was the only threat Makepeace could think of, the only power she could call on more dreadful than the Fellmottes. ‘God is watching — He sees what you are doing! He will see you killing me! He will see your devilry—’

‘How dare you!’ retorted Lady April. For a moment it seemed that she would strike Makepeace, but then her raised hand lowered again. Of course she would not bruise a cheek that very soon would belong to Lord Fellmotte.

‘Our traditions have the blessing of both Churches,’ the old woman hissed, ‘and six different popes. It is God that has blessed us with the ability to live on, gathering wisdom over centuries. And in our turn we have served Him well — many Fellmottes have joined the Church, and risen to become bishops, even archbishops! God is on our side. How dare you preach to us?’

‘Then tell everyone!’ snapped Makepeace. ‘Tell the world how your ghosts steal the bodies of the living! Tell them you have God’s permission, and see what they say!’

Lady April drew closer. She pushed stray strands of Makepeace’s hair out of her face, and slipped a band of cloth around Makepeace’s neck, just under the chin. Makepeace could feel it being tied to the chair behind her.

‘I will tell you,’ Lady April said icily, ‘what is ungodly and unnatural. Disobedience. Ingratitude. Impudence.’

Makepeace knew that the old woman meant it. Lady April’s ghosts believed there was a natural order to the world, bright and shining. Just as flames rose and water ran downhill, so everything found its ordained level. It was a great pyramid, with the lowly multitudes at the bottom, then the middling sort, then the nobility, and finally Almighty God as the shining pinnacle — each rank gazing at the levels above with submission and gratitude.

For Lady April, disobedience was more than rudeness, more than a crime. It defied God’s natural order. It was water flowing uphill, mice eating cats, the moon weeping blood.

‘You’re the Devil’s own pups,’ snapped Makepeace. ‘There’s no goodness in obeying you!’

‘Crowe,’ Lady April said coldly, ‘hold her head.’

Young Crowe grabbed Makepeace’s head, and held it still while she tried to jerk free. Lady April seized her jaw and forced it wide open.

‘Help!’ was the last thing Makepeace was able to shout, before a broad wooden tube was forced into her mouth, holding it so far open that her jaw ached. It was a stupid thing to shout, a waste of her last word. No friends would rush to her aid.

A nervous voice creaked from the entrance to the chapel.

‘My lord, my lady . . .’ Old Crowe was standing in the doorway.

‘Does this look like a good time?’ snapped Lady April, still gripping the tube wedged in Makepeace’s mouth.

‘Forgive me — a campfire has been sighted, out on the moors. You gave orders that if there were any sightings . . .’

‘We will look into it,’ Sir Marmaduke murmured quickly to Lady April. He started towards the door, then hesitated, his face performing the shifting Elder frown. ‘Do you still mean to travel tonight?’ he continued under his breath. ‘If enemy troops are close, the roads will be dangerous.’

‘We are quite aware of that,’ Lady April told him curtly, ‘which is why this must be done quickly so that we can leave. We have urgent dispatches and money for the King — we must travel tonight if we are to meet with our messenger. We cannot afford to find ourselves trapped here.’

‘Then give your signet ring to somebody you trust, and send them instead!’ insisted Sir Marmaduke.

‘If we trusted anybody, we might.’ Lady April’s lean mouth thinned and puckered for a moment. It seemed that her face muscles had long since forgotten how to smile. ‘Go! We will handle this. Tell Cattmore to have the carriage ready — we will be down shortly.’

Sir Marmaduke strode from the chapel, followed by Old Crowe, and the door closed behind them.

‘We need her mouth and eyes open,’ said Lady April.

Young Crowe, still gripping either side of Makepeace’s head, moved his thumbs to peel up her eyelids and force her eyes open. Her eyes watered, and the world became blurry.

She was being opened up, so that it was easier for the ghosts to get in. Makepeace writhed and screamed wordlessly, and tried to twist her hands free.

‘It is far too late to complain now, Maud,’ Lady April went on. ‘You agreed to this. You agreed with every night that you slept under our roof, and with every meal at our expense. Your flesh and bone is made from our meat and drink — it is ours. It is too late to cry over the reckoning. This is your chance to show your gratitude.’

Makepeace could feel dampness flowing down her cheeks. Her eyes were watering with the pain of being held open, and she felt stupidly angry that Lady April would think she was crying. The others’ faces were smudges now, peach-tinted with the candlelight.

‘My lords,’ said Lady April, in a far more deferential tone, ‘the path is made ready.’ And Makepeace knew that she must be addressing the ghosts waiting inside Lord Fellmotte. ‘The girl is troublesome — it might be best for your Infiltrator to come first, to subdue her, and make all ready for your coterie.’

Infiltrator? Makepeace had never heard the term before, but it sent a chill down her back.

There was a long pause. But the silence had a texture, a prickliness, like the air just before rain. There was a sibilance tickling at Makepeace’s ears. Whispers — a faint, papery, scrabble of sound.

Then Makepeace saw a wisp of something flicker between Thomas Fellmotte’s lips, like a serpent-tongue of smoke. His jaw fell open, and it crept out a little further, coiling hazily, then swelling, a soft, snaking plume of shadow. It did not thrash or flail or melt away. It began advancing with sinuous purpose, seething towards her.

Makepeace screamed, and twisted, and tried to push out the tube with her tongue, but in vain. The whisper was louder now. A single voice, but the words indistinguishable, only dusty splinters of sound. She could see it nosing this way and that like a blind thing, edging ever closer to her face. It was smoke, and not smoke. It strangled light.

And then, with one fluid motion, it seethed up over her face and poured into her mouth. Her vision darkened and twisted as it slid into her eyes.

The Infiltrator was inside her mind, and she screamed, and screamed, and could not have stopped screaming even if she had wanted to. She could feel it, sliding around in her thoughts, moth-soft, probing, insistent. It forced its way into the secret recesses of herself, and it was wrong, wrong to feel it there, like a great worm twisting inside her head. She struck out at it with her mind, but it flexed against her, forcing her back, crushing her against the walls of her own skull to make room for itself.

But Makepeace’s scream was not just one of terror. There was rage in it too. It became a roar, and she was not the only one roaring.

Suddenly she could smell Bear and taste Bear. Her blood was like hot metal. Her mind was on fire. Somewhere in her skull, she felt Bear strike out, a clumsy swipe with a terrible shadowy strength. The impact juddered her to the bone and sickened her, but she felt it tear into the Infiltrator, which jerked and flailed like a scalded snake.

There was a terrible creaking crack, and Makepeace realized that she was biting down through the wooden tube. Splinters pushed their way into her gums as the wood gave way. She strained at the bonds holding her wrists, and they broke. She grabbed at the straps around her chest and neck, and yanked at them until they gave.

Lady April jumped backwards with a speed that belied her age. Young Crowe did not, nor did he dodge Makepeace’s great, swinging blow, which struck him in the temple and hurled him across the room. He hit the pew so hard that its oaken mass tipped backwards, knocking over the next like a domino.

Makepeace stood, spitting out broken wood and plumes of ripped ghost. Her surroundings came to her in pulses. Thought was a lost gull in a storm. She was Bear, and Bear was she.

A pulse of awareness. Lady April plucking a bodkin from her sleeve, with the swiftness born of centuries of practice, and holding it in front of her. She was shouting something at the top of her voice. Calling for help? Help from the living? Help from the dead?

Another pulse. A red stripe of pain across her chest. Lady April was dragonfly-fast. Lady April’s bodkin was red. But pain and sickness were just notes in the storm-music that filled her head.

Young Crowe at her feet, winded and stunned, one arm twisted badly. He looked up at her, and she saw a madwoman reflected in his dull eyes. And then his gaze flicked to something behind Makepeace. Lady April picking up his sword. Lady April ready to lunge.

Then Lady April’s cold, cold eyes looked deep into Makepeace’s own, and saw Bear.

Makepeace saw the shock in those ancient eyes, saw the question. Girl, what have you done?

And in that moment Makepeace’s hand-paw struck out with skull-denting force. The shock of the blow jolted every joint in her arm. A pulse of dark. A pulse of light. Lady April crumpled on the floor. Smaller now. An old woman sleeping.

Bleeding.

Makepeace stood and gasped for air, as her thoughts and vision throbbed in and out of clarity. Where was she? The chapel. Pools of light. Broken wood. Two bodies on the floor. Pain spilling over everything, or maybe coloured light from the window.

Think. Think!

She stooped, unwillingly, to touch Lady April’s wrist. Every moment she feared that ghost-snakes would writhe from the old Elder and leap for her own mouth. But she had to know.

There was a pulse, a sullen, relentless tremor of life. Nearby, she could see that Young Crowe was also breathing.

Makepeace thought of the smoke-snake forcing its way into her mind, and for a moment felt a terrible temptation to stamp on Lady April’s skull and crush it like an egg. But she did not. They deserve to die, she thought, groggily, but I do not deserve to be a murderer.

‘Think!’ she whispered to herself. ‘Think!’

Her gaze fell upon Lady April’s silver signet ring. She stared at it, her thoughts shifting to form a plan. No, something too foolhardy to be called a plan. It was a desperate, ridiculous gamble, but it was all she had.

Makepeace dropped to her knees, and unfastened Lady April’s hooded cape. Her paws hurt as she fumbled with the clasp. No — her hands. Her hands hurt.

She removed the signet ring and gloves from the wizened hands. She snatched the old woman’s purse and a bag that hung at her belt. Then she quickly put on the cloak, gloves and the ring, and pushed her other thefts into her pockets. As an afterthought, she picked up the bodkin as well.

Makepeace paused just once, to glance across at the other throne where Lord Fellmotte lay slumped, his eyes following her. He still looked like Sir Thomas, and it felt cruel to leave him there, but she had no choice.

‘Sorry,’ she whispered.

It was ten o’clock, and even in her Bear-drunk state, Makepeace knew the best route to avoid attention. Over the years, she had memorized the different passages, knew where one could hide, which routes muffled your steps and which echoed them. All of this was second nature to her, which was just as well, since today her first nature was no longer behaving naturally.

Makepeace only just managed to duck into the shadows of a windowseat when Sir Marmaduke came striding past. She held her breath until he had gone. He was not running, so presumably he had not heard Lady April’s cries. As soon as he reached the chapel, however, he would see the devastation. In mere minutes the alarm would be sounded.

She scampered to the Long Gallery, removed the helm from a suit of armour, and retrieved one of her runaway packs and her carefully stitched rag-rope from inside.

There was no time to sneak out through the kitchens. She could not risk leaving by the main entrance either. At a distance or in the dark she might pass for Lady April in her stolen clothes, but there would be too many people and candles in the Great Hall for her to go unrecognized.

She had to stake all or lose all.

Hastily she tethered one end of her rag-rope to an old torch bracket on the wall, then eased the nearest casement open. It was a first-floor window set in the side-wall of the house, looking down on a shadowy expanse of flags around the corner from the main courtyard.

Heart in mouth, she tossed the loose end of the rag-rope out of the window, and clambered out on to the sill. Wrapping the rough cloth of the rope around each hand, she began to climb down the wall, scrabbling in the dark for toe-holds in the mortar-cracks between the stones. She could hear the raking sound of her own breath, and the snap-snap-snap of her careful stitches tearing, one at a time.

The rope gave when she was still four feet from the ground, but she managed to land with no more than a bruising jolt. Pulling her hood down over her face, she stalked around the corner of the house with as much confidence as she could muster.

Through the fabric of the hood, she could just make out the outline of the waiting carriage, and the silhouette of the driver seated on its roof. She hoped that he saw only Lady April’s cloak, and would not wonder why his mistress had unexpectedly emerged from around the side of the house.

She held up her gloved hand so that the ring glistened in the faint moonlight. The driver’s silhouette nodded deferentially and touched his forehead.

The carriage door was open. She moved to enter, daring to raise her head as she did so . . . and came face to face with Mistress Gotely.

The old cook was stooped inside the carriage. A basket of muslin-wrapped shapes sat on the seat inside. Provisions for Lady April’s journey, no doubt.

Mistress Gotely stared at Makepeace in shock, one hand to her own chest, breathing heavily. Makepeace knew that she had been recognized, and could only guess how guilty and dishevelled she must look. She could only stare back at the broad, sullen face of her mentor, tormentor and companion — the woman she had liked, but never trusted with anything important.

Makepeace felt her mouth move to shape the word that Beth had whispered to her.

Please.

After a long moment, Mistress Gotely lowered her eyes.

‘Apologies, my lady,’ she said, clearly enough for the driver to hear. ‘God speed you on your journey.’

And she stepped out past Makepeace, dropped an awkward, gout-skewed curtsy, and hobbled back towards the house.

Hardly daring to believe in the chance she had been given, Makepeace climbed quickly into the carriage. She banged twice against the roof, and the driver whistled up the horses. The carriage lurched into motion.

Thank you, Mistress Gotely, she thought silently. Thank you.

There was distant shouting somewhere in the house. Makepeace thought she could hear Sir Marmaduke’s voice.

‘Close the gates!’ came the faint words. ‘Close the gates!’

But she heard it only because she was listening for it, and the driver did not seem to hear it at all. For the clipper-clop became a trot, and now they were out of the courtyard and through the gate. The trot became a canter, the limes that flanked the road raced past, and then they were on the main road and away, the moorland’s rugged, indifferent face silver-stubbled in the moonlight.