A Skinful of Shadows

by Frances Hardinge

  ‘You’ve got a temper,’ he said, with a hint of surprise. Makepeace was surprised too – nobody had ever said such a thing of her before, let alone with a hint of approval. ‘You are like me. Hush – don’t go waking the house.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ asked Makepeace, lowering her voice again.

  ‘All the other servants were talking about you,’ the boy said promptly. ‘Young Crowe said you were mad, but I didn’t believe him.’ Makepeace guessed that the beaky-faced manservant who had beaten her must have been ‘Young Crowe’. ‘There’s another window on the other side of the tower, so I climbed out of that, then worked my way round, feet on the ledge.’ He grinned at his own ingenuity.

  ‘What if you’re wrong? What if I’m crazy, and I push you to your death?’ Makepeace still felt unreasonably angry and cornered. Why were there always people, living or dead, wanting something from her? Why could she not be left alone with Bear?

  ‘You don’t look mad to me,’ James said, with annoying confidence, ‘and I don’t think you’ve got the strength. What’s your name?’

  ‘Makepeace.’

  ‘Makepeace? Oh. I forgot you were a Puritan.’

  ‘I’m not!’ retorted Makepeace, turning red. The godly in Poplar had never called themselves Puritans, and when Obadiah had described them that way she had sensed that the word was not a compliment.

  ‘Does everyone have a name like that where you come from?’ asked James. ‘I hear they’re all called Fight-the-Good-Fight, Spit-in-the-Eye-of-the-Devil, Sorry-for-Sin, Miserable-Sinners-Are-We-All and things like that.’

  Makepeace did not answer. She wasn’t sure whether she was being mocked, and the congregation in Poplar had included one Sorry-for-Sin, usually shortened to ‘Sorry’.

  ‘Go away!’ she said instead.

  ‘I’m not surprised they locked you up.’ James chuckled. ‘They don’t like spirit. Listen, I will find a way to get you out of there. Sir Thomas will be back at Grizehayes soon. He’s Obadiah’s heir – Sir Peter’s older brother. He likes me. I’ll see if I can put in a word for you.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Makepeace, perplexed.

  James stared back at her with just as much incomprehension.

  ‘Because you’re my little sister,’ he said.

  Afterwards, Makepeace could not forget those words. She had a brother, it seemed. But what did that really mean? After all, if what James had said was true, then Lord Obadiah was her grandfather, and she had seen no kindness or kinship in the old man’s eyes. Just because you shared blood with somebody, that didn’t mean that you could share secrets.

  And yet James seemed blithely confident that he and Makepeace were on the same side.

  However, days passed and James did not come back. Makepeace began to fear that she had been too hostile. Soon she would have done anything to see a friendly face.

  Young Crowe was not just her warden, he was her judge. If she argued, cried out or was sullenly silent, this was a sign of her melancholy madness. The punishment was a few sharp blows on the shins or arms with his stick.

  It was all Makepeace could do to stop Bear striking back, as her vision darkened and his rage threatened to swallow them both. After Young Crowe’s visits, Bear would keep her pacing to and fro for hours, sometimes giving a wordless bellow with her voice. There were moments of rapport where he seemed to understand her, and she could soothe him. At other times it was like reasoning with a thundercloud. He did not understand the bars, or Makepeace’s limits, or the need to use a chamber pot.

  After Bear flung their bowl across the room and broke it, Makepeace’s ankles were put in shackles. In the following days, she was held down each morning so that a reddish concoction that smelt of beetroots could be squirted into her nose to cool ‘the cauls of her brain’. A little later she was caught weeping and she was given a broth that made her vomit, to rid her of the ‘black bile’ that caused her ‘melancholia’.

  Bear was strange and dangerous, and made everything worse. Yet she clung to him. She had a secret friend, and because of this she could hold off despair. She had somebody that she wanted to protect, and who silently raged to protect her. When she slept, it seemed to her that she was curled around something like a small, rounded cub, but also as though something vast and warm had encircled her to shield her from the world.

  One day, Young Crowe had her bound to a stretcher, her face covered with a cloth. She was carried, jolted and tilted down stairway after stairway, then into a room that was blisteringly hot and full of the rich, kitchen smells of smoke, meat-blood, spices and onion.

  ‘Sweep out the embers, the bricks are hot enough without them. Help me – we need her head just within the oven . . .’

  Makepeace struggled, but her bonds held. She felt every jolt as the stretcher was manoeuvred into place, then the searing heat of the oven against her face, even through the cloth. It was hard to breathe, the hot, smoky air burning her lungs. Her skin started to scald and sting, and she cried out in panic, fearing that her eyes would start to fry like eggs . . .

  ‘What are you doing, Crowe?’ asked an unfamiliar voice.

  ‘Sir Thomas!’ Young Crowe sounded rather taken aback. ‘We are treating the Lightfoot girl for melancholia. The heat of the oven causes her head to sweat out all the disordered fantasies. It is a tried-and-tested practice – there is a picture in this book—’

  ‘And what were you planning to do after that? Serve her with radishes and a mustard sauce? Take the girl out of the oven, Crowe. I have a mind to speak with her, and I cannot do that while she is being baked.’

  A few minutes later, her eyes still blurry with smoke and tears, Makepeace found herself sitting alone in a little room with Sir Thomas Fellmotte, Obadiah’s heir.

  He had bright, brown eyes, a bluff manner, and a voice that belonged to the outdoors. On second glance she noticed the grey in his long, aristocratically curled hair and the sorrowful-looking lines that scored his cheeks, and guessed that he was not young. His chin had a familiar vertical dent. Belatedly Makepeace remembered that Sir Thomas had been her father’s brother.

  To her great relief, he did not fill her with same chill dread as Obadiah. As he looked at her, his gaze was warm, human and a little wistful.

  ‘Ah,’ he said quietly. ‘You do have my brother’s eyes. But there is a good deal more of Margaret in you, I think.’ For a while he stared at her, as if her face were a scrying glass in which he could see the faces of the dead shimmering.

  ‘Makepeace, is it?’ he asked, recovering his brisk tone. ‘A preachy name, but rather a pretty one. Tell me, Makepeace, are you a good, hard-working girl? James says you’re sane as noontide, and not afraid to earn your keep. Is that true?’

  Hardly daring to hope, Makepeace nodded vigorously.

  ‘Then I am sure we can find you a place amongst the servants.’ He gave her a warm, pensive smile. ‘What can you do?’

  Anything, Makepeace almost said. I will do anything if you save me from the Bird Chamber and Young Crowe. But at the last moment she thought of Obadiah’s deathly eyes. Anything that does not involve waiting on his lordship . . .

  ‘I can cook!’ she said quickly, as inspiration struck. ‘I can churn butter, and bake pies, and make bread and soups, and pluck pigeons . . .’ Her first encounter with the Grizehayes kitchen had not been a happy one, but if she worked there she could avoid Obadiah.

  ‘Then I shall arrange something,’ declared Sir Thomas. He strode to the door, then hesitated. ‘I . . . often thought about your mother after she ran away from Grizehayes. She was so young to be alone in the world – barely fifteen, and expecting a child, of course.’ He frowned, and twisted one of his buttons. ‘Was she . . . happy with the life she found?’

  Makepeace did not know how to answer. Right now, her memories of Mother were too painful to handle, like shards of glass.

  ‘Sometimes,’ she said at last.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Sir Thomas softly, ‘that is all that any of us can a
sk.’

  CHAPTER 7

  That same afternoon, Makepeace found herself in clean clothes, being introduced to a curious gaggle of other servants. After the darkness and isolation, everything seemed very loud and bright. Everyone was looming and unfamiliar, and Makepeace kept forgetting their names.

  The other servant women were wary at first, then beleaguered her with questions, about her name, London and the dangerous world away from Grizehayes. None of them asked about her family, however, and Makepeace guessed that her parentage was already household gossip.

  They all seemed sure that Makepeace must be very glad and grateful to have been ‘rescued’ from her previous home. They also agreed that another hand in the kitchen would be welcome.

  ‘Kitchen’s the best place for her, I say,’ one woman remarked bluntly. ‘She’s scarcely handsome enough to wait on the family, is she? Look at her, the little spotted cat!’

  ‘There’s a French cook,’ another woman told Makepeace, ‘but don’t you mind him, he’s just for show. French cooks come and go like apple blossom. It’s Mistress Gotely you’ll need to please.’

  Makepeace was duly set to work in the kitchen, which seemed vast as a cavern, its ceiling black with generations of smoke. The hearth was so huge that six Makepeaces could have stood in it, side by side. Herbs dangled in bunches from the rafters, and ranks of pewter plates gleamed. Ever since Bear had become her secret passenger, Makepeace’s sense of smell had become keener. The kitchen scents hit her with maddening force – heady herbs and spices, charred meat, wine, gravy and smoke. She could feel Bear stirring, confused by the smells and hungry.

  Mistress Gotely was in theory just an under-cook, but in practice the queen of the kitchen. She was a tall woman with a strong jaw, a gouty leg, and no patience for fools. And of course Makepeace did seem a fool, clumsy and slow-witted with nerves. She was desperate to prove her worth, so that she wouldn’t be sent back to the Bird Chamber. This would have been hard enough without a ghost bear in her head. He did not like the heat, darkness or clatter. The aroma of blood maddened him, and half her mind was busy calming him.

  After a baffling, whirlwind introduction to the intricacies of the kitchen, scullery, buttery, ewery and cellar, Mistress Gotely took Makepeace out into the courtyard to see the pump, granary and woodpile.

  Grizehayes looked different in sunshine, the grey walls almost golden in places with blots of lichen. Makepeace could see details that made it look more lived in and less like a ghost castle. Rugs dangled from windows to be beaten, smoke trailed from the great, red chimneys. It was a hodgepodge house, old craggy stone alternating with neat grey blocks, slate roofs mingling with turrets and church-like arches.

  It’s a real house, Makepeace told herself. People live here. I could live here.

  She blinked up at the sunny walls, then shivered despite herself. It was like watching someone smile with their mouth and not their eyes. Somehow, the house made even the daylight cold.

  A seven-foot stone wall surrounded the house, stables and stone-flagged courtyard. Three great mastiffs were chained to the wall. When she drew close they exploded into motion, running to the full extent of their chain, then leaping and snarling at her unfamiliar scent. She jumped back, her heart banging. She could feel Bear’s fear as well, like a crimson fog, uncertain whether to lash out or flee the bared teeth.

  One grand gate was set in the wall, wide enough for a coach-and-four. Through it she could see only open fields, then drear tufted moorland. She remembered Obadiah threatening to throw her out on to the moors, to freeze or have her brain eaten by wandering ghosts.

  Count your blessings, she told herself, repeating Young Crowe’s words. Better to be working in the kitchen here, than chained up in the Bird Chamber. And the Bird Chamber was better than the real Bedlam would have been. And even Bedlam would be better than starving out in the cold, and having my brain eaten by mad ghosts.

  She inhaled a deep breath of the fresh air, and blinked up at the high, heavy sunlit walls. I am lucky, she told herself. Better in here than out there. Grizehayes was strange and frightening, but it was a fortress. It could keep the darkness out. Even as she tried to convince herself, however, she was wondering why her mother had fled the house, and remembering her words.

  You have no idea what I saved you from! If I had stayed in Grizehayes . . .

  Makepeace made heroic efforts to impress Mistress Gotely throughout the day. And then, during the rush to cook dinner, she ruined everything.

  Next to the hearth, a little turnspit dog ran in a wooden wheel fixed to the wall, turning it to revolve the great roasting spit over the fire. The ugly little dog’s tail was a stump, its muzzle cracked with heat and age, and it wheezed in the smoke. However, it was Mistress Gotely’s habit of tossing embers at its feet to make it run faster that was more than Makepeace could bear.

  Vivid in her mind were Bear’s memories of his own cubhood, and the coals thrown under his feet to force him to dance. Each time a glowing fragment bounced off the turnspit wheel, showering sparks, she remembered – felt – the searing pain under her paws . . .

  ‘Stop it!’ she exploded at last. ‘Leave him alone!’

  Mistress Gotely stared at her astonished, and Makepeace was taken aback by her own outburst. But she was too full of rage to apologize. She could only stand in front of the wheel, shaking with anger.

  ‘What did you say to me?’ The under-cook gave her a meaty cuff about the head, and knocked Makepeace to the ground.

  Bear was raging, and Makepeace’s cheek stung. It would be so easy to give in and go to the dark place, let Bear take care of the blind rampage . . . She swallowed, and struggled to clear her mind.

  ‘He’ll run better,’ she said thickly, ‘if his paws aren’t covered in burns and blisters! Let me have charge of him, I’ll have him running faster than you ever did.’

  Mistress Gotely hauled her to her feet by her collar.

  ‘I don’t care how that wilful mother of yours brought you up,’ growled the under-cook. ‘This is my kitchen. I do the yelling here, nobody else.’ She gave Makepeace a couple of hard, hasty knocks around the head and shoulders, then gave an impatient snort. ‘All right, the dog’s your problem now. If he’s slow, you take his place and turn the spit for him. No whining about the heat!’

  To Makepeace’s relief and surprise, the old cook seemed in no hurry to report her, or have her chained up again. If anything, afterwards they were a little more at ease with each other, in their own surly, reserved way. They had found the edges of each other’s temper, like jagged rocks under a placid skin of water.

  When the pair of them finally had their own dinner before the great hearth, the grumpy silence was almost companionable. The cook chewed away at a hunk of the tough, dark bread Makepeace had eaten all her life. To Makepeace’s surprise, however, Mistress Gotely handed her a piece of golden-crusted white bread, of the sort the rich ate.

  ‘Don’t just stare at it,’ the cook told her curtly. ‘Eat it. Lord Fellmotte’s orders.’ Makepeace bit into it gingerly, marvelling at its sweetness, and the way it yielded under her teeth. ‘Be grateful, and don’t ask questions.’

  Makepeace chewed, wondering at this strange show of kindness from the frosty Obadiah. Then she asked questions anyway.

  ‘You said my mother was wilful,’ she managed through a mouthful. ‘Did you know her?’

  ‘A little,’ admitted Mistress Gotely, ‘though she mostly worked upstairs.’ She said ‘upstairs’ as if it were as far away as France.

  ‘Is it true she ran away? Or did they throw her out for being with child?’ Makepeace knew that such things sometimes happened.

  ‘No,’ said Mistress Gotely curtly. ‘Oh no, they wouldn’t have turned her away. She ran off one night of her own free will, without saying a word to anyone.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘How should I know? She was a secretive creature. Did she never tell you?’

  ‘She never told me anything,’ Makepeace s
aid flatly. ‘I didn’t even know who my father was until after she was gone.’

  ‘And . . . you know now?’ asked the old cook, giving her a sharp, sideways look.

  Makepeace hesitated, then nodded.

  ‘Well, you would have found out sooner or later anyway.’ The cook nodded slowly. ‘Everybody here knows – it’s as plain as the chin on your face. But . . . I wouldn’t go talking about it too freely. The family might think you were being impudent and making claims for yourself. Be grateful for what you have, and cause no trouble, and you’ll get by.’

  ‘Can you tell me what he was like, then?’ Makepeace asked.

  The old cook sighed, then rubbed her leg, looking affectionate and wistful.

  ‘Ah, poor Sir Peter! Have you met James Winnersh? He was a lot like James. James is a reckless rascal, but he has a good heart. He makes mistakes, but he makes them honestly.’

  Makepeace began to understand why Sir Thomas might be fond of James, if he reminded him of his dead brother.

  ‘What happened to Sir Peter?’ she asked.

  ‘He tried to leap a hedge too high, on a horse that was worn out,’ the cook answered with a sigh. ‘The horse went down, and rolled on him. He was so young – barely past his twentieth summer.’

  ‘Why was his horse so tired?’ Makepeace could not help asking.

  ‘There’s no asking him now, is there?’ Mistress Gotely told her sharply. ‘But . . . some said that he rode himself ragged looking for your mother. It was two months after she disappeared, you see.’

  She glanced at Makepeace, and frowned slightly.

  ‘You were a mistake, girl,’ she said simply, ‘but a mistake honestly meant.’

  That evening Makepeace learned that, as the lowliest and youngest person working in the kitchen, she would not be sharing a bed with the other servingwomen. Instead, she would now sleep on a straw pallet under the great kitchen table each night, and make sure the fire did not go out. She was not alone. The turnspit dog and two of the huge mastiffs slept by the fire as well.