A Skinful of Shadows

by Frances Hardinge

  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.