She hurried. Quicker still the bines withered, the leaves died, the wave of brown shriveled up toward her, as if he had killed everything with the cold of his touch, and she knew it would kill her too, if it reached her.
Janus spoke again, but now she was too high to hear and dared not look down. A stem of the creeper tore from the wall as she grasped it. She yelled and grabbed another, clinging tight, afraid that the whole mass would peel and crack away and she would fall and fall to his feet, her blood a pool on the paving.
Then, above her head a bird flew out; she saw the edge of an open window, wide in the ivy.
With a twist that made her gasp with the pain in her side she jerked herself over toward it, and grabbed the sill. Warm stone crumbled under her fingers.
Dust slid into her eyes.
She dug her toes in, found a good grip, raised herself until she could peer over the edge, saw a bedroom hung with scarlet silks.
Empty.
At once she was squirming up onto elbows and over, tumbling breathless into the scented room over a window seat scattered with cushions, knocking a vase of roses flying.
She lay flat on the floor, winded, staring up.
Then she scrambled to her knees and looked down.
Janus, and the wolves, were gone.
The ivy was dead and withered. And the skin on the palm of her left hand was withered too, like an old, old woman’s.
12
Three things that shine in Summer.
The diamond dew.
The emerald leaves.
The gold coin of the Moon.
Trad proverb
Moll’s diary.
Three weeks later JHS opened the newspaper at the breakfast table and went absolutely still. Then he said, “Bless my soul.”
I just sat there, eating muffins. They were hot and the butter was greasy round my mouth. Mrs. C makes top muffins.
All innocent, I said, “What’s up, JH?”
His bald head was shiny and his eyes were wide behind his specs. He read a few lines, looked up at me, then read some more. I just chewed.
He said, “I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it, cully. Let’s have a gander.”
He read aloud what it said.
SENSATIONAL ROBBERY AT THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM!
Irreplaceable artefacts missing! Tragedy for the nation narrowly avoided!
Last night a daring raid was perpetrated at the famous Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The miscreants entered with great cunning and no alarm was raised. The night watchman heard nothing. It seems however that the thieves had no specialist knowledge; they stole several gold and silver items from the jewellery cabinets and in their ignorance left behind valuable pieces of historic significance. The Curator of Antiquities, Mr. Solomon Fortesque Jones, said to this reporter, “We have had a most narrow escape. These were clearly low and unintelligent men, seeking items for a quick resale. I feel secure that the police will do their duty and promptly recover our artefacts, as no reputable dealer will”—he looked up at me—“fail to recognize . . .”
I smiled, licking butter from my fingers. Letting my sleeve slide slowly down from my wrist. “Recognize what JH?”
His fingers crushed the paper. “Oh Lord, Moll! Oh my good Lord. What have you done?”
The silver bracelet was pretty on my arm. It glinted in the sun, its eye all amber and shiny bright. Symmes dropped the paper and reached out both hands, not even saying anything, so I took it off and dropped it in his flabby palm. “For us, JH. A little present. So now we can get on and find Jake. And never mind what your fiancée says. Okay?”
The poor slob was too stunned to speak. He turned the silver snake over and over. Finally he gasped, “How did you manage it, Moll?”
I looked modest. “Told you, I know people. It’s sorted. Won’t ever get back to you.”
That scared him. He looked up in terror. “The police won’t come here?”
“If they do, you knows nothing, cully. Bluff it out.”
“My God.”
“Nothing to you, JH! You’re a seeker after truth, ain’tcha? A scientist. Ruthless, you are.”
He tore his glance away from the bracelet. “Yes, I suppose I—”
“Won’t let nothing get in your way. Famous, you’ll be someday. Up there with Newton and . . . er . . . them others.”
“Moll, you’re quite right.” He jumped up, started pacing up and down on the hearthrug, going on and on about what he’d do, and how hard he’d work, and his voice got that big ringing tone it gets when he’s lecturing. So I knew then it was all right. Wind him up and set him off. Because whatever you think of old Symmes, he’s a fanatic about the obsidian mirror.
I buttered another muffin, and bit into it. What he didn’t know woz I had plans of my own. To find you, Jake. And the snatch from the museum had given me my big idea. To be a sort of Time Thief. Get rich doing the big jobs, and then slip back through the mirror and never get caught.
Easy as kiss-me-hand.
As Symmes prowled and spouted and brandished the poker like a good’un, I looked at the mirror and the mirror looked back at me.
With my own slanty little face, all bent and warped.
All sly.
Jake lay sleepless on the thick mattress in the thieves’ den.
Around him the wooden building creaked, as if the river rushing below its rickety timbers would sweep it away.
He was thinking hard.
Sarah. Where in this dark, dangerous city was Sarah?
What was she doing? Because he knew she would be using all her guile and cleverness to find him.
And the others—would Piers and Maskelyne have been able to work out where he was? They would have told Venn. Jake rolled over and stared up at the ceiling and wondered if Venn would even care. Venn was lost, lost in his own guilt and the snares and tangles of the Wood.
There was no chance this time of Gideon coming to the rescue either—he’d sworn he would never enter the Summerland again. And Wharton? Where was he?
Jake wriggled onto his side. The bed was hard. He was alone, weary, bitten by fleas. All the problems weighed as heavy on him as the scratchy blanket.
Being in the past didn’t change some things. There were the same worries, the same dread. He had brought them with him, secret, in his heart. But his father was here, in this city, somewhere close, and that meant he had to put up with anything and go along with all of Moll’s crazy ideas. He had to be alert and sharp and ruthless.
Because to get Dad back he’d risk anything.
Even his life.
“Jake!” A hissed whisper from the door.
What?”
Moll had her head around the wooden frame. “Time to go, cully. Get into the togs. Tie your hair back and paint your beauty spot on. Cinders and her prince are going to the ball.”
He sat up and looked over at the pile of clothes on the chair. A dark silk suit, a white flouncy shirt.
He was going to feel a real idiot in those.
When he was dressed, though, it wasn’t too bad. He tied his hair back, looked at himself in the dirty, propped piece of looking glass, scowled, made sure the sword was straight, and marched out, ready to face Moll’s mockery. But what he saw made him stand still with astonishment.
She was transformed. The urchin was gone; he saw a demure, shining creature, a young princess in a silver dress, her hair ornately piled, her ears glinting with hanging diamonds. A silver mask on a stick showed the face of a vixen, fantastically designed of white fur and pearls. She dropped a graceful curtsey.
“Wotcher, Jake.”
He came in. “Moll! You look like a real princess. It’s fantastic!”
She grinned, shy. “Maybe I am a princess. Stolen at birth, like.”
Gallant, he swished an orn
ate bow. “I could believe it. But Moll, can you do the voice too?”
“Impeccably,” she said, with a cut-glass pronunciation that made him stare, because for a moment she was completely someone else, and he wasn’t sure if he liked that.
“But being la petite anglaise, no one will know the difference anyway.” She picked up a filmy wrap and tossed it to him. “Big on manners, this lot, Jake. Remember that.”
He opened it and held it out; she snuggled into its white smoothness.
He said, “Is it all . . . Have you . . . ?”
She turned and looked up at him. “Everything’s set. So stick with me, stick with the plan. We’ll get him Jake, I promise you. Okay?”
“Okay,” he said.
Moll grinned. She flounced extravagantly to the door. “After all. What can possibly go wrong?”
There was a meadow. It was heavy with soft waving grass, yellow with buttercups. Beyond it, misty green hills rose against a blue sky.
Fine.
But slashed into the corner of the field was a triangle of tarmac, and down it, as Wharton stared with wide eyes, a plane—no . . . half a plane—roared into land. It thundered by and was gone into nowhere, and the grass was not even shaken.
He stood there and wrapped his own arms around him because only they felt safe, real.
He was George Wharton, forty-nine, of Shepton Mallet.
He had to hang on to that.
The slanted worlds of the Summerland terrified him. They defied all logic and reason. He had seen a river that flowed up the side of a cliff into a lake at the top. He had seen a dignified red-brick building upside down in the wood, standing on its pointed roof with perfect balance, as if some Shee had played with it like a child’s toy and then tossed it away and forgotten it.
He had seen an orchard growing in the sea, its apples falling and bobbing on the waves.
It was completely insane.
Now he turned his back on the corner of airport and saw a park bench with a litter bin next to it in the middle of the meadow. He set off deliberately to get there, hurrying, because there was no saying when it might change to something else. But the bench remained, waiting for him, and when he sat down it even seemed to wriggle under him, into a more comfortable shape.
He ignored that, stretched his feet out, and thought about the monk.
Of course the poor man had been dead for centuries, in a manner of speaking. But the shock of seeing him dissolve to dust had shaken Wharton to the core. It made it all the more urgent that he should get back. He might already have been here years. Decades . . .
He had a sudden vision of himself running up the drive to the Abbey to find a roofless ruin, or to see a middle-aged man come out and stare at him and he would whisper, “Jake?” in utter horror. Or an old lady with a walking stick who would be Sarah.
No. No!
Get a grip.
Think!
He had two plans.
The first was to make a break for it and flee farther into the Summerland—into that airport for starters, and then into wherever that led. But it wasn’t an idea he liked. He could be lost in a series of mirror-worlds, one within another, literally forever, and never find his way back; he’d become some sort of eternal journeyman, wandering time and space.
For a moment that reminded him of Maskelyne. Was that how the scarred man lived?
The second idea—more dangerous, certainly—was to bribe or persuade the moth-Shee or one of the others to get him back into the Wood and then take a run for it from there. They’d be after him, but he could go to ground. He’d done the commando training. Mud-smeared face, dig a hole, wait for dark . . .
A butterfly landed on his knee. He brushed it off, quickly.
Crazy plan, but all he had really. And yet, what did you use to bribe creatures that had everything and cared for none of it?
“Hey,” he said. “Hey! You!”
Nothing happened.
He looked around. Were they really not here?
“Moth?”
The moth didn’t come. But zigzagging along the top of the grass flew a small brown bird, its red breast barely noticeable, with a purple flower clamped tight in its beak. It landed on the brim of the bin.
Wharton said, “There you are. Is that you? Look. How would you like to take a look at the mirror? The famous Chronoptika.”
The bird hopped nearer. It came to the arm of the bench and edged along, one claw after another.
Wharton bent closer. “Take me to the Wood, and I’ll get you into the Abbey. Promise. You can—”
The bird spat the flower out onto the bench and said, “Are you a complete idiot? You can’t bribe them like that. They do just what they want.”
Wharton gaped. “Piers?”
“Of course it’s me.”
It certainly sounded like him. But in this place nothing was as it seemed.
“How do I know?”
“Because I bloody say so! If you think I’m showing my face here even for a second, you’re stupider than any mortal I’ve ever known. And believe me, I’ve known a few.”
The acid testiness was unmistakable. Wharton suddenly felt a lot better. “Venn sent you?”
“Yes.” The robin looked around anxiously. “Listen. He’s going after Jake.”
“Journeying? Where?”
“It’s not good. Revolutionary Paris.”
It was all Wharton could do to keep his seat. “God in heaven! What—”
“Shut up and listen! This flower will give you some sort of power over Summer. I don’t know what it can do but Venn almost purred when he saw it, so it must be good. You should—”
Abruptly, the robin gave a strangled chirrup of terror and fled away.
Wharton looked up.
Summer was standing twirling a parasol at the far end of the bench. “My dear George,” she said quietly. “Are you talking to yourself now?”
He hadn’t a clue how to answer, so he just laughed, a ghastly parody of mirth.
And slid his fingers over the flower.
She didn’t seem to notice. She closed the parasol, sat on the bench, and slid up alongside him, crossing her bare ankles in the buttercups.
“No sign of Gideon coming back,” she said. “So it seems I’ll be keeping you here a little longer. Have you thought any more about my offer, George? I know you’re tempted.”
He couldn’t stand it anymore. The anxiety that had built up in him seemed to explode in a silent, cold terror that made him reckless.
He picked up the purple flower.
“What’s that?” she snapped, but before she could freeze him or snatch it, he had put it in his buttonhole, with shaky fingers.
Suddenly she was looking at him as if she had never seen him before.
“George,” she giggled. “What’s happened to you?”
For a moment then his dream flashed through his mind; he felt his head and ears with alarm but they were all as normal and he seemed just the same.
“Nothing. Why?”
Summer’s eyes were dark as night. Her red lips twisted into a smile, and somehow its usual power to make him afraid had been doubled. “Because you’re so handsome. So . . . strong. I feel as though I’ve been woken up, George. By a dark angel.”
He felt himself going red. “What—what about Venn?” he stammered.
Summer shook her head. “Who cares about Venn?” she murmured.
She reached out and took his sweaty hand.
The baby, Lorenzo, had a cot, made of white wood, and all around the cot Rebecca had hung metal implements—scissors, shears, spoons and saucepans, like some crazy force-field. She finished feeding him now with the last of the warmed milk, then laid him on her shoulder and tapped his back. She had seen this done on TV but had no real idea what it was for.
“Good. Okay. Listen, I need you to go to sleep now.”
She laid him back in the cot. He looked up at her with dark, serious eyes. A baby born over seven hundred years ago. David’s son. Jake’s brother. It was all so weird.
But she didn’t have time to think about that. She turned to the cats. “I want at least two of you here watching him at all times. Got that? If Summer gets her hands on him, there’ll be hell to pay, and I’ve got the whole house to look after.
The Replicant animals regarded her with seven green stares.
She turned and hurried out.
There was no way she could safeguard the whole Abbey. So she had brought the baby down to the Monk’s Walk, together with a supply of food, all the water she could carry, the med kit, the radio, her phone—though there was no signal—and any weapon she had found in the house. Which was an old sword, a poker from the drawing room, and a set of kitchen knives.
Now, as the slow summer twilight descended, she made sure the lab door was securely locked, and went and stood over Maskelyne.
He lay still, his eyes closed.
For a terrible moment she thought his breathing had stopped, but then the dark cloth of his jacket lifted and fell, and she blew out her cheeks in relief. His temperature was normal, but nothing would wake him.
She should get help.
Get him in the car. Drive to the hospital, take the baby too.
And leave the mirror exposed to its enemies?
She sat down, helpless.
As she did so, all the lights went out.
For a moment her terror froze her; then she jumped up, fumbled her way across the pitch-black lab, and groped for the switches. When she found them she clicked them rapidly. Nothing happened.
There was a flashlight among the stuff from the kitchen; when she found it and switched it on, it gave only a narrow jerky cone of light that made everything outside it even darker. It flashed across some yawning emptiness in the corner. With a gasp she turned back, but it was only the mirror, a leaning darkness that took the light and swallowed it and gave nothing back.
She turned her back on it, but it was still there. Like an unlocked door into the house.
The Door in the Moon Page 11
