Darkwater

seven

The dress was dark blue, with an ivory lace collar. It lay spread on the bed and she stared at it in silent wonder. Scrab dumped the candle on the fireside table. “’Imself says you might not want to get yer breakfast with the workers. So . . .”

“Yes.” She nodded decisively. “I will.”

He shrugged, scattering dandruff. “Please yerself. Servants’ ’all. Seven. Now can a man get to ’is bed?”

She summoned as much dignity as she could. “Yes. Thank you.”

When he had closed the door she dumped the sack on the floor and collapsed onto the bed’s edge, running both hands through her soaked hair. What a way to come home! Because it was home. Or should have been. The thought gave her a sort of courage. Smelling toast, she raised her head and saw on a tiny round table by the fire a tray laid with the same porcelain cup and teapot that she had seen downstairs. Unlacing her boots she kicked them off, washed face and hands in the basin on the washstand, pulled her old nightdress on, and curled luxuriously in the velvet chair, enjoying the small clear flames and eating the toast slowly, its warm golden butter dripping onto her fingers.

This was bliss. And Scrab hadn’t brought it; it had been here waiting. Azrael had been that sure she would come.

Wriggling her toes in the heat, she thought for a moment of her father, coughing in his bed in the drafty cottage, but she poured the tea out quickly and tried to forget. The money would make things better for him. But if only he would have come!

She looked around. The bedroom was small, but not a garret, its walls papered a deep red. The bed lay under a heavy coverlet, and in dimmer corners dark furniture lurked. A press, a tallboy, a small closet by the wall. The windows were shuttered. Tomorrow, she thought sleepily, she would look at it all, but she was far too tired now. But she did cross the soft carpet and open the closet warily.

A tiny moth flitted from its cedar-scented darkness. It was empty, except for a big dark book, which she lifted down. It was a Bible. There was a clasp on it, but it wasn’t locked, and a long white feather had been pushed into one of the pages. It was heavy, and she took it to the bed.

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 Egyptian 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!”