Darkwater

by Catherine Fisher

  In seconds Azrael was with them. He slammed the door and locked it, and turned on her in wrath. “You were following me! Why, Sarah?”

  “Because you never explain anything to me!”

  Scrab was waving someone down the corridor.

  “I can’t,” Azrael said tightly. “Not yet.”

  “Sarah?” It was Martha, wet through, almost distraught. She glanced at Azrael in fright, then grabbed Sarah’s hands. “You have to come home . . .”

  “No!”

  “You must!” Martha gripped tighter. “Right now, Sarah. Your father’s dying.”

  twelve

  The fire spat, but still the cottage was cold. Pulling her woolen shawl tighter, Sarah propped a few more sticks on the flames and then the last of the sea-coal, kneeling on the old rag rug with the holes in it.

  Under blankets, her father coughed.

  They had brought his bed into the kitchen, nearer the warmth, but it was still far too drafty. She could feel the raw wind whistling and gusting in all the chinks, and the back door had rattled and banged all night. One tiny rushlight guttered on the table.

  “Sarah.”

  She hurried over. “Papa? I’m here.”

  “A drink. Please.”

  She poured the water and held it to his dry lips. He sipped it, one hand frail as a claw holding on to her wrist. When he leaned back he was sweating, despite the chill, his breath caught like a fluttering bird in his throat.

  He gasped, “She should never have fetched you.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “You have your new life now, away from this . . . slum.”

  Even now, she thought, he was bitter. She sat on the rough blanket; he looked away, restless. Despite his sunken cheeks, his white hair made him look more lordly than ever. For a second she imagined him warm and safe in Azrael’s sitting room, his feet on the footstool, the porcelain tea-service on the table. It was where he ought to be.

  “Listen,” she said, almost angrily. “You must come back to Darkwater with me. The doctor says there’s every chance of a good recovery if you had—”

  “I will never set foot in that place. Not while he’s there.”

  She knotted the ends of the shawl. Then she said, “What if he wasn’t there?”

  He turned, his chest rising with the effort of breathing.

  “What?”

  “If he wasn’t there. If he’d gone. Would you come then?”

  Driftwood crackled and spat.

  Her father drew himself up, a pitiful, stubborn effort. “Sarah. I will not enter the Hall unless this . . . interloper admits it was never his in the first place. Unless he restores what is ours with every apology. Legally.” He slumped back, suddenly gray. “And that he will never do.”

  He coughed, and she helped him up, feeling the tension knotted in his frail shoulders, the sickening knowledge of his ruin, that he never allowed to leave him. It was a while before she spoke again.

  “Papa. Was your father as cruel a man as people say?”

  Surprised, he stared at her, the gold silk of the dressing gown dirty at his neck. “Cruel? He was firm. He had to be.”

  “He evicted families who couldn’t pay. Killed a man.”

  Impatient, he shook his head. “The people here are weak, my girl. Feckless. Living among them, I can see that even more clearly. For centuries the Trevelyans were the only law in these counties. We had to take the lead. Stand no nonsense. Generation after generation, we had to commit the criminals to the gallows and uphold the rights of property. If they hated us for it, it was the price we paid. But we too, we’re getting weaker. Just like all the rest.”

  His voice was a whisper.

  “Or being purified,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Something Azrael said. Go to sleep now.”

  He lay looking up at her, uncertain, suddenly childish. “If I do, will you still be here?”

  She picked up his thin hand. “Yes. Till the morning.”

  The carriage was waiting.

  How Azrael had known when to send it she didn’t know, and she didn’t recognize the coachman either, but she climbed wearily in and slammed the door, pulling the window blinds down.

  The horses snorted, moving off with a jolt and a chink of harness. For a while she sat there, too tired to think and yet feeling remote and grand. She knew she enjoyed feeling that.

  They clattered noisily through the village, through the first swirls of snow that spun from the bleak dawn sky, and in the cold creaky darkness she leaned forward and lifted one corner of the blind. She saw how the village women plucked their children anxiously away from the coach; how the wheels splashed the fishermen working at their nets. They scowled and swore. How did they feel about Azrael? She knew they had stupid, superstitious ideas, but it struck her now that he was a good landlord, generous to his tenants. No one had been turned out because they couldn’t pay. It was more than her family had ever done.

  She was so tired. Rubbing her face with her hands was no help. She was shivering now, and the fast rattle and jolt of the coach made her feel sick, until the crunching under the wheels went suddenly smooth and she knew they were racing up the long rutted curve of the drive.

  She pulled up one blind.

  The morning was gray. Darkwater Hall rose up through the gusts of snow like a fortress from some old gothic manuscript, and as the coach swept around she saw how the gargoyles spat and snarled in their ferocious stillness, a silent malice.

  Jumping out, she ran up the steps, snow stinging her cheeks. Scrab had the door open. “Thought you’d be back,” he jeered.

  She ignored him and ran, up the great stairs, under the portraits of her long-dead family, along the corridor, through the whole library wing, setting all her carefully ordered stacks of catalogued papers fluttering and spilling in a sudden draft.

  Then she flung open the door.

  Azrael was looking in the wall safe. It was empty.

  “Where’s the jar?” she asked, breathless.

  “Jar?”

  “With the two boys inside.”

  “Ah.” He locked the safe. “That will come later. Now, how is your father?”

  “Worse.” She came over and picked up a small crucible, looking at its fine cracks and seeing nothing. “All right,” she said. “You win.”

  “Win?”

  “Yes. I’ll make your agreement.”

  He sat down, smiling a little in surprise. “I see. This makes me very happy, Sarah.”

  Clumsy, she turned the crucible in her cold fingers and it fell, smashing into white porcelain slivers with a crash that made her heart leap. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s nothing.” Azrael touched the remains with his foot. “Scrab will clean it up. Give him something to do. But Sarah, you should not be so nervous.”

  “I’m not,” she snapped.

  He nodded. “So. Tell me what you want.”

  She took a deep breath. “I don’t know who—what—you are. I do know you have power, over our lives, over the way things happen. I want my father to come back here, back to his home, and he won’t unless the estate is ours again. I want you to give us back the estate.”

  For a moment she expected him to laugh, but his smile was wry and grave. “I see. And, on your side . . . ?”

  “A promise. That things will be different. That we’ll make up for the past. We’ll treat the people fairly, I swear we will.”

  “You might. But your father?”

  “My father has learned his lesson.”

  “Indeed?” Azrael looked politely dubious. “What I see is a man who never leaves the cottage. Who lets his sixteen-year-old daughter do the work he cannot bear to think of. Does he love you more for what you
do for him, Sarah, or is he secretly ashamed of you? Or of himself?”

  She looked at him. “That’s not fair!”

  “Maybe not. But your father. Tell me, Sarah, has he even been humbled? Has living for fifteen years in a slum made him more sympathetic to the poor, feel more for their terrible struggle? Will he be generous with the wealth of Darkwater? Or will he just gorge himself on comforts, spend on luxury, make up for lost time? Will he even remember the Marthas and the Emmelines?”

  She shrugged, miserable.

  “Yes.” Azrael kicked the fragments sadly. “I think you know the answer to that as well as I. How can I give the tenants another selfish master, just to please you?”

  The silence was intense. Into it she said, “I have something else I can offer.”

  “And that is?”

  He was waiting for her to say it. So she said it, harshly.

  Squashing down her fear, telling herself he was mad.

  “My soul.”

  Azrael gave the smallest of sighs. He limped to the window and leaned on the gleaming brass of the telescope. She could almost sense his pleasure.

  “My father will die . . .” She took one step after him. “Unless he comes back.”

  Azrael gazed out at the wintry sea. “Have I treated you well?” he asked softly.

  Surprised, she said, “You know you have.”

  “Then I won’t fail you now. But . . .” He held up his hand as she came forward. “There are conditions. These things have rules. You have to work for it. How long do you think it would take to make up for the oppression of centuries?”

  She laughed, scornful. “Another hundred years might do it.”

  He nodded. “You think I’m making fun of you. But a hundred years it is. You have the estate for that time. Use it well, Sarah. At the end of the time I will come for your soul.”

  The room was utterly silent.

  She stared at him, at his grave dark face with its neat beard, a cold unease like a thread of ice inside her. For a moment she knew with certainty that he was some vast, eternal power. And then she knew he was a madman, and felt utterly stupid. “You really believe that,” she whispered.

  “Humor me.” He went to the desk, took a sheet of paper and a pen, and began to write, the swift, sloping writing she knew so well. As she watched, she rubbed sore eyes, bewildered.

  “You’re tired,” he said, without looking up.

  “I stayed up with Papa all night.”

  “Scrab will bring us breakfast. And then you should sleep.” He came over. “After you’ve signed this.”

  It was written in red ink with a seal. It said:

  I, Sarah Trevelyan, the undersigned, hereby accept from the hand of the lord Azrael the freehold and properties of Darkwater Hall from this day forward for the period of one hundred years. In return I pledge to him the eternal possession of my immortal soul.

  “This is stupid,” she said, terrified and confused. “I just want . . .”

  “Sign it.” He put the pen in her hand. “Trust me, Sarah.” The room was chill. Snow clogged the sills. The door creaked as the cat slid in.

  “I just want to bring my father home,” she muttered.

  “I know that. Sign it.”

  “The cottage is too cold for him! He wasn’t brought up to it.”

  He took her hand and guided it to the paper. “There. Just your name.”

  “And you’ll really go?”

  “The Hall will be his. Legally. If you sign.”

  She shook her head, unbearably weary, and laughed an exasperated laugh. “I don’t know what to make of you. I think we must both be mad.”

  “If we are, it doesn’t matter,” Azrael said.

  So she put the paper on the bench and signed it.

  Sarah Trevelyan

  thirteen

  At once all the clocks had started ticking. Lying in bed now, shivering under the heavy covers, she remembered that, and it seemed to her as if the house had woken up at that precise moment, that the windows had begun to rattle and the boards creaked, as if far below the Darkwater raging through its underground caverns had roared with a strange fury. Even lying here now, barely awake, she could hear tiny movements that had not been in the house before, gusts and the bang of a door, the rapid scuttle of a beetle across some wainscot.

  It took her a long time to fall asleep.

  When she did, her dreams were a jumble. She found herself in a room full of clocks, their ticking so loud she put her hands to her ears, staring around. It was the laboratory. But Azrael’s experiments had dust all over them, the alembics cracked, the liquids and chemicals in every tube dried and crusted.

  “Where are you?” she called.

  There was someone standing by the mechanical model of the planets. A dark man, shadowed by the heavy curtains. As she watched he set the model moving, and the planets spun off their wires and went careering around the room, whizzing past her. She had to duck, feeling their fiery glow, the ends of her hair singed by Mercury’s sizzle.

  “Stop it!” she hissed. “You’re breaking it!”

  It wasn’t Azrael. It was the tramp. He stepped out of shadow and she saw how big he was, taller and broader than she remembered, his coat tied with string looking more like a belted robe, and a great sword in his hand.

  “Tha’s done it now, ain’t thee!” he said angrily. “Tha’s made the pact with him!”

  “I had to. I had no choice!”

  “There’s always a choice!” he roared. “Thou’rt lost now, girl! Lost forever and all eternity!” And he swung with his sword, and the glass vessels crashed and tinkled, the top of the bench cleared with one terrible sweep, a thousand fragments bouncing and shattering on the floor.

  “This too,” he raged, and she jumped aside as he shoved the telescope over and dragged everything off the mantelshelf, notes, papers, books, carvings, globes, and hurled them all into the fire.

  The fire! She had never seen it so huge; it snarled and crackled and spat like something alive. She was almost sure she could see hands in it, tiny red hands that grasped and seared and curled the paper, a demonic delight in the roaring and heat. It had spilled out of the grate; now it rampaged through the laboratory, devouring benches and tables, and in the heart of the smoke the tramp was unlocking the wall safe with a great black key.

  “Come on,” he yelled to her. “This way!”

  There was a glass jar inside, and with another key he opened a tiny door in its side and grabbed her hands and pulled her in, the fire laughing hoarsely behind them.

  The room was a strange one. There was a bed in it, and the odd lamp she had seen before, and a box-like contraption and small, cheap-looking furniture. All its colors were bright. On the walls huge colored pictures of men in ridiculously short trousers with numbers on their garish shirts shocked her. They were photographs. She was amazed at their color, at how real they looked.

  The twins were there. One lay on the bed, the other sat by the window, looking out. He was talking. “I would have died if it hadn’t been for you,” he was saying.

  Sarah was alone; the tramp had vanished. Now the twin on the bed sat slowly up. He was staring at her.

  “Tom,” he said softly. “She’s back.”

  Tom turned. They were identical, both about her age. “I can’t see anyone.”

  “She’s here.” The other boy stood. There was something misty in his outline. He blurred as he reached out to touch her, and she twisted away with a hiss of fear as his hand became the paw of a black cat, soft on her fingers.

  Then, a long time later, she was dreaming of the beach. It was gray and raining, and the gulls screamed over her head. Azrael sat on a rock elegantly, as if it were a throne. He wore his dark expensive coat, and behind him stood a huge grandfather clock�
��the one from the oak dining room—and it ticked, but its tick wasn’t mechanical, it was a human voice, infinitely weary, repeating the same words over and over. “Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.”

  She stepped nearer. “Is that . . . ?”

  Azrael smiled sadly. “Your grandfather, I’m afraid. Doomed to be trapped in eternal torment. Until, of course, your actions release him. Oh, and your father. Do you want to see him?”

  “Yes,” she breathed.

  The rain drifted apart. She saw him lying on the sofa in Darkwater Hall, wrapped warmly in cashmere and wool. A great fire blazed in the grate. He poured tea into a vast porcelain cup.

  Azrael came over to her. “You’ll see. It will be worth it.” He put a small card into her hand. “But I will come for you, Sarah. Wherever you go, wherever you think you can run, there’ll be no escaping me. No one ever does. The experiment has to run to the end.”

  The mist closed around him. A small beetle ran into a hole in the sand.

  She turned. Mrs. Hubbard put the cane into her hand. “You’re a menial!” She took a huge pinch of snuff out of an open desk. “What are you?”

  Silent, Sarah watched the cane. It grew a tail, and back legs.

  “What are you?” Mrs. Hubbard snapped ominously.

  Front paws. A great head, its jaws wet and slobbering, growling, the red eyes opening, nostrils fuming with smoke, and as she turned, it sprang on her and she screamed, and yelled, “A menial!”

  Sarah opened her eyes.

  She was soaked with sweat. The fire was out, a gray gather of ashes, and through the curtains the dimness of a winter afternoon filtered.

  She sat up, dressed in a furious rush, and ran down the stairs.

  The servants’ hall was empty. Here too the fire was out. There was no sign of the cook and nothing to eat; she picked up some bread from the table, but it was stale, rock hard. Annoyed, she flung it at the ashes.

  “Scrab!” she yelled.

  No one answered.

  The library was a mess. Somehow the wind had gotten in and whipped everything out of order; it would take days just to sort it out. Dumping armfuls of pamphlets on the desk she marched through to the laboratory, and flung the door open.