A Skinful of Shadows

by Frances Hardinge

  He is still confused and frightened after the fight, she told herself. That is all.

  In an hour, she would have to bluff her way through an encounter with the ‘others’. She did not have long to prepare. If she was to pass herself off as an agent on Lady April’s business, she needed to know what Lady April’s business was.

  There was a chest on the floor of the carriage. It was locked, but she found the key for it in Lady April’s purse. It held so many coins that it made Makepeace feel a little dizzy. This could only be the money for the King.

  Lady April’s bag contained a slim package of papers and a tiny bottle. Makepeace uncorked the bottle and sniffed cautiously, fearful of poison, but the contents smelt of garden artichokes.

  Makepeace examined the papers by the light of the candle. Reading had always been a struggle but, curiously enough, this night of all nights it did not seem so hard. Whatever the reason, she was glad of it. Some of the papers seemed to be battle reports. Some tiny slips of paper bore only a strange cipher, in characters that Makepeace did not recognize.

  Makepeace no longer had any doubt. Lady April was a spy.

  One letter, written in a bold and elegant hand, caught her attention:

  Salutations to my Friends and Kinsmen,

  If this Missive is in your Hands, then by now I have either relieved myself of my Command or Perish’d in the Attempt. If the Latter, then no doubt you will hide my Actions for the Sake of your beloved Family Name. If the Former, then by now I have traded my Colours for Better Ones.

  You will call me a Turncoat of course, but of late I have found my Sense of Duty Leaning towards Parliament. I would rather be a Traitor to the King than to my Conscience. I must admit however that my Conscience might have proven less Tender had I known for certain that I was properly valued by my Kin. Alas I was left to Wait upon your Mercies and Pray that you might find me Worthy to join your Ranks. I no longer choose to Gamble my Life and Soul on your Good Graces.

  I Pity the Regiment but my new Friends could not be expected to Take my Conversion on Trust without some Evidence of my Good Faith.

  I have taken a Trifle from the Muniments Room to ensure my Safety. If you should move against me, or if I should Espy a Murder of Crowes from my Chamber Window, then Parliament shall have the Charter and Copies will be Sent to every Gutter Printer from Penzance to Edinburgh. The World will know you as Monsters, and the King as a Friend to Monsters, and then we shall see how the Wind blows.

  Be sure that no Gratitude will stay my Hand if I think myself in Danger. Blood is Blood, but a Man has a Duty to Save the Neck God gave him.

  Your most affectionate Kinsman,

  Symond Fellmotte

  It was all Makepeace could do to resist crumpling the letter into a ball. So this was the jaunty message that had caused Lord Fellmotte’s heart to break, and shattered his health in a single blow! Symond had not simply deserted; he had defected to Parliament’s forces. He had planned his betrayal in advance and in cold blood.

  I Pity the Regiment but my new Friends could not be expected to Take my Conversion on Trust without some Evidence of my Good Faith . . .

  Makepeace read that line over and over. He had deliberately drawn James and the regiment into mortal peril, and left them there. He had been willing to sacrifice them all to win the approval of his new allies.

  She did not blame him for wanting to escape his Inheritance. After all, she had been trying to run away for years. She could not even blame him for backstabbing the Elders. But she could blame him for betraying James and a whole regiment of his tenants and servants, men who had followed and trusted him.

  So the golden boy Symond had not been happy after all, or at least not happy enough. He would have accepted the rich burdens of lordship, even played host to immortal spirits, had he been certain that in time his ghost would have been preserved like theirs. But he had not been certain. And apparently he had been laying plans and awaiting his moment, just like Makepeace.

  No, not like me. He’s no better than the other Fellmottes. Another rich man bent on what he thinks the world owes him, and willing to pay any price, as long as it’s in the blood of others.

  Makepeace let out a long breath, and tried to calm herself. At least now she knew that Lady April had planned to pass on letters, military information and evidence of Symond’s treachery to a messenger destined for Oxford. Makepeace was not much the wiser, but perhaps wise enough now to play a game of hints.

  She had another pressing problem, though. Lady April knew where the carriage had been heading. Once the old woman had recovered enough to speak, the Fellmottes would be hot on Makepeace’s heels again. Furthermore, after the meeting the driver might expect to take ‘Lady April’ back to Grizehayes or her own estates.

  As Makepeace wiped her face and tucked her braided hair back under her cap, she tried to form a plan.

  The carriage arrived at the safe house during the early hours. It was strange to have the door held open for her, and a hand offered to help her alight. Bear’s keen sight pierced the darkness, and let Makepeace see a little of their surroundings. They were out of the woods, albeit just in a literal sense, and only a few straggling trees marred the dull, misty horizons.

  The carriage was parked beside a lonely house backed up against a hillock, next to a greenish, dripping waterwheel. The millpond was heavily choked with weed, but here and there water gave a brief sabre-flash of reflected moonlight.

  An elderly couple opened the door quickly to her driver’s knock, and quietly bowed her in. They showed every sign of expecting Makepeace, or somebody at least.

  ‘Is all well?’ asked the coachman as the couple led them through dark, cold passageways that smelt of mice and last year’s hay.

  ‘Quiet enough these last few months,’ answered their hostess. ‘But we have had our share of billets. Parliament’s troops settled on us like a plague of locusts and ate our pantry bare.’ Her eye fled quickly and fearfully to Makepeace, as if dreading her disapproval. ‘There was nothing we could do about it, I swear!’

  Makepeace was shown into a narrow little parlour, with a fierce fire of spitting, wet logs. There she found the ‘others’ waiting for her. Both were women and, to judge by the hum of conversation as the door opened, women that knew each other. They hushed as Makepeace entered.

  One was tall, and the hair that peeped out from under her high-crowned hat was an unabashed red. There were half a dozen tiny circles of black taffeta glued to her face. Makepeace knew that such patches were fashionable, but six was too many even for fashion. These probably hid pockmarks, and Makepeace guessed that this woman must have had an even worse brush with smallpox than her own.

  The other woman was old and broad-faced, with tired, tightly braided hair the colour of weathered rope under her coif. Her eyes were blue, like little scraps of sky. Common as washday, Makepeace thought, and very far from stupid.

  They gave Makepeace a dip of the head as she entered, but did not start talking again until their hostess had left the room. The red-haired woman took a careful look at Lady April’s ring and seemed satisfied. There were quick, oddly informal introductions. The redhead was ‘Helen Favender’ and the old woman was ‘Peg Corble’. Makepeace had the feeling that these names were about as real as ‘Judith Grey’.

  ‘We were expecting somebody else,’ said Helen. Her voice had a touch of a Scottish accent, and Makepeace wondered if hers was one of the families that had travelled from Scotland to England with the previous King. There was a silver ring on her finger, and Makepeace guessed that even her bluntness came from the confidence of gentry. She was a horse with a bit of wildness, but one that had been well-fed and allowed space to kick up its heels.

  ‘My mistress intended to come herself,’ Makepeace said quickly, and not entirely untruthfully. ‘Another emergency arose – she had to change her plans quickly.’

  ‘Nothing too grievous, I hope?’ asked Peg, her gaze sharp with concern and curiosity.

  ‘Sh
e would not tell me,’ Makepeace said quickly.

  ‘Did you bring the money for His Majesty?’ asked Helen, and seemed reassured when Makepeace passed across the chest and key.

  ‘Yes . . . but there has been a change of plan.’ This was the leap. ‘My mistress has ordered me to travel with you to Oxford.’

  The two women exchanged a sharp look.

  ‘Travel with us?’ said Helen. ‘Why?’

  ‘There is a message for one there that she would have me pass on in person – it was not to be entrusted to paper.’ Makepeace hoped that this story was plausible and vague enough.

  ‘And yet she entrusted it to you,’ remarked Helen wryly. ‘Has she used you for this kind of business before?’

  ‘Some private matters for my ladyship—’

  ‘What sort of matters?’ interrupted Helen.

  ‘Ah, do not pluck the poor little hen!’ said Peg reprovingly. ‘She cannot reveal her lady’s private doings!’ But above her kindly smile her eyes were questioning.

  ‘This is a twist in the road, and I wish to know the reason for it!’ Helen retorted. ‘And . . . child, you are younger than I like for this business. We shall be bluffing our way past enemy troops! It is no game – if we are caught, then we shall have a holiday in the Tower if we are lucky—’

  ‘You might, perhaps,’ Peg remarked drily. ‘I’m more likely to have my neck stretched till it’s lovely and swan-like.’

  ‘And if one of us is unweaned to shadow-work, it is more likely that we will be caught!’ Helen continued.

  ‘I am not untried!’ Makepeace protested. ‘I will not let you down – I promise!’

  ‘Lady April always plays her own game,’ said Helen, and raised her hands in a gesture of exasperation. ‘So does everybody! If all who love the King could keep in tune with each other, we would have the rebels routed by now. But we are all fiddlers in the dark, sawing away at the same strings and poking each other in the eye.’

  ‘Please do not send me back!’ said Makepeace, changing tack.

  ‘My lady would never forgive me.’

  ‘This message you must pass on – it is really so important?’ asked Peg.

  ‘Important enough that I was followed on the road,’ declared Makepeace, in a moment of inspiration. ‘There were riders on the moors, chasing the coach.’

  ‘Are you sure you lost them?’ Peg asked sharply, immediately seeming less maternal.

  Makepeace nodded. ‘Yes – but I did not like it. It was as if they knew I would be passing. Is this place safe? How many people know of it?’ Every moment she spent in this so-called safe house, she knew that she was at risk.

  ‘A good question.’ Peg met Helen’s eye, and raised one eyebrow. ‘We had planned to stay here a day . . .’

  ‘. . . but perhaps we should not wait that long,’ finished Helen. ‘The horses will need a few hours to rest, and so will we, but let us be gone tomorrow morning.’

  Makepeace noticed that, however grudgingly, she had been included in the ‘we’. Helen was not happy to find an unknown girl accompanying her, but she had not yet refused to take her.

  She knew that Helen was right. The mission to reach Oxford would be difficult and dangerous. But she could not forget the story about the doctor Benjamin Quick, who had rid a patient of his ‘haunting’. According to the news-sheet, he had done so in Oxford.

  If she could find this mysterious ghost-defeating doctor, maybe he could show her some way of fighting the Fellmottes. She could not give up on James, or the hope that his true self still existed. With the help of the doctor, perhaps she could save him, before it was too late.

  CHAPTER 21

  Makepeace woke with a start, with the bleary impression that something had just nipped sharply at her forearm. She was very cold, the world was very dark, and there were cobbles under her bare feet.

  Where am I? How did I get here?

  Her fuzzy thoughts rallied. She had gone to bed in the little garret room put aside for her, with the flock bed and the extra blankets.

  She was holding a large, metal ring. Before her the darkness yielded to deeper darkness, from which came soft snorts, and the sound of hoofs shifting on straw. She was standing in front of the stables, holding the door open. Above her the stars glittered.

  What was I doing?

  Surely Bear had not crept down to eat the horses! He had hungrily considered it during Makepeace’s first ever riding lesson, and it had been hard to persuade him otherwise. But that had been a long time ago.

  Bear – why did you bring me out here?

  There was a silence, then Makepeace seemed to hear a low rumble of a growl inside her head, so cold and deep that it might have been the coal-hearted earth answering her. It was not a friendly noise. She felt it as a warning, a noise of utter enmity.

  ‘Bear,’ she whispered, aghast, but there was no reply. Something about Bear had changed, and she did not know what. She was reminded of dogs raising their hackles when they caught the smell of a stranger. Or dogs snarling at a friend after going mad in the sun. Her blood ran cold.

  Just then, she heard a faint murmur. It was not Bear, nor did it come from inside her head.

  Makepeace edged towards the sound, and found herself peering around the side of the stables, towards the front of the house. The shutters at one of the windows were slightly open, the slit bright with candlelight. A male silhouette was leaning close to the window, whispering to someone within.

  For a moment Makepeace felt utter, panicked certainty that the man must have been sent by the Fellmottes. They had found her, they had come for her. Then she recognized the voice of her hostess from inside the window.

  ‘Go quick!’ she whispered. ‘Head to Aldperry, and ask for Captain Maltsey. Tell him that the Royalist she-intelligencers are back – and that I kept my word.’

  As the man obediently scurried away, lantern in hand, Makepeace understood. This was nothing to do with the Fellmottes. Her hosts were working for somebody else entirely.

  Shivering with the cold, she felt her way along the front of the house until she found the door, then slipped inside as quickly as possible. She climbed the inky, narrow stairs, then rapped furtively on the door opposite her own, praying that she had picked the right room. She was relieved when Helen appeared at the door, hair wild, taper in hand. Makepeace stepped in through the door, and closed it before speaking.

  ‘We need to leave.’ Quickly she described what she had heard. ‘They’ve betrayed us. They’ve sent a man to tell Parliament’s troops that we’re here.’

  ‘I should have guessed!’ Helen exhaled through her teeth. ‘They’ve been so cowed this time, and they never were before.’ She glanced at Makepeace, and frowned. ‘So why were you down by the stables, anyway?’

  ‘I walk in my sleep sometimes,’ Makepeace said quickly, and received a sceptical look from Helen.

  ‘Hfft, maybe she does,’ said Peg, who was awake now, and gathering her possessions with calm practicality. ‘It’s hardly likely she was running away like that.’

  Makepeace realized, to her great embarrassment, that she was only wearing her long-sleeved shift, which doubled as her undergarment and nightdress. She hugged her arms around herself defensively.

  Helen frowned, brought the taper closer, and pulled one of Makepeace’s sleeves back. By the light of the flame, the yellowish-brown bruises on Makepeace’s arm were clearly visible.

  ‘You’ve been ill-used,’ said Helen quietly. ‘Hmm. I start to see why you do not want to face Lady April without having carried out her orders.’ She gave Makepeace an odd, cool glance with a hint of sympathy. ‘Come – get dressed before the night air makes you ill.’

  As Makepeace pulled down her sleeve again, she noticed something else. Besides the bruises, a little patch of her forearm was pinkish, as though fingers had recently pinched the flesh hard.

  The coachman was woken quietly, and told to prepare the carriage and the two horses belonging to Peg and Helen. Back in her room, M
akepeace dug out her runaway pack, and retrieved her change of clothes. The old russet jacket she had secretly bought from the market. The faded, smoke-grey skirt was one she had put aside some six months before, and showed more petticoat than it once had, but there was nothing to be done about it. She tucked all her hair under a dingy linen cap.

  When she returned, Helen and Peg gave her brief glances of approval, and did not seem surprised to see her transformed from lady to ill-dressed servant. They were spies, and perhaps used to such metamorphoses.

  The coachman, however, looked at her aghast. He seemed even more concerned and surprised when he learned that Makepeace would not be returning with him.

  ‘Take a long route back,’ she told him, in her best imitation of Lady April’s manner. ‘And tell nobody where I have gone – not even members of my family.’ He would almost certainly crack under Fellmotte questioning, but this might buy her some time.

  By the time Makepeace mounted up behind Peg, there were streaks of light in the sky. Their hostess appeared in the door as they were departing, confused and protesting. Makepeace felt a little pity for her, even as the mill house receded behind them and vanished among the trees.

  The Fellmottes had taught Makepeace to ride, but this had not prepared her for many hours on horseback. Bear never made such things easier. He could smell horse, and was always confused at finding himself straddling another animal. Her horse was skittish, and she wondered whether it could smell Bear.

  Bear was still restless, feverish and strange. He had always been a wild thing, of course, but Makepeace had grown used to his brute warmth and unruly, changeable moods. She had spent three years bargaining wordlessly with him – sharing his pain, soothing his fears, reining in his urge to lash out. But this was different. For the first time in years she was afraid of him.

  Sometimes his mind would nestle against hers as normal, but then he would draw back and utter a long, low growl that chilled her. What if he had been injured in his battle with the Infiltrator, and it had changed him somehow? Was he starting to forget who she was? What could she possibly do if he turned on her? He was inside all her defences.